 Welcome to Stan Energyman here on Think Tech, Hawaii. Stan Osserman, coming to you live and direct from the beautiful downtown studios of Kailua, Hawaii, where we like to raise chickens and play with dogs and stuff. Anyway, thanks for joining us today. I was hoping to have a guest today, but they're all pretty busy. And then I found out why I got an email from a friend in California, Keith Malone, who's the public relations guy for California Fuel Cells Partners. Excuse me, and he had a newsletter that he sent me that had all kind of great information in it. So we're going to talk about some of those things. And to tie into what we're calling today's show, and that is basically, you know, does hydrogen have a place in the new normal after COVID? And actually it does. And I'd like to start off with just some kind of local wisdom here. You know, growing up in Hawaii, we have a lot of cultural intermixing. And one of the things that's interesting is when you hear stories from Asia and different parts of the world that their way of viewing things is sometimes a little bit different. So for example, the Chinese, actually the Asian, because a lot of the written, written language in Asia is similar, no matter whether it's Japanese, Kanji, or Chinese characters, or Vietnamese, a lot of them are very similar. And so even though they speak different languages, their written characters are very much the same. And the written character for change, as I recall, is a combination of two characters, one for crisis and one for opportunity. So every time you have a crisis or change, you have opportunity to succeed or fail to make it a winning situation or make it a miserable situation. And that's how a lot of Asian cultures view change, a little bit different than most Western cultures where change is usually resistant at most at all costs until some logic takes over or emotion takes over. Another one is the fact that we have a saying, they say originated in China, that the saying is actually called a Chinese curse. And it goes, may you live in interesting times. And when you think about it, it's like, well, in English, living in interesting times sounds like kind of fun. It's just different, new, exciting. But of course, in Asian culture, it could mean good or it could mean bad. And there's a story that's told about a Chinese rancher that lived in the old, old China. And he had he was a pretty wealthy guy. He had a lot of cattle and horses and, you know, armed land and, you know, a lot of a lot of assets available available to him. And one day there was a big thunderstorm and thunderstorm scared a lot of his horses and stuff. And the horses broke down the corral and all of all of his prize horses, he had some of those beautiful horses in the area. And they all ran away. And all the people came around and said, Oh, gee, that's terrible. Your horses ran away. It's, you know, how terrible. That's like you lost your fortune and horses there and they're also beautiful. And the rancher said, Well, maybe it's bad. Maybe it's not bad. And so the people looked at him a little bit puzzled. And next thing happened was the the horses or excuse me, the army came and or excuse me, the horses came back. And the horses came back, not just the ones that he lost, but they brought back a whole bunch of other horses. And the other horses were not quite as beautiful, but really good horses. And now all the people gathered around him said, Oh, you're so lucky all your horses came back. You're so fortunate. He said, Oh, maybe I am. Maybe I'm not. The people just kind of looked at him perplexed. So then the guy's son went out to one of the new horses and was trying to break the horse and, you know, make it rideable. And the horse threw him off against the fence and broke him, broke his arm, cracked a few ribs. And everybody came over and said, Oh, that's terrible. That that horse, that new horse just almost killed your son, broke his arm and his leg. And he's all beat up and everything. And the farmer and the rancher said, Maybe it's good. Maybe it's not. And people at this point are just getting fed up with this guy. It's like, doesn't he know what what's bad and what's good? The next day, the Chinese army came to town recruiting all able bodied young people to go fight in the war. And this farmer son couldn't go or rancher son couldn't go because he was all beat up. He wasn't suitable for military duty. And so the people came around said, Oh, you're so lucky because now your son doesn't have to go to war. And the rancher said, Well, maybe I am. Maybe I'm not. The bottom line is think he's going. The bottom line is there's good and bad in everything. And you kind of have to look for the good. And sometimes the good doesn't end up being so good. And sometimes the bad doesn't end up being so bad. You have to look for the right answers. So today's show is about hydrogen again, my favorite topic. And what's going on in the world post COVID-19 with hydrogen, because I had a friend call me up from the East Coast. And he actually called me up. What must have been midnight or one in the morning, his time. And it was because it was fairly late here in Hawaii, which means it was really late where he was at. And he was actually kind of distressed. And he had lost a family member to COVID. And he's kind of near an epicenter where there's a lot of people, you know, being impacted by the virus. And his business is basically stopped because of all of his employees have to stay home. And some of the investors are threatening to pull out because they don't have funding. And you can tell he was really down. And he was upset that this virus and how it's being handled by none of the state and local government. But he was not really happy with the federal government's response. And he was really upset. And you know, and I kind of basically