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Why Oil & Gas Might Hold the Key to Geothermal Energy...| Fully Charged Show Podcast
01:01:26
Could we power the entire world with clean energy, 24/7, just by tapping into the heat beneath our feet? According to Jamie Beard, founder of Project InnerSpace, the answer is a resounding yes! She believes we could produce 70-75% of global...
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- [00:00]
Robert Llewellyn
Foreign. Hello, and welcome to another glorious episode of the Fully Charged Show Podcast. I'm going to ask you a question now. What you imagine, can you imagine? Can you imagine? That's the question. That we could develop a technology that produces around 70, 75% of all the electricity we would ever consume on the planet or the whole globally. We're talking global, not local, global. All the electricity and 100% of the heat that we need on the planet by using one technology that does not require us to dig up and extract and transport and refine and burn a fuel. Would that be quite a good idea? That's my question. I think the answer is yes, it would. Across the board. Regardless of political opinion, regardless of whether you think climate change is a cruel myth designed to crush basic freedom or something that we could possibly be slightly concerned about. Well, that technology is what we're talking about today. I'm talking to this extraordinary woman called Jamie Beard. She is a very experienced person who's worked in the oil and gas industry, has seen fracking taking place, has understood the technology that's used to that and is part of the renaissance, as she calls it, of, of technological development. That means that we can use much of that technology not to extract oil or gas that we burn once, but to extract heat that we can extract again again and again and again for tens, if not hundreds of years. It is that. It is a critically important step in what we're doing. And this isn't just a bit of heat so you can have your radiators on in your house. This is heat that you can use in industry. So we're talking very high temperatures, we're talking extraordinarily next generation geothermal. Jamie is part of a thing called Project Inner Space. I'll put all the links to that in the show notes. It is an extraordinary conversation. The one quick little thing I want to add, because we do talk about it, but really close to the end is shallow subsurface geothermal, which I'm familiar with because I know so many people have done it. So, so you know when you're doing a building and you dig up the yard, the garden, I think I used the American term yard. Dig up your garden and put pipes in a long string of pipes just like two or three feet underground, and you extract the heat from that because it remains exactly the same temperature all year round. That is geothermal heating. And we do mention it, but what we're really talking about here is kind of more industrial level drilling down properly deep. I'll let Jamie Explain quite how deep. Because I just went quiet. I didn't realize that was possible. And this is definitely using oil and gas technology to do this. So it's a really fascinating discussion. Just before I go, I just want to say we've got shows on very soon or not that soon. In September in Vancouver, in October in Farnborough in the UK and in November in Melbourne, Australia. Really, really looking forward to all three of those. I get to see a very small amount of the organization of that. I don't organize them. These are properly organized by professional people who are good at their jobs. But I get to see stuff that's happening. It's really exciting. We've got loads of new cars appearing that people haven't seen before. But also we do amazing talks with people like Jamie that you'll see and hear today at those events. And they have become incredibly popular, and we're very grateful to have the kind of quality and, you know, knowledge of those speakers appearing at our events. And then there's loads of stands of other stuff, not just cars. It's not just cars. Just really want to underline that. That's all. Though, please do subscribe to this channel if you haven't already. Lots of people have, but it would be nice to have some more. Do tell your friends about it because I think the caliber of people we get on this show is extraordinary. And I think it's really worth, you know, subscribing and listening to it and sharing it with your pals, especially your angry uncle that thinks that climate change is nonsense. It's just nonsense. That's why I voted reform. Sorry, I'm not gonna get political, but I did by accident. Then that's it. Please welcome to the Fully Charged show podcast, Jamie Beard. We've teamed up with Duracell Energy to celebrate their brilliant ecosystem of home energy products and their platinum homeowner offer by giving away a Duracell bunny to win. Simply watch to the end and answer a question about the Fully Charged Show. So, Jamie, this is a big thrill for me. Thank you so much for finding time to do this.
- [04:46]
Jamie Beard
Hey, no, it's exciting.
- [04:48]
Robert Llewellyn
Oh, good, good, good. Can you. Would you. Before we really start, can you just give us a potted history of how you ended up doing what you're doing now and. And where you get your enthusiasm from?
- [05:01]
Jamie Beard
Well, okay, so. So how I. How I, you know, ended up in geothermal? It's a. It's a long and kind of random story, but in sum, I was. I was working at a startup company An MIT spin off in Boston after, after practicing law for a while and getting quite bored with that and, and the startup company started developing a high temperature energy storage device. And we were looking around for applications for that technology and we're landing in places like defense and space and electric vehicles and we ended up landing in an application in oil and gas, in drilling. And I hated that because I was an environmentalist and I still am, but you know, ended up on rigs, doing product deployments and getting excited about drilling. And around that same time, this is like the early, the beginnings of the shale boom in oil and gas. So there was just a lot of innovation happening in the field and it was really, really cool, really high tech and fun. And around the same time there was this really, really exciting and kind of watershed report published called the Future of Geothermal. It was a, an MIT publication with Idaho national lab in the US and the report essentially was like, wow, you know, geothermal, particularly, you know, next generation geothermal, such a huge opportunity could, could, could solve energy and climate and everything in between. But man, it's just this hard set of engineering challenges that has a lot to do with drilling and there's just, you know, there's, there's a lot that we need to learn and it is putting those two things together. What I was seeing in the field in oil and gas and all of that innovation. With that report I left my position, moved to Texas and started working full time on geothermal. So there you are in some.
- [07:02]
Robert Llewellyn
Because, I mean, I think, I just sort of think it's worth explaining for a lot of us who wouldn't know anything about kind of drilling. Let's go with, let's stick with drilling. I think most people understand there's a middle bit of the planet Earth that's quite hot. I think we've got that, yeah, it's a bit of a volcano happening in Sicily at the moment. Kind of aware of stuff like that. I mean when you, this is going to be such a dumb question, but when you drill for oil, you know, forget geothermal. You're drilling for oil and you're drilling down really deep in the ground, maybe in the sea or in, on, on land or whatever. Does the, does the temperature of the, the, the material that surrounds the drill bit, as you go deeper, is it warmer than the surface? That's the best.
