Demand for power generation and grid equipment is booming. Can the industry keep up?

22:46There's more attention on how quickly can we deploy. And at some point, people are looking at the actual inputs, the turbines, the transformers, and things like that, and saying, well, it's going to take a few years to get those. It's always taken a few years. But what's happened is we have increasingly added capacity to meet that demand so we can stay in sync with the infrastructure. So, where I think the narrative, I think, could be clarified a little bit is, and I think it has been clarified to an extent, is it's not just about the turbines and the transformers. It's about the infrastructure.

23:15And something Scott, our CEO, always says is, if you can show me a turbine stand without a turbine, I will find your turbine. I will get it on it. And no one has been able to do that yet. So, what we need to do collectively is if we want to build things faster or deploy them faster than we have in the past, we will meet that moment. But we're going to have to solve for the infrastructure. We're going to have to solve for all the connections and all the permitting and things like that together. So we are working at the same type of lead times we always have. We're making more of things. We've gone, I think, from 18 gigawatts of capacity to announcing 30 gigawatts of capacity here in the US.

23:48That's a lot in a few years. But we also want to work across the whole ecosystem to make sure the ecosystem's keeping pace as well so we can meet the expectations of the growing demand and the greater sense of urgency that we're seeing in this environment.

24:01Roger Martella:And then when you talk about that sense of urgency, I'm just thinking through what we talked about at the top of the show, which is this idea of electrifying so many things, building out the infrastructure that's necessary for electrification and to support that growing demand, and then doing it with sustainability as a foundational piece of it and how you think about it. And as you look at expanding all the different pieces of your manufacturing, of your workforce, like how does that, I mean, bluntly, how does that conversation go? Like how does that strategy go when you're thinking about, okay, we're moving quickly and we're meeting demand and sustainability is core to that.

24:35Roger Martella:How do those things come together? Well, thank you. I'd love to share that because this is, you know, goes back to my story a little bit too. So I spent 30 years of my career in DC before GE, roughly that. And you could look at my LinkedIn, you'll see I had a number of different titles that sound like I did a lot of things and proud of those roles. But the reality is that someone who cares about these issues, who cares about environment, cares about now climate change, sustainability, all of that was kind of an exercise in frustration because you would take two steps forward, you take two steps back.

25:04And what we would find about the environment we were working in is it was a zero sum game. Maybe you'd get something here, but then some court would affect that there. What has changed, I think, about the last few years, and I think GE Vernova is part of this is we are now, for the first time in my career, making investments at scale that are actually going to move the needle when it comes to sustainability, when it comes to emissions and these things. So, it's this thing we've been looking for for a long time. No one ever thought policy was going to solve it on its own. It would take the private sector investing.

25:33This goes back to the Biden administration. They were on board with this as well. And the private sector is now making these investments at scale. And what we do as a company, I think we do this more than any other company, is we track the, connect the dots between how is the electricity we're putting on the grid, how does that have an impact on jobs, how does it have an impact on workforce training, how does it have an impact on emissions? So just to share an example, so if we go back to 2024, I'm sorry, 2025, if we look at our impact in 2025, we put 26 gigawatts of capacity on the grid. That's about the size of Louisiana's grid.

26:06And we energized 68 gigawatts of transformers. That's about the size of Egypt's grid. The carbon intensity of that capacity we put online in 2025 was 37 % below the grid itself. And so the more we're making these investments at scale, the more we're improving the trajectory of emissions, of greenhouse gas emissions. And so we really see these investments as not only good for AI and good for all these other things we're talking about, manufacturing and jobs, but really being those investments at scale that are long overdue. We avoided 22 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions with our technologies.

26:41That's about 5.1 million cars coming off the road. So we're trying to connect the dots and be very clear on how these investments at scale are also leading those benefits when it comes to communities and emissions at the same time. And sorry, those were global numbers, were they? What was that? Those are global numbers, yes. Yeah, got it. Right. And in particular, then that emissions benefit, well, that comes from grids that are more coal-based shifting to burning more gas and renewables, I guess, as well. It could be that in certain parts of the world. It could be shifting from coal or even fuels to natural gas.

27:13It could be shifting from other types of fuels onto renewables. We make wind turbines, of course. Electrifying the grid makes the grid work more efficiently. And we're going to hopefully not too long from now be at the point we're going to be turning on small modular reactors. And that will have a further impact on improving that trajectory of emissions.

27:31Roger Martella:I'll tell you, I was looking at engineer nerd. We all know this. Ed, you can start laughing now. But I was looking through some of y 'all's public information on different technologies in preparation for the conversation. And it was interesting. I was thinking back to when I was a graduate student at University of Texas at Austin for Michael Weber, who's still a professor there. And the inputs I put into my models around emissions from some of y 'all's equipment that was put and put in my model and also water use around it, the land footprints, all these pieces. And I realized the inputs of that model, if I was building it today, would be substantially different.

