Coinciding with the Green Hydrogen Congress in HuelvaEcologistas en Acción has just presented its presentation allegations against CEPSA’s green hydrogen projectwhich plans to build a factory to produce more than 53,000 tons per year hydrogento use it in the industrial processes of its refinery and to sell it to nearby fertilizer production industries.
Ecologists in Action from Huelva are critical of the production and trade model of Hydrogenpatrimonized by the big industry linked to fossil fuels and defending local use and endogenous exploitation and with social control.
The option of green hydrogen It should be considered in a transition scenario towards a model based on energy sovereignty and decarbonisation of the economy. It is not the administrative obstacles that prevent the correct management of production, but on the contrary the lack of planning, insufficient management and the abandonment of prioritizing projects. , increasing the risks of oversizing and the creation of a dangerous bubble.
It is essential to ensure that the energy source is renewableto be considered a project of green hydrogen as such, without the mere accreditation of clean energy (as currently understood in the EU) being sufficient to guarantee this origin renewable.
This guarantee is not justified in the proposal for CEPSA, nor is its specific origin specified. Another issue highlighted in environmental claims is the high water consumption required by this new energy technology.
The project involves a demand of almost 900,000 cubic meters per year, to which must be added the requests for water concessions from similar projects advertised in the same area. The Junta de Andalucía must guarantee the balance between demands in the current situation of drought and in light of the forecasts of lower resources due to climate change, and to do so it must limit new applications that will fill the hydrological deficit in areas such as could accentuate ours.
Welcome to CEPSA’s green hydrogen project, but not like this
Ecologists in Action also considers respect for the protected spaces of the environment as fundamental, and the project thereof CEPSA It is located on the edge of the Estero Domingo Rubio Natural Park, part of the European Union’s Natura 2000 network, already badly affected by intensive agriculture in the area.
For this reason, Ecologistas en Acción proposes the elimination of agrochemical herbicides in the control of vegetation, fencing systems permeable for the passage of native fauna and the burial of electrical lines to avoid collisions and electrocutions, inside and outside the new fence, as well as monitoring its impact on birds and habitats of Community interest.
For the environmental association Huelva. The allegations from Ecologistas and Acción also emphasize that this is contradictory green hydrogen such as that presented here, are carried out by companies whose fundamental purpose is the refining of petroleum and its auxiliary industries.
In line with the necessary decarbonization, they found no explicit commitment from the company to replace the “fossil” industrial pipes at the Rábida factory, which would have to be replaced by using green hydrogenTherefore, they demand the gradual replacement of fossil fuels and not merely their addition with alternative fuels such as H2 green.