Big Digital Energy

0:00 The fact we're all EMP guys and not power guys is showing it so it's always a unit it's always the how much is it in barrels? Yeah, exactly be a reason. I could do that all day long show me where I

0:12 can divide by 58 exactly so last weekend Are we on went to Vegas? Well, it's rolling it is we don't do the cheesy drumbeat and Yeah, that's that's old news. I Like the old one beat. Well, let's

0:31 do it. No, no, no, no, no. We should stop doing this

0:37 All right, so last weekend Took the eldest to Vegas. That's what she wanted for 21st birthday The girlfriend was like, oh, y'all should go eat dinner here. Go see a show here go get a special

0:49 drink there No, I've been playing online poker all she wanted to do was go play poker. I'm like, okay, so what's her age? 21 okay burns 21 this is what she wants so We show up. So since you took

1:03 her, she wanted to play high stakes poker. Exactly, she needed the bank, I think, is why I was there. But anyway, so dad's hope for this trip is lose a lot of money, long run, cheap lesson,

1:17 get rid of the potential degenerate gambler that I am raising. So we get there, Friday night, big stake, nice bottle of wine, we go play cash games, boom. She loses a lot of money, I'm like,

1:27 great Next night, tournament at the encore, I finished 12th, of course, top 11 pay, but anyway, she finished 10. So she got paid at a tournament, still a little better, loses all that money

1:40 and then more playing cash games that night, I am so pumped up, dad, I never wanna come back to Vegas, this is horrible, I hate it, she hits a 2, 200 slot on the flight home in the airport,

1:54 it's texting me every day, dad, when are we going back? Go back. Yeah So we just screwed yourself. We screwed ourselves. So, hey, real quick, let me do a public service announcement. October

2:06 30th, 31st, we have our Fuse Conference coming up. It's gonna be at 713 Music Center in downtown Houston. Fuses are a self-by-self-west of energy technology. The key is, hey, if you make energy

2:19 in any way, oil and gas, renewal, bulls, et cetera, show up. If you move it in any sort of way, pipelines, transmissions, whatever, show up If you consume it in any sort of way, data center,

2:32 whatever, show up. Let's check egos at the door. Let's talk about technology and how we're gonna do this. And I hear the new OctoQ, the EV charging company, for apartments and condos are gonna

2:45 be showing off their new tech. Nice, do we have a designated speaker from the company?

2:52 Maybe, maybe, I'm working on that. Well, you know what's so funny? You're like listed above me in terms of the speakers there and they haven't told me how's that how's that speaking? But I don't

3:02 know at least you're listed. The first you're not on the list and the last on the first. Why don't you give us some of the headliners who are on the list? There we go. John Arnold's going to be

3:11 their legendary Enron trader. We'll be there. Bobby Tudor is giving the other peanut and Bobby Tudor was a long time goldman banker and then founder and CEO of Tudor Pickering Holt until I think

3:24 Maynard joined, right?

3:26 Or was Bobby always chairman? Bobby was always chairman, I believe. I was much later. There you go. So anyway, the stuff we talk about at this conference fastening, we'll go every, we'll do

3:38 panels on cloud tech, to intelligent, well-board design, to geothermal, to scaling renewables. I always thought that was the coolest thing from last year's Fuse Conference as a solar guy came up

3:51 to me and said, Chuck, I need to meet an oil and gas guy. And I'm like, what are you talking about? And said, well, I just need to meet one We need to talk scaling because that, you know.

3:59 Nobody scaled an oil and gas, scaled a business, like oil and gas. So low and bold, I introduced him to a COO of an oil and gas company, and I would give anything to have that hour and a half

4:10 recorded, 'cause it was fascinating. It was like literally down to, how do you deal with employee drug testing issues, and just all the stuff you don't even think about when you're trying to scale

4:19 a business? I don't think they drug test anymore. They may not, but we talked about it. Yeah, it seems to have at least faded to the background, which gives you a little pause, I guess.

