 This week, Stan the energy man, Stan Osserman here coming to you from beautiful downtown Honolulu, Hawaii and the weather is beautiful. It has been all week. You should be here vacationing and spending all your money in our beautiful state tourist thing and checking out the surf and all the good things. California has some good things too, including my guests today. But before we get to my guests, I wanted to show a short video that we didn't get to show last show that we were trying to squeak in, but we were trying to do a technical moonshot last week from the big island and it was tough to squeeze this video in. But I want to show it because a lot of people think that hydrogen is invisible when it burns. And that's true out in daylight, but it's not true at night or indoors. So we have a really neat video and this is a video of hydrogen burning in a specially made, this was manufactured by Blue Planet Research. And the flame is actually done in that little center section. The kind of gold silver colored ring around it is the normal burner that he uses in there to burn hydrogen. But we call this the Starfire burner and it's meant to be used in some high tech applications with igniting other things or cooking, but it's just really a beautiful flame. And outdoors, you would never see it. If you took that, we've actually taken that burner outside and you can't see the flame. You can see the heat waves on the concrete and you can definitely feel the heat when it comes off of there. But again, hydrogen doesn't have any carbon in it. So if you're next to the flame, it doesn't radiate heat sideways or down, but over the flame or wherever the flame is jetting, the direction is jetting. It's hot. It's 500 plus degrees. So just want to start off with that and say it was really fun being with Paul and on the big island and Andy Belt from Geener. I got it right this time, Andy. Geener guys make electrolyzers over there. And this week we've got my old battle buddy in the hydrogen Wars, Keith Malone from California fuel cell partnerships. So welcome, Keith. Thank you, Stan. At your surfboard here. Are you waxing up your surfboard there in California yet. You know, I'm not really a surfer myself. I have a great deal of respect for surfers, but you know, we've got some pretty decent surf weather. It's a little cold here, but it's still warmer than a lot of other areas across the US. So I would say if you can't make it to Hawaii this year, perhaps you can visit us in Southern California. Okay. Well, Keith, why don't you start off by telling the viewers a little bit about what you do in California for the California fuel cell partnership and then we'll get into some of the stuff that you do specifically letting the rest of us know all that's going on in the world of hydrogen and doing a great service for everybody else that doesn't live in California. Okay. So, so I've been with the I am, I am kind of what you might call the public affairs guy at the California hydrogen California fuel cell partnership. And I've been with the partnership for now for about seven and a half years. I've been driving a fuel cell car for about six and a half of those years seven of those years. And I've lost every kind of fuel cell car there is from the Hyundai Tucson fuel cell, the Honda Clarity fuel cell, the Toyota Mirai. And now I currently drive the Hyundai Nexo fuel cell. How do you like that? They're all great cars. I love them all. They're all great for various reasons. I've been driving the Hyundai Nexo now for a little over a month. I've driven it down to San Diego and up to San La Barbara and San Luis Obispo. And it's like all the cars, it's damn fun to drive. I haven't driven the Nexo yet. I've driven all the other ones you mentioned including the Mercedes. They had one at one of the shows or conferences you had there in California, I got to drive the Mercedes as well. But both of the Hyundai vehicles, I was really impressed with both of those. And of course we have the Mirai here in Hawaii, but yeah, people, if you get a chance to drive a fuel cell vehicle, you got to go do it. It's a mind blowing experience. It's really cool. They're quick off the start. They're great handling. They have low center of gravity. They're just good vehicles. And if you're a real aficionado of drive trains and vehicles, I think you'd be impressed. Like I tell people, they are damn fun cars to drive. And I hold my own in crazy LA traffic. Everybody's going 70. I'm going 70 as well. If there's an idiot in front of me like any good Angelino, I will yell at him or her first, hit the gas and go right around him. Not a problem. So Keith, what's been going on in California lately? How many stations are you up to now? So right now we're at 40 plus. We've got another 20 stations in development. So we should see a lot of stations come online this year here in California. And just a couple of weeks ago, the California Energy Commission released a grant funding opportunity for light duty stations. That's what we call stations that are primarily focused on the passenger vehicle market. And in California, we have kind of two critical milestones. The first one is 100 stations. And so this funding opportunity should get us well beyond 100 stations. And the next goal we have is 200 stations. And so you're going to see stakeholders here in California talking with government agencies as well as the California legislature to get us to that 200 stations. Yeah, I have a question for you. We haven't here in Hawaii, we haven't started selling any hydrogen yet from our surf coast station that I know of. I haven't talked to him this month, but last month they still were working it. And the problem was, and I know you guys have worked your way through it already is how do you give a kilogram worth of hydrogen? And you guarantee it with the little sticker from the Department of Agriculture on the pump that says it gives a real one kilogram and it says giving a kilogram. I know that because measuring people think about this, but with hydrogen, you're measuring gas and not a liquid. Liquid is not very compressible, but gases are. So if the gas is hotter or colder, you get a different actual volume