Entrepreneurs for Impact (EFI) Podcast: Transcripts
#101:
Billions of Dollars of Net-Zero Energy Infrastructure — Damian Beauchamp, President of 8 Rivers
Chris Wedding:
Damian Beauchamp, President and Chief Development Officer for 8 Rivers, welcome to the podcast.
Damian Beauchamp:
Thanks, Chris. It's great to be here. I appreciate you having me on.
Chris Wedding:
For sure. We were talking before pressing record that the last time I was in your office, there were maybe 16 of you and now there were 50 plus. Again, on air, congratulations, the world needs what you guys are building for sure.
I think on that note, let's start with a sentence from your bio, something I knew conceptually, but not mathematically here. Over the last seven years at 8 Rivers, you've been part of the core team building over a billion dollars of market-based value really in hard tech, deep tech, solving big problems, much of it related to climate change. Say more about that, Damian, pick on whichever part of that rings most true. It's a big and important stat to start with.
Damian Beauchamp:
Yeah, I can certainly touch on how we've achieved the billion-dollar market-based value piece, but I think before that, what's important to understand is, what are we doing here at 8 Rivers and what's the mission? Ultimately, our goal is to deliver climate and clean energy solutions necessary to improve life on the planet for everyone. Question is, “Well, okay, that sounds great, but how are you doing that?” And specifically, we're doing that through pioneering clean energy and climate futures by innovating across business models, financial models, and technology. So, we're not just innovating.
04:40
I think the real key to our success is that we're not strictly focused on technological innovation, although we do focus on large scale infrastructure-based innovation, power plants, 100 million, billion-dollar process technologies that'll be deployed. We're specifically focused on how do we innovate the business models of the future and how do we innovate the financing of those models and of that technology? The focus on those first two pieces is how I believe that we've been able to achieve success, innovating at a scale that people thought was really unachievable.
Chris Wedding:
Well, let's build on that. I know this story, but let's tell the story a little bit. You mentioned that you all are innovating both on tech and on finance, probably that stems from two guys that founded 8 Rivers and their backgrounds. Maybe say more about why that combination is so important and maybe how they came together to start 8 Rivers.
Damian Beauchamp:
Yeah, absolutely, Chris. So, the two people you're talking about are the co-founders, Bill Brown and Miles Palmer. Those two were an undergrad at MIT together. Ultimately, Bill's path took him back to Duke Law School and then onto Wall Street. And on Wall Street, he focused on financial markets and the things that really drive large organizations to make multi-billion-dollar decisions in the economics behind those decisions and very much at a macro scale. So, the head of commodities at Goldman and then time at AIG and Morgan Stanley.
Then Miles went more of a technological path out of MIT and went on to get his PhD from the University of California at San Diego in chemistry. Then from there went on to spend a significant amount of his career at SAIC focusing on big scale innovation across the defense sector, things like drones and energy storage and things like that.
Then, late in their career, they both met up back in New York to start discussing, what are the things that they could start to do outside of the career that they've built for themselves? They started to look at large scale innovation in the energy sector. They were looking at things like telecom and space launch and ultimately, they said, “Well, why don't we focus on innovating in the areas that traditionally people have avoided?” And that's the more capital-intensive, large-scale innovation areas.
I think those conversations went well and then ultimately, Bill's from North Carolina, he ended up back in Durham. Miles was just up the road in Virginia that they came back here to start 8 Rivers with a big focus on the access to talent and the research triangle.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, amen. Clearly, I'm a believer in that being your local with you as well.
Damian Beauchamp:
I think the other thing too that's really important to add is, Bill spent his career on Wall Street and Miles very much in the defense industry. One of the things that they talk about is the fact that Bill was spending his time creating weapons of financial destruction and Miles was creating weapons of mass destruction. They said, “Well, why don't we come together and do good for a change? Why don't we put this expertise, this technical and financial expertise together to develop solutions that provide a net benefit for the world?”
08:25
Chris Wedding:
Well, I’m glad you said that because I think some listeners we're thinking that, just not as eloquently as you stated it. I want to call out one thing for listeners where Bill and Miles said, “Let's essentially look to build innovation and in businesses in areas where others aren't. They're too scared, they think it's impossible.” I think for those listening, that describes the Blue Ocean strategy and if listeners haven't read any of the books around or looked at any of the tools around, Blue Ocean strategy would be a good book to pick up.
