International Insights

It has been a very busy period for Star Scientific Limited (Star Scientific) on the world stage. In May, we were part of a German-Australian Chamber of Industry and Commerce (AHK) mission to Germany and Denmark, where we had the opportunity to talk to industry and government officials about the evolving face of hydrogen in Europe. We spoke on a panel at the Australian Embassy in Berlin and participated in workshops with German hydrogen supply-chain participants.

During our brief visit to a Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) facility in Denmark, we noted a new fume extraction technology that our research team has since pursued with the vendor. We also toured the salt cavern storage facility at Wilhelmshaven on the Baltic Coast.

This mission was the last to be led by the AHK’s redoubtable Florence Lindhaus, and we would like to thank her for her leadership on hydrogen policy and wish her the best for the future.

Star Scientific was represented at the annual World Hydrogen Summit at Rotterdam, where Star Scientific’s Global Group Chair Andrew Horvath presented the “Industrial Application” Award (the same Award Star Scientific won in 2021). The team from Star attending the conference appeared on several panels, talking about our view on the hydrogen supply chain (light, nimble, local) and energy equality for the developing world. The conference exhibition had increased in size from the previous year and included a strong Australian contingent with some very interesting technological innovations. During our time in Rotterdam, several government meetings took place, including with our Ambassador to the Netherlands, Dr Greg French.

Following on from Rotterdam, our Deputy CEO joined an Austrade trade mission to Sweden to investigate “green steel.”  Initially, we thought we would have a limited, if any, role in green steel, thinking the furnace temperatures would be too hot for HERO®, however this mission is causing a rethink, as there are other heating requirements in the process within our reach. We were particularly enamoured of a start-up who are developing a “reduction as a service” model via deployable kettles. They aim to take the smelters to the ore bodies rather than the other, more traditional way around.

From Sweden, we visited Warsaw for a range of meetings, including with Secretary of State in the Ministry of Environment and Climate, Krzysztof (Chris) Bolesta to discuss Poland’s Hydrogen Strategy. A highlight was a meeting with the sustainability team of global food giant, Danone.

 

In the Czech Republic (Czechia), further meetings were scheduled, one being with Petr Mervart, the Senior Czech bureaucrat responsible for their excellent Hydrogen Strategy. Czechia’s vision really accords with ours – i.e the industry should be built from the “ground up,” locally with demand and supply in balance.

 

These visits have been invaluable in building our commercial strategy, uncovering complementary technologies from like-minded companies and in laying the groundwork for our eventual European base. As ever, we would like to thank Austrade, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, along with the Polish Investment and Trade Agency and the CzechInvest for their excellent assistance.

Regulatory matters

Star Scientific is monitoring the New South Wales Parliament to see if the Government will honour its promise to legislate hydrogen as a gas under the Fair-Trading Act. A positive outcome in the Parliament will allow us to extend an invitation to their officers responsible for certification.

The Australian Federal Election has seen the Labor Federal Government returned and therefore no significant changes in policy. One major impact however was that the Opposition campaigned on a pro-nuclear energy policy, and, given their sound defeat, the future looks problematic for nuclear energy in our home country.

One major change is the dropping of former Minister Ed Husic from the Ministry and his role as Industry Minister. Mr Husic has always been supportive of Star Scientific, and we are sorry to see him go and wish him all the best. We do hope, however, that this opens the way for new Minister Tim Ayres to review the poor policy outcome in the “Future Made in Australia Act” which limits access to the hydrogen tax rebate to those who use an electrolyser of 10MW or more. Speaking to Australian delegates at the conferences we have attended has revealed much anger at this.

Second Sustainability Report to be Published

Our Second Sustainability report, for the year 2024, will soon be published on our website. As with our inaugural report it complies with the European Union regulations, which are the world’s strictest.

Notwithstanding some countries and companies walking back from sustainability measures, we at Star Scientific believe we should hold ourselves to the higher measures and back, with confidence, HERO® as a superior technology.

Our Views on the State of the Hydrogen Economy

In this newsletter, we’d like to comment on some of the negative press around green hydrogen.

It is fair to say that the “hype” around hydrogen of recent years is receding, particularly here in Australia but in other countries as well. Our view, in a nutshell, is that hydrogen’s current “bad press” was entirely predictable, and from our perspective, it is not a bad thing that reality is setting in.

Put simply, the orthodox thinking about hydrogen and its role in the energy transition has always been wrong, and Star Scientific Limited has pointed this out continually.

The problem has been that governments and big corporations’ motivations for hydrogen were out of sync with the economic reality of its deployment. Governments wanted to hit their political net-zero targets and gave hydrogen too much to do, too soon.

Assertions that hydrogen was just another fuel that would be produced in mass quantities and exported across the globe, just like oil or gas, were always wrong. Even with subsidies, green hydrogen is still relatively expensive to produce. Add to that the cost of mass storage, mass refinement to and from ammonia and long transportation distances and very quickly the economics just do not add up.

And then, to make the job for hydrogen harder, the orthodox view of how to liberate hydrogen’s stored energy is to burn it. As followers of HERO®’s alternative would know, burning hydrogen is wasteful and inefficient.

Enter Star Scientific Limited.

The first orthodox thinking we have challenged is that the main motivators for the green hydrogen economy is decarbonisation and climate change.

While, yes, that is important, the world just wants a better form of energy – energy that is cheaper, cleaner, and accessible to all, not the least being the one billion people in the world today that have no access to electricity.

