What’s it all about?
Green Hydrogen! I’ve been aware of Graham and the work of ITM for some time, since meeting their Germany team at Power to X event in Dusseldorf, and seeing the scale of their recently expanded manufacturing capacity, I thought it would be a great time to have CEO Dr Graham Cooley on the podcast. Hydrogen is still in some ways contentious, but as I’ve said many times, it’s about the right tech solving the right problem. There is much to be done to replace grey/dirty hydrogen with green hydrogen, and it was fascinating to hear Graham’s take on this.
About Graham Cooley:
Dr Graham Cooley joined ITM Power as CEO in 2009. ITM Power was the first hydrogen related company to be listed on the London Stock Market and has been developing electrolyser equipment for over 20 years. Graham started his career in the power sector in 1989 joining the CEGB and became Business Development Manager at National Power plc and then International Power plc developing energy storage and new generation technologies. Before joining ITM Power Graham was CEO of Sensortec Ltd, founding CEO of Metalysis Ltd, a spin out from Cambridge University and founding CEO of Antenova Ltd. Graham has a PhD in physics, an MBA and is a Fellow of the Institute of Metals, Minerals and Mining (FIMMM). Graham also sits on a number of industry bodies and is a member of the UK Government’s Hydrogen Advisory Council.
About ITM Power:
ITM Power plc manufactures integrated hydrogen energy solutions for grid balancing, energy storage and the production of renewable hydrogen for transport, renewable heat and chemicals. ITM Power plc was admitted to the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange in 2004. In October 2019, the Company announced the completion of a £58.8 million fundraising, including an investment by Linde of £38 million, together with the formation of a joint venture with Linde to focus on delivering renewable hydrogen to large-scale industrial projects worldwide. ITM Power operates from the world’s largest electrolyser factory in Sheffield with a capacity of 1GW (1,000MW) per annum. Customers and partners include Sumitomo, Ørsted, Phillips 66, Scottish Power, Siemens Gamesa, Cadent, Northern Gas Networks, Gasunie, RWE, Engie, GNVert, National Express, Toyota, Hyundai and Anglo American among others.
Social links:
- ITM Power Website: www.itm-power.com
- ITM Power on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/ITMPowerPlc
- ITM Power on Flickr: ITM Power | Flickr
- ITM Power on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ITMPowerPlc
- ITM Power on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ITM-Power-113334372043763/?v=wall
- Graham on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/grahamcooley
- Graham on Twitter: https://twitter.com/GrahamCooley4
About Hyperion Executive Search:
Hyperion are a specialist executive search firm working with some of the most innovative cleantech companies in the world, helping to find extraordinary talent to enable their growth and success. Partnering with leading cleantech VCs, as well as directly with founders and entrepreneurs in the sector. With our clients we are transforming business and growing a strong and prosperous cleantech economy.
If you want to grow your team, or move forward your career, visit www.hyperionsearch.com, or email info@hyperionsearch.com
EPISODE LINKS
- The ITM Gigafactory walk through is on the company homepage https://www.itm-power.com/
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Unknown Speaker 0:04
Hello and welcome to the leaders in clean tech podcast. Each week our host David Hunt speaks to a leading startup CEO, executive or thought leader in the clean tech sector, focused on the clean energy and clean mobility transitions. Each guest shares the highs and lows of their clean tech journey, their industry insights and their vision and hopes for the future.
David Hunt 0:31
I’m David Hunt CEO and founder of Hyperion executive search and your host for the reason clean tech podcast. Thank you for the feedback on the last few episodes. It’s always great to hear your thoughts and feedback. This week we return to the world of hydrogen, very hot topic at the moment. More specifically, of course, green hydrogen, and I talk with Dr. Graham Cooley, CEO of ITM power, one of the best established manufacturers of hydrogen electrolyzers. I hope you enjoy the episode. Hello, welcome to the LEDs and quintet, podcast. Graham. It’s great to have you join me.
Dr Graham Cooley 1:05
Thanks, David. Yeah, great to be on the leaders in clean tech.
David Hunt 1:09
Is there a lot to get through? It’s been a pretty good year for those of you involved in the green hydrogen sector, lots of investment, lots of discussion, lots of government policies leading towards the growth of the hydrogen economy. So there’s loads that I want to cover with you. But it’s always customary to start with a little bit of your backstory, perhaps if you could share a little bit of your journey prior to joining it MSc in 2009.
