 It's Wednesday afternoon, and we know what time that is. It's Hawaii, the state of clean energy time. And I'm your host, Mitch Yuan. And I'm very pleased to welcome back a multiple or a serial interviewer, interviewee, Toby Kincaid. And we're gonna carry on with our series about hydrogen, the decarbonizer. This is actually the fifth part of our series. And I hope we're gonna have a lot more. Toby's got a lot of good information today, which I will guarantee we're gonna be back many times with Toby on this show. So Toby, welcome to the show. Thank you, aloha, Commander. Good to be with you. So you have a lot of news. I mean, we're talking before the show started. Wow, it was all I could do was to quiet you up so we could start the show. You're so excited and enthusiastic about this. So tell us about your news. You've been all the way into Singapore, I understand. It was a hard flight. And I went two and a half days, three days in Singapore. Tell us about what's going on in Singapore. Well, it was a virtual conference. So I didn't fly very far, but I am astounded. The world is organizing around green hydrogen. I've never seen this before. This is extraordinary. And I remember we had a conversation some months ago when you mentioned, you know, you sensed something happening in the hydrogen industry. Well, my goodness, are you right? This is a sea change. You know, we've been talking about green hydrogen and the way of informing people, but I had no real concept of how advanced the world has become just within the last few years. And how I know this now is I've been attending conferences. There was one in Europe a few weeks ago put out by Mission Hydrogen out of Stuttgart. Very well done. It was a 24-hour marathon session. I look a little older now, probably for that session. And even last week in America, we had a conference put on by the Green Hydrogen Coalition out of Berkeley. Absolutely fantastic panel. I was astounded at the caliber and quality of the venture capitalist of that one of my favorite speakers was the director of the LADWP, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Now, it doesn't sound like that's a big thing, but they control billions of dollars of service area. And they were absolutely on the money. So I was astounded. Now, we're just finishing up actually right now the Singapore Conference. Now, this is the first annual Asia Pacific hydrogen summit. And again, I am floored at the absolute caliber and quality of the perspective of the speakers. Now, this was put on by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. So that tells you that they are looking very seriously in that they're not beginning to look. They have looked, they are beginning to conquer. And what's happening is that we see these emerging markets in Japan, South Korea and Singapore and they intend to be the green hydrogen hub of the Asia Pacific basin. And what they're doing, which I didn't really realize and you had mentioned before is that the Australians are really positioning themselves to be the supplier of green hydrogen for the entire basin. And in this conference, I find it interesting, they didn't mention the United States. Nobody talked about us. They even didn't mention Hawaii. They are looking at the world as though we're gonna do this and we're gonna lead everybody in doing it. And I was astounded, the venture capitalists, we'll get to some of the slides later, but the amount of capital that is being mobilized is this is a sea change. Right, so let's go to the next slide because you wanna tell us about something. Oh, please. Oh, well, this is your great slide that talks about the water cycle. This is what it's all about. Have you ever heard the phrase from dust to dust? Yeah, okay, well, this is from water to water. And that's what's so amazing is that we're talking about industrial power. We're talking about safe power. We're talking about power that's available to everyone in the world because it's sourced from water. And what your slide points out is once you make the water and you store it as hydrogen, it can store forever. We're not talking about lithium ion which degrades in four hours. No, no, hydrogen is so stable and so safe. Safe, you can store it for weeks, months, years, decades, possibly even centuries. That's how well we know how to store it and how safe it is because there's only hydrogen in the tank. And now in your slide, we're talking about how do you use this hydrogen? Well, the fuel cell is a marvelous device and it gives you the energy, the power density that you need to run not only cars, but pickup trucks, construction vehicles, farm equipment, and as we'll get into later, maritime shipping now that the incentives and the initiatives being born in Europe and in Asia Pacific. Oh my goodness, the world is moving. I was astounded. Yeah, it's really a disruptive technology and it's, you know, once it catches on like it is, like you said, you know, like several months ago, you could just feel the tremors. Well, you did, you're like one of those people that, you know, feels the earthquake is coming and you're like, oh, there's earthquake coming. You know, and then it shakes, you know, how do you do that? Well, you were in, you're in tune. It's really that momentum. And so well done, called that one right. Yeah, right. Well, thanks. So let's throw up to a slide too. Oh, okay. Let's take a slide. So I'm not sure they're coming on, so. I think I see something on, but I'll give it a preface. I've lamented for a long time, this industry needs a trade journal, a trade magazine. So I've been contemplating how I might do that. And so it reminded me of something my mother said to me when I was a little kid. She saw me one day and I was kind of forlorn and I had this big project and you could tell, I just didn't know