Chuck Yates Needs A Job

0:00 Welcome, everybody to Chuck Yates needs a job, the podcast going against my better judgment. First time we've done video on the podcast, Carmen, they told me I had a face for podcasting. So this

0:14 is, we'll see what happens with the video on this. But anyway, please today to have my guest on Carmen Batista. And we're going to talk some shit. We're going to talk hydrogen. This is going to

0:26 be cool stuff. Um, but Carmen, let's get started Where do we meet? Well, funnily enough, actually, we met through a shared boxing coach, Luca Vrazi, a dear friend of both of ours and lose one

0:37 of those great kind of guys that, you know, you're there sparring with him and off the round. He's going, oh, you know, how's the job going? And at that particular moment in time, I was, I

0:37 co-founded and raising funds for a

0:55 different hydrogen company and I was telling him how it was going. and they said, Oh, you know, let me help you with that. I know some people in that industry. And you kind of pinch of salt.

1:06 You're like, I appreciate the help. Always accept help when it's offered. Well, so few people go out of their way to help you. And he wasn't lying. He connected me with you. And you, of course,

1:18 gave me a lot of help and counsel and introduced me to some people who ultimately became interested in investing in that previous venture. And isn't that just crazy? The, if you think about it,

1:31 back in the day, Lou fought Foreman. Right. He fought Tyson and he fought Holyfield. And boxing, there are certain boxing critics out there that think he beat Foreman and that he beat Holyfield.

1:45 Tyson, not so much.

1:48 Well, I mean, what a terrible timing to be world champion, right? You know, he beats Foreman, he's top of the world and then along comes a young, hungry, mean Mike Tyson. like, you know,

2:00 it's like being the second best hundred meter sprints. We're not saying bolts around. Yeah, that's probably fair. That's probably fair. But yeah, you're right. Now I always tell people that my

2:11 boxing training is like 20 boxing and 80 therapy because we're just two old men out there punching the bag, lamenting life and, uh, and the like. So yeah, no, so Lou introduces us, uh, we go

2:26 get sushi, as I recall. Right It was kind of the, the opening thing. So tell, tell the audience about your background. How'd you, how'd you get to eating sushi that day? Well, um, so I, um,

2:38 I grew up in England, um, some of, uh, speech therapist and, uh, a lawyer who became a social worker, wonderful parents, really instilled a lot of values of education for me. Um, I was lucky

2:52 enough to go talk food, which opened a, a lot of doors for me. Um, oh, I got a great story Yep, so.

2:60 The head of the, I believe it was electrical engineering department at Rice University, 'cause that's where I went, was Dr. Tittle. And Dr. Tittle was from England. And anyway, my brother Jay

3:15 was an electrical engineer and Jay got a scholarship

3:34 to go get a master's degree at Cambridge. And Jay comes up to Dr. Tittle and says, Hey, you know, I'm gonna go to Englandand I'm gonna do this at Cambridge. And Dr. Tittle and his British

3:36 accent said, said, Oh my gosh, that's very prestigious. Only Oxford is better. Definitely just deflated, brother Jay. Gotta hold, what, what? Well, you know, I think

3:47 it's much of a muchness, right?

3:50 You know, it's, do you like a miles bar or a Snickers bar more than that? Yeah, Harvard or Yale, I mean, yeah, exactly is it's all about what you do with it, right? It's a great education,

4:01 but

4:03 there's no clear path afterwards. You kind of have to go and find something to do. And being a classicist, there was no clear path for me. So I was very lucky that Shell came and did a trading

4:17 recruitment event at the university. And I thought, well, this sounds funny. And I've always enjoyed board games. And I like that element of calculated risk in trading And I like the fact that

4:30 Shell seemed like a really great company where it would kind of take you in your war clay form and

4:36 incubate you.

4:42 And yeah, I had wonderful career at Shell, worked in London, Houston, Barbados, trading a range of different oil products in a range of different geographies and really learned a whole lot

4:53 commercially and about oil trading through show and. still got very fond memories. I think you only realize what a great company show is when you cease to work there. So it's a really great place

5:09 to work. No, it shows balance sheet, were you proprietary trading trying to make money or is this more logistics of trading the products they're creating or was it some of both? Sure, so you do

5:23 get both types of traders at show. You get more supply traders, typically around crude, supplying the refinery and you get proprietary traders like I was. So initially that was in derivatives. So

5:36 proprietary trading down the curve,

5:40 trading relative value, typically of like refining margin. So crack, spreads, all that good stuff, a little bit of fat price. And then went on to proprietary trading in Latin America, West

5:55 Africa, were shown actually divested.

