Listen: US government stepping into battery metals where private capital is hesitant

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Taylor Kuykendall:
Hello and welcome to another episode of Energy Evolution, the podcast exploring the latest developments in the energy sector. I'm your host, Taylor Kuykendall, and today we have a very exciting episode lined up for you. Joining me today is Camellia Moors, our correspondent here at the show. Hi, Camellia.

Camellia Moors:
Hey, Taylor. Really excited to be here today.

Taylor Kuykendall:
Me too, absolutely, because today we have two very special guests joining us. We both recently sat down with Jigar Shah, the director of the Loan Program's Office at the US Department of Energy, and John Evans, the president and CEO of Lithium Americas.

Camellia Moors:
That's right, Taylor. The DOE may be getting more into the metals and mining space given its importance to the energy transition. Notably the DOE clarified in April, that critical mineral mining and extraction projects are actually eligible for federal loan guarantees under its Title 17 financing program. Separately, back in March, the LPO announced a conditional commitment to provide a $2.26 billion loan to Lithium Nevada Corporation, which is a subsidiary of Lithium Americas Corporation. This loan will help finance the construction of a lithium carbonate processing plant at Thacker Pass in Humboldt County, Nevada. Thacker Pass is also located near what the DOE says is the largest proven lithium reserves in North America.

Taylor Kuykendall:
And that's a really big deal right now because we are scrambling for the metals needed for the energy transition here. As you know, we are currently largely dependent on a whole lot of other countries for many of the metals that we need for energy technologies ranging from wind turbines to EV batteries and more.

Camellia Moors:
Exactly. It's certainly something we've talked about on the podcast before. So with this project, once operational, this Lithium Americas facilities expected to produce about 40,000 metric tons per year of battery grade lithium carbonate, which will then be used in lithium-ion batteries for things like EVs. Thacker Pass has received support from General Motors, the automaker through an equity investment in Lithium Americas. And then General Motors is also expected to be a long-term primary buyer of lithium carbonate from the project, which should help them start off with a steady stream of business.

Taylor Kuykendall:
All right. Well, how about we just dive into our conversation with John and Jigar now?

Camellia Moors:
Sounds great.

Taylor Kuykendall:
Thank you all so much for joining Energy Evolution, really excited about this conversation. Jigar, to start, can you tell our listeners about this 2.26 billion loan guarantee that we're talking about and the basics of the project. What is Lithium Americas doing exactly and why is the US DOE involved?

Jigar Shah:
Well, look, I think when you think about where we are in this particular moment in time, we are onshoring and reshoring our entire battery supply chain, not just on the lithium side, but also battery manufacturing, but also other critical minerals as well as battery recycling and other components. And so when you think about just the comprehensive nature of what we're doing, Lithium Americas fits in wonderfully into what we're doing there.
I think that coming into the administration, the processing of critical minerals always qualified for the Loan Programs Office and so we've been doing a lot of projects on the processing side. I think with the Title 17 amendments that were passed in the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law now can do mining in Title 17. So we've yet to do our first project there, but we're excited about the expanded mandate.

Taylor Kuykendall:
Excellent. And John, before we dive too much further into this, tell us the basics of the Lithium Americas project. What are you all doing out there? Why is the project special and where exactly are you in the process of developing that?

Jonathan Evan:
We're developing a fully integrated, basically mine through processing, so when the material leaves the site itself, it's a better grade quality lithium salt, which goes directly to treatment for cathodes. The site's in Northern Nevada. It's the largest known lithium deposit in North America.
And at this point we've completed all the call it pre-construction activities. We've completed over a third of the final detailed engineering, costed over 70% of the final equipment packages. I mean we're essentially ready to go and at the starting gate at this point.
And it's a large deposit. I mean it's 40,000 tons a year. The production right now in the US is 1/10 of that. So it would make a measurable contribution to the North American lithium salt supply that's a critical part of the supply chain.

Taylor Kuykendall:
And I'm sure this help from the DOE is going to be a great amount of support to getting that off the ground. For our listeners, Jigar, could you tell us a little bit more about the Loan Programs Office? What's its mission, what types of projects it considers generally, and maybe what are the risks that it's willing to take or not take compared to maybe a private investor?