Dr Graham Cooley 1:34
Yeah, so while I started by doing a physics degree, and then did a material science PhD at Brunel University, actually in the materials that go into fuel cells and electrolyzers for that thing. I started at the cGb in 1989. And then went through privatisation and became part of national power and was business development manager at national and had a particular interest in energy storage technologies. Okay, I developed a project called regenesis. Which, in the end, we built 100 megawatt hours of a flow cell technology and little Barford, which for a long time, actually, for 20 years, was the world’s largest electrochemical energy store. And then I did a number of early stage technology companies raising venture capital, one was a telecoms components company. One was metallicities, which was a spin out of Cambridge University, actually looking at making tantalum for Super capacitors. And a one was an industrial diagnostics company, before starting ITM in 2009. So I’ve been the CEO now for 12 years,
David Hunt 2:59
acquired an eventful 12 years, I’m sure and also will pick up later on in terms of that entrepreneurial experience you had prior to joining it, Mr. Cleaver already listed at that point. I guess to start with what might be useful grameena there’s quite a few sort of different electrolyzer technologies. Can you perhaps share with us a little bit about the ITM power product specific technology and where you are at the moment and as a company?
Dr Graham Cooley 3:25
Yeah, so we make PEM electrolyzers. That’s polymer electrolyte membrane electrolyzers. Actually, when I started 2009, we made both electrolyzers and fuel cells, right. And I stopped the development of the fuel cell, because it was my view that the applications and the market for electrolyzers was larger than for fuel cells, and we concentrate solely on PEM electrolysis equipment. That means now we’ve been working on PEM electrolyzers for 20 years, that the whole history of the company and the PEM electrolyser has a solid polymer electrolyte at the middle between the two electrodes. So there’s a physical barrier. And the reason that that’s important is it means you can generate clean hydrogen at high pressure. But most importantly, you can turn the electrolyzers on and off very rapidly. And that means you can use them for grid balancing and energy storage.
David Hunt 4:33
So there’s a job since 2009 include the world has changed to the whole energy world has changed quite significantly what what have been the sort of the major, I guess events or changes and sort of the growth of the business since you joined
Dr Graham Cooley 4:50
so we first thing that I tried to achieve was to get the ice factory ISO accredited, which we did. After the first year, and then in 2011, we launched our first product to Hannover desert, an important moment because we had for the first time a CE marked product that we can sell. Right. So we launched that at Hannover, and then we began a scalar prices. We got some money from the UK Government to build our first refuelling station, which was 100 megawatts in size. And that’s the advanced manufacturing hub in Sheffield. And then we went on that scale up. And over the last decade, we’ve scaled up by a factor of 1000. So three orders of magnitude. So this year, we finalise the delivery of 10 megawatts of electrolysis to the Rhine Lam refinery to shell, right. And that means we moved from 10 kilowatts, to 10 megawatts in 10 years. And in fact, we now protein 100 megawatt scale electrolyzers with our partner, Linda, and then your engineering EPC. partner. And so that’s the fourth order of magnitude the scale up,
David Hunt 6:18
and certainly impressive, rising in terms of capacity to reflect that, how is the company changed. During that time I’ve not been but I’ve only seen sort of some visuals, which we’ll share on the on the episode page of the facility at Sheffield. But perhaps you can share us a little bit of the how the company has changed and how you’ve were how the company has changed and some of the challenges and opportunities that you faced personally during that scale up.
Dr Graham Cooley 6:48
So I think our technology development has been very successful. And not only did we get technology, the technology compliant right from the beginning, but we made it modular so that we can scale up. Right. The key challenge, of course, is the challenge of transitioning technology to be a real product, it’s manufacturer. And that’s the other very, very important process that we’ve been through. And first Monday, actually 2021 the company moved into the world’s largest electrolyzer factory. So it’s our new Giga factory in Sheffield. It’s just off the one. And so it’s 134,000 square feet, and as a manufacturing capacity of one gigawatt, or 1000 megawatts per annum. And that’s really very, very important because the markets moving very quickly. And all of the targets that have been announced national targets that have been announced for electrolysis equipment are at the gigawatt scale. And actually, you can’t take your get your order, if you don’t have somewhere to manufacture a gigawatt electrolysis. Yeah. And so we spent now two and a half years, designing the process to be able to manufacture the people that will remove into the factory, and we’re now shipping from that factory. So that’s been a very, very important transition for the company. And we’ve also implemented some automation, I say some automation that only semi automated right now, but but we’ve moved from many of the very simple processes, picking components, cleaning components, and so on. And we’ve automated those processes. And as more automation comes online, then the capacity of the fact you will create will increase even further. And we think we’d get somewhere between 1.2 and 1.5 gigawatts of capacity out of the existing factory. So that’s an ongoing draw a continuous improvement.
