ScotWind

Marubeni Corporation (Marubeni), SSE Renewables Limited (SSER), and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) (the Project Partners) are combining their unparalleled local experience and extensive global expertise in the development of fixed and floating offshore wind farms to deliver significant and enduring social, economic, and decarbonisation benefits to Scotland.

About the project

ScotWind is a programme managed by Crown Estate Scotland which will lease areas of the seabed around Scotland for wind farm developments. Developers apply to the scheme and, if successful, will be granted the rights to build wind farms in Scottish waters. It is hoped that as much as 10 gigawatts of new generating capacity will be built over the next decade as a product of ScotWind. The application window closed in July 2021 and the results are expected to be announced in January 2022.

Marubeni Corporation

Marubeni Corporation is the Tokyo Stock Exchange listed conglomerate with extensive interests in power generation and renewable energy. Marubeni has built considerable offshore wind experience since its investment into UK offshore wind in 2011 as a first Japanese IPP developer. Marubeni is also one of the shareholders of Seajacks and has a wide range of offshore wind industrial value chain knowledge. As of June 2021, Marubeni owns a total gross capacity of over 38GW and 11.8GW on a net equity basis of power plants globally.

Marubeni brings a wealth of sector experience of delivering floating offshore wind, including leading floating offshore wind demonstration projects in Japan with five different floating foundations.

In September 2018, Marubeni announced to double the scale of renewable energy exposure from the current 10% to 20% of total net generating capacity by 2023. Further, in March 2021, Marubeni has set a goal to strive for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions from the group by 2050. To achieve this goal, Marubeni has formulated action plans which include halving its coal generation capacity by 2025.

SSE Renewables

SSE Renewables is a leading developer, owner and operator of renewable energy across the UK and Ireland, with a portfolio of around 4GW of onshore wind, offshore wind and hydro. Part of the FTSE-listed SSE plc, its strategy is to drive the transition to a net zero future through the world class development, construction and operation of renewable energy assets.

SSE Renewables is building more offshore wind energy than any other company in the world right now. It is currently constructing the world’s largest offshore wind farm, the 3.6GW Dogger Bank Wind Farm in the North Sea, a joint venture with Equinor and Eni, as well as Scotland’s largest offshore wind farm, the 1.1GW Seagreen Offshore Wind Farm in the Firth of Forth, which is a joint venture with TotalEnergies. It also has the largest offshore wind development pipeline across the UK and Ireland at around 7GW, of which around 1.5GW is already in construction and nearly 800MW is fully consented.

SSE Renewables owns nearly 2GW of operational onshore wind capacity with a development pipeline of over 1GW under development. Its 1,459MW hydro portfolio includes 300MW of pumped storage and 750MW of flexible hydro. Its operational offshore wind portfolio consists of 487MW across two offshore joint venture sites, Beatrice and Greater Gabbard, both of which it operates on behalf of its asset partners.

SSE Renewables is a Principal Partner to the UK Government in the run up to and during the COP26 UN climate summit in November 2021.

Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP)

Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) is a fund management company specialised in offering tailor-made investments in energy infrastructure assets globally within renewables and the greenfield segment. CIP manages eight funds and has approximately EUR 16 billion under management. CIP was founded in 2012 by senior executives from the energy industry in cooperation with PensionDanmark. Today CIP’s funds have approximately 100 international institutional investors from the Nordics, Continental Europe, the UK, Israel, Asia, Australia, and North America and multi-lateral organisations e.g. EIB.

CIP are a trusted partner in projects across a wide range of technologies including offshore wind, onshore wind, solar PV, biomass and energy-from-waste, transmission and distribution, reserve capacity and storage, and other energy assets like Power-to-X. They are known for execution certainty, with projects completed on budget and to specification.

In the north of Scotland, CIP is developing both a floating demonstration project up to 10MW and a floating wind farm with a capacity of up to 100MW off the coast of Dounreay in the Pentland Firth. Copenhagen Offshore Partners (COP) is managing the development, design, EPC and O&M of these projects on an exclusive basis for CIP and provides resources and know-how to the ScotWind Project Partners.

Geothermal Projects

Marubeni has vast experience building and operating geothermal energy projects with past involvements in Costa Rica and Philippines and current construction of Rantau Dedap in Indonesia.

In Europe Marubeni is currently developing a geothermal energy project in the South East Molasse Basin of Germany. With an expected thermal power output of over 100MW, the project is looking to deliver renewable heat and electricity to the local communities for over 50 years. In parallel, Marubeni is looking to make other geothermal project investments in other parts of Europe suitable for geothermal development.

V2G PoC Project

A new future energy project will explore how UK businesses can leverage advanced electric vehicle (EV) charging capabilities. The Proof of Concept (PoC) project will aim to explore service offerings that leverage Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) and Vehicle-to-Building (V2B) technology.

The Norton Way Nissan site, Hertfordshire. On-site two Virta V2G chargers, a solar carport and a rooftop solar system have been installed.

The following businesses signal their commitment to supporting the UK’s efforts to increase EV adoption and assist corporates in considering how best to electrify their fleet to work towards achieving net-zero carbon targets, optimise EV batteries and maximise returns on investment:

• Marubeni (Marubeni Europe plc, Marubeni Europower and Marubeni Auto Investment (UK)
• SmartestEnergy
• Grid Edge
• Virta
• Origami

With a focus on flexibility, the PoC will be testing predictive controls and optimisation strategies to inform future service offerings for UK businesses. The project will make use of Norton Way Nissan in Hertfordshire, one of the Marubeni Auto Investment (UK) sites for a minimum of one year for this knowledge-share project to provide rich data insights that will shape product development activities across all entities involved.

The PoC V2G hardware installation by Virta at the Norton Way Nissan site, Hertfordshire.

Hydrogen

Hydrogen can be generated from a range of chemical species including hydrocarbons, ammonia, water and biomass and a number of processes are available for its production including:• thermo-chemical processes such as steam reforming of hydrocarbons, biomass gasification, biomass-derived liquid reforming or solar thermochemical reforming;• electro-chemical processes using electrolysis;• direct solar water splitting; and• biological processes using bacteria and microalgae to produce hydrogen via either photosynthetic or fermentative processes.

The starting medium and the technique used influences the sustainability of the hydrogen fuel produced.  Green hydrogen refers to hydrogen produced from renewable sources.  The definition provided within the EU Hydrogen Strategy for green hydrogen is:

“hydrogen produced through the electrolysis of water (in an electrolyser, powered by electricity), and with the electricity stemming from renewable sources. The full life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions of the production of renewable hydrogen are close to zero. Renewable hydrogen may also be produced through the reforming of biogas (instead of natural gas) or biochemical conversion of biomass, if in compliance with sustainability requirements.”

The main green hydrogen technologies will include techniques for hydrogen generation from water using electrolysis:

• alkaline electrolysers;
• polymer electrolyte (or proton exchange) membrane (PEM) electrolysers;
• solid oxide electrolysers

Marubeni Role

Marubeni will be designing, financing, procuring, constructing, owning, and operating the electrolyser plant.

Marubeni can procure competitive and reliable sources of renewable power, a main ingredient for green hydrogen production. There are mainly three ways of sourcing renewable electricity;

1. to build onsite renewable generation facility,
2. to source from the electricity grid with certificate of origin of offsite renewable generation facility
3. to secure renewable power via private wire connection from new or existing assets.

We are currently engaging with local stakeholder to develop a electrolysers plant with an electrical capacity of between 5 to 7.5MW, with the potential to produce approximately 500 to 750 tons of green hydrogen per annum

Concept of Green Hydrogen Project