Jigar Shah:
Yeah, happy to do so. The Loan Programs Office really was conceived in the 2005 Energy Act and really was started to help build nuclear power plants. That mandate was expanded to include fossil energy and renewable energy during that 2008, 2009 Recovery Act time period. Today, I think when you think about where we are, we continue to have the same mission, which is that there are many companies like Lithium Americas, but others, who frankly have an extraordinary business plan.
But when you think about the way in which our capital markets work for the commercial banking side, they really want to see 10, 20 years of profits in this sector before they want to provide any debt. And what that means then is to get to where you need to be, you really need to 100% equity finance these efforts, which oftentimes is very, very hard to do.
So we really try to play this role of being a catalyst for these companies where you don't really have technology risk, you do have a lot of execution risk, you have a lot of scale up risk, but you don't really have technology risk. And this is where I think DOE has been quite good.
So when you look at our track record, we have about 3% losses across a $34 billion portfolio. We're putting more loan guarantees and loan closings out the door each and every month. And so you're seeing that across innovative clean energy, the automotive supply chain, which we're talking about here, but also our new 1706 Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment program where we issued the first loan there, the first conditional commitment to the Palisades Nuclear Plant to restart it.
And so it's really a great time to see how many extraordinary things innovators and entrepreneurs want to do. And we stand ready to help them with the debt that they need to be able to get those projects to the finish line.

Camellia Moors:
Staying with you, Jigar, I mean the Biden-Harris administration has been pretty clear with its goals as it concerns US critical mineral supply chains and also national energy security. Could you tell us a little bit more about how this Thacker Pass project aligns with that and what other sorts of projects are actually currently under consideration within this mining space?

Jigar Shah:
Yeah. So I think at the top level, remember that the president has a goal of 50% of all new cars sold at the end of the decade to come either electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles. And so when you think about that goal and you think about the onshoring and reshoring mandate that we've been given through the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act, you're talking probably at least 400 gigawatt hours a year of battery manufacturing, more if you think the share of battery electric vehicles will be higher within that mix.
And then you think about how much lithium we need, how much cobalt, manganese, nickel, et cetera you might need. But you also think about battery separators, you think about permanent magnets, you think about all of these other things. And so as a result, one out of every three loans that we've done out of the Loan Programs Office since I've been the director and the president's been in office has been in this space. And so I think it's been quite a broad mandate and one that I think is continuing to evolve as people feel inspired to continue to develop projects, build projects, get to final design and get to doing that.
But one other thing I'd say is that the United States of America wasn't really in the game until 2021. We were not really fighting for market share in this space until that time period. So I think there's a lot of folks who have expectations of us already having some sort of substantial market share this week.
And I would say that when you look at the investments, we expect that not only will we have substantial market share in all the critical minerals processing and battery manufacturing by the end of the decade, I think we will probably have enough lithium to meet our entire domestic needs and start to export to our allies around the world by probably 2034.

Taylor Kuykendall:
I'm glad you brought that up. And I'm just wondering how did the US get so far behind when it comes to some of our competitors like China when we think about the EV battery chain? I mean it sounds like we can catch up pretty quickly, but what was the thinking process that led us to where we are now?

Jigar Shah:
I think getting far behind is a very difficult thing to define. Today, we have something on the order of around 11 to 12% of all vehicles sold in the United States being electric. Our existing infrastructure in terms of all vehicles on the road today, we're about 1% of all vehicles in the United States being electric.
So I would say that we really only got in the game in 2021 because that's when it was very obvious that we wanted to onshore and reshore and Congress gave us that mandate to do so. I don't think it's going to take us that long to diversify the supply chain once we put our mind to it, but I don't think that we had our mind set on making sure that we were winning in this sector until the president came into office.

Taylor Kuykendall:
John, I'm wondering if you have anything to add on that maybe from a mining perspective and just maybe how the US has historically thought about domestic mining?

Jonathan Evan:
Well, actually I'll say I'll classify us as more of a chemical company because at the end of the day is a highly refined product and the bulk of the capital cost actually are in the processing part. The mining is actually quite small. And Jigar hit it early on, I mean capital markets typically look for quick returns. And when you're in projects like we are, segments like we are, it takes a long time. It takes several years to develop these projects. It takes years to build them and it makes it difficult to get projects like this financed and get people interested. And that's where the government plays a key role in acting as a catalyst.

