Hello all,
Beyond the information we can glean from ADN’s own announcements, interviews with James Marsh and the like, we can continue to assess the potential significance of the company’s hydrogen storage aspirations by keeping our finger on the pulse as to material developments in the broader industry.
As I have intimated in earlier posts, in my respectful view view any serious consideration of the emerging hydrogen industry in Australia necessarily entails a discussion about the increasingly aggressive move by Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) into the hydrogen and green energy space.
Today we had the following developments I thought were worthwhile bookmarking in this thread:
1. FMG’s chairman Andrew Forrest discussed plans at the AGM to “take on fossil fuel giants with expansion into green energy” via its Fortescue Future Industries (FFI) arm:
https://www.watoday.com.au/business/companies/fortescue-to-expand-into-renewables-with-green-energy-arm-20201111-p56dnx.htmlAmong other matters, it was reported that:
”FFI will finance, develop and operate renewable energy projects including green hydrogen and green ammonia plants.
Dr Forrest revealed FFI would aim to build 235 gigawatts of installed energy capacity – greater than Chevron’s 2019 energy production – and had already committed to $1 billion out to 2023.
He said a team of 40, including himself, had already visited 23 countries to buy up renewable energy patents and intellectual property.”
2. Furthermore today FMG released its AGM presentation document (a tidy 52 pages) from which I have extracted some of the more pertinent slides for your convenience:
https://www.fmgl.com.au/docs/default-source/announcements/fortescue-agm-presentation-2020.pdf?sfvrsn=e8b4897a_6
And:
As to how this may tie into ADN and its hydrogen storage R & D, in my opinion it is certainly not out of the realm of possibility that:
1. ADN could come on to FMG / FFI’s radar at some stage (whether via Natural Nanotech Pty Ltd or otherwise) or their paths may very well cross by reason of hydrogen storage possibilities and related IP, not least given their mutual “friend” the CSIRO.
The CSIRO released its National Hydrogen Roadmap in November 2019 (and that specifically refers, for example, to the examination of nanotubes for hydrogen storage under the emerging technologies table 36 at page 71):
https://www.csiro.au/~/media/Do-Business/Files/Futures/18-00314_EN_NationalHydrogenRoadmap_WEB_180823.pdf?la=en&hash=36839EEC2DE1BC38DC738F5AAE7B40895F3E15F4We know that FMG has formed a partnership with the CSIRO on “hydrogen technologies” and to support the “development of new industries”:
https://im-mining.com/2020/04/06/fmg-strengthens-western-australia-hydrogen-ties-atco-agreement/Similarly ADN has previously reported its own “partnership” of sorts with the CSIRO in relation to the collaborative testing that has been undertaken on Great White halloysite-kaolin samples (for example, refer to the ADN announcement from 12 December 2019: “Halloysite content measurements are a complex time‐consuming process due to the chemical and mineralogical similarities between halloysite and kaolinite, resulting in the long lead time for final results. Andromeda uses the CSIRO, one of the world’s leading experts in halloysite and kaolinite measurement, to complete this analysis. The collaboration between the CSIRO and Andromeda for halloysite measurement analysis has resulted in significant in‐house knowledge and valuable experience being gained.”)
2. Should ADN’s research into and development of HNTs for hydrogen storage prove to be viable (and indeed exceptional), then it also reasonably follows that FMG / FFI would have to be identified as being on the list of possible candidates for future commercial partnerships and opportunities simply given their rising prominence in this space and apparent hunger to acquire related intellectual property.
All of the above is of course speculative and for the purposes of ongoing discussion in the forum. For the avoidance of doubt this post is not intended as cross-promotion and I do not hold FMG.
Best wishes to all.
(20min delay)