Endgame with Gita Wirjawan - Jimmy Chen - Stanford’s Energy Expert: Climate Bottleneck Might Fail Us

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

Join Endgame YouTube Channel Membership! Support us and get early access to our videos + more perks in return: https://sgpp.me/becomemember ---------------------- “When there is a clear enough motivation or change, things get done really fast.” Dr. Jimmy Chen, the managing director of Stanford Energy Corporate Affiliates (SECA) at Precourt Institute for Energy, in conversation with Gita Wirjawan to share his optimism towards global climate actions. Gita Wirjwan is an Indonesian entrepreneur, educator, and Honorary Professor of Politics and International Relations at the School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham, UK. He is also a visiting scholar at The Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), Stanford University (2022—2024). #Endgame #GitaWirjawan #JimmyChen ---------------------- Content: Prof. Jimmy's Early Scientific Curiosity Manual vs Digital Dexterity Academic Journey 3 Agencies in Sustainability 'Stealing' Silicon Valley California's Blessings When Academia Meets Entrepreneurship Climate Realism, Prediction, Hope Money: A Fundamental Issue Fossil Fuel Demand Climate Bottleneck 'Climate Deniers' & 'Flat-Earther' Hydrogen "It Is Within Our Power to Control" ------------------ Earn a Master of Public Policy degree and be Indonesia's future narrator. More info: [e-mail] | https://admissions.sgpp.ac.id | https://wa.me/628111522504 Visit and subscribe: SGPP Indonesia | Endgame Clips

It is within our power to control. We're not violating laws of God. So we can actually solve this issue. But we have to do it relatively quickly. We're honored today to have Professor Jimmy Chin, who is the managing director of Stanford Energy. There's a lot of incentives and funds that are not available or will become available for making a lot of steps.

But the processes, the permitting, the safety, the siding, all those processes, their existing processes, their existing processes are out of phase with the speed that we need to move. And I tell my constituents in New York, COVID was horrible. But if we do nothing on climate, starting within a few short years from now, each year will be worse than COVID and each year will be worse than the previous year. Isn't it ridiculous that we're destroying the only home we have? And isn't it time now we're faced with the threat of climate?

climate change, and it's not a threat anymore, is it? It's reality. Those things have to change, and those things are not based on the marketplace of supply and demand. Those are based on the policies and processes we have in place for execution of these things. They'll put in there for good reason, but at the end of day, not getting there. You stop short of mentioning the people that are in charge of the processes. Yeah, you know. Hi, friends and fellows, welcome to this special series of conversations involving personalities

coming from a number of campuses, including Stanford University. The purpose of the series is really to unleash thought-provoking ideas that I think would be of tremendous value to you. I want to thank you for your support so far, and welcome to the special series. Hi, friends, we're honored today to have Professor Jimmy Chin, who is the managing director of Stanford Energy. Jimmy, thank you so much for coming on to our show. Sure. Of course.

You know, as always, I'm very curious about how you grew up. You, you know, got hooked to science quite early, but what made you get hooked to science? Yeah, so I think, you know, like a lot of people, there was a natural gravitation toward things that you were interested in. And for me, I was always interested in how things work, mechanical things, electrical things, and then building things and trying them out. And there was always a great deal of satisfaction. When you play with that, and you actually build something with a seeing how it works, and then build something with an intent, like a purpose or something.

It's like, oh, it's like, oh, you can actually do that. And so that kind of just reinforced itself. And I enjoyed it. It was fun. And, you know, you could actually do something small and actually have an effect, sort of a intention, and I'd make it come real. And that was just very rewarding. You know, the scientists that I've talked to, they oftentimes refer to some of the experiments they did when they were a kid.

Yeah. Right. And some of which were not very pleasant. Sometimes. Did that happen to you? And it sort of gave me the impression that stuff like that would actually reinforce your gravitation to empirical science, which is a bit weird or funny. So as a kid, you're going to naturally experiment.

And that's not necessarily just true with what you just describe, at least in my viewpoint. It's not just for science. You know, you could be something as simple as, you know, you're at a, at a campfire, and then you put your hand there, and it's like, okay, you won't do that again. So I think kids learn by child and error. That's how they learn. And the lessons that are with them in many cases for life

are formed in those early years of experimentation. I think anything, any animal, any child, anybody learns in the early days by experimentation. And in some cases, I think later you learn by being taught, you know, by your parents and other things. And then they try to spare your lessons which can be really bad to learn by experimentation. But I think everybody learns from experimentation. And if you love something, more than likely you're going to have some bad experiences with it, like most people. In fact, I remember my brother, you know, this is a classic hairpin in the,

light socket experiment, right? And it's not like, okay, well, we won't be doing that anymore. But I think that people like and find their naturally attracted to certain things, they experiment, and then if they have positive experiences from it, like I did, you know, they want to play with it some more. You know, when you grew up or when I grew up, people that wanted to be scientist, spent a lot of time in the labs. Yeah.

With the kids nowadays, they were spending a lot of their time and not most of their time on their mobile phones. Yeah. Do you see a possible change in the future in the way scientists, you know, get shaped by way of the different early habits of kids from today's era versus your era? Oh, absolutely.

You know, I think that kids that are on digital media a lot, has pros and cons. I mean, I think the whole data simulation successes in the last couple of decades are in many ways driven by people who were able and comfortable in harnessing the tools of computation, simulations, visualization, you know, in this e-space

and integrate all that information together and make the advancements that are, we see, you know, AI, machine learning, all those kind of things, right? I think certainly in our era we didn't have the computing power and the maturity of a lot of those things. And I think many of us were more grew up building things with our hands. Right. Okay.

So like a lot of things, is a give and take. So I think what we're struggling now in many cases is building things with our hands. Yeah. The kids and maybe. No, it's like the two thumbs only. Yeah. And I think many of them have this impression. that's not correct, that it's like a video game.

Can't you just sort of redefine this, reprogram it, and also it comes out. And the answer is no, actually, if you actually have to physically build things, you need to actually put shovels in the ground. You know, so I think that's been one of the things that we're coming, running into, is that if we're going to build things in this country,

physically building, shovels in the ground and stuff, the skills that necessary for this are not really available. You have to actually train. But on the other hand, many of the kids grew up that way were involved in many of the dramatic learnings that enable AI machine learning and stuff. And so I see it as another one of these things that ebb and grow and flow.

And I think that honestly, you need people in both those spaces. You just have to understand that for the people who grew up in digital media, that life is not a video game. Okay. And for the people who grew up with just hands out and all the stuff, that there's real value in simulation and machine learning and AI, as we're finding out in trolls right now.

