Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards and Air Products Chairman, President, and CEO Seifi Ghasemi announced a $4.5-billion clean energy complex to be built in Louisiana that will make the state a leader in the US clean energy transition. Air Products is a world-leading industrial gas company that produces and transports hydrogen and other essential industrial gases to many customer facilities in Louisiana, across the US Gulf Coast and around the world.

Air Products will build, own and operate the megaproject, which will produce more than 750 million standard cubic feet per day (MMSCFD) of blue hydrogen in Ascension Parish, Louisiana. “Blue” products are produced utilizing hydrocarbons as a feedstock, with the carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the production process captured for permanent sequestration.

The blue hydrogen energy complex will produce more than 750 million standard cubic feet per day of blue hydrogen for Air Products’ pipeline customers in the US Gulf Coast and blue ammonia for global hydrogen markets, including transportation/mobility. The project will also be the world’s largest carbon capture for sequestration operation, permanently sequestering >5 MTPY of CO₂.

The project will create 170 permanent jobs with a total annual payroll of $15.9 million and more than 2,000 construction jobs over three years. It represents Air Products’ largest investment in the US.

A portion of the blue hydrogen will be compressed and supplied to customers by Air Products’ extensive US Gulf Coast hydrogen pipeline network. The network is the largest hydrogen pipeline system in the world, stretching more than 700-miles from Galveston Bay in Texas to New Orleans, Louisiana. Today, this vast US Gulf Coast pipeline network can supply customers with more than 1.6 billion cubic feet of hydrogen per day from approximately 25 production facilities, including blue hydrogen from Air Products’ Port Arthur, Texas facility.

The Port Arthur facility has captured approximately one million tons of CO₂ annually since 2013, with the CO₂ transported via pipeline and utilized for enhanced oil recovery operations.

The balance of the blue hydrogen from the new Ascension Parish facility will be used to make blue ammonia that will be transported around the world and converted back to blue hydrogen for transportation and other markets.

The megaproject will also feature the world’s largest instance of CO₂ capture for permanent sequestration and produce only environmentally friendly blue products. The megaproject is expected to be operational in 2026.

Approximately 95% of the CO₂ generated at the facility will be captured, compressed and transported by pipeline to multiple inland sequestration sites located along a pipeline corridor extending up to 35 miles to the east of the new production facility. More than five million metric tons per year (MTPY) of CO₂ will be permanently sequestered in geologic pore space secured from the State of Louisiana approximately one mile beneath the surface.

Air Products has already received approval from the State Mineral and Energy Board, which is part of the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, for the permanent sequestration of the CO₂.

Air Products will provide all of the complex’s products—blue hydrogen and co-products (liquid nitrogen, liquid oxygen and liquid argon)—to customers in the US and around the world.

This new Louisiana clean energy megaproject announcement follows Air Products’ announcement in June 2021 of a multi-billion-dollar net-zero hydrogen energy complex in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and its previous announcement of the green ammonia production facility joint venture in NEOM, Saudi Arabia powered by renewable energy for the production and export of carbon-free hydrogen to global markets.

We continue to make significant investments as the world leader in the production and supply of hydrogen. In addition to our leadership in gray hydrogen, our Canada project and this Louisiana project make us the leader in blue hydrogen. We also will be the world leader in the production and supply of green, carbon-free hydrogen when the NEOM Project comes onstream. The energy transition will occur in stages, and the megaproject we are announcing today in Louisiana will help the State meet its ambitious goals while providing new sources of blue products for customers in the US and around the globe.

—Seifi Ghasemi