28:06Roger Martella:Even if I just stayed, Ed, to your question right then, even if I just stayed within natural gas around a turbine, is that example, much less if I looked at the overall efficiency of operation and maintenance around wind turbines. I mean, the inputs have fundamentally changed. And, okay, yes, there's been a bit of time between those two moments today and when I was mailing that model. But it is very interesting to see how those progressions have moved forward even before kind of electrification started really taking off here in more recent years. Yeah, Melissa, we're learning too. We can be a little nerdy too.

28:38We love it. And we had an intern here from MIT that I think last Friday was his last day this summer. And he did something that we hadn't even done where he said, you know, you guys take credit for the greenhouse gas improvements, the carbon intensity improvements of your equipment, but you don't take credit for, you don't look at, you don't do an analysis on your upgrades. And so he actually did an analysis. Every time we go through and upgrade our turbines, we do services on them to make them more efficient. We do understand the efficiency benefits. We understand the capacity benefits of just doing routine maintenance.

29:08But now he did a calculation that created a calculator using AI tools that enables us now to say, if you do this service, do this maintenance, do this upgrade, here's going to be the carbon benefits of it as well. So we're learning, too, and we're trying to capture this. But as you say, this is all changing in real time. So we're really excited to get this project and we'll look to roll that out next year. That's very cool. Yeah, it's a really, really interesting taste point. So you mentioned small modular nuclear reactors. I want to come on to talk on those in just a moment. Before we do that, I want to go back to the subject of lead times and what's happening there.

29:40Because as you say, a lot of people in the electricity industry are very focused on this. A lot of people are concerned about it. So, as you say, I think it's right and fair to say that you don't hear quite as much about it now as you did a year ago. I'm not sure if that's because some of these constraints are actually getting a bit better or just because people have got resigned to it and they just think that's the way the world is nowadays and you're going to have these long lead terms and they're just going to have to put up with it and work around it. What's your sense of it then? Do you think the times are coming down?

30:15Do you think they will start to come down? As you say, as this new capacity gets added, is that something that's going to make it easier for customers to get hold of the equipment they need? The capacity is certainly making it easier to get a hold of the equipment they need. Our goal, though, again, is to meet the market, to meet the demand. So we believe strongly. I think this is why the narrative has changed because I think we've invested a lot. I've invested a lot. Scott's invested a lot, my colleagues, in educating, taking people into our factories where they can see us installing hundreds of heavy-duty machines and earth-moving equipment and meeting all the people we're hiring.

30:52I think people got the message, okay, Vernova is not the bottleneck. I think there was a perception that the OEMs like ourselves, we were the bottleneck. And there's other things that could be bottlenecks. But I do think we have managed to explain what is accurate that we will meet the moment. So if you have a turbine stand that needs a turbine, we will have your turbine for you. And I think what's happening with the lead times is people have come to appreciate it's much more an ecosystem. It's the infrastructure. It's the investment. It's all the things that come into building a power plant. It's not just about getting a turbine there.

31:23No one can build a power plant and just expect us to show up with the turbine. It takes a few years to do that, to get the connections, even on the electrification equipment. So we are constantly increasing capacity. We're constantly meeting the demands of the market. We could probably debate are the times moving forward or back. I just think that's the question we're not as focused on. I think the question is, are we leaving our customers without the technology they need? And I think we've been successful in demonstrating that that's not happening. We are meeting our customers where they need us.

31:52And we're going to continue to do so. We're going to continue to make those investments. And there's going to be more to come on our supply chain announcements. This is not the end of our story. Right. Because one thing I wonder is how you make those decisions about how much capacity to add. And two considerations I think of that I guess must loom large in your minds and perhaps have an impact in terms of making you not add as much capacity as you could. One would be the fact that the electrical equipment market has always been highly cyclical. And again, when thinking back to 2017 and the terrible position that GE in general and GE Energy in particular was in at that time, I think a lot of that was about still that kind of hangover from the previous cycle, the previous boom in demand for equipment, boom in demand for gas turbines.

32:48and that had a very long hangover. I mean, I guess when did that kind of peak? But I guess sort of peaked in late 90s, early 2000s, did it? And then the kind of the decline from then took a long time. So one point, cyclicality of the market, presumably, as I say, is something you think about a lot. The other thing I then wonder about is sort of your constraints in terms of the equipment and materials that you can get from your suppliers. And as you say, it's very important to think about that whole ecosystem. And also, I wonder about availability of the workers you need. So as you say, you're trying to hire a lot of people.

33:30Very often, these are for skilled positions, I know. And everyone talks about how hard it is at the moment in the United States to hire people for a lot of these skilled trades and so on. So, sorry, that's a very long and winded question. It probably would make sense to think about it in two parts. But I'm interested in both of those issues, which is one, cyclicality, and then two, kind of your constraints and things like skill shortages on the way those affect your decision making. Sure. On the cyclicality point, I think it's fair to say that's certainly something that weighs on you in the room.