And that the, that capability is actually quite amazing. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. What do we need to do as parents or the older generation as to help our kids in terms in terms of harnessing this dexterity that's needed, right? I mean, they can focus on whatever AI stuff that they're doing, but let's make sure that they do not forget some of the other skill set

that, you know, their preceding generation would have been exposed to that would have been helpful. Yeah, I think that's really germane to develop countries. where they're more, they have access to the tools and all that. And in many cases spend a lot of time on that. Look, I think just my experience, both as a child and as a parent, is that one of the biggest tools you give your child is exposure. Okay. And expose them to different cultures,

expose them to different ways of doing things. And in many ways, encourage, not just exposure, but experimentation in those lines. So you can, you know, you can, for example, show someone that, hey, you know, wow, you know, if you were out there playing in the playground and you were to do either basketball or any of the other sports, that can be a lot of fun too. And it, you know, gets you out there in the sunshine, walking in nature, you know, seeing some of the amazing, you know, natural wonders and stuff. That can be very fulfilling.

And it's a lot better than a video game. I know that when I, you know, one of my things I used to love to do was a very early morning hike to actually be up there and see a sunrise. Okay. I found that really, really fulfilling and very sort of settling and stuff. And I remember when I wanted to get my kids up early to do that, it looked at me like I was crazy. It was like, why would you want to do that? It's not even light yet and, you know, it's cold and everything else, right? But after a couple of times out there, we're just like, wow, this is actually really good.

The air is clean, it's quiet. You know, you're kind of refreshed. And so I really do think that you need to have exposure and actually try it. And I think that's one of the things that a parent can encourage is doing that. And also exposure to cultures, different people, different ways of thinking, different foods, you know, all those kinds of things. And then people are realizing that there's such a much bigger world. And some of those, some of the things you're never going to get from video game. Like, are you really going to be able to tell how different foods taste from video game?

no, you actually have to try it. And you may find that you like a lot of those kinds of things. And there is no video game that I've seen where the background and the imagery is as amazing as a hike in nature. Okay, it's just, you know, the whole smell, seeing the world come up and wake up. There's no video game that I've seen that actually comes to that. So, anyway, as my two-sent. I go through the same exact thing. Yeah.

You went to MIT and then Berkeley. Actually, it was Berkeley and MIT. Berkeley first and MIT. Yeah. Why and how? Well, my parents were immigrants. Berkeley was an accessible school in California. It was much more reasonably priced.

And it had the kind of reputation, which really, I think you can strive to work. and so I think most immigrant families getting into Berkeley was like, okay, that would be a great thing. We weren't necessarily as attuned to the whole, the Ivy League or anything of that. So it was sort of just like that was going to be it. And then, but anything, I felt like if you were to stay in one school and you have certain biases built into your education and certain ways of looking at things. So I really didn't want to do that. And so when I decided to, at that time, I was convinced I wanted to go and be a faculty member, I felt like it would be a mistake to get all your degrees from school. So I looked and, you know, sort of thought about what other schools would be good to go to finish up my PhD.

And, you know, MIT's a good school. It's in Boston. Yeah, it's in Boston. Boston's a fun town. It's kind of a great experience. It can be a big cold. There are times when the snow is really high, and they have these snow days and everything else. But boy, what a great experience.

And so it's very much for me about education experience, exposure. What brought you to Stanford? Ah, that's a really good question. California? No, no, no, no. So I've only been in Stanford for about nine years, eight, nine years, I think. So I had, like other people, finish graduate school and then went and started working. And I went into industry.

I found that actually that it was a better match with my personality and sort of like getting, you know, doing things, really having an impact, you know, meeting the customer, all those kinds of things. And I went into industry for the majority of my career. And after spending many, many, many years in industry, I found that I was looking for something different. I wanted to try something different. And so I took a number of years off, did a lot of volunteering, did interviews or talking to people to get their sites. Really, I was looking to see and learn from people who did a career change and also what to do next. And in the course of those a few years, a number of people kept saying, you should go to Stanford and check it out.

And I wasn't really sure that was a good idea. But I reached out to people I knew at Stanford. And one of them, which was a colleague of mine from MIT, actually reached back and says, oh, we have this new program. We love you to lead. Can you come give it a shot? Right. And so I found that, boy, I really, Stanford is an amazing place.

It really is. I mean, you get to work with, you get to work with amazingly bright people who are very passionate, very creative. You get to work in an environment which you really are encouraged to think about having an impact, right? Not just something, research that would not be adopted. There's a real strong emphasis on having an impact. And so the culture at Stanford is amazing and the people and stuff. So I wasn't sure, but I couldn't have predicted that I'd be here eight or nine years later. You're going to be much longer.

Who knows? You know, it's just, but I think anyone who has been at Stanford, well, you're at Stanford now, right? Yeah, I've been here for a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'd be. I love the weather. The weather is nice, right? The wine's nice.

That's a big plus. Yeah, 20 minutes to the beach, 30 minutes. That's nice. You know, no question about it. But I do think, as I've talked to many people who have visited, that the culture and energy here and the vibe and everything else, it's pretty special. You don't find that in many places.

And there's a lot of other academic institutions around the world. But there's something actually very special about Stanford. Let's talk about the weather or climate. Sure. Which you've been doing a lot of work in or on. If you've been in the academic domain, you've been in a private sector, and you've dealt with the government or governments, right? And you're specializing on how to find the optimum, you know, or optimal intersection between government, entrepreneurship, and academics, right? And what have you seen as being the most difficult parts of putting the three together to embrace this narrative of sustainability?

Well, I think I feel a big sense of urgency with sustainability because we actually need to make some big changes in a very short time. we're actually going to mitigate the impacts of climate change. Right. But the agencies you're talking about, like government agencies, short of a major motivation like a pandemic, okay, government generally doesn't move fast, okay, unless you have a war or a pandemic or something like that. Government tends to be much slower in that approach.

But on the other hand, if they're activated, right, then amazing things can happen. Real big things can happen. You know, my experience, industry can move a lot faster. And quite frankly, I think industry, what I observe is that if you want to do something at scale, do it fast, and be able to be self-sustaining, industry is going to be the best at that because they can figure out a way to actually scale it and make it profitable. And then you can sort of self-continue.

Much better than I think anything else, like government or, you know, I just think industry is really good at that, right? And in my mind, academia of sort of understanding and creating the tools and the thought leadership around and the research that could enable that are important. But they're also in different timescales. You know, academia tends to move slow, you know, and they don't have necessarily deliverables, you know, it's very hard to manage research.

They don't have quarterly reports. Yeah, right. So I see it as more like there are different strengths and weaknesses about each of these entities, but bringing them together is very important because in my mind when you're having the researchers, they, what would really, and I've seen this in many cases, is to understand where and what the real issues are out in the actual marketplace. What is it the needs are? What is it that keep the companies up at night or people are really struggling with?