just talked to him and calmed him down and told him, don't worry, you're in a hot spot and you're in a tough spot. But you know, there's a lot going on in the hydrogen world. And just hang in there. You'll be okay. Just don't give up yet. Keep pressing. And so, you know, we hung up and he didn't call me back yet. But I know he's still going through a little bit of a tough time. But I got this newsletter from Keith Malone in California. And it just blew me away. All of the different things that are going on in the world today in hydrogen that are telling me it's really, really taken off. So what I'd like to do today is, you know, give you some positive notes and some positive thinking of the future of hydrogen and clean energy from here forward. Because just like the Chinese curse says, may you live in interesting times, you could make them as miserable and as bad as you want, or you can learn from them, and hopefully make them as positive and good for the future is as can be done. So let me start off here by saying one of the biggest things, and this one actually warranted a separate email from Keith was that over in the European Union, and many of the countries in the European Union, there is a lot going on in hydrogen. And the big takeaway is that the European Union and the European Commission have focused on clean hydrogen and clean hydrogen economies for many of the countries in the EU, and many of the overarching policies in the European Union. And there's a lot of things going on with surplus power from the North Sea wind, and things like that. There's pipelines that run all over Europe that are used to move natural gas. And companies are starting to look at those pipelines to move mixes of natural gas and hydrogen and integrate hydrogen into a lot of the transportation and grid infrastructure, and build those things up. But there's tons of stuff going on all over the world. And I'm going to talk to you about a few of them. So forgive me for looking down here. So I want to actually read some of these word for word. European Green Deal, they're calling it because it's it's based on some of the Paris Accord stuff. It says a massive renovation renovation wave of our buildings and infrastructure and more circular economic activities are bringing bringing local jobs into the economy. In other words, they're looking at taking clean energy and growing it and training people to the new jobs as part of the recovery from the coronavirus impacts on the economy. Rolling out renewable energy projects, especially wind solar and that kick kick starting the clean hydrogen economy in Europe are important. I learned something a little new for me today. There I'm used to the term green hydrogen, which is when you take electrolysis and make hydrogen from water, and your only byproducts are heat, electricity and oxygen. When you when you excuse me, when you take water and divide it, you get heat, electricity and oxygen electricity comes from the electron and the hydrogen. And heat is a byproduct that's it's basically some of the energy that's being used to create the reaction. And it's lost in the form of heat. But it's nowhere near what you find in internal combustion engine type reactions. Anyway, I learned the term blue hydrogen, which I really didn't understand what that was. And what blue hydrogen is, is when they do mix natural gas with hydrogen. And what some companies are doing in European Union is really coming down, not against blue hydrogen. But they're saying blue hydrogen is a second. It's not first. The first priority is clean, renewable hydrogen from electrolysis, where you take water, you split it into hydrogen and oxygen, and store the oxygen and take the hydrogen, I mean, store the hydrogen and take the oxygen, use the oxygen for either medical purposes or industrial purposes or just let it let it loose, and then turn around and use the hydrogen in a fuel cell with air or oxygen to generate electricity back. And like I say, make heat water electricity when you bring it back into play and using the pipelines to move it all around. And looking to the future, so that if you do use blue hydrogen to start with, that the end game will be clean, green hydrogen, where all the hydrogen that's produced will be from electrolysis only, and will be used in either fuel cells, or used in turbines, like like oil turbines and gas turbines are now to make electricity, except instead of fossil fuels running the turbines, it will be clean hydrogen. And it says to strengthening the transition fund, which is, I guess, a piece of funding material in the EU to support reskilling and help building businesses back in the economy using hydrogen and clean energy. But that's kind of the overarching activities that are going on. European Commission wants to see a massive scale up in EU clean hydrogen production and demand that helps set up its 2030 and 2050 climate goals. The European community now considers clean hydrogen so important that it will present a dedicated European Union hydrogen strategy, along with the European Union's energy sector integration strategy. This month, June 24th is the rollout date for that. And then there's some comments from some of the industries around the world. This one comes from Mitsubishi Hitachi power systems. It says they're betting on renewable hydrogen for decarbonization. And they're talking to some of the folks at Mitsubishi. And their comment is, if you take lessons from the solar industry 15 years ago, solar was way too expensive. But society rallied around the renewables. And today, solar is arguably more cost effective than a lot of the existing generation systems. In other words, they're looking at hydrogen to basically replicate the pattern that solar did where people are going to start to understand the value of hydrogen, especially as it relates to battery