NEL ASA: This is how the Norwegian hydrogen company came about

Became the world’s largest hydrogen electrolyser company within 13 years

NEL ASA is a Norwegian company active in the energy industry. It has specialized in hydrogen technologies that are intended to enable the production, storage and distribution of hydrogen. The company was founded in 1927 in Notodden, Norway. NEL ASA’s mission was and still is: “We deliver optimal solutions for the production, storage and distribution of hydrogen from renewable energies.” From the start, the company focused on the installation of electrolysers, a device in which water is split into hydrogen and oxygen with the help of electricity.
NEL ASA was involved just 13 years later its hydrogen electrolyser installation in Rjukan, Norway: NEL’s hydrogen installation in Rjukan was the largest in the world at the time.

Commissioning of further hydrogen plants

This was followed in 1953 by the commissioning of the second large hydrogen electrolyser plant in Glomfjord, Norway. This was intended to supply hydrogen to ammonia production in Norway. The year 1959 marked another milestone for NEL. The company restructured its electrolyser unit from the ground up, creating the basis for the atmospheric electrolyser that is the foundation of NEL’s business model today.

NEL takes the plunge and offers its products on the market

In 1974, NEL began making its electrolyser technologies available to the broader market and thus to other companies for the first time. In addition to other companies, NEL also reached other industries and increasingly established itself internationally. In 1988 NEL further strengthened its position in the international market. The hydrogen company becomes the world’s first provider and supplier of asbestos-free alkaline electrolysers. However, NEL did not rest on its laurels and continued to focus on the further development of its products. So it came about that NEL celebrated the launch of its first pressure electrolyser in 2001 and brought it onto the market.

NEL expands and acquires more companies

Just two years later, NEL reached another milestone in Reykjavik, Iceland. There the company opened the first publicly accessible hydrogen filling station – and was thus a global pioneer. NEL ASA’s pioneering spirit was also evident on the stock exchange, with NEL going public on the Oslo Stock Exchange in 2014. The special thing about it: The company was listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange as the first company to be 100 percent specialized in hydrogen. NEL ASA now started to enlarge its product portfolio and expand its market position. For this purpose, NEL acquired the company H2 Logic in 2015, which was a leader in the field of hydrogen filling stations. In connection with this, just one year later, NEL ASA started constructing the world’s largest production facility for hydrogen filling stations, which has a capacity of 300 hydrogen filling stations per year. In 2017, NEL ASA took over another company, Proton OnSite, which specialized in PEM electrolysis technologies. With the purchase of Proton OnSite, NEL ASA became the largest electrolysis company in the world. However, this is not NEL’s only big event. In the same year, the electrolysis company found a new partner in Nikola. Nikola plans to create a hydrogen fueling station infrastructure for its hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

NEL’s future prospects: Green Hydrogen Catapult Initiative

Various global players from the renewable energy sector recently joined forces to form the “Green Hydrogen Catapult Initiative”. These are the companies ACWA Power, CWP Renewables, Envision, Iberdrola, Ørsted, Snam and Yara. Although NEL is not directly part of this initiative, it can bring new opportunities to the company. NEL works with Iberdrola and Yara as an electrolysis specialist. As Der Aktionär reports, this could be NEL’s chance to get access to new, large projects through the initiative. Editorial office finanzen.at