![](images/Logos/SWLedger%20logoSm.jpg)
News about Green Ammonia in Texas
Conditions, Wilbarger, County, AES and Air Products.
$4B hydrogen production facility planned
for idled Oklaunion site
By News
Staff on Friday, December 23, 2022
![](images/images_05_19_2023/pic1.jpg)
-
The plant sits idle near
Vernon, Texas, on October 15. The facility was retired in 2020 after
34 years of generating electricity. Two companies have announced
plans to spend $4 billion to develop a ‘green’ hydrogen production
facility on the North Texas site.
![](images/images_05_19_2023/pic2.jpg)
-
The coal-fired power
plant sits idle near Vernon, Texas, on October 15. The facility was
retired in 2020 after 34 years of generating electricity. Two
companies have announced plans to spend $4 billion to develop a
‘green’ hydrogen production facility on the North Texas site.
VERNON, Texas — Two
corporations announced plans to invest approximately $4 billion to
construct a “green” hydrogen production facility on the site of a
decommissioned electric generating plant near here.
The “mega-scale
renewable-power-to-hydrogen project” will include approximately 1.4
gigawatts of wind and solar power generation, plus electrolyzer
capacity capable of producing more than 200 metric tons of hydrogen
each day – more than 73,000 metric tons of hydrogen per year – “making
it the largest ‘green’ hydrogen facility in the United States,” said
Air Products and The AES Corporation.
The hydrogen plant will be
powered by solar and wind energy produced at the site. The gas will be
produced by electrolyzers, which split water into oxygen and hydrogen.
Since no carbon emissions will be generated, the product is known as
“green hydrogen.”
The facility is projected to
begin commercial operations in 2027, the two companies reported in a
joint press release.
The location is west of
Wichita Falls and nine miles east of Vernon, approximately 30 minutes
southwest of Frederick, in Wilbarger County, Texas. The site is where
the 650-megawatt, coal-fired Oklaunion power plant generated
electricity for 34 years, until 2020.
The Oklaunion plant was
co-owned by four partners: Public Service Co. of Oklahoma (which
operated the facility); sister company AEP Texas; the City of
Brownsville, Texas; and the Oklahoma Municipal Power Authority.
The new facility “will be,
by far, the largest green hydrogen facility in the U.S. to use wind
and sun as energy sources,” said Seifi Ghasemi, chairman, president
and CEO of Air Products.
The facility will serve
“growing demand for zero-carbon intensity fuels for the mobility
market as well as other industrial markets,” officials said. “It will
yield a totally clean source of energy on a massive scale, and, if all
the green hydrogen were used in the heavy-duty truck market, it would
eliminate more than 1.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide
emissions annually when compared to diesel use in heavy-duty trucks.”
The joint venture will sell
hydrogen to Air Products for distribution to the transportation market
and for new industrial uses, which Air Products declined to identify.
Over the lifetime of the
project, it is expected to circumvent more than 50 million metric tons
of CO2, emissions that would otherwise be generated in conventional
natural gas-based hydrogen production. That volume is the equivalent
of avoiding emissions from nearly five billion gallons of diesel fuel.
Air Products and AES said
they will jointly and equally own the renewable energy and
electrolyzer assets, with Air Products serving as the exclusive
off-taker and marketer of the green hydrogen under a 30-year contract.
The project will create more
than 1,300 construction and 115 permanent operations jobs, and
approximately 200 transportation and distribution jobs, the companies
estimate. It also is expected to generate approximately $500 million
in tax benefits to the state over the course of the project’s
lifetime.
“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 centers,” said AES president and chief executive officer Andrés
Gluski.
The Air Products/AES project
is subject to receipt of local permits and local, state and federal
incentives.
The Inflation Reduction Act
signed into law in August by President Joe Biden gives producers with
very low CO2 emissions a credit of $3 per kilogram of hydrogen
produced. Ghasemi said the joint venture can receive up to $5 per kg
if credits for producing green energy and building on the site of a
former electric generating plant are included.
“The tax credits are doing
what the U.S. government intended them to do, which is to accelerate
implementation of these kinds of projects in the U.S.,” Ghasemi said.
