Thursday 14 July 2022

Amazon invests in green hydrogen companies

Amazon’s $2 billion (£1.68bn) Climate Pledge Fund has invested into two green hydrogen companies, looking to decarbonise transport and steel production.

The beneficiaries are Electric Hydrogen and Sunfire, American and European builders of electrolysers – the technology required to make green hydrogen using both water and renewable electricity.

Amazon set up the Climate Pledge in 2019 – and it has had more than 300 signatories since, including PepsiCo, Siemens and Microsoft.

The company has stated that more than 95% of hydrogen today is made using fossil fuels – mostly from natural gas – and these new investments are aimed at changing the landscape; making hydrogen a clean alternative for the energy industry.

Previous companies that the Climate Pledge has invested in are now thriving in their industries, including electric vehicle (EV) maker Rivian, EV battery recycling company Redwood Materials and ZeroAvia, which focuses on decarbonising aviation.

Kara Hurst, Vice President of Worldwide Sustainability at Amazon, said: “We are proud to be investing in visionary companies like Electric Hydrogen and Sunfire that are developing vital technology for the deployment of green hydrogen to help decarbonise hard-to-abate sectors.”

On their investment, Electric Hydrogen CEO, Raffi Garabedian commented: “Amazon and the Climate Pledge Fund have a clear and expansive vision of the role that green hydrogen will play in decarbonising their operations.

“We look forward to collaborating on fossil-free hydrogen projects as we advance toward commercialisation.”

“Sunfire today is one of the few companies capable of providing hydrogen-producing systems on an industrial scale. With Amazon’s help, we want to further scale up our production capacity,” added Nils Aldag, Sunfire CEO.