Breaking: Whiddy Island to be home to one of world’s biggest energy plants

ONE of the world’s largest energy facilities is to be set up on Whiddy Island to produce green hydrogen and green ammonia.

Zenith Energy and EI-H2 have announced plans for a joint venture to develop a 3.2 gigawatt (GW) green energy facility which, when fully operational by 2028, has the potential to reduce Irish carbon emissions by 2.4m tonnes per year. That represents the equivalent of the carbon emissions of a quarter of all Irish homes.

Whiddy island was strategically chosen as the location for a facility of this scale given its proximity to some of the most productive off-shore locations for wind-generated electricity.

The first phase of the project will see the construction of a scalable green hydrogen production facility, up to 2.7 GW in capacity.

The second phase involves the construction of a 500MW green ammonia facility, using the green hydrogen from the first phase.

The green energy produced by the facility will be used both domestically and internationally, providing carbon free alternatives to help reduce the country’s carbon footprint, and to put Ireland on the green energy export map.

The developers say the construction phase could provide hundreds of jobs in the area.

For full story, see this week’s Southern Star, out Thursday.