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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
Company Spotlight- NAES (North American Energy Services)
Good morning, Dave. How are you today? Good morning, Good morning. Good morning Wayne. Welcome back to the show. Everybody Got a great episode teed up. Dave and I have been doing our homework, as usual this is what we do.
Speaker 2:We're exciting people in our free time.
Speaker 1:There's just so much to talk about. There's always something to talk about Every week. It's like we've got a list of stuff what should we, what do we have time to cover this week? So this week we're going to be talking about NACE.
Speaker 2:We are. No, I've just had a funny little anecdote. So you know one of our and says hey, you know, I've been listening to your podcast and he's like as if I didn't, as if I don't have to hear your voice enough. I've got a hearing voice in the morning on my drive into work. He's like, ah, you know enough, enough anyway I. It was funny, I figured I'd share with you. You need to appreciate that.
Speaker 1:So I do. I know who you're talking about. That must have been greg, right? That must have been good to have friends. We love greg, okay. But so, as I was saying, guys, nace, n-a-e-s and we're going to dive into NACE, a very, very large multinational company. How do you want to frame kicking this off, dave? Do you want to take the lead on framing this up?
Speaker 2:Sure, I mean, let's give it an overview. I mean NACE. If you don't know anything about them, you're like, okay, nace, that's neat. So it's N-A-E-S is the acronym, is the short for it. It actually stands for North American Energy Services, that's right, one of the most significant players in independent power services today. Founded in 1980 by four Northwest Electric Utilities, the company since has grown from its regional roots to a global powerhouse and since 2001, it's been a wholly owned company by Japanese conglomerate Itochu, giving NACE the financial strength and international reach to expand across every corner of the energy sector. So this is a very, very, very well-respected, well-regarded company here in the US and they have, you know, a bit of respect outside the borders Very significant player in the space. So I think that sets the table for who we're talking about here and you and I have talked about and I'll let you go, wayne, talk about, like this, independence, because that's kind of a key word here. We hear independent a lot, but there's a lot to it in this energy sector.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe we just lead with that because you know, as we contemplate, who NACE is, what they do, by the way, you can go look them up at NAEScom and I recommend that you do if you're in the industry and you don't know about NACE. But Dave and I are particularly interested about nace number one because we're working with them okay and we'll get to that later in the show. But disclosure, but yeah, disclosure here. But, um, as we've learned about nace, um, there's this contrarian belief, okay, and and I I heard a quote recently from Peter Thiel suggesting that a startup typically always has a contrarian belief what's your contrarian belief as a startup? And for us at Invictus Sovereign, my personal contrarian belief is that two-thirds of all power generations are going to become privately built and operated within the next five years. I've made that prediction multiple times on the show and I think Dave loosely agrees with that and he'll chime in on, maybe, the nuances of that. But that has huge implications. What that means and the foundation of my belief is that because utility companies traditional utility companies do things a certain way and that certain way is failing the system generally, globally, today there's this once-in-a-lifetime transition happening right before our eyes.
Speaker 1:We happen to be pioneers in this independent power provider space, standing up huge generation and transmission and standing up communities around that. That have never been done before, quite frankly. And in order to do that, we've talked about having to have the right people and depth on the roster. And so here's the major connecting the dots for you guys. Our traditional utility companies are traditionally operating their own assets. They don't contract it out to a third party NACE and what makes them really unique globally is they are a third-party operator, arguably the largest independent power plant operator on earth, and you can go research that it's, if not the largest, certainly among the largest for this niche. And what they do. I mean they operate nearly 3 000 different facilities globally in many, many countries. Uh, and, and you know, similarly to quanta, you know as you, as you go to the website, you look at the family of companies nace has been acquiring. You know these big companies and owned by itochu is a is a trillion dollar revenue producer. Dave, do you have the number on what the actual revenue is.
Speaker 2:I think the last number I saw was, uh, somewhere in the neighborhood, like 850, 900 billion in revenue a year, with all of their own, so, so approaching. But I think that number is a little bit older, so I think it could even be over that now. So it's a big, big, big number. This is a very significant company in the global landscape.
