MAN plans to turn H-TEC into a “mass producer” of polymer electrolyte membrane electrolysers, units which split water into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity.
Uwe Lauber, CEO of MAN Energy Solutions, said: “Over the next five to ten years, green hydrogen will become one of the most important primary energy sources for the global economy as it continues to decarbonize.”
Green hydrogen is created by electrolysis using electricity from renewable sources and is distinct from brown, grey and blue hydrogen which are created using fossil fuels.
“The technology is mature and has already been placed on the market successfully. The next step is therefore to scale and set up highly automated serial production – and we would like to make rapid progress with this,” said Lauber.
The switch to growth mode for H-TEC will involve a management restructuring. The new c-suite will comprise: Robin von Plettenberg as CEO and CSO; Frank Zimmermann as CFO; Marius Zasche as CTO and COO. The company plans to hire “several hundred” staff in the next few years.
Von Plettenberg said the company was position itself for a shift in focus for hydrogen production.
“The market for hydrogen production from renewable energy sources is currently focused on decentralized production and local use. Over the next few years, we will see increasingly larger projects, such as those for integrating entire wind farms. We are increasingly expecting projects on a scale of over 100 megawatts and, in the medium term, are also predicting structural changes in the market for multi-gigawatt large-scale plants, which are used in particular to export hydrogen and supply industrial sectors worldwide,” said Von Plettenberg.
MAN has the support of owner Volkswagen group. Chairman of the supervisory board of MAN Energy Solutions and member of the board of Volkswagen AG, Gunnar Kilian, said: “On the path toward achieving climate neutrality, hydrogen plays a key role for sectors such as international shipping or industrial processes in which direct electrification is not possible. It is therefore essential for our subsidiary MAN Energy Solutions to continue to strengthen its strategic position in the future market for power-to-X technology and synthetic fuels with investment in hydrogen production. Only by coordinating our efforts will we achieve our shared objective of climate neutrality. MAN Energy Solutions is playing an important role in this regard.”
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