Air Products Abandons Proposed Louisiana “Blue” Hydrogen and Ammonia Plant with Carbon Capture Scheme

Air Products Abandons Proposed Louisiana "Blue" Hydrogen and Ammonia Plant with Carbon Capture Scheme

Community groups celebrate the company's decision to pull out-citing the huge risks associated with the project's polluting facility and carbon dioxide pipeline

Contacts

Dustin Renaud, [email protected]

Air Products has cancelled the so-called Louisiana 'Clean Energy' Complex. The company had planned to produce blue hydrogen and ammonia from methane gas, then pump its industrial carbon dioxide waste from Cancer Alley through the protected Maurepas Swamp Wildlife Management Area to inject it beneath the treasured Lake Maurepas. In total, the sprawling project had a proposed footprint that stretched across five parishes in Louisiana.

Since the project was announced more than four years ago, many Louisiana residents have opposed it, citing health and safety concerns over the project's location near homes and a school, the risk of a catastrophic carbon dioxide pipeline rupture, impacts to a fragile cypress swamp from pipeline construction, interference with ongoing flood protection projects, and the industrialization of Lake Maurepas.

"This project would have been a nightmare for the students, teachers, and parents at Sorrento Primary School," says Kaitlyn Joshua, Louisiana Gulf Coast senior campaigner at Earthworks. "The children would have been near a highly polluting hydrogen and ammonia production facility and flanked by a dangerous carbon dioxide pipeline on one side and a potentially explosive hydrogen pipeline on the other. We can sleep a little lighter knowing that these kids will be safer than if this project were built."

Air Products' facility was proposed to be built on the site of the former Orange Grove sugar plantation, where local communities raised the alarm regarding the presence of unmarked graves of people who had been enslaved on the property.

"Air Products wanted to build this project near the unmarked graves of the enslaved and several residential homes and neighborhoods. This project would have threatened the health and quality of life for so many residents," says Shamell Lavigne, Chief Operating Officer of RISE St. James. "They faced opposition because their project was ill-conceived and impacted too many people. We're so happy this project won't be moving forward-it was a bad deal for Louisianans."

"Today, we are relieved. We are relieved that this CO2 pipeline will not pose a threat to our precious veterans at the Southeast Louisiana Veterans Home nor will the pipeline impact the nearly completed levee protection system meant to protect us from flooding," said Robert Taylor of Concerned Citizens of St. John.

Environmental groups opposed the project as a false solution to the climate crisis, allowing instead the fossil fuel industry to continue polluting while causing new risks to people and the environment.

"This project was never clean. It was proposed to take advantage of federal "clean-energy" tax credits for carbon capture," says Scott Eustis, Community Science Director at Healthy Gulf. "People in Louisiana don't need greenwashing and dangerous carbon dioxide pipelines. Louisiana needs real clean energy solutions that put people to work, like cleaning up the mess of abandoned oil and gas wells in the state."

Opposition to the carbon capture scheme under Lake Maurepas was early and strong. By 2025, Livingston Parish Councilman Dean Coates was able to unanimously pass a resolution opposing carbon sequestration wells by the parish council.Local opponents pushed more than a dozen bills in the state legislature, but Air Products famously hired 25 lobbyists for the Louisiana legislative session to fend off any proposed legislation.

"I'm jumping for joy today," says Bill Whittington, president of the Lake Maurepas Preservation Society. "Lake Maurepas is too important for too many families to sacrifice it to this experimental industry."

Air Products still holds an agreement with the state to use the pore space beneath Lake Maurepas for industrial-scale carbon storage, which could be transferred to another company. As residents celebrate the project's defeat, they are urging Louisiana officials to permanently protect the lake's pore space from future industrial carbon storage development.

"We fought back for 4 years because of the enormous health risks to communities and the Lake. Those risks likely won't change if another company takes on a similar project," says Darryl Malek-Wiley, senior organizing representative for Sierra Club. "As we celebrate this huge win for our communities today, we have to remain persistent that Lake Maurepas is protected from future carbon waste injection schemes."

Earthjustice represented this broad coalition of groups over several years in multiple agency proceedings challenging Air Products' applications and issuance of major environmental permits, including an Army Corps of Engineers Clean Water Action Section 404 permit, Louisiana Department of Conservation and Energy Coastal Use Permit, and Clean Air Act permits-all required for construction of the planned project. Earthjustice not only leveraged its legal expertise, but worked with experts in engineering, modeling air pollution and fluid dynamics, geology, economics, cartography, coastal science, and history, who developed reports to support these permit challenges.

"Air Products proposed a massive project with significant environmental and human impacts, so our challenge had to match that threat," said Corinne Van Dalen, senior attorney at Earthjustice. Air Products had been unable to secure any of these permits when it decided to pull the plug on the project. "The strength and dedication of the coalition gave this fight the power to win as evidenced by the hundreds of people who showed up at every public hearing to say no to this project," said Van Dalen.

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