Europe and the Ecat

Andrea Rossi did not say what triggered his decision to start producing his Ecat SKLeps before the target of 1 million pre-orders had been met, but I can imagine that the drastic change in the current geopolitical situation must have had an impact on his thinking.

If the Ecat really does make a market debut this year, Andrea Rossi will have the world’s attention, and I think this will be particularly true for Europe, where energy prices, which were already extremely high, have climbed much higher on fears that sanctions against Russia could extend to energy, or that Russia could cut energy supplies to Europe. Europe as a whole gets approximately one third of its natural gas from Russia, and European nations are looking at ways to quickly reduce or even eliminate this dependence, which is no easy task.

European nations not only want to reduce its reliance on Russian natural gas, but they have also made commitments to reducing fossil fuel usage overall. The current situation puts them in a very difficult situation because currently they can’t operate on wind/solar alone.

Andrea Rossi has stated that the decision to start Ecat production now was made to ‘gain time’, meaning that he will be ready to start delivery of Ecats as soon as the pre-order target was reached, rather than waiting for that moment to start production. He has stated that production has started in both the USA and Europe. Presumably this means he will have tens of thousands of Ecat SKLeps sitting in storage somewhere, ready to ship when that moment comes. He hasn’t said what will happen those Ecats if the pre-order target is not reached – I think he has just taken the gamble that he will get there.

I think that whatever Rossi says now will have little to no impact on the larger energy picture. Most people have either not heard of the Ecat SKLep, or if they have, they probably dismiss it as being too good to be true. The only thing that will change this will be reports from customers doing their own testing and verifying that it works as advertised. If we get to that point, then I think the power of word-of-mouth, coupled with social media, will quickly bring the Ecat to the attention of government and business. Then Rossi’s biggest challenge will be keeping up with the demand for his technology.