In this episode of Carbon Removal Newsroom, our panelists look at the benefits and risks of nuclear power, attempting to find where the balance should lie between necessary safety precautions and overburdensome regulations. We address the grim accomplishment of the highest recorded levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere— 419 parts per million— and the real-world impacts of changes in the climate. With much of the west in drought, farmers and fish are competing for limited resources, and water rights along the Colorado River are under debate. We discuss the emergence of rare climate bipartisanship on carbon storage bills, and round out the episode with a positive story of the week.
Panelists Dr. Holly Jean Buck of the University at Buffalo and Chris Barnard of the American Conservation Coalition join host Radhika Moolgavkar of Nori for this episode.
Full Transcript
Announcer: You’re listening to Carbon Removal Newsroom, a weekly show about current events in the world of carbon removal, from technology and innovation to policymaking and job growth. Brought to you by Nori, the carbon removal marketplace.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the June 11th version of Carbon Removal Newsroom. As always, I am joined with my great co-host, Holly Jean Buck, Assistant Professor of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Buffalo. How are you doing, Holly?
Holly Jean Buck: Doing well, thank you.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And Chris Barnard back this week, National Policy Director from the American Conservation Coalition. Glad to have you back.
Chris Barnard: It’s great to be back.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, your co-host or your, I mean, your colleague who was our co-host last week, I did have a little fondness for because we’re alumni from the University of Washington. So I liked who you chose to sub. And this is Radhika Moolgavkar, Head of Supply and Methodology at NORI. So today we’re going to learn a little bit more about nuclear power, a subject that is dear to Chris’s heart. So he will be chatting us through that. And learn maybe if the benefits outweigh the risks. And is nuclear power really the key to stopping things that are happening around our second topic, which is the seemingly never-ending drought in the West that is even impacting Washington State, a place with a reputation for raining all day, every day.
And finally, something a little more wonky for the carbon nerds in the room, we’re going to talk a little bit about a bunch of new proposals, all bipartisan, music to Chris’s ears. For carbon, different carbon sequestration in the manufacturing space. With that, I do want to start with an unfortunate grim milestone that this week the world hit the highest global emissions and the May carbon dioxide levels were at 419 parts per million, a 0. 5% higher amount than last May. So typically carbon dioxide levels peak in May before the northern hemisphere seasonal vegetation growth begins.
But really what’s concerning about that number is that we were shut down for large parts of the year during the pandemic and apparently there was no detectable emission reductions in the atmosphere. So it kind of begs the question, like, what are we going to do? Because obviously we talk about a lot of solutions, but it’s not clear to me that the solutions we’ve put forth and are talking about a lot are going to get us there, which leads us to nuclear power. And maybe that being really something we should be more focused on, like Chris’s and Bill Gates.
So Chris, give us your perspective on it, which I think is pretty interesting.
Chris Barnard: Sure, and just quickly going off your point that you made about we essentially shut down our economies and societies for a little over a year and it apparently didn’t have an impact on carbon emissions. And it’s interesting, something that we talk a lot about at the American Conservation Coalition is the importance of economic growth and capitalism and markets in being a part of tackling climate change. Because clearly when we stop the entire economy, it doesn’t really change much when it comes to carbon emissions either. And you have a lot of people kind of more on the socialist side saying we actually need to stop economic growth and reverse it.
We need to kind of a strategy of degrowth because capitalism inherently is at odds with the planet. But clearly the strategy of degrowth economy shrunk during the pandemic. It didn’t work. So I think it’s entirely justifiable for you to say that we need to be looking at other solutions and those are some of the kind of solutions that we push at ACC. But going to nuclear, I think that’s another very interesting topic. And really one of the reasons why I want to talk about it this week is because last month there was a nuclear power plant in New York State that closed called Indian Point Nuclear Power Station.
It was right outside New York City and actually provided 25% of all of New York City’s electricity needs. And it was closed, I believe, on April 30th. And a bunch of progressive environmental groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, put out a bunch of tweets saying how proud they were to have campaigned to close Indian Point and how they’re so happy we’re moving away from nuclear. And then a few weeks later, a study came out showing that The lost production from that nuclear power station was entirely replaced by fossil fuels and in-state electricity emissions actually rose 35% in the month since they closed that nuclear power plant.