David Hunt 9:11
Yeah, yeah, like I said, very impressive facility. I was watching something online recently where you were introducing walking people through so I say we’ll put a link to that on to the episode page that people can see a little bit of the scale because it is massively impressive to see. Again, we band around gigafactories, clearly with on the back of Elon Musk and Tesla and batteries. But it’s great to see that there is that scale, developing for for electrolyzers and how you’ve achieved that. One thing that also during the time, as I understand next, I’ve met with some of your colleagues at various events in Germany, and that is that you do have an international presence as well. At what point did you or did that already exist when you joined? Or what point did you decide that it was good to have an overseas entity in their profile as well.
Dr Graham Cooley 9:56
So we are first international project actually was a power to gas project in Germany with the tivity group. And the timber group is the largest grouping of power and gas utilities and istep workers as they’re referred to in the m&a and that grouping funded 100 megawatt electrolyzer project. Actually, ultimately, we deployed a 250 mega kilowatt, half a quarter of a megawatt in the middle of Frankfurt, actually in the Sheila’s Strasser in Frankfurt. And we bid that electrolyzer into primary grid balancing. So we used it as a flexible load that you can turn on and off very rapidly. And we’re injecting the hydrogen directly into the great gas grid in the centre of Frankfurt. So it was a genuine power to gas energy storage. And around that time, we set up ITM gmba H. And that German company then did some other projects as well, including the rW a first electrolyzer project. We then did the shell refinery project, we did a project with C ag. And we’ve now announced our largest project today, which is again with Shell at the Rhineland refinery, which is 100 megawatts in size. So in terms of internationalising, our first subsidiary company was in Germany, we then set up the company in the US ITM Inc, and also one in Australia, at one, and we have a strong presence also in France. So we took an international approach from very early on. And of course, now, we have a strategic investment from Linda, from snam, cio at Linder in Germany, snam in Italy, and we work very closely with Shell, of course, who are headquartered in The Hague in the Netherlands. So yeah, I would say internationalising has been a very important part of that.
David Hunt 12:16
Yeah, and I know from experience the setting up again, Bihar was somewhat more difficult in the setting up an Inc in the US having done both recently. But yeah, the the gem market, of course, really interesting in terms of, you know, as she said, the stat verkar, of which there are, I guess, technically about 1000 or so. So the sort of the energy, I guess makeup or the utility makeup is slightly different. But also, my understanding is that the regulations and rules allow for a greater capacity of a hydrant be directly injected into the grid. Is that still the case? Or is it the case?
Dr Graham Cooley 12:46
Yeah, so in in, in Germany, you can put 10% hydrogen into the gas grid. The the work we’re doing with Caden northern gas networks in the high deployed project is, is actually looking at a 20% lend and we’ve looked 20% into the gas grid in Kiel, and Caden, Northern gas networks, and continuing now to do those trials on the open gas creeping out in the UK. But today in Germany, you can put 10% hydrogen into gas. I mean, there has been some interesting developments in Germany, I think. You’ll see that very recently, the German renewable energy law allowed electrolyzers to connect to the electricity grid, without the connection charges that used to be imposed. This is very important for reducing the cost.
David Hunt 13:43
Absolutely,
Dr Graham Cooley 13:44
to facilitate that. So. And also the German government announced, actually, now it’s about 18 months ago, but it announced one of the first schemes for contracts for difference auctions for green hydrogen, to replace grey hydrogen, or indeed natural gas in the gas grid. So Germany is a very interesting place. An early adoption market for electrolysis.
