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Enegix Base One Green Hydrogen Plant will produce renewable hydrogen via electrolysis in Ceara, Brazil, leveraging 3.4 GW baseload renewables, offshore wind, and hydro to scale clean energy, storage, and export logistics.

Key Points

A $5.4bn Ceara, Brazil project to produce 600m kg of green hydrogen annually using 3.4 GW of baseload renewables.

✅ 3.4 GW baseload from hydro and offshore wind pipelines

✅ Targets 600m kg green hydrogen per year via electrolysis

✅ Focus on storage, transport, and export supply chains

In March, Enegix Energy announced some of the most ambitious hydrogen plans the world has ever seen. The company signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the government of the Brazilian state of Ceará to build the world’s largest green hydrogen plant in the state on the country’s north-eastern coast, and the figures are staggering.

The Base One facility will produce more than 600 million kilograms of green hydrogen annually from 3.4GW of baseload renewable energy, and receive $5.4bn in investment to get the project off the ground and producing within four years.

Green hydrogen, hydrogen produced by electrolysis that is powered by renewables, has significant potential as a clean energy source. Already seeing increased usage in the transport sector, the power source boasts the energy efficiency and the environmental viability to be a cornerstone of the world’s energy mix.

Yet practical challenges have often derailed large-scale green hydrogen projects, from the inherent obstacle of requiring separate renewable power facilities to the logistical and technological challenges of storing and transporting hydrogen. Could vast investment, clever planning, and supportive governments and programs like the DOE’s hydrogen hubs initiative help Enegix to deliver on green hydrogen’s oft-touted potential?

Brazilian billions
The Base One project is exceptional not only for its huge scale, but the timing of its construction, with demand for hydrogen set to increase dramatically over the next few decades. Figures from Wood Mackenzie suggest that hydrogen could account for 1.4 billion tonnes of energy demand by 2050, one-tenth of the world’s supply, with green hydrogen set to be the majority of this figure.

Yet considering that, prior to the announcement of the Enegix project, global green hydrogen capacity was just 94MW, advances in offshore green hydrogen and the development of a project of this size and scope could scale up the role of green hydrogen by orders of magnitude.

“We really need to [advance clean energy] without any emissions on a completely clean, carbon neutral and net-zero framework, and so we needed access to a large amount of green energy projects,” explains Wesley Cooke, founder and CEO of Enegix, a goal aligned with analyses that zero-emissions electricity by 2035 is possible, discussing the motivation behind the vast project.

With these ambitious goals in mind, the company needed to find a region with a particular combination of political will and environmental traits to enable such a project to take off.

“When we looked at all of these key things: pipeline for renewables, access to water, cost of renewables, and appetite for renewables, Brazil really stood out to us,” Cooke continues. “The state of Ceará, that we’ve got an MOU with the government in at the moment, ticks all of these boxes.”

Ceará’s own clean energy plans align with Enegix’s, at least in terms of their ambition and desire for short-term development. Last October, the state announced that it plans to add 5GW of new offshore wind capacity in the next five years. With BI Energia alone providing $2.5bn in investment for its 1.2GW Camocim wind facility, there is significant financial muscle behind these lofty ambitions.

“One thing I should add is that Brazil is very blessed when it comes to baseload renewables,” says Cooke. “They have an incredibly high percentage of their country-wide energy that comes from renewable sources and a lot of this is in part due to the vast hydro schemes that they have for hydro dams. Not a lot of countries have that, and specifically when you’re trying to produce hydrogen, having access to vast amounts of renewables [is vital].”

Changing perceptions and tackling challenges
This combination of vast investment and integration with the existing renewable power infrastructure of Ceará could have cultural impacts too. The combination of state support for and private investment in clean energy offsets many of the narratives emerging from Brazil concerning its energy policies and environmental protections, even as debates over clean energy's trade-offs persist in Brazil and beyond, from the infamous Brumadinho disaster to widespread allegations of illegal deforestation and gold mining.

