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department of government efficiency
The Cancellation of a Blue Hydrogen Boondoggle Proves No Project Is Inevitable
This retreat shows that these projects and their false climate solutions are not just unpopular, they’re also a major financial risk to companies, investors, and communities. For Louisiana communities that opposed the project from the beginning, however, the announcement means something else: proof that projects portrayed as inevitable can be stopped.
A Flagship Project That Never Materialized
When Air Products first announced the project in 2021, the company described it as a transformational investment. Their plans included the production of 1,700 metric tons of hydrogen per day from fracked gas with up to 95% of emissions mitigated through carbon capture and storage (CCS). They planned to pump the hydrogen—called "blue" hydrogen due to the addition of CCS—through a pipeline along the Gulf Coast for refineries and petrochemical plants, or turn it into ammonia, which is a toxic, fossil fuel-derived chemical—used primarily as a fertilizer.
(Graphic via CIEL Ammonia Factsheet)
That vision quickly began to unravel. By 2024, Air Products was already seeking partners to offload parts of the project, including the ammonia and carbon capture components. In 2025, it entered advanced negotiations with Norwegian fertilizer giant Yara. By mid-2026, both companies announced the project had been abandoned, citing financial concerns and an inability to find customers for a speculative market.
The cancellation reflects a broader reality: Despite billions in public funds and years of political backing, many blue hydrogen projects continue to struggle with rising costs, uncertain markets, and technical challenges.
Why This Matters Beyond One Company
Air Products is not alone. At least 45 hydrogen and ammonia production facilities have been proposed in recent years across the US—mostly clustered in Texas and Louisiana—with only one making it to the construction phase, and many more on hold. Although more than 80% of ammonia produced in the US is used to manufacture fertilizer, much of the proposed buildout depends on speculative markets—including using ammonia as a shipping fuel, hydrogen carrier, and energy source—none of which are possible at scale today.
To make these projects appear climate friendly, companies increasingly market them as "clean," "blue," or "low-carbon" by pairing fossil fuel-based hydrogen and ammonia production with CCS. Yet, CCS has repeatedly failed to deliver emissions reductions while putting communities at elevated risk for pollution and related disasters. Despite that record, federal carbon capture subsidies were expanded in 2022 and again in 2025, potentially leading to the transfer of $1 trillion in public funds to private corporations over the coming decades.
The collapse of one of the industry’s flagship projects should prompt investors and policymakers alike to ask whether this business model is built on wishful thinking rather than sound evidence and economics.
Louisiana Was Forced to Bear the Risk
Air Products’ proposed Louisiana Complex would have consisted of a hydrogen and ammonia plant in Ascension, Louisiana, with 38 miles of pipeline sprawling across five parishes, connecting to one of at least 10 separate injection wells underneath Lake Maurepas. The project would have formed part of a larger effort to transform Louisiana into a national hub for CCS.
More than just a proposed storage site, Lake Maurepas is an important estuarine ecosystem beloved by locals for recreational activities like boating, fishing, and wildlife observation. One of the nation’s largest forested wetlands borders the lake, supporting wildlife, commercial fishing, and local businesses. For generations, communities have depended on these waters—not simply for income, but as part of their identity. From the moment residents learned about the Air Products project, they organized against it.
Today, more than 30 CCS projects are under review across the state by the Louisiana Department of Conservation and Energy. Many would be built alongside communities already burdened by decades of petrochemical pollution in the 85-mile stretch along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, known locally as Cancer Alley.
These communities have long borne the health costs of fossil fuel development. Siting this experimental and knowingly dangerous CCS technology alongside frontline communities already overburdened by industrial pollution would force them to shoulder another layer of industrial risk, while companies stand to gain hundreds of billions of dollars in public money over the next 20 years through a federal tax credit.
This Isn’t the First Time
The failure of Air Products’ vision is not a surprise to anyone watching the proposed CCS buildout; the ballooning costs and failure to deliver on ambitious promises follow a familiar pattern.
The Kemper “clean coal” project in Mississippi was once celebrated as the future of carbon capture, claiming it would capture 65% of emissions from the power plant. Originally budgeted at $3 billion, the costs of the project more than doubled to $7.5 billion over the seven years of its construction (2010-2017), before the carbon capture system was abandoned altogether. Despite the massive investment, the Kemper facility never operated as promised and was partially demolished in 2021. Local residents are still paying for the corporate loss from this experiment through their electricity bills.
The failure of the Kemper project should have been a warning for future investments and should have prompted the more fundamental question: Who bears the cost of these projects?
While Louisiana leads the nation in oil refining, natural gas production, and chemical production, the state consistently ranks among the poorest and least educated states in the US. CCS projects will no doubt add to the unequal environmental burden that the state population is forced to bear for the benefit of corporations. While many of the hardships can be quantified, the joy and love for the land by its residents is immeasurable. There’s no metric that captures the experience of paddling a canoe across Lake Maurepas, seeing alligators bask in the sun, listening to birdsongs echo across the wetlands, or watching the flotant—marsh grasses that float on top of the water—bob with the waves.
An alligator basks in Lake Maurepas, Louisiana, US. (Photo by Jessi Parfait, CIEL.)
For the communities that have called this place home for generations, protecting the lake has never been about stopping a single project—it has been about safeguarding a way of life. The cancellation of the project is a victory not only for the hundreds of community members who organized against it—showing what is possible when people stand together to fight against false solutions—but also for the future generations who will continue to enjoy this remarkable ecosystem.
