The Ulster Hydrogen Valley concept was uploaded onto the EU Hydrogen Valley website to show several electrolysis stations with combined capacity of 3.45GWe being fed with green offshore wind power through private wire cables and transformers to produce green hydrogen.

The electrolysers were then connected through a network of dedicated hydrogen pipelines that also incorporated the Islandmagee Salt Cavern storage facility. The 7 x 70 million m3 (at STP) capacity would be a nationally significant hydrogen storage asset. Additional short term diurnal storage would be provided through line-packing in the hydrogen pipelines that extend to both Scotland and the Republic of Ireland

Hydrogen offtakes to CCGTs, natural gas blending, industrial heating, HGVs etc are all technically possible but so far there is insufficient legislation and regulation to cover these areas in Northern Ireland and developers like B9 could wait another 10 years for an opportunity to progress with project development.

However, given that a well-established global market for e-methanol already exists today it was concluded that this was able to provide a suitable route to market for the project.

It can therefore be said that the Ulster Hydrogen Valley concept has shown that the methanol economy will likely pre-date the hydrogen economy in this region of the country.