Why Clean Energy Will Always Win (Eventually...) with Cleantechnica

29:14Exactly the same thing, really. And now suddenly you're going, oh, my God, Utrecht is actually running off its cars for some period in the evening. You know, that is It's bonkers. Yeah. Yeah. Super, super cool. I mean, what they're doing with energy storage and especially with distributed storage and shaving peak demand and demand response stuff is so fascinating. It's so fascinating. Have you seen Zoom? Z-U-M? Oh, no. What's Zoom? Oh, you'd love this. Zoom is incredible. It's a bus, for lack of a better word. But it's so it started off. There was a woman in the Bay Area, San Francisco Bay Area, who was frustrated with her kid getting on the public school bus and the challenges that happened.

30:03You know, any number of things. Right. And she said, I bet we can do this better. You know, it's one of these things. And so as of today, I just toured the Zoom facility in Oakland and it was incredible. They have giant all electric school buses. Right. Those are the big yellow school buses. Big yellow school bus. Yeah. I don't know what color your school buses are in the UK. We don't even have school buses. Our children have to walk barefoot through the snow. Through the snow uphill both ways. Got it. Yeah. No, we don't have specific buses like that. Yeah. Okay. In America, if you look at it a certain way, it's the biggest mass transit system in America.

30:4425 million riders a day use this transit system, right? And it's distributed and independently operated and managed. But the bottom line is that these electric school buses are solving so many challenges. This is like, okay, the first electric school bus maybe was equivalent to the CFL. This is like an LED on crack, okay? This bus, the batteries are humongous on these things. They drive the kids, drop them off at school. They plug the bus in. And then the thing just sucks down solar power all day, right? Just like cruising on basically free energy. Fill these batteries up, these gigantic batteries.

31:24And then they drive the kids around, drop them off at home, park the bus. The bus then powers the grid during peak demand. Duh, right? So 5 to 9 p.m., electricity rates skyrocket. You've got this giant array of battery storage. It happens to be in the form of a school bus. but they're all plugged in and they're all bi-directional and and now they're like powering the school plus selling electricity to the grid and all this kind of stuff and it's and it's mind-bogglingly like straightforward and simple but what's beautiful i love that so many in the sustainability movement now are doing these human-centered designs so zoom also has like an rfid chip so it's like you you scan in and scan out your card i guess when you get on the bus so the school kids get on the bus get off the bus they know what's up right and then their parents know where they are.

32:13They know the kid's on the bus or not on the bus. Oh, cool. He made it on the bus. Great. Whatever. I'm good. The bus is quiet. So any bullying that's happening, the bus driver can hear it. He's a parent. He's like, hey, sit down. Rex? Stop picking on that kid. Stop picking on little Jimmy. So it's cut down on bullying. This is the thing. And it's quiet, it. Right. So it's like, you're driving around kids can, they're not like damaging their hearing, you know, the bus driver doesn't damage his hearing, you know, and then it, there's no fumes. That's the thing is like the school buses typically like they take care of the lower and moderate, moderate income kids in the United States.

32:56Right. And so those are the ones most exposed to diesel fumes, which of course like starts their day in a bad way. And then they get to school and then they're a little like spacey and then the teacher's like pay attention And then they're mad. And then, you know, like, so it just solves so many problems. It's so such a beautiful, elegant solution. And it's and it's growing. So it's like growing super fast in the United States. So it's only a matter of time that it's like it hasn't changed in 200 years, or whatever, it hasn't changed in a long time. And then boom, it's just gonna, it's gonna be completely different.

33:26So yeah, I don't know, stuff like that is that that that trips me out. Just like I sit back and I just like admire the genius of this woman and her two, you know, co founders who started this company. And now it's like this booming company hiring a bunch of people doing just solving all these problems all at once. You know, it's just because I had heard about the buses, but I didn't realize. So it started in Berkeley then is that it started in California? Is that where they started? Of course. It was a Bay Area startup, you know. So, yeah, it is. I mean, it is. We've lived through some fascinating history.

