56. Why Energy Is Still Not Abundant (And What Might Finally Change That)
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Think about a water tap that only runs when it rains. That is roughly the state of clean energy today. The sun and the wind hand us more power than we could ever use, but the moment the sky clouds over or the wind dies down, the tap runs dry. We have not solved energy. We have only solved sunny afternoons.
That gap between how much clean energy exists and how much of it we can actually use is the subject of this episode of The Mizter Rad Show. Mizter Rad sat down with Florian Hildebrand, a mechanical engineer who walked away from a software company he built to 200 people and 80 million euros in funding, to chase a much harder problem: fuel for the things that cannot plug in.
The Industries Electricity Cannot Reach
Planes, cargo ships, steel plants, cement factories. None of them can run on batteries. They are too heavy, the distances too long, the heat requirements too extreme. Together, these hard-to-electrify sectors account for roughly 30 percent of global CO2 emissions, and for decades nobody has found a clean way to fuel them without rebuilding the entire world's infrastructure from scratch.
Florian's company, Greenlyte, is trying to do exactly that, without asking a single airport or engine to change. The idea is almost stubbornly simple: pull CO2 out of the air, combine it with hydrogen split from water, and produce a fuel that is chemically identical to the kerosene already flowing into a Boeing 737. No new engines. No new pipelines. Just a different source for the same molecule.
"In a way, we are storing energy," Florian said, explaining the technology the way he would to his own child one day. "We cannot really store the light of the sunshine, the energy of the sunshine. And that's exactly what we're doing. Our technology is called liquid solar because in a way we're liquefying that sun into a chemical energy storage, almost like a battery."
The Real Reason Energy Isn't Abundant Yet
Here is the uncomfortable truth Florian laid out on the show: the world is not short on clean energy. It is short on a way to hold on to it.
"When you look at it on a yearly basis you would say, why is there a problem? We're producing more energy over the course of a year than we actually consume," he said. "And the problem is that we cannot store this energy."
Solar panels and wind turbines are not the bottleneck anymore. Storage is. Batteries are heavy, expensive at scale, and simply the wrong tool for anything that needs to fly across an ocean or run a steel furnace for months at a time. Fossil fuels, whatever their downsides, solved storage brilliantly, which is exactly why the world has stayed hooked on them for over a century. "Fossil fuel has been a great invention by nature," Florian admitted, a strange compliment coming from a man trying to replace it.
There is a second, less obvious culprit: money. Greenlyte's technology has cleared the scientific hurdle, its patents are filed, and its pilot plants are running. But scaling from a lab result to a facility that a bank will finance is its own multi-year battle. "The whole thing that we're trying to solve is bankability," Florian said. "How can we build a technology that is not financed from equity or grants as it is today, but financed through predictable bank cash flows?" Venture capital can fund an idea. It cannot fund the hundreds of millions of euros needed to build ten identical plants in the Saudi desert. That kind of money, the infrastructure fund and pension fund kind, does not bet on unproven technology. It bets on toll roads and airports: boring, predictable, and already working.
And then there is the failed detour the industry keeps circling back to. Hydrogen propulsion, the dream of flying planes on pure hydrogen, has quietly stalled at most major airlines. "When you take a bottle of water and you fill it up with compressed hydrogen, and you take the same bottle and you fill it up with compressed natural gas, in your natural gas bottle you have four times as much energy compared to the hydrogen bottle," Florian explained. Physics, not ambition, is the wall there. It is a reminder that not every clean-energy dream survives contact with the laws of thermodynamics.
The Crystal at the Center of It All
The piece of Greenlyte's technology that makes the storage problem solvable is a white powder Florian calls "the green light," a potassium bicarbonate crystal formed when CO2 reacts with a liquid solution pulled from the air. It is its own kind of backup system, not unlike the biological one Andrew Hessel described to Mizter Rad in What If You Could Clone Yourself? Andrew Hessel's Radical Plan to Back Up Your Life, just built to preserve carbon instead of a genome.
"The green light is dissolved again in our back end, which is an electrolysis where we then release the CO2 from that green light, produce green hydrogen and regenerate the liquid we need in the front end," he said.
The trick is that the front end, the part absorbing CO2, runs constantly and needs no energy at all, while the energy-hungry back end only fires up when solar or wind power is cheap. That separation is what lets the whole system flex with the weather instead of fighting it. "In the back end you can almost imagine it's like a speaker," Florian said. "You can run it at 50 percent, you can run it at 200 percent." When clouds roll in, the crystal simply holds its CO2 and waits for the next sunny stretch.
The Outlook: What Abundance Actually Looks Like
Florian's timeline is candid rather than hyped. Scientific de-risking is done. Technology and scaling de-risking are underway now at Greenlyte's first-of-a-kind facility near Essen, Germany, built inside an old chemical park rather than from scratch. A commercial-scale plant in the Middle East, aimed at sustainable aviation fuel, could follow. Real bankability, the point where infrastructure money finally shows up, is targeted for around 2030 or 2031.
"Once it's de-risked, cash flow wise, demand wise and so on, then it should be faster," Florian said. "That's where we think we will see a hockey stick."
What is at stake is bigger than aviation fuel. Florian connected the dots to a question every futurist eventually runs into: what happens once energy stops being scarce. "If we really want to hit AGI, artificial general intelligence, then we will be limited by energy," he said. It is the same kind of question Mizter Rad chased with James Glattfelder in How Consciousness and Information Will Reshape Humanity, a conversation that also kept circling back to what actually underlies the systems we build civilization on top of.
Florian also pointed to a more human version of the same idea, one that echoes what Adrian Woolfson told Mizter Rad about the energy cost of storing the world's data. "If people have access to energy for free, then this will significantly, significantly reduce poverty," Florian said. Cheap, abundant energy is not just an engineering milestone. It is one of the more direct levers we have on global inequality.
By his own admission, the deciding factor was never going to be climate conscience. "Everybody believes that climate change will come and in the long term it will be much, much more expensive, but nobody knows exactly who will pay how much," he said. "It's economics. I think we need to build the technology to the economics."
That may be the most useful reframe in the whole conversation. Energy abundance will not arrive because enough people cared. It will arrive the day clean fuel is simply cheaper than the dirty kind, at which point nobody will need convincing.
Curious how that shortage of stored energy connects to the race for artificial general intelligence and even data storage itself?
Mizter Rad explored that exact tension with Adrian Woolfson, where the conversation turns to how much of the planet's energy is already going toward keeping AI running.
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This article was produced with the assistance of AI tools. The Mizter Rad Show is hosted by Mizter Rad.
Guest: Florian Hildebrand, Founder of Greenlyte.
Follow Florian on LinkedIn.
Listen to the full conversation with Florian on the Mizter Rad Show.
