 Welcome to Stan Energyman here live and direct again from Kailua, Hawaii. The background there is Makapu Beach Park, one of the best body surfing beaches in the state with Rabbit Island in the background. So again, if you're tired of the snow and the sleet and the hail and the tornadoes and everything else, it's just one five-hour flight from California to here and you could be sitting on that beach behind me with your toes in the sand. I'd get over here if I was you. Anyway, today's show was supposed to be about farming and farm equipment with electric farming stuff. Unfortunately, we're going to schedule that next week and have our guests come in and do the show. There was a scheduling conflict, but I'm going to cover some stuff today that came to me in a newsletter from California Fuel Sales Partnership and also from H2View. So if you want to look at some of these stories, just look up H2View and they have like a website and a newsletter or California Fuel Sales Partnership and they send out a newsletter too that you can catch these stories on. But I want to talk, I don't want to read through all the stories there and I just want to talk about the headlines and what they, especially if they have relevance to Hawaii. Before I get started, I wanted to do something, a little novel here. I want you to remember the number 13 billion. That's one three with a B billion because if you've paid attention to some of my last couple of shows about energy blindness and critical thinking, I think when it gets to really big dollar numbers like in the billions and millions and trillions, people just lose perspective on how much that is. So I want you to remember the number 13 billion and when we get to the end of the time here, we're going to be talking about that number. So the first thing I want to do is talk about some of the stories from around the world. I'm going to do this Walter Cronkite style I have on paper here. So one of the things, the first stories that came out and this is from H2View is electrolyzer system to be provided to Norwegian based hydrogen bunkering project. So that's a test. If you don't know what bunkering is, you don't pay attention to stand energy manual enough because I did a couple of stories on this already. But bunkering is actually the fueling of a cargo ship or a large ship. So when they talk about hydrogen bunkering fuel, they're talking about converting cargo ships to run on hydrogen. And the origin of the word bunkering comes from when ships used to run on coal and to keep the ships ballasted correctly so they didn't roll over. They would put the coal in separate compartments called bunkers like a ammunition bunker in an armory. And that would keep the coal from catching fire and spreading real rapidly or shifting as a ballast in the ship and making the ship roll over. So when you hear the term bunkering and in conjunction with the word fuel, it's fuel specifically for cargo ships. The reason that's a big story and it's going to tie into another story here is that Hawaii has always been a bunkering port for large ships and a supply port for all large ships, whether it was coal, whether it's oil or in the future, whatever fuels ships run on, they're going to refuel here in Hawaii. And oh, by the way, so are your long range airplanes. And we'll explain that when we get to it. But anyway, in Norway, Norway is a really interesting place because they're very much into clean energy and decarbonizing. But they also happen to be one of the largest fossil fuel exporters in Europe. In the North Sea around them, they have oil and gas reserves and they actually sell a lot of oil and gas to the rest of Europe. But what they're doing is they're looking forward right now to 2030 and beyond to become a hydrogen port or a hydrogen, a place where hydrogen ships can be fueled. And that's something that I think Hawaii needs to be looking at right now. Not in 20 years, not in 30 years, but we need to be looking and getting ready for that right now. And that'll tie in to some more things we're going to talk about. Another story here, kind of a small story, hydrogen electric mini bus delivered to Slovakia. So Slovakia is a former Soviet Union country and not a real big country over in Europe, kind of right smack between Germany, France and those folks. And the former Soviet Union or Russia right now, kind of like Ukraine in the same neighborhood. And they're getting a fleet of hydrogen electric buses, shuttle buses. And it's like, well, why can't Hawaii be on that page and already have those? I've been talking to the legislature and governors and folks for at least a decade and so have a bunch of my associates about how much sense this makes and Hawaii's always been a leader in clean transportation from battery-powered to hydrogen fuel cell. But some country out in the weeds in Europe that just became an independent country not too long ago, they've already got shuttle buses. So we need to catch up with these guys. The next story is Sunfire Company is to provide electrolyzers for 20-megawatt hydrogen production project in Finland. So Finland is not a NATO country, if you remember from our talk last week. But 20 megawatts is bigger than any hydrogen generation station in the US. That's Finland. They're putting this in. And so what I'm getting at is there are a lot of people around the world that are getting the hydrogen picture. And most of the US and specifically Hawaii, we're still not getting it. But it's going to be really clear as the war in Ukraine between Ukraine and Russia grinds on. And we start seeing oil prices go higher and higher and higher, which is going to drive inflation higher and higher. That Hawaii should be self-sufficient. We used to be self-sufficient back when Hawaii was a kingdom and almost the same population. But we're not there. We're miles away from it. Agriculture is part of it, so we'll talk about that next week. But energy is a huge part of it. So somebody told me this week that if you control the food, you control the population. This is a quote from Henry Kissinger or somebody. You control the food, you control the population. If you control the energy, you control the country. If you control the banks, you control the world. What we're seeing right now nationwide, worldwide, is that convergence of agriculture, petroleum, or fuel, and banking all converging to change the way the world is. Maybe not for the better, so we need to pay attention to those things. The next story, Erlikid. And that name will come up a little later. Erlikid bets on big hydrogen in a newly published strategic plan for 2025. 