Essar banks on green future with Ellesmere Port facility
LOW-CARBON HYDROGEN PROJECT ‘WILL MAKE HUB UK’S FIRST NET ZERO EMISSION REFINERY’
INDIA’s Essar Group, in partnership with clean energy specialist Progressive Energy, will invest £750 million to build the UK’s biggest low carbon hydrogen production hub at Stanlow refinery in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire.
The investment in two plants, next to Essar’s Stanlow refinery, will be part of the HyNet scheme, a project to supply low carbon hydrogen to industrial sites and homes in north-west England.
The first plant will open in 2025, while the second is expected come online two years later.
Natural gas and fuel gases from the refinery will be converted into low carbon hydrogen, with carbon dioxide captured and stored in depleted undersea gas fields 60 km offshore in Liverpool Bay, according to a statement.
“The hydrogen production hub will deliver clean energy to the industry in the HyNet ‘low carbon cluster’, as well as to fuel buses, trains, and heavy goods vehicles,
to to heat our homes, and to generate electricity when the sun is not shining or the wind blowing,” the statement said.
The low-carbon hydrogen hub will initially produce three terawatt-hours (TWh) of low carbon hydrogen each year from 2025.
It will be followed by a facility twice that size giving a total capacity of over 9TWh of hydrogen per annum, equivalent to the energy used for heating across the whole of Liverpool.
A joint statement said followon capacity growth is planned to reach 80 per cent of the government’s new target of 5GW of low carbon hydrogen for power, transport, industry and homes by 2030.
Chris Manson-Whitton, director at Progressive Energy, said, “HyNet offers an opportunity to create change in energy production and consumption, creating a cleaner world. It will unlock the low carbon hydrogen economy in the north-west, reducing emissions and creating and safeguarding jobs.”
Stein Ivar Bye, chief executive officer of Essar Oil UK, added: “HyNet and hydrogen production are integral to Stanlow’s strategy and will set it on a journey to be the UK’s first net zero emission refinery, with the ambition to avoid emissions of over two million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere per year, the equivalent of taking nearly a million cars off the road.”