Heliogen stock trading below NYSE minimum average share price
Heliogen has received written notice from the New York Stock Exchange that the average closing price of its common stock is below the minimum average share price for continued listing on the NYSE.
December 28, 2022
Heliogen has received written notice from the New York Stock Exchange that the average closing price of its common stock over the prior consecutive 30 trading-day period was below $1.00 per share, which is the minimum average share price for continued listing on the NYSE, according to a news release.
“Heliogen intends to respond to the NYSE within ten business days of receipt of the notice of its intent to cure the deficiency,” the release states. “Pursuant to the NYSE’s rules, Heliogen has a six-month period following receipt of the deficiency letter to bring its share price and average share price back above $1.00.”
During the cure period, Heliogen’s shares of common stock will continue to trade on the NYSE.
“The NYSE notification does not affect Heliogen’s ongoing business operations or its Securities and Exchange Commission reporting requirements,” the release states. “Heliogen is considering all available options to regain compliance with the NYSE’s continued listing standards, including the consummation of a potential reverse stock split.”
Heliogen recently signed an MOU with the City of Lancaster, California to develop and provide equity for a green hydrogen generation facility there. The company also intends to develop a green hydrogen facility on leased land in the Brenda Solar Energy Zone (SEZ) in Arizona.
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HIF Global will assess demand for CO2 in its eFuels production facilities around the world. Idemitsu will study the capture of CO2 in Japan. MOL will examine the transportation and shipping of CO2 from Japan and eFuels to Japan.
HIF Global, an eFuels company, Idemitsu Kosan, the Japanese petroleum company and Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Ltd. (MOL), the international shipping company, have reached an agreement to develop an eFuels supply chain between HIF facilities and Japan.
The agreement also outlines how the companies will explore the potential for supplying carbon dioxide (CO2) from Japan for use as a feedstock for the eFuels production process in HIF facilities under development in the USA, Australia and Chile, according to a news release.
HIF Global will assess demand for CO2 in its eFuels production facilities around the world. Idemitsu will study the capture of CO2 in Japan. MOL will examine the transportation and shipping of CO2 from Japan and eFuels to Japan.
Cesar Norton, President & CEO of HIF Global, said: “At HIF Global, we are developing a portfolio of eFuels facilities that would recycle approximately 25 million tonnes per year of CO2, equivalent to the emissions from over 5 million cars. Carbon neutral eFuels are an immediate replacement for fossil fuels across the global transport sector. Initiatives like this collaboration will bring us a step closer to fueling our world with renewable energy as we strive towards net zero emissions now.”
Hiroshi Tanaka, General Manager (Carbon Neutral Transformation Department) of Idemitsu Kosan said: “As part of our commitment to sustainability, Idemitsu is actively working towards establishing a robust supply chain for eMethanol and eFuels. We recognize the importance of these low environmental impact alternatives in our business and their versatility. Through strategic collaborations such as this, we are confident in our ability to take a leading role in reducing carbon emissions in both the energy and transportation sectors. Additionally, we see tremendous potential in the development of various business opportunities within the supply chain. We look forward to exploring and capitalizing on these opportunities together.”
Hirofumi Kuwata, Senior Managing Executive Officer of MOL, said: “Mitsui O.S.K. Lines is pleased to be working with HIF Global and Idemitsu Kosan to develop a value chain for CO2, synthetic fuel, and synthetic methanol, contributing to decarbonization throughout the lifecycle. We will establish efficient maritime transport of CO2, synthetic methanol, and synthetic fuel within the supply chain connecting Japanese and overseas projects.”
The parties will also discuss the sale and purchase of eFuels and analyze the resulting greenhouse gas emissions reduction.
eFuels are made using electrolyzers powered by renewable energy to separate hydrogen from oxygen in water. The green hydrogen is combined with recycled carbon dioxide to produce carbon neutral eFuels, which are chemically equivalent to fuels used today and can therefore be dropped-in to existing engines without requiring any modifications.
CIP, through its Energy Transition Fund I, has acquired a 26.67% stake in a development platform within CWP’s green hydrogen business.
CWP Global and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) today announced CIP’s strategic investment in CWP’s development portfolio of ultra-large-scale green hydrogen hubs, including projects across Africa, Australia and the Americas, according to a news release.
