Big Digital Energy

0:00 What's up, everyone? Welcome to another episode of BDE. We got Mark back in the studio, but we're missing Kirk today. Kirk's out playing golf, sponsored a red M golf tournament. Sponsored the

0:13 launch and I need to, uh, need a four players to go represent us. So deployed. It was not these three choice. So he's already got some hardware or some crystal or, yeah. Well, uh, so Kirk and

0:27 Kevin, Kevin's on our team They went and played last week. I don't know what tournament it was. The slumber, you know, the tournament. There you go. And yeah, uh, it took fifth place out of

0:37 like 40 teams, not bad. Brought home some hardware. It's funny. They sent me a picture of it and I saw it. And then when I got here to the office, it's like this small. I can't look all big in

0:48 the picture. It was a fish picture. It's exactly what it was. He didn't win the long drive as well at 340 yards So anyways, I'll see if they bring us back some more It's more hardware from this

1:02 tournament. But anyway, it's got a busy week this week. We got a power Tuesday and Wednesday. So when this drops tomorrow, we'll just get my power. Mark just got his ticket. Listen, Mark had

1:13 he had to buy a ticket, too. I don't pay Mark for anything around here. That was about to say. It shows up every week to do VDE, and he thought he had to buy a ticket and it's before Mark. Yeah,

1:25 so as you're listening to this in your car, just drive to 713 Music Center and just come join us, yeah. Convince them at the front desk, your VDE listener will let you in for free. We should have

1:35 like a special VDE episode at Empower. Oh yeah, we did one last year. First mark, we would do more things like that, but we're not smart, so we don't do that. I think it's more forward thinking.

1:46 Yes, our issue. We tend to wait last second on things. So, what do we got this week? Did you all see my video that I posted of - Yeah, the little immigrants on I-10. It's kind of crazy. Yeah.

2:02 Some guy took it. So I have Jacob pull up the video, but essentially semi-truck full of illegal immigrants. I'm assuming they broke down. Surely they're not going to drop them. The inside

2:13 shoulder. Yeah, inside shoulder, I-10, right at 6'10 and I-10, and the heights, right in the middle of town. All these immigrants get out of the semi-truck and then run to a pickup truck and

2:26 jump in the bed And someone took the video and tagged me in it and they said, Hey, will you repost this? You have a more clout than I do. I want to get some views on it. Somebody tagged me in it

2:35 and said, Do a podcast on this. Oh, really? Yeah, and so, just kind of highlights, I mean, how crazy things are right now, 'cause that's just happening right in the middle of, like, if you

2:46 haven't been on I-10 in Houston, like, just let me, you know, kind of set the scene for you. I mean, this, like, it's like a thunder dome and just cars everywhere and right in the middle of

2:54 the city. And so - Are they driving an electric vehicle? Let's get to the essential stuff. That's fine, I saw it pass through and the video is gonna tag Elon. I can't even decide I'm gonna use a

3:05 Cybertruck. Running a pickup like we used to do in the bed. Yeah, I think that technically, I think that's against the law in Texas or is it okay if you're an adult? No, it's okay again. No,

3:15 you can't ride in a fucking bed of a pick-and-check chain. Unrestrained, of course. In a closed up trailer, unrestrained. It's funny, I posted a video, or I posted a picture a long time ago I

3:26 was out on some country, I used to live out in the country when my first son was born, and we drive around in the pickup, and I have him up in my lap, pretending like he's driving, and I posted

3:35 on LinkedIn to be like, It's unsafe to have your kid. Like, dude, man, a fucking dirt road. There's no cars around us. I would ride in the back of a pickup truck, but yeah, I think they've

3:47 found upon it now, even in Texas. Yeah, exactly. Maybe not when you're running from border patrol and trying to get over illegally, everything everything goes in that scenario, so. but it's

3:58 crazy zero hedge retweeted it today. That's why it's going viral. Yeah, no, it's

4:04 crazy. The implications of

4:07 all this just, I mean, we have let in more people during the Biden administration than the population of 37 states - That's mean I and, Yeah. something going on for - And if you believe in

4:20 democracy, right? 'Cause right, that's we got to protect democracy Literally the population of more than 37 states, that's how we, the census doesn't break out illegal versus legal citizens. And

4:36 that's how we apportion Congress, the electoral college. I mean, this is a real thing, you know? You know, Julie's family lives down in Del Rio and her grandfather, he passed away last year,

4:50 but he's a two-star Air Force general and her aunt There's a paramedic down there that works for. EMS and a couple of years ago was down there in Del Rio and I was talking to her and she's just

5:02 telling me about how bad it was and how often they were pulling bodies out of the water and essentially think what was happening, the Lake Amsterdam down there is a man-made lake and has a dam that's

5:20 controlled by the US Army Corps of Engineers and I think what they're doing was draining the lake and elevating the river making the river harder to cross and ultimately killing people and she was

5:34 super sympathetic towards that because she's like she's like this is dangerous for people crossing like people are dying. She's like we're the ones pulling their bodies out of the water and so I was

5:45 like well what are they doing with all of these all of these camps and all of these people and she's like they're putting them on planes at the air force base and flying them out. That was like two

5:54 or three years ago that blew my fucking mind. When I heard that. Flying to blue states. That's like they're literally men. Yeah, they're literally taking them to the Air Force base and putting

6:02 them on C-130s and flying them out. And Juan Musk tweeted out something, I didn't get the name of the study, but it's just disproportionate representative of illegal aliens that go to blue states.

