Next Unicorns: The Path to Reaching Net Zero with Avnos CEO Will Kain | E1810

0:00We've only got one planet Earth, so we better take care of it, right? You know, this is something, you know, Elon said to me maybe 15 years ago, and we were talking about the controversy around this when it was like a little more controversial people talking about. Yeah. And I said, what do you think? And he said, I think this is a stupid experiment to run. And that's why I'm doing Tesla. And I said, you know what? The risk is totally asymmetric, isn't it? If we do nothing and climate change is a real thing, we're up a creek. This Week in Startups is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. A business is only as strong as its people and every hire matters.

0:34Post your first job for free at linkedin.com slash unicorn. Fount. Do you want access to the performance protocols that pro athletes and special ops use? With Fount, an elite military operator supercharges your focus, sleep, recovery, and longevity. all powered by your unique data. Want a true edge in work and life? Go to fount.bio slash twist for$500 off. And catalog. Stop wasting time and money with expensive design firms and unreliable freelancers. Get fast three-day turnarounds for a flat monthly fee with catalog. Get$1 ,200 off right now at trycatalog.com slash twist. All right, everybody.

1:26Welcome back to this week in startups. We're doing our next unicorn series. It's been ridiculous. What an amazing group of founders we've had on the program. We had Victor from Synesthesia making AI-generated video avatars. Had Andy from PathAI building AI software for pathologists. helps them make diagnoses faster more accurately we had shiv from a bridge they're doing a hip approved speech to text ai software saving doctors a couple hours a day which really does add up nick from light matter building photonic computing chips for ai that's going to make data centers less hot and make data move faster do all those big jobs that was episode 1787 definitely worth your time gabriel from propruro uh it's a surgical platform it uses computer vision ar to teach surgeons to do very complicated uh surgeries and to have them do complicated surgeries without looking at some x-ray on the side nope they can see everything right there up close and personally uh while they're fixing your spine delian from varda he's building space factories for some pharmaceutical companies i mean it sounds like science fiction peter from covariant full stack robotics platform basically he's using ai to help robots um function in the real world right c3po decker uh and then we had celine from loyal working on life extension drugs not for humans but for dogs because that would be a great stepping stone and and hopefully can be super profitable for the team over there uh we had suits from sardine uh they're building an ai powered fraud detection platform you know because you got all these new ai hackers right think about all those incredible industries biotech ai chip space robotics healthcare really deep tech is happening in a major way in the venture capital silicon valley space and you know all over the world we haven't had a climate founder on you know why i looked at a lot of climate companies a lot of these are hippies they're doing stuff that's not going to matter or is low impact and we searched and we searched we said who's doing something that's super high impact well we found the guy so uh will kane is with us he's the ceo and founder of avnos avnos is a hybrid direct air capture startup basically it's building machines that are going to capture carbon from the air and uh turn it into something we all need water well welcome to the show chasen thanks so much for having me it's a pleasure to be here and that list it's been a great series it's been a terrific list of founders you've had on it's uh it's a pleasure to be here yeah uh it's great to add you to the list okay we're all going to need a bit of an education here we hear the term carbon capture over and over again why is carbon catch capture important how does it work and then what technique uh and strategy are you bringing to the table with your startup apnos yeah important place to start Um, so carbon capture is a broad rubric under which there are a whole bunch of different individual technologies that refers to the process of pulling CO2 emissions out of some airstream.

4:43Um, you may have heard of point source capture, which is going on the back of industrial processes, for example, and pulling CO2 and other pollutants out of the exhaust stream, uh, of industrial processes. You may have heard of things like nature-based solutions. So growing trees and other types of biomass that naturally pull CO2 out of our atmosphere. And that's actually a certain form of what we call direct air capture. And that is what we do at Avnos. So we are pulling legacy CO2 emissions. So the CO2 content that's already in the atmosphere around us. We are pulling those emissions, legacy emissions as we call them, out of the atmosphere to reduce the total CO2 content in the atmosphere.

