Global shipping group Monjasa will provide logistics services to distribute electrolytic ammonia produced at the under-development HØST PtX project in Esbjerg, Denmark. Part of the 600,000 tonne-per-year production volume will also be reserved for Monjasa to utilise as a bunker fuel.
Casa dos Ventos, Comerc and the Transhydrogen Alliance (THA) will continue development of a 2.2 million-tonne-per-year electrolytic ammonia export project at the Port of Pecém in northern Brazil. The country’s renewables-heavy grid will power 2.4 GW of electrolysis capacity, with exports to Rotterdam to start in 2026. THA founding member Proton Ventures recently selected an engineering partner to perform FEED work for the Pecém plant, and was also awarded a construction contract by OCP Group for two world-scale ammonia storage tanks in Morocco.
RWE, LOTTE, Mitsubishi will join forces to jointly develop a large-scale clean ammonia production & export project in the Port of Corpus Christi, Texas. At full size, the facility will produce 10 million tonnes per year of “green” and “blue” ammonia combined, to be exported to Europe and Asia. Also on the Gulf Coast, Linde will build, own and operate a CCS hydrogen & nitrogen production plant to supply gas feedstock to OCI’s world-scale ammonia facility in Beaumont, Texas.
Hyphen Hydrogen Energy has signed off-take MoUs with a major chemical company and South Korean hydrogen producer Approtium bringing the total off-take for their Namibian mega-project to just over one million tonnes of renewable ammonia each year. Also in Namibia, Fortescue Future Industries will support the early stages of the new Daures Green Hydrogen Village project.
As part of the HyEx project, Mitsui & Co., Toyo Engineering and Enaex will develop a solar-powered, 18,000 tonnes-per-year renewable ammonia plant in Tocopilla, northern Chile. Just outside of Tocopilla, Sumitomo and Chilean transmission utility Colbún have teamed up to explore renewable ammonia production & export. The pair will also assess million-tonne-per-year production in Chile’s south. Also in South America, Proton Ventures have contracted Fitchner to assess the feasibility of planned renewable production projects.
Electrolysis-based ammonia production peaked worldwide around 1970, before the economies of scale and cheap gas feedstock led to its decline. With decarbonization and climate-neutral industrial processes now a critical priority, electrolysis-based ammonia production has re-emerged as a long-term solution. From a base of 10,000 tonnes per year worldwide production in 2020, as much as 100 million tonnes per year of electrolysis-based ammonia could be produced by the end of this decade, driven by a dramatic roll-out of renewable energy generation and installed electrolyzer capacity.
Shell will acquire a 35% stake and operatorship of the Green Energy Oman (GEO) project, a 25 GW renewable ammonia supergiant under development on the Oman coast. The news is the latest in a series of ammonia energy announcements from the oil & gas majors.
This week we explore three mega-scale production projects planned for Texas. On the Gulf Coast, Avina Clean Hydrogen is developing a 100% renewable-powered ammonia plant. In northern Texas, Air Products and AES are planning a 1.4 GW wind & solar-powered hydrogen production facility targeting the heavy trucking market, and in Beaumont OCI has just broken ground on its new million-tonne-per-year CCS ammonia plant.
CWP Global and Djibouti’s Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources have agreed to develop a 10 GW renewable energy hub in the African Republic, which will power the production of renewable hydrogen & derivatives like ammonia. In two related Australian updates, the AREH will become the Australian Renewable Energy Hub, and Andrew Forrest-owned Squadron Energy announced it will acquire Australia-based CWP Renewables and its significant project pipeline.
Fortescue Future Industries and the Kenyan government will develop a 300 MW, geothermal-powered ammonia & fertiliser production plant. The project is part of a larger pipeline (25 GW) of renewable energy generation being explored by FFI and Kenya. In Mauritania, bp will explore the potential for large-scale renewable hydrogen production, and a new report from Masdar has laid out the opportunities on offer for Africa: as much as 10% of the global renewable hydrogen market by 2050, or 60 million tonnes per year.