Thank you.
Good morning.
My name is Nicolas Pocard. I'm the vice-president of marketing for Ballard Power Systems.
Ballard is a company based in British Columbia. For the past four years, we have been developing clean zero-emission hydrogen and fuel-cell solutions. As a technology developer, we are bringing zero-emission engines to market. Today more than 3,500 buses and trucks are powered by Ballard technology globally.
From day one of its life, Ballard has been relying on the export market because of the lack of domestic markets. We're been relying solely on exporting our technology. As of today, over 98% of our revenue is from exports. We have many working in the U.S., Europe and China. Today we are seeing really a growing demand for technology as part of the efforts by different countries towards lowering carbon emissions and towards carbon neutrality. In the transportation sector, which has a significant impact on emissions, different alternatives are being deployed in order to reduce those emissions.
Hydrogen and fuel-cell technology is now being recognized as an important part of this effort towards decarbonization. Even in Canada, at the end of 2020 the federal government published a hydrogen strategy, done by NRCan, recognizing the key role of hydrogen in the decarbonization of our economy, especially for heavy-duty mobility. When looking at applications like buses, trucks, marine and trains, this is where hydrogen and fuel cells provide the most attractive path to decarbonization.
Today at Ballard we employ around 950 people, the majority at our headquarters and production engineering facility in Burnaby, British Columbia. In addition to that, we have probably around 80 people based in Europe, with some R and D and production facilities in Denmark. We have around 10 to 15 people in the U.S., with an R and D office in Bend, Oregon. We have around 15 people in China, in our Guangzhou office.
International growth has been absolutely paramount to the success of Ballard. We have been investing in that development and the export of our technology from the birth of the company. We have worked very closely with and would like to take the opportunity to thank the support we got from the network of trade commissioners worldwide where you're active—Japan, Korea, China, France, Austria, Germany, Denmark and Norway. We have worked very closely with that network. The trade commissioners have helped us to better understand the market conditions, have provided support at events that Ballard has organized by bringing in customers, organizing one-to-one meetings or introductions, and inviting us to events for our industry. I think that has been a really important part of our growth. Even today, we continue to leverage the network with the trade commissioners. We would really like to thank them for their support and for being very proactive and very professional and very knowledgeable, especially when it comes to clean mobility.
As was highlighted by the previous speaker, we are also facing now in many different jurisdictions local rules and regulations. The U.S. is one of our biggest markets. Buy America, as was mentioned earlier, is today threatening to really challenge our cross-production efforts. Today, as a new technology, our key focus is to drive down the cost. We need to be able to drive down the cost to use the local-global supply chain and be able to manufacture at scale. Most of our core technology is made in Burnaby, and we need to scale up. Having delocalized plants and smaller plants doesn't enable us to drive down the cost. It's an impediment to cost production. It's actually increasing the cost.
Requirements like buy America are forcing us to actually increase the cost of our product, which is slowing down the adoption of the technology. We see that not only in the U.S.
In China, there is very stringent regulation in terms of localization. The number of components that need to be produced in China is forcing us actually to enter joint ventures and to produce our product in China for China.
Now we're starting to see the same level of protection rising in Europe in order to have access to some of the programs of development. We need to be able to show that we are producing our products and technology in different geographies.
As we are trying to lower the cost to enable wider adoption of the technology, this comes as an impediment to that growth.
This just provides a bit of a perspective from Ballard. I thank the members of the committee. I would be very happy to answer your questions.
Feel free to ask any questions that you may have.
Thank you for your time today.
Thank you.