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THE FRONTIER LINE
Hosts Wayne Aston and David Murray explore the critical global pillars of infrastructure development and energy production, from traditional methods to future-forward advancements. The Frontier Line covers the latest industry news, energy innovations, and sustainability trends that are shaping the future. Through expert interviews with industry leaders in renewable energy, utility-scale battery storage, and waste-to-energy technologies, the podcast provides insights into the evolving landscape of energy efficiency and sustainable infrastructure. By focusing on the intersection of innovation and the politics of energy, The Frontier Line highlights transformative ideas and technologies poised to deliver cost-efficient, resilient, and sustainable solutions for global industries.
THE FRONTIER LINE
Avoiding the Costly Rollback of Overly Optimistic Sustainability Initiatives
Welcome back, guys.
Speaker 2:Welcome everyone.
Speaker 1:Happy to be with you, wayne, on the Frontier Line in this new year, you know, kicking the new year off in this. I'm so eager to dive into this situation that you brought up before we walked in today with Puerto Rico. Why don't we dive right into that? Hell of a way to start out, hell of a headline.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this was, you know, right around the time of the time of the week, you know, a week ago, but the half of Puerto Rico started a new year in the dark after massive power outage. Why is that interesting? I mean, it was horrible for Puerto Rico, but it just goes with everything we've been talking about in all the episodes, at least to this point, which is, I think you could make the argument that Puerto Rico's grid is aging. It's run by one company, which is fine, but it also, you know, in this case it was one underground line that appears to be the corporate, so one line took out power for, you know, I think it was over a million residents and businesses. Wow, that's substantial. And why? I think it's? You know it's been restored, I think in most part by now, but it just underscores everything we've talked about about our infrastructure around America and that this that we're seeing in Puerto Rico perhaps might be coming to a city near you or your town.
Speaker 2:You might see more brownouts and blackouts, which they do experience on a fairly routine basis in Puerto Rico already, and they would say well, we've got to update all of our infrastructure Again on an island, they've got to bring all the gear that we know is not necessarily hard to get to.
Speaker 2:There's supply chain issues, all kinds of things, that fixing this stuff doesn't happen overnight, and we're seeing this around America already, and that's as demand is kicking up and and we don't have necessarily the requisite power generation uh, you know, the electrons to support the demand needed, and so what ends up happening in some of these instances is you experience brown out, so you just, you just, there's just not enough power to go around. And I think we're going to see more and more and this just underscores kind of what we've been talking about is that if we don't fundamentally address infrastructure, both on a local, municipality level, on state levels, on federal levels, and how this works and how maybe we have backups of decentralization and maybe you have grid resiliency partners or you have a main utility, but you also have other groups that can perhaps provide a little bit of power or something, and this is going to continue to happen more and more and more and we're going to see it widespread across the US, I think.
Speaker 1:Well, you know it's been a minute since we came into the studio to record. It's been a few weeks as we took some time off. And New Year's Day we have what are being called and questioned terrorist attacks. We've got the New Orleans incident. We've got the Las Vegas, you know Cybertruck bombing. I'm trying to go down the rabbit holes on all of it.
Speaker 1:Looking at Puerto Rico and talking about grid fragility we talked about this recently. We talk about it almost every episode Like what keeps us up at night? The concern about how easy it is to impact us If someone wants to make an impact. How easy is it to make an impact on the grid, on the power generation which makes it so much more important? It's almost like we came up with a narrative or like, hey, it would be really great if, all of a sudden, everyone needed, you know, a lot more power, it'd be really great if we had an opportunity to be able to privatize power somehow.
Speaker 1:And you come up with that narrative and then have no drivers to it and it would just go into an echo chamber column underscoring the necessity of this narrative of grid resilience, of decentralization, of deregulation, of expand and harden and all the things we're talking about. You know, it's almost as if we paid all these countries and these politicians and these people to do all these things to underscore how valuable this opportunity is. Because I just see opportunity. I see all these obstacles and I see all these crises and I hate, I would hate to be categorized as a fear-mongering kind of crisis, hopeful like hoping for crisis, because that's that's not what I, that's not that's not us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not us, but it is. It is quite interesting to see so much of it happening so fast. And we're still reeling from the, the carolina hurricane, but fema has has not done, done anything. You know, the, the who knows how long it's going to take for them to recover. And now we're talking about california and wildfire recovery. We got coast to coast natural disaster right to be dealing with and let alone what the impacts on our grid.
