"Hydrogen could become big business for us" – Siemens Gamesa CEO

Renewables energy company Siemens Gamesa is to start production of green hydrogen in addition to wind power, CEO Andreas Nauen said in an interview with German business daily Handelsblatt. Despite the current boom in renewables, Siemens Gamesa experienced significant financial losses in 2020, the newspaper writes. The main reason for this was taking on projects in Northern Europe that were too risky, and planning too optimistically, Nauen told Handelsblatt. The company has a network of many wind farms, some of them very small, and is closing those that are not competitive, he said. Siemens Gamesa is now looking into the production of green hydrogen together with Siemens Energy. “There is an enormous demand for green hydrogen,” Nauen said. “If we manage to produce it cost-effectively, it could become big business for us,” he told the newspaper. The company has produced the first kilogramme of hydrogen with an onshore wind turbine and electrolyser in Denmark and expects to have a test plant at sea in the mid-2020s, when there are “commercial projects and the cost has dropped significantly,” Nauen said. 

In the fight against climate change, green hydrogen made with renewable electricity is increasingly seen as a solution for many areas where emissions are particularly hard to reduce, such as heavy industry and aviation. Germany, which has set itself the target of becoming climate-neutral by mid-century, aims to become a global leader in the associated technologies - not only to launch the next stages of its energy transition but also to secure a promising growth market for its internationally reputed industry. Earlier this year, Germany launched three flagship projects to fulfil its green hydrogen ambitions.