Sines, Portugal, March 25, 2025 (Lusa) - Portugal's Galp Energia expects its planned new green hydrogen and biofuels units, including for the manufacture of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), to start production in mid-2026, after a total investment of €650 million, the company said on Tuesday.
In the case of the HVO (Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil) facility to produce renewable diesel, "construction began at the end of 2023, in April 2024 we started building the green hydrogen unit and the expectation is to have both in operation by mid-2026," said Galp's director of green hydrogen and biofuels, Sérgio Machado, at a meeting with journalists at the Galp refinery at Sines, in the district of Setúbal.
Galp made the final investment decision on these two units in September 2023, for the construction, in Sines, of an HVO and SAF plant with the capacity to produce 270,000 tonnes of advanced biofuels, with a value of around €400 million, and a 100-megawatt (MW) green hydrogen unit, representing an investment of around €250 million.
In the latter case, Galp only is the second company in Europe to make a final investment decision on the scale of 100 MW, and it could well be the first company in Europe to have a unit of this size in operation.
Machado said that the "slight delays" in construction are natural in a project of this size and complexity.
"If we're the first unit of this scale to start operating in Europe, it's because others were later than us," he pointed out.
Together, the two units will reduce pollutant emissions by more than 900,000 tonnes, the equivalent of taking 700,000 cars off the road a year, according to Galp.
The head of Galp's industrial segment, Ronald Doesburg, argued that refineries are critical to Europe's energy security and should not be seen as something to be phased out but rather as "catalysts for change" towards a greener economy.
According to Machado, the knowledge, technologies and logistics system that exist in refineries should be utilised to produce biofuels.
"The refining sector is the world's largest consumer of hydrogen, so it's only natural that these new products are introduced here," he said, explaining that 20% to 25% of the Sines unit's carbon dioxide emissions come from the use in operations of “grey” hydrogen produced from fossil fuels, primarily natural gas, in a process that releases significant amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.
The idea, he explained, is to produce green hydrogen to replace what the hydrogen that is currently being produced.
With regard to the production of SAF, Machado emphasised that Galp, as a company that supplies aviation fuel, is already obliged this year to ensure that at least 2% of the fuel supplied at airports is sustainable, with this percentage increasing over time, in accordance with European Union standards.
From next year onwards, he added, Galp will have a higher SAF production capacity than that obliged by EU standards.
MPE/ARO // ARO.
Lusa
