Policy makers and business leaders in the Pacific Northwest are looking for ways to cost-effectively decarbonize our energy supplies while also ensuring that our region has sufficient capacity to address the energy needs of the future.  With billions of dollars invested and years of technical expertise already developed for maintaining our natural gas systems, our approach should ideally consider ways to leverage these existing investments to help produce and transport more carbon neutral fuel supplies such as green hydrogen and renewable natural gas (RNG).  On this study tour we will be visiting sites and meeting with peers in Denmark and the Netherlands, two global leaders in developing these types of solutions, to learn about their vision and the latest developments there.

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Denmark is a world leader in addressing climate change, and has committed to  achieving climate neutrality economy-wide by 2050. The country views development of carbon-neutral biofuels and green hydrogen as a critical component for achieving this goal. Renewable natural gas (RNG), which provided only 8% of the pipeline gas consumed by Denmark in 2018, rose to almost 40% by 2023, and is projected to meet 100% of the country’s natural gas needs by 2030. This rapid growth is due to supportive government policies, combined with close collaboration between the government and business, academic, and non-profit partners. Production of green hydrogen and synthesized carbon neutral fuels, which are just beginning to be produced through Denmark's Power-to-X (PtX) initiative, is poised to enter a growth curve similar to that experienced for RNG over the past decade.

The Netherlands is also a global leader in the transition to a hydrogen and green fuels energy supply.  Once home to one of the largest on-shore natural gas fields in Europe, the region around Groningen is being transformed into a Hydrogen Valley, demonstrating the development of an integrated hydrogen economy that serves transportation, industrial and residential heating needs.  Due to the local history of natural gas extraction, there is elaborate infrastructure available, connecting the approximately 450 larger and smaller gas fields, and the residential areas.  More than 10,000 miles of existing gas pipelines are being evaluated to determine how to best repurpose portions of the system to accommodate transportation and storage of  hydrogen, and make green hydrogen available to the market.