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That's Where I Belong - Location is Key for the Latest Blue Hydrogen/Ammonia Project

In case you hadn’t noticed, many of the largest, most successful companies in the U.S. and Canada are placing big bets on the energy transition. Take “blue” hydrogen, which is produced by breaking down natural gas into hydrogen and carbon dioxide and capturing and sequestering most of the CO2, and blue ammonia, which is made from blue hydrogen and nitrogen. Last fall, Air Products & Chemicals announced a multibillion-dollar project in Louisiana, and now it’s a joint venture of Enbridge and Humble Midstream, which is planning a large, $2.5 billion-plus blue hydrogen/ammonia project down the Texas coast, at Enbridge’s massive marine terminal in Ingleside. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss what we’ve learned about the companies’ plan.

As we said in Tangled Up in Blue, our October 2021 blog about the Air Products’ project, none of us knows with any certainty how big a role hydrogen and ammonia will ultimately play in helping the U.S. and the rest of the world decarbonize. Sure, some true believers are convinced that low-carbon hydrogen is the next big thing, and many have similar faith in low-carbon ammonia, which contains a lot of hydrogen and which can be an efficient carrier, or “suitcase molecule,” for transporting hydrogen by ship. But even these advocates must acknowledge the economic and other challenges associated with scaling up the production of hydrogen and ammonia that emits little or no CO2, the predominant greenhouse gas.

Given that RBN’s primary area of expertise has historically been hydrocarbons, we needed to educate ourselves about the so-called “fuels of the future,” and brought you all along for the ride through our blogs. We started off a while back with our “Help!” series on hydrogen, where we tried to make sense of the hydrogen buzz (Part 1), explained how hydrogen is produced (Part 2), and looked at hydrogen production economics and the many “colors” that hydrogen can come in (Part 3). These include old-fashioned — and market-dominating — “gray” hydrogen, produced with natural gas via steam methane reforming (SMR) without carbon capture and sequestration (CCS; see Been Around a Long Time); blue hydrogen (see above and Bullet the Blue Sky); and “green” hydrogen, which is made by using renewables-powered electrolysis to break down water into hydrogen and oxygen.

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