Yara: decarbonising ammonia production in Italy

By Julian Atchison on September 02, 2022

Ravenna: a decarbonised industrial hub on the Adriatic

Yara’s Ravenna fertiliser manufacturing facility on the Adriatic Sea, which will soon become part of a new CCS project. Source: Yara Italia.
Click to learn more (Italian language). Yara’s Ravenna fertiliser manufacturing facility on the Adriatic Sea, which will soon become part of a new CCS project. Source: Yara Italia.

Yara and a consortium of industrial partners will join forces to develop an integrated CCS project (Italian language) near the cities of Ravenna and Ferrara in northern Italy. The partners represent a wide range of energy-intensive industries, including steel, chemical manufacture, industrial waste disposal, fertiliser and urea production (Yara has two plants in the area).

The Ravenna project would capture emissions from industrial facilities in the area, transport and permanently store them in depleted gas fields in the Adriatic Sea. The initiative is the first of its kind in Italy, and the partners are aiming to maximize the synergies with the industrial clusters and the territory.

“Hard to abate” [emissions] in Italy represents 13% of total GHG emissions and 64% of the industrial sector’s…In this context, CCUS represents the main technology and the fastest and most efficient solution for the reduction of emissions from energy-intensive industries…In this sense, the industrial clusters of Ravenna and Ferrara share the purpose and ambition of developing effective projects for the reduction of emissions, through the use of this tool.

More details of the Ravenna project, with the press release quoted in “Le industrie grandi consumatrici di energia firmano a Ravenna un accordo per la decarbonizzazione”, Ravenna Today 16 June 2022 (translated using Google Translate)

The project was launched at the OMC Med Energy conference in June 2022. The nascent Ravenna project was one of forty potential European CCS projects highlighted by the Clean Air Task Force as evidence there remains “unprecedented industrial interest” in the space, and we examined the growing momentum for CCS in Europe at a Project Features webinar earlier this year.