Two hundred and fifty-seven wind turbines and a solar farm the size of Manhattan will provide renewable energy to power the world's largest green hydrogen plant, located in Saudi Arabia (courtesy of NGHC).

World’s Biggest Green Hydrogen Project Blows Off Trump, Bigly

June 30, 202610 minutes Tina Casey 0 Comments

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The Intertubes are buzzing with news that US President Donald Trump has flushed more than $121 billion in renewable energy investments down the toilet, but here’s the thing. It’s a big world out there. Investors can pack up and take their business elsewhere, and they are doing just that. Take the global green hydrogen industry, for example. Trump can do nothing to stop the world’s biggest green hydrogen project from launching in Saudi Arabia, with a healthy assist from the US firm Air Products.

$121 Billion In Renewable Energy Projects, Down The Drain…

For those of you new to the topic, green hydrogen is an emerging alternative to the current hydrogen supply chain, which consists of natural gas along with coal to a lesser extent. Among the alternatives under exploration, water electrolysis has attracted the most attention so far. Electrolysis systems jolt hydrogen gas from water, ideally with an electrical current supplied by wind, solar, or other renewable resources.

The US has renewable energy in abundance, and a Biden era program called Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs aimed to stimulate activity in the green hydrogen field for export as well as domestic use. However, it sure looks like Trump did his friends in the Middle East a solid when he knocked the pins out from under the Hydrogen Hubs program last year.

Trump also put the brakes on two key supportive US industries, namely wind and solar. As a result, US green hydrogen stakeholders are sidelined while investors in the Middle East have a clear shot at supplying Europe and other regions around the globe.

Don’t just take my word for it. That figure of $121 billion in lost and at-risk investments comes from Wood Mackenzie. In a report issued earlier this week, the firm took note of 7 gigawatts in canceled or delayed renewable energy projects on federal property last year, with another 12 gigawatts also at risk, and much more — 80 gigawatts — at risk on private property.

Pennsylvania On The World Stage

As for the world’s biggest green hydrogen project, that monster of an effort is located in the industrial city of Oxagon, located in Saudi Arabia’s ambitious technology development and lifestyle centerpiece NEOM. The NEOM region sprawls across northwestern Saudi Arabia to the coast of the Red Sea.

Ownership of the hydrogen project comes under the NEOM Green Hydrogen Company, which is a joint venture between NEOM, the Saudi firm ACWA Power, and Pennsylvania-headquartered Air Products.

Pennsylvania…who knew? Nevertheless, Air Products has been a leading US and global industrial gas producer for decades. The company re-affirmed its domestic roots in 2018, when it announced that its new global headquarters would be located in Pennsylvania, just about a mile from its old headquarters.

Good News For The World’s Biggest Green Hydrogen Project…

The NEOM hydrogen project has largely flown under the CleanTechnica radar, so now would be a good time to catch up. Last year, NGHC reported that the project was 80% complete, listing wind turbines, hydrogen storage vessels, and electrolysers among the key elements completed, alongside a solar array and a transmission grid.

At the time, NGHC sounded confident that the project was on track with a total of 4 gigawatts’ worth of wind and solar power to run the electrolysers. If all goes according to plan, the turbines and solar panels should start generating electricity around the middle of 2026 — right about now, as a matter of fact — with electrolysers to be commissioned next year and distribution to follow right behind.

By distribution, NGHC includes green ammonia. Produced with green hydrogen and ambient nitrogen, green ammonia (chemical formula H3N) can be used as-is for fertilizer and other industrial products, or cracked to release hydrogen gas at the user end. The underlying idea is that ammonia is more economical to transport by ship, compared to hydrogen gas.

The new hydrogen facility is designed to produce 600 tonnes (about 661 US tons) of green ammonia per day. NGHC has not posted an update on its website since June of 2025, but Air Products has indicated that all is going to plan. Earlier this morning, the company announced that it is taking the final steps to nail down a marketing and distribution agreement with the Norway-based global firm Yara, as off-takers for ammonia produced by the green hydrogen project.

…Bad New For Green Hydrogen In The USA

The off-take agreement was not the only news. In the same announcement, Air Products advised everyone that it is pulling out of low-carbon hydrogen projects in the US. That includes the proposed Louisiana Clean Energy Complex, which despite its name was not a renewable energy project. LCEC was aimed at pairing natural gas with carbon capture to produce “low-carbon” hydrogen.

Air Products also used the occasion to announce that has dropped several other hydrogen projects in the US, including a green hydrogen project in Casa Grande, Arizona. Casa Grande would have produced liquid green hydrogen as a final product, with both the electrolysis and the compression systems running on renewable energy.

The focus on liquid hydrogen was meant for the zero emission transportation market in California. That was always going to be a tough row to hoe, and the Trump administration didn’t make things any easier. “These exits are being driven by challenging commercial conditions, project-specific economic factors, and slower-than-expected development in certain markets, largely hydrogen for mobility,” Air Products explains, deftly skipping over the abrupt U-turn in federal energy policy that took place when Trump returned to office for the second time last year.

Despite the obstacles, though, green hydrogen and green ammonia activity continue to bubble up in the US. Keep an eye on Minnesota, where a startup is marketing a green ammonia system aimed at producing fertilizer while making use of wind power that would otherwise be curtailed. The Massachusetts firm Electric Hydrogen has also been making some moves of late.

Meanwhile, New York-based Plug Power is among the US stakeholders seeking greener pastures for green hydrogen in other parts of the world. That includes the forthcoming H2 Hollandia project in the Netherlands, which aims to demonstrate how small scale, regional hydrogen systems can help prevent renewable energy curtailments and relieve grid congestion, too.

Photo: Two hundred and fifty-seven wind turbines and a solar farm the size of Manhattan will provide renewable energy to power the world’s largest green hydrogen plant, located in Saudi Arabia (courtesy of NGHC).

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