Stay curious, question everything.
Mizter Rad
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Mizter Rad (00:03.586)
Hello, beautiful humans. Today we're talking about planes, fuel, and one of the biggest unsolved problems in the history of energy. What do you do with the industries that cannot go electric? Let me take you 50 years into the future to find out.
Mizter Rad (02:22.166)
So back in the present, we are not there yet. That's the future. But someone in the present is working on it. Every time you board a plane, that flight burns fuel, not batteries, fuel. And that is nothing changing anytime soon. Planes are too heavy. Distances are too long. Batteries too weak. Same with cargo ships crossing oceans. Same with the factories making your steel and your cement. This industry can't not just go electric.
They're too heavy. They're too big, too dependent on burning things. And they, on top of that, account for roughly 30 % of all CO2 emissions on this planet. Nobody has cracked how to clean them up until maybe now. My guest today is Florian Hildebrand, mechanical engineer, serial entrepreneur. He co-founded a software company, scaled it to over 200 people, raised 80 million euros, and then walked away.
Because, and this is an interesting story, during COVID, he spent two summers in Southern Europe watching climate change happen up close. And then he decided it was time to do something that actually mattered. He found a researcher named Peter, who had spent 15 years developing a technology in a German university lab, a technology that pulls CO2 directly from the air, store it in a crystal, think of it
like a battery but for carbon, and then combine it with green hydrogen to make synthetic fuel. Fuel made from thin air, water, and sunshine, essentially. Fuel that goes straight into a Boeing 737 engine with no modifications needed to the engine. Nothing at the airport needs to change either. The infrastructure stays the same. Together with Peter, Florian found the green light.
And now today they're building something that could quietly change where the energy that moves our world actually comes from. Florian, we're coming by the Mr. Rad Show. Welcome to the Mr. Rad Show. How are you?
Florian (04:33.03)
Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Good. Good. Good to be on the show. And I really liked the intro sequence. It actually captures quite well what we're all about. I would say hopefully it doesn't take us until 20, 70, 75 or 76, 74. I think we can probably do that a little bit quicker, but yeah, it's exactly what we're all
Mizter Rad (04:47.84)
Or.
Florian (04:55.566)
And I think there's the whole story about how we consume energy, how we produce energy, and how we go from this world of energy scarcity, which we still live in today, and we see that with AI and so on, to the energy abundance age. And that, think, is where our technologies will play the next big role in the next 30, 40 years. But I'm sure we will come to that.
Mizter Rad (04:56.206)
That's good.
Mizter Rad (05:16.654)
Amazing, Well, yeah, Flo, I wanted to start with something very basic, but very interesting. think a lot of entrepreneurs listen to the show and they want to understand why you went from being a CEO of a software company with 200 people already had raised 80 million euros. And maybe you were going on a path to grow even further. Most people in that position would just keep going. What happened?
during COVID or after that that made you walk away from that path.
Florian (05:51.48)
Yeah, I mean, I think there were like two things that sort of happened. So A is the sort of entire excitement about sort of, you know, climate change. I felt like when, so my wife and I were traveling and we were talking, like you could really like, these were really, really hot years and you can see how the world was changing. And you can almost feel that in those, you know, couple of weeks we spent abroad, felt like the entire world of climate change was accelerating so much.
And when I then sort of went back into daily meetings and we had conference calls and so on, I felt like that what I was doing didn't really matter so much. And I think when you first start out, maybe many people share this, but one of the reasons why I started to become an entrepreneur was initially financial freedom and being able to afford more, buy more, and just be like, you know, have a little bit of that happiness that money can buy you. But I think once you sort of over this period a little bit, and then you sort of.
Mizter Rad (06:42.008)
Yeah.
Florian (06:48.558)
You're in the daily struggles and you realize that the world is not always greener on the other side, but sometimes it's just, you you're sort of in the middle of everything that you're doing. Then I think this whole motivation of the reason why, that was one of the things. And the other was also...
quite honestly that, you know, building a company is such an intense experience that it also, you know, bores you out. And if you don't have this sort of intrinsic motivation that really drives you and gets you up and running, then I think the reason that you sort of maybe lose energy is it's a little bit earlier. And at the time I felt that, you know, the company was at a good stage where, you know, it was going from this, you know, crazy hectic discovery mode into being more and more of like a, you know, management type of company building new processes and so on. And I felt like,
Mizter Rad (07:36.176)
Yeah.
Florian (07:36.688)
I sort of lacked a little bit the excitement and energy to probably also take it to the next stage. And I think this was ultimately related to me and not being fully, fully, fully, in line with the pure intrinsic mission.
Mizter Rad (07:54.742)
Yeah, that's I completely see what you mean. I'm also an entrepreneur. I see what you mean completely. when you talk about because I find this super interesting as well, the inspiration maybe that you got while you were traveling with your with your wife. And now I understand that you guys are having a family very soon.
When that
little Florian or baby is born and she or he grows and is now five, six, seven, ten years old. How would you explain her how to what you do basically as a company in very simple words? What do you do for work?
Florian (08:47.276)
Yeah. So essentially, in a way, we are storing energy. And if you explain it to a five year olds, you get up in the morning and every time the sun is shining, you go out, you play in the garden and you have fun. And then the sun goes down and you get inside again and the day ends. And it's not just the sun that is moving us to go outside. The sun is actually providing energy to the world.
Similar to a child that has to go inside because it's night and it's getting cold. Similar, we cannot really store the light of the sunshine. We cannot really store the energy of the sunshine. And that's exactly what we're doing. Our technology is called liquid solar because in a way we're liquefying that sun into a chemical energy storage, almost like a battery.
Mizter Rad (09:18.936)
Thank
Florian (09:41.198)
to then make it available when it's needed again. And I think it starts the way, you know, we fly planes, planes are flown through with kerosene, which is nothing else but an oil refined into something that makes the plane move. And an oil is sort of a hydrocarbon, meaning it has CO2 and hydrogen, or carbon and hydrogen, and you can almost reverse it by using green energy. So what we are doing in very simple terms is we are liquefying the sun.
with liquid solar to turn sunshine into liquid energy.
Mizter Rad (10:16.904)
Okay, and so how did you get to this idea? Because I think that from what I understood, you were not necessarily the one that developing the.
sort of developed the technology, you actually went around as a, it was a very entrepreneurial spirit. And I think this is fascinating because I, don't know if I ever heard that before you went around looking for something cool in university labs in Germany. Is that correct? How, did that happen? How, how did you go from being a software developer, not software developer, a software entrepreneur to becoming an energy entrepreneur?
Florian (10:47.758)
Yeah, I did, so...
Florian (10:54.519)
Yeah.
