Endeavour: Using Methane to Crack the AI Power Problem

Few challenges capture the growing pains of AI quite like the scramble for sustainable, high-performance energy.

This tension is playing out across the global data centre ecosystem, where computing demand continues to surge.

According to the IEA, data centres currently account for around 1.5% of global electricity use – a share that could climb to 3% by 2030 as AI workloads and digital infrastructure expand.

Meeting this escalating energy appetite without intensifying carbon emissions remains a formidable task.

Enter Endeavour, a New York-based infrastructure innovation specialist, which claims to have engineered a breakthrough.

Its new technology, Pact, is designed to provide a continuous stream of clean hydrogen fuel while capturing and converting carbon by-products into commercially useful materials – potentially rewriting the energy equation for the next generation of AI data infrastructure.

A leap in hydrogen production

So how does Pact actually work?

According to Endeavour, Pact operates as a continuous-flow, closed-loop methane cracking system engineered to produce hydrogen at both a lower cost and a lower carbon intensity than electrolysis-based “green” hydrogen.

Hydrogen may once have been hailed as the silver bullet for the clean energy transition, but its reputation has dimmed in recent years thanks to the vast energy input needed to make the fuel viable.

With Pact, Endeavour aims to flip that narrative.

What sets the company’s approach apart is how it handles carbon: rather than emitting CO₂ as a byproduct, Pact captures the carbon and converts it into solid graphite – turning a traditional waste stream into a potentially valuable material for tech manufacturing and energy storage applications.

Jakob Carnemark, CEO and Founder of Endeavour, says the technology addresses a critical bottleneck: “There have been few low-carbon options that can be deployed quickly at the scale and cost needed for AI campuses and heavy industry. The Pact system fills that gap.”

Jakob adds that Pact is the first technology capable of supplying clean hydrogen for AI data centres and other forms of high-demand digital infrastructure – all while generating useful carbon-based materials as a by-product.

The wider goal, he explains, is that these materials could help decarbonise industries well beyond computing, extending Pact’s impact across manufacturing, energy storage and advanced materials research.

Carbon turned to opportunity

At the core of Pact lies a low-temperature catalytic reactor, the result of more than a decade of focused research and engineering.

Methane – sourced from either natural gas or biomethane – is fed into the reactor, where hydrogen is extracted and the residual carbon is instantly transformed into solid graphite.

Because this closed-loop system eliminates direct carbon emissions and sidesteps the heavy power demands of electrolysis, it produces hydrogen with a significantly lower greenhouse gas footprint across its full lifecycle.

The technology has already been trialled in partnership with EBNER, a manufacturer with deep expertise in industrial hydrogen systems, at the company’s facility in Wadsworth, Ohio.

Herbert Gabriel, Managing Director of EBNER, sees this as a watershed moment for the sector.

“This is an important milestone for the hydrogen industry," he says.

"The Pact system dramatically reduces the environmental footprint of conventional fossil-based hydrogen and overcomes the scalability challenges of electrolysis-based systems.”

Building a carbon materials platform

Beyond hydrogen, Pact’s secondary output – a fine, high-purity graphite – could unlock an entirely new commercial frontier.

According to Juzer Jangbarwala, Pact’s CTO and the system’s original inventor, this carbon management approach transforms what would traditionally be waste into a new class of high-value industrial materials suitable for applications in electronics, energy storage and advanced manufacturing.

“Instead of storing carbon or releasing it into the atmosphere, Pact is creating the foundation for a carbon materials platform backed by a growing patent portfolio of clean chemical synthesis and functionalisation technologies,” he says.

These materials could serve high-tech sectors from advanced semiconductors and battery production to concrete manufacturing and electrical transmission infrastructure.

Endeavour argues that by displacing imported graphite with these domestically produced carbon products, the full Pact process becomes not merely carbon-neutral, but genuinely carbon-negative.

Designed for scale

Endeavour envisions Pact operating in tandem with its existing power generation systems.

The technology can connect directly to generators like the company’s TurboCell units, producing hydrogen on-demand for AI workloads and high-density compute – eliminating many of the storage and transportation challenges that have long stymied hydrogen deployment in data centres.

The modular, compact design supports deployments as small as 5MW for edge facilities or scales to gigawatt capacities typically seen in hyperscale regional energy grids.

Meeting the needs of an AI-powered world

As AI continues to reshape global industry, the infrastructure underpinning it will increasingly define the sector’s environmental impact.

Endeavour’s Pact system delivers a technologically robust yet economically viable path to continuous clean power for AI data centres and high-intensity compute environments.

Whether it can scale reliably beyond trials remains the critical test ahead, but for now, Pact marks a pragmatic pivot in the clean hydrogen landscape – from aspirational sustainability goals to practical, deployable solutions engineered to power the AI era.