Site items in: Infrastructure

Introducing our Australia conference, meet our first panel
Article

This year marks the fourth edition of our annual Australia conference, and we begin our event with a challenging topic - for good reason. As momentum grows, so do the stakes. The opportunity for hydrogen & ammonia in Australia is unparalleled, but establishing a world-leading industry requires many, many pieces to come together. To explore the challenges immediately ahead, we’ve brought together three familiar faces with a wealth of experience: Paul Hodgson (Scaling Green Hydrogen CRC), Alana Barlow (Sumitomo Australia) and Laurentiu Zamfirescu (Principal Safety and Risk Engineer, AMOG Consulting). Join us in-person or online, and make sure to register by the end of this week (Friday 29 July) to secure the early-bird rate.

Air Products and Gunvor to develop new import terminal in Rotterdam
Article

Air Products and Gunvor will jointly develop a renewable ammonia import terminal at Gunvor Petroleum’s existing refinery & distribution facilities in Rotterdam Europoort. The partners expect to be providing hydrogen to the Netherlands in 2026, with the new terminal receiving imports of renewable ammonia from Air Products production projects around the world. The new project is now the third ammonia import terminal under development at the Port of Rotterdam, and comes the same week as Dutch gas network operator Gasunie announced that it had started construction of a national hydrogen distribution network in the Netherlands.

NOV: Subsea storage of fuel ammonia
Article

A high-profile industry consortium (including Equinor, Shell and ABS) will validate NOV’s subsea fuel storage system. NOV argues subsea storage will be a crucial element for effective distribution of ammonia as an alternative maritime fuel. Validation testing is expected to be completed by the end of next year, with the first projects deployed late 2024 to 2025.

New ammonia partnerships in Japan, Indonesia
Article

JGC Corporation has entered into a series of new ammonia partnerships. As part of a wider agreement to license KBR’s patented ammonia production technology, a new renewable ammonia pilot plant will be developed near Fukushima. JGC will team up in an “alliance agreement” with TOYO Corporation to develop fuel ammonia production projects and import terminals in Japan. And in Indonesia - where TOYO is currently assessing the feasibility of retrofitting an existing ammonia plant to run entirely on renewable energy - JGC and Indonesia’s national energy organisation Pertamina will collaborate on key decarbonisation projects.

RePowerEU: supporting the full switch of existing hydrogen production to renewables
Article

The European Commission has announced its latest plan to reduce the EU’s dependence on fossil imports. RePowerEU will encourage a full switch from fossil-based hydrogen to renewable hydrogen, based on the use of carbon contracts for difference. A hydrogen utilisation target of 20 million tonnes per year has also been set, composed of 10 million tonnes from domestic production and 10 million tonnes of imports. Of these imports, the EU has also forecast 4 million tonnes will be in the form of hydrogen-as-ammonia. The new plan marks a significant increase in ambition from the Fit-for-55 package released in July 2021.

Nutrien planing world-scale clean ammonia facility in Geismar, Louisiana
Article

Nutrien has announced plans for a $2 billion, million-tonne-per-year CCS ammonia production facility in Geismar, Louisiana. Nutrien will partner with Denbury, who will handle the construction & operation of necessary CCS infrastructure, with permanent underground sequestration to occur. Mitsubishi Corporation has agreed to off take up to 40% of the produced ammonia, which will be exported to the “Asian fuel market”.

Building ammonia supply chains into the Port of Rotterdam
Article

The state government of Queensland has signed a new agreement with the Port of Rotterdam to develop an ammonia export supply chain between Australia and the EU. The announcement comes the same week that the Port of Rotterdam authority set a target of supplying industrial centers in northwest Europe with 4.6 million tonnes of hydrogen by 2030 - the vast majority of which will need to be imported. As to the question of when those imports will begin, the Rocky Mountain Institute has released a new report indicating the EU should be ready to receive renewable hydrogen as soon as significant capacity comes online in 2024.

Canada: ammonia exports from British Columbia & Nova Scotia
Article

EverWind Fuels will develop a regional hydrogen hub in Point Tupper, Nova Scotia (Atlantic coast of Canada) after acquiring existing storage terminal facilities at the deepwater port. The existing infrastructure will be expanded to include renewable hydrogen and ammonia production, with huge potential for onshore and offshore wind power.

On the Pacific coast, Trigon has announced a new focus on zero-carbon energy exports, particularly ammonia. Trigon’s Prince Rupert, British Columbia export terminal has traditionally been a major coal port, but existing infrastructure will be leveraged as Trigon shifts focus from fossil commodities to low and zero-carbon exports.

Details of Murchison ammonia mega-project emerge
Article

New details about Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners’ Murchison PtX project have emerged in a recent planning proposal submitted to Western Australia’s Environmental Protection Authority. 5.2 GW of wind and solar generating capacity will power the production of 2 million tonnes per year of renewable ammonia for export from Australia.

Electrolyser scale-up news: May 2022
Article

This week we explore announcements about novel electrolyser technologies (Advanced Ionics), funding announcements from Europe (ITM Power, Battolyser and Sunfire), and some gigawatt-scale expansions in manufacturing capacities (Hydrogen Optimized, Nel, Cummins and Sinopec).