5:30you've read and heard that we are approaching 420 parts per million co2 content in our atmosphere carbon dioxide being the chief bad actor among a variety of greenhouse gases that create effectively kind of a heat dome that trap uh heat in the low earth atmosphere and generate what we know as climate change or has been called global warming um over the years as well and in order to get to a net zero economy that's another term that a lot of folks out there have probably heard where that net zero refers to net zero emissions of co2 uh in our economy um we have to deploy things like carbon capture and direct air capture in particular that's the only way CO2 is the CO2 that's in the, the atmosphere.

6:21Yep. Uh, CO2 itself comes out of humans, right? When we breathe out, it helps trees grow there. It is not in its, of itself, um, a challenge except when it gets to an extreme amount. And this, uh, chart, I think sort of displays that the, the, over time, it was pretty steady. And we know this from the science, uh, of, uh, looking at, I guess, trees or minerals and then carbon dating them? Or how do we know that? And just so we level set here, because there's a lot of client deniers, there's a lot of like people now who are trying to spend misinformation. And listen, there's also people on the environmental side who have been worked up, and maybe gotten a little hot under the collar, in some cases, hysterical.

7:07So it feels to me like the climate discussion has lost some rationality, you can see that on both sides so just to be clear there is nothing controversial about co2 necessarily it's the amount that we have and then that's causing heat uh and temperatures to rise and maybe your your best explanation of why this is not a controversial statement yeah yeah well you've got it co2 in and of itself is not a bad thing right carbon is kind of the basis of all life form so it is not in and by itself a bad thing but as the expression goes poison is in the dose right and so the chart that you just showed yeah we know from pretty sophisticated carbon dating and carbon modeling historical looking carbon modeling that up until the industrial age and on the chart that you just had there you can look at that as roughly 1800 let's use sort of rough numbers.

7:59As of 1800 to the early to mid 19th century, you saw that CO2 content in the atmosphere was pretty steady at about 280 parts per million. So you almost think of that as kind of a natural equilibrium state. That's where the CO2 content in the atmosphere has been for centuries. But then again, you look at that chart and you can see there's a significant move upward as of the beginning of industrial significant industrial activity uh in the early 19th century so that 280 parts per million which again think of that as equilibrium plants live pretty happily humans live pretty happily right the the temperatures on the globe are um quite conducive to uh to to supporting life right and supporting a comfortable existence for most forms of life but then yeah you can see as of about 1800, you get ever sharper slopes headed up into the right in terms of the CO2 content.

8:59By the year 2000, that 280 parts per million had become roughly 370 parts per million. Then just in the last 23 years since the year 2000, we've seen another 20 parts per million of CO2 added to the overall content of our atmosphere and we're 420, 417 if you want to be particular about it but we're roughly 420 parts per million co2 content in the atmosphere and um you know what what that points out is the human activity around industry is the thing that has changed there on this graph that we're looking at controversial about nothing controversial about that exactly right we built cars these were incredible human innovations they move the species forward but there are downstream effects of them that's right all right listen you're listening to the next unicorns, right?