- [07:45]
Jamie Beard
Yes. Yes. So a lot warmer. So warm in fact that in some places where we produce oil, gas in the world, the oil and gas is boiling when it comes to the sun. I mean it's really hot. And there are, you know, oil and gas is not currently in the business of looking for and drilling for heat, which is what we're working on, what we want them to be in that business. They're actually trying to actively avoid heat because it's harder to drill in really hot conditions. But there are some, there are some places in the world where, you know, oil and gas production is happening at really high temperatures. And it's something that I think, you know, the, the world doesn't quite appreciate, which is like when you, when you drill underground, the further you go, the hotter it gets and, you know, it doesn't matter where you are in the world. You don't have to be in Iceland for this to be true. Yeah, right. You don't have to be on a volcano for this to be true. Everywhere it is true. And the only difference between, say, the subsurface in the UK and the subsurface in Sicily where there's a volcano erupting right now is that is how far you have to drill to get the same amount of heat. And some places you have to go deep, deeper, but in a lot of places you don't have to go much deeper than oil and gas currently drills.
- [09:01]
Robert Llewellyn
Right.
- [09:01]
Jamie Beard
Which, which of course, you know, produces this massive opportunity for technology transfer and skills training. All, all of these fun cool things that go to the scale of geothermal.
- [09:12]
Robert Llewellyn
I mean, that is one of the really interesting things I think, that I first understood with offshore wind in the uk. So in the North Sea we have these huge wind farms and you know, I didn't think about it. You know, it's a typical sort of landlubber, lay person's thing was that all the people who used to work in offshore oil and gas now work in offshore wind because there's very, very obvious transferable skills. And I guess the same thing can be said for geothermal. I mean, if you know how to drill a really deep well to hit a gas reserve or oil, then you're quite good at drilling, I would imagine.
- [09:43]
Jamie Beard
Well, I would go further and say that geothermal is even better positioned than any other renewable to, to, to engage the oil and gas industry. Yes, offshore wind looks a lot like offshore drilling in terms of, you know, built, building, you know, structures.
- [10:02]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah. That don't sink or fall over.
- [10:04]
Jamie Beard
Exactly. Right. But it leaves out offshore wind leaves out a lot of the core competencies of the oil and gas industry. Right. So like exploring the subsurface, finding subsurface energy assets, drilling for them, producing them. It leaves out all of that. So if you, if you look at, you know, competency overlap between the industries, geothermal gets 80 or 90% competency overlap with oil and gas, which means that we get out of the New Energies Ventures, part of oil and gas, the parts that are doing solar and wind and you get into the parent company. Right. So it's like the core of what they do, which makes it a really, really exciting kind of business opportunity for oil and gas. Right.
- [10:46]
Robert Llewellyn
And I mean presumably there's got to be advantages for geothermal directly as a result of the advance, the technological advances in oil and gas drilling. I mean fracking for sure that I'd never heard that word before, I don't know, 15 years ago, you know, it was even as, even as a sort of schoolboy swear word, which is what it sounds like to me. Yeah, yeah, well I never said it, you know, it just wasn't in the, in my lexicon at all. So.
- [11:11]
Jamie Beard
Yeah, yeah, well, and it's a loaded term that is very emotional and visceral for a lot of folks right now in the world. I mean, so if you don't, if you don't mind, Robert, you know, let's spend a minute, minute on, on that word and on what, what it means and how we would, we might apply it to geothermal. Because I think this is something that in, in talking with, you know, I'm an environmental, environmentalist and you know, a climate, climate activist in talking with environmental organizations over, over the years I've been working in geothermal. What's become really clear to me is that the, the term fracking is widely misunderstood in terms of what it technically means. And so it's kind of become this catch all bucket term for everything bad about oil and gas and all of these emotional feelings. Right. But I think that we need to do the intellectual work of separating these things out because there is a very big difference between fracking, what it means technologically and how it could be applied to geothermal to make geothermal scale and how it's utilized and the reason it's utilized in oil and gas. Right. So you know, fracking, and you're right, the term wasn't around 15, 20 years ago because it didn't exist. And so there's, you know, you know, the shale boom or you know, as oil and gas calls it, the unconventionals resolute. You know, revolution occurred about 20 years ago or started on the curve about 20 years ago and just massively rearranged geopolitics in terms of like where we could produce Oil and gas. How much oil and gas the United States state was producing, you know, it, it had this. There was this natural gas revolution that occurred because there was a flourish, a very fast flourish over five or 10 years of technological development within the oil and gas industry. And so that became like this, this term, fracking. But, you know, if you look at it, it's not, it's not just fracking, which means technologically that you are. You drill a well, then you plug a bunch of pipes up to that well and you pressurize it. So you push really hard on that well and you crack rocks in the subsurface. So you make, you make fractures where there aren't many and you widen fractures that may already exist in the oil and gas context. The reason you do that is because you want to loosen up the rocks so more oil and gas will come out of it, right? And so, you know, that is fracking in the oil and gas context. You drill, you pressurize all that rock and you make fractures and more oil and gas flows to the surface. And that, you know, it really did. It really, it really did revolutionize. It turned the United States into essentially a petro state. Right? I mean, like, we, it really changed.
- [14:05]
Robert Llewellyn
I think that's a generational thing. I think there's going to be quite a lot of young people who won't, even if they're aware of the energy industry now, won't be aware that in like the 1970s, which I remember very clearly, the US was a major oil importer and was going through absolute traumas with the, with the fuel traumas of the early 1970s. I mean, that's.
- [14:25]
Jamie Beard
Now we are a major oil exporter. It is because. It is because of fracking. Right? So, but along with fracking, the industry also developed at the same time a lot of really cool technologies. Technologies where you could drill and you could turn. You've got.
- [14:42]
Robert Llewellyn
I mean, I want you to give me. No, we don't do it now, but I desperately need an explanation of how on earth you drill down and then bend and go sideways.
- [14:50]
Jamie Beard
But it's even cooler than just turning, right? So you're talking about, you know, essentially the technological complexity is what got me really excited when I was like, I hated oil and gas. And then I went to oil rigs and watched it and was like, well, holy shit, this is just amazing. What do we do with that? We should do something with this other than oil and gas. But like, you're literally talking about drilling five miles into the earth, right? Turning and hitting A piece of property under the ground five miles away that's the size of a pizza with absolute precision, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times over and over again. That's how we produce oil and gas now in the world. Right. It's called drilling, manufacturing or pad drilling. And it's just been really. It's been perfected by the oil and gas industry. And so, you know, all of this cool technology and this huge flourish of technology, yes, it has really pressed the gas on oil and gas development in the world, but it's also enabled something else, which is why we're talking right now. Right. Which is it didn't take long for after the shale revolution and all of these technologies came out of. Came out of that in oil and gas. It didn't take long for oil and gas to start considering how to apply those cool technologies in other ways. And one of the really cool things about it is these technologies can be almost entirely transferred into geothermal, into what has become, or what is called now, the next generation geothermal revolution, or you hear it colloquially as geothermal everywhere. And it means, essentially, look, we've gotten so good at, well, engineering, at engineering the subsurface like we're doing in oil and gas, that we can now, instead of just developing geothermal where it's sitting on the surface in places like Iceland, so you can just, like, drill down. It's right there.