The energy supply chain of the very near future will not be monolithic, capital-intensive, high barrier-to-entry systems that are dominated by a monopoly of a few global conglomerations. The energy delivery systems of the near future will be light, scalable, quickly deployable, local, printable, recyclable, and off-grid. That goes for the generation of green hydrogen too. The idea that we will be locked into massive solar and windfarms and their transmission systems to make hydrogen and transport is laughable.

Human ingenuity will see us get around the technical challenges to green hydrogen’s role in the energy transition. Star Scientific Limited and HERO® have already found a better way to use green hydrogen. The same technical breakthroughs will happen around its production.

Around the world, the penny is slowly dropping with governments. Of all the volumes of national hydrogen strategies we have been studying lately, most of which repeat the familiar orthodoxies, there are a few that are grasping the reality of green hydrogen, and from unexpected places.

One of the best we have seen recently comes from the Czech Republic. They have a considered, staged plan for a hydrogen economy that starts from the ground-up, rather than top-down from the Government. Their first stage will see green hydrogen produced and consumed locally, in small but profitable quantities, with supply and demand in balance.

The better government strategies we have seen, such as the Czech one, are open to adaption as innovative technologies disrupt the supply chain, technologies like HERO®.

Star Scientific Limited remains adamant, however, that the best thing that governments can do is to provide a supportive regulatory environment to support the development of the hydrogen economy. Sadly, there remains much to do, particularly here in Australia.

For example, in Star Scientific Limited’s home state of New South Wales, hydrogen still has no legislative basis as a gas. We first raised this with the Government in 2022. Now, in early 2025, we have been told by the Government that the earliest this will occur is August. We remain in close discussions with the Government.

Another example is the Future Made in Australia Bill recently passed by the Australian Parliament. While the bill includes billions of dollars in subsidies to make green hydrogen, the catch is that the minimum sized electrolyser that can be used is 10MW. Star Scientific Limited and others directly lobbied the government to remove any electrolyser size restriction to encourage local, grassroots production for industrial use and refuelling stations. The bill passed the Parliament unchanged.

These frustrations aside, we are more confident than ever that the times suit Star Scientific Limited and HERO®.

In the last year, our Deputy CEO and Head of Business Development has travelled extensively to hear the views of and hold discussions with literally hundreds of government officials, suppliers and off-takers. This is a critical form of risk management – we want to make sure that investors’ funds are deployed in jurisdictions that understand Star’s vision and are open to our presence. We don’t want to find ourselves blocked by inflexible thinking or competition from legacy technologies.

We will continue to robustly prosecute our views, on any legitimate platform, on behalf of our investors, supporters in public and private spheres, our staff and the dozens of companies and communities we have spoken to who want to be our first customers.

As a postscript, we note that we’re not the only voice bullish about hydrogen. Recently, Blackrock launched a new fund targeting hydrogen technology and they rarely, if ever, get it wrong.

 

On the shop floor

Star Scientific Limited has been using the holiday period to make serious advances on the technical side of our operations. For some time, we’ve been grappling with a solution to coat our substrates with the catalyst that is both adaptable for mass production and is compatible with our ESG rating. The previous method was slow, and complex and used toxic chemicals which were necessarily difficult to handle.

We’ve now adopted a simple but brilliant technique that is well within the bounds of ESG targets. Our early trials for this process have been very promising.

This technique and others have been brought to us by some experienced new hires who have the ability to look at things laterally. The same is happening to our R&D of HERO®. We have had some very exciting advice that the capacity to generate greenhouse gas-free heat is only one of HERO®’s applications. Many, many other current catalytic processes can be adopted, and improved, by our catalytic design.

For now, the priority is to get the pilots out to industries and operating (when the legislation allows us, as noted above) but we will be spending some time looking at these new potential applications.

Spreading the HERO® word

It has been a busy period of global activity for Star Scientific Limited’s Deputy CEO,  Mr Matthew Hingerty and our Energy Justice Officer, Miss Amy Halliday.

In the wake of the publication of our inaugural Sustainability Report, Matthew and Amy have been invited to attend and present at conferences across the world. As a result, the interest in Star Scientific Limited and HERO® has been mounting.

Since our last newsletter executive members of staff were invited to attend the African Hydrogen Summit in Namibia, which confirmed the exceptional opportunities for HERO® in Africa and underlined our mission to use our technology to bring clean energy to the hundreds of millions of people globally who are not connected to a grid.

This was followed by attendance and an appearance at the SEC APAC conference in Brisbane, where we gave a no-holds-barred view of our opinion on where hydrogen orthodoxy is going wrong (see below).  We also hosted a delegation from Austria who were here for the conference.

In late September we attended and spoke at the Hydrogen Asia Summit in Singapore and noted the very positive views of the Singaporean and Indonesian Governments on hydrogen’s role in their future.

In October, our Deputy CEO, Matthew Hingerty, attended a trade mission in Germany organised by the German-Australian Chamber of Commerce and hosted by the German Federal Government. It was an enlightening tour from West to East and outlined some of the opportunities for Star Scientific Limited in Central Europe.

Later in October, Amy Halliday gave a presentation on HERO® to the Stade Chamber of Industry and Commerce in the state of Lower Saxony with the local Municipality in attendance (Stade is near Hamburg in North-Western Germany). This was an invitation following a meeting with a delegation from Lower Saxony at the SEC Conference in Sydney last year.

Following his visit to Germany, Matthew Hingerty visited Dubai, where he gave several speeches over two days at a series of crypto-currency conferences.  Crypto is having a significant global impact on energy demand and, again, Star Scientific can make a big difference in this regard.

