The Future of Green is Blue! Water Powered Renewable Energy with Dr. Greg Stone, Michael Henricksen, and Dr. Steve Grasby

The future of green energy of course involves water. The biggest increases in consistent renewable energy production all involve water. Of course the next issue is how do we store all of this green energy? Well the ocean may hold the answer to this question too.

In this episode you will learn all about Wave Energy from Michael Henriksen, the CEO of Wavepiston. Wavepiston is changing the game when it comes to capturing wave energy and transferring it to electricity.

You'll also learn all about the future of geothermal energy in Canada from Dr. Steve Grasby the President of Geothermal Canada. Canada is one of the only countries with active volcanoes that doesn't produce geothermal energy. Tune in to hear how Dr. Steve is planning on changing that.

Now how can we store all of this green energy? Did someone say batteries? Or even better how about electric vehicles? Dr. Greg Stone the Chief Ocean Scientist from the Metals Company lets us in on the little secret sitting on the ocean floor that may revolutionize the future of electric vehicle batteries.

The Aquatic Bisophere Project
The ABP is establishing a conservation Aquarium in the Prairies to help tell the Story of Water.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

David Evans: 0:19

By the year 2022, has gotten off to quite a start. Let's see, Russia invaded Ukraine. And the world is watched in horror at the absolute terrible events that have happened in Ukraine, but also in admiration of the strength and resilience of the Ukrainian people. COVID-19 pandemic restrictions that are loosening again, so maybe we will be going back to normal. And there's another thing that I hear about constantly rising gas prices. Now there's many possible reasons for these fluctuations and gas prices can be inflation. There's the Russia Ukraine conflict and the sanctions imposed by Western countries on Russian oil products. But we're also feeling the aftershocks of the shutdowns during the COVID 19 pandemic. So OPEC and oil producing nations cut global production of oil and fossil fuel products by 10%, during the COVID 19 pandemic, simply because the demand wasn't there. So the price has dropped. As we've been ramping back up and reintroducing back to life, as we normally knew it, the production of oil hasn't kept pace with the reopening. So the prices have increased because there's less supply. And while we're starting to ramp up production to where we think we might be, it's not as easy as a one day turnaround. It takes time from that oil to be extracted and then refined into a form that we can actually use. So all of these price fluctuations have gotten people thinking, do I really need to fill up right now, Dwayne need to drive there. And even is this the right time to switch to an electric vehicle? Crude oil makes up over 31% of the energy supply for the entire world. And if we stay in our current trajectory, we will run out of oil resources within the next 50 years. We are already beginning our transition to alternative energy sources. Specifically, I want to talk about renewable energy, and some of the renewable energy sources that you may not be thinking of when you think of renewable energy. Now, we're not talking about wind, we're not talking about solar today. By the end of this podcast, my goal is for you to go away and start screaming from the hilltops about geothermal energy and wave energy and how we can use these technologies as part of our renewable energy portfolio for the future. And we'll also be discussing electric vehicles and probably their most contentious issue the batteries How can we get our hands on to all of the metals that we need to create these batteries in the least environmentally damaging way? That sir, G. nippy oh me No, into me marry a child. Why water we doing? And how can we do better? Your one stop shop for everything water related from discussing water, its use and the organisms that depend on it for all the global issues that you really never knew all had to do with water. I'm your host, David Evans from the aquatic biosphere project. And I just want to ask you something. What are we doing? And how can we do better? Let's start with a quick definition, renewable energy. What is it? Well, renewable energy must be derived from a natural process and it must be replenished faster than it's actually being consumed. According to the International Energy Agency, if you look at all of the energy that's used globally supplied around the world, 2.3% of that is from renewable energy sources. Actually, Canada's punching well above its weight, because we're already at about 18.9% of our energy generation is from renewable sources. Right now, our most important renewable energy sources are coming from hydroelectric dams, then followed by wind energy generation, and then biofuels. So these are our three top producers currently, with hydroelectricity being the number one standout. It currently accounts for over 59% of all of the electricity generation in Canada. And you probably guessed it, solar and wind energy are the two most quickly growing industries In the renewable energy sector in Canada, and they're probably the ones that you're most familiar with. And you see most often. And if you're familiar with wind and solar energy generation, you're probably also familiar with the common knock against these technologies is that they generate electricity when it's sunny, and when it's windy. And that doesn't always correspond when we actually need all of that electricity. So it becomes this complicated problem of getting energy to where it needs to go at the right times and storing energy. Whereas you can't just really generated to meet the demand that you need to meet. Whereas hydro is definitely something where you can turn it on and turn it off, and pump back all of that energy back up into those reservoirs, so that you can use it later, like a large battery. But the problem too, is you need the right location and the right geography to be able to put in a hydroelectric project. Also, it takes up a huge area and completely changes the landscape. So you have to take that into account as well. So what other options are out there that can help us complement our current renewable energy portfolio?

