Good morning, everybody. I am Klaus Ehrenberg. I am heading the Investor Relations department of thyssenkrupp. Also on behalf of the entire team, I wish you a very warm welcome to our Capital Market Day, and of course, a happy New Year. The Capital Market Day today is the second within the last six weeks, and today we are focusing on one individual business. It's about our hydrogen electrolysis business, formerly known as TK UCE. UCE stands for Uhde Chlorine Engineers. I'm saying formerly because from today on, the name is thyssenkrupp nucera, and you will hear more about the rebranding later in the course of the presentation. In the setup of the group, you will find or you find our electrolysis business within the segment Multi Tracks. So far it has been part of the chemical plants business.
Now it is separated, and there will be much more transparency from now on going forward. Before we start with the presentations, please allow me to make some housekeeping remarks. The Capital Market Day will be recorded and there will be a replay available after the event. The presentations will be uploaded one after the other in the course of the agenda. There will be interactive Q&A sessions, and those who follow the event via the Zoom platform have the opportunity to ask questions. If you want to ask a question, please use the Raise Your Hand function on the Zoom platform, and you will be transferred into the meeting, so you will then become an active participant. This transfer might take a few seconds, so please be patient.
Our technicians will be sure that you will be part of the meeting then for your questions. After your questions, please mute your microphone. This is helpful in order to avoid acoustic feedback. There will be 11 presentations or sections today. There will be three Q&A sessions, and there will also be two breaks. After the first four presentations, there will be a Q&A session and then a break. The next Q&A session after the next four sections and then a break, and a third Q&A session, of course, then after the last three sections or presentations. The breaks will last about 30 minutes. This is a requirement we have due to workplace safety regulations. It's due to the COVID situations. All the people in the background, they have to wear a mask and therefore we have to make regular breaks.
Before I hand over now to the first presenter today, which is Volkmar Dinstuhl, the CEO of the Multi Tracks segment, I wanna show you the next slide here. This slide comes with kind regards from our legal department, and please have a look at it. With that, I would like now to hand over to Volkmar Dinstuhl, who joins us via a virtual arrangement. Volkmar, please take over.
Thank you, Klaus. Ladies and gentlemen, also from my side, a very warm welcome. My name is Volkmar Dinstuhl. I'm the CEO of the Multi Tracks segment of thyssenkrupp. TK UCE is an important business within Multi Tracks. At TK, we are very focused on the optimal development of our portfolio, and the potential IPO is just another example how we manage our portfolio in order to create value. TK UCE is a unique asset in the portfolio of thyssenkrupp, a true technology leader. The company has been winning landmark orders in the last couple of weeks, and with that controls an excellent project pipeline. The company is led by a very strong and experienced management team that will shortly introduce their company to you. Green hydrogen represents a huge growth opportunity and therefore I'm really, really excited about today's Capital Market Day.
Thyssenkrupp will remain a majority shareholder going forward and support the growth journey of the company. A potential IPO will allow for value crystallization and at the same time provide capital market access to the company. I really hope that we together enjoy this presentation today, and you will find it informative at the same time. You may have seen in the press release this morning that TK UCE will be rebranded into thyssenkrupp nucera. Nucera combines the three words new, UCE, and era. This underlines that we are creating something new, that we are building on the existing platform of TK UCE, and that we are entering a new era. Thank you very much for joining today's capital market presentation. Now let me introduce you to thyssenkrupp nucera. The future is just about to start.
There is something deep in our DNA that could be a decisive impetus in answering one of the most challenging questions of our time.
How can we reduce CO2 on a large scale? Could green hydrogen pave the way?
What could we achieve if we use our experience of the many gigawatts that we have already installed?
If we extend our scope to a new market, if we innovate to accelerate transformation into a brand new energy age.
We will create that significant impact we need to solve one of our most pressing problems.
Are we prepared to establish a growing hydrogen ecosystem? Yes, we are determined. We are ready to grow. We are able to lead this development. Today, we open up a new era.
Thyssenkrupp nucera.
Yeah, that's really great. Now
Ladies.
Oh, Volkmar, you take it. Good.
Yeah. Thanks, Klaus. Ladies and gentlemen, I really hope you enjoyed this. Now I would like to hand over to Denis Krude, the CEO of thyssenkrupp nucera. Thank you for your attention.
Dear ladies and gentlemen, thyssenkrupp Uhde Chlorine Engineers now becomes thyssenkrupp nucera. We are at the beginning of a new era defined by clean energy supply with green hydrogen at industrial scale. We are ready to do pioneering work again. With our chemical engineering DNA, we have built the solid basis for technology that is to become a leading part in the energy market. This is no more business as usual. This is a huge opportunity and a promise to our future. This is a strong belief and our leading purpose for the next generation. Following this purpose, we are growing as an agile team that combines and unleashes the power of the most experienced specialists and the most passionate young experts. Open-minded, collaborative, innovative. We want to have a significant impact by transforming electrons into molecules at gigawatt scale for a climate neutral world.
We will be the pacemaker and pace the way into a new era. We are thyssenkrupp nucera. Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Capital Market Day of thyssenkrupp nucera. We will present to you today our company, our unique products, and our exciting business case. The picture on the cover page shows you already what you can expect from us, and this is leading electrolysis technology in industrial scale. Let us start with the overarching task that we all, as a society have to accomplish. We need to save the global climate. In 2016, 35 billion tons of CO2 have been emitted, and this is the main contributor to the global warming. Many people think that climate change does not affect us until it becomes tangible. We now see more and more severe weather phenomena, and it has become tangible for everybody now.
The challenge is to provide food, clean water, and a huge amount of energy to many people, while simultaneously we have to stop the global warming and have to limit the CO2 emissions. We are having a solution for it. The solution is green hydrogen produced by our electrolyzers. Green hydrogen can reduce the CO2 emissions in the world by around 60% according to the Hydrogen Council, and this is a huge potential. Therefore, we have given our company and our daily work a meaning. The meaning why we go to work every day. This purpose, this purpose is we shape the new era. It is an era of transformation from fossil-based to sustainable processes, and we want to be part of this energy transition. This is our driver. This is our purpose.
Our vision is to be the number one provider for hydrogen and chlorine technologies. We want to fulfill this vision by our mission. With passion for innovation, as a technology company, we need passion for innovation. We enable our customers to make superior electrolysis products and minimize the CO2 footprint. Before we jump into the details, I would like to introduce today's speakers. About my present, my name is Denis Krude. I'm the CEO of thyssenkrupp nucera, and I'm an Electrical Engineer, and with the company since 1998. I've grown up professionally in the electrolysis business of Uhde in all kinds of functions. I spent also five years outside of the electrolysis business and then returned in 2016 as the CEO of nucera, this exciting multicultural joint venture. Next speaker is Arno Pfannschmidt.
Arno has got a long history as CFO of thyssenkrupp group companies at home and abroad. He's with the company, with thyssenkrupp, for more than 25 years, and he's also the founding CFO of nucera and has been the essential force behind the post-merger integration of our multicultural offices. Comes Fulvio Federico. Fulvio is our CTO. He has got more than 25 years of experience in the industry and originally comes from our shareholder, De Nora. He's our expert for electrochemistry, and I think there's nobody else who knows more about electrochemistry than Fulvio. Next speaker will be Christoph Noeres. Christoph is our Head of the Green Hydrogen business. He is more than 19 years in the electrolysis business, has got a lot of experience in delivering projects, in sales, and has been also four years the managing director of our operations in Japan.
Next speaker is Roland Beckmann. Roland is the Head of our Chlor Alkali business, our foundation. He's with thyssenkrupp since 1997 already, has got a vast experience in delivering projects, a lot of experience in project management and construction sites. We are having Ulf Bäumer. Ulf is our Head of Innovation and Service, a very important double function for our company. He's more than 15 years with thyssenkrupp, and he's very experienced in R&D, in all kinds of service businesses, and has been CTO of thyssenkrupp in India for two years. This is the agenda we have prepared for today. We will focus on the alkaline water electrolysis, but give you also some insights for our chlor-alkali technology as well. In between and at the end, we will allow for plenty of time for Q&A.
I personally will start with the introduction to thyssenkrupp nucera and present to you our business model and corporate strategy. Christoph will take over for the hydrogen market and the alkaline water electrolysis technology. We are going to have a break and Q&A. Roland will continue then for the chlor-alkali market and also for the chlor-alkali technology, the DNA for the alkaline water electrolysis. Fulvio will then take over for R&D, for innovation leadership, and then comes Ulf for technology service and digitalization, followed by another Q&A and break, and then comes again Fulvio for our manufacturing strategy for the sales and the modules. I will cover the section for environmental, social, and governance, means ESG, and then comes Arno, and he will present to you our financials. At the end, we will have a final Q&A, and I will wrap up the event.
Now let's start with the introduction to thyssenkrupp nucera. Let me take you first through the key highlights. Our electrolysis and the green hydrogen are the enablers for the industries to decarbonize their still fossil-based processes. This creates a high demand for green hydrogen and therefore also a high demand for water electrolysis, so it is a high-growth market for this water electrolysis. We are a technology leader only for industrial-scale electrolysis. We usually don't do small projects, only big projects, and we have decades of experience for this technology. We have built up a global organization, a global network with reputable partners, and we have the support of a highly experienced management team. We are also very proud to have built up a very successful, holistic, high-value add aftermarket and lifecycle service.
Our pipeline, our backlog for the alkaline water electrolysis is already growing fast, and this proves the validity of our claim. Now let's go more into the details. The challenge is to reduce carbon emissions. The solution is the use of renewable power. However, renewable power has got a limited reach, and many industries cannot directly process the renewable energy. This is where our electrolysis comes into play. Let me take you through the slide from the left to the right. There's a growing supply of renewables at a much lower cost than before. That's the basis. If we now convert this renewable power into a different form, it can develop its full potential. This is exactly what we do. Our alkaline water electrolysis converts the renewable energy into green hydrogen and makes it usable for a wide range of industries.
It enables the industries to replace the fossil-based processes and thus accomplishes a broad decarbonation, decarbonization in the industry. In this way, we reach many different industries, such as transportation for trucks, trains, buses, or even for Marine Systems. It can partially substitute also natural gas, the blending case. It can also substitute the gray hydrogen by the green hydrogen in refineries and make conventional fossil fuels a little bit greener. We can also produce fertilizers, ammonia and urea with the green hydrogen to make these also green. We can also make the steel green, a very important business case also for the thyssenkrupp group. Last but not least, there's a wide range of different chemicals that can be produced with the green hydrogen, like methanol or ethanol and, so-called green chemicals. The principle is simple, so why has it not been explored earlier?
For me, there are three main reasons for that. First, of course, a high awareness in the public, not only since the Fridays for Future movement. I think the society now knows that we have to act. There is a much higher amount of renewables in the market, a much lower price than before. It still needed some kind of disruptive change, and that has been provided by the pandemic. During the pandemic, many governments in the world have published and issued economic stimulus programs that all have a sustainable and green focus. This now has unleashed a whole new economy and creates a huge demand for green hydrogen and our electrolyzers. Here on this slide you see the hydrogen demand.
This is the total hydrogen demand, so it contains all kinds of hydrogen, gray hydrogen, green hydrogen, blue, all colors. In 2020, the hydrogen business was worth already EUR 110 billion. First, of course, there is the potential to convert this to gray hydrogen into green hydrogen, and then it is forecast to grow until 2050 sevenfold. A huge potential. According to the Hydrogen Council, about 60%-80% of this hydrogen in 2050 will be green hydrogen, so our primary market for our electrolysis. We now reach the different sectors, as already mentioned, like power generation and storage, transportation with different kinds of vehicles, rail, even aviation, buildings and industry heat, and the industrial feedstock already mentioned as well, like ammonia, methanol, the refining business, and also the steel making.
It is a huge market and a huge opportunity we want to take advantage of. Now let me show you where we are located in the thyssenkrupp organization. There are six business segments, starting from Multi Tracks, Marine Systems, Steel Europe, Automotive Technology, Industrial Components and Materials Services. We are located in the Multi Tracks segments. Our shareholders are thyssenkrupp and De Nora from Italy. thyssenkrupp holds 66% and De Nora 34%. We as thyssenkrupp nucera, we are having two business lines. We have our mature, very successful chlor-alkali business, with an order intake of already EUR 288 million in the last fiscal year 2020-2021. We have built up already our new alkaline water electrolysis business. Here we are proud to have made already an order intake of EUR 89 million in the fiscal year 2020-2021.
We are having such reputable customers for our products, such as for chlor-alkali, the largest producer, Olin from the U.S., BASF or Covestro. For the alkaline water electrolysis, we are having Air Products, number three gas producer in the world, Shell, CF Industries from the U.S. and NEOM in Saudi Arabia. This is our world-class organization with a network very close to our customers. I have already introduced the management team. Not only our management team, the upper management team is very experienced, but we all of our managers have many years of experience in electrolysis. We are all experts in electrolysis. We don't do anything else. Many of us are engineers, and many also have PhDs. Our organization already has got a headcount of more than 400 people globally, and we are continuing to expand. Our offices are all around the world.
The headquarters in Dortmund, another office in Tokyo, another one in Okayama in Japan, then in Shanghai, very important business for us in China and also very successful. We have a sales office in Houston, a full-fledged office in Milan, and we have just opened or initiated the process to open two more offices, one in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia and another one in another focus region for green hydrogen in Australia, in Perth. On the right side, you see the map with the thyssenkrupp nucera locations. The green dots are also very important locations. These are the workshops and the offices of De Nora. De Nora is our minority shareholder, but also a key supplier, especially for our service business. We utilize the workshops, and they have also a network that spreads from South America, North America, Europe, India, China, and Japan.
We also utilize some services of thyssenkrupp from the plant technology. Here I would like to mention especially the offices in India, in Mumbai and in Pune, where we do quite a lot of detail engineering with thyssenkrupp in India, and also in Thailand with their modularization competence. thyssenkrupp nucera has already started to scale up its organization in three key areas. First of all, the footprint of the offices. I have already mentioned the new offices in Perth and Riyadh, and there might come more in other key areas in future. We expand the existing locations also in capacity and capabilities. This brings me to the second point, the know-how and the process. We roll out the know-how to all local organizations, and the basis is the strong foundation of our chlor-alkali competences.
The differences between chlor-alkali and water electrolysis are not big, and therefore we have a very good starting position there. We have set up a rollout process and have also defined the responsibilities how to do that. The third column is the hiring, the team. We have hired already in the last fiscal year 86 people. We filled 86 positions globally. We are very satisfied, and we are very proud that we got an overwhelming response to all these job postings. More than 2,000 applicants have applied for these positions, and we are impressed by the response and by the number and the quality of the people. They are very well qualified, young, smart and enthusiastic talents. We are well prepared for the growth which is ahead of us. Let me now please explain how we developed the alkaline water electrolysis.
We built on a very strong foundation, and the basis is, as already mentioned, the chlor-alkali business. We have worked in more than 600 projects. We fabricated more than 240,000 cell elements, equivalent to about 10 GW of power. About 50% of all chlor-alkali installations in the world use our technology. On this experience, we are building now the hydrogen business, and we also want to be the number one for the hydrogen business. There are three key areas. First is the market readiness. We are used to build industrial scale installations, and we have already established a quality proven supply chain for the cells with a capacity of 1 GW/ year. We take now this experience and also build the industrial scale plants for hydrogen.
We have initiated the process and the project already to expand the capacity for our supply chain from 1 GW- 5 GW. On the product side, we have got decades of experience for electrolysis, for R&D and for the process itself. For chlor-alkali, we produce chlorine gas, caustic soda and hydrogen already as a by-product. We know hydrogen. With this experience, we have built and designed our standardized alkaline water electrolysis product with a leading total cost of ownership, so the combination of CapEx and OpEx. We now produce oxygen and hydrogen, and the hydrogen has become now the main product, but nothing new to us. The third point is the organization and network. We are very proud to have built up this life cycle service, which is very successful.
We, in the chlor-alkali business, it is about 50% of our sales is covered by the service business. We have built up a global network, not only our own companies, but with our partners, with thyssenkrupp and with De Nora. This successful model we now transfer also to the alkaline water electrolysis, and we'll further expand it and enhance it by automation and digitalization. This puts us into the pole position, not only for chlor-alkali, but also for the alkaline water electrolysis. On this slide, you see our unique 20-MW module for the water electrolysis. It is not only based on chlor-alkali, it also looks like it. The 20-MW module consists of two main sections. One is the process section you see on the left side, left upper part, with pumps, with coolers and filters.
On the right side, these blocks, this is the so-called stack. This stack contains about 300 single elements. We transfer these many proven properties of chlor-alkali to the alkaline water electrolysis. First to mention is the quality. It's a proven cell design. We have not changed much from the transition from chlor-alkali to the water electrolysis. Therefore, we can also assure longevity of the cells of the technology. They are highly durable, proven by chlor-alkali. We achieve a high performance. We have a long-term technology experience here. Because we are running with a very high current density for alkaline water electrolysis at 12 kA/ sq m, we also have a very compact design. A very compact capacity design, and therefore we can incorporate 20 MW in this one electrolyzer.
Last but not least, of course, we build up the service business that we also transfer now to the water electrolysis. Our hydrogen plants are built in a modular way. This modular design is on several levels. It starts on the left side with a so-called single element, and it consists of an anode, a separator, in this case, a diaphragm, and a cathode. The only thing that we have changed from chlor-alkali to the alkaline water electrolysis is the anode. It's a different separator, but very similar design. You hardly see a difference from outside. This is the basis for the 20-MW module. We have 296, roughly 300 elements in this 20-MW module, all connected in series.
Our hydrogen plant consists of a multiple of these 20-MW modules, so we can realize any capacity by just numbering up one module after the other one. For the big project, NEOM, that I will just show you in a few seconds, it's more than 2 GW. We, for example, employ 100, more than 100 of these modules, so very easy to scale it up. Now let me show you some highlights of our evolving hydrogen business. It all started with Carbon2Chem in 2018. This is our main pilot, our main R&D site, 2 MW of capacity installed next to the steel mill at thyssenkrupp in Duisburg. This is where we qualify all the components that we develop in R&D before we install it in our commercial plants.
In July 2020, we entered into a strategic collaboration agreement with Air Products. Air Products is the number three gas supplier producer in the world. We are very proud of this collaboration. We agreed to collaborate exclusively for their business models, for certain business models in key regions, and this gives us the unique access to their big installations. In April 2021, we got awarded the first 20-MW module from CF Industries. CF is a big ammonia producer in the U.S., here located in Louisiana, and it shall replace a part of their green hydrogen and convert it to green hydrogen to make then at the end green ammonia. Last month, in December 2021, we are very proud to have been awarded and selected for this prestigious project of NEOM.
