MOL is building one of Europe’s largest green hydrogen plants in Százhalombatta. The EUR 22 million investment enables MOL to produce 1,600 tons of green hydrogen per year using electricity from renewable sources and thus reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 25,000 tons.
With the introduction of the new technology, MOL will become a major player in the region’s sustainable hydrogen economy.
The development is an important step in the implementation of MOL’s updated SHAPE TOMORROW 2030+ corporate strategy, which aims for the company to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
The company is implementing the investment with the help of American Plug Power, a leading supplier of turnkey green hydrogen systems. Green hydrogen will reduce Dunai Finomító’s carbon footprint and enable emission-free mobility in the long term.
The 22 million euro facility, which uses the American Plug Power 10 MW electrolyzer unit, is capable of producing around 1,600 tons of clean, carbon-neutral green hydrogen per year, thanks to which more than 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions can be avoided, instead of the natural gas used today. -based manufacturing process. As this technology is responsible for one sixth of MOL’s carbon dioxide emissions, the new technology supports the realization of MOL’s carbon neutral goals and contributes to the energy independence of the region.
MOL will use the green hydrogen produced by the equipment, which will come into operation in 2024, in the Danube Refinery during fuel production, in its own hydrogen network. Thus, it is integrated into the molecules of MOL fuels, making the production technology and the final product greener, thus further reducing the company’s carbon footprint.
„We are convinced that hydrogen is not only one of the most important energy carriers of the energy transition that is already underway, but will also be unavoidable in the new, carbon-neutral energy system. With the new technology, we will localize the production of green hydrogen in Százhalombatta, and with this the MOL Group can emerge as one of the most important players in the sustainable energy economy in the region.” – stated Gábriel Szabó, managing director of the Downstream business of the MOL group.
„Green hydrogen is designed to help address two critical issues facing humanity: climate change and energy independence.” said Andy Marsh, CEO of Plug Power. „And our possibilities seem limitless to support the introduction of green hydrogen to more traditional industrial hydrogen markets all over the world.” We are happy to provide our state-of-the-art technology to Dunai Finomító, enabling the MOL Group to take a big step forward in addressing these problems in the region.”
During the production of green hydrogen, no greenhouse gases are produced at all: in Plug Power’s equipment, water is broken down into hydrogen and oxygen with the help of electricity from a renewable source. In this way, no by-products are formed at all that would have a harmful effect on the environment: in fact, by producing 1 ton of hydrogen, the equipment also produces 8-9 tons of pure oxygen, as well as saving the use of almost 10,000 tons of natural gas. Plug’s equipment – in the application of which they have nearly 50 years of operational experience – are modular, scalable, hydrogen generators optimized for the production of pure hydrogen.
The production of green hydrogen fits organically into the updated, sustainability-focused SHAPE TOMORROW 2030+ strategy of the MOL Group, fully in line with the European Green Agreement, within the framework of which the company will invest a total of one billion dollars in the low-carbon, circular economy by 2025. As part of the strategy, MOL will reduce the carbon footprint of its operations by 30 percent by 2030 and devote 50 percent of investment expenditures to sustainable projects. MOL aims to make its activities carbon neutral by 2050.