34:01When I think back to when I spent a lot of time in California, the positivity cluster of Silicon Valley in San Francisco was remarkable. It was globally noticed. It was incredible. The culture is all about creativity and innovation. There's arts and technology is the foundation, the backbone of Silicon Valley. And that I don't think will ever change. I think, honestly, Robert, just between you and me, I think it's the redwoods. the redwood trees there just like you know you can't go outside and see these redwoods and go yeah not be you know yeah it just inspires creativity you know in california's coastline and the just the ocean and like the surfing and the great white sharks that are just right off the coast just like waiting to eat every surfer just inspires a lot of creativity it's quite similar to sydney i see people swimming out in the bay i go what the hell They're just fish food, you know.

34:54That's just terrifying. That's, no, I'm good.

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35:35but i mean i think uh i don't think i'll again go into any contemporary situation in america but i think there have been some slightly less positive figures connected with silicon valley in the last few years which is you know challenging and difficult but i think i think it's really good and i think it's important that you underline that there is an underlying very positive very creative you know not dictated by uh by um dogma or anything you know because i think that you know just that that you know the the innovation i mean uh solar pv you know didn't come wasn't invented same as this the lithium-ion battery wasn't invented it's actually invented in oxford in England, the early lithium-ion battery, but by an American professor.

36:19When I was a hippie with lots of long hair in Oxford in the 1970s, there were some scientists in a building I know really well, who developed the rechargeable lithium-ion battery. It's so weird to think back. That's all happened in my lifetime. That's pretty cool. I want to see the pictures of you with the long here though oh it's embarrassing yeah well i mean i think the thing is that i used to get propositioned by by heterosexual men not gay men i would have been happy if gay men were propositioning and they'd be like yeah and i go hello with quite a deep voice

37:02oh my god yeah no it's incredible so okay here's another one that i didn't see coming and has come very quickly, and I'd love your take on that, which is data centers. Well, I think particularly AI data centers, because we've had, you know, you and I are only able to do this because of data centers and networking and all those things. And anybody listening or watching this, that's where, where's it stored, this video? Let me tell you, it's in a massive building, probably in a desert, using gargantuan amounts of water. But I mean, that, you will have been aware of this as well. I mean, that argument that people used to say, oh, if we all have electric cars, the grid will melt.

37:38I remember hearing that so many times. And all that's happened since you've had electric cars is the grid is healthier and operating in a more balanced way. And then suddenly data centers just go boom. And everyone goes, holy cow, we can't power. There's not enough power in the world to make these work. Right, right, right. Yeah. And it's one of these things that, again, we'll look back in five years and be like, oh, that's right. That was a problem at one point. You know, I just, I, the thing is I look at problems and I put them typically in three buckets. If there's a cultural problem, if there's a business problem, or if there's a technological problem, right?

38:15Right. The cultural problem, try to get people to buy more EVs. That's a cultural problem, right? Yeah. The business problem is how do you make a business case for it? And then the technological problem, can we actually solve this problem? And so whenever something is a technological problem, I tend not to worry about it because Because it's one of these things that the economics alone will drive somebody to create something that does something that solves the problem in all the ways. Just like the school bus. It's just like somebody will come up with something that solves all these problems. So it already is the case that the best way to power these data centers is on-site solar.

38:52So there is a strong return on investment for that. Put some battery storage, do some solar right on-site. No grid interconnectivity problems. You know, you just, you behind the meter, you have your own little microgrid and you can power these guys. You know, if they're out in the middle of the desert, it's a great place to do it. You know, the tech companies that have the money for this kind of stuff can buy the land, put the solar, set the thing up. And then what? They're not paying electricity for this gigantic thing. It's just more profitable for them. So it's, we'll see how many of them get built in certain ways.

