WEBVTT - Cutting through the climate tech hype and looking for profit 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:01.040 Welcome to Zero. 0:00:01.240 --> 0:00:19.360 I am Akshatrati. This week climate tech Hype or note. 0:00:20.000 --> 0:00:23.400 Breakthrough Energy Ventures is one of the biggest funders of 0:00:23.680 --> 0:00:27.880 early stage climate technologies, spending billions of dollars so far 0:00:28.120 --> 0:00:31.440 with investments in more than one hundred and twenty startups. 0:00:32.360 --> 0:00:35.160 Since Zero launched two years ago, we've featured a number 0:00:35.159 --> 0:00:38.320 of companies that break Through Energy has invested in. You 0:00:38.360 --> 0:00:40.520 can find some of those episodes in the show notes. 0:00:41.080 --> 0:00:44.800 But there's a brain trust behind Breakthrough Energy Ventures that 0:00:44.960 --> 0:00:48.800 makes the decisions of what kinds of technologies they invested. 0:00:49.120 --> 0:00:52.240 One of those people is Eric Toon. In his former life, 0:00:52.360 --> 0:00:55.600 he was a professor of chemistry, which, as someone who's 0:00:55.600 --> 0:00:59.120 studied chemistry, is something that always gets my attention. Over 0:00:59.120 --> 0:01:01.560 the years, I've talked to him plenty of times trying 0:01:01.600 --> 0:01:05.520 to understand where exactly he sees the technology landscape going. 0:01:06.280 --> 0:01:09.080 So for this episode, I wanted to bring you into 0:01:09.120 --> 0:01:11.600 some of our chats to get his take on what 0:01:11.760 --> 0:01:15.360 set of climate technologies he's hyped about, and what technologies 0:01:15.440 --> 0:01:18.679 he thinks the world shouldn't be hyped about, and why 0:01:18.720 --> 0:01:21.759 he thinks his set of technologies will not just work 0:01:21.920 --> 0:01:25.520 but also make money, because no longer is he just 0:01:25.560 --> 0:01:29.080 a professor. He doesn't just assess the feasibility of a technology, 0:01:29.400 --> 0:01:35.200 but also the company's potential profitability. We touched on carbon removal, 0:01:35.520 --> 0:01:40.559 grit technologies, nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, and hydrogen. We also 0:01:40.560 --> 0:01:59.240 talked about some of the companies he's most excited about. Eric, 0:01:59.280 --> 0:02:00.000 Welcome to the show. 0:02:00.400 --> 0:02:02.080 It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. 0:02:02.280 --> 0:02:02.480 Now. 0:02:02.600 --> 0:02:05.960 You were a tenured professor of chemistry and biochemistry at 0:02:06.000 --> 0:02:10.920 DECU University. A tenured position is a ticket for life 0:02:11.600 --> 0:02:14.240 to do what you want. But you gave it up 0:02:14.400 --> 0:02:16.960 to join Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and you joined as the 0:02:17.000 --> 0:02:20.720 science lead. So Breakthrough Energy Ventures has been investing for 0:02:20.760 --> 0:02:24.360 seven years. It has one hundred and twenty companies that 0:02:24.440 --> 0:02:26.639 it has invested in so far. A few of them 0:02:26.760 --> 0:02:29.680 have gone public. But you are still very much at 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:34.359 the frontier of trying to seed ideas that are there 0:02:34.400 --> 0:02:38.239 in labs that need to be commercialized. How has your 0:02:38.360 --> 0:02:41.240 thinking changed as a result of doing this for the 0:02:41.240 --> 0:02:42.280 past seven years. 0:02:43.160 --> 0:02:47.720 So I think that I knew sort of intellectually how 0:02:48.320 --> 0:02:54.080 different this space was than tech investing, how difficult it 0:02:54.280 --> 0:02:59.119 was to scale things. Things in this space don't scale 0:02:59.200 --> 0:03:04.560 the way that apps or computers scale. Right, this is 0:03:04.800 --> 0:03:08.919 steel in the ground stuff, and it's in industries where 0:03:09.040 --> 0:03:13.760 margins are razor thin, where there are existing interests that 0:03:13.840 --> 0:03:17.720 are enormous. I knew all of those sorts of things intellectually, 0:03:18.240 --> 0:03:21.480 but I understand them in a much more visceral way. Now, 0:03:22.080 --> 0:03:24.880 you take an idea that you think could