6:16 And it's all because of the census. You know what's funny? Jake and I were just talking about this the other day is that every time we have a new driver here that's immigrated and it doesn't matter

6:25 if they're from South America, Central America, Pakistan, it doesn't matter. They're super anti-Biden and Democrats and very pro-Trump in America. That's your selection bias. They chose to come

6:39 to Texas when they fit in. I know, but it's just so funny. I was like, you know, I would love to have some harder data and statistics on people that immigrate over whether it's legally or legally

6:52 it's it's first first-generation or seventy percent More likely to vote Democratic than a then Republican. I always said I had it the greatest teacher I've ever had in my life was Doc C my political

7:06 science professor at Rice Gilbert Cuthperson and his whole deal on every argument is You take the person's position that you're arguing against you take it to its logical extreme And then you

7:20 cheerlead for it and so he he would have said the way the Republicans should have fought this battle Was not getting up there making speeches about you know, oh, we need to secure the border He said

7:31 you needed to be down on the border handed him a Trump t-shirt and a Trump hat and 250 dollars from the Republican Party as soon as they walked across and set him free and He said you know his take

7:44 was always you attacked from the left, you know, yes far over. Yeah, so yeah That would have been my strategy. That's how you could have been exactly welcome to America. Have a Republican

7:54 t-shirt Yeah, it's unfortunate because I I think that the only way that it gets solved is by a show of force, to be honest, I mean, if you're talking about a true invasion from the South, which

8:06 this isn't just, you know, I'm super, you know, sympathetic towards people that want to come here and have a better life. You know, I've been on this. But most horrific, one of the most

8:18 horrific things America did, obviously behind slavery was not accepting Jews when what was going on in Germany was happening. You know, we just,

8:30 we were not, we let, we let in less than the allocation we had from Europe, just, I'm not saying it was anti-Semitic, but it was very much isolation America, and we could have saved tons of

8:44 lives. I mean, the best testimonials that you'll hear about coming to America are those from naturalized citizens, and their life story, and deadly reasons for being here and comparing Yeah, this

8:57 one time I was on a rig. I mean, way down south on the border, I'm talking like two hours from the nearest blacktop, just on the middle of the desert. And there's each two guys walking across on

9:09 the border and they were hitchhiking on this dirt road. I'm not gonna fucking give you a ride, but you know, I did stop down the road and throw a case of water out 'cause I'm fucking - Right. Like

9:19 you're out in the middle of this, I mean, very extreme desert And so it's like, have sympathy for people that wanna escape, you know, the oppression and poverty that they're living in, but

9:34 there's a lot of bad people coming across the border as well. And so - Chinese males that are 30 years old and in perfect health, walking across our border right now is scary. And I mean, there is

9:45 no disrespect to Chinese people, I'd say, communists. Would be a better way to put it. No disrespect to Chinese people, but like what's happening in Oklahoma right now is that you have all of

9:57 these weed farms, illegal weed farms that are being ran by Chinese nationals. And there was a story either last year or the year before that stands out to me, but it was several people killed

10:10 execution style on their knees, just bullets at the back of the head. 'Cause it's Chinese gang. And it was Chinese nationals that are doing these things And so, you know, it's, and you look at

10:23 Texas, I mean, Houston and Midland Odessa are hubs for human trafficking and cartel activity. And I remember I tweeted about that a couple of years ago and I don't wanna call 'em out, but I'm

10:37 gonna call 'em out 'cause it was a cool story, but Fraxen over on Twitter was like, this is bullshit. You know, you're saying that there's - Trash in Midland. Yeah, trash in Midland And this is

10:49 when I started really respecting Fraxen

10:52 later, two days later. And he's like, I want to apologize to Colin. He's like, I had no idea that this was happening in our backyard. You know, I talked to someone from the Department of

11:02 Homeland Security and just had no clue that this stuff was happening. And so it's just kind of, it's kind of scary when you think about it, just, I mean, the arteries that run from Mexico, up,

11:16 you know, Highway 59 into Houston, I-10 and I-20 out of Midland, Odessa. I mean, these are, these are major hubs. And I always remember, sorry to rant here, but I remember when I first

