Per month: 10,000 green hydrogen generators

Clean­tech com­pa­ny Enapter (WKN A255G0) today cel­e­brat­ed the ground­break­ing of its series pro­duc­tion of elec­trol­y­sers for the gen­er­a­tion of green hydro­gen. The 82,000-square-meter Enapter Cam­pus will be built in the North Rhine-West­phalian cli­mate com­mu­ni­ty of Saer­beck and will run entire­ly on local­ly gen­er­at­ed renew­able ener­gy. Enapter’s goal is to ini­tial­ly mul­ti­ply its pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty to 10,000 elec­trol­y­sers per month to meet the rapid­ly grow­ing demand for low-cost hydro­gen pro­duc­tion solutions.

“To mas­sive­ly reduce the cost of pro­duc­ing green hydro­gen and meet glob­al cli­mate goals, we need to rapid­ly scale exist­ing tech­nolo­gies now. Our entire DNA is focused on urgency in research, devel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­iza­tion: The Cam­pus is our cli­mate con­tri­bu­tion under the mot­to ‘Act, don’t talk’. Scaled pro­duc­tion of mod­u­lar, com­pact AEM elec­trolyz­ers for projects of any scale will make a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to address­ing the cli­mate crisis.”

- Sebas­t­ian-Jus­tus Schmidt, CEO

Accord­ing to cur­rent plans, the cam­pus will cost around 105 mil­lion euros. Con­struc­tion part­ner Gold­beck will build at an ambi­tious pace so that pro­duc­tion can begin grad­u­al­ly in the fourth quar­ter of 2022. The first cus­tomer deliv­er­ies from series pro­duc­tion are sched­uled for 2023. The devel­op­ment is expect­ed to cre­ate around 300 jobs in Saerbeck.

Auto­mat­ed mass pro­duc­tion of elec­trolyz­ers will enable Enapter to reduce the cost of the devices and thus quick­ly make green hydro­gen com­pet­i­tive with fos­sil fuels. The devel­op­ment of the machines need­ed for mass pro­duc­tion was fund­ed by the Min­istry of Eco­nom­ic Affairs, Inno­va­tion, Dig­i­tal­iza­tion and Ener­gy of North Rhine-West­phalia with around 9.36 mil­lion euros.

“With the com­pa­ny, North Rhine-West­phalia has gained a strong part­ner to dri­ve for­ward the cli­mate-friend­ly trans­for­ma­tion of our indus­try, sup­port the achieve­ment of cli­mate pro­tec­tion tar­gets and attract new jobs to the region,” said Prof. Dr. Andreas Pinkwart, NRW State Min­is­ter for Eco­nom­ic Affairs, Inno­va­tion, Dig­i­tal­iza­tion and Energy.

The Group already sup­plies more than 70 inte­gra­tors and project devel­op­ers in 40 coun­tries with its patent­ed AEM (Anion Exchange Mem­brane) elec­trolyz­ers, which are stan­dard­ized but flex­i­ble for many appli­ca­tions. Start­ing in 2022, Enapter will offer the first megawatt-scale AEM elec­trolyz­er — the con­tainer­ized AEM Mul­ti­core — equipped with 420 of its AEM elec­trol­y­sis stacks.

“We were very impressed by the dynam­ic approach in the fight against glob­al warm­ing,” said Jan-Hen­drik Gold­beck, CEO of the fam­i­ly-owned con­struc­tion com­pa­ny. “We’re proud and delight­ed to work with them on the build, help­ing to rapid­ly scale their elec­trolyz­er production.”