5:60 it's footprint actually at the time to veto, quite an interesting move strategically because Shell wanted to divest those West African assets due to liability reasons, even though they were

6:14 profitable, yet when they divested them, they divested them whilst allowing veto to operate under the Shell Pecton logo. So whether or not they truly achieved their goal of divesting the liability,

6:29 it doesn't matter. Interesting. So you go from Shell, what do you do next? I went on to a Chinese national oil company and headed up there oil trading in the Americas for four years. So I'm

6:44 focused on Latin America and the arbitrage between

6:49 US and China for a number of products from ranging from LPG

6:56 to ethanol, ethanol was quite interesting at the time. It was quite. formative change, you know, a lot of the most profitable trades in fiscal or trading revolve around policy and the change in

7:08 policy. So that interaction between China and America and China's ethanol policy was really interesting and by getting ahead of the curve on that was very lucrative. Did that four years ultimately

7:25 became the cliche burnt out trader

7:29 grand old age of 33

7:32 having traded for 12 years

7:36 and really then wanted to re-center and refocus on ESG tech and the energy transition which I think is broadly representative of the larger theme we see at the moment among commodity traders the more

7:55 for our sighted ones such as Mercuria traffic or investing very heavily in bean energy now and focusing on environmental products like carbon credits, which is fantastic to see. I think that

8:12 commodity trading houses are one of the best barometers of capitalism and it's great. Maybe the purest. Yeah, the purest form of capitalism. Yeah, no, exactly So if you see those guys saying,

8:26 okay, and they're private companies as well, so when you see private pure capitalist companies, and I say that's compliment, refocusing on clean energy and emergent energy tech, you think, oh,

8:41 energy transition 20, this is a real thing. Yeah, you know, I had Dan pickering on the podcast and have had him in a clubhouse room before, and his whole shtick, which is 100 correct, is this

8:55 isn't a government regulatory project forcing us to do this. This is a true tidal wave. This is consumers, it's companies, it's people saying we want less carbon on the planet. So it's a real

9:11 thing. And I think it's so clever. I really, for me, it was a choice between two things, right? It was going and finding

9:24 next stage tech that really moves the needle in the energy transition or if I couldn't do that I always said I'll give myself a few years to do it and if I can't do that I'll go and re-qualify and

9:38 become a carbon crater. That's one through an energy trader. Right. It doesn't matter if it's potatoes, tomatoes, you know, unicorn horns in Narnia, like it's all the something trading. So I

9:52 think the mechanism of carbon credits and environmental products is going to be so very huge in allowing this this morph in what the energy mix looks like. And I think California has actually done a

10:09 real solid one for the rest of the country in trialing at great expense how this looks like and how this works. I think the LCFS program is quite a powerful change and I think I put value in carbon

10:23 and putting a price around it, especially in the US, to a less degree in Europe, because we've not quite got a United States of Europe yet. But wherever you've got a group of countries or states

10:36 that can work together and have common value on carbon price, that can drive change. Yeah. Yeah, you know,

10:44 it's going to be interesting. And we can probably do a whole podcast around that. My reticence on the carbon credit market and how that all works is, I mean, at the end of the day, you basically

10:59 just have to put a price on carbon, you know, and to reduce consumption. I mean, I think we all get that. I just don't know how that functions within the framework of the United States, China

11:14 and India, not having a clue what we're going to do. You know what I mean? It seems like those three need to get into a room. and just figure this out. And then the cards will kind of fall where

11:26 they may in terms of figuring all that out. But like I said, we do a whole podcast on that and we probably will. I mean, 'cause it's gonna be a thing. Right, and ultimately it is the impossible

11:39 because there's that interplay between developing countries, or one could argue developed countries now, saying that they have the right to have their industrial revolution, be it 50 years later

11:55 than America, so that it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to come to a global carbon price, but

12:07 hope that I think as a start, you'll have America and Europe individually. I think really difficult when you look at the double digit GDP growth in Africa really really difficult to

12:23 carbon credit penalties there, but my thinking is that the developed countries of this world will be able to suitably invest and develop green fuels like electricity, renewable electricity,

12:45 hydrogen, to such a point

13:01 that they may be actually be cheaper alternatives to fossil fuels and therefore you will allow Latin America, West Africa, the leapfrog, and adopt those technologies without those carbon credits.