Speaker 1:Funny, starlink happens to be popping up in the news for both of those. You know, elon's got Starlink over there in Carolina. He's got Starlink already up for the news outlets in California to be reporting on these fires. Right, because all the infrastructure's gone, yeah. So what can we do to not be Puerto Rico, to put it bluntly, yeah, what can we do to avoid? That's really, you know, what we want you guys, the listeners, to be focusing with us on. How can we get into this game, how can we make an impact? We think we have the solutions. We have many solutions. We've built a team, we've built a mechanism, we've got the projects, we've got the access to capital. We've got seems like we have, you know, a nice hand of cards to be played and opening up opportunities for everyday guy on the street to be able to somehow get in this game with us and make a dent right, because this has been, this has been the big boys club for a long, long time.
Speaker 2:It has, you know traditionally has been.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is a very small circle of you know, this is the. If you've ever played monopoly and you, you own the utilities, you own the rail companies and you own hotels. Those are the power plays and that's traditionally how our country has been built is on that traditional infrastructure, the traditional blue-chip, blue-collar companies, and it worked. It has worked Really well In what built America into the greatest nation on earth to date. We're just now starting to see some of that corrode and beyond corrosion. It's just meeting demand. That's really the key. It's meeting the demand.
Speaker 2:Right and on corrode. This comes back to. We have an aging infrastructure that hasn't effectively been dealt with, and you know, and and we can, we can, in every community, wherever you are listening to this you have, you have these issues, you've seen them in your own community. Maybe it's the water main that hasn't been updated in 80 years, that's had breaks that you know damn well needs to be replaced. But no politician, or at least very few politicians, want to go out there, disrupt lives and traffic flows and all these things, and not to mention bonding and cost to do a thing that maybe or maybe not people are going to appreciate. But you know damn well needs to be done. It has to be, and it usually has been kicked down the road, by the way, you know, for decades. But we've kicked a lot of these things down the road. Even utility companies, in whatever interest they have, whether it's maybe they were trying to keep costs down overall for their base and not passing on these infrastructure costs, they're trying to just keep up with it. They're just trying to keep it up, just keep going with demand. The problem is and we've talked about this and we'll continue to talk about this demand has spiked everywhere.
Speaker 2:Why Data centers? Why AI? Is that a? You know, all these things are happening around us and so we're in a time where now we have to come to a reckoning about how we fix this and obviously you and I and our group, we think we have a good solution for our space. We see it as part of a bigger.
Speaker 2:We hope there's a lot of groups like us trying to solve this in their own areas. We're trying to solve it in where we're working and we think not only does it benefit a larger problem and building out what we need to do to be successful, but we also think that there is a societal benefit to this infrastructure-wise down the road for these communities. Infrastructure-wise down the road for these communities so that you know we are experiencing less disruption because, frankly, you know again, it comes back to aging infrastructure and you know we talked about it on one of our episodes it wouldn't take a lot, at least some people claim, and I don't think they're wrong. But if you talk to energy experts, you know some very again not to be fear-mongering just saying experts. You know some very again not to be fear-mongering just saying, while connectivity has been helpful, it is now a bit of an Achilles heel, or it can be.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because now we have bad actors that could take down certain, just like in Puerto Rico. They have one line. You take one line down half the country's out of power. Yeah, the US is harder to do, but not you know, with some coordinated things you could disrupt a lot of lives very quickly. Oh yeah, and you mentioned it, you know what we saw and the unfortunate thing we saw in New Orleans and certainly in Vegas.
Speaker 2:You know my take on that is that look at the disruption one person created. Look at the disruption one person created. I mean I'm going to assume, based upon what I read, that these are just, you know, these are two unfortunate individuals who, whatever, struggling with lots of stuff. Yeah, let's just assume that for a second that it wasn't any sort of coordination. It sure disrupted everybody. Oh yeah, I mean it was everywhere, it was in the consciousness. I mean one person with bad intent and an ability to do something. Yeah, look what it does. Oh yeah, now imagine that on a coordinated, bigger, where we have a state actor. This is where and again, not to fear monger, it's just this is. It just shows how exposed we are and we, like you know, okay, out of sight, out of mind, we don't worry about it until we have to worry about it.
Speaker 1:But you know, prudently.
Speaker 2:This is why we're talking about this we want to bring awareness to our listeners that these are real, everyday issues that we hope you take some time to go educate yourselves, listen to our podcast and say, yeah, we probably should be doing more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, you know, on the political front, let's take the poli sci degree and just put it in a paper shredder. And let's take the philosophy degree and put that in the paper shredder too. Be careful there. Now I have one of those. I know you have one of those. That's why we're good at it. I mean, this is self-deprecating in a lot of ways. You know, I double majored in business and architecture. What good is it?
Speaker 1:My point is in the political scene, wouldn't it be valuable if we had people with military backgrounds? Wouldn't it be valuable if we had engineers in these positions who understand the grid and understand how things actually work? Wouldn't it be interesting if politicians were required to have some economic development background or land development background so they actually understand the feasibility and executability of policies that are enacted? It's disjointed is the point I'm making. You've got policymakers and legislators not all because we're still singing praises here in Utah. We're so grateful in Utah, but but nationally speaking, we've got a lot of of of dissonance. A lot of dissonance between what the political theater sees and executes versus what the guys on the ground see and build and execute. And that disconnect is what's causing the dissonance, which is causing vulnerability, which leaves us in a pickle. So again, you know, if I was the president, what would you do? And if I was the president, one of the things I'd be looking at is I would be focusing on the backgrounds.
