 Hey Aloha and welcome to Stand Energy Man here at Think Tech Hawaii where it's another beautiful Friday, a little windy today here in Hawaii. I'm Stan Osterman from the Hawaii Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies and we're here today to talk again about one of my favorite subjects which is hydrogen and we're getting caught up with a good friend that I've met at several conferences, Department of Energy conferences that I attended and fuel cell conferences in California. Mr. Steve Jones from ITM Power and he talks a little funny but he lives in California and he doesn't have a California accent, he's still got his UK accent and he's going to kind of get us up to speed on what's been going on in Europe across the continent with clean energy and specifically probably more specifically hydrogen and then also what's going on in California because their company does a lot of work worldwide and so one of the companies I keep looking at to make sure I have my finger on the pulse of what's happening now. So Steve thanks for joining us today, I appreciate you chiming in there from California. Yeah no problem, thanks Stan, good to be on again. So give everybody, you know we have some folks that probably haven't seen you before or know your background, why don't you give us some ideas, give the viewers an idea of what your background is and how you got into what you're doing at ITM. Sure, yeah thanks, so originally I started as a material scientist at university in the UK and one of my final year assignments was looking at purification of hydrogen and technology associated with that and then so that got me into the hydrogen space relatively soon after university and decided that that was what I wanted to do and so I've been working in the hydrogen space most of the time ever since. So currently with ITM Power, I've been with ITM Power for 13, 14 years now, started in the UK and then for the last four and a half years I've been out here in California heading up the US subsidiary ITM Power Inc. Looking at electrolysis solutions and hydrogen refueling mainly but also crossing over into some hydrogen energy. That's great, so you know one of the things that attracted me to looking at your company was all the things that you're involved in over on the European continent and you know as I look at all the industry publications and newsletters that I get there's a lot going on around the world, in fact I was at a meeting this week with some Arizona State University folks and some Julie Wrigley Foundation folks looking at funding hydrogen projects and Paul Pontio the chief technology officer at Blue Planet made the statement that he's been doing this kind of stuff probably about as long as you have you know 14, 15 years and he says this is the year that hydrogen's really going to take off internationally and I agree with him. Would you agree to that statement and then could you give us an idea what's going on in Europe? Yeah sure yeah I mean first off yes I think that I agree with that you know this this year and the coming years after are really going to be when we start to see a step change in in what's going on with hydrogen. I haven't been involved for so many years in the industry you know as with a lot of these emerging technologies and they can take a little while to find their feet but now you know you have real strategic commercial projects that are happening around the world and you know we're really starting to see that gather pace so for example ITM is currently in the process of deploying the world's largest palm electrolyzer system and the customer in that in that project is Shell and Shell are using that hydrogen system in their refinery in Germany and you know that's really a flagship project it's only 10 megawatts but that 10 megawatts can grow very very rapidly in that refinery industry and you know another couple of examples in Europe, France, H2B and GE are putting together projects that'll see hundreds of megawatts of electrolysis being deployed in France, I think it's 700 megawatt projects that they're ideally targeting and likewise in Germany some of the big utility companies have just announced that they're looking at the first 100 megawatt electrolysis project to provide grid scale in the German energy market so that you know when we move from one to five megawatt demonstration plans up to this 100 megawatt commercial scale now you know that's starting to get companies like ITM involved to drive costs down, increase production capacities and you know we'll start to see a real a real uptick in the market in my opinion. So is ITM more of an integrator or is it do you guys manufacture equipment as well and you know how do you how would you describe ITM as a company? Yeah so ITM primarily is a manufacturer of of PEM electrolysis that's our core competency that's where our IP and know how surrounds and we build full electrolysis products you know we don't just do the stat we'll package it in a full solution so we go everything from electricity and water in right the way through to fuel cell grade hydrogen on the back end but because of the nature of our industry we have to get involved both upstream and downstream of that electrolysis so whether it be power conditioning or energy balancing on the front end or whether it be compression storage dispensing purification gas injection plants on the back end in and you know on the hydrogen use case side we get involved in both so we can be both an integrator and the manufacturer in some certain circumstances in other circumstances we'll provide the electrolysis function to somebody else that's doing the rest of the project. Okay so would you say that in Europe the the electric utilities in Europe have kind of at least recognize the fact that your electrolyzers are a good grid stability tool in terms of a adjustable load and when they need to curtail power they can they can put it into that and then they actually have a product coming out that's not just a grounded you know dummy load or anything they're actually getting a product of hydrogen out of your electrolysis. Yeah very much so so the power to gas hydrogen energy component initiated in Germany and there's a you know there's there's double digits nearly 30 something projects now that are looking at it in various ways and you know