And they can read about that, but actually having a real dialogue and learning and exchange of information is really helpful for them. Because then they can say, okay, these are the real problems you need to solve. And then they can focus or adapt their research to address those questions. So that kind of exchange is really important. And so bringing that community together of both the academics, the industry, people, and the government, around us is really necessary for what we're trying to do, but they just have different strengths and weaknesses. And so you just have to be aware of how and what you need to try to do

and play to the strengths of each of these bodies to be able to, you know, like one of the things we do at Stanford and many of the programs I'm involved with. You know, we'll create seed fund, seed projects, okay, which were crazy ideas or new ideas or whatever. which can then lead to very interesting and promising results, which can then lead to government contracts or applications, submissions, whatever, which can lead to bigger funding.

So try to leverage off the interest and desire of companies to move fast and they're willing to help be part of a community to fund some of this stuff. And then this will lead to the next step, which could be very interesting promising results, which the government can then be involved in funding and stepping forward. further and the academia is having that community to hear from the people who are seeing the boots on the ground as well as the people that have a longer range of it and integrating that whole community together. That's terribly powerful and that's what certainly I find very stimulating

for me is bringing that community together. At times it can be challenging, right? They have different strengths and different weaknesses. Do you believe that it makes a difference that where you are? which is Silicon Valley, gets you to move a little bit faster. Oh, yeah. Because you're closer to where the marginal innovation is taking place. Oh, absolutely. A faster rate than some others, if not many others. Oh, very much so.

I think that's a critical piece of this. You know, I think that the culture, exchange, and can-do attitude, mindset in Silicon Valley is absolutely critical and in fact it's closely tied to Stanford and the Stanford mindset. I think that it's one of the reasons why for many decades now,

this area, Silicon Valley, Stanford has been a hop-ed of the latest and most promising, impactful discoveries and scale-up. I don't think that's an accident. In fact, I think there's very much a huge culture piece of this, which is very hard.

I mean, you can move technology and talk about doing research in the place of the world. You can even make policies and stuff. Changing the culture of a place is very difficult. And, you know, I think a number of places have tried to do this. And they find that what they get stuck on is the culture piece, which, you know, you can't easily export that, right? Exactly. What advocacy would you have for people that do not yet have the equivalent of Silicon Valley so that they can better embrace the narrative of sustainability. Like for many of us in Southeast Asia,

some of our brothers and sisters in Africa, friends and some other places, which may not have the kind of innovative ideas that we're seeing here in the zip code. I'm a big fan of experience. So if many of these So I would encourage me of them to apply to a place like Stanford so they can actually be here, sense it, experience it,

and understand it and bring some of that back. If you're in a company or whatever, if there's a chance to visit and get exposure to the kind of energy and the kind of ideas, some of which are very different than what you're exposed to daily, but then you start to understand and see that kind of stuff. I really do believe I would go into a place and experiencing it and maybe just getting a little bit of through your genes in osmosis

and seeing that and just realizing, wow, you know, this is not that there are different places in the world that look and do things differently than what I'm used to. And therefore now you're not limited by the boundary conditions of the way you grew up or what you think and stuff. You're just realizing, no, it's a much bigger planet. There's all sorts of new ways of people. And some people are doing it and experiencing this.

And heck, some of them become billionaires in some of these crazy new ideas. Then you're just exposed to that. You realize there's that, you know, there are other ways of doing and thinking about things. You know, you've been exposed to some places in Southeast Asia, one of which would have been Vietnam. You've been visited by companies. from Thailand. What have you identified as some of the positives and some of the stuff that we may need to work a little bit harder on for purposes of not just those two countries, but more broadly, the region of Southeast Asia? You know, I've been really, really, really, really impressed with these people from developing countries, with their

with many of the visitors that come to Stanford you know they're here to engage with Stanford and learn about how we do things how it works new ideas and stuff to address real problems that they see back home so they're here to actually learn

potentially collaborate with us and bring it back home to solve real issues and I think that I think where we're going, you need that because they understand from their particular regions what they need to do to make it work in their area. We're not going to necessarily understand that from our side. We can help with that and we can have some visibility,

but honestly, they're going to be much more familiar with that. And so learning about these new ideas and stuff and what may work, what may not work, and how we're doing it and how we're thinking about it and bringing those tools and stuff and then going back and crafting a regional solution or ideas that will work in their culture and what their political structure is and rules and everything else is really necessary. And they're the ones that can really do that.

We're not going to be able to do it because we can learn a little bit about it, but it's not necessarily the same. And so I think that that kind of exchange and visits and stuff and exchange of ideas and potentially longer term, collaborations is really key. Now, adapting to learning and available information and then customizing and adapting

to their particular region, that's the way it's going to work. You're not going to just take your solutions and say, do it there. One size fits all. Yeah. It won't be like that. No, no, no. Every country, even every region within a country may have their own boundary conditions. And there in lies where

understanding what's happening everywhere else and then picking the right pieces that could work for you and trying it out is really key. And in order to do that, you have to talk to people. You have to actually see, visit, learn, read, which is one of the arguments that the increasing accessibility of the communication tools is really good. You just have to realize that that's, you have to go beyond that.

I want to go back to this, but I want to pivot a little bit to the state of California. Yeah. We kind of talked about this a little bit. this state has been seemingly more progressive, right, in ushering forward this narrative of sustainability as compared to some of the other states in the United States. Yeah. Why do you think that's the case?

I mean, as much as we know that it is one of the largest carbon or fossil fuel producers in the world, not just in the U.S., but I think they've been able to show a lot of proactivity and progressiveness, you know, with respect to making sure that, you know, we stay environmentally friendly. Yeah, you know, I think California is very blessed in many, many ways. We have relatively, we have so many blessings. We have a moderate mild climate. We are, our economy is based across many different sectors, so we're not critically dependent

on any single sector. We have, you know, we're relatively wealthy. Very wealthy. Yeah, with a fifth largest. It's bigger than the GDPs of many countries are going to look. That was that amazing. And then I think there's a level of, there's a level of just sort of what I think is California spirit of, well, we can.

can try things, we can do things, we can actually have an impact. And that's been demonstrated where some of the new policies or ideas or regulatory constructs that originally percolated out to the rest of the U.S. So there's this history

of making difficult choices now, but then they actually have lasting impact, right? So California is to stay with the most people. yet it's like number one in population compared to the rest of the U.S. But the energy consumption per person, per capita, is among the lowest, right? So all those changes in efficiency, all those things, right?

You know, like one of the classic examples I have is the LED light bulb, right, as opposed to an incandescent light bulb, right? When they first came out, there was a strong resistance. Many cases, they were saying, well, it's just really expensive, right? A LOD lipos that could be fired all our resources, an incandescent light bulb, that's maybe 50 cents or less. But now LED lipos are really cheap. So the scaling now has taken effect, right? But those first couple of initial instances is relatively expensive.