39:25And I think we'll see more and more as one, two, five, 10 get launched that are all solar, that are working perfectly well, that are saving their owners money. You know, it's just going to become a no brainer. So it's what it is. I mean, I'm greatly oversimplifying, but that's kind of how I look at, you know, the data center issue. I mean, it absolutely will be the economic imperative that drives it. Because if you're running a thing that's using megawatts of electricity every minute and you're burning gas to produce that electricity, going, hang on a minute, there's 4 ,000 acres right behind my data center.

40:01If they were geographically dependent, you know, I think it would make it. If you had to have a data center that was right next to some facility, then, OK, maybe you're constrained by land or water or some other resources, whatever. But, I mean, data centers, more or less, I mean, again, greatly oversimplifying, more or less, they're pretty location independent. And so places like Iceland that have a ton of extra electricity, just geothermal, and they're just... And they're cold. It does make sense to put them there. Yeah, sure. Of course. Helps with the cooling. Yeah. Yes. So, yeah. So I think there will be technological answers to that that we'll look back on and go, duh, that was pretty straightforward.

40:45The energy efficiency aspect of it, too, it just makes so much sense financially for those companies to invest in the energy efficiency, make those data centers as efficient as possible, is what it is. The first computer used a lot of electricity and cranked out a pretty bad product. Now my laptop can last eight hours on a single charge and it cranks out this. So it just changes. Tech is tech. Tech is tech. Well, I mean, I think the other one, the other thing that we're now faced in the UK and I think is going to emerge elsewhere, which is I'm trying to think which one it is. It's the first one.

41:21What are your three things? There's the social. Business and cultural. Cultural. OK, so it's business and cultural. This one is. So there's been we've had an announcement that we're having a three pence per mile road tax for electric vehicles starting in 2028 in the UK, which is, you know, which I've always said that. there's no other solution to replacing the income that the government got from fuel tax, you know, liquid fuel tax, really, really high in the UK. And it's billions of pounds to the Treasury in the UK comes from that. And it's already gone down because we now have a million and a half electric cars that aren't using that fuel.

42:00That's quite a lot of fuel. You know, if you actually think how much, you know, how much liquid fuel that million and a half cars burn through in a year. It's a lot. It's a lot. So, but so that, um, you know, that, uh, I just wondered what, what happening in Hawaii, for instance, I mean, presumably there is, is there a tax on fuel or is there a tax, do you pay a tax to use the roads or how, how is that dealt with there? That's a good question. I, you know, we have, we have a federally, we have a gas tax. And so it just taxes gasoline. And then they have started taxing EVs heavier in registration in a lot of places.

42:38I'm not entirely, honestly, Robert, I don't pay that close of attention to my own bills, sadly, here in Hawaii. So I don't actually know. It's a good question. I'll have to get back to you on. But there's some combo of those things and people are trying to find an equitable kind of path forward for that, that, you know, lost revenue for the government. Yes. Yeah. I mean, it is certainly, I mean, I think it's going to be a, you know, it's one of the side effects of the, you know, a change in the culture. Well, in a way, it's like landlines and cell phones. You know, we all had landlines. I had two.

43:10In an apartment I lived in in London, I had two landlines because one was for a fax. Oh, I was so modern. I had a fax line. Nice. I was so cool. Yeah, not many people had a fax line like I had. Anyway, and that's now complete. We don't even remember. It's totally dead technology. But it is that thing, that shift when, say, if there are 25 million electric cars in the UK, that means that the exchequer's income from liquid fuel drops by phenomenal. I mean, it just disappears. And then you've still got to pay to maintain roads. And how do you do it? So I think the problem, the initial problem is it will put some people off who might have bought an electric car in the next two or three years.

43:53And they go, I don't want to pay three pence a mile road tax. And it is a difficult thing to impose. Anyway, we don't need to talk about that because I think that's a big shift that's going to take place regardless of what you and I pontificate. I'll tell you what. When I first bought, I drive a Model 3, and it's like seven years old now. And I'm still waiting for CleanTechnica to get a Rivian loaner for a year. You know, I just, I just keep asking him like Rivian, are you guys ready to just like give clean technica as leadership a Rivian to drive around? You have no idea. We'll be blogging about this constantly.

