Embrace Technologies to Power Our World and Make It More Sustainable

As the world continues to battle the Covid-19 pandemic and address the nu-merous challenges it presents, we also must keep an eye on the challenges and opportunities in tackling the climate cri-sis. The importance of sustainability in the present and the foreseeable future cannot be emphasized enough. We sim-ply must protect all living creatures and the environment whilst providing for the needs of our people and our industries in fulfilling demand for cleaner energy and materials. The need for a continued ener-gy transition toward clean, non-polluting, renewable energy underlines almost all efforts in this direction.

There is a growing focus on sustainability as more and more companies address their own performance and support cus-tomers in doing the same. At Air Prod-ucts, sustainability is our growth strategy. Sustainability creates our growth oppor-tunities, and our growth opportunities support our sustainability goals and fo-cus. Our higher purpose is bringing peo-ple together to collaborate and innovate solutions to the world’s most significant energy and environmental sustainability challenges.

Nurturing sustainable energy systems is crucial and forward-looking companies are exploring ways to improve productiv-ity, minimize resource consumption, and lower their environmental impact whilst at the same time, driving innovation and scale. This presents huge potential for implementing solutions such as gasifica-tion, carbon capture technologies, and hydrogen for mobility, to name a few.

Gasification for value-addition and pollutant-reduction

Gasification technologies convert low-ervalue feedstocks into synthetic gas, or syngas, which can then be used to make products of higher value such as substi-tute natural gas, power, steam, hydro-gen, transportation fuels, fertilizers, and chemicals. Gasification of coal enables plentiful, local resources to be converted into high-value chemicals and materials whilst significantly lowering emissions of sulfur oxides that occur in combustion processes and are harmful to human health. Advanced gasification technolo-gy is well-suited for countries that have plentiful coal resources and want to re-duce dependence on fuel imports, as well as countries that have huge natural gas reserves and want to efficiently cre-ate additional value from it.

Gasification also provides a solution for refineries that seek to find a use for bottom-of-the-barrel liquids and for pe-troleum coke – both of which have high sulfur content. From an environmental perspective, gasification allows for the easier removal of pollutants like sulfur and nitrous oxides, and the transporta-tion fuels produced from syngas have significantly less sulfur dioxide emissions and provide local environmental and health benefits.

In India, the Ministry of Coal has set a tar-get to gasify 100 million tonnes of coal by 2030, as part of its vision to ensure ener-gy security and reduce its dependence on coal imports and fossil fuels. A typical gasification plant has the capability to produce a few million tonnes of essential chemicals every year.


Carbon Capture 
The other important aspect of these technologies is carbon capture and storage (ccs), wherein the carbon dioxide released by power stations and other industrial sources is captured and sequestered underground. Carbon capture and storage can serve as a bridge until we successfully transition to a low-carbon economy.

Hydrogen for Transportation, Energy Storage, and Emission Control

The wide use of hydrogen in petroleum refineries is highly effective in lowering the sulfur content in fuels. The use of such cleaner-burning gasoline and diesel fuels, in turn, significantly reduces vehicular emissions.

Hydrogen can also be used in different types of transportation, either in a fuel cell or an internal combustion engine, which eliminate or reduce emissions. Hydrogen is the best clean fuel alternative for heavy-duty vehicles like buses, trucks, and trains due to the duty-cycle associated with these applications. Furthermore, the energy storage capabilities of hydrogen can be of great help in integrating more renewables into the energy mix – something that we sorely need and are working towards.

These are all technologies with a lot of promise, but they need to be deployed at scale to fully deliver their inherent promise. This will require active public- private collaboration and investment in technologies to develop sustainable energy systems. The oil-and-gas industry is particularly well-positioned to accelerate this process and benefit from the deployment of these technologies. In coming years, we must individually and collectively do all we can to make industrial and economic activities as sustainable as possible.