But because of those early adoptions, the energy consumption in California, per capita is actually quite low. You know, so I think California has a lot of things associated with its culture. Fortunately, it's very wealth and its climate and its people that are, and quite frankly, a history now of doing that, that there's a level of comfort in doing that. And I think we're blessed. That's one of the things. You alluded to the fact that California has greater degree of sensitivity to what's happening.

You know, in the other parts of the world. Yeah, right. Talk about that. Well, I mean, I think California is the first state where the number of non-Caucasians was greater than 50%. And the acceptance of immigrants and the acceptance of mixing cultures together, you know, cross-marriages, all that was was okay. It was fine, you know. and people were accepting of that. And so what you have then is a situation

where people are from all over the world here. People are very accepting and understand their differences in cultures and they in fact embrace that, you know, everything from, oh, that's a different kind of food to, oh, that's kind of, you know, a different way of doing things.

And so I think in many ways California manifests the saying that there are strengths in diversity. And I think in California, you can see that. Right. And so I think in California, that's viewed as a default in many cases. And California also has differences across the state.

But I think in many places in California, people really see that. And, you know, I think people realize that there are people from all over the world here. And by and large, you're all accepted and embraced. And then people are comfortable and they bring their ideas and creativity. and now you have all different ways of looking at things and come up with ideas. And, yeah. Well, you got all the smart immigrants coming here, right?

You got all the great ideas coming in. It's very true. You know, there's very much of the best and brightest coming to the U.S. and maybe in California in particular. I think many people are the best and the brightest that want to feel comfortable, feel comfortable in California. Feel more comfortable in California.

To what extent would you attribute the success or relative success to leadership, you know, in the context of how the jelling between academia and entrepreneurship is so good, right? Does leadership play a role or irrespective of leadership because of the diversity ideas are always going to be cooked up in a good way? And there's always going to be marginal innovation. I mean, leadership is actually a very, critical part of that. I mean, the leadership, and I'm thinking, when I think leadership, I think of many elements of leadership, you know, whether it's social leadership, whether it's political leadership, whether it's technical leadership. I think, at least what I observe,

especially in Silicon Valley, is that there is a, there's a, not a fear of the unknown. You just go into it. You try it. Who knows, right? You could be wrong. You could be right. And if you're right, fantastic. If you're wrong, okay, change course. Try, something different. So I think leadership is a critical aspect of that and a critical aspect of the culture. I also think there's a very much of a, you know, everyone, everyone can contribute. It's not just on your education level or your social status. It's just a recognition that everyone can contribute. And there's, I think, by and large, an acceptance of that. So you will have a chance to to make your case or suggest your ideas or everything.

And if that's the right one, there's also an acceptance of, well, that's the best idea. I know it didn't come from necessarily the right person or whatever, but that's the right idea. That's what we should do. You know, it looks like it's the best idea. And then people will rally around that and they will do it, as opposed to, well, you know, this came from the boss

or we have to do this. I think there's more of a relaxed. Let's get that out there and see what people think and then come up with the best ideas and the best idea is what we should go with. I want to refer to the COP 28 in Dubai some months ago, right?

You know, we continue to see or witness very ambitious, lofty goals about decarbonization. And I've been somewhat skeptical about the realism of the achievability of this carbon neutrality by 2050. Well, I think there's a lot of people that are a little worried about that or worried about it. Might be a better word. Right. It just seems a little too political as opposed to empirical. The declaration of goals and whatever.

right? And I've been more optimistic about what the technologists are going to be doing as opposed to the policymakers, much less the politicians. And I think a lot of what the technologists are doing are going to be dependent upon what academia is going to be doing. Because there's this very close intersection or interaction between the two domains. How realistic do you think? Carbon neutrality. will be achieved by 2050. I mean, that's a major undertaking. You're talking about taking a fundamental plank of civilization, and you're talking about changing it completely,

all within the next couple of decades. And I think that's been part of the struggle. I mean, this is not something which doesn't... I always think, look, energy is one of those things So it will touch everybody and everything. Okay. And because of that, changing something like that is going to be really difficult. People, you're talking about changing people to some extent, what they're used to, their habits, their conveniences,

and then you're going to change it up on something they're not familiar with. And by the way, it could be more expensive. It's a really heavy lift. And I think it's what we're seeing is because it touches everybody and everything is that you need to have. have everybody and everything involved in something that big, the government, industry, academics, and that's a really, really big undertaking, which I think is part of the problem we're seeing with the struggle and why people are worried now. And there's a much bigger emphasis on carbon-negative technologies, you know, which is like, okay, we're probably not just going to get there by doing less

or doing more efficient. We have to figure out ways to take the carbon out of the air. And so there's a big increase now in looking at that, which will, I think it underlies a concern that we'll probably not be able to meet our goals. We have to come up with other ways to actually take it back out of the air. Is there enough momentum on carbon negative propositions? Yeah, so I think there's a lot of advancements and a lot of research going on. We see a lot of, we see a lot of that being done. You know, it's certainly still relatively early. And we don't know about whether and how it works at scale yet, which is a lot of the recent announcements around these big projects

that we'll be able to show that. Momentum. I think that there's now a lot of attention on it. So from that standpoint, I think that there's momentum. Do we have enough options and things, and do we have a path that we know it's going to get us there? No, I don't think so. in my opinion.

So, momentum from a standpoint of actual progress that shows that this will have an impact on the total CO2 in the world, right now I don't think so. But you have to start. And so I see that starting as a really encouraging sign. And so I do feel like

there's a lot of people that are worried about actually being able to do that. And the challenge is that, like, as I said earlier, you actually need all the people involved, right? The government people, the industry people, the academia people, right? Because it touches everybody and everything. And getting these various organizations to collectively work together in one country, let alone across the world, that's really tough, really, really tough.

And that's why I think, I think the cop announcements has been an enormous vehicle for the publicity of where we need to go, the challenges and getting alignment or at least some communication around this. Amazing. But it's, again, really only one of the vectors that needs to get us there. But if you didn't have that, that's so good. The other case. If you didn't have that, it'd be much worse. Because you wouldn't have the publicity or focus and talking about the funding

and all those other things. So it's really critical, but it's only one piece of where we need to go. You don't want to take you back to Southeast Asia again just to give you a taste of reality. Yeah. I mean, I've been talking about this in a sense that we're not adequately electrified yet. Yeah. You know, Indonesia is electrified only to the extent of about 1,000 kilowatt hour per capita. If you want to be modern, you need to be at least 6,000.