34:04And these are boardroom level discussions, as everybody would want them to be. And so these are not decisions that are made lightly. There's a lot of considerations going on, including the demand from our customers, the certainty of that, policies, the cyclical point, the ability to access materials and equipment and things like that. But we are optimistic. We see, again, looking at this with a global lens, as we must, as a company that helps produce 25 % of the world's electricity, we see demand well into the next decade for a variety of different reasons. And not just because of AI factories.

34:38That's part of it. But just a sense of a super cycle right now that the world needs to invest in the world's most complex machine. We've taken it for granted, whether it's energy security or just providing more access or more industrialization, that we are seeing very diverse demand from very diverse places. And that's the kind of thing that gives you higher level conviction in making these types of investments. You're not betting it all on one thing. And I just really have the most respect for our team and our board that they do challenge, right? That no one takes anything for granted. No one's going to this rose-colored glasses.

35:12But we're trying to find that right balance of meeting the moment, meeting our customers, but also being reflective of the past because we've all been through it at this point several times. And when you talk about workforce, that is our biggest opportunity. I'll go back to my – this is my personal view, not the company's position. But I do think we, as a country, undersold that, that we haven't really created a lot of optimism historically, at least during my career, of encouraging people to go into the trades, into the vocations, into working in manufacturing, working in industrial. I think we have had policies that have directed us more towards kind of service economies, which are important and great.

35:49But I always felt, because I saw the impacts on my own home, my own communities, that we needed to do both. And so I think we have a bit of a lag there as a country. I think the Trump administration, Secretary Wright, Secretary Burgum and others, they have been fully transparent on that and they have been doubling down on kind of being highly inspiring, highly motivating on how do we inspire the next generation of those leaders. And we're partnering on that. We're partnering with other companies. We're partnering with the administration. We're partnering everywhere where we have factories with Governor Shapiro and others on creating that workforce of the future.

36:21It's going to take some time. There's going to be a bit of a lag there. But everybody's committed to doing it. And I see the benefits already paying off and I see the opportunities already paying off. Every business has priorities to protect, goals to reach and decisions that need to hold up. Energy should support all of that, not become one more thing to manage. That's why Engie takes the time to understand your business before building energy solutions around it. Your operations, your goals, your pressures, your plans for what's next. Because while Engie knows energy, no one knows your business like you.

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37:14Roger Martella:I will say, Roger, you just brought me back to a fun memory. I was backstage at a World Economic Forum meeting in Saudi Arabia. And I'll leave it generic. I was sitting next to a CEO of a big company. And they said in an AI era, if your kids were going out to college, kind of, or going off to their next step after high school, what would you recommend that they do? And they said college. And I sat there and I was like, well, what do you mean? They said, well, what do you think the workforce of the future needs like in an AI era? And I said, more electricians. That was the first thing I said. And they were like, well, wait, not more programmers, not more.

37:53Roger Martella:And I'm like, look, there's all kinds of valuable jobs and job shift in this era that we're stepping into. But when you talk about the trades, I just was sitting there going, if I wanted a great, well-paying job that had a lot of security, electrician. That is where I'd be going right now. Because everything you're talking about today is powered by electricity, every single piece of it. And so how are we going to build that out? And how are we going to build it out effectively, efficiently, cleanly, et cetera? You've got to have people who know how the system works and can literally wire that sucker up.

38:26Roger Martella:So I haven't thought about that in years. No, it's great. But it's true. And we think about the workforce of the future. But Ed, you've got questions. And I'm kind of waiting when you're going to come back to SMRs because I can't believe you waited this long. No, no, no. Sorry. We'll come to that. Yeah. Promise we'll come to that in just a moment. But I am really interested in this workforce question because it feels like it's one of these things that slightly, what's the word? I want to push back on it because it feels such a consensus kind of thing. everyone we have on this show um agrees with you on this basically agrees with you melissa agrees with roger um you everyone i read as you say it's it's true in a kind of a bipartisan way across u.s politics at the federal level state level everyone's yeah yeah you know we need more of these skilled workers we need people who can uh be electricians welders bummers other things so that seems very kind of broadly agreed and yet the problems persist which makes me think that there are maybe some more deep-rooted problems and i wonder beyond people kind of nodding their heads and agreeing and yes yes you're absolutely right about this this is terribly important what's really being done to change things to actually deliver those increases in the supply of people trained in the right way.

39:55It just feels like it's something which is harder to achieve than it is to talk about. Well, I think you hit on a really important, and I agree with you. We have this conversation internally here as a company because we talk about workforce a lot, and I actually push back as well. I'm like, we have to be very careful here because we always want to differentiate ourselves. We don't want to just repeat what everybody else is saying. And it has become so common. How do we kind of share our own perspective in a way that doesn't sound like a broken record with everyone else? And, you know, Melissa and I talked a little bit about the pipeline here and how do we create the pipeline?

40:26I have four children and the first three, like they were going to college whether they want to or not. I have an eight-year-old and I'm thinking, well, this is a more complicated analysis for me. You know, maybe that's not a given. Maybe, you know, for the first time I'm going to challenge myself. So, there is a little bit of that, I think, that has changed. But what your question goes to, I think, is the motivation. And have we really kind of convinced people, have we really had the time and the benefit? And have we been successful convincing people that this is something they should be thinking about?

