PARIS (Reuters) – TotalEnergies announced on Thursday the launch of a massive call for tenders for the supply of 500,000 tonnes per year of green hydrogen as part of the objective of decarbonization of its European refineries.
This green hydrogen, from renewable energies, would completely replace “gray” hydrogen, that is to say produced from fossil fuels, used today by the sites concerned in order to eliminate the sulfur contained in oil during fuel refining.
Green hydrogen would thus make it possible to avoid the emission of around 5 million tonnes of CO2 per year from TotalEnergies’ European refineries by 2030, the group, which has six refineries in Europe, including three in France (Normandy, Donges, Feyzin), and two biorefineries in France (La Mède and Grandpuits).
The TotalEnergies call for tenders will complement smaller local projects.
The group also announced on Thursday an agreement with Air Liquide for the latter to supply the Gonfreville refining-petrochemical platform in the long term with green and low-carbon hydrogen for volumes of up to 15,000 tonnes per year, a project which will enable to reduce the site’s annual CO2 emissions by up to 150,000 tonnes per year.
“We need electrolyzers in massive quantities. This is also the purpose of this call for tenders: to give a boost to this sector,” Jean-Marc Durand, Director of Refining Petrochemicals Europe at TotalEnergies, told journalists during a a presentation of the project.
“We talk a lot about green hydrogen, but at some point, players like us need to commit to getting these sectors off the ground via massive calls for tender. There needs to be a knock-on effect. scale and that’s what this work is all about,” he added.
Sébastien Bruna, “hydrogen” director within the refining-chemicals branch of TotalEnergies, for his part indicated that the group was also banking on various regulations and incentives in Europe to obtain “competitive” prices, while green hydrogen costs normally two to three times more expensive than gray.
The use of green hydrogen in TotalEnergies’ European refineries should contribute to the group’s objective of reducing by 40% its net greenhouse gas emissions linked directly to its oil and gas operations (known as “scope 1+ 2”) in 2030 compared to 2015.
(Reporting by Benjamin Mallet and Forrest Crellin; edited by Blandine Hénault)
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