RENEWables #68: Powering Transparency - Simplifying the Energy Commodities Market with Scott Burns of TraceX

Speaker A: Hello and thank you for listening to Renewables, a podcast by Biostar, which aims to explore the current and future energy landscape in America.

Speaker B: Hey everybody. Welcome back to Renewables. We are so excited to have you back this fall. We have a ton of great episodes coming at you. I'm David Smart, our Chief Commercial Officer at Biostar Renewables. And today I have Scott Burns with me. Scott is the VP of, of Environmental Commodities at Power Ledger. Scott, thank you for coming on the show. Great to see you.

Speaker C: Thank you for having me. Uh, I'm excited to kick off the fall season this year.

Speaker B: Yeah, appreciate that, appreciate that. Scott and I have known each other for quite some time now. Uh, we're both T bonds. I don't know if that's a term. We both see each other at the TIPA shows. That's the Energy Professionals Association. If any of our listeners and followers, uh, are interested in keeping track of the power markets, especially in deregulated states, I highly recommend you look up tepa. Uh, that's how I got to know Scott. And Scott, you've been with Power Ledger for a little close to a year now, is that right?

Speaker C: Yeah, I uh, I joined Power Ledger about a year ago in, in November. So it's been uh, it's been exciting ride since then.

Speaker B: Awesome. Well, tell us a little bit more about your background. You've been in the power space, energy space for a while now. Tell us a little bit about your journey and how you ended up at Power Ledger.

Speaker C: Yeah, um, I started my career in uh, retail energy and uh, I've been there for longer than I probably care to admit, but uh, started in operations, uh, side of things for Hess Corporation. I've worked with Direct Energy, Marathon Energy, number of different uh, roles and facets. But um, towards the end of my, my career I was more on the sales side of things and um, you really started to see a shift in terms of uh, companies looking to achieve ESG and sustainability goals. And so I've kind of dove uh, headfirst into the sustainability realm, help a lot of customers solve uh, their short term and long term goals in terms of ESG and um, Power Ledger came along about a year ago and uh, showed me some of their software and platforms and you know, I, it, it stuck with me because I really feel that technology can play an important role in us transitioning to renewables. And I think the mission of Power Ledger is to, to achieve that. So um, yeah, really excited to join. Uh, I can give you just a quick summary around Power uh Ledger, but uh, it Is as I said a, it's a technology company or a software company, uh, founded on the principles of facilitating the energy transition to renewable energy. And uh, it's founded back in 2016. We're a global company headquartered in, in Switzerland with our two co founders, uh, Gemma and John. But uh, you know the, the beginnings of it really, really stem from you know, having problems with the energy markets and grids and uh, and how to solve it. And so it started in Western Australia. Um, there's a, it's a deregulated market. However, you know, contrary to what we have here in the US there's not really a, ah, mechanism for net metering. So I'm sure with, with a lot of your solar projects you understand that you know, if you generate more energy than you, than you consume, uh, you know you'd like to get credit for that energy. And so um, you know there wasn't a mechanism in Western Australia to achieve that. And so they built our, our first product which was a peer to peer energy trading platform to allow users of or generators of solar or renewable energy to then ultimately sell that to another, another party. And so that was sort of the birth uh, of the first idea. Uh, we've since expanded our products. Uh, we do, uh, we have an energy visualization tool to help customers who are trying to match hourly or achieve some additional goals and understanding how their energy consumption is or energy efficiency, sort of um, deductions. And then um, you know what I'd like to talk a little bit more about too is our latest product which is tracex, uh, and it's a digital marketplace for uh, buying and selling EACs or environmental attributes, um, whether it be REX or carbon offsets.

Speaker B: Thank you for the overview, that's really helpful. And um, I think the tracex product is really interesting. We're going to dig into that further but I think it would be helpful. Uh, we think probably 50, 60, maybe 70% of our listeners are kind of in the business. Right. And might understand some of these acronyms that we throw out. But there's probably 20 or 30 or 40% who don't. So I think let's just level set uh, if you don't mind, give me a kind of overview of how these EAC markets work. Energy attribute commodities. Tell uh, us what that means and how it works.

