Michael Barnard’s TFIE Strategy Briefing

Michael Barnard’s TFIE Strategy Briefing

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TFIE Diligence Files

ARES Proved Rail Gravity Storage Works. The Economics Are Worse Than I Thought
Moving the mass is the easy part
 • Michael Barnard
Dense-Fluid Pumped Hydro Storage’s Duration Trap
Short durations favor batteries. Long durations favor water.
 • Michael Barnard
£30,000 For A Used £556,000 Hydrogen Bus — And First Bus Is Still Hedging
First Bus is buying Aberdeen’s failed hydrogen buses cheaply enough to make conversion an experiment, not a commitment.
 • Michael Barnard
Energy Vault Built An Artificial Mountain To Do A Battery’s Job
Rudong is a 25 MW / 100 MWh, four-hour storage plant. In China, a BESS doing the same job is smaller, cheaper, lower-carbon and already routine…
 • Michael Barnard
Vertical Aerospace’s September 11 AGM Exposes Five Years of eVTOL Recapitalization
Farnborough proved the aircraft can fly. It did not prove the passenger business.
 • Michael Barnard
Transit Data and Trajectory aren’t the Problem. CUTRIC’S Analysis Is.
CUTRIC should choose between commercialization and independent evidence. Transit agencies and CUTRIC’s members have choices of their own, and they do…
 • Michael Barnard
Hydrogen Has Narrative Density. Electrification Has Deployment Density.
Media and PR make hydrogen look far more prevalent and commercially mature than the physical economy says it is.
 • Michael Barnard
Methane Thermolysis Couples Two Markets That Don’t Scale Together
Hazer provides a useful industrial-scale example: every ton of hydrogen creates roughly three tons of solid carbon, whether nearby customers need it or…
 • Michael Barnard
Poland Subsidized Hydrogen Demand. Polenergia Still Couldn’t Make Supply Work.
Poland created hydrogen demand. The supply case still failed.
 • Michael Barnard
Europe’s Banks Are Pricing Hydrogen As A Niche, Not An Economy
Antwerp-Bruges has a “commercial” AEM electrolyzer. Conventional lenders are backing captive industrial demand, not a new merchant hydrogen market.
 • Michael Barnard
What Boeing’s Wisk Exit Says About Archer’s Strategy
A Rumeltian reading of the transaction finds Boeing trying to repair an execution problem in proven markets, while Archer adds programs without…
 • Michael Barnard
AI Electricity Demand Is Rising. The Hype Still Outruns The Load.
AI has driven a real data-centre electricity surge, especially in the United States. Globally, however, all data centres still use less than 2% of…
 • Michael Barnard
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