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Enabling the Green Hydrogen Revolution
Hydrogen is the foundation of modern industry, with global demand at 100 million tons per year – expected to double by 2030 and reach 550 million tons by 2050. Today, it’s essential for fertilizer production, chemical manufacturing and oil refining. Tomorrow, it will be the cornerstone of global decarbonization efforts, transforming heavy industry, transportation and energy systems worldwide.
But here’s the stark reality: 96% of all hydrogen today comes from fossil fuels, releasing a staggering 10 kg of CO₂ for every kilogram of hydrogen produced.
There is widespread agreement that the solution lies in PEM electrolyzers, which convert electricity from intermittent fossil-free sources (hydro, wind, solar) into hydrogen. But this critical transition is not happening fast enough because global enterprises building large-scale PEM electrolyzer facilities are constrained by the limited supply of iridium.
The global production of iridium is only 7–9 tons per year, primarily as a by-product of platinum and nickel mining in South Africa and Zimbabwe. This severe supply constraint creates a fundamental physical barrier preventing electrolyzer manufacturers from scaling production to meet the rapidly growing demand for green hydrogen. While renewable electricity costs represent the largest part of green hydrogen production expenses, this iridium limitation is the critical bottleneck that must be solved to enable the massive scale-up needed for emerging fossil-free applications across for instance steel production, transportation, and energy storage.
This creates an urgent need for a radical solution: the amount of iridium required in PEM electrolyzers must be drastically reduced while maintaining or improving performance.
Smoltek Hydrogen has risen to the challenge: to reduce the need for precious metal catalysts in PEM electrolyzers while maintaining performance and making them even more efficient and cost effective.
This allows manufacturers to overcome the iridium supply constraint and scale up the production of PEM electrolyzers, making clean hydrogen economically competitive with fossil-based alternatives. For investors, this represents an extraordinary opportunity across the hydrogen ecosystem.