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10:53That's right. LinkedIn.com slash unicorn to post your first job for free terms conditions apply because LinkedIn is so generous. It's kind of strange when I heard Vivek, you know, who's I don't want to say he's a climate denier but he i guess is using the climate as like part of his you know technique for for getting votes he and i aren't necessarily on the same side of the discussion but uh but he was sort of saying like the co2 is like helping green the planet uh because we all know trees need co2 so this is a true statement also a true statement there's a lot of co2 so there's a lot of undeniable facts here but it is um i think the the next part of this puzzle is once you accept okay yeah if we burn a bunch of fossil fuels that puts pollutants in the air not good for anybody so i don't think anybody can debate that but the co2 obviously then uh creates heat so just let's make that next jump there and there's there shouldn't be anything controversial about co2 in the atmosphere i don't think so if we can all agree on that because this is pretty irrefutable science it's irrefutable science yeah that's right yep okay now we get the next jump which is temperatures increasing right so let's make that next jump how certain are we co2 is causing that heat jump yeah um the certainty is uh sort of as high as it gets in the scientific community right you've seen the same stuff that i have that when you consider the ipcc reports and surveys of climatologists around the world who are certainly experts in the space uh that i of of a level that i cannot claim to be um that co2 is the primary and bad actor in trapping heat and creating um global warming and and broadly climate change right because global global warming is not the only feature is not the only features too positive a word is not the only ramification it's really climate extreme climate extremes that are being created by virtue of this excess co2 in the atmosphere and if we go back a second you said you're exactly right trees do absorb co2 uh that's they're great at that but we the actions of the industrialized economy over the past you know roughly 200 years have overwhelmed trees capacity to absorb co2 and to kind of bring us and keep us at an equilibrium level with respect to the co2 content in the atmosphere and and it is that excess co2 you know to give a couple of numbers since roughly that dawn of the industrial age so since roughly 1800 we've emitted roughly two and a half trillion tons of co2 into the atmosphere as a global economy and something like 700 billion tons have been absorbed by land by trees and plants and other photosynthetic organisms as well as the oceans and that leaves you know roughly 800 billion tons of co2 of excess co2 right that has gone into our atmosphere and so i come from the school of thought that that's creating an existential climate crisis for us uh us being humanity um but even if you don't necessarily subscribe all the way to that level right what you've got ultimately jason is a significant waste management problem i mean you think about that volume of waste that has been emitted into the atmosphere and ultimately that's what co2 emissions are that's what pollution is is it's waste and it's inefficiency and when you see that level of weight think about other forms of waste co2 is a hard one to visualize given that it's an invisible gas But when you think about sort of waste management, you can't imagine our industrial trash, for example, just going into our environment and not creating negative impacts.

14:53And the negative impacts that we're seeing now are really all around us. Climate change has been one of those a bit esoteric concepts for much of certainly my lifetime and much of human existence. It's been hard to visualize and wrap your arms around what climate change actually means. But the big thing is heat. You're right. And you're seeing July of 2023 was the hottest month in recorded human history. In June of 2023, we had the hottest week in recorded human history. 2022 was the sixth hottest year in recorded human history. And how's this one? 10 of the 10 hottest years in recorded human history have happened since 2010.

15:34Got it. you know and that's and that is then and yet john's got another great article and chart up here which then you start to see the effects not just of the heat itself but you see more extreme droughts and more extreme flooding and sea level rise and ocean temperature rises in acidification and you know all of those effects that have start to have a meaningful effect a negative effect on our everyday life as humanity so when um and i don't want to i don't want to tag anybody with being hysterical or denial or being in denial right so let's take the 20 of the lunatics on either fringe 10 whatever people who are chaining themselves you know to nuclear power plants saying you got to shut this thing down whatever it is and then interrupting nba interrupting nba games which i have no interest in an nba game being interrupted you know so let's put the lunatics aside and we we won't call people climate deniers, we won't call people historical, but just looking at the facts here, the heat fact is undeniable.

16:35And so I guess the question then becomes twofold. One, is there any, when you hear people say like, well, we've had other times, we've had spikes in climate and temperatures. Is there any way to give that any credence? I mean, you said 10 of the last hottest were since 2010. So that's like 10 out of the last 13. Yeah. Do you think there's anything there that is in any way logical in terms of looking at this heat as it might be some temporary pattern that just happens to correlate with CO2 and all the science? Yeah, I think I defer to the science as you say there, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of room for argument, quite frankly, that the increase in CO2 levels has resulted in more trapping of heat and the resultant climate change madness that we see manifested in many of these extreme events that we talked about.

17:33So, you know, I'm a bit of a big tent kind of guy. So I'm certainly happy to, I went to the University of Virginia and Thomas Jefferson had a saying, one of my favorites was, for here, we are not afraid to tolerate any error as long as reason is left free to combat it. So, you know, if we want to have a discussion about, well, heat maybe is good, right, or CO2 is good, let's look at some data, let's look at some facts and, you know, sort of put a point-counterpoint together. And I just think, as you said, it's incontrovertible when you put the point counterpoint together, that climate change being manifested as heat and those extreme events is ultimately a purely negative proposition for humanity, for the world, for our economy.