Michael Henricksen, WavePiston: 6:32

What happens when we wavy energy pin success yet? Why haven't we any competitive like, why don't like when wind and solar? And the simple answer is, is because it's more difficult. In the old days with the local blacksmith, he just built his own little wind turbine, put it next to his farm or whatever, and then started working on this going back and forth cetera, we need to put something in the sea. And that makes it more difficult. So So what we've done in the world, now we have taken them all low hanging fruits of the renewable energy, we're still going to use that much more wind much more solar as needed. And then we just need to add, now we need to add the wave energy because it's a very large potential. And we are getting there. It's not only Ospital, stable, interesting companies in the world. Now looking into this, this renewable energy source. We also need that to complement wind and solar because the wave energy this all places actually time I shift compared to wind and of course, solar energies in the daytime, it's not in the nighttime. So by having several renewable energy sources, makes it much more interesting. It's better to stabilize the grid and sort of having a total system viewmont getting renewables a 100% renewables.

David Evans: 7:40

Sorry, there's a quick introduction, and we need to make Michael, tell us a little bit about yourself in Wave piston.

Michael Henricksen, WavePiston: 7:46

Well, I'm Michael Henrickson, I'm the CEO of wave piston, I've been involved in wave energy since end of 2013, and CEO of wave piston since 2014. And in Wave piston, we are working with the energy of the waves to convert them to something usable via turbogenerator, to electricity. And we can also use the energy in the wave for desalination via reverse osmosis plants. So this is sort of our basics of our system.

David Evans: 8:16

It's funny, every time I think about wave energy, I just think about people who are getting their photos taken right beside the ocean. And suddenly a giant wave comes up crashes over them completely ruins the photo. But imagine if you can use the kinetic energy of that wave to charge your phone. Now, there are many different ways of capturing wave energy, there are some really cool companies doing things with big buoys, there are attenuators, which are basically these long flowing devices that just kind of sit on top of the waves and looks like a giant snake just swimming in the ocean. And what makes wave piston different is their force cancellation design. Stick with me here, I'm going to do my best to explain it, but it might just be easier to look them up online. Alright, so wave piston has all of these large plates, I like to think of them as boogie boards that are standing up at the surface of the water. Now they all stand one behind the other, and they're all attached by a pipe that runs through them. Now these plates are attached so that they can actually move back and forth along the length of that pipe. And as the waves crash over towards shore over these plates, they actually move back and forth with the wave kinetic energy. Now how in the world would they not get just got ripped away with all of this huge wave power that we're talking about? Well, that's the idea of force cancellation. So as one plate is pushed back, another plate is pushed forward, because there's many different competing forces actually within a wave. And this means that you have competing forces. So you actually don't have to have that crazy of a mooring system to make sure that it doesn't get ripped away. It's actually going to help keep yourself stable. Now with all of this movement of the plates, all of that energy is being captured and being used to bring in seawater from the end of that pipe and pressurize it as it makes its way along that pipe. I think I covered it. Well, to be safe. Let's hear it again from the CEO.

