Good morning, and it's a pleasure to be here for the fifth Plug Symposium. If I take a step back, I want to remind people really what the purpose of the symposium is. A lot of it has to do with talking about Plug's future, but also a lot of it has to do with talking about where this industry is going, not just with Plug's ideas, but the ideas that are provided by government officials, by our customers, by folks from universities. I think one of the reasons, I think, that makes Plug different is that, we really view this hydrogen industry as a community, and we will work and engage with people across a broad spectrum to make this hydrogen economy happy, but quite honestly, in a parochial view, allow Plug to continue to be the dominant player in creating this industry.
Listening and working with people is really what makes us different, as well as a lot of smart people, and now a lot of great infrastructure. If I take a step back, I just wanna remind everyone that this presentation, all throughout the day, is covered by our Safe Harbor Statement. Let me begin by talking about our agenda. As I mentioned, today, you're gonna start out by hearing Paul and myself really talk about the state of Plug, mostly today, and a little bit over the coming years. Then, I really look forward to it. We have Dr. Jack Brouwer to present, talk about his view. Jack's a professor at UC Irvine, been engaged in this industry for over 20 years.
He's gonna give you his view of the industry, and Tim Cortes and Luke Wentlent will be up here talking about where green hydrogen makes sense from a society point of view. Then, you know, stealing from my analyst friends, we're gonna have a, we're gonna just have a chat with some of my leadership team. And, you know, we practiced 3x this chat, and everyone's different. And because, I get so interested in what they have to say, I take the conversation different directions. You'll have some of that today. We'll have a wonderful tour of this facility, and then there's 18 great breakout sessions, covering our energy business, application business, and our path to profitability.
For those who are online, and I know there's about 3,000 of you out there, that you know, this session through the fireside chat will be online, but many of the breakout sessions will be available online in the coming days, as well as the fact all the presentation material has already been put into the public domain. So, feel free to look at it, and I hope you enjoy this presentation today, too. I want to remind people that this is a big market opportunity, and I would tell you there's no doubt. When you have folks like Bloomberg saying that by 2050, 20% of world energy will come from hydrogen, that's a big number, and even if that number is overstated, it's still a big number.
And then, when you take a look, and 2050 sounds great, I think I'll be 94 years old in 2050. I like things that come a little faster. But if you look at by 2030, take a look at Europe. Europe is saying that by 2030, they're going to be using 10 million tons, produced within Europe per year, of hydrogen and importing 10 million tons of hydrogen. You'll hear a lot from Benjamin Haycraft today, and Benjamin has a good session. I would go in, if you're around, to hear what's going on in Europe. There's also, here in the United States, another 10 million tons of hydrogen which will be generated. And when I take a look back, that's a huge market opportunity. And in Europe, it's made it clear, 42% of it has to be green.
When we do our back of the envelope calculation, just for our electrolyzer business, just for Europe, just for United States, and I know there's folks from Brazil and other places around the world here today joining us, it's a $40 billion opportunity between now and 2030 for just one small segment of our business. So yeah, hydrogen's going to be big, and we've been building it out. I know that, I've shown this schematic many times, and everything from generation to all the applications that use our products, but it's the next slide of that I really like. I take a look at the next slide. You know, there's a picture of our production plant that's in Georgia. Uses Plug electrolyzers, Plug stacks for our renewable generation taking electricity. We know how to deliver products. They're real delivery vans.
That's Plug's logistic network, as well as Plug trailers. We have our own ability to liquefy hydrogen, and liquefaction, I think you'll hear in many sessions today, is really important to the future... We've been building infrastructure for the last 15 years. That 1-MW fuel cell system—Hey, Teal, is that picture from Tennessee? I don't know if that's from Tennessee or not. It is. It is? Yeah. By the way, that's powering vans today and electric vehicles. And if you look at the HYVIA van there, you'll have an opportunity, those in the audience, if you stay around to after dinner for a cocktail party, you know, we like to get a drink in you and then tell you to go drive our van around the parking lot. So that's, that's what Plug has done.
We're involved in so many accelerators, and, you know, people say to me, "What's going to accelerate the business?" I'm always about... You know, I'm an engineer, so I'm going to give you 120 degrees out of sync with folks sometimes. But I see all those products. I see all the demand. You know, I, you know, we've been—I was talking to Dave Mindnich last night, who runs our operations, about how we've been fighting a multi-front war, building hydrogen plants, building stationary products, building electrolyzer products for the first time, building facilities for the first time. That's really tough.
But, you know, this business from a capabilities point of view, and it was funny, when I was talking to Dave last night, it struck me, I don't have new battlefronts coming, 'cause those battlefronts are going to just generate so much opportunity for Plug, and we've learned so much over the last three years. And one of the items I've learned over the last fifteen years, that when you're in the energy business, regulations matter. Fifteen years ago, I see some folks in the audience who've actually listened to me speak fifteen years ago, I didn't realize how much regulations matter. And, you know, how the IRA comes out, important.
The Renewable Energy Directive that came out of Europe on Monday, which says 42% green hydrogen, that's really important, and it's the work we do to help guide our legislators and our executive branch in how to implement these regulations and how to help build a big economy. It's something Plug's deeply involved in and which is, really important for our future, as well as deals. Everybody likes when we announce deals with partners because they're real business, and real business, real customers, which Plug has done for years and years. You know, people like Amazon or Walmart, people like Ford and SK, these are real customers who want our products, and without that, quite honestly, you know, this business doesn't grow and expand. On top of that, we have a plan for margin enhancements.
Paul's going to talk much more about that than me, as well as how he's thinking about non-dilutive financing. But these are the four elements that I believe are important for continuing to build and expand this business. Now, I do want to talk about the IRA, and I first want to take a step back and say, we've been at... Yeah, you know, we're like Hamilton, right? We were in the room, and in the room. I think in Hamilton, when you were in the room, it wasn't exactly a good thing. But we were actually in the room and, you know, working closely with Senator Manchin, Senator Carper, Senator Schumer, when the raw law, when the law was written, and we really know what was in the law.
But look, during that process, afterwards, and again, this is kind of my own learning, how regulations became important, and folks started talking about these three pillars and, you know, associate it with time matching and regionality and additionality. And Plug's invested an incredible amount of time to really understand these subjects. You know, we accepted the fact, quite honestly, there had to be a compromise. And one of the items, and I think many of you have seen our presentations, which have been on the web. I've been at the DOE with Secretary Under Secretary Crane. I've been in John Podesta's office a number of times. I've been with Treasury. Senator Manchin's hosted events for me with key officials. We've been able, I believe, to help influence, to really make sure the legislation, regulations for the legislation come out right.
I also have become extremely respectful of the professionalism within the bureaucracy of the United States, which isn't something people often say. But we have had thoughtful discussions about how to implement the law so that it makes our economy green, and quite honestly, creates jobs like you see in this building today when you walk around. But I also have to add, you know, our fundamental belief is the key item is regionality. If you take an area like New York, and I think the hubs will be announced this week, for a hub in New York to really work right, you need a large region to be included in regionality. It needs to be the eastern region, western region, and I'm gonna say ERCOT, right?
I've been saying ERCOT, right, and saying it all our presentation, but ERCOT. That makes this bill most effective and quite honestly, makes additionality and time matching less important, the bigger the region. Quite honestly, I think everybody knows time matching is a late in this decade activity because the capabilities don't exist today. I think this is part of Plug's thought leadership. We just didn't, we just didn't, take it at face value when folks threw out these three pillars. We spent a lot of time understanding and understanding what it would mean to the business. Finally, I gotta say, if you only follow the law, you're gonna have less greenhouse gas emissions, you're gonna have more jobs and more investment. So any government officials watching me, just follow the law. Let me talk about business expansion.
We had some nice announcements today, and, and I think this is a part of the journey in this industry. We've talked about Fortescue a lot, and Fortescue and us share a vision for a green hydrogen economy. And we've had negotiations that have gone on for two, three years. And over the last year, and I can tell you, I was at CERAWeek, I sat down with Mark Hutchinson and said, "Okay, Mark," and Mark said to me, "Okay, Andy, how do we move this forward?" And then I decided to delegate to Sanjay and let him do all the work.
So, you know, Mark and Sanjay really have spent a great deal of time not only thinking about the big rollout in Gibson Island of 550 MW in Australia, but really thinking through how to position our cryogenic equipment, how to position our trailers, also, how to work together in building plants. And I'm gonna show you a, a clip here of Sanjay and Mark talking about what we're doing together and how we're looking to build out this industry together. So Matt, if we can roll the tape, that'd be great.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to work with you all as our 10-MW electrolyzer skid supplier to your Gibson Island project, which is, I think, gonna be one of the largest projects announced here on a global basis at 550 MW. So, Mark, can you tell everybody a little bit more about that project and how we're sort of working together there?
We have a goal for 50 million tons of hydrogen by 2030, which seems enormous. But actually, we're starting to see a pathway there, that we believe it's so important for... To show the world and also our investors who invest in the company, what these projects look like. The intention is really to show the world, you know, the difference in these projects, but also to really learn the processes we go through and as we develop these projects. So Gibson Island is one of our first. It's in Queensland, Australia. It's an opportunity to export ammonia. It's a large project to get going. We're working very hard with your team and Plug to provide the electrolyzers. We've got banks already lined up, and we hope to be, you know, financially closed sometime in 2024 and production in 2026.
The benefit I see in this collaboration is, obviously, we have the world's first gigafactory with the electrolyzer. We can give you that security of supply, right? So maybe it would be beneficial for everybody to understand scale of some of this project on a global basis, especially those first five that you see getting to FID here in the near future.
I think we see the market developing in certainly different ways. With the IRA in the United States, it's really, you know, serving a domestic market more than anything else, and so.
Yes.
Y ou don't really have to change the hydrogen to anything.
Yeah.
So you can liquefy it using your, your equipment, or you can sell it as gas, and that market's gonna be huge eventually. But then you have the other markets around the world, which is really feeding into Europe and feeding into the Asian market, Singapore, Korea, Japan, where you have to turn it to ammonia. We're looking at really the next wave of what we think about as mega projects. And what we're trying to do is look for where, where around the world can we get very cheap power abundantly that really isn't needed in the domestic market? So some of these projects, the first phase will be 1 million tons, but then we hope to continue to kind of build these out as the demand grows.
Eventually, we want to almost, you know, jointly work on how do we kind of replace the LNG market and use the LNG infrastructure globally?
Yeah.
I think that's kind of like the Holy Grail in our view, but let's start with what we know and what we can do.
Now, one another thing I don't think a lot of folks know about our collaboration or the cooperation in this area, it might be worthwhile for both of us to talk about it a bit, which is we're also looking to be co-investor in some of our hydrogen plants here in North America, right? So Mark, as we are collaborating and both of our teams are working on potentially being co-investor in some of these plants, what are the criteria, Mark, your team are looking at in terms of, all right, this is the—these are the key things that we need before we step in and say, "We're gonna be a minority investor in one of the Plug's project, and Plug becomes a minority investor in one of our projects." How, how are you guys thinking about that?
You know, I think collaboration with Plug, and there's, you know, we have a project in Phoenix, you have some projects in Texas and other parts of America, and swapping equity a bit, so we all learn together, I think is really smart. I think it's just a matter of getting going, you know, creating the market. In fact, most of the customers we talk to aren't really interested in you know, bespoke projects.
Yeah.
They're more interested in saying: "Well, look, you know, we'd rather contract with you as a company, and then where you get it from, we're kind of agnostic to some extent." So we've got to, we've got to create a market here. There is no real price, there is no market, there is no index, so all that has got to be done. So this, you know, this is a very exciting space for both of us as we kind of face in.