I think the first one, the first important aspect was realizing that I had, needed a change in the opportunity cost. And I think that was maybe in a way the hardest because you mentioned like we were on this path and going and going and then realizing, Hey, that's not my path. I need to go back to zero. And when I went out of the company, which was, you know, super well done professionally, but it was also personally super difficult.
And then went from like all these conference calls during the day to basically nothing. And the only thing I knew that I wanted to do something in climate change. And the first thing that it was like, I reached out to a few founders, started to network, invested in a few companies and I realized I wanted to start something again. And when you look at, think founding a software company, I mean, most of the time, the biggest risk is not can you build the technology, but it's rather can you build the market? So is somebody actually willing to buy your product once you've built it?
But in climate change, in hardware tech, it's the other way around. Most of the times, the markets already exist. If you sell a kerosene, whether it's green or gray, doesn't matter, the market exists. The question is, can you build the technology cheap enough?
Mizter Rad (11:52.046)
Hmm.
Florian (12:01.766)
And can you scale it so that you can compete with your great alternatives? So it almost flips the entire question around. And your biggest risk is not a market risk, it's a tech risk. So with that in mind, I then thought, okay, I cannot just, you know, make up and come up with the technology overnight. So I felt, you know, Germany still has a rich legacy in research and innovation. And I made a list of all the interesting universities and chairs around us and just started to approach them on a cold email.
Mizter Rad (12:18.414)
you
Florian (12:30.862)
saying, hey, I'm Florian, I co-founded a company before, I know a little bit how to do that, I have a little bit of money now, who wants to work with me? And then there was actually quite a lot of replies because, especially in Germany, we still, I mean, we're getting better, but you know, it's probably changing also on a yearly basis now, but still it's like...
desire to found a company in entrepreneurial education. That's something where Germany is really lacking, lacking behind quite crazily. So quite a few people sort of were open. And then I went around these labs, started to talk to people. And then I realized the next problem, I'm an engineer by training, but these people like Peter, right? He spent 15 years working on this technology and you come in and you ask him what the technology does and he goes straight to the machine room. He goes straight to the molecules and explains to you all these reactions. And it was.
Mizter Rad (12:53.414)
Hmm.
Mizter Rad (13:17.127)
Right. Right.
Florian (13:17.52)
difficult for me to grasp this. I couldn't tell, okay, this is now a good innovation or not. I mean, I can tell, hey, this sounds great. It sounds cool, but you know, does it actually work? I don't know. So I then, I started to reach out to people in my network, investors in my network, professors in my network to try to get a grasp of what we were doing. And I spoke with quite a few VCs at the time.
And sort of shared ideas like, have you looked at this market before? Have you looked at the technologies? What are sort of pitfalls? Can you believe that, you know, this could work? And this is how that over time, I sort of got confidence. And eventually when I met Peter, and that's actually a funny story, how we met.
Mizter Rad (13:50.99)
.
Florian (13:54.53)
you know, quite a few things started to click and then, yeah, we just sort of started to realize, okay, what do we need to do and who do we need? And it was also very clear that, and we early on started to a team. mean, we are four co-founders now, but know, Peter very much the scientific expert. I'm a little bit more maybe on the business side. So was clear from the beginning, okay, the two of us are not going to make it. So.
We immediately started to look for a new, for another co-founder, like an operator with a technical mindset. is how Niklas got involved. And I remember one of our first conversations, I knew him from before, but when I called him about this and he said, okay, Florence, somebody has to do this now, somebody has to do this. yeah, then we started to get going.
Mizter Rad (14:20.782)
You got excited. OK, I see. OK, so I believe I would say I would claim you're maybe in your mid 30s. Is that correct?
Florian (14:48.718)
Yeah, I'm 35.
Mizter Rad (14:50.286)
35, okay, so this technology from what I understand and maybe by your own admission because we talked about it before won't reach meaningful scale maybe until, don't know, maybe 2035 if we're lucky. That would be around 10 years from now and then you will be 45. Do you see that as a sacrifice or is it just the job that has to be done?
Florian (15:21.962)
I mean, hopefully it will be earlier. And I think sometimes we underestimate how much we can do over a longer period and we overestimate what we can do in days. And I think it's all about, how do we leverage scalability? But to a question, I don't really think it's sacrifice. I it's still, and I mean, I founded the company, but still for me, it's, I'm grateful that I'm able to work on this opportunity. I'm grateful how far we've come and...
Every time you visit our factory and you meet our team, I mean, we have people from, you know, over 20 different nationalities. have roughly 80 odd people in our team and the amount, quite a diverse team and the amount of passion that everybody's united by this sort of common set of values, how we respect each other, how we deal with each other, but sort of working to this common goal to do something good for the environment and also create a great business. This is fascinating. And I mean...
Mizter Rad (15:50.766)
Thank Yeah.
you you
Florian (16:18.124)
I think it's been rare that we enjoyed so much what we're doing. And when you see it like sort of the management style, we implied very flat hierarchies and we don't track hours. We don't have people come in on a Saturday, on a Sunday, but the amount of passion and excitement that exists within the team. Like, you know, we give a lot of freedom and budget responsibility out to the teams as well. It's just crazy to see how people grasp this and how people have created this almost mystic energy around us. And it's not like a cult, but.
It's like the people that work in GreenNet, we are quite welcoming, but it's just crazy to do this energy. And I think ultimately if we can still do this for the next 10 years, have fun doing it, then for sure it's not a sacrifice. think it's, and that's, think what people in the team would say. mean, people that join and so on, they sometimes come up and say, I'm so grateful for this opportunity. And then we go, okay, but we're grateful for the stuff that you do.
Mizter Rad (16:59.505)
I see, I see.
Florian (17:11.788)
And I think, you know, this spirit and this culture we created with Greenlyte is special and we really want to make sure that this keeps going.
Mizter Rad (17:22.108)
I see the entrepreneurial drive for sure. And that's very exciting. I 100 % agree. When you have that and it doesn't, it's still there, it's exciting. At some point, sometimes it kind of fades off. And maybe then it's when you have to be honest with yourself and say, okay, I'm done. I'm moving to the next step. At least that's in my experience.
But you talked about your factory and how people are excited and so on. When you talked about your factory, I imagine I started imagining the process. And I still quite and I'm sure my listeners quite don't get exactly how the process goes from the moment you capture CO2 from the air all the way to the moment a plane, for example, in Charles de Gaulle or in the airport in Dusseldorf, whatever takes off using your fuel.
I'm not sure if that's happening yet, by the way. But if it were happening, how would that process go? How does the process all the way from the beginning to the end goes?
