Content:

Market News:

Much ado about hydrogen

Sven Geitmann reports:

World Council for Renewable Energies constituted

Clean Energy for Berlin

Fuel cell block heating power station funding

How much money will renewable energies get?

Million-dollar funding as an afterthought in the US?

Norwegian and Canadian development programs

Fuel cell heating stations to come in a few months

Toyota's passenger car and bus developments

BMW's Clean Energy World Tour

Honda filling station in L.A.

Interview of the month:

This time with Mark Kammerer, P.Eng., Engineer Marketing & Sales, Hydrogenics Corp.

Event News:

Vote for the most innovative product!

Mark your calender: dates for 2002!

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Market News:

Much is happening at Shell Hydrogen, who in July alone released three annoucements about their global activities: On July 30, Shell Hydrogen announced that its CEO Don Huberts was elected chairman of the California Fuel Cell Partnership for 2002, replacing DaimlerChrysler's Dr. Ferdinand Panik whose term as chairman expires at the end of 2001. The Partnership is a collaboration of fuel providers, auto companies, fuel cell technology companies and government agencies. It plans to demonstrate the potential of this new technology as safe, practical, clean and efficient alternative to conventional sources of vehicles and energy. On July 25, Shell Hydrogen together with Ballard Power Systems and Westcoast Energy released news about the creation of a new Vancouver-based private capital joint venture called Chrysalix Energy Limited Partnership. The joint venture is focused on promoting early stage companies with high growth potential in fuel cells and related systems, hydrogen infrastructure, maintenance and support techniques. Operating independently, Chrysalix will offer assistance to its start-up clients throughout the business planning, start-up and operations phase of development. "It is our goal that Chrysalix will become the preeminent vehicle for supporting the growth of new fuel cell, hydrogen and related technology companies." says Chairman and CEO of Westcoast Michael Phelps. On July 12, together with Hydro-Quebec and Gesellschaft fuer Elektrometallurgie (GfE) Shell Hydrogen announced the creation of a new company which will develop, manufacture and market hydride-based hydrogen storage products. The creation of the new company, which will be based in Montreal, Quebec, and will have an office in Nuernberg, Germany, is yet subject to regulatory approval. The agreement followed the signing of a memorandum of understanding earlier this year. Says CEO of Hydro-Quebec Andre Caille: "Since our announcement in February, the partners have worked hard at translating their vision of the opportunity into a concrete company plan that will provide the fuel cell market with leading-edge hydrogen storage products." The partners are convinced that metal hydrides will be the best means of safely and reliably storing hydrogen at affordable prices.

Sven Geitmann reports:

Planet Earth just witnessed the constitution of the "World Council for Renewable Energies". After the foundation of regional energy agencies in Germany during the last couple of years and the German Energy Agency (German: Deutsche Energieagentur, dena) in fall 2000, this seems to be the next logical step. The original plan was to create an International Agency for Renewable Energies (IRENA) this summer. However, this could not be established during a three-day conference in Berlin. Instead, the 400 delegates present constituted the World Council, which will serve as a global network of non-government organisations in the realm of renewable energies, evironment protection and development aid. The new council will have a steering commitee of five representatives from the five continents. For Europe, member of parliament and president of Eurosolar (European solar agency) Hermann Scheer will take this role. According to an initial press release the World Council for Renewable Enegies is to give a voice to non-fossile energies in the global energy discussion, in which the (traditional) World Energy Council lobbying for nuclear power and fossil fuels currently dominates. One of the new council's objectives is to found the above mentioned international agency supported by the government, similar to the international nuclear energy agency. Berlin may be a possible location for this institution.

Berlin is to be the testing ground for alternative propulsion concepts. This was released after a meeting between German Minister of Traffic Kurt Bodewig and representatives from the automotive and mineral oil industry. Berlin's "Clean Energy Project" is aimed at testing different propulsion concepts for passenger cars, busses and transport fleets with different alternative fuels, with an emphasis on hydrogen. The "VES" (energy strategy for the traffic economy, German: Verkehrswirtschafliche Energiestrategie), which met in June, consists of: BMW, DaimlerChrysler, MAN, Opel, Volkswagen, Aral, BP, RWE and Shell. As a result of the discussion Bodewig commented: "The unilateral dependency of traffic on fossil fuels has to be overcome." The VES decided to select a maximum of two suitable fuels and to prepare their introduction to the market. Hydrogen filling stations were announced to be a means to achieve this. In the long run hydrogen appears to be the most promising alternative. On a mid-term basis methanol or modified gasoline can serve as intermediaries. The Clean Energy Project is part of this strategy and is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Traffic.

