Electrolyzers' production: "Milestone for the hydrogen ramp-up"

 

"The most important component for the production of the green gas is now being manufactured in Hamburg. But Chinese manufacturers could soon overtake German manufacturers.

 

The heart of the plants for producing green hydrogen will now be produced in Hamburg. The company Quest One opened a factory in the Rahlstedt district on Monday where it plans to manufacture stacks for electrolyzers in series and automatically. 

 

By next year, the company wants to achieve a production volume of one gigawatt, and by 2030, five gigawatts are to roll off the production line every year.

 

 Quest One boss Robin von Plettenberg spoke to more than 800 guests about "one of the world's most modern locations for the research, development and production of electrolysis technology in Europe". Proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysis is considered one of the most important processes for producing hydrogen from renewable energies.

The company was previously known as H-Tec Systems. The new name is intended to clarify its goal: "One" stands for the goal of using its own technology to help avoid one percent of global CO2 emissions by 2050. This, in turn, is a "quest," said von Plettenberg, a "mammoth task" and "a huge incentive." The beginnings go back to a scientific project launched in 1997. The company now has 550 employees. Of these, around 350 employees in Augsburg are involved in the production of electrolyzers, while around 200 employees in Hamburg manufacture the stacks, the heart of the systems.

 

Automation instead of manual work

 

MAN Energy Solutions is investing up to 500 million euros in the new factory and the market ramp-up over the next few years. With this commitment, Quest One became an almost 100 percent subsidiary of MAN Energy Solutions in 2021 and thus also part of the VW Group. Quest One expects to benefit from its proximity to these two companies - be it in terms of a global sales network, experience in heavy industry or the scaling of production. The ramp-up depends not only on demand, but also on the success of series production. So far, the fuel cells have been processed into stacks by hand, which takes several hours. 

 

With automation in the new factory, this process should be shortened to 45 minutes.

 

German industry will urgently need green hydrogen in the coming years to decarbonize its plants. The demand for fertilizer and steel production, for example, or aviation and shipping is enormous and is increasing massively, emphasized von Plettenberg. Analysts see the market growing to 500 to 600 million tons per year by 2050. The majority of German demand is to be imported in the future, but a small part will also be produced in Germany - this is where the stacks from Hamburg come into play. The high hopes placed on the plant were also reflected in the number of prominent figures who travelled north on Monday. Chancellor Olaf Scholz praised the project as a "real milestone for the rapid ramp-up of hydrogen in Germany", and Hamburg's First Mayor Peter Tschentscher sees his city on the way to becoming the "leading hydrogen location in Germany".

 

EU rules against China

 

Europe is in danger of losing its competitive advantages and falling behind China and the USA. In an as yet unpublished study available to the FAZ, the strategy consultancy BCG describes that the European hydrogen industry is currently still benefiting from advanced materials science, consistent system efficiency and a longer service life of the systems. The better quality of the individual components means that Western electrolyzers can still produce green hydrogen ten to 15 percent cheaper than the competition from China. 

 

However, in just three to five years, foreign suppliers could surpass the European industry in terms of costs, quality and performance, warns BCG.

 

In China, around 1,000 new patent families have been created in recent years thanks to targeted funding - around three times more than in Europe.

 

The EU Commission is also using protectionist measures to fight against increasing competition and is making access to components from China more difficult, as was announced on Monday. Projects that are awarded funding in the European Hydrogen Bank's second auction worth 1.2 billion euros at the beginning of December are therefore not allowed to source more than 25 percent of their electrolysis stacks from China."

 

Nobody cares in the EU about the threat of baking the Earth... We only care about power and money.