13:05 Yeah I mean in the phone business I mean Africa's not laying phone lines anywhere, they just went straight to sell you. Right. So yeah now I

13:16 get that and that does make a lot of sense because I've said this on I mean, if we were starting from scratch today to create an energy infrastructure, we'd probably just start with hydrogen, you

13:30 know? The thing we've got going is we've got this just massive infrastructure that does a really, really good job of delivering energy, and it's just built around hydrocarbons And so it's the

13:46 transition of that is what we've kind of got to navigate. And that's why I think what drew me to the market is that there's so many problems that need to be overcome. There's so many technology gaps,

14:05 so you talk about infrastructure rollout. There's a huge number of challenges to be solved, but if you can help solve those challenges, there's huge amounts of profit to be made as well, because

14:19 it does require a complete

14:22 infrastructure overall, something that we haven't seen in a much short space of time, then you look at standard oils, pipeline network,

14:34 that will be smaller than what we need to do in renewable energy. And probably even this isn't the right word for it, but maybe even inflation adjusted, if you will. I mean, when they were

14:46 rolling all that stuff out back in the day, pretty massive, but to your point, smaller than what we're going to do going forward. And, you know, I get kind of beat up on my podcast, because

14:58 everybody always says I'm trashing the energy business, and I'm really not. I'm very pro-energy, I'm very pro-hydrocarbon, so I'm going to go ahead and say it at the risk of sucking up to my

15:11 enemies. I mean, it really is morally wrong to deny folks' energy Yeah, I mean, when you're burning wood, you're burning animal dong, I mean, your life expects is half what you and I have,

15:24 because we can turn on a light and have electricity and we're like, so I really do feel there is a, and I'm stealing kind of Alex Epstein's terminology for it, but there's a moral calling to make

15:36 sure folks have cheap, affordable energy because it really does make life better. Yeah and, you look in our own experience in Houston, how we've been able to deal with a freeze, flooding, the

15:49 energy resilience, you know, I think there's clearly going to be a new diverse mix of energy sources going forward. It's not going to be a single solution. And transition, I think transitions

16:03 rather a nice word, in my opinion, transition doesn't imply an abrupt halt of one, and a start of another, it implies a more gradual, staggered effect whereby over time, those same energy

16:19 companies, you know, shall, morphed over the years now predominantly

16:27 in LNG business, BP has got great aspirations, so has Chevron

16:33 in their energy ventures team. So I think those companies do have the dry powder, the engineering expertise that they can become some of the biggest champions of the energy of the future Yeah,

16:47 buddy of mine just got elected to the board of Exxon.

16:54 So Andy's always been a clean and Andy Karzner got elected to the to the board of Exxon and he's always been a clean energy guy. So Exxon's going to have their hands full in the boardroom with with

17:06 Andy. So one quick kind of funny story, my dad decides he needs solar panels at the house, right? They get solar panels put in Tesla batteries on the wall. And I'm like, and I'm sitting there

17:23 talking to dad. I go, dad, how much does this cost? And dad's like, ah, 125, 000. And I'm like, wow. I'm like, okay, you know, I'm one fourth of the inheritance. I think it's kind of

17:36 fair question to ask. And I go, all right, well, you know, dad, and he goes, yeah, but I never have to buy electricity again. I go, okay, what's kind of the payback on that? And he goes,

17:46 12 years. And I was like, dude, you're 81. So

17:51 I got, I hope you're here to see payback on this, but you know, and so anyway, he's like, well, I just went off the grid, blah, blah, blah. So - What you don't know is your dad actually

18:02 secretly has a very large cannabis growth farm underneath that house. So he's paid back to you. He's really quick.

18:12 Actually, you'll appreciate this 'cause dad has an incredibly dry British sense of humor. So during the Urchottness.

18:21 when the freeze is happening, my house down in Richmond is equal distance from the fire department, the police department, and the hospital. So I always thought I'm bulletproof on my part of the

18:33 grid. It's never going down. I'm right in the middle of all this, boom, lights go out twice. Right. Electricity off, it's freaking cold, right? So anyway, I show up over to my parents' house.

18:45 I've got, you know, cat in the carrier, you know, bag under my arms and I walk in and I sit down and under his breath and a very dead pathway, I guess, 12-year payback doesn't sound so bad right

18:59 now. How does it,

19:01 you know, it's a good point. Fair enough, Dad. You talk about something we can get to in the hydrogen later, but that

19:12 backup power generation, that electricity on demand for schools, hospitals, data centers.