11:30 started working on a rig, Mexican dude that I worked with had used pretty connected with cartels. And back then, I think it was, I don't want to say which cartel because I can't, I can't remember

11:43 But anyways, one of them that skinned a guy's face off and then sewed it to a soccer ball. He told me that that guy was living in Odessa. that did that, it's like, is that the type of people that

11:56 you want in Texas? It's kind of the, I mean, the bottom line on it and then Mark, you gotta get us to Sarah Wake. But the bottom line on it is, we're catching people on the terrorist watch list

12:07 coming across the border. And you know, those are like the shitty terrorists 'cause they got on the list. Yeah. Well, really good ones aren't on the list. Well, this truck over on I-10 is full

12:17 of, it looked like soil or dirt And my thing is, is how does that get across border patrol? Like, that is not how you transport soil. Dirt in the oven there. Yeah, and like this in this cargo

12:31 truck and like, you wanna think it's like, hey, maybe there are people hiding in there. And so anyways, and I just don't think highly of border patrol in the first place. Out of all my years and

12:41 time spending on the border patrol, like these are just movie watchin' dudes. They sit in their Ford Raptors and Tahoes on the sides of highways and the shade underneath some tree and, you know,

12:51 not that not that. bash and Border Patrol guys, because I'm sure their hands are just tied. Yeah, I mean, that they're not allowed. They have laws and then they have what the their boss is, the

13:01 administration tells them. Yeah. But yeah, just very little faith and

13:07 things being done. Sarah week. Let's talk about Sarah week. Why don't we start off with the characterization of Sarah week is the Facebook relationship status that

13:20 Javier crushed it. So you want to do it? You want me to do it? You got it right there. So Javier boss, good friend of the show.

13:31 Characterized energy transition as Facebook relationship status is

13:37 2020. Hey, I'm single Twenty one in a relationship. Twenty two engaged. Twenty three married. Twenty four. Uh, it's a compass

13:51 That's a good analogy. That's the first thing I read this morning. That was good stuff. So the complication relationship, or the complicated relationship status I think has to do with the

14:03 dominance of, you know, oil and gas, leadership commentary about a bit of the pragmatic reality of the prospect of investing and making very large capital investments and the things that they're

14:18 doing And I think it was kicked off, you guys talked about

14:25 Nasser's comments last week from Aramco. Darren Woods basically said, look,

14:34 this is really hard from a market standpoint because essentially nobody wants to pay for net zero and that for private enterprises is, I think the number one objective still that they've got to have

14:50 line of sight. for not just a few years, but multiple decades on what the return profile is going to look like. And so I think just because of all of the dynamics that we've seen crop up lately

15:05 with respect to this conversation and the trouble, at least in the equity markets that the renewables players have experienced over the last couple of years

15:17 has just created a bit more of a

15:21 sobering pushback, if you will, on this whole conversation. There were protests outside. I think there was a funeral for the planet. That's really

15:33 the only

15:36 kind of opposition voice that I saw. There wasn't very much time spent on it.

15:44 I've always thought Sarah Weeks, a little high flute and, and, and the like, but And I wasn't there, I've never been there 'cause I can't afford the ticket, but at least reading from it, to

15:56 your point, Mark, the things they talked about, you know, demand for electricity, you know, we spent nine and a half trillion on transition over the last 20 years, kind of lack of financing for

16:10 third world countries for energy infrastructure. Really commercialization of products, you know, the increase in renewables, hey, we're gonna need a lot more transition, was actually a very

16:22 thoughtful discussion of what we need to be talking about if we're gonna do this. Yeah, and what you raised there, you know, the global south is getting more vocal at the table as well, and

16:35 wanting, you know, a primary voice in the decisions that are being made with respect to energy security availability, affordability, things like that So I just think that the environment this year.

16:48 was pretty pronounced shift from what we've seen in the past two or three years coming out of COVID. And again, I think Javier's characterization of the relationship status was spot on. I didn't

17:01 say a lot of quotes. We talked about some of the quotes to open up Sarah Week last week on Monday from people like Darren Woods.

17:12 The only quote that I saw since then, I haven't really been paying attention to Sarah Week, but Bill Gates speaking. And anyways, he was talking about Houston and the future of

17:27 energy. And he said that there's a heroic effort beginning here, I'm very excited about it, but we shouldn't underestimate how incredibly difficult the energy transition will be. I thought that

17:37 was good commentary. Very pragmatic. And also noted that the effort will be far more difficult than anything he had worked on at Microsoft. Um, cool to see that, uh, Bill Gates understands that.

