Deep inside Essar’s sprawling oil refinery on the banks of the river Mersey, a £200mn machine smashes the molecules in crude oil to assist produce hundreds of thousands of litres of diesel, petrol and jet gasoline day by day for the UK transport trade.
The catalytic cracker is the moneymaking engine of the Stanlow refinery. “With out this unit we’d make zero revenue,” stated Marcos Matijasevich, head of low-carbon transition at refinery proprietor Essar Oil. “You’ll have a very primary refinery.”
But it surely additionally contributes closely to one of many website’s greatest issues, accounting for greater than 40 per cent of its annual greenhouse fuel emissions of about 2.1mn tonnes.
It’s a determine Essar’s bosses wish to carry down. If not, the refinery in Ellesmere Port, which produces 16 per cent of the UK’s highway transport fuels, is prone to face more and more huge annual payments because the UK authorities tightens guidelines about utilizing clear fuels and the way polluters pay for his or her emissions.
“Europe and the UK is sort of a tough place to be, in comparison with different elements of the world, for plenty of causes,” stated Tony Fountain, managing companion at Essar Power Transition, a division arrange by the refinery’s final proprietor, India-based Essar Group.
“One in every of them is sort of aggressive carbon regimes. To be viable sooner or later, we have to have a decarbonisation technique.”
Stanlow’s challenges are shared by the UK’s 5 different giant refineries, that are all underneath strain to chop their carbon emissions. Over the long term, in addition they face declining demand for his or her merchandise as petrol and diesel automobiles are phased out in favour of electrical autos.
Consultancy Wooden Mackenzie expects demand for refined merchandise to carry up in Europe not less than till the top of the last decade, whereas the sector globally has loved file margins over the previous 12 months. However refinery house owners should now work out how you can put these income to work to guard their future.
“We expect for the remainder of this decade the worldwide [refining] trade’s OK,” stated Alan Gelder, vice-president for refining at Wooden Mackenzie, which expects oil demand to peak at 108mn barrels a day in 2032, up from virtually 100mn b/d in 2022. “Then the chance of closure begins to emerge within the 2030s.”
Stanlow’s efforts are targeted on carbon seize and hydrogen: it goals to strip out carbon emissions from vital processes comparable to catalytic cracking and it’s also planning to provide hydrogen on the plant, extracting it from pure fuel.
Underneath its plans, that are nonetheless at an early stage, emissions from each processes would then be piped out to Liverpool Bay and stashed in depleted gasfields. The ensuing “blue” hydrogen could be used on website, whereas Essar finally needs to additionally promote it to factories and different heavy industries within the UK. Final 12 months, it purchased a brand new furnace — utilized by refineries within the crude oil distillation course of — that may be switched to work on hydrogen energy.
“The thrust is [ . . .] to create a very main hydrogen enterprise,” stated Fountain. Nonetheless, future demand for hydrogen, which has been proposed as a supply of low-carbon vitality for the whole lot from heavy trade to properties, is extremely unsure. Manufacturing prices are excessive and new infrastructure and gear could be required.
EET Hydrogen, the Essar three way partnership with clear vitality specialist Progressive Power that’s planning to construct the manufacturing plant at Stanlow, has provisionally agreed to promote hydrogen to glassmaker Encirc. It has earlier-stage agreements with a number of different corporations together with glassmaker Pilkington. However these should not but agency gross sales offers.
Fountain estimates there might be demand within the area round Stanlow to assist 4.5GW of hydrogen manufacturing in direction of the top of the last decade, based mostly on present plans and authorities targets. That is virtually double the UK’s present manufacturing capability.
He additionally rejected the concept blue hydrogen made utilizing pure fuel and carbon seize will wrestle to compete with inexperienced hydrogen produced from water in a course of powered by low cost renewable electrical energy.
“I’m not certain that’s true within the UK,” he stated, although he added that low cost solar energy in India may allow “very financial inexperienced hydrogen”. Essar additionally plans to develop a brand new import terminal in Liverpool for “inexperienced” ammonia, made utilizing renewable energy, which might then be transformed again into hydrogen. A few of this might come from its personal initiatives in India.
Essar has stated it needs to take a position $2.4bn within the UK, however its hydrogen plans rely upon state assist. EET Hydrogen is in talks with the UK authorities a couple of contract to assist revenues from the deliberate new hydrogen plant, as a part of wider measures to assist the nascent trade compete with pure fuel. “In the mean time, burning pure fuel and shopping for carbon allowances continues to be cheaper than shopping for hydrogen,” stated Matijasevich.
Low-carbon hydrogen manufacturing options closely in different UK refinery decarbonisation plans, though some have run into issues due to prices and lack of infrastructure.
US firm Phillips 66 and Danish wind developer Ørsted determined in the summertime to “pause” their “Gigastack” undertaking, which might contain making hydrogen from water with energy generated by wind farms within the North Sea and utilizing it at Phillips 66’s Humber refinery within the east of England, in addition to promoting it to different industries.
The 2 corporations have withdrawn the undertaking from a authorities funding spherical, saying that “additional undertaking maturation along with provide chain growth is required”.
In the meantime, chemical substances group Ineos suspended work on a £350mn hydrogen-ready warmth and energy plant at its Grangemouth refinery and chemical substances website in April 2022, citing spiralling prices, and has but to renew. The plant is one a part of its plan to chop the positioning’s roughly 3mn tonnes of annual carbon dioxide emissions.
Ineos’s and Essar’s plans additionally depend on provides of fairly priced pure fuel, from which to extract the hydrogen. Andrew Gardner, chair of Ineos Grangemouth, stated that the Labour opposition’s plans to cease new exploration licences within the North Sea if it wins energy may improve reliance on imports.
He pressured Ineos is dedicated to decarbonising, with a goal of internet zero carbon emissions at Grangemouth by 2045, even after falls within the value of carbon permits minimize prices for polluting industries.
“In case you did it solely on the carbon value you then’ve missed the purpose,” he stated. “It’s concerning the planet. it’s about having a licence to hold on.”
Whereas trade consultants don’t count on the entire UK’s refineries to remain the course, Essar is optimistic. “I feel the best way that [our decarbonisation] technique performs is, it’ll assist us be the winner in a really lengthy finish sport of fuels,” stated Fountain. “Not each refinery will survive . . . there’s a little bit of final man standing.”