Shifting views

Throughout 2024, Star Scientific has been listening very carefully to the changing views on hydrogen’s role in the transition with company representatives participating in many conversations, publicly and privately on the topic.

In the public sphere, hydrogen has come under a lot of fire in recent months. Its critics have said it is too expensive and that its promise of a couple of years ago is fading.

This criticism is understandable, and even valid, when you consider the type of arguments that have been prosecuted on hydrogen’s behalf and who is prosecuting them.   The big fossil fuel players and their hired consultants cannot think of hydrogen in any other way than as a commodity like coal, oil and gas.  So, they encumber it with visions of major industrial production facilities, moving it through large ports, shipping it thousands of kilometres as ammonia, receiving it in large ports, cracking it back to hydrogen and then shipping it off to large industrial facilities, which can only result in it being very expensive!  They further encumber the task of the still rare green version of the molecule by proposing to burn it, which is problematic, wasteful and, with the advent of HERO®, unnecessary.

Star Scientific Limited has been proposing a different model in all our appearances.  Our model is for lighter, cheaper and more nimble supply chains with hydrogen being produced and used as close to the off-taker as possible.  This model is gaining increasing attraction, and, indeed, many delegates have raised this model, independent of any knowledge of Star Scientific Limited.  In Namibia, for instance, the push is on to use the green hydrogen they produce for their domestic energy, desalination, agricultural and industrial needs before any surplus is exported.  In Dortmund, Germany, Mr Hingerty witnessed an industrial campus where a company is generating, storing and using green hydrogen entirely on-site.

Next year, no doubt, will bring interesting but at times rocky debates about the future of hydrogen as the world continues to further investigate and understand its value.  Star Scientific Limited looks forward to being a participant in these debates.

Record Numbers at World Summit

Star Scientific attended its third World Hydrogen Summit in Rotterdam this year where we were a finalist in the Industrial Application Category and part of the 50-company strong Australian contingent.

It has been amazing to see the growth of this conference and exhibition in the last 3 years, from 1,100 attendees in 2022, to 11,000 in 2023, to a staggering 30,000+ this year.  Australia’s lead in the “country pavilion” category was seriously challenged by Canada with India a late and large addition to the event.  The organisers are expecting more significant growth next year.

With so much interest apparent in hydrogen it has been interesting to watch the debate and take note of the evolution of the industry and the issues it is facing.  Being a “world” Summit, this event is targeted by governments, industry bodies, consultants and community groups, and the continuous theme coming from the “stakeholder” speakers was that governments need to invest more.  Conversely, when industry delegates spoke, it was more about projects, and how the hydrogen sector needs to focus on realistic use cases.

A nice sideline was a chance to catch up with our friends from New Mexico, including the Governor, and to co-chair a joint Australia/New Mexico industry panel.  It was here that Star Scientific was able to explain to other Australian delegates why we chose New Mexico as our first US destination.

 

Star in Washington

The Sustainable Energy Council’s second big annual conference is their Americas conference in Washington D.C., which Star attended for the first time.  This was a smaller, much more focused conference, with a clear and recurrent theme being that there needs to be more focus on demand-side issues, as well as IRA-stimulated supply-side issues.  The feeling from the conference floor was “ok we’re making the hydrogen now, but what are we going to use it for and how are we going to use it?”

This, of course, is what Star Scientific has been saying since the unveiling of HERO® to the world and very much reflects what we hear from the market.  Many, many companies have approached us with very advanced supply contracts but with concerns about the technological challenges they are encountering at the “off-take” end of the supply chain.  HERO® would appear to be the answer to many of their concerns.

Star was able to have many interesting side-line conversations at this conference, with the more intimate nature meaning that many very senior company executives were in attendance.  We were also able to visit the Australian Embassy and give a high-level briefing to our trade commissioners there.

Star Scientific Europe

Star Scientific Europe’s Managing Director, Amy Halliday, recently met with officials at the Australian Embassy in Bern, Switzerland and gave them a briefing on Star Scientific and HERO®.

An interesting takeaway from the meeting was learning about the Australian Swiss Academic and Innovation Network (ASAIN) that will be formally launched later this year. They will bring together people with an interest in fostering academic, innovation, science and research between Australia and Switzerland.

Star Scientific strongly believes in engaging with diplomatic officers, both Australian and foreign, in countries which we plan to operate, and we look forward to extending our relationship with the Swiss post.

 

Australian matters

Here in Australia, the renewable energy debate has taken an interesting turn in the run-up to our next Federal Election.  The incumbent Labor government and many climate-change motivated independents are vigorously supporting the role of intermittent renewables in the energy transition and, in the case of the government, backed by firming gas.  The conservative opposition coalition has escalated the debate to a new level by proposing nuclear power stations (Australia does not have a nuclear energy industry).  Hydrogen, at least clean hydrogen supply, has not been forgotten, with the incumbent government proposing a $2 per kg hydrogen production tax offset.  This is currently before the Australian Parliament for debate.

All this and more were discussed at the recent “Friends of Hydrogen” exhibit hosted by the Australian Hydrogen Council at Parliament House, Canberra.  The exhibit was attended by Ministers and Members of Parliament from all sides of politics, and Star was there, exhibiting the “Unit”, as the cut-away facsimile of the heat exchanger has come to be known.  We were also able to hold some private briefings of Australian politicians while we were there.

