EverWind’s ‘green hydrogen’ math rests on double-counting carbon reductions, alleges greenwashing complaint)
Halifax Examiner by Joan Baxter Aug 26,2025
Fanfare about EverWind Fuels’ new tugboats looks like a diversionary distraction from serious hydrogen headwinds.
It was much ado about three diesel-powered tugboats.
On August 21, Canada’s environment and climate change minister Julie Dabrusin, Chief Terry Paul of Membertou First Nation, Nova Scotia’s energy minister Trevor Boudreau, Port Hawkesbury mayor Brenda Chisholm-Beaton, and EverWind owner and CEO Trent Vichie gathered in Port Hawkesbury to christen three new EverWind tugboats.
For the foreseeable future, the tugs will be used to guide ships carrying fossil fuels to and from EverWind’s Port Tupper shipping and storage facility.
“Today we celebrated a major milestone for the Strait Area and Nova Scotia’s clean energy future with the christening of our new tugboat fleet,” gushed the EverWind press release. “This $50 million investment is one of the largest private sector commitments in the Strait of Canso region in more than 50 years.”
However, according to Transport Canada, nearly half of that amount — $22.5 million — came from Canadian citizens through something called the “Green Shipping Corridor Program.”
Related: Who is paying for EverWind’s new tugboats?
Related: More greenwashing and misleading hogwash from EverWind Fuels
Feds still pushing ‘green’ hydrogen dreams
Speaking at the tugboat christening event, Minister Dabrusin said EverWind’s new tugboats would “support green energy plans proposed by the company.”
“We need to build a climate-competitive Canada and we need clean fuels like hydrogen and projects like EverWind to help us do it,” said the federal environment and climate change minister.
A few days later, a press release from the office of Prime Minister Mark Carney after a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Berlin, stated that Carney had underlined to Merz “the potential for deeper bilateral collaboration between Canada and Germany on liquified natural gas (LNG) and hydrogen, including through the Canada-Germany Energy Partnership.”
The press release stated that Canada would be “advancing co-operation under the Canada-Germany Hydrogen Alliance to develop a transatlantic hydrogen trade corridor that supports the clean energy transition and strengthens energy security.”
Plenty of public money
A year ago, the federal government committed $300 million to “support clean hydrogen trade with Germany.” To date, the federal government has handed EverWind Fuels nearly $200 million in financing and grants — US$125 million from Export Development Canada and the $22.5 million for the tugboats and port infrastructure.
There is also a very generous tax credit of “at least 40%” for green hydrogen projects in Canada.
Despite all that public money, EverWind has yet to sign a single offtake contract for any hydrogen or ammonia it would produce, turn a sod on a hydrogen or ammonia plant, or put up a single wind turbine. But the federal and Nova Scotia governments continue to promote hydrogen. They maintain this will help combat the climate crisis.
Related: Canadian and German officials pursue dream of cross-oceanic ‘green’ hydrogen trade
EverWind hydrogen hype
It is now three years since EverWind — again with much fanfare and hype — signed memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with two German utilities, Uniper and E-On, for the “offtake” of a million tonnes of “green” ammonia from EverWind’s proposed plant in Point Tupper. In its press release at the time, EverWind said it expected to be in production by “early 2025.”
Obviously that hasn’t happened.
In an interview with CBC at last week’s tugboat ceremony in Port Hawkesbury, Vichie said he thought they would be starting construction on the plant next year, and he made a vague reference to that being “contingent on finalization of some laws and regs [regulations].”
“We can’t build a project without the laws, the regs in place, and so like some of that stuff takes time when you’re working between municipalities, provinces, Canada and European countries. Europe is finalizing their laws at the country level for the product right now,” said Vichie.
In fact, the situation for Vichie’s plans to produce “green” hydrogen in Point Tupper, convert it to “green” ammonia and ship it to Europe, may be far more serious than Vichie is letting on.
EU headwinds for EverWind’s plans
Kristen Overmyer has a masters degree in mechanical engineering, and he runs a website called “Get Green Right.” Overmyer is concerned about greenwashing, and poorly informed decisions that could actually impair rather than help efforts to tackle the climate crisis.
Overmyer, who lives in Nova Scotia, has been studying EverWind’s claims carefully, and also looking closely at the regulations in Europe that govern what hydrogen and ammonia can be considered “green.”
According to Overmyer, if new European Union regulations go through, EverWind’s plans for its first phase of hydrogen and ammonia production will not qualify.
In an interview, Overmyer said he has been sending his calculations, analysis and supporting studies and documentation to both the European certifying agency and to regulators in Canada, including Natural Resources Canada, and explaining to them why he believes EverWind’s proposed hydrogen and ammonia production is not “green.”
He has asked them to correct him if he is wrong.
So far, Overmyer said, none has sent any corrections or informed him of any errors in his assessments.
EverWind plans for power purchase agreements
EverWind’s plan for phase one of its project is to construct large wind projects — Kmtnuk, Windy Ridge [the link for its website seems to be broken] and Bear Lake — and have them operating by 2025. The projects are in Colchester County, and at the intersection of West Hants, Chester, and Halifax Municipalities.
At an EverWind open house in Debert in October 2023, EverWind vice president of power, Brendan Chard, told the Halifax Examiner that the plan for the first phase would be for EverWind to “sell the energy from the wind farms at the point of interconnection with the Nova Scotia power system.”
Then, as part of a power purchase agreement (PPA) with Nova Scotia Power that was still in negotiation, Chard said EverWind would “repurchase that equivalent amount of energy from the utility at our production facility.”
