RWE is upgrading the importance of its rapidly expanding hydrogen activities, setting up a new hydrogen business unit within its RWE Generation subsidiary and has appointed Sopna Sury to lead it.
The new unit is responsible for developing and implementing RWE’s hydrogen strategy and will promote the respective projects in the German utility’s core markets.
Sury will also be part of RWE Generation’s executive board as of 1 February 2021.
“Hydrogen holds a huge potential for the energy transition and for RWE. We are now acknowledging its significance by creating a separate portfolio for hydrogen within the executive board as the central hydrogen hub at RWE,” RWE chief executive Rolf Martin Schmitz said.
“In Sopna Sury we have found a manager, who will put all her energy into developing this technology of the future on the board of RWE Generation.”
RWE is already on course to become the world’s leading developer of green hydrogen, being active in 30 projects in Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. Among them are two giant plans to use up to 10GW of North Sea offshore wind capacity each to produce green hydrogen via electrolysis, the NortH2 project in the Netherlands and the AquaVentus initiative around the German island of Heligoland.
The utility stresses that it is positioned along the entire value chain for green hydrogen.
Its RWE Renewables subsidiary is the world’s second largest operator of wind at sea, which can supply large quantities of green power for the hydrogen production process.
RWE Generation has expertise in electrolysers to generate green hydrogen, RWE Gas Storage can temporarily store the green gas its gas storage facilities, and RWE Supply & Trading is slated to make the fuel available for industrial customers.
“With our new business unit, we ensure to fully leverage this advantage. We are very much looking forward to working with Sopna Sury,” RWE Generation CEO Roger Miesen said.
Sury currently is leading the strategy and regulatory affairs division at RWE Renewables. She previously worked for Uniper, and held various positions at E.ON, among them to work on the rival German utility’s renewables strategy.