All these matters and more will be discussed at the third leg of the Sustainable Energy Council’s Summit series, the APAC Summit, to be held in Brisbane in September.  Star Scientific will be a major participant.  You can register to attend here: www.asia-hydrogen-summit.com.

 

On the workshop floor

Our TrendPac and Mars pilots are proceeding, with testing being done to confirm our carbon inputs and outputs, an important part of our regulatory compliance.

However, we are happy to announce that a third pilot program has been given the green light by the Board, this time to do with one of life’s most basic essentials – water.

Saline and wastewater treatment with current technology involves a huge amount of both heat and energy, and we have always said that this is a prime commercial target for HERO®.  One of the big attractions for New Mexico for us was the recognition by the government there that hydrogen can be the key to unlocking the massive amounts of naturally occurring underground “brackish” (saline) water for human and agricultural use – and also to make hydrogen.  On top of that, they (and other South-Western states), are looking to treat and use wastewater from the gas and oil industries, known as “produced water”.  Of course, there is a major market opportunity in the Middle East and North Africa as well.

In Australia, desalinated water is seen as the key to unlocking vast mineral resources in the arid centre of the continent. Indeed, Star had a long discussion with South Australian Government delegates at the Washington conference about their plans to use desalinated water to further drive the State’s mineral potential.

Construction of our test units is well underway, and we will keep you updated.

 

Rotary Science Challenge

As we do every year, Star Scientific sponsored the Star Scientific Science and Engineering Challenge, organised on the Central Coast by Rotary and co-sponsored by the University of Newcastle.  At this event, teams from the Central Coast’s high schools compete in a series of science and engineering challenges, viewed by local dignitaries like Members of Parliament.

Our favourite “challenge” is the “ElectraCity Challenge”, where students must solve several situations, requiring connecting “power stations” to end users like hospitals.  Teams lose points if they can’t make all the connections, they lose more points if they use more expensive connections, but they earn points for efficient solutions. The team with the most “profit” wins this particular challenge.  A good way to teach the students about the problems of grid-connected energy supplies!

Our sponsorship of the Science and Engineering Challenge is one way we “give back” to our local community, and hopefully foster interest in science and engineering careers in new generations of young Australians.

 

A Prestigious Visitor

In early April, Star Scientific was honoured to be visited by Kadri Simson, the European Union’s Energy Commissioner, one of the most important individuals in the European transition to renewable energy. Her visit was on the recommendation of our contacts in the Office of Regional Economic Development New South Wales, who suggested she see an example of applied hydrogen development while in Australia.

She, of course, was shown our “coffee plunger” HERO® demonstration device and our heat exchanger. This was followed by a broad-ranging discussion on matters such as regulation, the impact of the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, industrial heat, and HERO®’s potential role in district heating.

The following day, the Commissioner addressed the National Press Club in Canberra, and emphasised the important strategic relationship between the EU and Australia in hydrogen, via the Clean Hydrogen Partnership.

Star Scientific in Queensland

The Northern Australian state of Queensland is blessed with a range of conditions ideal for the development of a hydrogen industry. The “Sunshine State” not only has an abundance of the sun’s rays, wind, and water, but it also has a government with a clear vision of hydrogen’s role in the State’s energy transition and as a supplier of hydrogen to international markets.

The Government, via its Trade and Development Queensland department, has been keen for us to visit since we met with them at the Sustainable Energy Council’s APAC Hydrogen Summit in Sydney last year. This month, our Deputy CEO and Head of Business Development Matt Hingerty, our Global Head of Infrastructure Shayne De Courcy, and our Unit Principal – EDM, Dr Ashkan Vatani accepted the offer.

Our team visited the Gladstone region, with its rich heritage in the energy sector and as an industrial port. We held high-level discussions with government officials in Brisbane and visited industrial estates being developed between Brisbane and the Gold Coast. Everywhere we went, we were impressed with the integration of private investment, government policy and research and development in hydrogen. We were also excited by the multiple customer opportunities for our services.

Queensland will be a very important target for Star Scientific as we move into commercial operations. We will be back there in September for the follow-up SEC APAC Hydrogen Summit.

 

Star Opts for Green Energy

Star Scientific takes our commitment to Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) sustainability very seriously. It is critical to our future as a supplier, customer, employer, corporate citizen, and investment partner. To that end, we recently contracted with our energy supplier, AGL, for 100% certified “green” energy for our electricity supply. While this may be more expensive in the short term, it makes a very important statement about our long-term aspirations. We will implement more ESG policies as we progress.

 

More Awards and Nominations for Star

Star Scientific was delighted and surprised to learn that we have again been recognised on the award front.

The first is related to the New Mexico project, where we were one of fifteen projects across the United States to achieve the Trade and Industry Development Magazine’s “Community Impact Award.”  Not only does this recognise Star Scientific, but all the team at the Government of New Mexico for coordinating our project.

The second was a nomination as a finalist for the prestigious World Hydrogen 2024 Awards in the Industrial Application category, with the winners to be announced at the World Hydrogen Summit at Rotterdam on May 12. It’s an honour to be recognized among the top innovators in the field of hydrogen technology, in a category that we have won previously.

 

Star in Rotterdam

This of course means that we will once again be in Rotterdam as part of the huge Australian contingent (50 separate companies are attending) organised by the Australian Trade Commission (Austrade) at the World Hydrogen Summit. We have been amazed at how this conference has grown – from 1100 attendees in 2022 to 11,000 last year, and the reports are it will be even bigger this year!