We can really collaborate with each other, and the goal, as you said, right, you know, this is not about Fortescue versus Plug. It's really more about Fortescue and Plug working together to make sure that we presented a solution that is gonna be a displacement of the fossil fuel as we look forward, right? And that's really kind of what we're both looking at, if you would.
So I think that's totally right, Sanjay. Look, you know, we've got a lot of work to do together. This is just the start of this industry. I kind of think of the, you know, when the solar industry happened and the wind turbine industry.
Yep.
It just matured so much over the next few years as the market scaled, and then you got innovation. Just think about the last 12 months, how governments around the world have really kind of changed their mind and accelerated this industry. So, you know, we're—I, our belief is we're very much at the start of the starting gate for this industry. We've got a long way to go, but there's plenty to do for everybody here.
I don't really think I have to add to that slide or presentation, but partnerships are important to Plug, and I actually have. One of our partners is here today, SK. I saw Ji Young, who we've been working with for a number of years. Ji Young, as well as HK, the CEO of Hyverse. But quietly in the background, there's been a lot going on. Keith Schmid, who's here, has been really driving both our JVs, and Keith has a wonderful session later in the day about our JVs. But we're building a hydrogen network in South Korea. That fueling network will have over 14 fueling stations by the end of 2024. We've been working, and Keith will talk more about it, about putting buses on the road.
We'll have 300-500 over the next, over the next 18 months on the road in Korea, and continuing to grow. And the unique work that Keith and the HK and Ji Young did in building partnerships really made it possible. The 1-MW products, which ultimately grows to 200 MW. I was in South Korea, and I was mentioning our chairman's here today, George McNamee, and how we've been actually able to use some of the great work that's going on in cabinet design and work in South Korea to leverage back here in the United States. It's a wonderful partnership. I was over there in South Korea a couple months ago and, you know, announced a deal with a three-way partnership for a, the largest logistics supplier in South Korea. So, partnerships, you know, are really critical to Plug.
Acciona, our partnership with Renault, our partnership with SK, our partnership now with Fortescue, our partnership with Hy24, all these partnerships are important for building out Plug. Let me talk about hydrogen. My, this is about gross margin, so I'm kind of changing the subject here. My first day on the job, April 8th, 2008 , I was told by Gerry Conway, and he didn't solve it yet, that my biggest problem was, you know, what was the price of hydrogen and what was the availability of the hydrogen? The network we're building out is to address both, and the price of hydrogen is really critical to build out all the applications we are involved in. Without that, it would not be possible.
The hydrogen network in the United States today is incredibly weak, and quite honestly, incredibly difficult for us to manage on a day in, day out basis. You know, Plug's customers use 20% of the liquid hydrogen in the United States. We keep our customers in hydrogen. I will tell you, if you look at the California Hydrogen Network, they don't have hydrogen a lot of the time. Building these plants is so critical for building out our stationary business, for expanding our material handling business, and those plants are under development. I'm gonna talk a little bit more about our plants in a later slide, but they're incredibly important to driving down our costs to make it cost competitive and profitable for Plug and good for our customers.
And it is really a focus of Plug every day to make sure that we make hydrogen a ubiquitous fuel. And that's why I get so excited when we look at partnerships with people like Fortescue. We have a similar vision. We know we have to make hydrogen easy, and it's something that, Jack, I can remember being in California 10 years ago, standing in front of a crowd, three people were in the room talking about the importance of hydrogen. But hydrogen is really important. So, I wanna tell you why I believe, because, I've lived the ups and downs of my life in many industries, from wireless. I worked in broadband in 1988, where things weren't easy. People didn't even know what the word broadband meant in 1988. But...
I always have to take, and I'm never satisfied. I'm always—Anybody who works for me knows I'm never happy. And you know, this is a facade up here that I'm pretending like I'm happy. Because I always believe we can do more. But you know, I'm a power electronics engineer by training. And look, in 2020, the biggest product that we had to offer was 10 kW. Today, it's 1.5 MW. Think about that. If you're a, you know, that's a 10 to the second power. Now, this is a lot. You know, you start plotting this logarithmic tail, where we're heading with these products. That system, I think I mentioned already today, is operating and powering plants, powering vehicles.
If you went back even a year ago, you know, that was a big, huge plant that we did a test with Microsoft for phase zero. Now, within a year, it's a real, real product with safety certifications. Our advantage in this market, and you'll see Scott Spink today, who really drove the development. I sit back and say, you know, Scott had to do, I believe, Mahesh is here. I think Mahesh may have done 85 or 90 tests to really get this product qualified for Amazon. We had to go through all safety. No company in the world could have put this together in a year, and no company in the world had the engineers to make a product like this. Then I look at the manufacturing facility.
Many of you were here at the 2019 symposium, where we had 50,000 sq ft of manufacturing capability. Today, between this facility, Rochester, our facilities in Indiana, Spokane, and Houston, we have over 1 million sq ft. We did that in three years, and I know those in the audience, digitally, who aren't going to be going on the tour. This is a spectacular place. You're gonna see a state-of-the-art manufacturing center, not only for our material handling products, for our stationary products. There's nothing like this in the fuel cell industry in the world. And on hydrogen, in 2020, we had nothing.
There is dream. I went back and looked at 2020 slides, which when I looked at, I found out we're beating the 2019 slides, we're beating the numbers, we told folks we were going to be in 2019. I think we said we were gonna be $1 billion of revenue in 2024. We're gonna do that this year. But also, we talked about we were thinking about how we would build hydrogen plants. Well, we have a plant in Tennessee. I wish I could tell you Georgia was putting out liquid today. Somewhere between 11/15 and 12/31, when the cold boxes, you know, cold box is finally commissioned, where we're going through a process now, drying it out. It's a $100 million piece of equipment. We really want to make sure it's done right, but that work's about to be completed. It's the biggest electrolyzer plant in the world.
We've learned, and it's, you know, every day I learn a little bit more. We had to test 8,000 pipes in this facility. We had to test 3,000 electrical loops to make sure everything was right. We're drying out cold boxes. It hasn't been easy, but I, I can tell you, Sanjay, myself, Tim Cortes, have become experts in what it takes to build, which is the easy part, and really what it takes to commission. But we have lots of construction ongoing as we speak. St. Gabriel's in Louisiana, which is actually easier because you don't, because we're just taking a hydrogen waste stream. Texas, which is really cool, where we're taking a NextEra wind farm, 390 MW, to generate pure green hydrogen. Work in New York is 74 tons a day.
Benjamin's here, and he's been deeply involved in our plant in Antwerp. Our folks from the port of Antwerp were here a month ago, and some folks in the audience were with them. Our three sites in Finland, which we're working really to tie our hydrogen plant directly to ammonia manufacturers and steel manufacturers. This is all coming together. I know everybody always wants it to be faster. I want it to be faster, but it's remarkable what we've accomplished, and I don't want it to be forgotten. Finally, I wanna remind folks before I turn it over to Paul. I can't imagine any of the 3,000 folks listening to this today question how big of an opportunity this is.
And I have to tell you, I think when you sit and hear Benjamin, Jose, Tim, and Sanjay talk in our fireside chat, you all agree there's unmatched market knowledge here, especially when you walk through the factory. These products are spectacular. They're early, right? I always take a step back and say to Scott Spink, "We're in generation two." You know, generation eight will be the product that you know will be so efficient, so cost-effective, that it'll be peaker plants everywhere. People won't know what natural gas generators are for peaker plants 15 years from now, because that product's gonna be everywhere. All those natural gas caverns are gonna be hydrogen caverns. We have unmatched infrastructure. You walk these facilities, you walk the plants, you walk the distribution centers where we man our service warehouses around the world.
Nobody has what we have. I believe in customers, and this has always been a customer-driven organization. There are many customers here today, folks from Tyson, folks from Amazon, folks from other companies. Customers have taught us along the way, and I can tell you at many meetings, at the end of the meeting, and I don't have to say it anymore, people start explaining to me what customers think about what we're doing. We have a clear vision for the future, and I often like to say, we may not have always been right about time, but we've always have picked the right things to do. Nobody can question today. People thought, and you know, it's people thought material handling market, what are you gonna learn there?
Well, we learned making 60,000 fuel cells and 200 hydrogen infrastructures, and now we have 287 sites between electrolyzers and stationary and material handling. Boy, we learned a lot, and those learnings made our stationary products today and our on-road vehicles products with HYVIA. This company thinks about today, but also thinks about where the market's heading, and that really makes us different. We're bold, but we're also humble because when you make all these products, and quite honest, you have all the arrows in the back that many of us have, you know, you learn along the way. But let me tell you, there's nothing like what Plug has done in the industry, and it's been my pleasure to be able to really be involved in this and be part of this journey.
Paul, I'm going to turn it over to now to tell you more about the business itself from a financial point of view, and you know, hope you enjoy the rest of the day. So my friend, Paul.
All right, good morning, everybody. I, as Andy said, I'm Paul Middleton, I'm the Chief Financial Officer for Plug Power, and I'm gonna share with you a little bit of insight about our the outlook for our plans for the company. Please reference the Safe Harbor Statement, which tells you to ignore everything I'm about to tell you. So I just want to think, you know... I guess before I start, I just want you to think about how big these markets are, the foundation that Plug has established, the penetration that we've already made, and the differentiated position that Plug has and can leverage going forward. When you think about that, reaching our growth target seems very reasonable.
To support our growth, we've built a platform that should help us meet our targets, including a broad foundation of technologies that enabled an early adoption, deep relationships with multiple industry leaders across many sectors, new investments that are expanding our geographic and industry footprints, and a strong cost discipline that continues to drive down cost and total cost to ownership. Our revenue forecast for 2023, as we sit today, is roughly about $1.2 billion, and this represents not only 70% growth over 2022, but equally important, it represents the growth in new markets for products like electrolyzers, stationary, on-road, green hydrogen, as well as continued growth in our material handling business. In 2023, it's an inflection point for all these new platforms, and it positions us for the compounding growth in 2024 and beyond.
Our second half of this fiscal year, and particularly the fourth quarter, represents not only typical seasonality in our material handling business, but really, the substantial ramping of these new markets and these new products as we start to deploy at scale. For our legacy business, I just want to reference that, you know, it, this year also serves as another big platform, given all of the new pedestal customers that we've added and expanded offering, like our new hydrogen small scale solution, which cumulatively, those factors continue to make this business available to us to double or to grow at 50% in 2024 and beyond. In the near term, we forecast progress across gross margin in our cash generation.
In electrolyzer, for example, we will be increasing production next year by more than double in 2023, which is, you know, we have direct sales, and we also have internal demand in our green hydrogen facilities. In fuel in 2024, it's gonna be a breakout year as we turn on the new green hydrogen facilities and leverage the PTC benefit. And in service, we're seeing strong progress in new unit performance, as well as the reliability investments we're making in the legacy fleet. There's always many puts and takes in any forecast, like new develop, new product platform development, lead times, and market conditions, and customer deployment timing. But our continued traction helps give us confidence that we're on track for meaningful sales and margin enhancement as we move forward.
We look forward to our normal business update here in January, where we're gonna share more with you on what we see for 2024. As we look to 2030, we anticipate continued growth rate of over 50%, which could yield over 20 times growth than over from 2023. And this top line growth is complemented by the growth we are forecasting in our joint ventures, which should expand our global market presence, enable enhanced margin growth for Plug, given the shared mutual supply chain leverage we have, as well as accretive investment returns as these JVs scale. We've talked often about our plans to grow the varied markets, and there are some commonality in themes. We've got to build on our strong market channels and customer relationships. We've got to continue investing in new capabilities.
