Hygen to develop clean energy projects
- £27 million funding round enables company to deliver new projects and develop its strong pipeline of opportunities
- Hygen Energy aiming to have first gas flowing in early 2024
- Hygen is the production partner to Ryze Hydrogen, which distributes and sells clean hydrogen
- Company expects to raise further capital in 2023 to fund its next round of projects.
Energy pioneer Hygen is set to deliver its first clean hydrogen projects after raising £27 million in funding from HYCAP.
The funding will also allow Hygen to further develop its pipeline of more than 300MW of projects across the UK in advance of a second round of funding scheduled for the second half of 2023.
HyGen Energy Holdings Limited (Hygen) is a joint venture between clean energy pioneer Jo Bamford, and Armstrong Capital Management. The new company will build, own and operate commercial scale hydrogen production facilities across the UK to help the UK match its net zero ambitions.
Last month, it was announced that gas distributor Northern Gas Networks (NGN) had partnered with Hygen and Ryze Hydrogen to work on an ambitious low carbon hydrogen production and dispensing facility in the heart of Bradford.
NGN, the gas distributor for the North East, Cumbria and much of Yorkshire, is carrying out the project in a Joint Venture with the two companies. The project will be built on NGN’s decommissioned gas storage site of Bowling Back Lane in the heart of Bradford. It will deliver one of the UK’s largest low carbon hydrogen production facilities with a clear objective of using renewable energy to power an electrolyser which will produce clean hydrogen. The site will also have on-site refuelling for hydrogen vehicles, EV charging, and a low carbon technology education centre. Residents and businesses in West Yorkshire will be able to use the refuelling facilities, with Ryze supplying hydrogen to transport and industrial users across the region.
Hygen’s short-term focus is to produce hydrogen for Ryze to supply to transport, as these projects can benefit from subsidiesunder the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO), enabling well designed hydrogen projects to be cost competitive with diesel.
Hygen expects to be producing hydrogen in the first quarter of 2024, making it one of the earliest commercial clean hydrogen facilities in the UK. One hundred percent of the hydrogen produced is expected to meet the low carbon hydrogen standard.
Andrew Newman, Managing Director at HyGen said: “This is an important milestone for the Company. We now have the firepower to start to deliver the extensive pipeline of opportunities that Jo Bamford has been originating over the last few years.
“We have a number of exciting opportunities in the pipeline and look forward to announcing further developments in the New Year.”
About HYCAP
HyCap has a key focus on investing in the emerging green hydrogen economy and their investment strategy is to match supply and demand for hydrogen, with a focus on demand origination allowing the market to scale rapidly.
About Ryze
Ryze supplies organisations wanting to decarbonise their solutions through the use of clean hydrogen. For heavy-duty vehicle and long-range fleet operators through to industry and domestic energy users, Ryze provides a simple and affordable conversion to hydrogen to lower emissions.