Motor Oil Hellas Corinth Refineries S A : The Innovation Fund Grant Agreement, for Motor Oil’s flagship project IRIS, has been officially signed.

Motor Oil and the European Commission have signed the E.U Innovation Fund Grant Agreement of €127 million, for the pioneering IRIS project regarding the construction and operation of a Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage (CCS) and e-methanol production system at the Agioi Theodoroi Refinery.

It is worth mentioning that the IRIS project is among the 41 projects that were selected, out of the 239 proposals submitted, under the second round of the EU Innovation Fund's "large-scale" calls for proposals, and just the third in Europe, involving a Steam Methane Reformer.

The IRIS project will integrate several innovative industrial processes, on a scale that has never been implemented before in an independent refinery. In particular, the project will contribute to a significant 25% reduction of the refinery's CO2 emissions, and thus to the achievement of the industry's national and EU carbon reduction targets. At the same time, there are plans to establish an innovative e-methanol production plant, which will be produced from the available renewable hydrogen and part of the captured carbon dioxide, which will be one of the first plants to be set up in Europe.

Furthermore, the project falls under the umbrella of Motor Oil Group's "Blue Med" strategic plan, aiming at the development of a hydrogen value chain in Greece. The quantities of renewable hydrogen produced by the 30MW electrolysis plant under development in the EPHYRA project (supported by the Clean Hydrogen Partnership and the members of Hydrogen Europe and Hydrogen Europe Research under Grant Agreement No. 101112220) will be supplemented by sufficient quantities of low-carbon hydrogen that will comply with the prescribed limits of the EU Classification Regulation.

The launch of the construction of the project, once all the necessary individual agreements have been completed and the final investment decision has been obtained by the company, is expected to start in mid-2025 with a three-year completion deadline, so as to be operational in mid-2028, according to the timetable approved by the European Commission.

George Triantafyllou, General Manager of Strategy at Motor Oil Group said: "Motor Oil Group is determined to guide the industry's energy transition and play a leading role in achieving the industrial decarbonization goals and in establishing the hydrogen and hydrogen derivatives market in Greece. The funding from the European Union's Innovation Fund marks a major milestone for the Group. We remain committed and fully aligned to the €4bn energy transition plan that has been announced, having invested €1bn up to now in this direction. We are leading the way, utilizing our competitive advantages and we are committed to implementing emblematic and pioneering projects and investments, that will accelerate the transformation of our country's energy mix, on the road to ensuring energy autonomy".