WEBVTT - Silicon Valley Is Making Gasoline Out of Thin Air 0:00:02.360 --> 0:00:05.480 Google's research Labs started a project a few years ago 0:00:05.600 --> 0:00:08.479 that it thought had the potential to slow the impact 0:00:08.520 --> 0:00:11.479 of man made climate change. It was going to make 0:00:11.520 --> 0:00:16.200 fuel from carbon dioxide harvested from seawater. This fuel would 0:00:16.239 --> 0:00:18.880 still release carbon when it was burned, just like oil 0:00:18.920 --> 0:00:21.960 and gas, but because it was made from carbon taken 0:00:22.000 --> 0:00:25.479 from the atmosphere instead of taken from underground deposits, it 0:00:25.480 --> 0:00:28.800 wouldn't end up increasing the overall level of greenhouse gases. 0:00:29.280 --> 0:00:34.360 Our world economy is fueled by awfel fuel still, and 0:00:34.440 --> 0:00:36.839 they have a lot of amazing properties that are hard 0:00:36.880 --> 0:00:39.680 to replicate, and so we could make renewable fuels, we 0:00:39.800 --> 0:00:47.240 would the advance substantially as you know, world civilization. That's 0:00:47.320 --> 0:00:50.640 Kathie Hannon who led the project, which Google called fog Horn, 0:00:51.240 --> 0:00:54.320 and the Foghorn team actually did succeed in making fuel 0:00:54.360 --> 0:00:57.320 from seawater, but Google pulled the plug on the project 0:00:57.360 --> 0:01:01.000 anyway in early because it was just too expensive. It 0:01:01.120 --> 0:01:02.840 just didn't look like we would be able to hit 0:01:02.840 --> 0:01:07.679 a price point on a timeline that would justify the 0:01:07.840 --> 0:01:12.120 very large investments that would be required to bring that 0:01:12.280 --> 0:01:16.840 technology to market. Scientists have known for decades that it's 0:01:16.920 --> 0:01:20.720 theoretically possible to suck carbon from air or water and 0:01:20.760 --> 0:01:23.399 turn it into all kinds of products. To date, a 0:01:23.440 --> 0:01:26.440 big problem with carbon removal efforts is that they've been 0:01:26.440 --> 0:01:29.360 too expensive to justify doing on a large scale on 0:01:29.400 --> 0:01:33.080 any practical basis. Three years after fog Horn ended, other 0:01:33.120 --> 0:01:35.960 researchers think they're coming even closer to cracking the code. 0:01:36.200 --> 0:01:39.480 One of them is a tiny company named Prometheus. It's 0:01:39.480 --> 0:01:42.800 not using the exact same technology that Google used for Foghorn, 0:01:43.000 --> 0:01:45.720 but it does see itself picking up where Google left off. 0:01:45.840 --> 0:01:48.280 The company even counts the person who was the technical 0:01:48.360 --> 0:01:50.840 lead on Foghorn as an advisor. But for any of 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:53.240 this to matter, these new companies are going to have 0:01:53.320 --> 0:01:57.040 to act quickly. Here's Julio Friedman, an expert on carbon 0:01:57.120 --> 0:02:00.600 management at Columbia University. If you're getting into this business 0:02:00.600 --> 0:02:03.080 because you want to help on climate, here on the clock, 0:02:04.800 --> 0:02:07.880 we need to keep in emissions very very quickly. If 0:02:07.920 --> 0:02:10.920 it takes those seventy years to displace the incumbent we 0:02:11.040 --> 0:02:21.280 loose like that, that's not good. A growing number of 0:02:21.320 --> 0:02:25.000 experts now believe that carbon capture technology is a necessary 0:02:25.080 --> 0:02:28.440 part of any plan to confront climate change. The problem 0:02:28.520 --> 0:02:30.880 is moving it out of the laboratory and up to 0:02:30.960 --> 0:02:33.080 the kind of scale that could make a difference at 0:02:33.080 --> 0:02:36.160 a planetary level, and doing it fast enough to avoid 0:02:36.400 --> 0:02:40.519 the potentially disastrous effects of climate change. It's a daunting prospect, 0:02:40.720 --> 0:02:44.400 but there's never been more support from private investors and policymakers. 