Speaker 1:How do you qualify to be a politician? How do some of these people even qualify? You know they get votes. Is that the only qualifier? I mean, I'm totally ignorant to politics. By the way, I have opinions, but I'm ignorant, admittedly. But I'm just looking at this and I'm like I think my, my youngest son could do better than half of these people. So it's just a it's. I guess I'm jaded when I see, you know, these huge gaps in all of these areas.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, they've. They've always said you know, uh, what was it? 90, 80, 90% of politics is just showing up. Those are the people who actually make decisions, meaning like they're just they're. They've always said you know, 90, 80, 90% of politics is just showing up. Those are the people who actually make decisions, meaning like they're just, they're the ones that threw their hat in the ring. Good point, maybe, maybe, maybe they are, maybe they're not qualified, but they're the ones who put their hat in the ring and got in there and that's pretty much the qualifier. And getting through that and playing, I mean, that's, that's really it. I mean it could, and that's the great thing also is that anybody can can jump into politics and.
Speaker 2:American politics, I suppose it is. Um, you know I come back you. You mentioned something and I I you know, you and I have talked about this independent, but I think you raise point and I'm going to bring it up here because I think it underscores how I see and especially how it relates to AI skill sets.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes.
Speaker 2:And why I said hey now, because I will say this. You know, we hear, you know, gary Vaynerchuk has said soft skills are the hard skills of business and life. Right, yeah, there's been a lot of attention paid over the last decade to these human skills, soft skills, hard skills. What do we really need as, as you know, and then how they are related to our degrees in college or grade school or what have you. And you know, this is an issue where I've had some experience in and you know, I've, you know, jumped into the lots of rabbit holes in this area. I mean, and this has been an issue that education has been trying to tackle for over a hundred years. Let's go back to Carnegie. Carnegie, actually, there was a, there was a famous study where they they looked at 2000 engineers and they said what's the value of an engineer? What does it come from? Does it come from, like book smarts, stuff they're learning, you know, that kind of a thing, or does it come from something else? Turns out, even over a hundred years ago, 15% came from that book smarts or that kind of that stuff. Everything else came from what we would, paul, put into this, this umbrella of soft skills today, and this is, you know, thinking, interacting, leading, managing ourselves. You know critical thinking, communication, collaboration, project management, relationship, ethics. I mean those things that you and I both know are critical, absolutely critical, and the better we are at those things, the better we can then play in these spaces. So I would say your experience in school not dissimilar from mine. You know my experience, you know, started out in business, ended up in philosophy. I was going a different track. What the practice of philosophy did not the study of philosophy, but the practice of philosophy was. I read a lot yeah, like a shit ton. Yeah, like more than any of my peers. Generally speaking, yeah, because that's what I had to do and I had to go through really heady arguments and pull these things out, and it got me better. I believe some might disagree at critical thinking and being able to go through these things. That skill has served me well. That's the skill I gained. That's the main skill I gained out of doing that as I became. I think it honed my skills as a critical thinker. Think it, it honed my skills as a critical thinker.
Speaker 2:You mentioned the military. I could point to anything on a list of 20 plus skills and I'd say that any person in the military probably gets really good at those things or gets practice on things. That's how you function in the military. Why do military, why do people come from the military, come out and go into civilian life and are able to play? Because they spent time doing this. It is leading.
Speaker 2:Vision, accountability, adaptability, planning, organization, persistence I mean all of those things are just inherent to being in the military. Well, yeah, they're really good at it. So what we don't? Education hasn't really recognized independently the value of these things, and I'll stop here. But I'll say the reason I'm talking about this is MIT studied this recently. They set up a whole group within MIT to basically say and they called it the human skills matrix and they came up with all these durable skills that everybody, irrespective of what you like to do or what you're really good at, this is the stuff you need. This stuff is going to make you better at what you do. And to circle this all, perhaps maybe the people who are politicians maybe aren't as practiced in all of these areas. Maybe they've developed a good skill set in their particular vertical, but maybe they aren't the best, or maybe they're really good at communicating.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Right Most likely.
Speaker 2:That's the most probable. Yeah, communicating, interacting and collaboration, doing that and maybe, maybe not else, but that that ends up being really important in the political sector, even though they might not have all the other kinds of ways.
