Clean tech companies are in the frontline of Europe's efforts to become carbon neutral by 2050. A Dutch firm, backed by EU financial support, has developed a new green energy technology that will help achieve that goal.
Energy powers our daily lives, but producing and using it makes up 75% of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions. Now, a Rotterdam-based clean tech company, supported by an EU investment programme, is on a mission to help cut fossil fuel dependency with an innovation called the Battolyser® . It’s an electrolyser, which can store renewable energy in a battery and produce green hydrogen.
Invented at a Dutch university, the Battolyser® is fed by renewables like wind and solar. Once its battery is charged, energy can then be used to produce hydrogen. The system can also be instantly switched on and off, to match intermittency of supply.
Optimal energy generation
Maarten van Heel, Battolyser Systems' Director of Projects and Engineering explains how it can contribute to green energy generation: “Sixty percent of the costs of green hydrogen comes from the electricity," he says. "What a Battolyser® can do is when power prices are low, it produces hydrogen, but when power prices are high, it can stop producing hydrogen. Something that other technologies cannot do. It can also deliver the electricity back to the grid and therefore creating an additional income stream for customers.”
Last year, the first industrial-scale Battolyser® system was installed at a Dutch power plant, for field testing. The hydrogen produced is used to cool gas turbine bearings. Now, production facilities are being ramped up for commercial deployment. Industries, ranging from oil refineries to mobility companies, are being targeted, says Mattijs Slee, CEO of Battolyser Systems: “The energy transition needs to basically go fast because that is important for the climate change, and it needs to be affordable, and I think we can do both.
Company-led transition
The company plans to build its first-large scale factory at the Port of Rotterdam, a welcome development for Boudewijn Siemons, CEO, Port of Rotterdam Authority: “We need the existing companies to do the transition and we need new companies that fill the gaps," he says. "In the future, the energy system will be decentralised. We’ll need batteries and hydrogen production. And the fact that Battolyser® combines the two of these is really a new offering in this new energy market.”
A finance deal worth 40 million euros has been signed with the European Investment Bank for the scale-up in production. It’s backed by a guarantee from the InvestEU Fund and in addition the project benefits from 2 million euros from the EU’s Just Transition Fund. It is now hoped the technology, developed in the Netherlands, will start rolling out from later this year.