NEOM is a region in the northwestern part of Saudi Arabia at the Gulf of Aqaba. NEOM and Air Products and ACWA Power want to build there and will build there a big green ammonia plant, and they have selected our technology for the electrolysis part. It is a huge plant with a capacity of more than 2 GW, and this will then at the end make green ammonia that is shipped into the world. There was another success in December 2021, and this is the project at Shell in Rotterdam, and we have been awarded with a 200-MW hydrogen plant. This is a very big milestone and one of the biggest plants in Europe that has been awarded.
Actually, our opportunity and sales funnel is well filled, as Christoph will also show later on, and there is more to come in the next months and years. On this slide, we have highlighted once more the two largest orders in our books. NEOM, more than 2 GW, startup is about 2026. It's a large plant, takes some time to build it. Then we have Shell, the 200 MW with a startup targeted in 2024. With these two big projects and further other projects, we have achieved already a backlog of approximately EUR 0.9 billion, approximately EUR 900 million. For chlor-alkali and the service business, service is mainly chlor-alkali still, we have achieved a backlog of approximately EUR 0.4 billion. This is an excellent start for thyssenkrupp nucera into the new era.
I now want to conclude the first section of the introduction. Would like to give you the key message I would like you to take away. First, we are acting in a high-growth hydrogen market, and this will also drive the demand for the water electrolysis. We want to take advantage of this huge opportunity. We are having a leading organization with a global network of our own locations, but also with our partners, very close to our customers. We don't need to start it from scratch. It's already existing, and we expand. We have a proven know-how from the chlor-alkali business, and this is the strong basis, the DNA also, to scale up the new alkaline water electrolysis. We are proud of our modular 20 MW electrolyzer design. It's a standardized design, specifically designed for big projects, for industrial scale projects.
We have already secured big hydrogen projects with a total of more than 2 GW of capacity, and we are working on further multi-100-MW opportunities. Now I would like to move on to thyssenkrupp nucera's business model and our corporate strategy. First of all, I would like to explain the scope and the different phases of a hydrogen plant. These scopes and phases are very similar also to a chlor-alkali plant, so we are very acquainted with it. It all starts with the alkaline water electrolysis modules. We have to procure the materials and the equipment. We have to fabricate it, the cells and also the modules. Then there is the balance of plant, so-called.
In order to make it a full hydrogen plant, we have to engineer and design and procure transformers, rectifiers, purification of the hydrogen, compression, the utilities. This is all the engineering to make it a full hydrogen plant. There's the phase of construction, civil construction, foundations, steelwork. There's the installation of all the material and equipment that we procure on the construction site. Once it is installed and erected, it has to be commissioned piece by piece, unit by unit. At the end, the entire plant is started up, handed over to the customer. We don't leave the site.
Starts the life cycle of a plant, and we accompany the customers with our technology service and support them to optimize the processes, to improve their business cases, for example, with optimizations or with debottleneckings or revamps. After having illustrated the different scopes and phases of a hydrogen plant, I would like now to show you what part we cover and why. The criterion is the attractiveness in terms of value add and the limited complexity for thyssenkrupp nucera and of course our shareholders. The core supply scope, of course, are our alkaline water electrolysis modules, the 20- MW modules. Then it depends on the requirements of the customer. We can also design the rest of the plant, the balance of the plant, and make it a full hydrogen plant.
We cover then the engineering, the procurement, the design, and then also the fabrication of our proprietary equipment. Civil construction is usually done by third parties. Erection, we support with advisory service for our proprietary equipment because of course we know it best what we have designed. We also support our customers for the commissioning, for the testing of all the parts of a hydrogen plant, and then do the start up and the guarantee test run. Then of course starts the long period for the technology service where case by case we are supporting our customers. Only if the opportunity risk ratio is beneficial for thyssenkrupp nucera, we also do the construction and the full installation, but in collaboration with a partner. This is our business model, very similar to the chlor-alkali case.
In the chlor-alkali case, the balance of plant is a little bit more complex, but also very well known for us. These are the partners we collaborate with. I would like to mention first De Nora. De Nora is a world leader in electrochemical technologies. They are not only our joint venture partner, they are also a key supplier for the electrode coatings, for the noble metal coatings that make our electrolysis more efficient. They give us access to their world-class coatings and also to their network of workshops worldwide, and we also jointly pursue R&D programs. We jointly develop the combination of coating and our cell structure. De Nora serves us also with the manufacturing and the service workshops for our cell technology.
Nucera owns the intellectual property of the cells, but De Nora contributes with the coatings and acts as a toll manufacturer for our cells, so we don't manufacture the cells ourselves. This is being done in a toll manufacturing agreement by De Nora. The second key partner is thyssenkrupp, the business unit Uhde. Uhde is an engineering procurement construction company and a technology provider for chemical and process solutions. They also have a global network of hubs for engineering, procurement, and construction services. The key people are with thyssenkrupp nucera, but Uhde provides to us support for work intensive tasks, for detail engineering, for example, in India or in Thailand with their modularization expertise. These interfaces are well-tested and therefore working very well since many years. The main locations are here, Germany, India, and Thailand with its modularization competence. Furthermore, Uhde and nucera offer jointly so-called process chains.
We are having in our portfolio the chlor-alkali electrolysis and Uhde has got EDC, VC, PVC, so the plastic route. We are having again, the green hydrogen electrolysis and Uhde adds the ammonia or the methanol plant that processes the green hydrogen produced by our electrolysis. This is a competitive advantage when we jointly offer these projects because customers want to deal only with one contract and not with two different suppliers. This is an advantage also for us. With these partners, we have a very well-working setup and proven over many, many years. We have talked about the business models and the partners. Now let us talk about the technology and the roadmap, how we develop it. We have already established a standardized cell production with 1 GW/ year of manufacturing capacity.
We have accomplished a competitive, very competitive total cost of ownership for our electrolysis and actually a proven quality and reliability at scale. That's our specialty, industrial scale projects. We have already started to develop the next generation by introducing improvements, reducing the CapEx and also the OpEx of our technology. We call it 1.X, AWE 1.X technology. We also set up a serial production for the cell and module fabrication at multi-gigawatt scale. This has already started, this process. We will also automate the fabrication and the assembly of our technology, and we will introduce digital solutions to optimize, to further optimize the operations of our plants. In about four-five years, we plan to introduce the next big innovation. This is the AWE 2.0.
It'll be a disruptive next generation architecture with a quantum leap in total cost of ownership. We will introduce major improvements in stack design, cell structure, electrodes and diaphragms. We will roll out our gigawatt factories to multiple regions. This is the plan, this is our roadmap. Finally, I would like to give you our vision, how we want to develop the company into the new era of decarbonization, how we shape the new era. Our foundation is strong and has passed into our DNA. We are having decades of electrolysis experience. We are an established technology leader in our field. We are fully committed to quality and longevity. We have built up this very successful holistic life cycle service. We already now have a really multicultural setup, and this has made us a global leader of chlorine technologies.
With this heritage, with this foundation, we now shape the new era and the vision is as follows: we want to have a diversified technology and service portfolio with a globally leading total cost of ownership. We want to have our electrolyzer gigawatt factories all around the globe, fully automated and digitized fabrication, and also the operation will be automated. We want and already do attract and inspire young, smart, enthusiastic talents, and we want to enable the industries to deeply decarbonize. This will make us not only the number one provider for the chlorine technologies, but also for the hydrogen technologies. This is the vision for our new era. This is how we would like to shape the future. Now concluding this section, and these are the key messages I would like you to take away from my presentation.
First, we are having a highly scalable business model focused on the most value add activities for thyssenkrupp nucera and all our shareholders. We are having strong strategic partnerships with Uhde and De Nora, while the IP rights are with thyssenkrupp nucera for the cells and the modules. We have a clear technology roadmap and a company vision that will assure our long-term success. Thank you. Now I hand over to Christoph, and Christoph will cover the hydrogen market and also the alkaline water electrolysis technology. Christoph, please go on.
Yeah, thank you very much, Denis, for the kind introduction. Ladies and gentlemen, also very warm welcome from my side to today's Capital Market Day. Green hydrogen is a huge opportunity. It's reality. It is backed up by never seen market development outside there. We see numbers of projects and opportunities coming up. It's like a big wave which is getting bigger and bigger month by month. We are sure this is the next revolution. It's the next industrial revolution, and we are part of that, and green hydrogen is key to it. We expect that this is a once in a lifetime business opportunity. The good message is, we as thyssenkrupp nucera, we have the technology, and we can deliver now. Ladies and gentlemen, in this presentation, I would like to share with you three key items. The first one is the key market beliefs.
The second one is the key market drivers. Last but not least, the third one is why we see us as thyssenkrupp nucera with an outstanding positioning in this market. Let's start with the first slide. Please, next slide. Yeah, you have already seen this slide. This is the slide presented by Denis. This is the hydrogen market demand today. It's already today a huge market of around 3,500 TWh . Where is this market demand coming from? It's mainly industrial market. It's about the refining industry, about the ammonia industry, and about the methanol industry. They need, as a feedstock, hydrogen. The hydrogen used today is mainly gray hydrogen. As already mentioned by Denis, we are going into a net zero economy. That is our future. We have to do something about the gray hydrogen.
Why? Because gray hydrogen is manufactured from natural gas, mainly by steam methane reforming. In this process, not only hydrogen is produced, no, it's also carbon dioxide. CO2 is produced. It's about 10 tons of CO2 per ton of hydrogen. This SMR process and this gray hydrogen is a very polluting process, and if you would account all the CO2 coming only from those industrial processes, we would come up to an overall figure of 900 million tons of CO2 emissions per year. This is a significant CO2 footprint globally. Now, let's assume, if you would take now this gray hydrogen and you would turn it towards green hydrogen, we would need an electrolysis capacity of around 950 gigawatts in total. This is already a quite big business opportunity. Let's come to the next slide, please.
The next slide shows to you how experts expect the hydrogen market will develop from today, 2020, towards 2050. It's expected that it will grow seven-fold by 2050. That is shown in the left-hand side graph. You can see in 2020, hydrogen market is about 3,500 TWh, and it will grow towards 26,000 TWh in 2050. This is all driven by the net zero emissions targets, which were set by many governments until 2050. Hydrogen is seen as the key player to deep decarbonize many, many sectors. Hydrogen, which not only further introduce into other processes inside the industrial sector, for example, the steel and other processes in the industrial sector.
No, it will also enter other sectors, for example, the building heat and power, the transportation sector, as well as the power generation sector. In all these sectors, hydrogen will play the role to decarbonize those sectors. If you now take another assumption of experts, it's coming from the Hydrogen Council, and they expect that this amount of hydrogen in 2050 will be around 60%-80% green hydrogen. So it means from this 26,000 TWh in 2050, 60%-80% are expected to be green. If you would now translate that into electrolyzer capacity, again, we would come up to an electrolyzer capacity of 5,500 GW, which is a super big number. Let's go to the next slide.
Ladies and gentlemen, we talked a lot about the different types of hydrogen, different colors of hydrogen. To make it very clear, we, as thyssenkrupp nucera, we focus on green hydrogen only. Because green hydrogen is the enabler of the net zero economy. On this slide here, I would like to share with you two main items. I will explain a little bit more about the different types of hydrogen, and I will also share with you the expectations of analysts, what kind of supply mix, what kind of market shares the different types of hydrogen will assume in 2050. Let's start first with the gray hydrogen.
As I mentioned, gray hydrogen coming from natural gas, reprocessed by steam methane reforming, it's a highly polluting process, and therefore, as it has such a significant CO2 footprint, the experts expect that its market share will more or less vanish in 2050. If you take now the CO2 emitted in that steam methane reforming process, and we capture it, and then we store it, we turn gray to blue hydrogen. Many experts say that this blue hydrogen, even you capture and store the CO2, still has, along the value chain, a significant CO2 footprint. Therefore, the experts of the Hydrogen Council expect that blue hydrogen will have market share in 2050 limited to 20%-40%. Contrary to gray and blue, green hydrogen is the only real sustainable hydrogen which is carbon free.
You need only renewable power, clean power, water, and a good mature electrolysis technology, and then you get green hydrogen. As it has no CO2 footprint, the experts see that green hydrogen will achieve a market share in 2050 by 60%-80%. This is a significant market share for the future. Let's go to the next slide, please. Now I would like to have a different view of on the market. Now I would like to analyze the project and opportunity announcements. What we can say is that it's a significant, tremendous momentum for hydrogen projects globally. That is shown here with this slide here. Let's look into this graph here. The graph shows you the forecast done by the Hydrogen Council of the announced hydrogen production volume by 2030.
This forecast, this projection, was done in the last three years, every year. It was done in 2019, 2020, and 2021. What we can see is that this projection of the hydrogen volume up to 2030 is increasing year by year. For example, in 2021, it's 717 TWh . This is eight times bigger than the projection in 2019 with 90 TWh . It's, as already said in my introduction statement, it's like a wave. The project is getting more and more, bigger and bigger, and it's building up like a big wave. There's one more important information in the projection done in 2021. It was analyzed that those projects are up to 50% green hydrogen.
If you would translate that now into electrolyzer capacity, we would have around 93 GW of electrolyzer capacity. Quite overwhelming number. Now let's look on the next slide, please. Where are all these projects located, yeah? All those hydrogen projects along the hydrogen value chain, in total more than 500 projects, in principle are all around the world, but still we can see focus regions. The focus regions are Europe with around 50%, China with 20%, North America with more than 10%, and Australia around 10%. It's a really global business opportunity. Now let's refer once again to Denis' presentation. We have seen our global setup. We are a global business player. We have a global organization, and we have done global business over the last decades. We meet the requirements of this global market. It's our DNA.
We are global. The additional information on this slide, which is very important, is if you now analyze those projects, you can say that around 80% of those more than 500 projects focus on gigascale production, large scale industrial usage and transport shipping projects. These are all big scale industrial projects, and that is just what we need. This is an industrial business opportunity. We are industrial. We focus on industrial and large scale projects, so it's a perfect fit. How does now this all translate into a sales funnel? Let's move to the next slide, please. If you now translate that with our procedures into our sales funnel, we come already up with a sales funnel with an order intake volume of more than +EUR 13 billion. This is already quite big sales funnel, I have to say. It's really impressive.
How do we proceed here? Inside thyssenkrupp nucera, we have clear business development and sales procedures. We have clear gates, we have clear criteria, how we select the projects. Because this is such a super big market, we have to focus on the right and most important projects. If we now apply such criteria like what is the maturity of the project, what is the feasibility of the project, can the customer finance the project, all that comes together, then we come and can decrease the number of projects and really focus our resources. We come to a high transparency of our process, and we can do a prudent order intake planning, and that is most important that we have done over the last decades, and that is the reason why we have been successful and why we are successful.
Let's now apply such criteria, then we come down to around 397 projects, which are really industrial projects, those are 80%. If you further apply our detailed criteria, we come down to a sales funnel of 90 projects. These 90 projects represent the +EUR 13 billion, and they are in more than 35 countries around the world. It's a really global business opportunity. Also, the resulting projects we focus on. In addition, the average, the median project size is around 100 MW. This also says the projects in total develop to real big projects. It's not only not any more like maybe two years ago, we're talking about small kilowatt or single-digit megawatt projects.
No, we are talking about 100 MW projects and bigger, and that is just what we are focusing on. That is what we can do very much. Later on in Arno's presentation, Arno will further detail this, how this sales funnel will be translated in our business planning. Let's now move to the next slide, and I would like to start with the second part of this presentation, ladies and gentlemen. What are the key drivers now for this green hydrogen wave, this green hydrogen market? These are in total three drivers. The first key driver is governmental policies. This is in principle all the net zero targets which are implemented around the world, and these are the CO2 emission costs. The second driver is the renewable energy.
The cost decline in renewable energy, as well as the huge amount of renewable energy which comes upstream, in the future. Last but not least, the third driver, hydrogen, green hydrogen, is seen as the only viable solution to decarbonize specific industries. These are especially the industries which are hard to abate, which you cannot electrify, like the steel case. This is the last and the third driver to push green hydrogen forward. Let's start now with the first driver, governmental policies. Please, the next slide. Yes, what you can say is in the markets over the last years, we have seen a development of initiatives, of regulations coming out, which we have never seen before.
It all has started with the Paris Agreement in 2016, with the RED II regulation, with the European Green Deal, with the European Hydrogen Strategy and many others. What you can say is all these initiatives to push net zero targets forward is really pushed forward by the European Union. What you can also see over the last years is that all the other countries around the world are following this. It's a real global trend to push net zero targets forward. Let's give you some details that you really have a better understanding what is happening outside there. In total, there are around 39 countries with a dedicated hydrogen strategy, which is shown here, with the map of the red-colored countries.
Well, it's already a quite big number, and as said, this is also covering all those countries which are focus regions. If we look on the overall number of countries which have already adopted net zero targets, this is already 93 countries in total. One more important information. If we take the update from the Hydrogen Council, they are saying that countries representing over 80% of the global GDP, they plan to enter the hydrogen economy by 2025 with a clear, dedicated strategy. One more important point is all these strategies will have green hydrogen as a central pillar. That is also a very important thing. Another very important information is that most of those strategies have two key targets.
One key target is that many countries try to utilize this hydrogen strategy to have a higher independence with regards to energy. The second item is that many of those countries link those strategies with industrial recovery programs to recover the economy, especially due to the COVID-19 impact. What I want to tell you with that is this all gives the whole initiatives and regulations a real serious character, and it will show that all these countries will move forward, they will move forward very fast. Let's come to the next slide. Let's come to the carbon emission allowances. Well, as already indicated, hydrogen has a significant abatement potential, and for many industries, it's the only solution to decarbonize their processes. For example, many processes inside the chemical industries as well as the steel industry.
If you now add to that so, because the industry has to move, they have to implement zero emission targets, so they have to change. Now in addition, what's pushed this forward, what accelerates this, are the carbon emission allowances. If you look now on this bar chart here, it shows you the emission allowances in Europe, in EUR per ton of CO2. And already today it's around 50 EUR per ton of CO2. If you now go into analyst forecasts, we see that there is an expectation that those allowances will further increase up to 2030, up to 100 EUR per ton of CO2. So it will double in total. Now, can I imagine how much additional push that can give into such business cases.