Speaker 1:Well, it's really important to collect both. It is very you have to right. But executing policy may be a whole different bailiwick and to your point, I love what you shared my experience and I'm a college dropout, you know, with the double major that I was working toward business architecture, but I'll tell you that my probably my number one skill was advanced English writing and communication. I mean that has been a godsend for me in my career. You know, I'm in my 29th year now as a, as an entrepreneur, and those skills have bled into packaging a deal, communicating that to investors, enrolling the banks, enrolling the service providers, all the things. It's some level of acumen of the English language that's been the most helpful to me.
Speaker 2:Communication, and that is one of those variable skills that MIT identified. I just pulled up the list here because I'll quickly go through it. And I bring this up because I think, you know, I read this list a while ago and I had a thought, and I'll share it because I think it's important and we're off kind of headlines, but this is critical. This is, I think, essential to kind of what we're talking about. I mean, it underscores, like, how we're evolving and actually I think AI this is where I think is, this is where it makes a very relevant conversation this is stuff that, at least for the most part, ai cannot replace. Yeah, it can't, that's true, not easily. Yeah, not right now. And so you want to know how to hone your skills. This is the stuff that you can actually become better at. That AI can't just come in and replace you, and so I think that's why this whole bigger picture as our workforce evolves and it's evolving, it's changing. Before the advent of generative AI, the last couple of years, there were predictions by the biggest McKinsey and everybody else saying we were going to have 800 million jobs by 2030, displaced worldwide. Why? Because it was going to have 800 million jobs by 2030, this placed worldwide. Why? Because it was going to move to job market that is more soft skills driven, and that the expectation was, by 2030, that 80% of employers would be looking and putting this stuff higher than you know. Yeah, do I care? Where you graduated? Maybe, but what I care about? Do I care that you did this? Yeah, but what did you do? What was it? How is it related to these skills anyway? Right, so I mean thinking. So there's four categories. This is this is MIT, yeah, not me. Uh, MIT, broken in four thinking interacting, leading, managing ourselves. Four categories under thinking critical thinking, creativity, entrepreneurship, ethics, systems thinking, comfort with ambiguity, growth mindset all really good, oh, yeah, okay, yeah now, interacting, communication, collaboration, empathy, negotiation, relationship curation how important are those things to everything we do on a daily basis? Critical, critical, yeah. Managing ourselves yeah, and I'll share with our listeners wayne is amazing at his self management and, like his schedule and what he does. People don't know this, but he's so absolutely driven and so planned out. I mean, he, you can say you know some of these things, but you also incredibly good at managing yourself. So, self-awareness, accountability, adaptability, planning and organization, persistence, professionalism, initiative and integrity yeah, I mean these are things like, well, persistence, professionalism, initiative and integrity. I mean these are things like, well, yeah, I mean these are all things that you and I go. Well, yeah, that's that and all that stuff's critical. And then on leading strategic vision, again, you know, wayne, you know, to blow some snow has an amazing ability to like, really lay out a strategic vision, empowerment of others, project management and performance management. So when I read this list a number of years ago, I was like, oh, this, this is, this is, this is what I would hope to see schools focusing on.
Speaker 2:And it doesn't mean you don't teach history. It doesn't mean you know what it means. You're, if I, if I take a history, you know, if I take a history class, what critical skills am I getting out of a history class? Well, maybe I'm, you know, I'm learning a little bit about systems thinking. Maybe I'm learning how do all these things. So you can take any subject and you can say, okay, what am I getting out of it? Like, again, philosophy, what are you getting out of it? You're probably going to get a lot of critical thinking, a lot of critical thinking, a lot of critical thinking, probably some, maybe some adaptability, maybe some systems thinking Maybe come with ambiguity, especially when you're reading Abstract idea that it is like well, that doesn't make me feel good right now that I'm reading this thing.
Speaker 2:Those are the things that are really coming out of that, and we don't understand how to translate necessarily. So one thing occurred to me. I'll share it here. It's something I think. There's one group in America that is that that, I think, just has all of this on lock, one group of people that that often get overlooked farmers.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, oh, absolutely. Farmers we know a few of those. We do some of the best people on earth?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, if you think about what a farmer has to do. Oh yeah, there's not anything on this list that they're not great at that, they're not great at that.
Speaker 2:They.
Speaker 2:They have to. You know, I mean relationship curation. You better damn well know your neighbors and get along with them, because you know something's going to break down All your vendors, equipment. I mean so many relations, empathy, collaboration, communication. Yeah, all of these things I mean talk about. You have managing yourself. Yeah, you, you don't get up at 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock in the day. If you work on a farm, you get up at early. Am right, yeah, because you've got a lot of stuff to do. That's right, it's, it's. It's. So.