Taylor Kuykendall:
And John, I was wondering if you could maybe walk us back and give us a little color on how this loan came to be, how you found out about the program, what the process was like. I'm just wondering. If we have any other maybe mining or chemical companies out there that are listening and they're wondering how can I also get this kind of support, what was that experience like? Would you describe it as easy? Was it a lot of hoops to jump through? I don't know. How would you describe the process?

Jonathan Evan:
Well, I think the office and the Department of Energy have done a good job of publicizing how the program works. It's not easy, and I've actually spoken to a lot of peers in the sector that were willing to help. There needs to be more than just us, not only in this particular part of the supply chain, but others. It's a very rigorous process. I mean it's been two years of work. There's different milestones that you go through.
The government is very much like any other bank actually, the way it acts, where a tremendous amount of due diligence and data that you need to provide. The other thing that you have to remember as well is you have to have a well-developed commercial plan, partners. You need to be permitted in a lot of cases for sure, and especially to get to the point to close the loan. So there's a lot of onus that's on the company.
And then again, the government does a very thorough job because of course they want to be paid back. This is a loan. This isn't a grant or free money, but it all works quite well together. But the team has to be well staffed and you have to have a good plan and you have to have all your ducks in a row. It's not willy-nilly.
I've heard comments before that the government's giving away money. That's far from the truth. In fact, I would say private equity and other pools of capital that you might go to might be faster than the government, but what you get here is a larger loan size, but also you get very low cost of capital, basically borrowing at the same rate as the US Treasury. So it's worth the effort.
And especially with companies like ours that are small that as Jigar said earlier, it's difficult to access the capital markets and raise that much capital when your market cap is smaller. I mean, we're not a mega cap company. We're a billion dollar market cap. It's a $2.9 billion project with a contingency included in that number. It all works very, very well, but it's a very vigorous process.

Camellia Moors:
So digging down into this Thacker Pass project, and the pun is very much intended, John, Lithium Americas plans to extract lithium from clay rather than say spodumene or brines as we see at some other extraction sites. In perhaps layperson's terms, can you explain the challenges and opportunities of clay extraction? And I'd also be curious whether the unknowns around that have been a challenge when it comes to communicating with investors.

Jonathan Evan:
So lithium is in lots of different ... It's in seawater. So it's in many different forms. It's in brines, it's in spodumene, hard rock, and every country is gifted with different geological resources as well. So clay is actually a resource that I think even Elon Musk himself said is going to be in the next large supply of lithium, especially for North America. We're gifted in that the geology that we have makes the extraction part quite easy.
I mean on simple terms, it's a sandpit. We extract right at surface. It's a very shallow mine, it's about 350 feet deep at the deepest point. There's also benefits to that as well is that I can do a reclamation as we extract, so we're actually backfilling as we go. So it gives us a much lighter environmental footprint.
How we're behind all this was three or four years of very vigorous work, working in concert with Stanford University and others to understand, very detailed, how this formation was put together, but also what it looks like and how you separate the lithium from the underlying, we call it gangue in the industry.
From then on, actually the process actually looks very similar to anything else you would see. Actually our flow sheet is not that much dissimilar as a combination of both. The front end of the process, the beneficiation's a little different, actually I'll say is easier because we usually use particle size separation.
Then it gets to a midpoint where the intermediate is exactly the same as what a hard rock process would be. And then the end of the process, or I'd say the final third, putting it up into thirds, looks just like any other brine operation or spodumene operation when you're going through purification to remove whatever impurities that your deposit has.
So it's not really that dissimilar. The form in the beginning looks a little bit different, but the processing techniques that you get to the final end product are really all things that have been practiced for several decades, and all the equipment is essentially off the shelf. Even the size of it, they're operating all over the world today.
But again, in what country you're in, you have to deal with the geology you're dealt with. In this case, actually, I think the United States is gifted with this deposit just given the extensive size of it. 16 million tons of lithium carbonate equivalent and we'll have a substantial increase to that number in that it's all over the place in the deposit that we're at.
So I add this in because if you go back in history, and I know this industry really, really well, brine actually was not seen as a lithium resource at all until the '80s. And that was just, they were mining actually potash. And they did some analysis on the waste that they had and said, "Wow, there's a lot of lithium in here." This was work done by what was today Albemarle. It was a previous iteration of that that developed the processing techniques for that that grew on to SQM, their neighbor and eventually to FMC over in Argentina.
So this spodumene process was actually practiced in the US and Canada for decades and decades earlier than that. And the brine processes took that over and actually essentially provided most of the world's lithium for a pretty long period of time from the '90s up until probably 2010 to 2015. It was mostly just brine and it was really three operations around the world that provided I'd say 90% of the supply.
The market's grown now. So an analog to this is oil and gas. There's all kinds of different extraction techniques now to get oil out of the ground because the economy and the world grew. And people are creative and you find different resources and different methods to tap them. So it's not dissimilar to other industries that are out there today.