19:22 the capacity to replace, you know, you can't really be gas powered electricity on a kilowatt basis, but you can be heating our generation. And that if you look at the North East, the backup

19:36 generators around there and the data and new data since they're building, there's a very real possibility that you have,

19:45 I've used solar, which works well, or you can use hydrogen on site to have their backup generation. And that's a real first step because you can't build Roman a day, you need small winds at first.

19:59 So we've talked about the

20:03 LCFS program, how that can actually be used in Paris for hydrogen stations in California. But also there's a real demand of data. Because one of the problems with hydrogen is right now, it's like

20:20 being in the oil business. they were cars. So, you know, you kind of build it and they will come. Okay, fine. But how do you build it profitably? Right. And there's very few hydrogen

20:32 companies out there. Yeah. So

20:37 let's get into hydrogen. And I think as a backdrop, you and I talked about this the other night at dinner, back in the late 90s, when oil went to 12, I at Stevens became a power technology guy.

20:52 One, it sounded cooler than oil and gas guy. And two, there was just nothing to do and oil and gas. And the internet wave was starting. And so kind of the thesis we carved out after trial and

21:07 error was that basically the grid delivered 999

21:14 percent reliable power that actually meant that there were eight hours of downtime a year on the grid.

21:22 And something like 90 of all the downtime was five or 10 seconds or less. So it was a blip, which didn't matter to your refrigerator, 'cause it would just cycle down and cycle back up and you

21:34 wouldn't miss a beat. It really matters to a microchip and data centers and computers and all that. So we kind of had this thesis of the grid was gonna have to go from 999 reliability. And I don't

21:46 remember if we said five nines or seven nines of real life So a lot of the technology we were looking at was ways to buttress kind of the grid for backup type power. And one of the companies we

22:03 invested in had in effect a reversible fuel cell. It basically took electricity and generated hydrogen out of it, reverse electrolysis. And

22:16 the thought was is that at night, you know, when power is really cheap. and you can produce as much power as you want because there's not a big demand on the grid. You just in effect fill up a big

22:29 container of hydrogen and then use that for peaking power, run it through the

22:35 fuel cell

22:38 and create your electricity.

22:42 And there was a hydrogen market, an industrial hydrogen market at the time So the thought was you could use these machines to generate hydrogen, sell hydrogen, and in effect make a little money

22:56 while you did this. But the big thing was was going to be storage around this company. We got it public. I can't even I don't even know what wound up happening to it. But that was my view of

23:09 hydrogen has the market changed much since then I was 20 some years ago so interestingly markets kind of come full circle on that so best way to think hydrogen isn't in it's

23:25 just we've got wide range of listeners so I should clarify something we always have to dummy things down by my mother well I shouldn't say dummy things down from other make it simpler for my Yeah if

23:36 you don't understand it well enough you know you're not able to speak by simply so we should think of hydrogen as really like another sought form of battery a great way quite a great store for

23:48 electricity liquid store for electricity if you will as a former colleague once said and so

23:56 the hydrogen is a fantastic store of power bomb far better than almost anything we have combined with a hydrogen fuel cell and is one of the best most economists economical white wires and

24:16 transfers of power we have so it's Fantasticly useful for things like planes where weight is a real concern, where lithium-ion batteries are incredibly heavy, relative like 10 times heavier. That's

24:32 always one of the great stats I like is that Boeing and Airbus don't even have patents on electric planes here. You know what I mean? So the whole battery thing for planes and doesn't work, you

24:47 don't have the range and it's too heavy. Doesn't work, unless there's a material step change, you'll never go get there. So for air transport, hydrogen has it. For ships, kind of the same story.

25:04 And there's some really interesting developments in tech. I'll talk about upper-prietary pellets later, but where you can make hydrogen from an electrochemical reaction from raref oxide alloy

25:19 ships again Great Opportunity to make hydrogen from seawater they can pump on board and react

25:28 and trucks so what we're really talking about here is hydrogen as a replacement or proxy for diesel is really good wifi lacy suffered random gas before he published shift to electric batteries stuff

25:43 that was running on diesel at the moment so you big eighteen wheelers re need to be outta all a great load and and you you have to be able to have good range good power be relatively light their

26:00 hydrogen kicks in but also to your point and there's a bright opportunity to use hydrogen as I am kind of a peaking device for power generation so it is almost like a one great big static battery.

26:22 Yeah, there's absolutely that possibility. And for using it on things like power plants, absolutely. That's why power plant data centers, not power plants.