the German utilities are really starting to see the benefit of hydrogen and I think it comes through analyzing the energy market and what the benefits and limitations of different storage technologies are and then you know every every reputable study that's looked at large scale you know national scale energy and energy storage has concluded the same thing in that if you want to go for real what they call deep decarbonization you know 50 to 100 renewable hydrogen has to play a role in some capacity because it's the only technology that spans electricity and gas as the two primary energy vectors and it's the only technology that can scale to large large storage duration and large volume economically so you know batteries and other technologies are very good at what they do you know short-term energy storage but for long-term really you know hydrogen is the only way to go and the Germans and the rest of Europe is really latching on to that that's that's great I mean I know that Hawaii's not there yet and I hear that a lot of the mainland utilities are looking to Hawaii to kind of set the example because we've already established a hundred percent renewable portfolio standard for our grid by 2045 and there everybody's looking at Hawaiian Electric to kind of show how to do it but our our grid's only like a gigawatt I mean it's it's not a really huge huge grid but I know that Europe's way ahead one question I did have though you know we have electric utilities but we also have natural gas utilities for the same reason they they move gas around through pipelines all over our between cities and towns and things like that so they're publicly regulated monopolies I would assume that similar in Europe that yeah the gas companies are also regulated is there now becoming a more of a relationship between electric utility and the gas utility as you say we you know you're doing power to gas and how you move it around is how's how's that relationship developing or is it still pretty separate yeah it's much more integrated these days I think in Europe different to the U.S. a lot of the energy companies are vertically integrated so you have the gas side of the house and the electric side of the house I see in the same organization which obviously helps but there are still areas where where that is in the case and I think what's happening now is that tries to figure out well you know how are we going to store all of this energy to meet our goals they're starting to look at the benefits of power to gas and the fact that the gas grid is such a huge asset and store of energy that's already built and paid for and underground and and then the gas side of the house are trying to figure out how they're going to decarbonize their network and really you know biogas biobased gases and hydrogen and really the only two games of town and so you know as utilities start to go further down that road the logical conclusion is that they finally come to is that they you know they kind of need each other and this this concept of sector export we call it is shifting energy between the electricity and the gas sector I think is very important yeah that's interesting I'm we're not vertically integrated as they are and two separate companies and under two separate corporations in fact my understanding is that our gas company is actually their parent corporation is in New Zealand or Australia someplace so it's like we're even international on our gas company and why electric is you know associated with mainland you know large institutions so that probably makes things a lot easier when you're part of one big corporation and you can have two divisions one for electric utility and one for gas and get them get them working together I think we're going to be a little challenged there so I have to start thinking some more on how we do that but you know where does most of your renewable electricity come from is it north north wind north sea wind or is it you have a lot of PV going in or you know because those two are both the intermittent ones which drive a lot of the storage requirements um can you kind of give us a picture of you know how much electricity is nuclear how much of its intermittent renewable how much of its um like hydroelectric some other way yeah so obviously it depends where you are um obviously in California most of it's solar with some winds uh in Europe there's more wind energy available uh you know from the north of Germany for example or north sea uh you know Scotland region in the UK um but the um I think the process is that it's kind of agnostic it doesn't care where where the energy comes from and it's very flexible so um you have you know different wind and solar resources coming on to a grid and you can strategically place the electrolyzers where the kind of hot spots or the pinch points are in the in the electricity network um and use them essentially as a dockload to mop up the um the excess energy which would otherwise be grid problems and turn it into hydrogen and then use that hydrogen uh attilate today either for vehicle fuel or primary energy or heat or you know whatever you want to do with it um so you know I think areas like France obviously have a lot of nuclear base load um and so when renewable energies in France are trying to come onto the grid the nuclear base load is already there and it has a you know it has a problem turning turning down and so um storage of energy is very important in France and hence the reason that these 100 megawatt grid scale energy storage projects are coming online you know for example in Germany there's a big mismatch between north and south and the connection between north and south from an electrical grid point of view isn't isn't great and so they want to try and leverage the gas network to to move that energy around um so you know I think it's it's fairly geographically dependent but I think the good thing about hydrogen energy storage is that it is so flexible and you can use it in in uh in almost at any source yeah we don't have we don't have nuclear power here in hawaii um and so it's kind of did I understand you right that actually when when you have a nuclear power plant in play they're not quite as flexible in adjusting their output so they can actually um push some of their output to an electrolyzer rather than try