40:54Because no one has spoken about that. I mentioned, I said earlier, when GE Vrnova was going to split up, you know, we had a GE corporate leadership team. There were three companies and Scott and I were the only two that went over to the energy business. I don't know why that is. But, you know, my sense is Maybe people don't think like electricity was like the most interesting of this. That's my presumption. Everybody's taken it for granted. And now like it seems I've always thought it was super interesting. So did Scott. And I think other people understand it. But like is the next generation still in that place where we were a couple years ago that maybe everybody doesn't understand, not everybody understands how impactful this could be.

41:30So I mentioned the Women in Energy Program at Columbia. Like we invest a lot there. We're going to be investing more because we want to be inspiring people, whether it's college campuses and we love college campuses or whether vocations, that there is an optimistic opportunity here to really have an impact. We call them the future leaders of energy that you can dedicate your career to not only having a rewarding career, but having a sense of purpose, a sense of impact. And I think sometimes we need to connect the dots on that because people didn't grow up. We didn't grow up. And my kids didn't.

42:01My older kids didn't even grow up in that kind of environment. But now they think it's like super cool and interesting. So we have more work to do there, I think, to create that motivation. But Scott invests a lot in that. That's one of his biggest priorities. And I invest a lot in that. And I'm super optimistic we're going to get there.

42:16Roger Martella:And so a couple of different things. One, I will give a 10-second shout out to Jess Weiss over at the Women in Energy Program at Columbia. She is phenomenal of force and has taken that program to new heights and just really, really respect her. So I'm smiling as you're saying all that, Roger. On the workforce thing, I'm going to actually request for the future, Ed. I feel like this is a topic to dive into in detail with folks who focus on this. I remember when I was doing the Big Switch podcast, which was my textbook at Columbia back in the day. I mean, it's still online. It's still free for folks.

42:47Roger Martella:But we talked with a pair of women who had started an EV, an electric vehicle charger repair company. And they talked about how they built up their workforce out of LA, out of an incubator down there is where the company started and what it really takes in the nitty gritty of finding the right people for these different jobs and what they looked for, for someone who's going to go out and have to get curious and fix this charger in the middle of nowhere that might be, I don't know, have a nest of honeybees in it or maybe the credit card swiper just glitzed out. Who knows? But I would love to have that conversation and go in it in detail, Ed.

43:23Roger Martella:I think it's a really good one for us. Yeah, that's a great idea, Rich, because as you say, it's a fantastic topic. And I think, I mean, to your point, Roger, as you say, there are a lot of attitudes here that are very deeply ingrained in society and go back many, many decades. And as you say, that's just that question about it's always better to go to college if you can than to not go to college. and maybe there are issues about the kind of work you're doing and where you're doing it and perhaps people would rather go to an office and work in an office environment than be out in the field maybe traveling around the country and have less kind of predictability and stability in where they're working maybe nowadays um people like working at home and being able to do that and so again rather than having to go to a work site and do your work on site there that may be something that appeals to people.

44:12So there's a whole lot of other issues around it. And then, of course, the critical question of just what the pay and benefits and job security are, and are people really being offered those right incentives to get those kinds of skills. Yeah, there's an enormous amount to talk about. And I feel I need to go a lot deeper on it to really properly understand, to go back to that point, why it is that people talk about this issue a lot. Everyone seems to agree on it. And yet progress seems to be pretty slow. And it's fascinating because I'd encourage you, I'd love to hear those conversations. And when we talk to the colleges and hopefully you could bring them on, like they're struggling with the same thing, the four-year institutions, they all are looking at the schools like Northeastern and Drexel that have these programs, these co-op programs.

45:05And everyone, I think a lot of these colleges are reaching out there. So how do we reinvent ourselves to get more on the job training, to get more technical training, even if you're getting a four year degree? So even the colleges are seeing kind of this new tension, which I think is very positive tension, but this tension that's arising and bringing people into the real world and making sure they're getting the skills in college they need to go off and be able to succeed if they go that route. Yeah, that's a great point. So look, okay, here's a call out there to anyone who's are listening or watching, if you're involved in education or in trading, workforce development, and you think you have some of the answers on this, please do get in touch because this is definitely an issue we want to discuss further.

45:44So let's get on to SMRs then. We've put it off for a minute. And we must do it. SMRs? What are those? I don't know.

45:53Roger Martella:And I've never talked about them before, ever. No, exactly. Roger, never. Absolutely fascinating topic. Again, you as GE Vanova are right at the heart of it, and you have what I think will be the first commercially operational SMR anywhere in the world. I think that's likely to happen. You're one in Ontario, Canada. Okay, let's level set first of all just by talking a little bit about what GE Vanova is doing in this area. Do you want to explain it to us? No, I love this topic, all joking aside, because I love a comeback story, right? Don't we all love a comeback story? And it wasn't too long ago I was in Silicon Valley just a few years ago with a lot of tech leaders and someone raised a hand and like, whatever happened with nuclear?

