UPPER MACUNGIE TWP., Pa.- Lehigh County-based Air Products (APD) is pulling the plug on a massive clean energy complex in Louisiana.
The announcement Tuesday morning “is based on expected financial returns not meeting stringent return criteria,” the company said in a news release.
The project in Darrow, Louisiana was first announced by Air Products in 2021, representing the company’s largest U.S. investment.
It was billed as a $4.5 billion clean energy complex that would produce over 750 million standard cubic feet per day of blue or “low-carbon” hydrogen; during the production of blue hydrogen, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are captured and stored instead of being released into the atmosphere.
Following the decision to terminate the project, Air Products will record pre-tax charges not expected to exceed $2.9 billion in its fiscal 2026 third quarter, primarily to write down assets and terminate contractual commitments, the company said.
The Louisiana project was announced under previous Air Products President and Chief Executive Officer Seifi Ghasemi. It was originally supposed to be operational this year, but it’s faced delays as well as opposition from environmentalists and residents of Ascension Parish.
In 2025 the nonprofit Healthy Gulf filed a lawsuit over the project, alleging that various Louisiana state agencies overstepped their authority when they gave it the greenlight. The complex includes a CO2 pipeline across the Maurepas Swamp Wildlife Management Area.
Current APD CEO Eduardo Menezes has been vocal in his desire to return the company to its core industrial gas business. In May of 2025, he halted spending on the Louisiana complex. Then in December, Air Products announced it intended to team up with Yara International for the project.
Yara is a Norwegian company that produces and distributes fertilizers and nitrogen-based chemicals, including ammonia.
Air Products is still moving forward with a marketing and distribution agreement with Yara International on a separate project: its NEOM green hydrogen project in Saudi Arabia, which is expected to be operational next year.
But, in addition to canceling the Louisiana complex, Air Products also will discontinue a zero-carbon liquid hydrogen facility in Casa Grande, Arizona and other smaller scale projects supporting clean energy distribution, the company said.
“These exits are being driven by challenging commercial conditions, project-specific economic factors, and slower-than-expected development in certain markets, largely hydrogen for mobility,” APD said in the news release.