Elec­tro­chaea GmbH

Elec­tro­chaea is a clean tech­no­logy start-up that has devel­op­ed a nov­el tech­no­logy for grid-scale energy stor­age known as power-to-gas. ln this two-step pro­cess, low-cost and stran­ded elec­tri­city from wind and sol­ar is first con­ver­ted to green hydro­gen by means of water elec­tro­lys­is. The hydro­gen is then com­bined with car­bon diox­ide and reacted to meth­ane, the prin­cip­al com­pon­ent of nat­ur­al gas. This meth­ana­tion reac­tion is per­formed by a pro­pri­et­ary strain of meth­ano­gen­ic archaea, a single-celled organ­ism that has been among the first liv­ing organ­isms on Earth.

Elec­tro­chae­a’s archaea have been adap­ted for deploy­ment in indus­tri­al envir­on­ments and excel through high mass con­ver­sion effi­ciency and robust­ness and fast reac­tion kin­et­ics. The renew­able nat­ur­al gas pro­duced in this pro­cess can be injec­ted dir­ectly into exist­ing nat­ur­al gas pipelines and stored for days, weeks or months. Once in the grid, the gas can be trans­por­ted geo­graph­ic­ally to the point of end use in power pro­duc­tion or in trans­port­a­tion, heat­ing, and oth­er indus­tri­al applications.

The com­pany is plan­ning to com­mer­cial­ize its power-to-gas tech­no­logy in coun­tries with ambi­tious tar­gets for wind and sol­ar energy such as Ger­many, Den­mark, France, the United King­dom, the Neth­er­lands, and the United States.

Backed by an inter­na­tion­al con­sor­ti­um of renowned investors, Elec­tro­chaea is based in Planegg, close to Munich (Bav­aria), and cur­rently employs over 30 tal­en­ted indi­vidu­als rep­res­ent­ing 11 dif­fer­ent countries.