UAE’s Masdar partners with Uniper to build a green hydrogen plant: Emirati renewable energy firm Masdar will partner with Germany’s Uniper to develop a green hydrogen plant in the UAE powered by 1.3 GW of solar energy, Bloomberg reported on December 22. The plant is expected to generate green hydrogen by 2026 and the EU wants to import the clean fuel the facility will generate, Masdar’s executive director for clean energy Mohammad Abdelqadar Al Ramahi told the business information service. The location of the plant and the financials of the agreement have yet to be disclosed. Masdar officials did not respond to Enterprise Climate’s request for comment as of the time of publishing.

Part of Masdar’s plans to become a major renewables generator: The firm is aiming for a renewable energy capacity of at least 100 GW by 2030 with a production quota of up to 1 mn tons of green hydrogen. It ultimately plans to expand its renewable energy portfolio to over 200 GW, a company statement notes, without giving a time frame for this target.

The firm already has a strong footing in MENA and beyond: The company is active in over 40 countries in six continents with a portfolio worth over USD 20 bn. Alongside Infinity Power and Hassan Allam Utilities, Masdar signed an agreement at COP27 in November to build a 10 GW wind farm in Egypt — which could be one of the world’s largest — and the three companies also went big on green hydrogen, inking an agreement to establish a facility with production capacity of 480k tons of green hydrogen a year. Masdar is expanding to Turkmenistan with a 100 MW solar plant, following an announcement in September that it’s building a 500 MW, USD 600 mn wind farm in Uzbekistan. The company — along with waste management company Bee’ah and France’s Veolia Middle East — will also operate and maintain the Sharjah waste-to-energy plant for 25 years.