CzechCrunch: Bill Gates-backed artificial fuel and sewer water heating. Czech 2JCP targets two billion CZK revenue

The group from Ra?ice specialises in supplies for energy projects. Both for conventional gas-fired power plants and futuristic ones.

Reuter West is Berlin's largest power plant with an output of almost 600 megawatts, it went into operation at the end of the 1980s and is primarily powered by coal. But as part of the greening of Germany's economy, it is now undergoing an upgrade that includes a unique project with 75 megawatts of heat pumps- these will suck in wastewater, take a few degrees out of it, and send the accumulated heat to apartment buildings, heating up to 45,000 homes. The key components of the system, the heat exchangers, are manufactured by the Czech energy group 2JCP. "We want to be at the forefront of green transformation efforts, but not at any cost. Europe is sobering up, we see it all around us," says Vojtěch K?enovsky, the company's CEO.

2JCP, which is based in Ra?ice, North Bohemia, near the sports canal on the river Elbe, is part of billionaire Igor Fait's Jet Investment industrial group. He and his colleagues bought it for their Jet 2 fund four years ago, and it was a bet on the development of the gas and transformational energy sector.

This is where Krenovsky's remark about Europe sobering up comes in - after the Russian attack on Ukraine and in the greatest euphoria around the Green Deal, it seemed that Europe would also condemn gas as an unviable resource. "It is confirmed that gas has to be reckoned with. Europe will not survive without it for the time being," said Krenovsky, who has headed 2JCP since 2022 and previously held the position of Ra?ice’s Operations Director for almost a decade.

In Ra?ice and at the second production site in T?ebí?, they continue to work on various auxiliary equipment, such as a modular acoustic enclosure for the largest gas turbine in the world, which is manufactured by Siemens Energy and has the same power output as the Berlin power plant mentioned in the introduction.

"Interest in gas has revived in Europe, and retrofits and upgrades of older gas-fired power plants are on the rise," adds Marek Pali?ka, who oversees 2JCP within the Jet Investment group. But he adds: "That doesn't mean we've given up on projects that are more forward-looking." Ra?ice is particularly fond of technologies that aim to produce hydrogen...

For Siemens Energy, they have become the premier packager of electrolyzers, i.e. equipment in which hydrogen and oxygen are separated from water with the help of electricity. Together they are involved, for example, in the FlagshipONE project being built in Sweden by the Danish energy company ?rsted, which will use green, i.e. environmentally produced hydrogen to produce synthetic fuel for giant cargo ships.

"The customer will mainly be the Danish shipping company Maersk, but the technology itself has already attracted the attention of companies such as LEGO and Novo Nordisk," Pali?ka says. Incidentally, Bill Gates, or the Breakthrough Energy Catalyst fund he founded, has invested in the FlagshipONE project and owns a 15 percent stake in it.

And K?enovsky also adds another experimental project - with the British company KEW Technology, they are developing a technology that can transform waste into synthetic gas and then, by splitting it, obtain both very pure hydrogen and CO2, which can be used to produce fertilisers. Together, the companies are also working on technology that will convert waste into synthetic fuels such as e-methanol or rDME.

"Synthetic fuel production in general is something that is quite interesting and is getting more and more attention from global companies," he recalls, saying that this type of hydrogen is partly green, but that the range of hydrogen is getting wider - green, blue, grey, rainbow, or even pink. Pink? "That's created by separation from emissions from factories."

In 2022, the 2JCP group reached a turnover of 1.7 billion CZK and had an ambition to approach or surpass two billion for 2023. However, it will only be able to reach that milestone this year. "Last year, on one hand, there was some market cooling visible, with some orders delayed or postponed. In addition, the economic performance for 2022 is somewhat distorted by the sale of the subsidiary PBS Power Equipment, for which we have found a strategic partner," Pali?ka explains why the two billion mark will not be reached until 2024.

K?enovsky, however, as his nature dictates, is brimming with energy and enthusiasm not only for this year, but also for the years to come: "What is happening in the United States is very promising, we have received five times more orders there. In general, we have strengthened our business development department, including our UK office."

At the same time, he and his colleagues feel what most engineering companies in the Czech Republic know: that it is very difficult to find quality employees, especially in a factory about an hour's drive from Prague. "It's painful, but it can't be helped," shrugs K?enovsky.

When he and Pali?ka are asked to sum up what they see around them, their response is quite clear: "Something that could be called a gas renaissance is taking place. And a sobering of Europe. Gas will be great as a complement to nuclear, as a kind of back-up and transition to more sustainable technologies. We will need it for a long time to come."

Read the original article in Czech at https://cc.cz/umele-palivo-s-podporou-billa-gatese-i-vyhrivani-vodou-ze-stoky-cesti-2jcp-cili-na-dve-miliardy/