EUR 36 mil­lion in series D for Electrochaea

Power-to-gas com­pany Elec­tro­chaea announced today a €14.9 mil­lion equity invest­ment from the European Innov­a­tion Coun­cil (EIC) Fund. This invest­ment com­pletes the €36 mil­lion Series D round, led by the energy tech­no­logy com­pany Baker Hughes and exist­ing part­ners MVP, Storengy (an ENGIE sub­si­di­ary), btov, KfW, Ener­gie 360°, Cal­iza, and Focus First, which was announced last year. The pur­pose of this invest­ment round is to accel­er­ate the scale up and com­mer­cial­iz­a­tion of Electrochaea’s tech­no­logy that pro­duces a replace­ment for fossil nat­ur­al gas while stor­ing renew­able energy and reusing CO2.

The equity funds per­mit Elec­tro­chaea to cata­lyze the con­struc­tion of a com­mer­cial European pro­ject, through dir­ect invest­ment of funds, and to real­ize the engin­eer­ing work com­pleted under the €2.5 mil­lion award that Elec­tro­chaea received in August 2020 from the ​“EIC Accel­er­at­or” pro­gram, a part of the EU research and innov­a­tion pro­gram ​“Hori­zon 2020”. EIC equity invest­ments are made to scale-up game-chan­ging innov­at­ive tech­no­lo­gies that pro­mote Europe’s goal to reach net-zero green­house gas emis­sions by 2050. Electrochaea’s power-to-gas bio­meth­ana­tion tech­no­logy pro­duces grid-qual­ity renew­able meth­ane using CO2 and renew­able hydro­gen. Renew­able meth­ane can replace any use of fossil nat­ur­al gas, thereby sig­ni­fic­antly redu­cing green­house gas (GHG) emis­sions, util­iz­ing invest­ment in exist­ing gas dis­tri­bu­tion and stor­age infra­struc­ture, and con­trib­ut­ing to the trans­ition to a clean energy eco­nomy.

​“Equity sup­port from the EIC Fund will have a sig­ni­fic­ant impact on Electrochaea’s abil­ity to deliv­er renew­able gas to cus­tom­ers through­out Europe and the world,” said Mich Hein, CEO of Elec­tro­chaea. ​“Tech­no­lo­gies that can deliv­er on net-zero green­house emis­sion goals need to be scaled up and brought to the mar­ket without delay. Electrochaea´s bio­meth­ana­tion tech­no­logy, which has been proven in two demon­stra­tion plants, one in Den­mark and one in Switzer­land, is an ideal solu­tion to replace fossil gas with fully renew­able gas and to par­ti­cip­ate in the energy trans­ition.”

​“Elec­tro­chaea is a great example of how the EIC Fund is sup­port­ing the cli­mate tech innov­at­ors to bring their tech­no­lo­gies to the mar­ket and help achiev­ing the Green dealob­ject­ives,” added Mar­tin Brun­cko, mem­ber of the EIC Fund Invest­ment Com­mit­tee. ​“This equity fin­an­cing will sup­port Elec­tro­chaea to suc­cess­fully pro­duce at indus­tri­al scale renew­able meth­ane that replaces nat­ur­al gas and can be stored and trans­por­ted in the exist­ing gas grid.”