The Hamburg Senator for Economic Affairs, Michael Westhagemann (non-party), is forging ahead with plans to build the world’s largest hydrogen electrolysis plant in the Port of Hamburg. With a capacity of 100 MW, the plant will achieve ten times the capacity of existing facilities and run on the surplus electricity generated from wind turbines. Plant manufacturer Siemens estimates that such a plant could produce some 2 tons or 22,000 m3 of hydrogen per hour. The location has been chosen because large factories processing steel, aluminum, and copper are located near the Port of Hamburg. The hydrogen could be used there as an energy carrier, instead of the fossil fuels used to date. It is also conceivable that it could be used in heavy-duty freight transport, shipping, or local public transport, or to supply the metropolitan area with district heating.

The plans fit in with the concept of the federal states of Bremen, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Lower Saxony, and Schleswig-Holstein for a North German hydrogen strategy . In April 2019, the federal states called for the substitution of fossil fuels with hydrogen, to be produced from renewable energies such as wind turbines.