Singapore is 10,000. The United States, I think it's around 10,000. So we got to multiply our pre-existing capabilities by six times, right? At the rate, we only build about 3,000 megawatts per year. It's going to take us more than 100 years to get to 6,000 kilowatt hour. And that's assuming that we're going to build every additional wattage, you know, using renewable energy capability. And that's a very long time. And that's also a very prohibitively.

costly proposition. Because you're going to spend, I don't know, $2 million per megawatt at least for, you know, cool renewable energy capability. You extrapolate that to the whole Southeast Asia so that everybody in Southeast Asia will be electrified at 6,000 kilowatt hour per capita.

We're going to have to build an additional give and take a million megawatts worth of power generation capabilities. Oh, yeah. So that's two trillions. $2 trillion. How are we going to get that money? So I think it's going to require a very skillful academician,

a skillful entrepreneur, a skillful government official to work together to figure out how to get that kind of money. Yeah. I mean, I think if you look at it that way, and there's a lot of examples of that, you know, one of the ones that comes to minds around batteries, you know, with the scale up as part of the electrification question, is the amount of batteries you're going to need, whether it's transportation or grid level of storage and stuff,

and how many batteries you're going to need versus the actual capacity. It'll take your 100 years. You know, you see that kind of calculation a lot. And I think what a lot of those calculations assume is, let me rephrase that, I think a lot of those kinds of simulations and calculations make fundamental assumptions. And those assumptions, may or may not be true. So, I mean, we have seen major transformations in the past.

And these major transformations... Higher efficiency and all that, right? Higher efficiency, even transportation, right? In the 1900s, the transportation transformation from horse and buggy, do you remember this? Right? Over to electrified or motor vehicles with internal combustion engine or diesel or whatever.

And actually the first electric cards were around that time too. So, and I'm sure at that time when they were doing the calculations and all the other stuff, they also had similar sort of predictions. But I think this is where, at least for me, when I look back in history, it tells me that the models and other simulations are predicated on critical assumptions that may or not actually be the case as you start to scale this. and I think a better indication of that is when there's major undertakings and reasons for that, how has the world responded?

And that will tell you more like, okay, you know, this is how things can be done. The COVID pandemic is a great example of that, right? Who would have thought the vaccine was going to come out in a few months? You know, I think if someone shows how humans can work. Oh, absolutely. Under motivation and under stuff, right? Because, you know, if you had done the same sort of prediction, without a duly simulated pandemic kind of a model and said,

da-da-da-da-da-da, you say, oh, it's going to take me 30, 40 years, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, when there is a clear enough motivation or change, things can done really fast. That's what history, at least, when I look at history is shown, right? For critical things, it can be done very fast. And those assumptions that were made about how long things are take, again, the assumptions are what's changing, changes during those situations. So I tend to believe that those kind of transformations will happen much faster than we predict,

and that those assumptions that are showing that it will take that long will be revisited because the assumptions then change, you know, the actual reality of the actual implementation or adoption and all those other things are going to be driven by the real need. And so I appreciate all those predictions and stuff. I'm actually not as pessimistic as you. No.

You might have, you know, perceived me as. $2 trillion is actually not a lot of money. No. And that's assuming constant, you know, whatever pre-existing, you know, assumptions. there's more than $100 trillion worth of liquidity in the world right now. Yeah. It takes a good storyteller from anywhere, call it Southeast Asia,

call it sub-Saharan countries, to tell the story to the holders of capital. There is a real need here for technology and for money or capital. And there is a real reason for that investment to be recovered. in a most judicious viable manner. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

So I think that storytelling can be packaged by way of a collaboration. Yeah. Amongst academia, entrepreneurs and government, right? Yeah. I think storytelling is one aspect of that. I think new innovations in financing, mechanisms, and I think that's all going to be part of the package. maybe even new ways by which accounting is done.

So I actually think that with the right motivation, we can do amazing things. Well, I mean, assuming that we want to increase the pre-existing electrification from 7 terawatt to call it 16 to 20 terawatt, we're talking about around 20 to something, $25 trillion. dollars, it's still manageable. Yeah. By what we have, you know, the liquidity is rampant. Yeah. You know, we just need to tell these capital holders that there's a story here.

Yeah. That's going to make sense to these guys, right? Yeah. So this is, this is my next point, right? The bridge of communication needs to be built a little bit faster, a little bit more strongly. And I want to put this in a context of an increasingly complex geopolitical. calculus. Yeah.

How do we maneuver around this? Yeah, that's a really, that's a really, that's a really good question, a very challenging problem. And communication, I think, is, is certainly critical on that, you know. You can see, you can see that happening. But one of the things that I've observed is that the follow on for actions and collaboration, you know, all the processes are in place right now are not necessarily all that easy

to encourage that kind of collaboration either, right? As I'm sure many people have observed, is that the funding vehicles have restrictions on use. So even though we all believe this is a global issue, it should be funded globally, right? Many of the large amounts of money have restrictions on the use

which does not encourage global collaboration. They encourage global collaboration in theory and in vision, but the money rules on where they get spent and stuff are all very restrictive that are essentially nationalistic, right? And so the communication and the follow on that in a collaboration has a lot of opportunity right now, at least from what I've seen. I'm waiting for the funding proposals that come from a pot of money

or the PI can come from anywhere in the world. okay and there is no the money has to be spent on companies that are you know that are from our country or whatever all those kinds of rules which

I get it these are taxpayer money and government monies right but that makes it very difficult to solve global issues globally when you have domestic restrictions that are you know that are limit what you can do but I do I've seen some encouraging science where people

are starting to talk about funding opportunities that actually were PI coming up from anywhere in the world. So I see that as an encouraging sign that people are realizing that we're going to try to solve a global issue. We have our own processes and rules that are not making that easy to do. What can we do about it? But it does, at least from my observation, it seems to be starting down that path, but we're a long way from actually being able to do that. well I think you know being optimistic about this helps right as opposed to being pessimistic yeah and you know a typical developing economy could only afford maybe five cents on a per kilowatt

you know any renewable capability out there you know if you want to make money on it you got to be able to charge at least 15 cents per kilowatt right so there's got to to be a bridge that will connect between the pre-existing affordability at five cents that will take you to that time when this guy is going to be able to go up to 15 cents while the technologies are going to be working on bringing the cost per unit down. And hopefully the intersection is not going to be as long as you think it might be, as you alluded to, that you can't use pre-existing assumptions on a constant basis. because there is marginal efficiency being created by technological innovation.

And hopefully these guys will be able to augment their economic war with all as to increase their affordability or purchasing power. Yeah, I mean, I think that's, I think that is a good summary of a fundamental issue with these new approaches, is that the price point that, that we need them to be at. And the price point that is, in many cases, certainly that exists right now, is all pretty low, pretty challenging, okay?