Speaker 1:Okay, Thank you for that, and so you know you guys listening out there. This is important to understand because, you know, Invictus Sovereign is building. We're the developer, we buy the land, we're designing and we're developing. You know, Sentinel-1 power complex we've talked about, we've started to get more open about that as time goes on here and it becomes more public. But that's a privately owned, independent power generation resource and we're not power operators, we don't proclaim to be, and so the natural thing is to find the best operator in the world to do that. And we've talked to other operators, We've talked to some local operators, We've talked to other US operators and we'd love NACE because of that depth and because of the breadth of their experience across lots of different modalities renewables, coal plants, so fossil fuels, renewables I mean across the spectrum. Nace is. They're operating, all of it.
Speaker 2:I think the number I did see was 50 to 50 somewhere. Did see was 50 to 50 somewhere. There's a gap 50 to between 50 and 65 gigawatts across all those sectors in in in the us.
Speaker 1:So coal, hydro, wind, solar storage, gas, all of it, it's, it's a chunk of energy so so nace nace is important to us because they're they're obviously the operator that we've selected and we've contracted to come and operate Sentinel-1 Power Complex here at Valley Forge in Utah, and it's exciting to bring big multinational corporations to Utah. I mean that in and of itself is exciting for us because it's a signal to the scale and the magnitude and the impact of what it is that we're doing here. But I think it also has international implications, um and and it's a little bit of a divergence away from the things, the way things have been traditionally done here in utah right, and I it is.
Speaker 2:And I would say that, you know, in an interesting way, because utah actually has a really good trade relationship directly with Japan through the World Trade Center here in Utah.
Speaker 2:I think that interestingly for us, and I think having that further layering on that connection, if you go and you read about some of the talks and arrangements and the agreements and the meetings between leadership in Utah and leadership in Japan, it has a pretty good history recently. And so this is, you know, we see, I see this, I think, for us is just another underscoring what is starting to actually naturally happen. All you know has already started happening in Utah, and Utah reaching out and saying, hey, we can part, you know, as a state we can, we can find countries to partner with that align with our interests. And so, you know, not only are we taking on, not only as NACE, you know just a fantastic U S company, but their owner is somebody, is a group that you know. Utah I'm, I'm, I'm sure we ask is quite, quite happy to have, you know, have some toehold here in Utah. So that's right, that's right.
Speaker 1:So connecting all the dots. Yes, thank you, dave, and so my natural inkling here is to to focus a little bit on the family of companies. Are you okay if we go down that rabbit hole for a minute? Absolutely Okay. So I'm just going to, I just want to touch on there's there's not a, there's not 300. We're going to touch on like the top six or seven.
Speaker 1:Okay, e3 Consulting is one of the companies under the NACE umbrella and every one of these companies is 30 or 40 or 50 years old, so these are all longstanding. You know veteran businesses. E3 Consulting is one of the most exciting ones for me because they're a technical advisor and they provide reviews of financial modeling, engineering, intense energy infrastructure and for developers like us, this is a big deal. So this is what I would consider pre-construction services, advisory, and you know we've we've actually brought our own valuation guys on the show bt valuations. We've got well-heeled professionals building models on all of this.
Speaker 1:But it's great to have, you know, the division of nace through e Consulting to be able to qualify models, make sure that we're institutional, quality, pro formas and projections and valuations and costing right, because it's pretty darn complicated stuff, and so to have a group like this it's just an oversight committee, if you will is helpful. And the other thing I love about E3 Consulting the other thing I love about E3 Consulting and yet to be determined here if it's the division within E3 Consulting, but they have an entire legal element to that that will actually come in and they're coordinating with us to actually negotiate power purchase agreements with our customers. That's another really valuable service, because we haven't been negotiating big gigawatt offtake agreements with power purchasers for the last 30 years and so to have a team in the environment, in the industry, that can effectively do that also a very big deal for us. Nace Ren renewables is another one of the the sub companies that's.