David Hunt 14:11
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, certainly an area. So where we’ve we’ve traditionally always had a great deal of presence and profile and the office now in Munich, but yeah, there, there has always been in fact, it’s what drew me to the clean tech sector in myself initially, way back in 2006. was looking at the the market in Germany and how they were a guest for the energy event leading in many ways, and clearly not in a smooth path necessarily, but I think in many ways, they do still continue to, to lead. One thing that I wanted to pick up on, from what you’re saying there, Graham, in terms of, obviously some strategic partners that you have, and the growth clearly substantial growth that you’ve enjoyed over the last 10 or plus years, and I’ve just wondered when we’ve got a lot of clients who are vcap backed and a number of reasons, presently They’re going through sort of the IPO process. There’s a lot of ways to obviously fund and push a company. I’m just wondering because you’ve got experienced both as a founder entrepreneur Now, obviously, as the CEO of a listed company, what what you see are some of the advantages and disadvantage of leading a listed company.
Dr Graham Cooley 15:15
Yeah, I mean, when you’re listed on the stock market, you publish audited accounts every year, actually, you publish, audited interims and then finally accounts. And what that means, then, is it’s much more straightforward for funds to invest in, and you can raise money. It’s much more straightforward than doing a VC funding. With a venture capital funding have, you also normally end up with more than one class of share? So you end up with rather than just having investments in ordinary shares, you have preference shares, which have liquidation preferences and voting, right preferences and so on. So, you know, being listed on the stock market, in terms of having access to the capital markets, and having access to capital is very, very important part of the development. And so, yeah, the journey is more straightforward. Having said that, you need to put forward to the markets and very robust plans, and you need to stick. And the stock market is a very, very dynamic place. And I think that you have been able to very succinctly articulate your proposition and be able to explain to fund managers exactly what the market, your market entry strategy is, in your development strategies, really.
David Hunt 16:57
Apart from the obvious governance things, I think that’s an important factor, because a lot of the clients that I’ve worked with and work with over the years who’ve gone through vast and massive scaling up seem to spend, you know, 50 to 70% of the time, constantly fundraising, and they’re always looking at the next round, which is important, of course, for growth, but it can be a huge distraction from the core responsibilities of a CEO leading a business.
Dr Graham Cooley 17:20
Yeah, that’s absolutely true. I mean, the last funding round that we gave, we raised 172 million. We did that in October of last year. And we were two and a half times oversubscribed. And I was actually really pleasantly surprised at how knowledgeable with capital markets are now about hydrogen. Alright, so about the knowledgeable about the energy transition, knowledgeable about energy storage and renewable power, and how you use green hydrogen turning electrons into molecules to make them storable. And power to x. And the whole transition from fossil fuels to clean fields are really very, very knowledgeable. fund managers in a way that they certainly weren’t two years ago.
David Hunt 18:15
Yeah. Yeah, no certainly found that, again, going back to my own experiences in the soda market sort of three or 13 years ago, practically no bank or financial institution had any understanding or inkling of wanting to get involved. And I think, now she said, there’s a lot of very sophisticated investors who really do understand the bigger picture of of the sort of disruptive technologies that we’re talking about. So let’s touch on something which which I think is important we did when we spoke very briefly before. And that’s that element of tribalism that exists within the supposedly allies of the the sort of the clean energy revolution, you obviously have staunch advocates of green electrons and those of green molecules and green hydrogen. Whereas it seems fairly obvious to me that it should be a case of which technology best suits which application. And where do you see the areas where hydrogen is best suited to make those big climate impact?
