The British company BP will buy a 40.5% stake and become operator of the Asian Renewable Energy Hub (AREH) green hydrogen project in the Pilbara, in Western Australia. The AREH project is expected to develop up to 26 GW of wind and solar capacity, which could be used to produce up to 1.6 Mt/year of green hydrogen or 9 Mt/year of ammonia.
The project's founders, InterContinental Energy (26.4%), CWP Global (17.8%) and Macquarie (15.3%), are expecting BP to accelerate the AREH project, which has been set back by Australian concerns about damage to local wetlands. BP did not disclose how much it paid for the purchase. The project is in line with BP's push away from fossil fuels to cleaner energy and could allow it to hold a 10% share of the global hydrogen market.