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Camellia Moors:
Certainly interesting to observe how things change and come full circle over time. You mentioned as well Lithium Americas size a moment ago, wondering if you could provide some more information about General Motors' equity investment in Lithium Americas and what role it has as a long-term primary lithium carbonate buyer for this project. And also, I mean generally, how would you actually describe interest in mining projects from OEMs in the US both now and historically?

Jonathan Evan:
I give General Motors a lot of credit. We have a very close relationship with them and they have a plan for where they want to go that I think mimics what the president has laid out and what Jigar has actually laid out as well. They wanted more control or visibility I should say, over their supply chain and the nearshoring.
We worked with them for six to eight months, extensive due diligence, lots of site visits. They hired outside consultants and became very comfortable with the project, the team, the technology and moved forward. And I think the way they did their investment is quite unique. They bought interest in the capital shares level of the company, so TopCo. Basically they have common shares in the company doing this in two tranches and that we're basically borrowing their balance sheet.
Now from GM's perspective, if you look at this, it's almost a little bit like private equity. They're confident the market's going to grow, they're going to grow as well. They've secured their supply for 15 years for phase one. They're also confident that the market value of the company is going to go up. They don't have an interest in controlling the company or running it. They're an automotive company. And it allows them over time to, at a profit, actually sell their shares sometime down the road, say 10 years down the road. So I think it was quite unique. It worked for them and it worked for us as well and it's been a good partnership.
I would say the interest from OEMs is mixed. I think what GM did is something that I think hopefully others will do, but there hasn't been a ton of interest out there from OEMs. And it makes sense a little bit, I mean their core competency is making vehicles and not making refined chemicals. Battery companies get involved, small investments. So you see Korean companies typically. The companies that have done the most are Chinese, which is no surprise. This has been a part of industrial policy in China for at least 10 years. So you see a mix of mining companies and battery companies heavily involved in the supply chain.
So CATL is backward integrated into lithium production in China. BYD has been very vocal about wanting to backward integrate in Chile and also is involved in operations in China. Africa primarily has been Chinese mining companies as well. So they're willing to take risk and also accept returns that a lot of financial investors, as Jigar said earlier, wouldn't do in small companies that are pre-revenue or if there's execution risk or in some cases country risk.
There's a high comfort level and there's a tremendous amount of involvement from the Chinese government providing very low cost of capital to enable that. And that's one of the reasons why you see them very, very active. What we're doing now in the US has been going on in China now for at least a decade or more.

Taylor Kuykendall:
I want to pivot a little bit. Jigar, environmental justice has been a really big push for the Biden administration. First, I'd like you to maybe define what the administration means when it says environmental justice and how it's taking those considerations into energy projects. But then tell us a little bit more specifically about the considerations that went into Thacker Pass and how this project's going to benefit the local community.