46:34Like my dad, my grandfather used to work on nuclear. I'm like, oh, it's actually coming back. And people were just like completely aghast. And now here we are because I think it is like the number one topic where I get the most questions about and where we take the most incoming. I think at this point we're happy to do so. So I think if you've been talking about this, everybody knows SMRs are small modular reactors and that we are kind of at a nuclear renaissance where the world has agreed to triple capacity. I think by 2040 or 2050, I was part of that announcement at COP28. And so there will continue to be conventional reactors built, but a lot of folks see SMRs as very complementary to that.

47:13And this is the notion that these are not going to be bespoke. You're going to have a common design that can be kind of modularized and installed on site and just again and again and again. And that greatly accelerates and simplifies the construction, the timelines, and also the operation and the safety of everything. So we have a unique role to play here. We have an important role to play, Ed, as you point out, because we do have an SMR under construction in Ontario, Canada. There's about 400 people there working on it every single day. And the schedule is for it to be commercially operational by 2030.

47:44So it'll be the first SMR in the Western world to be putting electrons on the grid in 2030. And that's important. And the reason we have this unique role to play is I want to explain a little bit is we took a very, I think, contrarian position when it came to SMRs at the time. It's now paying off in a way, paying off both for us and for others, which is good. Which is we decided to take a more evolutionary approach than a revolutionary approach. So back in the early days of different SMR technologies, everybody wanted to bet on kind of like entirely new things, what they call Generation 4 or Generation 4+.

48:20And we thought that the world needed something a little more modest than that, a little more humble. And so we developed something called the BWRX. BWR stands for Boiling Water Reactor and X stands for 10th. It's the 10th generation of our boiling water reactor, which we have, I think, 70 plus of these in the world operating on common fuels. And what we said, we're going to shrink it down. We're going to modularize it. But it's something everybody's going to understand and be familiar with. And we said, we think this is what the world needs as a bridge to get from point A to point B. And at the time, it was very contrarian.

48:53It was controversial. People kind of dismissed this and said, oh, that's not creative enough. And we think we need to kind of leapfrog ahead. But I think we've been proven right on this that the world has kind of said, we do need this iterative technology. And so the world's been like very aggressively embracing us, embracing the BWRX. And we're very happy to see that. We're happy to be able to serve. We have the deployment in Canada coming in the United States, Europe, other parts of the world. But we're happy about that not just for GE Vinova and the BWRX. We're happy about it for SMRs because what our technology will do will be the proof point that the technology is viable, the commercial case works, and others get to come along too.

49:29And the Generation 4 gets to come. So there's plenty of room for everybody. There's plenty of demand out there. But that's the role we're playing. We get to go first. We take that seriously. But that going first opens the door not just for us but for others. And so it's an extremely exciting time to be in the nuclear space and a real privilege to be part of this. Right. So, I mean, I think that's all very interesting. I focus in immediately on the words you said, proof point. That seems to me to be the crucial thing, as you say. So we're, I mean, you talk about being in a nuclear renaissance. It seems very clear that we're in a renaissance of talking about a nuclear renaissance.

50:07I think until we have some of these new plants actually being built and operating and supplying power to the grid, I still think talking about that actual renaissance seems a bit premature. It feels like we've had kind of false dawns in the past and those kind of waves of enthusiasm kind of rise and then fall again. And people hit a lot of issues. The crucial one always seems to be cost. I'm, in principle, myself very pro-nuclear. I mean, absolutely, I am persuaded by the case that we need a lot more investment in nuclear. But it does seem to be very hard to make the economics work. And SMRs seem like they could potentially be a solution to some of the questions about cost.

50:58And as you say, modularization may reduce cost. I've heard arguments on the other side, though, and I've heard people say, well, actually, most of the work, most of the cost that goes into a nuclear plant is on-site, balance-a-plant type stuff, safety, all of that around the plant, the actual modularization does not save you an enormous amount of money. And obviously, it's unfair to generalize just from the example of what's going on in Ontario, because that's first of a kind and so on. But some of the numbers that have been flying around for the cost of that plant do make it sound like it's pretty expensive.

51:37So to your point about proof points, where do you to get to to show that new nuclear, SMRs in particular, really is a cost-effective, viable solution for making a contribution, a significant contribution, to meeting electricity demand? Yeah, no, it's a total fair point, Ed. And look, we cannot run our nuclear business like a hobby. We know, as I said, because we're going first, the world is watching. I can assure, we are aware every day, I'm aware every day coming, the world is watching, because we have to succeed here. We can't just succeed to produce electrons. We have to succeed as a business.

52:15And we hold ourselves to that standard. I can assure you, again, at board level discussions, like we are running this not as a hobby, but as a business, knowing that it has to be competitive, cost competitive to justify its existence on scale with other types of technologies. And we're not even factoring like a climate premium, which some people probably would, but we have to make it cost competitive on its own merits. We wouldn't be doing it if we didn't think we were going to get there. Now, we recognize as a first of its kind, we're going to have learnings. And even the next of its kind, we're going to have learning.