Dr Graham Cooley 19:03
So first thing to say is that green hydrogen is the only netzero energy. So if you if you make hydrogen by splitting water using an electrolyzer and you use renewable power, then you’re able to store that renewable power and convert the electrons to molecules. And as you know, molecules are easy to store and electrons incredibly difficult to store. But you what you make them is a netzero energy gas, you’re also hydrogen is the only fuel with no carbon in its whole supply chain. But also, if you make green hydrogen by splitting water, you also make oxygen. And so green hydrogen is also the only field that does not deplete atmospheric oxygen. So it has the Two very important principles. The entry market for green hydrogen is replacing the existing supply of hydrogen, which is we use 70 million tonnes a year worldwide in industry of hydrogen today. And that goes mainly into production of ammonia, into refineries production of methanol. And in the areas of metals treatment, although there is a much larger market for hydrogen in the steel industry in the metals industry. So, they they are, that’s the existing market. Now, if you look at that market, it that market has 29 years, it’s got until 2015 to be carbon. And today, all of that hydrogen is made by reforming natural gas. So steam methane reforming, which is very carbonising. Making the hydrogen that goes into those industrial places 70 million tonnes per year is equivalent to about 600 gigawatts of electrolysis. So very large market. Yeah, and that’s the that’s the entry market. There’s no market to create. You don’t have to change the legislation about putting hydrogen in pipes or nobody has to buy a bus, a car or a truck. And and those other two markets, by the way, are incredibly important markets for hydrogen. But today, the existing market is our focus. And we work closely with endure engineering, because of course, they’re in that market already. They work in refineries and production of ammonia and methanol. So it’s a key early entry market for the organisation. Now, one other point is that refineries are included in the renewable energy directive. So all refineries have to make 14% of their product renewably in the next day, and the most straightforward way of doing that is replacing the grey hydrogen with green. And so that not only is our focus, industrial hydrogen and replacing grey with green, but very specifically working in refineries. And that’s why the 100 megawatt announcement from shell about working with ITM to instal 100 megawatt electrolyzer and run them refining, is really fantastic news for us, because, of course, it’s a very important reference from the early adoption. Mark.
David Hunt 22:48
Yeah, I was going to touch on that. I think you made a really important point this because I understand that, you know, practically, Well, certainly 90% or so of industrial hygiene presently does is derived from fossil fuels. And that’s without carbon capture. So there’s, there is a massive issue there. So I guess you touched on a few legislative drivers there, which are really important. But clearly the both the challenge and therefore the opportunity that exists right here and other sort of others within the green hydrogen spaces is enormous. But it how do we start with such a massive task?
Dr Graham Cooley 23:21
Yeah, I mean, you you always start any massive task by just getting started and building things. And, you know, I mean, what we’ve what the industry really needs now is some policy for incentivizing the adoption of green genie in industry. And it needs to be a stable policy, their last long enough, there, it will encourage private investment. Yeah. And you know, what’s very important when you when you put incentives in places that lead smart incentives, they are those incentives that drive volume to reduce costs. So they ultimately don’t need the incentive anymore. And I believe that green hydrogen will be significantly lower costs thin grey hydrogen in the decade. And it needs that early stimulus, and contracts for difference auctions are the best way. I mean, if you just think about the task of decarbonisation, and using electrolysis to decarbonize, for instance, the natural gas industry, which is the origin of the grey hydrogen industry, I mean, there is a huge there are huge economies of scale in fossil fuels. There is a massive amount of sunk capital. And so it’s obvious that we wouldn’t be able to compete on price immediately. But you only need incentives. For a short period of time, so, but if you look at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, and if you look at the McKinsey model for costing green hydrogen, you’ll see that the prediction is mid 2020s to 2030. Green hydrogen, first of all, is low cost and blue hydrogen, and competitive costs degray will be somewhere around 1.6 dollars per kilogramme in 2030, which is approaching the cost of natural gas in Europe. By 2050. They’re saying, point $8 a kilogramme, which is equivalent to natural gas at $6 per mmbtu, which is a phenomenal place to bring hydrogen to gotten to in a decade. But to get there, we need policy stability, and we need contracts for difference options to incentivize default.
David Hunt 26:02
getting very clear points, again, we’ve seen with solar what the sort of stimulus initially can can do in terms of reducing the cost curves and becoming very cost competitive. Once that traction, or once that scattering is underway. You’ve touched on the kind of answer the question in advance for local CFDs. We’re just wondering if there are no policy mechanisms that you are seeing, both in the UK across the EU, I don’t know what the landscape is like in the US. Clearly, you have some profile and presence there. Is there a consistency or some level of consistency, do you think across landscapes in terms of how we can transition green hydrogen to costpoint? You’ve talked about that.