2025 is not that far away. I mean, it's basically three and three-quarter years away, which seems like a long time. But in the big industry world, you got to be planning, I mean, already making stuff to meet goals to be in production in three years or so. You've got to already have shovels in the ground, equipment being manufactured and assembled and ready to be delivered. And Erlikid is one of the biggest companies in the world for producing hydrogen infrastructure. And I have another story about them coming up. There's a hydrogen production project set to decarbonize an Italian office complex. And this is kind of interesting that in an article, they show a picture of it. But basically, it would equate to what we've been talking about on microgrids, where the whole building or the whole complex of buildings is set up to use renewable energy and to take any of the extra energy that they have, make it into hydrogen and use that hydrogen for heating, cooking, electric generation, and have that as a microgrid or a small community. And those are the kind of things that we need to look at in Hawaii for our rural communities, some of our isolated communities that instead of running power lines for 20, 30, 40 miles, they get hit by hurricanes and stuff, we have some of these communities that are self-sustaining and off the grid and totally possible here in Hawaii. And we'll talk more about that in future shows. Let me see, West Virginia officially submits a bid to transform the mountain state into a hydrogen hub. The US Department of Energy has announced that they're looking for ideas on what parts of the US could become hydrogen hubs. And they wanna have at least four of them. And right now I can tell you that California, Ohio, Louisiana, Texas, and probably a couple other states are already planning to, well, there's a consortium, I break two weeks ago, that there's a consortium in the West, Colorado and New Mexico. I think it's Utah and Nevada are all combining energy to become one of these hydrogen hubs. And the reason is because the Department of Energy and big industry understand that this transition to hydrogen is gonna happen. It's not a wishful thing, it's not a fanciful thing as people have referred to it 10 or 15 years ago. This is gonna happen for a lot of big reasons. And when it does, certain regions want to sit themselves up as one of these hydrogen hubs. So there's a minimum of four that are being looked at and there's I think eight and a half billion dollars. Again, that's billion with a B, not million with an M and not T with a T, trillion with a T. But $8.5 billion to build at least four of these hubs. Well, as I mentioned, Hawaii for hundreds of years has been a refueling slash resupply center for the Pacific if you're transiting the Pacific. So wouldn't it make sense for Hawaii to be a hydrogen hub? I think so. And I think our congressional delegation and I think our local legislators and our local businesses ought to be gearing up for that. The next story comes out of Germany and Norway. They're collaborating. It's the second story Norway's been in. Germany and Norway collaborating to export large scale hydrogen transportation to displace Russian fossil fuel and gas reliance. If you've paid attention to what's going on in Europe right now in Ukraine and all the sanctions and all those nitty gritty details of what we're doing to Russia to basically pressure them into getting out of Ukraine. One of the things that's happening as a side effect is Europe has become over dependent on Russian natural gas and oil to a very high degree. So we in the United States cut off of all of our fossil fuel purchasing from Russia. But Europe hasn't done that yet. And it's because they can't because they're so dependent. They don't have any other sources available without paying a really high price, which is obviously what's happening in the US too. We shut down our pipelines and we shut down our oil drilling fields. And now all of a sudden we don't have our resources available and we're looking for other places to buy fuel that normally we would get from the world's market and even some from Russia. Here in Hawaii we get quite a bit of our fuel for our transportation fuels from Russia. And that's a whole other story. Anyway, but Norway and Germany see that and they're looking to accelerate their movement into hydrogen as a fuel to get them off of the dependency for Russian fuel. So before we go to my next story, what I want to do is take a quick break here and we'll hear from some of the other folks shows and things on Think Tech Hawaii. On April 1st at 10 a.m. Hawaii time, Think Tech will be presenting a 90 minute webinar panel program called Burning Global Issues. This will be an examination of six continents by thought and community leaders living in or expert in those continents discussing burning issues affecting each of them, how they relate to the prospects for functioning democracy and what we can learn from all of that. The moderator for the program is Pamela Spradlin, a 30 year foreign service veteran who has served as U.S. Ambassador and Consular Official in a number of overseas posts. The panel is comprised of Carl Baker, Senior Advisor of Pacific Forum on China and Asia, Rupmati Khandekar, Director of Global Relations Forum on India, Elsa Jharkhadyan, a consultant