26:34 So you've definitely got the potential to use hydrogen in those kind of power management situations, as well as power generation. So hydrogen can be in certain disaster relief areas or perhaps

26:52 portable power generation, the likes of the military with technology that

26:60 has come through this year,

27:03 this pellet technology, you have the capacity to generate power in a distributed manner. All right, Carmen. So that's kind of the framework for what hydrogen can do. Where are Are we in the world

27:19 today? exactly what is it doing. And then number two, 'cause the knock on hydrogen is, it's expensive and it's not really that scalable. And so. So there's actually four issues. Okay. Not bad

27:35 issues on the side. All right, there it is, it's too expensive. Yeah.

27:40 It's hard to scale. It's all centralized, which leads to the fourth issue. It's really hard to transport Right. Really hard to transport. So it's not fungible, it's not commoditized. Yeah. And

27:54 absolute pay. As I said earlier, that's what attracts me to it. Okay. Because if you can solve these problems, great, so too expensive. Yeah, you've got steam methane reformation at its source

28:08 can produce about3 a key, which is good, that's less than diesel. The problem is then you've got to add another3 a key so to transport it to where it's being consumed. because it's not all being

28:21 consumed right next to a refinery.

28:25 Electrolysis is even more expensive. It's about8 a key. People optimistically think that gets down to3 a key, largely driven by assumptions around renewable energy, cheaper electricity, still

28:39 uses drinking water. I'm somewhat dubious that we do see3 a kilogram of electrolysis

28:49 I actually don't think power prices drop as fast as the consensus projection is, but we'll see. It'd be great to see it for. But again, centralised, massive electrolyzer, you know, you're not

29:04 talking about distributed manufacture. There are some great advances. Previous company I worked with Gen H2 on liquid storage, applying NASA technology

29:17 through exclusive license the developed transport. citation methods and so far liquid hydrogen that's great there's some discussion about using ammonia to transport hide should the arrange that used

29:32 to be an okay idea up until this year and I'll explain what changed and so we've got issues with the cost of generation we've got issues on how scalable is because it's all centralized and issues will

29:46 transform now

29:49 this is basically exactly what the company that I've cofounded addresses I've worked with some absolutely brilliant scientists former MIT PHDS you copy H days these guys used to work on the trident

30:03 missile

30:06 making nanomaterials for it they were the lead and nano engineering team for schlumberger made over one hundred and fifty patents and they've actually created a rarer Fox I had allowed that when put

30:21 in water, any kind of water, it's salinity-intensive, bit salt water, filtered sewage water, drinking water, reacts and makes hydrogen. And it makes hydrogen cheaper and steam methane

30:37 reformation, half the price of electrolysis. So, and cheapness, it solves it. This can be done at any scale. This can be done on a localized scale Your gas station level, or centralized, not

30:52 that you'd ever need to do it in bulk centrally. And it changes the way energy is transported. Simply put, it commoditizes hydrogen, because you can now ship these pellets, like so Japan. Once

31:04 hydrogen doesn't have great energy security, still burning fuel oil and some power plants, you can now ship them containers of these pellets. They can pump water from the sea, and have very, very

31:17 simple low cap X reaction. So let's give, let's give mom the, uh, the analogy here. I mean, are we talking almost kind of like Alka Selser? Yeah. I mean, right.

31:29 It's good. You know, so

31:31 basically we're, we're shipping Alka Selser out. We drop in the water and plop, plop, fizz, fizz. That's right. We've got now, you know, you need to do it, of course, in a, in a closed

31:40 container, but very simple. The structural side of it is very very simple. It's just a closed container that you've had the reagent pellets, and then you do get a bifurduct, you do get hydroxide

31:52 as a bifurduct, but that's got application in cements in fertilizer, or it can be used to treat sewage and low nature sewage. So,

32:08 you know, it's not, it's an easy bifurduct to deal with So, how far are you along in this technology? Is it, you did it in the lab one time in a cup? What what What's kind of what what's kind of

32:22 the the work you've done so far to to start getting your hands around being able to commercialize this also and this was invented it so one point I I in twenty fourteen by and for Dossier Tio the Wamp

32:40 one point one version which is aluminium based as the core of the alloy and is being experimented on still now by mit to understand exactly what he created right and infantile that invented that

32:58 whilst he was slumber J he went and went worked for an mIT startup and then two or three years go crazy son starts up nov the last three years he's been thinking how can i focus down the Nano

33:12 engineering on this and create a lower price point one much cheaper more than six thousand per cent cheaper When he invented in twenty fourteen cause price matters right right and it has come combats