of fuel. So have you in California got that through the state and got it all regulated yet or are you still, the cars just being leased out and it's still part of the purchase price of the lease of the vehicle. So the fuel cell partnership, we're a public private partnership government agencies at all levels and private industry and we work together. And one of our members is the weights and measures division of the California Department of Food and Agriculture. And so our members have worked closely with them over the years to ensure that that we have a system for verifying stations and to making sure that they operate correctly. And so we have stations, all of these stations that we describe as retail stations, they have to meet certain certain standards. And that includes the approval of the weights and measures folks, both either from the state of California or any local jurisdictions. Okay, so I, I assume, because Toyota is very involved with that serve code station that they have linked Hawaii officials up with California state officials to ensure that they're able to achieve that. Okay. I wish I could go into more technical side of things, but I'm just the pretty public affairs face. I can at least describe to you the relationships and kind of where we are. How about that. Okay. No, it's just good to hear how many stations you've got up. I think the last time I checked in with you, it was in the 30s and now we're over 40. And yeah, on your way to your first 100. And there is a real recognition in the last year or two that it's time to go to scale. There's certainly this California Energy Commission grant funding opportunity that's out on the streets. That's certainly going to be helpful, but we're beginning to see others kind of what I like to say get into the game like for example recently, we saw that Chevron joined the hydrogen Council, and in the press release where they announced the council, they also said that they are going to be opening up some test stations and pilot stations. Really, not so much to prove the technology we're well beyond that but really kind of I think for them, figuring out what kind of business model they want to employ as they move forward. And we also have, we just added to our low carbon fuel standard. It's a program that really works to incentivize the production of low carbon fuels. Early last year, the California Resources Board added a new regulation to it added a new section that incentivizes the creation of zero emission infrastructure so basically it incentivizes the creation of the development of charging stations, as well as hydrogen stations and so that's another kind of multiplier to describe it that way. Another market mechanism to really kind of push the development of hydrogen infrastructure as well as battery electric charging infrastructure. Yeah, the Department of Energy recently came out with some funding opportunities as well, and I know you probably haven't, I even had a time to really dig into it, you probably haven't either but that's kind of late breaking news right after the holidays. The Department of Energy hydrogen folks, they're really, they've been pushing the hydrogen at scale for like two years now. And their partner on the civilian side is the hydrogen fuel cell or hydrogen council, which is, and they started off with maybe 18, 16 or 18 members in January of 2017 and last time I checked they were approaching 60 members. And since they've been involved, yeah, it's way more. 81 members now. Wow, they have just taken off and I think that the spike that you see in the and the and the rush on the hydrogen is has a lot to do with the members that are joining. There's, there's like a big magnet there of people who want to move into hydrogen that have the horsepower the technology and everything else to make it happen and they're all sitting around the table talking. And it's like, I think they're even competing to see who gets there first and really make things happen. So I saw that article that, by the way, everybody out there. He sends out a really good newsletter on the internet. So maybe you can give them the website or whatever to check on that but it's great info and articles to track down if you're interested in hydrogen topics. Keep screens the world for the most pertinent and incise information on anything hydrogen and puts it in his, in his blog there. And so what's your what's your website again. So our website is CAFCP.org. So California feel partnership CAFCP. Correct. And on the website there are a couple things you can do if you want to stay in touch so one of them is at the very bottom of the website like most websites you can sign up for our newsletter. We periodically push out information. It's not a weekly or bi weekly it's we push out. We try not to overwhelm our subscribers we only push out information. When we think it's important. For example, we pushed out information in early January about the California Energy Commission funding. We also just earlier this week talking about the Hydrogen Council, we pushed out an announcement from the Hydrogen Council. A big, big deep dive into data, a study that shows that we can get to low cost renewable hydrogen and decarbonize hydrogen by 2030. This follows some other reports over the last year that that have said similar things, but also on the website like you said we now have a new news page where we are placing key articles. We want to keep up to date, but we also have another, I think, interesting resource for people we have what we call our resources database, which is a database of key documents related to hydrogen and fuel cell technology. So if you're trying to track down and key documents. It's a good way to find them in fact a lot of times, we use that database ourselves. And so we put things on there that we would want to use. So if you're a little wonkish, this is a good way to stay up to date. Now really, I'm glad you mentioned that because I know here in the state of Hawaii, our legislature isn't forthcoming with a whole lot of funding to do studies and figure things out. And we look to California and your resources to get into how to standardize stations, J2601, NFPA2, you know, all