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:48.120 Maybe this is the rare case where the biggest business 0:02:48.120 --> 0:02:51.560 opportunity is also a chance to save the world. I'm 0:02:51.560 --> 0:02:55.680 Pia Gadkari and I'm Joshua Brewsting. You're listening to Decrypted. 0:03:01.360 --> 0:03:03.000 If you want to know what's hot in the tech 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:05.440 startup world, there may not be a better place to 0:03:05.520 --> 0:03:09.800 look than why Combinator Demo Day. Twice a year, several 0:03:09.840 --> 0:03:12.480 dozen hand picks startups give two minute pitches to a 0:03:12.560 --> 0:03:21.600 room full of investors, media types, and industry insiders. It's 0:03:21.600 --> 0:03:24.560 a big deal. Y SEE as a tech investment firm 0:03:24.639 --> 0:03:28.680 that's famous for its role launching companies like Airbnb, drop Box, 0:03:28.760 --> 0:03:32.440 and Reddit. Every founder that takes the stage oozes with 0:03:32.480 --> 0:03:39.520 optimism that they're about to hit it big. No one else, 0:03:41.520 --> 0:03:50.320 Because no one else, no one else. It's InCred ten. 0:04:00.560 --> 0:04:06.240 But in recent years y C has also begun testing 0:04:06.240 --> 0:04:10.560 out its own sweeping social projects. It said it was 0:04:10.560 --> 0:04:13.320 going to begin experimenting with the concept of paying people 0:04:13.360 --> 0:04:16.480 a universal basic income. That year, it also said it 0:04:16.480 --> 0:04:18.160 was going to build a city from the ground up. 0:04:18.800 --> 0:04:21.440 Y C side projects serve as a barometer of the 0:04:21.480 --> 0:04:24.640 big questions that Silicon Valley is fixated on at any 0:04:24.640 --> 0:04:27.120 one moment in time, and this year, why C said 0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:30.880 it was specifically seeking pictures from startups working to remove 0:04:31.000 --> 0:04:35.360 carbon from the atmosphere. It was overwhelmed with responses. Sixties 0:04:35.400 --> 0:04:38.919 startups applied to the program. It accepted just two of them, 0:04:38.960 --> 0:04:42.640 and one of those was Prometheus. The company was started 0:04:42.640 --> 0:04:46.280 by a guy named Rob McGinnis. A demo day, Rob 0:04:46.320 --> 0:04:48.680 took the stage and told the audience that he had 0:04:48.720 --> 0:04:51.600 built a machine that could make gasoline from thin air, 0:04:52.400 --> 0:04:55.200 and that it could do it at a profit. This 0:04:55.279 --> 0:04:57.839 was an idea with the potential to be the undepenning 0:04:57.880 --> 0:05:00.520 of a huge business and a real force in the 0:05:00.560 --> 0:05:04.640 fight against climate change. It was also pretty audacious coming 0:05:04.640 --> 0:05:08.080 from such a small company. After demo day, I visited 0:05:08.160 --> 0:05:10.840 Rob in his coworking space about two hours south of 0:05:10.920 --> 0:05:14.400 San Francisco, formed a company, and I started building our 0:05:14.440 --> 0:05:18.440 first proaches. Would you say, we it's really just to 0:05:18.480 --> 0:05:20.800 do at this point. Yeah, but I had health. So 0:05:20.839 --> 0:05:23.000 it's like people have been working as if they're going 0:05:23.040 --> 0:05:28.120 to have jobs and now they are. Rob's machine is 0:05:28.160 --> 0:05:30.960 a six ft tall box, three ft on each side. 0:05:31.400 --> 0:05:35.800 It's the size of a real big refrigerator. So you know, 0:05:35.839 --> 0:05:40.240 I had this open and have you looked at it 0:05:40.240 --> 0:05:42.359 since it came back from San Francisco, haven't? Really, this 0:05:42.400 --> 0:05:44.760 is the first unveiling. Everything's still here in the racks. 