 Aloha and welcome to Stand the Energy Man. Stan Osserman coming to you live and direct on think te kauai directly from the mighty megalopolis of Kailua. Another beautiful day. My guest today is my pet rooster who just happens to start growing right before my show right on cue, just like I apologize. He just loves participating on Stand the Energy Man. But today we're gonna talk through a bunch of the things that are going on in the hydrogen world. You know, the world is focused right now on so many things, COVID and the inflation and stuff. And right now over in Europe, they've got COP26 going on where all the worlds rich people get together flying on their jets and build a bunch of the sky full of carbon. To talk about the pressing issues of greenhouse gases and the centigrade of Thunberg, you know, lecture us about how we're not doing enough to take care of our carbon footprint. But anyway, we are taking care of our carbon footprint and a lot's going on, but nobody hears it because we're busy talking about what's not going on and that's kind of counterproductive. So I'm gonna tell you what is going on. And we're gonna talk a little bit about what's going on specifically with hydrogen. And then we're gonna talk a little bit about what's going on in general in the energy world. So to start off with from the Ohio Fuel Cell Coalition which turns out a really great newsletter. Got a couple of stories. This one comes from PR Web. This Plug Power and Heaven Drones announces a joint development alliance between the two companies. Heaven Drones is a leader in the development and commercialization of actionable drone platforms with heavy lift capabilities today. And they announced that they have a bilateral alliance with Plug Power, a leading provider of hydrogen engines and fueling solutions enabling mobility. So Heaven Drones designed its own proprietary operating systems and it's the exclusive company selected. This is important by the Israeli Ministry of Defense to develop and customize lead of hydrogen fuel cell drone. Specifically, Heaven Drones is working with the DDR and D their research and development spokes in Israel on a specialized unit responsible for research and development of advanced technologies. That's a real keeper. That means that hydrogen is being taken seriously by one of the militaries that really has the most at risk in the world is really defense forces. Next story comes from the Ballard Press Release. It says Ballard and 4C Power who entered a long-term strategic partnership to develop and commercialize integrated fuel cell and battery solutions for heavy duty hydrogen mobility. This is important. You know, a lot of people don't realize that hydrogen and fuel cell vehicles are electric vehicles and they also contain batteries. And the real trick when you do a mobility solution with hydrogen is matching the ratio between batteries and hydrogen and which system is gonna provide what kind of power. We have systems called battery primary or battery focus power and fuel cell power and shift between the two. So sometimes you might wanna like the Toyota Mirai is fuel cell dominant. It really has a powerful, powerful fuel cell and only relies on the battery for bursts of power at startup and things like that. Most of the power overall is delivered by the fuel cell. But the battery dominant fuel cells have big batteries and they just have the fuel cell like charging the batteries all the time. Now, Ballard and this 4C power that solution they're coming up with is important because that mix has to be paired with what you're using the technology for. And so it's really important that they've set up this partnership. So Ballard system, a world leader in chem fuel cells and 4C power a leader in smart battery systems for sustainable electromobility, meaning transportation announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding for a strategic partnership to develop fully integrated fuel cell and battery solutions optimized for performance cost and installation for heavy duty hydrogen mobility applications. I'm assuming that means class A trucks, class seven trucks probably even locomotives and other things. So that's a critical development that has a huge impact across all sectors and in the hydrogen world. Out of a location called microgrid knowledge there's an article on fuel cells on the microgrid gap solution that customers seek. And this is important too because a lot of people when they start talking microgrids and they start pricing the need for long-term storage of energy and they start looking at batteries they quickly are overwhelmed by the huge cost and recurring cost of batteries plus end of life disposable and things like that. But people are starting in mass in droves to recognize how hydrogen really complements microgrids in long-term energy storage. So this story again is from microgrid knowledge and says utility businesses and homeowners are tuned to the value of microgrids as reliability solutions. They're being deployed around the United States in all shapes and sizes and combinations from dense urban environments to rural farms. However, the conventional path to new microgrids microgrid doesn't work for everyone who needs one. Increasing the wildfires, hurricanes, severe weather grid infrastructure fails and public safety power shutoffs have made backup generation for critical infrastructure or critical and essential loads necessary for many but they can't afford to wait the 12 to 24 months for a microgrid to be installed. They face a power gap. So what this article is talking about is the real need again, just like in the previous comment about the pairing up the batteries and the fuel cells and pairing up the solutions for microgrids. You know, basically a single family home with a battery backup system in solar, the microgrid especially if you're not connected to the public utility but that