“I can’t speak for the whole of Brazil, but if we look at Ceará specifically, and even from what we’ve seen from a federal government standpoint, they have been talking about a hydrogen roadmap for Brazil for quite some time now,” says Cooke, highlighting the state’s long-standing support for green hydrogen. “I think we came in at the perfect time with a very solid plan for what we wanted to do, [and] we’ve had nothing but great cooperation, and even further than just cooperation, excitement around the MOU.”

This narrative shift could help overcome one of the key challenges facing many hydrogen projects, the idea that its practical difficulties render it fundamentally unsuitable for baseload power generation. By establishing a large-scale green hydrogen facility in a country that has recently struggled to present itself as one that is invested in renewables, the Base One facility could be the ultimate proof that such clean hydrogen projects are viable.

Nevertheless, practical challenges remain, as is the case with any energy project of this scale. Cooke mentions a number of solutions to two of the obstacles facing hydrogen production around the world: renewable energy storage and transportation of the material.

“We were looking at compressed hydrogen via specialised tankers [and] we were looking at liquefied hydrogen, [as] you have to get liquefied hydrogen very cool to around -253°, and you can use 30% to 40% of your total energy that you started with just to get it down to that temperature,” Cooke explains.

“The other aspect is that if you’re transporting this internationally, you really have to think about the supply chain. If you land in a country like Indonesia, that’s wonderful, but how do you get it from Indonesia to the customers that need it? What is the supply chain? What does that look like? Does it exist today?”

The future of green hydrogen
These practical challenges present something of a chicken and egg problem for the future of green hydrogen: considerable up-front investment is required for functions such as storage and transport, but the difficulties of these functions can scare off investors and make such investments uncommon.

Yet with the world’s environmental situation increasingly dire, more dramatic, and indeed risky, moves are needed to alter its energy mix, and Enegix is one company taking responsibility and accepting these risks.

“We need to have the renewables to match the dirty fuel types,” Cooke says. “This [investment] will really come from the decisions that are being made right now by large-scale companies, multi-billion-euro-per-year revenue companies, committing to building out large scale factories in Europe and Asia, to support PEM [hydrolysis].”

This idea of large-scale green hydrogen is also highly ambitious, considering the current state of the energy source. The International Renewable Energy Agency reports that around 95% of hydrogen comes from fossil fuels, so hydrogen has a long ways to go to clean up its own carbon footprint before going on to displace fossil fuel-driven industries.

Yet this displacement is exactly what Enegix is targeting. Cooke notes that the ultimate goal of Enegix is not simply to increase hydrogen production for use in a single industry, such as clean vehicles. Instead, the idea is to develop green hydrogen infrastructure to the point where it can replace coal and oil as a source of baseload power, leapfrogging other renewables to form the bedrock of the world’s future energy mix.

“The problem with [renewable] baseload is that they’re intermittent; the wind’s not always blowing and the sun’s not always shining and batteries are still very expensive, although that is changing. When you put those projects together and look at the levelised cost of energy, this creates a chasm, really, for baseload.

“And for us, this is really where we believe that hydrogen needs to be thought of in more detail and this is what we’re really evangelising about at the moment.”

A more hydrogen-reliant energy mix could also bring social benefits, with Cooke suggesting that the same traits that make hydrogen unwieldy in countries with established energy infrastructures could make hydrogen more practically viable in other parts of the world.

“When you look at emerging markets and developing markets at the moment, the power infrastructure in some cases can be quite messy,” Cooke says. “You’ve got the potential for either paying for the power or extending your transmission grid, but rarely being able to do both of those.

“I think being able to do that last mile piece, utilising liquid organic hydrogen carrier as an energy vector that’s very cost-effective, very scalable, non-toxic, and non-flammable; [you can] get that power where you need it.

“We believe hydrogen has the potential to be very cost-effective at scale, supporting a vision of cheap, abundant electricity over time, but also very modular and usable in many different use cases.”

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North Carolina Power Outages continue after Hurricane Florence, with Wilmington and Eastern Carolina facing flooding, storm damage, and limited access as Duke Energy crews and mutual aid work on restoration across affected counties.