Speaker 2:That's self-explanatory um wind farm solar rays storage systems yep, yep, greenberry industrial.
Speaker 1:That's another one that you might not axiomatically just just lean into like understanding, like how that makes sense for a power operator, because Greenberry Industrial is a fabricator and contractor on building components in the hydro and marine power and energy, oil and gas and other fields.
Speaker 2:So you know, controlling supply chain and components, that's another important element Right, and in this space, you know, regarding Greenberry, in this space, you know they often run into things where you've got to fabricate, and that's what you know Greenberry is really good at. So they're they're I mean, they're the capability that they give them to be able to say, okay, we have to be able to fabricate and solve these problems where maybe a supply chain has been disrupted or maybe it's not manufactured. You need the company. You know every company needs that person to fix it all, the person who just knows how to do everything and you know the Mr Fix-It. Well, this is a company that is truly that for them and it provides a key support in all of their operations and, as a result, all of their clients.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right. And similarly to um to, similarly to greenberry, you've got olson industrial electric, again on the electric component side. Um, you know fabrication, installation, engineering, uh, in you know private and sectors, so cover kind of both sectors. There You've got NACE power contractors, and NACE power contractors is actually if a developer like us wanted to just hire NACE to actually commission, design, commission and build a power plant, nace power contractors could do that.
Speaker 1:Now we happen to have relationships that we've talked about with. You know we've kind of got different scopes of work for the Sentinel-1, you know power project, quanta services being, you know, one of the key figures in that equation. So I look at NACE power contractors as a supporting element to what we're doing. And then the last two I wanted to mention are Gridforce and Pure Energy. Pure Energy is an asset management firm that actually provides experience managing and enhancing power generation, transmission and infrastructure projects with a full suite of asset management and financial services on behalf of owners. And Grid Force is really cool. That is a company that's designed specifically for power generators to maintain consistent, reliable flow of power and manage a grid. So when we talk about the contrarian prediction of independently owned and operated generation and transmission assets. You need a company like Gridforce to help, you know, provide balancing authority and maintenance.
Speaker 2:I've got it and I've got a couple more. If you want Good, absolutely, I'll throw out a couple more.
Speaker 2:One is, that was just a top seven for me, no, and one's very recent. I don't know if you saw anything about gecko robotics. No, this was just. It's just a reason now, in fact, actually, uh, I think I had, I had uh earmarked it to talk about in, you know, in our headline off segments is that. So Gecko Robotics is a Pittsburgh-based company founded in 2013. They build and deploy wall-climbing robots and then designed to inspect critical infrastructure. So robots pack the sensors, cameras, advanced tools, and then there's also a whole component of a drone fleet so that these drones then routinely go out and monitor, obviously as drones do, and then are able to report back and go and funnel into a whole system. And so they just announced that partnership just within the last month.
Speaker 1:You know, I really appreciate you bringing those up because that's two real examples in real time. When we talk about companies that are moving with the flow of, of meeting the demand of ai and data, this whole new world of, of energy and infrastructure, you've got to be able to use, like these advanced next-gen monitoring systems like that. We've already anticipated needing multiple drone stations that are they're automated automated monitoring of lots of different things security, air quality, heat and regulating all of the things right. And so I think that's intuitive that NACE would be acquiring those types of companies.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And again, these are, you know, in part. You know sometimes it's a you don't want, you would rather send a robot into what is potentially a dangerous situation. Right, there's that whole side of it. But then there's also the preventative side of it, where robots can get to places where, say, a crew of a couple, three, four people having to do routine inspections, they can deploy routinely and a lot, you know, a lot less expensively really, and actually provides you more real-time assessment of these assets. And these assets are not small number assets. These are multi-billion dollar assets and so it's important to make sure, a you're able to maintain them. B you can see problems coming before they happen. And it makes all the sense in the world and just makes me go, hey, great, that's they're. They're really just getting all the right companies to make sure that they have everything they need as an operating entity. So I love it Well you know it's funny, dave.
