KfW IPEX-Bank has announced its financing for the world’s largest green hydrogen project, being built in Saudi Arabia.
The giant production plant is under construction at Oxagon, in Saudi Arabia’s region of Neom by NEOM Green Hydrogen Company. The facility will produce green ammonia on an industrial scale with an unprecedented annual output of 1.2 million tonnes with its own dedicated wind and solar farms after its planned completion in 2026.
Around $6.1bn of the total investment volume of over $8.4bn is being provided as debt capital by a large consortium of 23 international and regional banks and Saudi sovereign funds.
KfW IPEX-Bank is contributing $325m. Its share is largely being used to finance the electrolysers supplied by ThyssenKrupp Nucera from Germany. This part is covered by the German export credit agency Euler Hermes. In the overall financing, KfW IPEX-Bank is acting as the Euler Hermes coordinator and agent.
The borrower NEOM Green Hydrogen Company is an equal joint venture by ACWA Power, Air Products and NEOM.
The electrolysers are a key component of the project and are already the largest ever built, each with a capacity of 20MW. The total output of the 2.2GW plant is achieved by interconnecting 110 such units.
“The reliable production of large quantities of green hydrogen plays a key role in global decarbonisation and the transformation to climate neutrality,” said member of the management board of KfW IPEX-Bank Velibor Marjanovic,.
“We are pleased to be able to contribute to this genuinely flagship project with our financing of cutting-edge German technology, underpinning our aspiration to drive forward global projects in the energy transition and the export of European technologies.”