4:31 I think I read something about a pilot who had

4:36 had a few lines of cocaine and then attempted to fly a plane. And then

4:44 he got nailed by someone he had texted, one of his colleagues, he had texted, who kind of headed off that disaster. I have to look up the details of that story. All the emelasian face company I

4:57 still want to find that plane. That's the one. That's the question. All right, Kirk, your favorite subject. Why don't you kick us off? Oh my gosh. So we're back here again. So my favorite CEO,

5:09 YL, who took over show. Yeah, I mean, I said, look. Hey, the key to successful name dropping is always making them sound like the best friend. Yeah, he's totally my best, yeah. While CEO

5:23 has been on seat, you know, less than a year

5:28 There's an internal yammer, which I think sucks. Like that platform is so bad. However, we had that in 2002. I so bad, but two, well, Shell has it, tells you what you need to know, but two

5:42 Shell executives from the renewable, now called low carbon division, they basically pen a letter on the internal platform, gets picked up

5:53 by Reuters. Over 80, 000 people viewed it. 1, 000 people liked it, which created internal dialogue. And basically, the letter, internal letter said, Hey, WIL, we're worried because you're

6:06 basically going sort of against the low carbon strategy that Shell had before you became CEO, and we're worried about our jobs and we're worried about the direction of the company. And this came

6:18 after WIL and others spoke on

6:22 their investor day. 'Cause WIL is actually trying to put the company on a path to greater profitability, greater dividend returns and increase their multiple, which is something we've talked about

6:37 before. So this created a shitstorm internally and now is public. So it's incredible. How many of those 80, 000 likes were shareholders? That was all internal employees. Yeah, exactly. Well,

6:53 so all of them 100 And so

6:59 how is it, the thing that was fascinating to me about this article is I totally get kind of the evangelical nature of the letter, you know, a vote we have to say, I get that. I like can

7:10 understand that. I can understand kind of the fervor around it, but how is it pressure? I mean, is he not running the show? Is there internal dissent there that this beg the fire to? Number one,

7:25 it's a European company So it's more committee-led than like, it's not the powerful CEO, American CEO. It's a little bit, a little bit. I always thought of Shell, especially when they had two

7:37 locations in Europe, has a weaker Federalist, at least weaker from a centralized top-down authority and decision-making. I always thought of Shell as being more Federalist. This is true, while

7:51 though, is very influential and he's CEO However, this is a company that has a company that has a company that has a company that

8:01 HR on the executive committee. So it's an important role. So people are important to show.

8:06 And if 80, 000 people, or a thousand people liked it, 80, 000 people read it, does it mean they agree? Now here's the age old question that I've had with others before, is you need to be able

8:18 to separate your hat as an employee and as a shareholder. 'Cause those are two different things. I think what I, when I read the letter, it basically, in my opinion, was I am an employee and I'm

8:31 worried about my job. I didn't read it as I'm gonna concerned shareholder because I think what Wales trying to do is saying, hey, we belong next to companies like ExxonMobil, we have great capital

8:44 discipline, which is exactly what Wales trying to do. Employees don't like it, though. Interesting. And I think that has a lot to do with really the

8:56 culture and societal differences between

9:00 the different locations of Exxon being here in the US and Shell being domiciled in Europe. Absolutely. Stating the obvious, but that's, you know,

9:11 I don't know anyone within those companies who is incentivized or has a significant amount of their comp tied up in non-cash type of things, in other words, company stock that wouldn't want the

9:27 stock to perform better. And that's, you know, that's no different than what the external constituents and shareholders are telling while and others more loudly that this is what we want, kind of

9:40 slow the role on these investments that we can't see line of sight generating competitive return on capital employed And the only area where I think is there's some at odds is these people, not all

9:54 of them locked in pensions, or at least they want to continue to have that pension grow, they want to keep their job first, stock price second. So there is definitely

10:07 that concern that I see, but I can't believe, like I wouldn't have written a letter. And the first time I met while I had an honest conversation about what I did for the company, and whether it

10:18 was valuable. And I said, well, I'm not gonna tell you what I said, but I think a lot of these people are afraid to speak in terms that doesn't put themselves in the forefront versus what is best

10:32 as a shareholder, 'cause it really is owned by the shareholder. Well, it's the difference between what is described in political circles is between the owner class and the managerial class. Always

10:43 a fight. And even when you're looking at highly compensated individuals and well and guess pays very well for career professionals, the notion that that. that guaranteed income so to speak is at