- [16:46]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [16:47]
Jamie Beard
Instead of just doing it in those places, we're actually able to engineer the subsurface much like we do for oil and gas now, to produce geothermal in vastly more places in the world, you know, dare I say, any place in the world. Right. Or just about any place in the world. And it's just a matter of tweaking the subsurface to have some of the characteristics that Iceland has that it doesn't naturally have. That's where we come to the application of fracking for geothermal. Right. So in some places in the world, the subsurface doesn't have enough cracks. You know, the rocks don't have enough cracks to flow water through them to pick up heat. Right, right. So in, you know, in some places in the world, you can actually apply that pressure, crack the rock and make the rock produce more hot water to the surface. So then you can make, you know, geothermal energy, whether it be for electricity or. Or heat.
- [17:43]
Robert Llewellyn
And can I just. Just. So I understand, because my understanding of physics is basic, but there is some understanding. But if you drill a hole just straight down and up again, the surface area that's exposed to a fluid that you're trying to use to extract the heat is fairly limited. You know, it's just the edges of that tube. So but then if you crack the earth, then those, that surface area is multiplied by probably thousands. You can extract more heat from that.
- [18:08]
Jamie Beard
That's exactly right, yeah. So I mean you're, you're creating this web of fractures through which water can flow and you're not having to drill that, which drilling is expensive. So the more that you can fracture the rock, it's more of a passive way of developing the subsurface rather than literally drilling miles of radiator through rock, which we could do. And there, and there are next generation concepts that do that. They're called advanced geothermal systems and they forego the fracking part and just drill the whole thing to get the surface area right. But there are trade offs in this thing, right? You frack, it's cheaper, you drill it like a radiator, it's more expensive. Right. So. But that's exactly right. This is all about creating enough surface area under the ground where water can contact the heat and produce it at the surface at hot enough temperatures to do whatever you want to do with it, whether it be produce electricity or industrial heat or heat buildings or whatever you want.
- [19:05]
Robert Llewellyn
And then presumably does it, I mean, do you, for the most of the, the uses that you're imagining this for, do you need it to be effectively coming out as steam or can it come out as very hot water that you use, you know, heat pump to, to increase that heat? Is that.
- [19:22]
Jamie Beard
Yeah, is that all of, all of those things? Right, so all of these things, the, the cool thing about geothermal, particularly next generation geothermal, so applying all of these new innovations to the, to the space, it, the cool thing about that is in the last, you know, 24 to 36 months, we've, we've, we've entered this renaissance period where like, you know, geothermal was essentially stagnant for decades and decades. I mean 100 years, geothermal has been around for a very long time, but, but largely stagnant in terms of moving the needle in any global way. Stagnant. So we're talking about less than 1% of global energy demand powered by geothermal. It didn't even show up on projections for 2050. I mean, it's not on the graphs, Right. It's in the other category and all the graphs. It doesn't even get a name in the graphs. Right. So like, you know, the traditional methods were unable to move the Needle. Now we're in a situation where there's so much innovation and there's, there's this renaissance period where everybody's trying new things. And so everything you just said is true, depending on what startup and what entity you're talking to. Right. So there are some entities that are thinking, man, we should just go for the low hanging fruit. We should drill the shallow stuff. That's hot enough to do a lot of industrial processes but not hot enough to do steel, for instance. That's really hot.
- [20:44]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
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Jamie Beard
But it would be hot enough to do all sorts of agriculture applications, even chemical applications, you know, a pulp and paper mill applications. You know, let's do that. And we can do that with an industrial heat pump.
- [20:57]
Robert Llewellyn
Cool.
- [20:58]
Jamie Beard
That's awesome. There's, there's another, you know, there's another part of next generation geothermal called super hot. And they're, they're thinking, no, let's go for the steel. So we want to go for the super hot stuff we're going to do. We're going to go to super, super deep, super hot. We don't need heat pumps because we're going to be producing super critical fluid to the surface. Cool. You know, all of those things should be and can be true at the same time. That's what a renaissance is. Right. And I, and I love that because every, I feel like every other week we get a new startup in the space that's thought of a new application and they're going for it. It's really fun because I mean we.
- [21:35]
Robert Llewellyn
Probably, I will mention this in my introduction, but we should mention Project Inner Space so that, can you explain what that is and what role that plays in the, in what we're talking about?
- [21:46]
Jamie Beard
Yeah, so, so when I, when I started in geothermal, back, back whenever that was, you know, 2018 ish was really when I threw in full time, there was not a mechanism or any entity that was driving disruptive change in the global ecosystem. Right. So there were traditional geothermal operators and companies that were running power plants in Iceland and places in the ring of fire and they're doing their thing. There were industry associations that were focused on that piece of geothermal and there was a, you know, a blooming but scattered ecosystem that wanted to do something different and disruptive and new. And if you, you know, if you look at the entrance of oil and gas into the space, that required a lot of recruitment and a lot of work. And so that's the work I started when I moved to Texas. That's what I started first Recruit a bunch of oil and gas veterans. A lot of them had already retired and were like golfing and were bored and wanted and you know, and the. Really, here's a, here's a cool one. A trend at the beginning where a lot of, a lot of folks in oil and gas have children and grandchildren who really disliked their legacy, right? The family legacy. They dislike the fact that their parents had worked their entire lives and in some instances their trust funds were funded by general generational wealth that was created by oil and gas. Like there was this discontent. So what I found in this, in this demographic of oil and gas person, very smart, decades of institutional knowledge and operational expertise, right? But they had this need or this, this want, this desire to do something else with what they had learned. And we just grabbed, I mean grabbed onto that over and over again. Like, you know, got veterans that were bored to start thinking about new ways to apply oil and gas technologies to geothermal. And so we ended up with this flourish of startups, you know, and I supported them along and starting companies, getting their companies funded. Eventually this built into a thing, into a movement that resulted in Project Inner Space. Right? So it became clear I was doing this work out of a university, out of the University of Texas at the time, and it became clear that this movement got bigger than a university could shepherd. So I launched a nonprofit and that, that nonprofit is Inner Space. Inner Space now has a, a couple of sister organizations that are different types of entities, but we're all, you know, all of the organizations are working toward not only supporting oil and gas into the field, so helping divis, helping develop business models, recruiting folks, et cetera, but also supporting the startups in the ecosystem that need more visibility, funding and help. We are, we're focused on creating community assets that the world needs to understand geothermal. So we, we developed a map of geothermal resources like, because it's, you know, amazingly it is not obvious if you think there's no. Before Interspace and Geomap, there was no global tool where you could go to understand where the, the low hanging fruit was for geothermal. So if you weren't sitting next to a hot spring and you saw it right there, you're standing in the middle of Texas. How do you know how far you have to go to get to good Reese? Right. Yeah, it was, it wasn't you, you. There was a major barrier like as an investment and hundreds of thousands of dollars of subsurface research to understand opportunities in any given place. So we spent up, you know, we spent some philanthropic Dollars to develop a map like Google Earth for geothermal where you can just click on a spot and do a techno economic analysis and see what applications could apply, etc. So we focus on open sourcing that type of information to help support the ecosystem. And the overall goal of all of these initiatives of inner space is to, you know, really get geothermal to disrupt things, you know, to rattle and to really get geothermal on an exponential growth curve. Meaning out of this doldrums of stagnant hundred years and into massive exponential global growth that looks a lot like. And repeats the shale boom. Right, right. So that massive disruptive geopolitical event, that was natural gas. Why don't we do that again for geothermal? So we're focused on trying to get that ignited.