And that just begs the question, why are these groups so against nuclear if the point is to reduce emissions and to tackle climate change and their campaigning directly led to higher emissions in New York State? It’s just very hypocritical. So I guess that’s the first thing I’ll say, and we can talk a little bit about that, and then we can kind of go into some of the other aspects of nuclear.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, so maybe my reaction is the reason they’re against it, and we’re seeing this trend in Europe too, right? France just recently closed some nuclear power plants, is that people are afraid because in the risk-benefit analysis, The cost can be so catastrophic, things like Fukushima, Three Mile Island, and that leads to the environmental community’s desire to get rid of nuclear power or parts of the environmental community. What do you think about that, Polly, as our social scientist?
Holly Jean Buck: Yeah, I mean, I think we have a lot of social science research about acceptance of nuclear and showing that it’s often low for those reasons. Also waste disposal concerns, environmental justice concerns around legacies of uranium mining, all of that stuff. So I don’t think it’s a mystery why people don’t want to see it. I mean, there’s a response we call dread in the literature, right? There’s an innate dread with messing with things on that atomic level. But that said, I support nuclear. I support trying to keep Diablo Canyon and some of these other places open, contra many of my good friends and colleagues.
Just because of the situation we face, obviously, there’s no perfect solution. There’s trade-offs in this big transition. And I just think that the way we think about new technologies, or even old ones, and the whole energy transition picture, we don’t really have the tools to think about the trade-offs. I mean, the mental tools yet.
Radhika Moolgavkar: How do you, Holly, think, as you are, I’m going to identify you with maybe the more leftist side of the environmental world that Chris was talking about. How do you convince your friends and colleagues of your perspective? How do you get over dread?
Holly Jean Buck: I’m not sure if there’s an easy way to get over it. I mean, you can point to I don’t know, it’s not easy.
Radhika Moolgavkar: I’m pretty sure if you told somebody you’re going to build a nuclear power plant in their backyard, many people would revolt without knowing anything. And I think that’s the crux of the issue. And maybe, Chris, you have, I’m sure, additional thoughts. With Bill Gates, I don’t think it’s totally a policy failure because you do see Bill Gates being funded, his company with funding from the US government launching a different type of nuclear power plant in Wyoming. So it’s not purely a policy failure. I do think there’s a huge social issue that we have to overcome.
Chris Barnard: Yeah, I mean, there’s a million thoughts swirling in my head, so I’ll try and structure them for the purpose of answering what we’re talking about. The first one about people wanting things in their backyard or not, I think that’s valid for pretty much anything. There’s a lot of opposition to solar and wind in people’s backyards. There’s opposition to just homes in people’s backyards. There’s opposition to nuclear. There’s literally the NIMBY attitude of not in my backyard pervades everything. And I think that’s just kind of an aspect of human nature that you’re kind of defensive about where you live.
I actually lived In the UK, within 10 miles of a nuclear power plant, and that had been there for decades. And I never heard anyone ever talk or complain about it. So I think it’s one of those things when it’s there, people don’t mind as much. But when it’s like, we’re going to bring this to you, and we’re going to build this and potentially ruin the landscape, then then it becomes a lot more unleashing their emotions about it. But the idea of dread and kind of the public Perception of nuclear is a very big problem.
I would argue that part of that is because there have been environmental groups like the Sierra Club that have explicitly tried to push this narrative that nuclear is dangerous and the next apocalypse to get governments to overregulate it to push it out of business. Quotes from some of the founders of the Sierra Club saying that kind of stuff. And I think if they were to be more honest about this, talking about the Sunrise Movement, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, some of these progressive environmental groups that are pushing the climate conversation, if they were to be honest about the science around nuclear and embrace nuclear, that would be a huge factor in reducing some of this public negative perception of nuclear.
One other thing which I’m sure Holly knows as well as there’s a huge generational divide when it comes to public opinion polling of nuclear. A lot of people kind of my parents and people that are kind of more middle aged in the kind of boomer category are grew up in that time when they were very much afraid of nuclear apocalypse because of the Cold War and the Soviet Union. And I never grew up with those kinds of fears and so I naturally have less of an instinctive negative emotional reaction to nuclear.
And so I do think that more and more young people are embracing this. And I think that’s a positive thing that they’re less negative about it. Just one final thing I’ll say about the need for education is when you ask someone, like you talked to yourself about the nuclear disasters of Three Mile Island and of Fukushima, but I would argue, I mean, they were bad purely from a The only people that died from Fukushima were from the forced evacuation and from the tsunami. There’s no evidence that anyone died from radiation in either place.