energy storage. And they're going to say, wow, this is too important, even if it's a little bit too expensive right now. But as it gets to scale, as the scales larger, the price will drop dramatically. And pretty soon, it'll be cheaper than even the carbon based fuels that we're using now, and much, much, much cleaner. Because they're expecting it to scale and have that that marketing and scaling happen within the next actually three to five years. Let me see, Netherlands and Germany, the world's most climate ambitious, stimulus packages are being generated in Europe. And it was unveiled Wednesday, poised to earmark tens of billions, billions of euros for hydrogen technology, as well as infrastructure for clean energy. There's there's a lot going on, especially in Norway, Germany, even in Switzerland, and I'll come to some of those stories later. Hydrogen fuel, there's this is a great story out of Italy. The CNAM, SNAM, it's a operating business that runs natural gas networks in Italy, and across Europe. And they're actually really excited to mix hydrogen into their natural gas. And their goal is to switch natural gas out for hydrogen as their commodity in the future. Instead of running natural gas in their pipelines, they expect to run pure green hydrogen in their pipelines. The guy who actually is the owner of that CNAM company, Mr. Alvera, is embraced hydrogen as a clean substitute for natural gas. Hydrogen is some major virtues. It is emission free, and he hopes it will be carried in the CNAM existing 25,000 miles web of transmission lines to move it all over Europe. Michelin welcomes the government support to plan for automotive industry in France. The Michelin group is pretty well known around the world for their tires and stuff, but they're pretty influential. And so Michelin is convinced that a key role to play in accelerating zero emission mobility. And so it's confirming its commitment to zero emission valley project, excuse me, which is a 1200 hydrogen vehicle and 20 station project in the Alps region. So they're really leaning forward. Next story down says Rolls-Royce and Domler truck AG plan to cooperate on stationary fuel cell systems. So you have two basically transportation giants, Domler and Rolls-Royce, who does jet engines for aircraft and also other transportation. They're working together to start generating power systems that use hydrogen, including fuel cells, but also turbines to take advantage of clean transportation options in the future. So as Europe starts to get a better grip on COVID-19 emergency, we need to understand that the immense task of rebuilding our economies and repairing our staggering damage to our communities and workers and businesses plays in in developing future transportation and energy solutions. As gentlemen, Franz Timmermans is the executive vice president of the European Commission. So there's two important emerging elements of clean energy progress. Hydrogen, electrolysis and lithium ion batteries are on the verge of becoming a decade, the decades breakout technologies. And that's great. And like I say, I like batteries in general, and we need them whenever we have fuel cells as well. There's a place for them even when you have hydrogen vehicles and stuff. But lithium technologies got some other things coming up later here and I get to them in a few seconds. But they consider these technologies breakout technologies. Let me just read and this list, I'll show you some I've highlighted some of them. And you can see there, I'm not reading through the whole list. And this is half of the list, by the way. So I'm just going to read through a couple of them that that struck out as as really important. Portugal announces 7 billion euro investment plan for hydrogen energy over the next decade. Dutch outline clean hydrogen vision, and they aim at a global market. In other words, and there's a couple of these stories in here where I try and promote hydrogen and hydrogen economy here in Hawaii, because we're so dependent on fossil fuels for electricity and our transportation. But if we could get ourselves off of dependence of fossil fuels, and and use all clean renewable resources like geothermal, wind, solar, hydro electric, that we could literally turn from becoming an energy importing state to an energy exporting state. And if you don't think that wouldn't have a huge impact on our economy. And then you don't know much about economics. But that's what a lot of countries, especially small countries are starting to see is that nobody has a monopoly on hydrogen. If you have any kind of water source, and you have surplus solar wind energy that you can turn into it or hydroelectric or nuclear power anything, you can make hydrogen and then use it pretty easily throughout transportation or grid applications. Let me see massive 1000 megawatt base load wind solar and hydrogen plant is being pitched for New South Wales, Australia. So even the Aussies are getting into it. Kind of the capstone article in here that I thought was worth pointing out was the coronavirus crisis has caused a lot of suffering and uncertainty. But in this aftermath that offers us an opportunity to break with the old habits and build a circular sustainable and highly competitive economy. And that's from that runs 10 men. And the folks at the European Commission. And that's the key. You know, we can take this crisis and do what we want with it and make it something special or suffer with it. The first of its kind clean hydrogen plant is planned for Los Angeles County. South Korea to build hydrogen production facilities for over 50,000 vehicles this year. Hydrogen can make Canada an energy superpower again. Again, these are separate stories in this in this newsletter. So I'm just reading the highlights from it. Germany, Germany's gas grid operators present a concept of 2030 