Fortescue has led a $US380m funding round for California-based electrolyser company Electric Hydrogen, pushing the latter’s valuation to $US1bn.
The investment round included a number of high profile names including BP Ventures, Temasek, Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund and the United Airlines’ Sustainable Flight Fund.
The other co-lead investors were Fifth Wall and Energy Impact Partners.
Electric Hydrogen (EH2) was founded in 2020 and expects to ship its first 100MW electrolyser next year.
Fortescue said separate to the investment in the company. it had also signed a framework procurement agreement for the supply of one gigawatt of EH2’s electrolyser systems to Fortescue’s green hydrogen projects in the US and globally.
“Each EH2 electrolyser system can make nearly 50 tons of green hydrogen per day at transformational low cost,’’ Fortescue said on Wednesday.
Fortescue Energy chief executive Mark Hutchinson said green hydrogen was critical to the company’s mission to help heavy industry decarbonise.
“Right now there are not enough electrolysers in the world to support the amount of green hydrogen we are set to produce,’’ he said.
“That is why we are partnering with other world leaders in this space to secure our green energy supply chain, and we’re excited to invest and secure capacity with Electric Hydrogen to help us achieve our goals.
“Electric Hydrogen, just like Fortescue, is working at the speed and scale necessary to help deliver green hydrogen projects around the world and stop the need for fossil fuels.’’
EH2 has raised more than $US600m since it was founded, with other major companies investing including Amazon and Honeywell.
The company raised $US198m in June last year, with Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, Equinor Ventures, Honeywell, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Rio Tinto taking part in that round.
Fortescue did not divulge the size of its investment in the Series C round.
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