Speaker 2:When we talk about rural america, this is what's in my mind about. This is what rural America there's. There's so many people in rural America who who just have this stuff down at, and I think it's the really valuable thing. Anyway, I totally agree. That was a complete, that was a complete diversion into, but I think it's an important conversation and I think it feeds into AI directly, because we are now, we're now bringing on agentic solutions where I can ask an AI to say, basically, go through my emails, find the ones that are important, start narratives for me on, you know these important emails and pay attention and then get back to me. Yeah, I mean literally, we're there right now, not not. Hey, I'm going to put this in and create an email for me. No, I'm talking about I can, or like I can, have a personal assistant. That is a. That is a is an AI. This is changing so quickly. Where we don't, we're getting away from needing some, some of these jobs, but but we still need to be able to do this stuff really well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I appreciate you bringing that up, because one of the most important objectives Well, I appreciate you bringing that up because one of the most important objectives for me personally, doing this show for our listeners is expressing authenticity. We're not scripted. We have some ideas, we have a theme, but we reserve the right to talk about what the hell we think, about what we're feeling. We bring emotion to the table and all of these things. This is a really valuable conversation. If we win and we meet the objectives I have for the show, then our listeners come away with this feeling like they know us better. Right, that's what we want y'all to feel is. We want to. We want you to feel like you're getting to know us and how we think and how we operate. That would be my number one objective.
Speaker 2:So I appreciate you hearing that that would be my number one objective. So I appreciate you hearing that Well. Well, thanks for that and thank you. Thank you, it's, it's good to talk about and I think I think it I mean it's informed to think a little bit about how I look at all of our projects, right, yeah, you know, we we've looked at building, obviously in rural communities, and and, and workforce is one of the things that comes up. That's how I look at this. I'm like, well, I don't worry about workforce as much as maybe some, because I think they have the right skills. Yeah, they can upskill quick, but they have the right base skills and I look at that as they have the right human skills in place that they can do anything. Yeah, give them, give them the shot. Yeah, so that's how I mean. So it does play into our on our you know, some of our, I think, decision-making and how we're going about this and how we're seeing certain things and that's.
Speaker 1:But that's just one, the one one example of how this is a kind of relevant to our stuff, and it begs. What you just brought up is so relevant in regard that the things we're building next-gen data centers, next-gen power plants, next-gen industrial these are things that have never been done before. Right, so you don't have a built-in workforce. There's not been a course at college that teaches you how to do that. This is all about adaptability. This is humanity adapting for the future, into the future, innovating into the future, and these are the skills that bring us there. And so you're absolutely right. Well put, all these people are going to be trained up into whatever these new fields end up becoming. Yeah, that's what's exciting about it. It's very exciting. So anyone can get involved if they've got a will and the discipline to choose. That's right. So I love it. I love it too, and I think there's going to be a lot of opportunity for a lot of people. Absolutely, and I'm so excited to be able to deliver that to so many of these communities. Valley Forge Impact Parks.
Speaker 1:I wanted to bring a CNBC article up. Okay, and I don't think anyone's going to grab this for face value. Well, let me put that differently. There's a face value to it, but I'd like to introduce the twist, our unique twist and, and the way I think about it, the title of the headline here why tech giants such as microsoft, amazon, google and meta are betting big on nuclear power. And I'm gonna underscore, underscore betting as a teaser, and I want to read a little bit, because we've been following this heavy for the last, you know, months or so. We know all about what AI is doing to push power demands. We clearly understand that. Everyone, including the Department of Energy, has called for a double or a tripling of power capacity. We understand all these issues, but what I felt was interesting about this article and the opportunity to key into something special is that I'm going to bring two quotes out of this article. First one after years of focusing on renewables, major tech companies are now turning to nuclear power for its ability to provide massive energy in a more efficient and sustainable fashion, and it specifically states Google, amazon, microsoft and Meta. Okay, that's the first one and I'll get to the second one here.
Speaker 1:Okay, as leaders in the AI race push for further technological advancements and deployment, many are finding their energy needs increasingly at odds with their sustainability goals. And if you read the article, the journalist that wrote this was really kind of making the case for why nuclear is such a great idea. Now everyone knows that we support nuclear. We think it is a great idea, super excited about Kairos and Oklo and you know all of Deep Vision and all these guys working on these SMRs and all this advanced technology. We are so excited about the future of nuclear.
Speaker 1:But I want to underscore to the listeners that we have in those four companies, those are the big hyperscalers, these are multi-billion pushing into trillion dollar companies who have been wrong about this commitment to sustainability. Okay, what's happened is they've spent years being wrong trying to solve these problems of sustainable energy and infrastructure. Now it's a hard pivot. The hard pivot goes and what I find interesting about this is it's such a it feels so disconnected to me To be over on the far left, focused on your solar and your wind and your true renewables, and then jump all the way over to this nuclear very renewable, I would argue nuclear someday will be the best power source until we come up with a zero-point energy thing that's beyond nuclear. But it feels like what's available to us on the horizon.
