$4.5B clean energy complex planned for southeast Louisiana

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Industrial gas supplier Air Products announced Thursday it will build a $4.5 billion clean energy facility in Louisiana's capital region, a project that Gov. John Bel Edwards said will help the state's work to reduce carbon emissions in the heart of the petrochemical corridor.

The planned complex in Ascension Parish will produce “blue hydrogen," which uses natural gas to produce an alternative fuel with the carbon dioxide emissions captured and stored underground. Air Products said the facility will create 170 permanent jobs with a total annual payroll of $15.9 million, plus thousands of construction jobs to build the site over three years.

Air Products President and CEO Seifi Ghasemi said the Ascension Parish site will be the largest permanent carbon dioxide sequestration facility in the world, helping to capture human-caused emissions and keeping them out of the atmosphere.

“Nothing will come close to it,” Ghasemi said at an announcement event with Edwards, local officials and business leaders. “So clearly, Louisiana will be the world leader in sequestering carbon dioxide, which is the key to climate change.”

Some environmentalists have been wary of carbon capture technology, with Greenpeace and others saying the focus should be completely on developing renewable energy sources and that carbon capture just prolongs dependence on fossil fuels.

Air Products will capture and store about 95% of the carbon dioxide generated at the facility in deep underground geologic formations leased from the state. The complex is expected to be up and running in 2026.

Edwards, a Democrat who leads one of the nation’s top oil and gas production states, has set a goal for curtailing Louisiana's greenhouse gas emissions, seeking to cut the state's net carbon...