As well as developing marine engines capable of operating on green future alternative fuels such as hydrogen, MAN Energy Solutions aims to take a leading position in the production of green hydrogen as a fuel.
Over the next few years, plans to invest up to €500m in its subsidiary H-Tec Systems to transform the hydrogen specialist into a mass-producer of PEM electrolysers as quickly as possible.
Uwe Lauber, CEO MAN Energy Solutions, said: “Our plan is clear. We are transforming H-Tec Systems into one of the world’s leading players in the field of PEM electrolysis. Over the next five to ten years, green hydrogen will become one of the most important primary energy sources for the global economy as it continues to decarbonise. With PEM electrolysis, H-Tec Systems has mastered one of the most important processes for industrially scaled hydrogen production from renewable energy sources. The technology is mature and has already been placed on the market successfully. The next step is therefore to scale and set up highly automated serial production – and we would like to make rapid progress with this.”
On its way to becoming a market leader, the company not only benefits from a global sales network and the experience that MAN Energy Solutions has in major projects, but also from direct access to the expertise and experience of the Volkswagen Group, especially in matters relating to production scaling and the supplier-based series production business.
Gunnar Kilian, Chairman of the MAN Energy Solutions Supervisory Board and Member of the Board of Volkswagen, said: “On the path toward achieving climate neutrality, hydrogen plays a key role for sectors such as international shipping or industrial processes in which direct electrification is not possible. It is therefore essential for our subsidiary MAN Energy Solutions to continue to strengthen its strategic position in the future market for power-to-X technology and synthetic fuels with investment in hydrogen production. Only by coordinating our efforts will we achieve our shared objective of climate neutrality. MAN Energy Solutions is playing an important role in this regard.”
H-Tec Systems has developed integrated container solutions in the megawatt range. The specialist is restructuring its management team to implement the growth strategy, which has now been approved.
New CEO of H-Tec Systems and former head of turbomachinery service at MAN Robin von Plettenberg said: “The market for hydrogen production from renewable energy sources is currently focused on decentralised production and local use. Over the next few years, we will see increasingly larger projects, such as those for integrating entire wind farms. We are increasingly expecting projects on a scale of over 100 MW and, in the medium term, are also predicting structural changes in the market for multi-gigawatt large-scale plants, which are used in particular to export hydrogen and supply industrial sectors worldwide.”
Other plans include a significant increase in staff of the company based in Augsburg and the Braak municipality in Schleswig-Holstein.