Key Points

Outages after Hurricane Florence, with Wilmington and Eastern Carolina hardest hit as crews restore service amid floods.

✅ Over 250,000 outages statewide as of early Wednesday

✅ Wilmington cut off by flooding, hindering utility access

✅ Duke Energy and EMC crews conduct phased restoration

Power is slowly being restored to Eastern Carolina residents after Hurricane Florence made landfall near Wilmington on Friday, September 15, a scenario echoed by storm-related outages in Tennessee in recent days.

On Monday, more than half a million people remained without power across the state, a situation comparable to post-typhoon electricity losses in Hong Kong reported elsewhere.

As of Wednesday morning at 1am, the Dept. of Public Safety reports 252,596 total power outages in North Carolina, and utilities continue warning about copper theft hazards during restoration.

More than half of those customers are in Eastern Carolina.

More than 32,000 customers are without power in Carteret County and roughly 21,000 are without power in Onslow County.

In Craven County, roughly 15,000 people remain without power Wednesday morning.

Many of the state's outages are effecting the Wilmington area, where Florence made landfall and widespread flooding is still cutting off the city from outside resources, similar to how a fire-triggered outage in Los Angeles disrupted service regionally.

Heavy rain, strong winds and now flooded roadways have hindered power crews, challenges that utility climate adaptation aims to address while many of them have out-of-state or out-of-town help working to restore power to so many people.

Here's a breakdown of current outages by utility company:

DUKE ENERGY PROGRESS - 

• 1,350 in Beaufort Co. 
• 10,706 in Carteret Co. 
• 2,716 in Pamlico Co. 
• 7,422 in Craven Co. 
• 1,687 in Jones Co. 
• 13,319 in Onslow Co. 
• 7,452 in Pender Co. 
• 48,281 in New Hanover Co. 
• 5,257 in Duplin Co. 
• 488 in Lenoir Co. 
• 1,231 in Pitt Co.

JONES-ONSLOW EMC - 10,964 total 

• 7,699 in Onslow Co. 
• 2,366 in Pender Co. 
• 816 in Jones Co.

TIDELAND EMC - 

• 174 in Beaufort Co.
• 1,521 in Craven Co.
• 1,693 in Pamlico Co.

CARTERET-CRAVEN ELECTRIC CO OP- 

• 21,974 in Carteret Co. 
• 6,553 in Craven Co.
• 216 in Jones Co.

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SDG&E Minimum Bill Proposal would impose a $38.40 fixed charge, discouraging rooftop solar, burdening low income households, and shifting grid costs during peak demand, as the CPUC weighs consumer impacts and affordability.

Key Points

Sets a $38.40 monthly minimum bill that raises low usage costs, deters rooftop solar, and burdens low income households.

✅ $38.40 fixed charge regardless of usage

✅ Disincentivizes rooftop solar investments

✅ Disproportionate impact on low income customers

The utility San Diego Gas & Energy has an aggressive proposal pending before the California Public Utilities Commission, amid recent commission changes in San Diego that highlight how regulatory decisions affect local customers: It wants to charge most residential customers a minimum bill of $38.40 each month, regardless of how much energy they use. The costs of this policy would hit low-income customers and those who generate their own energy with rooftop solar. We’re urging the Commission to oppose this flawed plan—and we need your help.

SDG&E’s proposal is bad news for sustainable energy. About half of the customers whose bills would go up under this proposal have rooftop solar. The policy would deter other customers from investing in rooftop solar by making these investments less economical. Ultimately, lost opportunities for solar would mean burning more gas in polluting power plants. 

The proposal is also bad news for people who already have to scrimp on energy costs. Most customers with big homes and billowing air conditioners won't notice if this policy goes into effect, because they use at least $38 worth of electricity a month anyway. But for households that don’t buy much electricity from the company, including those in small apartments without air conditioning, this proposal would raise the bills. Even for customers on special low-income rates, amid electric bill changes statewide, SDG&E wants a minimum bill of $19.20.