And in many ways that actually shows the kind of relative safety of these plans that you had literally had a tsunami hit a nuclear power plant and no one died from the accident because it had safety mechanisms in place. And the next generation of nuclear power plants, like the one Bill Gates is working on, have even more passive safety mechanisms where it’s literally impossible for anything to go wrong. So I really think that the safety concerns are massively overblown. There is a concern about the nuclear waste, but I think that’s also very overcomable.
But I think really, if you look at the statistics of any energy source out there, nuclear has the fewest deaths of any. More people die every year in the US falling off their roof while installing solar power than from nuclear. And I think that just puts the issue in perspective.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So Chris, I’ll push back a little bit on that. I don’t disagree with a lot of what you said, but I do think that we aren’t always cognizant of the cause and effect. I think If you go to people who live in Richland, Washington, which has nuclear reactors, was one of the most important sites for the development of the nuclear program in the United States early on. There are a lot of people who think that there might be unknown health risks, increased cancer, increased other health risks that we just have not been able to identify.
So I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I think it is an important thing to acknowledge if you want to get over the argument that it’s safe, that maybe that exists. And what about Chernobyl? How do you categorize that where there were death and death deaths?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, no, I mean, that’s that’s entirely valid as as as a point to bring up a lot of that was pretty much kind of literal communist incompetence. They just Did not know how to handle this and they were too ashamed of the fallout that they didn’t allow people to come in to stop some of these things from getting worse. And the technology has come a long way from that. And something like Chernobyl has never happened since because people kind of learned their lesson.
Radhika Moolgavkar: I could see it happening in China, though. I mean, if you look at the way they’ve handled the virus and the way they’ve sort of been less than open, you could imagine them Adopting some nuclear power and having a catastrophic accident and never acknowledging it. I mean, you could see it happening in Russia again right now. So not that I’m against nuclear power, but I do think there are some pretty thorny political and social issues that are hard, that have to be really deeply thought through to make it a successful type of environmental impact, have an environmental impact.
And I am happy to see that people like Bill Gates Who have the technology background are getting involved and are actually launching, hopefully, the next generation that are safer, smaller footprints, less expensive. And time will tell and maybe by 2030 we’ll know because that’s the goal, right? To get it up in Wyoming before 2030. Holly, any thoughts about that whole?
Holly Jean Buck: Yeah, I mean, I do think that the governance and regulatory environment is critical. I would say that the Trump administration’s early handling of the pandemic gave me flashbacks to watching the Chernobyl miniseries, you know, just the way things are kind of papered over and they weren’t a problem until they were and I do worry about any of our capacities to govern any of these technologies, but we have to do the best we can. I think there’s a broader question of who’s going to champion things that are so hard to love, like nuclear or carbon capture and storage, I think is in the same situation, which is why I appreciate the efforts of the nuclear influencer, Isodope, for example, trying to send a positive message, get the word out, not easy.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Nope, not easy at all. And pivoting and speaking of things that are not going to be easy this summer, it looks like the weather is not going to be easy for any part of this country. I was just talking to somebody in Minneapolis who was telling me that the Midwest is showing signs of extreme heat, which will mean lower corn yields, which could be something historic that the U. S. has never seen before, corn yields below what we need. And As many of you probably know, I really enjoy the water.
So the water crisis that’s currently happening in California, Arizona, across the West is quite concerning. So Holly, I turn it over to you to kind of give an overview of what’s going on in the West, even though I’m the only one who lives on this side of the country, but give you your turn.
Holly Jean Buck: Well, I mean, it’s a huge region to cover, I think. You know, there’s a discussion about the Colorado River, temporary cutbacks there. There’s a discussion about the Central Valley in California, water deliveries there to farmers being cut. The snowpack is basically gone, and this year in Nevada is very early. And so then you also have Lake Mead, I think also historically. Low levels back to 1930. It’s the last time it was this low, maybe 38% full back to the Colorado River again. And then obviously the potential for wildfires, the vegetation is exceptionally dry in Northern California, but other regions as well.
So yeah, I mean, this has been kind of a pattern since 2000 of drought in the West, but some climate scientists are considering if it’s a mega drought, right? I don’t think that’s kind of the status, but as for what we do about it now, I mean, this has been really foreseeable. You could go retrospectively and say, oh, maybe we should have developed the sunbelt differently over the last 50 years, but I don’t know if that reflection helps us in this exact moment.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So what has particularly interesting to me, which I don’t think we’re going to solve on this podcast, is the whole water rights regime that we have on the West Coast. It’s very different from what happens on the East Coast. But this interesting first-in-time mentality that still exists is a little shocking to me, that when you look at some people in California will be entitled to 75% of their share of water Because they were there before 1930, and some people will get nothing. And I just don’t understand that. I don’t understand why we can’t retroactively fix this water rights regime.