CO2 tax is a very important driver to push green hydrogen projects forward. Let's come now to the next slide. With the next slide, towards the second key driver, renewable energy. Especially low-cost renewable energy. Look, have a look on this slide on the right-hand side graph here, and it shows you the global weighted utility-scale renewable power costs for different types of technologies. Independent from the technology, what you can see is a continuous decline of renewable power during the last 10 years. If you would analyze that, you will come to an average cost decline of around 11% per year.
If you take specifics on it, if you come from this average values and go to very specific projects which are built in very favorable areas, for example, in the Middle East or in Australia, you come to record projects. One of the last record project with record low renewable power PPA cost was around $10.4/ MWh. If you come now to the next slide, please. Here, this picture in the background shows to you an example picture for a PV plant, how it could look like. This is just the example for this project with $10.4/ MWh, which is a project in Saudi Arabia. It's not a small project. It's a huge project of close to 1 GW. It's 600 MW in total.
That is the next important point. You need not only low cost power, you need a huge amount of power. Thanks to the International Energy Agency, IEA, they have reported in the last publications that, for example, in 2020, the additional renewable energy coming on stream was around 280 GW globally. Big, big amount. They also have further expectations until 2025. They reported that in 2025, the renewable power coming online in only that year will be around 400 GW, which is a super big number and all this will push green hydrogen forward. Let's come to the next slide, please. Yeah, this is the third driver. As we said, it is certain industries which have a significant CO2 footprint, they have to change.
They have to transfer their value chain to zero-emission value chain. The only way to do it is with green hydrogen for certain industries, and some examples are shown on this slide here. For example, the refining of ammonia as well as the steel industry. If you would now apply for those industries, in the case of refining ammonia, we would just substitute the gray hydrogen to green hydrogen. It's a quite simple process. In case of steel, we really have to adapt our steel process, and then we can utilize green hydrogen at the end as well. Let's now look into certain business cases.
If you now look into business cases as dependent on the CO2 costs, we can already say that steel would be a positive business case with a CO2 cost of around $50 per ton of CO2. In principle, it's already now a positive business case. If you look into refining ammonia, the expectation is that those processes can be switched to a net zero supply chain utilizing green hydrogen in case the CO2 costs are higher than $100 per ton of CO2. It means already those industrial business cases are quite close, and they have to be done, so therefore they will drive further the green hydrogen. This was about the key drivers for the market. Now let's come to the last item of my presentation.
Let's go to the next slide, please. As already said, we see ourselves with an outstanding positioning in this market here. I would like to explain it to you with this slide. We have seen in the analysis of the projects that a significant number of projects is multiple hundred megawatt size and even gigawatt size big. What is the reason for it? There are three answers to that. The first one is in order to substitute in existing industrial installations the gray hydrogen with green hydrogen. The existing industrial process is on a large scale, industrial scale, so you need also to produce green hydrogen industrial scale to fit accordingly.
The second reason is, as many, many reasons in the industry, you need to follow the economies of scale principle, because large scale electrolyzer projects as well will push down the cost structure, will improve cost structures of projects. This will help you to make green hydrogen more competitive. The last reason, if you manufacture green hydrogen, for sure you have to look that you fit into the downstream process and either it's a Power-to-X. The first part where you have like methanol production, or if you then further go and you want to transport those chemicals or that energy carrier, you need size, you need scale, you need industrial scale to operate either production or the transportation in a very competitive way. This in total shows you industrial scale drives the whole green hydrogen production to a very efficient production process.
That we need to make green hydrogen competitive. Anyhow, industries have to change, so they will move forward, and they have to implement green hydrogen. The good message here is these are industrial processes, these are industrial customers, and we are industrial. We have the industrial DNA, and therefore we can fit those projects best. As mentioned in the presentation of Denis, the last contract awards, published over the last weeks, NEOM and Shell, it underlines the industry is really looking for a service from a supplier like us who has the industrial DNA. With this, I would like to summarize the first presentations of these two next slides. Please take those three key messages with you home. The first one is we see a super steep market development, and it will continue as expected, and we see even gigawatt projects announced.
Second, green hydrogen is the key to the energy transition, and it's driven by government policies and low cost renewable energy. Third, green hydrogen demand will be driven by the industrial sector, and that is just our home turf. That is our focus market of thyssenkrupp nucera. With this, I would like to switch to the next presentation, AWE technology. Please, to next slide. Yeah. I would like to explain to you in this section what is our AWE technology. Before I start with that, let's now think again what I stated in the market presentation. What are the market needs our AWE technology has to meet? It's large scale projects, it's industrial customers, and it's a global business.
As said, we are, our DNA is industrial and global, and our AWE technology is mature and it's proven, and that I would like to show you with this presentation. Let's start with the next slide, please. We have a very strong foundation inside thyssenkrupp nucera. We are a global leader in the chlor-alkali electrolysis technology, which we have built up over the last 30 years, the last three decades. All our expertise we built up by serving the chemical industry, by serving all those significant global players over the last three decades. With this, we have built more than 10 gigawatts of electrolyzer capacity for the chemical industries, and in other words, more than 600 projects. With that, even in after-sales service, we have a market share of more than 50%. This is a significant heritage we have.
We have utilized that and have transferred that expertise towards our AWE technology. We have developed a very competitive technology by standardization. We have 1 GW existing supply chain, which we could reutilize from the chlor-alkali process technology towards the alkaline water electrolysis technology. We have a super scalable technology, which is our 20- MW module. That makes us very, very efficient and cost efficient. Still, if you look in the future, we still see a significant optimization potential to become better. That's also what we have done in the past. We always try to become better for our industrial customers, to make our industrial customers more competitive. We see that with a cost down roadmap, we want to improve, we want to scale up the manufacturing, we want to introduce further high performance materials.
We will change our design with incremental steps, so optimize design step by step to come down with cost and improve performance. We will come to the next level of AWE technology. We have already started the program, and we want to develop AWE 2.0, which will be a disruptive approach and will be a new architecture. Now let's start with our 20-MW module, our baby. Next slide, please. The picture was already presented by Denis, but it's so super important, I would like to re-share some other thoughts about this module. This module, as said, we have designed with all our expertise what industrial customers need and what green hydrogen needs. Then you can see in the center, this is our famous single element, and around 300 of those single elements are on this electrolyzer module.
It's worldwide the biggest electrolyzer module. Baby is the wrong word. It's a strong boy. We have a standardized solution here to manufacture green hydrogen in large scale. One more item, we are operating this technology at a very high current density, and this gives us a super small optimized footprint. As said, we have developed this, keeping in mind what our industrial partners need. The technology has a high performance, which is proven in our Carbon2Chem facility. I come later to that one in this presentation. We can serve this, so we can supply this technology around the world with our network and our colleagues. We can also serve it with our network, because we do the network globally already for our chlor-alkali business over the last decades.
Also further explain that how we want to do it here for AWE technology. We are, with this technology, ready to roll it out for the industrial market. Now we come to a very brief video. In this video, I would further explain to you, well, the video will explain to you how the single element will work and how the single element will be then integrated into a 20- MW module, and how then the 20- MW module is numbered up to a gigawatt scale plant. Please enjoy the video. Please start the video now. Great. Let's come now to the next slide and some more words how we utilize our system, our single element, our 20- MW module to deliver successful 20- MW and multi- to 100- MW and gigawatt scale projects.
Thank you very much. As you can see on the left side, so this is starting with the single element, and the single element is more or less the same architecture or very similar architecture as we have it from the chlor-alkali technology. Roland will later on explain it as well as Fulvio. We do all improvements, all innovations inside this one element, the same size, and test that in our Carbon2Chem test center. I will show it later to you. That means we take this ready and finished and tested element and number it up. We don't scale it up. In many other processes, you have to scale it up. No, we don't scale up. We keep the size of it, and we number it up. Then we install around 300 of such elements into the 20-MW module.
With this numbering up, this is one of the key items. We reduce the overall risk. We mitigate risk. Additionally, the numbering up also helps to standardize it. Standardization means lean operations, lean processes. With that, we come down with the overall costs. Now we have the 20-MW module, and also this 20-MW module, we don't scale up. We number it up. Then with the numbering up, we come to the 100, the multi-100 MW plants and even the GW plant size. As said, with this fully modular system, we keep standardization, we reduce costs, and we mitigate risk. That is what our industrial customers need. This simplicity really is what our market needs. Next slide, please. Now we come to our Carbon2Chem facility in Duisburg at our thyssenkrupp Steel site here in Germany.
It's only around 45 minutes from here to our headquarters in Dortmund. It's very easy to reach there. We always have a team working there. This is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. It was started up in 2018. As said, it's a testing and a demonstration unit, and it has a plant size of around 2 MW.
Yeah. Well, ladies and gentlemen, sorry for the interruption. There seems to be an issue with the internet connection. We are working on it, and we are trying to fix it, as fast as possible. We just ask you a bit for your patience. I think it cannot last too long before it will be available again. Thank you.
All right. Sorry. I thought we could continue. This is the Carbon2Chem. I think I can restart again. This is the current-to-current electrolyzer. As said, it's a 2 MW unit with 30 elements, and it's key to our methodology and our R&D philosophy, because we can test all innovations, all components in this electrolyzer, and this we can easily transfer from this electrolyzer because the single element here has the same size as in the big scale plant. With that, we can mitigate risk, and we can very fastly introduce new innovations. Okay, let's come to the next slide, please. Thank you very much. Here we come now to a real industrial plant. I think if I look on the left-hand side, you see an industrial chlor-alkali electrolyzer.
If I remember correctly, I was even a commissioning manager of this plant in 2006. If you compare that single element on the left side with the chlor-alkali element to the right side, which is a AWE element, it's more or less the same architecture, it's the same size, only colors different. You can see here it's really that this technology is made for industrial usage, for industrial handling. That is what we have learned over the last 30 years. Therefore, we have a single element, because with the single element, in case we have an operation, we want to optimize something on the single element or two or three single elements, we can shut down the electrolyzer, take out those one or two elements and improve them, install them back or exchange them with a very low shutdown time.
This is completely different to our technologies. In our technologies, you have to change the whole stack, and this gives you a huge opportunity to improve availability and time online for the plant, which is key for industrial operation. Next slide, please. Now we come to a full picture of a cell room. This is the cell room, started up, if I remember correctly, also in 2006, which was built by us for the customer Tessenderlo in Belgium. It's, if you would translate the chlor-alkali capacity toward AWE technology, we would have a capacity of around 60 MW, which is quite a big plant. It gives a really nice picture how a future cell room of AWE technology would look like.
One more important item is this plant produces not only chlorine and caustic soda. No, it also produces hydrogen. All the other 600 references we have built are also producing hydrogen. Hydrogen is part of our DNA. thyssenkrupp Uhde is very experienced to handle hydrogen. Next slide, please. We are absolutely confident that AWE technology is the most suitable for large-scale industrial projects. There's a significant discussion in the market about technologies as usual, and I would like to make a very short comparison of the different technologies, different key technologies. I would like to briefly summarize here about the PEM and SOC technology. Let's start with the PEM technology. PEM means polymer electrolyte membrane electrolysis technology. It's partially commercial, partially under development. As we understand, it's mainly focusing on decentralized, smaller project size.
What we understood is that the technology needs a quite significant amount of precious metals, and that makes it quite expensive. The other technology, the SOC technology, or in full solid oxide electrolyzer cell technology, is in a very early stage of development. We see it that in the future it might focus on certain niche industrial areas, so not on the whole industrial area because it has to fulfill certain constraints. We also understood from experts that the response time is quite slow, which also limits the area of application. Now let's come to AWE technology. AWE technology, in contrast to those, is a fully mature and commercially available technology, and it clearly focus on big scale centralized projects. It has a reasonable response time, so it can meet the requirements of big renewable energy in installations.
The very important thing is it has very good performance and the amount of precious metals is significantly limited in comparison to other technologies. That means we have a very suitable and very competitive technology. As said, this was underlined by the industrial global players, by Air Products, NEOM, as well as Shell, and therefore we have been awarded with those two major contracts. The next discussion always on the market is the cost of the technology. Let's move to the next slide, please. Even we have to say for green hydrogen production, one of the key cost parts, excuse me. Sorry. Is the cost of renewable power and, for sure, also the cost of the technology is important.
Here in this graph. The IRENA, this is the International Renewable Energy Agency, have compared the costs in U.S. dollar per kilowatt for AWE and PEM technology. What you can see here is that in 2020, already AWE has a significant cost advantage. If you continue then and go to 2050, AWE will keep its cost advantage. What you can say is, the difference between those two technologies regarding costs, as shown here, is getting smaller. We at thyssenkrupp nucera are super confident that we will keep the cost leadership of AWE technology. For that reason, we have introduced and implemented a clear program forward with five measures. First is product philosophy is already installed to make our processes lean. We have a gigawatt procurement and supply chain is also already in place, and we further improve.
We have a technology roadmap in place where we have stepwise improvements to come down with costs and further improve performance. In the goal for AWE 2.0, the next level AWE technology with a disruptive design approach with a new architecture. Last but not least, we will have a 5 GW manufacturing line available in the future. With that scale of manufacturing, we come down with costs. With that, we can say with a clear program and we are very confident we will keep our cost leadership. With that, I would like to come to the next slide, which is our summary. Ladies and gentlemen, please take those three key messages with you. First of all, AWE technology is already ready today.
The second one is, it's clearly the most suitable technology for industrial use cases to manufacture hydrogen, green hydrogen at industrial scale. AWE technology is a high-performing technology, and it's a cost-leading technology. With this, I would like to close this presentation. I would like to thank you for your attention, and I would like to ask Denis to come back on stage so that we can start the first Q&A. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you very much, Christoph. Thank you very much also, Denis. We are now coming to the first Q&A session, and we also already have four questioners registered, and we would like to start now. The first questions, they come from Seth Rosenfeld from Exane BNP Paribas. So it could now take a couple of seconds before Seth is live. Before you're live, Seth, but just be a bit patient. Yeah, here you are.
That's it.
Great.
Wonderful. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Very well. Thank you.
Great. Thank you very much for your presentations this morning. Following up, I guess, on the final slides, please, a few follow-up questions, please. Obviously the market outlook is exceptionally compelling, really exceptional demand growth for green hydrogen over the coming decades. Nucera obviously has a very good market share in chlor-alkali at present, roughly 50% you mentioned. How should we think about your expectations for market share going forward? In your final slides, you discussed where AWE stands versus PEM and other technologies. How do you think about market share for your own business? Is 50% the right number we should be keeping in mind? Or what scale of discount should we expect over coming years and coming decades? I'll start there, please.
I will take this question, Seth. For the chlor-alkali market, as you have rightly stated, we are a market leader. About 50% of all chlor-alkali installations utilize our technology. As a specialist for industrial scale electrolysis, of course, our ambition is, our target is to be also a leading company for the alkaline water electrolysis. This is clearly our target. It might not necessarily exactly the same as for chlor-alkali, but we want to be one of the big, really leading companies for the alkaline water electrolysis, and we will grow along also with the hydrogen market.
Okay, Seth? Yes, please, Seth. I can't hear you at the moment.
Sorry.
Now, I got you.
Thank you.
Now I get you.
Thank you. Within AWE, please, can you talk about the competitive landscape, please? Certainly, given the demand trends that everyone's looking at right now, we understand there's competition across North America, Europe, and from Asian competitors as well. When you think about specifically within AWE, how do you stand versus those competitors in terms of the scale of capacity growth and also future cost performance, please?
Right. There, of course, a very good starting position from our side. We have decades of experience in R&D in electrolysis. This gives us the power also for innovation to stay also a leading company in electrolysis. We have already established our manufacturing of 1 GW of capacity, and the process is initiated to expand it to 5 GW, and not only in Europe.
We are fortunate to have a network of workshops together with our partners to expand also in different regions of the world. We already now have a leading total cost of ownership, CapEx and OpEx. With our innovation and also with the serial production and our partners, we strive to stay at the top of this leadership also for the alkaline water electrolysis. As you see also from our backlog, we have been now very successful in getting jobs. The big job of NEOM and Shell with a great order backlog of about EUR 900 million. I think this is a good starting position. Of course, we have to continue with innovation and with expanding our business in order to maintain this really leading position here.
I think it's we are perfectly positioned here with our setup.
Thank you, Seth.
Thank you very much.
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Seth. The next one now we have here is Tom Zhang from Barclays. Tom is already there.
Hi. Can you guys hear me?
We can hear you.
Yes, we can.
Yes. Brilliant. Just one question from my side. Thanks very much for the presentation. It's just on the AWE 2.0. So you mentioned it's a disruptive new generation architecture for a quantum leap in how water electrolysis is carried out. I mean, one of the big USPs for nucera is your long history and experience in chlor-alkali, but this sounds like it could be, you know, totally new architecture and new technology. So can you talk about the risks that in a few years your experience in chlor-alkali is not so relevant? I know you can't give, you know, too much detail perhaps on exactly what AWE 2.0 really means, but just any color you can give around that would be great.
Yeah. Thank you for this question. Well, our experience is relevant. Christoph, would you like to take over this question?
I think you were muted there. Sorry. I couldn't hear you, Denis.
Can you hear me now? No?
Okay. Better. Thanks.
Christoph, are you still on the line? He's not, so I will take the question. I think our experience in chlor-alkali is relevant, not only for 1.X, also for 2.0. We are collaborating also with a leading company for the electrode coatings, and it's always a combination of it all. It's the cell design, stack design, the structure, the diaphragms, the coatings. It's the whole package, including also the service business. I can give you now already details for something that we will publish in four-five years, but it'll be a quantum leap also in the reduction of cost and also in the performance. That means in the increase of the efficiency of our water electrolysis.
We are quite confident that we will have also with this AWE 2.0 a really leading position in the market.
All right. Tom? Okay, great. Thank you. So the next one is from Citi. It's Krishan Agarwal. We now try to transfer you into the meeting, Krishan. A little bit of patience.
Hello?
Hello?
Yeah.
Are you there? Great.
Yes. Yes.
Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks a lot for informative presentation. If I'm allowed to think a little bit loud and out here in terms of your market share potential, current market share is 20%-50%. I mean, the opportunity you see by 2050 is 5,500 GW. I was doing a rough math that what it could mean for next 30 years order intake. Even if I were to assume a market share normalizing to, you know, 25%, 30% scenario, the opportunity is as big as, like, 50, 50 GW order intake per year. Is this number making some sense to you, or I'm thinking too loud on this order intake potential front for nucera?
Actually, this is part also of our financial section, and I would like to ask you for a little bit more patience for that section still to come, maybe at the end of this event. We are having there some guidance also for our sales development over the years. If this is okay for you, then we will try to answer this then in one of the next sections.
Sure. Perfectly fine. If I can ask another question on your competitive position following up on Seth's question. So if I were to look at the competitive landscape, both in terms of, you know, CapEx and OpEx, what would be your guidance as in you are below your competitors' positioning in terms of both CapEx and OpEx? And if you are below, then how much is probably that range of competitive, beneficial positioning for your product?
Well, I think this is a similar issue, so it's again a financial issue, and we would like to leave the financial questions for the Q&A session that follows the presentation of the CFO, if this is okay for you, Krishan.
Yeah, perfectly fine. We are the analysts, so we are always asking the financial questions. No problem. Thank you. I'll wait.
Good. Thank you very much. The next one in the row is Alan Spence from Jefferies, and Alan has already arrived. Great. Alan, please go ahead.
Thanks, guys. I had one question on the longer-term demand outlook. You provided that helpful graph noting that about 50% of the megawatt scale projects have been announced in Europe. How do you see that progressing in the coming decades? When could a region like Asia take the lead and be the primary driver?
Alan, I think this is a very good question for Christoph. Are you online?
Yes, I'm online.
Could you please take over this question?
Yes. Alan, I think what you have shown the reporting from the highest council has shown the announcements out there. You have seen on that slide that these projections are changing year by year. It's a very dynamic market there. Therefore, the forecast is to a certain extent a bit difficult. We expect that especially in Asia and China, the market will have a very fast further development. I think the European Union pushed forward with all the initiatives and regulations, and many other regions come and follow them. I could expect that Asia will be very fast.
I think it's very difficult and would be also unproven to give you a statement at what time Asia would be the bigger market than Europe in the future. I hope that fits to your question, and you are happy with that.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next one is Jason. It's Jason Fairclough from Bank of America.
Hello.
Hi, Jason.
You can hear me guys? Yep, perfect. Look, it's Jason Fairclough from Bank of America. A couple questions, I guess, on the strategy front. You alluded a little bit to ESG, and I did just wanna ask a couple of questions on the G, so governance, and thinking about how this business will be governed. Historically, I think one of the best businesses to come out of thyssenkrupp was the elevator business. Effectively, that was run completely independently. It had its, you know, ultimately, its own decisions on strategy. I guess the question is the vision that this business is run with its independent management or is it taking direction ultimately from the top?
I guess on a related issue, I think that the relationship with De Nora looks quite interesting, but it also sets up risks here for conflict of interest. How are you managing those conflicts of interest or those potential conflicts of interest with De Nora?
Thank you for your questions, Jason. The first question I think I would like to forward to Volkmar, regarding the governance and the independence of thyssenkrupp nucera as a shareholder.
Thank you very much, Denis. I think the potential IPO is the perfect solution to give Nucera more individual freedom and very similar to the elevator setup to get a little bit of relief from corporates.
Okay.
We as a management are happy with the decision. It gives us operational autonomy and it's exactly the way that we will be independent here. Regarding your second question on the relationship with De Nora. I have to explain that this relationship is a long-standing relationship. This has been built up already about 20 years ago in the collaboration as a salt manufacturer for ourselves also the provision of the world's leading electrode coatings. This is working perfectly. We have a contract with De Nora. We do jointly also R&D in order to match the sales structure with the noble metals. We actually intend to continue this partnership because it's very successful and beneficial for both parties. However, this partnership is not exclusive. This we have to say.
We are also open to third parties, but with De Nora, we are working with one of the leading companies, and they have a very good offering to us. We also have transparency in our relationship. This is, of course, a competitive advantage to us, but also to De Nora. If there's another party, a third party who has got a very good offering for us, we would, of course, consider this in order to further progress our own technology and offering and positioning in the market.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Jason. Now we go over to the next one. It is Luke Nelson.
Hi, can you hear me?
Yes, we can.
Perfect. Thanks a lot for the presentations. I have two questions. Firstly, just on the business model, it appears you're targeting a much larger reach across the value chain, than maybe some of the pure play peers, particularly into EPC. You obviously make a good point in terms of how it provides a one-stop solution for clients. On the flip side, it does potentially introduce some additional risks. Can you maybe talk about how you plan or how you mitigate these risks, particularly going forward as you enter into larger scale projects from a balance sheet risk within a standalone entity. Can you maybe also talk about how that greater EPC exposure affects your revenue share within installations between the different partners on these installations? That's my first question.
Yeah. Thank you, Luke. I will take this question and the answer. We have designed exactly our business model to the strengths of thyssenkrupp nucera. The strength is the technology part. I think I have explained this with our modules and also with the balance of plant, engineering, procurement. Only in case the opportunity and risk ratio is favorable for us as thyssenkrupp nucera, we would also go to the construction part and the installation part, but never alone. We don't have our own specialists for that part. We would then partner up with somebody else. That can be Uhde, that can also be a third party. This is how we manage and mitigate then also the risk for thyssenkrupp nucera and our shareholders.
Regarding the detail engineering, we utilize third parties because we don't have all the functions for doing the work intensive work. Here, preferably, we do it also historically with group companies of thyssenkrupp Uhde in India or in Thailand. We have this model very well under control. The C part is principally possible for us, but actually not our core business model, and we are very selective here. Does this answer your question, Luke?
Uh, I don't think you-
Luke, you are on mute.
Hi. Can you hear me now? I was muted.
Yeah.
Yes, that answers my question. Thank you very much. My second question is just around comments on growing the share of services revenue at nucera. Firstly, can you give any indication of what the annual charge is of the purchase price into services, at least what you eventually are targeting? I believe some of the pure plays talk to low mid-single digit % as a proportion of installation costs. Secondly, can you talk around what your expectations are around the stack replacement cycle? Is this a decade? Is it 15 years? Just maybe how you're thinking around that going forward.
Luke, these are very interesting questions, but we will cover this by the following section. I would like you to ask for a little bit more patience, such that we can better answer it with the background and the information of the slides that we have presented, if this is okay for you.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you, Luke.
The next one is Christian Georges from Société Générale. Christian? Yeah, again, a bit of patience required.
Hello. Can you hear me?
Yes. Now we can hear you.
Okay.
Welcome.
Thank you. Thank you, Klaus. And thank you for this presentation. Look, just a couple of questions which I will try not to make financial. The technology, just to be clear, which you have, you know, at your disposal, who exactly owns it? I mean, first of all, is it the membrane, the cathodes, the anode? Which part of the technology is really where you have your competitive advantage? Between nucera and Uhde and De Nora, who owns it and who can use it as you go forward in new R&D?
Christian, thank you for your question regarding the technology. Christoph, would you like to take over?
Yes. I think I'm now-
Okay.
Christian, as you mentioned, the electrolyzer consists of different parts, from the electrolyzer unit, the process section and many important items inside. Some of them, the overall thing is our design, and especially on the electrolyzer itself, the electrolyzer single elements. We have the IP on the electrolyzer design and architecture. For sure, there are some key elements, for example, like the electrochemical coating, like the membranes, like other things which we purchase from other partners. For example, the electrochemical coating from our long-term partner and shareholder, De Nora. The important thing is that we have already acquired long heritage and expertise how to bring all these components together, like electrolyzer design.
There are all the details, how the hydraulics works with the different components and how to ensure that this work together properly, not only during startup but on the long term, over the whole lifetime of the electrolyzer. I think that is a very important item to me. Once again, IP of the electrolyzer design is our IP with certain key elements we purchase from key suppliers.
Right. Nucera will own the technology going forward.
Correct.
R&D will be, you know, running alongside with chlor-alkali, right? Uhde will do R&D, nucera will do R&D. Is that the same R&D or are you sharing?
No. Chlor-alkali is also a technology which remains inside nucera. Maybe that was a misunderstanding from your side. The chlor-alkali technology, the chlor-alkali R&D is also part of nucera. Inside nucera, we have two business fields. One business field is chlor-alkali technology, and the other business field is the alkaline water electrolysis technology, the green hydrogen technology.
Okay, I understand that.
Both R&D is done by us, by nucera.
Yeah.
Good. That's very clear. My second question, which is a bit linked, so Uhde would come in potentially as a partner on the C side of the EPC. You know, in other part of the business, like cement and so on, it has been in the past some issues with the pricing of turnkey projects. If you take a turnkey project, is there a risk for you guys at nucera of a mispricing of the turnkey, or are you just paying, you know, charging for your business and then it's Uhde who takes the risk or whoever is your partner? Where would the risk be on pricing of turnkey?
Maybe I can take this question, Christian. Our core business model is EP and the supply of the technology. That's our core business model. Only in cases where we really have to deliver the entire project as EPC, we would partner up with a third party. Currently, preferably with Uhde, because the interfaces are well proven, and we would either act as a subcontractor to deliver only the technology, or we would go into a consortium kind of a partnership where each party takes over responsibility for its party, for its part of, its portion of the entire contract. It's a well-defined scope and a well-defined risk profile. There's of course some interface, but this can really be described very well.
We know this kind of business model and these kinds of partnerships and risks can be very well mitigated in this way.
Got it. Thank you very much. Thanks again for this presentation.
Yeah. Thank you, Christian.
Yeah, with those answers, we have come to the end of our Q&A session. We would like now to go over to a break. The break will last about 30 minutes. I suggest that we meet again at 12:35 or 11:35 GMT, and then continue with our agenda. Thank you very much, and I look forward to seeing you all soon again.
Thank you. See you.
There is something deep in our DNA that could be a decisive impetus in answering one of the most challenging questions of our time.
How can we reduce CO2 on a large scale?
Could green hydrogen pave the way?
What could we achieve if we use our experience of the many gigawatts that we have already installed?
If we extend our scope to a new market, if we innovate to accelerate transformation into a brand new energy age.
We will create that significant impact we need to solve one of our most pressing problems.
Are we prepared to establish a growing hydrogen ecosystem? Yes, we are determined. We are ready to grow. We are able to lead this development.
Today, we open up a new era.
Thyssenkrupp nucera.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the next round of sessions. There will be now four presentations again, and the first two presentations or sections will be hosted by Roland Beckmann. Roland will give you more insights into the chlor-alkali market and the technology fundamentals of our chlor-alkali technology. Roland, please.
Yeah. Thank you, Klaus, for the kind introduction. Ladies and gentlemen, a very warm welcome to our chlor-alkali section. I would like to take the next 25 minutes to introduce to you the chlor-alkali market. After that, we will take a closer look to our chlor-alkali electrolysis technology and how it represents the DNA for our AWE technology. Let's start with our first part, the chlor-alkali market. The chemical products of a chlor-alkali electrolysis are essential for a large number of end products. At the bottom, you see key products, caustic soda, chlorine, and hydrogen. Caustic soda and chlorine are starting point for a huge number of end products.
On the left, based on caustic soda, you can see products like soap and detergents, but a huge amount of caustic soda is also produced and used for aluminum, which is used in everything from airplanes up to drink cans. In the middle, based on chlorine, polyurethane foam, polycarbonates, and polyvinylchloride, known as PVC, are produced. You'll find them everywhere in your daily life. Polyurethane foam in mattresses, but also for the construction industry. Polycarbonates for high-resistant glasses of lower weight in the car industry. On the right, you see hydrogen used for hydrogenation of alkanes, fats, and oils, but also sold as a gas after compression and bottling. On top of this, we offer our clients additional products and technologies in combining these products for another product. Half left, the reaction of caustic with chlorine gives sodium hypochlorite, used for disinfection and water treatment.
Half right, burning of chlorine and hydrogen results in hydrochloric acid of high purity. This HCl is used for the production of silicon for solar cells. To summarize, the huge number of products linked to our chlor-alkali are the reason that the global demand for chlorine and caustic grows in line with the GDP, enabling strong and stable growth for us, thyssenkrupp nucera. Let's have a look at the chlor-alkali electrochemical process in a nutshell. You start by dissolving salt in water like you do for cooking. This gives you brine. This solution will not react on its own. The reaction has to be forced by electricity. At the anode, chlorine gas is produced. At the cathode, hydrogen gas is generated and liquid caustic is collected. This process has a long history of more than 100 years.
However, we have spent decades improving and perfecting it, and nowadays, we use the membrane process. This has been developed over the last 30 years, and it is the dominant process for chlor-alkali. It has the lowest power consumption combined with the lowest emissions. No mercury, no asbestos. You see, the chlor-alkali electrochemistry is a process of splitting salt and water into chlorine, caustic, and hydrogen, and this is the basis for AWE, the splitting of water. It is a part of a chlor-alkali electrochemical process. We are the global market leader in chlor-alkali membrane electrolysis. If you look at the actual installed capacities of chlorine produced by the membrane process worldwide, based on IHS Markit data, you can see that we have a market share of nearly 50%.
The other half is linked to capacities of our global top three competitors from Japan, China, and Great Britain, as well as a few smaller producers. Looking on the contracts we have been awarded so far, our key figures are 40.5 million tons per year chlorine, 2 million tons per year chlorine from HCl ODC technology. Here, we are the only one having this technology in place. An installed power of 6.6 GW equivalent for hydrogen produced from chlor-alkali. What does this number stand for? To get the same amount of hydrogen that is already produced today from our chlor-alkali electrolyzer, also produced from our AWE electrolyzer, you have to operate plants of 6.6 gigawatt installed power. These are 330 standard modules you have to install.
This large installed base provides us meaningful and stable service revenue potentials, with similar ramp-up expected for AWE. Service is a lot more than only maintaining the electrolyzer. It is the life cycle of a whole plant, including digitalization. My colleague, Ulf, will tell you a lot more about this in his section. To compare chlor-alkali with AWE, let me concentrate here on the electrolyzer itself. In chlor-alkali, you have to service on each of your element twice in an average period of eight years, re-membraning after four years and recoating and re-membraning after another four years. This gives you a spend per element of about EUR 12,000 over eight years. Assuming that there are 200, about 200,000 elements under service in this period, this will add up to about EUR 300 million per year market size.
Last fiscal year, we captured around 2/3 of this value, a strong sign that our clients have trust in our competence, in our high quality services, and in our technology. We can expect similar service demand ramp up for AWE, as the electrolyzers are, like in chlor-alkali, our proprietary equipment. All in all, thyssenkrupp nucera is a global leader in the large and stable chlor-alkali market. Let me summarize the key messages and give you three takeaways. First, chlor-alkali electrolysis is a fundamental technology and the starting point for a huge amount of day-to-day products. Second, we are a global market leader in chlor-alkali. Third, our large installed base provides meaningful and stable services. The same thing will happen to AWE. Having looked at the chlor-alkali market and the chlor-alkali process, please bear in mind that AWE is part of a chlor-alkali electrolysis.
In the next section here, let's have a deeper look at what our AWE technology is based on. It's our chlor-alkali technology, our DNA for AWE. Our leading experience in chlor-alkali serves as a strong basis for AWE. Let me remind you of a few key facts. We are a global leader in electrolysis. We have installed more than 10 GW of electrolyzer capacities worldwide. Our experience is based on over 600 electrochemical projects realized and more than 240,000 cell elements produced. Our success is based on our product portfolio. We have the leading chlor-alkali technologies in our hands for local production of chlorine, caustic, and hydrogen. On the left, you see the Uhde® BM 2.7 single-element electrolyzer on which AWE is based on. Followed by the Chlorine Engineers BiTAC® filter-press electrolyzer, and third, the nucera ODC electrolyzer.
This has lower power consumption and is also based on the Uhde® BM 2.7 single-element electrolyzer. On the right, you see our technologies for recycling of HCl to chlorine and hydrogen, both filter press types. Left, the HCl diaphragm electrolyzer, and the HCl ODC electrolyzer having less power consumption without hydrogen evolution. Our leading design and manufacturing know-how is crucial in developing the AWE cell. Why have we decided to take our older BM 2.7 single-element cell technology as basis for AWE? Well, the answer is high performance. In the center, you see a schematic sketch of a single element. For chlor-alkali, more than 200 elements are put together in one electrolyzer. The current is passing from the right to the left, and it's passing to all of these cells.
The cell is fed at the bottom with brine on the one and with depleted caustic on the other side, and the products are collected at the top of the cells, chlorine on the anode side and hydrogen on the cathode side. Both sides are separated by a membrane. More details will be given by my colleague, Fulvio, in the next section. What are the key ingredients of high performance? It is all about hydraulic design, the mechanical design, and you need to have zero gap for lowest resistance, giving you lowest power consumption. Fulvio will explain our zero gap technology in a few minutes. Last but not least, electrical design. We have laser welding in this cell technology. Full metal connection for high current density operation.
As we are operating our AWE at 12 kA/sq m , only to give you or to point out what does it mean 12 kA/sq m . We are handling here a current of more than 34,000 A, and this we are handling successfully already now in Carbon2Chem. All this know-how and these technologies are needed for implementing effectively high current density and high efficiency into the AWE cell. On top of our electrolyzer know-how, we own the critical technology competencies as basis for AWE. Here, you see all technology units to be integrated for our chlor-alkali plant. We are the experts for system integrations. For AWE, only the top line is required. All of this know-how necessary for AWE is already with us. From water units on the left to the high voltage grid, the harmonic filters, and the transformer rectifier units.
Of course, the important part of our electrolyzer, including all safety and operation installations, up to hydrogen gas cooling on the right and handling including hydrogen filtration, compression, and storage. We have the globally leading know-how to integrate adjacent technologies into chlor-alkali plants, and this is the basis for AWE. We also offer outstanding plant engineering capabilities, and this is the key differentiator to our competitors. Our experience, as mentioned before, more than 600 plants planned and realized by thyssenkrupp nucera. We provide more than 420,000 engineering hours with more than 300 experts from all over the world, Germany, but not only Germany, Italy, China, and Japan. Our experts are across all disciplines, not only process and design engineer to plan, make this planning, but also sales, R&D experts, ENI, module experts, technical service, and project execution is in our organization.
Project execution in order to deliver the projects in time, budget, and quality. On top of this, we are continuously improving our safety, our processes, and our quality, and this is confirmed by regular audits of a German TÜV. All in all, this is valid for chlor-alkali and for AWE. Now, let's have a look at the technology in action. Christoph gave us some examples already in his presentation, but I want to give you some more. We have a global leading technology for chlorine production in our hand. On the left, you see Vestolit Marl in Germany, installed base 60 MW, based on the BM Single-Element technology. On the right, Ningxia Risheng in China, even higher installed base of 81 MW BiTAC® filter-press electrolyzer. Also, leading energy-saving technologies for chlorine production and recovery are with us.
On the left, Shantou Yuli in China installed base 50 MW HCl ODC. On the right, Covestro Uerdingen in Germany installed base 5 MW NaCl ODC technology, also BM Single Element. Our further products. Excellent modular solutions and services to reduce cost and add value. On the left, you see examples of our services and revamps, and on the right, you see a skid-mounted plant to lower construction costs at site and shorten overall time schedule of a project. Due to our broad experience, we make a difference across every step of an industrial electrolyzer value chain for chlor-alkali, and hence, also for AWE. Let's have a look on the value chain, starting with engineering and cell fabrication, over modularization and piping, up to handling and services. Let me give you details on each step. Engineering.
Our experience of over 600 projects realized in the world. This will give us the most efficient plants with best-in-class safety standards. Cell fabrication. Looking at design, manufacturing, and assembly, we have IP of design in our hands, and together with our joint venture partner, De Nora, we can deliver world-class integrated manufacturing. Modularization. It is all about construction and logistics. We have built all sizes of plant from skid-mounted small size to larger plants together with our partner, Uhde. Piping. We need high-quality piping material to handle the electrolytes, as strong alkaline solutions are used in chlor-alkali and in AWE. We have all know-how and trademarks in place. Coming to handling, the use of chlor-alkali products. We have more than 30 years of experience and know-how in handling of hydrogen. Last but not least, services. Here, we are talking about full life cycle services, consulting and digital products.
We have an excellent service organization in combination with our JV, joint venture partner, De Nora, installed and in operation. More to come from Ulf in this section. All in all, we provide leading in-house experience along each step of our electrolysis value chain for chlor-alkali and for AWE. We have proven experience in chlor-alkali business, providing us a strong technical basis for AWE scaleup. I would like to recap this key slide that Denis has already shown you a little while ago. It is extremely important. Just to remind you, chlor-alkali, we have over 600 projects worldwide, more than 240,000 elements produced, and this brings us to the top of AWE. What do you need for an AWE scaleup? It is all about market readiness, product, and organization and network. Market readiness.
We have our industrial-scale installation in place together with a proven quality supply chain. This will directly give us industrial-scale hydrogen plants together with an expansion to a 5-GW supply chain. Second, let's look at the product. We are the technology leader for electrolysis. We have more than 30 years of experience in handling of hydrogen as a by-product. With this will bring us to a standardized AWE product with leading TCO. Also here, more to come by Fulvio in his section, and a successful handling of hydrogen as main product. Third, organization and network. We have holistic life cycle services, including our global network with our partners in place. This all we will directly transfer to AWE. Here, my colleague, Ulf, will tell you more about that. All these points are key enablers for hydrogen production, and this ensures a successful scaleup of our AWE business.
Let me give you the key takeaways out of this section of chlor-alkali technology. First, our industrial large-scale electrolysis expertise is the DNA of thyssenkrupp nucera. Second, our significant technology and knowhow in chlor-alkali is the foundation for the technology adaptation to AWE. Third, we as thyssenkrupp nucera have a holistic understanding of the entire electrolysis value chain for chlor-alkali and AWE. Last, we have a proven experience with over 600 projects, over 240,000 elements produced, and more than 10 GW of electrolyzer capacity installed. Thank you very much for your attention, and I will hand over to Klaus. Thank you.
Yeah, Roland, thank you very much for your presentations, and you will be back here on stage for the Q&A session later on. Just as a reminder, if you want to ask questions, then please use your raise the hand function on your Zoom device, and then you can be later on transferred here into the session. The next presentation that will come now will be on technology. It will be Fulvio Federico. Fulvio will now be on stage here. Please, Fulvio, now the stage is really yours.
Thank you, Klaus. Thank you also to Dennis for this morning a previous very kind introduction. In the next section of presentation, I would like to talk about how we have achieved our current products and technologies, and our roadmap for further improvement and development of that. Forgive me if I will give some technical or technological information, which by the way, I like very much. I will try always to connect that to our business and our product competitiveness. This slide may appear packed with data and milestones. The message here is that we, thyssenkrupp nucera, can look back to more than 30 years in leading innovation in modern industrial electrolysis.
Even before that, we had experience with, for example, diaphragm cells, at the time still using asbestos, mercury cells, and then came the chlor-alkali membrane cell, which is definitely much better in terms of energy consumption and environmental protection. Both our colleagues of former Uhde electrolysis and Chlorine Engineers Japan have been developing two models of electrolyzers. Respectively, the BM Single Element, already presented before by Roland and my colleagues, and the BiTAC® family of electrolyzers. In the years, they have developed generations, one after the other. It's not possible to put here all of those milestones. Only a few are represented here. For example, the generation three of BM Single Element was the first one using laser welding, which is a design feature very important to achieve electrical efficiency. I will touch it again later on. Then came the generation three.
After generation three, generation four, five, six plus. Seven is what we are working on now. Very similar for BiTAC®. In the early 1990s, it was the first cell with zero gap operating at relatively high current density. Step by step, there were next generations, and nowadays we sell the e-BiTAC v7, which is high efficiency electrolyzer. It integrates also some features coming from BM technology. What is the value of that? Across that journey, the power consumption was significantly improved. At the beginning, it was 2,300 kWh. Nowadays, we are well below 2,000 kWh. 15% reduction, it is significant. We have to take in account that the energy cost is accounting for more than 50% of the production cost of chlorine, caustic, hydrogen, or hydrochloric acid. At the same time, also the current density was drastically increased.
It was 3 kA/ sq m. Now it is 7 kA/ sq m, more than double. It means that with the same cell, with the same active area, it is possible to produce more than double of the products, chlorine, caustic, hydrogen. Normally, you expect that if you increase the intensity of production, like in a car pressing the accelerator for more speed, the fuel consumption, the energy consumption should be more, but that didn't happen. We managed, through all of those developments and know-how, to even reduce the power consumption. All in all, that is making competitive our products in terms of total cost of ownership. Not only that, not only chlor-alkali. I've heard a question before. We have experience also in other technologies, applications in industrial-size electrolysis. ODC is an example where we could make radical changes.
I will touch it again in the next slide. In the last years, we have been consistently transferring all of that knowledge, capabilities, and technologies from chlor-alkali to alkaline water electrolysis. In 2018, we have installed our Carbon2Chem electrolyzer, 2 MW. Already mentioned before by both Christoph and Denis. Not only that, we have continued the development, the qualification, proving the performance until now the release technology with a 20 MW unit, which is available for a production capability of up to 1 GW/ annum. The ODC, I bring here this as an example of disruptive innovation. ODC means oxygen depolarized cathode.
I remember when I was a young development engineer talking with the colleagues of De Nora, then the colleagues of Bayer, now Covestro, and then the colleagues of Uhde Nora, about the idea of using those electrodes, gas diffusion electrodes, coming from fuel cells. De Nora was already producing that kind of specialties. We came through the idea, the concept, laboratory cell, pilot test, demonstration test, until industrial application. That is the value. That is our DNA. It's our role is mainly to bring it from small size to large size, from initial to long-lasting proving technology and performance. In 2003, we had the first industrial reference plant with HCl ODC electrolysis. In the picture here, it is represented at a plant in China in 2003. It was in Brunsbüttel.
The colleagues of customer Covestro and partner Covestro. It is a way to recycle hydrochloric acid, typically a by-product of processes using chlorine. With this, it is possible to do efficient recycling of HCl, hydrochloric acid, back to chlorine. That has an impact on both business and environment protection too. We did not stop. We also transferred a similar application to chlor-alkali, sodium chloride electrolysis. On the right side of this slide, the first electrolyzer installed at Uerdingen, again, our partner Covestro, where we have achieved up to 25% energy saving in comparison to conventional chlor-alkali electrolysis. This is outstanding. This ability to transfer new concepts, disruptive innovation from small scale to large industrial scale is unique of thyssenkrupp nucera. Nobody else could do that. Others, they have tried but remained at academic level, laboratories, small tests. How could we do that?
I think that nowadays it is very hard to achieve true innovation by single individuals or single companies. The cooperation is the key to do that. In this technology, in the cell technology, we have been in a long-lasting, more than 20 years cooperation with company De Nora. De Nora is providing the electrocatalytic coatings for anode and cathode or also for gas diffusion electrodes or ODC. That is important because it is the catalyst where the reaction has to happen, and that has to be efficient and has to have longevity. De Nora is also providing us with manufacturing of the half shells according to the thyssenkrupp nucera design. Design is the design of the cell itself, of the half shells, of all the other components, the electrolyzer, the plant. Inside the cell, there are other components procured by thyssenkrupp nucera.
Those are the raw materials, the separator in between anode and cathode, which is either a membrane or a diaphragm, the sealing systems with flange, gasket frames, sealing cords, the internal tubes for fluid dynamics and for external connections, everything that makes a cell. Because each part is influencing another part or has to be adapted to it, the design of the cell is crucial in order to have the best integration of those. That amounts to efficiency, longevity, and cost-effective solution. I mentioned the design as a crucial item for the development of such technologies. Roland has already presented this before. Now let me give you a few more background information. Electrochemistry means we have to integrate different functions inside such appropriate equipment.
The electrochemical, the chemical part means the fluids, the electrolyte, sodium chloride brine, or solution of sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide needs to reach the electrode catalytic centers on top of the coating. Then the products are typically hydrogen, chlorine, oxygen are evolving as bubbles. Those have to be removed in order to allow the electrolyte to reach again the catalytic centers. Very important for that is the hydraulic design, the fluid dynamic, to avoid concentration gradients or to mitigate concentration gradients and to get best possible cell voltage, best possible efficiency. Electrochemical electrical design is also crucial. It is necessary to bring the electrons at the reaction centers on the entire surface in a uniform way.
With the, for example, the laser welding design, we could achieve again best electrical efficiency because there are minimized Ohmic losses in the welding points that is well distributed on all the surface. Mechanics and mechanical design are also important. The electrolytes, the electrical distribution have to be contained inside the half shells and the total electrochemical cell. The materials needs to be resistant against corrosive conditions. Because of that, also the sealing, it is of utmost importance. Solution. We need to avoid any leakage for safety reason and for environmental protection. The zero gap is the best configuration in order to realize the optimization of all of those design issues. What does it mean, zero gap? Inside the cell, the anode and cathode electrode are close together. They basically touch gently, kiss the membrane or the separator in between.
Such a force of closing those together shall not be too high, otherwise it could damage the separator, or it could hinder the flow of the electrolytes that need to be there for the electrochemical reaction. We have in our design single element, an internal elastic element, which is calibrating those forces in order not to damage the separator, but at the same time to have enough force to transfer the electrical contacts and the electrical current through the metal to metal contacts. We can do it very calibrated in the proper way, independently from the sealing system, which is realized by a flange and gasket frame all around the cell with high forces to ensure that works properly, independently from the internal forces that are necessary for the zero gap. Overall, this is the way to achieve high efficiency at a very high current density.
Summing up the previous slides, first, all the decades and years of development and innovation. The holistic cooperation with De Nora for the electrocatalytic coatings and the manufacturing. The thyssenkrupp nucera design, knowledge, and capabilities have been quickly transferred from chlor-alkali to alkaline water electrolysis. On the left side of this slide, we see the chlor-alkali cell. On the right side, the alkaline water electrolysis cell. They look similar, right? First of all, on the cathode side, the cell shell is exactly the same. Same material of construction, nickel. Same catalyst, hydrogen evolution. It was producing hydrogen before in chlor-alkali. It continues to produce hydrogen now in this alkaline water electrolysis cell. The anode is different. Does not use any more titanium because there is not any more sodium chloride, but the electrolyte is there, potassium hydroxide.
The catalyst, it is for the oxygen evolution instead of the chlorine evolution. The separator in between does not need to be any more ion exchange membrane, which is separating brine and caustic selectively, but here as a function to keep separate hydrogen and oxygen gas. As I said already before, the electrolytes, anode side and cathode side are the same, and that give also other advantages in terms of corrosion protection. With this transfer from the chlor-alkali knowledge to alkali water electrolysis, we could ensure safety and longevity of our cells, and we could provide very high current density. We have achieved 12 kA/ sq m. That's a lot. It is 3x-4x more than the conventionally alkali water electrolyzers.
The outcome of it, the value in it, is that it allows a reduction of the cost for the total plant, for a compact design too, and overall summing up in a competitive total cost of ownership. Despite we have achieved these outstanding results with 12 kA/sq m in our alkaline water electrolysis cell, which we call AWE 1.0, we never settle. We never stop innovation. We have here in this roadmap represented three key activities that will be explained again in the next three slides. The incremental development that is aiming to reduce on the current platform, CapEx and OpEx, continuously in the future. The H2Giga project, which is for the economies of scale, and it aims to continue on the serial production, including automation.
Last but not least, a second generation of electrolysis design to find a disruptive solution and a quantum leap in total cost of ownership. With those three items and activities, we aim to reach in 2025 in our plan, a highly automated and multiple gigawatt fabrication capability on the worldwide basis. The first pillar of our roadmap is continuous development and design improvement. Similar as we have done for chlor-alkali. We will step by step improve and introduce next generations from AWE 1.0 today to AWE 1.1., AWE 1.2, AWE 1.X. Such optimizations will touch each component of the cell, the operating conditions, including pressure. For sure, we will integrate the advanced electrocatalytic coating coming from the roadmap of our partner, De Nora.
On the left side, you see our new test facility for such a research and development, also located nearby the unit in Carbon2Chem, which is ready for all of that work. As we have experienced in chlor-alkali, there is no limit or no significant limit to improvement. We were told time by time, "This is the end. It is the edge. It's not possible to improve it anymore," but we have proven step by step that this is doable, and we target to do the same here. We will reduce CapEx and OpEx on the platform of BM, and this will support us to stay ahead of competitions. That will be useful for both the business of new plant as well as the maintenance and service business, as Ulf, in the next section, will present also.
The other action is aiming to exploit the economy of scale. The H2Giga project, partially funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, will work on each portion of the electrolyzer unit, the cell, the stack, the module, and the process equipment. It will include optimization of the scaling for manufacturing, and it will include automation. Important is that each step of those developments are proven through a solid qualification process. We go to the market only after releasing and only always after having checked all the technical risks and mitigated or removed those. With that, we aim to achieve the 5 GW/ annum annual capacity. Third in our roadmap, as represented before with the example of ODC technologies, we always look for improvements, not only incremental, but also radical. We are committed to continuous innovation, and we do it with passion. We look for it always.
We target to a quantum leap in total cost of ownership. No matter what is the challenge, we will work on each part in order to achieve it. Our role, our expertise is to convert ideas and new opportunities coming from the different fields, for example, of new materials, catalysts, design solutions or operating conditions, up to the large scale applications. In an agile project, we are doing that together with our customers, with our partner, De Nora, and everybody else who would like to help us in this challenge to find a solution to save the global climate change. Please allow me to say, with a certain proudness, who else can do it, if not us? The key messages of this presentation section are basically four. The long-term experience in innovation in large-scale industrial electrolysis is there available for us.
That was consistently transferred from chlor-alkali to hydrogen alkaline water electrolysis. We have already achieved a milestone of a standardized 20 MW unit based on very high current density or power density. In our roadmap, we continue the development, the incremental one, step by step, generation of the current platform. We also aim to a disruptive new generation. We are going to increase and enhance the scale-up of manufacturing. With that, we will target to achieve the ability to serve the growing global market expectations from the global situation, from the global market, expectation growth. With that roadmap, we will make our products more attractive now and in the future. Thank you, and I would like to hand it back to Klaus.
All right. Fulvio, yeah, thank you very much for your presentation. Also Fulvio will be back here for the Q&A session, and the Q&A session will take place after the next presentation. The next presentation, as you can see here on the screen already, is about technology, service, and digitalization. That means the opportunity, fundamentals, and opportunities here for us on the aftermarket side, and of course, the opportunities arising from our digitalization expertise. For this presentation, we have Ulf Bäumer. Ulf, please here, go ahead.
Okay. Thank you very much, Klaus. Also thank you very much, Denis, for your nice words of introduction earlier this morning. My name is Ulf Bäumer, and in the next 15- 20 minutes, I will tell you about our existing chlor-alkali service business, which is a good and attractive business, and makes already about 50% of our revenue, as pointed out by Denis and Roland earlier this morning. I will tell you about its characteristic and of course, how we want to utilize this experience and want to leverage this to replicate and grow also our green hydrogen service. Imagine you are responsible for a plant. Your three key priorities would be safety, because you don't want your asset to get harmed and of course not your people. The availability, which is actually the output of your plant.
The performance, which is a figure like power consumption, which goes into your business case. Exactly these areas are addressed by our thyssenkrupp nucera service portfolio. On the left-hand side here, you see again our electrolyzer unit and a picture of our single elements. The single elements, as explained this morning by my colleagues, is in the heart of our technology or is the heart of our technology and is key to the performance of our electrolyzer unit, and therefore it's of course also in the center of our services. We concentrate so on these three key priorities like safety, availability, and performance, and have such a high expertise that that's one of the biggest reason why people choose us later on to get the services from us.
The service offering and digital solutions are integral to thyssenkrupp nucera's business model because it supplies us or provides us with high recurring life cycle revenues. Roland has explained to you already a bit about the life cycle of a plant. Let's go a bit deeper into that. You see here on the first bar, there is the life cycle of a plant. It starts, of course, with commissioning, with handover. After around eight years, there is a bigger refurbishment required. Coming maybe back here to Luke's question in one of the earlier sections, there is no exchange of a stack, just to say that clearly. One of our advantages and one of our USP is that we have the single element.
After eight years, we take the single element out, we replace or renew the coatings, the diaphragm, bring that back in, and the stack will stay. The lifetime of the stack is 20-30 years, of course, with replacing of some usables. But there is no replacement of the stack. Going a bit into the services itself, we look to the second bar here, like consulting, engineering, digitalization, automation, which comes in directly after the plant is handed over to our clients. Again, imagine you are first in your new plant and now you are responsible for the plant.
Normally, the first priority of the operators is to get familiar with the asset, to get into a safe and reliable operation, and they are quite happy to contact us at any time and get our consulting service, consultancy services. Once this phase is passed, the owner and the operators think of improvements. How can I improve my operation, my asset? There we come in with engineering services, with automation service, and with digitalization solution. Especially when you think about the many elements you have to manage, digital solutions are key to that. After, let's say two years, because in the beginning, the customer gets a spare part package to just operate the first years. After two years, normally our spare parts business kicks in, which consists of O&M parts and single elements mainly.
