Yara Growth Ventures has announced its investment in Dynelectro, a company based in Denmark that develops technologies to advance solid oxide electrolysis (SOE). While SOE yields the highest possible efficiencies to produce renewable hydrogen and e-fuels, it has been suffering from system lifetime issues up to now. The investment is part of Yara’s ambition to decarbonize fertilizer production and enable the hydrogen economy.
Dynelectro’s approach increases the lifetime of SOE systems dramatically from typically 2 to 10 years, and it also allows for integration of SOE with intermittent renewable electricity – a key requirement for large scale adoption.
“Electricity is the key driver for the cost of renewable hydrogen. While solid oxide electrolysis has the best potential for low cost, it suffers a niche existence due to system lifetime issues. We believe Dynelectro will overcome these issues and pave the way to make low-cost renewable hydrogen a reality,” says Björn Heinz, Investment Director and part of the Yara Growth Ventures team.
“Decarbonization of the fertilizer value chain is an essential part of securing global food supply in a sustainable way and one of our primary objectives. Investing in companies like Dynelectro realizes that strategy by supporting new technologies for the production of affordable low-emission end products. We are excited to join forces with them,” says Heinz
“The addition of Yara Growth Ventures is a significant milestone as they are our first industrial investor thereby demonstrating market readiness and pull for innovation within clean sustainable technologies,” says Dynelectro’s CEO Sune Lilbæk
The investment follows the company’s seed investment round, which was led in May 2023 by The Export and Investment Fund of Denmark (EIFO), Denmark’s national promotional bank and export credit agency, with contributions from Vsquared Ventures, a leading European deep-tech fund, and further local venture investors. The funding will be used for demonstration projects and further technology development.