About my posting yesterday on MY LIFE, in the first month of this blog I also had a MY LIFE. Then on 26April2022, dressed that first version up with some graphics. Not much different from that of yesterday.
However, I almost purposefully left out some of my life highlights, so rather than go back and add them to my posting yesterday, here are some of them.- My professional life, from first graduating, where I went into biomass engineering, to my academic career where I became a full professor of engineering and spent much of my years at the University Hawaii in the full spectrum of green energy, a satisfying honor came from the American Association of Civil Engineers, the Stephen D. Bechtel Jr. Energy award at their annual conference in 1999.
Within the field of renewable energy, I was most active in ocean activities.- Drafted the ocean thermal energy conversion bill that became law.
- Served as Secretary of the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii and Director of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute (HNEI), the latter for 15 years.
- HNEI was selected by the Department of Interior as one of the dual national centers for Marine Mineral Mining Technology, and the National Science Foundation as the Marine Bioproducts Engineering Research Center.
- The Ocean Energy Council gave me their Ocean Pioneer Award.
I not only wrote the original hydrogen legislation that was signed into law, but became an international leader in the development of hydrogen, where the Department of Energy selected HNEI as the national center for hydrogen education and research. I served as chairman of the Secretary of Energy's Hydrogen Technical Advisory Committee and the National Hydrogen Association one year gave me the Spark Matsunaga Memorial Award, where the previous winner was then California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
As I was mostly an administrator at the University of Hawaii, it was particularly satisfying to be selected as administrator of the year, gaining a resolution of honor by the Hawaii State Legislature. After I retired I endowed my penthouse apartment to the UH to establish a Blue Revolution Program. This was capped off in 2022 by a TEDx presentation I made on the Blue Revolution. Watch it, only 18 minutes long. An earlier talk in San Francisco on the first stage, the Pacific International Ocean Station, where Blue Revolution Hawaii is seeking $150 million. Anyone know a billionaire with ocean development interests?
Got to add just one more thing. As a freshman at Stanford, two of my classmates, from Oregon and New York, were acquainted with two groups, and I still remember their songs: Bell Notes for I've Had It and The Kingsmen for Louie Louie. Tonight I go to see the Beachboys at the Hawaii Theater.
Took me a long while to get here, but Wednesday is science day, so I reach back into the past for some history, then gaze upon the future of what can be expected from hydrogen
- I participated in the very first gathering of the Hydrogen Romantics at the University of Miami in 1974. Wow, that was half a century ago.
In 1980 I drafted the first hydrogen legislation when I worked in the U.S. Senate. The bill passed in 1989 as the Matsunaga Hydrogen Act.- In 1990 I chaired the World Hydrogen Energy Conference in Hawaii.
Around that period I became chairman of the Secretary of Energy's Hydrogen Technical Advisory Panel, which prepared The Green Hydrogen Energy Report, guiding the U.S. Congress on funding for next decade.- More recently in this blog, on 11November2021 I wrote about the history and science of hydrogen, and elaborated on why I long have been enamored of this gas. After all, hydrogen is 75% of normal matter, is used by all stars to produce energy, and when combusted, produces water.
I indicated that a biomethanol fuel cell was an optimal transition to the Hydrogen Economy.- Why? Because hydrogen is too expensive today, and an electric vehicle has a long term flaw and a fuel cell made more sense. A glance at the Table of Elements shows that lithium will be the final battery, and here is the case made against batteries.
- Much of all this is described in my Huffington Post articles written more than a decade ago:
- What About Free Hydrogen (Part 1)
- What About Free Hydrogen (Part 2)
- The Free and Clean Hydrogen Age (Part 3)
- The Free Green Energy Age (Part 5)
- The Future of Sustainable Aviation
- What is the Best Biofuel?
- America, Don't Copy...Build Something Better!
- Is There an Option More Promising than the Plug-in Electric Vehicle?
Not sure about Part 4, but this was in my period when I thought it made sense to make hydrogen free to develop the marketplace.
While much of what needs to be accomplished remains in the research stage, the infrastructure is rapidly building.
Top 10 Hydrogen Industry Trends (2024)--
click to read the details:
- Hydrogen Fuel Cells
- Renewable Hydrogen
- Advanced Electrolysis
- X-to-Hydrogen-to-X
- Hydrogen Carriers
- Carbon Capture, Utilization & Storage
- Hydrogen Distribution
- Hydrogen Liquefaction & Compression
- Combined Heat & Power
- Hydrogen Propulsion
These are the hydrogen hotspots.
| HYDROGEN STOCK | TICKER SYMBOL | MARKET CAP |
|---|---|---|
| AIR PRODUCTS | NYSE:APD | $58.8 billion |
| BP | NYSE:BP | $100.76 billion |
| PLUG POWER | NASDAQ:PLUG | $2.37 billion |
| BLOOM ENERGY | NYSE:BE | $2.96 billion |
| LINDE | NYSE:LIN | $196 billion |
Frankly, from the very beginning, I have provided caution on investing too much time or money on hydrogen.
- A few breakthroughs are still to come, and I haven't the faintest idea what they will be, nor when.
- The Hydrogen Economy will become necessary if aviation makes any advancement.
- A long time ago I encouraged Rinaldo Brutoco to take a close look at this pathway, and, to my shock, he did.
- We heartily joked that one day his swift dirigibles would fly passengers from the West Coast to Hawaii, where the airship would be refueled from OTEC plantships generating hydrogen.
- Incorporated in 2011.
Read about his H2 Clipper.- They sailed into Series A funding in 2022.
- H2C hopes to fly a prototype next year, with a full-scale airship in 2028.
Just read in Sea Technology about the Belgian Sealhyfe project. They demonstrated hydrogen production offshore. Will next incorporate this experiment into the HOPE project as part of their Clean Hydrogen Partnership. They "hope' to expand into a 10 MW green hydrogen effort in 2026.
Maybe I should now take a more active interest in the Hydrogen Economy. But what? Jeremy Rifkin wrote this book in 2002.
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