Air Products (NYSE: APD)- an American company providing industrial chemicals and gases, is planning to build a major $4.5 billion carbon capture facility in Ascension Parish that would be Louisiana’s first carbon capture complex.
The company will be manufacturing a blue hydrogen facility near Burnside that is expected to start operations by 2026 with construction commencing in 2022. The project would support 2,000 construction jobs and 170 jobs with an average salary of $93,000 plus benefits over a three-year period.
The carbon capture technology project is also expected to be one of the largest in the world, with blue hydrogen production capacity of more than 750 million standard cubic feet per day. According to the company, that is enough energy to drive 3 million cars.
Around 95% of the CO2 generated at the Burnside manufacturing site will be captured and transported through a pipeline to a storage site 35 miles away. From the blue hydrogen produced, a portion will be compressed and supplied to customers by Air Products’ Gulf Coast hydrogen pipeline network – the largest hydrogen pipeline system in the world.
The rest would be used to make blue ammonia that will be transported around the world and converted back to blue hydrogen for transportation and other markets. The blue hydrogen export offers better value than liquefied natural gas due to the carbon offset.
The carbon capture expense part of the project would be several hundred million dollars. The cost of per ton carbon capture varies between $58 and $232. Projections from the US Department of Energy see them dropping to $30 per ton by 2030. Currently, the 45Q tax credit offers a $50 per ton government subsidy for carbon capture and storage and recently, officials from the White House agreed to boost it to $85.
Relevant: 45Q Carbon Capture Credit Raised To $85 From $50
The state of Louisiana is currently focusing on decreasing industrial emissions as 61% of its greenhouse gases come from this sector. First on the list is the petrochemical sector, according to the LSU Center for Energy Studies that could continue to bring carbon capture investments.
Air Products is an international company creating technology solutions for capturing CO2. It operates facilities that separate, purify and transport carbon dioxide from natural gas reforming, management of syngas from gasification, and oxyfuel combustion in markets such as steel and glass.