We've got to be flexible in our business models to improve market accessibility, and we need to stay focused on maximizing the customer experience. We've got clear visibility on these strategies and clarity on how to execute. 2023 has been an inflection point on many facets, but with the new products launch and the penetration in new markets, one key accomplishment has been the geographic expansion. This year represents about 20% of our sales outside the U.S. We envision, as we approach 2030, that we could get potentially north of 25% of our sales being outside the U.S. And if you factor in the joint ventures, we could have close to 40% of our global commercial position outside the U.S. When we look to gross margin OpEx leverage, we should see growth in that, in both. This really stems from many factors.
We've scaled key capacity expansions. Andy showed the chart earlier, where we've grown our manufacturing capacity, and we will leverage that as we grow. We've continually innovated, improving performance and simplifying designs. We've vertically integrated key components and capabilities and done it with nominal investment. We've built the global hydrogen supply chain, in doing so, collaborate with partners to drive down costs and improve performance. We've established a green hydrogen energy platform to reduce fuel costs and accelerate adoption. And lastly, we've shown leverage on our cash OpEx base and managed investment prudently as we've grown. We have clear roadmaps to grow our gross margin profile over to 35%, and as OpEx as a percentage of sales into the low teens. But taking a look, a closer look at our gross margin roadmap, we have specific initiatives to reduce cost and improve performance further.
We've achieved a strong margin profile on equipment historically, and as we scale, we plan to continue to drive leverage and design improvements. To date, fuel cells has mainly been the pass-through. But as we move forward, the focus is gonna be on our leveraging our hydrogen platform. In addition, we should see continued leverage on the CapEx spend, which not only benefits our plants, but also benefits for the products that we sell externally, and that's a unique competitive advantage. Since our focus from the start has been on green hydrogen, we are well positioned to maximize the regulatory incentives that Andy talked about today with the PTC credit here in the U.S. The platform scale-up will yield incremental improvements over the next 18 months and posture us for step function changes in the latter part of next year onward.
On service, we continue to improve designs and maintenance procedures, which reduces parts cost. We also have more than doubled the number of units per tech since this offering we launched in 2014, and we expect this to continue as we grow greater concentration of sites. Overall, we expect to see step function improvement in 2024 as we grow equipment sales and continued improvement in fuel and service. Based on continued cost discipline and volume growth, we should see ongoing margin enhancement and growth in the next 24 months over the 30% mark for gross margin. I just want to emphasize how new equipment platforms from Plug will make such a substantial difference in the near term.
The breadth of these offerings, the size of these markets, and the near-term traction we're seeing, positions us well to deliver our near- and midterm growth targets. The majority of our growth in the next 18 months will come from these equipment sales. Since we already make positive margin on equipment today, as we grow and scale that, it offers tremendous opportunity to leverage that CapEx base that we talked about. This change in volume and mix should have a step function change in our margin profile. Most importantly, we've invested in the CapEx to deliver that growth, and so now the focus is really on leverage and optimizing as we scale. As we grow the business and drive down costs, this should translate into positive trajectory for operating margin and cash flows.
Our growth forecast suggests that next, in the next 12-15 months, we'll get to that equilibrium on operating cash flows, and that will be a substantial milestone for Plug, and that will continue to improve the cost of capital options that we have, as well as the range of solutions that are available to Plug. Our base product and service businesses are not super CapEx intensive. The green hydrogen platform is more capital intensive. But fortunately, that's a platform that's incredibly interesting to a range of participants for long-life infrastructure investments. We are working with a number of partners, from corporate-level debt solutions to project financing solutions to project equity solutions. We have over $5 billion in assets to fund our growth and very little debt leverage.
So we are well positioned to recirculate this capital in these initial plants, as well as take on the right capital solutions as we grow and move forward. We believe in the short term and the midterm, that our capital needs are going to be sourced from a combination of those things I talked about, from corporate-level debt solutions to project-level financing, project equity. In addition, we're making progress on the DOE loan program, and we expect, or we have confidence that we'll be announcing something before year-end. Given the megatrends in our market, the foundation we have built, and the clear strategies we've developed, we believe our near and midterm revenue goals seem very attainable.
We've proven that scale matters, and we improve operating leverage, and given our operational investment capabilities and cost down strategies, we're equally confident in our ability to achieve our gross margin operating level targets. We look forward to sharing more with you as we grow and move forward. Thanks for your time, and I'm going to welcome Andy back to the stage.
So, now this is a fun section. I talked about how we like to talk about the industry trends and where it's going, and we couldn't have a better speaker than Dr. Jack Brouwer from UC Irvine, who's the director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center. What is it? National Fuel Cell Research Center?
Research Center.
Research Center, Jack. But Jack has actually spoke at the first Plug Symposium, and he's been working in this industry for over 20 years, really been a thought leader. We have many programs which we're doing with Jack to make sure that we have the right technology for the future. Joining Jack, you guys jumping on stage right away with Jack is Tim Cortes, our CTO, and Dr. Luke Wentlent, who's well known for his talks on YouTube on the three pillars. So I'm gonna turn it over to Jack, Tim, and Luke, and I think you'll really enjoy this discussion. Jack, always a pleasure to see you.
Thank you very much. Yeah, I remember the first symposium. It was back at that original Latham headquarters there, where you only had 50,000 sq ft. I remember talking about the future of hydrogen and all that it could do in society, and I remember thinking, Plug has kind of a similar vision to me, and it's the only company I knew that had a similar vision, but I also thought they were a little bit crazy. I mean, are you really gonna do this in the next five years? And yet, here we are today at one of those facilities that they promised they were going to invest in, and it's really here. I'm pretty impressed, pretty impressed. But I know that this is required for our zero emissions future.
Hydrogen is essential for us to achieve the goals that we have all over the world, right? So many jurisdictions all over the world, most of Europe, China, Japan, Australia, Korea, Canada. There's so many announcements because of the reality of what hydrogen can deliver. Why do we have so many jurisdictions that have agreed we need hydrogen? It's because the complexities of our energy infrastructure, all the things that we need for energy to work, require the features of hydrogen, the features, okay? And in some cases, the only known zero emissions vector for those features is hydrogen. Okay, so every objective analysis of the energy transition says we're gonna use a lot of hydrogen. You mentioned 20%, Andy, but some people say 25%. Okay, so I don't know. I don't know if it's a low or a high estimate, but it's gonna be big.
It's gonna be big, and why? Okay, if you look at a highly renewable grid, you need the feature of separate power and energy scaling. Separate power and energy scaling. This leads to, for example, the ability of our highly renewable grid, which we simulated here in California, to have much more storage than pumped hydro can deliver, much more storage than EVs can deliver. The only thing that can match the scale that the grid requires is hydrogen or any or other renewable zero emissions fuel. This is the only type of technology, separate power and energy scaling, that can do massive and seasonal energy storage. You need this feature if you want this massive scale of storage at cost-effective conditions. We also have the fact that we have low self-discharge with hydrogen.
I'm showing battery energy storage systems here in the utility markets in California, and you can see they have some very low round-trip efficiencies. Why is that? It's because batteries store the chemicals and the electrodes together, and as a result, you can't avoid some energy loss over time. The fact that we have hydrogen storage that is totally separate from the electrodes of the fuel cells, the electrodes of the electrolyzers, you can stop the self-discharge. And this means that if you need long-duration storage, hydrogen's gonna be even more efficient than the batteries. Huh! You don't hear that very often, right? You always hear batteries are more efficient, and they are for short duration.
Right.
Not necessarily for long duration. Besides, the reason our electric grid is reliable today is because we have underground delivery of fuel. That's how we keep the lights on in California. This is a proven fact that we can deliver the reliability and resilience if we have both wires and pipes in our energy future. Plus, the high gravimetric energy density of hydrogen makes it the preferred choice for some zero emissions applications. Certainly, anything that requires rapid fueling, long range, or heavy payload is gonna prefer hydrogen as the zero emissions option. And then you have some applications that are just impossible to decarbonize and depollute without hydrogen, right? You need a reducing gas, or you need high temperature heat, or you need it as a feedstock, like you do for ammonia. It's part of the chemical itself. Now, we published a paper, it's a review paper.
We have over 300 references, 11 features of hydrogen that you need for a zero emissions future. I just gave you five of them, okay? We know it's impossible to decarbonize and depollute everything without hydrogen. Okay, so some jurisdictions like California, we're starting to do this, right? I'm very proud to be a Californian, where we're doing things like this, right? We have lots of wind, lots of solar. We lead the United States in the installation of solar per capita and batteries, okay? We have a plan. By 2045, all delivered electricity is zero emissions. You can see, we must install a lot of capacity over time to get there. So where do we need to get? We need to get to a capacity range that's in this orange area.
But look at the blue trajectory, because I show historical data for solar there. And our existing policy framework, without hardly any hydrogen, is getting us to only a third of what we need by 2045. Okay, we must have additional policy investment, and I suggest something like hydrogen, which can deliver this increased rate of renewable adoption. We already, for example, are selling electricity for negative prices to our neighbors, okay? And it's increasing every year. We already have a lot of curtailment of renewable energy. That means we're throwing it away when it's available. Over almost 600,000 MWh in April alone last year, and more than 2.4 million MWh in the whole year. Okay, why are we doing this?
We're doing this because we have already installed so much renewable energy that sometimes the grid can't handle it, even though we have over 3,000 MW of batteries installed. So this challenge of the dynamics of a renewable future is already slowing the pace of adoption in California. We must invest in what's next. What's next is this, something that connects the electricity, the renewable electricity supply, to these end uses that require energy. This electrolysis technology is what's needed to deal with these negative prices, deal with these curtailments, deal with these transmission and distribution constraints.
So, Jack, real quick.
Yeah.
Can you reemphasize? I know there's a quote that I always use that you have it. For everybody to really understand, where does our energy come from in terms of the sources versus, you know, electrons and molecules?
Sure.
I think that's really, really important. And-
So you're leading right into my next slide here. So this is exactly, okay. Today, around the world, 80% of our energy is delivered as a molecule. That's what we see over here in the 2018, but it's about the same today. We must absolutely electrify all kinds of things and try to use that renewable electricity directly, right? This is the very best thing that we can do, but it's foolish to think that we can meet everything, all, energy demands with electricity alone. Let's electrify as much as we can, and then let's use molecules, I hope it's mostly hydrogen, but it can be ammonia, it can be all these hydrogen derivatives, methanol, and these kinds of things, too, okay?
These sorts of things we must have for a zero-emissions future, and we need it for not only the transportation applications that need the liquids, but it's for.
Industrial.
Logistics.
And industrial.
And industrial.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Right.
This is how you're getting that renewable energy from Australia to Japan and to Europe, right? Like you were talking about earlier here.
Yes.
Right. Plus, there's an additional reason people need to adopt hydrogen. Even if it costs more to buy a fuel cell electric bus, which I'm showing you here from the plans from AC Transit, it costs more to buy a fuel cell bus, $1.6 million versus $1.4 million. But if you look at the infrastructure, this is increasingly going to be the reason we adopt hydrogen, because it takes a lot more investment to deliver renewable energy in the form of electricity and charging infrastructure than it does in the form of a hydrogen truck that delivers that fuel.
Hmm. And I also think time.
Yeah.
T here's a time element, too.
Yeah.
In order to build out the infrastructure, in order to get the electrons where customers need them, there's a significant time element.