how to go at it. And she said, how do you eat an elephant? And I thought for a second, I eat an elephant. I don't know, how do I? She goes, one bite at a time. Right, oh, thanks, mom. That made me understand. So when I look at this elephant of the green hydrogen industry, as you know, everybody's involved now, everybody's doing projects. Everybody, it's like a shotgun throwing everywhere. And it's very difficult to have one clearing house for information. So I thought, okay, I'm going to, this is just a mockup. We're going to print the first week in January. So these are just spreads that I'm putting together, throwing out, looking at different combinations. But you can see that we're going to be a practical magazine. We're going to talk about the industry and the news that's going on. And I had a bit of another epiphany, if you want to jump to the next slide, is how do I turn this industry into little bites? So I thought, what would happen if we took a section of the magazine? For example, this one is green hydrogen heavy industry. And I thought, well, if I built a corresponding website so that people could read the magazine, read the articles, but if they want to drill down on the backstory who did it, who financed it, who did the construction, all of those details, I thought, well, why not create a website under each section that you could go to online and drill into more information? So I started doing this and then I started registering for the websites and they kept going on and on and on. Well, I covered what I needed in these different sections. Now, heavy industry. You just never hear of green hydrogen and heavy industry in the same sentence. Well, the Europeans have an initiative. They're doing a green new deal and they call it a green hydrogen deal. They know what to do. And their initiatives, their renewable portfolio standards are double all of what Asia is now declaring. So Europe is definitely ahead in this. There's a great project in the Netherlands called Hermes where they are demonstrating every single aspect, a port facility, storage facilities, large electrolyzers, large fuel cells. And just to refer back to your first slide, that's what's so wonderful about this because when you have an electrolyzer, you basically have two inputs and two outputs. The two inputs are water and electricity, well, from newables, from solar wind. And then you have two outputs which is hydrogen and oxygen. Well, the fuel cell is just the opposite. You have two inputs and two opposites, but the inputs are hydrogen and oxygen and the output is electricity and water. So by putting those two together, you now have a total ecosystem. You have a water-based system and you can power anything. Jets will talk about Airbus and their new initiative. So when I was designing the idea for this magazine, I thought, okay, when I do a section, I'm gonna have the supporting website so we can really get to the information. And now when we have information, we know what bin to put it in. And my philosophy is the smaller the bin, the more comprehensive the content. So this would allow us a tool. In fact, I have a very ambitious notion of building out these websites through this trade journal and becoming the world's largest app. Ah, how about that? Now, that's me waving my arms. And none of these things are built yet, but they're under construction and we'll be going live one by one with the websites as they come up to speed. But the magazine will be coming out in January. I would encourage everyone, please get a copy of it and contribute. If you have articles, if you have projects. So I'm very excited about this and what's happening. So, well, let's go on to the next slide. Let's just keep going. Okay, then one of these is transition. We don't want to strand our assets. When we get to the capital part, one of the things I heard in these conferences is they're very much involved with the fossil fuel industry. And 90% of the world runs on fossil fuels, which really leads us to the big question in the world. Here's the fork in the road. Do you prefer your hydrogen stuck to carbon or do you prefer your hydrogen stuck to water, but to oxygen? That's the choice. If you pick carbon, because we saw in our last episodes, the energy's in the hydrogen, not the carbon. Cold is mostly carbon, little hydrogen, low energy. Oil less carbon, but more hydrogen, higher energy. Natural gas even less carbon, but more hydrogen proportionally, higher energy. And then forget the carbon, you don't need it at all. Just look at hydrogen and it has the highest energy. So the whole world runs on hydrogen, but it's stuck to a carbon atom. Exactly, and then we pollute the atmosphere when we get rid of the carbon atom. The only way we can get rid of that is attaching it to oxygen. Exactly, and as you pointed out in the earlier show, you're in Hawaii. You're surrounded with the ocean of hydrogen stuck to oxygen, water. So why would you import hydrogen stuck to carbon from some other place? This is what your work demonstrates. And the fact that you're using large scale solar arrays, making clean energy, potent energy for public transit in your application, which is brilliant because now you're actually fulfilling your state's mandate of saying you're gonna be clean by 2045. Now you're doing it right now. And that's what's brilliant about the work you do and the role Hawaii has played and I believe will play pushing forward in the future. And really Hawaii has a lot of skin in the game because 10 years ago they put together the hydrogen fund and it was a $10 million fund. So that doesn't sound so big when you're looking at some of the projects today. But if you look at the pop on a population basis, as I think I've said before on a per person basis and you compare it to say the population