Shares in Powerhouse Energy (LSE:PHE) spiked 6pc to 0.55p on Wednesday after the clean energy technology business revealed a crucial milestone in its plans to build a waste plastic to hydrogen and power facility.
Powerhouse said its development partner Waste2Tricity has signed an agreement for a 124 lease on a 54-acre energy hub site in Cheshire called Protos. The in believes this will be the first full-scale site for its proprietary hydrogen from waste technology and a critical step in its commercialisation strategy.
Powerhouse’s technology converts waste products like plastic, tyres and other waste streams into syngas efficiently and economically. This is then used to create valuable products like chemical precursors, hydrogen, electricity. According to the business, its process can generate more than 1t of road-fuel quality hydrogen or more than 28MW/h of exportable power a day and can be used at both enterprise and community level.
Powerhouse and Waste2Tricity will now conclude arrangements for the sale and licence of this technology at the site. Waste2Tricity will also secure the power purchase agreement, and plastic feedstock supply needed to finalise its funding.
Protos is being developed by Peel Environmental, a subsidiary of leading British infrastructure, transport, and real estate organisation Peel Group. The £700m energy hub is designed to bring together complementary business in the environmental sector across the whole supply chain.
Powerhouse’s chief executive David Ryan said: ‘We believe the Protos site to be an ideal location to showcase our DMG® technology in action on a fully commercial basis and demonstrate the considerable value this technology delivers, paving the way for other contracts in the pipeline to come to fruition.’
Meanwhile, Myles Kitcher, a managing director at Peel, added that the firm will look to roll Powerhouse’s technology out across its other UK sites following the deal:
‘This project sums up the vision for Protos – a closed loop solution where innovative technologies are used to create value from waste and provide low carbon energy sources. Not only will this help tackle the problem of waste plastics, it will provide a local source of hydrogen which could be used as a clean and low cost fuel for buses and HGVs across the region.’