TotalEnergies is adding to its numerous low-carbon and green hydrogen initiatives taking place at its European refinery sites, by looking for a supply of 500,000 tonnes of green hydrogen per year.

The French Oil and Gas company currently has refineries in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and France which all use grey hydrogen. However, TotalEnergies has developed a new goal to decarbonise its refineries by 2030, by switching its grey hydrogen to green hydrogen and reduce their net greenhouse gas emissions, produced by their oil and gas operations, by 40%. The company has said that making this switch has the potential to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by an estimated five million tons per year.

TotalEnergies has previously made three partnerships with, Engie, Air Liquide and Bad Lauchstädt Energy Park.

Their partnership with Engie involves TotalEnergies La Mède biorefinery in France, where the plan is to use a 40 MW electrolyser to produce 5 tons of green hydrogen per day. This will result in avoiding 15,000 tons of CO2 emissions every year.

TotalEnergies partnership with Bad Lauchstädt Energy Park involved an agreement made in July of 2023, which said that all the green hydrogen produced from Bad Lauchstädt’s electrolyser would go to TotalEnergies.

The final partnership with Air Liquide has previously been focused on developing a circular system, where recycled residual biogas is used to produce 20,000 tons of low-carbon hydrogen. Now this partnership will be taken further as Air Liquide has been named a long-term supplier of 15,000 tons to TotalEnergies at the Normandy site in France. The next steps for this project will involve TotalEnergies supplying 700 GWh of renewable and low-carbon power to the Air Liquide 200 MW electrolyser which will provide power for half its capacity. In return AirLiquide will generate 5,000 tons of low-carbon hydrogen and 10,000 tons of green hydrogen and will give half of what is produced to TotalEnergies.

The Executive Vice-President of Air Liquide Pascal Vinet said, “This Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with TotalEnergies illustrates our ability to offer concrete decarbonisation solutions to our customers. Air Liquide Normandy will contribute to the decarbonisation trajectory of our assets; it is also in line with our commitment to accompany the industry and mobility sectors in their path to reducing their carbon footprint.”