Michael Henricksen, WavePiston: 10:12

So the back and forth movement is sucks and seawater and then it pushes you know this you're into a pressure pipe and we crease pressure to 60 pounds. So what we're working on we take the energy from the waves and then we pressurize seawater. And that pressure seawater is set transported via air pressure pipe to a conversion station. Yeah. And the interesting part here is that for a pressurized water you can use at least for two things. One is you can we can drive a turbine, so that spins around drives a generator and we can produce the electricity to the grid. The other interesting part of the pressure is seawater will be sucked in and pressurized it is pressurized seawater is what is needed for reverse osmosis.

David Evans: 10:56

All right, history lesson, episode three of season one seawater desalination. Yeah, you need pressurized seawater for seawater desalination through reverse osmosis. So it's a perfect fit. So not only does wave piston provide the opportunity for electricity generation from waves, but it also provides the opportunity to switch to seawater desalination, depending on the current need. Now, the theoretical potential of this wave energy is huge. It's been predicted to be from 20,000 terawatt hours to 80,000 terawatt hours, which means absolutely nothing. I mean, that's just a big number. I have no idea what a terawatt hour even is. Okay, that's a lie, because I just looked it up. And 20,000 terawatt hours is exactly how much we use for all of the electricity for the entire world. So we have 100% to 400% of the potential electricity that we would actually need. No, of course, there's a lot of things that would need to go right. And we'd need to improve the efficiency of the conversion, we'd need to have converters literally everywhere, and that's not going to happen. But wave energy does have a lot of potential to grow, and to play a role in our renewable energy future. That being said, one of the main drawbacks is that it's such a young industry, it still requires a lot of proof of concept before we can get major investment. So what's the plan to get us there?

Michael Henricksen, WavePiston: 12:22

We say in the beginning, let's look at islands isolated coastal communities. These are not triple digit megawatt systems, they like two fives in 10 megawatt systems, and they have decent generator power, many of them fossil fuels, we want to replace it. So we can go in and replace everything, but at least go in and be a big part of the solution for throwing these diesel generators out. And then we'll get that price on levelized cost of energy, that is like 30 to 40 euro cents to 40 US dollars per kilowatt hour. And that price we can compete with, of course, we need to start somewhere to get into the market. And then we can sort of get economies of scale over time also. And then, of course, combining offshore wind and wave energy. You know, that is, of course also interesting because you already have some areas. And if you have good waves there, for instance, in the North Sea, we should also have wave energy, because then we increase the capacity of the whole area you and then we use to who they were better NTLM is is one of the mega trends at the moment. So they were building energy out in the middle of the North Sea to start with 3d or wind and obtain key who would have been afterwards and then export that to different countries around the North Sea. But of course, now we have this last area, we should also put weight on it. So we'll get more out of this area.

David Evans: 13:41

Wave Energy definitely has its place in the future of our renewable energy systems. But while it typically does peak at the low times for solar and wind energy production, it still doesn't solve the problem that we can't predict these peaks. So what other renewable energy systems can we look at to help solve this issue? Yeah, that also involves water.

Dr. Steve Grasby, Geothermal Canada: 14:03

You know, wind and solar only work when it's sunny and windy. Oh, right. And so I suppose 30% of the time that they produce the power they're rated for a geothermal power plant runs at about a 95% efficiency, right. So they're just always on always going. And the other aspect that's attractive is that it's dispatchable, which means that you can quickly ramp up and down that power production. So we all know the electric rush hour or so people come home at the end of the day, and they all turn on the lights and turn on the oven around six o'clock. So you need this big increase in electrical generation to meet that demand. And wind and solar. I mean, well, even if it happens to be sunny at that time, you can't just ramp up solar production, right? Whereas geothermal you can.