The cancellation is also a major win for communities that spent years warning about the project’s risks. Concerned residents across the complex’s planned footprint partnered with environmental groups to speak out at public hearings, organize neighbors, and challenge permits, refusing to accept that the project was inevitable.
Their persistence mattered. For years, the fossil fuel industry insisted that carbon capture represented the future—that projects like this were necessary and unavoidable. But as James Hiatt, founder of For a Better Bayou based in Lake Charles, Louisiana, put it:
Air Products pulling out proves that nothing here is inevitable. Industry wants us to believe these projects are a done deal, that our voices don’t matter. They do. Elected and regulators didn’t hand us this win; community pressure did. Consistent, persistent organizing works.
A Warning for The Future
Air Products’ withdrawal is not simply a failed investment by one company. It is a warning to policymakers considering whether public money should continue subsidizing projects that repeatedly fail to deliver.
Communities increasingly reject being asked to bear new risks in exchange for promises that never materialize. And this failure is likely not the last ammonia and CCS project to be canceled. Even now, many projects are on hold or delayed, further signaling to companies, investors, and communities that they are a bad bet.
The cancellation also sends a broader message: Expensive, speculative technologies designed to prolong fossil fuel production aren’t fooling anyone and companies pushing these risky projects will be footing the bill.
Inspired by Trump, Israel Advances Plan for Crocodile-Ringed Prison for Palestinians
Israeli Environmental Minister Idit Silman signed a directive Wednesday reclassifying Nile crocodiles as "specially managed wild animals," a novel legal category enabling the government to keep them for security purposes.
Ben-Gvir, who heads the Israel Prison Service (IPS), said he was inspired by the Trump administration's recently closed Alligator Alcatraz immigrant detention center in Florida. He is seeking to first introduce crocodiles into a moat around Ketziot Prison in southern Israel.
While it is not certain that the plan will come to fruition, Ben-Gvir celebrated Silman's decree in a social media post showing him petting a crocodile, with the caption: "Cursed terrorist, thinking of trying to escape? Think again."
Palestinians have occasionally escaped from Israeli lockups, such as in September 2021, when six men used improvised tools, including spoons, to tunnel out of the high-security Gilboa Prison. All six escapees were caught within weeks.
(Photo by Itamar Ben-Gvir/Facebook)
The move by Silman—who gained international notoriety by calling for the ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip—came despite objections from her own ministry's legal adviser and the Nature and Parks Authority.
IPS, which sent a fact-finding mission to the Hamat Gader crocodile farm in January, argued that its employees could handle the animals, citing the agency's experience working with the attack dogs that Palestinian prisoners and human rights groups have claimed were used to maul and even sexually abuse detainees.
Silman's approval is contingent upon IPS meeting animal welfare requirements and appropriate holding conditions.
Meanwhile, Ben-Gvir has openly boasted about the dramatic deterioration in conditions endured by Palestinian prisoners since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023 and Israel's retaliatory obliteration of Gaza, which United Nations and other experts describe as a genocide.
“We go into the prisons, and they wet themselves," Ben-Gvir said of Palestinian prisoners during a speech on Friday. "I'm not joking. They're afraid. Fear rules them, and that's how it should be.”
Ben-Gvir and other Israeli officials have worn noose lapel pins to celebrate a recently passed bill legalizing the execution by hanging of so-called "terrorists."
Former Palestinian detainees and Israeli personnel have described beatings, rape and sexual torture by male and female soldiers, routine amputations due to constant shackling, burnings, electrocutions, attacks by dogs, ice-water dousings, denial of food and water, sleep deprivation, constant loud music, and other abuse.
The Israeli military is investigating the deaths of dozens of detainees at the Sde Teiman prison in the Negev Desert, including one who died after allegedly being sodomized with an electric baton.
Ben-Gvir has defended Israeli reservists accused of torturing Palestinian prisoners, and called the reservists who allegedly gang-raped a man at Sde Teiman prison "heroes."
The minister is banned from entering a number of Western countries for his incitement to violence against Palestinians.
Several Israeli environmental groups issued a joint statement opposing the use of crocodiles in prisons.
"Crocodiles are sentient beings, with complex needs for space, water, temperature, and natural behavior," the groups said. "It is also highly doubtful that the crocodiles intended for this purpose have aggressive temperaments, and in any event, during the winter they slow their metabolism dramatically, become very sluggish, and stop eating.”
"Security should be achieved through real security measures, not through animals," they added. "We are considering filing a petition with the High Court of Justice over the matter.”
Last year, the Israeli military massacred 262 crocodiles that were being kept on a farm in the occupied West Bank near the illegal Israeli settler colony of Petzael, claiming the reptiles posed a risk to the public.
“They just slaughtered them," farm owner Danny Bitan told reporters at the time, describing the scene as "some kind of killing valley."
Ben-Gvir's plan comes amid ongoing slaughter in Gaza—where Israeli forces have killed more than 73,000 Palestinians, over 21,500 of them children, since October 2023—and accelerating colonization and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
News of Silman's approval sparked disbelief around the world and on social media, where Reddit users called the plan "cartoonish idiocy" and "Bond villain-level lunacy."
"The fact that Israel is trying to surround a prison with [crocodiles] tells you all you need to know about these camps, which are designed to torture, rape, and murder Palestinians, often held as hostages without charges," Israeli researcher and political commentator Shaiel Ben-Ephraim said Thursday on X.
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