I just put that out there to both of you, if you have any thoughts about that.
Chris Barnard: Yeah, it’s certainly a huge issue. And on top of that, there’s also been Kind of the problem of different interest groups. So, for example, farmers versus conservationists lobbying government to get more rights over particular Areas or sources of water and then the government kind of flip-flopping year to year of whoever who gets the rights and then there’s kind of an incentive for them to use all of it before it gets given to someone else and it doesn’t actually conserve anything and one of the interesting things is in the Klamath Basin in the in the West you there was actually a water market design that they implemented where people could essentially kind of negotiate for how much water they use and it wasn’t like a first in Time first and right kind of model.
It was really whatever you’re willing to put into it, you can negotiate with others over what that would look like, how much you could get, how much you can sell to others, et cetera. And that allowed water levels to recover. And it allowed both farmers and developers and conservationists to be happy because they could kind of Make a cost benefit analysis of what this water was worth to them. And it made sure that everyone thought of how much they could conserve rather than how much they could use up before others would take it.
So I’m definitely not an expert on this, but I’ve seen some interesting kind of water market proposals around that kind of stuff.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Do you know, Chris, how they deal with the existing regime? So in the Klamath Basin, did they already have a first in time kind of right and they just took it away? What did they do?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, they essentially, as far as I know, they took it away and replaced it with this water market model. So there were no kind of entrenched interest or lobbying power for people with more money is basically you compete in a fair market. And the consequence was that water was a valuable asset rather than something to be spent as quickly as possible.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Gotcha. That’s interesting. And I think certainly I hope something that states begin To investigate, though, bringing Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, California, all to the table, it’ll be quite a Herculean effort, I’m sure. Holly, one thing that struck me, and I’m wondering your thoughts on this, is the negative impact, the disproportionate impact on minority communities and people of color because of this water rights regime, you know? San Francisco, they kind of get as much water as they want. Central Valley, where you have a lot of immigrant labor, not so much. How do you deal with that, if at all?
Holly Jean Buck: I’d also say, don’t forget about Mexico. In terms of the Colorado River and where it goes or where it ends. I think that social movements have been trying to address this for a long time. I think that there’s a few different lines of conversation we could have. One is about the balance between urban users and agriculture and the question of what sort of agriculture should we be having in some of these areas like the Central Valley or the Imperial Valley. A lot of what’s grown in the Imperial Valley, which has very strong water rights to the Colorado River, like a huge amount.
A lot of that is for grass that’s shipped to feed cattle in other countries. So there’s a question you could have about, okay, who owns this land? Who’s using the water? Who’s benefiting from it? Is it in the public interest? I don’t think we’re there. I mean, these are very entrenched regimes, but I think that as things continue to get worse, there will be more social contestation about all of this.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, there was that interesting picture of the truck removing the almond trees that they were no longer going to farm because they didn’t have the water to farm almond trees, which are highly, highly irrigation dependent in a place like California. I think those are such important questions and I hope that policymakers are thinking about them. Holistically, because I think what we’re seeing is really state by state them putting in different types of solutions that aren’t actually addressing the fact that Colorado spans multiple states. And what I’m thinking about right now is California.
And I think, Chris, this is probably something you would be interested in is that, you know, California now is basically saying you can’t build in certain areas or you can build in certain areas. But if you do, don’t expect the California insurance So I was curious what you thought about that because that’s kind of pitting two different private industries against one another. And, you know, the insurance companies are saying we want out and the building industries who are saying we need to build because people need to have a place to live and the state saying we’re stepping back and we’re going to put in more regulation to make sure that if you do burn, if there are burns, your house stands up.
Interesting group of people involved in that conversation, I thought.
Chris Barnard: Yeah, I mean, I don’t think it’s the role of the state to distort the market to the extent that they’re allowing or actively supporting new homes to be built in an area that risks literally endangering the people’s lives that live there. And this is kind of similar to the whole national flood insurance program where millions of homes around the country are Essentially propped up by government home insurance, whereas they get flooded frequently, they’re in areas that will be increasingly vulnerable to climate change. And it’s kind of crazy that the only reason they’re being built there is because private insurance doesn’t want to build there and the government is happily footing the bill for it.