Correct.
Not just dollars.
Yes, because the utilities have to do their studies.
Studies, the interconnection.
They charge you for all these things, the interconnections, and then they have to put the real investment in, the wires and the transformers and everything else.
Exactly.
Okay, so fuel cell electric buses are becoming the preferred choice of a lot of these transit agencies because the total cost of ownership is lower. Okay, so I've presented some features, I've presented a case study with regard to California, but I wanna tell you that the most important reason that I'm sitting here today, and I think that Andy has been invested so long in this company, and that I'm working with you guys on so many things, is because of this.... it's because of human and environmental health.
Okay, the red areas here, which are near the ports of L.A. and Long Beach, and along the heavy-duty transportation corridors, show where life expectancy is seven years lower than adjacent communities. We've done a good job in California, right, decarbonizing and depolluting some things.
Yeah.
But definitely not this heavy-duty sector, definitely not the ports and shipping and aviation. And, and while we are not focusing decarbonization and depolluting efforts in this, people are dying prematurely because we must invest in hydrogen, which is the best opportunity for depolluting diesel combustion emissions. We know we can do it. We've simulated this, and right in the areas where we could apply hydrogen to these ports and to these heavy-duty trucks.
Yes.
This is where you can make the biggest difference. Hydrogen will improve quality of life and save lives doing it this way. And we have lots of other places we could use hydrogen, too, and this is what's another wonderful thing. We are working with you guys in this study, which is looking at all sorts of applications, not just the diesel combustion emissions, like I'm talking about here, but all sorts of applications, trying to figure out where it would make the biggest difference.
Absolutely.
I'm proud to be working with you guys and your whole team in this evaluation of hey, if we have only this much hydrogen to invest, where can it make the biggest difference? So I'm happy to pass it on to you guys.
Yeah. No, thank you.
To talk about that.
So, yeah. Thank you, Jack.
You're welcome.
The work that you're doing, your team's doing, and we're doing together is really critical when we think about the entire industry, the research that we're doing, not just on fuel cells and electrolyzers and flow fields and new MEA materials and all that, which are really important, and we'll talk about some of that later in terms of performance and cost reductions. But, you know, as we sit and we've talked about our different research projects that we have going on with you, and we do a regular review with you on all these projects.
Mm-hmm.
I remember a few months ago, we were sitting with you in your offices on campus, and the idea that we started to kick around was we're fairly new in terms of where the industry is, and it's gonna take us some time to build out where we're going. And we've done, you know, we've done a great job, others have done a great job, but the demand is so high, and you, you've talked about it, Andy talked about it. The market is so big.
Mm-hmm.
But in the near term, we're gonna have a limited amount of hydrogen to be able to deploy. And so Luke and I, and you and others from your team started to think about what does that really mean?
Mm-hmm.
And what does it mean... How do we start to think about deployment of hydrogen? And we started to think about, well, look, if you look at the demand, and this is, again... another demand curve and with different... But we started to break it down into sectors, and we really wanted to think about where we're at with the maturity level, where these applications are. And typically, from a business perspective, we think about adoption, market potential, but it was.
Where you can make the most money.
Yeah, where you can make the most money. And, and that's, you know.
Which is good.
Still important.
And important.
Still important because if you don't have a strong economy and you don't have a strong industry you know, it's not gonna be lasting. But there are other aspects, and when we think about ESG for Plug and for other companies and, and what everybody's doing, we started to think about, well, what's... And you brought it up. You know, you think about all those lives that are impacted and what's the societal value of hydrogen?
Yeah.
To be able to use in these applications? So we started to think about it a little bit differently.
Yeah.
And your team had some great ideas about how we can think about that and how we do it. The chart on the left shows if we think about the, the human health impact that you mentioned, we also think about the natural resources and the environment. If we break those down into those impact factors, how do we think about, can we quantify that? Can we monetize that, and can we then convert that into real dollars, and what does that mean?
Mm-hmm.
I think if you could speak just real quickly on the existing data that's available, because this, we didn't create all the data that's available. You guys have access to all the databases that have this information.
Yeah. The impacts associated with, like, extraction of raw materials, the impacts associated with the manufacturing of it, where the manufacturing occurs because of different energy supply, all of these emissions and impacts are available in databases that have been studied for more than 20 years. So we have this information available to us, and we have techniques for valuing each one of these and putting them together in these life cycle analyses, as we call them.
Yeah.
Which look at everything from the raw material extraction to the disposal or recycling.
Right.
So, yeah.
Right. So that's key, 'cause the data is available.
Yes.
It's not like we had to create the data, but we had to think about it in a different manner, and we did have to think about it from the end-to-end life cycle perspective.
Yes.
What was interesting, and the graph on the right is just to highlight, and Luke's gonna talk more about some of the applications that you guys have looked at from a, you know, deep dive perspective, and he's gonna go into the data. But what's really interesting about this is you have the actual cost of diesel and renewable hydrogen.
Hmm.
Comparatively speaking, yes, the cost of renewable hydrogen is more expensive, just on a pure levelized cost of hydrogen versus generation of diesel. But if you look at the damage cost to society and you start to think about that and what that really means ... you can see there's a substantial difference between the damage cost of diesel versus renewable hydrogen. And so as we started to look at this data that delta between those two, those costs, really starts to now paint a clear picture of what the value to society is.
Yeah.
How do we quantify that and monetize it, right?
Right. And this is a little bit of some novel science here, right? Because we're trying to monetize these damages, okay, and this is not fully accepted science, but it's science that nonetheless is showing a real impact. And if we value this, even somewhat you have a huge difference in the real value to society that we should take into account some way, and maybe a policy will start to pay for some of that damage cost.
Right.
You know?
Exactly.
Yeah.
Exactly. And so, I'm gonna hand it over to Luke, but we're still in the middle of this study.
Yeah.
We still got some work to do with some additional applications and sectors. When we're done with it, we will be probably publishing some work so everybody will have access and be able to see all this great work and what it really means, and get people to think differently about what's important. Now Luke's gonna go into some of the specific applications and the sectors and show some of the data, preliminary data that we have.
Thank you, Tim.
Luke.
So, this is a really kind of fun, exciting project that we've been working on, and just we start to go through the next slide, I just want you guys to keep this in your mind, that we're gonna show a societal value, and that's the difference that's instead in that damage cost that we're looking at here, okay? And so we, like I said, we looked at a lot of different applications, and there's more that are still going. This work, we're gonna be publishing it in the coming months, so if you really wanna, like, get down into it, you'll be able to. But we looked at the damage for all of those different impact factors. We quantified them over the lifetime, and then we monetized them, as I said.
For Class 8 trucks, which is what I'm showing here on the right, we looked at a PEM fuel cell Class 8 truck that would have about a 750-mi range, and you have two different versions of a hydrogen combustion, you know, with a 400-mi range or a 750-mi range. So you're burning hydrogen in a combustion engine, right? And we're comparing that with the incumbent, so a diesel tractor-trailer, you know, Class 8 on a highway. And what we're showing here is that societal value, that difference in the damage per kilogram of hydrogen deployed.
Hmm.
So what you see is that for that, you know, the long-haul 750-mi Class 8 truck, you have a value of about $12.31 for every kilogram, a reduction in the damage for all those impact factors that's equivalent to that amount. Not to, you know, overshadow the combustion, there's still a value there of deploying the hydrogen.
Mm-hmm.
You know, the byproduct of combusting hydrogen is predominantly water vapor, right? There's still some other things that go on there, though, so you do have a little bit of a lower value, but still a positive value nonetheless, okay? We looked at Class 3 trucks, and so what I'm showing you here is a PEM fuel cell truck with a 250-mi range, a PEM fuel cell truck with the same range, but a reduced load, so maybe it can't carry as much cargo for some reason. And then we looked at two different combustion variants as well. And you see a similar trend, a very strong positive societal benefit of deploying that PEM fuel cell in that application.
Mm-hmm.
These pillars, what you're seeing, we can break these down, and you'll see that in the study. They'll be broken down for every impact factor, all 15 of those that we identified, and you'll see the contribution from each one of those, right? So you can see where you're making the most savings or where you're having the most impact from. Is it, is it emissions reductions, or is it something you're doing with respect to resources or water, right?
Hey, Luke, I know you're gonna get to it, but talk about the one on the bottom right, because I think it's important to make sure that we emphasize that when we looked at this study, we didn't look at it in any particular way. We just really wanted to understand the different applications, comparing them to different solutions. So we looked at diesel, we looked at battery electric, we looked at hydrogen solutions, and we really wanted to understand, with Jack's team, what do those impact factors really mean? And I think the one on the bottom right is interesting. You can go back to the other ones too, but for me, that one just kinda stands out, and I think it's.
Yeah.
No, this is fascinating. So we're not just looking at our technologies. We're also trying to understand other things that people are doing, whether it's battery electric or other ways to decarbonize steel or ammonia or oceanic shipping, right? And so in this case, Class 3, the major other things that are out there are battery electric, right? And so we looked at some different variations on a battery electric vehicle with a 300-mi range, a 500-mi range, and a 750-mi range. And in each of those, that truck configuration is gonna change: more batteries to go further, more power consumption, more resources to make those batteries, for example. What you see is that for that 300-mi range, Class 3, there's actually a negative benefit of hydrogen over the battery electric vehicle.
What that tells you is that it's probably, from a societal perspective, better to use an electric, battery electric vehicle platform in that case.
For the short range.
For the short range.
Not as much payload.
What you see is when you go up to that 500-mi, though.
Yeah.
I t changes, right?
Yeah.
We're moving to a positive benefit. We repeated this not just for Class 3 trucks, other light-duty vehicles, different, you know, kind of trucking, medium-duty things. There's always a transition point somewhere.
Yeah.
Somewhere between about 200-350 mi, depending on the exact platform. But for shorter-range stuff, battery electric vehicles, you know, that's a pretty compelling case.
Yes.
But once you start to move to long-range things or high-power-consuming trucking applications. It's I mean, you see with the 750 mi, it's a massive benefit over battery.
Jack, this gets back to your point about it's important to think about many, many different solutions that we're gonna need to be able to decarbonize.
Yeah.
So hydrogen has a huge play in many of these applications, but other solutions are
Absolutely, yeah.
Part of it.
We must electrify, we must use heat pumps, we must use batteries as much as we possibly can and use them where they make the most sense.
Yeah.
Similarly, invest in hydrogen, and there's those solutions.
Yeah. I think, I think Plug's been really open that, you know, we don't view hydrogen as a silver bullet that solves every problem out there.
No.
Right? There are, we have roles in places where it makes a lot of sense, places where it doesn't make sense. You probably shouldn't do it, right? So just to summarize, you know, these are some of the different applications that we've looked at so far. Class 8 trucks, Class 6... I'm going left to right here. Class 8, Class 6 trucks, Class 3 trucks.
We looked at steel production, ammonia production, and then transoceanic shipping, so powering those ships, okay? And we have all of the different various applications showing up down there on the bottom. And you know, we already talked through the trucking, so you can kind of see that represented, right?
If we look at steel, very strong benefits with respect to a DRI process, not quite as strong, still though, still beneficial when you start looking at trying to decarbonize blast furnaces with it. So, there may be, there needs to be some more thought about how, you know, the best way to get in there.
Ammonia is a pretty, pretty clean, easy one, I think, that everyone seems on, you know, it's a clear, clean feed stock that you're, that you're putting in, so there's really strong gains with respect to that. And then transoceanic shipping, you have, you have a lot of, I think, of questions that people are still trying to exactly understand. What exactly are the platforms and what will win out, but, you know, there's a little bit tighter spread across those. I don't want everyone to read too deep into this, right? Like, like, I'm not saying suddenly this is, like, where we're, we're picking our targets and you're running. This is a tool.
