Israeli start-up H2Pro backed by Li Ka-shing and Bill Gates joins race to make hydrogen cheaper
- H2Pro has raised US$22 million to scale up its technology from the lab to the factory floor
- By tweaking the current methodology, H2Pro says it will be able to make green hydrogen for US$1 per kg by the second half of this decade
As governments and industries get serious about cutting greenhouse gas emissions, demand has grown for hydrogen produced by splitting water – using renewable electricity – as a potential carbon-free fuel to replace coal, oil and natural gas. H2Pro said on Tuesday it raised US$22 million to move its technology from the lab to the factory floor. Japan’s Sumitomo and carmaker Hyundai Motor also invested.
“We definitely see a worldwide market for these devices,” said Talmon Marco, H2Pro’s chief executive. “When we started the company back in 2019, it was much more difficult to have a conversation with investors about hydrogen. And today it’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, absolutely. Hydrogen is happening’.”
H2Pro’s technology is similar to the alkaline electrolysers that are most commonly used today to make green hydrogen, but with a crucial twist. When water is split, the current process uses electrical energy not just to break the hydrogen and oxygen atoms apart, but also to pair two hydrogen atoms and two oxygen atoms, respectively, to make the separate gases.
H2Pro reduces that energy use by splitting the step in two. First, it creates hydrogen at the electrolyser’s cathode. The chemical reaction also changes the composition of its nickel-based anode. The cell is then flooded with a hot liquid, which helps the anode release oxygen gas with the help of thermal energy instead of electrical power, before the first step can be performed again.
By tweaking the current methodology, H2Pro says it will be able to make green hydrogen for US$1 per kg by the second half of this decade. That’s far cheaper than current projections by clean energy research group BloombergNEF, which doesn’t expect that low a price until 2050. A kilo of green hydrogen cost $2.50 to $6.80 in 2019.
Tifenn Brandily, a hydrogen analyst with BNEF, said the US$1 per kg goal was “highly ambitious”, though he was impressed with H2Pro’s technology.
H2Pro is far behind its competitors that use conventional electrolysers. Current pilot projects under construction will be able to produce thousands of kilograms per day. Larger-scale projects will have capacities many times greater.
Companies based in Europe and the UK, such as ITM Power, Nel and Green Hydrogen Systems, are already racing to scale up production. Other more established industrial players such as Siemens Energy, Thyssenkrupp and Haldor Topsoe are also preparing to start large-scale manufacturing.
Still, the green hydrogen industry is in its infancy. The rush from companies in Europe is expected to bring as much as €470 billion (US$560 billion) by 2050 in government funding and private investment, according to estimates from the European Union.
H2Pro is planning its first factory in Israel that should be able to produce 100s of megawatts of capacity from 2023, according to CEO Marco. Additional factories may be built in other countries, he said.
