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…me, we can produce methanol and sell that at roughly six times higher revenue per carbon atom handled. Assembling molecules atom by atom is tedious. I'm sorry, where do we use methanol in the economy? Methanol, it's used for all kinds of things, but it's a precursor. So again, this is a somewhat subtle point, but Terraform’s job is to take sunlight, which is intermittent, but it's free. And in the form of solar panels, make electricity that's intermittent and then do a bunch of very scary chemical engineering to turn it into a tangible, storable, off-loadable commodity. So we make hydrogen, but I would never dream of trying to sell that hydrogen as our major product because there's no mechanisms for transporting that to market. No one wants it in bulk. It's an intermediate product, not the final product. We make carbon dioxide, same story. Put them together, now we have something that you can store in a tank. Methanol itself is chemically, in terms of boiling point and so on, it's very similar to water. So you can literally store it in a tank. Then if you want to, you can pipe it across the road to a standard old-school refinery and they can turn it into gasoline or something. I could do that myself. I could build a refinery, but what is Terraform good at? We don’t know much about making large-scale chemical plants and we'd have to go and license the MTG process anyway. Methol a gasoline process. So why not just hand that off to someone who can do that already? And we just focus on the thing that we do really well. The methanol to gasoline process is like a proprietary process that you have to pay— A local development in the seventies. But is it patented? Is it a trade secret? Almost certainly had a patent at this point, but— It's just protected by trade secrets? So the thing is, even if I had all the patents in front of me right now and blueprints of the plant, right? It's just process knowledge. And access to half a dozen expert chemical engineers had done this before and then I went and built it. I promise you it would still not work. It's Walter White's cook. It's just the process. I've not seen that show, but I mean it's the same as brewing beer. I can buy all the pipes, I can make something undrinkable, but— I believe that. Oh yeah, but– I mean you're Australian. It's in your culture. Now, now. I'm American now as well. Fifteen years [on] Sunday. It's a very finicky process. I think it involves blood sacrifice to get it right actually, to be perfectly honest. Okay, so that's methanol. And sorry, you mentioned you could do cement. How does that work? Well, so we use what's called lime calcite cycle to capture CO2. And so that involves calcinating calcium carbonate to make calcium oxide, which is the active ingredient in cement. So that's 60% of the difficulty of making cement there. Then having a shiny demo of something that works but is not commercially viable. o make calcium oxide, which is the active ingredient in cement. So that's 60% of the difficulty of making cement there. Then having a shiny demo of something that works but is not commercially viable. Even that is impressive in itself. I mean, Rivian for example, they make a beautiful product but they're yet to make money with it. But just getting a product to market that people like… That in itself is worthy of admiration. Beautiful car. They've just got to figure out how to delete about 30% of the components and they'll be in business. And far be it for me to criticize. But if you are able to make cement with a carbon neutral process and you're like 60 bucks, you probably have an argument that you could find enough off-takers who want to pay for the carbon credits or whatever. Then you can stay in business. But if it's $6,000 a ton, it's very slim. How causal were the solar subsidies along the way, like Germany's, to solar success on the current cost curve? That's a good question. I think it's very hard to run the counterfactual. I think that the Germany solar subsidies did not accrue the appropriate reward to Germany that they probably should have. But I don't think they were intending to— But it would've been nice if they had. Sure. Yeah. But I think they were more motivated by do-goodery than… Well, these things are always bootleggers and Baptists. The total amount of money they spent on, it was not all that much in the grand scheme of things. But I guess what I mean is, learning rates are about the idea that with increased volume comes lower cost and you get to be competitive. And again now— So in the counterfactual where Germany didn't do it, right? Well, Spain still did it a little bit and Australia did a little bit. Maybe it would've delayed things by a year or two. But as soon as, say China, started to do it at scale, they would've slurped up that time difference and we'd be where we were today. Well, and then how impactful were the Chinese interventions in the market— Enormously. Enormously, right? So Chinese subsidies accelerated solar. that time difference and we'd be where we were today. Well, and then how impactful were the Chinese interventions in the market— Enormously. Enormously, right? So Chinese subsidies accelerated solar. China has deployed more solar in the last three months than the United States has ever deployed, ever. They're becoming an electro-state, and this is an important point that I think is widely underappreciated. The United States has formed an alliance with Australia and Japan, and I believe India—I can't remember exactly—to basically try and control oil transiting through the South China Sea and adjacent areas, because they believe that will give them the political leverage they need to force China to play nice. And China currently imports something like 12 million barrels a day from the Middle East across sealands they don't control and can't control. Past countries who are not all that friendly to them in general. And they understand this. And the Virginia-class nuclear submarine is being built in part to service the needs—allied needs—to police the Strait of Malacca. That submarine is due to be delivered to Australia in 2035. Do you think by 2035 China is still going to be as dependent on oil through the Strait of Malacca? I don't. At the rate that they're deploying right now, they could cut off that supply if they needed to. In the same way that Germany was ultimately able to cut itself off from supplies in 1939. And it didn't really kill them until 1944. But it did kill them. Ultimately, yes. But that was mostly the combined bomber offensive delivered by a fleet of hyperloops flying from—oh no wait, they were planes. And so the way that China reduced its oil dependence is via electrification or via Terraform-style synthetic fuels? As far as I know, they're not working on synthetic fuels, at least not Terraform-style, but it is not rocket science. And I'm sure they'll figure it out sooner or later. I mean, it's a little bit rocket science, a lot of meat in there. Actually yeah, it's probably rocket science. Going back to the subsidies, how did the Chinese subsidize solar panels? I actually don’t know the specifics. Okay. What I do know is that they basically offered government-backed, zero-interest loans to manufacturers, for example. And they also— Cheap capital. That's right. Yeah. Cheap capital. So a lot of these technologies are developed in Australia. I would like a government-backed, zero-interest loan. That sounds lovely. Yeah, it'd be great. Actually, to be fair, the financial and legal situation in the United States, as much as we complain about it, would you rather have built Stripe in Hong Kong or something? Oh no, no I agree. The US is a fabulous business environment. It’s a great business environment. The capital is cheap enough. That's the important thing.…

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