The Real Finds Podcast, Episode 100: Hydrogen, Data Centers, and the End of Energy Poverty With Whitaker Irvin Jr.

A conversation between Gordon Lamphere, J.D. of Van Vlissingen and Co. and Whitaker Irvin Jr., CEO of Q Hydrogen, who is leading the commercialization of a breakthrough hydrogen technology and preparing to open one of the world’s first economically viable renewable hydrogen power plants in New Hampshire. Transcript edited for clarity.

Gordon Lamphere: I’m Gordon Lamphere, and welcome to the Real Finds Podcast, where we have real conversations with key entrepreneurs, activists, and researchers shaping the real estate industry and, as a result, our world. We’re happy to celebrate 100 episodes on the podcast. Over the course of 100 episodes, the most common refrain we get from our guests has been pretty simple: we don’t talk about energy and energy access enough. As a result, we’re speaking with Whitaker Irvin Jr., CEO of Q Hydrogen, who’s leading the commercialization of a breakthrough hydrogen technology that could break energy access barriers, and is preparing to open what will be one of the world’s first economically viable renewable hydrogen power plants in New Hampshire. On the podcast, we dive into how hydrogen factors into the data center power crisis, why grid interconnect queues are reshaping site selection, and what the future of plentiful behind-the-meter clean energy could bring to industrial development, site selection, and the global economy. If you’re interested in the energy business, data centers, or industrial site selection, this is a must-listen episode. Wit, thank you so much for hopping on today.

Whitaker Irvin Jr.: Of course, thank you for having me.

Gordon Lamphere: Before we get into everything, and it’s a very interesting subject, tell me a little about yourself. What got you into the industry?

Whitaker Irvin Jr.: In a roundabout way it was family, but my previous world was in aerospace and defense and finance. I figured someday I’d be involved in the family business; my father is actually the developer of this technology. I did my own thing for a while after college and then got the call in late 2010 to join, helping with operations for another aspect of the business, because this is something that actually started in industrial heating and cooling and ended up having IP considerations in a bunch of different spaces. It started then, and I’ve been focused on the hydrogen commercialization side since.

Gordon Lamphere: So why hydrogen?

Whitaker Irvin Jr.: What we’re talking about here is a different way of creating hydrogen, something not like anything else in the market today. When I mentioned the early days of HVAC, the scientific principles and technology we’re employing were based on ideas of creating a turbine with high and low pressure zones interacting with clockwise and counterclockwise motions simultaneously to create a hot and cold flow of air. Turns out there was a whole lot more than that going on. From the lab days of infancy, where this was an idea back in the late nineties, to the first versions in the mid-2000s, to the accidental discovery of being able to create volumes of hydrogen very efficiently back in late 2008, that was the beginning of the idea. Because what we’re talking about is a whole lot more than hydrogen. From a scientific perspective, everything was in an R&D phase: discovery, creating intellectual property. It wasn’t until 2014 that our family came together with investors and advisors and had to make a decision: what are we going to commercialize first? Looking at this entire body of global IP, the decision was made to focus on hydrogen, because everyone’s familiar with the idea. People have talked about hydrogen for decades. It hasn’t been financially viable, because the green side, the clean versions, is too expensive to produce with a lot of infrastructure involved, and the less expensive stuff has a significant carbon chain attached, so a lot of people don’t consider it clean. Because of those early lab discoveries, we decided to bring out this overall technology through hydrogen first.

Gordon Lamphere: What makes hydrogen valuable? We have a lot of real estate and finance folks who listen, but they’re not scientists, so they don’t necessarily understand the ins and outs. What makes it valuable in the market?

Whitaker Irvin Jr.: There are a lot of ways to look at it. There are values in the mobility space, values in the chemical space. But more applicable to your viewers would be the energy space, power production. In the world of hydrogen use today, it’s mostly backup or load leveling when you talk about the buildout of data centers. There are even buildings that use hydrogen fuel cells as backup as opposed to something like diesel generation. It’s something that can produce electricity and is considered clean. So if you have the proper incentives in place and government support, like the Inflation Reduction Act under the Biden administration and the work they were doing with 45V, that was an attempt to create an adrenaline shot in the arm of the industry, to create more production of hydrogen across the board with hubs and other things. Of course there’s been a lot of shifting and cancellations, and a lot of question marks about how it’s all going to shake out, especially on the stereotypical side. But the main point is this: if you figure out a way to produce inexpensive hydrogen, you can use it as a direct energy source, perhaps to produce kilowatt hours as prime power rather than backup. Then you could use it as a power source for your buildings, your developments, an off-grid installation related to data centers, or decentralizing grids.

