[00:00:00] Speaker A: Segment 154321. Success isn't given, it's earned. And earning it means becoming the person who deserves it. The bottom line is where we cut through the chaos to simplify success, uncovering the strategies, mindset and resilience it takes to win. Real stories, expert insights, and practical tools. Because the only way to the top
[00:00:26] Speaker B: is, is by putting in the world.
[00:00:28] Speaker A: This is the bottom line.
Welcome to the Bottom Line. I'm your host, Ryan Herpin, and today we are going to be covering a lot of fun things surrounding AI. Now, on this show, we like to cut through the chaos and the noise of what it takes to actually be successful in a world that is drowning in information. And the next thing, that's snake oil.
We like to cut through all of that and try to really simplify it all. Now, artificial intelligence is changing how companies operate. But behind every new AI tool is a physical infrastructure that consumes power and requires capital.
Today, we are looking at the economics behind the transformation and what business leaders need to understand before they make their next big bet. So Today, my guest, Mr. Todd Thomas. He's entrepreneur, technology innovator, and author of the Unleashed Abundant Energy trilogy and host of Abundant Energy on NOW Media tv. So he is a fellow host now. His work examines how the AI era intersects with electricity demand, infrastructure and sustainable power solutions. Todd, I know you're working on another book, and I want to dive into that before we dive into pretty much anything else. But welcome to the show. It's such a pleasure to have you here.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: Hey, Ryan, thanks so much. Really glad to be here.
[00:01:56] Speaker A: Now, before we really rock and roll, we were able to chat a little bit before this segment launched. And I know I talked about the few books you had out there, but it sounds like you just launched a whole nother one.
[00:02:09] Speaker B: Yeah. My newest book, Starving for Innovation, just came out. It's brand new, it's on Amazon.com, and it's very similar to the first five in that the backdrop is AI, energy and innovation.
But this book is definitely my most personal. We really go beyond energy and AI and we tell the story of Woodchuck. We talk about our early struggles and we talk about some of our successes. And we really use Woodchuck as a template for other entrepreneurs or young founders looking to looking to launch a company so you can learn from the things we did well and learn from the things we didn't do well. Hopefully it can really work as a guide for you. All of this set in the context of, you know, this incredible surge in Energy capacity that we're seeing really across the world. I mean, AI and data centers, the infrastructure to drive all these AI services that we can't get enough of is really driving the biggest energy surge, the energy capacity surgeon, since the industrial revolution. So it's a, it's an exciting time to be around and, and this book will kind of guide you some, through some of the hottest topics right now.
[00:03:19] Speaker A: That's, that's incredible that I'm glad you're able to throw that out there because that's to me is quite interesting. And I'm very curious on the topic of, you know, how AI is really impacting the energy infrastructure we have. But you know, for this segment, you know, to our audience really, AI may feel digital, but it costs, its costs are truly tangible. Right. You know, whether it's electricity, data centers, equipment, long land and long term investment. Right. There's a lot that's really involved in this. But you know, I really want to explore the economic connection between AI adoption, data center expansion, energy capacity and the real cost that companies and communities must plan for. So to dive on into this and to have a bit of a heavy hitting question right off the hop. Todd, you know, when, when business leaders hear about the AI boom, what major energy cost do you think they are overlooking?
[00:04:16] Speaker B: Well, there's a couple layers to that. You're right, that is a big question right off the bat. Right. And the reality is when people talk about AI, I don't think people have a clear understanding of what that really means. Right. There is not one single AI. That AI is this huge umbrella. And there's hundreds of different software components and AI tools that all fall under this, this huge umbrella of AI. So your company, like Woodchuck, uses computer image recognition.
There's large language models, there's AI agents, agentic AI. But the reality is AI has become ubiquitous in our society. So even if you don't think you're using AI, you are. Anytime you interact with almost any, anything digital these days, you're interacting with AI. It's built into all of the tools that we're using all of the time. So there certainly are people that will proactively go out and use Claude or Chat, GPT or Claw or lots of these different tools. And those are, you know, probably more of your heavy hitter AI users. But everybody is using it all day, every day and we can't get enough of it. We want more and more of these AI tools. So the demand for AI services just continues to grow. And the reality is, in order to deliver all of these services. There has to be a physical infrastructure behind every one of those queries. There is a server farm or a data center somewhere that is calculating and delivering that answer. And that's really where the rubber hits the road. Right now.
AI and energy are inseparable. It takes a massive amount of energy to deliver AI. So the big challenge today is how do we build data centers and power data centers fast enough to meet the demand for AI services?
And that's really the challenge.
And I think people are becoming more aware that there is not enough existing energy grid in the United States, or really in the world. You can't just connect to the grid anymore. There is no excess capacity.
So what we're seeing is in order for big tech companies to deliver the services that people want, they're needing to build their own power supply to power their data centers. Most people refer to it as bring your own capacity.
So as they're building the data center, they may build a solar farm or a wind farm, or a bioenergy facility, or lots and lots of folks are connecting to liquid natural gas. There are liquid natural gas pipelines crisscrossing all over the United States. So if you can build your data center in close proximity to one of those liquid natural gas lines, it's a very cost effective way to power your data center.
