Raised through Series A funding led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV), the company has said the funds will accelerate the scale up of its integrated membrane reactor and membrane separation technologies to obtain fuel cell purity hydrogen.

H2 View understands the technology to produce hydrogen from ammonia or methanol cracking could also enable transportation in existing natural gas infrastructure.

H2SITE has said the capital will also be used to increase its membrane manufacturing capabilities at its plant in the North of Spain.

Andrés Galnares, CEO of H2SITE, said, “While much focus is given to hydrogen generation cost reduction, less attention is given to reduction of hydrogen transport cost. Transporting hydrogen is a complex task, it being a small molecule that is difficult to contain.

“The current compression, storage, decompression, and transport solutions are both economically and environmentally inefficient.”

Equinor Ventures, ENGIE New Ventures, TECNALIA and institutional investors from the Basque Country (Capital Riesgo País Vasco (EZTEN FCR) and Seed Capital Bizkaia (SCB)), are all said to have participated in the funding round.

The funding has received praise from European officials as the continent grapples with challenges of scaling up its hydrogen production and deployment to meet its REPowerEU targets of producing 10 million tonnes of renewable hydrogen annually by 2030.

Read more: REPowerEU: €34-49bn needed for hydrogen infrastructure

Mariya Gabriel, European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, said, “This investment by BEV is much needed. The hydrogen economy needs to take off and I believe investments such as the current one may indeed be one of the triggers we’re waiting for.

“Facilitating hydrogen transport will be important to scale-it-up. This shows that public funds can be married with private funds successfully, as happened with BEV. Investments in the energy transition must however take place at an even faster pace if we want to succeed in our climate ambition.”

Carmichael Roberts, founder and Managing Partner at BEV, commented, “Hydrogen is a promising pathway to decarbonise many parts of the economy but transporting it remains one of the biggest challenges.

“H2SITE has developed a solution that solves the transportation issue and will change the game for how quickly hydrogen can be deployed in already established pipelines which in turn could save billions of dollars in infrastructure costs.”