Speaker 1:Nuclear is probably the most sustainable, cleanest from an emissions perspective and a longevity and all the things, but I'm saying that's at least 10 years away. You still are dealing with FERC, you still have a process, and we've talked about the hundreds of millions of dollars it will take to build test facilities, go through the FERC processes, develop approvals and get there someday with no guarantees. So the question that begs is why are these huge billion and trillion dollar companies not seeing what seems so obvious to me? Why are they not seizing upon clean coal technologies? Why are they not seizing upon natural gas and hydrogen technologies that are abundant today? That's what we're doing.
Speaker 2:I think that we're and I think they are. I think they are starting to move that way.
Speaker 1:I think they are okay, I'd love to see more of that, because that is the gateway to me.
Speaker 2:That's the only gateway and and I'm you know, I don't want to say that they're not and they can probably correct us, but I, you know what I've seen. I think it's, you know, maybe reading between the lines is it's not a halfhearted commitment, it's just it was good business, yes, Okay, last decade. And the question is is are they truly committed? Are they really committed or is this just, hey, we're just trying to meet our day so we can say that, well, we are, we're green, we don't, and there would be safe, for example, in California?
Speaker 2:Some would say, oh, they, they, you know, as a state, are saying, look, we're doing all these things, and you'd have the people in the know saying, well, yeah, because the pollution's elsewhere that we're creating, because it's coming in from Utah. Or we're getting our gas in from the West, even though, you know, even though we're using it, we're, you know, the emissions created on pulling it out of the ground is all coming from elsewhere, it's not coming within the state of Utah or state of California, even though we're sitting on all these rivers. So it's, it's a bit of a marketing perhaps. I wonder, and I don't want to go sideways because it's hard to really understand it, but I think the demand is so high. Now they can't. It's been. They could play this game of the bicarbon credits. We're going to do this.
Speaker 2:We're going to play this and this, and I think it's kind of a game. I think, at the end of the day, like lots of big businesses there, look, we want energy as cheap as we can possibly get it to power our stuff. And, yeah, we know there's a reality out there. And that's not to say there aren't people in those organizations who are absolutely committed to saying, no, we want to get to green, we want to get to fully sustainable, like you, and I would like to see that. But there there's a pragmatism that has to happen. You, in order to get there, you got to. You just can't turn it on. Yeah, and we're seeing that they were able to turn on some.
Speaker 2:Not enough, yeah, it turns out these are the same people saying, well, yeah, I, I want to do these things, but we can't have that type of power. Yeah, because that's not a good enough for base load power. That's right. So we want a tier four data center, but yeah, obviously it can't be completely on solar or wind because that's not consistent enough power. And even with a battery storage solution, we still don't have those yet. So we've got to have line power.
Speaker 2:Where's line power coming from? Line power is typically coming from a gas plant in the case cases of coal plant. This is what I'm saying is that it's masking what's actually going on and the industry actually knows what's going on, which is, yeah, we're still producing a lot of now, a lot of renewables coming online, but it can only be used if you have certain kinds of technologies and structures in place and other wires and stabilizers and all the additional equipment and technology, any batteries and gas, and then so it's not a just, it's not a panacea, and I think some, I think these big companies who have gone there and saying oh, we're, we're, you know, we're we're really going after this far, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, it is my question, I think you know, I think it's, I think it's Paul, I think they're playing politics. It will play a nice image, I think.
Speaker 1:I think, well, we, we happen to know a little, a little bit, what's in the public realm of the CEOs of these big companies. We, we know where they lean. It's not surprising to me that they develop these we're going to be all sustainable by 2030 initiatives. They're following other people in that renewable camp that think that's possible. What I think is fun about it is you've got very, very wealthy players who have access to all the information everyone else has access, probably more access still making these hard commitments and inflexible. I'd like to see more flexibility. I'm predicting more flexibility is coming, because what we're seeing with headlines is the backpedaling off of these hard. You know California, the state, commits to being all renewable by 2025 or what, what? 2028 or something.
Speaker 2:Because something crazy. We've talked about this. It's like an onion headline Until reality sets in, until reality, until they realize they've actually got a, they've actually got a power all of these charging stations or whatever it might be Like. In order to actually do this, you actually need infrastructure, you actually need power.
Speaker 1:Yes. So you know, jeff Bezos says, okay, we're going to be all renewable by X, and they march hard toward it. They put billions of dollars toward it. It doesn't work. The message to investors is just because you're the big, moving toward trillion dollar valuation juggernaut in the space doesn't mean you know everything, doesn't mean you're infallible or infungible in your thought process, because you are, they are, are, and so you might want to spend some time looking into some of the possibilities and and focusing on pragmatism here, because when people are rolling this stuff back, it comes at a cost. It comes at a cost of speed to market. It comes at a real sunk cost of putting energy into renewables that aren't meeting the need Right. So there's actual capital risk that's occurring and capital loss that's occurring when we're rolling back some of these policies.