of the regulations and the models that, you know, why recreate the wheel when California has already done it and done a good job at it. So we appreciate being able to use those resources. And I will tell you on behalf of our members, both public and private, we are very happy to talk to other states and share with them information about what we've learned. At least in the passenger vehicle market this just launched in 2014, really more like 2015, we've learned a lot of lessons and I think some states are waiting for us to really kind of learn all of the lessons and then they're going to jump into the game. But when it comes to passenger cars, when it comes to buses and now to trucks, they're really ramping that up. If you look at buses, for example, California early last year mandated that all transit buses will go zero mission by 2040. So that's the first vehicle category that we know of around the globe that has been mandated to go zero mission. They are now looking at it with trucks. And so we should know more about that they've got it's called the I believe it's the advanced clean truck regulation. And right now it's being reviewed by the California Air Resources Board, and they will likely have a decision by the end of this year. Right. Well we're going to have to take a quick break here Keith and we'll be back in 60 seconds and talk a little bit more about what's going on in California. Hello, I'm Keisha King, host of at the crossroads, where we have conversations that are real and relevant. We have spoken with community leaders from right here locally in Hawaii and all around the world. Won't you join us on think tech Hawaii.com or on YouTube on the think tech Hawaii channel. Our conversations are real, relevant and lots of fun. I'll see you at the crossroads. Aloha. Hi, I'm Rusty Kamori host of beyond the lines. I have a TV show based on my book, which is also called beyond the lines. And it's about leadership, creating a superior culture of excellence and building winning teams. We are having a fun drive for think tech Hawaii. And please, please, please, please help us keep these shows going. Please go on our website think tech Hawaii.com to donate. Thank you. Hey, welcome back to stand the energy man. Hey, I don't have to do this on my lunch hour now that I'm retired. That's pretty cool. I like this. I can actually have a leisurely lunch for once in a while. Anyway, we're talking to Keith Malone from the California fuel cell partnerships and we just started talking a little bit about the resources that they have available online to help any of the cities, municipalities, states or private sector folks that want to start doing things in hydrogen and don't know where to look. California is a great font of knowledge and experience in getting these stations online, helping to standardize equipment, fire protection codes and things like that. Great. I would check out the California fuel cell partnerships website and milk it for all its worth because it's got some great information there. One of the articles that Keith put in his newsletter, I think last year, probably middle of the year was a story about some of the big gas companies putting liquid hydrogen plants in the US. And the reason it caught my attention was not much earlier than that, probably early last year or last summer. I was at a conference and there was a liquid hydrogen specialist in the room. So I asked them how much production, liquid hydrogen production there was across the entire US and Canada. And he said really not that much and the average, the average plant was maybe 20 tons a day and most of it went to NASA. But just in the last 14 months or so, there have been four liquid hydrogen plants being announced or being built in the continental US. California and Nevada and Texas, I believe are three of them. I think two of them in California. A lot of them are designated just for transportation. So do you have any other news besides that on these liquid hydrogen plants? Because that's a real key indicator of scale. We talk about scaling hydrogen up. I think it's an indication that kind of the demonstration phase is definitely over. That we are well into the early commercial market. It's a recognition by leading international companies that it's time to scale up. We know that the number of fuel cell cars in California are going to continue increasing. We've already heard from Hyundai and Toyota that in a couple of years, they're going to be significantly increasing the output of fuel cell vehicles. There are companies like Air Lequid and Air Products that are getting ready to build plants that help meet those needs. And I think it's an indication there is recognition even beyond kind of the industrial gas community that more hydrogen is needed and especially renewable and decarbonized hydrogen. And I expect this year it wouldn't surprise me if we begin to hear that folks in the wind and solar industry are getting into hydrogen. I think there is a recognition, for example, that batteries provide certainly a benefit for energy storage, but that when you want to get to a scale of gigawatts and in some cases terawatts of power, hydrogen starts to become one of those tools available to them. And what I've seen over the last year, the interest has definitely increased. Just the fact that it's not just the hydrogen council, but now you're seeing many of the consultancies like McKinsey and Company, Deloitte, and a few others are now beginning to do deep dives into this subject. Even institutes like within the utility industry like EPRI, the Electric Power Research Institute. So lots of indicators that we've moved beyond the earliest stages of the commercial launch. You mentioned in there you were talking about green hydrogen or clean hydrogen when you talked about liquid hydrogen. I don't think some of the viewers understand that quite a bit of the hydrogen that's produced, especially in the continental US, is steam reform from methane. And that's still a carbon based process and starts off with carbon that has to be sequestered or they have to do something with it to keep it from, you know, being released into the atmosphere. And so what's the difference