17:51 And then also said that, uh, you still can't put a microchip inside me, but I do like that. Well, we'll put that on the list. We're going to talk about that a little bit. Anyways, I can't find

18:02 the exact quote, but, um, he made a comment that, uh, he sees Houston becoming the Silicon Valley of the energy industry. And that's been a big talking point for us here at digital all caters

18:14 for the last five years that this is energy capital of the world, and this is where all the innovation will come from. So it's good to hear Bill Gates alluding to that as well. Yeah. And just one

18:23 more I kept it off last night. I got to the long form, the COBT episode on, on Barrett and, uh, Maynard had a sit down with Mike Worth, the chairman and CEO of, of Chevron. Hey, I got my

18:36 course for an hour, hour plus actually, I think it was an hour nine Well, it's not like I can go ask him after all the, uh, antenna range stuff I've done. Yeah, everyone likes me, though.

18:47 Yeah, he doesn't like you, don't like me. Toward the end of the discussion, he did broach the subject of what's going on between them and Exxon with regard to House and Guyana. So encourage

18:58 people to get some time to

19:02 watch that long form discussion, which I think was very good. But a couple of things as it relates to the topic at hand in the energy transition, you know, I think

19:14 Mike comes from a, I don't think I know he comes from an engineering background. He's a chemical engineer,

19:23 looks at the world of an upstream dominant company with a pretty downstream, margin focused oriented or through that lens. And interesting to hear him talk about that perspective

19:39 The other thing he said about, you know, as they look at through their new energy's business. We have to look at each component of the value chain in everything we do. And when you get down into

19:53 the weeds of the real complexities and technical hurdles, it's a bit of a different risk assessment from an investment standpoint, because we're talking about at their scale, at any major scale,

20:06 we're talking about hundreds of millions, north of a billion in some of these projects The other thing that was interesting was comparing and contrasting things that have some government influence,

20:22 whether it's subsidies from the IRA, or one that has a developed market that's about 20 years old, DPA

20:32 started with the renewable fuel standards which applies to biofuels blending in diesel and things like that made a really good point. that the subsidies that are in place for the IRA to kick this off,

20:50 you know, some of those things are set to expire, at least the way the legislation is written, some of those things are set to expire within a decade. Well, if we get started now with a major

21:01 capital project, we're looking pretty close to the end of the runway. By the time we get to operational, my word's not his. To operational startup Yeah, RINs does have a mandate driven

21:18 objective or runway, but it's also developed. The RINs market is pretty deep and liquid, and there are standards within their RFS and credits related to that, that basically constitute what

21:32 started out as a government mandate

21:36 to essentially being handed off to a market, which a lot of the IRA stuff, or the IRA subsidized stuff or any subsidy. with no clear future at what the very long-term looks like. How do we hand

21:50 that off? Is there a developed market at that point in time when the subsidies go away? And Darren Wood said, you know, thanks to that effect as well in his comments is that we don't tend to think

22:01 that purely subsidized business models are good for us. Probably not good for anyone. I don't want to create any business that's depending on subsidies or any types of credits because what you just

22:17 brought up a good point, it's what happens 10 years from now, five years from now. And those types of things go away and you're left holding the bag. That's really hard to underwrite and plan for.

22:28 And as you've said many times, you know, they're all agnostic in the way they generate returns. If it's in something else other than oil and gas and it makes sense from a risk standpoint and

22:42 there's a developed market,

22:45 It could be hydrogen, it could be renewables, it could be

22:50 some things we haven't even talked about yet, but the demand to generate returns, and we've seen it with the other majors where the European majors, where they're starting to walk back some of

23:01 their kind of aggressive posture on getting out in front of, I forget who said it, you know, I think is the activist that is suing Shell, you know, why do you wanna grow or BP? Why do you wanna

23:14 grow this part of your portfolio at faster than the rate of society's demand growth for this stuff? Yeah, I mean, it's just, it's impossible to know who's gonna be elected and who's gonna be, in

23:28 effect, a lifetime appointment, a government bureaucrat making rules for your business. It's hard to plan. That's why what's really interesting, if you look in the history of the United States

23:39 and you look at economic development type metrics, We always perform so well when we have divided government. 'cause everybody knows the rules aren't gonna change. Our rules may suck, but at least

23:49 they're not gonna change. Yeah, gridlock's great for that. Gridlock's great for that. One thing to throw in here on kind of the subsidy risk and uncertainty, I don't know if you guys saw it, I

23:60 centered around late last week. The Georgia legislature has pulled or suspended sales tax incentives or

24:12 a sales tax exemption actually for data center developers in Georgia to study the situation. My read of that was in reading between the lines and maybe some of what was explicitly stated the analysis

24:24 is that

24:26 the construction of these things provides quite a bit of job opportunity, but once the facilities are built, I think the

24:37 long-term future of permanent employment, I don't know, you tell me what does a data center require? certainly doesn't require as much. a human labor as a new refinery or a chemical plant or auto

24:52 manufacturing facility. The other theme that I think is at play here is what we've talked about in terms of what's going on in Virginia. You know, we're going to build these big power generation