- [26:26]
Robert Llewellyn
I mean it is very exciting. I've got to, because there's some of the things that, that I'd heard before I came across your work and what you're doing, which was. And you'll know this company and I'm so annoyed. I've been trying to find it this morning in a rush, had a bit of a panic on. But they were talking about drilling at existing gas turbine locations where there were, where there was already a power generating system and they were going to drill there to replace the gas with geothermal, but they were going to drill like to my mind, insanely deep using, using new technology. So and I, and when I, I've learned over the last 15 years doing this show, every now and then you'll hear this technology and I go, oh wow, that's amazing. And then I go, I wonder if it really works. Yeah, it sounds great but you know, I can't remember what the name of that company is. Do you know who I'm talking about? I don't, I'm not sure.
- [27:18]
Jamie Beard
Yeah, I think I do. And I, you know, my guess is that that's Quaize.
- [27:23]
Robert Llewellyn
It is Quaize. Thank you.
- [27:24]
Jamie Beard
That's my guess.
- [27:25]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah, you're right.
- [27:26]
Jamie Beard
But you know, there are others that are trying to do that as well. It's not, it's not necessarily natural gas, it's coal. Which, you know, I think this is a moment to back up and say, yeah, you know, and this is another point that I think the general public misses. And it was very eye opening for me when I started really diving into, you know, how energy works and how the world consumes energy and energy transition. When you look at a solar farm or a wind turbine, I think the average citizen doesn't have a good understanding about the energy density of that thing. Meaning, like, how much power are we getting out of that thing? Right. Compared to, say, a coal plant, a nuclear plant, or a natural gas plant. The answer is not much. They are tiny. A wind turbine or even a wind farm.
- [28:18]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [28:18]
Jamie Beard
Is tiny compared to, say, a new coal plant out there. Or a coal plant. Right. I mean, we're just talking about multiples of 10 or 100 in terms of output. And so, you know, what that means is we've got to build a whole lot of renewables in terms of land footprint, solar and wind to equal even one baseload big natural gas coal or geo. Or natural gas coal or. Or nuclear plant. Right. And so the cool thing about geothermal is that it offers the same baseload capability that nuclear and natural gas and coal do, Meaning it's on all the time, it runs all the time, no matter if the sun is up or if the wind is blowing. That's great. And that means it doesn't need that extra investment of energy storage, which, you know, does. Does change the economics of solar and wind. If you add that in, you know, if you add in the storage. Geothermal is really cool like that. The thing about shallow geothermal. So we started our conversation off thinking, what about oil and gas depths? It's hot down there, right? Yeah, it is. And if we drilled the number of wells that we drill for oil and gas right now, but for geothermal at the same depths.
- [29:33]
Robert Llewellyn
Right.
- [29:33]
Jamie Beard
We could power the world with geothermal by 2050. Like, that's. I mean, that just like let that sink in for a minute.
- [29:40]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [29:40]
Jamie Beard
70,000 wells a year is what oil and gas drills for us right now.
- [29:44]
Robert Llewellyn
Because I think this is, this is the other thing I think people don't realize. You think they've drew, you know, because you'll see an image of an oil well and they've drilled it, and that's where the oil comes from. That's where the oil comes from for a bit. Then they've got to drill another one and another and another and another.
- [29:57]
Jamie Beard
Yeah, Yep. Yeah, that's right. So, so for, for, you know, if you think of that capacity, that drilling capacity of the industry, if all of that was directed toward geothermal, same capacity just directed to geothermal heat instead of oil. By 2050, you're talking 80% of 2050 electricity demand and over 100% of 2050 heat demand. And by the way, and this is another one to really bold and highlight and underline, 50% of the world's energy demand is heat. Yes, it's heat, it's not electricity. And this is the thing, this is what we do. That's really silly. We burn coal and we burn natural gas to make heat and then we take that heat and we stick it into industrial processes and buildings. The geothermal is heat.
- [30:47]
Robert Llewellyn
Right.
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Jamie Beard
So we could simply produce this massive abundant clean energy source and use it for heat.
- [30:52]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [30:53]
Jamie Beard
You know, so again like there's, there's a, there's a, just a huge opportunity in really low hanging fruit for geothermal. But let's go back to quays for a second.
- [31:01]
Robert Llewellyn
Okay.