A heated argument follows in the wake of the German government's new regulation on the support of co-generation heat and power plants (CHP, German: Kraft-Waerme-Kopplung, KWK). The program to be implemented includes market penetration of fuel cells as well as maintenance, modernisation, and extension of CHP plants, including small block heating power stations. With this the government wants to achieve reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. The program is based on volunteer action from the industry and supporting legislation. The German Hydrogen Association (German: DWV) welcomed the decision to incorporate fuel cells into the plan of action, which supports fuel cell block heating power stations of up to 2 MW performance with DEM 0,10/kWh. This funding is twice as high as for other small block heating power stations. According to the DWV this legislation is worldwide unique. The German Association for co-generation heat and power (German: Bundesverband Kraft-Waerme-Kopplung, B.KWK) heavily criticised the decision. According to the association the volunteer agreement with the German energy industry is insufficient, non-binding and leaves too many "backdoors" open. Further, a legal foundation for this funding was questionable in that it only granted support for CHP generated power fed into the public infrastructure but not for power consumed where it was generated.

Having reviewed the German "red-green" government's draft budget for 2002, the opposition claims that there were severe slashes with regards to renewable energies. Budget spokesman for the Christian-Democratic Union/ Christian-Socialist Union (CDU/CSU) faction Dietrich Austermann (member of parliament, German: MdB), and the responsible observer Dankward Buwitt (MdB) in a release stated that the program for research and development of renewable energies and for their market introduction was reduced by 27%. Mathias Wagner of the Green Party commented on this to H2 Report, saying that the amount of DEM 623 million from 2001 included DEM 196 million from 1999. Consequently, the amount of DEM 456 million budgeted for 2002 actually constituted an increase compared to the year before. Wagner however admitted that DEM 65 million less were spent on investment funding and R&D, but emphasized that DEM 20 million were used for renewable ressources from the agricultural budget. Another member of the government faction, Jochen Raven, further pointed to DEM 29 million funding for ecological farming. The question of course is what this has to do with renewable energies, unless the focus is on rape oil for biodiesel. This is to say that the politicial discussion seems slightly confused. At second glance the draft budget does not slash renewable energy funding but stagnates in this respect. It remains to be seen whether this satisfies the expectations of the red-green voters.

In June H2 Report featured an article on budget restraints for the US environment program. This is still true, with the research and development budget for renewable energies for the year 2002 to be reduced by USD 135 million in comparison to the year before. However, new negotiations resulted in new figures. At the end of June, US Federal Minister for Energy Spencer Abraham annound that approx. USD 85.7 million will be granted to support 18 organisations and five universities in their R&D activities. In a joint effort both the government and the industry will share the cost. A significant number of the projects receiving funding through this focus on hydrogen production, reforming, cleaning and storage, as well as fuel cell research. Says Abraham: "Fuel cells, hydrogen technology and improved combustion engines are among the most promising areas in research and development." At the same time a study on national energy policy introduced by Dick Cheney a couple of days earlier concluded that activities would be concentrated on traditional energy sources. Hydrogen and fuel cell technologies were of minor importance only, while for the near future the government would rely on conventional methods. "Renewable and alternative fuels bear hope for America's energy future, but they are currently contributing only a small part of the energy demand." Several American hydrogen companies and associations had reacted positively to Cheney's report.

In mid-Juli the Norwegian government announced its plan to invest around USD 1 billion in a comprehensive clean energy development program over the next eight years. The dominant features of this plan are the use of hydrogen and new natural gas technologies to reduce CO2 emissions. Norway possesses about 45% of the European natural gas supply and exports around 98% of it. It is to be hoped that the planned foundation of a new gas company and the building of a gas infrastructure includes reforming of this fossil fuel into hydrogen. The Canadian government released that about CAD 109 million will be granted for a new support program aimed at reducing emission in the transport sector, one of the methods to achieve this being the use of fuel cell technology. A total of CAD 1.1 billion is to be invested over the next five years in a cleaner future.

H Power Corp. of the US recently announced that they will have a fuel cell energy supply station for private households on the market in a few months. A small series will be installed in California. With regards to the costs and number of stations, H Power have not released any figures for the systems with performance between 3 and 4.5 kW. California in particular is regarded to become a fast-growing market for these systems, because there have been repeated difficulties with uninterrupted power supply. An important step for this enterprise surely was the opening of a new production site in Monroe, North Carolina at the end of June. H Power CEO Dr. H. Frank Gibbard will speak on his company's fuel cell system about to start market penetration at the Hydrogen Expo seminar forum on October 12, 2001 in Hamburg, Germany.