have legs, 0:03:25.280 --> 0:03:29.120 and you spend seven or eight or ten years and 0:03:29.280 --> 0:03:33.560 invest three hundred million, four hundred million dollars and get 0:03:33.600 --> 0:03:36.400 it to the point where it really looks like this 0:03:36.440 --> 0:03:39.640 could scale. And now I have to turn around and 0:03:39.680 --> 0:03:41.480 raise a billion dollars to do a first of a 0:03:41.560 --> 0:03:46.560 kind plant and the marketplace. Of course, since these are commodities, right, 0:03:46.600 --> 0:03:49.680 electrons are the most undifferentiated commodities on the face of 0:03:49.680 --> 0:03:52.760 the earth. And so the reaction is not, oh, that's 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:56.080 unbelievably cool. The reaction is, we'll see if you can 0:03:56.120 --> 0:03:58.680 make it five percent cheaper than the way we make it. Now, 0:03:59.320 --> 0:04:01.560 give me a call. I knew those things that will 0:04:01.600 --> 0:04:03.680 actually but to be in the middle of it and 0:04:03.720 --> 0:04:07.160 to really feel it viscerally, that changes you. 0:04:07.840 --> 0:04:09.760 Now, over the years, we've talked about a number of 0:04:09.760 --> 0:04:13.240 scientific areas or trying to invest in climate solutions. I 0:04:13.320 --> 0:04:16.000 wanted to pick five areas, and I wanted to play 0:04:16.000 --> 0:04:18.240 a game with you this time. Let's call it hype 0:04:18.360 --> 0:04:21.000 or not, and I'll define it because I think hype 0:04:21.080 --> 0:04:23.520 or not can be very broadly assumed, whether it's in 0:04:23.640 --> 0:04:28.440 conversation or dollars, or in sheer number of startups that exist. 0:04:29.279 --> 0:04:33.600 So let's be specific about whether you think in these 0:04:33.680 --> 0:04:37.080 five areas of technologies, which we will take sequentially, there 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:41.919 is either too much investment or too little investment going. 0:04:43.040 --> 0:04:46.039 So let's start with carbon removal. Now, the scientific case 0:04:46.080 --> 0:04:49.560 for carbon removal is strong, and it's strong because we've 0:04:49.560 --> 0:04:52.160 really not acted on climate change. And that means if 0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:55.359 we want to keep to our climate goals as agreed 0:04:55.400 --> 0:04:57.719 in the Paris Agreement or not have a planet as 0:04:57.720 --> 0:05:00.240 hot as it already is, we're going to have to 0:05:00.320 --> 0:05:02.520 draw down some of the greenhouse gas emissions that are 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:05.800 already sitting in the atmosphere. But we don't need to 0:05:05.839 --> 0:05:08.240 do it now. We just need to have the technologies 0:05:08.640 --> 0:05:10.360 ready to be able to do it over the next 0:05:10.440 --> 0:05:15.120 few decades. This industry has been unlike any other industry. 0:05:15.360 --> 0:05:19.400 Most climate technologies start in labs, they get government support, 0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:23.000 then they are commercialized through government regulations that create a 0:05:23.040 --> 0:05:27.320 market for that technology, and then they produce something that 0:05:27.360 --> 0:05:30.240 people want. Solar panels are a good example. Electric cars 0:05:30.279 --> 0:05:35.360 another good example. Carbon removal was not really supported as 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:39.920 much by government. It was private industry, mostly the tech industry, 0:05:39.920 --> 0:05:44.120 that was interested in pursuing carbon removal as a path 0:05:44.200 --> 0:05:47.120 to try and meet its climate goals. And yes, now 0:05:47.120 --> 0:05:49.440 it has government support, but at the end of the day, 0:05:49.520 --> 0:05:52.520 what it's producing is not a commodity that people want. 0:05:52.720 --> 0:05:55.920 It's a commodity that the world needs. And we are 0:05:55.960 --> 0:05:59.440 at this moment where there are by one count eight 0:05:59.680 --> 0:06:03.520 hundred undred carbon removal startups in the world. And again, 0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:07.000 if we look at HiPE cycles, there can be HiPE 0:06:07.000 --> 0:06:09.880 cycles where lots and lots of companies exist, hundreds of them. 0:06:10.040 --> 0:06:12.200 Many of them will fail at the end of the day, 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:15.640 some will survive and scale up the solution. But do 0:06:15.680 --> 0:06:19.279 you think at this moment we're investing too much in 0:06:19.360 --> 0:06:20.160 carbon removal. 