The Exchanges

Q Well, but to, to, to just for a second on that, I guess what I'm saying is like, yeah, you could characterize the people who are doing gas stove bans as jackbooted liberal thugs, but like, why, why the gas stove ban in the first place? Why is that the fight to pick?

A Well, I think, It's about, I think you, you, you, you mentioned it in passing. It is, About whether to hook homes up with gas at all, right? Like, if you've, if you've got the electric car, you've got your, your solar panels and your heat pump, the only reason you're still hooked up to the gas system at all is the stove. So in a sense, it's like, it's like the, the, the mopping up remainder of, of home energy use, but it's the, but it's a, but it is a binary thing. You either can cut off your gas connection to your house or you can't. You know, this reflects sort of In some sense, an admirable kind of quantitative carbon brain, like we're going after the carbon. This is not where the carbon is. Why are we spending time on this? But I feel like the right, like they don't, they don't care that gas stoves are a relatively small part, part of gas use. They've, they've recognized that this is a cultural battle that resonates beyond energy people. And I feel like the energy world, climate and energy world is full of like Wonks, and technocrats, and quant, quants, you know, who, who are not as literate as they should be in the language of these cultural battles, and in, and lacks what I think ought to be, like, the desire to fight them, you know, like, we just run away from them, like, like, the, the right starts a huge fuss about Gaston's, and we run away and talk about something els…

AI assessment note: “It is, About whether to hook homes up with gas at all, right?”

Q Right. Okay, so we should move on, probably. Uh, okay, so my, that was my second underhyped thing, interest rates. What's your second underhyped thing?

A Uh, I went back and forth on this one, too, because I have hyped these in the past, and they are getting a little bit of, a little bit of hype in our world, but I think are totally unknown in the larger world, which are, uh, and, you know, to this point, I don't think they even have a standard terminology yet. Um, sometimes they're called geogrids. It's basically heating, district heating, using rather than one central source of heat They drill a series of boreholes, a series of small boreholes to take advantage of the high temperatures that exist, whatever, 50 feet down. And then you have a network of pipes that carries that warmed water to each house. Each house has a heat exchanger to pull the heat out. And basically, if you can build one of these things, you have what I think is Easily the cheapest and cleanest and most efficient way of heating and cooling buildings that exists in the world, as far as I can tell. And so there, there's, um, you know, I did a pod on this, uh, a year, two year and a half ago, they're building A test one in Massachusetts now. I think maybe some campus, I should have looked this up before we started, but some campus I think is building one. And to me, you know, I, I, as I said earlier, I, I've been thinking a lot about heat lately and this gets, this gets to that, but also, you know, district energies is difficult in the sense that it's much, mu…

AI assessment note: “sometimes they're called geogrids. It's basically heating, district heating”

Q Okay, so tell me why, why is this overhyped?

A I just think, well, two reasons. One concept I'm trying to bang on to the point that I can push it out to wider circles, uh, uh, beyond our circles is simply Yes, we have variable renewable energy that is going to be the heart of our grid. Yes, that means we need balancing. And I just want people to see nuclear, not as some sort of special, unique kind of power, but simply one of the options on the table for balancing, uh, longer term Renewable energy. One among others, there are other options. There's, there's geothermal, there's longer term storage, there's e-fuels, whatever, and there are, I think, lots and lots, there's lots and lots of action and development and innovation in this space, in the longer term, um, firm power space. So one, I just want people to reframe nuclear as energy. Not the option, but an option for balancing out renewable energy, because I think a lot of people have it in their heads that like renewable energy is just useless because you have to back it up 100%. So why not just go straight to nuclear, which is more familiar? You know, I think I want to break people of that. And two, you know, more on the details, it's just that we haven't really seen a lot of nuclear plants get built that are actually small or actually small. Modular, right? Like, I, I think that the whole notion of Shrinking the overall size of the project and then shrinking the sub pa…

AI assessment note: “I just think, well, two reasons.”

Q Well, but to, to, to just for a second on that, I guess what I'm saying is like, yeah, you could characterize the people who are doing gas stove bans as jackbooted liberal thugs, but like, why, why the gas stove ban in the first place? Why is that the fight to pick?

A Well, I think, It's about, I think you, you, you, you mentioned it in passing. It is, About whether to hook homes up with gas at all, right? Like, if you've, if you've got the electric car, you've got your, your solar panels and your heat pump, the only reason you're still hooked up to the gas system at all is the stove. So in a sense, it's like, it's like the, the, the mopping up remainder of, of home energy use, but it's the, but it's a, but it is a binary thing. You either can cut off your gas connection to your house or you can't. You know, this reflects sort of In some sense, an admirable kind of quantitative carbon brain, like we're going after the carbon. This is not where the carbon is. Why are we spending time on this? But I feel like the right, like they don't, they don't care that gas stoves are a relatively small part, part of gas use. They've, they've recognized that this is a cultural battle that resonates beyond energy people. And I feel like the energy world, climate and energy world is full of like Wonks, and technocrats, and quant, quants, you know, who, who are not as literate as they should be in the language of these cultural battles, and in, and lacks what I think ought to be, like, the desire to fight them, you know, like, we just run away from them, like, like, the, the right starts a huge fuss about Gaston's, and we run away and talk about something els…

AI assessment note: “It is, About whether to hook homes up with gas at all, right?”

