The largest oil company in Spain, Repsol, will build the largest electrolyzer in Spain in Tarragona, with a capacity of 150 megawatts (MW) in 2026, when it will start operating, and 1,000 from 2027. It will do so with funding from the European Commission , for a total investment of 320 million euros.
The facility will have, according to the energy company, “the best technologies to minimize water consumption to produce renewable hydrogen.” Its production will be used “as raw material in local industry, as industrial fuel, in mobility and to be injected into the natural gas network.” In Tarragona, Repsol has one of its largest refineries, the facilities that currently demand the most hydrogen.
Electrolysers are machines that generate hydrogen with water and electricity —usually from renewable sources. Its use has grown exponentially in recent years, as the promise of green hydrogen begins to take root as an energy vector for the future. If the future projection of green hydrogen is what is assumed today, this type of electrolysers will soon be surpassed by other larger ones, just as it happened with the first wind and solar projects. Until then, however, they will produce more than respectable volumes, essential for this type of energy storage and transport to grow and become a reality.
Refinery connection
The project, still in the engineering phase, also provides for the construction of a hydrogen collector to transport it to consumers in the surrounding area, such as the aforementioned refinery or the Ecoplanta, the —according to the oil company— the first circular methanol facility in Spain.
The electrolyser is part of the Hydrogen Valley of Catalonia and the Ebro Hydrogen Corridor and “represents a boost to the creation of clusters around renewable hydrogen”, according to its promoters. “The objective is to match the production capacity to the needs of the adjacent and newly created industry, in addition to diversifying the uses of renewable hydrogen, so that the ecosystem is as efficient as possible, both in terms of production costs and transformation and logistic”.
The third call for large-scale projects of the European Commission’s Innovation Fund, from which the community funds that will finance this project come, has a total budget of 3,600 million euros. The Community Executive has received 239 applications, of which 41 have been selected. Among them, the Repsol electrolyser in Tarragona.
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