Significant next step in developing sustainable methanol for chemical industry
- Project Air receives funding from EU Innovation Fund
- The project is being carried out by the Perstorp chemical group in collaboration with Uniper and Fortum
Project Air, a cooperation project with Perstorp, Fortum and Uniper, is taking significant next steps in developing sustainable methanol for the chemical industry. The project has been selected for funding by the EU innovation fund.
Project Air aims to move the chemical industry from using fossil raw materials to recycled and bio-based feedstock, thereby enabling sustainable chemical products to a large variety of industries and end products.
At full capacity, it will reduce global CO2 emissions with close to 500,000 tons from today’s levels, corresponding to 1 percent of current emissions in Sweden.
Project Air is based on innovative usage of existing technology in a large-scale industrial application. To produce sustainable methanol, the facility utilizes significant amounts of CO2 and other residue streams recovered from Perstorp’s ongoing operations, biogas from new dedicated plants together with hydrogen from a new large electrolysis plant. Further, existing wastewater treatment will be utilized as feed water for the electrolysis. All electrical energy for the combined project will be renewable based. The ambition is to start up large-scale production by 2026.
The consortium behind Project Air now enters the Grant Agreement Preparation process, which is to be completed during the fourth quarter. The consortium has applied for EUR 97 million and the total investment is expected to amount to more than EUR 230 million.
We want to recognize the team working with Project Air and the effort that has been put in to it as it truly represent the combination of innovative thinking and hard work that will enable us to reach the Paris Agreement targets by 2050.
About Uniper
Uniper is a leading international energy company, has around 11,500 employees, and operates in more than 40 countries. The company plans for its power generation business in Europe to be carbon-neutral by 2035. Uniper’s roughly 33 GW of installed generation capacity make it one of the world‘s largest electricity producers. The company's core activities include power generation in Europe and Russia as well as global energy trading and a broad gas portfolio, which makes Uniper one of Europe’s leading gas companies. In addition, Uniper is a reliable partner for communities, municipal utilities, and industrial enterprises for planning and implementing innovative, lower-carbon solutions on their decarbonization journey. Uniper is a hydrogen pioneer, is active worldwide along the entire hydrogen value chain, and is conducting projects to make hydrogen a mainstay of the energy supply.
The company is based in Düsseldorf and is one of Germany’s largest publicly listed energy supply companies. Together with its main shareholder Fortum, Uniper is also Europe’s third-largest producer of zero-carbon energy.
This press release may contain forward-looking statements based on current assumptions and forecasts made by Uniper SE Management and other information currently available to Uniper. Various known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors could lead to material differences between the actual future results, financial situation, development or performance of the company and the estimates given here. Uniper SE does not intend, and does not assume any liability whatsoever, to update these forward-looking statements or to modify them to conform with future events or developments.
