 This is Think Tech Hawaii. Community matters here. Hey, Aloha, and welcome to Staten Energy Man on this very first day of February 2019. Man, I just don't know where the time goes. Where did January go already? It's almost coming up on Valentine's Day and I haven't got a clue what to get my wife yet, so I need some help there. Anyway, thanks for joining us today here on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm Stan Osterman from the Hawaii Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies. And I'm here on my lunch hour to interview some of the folks that we kind of tap into an awful lot in the state of California to make sure that we're up to speed on what's going on. And I know on the show a lot of times I'll do a solo show and I'll highlight some of the newsletters we get from the industry partners. And one of those, in fact I think one of the best newsletters we get is from an organization called the California Fuel Cell Partnership. So today's guest is Keith Malone from the California Fuel Cells Partnership. And we have him zooming in from California from down in LA. And Keith, welcome to the show. I'm really glad you could make it on today. Hey Stan, glad to be here. So Keith, tell us a little bit about your background and how you got started working for the Fuel Cell Partnership and maybe what you do for the Fuel Cell Partnership. Well, I've been with the partnership now for almost seven years. My background is mostly in politics and in the nonprofit sector. And for the partnership I deal with public affairs. I do a lot of outreach to legislators, policymakers, planning organizations, and the general public. I also talk to a lot of the news media as you can imagine. And so I'm paid to talk and write a lot about Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles and Hydrogen. And just kind of really quickly, if you could bring up that first slide, the California Fuel Cell Partnership is a public-private partnership. So government agencies at all levels from our air quality management districts all the way up to the U.S. Department of Energy. Our members also include many of the major automakers as well as hydrogen producers, fuel cell manufacturers, and others. And we work together to commercialize this technology or really to push it along the commercialization pathway farther than it's gone. You know, we heard over just over the last, I want to say, four or five weeks that air liquead and air products, I believe, are putting liquid hydrogen plants into California. And according to their press releases, it was to support the vehicle sector and your new stations. And then I heard that in Texas, there's another 30 ton a day liquid hydrogen plant going in in Texas again to support hydrogen transportation sector that they see coming down the road. Could you tell us a little bit about what you know about the California projects? Well, I can tell you, at least from the air products announcement, it seems like it's going to be here in California. As for the air liquead, I don't think they've identified publicly a location yet. It's somewhere in the west. But that said, if you look at both of their announcements, air liquead, certainly the main objective was really to support fuel cell electric vehicles and to work with a new partner, First Element Fuel, which operates a number of hydrogen stations throughout California. Air products, I think they gave a number of reasons why they were building that plant, but certainly being able to kind of feed, so to speak, or fuel cell electric vehicles was certainly a key part of that announcement. And I just want to be clear that it's not just about they're looking at not only the passenger vehicle market, but also they're looking at the heavy duty market as well. Because we're just in the early stages of fuel cell electric trucks and they see large volumes associated with that vehicle category. Are you talking like Nicola Motors and maybe the drainage trucks that are working the ports over there? Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that's what's on their minds. I think if you look at Nicola right now, I think they see most of their source of hydrogen coming from now hydrogen, the company out of Norway, which is building their stations. And also it looks like producing much of their fuel. But if you kind of look at what's going on out of the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, the potential for extremely large volumes of hydrogen, they see opportunity there. Great. Yeah, I was really excited to see the two, Ehrlichheed and Air Products both announced because that was unprecedented. I happened to be in Detroit for an army military forum that was focused on hydrogen. And I got a chance to talk to someone from Ehrlichheed and I asked questions about liquid hydrogen. It turns out that most of the customers for liquid hydrogen right now as far as he was concerned were NASA and space programs and that the average plant was only 20 tons a day. And to see two 30 ton a day plants get put on the books to be built in the next couple of years, that seemed to be really exciting to me. I mean, that says there's a market getting ready to take off. And I think it's really exciting for California. I wish I could get them to do one over here in Hawaii because we'd love to take all our renewable energy and help stabilize our grid and have some energy to export to boot maybe and send some over to California or send some to Asia. But I'm excited about hearing the liquid hydrogen piece. But your stations in California are a lot of them basically started off with liquid hydrogen and then put into tanks on site as compressed hydrogen. What's the use of liquid hydrogen in the stations you have going up on average? I know there's all different kinds of stations you have some produced on site, but a lot of them have it trucked in in tube trailers. Can you kind of describe what the stations are like? I'd say at the moment most of the stations, given kind of their capacity and where we are right now, and the vast majority first