Speaker C: Yeah, sure, um, yeah, just uh, you know, I'm sure everyone is familiar with you know, electricity and natural gas and how they use that and um, you know the way that the, the, the grid sort of operate is it's really difficult to distinguish renewable energy and renewable natural gas and these types of things. Uh, once it all gets you know, pumped into the, into the grid in the system. So rather than the utilities trying to separate or identify what electrons on the, on the wires are, uh, are green or what, you know, molecules within natural gas are, are green, uh what they essentially do is they use a financial instrument or uh, sort of certificate or credit and that's issued to the generators. Um so whether it be RNG or solar or wind, uh, those generators get you know, in terms of like a credit essentially with those attributes. So in the terms of uh, of natural gas it's an RNG credit. In terms of electricity it's a wreck. Um and essentially it's the environmental attributes associated with a green asset. And so these wrecks are generated or minted by uh, what we call registries. And so there's several of them sort of regionalized in, in North America, uh, that are basically will produce and are responsible for making sure that the generation, uh, that uh, the renewable generators are producing exactly what they say they are. Um, they're responsible, making sure it's not double counted. They're also responsible for the retirement, uh, and all of that. And so um, they're a key cornerstone to sort of supporting the, both compliance as well as voluntary carbon markets in the United States and abroad. And um, you know it's uh, they're, they're essential in terms of our marketplace because we, we leverage a lot of their um, their assurances and guarantees to ensure that the products and recs that are sold within our platform are of, of legitimate origin and, and so forth.

Speaker B: So that's your tracex product. And it's interesting because a lot of people, everyone seems to have sort of different standards. Right? There's certain companies are you know, going and, and using stbi, some companies are using uh, there's a few different sort of methods to setting your goals. Right. And then once you set your goals, uh, ultimately you have to go and achieve them. Tell us a little bit more about um, about how tracex kind of fits into to that problem and making sure that regardless of the specifications, you're buying a product that meets your goals.

Speaker C: Yeah, um, I think that's one of the greatest things about sustainability is that there's no one size fits all. We're able to sort of customize and structure an ESG program, uh, depending on the interest of each customer and client. And I think the value of tracex is that we allow them to sort of achieve that and so I think the best way to sort of talk about this, I guess challenge or impossible solution is to really kind of go back in time. Uh, you know, when I first started in the energy industry, like, you know, wrecks and voluntary, uh, carbon or voluntary rec certificates were fairly limited. Um, there wasn't a lot of companies that were doing it and there wasn't a whole lot of focus. Uh, it was kind of a one standard green product that you would purchase, uh, Rex, it would be bundled into your energy price if you're a retail supplier. And um, and that was it. And you would feel good about it. But, uh, you know, it really wasn't too complicated process. And so what we've really seen is as companies start to focus more on ESG and sustainability is that, uh, there's a lot more focus on, you know, specific aspects of what it is. So, you know, I kind of allayed it to 50 Shades of Green, where there's really no right answer to being sustainable. It's really what your company feels. So, you know, you've got companies that are certainly leading the charge if you talk about some of these large tech companies or a Patagonia that are really focused about delivering, you know, the most, uh, sustainable and efficient solutions for, to minimize the impacts of their businesses. Um, but I don't think that we as a society should look at ESG as a 1 or 100. You know, um, there's a lot of sort of buckets that sort of fall in the middle. And so, um, you know, the great thing is that sustainability in terms of voluntary is kind of up to each of the individual users to decide what it is. Um, so it's defining what those standards are and working with companies that have some insights into that to be able to understand it. Um, and then, you know, sort of executing on that strategy. And, uh, you know, there's been been a lot of, I guess, pushback in ESG space, I think partly because businesses made claims without necessarily understanding, you know, the challenges or hurdles to be able to achieve those goals. Um, but I think that's also sort of brought to light some of the lack of transparency within the marketplace. And so, yeah, the idea of Trace X is how do we bring more transparency while also making the process of being green a much simpler process. And so, you know, it's, it's understanding where your, your wrecks come from. It's understanding the process and being more involved in that process to ensure that whatever you're claiming that you're doing from an ESG perspective, you're actually executing and delivering it. And I think that whether it's you know, like I said, the 1 or the 100, whatever, uh, you feel comfortable from a business perspective, uh, we can help you decide what that is and deliver a solution with transparency.

