clean-hydrogen
(4)
Hgen
Hgen is a Los Angeles-area climate-tech company building higher-efficiency alkaline electrolyzers that convert water and renewable electricity into clean, low-cost hydrogen for heavy industry. Founded in 2021 by former Tesla and SpaceX engineers, Hgen redesigned the electrolyzer cell to shed hydrogen bubbles faster, claiming roughly 20x higher power density and a much smaller footprint than conventional alkaline systems. The company packages its technology into shipping-container-sized units that need only water and electricity, aiming to undercut the cost of trucked-in liquid hydrogen and help decarbonize chemicals, steel, and other industrial processes.
Molten Industries
Molten Industries is an Oakland, California climate-hardware startup that uses methane pyrolysis to crack natural gas into clean hydrogen and high-value synthetic graphite, with no carbon dioxide emitted in the process. Founded in 2021 by Dr. Caleb Boyd and Dr. Kevin Bush, the company aims to onshore battery supply chains and decarbonize heavy industry by producing battery-grade graphite for lithium-ion cells and low-cost clean hydrogen for fuels, ammonia, plastics, and green steel. It raised a $25M Series A in June 2024 led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures to build its first modular commercial reactor.
Mote
Mote is a Los Angeles-based climate-tech company that turns woody waste biomass into clean biohydrogen while permanently sequestering the carbon. Using a biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS) process spun out of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Mote pairs energy production with carbon removal: each utility-scale plant is designed to produce roughly 60 tons of carbon-negative hydrogen per day while removing on the order of 450,000 tons of CO2 a year. The company is developing its first commercial facility near Bakersfield in California's Kern County and a second project in Northern California with the Sacramento Municipal Utility District.
Utility Global
Utility Global is a Houston-based clean-energy technology company whose proprietary eXERO platform and H2Gen system produce high-purity hydrogen and a capture-ready CO2 stream from industrial off-gases and biogases - without using external electricity. By bolting onto the existing infrastructure of steel mills, refineries, petrochemical plants and other hard-to-abate sites, the company aims to make industrial decarbonization economically competitive with fossil-based hydrogen rather than dependent on subsidies or pilots.