Chuck Yates Needs A Job

0:20 Hey, everybody welcome to Chuck Yates needs a job. The podcast. Sorry been away for awhile. I had my white D C roast. We roasted. The Rice Brothers made a million dollars for Y D C. Which is

0:31 very cool, helping underprivileged kids learn to read in Houston, Texas, which is a good thing, digital out counters. We had our big fuse conference, The South by Southwest of energy Technology.

0:42 If you will really cool stuff, Bobby Tudor gave a keynote. John Arnold gave a keynote. It was really great. Enjoyed getting together kind of all the segments of the energy business and talking

0:53 through how we're gonna handle this transition. We just got done recording Bd and we stumbled upon something that I wanted to flesh out a little bit more. We. We're basically talking about

1:04 technology and energy, the interaction the drivers, and so let me just throw some stuff into evidence here that I've been wanting to talk to you guys about if you look from nineteen fifty to two

1:17 thousand. Energy usage and bowen, I say energy usage. I mean electricity power demand in the United States was up almost fifteen. X. I mean, think about it. We came up with a lot of really cool

1:30 stuff to do with electricity, think refrigerators, think washer and dryers think lo and behold air conditioning, think lighting all this stuff. Then we roll into the computer revolution and we're

1:42 using a lot of power, so up fifteen x two thousand to today, then a very very slightly, Not much. In fact, you could you could call it flat and you wouldn't be stretching anything. I think Why

1:55 that's happened. The last twenty years is not that were not in effect using more power. The machines have gotten really efficient. I mean if you look at what lightings done over the last twenty

2:06 years, amazingly more efficient computers way more efficient. I think I saw a stat that we're using ten acts. The amount of computing power in the cloud over the last decade, but we're only using

2:18 about ten per cent more power to power those machines, just because the machines have gotten more efficient. I kind of give you that and let's put a pin in that for just a second. Let's go then to

2:29 a couple of podcasts. I've listened to and this is what I'm going to conclude with if you haven't had a chance to listen to Marc Andreessen. Go on Joe Rogan. I think he's been on twice once. The

2:40 summer of twenty one second time was the summer of twenty three, so several months ago, but times talked a lot about Ai in kind of his vision for an A I driven artificial intelligence driven future,

2:54 really fascinating stuff. The first time I don't think then lay person knew a lot about Ai. What was going on. And you had this whole thing of is it going to become the computer and take us over

3:05 and kill us And so the first time he came on a lot of philosophical discussions On what even is a I. I. What could it become second time Cause we've had chat, G, P. T introduced. We're seeing Ai

3:18 embedded in a lot more things gotten some more granular detail and I don't want to put words into Marc Andreessen mouth, but I'll paraphrase for the audience and I definitely want to listen to those

3:30 podcasts are amazing. He's fascinating guy marks. Take his Ai. It's a fancy hammer. It is a tool. It will be subservient to man. It will make our lives better, and so I don't want to say he was

3:44 preaching a utopia, because there is no such thing as a utopia, but he was preaching a much brighter future because of Ai and their spend a lotta time investing in a I driven products strategies etc.

4:01 Cause, I think it's going to be embedded in everything, and quite frankly March right about that. I mean If you think about it, if your girlfriend just broke up with you ran off with some dude,

4:11 half your age or God forbid ran off with your brother and your a twelve pack of beer in? Do you want to go search for a song on Apple music or do you an Apple music just to know it's time to play

4:23 guns and roses, I used to lover or Hank Williams. You want them to know, so let's put a pin in that kind of this Ai driven future, and then talk this The third point I want to bring up if you run

4:38 a Google search and I run one hundred a day. What is this? What is that? That's one water power and a I driven search of the same exact question, five watts of power to train the Ai driven

4:52 language model to ask that question, ten watts, two thousand watts of power and guess what. Everybody's going to want their own Ai driven language model, right, The Republicans are going to hate

5:05 the way the Democrats model work, etc, so everybody's going to be training these languages. We've already seen it. They're competing languages everywhere. It's going to happen. Right What do we

5:13 do when we put these three things together, Cause I'll tell you this. I don't think we have the ability to generate enough electricity in the United States to meet this future demand if we're going

5:24 to embed Ai and everything, and that doesn't even have anything to do with all the electric vehicles. We're going to be running around here all the computing power, or we're going to put Be putting

5:35 up into the cloud. If you look out, I think Alon Musk predicts by twenty forty five. We're gonna use three X. The power in the United States that we're using today. We use about four trillion

5:49 kilowatts four trillion kilowatt hours of power, and that's about one sixth of all the power used in the. In the world, so he's up three acts, then Goldman Sachs is up two and a half x in their

6:03 predictions. Even Mackenzie's up to acts. We're going to use a lot more power, and when you look at what's going on, I mean in Texas, we almost had a massive brown out this summer, If at one for