Speaker B: Okay, so let's say I'm a chief sustainability officer at Google. That would be a pretty cool job. And I need to go buy Rex. Right. So tell me how you and how tracex help. Where do you fit into that process?

Speaker C: Well, well first I'd be super excited to know the, the Chief sustainability Officer at Google. Uh, but um, yeah, I think um, you know, just kind of taking a look at what the, the current landscape looks like in terms of your options as, as, as Google. So you know, first you have uh, you know, purchasing options whether you purchase EACs or RECs on behalf to offset uh, your current emissions. Uh, and so there's really two ways to do that. One uh, is that you can, if you're in a deregulated market, you would be able to bundle your energy purchases with renewable energy certificates to claim 100% renewable energy on that front. Um, the second thing is you could work with an intermediary, uh, and do an OTC transaction, uh, which you would contract uh, with um, three degrees or an act or uh, some of these intermediaries within the market that help facilitate contracts between uh, or generators and then ultimately to news customers. And so um, it's really OTC bundled product. Uh, if you wanted to do something yourself you could do um, a PPA or a bppa. Uh so there's options for on site and doing more physical things but those come with their challenges too. So you know, when I, when I talk about 50 shades of green, you've got sort of all these different buckets and options. But going back to sort of those first two options, there's really a limit on what you can do. If you are interested in purchasing Rex, right, you're operating through a retail shop or you're operating through uh, an OTC transaction with a third party. And I think the challenge that a lot of cni, uh, or off takers in the voluntary space deal with is that there's just not a lot of transparency in those processes. So you may have a contract and there may be stipulations as to where or what type of recs. Uh so you might make it, make it clear that it has to be wind or solar or it has to be from a CRS listed facility for greenie certification. Um, but there's not a Lot of details of where that project came from, um, you know, if you, if you have a request or interest in things like additionality when those, those systems or those projects came online. So there's still a lot of um, you know, uncertainty when you make those contracts about specifically where your recs are coming from. I think what we're trying to do is one, bring more transparency to the marketplace, but two, make it simpler for CNI customers to be able to be engaged directly in this market. And so instead of coming up or working with these intermediaries on the platform, we're trying to build a very uh, uh, user friendly, intuitive digital marketplace for sustainability, uh, analyst, uh, or even a chief sustainability officer of Google to come and see not only what is available within the marketplace, uh, but what the pricing is for some of those attributes as well. And so uh, a lot of times when I'm speaking to customers and trying to get them to understand what our platform looks like, uh, I attribute it similar to the evolution of stocks, uh, within the United States. If we look back 20, 30 years, if you wanted to be participating in the stock market, you had a stockbroker who had a special account that you would have, you'd pay fees to him for performances, but that was, that was the access for you to being able to buy and sell stocks. And the Internet comes along and we create platforms like E Trade and that just sort of opens up the marketplace to allow users to be more, I guess, proactive within these marketplaces. And so when I look at Rex, uh, in general I still see the activity happening. More of that sort of 1990s stockbrokers, lots of OTC transactions, uh, legal contracts that have to be reviewed, invoicing, manual transfers, all of that kind of gets uh, washed away with tracex where we're creating a digital marketplace onboarding customers um, digitally with a KYC process. We're linking bank accounts, registry accounts, all of that to make a seamless transaction to remove a lot of those headaches while giving know, sort of that uh, touch points or visibility into the actual purchases of Rex for those CNI customers at the end.

Speaker B: So do they actually close a transaction in your platform?