with Project Expedite Justice on the Middle East, Hilbert Nuagira, an economist in Kampala, Uganda, on East Africa, Carl Ackerman, of the Social Studies Faculty at Punahou School on Eastern Europe, and Juan Telo, a business attorney in Bogota, Colombia, on Latin America. The program is sponsored by Project Expedite Justice. We hope you will attend, and that this program will help you better understand these important global issues. Please go to our website, thinktechhawaii.com, and register, mahalo. And welcome back to Stand Energy Man, Sand Austin here. And we were talking about news from around the globe. And the next story coming up is a breakthrough technology to enable hydrogen production of below $1.50 kilogram in Australia. This is kind of a big story. I'm not real familiar with the technology they're talking about, and they weren't real specific in the article. But let me give you these numbers again, and again, try and make them relative. Currently, in the state of California, where we have hydrogen stations, about 45 of them right now, maybe a little bit more, spread across the state of California, average price for hydrogen is around $16 a kilogram. And that may sound like a lot for fuel, especially when you think that one kilogram of hydrogen is equal in energy to one gallon of gasoline, but they're not equal in performance. So that $16 a kilogram of hydrogen can actually drive a car two and a half times farther than a gallon of gasoline because the fuel cell electric drivetrain is more efficient than the internal combustion drivetrain in your gas car. So we use the term gallon of gas equivalent, but basically, if you have hydrogen fuel cell cars, they're much more efficient. So if Australia has come up with a technology that can produce hydrogen for $1.50 a kilogram, then that's a game changer. That's basically $1.50 a kilogram. Let's say it's $3. If you could pay $3 a kilogram for hydrogen, that would be like paying about a $1.25 a gallon for gasoline and diesel. That's how dramatic that is. And that's what this article says, that there's an Australian company that works with arena, one of the Australian university systems, that has come up with hydrogen electrolyzer that is so efficient, it's over 95% efficient at turning electricity into hydrogen. It says optimization of hydrogen production technology could be crucial to unlocking the cost comparative green hydrogen. And this could now be feasible with the company's name is Hisata, H-Y-S-A-T-A, and their new innovative technology. So maybe you can look up Hisata and get a little bit better feel for their technology. But they're looking at this technology coming along to replace what most hydrogen today internationally, industrial hydrogen is made from natural gas. They steam reform natural gas. And that's because natural gas is literally a throwaway thing from oil wells. But it's becoming expensive now because we're using it for eating fuel and other things at a much greater rate as we're trying to get away from oil. So it burns a little bit cleaner than oil does. So basically what we're trying to do is get completely away from fossil fuel oil and natural gas and get to what they call green hydrogen which is electrolyzed hydrogen made from electricity and water. So this process will help accelerate the transition away from what they call blue hydrogen which is made from natural gas and gets you to green hydrogen which is totally carbon free from the beginning. And when you throw it into a fuel cell vehicle, you have no carbon at all in the process from manufacture to driving the vehicle. The only thing comes out of the vehicle's exhaust is water. And all the other byproduct from that is heat and electricity. So this company Hisata, I'm gonna be doing some more homework on them and looking them up because that's an awesome breakthrough. Back to what I said I talked about earlier, how aviation fuel cells can revolutionize the aviation industry ties into another story here that says Delta and Airbus have joined forces on hydrogen flight ambitions. It says Delta Airlines has become the first US based airline to collaborate with Airbus to accelerate the development of hydrogen powered aircraft as it looks to spearhead its efforts in this area. And then this other story talks about how fuel cells could revolutionize aviation history. Now, let's go back to what I said earlier in the show. For hundreds of years, Hawaii has been an important supply and fueling point for long range transportation across the Pacific. Right now, every international airline flight that comes in from Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and most of the ones that come in from the continental US, when they get here, they only have the reserves are required to carry and maybe a little bit extra. And then they have to buy the fuel here to get back to where they came from. That means if Airbus and Delta are already looking at what their airplanes are gonna be burning in the near future. And if you paid attention, I told you a couple of weeks ago that Airbus has already has three aircraft designated to be in production by 2035, which again is just about a decade or so away from us where they will be flying airplanes. Delta will be flying them. Delta comes to Hawaii. United is looking at hydrogen airplanes. By the time we finish 2025, I'm gonna bet that several companies are gonna be looking to buy Airbus or Boeing long range aircraft that are gonna be coming to Hawaii and they have to refuel here. Why do they have to refuel here? Because you can't afford in commercial flight to be carrying a whole five, six, seven, 8,000 miles worth of energy on your airplane when you're just gonna come here and land. And then, and not by fuel. In other words, your fuel economy goes way down when your plane is really heavy. And so if you're carrying all that weight, you're basically burning your energy to fly at a higher rate than you would if you had half the weight on you. So