and tune the tune the power plant they just take any access and push it to an electrolyzer did I understand that right yeah yeah very much so nuclear energies is very inflexible you know it's base load plant it does not like to be turned on and off you know the it takes days to come up and up you know online and offline so really it's base load steady state plant so if you have a bunch of renewables that are kind of cutting in and out at different levels um you know that that's not the ideal partnership with a with a nuclear plant so having these flexible storage loads um you know really really helps manage a grid like that all right okay see we're going to take a quick break here and we'll be back in 60 seconds and maybe we can transition to the continental us and talk about what's going on in your neighborhood there aloha i'm wendy low and i'm coming to you every other Tuesday at two o'clock live from think tech hawaii and on our show we talk about taking your health back and what does that mean it means mind body and soul anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier is what we're going to be talking about whether it's spiritual health mental health fascia health beautiful smile health whatever it means let's take healthy back aloha hey aloha my name is andrew landing i'm the host of security matters hawaii airing every wednesday here on think tech hawaii live from the studios i'll bring you guests i'll bring you information about the things in security that matter to keeping you safe your co-workers safe your family safe to keep our community safe we want to teach you about those things in our industry that you know may be a little outside of your experience so please join me because security matters aloha hey welcome back to stand the energy man on my lunch hour we're talking to steven jones from itm power united kingdom based company that has offices in california actually has a corporation in california that's helping california get their hydrogen stations set up for their transportation sector and that's probably a good place to start the transition that steven is um transportation because uh again even california i don't think their grid's catching up to our europe sat and using hydrogen effectively on their grid and a lot of their a lot of their hydrogen is steam reformed they're by by california law 70 percent of the hydrogen that's produced can be produced through steam reformation off of natural gas and that's by far a cheaper way to make it than electrolysis so we're still breaking the code over there can you can you talk about the transportation side of europe you know what's coming out online over there and also maybe how it's integrating and then maybe help us with what's going on in california yeah yeah sure so so transportation is obviously a big a big topic within hydrogen you know it's the it's the thing that grabs the headlines with the you know the new core cars that are coming out and buses and things like that and you have all of the oems uh touting their new hydrogen vehicles um buses uh you know toyotas moving into the world of trucking um Hyundai is is is saying that they're going to have thousands and thousands of fuel cell buses and trucks on the roads um and we're starting to see big transportation schemes pop up so um uh you know in the in the uk for example uh we're building a network of stations out there to um support uh the emerging hydrogen fuel cell fleet uh things like the metropons police force has shown interest in in having a fleet of 200 toyotas to drive to drive the policemen uh around the london area um and you know just the other day uh there was an announcement of um a new uh round of funding to put a load more buses and vehicles passenger vehicles on the road in the uk um europe is looking at combined procurement so looking at you know how can we get costs of 100 buses down and deploy those 100 buses in different places in europe and even further afield uh we just signed an agreement to supply five electrolyzers for transportation based projects in australia we've just opened a company in australia as well um and they're looking at hydrogen as as a key way to decarbonize decarbonize transport um i was going to say last week i just uh i told everybody last week that uh um australia had just released their strategic uh hydrogen plan and um so yeah we know they're stepping forward too in a in a big way i did have a question though that i was thinking about what we were talking and that is here in the us we have um zev states zero mission vehicle states and that really makes a big difference in terms of getting the um the manufacturers to deliver their cars that's why california has has virtually everything they have the hundays they have the toyotas they have the um hondaclarities um so does europe have a similar system for incentivizing um oems to bring um their their hydrogen vehicles or their electric vehicles um to offset the other okay yeah so it's country specific um but there are uh clean vehicle incentives um like rebates and tax breaks for um oems to bring uh low carbon vehicles into a specific region um and you know the main difference with hydrogen uh transportation rather than battery electric transportation is that it really needs to be a much more coordinated effort because of the fact that hydrogen requires a dedicated infrastructure and it can't rely on an existing infrastructure like the electric grid and battery vehicles um so you know the two go hand in hand in in most european places uh vehicle incentives and infrastructure incentives yeah i just talked to a friend of mine that um works in the national garden she just got her tesla and she's really really happy with it um but she's plugging it into her 110 volt system at home and that really doesn't charge the battery very well even overnight it's it's not enough to charge the battery so she's going to upgrade her system to 220 volt which is what europe uses to get a little faster charge but what we're finding as a shortfall here is that because we're only 110 for the most part in uh in our buildings that even upgrading to fast charging equipment is causing us to invest a lot more into infrastructure whereas i think over in europe you could probably do pretty reasonable charging at home without a whole lot of utility