The European Parliament has recently voted on key changes to the Renewable Energy Directive II. The changes include new renewable fuel targets for industry, scrapping the “additionality” clause, and easing temporal & geographical restrictions on electricity PPAs for hydrogen production. A new, €3 billion Hydrogen Bank has also been announced in a bid to close the investment gap in Europe.
Korea Zinc, Hanwha Impact, SK Gas and Australia-based Ark Energy will work together to build a million-tonne-per-year renewable ammonia supply chain between Korea and Australia by 2032. Ark Energy’s renewable energy portfolio in Queensland will be leveraged for ammonia production, with the three South Korean organisations acting as offtakers. The announcement comes as the Qld state government launches an ambitious new energy plan, which will support the addition of 20-plus GW of renewable energy generation to Qld’s grid.
At Vlissingen in the Netherlands, Uniper & Vesta Terminals will explore the feasibility of developing a new ammonia import hub in northwest Europe, based on Vesta’s existing 60,000m3 ammonia storage facility. Also this week, Proton Ventures is currently developing a state-of-the-art ammonia export terminal for an oil & gas major in the UAE, which will feature the “biggest ammonia tanks ever built in the Middle East”.
New US CCS ammonia announcements include: a new million-tonne-per-year facility for OCI in Texas, a new $2 billion production facility for CF Industries and Mitsui & Co. in Louisiana, multi-million-tonnes-per-year of production output for JERA, ConocoPhillips and Uniper on the Gulf Coast spread over multiple export projects, and FID reached for OCI’s decarbonisation project in Iowa.
The number of renewable hydrogen-based projects planned for the Suez Canal Economic Zone has now reached fifteen. Of the seven new MoUs signed in late August, four are targeting renewable ammonia production. Saudi-based alfanar, African energy developer Globeleq, Mediterranean Energy Partners and renewable energy developer Actis are all planning renewable ammonia production plants, with ACME Group also signing an MoU for a multi-million tonne renewable hydrogen plant in the SCZONE.
Last month, four significant production projects were announced in Canada’s maritime provinces:
German energy giants E.ON and Uniper have signed agreements to offtake 500,000 tonnes of renewable ammonia each from EverWind Fuel’s under-development project at Point Tupper, Nova Scotia, beginning from 2025. The backdrop for these offtake MoUs was the signing of a new bilateral agreement between the Canadian and German governments to establish a Transatlantic Canada-Germany supply corridor for hydrogen.
Air Products and Associated British Ports will develop a facility at the Port of Immingham for ammonia imports and hydrogen production (ie. cracking). Immingham is one of the UK’s largest ports and sits within Humberside: the UK’s largest industrial cluster. This follows on from a July announcement, which will see Air Products team up with Gunvor to develop an import terminal in Rotterdam, bringing ammonia from Air Products production projects around the world into Europe from 2026.
Syzygy Plasmonics, LOTTE and Sumitomo Corporation of Americas announced they will join forces to deploy & test Syzygy’s fully-electric, photocatalytic ammonia cracking reactor at LOTTE Chemical’s HQ in Ulsan, South Korea. Syzygy’s reactor technology uses light from ultra-high-efficiency LEDs to crack ammonia into zero-carbon hydrogen, eliminating combustion emissions usually associated with chemical manufacturing. The announcement is one of several new ammonia collaborations this week, with LOTTE, ITOCHU and Sasol all announcing new agreements.
India-based ReNew Power and the SCZONE have signed an agreement to develop a new, $8 billion, million-tonne-per-year renewable ammonia production plant near Ain Sokhna in Egypt. The first phase, producing 100,000 tonnes per year of renewable ammonia, is targeted for completion between 2023 and 2025.