25:01 additions. What does that look like from an opportunity standpoint in terms of being able to generate a return, what's it going to cost because I think the number of data centers that are on the

25:16 table per state like Georgia is a pretty large number and that portends quite a bit of incremental power demand. I read a rumor thing, maybe Reddit or somewhere on Twitter or something that

25:29 basically the behind the scenes is the power provider in Georgia saying we can't handle this We're pushing up against our limits to be able to handle this and they pressured the government

25:45 get rid of the sales tax thing to buy it kind of some time to dig through that, and that people in the know, in the Georgia legislature are going to local municipalities and say, Hey, just because

25:59 we got rid of the sales tax thing doesn't mean you can't offer it. Right. And so that's kind of a while, you know, who knows if that's true, but it sounds believable, right? And I think that's

26:12 a fair way to deal with it too, like getting rid of the tax treatment or subsidies to try to get things to cool off. So you can, I mean,

26:22 it kind of gets out of hand, you know, all of a sudden you have this rush of demand and you need to be able to slow it down and figure things out. So I think it's reasonable. We'll go next to you.

26:33 I've got two things I want to close out Sarah Week with, one, the best quote I read from From Sarawake, Elner Sol Tanav, who is Isaac. Azerbaijan's deputy energy minister said, Let's cut to the

26:48 chase. Every country is an oil country, either on the supply side or the demand side. I thought that was an epic line. That's a pretty baller quote. That's a very baller quote. And then Liz

26:60 Bowman, who's at Williams now, she used to be at AXPC. And I got to meet her when I had the president of AXPC on the podcast. She actually put out a fashion report from Sarah Week She said,

27:14 bright colored suits, red, pink, bright blue, still totally in the mix, a lot of Kelly Green, lots of leather, surprising for warm time in Houston. The honorable mentions were jumpers, plaid

27:30 pantsuits with matching jackets. And even though there was a lot of walking, heels still remain dominant. So I like that. I guess I'm good fashion context of such a thing. Thank you, Liz. You

27:41 know what's funny? Last Saturday, I spent two hours. Saturday morning learning about the mechanics of sewing machine, which led to the history of sewing machines. And then ultimately, good God,

27:51 what is it? What is the color of the sky

27:55 and then going and then actually, which led to the impact that sewing machines have had on the environment and climate, because it's actually wild, you know, not that long ago, humans spent

28:05 something like 20 plus of their income on garments And now it's somewhere in the ballpark of 3 to 4 of our of our income. Despite we have 20 times the amount of clothes now and just the amount of

28:21 clothes that are ending up in landfills. And so, um, I want to hear Elizabeth Warren going after big sewing, which is singer,

28:30 because it is, but it shows you it's like, would we all, would we agree that the automation of sewing is a good thing, like net positive for humanity, I would say so. Sure.

28:43 in affordable clothing. We need Somali pilots in a Tom Brady shirt, but yeah, and there's negative externalities and second order effects that come from that, but like it's ludicrous to be like,

28:56 oh, we should ban sewing. Anyways, one other cool little tidbit on this is when they first came out with industrial sewing machines, they weren't each individually powered. They'd have a, either

29:10 a coal or steam powered engine in a facility and all of these individual sewing machines would have a line that would run up to that. Oh yeah, I've seen those folks. The second that you would, I

29:21 mean, plug in, I mean, it's just going. And so the skill and the ability of these seems just as back then, it's like you didn't have your own little fucking power source and pedal where you could

29:31 control it. It's like, nah, you just plugged in and all of a sudden you're getting all this horsepower, so. Then there were the manual ones where you had the pedal that you had to constantly keep

29:39 going Yeah, that's interesting is my mother-in-law's. uh, she's a seamstress and sos. And so I want to use my knowledge on Julie. I was like, man, I learned like, do you know how a sewing

29:49 machine actually works? Like taught him all the stitches. Julie already knew all of it. And I was like, damn, dude, I was like, we need to get Julie on here to talk about it. But it's

29:57 interesting to see, like, I, I just, I find a lot of similarities between that and computational power and things of this, like all the things that we're facing right now, we've already seen

30:08 historically, um, through the industrial. What's the, it's the Mark Andre some point is that no technology has made the world worse. It makes the world better. I mean, there are definitely

30:20 trade-offs and he even makes the case for the nuclear bomb. He said, us and the Soviets held each other at bay at least till today. And, you know, until Russia went into Ukraine, kept a major

30:33 land war from happening in Europe. So, yeah, for sure. Speaking of technology, I'm gonna throw a wrench in the run a show, but you made a comment earlier about getting the chip implanted

30:46 video got released on Twitter on X last week of the first Neuralink implant patient his name is Nolan Arbok 29 year old he was in a

30:55 freak car accident that

30:59 left him paralyzed from the from the neck down so he's wheelchair bound and got the Neuralink implanted in the video was someone from Neuralink's team interviewing him and while he's interviewing