0:05:44.839 --> 0:05:49.320 That's good, Okay, Um, well that's go through and make 0:05:49.360 --> 0:05:52.159 sure nothing lose. I mean, is this your only one 0:05:52.200 --> 0:05:54.880 at the moment? Yeah, this is so we were really 0:05:54.920 --> 0:05:57.040 nervous loading and unloading it, you know, but it was 0:05:57.080 --> 0:05:58.760 important to have it there for people to be able 0:05:58.800 --> 0:06:01.760 to see what we're talking talking about. So these are 0:06:01.800 --> 0:06:05.080 power supplies. Um. So we opens it up and I 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:07.599 can see that there's a cooling unit on the top 0:06:08.040 --> 0:06:10.440 and a little screen that shows a video feed from 0:06:10.440 --> 0:06:14.040 what's going on inside the machine. That's just bubbles coming 0:06:14.040 --> 0:06:17.160 out of water, and there's some piping and some wires, 0:06:17.680 --> 0:06:20.080 and then at the bottom there's a little spicket where 0:06:20.080 --> 0:06:22.279 the gas can come out. Rob asked me not to 0:06:22.320 --> 0:06:24.599 take pictures. We don't want people to see kind of 0:06:25.160 --> 0:06:29.080 exactly are piping and instruantation design because, um, you know, 0:06:29.120 --> 0:06:32.560 eventually people will compete doing things that may be similar, 0:06:32.560 --> 0:06:35.240 and we don't want to give anybody any you know, shortcuts. 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:38.640 The clever thing about Rob's machine is that it ends 0:06:38.720 --> 0:06:41.440 up at exactly the same place that traditional gas companies 0:06:41.520 --> 0:06:45.719 end up. It just starts somewhere different. Traditionally, the process 0:06:45.720 --> 0:06:48.400 of making gas starts with drilling something out of the ground, 0:06:48.800 --> 0:06:50.920 You refine it, you put it in your car, and 0:06:50.960 --> 0:06:54.120 you burn it. This releases carbon into the atmosphere, and 0:06:54.160 --> 0:06:57.400 that's the problem. The more fossil fuels we burn, the 0:06:57.480 --> 0:06:59.960 more the carbon builds up in our atmosphere, and that's 0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:03.279 ultimately contributing to climate change. But if you can use 0:07:03.320 --> 0:07:06.720 the carbon that's already in the air to make your gasoline, 0:07:06.960 --> 0:07:11.000 your carbon footprint can theoretically be zero. You just create 0:07:11.000 --> 0:07:14.320 a circular process that recycles the same carbon over and over, 0:07:14.760 --> 0:07:17.200 and that's what Robs trying to do. What's cool about 0:07:17.240 --> 0:07:20.920 this is it's reverse combustion, right, So when you burn fuel, 0:07:21.160 --> 0:07:25.040 you make water, carbon oxide, and energy in some sort 0:07:25.040 --> 0:07:28.440 of work. Hopefully um and those three things can be 0:07:28.480 --> 0:07:33.360 combined back into um into gasoline, but the byproducts oxygen. 0:07:34.000 --> 0:07:37.360 So this thing is like a little mechanical forest, just 0:07:37.440 --> 0:07:41.080 like trees. Rob's machine would remove carbon dioxide from the air. 0:07:41.600 --> 0:07:44.400 Of course, there are some caveats. The process requires a 0:07:44.440 --> 0:07:47.800 significant amount of energy. If that energy doesn't come from 0:07:47.800 --> 0:07:51.800 renewable sources like wind or solar energy, you'll just end 0:07:51.880 --> 0:07:55.400 up burning carbon to make your carbon neutral fuel, and 0:07:55.480 --> 0:07:58.560 that defeats the whole purpose. It can also be really expensive. 0:07:59.840 --> 0:08:02.880 I contacted Matt Eisman, who was the technical lead on 0:08:02.920 --> 0:08:06.280 Foghorn for Google. He's advising Robin. I was interested in 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:09.400 what he had to say about Prometheus. Matt said people 0:08:09.440 --> 0:08:13.320 regularly approach him with ideas for carbon removal companies, seeking 0:08:13.320 --> 0:08:16.480 his endorsement or his advice. Prometheus stood out to Matt 0:08:16.600 --> 0:08:20.280 because of advances Rob had made in material sciences. These 0:08:20.280 --> 0:08:23.320 would allow him to turn carbon into fuel in liquid stage. 