David Evans: 14:45

This is Dr. Steve grass beat or research scientist from the Geological Survey of Canada, and also the president of geothermal Canada, which is the umbrella organization that is looking to advance and promote geothermal research and development in Canada. Now, you may be asking yourself, What Is geothermal energy? Geothermal energy production is just our ability to capture and harness energy from down in the earth's core or the Earth's mantle. The center of the Earth is continuously producing heat the absolute center of the earth's core sits at a very toasty 6000 degrees Celsius, which is the same temperature as the surface of the sun. So the whole idea behind Geothermal energy is to basically drill down very deep holes and pump water into these holes so that it can heat up. And when we bring it back up to the surface, then we can actually extract that heat and be able to use that to run a turbine or some other form of energy generation. And then we can pump the water right back in and restart the process. So you really want to locate the places where you don't have to drill as deep down to access that heat. Where's the heat closest to the surface, and then you also want to find where the rock is permeable. And that means where the rock is porous enough that the water can seep through and absorb the heat a lot faster. So that way, you can have a faster reflow and reheating of that water that you're generating. So where can you put in a geothermal power plant?

Dr. Steve Grasby, Geothermal Canada: 16:23

So it's it's rapidly growing around the world, any country along the rim of fires, I mean, Canada's kind of unique, it's the only country in what's called the Ring of Fire is the Pacific Ocean ring that doesn't have geothermal Development. Today, we kind of stand out as not having developed this resource. There's tremendous potential this across the country, there's areas that are, you know, much higher potential for things like electricity. So the volcanic belts of Western BC the Yukon.

David Evans: 16:48

Oh, sorry, did anyone else know that we had volcanoes in Canada. I mean, is this just me that I didn't know this. So it turns out there's five separate areas all throughout BC and the Yukon that are volcanically active and could have an eruption, mostly they haven't had eruptions in a long, long time. But it's still possible, sorry, back to our potential in Canada,

Dr. Steve Grasby, Geothermal Canada: 17:10

or some of the hot sedimentary basins and parts of BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan and northwest territories and not going to be Iceland. Iceland is a special case country sitting on the spreading ridge of the Atlantic Ocean, and they have a lot of really high temperature systems there. But we can look at other places like Germany and France that are developing geothermal and very similar geologic settings to what we have.

David Evans: 17:32

It's not that we could probably get over 5000 megawatts of energy right now using our current technology. And that's not factoring in the technological advances that are currently happening. So to put that in perspective, if you were to replace 5000 megawatts of energy from a coal fired power plant every year, you're stopping 25 megatons of carbon dioxide emissions every year. Now, that would make a significant dent in our co2 emissions. And we're also forgetting about the other offset that you can have. One of the other things you produce is heat. Now, what about if you could use this heat to heat your home or heat a greenhouse to produce food without having to use any oil, gas or electricity to heat your home, you're just using the power of the earth.

Dr. Steve Grasby, Geothermal Canada: 18:18

Remember, in Canada, like 80% of our domestic energy use is heating. So most of the energy we consume is for heating and not electricity, and especially places in northern Canada, where you know, average air temperatures are minus 20. On an annual basis, you don't need very hot water to make a big impact on just offsetting the heating needs for those communities. In terms of the footprint, like per gigawatt of energy you produce the geothermal plant is significantly less than any other source of energy. So it's one of the lowest land footprints of any type of power production. So it's all there. It's been used to a minor extent so far in Canada, but we have hopes that this is going to be a significant increase in the use of geothermal energy in the future.

David Evans: 19:03

The proliferation of new renewable energy sources that are coming to a market points where we can actually start taking advantage of them, it starts to make sense financially. It's amazing, this proliferation is wonderful. But how can we take full advantage of this generating electricity is great. But if we don't replace our reliance on fossil fuels for transportation, our co2 emissions will keep going up and up and up. So what's stopping us from getting into electric vehicles tomorrow? Many people will point out that we don't have enough charging stations. So why should I get an electric vehicle? If I can't drive it and charge it up or wherever I need to go? Yes, that's absolutely true. We need to build that infrastructure, build it and they will come. And then there's the entire problem of making the batteries. Where are we going to get all of this metal that we need to create all of these massive batteries for all of these cars? My next guest doesn't really come from the energy world, although somehow he found himself in it now. Dr. Greg Stone, the floor is all yours.

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 20:10

We are in the age of metals, David, the age of oil is passed. And now we're in the age of metals because with metals arranged and put in the right system Because we can have a renewable energy system that's a closed loop in terms of material with, you know, no fossil fuels and all that. So metals is what it's all about.