0:06:21.600 --> 0:06:23.599 I think that we need to be a lot smarter 0:06:23.680 --> 0:06:26.960 about how we invest in carbon removal. The first thing 0:06:27.000 --> 0:06:30.320 that I would do is to bifurcate the market and 0:06:30.360 --> 0:06:32.479 the way I would bifurcate the market is there is 0:06:32.560 --> 0:06:35.359 certainly going to be a significant amount of carbon capture 0:06:35.360 --> 0:06:39.320 for just sequestration, for simple removal, however you end up 0:06:39.360 --> 0:06:41.960 doing that, But there's also going to be a large 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:45.560 market for carbon as a reagent as a resource as 0:06:45.600 --> 0:06:48.960 we start to make liquid fuels that are zero carbon, 0:06:49.000 --> 0:06:52.360 as we start to think about making plastics and materials 0:06:52.640 --> 0:06:55.239 that are zero carbon. So I think that the first 0:06:55.240 --> 0:06:57.240 thing you need to do is to kind of bifurcate 0:06:57.279 --> 0:07:01.240 this market into a market for sequest and a market 0:07:01.279 --> 0:07:03.720 for carbon as a reagent. And I think there's very 0:07:03.720 --> 0:07:06.760 different requirements on the material there, and I think that 0:07:06.839 --> 0:07:09.920 there's very different price points, So that that is the 0:07:09.920 --> 0:07:13.640 first thing that I would do if we think about 0:07:13.760 --> 0:07:17.000 the carbon market for sequestration, and you know this is 0:07:17.040 --> 0:07:20.800 narrated that we've invested in. The challenge that I have 0:07:20.960 --> 0:07:26.239 here is there are fundamental questions about what you're doing 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:31.640 that are questions that society needs to answer, and society 0:07:31.720 --> 0:07:35.240 hasn't really thought about those questions. So let me be 0:07:35.360 --> 0:07:39.920 a little bit. You know, clear, people pay for certainty. 0:07:40.000 --> 0:07:43.000 If you pay me one hundred dollars to capture a 0:07:43.040 --> 0:07:47.000 ton of carbon. And after I do that, you come 0:07:47.040 --> 0:07:49.840 back and say, prove to me that you captured a 0:07:49.880 --> 0:07:51.640 ton of carbon. I paid you for a ton of carbon. 0:07:51.760 --> 0:07:54.720 Proved to me that you actually captured a ton of carbon. Well, 0:07:54.760 --> 0:07:57.520 if I'm running climb works or if I'm running carbon engineering, 0:07:57.920 --> 0:08:00.000 I can show you all the log data. I can 0:08:00.120 --> 0:08:02.000 show you the machine worked. I can show you how 0:08:02.000 --> 0:08:05.000 those machines were qualified. I can show you all those things, 0:08:05.000 --> 0:08:06.880 and I can convince you to a very high degree 0:08:06.880 --> 0:08:09.200 of certainty that I captured a ton of carbon that 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:11.840 you paid me for. And if you come back to 0:08:11.880 --> 0:08:15.040 me in five years time and you say I paid 0:08:15.080 --> 0:08:17.880 you to keep that carbon, can you tell me where 0:08:17.880 --> 0:08:20.800 that carbon is? Well, I can show you where that 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:23.760 carbon is. Perhaps I've done underground storage. I can tell 0:08:23.800 --> 0:08:25.640 you what the volume that I've stored it in is. 0:08:25.680 --> 0:08:27.520 I can show you the pressures and I can say 0:08:27.560 --> 0:08:31.040 that it's there, or perhaps I mineralized it, and I 0:08:31.080 --> 0:08:33.319 can show you exactly where I did, and I can 0:08:33.360 --> 0:08:35.120 show you the well logs. I can do all of 0:08:35.120 --> 0:08:37.000 those things. I can convince you to a very high 0:08:37.000 --> 0:08:39.480 degree of certainty. But that costs a lot of money 0:08:39.600 --> 0:08:41.600 right now. That costs somewhere between five hundred and one 0:08:41.600 --> 0:08:43.600 thousand dollars a ton. We hope someday we can get 0:08:43.600 --> 0:08:45.520 it down below that, but that's where we are today. 