52:45So, that cost curve is going to improve. And we're thankful for our partners like in Ontario who are working through these learnings with us. But one of the things, you know, because we know the world is watching, because we've been able to do this before, the amount of governance around how do we take everything we're doing today in Canada and translate that into becoming more cost competitive with the next iteration and taking those learnings to make every little detail from nuts and bolts into design and common design and things like that. So we're constantly driving that cost curve is happening on a daily basis.

53:17And it's almost effectively a full-time job just making sure as we deliver the first of its kind that we're improving that cost curve. Because I go back to what I said, this can't be a hobby. This has to be a business. It has to stand on its own merits. And we cannot afford to send the wrong signals that we under-delivered or something like that. So this weighs on us every day. We're running it with the type of governance you would expect and the type of rigor people would want us to.

53:40Roger Martella:And Roger, am I right that the Darlington project up there in Ontario, it's eventually going to have 1.2 gigs, so like four units eventually is the plan for the build out of that? There's one under construction and they're considering another three. And I think that's under consideration. Yes. So one thing I will say that's really interesting to me when I'm watching it, the technology is very cool. All right. I'm an engineer at the end of the day. I love it. Let's go into it. Let's go through it. You don't care how much it costs. I think it's really cool. Man, I want to respond to that, Ed, but then we're going to go into a whole cost comparison and value of prime power.

54:19Roger Martella:I'm sorry, that was a cheap shot. I'm sorry. No, I was talking about the value of prime power, of firm power and all that stuff. But pausing that for a second, I got really interested when it talked about the amount of concrete that will be used on these sites compared to a traditional one, the actual construction timelines and how you're practically achieving it. Because I know, Ed, when we've gone into these discussions about, yes, the cost of nuclear, to your comment right then, and also just what technologies are practical pathways forward, not a cool PowerPoint, but something that actually gets built out.

54:51Roger Martella:And then, as what you just said, Roger, not just built once, built multiple times on the same site or other sites. It's like those practical things around construction timeframes and how you actually think about, what is it? Go back to my project management classes, the Gantt chart. Let's go through it. Let's actually plan this project. How does it work? That is something that I know I'm watching really closely. Yes, the technology is very cool. It's very interesting. Not saying it's not, but the construction and the actual process is there and how it practically gets moved from a concept to a build to a completed build that's putting electricity on the network.

55:28Roger Martella:Like that's a lot of learnings to your point, but also something I know I think a lot of us are watching really closely. I appreciate it. And, you know, that's my point. I think I said the world is watching, right? And one of the reasons when Scott and I had an investor day, I think in March, we rang the bell in the stock exchange in April 2024. We had an investor day in March about the month ahead of that. And I had to give some remarks. And my remarks were that, you know, when we come to work every day, we feel a sense of history. We feel the aura of history. Melissa, you talked about Thomas Edison going back 130 years.

56:02But I think this is an example of that. Like we're with humility, like we know we're making history here for the industry, for others, including our competitors. And we take it with that kind of seriousness. And so that's the mindset in which we go into. We have to succeed on this so that we do it. But if we don't do it, what's the alternative? You know, we could certainly debate a lot, not with you, but with others, you know, is this feasible? Is it going to happen? We're just going to do it. And we're going to do it successfully. We're going to do it well. We're going to take our learnings running other businesses.

56:33Maybe we won't have the same margins in the first few units that we have on gas turbines or switchgear equipment. Fine. We'll drive the cost curve. But the alternative is we don't do it. And that's just not the mindset of this company. It's not the mindset of our CEO. He's always focused on the future, the next decade. and this is going to be something that becomes part of this company for decades to come.

56:54Roger Martella:Yeah, and I will say on that, so I mean, we've talked about gas turbines, we've talked about wind, we've talked about nuclear, also things in terms of Yale's portfolio moving forward. There's some really other cool techs in that portfolio that when you think about the next decade or decades, I don't know, Ed, I was tracking down more information on Director Capture and kind of that project moving forward. I was looking at, you have a really cool, is it called AirJewel where you're saying, hey, let's take some air, let's pull some water out of it. How's that going to work? I say that jokingly, but it was an idea of, okay, how do we actually do this?

57:27Roger Martella:I was reading about it online. I will say it seems like, and I'm curious because we have you here, it seems like you're pushing the portfolio across the entire energy portfolio, not just one piece of it, and then also the tangential sustainability pieces that relate to it and that are really important, whether it's water, carbon, et cetera. To have all that in one company. I mean, that's an interesting place to come to work each day. That is a very interesting place to come every day. I appreciate it. I think so. And I think it goes out to your point earlier about the boardroom level decisions on how we decide on capacity.

