France-based green hydrogen specialist Lhyfe has acquired a 49 per cent stake in Flexens, a Finnish renewable hydrogen and Power-to-X project developer. According to Lhyfe, the two companies will combine their expertise and commercial pipelines to accelerate current projects and identify new opportunities in Northern Europe, in particular large offshore projects.

Lhyfe says that the investment, the first of this kind for the company, would accelerate the commercial deployment and Finland-based projects of both companies.

“Through this investment, Lhyfe will be able to draw on a team of developers and experts with an excellent network in Finland and Northern Europe, and a project portfolio including one of the largest renewable green hydrogen projects in Finland”, Lhyfe states in a press release issued on 21 March.

“With Lhyfe’s entry into the company, Flexens will benefit from the technological expertise of one of the most advanced players in the production of renewable and green hydrogen, to develop more projects, faster, and on a larger scale”.

Flexens has a commercial pipeline totalling more than 1.5 GW in capacity in Finland and abroad. This includes a 300 MW hydrogen production plant in Kokkola, expected to be commissioned by 2027; a 2.5 MW green hydrogen production unit in Lempäälä, expected to be operational in 2025 and planned to be connected to Finland’s first hydrogen refuelling station; and the Smart Energy Åland demonstration project that employs hydrogen and Power-to-X applications, on which Lhyfe is also collaborating.

According to Lhyfe, the two companies first started working together on joint projects in 2020.

“Now officially linked, they will combine their expertise, market knowledge and commercial pipelines to accelerate current projects and identify new opportunities in Northern Europe, in particular large offshore projects, in order to achieve the decarbonisation objectives they have set themselves”, Lhyfe states.

The news about the stake acquisition in the Finnish Power-to-X company comes shortly after Lhyfe and Centrica announced plans to jointly develop offshore renewable hydrogen projects in the UK. The two partners in the UK plan to first roll out a pilot project in the Southern North Sea and later also examine an additional partnership to deploy the technology at a commercial scale alongside offshore wind electricity production.

The French company is one of the world’s leading developers of green and offshore hydrogen projects, having launched the world’s first industrial site for the production of green hydrogen connected to a wind farm in 2021, and the world’s first offshore green hydrogen production demonstrator in 2022.

Lhyfe says it will have three new industrial sites in operation by the end of this year.

The green hydrogen project developer, which aims to have more than 3 GW of installed capacity by 2030, has already announced several projects throughout Europe, including in Nordic countries, with GreenLab and GreenHyScale in Denmark, Storgrundet, Trelleborgs Energi and Harjedalen in Sweden and Horisont Energi in Norway.