18:16um maybe more importantly which is something i'm sure we'll talk about is that you know that there's a lot of economic rationality to uh fostering this energy transition and to fighting and mitigating and preventing the worst effects of climate change which is a bit of how i think i approach it i said before i come from the school of thought that um climate change is an existential crisis for humanity. But I also think that it represents a meaningful economic opportunity to, you know, to create wealth in our economy and to create, to reduce negative externalities, which as I said, are ultimately waste and inefficiency and create better economic outcomes across the economy, which is what's exciting about this energy transition for me.

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22:57The IPCC has educated us on that. And in order to do that, we both need to eliminate the next emission. So we need to go to wind and solar and geothermal and other forms of renewable power, which we can talk about the positive economic and job impacts there, by the way, especially relative to traditional kind of fossil sources. But then we also need to reduce the CO2 content in the atmosphere, as we talked about previously. Even if we go to a zero marginal emission society tomorrow, which we're not doing right. So that 420 parts per million CO2 content in the atmosphere is problematic. We have to pull that down and get to a more rational level.

23:35And that's what we're doing at Avnos. So this is a physical device you're building at Avnos? Exactly. It's a physical device and there's a rendering of it on the screen right now. That is actually a device that we have built that is installed in Bakersfield and is capturing water and CO2 as we speak. So, yeah, explain how this works broadly in terms of, because this takes energy to power it. it does energy tends to put co2 into the atmosphere so i assume that let's we'll talk about the process here and then we'll talk about the energy and the displacement there and the economics of the energy because i assume you're using renewables to do this but i don't know that um so let's talk about it sure yeah so direct air capture writ large as i said it it does a bit of what trees were designed to do you pull ambient air into a chemically charged system the chemicals that the system is charged with, we'll refer to those as adsorbents or sorbents.

24:35So those sorbents are chemically made up to be what's called selective for carbon dioxide. So you pass air over those sorbents through that sorbent charge chamber and the sorbents adhere to the CO2 content in that air. So the rest of the exhaust, if you like, from a DAC plant is CO2 lean air, is reduced content CO2 air. The CO2 has been captured inside of the direct air capture system. And then more often than not, we differ here, but as a broad matter, more often than not, you got to heat up that adsorbent to release the CO2 that you've captured. And then there are two things to do with the CO2.

25:12One is utilization, which are things like sustainable aviation fuel or e-fuels, where you can use that CO2 and combine it with hydrogen to create synthetic hydrocarbons effectively. So carbon neutral fuels is one pathway. So that's utilization. That'll be the smallest pathway of things to do with the CO2. The bigger one is to sequester that carbon dioxide in the subsurface. So think of old depleted oil and gas wells, old saline aquifers. Those rock formations, those geologic formations are really well suited to retain gaseous CO2. So you can put those, this is miles underground, right? Think of like under the Gulf of Mexico, for example, is an area that's drawn a lot of attention for CO2 storage, subsurface storage.

26:00And that CO2 can then go under the Gulf of Mexico and stay there, in air quotes, permanently, but for hundreds or thousands of years. So that's director capture writ large. And I'm going to tell you why Avnos is special in the director capture landscape, but let me let you ask any questions there. No, no, I get the concept here. We're sequestering it. we can then store it somewhere put it somewhere it makes total sense to me the thing i always wonder about just like uh desalinization you know this technology has existed desal for forever yeah but carbon capture for a decent amount of time my understanding of it as a neophyte um but who's talked to a bunch of founders is the the issue becomes energy how much energy does it take to do this and so how much carbon can you capture versus how much are you creating and so if this if we had a renewable source like if this was at a nuclear power plant and at night nobody's using the nuclear we got this extra nuclear energy instead of doing bitcoin mining or something we could be having these buy a nuclear power plant and at night just run them full bore for free i guess or you know essentially free for what would have been wasted energy is that the vision here or is there some other vision do you run batteries and solar let it just become sustainable because i don't know how much energy it takes to do this process and is that that is that the blocker yeah broadly speaking you've got the idea is that you know you want to think of these processes in sort of a resource from a resource efficiency perspective right is what resources are we investing in order to generate what benefit and what resources on the back end and so yeah energy is one of the key factors uh to consider So I'll use gross generalizations.