Gordon Lamphere: We work with a lot of folks in the contractor space around data centers, and we’ve definitely heard hydrogen mentioned. How does hydrogen factor into the data center boom, as an energy source or in other capacities?

Whitaker Irvin Jr.: A lot of it, with the current known methods of producing hydrogen, is related to new versions of backup, because a lot of these data centers utilize diesel generation as backup if something happens with their grid connection, and diesel is not a clean way to provide backup power. In some cases there’s an end-user component associated with the data center that still has requirements for some level of clean, regardless of what’s happening in any administration. There are a lot of groups looking to be ready for whatever changes in this world, and being environmentally conscious is a big part of that. So putting in a hydrogen fuel cell as backup for a data center is one way of using it. The hydrogen itself, when you store it that way, has volatility concerns, but it’s stable in that space for a long period, so it provides a good way to check some of the boxes their end users would be looking for on the backup side. It can also be useful in load leveling or dealing with load shedding. You could have periods where power’s expensive and use the fuel cell to offset some of that, or store energy when power’s less expensive, going back and forth on the loads to lower your overall cost per kilowatt hour. Those are some of the stereotypical ways regularly utilized hydrogen technology is employed today.

Gordon Lamphere: Say I’m looking to implement hydrogen as a secondary source of energy. What kind of infrastructure is needed to develop hydrogen as an energy form for, say, my data center?

Whitaker Irvin Jr.: There are two things here. First I’ll talk about the normal way it’s employed with regular technology, then what we’re doing that’s very different. In the hydrogen space today, you’d look at your overall plan and decide what component fits into some sort of clean aspect for your development or portfolio, then choose how to employ it. It’s as simple as buying a hydrogen fuel cell from providers; they have some in the United States, but a lot come from Asia, and you include that in your overall electrical plan for the facility. There’s also the component of storing the gaseous hydrogen itself. You’d source that from a lot of the stereotypical producers, large industrial gas companies that produce volumes of hydrogen at large refining areas, so you can have deliveries on site, and then you store it in very specific areas under cryogenics or pressure. In that case you’re talking about backup power and load leveling.

But what Q Hydrogen is doing is something different. We’re going to be opening what will be the world’s first renewable hydrogen power plant that will be economically viable without a subsidy. This facility is in Groveton, New Hampshire, and we will initially be providing power to a version of a behind-the-meter data center, to prove a point. We’re living in an age where there’s not enough power available for all the demand we’re seeing for AI and regular data centers, and everyone’s looking for a solution. So we’re going to show a version of how that possibility can exist, where you could have an installation with behind-the-meter power. Further, we’ve made massive strides, something we’ll be releasing very soon, on some forms of hydrogen-based fuels that massively reduce the volatility we normally see with hydrogen. We’ll be introducing both of those things in just a few months. It’s taken a while to get everything going, best-laid plans, but we’re targeting an opening this year to unveil both that, as well as a plan where we’ll provide kilowatt hours to co-located users, doing it in New England at rates you’d normally see in the southern and western US.

When you think about the cost of electricity, it’s rising everywhere. When we started this project in New Hampshire, it was for roughly fourteen to seventeen cents a kilowatt hour, which now, given the current state of things, isn’t a bad deal. Now it can touch up to thirty cents, so it’s a totally different equation, but our plan is still to do what we’ve always talked about, including transmission and distribution. So it’s something that can exist behind the meter and provide power at very reasonable rates that will allow industrial users to co-locate and build out their facilities. We’re talking to several people in different industries, including timber and different types of manufacturing. It will create an economic zone that couldn’t exist previously because power was too expensive.

Gordon Lamphere: Power is ultimately the basis for most economic activity we do. Beyond price, you mentioned storing. What kind of challenges are there in storing hydrogen, traditionally and today?

