Former Uniper CEO joins HH2E Board of Management

The company wants to make green hydrogen from Germany competitive.

The former head of the Düsseldorf-based energy company Uniper Andreas Schierenbeck joins the board of the Hamburg-based hydrogen start-up HH2E. This is reported by the Newspaper for community business. He is joined on the board by founder Alexander Voigt and chief financial officer Mark Page. The start-up wants to produce green hydrogen from Germany so cheaply that it can compete with green hydrogen from the Middle East or other regions.

Schierenbeck looks back on a career spanning more than two decades in large, global organizations. "But in these large companies, you also have to spend a lot of time dealing with the often very slow changes in their culture as well as their internal bureaucracy," he is quoted as saying in the media report. Now, he said, he wants to focus on something that has a direct and quick impact: Innovation, technology and business models that can positively change the economy and society.

HH2E wants to produce green hydrogen in Germany as early as 2025 at the same cost as green hydrogen imported from, say, the Middle East or Australia in 2030. This is to be made possible by the start-up's technology: A storage unit is to store wind and solar energy in the form of heat. A zinc electrolyzer is to have a particularly high efficiency. An electricity generation unit, consisting of a hydrogen turbine or a fuel cell, is in turn to generate electricity without carbon.