132. Al Gore, The World Bank, Climate Denial and Human Composting in California

The Clean Energy Show

Al Gore correctly calls the World Bank president a climate denier. California the latest state to allow human composting. Ford is moving to a direct sales model for EVs that will eliminate dealer markups. The Fully Charged Live event is coming to Canada. Reducing costs in massive solar farms goes beyond the cost of the panels themselves.

We get a letter from Denmark and here is the link we talk about: https://dk.karnfull.com/ General Motors Co (GM.N) said on Tuesday it backed establishing tougher federal emissions standards to help ensure at least 50% of new vehicles sold by 2030 are zero-emission. This may be meant to harm Japanese auto companies who are way behind.

The founder and owner of the outdoor apparel brand Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard, has given his US$3-billion company away to a specially-designed trust, ensuring all profits—in perpetuity—are used to fight climate change and preserve wild spaces.

Gas stoves can release hazardous air pollutants while they’re operating, and even when they’re turned off, according to a new study.

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Transcript

Hello, and welcome to episode 132 of the Clean Energy Show.

I'm Brian Stockton.

I'm James Whittingham.

This week, Tesla's boring AI team members from its autopilot program to work on the humanoid robot.

I predict a lot of broken dishes.

Ford is moving to a direct sales model for EVs that will eliminate dealer markups.

But dealers are skeptical and are rapidly researching alternative ways to antagonize and anger their customers.

GM is pushing electric vehicles and American football fans.

What's next? Low fat nacho cheese? The fully charged live event is coming to Canada.

As Canada's foremost clean energy podcast, I propose that James and I be invited to participate.

I could hook the panel while James could do crowd control and some light housekeeping.

What all that? More this edition of the Clean Energy show.

And also Brian on this week's show.

Reducing costs and massive solar farms goes beyond the panels.

And California will allow human composting in 2027.

I'm way ahead of you, California.

I'm studying a compost myself internally.

I had a bad week.

Feeling sick.

Yeah, well, I know you told me you had some type of terrible stomach flu, and you're definitely looking better, and I hope that you're better.

I just don't want to hear too much about this.

okay.

Let's just say I said to my ask this morning, can you do me a solid? And it did.

That's all.

Everything worked out.

Yes.

I don't know where it came from because you know, I never leave home.

You never leave the house and no one brought it home, no one else was sick.

So where the hell did this come from? But it just goes to show you how you could have gotten covered under the same situation too.

From what, though? The neighborhood cat.

Do I pet thing in the yard? Other people come in and out of your house.

You know them as your family.

Well, I do, but it's an awful thing.

And I'm one of these people who has a phobia of being sick, as you know.

I don't know if it's a terrible phobia, but I really hate being sick and I don't do it.

Ask any of my family members.

Like, I'm the worst patient in the house.

I'm just kill me.

Yeah.

So my wife is of course, as a rock, she burst children.

Something I couldn't do if I wanted to.

It's just aying I can't handle being sick.

I'm just not good at it.

I'm sorry.

I'm just glad it's over.

And I don't want Covent.

Yeah.

I really don't want coven.

So far, so good.

So far so good.

What's new with you around this house here? It seems like this often happens when we're recording the podcast, but you may hear some banging and crashing in the background because you're like working brown.

You're always getting your house renovated constantly.

That's right, yeah.

What was the name of that guy? I can't remember.

Is that like Sheldon? Or something? No, I don't think Oswald or he had a good name, but he was Peter Albert.

I don't know.

Yes.

So the kitchen half of my vaulted ceiling has now been spray foam, and the drywall guys are there already to fill it in.

So we're half done, and once that's done, we open up the other half and do that.

So I'm going to have a freshly spray foam ceiling, and I'm real excited about that.

Well, I don't know why you don't have a live microphone in your kitchen.

That's what I would do.

Yeah, I know that's what you would do, but I prefer podcasts to have that studio sound without well, I just want to check in on them to hear if there's any sound.

It's interesting.

Something like that weird sounds would be nice.

And then the other thing was so I bought a brace for my back.

I was having back troubles.

You bought a back brace? Yeah, it's a shocking news.

It's like a belt thing that sort of just tightens up and supports your spine when your spine is feeling weak.

And then I know you had this horrible stomach flu this week.

So my new idea for the podcast is these are our sponsorship possibilities, James, like all of our old man health problems.

So this brace is from a company called Braceability, and they're not a sponsor? They are now.

But hey, if they want to sponsor us, I could be a spokesperson for this product.

I thought it was really great.

Does it work? Yeah, it totally works.

This is your future commercials on Fox News.

And it's better to have on hand now.

Like, I needed it sooner than I got it, but for the next time this happens to my back, I'll be able to I think when it happens yeah, it'll be able to move around sooner if I have this brace.

And what does it do exactly? You put it in your lower spine, and it's like having a lumbar support.

Like, I realized that when I drive a car, I have an extra lumbar support pillow in the car, like the one in the built into the seat is not enough.

So when I'm sitting in a chair, I need a lumbar support.

And I just thought to myself, hey, well, I need a lumbar support while I'm standing up.

Surely there's a product like that.