0:08:46.400 --> 0:08:48.400 On the other hand, I can put all of mine 0:08:48.440 --> 0:08:52.320 on beaches and I can watch it disappear. And now 0:08:52.800 --> 0:08:54.560 if you come to me and say I paid you 0:08:54.600 --> 0:08:56.880 for a ton of carbon, can you show me that 0:08:56.960 --> 0:09:00.120 you actually captured a ton of carbon? Well, I can 0:09:00.240 --> 0:09:03.080 show you the certificate of analysis of the olivine that 0:09:03.080 --> 0:09:04.760 I put on the beach, so you know what the 0:09:04.800 --> 0:09:08.800 calcium magnesium concentration was, And I can say, you know, 0:09:09.080 --> 0:09:12.120 it's gone. It's in the ocean. It reacted. So that's 0:09:12.240 --> 0:09:14.480 my proof is I you know, I can tell you 0:09:14.520 --> 0:09:19.040 how much calcium magnesium there was and it's gone. Maybe 0:09:19.080 --> 0:09:21.600 you're good with that, maybe you're not. And when you 0:09:21.640 --> 0:09:24.120 come back to me in five years time and you say, well, 0:09:24.200 --> 0:09:26.360 tell me where that ton of carbon that I paid 0:09:26.520 --> 0:09:30.160 for is, you can say, well, the solubility product of 0:09:30.679 --> 0:09:33.600 calcium carbonate is, you know, And so Licia Telia's principle 0:09:33.600 --> 0:09:35.080 says it must be at the bottom of the ocean. 0:09:35.120 --> 0:09:37.360 And you can decide for yourself whether or not you 0:09:37.440 --> 0:09:41.360 think that that's proof. But that costs ten dollars a ton. 0:09:43.000 --> 0:09:45.640 And now I can do ocean fertilization. I can go 0:09:45.760 --> 0:09:48.720 dump iron in the ocean. And now when you come 0:09:48.760 --> 0:09:51.040 back to me and you say, prove to me you 0:09:51.120 --> 0:09:53.560 captured a ton of carbon, I can say I have 0:09:53.640 --> 0:09:56.319 no idea, but it must have been a lot, because 0:09:56.360 --> 0:09:59.319 you could see the algel bloom from space, right, So 0:09:59.600 --> 0:10:01.280 it must the bit a lot, but I don't really 0:10:01.320 --> 0:10:02.760 know how much. And if you come back to me 0:10:02.800 --> 0:10:05.160 in five years time and say, well, where's that ton 0:10:05.160 --> 0:10:07.760 of carbon that I paid you for, you sort of 0:10:07.800 --> 0:10:12.080 say I don't really have any idea, but that costs 0:10:12.280 --> 0:10:16.760 pennies a ton. And so society has to make decisions 0:10:17.120 --> 0:10:19.480 not about whether or not we have to do carbon capture. 0:10:19.520 --> 0:10:22.920 I don't think there's any real discussion about that, But 0:10:23.000 --> 0:10:26.760 what do you actually mean by carbon capture? What constitutes 0:10:26.880 --> 0:10:29.840 certainty with regards to what I was able to capture 0:10:30.080 --> 0:10:33.200 and with regards to where it is? And does society 0:10:33.240 --> 0:10:35.319 want to pay five hundred dollars a ton to climb 0:10:35.360 --> 0:10:39.000 works to be absolutely certain I captured and to know 0:10:39.040 --> 0:10:41.319 exactly where it is, or does society want to pay 0:10:41.360 --> 0:10:43.880 ten cents a ton and hope for the best, and 0:10:43.920 --> 0:10:46.240 we'll check again in thirty years and see where we are. 0:10:46.280 --> 0:10:49.520 And so I think the problem is without an understanding 0:10:49.520 --> 0:10:52.439 of what that market looks like, there is no evidence 0:10:52.559 --> 0:10:55.800 anywhere at all that society is willing to pay anywhere 0:10:55.840 --> 0:10:57.720 close to even one hundred dollars a ton. 0:10:58.400 --> 0:11:01.320 Right, So there are two dimensions. One is certainty, but 0:11:01.400 --> 0:11:05.000 the other is demand, and on both that is uncertainty. 0:11:04.480 --> 0:11:07.000 Tremendous uncertainty. So how do I invest in a company 0:11:07.040 --> 0:11:09.360 if I don't know what the relevant cost point is? Right? 