what the airlines do is they take half of the weight of the fuel off the airplane, fly to Hawaii and refuel it. If you fly smaller planes, you know that if you get three or four big guys in your Cessna, sometimes you have to take fuel off the airplane or you can't even get off the ground. And then you understand this relationship. Airlines can't afford to be spending money to carry fuel they're not gonna use until another leg, especially when they're flying at least 25 miles from the mainland to here, or in the case of Japan and stuff, you're flying several thousand, you know, five or 6,000 miles to get here. So Hawaii, wake up. Hydrogen is gonna be used in airlines. And by the time they start flying hydrogen long range aircraft, we need to have the infrastructure here to refuel them. We need to start now. We can't be waiting until they're starting to show up on our doorstep or the airlines decide they can't fly here because we can't refuel them. So another story is reversible fuel cells. Are the superhero in fuel cell technology. I've done a little bit of homework on reversible fuel cells. They are a real thing. That means you can not only make hydrogen out of water using these reversible fuel cells, but you can take the hydrogen and oxygen and put them right back in the fuel cell and it'll give you back electricity. They're really cool technology. It's not really complicated technology. Right now it's just not very efficient, but just like those Australians that are coming up with a great electrolyzer that can be 90 something percent efficient to make hydrogen, green hydrogen. If we can get that technology to be in a reversible fuel cells, we will be well on the road to providing all of the energy that people need to replace fossil fuels completely. We could be a carbon free society. We can have carbon free countries, energy across the world. And every country, every country has hydrogen. You just have to pull it out of whatever you have, whether it's water, whether it's natural gas, whether even if you get water from your, from clouds or way, way underground, even saltwater, even the ocean. You can make hydrogen from just in about every country on the planet. A company called Gaussin unveils the world's first, they claim, hydrogen powered fuel cell automated guided vehicles for port operations. This kind of goes back to what I talked about when I said that the ocean going vessels are gonna start being fueled with turbines. You'd probably turbines and electric motors that run on hydrogen to give the shipping industry a cleaner fuel that's not gonna put CO2 and greenhouse gases and NOx and stuff into the atmosphere or at least reduce that. So the important part is around ports. In California, and I'm not sure for why he's got new laws, but they have a thing called cold ironing. When the ship pulls in the port, they're required to shut off their engines that given the electricity and they're required to buy electricity from the ports so that they don't pollute the port with a lot of carbon dioxide. Well, the other thing that makes a lot of CO2 and greenhouse gases in a port, especially with the port that deals with cargo ships like Long Beach in Los Angeles is the trucks that pull the containers away from the port and take them to the warehouses. Those trucks are called drainage trucks. They're class A diesel trucks. They make a lot of pollution. So this company, Gaussin, G-A-U-S-S-I-N has developed a truck that runs off fuel cells and takes care of that job. Now, if you remember a couple of months ago, I showed you a video from Hyundai in Korea. They are also making an autonomous driving drainage truck. So they're working on it too, not just this one company. Let me see. My last story here is where I started, 13 billion. 13 billion dollars is the current estimated cost of getting Oahu's light trail project completed short of its destination and probably at least five to 10 years late. 13 billion dollars. This story, Erle Keed, remember, they're one of those companies out there that's building transportation electrolyzers has decided to build a liquid hydrogen production facility just north of Las Vegas in Nevada, Sin City, strategically located to take liquid hydrogen into California into those 45, 50, 100 hydrogen stations for cars and trucks. It cost $250 million, million, M million. So Erle Keed and Nevada are building a 30 ton a day liquid hydrogen facility north of Las Vegas for a quarter of a billion dollars and Hawaii is stuck with a price tag, 13 billion. So what is that? Four times 13, that much more money than building this one liquid hydrogen station. It's 30 tons a day is probably the largest hydrogen station that we build in the continental US. The ones built for NASA were 20 tons a day, this is 30. So I'm emphasizing this because when we see the cost overruns in Hawaii and we go, it was supposed to be three billion dollars, that went up to six billion dollars, that went up to nine billion dollars, that went up to 10 or 12 billion dollars. Now it's at 13 billion dollars. And yet for 5% of that money, we could be having a liquid hydrogen facility in Hawaii, making liquid hydrogen for those airplanes, for ships, for export to the mainland, for export to Japan, for export from Big Island to Honolulu, for a small fraction of what we're spending for a stinking light rail train that goes from West Oahu to the airport and the edge of Honolulu proper. We have to quit making stupid decisions like that. And start thinking about what we're doing. So to all of our legislators, to all of our congressional delegation, to all of our big businesses, if you don't think hydrogen is coming, I've got a clue for you. It's late to need already. You ought to be looking at it. And we can't afford to be making 13 billion dollar mistakes anymore. And for today, that's gonna be it for Stan Energyman signing off until next Tuesday. I'll be talking about e-farming. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.