And I just started researching it and yeah, you get these lower back braces, and it's like an artificial spine on the outside of your body.

Now you're endorsing it.

And if you're not from North America or younger than us, which most people are, by the way, shit.

Murphy Brown was a TV show in the 80s, early 90s, maybe 80s.

National news anchor.

Was it Elden? Eldon.

Eldon.

Very good.

That was the guy's name.

Give it some time and those old brain cells, with the help of a back brace, will kick in and you can help your brain cells with this new product.

See, that's how it works.

Oh, my gosh, you're such a good spokesperson.

I would have you endure.

I would listen to that old man sitting in front of a couch in the fireplace recommending something to me.

The car hunt continues on my end.

A couple of interesting developments on Front when I found out the Prius is coming out with a new plugin prime that is through spy websites and rumor websites.

Could be 100 kilometer range, which would be interesting.

However, it's too little, too late, right? I mean, I want a freaking EV.

My partner wants an EV.

I don't want to get an oil change again.

That would do me, and I wouldn't have to worry about charging infrastructure for the next few years.

Not that that's a terrible issue, but the infrastructure is there.

It's just not working, essentially, and just the inconvenience of it taking slow speeds.

But the Equinox, as we mentioned last week, from Chevy, which is a small SUV, they have the gas version of it with a very popular vehicle, and now they're having an electric version of it, as well as the what is it? The Blazer.

Chevy Blazer, as well as silverado pickup truck.

Anyway, the Canadian, where we live of pricing is $34,400 for the Equinox.

For the Equinox, which is a small that's really good SUV.

The bolt is a hatchback, which I'm shopping for, maybe would have probably bought if there was one on the lawn, but I can't because there's not one on the lawn, and it's a lottery shoot to try and get one crap shoot.

But the bolt sells for 38 for something like that.

Yeah, and it's not the Equinox.

It's a small car.

They should be marking those down, but they're not.

And they have in the States that would explain the $6,000 reduction in the States, something like that.

So they said, Canada, we're not going to do it because we don't need to, because we don't sell any there because the demand is too high.

There's no competition.

So screw you, Canada.

This tells me not to buy a bolt.

I'd be stupid to buy a bolt, especially at the current price, because let's say I buy one, and a year from now, people are starting to buy a $34,000 car that's less and better, and they're going to have to lower the price of the bolt.

Absolutely.

They're going to have to 8000 less.

It's going to probably have to be $8,000.

It's a real conundrum.

And ideally, you would like to buy a car now, not a year from now or two years from now.

Ideally, yes.

The Prius is still fine, but right now, the Prius has an incredible resale value, and that's what I was hoping to take advantage of and get into the game.

But you know what? At the price of $34,000, it doesn't matter so much what my resale value of the Prius is I could go and buy that car.

Yeah, that's because it's about the same price as the Prius if you factor in the gas savings over four or five years at most.

And that's normal gas prices, by the way, not the ones that we have now or had had recently.

There was a thing going around the Internet that everybody was sharing saying the Saskatchewan, our province in Canada, which is a prairie province with oil and lots of mineral resources and potash and stuff like that, and farming would be a perfect place for battery minerals for manufacture, bringing it to Canada, because there was an article about that and everybody's talking about it.

And I have this contention that is a problem with our province, that is that our grid is very dirty.

It's 45% coal, and they're cleaning up very slowly with very small solar projects and small wind projects.

My thinking is that a lot of these companies who want to buy minerals and build batteries want them clean.

Why do it with a dirty grid? So our province, in being backwards and trying to cling onto fossil fuels, a jurisdiction there's many of around the world, including the United States, in parts of the United States that you're not going to be competitive.

Why would we go to A, the dirty one that has a larger carbon footprint for a battery that we make in your place, then B, that has a clean grid, and 80% of the Canadian electrical grid is clean because of all the hydro, especially in Quebec and BC.

Right? Yeah.

So I think it's a competitive disadvantage for us to drag our feet and few people talk about that stuff.

It makes me mad.

Yeah.

And if you're sourcing minerals for batteries and you have a choice between a place that can source them more cleanly, you're obviously going to go for the more clean source.

And speaking of our province, which I vow that I'm going to do less of because nobody knows what we are, our power utility, South Power, which is a government owned utility, has identified two places to put small modular nuclear reactors.

Now, small modular nuclear reactors is something that you claim to study if you want to put off fighting climate change.

You claim that now we can only use these technologies and they're not ready yet.

So they'll decide on this in 2029.

But right now to warm us up and claim that they're doing something so they can continue mining fossil fuels and grease up their buddies on the golf course.

Estevan and Elbow, there's two predominant winds where we live in our city, and it's both downwind from those two places.

For what it's worth, I'm just putting it out there.

Radiation travels, Brian.

And I just want to point out that there is a town in our province called Elbow.

There's a town called Climax.

Name me some weird Saskatchewan towns.

Virginia rhymes with fun.

As Mick Jagger once said, there's one called Kipling, which is the only town in the world named after Rudyard Kipling, the famous author of The Jungle Book.

Oh, really? That's what he's named after? That's what they named him after.

