Hydrogen revolution in hands of firm that really knows its history

It is a company that can trace its heritage back to the industrial revolution, but now Johnson Matthey is at the forefront of Britain’s transition to clean energy.
The company had long been a leader in catalytics — the science of chemical reactions — when in 2002 it acquired the catalyst technology of ICI Synetix in a £260 million deal. Two decades later it is part of the revival of Teesside, putting the region at the forefront of the UK clean-tech revolution.
At Billingham and a sister facility in nearby Stockton — formerly Davy, a process engineering business acquired in the 2006 break-up of the UK empire of the dissident Russian businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky — are laboratories containing banks of catalysis experiments: arrays of shafts and canisters, reactors connected by pipework to measuring devices collecting data on heat, pressure and process efficiency.
Among these are Johnson Matthey’s big bets on the Fischer-Tropsch chemical process, whose viability has long been renowned but lay dormant before recognition of its commercial viability in the production of sustainable aviation fuel. The 100 per cent synthetic kerosene on which a Virgin Atlantic flight crossed the Atlantic last autumn was enabled by Johnson Matthey technology.
Maurits van Tol is the chief executive of Johnson Matthey Catalyst Technologies. He says the company is using technologies created in the early 20th century, modified for demand in the 21st century.
“We are standing on the shoulders of giants,” he says. “Elements of our business, our engineering and our design go back a long time.”
Johnson Matthey is not in the business of producing sustainable aviation fuel or low-carbon hydrogen but in providing the catalytics which turn feedstocks traditionally of coal, natural gas or oil — and now renewable energy, biomass and waste and recycled CO₂ — into syngas.
From these synthetic gases, hydrogen for aeroplanes or trucks and buses, or heat and energy, can be produced; or methanol for chemical industries or ships, replacing bunker fuel; or ammonia used in fertilisers; or as a hydrogen vector, transported long distances and then at destination turned back into hydrogen with the extraction of the nitrogen.
All this is at the epicentre of the much-vaunted coming of the hydrogen economy, a main component of any hope of getting to net zero — even if true net zero can only come with the arrival of “green hydrogen”, the electrolysis of air and renewable electricity into hydrogen and water.
The “blue hydrogen” of current sustainable aviation fuels and the like is the production of the gas with a byproduct of CO₂, which must be captured to count as low carbon and either repurposed in industrial processes or stored in underground caverns or beneath the ocean.
Van Tol says green hydrogen will only be facilitated by the commercialisation first of blue hydrogen.
“We are agnostic and developing both technologies,” he said. “Electrolysers producing green hydrogen have a nascent supply chain and we have to look past 2030 and way beyond. If you were to start with green hydrogen, we would have no chance of hitting net zero by 2050.
“The journey has already started for blue hydrogen. We know we can build infrastructure to scale and if it is something that you want to start next Monday morning, then that would be blue hydrogen.”
He believes the UK is ideally placed to take full advantage of the technological revolution required to meet environmental goals.
“This is a tremendous opportunity for the UK,” he said. “The most advanced technologies for the production of blue hydrogen are in the UK and in British companies, and the UK has the geology to store the CO₂. With our existing core competences and companies, it is something not to be missed. We can be the great exporter of technology for UK plc in the clean-tech space and with the creation of high end jobs.”
• The day coal died
Johnson Matthey is a company that traces its history to the pre-Victorian industrial revolution. After more than two centuries in precious metals, it remains one of the world’s great handlers of platinum and kindred metals on the periodic table, though it rarely advertises the presence or value of its physical depositories in north London.
But it is the chemistry, not simply the value, of the metals that made Johnson Matthey’s name in the last quarter of the 20th century, with the development of platinum group metals in catalytic converters reducing vehicle exhaust pollution and emissions.
However, in the knowledge that the internal combustion engine was on a glide path to regulatory extinction, Johnson Matthey bet a proportion of the farm on the development of high-performance battery technology for the electric car revolution. By 2017, the company had pressed the button on plans to go into production for gigafactories.
And then within two years came a screeching halt amid the realisation that they were never going to catch up and compete with the Chinese and far eastern opposition, followed by a U-turn and exit out of battery technology.
It came at a cost of hundreds of millions of pounds, a chief executive’s job and a tarnished reputation. That the company’s shares are no longer in the FTSE 100 and trade at half their 2019 value is some indication of the fallout.
But now that core competence in catalytics, and global leadership in the licensing of its technology, puts it at the fulcrum of the clean energy transition.
Johnson Matthey has the DNA of ICI in its make-up: the sprawling industrial giant that was Britain’s original economic bellwether and also a leader in new processes from its Teesside plants. Van Tol says his company is keenly aware of this economic legacy.
“We feel it very strongly,” he said. “They were the quality player in the technology arena. We have a lot of ICI people and technology in our DNA. It is like seedlings from ICI have been replanted and are now flourishing in a number of different pots.”