can be a small microgrid or a mini, mini microgrid but so can a network of hospitals being, excuse me linked on the same network with other microgrids to provide resiliency in a big system but they all need to be designed and that's the critical piece. So they're saying that the industry in hydrogen has grown enough that we need to have a company or companies that provide solutions in putting together all the pieces all the components of hydrogen and solar distribution, DC-DC converters, DC-AC converters, things like that to really supply an entire solution for institutions and buildings of all kinds because there's all kinds that need. So I think that, and I think that's really a good if you're an electronic electrical engineering system designer, that's really a place for a company to grow. The next story comes from Argus Media and it's about Phillips 66 upbeat on hydrogen fuel. Again, Phillips 66 is a big fossil fuel company. So Phillips 66 is optimistic that hydrogen can help diversify the energy mix as industries around the world step up efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in coming years. After introducing a lower carbon unit called the Emerging Energy in January of this year, the US independent refiner, Phillips 66, fielded a rush of calls from groups looking for project investment as well as a fair amount of commentary from peers skeptical of hydrogen and their hydrogen initiatives. That's according to the vice president of emerging energy, Heath DePriest. So what you've got in this story is an example of the industry is recognizing that we need to have hydrogen and the mix on micro grids and solutions that mitigate our greenhouse gas emissions. But a lot of the fossil fuel industries and power producers that are out there that haven't taken the time to understand hydrogen solutions are looking at hydrogen data from 10 or 15 or 20 years ago. And who poohing it saying that it doesn't work it's too expensive, not ready for technology, blah, blah, blah. So much has happened in the last 20 years with technology that really companies need to look like Phillips at the need to use hydrogen in large-term energy storage. The next story comes from Swift headline. It's a universal hydrogen to start testing fuel cells in passion in a passenger jet. So universal hydrogen, a Los Angeles startup once they convert passenger planes to flying hydrogen then it'll start testing its fuel cells with a 40 seat jet next year after it raised a fresh bunch of funding from investors including 10 cent and GE aviation. The company has attracted 62 million in new investment on top of its 22 million and it raised in April with its valuation climbing from 55 million to 262 million and other investors including the venture arms of Toyota, JetBlue and PortaQ, PortaSq, universal hydrogen has already signed deals with at least five regional airlines to buy conversion kits to replace their current engines with hydrogen fuel cell and electric motors. It said the plane should be operational by 2025, 2025. I mean, for practical purposes, that's three years from now. So hydrogen aviation is not as far off as everybody thinks and even Airbus has already announced that by 2035 they will be marketing and selling three hydrogen fuel cell or hydrogen powered aircraft including commuter size all the way up to 200 passenger long range aircraft. And so some of the companies that are gonna be purchasing these aircraft from universal hydrogen are Ravin from Alaska, Spain's Aaron Ostrom and Ireland's ASL aviation. So aviation is also starting to recognize the energy density of hydrogen makes it one of the lightest fuels on the market energy wise and perfect choice for anything that relates to aviation. Advent Technology announces successful installation of the Advent fuel cell system in the Philippines telecom sector. This is from a company called Business Wire. On the Boston Advent Technologies Holdings, today announced that it was partnered with Smart Communications Inc. The company has successfully completed the first installation of its HD 5000 fuel cell system across the Philippines. The delivery agreement was made earlier this year between Smart and the Philippines and Advent Technologies AS of Denmark, formerly Sir Energy AS. Smart's partnership with Advent follows a commitment United Nations Race to Zero campaign with the GSM Association. GSM A is a member of the trade alliance of Climate Action Task Force. So that technology was put in place primarily I think for telecommunications backup. The Philippines obviously has a bunch of islands that are isolated, a lot of territory to cover including cross-channel territory. And it's great to have telecommunications companies recognize the importance of hydrogen in their systems. Let me see, Enos confirms fuel cell version of Grenadier retro SUV green hydrogen plant. Enos on Monday announced, and this is from Green Car Reports. Enos on Monday announced a 2.3 billion, that's with a B investment in what the chemical company calls green hydrogen production which could pave the way for a fuel cell version of their Enos Grenadier SUV. The investment will fund plants in Norway, Germany, Belgium and the United Kingdom that will produce hydrogen through electrolysis of screen hydrogen. And Enos press release said, the company already has some plans in operation through the subsidiary of Eno in Oven and claims to be the largest operator of such a plant in Europe. Another component of the investment is the 100 megawatt electrolyzer in Cologne, Germany that will produce hydrogen intended for green ammonia production. Transitioning to green ammonia could reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by almost 1% per year, according to Enos. And for those of you that aren't aware, ammonia is NH3. So it's three hydrogen atoms and one nitrogen atom which makes a liquid carrier of hydrogen which is much easier