After this eight years, maybe a bit earlier, sometimes because of the size of the plant, we have this large refurbishment, recoatings, replacement, which we offer also as a full service. On top of this, we still see a good potential for growth in our service business. You can see this in the top bar just behind the timeline, with performance services, with performance-based contracts, with asset management, and also with availability guarantee, also with financial models like BOT, which is Build-Operate-Transfer. On the left bottom side, you see the ratio of the revenues, which is say to the order of magnitude, 1/3 is spare parts and 2/3 is for the bigger refurbishment. Just to come back here again to the digitalization and consultancy services, this is key to our business.
It's a win-win situation. It allows our customers to get our consultancy and our recommendation nearly all the time. For us, it allows us to stay in touch with our customers, to earn the credibility to further on leverage our service business. Overall, again, we want to utilize this experience in our existing service to leverage this and grow our green hydrogen service business. I've told you about the nice thing of our services that it supplies us or provides us with recurring continuous revenues. Let me explain to you why that is. On the left-hand side here, you see a typical revenue profile of one plant. You see at the bottom line, there is this magenta or purple bar, which represents our consultancy and digital services, which is there from day one.
Then you see the smaller lighter gray bars, which represent spare parts. In the beginning, as I told, which comes with the new build. Then just to illustrate it here and there are spare parts packages which is requested by our clients and which we of course sell them. Then after six-eight years, there's the first refurbishment. 6 years because some plants are that big that they have just to start early to finish in time. You see after 16 years, that bar is a bit bigger. That is related to new improvements, which we know from our chlor-alkali business, which we develop over the time. Sometimes it's good to bring in new improvements, which is a bit more expenditure, but which is very much satisfied by the business case.
If you see this profile of a revenue profile of one plant, and then please go to the right-hand side of the slide. You see when there are more plants than one in operation, more plants than one under service, it's pretty obvious that it results in a quite stable revenue stream in our business. On top of this, the maintenance spending of a plant is in the, let's say, in the life cycle of 20-30 years, which relates a bit to the business case of the client, is approximately in the same amount of money the client spends initially when he buys the plant. The most important point on this slide is that it shows our holistic service portfolio to help our and support our clients for the performance and availability.
Starting here at the left column, you see digital services, where we'll go a bit more in detail on the next slide, and engineering and consulting services. Going a bit further down, digital twins or advanced process controls are examples for digital services. Coming to the other services like remote expert support. We are able, with the help of data transfer, with our analysis recommendation to our clients, to even support them when they are in remote locations. Even we have customers in northern part of India where we are able to nearly live support them when we can exchange the data and give them recommendations. Of course, our studies, for example, if a customer is heading for a capacity extension, how he can utilize this as is best.
This leads as a value add to full transparency of the operating and maintenance data. With our engineering, for example, we bring in continuously innovative solutions to our customers, and of course, this leads at the end to a high plant availability and a good performance. Going further to the right, to the middle column, spare parts. These are normally OEM parts and electrolyzer cells where we utilize our global supply chain to deliver consistent quality and if there are and when there are innovations in between, we of course deliver this with our built-in license and know-how and our built-in license innovations. Obviously this goes with the benefit of a higher plant availability of our clients.
The third column here, which deals with the refurbishment and revamp business, which from our point of view are normally on-site business, so like the recoatings and revamps, which we normally do together with our partner, De Nora. Where we offer all of them also as a full service, which I will explain you a bit later what that is. This service for our customer comes out of one hand, so he has a single source of responsibility. Normally, it comes also with a new system guarantee from our side. And then again, in terms, for example, of a capacity extension with the existing asset, they utilize the existing assets, so then no bigger new investments are required. This is of course a great business case for our clients.
On the fourth column, and I think this is very exciting, we still see a good growth potential for our service business. For example, with performance-based contract. These are contract where the customer only pays us in terms we really improve the performance of him. In that case, we also participate in that improvement. With asset management, with operation and maintenance contract, and also as said, with investment into key projects with a, for example, BOT, this Build-Operate-Transfer model. The value add is clear, so the customer has the maximum involvement of us, as a licensor, as the technology owner, and of course, in terms of investment, of course, very attractive financial models. Digital solutions are key to our service business and also to unlock our further growth in service business.
We have developed and we are still developing a whole digitalization suite for our customers, so I will run you through that. Starting with performance optimization, we have, for example, a client in North America who we supported from the beginning with analysis of their operating data and, sorry, giving recommendation to the operations. This plant is from day one the best operating plant in all our installed capacity. Going further on, predictive maintenance. If you operate many cells, many single elements, it's of course unfortunate if one element has the need for maintenance and this comes unscheduled. You have to shut down one electrolyzer, which comes with the loss of production.
You want to know which of your element has a need for maintenance, so you can schedule it and can do it during a scheduled maintenance. Again, maybe coming back to the issue of stacks. Again, we do not replace stacks. If there is an issue with an element, we only exchange one element, bring this back in operation and start the stack up, which is again a USP compared to many of our competitors. On the right-hand side, we see predictive operation. This is especially important when you deal with renewable energy, with fluctuating power. Here we offer digital twin and our so-called load balancer.
When the power which comes in, depending on the weather, you want to give your operators the recommendation which of your electrolyzers you should charge with what kind of load. This is exactly what our load balancer does. All of these services, they are based on data analytics and consultancy services. Also for the digital solutions, we think we have a good USP, because this is based on our vast technology expertise in our domain together with our digital capabilities. We are able to develop and to program smarter solutions for the benefit of our customers. We offer full service solution from a single source. That means for larger maintenance, revamp, refurbishment activities, we execute this project completely for our customers and the customer pays a fixed fee for that.
Again, this comes with a single point of responsibility, it's us, and with new system guarantee. To explain you the importance of the system guarantee, for example, a customer has a revamp or refurbishment project, and he buys everything from the different suppliers. He only gets guarantees just for parts, and if any. Only with us, he gets a complete new system guarantee, which is a very good argument and a very valid value add for the customer to choose us. On the right-hand side here, you see the different services we offer as a full service. For example, an element recoating. That is the renewal of the spent coating, of course, with our partner, De Nora. Then there is the element upgrade, where we bring in new hardware components revealed from our development to go back into operation with a better performance.
The third you see is the element exchange. This, when the new technology is so advanced, sometimes it just makes sense to buy new elements because the business case allows it. Of course, we do other services as full service. For example, piping. This service we grow globally and it gains more and more attractiveness, especially in Europe and the Middle East, and also in North America. In the service business, you can imagine it is of utmost importance that you have a competent team, experience in your field of expertise, and that you are very close to your customer and have a very close proximity to them. The slide you have already seen by Denis this morning, it shows again on the left-hand side, our experienced management team, and all of them have a good track record in the electrolysis industry.
Of course, this is built on many other colleagues, very knowledgeable colleagues in our company. On the right-hand side, you see again our global locations from thyssenkrupp nucera, starting with Japan, in China, in Italy and Germany, where we are headquartered, and in North America, complemented by the location of our partner De Nora and our partner from the thyssenkrupp Plant Technologies. On top of this, we are even expanding our network to new green hydrogen hotspots and booming locations like we have done recently in Australia here with Perth or in Saudi Arabia with Riyadh, and we will do the same in the future to be close to our customer and to grow and develop our service business.
In conclusion, we have first a de-risk and efficient ramp up and scale of our AWE service business based on our experience and our existing chlor-alkali service business. Second, we expect a steady revenue stream also from the growing installed base from the alkaline water electrolysis installed base. Third, on top of this, we still see a good growth potential leverage for our digital solution, which combines our technology expertise with our data analytics and digital capabilities. Thank you very much for the attention, and I hand over now back to Klaus, who will guide us through the Q&A session. Thank you very much.
Ulf, thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived at the second Q&A session for today. Also the presenters are coming back on stage. Denis is also here again, so and we now can start the Q&A session. The first question comes from Seth Rosenfeld from Exane BNP Paribas. Seth, please come in.
Good afternoon. Thank you once again for your presentations today. Kind of diving into services, thank you for very clear exhibits on the timeline of services revenue for individual chlor-alkali facilities. I'd like to better understand how AWE services might compare to the legacy chlor-alkali services. I guess two ways of framing it. With AWE a newer technology, is there better pricing power on your side as customers are more in need of consulting services? Or alternatively, with an aggregate newer asset base, potentially better operating quality, is there risk that services intensity is lower moving forward? I guess starting there and then with kind of a follow-up question. Obviously, you've highlighted 50% of current revenue coming from services within chlor-alkali. At what timeframe can we expect AWE services to reach that same point, please?
Thank you, Seth. Maybe you start, Ulf.
Yeah.
in explaining.
Yes. Thank you very much for the good question. In principle, as explained, we expect that the service revenues for AWE are pretty similar to the chlor-alkali. You're right, in green hydrogen, we see already from the project we have and from the project we sold that the need for digital solution for support is bigger than for chlor-alkali, where for many of our projects we have experienced chlor-alkali operators.
It's not the very same as for chlor-alkali, but coming also to the growth to the new business models we want to apply for our green hydrogen service. We also expect to be at least on the same level when it comes to the revenues and to the percentage. When it comes to the timeline, as explained, the profile for a green hydrogen plant it starts with consultancy with digital services and goes on over spare parts and refurbishment. If we can realize the new ideas we have for our service business, of course, this profile will be shifted to the front by applying new services.
The service business will build up over time.
As our installed bases will grow, also our service business for alkaline water electrolysis will grow. We expect a quite similar business for alkaline water electrolysis. Actually, the customers come back to us. They return to us because we improve their business case. This is the big strength of our holistic life cycle service offering.
Thank you very much. One separate question, please. You've now referenced kind of the technology AWE 2.0 both for chlor-alkali and also for AWE over the next seemingly four-five years. When you think about that technology change, how do we consider both the CapEx element and the earlier R&D needs of the business as you approach that revolutionary change? Thank you.
Fulvio, may I hand over this question to you as the CTO?
Thank you. If I understood well the question, AWE 2.0, which is aiming to deliver a disruptive new design for alkaline water electrolysis, will keep in parallel with the constant improvement of the AWE 1.0, AWE 1.1, AWE 1.x. That with the basic platform, we continue to serve our customers, also those who have a plant now, and that will be able to use. We could provide a kind of refurbishment or retrofit with the new AWE 1.2, AWE 1.3, AWE 1.x after some time of operation of the original plant. AWE 2.0, of course, will require additional R&D. We are already expanding significantly our expenses in research and development in the next, in the present years and in the next years. We are prepared to cover both.
It would be, then, in comparison to a chlor-alkali, much more than double than in the past.
Thank you very much.
Yeah. Thank you, Seth Rosenfeld. The next one is again Christian Georges from Société Générale.
Thank you. Can you hear me?
Yes. Very well.
Yeah. Great. Thank you. Look, I've got two questions. The first one is just so that we understand, you know, what your key competitive advantages are and what justifies, I suppose, your 50% market share in chlor-alkali. I counted engineering ability. Second, energy efficiency of your products. Third, lower floor size for your customers. And fourth, aftermarket excellence. Is that accurate? And are these four parts equally important, or is one more critical?
I'm happy to answer this, question. Christian, you are right. It is a package. Yeah. We have the high performance, of our electrolysis. That means high current density, low power consumption, high efficiency, and here we really have an excellence. Also in regards of, CapEx, it's a very good total cost of ownership, so the combination of OpEx and CapEx over the entire life cycle of the plant. Of course, it is our service offering because we do not stop serving our customers when we deliver and install the first installation. We continue to accompany our customers over the whole life cycle, and this really adds value to their business case, and at the end, also to nucera and its shareholders.
Quite great. I mean, I assume all your competitors also serve them on the aftermarket. What, why would, why do are you chosen in priority in your view? Is that primarily because of your technology and that your machines, or is that because of your ability to deliver a full package?
Actually, it's both. We are a technology provider, and we provide services around it that add value to our offering and to our customers. It's a holistic approach, and this differentiates us from many of our peers.
Okay. Thank you. Very clear. My second question is about competition, you know, outside Europe. I mean, just, you know, something which a few of us are worried about. We saw in Germany, you know, a very, very strong solar industry many years ago, and within a few years, the Chinese industry took over the whole of this industry and, you know, is now in control. What are the barriers that make you confident that we won't have a similar development potentially with Chinese producers, you know, being so efficient on cost that they take over this industry?
Yeah. Of course, we don't know how the market will develop, but we have already proven that we can compete also with low-cost suppliers. We are already successful also in China with our chlor-alkali technology. This is one of the toughest market. Also there, we convince customers to take our technology because of performance, because of the service, because of the reliability, because we deliver, and we add value to the business cases of our customers. We already have our global network, so we serve our customers in the regions locally. This is of course a very good starting position also to roll out now our alkaline water electrolysis technology and also increase our offering in all the regions, not only Europe. Actually, we are a global provider for electrolysis.
It's known to us that we also provide our technology to difficult markets, for example, a very competitive market like in China. Also, this operation is profitable in our portfolio.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Christian. Next in line is Bastian Synagowitz from Deutsche Bank.
Yeah. Hi, good afternoon all. Can you hear me?
Yeah, we can hear you.
Perfect. Sounds good. Yeah, thanks for taking my question. I have a quick follow-up, actually, on what Christian just asked. So, just if we look into your competition, obviously, there are probably a handful of companies which are all claiming to have the leading product out there in the market. I guess you clearly have a very strong USP with your turnkey experience. But when it comes to the technological side, are there maybe some benchmarking KPIs which you could give us? And maybe also tell us where you stand broadly versus your competition? That would be my first question. And related to that, is there any more color you could give us in terms of the R&D ratio you're aiming for as a percentage of sales for the next years?
Regarding the benchmarks for, well, compared to our current technology, actually, the market is just evolving for alkaline water electrolysis, so there's not that much information out. We get the feedback from our customers. The best feedback is when we get awarded the projects, and we get the projects awarded because we are having a really leading offering in regards of CapEx and OpEx and also our service offering. I cannot give you an exact benchmark here. I only know that we are very well positioned in the market and that our offering is very competitive, and we prove this by the order intake that we have already achieved.
Denis? Denis, I would suggest to save the answer for the second question for after the presentation of our-
Right.
Of the CFO.
That is to come now in the financial section.
Yeah.
Right.
Okay.
Sounds good. No, thanks for that. Just a quick follow-up, if I may. On the service business, so how does this actually work? Do you sell this in a bundle with your new contract for the plant, or do customers look at this as a totally separate market?
Yes. Thank you for the question. We usually don't sell the service business together with the first installation. That is very difficult to accomplish this because it's a service over 20 or 30 years. We convince our customers that we add the value to their business case and improve their plant performance and their operations. They rather return to us after we have installed it and ask us for support, and then a relationship is built up that is long-lasting and also beneficial for both, for us as a provider and also for our customers. No, it's not sold, usually not directly with the first installation, but then later on a partnership is built up that is fruitful for both parties.
Understood. Thank you.
According to my list, the next questioner is from Kepler Cheuvreux. It is Martin Flueckiger.
Yes, hello, and thanks for this opportunity. I have two questions. I will ask them one by one. Regarding your chlor-alkali business, you supply many industrial end markets. Can you tell me how cyclical this business has been in the past when you exclude the stabilizing service part? I think that you have been also affected by the crisis in 2020. Maybe you can differentiate the volatility between volumes and pricing.
All right. I can take this question. Yes, there are different end markets. Partially the projects are driven by the chlorine produced. Chlorine usually goes into plastics, PVC or polyurethanes, so they are always connected to downstream processes, so more connected to the plastic markets. The other driver is the caustic market. Here, investments are usually triggered when we have a high price for caustic in the market, and then projects are developed. It is somehow cyclical, depending also on the GDP growth and cycles for caustic and also for plastics. Over the years it's relatively stable and of course, together with our service business it's flattened. There is some fluctuation in the market. This is fully balanced also with our service business.
The second question is on your strategy. Does your growth strategy at group level mean that you will shift staff from the existing chlor-alkali business to the alkaline water electrolyzer business so that you can speed up the growth in green hydrogen?
Yeah, Martin, actually, we already do this. Yeah. We have the strong foundation for chlor-alkali, and of course, we utilize this expertise now to build up the alkaline water electrolysis. We see now so much demand, we really have to hire new people and fill all the new positions. It's currently a mix of very experienced people, of course, coming from chlor-alkali and new, smart, enthusiastic people who now get up to speed on this topic and are onboarded. Together we now develop the new technology and roll it out into the markets.
Thank you.
Good. Great. We still have a couple of minutes left, so we could bring in another questioner. We have now on the list, Chris. Chris Leonard from Credit Suisse.
Hi, everyone. Good afternoon. Thank you for the presentations. Just a quick question or a few questions perhaps from me. Firstly, what's the current efficiency of your system on an LHV basis as a useful comparator against peer group for the alkaline electrolysis portfolio? Globally looking at sort of 67%-70% LHVs. Just wondering where you're landing now on the AWE portfolio. Second question, if I can, do you have any costings for dollar per kilowatt for the product currently and where you believe that could go long term? If we can also add in on the coatings, are you using PGMs, platinum group metals, here? If so, what's the loading either with platinum or iridium per megawatt or per kilowatt, if you have that to hand? Thanks.
Thank you, Chris. The first question regarding the current efficiency, I would like to hand over to Fulvio.
Yes, I can provide a number that we offer, the technology now with 4.5 kWh per normal cubic meter of hydrogen. I hope this could be converted to the efficiency percentage because there are different methods, you know. This can be easily converted to the other lower heating value of hydrogen or higher heating value or the efficiency in comparison to the electrochemical thermodynamic or thermoneutral way. Yeah. Regarding, I think, the costs.
Regarding the cost, we don't give specific numbers here. There are, of course, ranges available in the market from organizations like IRENA, for example, which states $500/kW-$1,000/ kW. I can really say here that we are very well positioned within this range. Third question was regarding the platinum group metals and,
Also, in this case, in the coatings, we cannot disclose the loading of platinum group metals. This is a confidential information. What we can say it is significantly less in comparison, for example, to the PEM electrolyzers that use significant amounts, as you know, of typically iridium on the anode side, platinum on the cathode side.
Does this-
Sure.
Answer your questions, Chris?
It doesn't, and maybe just as a brief follow-up.
Okay.
