Essar Group, one of India’s largest multinational conglomerates operating across various industries, plans to invest INR 30,000 crore ($3.5 Billion) over the next four years to set up a green hydrogen plant in Gujarat, India.
The information was provided by Prashant Ruia, director of Essar Capital, in an interview with the Press Trust of India. He said that Essar Future Energy plans to develop 1 gigawatt of hydrogen capacity along with associated green molecules capacity of 1 million tonne per year in Gujarat’s Jamnagar over the next four years.
The company will use 4.5 GW of renewable energy from a sister concern ‘Essar Renewables’ to split water molecules to produce hydrogen and oxygen. Usually, Hydrogen cannot be shipped and is used to make green ammonia for easy transportation.
“The idea is to create green molecules that can be transported directly rather than green ammonia. Because you carry green ammonia and then you convert it into hydrogen. That cost is very high. So, we are trying to build a complex which can make green molecules from hydrogen and largely in the biofuels space and export that,” Ruia said.
Essar also plans to invest $3.6 billion to decarbonise its Stanlow refinery in the UK and another $4 billion to set up a green steel plant in Saudi Arabia that will use hydrogen power.