upgrades um even in your house to get a decent charge overnight let alone putting in fast charging stations but um i think we're we've got more of an incentive here to go to hydrogen because i don't know how our infrastructure could be upgraded enough to um to accommodate quick chargers for all the electric vehicles people are thinking are gonna come online yeah yeah i think you know it's gonna it's gonna be a combination of both you know there are some circumstances when electric vehicles are great um and you know they they should definitely be used because um you know very good at what they do but there are a whole bunch of other transportation areas where you know batteries are just not non-optimal you know heavy-duty stuff um where the batteries start to impact on the payload weight of the vehicle um long ranges you know battery vehicles are very limited in terms of range particularly when they get to be larger heavier vehicles and also charge time you know the the um the fast chargers that are being put into california you know they still require you know a 30 45 minute rest period where you have to wait for the vehicle to charge um and you know in in quite a few circumstances it's just not really that practical so you know the benefits of hydrogen as you know you know five minutes and you're back you're back on the road um but i think more than that from an energy point of view when the electricity networks start to think about charging you know hundreds of thousands of battery vehicles at random times throughout the day it's going to start to cause issues on the grid and having electrolyzers that are you know essentially a few thousand vehicles that are plugged in and never move are always available to accept electrons um you know will really help the future electricity grids while still providing zero emission fuel for electric vehicles albeit fuel cell electric yeah that's true well let's get to your neighborhood now in california your current neighborhood and what's new in california yeah so california um is currently uh just reached about the 60 station mark in terms of vehicle stations that are either built or being built and um we have just received the first draft of a new solicitation from the california energy commission which is looking to put up to 110 million dollars for the next wave of stations now what's different this time around is that rather than just putting up a figure and having everybody fight over the money for you know one to five stations what they're looking to do this time around is actually be a bit more strategic and and allow companies to bid multi-year uh what they're calling tranches of stations so you know a single company might bid 20 30 stations over the period of five years um and what that enables us all to do is try and get that cost down by both purchasing and um also allowing the engineering services and and construction teams to to get a bit of economy of scale as well um and so as I said it's it's at draft stage at the moment so we're all looking at it and providing comments but that's really exciting from the energy uh commission uh to to push forward the the new goal of 200 hydrogen stations which is what the the californians want to put in place um so that's kind of california from the vehicle side of things from the passenger vehicle side of things there are also a couple of really exciting heavy-duty projects um orange county are just about to receive 10 fuel cell buses palm springs are going to also receive some new fuel cell buses of sunline transit and also down at the port of la toyota are putting in place 10 class 8 heavy-duty drage trucks to move goods in and out of the port of of la and into the inland empire so you know there were some really exciting heavy-duty projects um coming online too um you know which is which is really good for for california is is it looking outside of california to neighboring states um because you know i had keith malone from the california fuel cell partnership on a couple shows ago and and i noticed that california is building some near the borders especially along nevada and um it seems to me that it would make sense especially if you want to be a destination um for fuel cell vehicles that you start looking at those states expanded is it i'm doing that yeah that we're looking at different locations as well you mentioned vegas as being a destination station so looking at stations along that border um and also into into las vegas the other place that we're looking at the moment is the is the oregon region so there's a new um organization called the renewable hydrogen alliance which is started out of oregon we're one of the founding members of that alliance and that's looking to try and develop hydrogen technology um up that west coast you know right the way through oregon washington and up towards um uh vancouver and vancouver is another area that we are currently doing a project so we have a uh a government funded um feasibility study looking at up to 300 megawatts of electrolysis based in the vancouver region to provide hydrogen locally to provide hydrogen for california and also some export opportunities to move hydrogen across japan as well there's a lot going on on the on the west coast of the us for sure all right okay well we believe it or not we've hit our uh 30 minute point on the show and man it seems like we just got started talking about california and the west coast but yeah we'll close up by saying you know we we were aware of some of the things going on in canada where they're exporting ammonia which is kind of hydrogen rich hydrogen rich liquid that can be moved at ambient temperature ambient pressure which is a nice way to move it and they're they're shipping a lot of that ammonia to to japan and asia to use in the hydrogen market but hey steven i want to thank you again for being on the show today and getting us up to date and we'll have to bring you in again in another few months and and get another update but thanks for talking with us today and and bringing some news from europe over to the islands here thanks again yeah no problem thanks for having me uh look forward to coming on again soon all right well that'll do it for this week on stan energy man and we're looking forward to next week and talking some more with you aloha till then