Penalizing customers who don’t use much electricity would disproportionately hurt lower-income customers, raising energy equity concerns across the region, who tend to use less energy than their wealthier neighbors. In the region SDG&E serves, the average family in an apartment uses half as much electricity as a single-family residence. Statewide, low-income households are more than four times as likely to be low-usage electricity customers than high-income households. When it gets hot, residential electricity patterns are often driven by air conditioning. The vast majority of SDG&E's customers live in the coastal climate zone, where access to air conditioning is strongly linked to income: Households with incomes over $150,000 are more than twice as likely to have air conditioning than families making less than $35,000, with significant racial disparities in who has AC.

In its attempt to rationalize its request, SDG&E argues that it should charge everyone for infrastructure costs that do not depend on how much energy they use. But the cost of the grid is driven by how much energy SDG&E delivers on hot summer afternoons, when some customers blast their AC and demand for electricity peaks. If more customers relied on their own solar power or conserved energy, the utility would spend less on its grid and help rein in soaring electricity prices over time.

In the long term, reducing incentives to go solar and conserve energy will strain the grid and drive up costs for everyone, especially as lawmakers may overturn income-based charges and reshape rate design. SDG&E's arguments are part of a standard utility playbook for trying to hike income-based fixed charges, and consumer advocates have repeatedly shut them down.  As far as we know, no regulators in the country have allowed a utility to charge customers over $38 for the “privilege” of accessing electric service. 

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EU Nuclear Power Dispute strains electricity market reform as Germany resists state aid for French reactors, while Eon urges cooperation to meet the energy transition, low-carbon goals, renewables integration, and cross-border power trade.

Key Points

A policy standoff between Germany and France over nuclear energy's role, state aid, and electricity market reforms.

✅ Germany opposes state aid for existing French nuclear plants.

✅ Eon CEO urges compromise to advance market reform and decarbonization.

✅ Cross-border trade shows reliance on French nuclear amid renewables push.

Germany should stop trying to impose its views on nuclear power on the rest of the EU, the head of one of Europe’s largest utilities has warned, as he stressed its importance in the region’s clean energy transition.

Leonhard Birnbaum, chief executive of German energy provider Eon, said Berlin should accept differences of opinion as he signalled his desire for a compromise with France to break a deadlock amid a nuclear power dispute over energy reforms.

Germany this year shut down its final three nuclear power plants as it followed through on a long-held promise to drop the use of the energy source, effectively turning its back on nuclear for now, while France has made it a priority to modernise its nuclear power plants.

The differences are delaying reforms to the region’s electricity market and legislation designed to meet greenhouse gas emissions targets.

One sticking point is Germany’s refusal to back French moves to allow governments to provide state aid to existing power plants, which could enable Paris to support the French nuclear fleet.

The Eon chief, whose company has 48mn customers across Europe, said it would be “better for everyone” if the two countries could approach the dispute with the mindset that “everyone does their part”, even as Germany has at times weighed a U-turn on the nuclear phaseout in recent debates.

“Neither the French will be able to persuade us to use nuclear power, nor we will be able to persuade them not to. That’s why I think we should take a different approach to the discussion,” he added.

Birnbaum said Germany “would do well to be a bit cautious about trying to impose our way on everyone else”. This approach was unlikely to be “crowned with success”.

“The better solution will not come from opposing each other, but from working together.”

Birnbaum made the comments at a press conference announcing Eon’s second-quarter results.

The company raised its profit outlook, predicting adjusted net income of €2.7bn to €2.9bn, and promised to reduce bills for customers as it hailed “diminishing headwinds” following the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine.

Birnbaum, whose company owned one of the three German nuclear plants shut down this year, pointed out that French nuclear energy was helping the conversion to a system of renewable energy in Germany at a time when Europe is losing nuclear power just when it needs energy.

This was a reference to Europe’s shared power market that allows countries to buy and sell electricity from one another. 

Germany has been a net importer of French electricity since shutting down its own nuclear plants, which last month prompted the French energy minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher to accuse Berlin of hypocrisy. 

“It’s a contradiction to massively import French nuclear energy while rejecting every piece of EU legislation that recognises the value of nuclear as a low-carbon energy source,” Pannier-Runacher told the German business daily Handelsblatt.