0:08:23.840 --> 0:08:26.120 Before then, people have been heating it up and doing 0:08:26.160 --> 0:08:29.680 this in gaseous form. This would mean that Prometheus can 0:08:29.720 --> 0:08:33.320 conduct his process at a lower temperature that requires less power, 0:08:33.800 --> 0:08:37.840 and that makes everything cheaper. Rob's machines can also be 0:08:37.880 --> 0:08:40.320 small enough to be portable, so he could physically move 0:08:40.360 --> 0:08:42.560 them around based on where the power is cheapest at 0:08:42.559 --> 0:08:46.120 any time. In the weeks after Demo Day, Rob said 0:08:46.160 --> 0:08:47.959 he was able to raise all the money he was 0:08:48.040 --> 0:08:50.120 off to and that he'd use it to hire a 0:08:50.120 --> 0:08:53.080 few employees and move the project onto the next phase, 0:08:53.600 --> 0:08:55.400 but he didn't want to say how much he had 0:08:55.480 --> 0:09:00.440 raised or from whom Prometheus is entering a growing carbon 0:09:00.559 --> 0:09:04.679 capture industry, there's a number of stages that companies are 0:09:04.679 --> 0:09:07.320 focused on. There are the companies that want to perfect 0:09:07.400 --> 0:09:09.920 the process of sucking the carbon out of the air 0:09:10.400 --> 0:09:14.640 that's known as direct air carbon capture. Climb Works, Global Thermostat, 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:17.440 and Carbon Engineering have all been working on that project 0:09:17.480 --> 0:09:21.080 for years. Then there are companies like Opus twelve who 0:09:21.120 --> 0:09:23.600 want to use the technology to make not only fuel, 0:09:24.040 --> 0:09:28.080 but other industrial chemicals like carbon monoxide. And then there's 0:09:28.080 --> 0:09:31.280 another set of businesses that want to use repurposed carbon 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:35.880 to build alternatives to concrete and other construction materials. Meanwhile, 0:09:36.040 --> 0:09:38.440 Rob wants to go off to another huge market, which 0:09:38.480 --> 0:09:41.240 is the gasoline market, and he believes that it will 0:09:41.280 --> 0:09:44.520 be possible for him to start producing gasoline at profitable 0:09:44.600 --> 0:09:47.880 rates within a year. He's told us about three dollars 0:09:47.880 --> 0:09:50.440 a gallon at first. Of course, for now he's just 0:09:50.520 --> 0:09:54.160 asking us to take his word for it. We've been building, um, 0:09:54.280 --> 0:09:57.680 both this prototype system and also the economic model that 0:09:57.720 --> 0:10:01.280 we're basing our assumptions on during that And have you 0:10:01.320 --> 0:10:04.000 actually produced any gasoline during that period? No? No, we 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:07.000 just finished the machine on Friday. But um, there's no 0:10:07.120 --> 0:10:09.439 question it will make fuel because everything in it has 0:10:09.440 --> 0:10:11.800 already been used to do what it's done before, So 0:10:11.840 --> 0:10:15.360 there's no there's no like, no new part in this system. 0:10:15.400 --> 0:10:17.920 It's really just things that have been done but done 0:10:17.920 --> 0:10:27.920 before independently. What most climate scientists agree on is that 0:10:27.960 --> 0:10:31.680 the planet needs more carbon capture. Last fall, the u 0:10:31.800 --> 0:10:34.960 n s Into Governmental Panel on Climate Change said carbon 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:37.760 removal would be a necessary part of the response to 0:10:37.760 --> 0:10:40.720 the problem. Estimates of how much carbon we need to 0:10:40.760 --> 0:10:43.720 be removing from the atmosphere every year are in the 0:10:43.840 --> 0:10:47.840 range of ten giga tons. That's ten billion tons of carbon, 0:10:48.400 --> 0:10:51.320 or about a quarter of the current annual level of 0:10:51.320 --> 0:10:55.240 global CEO two emissions. That means companies like robs have 0:10:55.320 --> 0:10:58.960 to start having some real successes and real soon. But 0:10:59.080 --> 0:11:02.480 not everyone in albed in. Carbon removal is necessarily building 0:11:02.480 --> 0:11:12.560 new machines. Say that absolutely, thanks for having me. The 0:11:12.600 --> 0:11:15.120 same week I met Rob, I also met with Diego 0:11:15.200 --> 0:11:18.520 sized Gill, the founder of Pachama. That's the other carbon 0:11:18.559 --> 0:11:21.800 removal company that got into y S. Diego didn't have 0:11:21.840 --> 0:11:25.000 a machine to show me. His company makes software that's 0:11:25.000 --> 0:11:28.280 meant to improve carbon offset markets. These are transactions in 0:11:28.320 --> 0:11:31.240 which someone, usually a business that releases a lot of 0:11:31.280 --> 0:11:34.720 carbon into the atmosphere, would pay someone else to remove 0:11:34.960 --> 0:11:37.640 or prevent the release of a similar amount of carbon. 