The founder of Wise is among those backing a British producer of synthetic natural gas, which has raised £25 million as it gears up to build the largest plant of its kind in Europe.
Rivan already operates the UK’s largest synthetic natural gas plant in the UK and is looking to scale up by opening a new manufacturing facility in south London, as well as accelerating its research and development to help bring down the cost in relation to fossil fuels.
The latest funding round was led by IQ Capital, a venture capital firm, alongside Plural, an early-stage investment fund led by Taavet Hinrikus, co-founder of the Estonian fintech company Wise.
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London-based Rivan was founded in 2024 by entrepreneur Harvey Hodd with the aim of finding an alternative to the fossil fuels used to provide power for heavy industries that cannot be electrified.
Hodd said that the company had already secured commercial contracts with large multinationals in the cement, chemicals and steel-making industries.
“The war in the Middle East has shone a light on just how reliant the UK is on fossil fuels and just how important it’s going to be for energy security to have domestic production of energy, one of which is synthetic fuel,” Hodd said.
Hinrikus, who no longer has an operational role at Wise, said: “Producing synthetic fuel has historically been constrained by cost, complexity and scale. Rivan has made rapid progress in addressing each of these, moving from first principles through to a functioning system with early commercial validation.
“That combination of scientific progress, engineering execution and early traction is rare, and puts Harvey and the team in a strong position to build a new category of domestic energy production.”
Taavet Hinrikus, the co-founder of WiseJason Alden/Getty images
Rivan currently operates a plant that manufactures the equipment needed to produce the gas, and a deployment facility in Swindon, where the gas is made and injected into the grid. It is aiming to build a second deployment facility, also in Wiltshire, before the end of the year, which would be Europe’s largest.
The cost of the synthetic gas produced by Rivan is between £80 and £90 per megawatt hour, compared with about €40 per megawatt hour for European natural gas. However, with increased scale the company is aiming to be competitive with natural gas within three years.
Its ambition is to produce 1 billion cubic metres of synthetic natural gas annually within the next decade — enough to meet about 20 per cent of the UK’s industrial gas needs, it estimates.