Let's pick up on one particular innovation, maybe one of the earliest and the biggest, which is NET Power, where you're also on the board. I think some listeners will have heard about NET Power, lots of press doing what seems to be impossible, but being proven at scale with big, big investment partners. What's the NET Power story, Damian?
Damian Beauchamp:
The origins of NET Power are the origins of what's called the Allum-Fetvedt Cycle. So, Rodney Allam, former lead technologist at Air Products and Jeremy Fetvedt, who really is a chief engineer at many industrial design companies, pioneered the cycle of using supercritical CO2 as a working fluid in a power plant. But the origins of the Allam-Fetvedt Cycle really start back in around 2008 around the clean coal initiative.
And so, 8 Rivers started focusing on, well, how do we deliver a system that can utilize coal in a cleaner zero emissions way? Through that work, through the advice of many large industrial organizations, they suggested that 8 Rivers focus its time more on the natural gas side of clean power cycles. And so, ultimately that's where the Allan-Fetvedt Cycle was first applied was for, how do you utilize natural gas, capture all of the emissions at competitive heat rate? What I mean by heat rate is efficiency, and be able to provide electricity at a price that remains affordable, but not only affordable, but is consistently accessible? So, being able to remove that intermittency.
So, that's the basis of the innovation and the way that NET Power achieves that is by burning natural gas with pure oxygen. You then get a very pure stream of CO2 and water. Water comes out as a liquid. CO2 is recirculated carrying heat and energy. The CO2 fluid, comes back into the front end of the system, gets reheated prior to going through the turbine and ultimately that heat recuperation piece and the properties of supercritical CO2 allow for one to achieve very high energy efficiency while capturing all of the CO2.
The other real key innovation is that there's no adsorbent used in that carbon capture process. You're capturing CO2 just as a pure gas and it's typically that adsorbent process in traditional carbon capture that comes with a significant energy penalty.
Chris Wedding:
So, I'm just taking notes here to follow on that. Maybe we'll start with the last point here, this adsorbent you mentioned not being required. You mentioned the energy penalty paid for that, but the other I presume it's some sort of cost that’s not in your system that helps make it at or below the cost of other natural gas derived power. The other thing I wrote down was, for those listening, they may be thinking, “Wow, I wish I had paid more attention in my chemistry course back in high school or college.” Maybe just to call out, I know your background, Damian, is heavy in science, heavy in chemistry materials. I think many others, that's true at 8 Rivers. So, here's another example of a path in the hard sciences leading to, again, large value creation from a financial point of view as well.
12:33
The other thing I wrote down was natural gas. So, I think some listeners would think, “Well, NET Power sounds amazing, zero emissions, but it's still using natural gas. What about things like leakage or otherwise upstream for this potent greenhouse gas?” I can appreciate, it's the full picture baby and natural gas is not going anytime soon, not going to zero for sure. How do you respond to other concerns beyond just the combustion portion of where that gas has limitations?
Damian Beauchamp:
So, the way that I've really reconciled this in my own head is, significant opposition to carbon capture in the past has been that carbon capture perpetuates the oil and gas industry, perpetuates the coal industry. 20 years ago, that's what people were saying and here we are 20 years later with not nearly enough carbon capture deployed, but oil and gas and coal continue to flourish. So, what's the answer there?
Well, the answer isn't that some technology on the back end of oil and gas or coal facilities, or using it in a new way is what's going to cause those industries to flourish. What's caused those industries to flourish is the invisible hand. Economics 101. We've spent a century optimizing the systems that utilize transport, oil and gas and coal, and as a result, the levelized cost of energy from those sources has come down significantly such that people in less economic prosperous areas of the world and developing areas of the world can now access cheaper energy.
And so, that energy is going to be accessed and it's going to be accessed in the cheapest way possible. So, we're not doing ourselves any good by just focusing on not capturing CO2 saying, “Oh, well, if we capture CO2 in the downstream, what about the upstream?” The thing is, we've never had more renewables deployed than we have today, but it's also true that we've never had higher CO2 emissions than we have today. So, what does that mean? Because I think about that and that means that in the near term, before we're fully electrified and fully on renewables, which that's in our future for sure, that is the prize, eyes on the prize. But how do you get there before catastrophic global warming occurs?
Well, in the near term, the deployment of renewables and the reduction in CO2 emissions are not correlated. Why is that? Well, it's because the cost of hydrocarbons is very low. They continue to be consumed and we haven't deployed enough carbon capture. Because it may seem obvious in hindsight after saying something as simple as what I'm about to say, but to prevent CO2 going in the atmosphere, you actually have to interact with it. You have to capture it.
