@Byrnesty

Agree with your coments about hydrogen. 

There is an interesting link between Gogstate - Hydrogen -  Fortescue

Notes below from various sources while looking into Cogstate:

Alan Finkle, I presume it is Dr Alan Finkle, has a 4.56% holding in Gogstate. Alan Simon Finkel AO FAA FTSE is an Australian neuroscientist, inventor, researcher, entrepreneur, educator, policy advisor, and philanthropist. He was Australia’s Chief Scientist from 2016 to 2020.  For Alan Finkle to invest in CGS is a plus for me.

 Paul Maruff, Founder and Chief Innovations Officer. Prof. Maruff is a neuropsychologist with expertise in the identification and measurement of subtle behavioural and cognitive dysfunction. Prof. Maruff has published over 450 research articles in international peer reviewed scientific journals and has co-authored 15 book chapters and review articles. This is only a small extract from articles about Prof Marruf.

Dr. Amy E. Veroff, Principal Consultant.  PhD serves as Consultant of Cogstate Ltd. Dr. Veroff has more than 30 years of experience in clinical and research settings. Dr. Veroff’s clinical training and dissertation work was done at the Aphasia Research Center of Boston University. She has held a clinical appointment in the Neurology Department of Boston University Medical School and an academic appointment in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School, providing clinical service and teaching. At Johns Hopkins, Dr. Veroff was Principal Investigator of a grant to study the dementia syndromes of Huntington’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. Dr. Veroff has worked in clinical drug trials and has provided specialized scales services for nearly 25 years including establishing and leading a global division of a CRO. Under Dr. Veroff’s leadership, the group provided rater training programs and materials, central monitoring/quality assurance of study data, translation, harmonization, and cultural adaptation of scales, and other related scales services and technology for more than 200 clinical trials, training more than 20,000 thousand raters. Dr. Veroff serves on the Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study (ADCS) Workgroup tasked with updating the ADAS-Cog. Dr. Veroff is widely published, including regarding the Computerized Neuropsychological Test Battery (CNTB), a tool that she designed and co-pioneered for the assessment of CNS-drug effects. She has co-authored a book on Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials, Alzheimer’s Disease: Optimizing Drug Development Strategies. Dr. Veroff is a neuropsychologist licensed in Massachusetts, Maryland, and California.

I don't want to sound over hyped about this business, but the quality of those involved is extraordinary.

Hydrogen: 

Australia’s Chief Scientist, Dr Alan Finkel, presented the National Hydrogen Strategy to the Council of Australian Governments Energy Council in Perth on 22 November 2019. Dr Finkel said, “The strategy is ambitious but I believe that developing clean hydrogen offers a unique opportunity for Australia.”“Australia has the renewable resources, the technology know-how, and the relationships with trading partners to make the most of the changing marketplace that is the energy sector.”“When it comes to capturing and exporting solar and wind electricity by first splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, clean hydrogen and its derivatives have no equal. Energy importing countries are hungry for hydrogen as part of their emissions reduction agenda, and Australia has the potential to supply much of their needs. We can be the leader in the new industry I call “shipping sunshine”.”

Fortescue FMG, owns Fortuescue Future Industries. FMG is working with the CSIRO to develop Green Hydrogen. Instead of FMG only having one shot in the locker,iron ore, the move into hydrogen is a brillant move. As an FMG share holder, there is the possibility of FFI being split off to share holders. 

I concur with your thoughts on battery/lithium thematic.

I had been doing some research in preparation for plunging into the Lithium/Battery thematic  but couldn’t get over the line for the following concerns:

1. Lithium mining appears to come with some fairly adverse environmental consequences. It requires 750t of mineral rock brine and 1900t of water to extract just 1t of lithium.

2.Cobalt – 70% of the world’s cobalt is sourced from the DRC with serious child labour /human rights, safety and corruption concerns.

3. Battery Life – My personal experience with a LI Battery powered electric bike was soured when the battery failed within 2 years. 50% cost of the bike to replace the battery.

4. Hydrogen powered vehicles are commercially available now (ie Toyota Mirai & Hyundai Nexo).

5. Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEV) (ie hydrogen powered) are more suited for longer travel distances than Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV).

6. Existing fuel stations can be re-purposed for hydrogen refuelling avoiding the need for a re-charging network.

7.Refuelling is quicker than re-charging.

8. No mining or fossil fuel sourced charging required for hydrogen powered vehicles.

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) believes that hydrogen production at scale is only 5 to 10 years away.
Jeremy Clarkson (albeit not a electric vehicle fan) recently wrote “its like we are all racing to buy CD’s when we don’t know the internet is coming”.

I can't help but feel that BEV are just a stop gap measure until something better comes along.
 

10-Sep-2021:  https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-10/storage-battery-will-create-renewable-energy-solution-and-jobs/100448940

One of the reasons I have not fully embraced the battery metals megatrend is that I believe it is still unclear which metals are going to be the biggest long-term winners from this thematic, other than the obvious ones like copper.  In this article published this morning on the ABC News website (link above), they talk about recent developments, in particular the ‘Gelion’ battery, which uses a specialised zinc-bromide gel technology, designed to overcome the limitations of traditional lithium ion and lead acid batteries.

I think backing copper is a no-brainer because everything needs to be wired up, and copper is still the most cost-effective solution for most wiring, however as far as cobalt, lithium and some of the other metals, while they will certainly play a big part in the next few years, there is certainly still plenty of potential for somebody to "build a better mousetrap" in the battery sector.  While certain types of batteries will suit certain conditions better than others, the biggest winners are likely to be the metals that end up being the ingredients in the batteries that provide the best bang for your buck in terms of battery life versus cost, IMO.  

This forum might be a good place for people to argue the case for lithium or any other battery metal and why they think it will end up being one of the bigger winners in terms of being used in the majority of batteries in, say, 20 years time.  My own thoughts are that we have no idea what the best state-of-the-art batteries will look like or be made of in 10 years, let alone 20, so it's difficult.  If you take a shorter-term investment timeframe, like 5 years, I think metals like lithium look really good, however I am concerned by an expected rapid supply response to increasing demand, as I've discussed previously.  There are big lithium mines that are currently on C&M just waiting for increased demand to feed into a higher lithium price, and those mines can be fired up in a relatively short space of time, because all of the infrastructure is already in place.  One example is Wodgina, one of the largest known hard rock lithium deposits in the world (they claim it is the largest), owned by Mineral Resources (ASX: MIN) and Albemarle.  Those two via their MARBL Lithium JV are also building two 25ktpa lithium hydroxide modules in Kemerton, WA (in the SW, just north of Bunbury), so they are setting themselves up to be vertically integrated and get the most bang for their bucks from their lithium production.  Another company taking a similar approach is IGO, via their hook-up with Tianqi.  Once in full production, their Kwinana processing plant will be the largest lithium hydroxide-producing operation and the biggest spodumene converter in the world, so IGO are clearly making a BIG bet on lithium.  They started producing from Kwinana last month (August 2021).  Both IGO and MIN have seen their SP more than double over the past 12 months, and there's likely more upside from here, however I'm not entirely convinced that there will be the same level of hype around lithium in 10 years and 20 years from now.  There might well be even more hype, however I think the future of batteries is far from certain, particularly when you look at what the prevailing views were 10 and 20 years ago.