So a lot of these data centers are building behind the grid or build your own capacity energy.
That's the only way to get these centers up and powered quickly. And if it's truly 100% behind the meter, it has no impact on the local grid. It's not connected to the local grid.
The ideal situation, in my opinion, is that a data center does build their own capacity, but they also connect to the grid so that you can manage the data center and the local community as a single grid. And this can give all sorts of different benefits.
Demand capacity, response, utilization management. So if it's a really hot day and everybody has their AC cranked up, the data center can send extra energy to the community. And in the middle of the night, when everybody has all their TVs and radios and Internet shut off, they can send extra capacity back to the data center. I think that's the ideal situation.
I think that's where we will be 10 years from now.
So the big question is, how do we cross this bridge? How do we provide the Data or the AI services that everybody wants over the next 10 years?
And how do we get these centers powered fast enough to deliver those services? That's, that's the big question right now,
[00:08:11] Speaker A: you know, I've become a little bit more and more aware of the power requirements for, you know, really, truly utilizing AI. And it's become a much hotter topic across the United States and the world for that matter. And it does drive some curious questions of mine. Like, you know, a lot of people are wondering and don't necessarily understand what the actual, you know, data center footprint change really looks like on the financial equation for utilities, developers and even local communities.
Could you shed some light on what impact that might have on local communities?
[00:08:48] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. You know, data centers have been around for decades, they're not new.
The difference is data centers, or we used to just call them server farms. Server farms in the past, like 10 years ago, right, if you wanted to watch Netflix and so you hooked up to a server to stream the show to you.
A Netflix show is pre recorded, the content already exists. All they're doing is replaying the data for you. So it requires energy, but not a ton of energy. AI is different. There isn't pre canned content that's sitting on a server somewhere. AI is a math equation. It's calculated. So when you ask AI something, the servers have to do a large complicated math algorithm to calculate your answer takes a lot more energy. So an AI data center may use 10 times the power of a traditional server farm. So it's a lot more power. So how are you going to do that? And you're right, what's the impact on the local community?
So you know, decades ago when we built these data centers, someone would build a data center. A developer would build a data center and deliver it to the user. The data center in it, it was a non event. Nobody really cared and so nobody really noticed. It was just, it was just another piece of commercial development in your area.
But today, because they require so much power and because they're getting bigger and bigger and bigger, we're seeing campuses of, you know, 6, 8, 10, 12 data centers, all on a single campus and they are impacting local communities. So it's, it's no longer under the radar, it's now become a hot topic and communities should be asking questions. I mean the big questions are how are you going to power it? How is it going to impact my electric bill, how are you going to cool it and how is it going to impact my water and what are the tax benefits to the local community? Those are the big questions and communities should be asking those questions.
And I think we're starting to see is developers are now proactively engaging communities and having those conversations up front because the old strategy of just building it and not integrating with the community, it doesn't work in the new world. They're too big, they're too exposed, they're too visible. So we need to engage the communities. But the reality is there are good answers to all of those questions. So a data center developed well, transparently in collaboration and communication with the local community can have a positive impact on local power, can have a zero impact on water.
And the biggest thing is done well, it can have a massive positive impact on the tax revenue for a small community.
You know, a little teeny community, the middle of nowhere, you go build a 10 data center, data campus that could 5x, that could 10x that little community's tax revenue. So now all of a sudden they can give their firemen a raise and their teachers a raise and they can repave the roads. It can be a real windfall for those communities. If you do it well, you ask the right questions up front and you build that together transparently.
That's really the key.
[00:11:45] Speaker A: I think you, yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head that transparency is absolute key because all the things that you would see, like, honestly, you know, looking at social media and stuff, you see all the bad things, the scary things going around, but what you don't see right now that is so relevant is all the solutions, the real conversation between that and what pros there really are to the situation. And I think that's something that people need to understand because there's pros and cons to pretty much everything. What are the pros to this? And I think you expressed that really well. So to our audience after the break, we will look at the business case for really cleaner, more flexible energy systems and the investment decision behind them. So don't go anywhere. We'll be right back with more.
Welcome back to the Bottom Line. Stay connected to this show and every NOW Media TV favorite live or on demand, anytime you like. Download the free Now Media TV app on Roku on iOS and unlock non stop bilingual programming in both English and Spanish. You on the move. You can catch the podcast version at www.nowmedia.tv. from business and news to lifestyle and so much more, NOW Media TV is streaming around the clock. Ready whenever you are.
Now we are back with more conversation around the big beautiful topic of AI and energy. And I'm joined by Todd Thomas again. He's an entrepreneur and author and host of Abundant Energy here on NOW Media Television. Now we want to explore the business models that could help power the next wave of AI growth.
So the question is not only where energy comes from, but whether a solution can be well financed, developed and operated reliably.