We have an excellent series of meetings being lined up, including a follow-up with the EU after Kadri Simson’s visit. Our Chairman, Andrew Horvath, will also be continuing his role as a Hydrogen Advisory Board Member of the Sustainable Energy Council.

Following the conference, we’ll be visiting some European Union countries as we prepare for European operations.

There is still time to register for the Summit or the Exhibition and chat with our team in attendance. Registration for the exhibition part of the conference is free.

Hunter Regional Conference

As hydrogen begins its journey in the energy transition, Star Scientific feels strongly about cooperating with other renewable energy businesses in our region. By talking collectively to governments about our common needs and aspirations, we can rapidly achieve our milestones.  It is also an excellent way to connect to suppliers, collaborators, and customers.

To that end, Star Scientific kicked off the year, in a public sense, by attending and exhibiting at the Hunter New Energy Symposium hosted by “New H2”, the Hunter Hydrogen Technology Cluster.  New H2 is a collaboration of a number of industry groups and the University of Newcastle.  This region, which is just to the north of our Research, Development, and Deployment Division on the Central Coast, has been identified by the Australian and State Government as a major hydrogen port and industry hub.

The conference program was jam-packed with very useful content, with some recurrent themes emerging that we have observed elsewhere in Australia.  Australia is densely populated in a few main cities and urban centres on our coasts, and as such, land is at a premium, and our burgeoning population is competing fiercely for residential land, particularly industrial land uses.

At the same time, coastal and rural communities are pushing back against the land and waterway impacts of the transition – solar farms, transmission lines and terrestrial and coastal wind farms. These matters will likely figure in Australia’s next national election. Happily, the community’s view towards hydrogen is neutral but it will nevertheless be an interesting couple of years as we map out our growth needs in our home country.

While the Newcastle conference allowed us to make a regional contribution, we move more locally next week, where we’ll be exhibiting at the Central Coast Industry Exhibition, organised by Central Coast Industry Connect.

Starscientific.com

Speaking of real estate, this time of the cyber-kind, Star Scientific is very pleased to announce that we have secured the starscientific.com domain.  We recently discovered the domain’s availability that we’ve been eager to obtain for a while and wasted no time in securing the rights. We will be transitioning from the “.com.au” domain over the coming months and will make it seamless for all.

Star Scientific on the world stage

Star Scientific will, again, be attending the SEC World Hydrogen Summit in Rotterdam on May 13-15. Our Global Group Chair, Andrew Horvath, continues as a member of the SEC Hydrogen Advisory Board.  Last year it expanded to 11,000 attendees, up from 1,100 in 2022, and it’s expected to grow again this year!  For those who are interested, a reminder that registration for the exhibition floor is free.

Following Rotterdam, we’ll be attending the SEC’s Americas Hydrogen Summit held in Washington, DC in June.  In our next Newsletter, we hope to bring you some exciting news related to our New Mexico plans.  Then later in the year, it will be back to the SEC Asia-Pacific Hydrogen Summit, this time in Brisbane.

If you’re interested in any of these events, please go to:  https://www.sustainableenergycouncil.com

Looking forward to 2024

As 2023 draws to a close, it is time to “pan back” and have a look at the recent past, how it has affected us, and what the future holds.

It is clear that we have all just lived through an extraordinary period in human history.  Over the past two years, we have weathered a desperate global pandemic, wars, financial instability, and political uncertainty.  This has led to supply chain disruption, a “rehoming” of critical supply chains and investor uncertainty, impacting all global-facing businesses, including Star.

However, at Star Scientific, we are moving forward into 2024 with strong optimism, largely because the world is starting to see the future of hydrogen the way we do.

For years now we have attended conferences and meetings where we have diligently stuck to the message that industrial heat, not energy, was the early pathway for hydrogen’s financial success and social licence. Similarly, we have predicted that desalination and wastewater treatment would play a big role in hydrogen’s future.    For years we have opposed the orthodox thinking that burning hydrogen was the way to release its energy and we have warned that too much investment and thinking was going into the supply side at the exclusion of the demand side of hydrogen’s role in the transition.  More often than not, at these conferences, we were met with polite nods at best, but usually blank stares.

How things have changed.  Now, at every conference, there are sessions on process heat, indeed whole conferences are devoted to process heat alone.  In the United States, and in particular in the Southwest states of New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, Wyoming and Utah, to name a few, there is a massive effort going into wastewater treatment, backed by the IRA funding.  As each year goes by, the shortcomings of combined cycle gas-burning turbines are becoming clearer.

For Star Scientific, and particularly since our announcement regarding our future in New Mexico, this means an almost overwhelming interest in us from potential customers, suppliers, collaborators, and regulators, particularly, but not exclusively from the US.  Our team has kept busy meeting with these parties and making plans for further discussions next year.

We are particularly excited about the opportunities in water treatment and have ramped-up a pre-pilot design process to complement our existing pilots in process heat.

COP28 Out-takes

As veteran watchers of, and participants in, many editions of the annual Conference of Parties (COP), we have learned that it is behind the scenes of the headline-grabbing politics and speeches that the real advances are made.  This year was no different, and the most important outcome, for hydrogen and for us, was an agreement by 38 countries, including Australia, Germany, and the United States on the “Mutual Recognition of certification schemes for renewable and low-carbon hydrogen and hydrogen derivates.’

This will be an important step in making it easier to move hydrogen across borders and trade in it as a commodity.  Although not particularly exciting in a media or political sense, it is nevertheless these “dry” but important regulatory mechanisms that will be critical for hydrogen’s role in the energy transition.