Florian (18:28.184)
So the first bit of fuel we created is actually synthetic natural gas in our Duisburg facility. so, I mean, the entire value chain is quite complex because it involves several steps of transportation and so on, but in simple terms. our core technology.
has a front end and a back end. So in the front end, we absorb CO2 from the atmosphere using a liquid process, meaning there's certain liquid that gets in touch with air. And as liquid gets in touch with air, the CO2 is almost sucked out of the air into this liquid. And that is an exothermic reaction, meaning it does not require energy. It just happens naturally. And we have patented a, what is called crystallization reaction that immediately as the CO2 goes into
the liquid forms the solid product which is the bicarbonate or as we call it the green light. So front end CO2 into the liquids forming a solid product and then this solid product goes
Mizter Rad (19:24.729)
Wait, wait, and the solid
Sorry, the solid product is the crystal or what is the crystal? Okay.
Florian (19:29.622)
Yeah, that's the crystal. Yeah, that's the crystal. And what we have developed is this reaction. So normally when you see crystallization in industry, it's a process that's happening quite a lot. You normally use heating and cooling so that you have a constant temperature and then you have a crystallization reaction. And we have developed it using the natural swings of the temperature so that we do not require any energy in that process and still create the solid bicarbonate. I'll come to why this is important. So first product, first step.
Mizter Rad (19:44.27)
you
Florian (19:58.26)
front end air using CO2 from the air forming this product, the green light. And then the green light is dissolved again in our back end which is an electrolysis where we then release the CO2 from that green light, produce green hydrogen and regenerate the liquid we need in the front end.
Mizter Rad (19:59.662)
Okay. Okay.
Florian (20:19.47)
And this is so fascinating and disruptive because we believe that in order to bring down the cost of fuels and bring down the cost of carbon capture and so on, we need to make sure we use the cheapest form of energy and optimize our capex. And the cheapest form of energy is renewable energy, sun energy, wind energy that you don't connect to the grid.
Mizter Rad (20:29.646)
Yes.
Florian (20:44.726)
And when you build a technology that just relies on solar and wind energy, you have essentially two problems. So A, you switch it on and off all the time, which no technology likes. And then B, because you can only run it at 50, 60 % of the time, your capex becomes a problem. And what the green light does, it allows us to separate the capex heavy front end, which does not require any energy, from the opex heavy back end.
Mizter Rad (20:57.043)
Yeah. Yeah.
Florian (21:13.27)
and we're running the front end 24-7 allowing us to increase our capex utilization.
And the backend only runs when the energy is cheap. And that allows us in turn to then create super, super, super cheap raw materials, green raw materials in the form of carbon and hydrogen. And now carbon and hydrogen as raw materials can then be fed into either existing refineries or new refineries like in Eratech is building, Lydian, 12. There's so many companies out there which are working on reactor technologies or using distinct technologies that then turn CO2 and hydrogen into
fuels. But on the economic side, if you crack the CO2 and the hydrogen question, then you've cracked 80 to 90 percent of the cost question. Because 80 to 90 percent of the cost of an e-fuel is the feedstock. If you lower the cost of the feedstock, it almost doesn't matter what you do downstream, because then that needs to work and operate.
and then you get the fuel and that's essentially what we have done.
Mizter Rad (22:19.319)
I see. OK, so let me try to put this in my own words.
for everyone listening. Imagine you're standing at an airport. Again, you're at the Barajas Airport in Madrid and you're watching a plane take off and that plane right now, that plane is burning fuel, liquid fuel from the ground. It comes from the ground because batteries are still too heavy and they cannot fly a plane across the ocean.
Now that plane comes from the Middle East or Texas or Guayana or whatever. But what you guys are building in green light, Florian and his team, is essentially a different kind of fuel pump. Instead of drilling down the earth, you get ingredients, like you said, the carbon and the hydrogen, from the air, basically, above us. So the CO2 from the atmosphere.
and hydrogen from water. Those two ingredients combined in the right reactor, as you said, give you a fuel that works in that same plane engine, in theory. And then on top of that, you said, and I think this is important, the airport or the planes, they don't have to make major changes because the infrastructure, you're looking for infrastructure, it's already there and you would just like come in with your setup.
same plane, same engine, same runway, and just like plug into their systems. And you sort of sort in the ingredients that you just mentioned, carbon and hydrogen that you can retrieve from water and air in a cost effective way. More or less.
Florian (24:08.719)
Correct. the beauty, yes, 100%, and the beautiful part around this is that we are a carbon and hydrogen feedstock platform.
And I mean, when you look at how a refinery works, you take a crude oil that you take from the ground into the refinery and you create different products out of it. I mean, you can also take natural gas, but essentially you take different products. have heavy, medium, high phase, whatever. And all these types of product have a different application. have a diesel, you have a petrol, you have a kerosene.
or you have synthetic natural gas. And depending on application, you can then sort of, you know, put whatever you've produced into these applications. And for us, this is the same. I mean, we can do...
anything from CO2 and hydrogen. It depends on the reactor technology. And this is what we think will also change the world from an... I mean, right now, energy is a scarce resource, right? Energy is fueling the world and most of the energy is still fossil based. And we're already here today that, you know, data centers, they cannot be built because energy is a problem and then you shut down cities or whatever. At the same time, the potential of wind and solar is so massive.
Mizter Rad (24:58.865)
Mm.
Florian (25:20.236)
that looking at it on a yearly basis you would say like why is there a problem? mean we're producing more energy over the course of a year than we actually consume so why is there this problem? And the problem is that we cannot store this energy.
Mizter Rad (25:22.254)
Hmm.
Florian (25:34.848)
And when you tackle the CO2 and hydrogen question, because fossil fuels are probably the best energy storage that exists. Yes, they are a little bit more inefficient than an electric car, much more inefficient when you burn it because you produce a lot of heat. But in terms of energy storage, the fossil fuel has been a great invention by nature. So if you can cheap on a super, super cheap and scalable form replicate that.
Mizter Rad (25:49.55)
Okay. Mm.
Florian (26:00.214)
You can turn the world from an energy as a scarce resource into an energy abundance question. And that is even where the Middle East could become such an interesting exporter of energy in the form of liquids, much, much, much more than they are today. Because you could almost turn the world from an energy as a scarce into energy abundance. And then you probably will not just make kerosene, you would also make a lot of synthetic natural gas, a lot of simple petrol like methanol and so on.
We use it as an energy storage to fuel whatever type of application. And as long as you are taking the CO2 from the atmosphere, the whole thing becomes a carbon cycle. And in the end of the day, you can increase our energy output on super, super cheapest form of energy. And still you will not harm the environment.
Mizter Rad (26:47.659)
OK, wait, let's go back to this crystal because the crystal, think, is a key. The green light crystal. That is the thing that makes your process different, I believe, or let's say one of the things. Let me try to say it simply. And you tell me if I'm wrong again. The crystal is basically a battery, let's say, to put it simply. But instead of storing electricity, it stores CO2. And then when the sun is
Florian (27:00.876)
Yes. Yeah.