The 4.5 kWh/ Nm3, that's maybe a 67% efficiency. On LHV, that compares to Asahi Kasei at around 70%, so a touch above you from your chlor-alkali competition. Where do you think you can get to on efficiency, given the new, you know, next generation, which I assume is gonna leverage better coatings? That would be an interesting extension if you could give what you think the top range could be and what's achievable for you.
Again, we cannot disclose the details. Of course, each component, the anode and cathode coatings, can contribute to the operating cell voltage, then to the efficiency. The separator in between also play a significant role in relation with the current density, of course. Because the higher the current density, the higher the ohmic drops inside the separator, also the operating conditions, I'm talking about concentrations, I'm talking about pressure, I'm talking about temperatures, of course, can provide a room for improvements in the future. I cannot say how much in the next years.
Please remind that the 4.5 expected starting power consumption is at 12 kA/sq m. A very high current density. This is already a very excellent performance.
Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you, Chris. The last questioner for this round is Jason again, Jason Fairclough from Bank of America. Jason, welcome back.
Yep. Thanks, everybody, and thanks again for the presentation. Just to come back to this idea of IP and trade secrets. As you start to export internationally, and in fact, as you start to manufacture on a global basis, how do you think about protecting your trade secrets? I mean, it sounds like you've got some really unique offerings here. Isn't there a risk that those get stolen from you as you start to manufacture internationally?
Maybe I start. Yes, the entire cell and the module is our intellectual property, yeah? To make this clear. We of course protect it with patents, but this is actually not the only method to protect our intellectual property. It's also quite difficult to copy it because we have really sophisticated manufacturing here and also very thin metal sheets with nickel. This is a know-how by itself also to manufacture our cells and make it that highly performing. Therefore it's a combination of intellectual property protection by patents. Of course, we do this worldwide in all major markets, but also intrinsically within the design itself.
Okay. I guess a related one to come back on the sort of critical metals, so whether it's PGMs, whether it's nickel, how do you think about potential scarcity on some of these these raw materials and ultimately the risk that could limit the rollout of a hydrogen economy?
Well, some platinum group metals are required. Actually this is rather limited. Raw materials always have to be available, this is clear, for any technology. Fortunately in our technology, we use much less of the PGMs than some other technologies like PEM for example. I think we are much better off here.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Yeah, thank you also for being available. We have now reached the end of the second Q&A session, and there is now again a break. The break will be about 25 minutes, so I suggest that we all be back here at 1:25 GMT. A break for about 25 minutes. After the break, we will have again on stage Fulvio Federico for the manufacturing strategy. We will tell you more about the ESG approach. Denis will do that. There will be a section on the financials. We will have then again another Q&A session. Thank you very much and I look forward to seeing you back soon.
Thank you.
Thank you.
There is something deep in our DNA that could be a decisive impetus in answering one of the most challenging questions of our time.
How can we reduce CO2 on a large scale? Could green hydrogen pave the way?
What could we achieve if we use our experience of the many gigawatts that we have already installed?
If we extend our scope to a new market, if we innovate to accelerate transformation into a brand new energy age.
We will create that significant impact we need to solve one of our most pressing problems.
Are we prepared to establish a growing hydrogen ecosystem? Yes, we are determined. We are ready to grow. We are able to lead this development. Today, we open up a new era.
Thyssenkrupp nucera .
Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. It's now the last round of presentations for us here. Three presentations, and the first one will come from Fulvio Federico. It will be on manufacturing strategy. Fulvio, please go ahead.
Thank you, Klaus. Our great products and technologies we have presented before today deserves and need an adequate manufacturing strategy. First of all, our company is an evolution from project-based business to product-based business. That is the way to serve efficiently the global demand on the market. In chlor-alkali, it was, and it is still, mainly project business. The customers can have different feedstocks to the plant. The salt, the sodium chloride could have different impurities. They have different requirements for the products, chlorine, caustic, hydrogen, hydrochloric acid, depending on the use in downstream processes that can be different in different sectors of the basic chemicals industry. Often, it is a conversion from existing old plants with diaphragm or mercury that have to be converted to membrane cell technology. It is necessary every time a certain degree of engineering and customization.
We expect that for alkaline water electrolysis, it will be much different. The feedstocks to the plant and to the electrolyzer is basically very simple. It is water and electrical energy, and the plants will be mainly new, associated with new installation of renewable energy, so it will be a repeatable kind of product. Then we expect to be able to number up, numbering up of the standardized 20-MW module to make 100-MW, 1-GW plant, and so on. That delivers key benefits, the standardization enabling serial manufacturing, the establishment of thyssenkrupp nucera as a key technology provider, taking responsibility from the beginning until the end, and the reduction of complexity. By repetition, it is possible to reduce the cost, and it is possible also to have short delivery time for accelerated times, time schedule.
In order to provide efficiency in that process, we can divide the manufacturing activities in three main blocks or parts or phases. On the left side of this chart, the A part is regarding the cell. We have already explained before, me and my colleagues, there is an anode cell and a cathode cell. Those are manufactured by our partner and shareholder, De Nora. Inside those shells, half shells, of course, there are the electrode coatings also provided by De Nora with their own proprietary technology. Thyssenkrupp nucera is, of course, taking care of all the other important parts inside the cell, including, of course, the separator, the diaphragm, including the seal system. We have already spoken about that. Very important for safety, reliability, environmental protection, all the pipes, tubes, bolts, and parts making the entire cell element.
Those parts are ready to be shipped in order to make the final assembling on-site or at fabrication yards. Part B regards the skid-mounted process units divided into blocks. The content there is basically the equipment, like tanks, pumps, filters. It is including the piping, the valves, instrumentation, electrical cables, steel structures, everything. The power electronics also, everything to make the 20-MW module. The sum of all those parts is transportable on-site for the activity C here in this slide, to assemble together the stacks, the electrolyzer unit, and the value provided there by thyssenkrupp nucera at each step along this value chain is to keep control, is to ensure quality, and to provide a time effective execution. Part A regards the cells. We have already said, together with De Nora partner, we are ready to deliver now, today, 1 GW/ annum.
It is real. We can see a picture here in the middle of the slide. It is the facility located in Rodenbach, De Nora Deutschland, making for us the chlor-alkali cells and also the bottleneck there in order to provide 1 GW/ annum of alkaline water electrolyzer cells. This will be further expanded also to other regions in the world. Inside there are, of course, all the manufacturing facilities for the coating manufacturing as well as welding the cells, and so on. Thyssenkrupp supply chain is providing the other parts, the raw materials, the nickel, the titanium, the other parts, separator, and so on. All together, those parts are ready to be provided on-site or on module yards. What I would like to stress, this is not a plan. This is not a project on paper. This is real. It is there. Please come with me.
Let's go there via movie virtually. Let me ask our colleagues to start a short movie about this.
Dear renewables, enough of your diva behavior. Sometimes you feel like delivering energy, sometimes you don't. Sorry to say, it's impossible to run an industrial economy like that. What the world needs is reliable baseload. We here at thyssenkrupp are crafting the tools to make wind and solar reliable and predictable. We are taking renewables from diva to baseload. Efficient supply chains and manufacturing are key to meeting net zero goals. Why? Because fully automated series production is faster and more cost efficient to meet an increasing demand. We are ready to deliver today and industrial size.
Very nice. Thank you. I would like to stress what was mentioned in the second part of this movie. We are ready today to deliver at industrial size, at gigawatt size. Regarding the part B or phase B, we have already experience. In the case of small chlor-alkali plants, like this one in this slide, which was made in Brazil with 15,000 tons per year chlorine production. There, it is possible to have a repeatable plant. I said before, typically, the chlor-alkali plants need a project-based approach. For those small, it is possible to have skid-mounted chlorine plants. We have done it at thyssenkrupp nucera in the past. We have experience with this. It includes standardization and optimizations. It includes reduced cost of erection on-site. This is the key?
It is possible to prefabricate everything on controlled site, on module yards, and then transport. What remains at the final site is the interconnections. This reduces the risks of construction, so saving money, and also allows very fast project schedule. With that experience, we have designed together with our partners, De Nora and TK, and we have prepared our 20-MW module unit with 16 subunits or building blocks containing the process equipment. Each building block is pre-engineered. It can be optimized through learning during repeated manufacturing. It is tested before shipping and transportation. Only the interconnections will remain to be done on-site. With that process and knowledge, thyssenkrupp nucera is able to ensure quality and cost efficiency. The final step is assembling. At the initial situation, like now, we have the cell fabrications in Europe.
We have the module units, subunits on fabrication yards externally located at best cold countries, and we deliver such parts together to the project location in order to fulfill our commitments with the order intake that we have achieved recently at large scale. This is also evolving. Both the sales manufacturing and the module yards fabrication will expand worldwide, taking the advantage and the synergy of the existing network with thyssenkrupp nucera, with thyssenkrupp Uhde, and with De Nora.
With all of that, we target to deliver for the expected global market growth our products at accelerated timetables and at cost efficiency. In summary, regarding our manufacturing strategy, there are basically three key items I would like to repeat. The serial production, the scale up, and the modularization. It may seem very simple to say, but it took a lot of time and efforts and knowledge and technologies in order to do that. Together with our product performance and competitiveness, it delivers a powerful tool to serve the global growing market. Thank you.
Fulvio, thank you also from my side. Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, just as a reminder, you have the opportunity to ask questions once you joined us via the Zoom platform. If you want to ask a question, please indicate this by using the Raise Your Hand function on the Zoom platform, and our technicians will bring you into the session later on in the Q&A session. Now the next presentation on ESG, on our ESG approach by Denis Krude. Denis, please.
Thank you, Klaus. Dear ladies and gentlemen, we are now coming to the ESG chapter. This is a rather short but very important one. As the CEO, I'm responsible for ESG, and I take it very serious. ESG is an essential part of our culture and strategy. People work for us because they want to make the world a better place. Thyssenkrupp nucera has been so far part of the overall thyssenkrupp ESG program and reporting. thyssenkrupp nucera is setting now up its own program in the next months, and I will a little bit explain about it in the next slide. On the left side, you see the five UN Sustainable Development Goals out of the total of seventeen. We think we can contribute the most and are most relevant to us, the following five.
First to mention is affordable and clean energy. We give access to green hydrogen and to a source of clean fuel to the industry and to the society. Second target is decent work and economic growth. We want to be an attractive employer. We want to provide high quality and high skilled working places. Third, industry, innovation and infrastructure. I think this is our natural target with our electrolyzers. We decarbonize the processes of our customers, of the still fossil-based processes. Fourth, sustainable cities and communities. We help to build sustainable cities such as the city of NEOM, that is to be built in the northwest of Saudi Arabia, where we just got this big and huge project. Number five, partnerships for these goals. We build coalitions.
We are member of the Hydrogen Council, and we are also a founding member of the H2 Global Foundation in Germany. This supports the achievement of all these goals. We underpin these goals with our commitments, and we are committing ourselves to calculate and report greenhouse gas emissions. We also commit ourselves strongly, this is really, our culture for safety and health standards. We have just achieved a lost time incident frequency rate of zero, so not a single lost time incident in the fiscal year 2020 and 2021. Of course, this is difficult to repeat, but we strive for it to repeat it again for this fiscal year. We also commit ourselves for a responsible procurement for the practices in which we also already have started. Another commitment is strong governance. Here we will commit also ourselves to diversity, transparency and accountability.
These are our plans. This program will now be developed, and we will give you more details in the next few months. Moving on now to the subject of governance. We have to mention the legal structure of thyssenkrupp nucera. The legal structure will be a KGaA, with an AG as the general partner of the KGaA. This structure has been chosen by the existing shareholders in order to reflect the long-term partnership of thyssenkrupp, De Nora, and thyssenkrupp nucera, and also gives a firm commitment to continue this partnership also in the future. It also safeguards the free float shareholder interests very similar to a normal AG.
It also provides the management of thyssenkrupp nucera for operational autonomy. Such a legal structure of a KGaA is a very familiar one in Germany, and there are several successful examples of large listed companies in Germany, such as Henkel, Merck, and DWS. You can find more details about this legal structure in the appendix of this presentation. I just want to summarize this chapter. The key messages of the ESG section are the following. thyssenkrupp nucera's mission statement is aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and will create a long-lasting impact. Secondly, the KGaA structure provides operational autonomy to the thyssenkrupp nucera management, while reflecting also the long-term commitment with the key shareholders, thyssenkrupp and De Nora. That's it for my section. I hand over to Klaus, and Arno will continue with the financial section.
I think many people are already waiting for that.
Yeah. Thank you, Denis. You will be back here for the final Q&A session, which will take place after the financial session that is going to start in a couple of seconds. As the final section for today, it's about the financials, and for that, we will have Arno Pfannschmidt here. Again, the reminder, use the raise your hand function on your Zoom platform when you want to ask a question, and we bring you into the session here. With that, I would like to hand over to Arno. Arno, please, the stage is yours.
Thank you, Klaus, for the kind introduction. Yes, hello. Good afternoon. A warm welcome also from my side. I'm the CFO of thyssenkrupp nucera. We had a long waiting time, and may I assume that you as the investor community are interested in the financials? Yes, I think the answer is clear. I'm very proud and also excited to present our excellent financial key figures. They reflect our strength and the technology foundation. The business is in a significant transformation now, so we cannot assume that the figures of the past will be the same in the future because we will grow significantly and therefore the size will just significantly go up. Let's start with this picture.
It shows on the bottom side, our foundation, the stable and successful chlor-alkali business with its best-in-class technology and the service share, which is around 15%-50%, so this is the recurring after-sales business. If we move now to the top, there is our new star, the alkaline water electrolysis to generate green hydrogen. It's the core and the focus of our strategy. We expect exponential profitable growth. That's the reason why we're here today. We will drive to become quickly much bigger than our existing business with the alkaline water electrolysis. Let's move to the next page. Where do we stand today with our alkaline water electrolysis business? That has been presented already.
We have contracted an alkaline water electrolysis backlog of EUR 0.9 billion, about EUR 900 million, with a capacity of more than 2.2 GW. We, as Denis has mentioned already, have a chlor-alkali order backlog of around EUR 0.4 billion. That shows already that the alkaline water electrolysis is already the double of the size of the traditional chlor-alkali business. Again, we have the largest contracted backlog of all suppliers of green hydrogen plants. We have these two landmark milestone projects included, which have already been presented. It's the biggest in the world in Saudi Arabia and the biggest in Europe with Shell, 200 MW for Shell and more than 2 GW in Saudi Arabia. It is the proof of our leadership for large industrial scale projects.
We are ready, and we are best placed on the market, and there is much more to come. As Christoph has explained, there are hundreds of projects out there. He mentioned 552 projects announced. The number is constantly rising. Again, we have here the substantial pipeline, a selection already of those projects, those which are currently identified as attractive projects where we had the first customer interactions. Of those, we actively pursue a selection of 16 projects with a value of around EUR 0.8 billion, an average 90 MW according to criteria which were also mentioned by Christoph before. The criteria are the maturity of the projects. Are they in an advanced stage? Has the business plan been prepared?
The likelihood of the realization, profitability of course for us, the timing, when it will happen, and whether the customer is strategic for us. Let me quickly guide you through the details of our reporting structure. We have the segments which are structured by our global footprint as already shown here with Germany, Italy, Japan, China, and currently the U.S., and Australia and Saudi Arabia to come. We have a decentralized profit responsibility in these entities. Just to let you know, our fiscal year end is the thirteenth of September. That's why we have very often these split years, 2021, for example.
On the right side, you see our two major product groups, the alkaline water electrolysis, initially new build projects, and the service to come with this delay after the installation with significant amounts about six-eight years after the installation. The second big product group, chlor-alkali, has been presented with the new build projects. More than 600 have been realized, and this important service and maintenance business, which stands for about 50% of the revenues. Let's now move to the top line, to the order intake and sales. We had a very stable order intake and sales in the first two years, and then a significant growth in the last fiscal year, 2021, which included already, on the order intake side, the first meaningful projects, the first meaningful alkaline water electrolysis projects.
Below we see the sales. The turn to sales is in our plant engineering business always split about two-three years depending on the size of the project. We have also shorter or longer projects. Here we have indeed EUR 390 million in the last fiscal year with the first sales also from the alkaline water electrolysis. The service portion, as mentioned, is around 50% of that. Now let's look on our sales split, first by the segments, by the legal entities, with Germany as the largest segment covering about 58% of the sales and doing this mainly in Europe and the MENA region.
On the right side, you see the sales by destination indicative with good geographical balance, and that will then also move forward when alkaline water electrolysis becomes more important. As Christoph has reported, Europe stands for about 50% of the market, China about 20%, North America and Australia each 10%. In these directions also, the geographical split will move, and it will be geographically balanced also in the future. Now let's move to the bottom line. EBIT is our main KPI, including also depreciation and amortization. What you can see here is it's a proof that we are consistently profitable with our electrolysis business, with the chlor-alkali business. We are resilient against corona. That's also important to mention here.
In the last fiscal year, 2021, we had an impact from the alkaline water electrolysis ramp up from the cost which we are incurring, which are anticipating the revenues to come, mainly R&D expenses and selling expenses. We have an average without these special burdens, an EBIT margin of 10%-11%. Below you can see the EBITDA with about 12%. There's just 1% depreciation and amortization in between, which reflects our asset light model. Cash and cash flow. What is typical in our traditional plant engineering business is a negative net working capital, which is shown here in the upper part. On the top, the absolute amount, and below then the changes from one year to the other, which go one to one into the operating cash flow.
It is a negative net working capital, however, with swings depending on the portfolio and the status of the project execution. We had, particularly in the last fiscal year, a significant reduction of the net working capital becoming more minus. With that, we had a cash effect of +EUR 18 million . Which fed into the development of the operating cash flow over the last three years, with a peak of EUR 37 million in 2021. Below you see our CapEx, reflecting the asset light business model in the traditional chlor-alkali business, with the manufacturing of our design outsourced so that we don't have the investments for the machines here. Of course, looking forward, we expect with the growth of the alkaline water electrolysis that we will have to invest more.
The alkaline water electrolysis CapEx will be higher, which I will show you also later. We come to the balance sheet and our capital structure. Please keep in mind we are a growing business, and we need to cater now for the large contracts in the alkaline water electrolysis industry. On the left side, we start with the cash equivalents, and the cash which we have invested in the TK Group cash pool as receivables. We have at the end of September 2021, EUR 200 million. We have very limited debts, mainly leasing liabilities according to the IFRS accounting principles and very little accrued pensions and similar obligations.