off are getting delivered hydrogen. It tends to be gaseous hydrogen. There are a few stations that are making it on site. But I would say as you look to the next generation of stations, the ones that are still being built, the ones that are going to be funded in the next round of funding, which is coming up hopefully in the next couple of months, I think you will begin to see liquid hydrogen deliveries. But for the most part right now it's mostly gaseous hydrogen deliveries. Well I think we have an image coming up here that shows where the stations are. Maybe we can talk to that. The first one coming up is the electric vehicles and it shows the Toyota Mirai, the Honda Clarity, and the Hyundai there on the side. The thing says hydrogen station map and the California fuel cell revolution. I think the next one coming up shows the stations. Yeah there it is. The first shot was really of our website and that's the landing page. And right off the front of the website you can actually go directly to our Google map of where open stations are located throughout California and where stations in development are located. So the green are the open stations? The green are the open stations that I believe yellow are the stations that are in development. Alright so there's a whole lot around San Francisco and LA and a couple popping up in route in between. It looks like maybe even one on the California Nevada border on the way to Reno or Tahoe. So what you have right there, right now you have 39 stations that are open, about I think 25 more that are in development. And the general kind of layout of where these stations are going are, we're concentrating most of those stations where you have the highest concentrations of early adopters. So it makes sense that you're going to see stations in the Bay Area as well as Los Angeles and Orange County. And then you have other stations like, you said that kind of what seemed like an outlier, it's one near Lake Tahoe, it's in Truckee and it's meant to serve as a destination station. So if you're really talking to folks in this community you're talking about kind of neighborhood stations as well as connector stations and destination stations. Okay. Are you working with the state of Nevada at all about maybe starting to have them incorporate some hydrogen. I know a lot of folks spend the weekends out of LA going to Vegas and out of San Francisco and Sacramento going to Tahoe and Reno. Is Nevada showing any interest into getting into the hydrogen network? So you're beginning to see a lot of conversations among all the states that border California. Oregon, Nevada, not so much Arizona at this time but I'm sure that will happen. And certainly not directly next to California but certainly Utah as well. But in Nevada I think at the very least stakeholders in California want to see stations open up in Reno as well as Las Vegas. Before that Las Vegas station can be built we have to kind of time it with the location of another connector station on the California side of the border. So we are beginning to have preliminary conversations. Our 2030 vision document, the California fuel cell revolution that just came out in August I think has definitely caught the attention of policymakers across the U.S. And it's triggered a number of conversations that we haven't had before. Great. I think just looking at that map of the existing stations and stations ready to come online is pretty darn impressive because you know people I still think don't have an appreciation for how far along the forklift the commercial vehicle and the passenger vehicle market is already growing in California. It's certainly not massive at this point but it's a lot farther along than most people I think imagine and I'd really like to see a lot more of that out there so thanks for sending out your newsletter and stuff. I try and spread it far and wide when I get it and share it with folks but California has always been leading the way. In fact I think I put on the lead into the show here that California never really stopped the hydrogen economy movement from back in 2000, mid-2000s, 2005, 2007, 2008. Hawaii and almost every other state kind of stopped and I think a lot of it was because the Department of Energy at that time didn't really look at hydrogen as a priority but recently you know we've picked it back up so the Northeast Corridor states and California never stopped. They just kept on rolling and kept on building that hydrogen highway and pressing forward so we thank you for all your work over there and all the standardization work and all the things that you've done internationally with all the companies to encourage the continuation so you know we kind of are riding on your coattails so keep up that good work. Well I think you know California certainly it's a little humbling when we have folks visit the state from across the globe and they talk about what they view as California's leadership certainly there are a lot of stakeholders here that want to share kind of what we've learned kind of the challenges and the successes and it's clear that as other states begin to adopt and pursue hydrogen infrastructure and bringing in fuel cell electric vehicles they're all going to do it their own way. I think some people think that somehow the California model is going to directly kind of apply to them and we've talked to states and said you know you've got to kind of look at a variety of factors to figure out what's going to work best what's going to help you launch this market faster and easier. Well I know you still have Tyson working in the governor's office over there? Tyson Neckarly yes. Can you kind of comment on how important his position is in the effort to really get hydrogen moving in the state of California because one of the things we run into in Hawaii besides a total lack of funding is you know having somebody that can kind of break loose issues with fire marshals or permitting things because every different municipality and county has different rules and it's like a learning curve that starts at