Wabash Valley Resources granted Class VI license for CCS ammonia production

500,000 tons per year in Terre Haute

Based at the retired Wabash Valley Generating Station in Indiana, Wabash Valley Resources (WVR) is developing a CCS-based hydrogen production facility, which will feed a 500,000 tons per year ammonia plant. Under development since all seven coal-fed units at Wabash Valley were retired in 2016, the last twelve months have seen two significant progress updates. In April 2023, Indiana Senate Bill 451 was signed into law, establishing a framework for project developers to engage with landowners under whose holdings CO₂ would be sequestered. Last month, two Class VI permits were officially issued by the US EPA, allowing WVR to construct two wells for injection and storage of CO₂ underground.

The carbon storage permits are an important milestone that brings the United States closer to industrial-scale, domestic, environmentally friendly ammonia production and moves America’s farmers closer to fertilizer independence.

The EPA’s issuance of the two draft Class VI permits for carbon storage validates our investment to date and our more than five years of research and testing to verify the geology of the injection well sites as suitable for permanent carbon sequestration.

Greg Zoeller, WVR’s Vice President of External Affairs in his organisation’s official press release at the announcement of draft permits being granted, 18 July, 2023

The project would be Indiana’s only ammonia plant, with 500,000 tons per year of anhydrous ammonia amounting to a significant percentage of current annual usage within the USA’s Eastern Corn Belt. An investment of over $1 billion is anticipated.

Class VI landscape

One of the key project steps is granting of the Class VI license for CO₂ sequestration: a lengthy process with multiple assessment steps. While the Wabash Valley Resources project is the first ammonia project to receive its license, a number of other CCS-based ammonia projects in the USA sit at different stages. Based on up-to-date information from the EPA:

• Lapis Energy’s sequestration project in Arkansas that will help decarbonise LSB Industries’ El Dorado ammonia plant is in the early stages of an ~18 month technical review.
• And the Bluebonnet Sequestration Hub near Corpus Christi, Texas is almost ready to be submitted for technical review. Yara and Enbridge’s ammonia plant in Corpus Christi will reportedly use this sequestration site.

The Louisiana EPA has recently been granted “primacy” over Class VI license decision-making, meaning that state officials will now assess CCS ammonia projects under development.