You can read more at our LinkedIn site here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/star-scientific-limited/

Seasons’ Greetings

From all of us here at Star Scientific, we would like to wish you a happy, safe, restful, and reflective holiday season.  After a short break, our office will reopen from 2 January.  We look forward to working with you through an exciting 2024.

All the best.

A Week of Announcements and Activity

Star Scientific was the “star” at the Asia-Pacific Hydrogen 2023 Summit & Exhibition produced by the Sustainable Energy Council (SEC) and in partnership with the Australian Hydrogen Council in Sydney, on 26th and 27th of October 2023. It was a major week of announcements and activities, and here is a summary below.

High-level Visits

Our big week began with a high-level business delegation from the German-Australian Chamber of Industry and Commerce, many of the delegates were representing businesses from the Stade Region of Lower Saxony, Germany. The delegates were given a briefing on HERO® and a tour of Star Scientific’s research and development facility, before moving on to a cruise of the Port of Newcastle, where our Deputy CEO, Matt Hingerty, joined them. We were very grateful that our local State Member of Parliament, David Meehan MP, visited us to officially welcome the guests.

On Wednesday we were honoured to be joined by the Governor of the State of New Mexico, Michelle Lujan Grisham, and her Environment Department Cabinet Secretary, James Kenney, along with senior Government officials for a tour of the facility, including a live demonstration of HERO®.

Hydrogen Summit Day 1

In a first for Star Scientific, we took out an exhibition booth, which was the first outing for our demonstration HERO® unit. This proved to be a great device for our Global Head of Research, Steve Heaton (and the rest of us) to explain how HERO® works to the exhibition attendees.

During the conference, we made our first major announcement. After New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham appeared on a conference panel, she was joined on stage by Star Scientific’s Global Group Chair, Andrew Horvath, and they jointly announced that it is our intention to establish our first US facility in Albuquerque, USA. Much media activity followed, particularly on the US side, and the volume of visitors to our exhibition booth increased dramatically.

Hydrogen Summit Day 2

The day commenced with a keynote speech from our Global Group Chair, Andrew Horvath. One of the things we noticed at the World Hydrogen 2023 Summit & Exhibition earlier in the year, and in the earlier panels of this conference, was negative sentiment towards the energy transition. This negative sentiment was being fuelled by local communities “pushing back” on wind, solar, hydro and transmission projects.

Andrew’s speech countermanded this sentiment. His key point, using HERO® as an example, was that scientific innovation would get us around some of these political issues. His point was that the renewable energy sources of the future may look very different to the solar farms, wind towers and transmission lines of today.

He also took the opportunity to announce our second pilot project for Central Coast packaging company, TrendPac, which is also part of the Central Coast Hydrogen Food Cluster.

Shortly following Andrew’s presentation, Steve Heaton and Matt Hingerty gave a slightly more detailed technical run-down on HERO®, and its commercial uses on the H2-Tech Series stage.

These speeches further increased the volume of people coming up to our stand, and the team were kept busy for the rest of the conference, fielding inquiries, and making appointments for further discussion.

All in all, it was a very satisfying week for us, and we’d like to thank everyone involved.

 

Additional Special Edition Newsletter

Friday 27th October 2023, 1pm AEDT
Sydney, Australia

Today at the Asia-Pacific Hydrogen Summit and Exhibition, hosted by the Sustainable Energy Council and the Australian Hydrogen Council, Star Scientific Limited’s Global Group Chairman, Andrew Horvath gave a keynote speech.

In the speech, Mr Horvath announced Star Scientific’s second pilot project, for Central Coast packaging company Trendpac.   Trendpac is a member of the Central Coast Food Hydrogen Cluster.

Mr Horvath also discussed Star Scientific’s optimistic view of the transition based on technological innovation.

Mr Horvath’s speech and associated media release are below.

Speech

Good morning.

Star Scientific is proud to be one of the main sponsors of this conference; as a member of the Hydrogen Advisory Board of the SEC, I lobbied hard to bring this conference to our shores. Australia has much to offer beyond our potential to make and export hydrogen. In my view, Our talent for innovation can accelerate this global transition more than a make-and-ship mentality can.

I want to acknowledge the many VIPs and delegates who have travelled from overseas at Star’s invitation to be here, and I would like to recognise Governor Grisham and Her Environment Secretary from the State of New Mexico, Mr James Kenney, who hosted Star Scientific when we visited that State last year.

Colleagues, we gather here in Sydney at a complex time for the energy transition; some may say we have entered troubled waters. Here in Australia, local communities are pushing back against the physical manifestations of the transition, be they solar or wind. Rural communities are expressing concerns about the sterilisation of farmlands, and coastal communities are protesting about offshore wind’s visual and environmental impacts. Hydro is not without its troubles, as we have seen with the Snowy Hydro II project. In the UK, we have seen the Government marching back the implementation dates for some of its policies. In Europe, we have seen protests about the cost to individuals of aspects of the transition.

My key message today is a message of resilience. We will get through these transition pains, and we will do so through the relentless march of technology and science. My message to regulators is to put policies in place to allow technological innovation to flourish, including in our schools, be open to innovation, and be wary about “locking in” technologies whose time may be limited.

Just as transport last century rapidly evolved from horse and steamships to personal cars and jet planes, the renewable energy sources of 2050 will look very different from today’s solar panels, wind turbines and batteries. What if there was something better?