Yeah.
To help us make more informed, intentional decisions. I think everyone in this room understands there's a lot going on in the energy and the hydrogen world, and we could run a million miles an hour in every direction if we wanted to, right? This is a tool to help us focus, help us understand where we're doing, and just to be more intentional and, you know focused about it.
Yeah. Jack, anything you want to conclude with today?
No, it's just very surprising to me, actually, that a company like Plug is willing to invest in societal value. I think this is part of your whole ESG commitment.
Mm-hmm.
But you're proving it by our work together.
Yeah.
It's really enjoyable to actually do this work with you guys. Thank you.
Well, we really appreciate it.
Yeah.
Thank you. Thanks for being here again.
All right. You're welcome.
Somebody's a chair guy. Thanks, guys. So I think some of these other folks need to roam up here, right? Sanjay and Benjamin and Jose. So I think... All right. So I started out by mentioning that Plug's doesn't— We, we have this symposium not just to talk about Plug's future, but the future of hydrogen. And I think the presentation Luke, Jack, and Tim made really shared with you all the fact that this is just not a Plug sales pitch. It's really our efforts to figure it out, and figure out climate change, and figure out where hydrogen fits. I always enjoy hearing Jack speak. I always enjoy hearing Tim and Luke speak, and it's one of the joys of my job that I get to spend time with them and learn every day. So, this panel, I actually learned from this panel, too. Not as much.
Not as much.
But these are folks who are leaders of our business, and I'm gonna ask each of them to tell you a little bit about what they do here at Plug. It'll be really helpful for me to understand that.
Thanks, Andy.
I think the audience, and then we'll have kind of a back and forth. So, Sanjay, do you want to start?
Great. Thank you, Andy, and good morning, everybody, and once again, thank you so much for being part of our fifth annual Plug Symposium here, both who are here in audience as well as those listening online. And again, as Andy said, I now have been with Plug for about five years, so I've been on all five symposiums, so this is amazing to see how it all has unfolded and what we've been-
By the way, Sanjay, you're the founder of the symposium.
Well, we all did it.
Yeah. It was Sanjay's ideas, then we all... And like most things at Plug, we all took credit for it.
So on that note, again, I'm responsible for our energy business. So what is the mission within our energy business at Plug? We're trying to make hydrogen easy, economical, and ubiquitous. What do we really mean by that? We have our capital equipment side of the business, we have our project development, and we're building green hydrogen plants on a global basis, both here in the U.S., as well as all the work that Benjamin is doing in Europe as well. Within the capital equipment side, we are the world leader with PEM electrolyzer. We are now the most efficient liquefier provider in the market for the liquefaction technology, with the acquisition of a company that we made about two years ago. We now have trailers, tankers, storage, so anybody who wants to buy capital equipment to meet their hydrogen needs, we're a one-stop shop.
You can get everything from us, soup to nuts. And not just that, we're using that ourselves, and all the learnings we're having by using our own electrolyzer, using our own liquefier, having our trailers on the road, we're able to pass that know-how also to our customers, give them the benefit of our learning curve, and finally, allow them to make a decision as to do they want to buy hydrogen from us and make it an OpEx decision, or do they want to make it a CapEx decision and buy that equipment from us? We'll listen to them, we'll offer them what they're looking for, and that's really what I'm responsible for and looking forward to this discussion here.
So, Sanjay, one item. We have one good announcement today, but you had a second good announcement today, and it was—Arcadia is here. Maybe you can talk about that. You know, there's a customer who's buying the products from us, our electrolyzer.
Absolutely, Andy. I think, you know, we're still really starting to see a pretty big inflection point here in our electrolyzer business. You know, obviously, Andy talked about our Fortescue transaction and also the 550-MW, but all the things that we're trying to do here in North America on a global basis, and with Arcadia, it's a 280-MW opportunity. It's a very large sustainable aviation fuel application, and I think Amy should be here somewhere in the audience, if I'm not mistaken. There she is. And again, thank you so much for obviously giving us this opportunity to work with you all. And this is actually gonna be in Denmark, and, you know, obviously, she's got a tremendous background and experience in the gas to liquid world, all the things that she's done.
This is obviously gonna be one of those e-fuels that's gonna be critical as a part of the decarbonization effort from a global basis. Super excited to actually be working with you all and, you know, continue our collaboration and many more to come.
That's part of Europe, where are you hanging out, Benjamin?
Absolutely. So, I'm Benjamin Haycraft, and I'm very pleased to be with you all today. I'm responsible for Plug's activities in Europe. It's my first time live on stage at the symposium. I'm pretty pleased about it because I think it shows-
Why weren't you here last year?
Well, I had a baby, but that's another story.
You? We didn't.
Your wife had a baby.
I'm not sure about that.
We have babies.
There you go.
So, you know, I think it shows that Europe is becoming more and more important to Plug's businesses, and I would say that Plug's businesses are also becoming more and more important to Europe. You know, in the span of three years, when I started discussing joining Plug, we had, you know, 24 employees in Europe. We had very little business presence in the continent, and today, we have more than 300 employees. In the next year, we're going to deploy more material handling sites than we did in the past 10 years. We have projects in more than 10 countries, hydrogen generation projects. We have Finland, we have Antwerp. We are selling electrolyzers.
Three years ago, we were acquiring green hydrogen and today, we announced this 280-MW with Arcadia. We announced a few months ago, 100-MW with Galp. We have the same with Uniper. So this shows the pace at which we've been growing Europe, and that has been on the back of a number of partnerships and JVs. You obviously know everyone about this HYVIA joint venture with Renault. We have this Acciona Plug joint venture. We are one of the anchor investors and founders of Hy24, the largest infrastructure fund dedicated to hydrogen in the world. We are one of the cofounders of GravitHy, a venture dedicated to decarbonizing green steel. We have this Johnson Matthey partnership. We have multiple ventures and partnerships.
I forgot about that, Technip and Fives on the liquefy side. So the breadth of our business has been expanding very, very significantly in Europe. And I'm very happy to be with you all today.
So, about three years ago, one of the best Christmas presents I ever got, I received a text message from Benjamin. Benjamin just closed out our HYVIA JV with Renault and our Acciona JV, and he said via text, he was working for Santander Bank and said, "I'd much rather work for Plug. Can we talk?" That was pretty good Christmas, Benjamin. Thank you, and keep on bringing the gifts. How about you, Jose?
Okay, my name is Jose Luis Crespo. I've been with Plug 10 years, and I've been in all five symposiums as well. I manage or I'm the general manager of the Applications business unit. The Applications business unit, we're gonna continue growing our material handling business. The adoption of the technology in material handling is really accelerating. We used to take probably a couple of years to really close a multi-site, a big multi-site deal. Right now, we're talking in demands. You will hear today from Tyson in one of the breakout sessions, what the decision-making process was, but we closed that deal pretty quickly. So we're gonna see that business grow really, really fast. But we're also gonna see other applications grow.
Well, we've been talking a little bit about our high power stationary generator, which is basically a zero emissions generator that is gonna be a key for the transition of energy, where the grid has constraints. And we see constraints in charging battery vehicles. We'll talk about it also in one of the sessions today. We see constraints in anything that really needs power today. The talk before was really touching into all of this, right? And this element, this zero emissions generator, is gonna be a key element to be able to complete that transition.
And then we're gonna be growing with our mobility applications, mainly with our joint venture in Europe with Renault, HYVIA, but also in this landscape with the 500 buses, 300 buses that we're gonna be deploying in the next couple of years. And then we have other applications that we're looking into that are quite interesting and exciting. You're gonna hear about one of them today also in one of the sessions. It's a mobile generator. And with that, the applications business will continue growing. And as we grow, we're gonna be eating up all the hydrogen that Sanjay is gonna be producing.
Producing.
One of the items I really like, I think you have United Rentals.
Yes.
So we were able to work with United Rentals to leverage our 30 kW ProGen platform with really limited development activity to generate a new product based on that platform. And I think that session with you and Rick and United Rentals, talking about how we're gonna develop that market and what they hear from their customers, I think people find really interesting.
Absolutely. You're also gonna see the generator later on, already in real life. So it's... Things are happening. It's not like just a talk, so.
Yeah.
Yeah.
How about yourself, Tim?
Yeah. Thanks, Andy. Tim Cortes, I'm the CTO here at Plug, and I've been with Plug almost nine years, not as long as Jose Luis, but I have been at all five symposiums as well. In my role, we're responsible for many things, but I'm gonna highlight two of them. One is the medium and long-term technology strategy for the company. And that's really important to help us drive in more into the green hydrogen economy, but also to address a lot of the applications and support Jose's team in terms of the new customers, new applications, and new products.
But we don't do it just for the sake of technology, and I know Luke can tell you, I'd say this all the time to the team: We're not just technologists for the sake of generating technology. We have to support the goals of the business. And how we do that is we work with the business very closely to understand what are the cost requirements. We look at critical performance indicators, cost, efficiency, durability, how easy it is to use our product, how do we operate our products, how do we maintain our products? And those all go to the value proposition that makes it a lot easier for Sanjay and Jose to actually sell our products. So that's the main thing.
But we have research projects associated with that, and we talked a little bit about that with Jack. Secondarily, I and many folks on my team spend a lot of time with our government affairs team. As Andy and Paul talked about, policy and energy regulation is really, really important to us. And so when we think about what's required to make sure that when legislation is being considered, that the funding and the credits that are being talked about are the right things for Plug, they're in line with our product roadmaps, they're in line with where we're going with the business, and they're right for the entire industry, so it's really important that we consider that.
And some examples of that would be, in 2013, the DOE Market Transformation program that allowed the Plug to seed many, many fuel cells into the market to get into customers' hands, so they could really understand how to use them and what it meant for their operations. Secondarily, the fuel cell ITC was a really big impact for our business and our ability to sell more and more fuel cells. And lastly, as Andy mentioned before, with the 45V for the PTC, we were in the room where it happened.
We provided guidance in terms of what the right carbon intensity should be for the incentives, what the right measurement tool should be to actually measure the carbon intensity, and what should the dollar amount per kilogram credit be based on those incentives and what was important for the business. And so those are a couple of the major things that we spend our time on.
Okay. Now, I'm gonna ask some tough questions. And, we-
That's a surprise, Andy.
We ask, we do ask ourselves tough questions, and one of the questions I often ask Sanjay is: Why green hydrogen versus blue hydrogen?
Yeah.
Lots of fossil fuels out there. You can get pretty low carbon intensity, and if you're not a perfectionist, but you just wanna take big strides, why wouldn't you just go to blue hydrogen now and wait for green?
Yeah. Again, Andy, one other thing that I've actually learned from you is that we're not a purist when it comes to how we look at the world, right? So there are those who, let's say, have an ideal source of natural gas, ideal geological formation. That's what they might wanna do, right? And, by the way, we'll be more than happy to support them with our equipment sale, and as a matter of fact, we have some of those transactions also going on. Having said that, when you really think... And now, the question is why green and not blue from Plug's standpoint? Why we believe green is going to win, and it's already winning. Here's what it comes down to, right? Let's take a step back and think about what was the levelized cost of energy for solar and wind 10 years ago.
