A green hydrogen gigafactory will be built just outside Milan

The works were inaugurated on 11 June 2024 and will be completed in 2026.It will be the largest Italian green hydrogen factory.

• The largest green hydrogen factory in Italy will be built in Cernusco sul Naviglio.
• The works began on 11 June 2024 and will end at the beginning of 2026.
• Europe is focusing heavily on green hydrogen, but there are still many uncertainties about achieving the objectives.

Where pipes were produced, now hydrogen will be produced.A groundbreaking ceremony inaugurated, on 11 June 2024, the works of what will become the largest "gigafactory" dedicated to the production of hydrogen in Italy.It will be built on the outskirts of Milan, in the former Rapisarda area of ​​Cernusco sul Naviglio, a pipe industry that has been abandoned for decades.

The first electrolyser factory in Italy will employ 200 internal people and will create an industry for around 2,000 workers, say the proponents of the work, which are the De Nora company and Snam, an energy infrastructure company with headquarters in San Donato Milanese .The two together formed the company De Nora Italy hydrogen technologies in May 2022, with the aim of building this large plant.

What does the Italian GigaFactory in Milan provide?

There Italian GigaFactory – as it was baptized – will extend over an area of 25,000 square meters, will be 100 percent supplied by photovoltaic panels and aims to become one of the most advanced factories in the world for the production of green hydrogen, that produced from renewable sources.

The technological hub, which the proponents assure will be reachable by public transport and cycle paths, envisages an investment of approximately 100 million euros, of which 32 financed by the Pnrr (National Recovery and Resilience Plan) but which could become 63 thanks to additional resources from the funds Ipcei Hydrogen (Important projects of common European interest), a European initiative - which includes several member states including Italy - which economically supports research and development activities along a large part of the hydrogen value chain.

The end of the works is expected between the end of 2025 and the beginning of 2026.Once completed, the factory will produce electrolysers for the generation of green hydrogen, systems and components for water electrolysis and fuel cells for mobility.

Europe is focusing on green hydrogen

Europe focuses heavily on green hydrogen, because it is considered a necessary fuel for decarbonization and the reduction of emissions.The European green hydrogen production objectives, set in the RePowerEu community programme, predict 10 million tonnes per year by 2030.

Global hydrogen production is 95 million tons per year but, paradoxically, almost all of it is derived from methane (grey hydrogen) or from coal gasification (black hydrogen).Gray and black hydrogen therefore do not contribute to the reduction of climate-changing emissions but, being produced with fossil fuels, increase them.Global hydrogen production generates 800 million tons of CO2 per year, corresponding to more than 2 percent of emissions global carbon dioxide.Currently, therefore, hydrogen is not a solution to climate change but rather its cause.To transform it from problem to solution it is necessary to produce it by electrolysis using or electricity from renewables (green hydrogen).

The European hydrogen strategy, adopted in 2020, aspires to install 40 GW of electrolysers by 2030.Considering that currently the capacity of electrolysers installed in the European Union is around 1 GW, several entities - including the Ispi research center where these data are taken from – they ask whether the goal of tenfold by 2030 is feasible.

The Milanese gigafactory will have to respond to this challenge.The CEO of De Nora, Paolo Dellachà, said that "we don't need large centralized structures but many distributed ones, to respond to the needs of the various sectors, starting from the 'hard to abate' ones such as the chemical and steel industries".According to this view, they necessarily must other production centers arise of green hydrogen in Italy, otherwise the efforts will be in vain.

There are several "hydrogen valley" projects announced but whose construction site is still uncertain:starting from Val Camonica, where an "all hydrogen" railway line is planned - the Brescia-Iseo-Edolo - to those proclaimed in Puglia and Sicily:in the first is expected the implementation of the “Puglia green hydrogen valley” project, which was selected by the Ipcei Idrogen initiative for an amount of 370 thousand euros;in Sicily, however, in February 2024 was announced the creation of a hydrogen valley in Messina.Also in this case, Pnrr funds will be used.But both projects have not yet laid the first stone.