- [31:01]
Jamie Beard
Right. So there, because there's a lot of, remember our renaissance. We're in a renaissance and there's a lot of different ways of thinking. You know, a lot of folks are in the camp of let's get that low hanging fruit first. I mean let's go and let's, let's take 50% of the world energy demand off the table and just, you know, power all heat with geothermal. That's cool. Like I totally, let's do that. Absolutely. And it tends to be technologically enabled, fully economically attractive. We just need to go and do it. Awesome. But there are different schools of thought. Like well, okay, but how are we going to start, start replacing coal capacity? How are we going to build these massive gigawatt scale baseload energy power plants, geothermal in the shallow subsurface and that less hot subsurface? Can't do that. It can't, it can't produce a gigawatt. There's not enough energy density. Right. It can produce hundreds of megawatts, but it just can't get there. Right. That's where quays comes in. Right. So you have this other school of thought that's like, man, if we go way deep and way hot, we can, we can compete megawatt to megawatt with these big gigawatt scale baseload energy sources. But the trade off is it's, it's really deep and really hot. And that we are not to, we can't, we are not fully technologically enabled yet to do that. Right. So like we, we have material science issues. You know, drill bits melt.
- [32:35]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah. If it's that hot. Yes.
- [32:37]
Jamie Beard
Metal will and metal melts. Right. So there's, there's these really cool, you know, kind of sci fi drilling concepts out there where it's like, well, let's just vaporize the rock instead of drilling it. Right. And that, you know, again like school of thought. Awesome. Go. Low hanging fruit for heat. Awesome. Go. Everybody just go.
- [32:57]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [32:58]
Jamie Beard
And let's see, let's see what happens. I mean, eventually geothermal will mature and the renaissance will come to a head and there will be some, you know, a group of winners that are able to figure this out and make the business model work.
- [33:09]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I think there are correlations with electric vehicles. You know, not that that's our primary focus, but I mean, it's certainly what started our, the show that we make now. But in the sense that it's not new. There were electric vehicles way before there were combustion engine vehicles. You know, they've been around for decades. But that, that kind of innovation of, of rechargeable batteries, basically just in the widest sense of what that means and the, and the shrinking. And now what we're just seeing, I mean, I've just been in China fairly recently. You know, we are, we were witnessed of batteries, technology, manufacturing and new battery chemistry that brings the cost of batteries down to $10 a kilowatt hour, which is insane.
- [33:53]
Jamie Beard
I mean, that's amazing.
- [33:54]
Robert Llewellyn
When we first started the show 15 years ago, it was $1,400 a kilowatt hour to manufacture.
- [33:59]
Jamie Beard
Amazing.
- [34:00]
Robert Llewellyn
Anyway, but those changes and what we're seeing now with this is 25 years ago, an oil company drilled straight down, and if there was some oil there, they were lucky and they made money.
- [34:09]
Jamie Beard
Yeah, that's exactly right.
- [34:11]
Robert Llewellyn
And now they can drill down and go sideways and do all kinds of.
- [34:14]
Jamie Beard
Weird stuff and go five miles deep. And importantly, importantly and in parallel with the way the electric vehicle industry developed as oil and gas drilled five miles deep and hit the pizza size spot over and over and over again, costs dramatically decreased over time.
- [34:32]
Robert Llewellyn
Right.
- [34:35]
Jamie Beard
Oh, super expensive drilling is capital intensive, but if you do it over and over and over, that's where the manufacturing piece of this comes in. Well, manufacturing, they got to a point where it was so fully optimized, they squeezed every bit of inefficiency out of that system. And you saw, and you see, you saw price decreases per well, just like in electric vehicle batteries. I think there's another parallel and this is a, this is a really fun conversation, Robert, I'm happy to chat with you. There's another parallel that I see in geothermal that is analogous with electric vehicles and how they really caught stride and it's making. It was the musks of the world that made electric vehicles sexy.
- [35:20]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [35:21]
Jamie Beard
And like there was a moment where they, they changed from this kind of clunky, you know, it was more of a fashion statement or a political Statement, but not necessarily an enjoyable or fun car to drive.
- [35:35]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [35:36]
Jamie Beard
Not a flashy item that you brag about at a party.
- [35:41]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [35:41]
Jamie Beard
But there was this shift to sexiness for electric vehicles that, that I think really, really drove engagement. And I think with next generation geothermal you're adding that sexy. So like geothermal has, has suffered in terms of narrative and people's perception of it. And you know, most people in the world don't know about it. They still don't know about it. Not relevant. Oh, that hot spring I sat in and on vacation. Oh, that's very cute. But like I'm trying to solve climate change.
- [36:11]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [36:12]
Jamie Beard
You know, I mean I actually on Friday recently was, was, was on a, on a panel with Bill McKibben and like there was this, there was this tension between what I'm saying, this narrative of like, oh man, oil and gas, we need to leverage all this expertise and this, this older school of thought about oil and gas, which, which is. We've been doing that hell forever. Let's move. Right. But, but here's the thing and you know, I guess you know, this, this is, you know, attributed to all of the startups now in the space that are just really out, you know, really making really cool things happen and thinking of new ideas. But there's a sexiness and a sci fi kind of aspect of next generation geothermal and this kind of huge win of ubiquity and abundance and you know, cost reductions. You can do this anywhere for all types of applications. Heating and cooling and power and you name it. Right. Even, hell, even combining geothermal with things like, you know, heavy metal mining, like lithium mining for instance, from, from geothermal brines. There's all of these innovations in the space and it's created a buzz in media that has quite frankly resulted in, in me being here. Right. I mean there, there is a buzz around the space and I think if we really lean into that and keep that sexiness for people so there's something for them to engage their imaginations with. Much like the, you know, electric, electric vehicle revolution. Right. I think, I think that will help the layperson understand the massive opportunity in geothermal. But it's not just hot springs. Right. That's the, that's geothermal of the past. What does geothermal of the future look like? Well, it's just really freaking cool.
- [38:02]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [38:03]
Jamie Beard
You know, it's just like, that's awesome.
- [38:07]
Robert Llewellyn
But now there's a, it's going to be a slight side step because I do want to focus on what you're you know, the main thrust of what you're doing. But sort of the examples of how individual people can explore this, you know, like for instance, on my house I've got solar panels, I've got batteries, I've got electric cars, you know, so people, you know, and a lot of people are doing that now and all over the world and in Australia, in the States, everywhere. But I know there's a gentleman who lives in the next village to me and I live in a very old village with the very old houses and he lives in the one down the road about a mile away, who was in the oil and gas industry. He retired. Exactly like you said. He was bored. I learned this from his wife. He was bored. So he started drilling holes in the garden. That's how I first heard about it. So then he got quite a big drill company. I think he's got plenty of money. He drilled quite, quite deep. Now we're in a limestone area, so I don't know what that means, but I know he drilled much deeper.
- [39:07]
Jamie Beard
Yeah, but it's soft and easy.