44:31Like, come on. Anyway, they, if you're listening, Rivian, uh, we're still here anyway. Um, so I, so I drive this seven year old model three and you know, it's, it's a great car. It's, it's done well, zero maintenance, seven years. Like I literally had to replace a dashboard cause I park in the sun and that's kind of, it's kind of all the maintenance. that's been done. But back in the day, the incentives that they had for electric cars, first of all, you had none of this gas tax, right? But they made airport parking free, which is expensive. Then they made parking at any metered spot in the city free.

45:10Wow. You could drive in the HOV lane, which you still can. I mean, the perks for an EV were out of control when I first got the car. And that's, you know, can you quickly explain what an HOV lane is for the, yeah, sorry. High occupancy vehicle. So it's a carpool lane. Yeah. So, yeah. So if you, if you have more than one drive, one, more than one person, you can drive in it. Or if you're driving by yourself in an EV, you could drive in it. So anyway, it was a nice little perk. Keeps you out of traffic a little bit, but they took all these incentives away because it was Once there was EV adoption, they were like, oh, this is getting a little out of control.

45:48And like, oh, this is kind of a rich person's privilege to be able to park at the airport for free with your EV. But it was great. It got the ball rolling with all that kind of stuff. And then they took it away. And for a little while, I was kind of bummed. I was like, oh, God, I was really enjoying just parking anywhere and not having to be like, oh, where's my quarters? But then they've replaced the meter so you can use your credit cards. I have no more excuses and all that stuff. But culturally, these shifts will happen. And then in a little while, people won't even notice that three cents, three pence per mile kind of thing because they're saving so much money in other places.

46:26We'll see how it plays out. But that's kind of a little story of Hawaii's history and the cultural shift that went on here. Now we're at one of the top EV adopting states in the country in the United States. Right. Yeah, just because it makes sense financially. The only downside is you can't have any Chinese cars. I mean, I don't think anyone's going to bother. But I mean, that is kind of difficult. I know. I know. I haven't even tried any of this. I haven't even seen a BYD. And it kills me. I'm just like, this is the third biggest automaker in the world now. It is extraordinary. I mean, that's why it's very noticeable in Australia.

47:02We actually feel this is utterly unconfirmed. And it's just, we've just assumed it, that the Chinese automakers go, let's try and sell some, let's launch our cars in a Western country. Oh, Australia's quite near. Yeah, that's right. Let's send them all there. I mean, they have every, I see cars every day. I'm like, what the hell is that? I don't even know what they are. You know. That's awesome. And there's a lot of, so BYD are huge here. When you drive down a big motorway, freeway in Australia, there'll be Audi, you know, an Audi showroom there. And there's a BMW there. And there's a Volkswagen there.

47:35and then five times bigger is BYD with a bigger sign. Wow. It's very, very noticeable. That's awesome. It's amazing. I would love to see that at some point. That sounds really cool. You know, one of the other things, we talked about how these things are growing so fast. BYD is, I mean, my God, like I can't get over this company that I had never even heard of five, six, 10 years ago. Like it just, it wasn't even on the radar, you know? And, you know, I think we were talking a lot more about XPeng. I think we thought XPeng was going to end up being like the big player, but BYD just kind of ran away with it.

48:08And it's, it's amazing. It was, um, 2019, they were the 49th biggest automaker in the world. 2019 as of 2024, five years later, they were the third biggest in the world. Talk about, I mean, exponential growth there, their sales from 23 to 24 rose something like 40 some odd percent. Volkswagen is like the top in the world, flat sales, Toyota, flat sales, every Hyundai, all the guys down, down, down, down, down, down, or flat. And it's like BYD just exponentially growing. And again, we're going to look back at this and be like, duh, this is so obvious. Like we really, you know, people want electric cars for crying out loud, you know?

