Centrica has secured a minority stake in hydrogen production technology firm HiiROC as part of a £26 million fund raise by the startup.
While it would not confirm how much of a stake it had purchased in the company, Centrica has said there is scope to grow the partnership “significantly” in the coming years.
HiiROC said its proprietary technology converts methane into clean hydrogen and carbon black – a form of solid carbon used in tyres, building materials and as a soil enhancer.
The company said it does this through an electrolysis process using thermal plasma, producing “turquoise” hydrogen at a comparable cost to steam methane reforming but without the carbon dioxide emissions and using only one fifth of the energy required for water electrolysis.
It said the technology can be placed wherever hydrogen is needed, thereby using existing infrastructure and avoiding storage and transport costs.
HiiROC said its latest funding will be used to expand the deployment of pilot units into more customer segments ahead of a wider rollout. It said the modular units can be used in transport and heating, as well as on a larger scale in decarbonising gas-fired power stations and for hydrogen blending in the grid.
The initial pilots include projects at EPi’s biomethane pilot plant in Chelmsford and with Northern Gas Networks as part of its hydrogen programme.
Greg McKenna, managing director of Centrica Business Solutions, said: “We see a huge role for hydrogen across Centrica, from domestic boilers in people’s kitchens to combined heat and power units powering data centres and hospitals.
“There remains a great deal of work to be done to make hydrogen affordable, sustainable and available at scale, but HiiROC’s technology demonstrates that this can be achieved sooner rather than later. We think that there is scope to grow our partnership significantly over the coming years.”
Tim Davies, HiiROC’s chief executive, said: “We are now very well positioned to move to commercialisation and are excited to have Centrica as a partner, bringing the breadth and depth of expertise required to operationalise our transformative technology.”