Industrial Green Hydrogen Is Coming To Europe From The US

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Despite the sudden U-turn in federal energy policy, signs of a reboot are emerging in the area of industrial green hydrogen, where the low cost of renewable energy has combined with new cost-cutting innovations on the production side. As demand for industrial-scale green hydrogen continues to gather momentum, the Massachusetts startup Electric Hydrogen is among the domestic cleantech firms demonstrating that the US can continue to push the global decarbonization movement, with or without support from the White House.

The Green Hydrogen Solution

For those of you new to the topic, hydrogen is the glue that holds the modern industrial economy together. Hydrogen is used in refining, metallurgy, agriculture, food processing, and pharmaceuticals, among other industrial systems. Because almost all hydrogen is currently extracted from fossil fuels, decarbonizing the hydrogen supply chain plays a significant role in climate policymaking.

Biomass, biogas, and biochar are among the non-fossil feedstocks under development in the sustainable hydrogen movement. Plastic waste and other circular economy solutions are also in play. To date, though, much of the activity has focused on green hydrogen pushed from water by a jolt of electricity, assisted by a catalyst in an electrolysis system. The decarbonization factor shifts into high gear when the electricity is supplied by renewable energy.

Electrolyzer technology predates today’s renewable energy transition. Its application to green hydrogen is a relatively new phenomenon, fostered by the falling cost and rising availability of wind and solar energy. The renewable energy angle generated an initial burst of enthusiasm among investors and policymakers, but the bloom was soon off the rose. The flurry of activity quickly devolved into a pile-on of mismatched opportunities, including a focus on hyper-granular applications aimed at decarbonizing individual vehicles and buildings.

With some notable exceptions, the granular approach has smashed many a green hydrogen dream under a cascade of transportation, storage, and distribution costs, among other obstacles. Consequently, in recent years, the focus has turned to a more limited range of high-volume industrial applications, where economies of scale can kick in. In one representative analysis, refineries and ammonia production are within closest reach of conversion to green hydrogen, followed by a second industrial group that includes steelmaking, long-haul marine and aviation shipping, and petrochemicals. Farther out of reach are energy storage and other systems where competition from alternative technologies is fierce, with granular applications lagging far behind.

The Electric Hydrogen Solution

Electric Hydrogen crossed the CleanTechnica radar back in June of 2022, when its patented electrolysis system earned a raft of financial supporters from legacy industrial stakeholders, including Honeywell, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and Rio Tinto, along with the Brazilian company Cosan and Equinor Ventures. Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund also chipped in, among other A-list climate tech investors, including four returnees from a previous $24 million round, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Capricorn Partners, Energy Impact Partners, and Prelude Ventures.

For the record, the $198 million round was led by Fifth Wall Climate Tech along with S2G Ventures, Silicon Valley Bank, and Trinity Capital.

Electric Hydrogen is laser-focused on the industrial green hydrogen market, where transportation and storage costs can be minimized by producing and using hydrogen in bulk on site for large-scale operations, instead of hauling it over long distances to small-volume offtakers. The mainstage attraction is the company’s HYPRPLant cost-cutting electrolyzer production platform. The turnkey solution is factory-assembled and delivered on skids to its use point. It can be dropped off as an open-air installation, avoiding the expense of constructing enclosured systems.

There Goes Texas, Again

Electric Hydrogen claims that its HYPRPlant model supports a game-changing drop in the cost of green hydrogen by up to 60%, and we’re about to find out if all that hard work is going to pay off.

Electric Hydrogen got its feet wet with a 1-megawatt demonstration facility that began operating in California in 2022, followed by the much larger Pioneer facility in 2024. This year, the company moved into Texas with its first 100-megawatt HYPRPlant delivery, heading for the high-profile Project Roadrunner project in Pecos, Texas. Under the umbrella of the California firm Infinium, Project Roadrunner is slated to be the largest efuels producer in the world, replacing fossil energy with green hydrogen and electricity from a solar array of almost 500 megawatts (see more electrofuels background here).

Once again demonstrating that the current partisan political environment in Texas does not map with the intensity of renewable energy development in the state, the HYPRPlant platform has also been tapped for another efuels project in Texas under the wing of HIF Global.

In the latest news from Electric Hydrogen, the company is in the mix for a final investment decision on a third US project aimed at exporting green ammonia overseas, under the wing of the Texas firm Synergen Green Energy. If all goes according to plan, the FEED (front-end engineering and design) stage will conclude with Electric Hydrogen contributing two 120-megawatt HYPRPlants to the project.

No word yet on other details, but Electric Hydrogen describes the project as a 210,000-ton-per-year facility aimed at producing ammonia in the US “for maritime and industrial applications in Europe and Asia.”

About That Ammonia Connection … And Texas …

In case you’re wondering about the ammonia connection, ammonia (chemical formula NH3) is among the low-hanging fruit of industries ripe for transitioning from fossil-sourced hydrogen to green hydrogen. Ammonia has also been talked up as an economical transportation medium for green hydrogen by ship, the limitation being how to economically extract the hydrogen from the ammonia once the ship reaches its desperation.

Yet another Texas startup, Syzygy Plasmonics, is among the US innovators addressing the ammonia cracking challenge. Apparently Synergen and its offtakers are not waiting around for ammonia cracking to happen at scale, though. Environmental organizations (here’s one example) and industry groups have been making the case for carbon-free ammonia to replace carbon-heavy shipping fuel, though with caveats.

One of those caveats is pressure on the supply side. Lloyd’s Register, for example, notes that the fertilizer industry currently accounts for 80% of global ammonia demand. “If 30% of shipping switched to ammonia to use as a fuel, then the current production would have to nearly double,” LR explained in a report back in 2021.

The needle hasn’t moved much since then, but keep an eye on the latest round of green ammonia activity in the US for signs that domestic innovators are flexing their global muscles. In November, Synergen dropped word that it intends to build multiple green ammonia plants in the US, with an eye on the export market and with an assist from the leading global chemicals firm Topsoe.

Photo: US innovators in the green hydrogen space continue to expand their impact on the global decarbonization movement, despite the sudden U-turn in federal energy policy (cropped, courtesy of Electric Hydrogen).