0:11:09.720 --> 0:11:11.760 You know, I'm pretty sure that if you can do 0:11:11.840 --> 0:11:14.040 carbon capture at one hundred dollars a ton and it 0:11:14.080 --> 0:11:16.920 is pure approximately CO two, there is going to be 0:11:16.920 --> 0:11:18.680 a market for that. And the CO two is a 0:11:18.720 --> 0:11:22.319 reagent game to make electro fuels and things like that. 0:11:22.679 --> 0:11:25.640 So I feel confident about that. But you know, carbon 0:11:25.679 --> 0:11:28.480 capture from the perspective of sequestration and just taking it 0:11:28.480 --> 0:11:30.320 out of the atmosphere, I don't know if the price 0:11:30.320 --> 0:11:32.520 points one hundred dollars a ton or ten cents a ton. 0:11:32.720 --> 0:11:34.360 So how do I build a company? How do I 0:11:34.440 --> 0:11:36.960 invest in a company? It is literally a race to 0:11:36.960 --> 0:11:38.719 the bottom. I mean, if you've got a technology that 0:11:38.760 --> 0:11:41.199 works at eighty dollars a ton, If I look at 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:43.520 the supply and demand curves and where they cross, there's 0:11:43.559 --> 0:11:45.559 some market at eighty dollars a ton. But if somebody 0:11:45.559 --> 0:11:47.760 comes up with something at fifty dollars a ton, and 0:11:48.160 --> 0:11:51.679 so I think you're just necessarily running down that cost curve. 0:11:51.800 --> 0:11:55.000 This is such a big area. The need is so 0:11:55.160 --> 0:11:56.840 enormous that the idea that there is going to be 0:11:56.880 --> 0:11:59.640 a single, monolithic technology that will rule them all as 0:11:59.679 --> 0:12:01.240 almost certainly not the case. 0:12:01.880 --> 0:12:04.559 Now let's turn to the grid. We know that one 0:12:04.559 --> 0:12:06.520 of the ways in which we are going to decarbonize 0:12:07.240 --> 0:12:09.960 is to electrify as much as possible and make that 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:13.840 electricity from zero carbon sources, and that's going to require 0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:18.079 a bigger grid. Investments around the world on the grid 0:12:18.960 --> 0:12:21.640 just to build it have not quite got to the 0:12:21.679 --> 0:12:24.760 place where they need to be on trajectory for net zero. 0:12:25.360 --> 0:12:28.600 But within the grid there are technologies that could make 0:12:28.640 --> 0:12:31.680 that job easier. So within the grid, where do you 0:12:31.760 --> 0:12:35.760 think the technologies are hyped and where do you think 0:12:36.120 --> 0:12:39.600 they are under hyped that there is potential for more investments. 0:12:40.200 --> 0:12:42.600 I think there's two areas that at least we at 0:12:42.679 --> 0:12:46.400 Breakthrough are especially interested in, and I think one is 0:12:46.600 --> 0:12:49.880 fairly widely recognized, in the other perhaps not so much. 0:12:50.720 --> 0:12:55.120 The first is reconductoring existing right aways. You mentioned that 0:12:55.160 --> 0:12:58.040 we're going to have to mass electrify everything implies massively 0:12:58.080 --> 0:13:01.240 expanding the grid, so you're just understand what that means. 0:13:01.280 --> 0:13:05.839 That means something like four x the existing grid. It's extraordinary, 0:13:06.320 --> 0:13:09.440 and that energy has to be moved. And you know 0:13:09.480 --> 0:13:11.800 in the United States today it takes on the order 0:13:11.840 --> 0:13:16.640 of sixteen years to permit a new transmission right away, 0:13:17.120 --> 0:13:21.000 and so that really means that reconductoring existing right aways 0:13:21.120 --> 0:13:23.280 is going to be a big, big deal. Right that'll 0:13:23.320 --> 0:13:26.960 allow them to carry more power on those existing right away. 0:13:27.080 --> 0:13:30.920 So new technologies that allow you to move much more 0:13:31.000 --> 0:13:36.080 power down existing right aways are very interesting. DC transmission 0:13:36.400 --> 0:13:40.200 and lines that can be placed along other public right aways, 0:13:40.280 --> 0:13:43.040 rail lines and things like that. That's also an area 0:13:43.040 --> 0:13:46.240 of interest, although as you know, there's challenges to ACDC 0:13:46.320 --> 0:13:48.120 inter conversion and things like that. But I think there's 0:13:48.160 --> 0:13:51.640 