Pierre-Etienne FRANC

Co-founder and CEO, Hy24

Pierre-Etienne Franc is considered as one of the leading architects of the hydrogen economy. He served as Chair of Hydrogen Europe (2011- 2016) and then co-founded and coordinated the World Hydrogen Council as Secretary (2017-2020). Within Air Liquide - where he spent +25 years of his career – Pierre-Etienne occupied several global business, strategy, and operational management positions. He notably spent 10 years leading the advanced technology companies, venture capital and hydrogen energy activities for the Group. In 2021, he co-founded FiveT Hydrogen, a hydrogen investment pureplay, and then co-founded Hy24, a 50/50 regulated Asset Manager (a joint venture between Ardian and FiveT Hydrogen). Hy24 currently manages the world’s largest clean hydrogen infrastructure fund, which is today up and running with 2 billion euros of allocations and has already made 8 investments. The fund ambitions to invest on the whole clean hydrogen value chain, deploying large scale projects in the most dynamic geographies in Europe, Asia, and America. Pierre Etienne is the CEO of Hy24.

Since the beginning of his career, Franc has built a development approach driven by a belief in the power of alliances, joint ventures, and co-development. It has helped to open new businesses (co-generation), new territories (Russia, China, Brazil in the steel markets), new markets (hydrogen energy, IT), and new technologies (electrolysis, hydrogen tanks, fuel cells in forklifts).

In 1994, he wrote his first book, with Christopher Hogg focusing on the importance of customer management, which was published by Dunod. During the COP21 held in Paris in 2015, Franc published a book that detailed his vision for the hydrogen economy, with a preface by Pascal Lamy. His 2017 “Entreprise et bien commun” is a reflection on the role of business in improving society, with a preface by Gaël Giraud.

Franc graduated in 1993 from France’s HEC business school, where he was awarded the HEC Foundation Prize and the second prize of the Ernst & Young Foundation for his final thesis on industrial joint ventures

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