How does that happen? The town of Kipling? I don't know.

I like this book.

So we're going to name it Kipling? Yeah.

There you go.

That's the town where the paperclip story went.

Yeah, the red paperclip story.

Look it up if you want a boring story about the Internet.

And Corbin Bernstein made a movie there, too.

Why? Because it was famous for a day.

It's a long story, but I don't know.

I was once in a movie with Corbin Bernsen.

We were eating services together.

Yeah.

Did you have any lines in that movie? I had lots of lines.

I was quite nervous about the amount of lines I had.

Like acting with carbon.

Bernson no, but I was acting with someone else and I can't remember his name.

I'm sick.

Okay.

I've got a bit of a fever.

Yes, somebody famous.

It was somebody famous.

It is somebody famous.

So probably know you know who Corbin Bernstein is.

We have to stop making old man references.

Brian it's just Murphy Brown and now all that was a TV show called La Law.

Yeah.

See, this is all going to be in the transcript and people are going to search this and they're going to be linked to us.

This podcast talks about Ally Long, corbin Burns, corbin of your'listing if you looked up your own name because you're unemployed between shoots.

Hello.

What's? The podcast? Yeah.

Ate a lot of that rice pudding.

That's all I'm going to say.

You went to town on it.

Let's get on with some updates to surpass stories that I want to start with this because I have a clip about.

We've talked a lot about Beyond Meat, the fake meat, and how it's going to clean up the world.

And I'll tell you why later, because regular beef has a lot of carbon emissions, which I'll get to later.

But in Arkansas, plant based company Beyond Meat COO.

Was arrested for biting a man's nose.

Well, of course he did give the guy a Slim Jim before he kills again.

Apparently it was a road rage confrontation in a parking garage.

And when police arrived, they found two males with bloody faces at the scenes, which Ramsay said, actually, it's beet juice.

It tricks your brain.

You're just thinking you're eating real nose.

Yeah.

So that has taken a dark turn.

The view on meat story, brian well, I mean, how could you not make jokes about that? It writes itself.

Because I mentioned it last week and it's kind of weird that I mentioned it last week.

And then this happened in real life.

I was talking about pipeline inspection planes and I happened to reference a 2013 fatality crash and it actually happened between the last week's show and this week's show, it actually happened right here in Saskatchewan.

Like another crash? Another crash with two fatalities, two people on board.

It was near Swift current.

The federal agency, the transportation agency in Canada confirmed that a pipeline inspection flight crashed 11 km southwest of Sean of in Saskatchewan, the town of 1700 people, 350 km southwest of Virginia, where Brian and I are podcasting from.

And that took off from South Korea on Sunday morning, headed to Esteban, which is about 400 drive away by car.

I don't know how much that is in miles exactly.

So nobody knows why, but that actually it's just weird that I would talk about it and then the freaking happened.

Now I can't talk about anything.

I don't want to talk about anything.

Vladimir Putin died by apple choking.

Why doesn't that happen? You heard it here first.

Why doesn't that happen? Jeez.

It's an unfortunate thing and I was really pumped last week to talk about Bloomberg opinion piece on how the supply chain for solar to reach in that zero world.

What we determine, the amount of solar we need for a net zero world is already being built.

Because I thought it was surprising and so did they.

The people at Bloomberg think it was surprising and inspiring piece.

So if you look at the current prices of volatile commodities, they say you won't understand the direction of investment, which is the important thing, is what people are investing in, where the action is, what's actually happening.

People talk about, well, gas is up, so oil is good, solar is up, so that's bad because there's a big demand and supply chain shortages for different things in clean energy as well.

But the direction of investment is insane.

We talk about battery factories, gigafactories almost daily, maybe even daily.

Such spending is a forecast made flesh.

They write a bet on the direction of future demand, taking the physical form of property, plant and equipment.

But anyway, I just thought it was interesting that solar as a whole generates like 20% of the time.

So if you have the equivalent of a nuclear power plant, it's only actually going to be 20% if you look at the rating of those two things.

But the nuclear power plant generates like 80, 90% capacity because they have downtime.

So yeah, it's not an entire comparison like that, but 940 gigs of connected panels would be sufficient to supply about 5.8% of the world's current electricity demand and then another 5.8% every year.

But this is what they're going to be manufacturing soon, is that 5.8% and that amount of gigawatts.

But what I didn't mention was the equivalent of adding the generation of all the world's nuclear power plants every 20 months, which is incredible.

In solar, I'm not talking about the maximum output, I'm talking about the actual output of 20% of the solar max.

And keeping in mind, if you did have to double the number of nuclear power plants that exist in the world.

It would take like, 20 years at least.

Yeah, that's optimistic even.

That's if we started today.

Right.

I mean, it's crazy.

Yes.

I was listening to the Energy media podcast from Mark and Hispan.

They were talking about these kinds of issues and an important point that people aren't quite wrapping their brains around, because we're used to energy scarcity, and as we use up the oil reserves around the world, the price goes up because these things get harder to get and it gets more scarce and the prices go up.

But the exact opposite thing is happening in clean energy.

Abundance is every time we build a solar panel, we're creating more abundance, and so the price trends down and not up.

