Earth Day 2021: Going All in on Green Hydrogen

In 2020, Plug Power solidified its global leadership position in green hydrogen solutions and built the foundation to lead the emerging $10T hydrogen economy. We are the largest user of liquid hydrogen – in fact, we do a refueling every 3 seconds! Even more so, we’ve made a significant commitment to be a major player in the generation of green hydrogen with plans to achieve 500T of capacity daily in the US by 2025, 1,000T globally by 2028.

This year’s Earth Day, we pose the question – are we building out this green hydrogen network to support multiple applications; or are we building applications for material handling, on-road vehicles, data centers and beyond, to support selling green hydrogen?

Our conclusion – they are wildly mixed together! Let’s explore this…

Green hydrogen is produced by electrolyzers, which use electricity to split water into its constituent molecules, hydrogen and oxygen. When renewable energy powers the process, the result is 100% emissions-free hydrogen. Simply put, no other energy source is as clean, versatile or efficient as green hydrogen.

We made two significant acquisitions in 2020 to support our green hydrogen pursuits – GinerELX and United Hydrogen.  GinerELX has the best PEM stack technology in the world.  United Hydrogen is the first company ever to build a green hydrogen plant in the US, based in Tennessee . Between these two, we have the ability to build plants using Plug Power electrolyzers for green hydrogen production.

 We recognize that in the end, our customers are demanding green hydrogen, which , in fact, is critical to reaching net zero, especially in the logistics industry.

Our green hydrogen generation activity is already in progress!

–          In New York State, Plug Power is building a 45 TPD green hydrogen plant. This is the largest green hydrogen plant in Western NY, and will use 120 MW of Plug Power’s PEM electrolyzers to make hydrogen using hydropower.

–          Plug Power is building a 10 TPD green hydrogen plant in Pennsylvania with Brookfield Renewables using hydropower.

–          With  APEX Clean Energy we are using wind power to generate green hydrogen at a 30 TPD plant.

By year’s end, Plug Power will have more than 120 tons of green energy projects under construction as we build the first pure green hydrogen network across the United States.

Certainly, the benefits of green hydrogen expand beyond borders –and so does the Plug Power vision. We’re working with SK Group to form a joint venture in South Korea to manufacture  and sell products across the entire green hydrogen value chain, including an electrolyzer gigafactory. South Korea targets 6 million fuel cell vehicles on-road in 2040.

In Europe, Plug Power is partnering with leaders like Groupe Renault to build new markets for hydrogen ecosystem solutions, such as fuel cell powered light commercial vehicles. This JV has an ambition to have over 30% of the European light commercial vehicle market in 2030. And we continue to push boundaries by developing hydrogen solutions for emerging use cases like air travel through our work with Universal Hydrogen on fuel-cell-based powertrains.

This is just the beginning. We plan to look back on Earth Day in 5 and 10 years to reflect on this pivotal moment for our company and the green hydrogen economy. Until then, we are committed to advancing the clean energy transition through innovation, collaboration and the unrivaled expertise of the Plug Power team. We’re all in. It’s who we are.

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