Customer Corner : Tyczka – Germany’s Hydrogen Hustle in Grease and Smoke

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In Germany’s booming hydrogen parade, one name keeps slipping through the confetti – Tyczka Group. The Bavarian gas giant has spent decades selling itself as a clean-energy pioneer, shaking off its old propane stains for a greener glow. But peel back the paint and it’s the same engine running on greed. Cartels, explosions, subsidy whispers – the whole portfolio. And now Tyczka’s climbed into bed with Accelera by Cummins, buying electrolyser tech from a partner already knee-deep in its own scandals. It’s not innovation. It’s a handshake between two firms that treat fines like service charges.

The Cartel Years: Sharing Customers, Fixing Prices

Long before the hydrogen hype, Tyczka was running with Germany’s LPG cartel – a seven-member club that carved up customers and price lists from 1997 to 2005. The Federal Cartel Office called it what it was: organised cheating. Fines hit 208 million euros in 2007. Tyczka’s share was big enough to sting, but not enough to change its ways. When they appealed, the court upped the penalty to 244 million, just to make the point.

For eight years, these firms treated households and businesses like a captive herd. Pay up or freeze. Then, once caught, they paid their dues and carried on polishing their “family company” credentials. The same breath that talks about sustainability still reeks of price-fixing exhaust.

The Hydrogen Fireball: Green Dreams, Black Smoke

June 2024, Gersthofen. Tyczka’s new hydrogen refuelling station had been open less than a week when it erupted. Flames ripped through the facility after a compressor failure, tearing the company’s PR script to shreds. Nobody died – luck, not skill – but the images told their own story: progress by marketing, risk by design.

Officials blamed a component fault. Tyczka promised reviews, audits, learnings. The usual hymns. But when you rush for the next subsidy headline, safety becomes optional. Germany’s hydrogen rollout is littered with the same burns: too fast, too fragile, too proud to pause. Gersthofen just happened to light the match.

Subsidies and Sleight of Hand

Follow the money and the fumes start to smell the same. Germany’s clean-energy funding drive has ballooned into billions, and not all of it has landed cleanly. Investigators talk about inflated project claims and “creative” emissions reporting – five billion euros tangled in disputes. Tyczka hasn’t been charged, but its name keeps circling the same grant pools that regulators are now draining.

It’s the kind of story you could only write in the age of green capitalism: firms tripping over themselves to look virtuous while dipping both hands in the public purse. Tyczka’s whistleblower hotline might impress auditors, but it won’t drown out a record that already hums with self-interest.

The Cummins Connection: Filth Meets Familiar Filth

September 2025. Tyczka Hydrogen orders a 5-megawatt PEM electrolyser from Accelera by Cummins for its Schweinfurt hub. Five million euros in Bavarian subsidy money. Two tonnes of hydrogen a day. Six thousand tonnes of CO₂ saved on paper. And none of it scrubs the stench.

Accelera is Cummins’ clean arm – a sleeve stitched to a shirt soaked in diesel fraud. Tyczka calls them “experienced partners”. That’s one way to put it. Between Cummins’ billion-dollar emissions fine and Tyczka’s cartel record, the partnership reads like a punchline written in grant paperwork. One burns credibility, the other flammable gas. Together, they call it progress.

The Pattern

Cartels, explosions, creative accounting, and now a collaboration with one of the dirtiest names in American manufacturing. Tyczka’s story isn’t redemption; it’s rebranding. Germany’s hydrogen future may be bright on the slideshows, but behind it sits the same old crowd – the ones who call pollution “transition” and fines “adjustments”.

If this is what passes for clean power, then the industry’s running on fumes and bravado. Tyczka gets to call it innovation. The rest of us can smell what it really is.

Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project

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