Germany's Sunfire gets 109 million euros to boost green hydrogen supply

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Germany's Sunfire gets 109 million euros to boost green hydrogen supply

FRANKFURT, Oct 18 Reuters - Germany's Sunfire, a Dresden-based clean technology company, announced on Monday that it has secured 109 million euros - $126 million of funding to boost its role in fast expanding markets for renewable hydrogen derived from green hydrogen derived from renewable sources like wind or solar.

Sunfire, a manufacturer of electrolysis plants, whose shareholders include Total and Neste, said the money was raised from private equity investor Lightrock, Planet First Partners PFP based in London, Carbon Direct based in New York and British HydrogenOne Capital which is supported by chemical and energy group INEOS Goldman Sachs Bank Europe served as exclusive financial adviser and placement agent to Sunfire, it said.

Our electrolysis technologies are critical for increasing the green hydrogen supply that is needed to decarbonise industrial companies at significant scale, said Chief Executive Nils Aldag.

The European Union and Germany aim to create a non-fossilifuel hydrogen industry based on green sources as part of its decarbonization strategy.

Electrolysers are a crucial part of that industry as they use electrical current from wind and solar plants to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

In this way surplus renewable energy production can be stored on gas networks and caverns and the hydrogen can be used in industry, energy, heating buildings or fuelling fuel cell vehicles.

Conventional or grey hydrogen is currently produced using renewable fuels in a different process and serves a smaller range of industrial applications that can be considered when its green counterpart arrives at large scale.

In October, Sunfire announced it would expand its alkaline production capacity to at least 500 megawatts MW per annum from 40 MW at present.

Demand for electrolysis capacity in the EU is expected to increase by 2030 from currently under 1000 MW to 40,000 MW, said AP.

Sunfire has expertise in both alkaline pressure electrolysis method and high temperature electrolysis method, called solid oxide electrolyser cells SOEC which equips it to respond to a wide range of different use cases.