One of the world’s largest ever renewable power projects and a global pioneer in green hydrogen mega-production – Saudi Arabia’s Neom – announced financial close on a project that will cost of $8.4bn.
Neom Green Hydrogen Company (NGHC) – a joint venture between ACWA Power, Air Products and the vast Saudi Neom future city project – plan to deploy 4GW of wind, solar and batteries to produce up to 600 tonnes a day of green ammonia using more than 2GW of hydrogen electrolysis.
The JV said today (Monday) that it had reached financial close on the project after signing agreements with “23 local, regional, and international banks, and investment firms” covering $6.1bn of non-recourse finance, becoming the world’s first giga-scale H2 initiative to reach FID.
Saudi Arabia and its heavyweight partners made headlines around the world in 2020 when they announced the green H2 to ammonia plan, with analysts saying the deep pockets and clout of those involved made it far more likely it would see the light of day than some other mega-projects planned around the world.
ACWA Power, which is delivering the renewable element, said: "With the combined experience of our global utility scale renewable projects and innovative partners, we are making rapid strides towards the development of NGHC's giga scale-plant, integrating up to 4GW of renewable power from solar and wind energy to supply green hydrogen to global markets at scale.”
The project hopes to be producing green fuels by the end of 2026. It has already secured a 30-year exclusive offtake agreement with co-developer Air Products, which plans to distribute the ammonia to global demand centres, with a focus on northern Europe, to serve mobility and industrial markets.
Air Products has also bagged the engineering procurement and construction (EPC) contract for the project, valued at around $6.7bn.