It was in double digits, right? When you think about solar electricity or wind power, it was $0.10-$0.12/kWh, if you would, right? Today, you know, in an area where you're gonna actually have 50% capacity factor for wind, that number is below $0.02/kWh. And if you think about capacity factor for solar, you can actually have solar electricity at $0.025/kWh. Now, if you wanna benefit from that learnings curve of renewable industry, continue to decline that levelized cost of energy...
You know, we've actually run some math, and actually, as a matter of fact, we have a session at the end of the day today, where we'll be happy to go to those of you that are here, to with some details as to why it's already economical and how this is actually going to get even better. And, you know, so that's where I think, Andy, green is already winning. It's gonna only continue to win because it's gonna benefit from that continued decline of both renewable electricity, solar and wind, versus blue, that could actually run into even some challenges of volatility from a natural gas standpoint. If natural gas ends up becoming a global commodity, if anything, the price might go up, right? And that makes up a huge chunk of that cost.
If you actually give the benefit of all the study that's been done by S&P Platts, Bloomberg, and give them the benefit that, you know, carbon capture and sequestration cost comes out to be some of the number that they're talking about, I think, you know, that's where they got the commodity volatility. We got the benefit of declining renewable cost, which is why we're focused on green, because green is already there, and it's only going to get better from an economic standpoint.
Benjamin, electricity costs are a little higher in Europe.
Yes.
I guess, you know, when I look at it, I say, you know, places in Europe, maybe 3x-4x higher electrical costs than the U.S. How do you wrap your head around green when it comes to Europe versus blue hydrogen and hydrogen in general?
So it is true, you have a fundamental difference between Europe and the U.S. U.S. is energy independent. Europe, we are importing a big chunk of our energy. We are net importers, when the U.S. are net exporters. And that translates into, you know, structurally higher prices of energy in general. In addition, you know, we have less land access than in the U.S. We have more challenges in getting access to cheap electron. I think, first of all, if we take a step back, you know, you mentioned this 20% number of Bloomberg on, you know, the share of hydrogen in the global energy mix by 2050. If we look at, you know, if we look at that, how it translated a smaller scale, if we take Antwerp, for instance.
In Belgium, they consume today 500,000 tons per year of hydrogen, mostly gray. If you look at Antwerp, it's probably a 50% share. You had a very big moment on Monday because all 27 member states in Europe adopted the Renewable Energy Directives, which basically states that 42% of the hydrogen consumed by industries needs to be green by 2030. So I ran a quick math for Antwerp. So 200,000 tons per year to 300,000 tons per year, that is basically 12-18 TWh. That's 3.5-5 GW of electrolyzer capacity. And that means, you know, 1.5-2 GW of electrolyzer capacity that needs to be built to decarbonize Antwerp, just Antwerp.
Just for the audience, we're building 100 MW, so you know, the depth of the market is there. And you know, when I see the depths of the market to decarbonize, I think, you know, we will need both blue and green, actually. So that's really one big element. The second thing is, I think what we'll see in Europe, and like, that's something we'll see in many places in the world, the first electrolyzers are being built close to the demand centers, like we're doing in Antwerp. But to scale up that production, you need to go in places where you can have access to excellent renewable resources.
What I call excellent renewable resources is, you know, when you can have a capacity factor of 30%-35% on wind in France, for instance, you can get that close to 60% when you go north of Finland. So that's why we're going to Finland, because then the cost of electricity goes down drastically, and then you can use that molecule in a very competitive way, even in Europe, although, you know, we have some challenges with our, with our energy policy versus the U.S..
Interesting. So I'm gonna change the discussion, and I'll ask Jose a question that I think about all the time. Why, you know, batteries have such a huge head start over fuel cell electric vehicles? There's probably 99 battery electric vehicles on the road to one fuel cell electric vehicle, and I'm probably being generous. Why would... You know, and battery costs are coming down, you know, you know, there's such a huge commitment by many policymakers on BEVs. You know. Why would anybody buy a fuel cell electric vehicle?
Yeah, that's a very good question. So, as we were talking before, we are not purists, so we see a place for battery vehicles, but there is also a place for fuel cell vehicles as well. And as always, here at Plug, we especially, when you're talking about applications, we make decisions based on what our customers say. So what our customers are saying, it's not me saying this, is that they're finding, as I said before, in many areas, real difficulties finding electricity to power their fleets. And you find that problem, powering your fleets, is really difficult to move into battery EVs. The talk before, this chat was highlighting that exactly, right?
You're not gonna be able to get that electricity everywhere you need it, and you're gonna have to find other vectors to get that electricity to our customers. In Europe, we have a solution, which is, instead of using battery EVs, when you have a need for electricity, and you cannot get it from the utility, we can go to HYVIA, and we are doing many tests with many of the largest fleet operators in Europe right now. In the U.S., we don't have a van that is fuel cell operated. What we're doing is exactly, even though it probably doesn't make a lot of sense for a lot of people, what we're doing is we're powering battery vehicles with a large fuel cell.
So if we were to have already a fuel cell vehicle here, it would be much more efficient to actually go directly to the fuel cell vehicle. So again, you know, our customers are saying that fleets are really difficult to power. We're gonna, and we're gonna see this more and more in the future, and that is the reason, 'cause there is a space for a fuel cell vehicle in the industrial type of applications.
Even though you're not in energy like Sanjay, getting the grid is tough. Do you have any thoughts about that?
Yeah, it is. I'm not in the energy like Sanjay, but.
I understand.
. I've been, yeah, I've been really fascinated about, you know, how the grid works. It's not my background. I've actually read a book that is called The Grid.
The Grid.
It's actually pretty good. And really, the grid is built, you know, in, you know, for many, many years. It's not very efficient, and getting grid to sites is extremely difficult. When I was in California, in one of the trade shows, a few months ago, one of our potential customers came and told us that they were trying to put a charging station right outside of the San Francisco Airport.
When they went to the utility there to tell them, "Hey, you know, when can you get us 2 MW?" They came back and said, "Well, we'll talk to you in 2030." And they said, "Well, we'll get it in twenty-- " "No, no, we'll talk to you in 2030 about how to plan it and how to get it." This is an extreme, probably, but I think we're gonna get it more and more, and the more we electrify, the less availability you're gonna have. So you're gonna have to have another vector to get your electrons to the point of use, and that's hydrogen.
I'm gonna change subjects again. Does efficiency matter to you, Sanjay, and Benjamin, and Jose? And then I'm gonna ask you, Tim, how are you gonna solve that?
Short, short answer is absolutely yes, Andy.
And why?
Because, you know, when we make our electrolyzer continuously more efficient, which is why we've been so focused on making sure that our liquefier is one of the most efficient liquefier in the market, right? You know, every, let's say, given where we are today versus where we can be, if we improve our efficiency by 20%-30%, right, that is gonna translate to, based on $0.03/kWh of electricity, at least about $0.30-$0.40 of cost savings from that hydrogen molecule cost perspective. What's our mission? Keep driving the cost of that green hydrogen down, right? So in light of that, absolutely, it matters.
So does it matter to you, Jose? I'm gonna let you jump in. I think, Benjamin, I'm gonna skip over you.
I want you to jump in when you say that, because you produce a cheaper molecule, more efficiently.
Better for you.
That's good for me. More, more applications-
Absolutely
... are gonna be adopted, but also on the other side, you have the fuel cells that actually convert the hydrogen into electricity, again, to power all these vehicles, to power all these applications. So you have a more efficient fuel cell, you're gonna be using less hydrogen as well. And we want our customers to use less hydrogen. It's good for everybody. It's not like, you know, we want more hydrogen to be used. The more efficient we make our customers, the better for everyone. So more efficiency leads to that. But also, more efficiency usually means a more simple design, a more simple solution that makes things even more reliable, which also helps us, you know, in the adoption of the technology. So efficiency is the name of the game for us.
Absolutely.
So, Tim, you know, I bug you about efficiency a great deal. So what are we doing about efficiency for Sanjay and Jose?
Yeah, so it definitely impacts both the electrolyzers and fuel cells, as Sanjay and Jose said. So when we look at our technology roadmaps and we look at some of those KPIs or key performance indicators, you have cost, efficiency, and durability, and they don't exist independent of each other, right? So what's really important to understand is, if we can bring down the cost of the materials that we're using, the number of components, as Jose Luis said, making systems easier and simpler, that helps with the efficiency. Also, from a durability perspective, that has a play. And as we drive the cost down and we improve that performance, we can then think about, particularly on the electrolyzer side, how do you do different cell and stack configurations that... so you can optimize from a, from a efficiency perspective, right?
If you drive the cost down of the capital or the actual equipment from inside a stack, that gives you a little bit more luxury to change some of the characteristics in the stack to improve the overall efficiency. So that's why they are intertwined. We're looking at different materials. How do we reduce the amount of the precious metals in both the fuel cells and the electrolyzers? And on the electrolyzer side, we call it thrifting. So how do we take and potentially reduce the amount of iridium we use by an order of magnitude, right? So that's significant because the cost of iridium is expensive, but also those precious metals over time, they're, you know, the fluctuation is difficult to understand sometimes.
But as we look at that, and we do... we're doing projects with, like, folks like UC Irvine, where we're looking at different MEA materials. We're doing different flow fields. We're really trying to understand how to optimize the performance and how do we reduce things like compressors and water pumps and they all come with a power penalty, right? The more components you have, if we can get rid of those and drive up the performance, that really helps from an overall efficiency perspective. So we're looking at that. We're also looking at as with respect to, from an electrolyzer, I mean, from a liquefier perspective, how do we look at new and different refrigerant cycles to help with the liquefaction process, right?
How do we drive down the number of kilowatt hours it takes to liquefy a kilogram of hydrogen? That's really important to Sanjay's business. So we work really closely with the team that's developing our liquefiers, to really understand what are those different technologies we look at from maybe a mixed gas refrigerant perspective and some different technologies. We do look at all pieces of the business. We're trying to also look at how we can help Dave's team from a throughput perspective, but when you look at the cost and how we drive down efficiency is very, very critical.
Andy, if I may add one thing to that.
Yeah.
So it's not directly tied to the efficiency per se, but as Tim said, when we simplify our design, electrolyzer design being simplified, making sure huge benefit from a CapEx perspective, right? So it will drive the construction cost down dramatically versus where we are. And it's been some of the amazing learnings we've had by actually doing real projects, right? So that's, I think, is something worthwhile.
And we're doing some of that-
Yeah
... work by also driving our current densities, right?
Exactly.
If we-
Exactly
... if we really drive the current densities of our solutions, both from an electrolyzer and fuel cell perspective, that really helps Sanjay in how much real estate and how complex the systems become, and how many different modules and number of modules you need to build out 100-MW systems. So the more that we can simplify and reduce by doing things like driving our current densities up, it really helps in the future.
Yeah. Tim, it reminds me of the journey I went at Bell Labs with wireless. When radios were this big, today, they're on a chip. To power efficiencies were in the low teens, to now they're in 60%-70% level.
Yeah.
That's really... You know, I think people have to realize this is a journey, and technology development is gonna be core to Plug for the long term. You know, you were talking about liquefiers, so I'm gonna put Benjamin on the spot. You know, we have these charts, which tells me if you go over more than 500 mi, you should be liquid. Things are closer in Europe. Do you really need liquefaction in Europe?... Well, and I have no idea what he's gonna say.
Neither do I.
Good luck. Hope you say the right thing.
Firstly, we're going to build a 15 tons a day liquefier in our Antwerp plant.
Yeah.