to transport than the liquid hydrogen or gaseous hydrogen. You just have to follow the safety protocols. And ammonia of course is also used in fertilizer. I think this is the last story from these folks. A new catalyst helps combine fuel cell and battery into one device. This is kind of intriguing. We've had bi-directional fuel cells in the past where one can make the hydrogen and then turn around and use it to make electricity. But his org, PHYS org reports that a single device that will generate fuel and oxidant from water and when a switch is flipped converts the fuel and oxygen to electricity and water has a host of benefits for terrestrial space and military applications from low environmental impact to high energy density, developing efficient utilized regenerative fuel cells. And they call that a URFCs. Has been researched, re-tertiary site for years now but only truly to be efficient these URFCs need to have a good bifunctional catalyst. And that means in the electrolyzer mode the catalyst needs to facilitate the breakdown of water into hydrogen and oxygen. And then the fuel cell mode it needs to facilitate the recombination into water. And that's quite a challenge. So anyway, we're gonna take a quick break here and let you in on what's going on with Big Tech for a few minutes. We'll be back with the rest of the stories on Stand Energy. Hi, I'm Rusty Kamori, host of Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. I was the head coach of the Punahou Boys varsity tennis team for 22 years. And we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. My show is based on my two books, Beyond the Lines and Beyond the Game which is about leadership, success, character and creating a superior culture of excellence. Please tune in and watch my show every Monday at 11 a.m. on Think Tech Hawaii and on YouTube. Aloha. Hey Aloha and welcome back to Stand Energy man. We're gonna continue here with these stories now are not from the Ohio Fuel Cell Coalition but from one of my regular guests, Dan Gohan from Electron Power and Technology. And he and I talk a lot offline about the bigger energy picture. What's going on in the oil and gas world? So some of these stories and I'm just gonna make little clips from them. This first series of stories actually comes from oilprice.com. So on any of these topics, if you wanna do more go to oilprice.com and look up these separate topics. The first one is that oil prices will remain high for years to come. And that is the opinion of this organization but I'm telling you a lot of people are following the same thing and you'll understand as I go through these stories but the global annual upstream spending needs to increase by as much as 54% to 542 billion with a B. If the oil market is to avert the next supply shortage shock. By the way, we're going to experience a global oil supply supply shock here this winter. It's already started and you can tell by the price of gas. Any new major oil fields that's fields producing 100 million barrels or larger found this year and that's no small feat. There haven't been any that big found for a while. The production will not arrive in the marketplace until after 2026. So as we're talking about COP 26 this year and what they're trying to figure out how to accelerate the clean green movement across the planet, you gotta realize that there are economic forces behind the scenes that are driving whether you can produce oil or sell oil at a reasonable price. And the problem is with all these big fluctuations and huge government predictions that we're gonna go off oil like right now, big investment, big company investments in oil field refurbishing or looking for new wells or driving new wells is starting to actually cause people not to wanna invest in the oil industry and therefore it leaves a shortage of production which drives the price higher while we're trying to also pay for new infrastructure in new technologies like wind and solar and other things to get back to green. So sometimes pushing this stuff is actually making it more expensive to get where we wanna go and not necessarily speeding it up. The next story is what's behind Saudi Arabia's pivot to natural gas? Well, what people don't understand in most cases is that natural gas is a byproduct of oil fields. So when oil fields die, the last thing to come out of the wellhead is natural gas. And if we're not drilling new wells and we're not tapping into natural gas that we have, we're missing out on an opportunity. But here in the US because we've kind of limited ourselves with some of our resources and a lot of our natural gas companies have gone bankrupt because they invested a lot in fracking and stuff and then found out that the price had dropped so low they couldn't pay off their loans. They went bankrupt and now there's actually a shortage of natural gas. So it says US residential natural gas bills will jump 30% this winter. The average cost of drilling and bringing products to shale wells is $7 million each. The shale wells only produce on average seven years until they go dry. So expect the cost average for this winter's natural gas in North America to be greater than $10 per million BTUs which is the standard term that gas companies use or gas markets use for the price of their energy. The next topic is United States is not doing enough to secure critical metals. You go, whoa, what does this have to do with oil and gas? Well, it does not much to do with oil and gas directly for fuel cells and batteries. It actually has quite a bit to do. But also there's another source of energy out there that's clean and renewable but it has pretty nasty reputation. It's called nuclear and nuclear power. And I talked to some friends who are nuclear engineers and I worked nuclear issues, including the 2011 Daiichi Fukushima nuclear power plant issue in Japan when they had the tsunami and the earthquake. And there's