Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) has been chosen as a licensor of CO2 capture technology for the EET Industrial Carbon Capture project, which is underway at the Stanlow Refinery, owned and operated by Essar Oil UK in Cheshire County in northwest England.

Essar Oil UK is the UK arm of the Essar Group, a multinational conglomerate based in India.

The project at Stanlow will capture CO2 emissions from the fluid catalytic cracker in the refinery process.

This contributes to Stanlow becoming the UK's first low-carbon refinery. Once it is built, it will capture approximately 860,000 tons of CO2 per year.

The project is supported by HyNet, the carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) cluster in northwest England.

The captured CO2 will be permanently sequestered into depleted gas fields under the sea in Liverpool Bay.

MHI, as a licensor of the project's CO2 capture technology, will support the project by providing the basic engineering design package (BEDP) applying its "Advanced KM CDR Process," CO2 capture technology jointly developed with The Kansai Electric Power.

The British Government has set a target to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. In line with this initiative, the requisite infrastructure, including formation of CCUS clusters, is being developed to carry out all related processes - from CO2 capture to transportation and storage – at each of the country's targeted industrial zones.

In October 2021, then the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) designated two CCUS clusters, HyNet and East Coast.

This is still being supported by the subsequent new department, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ).

The project at Stanlow targets 2028 as the start of operations of EET Industrial Carbon Capture.

Essar Oil UK is actively advancing the decarbonisation of its refinery and putting it at the forefront of UK's energy transition. In order to commit this, the company is investing $1.2 billion over the next five years to lower emissions from the refinery.

MHI Group has formally declared its intent to achieve carbon neutrality by 2040, and the Company is now working strategically to decarbonise both the energy demand and supply sides. A core element of the Company's 'Energy Transition', which targets decarbonisation on the energy supply side, is the development of a CO2 solutions ecosystem integrating diverse sources of carbon emissions with modes for carbon storage and utilisation.

Through provision of the carbon capture technology at Stanlow, the Company will contribute to execution of the project and realisation of the UK's first CO2 capture for a refinery, and thereby boost its presence within the UK's CCUS market.