So I do believe that there's absolutely a market for liquefaction in Europe, and you know, for a very simple reason: It's tied to logistics. You know, Jose Luis was talking about the stationary fuel cell. When we commission a stationary fuel cell that consumes close to a ton per day of hydrogen, if you know, if you want to run that with compressed gas trailers, it's very, very, very difficult, and usually, it's very demanding consumers. You cannot have interruption in the delivery process, so the security of supply matters quite a bit. And this is where liquid hydrogen will absolutely have a place. I do think that in Europe, there's one thing that is very interesting.
You know, one of the benefits of having a heavily regulated areas like Europe is, for instance, all the utilities focusing on building pipelines. There's this incredible project in Europe where all the regulated companies in the different countries, you know, went together and put together this map to build and roll out a pipeline infrastructure dedicated to hydrogen. And that's happening really fast. Antwerp, when it's commissioned, will be connected to a pipeline that will be able to deliver hydrogen to clients, obviously, in the Antwerp area, but also in Ghent and in other areas in Belgium. They are breaking ground in the Netherlands. It was announced a few days ago, and these two pipelines will be interconnected pretty soon. Now, Finland will be the same. Other countries will be the same.
Now, what gets interesting is, instead of tying the liquefier to the electrolyzer unit, in the future, what we'll probably do is actually tie the liquefier to the pipeline. So we produce gases north of Finland, we bring it from Finland to Germany, let's say. The cost of the transportation will be minimal, less than $0.50 a kilogram, and then you liquefy it to bring it to the end consumer. So liquefaction absolutely has a place, but you're right, you know, smaller distances, great deal about network of pipelines will make the parameters in Europe a bit different there.
So how will that help you grow the market for applications then?
In Europe?
In Europe.
In general, really. But in Europe, in particular, I think, Benjamin just touched on that a minute ago. Being able to get large amounts of hydrogen to our customers in a very efficient and cost-efficient way is really gonna help us, you know, growing, especially applications like, like, high-power stationary. A high-power stationary system, just to make, you know, a little bit more of the context of, of what you just mentioned, Benjamin, will consume in prime power, so continuous power, will consume about 1.5 tons a day. You have to have several days of capacity on site to be able to run that high-power stationary unit. You cannot do that with 400 kg of gaseous hydrogen, or 500, or even a ton of gaseous hydrogen going back and forth.
So this is a key element for us to grow that market. But in general, other markets, when we start talking about HYVIA vans as well, if you talk about 100 vans from HYVIA, each one of them consuming 5 kg or 200 vans, each one of them consuming 5 kg, it is a much more efficient way to get hydrogen to site to our customers. We have the experience because we've done it here in the U.S. for, you know, more than 250 sites, and I think in Europe, it's gonna be a competitive advantage, so.
So, Sanjay, you have a chart, I think, that you show later today. Eight times more hydrogen from liquid when you really start to think about utilization and other-
That's it, yeah.
Just think about it, you can move eight times the amount, what the cost is, what storage is. It's all a lot simpler. I think the importance of liquid from a storage point of view gets lost. One last one: What do you think about caverns and hydrogen?
Yeah, so storage-
Because this is really important for this guy here to sell peaker plants.
Sure. Absolutely.
You know, we've done some studies about geological storage of hydrogen, and obviously, salt caverns are the... They're the right material. The problem is they're not everywhere, right? So if you think about it, there's a cavern in the coast. There's one that's been built recently in the west, in Nevada, for that facility there. And so I think geological storage and salt caverns are gonna be really critical, particularly the model that Benjamin talked about. I think that similar model is gonna get built out here in the United States. We've talked to many midstream companies, Sanjay and I have, about they're already moving energy today, right?
So they think moving hydrogen is not gonna be that difficult, whether it's in their existing pipelines or pipelines that they run in the existing right of way that are dedicated to hydrogen. But this, connected to that storage is gonna be significant. And I think there's locations all over the country to do that. Not all deep storage with salt caverns, but it's a matter of finding them. And then, when we build out the network, once we build it out, that's gonna be a huge store of hydrogen, just the pipeline system itself, when we're able to get there. Now, it's not gonna happen overnight.
As everybody knows, the natural gas, you know, network that we have today took decades and decades to build out, but we have to start now, and we have to find the locations for storage, both in the ground, but also how do we build out that network to be able to deliver it and also store it effectively.
Before I give closing statements to everybody, I was fascinated with what Raja showed us about how much more hydrogen from an energy point of view you could store versus natural gas.
Yeah. So, Raja and our team did a study of, again, the geological storage of where we can do that, and it's significant. You have to be very careful in terms of where you store it, and there are chemical reactions that happen when you store it, and you have to think about the right places to store it and what those reactions are. But yeah, there's lots of options when we think about aquifers and depleted oil fields that we might be able to take advantage of in addition to salt caverns. I think that's very important.
The more that we can look at different opportunities and different geological locations where we can store hydrogen across the country is gonna be significant because, you know, as we know, here in the United States, the geography is not the same as you across the country. So we have to have lots of opportunities, lots of different locations.
Okay, so the lightning round. 45 seconds, what do you want to tell folks? Jose, I'm gonna mix it up.
I don't know.
45 seconds.
I was actually waiting. It was gonna be Sanjay.
I know.
I know.
So I've been with Plug 10 years, and I've never seen all the conditions, you know, getting so good together at the same time, and this is happening. We have, you know, legislation coming up. We have, which is even, in my opinion, more important, there is an understanding of hydrogen that is making customers feel much more comfortable about it and is making them understand that this is here to stay. It's a vector that you need for all the reasons that we were talking about before. This is not anymore something that, at the beginning, 10 years ago, I would go to customers, and I would take three months to explain to them why hydrogen and what was hydrogen. Today, they come to tell me that they need hydrogen, so it's a, it's a very different way of seeing things.
So that's good for the industry in general, but for Plug, we're building these hydrogen plants that are gonna be, you know, unique in the world, but it's gonna give me all this green hydrogen that I can go to customers and sell and make these applications a reality because that's an enabler for all my applications. And then I have the applications also that we're finishing, in some cases, you know, beginning to commission some of the 1.5 MW.
Six or seven out here you're gonna ship?
Exactly. I have a few of them that are gonna ship this year. Next year is gonna be exponential growth on this, so in all, I'm extremely excited of... I think this is just the beginning. This ten years was just the training. Now we're gonna be, like, going through the roof. So that's, that's my, my feel about this.
How about you, Benjamin?
I would say that, you know, growing the hydrogen economy is not, you know, a peaceful river. But when I take a step back, and when I see what we've accomplished in Europe in just three years, you know, going from close to zero in terms of how much we accounted for Plug's global business to close to 10% today, and when I see the market prospects, I think that the opportunity is just absolutely incredible. You know, and again, you know, this 42% binding target by 2030 is a very defining moment for hydrogen in Europe.
You know, running the math on what that means, you know, just for Antwerp in terms of, you know, binding market that needs to transition to green hydrogen, I think, well, we have a huge opportunity. So, you know, we went from zero to, let's say, 100 in three years, and I think that in three years, we'll be pretty far away from that, you know? So that's my takeaway.
So, Tim, I'm gonna let Sanjay do the closing.
Wow. Okay. I'll try and tee it up for you.
Yeah.
So I think when we talk about the Plug culture, innovation is in our DNA, and I think that's really, really important, and I think when you... It's not just innovation from a technological perspective. I think if you listen to everybody and what they're responsible for and what they're working on, you know, Paul's got innovation from a finance perspective and project financing, and Tami's here, and when you think about HR, there's innovation in workforce development and talent management and the work that Sanjay's team is doing, building plants and the partnerships and the innovation that we're doing in Europe, and Sanjay's ability to put these deals together... I mean, Jose's ability to put these deals together. There's innovation everywhere. The plant, look at this beautiful facility, Dave's team putting this together.
It's in our DNA, and it continues to drive us, and I think it's really important to make sure that we recognize that every day and embrace it and make sure that it's really the driving force behind what we do.
Sanjay?
Great. Thank you, Andy. Again, I think I just want everybody to sort of think about this in the following terms: We are set out to become the category king in this green hydrogen economy. We have all the pieces in place. We've been working very hard at it. What we're doing, by the way, is not easy when you talk about it. You know, we're in an uncharted territory. We're focused on making energy transition happen, not just make it happen, but accelerate that energy transition with everything that we're trying to do. Foundation is there, team is there. You've seen a lot of growth out of Plug, but we're just getting started. We're at that tipping point of growth, where there might even be some kind of a big hockey stick impact when you start to think about the second half of this decade.
This is the work we all have to do. This is not just about top-line growth or a bottom line for the company. It's about the right thing to do from a societal standpoint. We just want you all to come along with us in this journey to make this world a better place.
Good close.
Yeah.
Oh, we're not done yet. Sorry.
Yeah. We don't give away that easy.
So, I've been fortunate enough in my career to be on this journey before. And I tell this story often about being in a wireless hut in 1983 and spending six months, and nothing worked. And we had to learn how to make a wireless radio work, and it wasn't easy. We made one work, and we made 10 work, and we made 100 work, and we made 1,000 work, and then wireless phones became eventually ubiquitous, and cost became dramatically, went dramatically down. And I thought that was a real cool way to spend my career, and thought I would never be involved in a market opportunity which was similar. This market opportunity in energy is much, much bigger than the communication revolution that happened.
This is a journey which, you know, is gonna have, just like wireless, some good days and some bad days. But as Jack says, "The vector's right." There's certain. If we're going to meet these goals, and we will meet these goals. When I was a kid growing up, the Delaware River would float, would go on fire, and today you can fish at it. Those goals we are going to achieve, we will be net zero. Whether it's 2050 or 2053 or 2044, it doesn't really matter. But really, what matters is we achieve those goals altogether. And I hope everyone who's listening and is in this audience here today recognize that Plug is the pioneer. I talked to George about the, the different stages.
I really feel that, we kinda just, you know, I'm an American. I love American history. We've kinda won the Battle of 1812 and finally got our freedom, and that's what freedom is for us. With these great products, with this great technology, we are about to take off. We've gone a long way, but we have so much further to go. I'd like to give you all now a chance to ask us questions for about the next 15 minutes. I think someone's running around with a microphone. I think, Paul, you're joining us back on stage. So what we got out there? Anybody have any questions for the team?
Paul. Did you get a mic?
Yeah, we have. Any questions?
Yeah.
Yes.
Two or three.
Go ahead. James, I think that's you.
Andy, uh. Go ahead, Colin.
Okay, go ahead.
Thanks so much, guys. Colin Rusch from Oppenheimer. You know, there's a couple... You know, there's not only the technology efficiency that you guys are working on in the supply chain, but the construction element of this is massive, right? And as we think about the zero emissions economy, the volume of construction that's gonna happen over the next couple of decades is kind of mind-bending. So can you talk a little bit about where you guys are at in that learning cycle? You alluded to it a little bit here, but you know, how you see that playing out along this cost reduction road.
You want to take that, Sanjay?
Yeah.
Because I know you spend most of your day thinking about it.
Yeah, and, and collaborating, obviously, with Tim and his team as well. So, Colin, one of the things, right, building our plant in Georgia, what we have learned is how much cabling, piping, label work, loop test, that has to be done on site, right? And when you think about the CapEx number for building this plant, your construction cost is so massive today, it's more than 50%, if you would, right? And then, when we then think about our cost reduction roadmap, and when we tell you all that we want to go from that $10 million a ton number down to $6 million a ton, and really create a lot of efficiency from a capital deployment perspective, what's gonna drive that? And this is what we're trying to do. Think about the rectifiers today.