In mid-June Toyota introduced a new fuel cell hybrid vehicle (FCHV-4). Now, it was released that this vehicle will go commercial in two years. A company spokesman in Tokyo explained a refined version of the FCHV-4 will be sold in Japan after comprehensive testing in limited series as soon as 2003. The price and number of vehicles have not yet been determined. Thanks to an iniative of the Japan Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport the FCHV-4, similar to Honda's VCX-V3, already received approval for operation on public roads. The Honda previously drove in the US, now both vehicles can do their test-driving on Japanese ground. As of Juli, two further Toyota fuel cell cars will participate in the California Fuel Cell Partnership test program in the US. Toyota developed the FCHV-4 simultaneously to the FCHV-3. The latter was presented with a metal hydride storage system in February this year, while the new vehicle has a compressed gas tank (gaseous hydrogen, 250bar). This version is based on Toyota's Kluger V SUV and has a fuel cell stack with a performance of 90kW. Toyota tailored this PEM-stack for its own purposes and had it combined it with a battery (nickel metal hydride) to recover and store braking energy. Because of the hybrid system the FCHV-4 reaches a maximum speed of more than 150km/h with a reach of 250km. In addition to this, Toyota develops a new fuel cell hybrid system for busses in collaboration with Hino Motors, Ltd. The integral parts are similar to the passenger car, but with the gas bottles lying on the roof and the vehicle seating 63 people. Using the same stack (90kW performance) the bus has a maximum speed of 80km/h and a reach of 300km.

As far as Japan and recently to the United Stations did the Clean Energy World Tour take BMW's first small hydrogen vehicle series. In May BMW canvassed for their technology in Tokyo, Japan. Now the tour ended in July in Los Angeles, California. On Oktober 11-13, 2001, two vehicles will be demonstrated at Hydrogen Expo in Hamburg, Germany. Vice President of Research and Development Burkhard Goeschel said that hydrogen technology had progressed remarkably during the past two decades. Japan, along with Canada, Germany and the U.S. was one of the leaders in this field. Accordingly, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi not long ago underlined his countries commitment by announcing that as of 2005 the government fleet would include low emission vehicles. During tests in Oxnard, California, BMW re-emphasized they were looking for partners to cooperate. At a press conference Goeschel said he wanted to once again express his wish to find partners from other car manufacturers to develop alternative propulsion systems. The new hydrogen filling station located at the BMW Engineering and Emissions Control Test Center just outside Los Angeles (which according to the US is the "nation's smoggiest city") is to lay the grounds to introduce H2 as California's future vehicle fuel. The Bavarian car manufacturer is also active on its home turf. At the beginning of June BMW invited Secretary of the State under the Minister of Economics, Sigmar Mosdorf, to a test-drive with the BMW 750hl. Says Mosdorf: "Fuel cells and hydrogen combustion are about new propulsion technologies, which meet the sustainability demands of the 21st century." Further, BMW put a live chat on the net to get in contact with hydrogen experts and young internet users.

Car manufacturer Honda just started operation of the first hydrogen filling station in the greater Los Angeles area. The station is located at Honda's US headquarters in Torrance and is part of the company's R&D strategy in the renewable energies field, including efforts for hydrogen production on storage. Electricity for electrolysis producing hydrogen from water is generated by a solar station. The hydrogen produced is compressed and stored as gas. Honda's fuel cell vehicles already drove more than 5.000 km between November 2000 and June 2001.

H2 Report: Who is Hydrogenics?

Kammerer: Hydrogenics is a designer, developer and manufacturer of FCAT products, that is Fuel Cell Automated Test Stations for the fuel cell industry. These products provide unattended control and monitoring of single cells or complete fuel cell stacks for analyzing many parameters such as voltage, temperature, pressure, humidification. The other part of our business is that we design and build fuel cell stacks, currently concentrated around PEM technology. Generally speaking, we are a systems integrator and most of our efforts are directed at the overall system.

H2 Report: What are the current products or projects you are working on?

Kammerer: A constantly continuing project is further development of our FCATS products. We are also developing FCATS for solid oxide fuel cell systems, which we are now delivering, and have added our multicell voltage monitoring technology as a standard. Aside from the FCATS, we have our fuel cell power generation projects, which are in the development stage. We have two power modules that we are working on, called GENESYS, which operate in the ranges of 5 and 40 kW. And we are working on integrating our electrolyser technology, which is "reverse" fuel cell technology, into GENYSYS, to generate hydrogen, including a storage capacity of up to 100 kWh. We have our multi-kW portable fuel cell power generator with metal hydride hydrogen storage, called HYPORT, which is currently being submitted for fuel testing. Plans are to also integrate our electrolyser together with the HyPORT. Our small sub-kW generator, HyTEF, is currently being integrated with our chemical hydride hydrogen generation technology, and the power ranges for this product are being extended from 50 kW to 500 kW.

