Last year, Bill Gates backed Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV) took a deep dive into the green hydrogen pool by helping to jump-start an EU initiative called the European Green Hydrogen Accelerator Center.
The center aims at deploying renewable hydrogen to foster the “substantial displacement of hydrocarbons in energy intensive industrial applications (i.e. steel, cement, chemicals), heavy transport (i.e. maritime and heavy duty) and fertilizers.”
Another interesting development occurred earlier this month, when the Israeli startup H2Pro raised $22 million for its green hydrogen system from BEV and the clean tech heavy hitters Jeff Bezos and Michael Bloomberg.
Other investors are Hyundai Motor Co., which has been chasing the fuel cell EV dream, and Sumimoto, which has a hand in the platinum-curious H2 capital venture fund AP Ventures.
As part of the green hydrogen gold rush, H2Pro seeks to replace fossil-sourced hydrogen with renewables. The cost of electrolysis is still relatively high, and that’s where H2Pro comes in.
Standard electrolyzers rely on an energy intensive, two-part process. The H2Pro system relies partly on thermal energy to help reduce overall costs.
By tweaking the current methodology, H2Pro says it will be able to make green hydrogen for $1 per kilogram by the second half of this decade. For comparison, as of 2019 the cost of green hydrogen ranged from $2.50 to $6.80 per kilo.
Against this backdrop, BEV is creating a pipeline of pioneering large-scale projects, launching a new generation of public-private partnerships and is accelerating the speed of delivery from mega- to gigawatts.
Reference- BloombergNEF, Breakthrough Energy Ventures website, Clean Technica, H2Pro website