Pensana Share Discussion Threads

[mwj1959] 10/3/2023 09:27

mhssh - you're making generalisations here. Time will tell whether they apply to PRE or not. But without financing we'll never know on the profits front.

[mhssh] 09/3/2023 12:16

mwj 7/3/23
I suspect, that just like the cost of large infrastructure projects (regularly double before completion), the profits indicated are likely a pie in the sky which no financier believes. I suspect they are likely right.

[mhssh] 08/3/2023 10:38

For every buy, there's a sell.

[mikethebike4] 08/3/2023 09:55

hefty buys this morning !

[mikethebike4] 08/3/2023 09:49

very interesting reading in the Telegraph today for Lithium investors

Also has (positive) implications for electric motor production and rare earth demand in the future!

The Argonne National Laboratory in the US has essentially cracked the battery technology for electric vehicles, discovering a way to raise the future driving range of standard EVs to a thousand miles or more. It promises to do so cheaply without exhausting the global supply of critical minerals in the process.

The joint project with the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) has achieved a radical jump in the energy density of battery cells. The typical lithium-ion battery used in the car industry today stores about 200 watt-hours per kilo (Wh/kg). Their lab experiment has already reached 675 Wh/kg with a lithium-air variant.

This is a high enough density to power trucks, trains, and arguably mid-haul aircraft, long thought to be beyond the reach of electrification. The team believes it can reach 1,200 Wh/kg. If so, almost all global transport can be decarbonised more easily than we thought, and probably at a negative net cost compared to continuation of the hydrocarbon status quo.

The Argonne Laboratory in Chicago is not alone in pushing the boundaries of energy storage and EV technology. The specialist press reports eye-watering breakthroughs almost every month. America, Europe, China and Japan are all in a feverish global race for battery dominance – or survival – and hedge funds are swarming over the field.

I highlight this paper because US national labs have AAA credibility. The study is peer-reviewed and has just appeared in the research journal Science. Their solid-state battery has achieved the highest energy density yet seen anywhere in the world. And sometimes you have to pick on one to tell a larger story.

The science paper says the process can “theoretically deliver an energy density that is comparable to that of gasoline”, a remarkable thought that slays some stubborn shibboleths. It is not for today, but it is not for the remote future either. It typically takes five or so breakthroughs of this kind in battery technology to reach manufacturing.

Professor Larry Curtiss, the project leader, told me that his battery needs no cobalt. That eliminates reliance on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which accounts for 74pc of the world’s production and has become a Chinese economic colony for the extraction of raw materials.

Beijing has already gained a lockhold on the supply chain through ownership or control over three quarters of the DRC’s major cobalt mines. Russia is the world’s third. It is planning to raise that share by tearing up the marine bed off the Pacific coast.

Reports by the United Nations and activist groups leave no doubt that cobalt mining in the DRC is an ecological and human disaster, with some 40,000 children working for a pittance in toxic conditions for small ‘artisanalR17; mines. It has become a byword for North-South exploitation.

Needless to say, the horrors of the cobalt supply chain have been seized on by fossil “realists̶1; (i.e. vested interests) and Putin’s cyber-bots to impugn the moral claims of the green energy transition. The Argonne-IIF technology should make it harder to sustain that line of attack.

Prof Curtiss said the current prototype is based on lithium but does not have to be. “The same type of battery could be developed with sodium. It will take more time, but can be done,” he said. Switching to sodium would halve the driving range but it would still be double today’s generation of batteries.

Sodium is ubiquitous. There are deposits in Dorset, Cheshire, or Ulster. The US and Canada have vast salt lakes. Sodium can be produced cheaply from seawater in hot regions via evaporation. There is no supply constraint.

This knocks out another myth: that the EV revolution is impossible on a planetary scale because there either is not enough lithium, or not enough at viable cost under free market conditions in states aligned with the Western democracies. (The copper shortage is more serious, but there may be solutions for that as well using graphene with aluminium).

The International Energy Agency estimates that demand for lithium will rise 20-fold by 2040 if we rely on existing battery technology. The Australians are the world’s biggest producers today. But the greatest long-term deposits are in the Lithium Triangle of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, which are in talks to create an OPEC-style lithium cartel. China’s Tianqui owns 22pc of the Chilean group SQM, the world’s second-biggest lithium miner.

A lithium recycling industry will mitigate the problem. In the end, lithium can be extracted from seawater. It is highly diluted at 180 parts per billion but research suggests that it could be isolated for as little as $5 a kilo. If so, the lithium scare is just another of a long list of seemingly insurmountable barriers that fall away with time. The march of clean-tech is littered with such false scares.

For readers with a better grip on chemistry than me, the Argonne-IIF uses a solid electrolyte made from a ceramic polymer based on nanoparticles. This does require expensive materials.

It achieves a reaction of four molecules at room temperature instead of the usual one or two. It is able to extract oxygen from the surrounding air to run the reaction, solving a problem that has held back development for a decade. It can operate over a thousand cycles of charging and discharging. It is safer and less likely to catch fire than today's batteries.

What the Argonne-IIF battery and other global breakthroughs show collectively is that energy science is moving so fast that what seemed impossible five years ago is already a discernible reality, and that we will be looking at a very different technological landscape before the end of this decade.

Germany and Italy last week succeeded in blocking EU’s plans for ban on petrol and diesel sales by 2035. They might just as well bark at the moon or command the waves to recede. Moore’s Law and the learning curve of new technology has already sealed the fate of the combustion engine – with or without net zero.