between that majority and this green liquid hydrogen you're talking about? Well, one of the things that certainly a criticism that some use against fuel cell electric vehicles, this sort of, I won't call it a myth, but I call it a distortion of what is going on. One thing I make clear to people is that hydrogen is on a renewable pathway, especially here in the California and around the globe. Here in California for hydrogen fuel, right now we've mandated that at least 33% of that hydrogen has to come from renewable sources with that new low carbon fuel standard credit. And that becomes the requirement that the renewable content goes up to 40%. And you're going to see staples as this year, likely introduce legislation that will put us on a pathway to 100% renewable and decarbonize hydrogen. Which is basically hydrogen out of an electrolyzer, correct? It could be hydrogen from an electrolyzer using renewable power, solar, wind, geothermal, but also it could be hydrogen from biomass like sewage or agricultural waste that you either use the same hot steam method that steam reformation method or using trigeneration fuel cells. There are two ways to make it renewably as well, but I really don't have the time to talk about all of them, but I do want to emphasize the fact that just like electricity is on a renewable pathway, so is hydrogen. Right, right. Here in Hawaii, you know, we think of electrolyzers as being the primary clean source of hydrogen because we don't have any, well, we have very little natural gas. We have some from wastewater systems, and we have some from landfills, but we don't have a plethora of natural gas. We even import that to supply 80% of our customers here. So for us, clean hydrogen primarily comes from solar and wind curtailed power and electrolysis. But the bottom line is like you say that if you have an electric vehicle here in Hawaii and you plug into Hawaii Electric, it ain't clean electricity. It's a fuel oil based, you know, fossil fuel electricity for the most part being generated. So unless you have your own solar on your roof and you're you're fueling your car up your battery charging your batteries from your own solar, you're not even cleaning green when you're driving electric car necessarily. But your point of there's a pathway for electric and for hydrogen. And we're both on the same trajectory. So if you look at every kind of every state or actually really every region, they have different means of producing hydrogen, renewably, or in a decarbonized form using carbon capture. And everyone's going to do it differently, like up in the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest, they're going to use a lot of hydropower California it's going to be wind and solar in Texas definitely wind power. They've got salt caverns there where they can store that hydrogen in vast amounts like I said earlier gigawatts and terawatts of power. So everyone's going to do it differently. We're all going to get to that renewable future in a different pathway and and so for Hawaii, it's going to be through electrolyzers. Yeah, you know what it makes the most sense. I mean if you look at, like I said, if you look at what we've seen just over the last year, then some major reports have come out Bloomberg NEF or Bloomberg New Energy Fund just did a study that echoed what the hydrogen council just issued which is we're going to get to lower cost renewable and decarbonized hydrogen by 2030, lots of good indicators. Yeah, in fact, um, you know, I was in Texas a while ago and and some of the wind producers and I was actually talking to some of the folks that sell as power power providers to the utility. He said that sometimes they're they're selling the power for as little as two cents a kilowatt hour, and they're still able to make a turn a profit at that. And they average around four cents a kilowatt hour. What we use locally in our calculations, if we can get our hydrogen produced with electricity down at around seven cents a kilowatt hour, we're actually competing with diesel fuel and gas on a price price wise. And so we like that and and quite frankly we're finding some of the curtailed power here in Hawaii now that you don't have net metering. We're actually talking to people who have larger power production facilities, and they're talking seven to 10 cents a kilowatt hour. And that's getting us right in the ballpark of competing with gas today, not 30 years from now. We're really excited about that kind of stuff. Absolutely California about two to almost three years ago, we had a unique situation where we actually paid Arizona to take our excess renewables and Arizona shut down its renewables to accept them and so obviously batteries hydrogen and other forms of energy storage, as we increase them will begin to avoid those kinds of situations. But it also points to the fact that hydrogen starts to become this really interesting business opportunity and opportunity for grid balancing that we haven't thought of before for a long time, up until just a couple of years ago. At the partnership we were in our members really were thinking of hydrogen as a fuel, and with kind of the rapid expansion of the renewables market, we now look at hydrogen as an enter grid balancer as a sector coupler. Really this sort of interesting opportunity that we really need to explore because it's all related this hydrogen kind of ecosystem this hydrogen society as the Japanese and the South Koreans are increasingly referring to it. You know, it gives us, it allows us to kind of think more broadly and look for opportunities, just as the battery electrics are looking at the grid and kind of how battery electric cars might interact with the grid in a way just beyond, you know, fueling those vehicles are charging All right, believe it or not Keith, we blasted through 30 minutes and we got to wrap it up here but hey do me a favor and check in with Joe Pratt up there in San Francisco on that ferry and see how it's doing. We'll have you back in another couple of weeks and we'll get caught up on the maritime side as well, all right. Great. Okay Keith, thanks for being on the show with us today and until next week, Stan Osterman signing off.