fairly broad recognition that as we electrify everything and the 0:13:51.679 --> 0:13:54.760 grid grows, that we're going to have to find better 0:13:54.800 --> 0:13:59.360 ways of moving more energy down existing right aways. The 0:13:59.400 --> 0:14:02.520 one that I think think there's perhaps less recognition of 0:14:02.600 --> 0:14:06.199 are the challenges of operating the grid. If you think 0:14:06.240 --> 0:14:10.800 about how we operate the grid today, we model the 0:14:10.840 --> 0:14:14.640 grid supply and demand typically a day in advance, and 0:14:14.880 --> 0:14:16.920 in the old way that we did things that was 0:14:17.200 --> 0:14:22.760 relatively straightforward. Right supply was mostly dispatchable and it could 0:14:22.840 --> 0:14:25.480 be scheduled. There's not very much storage in the grid. 0:14:25.800 --> 0:14:28.560 I could model the distribution grid just as a load. 0:14:28.600 --> 0:14:32.320 There's no two way flows of energy. Variation in demand 0:14:32.360 --> 0:14:36.240 from day to day is relatively modest, and it's related 0:14:36.280 --> 0:14:40.040 to things that are easy to model, the weather, the season, 0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:44.880 things like that. As you simultaneously grow and decarbonize the grid, 0:14:45.120 --> 0:14:47.560 all of that stuff goes out the window. As you 0:14:47.600 --> 0:14:51.040 start using more intermittent wind and solar and not using 0:14:51.400 --> 0:14:55.440 rotating machinery for the generation of electricity, inertia and the 0:14:55.480 --> 0:14:58.160 grid goes down. It makes it hard to keep it stable. 0:14:58.600 --> 0:15:01.800 Generation resources are play where the resource is not necessarily 0:15:01.840 --> 0:15:05.160 where the load is, and transmission pathways change from day 0:15:05.160 --> 0:15:08.080 to day depending on the weather. There's a lot more storage. 0:15:08.360 --> 0:15:11.320 There's people doing distributed generations, so there's two way flows 0:15:11.360 --> 0:15:13.880 of electricity. I can't think about the distribution grid just 0:15:13.880 --> 0:15:16.600 as all of that stuff goes out the window. And 0:15:16.920 --> 0:15:19.120 we saw in the LA one hundred study, the study 0:15:19.160 --> 0:15:22.120 where Enrail partnered with the city of Los Angeles to 0:15:22.160 --> 0:15:25.120 think about how we could decarbonize the Los Angeles grid, 0:15:25.360 --> 0:15:29.120 just how hard that is to do. People, I think 0:15:29.160 --> 0:15:32.680 sometimes think about the grid as an afterthought. Its wires 0:15:32.720 --> 0:15:35.240 hung on poles and so, yeah, sure we got to 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:37.040 build that, but it's really more appropriate to think of 0:15:37.040 --> 0:15:39.400 the grid as a machine. It's the largest and most 0:15:39.440 --> 0:15:44.120 complex machine that humankind has ever built. And so before 0:15:44.160 --> 0:15:46.880 we can expand the grid, really at the outset, we 0:15:46.960 --> 0:15:48.760 have to think about not only how are we going 0:15:48.800 --> 0:15:50.360 to build a grid, but how are we going to 0:15:50.400 --> 0:15:53.600 operate the grid? And so this is a new area 0:15:53.720 --> 0:15:56.800 of interest and emphasis for us. A significant part of 0:15:56.800 --> 0:15:59.480 that is going to be done on the philanthropic side, 0:15:59.480 --> 0:16:02.600 a pretty grid modeling effort that we're standing up now. 0:16:02.840 --> 0:16:04.840 But this is an area that I think has received 0:16:04.840 --> 0:16:08.240 not nearly enough investment, not nearly enough attention, and it's 0:16:08.280 --> 0:16:11.040 really treated more as an afterthought. So that's an area 0:16:11.120 --> 0:16:13.560 of the grid that I think needs an enormous amount 0:16:13.560 --> 0:16:14.520 of attention and effort. 