Energy industry veteran Tim Cowhig is leading a business that plans to invest around €2 billion in a green hydrogen project meant to boost renewables use.
Cowhig established SWS, subsequently bought by Bord Gáis Energy, and Element Power, which Norway’s Statkraft acquired, as well as backing the venture that subsequently led to the GreenLink Interconnector.
He is chairman of Net Zero Energy (NZE), which plans to invest €2 billion in a scheme to use excess or untapped renewable electricity to make green hydrogen that can be stored and deployed to generate power when it is needed.
Renewable power availability and electricity demand do not always coincide as wind and solar power depend on the weather. At the same time, electricity grid constraints and market rules prevent some wind or solar plants from providing power when it is available.
RM Block
NZE intends using some of this unused power to produce hydrogen. This involves applying an electrical charge to water to split oxygen and hydrogen.
The company will then store the hydrogen in specially dug lined granite caverns “deep underground” for use later to generate electricity when demand is high and supply it to the national grid. Hydrogen turns to oxygen when it is burned, so produces little in the way of emissions.
Similar systems are already working in Scandinavia and the UK.
NZE has earmarked a site at Rathrush, close to Rathoe in Co Carlow, for the project, known as Rathrush Green Energy Park.
The company began consultations with locals this week and also met Carlow County Council representatives. NZE hopes to apply for planning permission before the end of the year.
It calculates that the plan will cut 180,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year, equivalent to taking 40,000 cars off the road.
David McRedmond: ‘O’Connell Street needs high density housing’
Cowhig predicted Rathrush could meet “as much as 10 per cent” of peak electricity needs.
“Rathrush Green Energy Park provides significant, secure, sustainable, long-duration energy storage for the Irish grid,” he said.
The Republic spends €10 billion a year importing fossil fuels, he said.
NZE chief executive Peter Harte said the Co Carlow development would in the future help insulate the State against shocks such as those that followed the US-Israeli attack on Iran in February and Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
“It simultaneously provides reassurance and confidence for high-end electricity users seeking to locate here in Ireland,” Harte said.