33:27 what was saying earlier over these things have to be economic rodents and then focusing on making sure it doesn't passive ate a big issue you have on these electro chemical reactions is basically

33:42 they're not quite catalysts because they are consumed in the process longer used in inappropriately used the word catalyst is cast as you drop in some caused the electric chemical reaction after a

33:54 while they get like a layer of rust as it were around them which makes them a nurse so he's had to molecular he changed the alloy so it doesn't pass away and salinity insensitive cause we ideally want

34:09 to do this with seawater sewage water as opposed to drinking water which I personally believe as former commodities trader I believe drinking water image sized next twenty years which are not form of

34:23 electrolysis and steamy fan reformation they use drinking water Yeah now that's up them in Enron tried that back in the day by the Zurich's they went they went down that that path so basically to to

34:37 get to where the technology is today you've you've experimented in the lab Yes that gives you your basis of alright how much do the ingredients cost you how much hydrogen came out Yes I mean any

34:50 reason to think if you used and I'll just make this simple one unit of material and you generated X amount of hydrogen any reason to think if you use four hundred and fifty units of the material you

35:06 don't get the same linear combination of chemistry scalable fin chemistry chemistry So Yeah it works that way at any scale there there's No there's no difference There are some things that you could

35:22 do to optimise the process with exploring the potential of electromagnetic fields improve the reaction, but we don't need any of that. We've got a great reaction

35:40 as it is right now, certainly when we're comfortable taking to market. Of course, it's a

35:47 fun game, we've got some really interesting investors right now, which is great. It's

35:52 about what information you reveal to who. We do have a patent, we've got a lot more trade secrets than that patent, so it's a matter of cautiously showing people enough that they're interested and

36:08 engaged, and then as we go down the due diligence period, rating to the very last minute for the final investors to show like full scope. It sounds like dating Yeah exactly exactly like dating as

36:26 the single Guy I've been down this path but no so so you've got your arms around it I think you've taught you and I talked at dinner the other night and bullet one dollar kilogram three dollars a

36:40 kilogram somewhere in there and how does that translate into like something that the the audience would know like a gallon of diesel or something you think of it as kind of two to one like kilogram of

36:54 hydrogen is roughly two gallons of duca and cycle diesel free dollars a pop that's probably the equivalent of six solar hydrogen pump Gotcha and so we believe cars with generating the pump even after

37:07 storage compression depending on how secure supply chain of course cause this is ultimately a commodifies thing we believe will be able to price free four dollars at the pump

37:20 a little margin. We're not going for big margin because it makes more sense for us to drive adoption by being cheap. So we are planning on having at least one station in California next year.

37:29 California does yield LCFS credits and when we get CARB

37:45 certified with a zero carbon intensity score for our method of hydrogen generation, we should be able to generate pretty good value for our investors through

38:01 LCFS generation and use that as a full-scale working model to demonstrate the tech works. We're really looking to just partner with the various hydrogen companies and energy companies to deploy the

38:18 tech.

38:20 We really we readied Swazi as widely spread as possible I mean something you taught Me I think the first time we went and had them add lot of I think we went and ate lunch not dinner but from their

38:35 ten thousand hydrogen cars in California right now as we speak hey it went up it went up one hundred per cent this year is crazy which is awesome Right I was talking to the guys at loves about this

38:52 and I said I said I gave my statistic eyes by eight thousand cars on the roads and they said they were last year there's another eight thousand this year to summarize yeah they're pretty popular I

39:04 mean the great cause the great cars like the immediate parent pickup like I've been I went with a Nikola guys to their C there are things called the Badger and My is an awesome com and the Paralympic

39:21 And so this is, this is pretty interesting. So you, for lack of a better, we'll call it a gas hydrogen station. Yeah. You pull your car up. Is it, is the hydrogen coming into the car in a

39:34 gaseous form or a liquor? Okay. So it's coming in a gaseous form. And then what actually powers the car? Is it a fuel cell or fuel cell? That's what I was thinking about it as when we were saying

39:47 about it, like a store that you pump in the gaseous hydrogen and the fuel cell converts it. But you don't need to like

39:57 the hydrogen is just like charging. I mean, it's electricity and water, right? You can fuel it up in 10 minutes. And then you're good for 500 miles. Oh, wow. Yeah. So yeah. And yeah, it's

40:11 got power. Like you should see these hydrogen motorbikes are basically unrideable this. You can evil on steroids. You like you

40:36 put a Kawasaki and a Ducati and they have like an evil hybrid baby. That's what these bikes are. They are so, so powerful. So in the lab, we've been able to create hydrogen. Shouldn't be a big

