Essar Oil UK announced it has signed a Heads of Terms offtake agreement with Vertex Hydrogen for the supply of 280MW+ of H₂. The H₂ will then be used to help decarbonize Essar’s existing production facilities including the new H₂ powered furnace which was delivered in August this year.

Vertex, a joint venture between Essar and Progressive Energy, is developing the first large scale, low carbon H₂ production hub in the UK, as part of the HyNet Consortium. This will produce (in its initial phases) 1GW of H₂ (the equivalent energy use of a large UK city like Liverpool) and capture some 1.8 MMtpy of carbon. By 2030, Vertex expects to deliver nearly 4GW of low carbon H₂, equivalent to 40% of the UK Government’s national target.

Essar achieved a new milestone in its ongoing transition to low carbon operations, following the UK Government’s decision in August this year to shortlist the construction of the H₂ production plants and a separate carbon capture project at its site in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire. This commitment was confirmed in the UK’s Government’s recent policy statement The Plan for Growth.

The two projects form part of the Essar’s £1-B investment into a range of energy efficiency, low-carbon energy, and carbon capture and storage initiatives, designed to decarbonize its production processes and put Essar at the forefront of the UK’s shift to low carbon energy. The company is delivering plans to significantly reduce its emissions before the end of the decade, to become the UK’s first low-carbon refinery.

Deepak Maheshwari, Chief Executive Officer at Essar Oil UK said, “This is an important statement of intent by Essar and highlights our continued commitment to becoming the UK’s first low carbon refinery. By signing this hydrogen offtake agreement with Vertex Hydrogen, we are helping to de-risk the project, while also securing supply for our production processes into the future and thereby reducing our carbon footprint.”