Star Scientific makes it our business to scour the World for innovation on the supply side of the hydrogen equation, and I can tell you we have seen some fascinating technology indeed. These are not minor tweaks of existing technology but new, exciting ways of thinking.

At Star Scientific, we believe that human ingenuity and scientific curiosity’s relentless drive will overcome material issues. We believe this optimistic view is on the right side of history.

Our product, HERO®, which is on the demand side of the hydrogen equation, is an example of this ingenuity.

HERO® is the globally patented invention of Star Scientific Ltd, a private Research and Development company based on the NSW Central Coast.

About five years ago, as part of our materials research, we developed a profound breakthrough: an award-winning catalyst called the Hydrogen Energy Release Optimiser, or HERO®.

HERO® chemically oxidises hydrogen and oxygen into high levels of heat very quickly and without any output other than pure water. In controlled experiments, a video you can see at our exhibition stand, we reach 700+ degrees Celsius in three minutes.

Indeed, earlier this week, we ran a live demonstration for the Australia-German Chamber of Commerce delegation and New Mexico Governor Grisham. I thank them for taking the time to visit our facilities.

The critical thing about HERO® is that it is a “true catalyst” – meaning it is not “used up” in the process. Once the gasses are removed, it reverts to its inert state. That disc you can see in this slide has been used hundreds of times and shows no deterioration.

HERO® is made from relatively common, non-toxic elements. We do not have the same supply-chain issues that other aspects of the renewable energy transition find challenging. Our inputs are sourced from responsible supply chains.

As we have developed HERO®, two clear commercial pathways have become apparent, but before I come to them, I would like to comment on the broader use of hydrogen in the energy transition.

Undoubtedly, it has been necessary for governments, consultancies, and investors to focus heavily on hydrogen’s supply-side issues of generation, storage and transport.   However, not enough attention has been paid to the demand side of the equation.

We have noted the assumption in countless reports and at conferences like this one that the demand side – how to use hydrogen – will be met by fuel cells and by burning hydrogen.   However, as our network of potential customers has been telling us, both have their limitations.

This is where HERO® fits in. It is the missing link in the hydrogen energy chain. It can extract the energy from the chemistry of hydrogen and use it without generating greenhouse gasses and without the engineering complexities of burning it.

The commercial pathways for HERO® are twofold. The first is for process heat, as a service, ranging in temperatures from 100 to 700 degrees Celsius. And the primary target here is the food sector.

To that end, we are currently working on two pilots, one for a Mars Foods Australia facility near us on the Central Coast and the other, and I am announcing for the first time today with packaging company Trendpac.

Indeed, we have formed our own cluster – the Central Coast Food Hydrogen Cluster, under the auspices of Central Coast Industry Connect.

The other opportunities lie in the area of facility-scale energy.

The orthodox thinking about how to liberate the energy from hydrogen is to burn it – to burn it either on its own or as a blend with natural gas.

At Star Scientific, we reject this. We don’t believe that you should burn hydrogen to liberate its energy. You don’t have to dig too far to find public statements from turbine manufacturers about the engineering problems of burning hydrogen, particularly blending it with gas. Aside from the engineering and efficiency issues related to hydrogen turbines, there are issues with their water use. Further, when you blend it with gas, you are creating greenhouse gases.

Therefore, we have this unreal situation where Premiers and Ministers are making promises about hydrogen-derived energy while the technology providers are, at best, ambiguous about their capacity to meet the stipulated timeframes.

The good news is that there is an alternative way to decant the energy from hydrogen for large-scale electricity generation without burning it.

This involves the mating of HERO® to the new generation of supercritical C02 turbines. These avoid the downfalls of combined cycle turbines – sCO2 is a proven technology, no greenhouse gasses need to be vented, and the systems are air-cooled, avoiding the massive water needs that wet-cycle combustion turbines require. To top it off, they are about 1/10^th the size of an equivalent steam turbine and, therefore, easily transportable and deployable.

This has significant and exciting implications for energy justice and economic growth for those populations who, for geographic or historical reasons, do not enjoy access to a modern, large-scale energy grid that many developed countries have.

We are developing a technology program on sCO2 and look forward to updating you all on this project soon.

The mating of HERO® and supercritical CO2 turbines is a demand-side example of the relentless march of scientific inquiry and innovation in the quest to net zero. The same is happening on the supply side of green hydrogen, yet commentators seem to be overlooking it.

As I mentioned, there has been debate in the Australian media around the “stalling” of the energy transition. These articles invariably comment on the material limitations and political obstacles encountered by solar and wind technologies and the need to upgrade the grid.   These issues often revolve around material availability, such as rare earths, even copper, or the sterilisation of farmlands or fishing grounds. They are also spilling over into the hydrogen area with queries about whether enough green electrons will be produced to meet our hydrogen requirements for domestic use and export.

The answer, of course, is that technological innovation doesn’t stand still. Visionary innovators and investors will solve some of these issues. We seem locked into an orthodox box that says the transition is all about masses of solar panels and giant wind turbines.

We take issue with the almost uncontested assumption that green electrons are locked into current solar, wind and hydro technology.

We are on the cusp of seeing alternate technologies. However, NDAs prevent me from disclosing these at this conference.

Of course, all of this takes money, and it is here that orthodox models have been problematic for many.

Developing technologies such as ours takes time and patience.

To date, we have been funded by an excellent group of patient, private, long-term investors. As we are single-minded in our vision, we have eschewed the financing path of public listing and venture capital, with their business-model bending demands for a quick return.