40:36 step in terms of having a commercial application. You're going to have your station in California. God bless the taxpayers of California for paying

40:47 you money and, uh, uh, and the like if they don't go broke. But, um, so you'll do that. That's kind of the first step. Let's get really weird and deep and we probably shouldn't be doing this

40:60 at eight forty five in the morning. We should be doing it nine at night after a bottle of wine. But let's say this works and, you know, a bucket kilogram. So in effect diesel, you're generating

41:15 at fifty cents. And I mean, there's going to be more cost to it. But, you know, let's, okay, let's say. 75 cents for diesel or a buck for a gallon of diesel, whatever the case may be.

41:28 Doesn't this just like, isn't this a big fucking deal? Yes. I mean, tell me how that changes the world. It's given me tools ever since. You know, I really deep dove with our CTO, Indranelle,

41:41 and went through this. This changes the entire world. It changes energy, changes energy supply, energy security These reagents are mined in Canada. So they're in US hands.

41:57 It means that using clean energy becomes affordable in the world. And you can start exporting clean energy solutions. Does it spell it to, right? Yeah. Just don't get them wet when you're

42:11 transferring them.

42:15 Yeah, you can monetize hydrogen. It changes absolutely if your commodity trader liked me. IT blows my mind how much of a change it is like when you realize how many of these high value blockers the

42:32 cost of generation how you transport factories to centralize when all of them fall at once to one technology Yeah it's a game changer it's a massive game changer I mean I'm delighted that I've been

42:46 invited to be CEO of this a hyphen company Damn of hydrogen do businesses Green with Green Revolution nitrogen is Revolution but really I'M just the custodian of this technology this the the Amazing

43:01 work has been done by introducing his wife Tin at this is his game changing and this is just one of the inventions that they've made with nanotechnology this was this Guy's attention for a few years

43:14 earlier that absolute geniuses is extraordinary and I don't think they coin I wanted to make hydrogen in a greenway greenest way right I don't think they quite realized that it was also the cheapest

43:32 way and how transformative it is that to the supply chain and I just wanted to make green eyed finn in a mobile manner yeah no really a really interesting stuff the cause you're right I mean to the

43:51 extent and I said this earlier in the podcast and in it bears repeating though I mean if we were starting an energy infrastructure build out right now and we'd just had a bunch of dirt on our land

44:06 right nothing else there we probably would start with hydrogen I mean no no greenhouse gas emissions from it et cetera I mean we'd have to deal with the Hindenburg and the Faq that it's highly

44:21 combustible, but outside of that, right? I mean, and like, look, nothing's perfect, right? So technically, water is a greenhouse gas from the emission from burning hydrogen, but it's a very

44:33 minor one. There's lots of water in our system. And like, look, the other side of it is ours doesn't use drinking water, it doesn't use electricity, but ultimately, the reagent is mine at some

44:47 point. So we do have an environmental footprint. Nonetheless, I think we're the greenest solution.

44:56 We're not perfect, but I think we're as good as we go. Yeah, you know, just, and I probably should have started the podcast by saying this when we went to dinner the other night, you asked me

45:08 what I consider being on the board. And after I gave my full disclosures of, you know, you auto-aspire to more and. what would be the dress code at the board meetings and whether I could wear my

45:19 hoodies or not. And we'll continue to talk about all that stuff, but just a little bit of advice 'cause I've been thinking a lot about what we talked about the other night at Denner. I think a

45:32 really aggressive early and often reaching out to the environmentalist movement and educating them on what you've got and just like you just said, hey, here's why I think we're really good. Here

45:49 are our issues, here's how we're gonna mitigate our environmental impact. I think it's really important 'cause one, those folks actually have a big, huge voice. Yep. And so I think it's

46:04 important and I think a huge mistake, we in the oil and gas business made, And I talked about this, I think, two podcasts ago. I think one of the biggest mistakes we made as we didn't tell people

46:16 what was in FRAC fluid you know we didn't say Hague as it's water and sand and a couple of other things here I can drink it it's not that bad we created a mystery around it and that really gave the

46:30 environmental movement a leg up in terms of being able to portray it as evil portray it as damaging and so just two cents worth for what it was what it's worth for me is really to the extent you can

46:46 educate the other side and as much transparency as you give I think that's really going to be helpful cause an adoption by the environmentalist movement I think will will go a long way to help you

46:59 secure and kind of your your your footprint if you will Yeah I mean I think that's absolutely the case I think now you have the way people communicate is different so I think communication, who means

47:15 such as this, that direct, you know, there's no cuts here. Just sitting down and having an open dialogue is so important.

