Spotlight on hydrogen.

Traveling to Béziers on Tuesday, Emmanuel Macron will visit the Genvia company created in March 2021 in joint venture with the Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) on a former para-petroleum site.

Coming from the Schlumberger group, it is developing a pilot production line for hydrogen.

The public authorities are relying heavily on this French research and hope to become a major player in hydrogen production.

The President of the Republic intends to take advantage of this visit to highlight this energy which should make it possible in the years to come to decarbonize heavy industry and construction.

In the absence of a vaccine, France is betting everything on energy

The factory manufactures high temperature electrolysers, that is to say machines for producing hydrogen from the water molecule (H20) according to a brand new technology that has been the subject of a forty patents. The "conceptual breakthrough of the technology is that it allows very good efficiency", "to use less electricity to produce more hydrogen", and that it is "reversible", that is to say that it makes it possible to store electricity in the form of hydrogen, and conversely to produce electricity with the hydrogen already produced and stored, explains one at the Élysée.

The only industrialized country not to have been able to quickly develop a vaccine against Covid-19, France is banking, through the recent France 2030 investment plan of 30 billion euros, on "technologies of the future" including hydrogen is part, to develop its industry while decarbonizing it.

The electricity used to manufacture hydrogen comes either from nuclear or renewable energies.

Create "gigafactory"

This explains the encouragement given by the public authorities to the "technological bet" of this young company, that of industrializing a technology not yet proven on an industrial scale, it is argued at the Elysee.

The objective is to launch in 2024 the construction of a “gigafactory”, or mega-factory, for the production of these electrolysers which would eventually employ some 500 people.

The electrolysers will be used by industrialists in the building industry, the steel industry or other highly emitting sectors to produce hydrogen which will be their new fuel (instead of petroleum products) and will thus make it possible to decarbonize their activity. The constructor Vinci and the cement manufacturer Vicat are also partners of Genvia, specified the Élysée, as well as the steelmaker ArcelorMittal. EDF is also interested, according to the Elysee.

Ultimately, France's ambition would be to create “five gigafactories” of electrolysers on the territory, using different technologies, the same source added.

This would create a total of "50 to 100,000 jobs by 2030" throughout the hydrogen sector according to the Élysée.

The Genvia project is one of the 77 projects filed by manufacturers with Bercy in the hydrogen sector, of which around fifteen should be notified to Brussels to receive aid.

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