On Eureka Report Alan Kohler has interviewed Francis....

On Eureka Report Alan Kohler has interviewed Francis. Interesting from perspectives of making money also from providing green heat energy to local communities in winter. The project is getting more interesting as it goes. Below copy of Alan's introduction to the interview. I hope some of you have access to the whole interview - worth listening!

Francis Wedin is the CEO and founder of Vulcan Energy Resources, which is the locally listed company that is developing a lithium and geothermal energy project in Germany, not far from Frankfurt. It’s developing as time goes on, but primarily it’s a lithium business. They’ve got a half a dozen binding offtake agreements with car companies and recently, LG, the battery maker. But since I last spoke to Francis Wedin a year ago, they’ve now decided to start selling heat as well as power from the geothermal energy. The geothermal energy will drive the lithium extraction plant and they’ll also have surplus energy to sell into the German grid. They were just proposing to sell electricity but now they’re going to sell heat as well, which is piped by some sort of fluid – Francis doesn’t know what it is, but it’s some sort of fluid that gets piped around and heats everyone’s homes up. They’re starting to talk to local councils in Germany about doing that as well.

It's a two-phase thing. They propose to have a definitive feasibility study in the second half of this year and then have the project up and running by 2024. They’ve got tonnes of money in the bank; 134 million euros and that will get them through the next couple of years, but obviously it’s going to be an expensive build because they’re building three projects in one: a lithium project, a heat project and a power project. It’s going to be an expensive build but according to Francis Wedin, will be well and truly worth it.

Here he is, CEO of Vulcan Energy Resources, Francis Wedin.