ArcelorMittal makes US$5 million investment in H2Pro via XCarb innovation fund

25 January 2022, 20:00 CET

ArcelorMittal (‘the Company’) today announces it has made a US$5 million investment in H2Pro through its XCarb innovation fund, bringing the fund’s total investment commitments to US$180 million since its launch in March 2021.

The investment is part of a US$75 million Series B fundraise by H2Pro, with other investors including Temasek, Horizons Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Yara.

H2Pro is developing a disruptive way of producing hydrogen from water. Similar to electrolysis, its technology, E-TAC (Electrochemical – Thermally Activated Chemical), uses electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Unlike conventional electrolysis however, hydrogen and oxygen are generated separately in different steps – an Electrochemical step and a Thermally Activated Chemical step.

The technology was developed at Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. E-TAC water splitting offers energy efficiency of over 95%, significantly higher than traditional water electrolysis technologies which typically deliver energy efficiency of around 70%. E-TAC is also expected to prove more cost effective than traditional electrolysis, with CAPEX costs anticipated to be broadly halved, alongside lower operational costs. H2Pro is targeting producing hydrogen at a cost of under US$2/kg by 2023, when its first commercial, megawatt scale project is anticipated to move into production, and at a cost of under US$1/kg by 2030.

H2Pro was founded in 2019 by three leading hydrogen experts from Technion, Dr. Hen Dotan, Professor Gideon Grader and Professor Avner Rothschild, and Talmon Marco. Talmon previously co-founded Viber, a messaging app which was acquired by Rakuten Inc. for US$900 million in 2014, and co-founded and led ride-hailing app Juno until it was bought by Gett Inc. for US$200 million in 2017.

Commenting, Pinakin Chaubal, chief technology officer, ArcelorMittal said:

“The potential green hydrogen holds to deliver deep decarbonisation of the steelmaking process is well understood. Although the technology required to directly reduce iron ore using hydrogen still needs to mature, the greater challenge with this new method of ironmaking is the cost and availability of the energy input – green hydrogen.

“Given H2Pro’s focus on developing a novel technology which aims to produce green hydrogen in an energy efficient manner at competitive costs, it is a very welcome and natural addition to our XCarb innovation fund investment portfolio. Although at an early stage, E-TAC is a very exciting technology and we look forward to working with the H2Pro team as it seeks to move it into commercial production.”