Speaker 1:Before we move off of that, just just one more thought on that vein. When we were up just a week ago at the University of utah, we got to take a vip tour of the, the test nuclear reactor up there, and one thing that was just just, it was uh, what's the word I should use I was just dumbfounded that. I was dumbfounded to learn that most nuclear reactors are still operating on analog control systems. Yes, and how we are in 2025 with advanced, you know, digital controls and AI and all the stuff that's happening, how we haven't evolved. But that's definitely the direction this is all going to go, is all going to go AI, power management, grid optimization, you know just the most optimized power management, and particularly power management with something like Sentinel-1, where you have multiple generation resources going into call it a hub, call it a control center and needing to effectively, you know, push that out in the best way. You've got to be using AI-based power management platform for that.
Speaker 2:I agree.
Speaker 2:I think one of the reasons and I can't say this publicly, but I can hint at some things I had some exposure, some information.
Speaker 2:I was surprised to learn that, beyond some of these systems, you have oh, I don't know you have other systems that are very critical to our infrastructure here in the US and perhaps defense, that are still operating on technology that is 40, 50, 60 years old. Part of it has been because it was seen as highly secure, air-gapped. However, there are lots of downsides, and so there's a lot of movement trying to update and modernize certain parts of everything, and it all comes back to security, and you and I have talked about security a lot. If you have a facility that is run by electronics and run by AI or run by management systems, you have to be able to secure that in a way that it can't be hacked or it is absolutely impenetrable, because these are significant assets and you can do a lot of things, much like up there, and I would imagine part of that security protocol, part of the reason they are still there, is no one's had a good answer for. Well, how do we make sure this doesn't happen?
Speaker 1:yeah uh.
Speaker 2:That said, I'm still dumbfounded. I'm like, well, yeah, yes, and why can't we solve this? And then I will just say we all know how sometimes you know, uh, how I don't know slow the government can work and how things can be. Oh, I don't know, take a long, long, long, long time and a lot of red tape and that just adds to this mess and you see things going. How come you're still operating on a system that no one has used, or at least not no one, but at least most of the market hasn't used for a long time? And then you start to see some of the fundamental problems of updating and evolving. Obviously, I'd love to see us and that we I mean that's where we're headed. It's like no, no, no, there are better ways to do these things. There's a host technology, and, yes, we can do these things and be safe at the same time. And, yes, we can do these things and be safe at the same time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yep, so Well. And so when we talk about hardening and modernizing the grid system, that includes generation, and there's so many layers to it. It's not just transmission lines and distribution lines, it's not just a gas or nuclear power plant, it's the energy storage, it's the tie-ins, it's the substation, it's the controls, it's the energy storage, it's the tie-ins, it's the substation, it's the controls, it's the components, it's the platform of management, and they all have to sync up and all of it has to be hardened and modernized. So you can't just take, you can't. And I love the analogy. We were on the phone yesterday and I was driving home and you were talking about you know the platform we're working on for just the controls team and managing a project and you made the analogy like look, you can't strap a rocket onto a pinto and expect it to perform like a rocket. It's still a pinto, that is. That is the perfect analogy for what we're talking about here. If you're going to build an amazing, if you don't know what a pencil?
Speaker 2:is go look it up.
Speaker 1:If you're building a rocket, it has to be fundamentally a rocket, and and that's a serious problem when we talk about a legacy grid system and legacy generation assets and how do we integrate all of that into becoming a rocket without tearing it all down and starting from scratch?
Speaker 2:because that's that's also not feasible, right and that, and that is a challenge, and it's one that I think you and I and the rest of the team are up for the challenge of how we solve those things. And I think we have some good ideas of how we do do exactly that, and so we get to. We get to respect the Pinto that exists. Yes, even if you don't understand that we have to deal with the Pinto and, at the same time, build a rocket ship in concert with this, and then eventually, the Pinto don't need to use the Pinto anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, eventually yeah, there's a special storage compartment in the rocket where we can park the pinto and, and it will just go at the same we put the pinto in the museum.