0:11:38.200 --> 0:11:41.160 So the software Diego is writing might one day allow 0:11:41.200 --> 0:11:44.560 people to pay Prometheus, for example, for the greenhouse gases 0:11:44.600 --> 0:11:47.920 that it eliminates. Remember how Rob had described his machine 0:11:47.960 --> 0:11:51.480 as a kind of mechanical forest. The carbon removal technology 0:11:51.640 --> 0:11:55.280 that most interest Diego are actual forests. You know, we 0:11:55.320 --> 0:11:57.959 need energy breakthroughs too, We need to reduce emissions and 0:11:58.040 --> 0:12:02.559 transition to a low carbon uh energy matrix. All those 0:12:02.600 --> 0:12:08.320 efforts need to be explored. Um. You know, we're just 0:12:08.320 --> 0:12:10.480 starting with with what we think is the easiest and cheapest. 0:12:10.960 --> 0:12:13.840 The more plan, Madris, You know, Diego told me he 0:12:13.960 --> 0:12:16.600 spent his whole career in technology up to this point, 0:12:16.800 --> 0:12:19.240 doing things that he looks back and fields are kind 0:12:19.240 --> 0:12:22.560 of inconsequential. So much of the tech industry has been 0:12:22.559 --> 0:12:25.840 focused on making life convenient around the edges, helping us 0:12:25.840 --> 0:12:29.360 our tackos from our phones or whatever, and Diego thinks 0:12:29.360 --> 0:12:31.600 that this is his chance to do something bigger than that. 0:12:31.960 --> 0:12:35.000 But he also knows that if a real carbon economy emerges, 0:12:35.240 --> 0:12:36.840 there's gonna be a lot of money to be made 0:12:36.840 --> 0:12:41.400 as a middleman. I strongly believe that it is an 0:12:41.400 --> 0:12:44.080 amazing economic opportunity as well. Right, it might be the 0:12:44.160 --> 0:12:47.440 economic opportunity of the twenty one century to fix climate change. 0:12:47.760 --> 0:12:50.280 Of course, a lot has to happen for those economics 0:12:50.280 --> 0:12:53.040 to pan out. Most businesses won't start paying for the 0:12:53.040 --> 0:12:55.280 carbon they're a missing until there's a law saying they 0:12:55.320 --> 0:12:59.320 have to. Diego's business really depends on governments taking action 0:12:59.440 --> 0:13:02.040 in order to work. This runs counter to a lot 0:13:02.080 --> 0:13:04.360 of what you've heard from the tech industry in recent years. 0:13:05.520 --> 0:13:08.800 It says that government regulation is often an impediment innovation, 0:13:09.120 --> 0:13:12.960 not its spark, and betting on politicians is always risky. 0:13:13.000 --> 0:13:15.559 But that's not even the only big question hanging over 0:13:15.600 --> 0:13:19.160 this industry. There's something a little strange about just letting 0:13:19.160 --> 0:13:22.599 the biggest climate offenders buy their way out of the problem. 0:13:22.640 --> 0:13:25.960 And with all of these carbon capture technologies. On one hand, 0:13:25.960 --> 0:13:28.199 it's good because we can keep doing things the way 0:13:28.240 --> 0:13:31.520 we always have without adding to the emissions that are 0:13:31.559 --> 0:13:35.400 already in the atmosphere. But critics would say, ultimately we 0:13:35.520 --> 0:13:39.400 have to develop technologies that don't create emissions at all. Right, 0:13:39.800 --> 0:13:43.559 So this is the view that carbon removal technologies are 0:13:43.679 --> 0:13:46.720 a fantasy that allow us to count on some easy 0:13:46.760 --> 0:13:48.920 way out to emerge so that we don't have to 0:13:48.960 --> 0:13:51.280 make the tough decisions that we'd have to make otherwise. 