Independent November 10 2002
A tiny British company led by the former chairman of Shell has raced ahead of its industry rivals by breaking new ground in the development of a working fuel cell - the technology that offers the Holy Grail of cheap, clean power generation.
The group, called Intelligent Energy, has now brought in boutique investment bank ARC Associates to help raise the £8m it needs to bring its products to the market, and advance its research to the point of commercial viability.
Sir John Jennings, the former chairman of Shell Transport & Trading and a veteran of the energy world, chose to back the group because he was impressed with the technol- ogy its scientists had come up with. The group has created fuel cell devices that deliver significantly better ratios of fuel to wattage output than other projects.
Intelligent Energy is particularly excited by the prospects of a machine about the size of a fridge that could keep a home powered with electricity using just a small bottle of natural gas. Such a device would, says Sir John, be of significance to families in the developing world. The group expects to pursue a series of strategic partnerships with Yukos, the Russian oil and gas giant, and BOC, the industrial gas maker.
But the company has bigger ambitions that centre on the wider energy market, and its management is keen to exploit the deregulated status of many electricity markets around the world.
Intelligent Energy believes that its technology could be scaled up to be usable on an industrial basis, and has been deliberately pitched at the EU's determination to reduce dependency on oil.
Reproduced from The Independent
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