Linde’s central role in the clean energy transition
Steffen Richter, managing director and head of the Middle East/Turkey Cluster at Linde Gas, and Uwe Zwiefelhofer, Linde Engineering Middle East’s managing director for the UAE and head of MENA, talk to The Energy Year about the company's hydrogen initiatives, strategies for improving efficiencies and reducing emissions in energy and petrochemicals projects. Linde is an industrial gases and engineering company.
How would you assess the potential for hydrogen development in the GGC in the coming years?
Steffen RICHTER: Linde plans to invest significantly in the development of hydrogen infrastructure, with a significant portion of this investment directed towards the GCC. The region has a great potential for carbon sequestration and green production capacity, and Linde is well-positioned with its strong presence in energy-rich countries like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
We invest in and operate production facilities and work closely with exporters and logistics operators to develop necessary infrastructure for hydrogen and ammonia, and commercially available hydrogen refuelling stations. We are proud to have a significant footprint in Saudi Arabia, operating one of the largest captive ammonia production facilities in the GCC and rendering services to IOCs.
We are also planning a CCUS network for the decarbonisation of petrochemical sites in Jubail in partnership with Saudi Aramco and SLB. As GCC countries transition towards a more sustainable future, Linde is ready to support them in their journey, with our well-established hydrogen business and integrated carbon management solutions.
Looking specifically at the UAE, how seriously is the energy industry taking carbon emissions reduction?
Uwe ZWIEFELHOFER: We notice that sustainability, improved efficiency and having a low-carbon footprint now play a major role in the conceptual phase of projects. When looking into new opportunities, almost all ventures developing projects in the upstream sector will incorporate carbon capture or reduction measures from the start. This also goes for petrochemical facilities, which are being designed with ingrained solutions to improve efficiencies and reduce their carbon footprint. These concepts are not only discussed in conferences and boardrooms;t we can also see that they are entering the execution phase. This is where our existing and proven technologies come into play in both the upstream and downstream sectors.
The principles of maximising energy and minimising emissions reflect the ambitions of the UAE and the entire region. Local organisations have already put measures into motion to reduce their carbon emissions from existing assets, such as electrifying large machines that would otherwise burn natural gas. We will see a portfolio of solutions, not only one, throughout the transition. We see that both electrification and hydrogen will have an important role in reaching net zero.
What would you identify as the company’s key solutions relevant for the GGC?
SR: We are a global provider of gas solutions, specialised in the production and distribution of crucial gases, such as oxygen and nitrogen, for a wide variety of industries. Our key solutions offer clients ways to enhance energy efficiency and reduce carbon footprint.
We believe in continuous improvement of existing technologies to achieve successful and sustainable decarbonisation of the petrochemicals industry. We have developed concepts and measures to reduce or even eliminate carbon emissions from steam crackers, which are the largest emitters of CO2 in the petrochemical industry segment. We are pursuing several opportunities across multiple sectors on a regional level related to efficiency improvement and emissions reduction.
Furthermore, we offer a portfolio of advanced technologies that capture, purify, store and distribute CO2 emissions from different sources, including adsorptive and cryogenic components for CO2 removal in sour gas developments. Our technologies support the ambition towards carbon neutrality, and the deployment of large-scale plants is expected to continue.
What factors should be considered when investing in hydrogen production in the GCC?
UZ: Several factors should be considered. The GCC has a successful track record of establishing world-scale infrastructure for oil and gas and petrochemicals projects, making it an ideal location for developing new large low-carbon emission projects such as hydrogen.
However, we face bottlenecks when looking at large-scale investment in green hydrogen production. Availability of proven technology and manufacturing capacity at scale, such as gigawatt-size electrolysers, is critical. Scale is essential to achieving lower prices, and today there is no single OEM in the market that can provide gigawatt-scale electrolysis capacity. In the meantime, we believe low-carbon hydrogen, so-called “blue hydrogen,” will play a paramount role in reducing emissions, as it can be produced today at scale, leveraging the existing infrastructure and technologies.
Another challenge is the lack of a localised hydrogen value chain and specialised distribution networks required to transport this resource at scale. Without available offtakers, companies will not make large hydrogen investments. The hydrogen demand centres targeted from this region are mainly in Europe and East Asia. Hydrogen production in the GCC requires transformation into ammonia for transportation to these destinations. Therefore, most developments today focus on this carrier.
Despite all the challenges, the GCC provides a competitive edge over regions without existing infrastructure and similar experience. The region’s attractiveness could be further enhanced through policies that incentivise local use cases for low-carbon products.
Linde is well positioned to support the GCC’s transition to low-carbon energy. The company is working alongside ADNOC, for example, to support their strategy for blue hydrogen as well as carbon sequestration and ammonia production. We are developing investment opportunities in CCUS and low-carbon hydrogen projects globally, and the GCC is one of the preferred investment locations.
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