Chard said this was permitted under European Union (EU) regulations on Renewable Fuels of Non-Biological Origin (RFNBO). Thus EverWind’s hydrogen and ammonia production would be qualified as “green” in accordance with the MOUs — which are not binding contracts — with the German utilities.
That was then. Now there are new regulations.
EU eliminates PPA option
Overmyer told the Halifax Examiner that on July 8, 2025, the European Union adopted new rules that eliminate the option of use power purchase agreements that permit electricity from grids to produce “green” hydrogen and ammonia, if those grids are not 100% powered by renewables.*
The changes for the new methodology for assessing greenhouse gas emissions from low-carbon fuels are described here, with detailed directives here.
Nova Scotia Power’s grid is far from that goal. In the first quarter of 2024, it was powered by a lot of fossil fuels — coal (36%), natural (fossil) gas (15%), and oil (1%).
According to Overmyer, the new EU regulations mean EverWind’s hydrogen and ammonia would not qualify as green.
Under the new EU rules, hydrogen and ammonia can only be certified as green when they are produced using electricity transmitted directly from renewable sources, and not through grids that are not 100% renewable, such as Nova Scotia’s.
‘A really big deal’According to Overmyer, the new EU regulations mean EverWind’s hydrogen and ammonia would not qualify as green.
Under the new EU rules, hydrogen and ammonia can only be certified as green when they are produced using electricity transmitted directly from renewable sources, and not through grids that are not 100% renewable, such as Nova Scotia’s.
EverWind would need to produce all its hydrogen and ammonia using renewable energy supplied directly to its plant from the wind project to have the ammonia certified as “green” in Europe, said Overmyer.
“This is really becoming an interesting situation,” Overmyer said. “For them to actually drop that power purchase agreement option in the first place, that’s a really big deal.”
Overmyer continued:
They had to have really compelling evidence that there was a problem for them to do that, because the cost of them [the EU] doing that in light of their aggressive hydrogen targets was very great. And essentially, as far as I can tell, none of the member state grids actually meet now the definition of fully renewable. Which essentially forces everybody now to a direct connection.
‘Double accounting’ CO2 reductions
Overmyer also noted that the closing of the power purchase agreement loophole in the EU regulations would put an end to a serious problem with carbon accounting that it permitted.
Under the old rules, Overmyer said, both Nova Scotia Power and the European country that purchased ammonia from EverWind would have been claiming the same reduced carbon emissions.
Overmyer went on to explain the problematic and deceptive “double” carbon accounting that would happen were EverWind allowed to feed wind energy into the Nova Scotia Power grid, and then withdraw an equivalent amount of electricity from the grid to produce hydrogen and convert it to ammonia for export to Europe.
It’s complex, but bears repeating:
The reduced emissions caused by the EverWind Fuels’ wind power plants displacing fossil generation will appear in Nova Scotia Power Inc. (NSPI) monthly reports, and along with a corresponding increase in percent renewable energy generation, will benefit NSPI by being counted toward Nova Scotia meeting its legislated, climate change targets. The renewable electricity’s environmental attributes are, in effect, used or consumed by the Nova Scotia grid.
To now grant those same environmental attributes exclusively to the RFNBO project owner [in this case, EverWind**] would require that the emissions reductions and percent renewable energy increases as recorded on the Nova Scotia grid be reversed.
For NSPI reporting, the avoided CO2 emissions would have to be added back to the Nova Scotia grid’s carbon ledger, and the percent renewable energy value decreased. Failing to do so would count the renewable energy attributes twice, once in reducing emissions on the Nova Scotia grid and the second time in reducing EU emissions.
However, no Nova Scotia act or regulation contains any requirement for NSPI to add avoided CO2 back to the grid’s carbon ledger for the purpose of reporting CO2 emissions let alone documents or references instructions for what to measure and how to calculate the avoided CO2 that is to be added back.
The European Union parliament and council are now reviewing the new regulations, Overmyer said, and have to either approve or reject the change by September 8, although a two-month extension is possible.
But, he added, the acceptance rate for new regulations in the EU governing bodies is 94%.
‘Greenwashing’ allegations
On August 18, Overmyer submitted an official “greenwashing” complaint against EverWind to Canada’s Competition Bureau. He has yet to receive a reply.
The Halifax Examiner has contacted the Competition Bureau about OverMyer’s complaint. We have also written to Uniper and E-On with questions about their MOUs with EverWind, given the new EU regulations.
So far we’ve had no replies.
We also emailed questions to the official contact address [info@everwindfuels.com] on EverWind’s website, but the email bounced back. We then called the telephone number [902-201-0643] on EverWind’s website, and asked for a callback. We’ve yet to receive one.
We will update this article if we receive any answers from these groups.
* Clarification: After this article was published, Kristen Overmyer asked that we clarify that “fully renewable” grids do not need to be “100% renewable.” Overmyer noted: “The EU regulations do not require a ‘fully renewable’ grid to be 100% renewable. Article 4, section 1 of the 2023 regs define the term ‘fully renewable’ as ‘average proportion of renewable electricity exceeded 90% in the previous calendar year…’ I do not see that the new 2025 regs have changed this.”
** The article previously and incorrectly identified the RFNBO project owner as Uniper or E-On. In this case it is EverWind, and the article has been corrected.
GNSF Contact: Madeline Conacher, info@greennovascotiafirst.ca www.greennovacotfirst.ca