Air Products' higher purpose is to bring people together to
collaborate and innovate solutions to the world's most
significant energy and environmental sustainability challenges.
We live our purpose through our business strategy and our efforts to protect the environment and care for our stakeholders. These are the underlying concepts of our Grow – Conserve – Care sustainability approach shared throughout this Report. Our sustainability priorities reflect this approach and include topics such as Energy & Climate; Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging; and Innovation.
Sustainability is embedded in our business strategy, which is focused on serving energy, environmental and emerging markets. Our strategy is evidenced through the products, technologies, and services we offer, and the projects we carry out. These are supported by our innovation capabilities and our desire to collaborate on real solutions for our customers and the world. Our core competency is our ability to develop, execute, own, and operate complex process facilities that can transform local economies through cleaner energy and environmental solutions.
Industrial Gases – Essential to Modern Life
Industrial gases are used to make materials that go into our homes and businesses, cars and fuels, health care, food and more. Their use also helps companies across dozens of industries to improve yields, reduce energy consumption and lower emissions.
Air Products is the world’s largest supplier of hydrogen, which is discussed in greater detail in this report, and continues to be a leader in liquefied natural gas (LNG) equipment, air separation plants, and hydrocarbon recovery and purification equipment.
Addressing the World’s Need for Clean Energy and Materials
Our technologies for gasification, carbon capture, and lower carbon hydrogen put us at the center of one of the greatest global challenges and opportunities today: addressing the world’s need for clean energy and materials while reducing environmental impacts. As a result, we are developing and delivering some of the largest and most complex projects in company history while fulfilling our core values of safety and integrity and providing reliability and operational excellence to our customers.
Hydrogen for Mobility and the Energy Transition
Hydrogen plays a key role in helping the world move forward with the energy transition and in building a cleaner, more sustainable future. As the world’s leading producer of hydrogen, Air Products is playing a major role in making that happen. We have more than six decades of experience and knowledge of every facet of the hydrogen value chain, from production to distribution to storage and dispensing. With over 110 hydrogen production facilities, we have nearly 9,000 tons of daily capacity. From small onsite generators to world-scale steam methane reformers, gasifiers and electrolyzers, hydrogen production is core to Air Products’ business.
We have already taken major steps to build the hydrogen economy and have hands-on operating experience on over 250 hydrogen fueling station projects in 20 countries. Our hydrogen dispensing technology, which mirrors traditional consumer gasoline fueling, is used in more than 1.5 million fueling operations annually. Buses, trucks, and other heavy-duty vehicles from Asia to Europe to North America are fueled with hydrogen produced, distributed and supplied by Air Products.
The key now is scaling up to create the hydrogen infrastructure that businesses and governments need to make the switch to this clean energy on a major scale, giving users confidence in a secure, reliable and consistent source of hydrogen. Air Products’ landmark investments in green and blue hydrogen will help deliver carbon-free and low-carbon hydrogen to the world.
Carbon Capture
We view carbon capture as a necessary and high-impact way to tackle climate change and essential to meeting the Paris climate goals and beyond. At the same time, we understand that implementation of carbon capture requires supportive policies, favorable project economics, and strong partnerships with governments and our customers. Air Products is developing proprietary carbon dioxide storage and utilization technologies that we plan to deploy in high return carbon capture projects. We have demonstrated the viability of capturing carbon from hydrogen plants through our Port Arthur, Texas CO₂ purification and capture project. This facility, the largest of its type in the industrial gas industry, captures nearly one million tons of CO₂ annually that is used in enhanced oil recovery.
Gasification
We view gasification as one of the many tools necessary to help countries and customers meet the world’s growing need for cleaner, sustainable chemicals and materials. Gasification plants typically convert low value hydrocarbons into useful chemicals and energy while significantly reducing harmful pollutants like sulfur oxides. The process produces carbon dioxide as a by-product that can be easily captured in a concentrated form, providing a pathway to reduce emissions where market conditions support carbon sequestration or utilization. New gasification technologies continue to emerge, opening routes to alternative feedstocks such as sustainable biomass and the use of waste materials in support of the circular economy.