But the problem is that, especially in a lot of those places, many of the homes are actually second homes for rich homeowners. And so the government is paying for those people and for their reckless decision to have a home in a place that is likely going to flood and actually If you look at it, it’s not that reckless of a decision on their part because they’re not paying for it or they’re getting a very good rate for it. So I think it’s very important to balance the need for enough people to have homes and making sure you’re not building homes where they’re going to be burnt down soon and then you go back to square one to start with.
You’ve lost a lot of money and lives in the meantime. So I think it’s sensible for the Californian government to kind of remove itself from that situation.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, I mean... It’ll be interesting to see if it passes, because this is just a proposal from the government, but it still has to pass the California legislature. And I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of lobbying about it. As we all know, land values in California are only going up and housing is only getting more expensive. But Holly, it looks like you maybe have something you wanted to add.
Holly Jean Buck: No, I just think that there’s a lot of people working on water issues in the West and it’s very complicated.
Radhika Moolgavkar: To say that again, I was struck though that this week there was just so much press coverage about it, more than I’ve seen in a long time. It seems to have broken through again in a way that I hadn’t seen in a few months. So it caught my eye and I had to talk about it. So off to our last conversation, which is kind of wonky, but I also think important because, and I also thought of Chris again when I was reading about it because it’s so bipartisan and we are trying to celebrate bipartisan wins on this show.
So we have a whole bunch of acts that have come out in the last couple of weeks around carbon, you know, incentivizing different types of carbon mechanism, carbon capture mechanisms. So Maybe Chris, you want to give a kind of a quick overview and your thoughts and where you think we’re going in Washington on this?
Chris Barnard: Sure. Well, obviously the government has become increasingly interested in kind of helping scale up the technology for carbon capture and storage. And so they’ve been looking into that a lot. A while back, there was a tax credit called the 45Q tax credit, which allowed basically companies to implement carbon capture projects and to write some of that off in their tax returns. And that vastly incentivized new projects to come online. And so one of the recent proposals is that this would be not only extended significantly I think a further 20 years, but also that they would increase the dollar value of each tax credit.
And so essentially the idea is that we need to rapidly scale up carbon capture technologies around the country and this would provide a kind of cost effective financial incentive to do that. So that’s one of the major things, and that’s been championed by both Republicans and Democrats. And it’s interesting, this seems to be one of those topics that they’re converging and coming up with policies that gain bipartisan support, and that’s really, really encouraging. Another bill that they’re talking about is the SCALE Act, which would essentially Expand the infrastructure necessary to be able to store the carbon that is captured with these technologies and obviously they’ll include transportation pipelines, geological storage, all that kind of stuff.
And so you’re right, this is totally wonky, but it’s cool to see Democrats and Republicans coming together on What is fundamentally kind of an innovation problem and trying to figure out ways for the federal government to be able to incentivize private innovators and private companies to be able to come up with these solutions. And I think it’s a rare and encouraging example of bipartisanship right now.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, so Holly, I’m curious as how you feel about tax credits that might be benefiting the oil and gas industry.
Holly Jean Buck: Yeah, so we have the Catch Act, which bumps the values of 45Q up to $85 a tonne for saline storage, which I think is great, and $60 a tonne for EOR, so storage in depleted oil and gas reservoirs, which I am not in favor of. I don’t buy the argument that EOR is a bridge to dedicated storage or to scale. I think it’s just, you know, Handouts to the fossil fuel industry. So not so happy about that part of it, but I do think that 45Q needs to be revised and extended because it’s hard for developers to plan projects without knowing what’ll be the case down the line.
Then also the Carbon Capture Improvement Act that involves bonds for carbon capture finance. Again, I think that’s important and Extending 45Q for industrial emissions, I think that’s probably a good step too. So kind of a mixed bag and all this stuff.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, I wonder, and maybe Chris, you’d have a perspective on this, if that CATCH Act, the 45Q tax credit, Would have had bipartisan support without the credit for the storage in the oil and gas fields, the $60 that Polly alluded to. Do you think that was kind of necessary for bipartisan support?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, I mean, one of the reasons why you have Texan Republicans like Dan Crenshaw kind of holding up 45Q as a good policy for climate action is because they understand that for their state, Which is heavily reliant on natural gas and oil that for those industries to survive, they will have to innovate and adapt and be part of this transition. And so many of those Republicans, probably their interest comes stems from that kind of understanding of what is important to their state and their constituents. And it probably is true that they wouldn’t support it as much if it weren’t to include something like that.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Polly, is that enough to make you feel okay about it? Or at least it has a chance of passing at this point. And without that, it might not. The sausage has to be made somehow. I don’t know.
Holly Jean Buck: I’m not sure I would be ready to compromise there if I was a lawmaker. I mean, I think some of this EOR stuff risks stringing people along.