Speaker C: Yes. Yeah. So the way it works is that uh, you know, we've got buyers and sellers. It's similar to our marketplace, but we onboard, um, you know, both generators and then anyone who's looking to buy, they all get on board and go through a similar KYC process. Uh, part of this is to ensure that the counterparties are legitimate. There's not any issues with payment, uh, transfers, aml, any of those types of things. Um, so we validate the legitimates of those businesses. Uh, we also integrate, um, the payment processing platform. So we're also sort of solving the credit or the payment process. So we're eliminating the, the invoicing for uh, those transactions, uh, linking bank accounts. So when a buyer and a seller match within our platform, those that transfer happens uh, automatically via the platform. It's not a, uh, invoicing. There's no time lag, uh, so it eliminates some of the credit risk. Uh, we've also integrated the registry accounts and so that's um, you know, we were talking about EACs. The registries are sort of responsible for the creation and retirement of these recs. So we integrate into them so we're able to validate the information that the seller is putting on there. So we know that where the Rex came from, we know all the information about it. We display that to customers within our marketplace. So it gives assurances to the, to the buyer that they know what they're getting when they make a purchase on our platform. Uh, and the second thing is because of those integrations, we're also able to transfer Rex from the seller's account into the buyer's account. And so, um, yeah, we encumber Rex on a seller's account within their registry, meaning that they can't take them out when they're listed on our marketplace and platform. So in the event somebody does buy it, we ensure that the recs that they purchased ultimately get delivered, uh, after the funds get delivered to the seller's account. So uh, we kind of act as an intermediary, making sure that the transaction that agreed to is ultimately delivered. Um, you know, by keeping the recs within the seller's account until they've actually received funds and then making sure and ensuring that those recs are delivered to the buyer so that both parties end up with exactly what they wanted. So um, you know, what we've done is we've built this whole process to eliminate the administrative work, uh, to eliminate some of the risks, you know, credit risk, transfer risks that occur during these sort of processes. Um, and create a really user friendly, intuitive feature so that anyone can log into our platform, understand what's available within the marketplace, and make a purchase to uh, satisfy their ESG needs.

Speaker B: It's really interesting. It sounds like you've addressed one of my questions was how seamless is it? Right? And it sounds like integrating, um, the payments in, you know, integrating the registries in to make sure we're not double counting wrecked. Right. Uh, you've done a lot of that. Talk a little bit about the contract itself though. Are you using a standardized contract, uh, to make that a little bit seamless as well, or is there a sort of a contract legal back and forth?

Speaker C: Yeah, no, the, the contracts are standardized. And so, you know, particularly on the products that we have here in spot market, like, you know, when you sign up and make these purchases, it's, it's standardized and we eliminate the need for contracts. So, you know, in some cases, you know, in most cases when you're purchasing rec, there's some sort of contract that's, that's associated with it. I mean, it's inherent in terms of when you submit your price that it's delivered. But, um, you know, there's no red lines, there's no legal review. Um, yeah, the transfers begin instantaneously once it's matched. Right. So we'll, we'll do a bank balance check to, on the buyer to make sure that they have the funds available in their linked bank account to our platform. Once we do that, we encumber the recs in the seller's account and begin the process of transferring the money. Um, so once the seller receives the money, the process automatically takes the rex and moves it to the buyer. So we've eliminated any of the efforts there. Um, I think the one thing that also would be an interesting dimension is there is, uh, to make these purchases within a marketplace. If you were, uh, going to buy them directly, uh, you would require a registry account to be able to participate in these marketplaces. And so, um, that's one hurdle or I guess barrier to entry for a lot of CNI customers to get in and do this process themselves. With our platform, you're able to log in, no need to create a registry account, can leverage the platform for us to be able to basically, uh, track the purchases that you make, um, store them in a sub account in a custodial sort of model. And then ultimately, when you're ready to retire those recs, you can ultimately do that process through our platform and then get a retirement certificate too. So it's really sort of this one stop, uh, solves sort of all of the processes or challenges within the whole REC purchasing process to make it, you know, as, as simple as a, as an E trade or a Robinhood where you, you know, you click buy, you receive what you have, and then, you know, you have the option to be able to retire directly there, get proof of those retirements. And like I Said information of those retirements down to a project level, whether it be uh, you know, the commencement date for additionality location Ality uh, we're working on adding additional, I'm sorry a missionality and so we're trying to give that end use customer a lot more transparency into the information um, that they're purchasing while removing a lot of the headaches that are associated with it as well.

Speaker B: There's a, this is a topic we've covered a little bit on the show but talk about what additionality means.