Speaker 2:No, and I'll think of never be in a museum for the record right. Um, there are two companies I did one of more, two more companies because I I thought they were, you know, they kind of rounded out what we're talking about and you, you didn't mention, I don't believe, pure Energy, correct? I did mention.
Speaker 1:Pure Energy. Oh you did. Yeah, that's the asset manager.
Speaker 2:Oh sorry sorry, yeah, bay4 Energy Services is the one. Okay, bay4 Energy, oh, didn't mention that. Okay, so they are, and there's a couple. There are two companies and again I'm very happy, strategic was the one that specializes in solar asset performance analytics, monitoring and OM. They provide data services For their solar part of the business. That's what they're doing. They help make solar that much more efficient. I thought that was interesting. As renewables get layered on, I would imagine they have implications in a residential where you'd have a community on solar, making that residential community even that much more efficient if everybody's connected on solar, for example. And then they have the pick group, which I was actually more interested in, and they acquired the business in just this year, and that is this, this.
Speaker 2:I think you'll appreciate this, wayne. We talk about this a lot. I mean, we talk about all this infrastructure coming. These jobs don't exist, yeah. So you've got to train, you have to have a workforce that actually can do this, and so you have to have companies specialized in building up this workforce. That's what the PIC group is. They're O&M, staffing, documentation, training business. So what this deal did is it expanded Mesa's reach into workforce development, knowledge management. So huge for them, for us, for anyone contemplating building out massive infrastructure and trying to train up a workforce that exists in part, but not completely.
Speaker 1:I love to hear that, because companies of this magnitude for companies on this magnitude and scale, that's a common denominator. We talked about Qantas training program and the Lazy Q, northwestern, lineman's College, these others. I love seeing that NACE is also in, that we got an opportunity to go meet with faculty up at the U of U last week, as I mentioned. We toured the reactor up there and we got to meet with the heads of their nuclear engineering, civil engineering and electrical engineering departments, all with the intent and agreeing on this common denominator that there's going to be thousands of new jobs that don't exist today. They've all got to be these next-gen, trained-up, high-paying jobs, and it'll be guys and gals coming out of high school and out of college and coming up through the ranks of internships and things like that, and so the more of this programming we can have, the better. That's a nod to the leadership, that's a nod to the strategic vision of the leadership team at NACE.
Speaker 2:That's right, that's right and understanding that this has to be done. And, just like our conversation last week, you know, I didn't know this part of it, but they are one of the few places in the US that actually can train nuclear reactor operators. So that's, the University of Utah is one of those places where they can actually, they've got the certification they can do all that. That again, these are, as we talk about, smrs and micro reactors and even the big boys. All of that. All of that has to be supported by a workforce that in large part doesn't exist yet or doesn't exist anymore and needs to be trained up again. And so you know, I mean I look at that and we're very fortunate to have that in our backyard Again and then a nice company who's like look, we also get that We've got to be able to operate all of these different modalities too.
Speaker 2:We're committing we're going to buy a company that specializes in that. So it's exciting for me from our perspective that these companies are already companies and organizations are already trying to solve that quickly. And I mean, we talked about that with Quantazoo. Quantazoo's got their Quantity University same thing Everybody recognizes. You've got to train a workforce in order to build all of this infrastructure out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Let's touch on that leadership team for a second. Should we, because that's the visionary, that's the visionary minds with the background and the and the leadership to? You know, spend the money building this organization up, building this organization up? And these guys have deep background in energy, engineering, military and management. Key members Mark Dobler, president, ceo, overseeing overall strategy and operations. You've got Arslan Javed I hope I said that Arslan might be Arslan Javed CFO, managing his financial operations. Stan Weeks, president of renewables and chief human resource officer. Charlie Hook, president of energy services. And then Steve Yoshida, and Steve Yoshida shares he's a senior vice president and chief strategy officer and he shares some responsibilities with guys like Paul Plath, president of E3 Consulting, mark Stapleton, ceo of Greenberry Industrial. So they all continue to play leadership roles within the sub-organizations. But you know that handful of guys at the top, that's the vision, that's the hive mind, right there, right.