And it's just something that people are just not used to.

They're not used to it, and they just can't wrap their heads around it.

I wanted to start this week with a bit of breaking news, if there is such a thing in the podcast world.

By the way, I've never listened to a true crime podcast before.

Have you? Yeah.

Yes, a couple.

Well, I listened to Cereal because it was in the news, because they exonerated the person or person that got released.

So I listened to it and it's exactly the same as the Hulu show.

The music is almost identical.

It's almost like a ripoff of the actual theme of Cereal.

They didn't even try not to exactly duplicate it.

You're talking about only murders in the building.

Only murders in the building, yeah, only murders in the building.

They drew heavily from cereal.

Yes.

And the woman does sound exactly like Tina Fey, which is kind of like the replacement for Cereal, the big podcast.

If I told you she was Tina Fey, you would believe me.

You didn't know better.

Right? It's just kind of hilarious.

Anyway, today at an event hosted by The New York Times, al Gore claimed the World Bank president is a climate denier.

Later, on the same stage, the World Bank president, David Malpass, was asked by The New York Times climate reporter David Gals if he believed in the scientific consensus that the man made burning of fossil fuels is rapidly and dangerously warming the planet.

Here is the painful clip of that.

I also want to give you one more chance to directly address former Vice President Gore's claim that he made on this stage that you were a climate denier.

His words so very odd.

I've never met him.

He's not involved in the efforts that we're doing.

He may present as a climate person.

I don't know what impact that's having.

Okay, let me just be as clear as I can.

Do you accept the scientific consensus that the manmade burning of fossil fuels is rapidly and dangerously warming the planet? I don't know if everyone wants to comment on that.

What we are doing is having impactful projects that reduce will you answer the question? We have a mission of a World Bank that's powerful.

Will you answer the question? I don't even know.

I'm not a scientist.

What a douchebag, if I may say so.

Yeah, well, I mean, he's not a scientist, but that's hardly I can't comment on it.

I'm not a scientist.

You're not a scientist.

So we should erase all the episodes of our podcast because we're not scientists.

I guess so.

I'll get out the magnetizer for our younger listeners.

Audio used to be recorded on magnetic tape, which you could erase with a magnet.

What? That's crazy talk.

I don't know what you're talking about.

How do you erase audio with a magnet? Brian? You truly are not a scientist.

I have a bulk tape eraser in this room.

Well, it's a good thing you didn't turn it on with my magnetic head, because my head is mostly metal now.

So yeah, I guess the answer to that is yes.

The World Bank president is a climate change denier.

This is a clean energy show with Brian Stockton and James Whittingham.

GM is looking to football to capture a broad consumer base and bring all of its nearly 30 US dealerships on board to sell EVs for the Equinox.

Chevy is banking on a 300 miles full charge as the pivot point for consumer appeal and for football's fascination with commercials to open the door so EV cynics might take a second look.

And I was actually watching football on the weekend and saw these commercials and said, Dang, I want one of those.

The GM estimated up to 300 miles range on full charge and a starting price around $30,000.

It's everything you want in an electric SUV.

Chevy equinox.

EV.

Finally, an EV for everyone.

I mean, that's true.

It is an EV for everyone.

Yeah, because it is the form factor that people buy the most after trucks, I guess.

It is a very popular size.

You can't say it's small, you can't say it's expensive.

EVs are too expensive because it's only 30 grand in the States.

And they're telling you that in the commercial.

That's 35 grand less than the model one.

How many are they going to make and when is it for sale? It's for sale starting in a year.

Production as any EV will ramp up slowly, perhaps faster than Tesla.

Because they are a more established manufacturer.

They know what they're doing.

These are going to be made in Mexico.

They say they have enough batteries for a while.

For a long time, actually, for 30 grand, though it's hard to argue that it's half the car of the Tesla.

Tesla's going to have to, once they do make these, and it'll be two years from now before they're up to full, let's face it.

But once that happens, they're making the Blazer, they're making the Equinox, they're selling them at prices that people can afford.

EV.

Adoption acceptance has moved a bit further down the road.

A year from now, Tesla is going to have to lower their prices.

I mean, they're a bit high now.

Oh, yeah, they're definitely high.

But they still have a backlog of orders, so they don't have to lower prices anytime soon.

But this is what we've been waiting for.

This is all good news.

I mean more available.

This is what the world needs.

And Hurt is going to buy a bunch of them.

Yeah, this is sort of an addendum to that story.

Hertz had previously ordered 100,000 teslas.

That was supposed to be by the end of 2022.

I'm not sure if they're on track for that, but they are now going to add 175,000 EVs from General Motors.

This is from different brands of General Motors.

So this would include Chevy, Buick, GMC, Cadillac Bright Drop, which I think are those vans? So this will take a while.

But this will also impact you again, because if you want one of these yeah, I was thinking about Chevy Equinoxes.

It could be that Hurts is in line in front of you.

We're still going to have these supply and demand problems for a long time to come.

We learned a bit about on a previous episode a few months back about how this works.

Usually an automaker gives a huge discount to these types of rental car companies for buying huge volumes of cars.