- [39:08]
Robert Llewellyn
It's soft and easy. So he got a company that does geothermal well drilling and they drilled a well for him and he went, that's not deep enough. And he got another company. But what he's doing now is he's produced. He's got much too much heat for a house. He doesn't know what to do with it. He's got a hot tub with no top. You know, you normally put a lid on it. Yeah, it's steaming away 24 hours a day all year round heat. But he's done that. But what I'm wondering is, is there in all the companies, you know, you know, like there's a solar company that puts the solar panels on my roof. There's a company that will fit batteries in my house. Is there a geothermal modest domestic drilling companies that will drill a small hole in your garden if it's, if it's suitable, which we then produce heat which you then use in your house? I don't know, just as a heat.
- [39:56]
Jamie Beard
Yes, the answer is yes, of course. But here's the, here's the rub. Geothermal has forever been a mom and pops industry. A very regional and localized mom and pops industry. I love your story, I think. And what you're describing is actually kind of a house size version of what's called in next generation geothermal deep direct use, which is right, you know, small footprint deep drilling that can be, that can be utilized for thermal energy networks. So you do, you drink, you drill a hole deep enough to produce enough heat to, you know, to, to service multiple buildings or a whole block or a mixed use development or what, whatever you want. I love his experiments for the, you know, for the layperson, geothermal, you know, it's really hard to navigate the ecosystem right now if you want to just do a project on your property because you, you essentially have to call around to local H vac companies and ask if they do, you know, ground sourced heat pumps. That's essentially geothermal heat pumps.
- [41:07]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [41:07]
Jamie Beard
And there are some really cool startups in this space that are trying new things. But again, even they're startups so they're localized. Right. In the United States. There's three or four of them that are doing. Dandelion is a Google company. They're doing these, these, you know, really kind of cool new take on heating for homes. Bedrock. Another one really good. Doing a cool new sexy take on commercial building heating and cooling. But again, you have to be located in a place where these entities are active. And so, you know, we're going to have to do a way better job growing the industry in a way that everybody has access.
- [41:48]
Robert Llewellyn
Right.
- [41:48]
Jamie Beard
But I will say, and this is, this is really exciting about the concept and the story you just told. You know, thermal energy networks or you know, and district heating systems as they're, as they're often referenced in Europe are really efficient, really impactful ways to decarbonize heat. Much more so than say all these discussions about heating buildings with hydrogen. I mean like, I feel like that's just all completely off the rocker. Geothermal is heat, it's, it's cheap, it's shallow. We need to be doing it, you know, it needs to, we just need to press the gas. But, but these, you know, these sorts of, you know, let's do experiments in a neighborhood. There's a really cool example of that that was just pioneered in Massachusetts in the United States by a natural gas U. And so this is, this is where I'm thinking like speed and scale. Right. When you actually pull industry in, Google Meta, of course, all the big tech for data centers and geothermal and we should talk about that before because that's a huge opportunity right now. But when you start pulling in utilities, particularly, particularly natural gas utilities and they get excited about transitioning their natural gas infrastructure, which again, these are pipes underground. Yeah, right. I mean that you, you have to do some tweaks to that infrastructure to make it geothermal. But as soon as you have natural gas utilities asking how can I do that? I want to do a thermal energy network and I want to use my infrastructure.
- [43:22]
Robert Llewellyn
So what you're talking about is sending heat in liquid form through the pipes that were originally installed to carry gas.
- [43:29]
Jamie Beard
Yeah.
- [43:30]
Robert Llewellyn
Oh, right. I didn't. Wow, okay.
- [43:32]
Jamie Beard
Or in new construction, instead of a natural gas utility building a natural gas infrastructure, they just build from the, from the start a geothermal infrastructure, which looks a hell of a lot like their natural gas infrastructure. I mean, so again, it's really smooth overlap in terms of core competency. You're just switching from natural gas to geothermal. Really cool and high impact. Because if you can imagine this all, you know, if we imagined a world in which all new residential and commercial developments had geothermal heat networks instead of natural gas heat networks, and that was driven by the utilities themselves. Massive. So, like, that's how I think we move beyond the mom and pops style industry and we get people engaged on a broader scale in their homes and businesses and whatnot. Is really pulling on those partnerships with industry.
- [44:29]
Robert Llewellyn
Because the frustration I have with the building industry in the uk, that's the one I'm familiar with with.
- [44:35]
Jamie Beard
Yeah, that's right.
- [44:36]
Robert Llewellyn
It's just down the road for me. There's a load of new houses being built. They've got many of them now. And it's become the law, and it will become the law in the UK in 2027. Actually do build them with solar panels on the roof. And one of the things I've discovered recently is per square meter, the cost of materials per square meter on a roof. In the uk, solar panels is the cheapest. So if you want to cover a large area of roof with something you put solar panels on because it's cheaper than tiles and all the rest of it. But that aside, all those houses, all of them, and we're building hundreds of thousands of them at the moment, all of them will have individual gas boilers.
- [45:13]
Jamie Beard
Right.
- [45:14]
Robert Llewellyn
In 2025. And you know, you're on a building site, there's where there's mud and there's rocks and you've dug up stuff and you've done foundations.
- [45:19]
Jamie Beard
Yes.
- [45:20]
Robert Llewellyn
Bring in a massive drilling rig. You complete, hopeless losers. The British building industry. And drill goddamn hole. A couple, not five miles, couple of miles.
- [45:29]
Jamie Beard
No, I mean, you wouldn't need to.
- [45:30]
Robert Llewellyn
Do that, would you? Wouldn't need it that deep.
- [45:32]
Jamie Beard
No, no, no. And, and again, like, okay, so this is, this is a moment we can, we can chat about this. Like, how deep do you have to go to get what? And again, this Is another, I think, lay, lay, layperson misunderstanding about geothermal and what you need to do to accomplish what. Yeah, so in the shallow subsurface, like the. Really. So if you've ever been in a cave, it's cold in there, right? Like, you go in and it's cold. So in the shallow subsurface, it's actually a steady. Now where I'm gonna. I'm gonna struggle to translate Fahrenheit into Celsius. So do it for me if you can. But like, it's a. It's a stable 55 Fahrenheit. It's cold. You've got to have a coat on to be comfortable down there in the shallow subsurface. Right. That's counterintuitive for most people thinking, well, why, why, why are you saying hot? And what do you mean? Right?
