GreenLab: Fremtiden bliver allerede testet
If you expect a traditional energy production building, you will be surprised when you arrive at GreenLab, located 12 km north of Skive. In the summer months, wild flowers grow here, and it is not at all unusual for the locals to go sightseeing in their cars in the area.
GreenLab is a green circular industrial park. What else belongs to the future, such as PtX and sector coupling, is already here.
In 2021, GreenLab Skive became a regulatory test zone for energy, and this removed a large number of obstacles. In the same year, the Brande Brint test zone also came, but on a much smaller scale.
Before GreenLab became a test zone, exemption applications were necessary for all the projects. Adm. director Christopher Sorensen remembers well what it was like when he took office in 2019.
- When I started, there was a stack of still unresolved exemption applications. It is no longer like that today. Now we have a sandbox to test our ideas in with the test zone, says Christopher Sorensen.
In one fell swoop, it became possible to unleash innovation and speed up the sector coupling of the future.
- This is how we got a large-scale energy cluster, it can easily be done, says Christopher Sorensen.
Next generation energy cluster
The energy cluster provides the opportunity to investigate how electricity from green sources such as offshore wind farms can be used in a closed loop by companies. Here, it is sustainability when resources are exchanged in the best possible way in the community. One company's residual products are used by the next company.
The cluster has wind turbines, electricity, electrolysis, hydrogen, PtX, methanol, water supply, biogas production, CO2, pyrolysis of plastic waste, pyrolysis oil that can be reused in new plastic production. It is production of protein for animal feed from starfish, production of fertilizer and production of 100 per cent. compostable cardboard made from residual fibers from biogas production. It is only the beginning, and there are already plans to connect GreenLab to the local district heating network.
- The various companies and projects are connected to each other via SymbiosisNet. It is the famous sector coupling, says Christopher Sorensen.
- This is how our society will function in the future. There is no waste because everything is recycled somewhere else in the cluster. It is common sense and a symbiosis.
The future
At the end of March 2023, GreenLab made history when a six MW test module for PtX production was delivered to the cluster.
The 70-tonne electrolyser is a prototype that has been developed by Green Hydrogen Systems. It is a big step towards large-scale production of large-scale green hydrogen production.
- PtX is not only a promising technology and a cleaner way to produce and store energy. It is also the cornerstone of the future energy system, where sector coupling is the cornerstone, explains Christopher Sorensen.
GreebLab will produce fuels such as hydrogen and methanol from green power sources. It will be a showroom for Denmark on how technology and economy are important when e-fuels are to be produced on a large scale. This is knowledge that can be used when and if Denmark gets its two energy islands.
It is also a way to obtain more knowledge about how the energy must be stored in the green energy system of the future. This is knowledge that is needed to be able to achieve Denmark's goal of reducing CO2 emissions. But it still requires time for development.
- We will get a 112 MW electrolyser in modules of 6 MW, but the factory to produce them had to be built first. Big is better, but we are not in a position to build a GW PtX plant yet, says Christopher Sorensen.
Important infrastructure
In the summer of 2023, GreenLab has buried the first hydrogen pipeline in Denmark, and it will be part of the SymbiosisNet that connects the companies to each other.
It is a network that can be reminiscent of the hydrogen backbone that might one day supply the EU with green hydrogen from Denmark.
- The infrastructure is important for the green transition and a hydrogen backbone is one of the important enablers in it. It's like the early days of wind turbines in Denmark, says Christopher Sorensen, he notes one thing:
- We have to start before there is a need, and it is now.