31:10 Nolan is playing chess and they'll show the camera on the computer screen and he's moving around the the cursor the mouse and moving around the pieces all with this telepathy he's doing it with his

31:22 mind he's not using a mouse and what I found funny about this is the whole time Nolan's wearing an AM hat and so I made a post I deleted it I should have left it up though that it's like breaking news

31:33 Elon Musk solves the Aggie this dumb Aggie problem I saw that before you took it down

31:42 And anyways, it's pretty inspiring technology there. And it kind of goes back, I think, do we talk about this on BDE last week, about the efficiency of human processing compared to AI? Camera

31:58 for the talk about that. Is it relational? Relational ship databases about talked we, that. And

32:05 I think that we should do a deeper dive on this sometime on a haunted episode, but really think about, I saw people talking about it, like you can actually mathematically determine, hey, what is

32:18 the computational power for AI, per query or a thought? And it actually takes a lot more energy than what a human does to produce a thought. And so I'd love to do a deep dive on. 'Cause if you

32:31 think about it - The energy efficiency of a human versus AI. Yeah, if you think about it, I mean, that's what we did historically with horsepower.

32:39 This does the work of so many horses, and we ought to shift that with AI. This does the work of so many humans. Yeah, and you know, my personal belief is that things like Neuralink or the next

32:50 step of evolution for humans, this is what keeps us from ultimately being killed off by AI is that we integrate with AI. And so I know it's a very controversial topic, but it just, it seems clear

33:01 as day that that's where society ends up going And the podcast that Rogan did with Elon on Halloween of last year, the one where he tried to shoot the broad head through the Cybertruck. Oh, yeah.

33:15 They get into this and talk about it. Talk about that. Talk quite a bit. It spent quite a bit of time in over, in a, over three hour podcast. I'll have to go listen. I never, I never listened

33:25 to that. But yeah, I mean, you look at it from either physical or mental capacity I mean, we have, you know, these exoskeleton suits where you can lift more, do more. From a mechanical

33:38 perspective and just makes sense that no, we'll have AI injected into us as well honestly, I'll do it like I said, I'd be the first one. Yeah, it's risky But also if I can run circles around all

33:50 your motherfuckers. I'll do it But let's be specific about what I said earlier in the podcast. I said Bill Gates could not put a microchip Inside me musk. I'm willing to roll advice with musk. I

34:02 trust I think I trust him more than I do anyone Which is probably it's probably fatal and it's and it's we're gonna have to frack here put you in a pretzel and put it in Himself All

34:18 right, sorry for the tangent, but I just know that one that was interesting so anyways What was next on the on the road? well, I think in the Area of Subsidies and grants do we well the Biden

34:34 administration announced I think it was this morning when I first saw it. 6 billion over 33 projects in 20 states that are designed to mitigate emissions and invoke processes like one of the grants

34:53 go stacks on for their Baytown Refinery and Chemical Complex. I don't understand the process technology. I haven't seen any details on that, but it's essentially using hydrogen instead of

35:09 natural gas to produce ethane. But the interesting one was half billion dollars of the six billion went to century aluminum to build a smelter, a primary aluminum smelter somewhere in the

35:25 Mississippi River Basin and looking at some of the history of what's happened to the US

35:32 leadership in primary aluminum smelting. There were 23 primary smelters in 1993. There are currently four in the US. We were number one as recently as 2000 globally, and we've dropped to number

35:47 nine. And so this, I think, in fact, the article that I read on Reuters said that this one project is going to double the primary smelting aluminum smelting capacity in

36:04 the US So, you know, part of this political message is we are doing things that are going to bring back

36:16 industrial and manufacturing activity at a primary level in the US. It cuts across a lot of heavy industries, concrete steel or cement steel food, finding in chemicals and primary metals There was

36:33 a steel subsidy with, um,

36:37 I forget in Ohio, but all of these things are kind of aimed at

36:44 greenhouse gas mitigation or elimination in the processes. Let's see how this plays out, but you know, 6 billion is a pretty big message and one grand announcement, I think.

36:58 I mean, if CO2 is the problem, when you look at those industrial production type things that you listed out, that's more than cars plus jet travel. You know, on CO2 emissions, it's about

37:13 industrial stuffs like 10, I think. Yeah, Energy Secretary Granholm said that this will eliminate the equivalent of 3 billion cars on the road in the US, CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions. Yeah,

37:27 because cars, I think, are 6 of CO2 emissions in planes are 2, so.

37:34 take that Sarah week, we're going to come out and

37:37 we had a number, super charged. I just need a mark met to be inspired to come up with a, with a statistic check. Did you see this? You know, we had that really bad storm, like three nights ago,

37:50 four nights ago, hail and wind blowing in like lightning like crazy. And anyways, 2000 Baker solar farm down their south of your house, down in Needville, absolutely smashed by the hill, like

38:06 every single solar panel, Rick, it's funny, it posted a picture of it from someone that was there and posted on LinkedIn. So I'm like, do you have a source for this? I don't know if I believe it.