- [46:18]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [46:19]
Jamie Beard
Well, in a shallow subsurface, it's cool and it's a consistent temperature all year. And when you. And that's what heat pumps do really well is they take a consistent temperature year round and they levelize that to the temperature you want your house. So say in the winter, if you were to use the Shallow subsurface at 55 degrees Fahrenheit to heat your house a little bit more in the winter, you're, you know, you're. You're raising the temperature 10 degrees to be comfortable instead of 40, 40 or 50 or 60 that you would have had to if you were using outside air that, you know, cold air from. From the winter air. Same thing goes with cooling. And again, this is another counterintuitive thing for geothermal. Here we are talking about heat, but geothermal is awesome for cooling, Right. For the same reason we're talking about heat pumps. And when you have a consistent 55 degrees Fahrenheit, you need coat. It's coat weather in the summer. That's a hell of a start to cool your house because it's hot outside.
- [47:19]
Robert Llewellyn
Yes.
- [47:19]
Jamie Beard
And so you have to just sip electricity to produce to cool your entire house versus grabbing hot air from outside and trying to cool it. Right. So in the shallow subsurface, and I mean, you know, feet down, not thousands of feet, I mean, feet dozens of feet shallow. That is good for heating and cooling applications using a heat pump. And so like these, these natural gas networks, these thermal energy networks, these, these, you know, these. Even the deep direct stuff, like the, like your neighbor friend who was like, I want to go deeper, and now he's got all this extra heat. You know, even the deep stuff, we're not Talking about the five miles, the oil and gas drilling depth, we're talking about hundreds of feet. And you get down into, you know, first you have the steady temperature and then as you go further and further and further, you end up with a ton of heat and it gets hotter as you go, which is what your neighbor experience. Right. So, you know, if you look at geothermal as this cascade, first we can use it for a low temperature heat. That's buildings. The hotter you go, you can start getting into industrial processes and you know, agriculture, aquaculture, greenhouses go a little bit hotter, pulp and paper mills, chemical plants, paint, all kinds of industrial processes a little hotter. And then as you step it up, you get into power production and that requires, you know, I mean I could do Celsius on this one, you know, 200C and above 250 is even better.
- [48:48]
Robert Llewellyn
That's the temperatures you're getting to.
- [48:49]
Jamie Beard
Wow, it's hot. To produce. If you're going to do it from, you know, an economically feasible perspective, you can, you can produce electricity with low temperature heat, but the hotter you go, the more economically feasible the project becomes. So the deeper you go, you get into these 200, 250 degrees Celsius ranges and you can produce electricity with that. So this is, this is not kind of a one size fits all thing. You can go to different depths in the subsurface and use geothermal for different, different purposes. For most people, if they, if they're interested for their homes and businesses, it's quite shallow, very shallow compared to, I.
- [49:29]
Robert Llewellyn
Mean we just been to a very old house, like a 500 year old house that has been retrofitted to be completely carbon zero, not even net zero, like genuinely. So lots of heat pumps, lots of solar and then they've got like a field, so a whole field that. And it's like literally, I think that is like three feet underground. It's really shallow, just a massive network of tubes and they use that with the heat pumps and that's what produces. Yeah, I think more people are familiar with that in the UK that people have had their, you know, their garden, their yard dug up and they put the stuff in. There's people around where I live that have done that and it works. I mean it certainly is, you know.
- [50:06]
Jamie Beard
It'S been more efficient. It is more efficient to do a geothermal or ground source heat pump than an air source. Yeah, the, the rub there is and why we don't see them everywhere in the whole world.
- [50:17]
Robert Llewellyn
You got to dig up your yard.
- [50:19]
Jamie Beard
You have to dig up your yard, which is annoying for a lot of people. But also there's a capital cost that's front loaded.
- [50:26]
Robert Llewellyn
Right.
- [50:26]
Jamie Beard
So you know, it's cheaper to just buy an air source heat pump and stick it on the side of your house. Over time though, that heat pump costs you amount, an amount of money to run.
- [50:36]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [50:37]
Jamie Beard
And it is less efficient in places where there are temperature swings. So like, you know, if it's really hot in the summer or really cold in the winter, your heat pump is, is not as efficient as it should be. Whereas ground sourced heat pumps pump, they're very efficient because they've got.
- [50:51]
Robert Llewellyn
That stays the same temperature.
- [50:52]
Jamie Beard
That's exactly right. So there's a front loaded cost that the, you know, there are some innovators in the, in the geothermal space, in the, in the heat pump space, industrial heat pump space and also, you know, commercial and residential heat pump space, ground source heat pump that are trying to figure out ways, you know, models to copy. For instance, the solar industry and the leasing model where you know, at the beginning of solar, if you remember, solar used to be expensive.
- [51:18]
Robert Llewellyn
It was very expensive. I do remember, I bought some.
- [51:21]
Jamie Beard
Yes, exactly. And people couldn't figure out how to, how to pay for the upfront cost of installation of solar. Over time, the solar industry innovated there and figured out all sorts of financial models and leasing models that would help alleviate that pressure on homeowners and business owners. Geothermal is the same again. We're going through that renaissance period where folks are building business models that are helping alleviate some of these pain points. And upfront costs for geothermal is one of them. Like it used to be in some solar.
- [51:49]
Robert Llewellyn
Right. So because we're gonna have to wind up fairly soon. This is so.
- [51:52]
Jamie Beard
Oh, it's fun.
- [51:53]
Robert Llewellyn
So brilliant. Thank you so much.
- [51:55]
Jamie Beard
Yeah, I'm happy.
- [51:56]
Robert Llewellyn
But, but so one, I've only heard this once, so please forgive the, I think. Well, I think, I think the innocent ignorance. But if we drill hundreds of holes all over the world. Yeah. And we're extracting all that heat that has been held in the earth's crust for millions and millions, Tens of millions. Hundreds of millions of years.
- [52:17]
Jamie Beard
Yeah.
- [52:18]
Robert Llewellyn
Will we start to cool it down and then the middle bit will go.
- [52:21]
Jamie Beard
And then we stop spinning and then we're gonna. Something, something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So I like this question and I run into this miss, you know, this misconception a whole lot.
- [52:32]
Robert Llewellyn
Oh, you do hear this. Because I've only ever heard it once, so.
- [52:35]
Jamie Beard
No, I've heard it more than Once. Yeah. And, and this is typically, you know, people who are really excited about the idea of scaling geothermal to be a massive global energy source, but then concerned about what that, what that might mean from a, you know, a natural resource for Earth, Earth health perspective.