Mizter Rad (27:14.744)
full on and that's why we talk about the Middle East a lot. And electricity is almost free again because of the sun. You release that CO2 from the crystal and combine it with hydrogen and then you push that system at full power. And even if it's cloudy, you know, you just pause and the crystal keeps holding that CO2 until you're ready again when it's sunny again and then you go full on again.
Is that right?
Florian (27:44.238)
Correct, yes, correct, in the back end you can almost imagine it's like a speaker. So you can run it at 50%, you can run it at 200%, but you can also run it at 200%. So you're fully flexible in terms of how you adjust that output, and that is exactly the magic. And the pure crystals, the pure green light is the reason why we can do it.
Mizter Rad (27:49.656)
Yeah.
Mizter Rad (27:54.691)
Yeah.
Mizter Rad (28:05.391)
And the green light is a liquid or what? does it look like actually? It's a white powder.
Florian (28:09.358)
That's a white powder. That's a white powder. So essentially it's a white powder and it's forming, it's a bicarbonate, a potassium bicarbonate. So it's formed when CO2 reacts in that liquid with our carbonate solution, which is just a chemical, and then forms a white powder. And it's basically a reaction where a gas, CO2, connects with the liquid, forms a solid.
Mizter Rad (28:39.982)
And nobody else has this buffer. What do competitors do when this sun goes down, for example?
Florian (28:43.694)
I mean the buffering parts, I mean we're doing this 100 % clean and clear CO2, but most of these technologies actually require a constant amount of energy. So they need either different forms of energy, they need grid connection or much higher batteries that then in turn would increase your cutbacks and your energy investment costs.
And we've written a white paper where the pros and RET and RET paper together was our industry advisor board which consists of Lufthansa, Tuifly, Unipa which is a big energy major in Germany and a few others and Mabanaft and the Energy. And there's three things that we think we need to optimize for. So A is we need to lower the cost of energy. If we do that, we need to build a technology that is capex cheap and allows us to run intermittent and three, co-locating, which you also said in the intro.
Mizter Rad (29:10.722)
Okay.
Florian (29:39.68)
And if you follow this first principle thinking, then you can reach cost numbers, which makes sense. And then at the end of the day, the big challenge of green technology is lowering their costs so that they are cheaper than the gray ones.
Mizter Rad (29:39.751)
Mm-hmm.
Mizter Rad (29:55.888)
Right, so but you said three things. One is lower the cost of energy. What else did you say?
Florian (30:01.528)
build the technology to then lower carpecs and then third and co-locating.
Mizter Rad (30:05.036)
Hmm.
Mizter Rad (30:08.684)
What is co-locating? Just being on top of the current infrastructure?
Florian (30:13.55)
Yes, or next to it. I mean, our technologies during scale up, it will probably not make sense to build everything from scratch. I mean, you need the refinery, you need the transport, the harbors, the ports and everything. But if you can just fit into existing refineries even and just replace, I mean, methanol reactor today that exists in Saudi and in Jubail, there are a few.
It takes fossil fuel and turns it into synthetic natural gas and turns it into methanol. But it also in this reaction requires CO2 and hydrogen. So what if we just replace the natural gas and just feed in CO2 and hydrogen directly? Then you don't need to build up your downstream reactors. You have an existing asset that is maybe already written off. You have an interest of somebody to bring your technology on site.
Mizter Rad (30:45.912)
Mm-hmm.
Florian (31:07.03)
And then boom, you have a business case, which is much, better than building everything new.
Mizter Rad (31:12.92)
I see. I see what you mean. I want to go back to the hydrogen point for a second because I think we didn't explain this clearly enough. Because I know you get the CO2 from the air. I get that. But the hydrogen, does?
that come from exactly you mentioned you split water from electricity. But here's what I'm thinking. Wait, give me a second because here's the important thing. The places with the cheapest solar energy we already talked about Oman, Saudi Arabia. But they're also dry. So in those places, isn't that a problem that the water comes if I'm I'm if I'm not mistaken, the hydrogen comes from the water in this case, right?
Florian (31:29.784)
So.
Florian (31:58.188)
Yeah, you'd always need water, but also in those areas, mean, you don't, I mean, it's normally a mix of solar and wind energy. You need to supply the water in there, but the water that you need for electrolysis, I mean, yes, you split water, but it's also, you know, I think a different level of water consumption. So yes, you have to answer this question, but there's quite a lot of people working on getting the water for the hydrogen in these areas. We're not the only ones there, but the hydrogen comes from splitting water and...
Mizter Rad (32:03.31)
.
Florian (32:26.574)
In the back end, we essentially use an adapted electrolysis. And essentially what we're doing is we're splitting H2O water into hydrogen and oxygen. And as we're doing this, there is a pH difference between the N-note and the cathode chambers, so the two sides of the electrolysis. And this essentially destroys the green light and releases the CO2. So we're using, I sometimes explain it like we're using a...
a pot and we're boiling rice and we're putting a breakfast egg inside as well and we're trying to cook sort of two things with one technology.
Mizter Rad (33:00.917)
I see, okay, so not everywhere works for you, essentially. You need a place with.
Florian (33:05.663)
we-
or you need to put access to, you need access to water.
Mizter Rad (33:14.316)
Water and sun also, right? Or wind? Wind.
Florian (33:16.578)
water, and wind. Wind and sun. We've done some simulations where it works in the normally combination of solar and wind.
Mizter Rad (33:26.178)
What kind of simulations are those actually? In the lab or?
Florian (33:30.122)
So there's two things. So we do have real life pilots installations and everything that we're doing is we're collecting the data in the cloud and we're running a simulation in parallel to the real world. And together with one of our partners, we've developed an AI model that predicts how the weather is changing and adapt this into our simulation and then adapt the real life process so that we can optimize for essentially running our technology. And that has all to do with
making sure that we use minimum amount of external energy into our process and being able to sort of run the absorption 24-7.
Mizter Rad (34:09.258)
Okay, so these are models built on software computer basically.
Florian (34:16.108)
Yes, correct. And then validate it with real live hardware.
Mizter Rad (34:21.588)
OK, so where do you run that validation? In Germany, in a closed environment? Or how does that work?
Florian (34:26.55)
Yes. So we do have, so we're trying to do three things in parallel. So we have sort of a lab environment and then we have a pilot and a demo facility, which is from five to the biggest one is 50 tons of CO2 capacity per year connected to a
methane reactor and now we're building up our scaled up production our first-of-a-kind facility which we do over a thousand tons but on a modular basis so that we can then replicate the modules and we have validated our technology sort of already in the field so we are at tier 7 technical register seven out of nine which is super good
Mizter Rad (35:04.258)
What does that mean? What does that mean?
