...AND CHEAPER...:

Once online, the plant will use renewable energy to split water in an electrolyser to produce green hydrogen, which is able to replace fossil fuels without producing carbon emissions. Most will be exported to Europe and Asia, said Alicia Eastman, the co-founder and president of InterContinental Energy, either as hydrogen or converted into green ammonia, which is easier to ship and store. The facility aims to produce 1.8m tonnes of green hydrogen and up to 10m tonnes of green ammonia a year.

Oman currently relies heavily on fossil fuels, generating up to 85% of its GDP from oil and gas, but its fossil fuel reserves are dwindling and becoming increasingly costly to extract. In December 2020, the country published its Oman Vision 2040 strategy, a plan to diversify the economy away from fossil fuels and increase investment in renewables.

Green hydrogen could play an important role, said Eastman, thanks to the Oman's combination of plentiful daytime sun and strong winds at night. "Oman is one of the places in the world that I've called the 'future renewable superpowers'," said Michael Liebreich, the founder of BloombergNEF, "because what you really want [to produce green hydrogen] is very cheap solar and very cheap wind."

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