27:45Most of the rest of the space will tell you that they're going to consume somewhere between 2 ,500 and 3 ,000 kilowatt hours per ton of CO2. That's sort of a rough generalization of what the rest of the space looks like. And that's on the order of 2 ,000 kilowatt hours per ton from thermal energy. So think of that as burning fossil fuels to generate heat. And as I told you previously, a lot of the other systems use heat. That's the way that they get the CO2 off of the sorbent. Well, that's how you generate that heat is by burning fossil fuels to generate that heat, which has a greenhouse gas emission profile associated with it, making those systems less resource efficient.

28:26That was one of the big realizations that I had when I started looking at the direct air capture space in 2017. Was that energy consumption profile and particularly the heat consumption profile was going to be a rate limiter for the broad scale employment of DAC? Exactly as you said, how many molecules of CO2 are we putting into the air to draw it down? The other piece of the equation is water, which is something that often gets lost in the discussion of climate change. But water is obviously a massive vector in climate change and drought throughout the world. 50 % of the global population is going to live a water scarce existence by 2025.

29:03But the water consumption profile of many other forms of direct air capture is consuming somewhere between 5 and 10 tons of water per ton of CO2 captured. And if you extrapolate that out to billions of tons per year of CO2 capture, you're increasing the industrial water draw on the planet by 25%. So really an unsustainable proposition. So that was the other piece that I looked at in direct air capture was, all right, energy consumption and heat consumption in particular, and then water consumption, right? Pick in California where we live. You can't get an industrial process permitted and built in California that has a significant greenhouse gas emission profile and a significant water consumption profile.

29:46And many more jurisdictions around the world are going the direction of California than not, right? And so I set out to identify emerging, interesting direct air capture technologies that address those issues. And I found that at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which is one of the Department of Energy's delegated research facilities in Washington state. And that is HDAC. That is hybrid direct air capture. That's what we're commercializing now at Avnos. And we use the word hybrid in front of direct air capture to reflect the fact that we're capturing both water and CO2 from the same airstream in the same system.

30:23got it so whereas everybody else in the space is consuming five to ten tons of water per ton of co2 captured we produce five to ten tons of distilled water per ton of co2 captured and then in so doing capturing that moisture uh capturing that water from the air actually allows us then to use the moisture to release the co2 that we've captured so we eliminate that thermal energy input that i referred to a moment ago so whereas others in the space are consuming somewhere between 2500 and 3 ,000 kilowatt hours per ton in order to perform their direct or capture processes were closer to 1 ,000 kilowatt hours per ton.

31:01You can see a major difference in why that became really attractive to me in looking at the landscape for differentiated technologies. And so a key piece of this is this atmospheric water generator kind of function, I think is what they call them. We might call them in our homes dehumidifiers, like when you get a leak, you put it in your basement and it captures and all of a sudden you got a bucket of water or when you put a hose on it drip drip drip so somewhere in your process you're extracting water from the atmosphere that's right to help this process um i'm curious you can't use salt water for this process would it not be or is this not conducive to doing it wait so there actually there are some other folks uh in the space who are looking at sort of combined direct air capture and desalination processes But for us, you know, you're moving some of the interesting insight into the technologies that there's water and CO2 in every molecule of air, right?