Our Board has also rejected funding offers from fossil fuel companies in accordance with the wishes of our investors. Government funding is complicated for a company with unorthodox technology like ours. In Australia, government funds are overly complex to apply for. This is especially so in the case of competitive tenders, where smaller companies will be up against larger companies with the resources to write long, compliant applications.

I am pleased to see recent suggestions that governments will increase their risk profile beyond wind, solar and electrolysers. They are looking at ways to make the application process more manageable.

Thankfully, our funding is well in hand through our funding partners, who are here today.

Star Scientific intends to develop a purpose-built research and development campus and mass manufacturing facility. While our preference is in the Central Coast/Hunter region, we also have Queensland and Victoria under scrutiny.

As you heard yesterday, we will develop a mirror facility in the United States and have chosen Albuquerque, New Mexico, as our preferred location.

We look forward to briefing you further in the near future and hope to see you at the SEC Conference in Rotterdam next year.

Thank you.

Star Scientific Announces Second Pilot Project

Australian Hydrogen Research and Development company Star Scientific Limited today announced that it was developing a second pilot project for Central Coast packaging company Trendpac.

Star Scientific Limited has developed the Hydrogen Energy Release Optimiser (HERO®), a catalyst that converts hydrogen and oxygen into heat, without burning. There are no greenhouse gasses produced, and the only other output is pure water.

Trendpac is a private contract packaging company serving major companies and supermarket chains. Their products include shampoos and detergents, many of which are formulated and mixed on-site.

Trendpac is a founding member of the Central Coast Hydrogen Food Cluster, an initiative of Star Scientific Limited and Central Coast Industry Connect. Other founding members include Mars Australia Pty Ltd, for whom Star Scientific Limited is developing its inaugural pilot.

Group Global Chairman of Star Scientific Limited, Andrew Horvath, said that the company was delighted to be expanding its work with neighbouring companies.

He went on to mention that the orthodox view is that hydrogen’s role is to decarbonise heavy industry through complex and capital-intensive processes like “green steel”. While there is no doubt that is in the future, there is a lot of work that renewable hydrogen can do to decarbonise other industries, such as food production and packaging.

He further stated that the pilot for Trendpac is complementary to the work the company is doing for Mars. While both involve the greenhouse gas-free production of process heat they are slightly different industrial processes. The learnings of each will feed into the development of the other.

CEO of Trendpac, Steven Hyde, said “we are excited to be working with Star Scientific Limited as they develop practical and innovative equipment using HERO® within a production environment.”

Frank Sammut, CEO of Central Coast Industry Connect, also said, “Star Scientific is blessed to be in the middle of the Central Coast’s food production cluster at Berkeley Vale and to be working with companies who share our ethics on sustainability”.

Information: Matthew Hingerty, +61 407 220 945, mhingerty@starscientific.com.au

Special Edition Newsletter

Thursday 26th October 2023, 1pm AEDT
Sydney, Australia

Today at the Asia-Pacific Hydrogen Summit and Exhibition, hosted by the Sustainable Energy Council and the Australian Hydrogen Council, Star Scientific Limited and the Government of the State of New Mexico announced that Star Scientific had chosen Albuquerque, New Mexico as its preferred location for its first operation in the United States.

The announcement was made by the Governor of New Mexico, Michelle Lujan Grisham and Global Group Chairman of Star Scientific Limited, Andrew Horvath.  The announcement was formalised by the Governor and Mr Horvath jointly signing a Letter of Intent in a ceremony at the conference.

Start Scientific’s media release is below.

Star Scientific announces New Mexico as a preferred destination for first U.S. facility

Australian Hydrogen research and development company, Star Scientific Ltd, today announced that it has chosen New Mexico as its preferred location for its first operation in the United States.

Star Scientific formalised the announcement by signing a Letter of Intent with New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham at the Sustainable Energy Council’s Asia-Pacific Hydrogen Summit and Exhibition in Sydney.

Global Group Chairman of Star Scientific, Andrew Horvath, said the company was very excited to begin its journey in the United States, particularly in the State of New Mexico.

“From the very earliest conversations, the officials in New Mexico outlined their long-term commitment to hydrogen and the benefits of their State for a company such as Star Scientific”, Mr Horvath said.

“We were impressed by their whole-of-government approach to manufacturing, logistics, higher education and research and their vision for the role that hydrogen will play in their future. We were equally impressed that they had holistically planned important human details such as housing for families that will work at our facility, education incentives for their children and lifestyle and leisure infrastructure.

“There is also an infectious ‘can do’ attitude which greatly appeals to we Australians.”

The Letter of Intent commits Star Scientific to an intensive process of planning and investigation of a site for a joint research and mass manufacturing facility in the Mesa del Sol district of Albuquerque.

Star Scientific is responsible for developing the award-winning and globally patented HERO® catalyst that chemically catalyses hydrogen and oxygen to rapidly create industrial-scale heat without burning the gases and without generating greenhouse gasses. The only other output is pure water.

“The facility in New Mexico will mirror the facility we will build in Australia, and it will service customers in the United States, Canada and, initially South America. We will be developing GHG-free process-heat systems for industry and stand-alone power systems while continuing research on other projects.”

Mr Horvath concluded by thanking New Mexico’s Environment Secretary James Kenney for his leadership of the project.

“From the outset, Secretary Kenney understood the potential of HERO® for New Mexico and has been a vigorous and respectful representative of his State”, Mr Horvath concluded.

Information: Matthew Hingerty, +61 407 220 945, mhingerty@starscientific.com.au