The European Commission has approved a €122 million Lithuanian state grant to support AB AChema to decarbonise fertiliser production at its existing facility in Kaunas. A 171 MW electrolysis plant will be installed, producing enough renewable hydrogen to displace 30% of the current, gas-based feedstock used at the site.
Singapore-based Aslan Energy Capital has acquired land in Sonora state for a solar-powered hydrogen and ammonia production project, feeding domestic requirements in Mexico. Also amongst Aslan’s portfolio is the ARUN Blue Ammonia project in Aceh Province, near the vital Strait of Malacca international shipping lane.
Fertiglobe has won the first H2Global pilot auction for renewable ammonia, promising to deliver 397,000 tons of renewable ammonia between 2027 and 2033. H2Global’s announcement comes at the end of a two year auction process. Following the H2Global announcement, Fertiglobe committed to a twenty-year offtake deal for renewable hydrogen feedstock from the Egypt Green Hydrogen project, demonstrating the investor certainty fostered by the auction.
Stamicarbon will provide its NX Stami Green technologies for a new renewable ammonia and fertilisers plant to be constructed in France. The FertigHy consortium plans to start construction in 2027, and will utilise new build renewable energy and back-up grid power for the facility.
Ireland-based Phelan has announced it will develop a $2.4 billion hydrogen and ammonia production project in Peru, based on solar energy generation in the Arequipa region. The project will initially produce 440,000 tons per year of renewable ammonia, with scale up plans already in place to boost production to 1 million tons capacity.
The Norwegian Maritime Authority has approved the ammonia fuel system design to be deployed onboard the platform supply vessel Viking Energy. The system will directly feed 2 MW of solid oxide fuel cells, allowing for long-range, high power sailing of up to 3,000 hours per year.
More than $37 billion will be invested across the initial stages of hydrogen and ammonia production projects, ranging in location from the Gulf of Suez to west of the Nile Delta. A series of agreements concerning existing and newly-announced projects were signed at the recent Egypt-EU Investment Conference.
In our May episode of Project Features, H2SITE joined us to explore the development history of their Palladium membrane-based, ammonia cracking technology. Learn more about the deployment of this technology at a hydrogen vehicle refueling site in the UK, plus plans for scaling-up the technology to produce tons per day of fuel-cell grade hydrogen from ammonia.
In our June episode of Project Features, we were joined by World Energy GH2 to explore the major milestones of Project Nujio’qonik, an RFNBO-compliant ammonia project based on GW-scale wind power in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. FID on the project’s first phase is expected in 2025, producing 400,000 tons of ammonia per year for export to Europe.
At last month’s MariNH3 conference in Nottingham, a series of keynotes laid out the opportunities and challenges ahead for marine ammonia fuel. Onboard ammonia cracking technologies are moving through testing phases and closer to commercialisation, vessel designers are working through the unique challenges of carrying ammonia fuel onboard, and emissions mitigation technology (in combination with adherence to existing Tier 3 standards) will be necessary to ensure that ammonia-powered vessels are more environmentally-friendly than conventional counterparts.