Whitaker Irvin Jr.: Hydrogen is extremely volatile. For fuel cells, if you’re using the gaseous form, it’s stored at anywhere between twelve to fourteen thousand PSI in very specialized cylinders that have temperature considerations, so there’s an energy component to how you store that gaseous hydrogen. If you’re talking about liquid forms, you’re storing something at around four to six thousand PSI and extreme cryogenic temperatures. Both create challenges because it’s very expensive to store either way. When you look at the cost associated with the hydrogen itself, you have the cost from the large producers, but then the cost of storage, which in a lot of cases can at least double the cost you’re paying for the hydrogen initially. So it’s pricey, which is one reason the Inflation Reduction Act was put together, to create incentive for new ways of production and storage, innovation in a space that has stayed relatively static. There have been incremental positive gains, but nothing really huge. One of the things we’ll be talking about in the new form of what we’ve created is something that allows for storage and transport without the cryogenic aspects. People will hear this and think hydrogen is hydrogen, it is the way it is, but what I’m talking about is an innovation in relation to a stable form of hydrogen-based fuel. There are other aspects, but it’s something that makes it easier to store, easier to transport, and more applicable in a lot of industries much sooner.

Gordon Lamphere: When we’re talking about industrial development and site selection, how do you think hydrogen can play into that? One of the biggest challenges we see for large industrial producers, data centers, anybody that needs a lot of power, is that they have to get power there. How does hydrogen play into the access-to-power game we’re seeing play out in 2026?

Whitaker Irvin Jr.: Talking first about the access-to-power game, because that’s the big elephant in the room, the power piece drives everything. You can have the best site in the world and an idea that they’ll get an interconnect, but unless you already have something signed, sealed, delivered, you’re hoping that a regulator or a framework within a state works positively for you. A lot of developers are seeing five-to-seven-year interconnect queues, in some cases longer. Some of these big projects seem perfectly sited, and we think, there’s power everywhere, those big lines are there, there are available electrons we can go get. And they say, no, those are for different purposes, you have to go through this other route. I live in Park City, Utah, and I travel all over the world, and I see this everywhere, the same story.

Right now, the way hydrogen plays into the power piece, if you already have your grid interconnect, I see it as an additive piece that will help you with data center clients somewhat concerned about their environmental impact, which in another way could allow for faster development on the project. Even though stereotypical hydrogen is expensive, it’s something that could help move the needle. Price sensitivity in the data center space right now is less of a concern, because people just need the power. Every single kilowatt of electricity that’s reasonably priced, with easy access to fiber lines and everything else, is being sucked up instantly. It’s like a needle in the haystack trying to find something at this point. So a lot of developers are trying to be creative: what can we do, and are there options that could be utilized in a behind-the-meter setup? Right now with regular hydrogen, I’d say the answer is not likely. But with what we’re doing, very soon there will be another way of going about it.

The interconnect-queue bottleneck Wit describes is precisely the site-selection constraint we mapped out in Inference AI Is Rewriting The Commercial Real Estate Site Selection Playbook.

There’s work happening in this space with small modular reactors, the small nuclear reactors, and what we’re doing goes hand in hand with that; we’ll be to market a bit faster. But it’s something that will allow for sites where, I’ll use an example, we’ve been in talks with people who have a great site with access to fiber, but when they talk about the grid, it’s going to take a decade to get power out there. What we’re talking about is on-site production of this hydrogen-based fuel. If there’s a reasonable water source, and eventually we’ll be able to use brackish or salt water, but some source of water, and we have a method to reduce the amount of water resource being used, because I know that’s a hot topic too. We’re talking about on-site production with our technology that would allow use of reciprocating generators to produce power, with some modest modification, not a rebuild of the whole thing. We’re moving into being able to use what we’re doing in turbines, and there are ways of repurposing old assets. For example, we’re exploring what’s necessary to bring an old coal power plant back online in a way that has the facility exist under its pre-existing air emissions permit but with lower emissions, so you don’t trigger issues with the EPA or local environmental authorities, and take some of these idle assets, bring them back, and use that as a portion of your power while other systems are built up.

Gordon Lamphere: How does capital and the world of finance see hydrogen? One of the things fundamental in our business is how the banking industry and finance perceive a development or an opportunity. What’s the perception from the folks on Wall Street and in London and the finance capitals of the world?

