Air Products and AES plan to invest ~$4B for mega-scale green hydrogen production facility in Texas; 200 metric tons per day
09 December 2022
Air Products and The AES Corporation plan to invest approximately $4 billion to build, own and operate a green hydrogen production facility in Wilbarger County, Texas. This mega-scale renewable power to hydrogen project includes approximately 1.4 gigawatts (GW) of wind and solar power generation, along with electrolyzer capacity capable of producing more than 200 metric tons per day (MT/D) of green hydrogen, making it the largest green hydrogen facility in the United States.
The facility, which is targeted to begin commercial operations in 2027, will serve growing demand for zero-carbon intensity fuels for the mobility market as well as other industrial markets. It will yield a clean source of energy on a massive scale, and, if all the green hydrogen were used in the heavy-duty truck market, it would eliminate more than 1.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually when compared to diesel use in heavy-duty trucks.
Over the project lifetime, it is expected to avoid more than 50 million metric tons of CO2—the equivalent of avoiding emissions from nearly five billion gallons of diesel fuel.
Air Products and AES will jointly and equally own the renewable energy and electrolyzer assets, with Air Products serving as the exclusive off-taker and marketer of the green hydrogen under a 30-year contract.
The project would create more than 1,300 construction and 115 permanent operations jobs, as well as about 200 transportation and distribution jobs. It is also expected to generate approximately $500 million in tax benefits to the state over the course of the project’s lifetime, while extending Texas’ energy leadership.
Demand for green hydrogen for mobility and industrial applications is expected to grow exponentially across the United States over the next decade. The growth in demand is supported by green hydrogen’s role in net-zero ambitions announced by several states and major corporations. The project is subject to receipt of local permits, and local, state and federal incentives.
Texas is where cemvita is actually investing some small money to produce gold hydrogen. Are they gonna win over electrolyzers hydrogen. At least they are all green. Canada is doing almost nothing for green hydrogen and they have difficulties increasing electricity production to keep-up with higher demand.
Posted by: Gorr | 09 December 2022 at 07:01 AM
HyTerra are now drilling the first wildcat wells specifically to look for naturally occurring hydrogen - previously when hydrogen was inadvertently hit, it was ignored, as the companies were not set up to deal with using it:
https://fuelcellsworks.com/news/hyterra-focused-on-pioneering-the-exploration-and-production-of-natural-hydrogen/
Both that and other technologies producing hydrogen from residual oil and gas in otherwise depleted wells can perhaps provide very low cost hydrogen - or perhaps not, we really don't know.
It is however absurd to seek to dismiss these sources out of hand, nearly as much so as when those opposed to the use of hydrogen falsely claimed that it does not occur on its own - which claim spoke to their wilful ignorance, not to the facts.
Posted by: Davemart | 09 December 2022 at 07:24 AM
@Dave, interesting ...
Posted by: mahonj | 10 December 2022 at 07:38 AM
Any idea how much of this there is ?
It is still a difficult fuel to handle, unless you turn it into ammonia or methane or something with a higher molecular weight so you can compress or liquefy it more easily.
If you could combine it with wood, you might be able to make something that could be handled and considered low co2.
(not so much with coal or heavy oil).
Posted by: mahonj | 10 December 2022 at 09:35 AM
In the next couple of years we should be able to get some sort of preliminary handle on what is going on, but we just do not have that at the moment:
' As it stands, we do not know how much H2 is produced daily on earth by the pathways listed above. We also do not know how much of this H2 accumulates in reservoirs where it would be easy to produce it. And, perhaps, we have not yet identified all the reactions that would produce H2. After more than a hundred and fifty years of drilling, oil reserves continue to evolve constantly – in fact they continue to grow as we find more oil-- and we had no idea what a source rock or an oil system was during the first 50 years of this industry. For H2 we still lack knowledge and there are very few wells dedicated to its exploration, so it is difficult to estimate total global volumes. '
https://www.renewablematter.eu/articles/article/natural-hydrogen-a-geological-curiosity-or-the-primary-energy-source-for-a-low-carbon-future
the discussion in the above link is a pretty good summary of the state of play, or rather of our lack of knowledge, IMO.
Posted by: Davemart | 10 December 2022 at 01:48 PM