10:58 risk is something that causes an inward look and self-preservation instincts to kick in so I think it was Rodney Danger filled back to school when he was in class taking the business class and he goes

11:11 when you are out there. While you are in here studying about your ethics I was out busting my hump in the real world and it always just gets to me that Portions of the company are like bashing the

11:24 portion that actually provides the wear with all for them to have a job. So that's the point that needs to be a recognition. That's the point I made with YL is like whoever actually is generating

11:35 the cash and paying the rest of us they should probably have the biggest voice. But these are people that have they're not making money and they're the loudest voice right now but in some ways that

11:46 has been Europe I mean as we saw we briefly spoke about this earlier but Ireland just cancelled. an LNG terminal because it's against their climate goals. And it was the Irish

12:02 power grid that two years ago said, hey, over the next five years, if it's a cold winter, we're screwed. We're not gonna have enough power. So Ireland's saying, hey, we don't want any more gas.

12:13 We want renewables, but they don't have enough renewables if there is a cold, bitter winter. So there's interesting dynamics at foot here, and we should be watching Shell over the next month to

12:24 see what happens. Yeah, and we saw a more recent example of that than two years ago, just last winter in preparation or in advance of last winter, the Germans were scrambling to put together

12:36 floating LNG and we all know what happened with their coal ramp up as well. So

12:44 part of the inertia that's in LNG is due to just uncertainties contractually You know, ultimate decision-making and approval for terminals is going to be, but we need to get started. And I think,

13:01 you know, we've got another item on here that's certainly related. Last week, Saudi announced its first international LNG investment. You know, the world's going to continue to press forward with

13:13 LNG and natural gas as a player in the sustainable portfolio of fuel and energy So, you know, the Saudis are very loudly, once again, saying and doing things, don't listen to what I say, watch

13:28 what I do, saying and doing things that are, I think,

13:34 flying in the face of the narrative that folks like the IEA are certainly putting out there in very long form, right? So.

13:46 Yeah. Chuck Chuck, I mean, I don't know what to say almost at this point in terms of. us talking about this. I do think one of the things and we've kind of teased this on the show, so I'll go

13:59 ahead and just say we're going to do it and let's say we will do it by Thanksgiving. We actually need to go around this table and we'll make sure Collins prostate's healthy so that he can join us,

14:10 but we need to go through position by position various things and in effect give a road map of potentially how you handle a reasonable transition if you will instead of the hey we're just going to

14:30 stop using fossil fuels tomorrow because that is part of the issue is you do have to give kind of the other side because it makes no sense not to use LNG because incrementally it is a lot better than

14:44 coal but at the same time if we don't have some sort of an input an endpoint then it just comes off like were cranky old men from the Muppets, sitting up in the balcony. So we need a positions what

14:59 you're saying. Yeah, we need a position. So it's kind of thematic with the coming election year we put together planks and policy positions. And if it's somewhat akin to what we did and speed

15:12 around with the energy draft podcast a couple of years ago. Yeah, let's do that. Let's do that. And there we go All right, 'cause I mean, at the end of the day,

15:25 I mean, I do think we have to put the framework over it that we've talked about a lot on here is there's only so much money out there.

15:33 And China and India are doing what they are doing, and we've just got to account for that. And so where do we best spend our dollars and how do we potentially get there? It reminds me

15:46 of a clip video I saw when, when, when Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger were talking. And they're like, you know why we're so rich? Because there's a lot of stupid investors out there.

15:58 I think we're sort of falling to this trap here. There's a lot of people making decisions, but you watch the Saudis, you watch the YLs, the shells. You're seeing people, you watch China, you're

16:09 seeing people that are positioning themselves to win the long run. But cheap energy, I mean, it's all about cost. I mean, people, inflation's gone out, renewable stocks are that way down People

16:22 are frustrated. I mean, you even have in California, which is an interesting story, but PGE, CEO Patty Pope is trying to spend 6 billion to bury all the power lines to prevent wildfires. But

16:38 regulators are about to kabash it because they're saying it's gonna cost so much money that we're already the most expensive state in the union. People can't afford it What's interesting is the CEO