Whitaker Irvin Jr.: Again, a two-pronged answer. There’s the known way of making and producing hydrogen that’s directly attached to outcomes associated with government propping up, basically subsidies. It’s very hard to make stereotypical hydrogen a financially motivating mechanism unless you’ve successfully gotten access to capital through what we’re doing in the US with the Inflation Reduction Act and 45V, or in Europe with some of the versions they’re employing. This is happening, by the way; there are projects tied to these incentive programs, and I believe they’re necessary. I think of it like the early days of wind and solar, when people thought wind and solar were a ridiculous, expensive idea. Then the government stepped in, provided backstops that allowed for innovation, better ways to produce, and the overall cost reduced. Now wind and solar are significant parts of the portfolios for major power companies. So from a financial perspective, tying hydrogen to these programs and building out systems based on that can be very lucrative. You have the three dollars a kilogram as a direct pay from the US government associated with 45V, which is highly interesting for a lot of these projects.

There’s also a blend. In the US we keep talking about green hydrogen, which is wind and solar being used to produce enough electricity to run an electrolyzer that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen, an extremely expensive way of doing it. Europe had been going down that same road but has shifted more toward blue hydrogen, where there’s more carbon involved, like steam methane reforming of natural gas, but they do carbon capture on the other side, so it’s considered blue even though they’re using a carbon-based molecule to get the hydrogen in the first place. All of those methods, if you figure out the right formula that includes the incentive programs, can pencil in a way that’s interesting to financial institutions. What we’re talking about is different, and it’s going to take time for the industry to understand it. We’re working with partners to create this new knowledge base with the innovation itself. But we’re taking hydrogen from a load-leveling source or something supporting the grid and turning it into an actual productive unit that would be considered alongside coal and natural gas, using it for base load power production. In that case we’re talking about hydrogen as a power source, and that will shift a lot of the discussion once it’s out there. With great claims comes a need for even greater evidence, which is why we’re going to provide the evidence soon, in the form of an actual physical implementation.

Wit’s framing of power as the true valuation driver echoes the revaluation thesis we laid out in Valuing Chicago Data Centers and Adjacent Properties, and the data-center-adjacent opportunity we explored with Bruce Garrison in The AI Real Estate Goldmine Everyone’s Missing.

Gordon Lamphere: What are we not talking about enough regarding hydrogen? What’s something that someone who might know a bit about it should really be diving into?

Whitaker Irvin Jr.: I think being more creative on the forms and states hydrogen can exist in. We live in a world where innovations are occurring all the time, and the old paradigm of living in the box is being degraded every day by things we see even from our biggest, most well-known educational institutions. So being open-minded. One of my favorite sayings is, I don’t know what I don’t know. I like being in that space, because it allows me to be open to other things, living by the idea that I’m not the smartest person in the room and always being open to input from others.

There’s another aspect I like to address, more related to the AI and data center world and this push for so much power to go into that space. I understand the technological reasons, the corporate reasons, the Wall Street reasons, the advancement of our knowledge base. But one of the things missing in a lot of these conversations is the human aspect. I keep reading articles about this CEO of an AI company or a tech company talking about how the future is going to be ruled by the neurodivergent and the trades. They’re missing something. We have to figure out a way for people to be part of the human experience and create the next thing. AI has the opportunity to get a lot of people off the wheel, so to speak, and could be a bastion for creativity, for so many other things to come into this world. I think we need to start talking about that piece, as opposed to everyone’s going to be in a breadline.

Gordon Lamphere: That’s the scary part of the future some people are putting out there. I saw one report recently mentioning we could have forty or fifty percent unemployment, and I personally don’t think that’s tenable as a civilization. Hopefully we don’t get to that point.

Whitaker Irvin Jr.: If you see that, it means there’s an onus on those creating this new version of the world to figure out how to include everybody in it. That’s what I’m talking about, the creative aspects, the next things, the stuff that will bring humanity and the way we interact with this planet, or perhaps become a spacefaring civilization. All of these things can be very positive, but we need to start looking at ways to include more people in this whole thing, as opposed to saying forty or fifty percent are going to be unemployed.

Gordon Lamphere: What does a positive energy future look like for humanity, say ten years out?

