Dow will take a final investment decision later this year on an ethylene plant using hydrogen as a feedstock, with plans to spend approximately $1bn per year during a multi-year construction phase.
The chemical giant is pursuing a brownfield expansion and retrofit of its manufacturing site in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, known as Path2Zero. The project would decarbonize roughly 20% of Dow’s global ethylene capacity and triple its capacity to produce ethylene and polyethylene at the site.
“Our Path2Zero project in Alberta remains on track,” CEO Jim Fitterling said today. “We expect the final investment decision by year-end, pending completion of our subsidies and incentives with the Canadian federal government.”
Linde will complete the design and engineering for a Linde-owned and operated world-scale air separation and autothermal reformer complex, integrated with Linde’s existing operations in Fort Saskatchewan.
The proposed production process at Fort Saskatchewan will convert cracker off-gas into hydrogen as a clean fuel to be used in the ethylene production process and carbon dioxide will be captured onsite to be transported and stored by adjacent third-party carbon storage infrastructure partners.
“Our view on the Alberta project is we’re working in an environment that’s supportive of decarbonization: There’s a price on carbon in Canada,” Fitterling said. “There’s existing carbon capture infrastructure. And there’s obviously some investment credits for the hydrogen portion of the project.”
Fitterling continued, “As we mentioned, though, we have to keep in mind that this is also going to be a very low-cost asset from an ethane supply capability standpoint. So that’s why we say, our expectation is the returns will be at or above our Texas-9 cracker, which is the best project that we’ve ever had in our history.”