And any new thing that we try, okay, they're gonna be initially more expensive. And sometimes, depending on duration, it could be more expensive for a much longer period of time. So then how do you bring innovation into such a marketplace and also make sure that you're you can actually be able to recover costs. And so a lot of it, I think, is around,

are there additional value streams that can come with this? So we think of them, and I think this is a fantastic, exciting area right now, where we used to think of, or electricity is going to use to run your lights, your computer or other things, right? But now we're just like, oh, well, no, electricity could be used for heating. and electricity could be used for transportation. Wow, now you're looking at a value stream where now you can take expensive, possibly expensive,

difficult to get to places, and that can be supplied by the grid or electricity. And those things have to be ferried out, right? It's like, you know, the picture I always have is, one of the pictures is that your phone, right? Most people used to have very simple phones. They're very cheap and they didn't do much, right? But now most people have much more expensive phones

and their phone bills are much higher. And the data center in the backhand requires a lot more energy. All of the above, right? But there are people going by these expensive phones. Well, why? Well, because the value proposition created by now the connectivity and other aspects of the phone is higher.

So they're able to see, wow, this is actually not just a phone. It's a communication device. It's a data device because I can look and find out information. It's a translating device. All these value properties are now incorporated in a single device in the phone. So they don't look at it as a phone anymore. So as these new technologies unroll out and the new value propositions that they unveil

and become available will change that equation, in my opinion. And so what we think of now as expensive and, arguably it could be, but may become actually something we're very comfortable with if the values that they create are greater than that. And we don't really yet know that. Where we're going, I don't think we are, you know, we have some value streams that we believe will be relevant.

But until you actually try to new discoveries and creative ideas and how to use some of the stuff comes to play, like the phone, you won't really know that. And I think there's another big innovation in that. these new directions go? I'm with you. I'm with you. You know, I was reading this Wood McKinsey report. Okay.

And, you know, they've been generally supportive of the fossil industry, right? They've made the argument that in the next 10, 20, 30 years, demand for fossil is not going to come down. I mean, demand for fossil from the automotive sector is going to decline by way of the electrification of vehicles, right? Yeah, you already see that. But demand for fossil from aviation is going to increase because you can't put batteries in an airplane that's going to travel trans-oceanic. You can't do that now. Yeah. But will that change, though, in the next 10 to 20 years?

Will we be able to fly an electric plane to London, you know, transporting 400 people? The other piece is the petrochemicals. It's also going to increase demand for fossil because everything in an EV. is correlated with petrochemical productions. Well, not just EVs. So here's the way I think of fossil fuels. Right now, there's a lot of forces that will increase consumption of that. And it's not just the fact that it's integral to energy.

It's integral to materials. It's integral to everything from fertilizer to everything. I mean, it's a fundamental plank of civilization. I'm just naming the three top, man. I can, you know, I know. I know you're right. All right. And our population is not decreasing, right?

So there are a lot of forces pushing additional consumption of fossils. No question about it. So do I really see that peaking? I mean, I think that's one of the big questions. Is it going to peak and if so, when? Having said that, I do believe that there are fundamental forces that are also, you know, within the last decade, in 15 years, around the impact of that approach on the climate that's being really, not sustainable.

And so what are these other things that we have to look at? Can we, in fact, come up with other forms of transportation fuels? That might be more sustainable, whether you do it as biodiesel or whatever or hydrogen or these other molecules. Are there ways to make our energy consumption more efficient, okay, instead of combustion, you know, maybe, you know, fuel cells or other things? These are all areas right now that are actively being explored. and there's a whole array of people getting in that space.

And so those forces are going to decrease consumption of the fossil fuels. But it is a fundamental plank of our civilization. It touches everything and everybody. I don't think there's a clear picture of how and when that is going to change. Yeah, in the near term. But I think the longer term, what's very clear is that if we don't change that, The additional costs to impact of the climate and to us ultimately because of the way we're doing it right now is not sustainable.

And you already see signs of that now. I can't, it seems like every couple of weeks you have this announcement of once in a decade event that just wiped out huge amounts of value had major destruction. Our storms are giving more severe, you know, extreme weather. All these new things. And people are seeing that. you know, the ice fields in Antarctica, you know, these are real things that are happening.

And they have a real cost. And so I think there is this realization that we just can't continue the way we're doing things because it's, you can already see in real time now within the last, within the last, I think it's touched everyone within the last 10 or 15 years, that these, the events that we're seeing now, that's not normal. Something's changing. You can call whatever you want, right? But you see something's changing.

And those changes are having real impact and costs associated with it. And so we can't continue that way. So we have to start doing things a little bit differently and think about how we do different things. I think, at least in my experience with people, there's this general realization that we can't continue the path we're on. what we need to do, when we need to do it, how we impact, what we go down. That's huge opinions regarding all that kind of stuff right now. But at least most of the people that I've talked with, there's this realization we can't just continue to do the way that we're doing it. So how do we do things differently?

Whether it's political solutions, whether it's technological solutions, whether it's policy decisions, whether it's collaborative, cultural, you know, all of those actually have to go into play. because you're dealing with a global issue and it involves really to make it work global collaboration because again, the solutions that will work for one region are going to be different from solutions or work in another. They're boundary conditions. Forget my, part of my...

It's a technical background, so I think of it in that way. But these boundary conditions are going to be different. So each region's solutions that they can come with are going to be different. And so, but they need to harvest the options and learnings from other parts of the world to do, to go about adjusting the solution that works for them. And I actually think I'm optimistic that that will happen.

You know, I don't know when the fossil fuel, with the balance of those two forces, the ones that push consumption down versus that push consumption nuts, where that will play out and when. I think there's a lot of people that are spending their life doing the kind of analysis and making predictions of issuing reports and guidance along that, you know. But my sense on right now, this is a huge dynamic landscape.

You know, a change in a, whether we innovate new policies or new technologies discover or anything, we'll shift those, shift those lines tremendously one way or the other. And we're in this period right now where you can see the innovations that are coming out as very rapid. And so I'm very optimistic that these things will really define our assumptions on what we're going to be going. and the innovations are not just technological, right?

Their policy, they're regulatory, their incentive. There's lots of things happening, which makes it terribly exciting. In some cases, I think people are uncomfortable with it. But I personally have a sense of urgency, which is you have to take your first steps. And taking them sooner is going to be better. I see this as a supply side. demand side of the equation. On the supply side, we kind of touched upon this. Technologically, I think we know a lot of people are working their butts off to make sure that there is a

decrease of cost. A lot of policies being put in place, a lot of funding. Yeah. And then economically, I think there are challenges, but there is availability of liquidity. We just need to innovate. Yeah. You know, from a financing standpoint, from an economic standpoint, from a communication standpoint, from a multilateral standpoint, from a whatever, whatever standpoint? And a process standpoint. Right. So we have unlocked huge amounts of funding for this,

but our processes are still the same. Yeah. So that's on the supply side. Yeah. On the demand side, intuitively, I think it's easy to re-architect or re-engineer the lifestyles of people so that they behave in a much more environmentally friendly manner.