Under the deal announced today, CIP, through its Energy Transition Fund I, has acquired a 26.67% stake in a development platform within CWP’s green hydrogen business, thus seizing the opportunity to invest in the latter’s pipeline of green hydrogen hubs under development globally.
The investment brings together CWP’s leading green hydrogen team, built off the back of a two-decade track record in developing and operating utility-scale renewables projects, and CIP’s expertise in financing and developing large-scale green transition infrastructure. CIP’s backing represents a significant vote of confidence in the emerging green hydrogen sector from one of the world’s largest renewable energy infrastructure investors, according to the release.
As it currently stands, CWP’s green hydrogen hub portfolio has a planned combined renewable power generation capacity of nearly 220 GW.
Alex Hewitt, CEO of CWP Global, said, “We’re thrilled to welcome CIP to the CWP family, a new partnership that could not have come at a more important time. The race to net zero is on, and green hydrogen at scale will be a critical pillar for global decarbonisation, perhaps meeting one-fifth of global energy demand by 2050.”
Felix Pahl, Partner at Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, said, “Achieving decarbonisation targets requires green hydrogen and green ammonia to be produced at scale. Through this investment, CIP’s Energy Transition Fund now further expands its participation in the development of gigawatt scale PtX developments. CWP has a proven track record in delivering onshore renewables and has already built a strong pipeline of PtX development projects.
With a strong management team and established regional footprints in Australia, Africa and Latin America, we expect CWP to become a global leader in developing ultra gigawatt-scale PtX projects and contribute significantly to decarbonisation of hard-to-abate sectors.”
The company, Ash Creek Renewables, serves North American renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel producers through its feedstock marketing, distribution, pretreatment and logistics operations.
Tailwater Capital LLC, an energy and growth infrastructure private equity firm, has agreed to a partnership with Ash Creek Renewables, a platform dedicated to developing renewable fuel feedstock solutions to meet the demands of the growing renewable fuels market, according to a news release.
Terms of the partnership were not disclosed.
The company serves North American renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel producers through its feedstock marketing, distribution, pretreatment and logistics operations.
Dallas-based Tailwater Capital is an energy and growth infrastructure private equity firm with $4.4bn in commited capital.
Ash Creek is led by chief executive officer John Cusick, who has over 20 years of experience in the low carbon fuels sector. Previously, Cusick was an owner of The Jacobsen, the leading consultancy for the renewable fuels industry. Prior to The Jacobsen, Cusick held senior positions at Renewable Biofuels, Inc., Glencore and Morgan Stanley.
“We are thrilled to partner with Tailwater as we embark on this exciting new chapter,” Cusick said. “Pairing Ash Creek’s deep industry knowledge, capabilities and multi-decade relationships in the renewable fuels industry with Tailwater’s experience in downstream-adjacent infrastructure creates an ideal partnership to execute our strategy.”
“Ash Creek will make an incredible addition to our portfolio and aligns well with our growth infrastructure expertise that has been developed through over a decade of investing in the downstream-adjacent infrastructure, renewable fuels, and logistics sectors,” said Edward Herring, co-founder and managing partner of Tailwater. “We are excited to partner with Ash Creek as they continue to develop meaningful solutions for renewable fuel producers.”
A US geologic hydrogen startup that employs electric fracking with a pilot presence on the Arabian Peninsula is raising a $40m Series A and has identified a region in the midwestern US for its first de-risked project.
Eden GeoPower, a Boston-based geologic hydrogen technology provider, is engaged in raising a Series A and has a timeline on developing a project in Minnesota, CEO and co-founder Paris Smalls told ReSource.
The Series A target is $40m, with $10m being supplied by existing investors, Smalls said. This round, the company is looking for stronger financial investors to join its strategic backers.
The company has two subsidiaries wholly owned by the parent: one oil and gas-focused and one climate-focused. The Series A is topco equity at the parent level.
Eden was one of 16 US Department of Energy-selected projects to receive funding to explore geologic hydrogen; the majority of the others are academic lab projects. Eden has raised some $13m in equity and $12m in grant funding to date.
