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Christie Hemm Klok for Forbes
The clean hydrogen push in the U.S. has cooled in the past year, but Electric Hydrogen, a maker of highly efficient, cheaper electrolyzers, just snagged a deal to supply a 100-megawatt hydrogen production system to Infinium to make sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) at Infinium’s new Pecos, Texas, plant.
Electric Hydrogen’s tech, which splits water molecules using renewable electricity, will produce 45 tons of hydrogen a day, CEO Raffi Garabedian told Forbes. When it begins full operation in 2027 it will be one of the largest electrolytic hydrogen plants in the U.S. The companies aren’t disclosing the project’s financial details.
“That hydrogen will go into a gas-to-liquids synthesis plant–a chemical plant–which also takes CO2 out of a pipeline that would’ve otherwise been vented from nearby wellheads,” he said. The elements are combined to make hydrocarbon chains, building blocks of different fuels, including SAF. “It’s pretty cool technology to go from power to gas to liquid fuel that you can put in an airplane.”
“The entire process is effectively zero carbon,” he said. “The plant is powered 100% off of procured renewable power, a combination of solar and wind. The CO2 is ‘free’ CO2 because it’s CO2 that was otherwise vented into the atmosphere.”
Electric Hydrogen’s goal is to be able to supply affordable clean hydrogen in the absence of subsidies, a wise move as the Trump Administration and Republican Congress move to end federal support for a broad range of clean energy initiatives. And though U.S. policies have changed, international markets, particularly Europe, are powering ahead.
“Our market is primarily in Europe, and Europe is a completely different animal,” Garabedian said. “Europe is messy; it’s slow; it’s cumbersome in a lot of ways. But it’s also consistently committed to a program of energy transformation.”
Along with the EU’s efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, it’s pushing for much greater energy independence and seeking to cut reliance on imported fuels, like LNG, which make energy costs there higher.
“Europe is doing what it’s doing not just because it’s green, but also because the economics are different there,” Garabedian said. “As a result, we’re focused on the European market and it’s pretty good news, honestly.”
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The Big Read
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Bloomberg
GM’s New Battery Will Cut The Cost Of Its Electric Trucks By Over $6,000
General Motors, which sells the biggest lineup of electric vehicles in the U.S., plans to slash the cost of its rechargeable pickups and large SUVs by thousands of dollars thanks to a new type of battery that uses more of the cheap material manganese and much less of expensive metals cobalt and nickel while still offering a long driving range.
The lithium-manganese-rich (LMR) cathode, which has been in development by GM and battery partner LG Energy for a decade, will cut the cost of battery packs in electric vehicles like the Chevrolet Silverado EV, GMC Hummer and Cadillac Escalade by more than $6,000, GM’s vice president of battery propulsion Kurt Kelty told Forbes. It has nearly the same driving range as “high nickel” lithium-ion cells now used in most EVs while competing on price with cheaper lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) cells from Chinese battery makers that are heavier and offer less range, he said. The new batteries are also durable enough to be recharged frequently for at least eight years.
“We look at this as a game-changing battery for EV trucks, and that’s really going to set the new bar for performance in this particular segment,” said Kelty, who built up Tesla’s battery operations for over a decade and previously worked for battery maker Panasonic. “With LMR we can actually deliver over 400 miles of range while reducing our costs.”
Read more here
Hot Topic
Jonathan Silver
2011 Bloomberg Finance LP
Jonathan Silver and Jigar Shah, former directors of the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office, on Multiplier, their new advisory firm for sustainability-oriented companies
You’re advising cleantech companies, but will Multplier also be an investor?
Silver: No. One of the things that makes Multiplier unique is that our interests are aligned completely with the entrepreneurs and initial investors. We’re not taking fees or retainers, there’s really no cash compensation upfront at all. What we end up with is a modest piece of equity in the company, and then when the company wins, we win. If the company doesn’t win, we don’t win either. Our interests are completely aligned with their successful outcome.
What will that look like? If I have a hydrogen company, a battery company, a solar company, what would multiplier do for me?