16:51 of the. largest regulated utility is not thinking about the cost to people. She's like, hey, if I can cram all this money, I get paid. I mean, utilities make money by spending more money. So

17:05 crease the rate base. It's just so lack of, man, lack of insight. It's amazing. Yeah. And that's, that's to your point, Chuck. What gets us over the

17:18 hump or across the bridge with, you know, things like natural gas to whatever else is next, right? It's, it's, what does all this cost and who pays for it? Yeah. And there are only so much of

17:35 that. And at the end of the day, none of us can foresee the future. So we kind of got to make our best bets along the way, right? And, yeah, because that kind of rolls into the next, we have a

17:47 lot of non-elected leaders and voices that are casually throwing around. borderline demanding that the world or the responsible world meaning responsible for

18:01 the damage that's been inflicted, the alleged damage that's been inflicted to spend trillions of dollars that

18:08 certainly people would be very hard pressed to absorb, given what's going on here recently with inflation, et cetera. But that's the other thing in this is that we need, as Dunberg says,

18:22 thermodynamics is a ruthless referee, right? So we need, and we've talked about this before, we need more technical and science perspective at the table, figuring all this out. Yeah. As well as

18:41 just a reasonable view of humanity that a life lost today because of higher energy prices or lack of energy or lack of fertilizer to grow. food is just as bad as a life lost potentially 75 years from

18:57 now because the planet's a degree and a half former. So we need, we need that perspective too. All right. So you heard it right here on BDE. We've committed to actually doing this before

19:09 Thanksgiving. We'll come back to you guys with a date, but

19:15 this kind of rolls into the next point that we talked about last week. You know, the prime minister of the United Kingdom came out and said, Hey, we're going to push back the banning of the

19:28 internal combustion engine till 2035 instead of 2030. And basically said that's going to be too much of a hardship on the average per average citizen. If we get rid of internal combustion engine,

19:44 so we're going to push it back five years. And, you know, I think that rolls into what we're, we talked, Colin and I talked that last week. That's rolling into this, the F-150. What's going on

19:58 with those? Well, there's rumors of

20:03 not yet confirmed, there's rumors that there are order of cancellations. Kind of sweeping across the

20:13 dealer network. And

20:17 it kind of goes hand in glove with what we've talked about previously as well in terms of dealers having to

20:27 handle an increasingly deal with

20:31 burgeoning or bloating EV inventory, right? So lightning is a very high profile, I think.

20:42 It's really a flagship vehicle for Ford's EV aspirations and to run into,

20:51 I think, what is. what one of our colleagues has recently experienced in terms of things like fast charger availability and range anxiety. And the fact that the vehicle is at a price point that is

21:05 yet still unattainable by many is showing up and building inventory and a softer market than I think was anticipated. Yeah, and a dad's

21:20 in addition to kind of your range anxiety, finding charger, infrastructure. Dad has the Mustang, the Mach, the electric and dad's buys technology. The first

21:35 day it comes out and then never upgrades. We still have the first VCR ever made in the United States at the Yates House somewhere, probably playing catty shack. Do you know how valuable VHS tapes

21:46 are now? It's amazing. That made me - As long as you have the right, you know. The right movies on there. Might be there, but you know, dad's had a piece go out on the charger at a home and

22:00 just can't get it replaced. I mean, they've got big backlogs in terms of all that. And so, I mean, they're having real issues. They're wildly unprofitable. Their actually performance isn't

22:13 living up. You know, they're figuring out when you're towing a bunch of stuff, range gets cut in half and all the rumors. So this isn't surprising You know, I've been thinking about this. You

22:22 know, the original research that came out was based on technology that once a technology gets about 7 adoption in a market in the US, for example,

22:35 it's a step function growth in that technology. It's a S curve. It's a S curve. Now that's based on things like XM Radio and - Software. Software. But these are, you know, 80, 000. the

22:48 technology pieces. So it's a very different scale. My question is, are if the Ford Lightning, it's a rumor, but we heard about a battery. There's a battery plant mark that you could talk about.

23:00 Is this a hiccup or is this a,

23:03 wait a minute. We sort of went out of the gate too soon. Let's re-step, is this a restart? Well, this is a Ford plant. I just saw the headline hitting the brakes on a 35 billion battery plant

23:15 investment in Michigan.