Dr Graham Cooley 26:42
So I in the EU, first of all, the announcement from the EU have their contracts, the difference options, there’s a pretty significant 100 billion over the next decade for CFDs. For green hydrogen, actually, the first announced contracts for difference option for green hydrogen, miss the German government, which was a few months earlier than the EU announcement. And, of course, the UK government is working on the development of its hydrogen strategy, which is soon to be published will also include some incentives for green hydrogen, including CFDs. And also including the RTF. O for renewable transport fuels, certificates. So I think there are there are a number of mechanisms up Is there a unified approach across the world to this day? No, there isn’t. I think the early CFDs that are designed in Europe will be the ones that will be either replicated or use as a as a good model of doing others. But I think it’s certainly important that there’s a a solid revenue model to incentivize investment. I mean, the the cost of green hydrogen is dominated by the cost of the renewable power, and it’s no factor and moving to power purchase agreement route, so that you can have load factors of 100%. And by the renewable power that goes into the electrolyzer up via a power purchase agreement, I think it’s very important. And then incentivizing the gap between green hydrogen and the cost of great hydrogen in the early days, is really going to drive for you. And I think that’s, that’s very important. The other point to make is that many CFDs for offshore wind, and now eliminating the negative price protection for the renewable power company. So the deployer of the renewable power. So a solution is needed by the renewable energy companies to actually what they can do it at times where the grid is, is projecting on the negative or zero price. And actually joining that logic help. And having a green hydrogen CFD that’s compatible with that means that you never waste any renewable power, you can always make molecules with it and supply that green power to industries green mode.
David Hunt 29:28
Yeah, I think I should say there’s so much to be done. But equally, there are other drivers both market driven and of course, policies still very much required. I just wonder if there’s an element of distraction, Graham, because again, I know you’re very active on LinkedIn, as many of us are, you know, that a lot of this boils down unfortunately, to sort of arguments we touched on before sort of between, you know, a Tesla and a mirage and that kind of city conversation whereas there are such massive opportunities and such areas where big impact has been made? And it seems sometimes a little bit. I don’t know, maybe it’s just a media thing where things come down to, you know, should you heat your home with hydrogen? Or should you drive a hydrogen car? And it seems distracting? Do you see that that’s only at that superficial social media kind of level? Or do you see it’s a distraction in government or in more important places?
Dr Graham Cooley 30:20
Yeah, I wouldn’t call it a distraction. I think anyone who really knows the energy industry knows that the entry market for electrolysis is replacing industrial. There are some very, very important other markets and the two touchstone tend to be the ones that that, you know, the general public sees, because it touches their lives. Yeah. So everybody’s got a boil. I mean, everyone’s got the car. And so consequently, when they think of hydrogen, they think about driving around using a hydrogen car, or heating their home using hydrogen. And not thinking about hydrogen at an industrial level. So when you think about heating homes, for instance, you commit 20% hydrogen into the gas grid, and the end user won’t even know. Yeah. So you getting to 20% decarbonisation of the gas grid is a very significant move forwards. I mean, the amount of energy is incredible. When we use around 800 terawatt hours of energy in the gas grid, the gas grid, actually on average is three times the size of the power grid, and in the winter, five and a half times the size of the power grid. So it’s an astonishing amount of energy to replace 20% of it with green hydrogen at the vehicle discussion, I think, you know, our interest in refuelling vehicles is certainly focused now, on heavy vehicles, those vehicles that always go back to the same place to refuel like buses, trucks and trains. And the reason for that is that you can have an anchor customer for the hydrogen refuelling station. And so you can make a commercial case for deploying your refuelling station because you’ve got a customer always coming back to the same place to refuel, whether it’s a fleet of buses or a fleet of trucks or vans. And that means that you can deploy a refuelling station on a commercial basis. And that means that there’s a, a route to private investment, a commercial market, which will then lead to growth. So that would, that’s our emphasis, and the debate about whether it’s a plug in electric vehicle, or whether it’s a hydrogen vehicle for straight passenger vehicle will play out over time. But the first roll out, in my view, will be those vehicles that go back those commercial vehicles that go back to the same place.
David Hunt 33:20
Yeah, heavy stuff. I don’t know, if you did catch one of the earlier episodes, nearly a year ago now was with zero a via looking at hydrogen flight. Hydrogen through fuel cells through the flight, which I think is interesting, those really heavy and long, long sort of durations, I think it’s interesting to see what part that can be played there. It’s been really good to get your insights grown in terms of how the market is and the scope and size of the both the challenges and the opportunities ahead. How does that as a CEO of business of ITM look for you, I mean, a little bit of a dive into the crystal ball to see what you think would be the next sort of four to five years for you as a business and more broadly for the green hydrogen sector.