David Evans: 20:31

Dr. Greg Stone has quite the resume before he joined the metals company, which you're going to hear about for the next little bit of the podcast. He's had many fancy titles, including he was a senior advisor for the World Economic Forum, he was the Executive Vice President for Conservation International, he was vice president of Global marine programs from the New England Aquarium. Not to mention that he's logged over 7000 dives. He's published numerous papers on marine mammal ecology. He's co founded an ocean conservation nonprofit group pulled a pole conservation, he's created in marine protected areas. He's led many trips for National Geographics, just to name a few. So that gives a bit of context about this person, who now finds himself as his chief ocean scientist for an underwater metals company. Now, what does that mean? And what does that even look like? Greg falls back in your court.

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 21:25

Did you know that mining is the worst thing we do on this planet? I didn't know that until recently, that if you look at the biodiversity loss to carbon production, the indigenous community displacements, the people that die doing the activity, it is the worst thing we do. And we know that for certainty, because we have 1000s of years of experience. So this guy came up to me with this idea, which I was aware of the polymetallic nodules that have formed on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. I've got one over there. Let's see it. I

David Evans: 21:57

can go get it. Yeah, that'd be very cool. Yeah,

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 22:00

these these nodules are. They were first found in the 1800s, during something called the Challenger expedition, which was the first oceanographic expedition ever. And the British have fitted a gun boat and traveled around the world for two years and tried to find out a little bit about the ocean and they put pulled these things up. Can you see it?

David Evans: 22:23

In the video version of the podcast? Did I mention we're making a video version this year? Stay tuned for that coming out later. But in the video, you can see that he's holding up this softball sized black, bumpy, but still somehow smooth rock looks kind of like maybe a moon rock. Anyways, search up polymetallic nodules at the bottom of the ocean on Google. And you'll see all sorts of these things.

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 22:46

And they're like a pearl, Dave, they sit on the sea floor, and they accumulate atoms of what's in the seawater like a pearl does, very slowly. This is probably 10 million years old. Every element on the periodic table that you learned in high school is in the ocean, it's it's in solution in the ocean, these nodules form and they reflect the relative abundances of the elements in the area of which they form. And it turns out, in certain places, especially about halfway between Mexico and Hawaii, there's a very high concentration of nickel, cobalt, manganese, and copper, which are all the metals we need for all these electric cars that are coming up, which is a it's between a 600 and 1,000%. increase in demand over the next 1020 years. Now, if you go to a terrestrial solution for this, you're looking at 1% grades of nickel laterites. We've already taken all the high grades out pretty quickly. And there's zero waste in this. This is 100% reusable metal. And what's not metal is non toxic, and perfect additive for cement. There's no waste, where's you know, in the traditional mining industry, it's 99% waste, you have a mountain, you take down and you use 1% of the mountain and the rest of the mountain, you've got to do something with it. It's just, it's it's just horrible. And we we offshore these activities to developing countries because, you know, we don't want to have them in California here. So why not put them down in some place in Africa or Indonesia? We're not going to see it. And there's very little oversight. So this was a solution. And you can find enough of these things and an area less than 1% of the bottom of the sea floor to supply the humanity for hundreds of years.

David Evans: 24:41

Until really they're that that plentiful.

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 24:44

Yeah. It's like cobblestones. I can show you pictures, what they look, wow. They're very, very dense. And we can get these into a closed loop material. We're in a material crisis, that this guy got a Nobel award for Chemistry A few months ago. And he said, This is not a question about supply shortages here and there. He said, This is a question about lack of atoms and molecules of everything. He says, we're running out of everything. And we've got to really rethink how we're going to do this. So this This technique allows you to project a period of extraction, which would be 20 3040 years and then a period where you can close the loop because you can't destroy an atom. Atoms are perfectly recyclable, especially battery metals and battery metals, and other metals are absolutely essential for the new renewable energy future, we must we must embrace. Otherwise, we're doomed, right? This to me seemed like the most tangible, nitty gritty hands on thing I could get involved with to stop this direction we're headed in.