48:52So let's make some electric cars. Yeah. Yeah. Cause one of the little things I would know when I was going through all the list of possible topics was electric trucks and buses but so i mean in london people are very used to them all our double-decker buses red double-decker but not all of them huge percentage of them now are electric and they're all made by byd so if they go past you it's just a red double-decker bus really common site in london it's only when you look at the front it says byd right at the front little badge and it's an electric bus so we got i think we're getting up for two two and a half over two and a half thousand buses in london are electric and it's made a noticeable difference when you breathe in London.

49:29All the taxes and all the buses are electric. But last year, sorry, this year, BYD have had a 213 % increase in sales of electric trucks and buses, which is crazy, isn't it? Because occasionally I'll still see a headline that says, no one wants EVs anymore. Sales have crashed. It's all over. How do you manage to do that? You know, the PR world is an amazing place. It really is. And it's, I just, I scratch my head. I'm like, my God, you guys are so, you guys are so genius. Like if you just come fight for the good side, you know, crying out loud, bring those brains over here. Like, wow, how did you make this?

50:10How do you make this up? But yeah, I mean, it's for a long time. It was, you know, we were like scratching our heads. Zach and I were like looking at stuff and we're like, there's a lot of news out there saying that like EV demand is like softening or falling off and all this kind of stuff. And I was like, I don't know. we're looking at the sales reports. It still looks pretty good. And when it, when it came down to it, it was all cars were crashing. Yes. Gas, gas, especially. Yeah. The EVs were slowly like, you know, the growth was slowing, right. But it was still growing. So it kind of, kind of amazing how you can spin those stories.

50:45Like it's, it's just, it's really, it's a skill set. But the thing I'm sure you, you're aware of this and, and we should talk about your, your event that's coming up but the the little it's these occasionally you just see a little thing so i saw a refrigerator uh at an at an event and it was just like a well is there a refrigerator here it had a battery in it had a two kilowatt hour battery it can run for like two days keeping your food frozen and your everything chilled well if there's a power cut that's the reason they've done it and the company that made it said oh you know we've done it just as an experiment what we're going to do is put a six kilowatt hour battery because it's the same it adds like it adds some dollars it's really not it doesn't add that much to the cost but what it also means then is you you would have all your you all your things your dishwasher your washing machine your tumble dryer your refrigerator will all have batteries in yeah and it will just become a thing you don't even think about it and you don't even know they're there but what it means is you put your tumble dryer on because you really need something dry in and it's winter and it's you shouldn't have it running because it's peak time it doesn't matter it's not using any power it charges when it's cheap you know that's it machinery that's smart i was going to say the smart shit in the home excuse my french i think really because i've i've gone through that early adopter period i'm sure you have where i was managing everything and making switching everything off of course which is no one's going to do that nobody just early adopters it's like you know you and me and like A lot of other people.

52:15We were interested, curious, having fun with this stuff, nerding out over it. And I didn't mind. I was like, okay, it's not convenient, but I kind of like tinkering with stuff. It was kind of fun to see how it would play out against your electric bill and this, that, the other. But yeah, they got to make this mass market, and this is obviously one way to do it. Have you seen copper? It's an induction cook stove. It has the battery integrated in it as well. Yes, that was the other one. Yes. Oh, my God. just a lot of sense because of that power the power demand for that yeah yeah and and and again you know just like with zoom the school buses they solve so many problems this human-centered design is like so genius and so copper it's it's okay let's start off with the fact that it's a stunningly beautiful stove right they made it they made it so intuitive and beautiful and these really nice handles and all this kind of stuff the thing is you know 30 whatever more efficient than a regular electric stove.

