Ooo good story, thanks for sharing it.
When I’m looking at hydrogen long term, I’m thinking planes, renewable energy storage and mixed with syngas for the UK’s gas network but never for cars. Maybe the proposed filling stations will be for long distance coaches? National Express announced that they’re never buying a diesel coach again.
Hydrogen cars have been available for years. They’re basically the same as electric cars but with longer range and doesn’t take hours to charge. You fill up with hydrogen the same as you would petrol, but the motor is electric.
I think once the petrol/diesel ban is in effect in 2035, hydrogen fuel cell cars will be the only option for driving with any range.
In Musk’s Master Plan, he actually compared the CO2 emissions between fuel cell and battery powered electric cars.
His calculation shows that battery powered cars are much “greener” and the the fuel cell powered cars are even worse than the oil powered counter parts in terms of overall CO2 emissions. Not sure how scientific his calculation is though.
Large vehicles, e.g. buses and trucks, are the ones to adopt fuel cells first (Ocado is ordering more gas powered trucks, not sure if it’s electric though). The extra weight added by large battery pack (and the potential charging time) is the main stopper for large battery powered electric vehicles for now but you never know what Mr. Musk could come out with and what the Tesla Semi could demonstrate to the world.
The emissions from a hydrogen car are only water and warm air, so the car itself is just as green as a battery electric car.
The real emissions in both battery electric and hydrogen come from generating the power. Right now hydrogen fuel cells are mostly produced using fossil fuels, which creates CO2 emissions. However the production is moving towards clean electrolysis, which uses electricity to separate the hydrogen out of water. ITM is working on clean electrolysis so the emissions will be significantly lower.
The possible benefit in Musk’s table is the claimed efficiency. If I’m reading that correctly he’s claiming that hydrogen engines are less efficient at converting potential energy stored in its fuel than petrol engines, and three times less efficient than battery electric engines. If that’s accurate then battery electric will still beat fuel cells on emissions even when the hydrogen is generated by electrolysis.
Bloomberg: Germany Moves Into Hydrogen With Lessons From OPEC and Russia.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-03/germany-moves-into-hydrogen-with-lessons-from-opec-and-russia
Not about ITM, but a good Hydrogen article
Hoping everyone sold their itm stock temporarily yesterday after the bonkers rally…!
Still holding! Any concern about ITM?
I bough in and plan to hold forever 
it’s a rather small position so I’d be willing risking it going to zero for the chance it could 10x
There’s so much upside should the hydrogen technology take to the gas network and gain government backing.
None. But after such a crazy rally, the party won’t last in the current climate I would imagine - 10% drop today. If you were lucky would have sold at the peak and buy back in at a later stage. Obviously, nobody could have foreseen the peak…
Im planning to hold tight and ignore the volatility. The new factory will come online in 6 months or so and we should expect some massive project orders around this time of 100MW. With Linde involved now the risk is massively reduced for ITM.
It’s accurate and thats the biggest criticism of fuel cell vehicles - you would need to build 2 or 3 times the amount of renewable energy generation to get the same number of miles driven as a battery EV. I tend to ignore this argument altogether though. Hydrogen used in industry and chemicals is a 70 million tonne market, currently produced by cracking methane in a process resposible for 2% of the world’s emmissions (similar to aviation). Just switching this to electrolysis would take years and hundreds of gigawatts of renewables. For a company like ITM with competitive tech and a huge partner in Linde we are basically looking at unlimited growth for years to come. Still plenty of risks but Im expecting a lot of growth in both revenue and share price for next 2-3 years followed by an acquisition from one of the multi-nationals.
The answer has to be combination of hydrogen and SMR for electrolysis.
If you don’t mind me asking, are you still holding this?
I did take a little profit (bought in ages ago when the price was around 20p) but still holding. I think the stock has been pretty resilient compared to many during the crisis and as an early stage growth company I dont see much risk of them going under as a result so happy to wait this out! All the value is based on what they will be doing in 5 years time and the price reflected this.
This is an interesting new post from them. IF my understanding is correct - wind farms that aren’t connected to the electricity grid but instead sit out at sea using the power to make hydrogen and then piping that gas back to land instead of electricity (pipes are cheaper than cables apparently)
Yes, probably the end state for hydrogen production in my opinion. The grid will get saturated with renewables pretty quickly (approx 5 years or so) and they will start to erode their own revenue. Most people talk about demand shifting through batteries as the obvious solution to that but I think you will see projects like this focused 100% on hydrogen ‘behind the meter’ - no need to even touch the electricity grid. As soon as renewable electricity reaches $30 per MWh (wind was £40 per MWh in the UK last CfD auction) its game on. At that price electrolyser produced hydrogen starts to beat natural gas produced hydrogen and a mind bogglingly huge market is unlocked. In the meantime a government framework for hydrogen (similar to CfDs for renewables) would be very helpful way of speeding it up but you will see projects like this regardless. The big fish have seen this coming and want to get their place in the queue and be ready to move quickly when the tipping point arrives. Future still looks bright to me for ITM.
It is a very solid engineering firm IMO.
They were severely underpriced during the March market mayhem.
I can easily see them at £2.5 before year’s end.