David Evans: 25:59

So the metals company, which Dr. Greg Stone is a part of, is looking at collecting these polymetallic nodules that form at the bottom of the ocean. And when I say the bottom of the ocean, I mean the bottom of the ocean, these nodules form at or even below the abyssal plane. So that means below 3000 meters in depth. Now, the metals company is looking at creating these collectors that would go along the bottom of this plane, and would use jets of water to be able to lift these nodules that are just sitting on the ocean floor, who would lift it into the collector to separate it from any mud or any other particulates and allow the mud to return right back to the ocean floor. The nodules are then sent right back up to the surface, where it's then deposited into carrier vessels that will then carry those nodules back to be processed on land. There's a really great video on the front page of the metals company website metals.co. So I would highly recommend checking it out, it'll help give a whole idea of this whole operation. So it strikes me that this is a pretty hot topic as metals or mining. Fossil fuel replacements are a hot topic to begin with, let alone doing something in the ocean. So how did you actually get involved? Greg?

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 27:16

Well, first thing I had to do was he asked me to join the company and help because he knew he was going to need somebody like me to give him cover, because I had a reputation. And people knew that I was a conservationist and, and all that. So I said, I said, okay, and he said, You got to keep in mind, this is a one way street for you. And I said, you have to keep in mind that if I find someone I like I'm gonna leave, and that's not gonna, that's not going to be very good for you. Yeah. And he said, if you find something, you know, like, I'll be right behind him. So I felt like I was with the right people. And I gave a speech in Abu Dhabi three years ago at the economist ocean Summit, where it was the first time a scientist like me, someone who has some credibility in the environmental community stood up and said, you know, we must do this, you know, and all my colleagues, were all saying, no, no, no, don't do it can't do it can't do it. They weren't offering any alternatives. They would just say, Don't do that, you know. And that's not acceptable. You can't say no, without saying do this instead.

David Evans: 28:24

And we do need to do our due diligence to understand what are the impacts of this? What do we know about the ocean, how these pearls that are dotting the ocean floor, affect everything within the ocean, and the metals company is investigating. And that's part of Greg's job is to be there to understand that. And especially when it comes to something like mining, where there are already concerns that Greg mentioned earlier, with traditional mining. And when you think about mining in the ocean, some people just can't even imagine what that would look like other than what's happening above water. So of course, many people, including many individuals in the public are very concerned,

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 29:02

backing up a little bit, they do have cause to have concern, because in the past, industry has lied to us. They've said, Hey, don't worry about we'll take care of it, and they didn't. But what these folks don't realize is that since that time, there's some sociological psychological science around the fact that our frameworks and our minds, the way we look at the world is about 30 years behind science and reality. Right? They're looking at this through like 1970s 1980s thinking. And since then, we've got the Law of the Sea, we got the Convention on Biological Diversity, we've got a whole bunch of very strong treaties that have come into place. There's science that says, This is not as bad as we think. And they're not taking that into account. They're imagining it's 1970. And this company is just rising up out of nowhere going to destroy the world, you know, right. That's kind of their perspective.

David Evans: 30:03

And we do have a lot of different regulations. The world has changed from those days. But just because we do have these regulations, doesn't mean that there are always checks and balances in place. And by that, I mean, there's not always enforcement So we also need to fund enforcement, we need to make sure that that is a priority. So if we make these rules, we need to make sure that everyone follows them. But overall, I think we need to just expand our minds and think through these decisions. In our materialistic society, we need to get these materials from somewhere. And typically, these natural resources come from areas that are hidden from society, or hidden from the First World in that they're located in third world countries. They're located far away from large urban centers. And most of us don't see the environmental issues that come with them. And that's not to be said that we don't understand that there are environmental consequences of any decision that we make. But we need to take everything into consideration and figure out what's best for our world moving forward. And that's the argument that I think Dr. Greg Stone is trying to make for the metals company,