23:18 All these things are, I think, ultimately related, right? It's just the timeline over which all this gets put together and works. You know, we used to say, everybody can hold their breath

23:30 underwater for a minute. Let's see who can do it for 10. Right. And Ford being very public in disclosing what the financial reality is of its EV division. I think we talked about it a few shows

23:44 together They're projected to lose 3 billion a few.

23:48 Brian Sullivan, CNBC, tweeted out this morning on Rivian. I saw one data point in there, Rivian is losing 33, 000 per SUV. That's it?

24:01 You don't understand the internet, Mark. Right. Hey, this is the intersection, the unique intersection of the digital world that has that S curve of history, the step change history after that

24:05 penetration And the

24:15 very nasty physics or physical world-based reality. I'm with you. Building cars is hard. Right, hardware is hard. At scale and cost effectively. Hey, quick question. I see on my screen up

24:26 there, there's a big mute button. Does that mean I'm not on? That's a hint. No, I think we're all right. I think that just flashes like that periodically. All right. Okay. I am safe. Let's

24:43 keep going There we go. So is it a hiccup or is it a restart? You're saying, I think, from what reading between the lines mark to restart, maybe.

24:55 Well, the weird thing about this is, if this were the free markets, and say what you want about the. com bubble, that was pretty big free market. I mean, this is the IRA not mandating, but

25:10 strongly suggesting that EVs are the wave of the future. And so I just don't know how to, let me through the future with that big hammer. Okay, so more simply in, you know, autos, which is a

25:23 big industry and it's critical industry, are big tax incentives, a sustainable business model, in a free market where there's not policy mandate, and there's consumer choice. If you look back to

25:38 the history of cafe standards, over 30 years, we made very modest improvements and ice fuel efficiency. because American consumers traded up for larger SUVs and better performance, bigger, more

25:56 horsepower, more torque. And so that's the demand side, that's the behavior side that is now more increasingly talked about. One of the pieces about the IEA report, I didn't see it, I saw Javier

26:12 Bloss tweeted about it. He said one of the more interesting things was this suggestion proposal idea scenario that we ban cars, diesel and gasoline cars, private vehicles in big cities by 2035.

26:31 Listen, and one of the replies to that was, I don't know who replied, but this is kind of

26:39 a German client activist, said, okay, well, those that have a car for traveling, longer journeys outside of the city during leisure time. How will they quote unquote be dealt with?

26:55 Wow, let me ask y'all a question. Look, I don't give a fuck about the IEA. Who cares what they say? What we should be and what I think our audience cares most about is that they care what we're

27:09 seeing real people that have money to spend, people that have lives in the line, such as companies, not politicians, but like the media, does it matter what they, like their forecast, 'cause

27:22 it's all today, it's moved from, hey, this is what the past said, we're gonna project the future. It's now sort of, they're sort of telling the world what they wanna see. Shouldn't we be

27:32 reading the tea leaves from people that are actually making decisions? Yes, we do that as a normal course of analyzing in the way of talking about things, but to say that, ideally, the IEA, the

27:45 UN, the. the NGO leaders of the narrative are or one side of the narrative or not, you know, who cares? I think that just isn't political reality and political reality has to be dealt with as we

28:03 think about energy policy and putting sound well thought out scientifically based economically based energy policy in place around the world where, you know, consumers, the electorate have free

28:20 will. And so there is a significant influence on the way people think about it and get behind certain ideas that may not be practical if we're trying to make the leap from natural gas to, you know,

28:33 full wind power and solar power. See how I set you up for that, Mark? Well, you're welcome Well, and you guys are right. I thought I thought it I was gonna go Roy Macroy on

28:44 Well, I'm Joe LaCava. Yeah. No, I was just setting you up for that because I actually do care, but I wanted to see your reaction to that. We do have to take him to consideration. We're on the

28:52 same side of the table. We're actually on both sides. You two can go get a room. It's okay. Yeah, but I think you guys are absolutely right. The other thing we have to do though, and if I said

29:04 IEA earlier, I meant IRA. I mean, we have to read our politicians in Washington and figure out, the IRA came in heavy duty on incentives, almost to the point of this is what we're doing, think

29:21 Captain Renault and Casablanca. Let's just say it's my request that is a more pleasant word, but do they take it the next step further? I mean, do they start throwing bands out? I mean, 'cause

29:33 that's, you know - Look at Trudeau. Look at Trudeau and Canada and see how far a leader is willing to go in terms of - already have de facto bans in Europe I drove around as I think you did this

29:44 summer and was a little surprised to when I got my rental car, they offered me an upgrade because the one I had was not certified or permitted for the ultra low emission zones, right? So as an

29:60 everyday European, not generalizing about Europe, but just make it a point, if I can't afford that type of vehicle and then I'm now restricted from going in those places and driving, I can't

30:12 afford to get to certain places, is that not a banning,

30:19 kind of hearing now that's upon us.

30:22 No, I'm here to say, I've like been won over by my brother, Bobby, who claims that Bill Gates wants a chip in every one of us and oil-filled Rando, who, you know, and all that, I'm right there.

30:35 The conspiracy theorists are right. Although, Jermaine has raised over a couple hundred million dollars in same all men. open AI is one of their big backers. They just, they put a wearable AI

30:50 wearable device on a Naomi Campbell during a fashion, one of a big fashion event. And so this stuff is coming. It's here. So I went on my rant about how they want EVs so they can track us. You

31:06 all have heard me do that a million times. And the guy I was talking to said, Chuck, do you have a license plate? They can already do that with the license plate. So don't worry. You're behind

31:15 on that. This is true. You know, when I went to Europe this summer, I don't know if this happened in the German airports where you are. We didn't even have to show our passport. It was facial

31:25 recognition in the Helsinki airport. Everyone knows Chuck. Well, you just, you walked in. I'm like, when do I have to show my passport? And they're like, no, we, we got you. So, you know,

31:36 I will say this is how, I mean, I was in Europe for the speaking of Ryder Cup since we just finished one. I was at the Ryder Cup in Valdera, in Spain. And my dad being as, you know, poor dad,

31:49 but dad thinks he's gonna rent a large car, like he picked the large rental car. And we get into space, Panya, me and one of his buddies and me. And the car is so small. The three Americans with

32:03 our luggage could fit into it. And it was the large. It was the large. I was like, you're just been doing this since the beginning of time. For one, it's smaller The roads are tiny. And, you

32:14 know, in the history before we were around, people were smaller. Yeah. So I think this trend has been happening for a long, long time. It's just funny now that it's gotten so politicized. It

32:25 does. But

32:27 man, do they drive really fast, and it's great. Yeah. The Italians. All right, from Vegas. We stayed at the encore when we were there on our poker excursion. We overlooked the sphere. Do you

32:38 guys know about the sphere? It's creepy, the big eye, man. Big eye, so James Dolan, Madison Square Garden builds this thing. I think it's supposed to cost 12 billion. It costs two or two and a

32:49 half, something like this. It's wild, go Google it, look up pictures. Maybe we'll get a picture embedded in this video. But anyway 160,,

33:01 000 speakers, 12 million LED lights the size of hockey pucks,

33:08 580, 000 square feet of programmable lighting. Literally, Nevada energy had to build a dedicated solar energy field to be able to power this thing. And it's gonna come online April of 2027, the

33:26 Sierra Solar Project with all these batteries, 18, 000 square feet the amount of power it's going to use. 18, 000 square feet. I'm sorry, 18, 000 seats. arena. That's not very big.

33:43 Nice. That is a perfect size venue. Nice. But I'm thinking about Rice Stadium speaking off. I mean, there you go. Well, this is indoors. More people can sit in Rice Stadium than have ever

33:56 attended the university. That's right. That's right. So, but anyway, so this is the sphere. Have we figured it out? Is it 96 gigawatts? It's going to use a year gigawatt hours of power. I

34:08 think it's going to use during the year. It's not 150 terawatt hours per year. It's not that it's a lot, but it's still a lot. And just some comparables on that. That's the same as 533, 000

34:21 electric vehicles driving 12, 000 miles a year would use. It's about the amount of electricity, a small town of 9, 000 to 10, 000 households would use. If we wanted to, at our big slumber party