Now, in order for success to happen on the upstream to capture those methane fugitive emissions, significant investment has to be put to work. The good news is that there's economic incentive for all these companies to prevent those upstream emissions. And so, groups like OGCI, the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, their first focus of their $1.3 billion fund was to develop technology, to detect and prevent methane leaks. They invested substantially in satellite technology that can show where is all the methane leaking. So, they needed to find it first and they were very open about that. And now that they found it, they're going to work to capture that methane because ultimately capturing that methane translates into dollars. So, there's an economic incentive to do that and there's an economic incentive that then translates to an environmental benefit.
16:26
But now if that methane is put into the system, where is it going to go? How are you going to utilize it in a cleaner way? That’s really what 8 Rivers is focused on. Not only from the Allam-Fetvedt Cycle, NET Power based technology, but across our platform. I think that's one of the things that makes us unique as an organization is that we've focused our time on engaging the hydrocarbon industry to achieve environmental and climate outcomes that the world and so many of its companies are wanting to focus on.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, to add to that, I think a way to think about it is, there's no silver bullet, there's no single solution to the energy transition. It's lots of solutions and renewables are great and often the cheapest form of new power out there. Batteries are getting way, way cheaper, but we still need other forms of base load clean power, which is what you all are providing. Let's go to more on the validation of NET Power. I think some listeners may think, “Sounds good. Is this like at a pilot lab scale?” The answer is no. So, tell us about where this technology is implemented, how it's proving itself out, scale, et cetera, Damian.
Damian Beauchamp:
Yeah, sure. So, there's a facility in La Porte, Texas that was constructed. Interesting piece is that facility in La Porte, Texas is one of the largest pieces of infrastructure ever built by a startup. The only one that we really know that has built anything larger than that at scale is SpaceX with the Falcon 9. So, that was where first validation occurred and large-scale testing.
Then as NET Power has progressed, most recently Baker Hughes came in as the turbine supplier and also an investor in NET Power, and now there are multiple commercial projects being planned around the world. I can't talk about other parties’ plan in development of those plants, but we at 8 Rivers have two specifically that we're very excited about.
One is the Coyote Clean Power Project on the Southern Ute Indian Tribes Reservation. That'll be a 300-megawatt electric NET Power facility and then there's another one in the UK that we're calling Whitetail, and that's with Sembcorp. Sembcorp has a large industrial complex that houses a lot of large industrial facilities, chemical production, steel. It's on the River Tees there in the UK and this particular NET Power facility would be used to decarbonize the electric utility for those industrial tenants on Sembcorp’s site.
So, those are two commercial facilities that 8 Rivers has been driving the development of and ultimately those facilities will license the technology from NET Power with 8 Rivers being a co-owner of the project itself.
Chris Wedding:
Well, that was a question I was going to ask on the business model. So, maybe let's go there. I think what you all do around getting your tech to market is important to discuss because it's about, how do you get the most projects built the quickest versus how to own everything, the entire life cycle of a technology. Maybe talk about how you arrived at the business model and what it is today and how it's working, Damian.
20:01
Damian Beauchamp:
So, I would say how we arrived at the business model has been an evolution over the past decade and a half. We've been around for 15 years and we've remained agile and flexible as we centered in on what is the model. Started in technology development and then worked into more of a project development scheme. But long-term, and you touched on it, building large-scale industrial-based assets is limiting for an organization. And so, our ultimate goal is to have caused more CO2 to be captured than any other organization on earth. The question is, how do you achieve that? Well, you don't achieve that by building every single project.
So, we really want to be a facilitator. We want to be a facilitator through our technological innovation so we license those technologies out to the world. We want to be a facilitator through services and helping other parties develop their projects successfully, either incorporating our technologies or incorporating other clean energy technologies. There are examples we're looking at in incorporating solar into a NET Power project or incorporating wind into a hydrogen project and how we integrate those clean energy solutions.
Now those solar technologies and those wind technologies aren't our technologies, but they're achieving the same goal that we look to achieve. So, again, technological innovation, provide services, and then we do do technology development and financing. So, it's across those three pillars that we think we're going to be able to scale to be the world's largest net zero solutions provider.
Chris Wedding:
There's a sound bite right there. You buried the lead, Damian, I like that. Back on how NET Power got to market. If my memory is correct, you all had some very substantial corporate partnerships where maybe you all only had X number of employees, but you were leveraging dozens if I recall of employees, of resources, human resources, talent from corporate partners. If you can, whatever's non-confidential or not confidential, say more about those partnerships, how you convinced essentially very large companies to take a bet on a much smaller startup.
