Offshore Hydrogen – A Key Building Block for Resilience and Defense Readiness

The recent LinkedIn post by Federal Minister Katherina Reiche on the strategic importance of the defense industry highlights a crucial point: A modern defense strategy depends not only on technology and logistics, but also on a resilient energy supply. As Rheinmetall already emphasized in June 2025, energy resilience is a decisive factor for national security. Likewise, the start-up INERATEC demonstrates that e-methanol produced from green hydrogen and carbon dioxide can make a substantial contribution to Germany’s energy resilience. It is therefore no surprise that both companies have entered into a strategic partnership to make INERATEC’s scalable Power-to-Liquid (PtL) technology available worldwide for the defense and security sector.

At AquaConsult, we take these impulses and extend them by adding the key resource “Offshore Hydrogen” — and we would like to discuss this perspective with you.

Our thesis: By integrating offshore hydrogen into our energy system, we not only advance decarbonization and strengthen Germany’s industrial base — we also build resilience and enhance national defense capability.

Supporting facts:

• Offshore electrolysis uses local energy and water resources, solves energy-transport challenges via pipelines, and significantly reduces redispatch measures.
• The high costs of grid connection for increasingly distant offshore wind farms can be mitigated through more economical pipeline connections.
• Operators of offshore wind farms become independent of (potentially negative) electricity prices.
• Enormous scaling and production capacities are possible (14 GWe = 1 million tons H₂ per year in Germany’s Exclusive Economic Zone “Entenschnabel” alone).
• Combined connection concepts enable continuous offshore electrolysis operation, increasing full-load hours, efficiency, profitability, and supply security.
• Germany can achieve energy and defense sovereignty by reducing import dependencies.
• The entire value chain — from seawater intake structures, desalination units, electrolyzers and PEM stacks to electrical and control systems, compression, storage, injection, and e-methanol synthesis — can currently be manufactured entirely in Germany or Europe.
• The innovation and scaling potential of offshore electrolysis offers enormous growth opportunities, strengthening Germany’s economic position.
• A networked offshore hydrogen production system in the North Sea will enhance European cooperation and economic cohesion. Wind-rich countries with large Exclusive Economic Zones such as Denmark or Scotland can produce hydrogen and e-methanol at scale and transport them to Germany via European pipelines (such as AquaDuctus).

What is needed:

• Political recognition that offshore hydrogen can be a strategic lever for technology, resilience, and prosperity → Offshore electrolysis targets must be legally anchored.
• Unbureaucratic funding for necessary development steps through DEMO and SEN-1 projects.
• Removal of the exclusivity requirement for grid connection in the WindSeeG (either electricity or hydrogen only) to allow combined connection concepts.
• Adjustment of strict realization deadlines and penalty rules under the SoEnergieV to ensure planning and investment security.
• Clear regulatory guidelines to enable reliable CAPEX and OPEX planning.
• Two-sided Contracts for Difference (CfDs) to de-risk the business case.

What AquaConsult contributes: Together with our partners, we provide end-to-end services covering financing, planning, permitting, insurance, implementation, and operation of offshore hydrogen production platforms. Our partners are deeply connected within the hydrogen economy and are currently developing an H₂ research and test platform within an existing offshore wind farm. There, various electrolyzers, desalination systems, and a methanol synthesis unit are being planned. The goal of this H₂ demo project is to lay the foundation for commercial hydrogen production in the North Sea.

Conclusion: Green hydrogen and its derivatives such as e-methanol can be produced efficiently and cost-effectively in the North Sea — at large scale, with minimal land-use conflicts, and within holistic connection concepts. This not only reduces dependency on gas and fuel imports and prevents power bottlenecks, water shortages, and excessive curtailment costs — it simultaneously strengthens domestic industry and the security of supply with climate-neutral fuels.

Offshore hydrogen production can therefore strengthen both the German and European economies, reinforce regional and EU-wide cohesion, and make a direct contribution to defense capability and energy security.

It is time to lay the foundation for this vital part of Germany’s future energy system. Let us strengthen the economy around hydrogen and e-fuels — to build resilience and safeguard our energy independence.

Links: [Rheinmetall & INERATEC launch energy partnership | Rheinmetall] [Efficient processes for green methanol demonstrated in container plant | INERATEC]

About the Author: Michael Berges is General Manager at ONP Management GmbH, where he leads complex offshore and maritime projects from vision to execution. With a background in civil and coastal engineering (University of Brighton / University of Applied Sciences Mainz) and more than 15 years of international project experience, he brings deep technical and managerial expertise in offshore wind energy, electrolysis, and green hydrogen prodcution. In addition to his role at ONP Management, Michael contributes as a technical expert to the AquaConsult consortium, which unites leading offshore, hydrogen, and infrastructure partners in Northern Germany. His current focus is the development of scalable offshore hydrogen production concepts – bridging maritime engineering and energy transition.