0:13:51.840 --> 0:13:54.479 It's definitely been a part of the discussion around them. 0:13:54.600 --> 0:13:57.559 I asked Julio Freedman about this. He's the Columbia professor 0:13:57.600 --> 0:14:00.160 we heard from at the top of the episode who 0:14:00.200 --> 0:14:03.200 has studied carbon management for nearly two decades, and these 0:14:03.280 --> 0:14:06.320 arguments about moral hazards really don't hold water with him. 0:14:06.440 --> 0:14:08.640 He says, it's unclear what kind of technologies are going 0:14:08.679 --> 0:14:11.080 to work, and so we should really be trying everything. 0:14:11.559 --> 0:14:14.320 The more technologies we try, the greater the chances we 0:14:14.400 --> 0:14:17.400 have of finding something that works. Because so many of 0:14:17.400 --> 0:14:19.840 these ideas are doomed to fail, often for reasons we 0:14:19.840 --> 0:14:23.320 don't quite understand yet, and history has proven repeatedly that 0:14:23.440 --> 0:14:25.960 finding something that's better than fossil fuel is going to 0:14:26.040 --> 0:14:29.600 be really, really hard. So there are many companies that 0:14:29.640 --> 0:14:33.000 have broken their spears on. There are many companies that 0:14:33.200 --> 0:14:35.360 were like, we're going to make something that's going to 0:14:35.440 --> 0:14:45.400 compete with gasolies and their debts, you know, Josh. One 0:14:45.400 --> 0:14:47.600 of the things that has kind of intrigued me most 0:14:47.840 --> 0:14:51.440 is the fact that despite this incredibly urgent need for 0:14:51.440 --> 0:14:55.760 the technology, the market is still in such early phases. Yeah. 0:14:55.840 --> 0:14:58.560 I think when you start looking at any new project, 0:14:58.800 --> 0:15:02.440 it's a discovery and you think, wow, people are just 0:15:02.520 --> 0:15:05.560 starting down this road and it's exciting. But one of 0:15:05.560 --> 0:15:07.440 the first things I found out was that the main 0:15:08.320 --> 0:15:11.600 direct air carbon capturing companies have been around for years. 0:15:11.880 --> 0:15:15.280 They're just still very early. And I think that's a 0:15:15.360 --> 0:15:19.560 reminder of how difficult the technological problems are here. I mean, 0:15:19.840 --> 0:15:24.600 Google gave up. There is a real question about can 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:27.560 you do this in a way that makes any economic sense, 0:15:28.560 --> 0:15:31.440 And even if you do that, then the scale up 0:15:31.480 --> 0:15:35.320 has to be so rapid and so big. That is 0:15:35.320 --> 0:15:37.880 a really daunting problem. In and of itself, and that's 0:15:38.480 --> 0:15:42.360 a technological and a sort of economic problem. I think 0:15:42.440 --> 0:15:45.520 one interesting example of kind of where we are with 0:15:45.560 --> 0:15:50.200 this industry right now is one of the other applications 0:15:50.320 --> 0:15:55.160 that companies have focused on, and that's selling bubbles to 0:15:55.360 --> 0:15:59.840 beverage makers. They need to buy carbon, and so direct 0:16:00.080 --> 0:16:03.040 carbon capture companies have been trying to strike deals with 0:16:03.080 --> 0:16:06.400 these bottling companies to say, hey, we'll sell your bubbles. 0:16:06.880 --> 0:16:09.880 We can do it at close to a reasonable price 0:16:09.960 --> 0:16:12.800 right now for this application, and then they can start 0:16:12.920 --> 0:16:15.040 learning about how maybe they get to some of these 0:16:15.040 --> 0:16:18.239 broader applications. And that's one of the things that's notable 0:16:18.360 --> 0:16:20.920 about Rob's company is that he's actually going off to 0:16:21.240 --> 0:16:26.440 a much bigger, more established market, which is the gasoline market. Yeah. Absolutely, 0:16:26.920 --> 0:16:31.440 Rob is a very convincing proponent of this idea. Obviously 0:16:31.480 --> 0:16:33.840 you have to be. He says, Look, if I can 0:16:33.880 --> 0:16:36.480 make gasoline that's the same as the gasoline that goes 0:16:36.520 --> 0:16:40.480 into your car, then there's already pipes to move that gasoline. 0:16:41.000 --> 0:16:42.880 I don't know if to convince people to buy that gasoline. 