Speaker 2:It's a fantastic time to be alive and watch all this happening the rolling back, the rolling back, the rolling back of some of these policies, and if that's what's happening though I mean that that's what we're seeing we're seeing a big move back, and I mean you and I are both seeing, especially in the natural gas is that this, this, this dual cycle solution, to solve immediately, with the idea that we will eventually convert over to hydrogen?
Speaker 2:That is becoming a very good alternative, and one, I see, which we knew was an alternative. Anyway, we know that's what you're probably going to have to do in order. You know you're going to put some sunk costs into this infrastructure. You don't want to just let it go like oh, in 10 years you want to be able to, because you, because you know, business-wise, you're going to want to build right off or the life of this thing. You're going to be able to get the use out of it. So what do you do? Well, a dual cycle engine. You convert it over to hydrogen when hydrogen actually makes sense yeah because it's coming.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that is the solution, absolutely hydrogen and yeah, you can argue your building and access strategy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so for the transition, for the transition, with something like yeah.
Speaker 2:So you, yeah, yeah, you deal with gas. Now, is it is it? Is it um? Does it release stuff? Yes, is it as much a coal? No, it's not Um, certain coal, I mean now certain capture technologies. I oh, yeah. So it's going to get us there and there is a financial on the business side incentive to move over, because eventually you know you've already got your sunk cost in the generators and then you can go over to hydrogen, and hydrogen, you know, is it going to be more expensive, less expensive? That's going to be a decision, but then it's going to make a lot of sense for all kinds of reasons, right, yeah?
Speaker 1:yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's kind of where this is going, and I see them. You're right, they're rolling back Because they're realizing they can't meet their demands their own created demand.
Speaker 1:Their own created demand. They can't do it. That's interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah. No, they've created a monster, kind of yeah, and it's just not solvable with traditional. What do you say renewable energy Now with traditional? We say renewable energy, now, geothermal awesome, has huge promise as far as compactness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, power density, yep, power density, and so I think we're going to see some interesting projects in that arena. Absolutely, that's one that actually is starting to at least prove out to where it could become a baseload power. Well, that becomes pretty sexy. Oh, yeah, because it is green and you know the infrastructure costs probably not as much as traditional gas, yeah. So again, they're looking at those things, but they're everybody's, I mean everybody, those the big four or five. They're realizing that they can't build, yeah, if they don't build and embrace other modalities of power period and history, because there isn't enough, yeah, that's. There isn't enough renewable to solve it. And even if there were, there's not the trend, there's all kinds of other issues around it. They just can't build a vessel and nuclear. To your point, how we started, yeah's, it's six to 10 years.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Um, now there's been some moves federally, um, in the last couple of months and I think we'll see what the Trump administration does to maybe um speed some of that process up. But you're still looking at a long process. And again, the issue with nuclear is just the permitting portion of this. Can it from $50 to $200 million? And at any time in that permitting process you could get told no and that's a big bill to have to swallow.
Speaker 2:If you get a no, the community says no, we're not doing it, and communities will have to, unless I mean, all of this has to be figured out, like, how do we do this? This is this? All this has to be figured out like how do we do this? Well, I think some of it is. There's a pr thing that's going to have to happen on the nuclear side to say this is the new energy, this is how we're different. Yeah, this is why it's different. Now, this is why it's safer, this is why it's better. Yeah, and and they're going to need gut milk. It's a national strategy to educate people perhaps matter good on what this actually is, and I think that's what we're going to start seeing.
Speaker 1:Well, I totally agree with you and I and I'm going to go back to that buzzword of betting I'm not a gambler. I refuse to gamble in Vegas or in business. I just don't do it, I don't believe in it.
Speaker 2:And this is why we invite him to poker games.
Speaker 1:He doesn't come. I didn't get the one. I saw that, but I didn't get an invitation. I do want to come and watch. I want to come watch and cheer. It was really big money, it was 10 bucks.
Speaker 1:But listen, guys, the name of the game for me and, I think, for Invictus Sovereign and the Valley Forge Impact Parks here I'll speak for the company on this is delivering the biggest bang for the buck in the most pragmatic, effective way, with a heavy focus on risk mitigation. Now imagine for a minute we were to develop a situation where we've got plenty of baseload power that takes advantage of what the current fuel availability is. It's the most cost-effective, the cleanest, that automatically converts over to a zero-emission thing at some time in the future. And how cool would it be if we have an AI power management platform to plug all these amplifiers of geothermal and battery backups and flywheel technologies and waste conversion, and there's a whole list of things we can augment that with. Oh, and, by the way, we can also bolt an SMR onto that at some time in the future. It's the most flexible. It's the most.
