Dive Brief:
- Verdagy received a $39.6 million grant from the Department of Energy to accelerate the production of high-volume advanced alkaline water electrolyzers, according to a March 14 press release.
- The green hydrogen electrolysis company started operations at its 100,000-square-foot factory in Newark, California, in Q1 and will start shipping from the facility in 2025. Verdagy also plans to double the facility’s employees by this summer.
- The grant is part of the DOE’s latest efforts to increase mass adoption of green hydrogen in the U.S. and decarbonize use in industries like chemicals, ammonia and fertilizer, steel and e-fuels.
Dive Insight:
The DOE grant advances Verdagy’s goal of manufacturing the industry’s lowest levelized cost of hydrogen at a scalable level too, company CEO Marty Neese said in the press release.
“Our new Silicon Valley manufacturing facility will accelerate the production and cost reduction of our eDynamic 20 megawatt electrolyzer module, which is the basic building block for delivering larger, gigawatt-scale plants,” he said.
The factory was announced in September 2023, and will be the first in the U.S. to produce advanced alkaline water electrolyzers in large volumes, according to the company. Verdagy also has a R&D facility in Moss Landing, California.
Verdagy also committed to achieving the DOE’s goal of $2 per kilogram of levelized cost target for green hydrogen by 2026. The California-based manufacturer was one of eight companies that received grants for low-cost and high-throughput electrolyzer manufacturing projects.
Last week, the department announced $750 million in funding for 52 projects, including Verdagy's electrolyzer manufacturing project, across 24 states to significantly reduce the cost of clean hydrogen.
The state of California is also interested in becoming a hydrogen hub. Gov. Gavin Newsom launched the Hydrogen Market Development Strategy last August, which looks at new financing models, changes to permitting processes and procurement initiatives to deplore more hydrogen projects in the state.
“We are focused on building an entire renewable hydrogen ecosystem in California to achieve our climate goals – including the crucial step of manufacturing electrolyzers,” Dee Dee Myers, senior advisor to Gov. Newsom and director of the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, said in a statement.