Q tall order if it's not a greenfield development. And so that's what I've always struggled with is like, how do you like awesome and maybe some campuses and things like that could pull it off. But if you want this to really scale, Is it realistic to imagine that's going to happen anywhere other than new developments, and then these, these campuses that sort of control the entire district themselves?

A Yeah, this is why I was a little iffy on including this, because I have, like, I'm charmed by it, and I love it, and I have high hopes for it, but it does require It's one of those things, like you, you mentioned one, I think, signal feature of technologies, but another thing I think that you find in common a lot across a lot of these technologies is they're, they're cheaper, they work better if you plan up front. They require a lot of planning and coordination, often across jurisdictional lines, across entities, across different kinds of entities owned by different people. They just require a lot of planning and coordination, and we're not Great at that. Like, like, I think these could be put, I think you could retrofit neighborhoods to put these in, and I think on some time horizon, probably relatively quickly as these things go, it would pay itself back, but you gotta just get all those ducks in a row, all those entities lined up, all those, you know, different layers of government and different, all the households, and yeah, so I agree, it's, uh, It's a steep climb. I guess it's going to come down to sort of how severe the need for clean heat, uh, gets and how, and how cheap heat pumps get, et cetera, et cetera. Like what are the, what are the other options in this space? But I, but I love them, so I like to hype them whenever I can.

AI assessment note: “I think you could retrofit neighborhoods to put these in... it's a steep climb.”

Q Okay, so tell me why, why is this overhyped?

A I just think, well, two reasons. One concept I'm trying to bang on to the point that I can push it out to wider circles, uh, uh, beyond our circles is simply Yes, we have variable renewable energy that is going to be the heart of our grid. Yes, that means we need balancing. And I just want people to see nuclear, not as some sort of special, unique kind of power, but simply one of the options on the table for balancing, uh, longer term Renewable energy. One among others, there are other options. There's, there's geothermal, there's longer term storage, there's e-fuels, whatever, and there are, I think, lots and lots, there's lots and lots of action and development and innovation in this space, in the longer term, um, firm power space. So one, I just want people to reframe nuclear as energy. Not the option, but an option for balancing out renewable energy, because I think a lot of people have it in their heads that like renewable energy is just useless because you have to back it up 100%. So why not just go straight to nuclear, which is more familiar? You know, I think I want to break people of that. And two, you know, more on the details, it's just that we haven't really seen a lot of nuclear plants get built that are actually small or actually small. Modular, right? Like, I, I think that the whole notion of Shrinking the overall size of the project and then shrinking the sub pa…

AI assessment note: “I just think, well, two reasons. One concept I'm trying to bang on”

Q climate person circles, and then they're hyped in a corner of tech world. Like, there's a bunch of VCs who really hype the shit out of them, but, but, you know, I don't think normies, so to speak, with, with quotation marks so that normies don't get mad at me, but, you know, I don't think that, like, the average person knows what a small modular reactor is, do you?

A I don't, this is, clearly this is a theme in our, in our show is our utter mystification about what normal people do and don't think about or know. I don't know. I feel like, um, Advanced nuclear, like nuclear renaissance. Nuclear's better now. It's smaller and cooler and safer. I feel like some of that has drifted beyond, but you're right. I think the hype that is most bothering me is among, but it's among some powerful people, powerful people in corporations looking for, um, Ways to decarbonize themselves are ordering these things. Like, you have, like, cities and utilities pretty seriously. You had this weird announcement from Microsoft the other day. I don't know if you tracked that.

AI assessment note: “I feel like some of that has drifted beyond, but you're right.”

Q 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.

A It is interesting. I'll just say my gut instinct strongly says no. I, 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 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.

AI assessment note: “I'll just say my gut instinct strongly says no.”

Q climate person circles, and then they're hyped in a corner of tech world. Like, there's a bunch of VCs who really hype the shit out of them, but, but, you know, I don't think normies, so to speak, with, with quotation marks so that normies don't get mad at me, but, you know, I don't think that, like, the average person knows what a small modular reactor is, do you?

A I don't, this is, clearly this is a theme in our, in our show is our utter mystification about what normal people do and don't think about or know. I don't know. I feel like, um, Advanced nuclear, like nuclear renaissance. Nuclear's better now. It's smaller and cooler and safer. I feel like some of that has drifted beyond, but you're right. I think the hype that is most bothering me is among, but it's among some powerful people, powerful people in corporations looking for, um, Ways to decarbonize themselves are ordering these things. Like, you have, like, cities and utilities pretty seriously. You had this weird announcement from Microsoft the other day. I don't know if you tracked that.

AI assessment note: “I feel like some of that has drifted beyond, but you're right.”

Q good study that, uh, 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, uh, with mostly solar and storage? Um, you generally do need a little bit of dispatchable generation, so you mix your things together and you end up with some gas, but like it, you know,

A 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, to, to firm up. Like, it's going to be the same in miniature. 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 and bigger 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, um, are data centers gonna 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 sort of just the bigger 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 the, not just the power people and the grid people, but, uh,…

AI assessment note: “what I think could straightforwardly, more straightforwardly substitute for, for natural gas is more and bigger batteries”