Skating on thin ICE
Those of you who follow my stories know that I am running a company that is trying to save the world one hydrogen molecule at a time. We used to be a much different company that was trying to save the world one ammonia molecule at a time. I don’t think many of my readers remember their high school chemistry so hydrogen is H2 where ammonia is NH3. You may think that doesn’t sound like such a big deal that we pivoted strategically from ammonia synthesis to hydrogen synthesis. Hell, what’s a little nitrogen between friends? I don’t want to go into the technicalities of the electrochemical reactions or the complexities of the reactors we have to build to make either of these things happen, but let’s just say that the pivot is a pretty big deal.
The most interesting thing to me has been that we made this pivot because we believed that the combination of uncertainty and time made continuing the search for ammonia impractical. We were already making lots of hydrogen, which was a bother to us. It was a dangerous and unwanted byproduct. Our Italian specialty chemical partner was concerned that regulatory approval for our proposed pilot plant might not be easy with hydrogen hanging around the reactor. We wanted less hydrogen and more ammonia. And then the lightbulb went on. Why were we working so hard against making hydrogen when it seemed to want so badly to be made? We had no good answer to that, so as the saying goes, we decided that if we couldn’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. We became a hydrogen company.
I could tell you that the hydrogen market is billions of dollars larger than the ammonia market, but that’s misleading because the hydrogen market includes supplying the ammonia market… with hydrogen. I could tell you we don’t need a nitrogen source to make hydrogen, but I suspect that the molecular script told you that already. It’s confusing to say this, but hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe. Given the endlessness of the cosmos and the very limited parts of it that we’ve explored so far, I’m not sure that can be proven as an absolute statement in a meaningful manner. So, if it’s so plentiful, why is there a need to synthesize it? Basically, it’s in all the wrong places and mixed with all the wrong other stuff. Suffice it to say, the world needs it more than they had realized.
The nub of the issue is that hydrogen can be “cracked” in what is called an exothermic reaction that can be used to generate energy in such a way that it may be a better source of energy supply than the hydrocarbons that we use now like oil products (especially like gasoline) and gas. In fact, six months ago the International Energy Agency (IEA) published a 217 page report about hydrogen and why it is taking over the world. The world that has relied on hydrocarbons for energy for over a century and has been kicking the shit out of the ozone layer by throwing carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere is unduly warming our little planet and causing…(drumroll please)…climate change. We need a new fuel and that fuel is hydrogen. The technology to “crack” it in fuel cells already exists and is available for deployment. Several technologies to make hydrogen also exist with the latest and greatest being none other than what we are doing. It seems that we got very lucky, we had pivoted right into a storm front with the wind at our back and we were suddenly racing forward.
To be clear, technological development is like evolution, there are always several different branches advancing simultaneously, trying to be the prevailing branch. The IEA report on the future of the hydrogen economy details three such branches for clean hydrogen synthesis, our branch being the latest greatest, but just now being proved out. Fair enough, we are a scientific R&D company and that is what we do. We are working on a cure for climate cancer and our version of Interferon seems to prevail.
A growing list of companies and countries are lining up to dance with us and as one of only a few girls at the dance, we’re feeling pretty right now. I went to Washington last week to meet with Chile. Well, not the whole country at once, but the people trying to jump on the recent craze of battery development. Chile is big in lithium and lithium ion batteries are still the winning technology du jour. I listened to how BEV’s (think Tesla’s) will dominate transportation in a few years. Tesla’s stock price would agree with that conclusion. My part of the pitch was to say that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (FCV’s) had a place in the future too and that meant green hydrogen fueling stations.
Just yesterday I received the latest consulting report on a big area of hydrogen interest, the future of FCV’s. It said FCV’s would surpass BEV’s in cost efficiency by 2026. In technology terms, that’s tomorrow. If that assessment is right, the wind at our back just got stronger yet. But what of all the existing 1.4 billion cars in the world that burn hydrocarbon? We know they are cheaper and that humans will keep polluting away to save a buck today. Well, by 2027, this study says FCV’s will even be cheaper than existing internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. Boom!
The old Barney’s ad that had Babe Ruth and Theorello LaGuardia asking Barney on the front stoop what he wanted to be when he grows up ended with the tag line, “I don’t know, but you’re all gonna need clothes!” Well, my version of that today as we race forward recklessly with the wind is, “I don’t know, but you’re all gonna need hydrogen fueling stations!”
As a Tesla owner who lives the joys and benefits of a BEV, compared to driving my Mercedes ICE, I also know that “range anxiety” makes me want to keep my ICE for long trips so I don’t need to recharge every two or three hours of driving. Elon Musk thinks he’ll have a million mile battery some day. Doc Brown in Back to the Future just needed banana peels to keep his flux capacitor going. China has taken a big bet on hydrogen fuel vehicles and many are taking notice. Those FCV’s are on the map and places like Scotland and Chile are putting hydrogen bus and train programs in place as we speak. All I know is that my little merry band of scientists and engineers seem to find themselves at the center of the hydrogen universe trying to ride atop the wave rather than being crushed by the wave of new technologies racing to be the next Standard Oil of the hydrogen world.
It’s thin ICE out here in the sea of venture hydrogen, but so far, the skating is going well and we haven’t fallen through into the icy waters of the void. We will whistle along with this wind at our backs hoping the ICE/BEV/FCV wars divine a course for success that we can navigate (or get enough capital to navigate).