of California, which is what about 35 million people and we're about like slightly over a million not counting visitors. That'd be like a $330 million investment if you kind of project it based on population, which is a huge deal and a huge investment. And even now we've got additional investment from the, for example, from the county of Hawaii, the big island, just invested in some hydrogen buses that we've got to upgrade them and a significant investment for them, especially given the economic times we're in right now. So yeah, Hawaii's got definite skin in the game and they're pretty, they're very serious about it. And particularly on the big island, they're very aware of hydrogen. I've got a really excellent support group out there that's working with me to kind of get the word out to particularly the school children. So that's going to be coming up in January where we're going to be running a contest, an art contest with all the students so that we can put a really interesting graphics on the buses. But the kids are going to be involved as a contest through the prizes. And if you get the kids involved, guess what? The parents are automatically involved. So I like to really leverage, you know, the opportunity here and get the kids being creative and thinking about it. So that's just one of the many tools in the toolbox. So anyway, this is about your show here. No, no, but your message is the greatest message for everybody. And particularly the younger generation. There is a solution. We don't have to see our world die. They don't have to grow up in a world where they can't go out and play in the forest and the streams and the fields as we did when we were kids. This is really it. And I'm so impressed with the Asia Pacific platform and the activity here because they really, around the world, they actually really get it. And they are in a race now to put in as many projects in the ground as possible. Hawaii has been the heart and soul of all of this because you guys have declared a hydrogen economy as your goal nearly 20 years ago, I think it is. Correct, yes. Yeah, so you beat everybody because it's, well, in the Hawaiian language, I think the phrase is opono, do the right thing. And so, you know, pono is really in the heart of Hawaii and look at the world's benefit. You know, you did all the hard work to open the door and now the world is running through that door. But they're not gonna push us down because there's room for everybody. And the great opportunity is to put as many shovel-ready projects in front of these capitalists as possible. You don't have to come up with the money. The underwriters have all the money you need. In fact, this is new to me, I didn't realize this, but there's a program in the magazine, I'll put all the contacts. There's a program from the DOE, Department of Energy, where they have a $2 billion fund. It's already been funded, it's sitting there. I think most of it is still ready to be placed. And they're looking for shovel-ready projects that are not R&D, but in the next stage, demonstration phase. Now, this is perfect for what you're doing because as your buses come in and you demonstrate this, we can go now to Oahu, to the bus, the transit authority, and say, look, let's put a program in. Here's the funding for it. And let's do clean hydrogen for all your public transit. Let's look at what we need to do, and let's do it. And so you're in the perfect position because you did the hard lifting, the heavy lifting. You demonstrated in the environment of Hawaii that you can make this work and you've done it. That's amazing, really. Well, let's look at your next slide. I'm really excited for you there, Toby. Thank you. Okay, another section I'm gonna do is greenhydrogenclimate.com, of course, in the magazine. And then when you go to the.com, we'll drill into it. But the climate issues here, this is an actual way to demonstrate what your first slide has been saying. It's a water cycle, and that's not only good for humans, it's good for every species on the planet. In fact, if we don't do green hydrogen, our planet will slip away. The toxicity loading that we're doing is unfathomable. It's just out over the top, almost to the point of reckless insanity. We have to understand that, you know, it's like everyone, imagine everyone in the world in a swimming pool, and everyone's doing number one and number two, at what point do you go, ew? We've reached that point. I'm there now. I'm never going swimming in a pool again. Well, we're in this together. And so we have to find, here's the bottom line in my view. If we want to solve global problems, the only way it can be done is if we all employ the same local solution. And green hydrogen, what you do, making hydrogen from renewables and from water, stores safely when you use it, you get the energy out in the water back. You know, that is the future for the world. And the young people of the world have to understand that they've been fed all of this propaganda that hydrogen is dangerous. That's the safest fuel. I mean, look, NASA has been working with liquid hydrogen since the 60s. Have you ever heard of a hydrogen accident from NASA? No, they rail it down from Canada all the time. Have you ever heard of a derailment that caused a town to be that? No, hydrogen doesn't work that way. It's so lightweight that if it breaches, it goes straight up and out. You can't get it back, but you're not gonna hurt anybody. And even explosions go straight up. It's the worst terrorist weapon in the world would be hydrogen because it won't go out, it goes up. So the whole idea is that it's foolproof. You've reasoned it out and you understand in the work you do that water is the feedstock and water is the end result. So it's a cycle. And it's potent, safe, available to everyone in the