Worcester Business Journal

wbjournal.com | May 29, 2023 | Worcester Business Journal 15 E N E R G Y & S U S T A I N A B I L I T Y F O C U S January 2-7 Sponsored by Cornerstone Bank February 16-18 Sponsored by The Club at Rockland Trust November 10-12 Sponsored by Country Bank THE LINCOLN CENTER THEATER PRODUCTION LOCALIZATION GOES HERE April 5-7 Sponsored by UniBank April 12-14 Co-sponsored by Worcester State University and bankHometown May 3-5 Sponsored by Bay State Savings Bank HARPER LEE'S TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD A new play by AARON SORKIN Directed by BARTLETT SHER TBA June 26 TBA August 14 Give your employees and clients something to CHEER about! Become a Corporate Partner Plus Subscriber BY JUNE 30 for the best seats at the best price . . . PLUS FREE PARKING. Corporate subscribers save up to $93 on six hot, new shows sure to sell out. Enjoy access to the Franklin Square Salon, including complimentary drinks and parking. For personalized service, call Diane at 508.930.2424. Ask about our All Access Club, a season pass to ALL shows! TheHanoverTheatre.org 15 YEARS Michael Hegarty as Alfred P. Doolittle (center) and The Company of The National Tour of MY FAIR LADY. Photo by Jeremy Daniel Worcester Center for Performing Arts (WCPA), a registered not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization, owns and operates The Hanover Theatre and Conservatory for the Performing Arts (THT). All donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law. about $120 billion a year that involves making hydrogen and using it to make fertilizer and chemicals and plastics and all that other stuff," Eaglesham said. "at industry contributes sort of a couple of percent of the total emissions, which is 2%. Doesn't sound like a lot, but actually it's a huge amount, sort of comparable to Exxon for perspective." Eaglesham assembled a team to find a way to make electrolyzers cleaner for the environment and efficient for manufac- turers to use. He team up with Derek Warnick, who was also at Breakthrough Energy, to be the CFO; Dorian West, who worked at Tesla for 15 years, to be to the executive vice president of engineer- ing; and Raffi Garabedian, who worked at chief technology officer of First Solar for eight years, as CEO. e company they founded is Electric Hydrogen. e team founded the company in December 2019, and it was self-funded until March 2021 when Electric Hydrogen raised money for the first time: $24 million, with Breakthrough Capital leading all investors. e team opened an office in Natick and another in San Carlos, California, which is situated between San Francisco and San Jose. Next up, Electric Hydrogen is opening a manufacturing facility in Devens to begin building its advanced electrolyzers, which can run off of renewable energy thanks to technological advances the company has made. Making clean energy cheaper What Electric Hydrogen is trying to do is similar to what First Solar did: make it cheaper, which will encourage the industry to change. When Eaglasham was at First Solar, the company started a price war to drive the cost down so it was competing with the cost of coal, which was inexpensive in comparison. "e goal is to make renewable hydrogen as cheap as fossil hydrogen," Eaglesham said. e issue with running an electrolyzer on renewable energy like solar or wind is that power isn't always on, and a machine like an electrolyzer previously needed to stay on to operate. "Renewables are actually only on less than half the time.," Eaglasham said. "So then the electrolyzer has to be cheap enough that the economics work even when it's turned off half the time." Renewable energy is a linchpin of Massachusetts climate plan. e state is actively working to bring more renewable Continued on next page David Eaglesham (right) examines lab work being done at Electric Hydrogen.

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