31:58And so atmospheric water extraction units, atmospheric water generators are a thing, as you rightly point out. And so is direct air capture. So when we started looking at HDAC, we thought, well, you're pulling molecules out of the same airstream. So how do we create some efficiencies by putting these two processes in series? and so the air that we crew that we or the water that we generate excuse me comes from the air and obviously that water is super efficient because you've got a fan or whatever reverse fan is sucking in it anyway so you're sucking in air anyway you're processing a lot of air might as well take some of the water out there another stupid question yeah uh you know different regions have different amounts of water in the air different they do humidity levels so do these devices work better near nuclear power plants that are near you know places i don't know maybe the pacific northwest canada etc places where maybe the humidity is just naturally higher than places like texas or arizona where it might be much drier yeah so we've got that unit that john pulled up uh previously that rendering that's in bakersfield uh california so about two hours north of la here um and our next year that that unit will do about 30 tons per year of co2 captures it's small it's a pilot unit the next scale will be 300 tons uh which will also go in bakersfield about this time next year and it turns out that bakersfield's a pretty good spot for us so it's not too hot uh but also not too dry um you know we we actually prefer to be slightly lower on the humidity scale if we're talking about optimal conditions because the point of the system ultimately is to bring about the most efficient um co2 capture and that goes back to some of the economics is that for better or worse water is a horribly mispriced resource yeah in the world relative to the value that it provides to humanity and to the world and so you know even though we're producing five to ten tons of water per ton of co2 on a volumetric basis on a revenue basis where it's 20 times in the co in the favor of co2 um so ultimately the economic case is there to be made on producing the co2 and so you're incurring at more energy the more water you produce actually the more energy you you consume and so having a little bit less water in the air is better how having said that um our system uh you know our team we've got a a team of of um We have seven PhDs.

34:25I think six are chemical engineering PhDs, one's mechanical engineering PhD that are working on creating the most robust system possible such that the performance of the system looks really similar in Texas, in Canada, in South Africa, in Chile, in Japan, right? That's ultimately our mode of deployment is to take more of a manufacturing approach and to build the same unit over and over again out of a single or a small number of infrastructure, production infrastructure assets, and then deliver those units to individual sites for assembly, as opposed to the more cost intensive, more expensive, stick built, customized, engineered, on-site construction deployment mode that some others in our space and some other industrial processes have, which just ultimately adds cost.

35:15When I see a startup that's got bad design, It's hard for me to take it seriously in today's day and age. Why? Because having great design, having world-class design, it's kind of table stakes today with consumers, with employees, with partners, and of course, with investors. But, you know, design agencies, they're very, very expensive. And there's a lot of back and forth to figure out what you want. It's not for startups. You know, you can't spend a quarter million dollars, a half million dollars getting some design agency to do your look and feel. And it's hard for you to hire somebody full-time because that's a full-time staff position.

35:48So let me tell you about an amazing service. It's called Catalog, a full-service design studio tailor-made for startups. And Catalog does all of your branding. They do UI and UX. They'll do landing pages, pitch decks. They'll do it all. It's half the price of a typical design agency, but they offer a full team, including a dedicated project manager and a design director. They've worked with hundreds of startups. So if you have a problem, chances are they've already solved it. You can stop and start back at any time. it's a monthly subscription and catalog will never waste your time they do three-day turnaround okay that's more than enough stop wasting time stop wasting money with all these expensive design firms and unreliable freelancers who disappear what you want is fast three-day turnarounds for a flat monthly fee with catalog and you're going to get twelve hundred dollars off right now at try catalog.com twist that's twelve hundred dollars off at try catalog.com slash twist are we still increasing the amount of co2 we're putting into the atmosphere each year or have we started to slow down we're still increasing it we're still increasing it yeah yeah we are increasing so yeah i mean interestingly um covid when we were all at home you know we we were increasing at a decreasing rate but since we've come out of covid and economic activity has resumed full bore or something close to that anyway um that you know the the the emissions are back on the rise um and so that's you know we we as a global economy emit something like 50 billion tons of co2 per year uh and that is the challenge is to get that 50 down to zero and again that's what net zero refers to is that's what net zero refers to stop doing this so at least the temperatures theoretically if we stop putting carbon in then we would stop seeing the temperatures increase at least we could pause what's happening but that's right what is the realistic net zero date do you think yeah i i think um you know i am uh i'm a techno optimist when it comes to climate solution broadly speaking and when it comes to climate solutions i think we've got a shot at 2050 at net zero it's something like 2050 but you know it's going to take herculean efforts from here to there you know maybe the the the more likely case is something like 2075 um but uh yeah the carbon budget is that based on any revolutionary technologies being created or is that just based on incrementalism and you know the increase in solar nuclear renewables it's a lot about the increasing penetration of renewables which doesn't require a major breakthrough continued uh cost reduction in batteries for example um but then yes certainly significant step changes in my space in carbon removal i think the technologies are there i think they exist i don't think we're starting you know got to invent these technologies out of whole cloth but we got to go fast to to get up the curve and deploy carbon dioxide removal um at at a much faster pace uh certainly than we have been who's your customer who's going to fund this i know venture capitalists are interested in investing in this but ultimately you're selling to governments you're selling to people who put carbon in the atmosphere and need to you know because of regulations become uh carbon neutral you know factories or something who's your customer who's going to buy these what are they what does it cost to build this uh you know these giant units you're making yeah so the primary monetization mechanism for co2 removal today is this 45q tax credit that was passed in the inflation reduction act uh a little over a year ago right here here in the u.s so that pays direct air capture companies like mine they capture co2 and store it in the subsurface 180 per ton of co2 so that's the the the leading regime for co2 monetization co2 removal monetization in the world the government in the section 45q they're giving a tax credit that's right uh for direct direct pay which you'll know but it is a bit of an esoteric story but ultimately you know you have to be a tax a taxable entity right it's it's a cash pay program to to the the capturer uh as it were of the co2 got it so that's so you can just build these things and the government will pay you for it so then it's your job to figure out if fifty dollars per you say fifty dollars per metric ton it's 180 uh and and had it so how do we deliver co2 for 100 bucks a ton right is is is ultimately the challenge and so to get from here to there right because we uh the director capture is not at 100 bucks a ton that's the level what is it at now how far are you um you know the the some of the folks in the space have put out numbers like 600 to a thousand bucks a ton is sort of where the the clearing price seems to be work to do you gotta there's work to do yeah You got to be 10 % better a month for...

