Ruia, and Essar’s Energy Transition arm (EET), is the vital private sector enabler in the northwest of the government’s GB Energy plan to deliver clean power by 2030…reports Asian Lite News
Indian billionaire Prashant Ruia is building a new refinery on the banks of the Mersey that will run on hydrogen, making it the UK’s first emissions-free plant
From the roof of a building in the industrial heart of the North West, a landscape of fields and smoke-chugging chemical plants is spread out before us. The Welsh hills make up one horizon, the River Mersey and Cammell Laird shipyard another, as per a Sunday Times Business profile.
It’s a glorious Cheshire day, and the mood of Indian billionaire Prashant Ruia is as sunny as the autumn weather. Clapping his arm around my shoulder, he points across the vast tangle of steaming pipes, fire-belching flare chimneys and giant cooling towers that make up Britain’s second-biggest oil refinery, Stanlow.
“It is all changing,” he beams, stretching out his arm theatrically. “We are going to decarbonise the industry around the whole of the North West.”
Ruia, 55, is the scion of the family industrials empire Essar Group, and its chief executive. Established by his father Shashi and uncle Ravi, better known as the fabulously wealthy “Ruia Brothers”, its rollercoaster fortunes are the stuff of business legend.
They bought the Stanlow refinery from Shell in 2011, when it was in a pretty grim state of repair. Ruia says they have invested $1 billion in it since, but it’s still clear that the 100-year-old plant, which makes 16 per cent of the UK’s fuel, has had better days. The pipes leak in many places, while its distillation columns — turning crude oil into jet fuel, diesel and petrol — are often heavily rusted and discoloured. Big parts of it are decommissioned and rusting into the weeds.
Look closer, though, and you can see the future — and Ruia’s enthusiasm about it. In the distance, a brand new refinery is emerging from a web of scaffolding, its dazzling silver towers juxtaposed with the dark red rust of a disused 1960s hulk behind.
It is being built to run on hydrogen, making it the first refinery to move away from CO2-emitting gas in the UK. “And that’s just the start,” Ruia says. If all goes to plan, and the government gives its support, the family will move on to installing carbon-capture technology in other parts of the refinery, pumping the carbon into disused gas fields deep under the Liverpool Bay seabed.
First, though, Essar needs to build a plant to make the hydrogen. This will have “350 megawatts” of generating capacity, says Ruia, who has a number ready for every topic. All things being well, a second hydrogen plant will follow. The gas not being used by the refinery will be piped to neighbouring factories, such as the Encirc bottle-making plant, to decarbonise their processes, too.
In short, Ruia, and Essar’s Energy Transition arm (EET), is the vital private sector enabler in the northwest of the government’s GB Energy plan to deliver clean power by 2030. In fact, only a few weeks ago, the Downing Street circus rolled into town for Sir Keir Starmer to announce a cool £21.7 billion of state funding for these projects, and a similar “cluster” in Humberside.