Corporate investors are an important LP group for many climate venture and growth funds. Hy24 (the joint venture between Ardian and Five-T Hydrogen), Energy Impact Partners and Climate Investment (established by the Oil & Gas Climate Initiative) will come to mind for New Private Markets readers. But what motivates these corporate investors?

For two of Hy24’s LPs, the motivation is clearly strategic as well as financial. “Our customers are asking us to support the forward progress of a lot of the decarbonisation initiatives that are underway, and I think it’s our responsibility as the private sector to listen to what their needs are,” said Jillian Evanko, president and chief executive of industrial cryogenics provider Chart Industries. Evanko was speaking at a reception last week co-hosted by Hy24 in partnership with Energy Observer, a company researching energy autonomy with technological innovations in hydrogen and solar power. The discussion took place following a visit to the company’s fully self-sufficient vessel The Odyssey.

Hy24 closed Clean H2 Infra Fund on €2 billion in October 2022, surpassing its €1.5 billion target. More than half of the capital has come from industrial corporate investors including Air Liquide, Vinci Concessions, TotalEnergies, Plug Power, Chart Industries and Baker Hughes. Other LPs include AXA, Border To Coast Pensions Partnership, Crédit Agricole Assurances, CCR, Allianz, CDPQ and JBIC. Hy24 is also raising a growth equity Clean Hydrogen Equipment fund to invest in the sector’s picks and shovels, NPM exclusively reported last year. The Equipment fund has a target of around €500 million.

Scaling the use of hydrogen power in industrial processes could create new services and cleaner alternatives for Chart Industries to offer its customers, and could create new use cases – and therefore more demand – for its customers’ products. “We want the [hydrogen] industry to be self-sustained over time,” said Evanko. “The commercialisation thereof is what our customers are looking for us to do. We’ve invested a lot of money into minority investments that will continue to have innovation and technology ahead.”

Evanko describes Chart’s investment activities as “investing in innovation for the future. The technologies today in some cases work, but they’re not necessarily ready for global commercialisation or the scale at which the industry is moving.”

For Lorenzo Simonelli, chief executive of Baker Hughes, a service and equipment provider for the energy sector, scaling hydrogen power is critical to meeting growing energy demands. “Let’s face it: we as human beings love energy. No matter what we say, we are going to consume more and more energy going forward. And we know that it needs to be sustainable, affordable, secure and efficient. And that means we need to continue to expand the energy mix, and hydrogen plays a key role in that.”

On Baker Hughes’ investment appetite, Simonelli said: “In some cases I’m willing to go turnkey and actually take the whole risk, because I believe in the e-fuel project. In other cases I’ll take a consortium risk. It varies.”

Editor’s note: this article has been updated to reflect the correct title of the vessel and where the discussion took place.