53:12Obviously, it's twice as efficient in terms of the conversion of energy as a gas stove. It has no combustion after effects, right? So like when you're cooking over a natural gas stove, you're breathing benzene and formaldehyde and all these things, and that stuff is percolating through the house and whatever. So I mean, it's obviously these are carcinogens you don't want in your house, right? Coming out of your natural gas appliance. So the induction cook stove by itself is just, it's a really awesome thing. However, in older homes, they don't have a 220 line, right? So it's not easy to convert away from gas.

53:46These guys put the battery in there, plug it into a 110, and it just charges. It knows when the utility pricing is cheap, and typically that's when solar is peaking, right? It sucks all that energy down at$0.03 a kilowatt hour and then cooks for you at night when it would be$0.20 a kilowatt hour with time of use pricing, right? and you don't have to drill holes you don't have to punch a hole in the wall you don't have to deal with potential asbestos or lead paint in older homes just plug it into a 110 you're good to go the induction is like and I saw this and I was like god I love that they've just solved all these problems and then it's pricier up front but pays itself over time like a lot of these other innovations and we're still at the beginning of the S-curve with the induction cook stove and it's hitting the inflection point and taking off.

54:37And the cool part about it is like with the economies of scale, price is just going to keep coming down on these products. Like it just gets better and better and better and cheaper and cheaper. Whereas, you know, the traditional stuff is just, it's the price it is. They've innovated it to the point where they could. I'm not going to innovate anymore. Natural gas is just going to keep costing more, whatever. So it's just, so they've just like, I just love that they've solved all the problems. The induction cook stove, that copper stove, I was like, oh, I want one so bad. It's so nice. It's so nice.

55:08Yes. I think I know. Cause we've recently, not recently, but about in the last, I think seven or eight years, we bought a new stove, which I've never done in my life before because we had gas in our house and I've now got, it's all electric. And as soon as I saw that stove, I went, Oh, I can't justify buying another one, but that wasn't, that wasn't available when I bought that stuff. I couldn't actually look at it so you've looked at it more because i just saw it oh yeah i can't even know man no no it's it's amazing and you know the induction you can just dial to a perfect temperature right so it's like and it's perfectly even heating and then as soon as you take the pot off the stove you can put your hand on it like you don't burn your hand yeah that blows me away like that stuff isn't we've got we have a part our stove we have is partly induction so i'm used to that you get that to that cookie in it yeah yeah i still have an electric stove and it still burns my hand so but uh yeah i mean it was amazing so they say they dial it exactly to the temperature that you want and they can they can melt chocolate like you don't need a double boiler right to soften the heat for chocolate exactly you can just melt it right on the right on the burner i mean that that they dial it to the exact melting temperature of dark chocolate you just have this goo of dark chocolate and you can dip your fruit in it and enjoy saving the climate you're like yes i'm eating chocolate covered strawberries and i'm saving the world and i'm proud to be a making the sacrifices i need to make to save this world as i eat my chocolate covered strawberries yeah yeah we won't discuss the fact that the strawberries are probably flown in on a set before seven yeah can't go plane let's forget that for a moment um i mean we i just don't want going to take up time we've nearly done an hour but the last thing i want to talk about which i don't know if i i think i mean i read about this on clean technica but i earlier this year we saw a very large electric ferry being built in tasmania extraordinary machine which is now on its sea trials but so cool there's just there's this announcement from catl who we went to visit when i was in china the research place but they're saying the ocean going electric ships are within in sight, that they would have sort of containers that have batteries in.

57:20I mean, you then go, no, that's not, I don't believe that's possible. Because, I mean, in the one thing, like the dirtiest thing we're all still doing is shipping. 40 % of it to move oil, very important to always remind people of that. 40 % of global shipping is oil. Yeah. Oh, no, it's really worth having that one up your sleeve. You know, let's cut that down to like 1%, you know, it would make a huge difference. Serious. But that's amazing. That really is. I think the batteries, it's very hard not to be completely obsessed with batteries. I try not to be. I'm not allowed to talk about it with my family.