Air Products provides industrial gases;
AES operates power plants
AES Corp. owns and operates
power plants and is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. It operates
in the U.S., Mexico, India, Central and South America, Europe, Vietnam
and Jordan. Earlier this year AES signed power purchase agreements to
deliver clean energy to Amazon data centers in California.
Air Products and Chemicals
is based in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and was founded in 1940. The
company provides essential industrial gases, related equipment, and
applications expertise to customers around the world. It had $12.7
billion in sales in Fiscal Year 2022. It employed approximately 21,900
people in more than 50 countries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East,
India, as well as the U.S. and Canada, on Sept. 30, according to the
company’s annual report.
The North Texas project is
another of Air Products’ major investments in green hydrogen. The
company announced in 2020 a $5 billion arrangement with the Saudi
energy firm ACWA Power to build a complex producing about 650 tons per
day of hydrogen, and is considering a similar complex in Oman. Air
Products also announced plans to spend $500 million on a
hydroelectric-powered project to produce 35 tons of hydrogen daily in
Massena, New York.
Hydrogen demand grows exponentially
Demand for green hydrogen
for mobility and industrial applications is expected to grow
exponentially across the U.S. over the next decade. The growth in
demand is supported by green hydrogen’s role in net-zero ambitions
announced by several states and major corporations.
Hydrogen is a versatile
energy source for actual and potential uses. It can be produced using
different energy inputs and different production technologies. Also,
it can be converted to different forms and distributed via different
routes: from compressed gas hydrogen in pipelines through liquid
hydrogen on ships, trains or trucks.
Hydrogen can replace coke (a
petroleum byproduct produced in the coal distilling process) and
natural gas as a reducing agent in iron and steel manufacturing.
Hydrogen also can enable decarbonization of products such as cement,
fertilizer, and petrochemicals.
Primary uses of hydrogen
today are as a chemical feedstock in ammonia, food, and drug
production, as well as petrochemical and refinery processing. It also
is used in crystal growth, glass manufacturing, chemical tracing,
metal fabrication, polysilicon and semiconductor manufacturing, metal
production, and thermal processing.
Hydrogen also is used to
remove sulfur and to hydrotreat and hydrocrack heavier crude oil
constituents into more valuable, lighter products.
Frontier Group
spelled out plans for power plant site
The Frontier Group of
Companies announced earlier this year that they plan to redevelop the
site of the decommissioned Oklaunion power plant “to support heavy
industry.”
The Frontier Group of
Companies was founded in 2001 and is based in Buffalo, New York.
The companies include
“industry-leading operations for industrial demolition, industrial
dismantling, asset recovery, equipment repurposing, industrial
clean-up, site remediation, brownfield redevelopment, facility
acquisition, real estate development, energy exploration, energy
production, and materials recycling,” Frontier Group’s website states.
Plans for the Oklaunion
Industrial Park include “dismantling obsolete structures along with
site clean-up, remediation and environmental monitoring as well as
industrial repurposing and industrial materials recycling,” The
Frontier Group announced. Southwest Ledger was unsuccessful in
its efforts to contact someone at the corporate office.
Oklaunion Industrial Park
redevelopment plans include “uses for manufacturing, commercial,
warehousing, logistics operations and renewable energy,” The Frontier
Group says in its advertising.
The site is “strategically
located” near Vernon and is “30 minutes southwest of Frederick.” It
has “1,000+ developable acres, 6+ miles of rail and a 2+ mile rail
loop, electricity, public water, private water/sewer, fiber cable and
three warehouses.”
Oklaunion Industrial Park
“will tap renewable energy sources with the installation of the
Oklaunion Green Energy solar farm,” Frontier Group of Companies
claims. “This 119+ megawatt solar array is expected to generate 194
gigawatts of electricity annually while creating carbon offsets equal
to 191,100 tons of CO2.”
Green Play Ammonia™, Yielder® NFuel Energy.
Spokane, Washington. 99212
www.exactrix.com
509 995 1879 cell, Pacific.
exactrix@exactrix.com
|