Paraguay to produce green hydrogen in partnership with British company

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – “The company will be launching bonds in the London Stock Exchange next month. We are completing all formalities to be able to issue these shares. The company also has a project to do something similar in Iceland and in the case of Paraguay, Atome Energy SA has been formed,” Spalding said.

He emphasized that the topic of ecological hydrogen and ammonia is not something new and that the country has the resources to produce it.

“The novelty lies in the way to produce it and in this case the British company is aiming to use the surplus energy from Itaipu. Paraguay has a surplus and the plan is to use this clean and renewable energy to produce hydrogen and green ammonia,” he explained.

He said that there are great prospects of generating this new energy to be used in vehicles. “There is a mutual interest with the International Technological Park of Itaipu, they are developing a project to create a low carbon economic zone, using their space next to Itaipu. We are also in talks with Ande and the Vice-Ministry of Energy to develop a flagship project at a national level and a public-private partnership.”

The first generation stage would amount to 50MWh. “We believe that 250MWh can be reached and it is basically the use of 1/3 of an Itaipu turbine in the project’s maturity stage.”

Spalding explained that the green hydrogen will be produced using water from the Paraná River. “That is split, the hydrogen is retrieved and oxygen is produced as a by-product, which can also be sold on the local and international market. Green hydrogen can be used in vehicles that use this energy to drive electric motors, as we can already see. In addition, it has greater autonomy and is charged faster than electric vehicles,” he said.

He said that green ammonia can be used to produce green fertilizer. “It could be an advantage for agriculture and multinationals to present themselves as companies addressing decarbonization.”

He added that British Atome Energy PLC would invest approximately US$550 million in Paraguay to implement hydrogen and green ammonia production centers. The foreign company opened an office in the country, headed by Spalding.

Green or renewable hydrogen (H2V) is generated from electricity from 100% renewable energies through a process called “water electrolysis,” which consists of the separation of oxygen and hydrogen, and its use is mainly intended for the agricultural industry with fertilizers, as well as in some automobile models.