Beyond geothermal
Eden started as a geothermal resource developer, using abandoned oil and gas wells for production via electric fracking.
“We started seeing there were applications way beyond geothermal,” Smalls said. Early grant providers recommended using the electric fracking technology to go after geologic hydrogen reservoirs, replacing the less environmentally friendly hydraulic fracking process typically used.
A test site in Oman, where exposed iron-rich rock makes the country a potential future geologic hydrogen superpower, will de-risk Eden’s technology, Smalls said. Last year the US DOE convened the first Bilateral Engagement on Geologic Hydrogen in Oman.
Early developments are underway on a demonstration project in Tamarack, Minnesota, Smalls said. That location has the hollow-vein rocks that can produce geologic hydrogen.
“We likely won’t do anything there until after we have sufficiently de-risked the technology in Oman, and that should be happening in the next 8 months,” Smalls said. “There’s a good chance we’ll be the first people in the world to demonstrate this.”
Eden is not going after natural geologic hydrogen, but rather stimulating reactions to change the reservoir properties to make hydrogen underground, Small said.
The University of Minnesota is working with Eden on a carbon mineralization project, Smalls said. The company is also engaged with Minnesota-based mining company Talon Metals.
Revenue from mining, oil and gas
Eden has existing revenue streams from oil and gas customers in Texas and abroad, Smalls said, and has an office in Houston with an expanding team.
“People are paying us to go and stimulate a reservoir,” he said. “We’re using those opportunities to help us de-rick the technology.”
The technology has applications in geothermal development and mining, Smalls said. Those contracts have been paying for equipment.
Mining operations often include or are adjacent to rock that can be used to produce geologic hydrogen, thereby decarbonizing mining operations using both geothermal energy and geologic hydrogen, Smalls said.
“On our cap table right now we have one of the largest mining companies in the world, Anglo American,” Smalls said. “We do projects with BHP and other big mining companies as well; we see a lot of potential overlap with the mining industry because they are right on top of these rocks.
Anti-fracking
Eden is currently going through the process of permitting for a mining project in Idaho, in collaboration with Idaho National Labs, Smalls said.
In doing so the company had to submit a public letter explaining the project and addressing environmental concerns.
“We’re employing a new technology that can mitigate all the issues [typically associated with fracking],” Small said.
With electric fracturing of rocks, there is no groundwater contamination or high-pressure water injection that cause the kind of seismic and water quality issues that anger people.
“This isn’t fracking, this is anti-fracking,” Smalls said.
The London-based non-profit EnergyTag has come to the forefront with its framework for global renewable energy hourly matching standards – what it views as a crucial substructure underpinning the future of green product commerce.
When Killian Daly was working for Air Liquide in Paris, sourcing renewable power for the industrial gas producer’s enormous energy needs, he noticed a mismatch in the way power is purchased and the way its green credentials are counted.
“When you buy power, you do hourly batching – you have to respect that electricity can’t just fly across the country,” he said. “And then you look at green power accounting and it’s detached, it’s completely different,” he said, referring to the practice of issuing renewable energy credits for grid power on an annual basis. This allows power consumers to claim they are using clean power produced any time of the year.
“You can be 100% solar powered all night long, or 100% renewable using Texas wind, even if you’re located in the Northeast,” said Daly, a native of Ireland who is now based out of Brussels as EnergyTag’s executive director. “So for me it was inevitable that someone was going to sort of raise their hand and say, ‘What’s going on here?’”
EnergyTag, a London-based non-profit, was founded in 2020 to address this issue: to make electricity carbon accounting more granular and tied to the reality of the power system. While the organization does not issue or sell renewable energy credits – or even offer its own software – its set of voluntary standards known asGranular Certificates (GCs) have become a leading framework for more systematic carbon accounting across the globe.
The GC scheme has been employed by projects and system-level REC providers internationally, amounting to 5 million MWh of tracking, which, according to Energy Tag, shows that hourly tracking is already a technical reality. In the U.S., it is the basis of the Granular Certificate Trading Alliance, which is led by LevelTen Energy and includes major partners AES, Constellation, Google, and Microsoft. And it underpins systems employed by U.S.-based REC providers like M-RETS and others.
