The UK government has chosen Essar Energy Transition's Vertex Hydrogen project as part of one of the two hydrogen plants that will be built in the country, the company said on Thursday.
Vertex Hydrogen, a joint venture of Essar group and UK's Progressive Energy, is building a hydrogen manufacturing unit at Essar's Stanlow refinery complex in the UK. The joint venture, in which Essar Oil UK holds 90 per cent, will produce 1 gigawatt (GW) of hydrogen per year from two units by 2026.
"Essar welcomes the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero's (DESNZ), cluster sequencing Phase-2 announcement, confirming that Essar Energy Transition's Vertex Hydrogen project has been chosen as part of one of the two hydrogen plants that will help build the UK's hydrogen economy," it said in a statement.
The announcement follows the UK government's commitment to providing up to 20 billion pound in funding for early deployment of carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) to help meet its climate commitments.
Recently, Essar launched Essar Energy Transition (EET) to invest USD 3.6 billion in developing a range of low-carbon energy transition projects over the next five years, of which USD 2.4 billion will be invested at the Stanlow site in Ellesmere Port, between Liverpool and Manchester.
This plan includes Vertex Hydrogen, which will produce some 350 MW of hydrogen from 2026, making it one of the UK's leading low-carbon hydrogen businesses. Some 600 thousand tonnes of CO2 will be captured and stored using HyNet's carbon-capture infrastructure - the equivalent of taking around 2,50,000 cars off the road.
Vertex is also rapidly progressing a second plant (HPP2) for 700 MW into front-end-engineering-design (FEED). This will be completed in 2023, positioning Vertex as the enabler of a broader hydrogen economy in the northwest.
The HPP2 plant has today received support from the Net Zero Hydrogen Fund as part of its development, the statement said.
Prashant Ruia, Director, Essar Capital, said: "This enables us to confidently move forward with our plans in EET to build a premier energy transition hub in the North West of the UK, anchored around our Stanlow Refinery. Today, huge progress has been made. We are more confident than ever in the potential of our UK site, with its core contribution to HyNet, to play a vital role in the UK's decarbonisation strategy and to act as a catalyst for significant investment in our region.
"We are demonstrating how legacy industrial businesses can become part of the solution, and drive decarbonisation across the North West's industrial heartlands." EET's strategy is founded on the fact that hydrogen and biofuels are fast becoming globally significant fuels of the future and that the UK is positioned strongly to spearhead the rapid growth of the European low-carbon fuel market.
In addition to the USD 2.4 billion investment in the UK, EET will also invest USD 1.2 billion in developing a cost-efficient global supply hub for low-carbon fuels in India, the statement added.