Dr. Greg Stone, The Metals Company: 31:17

then the climate crisis is accelerating much faster than we thought. And I can attest to that firsthand. I've been out looking myself diving and I went to the Galapagos Islands a few months ago for National Geographic is one of their guests scientists on one of their Lindblad trips, and, and I dive there a lot. And I was, I was kind of on vacation, really. But I switched on my my science brain. And I started looking around and I said, Something's not right. The Galapagos is where we have the most upwelling anywhere in the world. That's what drives the ocean is bringing this nutrient called the Deep Sea to, and I saw skinny seals, you don't see skinny seals in the Galapagos Islands, you know, you can see the bones on their back, you know, there you see the vertebra sticking out. And the fish biomass was way low. And lobsters are gone from Cape Cod now, and the Gulf Stream is slowing down and the whole thermo hay line circulation system is beginning to halt. Or I do think that we're on the verge of a collapse, climate collapse. And I think that might follow up civilization collapse in the next couple of 100 years, unless we have some technological advances, which we could some extraordinary things that we could do pumping gases up into the upper atmosphere, for example, that might cool the planet down, there are things that we could do that I hope we can do them. But the moment the best we can do is just keep going to these treaty meetings and pushing solutions like this and doing everything that we can. And we should be talking about it every day, from morning till night. You know, my parents were both in World War Two. And they told me that during World War Two was an existential threat to the world. And as a result, everybody was focused on it, hyper focused on it. And that's all we talked about for four years was the war. And we want it and put that to bed. Well, this, this, this thread is about 1000 times worse. And we're not talking about it, you know, it's something that we should talk about. And, and I have a belief that if we talk about it enough, it will happen. So that's why I like podcasts like yours, and in anything that will raise people's awareness of this stuff.

David Evans: 33:43

So let's keep the conversation going. Talk to your local member of parliament, talk to your local elected official, talk to anyone and help raise awareness about the issues that you care about. And this is an issue that crosses party lines, it crosses international borders, it crosses across the entire world, if we want to get to a carbon neutral future, renewable energy, and the batteries that will be able to allow us to get to that carbon neutral future are something we really need to discuss. And whether or not you agree with either of these renewable energy sources, or with the techniques involved in gathering these metals, these polymetallic nodules from the bottom of the ocean. Let's talk let's start talking about this and start getting solutions underway. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode all about renewable energy from water, and the batteries that might someday make it all possible. I would just love to thank all of our guests that we had on today's episode. Michael Henrickson from wave piston, Dr. Steve graduated from geothermal Canada, and Dr. Greg Stone from the metals company. It's so cool being able to talk with each one of you and hear your viewpoints on how you're trying to make the world a better place with your companies. And I'm so excited to share all of these conversations and these deep dive episodes that were coming out in the next couple of weeks. So be sure you're subscribed to the podcast. You won't want to miss any of these episodes. You can learn more about Michael Henrickson and wave piston at wave piston.dk You can learn more about geothermal Canada and Dr. Steve grasping at geothermal canada.org. And you can learn more about the metals company, and Dr. Greg stone@metals.co. Be sure to check out the show notes. As I'll leave links for all of these plus lots of other information, just in case this just whet your palate and he can't wait to learn more, be sure to check out the show notes that will all be there. Dr. Greg Stone also has a podcast. So if you like this, check his out. It's called The C has many voices and can be found on Google, Apple podcast, Spotify, you name it, it's everywhere. Be sure to check it out. I'm the host and producer David Evans. And I just like to thank the rest of the team, specifically Paula Pullman, Lee Burton, and the rest of the aquatic biosphere board. Thanks for all of your help. And to learn more about the aquatic biosphere project and what we're doing right here in Alberta telling the story of water, you can check us out at aquatic biosphere.ca. And we also have launched our new media company, a b n aquatic biosphere network, which you can find that the public place dot online and search for the aquatic biosphere network channel, where we will actually be posting all of the video episodes that we're going to be creating this year. So tune in. They will be out for the next little while, but very excited to start sharing video content as well of our interviews. If you have any questions or comments about the show, we'd love to hear them. Email us at conservation at aquatic biosphere.org. Please don't forget to like, share and subscribe. Leave us a review. It really helps us out. Thanks and it's been a splash