She also criticised Berlin’s drive to use new gas-fired power plants as a “bridge” to its target of being carbon neutral by 2045, even as some German officials contend that nuclear won’t solve the gas issue in the near term, arguing that it created a “credibility problem” for Germany: “Gas is a fossil fuel.”

Berlin officials responded by pointing out that Germany was a net exporter of electricity to France over the winter when its nuclear power stations were struggling to produce because of maintenance problems. 

They added that the country only imported French power because it was cheaper, not because their country was suffering shortages.

Berlin argues that renewable energy is cleaner and safer than nuclear, despite renewable rollout challenges linked to cheap Russian gas and grid expansion, and accuses France of seeking to protect the interests of its nuclear industry.

In Paris, officials see Germany’s resistance to nuclear energy as wrong-headed given the need to fight climate change effectively, and worry it is an attempt to undercut a key aspect of French industrial competitiveness.
 

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Germany Hydrogen Import Strategy outlines reliance on green hydrogen imports, expanded electrolysis capacity, IPCEI-funded pipelines, and industrial decarbonization for steel and chemicals to reach climate-neutral goals by 2045, meeting 2030 demand of 95-130 TWh.

Key Points

A plan to import 50-70% of hydrogen by 2030, backing green hydrogen, electrolysis, pipelines, and decarbonization.

✅ Imports cover 50-70% of 2030 hydrogen demand

✅ 10 GW electrolysis target with state aid and IPCEI

✅ 1,800 km H2 pipelines to link hubs by 2030

Germany will have to import up to 70% of its hydrogen demand in the future as Europe's largest economy aims to become climate-neutral by 2045, an updated government strategy published on Wednesday showed.

The German cabinet approved a new hydrogen strategy, setting guidelines for hydrogen production, transport infrastructure and market plans.

Germany is seeking to expand reliance on hydrogen as a future energy source to bolster energy resilience and cut greenhouse emissions for highly polluting industrial sectors that cannot be electrified such as steel and chemicals and cut dependency on imported fossil fuel.

Produced using solar and wind power, green hydrogen is a pillar of Berlin's plan to build a sustainable electric planet and transition away from fossil fuels.

But even with doubling the country's domestic electrolysis capacity target for 2030 to at least 10 gigawatts (GW), Germany will need to import around 50% to 70% of its hydrogen demand, forecast at 95 to 130 TWh in 2030, the strategy showed.

"A domestic supply that fully covers demand does not make economic sense or serve the transformation processes resulting from the energy transition and the broader global energy transition overall," the document said.

The strategy underscores the importance of diversifying future hydrogen sources, including potential partners such as Canada's clean hydrogen sector, but the government is working on a separate strategy for hydrogen imports whose exact date is not clear, a spokesperson for the economy ministry said.

"Instead of relying on domestic potential for the production of green hydrogen, the federal government's strategy is primarily aimed at imports by ship," Simone Peter, the head of Germany's renewable energy association, said.

Under the strategy, state aid is expected to be approved for around 2.5 GW of electrolysis projects in Germany this year and the government will earmark 700 million euros ($775 million) for hydrogen research to optimise production methods, research minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger said.

But Germany's limited renewable energy space will make it heavily dependent on imported hydrogen from emerging export hubs such as Abu Dhabi hydrogen exports gaining scale, experts say.

"Germany is a densely populated country. We simply need space for wind and photovoltaic to be able to produce the hydrogen," Philipp Heilmaier, an energy transition researcher at Germany energy agency, told Reuters.

The strategy allows the usage of hydrogen produced through fossil energy sources preferably if the carbon is split off, but said direct government subsidies would be limited to green hydrogen.

Funds for launching a hydrogen network with more than 1,800 km of pipelines in Germany are expected to flow by 2027/2028 through the bloc's Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEI) financing scheme, as the EU plans to double electricity use by 2050 could raise future demand, with the goal of connecting all major generation, import and storage centres to customers by 2030.

Transport Minister Volker Wissing said his ministry was working on plans for a network of hydrogen filling stations and for renewable fuel subsidies.