You're a real optimist. Well, no, I'm not as optimistic as you think because, you know, I go by this comparison between the followership of Greta Thunberg on Instagram, which is only 14 million. Okay. And I compare that with followership of Kylie Jenner, who's not exactly an environmentalist. She emits carbon, I think, more than Greta. She's got a followership of 399 million. Right there, you know that the pulse on a ground is more gravitation. to, you know, anything that epitomizes carbon emission.

But I think that could be a re-architectic. That could be re-engineered by way of leadership, by area of political culture, in the household, in places of worship, schools, offices, and what have you, right? So while we wait for the supply side to get fixed technologically and economically and financing, we got to be more cohesive in trying to re-engineer. or re-architect the demand side.

So that, you know, we start consuming less, you know, of what's emitting carbon. Yeah. We start basically just showing more accountability, more responsibility towards the planet, right? We start deferring gratification. We don't seek instant gratification. And I call this shifting from high time preference. to low time preference, shifting gratification to a later time so that we start investing for the future, not consuming today, for the convenience of today. That requires, I think,

leadership at home, at school, at the office, at social institutions, and whatever. So leadership, I think, matters here on the demand side as much as it is on a supply site. Unquestionably. Okay, I think leadership on the demand side is critical. But I'm in touch with a few of the people that are leading some of the demand side markets. And unfortunately, the two are linked very carefully, right? You can stimulate demand, but if you don't have supply, that's a non-starter. I'm with you. So I actually believe right now, especially with many of the mandates for decarbonation in California, right,

that it's a, I think it's right now it's somewhat a controversial question of whether or not we're limited by supply or demand. I, you know, I certainly know a few cases where we're limited, not by demand, we're limited by supply, okay? And at least in my sense, like, you know, one of that is around electrification and the amount of electricity we have. And we haven't even really gone down the path of a huge adoption in industry. We haven't gone down the path of a huge adoption in transportation.

We just started those two. And yet we're already struggling with supplying enough electricity. And so we have to create more generation. We have to create more capacity in the distribution as well as the transmission. And in my sense right now, that is not the demand's not there. Right? It's more of the fact that there's... Is it because of less purchasing power? Or just less interest?

So this is my reference to process. So there's a lot of incentives and funds that are not available or will become available for making a lot of steps. But the processes, the permitting, the safety, the siding, all those processes, the approval, the approval, the approval, the local county, this. All those approval processes, some of these. Got it. You know, their existing processes are out of phase with the speed that we need to move. It's not, they were put in place with very good reasons, similar to like the steps necessary if you're going to create a new drug or a vaccine or whatever.

There's good reasons behind them. But add them all together and it's not the result you want. So if you want to change that, in that kind of case, it's not just stimulating the demand. In my opinion, right, we have plenty of demand for electricity. I think we're actually right now limited by supply. And the reason for those limiting of supply and what we need to do is limited around the processes that are in place for that. So we think made a major change when we created abundance of funds that could be available for this. But the actual execution processes did not undergo anything.

So now those same processes are bottlenecking a lot of these kinds of projects. And yet, you know, it would be really, I think it would be a really good study to find out what those bottlenecks are, how big they are. And if you add them together, you know, it's just at a Bloomberg Summit workshop where it's like, well, you're not going to get there. You're not going to be remeated, right? And that's something you have to fix. The good thing is that, you know, they're, you know, I would say they're laws of man, they're not laws of God. Right. So man can't fix them, right?

And so it's within our domain to be able to fix this. But those things have to change. And those things are not based on the marketplace of supply and demand. Those are based on the policies and processes we have in place for execution of these things. They'll put in there for good reason. but at the end of day, not getting there. You stop short of mentioning the people that are in charge of the processes.

Yeah. You know, I said this once, I asked this question at the Bloomberg Summit actually. It'd be fantastic to actually do a detailed case study of how long it took for each of these steps and what are the pros and what are the reasons why this step is necessary and blah, blah, blah. It'd be a fantastic study to highlight that whole process a little more clearly

so people can understand where and what it's getting bottlenecked and where and for how long, right? And then figure about how we go about changing that. Same way we did with COVID, right? Where, you know, if you add all the steps of social, we're just like, oh, this is going to be like 10 years, right? But now, all of a sudden, boom, you could do it in a year or less. So if there's a will, there's a way to do this,

but it requires focus and requires clarification of the tradeoffs associated with. That's very dynamic. And I hope we don't have to wait until it gets apocalyptic. Well, I certainly hope not, right? But I think this is where you need leadership of the various agencies and committees and other stuff to truly take a look at that in the same way and say, okay, what do we need to fix? And how do we streamline this?

And what are we going to make a tradeoff associated with this for the risk and reward? But I don't see a lot of that happening. You know, and to me, this is not a market force issue or supply and demand. This is a policy process issue that's within a government agency or governments, you know, state, local, federal that needs to get aligned. and we're just not there. Well, if you think it's not unique. No, no. It's pretty universal in many other places.

Well, yeah, it's true. I think this is one of those cases where governments that have less freedom have to deal with less of this issue, you know, they tend to be able to move faster, but not necessarily better or for everyone's interest. We're sort of like seeing political new roses. in many places around the world. Yeah. So that adds a bit more complexity.

Very. And there's polarization right now. There's polarization. There's a lot of things being brought forward that may be either partially true or even not true, passed off as information that supposedly actually have real science or data behind it, but actually if you poke into it, does not. There's all sorts of challenges right now. And it's kind of unfortunate.

You know, I think I think that's actually just one of my biggest concerns. As a scientist and a background in technology is that, you know, used to be where the data spoke and everyone that has data really that can back up with the things that they're claiming are. In fact, you know, that's great. That's solid, right? But it doesn't seem to have the same few anymore, right? What would be your simple answer to a typical climate denier?