- [52:55]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [52:56]
Jamie Beard
And, you know, and there are, with every energy source, there are valid concerns that, that we, you know, that we need to, that we need to address in developing geothermal level. But the, the, the prospect that we're going to cool the core of the Earth in any measurable way is, Is not one of the things that we, that we should be concerned about. And I think we, we should. We can look at it like this. The core of the Earth is just this massive nuclear reactor. So it is, it is 6,000 degrees Celsius. It is the temperature of the surface of the sun. It's also very far from us on the surface. So it's like, you know, 4,000 miles away all the way down there. The reason that we aren't walking around burning our feet on the ground. So it seems like all that would just come up to the surface and it would be hot. It's not because the crust of the Earth is an incredible insulator and it's keeping all of that heat in. But what that means is that the Earth is this gigantic bucket of heat. A gigantic bucket of heat so big that, you know, calculations are so massive that it's beyond. It's kind of like calculations about space distances. It's beyond normal human imagination how big it is. But I'll get, I can, I can ground it in this. A little bit of that heat that's contained in the Earth leaks.
- [54:17]
Robert Llewellyn
Right.
- [54:17]
Jamie Beard
And that little bit that leaks comes out of volcanoes and hot springs and also just out of the Earth. So it just kind of like radiates a little bit through the crust. Yeah, that's why, you know, there's, there's shallow subsurface heat, because that heat leaks into the crust.
- [54:32]
Robert Llewellyn
Right.
- [54:33]
Jamie Beard
That heat alone that just leaks from this massive reservoir of heat underneath us in the Earth is enough to power the world thousands and thousands of times over. Just the leak. Just the leak. Not the actual source, just the leak. Right. So I think, you know, even if we were to power all of civilization with geothermal, we would still only be scratching the surface of the leak.
- [54:59]
Robert Llewellyn
Right.
- [54:59]
Jamie Beard
Okay. So, like, it's one of those things that it's hard to put into perspective, but the world is. The Earth is very big and there is a lot of heat in there, heat that we will never reasonably touch. We're talking about drilling five miles as opposed to 4,000. I mean, scratch the surface.
- [55:22]
Robert Llewellyn
It's just the surface.
- [55:24]
Jamie Beard
Exactly. I mean, there is no serious organization or company out there that's actually considering drilling, you know, 4,000 miles. Well, I mean, or even 100 miles. There's science fiction movies about it, but that's about where that ends.
- [55:42]
Robert Llewellyn
But the other one I think, which is, which I've also been asked a couple of times is, is how long a geothermal well lasts. As in does it just carry on forever or do you, you know, does it, you know, because it's, I mean, that's the thing. We've mentioned it. We do know you drill a hole to extract oil and gas and eventually.
- [56:04]
Jamie Beard
Yeah, the oil and gas runs out.
- [56:05]
Robert Llewellyn
It's going to run out. Yeah. So, and is that, does the same apply to a geothermal well? Presumably it's a different, it's a different argument altogether.
- [56:12]
Jamie Beard
It is, yeah. And as with everything, there's nuance. So let me spend a second. Oil and gas runs out. It took a long time to form and once we, once we suck it all out with our straw, it's gone and we have to go somewhere else to find more. Geothermal replenishes because it's heat underground. Right now, this is where the nuance lies. That depends on where you are, how fast it deplenishes, depends on where you are in the world and how close you are to those leaks. I was just talking about volcanoes and the places where it's hotter underground, closer to the surface. I will say this traditional geothermal methodology, so the type that you find in Iceland where there's these perfect conditions and underground to produce geothermal and we can just stick a straw in there and produce geothermal. Those types of concepts do sometimes run out because what we're doing in those concepts is sucking hot water out of a natural system and eventually sometimes this water is not replenished fast enough. And the geothermal well over time declines. And over time it can mean decades, it could mean, I mean there, there are operating geothermal wells that have been around for more than 100 years, 150 years, and have never depleted. So that there's one in Italy, for instance, speaking of Italy, again, that has just has operated forever with, with very little decline. So you know, it depends on where you are. But for next gen geothermal, so like this geothermal where we're, we're actually trying to engineer the subsurface to make it optimal for producing geothermal, built into those business models is a, an anti depletion calculation where it's like, how can we reach steady state? Let's not take so much heat out that it's not replenishing at the same rate. So then you're, you know, you're extending the lifetime of the well to who knows? Like again we, we haven't done it yet to know how long they last. But most entities are aiming for typical power plants life cycles. So 30 to 50 years of operational, you know, consistency with, with a decline thereafter if, if it happens.
- [58:27]
Robert Llewellyn
So and I mean that, that I think is a great moment to end on because in, if you imagine a. I just want our listeners and viewers to imagine a coal burning power power plant and the amount of coal that is going to burn in 30 to 50 years is massive. And what you're doing with this is you're, you're running, you could be running the same system and you don't need a train and a coal mine and a ship that moves it and you bring it. It's already there. It's there.
- [58:53]
Jamie Beard
Well, and minus the, minus the emissions.
- [58:56]
Robert Llewellyn
And minus the emissions.
- [58:57]
Jamie Beard
Minus the emissions. Right. And that's, that's, that's really, you know, that's really what's exciting about the oil and gas role in all this too, which you're literally enabling an industry to do what they're already. And what they already do. Well, minus the part that people don't like which is emissions and CO2. So like speed and scale. Speed and scale. Let's go.
- [59:20]
Robert Llewellyn
All power to you. Drill deeper. Drill baby, drill.
- [59:23]
Jamie Beard
Drill baby, drill.
- [59:25]
Robert Llewellyn
That is fantastic. That has been such fun, Jamie. I was looking forward to today anyway, but then I always have a nervous thing in the background. Oh, I hope I don't screw it up or I hope it's interesting. It's been amazing.
- [59:37]
Jamie Beard
Silence or something, you know.
- [59:38]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah, that would be bad. That has been a real joy. Thank you so much and I hope we will, we'll get you back on in the future for sure. Thank you. Well, I really hope you enjoyed that. I think that was a, it was one of the podcasts I was really looking forward to doing and it wasn't a letdown. What a what? Amazing woman. Extraordinary. I'm sure we'll be speaking to her again. She really is special and that and her knowledge of this stuff is just really. Her knowledge and enthusiasm is really infectious. That's it. Really hope you enjoyed it. As I said at the beginning, please tell your pals about this show. And as always, if you have been thank you for listening.
- [60:19]
Duracell Energy Representative
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- [61:22]
Jamie Beard
Good luck.