38:18 Yeah, it's worse someone fucking took a picture of it, like go drive down there. It's off of FM 1994. I was actually thinking about taking the drone and going down there and looking at it. And

38:27 you know, people are like, Oh, well, I probably know the

38:32 I mean, it's not far from the high school.

38:35 And anyways, people like, oh, it's not an issue, insurance, I'm like, yeah, but it's never that easy, first off. And then two, it's just pretty sizable. I don't know how many megawatts the

38:48 farm is, but all of a sudden, it's just offline. That's gotta be a big advantage. Well, I mean, yeah, gas plants and nuclear facilities and coal plants are, they have to do, have to do

39:04 weather protection and climate mitigation, but the engine of those facilities in terms of generating electricity is well protected inside of a facility, a structure. Yeah. And that's just

39:15 inherently impossible with wind turbines and solar panels. Well, that's the guy that posted the picture. He's a big nuclear advocate. And then he's like, but this nuclear plant down the road

39:25 stayed on during the storm. And so, you know, I think that's interesting too I don't want to know what the implications are when.

39:37 like nameplate capacity because all of a sudden you have this asset that can't generate. Are there any penalties for that or? You know, I mean, it's interesting you start talking about solar stuff

39:50 and you start talking about pollen in the state of Texas. You have to wipe the solar panels down for them to ride. Yeah, there's no tire service businesses. That's what I made a meme. And Jacob

40:01 pulled this meme. The meme was it's the strong doge meme versus the weak doge meme and the strong doge meme is willful service companies is like, yeah, we'll come fracked your 20, 000 foot lateral

40:11 well. And the weak doge meme is willful services is like, yeah, we'll come clean off your solar panels and cut the grass. Like the service companies and oil and gas are much more. But it's not an

40:21 infrequent thing. It's two times a week. Yeah, you

40:26 gotta do it often. That's why I've seen like some technologies for like automated cleaners where it's like real systems and it all. This is the solution to the Houston home was problem. All the

40:35 squeegee guys around will take it in need, Bill. We're going to wipe down these panels. Yeah, that's going to be the modern day. You know, he got the prison right down there in a sugar land

40:47 where they used to work the sugar cane fields to get them scubbing. That's the kind of window washing I could do. Said when I moved to Houston, just working up 50 floors. And I'm not real

40:58 comfortable with freestanding heights, airplanes and helicopters fine. And then about the time I started with Exxon, there was actually a tragic accident. Some window washers on the Penns oil

41:13 towers fell because the

41:17 lift cable broke and it was pretty. Jesus Christ, that'd be a terrible problem. Not something I want to see. Yeah, I would not be very good as a window washer. No.

41:29 All right, are we election time, or did we have something else on the run or show? Real quick,

41:35 I only bring this up because the preamble to this latest Duneberg on thermal batteries started with a discussion of liquid death

41:44 and what the mission is and how attractive that was in their capital round. And I think resulted in a valuation of what? 12, 13 billion dollars. Yeah, that's right. Let's put water in a can.

41:59 That would be 1 billion, please. This company, I'm gonna start a can water called Frackwater. Frackwater.

42:05 These are like big boxes of carbon bricks, which are very stable. There's an abundance of carbon that you can mine to meet the addressable market needs. They can store, and Doris technology can

42:23 store up to 2, 000 degrees Celsius. That's hot except for the very highest. intensity, heat intensity, industrial and manufacturing processes takes care of a lot relative to

42:38 combustion oriented thermal treating and cracking and things like that. And they've got aspirations to add distributed power capability to these thermal batteries. And one of the parts of the

42:55 discussion, kind of the Achilles heel of that aspect of it is, you know, there's a lot of inefficiency that comes into the system of going from heat to electricity and back. Yeah. And so, but

43:06 the thermal storage is, you know, attracted a lead round. The two leads in the round of capital, they raise150 million. Nice. Between BlackRock and Tymasic, the Singapore state investment firm.

43:21 So, you know, I And the whole just to make sure I understand you got these carbon bricks. you have some sort of, I'll call it off peak power, either solar when prices go negative and you're going

43:40 to shut in or whatever and you just heat the bricks up and then you access it later. Right. Right. And that's, you know, that's, you know, one of the, one of the potential benefits is that you

43:49 could raise the capacity factors of solar and wind when they're not generating into the grid and heat up these carbon bricks. Yeah. I've seen, I mean, people have been working on battery storage

44:06 that's, you know, brick-based for a long time and have like all these like gravity storage designs and shit like that. And so it's always been something that's interesting to me, but never seemed

44:19 like it was something that was actually viable, or at least no viable people working on it. And so, you know it, is a150 million VC rounds pretty.