Jigar Shah:
Yeah, it's a good question. Look, I think when you think about starting from maybe the last part of the question around Thacker Pass, there's a couple of pieces to this. One is, as John suggested, we are blessed with an extraordinary amount of lithium in our great country, whether it's in Nevada, but also the Smackover in Arkansas or in the Salton Sea in California, et cetera. And so there's lots of great lithium there today.
There's an extraordinarily dirty process using sulfuric acid that is the industry standard, and we have a number of additional technologies that are really American in nature that can complete that process with a far smaller environmental footprint. And I think when you think about what the United States has done over the last 45 plus years at the Department of Energy, we have figured out smarter, better, lower footprint ways of doing things for decades. But for a long time, we weren't doing anything here for decades, and so in the end, we had to license a lot of those technologies around the world.
I think today what you find is we're going to be a lot more judicious around where we license those technologies. But we are ensuring that Thacker Pass and others meet the best practices that we know they can achieve while having the goal of being cheaper to produce battery grade lithium than our friends in China. And so we do believe that you can actually provide life, family sustaining jobs as well as meet very high environmental standards while bringing these new technologies to market.
But the challenge with a lot of this stuff is that if you don't engage the community, if you don't have these conversations in a forthright way, then a lot of folks fill in the blanks with conspiracy theories and all sorts of other things. And so I think when you look at just the extraordinary efforts that John and his team have made with tribes and others in the area there, but also that the Department of Energy has engaged in, I think there's just a lot of trust in this process. And that is something that we didn't have for the last 50 or 60 years when doing these very large projects. That trust had broken down.
And I think it is the president's vision and the secretary's vision to make sure that while we're doing these billion dollar projects, I mean over 400 of them now have been announced around the country, that we're actually building trust by engaging in these conversations. That doesn't mean that we delay the projects to be clear. It doesn't mean that the projects are given a veto to every single party, but it does mean that we have to be a lot more thoughtful, and I think people have done that.

Camellia Moors:
Keeping on this theme of the future of domestic mining projects, Jigar, I'd be curious if you could give us a sense of the level of interest you've actually seen from companies at this mining and minerals processing stage in terms of LPO programs, post Inflation Reduction Act.

Jigar Shah:
Admittedly it's been mixed. I mean, I think when you think about the traditional process of mining, there are these junior miners that are generally under-capitalized and producing very small amounts of product and they have not been able to get the full attention and/or support from General Motors and others. And then you've got very large productions from familiar names that you know who I think feel very strongly that they shouldn't be using any government money. A lot of those projects have stalled as you know in high profile ways.
And so we have been going at it every year explaining to people that these programs are available for everybody, large mines like Thacker Pass, but also other projects around the country. Because for those larger companies as well, their weighted average cost of capital is actually quite high and their projects are not penciling right now without our debt. So we've reminded them that our debt is available and we're here to help them as well.
But they have been slow, I think, to take on Loan Programs Office funding, and so we'll keep at it. I think there's some interest, particularly this last year. I think there's been a lot more interest than there was the previous year, and we're always going to be here for folks to use it. But I do think this is a very big culture and norm shift for the mining industry.
The other piece of it that I've explained to people though is there's no promises in life, but when you use our debt, we then have this ability to have conversations with our friends at the Department of the Interior, our friends in other places around the US government to make things smoother for the rest of the process. It's really very difficult for us to have those conversations if people are not an active applicant into the Loan Programs Office. And so you've seen particularly for the other Nevada project that we're supporting a much faster timeline as a result of our participation.

Camellia Moors:
Great. John, I want to come back to you. I mean, we've been pretty optimistic in the discussion so far and forward-looking, but I'm curious what are in your mind some of the biggest challenges you see that are remaining in actually creating a domestic battery metal supply chain? I know for example, that mine permitting reform was a big discussion, D.C., In the last couple of years. Is that something that still needs to be completed in order to advance US critical minerals production?

Jonathan Evan:
Yeah, I mean, permitting reform I think is a broader issue. We're included in it and typically used as the example. However, it's needed for any type of infrastructure in the US whether it be solar farms, wind farms, transmission lines. So I think that's key, just given the transformation this country is going to have over the next decade, not only due to electrification of the vehicle fleet, but just the higher power demands needed for artificial intelligence now. I mean, electricity is key. And so not only the generation of it, the storage of it in batteries, but also the factory, all this stuff is going to be needed. So permit reform is key.
I think for the short term, one of the difficulties in the sector we're in is just the difficulty in getting private capital off the sidelines. So it's wonderful that the government has a long-term vision, which that's what governments do as part of policy, to help enable projects like ours and others to move forward. Private capital is more short term in their view and quite maybe hasn't bought into everything yet. So they sit on the sidelines.
Actually kind of ridiculous when you think about it. You'd think you'd want to join when assets are cheap. I mean, I'm saying our stock is cheap right now, and it's not just us. Most lithium producers, actually all of them, they're trading at near or at 52 week lows. And folks will wait until the tide has turned. The first 20% of the up cycle comes and then they'll jump in. It's kind of counterintuitive for value investors to wait, but is very much a herd mentality.
And EVs and critical minerals right now is a bit immature, especially lithium. The market behaves in an immature way. Wrong signals are used and people really can't see longer term that literally the world's changing in front of you. It's going to come back. I've been through two cycles in this industry and each time price bounces up, but the floor actually more importantly goes up when the market settles and declines. I remember when pricing was 3X less than we are today, market pricing, and we're at a floor right now at around 15 or $16,000 a ton.
But that's lost on the public debt markets and also the capital markets in general. I think that's a difficulty in that the government can only do so much, and it hasn't sunk in yet with the bulk of the investors out there that literally, I was just saying before, the world's changing in front of your eyes.