Speaker C: Sure, um, yeah, the concept of additionality is a ah, relatively new concept but the, the idea is that there is a lot of existing renewable energy uh, uh, systems and so you know we've got these large hydro systems that have been around for 40, 50 years. Like renewable energy is not a new concept. Um, I think the, the real initiative and a lot of uh, companies are beginning to focus on the fact that just purchasing renewable energy will is, is positive in an essence but there is um, a desire or want to be able to move the industry forward. And so uh, if you have a requirement around additionality, uh, what you're essentially saying is that what I want to do from my energy purchasing and renewables is that I want to be participating and incentivizing the growth of the renewable energy by putting in a new solar system or a new project. And so um, like I said it's an aspect that is important to some businesses, not all. Um, but I think that if it is important to those businesses they should understand where those wrecks come from. They want to be buying from newer facilities. Uh, getting the information and being able to do so is something important. And um, I think a lot of companies have sort of shifted away from the rec, uh, purchasing. It's gotten sort of a bad light because of some of the lack of transparency. If, if you are the chief sustainability officer of Google and you want to say that you know where your recs come from, it's a lot easier for me to do a PPA and say I own all of that project, I know my recs are coming from there. Uh, and so yeah there's been sort of a shift to that. Um, the idea is that if, if we have enough data and enough information which uh, which is available. Right. It's just a matter of us taking that information and putting it together. Uh, can we deliver the same sort of insights and information that the CNI corporates are looking to pass uh, along to stakeholders to validate the claims that they're making for esg and I think we can do it in a broader sense beyond PPAs, even through, you know, RNGs or wrecks or carbon offsets, as long as we've got a sense of validity and um, chain of custody, ultimately to the retirement of those recs.

Speaker B: And you said one that I don't know. So if I don't know it, I don't know everything. But if I don't know it, I'm going to assume some of our listeners don't know what is emissionality.

Speaker C: So emissionality is the sense that we're um. I think it's sort of the evolution where we've gone from that first, give me 100% green energy and there's one standard option to now having all these different breadths of options. Uh, the concept of a wreck has almost been commoditized and we think one wreck is a wreck. But what we've really. The more you understand about it, the more you understand that all wrecks aren't created equal. And so, uh, you know, a wreck that's generated, you know, from a solar in a, In a much dirtier, uh, part of the country. So if a lot of the generation is coming from coal or oil or, or things that have higher carbon emission, uh, factors, uh, by having a solar or a renewable energy generator in those markets, it ultimately has a greater impact of uh, offsetting the emissions impact of generating one more megawatt within that hour, uh, than it would be to say, uh, in West Texas where there's abundance of renewable generation but not necessarily a, uh, almost uh, you know, large

Speaker B: coal

Speaker C: or dirtier sort of population. So you know, understanding really the environmental impact of that 1 megawatt hour from a, from a carbon or GHG emissions standpoint, uh, rather than sort of just bucketing in under these blankets for a wreck or same thing with rng, understanding where they come from and the source of that and the impact that that has, uh, ultimately to help us make better decisions or to prioritize or value things that have a more positive impact on the environment versus sort of just standardizing, uh, what one rack might be.

Speaker B: Sure, yeah, it's interesting. It still feels a little bit, uh, like the Wild west in this industry. Right. Um, but it sounds like this platform and I'm hopeful that we'll have some screenshots of your platform or maybe even screen recordings in here so people can actually see it because it's really neat. Uh, but as we kind of wrap up here, I want to get your sort of macro on the energy market and the really the, particularly as it relates to EACs, uh, but just kind of, you know, elevator pitch as we wrap up on Trace X. You know, there's other products like this I assume in the market and customers do have options with what makes tracex different.

