By Nora Buli
OSLO (Reuters) - Norwegian electrolyser company Hystar will build a new factory outside Oslo from next year while also planning to expand into North America to benefit from investment incentives, it said on Monday.
Electrolysers produce green hydrogen by splitting water with the use of electricity, allowing for the decarbonisation of industry sectors that cannot switch to electricity outright.
Hystar, which has secured financial backing from Japanese industrials Mitsubishi and Nippon Steel Trading, says its technology will use 10% less energy compared to currently available models and is easy to scale up.
The company will build a factory able to produce 4 gigawatts of electrolyser capacity a year, in Hoevik outside Oslo, in early 2024, which will be fully operational by 2026, it said.
It already operates a small research and production facility at the site, which can assemble 50 MW of electrolyser capacity, with first deliveries slated for later this year.
Global electrolyser manufacturing capacity reached nearly 11 GW per year in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency.
In addition to expanding its European operations and meeting the demand for its technology there, Hystar is also planning an expansion into North America, Hystar's CEO Fredrik Mowill said.
The company is looking to set up a North America headquarters in 2024 and plans to build a multi-gigawatt factory by 2027.
"Both the U.S. and Canada have attractive incentives on offer, demonstrating a clear commitment to providing our industry with much-needed certainty and financial support," he said.
In the U.S., the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) offered investment incentives and the fast-moving market for hydrogen the necessary demand, with the government set to propose up to 10 hydrogen hubs in the coming week, Mowill told Reuters.
"We would probably have gone to the U.S. anyway at some point, but this is certainly accelerating and motivating us to do things bigger and quicker," he added.