One of the leading publicly traded hydrogen companies in North America has landed new funding from the government of Canada. And they are going to use it to prove out new technologies for producing synthetic fuel.
What’s happening:
- Sustainable energy technology company FuelCell (NASDAQ: FCEL) has announced that the Natural Resources Canada’s Clean Fuels Fund will finance $4.9M CAD of two of FuelCell’s new projects focused on producing synthetic fuel
The big idea:
- FuelCell Energy has developed proprietary technology around fuel cells and electrolysis that makes it possible to produce low carbon synthetic diesel fuels using zero carbon hydrogen
- Once synthetic fuels are produced they are then able be used as a replacement or blended into existing fuels such as gasoline, diesel or heating oil to significantly lower their cumulative carbon emissions
Why it matters:
- The government of Canada has been making moves a flurry of moves to support early stage companies and deepen their investment into natural resources, energy transition minerals and even quantum computing
By the numbers:
- FuelCell Energy has produced more than 15M megawatt hours of electricity through their hydrogen plants since inception
Going deeper:
- FuelCell’s initial project is attempting to prove out the viability of producing synthetic diesel fuels using synthetic gas that is generated from biomass gasification and then combined with hydrogen that is produced through solid state electrolysis
- The second project from FuelCell will be a demonstration of synthetic gas production through co-electrolysis, which will leverage FuelCell’s proprietary electrolyzer and capture carbon dioxide emissions from an operational cement plant
The intrigue:
- Producing low carbon fuel through technology has been a rising trend, with Gevo (NASDAQ: GEVO) recently launching a partnership to provide low carbon intensity blend stock to Shell’s race cars and Clean Energy Fuels (NASDAQ: CLNE) previously bringing their commercial scale gas digester into production to produce renewable natural gas from manure