Radhika Moolgavkar: EOR is enhanced oil recovery for our listeners.
Unknown speaker: Yeah. This is supposed to be an acronym free podcast.
Holly Jean Buck: No, I was in the oil museum in Midland, Texas, and there’s this kind of exhibit trying to attract people to work in oil and gas. And there are these questions like, will I still have a job if oil runs out? And then it’d be like, no, enhanced oil recovery is coming online. And this is going to be a viable industry for decades into the future. And I’m like, A young person who has their life ahead of them, don’t tell them that something is going to be viable for a very long time if it’s not part of a good climate future.
I just thought it’s kind of misleading. And that’s my general feeling about enhanced oil recovery.
Radhika Moolgavkar: I mean, fair enough. I have very mixed feelings about it. I am always happy to see that the two parties working together. I think anytime you Republicans, and I think Chris and Quill have both made this point, can get behind conservation types of activities, it’s a really good thing because it means we’re moving the ball forward, even if not as fast as we need it to. But I also see your point, Holly. I mean, do we want to continue Do we want to continue to prop up that industry or do we kind of want the forced retirement of that industry and pivoting to other renewable energy sources?
So instead of thinking of themselves as oil and gas companies, thinking of themselves more as energy companies, which I’m sure their folks in their boardrooms are already doing. But I don’t know, such mixed feelings. I don’t have an answer, but I was happy to see that more attention is being brought. Tax credits are awfully, awfully good way to get innovation moving. We saw it in the solar industry. I think we, and I hope that we can repeat it in this carbon capture area. With that, I think it’s time for sort of something positive to end on, though bipartisanship is pretty positive to end on.
But Chris, do you have anything more you might want to add to that happy story?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, as kind of my happiness contribution of the week, I read an interesting article about researchers at Cornell University that are in the process of developing a special type of road that can charge electric cars by virtue of driving on the road. And obviously, as people that know about electric cars understand, one of the big problems for it is the fact that the mileage on them is still not as good as it should be for it to be convenient for a lot of people. And the charging infrastructure is expensive and still quite disparate across the country.
Obviously, that’s changing and that’s potentially viable, but it’d also be pretty cool to have An actual road that charges your batteries while you drive and then they would have some kind of like you know how you have the easy pass on toll roads you’d have that on your car and then they send you a bill for how long you stayed on that particular lane and you don’t have to be on that lane so it’s not being overused and stuff like that so it’s kind of pay for play which I don’t know I think that’s a really interesting concept and I always love to see that kind of innovation.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Some people might know, but probably most listeners don’t know that before I started at Nori, I was in battery electric buses. So I spent a lot of time thinking about charging, charging stations, all that good stuff. And I heard about a company like this when we were, I mean, they weren’t going to be relevant for my specific area, but out of Europe, is this one out of Europe that’s doing it? And they were maybe Sweden and they’d gotten some, some funding from the government.
Chris Barnard: I, Honestly, don’t know.
Radhika Moolgavkar: That’s okay. Maybe it was Israel. Big difference between those two places, obviously, but it was such an intriguing idea, and I’m glad to see that maybe it is picking up some more traction, because this was probably well over a year ago that I heard about it, because I have thought the same thing as I’ve been driving around in my e-car, that I can only go in the city in this, and this is kind of limiting, and Washington State is going to be outlawing gas cars in 2030, I believe. And so that range issue really does need to be solved because you can’t even drive across our state on most of these single battery and charging takes a long time.
So pretty exciting. Yeah.
Chris Barnard: Just one interesting thing, a point I’ll add to that is there was a, in France, a similar concept where they tried to make the road basically one huge solar panel, because obviously the road is a lot of mileage where you could have solar energy being generated, but they realized very quickly that didn’t work because solar panels are, turn out to be pretty fragile things and having millions of cars drive over them every day isn’t a very good idea, especially the chemicals involved in all that stuff. So I’m not sure if That similar problem would be for this, but yeah, innovations can sometimes sound cool without being practical, so we’ll have to wait and see.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, we’ll have to wait and see. I mean, that’s pretty funny, though. I would have thought that was an inherently known, like solar panels seem pretty fragile when I look at them on roofs, so I can’t imagine them under a car.
Chris Barnard: Leave it to the French to try and do that.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Well, thank you both, Chris, Holly, for another really fun conversation. And I will be talking to you both next week. Until then, to all of our listeners, thanks for hanging out with us again. And we look forward to talking to you in a week.
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