MOSCOW (MRC) -- Saudi Arabia and Germany on Thursday inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to boost cooperation on the production and exploitation of hydrogen, said Arabnews.
The kingdom’s Minister of Energy, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, said the MoU will build on existing Saudi-German dialogue on energy developments aimed at achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change, with a focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The world’s first large scale green hydrogen plant is currently under construction in the new “megacity” of Neom on the Red Sea coast. Officials hope the USD5 bn Air Products JV will be the first phase of a mission to turn the country into a global hydrogen hub.
Last year, Saudi Aramco shipped the world’s first cargo of blue hydrogen, with ammonia identified as a key carrier for hydrogen given existing shipping and logistics infrastructure and relatively lower transport costs. On the German side, the MoU was signed by Peter Altmayer, Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy.
As per MRC, The European Union is offering assurances on funding for poorer members and countries' ability to choose their own energy mix, as it strives for a deal next week on a tougher target to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
As MRC informed earlier, auctions of carbon permits in the European Union's emissions trading system (ETS) next year will not start until late January or early February. For "technical reasons", auctions of permits on behalf of most EU countries, plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, will kick off later than usual, the Commission said. This year's EU ETS auctions began on Jan. 7. Poland auctions its permits separately.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,220,640 tonnes in 2020, up by 2% year on year. Only shipments of low density polyethylene (LDPE) and high density polyethylene (HDPE) increased. At the same time, polypropylene (PP) shipments to the Russian market reached 1 240,000 tonnes in 2020 (calculated using the formula: production, minus exports, plus imports, exluding producers' inventories as of 1 January, 2020).
MRC