H2PRO’s innovative, green energy technology won “best company in the scale-up track” of Royal Dutch Shell’s New Energy Challenge 2020, in which European and Israeli startups and scale-ups propose world-altering solutions to shape our future energy system. The startup was one of just five finalists in the oil giant’s international prestigious annual competition, and the youngest to break through. H2PRO was also the only one from Israel to make the final cut.

Technion-founded H2PRO invented a method to produce sustainable hydrogen fuel on a large-scale that is efficient, inexpensive, and safe. As the world strives to combat global warming and adopt cleaner power sources, hydrogen will play a huge role as a renewable energy source for powering electric cars, storing renewable energy for power grids, and heating our homes.

H2PRO’s technology, E-Tac (Electrochemical, Thermally Activated Chemical), employs electrolysis, or the process of using electricity to split water into its two components, hydrogen and oxygen. But unlike conventional electrolysis, hydrogen and oxygen are generated separately, at different phases, doing away with the costly step of creating a membrane to keep the two apart. The novel method of decoupling the elements is simpler to manufacture and would improve production efficiency by 20% – 25% over the alternatives.

H2PRO was created in 2019 by Technion Professors Gideon Grader and Avner Rohschild with Dr. Hen Dotan and Dr. Avigail Landman. The company’s research was supported by the Nancy and Stephen Grand Technion Energy Program, Technion supporter and businessman Ed Satell, the Adelis Foundation, Israel’s Ministry of Energy, and the EU Horizon 2020 program of the European Commission.