Member Info for toneman

Nice to see another hydrogen solution winning over battery alternative.

Just to keep you up to date, there are several hydrogen-related fringe meetings at the Virtual Conservative Conference this week. There was one on Saturday, there are two today, and one tomorrow. I'm currently listening-in to a general Future of Green Technologies one and, in his opening statement, Kwasi Kwarteng has admitted that he began his job 15 months ago as a hydrogen skeptic but has been persuaded of its advantages over the past year and sees it playing its part in heavy transport and building heating.

H202, considering a meaningful pullback, we've had three 30%+ pullbacks this year already (Feb, Mar, Jun). I know we all like to wait for the magic 50%, but sometimes we've just got to accept what's offered not what we'd like.

Considering catalysts to sustain the share price, I fear it's unlikely to come directly from ITM newsflow as it would take a 20%-50% filled factory for 'some' to accept this price is justified. However as long as targets are seen to be hit and order growth hints at a full factory by 2025-2026 then to many investors the price is easily justified. In that case it's simply a matter of how many new investors want a slice and how many long term holders don't cash in on the increasing SP.

External to ITM, if our government openly back hydrogen before the end of the year, or more orders for buses, or other countries openly back hydrogen, or more big oil switch to offshore or hydrogen then I think the increased investor awareness will at least sustain the current share price or possibly drive a steady increase. Short term though we have to get through ITM earnings statements without a collapse in shareholder confidence.

Jo's latest intervention was very enthusiastic and making a compelling argument for hydrogen ferries in Scotland, production of Hyundai and Toyota cars in the UK , all possible with simple intervention and backing from the Government to demonstrate its support for hydrogen.

I'm listening in to a hydrogen fringe meeting at the Virtual Conservative Party Conference. Jo Bamford has just been speaking and making the useful point that the Department for Transport needs to stop thinking only about batteries. He's pushing hard to get a multi-year order for his buses so that he can balance the supply model of hydrogen to a substantial demand.

My thoughts exactly Seaangler. Mentioning an invite to the factory (again!?) indicates they have every opportunity to make this a positive statement. I just hate getting my hopes up...but can't help myself. Today's volume certainly seems like a good sign though.

Having heard Hydrogen discussed at PMQs this week I'd be quietly confident that we'll be heading back up over £3 again...except for the imminent pesky Final Results (or is it Interim, can't remember) expected this month that always has the potential to shoot it down in flames again. Either way I'd still rather be 'in' the game than in... (shh, keep your voice down!)... Smithy's shoes.

Thanks for the link taskmaster. Interesting reading. Nice photos and time-lapse too.

Ok, I think I've worked out where this 2025 date came from. And it definitely does not mean the ice sheet will disappear by 2025.

https://www.climatecentral.org/news/widespread-melting-in-greenland-a-sign-of-things-to-come-16018

https://thinkprogress.org/widespread-greenland-melting-to-become-the-norm-in-next-two-decades-8794672fb7bc/

In layman's terms it mentions 97% of the 'surface' of the ice sheet showing signs of melting which was considered an unusual event. They witnessed it happen again and project that by 2025 we could expect it to be an annual occurrence. It does not mean that 97% of the ice will have gone. It will take many years to melt the ice. It certainly points to evidence of warming and eventual sea level rise, but a severe level of sea rise from the Greenland ice sheet will absolutely not be 2025.

taskmaster, I'm intrigued as to where the 2025 figure on the ice sheet comes from. Back of the envelope calculations suggest it would take 46 years to melt the whole thing even assuming more powerful sunlight energy than they currently get, no refreezing ever, and no additional precipitation ever. Accepting periods of refreezing probably occur plus the odd snowfall it's hard to see how my figures are so far out that you could get to complete depletion of the Greenland ice sheet by 2025. Of course my figures could be wrong (including my assumption of average annual temperature not rising above 1C) so would appreciate any pointers you can give to the 2025 prediction.

Wow, worth visiting the telegraph article just to read the comments section alone. It's absolutely jam packed with haters and nay-sayers, all very misinformed about hydrogen, energy, physics, and current developments in the whole sector. Here's a small taster...

"The law of thermodynamics means you will have to use more power to produce the equivalent energy in hydrogen and costs considerably more and is far less energy dense than the hydrocarbons needed to produce it. What on earth is the point?"

"What he fails to point out is that producing hydrogen from water is incredibly energy inefficient. Don't know how you get round that one."

"Anyone remember the Hindenburg?
Hydrogen liquefies at just 20 degrees above Absolute Zero.
So it has to be stored as a gas unless every car has superconducting magnetic refrigerators - which would at least triple the weight of any car."

"The problem is it has only a fraction of the power of petrochemicals and can't be stored in adequate quantities, say for your car.
The solution is to ditch the climate myth and get back to clean diesel."

"How many birds have been exterminated by very expensive, ineffective wind farms installed because of the fascist green lobby?"