57:59It's like someone could maybe look at us and say, you guys are going to be quite busy for a long time making gas turbines, electrification equipment. And so go ahead. And we will do that. And we're going to drive that every day for efficiency and more outcome. But we can't stand still on that. We have to be building the company for the next decade as much as we're delivering this decade. And so, Melissa, everything you're talking about, that's all front of mind as we build the company for the next decade, which will look a lot like this company this decade, but look a lot different in a lot of ways, too.

58:28And those technologies are all part of our future and maybe some things that we don't even know about yet or we haven't talked about. So, we're trying to do both of those at the same time. And two and a half years into this, we didn't maybe have the luxury or the gift of the ability to do both of those. We had to focus on just justifying running the company. But increasingly, as a leadership team, we're putting more and more of our attention to what does the company the next decade look like. And that's also very exciting.

58:54Roger Martella:And I'll make one comment I'll share with you, Roger. I sent Ed a link before we started. I think it was yesterday. It was over the weekend where I was like, hey, if there's a moment, I'm really intrigued by this. Essentially, what I term y 'all's predictive maintenance on steroids taking it to the next generation. AKA we got drones and AI going in and going into some of these complex jobs, not just on turbines, wind, or gas, but the whole system to say, how can we actually make sure that technicians are doing the jobs that they have to be doing? And we're limiting exposure to dangerous situations.

59:31Roger Martella:We're making sure that they're being as efficient with their time as possible. And we're giving them more tools in the toolbox to actually do things like that on existing systems that are out there, as well as the new ones you're building out. I mean, it's just fascinating. And I know we were messaging about that last night and the interesting stuff there. Yeah. So I was going to ask, Roger, how you think about getting that balance right then, as you say, between the company of this decade and the company of the next decade? Because clearly, when you look at, well, put it this way, at the very least, when you look at the discourse in business and among investors, sustainability has been de-emphasized in the past few years.

1:00:14climate policy has been very much de-emphasized in this country and to an extent elsewhere around the world. As you say, Europe's very much focused on energy security. Asia is focused on providing energy for development. From what you're saying, though, you are still investing in some of those technologies for decarbonization, and you still think those are going to be important in the longer term future of the company. So as I say, I'm interested in how you balance off that future perspective with what you need to be doing right now to maximize the value of the company currently and benefit from all the opportunities you've got at the moment, which, as we've been saying, are enormous.

1:01:00We have two mindsets in here in 2026, perform and transform. and it wasn't always that way. We were more focused on, I'd say more exclusively focused on perform for the early part of our history. Our short history was about performing and demonstrating what we could do separate and apart from GE and how do we even make things better and improve upon GE. And so that continues to be our mandate every day to perform. We have to succeed as a company. Please make no mistake. Goal number one is to succeed as a company for our investors, for our shareholders, for our employees, for our customers. And that's the perform element of what we do.

1:01:34But we wouldn't be fully successful if we just took that for granted, if we weren't focused on transforming. And transforming can mean, Melissa, some of the things you were talking about. Scott, a big believer in AI and automation, taking an industrial company but automating it at the same time. And he's a visionary on that. He's going to be on the leading edge of how do you combine those two things together. As you point out, that's part of transforming for the future as well as what are the technologies we should be thinking about. Now, we see the benefits. It's like what we're investing in, we think, checks both boxes.

1:02:07What's our mission? Our mission is to electrify the planet, to enable people to thrive, and so we can improve emissions. I'd like to think, again, this is my view, anything we do checks all three of those boxes, whether it's direct air capture, carbon capture, air joule. We're enabling all three of those things together. So I don't know that we're like specifically saying we're going to pick this for the decarbonization benefits versus that for the electrification benefits. We find a way to make sure we're doing all three of those things simultaneously. And I worry a little less about the policy because I've been around a long time.

1:02:37I've seen the policies come and go. But I will say as a global company with a global footprint and wide customers, these issues are there today. I wouldn't even kind of support a proposition that somehow they've been diminished or diluted in a lot of places. We have customers today that are making decisions on who they're going to work with based on sustainability performance, sustainability metrics. and things like that. So nothing has changed in that department for us as a global company. And we continue to see the growing pressures and demands. Melissa started this about forest fires, not just in Nevada.

1:03:10You know, we have colleagues in France and in Europe that were impacted by forest fires this summer who had to evacuate and things like that. This is really, all of these impacts are just driving more demands from our customers to make sure we are serving them, not only on performance, but on the sustainability side as well.

1:03:26Roger Martella:So I've got one question just because we're all here together. I just flagged a couple of technologies that I find really interesting when I'm looking through your portfolio. Roger, do you have any favorites that you're also looking at that we haven't mentioned today? Any cool projects that are top of mind for you and you're like, ooh, look at what we're doing over here to that overall portfolio. We're not picking favorites. They all have roles to play, but just some other ones that maybe aren't top of everyone's conversation every day. Thank you, Melissa. You know, the one thing we haven't talked about that I think needs to be more at the table is something called HVDC, which is, you know, this is something I've had to learn about.