H2 Report: Can possible applications be either stationary, mobile or portable?

Kammerer: Yes, that is a very good point. Because, we are not targeting any specific industry. Most of the applications can use essentially the same fuel cell technology for a number of different industries. In our business plan we targeted all of the market segments, one reason being that it is too early to commit to any one in particular. And as I said, the same technology can be ported to many different fields. Our main expertise is from the fuel cell test stations, that is the entire systems. For that is what the test station really is: a complete fuel cell system that can be configured for any range of operating conditions. This makes us very knowledgeable in this area, and we have the capability to optimize the system to each specific application, be it mobile, stationary or portable. One application could be auxiliary power units (APUs) for the automotive industry, but his same APU can be applied to the stationary or portable markets with minor differences.

H2 Report: Do you partner with anyone or have strategic alliances to develop your products?

Kammerer: At this point, no. All our work up to now has been for specific contracts. Some are for system integration, some are for power generation systems like the APUs. We are for instance, developing an APU for battery recharging for the Canadian government. In a sense they have been one of our major partners in that they helped us get started in the early days, and this relationship is continuing on. We are now working on some collaboration and also on some strategic alliances, which again is part of our business plans and what we have indicated to our shareholders. In the next quarters some announcements will be made as they are realized.

H2 Report: So you are one of the few fuel cell companies with a market ready product.

Kammerer: That is correct. Our fuel cell automated test stations are generating revenue, and we are pretty close to break even on that. That market we are expecting to be increasing quite a bit, as more companies get involved in fuel cell developing. After that stage there will be the fuel cell verification for series production, such as test systems for quality assurance. And after that as fuel cells, as we hope, are increasingly brought into the market place, diagnostics will become an issue. Automotive service stations for example will require test systems for diagnostics and servicing of APUs or the fuel cell engine.

H2 Report: What will you show at Hydrogen Expo?

Kammerer: We plan to bring our working demos of our HyPORT, and also our HyTEF, which stands for Hydrogenics Thermo-Electric Fuel Cell. This is a also a FC power generator, which we developed for the Canadian government which can operate in cold temperatures as low as –40 degrees C. We also want to display our sodium borohydride chemical hydrogen generator, the first prototype of which is working very well, and our electrolyser demonstration unit. With our HyPORT unit we can run our entire booth without external energy, including both hydrogen generation units and booth lighting. At a show last month in California we even supplied power to keep the exhibition’s ice cream stand running during a blackout, so perhaps this capability can come in handy again in some way in Hamburg!

H2 Report: How you see the future of the hydrogen and fuel cell economy then?

Kammerer: Well, if you are talking about hydrogen economy, you probably mean the production, supply and infrastructure of hydrogen. As it is known, there are different methods of producing hydrogen, and some are cleaner than others. There is reforming of natural gas, gasoline or methanol, or hydrogen production from renewables. What we see is that there will be all of these sources, and the consumer will have a choice. This means there will be different "grades" of hydrogen depending on how the hydrogen was produced. Consumers will have a choice of how clean the hydrogen they are buying is, and they will pay the associated price. Ultimately for the future, I am hoping that renewables will become the dominant way of producing hydrogen. With the Kyoto Protocol being heavily in the news these last weeks, it can be seen that paying for the "premium" grade hydrogen will become increasingly more justified.

H2 Report: As for market penetration, when do you think a significant amount of fuel cells will be on the market?

Kammerer: This is a more tough question, as it depends on many factors. I think, fuel cells will be starting to be more significantly on the market around 2004. We feel early adopters will the military and telecommunication sectors, who are just now starting with demonstration units and prototypes., By 2008 fuel cells in the automotive industry will be in standard production, and hopefully approaching 10% of the vehicles produced near or after 2010. That said, we believe that success is going to more of a marathon than of a sprint.

Your vote counts: At Hydrogen Expo on October 11 to 13, 2001, in Hamburg you can decide which of the products showcased is the most innovative. What caught your attention, which was the most convincing product? After your walk-through, you can give your vote at the H2 Report booth and have the chance to win a DIY fuel cell. Pick up your vote card at Hydrogen Expo. If you want to learn more about the exhibitors, please visit: http://www.hydrogen-expo.com

Mark your calender: dates for 2002!

Please do not forget to mark your calender for Hydrogen Expo 2002. The exhibition will again take place in Hamburg on October 10 to 12, 2002, on the Hamburg Fairgrounds. The synergies between hydrogen, solar energy, biomass and geothermal power will then contribute a special feature area to the trade show and seminar forum. For exhibitor information please contact us at email: info@h2expo.com or tel.: +49-211-687858-11.