zero for all of them so what's Tyson's role and how does he impact what you do? So about I'd say about five years ago the governor's office through the governor's office of business and economic development they created a position almost like an ombudsman to work on hydrogen fueling infrastructure and Tyson was the person they appointed and his position kind of coming out of the governor's office has really helped to coordinate among state agencies to in some ways talk to stakeholders in a way and get their attention in a way that others might not and so he has served and his colleagues because they brought on at least two or three additional staff members to kind of help with this sort of kind of coordination across the state and it's been critical and in fact Tyson did so well that he was promoted to overseeing zero mission infrastructure across California and so there is now he has a deputy Gia Brazil Basin who oversees hydrogen fueling infrastructure so we've kind of been jealous of not having a position like Tyson here because in every time we try and push something forward there's always a lot more questions and they seem to be the same questions but you know when you like you mentioned when you get a call from the governor's office it's like hey I'm Tyson and I'm here to help it seems to get a lot more attention than trying to just deal with it at the worker B level it's always nice to know that the governor's watching it seems to push things along a little bit absolutely absolutely and Tyson is part of a larger ecosystem that was created I mean the fuel cell partnership began in 1999 this is our 20th year and the addition of Tyson and others has really helped to build relationships to educate policymakers whether they be on the bureaucratic side, the agency side or the legislative side it's really helped to kind of coordinate activities and build agreement within the state so Tyson is really the latest incarnation of this sort of evolving like I said ecosystem of advocacy, supporting and cooperation and collaboration we're going to try and figure out how we can grow at Tyson over here in Hawaii and Keith we're going to take a quick break here so some of the other programs can talk about what they do and we'll be back in 60 seconds Aloha I am Howard Wigg I am the proud host of Code Green for Think Tech Hawaii I appear every other Monday at 3 and I have really really exciting guests on the exciting topic of energy efficiency hope to see you there Aloha and Mabuhay My name is Amy Ortega Anderson inviting you to join us every Tuesday here on Pinoy Power Hawaii with Think Tech Hawaii we come to your home at 12 noon every Tuesday we invite you to listen, watch for our mission of empowerment we aim to enrich, enlighten, educate, entertain and we hope to empower again Maraming, Salamat Po, Mabuhay and Aloha Hey welcome back to my lunch hour Stan Osterman here for Think Tech Hawaii and Stan Energy Man I've got Keith Malone from beautiful LA talking to us today he's from the California Fuel Cell Partnerships and they do a lot of public awareness and a lot of coordination in the state of California on their hydrogen economy their hydrogen networks and infrastructure so Keith we were talking a little bit about the fueling stations and how they're popping up we have another image coming up here why don't I bring that up and you can talk to that one this is the California Fuel Cell Revolution So when I first came on board in 2012 we issued a roadmap, a strategy document for how do we launch the passenger vehicle market kind of what kind of infrastructure and network do we need and this is our 2030 vision and this kind of takes us beyond that original vision and looks at down the road more than 10 years forward kind of what does California look like not just for passenger vehicles but for buses and trucks and as well as kind of the energy ecosystem and the role that hydrogen can play and so the original roadmap took us about five to six years to kind of produce the ultimate document that we shared with everyone but this document took us about a year and a half to two years and it kind of looks at things from a 60,000 foot level and although we don't have a lot of numbers probably the key item that comes out of this is the fact that we call for 1,000 strategically located stations hydrogen stations by 2030 that will serve upwards of one million fuel cell electric vehicles Okay, I think that's the next image we've got coming up is that depiction or that graphic So if you look at this next document we show two maps of California and so I believe on the right it shows 8,000 gasoline stations right now we have about 8,000 gas stations in California and we wanted to look at with 1,000 stations can we approximate that network and that coverage that comes with it and as you can see we get pretty darn close and I think we figured out that we would reach about I think about more than 90% of California's population with just 1,000 stations You know, a lot of people might say 1,000 stations compared to 8,000 stations isn't a lot but it's important to remember that with our 8,000 stations right now in California only about 1,800 of those stations are doing heavy lifting those 1,800 stations are providing about 50% of the fuel Okay, I think that's a pretty realistic goal I mean from my perspective, here on Oahu DOE worked with us on a strategic plan as well and they wanted us to put like 6 or 8 stations on Oahu initially and we actually walked it back to 3 and we could actually start with 1 we've got 1 in Mapuna Puna now we could have 1 more along our main highway between the airport and Waikiki and we'd be good but you know, it's funny to compare and contrast California and Hawaii because our population is like 1.5 million for the whole state close to a million on this island and when I think about that it's like LA is how many million are in LA right now population-wise like 8 million or something or 10? Something about that It's like 8 or 10 times bigger than what we are here in Hawaii and I'm seeing the