Shell

Low-carbon hydrogen can play a vital role in helping society achieve its net-zero emissions ambition, particularly for hard-to-electrify sectors such as heavy-duty transport and heavy industries like cement, steel, and chemicals. To unlock the full potential of hydrogen, Shell will focus on opportunities in key regions. For industry, this includes North America and Northwest Europe, where we see potential for forming key hubs, especially in adjacency with Shell’s Chemicals & Energy Parks (e.g. Shell’s Holland Hydrogen 1 electrolyser in the Netherlands).

To fully realise hydrogen’s potential in the energy transition, society, academia, and industry must move quickly to deliver larger projects, including development of know-how for large-scale energy storage solutions. Shell has an outstanding track record in subsurface characterization, risk assessment and mitigation which covers numerical and experimental studies of reservoir and wellbore integrity, surface facilities and pipeline infrastructure design. Further, we bring expertise in risk-based Measurement, Monitoring and Verification (MMV) of natural gas and CO2 storage operations. This know-how built on extensive in-house and collaborative research projects can readily be transferred to Underground Hydrogen Storage (UHS).

Project Goals

As part of the EUH2STARS consortium, Shell will be leading WP4 “Upscaling and Optimisation”, aiming to integrate the results of the other EUH2STARS work packages and implementing the learnings from the UHS demonstrator at Rubensdorf, Austria. WP4 will build on transformation pathways to full-scale commercial settings by providing subsurface design and surface facilities engineering for selected underground gas storage facilities and depleted gas fields in Austria, Hungary, the Netherlands and Spain. Shell is further contributing to other EUH2STARS work packages with its expertise in monitoring technologies, material sciences, and storage integration into the national and European energy system.

"Hydrogen storage will be essential in the future energy system to satisfy long-term energy storage needs. Building the required storage infrastructure over the next two decades poses a challenge that can only be tackled through collaboration. EUH2STARS offers the unique opportunity to work with European storage operators to demonstrate the feasibility and economic viability of hydrogen storage in depleted gas fields and to prepare its deployment across Europe“, Frank Geuzebroek, Decision Executive Subsurface Hydrogen Storage Technology Programme at Shell Global Solutions International B.V.