Essar Oil UK signs offtake agreement with Vertex Hydrogen

LONDON (ICIS)–Essar Oil UK has signed an offtake agreement with Vertex Hydrogen for the supply of hydrogen to Essar’s production facilities, the company said in a press release 28 September.
The deal is for at least 280MW of low carbon hydrogen, which “will then be used to help decarbonise Essar’s existing production facilities including the new hydrogen powered furnace,” the press release said.
Vertex, a joint venture between Essar and Progressive Energy, is developing low carbon hydrogen production as part of the HyNet Consortium.
Vertex is based in northwest England and aims to have 1GW of hydrogen production capacity online around the middle of the decade, and some 1.8mn tonnes/year of CO2 captured, with 4GW of low carbon hydrogen production capacity due by 2030.
Moreover, Vertex was selected as one of four hydrogen projects to proceed to the due diligence phase in the UK government’s Cluster Sequencing Programme.
The UK Government has set a target of 10GW of hydrogen production capacity to be in place by 2030, of which at least 5GW will be made up of renewable hydrogen.