Florian (35:06.732)
So that comes from NASA and the idea was TRL, technical readiness level from one to nine. One, let's shoot a rocket to the moon and nine, can shoot the rocket to the moon and we can rebuild it and it will get there and we have a high confidence it will get there. So that is sort of how you would develop technology.
Mizter Rad (35:24.142)
Okay, so you're almost getting to nine now.
Florian (35:25.966)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. probably take, I mean, the whole thing that we're trying to solve is bankability. So how can we build a technology that is not financed from equity or grants as it is today, but financed through predictable bank cash flows. And for this, we are trying to sort of de-risk as fast as we can. We've de-risked the technology at the smaller scales. Now we are hopefully towards sort of mid next year, we will have de-risked at the final scale.
And then we need to replicate that scale and in parallel bring smaller installations into the target areas like Sody and Oman. But then also validate the tech there and hopefully de-risk scaling somewhere else and then bring everything together to be much faster than the timelines that were mentioned before.
Mizter Rad (36:14.265)
Okay, so, okay, wait, I think this is interesting talking about bankability. So right now for people maybe that haven't heard this topic or.
word before. I want to unpack it a bit more because right now I think you run on VC money and we can talk business now a bit more. You run on VC money and this is in the big scope of things, amounts of risk money from people betting on you and they're relatively small. When you compare it to the real money, let's say that are billions of
dollars that you need to scale that maybe come from a completely different type of investor infrastructure funds and maybe pension funds, people like Brookfield and so on that they are already in the region of Saudi Arabia, of course, by the way, and you probably know that. And these people do not bet on unproven tech. Of course, they want they want to put their money on on toll roads and airports, things that are predictable with cash flow. So I think that's what we're talking about. Right. So
Florian (37:16.046)
Correct.
Florian (37:20.91)
Correct.
Mizter Rad (37:25.942)
I think the question that I want maybe a let's say a clear answer if you have one is what needs to happen from now to then so that that world, that new money opens up for you guys.
Florian (37:43.564)
Yeah, so I think it's two things.
mainly that need to happen. A is a tech de-risking. So we need to be able to prove that our technology works at scale and can be repeated. And then B is commercial question. We need to have the customer agreements in place that are bankable enough so that we have predictable cash flows over a longer period of time. And when you then take, okay, we have secured demand, people will buy for whatever comes out of it. And we know that that can supply
Mizter Rad (38:14.19)
I have been in the business for a long time. I've been in the business for long I've the business I've for I've the business I've business I've been I've been I've business I've been I've I've business I've in business I've in long long I've
Florian (38:15.856)
then you go into bankability and that will not happen overnight. what we are trying to do is, so we have sort of separated out in sort of three things. So first was the scientific de-risking. So does the science work?
And can we protect the IP? That's now done. We have four patterns in place. Science is done. So that should be okay. The next is then, and we have this idea, by the way, concept, idea to concept. That's sort of the first level. I have an idea. Let's do a concept, then concept to technology, technology to product, and then product production. So.
Mizter Rad (38:52.574)
I see.
Florian (38:53.55)
We now have sort of scientific de-risk. Now the next thing is can we also de-risk the technology in the product? And for this, we've now created various test plans, pilot plans where we collect data and we compare this data in a simulation against what have been the prediction against how this would work and how did it actually work. And then we can also extrapolate, okay, today the climate has been like a typical day in Oman.
Mizter Rad (39:02.574)
Yeah.
Florian (39:20.706)
Could we also predict that this could now work like this in Oman? That's the technology de-risking. And then the next aspect is, okay, the scaling de-risking. And for this, we believe we need to work in sort of module sizes where we have built the final modules, the final designs, and then replicate them and run them over time. And right now, the scientific de-risking, we could probably just say, okay, that's done. And the other two are right now done in Germany.
And we are building our, what we call first of a kind facility. It's already in construction now, which is a thousand five hundred ton facility consisting of three modules. The first one will be built this year, the next one next year, and then maybe end of next year, the last one. And then we have probably iterated three times collecting running data. then hopefully this will be enough for sort of de-risking the scaling.
And then the question is, okay, we then have theoretically de-risked in Oman or in Saudi Arabia, we've de-risked the scaling. We now need to also show that it's actually de-risked technology-wise in Saudi Arabia. So taking like a small pilot, putting it into Saudi Arabia, and if it works to the same degree as it does in Germany on a predicted basis, we have done the de-risking of the scaling, then we can probably gradually scale also in Saudi Arabia.
And then build the first facility, which is maybe 100 to 200 million euro facility, not the billions yet. Finance through, you know, passionate and more risk-taking investors and a little bit of grant funding. And then hopefully by 2030, we will be in a position where we have now built a significant facility, proven that we can scale modular, proven real cash flows.
Mizter Rad (40:46.99)
.
Florian (41:04.718)
And then we think, you know, 2030, 2031, at this point, something like this, then the asset would become bankable. And if it's bankable and we have this modular scaling concept, then I think it can go much, much faster because then we have tech that is IP protected on a clear scaling concept that works with existing infrastructure. Then there would be no reason why we cannot build or somebody else builds 10 facilities in parallel.
based on these fully validated technologies and validated cash flows. And that's where we think we will see a hockey stick because then it starts to make sense for much more people because then it's de-risked. And once it's de-risked, cash flow wise, demand wise and so on, then it should be faster. That's a big endeavor.
Mizter Rad (41:52.698)
Okay, you seem to have it clear. It sounds like a big endeavor, but I understand now why you're excited.
You're excited and your team is excited. I want to have something clear. When you talk about modular scaling, what are the modules? Are there containers that you placed next to what we talked about, the infrastructure that is currently there? What are the modules?
Florian (42:15.118)
I
People always think in containers because it's easy to move them around in logistics. Eventually, think probably containers, the question is, you know, can you build, if you run the facility for 20 years, do you need containers? But it's sort of the final designs of every sort of module. And we believe that sort of our module size is around 500 tons, meaning that the single unit of a plant does 500 tons of CO2 and the related hydrogen. We always measure in CO2, hydrogen is
lighter per year. And then you would probably combine them into a pack of four or six so that you would say the smallest facility we are building is maybe 3,000 tons and then you would just times that by 3,000.
Mizter Rad (42:47.288)
Yeah.
Mizter Rad (42:58.638)
And at what point does the sort of product market fit, if we want to put it in software terms, come in? Because once you've proven that the science works, the tech is de-risked and the scaling is de-risked, at what point do you get your first customer or your first contract?
Mizter Rad (43:37.006)
Mmm.