challenges that we face and they just go holy mackerel there's just so much to do but it's impressive to see how many stations are coming up already your graphics kind of tell the story so the other thing we talked about earlier was the trucks some of the trucks like Nicola Motors has got their big plan to lease the 18-wheeler transport trucks with hydrogen and they're building their own network their own fueling network across the nation that's really exciting but I know there's a lot of what we call drage trucks around the ports there in LA and there's a lot going on with hydrogen at the ports in LA and those are the kind of trucks we would actually use in Hawaii so could you describe what a drage truck does and how the hydrogen seems to fit well into that niche market? So generally speaking drage trucks are really those trucks that take goods from the ports up to kind of the centralized locations where they'll get shipped out of kind of the LA base in the Southern California area so they usually might have require ranges of about 100 to 200 miles and so what you've got right now like I said we're just in the early stages so you have a number of trucks that have been funded by the federal and state, by California and the federal government and they'll be coming on the road in the next couple of years but already we have two Toyota fuel cell trucks which is kind of a remarkable a really interesting approach to the way we kind of scale up because Toyota basically took two Kenworth trucks and basically scaled up their MIRAI technology which is absolutely fascinating and as you begin to look at what's going on globally it's not just Toyota that's doing this it's Hyundai, Hyundai recently made that announcement where they're going to be doing a thousand truck project in Switzerland but kind of circling back to California but we're just in those early stages the state just recently funded Toyota Kenworth trucks, Shell and the Port of Los Angeles for a 10 truck project and that project also includes two heavy duty stations in the greater LA area so it's going to get very interesting very soon Yeah, that grey-edged truck is I mean we don't have any distances from the Port of Honolulu that are more than probably 30 or 40 miles from the port so that's the kind of truck that we could actually use a lot of because we offload the container ships and then they go right out to the Costco's and the Home Depot's and go straight to the user right off the container ships so we could use that You're familiar with US Hybrid there in Torrance, aren't you? Yeah Okay, we work a lot with US Hybrid they actually have an office out here and they do a lot of work with us on our hydrogen vehicles What's it going to take to get US Hybrid up there with the big guys because they actually do exceptional work real high quality work but I'm kind of frustrated that we can't get some of the smaller businesses to play with the big guys like Toyota and Kenworth What can we do to help US Hybrid kind of push it along? You know, there's right now in California there is a grant funding opportunity out that supports in-state manufacturing for zero mission technology So that's kind of one opportunity You know, this market there's a lot of partnerships that are being made and continuing to be made so I wouldn't count them out at this point I really wouldn't Yeah, I know they've been doing a lot of not a lot of they've actually built a couple trucks and they've also done a lot in the mass transit market So I know several municipalities in California are already running hydrogen buses How are those things working out and what's the plan for expanding that mode of transportation in California? So California has about, I'd say about 18 years of experience with fuel cell electric buses Right now we've got about oh my numbers are not good in my head but about probably 25 buses on the road and another 20 something in development And so, and then we've got kind of on top of that we've got about 13 to 14 years of federally collected data that shows that these buses perform well These bus agencies include AC Transit out of the Oakland area, the East Bay of San Francisco You've also got Sunline Transit out in the Coachella Valley out in the Palm Springs area and they were actually, they're kind of really a trailblazer because they were the first transit agency in the U.S. to go all natural gas back in all CNG back in 1994 and then you've got a new agency our newest agency is Orange County Transportation Authority and they are awaiting now 10 buses coming out of New Flyer which is one of the largest bus manufacturers in North America Alright, I'll tell you why Keith we've got about 45 seconds left and I'm going to leave it to you I was going to try and talk a little bit about grid stuff because here in Hawaii we're trying to match up energy storage on the grid with hydrogen for transportation so I'll leave the last 30 seconds up to you to just talk about whatever you'd like to in California and we'll wrap it up I think that we see a lot of opportunity with renewables and excess capacity on the grid and opportunities for making hydrogen not only for fuel but for industry as well as for energy storage and I think you're going to see in the next couple of years some really interesting projects launch and I think a lot of minds change as well on this topic Well Keith, I want to thank you for your time today and I know it's a lot to ask to get you to spring away from the legislature and all your other duties but thanks for being here with us on Think Tech Hawaii and Stand Energy Man and I'm sure I'll have you back again sometime soon maybe after you have one of your other fuel cell conferences and we'll get some of the latest updates from there but thanks for being on today and we look forward to talking to you again soon Thanks for having me Stan Okay Keith, take care and for everyone out there thanks for joining us today on Stand Energy Man and we'll be back with you next Friday the second Friday in February already oh my goodness how fast it's going Aloha