The legacy companies cannot save their sunk investment in fossil motors – unless the EU retreats into fortress protectionism, which would be economic suicide. To try would be to guarantee the total destruction of Europe’s car industry. The only hope of saving it is to go for broke on electrification before global rivals run away with the prize.

The coming battery technology kills the case for hydrogen in cars, vans, buses, or trucks, and perhaps also for trains and aircraft, whether it is “green” from wind and solar via electrolysis or “blue” from natural gas with carbon capture. The energy loss involved makes no sense. It is much cheaper and more efficient to electrify wherever possible.

Clean hydrogen is too valuable to squander. We need it to replace dirty hydrogen used in industry. We need it for fertilisers, green steel, container shipping, and long-term storage in saline aquifers to back up renewables during a windless Dunkelflaute. We do not need it for road transport.

My advice to corporate bosses and ministers: keep up with the world’s scientific literature, or you will be massacred.

This article is an extract from The Telegraph’s Economic Intelligence newsletter.

[mwj1959] 07/3/2023 14:32

There is no doubt that PA has talked a good game for a while. If nothing else he is a consummate salesman. But as with all these projects what matters is being able to raise the finance to deliver on all the talk. The backdrop for doing so, as we all know, has been extremely difficult for the past year and is showing no signs of improving. I personally don't see the cost of debt falling sustainably and significantly until 2024. So if they want to meet their current development timelines the only way they are going to do so is to accept a much higher cost of debt. If the forecasted returns for the project are supposed to be so good for this project then they should be able to live with that. Also we shouldn't forget that there are two separate, but interrelated, fund raising exercises going on here for Saltend and Longonjo. No news on either since the AGM isn't encouraging. Certainly the impression I got from the AGM that the latter seemed to be easier to deliver on than the former. And for the former I agree that the government could be doing more to help expedite. PRE remains a high risk / high reward investment in my opinion and that's why my exposure, alongside that in ALK (where at least the share price rise has allowed me to take some profits) remains relatively modest.

[mhssh] 07/3/2023 13:09

An excellent summing up.

I guess the reality is that they can get finance but not "affordable" finance which, I suppose, is one and the same thing.

[mikethebike4] 07/3/2023 12:55

Paul Atherley seems to be doing all the right things to encourage investors

- to no avail judging by the share price

- it says a lot about the current economic risk aversion !

- all really courtesy of this shambles of a 'Government' over the last few years

- fortunately if we'd had the alternative lot it would have been even worse

[mikethebike4] 01/3/2023 12:48

encouraging buying recently including today

[markliddiard] 28/2/2023 20:07

Yes agreed, but they appear to be 'converging' on issues! ????

[mwj1959] 28/2/2023 14:27

But what really matters are the final two bullet points on the last slide (22)...

Working with financiers to finalise funding arrangements
Immediate commencement of main construction on finance

...and whether they are able to deliver on these. If they do the company is clearly worth a lot more than its current mkt cap (as per slide 6), but for now it remains a pretty big if.

[markliddiard] 28/2/2023 10:32

Slide 6 is interesting!

[sirmark] 27/2/2023 17:04

Presentation now in the header

[sirmark] 27/2/2023 13:46

A few decent buys in the past hour.

[mwj1959] 26/2/2023 21:37

This is what I wrote on the ALK site earlier...
What a surprise to read in the ST today that E&Y are delaying the deal to sell BV as they need more time to scrutinise Recharge's plans, particularly in relation to funding. I just don't understand why this wasn't done before they were made the preferred bidder. Anyone with half a brain at E&Y should have known that Recharge's bid was somewhat questionable given they have no obvious track record of raising the substantial funds required to build out this massive project, let alone successfully delivering on such a project. TVL's MOU with Recharge may not be worth the paper it was written on.

[mhssh] 26/2/2023 20:51

Today's Times "Recharge has indicated that it wants to rehire some of the 200 Britishvolt staff that were let go and to use the site to build batteries for energy storage as well as electric vehicles. This month Recharge signed a deal with Tees Valley Lithium (ALK/PA), also based in the northeast, to supply lithium for its batteries."

[mhssh] 16/2/2023 09:49

Prior to the £4.0m injection PA had said cash would run out in March. The £4m should therefore take them through to early/mid summer but, frankly, that is just guesswork.

[mwj1959] 16/2/2023 09:38

Would be interested to know how long the $4m will last before the company has to go back to shareholders for more cash, subject of course to no progress on the financing front.

[mikethebike4] 15/2/2023 17:48

need a few more buys of that quantity !

[sirmark] 15/2/2023 15:41

320,000 buy early very nice !

[sirmark] 08/2/2023 15:58

A break of 65p will be massive !! Doubt today but this week early next we could really push on ....

[mhssh] 08/2/2023 10:56

More than happy to do so, but I don't really have an agenda per se. I am simply a modest retail investor with a shareholding in PRE.

[chinasyndrome] 08/2/2023 09:18

mhssh, I don't suppose you would mind sharing your Agenda with us all ? I take it you are not a fan of Decarbonisation ?

[mwj1959] 07/2/2023 11:46

After some initial enthusiasm share price is now down slightly, so no bubbly for the rest of us either...yet!

[mhssh] 07/2/2023 10:12

I have no ALK shares so I certainly will not be breaking out the bubbly.