Jigar Shah:
And that is a role that the US government can play. I mean, it is not one that we played historically, and so as John is suggesting, I think the public debt markets and commercial markets are picking up on our signals in a very slow way. But when you think about what we've done in the underwriting of this loan where we've departed from the Shanghai Metals Market because they were sending false signals, we did a lot of our own data research. We hired our own market advisor, did our own fundamental analysis for the next 20 years.
We can't control if different countries around the world are dumping product, but we can control what truth is and figuring out exactly what it costs them to take stuff out of the ground, what it costs them to process, what the core value proposition is of a lot of these companies, et cetera. And so you're starting to see a lot of respect for the work that we're doing.
And so as a result, I'd say that without exception so far, all of our companies that have received conditional commitments have been able to raise the equity necessary to complete their projects. I think that's a huge testament to how much people respect the fundamental analysis that we're doing when we do the underwriting of a loan.

Taylor Kuykendall:
Excellent points. I'm definitely glad you bring that up because I always find it kind of fascinating. It seems like every forecast says we need more of these metals and the investment community does seem like they've been hesitant to jump in. And I always worry that maybe I just think that because I'm in the metals and mining reporting bubble or the energy bubble, and maybe I see it more than others. But glad to hear that seems to be a dissonance that other people are seeing as well.

Jonathan Evan:
We're thinking about adding AI to the end of our company name. That'll help maybe.

Taylor Kuykendall:
That should be it. Bitcoin probably doesn't do it anymore, right?

Jonathan Evan:
No, no, no, no.

Taylor Kuykendall:
Okay, so just pivoting one more time. My last question is, Jigar, we hear a lot about the potential of recycling battery metals and related materials and this idea that eventually we get into a circular economy where less and less mining is needed. I'm wondering where we're at now and maybe longer term in the future, what's your thoughts on how the LPO should focus on those technologies and whether maybe they should be prioritized over greenfield mining projects?

Jigar Shah:
I think the notion that we would prioritize one part of the supply chain over the other right now is really ridiculous. I think we've got an extraordinary amount of innovators and entrepreneurs across the spectrum. We are asking them all to go for the gusto. We're saying, "Look, there's never been a better time to take your ideas, to take your technologies that have been in demonstration and bring them to full scale."
And whether that's primary level mining and processing, or whether that's battery recycling or whether that's brand new chemistries that might be able to be used to be able to propel cars in the future, we are all in on American innovation, and I think that we're going to be that way for a long time. When you think about the prioritization piece of it, we can start thinking about that in 10 or 15 years, but right now we just have so much American innovation that had been sitting on the sidelines that needs to be accelerated.

Taylor Kuykendall:
Totally makes sense. Okay, great. Well, that was such a great discussion. Jigar, John, thank you both for joining us on Energy Evolution. Appreciate you sharing insights with our audience today. I'm sure they appreciate it as well. I hope you'll both be back on again soon.

Jonathan Evan:
Thank you very much.

Jigar Shah:
Thanks for having us.

Camellia Moors:
All right, everyone. That's all for today, and thanks so much for tuning into this episode. I want to give a special shout out to our incredible podcast team members, including Taylor Kuykendall, Dan Testa, Camilla Naschert, Christopher Coats, Karen Willenbrecht, as well as our fantastic agency partner, The 199.
To stay up to date with our upcoming episodes, be sure to subscribe to Energy Evolution on your favorite platform. And if you have any ideas for future topics or speakers, we'd love to hear from you. Send us an email at energyevolution@spglobal.com. And if you liked what you heard today, please consider sharing our podcast with others or leaving a review on your preferred podcast platform. We can't wait to bring you more fascinating energy talks in the future. Until next time, take care and stay tuned for more from Energy Evolution.