Speaker 2:You know the vision of you, know that you know modernization, financial workforce rigor.
Speaker 2:You know the vision of you, know that you know modernization, financial workforce rigor, you know execution strength and bring all of those, all of those uh, uh, the people with those you know that experience together and want to to keep this thing going, because it's or not keep it going, but to steer it into a very interesting and exciting time.
Speaker 2:They were growing anyway, but I would imagine NACE, like anyone. I mean they're looking at what is about to be an explosion of energy in the US and they are already, as I said, they're already operating 50 to 65 gigawatts. But, as we've talked about on the show multiple times, just to handle the expected load of AI growth, we're looking at adding 100 gigawatts to the grid, if not more, and that's in addition to everything else that's going to be needed. And so you can see why it's important to have people in the seat who, who know how to bring all of this together and then also steer Mason in the future, so that you know, so that they're operating a lot of that, a lot of that growth coming online. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it, and I was actually just looking up the company mission statement because I have it in my notes here and I wanted to share the mission statement because I think it's important for everybody to understand who they are and what they're about. As far as values are concerned, it's just an impressive organization. Um nace emphasizes core values such as transparency, integrity, ethical practices, diversity, respect and responsiveness to client needs, and they have really fostered a culture of continuous improvement, talent development and operational excellence, with strong commitments to safety and compliance. And we've seen that I mean you, you know commitment to operational excellence, particularly in talent development. Those are, those are critical in, you know, critical of company values to embrace moving into the next generation of power. Right and and and. Actually, if we're actually going to accomplish this whole transition of a hundred gigawatts, hundreds of gigawatts, in in the near term future I mean it's it's going to require companies who really fundamentally function on on a set of values like this.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I think they call their ever forward mindset is what I think I read somewhere and I love, I love that, you know, I love that. That that's how they, that's how they see this and, um, you know, also, one of the things that stood out to me was their you know how kind of on their kind of their careers, pathways, they they stress field first approach and craftsmanship, so kind of highlighting this culture rooted in accountability and trust, which, especially in this space, is incredibly important, especially with the people we've talked to. We know that has to be there. So they are a phenomenal organization.
Speaker 1:And while we're still talking about leadership, I'd like to make the shout-outs to a couple of the guys that we're working with inside the organization. So Reza Akhavan has been one of our lead liaisons and he's based down in Southern California. And then we've got Walt Smith who recently joined NACE. He joined, came over from a company called, I think, ethos Energy, which was another large operator, but between Reza and Walt it's been an incredible fast-moving. You know contracting, moving through legal processes, you know helping clarify all the ways that NACE can be a solutions provider to what we're doing and it's been awesome working with those two so far. Introductions of the broader parts of the team as we get into some of these sub-conversations around. You know feasibility studies and financials and projections and you know specific power equipment actually procurement. They've got some really great kind of line of sight on procurement and equipment.
Speaker 2:So overall, just an exciting team to be working with, absolutely, absolutely. You mentioned something about. I think we talked about kind of like a little bit of these companies, but one of the things that I guess a fun fact of this is that we've been talking about. They're an O&M provider, absolutely, but they're also a grid operator, which is a rare combination. I mean, when they picked up GridForce as a company that puts them in a, you know, this is a role that underscores this deep, deep expertise of this team and where they're seeing the future going. So, you know, not only are we going to be the provider, but we're also going to operate the grid. Yeah, you know, not only are we going to be the provider, but we're also going to operate the grid. Yeah, that's a really, really important distinction amongst any of the groups out there that you know, any of the other groups that we were familiar with, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Obviously a company of this size. You know you look into how many, you know how many employees and executives there are. I don't have that number. Do you have that in front of you, dave? I never saw it. Nace is a privately held corporation, so you know not. Not being a public company means that you know there's not a lot, of, a lot of information out there on their website. Um, so I couldn't find the number.