40:46You got to be jamming on cost out for sure. And the DOE has set$100 per ton as sort of a threshold that they've set as a target for direct air capture companies to get to. And at Avnos, we've got the most direct line of sight to get into less than$100 per ton. And it's because of those features that I mentioned. It's that water production as opposed to water consumption. So we've turned a cost line item into a revenue line item. And then as I say, in eliminating the heat input, we use this moisture responsive CO2 adsorbent material. So we can use the moisture that we capture in our atmospheric water generator.

41:26That is the method by which we liberate the CO2 that we capture. So we're generating that media, that liberation media inside of our system. We don't have to add heat. And that has a couple of effects. One is obviously operating expense. We don't have to pay for the generation of heat. But then the other is that you can use more cost-effective materials in building our systems because we don't have to manage heat the way that some others in the space do. And that's really important, Jason, because as you think, as a broad matter, the components of a cost of a ton of CO2 delivered from an Avnos machine is sort of a two-thirds, one-third proposition between the amortized cost of the CapEx and operating expenditures.

42:10So every bit that we can pick up on the CapEx, on CapEx efficiency, really is magnified relative to the OpEx in terms of reducing the total cost of CO2. And that's where when I talk about the manufacturing approach, as opposed to assembling on site, If we can build, again, invest in infrastructure to make our units, and we're just making the same unit over and over again, again, you very well know the sort of cost implications of being able to mass manufacture units, be they Avnos units or any other type of widget. This 45Q legislation that was put out there was done as a challenge almost to the community.

42:55Hey, we'll pay$100. We know it's costing you$600 to$1 ,000 to do this. So here's the carrot. Get moving. And has that spurred a lot of investment? Because you've been able to convince investors, I think we can get there. And here's how. It has. It has. Yeah, it spurred a lot of interest. It spurred additional investment. And, you know, I'm proud to say that, you know, we've brought on a number of really high quality industrial partners. We announced recently, you know, Shell and ConocoPhillips and JetBlue Ventures have joined our team from a partnership perspective. And we were engaged with those folks prior to that IRA passing and the 45Q passing.

43:35But certainly it supports the case, right? It supports the theory of the case that there is an opportunity here that a marker has been set. You can monetize this and you can generate returns on a project basis at that 45Q level if we do all the right things. And as I said, we've got, we think the most direct line of sight to get into less than$100 per ton, which makes then those projects deliver returns that are attractive enough to equity investors in those projects, project finance, credit providers, things of that nature to ensure that we've got an economic case. This is where incentives really matter.