Air Liquide to Build Clean Hydrogen Plant for TotalEnergies Biorefinery

Air Liquide SA has agreed to build a renewable energy-powered hydrogen production facility to curb emissions at TotalEnergies SE’s La Mède biorefinery in southeast France.

Expected to go onstream 2028, the hydrogen unit will add a capacity of 25,000 metric tons a year to the site’s clean hydrogen production. TotalEnergies earlier partnered with ENGIE SA for the Masshylia project, which will produce up to 10,000 metric tons per annum (MMtpa) of green hydrogen. Though the project with ENGIE was launched 2021, it is expected to start up a year later than the project with Air Liquide, according to TotalEnergies.

“These projects will reduce the La Mède biorefinery’s CO2 [carbon dioxide] annual emissions by 130,000 tons”, TotalEnergies said in an online statement.

The French energy giant expects low-carbon hydrogen to help reduce CO2 emissions from its European refineries by about three MMtpa by 2030.

Under the new EUR 150 million ($157.69 million) partnership, Air Liquide, also a French company, will construct and operate the hydrogen unit. The plant will recycle coproducts from the La Mède refinery. “The hydrogen will then be used in the biorefinery to produce biodiesel and sustainable aviation fuel”, TotalEnergies said.

TotalEnergies has already partnered with Air Liquide for a partly-renewable hydrogen plant to help decarbonize its under-conversion Granpuits biorefinery in France, its only other biorefinery in Europe. Air Liquide agreed to invest over EUR 130 million to build and operate the Granpuits hydrogen unit, which will have a capacity of over 20,000 MMtpa. TotalEnergies expects to complete the oil refinery’s conversion by next year.

“Almost ten years after the announcement of its conversion, La Mède is continuing its transformation and is becoming a low-carbon hydrogen production center, thus contributing to the decarbonization ambition of the Provence-Alpes-Côte-D’azur region”, said Vincent Stoquart, president for refining and chemicals at TotalEnergies.

Meanwhile the Masshylia unit will not only contribute to the biorefinery’s decarbonization but also serve local customers at the Fos-Berre industrial-port zone, according to TotalEnergies.

The Masshylia project was to go online this year, according to the partners’ announcement January 13, 2021, which said the project would have a 40-MW electrolyzer. Announcing the project with Air Liquide, TotalEnergies said the Masshylia project is now expected to start up its first 20-MW electrolyzer in 2029.

TotalEnergies’s La Mède site was built 1935 and converted 2019 under a EUR 337 million transformation. It can produce up to 500,000 MMtpa of renewable diesel using “a wide variety of certified sustainable feedstocks, such as vegetable oils, used cooking oils and animal fats from the circular economy”, the company says on its website. TotalEnergies is investing an additional EUR 70 million to upgrade the biorefinery's facilities to process up to 100 percent used cooking oil and animal fats.

“TotalEnergies is committed to reducing the carbon footprint of producing, converting and supplying energy to its customers”, it said announcing its new partnership with Air Liquide. “One of the paths identified by the Company is to use low-carbon hydrogen to decarbonize its European refineries, a move that should help reduce its CO2 emissions by around three million tons a year by 2030”.

Besides the two biorefineries at home, TotalEnergies has six traditional refineries in Europe — three in France and one each in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, according to online information from the company.

On September 14, 2023, TotalEnergies launched a call for offers for the supply of 500,000 MMtpa of green hydrogen. “The use of green hydrogen should avoid the emission of around five million tons of CO2 each year from the Company's European refineries by 2030”, it said then.

On June 7, 2024, it said it had awarded the first contract under that tender to Air Products, which will deliver 70,000 MMtpa for 15 years.

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