And then the point where it becomes profitable to resell it is actually very quick.

It's under six months, sometimes three months.

So they very quickly resell these cars because they got them at a price that makes a profit to sell them already because of the discount.

Right.

And then they always have new cars in stock to rent.

Right.

So they find the sweet spot where it's the most profitable and you're selling a practically brand new car that's three months old or whatever.

Lots of kilometers, perhaps.

Perhaps not depending on how it's used, but yeah.

And then they make profit off it.

Now.

Tesla notoriously did not give one penny discount.

Elon Musk said yes because they didn't need to and they couldn't make the cars any faster than they're making them.

So why give a discount if you have too many orders to fill? Anyway another thing is fully charged is coming to Canada.

If you don't know, this is primarily a YouTube channel hosted by Robert Lueellan.

Probably the premiere clean energy and electric car channel on YouTube.

Fully charged.

And they've done live events in the UK.

Before.

And they've done two live events in the US.

In Austin, Texas.

And then the most recent one was San Diego, which just finished.

I'd kind of been hoping that you and I might get down there for that one.

But we didn't.

But now it's coming to Canada a year from now, in 2023, the fully charged live show So I thought that was a super fun announcement.

They cited several reasons for coming to Canada.

I think the main one, though, is that BC Hydro, the electric utility, seemed to have offered them a large sponsorship.

So they seem to be the primary entity that's inviting Fully Charged to come and do this live show in BC.

So BC Hydro, the province of British Columbia, 98%, clean grid, mostly from hydroelectricity.

And so they're very interested in clean energy.

And they, I guess, are fans of the Fully Charged channel.

So they decided to invite them to Vancouver.

So this is September 2023, and if anyone from Fully Charged his listing, please invite James and I to come.

We'd love to come.

I think we should get our fans to lobby for us to be there.

Yes.

So, yeah, send emails.

Both knock on Robert Lola's door if you know where he lives.

Three in the morning, you want to make sure you got his attention.

So don't do it during daylight hours.

Yeah.

Sorry, Robert.

So, yeah, I think that's going to be a lot of fun.

So this is kind of a large sort of trade show and gathering of clean energy enthusiasts and electric car enthusiasts.

So there'll be lots of panels and discussions and places where you can go and look at electric cars and presumably, like home heating stuff.

They're very big on heat pumps in British Columbia.

They're somewhat milder climate for Canada.

So heat pumps makes perfect sense for British Columbia.

And BC Hydro has sort of subsidies and programs to help people buy heat pumps.

So, yeah, I think that's going to be a lot of fun.

So you anticipate us being there, don't you? Yeah, I think we should totally go.

Well, I'm going to have to start a go.

Fund me then, like right now.

Well, I can drive you in the Tesla.

I can pay for the charging.

That'll be the place where I get covert.

But if I got covert somewhere you got covert at a conference.

Yeah.

So maybe I would too.

Well, this will be at the Vancouver Convention Center, which is a big, nice open area kind of place.

We should also say that it's Canada in the Pacific Northwest, that they're kind of making it kind of for the whole region up there because it is a long way to go down to San Diego and Austin for us.

Yes.

But this is very close to Seattle is the American city just across the border.

So this is definitely the Seattle Vancouver area.

And I think that's going to be great.

You can buy tickets now.

They're about $75 for the weekend for the three day thing.

You can also get sponsorships and you could sponsor the event.

You can set up a stand there as well.

So we should do that, I don't know, just a tiny little 1 m² booth.

We have a little table and we can sell podcasts on cassette tapes or something.

Sure, get your podcast.

Here, 50 USB drives or something.

Okay.

And sticking to EV news for a second here, ford is looking to change up their dealer model going forward under EV.

So they're trying to split their business into kind of three sections at Ford.

And Model E is going to be the electric division.

Then there's going to be Ford Pro that handles commercial vehicles, and Ford Blue Oval, which will be their legacy internal combustion thing.

But anyway, so they're trying to revamp the model for their dealerships.

They want to keep the dealerships, but they need to change things up in order to be competitive in the 21st century.

So it's going to go to more of a direct selling model, like with Tesla.

And so the dealers are going to have to choose, much like General Motors is doing this as well.

You got to choose to be into the program with Model E, and it will cost the dealer some money to kind of set themselves up for that.

But it seems like a good strategy.

There needs to be a rethinking of the dealership model, especially if you're trying to compete in the new world of EVs.

But also, nobody really likes haggling for prices at dealerships.

It's the worst thing in the world.

So this would set a set price for their cars going forward.

Everybody pays the same price.

Haggling at a dealership is the worst thing in the world.

It is for everyone because we have one Toyota dealership here, so I couldn't walk elsewhere.

I'd have to go quite a ways, actually.

I'd have to go hours away.

Well, 1 hour away.

But that dealership was owned by the same company.

But with Chevy, there's one on every street corner.

There's a Chevy dealership in every 200 person town, pretty much.

And it's weird how it sort of developed this way because we are not a haggling culture.

Like, we don't typically haggle for prices in Canada.

You just walk into a store and you pay the price.