Whitaker Irvin Jr.: I truly believe energy is going to become something commonplace. Years ago a reporter asked me what one of my life goals would be, attached to this technology, and I believe this is possible: I believe we can end energy poverty globally in my lifetime. There are so many places in the world where dung is being used as a heating or cooking source, where there’s no access to clean water and no energy source at the base. I think this is something we can solve. I see technologies like ours and others coming together to create something that allows plentiful energy to be available globally in a way that’s also environmentally conscious. I’m not badmouthing the past; I believe our currently existing systems exist for a reason, and there’s going to be integration of those systems into the new version of the world. But I also think there are ways that how we interact even with our carbon molecule will end up becoming better for the world. I’ve seen some of it in the work we’re doing, still utilizing those aspects in some of our commercialization strategies but massively reducing the environmental impact. So I’m actually very optimistic. For example, I was just in Dallas last week for Trammell Crow’s family office event, and EarthX. It was really nice to be around a group of people thinking about true, actionable solutions that are applicable across the board, doing it in a way that’s open to the past and the future as opposed to trying to be one versus the other.

Gordon Lamphere: We’ve gone to the future, and hopefully it’s that bright energy future we discussed. Let’s take a step back. If you could travel back to the start of your career and give yourself one bit of advice, what would it be?

Whitaker Irvin Jr.: Not to be so quick to judge. It’s something I employ now. It’s very easy for us to rise to the occasion; we’ve all been trained to immediately respond to things. But taking a breath is a really strong way of processing, and it also creates a level of empathy. Say a person says something that rubs you the wrong way in business. It’s very easy to quickly jump. Now I’m more in the space of, okay, I hear it, then take a step back, breathe, and create a level of empathy with what may be going on with that person. It totally transforms how you interact with that environment and could very well shift the energy from something that could have been perceived as negative into something positive. So that’s it: don’t be so quick to judge, don’t jump to conclusions.

Gordon Lamphere: One of our most successful investors told me once, be the last person on the team to come to a conclusion about whether a property is good or bad when you’re doing a site visit. Early in my career I thought it was kind of silly, honestly; when you’re young in your twenties, you think, no, there are some bad properties out there. But then I thought more about it and realized there’s real brilliance in trying to look at every possible option and leaving yourself as open as you can until the end. That doesn’t mean you wait days, but a couple of minutes, take some time to make up your mind.

Whitaker Irvin Jr.: Exactly. A couple of minutes. That’s enough to change everything.

Gordon Lamphere: We’ve only spent a couple of minutes together, but one of the things we truly love about the podcast is that the men and women in the arena really know who else to reach out to, and we’ve had some of our best guests through that process. Who’s the next person we should bring on?

Whitaker Irvin Jr.: I gave it some thought, and I have a friend, Gabe Tishman, who is from Tishman, part of the family, very involved in all aspects of it, including the real estate side, the investment side, and some of the philanthropic pieces attached. I think he’d be great to have on your podcast.

Gordon Lamphere: We’d love to have him on, and we’d love for you to make the introduction. If somebody wants to reach out to you, what’s the best way to get in contact?

Whitaker Irvin Jr.: Just shoot me an email, wirvin2 at quasarwave.com.

Gordon Lamphere: Wit, thank you so very much for hopping on today. We have to have you on in the future once you get production up and running.

Whitaker Irvin Jr.: Thanks, Gordon. Look forward to it, and thank you for having me.

Gordon Lamphere: Thanks again to Whitaker, we appreciate his insights. If you enjoyed the podcast, please give us a like, a five-star rating, and a review. Your comments, interactions, and subscriptions truly matter and help us continue to get quality guests. You can find us on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. I’m Gordon Lamphere with the Real Finds Podcast, and thank you for listening.

Van Vlissingen and Co. has been the Midwest’s oldest commercial real estate brokerage, development, and management firm since 1879, and today is independently ranked the #1 commercial real estate agency in Chicagoland, home to the #1 independently ranked agent, Gordon Lamphere, and the region’s #1 ranked commercial property management team. If you own, manage, or invest in data center, industrial, or energy-adjacent property across Lake County, the North Shore, the Northwest and O’Hare corridors, DuPage and the I-88 corridor, Will County, or southern Wisconsin’s Pleasant Prairie, Kenosha, and Racine markets, contact Van Vlissingen and Co. at 📞 847-634-2300 or 🌐 vvco.com. For a market-wide view of where these dynamics sit today, see our State of the Chicagoland Commercial Real Estate Market for Q2 2026.