Damian Beauchamp:
Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, an innovation at the scale that NET Power is can't happen without large industrial partners who have specific domain expertise and can really help execute. And so, in the early days, NET Power was first financed from Shaw Power, which became CB&I and then McDermott. Then after that initial investment, Exelon, now Constellation came in, and then Occidental Petroleum, their Oxy Low Carbon Ventures came in, and then most recently, Baker Hughes.
And so, starting back to the first one, call it McDermott, they are an EPC so they know how to build really large things. We started with the EPC as the first partner because ultimately you have to be able to engineer and build the facilities and having that credible engineering partner to convey to electric utilities or the world's largest transporter and consumer of CO2 is critical and so start with that piece.
23:38
So, after some work with them, discussions with Exelon, now Constellation occurred and ultimately, they're the United States largest nuclear provider, but also interesting fact, they have the lowest CO2 emissions per megawatt hour produced of any utility in the United States. So, there isn't a California based utility who wins that metric. It's actually utility out in the Midwest and on the East Coast who can claim that great environmental attribute.
And so, they know how to operate power plants. They know how to build power plants as well so they were a critical partner. Ultimately, what they saw was a way to utilize natural gas, and an efficiency that was compelling and marketable while capturing all the CO2. That value proposition, if that was true, they believe that that would change the world and so they engaged on that power.
Then Oxy is a clear strategic because if you're going to capture all the CO2, you need to do something with it. That's like they're going to involve transport and they have a lot of experience in that part and then ultimately you need to store large volumes of it and that ultimately comes through sequestration. I think that Oxy's long-term vision is to be a significant sequester and service provider to CO2 capture projects across the United States and ultimately across the world. That's what I see through their commitments, just based on press releases and where they're investing their dollars is that they see a real future in doing a lot of environmental good.
Now that started through enhanced oil recovery, but that's okay because carbon capture and reducing emissions ultimately is dealing with large volumes of gas and fluids and needing to transport those efficiently. That's an expertise and an infrastructure that a group like Occidental Petroleum has built for themselves and leveraging that to do environmental good, I think is a wonderful thing.
Now, Baker Hughes is interesting because they produce equipment and they also provide services to the oil and gas industry. So, if you want the oil and gas industry and the hydrocarbon industry at large to start to engage and embrace carbon capture, clean energy solutions, it's good to have service providers and OEMs that they trust that have done a lot of good for those organizations over decades. Baker Hughes is one of those. They’re best-in-class service provider and I think their focus on environmental stewardship on behalf of those organizations has been as good as one could expect under any regulatory circumstances that they had to work under.
Chris Wedding:
I can imagine two things that listeners are thinking right now. One is, boy, a lot of reference to oil and gas partners and I think the other, how nice for a startup to develop these very powerful development partners. On the former, I'll state what I think is the obvious and what I think I hear you saying as well. We can't achieve the energy transition by just giving the metaphorical finger to the oil and gas sector. So many resources and expertise sets, et cetera, that are relevant to the transition. Look, are they moving as fast as we'd all like them to? No, but having partnerships like this are ways to create financial reasons for them to do so.
The other on forming these partnerships, Damian, can you just talk about maybe, timing is the first attribute that comes to mind. I can imagine these are many months, if not years in the making. I can also imagine how they stack and shorten the time to get the next partner. For those startups listening thinking, “I'd love some really powerful strategic partners like this,” I don't know, timing other drivers that get them to a yes versus a long, long no.
27:45
Damian Beauchamp:
Yeah. On the first point with respect to oil and gas, listen, if one expects to make any change in the world or the way we operate, demonizing any single partner is not a way to get a productive response. And so, in order to have real change and have true engagement from multiple industries, even those that you want to do things in a different or maybe in this circumstance, a cleaner way, I think the best thing we can do is first try to deeply understand the core objectives of that business and have some empathy.
Once you understand how those businesses and the pressures that their management are under to achieve certain metrics, once you understand that, if you can operate under that umbrella to allow them to achieve those things while also accomplishing the goal that say we at 8 Rivers want to achieve, that's when you can find a true and strong partnership that creates meaningful impact. And so, that's always been our approach is, again, that invisible hand is going to drive low-cost solutions into the market. There are whole economies that can't further develop today by taking the highest cost solutions.
