Cartagena is known for beaches and history, but a new project aims to make it known for cleaner fuel, too. Ecopetrol announced a green hydrogen plant at its refinery, and it comes with big regional claims.
The goal is not to replace oil overnight. It is to clean up part of the refining process using hydrogen made with renewable electricity, then use that hydrogen right where it is needed, inside the Cartagena refinery.
The announcement in Cartagena
Ecopetrol said it will build a green hydrogen plant at the Cartagena refinery with an investment of US$28.5 million, using a five-megawatt electrolyzer.
Some headlines spread a much larger figure, US$285 million, but the number consistently stated in official and industry reporting is US$28.5 million.
The project is framed as part of Colombia’s energy transition, but it is also a practical refinery upgrade. Hydrogen is already used in refining, so the key change is how that hydrogen is produced.
What the plant will produce
The expected output is up to 800 tons of green hydrogen per year, with a target start in the first half of 2026.
Even though 800 tons sounds small next to global mega-projects, it is designed for a very specific job: Supplying green hydrogen directly into Reficar’s fuel hydrotreating process once operations begin in the first half of 2026.
One report also mentioned a “potential” figure of up to 8,000 tons per year, but the official description of this specific five-megawatt plant points to 800 tons annually.
The plant’s hydrogen purity will reach 99.97%, which matters because refinery processes require consistent quality to run safely and efficiently.
Ecopetrol also said it plans to use a 1% blend of green hydrogen for hydrotreating once the plant starts operating, meaning it will begin as a partial substitution rather than a full switch.
How it will be powered
The electrolyzer will run on renewable electricity from the Cartagena refinery’s solar farm, which it described as having 22 megawatts of capacity.
Powering the electrolyzer with the refinery’s 22 MW solar farm is key because “green” hydrogen depends on renewable electricity. This setup ties the plant’s climate benefit to local clean generation, not to grid electricity of mixed sources.
This design choice keeps the supply chain short. The electricity is generated on site, the hydrogen is produced on site, and the hydrogen is consumed on site, reducing the need for transport or new long-distance infrastructure.
Ecopetrol estimated the green hydrogen integration will reduce up to 7,700 tons of CO2 equivalent per year, compared with conventional refining inputs.
To make the scale feel real, Ecopetrol compared that annual cut to the emissions from about 1,650 vehicles.
Why this matters for Ecopetrol, and for Colombia
The new plant will have capacity 100 times higher than what the group currently has operating, and it builds on three electrolysis pilots it has run since 2022.
The company is also selling a longer-term vision. Its 2040 strategy targets up to one million tons of low-carbon hydrogen by 2040, split across green, blue, and white hydrogen pathways.
The longer runway is huge. The Presidency release said Colombia’s hydrogen demand could reach 1.3 million tons per year by 2040, driven mainly by mobility and industrial uses, which explains why Ecopetrol is treating this as a scalable business line.
The government-side narrative is that this positions Ecopetrol alongside leading international producers of this cleaner fuel, at least in terms of industrial-scale operation within a refinery context.
Ecopetrol also said its low-emissions hydrogen business line expects to generate average annual EBITDA (earnings )between US$400 million and US$485 million by 2040, showing this is treated as a business, not only a climate badge.
Cartagena’s clean-fuel test
This plant is a real-world test of how Colombia can cut emissions inside heavy industry without shutting it down. The size is modest compared with global mega-projects, but the integration into refining makes it meaningful.
If the 2026 start goes as planned, the bigger story will be replication. One plant can be a headline, but a repeatable model, powered by renewables and plugged into industry, is what turns green hydrogen into routine.