green hydrogen grid. Europe is determined to lead on hydrogen and keep the jobs at home. Fraunhofer, which is big, big European energy company. Roadmap sees that an 80 gigawatt German hydrogen capacity by 2050. Hydrogen is emerging as the viable solution to meet 2050 climate change targets. That's based on a story in Barclays. Japan hydrogen mobility aims to launch 24 more hydrogen stations in 2020 to 2021. That's in just one year's timeframe. Hydrogen could be Norway's next industrial adventure. South Korea to export hydrogen fuel cells to Europe and the US. Green hydrogen pipeline surges on a wave of announcements of mega projects. Hydrogen China, hydrogen Solars China connections accelerate production of renewable solar hydrogen panels. Hydrogen power plants get backed from two big German companies. Hydrogen economy offers promising path to decarbonization. First look at BMW's hydrogen fuel cell powertrains and BMW's hydrogen excess will produce 300 or excess that's a model the X5 I guess will produce 368 brake horsepower in their powertrain. So those are the stories. Those are the stories that are out there. And it would literally take me an hour or two to read some of the highlights of those stories. But to summarize them, I guess I'd say that there is just so much going on around the world. Unfortunately, for the United States, we're busy, not just with this virus, but we're busy looting and rioting in the streets and things like that, to show how backwards we are compared to the rest of the world. And we need to get a grip on our country. And we need to start getting back to basics in our nation, and back to our Constitution and back to our individual responsibilities as citizens, and by our and get our government back in line to supporting citizens and supporting our communities and supporting our economy. Instead of going year after year with no federal budget, and states and and municipalities running huge deficits to where they're going to go insolvent and expect the federal government to bail them out. It's really getting sad. I'm so disappointed that I spent 35 years in uniform, protecting and defending the Constitution United States of America against foreign and domestic enemies. And to see the crap going on today just drives me absolutely bonkers. There is so much that we should be working towards so much we should be doing so much positive that we should be looking at. I just it just breaks my heart to see what our country is doing right now. What we're spending our energy, our physical, our emotional energy on. It's just it's just sad to watch. And I know our country's so much better than this. So, you know, I feel sorry for, you know, tragic things that happen. And I personally can't even watch the video of those police hitting down Mr. Floyd. I can't even watch that video anymore. It's so disgusting for me. But to paint every police officer with the broad brush of racist is so stupid. I can't I can't even articulate how stupid it is. Most policemen just knock themselves silly, trying to keep our communities safe and take care of people and help people in need. And there's certainly no shortage of those stories, but you'll never see them on TV. It seems like they just never seem to make the news or the newspapers. So let's get our country back together. Let's get our act together. Let's let's not fall behind Europe and Asia. And let's start being the leaders in the world again. And take these stories that I've just gone through and understand that they're they're a hint of the future. They're they're kind of where we should be going and how we should be looking at this change or this crisis as an opportunity to improve as an opportunity to be better as an opportunity to grow and make our economy better, make our skies clean, our streams clean, and stop polluting in us where we need to be on the energy side sustainability. So, you know, I would encourage you to if you don't already look at the California fuel cells partnership webpage, I'd suggest you go and check it out. And certainly if you can subscribe to Keith's newsletter, you'd just be absolutely floored, especially if you're in the energy world. And you want to get some really great insight. There's a story here. I didn't even mention it on the list I was reading. But the company plug power, which does material handling equipment has over 30,000 hydrogen fuel cell pieces of equipment out in the business world, helping with less forklifts and pallet electric pallet movers and things like that. They are growing and expanding like crazy. Cummins diesel just put out hydrogenics in Canada and now Cummins is teaming up with other big transportation companies to do long haul trucking, all focused on hydrogen. If you're not aware of this, you want to look at the good investments in the future. Start looking at hydrogen. It's really the future. It's going to be the next wave of great things to happen. And this may just be the start of it, getting through this coronavirus and resetting because some of the jobs are just never going to come back. But there's always opportunity and new jobs coming on. So we got a little bit of a late start today. And we kind of blasted right through some of the time here. But I'm going to wrap it up and call it done instead of getting into any of these individual stories, and maybe save them for a later date. And call it a call at the end of Stand Energy Man for the first weekend or the first Tuesday in June. And hope that everything's going well in your neighborhood. And you're being safe and you're staying healthy. And you're thinking about the positive ways we can come out of this coronavirus thing. So until next Tuesday, this is Stand Energy Man signing off. And we'll catch you back up on more energy news next week here on Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha.