Volts crossover: Six big energy questions

They’re at it again. Two years after they last teamed up for a Volts/Catalyst crossover episode, David Roberts joins Shayle for another far-ranging conversation exploring the future of energy. Their prompt was simple: Each host brought three critical questions they want to see answered in the next decade. From “data center fever” to closed-loop critical mineral economics, Shayle and David take the opportunity to dive deep into a myriad of second-order effects of the clean energy transition. In the hour-long conversation, the two hosts cover topics including: The coming explosion of self-driving cars, and whether it will fuel urban sprawl The feasibility of "electrifying everything” and whether a proliferation of “micro-DERs” in home devices will create create a more efficient grid or a software-fueled dystopia The future of off-grid data centers Whether the pros of geoengineering and solar radiation modification, or SRM, outweigh the potential moral hazards Resources: Catalyst: The Volts crossover episode Catalyst: The plug-in DER case for small businesses Catalyst: AMA: Geoengineering, nuclear, power prices, and more Open Circuit: Tesla’s fork in the road Latitude Media: The growing free-market push to let data centers go off grid Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Max Savage Levenson. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor. Catalyst is brought to you by Uplight. Uplight activates energy customers and their connected devices to generate, shift, and save energy—improving grid resilience and energy affordability while accelerating decarbonization. Learn how Uplight is helping utilities unlock flexible load at scale at uplight.com. Catalyst is brought to you by Antenna Group, the public relations and strategic marketing agency of choice for climate, energy, and infrastructure leaders. If you're a startup, investor, or global corporation that's looking to tell your climate story, demonstrate your impact, or accelerate your growth, Antenna Group's team of industry insiders is ready to help. Learn more at antennagroup.com. Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub helps utilities build next-generation virtual power plants that unlock reliable flexibility at every level of the grid. See how EnergyHub helps unlock the power of flexibility at scale, and deliver more value through cross-DER dispatch with their leading Edge DERMS platform, by visiting energyhub.com.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Latitude Media, covering the new frontiers of the energy transition.

• 0:08Shayle Kann?

  I'm Shayle Khan, and this is Catalyst.

• 0:11Speaker 02

  This is the scary thing about solar radiation management. You could stand up and do a reasonably large scale test on your own without a ton of money, arguably without being detected doing so by the world. You know what I mean?

• 0:30Shayle Kann?

  Coming up, six questions to David Roberts of the Volts Podcast, and I want to hear answers in the next five to 10 years.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  Demand flexibility is now an essential part of the data center's speed to power playbook. But how do data centers actually curtail load? Grid Beyond is the end to end solution for flexible energy management. Grid Beyond's advanced derms and VPP platform is tailored to what data centers care about most: maximizing reliability, intelligently meeting curtailment obligations, reducing costs, and managing all your distributed resources in one place. Ready to transform your distributed energy management? Get started at gridbeyond.com. Catalyst is brought to you by Antenna Group, the communications and marketing partner behind the most influential companies in energy, climate, and infrastructure. For three decades, Antenna has helped ambitious companies stand out,

• 1:27Speaker 00

  build market leadership, and become category defining brands. From breakthrough startups to global industry leaders, their team brings expertise, relationships, and track record to accelerate your momentum. Learn more at antennagroup.com.

• 1:42Speaker 03

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• 2:17Shayle Kann?

  I'm Shayle Khan. I lead the early-stage venture strategy at Energy Impact Partners. Welcome. All right. So this is the second crossover episode that I've done with my friend, David Roberts. He's a longtime journalist and thinker on lots of things, politics, but also clean energy. And he hosts the Volt's podcast, which I like as well. And he and I get together periodically and just riff on a bunch of stuff. So that's what we did here. The prompt we gave ourselves was we each came up with three questions that we want to see answered in the next five to 10 years. So we talked about those three from each of us, and then it led us down a bunch of paths from there. Anyway, fun conversation as always. Here's David. David, nice to be back with you.

• 3:02Speaker 02

  Awesome. Glad to be doing this again.

• 3:04Shayle Kann?

  All right. So we gave ourselves a prompt here, which is that each of us have come prepared with three questions we are eager to see answered in the next five to 10 years. I assume we both came with backups as well, in case we overlap. I don't think, I bet you we're not going to overlap.

• 3:18Speaker 02

  I tried not to overlap with you. So I think we will, it'll be funny if we both tried so hard that we're going to like leave some very obvious questions unanswered.

• 3:28Shayle Kann?

  We probably will. Yeah. I didn't try to go super esoteric, but I at least tried.

• 3:32Speaker 02

  I tried to get like medium esoteric. So we'll see. We'll see. You want me to go first?

• 3:36Shayle Kann?

  Yeah, you go first.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  Okay. So, so just to, just to review for, for listeners, the prompt here is questions, important questions facing the clean energy world that you might reasonably think will get some kind of answer in the next five to 10 years. And that turned out to be really interesting, really difficult, because I kept thinking of questions that I was like, well, will we really know in 10 years? You know, there are like lots of big, there are lots of big questions where I don't think we'll really know until like 20 or 30 years old. So that was sort of interesting as a way of bracketing my thinking about this. So anyway, long story short, my first one is, so.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  Self-driving cars are here, which is puzzling in itself since there was all this chatter and talk for years in anticipation of their arrival. And then they arrived and like, nobody talks about it. Like, they're operating in several cities now and nobody talks about it. Like, so it's a little weird. So, but there are lots of really, I think, interesting questions about the macro effects of self-driving vehicles that I think we will get answers to pretty soon because, you know, now that San Francisco has been doing it a while and

• 5:06Speaker 02

  it seems to be working, basically. And I think Seattle's starting a pilot. There's like pilots starting in a bunch of cities. We're very close, I think, to basically widespread adoption. And then we'll start to get answers to some of these questions with like, you know, the fear that I have that I think that I think a lot of people sort of climate people have, greenies have, is that making it easier to take a car around is going to result in a lot more people taking a lot more cars around. Basically, like, even though people

• 5:48Speaker 02

  might not necessarily own their own vehicle, even if these are, even if they're shared vehicles, just the level of, the level of use of cars is going to rise sharply when it becomes so easy and so convenient, which will translate mathematically into greater congestion. So like, you could see like deaths going down, as I think we're already seeing in San Francisco. You could see noise going down if they're all electric. You could see pollution going down if they're all electric. But, but on the core issue of urbanism.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  They are gonna, the fear is that they are gonna work against density, basically. They're gonna make it easier to live far out. They're gonna make it easier to commute. Like a commute, you're not gonna dread

• 6:44Speaker 02

  an hour long commute if you can just chill and like read and tap on your phone and or watch a TV show or something. So that's just gonna make it a lot easier to decide to live an hour outside of town. So anyway, I think

• 7:01Speaker 02

  within five to 10 years, we will at least see cities where these things become ubiquitous. And then I think at the very least, we'll have directionally answers to some of these things. I'm very curious, Shale, from your perspective, what your level like of anticipation versus dread versus, um, you know, now that it's here, it's just not that big of a deal either way. I'm curious what your disposition is on self-driving cars.

• 7:33Shayle Kann?

  Uh, good question, and so many things to say about it. Okay, let me offer you a few bits of exposition first. Um, so I live in the Bay Area, as I think you know, I don't live in San Francisco, but I live outside the city and I'm not.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  You've taken, you've taken.

• 7:46Shayle Kann?

  Of course, I Waymo. As a regular, I use Waymo as a verb regularly. Yeah, of course. And, and you're right that like, it's just not a thing in San Francisco anymore. Not a thing in the sense that like one out of every three cars in the city is a Waymo and, and that's just how it is. And it's become pretty normalized to anybody who's not a tourist. And I agree with you, it's coming everywhere. And I think five to 10 years is also, it's kind of the right timeframe for this. I, my other, um, tidbit for you, I have a four-year-old son and I've been making bets about his future with anybody who wants to take them with them since he was born. And the, one of the bets is that he will never drive a car. He'll never get a driver's license. I mean, he's growing up, you know, in kind of suburban Bay Area, California. So take that into account because this is specific that to my son.

• 8:32Shayle Kann?

  But, you know, I think 12 years from now, when it would be time for him to get his driver's license. He's not going to need to, right? And already lots of kids are just Ubering around.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 8:44Shayle Kann?

  That said, with your question, it's interesting, the framing of it to me because I had anticipated you were going to raise a climate concern, which you're not, right?

• 8:54Speaker 02

  Well, it's a second order. I think urbanism and density are climate related. Like, I think if you lose density, even if the cars aren't polluting, you're still going to get greater pollution and greater impact. Like, I think there are second order climate effects.

• 9:12Shayle Kann?

  Probably, but I would bet, I don't have data on this, but I would bet that those effects, one of the main reasons why density is lower emissions per capita is transportation. That's a big part of it.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:25Shayle Kann?

  And so if it is true, the benefit of self-driving vehicles from a climate perspective is that it makes a lot more sense for them to be electric. Right? Like, the utilization pattern.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  They're all Webos. They're all electric. They're all Jaguar EVs. All the extant self-driving cars on the road are electric today.

• 9:44Shayle Kann?

  They're pure EVs. And it just makes more sense, right? You drive high utilization, you pay back the added capex to the EV much faster. It's better for a bunch of reasons. So I think if you assume that our self-driving future actually accelerates vehicle electrification, then to a first order, from a climate perspective, it's not inherently a bad thing. Now, that would be weighed against your question, which is, I think, a question of like, will there be more vehicle miles traveled total?

• 10:11Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:11Shayle Kann?

  And so those kind of weigh against each other to some extent. But it's not obvious to me that that transition to autonomous vehicles is bad from a climate perspective. It might even be.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  No, no, I would not, I mean, I would not have the arrogance to put my flag on either side of that. I don't think, like, I think we just genuinely don't know. I think that's right. That it's going to eliminate a huge chunk of emissions, of emissions. The question is all these second order effects and how you even really trace them. But like, I do think that continuing to sprawl outwards is bad for a number of reasons extraneous to climate.

• 10:52Shayle Kann?

  Yeah, I guess I don't really have an opinion on that. I'm not a, I'm not an urbanist, I guess I would say in that way. And so I don't have strong opinions on whether adding more sprawl is bad. I could see it happening. I actually have a, I have a friend who's a long-term real estate investor, who is amassing a portfolio of land in the exurbs of certain cities under the bet, under like a multi-decade, decade bet of exactly what you're describing. So I totally could see that happening. I guess I just don't inherently see it as a bad thing.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  Oh, uh, well, the question of whether excerpts are bad or not, it's a large question that we don't have time to, to address here. So you know, so, so I mean, this, I, I, and I think this, I think this would just reinforce the worries of the urbanists, which is that they see the tech guys pushing this. And I don't, I don't see any sign from the tech guys that the tech guys care about this. They drive themselves, they drive themselves everywhere. They drive themselves everywhere. They don't live in walkable places. I don't like Silicon Valley, the physical form of Silicon Valley is so gross. It's so gross and deadening, but I guess that that's all they know. Anyway, so, but at, at the very least, like,

• 12:11Speaker 02

  we'll be able to see if that sprawl happens. And then I guess we'll be able to, you know, answer the question of whether, whether we like the effects or not.

• 12:20Shayle Kann?

  I think what we can measure to answer a question of will we know in five to 10 years? Is in the cities where there is high proliferation of autonomous vehicles, so San Francisco and five, 10 years from now, probably a bunch of other cities. Will total VMT have gone up over that period?

• 12:35Speaker 02

  Yes, because they are pushing.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  In the other direction, in California with policy, they are trying to restrain sprawl with a lot of other policies. So how will that balance out? And or it might even be more interesting to see like, what would happen to a city like, you know, Cleveland or whatever, if they get a bunch of AVs, because they do not have a strong overlay of other laws restraining them. So it'd be more of, I guess, like a clean, like a clean experiment. And we'll probably see something like that.

• 13:05Shayle Kann?

  Phoenix has been the testbed for autonomous vehicles.

• 13:08Speaker 02

  Oh, are they? Are they a thing there now?

• 13:11Shayle Kann?

  Oh, yeah, that's where that's where a lot of the early testing was in some ways, because it's obvious. Phoenix is a simple grid. It's not hilly. The weather's good. Yeah. So it's kind of the opposite of San Francisco. San Francisco was like trial by fire for Waymo, but Phoenix is.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. Phoenix is already sprawling like crazy. So it's a little too a little tricky to separate the signal from the noise. But.

• 13:32Shayle Kann?

  Yeah. Okay. Can I?

• 13:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:34Shayle Kann?

  Give you my first question?

• 13:35Speaker 02

  Hit your first one.

• 13:36Shayle Kann?

  Okay. So I think the obvious question that of course I'm going to ask, I'll try to ask a different version of the obvious question that I'm going to ask is, how hot will data center fever get? And will it break in the next five to 10 years? Five to 10 years is is probably the right timeframe to ask that question.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  I was wondering about that.

• 13:57Shayle Kann?

  You could argue it could be sooner, but who knows? Who knows? Right? But within the next 10 years, will we will see some directional thing here? And so but instead of asking the question of how hot will he did data center fever get and will it break? Ask a different question, which I think is like a second order effect of that, which is how much large load goes off grid?

• 14:20Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 14:21Shayle Kann?

  In the next five to 10 years, because to walk through the chain of logic, the kind of going assumption right now of what's happening is that there is so much demand for new data center capacity that we are going to be bursting at the seams on the grid in any market that has demand for data centers. We're basically going to tap out everything we could possibly do on the grid. And so much so that maybe we need to go to space, right? But I think before we go to space in significant volume, there would be a good chance we would go off grid. We've never seen a lot of large industrial loads go off grid, apart from like mining and things like that. We're starting to see glimmers of it right now in data center.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  Are we not seeing law? Like, didn't? Either someone just proposed or passed a law that basically said you have to.

• 15:11Shayle Kann?

  Josh Hawley in the Senate and somebody else, I think, introduced a bill that would essentially mandate data centers to go off grid. My presumption is that doesn't pass.

• 15:20Speaker 02

  Well, like I've said several times, like, there's a world of difference between bring some generation and bring enough generation to cover yourself if you go off grid entirely. That's a very, you know what I mean?

• 15:33Shayle Kann?

  I know, and I'm asking.

• 15:34Speaker 02

  Hundreds of megawatts, yeah.

• 15:36Shayle Kann?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, what's happening now, to be clear, there is an enormous amount of bring your own generation.

• 15:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 15:42Shayle Kann?

  No question about that one. That's an answered question. The question that has not been answered is, and actually, to add to that, there's also an enormous number of projects that are saying, okay, we'll do bridge power. So we are going to be off grid until we get the grid connection, and that's going to be a year, three years, five years, whatever it might be. I'm saying, forget the grid. How many large loads will just be fully off grid with no intent to get a grid connection? Will that happen in significant volume? That is an interesting question.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  It is interesting. I'll just say my gut instinct strongly says no. I just think, like, the arguments for a grid, like, a grid is handy. You know what I mean? Like, grids are extremely useful. And like, a lot of, a lot of policy discussion right now is, is being forced into weird shapes because it's trying to work around the fact that we can't do the obvious thing, which is just build more grid, right? Like, that's, like, that would solve all the problems. That's what everybody wants. It's what everybody needs, beyond data centers even, like, for the future, period. We just need to do that. And we're,

• 16:55Speaker 02

  like, torn between trying to make that happen and then trying to sort of weasel our way around it. You know what I mean? And so I guess how that question.

• 17:05Shayle Kann?

  You're making the case, right? Like, the fact that we're not solving that. I mean, you could make a case that we will solve it, but if we don't solve it.

• 17:12Shayle Kann?

  Then what happens?

• 17:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I mean, this, this, that's an interesting, even broader question like, what could it, I could, I could imagine a story where our sort of social and political dysfunction, our inability to build quickly forces these weird around the edges solutions that end up like growing and developing in ways that we can't anticipate now, like bringing new things into the world. You know what I mean? Like it will, it will spawn invention and innovation, I think, even though like if you had your druthers, you would not choose this situation, but I do think it will, it will, it will force some very creative thinking.

• 17:54Shayle Kann?

  Yeah, I mean, I think to me, it really comes down to this question of is it, is it really true that for an extended period of time into the future, we're going to have dramatically more demand for data center capacity than we have ability to serve it on the grid. With money attached to that demand that is willing to take some risks that maybe hyperscalers wouldn't have taken in the past, for example. And if those things are true, then it is kind of inevitable to me that some amount of it, and I don't know how much, is gonna, is gonna take the one risk that is introduced by not being on the grid, which is largely reliability, right? You, you don't, you know, you don't have

• 18:35Shayle Kann?

  as many nines of reliability unless you really overbuild a bunch of onsite stuff. But what you get in exchange is you get unleashed from a citing perspective. I mean, imagine how easy it is to cite something if you remove the constraint to the transaction.

• 18:49Speaker 02

  But you are, I take it, imagining very large gas plants. A lot, a lot of them.

• 18:56Shayle Kann?

  I'm watching them get built right now.

• 18:58Speaker 02

  A lot of them. I would, you know, I don't, I have not accommodated myself to that yet. I, I don't want that to happen, you know?

• 19:05Shayle Kann?

  Oh, but that's happening, right?

• 19:07Speaker 02

  I know, I know.

• 19:08Shayle Kann?

  And by the way, it doesn't inherently have to be gas, right? Like, there's a good study that Paces and Scale Microgrids put out a while ago that was, that was, you know, what would it, can you actually run at high utilization a data center fully off-grid with, with mostly solar and storage?

• 19:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:26Shayle Kann?

  Generally do need a little bit of dispatchable generation. So you mix your things together and you end up with some gas. But like, you know,

• 19:34Speaker 02

  It's just a microgrid, right? It's the same question. It's the same question that faces any microgrid. Like, you, you, same question that faces any grid, really. Like, you can do X amount with variable, and you need some marginal amount of dispatchable to firm up. Like, it's gonna be the same in miniature.

• 19:50Shayle Kann?

  Or batteries.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  Or more batteries. That's what, that's, like, that's what I want to see. Like, that's what I think could straightforwardly, more straightforwardly substitute for, for natural gas is more in batteries. But they're like, as, as you know, because like, half of your shows and my shows are about this now. But like, this question, the way you ask it, is also tied up intimately with a bunch of other super fascinating questions like, are data centers going to continue evolving in the direction of gigantism? Or is there a serious prospect for distributed, more distributed, more modular, more grid edge data centers? That's a super interesting question. Then there's the sort of the bigger

• 20:33Speaker 02

  question of like, will there be radical efficiencies in chip design that mean we don't need the sheer quantity, we think now? Or will the bubble pop or something? You know what I mean? Like, the question of how many data centers there will be is, is everybody, lots of people want to know the answer to that question. Not just, not just the power people and the grid people, but, uh, but, but so how do you think about, and this is something I, and then we can move on to the next one. This is something I try to think about how I talk about, like, I, what I want to say, or here's another note I would put. Before they take the extraordinary step of trying to build their own, I mean, if you've got a gigawatt,

• 21:18Speaker 02

  Gigawatt data center and you're trying to go off grid. You're basically building like a pretty large grid. Like you're building like a city's worth of like electrical infrastructure. It's a pretty extreme step. I would like to see them because they can't get nuclear plants quickly or coal plants quickly or natural gas plants quickly. I would like to see them get serious about exploiting distributed capacity. I think that's faster and cheaper than onsite generation. If we can get the, the, the financial and institutional arrangements lined up the right way.

• 21:56Shayle Kann?

  I think you, I think this is all, the whole scenario here is all a yes and like the presumpt- the presumption is there will be enough demand. We're going to tap out every available possibility. We're going to do gets and we're going to get more on existing lines. We're going to do some distributed capacity aggregation, which is all these things are starting to happen. I think they're going to continue to happen. And yet in the absence of building out like a entirely new transmission system on top of our existing transmission system, we're going to hit a ceiling basically, or at least we're going to hit a ceiling from a timing perspective.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I guess the fact that all these forecasts are saying we're going to build more data centers than we could conceivably power like is just good evidence that it's not, not going to happen. Like I'm, I'm just very skeptical. Like what, I guess I, I would just ask you the central question. What do you think? Like, do you, do you think demand is going to get even close to the sort of higher end projections or are you kind of a deflationist on this?

• 22:58Shayle Kann?

  I don't think I am smart enough to know the answer to that question. I don't think anybody really knows the answer to that question. I do think that it's, there is pretty universal agreement amongst people who are building these models that we're going to need, to your point on sort of the like, will it shift to the edge? Yes, inference might, and that's like an open question. There is going to be for some period of time in the future, demand for more and more and more powerful models. Those require the centralized, big, big ass data centers. We are already starting to have a harder time to find sites on the grid to power those and in the time period that people want.

• 23:40Shayle Kann?

  And so I think there's going to be some period of time where we are bursting at the seams from an electricity perspective. I don't know how long it lasts, right? And I don't know whether it gets to the point where like Elon wants to put 100 gigawatts a year of orbital data centers in space.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  Do you think there, do you think there are going to be space-based data centers? You did a, you did a pod on it, didn't you? You, you.

• 24:02Shayle Kann?

  We've talked about it a bunch. I'm doing more on it. I've, I've spent a lot of time now, like, understanding the economics. It, it's sort of, to me, um, the answer to that question is the answer to the question you asked me because, uh, I think that orbital data, I mean, Elon says he thinks that they will be the cheapest way to get new compute in like three to five years. I do not think that is possible, not in that time.

• 24:26Speaker 02

  He says a lot of things.

• 24:27Shayle Kann?

  Yeah, but, um, but if you do think that there is going to be this insatiable appetite and we're going to need to scale to hundreds of gigawatts a year and we are not going to have the ability to do that on the grid, then I think the interesting question is, um, your options are kind of off-grid or off-world.

• 24:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:45Shayle Kann?

  And, and then it's a different comparison and, you know, it's interesting to think about. We should get off of the data center thing.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. The, the final thing I would say about it, and this is the note I wanted to say earlier. It's just, it's when I talk to people who are, as you know, there's a very loud constituency to the left that hates data centers, hates AI, hates the whole discussion. All I would say as a final note is even if you think that data, short-term data center demand is, is radically overstated and that these data centers are not gonna, you're not going to end up with many as, as currently forecast. It is nonetheless the case that we're electrifying transportation and we're electrifying heat and cooling and we're electrifying industry and we're just gonna need lots, lots, lots

• 25:33Speaker 02

  more electricity and a much stronger, better grid in the future, regardless of what happens with data centers. So I just think like that should be, I don't want those two questions. To start to be conflated in people's minds, basically.

• 25:48Shayle Kann?

  Actually, I, okay, put a pin in that when we get back to my next question.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  Okay, this is another one that I sort of brought because I don't think tech people are thinking about it enough or taking it seriously. So.

• 26:02Shayle Kann?

  I love that I represent tech people.

• 26:04Speaker 02

  I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I've drafted you into this unenviable spokesperson job. So here's, here's my thought. Basically, you and I know that the way, the long-term evolution is that basically everything that is plugged in is gonna become a resource eventually. Like the notion of DERs as a kind of distinct category, I think is just gonna kind of fade away because eventually like everything that plugs in is going to be managed by software that is in communication with larger grids. Basically, that's just gonna become kind of the default on some time horizon.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  We can talk about how fast we think that's gonna happen, but it's gonna happen. Basically, so to me, what that means is that a lot of things that we have held as distinct from software are going to become software, like driving and cars and living and homes. And on the one hand, I think that's immense. I think there's immense potential there as I've done a kajillion podcasts on. I think it's gonna be extraordinary, gonna have a much more stronger grid. We're gonna make each electron go further.

• 27:25Speaker 02

  We're gonna utilize our grid better. We're gonna like, everything's gonna, we're gonna have a more small D democratic grid, et cetera, et cetera. On the, for the most part, I love this trend and I'm very hopeful for it, the internetification of, of, of the, of the grid. But capital B, but when I think about software as it exists today,

• 27:51Speaker 02

  it's awful. You know, the situation is awful, I think. And I'm, you know, and I'm not far from the only person saying this. Like it feels these days like tech, the tech sector, which is basically we think of as the software sector in, in, in public is.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  Kinda exploitative, out of touch, you know, like, kind of getting increasingly deranged, talking about their bunkers on their islands, talking about the Antichrists, like, all fucked up on ketamine, just off in La La Land. Basically, software feels exploitative these days, almost everywhere you encounter it, in shitification. You know, I did a whole pod on in shitification. Basically, platforms enter what seems like this inexorable cycle where they in shitify. And so this trend

• 28:51Speaker 02

  of of your house and your car becoming software, I don't see enough people raising red flags saying, do we want intrusive, ad-based, ad-supported, subscription nagging, different tiers, you know, real-time variable pricing, all these sort of exploitative things that we're running into? Do we want that in our cars and in our homes? Are we going to end up with in shitified homes? You know, is the promise basically of coordinated distributed energy going to manifest in reality

• 29:32Speaker 02

  like just another chapter of sort of chintzy exploitative and shitified software that ends up exploiting the people who get stuck with it? I worry about that. And I don't hear any, hardly anybody else worrying about that. Do you worry about that?

• 29:46Shayle Kann?

  Do you have a Nest thermostat?

• 29:49Speaker 02

  I do not. My house is so analog and primitive, my current house.

• 29:55Shayle Kann?

  I guess I don't see, so if I think of like, what are the things in the home that tie to electricity that have been softwareified?

• 30:03Shayle Kann?

  Thermostats are the obvious one to me via Nest and Eco B and other companies like that. You know, people who have EVs have an EV charger and then they have a software platform that goes on top of that. So their EV owners, I have a, I drive an EV9. I'm sure you're an EV driver.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  Oh, a Kia? The big one? The big one? Is it nice?

• 30:23Shayle Kann?

  The big one.

• 30:23Speaker 02

  Is it super nice?

• 30:24Shayle Kann?

  It's the best. Yeah. So there's, there's the vehicle, there's the thermostat. I mean, if you want to go newer, newer age, I am an owner of a quilt, which is a

• 30:37Speaker 02

  Oh, you got one of those.

• 30:37Shayle Kann?

  version of a heat pump. We're, we're EIPs and investors. So I was actually customer number seven of quilt.

• 30:43Speaker 02

  Do you have one of the newer? Because didn't they just sort of like refresh the look of their, of their, of their wall units? I feel like, am I making that up?

• 30:50Shayle Kann?

  Super cool looking. But it, but it is what you're saying, right? It's like softwarefication. It's got an app. It's much more controllable. I mean, my personal experience with all those things is that they're better. And I don't know that anybody, I've heard anybody saying like, oh, Nest and shitified the thermostat.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  Well.

• 31:09Shayle Kann?

  Or the Tesla app and shitifies my

• 31:11Speaker 02

  If you're

• 31:12Shayle Kann?

  EV charging or my charging experience.

• 31:13Speaker 02

  If you're familiar with Corey's work, you know, that always stage one on the platforms is that they're good to users and that they offer genuine value to users. That is step one of this process is you attract the users with genuine value and then over time work to make leaving the platform difficult. And then when people are locked in, that's when you start exploiting them. And like, I will, I will happily agree that all of this is so nascent and new and, and barely there that we're just on the front end of this. So a lot of this is speculative, but like,

• 31:56Speaker 02

  It sure seems like that is the direction everything travels. And, and like one way I think about this, and this is probably something you've heard me talk about before. Like, one thing that I'm just waiting for is if, if, if the self-driving cars become ubiquitous, what is to stop them from offering a free tier? That is ad-supported, which everybody then chooses because nobody wants to pay upfront. And then that's one more little area of our lives where we are constantly beset with customized advertising. Like, that's one way.

• 32:33Shayle Kann?

  Well, this is where, yeah, maybe I'm gonna, okay, I'm gonna own, I'm gonna own my, my tech bro-iness. I, if I decide to choose to take, to get free rides around in my future Waymo, or whatever it is, in exchange for being served ads, that's a trade I make deliberately and happily. Right? And I get free rides and that's worth it to me. I don't, I don't see that as being inherently a bad thing. I mean, I think they, the, there are challenges, obviously, to the ad ecosystem.

• 33:04Speaker 02

  But, but you, you, you recognize in shitification as a thing that happens on other platforms? Or are you skeptical more broadly about Corey's work?

• 33:13Shayle Kann?

  I don't know Corey's work, so, uh, let me preface with that. But I would say, I think I see what you're talking about, and I think I can come up with examples of it. I don't know that I see it as like the inexorable direction of travel when things become software-y, particularly as it pertains to me.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  It's less software-y than platform-y. It's the platforms. So this is like, this is why I want, if you're on like, if your water heater is signed up to some VPP and your thermostat is signed up to another one, they're both on different platforms, I want interoperability. And I want the ability to move from one platform to the other without penalty, basically. I don't want lock-in. Like, that's what leads to platform and shitification is lock-in. And I think we could.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  I think we could avoid a lot of that upfront if we just went in with some clear privacy laws and some clear rules and regulations about interoperability and transparency.

• 34:15Shayle Kann?

  I guess I don't disagree with that. I think that's a pretty innocuous statement to make. To me, I guess, at the high level, the things that I actually think about that are in our homes, I'll just focus on the home for now, that are hopefully going to be transformed such that, as you said, eventually all of them are software-enabled, interact with the grid, enable them to be responsive to the needs of the grid, but also have more capabilities for the customer. Like, when I think about them one by one and what I think the future of those things are going to be, I generally think it will be better. And certainly, the ones that I can think of today that have already started to be that way feel better to me. I can see how it could go off the rails. Like, I've watched Idiocracy, but as where we stand today, I don't see evidence of that.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess, yeah, I guess it's early enough now that I don't have a lot of concrete examples to hang this on. So mostly, it is just a generalized fear. But I look at the exploitation and the crappiness around us in every other area, and I just don't want that coming into my home and hearth.

• 35:29Speaker 00

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• 37:38Shayle Kann?

  Okay, can I come back to the last statement you made, the last question to ask my next question? Yes, segue me. You said you didn't want to see, you wanted to be careful to separate out the, "we need to improve the grid because we're going to be electrifying all these other loads" from the, like, you know, "some people just don't like data centers" thing. And I sort of agree with that generally. But here's my question that I, here's my concerning question, I will say, that I think we may or may not have fully answered in the next five to 10 years, but we will know the direction of travel, which is, is electrification dead?

• 38:21Shayle Kann?

  Or will electrification be dead as a pathway for industrial emissions reduction?

• 38:30Shayle Kann?

  So just to walk through the logic here.

• 38:33Speaker 02

  Will it be dead? When? For what reason?

• 38:37Shayle Kann?

  Well, for what? When? I mean, will it? Will it appear dead over the next five to 10 years? And for what reason is because you have two things happening in my mind right now that are pushing against it.

• 38:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:49Shayle Kann?

  By the way, for a long time, I've always said like to a first order, the simplest way to solve climate change is

• 38:56Shayle Kann?

  clean up electricity, electrify everything that you possibly can, and then go like fill in all the pieces of the stuff that you just can't possibly electrify. So that implies electrifying a big portion of heavy industry, for example.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 39:06Shayle Kann?

  Okay. If you are trying to electrify something in heavy industry right now, you're trying to build, or even not, not something that hasn't been electrified, but is already electrified. Take an aluminum smelter. Right? You just want to build new aluminum smelter, uses hundreds of megawatts of electricity. You can't find a site because every site is being taken up by a data center and your prices are higher and you're super sensitive to electricity prices.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  Oh, I see where you're going with this.

• 39:31Shayle Kann?

  So if you, so the, the premise of industrial electrification is you get cheaper, you know, operating costs because it is electrified. You're going to get probably higher capital costs. This is the trade with everything that you electrify and then you save money over time because it's so much more efficient. And that, that is a function of the spark spread. It's the difference between the price of electricity and the price of natural gas.

• 39:53Speaker 02

  And I also think less waste and less regulatory compliance and.

• 39:58Shayle Kann?

  Yeah, yeah, sure. Easier to permit. But, but in a world where you have a really, really hard time citing, because there are not that many places to put 100 megawatt, multi 100 megawatt loads, and where there is inflationary price pressure on electricity, which there certainly is today, that value proposition is eroded. And so I wonder what happens.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, more broadly.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  Both of us wanting to electrify everything, I think naturally leads to both of us being daunted at the fact that electricity prices are high and rising. Those are very obviously at odds on every level, industry particularly, but also residential, also transportation, also everything else, which gets us, of course, to the, the question of the day, the political question of the day, of the decade, really, which is how you bring down electricity prices while continuing to rapidly and aggressively electrify. Yeah. And another question I had

• 41:06Speaker 02

  about industry that I almost brought, I'll just throw in here. One, one is, does it in fact start electrifying in this circumstance where electricity is expensive and data centers are bullying them out of the way and grabbing all the, and grabbing all the electricity? Yeah, yeah. And then another, another question is that I have that I didn't bring today because it's definitely like a 20 year plus question is, when we say electrify everything, do we mean industry too? And by that, I mean, how much faith do we have in electrochemistry to replace? Like, right now, you can make steel with zero emissions electrochemically.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  It's just wildly expensive. Same thing with, you know, the concrete or concrete you can do, same thing. Like electrochemically, you can do it with zero emissions. It's just much more expensive. So is electrochemistry, is electrochemistry going to come along enough, fast enough, that we could really electrify everything, everything? The reason I didn't bring that question along is it's definitely like a 20 plus year question. But, but I think...

• 42:21Speaker 02

  Hope, think slash hope, let's call it a 50 50 split that in the long, long term, I really think we're going to electrify everything. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm an absolutist. I don't think, I think, once you've built a single unified system that is providing power to 98% of stuff, whatever that 2% is.

• 42:41Shayle Kann?

  It's the same question.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  The benefits of just being able to hook into that system are so immense that it's just going to overcome whatever, whatever barriers they are.

• 42:52Shayle Kann?

  I mean, I think I agree with you in the long term. I mean, right now, we're at 25% in the US, right? Like 25% of final energy consumption is electricity. 75% is not worth remembering that. But yeah.

• 43:05Speaker 02

  It's a long way to go.

• 43:05Shayle Kann?

  Yeah, it's a long way to go. And for a long time, I think people who were seeking to electrify, particularly industry, sort of rested on this belief that the marginal price of electricity was, was plummeting toward zero, right?

• 43:22Speaker 02

  Yes. Electrical chemistry in particular, very much depends on copious, cheap.

• 43:28Shayle Kann?

  Yeah.

• 43:29Speaker 02

  Electricity.

• 43:29Shayle Kann?

  And, and that is not the world we're living in right now. It's probably not the world we're going to live in for the next few years. Now, it may, it may turn back, right? This could be cyclical and five years from now, it'll turn back. But like, the current state of affairs is electricity prices are going up, not down.

• 43:44Speaker 02

  I mean, one thing that might be answered in the next 10 years is, everybody's freaked out about electricity prices now, right? The entire Democratic Party is seized with, seized with this.

• 43:54Shayle Kann?

  Right.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  So will we, will we actually be able to pass policies that reduce the prices, price of electricity in an enduring way? Like, you know, reform utilities and like infrastructural.

• 44:07Shayle Kann?

  Permitting reform, build more transmission.

• 44:08Speaker 02

  Permitting reform, stuff like that. Like, will we be able to actually?

• 44:13Speaker 02

  Will we be able to do that? That's an open question.

• 44:16Shayle Kann?

  Yes, I don't know. And maybe, right? And so I think five to 10 years is an interesting timeframe under which to think about this question. But but I could tell you, I think over the next three years, you know, electricity prices are probably going up, not down.

• 44:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:28Shayle Kann?

  And that's going to just make that value proposition.

• 44:30Speaker 02

  And that's and that's bad. So I think everybody in our world really needs to uprate the question of making electricity cheaper. It really is kind of a pivot on which everything else turns. And that alone could screw us, could screw everything else if we can't if we can't deal with that.

• 44:48Shayle Kann?

  I agree with you. But to your to your point, I think actually, a glimmer of hope here is that there is alignment. Everybody, everybody, the word affordability is going to be the key word.

• 44:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:58Shayle Kann?

  Many, many, many circles for the next couple of years. It has become, as you said, a political hot button thing. It's the word of the day amongst utilities, amongst data center companies, and amongst everybody else. Like affordability is the thing. So there will be big folks.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  And we and we are in the lucky position that the kinds of energy we favor are the cheap ones. So like, you know, like you can you can take climate out of the take climate out of the picture. There's still going to be a lot of moneyed interests pushing for lots more clean energy and batteries for reasons having nothing to do with the environment. Okay, so I'm on my third one, yes?

• 45:35Shayle Kann?

  I think so.

• 45:36Speaker 02

  Okay, my third and final one. This is something I've been thinking about. So here's how I'd phrase it. Is JB Struble going to turn out to be as or more significant to the long term fortunes of clean energy than Elon Musk? By which I mean, you know, JB Strubbles set up this big recycling company, this big battery recycling company, set it up, Redwood, set it up, arguably before there were many batteries.

• 46:09Shayle Kann?

  Batteries.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  So they had, they were like, you know, they were like, scrabbling to like, collect, you know, old vacuum cleaner batteries and double A's and stuff just to keep going along enough for the batteries to show up. But now I think we're just on the cusp of.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  The first kind of wave of of used up batteries coming in. And the reason I raise all this is that, you know, there's the whole, there's this whole question about critical minerals, about materials, and about who dominates supply chains. As you know, everybody in the world is freaked out because China dominates all the supply chains. They mine all the critical minerals, do all the processing, et cetera. And so we're very dependent on them. And so there's been a lot of talk about how the US can sort of stand up a supply chain of its own. And so there's been lots of talk about mining and stuff like that in the US, although not a ton of action.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  But I think we should start viewing electronics themselves, clean tech itself, as like a source to mine. Do you know what I mean? Like, if if we can capture those materials and reuse them effectively infinitely, then when you buy a solar panel from China, it is as though you you are both buying a solar panel and mining a certain quantity of materials that will be available after the solar panel is dead. Do you know what I mean? So like, recycling is a source of critical minerals, basically.

• 47:52Speaker 02

  Like, it is a strategic source of critical minerals. And I think, once you, you know, if you take the sort of growth numbers of EVs and solar panels and all the rest of it seriously, it's going to be a very large source of minerals, a large source of raw minerals and raw materials, which means, all of which just means that I think that recycling is going to go from a sort of like environmental, nice to have, which is what, which is kind of how I think people are thinking about it now, to something like a national security, energy security imperative. In other words, like, if you get your hands on some of these materials, it is absolutely

• 48:37Speaker 02

  in your interest to make sure that you keep recycling those materials through your economy forever, basically. I just think, so I think recycling in the next five to 10 years is going to, A, take off, and B, just become much, much more...

• 48:56Speaker 02

  I think viewed as much, much more strategically important. Wonder whether you think so. Wonder whether you agree.

• 49:05Shayle Kann?

  I do agree generally. I mean, and I think it's not just EV batteries either, right? So there's so Redwood is recycling EV batteries and a bunch of other old batteries and getting out of it, the lithium, nickel, cobalt, stuff like that. We invested in a company called Cyclic Materials that's doing recycling for rare earth elements. Um, rare earth elements are like the least recycled critical mineral, which is crazy.

• 49:27Speaker 02

  Out of coal piles?

• 49:28Shayle Kann?

  Uh, no.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  Or is that a different company?

• 49:30Shayle Kann?

  No, no, no, not tailings or coal piles or anything like that. This is out of.

• 49:33Speaker 02

  I saw a different company doing that.

• 49:35Shayle Kann?

  Motors and magnets and, and stuff like that. Um, there are companies that are now doing solar panel recycling. Yeah. I mean, I, I think that, um, where I agree with you is I'm like a recycling maximalist. We should recycle all this stuff. It has high value at end of life and we should take advantage of that value. And that should mitigate the amount of, of new virgin mined stuff that we need in any category where we possibly can, particularly in those where there is a geopolitical reason that we want to have our own sovereign supply. The only thing I would push back against, I guess, is just that the challenge, let's just take battery recycling. If you believe that we are on a steep upward trajectory of demand for new batteries,

• 50:20Shayle Kann?

  then you're forever going to be in a position where the amount of supply that you have to recycle is the amount of, of demand that there was 10 years ago. And so you're.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  Well, not, not forever.

• 50:32Shayle Kann?

  Well, until, right.

• 50:32Speaker 02

  Well, not literally forever, but until you hit the top of the S.

• 50:35Shayle Kann?

  That's what I mean. That's right. So, so unless you think we're already at the top of the S curve, um, which I don't think either of us do think, then it will matter some, but it is not a solution to our sovereign mineral supply problems.

• 50:51Speaker 02

  I would just say that my, I guess my prediction would be that in 10 years, maybe in, or in 20, that just a unit of critical minerals.

• 51:03Speaker 02

  Drawn from recycling will be cheaper than a unit mined, I think, I think eventually. Like, I think it will end up being our primary and cheapest source of those. Like, we're never, I don't think we're ever gonna, I mean, maybe you, maybe you disagree, but I don't think we're ever really going to be in a position where we're fully like autarky, where we fully have a, a, a, a contained and complete supply chain. I think mostly this is just about having a little bit of a buffer. But like, I just think people need to start rethinking, thinking of recycling like they think of mining, basically, like as a source of, as a, a large and probably the cheapest source of those materials.

• 51:46Shayle Kann?

  Yes, I agree, I agree with that. And I think to, to the point on it should be cheaper. I mean, I'll give you a specific example in the rare earth context, right? Which is that there are actually 16 rare earth elements that are grouped together. We really only use four of them, actually. Like, we only care about four of them out of the 16. If you're doing mining, virgin mining, you get this like basket of all of them and you have to do this complicated separations process to get the stuff you want. If you're doing recycling, you're only getting the stuff we were using in the first place already. So you've already cut out a bunch of expensive separation steps in the value chain there. So there's a bunch of reasons why, like fundamentally, I think it should be cheaper.

• 52:22Speaker 02

  And I, and again, I think it'll be such an economic, such an economic push on that, that again, there'll be tons of innovation and we'll get something closer to an actual closed loop. We'll be moving, because this is like, to me, this is like,

• 52:39Speaker 02

  like 50% of the, of, of future sustainability. You know, we, we focus so much on the energy part, but also the closed physical loop, the, the reducing physical waste and physical throughput, I think, is like the other half of the. The other half of the equation, and this is, you know, so like creating something like a closed loop of minerals where you're because the one thing that offsets that dynamic that you very accurately lay out, right? Like the demand is going up faster. So sort of by definition, your recycling is behind your new demand. One force does slightly offset that, which is the lithium you get out of the old batteries will go farther in the new batteries than it went in the old

• 53:22Speaker 02

  batteries, just because batteries are always constantly improving. So you will actually get more you, I don't think you'll catch up to demand, but you'll get more, let's say than, you know, it's not, it's not a fungible.

• 53:37Shayle Kann?

  Yeah. Yeah, right. I think, I think the place you want to end up in all these other critical minerals is kind of where we are, maybe a little better than where we are today in, in more mature supply chains where like aluminum, copper, which do recycle a lot of that stuff.

• 53:52Shayle Kann?

  That doesn't mean we don't still need a lot more. So it doesn't solve your problem, but it's meaningful. All right. Can I do the last one? I think this is the last one.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  Last one.

• 54:01Shayle Kann?

  Question to answer in the next five to 10 years, maybe not next five to 10 years, to be honest, like maybe it's a question that gets answered in, in 20 years, but nonetheless, I'm curious. Will we see a meaningful scaled geoengineering demo?

• 54:15Speaker 02

  I thought you were gonna say, I was thought for sure you were gonna go geothermal.

• 54:17Shayle Kann?

  Geothermal. Oh, that better get answered in the next five to 10 years.

• 54:20Speaker 02

  I know. That's, that's, that one, I think will be, I think in 10 years, we'll know whether geothermal is.

• 54:29Shayle Kann?

  Is big.

• 54:30Speaker 02

  Going to pay off the promise? Do you think in 10 years we'll know?

• 54:33Shayle Kann?

  We'll know, we'll know. Yeah. I mean, at least like traditional is for sure traditional hydrothermal, probably EGS. Who knows about, you know, super hot rock. Anyway, I'm not asking about geothermal, I'm asking about geoengineering. Will we see somebody go do like a big solar radiation management experiment?

• 54:50Speaker 02

  I have a, I have a solar radiation expert coming on the pod in a couple of weeks to talk about just this. I'm so torn on this question. Like you know, there, there are like a bunch of cowboy. Jerkoffs Silicon Valley doing this already like they're doing little. I mean, I don't know what counts.

• 55:13Shayle Kann?

  It's really one set. I just want to defend my apparently my people in Silicon Valley. I would not say that the group.

• 55:20Speaker 02

  Answer for them.

• 55:21Shayle Kann?

  The group you are referring to is not of Silicon Valley. They are not, uh, they're not.

• 55:26Speaker 02

  And that's just like one balloon at a time or whatever. I'm not super clear what they're what they're doing. So I guess I don't know if that counts as a test at scale. Like, uh, I do wonder, I'm so torn about this and I'm so curious what your thoughts are on the moral hazard side of things. Cause like, you know, like depending on what side of the bed I wake up, I could take different sides of this argument. Like on the one side, and this I suspect is, is your side and a lot of people's side, which is just, this is pretty cheap. Somebody's going to do it. You know, climate change is going to get so bad. Somebody's going to do it. So we might as well do it in a conscious, planned, controlled way. The other side is just,

• 56:14Speaker 02

  you know, in a sense, the whole field is protected by being kind of obscure and not a lot of people know about it. Like what happens if you start doing high profile, tests and experiments and make this a real thing. Suddenly then everybody around the world is going to be told, hey, you could like, you know, with like a hundred and 50 bucks, you could go fiddle with the climate and then you're like, got a whole Pandora's box thing going because you really, this is the scary thing about solar radiation management. You could stand up and do a reasonably large scale test on your own,

• 56:53Speaker 02

  without a ton of money, arguably without being detected doing so by the world. You know what I mean? And the fact that no one's doing that. Yeah. It's, I just think they don't know they can yet. So like, I kind of don't want them to find out. Like, what do you think about the, what do you think about that aspect of the moral hazard part of it?

• 57:12Shayle Kann?

  It's so tricky, right? I mean, to, to, to fear monger you a little bit more. I'm going to use, I'm going to use a dirty word to you, I suspect, which is that a billionaire could probably get us half a degree C of cooling globally, personally.

• 57:28Shayle Kann?

  Like, that's the crazy thing about SRM is that the estimates, like, we don't really know. We don't exactly know Africa C, blah, blah, blah. But the, but the rough estimates, just to an order of magnitude, are that, at least what I've seen, it might cost a couple billion dollars to, to deliver something like a half a degree of cooling, half a degree centigrade of cooling.

• 57:50Speaker 02

  Yes, but as you know, I'm sure, if you follow the literature, is the, the, the, the cloud of uncertainties around all of this, like, unanticipated

• 58:00Shayle Kann?

  Hundred percent.

• 58:01Speaker 02

  Second order effects that like, like, things could go so horribly wrong. And that is, I mean, that is precisely, precisely the kind of question I don't want random individual billionaires answering, you know what I mean?

• 58:19Shayle Kann?

  I totally agree.

• 58:20Speaker 02

  Like, this is, like, this is, to me, argues for really wrapping our heads around it and doing it explicitly, just because somebody needs to wrap their hands around it and start controlling it.

• 58:29Shayle Kann?

  It's the kind of thing where, like, you want the equivalent of the International Atomic Energy Agency, like, you want, you want, like, the UN to take charge of this and say, "Look, for the sake of the world, we need to explore this, but it should only be done in a coordinated fashion," or something.

• 58:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, but think about the difficulty that nuclear arms, like, you know, regimes have had ferreting out and finding out whether a country is actually doing a nuclear program. And a nuclear program is big and expensive and requires very specialized knowledge. It's very difficult to do that without being noticed, and people are pulling that off. Like, I can't imagine an international enforcement regime that could, that could, that could enforce this. Like, it's so easy to do, like, and then if, like, a billionaire does it and another billionaire doesn't like the way the billionaire does it and decides to undo it or do it a different way or redo it, you know what I mean?

• 59:31Speaker 02

  Like, do we want billionaires getting the idea that they should be involved in this field?

• 59:36Shayle Kann?

  I, I'm, well, yeah, I knew I was gonna, I was gonna trigger you with billionaires, but I, but I, I don't know, like, I think we have to, the problem is, I think the solution is not to put our heads in the sand, because the, the more we collectively put our heads in the sand about it, the more likely it is that that's the way it gets developed, ultimately.

• 59:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it's, yeah, I mean, I guess trying to do it on purpose and with eyes wide open is the best, is the best we can do, but boy, am I nervous about, about how that plays out. I guess there's no, I mean, you can't not do it. You can't put a lid back on it. You can't unknow what we know about it now. So like, I guess the only way out is through. But anyway, so we have three minutes left. You want to toss out one of your spares just to, just to intrigue the audience, just titillate an audience with a, with a question we didn't get to?

• 1:00:30Shayle Kann?

  My spares weren't great, actually. I want to hear what yours were.

• 1:00:32Speaker 02

  Oh, I had some really good spares.

• 1:00:33Shayle Kann?

  Yeah, you hit me with some spares.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  Well, one of my spares, I was surprised you didn't bring up, I almost brought up, which is what's going to happen with permissionless DER?

• 1:00:45Shayle Kann?

  Oh, I just did an episode on this.

• 1:00:46Speaker 02

  I know. I listened to it. I listened to it and, and, and I, you know, I did, I did one on the, on balcony solar not long before that. So people know this as balcony solar. Basically, it's any distributed, you know, generation or, or, or battery that you can plug in without getting permission from a utility or from anybody, really. You can just plug in. So 20, last I heard, and this literally changes week to week, but last I heard, 25 states had laws either proposed or announced to be proposed to legalize balcony solar. In 20, that's, that's half the country right there. That's 25 states. That's probably

• 1:01:28Speaker 02

  pretty soon. And I'm sure many more will follow in the wake. And I just think this so like, I'm just fascinated by what effect it's going to have. I think you and I probably agree that the net megawatts produced by this stuff is probably not going to be, you know, it's not going to be huge. The question is like, will the ability to put your hands on it and fiddle with it and play with it in a DIY way, like Legos in your backyard, is that gonna spark a kind of subculture? Is that gonna spark?

• 1:02:10Speaker 02

  A lot more people to care and get involved and just be aware, just be aware of solar. I'm curious what you think the, how you think that's going to play out.

• 1:02:19Shayle Kann?

  Balcony solar punk. I don't know. I need to learn more about Germany. Like I haven't spent enough time understanding like what balcony solar is a huge thing there.

• 1:02:27Speaker 02

  It's a gigawatt. Yeah. Like a gigawatt. Uh, so I guess it's not that small of a, of an, of a net amount. They have like 400 million or something like, or 4 million. I shouldn't say 400 million. That's ridiculous. 4 million, something like that. Systems installed from like three years of it being legalized. So clearly like people like it.

• 1:02:47Shayle Kann?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:48Speaker 02

  So I'm just curious, like what the sort of distributed social effects will be of that. I know both of us will be translating. And my other backup, which I thought was good, but which you and I are probably not the people to discuss, but is China is an over, a state of overproduction of batteries and solar panels, which means they're selling solar panels to their neighbors at just ludicrously low prices, which means countries like Pakistan and Vietnam are just being flooded with cheap solar. Like Pakistan went like, I think it was like two years or three years, 40% of its total load now.

• 1:03:30Speaker 02

  It has imported solar panels equivalent to 40% of its total load. Give that another two, three years. So I'm very curious. So we're going to see what happens when a massive spontaneous upwelling of distributed solar energy meets rickety, developing world grids. How does that resolve itself? Like what happens when Pakistan has enough solar panels that like it's more than 100% of its total load. You're going to get all these problems that grids get with lots of solar, right? Like balance and

• 1:04:15Speaker 02

  frequency management and inertia and all this stuff. But it's all of this is be, is unplanned. Like the leaders of Pakistan did not arrange this. They didn't have anything to do with it. Same. It's happening in Africa. It's happening in Vietnam. So I'm just curious, like, what is the spontaneous unplanned profusion of solar at the ground level do?

• 1:04:39Speaker 02

  To a country's electricity system physically and also just politically. Like, that's just a very big change happening very rapidly. We have no idea yet what's gonna come out of it.

• 1:04:52Shayle Kann?

  Great question. Not one we have time to answer. Let's watch it.

• 1:04:57Speaker 02

  We'll leave you listeners to ponder what's gonna happen and be a

• 1:05:01Shayle Kann?

  There we go. David, this was fun. Thanks for doing it again.

• 1:05:04Speaker 02

  So fun. Awesome. We'll do it again next year.

• 1:05:08Shayle Kann?

  David Roberts writes the Volt's newsletter and hosts the Volt's podcast. This show is a production of Latitude Media. You can head over to latitudemedia.com for links to today's topics. Latitude is supported by Prelude Ventures. This episode was produced by Max Savage Levenson and Sean Marquand. Mixing and theme song by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor. I'm Shayle Khan and this is Catalyst.