57:55I'm not allowed to mention the B word as its name. We get it, Robert. Shush. Yeah, exactly.

58:04But the fact that, you know, when we saw the batteries, the batteries weren't in that ship, but we saw the space put aside for them, it wasn't that big. That ship is lighter than if they were using diesel. So the engines are lighter. The fuel tanks would have been heavier and bigger. So the batteries, it's this weird thing. I mean, when it's on that scale, you're talking, they've got multiple megawatt hours of batteries on that ship. I don't even know what it is. But the actual electric motors are about the size of a dining table. I mean, they're big. Yeah. I don't think I could lift one up. Even though I go to the gym every now and then.

58:43They were enormous. But in comparison with a marine diesel engine, which I've seen, which are the size of a house, they were very small. That's awesome. I can't wait. There'll be a cruise ship that's all electric someday. And I'm looking forward to my retirement. I'm going to spend a lot of time on all electric cruise ships. All electric solar powered cruise ship. Yeah. Yeah. Fishing off the back. Oh, yeah. Very nice. Yes. Yeah. No, because that is a thing. I've been on one cruise ship. I filmed on a cruise ship. Yeah. And it was amazing. It was an American, American 9. A huge, huge thing. But when we left Portsmouth, which we did, I went up on the top deck and we were filming up there.

59:21And there was this black cloud going over our heads. Oh, my goodness. Not clean. Not clean. So quickly tell me what you're up to because you've got an exhibition going and a new web page. Do plug that because I think it's amazing what you're working on. Oh, thanks, Robert. I mean, it's, you know, your viewers will be very used to it. We're calling it the Electric Home Show. It was, you know, it's funny that I met Dan, your CEO. He reached out and said, hey, you know, like, let's talk about potentially partnering up on something. You know, we do these cool shows. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, well, that's awesome.

1:00:00I would love that. And we are actually running our first show. And he was like, really? And I was like, yeah. Yeah. So we, uh, yeah. So we, uh, you know, we're, we're not as focused on the EVs. So it's, it's interesting. We, we saw this opportunity to kind of fill in this gap in the home space a little bit, you know, really pushing heat pump, water heaters, the induction cook stoves, um, the heat pump AC units and gas or, uh, heat pump dryers, uh, to replace gas dryers and stuff like that. So we, we kind of saw that opportunity, a lot of e-bike rides and stuff like that. And obviously EVs will be there, but yeah, ours is called the electric home show and it's in, uh i we managed to get the the prime spot we're on earth day weekend in uh in hawaii uh so the the the second biggest expo center in the state of hawaii we are we're going to be uh exhibiting so we'll have a expo hall there um we've got uh we've got programming for the industry professionals to come and get together and have like a big day focused on industry and removing bottlenecks in the industry to get more heat pump water heaters put in and that sort of thing.

1:01:05And yeah, I mean, it's going to be a lot of fun. We got Bill McKibben is coming to be our keynote speaker. Oh, wow. Amazing. Yeah. He's been a lifelong hero of mine. That guy is such a badass. He's incredible. So yeah, his book, Deep Economy, sort of shifted my trajectory in life. I read that book and I became a far more effective human and a far more effective environmentalist reading that book. And I just, I owe so much to him. So I'm super excited to have him out. Um, but yeah, it's April, April 24th through the 26th in Honolulu. Uh, it's electric homeshow.com and yeah, it should be a lot of fun.

1:01:40So I was automatically going, how on earth can I wangle? Yeah. I want to come along. Wow. That does sound amazing. I'm really pleased. That's really really exciting and i mean it makes it's also i think really you know it's got a certain resonance to it you know that it's that it's in hawaii because it's like wow that is you know it makes sense to people who've never been there you know i've never been to hawaii i don't i've not had any experience of it but as soon as you hear that you go oh yeah i'd want to have more solar on my house if i lived in hawaii than i and i'd want to be able to not i'd not want to buy fossil fuel makes very, you know, yeah.