world and a hundred percent non-toxic. You know, anything else, do you want coffee in the morning? Yeah, I bet we could make it make coffee in the morning, but it does what we need to do. So in this magazine, I want to use all the things that I grew up with Loving Magazines was the visuals of images, the compelling content. For example, let's go to the next slide. Let's just try and go through them. Now, this is on capital. We're gonna have greenhydrogencapital.com but in the magazine, we're gonna talk about what the capitalists are doing. They see an opportunity. They see $30 trillion of infrastructure that needs to be replaced. They make money placing money, placing money to work. Tronches of capital are available. I'm astounded at what is being mobilized and how sophisticated the venture capitalists are today. They understand risk assessment. They understand asset management. They understand projections. And what they're really drilling down on is this new emerging market called green hydrogen offtake. Now offtake agreements are, of course, when people buy the hydrogen that you're going to produce. Now, a little sidebar in Japan, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, they're finishing a port at Kobe, the Kobe port, where they're putting a facility to then receive hydrogen from ships. Now, that's gonna open up. The Australians are salivating because they export more coal than anyone in the world. But as you remember, last year, they burned up. Just like we did a few months ago in Oregon and the West Coast, we burned up. They realized, okay, instead of coal, we've got to move to an export that we can do. We have lots of renewables. Let's make hydrogen and ship it to Singapore. And the Japanese said, wonderful, we'll build you a port facility to receive it. So the opportunity on the big island, particularly for you to manufacture, produce hydrogen from water and export it to the Asia Pacific region, would make you the Saudi Arabia of clean energy and wonderful. So I've been going through these sections from capital to infrastructure to even transition. The capitalists are talking about stranded assets. They don't want to strand assets, so they're trying to work it out. But I would remind everyone this, more than just hardware, there's human assets. So we have to have a transition for people to have new training, new education, new jobs. So I registered green hydrogen training, green hydrogen education, green hydrogen jobs. And the idea is now we have a place where people to go and they can figure out what they want. I even registered green hydrogen RFP, Request for Proposal, green hydrogen RFQ. These are where you could request a quote. This is where the industry can consolidate. And what I recognize is just this moment in time where the industry is just being formed that we really do need a trade journal, a trade magazine. It has to be professional, it has to be beautifully done. The slides you're seeing are kind of my mock-ups, my spreads, but I'll hire a real graphic artist to do the final master. But I think it'll be a wonderful opportunity to interview you. I'm gonna have a section called Hydrogen in Hawaii. It's gonna be wonderful. We're gonna talk about your coal plants and their conversions, the projects you're doing. The whole world would love to see what you do. And I intend to make sure they see it. Awesome. Well, I like your slides and your mock-ups are pretty good. Thank you. It'll just get better. You're doing well already. Well, we've got a good start. And let's go to the next slide. What do we have next? Okay, this is what my favorite is maritime. So I registered green hydrogen maritime and greenhydrogenmarine.com. I haven't decided which one yet. Doesn't matter. What you see here and what I was amazed to learn out of the Asia Pacific Conference is how much the shipping industry is going to be transformed. Port facilities, even airports for aviation fuel. And so one of the articles I'm preparing for this section is we're gonna take an example of a typical cargo ship from MERSC. We'll look at its range. We'll look at the fuel capacity and we'll examine if we use hydrogen, how would that impact the amount of space, the amount of range? And they have to go 14,000 nautical miles at 29 days. And then you have to have enough fuel for 29 more days because of contingency, weather. These are real things. And Kawasaki is now modifying liquid natural gas ships to transport hydrogen, very safe because hydrogen can only go up. They vent it if there's a problem. It's really the safest. I would feel very comfortable sleeping on a ship with the hydrogen in it because I know the physics of it. I would not be comfortable on a liquid natural gas ship. If you had a catastrophic explosion it'll blow up a square mile. So there's no surviving that but hydrogen goes straight up so I'd sleep well. So the point is these heavy industries are now in play where I must admit I didn't see this before. You sensed it, put me onto it and then when I looked at it I went, oh my goodness. This is not just a little bit of an interest or just a propaganda play. These guys are in to win. And it's a $6 trillion a year business and they want every bit of it. That's what I find very interesting indeed. What do we have next? Let's talk about aviation. Oh, this is wonderful. Okay. It looks like a shark with sunglasses on it. This is Airbus. Airbus announced they're doing a hydrogen transportation hydrogen jets, turbo fans, turbo props. They're doing a whole sequence of three. I'm only showing one of them. This is their kind of molded wing design. They are going big on hydrogen. And the reason is the whole world has really kind of matured and it's been a lot of hard work from people like you pushing projects pushing policy considerations pushing the