It comes in a box, you got a foundation, you can put it on. You got to energize that, right? So we're really looking at our electrolyzer system that actually gonna have a lot more component already finished, assembled. It comes on the site where it is actually gonna reduce tremendous amount of construction cost on the site, and it will actually work with our liquefaction technology in a seamless perspective as well, right? So really think about from a Lego block perspective of how you do the construction, and you know this, Colin, right? Just think about what happened in the solar industry, and in terms of how the construction was almost 50% of the capital stack.
You know, capital equipment costs continue to go down, but that construction ended up being 20%-25% of the overall CapEx number, and that's where we really see it going, and we have some of this product coming out by the second half of 2025. That's gonna have a dramatic effect in terms of driving that CapEx down. Do you want to add anything?
Yeah, definitely. So to Sanjay's point, we're looking at how do you simplify each of the blocks that go in the train, right? From all the way from the rectification to the electrolyzer to the liquefaction system. And if you can really simplify that and do most of that inside each of those blocks and have it be done, tested, validated, verified, and when you get it on site, it becomes very easy then to connect them and to install them, reduce the time, reduce the labor on site, and that's really gonna be the one of the drivers: simplification, modularity, and how do we then get it to the site quickly and get it installed? And I think a lot of that's just come out of the learnings that Sanjay talked about that we've had.
But it's really critical to think about how do you put together a system and these building blocks, and also allows you then to build different-sized systems very easily.
Great. Next question.
Sure. You got, James West at Evercore over here.
Yeah.
So, follow on Colin's question, I think you guys have had a lot of learnings in the United States with the building of the green hydrogen facilities, particularly Georgia. I hear you on the modularization, the Lego blocks. As we expand into Europe here, and then eventually into Asia, these are different markets, and so I don't know, maybe, Benjamin, if you want to take this or Sanjay, but how do you think about the learning curve, what you achieved in the United States and applying that to what are different markets, I mean, the same fundamental drivers, but certainly different markets, different countries, in Europe and then eventually in Asia.
So when we look at Antwerp and the way we're building Antwerp, we're actually benefiting in a very significant manner from the learnings in the U.S. When you think about a project team to build a big plant that's gonna produce hydrogen at an industrial scale, you actually can probably segregate the functions into three. Some of them are really, you know, have very low requirements because, you know, you'll need to comply with this regulation or this regulation that's gonna be different from one country to another. You have project services. You need to have, you know, what I call project services is scheduling, contracting, all these things. You have to have, you know, some level of local knowledge, but you also have big, big synergies on a global scale.
And then from an engineering standpoint, you know, if I take, for instance, high voltage electrical engineer, you need to have someone that understands the local requirements, but then the team working in the background to actually design that, knowing the requirements and having defined the constraining factors can be, you know, synergized teams. So, you know, there are functions that are commodities, there are functions that are more tailor-made. The technology at heart is the same. So, you know, and the building blocks that are being built, you know, are basically the same. And we're benefiting from that in a very significant way for our plants in Europe.
Why don't you talk about Benjamin, the team in the Netherlands.
Yeah.
The work they're doing.
That's right.
The EPC, who you're engaging.
Exactly.
How the FEED study works in Europe and the permitting process for Antwerp, 'cause I think that gives a great picture of how it all fits together.
Exactly. So basically, we have in Europe to get your permit, you need to get to a greater level of definition in Europe than in the U.S. Meaning, you need to spend a significant amount of our engineering effectively to get your permit. So the way it works, we were very fortunate. We have, honestly, a fantastic team in Europe and in the Netherlands. And in the Netherlands, we acquired this team that knew how to build large-scale projects. That was their DNA. They have done that for the oil and gas industry for decades, and that's the skill set that they brought to Plug.
We have basically, you know, a project director that is sitting in Europe, that is supported by a team that builds, you know, that manage the projects on, you know, civil work, what is required from a electrical standpoint, et cetera, et cetera. Then we have a second team that actually work on a global basis, not just for Plug Europe, not just for Plug U.S., just for Plug Global, that is in charge of the electrolyzer package. That's the team that is led by a guy named Chris Crockett, and Chris basically helps us with the electrolyzer package, both in the U.S., in Europe, and elsewhere in the world. And that's a package that he brings in, both for our.
For us as internal customer, but also for the rest of the market as external customers. So it's a team that's gonna work with Arcadia, it's a team that's gonna work with Galp, it's a team that's gonna work with all our external customers as well, and it's the same team. Then we have some folks in India, for instance, you know, I have a team of CAD engineers that are doing drawings for Antwerp. They're sitting in India, they're not in Europe. We have a big team in India that came as well with that acquisition of Frames in 2021.
Sounds about right.
Yeah. And so, you know, you have— And then we have, you know, the project director in Antwerp that has a weekly call with the U.S. project team that is so far more advanced than we are in Europe, to factor in all the learnings from the Georgia plant and all the other plants that are being built in the U.S., to make sure that we factor that learn— that these learnings into the Antwerp plant.
And you're working with the EPC every day, right?
We're working with an EPC every day. We basically have you know we are completing the FEED studies at the moment for Antwerp. We'll have our permit application ready early November, and hopefully we'll have a site that will be ready to build by the end of the first semester of 2024. So yeah, this one is moving pretty fast, and honestly, thanks to all the work that has been done by the project execution team in the U.S. at Byron Sharkey.
Great. Next question.
In the back.
There's, um-
Uh, yes.
There's someone in.
Me?
Yeah.
Oh, God, thanks. Chris Dendrinos with RBC.
Yeah.
You know, you opened the conversation here talking about regulation. You had the EU announcement earlier this week. You've got, hopefully, the H2 hubs announcement later this week, and then at the end of the year, the IRA kind of clarification point. So can you maybe talk about sort of, you know, what does this clarification do for Plug in the near term? What, you know, what type of things are in the pipe that sort of or opportunities that get unlocked, I guess, with these clarifications coming out? Thanks.
Yeah. So, Chris, it's difficult for companies to make final decisions when you don't know what the rules are. There are, you know, a great deal of, there's probably $3 billion-$4 billion in the funnel in the U.S., tied up, waiting to understand. And, you know, I highlighted, Chris, our engagement in this process, and the key item, as we learn more and more, is really regionality. And from a Plug perspective, if the regions are the ISO regions, we're gonna be in good shape. That being said, for the nation and for the hydrogen hubs to be really successful, should just be three regions.
We strongly support the three regions, but we've done enough analysis that says the regions, the ISOs, if nuclear power is a given, 'cause we have a lot of demand from nuclear power providers who wanna buy our electrolyzers. If here, for example, in New York, if hydro is acceptable, and I think it will be, Senator Cantwell's been circulating a letter to really push, you know. On the additionality, I think Jack talked about how much stranded wind and solar there is, and to be able to use that without strict additionality, quite honestly, Plug will be in a great shape. The nation will be in a better shape if it's three regions, and that's why we support three regions, because that's what makes the most sense.
When you look at the other two pillars, Chris, and I know you spent a lot of time thinking about this, I think you sit in the DOE, everybody kind of sits back and says, "We don't know how to do time matching." I think they sit back and say, "How would a REC market work without hourly time matching?" There is a clear understanding in Treasury, the DOE, and the White House that that probably doesn't work tomorrow. And finally, additionality becomes, especially if you have a three-year kind of grandfathering, additionality, probably the bigger the regions, probably the less important the rules on additionality are. So watch the regions for, I think, the effectiveness and how fast the sales funnel grows.
There was a reference Tim made, and I can tell you, I went through this during 2009, not 2013, Tim—with the fuel cells for forklift, Aaron. You probably caught that, too, Aaron. Correct me.
Because it took nine months to get the ARRA money out, it took nine months to get customers to make their final decisions to get those first 500 units out. I think we're in a similar spot. I think there's a chance it'll get out before the next maybe shutdown or the end of the year. That's how I kinda look at it. We've probably got time for one more question. There'll be a lot of questions during the... We'll be circulating around. We'll answer all your questions during the day. So one more.
Thanks so much. Andrew Percoco with Morgan Stanley. Just wanted to double-click on something Sanjay mentioned around PPA prices coming down from $0.10-$0.12 a kilowatt hour to less than $0.02 a kilowatt hour today in investing class regions. Maybe just to hone in on that, they've also kind of started to increase again with the cost of capital environment, the supply chain environment. How are you navigating that as you think about some of your interim targets in 2025 and 2030, in terms of securing low-cost PPAs?
Yeah.
Very good question, right? Because when you think about LCOE for renewable electricity, there is a component of the capital one has to think about. But look, I mean, I think, the rate of reduction probably is gonna go down in terms of what has happened to LCOE. We're probably not gonna see it go from, like, this dramatic reduction we've seen, right? But look, I mean, I think, this whole inflationary environment, supply chain dynamics, cost of component having gone up, one has to believe that that is gonna abate at some point, right? So that's one. Second is there's gonna be continued learnings, if you would. Efficiency of these panels are gonna get better. Technology for wind turbines are gonna continue to get better. That is gonna be another factor that's gonna continue to help drive that LCOE down.
But more importantly, when you think about how are we, how are we navigating it, right? So our plant in Texas, you know, we actually were told we didn't sign the best possible PPA. It turns out it's looking pretty damn good right now, Andrew, right? In terms of what those rates are, given what we're going through right now, right? What the world is going through right now. So what we're really doing is we're, we actually have a project development team led by, you know, Kevin here in the U.S., which is essentially focusing on where do we need to go from a location standpoint. We're going to get the best possible solar or wind resources, which is really the key, right? Capital cost matters, but you gotta get the right capacity factor. That's the key to really getting that. That's what we're doing.
We have a lot of activity going on, as you can imagine, in the middle of the country, right, in the solar belt as well, and really trying to think about where you can build a hybrid plant. We're already thinking about scale as well from a hydrogen plant perspective, and we're also starting to think about where do you get the right water resources, ideally wastewater, if you can find that. So that's what's going on, and size of the plants are gonna get bigger. You know, we really don't see that we're running into a major roadblock, if you would, in terms of really continuing to build out the generation asset here in North America, and obviously, Benjamin is doing all the work that he's doing in Europe.
Okay. Well, I appreciate the folks who have joined us online today. I wanna remind those individuals that they can go see all the presentations in the 18 sessions, and the sessions are really good. I spent a lot of these subjects. Some, you'll hear from customers, you'll hear from government officials, you'll hear from partners. So you'll have a, I've sat through all 18 sessions multiple times, and I really have enjoyed them, and I feel I've learned a great deal, so I hope you enjoy that. Those who are here, so if you're out there, they're available now. But additionally, we'll be putting some of those sessions up online so you can watch the replays. Now, finally, the folks who are here will have a wonderful tour and be able to go to those sessions.
But, I just wanna remind you all that this is built a unique company here. I started out by, in my presentation, talking about the size of the market. It's big. You can see the products and you can see the products we've developed when you walk this facility, when you listen to the presentations today. And those products really required a lot of market knowledge to do the right things. And as you listen to Luke and Tim, we're still exploring every day what's the right next step for Plug. But to really win in this market, you need more than market knowledge and products. You need an infrastructure to support it. And those who've been to Rochester, those who are here at Vista, those who've been to Georgia, you can see, Plug it does know how to build out the infrastructure.
So, we plan to win, and we're not in this to come in second place. We're aggressive, we're bold, we're gonna stumble sometimes, but directionally, we're always heading in the right direction because we are going to be a major share of that 20% world energy by 2050. So thank you, everyone, for being online. Thank you for those who came. We're gonna be around, too, so I know others may have questions. Just ask us. We'll tell you what we think. So thank you, everybody, online, and I will talk to you soon.