Speaker 2:I didn't see that, but we can probably. I'm sure it's out there. We can. You know at least some guesses, but obviously I would imagine it's in the tens of thousands at this point. Yeah, I will, but I can look. I can look it up and see if we can find something while we're talking here.
Speaker 2:But you know, one of the things that I think as we, as we look at Mace and we look at and this is let's have that conversation kind of like, what they're doing is reflective of what the entire industry is doing, and I would look at them as like okay, where's the industry going? What's NACE doing? Yeah, because NACE has been in this for a long time. They understand this. They are also the company that is not afraid to pivot, expand, grow, obviously by their acquisitions and understanding that we've got a great energy transition underway. So if we're looking at NACE and what they're doing as a guidepost for the rest of this industry, beyond what you and I talk about, wayne, well, let's look at what is. You know, it's partnership in robotics, it's expanding renewables, it's acquisitions, workforce training, compliance. This is a company that it's positioning itself to meet the demands of what it sees as an explosion in the future of energy and an independent energy.
Speaker 2:That's right, by the way, hyperscale centers, or ensuring compliance, or stabilizing the grid, or running operations, you know they are our vantage point for seeing how, you know, private enterprises helping keep the lights on. Yeah, right, so this is this, is that, this is that group that is going to be essential, as Wayne, to your, to your guests, on on five years, to your prediction. Right, it's a good one, uh, the only. And I, wayne and I joke about this I agree with Wayne Absolutely. I just I think it's going to take a little bit longer than five years, but I'm I'm absolutely open and happy to being wrong about this one. And so we have a friendly, we have a friendly wager between us. Yeah, so we'll see how this goes.
Speaker 2:But, truly, you come back to NACE. Nace is the organization in that transition that's going to make sure that we transition in a responsible way, because they've got so much depth and expertise at running these multibillion-dollar operations that they just want to expand that. But they're also that independent. They've been serving independent, they're used to it and that's as you say, wayne, that's where a lot of generations going. I totally agree. So that means NACE is going to be running and operating, likely a lot of this new generation, and that makes me feel good as a business owner. It makes me feel good because they're such a great organization for the you know, the casual listener of our, of our show, and even for the people who are in this business. It should also make you feel good.
Speaker 2:It's not, it's. This isn't just, oh, we hired not not to say that hiring somebody, you know that maybe doesn't, doesn't have the experience, doesn't sometimes have a value, but this isn't just going out and finding some small company says, oh, I can do it. This is a multi-billion dollar operation that has shown time and time and time again that they are operating at the highest quality, the highest levels, and they're keeping all of these things running. So, and they're going to be the ones just further expanding that. And so I'm happy to, you know, I'm happy to see them in the seat, I'm happy that we're working with them. They are the operator that everyone needs, because, as we transition into the space, as energy becomes more independent, more and more, we're going to need groups like this to make sure that we're dealing with all the, all the things that independence will bring.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and there's a few ancillary benefits that I just want to touch on. When we consider the specific application to Sentinel-1 power complex in central Utah and the first big one is when we talk about building something significant in central Utah we talk about job creation, and what you don't necessarily want to see is a big company bring in a whole bunch of people from out of the country or another state. What you do want to see is you want to see them bring in key execs that can stand up a training program and train locals and create the high paying job opportunities in the community and let that community kind of rise up in the process. So that to me that's a really big deal that I'm anticipating that's going to be part of this whole program at Valley Forge, but also introducing a multinational company like NACE into the Utah market and the fortification that that brings from a credibility perspective.
Speaker 1:All of our legislators, all of our regulators in the state are very, very concerned about credibility. In fact, they joke about it. It's like almost every meeting we have in the last year, everyone's making comments like, yeah, yeah, every developer in the world all of a sudden wants to develop power and data. You know and you know they joke about how so many of the people coming in pitching these plans are not credible people and don't have a clue about the plan. They lay out some idea. It sounds like maybe they read in the newspaper and, and, and they're. You know they're. They're doing whatever they're doing.