Shah: We’re only selecting companies that we think have a confident pathway by which we can help them get to an exit. Whether they’re in hydrogen or solar or EV charging or advanced building materials, there are a lot of sectors that encompass sustainability. The goal for us is to determine that they’ve achieved enough product and market fit and that they’ve got enough really excited customers, that we see a pathway to helping them get to an exit within a reasonable amount of time.
Silver: We think we can help a certain number of companies in certain industries turbocharge their growth. We want to be working with companies that already have product and take them to additional potential customer relationships. We want to help them avoid some of the things that we refer to as scar tissue that we’ve seen many companies have to work their way through. We also want to talk to them seriously about the nature of the company they’re building. Many of these companies have terrific products, but they’re really point solutions. The question is, is the intent to grow a dominant company around a single-point solution? Or is it a better strategy to tuck up under a larger strategic or different platform so that the technology has room to breathe?
Shah: One of the things I’ve found through all the conversations I’ve had with these companies is that for most they have never actually plotted out their exact course to an exit. If you say to them, who do you want to exit to? They’re like, “oh, I don’t have a ready answer.” Is it an IPO? Is it a sale to a company? If it’s a sale to a company, do you have three companies in mind that you think would want to buy you? What do they want you to accomplish before they buy you? Part of this is just helping them with that checklist and saying, if they want you to hit these three milestones, are you actually working toward those three milestones so that you could sell your company to these folks?
There’s been an assumption in the cleantech sector that it will operate the same as the Silicon Valley traditional approach. I think the reality is that what we do for a living doesn’t operate under a go-fast-and-break-things model. We’re working in global infrastructure. By definition, people’s lives are on the line. Stuff actually has to work.
Given moves by the Trump Administration and Republican-controlled Congress isn’t this going to be a tough time for cleantech startups?
Shah: It’s very clear that you have a set of technologies that we’ve invented and demonstrated here in this country, and for years and years and years, those technologies went to other countries to be scaled up. Then we imported them back in. I think over the last four years, there was a set of policies passed to get people to do big things here in this country. With the uncertainty of this administration and the recent House Bill, you’re starting to see some of those technologies revert back to going to other countries.
We continue to invent the best stuff in the world, and I think for a short period of time there we tried to get people to commercialize the technologies here. I do think that the message this administration is sending and that the House bill is sending is that [cleantech] commercialization is not something we have the patience for here in this country.
Silver: The great tragedy in this is that it’s a self-inflicted wound because by pulling away from these technologies, which are inarguably among the fastest-growing industries in the world, we’re sort of ceding the field and all the related business opportunities to the rest of the world and especially to China.
To circle back, one of the reasons we wanted to do [Multiplier] was to help U.S.-based companies realize the value of the work they’ve done, get those technologies more deeply embedded in the marketplace and create value for the entrepreneurs, whether that’s in the form of a sale or anything else. Otherwise, we run the risk of creating literally nothing at all.
Jigar Shah
Getty Images
What Else We’re Reading
House Republicans stall spending package for steeper cuts to Medicaid and green energy. In a massive setback, Republicans failed to push their big package of tax breaks and spending cuts through the Budget Committee as a handful of conservatives joined all Democrats in a stunning vote against it (Associated Press)
GOP budget plan contains a massive poison pill for clean energy. “Totally unworkable” rules could kill manufacturing and clean energy investment by restricting tax credits for any project remotely tied to China, experts warn (Canary Media)
A clean energy boom was just starting. Now, a Republican bill aims to end it. The party’s signature tax plan would kill most Biden-era incentives, but there’s a sticking point: G.O.P. districts have the most to lose (New York Times)
Trump officials want to cut limits on PFAS in drinking water – what will the impact be? The EPA is attempting actions that violate the law, some say, and Biden administration’s progress can’t be fully undone (The Guardian)
Polestar’s luxury electric SUV has a lower lifetime environmental impact than a tiny petrol car. Yes, the planet should have fewer cars, but small ICE cars are not necessarily cleaner than some large EVs (Forbes)
U.S. energy industry trade groups have launched a last-minute lobbying blitz to urge Congress members to spare a slew of former President Joe Biden’s clean energy tax credits from the chopping block in the Republican budget plan (Reuters)
Texas is failing to fix the grid (again). For more than 25 years, the Texas Legislature has done nothing to address ERCOT’s fatal design flaw (Forbes)
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