TotalEnergies has partnered with American industrial gas company Air Products to secure a supply of clean hydrogen, aiming to decarbonize its European oil refineries. Air Products has committed to supplying 70,000 tons of green hydrogen annually from 2030 for a period of 15 years.
Decarbonizing European Refineries
This long-term agreement with Air Products, the first signed under the tender launched last year by the French oil company, “is a stepping stone towards our goal of decarbonizing the hydrogen used in our refineries in Northern Europe by the end of the decade,” said TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanné.
A First Step Towards a Greener Future
TotalEnergies launched a major tender in September 2023 for the supply of 500,000 tons of green hydrogen per year to power its six refineries and two biorefineries in Europe. This contract is a “first step,” emphasizes the French oil company, which does not provide any figures on the purchase prices of green hydrogen, a key data for an industrial sector that is struggling to emerge.
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Hydrogen is already widely used in the oil sector to desulfurize fuels, but it is mostly “grey” hydrogen with a disastrous carbon footprint: nearly 10 tons of CO2 are emitted per ton of hydrogen produced during the reforming of methane gas (CH4), which fuels the warming of temperatures on the planet.
The clean hydrogen needed to at least partially decarbonize the oil sector responsible for global warming comes from the electrolysis of water, that is, the separation by an electric current of the two elements that make up the water molecule (H2O), and needs to use decarbonized electricity. But its production cost is much higher than that of grey hydrogen.
Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions
The group simply stated that the agreement would allow it to avoid the emission of “about 700,000 tons of CO2 per year” and move forward on its goal of reducing its net greenhouse gas emissions (scope 1 and 2) by 40% in 2030 compared to 2015.
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TotalEnergies also intends to “contribute to the emergence of a green hydrogen sector,” an area in which Air Products has been committed for seven years.
“We have always believed that if we made clean hydrogen available on a commercial scale, the demand would be there,” said Air Products CEO Seifi Ghasemi, expressing “his admiration for Mr. Pouyanné’s vision and courage as a forerunner towards creating a cleaner future for the world.”
A Two-Way Partnership
In parallel with this global agreement, TotalEnergies will itself become a supplier of green electricity for Air Products. The agreement provides for a 150 MW power purchase agreement (PPA) from a solar project in Texas led by TotalEnergies.