0:16:15.000 --> 0:16:18.280 The biggest machine that humans have ever built, but also 0:16:18.400 --> 0:16:21.200 the oldest machine in that sense. The grid has been 0:16:21.360 --> 0:16:27.040 continuously being built since the late nineteenth century, and many 0:16:27.040 --> 0:16:30.440 of the things that it uses even today are things 0:16:30.480 --> 0:16:32.640 that were set up back then. Of course there have 0:16:32.680 --> 0:16:35.880 been changes, but fundamentally it's doing the same thing that 0:16:35.920 --> 0:16:38.880 I was doing four hundred years ago. So now trying 0:16:38.920 --> 0:16:42.160 to power the grid with clean energy, we don't want 0:16:42.160 --> 0:16:44.560 to talk about renewables. They're sort of on their own 0:16:44.640 --> 0:16:48.960 doing their thing, but because of their variability, there is 0:16:50.000 --> 0:16:53.880 desire to have more dispatchable clean energy on the grid. 0:16:54.600 --> 0:16:56.960 You could do that in a few ways. You could 0:16:57.000 --> 0:16:59.800 have hydropower, but there are physical limitations on the hoimuch 0:17:00.040 --> 0:17:04.320 hydropower there will be. You can do geothermal, and previously 0:17:04.320 --> 0:17:06.639 it was thought there are limits to geothermal because of 0:17:06.680 --> 0:17:10.679 the geography of where geothermal is found. But newer technologies 0:17:10.680 --> 0:17:14.640 are opening up more areas. But there's an old technology 0:17:14.720 --> 0:17:18.600 that keeps coming back up into the conversation, and that's nuclear. 0:17:18.760 --> 0:17:22.000 And let's split that conversation into two. One that exists, 0:17:22.040 --> 0:17:24.880 which is nuclear fission, and one that could exist, which 0:17:24.920 --> 0:17:28.520 is nuclear fusion. So let's start with splitting the atoms 0:17:29.600 --> 0:17:35.320 within nuclear fission. We've gone from having first generation, second generation, 0:17:35.400 --> 0:17:39.000 and third generation nuclear reactors that all use water as 0:17:39.000 --> 0:17:42.199 a coolant, that all became safer and safer as a 0:17:42.240 --> 0:17:46.480 result of accidents but also public desire for more safety 0:17:46.520 --> 0:17:49.760 around nuclear fission. But as a result, they became more 0:17:49.760 --> 0:17:52.359 and more expensive and they are no longer able to 0:17:52.480 --> 0:17:57.880 compete with the way the grid prices electricity, and thus 0:17:58.200 --> 0:18:02.719 outside of China, no is really building nuclear fission reactors 0:18:02.920 --> 0:18:07.000 at scale anymore. And yet there are a number of 0:18:07.480 --> 0:18:11.320 ideas being floated. Do you think those ideas have any legs? 0:18:12.240 --> 0:18:14.520 I really do. First of all, I think you have 0:18:14.560 --> 0:18:17.240 to compare apples to apples. You're one hundred percent right. 0:18:17.920 --> 0:18:20.480 Electrons are the most undifferentiated product on the face of 0:18:20.480 --> 0:18:23.119 the earth. People are not going to pay extra for 0:18:23.160 --> 0:18:25.359 them as we think about the developing an emerging world, 0:18:25.359 --> 0:18:28.240 and that is absolutely the most important part of this thing. 0:18:28.520 --> 0:18:30.520 You know, I'm sure your listeners know, but it's always 0:18:30.520 --> 0:18:34.720 worth remembering per dollar of GDP energy consumption in the 0:18:34.720 --> 0:18:38.280 West is going down through efficiency. If you just left 0:18:38.320 --> 0:18:40.359 the Western world, if that was all we were talking 0:18:40.359 --> 0:18:42.879 about this isn't that big a problem. Where this really 0:18:42.880 --> 0:18:45.760 blows up is when the non OECD world seeks OECD 0:18:45.960 --> 0:18:49.400 prosperity and the demand for energy that comes with it. 0:18:49.680 --> 0:18:52.240 People are just not going to pay a green premium. 0:18:52.440 --> 0:18:57.600 So you do have to offer whatever zero carbon technology 0:18:57.640 --> 0:19:00.360 you want to use without a green premium. But it's 0:19:00.400 --> 0:19:03.919 important to compare apples to apples, intermittent wind and solar 0:19:03.960 --> 0:19:06.280 and even hydro, which is also just you know, remember 0:19:06.359 --> 0:19:08.920 hydro is just solar energy with some storage. That's all 0:19:08.960 --> 0:19:10.720 it is. And if you look at the challenges that 0:19:10.800 --> 0:19:14.880 Brazil is having with hydro today even Canada, even Canada, 0:19:14.920 --> 0:19:18.119 for God's sake, is rethinking it's commitment to hydro because 0:19:18.119 --> 0:19:20.520 so much of the country