Exploring the evolution of offshore wind based hydrogen transport pipeline network in the North Sea

Abstract

The North Sea is emerging as a central hub in Europe’s goal for energy transition with offshore wind capacity projected to reach up to 300 GW by the year 2050. Other than electricity generation, this vast renewable resource presents a significant opportunity for large scale green hydrogen production and the development of an integrated offshore hydrogen transport infrastructure. This thesis investigates how an offshore wind based hydrogen transport pipeline network could evolve in the North Sea under varying temporal, spatial and policy driven conditions. In order to address this question, a multi layered modelling framework is developed which integrates offshore wind farm deployment data, hydrogen production potential, transport capacity estimation, infrastructure cost constraints and dynamic network evolution modelling. Within a NetworkX based simulation environment, the offshore wind farms are represented as hydrogen production nodes and demand centers as sinks. Network growth is evaluated across multiple North Sea regions over the period 2030 to 2050 using four key performance indicators which are Total Pipeline Length (TPL), Average Source Sink Distance (ASSD), Fraction of Network Grown (FNG) and Delivered Hydrogen Potential (DHP). The results indicate that the North Sea has tremendous potential for producing hydrogen of approximately 20 to 27 million tonnes per year, depending on electrolyser technology employed and operational assumptions. Solid Oxide electrolysis offered the highest output. This level of production implies a substantial requirement for offshore hydrogen transport infrastructure particularly in the form of pipelines. The capacity of the pipelines ranged from DN200 for individual wind farms to DN600 or larger for larger pipelines for aggregated flows. Different scenarios were studied and across all scenarios, network evolution is found to be incremental and strongly path dependent. Early stage infrastructure is primarily driven by initial offshore wind farm deployment, forming localized clusters that gradually evolve into interconnected regional systems. Regions with early source activation exhibits rapid increases in pipeline length and hydrogen delivery by 2040, while regions with delayed activation showed slower initial growth followed by rapid expansion once sources becomes available. A key finding is that source availability and activation timing are the dominant determinants of network evolution while source selection strategies such as random or geographically close have limited long term impact. Constrained availability significantly slows infrastructure development in early periods. Phased activation results in smoother and more realistic growth trajectories. Project improvement scenario where the availability increases gradually to fully, showed the most balanced network evolution by avoiding both premature overbuilding and underutilization. The study further shows that offshore pipeline infrastructure evolves from fragmented local connections into structured systems with emergent trunk lines. The network formation is influenced by spatial proximity, flow efficiency ad network connectivity. However, early decisions creates path dependency and potential structural lock in effects that shapes long term network topology. Overall, the findings demonstrates that offshore hydrogen pipeline networks are not entirely cost optimised engineering systems instead they are emergent infrastructures shaped by the interplay of resource availability, temporal deployment, spatial constraints and policy coordination. Strong coordination could result in highly integrated system.