newer technology that's actually quite a bit safer and more reliable and has less end-of-life issues with the spent fuels. But that's not what we think of when we think of nuclear power. So we've also kind of given away the farm to China in terms of letting China buy or invest in countries that have rare earth minerals and they're buying up a lot of the raw stock that a lot of companies need for production and nuclear power and things like that. So we really need to be conscious of that as we proceed into our international relations and our international financing to make sure that we don't get stuck behind on the raw materials edge. Grid operator in France needs nuclear power for net zero. So countries like France are recognizing that they actually are gonna need nuclear power and they're probably gonna start looking at the safer version of nuclear power that's out now. The good news is that the US has plenty of nuclear fuel that can last quite a bit of time, several hundred years I'm sure. The next set of stories comes out of worldoil.com. So if you wanna look into worldoil.com, you have a bunch of these stories. Exxon to close two Houston office towers following worker exodus. You know, this COVID thing has had a real impact on a lot of economies, but to have the world's most profitable company on the oil side dropped to closing down two high rise buildings in Houston. And they must not be getting that profitable anymore. It must be a pretty tight market in the oil industry. High cost productions and customers looking at higher fuel costs are making the oil market pretty sketchy right now. Next story says crude forward prices price curves suggest a hundred dollar oil is on the way. You know, I've seen that production, that prediction more often than you would imagine from a variety of different sources. And one of the reasons that, and it's in actual, I'll skip one story down is that the St. Louis Federal Reserve has some data that shows that inflation tracks the price of crude oil. So right now the price of crude oil and fluctuating between $40, $50 a barrel, maybe a little higher, maybe a little lower here and there. So think about it, you're gonna go to $100 a barrel oil. And there are some sources that when you start to stretch out more than the next few years, they're talking $150 to $180 a barrel. What that's gonna do to inflation because everything that you buy in a store just about has to be shipped from someplace. Even if it's domestically produced, it's gonna be shipped on a truck or a train or something. And so therefore it uses fuel. And if the price of fuel goes up, the price of jet fuel goes up, the price of bunker fuel goes up for big ships, the price of gasoline goes up and diesel goes up. Therefore it makes sense that inflation tracks the price of crude oil. So get ready. If you don't think inflation's here to stay just keep watching the energy markets go. And if oil keeps going up, then you know that inflation's here to stay. And many Wall Street companies are also predicting quite a bit more inflation in the future. Let me see. Oops, went the wrong way. The Dutch government is gambling billions on green hydrogen. They're saying at the time that they, you know, Europe in general is really big on green hydrogen. And I personally think green hydrogen, that's hydrogen made from electrolysis is the way to go. But not every place has a clean energy production source. Like you can look at solar and wind as clean energy production and hydroelectric dams are clean, you know, production of electricity. But some countries just can't do it. I mean, they just don't have enough capability to use those technologies. But they have other sources like natural gas and methane and things like that. Well, if you, that's when you make hydrogen from those gases, it's called blue hydrogen. It's the green hydrogen. It's not as clean, but it's way cleaner than coal and oil in terms of from the time you get it to the time you use it and what it means to greenhouse gases. It's also better to do something with methane than to release it in the air because it's worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. So, you know, a lot of the folks in Europe are really bullish on hydrogen and specifically green hydrogen. If they have the solar, the wind, the hydroelectric or geothermal to produce hydrogen in a clean way. But this next story talks about gambling billions on green hydrogen. It says, at the same time, blue hydrogen potentially is an important bridge fuel and it's being largely overlooked. So right now, methane is actually flared off in many cases of making heterochemicals and fossil fuels. So why are we not looking at that more as a primary source of energy and making hydrogen and just flaring it off? So let me say, to close it up here, it says billions or potentially trillions of euros will be at risk as this new hydrogen infrastructure turns, starts to get turned out. But if we don't look at all of the production, blue and green for making this transition, we may kill the economic viability of hydrogen. And if we do that, we're gonna really be stuck because by then the demand for fossil fuels and the price will be too low and the price of fossil fuels will be too high and then the cost of renewable energy and renewable energy storage will also be too high. So that's gonna really wrap it up on what's going on in the world today. And I hope that the folks over in COP26 come up with some really brilliant ideas to do better, but you gotta start looking at the economics of things too to make sure that they make good decisions. So next week, we'll see you back here on Tuesday, Stand the Energy Man and we're gonna try and get that going in and finish up on a discussion of compressing hydrogen in a way that most people probably haven't thought of. So until next Tuesday, Aloha, thanks for joining us here on Stand the Energy Man.