"Suggest Grant is granted! the promised 4 year educational grant! to finish his scientific education--because he will then tell us how all this hydrogen is going to sourced"

That's enough of that. Many strong-willed individuals but clearly not been reading all the way to the end of the science papers. Half-truths, out-of-context facts, and some plain old-wives tales thrown in. You know what they say "just enough knowledge to be dangerous".

If it's quotes you're after...(and we've all heard these a million times)

The real key to making money in stocks is not to get scared out of them. - Peter Lynch

Price is what you pay. Value is what you get. - Warren Buffett

It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price. - Warren Buffett

Only buy something that you'd be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years. - Warren Buffett

We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful. - Warren Buffett

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield. - Warren Buffett

I think you have to learn that there's a company behind every stock, and that there's only one real reason why stocks go up. Companies go from doing poorly to doing well or small companies grow to large companies. - Peter Lynch

When stocks are attractive, you buy them. Sure, they can go lower. I've bought stocks at $12 that went to $2, but then they later went to $30. You just don't know when you can find the bottom. - Peter Lynch

I'm playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order. - Eric Morecambe

...courtesy of brainyquote.com

If only you'd thought to mention that before Smithy.

It makes sense for Linde trucks that ship green hydrogen should also use a green hydrogen powertrain. The green hydrogen should at least be created by ITM-Linde electrolysers. Looks like Linde still going all-in.

Linde vehicles to powered by Plug Power technology

Industrial gas giant Linde will deploy Plug Power’s ProGen fuel cell engine in Class 6 and Class 8 vehicles, which will be used for the delivery of products.

https://www.h2-view.com/story/linde-vehicles-to-powered-by-plug-power-technology/

In order to decouple themselves from the Nikola/Milton fiasco, Nel need to come forward with a forecast that re-enforces their robust future prospects in the green hydrogen economy without reliance on Nikola. I'm pretty confident the current stock valuation holds up under scrutiny without Nikola.

They should also remove/decouple the Nikola holdings valuation from their balance sheet (not sure that's even permitted though under accounting rules). Seems little point to me having such a risk weighing on a balance sheet if it may ultimately prove a valueless holding.

I'm relieved we've got through 'Battery Day' relatively unscathed. Having watched the event it seemed to be simply making the same type of batteries bigger, cheaper, faster to produce and a bit more efficient in end-user operation (more power, slightly faster charging). But it didn't seem to be the 'killer' announcement I was worried about.

So moving on...what's the next event? I was looking for confirmation about timing for next report/update from ITM and last years early October release was final results year end April 2019. I suppose we're still due a formal report for year end April 2020, but we already had a trading update that included figures up to the end of April 2020 back in June. We know the stock price took a jolt back then which seemed to bring it to short term senses. It can't get a jolt based on the same figures again can it?

Yeah, I think I agree taskmaster. I have been recently coming round to accepting that there's nothing wrong with BEV if you have some combination of driveway parking (charging), home solar, short trips, or happy to wait 30-45 mins for top-up. I think even I could manage with a Model S as their charging network appears so good. The advantage of plenty of happy BEV drivers/vehicles in the mix is they are undoubtedly a more efficient use of power (we shouldn't really be wasting it right?). As long as we do get FCEV for unhappy, forced-to-be-BEV, drivers to switch to would be a reasonable state of affairs.

It only changes my numbers by a small margin though, and I didn't even include electricity/hydrogen production for existing industrial demand in my original estimates.

Exactly right Seaangler. BuilderPete my Master Plan was obviously an over-simplification, but the numbers aren't far off if you want a fully hydrogen economy (incl heating and road transport) by 2050. And that's my point - we're not even close to getting those numbers and the politicians won't appreciate/understand those numbers either. But there is one important point that you make, which I left out for simplicity, and that is "the gradual change" and the role of big oil even in my master plan. There won't be enough hydrogen in my master plan for years yet, and so it has to be made from fossil (SMR) to begin with. People would have to accept that hydrogen at scale would have to start with grey hydrogen (then blue) and be content with 'zero emission at tailpipe' slogan otherwise there just can't be enough hydrogen available and it could never take off. That's why it's got to be a Master Plan because no-one (environmentalists) would buy in if they didn't understand it was an interim measure that would evolve to fully green hydrogen over 20 years.

As discussed I believe we need a Master Plan. Ok, so let's get started.

The end goal is 350GW daily average green electricity generation. Today we have under 10GW.

So we need to build out 11GW daily average green generation every year (Wind farms and Solar).

Year 1 we need 1GW of electrolysers to soak up any daily generation excess.
Year 2 we need another 2GW of electrolysers to soak up any daily generation excess.
Year 3 we need a further 4GW of electrolysers to soak up any daily generation excess.
Year 4 onwards we need annually a further 10GW of electrolysers as every 10GW we build in green generation is over-capacity above standard electricity demand.

And that's it. Wind-farm and solar guys need to pull their finger out. And ITM need to build another 9 factories. Sorted.