Environmental groups said the strategy lacked binding sustainability criteria and restriction on using hydrogen for sectors that cannot be electrified instead of using it for private heating or in cars, calling for a plan to eventually phase-out blue hydrogen which is produced from natural gas.

Germany has already signed several hydrogen cooperation agreements with countries such as clean energy partnership with Canada and Norway, United Arab Emirates and Australia.

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Summerside Wind Power reached 61% in May, blending renewable energy, municipal utility operations, and P.E.I. wind farms, driving city revenue, advancing green city goals, and laying groundwork for smart grid integration.

Key Points

Summerside Wind Power is the city utility's wind supply, 61% in May, generating revenue that supports local services.

✅ 61% of electricity in May from wind; annual target 45%.

✅ Mix of city-owned farm and West Cape Wind Farm contract.

✅ Revenues projected at $2.9M; funds municipal budget and services.

During the month of May, 61 per cent of the electricity Summerside's homes, businesses and industries used came from wind power sources.

25 per cent was purchased from the West Cape Wind Farm in West Point, P.E.I. — the city has had a contract with it since 2007. The other 36 per cent came from the city's own wind farm, which was built in 2009. 

"One of the strategic goals that was planned for by the city back in 2005 was to try to become a 100 per cent green city," said Greg Gaudet, Summerside's director of municipal services.

"The city started looking at ways it could adopt green practices into its operations on everything it owns and operates and provides services to the community."

Summerside Electric powers about 6,200 residential, 970 commercial and 30 industrial customers and also sells to NB Power, while Nova Scotia Power now generates 30 per cent of its electricity from renewables.

The Summerside Wind Farm is owned by the City of Summerside, which then sells the electricity to Summerside Electric, which it also owns, for profit. 

For the months of April and May, the wind farm generated $630,000 for the city. Last year, it was $507,000 over the same time frame, which does not include a 2 per cent rate increase imposed this year.

"We had a lot of good, strong days of wind for the month of May over other years. So normally we'd be on average somewhere in the range of the 45 per cent range for those months," said Gaudet. 

The city's annual target for wind generation is also 45 per cent, which aligns with the view that more energy sources make better projects. Gaudet said it balances out over the year, with winter being the best and production dropping as low as 25 per cent in the summer months.

At Summerside council's monthly meeting on Monday, May's 61 per cent figure was touted as one of the highest months on record.

"To have one at 61 per cent means we had great production from our wind facilities and contracts, though communities such as Portsmouth have raised turbine noise and flicker concerns in other contexts," Gaudet said.

The utility also owns and provides power through a diesel generation plant.

Municipal money maker
The municipality projects its wind energy production will generate $2.9 million for the city in its current fiscal year, which began April 1, paralleling job gains seen in Alberta's renewables surge this year.

"Any revenues that are received from the wind farm facility goes into the City of Summerside budget," Gaudet said. "Then the council decides on how that money is accrued and where it goes and what it supports in the community."

Wind power generated $2.89 million for the city in the 2019-2020 fiscal year. The budget originally projected $3.2 million in revenue, but blade damage sustained during post-tropical storm Dorian put two turbines out of commission for a few weeks.

Gaudet called this their "only bad year" and officials said they see this year's target to be a bit more conservative and achievable regardless of hiccups and uncontrollable forces, such as the wind they're harnessing.

"It's performed outstandingly well," said Gaudet of the operation.

"There's been no huge, major cost factors with the wind farm to date ... its production has been fairly consistent from year to year." 

Gaudet said the technology has already been piloted at a smaller operation at Credit Union Place, aligning with municipal solar power projects elsewhere.

The goal of the project is to bring Summerside's renewable portfolio up to a yearly average of 62 per cent. Gaudet said it's expected to be commissioned by May 2022 at the latest and after that, the city hopes to focus on smart grid technology.

"It's a long-term goal and I think it's the right [investment] to make," he said. "You have to be environmentally conscious and a steward of your community.

"I think Summerside is that and does that ... a model for North America to look at how a city can work a relationship with an electric utility for the betterment."

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