And we're even seeing when things like what's happening between Ukraine and Russia happen, we instantly revert to the most transportable, lowest cost fuels that we can find to ensure that the standard of living and the safety of societies is maintained. And so, if 20 years ago, we would have built and embraced these industries, I think when they call on these different energy resources, they could be utilized in a cleaner way today.
I think we have some lessons to learn on decisions and ways that we approached markets 20 years ago in trying to achieve certain environmental outcomes that haven't been successful.
As far as timescale is concerned, I think all that feeds into timescale. So, right now on the energy transition and reduction of CO2 emissions, we're failing and I think we're failing because there's been a level of divisiveness drawn between solutions. I agree it's an all of the above approach and the faster we start to operate in that way, the faster we're going to achieve meaningful outcomes that I think are positive.
Our business model, going back to talk about the 8 Rivers piece, yeah, the time scales for industrial scale innovation are decades and that's why people traditionally haven't done that scale of innovation is typically capital, typical venture capital, capital. NP Capital doesn't really have the patience in that space, but large corporate strategics who are thinking on the orders of decades and quarters of centuries at a time, especially electric utilities and gas utilities, they really think in five, 10-year chunks when they're talking about power plants coming online and operating those, or big refineries coming online. The last refinery in the United States built in 1971. So, those are the kinds of groups and those are the reasons we engage those strategics.
But what's really wonderful and Cam Hosie, our CEO says this, we at 8 Rivers had the dubious advantage of being 10 years too early in focusing on industrial scale carbon capture across industries. We were lucky enough, nimble enough, ambitious enough to survive that 10 years and now what we've come out with is the world's largest IP portfolio in carbon capture, not only in the power sector space.
31:25
So, a lot of people know about NET Power, but we've got a Solid Fuel’s variant of that. We've got a hydrogen solution. We just won the Carbon Removal XPRIZE first phase for our direct air capture solution. We've got post combustion carbon capture technology. And so, we've really built a substantial portfolio and the great thing is that we are ready to meet the market where the market is today. The market is screaming for solutions to directly engage with hydrocarbons, to directly engage with CO2 and prevent those emissions from going in the atmosphere. We at 8 Rivers couldn't be more ready to do that.
And so, we're seeing deployment of these first power projects in 2026, 2027 for the projects that we're developing with some partners. We're seeing direct air capture solutions coming on sooner than that and we're working with a partner, Origen in the UK on that solution. And so, yeah, I would say the next eight years are going to be really critical for us and you're going to see a lot of deployment happening from 8 Rivers.
Chris Wedding:
Well, I think what many listeners are doing is they're putting their car in park at the stoplight and they’re rewinding to the last two minutes, Damian, to hear all the other things you-all are working on and prizes you're winning beyond NET Power, which is pretty bad ass in itself.
I want to switch us to the personal side of the podcast, the Damian portion of the podcast, beyond just 8 Rivers. But before I do that, I want to just state the obvious that folks need to go to your website, I presume is the best place to start learning about each of those other things you just mentioned, which could probably deserve their own 40-minute podcast, which obviously we don't have time for. So, that's impressive.
Okay, let's go to Damian. So, Damian, one question we ask a lot is, if you could chat with your younger self, what tips might you give that person? Mostly career, but not just career, on how to be more effective, happier, et cetera, in these pursuits.
Damian Beauchamp:
I don't know that I have a whole lot of advice. I've been very happy so far in my career. I feel like I've been pretty effective relatively young, 36 years old. I don't know that I could have done things faster or more effective.
Chris Wedding:
How about then if you were saying, “Don't forget, these are examples of ways you're going to get to where you want to be when you're 36,” what are a couple of things you think have been instrumental in you having this position to influence climate change like you all can?
Damian Beauchamp:
Don't be afraid of the work. That's probably the single biggest thing is, it's going to consume a lot of time to make substantial change.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, right on. Don't be afraid of the challenge, the quality or the quantity, perhaps to get there.
Damian Beauchamp:
Yeah, if one wants to shift, and I think this is true for any organization that has really transformed the direction of the world, unfortunately, there's very little work-life balance. You need to find it and sometimes it's a struggle, but for those who are really going to lead the charge into that direction, it's going to take significant focus and effort in a very specific direction. And so, I would say trying to maybe find a little more of that would be the advice to myself, but at the same time, the work, at least here at 8 Rivers and what we're doing couldn't be more rewarding.
