Jon Gordon wants airplanes to reach the sky on green hydrogen by 2025.
And with a three-year plan to produce retrofit kits and hydrogen storage capsules for airplanes, Gordon half-joked his company is already behind schedule.
"Let's say I have all 100 planes in the air right now. The planes have six capsules per plane and we need to go back-and-forth for each route. ... It's over 10,000 capsules," Gordon said. "So that means I need to begin production in 2024. That means I need to get the building done by the end of 2023. And it's 2022. So I don't have any time. We are really late."
Gordon is the co-founder of Universal Hydrogen — a soon-to-be player in the state’s hydrogen economy. The company plans to lease 50 acres at Albuquerque's Aviation Center of Excellence, and to meet company goals, Gordon said a manufacturing facility needs to complete construction by the end of 2023 and be in operation by 2024.
“Hydrogen is the best and only scalable solution to truly decarbonize aviation, and we want to bring it to market decades sooner than anyone thought possible,” Gordon said in a statement.
Gordon joined Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and other local and state leaders on March 10 to announce Universal Hydrogen would expand to the Aviation Center of Excellence near the Albuquerque International Sunport. The company said it will make an investment of more than $254 million and bring about 500 employees over the next seven years.
At the future site, Universal Hydrogen will manufacture thousands of hydrogen storage capsules on-site that the company will deliver to airports around the world. Initially, the company will work on retrofit kits for regional turboprop airplanes but wants to add additional transportation verticals in the near future.
The retrofit kits include a motor, fuel cells and other equipment that airlines will install. After a flight, Universal Hydrogen refills the capsules and delivers them back to the airline. The company plans to purchase green hydrogen from third-party producers and partner with local producers to fill capsules, fuel planes and other transportation verticals.
The company was founded in 2020 by Gordon, Paul Eremenko and J.-P. Clarke. Across offices in California, Washington and France, it has 70 employees, the company said.
With Eremenko's signature, Universal Hydrogen entered into an agreement with the city of Albuquerque for a lease and development. The company will use the site for construction, manufacturing, assembly and aftermarket support, according to the agreement.
The terms of the agreement is proposed to last 30 years with an additional 20-year possible extension.
Through a connection with Sen. Martin Heinrich, the company said talks between the city and the state ramped up in late summer 2021. Heinrich's office said it worked with the company while it assessed possible locations.
"The clean hydrogen capsules that Universal Hydrogen plans to manufacture in Albuquerque will be central to reducing carbon pollution in air transportation — a major contributor to our climate crisis. I’m proud to welcome all of the jobs and investment that Universal Hydrogen is bringing to New Mexico,” Heinrich said in a statement.
Gordon said its decision to choose Albuquerque and New Mexico was in part because it was one of the few states that "got it" when it came to hydrogen. In part because of the presence of the national laboratories in the state, Gordon championed the quality of the local workforce to fill the hundreds of jobs.
Universal Hydrogen said chose New Mexico out of six states, but did not specify which other locations were considered.
"Washington state and New Mexico I think are the leading states in understanding hydrogen," Gordon said. "You have a sophisticated engineering workforce — a history of a really smart workforce — and the education system. Those things work together here in a way that they don't in other states."
Grant Taylor, director of business development and analytics at Albuquerque Regional Economic Alliance, was a point person in recruiting efforts. He said AREA helped conduct virtual and in-person site selection visits that began in September, adding the last visit took place in January.
"Representatives we worked with already had an affection for New Mexico, in part, because of its comparative prowess in aviation and aerospace — at a lower cost than southern California — and because the state has made carbon-free energy a strategic priority," Taylor wrote in a statement to Albuquerque Business First. "We further made the case for New Mexico on factors like workforce readiness and availability, higher-ed partnerships, cost of doing business and incentives."
Recruitment efforts included a $10 million commitment in Local Economic Development Act funding from the state. The city will be the fiscal agent for the LEDA awards. Additional LEDA incentives to assist in the expansion could be considered.
Sarah Wheeler, marketing and communications coordinator for the city's economic development department said Universal Hydrogen hasn't submitted an application for LEDA funds from the city as of Wednesday.
