On September 4, Iwatani which is engaged in the hydrogen station business also in California, the U.S. was awarded the subsidy consignment by California Energy Commission (CEC) to develop hydrogen stations.

The project is intended to subsidize the development of hydrogen station by California Air Resource Board and CEC which plans to support the hydrogen station project to develop 36 more stations with an investment of 39.10 million dollar in total including the 5 million dollar (equivalent to 500 million yen) aided by Volkswagen Environmental Mitigation Trust Funds. In California 45 hydrogen stations have already been in operation.

Iwatani was chosen for subsidization with two affiliates of Equilon in the First Element and Shell Oil groups engaging in energy-related business locally. The three awarded companies are going to develop hydrogen stations with using the subsidy and their own fund.
California is headed for minimizing candidates applied for subsidization for well-reliable implementation of the supporting project. In fact, they say six more applicants were not selected at this time.
It has come up to a local topic that foreign based Iwatani was chosen pushing aside regional applicants like Air Products.

The supposed reason of the choice seems to be Iwatani’s abundant experiences in the hydrogen station business having 37 stations in Japan. It must also be a reason for the subsidy consignment that Iwatani of America has already been operating four hydrogen stations in California.

Although specifications of the station to be constructed are unknown, most of the stations would be in the class of over 1,000 kg dispensed per day which is 3 to 5 times jump from the conventional design. With the background of increased deliveries of FCV or FC bus the up-sized volume of output capacity could lead to a rise in the sales volume and an enhanced business performance of management. The means to deliver hydrogen will be quite possibly dominated by liquefied hydrogen.

Iwatani has long been aiming to develop hydrogen stations at about 20 locations also in the U.S. It is expected that the consignment at this time will make quite a big step to accomplish the aim.