Fis­ter­ra En­er­gy SLU has an­nounced a part­ner­ship with Ke­nes­jay Green Lim­it­ed (KGL) to pur­sue a po­ten­tial de­vel­op­ment of KGL’s first ma­jor hy­dro­gen project, New­Gen.

The project is ex­pect­ed to pro­duce car­bon neu­tral and green hy­dro­gen as feed­stock for the Trinidad Ni­tro­gen Com­pa­ny’s (Trin­gen) am­mo­nia com­plex, which is co-owned by Yara Trinidad and is lo­cat­ed at the Pt Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate in Trinidad.

A state­ment from Fis­ter­ra En­er­gy said plans are al­ready un­der­way for the New­Gen project, which has the po­ten­tial to be the first and largest stand­alone com­mer­cial hy­dro­gen pro­duc­ing fa­cil­i­ty in the world.

The project de­sign an­tic­i­pates a hy­dro­gen pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty of 27,200 tonnes per year by 2024, which would be sold di­rect­ly to Trin­gen.

Head­quar­tered in Spain, Fis­ter­ra brings over 20 years of tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise in suc­cess­ful­ly de­vel­op­ing, con­struct­ing, and op­er­at­ing over 30GW of con­ven­tion­al and re­new­able en­er­gy projects in Eu­rope and Latin Amer­i­ca.

Fis­ter­ra is a port­fo­lio com­pa­ny of funds man­aged by Black­stone En­er­gy Part­ners, a part of the glob­al in­vest­ment firm, Black­stone.

The state­ment not­ed that over the com­ing months, Fis­ter­ra and KGL will work to­geth­er to fi­nalise the tech­ni­cal and com­mer­cial arrange­ments for the Car­bon Neu­tral and Green Hy­dro­gen plant to be lo­cat­ed at Trin­gen’s am­mo­nia fa­cil­i­ties. Up­on suc­cess­ful ex­e­cu­tion of afore­men­tioned project agree­ments, the par­ties cur­rent­ly an­tic­i­pate first hy­dro­gen pro­duc­tion by De­cem­ber 2023.

Ad­dress­ing the new part­ner­ship, Pe­dro Bar­riu­so, Fis­ter­ra’s CEO said, “Fis­ter­ra be­lieves that the New­Gen project of­fers an ex­cit­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate the vi­a­bil­i­ty of Hy­dro­gen as a key con­trib­u­tor to so­lu­tions in glob­al en­er­gy tran­si­tion. We are con­fi­dent that T&T’s long pi­o­neer­ing lega­cy in hy­dro­car­bon-based in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion of­fers the nec­es­sary ca­pa­bil­i­ties and en­abling con­di­tions to make this project a suc­cess. Ke­nes­jay Green’s deep un­der­stand­ing of the lo­cal busi­ness con­text and nat­ur­al gas en­er­gy ex­pe­ri­ence will com­ple­ment our own sig­nif­i­cant ex­per­tise in man­ag­ing and fi­nanc­ing large scale pow­er projects.”

Philip Julien, chair­man of Ke­nes­jay Green Lim­it­ed and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of New­Gen, recog­nised the in­volve­ment of Fis­ter­ra as an im­por­tant achieve­ment and not­ed that the in­ter­est of a glob­al in­vestor such as Fis­ter­ra af­firms the be­lief in hy­dro­gen’s role in the de­car­bon­i­sa­tion of the en­er­gy mix.

“Part­ner­ing with Fis­ter­ra al­lows us to fur­ther de­liv­er on our ob­jec­tive of main­tain­ing T&T’s com­pet­i­tive­ness in the Petro­chem­i­cal Sec­tor while re­duc­ing our glob­al car­bon foot­print. With Trin­gen iden­ti­fied as our first in­tend­ed cus­tomer in Point Lisas, the on­board­ing of this high-qual­i­ty in­vestor with ex­pe­ri­ence in re­new­able projects re­in­forces our abil­i­ty to bring the New­Gen project to fruition on sched­ule,” Julien said.

He added that the part­ner­ship is fur­ther proof that the lo­cal en­er­gy sec­tor re­mains fer­tile ground for world lead­ing in­vest­ments and serves the na­tion­al ef­forts at re­duc­ing car­bon emis­sions.