34:36 that we need to get rescheduled, we could actually pop 960 million bags of popcorn with that amount of electricity. There you go. And so the reason - Or you could buy one day's advertising on the

34:48 sphere for the low, low price of 450, 000. Which by the way, maybe we start to go fund me. But anyway, no, the reason I bring this all up is one just in Vegas and saw it and it's just

35:01 spectacular. I can see it now The Chuck Job Podcast logo with Chuck sprawled over the eye. I love that. I like that. That would be a great birthday gift guys. But anyway, yeah, no, but the

35:18 reason I bring this up, one, I saw it. It was cool as I'll get out. This weekend was opening weekend. You two was there, a couple of buddies actually when I'm getting videos, it's just stunning,

35:28 it's spectacular. That's a lot of freaking power And maybe this winds up just being a Vegas thing, like whatever. Does this become the standard for music performance venues in the top 50 or 75

35:43 metropolitan in the world? First of all, it is cool.

35:47 I wanna go back to what you said about the solar facility. Is that going to completely replace what's powering the sphere now? Is that? It's 70. 70, what's powering it now, what is? I guess

36:03 it's the electric grid in Las Vegas So it's the big dam and. So it's hydro. It's hydro, yeah. But, and this isn't even a renewables versus hydro carbon thing. It's just, we talk time and time

36:18 again about the demand for power and what electricity can do. I keep arguing that as we keep asking for more and more electronics. I mean, look, Houston being, you know, the energy capital of

36:29 the world as it is, we've had an eye for forever And it's always been, it's been, it's been analog. We've had an eye across the city. You've seen it. I've seen it. He's always watching Dr. Ed

36:42 Young. Second Baptist. He's everywhere. He's on every billboard, every major artery. Dr. Ed is watching you. And we've had an eye. So when I saw the eye, I was like, Dr. Ed has finally been

36:57 trumped, but it took 30 years to do it. Well, and I don't even know. I don't know Dr. Ed Young, so I don't mean to disparage. But I have heard his biggest or one of his big disappointments in

37:09 life is they've never led him into the Houston Country Club. And he supposedly applies every other year.

37:17 I need to ask about that one. Yeah, do do ask about that one. Don't know if that's a true story, but you know, again, speaking of PowerGen and all this new electronic demand, I think you had

37:30 some tidbits about Power Generation under development. I did. I did, so a report came out not too long ago. See how it set you up for that? You did, wow. I didn't get the pre-show notes on this.

37:44 I'll just sit over here and watch. In the past year - In the past year. In the past year, a global capacity and development for coal power plants increased 16 and

37:55 oil and gas plants by 13. So coal on a percentage basis is out, is leading oil and gas Now, where is that coming? I mean, so the rest of the world, coal plant capacity has been going down. So

38:13 the rest of the world is right now in terms of development is under 200 gigawatts. China, on their hand, in 2019, their coal plant capacity was around 200 gigawatts themselves. They're now almost

38:30 doubled So, if you look at coal plants and development,

38:36 557 gigawatts are in development today, 204 gigawatts under construction, 260 in pre-construction, 93 gigawatts announced, almost all that in China. Well, we did see, if you remember, when

38:52 Pakistan unsuccessfully procured,

38:56 LNG cargo's got no bid right over the winter, they came out with a polishing shift and said, We're going to quadruple our coal-fired generation. So we're going to start to see that in other markets

39:09 that

39:12 need energy in the most critical situations and power for their just daily life and having lived there for a bit of time. I know the reliability of the grid is not

39:28 great And so if you start to exacerbate that, you know, that all trickles. down and then causes

39:39 unfortunate and unfavorable political circumstances. So we're going to see, I think, an acceleration of that type of pivot if we can't be more constructive, more constructive, more balanced,

39:53 fairer, and really cognizant and acknowledging, and I think the African Union said,

40:03 basically, we're not going to be kind of side players in this, we're going to have a primary place in place in the table. And if you think about where the 19 billion people that will be added to

40:16 the planet between 2020 and 2050 are going to live 12 billion of those 19 billion are going to be in key countries in Africa that are very high population growth that don't have the best. power

40:30 generation and grid reliability situation today. And so if we're not addressing that practically and proactively, I think these problems

40:41 just can't be let them eat cake. It just cannot be, 'cause that will not be good. You know what's wild about your stats, Kirk, is we use 4 trillion kilowatt hours in the United States of power in

40:53 2022. We used more than Africa, I mean, more than China did in 2010. They passed us in 2010, and now they use 2X what we use. So I'm gonna read you a quote, you tell me where it's from. Okay.

