Tokyo Gas Co., Ltd. through its wholly owned subsidiary Acario Investment One, LLC, has become the first Japanese energy company to invest in H2U Technologies, Inc. (CEO: Jourdan Urbach), a US startup company that has unique, highly efficient catalyst discovery technology to reduce the cost of PEM water electrolysis equipment and has signed a letter of intent to collaborate with the company.
The development of water electrolysis equipment is progressing around the world in an effort to realize a decarbonized society. One of these methods, the PEM water electrolysis method, uses iridium, a rare metal that is very expensive and has a limited supply, in the electrodes, so in order to reduce costs, there is an urgent need to develop a new catalyst that is inexpensive and does not use rare metals as an alternative.
Tokyo Gas and H2U have been working together on the joint development of low cost, high-performance non-iridium catalysts since February 2023. As part of the two companies’ efforts, they have synthesized approximately 20,000 catalyst samples per year and evaluated their performance and durability, while also conducting searches using AI (artificial intelligence) based on the accumulated evaluation database.
Through this investment and collaboration, we will broaden the scope of our search for new catalysts and search for catalysts with higher performance. We will also accelerate the implementation of non-iridium catalysts in water electrolysis equipment, aiming to quickly realize low-cost hydrogen production.
Tokyo Gas Press Release: 20240701-01e.pdf (tokyo-gas.co.jp)