Global hourly matching case studies: EnergyTag
By most accounts, the small-budget outfit has achieved outsize success in its stance on a niche issue that has had a cross-cutting, global impact. Its advisory committee consists of multi-national representation from other non-profits, governmental agencies, and corporates that are aligned on the hourly matching problem. “It’s a global topic and I suppose it gives us a global voice,” said Daly, adding that Energy Tag’s independence allows it to be more to the point than other organizations.
Its chairman, Phil Moody, helped write the rules of energy tracking in Europe, “the only standardized system in the world for certificates,” according to Daly. “That’s a pretty unique set of skills that I suppose we bring to the table that is not really coming from another organization on this specific topic.” When it comes to policy, the organization has homed in on areas like green hydrogen, “where there’s a clear need for proper electricity accounting to avoid massive consequences and massive waste of taxpayer funding,” Daly said.
Time matching for renewable energy tied to green hydrogen production has become an existential issue for many proposed projects and their developers, particularly in the U.S. Under guidance issued by the IRS, project developers would be required to match renewable generation to green hydrogen production on an hourly basis starting in 2028, a requirement that has divided the green hydrogen sector into opposing camps and has been called, by those opposed to it, the death knell of the nascent industry.
More to do
The majority of U.S. renewable energy credit (REC) tracking systems can implement hourly matching akin to the standards put forth by EnergyTag in just a few years,according to a report from the Center for Resource Solutions issued last year. WREGIS, the system covering the western U.S., estimated it would take between three and five years but could cut it closer to three with state and federal support.
“A lot of the foundational aspects of how you set up a tracking system – they’re already there,” Daly said. EnergyTag’s granular certificate standards are focused on building systems as an extension of existing programs. “We’re not reinventing the wheel,” Daly said. “We’re taking standard definition television and making it HD.”
Although many of the U.S. registries are well on their way to being ready for hourly matching by 2028, Daly said there’s some work to be done in the phase-in period “to have a standardized approach across the REC registries, just so they can talk to each other, so that they can be audited.”
Even so, the implementation of a federal standard through 45V – even if it is an energy policy administered through tax authorities – is the only comprehensive federal policy that “can help move the environmental attribute markets to where they want to go,” M-RETS CEO Ben Gerber said during a panel discussion at Clean Power in Minneapolis on May 7.
Gerber said that some concessions might need to be made to appease industry concerns. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they moved the [hourly matching implementation] date back to 2030” from 2028, he said.
In an interview, Gerber added that he would like to see the establishment of a more robust market for trade in RECs, such as a platform advanced by Incubex, allowing developers to buy credits when they are short and sell when they are long.
EnergyTag itself also notes that the ideal of reaching 100% hourly matching might not be possible, at least not in the near term. “If you’re a hydrogen producer and you are hourly matching at a high level, but then you do not match hour by hour for 2% of your hours right now, under the current proposed rules it would look like you would then be bumped out of that top tier threshold” for tax credits, Alex Piper, EnergyTag’s head of U.S. policy, said.
This functional issue has been flagged by many in the pro-hourly matching camp, Piper said, “as a risk that is pretty existential and should be reevaluated by Treasury to determine if there are different flexibility mechanisms that can be included that would allow a project to miss a number of hours without being on that brink of in and out of the money, which could absolutely undermine the entire project.”
Devraj Banerjee of Ambient Fuels, a green hydrogen developer that has been vocal about the need to modify the proposed guidance, said that, while he agrees that a more granular matching scheme makes sense once renewable portfolios and banking systems are more advanced, allowing for flexibility now would help the industry get off the ground.
“What would be a significant fix in the [45V] policy would be allowing early mover projects to have either complete annual matching for the life of the tax credit, or barring that, some kind of pro rata share of annual matching in tandem with hourly matching to not only reduce overall economics but mitigate the need to over procure and provide the ability to be a bit more flexible with renewable generation to avoid falling out of 45V compliance if there’s performance issues, etc,” he said on the Clean Power green hydrogen panel earlier this month. “So some kind of annual carve out for early movers for the life of the tax credit would be a big change, and very helpful.”
