Green Lithium Refining announced on June 4 that it was partnering with EDF on hydrogen supplies for use as a feedstock gas at its lithium refinery at PD Ports in Teesside, Northeast England.
The hydrogen would come from the Tees Green Hydrogen project, which the French company’s EDF Renewables UK and Hynamics subsidiaries are developing in the same region.
The first phase of Tees Green Hydrogen entails installing an electrolyser with a capacity of 7.5MW to produce green hydrogen, with construction starting in 2025 and start-up targeted for 2026. Under further phases, EDF is aiming to expand the project’s capacity to 300MW.
The project has been gaining momentum, with EDF announcing in December that it had secured funding from the UK Government’s Net Zero Hydrogen Fund (NZHF).
It has submitted plans for the first phase of the project to Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council, and has also submitted plans for a solar farm that would produce power for the green hydrogen project.
EDF already operates a wind farm offshore Teesside that will also supply power to Tees Green Hydrogen. Now it looks like EDF has also lined up a hydrogen offtaker, or at least is in the process of lining one up.
Green Lithium did not disclose any details of its partnership and did not specify whether it was preliminary or definitive, nor did it mention the volume of hydrogen supply that would be involved.
However, it pointed to various benefits it expected from the partnership, both in terms of the energy transition and in terms of lithium supply security.
Global lithium supplies
This is because the UK is reliant on international sources of refined lithium – as is the EU – said Green Lithium, pointing to the fact that the majority of the world’s lithium is refined in China.
Lithium was a key part of the UK government’s Critical Minerals Strategy in 2022 and Critical Minerals Refresh in 2023, the company continued.
It therefore intends to bolster the security of local lithium supply by launching domestic refining operations.
Green Lithium’s Teesside refinery is planned to have a capacity of over 50,000 tonnes per year (tpy) of low-carbon, battery-grade lithium chemicals that the company expects to help meet growing European demand. This would be enough to help produce 1 million electric vehicles (EVs), according to the company.
In addition, Green Lithium expects the partnership with EDF to help decarbonise both its own operations and European battery and EV supply chains more broadly, given that lithium refining is largely powered by coal or natural gas.
“Operating our refinery in Teesside using the reliable supply of hydrogen from EDF’s Tees Green Hydrogen project will be good for Green Lithium, good for EDF in the UK, and good for Teesside,” stated Green Lithium’s site development and construction project manager, Charlie Tasker.
“This is also a significant step in being able to offer our customers lithium chemicals at 25% of the CO2 footprint of those produced by Chinese operators.”
Securing offtakers and thus matching supply with demand is one of the major challenges for the nascent hydrogen industry, so news of Green Lithium’s partnership with EDF represents a positive step forward, despite the lack of publicly available details so far.
News of the partnership comes as other companies are also working to advance low-carbon hydrogen initiatives in Teesside. BP is developing both the H2Teesside blue hydrogen project and the HyGreen Teeside green hydrogen venture. Meanwhile, Kellas Midstream and SSE Thermal are developing the H2NorthEast blue hydrogen project.
The blue hydrogen projects are also part of the East Coast Cluster, which is set to be one of the UK’s first carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) clusters, aimed at decarbonising local industry.
Recommended for you
