Hazer Process achieves funding milestone

Friday, 03 February, 2023

Hazer Group has announced that it has achieved a key progress milestone under an Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) Funding Agreement, facilitating the drawdown of $2.97 million.

Hazer Group Limited is a technology development company undertaking the commercialisation of the Hazer Process, a low-emission hydrogen and graphite production process.

The Hazer Process is a novel method to produce low emissions hydrogen from a renewable form of methane.

According to ARENA, “the process utilises methane as a feedstock to produce hydrogen — without producing CO₂ in the reaction process — instead capturing the carbon in the feedstock as solid graphite.

“Using biogas as a feedstock for the Hazer Process may result in significant carbon abatement. The technology originated from the University of Western Australia and has successfully undergone pilot testing. The Commercial Demonstration Plant will be the first scaled-up, functional and fully integrated deployment of the Hazer Process.”

Hazer and ARENA have agreed to amend the terms of the existing Funding Agreement, specifically the $3.92 million Tranche 3 — Completion of Construction and Commencement of Commissioning. The original Funding Agreement was executed in March 2020.

Under the variation, the parties have agreed to split the Tranche into two portions, 3.a and 3.b. The new milestone 3.a of $2.97 million reflects practical completion and commissioning of cold operations (as announced on 28 June 2022) and milestone 3.b of $0.95 million which covers similar for hot operations.

ARENA has approved the completion of milestone 3.a, acknowledging the significant progress in the construction and commissioning of the Commercial Demonstration Plant (CDP). This releases $2.97 million (75%) of Tranche 3 funding.

“We are delighted to have executed this variation to the Funding Agreement with ARENA, which recognises the solid progress we have made with our CDP and strengthens our ability to fast-track the commercial scale-up of our hydrogen technology,” said Glenn Corrie, Hazer CEO. “We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Australian Government through this important phase of technology development.”