Powerful together: Marty Neese and Andrew Cunningham on the next chapter for Ballard and GeoPura

Bringing Ballard and GeoPura together creates a stronger, more complete proposition for customers across hydrogen, power and mobility.

Ballard brings more than four decades of fuel cell technology expertise, global reach and established customer relationships. GeoPura brings proven stationary power, hydrogen production, logistics, refuelling and Energy-as-a-Service capabilities.

Together, the businesses provide the technology, fuel, infrastructure and operational expertise needed to deploy hydrogen solutions at scale.

Marty Neese, CEO of Ballard, and Andrew Cunningham, President of Ballard and founder of GeoPura, talk about why the businesses are coming together, what it means for customers and the opportunities ahead.

What have you created by bringing Ballard and GeoPura together?

Marty: “We’ve joined Ballard’s technical expertise in fuel cell engines with GeoPura’s end-to-end capabilities to produce, distribute and use hydrogen, creating power anywhere you want it, anytime you want it. We’ve provided fuel cells to GeoPura for its Hydrogen Power Units for a number of years.

 Now, by joining forces, we’re accelerating the deployment of those systems across stationary power while bringing GeoPura’s Energy as a Service capabilities to Ballard’s existing mobility customers. 

It gives us a much broader capability across hydrogen, stationary power and mobility.”

Andrew: “What excites me is that we’re building on a relationship that already works.

Our customers have enough on their plates before worrying precisely how their clean power is going to get to their site. They don’t want to worry about where the fuel comes from, how the logistics work or how things get maintained. We take care of that.

Bringing the businesses together means we offer that service to more customers, across more applications and at greater scale.”

Why Ballard, why GeoPura and why now?

Marty: “Two reasons really rise to prominence.

One is the Energy-as-a-Service ecosystem solution. Being able to deliver a full solution end-to-end, across production, distribution, stationary power and mobility, is paramount to scaling our business.

The second is growth. GeoPura gives Ballard a compelling stationary power proposition and significantly broadens the customer base we serve. As we grow, we drive lower costs and bring more value to customers.”

Andrew: “GeoPura’s customers love the service we provide. It’s clean energy and reliable energy. But we’ve provided it on a relatively narrow geographic basis, primarily in the UK and increasingly in mainland Europe.

Many of our customers operate around the world, particularly in North America. Ballard brings the financial strength, local presence and longstanding relationships that give us the springboard we need to widen that service.”

You’ve worked together since GeoPura launched. What has that partnership already demonstrated?

Andrew: “We genuinely found the best supplier in the world, and we’ve had a great relationship since then. We’ve been able to build a rock-solid Energy-as-a-Service capability around that fuel cell technology.

Being “the best” isn’t just a technology thing. The technology has to work, that’s a given. But you also need engineering support, long-term commitment and a company you know will be there throughout the whole product lifecycle. That’s what we’ve found with Ballard.”

Marty: “GeoPura has demonstrated what Ballard fuel cells deliver at a system level. The applications GeoPura has designed and productised have made Ballard fuel cells deliver six nines of reliability in proven, demanding environments. That’s not a trivial thing. It’s a very big deal.

Now we’re bringing together what Ballard knows about fuel cells with what GeoPura knows about high-reliability operations.

The teams are highly complementary too. We’re bringing together expertise across fuel cells, hydrogen, engineering, logistics, system integration, power generation and operations. It’s that one plus one equals three dynamic.”

Where do you see the biggest opportunities for the combined business?

Marty: “Everywhere is the short answer.

The hydrogen fuel market itself is enormous. Then you have data centres, which are seeing a once-in-a-lifetime infrastructure build-out creating demand for primary power, backup power and construction power.

It goes much wider than that. Construction and infrastructure need more power, while mobility continues to present a major opportunity for fuel cells.

Fuel, mobility and stationary power are all in growth mode and heading towards really significant addressable markets. The landscape of opportunity has just got much richer and much more comprehensive.”

Andrew: “And customers increasingly want bigger solutions.

Our original HPU provides 250 kW and can be combined for low-megawatt applications. Working with Ballard, we developed HPU2, which provides half a megawatt in a similar form factor and scales up to 50 megawatts. And that 50 megawatts, we’re going to push further than that.

At the other end of the spectrum, customers still need convenient portable power. We’re customer-led, so the opportunity is to work with customers across that spectrum and understand the problems they need us to solve.”

How does hydrogen fit into the changing energy system?

Andrew: “We’re adding enormous amounts of renewable generation, and when that generation is there, it’s absolutely marvellous. But sometimes it isn’t there.

We need the ability to store that energy so we dispatch it where and when we need it.

A fuel is a great reservoir. Making a fuel out of excess energy is a great way of storing that energy. You then move that fuel wherever you want it.

That’s the way hydrogen operates in this ecosystem. We take renewable energy, store it as hydrogen, move it to where it’s needed and use it to generate clean power.”

Marty: “And this is happening against a backdrop of enormous growth in electricity demand. The infrastructure build-out associated with data centres and AI is constraining the energy system.

Even with huge amounts of renewable generation coming onto the supply side, businesses are finding it harder to access additional power where and when they need it.

That creates opportunities to augment the grid, add resilience or supplement power wherever there’s a constraint.”

How does the combination help you reach more customers and markets?

At the same time, we’re bringing GeoPura’s hydrogen production, logistics and refuelling expertise to Ballard’s existing customers. That opens up opportunities across mobility and other fuel cell applications.

UK, Europe, Canada, US. That’s a lot of market opportunity and years and years of growth right in front of us.”

If we were having this conversation again in three years, what would success look like?

Marty: “From my standpoint, it would be a very profitable company with very strong growth dynamics.

We want to take the Energy-as-a-Service model and become world-class at delivering it end-to-end. Profitability and growth give us the ability to keep investing, innovating and improving the economics for customers.

That creates a flywheel: great products, great solutions, lower costs and customers wanting more and more of what we provide.

Everything we’re trying to do only matters insofar as our customers are feeling the benefit of it. The time is now. We’ve got everything we need right in front of us to deliver what customers want at very large scale.”

Andrew: “You’re not going to get too much difference between Marty and me on this one. The first answer is profitability. Something Marty and I share is that this is more than a business to us. We genuinely feel the world has a problem, and that problem is a scale problem. It’s a scale response that’s going to help move the dial on solving it.

We have the solutions and customers who are enthusiastic about those solutions. We want more customers and happy customers who want more of what we do, but it’s got to be done profitably.”

Ballard and GeoPura bring together fuel cell technology, hydrogen production and logistics, power generation and operational expertise to serve more customers across more applications and markets.

Whether you need reliable power, hydrogen supply or want to explore how fuel cells support your operations, talk to our team about how we help.