I would say, look, do an experiment, try something and see it, you know. And there's there people who say a lot of things and, you know, and, you know, everything from, I actually heard this once. There's more ice in the North Pole than we've ever had in the history. And I was just stunned. And I said, well, did you go to the North Pole and take a look? Right? Because I don't think that's true. Right?

and this particular person was saying, well, you know, there are pictures and articles that I said, fantastic, can you send me the references? I'd love to take a look at that. Well, I need to say, I never got that, right? So for a climate denier, I would just ask them to just do an extraordinary, take a look, right? And check the information that you think you're, you believe in, and just go take a look. And if it's not true, then you're like, okay, it's not true. You know, I always joke that, you know, the people who believe the earth is flash, you just

get an airplane and keep going in one direction. And if it comes back around, it's not flat, right? If you never come back around, okay, I get it, right? But if you come back around, it's flat, it's not flat, right? It's a circle. Let's move on. You did a lot of work on hydrogen. What's the hope for hydrogen in helping decarbonize? Oh, I think hydrogen has a lot of very nice attributes, okay, across the various sectors. If you wanted to potentially decarbonize, say, the chemistry sector, okay, the ability of potentially incorporating renewable hydrogen or low carbon hydrogengengen, it's a big deal. Now you're able to make these chemicals with hydrogen, which is a key component in these chemicals or plastics or whatever.

and yet it has, it's a sustainable hydrogen. It has a potential play in transportation, potential play in power. So across the full energy spectrum, hydrogen could play a big role. I think, so my personal opinion right now, hydrogen is definitely going to be part of the equation. The actual application and other things is going to be very selective to the particular use case, the price point, you know. And in some places, it's just say, if you happen to be in a region that's rich in hydroelectricity, which is just say, Canada, hydrocaria, okay? They're going to have very cheap available hydrogen because they can just have very cheap available electricity.

Okay, but then if you go to another place of the world, that's not going to be the case. Then hydrogen will probably be less relevant there. So again, in my opinion, hydrogen would definitely be a part of the energy portfolio. Its use in sectors or regions would depend a lot on the boundary conditions, price point, and everything else. But it's one of those where all these sectors do use hydrogen one form or another, and so it has a huge opportunity. And it has a lot of very nice attributes. You can use it for energy storage. You can burn it.

you can use fuel cells on it. You can use it in making chemicals that are potentially low carbon or more sustainable. So I'm very bullish on hydrogen, but only with an understanding that it's going to depend on the boundary conditions of each region, the use case, the price points, etc. and I don't think it's going to be why it's, you know, I don't think that everything's going to be hydrogen. I don't believe that, right? Neither do I believe that everything is going to be non-hydrogen. I don't believe that either.

I just don't, you know, I don't see that happening. You see the growth trajectory as being exponential for hydrogen? You see that replacing any of the other pre-existing renewable sources? Oh, it could if the price point was right. The problem with hydrogen right now is. it's much more expensive. So imagine that if you could make hydrogen a same price point now from fossil fuels. So if you were to think if you were making it from SMR, fossil fuels, methane, for example, right?

The price point is like one, maybe one and a half dollars, depending on whether or not you had, whatever your calculations. All right, okay. But from electrolytic hydrogen, you know, you're probably $4 to $5 or more, right? That's one of the big initiatives on the year right now to bring it down to a dollar per kilogram in a decade. And that's doable. Well, I think it depends on who you talk to. It's a big challenge.

But that's the challenge, right? If it was at the same price point, why wouldn't you do that? Okay, because you can just get hydrogen that sustainable and put it into your fertilizer or whatever, and away you go. Right. But now you're thinking, well, I've got to pay, you know, four or five times the price for the hydrogen would put in my chemical.

That's a big ask, Ryan. So the reason it's not being adopted is primarily because of supply and cost, which comes back to the, you know, things like the hydrogen hub, the production tax credit and stuff, which are meant to lower the price and get them in place right now. Lots of projects and ideas to create that supply,

but they're now actually being hampered by the various process steps that we have in place. you know, and, you know, off-take and stuff. In fact, we're having a workshop at Stanford to take a very hard look at supply and demand of hydrogen in, like, six to eight weeks. Interesting. That's, yeah, that's a really, you know,

so in the parado of things, right, what is it that's really being the speed bumps or the obstacles? I think that's a really big question. And there's some people that believe strongly that it's because there's not enough supply. Okay? And there's some people who believe just as passionately. That's because there's not enough demand.

I think of the latter. I mean, I think there's a lot of supply. Well, certainly I have many of my friends who believe that's the issue. Really? That there's not enough demand. No, that believe that there's not enough supply. Okay, because I work with many of the early adopters that are actually using this. And they're like, I just can't get this stuff.

Really? Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. That sounds countering. intuitive. No. In fact, I just talked to a number of the people that were looking at hydrogen for transportation.

You know, how am I going to get this stuff? How am I going to get it at cheap enough prices? Because I have to run and get them qualified in all these things. And that's a lot of cost. I get it. But in terms of the abundance of supply, retrieving it, I think it's going to be costly. Right now, yes. But if you had overabundance of supply because of all the actual projects,

getting completed and now you're flooded with hydrogen, right? Then I don't think that would be an issue. But no one wants to adopt that when the price is that high. Sure. At five bucks? Yeah, that's a little too fast. Or more. That's just the price, you know, at the pump. You start forwarding in the transport costs and all that stuff.

I had a Mariah. I used to go to the station and be like $18 a kilogram. I used that one time. The Mariah? Yeah. It's pretty good. Yeah. It was a fun vehicle.

The Toyotas, right? The Hondas, I think. Toyota. That's a fun vehicle. Anyway. Jimmy, you have any final messages on sustainability? We've covered a lot. Yeah.

I can just share with you some of my thoughts, right? I think sustainability is an existential crisis for us as a human race. And what I'm very optimistic about is that it is within our power to control. We're not violating laws of God. So we can actually solve this issue. It may require some changes in lifestyle and other things that we don't like and other things. But we can actually solve this issue. But we have to do it relatively quickly because it's very hard to impact the planet.

and then just say, oops, sorry, let me just undo it. It's not, that's not the way the planet works. If it goes to a certain point, it will continue that way, you know, sometimes for hundreds of years. And so if we want, if we like and want our planet to stay the same, we need to start making changes and we need to do them relatively quickly. It's going to take a, you know, it's like, you know, the old thing where you have your thermostat and your home, right, and you turn it up too high, right? And you go, oh, oops, I'm going to turn it back down.

Does that mean that immediately your apartment or whatever, right, at that new temperature? No, right? You have your light latent heat and stuff. So it's going to be a lot of the same thing. And if we're going to, if we don't quickly change that and dial it back that thermometer early and start making some of the changes we need necessary,

we're going to be in a world of hurt during that latent part. And if those late in part, you know, extends for, hundreds of years. That's a different planet. And, you know, someone once told me this, and I thought it was the greatest thing, is that, you know, the planet's going to be fine. It's going to continue. It's going to do what it's going to do. Our place in that planet, that's a different question, right? Is it going to be fine for us as a species? We're just not going to be okay. We're not going to be okay. But on the other hand, the things that we're talking about doing are within our domain to

control, you know, as a species. So, when I look at that way I think, you know, okay, we can do this. We just need a level of urgency and a collaborative, global collaboration to actually implement some of these things. And that's the good news, right? The bad news is we've not done so well in going down that path. You've been very kind with your time. Oh, thank you for having. Thank you so much. Thank you. That was Professor Jimmy Chen from Stanford University. Thank you. In the endgame.