Dr Graham Cooley 33:59
Yeah, I mean, the last 12 years have been incredibly exciting with it. And it’s been, you know, to me, it’s almost been the dream job, the it’s got the technology element to market access, element, strategy, politics, all of those. But I really feel like I’m making a difference by working out it. And, you know, for me, I wouldn’t be able to do a job if I didn’t feel like the end product was going to help the world get to a better place. And so, yeah, I mean, I it’s been a fantastic journey. I think the journey of green hydrogen is only just beginning. I think it will be an incredibly important part of the energy transition. And I would say over the next five years, you’ll see by far the fastest growth in ITM power then you’ve seen
David Hunt 34:58
certainly lots to to Look forward to given what the last 10 years has looked like, as you say, but I think, again, it’s there’s so much I think, money available now for whatever whether that’s VCP or through the public markets that are hopefully primed to support technologies that are truly making a decarbonisation impact. I think clue that helped money certainly greases the wheels of growth, as we all know. So really looking forward to seeing your continued expansion. Let’s just say we’ll put on the podcast on the podcast web page, a link to to all of the usual social media channels books, particularly to that. Look at the Gigafactory in Sheffield. Before we conclude, it’s always from my point of view, interesting to see what inspires people or what has motivated or started people on the journey that they’re on this decarbonisation journey. So are there any particular books thought leaders, people instances that have inspired you in your journey so far? Graham?
Dr Graham Cooley 35:53
Yeah, different question that one, David. Um, yeah, I mean, I guess, I ended up in physics and engineering because of my mother and father. So my mother was a physics teacher. And my, my father was an engineer. I had a brother who died actually a brother who died of multiple sclerosis, and actually, very, very difficult illness to watch somebody die like. And it really focused me on working hard. Actually, I think if there’s one thing that focus me on trying to achieve something in life, it was seeing somebody not being able to do that for themselves. My first job, actually, the cGb is a gentleman called Stuart male, who actually died of a heart attack a few years ago now, where he was my mentor. And actually, you know, regenesis, and I worked with him on superconductivity and a load of other interesting technologies. And I suppose what he taught me was that the important thing in technology development is to build things. You can’t do it in theory or on paper, you actually have to put bits of kit together, put them in the field, and work them to really, really make technology development work. And he was a great mentor for me, Stewart mail was his name. And then I guess the The other important thing was, my daughter was born. She’s nearly 15. Now, and, and her and all of her friends are really concerned about the environment. And I think it’s only when you have children, that you realise that we’ve really got to do something about We can’t leave the moon or
David Hunt 37:50
Yeah, no, absolutely. As a parent of three different ages, you absolutely do does bring home to the importance, or the potential of the impact that you do through your career. So thanks for sharing those thoughts. Again, I think it’s really important that we recognise that we are all humans. And it’s a variety of factors that get us to the places that we are, and those that we love and support us and that influence our lives, both from a family’s perspective. And likewise, actually, it’s quite funny. One of my early mentors was was way back when I was about 19. And in some ways, not particularly substantial, because it wasn’t included energy at the time, but just an individual who was impactful on my life. So it’s, it’s great to sort of reflect on those individuals that have taken you on the journey that you find yourself on now. But this has been really great to spend some time with you, Graham, thanks for sharing your thoughts. And thanks for joining us on the podcast. As I say we’ll put various links on the episode page for people to to share and see a little bit more about what you guys are up to. But I’ll make continue. Thanks very much. And hopefully, we’ll see more and more of it and the green hydrogen markets over the next five years as you suggest.
Dr Graham Cooley 38:54
Yeah. Thanks very much, David, and I enjoyed the interview. Thanks for having me.
David Hunt 39:02
Thank you for listening, and especially to those who subscribe to the podcast, very much appreciated that you do. We’re now ranked in the top 2.5% of podcasts globally, according to listen notes calm, which is phenomenal. So thank you to everybody who supported us on the journey so far. But of course, we’re keen to share the cleantech stories further and wider. And I’d really appreciate if you can share episodes within your own social media communities. And if possible, take a few minutes out to write a review on Apple podcasts or your platform of choice really helps and really keen to obviously take our message to a bigger and broader audience. But for those that you have been with us a while Thank you. For those that are new. Thanks for joining and we’ll see you on the next episode.