0:16:42.880 --> 0:16:45.160 Because there's a commodity market, I can just sell into 0:16:45.200 --> 0:16:48.880 it and will be there as fast as I can grow. 0:16:49.440 --> 0:16:51.760 At the same time, his main competition is going to 0:16:51.800 --> 0:16:56.320 be the big oil companies, and that that's pretty daunting competition. Yeah. Absolutely. 0:16:56.560 --> 0:16:59.720 I asked him about that as well. Obviously he said 0:16:59.760 --> 0:17:02.080 he hopes to work with them at some point. When 0:17:02.120 --> 0:17:05.320 I brought this up with Julio, he said that he 0:17:05.440 --> 0:17:09.080 thought these startups, a logical endpoint for them would be 0:17:09.119 --> 0:17:12.600 to figure out the technology and then be acquired by 0:17:12.600 --> 0:17:16.840 the large gas companies or oil companies, because you're going 0:17:16.880 --> 0:17:20.000 to need such a massive amount of infrastructure investment to 0:17:20.000 --> 0:17:22.680 get these things going, and they just have so many 0:17:22.720 --> 0:17:25.480 resources at their disposal that they might be willing to 0:17:25.520 --> 0:17:27.880 do it. And Rob actually had a number for how 0:17:27.960 --> 0:17:31.520 much he thought it would cost to build out his 0:17:31.960 --> 0:17:35.080 sort of direct air carbon capture gas for the United 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:38.560 States market, and that was eight hundred billion dollars. Okay, 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:41.440 so let's imagine that you know, whether by acquisition by 0:17:41.440 --> 0:17:46.320 an oil company or through tech investment, Rob's company Prometheus 0:17:46.320 --> 0:17:48.919 is able to kind of succeed and scale up. Do 0:17:49.000 --> 0:17:52.840 you foresee at that point unintended consequences down the road? 0:17:53.240 --> 0:17:55.800 There must be, I mean, it always happens if something 0:17:55.840 --> 0:17:59.439 gets to global scale, there's gonna be negative consequences that 0:17:59.480 --> 0:18:02.400 you haven't out of beforehand. I think some of them 0:18:02.400 --> 0:18:07.320 are kind of obvious already. If you started having fuel 0:18:07.359 --> 0:18:09.240 made this way at such a large scale, that will 0:18:09.280 --> 0:18:13.760 require a massive amount of energy. In some ways, it's 0:18:13.800 --> 0:18:17.480 just converting solar and wind energy into gasoline, if you 0:18:17.480 --> 0:18:20.280 think about it, and that's going to distort those markets, 0:18:20.359 --> 0:18:22.760 or at least impact those markets. Another thing that might 0:18:22.800 --> 0:18:25.199 happen is just the amount of land that some of 0:18:25.200 --> 0:18:27.720 this would require has been something that's been brought up. 0:18:27.760 --> 0:18:29.800 If you need to build wind farms, you know, from 0:18:29.840 --> 0:18:32.959 horizon to horizon, it's going to be a problem. And 0:18:33.000 --> 0:18:36.520 then also with anything that gets to the scale, the 0:18:36.560 --> 0:18:42.600 big problems are you know, yet to be determined. And 0:18:42.680 --> 0:18:45.840 that's it for this week's episode of Decrypted. Thanks for listening. 0:18:46.240 --> 0:18:48.800 If you're involved with carbon capture technologies, I'd love to 0:18:48.840 --> 0:18:51.240 hear from you. You can write to us at Decrypted 0:18:51.320 --> 0:18:54.080 at Bloomberg dot net or I'm on Twitter at Joshua 0:18:54.080 --> 0:18:57.560 Broosting and I'm at pa Gatkari. And please help us 0:18:57.560 --> 0:18:59.679 spread the word about our show by leaving us a 0:18:59.760 --> 0:19:02.280 race thing or a review wherever you like to listen 0:19:02.280 --> 0:19:05.600 to podcasts. This episode was produced by Pierre Gadkari and 0:19:05.680 --> 0:19:09.399 Lindsay Cratterwell. Our story editor was Anne Vandermay. Thank you 0:19:09.440 --> 0:19:13.480 also to Akio, Emily Busso, and Brad Stone. Francesco Levi 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:16.320 is a head of Bloomberg Podcasts. We'll see you next week.