Speaker C: Yeah, I, I think um, you know from, from, from our perspective it's really about information and transparency and we're looking to do that in the most efficient and, and user friendly way that we can. And so you know, I think the, the biggest thing and you know I've worked in energy for a while and I've worked in trading platforms and uh, in most cases these platforms require, you know, know, some sort of knowledge or training. Uh, and I think that's fairly off putting if you're a sustainability manager and you need to understand how you're going to go out and buy, buy these, these wrecks. And so um, you know, there's uh, you know, a lot of challenges, headaches, understanding of how these markets work to be able to participate in it. And so if we're able to deliver a really simple solution and a platform that allows anyone who's interested in purchasing Rex to come in, feel comfortable and confident that they understand what they're getting into, what they're buying and then ultimately retiring it so that they have a clear sort of path from understanding where their generation came from to retiring that and claiming those benefits and passing that information along to stakeholders or any of the reporting that they're doing. I think that's, that's sort of the win for us in terms of our platform. And so um, yes, there's certainly other, other platforms that potentially can also offer the solution. But you know, making it simple, making it easy. Uh, our onboarding process, you know, is all digital. It's done within 15 minutes. Uh, we've got, you know, we've got generators on board, we've got you know, all sorts of customers and market participants that are already, you know, to run the gamut. Um, and I think the flexibility and the fact that we're leveraging technology allows us to be more flexible than, than an OTC contractor would be. Um, you know, a generator may have hundreds of thousands of wrecks and they want to sell in large lots but uh, each time that they, they come to, to an agreement with a counterparty, they've got to generate a contract, they've got to send an invoice, they've got to make a manual transmit transaction. And so um, you know, there's a lot of effort that goes through that where they want to sell a wholesale or work primarily with large CNI customers that can take these large processes. And so, um, yeah, there's really sort of this gap when you look at these sort of mid sized CNI customers that have ESG goals is to how do they go about it? They're kind of, you know, forced to look for other options, uh, in terms of solving their needs. And so, yeah, I think we're just now one other option, trying to make it a little bit easier for them. And um, you know, I'd love to get additional feedback to see how we can make it even, even easier for customers too.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's interesting being in the renewable energy development side. Mostly on site projects. Right. Um, we ask all of our customers, you know, are you, are you buying Rex? And some of them we don't have to ask because we already know the bigger customers. We can Google their sustainability report. Right. And see exactly what they did. But like you're saying there's a lot of, you know, I'll say in a nice way, middle market CNI customers who want to establish goals, maybe they're in the process of establishing goals and you ask them, why haven't you bought Rex yet? And a lot of times the first answer is don't know how. Especially in deregulated markets, uh, I'm sorry, in regulated markets where folks don't have energy brokers that they're working with on a regular basis to, to renew their retail contract. So, uh, this is a great place, you know, for those folks to come and really be able to kind of see the market, see where the market's at and ultimately get involved and transact. So I was super impressed with the platform. Like I said, I think we'll have some, some screenshots and screen recordings, I hope, of the platform. Uh, you alluded to Robinhood, which is, you know, you know, very, very easy to use. Right. And that's why I think they've had a tremendous amount of success in the retail trading space because people can get on and in 10 minutes you've got an account and you're trading stocks. Um, so congratulations to you and Power Ledger and all the, you know, great work you've done thus far. I, um, do want to just quickly, in a minute or two, kind of zoom out a little bit, uh, on the macro and just, you know, as you mentioned, uh, I'll say it differently, not all wrecks are created equal. And so is there a day where companies get more credit for this wreck than that wreck or more credit for on site? Versus off site additionality. Right, but tell us a little bit, you know, from your perspective. You've been in this business a while now. Where do you see this moving and where do you see the market shifting, particularly as it relates to EACs?