It's a common thing in other places sometimes to haggle, but for some reason, it's only cars, and it's an expensive thing.

So if you do it badly, it costs you a lot of money.

Yeah.

And culturally in North America, the man of the household goes and does the dirty deed and then brags to his friends.

Right? Yeah.

And if you don't, then you're not a man.

You're a terrible human being.

A failure.

Yeah.

I hated it.

I did enjoy the experience of buying a Tesla online, which you do online.

You put the deposit down with the credit card.

I will say there was more human interaction than I expected, because when you're exchanging a large amount of money like that, you still need to talk to a human.

So I had to talk to the Tesla place in Calgary, which was the closest at the time.

And then we had to do a wire transfer for the final payment for the car, which was kind of nerve racking because it's a large amount of money.

And somebody at the bank said this is really important that you get every digit right or anything.

Like your money could just go off into the ether, I think a lot of money.

I spent ten grand to Montreal for my leaf.

I felt that experience and I was like I didn't hear back.

I was like, yeah.

And then the bank people spent an hour and a half walking in the back room trying to complete it.

And the manager came out, the janitor came in and was offering his two bits and it was like tense.

It was terrible.

And then ultimately the other thing this is weird about this, and I know this through just sort of online banking transfers and stuff, for some reason these take a couple of days.

Even though it's electronic, it takes a couple of days.

So I had to send a screenshot of the wire transfer to the Tesla people in Calgary because they wanted to release the car.

Like they had a truck leaving to deliver it.

And they're like, we got to release the car, so send us a screenshot to prove that you sent the wire transfer because they hadn't gotten it yet and they had to send the car.

I mean, they didn't have to, but they sent the car on its way before they actually got the money.

I wouldn't even think it would haggle me, I don't think, if I didn't read online that the average haggle price down for this particular model in your region is this much money.

One $700.

And I thought to leave $1700 table.

Who am I? And there's more resources now on the internet for us for that kind of information.

But it doesn't really make it easier.

It just makes it more because now you feel the pressure.

You know what you have to do.

And they know that, you know you have to do it anyway.

San Rafael, California based ojo.

This is a company that makes solar mounting hardware for solar farms.

They have a new way to mount solar panels.

And the reason why I mentioned this is because we always talk about the reduction of costs and the efficiency increases of the panels themselves.

Well, there's other stuff involved.

There's hardware.

And if you can get that down in price over and you're putting on literally millions of panels and then you reduce the cost of the things that hold those panels up, that's a lot of money.

So they're talking about using 50% less steel and labor, because labor is an issue too here, than the conventional pile system, which is what we saw at the solar farm here.

So the Earth trash combines it's patented hardware with a drilling machine.

They have their own drilling machine, specialized drilling machine.

And basically they have two piles that go in and form a a shape.

And at the top of that, a shape mounts onto the pivot of the solar array that holds up panels, and neither tilts or is steady, so it's just 50% less steel.

They're always coming up with new things to bring down those costs.

And when you bring them down, then the cost of solar electricity, period, becomes less.

Yeah, it's crazy.

And they're doing that.

They're also improving panels, too.

So that's happening.

Yeah.

All those efficiencies in whatever business make a huge like, I'm staring at a box of Apple MacBook Pro boxes that I've bought over the years.

And even though the laptops often get bigger, the packaging gets smaller.

And it's because, like, every millimeter that they can decrease the size of the boxes the more they save money.

First of all, people want less packaging, but the smaller the package, the more you can put in a truck or on a ship.

Every little bit counts.

All right, coming up with the show so Lady Randall breeze through the latest of the week's clean energy Headline news, and we have some feedback this week.

Let's dip into the mail bag.

It says, Hi, I'm a big fan from Denmark, embracing green energy, driving to Tesla.

They have solar panels on the roof and an air to air heat pump to keep the house warm.

So going all electric.

I enjoy listening to your program.

I think it is great what you do to enlighten people on the progress on clean energy and also in a fun way.

Thanks a lot.

He says, thank you, God.

It always boosts our wind in ourselves when we hear nice letters like that.

And he says, I just wanted to share with you how far we are here in Denmark and Europe.

The electricity prices are going up and down like crazy.

Here in Europe, the price varies from hour to hour, but the price is determined by the most expensive source, which is usually gas and coal.

Interesting.

I won't read you the whole letter, but I'll read you parts of it.

Many homes have variable price contracts with their provider, which you could choose freely.

You can even choose Swedish nuclear if you want.

And in Denmark, we have no nuclear power, but a lot of wind turbines that produce around 45% of our electricity on average.

And on windy days like today, when he was writing this letter, it was 120% was coming from wind.

So that means that they exported their energy to the neighbors, and the price goes down.

And sometimes it's negative.

Already we're seeing negative prices.

I can't get over that.

So green energy is the only source that can bring the price down in this crazy time.

And he has some other information and some things that he has done.

He's got a 6.6 kilowatt peak power solar system with a 6.5 kilowatt hour battery, able to charge the battery at night when the power is really cheap and use it in the morning, sell it back to the grid.

Yada, yadda, yadda.

You know how it goes.