In spite of the policy progress and advancements in hourly matching certification schemes, Daly said it’s still early days for accounting standards for global green commerce. “I fundamentally do believe what we’re seeing here on hydrogen in Europe and also now in the U.S. is only the beginning of a much broader discussion and framework around creating clean trade, marketplaces that are trading clean products, because that’s rule number one: is it clean, and that’s where we need to get into these details around accounting and three pillars,” he said.
“So I think it’s just a microcosm of actually a much broader set of discussions and actions over the coming years as we look to set up Transatlantic clean trade and in other parts of the world as well.”
Some states are mulling hydrogen-specific incentives and tax credits as they wait for final federal regulations for clean hydrogen production, Bianca Giacobone reports.
[Editor’s note: Paragraphs six through nine have been modified to clarify that Colorado legislation does in fact include ‘three pillars’ language.]
Final guidelines for the federal hydrogen production tax credits are still a work in progress, but in the meantime, legislatures across the country have been mulling their own incentives to spur production.
So far, 14 U.S. states have or are considering legislation that includes tax credits or other incentives for the use or production of hydrogen, five of which specify the hydrogen has to be “green,” “clean” or “zero-carbon.”
The industry is waiting for the final regulations relating to the 45V tax credit for production of clean hydrogen, a draft of which was released last December, and states are similarly waiting to make their own moves.
“States have interest in developing hydrogen programs, but they will lag the federal initiatives,” said Frank Wolak, CEO of the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association. “The new suite of things that the states will do is largely dependent upon the reaction from the federal government, which is brand new.”
The ones that aren’t waiting opt for vagueness.
Val Stori, senior program manager at the Great Plains Institute, a non-profit focused on the energy transition, notes that Washington state has a bill supporting renewable electrolytic hydrogen, but it doesn’t specify whether electricity has to be sourced directly from renewables or if it can come from the grid. It doesn’t touch upon the more granular “three pillars” requirements for clean hydrogen which could be included in federal regulations: new supply, temporal matching, and deliverability.
“The lack of specificity is the trend,” she said.
Meanwhile, Colorado’s Advance the Use of Clean Hydrogen Act is the exception to that rule with what’s considered the country’s first clean hydrogen standards, including “matching electrolyzer energy consumption with electricity production on an hourly basis” and requiring that “the electricity used to produce clean hydrogen comes from renewable energy that would otherwise have been curtailed or not delivered to load or from new zero carbon generation.”
The standard will be enforced starting in 2028 or when the deployment of hydrogen electrolyzers in the state exceeds 200 MW.
(Colorado also has a Clean Air Program and a recently launched Colorado Industrial Tax Credit Offering that can offer financial support for industrial emissions reduction projects, including hydrogen projects, but they don’t mention hydrogen use or production specifically.)
“You might see the beginnings of laws that are starting to appear now, but it might take two or three years before states build the momentum to figure out what they should be doing,” said Wolak.
Nine out of the 14 states that have hydrogen-specific legislation don’t target clean hydrogen, but hydrogen in general. Kentucky, for example, has a 2018 tax incentive for companies that engage in alternative fuel production and hydrogen transmission pipelines.
More recently, Oklahoma introduced a bill that proposes a one-time $50m infrastructure assist to a company that invests a minimum of $800m in a hydrogen production facility. According to local news reports, the bill is aimed at Woodside Energy’s electrolytic hydrogen plant in Ardmore.
“We are an oil and gas state and we will be a primarily oil and gas state for a long time,” Oklahoma Senator Jerry Alvord, the bill’s sponsor, said in an interview. “But we could be at the forefront in our area of hydrogen and the uses that hydrogen puts before us.”
Depending on the state, general hydrogen incentives could potentially add to federal tax incentives for clean hydrogen projects.
Meanwhile, other states have been implementing Low Carbon Fuel Standards to encourage the development and use of clean fuels, including hydrogen, in transportation.
Last month, for example, New Mexico enacted its Low Carbon Fuel Standard, a technology-neutral program based where producers and vendors of low-carbon fuels, including clean hydrogen, generate credits to sell in the clean fuels marketplace, where they can be bought by producers of high carbon fuels.
Similar programs exist in Oregon, Washington, and California, which was early to the game and began implementing its program in 2011.