Speaker 1:If I'm asking investors to bet on the right horse and I'm not asking anyone to bet anything, but if we're using an analogy of picking the right horse, I'm going to pick one that has like feet in seven lanes, not just one lane. You know what I'm saying? I need the horse with seven feet in seven lanes. To me that's risk mitigation. Yeah, hedging seven feet in seven lanes, to me that's risk mitigation. Hedging, it's effective hedging. And so hopefully, if you're listening, you're paying attention to this, go research, this. Go research and prove me wrong that that's not the way to go, and I'll leave it at that.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll bring and I'll dovetail into this with another headline. That is exactly what kind of a little bit of what we're seeing here, and this is interesting. Actually, this is today. The outgoing US government is set to streamline permitting for geothermal energy development, and this is a before I. Dcd data center dynamics dot com. Oh yeah, article, I get it, yeah.
Speaker 1:But yeah by stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, good stuff. This the author, zachary Skidmore. Just to give a shout out, the outgoing US government set to streamline permitting for geothermal energy development as part of a broader executive order to support energy infrastructure for artificial intelligence artificial intelligence data center sector. According to Bloomberg Bloomberg report, the order, which would be one of President Joe Biden's last in his term of office, is expected to be published next week. Bloomberg reports citing people familiar with the matter. However, timing is subject to change.
Speaker 2:The new measures will include establishing a competitive process for companies to build data centers on federal land and steps to speed approvals for geothermal and nuclear energy development. Under Biden's draft executive order, the Department of the Interior would set up a geothermal energy priority zones to reach a total permitted geothermal capacity target. In addition, the Department of Defense and Energy would identify sites currently owned by federal agencies that could house large-scale data centers owned by federal agencies that could be that could house large-scale data centers. Facilities located on government-owned land must comply with specific physical and cyber security standards and face restrictions on foreign funding. Businesses would also be required to allocate a portion of their data center computing capacity to national ai research initiatives, covering the cost-related infrastructure development construction.
Speaker 2:Uh, president biden and it goes on, president by the issue of flurry of executive orders in the last month of his presidency. However, there are concerns that when Donald Trump assumes office, he could roll back the orders. President-elect Trump has already promised to reverse Biden's ban on new offshore and gas drilling, which is a whole different headline which was announced this week. Despite this Trump administration's signal that it will prioritize data center developments, as I would expect, as a matter of national security, pledging to unleash all forms of energy to support the massive spike in demand for ai.
Speaker 1:Now, I've heard that, I've heard that specific term more than once. Which one brum used it unleash american energy. Yeah, I love the ring of that, don't you? Yeah?
Speaker 2:it works, yeah, you know, and it's true. I mean in in a way. I mean we, we currently, we, you know, we're the we're, we're producing an amount, a staggering amount of energy out of the U? S. We really are, yeah, I think we, we, yeah, we're four, whatever it is, however many million barrels a day of oil, and so we'll see if we can continue on it.
Speaker 1:Well listen if it doesn't speak volumes to us actually putting our money where our mouth is and believing in the future of geothermal. I'm just going to reiterate for everyone listening that as we go about site selection, just so happens that we have more than one site that have geothermal capacity as an option in the future. I always want that to be an option if it's possible. We have a checklist of site selection objectives, what that nomenclature should feature, and having geothermal capacity and with the enhanced geothermal capacities that Furbo and others are developing now really expands that.
Speaker 2:Yes, and in fact actually in this article they talk about FERBO. Google's previously partnered with FERBO Energy and Nevada Energy to procure more than 100 megawatts of geothermal energy in Nevada. Although you know and FERBO's got the Cape Station here, so it's here in Utah. So lots of movements in that space. I mean you and I we've talked. We think geothermal is another one of those great possible Amazing.
Speaker 1:It is absolutely amazing. It is.
Speaker 2:And and especially here in the West, and especially you know we're going to probably have, you know we're gonna have the oil industry to thank for this technology.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cause that's what they're using, 100%. That's what, and they're getting great results very small footprint, amazing energy density and cost-wise, a lot less than some other modalities. So again, very good solution you take this, you take nuclear, you take some of these things. These are going to be the solutions as we're going into the future that we're going to see a lot of, and then it's going to come back to we're going to use geo, and then it's going to come back to we're going to use geo. We're going to use solar and wind where it's appropriate, or maybe to power not dissimilar from how some of those rigs are powered in Texas, 100%. A lot of this infrastructure in Texas, the oil rigs themselves are powered by wind, because you don't have a grid out there. Right, that's how they power them, so you can use it in capacities. Right, that's how they power them, so you can use it in capacities. It's just it can't be that base load power, at least right now.
Speaker 1:And there are probably better versions of base load power. So that's really what we're talking about. Is load profiling? Yes, and we will get deeper into load profiling. So stay tuned, guys. We'll wrap this episode up now. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2:Thank you everyone. Until next time on the Frontier.
