Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) announced on May 6 that it has signed an MOU with nine organizations to set up 100 MW green hydrogen production facilities in a floating wind farm in the East Sea.

The nine organizations included the Ulsan City Government, Ulsan Techno Park, the Ulsan Chamber of Commerce, SK Gas, Korea East-West Power, Sejin Heavy Industries, and the UNIST.

Under the MOU, the first phase of the project is to build a 100 MW green hydrogen pilot plant in a floating wind farm in the East Sea by 2025. Their second-phase project is to build a 1.2 GW large-scale green hydrogen production plant by 2030.

HHI is planning to develop a large-scale hydroelectric green hydrogen plant that produces hydrogen from seawater using electricity supplied by the floating wind farm.

The Ulsan City Government will take care of regulatory issues and support commercialization; Korea National Oil Corp. and SK Gas will be tasked with developing floating wind farms; Korea East-West Power will supply power for production of green hydrogen and develop business models; and the UNIST will verify the technology to produce green hydrogen with offshore wind power.

Green hydrogen is produced by decomposing water by using electricity from renewable energy sources such as wind power. It is expected to be an eco-friendly energy source in the future as it emits no carbon dioxide.

Earlier in March, Hyundai Heavy Industries Group laid out the "Hydrogen Dream 2030 Roadmap," the group's hydrogen business vision to establish a hydrogen value chain ranging from hydrogen production on land and sea to hydrogen transportation, storage and utilization.

Meanwhile, the Korean government came up with a roadmap to revitalize an eco-friendly hydrogen economy in January 2019, and suggested the goals of producing 6.2 million hydrogen cars, building 1,200 hydrogen charging stations and producing 15GW fuel cells for power generation by 2040.