47:24 I think, you know, the environmentalists are, are, are court court supporters here. But we are a for profit business. We're just going to be operating in an ethical manner. And, you know,

47:39 there will be challenges that we have to address, you know, some things in order to protect our profitability. We're concerned about, of course, patent piracy. So we have to be a little careful

47:49 and some things are very secret. But we also want to speak very openly and honestly about what happens in reaction. What is the byproduct? I drop site. How will that be handled? Because it is a

47:50 form of acid.

48:06 So I think if,

48:12 as you say, communicate things clearly from the get-go, and there's no attempts to conceal something. Then there isn't a suspicion that we want to be open with people from day one. Andrew and Neil

48:29 and Ting have got,

48:31 they've got Shlamasay stamped all over them in terms of the policy control, and they're very much engineers, and we've a

48:44 really strong ethical drive, and

48:48 so this is ultimately their company, and that's how we're going to do business. Well that's really interesting, I wish you the best of luck on it, because it's fascinating I was talking to a young

49:04 call, I'll call them energy transition investor the other day, and they were going through you know, all the various fuel cell type stuff. And I go, you do know that all those companies that

49:21 you're talking about right now, I called on all those companies in the late 90s, you know, 20-some-odd years ago and was walking through and, yeah, the guy was like, well, you know, so much

49:32 has changed and there's so much more money available by all the large oil and gas companies. I go, time out back then, it was Enron El Paso, all those guys providing all the money. And the

49:44 technology was at about the same point. And I said, don't feel bad that I'm sitting here schooling you as the old boomer. 'Cause back in the late 90s, I went to eat lunch with one of my dads with

49:57 really good friends who's been a long time energy guy and we talked fuel cells and he knew all about it and I go, Jim, you're a pipeline guy, how do you know about this? And he goes, oh, there

50:06 was a wave of it back in the 70s So, you know, hydrogen tech was really developed after World War II. Right. I mean, you, there's been surprisingly little innovation and the reason is the only

50:19 real market for it except some forklift trucks in warehouses was NASA. Yeah. NASA was what moved the needle in the technology and even then that was more storage, that wasn't generation. Right.

50:33 So, yeah, I sincerely believe Indranil Damoff hydrogen has made the most significant in hydrogen in, yeah, I mean, decades. A gazillion years, yeah, for that matter. Decades. And, yeah, no,

50:51 and

50:54 I think you're thinking about it right in terms of there is this tidal wave that we need less carbon and it's being driven, commercially outside of, it's been driven by governments, but also

51:08 outside of governments. But more importantly, you gotta beat diesel. Every time you and I have talked about this, you're like, I got to beat them economically. I got to be cheaper. I got to be

51:17 cheaper. I got to be cheaper. So you can't rely on the government subsidies. Government subsidies might be there for a while they'll be there, but they won't be there forever. Right. That

51:29 supports your build out. You have to provide a better cost, better value proposition for the consumer. And the technology is there You

51:43 know, Hyzon, Nicola, they have trucks ready to go. There's just not as much demand for them yet. So it comes with chicken

51:53 and egg scenario. What goes to us? Infrastructure in the truck, or the trucks will clearly it's the infrastructure right in the chicken and the egg scenario. You need the infrastructure. So, and

52:01 then like who builds it nationwide when there's not the support. So I would love to see an LCFS rolled out across multiple states to support hydrogen build out.

52:16 And let's see, let's see, we've got a clear path in California. We will see what happens, then how you get it nationwide, we'll see. So two things, one, definitely come back as you've had

52:33 developments because we'd love to keep track on the story and hear how you're doing And two, when you have a milestone of some sort of getting a financing raised or that first station opens in

52:50 California or whatever it is, and there's a closing downer, we have Lou at it, right? 100. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well,

52:59 if you do come on the board, then Lou has to be some kind of advisor, stroke, counselor to both of us And interpreter

53:10 and audience, the reason that's funny. and I love Lou to death, but I mean, that is the heaviest New York accent I've ever heard. Yeah. And I think it's the reason we've been, we've been such

53:23 good friends is, he can tell me the same stories every time we box, and I only understand about a third of it. So I always pick up something new each time, and he didn't have to think of new

53:34 bullshit to say. Oh, fantastic. Thank you very much, Chuck. Absolutely, thank you for coming on, Carmen.