Speaker 1:The way that we hedge that credibility issue, the credibility factor is contracting companies like NACE, like we've done. We've talked about, you know, putting together the all-star team. But when you contract guys like this, it brings with it that you know that irrefutable credibility and that's really important to legislators. You know that irrefutable credibility and that's really important to legislators. It's really important when we're talking about potentially having impacts on new policy or new bills and new energy policy, new workforce policies, like there's a lot of ancillaries that benefit and that actually rise up in this process, when you've got the right people bringing the right expertise. And that's important for our investors too. By the way, it's not just on the legislative side, it's on the private sector, investment side having confidence in what the operation is, what the business model is and how this gets, you know, deployed and effectively executed.
Speaker 2:I couldn't agree more and I think you know I am very happy and pleased that our team, from damn near day one, has been very aware of what we don't know, has been very aware of what we don't know. We're really good at saying, okay, we hear vision and strategy, and understanding this, but also knowing that we have to bring in expert teams in order to solve these things and help us solve these things and inform us on how best to put this together. So, from day one, it's been oh no, we're going to set out and we're going to do this thing, we're going to. No, it's not that easy, I mean, and even then, that's not easy not to say that.
Speaker 2:But this is a very arduous process of assembling the right people and the right groups under one umbrella to say, okay, let's do a thing and bringing all of the right group, those right groups and there are, there are lots of them out there that have depth and experience and insights that you have to have and you would, you should want, as any organization, to do this.
Speaker 2:And so in order to I think, in order to be very serious about this, you have to it's a money where your mouth is you have to actually engage these companies and bring them in that's right and also give them a read saying okay, do you want to be part of this? They get asked that all the time. They don't jump on willy-nilly, they engage when there's something to engage on and they see an opportunity, like anyone in business, to say that's a place that we can succeed, that's a place where we can help you, that's a place that we can help you compete and it's a really interesting project that we want to be part of. And that's a different mentality on how to approach this, I believe. I mean based upon what we're seeing.
Speaker 1:Well, you're absolutely right about that, Dave. On the same note, scale matters. You know you're not bringing in a mis-. Size matters, Did you just say size?
Speaker 2:matters that's what Wayne just said is size matters. That's why I just heard it does.
Speaker 1:But if you look at all power generation in Utah and the West, you know you're not getting a company like NACE to come in and operate a 200 megawatt peaker plant. You're not going to get them to move off of their core business to come do even maybe a gigawatt. I don't know. I mean, we could look at the hundreds of plants they do operate and I think they do have some smaller operations. But I think in today's economy, in today's environment is all I'm saying is I don't see that happening. But it's a lot easier to bring a company like NACE into the equation when you've got an 8 gigawatt power profile to manage. That scale matters. That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 2:I think you said it well Scale matters. Um, I did speak speaking of scale. Um, I did look up, uh, the, the, the amount of employees, and it is a. There is a discrepancy. Okay, um, it's anywhere from low two thousands to over four thousand, but I don't think that includes some of the new acquisitions. So maybe not the tens of thousands, but thousands and thousands of people work for NACE here in the US and again, it's private. I don't know who's included or what they include, or they, you know, hard to say, but it's just to give you a sense of like. I mean, it's a large, large, large company.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, as we go down the road, it's always part of our objective for the show to get those those high level guest interviews. So I'm sure we're going to find those answers out as we go. And you know we're going to be aiming for for some interviews with some of the top, the top dogs over at NACE. So stay tuned, guys. Coming up on the hour, I think you have any final thoughts, Dave, before we wrap this up, it was a great conversation Again.
Speaker 2:Nace is a wonderful corporation. Go look them up, go read about them. They are just doing things right. And, of course, if you have any questions to us, feel free to reach out to the show.
Speaker 1:Very good. Well, thanks for joining us today, guys.
Speaker 2:And thank you Until next time on the Frontier Line.