6:15 a freak rainstorm in central Texas hill country to cool it down a little bit, we would have had an overload on our system, and as most y'all know are caught is the stand alone grid in Texas that

6:29 supplies our power. Well, Everybody always says Urquhart. It's also screwed up. It's also bad way I look at Arcot. It's a leading indicator, and so what's happening in Arcot today that were on

6:42 the verge of brown outs. We've used more power each month for the last nine straight months in Erekat. That's going to happen everywhere else. I think men are holed had the head of me, so, which

6:55 is the Midwest grid? On his podcast several months ago and he was talking about how they used to have fifteen percent excess generating capacity above demand. Now They're talking two percent, so

7:09 we're tapped out and it's hard. It's really really hard to bring more power online. We were talking on Bd like I said earlier and we're talking about Dominion, which is the utility that services

7:24 the Virginia area in and around Dc. I'll get these stats wrong, but will check them with Bt. Ee. It. I think they've put in seventy five data centres. In the last three years. The power they've

7:36 supplied has grown seven percent. The word on the street. His dominion is actually telling data centers know we cannot have any more data centers on our system. It's just really hard. It's really

7:47 difficult. If you think about the shale revolution and oil and gas. I mean we used to gripe about all the government regulation and intervention. And all that truth be told pretty easy to drill or

8:01 oil well in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, for that matter, Montana, so some private equity folks and some companies that were made up of five guys and rusty pickup truck went out and actually

8:13 doubled oil production in the United States. We went from call it. You know five ish million barrels a day. Two. We're producing thirteen million barrels a day of oil in the United States. We

8:24 were able to do that with entrepreneurship, grit hard work and drilling individual wells to do that with power. Just going to be really really tough. The grid has to be synchronized. You've got to

8:36 move electricity around. You can't store electricity produced oil. You store it in the tank. You can come pick it up. When it's time to get there. You can't store practically speaking. You can't

8:47 really store electricity. The grids. Got a lot of moving pieces on anything gets out of whack. It shuts down the whole system, so I lay all that out there. Because this is potentially going to be

8:59 a really big mess, we need to be talking about this. This can't be demagogue. That can't be politics. Because it comes down to science. I forget Doom. Berg has a quote and I'm going to bugger up

9:11 the quote, but physics is a a brutal arbiter of the truth. Something to the effect of we can't get around science, and so at the end of the day, this was going to be really really hard to supply

9:25 all this power to to the United States. If we want this ai driven future, so I threw all that out. Too. It's disjointed. Here's kind of my plea. This is the open invitation, the open letter.

9:38 If you will to Marc Andreessen who I've never met. Listen to on Podcasts before Big huge fan, but Mark. I actually think a power summit. No pun intended. You would think that, given my panache

9:53 in my. Prominence as a podcast where I could come up with something better than a power summit, but screw it power summit It is we need a power summit of Silicon Valley VC funds and then we need

10:07 Texas private equity energy funds to get together and talk about this problem Because I know you appreciate it mark, but I'm not sure all of Silicon Valley Appreciates just how much more power we're

10:21 gonna need and how we're tapped out I don't know that the utilities are gonna be able to provide it for us They were they came up with their business models in a different time and yeah You've got

10:31 folks that are being innovative on that front But at the end of the day if you need something done and maybe I'm a snob talking my own book here You need private capital leading the change and so I

10:42 think the Texas energy folks Are the people that are the same people that brought you the shale revolution or the ones that can bring you the power? Revolution here and so we need to get together.

10:54 I'm going to throw out. We all go to tell your odd cause. That's my favorite place on the planet and let's just talk. We need to do everything from us and energy, understanding what shall needs in

11:05 the way of power, particularly reliability, et Cetera We need your political clout. Because quite frankly left her own devices, people hate us and the government's not going to give us the the

11:19 benefit to be able to lay lines where we need to lay lines. The permitting the regulations, I mean trying to get a nuclear plant permit in the United States. Oh my gosh, so we need your political

11:30 clout. You need our power. I think we need to give you an accurate view of where we are on supplying the energy to you and we need to even get together and talk nitty gritty of stuff there

11:44 accompanies the Texas Energy Private Equity are looking at with Silicon Valley Vcs. And the deals just fall apart because we structure deals differently. You guys pass out having to control aboard

11:59 Texas, Private Equity Energy has to control the board, or else they'll pass out, and so just even deal terms like that, we needed to talk through and figure out how to coexist cause we need to be

12:11 investing in these companies together, So Mark. I'm saying we need to get together. You get your people together. I'll get my people together. All getting one room will go to all reds, Which is

12:21 the restaurant on the top of Mount Sophia, Sophia, Maison Wine list Great food best view of any restaurant I've ever seen in my life Will do that will solve all the world's problems. And look

12:37 forward to seeing you there.