German renewable energy developer Energiequelle has received planning consent for a large-scale green hydrogen park in Oulu, northern Finland, marking its first publicly announced hydrogen project in the country.
The proposed site, located approximately 600 km north of Helsinki, could eventually host up to 500 megawatts (MW) of hydrogen production capacity. The first phase of the project includes the development of a 5MW hydrogen production facility and a refuelling station designed for buses and heavy goods vehicles.
“If the right market conditions are met, we expect the first phase to be ready by 2028,” said Karl Schultheis, head of new business development at Energiequelle Finland. “However, this is a major industrial project and investment, so the planning reservation we have now received is only one of the first steps towards making concrete investment decisions.”
Future stages of the project could see production capacity expanded by 10 to 50MW, with the possibility of hydrogen exports via a planned pipeline network and the port of Oulu, depending on the development of supporting infrastructure. A third phase could increase capacity by an additional 100 to 500MW.
The timeline and final scale of the initiative remain subject to market demand and the readiness of infrastructure at the greenfield site.
The city of Oulu has designated space for three separate hydrogen production and processing projects at the same industrial location, with a combined potential output of up to 1.5 gigawatts (GW).
“We believe that Oulu’s strategy of bundling several hydrogen production operators in the same area is the right one, as it supports the development of hydrogen transmission infrastructure in the region,” said Nils Borstelmann, managing director of Energiequelle Finland. “This is exactly the kind of predictable investment environment and confidence-building policies we hope to see from local, national and European decision-makers.”
Energiequelle said the project aligns with Finland’s broader efforts to position itself as a hub for green hydrogen production and export within Europe’s clean energy transition.