Dad, can you me your phone? Dad, can you me your phone? It's working. The internet... Did the light
Mizter Rad (47:16.904)
Sorry Florian, I'm here. Can you hear me?
Florian (47:19.778)
Yeah, I can.
Mizter Rad (47:21.977)
Sorry, talking about electricity, it went off here. So the internet went off. Very funny. Let me go.
Florian (47:32.056)
Yeah, you're talking about sort of product market fit and what model size product market fit.
Mizter Rad (47:36.015)
Exactly at what time at what time do you start?
Yeah, you start selling because what I wanted to mention is that maybe you correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand that what you're producing here, at least for the aviation industry, is this sustainable aviation fuel. that considered that as well?
Florian (48:01.282)
Yeah, I mean, in the end of the day, yes, right now we are sort of at a pre-synthetic. I mean, we're doing synthetic natural gas and the next one will be methanol, which needs to be then converted into SAF. But, but, but yes. So, I mean, we have now signed quite a lot of offtakes and what we need to sell out is the first facility and our first sort of commercial facility in the Middle East will be focusing on SAF. The question is, will this be...
Mizter Rad (48:07.335)
right yet
Florian (48:28.59)
an entire SAF producing facility or will this be just co-locating with an existing refinery and then you mass balance, okay, I know now that 2 % of the refinery is producing SAF in parallel to fossil because on the chemical molecule basis, there is no difference. I mean, in fact, synthetic fuel is cleaner when you burn it because you don't have impurities that you get from the air. But if you do it together sort of from a refinery, I mean, it's a...
There's no molecule difference.
Mizter Rad (48:59.561)
And why do you think it's the holdup on why only about 1-2 % of global aviation fuel is SAF? Why not more than that?
Florian (49:09.71)
I mean, right now these technologies are still expensive. mean, TRL 7 sounds great, but it's still a long way to go because normally between TRL 7 and 9 there's another 300 million. So that is still a challenge to manage. And I think that's what we are. That's where we are right now. And I think in this sort of day and age, we need to sort of tell the stories which are beyond the climate angle, right? And for us in Europe now, with the state of home was being shut and
Mizter Rad (49:23.091)
Good.
Florian (49:38.126)
fuel availability and kerosene is a problem. And so in many other parts of the world as well. So the question is, is there not a different price logic by having a resilient fuel that you can produce in-house, which is more expensive, but at least you have something for defense applications as well. So I think we're in this phase right now where the green stuff is not really price competitive. So we need to find either markets that are driven by regulation.
or driven by a different price logic. And this will change. So 2030, 2031, when we hit bankability, that is assuming that we can get really, really close to the fossil price. And then there's a different sort of reason why people buy and the airline customers that we have that, you know, want to buy from us because we cannot produce stuff right now.
The logic of buying sustainable aviation fuel is yes, you want to buy green, but it's also about decoupling, potentially, the soft market from the fossil market in terms of prices. And then maybe there is another crisis or the prices of fossil go up, but you don't have to hedge it because you can lock in your soft price for 10 years.
Mizter Rad (50:44.745)
Okay. Okay.
Florian (50:48.846)
And that I think we think is sort of the next level of innovation that we see with these green tech tech from the air where you can just predict the price for 10 years because you know the sun is shining and you don't have to sort of you know play around with flexible prices and then save on the hedging costs which then gives you another reason for a premium.
Mizter Rad (51:06.281)
Let me change gears and switch gears here for a second. And I want you to understand, or I want to understand this concept of feedstock, of additionality of feedstock in general, because you mentioned it before. I don't think I have it clear. Maybe my listeners don't understand what it is. As I understand it, and you have to...
You have to sort of when you talk about feedstock additionality, you have to prove that the renewable energy powering your system in this case is genuinely new energy. And it's not just, you know, you're sucking the electricity away from the grid that may be used by homes or hospitals. And is this a real first of all, I want to know if that's correct. And maybe you have a better explanation of how this works.
Is that a problem for you? Who actually checks that?
Florian (52:10.126)
So there's validation and certification companies like there's one in Germany called Atmen which do a live verification of that. So, I mean, in principle, yes, you need new electricity, but also if the electricity price drops below a certain price in Germany, then for example, you assume that the electricity is green. And in Germany, we see these fluctuations.
But I think that again, it doesn't really matter so much because the first principle of our technology is we need to lower the cost of energy and the cheapest energy is the green energy that you make yourself. So if you just not connect the grid, but you just roll out a few solar panels, build a wind turbine in a cheap land somewhere in world, need to answer how you get the water there, but that also can be solved.
And then you end up with your own energy that you just use, which is additional. And that's, I think, the principle that we need anyways in a technology. And that, think, by the way, is the big advantage because every time you connect something to the grid, you pay grid fees, you then pay for like somebody balancing it out. It's maybe not super green, but if you can really just build solar panels, no, and not even the conversion from DC energy to AC energy.
Mizter Rad (53:13.821)
Okay. .
Florian (53:31.938)
Just the pure panels connecting the cables to the panels. is much, much cheaper than energy from the grid. And as long as you can predict your sunshine and your wind, then it's cheaper. it's because then the only thing, the cost of your electricity will just be the cost of buying the solar panels, putting the steel in the ground and connecting them.
Mizter Rad (53:40.507)
I see. That's a good bridge to my next question because when I was preparing for this conversation, I researched and of course understood
Maybe what other entrepreneurs or researchers are doing in the topic. And it occurred to me that maybe some people in the climate world would look at what you're doing and say, Florian, you guys are brilliant, but you're working on the wrong problem. The real solution is not cleaner fuel. It is not fuel at all. It is actually what you were saying, pure electricity, electric planes, or maybe even hydrogen propulsion.
completely reinventing how we fly and by maybe working with what you're working, making synthetic fuel cheap and scalable, you might be slowing down that revolution because you suddenly have airlines have a comfort excuse not to change to that. What would you say to them?
Florian (55:00.536)
think it's question of what we want as humanity and maybe this revolution will come. But right now all the major airlines have stopped their hydrogen programs because it's a super, super, super difficult problem to crack. And when you take a bottle of water and you fill it up with compressed hydrogen, let's say this would not precipitate but it would be in there.
And you take the same bottle and you fill it up with compressed natural gas. Then in your natural gas bottle, you have four times as much energy compared to the hydrogen bottle. the sort of energy per volume on hydrogen is unfortunately lower. So the amount of innovation on the, they're going beyond the even physical limits that has to happen is absolutely crazy. And
So I don't think that this is something that can be cracked in the next, I don't know, maybe AI will change it, but probably in the next 50 years even. And the planes that are bought today, they will still fly in 30 years, just the way it works. And I think the fastest way to clean energy is synthetic fuels. And I don't think that we are sort of then slowing down the different progress. Maybe it's something that, you know, when we talk again in 80 years.
