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Green and clean aviation fuel just hit a nearly $9 a gallon wall. Hospitals are turning to hydrogen to keep the lights on when the grid fails. And the hydrogen industry made a $400 million bet on where energy is heading.
Hi, I'm Steve Hill, CEO of New Hydrogen with this week's top hydrogen news.
Before we get into the news, here's a quick update on our own progress. Our thermal loop engineering test unit is under construction and we're working with New Cube Energy to evaluate using heat from their next generation nuclear reactor to power thermal loop and lower the cost of producing clean hydrogen. Hit subscribe if you'd like to follow our progress.
First up, The Street published a story about what happens to aviation's green fuel plan when an energy crisis hits. The Hormuz disruption sent sustainable aviation fuel prices to $8.85 a gallon in a single week.
The reason 81% of today's supply comes from used cooking oil and animal fats. Finite resources already competed over by shipping and trucking. The aviation industry needs 500 million tons of sustainable fuel by 2050, and it's on track for 2.4 million tons this year.
Hydrogen offers three distinct paths around that bottleneck. Fuel cells can power regional aircraft directly. Modified jet engines can burn liquid hydrogen instead of kerosene, which is exactly what Airbus and CFM International are testing with NASA right now. And hydrogen can serve as the feed stock for synthetic fuels that drop into today's jets with no engine changes whatsoever.
Three different routes, but every one of them runs through the same question. How cheaply can you make the hydrogen?
Next, hospitals are turning to hydrogen fuel cells for backup power, specifically because it can run independent of the grid. Earlier this year, a company called Hydreia won a contract to supply a solid state hydrogen storage system backing up a fuel cell at a United States hospital and clinic.
When the power goes out, life support and critical equipment can't wait for the grid to come back. Hydrogen storage doesn't degrade sitting in the reserve the way batteries can, which makes it a serious option for exactly this kind of always on backup.
Hydrogen isn't just changing lives, it's saving them.
Last story for today, Ballard Power Systems has announced it's acquiring UK hydrogen power company Geopura for $400 million, one of the biggest hydrogen deals of the year.
Ballard makes fuel cells and Geopura deploys them as leased power units. So the commercial market is clearly real, but the hydrogen powering those fuel cells still mostly comes from electrolysis using an electrolyer to split water with expensive electricity.
That's the same decades old process that's never solved the cost problem.
Thermal loop uses heat instead, which is why we believe it can reach costs that current methods can't. The demand is there. The question is, who solves the production economics?
Every story we've covered today points to the same unresolved problem. Clean hydrogen that's cheap enough to win across aviation, healthcare, and energy at large.
That's exactly what our patent pending thermal loop technology is being designed to deliver using heat and water instead of expensive electricity.
To follow our progress or learn about our technology or how to invest or watch our short explainer video, please visit us at newhydrogen.com.
We trade under the symbol new H. Thanks for watching and I'll see you again next week.