Australian chemicals commercial company Hazer Group has signed a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding with Nagoya-based Chubu Electric Power Company Inc. and Chiyoda Corporation to work together on a Project Development Plan (PDP) for a Hazer manufacturing site in the Chubu region of Japan.
Under the terms of the agreement, the three entities will prepare a PDP for a commercial-scale Hazer facility in Japan with an ultimate targeted hydrogen production capacity of up to 100,000 tpa, with an initial capacity between 2,500 and 10,000 tpa.
Chubu Electric Power aims to use the hydrogen produced as a fuel for transportation, other hard-to-abate industries, and power generation in the Nagoya region.
The parties have also agreed to complete the PDP by the first half of 2024, and will concurrently construct the appropriate definitive partnership and commercial agreements to advance the project with commitment, with the facility’s initial start-up scheduled for the late 2020s.
For the development and implementation of the initiative, ASX-listed Hazer, together with Chubu Electric and Chiyoda will form a project group looking for graphite offtake options.
According to Kouji Sada, general manager of Chubu Electric’s Electric Power Research and Development Centre, the company is “firmly committed” to decarbonising both its own operations and those of its clients.
“We believe the Hazer technology offers an attractive solution to locally produce low carbon hydrogen, using our existing supply chains and infrastructure,” Sada added.
Chiyoda’s Norimasa Matsuoka, senior vice president at its Frontier Business Division, stated that Chiyoda and Hazer have been working closely together for a while.
Matsuoka said, “We believe Hazer’s innovative technology has a strong alignment with the Japanese market and we are delighted to be working together with Chubu Electric and Hazer, bringing our engineering and project expertise to bear on this exciting project for early social implementation towards a carbon-free society.”
Meanwhile, Glenn Corrie, managing director at Hazer Group, pointed out that Japan has always been essential to Hazer as a strategic market for the application of our cutting-edge technologies.
“By integrating our technology into the existing energy value chain, we can contribute to the decarbonisation of hard-to-abate sectors such as power generation, heavy industry and mobility,” Corrie stated.
“This partnership complements our already established partnership with Mitsui relating to our graphite offtake and is further validation of the Hazer technology business plan,” the Hazer official concluded.
On April 4, 2023, the Japanese government announced that it would increase its objective for hydrogen supply to 12 million tonnes year by 2040, or a six-fold increase over the present target of 2 million tonnes annually.
In addition to Japan, Hazer stated that it sees Singapore and Korea as significant strategic markets for the implementation of its technology in the Asia Pacific area.
