Air Products and The AES Corporation have announced their plans to build, own and operate a green hydrogen production facility in Wilbarger County, Texas.
The large-scale renewable power to hydrogen project will include around 1.4GW of wind and solar power generation. The project would entail an investment of around $4bn.
It will feature an electrolyser capable of producing more than 200 metric tons per day (MT/D) of green hydrogen and will be equally owned by Air Products and AES.
Air Products will serve as the exclusive off-taker and marketer of the green hydrogen produced at the facility, under a 30-year contract.
Air Products chairman, president, and chief executive officer Seifi Ghasemi said: “We are very pleased to announce this exciting joint venture with AES, which is one of the leading renewable energy companies in America.
“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.
“We have been working on the development of this project with AES for many years and it will be competitive on a world scale while bringing significant tax, job and energy security benefits to Texas. We are excited to move forward and make clean green hydrogen available to US customers in the near future.”
The green hydrogen production facility is planned to commence commercial operations in 2027.
Once operational, it will become the largest green hydrogen facility in the US, and serve the zero-carbon intensity fuels for the mobility market, along with other industrial markets.
If all the produced green hydrogen is used in the heavy-duty truck market, it would eliminate more than 1.6 million metric tons of CO2 emissions annually, said Air Products.
Over its lifetime, the project would avoid more than 50 million metric tons of CO2, the equivalent of avoiding emissions from nearly five billion gallons of diesel.
The project would create more than 1,300 jobs during construction and 115 permanent jobs during operations, along with 200 jobs in transportation and distribution.
Furthermore, the facility is expected to generate around $500m in tax benefits to the state of Texas, over the lifetime of the project.
AES president and chief executive officer Andrés Gluski said: “This project will capitalize on AES’ position as one of the nation’s largest renewable energy developers and its global leadership in innovations such as energy storage systems and supplying around-the-clock clean energy to data centres.
“We are very pleased to partner with the world leader in hydrogen, Air Products, for this first-of-its-kind mega-scale green hydrogen facility in the United States.
“We will build more than 1 GW of new solar and wind facilities to provide zero-carbon energy for electrolysis and related production facilities. AES believes that green hydrogen has a key role to play in decarbonising transportation and accelerating the future of energy.”