So the battery can also be used in the winter where there is little sunshine in denmark is as far north as La.

Lash is in Saskatchewan.

And what a great guy for looking up our local town to give us an idea where Denmark is.

That's very sweet.

And Lash is quite a bit farther north from where we are.

Yes, hours and hours and hours.

So we live on a massive everything in Canada is massive.

Ontario is like I think it's the size of some planets it takes days to cross.

But Saskatchewan is very tall and most of us have never been anywhere near the top third, let alone it's just insanely big and becomes wilderness up there as well.

So the future is here now, and I think the future looks bright for clean energy.

And thanks again for a great show.

Best regards from Sven the Green Viking in Denmark.

Yes, and then there was a link to a website where you can look at a graphic that kind of shows you where the energy is being generated there in northern Europe and Scandinavia and which direction the power is going.

Sometimes it's going from Norway to Sweden and sometimes from Sweden to Norway and Denmark and so forth.

So, yeah, I thought that was really interesting.

So.

Thanks, Ben.

We got another note from someone who said that my son's university profit, like my son Jameson, my son, he said there's not enough lithium in the world.

I was mentioning in the show last week, and he gave us a link to a YouTube video.

But it's just some dude.

You can't rely on everything from some dude.

I know it's true, but maybe that's not the best link.

Yeah, so we love to hear from you, as you could tell, especially when you send us praise.

Contact us at [e-mail] on Twitter or TikTok or Handle as Clean Energy Pod.

Don't forget to check out our YouTube channel for visualizations of this podcast and other things and special features.

And Brian, it's time for the world famous Lightning round.

It's time for the Lighting Round, a fast paced look at the weekend clean energy news.

General Motors said on Tuesday it is backing Aestablishing tougher federal emissions standards to help ensure at least 50% of new vehicles sold by 2030 or zero emission.

Now, you'll recall that the Cafe standards that California and other states set before were opposed by some car companies.

Yeah, and Toyota was one of them.

Just got to mention that.

But now General Motors, who are all in an EVs, say, bring it on, hell, speed it up.

And you know why? Because their competition in Japan are going to be screwed.

Yeah, they're ahead of Japan.

Way ahead of Japan.

And then arguably ahead of a lot of people who are not Tesla or Rivian or other people who are fully EV, the founder and owner of the outdoor apparel brand Patagonia Yvonned, we'll call him yvonne has given his US $3 billion company away to especially design trust, ensuring all profits in perpetuity are used to fight climate change and preserve wild spaces, which is unusual.

He gave his whole company worth $3 billion.

That's amazing.

Powerful statement from Antonio Guters yesterday at the UN general assembly.

He is calling on nations to tax fossil fuel companies.

It's high time to put fossil fuel producers, investors and enablers on notice.

Polluters must pay.

And today I'm calling on all developed economies to tax the windfall profits of fossil fuel companies.

Those funds should be redirected in two ways.

Two countries suffering loss and damage caused by the climate crisis, and to people struggling with rising food and energy prices.

I hope people do that.

I hope developed countries do do that, because I've had it with fossil fuel companies.

Yeah.

And as we know, wealthy countries tend to do better in these sorts of things.

And the poorer countries are the ones that are getting the short end of the stick.

As usual, it's time for a clean energy.

So fast fact beef has the worst average kilograms of Co 2 food at nearly 100.

That is to say 1 beef.

That seems insane.

Can you guess? Brian Stockton, what major food group that James loves comes in second in terms of CO2 for us in terms of CO2, and I won't tease you any longer, it's dark chocolate, which is what at half? Oh, no.

Can we not have good things? Oh, man.

Do we have to stop eating dark chocolate? I love dark chocolate.

No one's talking about stop eating to eat dark chocolate, but we're talking about stopping eating beef.

We eat a lot more beef and kilograms of dark chocolate, except for possibly meat.

For every kilogram of beef, there's a kilogram of dark chocolate in meat.

That's basically the two things I eat.

A little bit of beef, a little bit of dark chocolate.

Washing it down from Auris Technica.

We talked about gas stoves releasing hazardous air pollutants before while they're operating, but even while they're turned off, according to a new study, some of these leaks can go undetected.

And although gas distributors adding odorant to the natural gas to ensure that people smell the leaks before there's an explosion risk the smell may not be strong enough for residents to know.

Smell leaks.

Some people have a much stronger sense of smell than others.

My daughter was telling me this the other day and I thought she was crazy.

No, they're super smellers.

There are people with insanely sensitive noses, and you have to think the guy at the supermarket who smells with terrible bo is one of these people who can't smell.

Like, what happens with those people? They just get used to it or what? Yeah, but people have different senses of smells.

I just want to know if my deal isn't working, if you people would tell me.

I hope you would.

In particular, those who have lost their sense of smell, whether from culvert or other causes, may not smell large leaks.

Even so, one study found that 5% of homes had leaks.

That's terrible.

Do you still have natural gas in your stove? I do the cooktop, but I've been shopping around for induction cooktops and hope to put one in soon.

And they'll probably put it in during the podcast.

Yes, I've been hearing drills and saws I don't know.

Hopefully it doesn't make the microphone here.