41:11 The Supreme Art of War is to subdue the enemy without fighting. There you go, Sun City, the Art of War. So the Art of War, which emphasizes the importance of flexibility, creativity, and

41:25 deception and warfare So written by a Chinese strategist. philosopher. So despite the so so when I think about the art of war, I think of what's happening right now, China. So one of the one of

41:41 the quotes from this article, despite the coal production, analysts believe China's renewable energy production capacity may help achieve its emission targets possibly ahead of time. Who is totally

41:52 winning right now? How do they subdue the enemy? We're all trying to get to renewable as fast as possible. No more coal, no more LNG. China, on the other hands, like build as many coal plants

42:05 as fast as you can. Let's get there. And at the same time, we're winning the renewable race. Well, they are winning in terms of the supply chain, but even they're like, our emissions are going

42:16 to outpace at some point. I'm just like, man, wow What's the traditional greeting in the Chinese army? General, I enjoy your chicken. and I yours.

42:31 Mark, close this out with baseball. I sat around and didn't know what to make of all this, so please explain. Last day of the regular season, a week before the Texas Rangers controlled their

42:44 destiny.

42:47 The Astros and Mariners had played pretty weak, and I'm talking about the AL West. And so on the last day of the season, after having lost two of three in Seattle, the Rangers dropped a

43:02 one-nothing shutout, nail-biter to the Mariners to then allow the Astros who swept the Arizona Diamondbacks in Phoenix to, based on the

43:16 tiebreaker, take the division title for the sixth time in seven years, in the last six full regular seasons that knocks out 2020, which was the 60-game sprint and then. tournament in Dallas. And

43:30 so the background noise in all this yesterday was kind of fun to listen to and watch. There was complaining about by the Rangers broadcasters that the Diamondbacks were not playing their some of

43:45 their superstars. Well, the Diamondbacks playoff future had already been decided the night before. They have to jump on a plane and go immediately to Milwaukee and play a three game wild card

43:56 series against the Brewers. And so preparing for that is really their priority. But the Astros jumped on pretty quickly to to an eight nothing lead and took care of business yesterday. Meanwhile,

44:10 the Rangers are facing

44:12 George Kirby, who was one of the top starters for the Mariners this year. And he lasted six innings and shut them out for six innings But then they brought in a succession of none of their high

44:24 leverage relievers. So young pitchers, I think what was making only his second major league appearance. So you had every opportunity to overcome a one nothing lead with that juggernaut offense that

44:37 has been most of the Ranger story and they couldn't do it. But let's blame everything else outside of our control and not take care of our own business. And so the Astros now have a five day arrest

44:51 between now and the start of the division series on Saturday at home. Meanwhile, in irony of ironies, the Rangers are having to fly about as far as you can across the continental United States from

45:03 Seattle to Tampa to take on the Rays, which hold the number one wild card spot. The winner of that series has to play Baltimore, which has been the best team in the American League this year. And

45:15 because the Rays had their spot secured, their batting average leader rested yesterday. Meanwhile, Corey Seager went over four for the Rangers and he dropped out of the batting title lead at the

45:26 same time. Finally. This is a karma turnabout for 2017 when during Harvey, the Astros asked the Rangers if they could swap home and home series with the Arlington facility because it was impossible

45:44 to play in Houston right around that time of Hurricane Harvey. The Rangers said no, they had to go to Tampa to play neutral ground series against both the Rangers and then ultimately the New York

45:56 Mets So they weren't lending a helping hand to Houston then and I think it's deliciously ironic that they have to go to Tampa to play the Rays when they could have won the division pretty easily. To

46:09 finish with a quote from the Art of War, Opportunities multiply as they are seized. Well done, strobes. Nice. All right, everybody, if you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe, please

46:23 comment, please share it with a friend I'm glad to have you back. Next, I think Thursday night is the prayer visual for Collins prostate. And hopefully we'll have him back next week.