44:30 Somebody thought it was, well, I won't. No, that's doubt. But you know what I think it is for me is as an investor, you sit there and you can tell yourself, hey, we're gonna be way more

44:43 volatile with electricity prices going forward, just as we add more renewables to the grid, all the issues we talk about here every week on BDE. So you tell yourself they're gonna be spikes and

44:56 you're gonna make your money, but ultimately with battery storage, you still cannot put in a baseline price and have it make money. Now we've put in a lot of batteries. So I mean, people are kind

45:08 of betting on the come, but that I think's been the limiting factor to it. That's right. You know, so. Yeah. What was that company's name again? And Dora. And Dora. And Dora. Cool. Yeah.

45:21 I'll have to go and podcast with them sometime. Yeah. Guys, come on. Okay, real quick election stuff. Slovakia and Senegal had elections. Quite frankly, I couldn't bring myself to read about

45:34 them, so I have nothing to report, but we do. It's the level of news reporting here. Good to dig in to yourself. Slovakia, you know. But what we do have - We probably have one Slovakia. And it

45:48 was like, fuck these guys. The three bottom farms that listen to

45:56 the podcast and Slovakia, nothing but nice things to say about Senegal.

45:59 But in April coming up, we have Kuwait on April 4th, April 10th, we have South Korea. And then this is gonna be really interesting on April 19th, actually having parliamentary elections in India,

46:13 which will be the largest election on the planet. There are almost a billion people eligible to vote in India

46:23 What's his face, Narendra Modi?

46:28 I think it's the prime minister that is running for his third term. The one thing I want to say here real quick, since we've got a little break in reporting on elections, that's kind of a theme

46:37 that's

46:40 starting to occur and I'm going to get a little bit on my soapbox. When you look at the issues in the Indian election, it's unemployment, there's some Hindu nationalism stuff going on, but one of

46:53 the big ones is political corruption Every election we have talked about, we've talked about political corruption, and this is a fine nuanced point, but I think it's really one of the things that's

47:04 made America a different country on the planet is the political corruption we've been talking about in every other democracy, the winner uses the authority of the state to go after the person they

47:17 just beat and they throw them in jail. I think Mark, you made the point of everybody runs for prime minister from jail or exile or exile. Exactly. And. Our founding fathers spent a lot of time

47:31 thinking through the constitution and the way they decided that we were gonna handle political corruption was at the ballot box. So if you'll notice the impeachment process, the how to get rid of

47:43 the president, other members of the executive, the judiciary is a political process. The House of Representatives, the duly elected representatives of the citizens has to bring impeachment charges,

47:57 the Senate tries it, the Chief Justice Supreme Court sits in judgment of that. And that's how we've done everything. I mean, for all his bravado, Donald Trump, a thrower in jail, did nothing to

48:10 Hillary Clinton when he got elected. And the reason I bring that up is it's a little scary seeing the power of the state being used to decide this election. 'Cause I don't think we've really done

48:23 that in our past I mean, historically, it's always been at the ballot box. call each other bad names. We say horrific stuff. You know, we even, you know, impeachments only happened to the

48:35 president four times in the history of the United States. Even Richard Nixon had the good sense just to resign because what he had done is wrong. We didn't impeach Jackson as president back in the

48:49 Johnson, Johnson back in the 1860s because a senator from the other side said, no, this is wrong. This is using a process that we shouldn't be doing for this. And so anyway, they ended up

49:02 resigning Johnson resigned. Did he? And then served in the House of Representatives. I didn't think Johnson resigned. I think he did resign. Anyway, but the whole, the whole, the whole point

49:14 is we took, we take it very serious going after our political opponents. We do it at the ballot box. We don't use the power of the state. And I think that's what's made us different. And it's

49:27 It's, I hate to be naive. It's actually been shocking that literally every election we've talked about, someone's been in jail. Yeah, yeah. That's funny. We call it in kind of the new lexicon

49:38 around this. It's, you know, it's been termed law fair. Law fair. So I'm gonna go back to India, and this is a numbers question. You said that there were a billion, thereabouts eligible to

49:52 vote in India? Yeah, just under Yeah, the country's 14 billion.

49:58 What's their legal voting age? I think it's 18. Yeah. I have to look into that, that's interesting. Yeah, which is

50:07 very interesting. All right, cool guys. Well, I gotta wrap it up 'cause I gotta head off to Empower.

50:16 Mark, it's good to have you back, man. It's good to be back. Opening week of MLB regular season. There you go He's coming to town for four against the Astros and Otani is reading. a statement at

50:30 445 central, not taking questions. We'll do an emergency podcast later in the week on it. There you go. Me and you, we'll drop it, cool. I like it. All right guys, we will catch y'all next

50:42 week. Hope to see some of y'all at Empower this week and make sure to share this episode with a friend if you enjoyed it.