renewable portfolio standards. And what we're seeing now is Airbus is responding as the Europeans are with great vigor. And they're going to take over the eight, in the next decade, things are gonna be Airbus. I predict unless Boeing decides to understand the moment in history, they better not wait. They're not waiting now. Just FYI there was a US Department of Energy put on H2 at airport's workshop I think it was last week of the week before last. And it was a three day online conference and they started out with the major aviation players like there was Airbus, there was Boeing, Sikorsky and some others, not too many more I guess because there aren't that many aircraft manufacturers but they all have like you said they all have very active hydrogen programs. So it was astounding. And then the next day was looking at what kind of technologies do we need? And then the third day was looking at the infrastructure. And for example, back of the envelope as I recall the number was for LAX to convert that. And everybody pretty well agreed that, well, it's had no question that the aircraft are gonna have to fly on liquid hydrogen. I mean, you got to ask us hydrogen for that. But they would have to have like, I think the number was 130 tons of liquid hydrogen per day. So I'm going to talk about infrastructure how do you get 130 tons of hydrogen per day into the airport? So there were a lot of ideas about how that might be done. So they'll come out with a report sometime in January, February, what happened. And a lot of the presentations will be presented in that right now they're just seeking permission from the, it was a bi-invitation only kind of a conference. So the US DOE is right on top of it, I'm happy to say. Pete Devlin and his team and Sunita are really, you know, being proactive and getting after it just as you said. So yeah, very encouraging. And I think Airbus said they were gonna have a test plane up and running in 2023, like in three years. So pretty interesting. Now they're moving. And I'm happy to hear you mentioned Sunita at DOE. She was one of the guest speakers at the Green Hydrogen Coalition out of Berkeley. And she's brilliant. What a resource. They were calling her the hydrogen rock star. And after hearing her speak. I understand. I'm a groupie. Oh yeah, yeah. She's been very effective at moving the program, you know through lots of barriers and getting it done. And even some of the times we're going through now. So that's right. And she has, she's sitting on $2 billion of funding and she'd love to place it. That's her job. And part of what she oversees. There are other groups in whether it's alone. Yeah, I don't think she has $2 billion. No, no, no, but her position in the DOE knows where it is. She knows where to go. Yeah, that own program you were talking about. Exactly, exactly. So the whole world is waking up with your prediction of a tremor, something happening. Something is near. It is a sea change. I've been around the hydrogen industry for 27 years. And I've never seen anything like this. It seems like every decade we get a surge. And then the powers that be kind of pushed back on it. Most recently with all the investment going to lithium ion, which at best might do 2% of transportation. Whereas fuel cells will do 98%. OK, there's a lot of. So we've got about a minute to go. I don't want to curb the enthusiasm, which is great. But let's have the last slide. We're going to talk about the different colors, very quickly, different colors of hydrogen. You've got that slide up there. Yeah, absolutely. So we talked about hydrogen being the real energy and fossil fuels. So in the world, in the Europeans and in the Asian world, we really talked about green hydrogen. And I thought I'd put a chart up of what we really So there's black hydrogen. That's fossil fuels. That's 90% of the world. Gray hydrogen is how most of the hydrogen in the world is made today. 98% of it, 70 million tons a year. And what that is is they use SMR, steam methane reforming. And this is making it from a fossil fuel, from methane. Now, the problem is you get one ton of hydrogen, but you're going to produce 10 tons of CO2. So that's not really a great solution, but that's where we are at the moment. So talk about hydrogen green. We've got to move fast. Oh, yeah, very good. OK, blue is where they say, OK, we're going to make it from fossil fuels, but we're going to capture all the CO2. That's CCS, carbon capture and storage. But it's green hydrogen. You're still fossil fuels. But green hydrogen, and that's the one because it's made from renewables on the front end, running an electrolyzer, turning water into hydrogen fuel. That's the answer. That's what the world understands. That's what you've been doing for decades. And bless your heart for all the work you do. And the leadership in Hawaii, it's going to really make a big difference in informing everyone in our country that we ought to follow what you do and get to it. Oh, we're all in that canoe behind me together. So last slide, how do we contact you? Oh, thanks. If anyone has any questions or they want to submit an article or comments or anything like that, please contact me, Toby Kincaid, at gmail.com. There's a number there. If you want to see some of the books on Amazon, you have to search Christopher Kincaid, which is my given. I publish under my given name. So not many people know me by Christopher because I've always been called Toby. But just in case, so if someone wanted to search Amazon, that's what you need to do. I'm going to move the back. Amazing enthusiasm. Thank you so much. You'll be back real time very soon. Toby, I love having you on the show. I'm sure everybody out there loves to hear from you. So this is Mitch Ewan signing off and aloha for Hawaii, the state of clean energy.