35:15
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, I see that in your facial expression. I think listeners hear it in your voice as well. It relates to a quote I shared with the CEO this morning, they were wrestling with too many things on their plate, too many ways to have an impact. I was just noting the quote of, we can have anything we want in life, just not everything. And so, I think it relates to your focus comment a lot, which builds well to the next question, Damian, which is, what are some habits or routines whether they’re daily, weekly, monthly, et cetera, that keep you focused for sure, but also healthy and sane in the process?
Damian Beauchamp:
Just having the appropriate downtime to decompress is a big one. Getting exercise and moving around is super important. In my past life, I certainly got into meditation and other things like this, but most of my meditation these days is, how are we going to achieve the next ambitious objectives that we have to meet? But certainly, time with family is valued and allows me to recharge and re-center my purpose and reminds me why I'm doing what I'm doing.
Chris Wedding:
And so, what does the downtime look like beyond family stuff, Damian?
Damian Beauchamp:
Listen, I've got a four-year-old and an 8-year-old, it looks like chasing them.
Chris Wedding:
Right on. How about recommendations on books, tools, resources, et cetera, folks could check out following the podcast?
Damian Beauchamp:
As far as books are concerned, the things that Dan Yergin has written have always been guiding lights and very insightful for the energy industry. So, that's an interesting one and there's another that's titled, How the World Works, not by Dan Yergin, I don't know the exact author, but that's another one to think about, how decisions are made globally. I think it's insightful for anybody trying to deploy large scale energy transition or climate solutions today. It helps hone the value proposition. It helps hone the strategy of how to go about deploying those solutions.
Some quotes in particular that I really like, one is Calvin Coolidge's quote on persistence, I think that one's a great one. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan press on has solved and always will solve problems of the human race. I think that that one is wonderful and that's one that I always keep in my mind's eye in doing the work that we're doing here at 8 Rivers.
Another one that's really interesting and it's hanging here in the 8 Rivers office is The Man in the Arena by Teddy Roosevelt and I really like that one. For anybody who doesn't know it, I would just say, google it and read it because for me, it certainly made an impact the first time I read it and I think it's really great.
38:28
Chris Wedding:
You're in good company with that. There've been several guests on the podcast recommending that as one of their favorite quotes or speeches perhaps. The Calvin Coolidge quote, it makes me think of your LinkedIn profile photo, which is, I believe, the Grand Canyon. I wonder if there's a relationship there between persistence and that image shown, or maybe you just like the Grand Canyon, perhaps, Damian.
Damian Beauchamp:
Wow, that's wildly insightful, Chris, but yes, that's exactly right. So, when you look at something like the Grand Canyon, you've got this fluid, the water that has through persistence created that Grand Canyon. So, this fluid that is much softer than the rock itself, through persistence has created that meaningful and substantial change in the landscape and that's exactly right. That's exactly why that picture is there.
Chris Wedding:
Perfect. Well, that's a good almost closure. I'm going to give the final word to you, Damian. Is it a call to action, who do you want to hear from, notes of optimism to solve these problems, what message do you want to leave the listeners with?
Damian Beauchamp:
I think that the world is really getting on track. I think over the past five years, we've seen a tremendous amount of the world's largest companies commit to net zero ambitions of varying forms. We've seen all of the large oil and gas companies now step up and say, “Yes, climate change is a thing.” They've stepped up and said, “Yes, we're going to figure out and invest in and deploy carbon capture-based solution.”
In 2019, we saw a transformative announcement from Saudi Aramco in their announcement of the circular carbon economy. ExxonMobil has now stepped up to say, “Yes, this is a thing and we're going to embrace it.” Especially here in our headquarters in Houston with the desire to make that a carbon capture hub, we've got the passage of the IRA, which pours hundreds of billions of dollars into the clean tech space in general, especially focused on climate-based initiatives. So, it's taken quite some time, but I think the moment is great.
I also think that we've never had a stronger alignment between so many of the stakeholders that are critical to make this a success. I think we really are looking at a clean energy and climate technology industrial revolution at the moment. Just going back to that earlier comment, oldest refinery or the newest refinery in the US being built in the 1970s, there's a need to replace infrastructure and we're now able to, I think, do a lot of that replacement, new build with cleaner, more sustainable solutions.
Chris Wedding:
Well, hear, hear on the optimism for the solutions to perhaps the greatest challenge we face as a species. We'll end here, Damian, but certainly rooting for 8 Rivers' success.
Damian Beauchamp:
Thanks, Chris. I appreciate that. We need all we can.
Chris Wedding:
Hear, hear.
41:45
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