Q&A: Air Products on Industrial Gases and Hydrogen

The industrial gases sector plays an indispensable role across many industries and everyday life.

MRI scanners, floating balloons, medical oxygen and even beer are brought to life by specialised gases. The industrial gases market is valued around US$100bn globally and is directly responsible for millions of jobs. 

Air Products is a leading manufacturer of industrial gases that serves a huge range of industries from electronics to food.

Founded in 1940 in the USA, it now has more than 250,000 customers and 750 production facilities. 

Suzanne Lowe is Vice President and General Manager for the United Kingdom, Ireland, Israel and Italy at Air Products.

She has more than 30 years of experience with Air Products and has seen both the industry and business expand. 

Suzanne shares her insight from the industry with ClimateTech Digital.

Why is it important to decarbonise the industrial gas sector?

There are two reasons. Firstly, it’s no secret that industrial gas manufacturing has traditionally been an energy-intensive sector.

We, like so many other industries, have a responsibility to tackle our emissions and we have put in place a specific goal to reduce the intensity of Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 CO₂ emissions by a third by 2030 versus our 2023 baseline. 

As part of this drive, we’re investing heavily in digitisation to decarbonise our own operations. To date, we have digitised 70 plants, including our Air Separation Units (ASUs) at Hull, Carrington, Didcot and a range of customer plants too.

Globally, we’re also investing to convert around 2,000 of our vehicles to hydrogen fuel cell trucks by 2030.

We’ve recently announced plans to retrofit an existing hydrogen production plant in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, with a state-of-the-art carbon capture and CO₂ treatment facility.

This will be the largest blue hydrogen plant in Europe once operational and it will also serve UK customers. The carbon capture retrofit will allow us to more than halve our CO₂ emissions in the port of Rotterdam. 

But it’s not just about our own operations. We’re also a critical lynch pin and supplier to the UK manufacturing sector, recently valued at a staggering £224 billion (US$293.2bn) by MAKE UK.

This means that, as a sector, we have a significant opportunity and responsibility to generate a cleaner future by supporting the UK’s drive to reach net zero by 2050.

How are you helping to decarbonise the manufacturing sector?

For our manufacturing customers, we have a broad portfolio of sustainability-enhancing offerings.

We are working with heavy industry customers such as glass, metals and ceramics manufacturers to decarbonise their operations through the use of oxy-fuel technology and through digital innovations.

For example, we use trademark technologies like Gastrak and Integra e2, which track and reduce gas consumption during welding processes.

Another case in point would be the digital twin study that we developed with Tandom Metallurgical Group. It calculates when the aluminium inside their furnace has reached tapping temperature, providing a way to predict when the melting portion of the cycle is complete.

The learnings meant that our client was able to improve yield, reduce CO₂ emissions by 15% as well as make energy gains by the same amount.  

Blue and green hydrogen are playing an increasingly important role in decarbonising hard to abate sectors such as heavy industry including steel-making and construction, as well as heavy duty transport.

As the world’s largest hydrogen supplier, we’ve committed to invest US$15 billion by 2027 in energy transition megaprojects globally.

Our projects include plans to build, own and operate a renewable hydrogen facility in Immingham UK. This world scale facility would convert imported renewable ammonia to green hydrogen which can then decarbonise industry and heavy-duty transport across the country.

If it proceeds, the facility in Immingham could produce up to 300MW of hydrogen.

Why is it important for sustainability to invest in talent and culture?

It can be easy to lose the human element in sustainability efforts but in fact people are at the heart of our approach.

We know that we can’t generate a cleaner future without a diverse and inclusive workforce to actually deliver the results, which is why our sustainability approach has a ‘people’ strand to it. 

Sustainability in its truest sense is about much more than the environment alone. It’s about safe operations and our goal is zero accidents, be it for our colleagues, contractors, customers or communities.

In 2014 we set out to become the world’s safest industrial gas company. The lost time injury (LTI) figure for fiscal 2023 was 0.1 – an impressive 58% reduction from 2014 and 0.29 for recordable accidents, a 50% improvement in the same 10-year time period. 

Sustainability is also about diversity and inclusion. We want to attract and retain the best people for each job and our company culture is a huge part of that offering.

Globally, Air Products has 12 Employee Resource Groups and four Diversity and Inclusion Councils around the globe that form our Inclusion Network.

The Women’s Success Network has received significant traction with colleagues – it’s about nurturing future talent so that young people come into the workforce caring deeply about future sustainability endeavours.

We also sponsor The National Careers Challenge in the UK, reaching around 8000 students with environmentally-linked STEM challenges.

What is the future of sustainability at Air Products?

For us it’s about viewing sustainability from the prism of opportunity and the potential to not only improve our own business but also to support other industries to hit their carbon goals.

That focus on both generating a cleaner future ourselves, and supporting our customers on their decarbonisation journey, will remain front and centre of our future.  

I’d also expect the digitisation of plants and equipment to keep growing and evolving to drive efficiencies and keep the sector competitive.

This will be increasingly critical and we’re always on the lookout for new people to join the team with a passion for making a difference, digital know-how and the mindset to think innovatively about what comes next. 

Whatever that might be, it’s important we don’t rest on our laurels. I’m proud of the improvements we’ve made and our contribution to generating a cleaner future but there remains much to be done and so much more potential to work together with our customers and make a lasting, positive impact. 

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