Mizter Rad (56:03.337)
you
Florian (56:13.218)
We will talk about the next revolution, which is just, you know, completely different nuclear, whatever electric planes, small modular reactors. But right now, I don't think that this is a realistic, realistic prediction. And when you in fact take into consideration what now, you know, some of the energy companies are doing solar energy from space, you know, building data centers in space.
Mizter Rad (56:23.145)
Okay.
Florian (56:37.12)
It's also again about solar energy and I think the sort of cost of producing energy was significantly significantly lower still. But the cost of storing it and the way of storing energy is still difficult, especially in mobile applications. So I think if we really want to go from a to a world of energy abundance, yes, batteries will also play a role. It's not just one technology.
But realistically storing energy over longer periods of time, transporting it, there's always going to be a fuel involved.
Mizter Rad (57:10.771)
So what are those things that keep you up at night in terms of competition right now? What are those technologies that you say, this is not so far in the future. This is actually happening right now, and it's directly competing with our solution.
Florian (57:26.734)
I mean, there's like direct competition in terms of making like cheaper ways of fuels. And to be honest, I think this is a little bit like...
playing golf, it doesn't really matter if these people are successful or not because in the end of the day, we're all competing for commodity price in the market. And if we are lower than this price, that's, think, right on the challenge. And we're always playing against ourselves much more than we're playing against the others. So I always compared it a little bit to golf. It's competitive, but first and foremost, you're playing against yourself. So that is not really something that I think we should, and by the way, I think that's also something that in this world,
It keeps you up at night if you just start looking on all these success stories in LinkedIn and so on. And I try to stay away from it because this is stressing you. And I think for us, it's just important that's focused on ourselves. We know what the target is in terms of our costs. We know what we have to hit. Let's make sure we hit it. And when we hit it, I'm pretty sure that there is a market and a technology because we do have real offtake in place. So that's, think, is that part. And the other part is like...
Mizter Rad (58:11.985)
Yeah.
Florian (58:31.97)
new technologies that would probably completely change maybe what you've just said, hydrogen propulsion and so on. But even there, the amount, the market for synthetic fuels is still super, super, super big because so much existing industry, because so much, this will not happen overnight. And so I do think that, you know, synthetic fuels are very, good alternative for many, many, many applications out there from energy storage.
to flying, to defense applications, to reliable energy for hospitals, backup generators for data centers and many other applications. Probably not for road transport. And funny enough, we have an electric car, which we drive on a daily basis. But when we go longer trips, we also have a diesel car. We then use that car. So, yeah.
Mizter Rad (59:18.381)
Hmm.
Mizter Rad (59:23.758)
And in 50 years from now, how do you see the world looking?
Florian (59:30.542)
Yeah, I think that the energy question, I think that's the biggest question that needs to be answered because it will fuel a lot of the innovation that happened. If we really want to hit AGI, artificial general intelligence, then we will be limited by energy. So again, where's the energy coming from? If we want to sort of build the newest form of medical, pharmaceutical, whatever, and give access to...
You know, when you, when you meet sort of Bill Gates a few years ago and his sort of idea around building equity in the world and making sure that, you know, people that, you know, live still in some areas of the poorer African continent and want to have the same level of luxury as we have in Europe, it's always about access to energy. And when you give sort of this decentralized access, then this will change everything. So I think.
Mizter Rad (01:00:19.059)
Hmm.
Florian (01:00:23.796)
Energy and that's I think the world if we can crack the energy question and go to energy abundance, then the world will be in a way, much more equal because if people have access to energy for free, then this will significantly, significantly reduce poverty and, and, many other aspects. So it could be a very promising world in where energy is abundant and enables, yeah, and much more.
Mizter Rad (01:00:51.296)
I see what you mean, and I think that makes total sense. I wanted to close with this other question because I think it's a nice way to wrap it up because it touches on the topic that we used to start the conversation, and that is you.
You became a climate tech entrepreneur or an energy entrepreneur because you cared about the climate change problem. Now that you're very much into the topic and you have experience in the industry and talk to a lot of people within the industry, do you still believe that we're changing our behaviors and the way we consume energy and so on because we care about the planet or are you finding
or realizing that the actual thing that actually moves people when it comes to changing their behaviors is economics in the end.
Florian (01:01:52.706)
Yeah, it's economics. I think everybody believes that climate change will come and in the long term it will be much, much more expensive, but nobody knows exactly who will pay how much. So right now people are not paying anything. And if you hiccup the prices for fuel, mean, everybody goes crazy. So I think it's always about the economics. And I think we need to build the technology to the economics. And I think that's something that...
Mizter Rad (01:02:09.926)
Right.
Florian (01:02:20.43)
We talk about energy abundance and super cheap solar panels and then putting cheap fuel producing machines everywhere.
then I think that's the answer. I think the biggest question that we still have to answer is lowering the cost so that there's pretty much no green premium and it just makes sense. And that is there. So I also don't really believe in all these crazy EU regulation. Yes, we need it. And yes, stuff needs to happen and it's incentivized, but you cannot dictate somebody to pay nine times more for fuel to have a green fuel that will not work.
Mizter Rad (01:02:53.108)
Yeah, absolutely. I agree. I agree. It definitely affects the lower and mid class much more than the upper class for sure. Florian, thank much. You are great
Florian (01:03:12.438)
Yeah, thank you very much. It's great to meet you. Good conversation.
Mizter Rad (01:03:16.206)
If people want to follow your work actually, where can they learn more about it?
Florian (01:03:20.972)
So we have our website Greenlyte Tech and then also super active on LinkedIn. So either myself or the companies will follow us there and we'll give regular updates. The next big one is end of this year with the opening of our first module, our first of a kind facility, maybe beginning of 27th, it's not 100 % scheduled, but yeah, super exciting stuff coming.
Mizter Rad (01:03:42.13)
Cool. Where is that going to be?
Florian (01:03:45.976)
So that is in a place very close to Essen, in a city called Marl, M-A-R-L, which probably nobody's ever heard of, but it has an existing large chemical site and we were building it inside the chemical park. So yeah, we'll be good.
Mizter Rad (01:03:50.045)
Huh.
Mizter Rad (01:04:02.866)
That's so interesting that you're using what used to be like a very strong industry with strong infrastructure before in Germany, and you're kind of building up on that. Very interesting. Cool.
Florian (01:04:17.164)
Yes, see a rural reborn on my shirt, yeah.
Mizter Rad (01:04:20.153)
there you go.
Cool, well people until next time beautiful humans stay curious question everything and while you question everything take a look at the Middle East not for the oil but for what comes after the oil hasta la vista ciao.