Genvia: industrializing high-performance solid oxide electrolyzers
Genvia is a company created by CEA, Schlumberger and their partners to industrialize the high-performance solid oxide electrolysis (= high-temperature electrolysis) hydrogen production technology developed by CEA.
The Grenoble-based Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives(CEA) Liten has developed a high-performance solid oxide electrolysis (= high-temperature electrolysis) technology capable of achieving 99% efficiency.
Here’s the company‘s website.
Innovative solid oxide electrolysis
Genvia will be exploiting a solid oxide/high-temperature electrolysis hydrogen production technology that would achieve 99% efficiency, and could function as both an electrolyzer and a fuel cell (making it ideal for managing current variations). The aim would be to offer electrolyzers capable of producing green hydrogen at €2 per kilogram.
We’ve already featured it in our article onhigh-temperature electrolysis.
Genvia in practice
Great technology is all very well, but it still needs to be industrialized and marketed. Genvia’s founders include some of the most important organizations in the world capable of meeting these challenges.
The founders
Genvia, born on March 1, 2021, was founded by several organizations:
- CEA, which provides the technology and research expertise
- Schlumberger New Energy, which will industrialize the technology
- Vicat (a cement group) and Vinci Construction are contributing their expertise in certain key uses for hydrogen production.
- The Occitanie region, which holds a 6.5% stake in the company, for €3.5 million.
Genvia’s management team
The Genvia team
Florence Lambert, former head of CEA Liten in Grenoble (which developed the technology), has taken the helm of the Genvia project.
She will be joined by
- Capella Festa, as COO (Chief Operating Officer)
- Gilles Iafrate as CTO (Chief Technical Officer)
- Yoann Barbesol as CFO (Chief Financial Officer)
Board of Directors
The Board of Directors will be made up of :
- François Jacq, General Administrator of CEA and Philippe Stohr, Director of Energies at CEA
- Ashok Belani, Executive Vice President, New Energies, and Olivier Peyret, President, France, Schlumberger
- Guy Sidos, Chairman and CEO, Vicat
- Pascal Baylocq, President, Geostock (VINCI Construction)
- Stéphane Péré, General Manager, AREC Occitanie
The installations: Genvia in Bézier
The company will first install a pilot line at a Schlumberger plant in Béziers in 2021. More precisely, the company is located :
Plaine Saint-Pierre, CS 10620, Avenue Joseph Lazare
34535 Béziers Cedex
It plans to develop a gigafactory for electrolyser production in Bézier in 2025, which would lead to almost 500 new jobs by 2030.
Genvia news
During a visit to the Bézier plant on November 16, 2021, Emannuel Macron announced public support to the tune of 200 million euros through an “Important Project of Common European Interest”(IPCEI). In total, the “France 2030” plan would allocate 2 billion euros globally to the hydrogen sector, in addition to the 7 billion announced by Brunos Le Maire in 2020.
To find out more