1:04:03I'm not going to be the best teacher on this, but I kind of assumed you could move electricity from point A to point B during my life. And it turns out that's super hard, even getting it from offshore facilities or like from one country to another or across different parts of the grid is not an easy thing to do. It requires a new type of technology we call HVDC from point A to point B. And as the world looks for more energy security and how do we have as much flexibility as possible in the grid, HVDC is something that's going to enable us to just increase the number of access points, the number of roads that serve the grid as a superhighway and enable us to transmit things in ways we haven't before.

1:04:44That would be one thing. I think the other thing that's kind of undersold in the space is software. You know, the grid is the most complicated machine ever built. And we kind of take it for granted. It was never built for the world it finds itself. It was kind of built as a one-way little street. Now it has the variability of renewables. It has cybersecurity risk. It has bigger demand than ever diverse sources. And so software using artificial intelligence enables us just to make everything work better, more efficiently, avoid blackouts and brownouts and things like that. So I think we have more room to do.

1:05:13We're really proud of our software products, but we have more room to do kind of like acclimating them, socializing them, so that that becomes an area that you can invest in that I think has the biggest bang for the buck when it comes to return on investment. Yeah, no, great point. That's really interesting. On that HVDC, is Jeevan over in that market then? We are. We are. We're one of the leading companies there. We have a number of projects all around the world. And I think our customers understand it. I think from a policy perspective, this is where I'd like to spend more time educating policy leaders because I think they either think of really big generation or they think of the switchgearing components.

1:05:50They tend to think less about how do you move electricity from point A to point B in more secure ways. And so, HVDC, I think, is the example. I think a lot of people associate it strictly with offshore wind. And the U.S. offshore wind is not a very popular topic right now. So, it's got maybe a bit of a stigma there if I'm being transparent in the U.S. And so, we're trying to explain it's not just about offshore wind. It's about how do you get our different ISOs connected in ways that they haven't been able to connect before. HVDC is the solution. And so we're having those conversations and folks have been pretty receptive of more work to do.

1:06:22Right, because that was the last thing I wanted to ask you about, actually, which is policy. If there's one message you have to policymakers, everyone's concerned about meeting electricity demand. around the world, as we've been saying, has an interest in meeting power demand for AI, for energy security, for economic development. What could policymakers do that would really help you expand and grow, provide the equipment the industry needs? Ed, if you're asking me like a magic wand type question, because you already challenged me, don't talk about the things everybody talks about, like workforce development and permitting.

1:06:59You're the president. Okay. President maybe of the United States or even president of the world. What are you going to do? Well, yeah, because I'm not even sure the president respects what I'm going to tell you. Because people would say permitting and workforce. Look, here's the biggest. Again, with my global lens, our global lens, and as kind of a global policy person, the biggest thing that keeps me up at night about all of this is the lack of policy durability. Talk about how do you make investments in supply chain. You can make investments today that you feel great about, and two years from now, they start to be questioned by whoever comes next, not just in the U.S.

1:07:32and other places. Then I compare that with other parts of the world I get to travel to, whether that's in Asia or the Middle East. They come up with a 10-year plan. They stick to it. They invest in it. They execute on it. They implement it. And I worry about that. I worry about that for my children, for our country, that are we going to fall behind because other countries are able to stick to something, execute on it, and we just kind of keep relitigating the same policies, going to court. it's two steps forward, two steps back. So policy durability to me is like the single thing that I worry about.

1:08:01I'm going to continue to worry about it. If I were president, I'm not sure I could fix it. I would try. That would be important. But I think it's I think it's understated and it's underappreciated. But it's serious, especially from a competitiveness perspective, because parts of the world are just moving forward. And Europe and the US have a way of just kind of getting on a treadmill. And we can't afford that anymore. We just can't afford it. And And that's what I would solve for. Yeah, that's a great point. And that's a really fantastic message from this podcast. And let's hope some of the relevant people are listening.

1:08:32Because, yeah, I do think it's a lesson. I'm sure they are. I'm sure they are. Exactly, exactly. Unfortunately, we do have to leave it there. It's been great talking to you both. Many thanks, Melissa. See you very soon.

1:08:42Roger Martella:Yeah, Ed, Roger, I really enjoyed this. This was a fantastic way to start the day and start the week over here in Nevada. So I appreciate the conversation. Look forward to continuing it. Ed, thank you for the honor of inviting me, inviting GE Vernova. Thank you for your leadership, Melissa. I'm thinking of you with the fires and everybody there and hope that all gets resolved quickly. But we are here to serve and anything we can do to support you in the future in any way, please don't hesitate to reach out. But thank you for taking such an interest and for all the thoughtful conversation. I really appreciate it.

1:09:09Well, thank you. Thank you again very much for joining us. It has been a fantastic conversation. Many thanks also to our producer, Molly Merwin. And above all, as ever, many thanks to all of you for listening. We really value your feedback. Please do keep that coming. Leave us a review, get in touch on social media, and we'll be back very soon with all the latest news and views on the future of energy. Until then, goodbye.