1:02:19It's just, just like California and the redwoods and the coast and all that stuff, like nature does inspire, right? So we walk out the door here, we see rainbows, we have the beautiful ocean, beautiful coastline, rocky, like beautiful space. And I think it inspires a lot of people to be, you know, at the very least cognizant of this stuff. And if you can connect the dots for them and be like, here's all the ways you can kind of do this, then you really can move markets. So yeah, that's, it's exciting. Bill, you know, Bill, Bill is a great guy and I talked to him about it and he said, he said, this is exactly what the world needs is to touch and feel and experience how much better an induction cook stove that has a battery in it is than what they're cooking on right now.

1:02:59And they need to experience all this, all these cool things. So it makes it, no, it makes such a huge difference. If you can do that, that is fantastic. I mean, that is, you know, what originally inspired us. You put someone an electric car that's never been in one and they come back and go i mean i think my best the best line i ever heard was a woman who just said oh it's a car and i went yeah because she was like this thing oh my god it's electric i know it's a car it's got all the disadvantages of cars you got to park it you've got to charge it you've got to do all those things pain in the ass but it's just like a car yeah and that's in a way like this is a stove only you're not breathing in horrible gases you know you know and it's much easier to use and it's much cleaner to use and it's easy to clean i mean those the amount of time i've spent cleaning old gas cookers that are the fat you know this is the this these are the things that we need to like talk about more right like how how much better this stuff is than what we were doing before it yes have you ever used a diesel generator you know like well i've been yes i've been near them yeah man they're they're nasty They smell terrible, but, you know, and just like the gunk that builds up just from the fumes, like condensing on the side, it just gets disgusting.

1:04:09I mean, gas handles, you know, you go to fill up at a petrol station and, you know, you touch that gas handle and it's just like whatever it is, it's disgusting. You know, and so you start to snap people out of this by being like, hey, plug in your car and it's clean. Your hand is clean. The plug is clean. There's no settling of goo. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And you're not breathing in it. Actually, there was an amazing graphic I saw the other day, which was, you know, which I know I did every time. You'd fill your car, you stop filling it, you pull the thing out, and it goes drip, drip on the ground.

1:04:42You don't even notice. Every time. Every time. You put the thing back, and it was like, well, someone's worked out in America, if you could capture all those drips, you could, it was, you know, you could fuel 14 million cars. I mean, it's not like a little bit. It's thousands and thousands of gallons, tens of thousands of gallons, just chucked away. And it evaporates and you breathe that in and it's toxic. Let's not end on a low note. Let's end on a high note. Tell me the name of the show again. It's the Electric Home Show. Electric Home Show. Brilliant. No, brilliant. Oh, I'm really excited to see how that goes.

1:05:17Thank you. I hope you can make it. It would be such an honor to have you here. Maybe one time I can wangle it. But thank you, Scott. I mean, I know we've rambled all over the place, but it's been real fun talking to you. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure, Robert. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a real joy. Great stuff.

1:05:42Really hope you enjoyed that. It was fantastic fun talking to Scott. What an amazing dude. I'm really excited about their show that they're doing in April next year. Please do check it out. We'll put all the links in the show notes for this episode. But that's it. So please do tell any of your friends and families about the Everything Electric pod, because we do come across some incredible people on here. We're shortly going to be recording a very exciting episode with Imogen, Jack and I doing a catch up for 2025. I'm looking forward to doing that. And then it will be Christmas and New Year, which I wish you all the very best for, particularly for the new year and for 2026.

1:06:23Let us hope it is positive and safe. Let us hope everything is wonderful. And that's it. Please do subscribe to this channel if you haven't done already. Please do check out Everything Electric Cars if you haven't ever seen that. Because that's really the kind of original channel that we started 15 now getting on for 16 years ago. And that's all. If you have been, thank you for watching.

1:07:16The Wall Deals for lugar