In March, Enegix Energy announced some of the most ambitious hydrogen plans the world has ever seen.
Green hydrogen, hydrogen produced by electrolysis that is powered by renewables, has significant potential as a clean energy source.
The Base One project is exceptional not only for its huge scale, but the timing of its construction, with demand for hydrogen set to increase dramatically over the next few decades.
With BI Energia alone providing $2.5bn in investment for its 1.2GW Camocim wind facility, there is significant financial muscle behind these lofty ambitions.
This combination of vast investment and integration with the existing renewable power infrastructure of Ceará could have cultural impacts too.
This narrative shift could help overcome one of the key challenges facing many hydrogen projects, the idea that its practical difficulties render it fundamentally unsuitable for baseload power generation.
Nevertheless, practical challenges remain, as is the case with any energy project of this scale.
This idea of large-scale green hydrogen is also highly ambitious, considering the current state of the energy source.
Instead, the idea is to develop green hydrogen infrastructure to the point where it can replace coal and oil as a source of baseload power, leapfrogging other renewables to form the bedrock of the world’s future energy mix.
“The problem with baseload is that they’re intermittent; the wind’s not always blowing and the sun’s not always shining and batteries are still very expensive, although that is changing.
“When you look at emerging markets and developing markets at the moment, the power infrastructure in some cases can be quite messy,” Cooke says.