AES and Air Products unveiled plans for 1.4GW of wind and solar to produce green hydrogen in the state of Texas from what they are billing as the largest such plant in the US.
The two partners – giants of power and industrial gases respectively – aim to bring the facility into service in 2027, with its electrolysers producing more than 200 tonnes of renewable H2 daily.
Air Products will be the sole offtaker of the green H2 under a 30-year contract, with the output targeting what the pair believe will be a bouyant hydrogen market for heavy-duty transportation such as trucking, as well as other applications.
“The new facility in Texas will be, by far, the largest mega-scale clean hydrogen production facility in the US to use wind and sun as energy sources,” said Air Products CEO Seifi Ghasemi.
The pair will run the power generation and electrolysers as a 50/50 joint venture.
The project joins a growing roll call of US green hydrogen projects against the policy backdrop of the Inflation Reduction Act, the milestone climate law signed by Joe Biden this year that offers renewable H2 production tax credits worth up to $3/kg.
Iberdrola-controlled Avangrid and Sempra Infrastructure have announced plans of their own to co-operate on green hydrogen and associated fuels, while Danish renewables group Orsted and shipping giant Maersk want to build a power-to-X plant on the US Gulf Coast.
Most ambitious of all, US start-up Green Hydrogen International (GHI) has announced a 60GW renewable H2 project in a sparsely populated area of South Texas, to be powered by wind and solar, with its own salt cavern for storage and a plan to produce clean rocket fuel for Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
