Eternal Power, a Hamburg-based cleantech company, aims to become a leading manufacturer of green hydrogen.
The company sees itself as a hydrogen generalist, covering the entire value chain from electrolysis to transport. Experts believe that the hydrogen market needs to be ramped up twice as fast as the liquefied natural gas (LNG) market. While it took 60 years for a trading volume of 350 million tons of LNG to be reached, it is estimated that around 150 million tons of green hydrogen will be needed – but in half the time.
According to Robert Meitz, a member of the Eternal Power founding team, infrastructure, transport, storage, and electrolysis capacities must be massively expanded to meet the high demand for green hydrogen. “We expect to be one of the first companies to produce green hydrogen in Germany by 2025 and to be able to deliver it to customers in this country,” says Meitz.
An important factor for a rapid ramp-up of the green hydrogen economy is the expansion of electrolysis systems. These systems use green electricity to convert water into hydrogen, and the global electrolysis capacity was only around 500 megawatts in 2021. The International Energy Agency estimates that it must grow to over 3,500 gigawatts by 2050 to produce over 300 million tons of hydrogen. In Germany alone, electrolysis capacities are to be expanded to 50 gigawatts by 2050.
Eternal Power focuses on large international projects that generate long-term cost advantages. The company has already concluded initial partnerships in Turkey, Vietnam, and Latin America, and is working on the development of international projects with a production capacity of one gigawatt. Meitz estimates that around 70 to 80 percent of Germany’s hydrogen requirements will have to be covered by imports in the future due to the sluggish expansion and high costs of renewable electricity.
The demand for green hydrogen is enormous and will continue to exceed supply well after 2030, creating investment security for companies. However, there is competition for the best production sites, and prices may even rise over the next three years. Governments around the world have passed enormous funding programs to support the green hydrogen economy, including the H2Global Foundation in Germany and the Inflation Reduction Act in the USA.
While the future of the hydrogen economy has been discussed for a long time, it is only now that the marathon has truly begun. Eternal Power and other cleantech companies like HH2E play a crucial role in approaching customers in a targeted manner to meet the high demand for green hydrogen. The industrial need for decarbonization is gigantic, and very many countries are currently setting up their hydrogen market.
Assessment by Martin Jendrischik, Cleanthinking.de: The analysis from Eternal Power is valuable because it shows that green hydrogen should be used only where electrification or other alternatives are not available. The competition for the best production sites will be fierce, and the hydrogen economy is a marathon that has just begun.