Speaker C: Yeah, and I think we've started to see that shift. And um, yeah, the idea is that we are, I don't think that all RECs are created equal and I think that that is becoming more and more in terms of mainstream uh, of thinking. And so I do see a uh, shift particularly to granularity. Um, you know there's been a focus on renewable energy. I now think the focus is about, about giving that additional credit or no value to um, you know, the, the more impactful uh, renewable energy generation, uh, you know, whether it be in a, in a high carbon emission or carbon intense area of the country, uh, do we put more value on, on additional or newer units versus this is other. And that's it. I'm uh, you know we're, we're a marketplace and we're here to support. All right. And I, and everyone has different opinions on, on what's important for us to move this, this path forward. And so you know, as a marketplace we're not necessarily dictating what it is. Our, our, our objective is to get the information to the customers that want to make those, those decisions and make those financial decisions uh, on, on what they're buying and how they're supporting it. And so you know, we talked a little bit. It's, it, you know, it's, they don't know how to buy Rex. It's, you know there's this, there's no real manual and then not only that, but even, even so it's like what are you buying and how do you feel comfortable doing that? Um, you know there's organizations out there, uh, we're integrated with crs, center for Resources Solution that runs a greenie certification uh program that's a third party auditor for these RECs. We have an integration to be able to identify which, which RECs are within our, our platform. So you know it's a, our objective for, for tracex is to provide all the information that uh a decision maker who is looking to fulfill their ESG goal. So uh, whether it be um, you know, the location out, the additionality emissionality. Right. If these things are important to you, we're going to display that information so that when you have a marketplace with a whole bunch of different options and you're trying to decide, you know, which one do I feel meets our ESG goals that are our level, our 50 shade of green. You have all the information. And so the idea is to start there. Um, I think we're going to continue to see more granular um, data. We're getting much better at managing data. We've got large data centers, we've got uh, AI that now can take these large amounts of data um, and analyze it. I think we're going to start to get more fractional or more time uh based data. I think we're moving a lot of uh, questions are moving towards 24, 7 or hourly recs. Um, we're going to have these emissionality factors. As I said it's, it's about you know, painting a clearer picture for CNI customers to make the optimal decision for the strategy that they've put together. And um, you know I think the more information that we can provide the better informed decisions we make. And uh, at the end I say uh, we talk about this climate change or this war on climate change. And uh, I think if we're talking about it as a war, we should think about what wins wars and generally intelligence wins wars. It's the more that we know about the actions of our opponent uh, ultimately can change the tide in the course. And so using technology platforms like tracex or any of these other platforms that are being developed to help us handle this renewable energy transition is extremely important. So think if we embrace technology we learn more about what we can do to uh, preempt our enemy or the increasing uh, GHG emissions within our atmosphere, uh, the more successful we're going to be in the long run.

Speaker B: Excellent Scott. You're a very smart individual. I've really enjoyed getting to know you and I'm um, sure our listeners and viewers enjoyed this episode as well. We really only talked about for the most part your tracex product, Power, uh, Ledger has other products you mentioned your peer to peer energy trading platform, your energy visualization tool. So tell our listeners and viewers how they can get in touch with you or find you online. And in case they want to learn more or just follow along with all the good work that Power Ledger is doing.

Speaker C: Yeah, if you'd like to learn more about what Power Ledger is doing, um, you can visit our website which is powerledger IO. Um, we'll have some information specifically on different, different products and platforms. Um, you know we are fairly uh, new to the North American markets uh, and we've launched specifically with the Trace X and the Vision products here. So those two would be the most uh, Most likely we can help. Uh, if you'd like to reach out to me, feel free to reach out on LinkedIn. You can connect with me, um, uh, via LinkedIn and I'm more than happy to respond there. Uh, also my email address is really simple too. It's just sb, my initialsowerlabs IO. Uh, feel free to send me an email or you can connect and um, just, uh, as we were coming up on some important events in the, in the next few weeks, um, I'm not sure when it'll be published, but we'll be at REM next week. Uh, I'll be at New York City Climate Week. So we'll uh, you know, if you're attending that event, more than happy to, to reach out and try to connect while we're there. And then, uh, the following weekend, uh, we'll be at, um, Electric Edison Institute out, um, in Denver. So, um, you know, love to meet anybody in person too, if you're attending any of those events.

Speaker B: Excellent. Well, thank you again for making the time to come on the show really interesting and really impressed, uh, with this tracex product and Power Ledger. Congratulations on your success thus far and to our listeners and viewers, thank you. You make this possible. Appreciate you tuning in to another episode and learning more about Power Ledger. I'm David Smart, your host of Renewables. And uh, stay tuned to make sure and hit that follow button. Hit. We've got a lot of great episodes coming up this fall. Thank you.

Speaker A: Hello and thank you for listening to Renewables, a podcast by Biostar, which aims to explore the current and future energy landscape in America.