is in drought. So you 0:19:20.560 --> 0:19:23.400 can't compare intermittent resources to baseload power. So if you're 0:19:23.400 --> 0:19:26.040 gonna say, what is the cost that I have to 0:19:26.080 --> 0:19:28.639 offer nuclear at, you really need to compare it to 0:19:28.680 --> 0:19:30.880 things like coal. Coal is sort of the ultimate base 0:19:30.960 --> 0:19:34.680 load electricity. Coal is broadly distributed around the world, it's 0:19:34.720 --> 0:19:37.200 easy to move around, and coal is about one hundred 0:19:37.200 --> 0:19:40.439 dollars a megawa hour, so that's definitely got to be 0:19:40.480 --> 0:19:42.840 your cost target if you're going to do that. After 0:19:43.280 --> 0:19:45.560 Three Mile Island in nineteen seventy nine, the cost of 0:19:45.600 --> 0:19:48.919 nuclear rose roughly fivefold, and that has to do with 0:19:49.000 --> 0:19:54.160 concerns around safety broadly, which is waste safety and proliferation. 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:58.119 There are certainly third and now fourth generation reactors that 0:19:58.200 --> 0:20:01.320 address many of those issues, but those haven't been built 0:20:01.720 --> 0:20:03.960 at scale and enough of them to really understand what 0:20:04.000 --> 0:20:07.440 their ultimate cost entitlement is. And so one thing that 0:20:07.480 --> 0:20:10.879 we need to do is to drive those costs down, 0:20:11.000 --> 0:20:13.200 get those things on a learning curve, and figure out 0:20:13.200 --> 0:20:16.439 what their ultimate cost entitlement is. The other very real 0:20:16.480 --> 0:20:19.520 issue that we have is we stopped building nuclear reactors 0:20:19.520 --> 0:20:22.560 in this country and so we've lost that muscle memory. 0:20:22.560 --> 0:20:24.960 We don't know how to do it now. If you 0:20:25.040 --> 0:20:28.000 look at the Votel plant in Georgia and the number 0:20:28.000 --> 0:20:30.720 of problems that there were with that, so many of 0:20:30.760 --> 0:20:34.639 those problems were just because we forgot how to build reactors. 0:20:34.800 --> 0:20:38.040 They were mistakes that were made in the planning and construction. 0:20:38.440 --> 0:20:41.760 And so we need to learn how to make reactors again, 0:20:41.880 --> 0:20:45.240 and we need to build these new generation reactors that 0:20:45.359 --> 0:20:47.400 needs to get built out so that we can understand 0:20:47.400 --> 0:20:49.720 what the ultimate cost entitlement is. If I'm going to say, okay, 0:20:49.760 --> 0:20:52.320 col's our baseline hundred dollars a bay, where can we 0:20:52.359 --> 0:20:54.840 get to can we get to one hundred and thirty dollars? 0:20:55.480 --> 0:20:58.120 We need to understand that, and so I think that's 0:20:58.119 --> 0:21:01.160 something that absolutely has to be done. There's about sixty 0:21:01.240 --> 0:21:04.879 reactors nuclear reactors globally under construction now, largely in China, 0:21:04.920 --> 0:21:07.760 but not only in China, right, and so there are 0:21:07.760 --> 0:21:09.840 about sixty and then about another one hundred that are 0:21:09.840 --> 0:21:12.720 in various stages of planning. But I think that the 0:21:12.840 --> 0:21:16.719 number of sources that we have for base load power 0:21:17.160 --> 0:21:20.040 are so small that it's really hard to see how 0:21:20.080 --> 0:21:22.600 we do this without at least some amount of fission. 0:21:22.680 --> 0:21:25.560 So there's an enormous demand for new electricity here in 0:21:25.600 --> 0:21:27.840 the United States, and it would be great to see 0:21:27.840 --> 0:21:29.600 some of that met with new nuclear. 0:21:30.480 --> 0:21:32.560 Would there be a point at which you would say 0:21:33.119 --> 0:21:39.119 that other clean electricity, dispatchable electricity technologies have come to 0:21:39.160 --> 0:21:42.439 a place where we don't really need to pursue nuclear fission. 0:21:42.480 --> 0:21:46.480 It's a very very very interesting question. So you mentioned geothermal. 0:21:46.640 --> 0:21:49.840 You know, historically to do geothermal you've needed three things 0:21:49.960 --> 0:21:53.360 need heat, permeability, and water, and so that's why places 0:21:53.400 --> 0:21:56.280