By Nicholas Earl
A fund targeting green hydrogen has raised €2bn to invest in projects as it looks to harness the West’s transition to zero-carbon energy.
Hy24 has announced the closing of the Clean H2 Infra Fund, with the strategy exceeding the €1.5bn target it had set when it launched in October.
The hydrogen fund is supported by global companies and financial institutions including TotalEnergies, Baker Hughes and Axa.
The successful fundraise reflects growing investor interest in hydrogen, and follows fund manager Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners announced a €3bn close on its clean hydrogen fund last month.
Hy24 is a joint venture between French private equity group Ardian and Zurich-based FiveT Hydrogen, an investment manager specialising in hydrogen investments.
Its fund is focused on scaling proven hydrogen technologies for mature infrastructure assets and aims to play a major role in decarbonising the global economy
The strategy was launched just a year ago, and the fund is already the world’s largest pureplay clean hydrogen infrastructure product dedicated to the entire clean hydrogen value chain
Pierre-Etienne Franc, co-founder and CEO of Hy24, said: “With €2bn of commitments, this fund will spur on the deployment of up to €20 billion in assets of strategic value to the industry in the next six years, performing for our investors and helping to decarbonize the global economy. This creates the right support for the new and critical hydrogen policy frameworks in our key geographies.”
Hy24 targets mega green hydrogen investment
Hy24 aims to mobilise up to €20bn of investment capacity over the next six years through financial support and sector know-how drawn from its major strategic investors and and senior team
The capital raised through the fund has already started to be deployed.
For instance, fund has acquired a 30 per cent stake in Enagás Renovable, a developer of renewable hydrogen projects, and a subsidiary of Enagás, the Spanish Transmission System operator.
Green hydrogen uses renewable energy to power electrolysers that separate water into its atomic constituents of oxygen and hydrogen.
The power source is increasingly viewed in Europe a viable replacement for some Russian gas,
In the EU’s new energy blueprint REpowerEU, it plans to use 20m tonnes of hydrogen over the current decade, half of which would be produced within the bloc.
Its executive arm, the European Commission in July approved €5.4bn in funding for hydrogen projects of “common European interest”.
Closer to home, the UK is targeting 10GW of generation by the end of the decade, to meet energy needs such as power heavy good vehicles and supplementing wind and solar.
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