We have a net cash position of EUR 187 million as per September 2021, and that's the result of our profitable business and also the advance payments we are receiving from our customers. Now, we come to the IPO and the expectations. We have here a targeted IPO primary proceeds of EUR 500 million-EUR 600 million. And that, on top of the net cash position that we have, is needed, is used for funding our strong alkaline water electrolysis growth, mainly the expenses of research and development and also the CapEx. It's also meant for strengthening the financial position to meet the counterparty requirements and to give us the ability to deliver on large-scale projects, including the provision of the required guarantees. We have a very strong capital structure as the basis of our future growth.
Let's move now forward to the future. We have given ourselves strong financial targets for mid and long term, and we are comfortable to achieve them. Let's start with alkaline water electrolysis. We expect sales of EUR 600 million-EUR 700 million by the fiscal year 2024, fiscal year 2025. The service sales are expected to ramp up six-eight years after installation, so very limited service sales included in that figure. On the EBIT for alkaline water electrolysis, we expect break even around 2023, 2024. In the long term, we want to increase to a low double-digit margin, also driven then more and more by the increasing service share. On the chlor-alkali side, we expect sales, depending on the projects, of around EUR 300 million by 2025, 2026 and thereafter. On average, we have the growth in line with the GDP as presented already by Roland.
The EBIT is expected to achieve a high single-digit EBIT margin. Let's look on our group figures for the R&D expenses, and that was one of the questions in the morning sessions. Over the next four years, we expect an amount of EUR 50 million-EUR 100 million. Again, this is included in our EBIT figures. It's not capitalized. It is expensed, and that's included here in the margins, which I mentioned before. For the cash flow for the next four years, we expect an amount of EUR 150 million-EUR 200 million. This includes also investments in technology. Whereas for the net working capital, due to the change in the business model, that we move now from the chlor-alkali business, from the plant engineering business to a more product and standard business.
Meaning that we will have to build up also inventory so that we could move into a slightly positive territory for the net working capital over time. The free cash flow is expected to be break even around 2025, 2026. After having given you this guidance, let me summarize and reiterate the main messages here. The focus of our strategy is alkaline water electrolysis growth, which will change and transform our company for growth. The foundation is a profitable chlor-alkali business with equipment and services. It is our ambition to drive the alkaline water electrolysis business and to achieve sales of EUR 600 million-EUR 700 million by 2024, 2025. Then, of course, with continued growth thereafter based on the strong market, which was presented by Christoph.
We have a promising backlog already due to the recently signed contracts for NEOM and Shell, with more than 2.2 GW contract volume. That demonstrates our technological leadership and our strong market position. Thank you for your attention. I would hand back to Klaus.
All right. Arno, thank you very much. Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, we are close to starting the final Q&A session for today. For the Q&A session we will have here on stage, of course, it will be Arno, it will be Fulvio, then we will have Denis, and virtually here in the room will be Volkmar Dinstuhl and Christoph Noeres. Sorry. With that, I would suggest we start. Yeah, here we have Seth Rosenfeld again as the opener for the Q&A session. Seth, please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thank you for the presentations and for taking all of our questions today. If I can start out with two, please. Both with regards to revenue recognition and secondly on the margin outlook. With regards to the sales outlook versus order wins, you now have several orders already in your backlog, EUR 900 million backlog versus 2.2 GW of related capacity. Is it safe to apply that value metric, a bit over EUR 400 million per gigawatt to future orders? Or do you view the pricing environment as changing for better or for worse over future years? Secondly, please, when you think about margin performance, you seem to be targeting low double-digit margin for AWE versus high single-digit margin for chlor-alkali. I guess, can you talk through the drivers of that premium margin for AWE?
Is it better pricing or is it better cost performance, given some of your comments in the manufacturing section? Thank you.
Arno, I think, these questions are addressed to the financial section. I would like to hand over to you.
Yes. Thank you, Denis. Well, indeed, we have these two main figures here, the backlog of around EUR 900 million and more than 2.2 GW. Of course, it gives a ratio of EUR per megawatt. We have clearly to say that each project is different. The scopes are different and the big projects, of course, have a different financial logic than smaller projects. As a general average, it is maybe a good indication, clearly, but if you look in the single projects, it might differ significantly. Yeah. The value might be higher or lower than that average, I think, which is clear.
Regarding your second question, what are the drivers for the margins? As you mentioned, we have here this long-term outlook for alkaline water electrolysis with a low double-digit EBIT margin. This will be, of course, influenced at the beginning by the strong demand of the market and the limited capacity of the suppliers which are there. We assume that we will be able to receive here good margins, good pricing, and also then with the increase of the service business, which has been implemented here also in the business plans from the beginning. Whereas in the chlor-alkali market, we have a more mature market and therefore I think it's a very good still low single-digit EBIT margin for the chlor-alkali market.
That will be more in a stable range here. Yeah. Of course, we will try to make margin out of this unique selling points, which were presented before here by Christoph and Denis.
Just to clarify, please, with regards to the AWE margins. Is the assumption that in the near term, with limited capacity, limited competitor capacity, superior pricing over the longer term, that pricing probably starts to weaken, but the growth in services helps compensate? Is that the right way to think about it, please?
Yes. That's one of the assumptions we have, maybe not for the first projects. Yeah, we need the reference projects, of course. For the second round, so to say, that's one of the assumptions we have. Yeah.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Seth. Next we can welcome back here in the Q&A session, Bastian Synagowitz from Deutsche Bank. Bastian?
Please.
Thanks again for taking my questions. Just also one follow-up on the margin side. You're obviously selling business for 2024 and 2025 in a market with significant cost inflation pressure and uncertainty and all of that, at times of peak inflation. You already pointed out that the content of PGMs is certainly lower than in PEMs. Even despite that, obviously there are other volatility drivers such as steel. How do you handle this, and how comfortable are you not just to build market share, but also to really generate a good margin?
I think I can take over this question. What we usually do in our proposals, in our contracts, we have escalation formulas for the most volatile metals. These are the noble metals, but also nickel metal that we need for the fabrication of our cells. We also have escalation usually for currencies, and recently we have even included transportation because we have also seen quite an increase of prices. That gives us quite a security. At contract award and effectiveness, we then secure these prices in order to secure the prices and not be exposed to any escalation here.
Okay. Thank you. That's very clear. Just a quick follow-up here as well on your margin targets. You're giving us an EBIT margin target, but as you suggest as well, there are significant numbers flowing through the P&L for R&D, for example. That obviously gives you a lot of flexibility. You mentioned a wide range, EUR 50 million-EUR 100 million. Can you maybe also give us an idea on whether your gross margins are profitable already to date and what you perspectively aim for? I think some of your peers aim for 30% gross margin. Is that a number we can apply for you as well?
Arno, the question, I think, is addressed to you.
Yes, I can take that. We want to have also some flexibility regarding the R&D expenses. If you say that the range is quite wide between EUR 50 million and EUR 100 million, that's true. We have here some ideas what we want to do, therefore, the range is rather big. Regarding the gross margins, we look on the EBIT. Our key KPI is the EBIT, so we want to have everything included. We have seen that the reporting logic is not the same in the industry. Some are capitalizing certain expense items where we are expensing all of them. Therefore, we are looking here for the EBIT margin.
That's, I think, all I can say here at the moment to that.
Just one very last question, if I may, on your revenue targets. We look at your order backlog, obviously, and it's pretty impressive. I guess if I'm accounting correctly, you've got more order backlog than almost your entire listed peer universe altogether. Yet, if I look at the EUR 600 million-EUR 700 million revenue target, one could basically say, depending on how NEOM is rolled out, that could be achieved with NEOM all alone. Is this number, as you would say today, a conservative number? Because you mentioned earlier that you basically have a pretty aggressive project filter looking at 500 projects, and then 90 projects of that you're only basically pursuing actively.
Because also when we look at the 5 GW capacity you're building, if I could reconcile correctly here, I think the revenue number then would only imply a 35% utilization rate of your capacity.
Yeah. Definitely the NEOM project is a major project for us, and it's a big one, but it will not turn into sales immediately, so that is spread over several years. We cannot expect to have such a big project every year, but we are having very good and big size projects in our sales and opportunity funnel. It's part of our growth, and we will further grow here also in the order intake and in the backlog. Arno, would you like to add?
Yes, indeed. I think it was mentioned that handover is forecasted for 2026. Now, that means we have here a time to sales period of five years, roughly. In that sense, it is a significant portion of the EUR 600 million-EUR 700 million, but there are further projects to come. In that sense, we think it's a basic planning with normal chances and risks. Yeah.
Thank you.
All right. Next we do have John Buckland from Waverton Capital. John, are you there already?
I'm trying to unmute myself.
You are unmuted already. Well done.
Okay. Great. Do you want me to start my video? I'm not sure about that. Thank you. I just want to go right back to the beginning, because I know the market for hydrogen is very big, potentially, and it's exponential. When you show all the projects that have been announced around the world are of vastly different sizes, and you're going to target this over 100 million megawatt segment. I'm just wondering how big that will be in the whole scope, and how competitive that bit is compared to the other smaller projects, potentially. I mean, are you in a more competitive market segment, or are you going to be in a less competitive market segment? I just wondered if you could explain that a little bit better.
Yes, John. There are not that many companies who are capable to deliver these big size projects. So there we have definitely competitive advantage, and we would like to keep this advantage. Christoph, you have reported about the market sizes and the projects. Maybe you can elaborate further on that. This is for us, the most attractive market segment, the big industrial scale projects. Christoph, are you online?
I am. Can you hear me?
Yes, we can.
Yeah. Perfect. No, I think Denis well said. As we stated in my presentation, we are looking on the overall market, which is more than 500 projects will be announced, and the focus we do is on this 80% of the market, and we have a clear methodology of how we come down, and we focus our resources. This is the industrial market, and as Denis already said, we see that we have a significant advantage in this market. There are not so many who can supply the amount of electrolysis, and there are also not so many on the market who have those expertise like we have to deliver a big scale project.
We feel that is just the market we want to focus, and therefore we don't focus, for example, for the small scale market.
I understand that, but that's the. As the market develops, is it not that there's gonna be many, many more smaller projects than there are, you know, if you like, hydrogen hub industrial projects? Therefore, you know, will the vast majority of the market be below 100 MW or however it's gonna be segmented in the future? Maybe the break point of the volume will be lower than that. I'm not quite clear when. Because, you know, we're just at the very beginning and you've got one or two big projects you talk about, but the potential is for vastly more smaller projects, is it not?
No, that is just what we have shown. We expect that the majority of the market is big scale market. There will be also smaller scale market, but that is not the market we are focusing on.
Okay. The other question is for me a question mark. You talk about this disruptive change, which is quite important to remain competitive versus PEM, it appears. You haven't really elaborated what the conceptual changes are gonna be and what differences it's gonna make. I mean, it's all talked about, it seems to be empirical evolutionary change rather than something which is step change. I'm also wondering whether that change will also affect your chlor-alkali business because they're too connected. Both of them are connected. I just want more information about that, more ideas about how that's gonna happen. Because you talk about trying to do it. There's a big difference between trying to do something and actually having some breakthroughs, which say you know it's definitely gonna happen.
John, it's in the nature of the topic that we will not disclose, of course, our ideas and concepts that we have in mind in order for developing of the new disruptive technology. It'll be, as always, in our case, a package of it. We will work on the total cost of ownership. With our standardized technology, we can build up a serial production that gives us a big potential in reducing the cost. We will work on the materials. We will work on the stack design, on the cell structure, on the diaphragms, on the electrodes, on the coatings. This entire package will be a leading total cost of ownership that will be a major step forward compared to the technology that we are offering today. Sorry, I cannot disclose more details on that.
We will do this in due time.
Okay. It just doesn't sound very disruptive to me.
All right. Thank you very much, John, for your contribution. We now have the next one, already in the room. It's Patrick Jones from JP Morgan.
Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question. This relates to the earlier presentation on the market side and the outlook for costs across the industry. You mentioned obviously in your, in comparison and contrasts of alkaline versus PEM that obviously alkaline, the atmospheric alkaline we're producing at one bar pressure where PEM and other technologies we're producing at 30 bar pressure. In the cost analysis, you obviously show that PEM is relatively more expensive on a dollar per kilowatt basis. My question is really on the, on the atmospheric alkaline side, you know, what do you think is the amount of the cost dollar per kilowatt that's needed in terms of compression and other components to bring that to 30 bar pressure, and is that included in your larger, cost estimates for alkaline?
It is included in our calculations. That was part of Christoph's presentation. Christoph, would you like to elaborate more on the comparison between alkaline water electrolysis and PEM?
Yes, I think it's included in that comparison as usual. You always compare at the better limits, which means the pressurized hydrogen. That's the typical better limits for such kind of technology comparison. It's included. Even if you take that compression pressure difference in consideration that there is additional compression needed, then still AWE has a cost advantage. I think that is most important.
Okay. Thank you for that. Just sort of a question on the technology side. Understand you don't wanna go into too much details on what the 2.0 program will be going into, but obviously as you know, you're one of the few that's focused on atmospheric alkaline as the primary technology. Have you considered pressurized alkaline, which some other competitors are pursuing? If so, what are your thoughts on that and maybe why have you not considered going down that route? Also on the issue around precious metals, you mentioned that there is a limited amount of PGMs that's still used, but some of the other peers in pressurized and atmospheric alkaline are using zero PGM stacks. So I was just wondering why you haven't opted for zero PGM at this point.
I think it's a very technological question. I would like to hand over to our CTO, to Fulvio, please.
Thank you for the question. Regarding technology, yes, we have considered the pressurized alkaline water electrolysis. It is always a trade-off concerning safety of the operation, reliability. We always look also to large size and long term. For the moment, among those options, the atmospheric or slightly pressurized electrolysis has advantages. In the future developments, we will consider all the other possibilities. Of course, with pressurized systems, also the cost of the electrolyzer goes up. We are able to choose among those possible versions. PGM catalyst metals. Again, we are already at a lower level in comparison to PEM, which is intrinsically needing those catalysts because working in acidic conditions. In alkaline water electrolysis, it is not strictly necessary, but it is an enabler to operate at very high current density.
Our roadmap includes, together with our partner, De Nora, a significant reduction of those or alternatives not using noble metals.
Great. Thank you.
All right. A couple of minutes are still left, so we can take one more. It will be Rochus Brauneiser. Rochus Brauneiser from Kepler Cheuvreux.
Yes, hi. Thanks for taking the question. Can you maybe elaborate a bit more in detail on the targeted growth path from the 1 GW- 5 GW, as you mentioned in your presentations before? Can you give us the kind of timeframe you see to go from a 1 GW- 5 GW? And what are the kind of CapEx figures we are talking in this context? And can you maybe help us to understand what kind of CapEx you are considering and how those are shared between, you know, the more kind of components and membrane and coating side of the De Nora business and the Uhde side or the thyssenkrupp side of the business? That would be your first question.
We have already started with the project. It's also a funded project by the German government, H2Giga, to expand from 1 GW- 5 GW. We do not do this alone. We do this together with our partners and with our suppliers. We are currently investigating the concepts, further automation and serial production. This growth program is fully aligned with De Nora. As we have explained, the cell design and the module design is the IP fully owned by nucera, and De Nora is contributing with the noble metals, with the coatings, and they do the cell manufacture for us. There's a clear split of tasks between nucera and De Nora. De Nora will invest in further expanding the cell manufacture, and we are taking care as nucera for the module manufacture fabrication.
For the module fabrication, we have two options. We can either collaborate with a partner, with a module yard, which we currently do, or we invest into our own module yard. This can differ from region to region just depending on possibilities and advantages that are presented to us. This is the concept to ramp it up, and a process has been initiated.
The timeline for arriving at this 5 GW capacity level?
In the next years will also be done step by step. We are fortunate that we already have a global network, also together with De Nora, on several continents, so we do not need to build up these workshops from scratch. We already have something to build on, and this will take place now in the next years, few years.
Okay. Maybe one question on the old existing chlor-alkali business. I think based on your projections, you're seeing the top line to be rather flat, and margins to be, you know, a little bit lower compared to what you are seeing at the moment. What are the assumptions behind? Does it mean you're shifting, you know, capacity from the existing business to the hydrogen electrolyzer business? Or are you assuming, you know, margin pressure in that business with associated margin effects? Maybe some color on the moving parts would be appreciated.
Yeah. Chlor-alkali is our DNA. This is a business that we will continue. We also achieve good profitability here. It is not only the first installations. There we see, according to the investment activities in the world, some fluctuation, but we have this very nice, profitable, holistic service offering that we have, and this we will definitely continue. We'll also transfer the concepts to the alkaline water electrolysis because it has proven to be successful. Currently, chlor-alkali experts are also working on alkaline water electrolysis, but this is natural because it, the both technologies are so related, and we will further expand our staff, but we will always run these businesses in parallel.
Thank you.
Well, with that, thank you very much, Rochus. With that, we can conclude this Q&A session. Thank you all for your contributions out there, and thanks also to the gentlemen here on stage or virtually on stage. I think with that, I would like to hand over back to Denis for the wrap-up.
Thank you very much, Klaus. Finally, I would like to conclude the Capital Markets Day of thyssenkrupp nucera and summarize our growth story. Maybe we have the slide here. These are the six big messages I would like you to take away from this event. We are a technology leader for electrolysis, for industrial scale electrolysis. The market for green hydrogen is huge. It's a huge opportunity, and this generates also a high growth for the water electrolysis market. We could already celebrate the first big successes. Our largest contracted backlog is EUR 0.9 billion, EUR 900 million, only for the alkaline water electrolysis, equivalent to more than 2.0 GW.
We are targeting, expecting between EUR 600 million-EUR 700 million of sales by around the year 2024, 2025, and an EBIT breakeven around 2023, 2024, only related to the alkaline water electrolysis. We are looking very optimistically into the future. We have the support of a highly experienced management team, and we want to shape the future with this really excellent expert team. We are excited about the future and the prospects. There's a huge opportunity, and we want to contribute to solve the global warming by delivering our electrolyzers, producing the green hydrogen. We think that we are perfectly positioned in this market, and we are delighted to have been able to talk to you today. It was really enjoyable for us.
In the name of the whole management team, I would like to thank you for your participation and say goodbye, and auf Wiedersehen. See you soon again. Bye-bye.
Yeah. Also from the investor relations side, I would like to thank you for attending our Capital Market Day. As always after these events, if you have more questions, then please let us know. Come to us. We are approachable, and we look forward to staying in contact with you. With that, we are concluding for today. Bye-bye.