Renewable hydrogen projects have been complex and costly, often requiring extensive custom engineering, long execution timelines and significant upfront investment. These challenges have slowed project development and delayed large scale deployment. Nel ASA (Nel, OSE: NEL) has announced the commercial launch of its next generation pressurised alkaline electrolyser system, a new technology platform designed to simplify hydrogen production projects while significantly improving cost, efficiency and scalability.
Following more than eight years of development and successful full scale prototype testing at Nel’s Herøya facility in Norway, Nel’s next generation pressurized alkaline electrolyser system is now ready for commercial deployment. The solution sets a new cost benchmark for large scale electrolyser systems, at a time when many industrial projects have ended up at total system costs approaching, or even exceeding, US$3000 per kW. With this system, Nel enables an estimated turnkey full-scope cost below US$1450 per kW based on a 25 MW plant, with further cost synergies seen for larger plants. The estimates are based on 30 bar pressure delivered hydrogen with 99.99% purity. With this next-generation pressurised alkaline electrolyser, Nel is fundamentally changing the cost structure of industrial scale green hydrogen production.
“This is an important step toward making renewable electrolytic hydrogen simpler, more scalable and more cost competitive,” said Håkon Volldal, President and CEO of Nel ASA. “As the energy system places increasing emphasis on resilience, security of supply and flexibility, renewable hydrogen is emerging as a key enabler – not only for today’s industrial hydrogen applications where we already use hydrogen, but also for long duration energy storage and decentralised energy production.”
The next-generation pressurised alkaline platform is based on a fully modular, skid based design, with factory assembled and tested units delivered as standardised products, rather than bespoke projects like we usually see today. The system itself operates in a 15 bar pressurised configuration, reducing the need for downstream compression and improving overall energy efficiency. It is designed for outdoor installation, minimising civil works and site infrastructure requirements.
“We have designed this platform for standardisation and industrial scale,” commented Marius Løken, Chief Technology Officer of Nel ASA. “Pressurised operation combined with a modular, factory built design reduces complexity and improves efficiency, making the system well suited for repeatable large scale deployment.”
Together, these features are expected to reduce system CAPEX by 40 - 60% compared to solutions available in the market today, shorten project timelines and lower execution risk, contributing to a significantly improved levelized cost of hydrogen.
The technology incorporates proprietary production methods and patent pending innovations not previously seen in the electrolyser industry, clearly differentiating Nel from other suppliers of pressurised alkaline systems. The platform is optimised for real world operating conditions, delivering improved in field energy performance compared with conventional solutions, where nominal efficiency often fails to translate into large scale operation.
“Our next-generation pressurised alkaline technology is designed to unlock business cases that were previously out of reach,” added Håkon Volldal. “This enables customers to move from concept to operation faster, with lower upfront capital and reduced execution risk.”
Today, low carbon hydrogen already underpins large and growing end markets, including ammonia and methanol production, the decarbonisation of refining and chemical industries, emerging pathways for sustainable aviation fuels (eSAF), and the production of low carbon steel. Demand across these sectors is expected to scale significantly over the coming decade, driven by climate targets, regulatory frameworks and the need to maintain industrial competitiveness.
At the same time, recent developments in global energy markets have increased the focus on energy resilience, security of supply and system flexibility. As power systems transition toward higher shares of variable renewable energy, hydrogen is increasingly recognised not only as a critical industrial feedstock, but also as an important flexibility option within the energy system, enabling improved balancing of supply and demand.
Hydrogen is gaining importance for long duration energy storage, grid balancing and decentralised energy production. By enabling renewable electrolytic hydrogen to be produced closer to end users, dependence on centralised infrastructure can be reduced, system resilience strengthened and both industrial demand and broader energy transition objectives supported. In parallel, defence and security related applications are emerging as an additional area of strategic interest, further reinforcing the case for flexible, localised hydrogen production.
“Customers are increasingly asking for solutions that are simpler to deploy and easier to finance,” said Todd Cartwright, Chief Commercial Officer of Nel ASA. “Interest is growing across industrial and infrastructure applications, including resilience driven use cases such as energy security and defence related applications.”
Nel’s new pressurised alkaline platform is being industrialsed following a final investment decision announced in December 2025, enabling a production capacity of up to 1 GW per year at Herøya, with a roadmap to scale production up to 4 GW annually. Industrialisation of the platform is supported by a grant of up to €135 million from the EU Innovation Fund, covering up to 60% of eligible industrialisation costs. The support underscores the strategic importance of the technology for Europe’s clean energy transition and accelerates time to market.