I think I color up the podcast.

Wonderfully.

Add some texture to it.

Beyond my illness.

This week, the same study showed that leaking natural gas contain multiple hazardous air pollutants, including benzene and cancer causing agents.

So boo to that.

From clean technica Pan African resources.

Ten megawatt solar plant in South Africa saves $170,000 a month on the gold mines electric bill.

That takes about five years to pay off, but after that brian, it's gravy.

Gravy.

It's like having a gold mine.

Totally.

I'm laughing at myself.

Uber has announced its Comfort Electric program is expanding to Canada and rolling out to more cities in the United States.

The Comfort Electric program launched back in May, allowing customers to specifically request a ride in an electric vehicle, like a Tesla Poll Star, Ford Mustang mocky.

What do you think of that? Yeah, that's interesting.

And I don't normally take Uber because I have a car, but when I had my back problem, I needed to take it to an appointment I had.

So I took an Uber.

And you could choose an eco.

Uber was one of the options, so I thought I better try that.

And gives me something to talk about on the podcast.

So the car that came and got me, it must have been like a Corolla hybrid or something.

I was hoping for a Tesla, but now it seemed like a normal Corolla.

But I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it was.

It was a four cylinder, which qualifies as a new car around here.

But then on the way home from the appointment, I thought, well, I'm in a hurry.

I'll just pick whatever.

And I got picked up by the largest SUV I have ever seen in my life.

Is that right? Why use that as an Uber? Why? It seems an odd choice to use as an Uber vehicle.

Oh, my God.

Especially nowadays.

Yeah.

From wind power monthly.

Update your subscription, people.

NorDx boosts a six megawatt onshore wind turbine rotor, and it's going to be 175 meters off the ground.

That is taller than the Washington Monument.

This is almost half that, and it is onshore.

Interesting.

Oh, it's time for another CES fast fact.

How many of the giant GE Halead X offshore wind turbines, which I just mentioned, which are 14 MW, would you need to power all of Great Britain? Brian? 60 00 60 00 60 00 to power all of Great Britain? Did I say the US? At first? I don't remember.

Check the tape.

Don't listen to the show.

Get the magnetizer out.

Erase the tape.

These old men on this podcast we're talking about magnetizers.

Ram promises electric pickup lineup that will challenge Ford and Rivian in range and beyond.

So, finally, Ram is the last people you're wondering what's coming.

There we are.

It's all coming.

Bring it on.

Dimeler has unveiled their long range transport truck.

This is a semi for the highway.

Has a 600 kilowatt hour battery and a 500 kilowatt meter range.

There's about 300 miles.

We use LFP batteries, which is the cheaper batteries, less energy dense, resulting in shorter range for the same weight.

But Mercedes says it is gaining in longevity because the company says it expects the vehicle to last for ten years, which is a lot for a semi truck and 1.2 million.

Then you can probably just put a new battery because the other components are probably in pretty good shape, I'm guessing.

Yeah, I'd be a little surprised if LFP batteries are kind of energy dense enough to work for a semi, because a semi has also got to carry a big load.

So if the batteries are too heavy, it kind of takes away from your payload.

But obviously they think it'll work.

Oh, look at this.

A bonus.

CES fast fact.

Brian, the boldest solar park in India is the largest solar farm in the world, about $1 billion per gigawatt.

That's a nuclear reactor is about a gigawatt, right? Okay.

So it produces 2.5 gigawatts of power, or about 2.25 nuclear reactors.

Given solar is 20% of its peak overall PowerPoint, that means about $5 billion per equivalent nuclear reactor without any storage considerations.

So you wonder what it's just another case of what the cost of solar is.

Nuclear is without storage, and it's about $5 billion per reactor right now, but that's getting cheaper, and we expect that it's going to half in the 2030s.

So that's incredible.

And from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, we have not cited them as a source before.

California is planning legislation to allow human composting starting in 2027, californians will be able to choose human composting as an alternative burial option.

Great.

Oh, sure, you clap now, but it's one more recyclable to keep track of.

I know eggshells and coffee grounds are okay, but what about Uncle Rick? Is he compost or disposal? The first state to allow human composting was Washington in 2019.

Other states that have legalized the practice include Oregon, Colorado and Vermont.

It is a problem because we cremate a lot of bodies and we probably don't need all those carbon emissions.

And finally, this week, tesla loses its infamous most shorted stock title to Apple.

Your thoughts? Brian Stockton wow, that's a man.

I had not heard that.

I mean, Apple is probably a bad choice to short as well.

I don't know why people would short Apple.

These are two things that you love, tesla and Apple.

Yeah, you just cited all the Apple boxes you have, and they're not for apples, they're for MacBook.

Yeah, no, it's true.

Certainly the growth days of Apple are behind them.

So they're maybe not the powerhouse stock that they once were, but they seem on very solid ground.

So shorting Apple is probably a bad idea, just like shorting Tesla is a bad idea.

Well, that is our show for this week.

We'd love to hear from you again.

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So if you're new to the show or to subscribe on your podcast app to get new episodes delivered every week, reading review when possible, and we'll see you next week.

Yeah, see you next week.