The President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, yesterday accompanied the CEO of Cepsa, Maarten Wetselaar, and his counterpart, at C2X, Brian Davis, to the presentation of a new project with which the two companies undertake to invest up to to 1,000 million euros to start up what will be one of the five largest demethanol production plants in Spain, with a capacity of 380,000 tons a year.
The event, in which the third vice-president and Minister for the Transition, Teresa Ribera was also present, was held as part of the COP28 in Dubai.
With this milestone, Sánchez symbolically places the first stone of this macro agreement that the Spanish Government announced in October 2021 with which the multinational shipping company Maersk committed to invest 10,000 million in the production of methanol to supply its ships in Spain. “We want 81% of our energy generation to come from renewable sources by 2030. Green hydrogen will play a crucial role and thanks to projects like this, Spain is positioned as a reference on a global scale”, assured the president of the Spanish Government.
As explained by the promoters, the current project consists of developing a plant in Huelva, with an investment of up to 1,000 million euros, which would become one of the five largest green methanol plants in the world and the largest Europe, with an annual production capacity of 300,000 tons, which will avoid the emission of up to 1 million tons of carbon dioxide.
Green methanol is produced from green hydrogen and carbon of non-fossil origin captured from the atmosphere or generated from agricultural and forestry waste, and can replace conventional methanol, reducing CO2 emissions from sectors such as long-distance maritime transport or other industries such as chemistry and plastics production. For this very reason, it would serve to complement another of Cepsa’s star projects in terms of transition in the Vall de l’ Hidrogen in Huelva, where it has already announced investments in clean energy worth 3,000 million euros and where it hopes to generate 2GW of ‘green hydrogen in 2030.
The new plant will be fed with part of this hydrogen produced by the solar panels and electrolyzers that will be deployed in the Vall de l’ Hidrogen de Huelva, although it will be necessary to wait at least two years, until 2025, for this announcement to materialize with a final investment decision. If it goes ahead, it is estimated that it could create 2,500 direct and indirect jobs. But for this to be possible, the energy companies hope to find the right framework. “We will work with the Spanish Government to develop the necessary regulatory framework for this project to succeed and be able to expand”, assured Maarten Wetselaar, CEO of Cepsa.