ITM Power

ITM Power was founded in June 2001 in Saffron Walden, Essex and originally manufactured fuel cells before expanding into electrolysers. In 2004, the company floated on the AIM Market raising £10 million.[5]

Its first sale was an electrolyser for the University of Birmingham, UK.[6] In 2011, ITM Power GmbH, the company's German subsidiary, was incorporated.

The company raised £52 million via a second equity fundraise in 2019. This included a strategic investment of £38 million from Linde plc[7] and the establishment of the joint venture, ITM Linde Electrolysis (ILE), to provide green gas solutions at industrial scale. ILE was incorporated in January 2020.

ITM signed a collaboration agreement with Iwatani Corporation of America,[8] a wholly-owned subsidiary of Japan's Iwatani Corporation, for the deployment of multi megawatt electrolyser-based hydrogen energy systems in North America.

ITM enacted a third fundraise, raising £172 million in equity that included a £30 million investment from Snam S.p.A.[9]

In January the company sold a 24MW PEM electrolyser unit, the largest in the world, to Linde.[10] The unit will be installed at the Leuna Chemical Complex in Germany. Production is due to start in the second half of 2022.  

In March the company marked its first deployment in Japan with the sale of a 1.4MW electrolyser to Sumitomo Corporation.[11]

August marked the official opening[12] of Bessemer Park in Sheffield. The facility has an electrolyser manufacturing capacity of 1GW per annum, making it the largest in the world to date.

In October the company raised £250 million[13] to expand manufacturing capacity to 5GW per annum by 2024.

Full-year results revealed that annual pre-tax losses almost doubled to £46.7m on the back of £5.6m of revenues. The firm admitted that it has scrapped its 5GW annual capacity target by 2025, now aiming for 1.5GW per annum by 2023. It also scrapped its previous decision to open a second UK factory in Sheffield. It also announced that CEO for 13 years, Graham Cooley, would leave once a successor was appointed.[14]

The REFHYNE project aims to supply clean refinery hydrogen for Europe. Comprising a partnership including ITM Power and Shell, it is funded by the European Commission's Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH JU).

Following two years of construction, Shell launched[15] Europe's largest hydrogen electrolysis plant at its Rhineland Refinery in Wesseling, Germany. The PEM electrolyser supplied by ITM Power is the largest of its kind[16] to be deployed on a major industrial scale. The project will investigate the feasibility of introducing similar technology in other industry plants.

In October 2020, the REFHYNE II consortium, which aims to install a 100-MW electrolyser[17] at Shell's Energy and Chemicals Park, Rheinland, secured a EUR-32.4-million grant[18] from the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency.

HyDeploy is an energy trial to establish the potential for blending up to 20% zero carbon hydrogen into the normal gas supply to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. It was the first trial of its kind in the UK.[19]

The £7 million project was funded by Ofgem and led by gas network Cadent in partnership with Northern Gas Networks, with ITM Power supplying the electrolyser system. 100 homes and 30 university faculty buildings on a private gas network at Keele University in Staffordshire received the blended gas during the first phase which ended in March 2021.[20]

The trial was designed to determine the level of hydrogen which could be used by gas consumers safely and with no changes to their behaviour or existing domestic appliances. A second phase launched in August 2021[21][22] and is due for completion in 2022.