So what we really kind of want to dive in here is we really want to kind of compare the strategic and economic considerations around renewable micro grids, biomass, advanced nuclear technologies, and other approaches discussed in Todd's work. So we want to try to avoid treating emerging technology as guaranteed solutions. But I think Todd's going to really help us dig into this. Well, so Todd, it is such a pleasure to have you here. I'm excited to have this conversation.
[00:14:06] Speaker B: It's a big conversation. It's one we need to have right now. And unfortunately there's not a lot of great information out there. There's a lot of bad information and misinformation. So I appreciate you tackling this topic.
[00:14:17] Speaker A: Absolutely. And to start off with another heavy hitter, you know, when you evaluate an energy innovation, what tells you it has a, a viable business model rather than just a compelling pitch?
[00:14:34] Speaker B: Well, I think anytime you're evaluating an energy source, at the end of the day you need to look at the cost effectiveness. Right? What's the cost benefit of this particular source?
And the reality is we have a huge array of energy options at our fingertips.
Solar energy, wind energy has become so much more efficient.
Battery storage has become much more efficient and cost effective.
Liquid natural gas is very inexpensive right now.
Hydro is great.
Geothermal is really exciting and stealing a lot of technology from the oil and gas industry that's making that available to be deployed in more areas.
And then we have the kind of the resurgence of nuclear with smaller modular reactors and mini reactors and micro reactors, all using, you know, more passive safety systems. So they're much safer than they used to be. They use less fuel, they produce less waste. So there are a lot of options. So as you are kind of evaluating, you know, are you going to expand into a new area, you're going to build a new production failure facility, a new manufacturing facility? Where are you going to do that and how are you going to power it?
Transportation is very geographically centralized.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: Right.
[00:15:50] Speaker B: It's, it's very expensive to transport energy from one location to another. So the more you can localize your energy source, the better it is. So your energy choices and the most cost effective energy decisions are going to be different in California than they are in Texas, than they are in New York.
Texas, that's where you are, I understand, is actually kind of leading the nation.
Obviously you guys got a lot of oil and gas but you also lead the nation in solar and wind development.
You guys have tons of renewable energy there. And so that's really exciting.
And I think the reality is energy demand is growing so fast right now that it's not a matter of picking which one of these solutions is going to solve the problem for us.
The math tells us we need all of them.
[00:16:42] Speaker A: Right?
[00:16:43] Speaker B: If we look at our current energy supply and the energy supply that we're going to need over the next 10 years, we basically need to double our global energy capacity in order to meet that demand.
If we take all of the renewables right now and throw nuclear in there too, so all the renewables and nuclear and you triple the current capacity over the next 10 years, that does not get us to the total energy capacity we're going to need in 10 years, which means we still need fossil fuels. We, we still need oil, we still need gas.
That's the only way we're going to get there.
If there is a silver bullet, it's probably nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion is a really unbelievable energy source. It is potentially abundant. It is much cleaner, but we don't have it yet. The science is there. We have proven that nuclear fusion can be net positive. And there are companies that are developing fusion reactors right now. Helion up in Washington says they're going to deliver fusion power to power a Microsoft data center in Washington in 2028. I really hope that that's true. I hope they succeed at that. If they do, that would be a great first step. But even if they do, in order to build out a fusion, nuclear fusion infrastructure to really power everything will take decades. So I think it's absolutely possible that our kids will live in an abundant energy future where energy is no longer a constraint.
But we've got decades before we get there. So what do we do in the meantime? In the meantime, we need to look at our particular localized demand.
What are the options that are there in that area and make the best, most informed decision possible.
[00:18:30] Speaker A: You know, I love that you're bringing up the different dynamic of the other, you know, energy sources, the renewable energy and some of the current options that are there. You even mentioned the application of LNG in supplementing some of the power requirements there. And my background is in manufacturing, working in the LNG space, especially here. And obviously, you know, in Houston, it's a pretty big market. But I started to grow very impartial to hydrogen. Hydrogen, being a pretty renewable fuel source, produces lots of energy, but the infrastructure is just not there. And the company that I worked with for quite some time was very devoted to developing the infrastructure needed to develop, to transport, to utilize. And it's a long game no matter how you look at it. Any alternative energy source that's going to be sustainable requires a lot of infrastructure. Like you said, it's going to take decades potentially to really achieve. So the dependence on fossil fuel is really something we can't avoid right now. But you know, something I am kind of curious about because we kind of touched base into like micro grids and things of that nature. And I'm kind of curious, you know, as you mentioned, tying data centers into, you know, the grid kind of all together within communities, what role could intelligent micro grids play in reducing operating cost or improving resilience, you know, the resilience for energy intensive businesses.
[00:19:57] Speaker B: So data centers or really lots of high tech manufacturing or production requires a lot of energy. So we need to figure out the right energy balance.
I think an exciting area, like you mentioned, hydrogen, Hydrogen is exciting, but I think the thing that hydrogen misses in their communication is hydrogen isn't just an energy source, which of course it is. The beautiful thing about hydrogen is you can feed all sorts of different feedstocks into hydrogen to produce that power, to generate hydrogen and use that as a power source and it can actually reduce waste.
And because you're generating hydrogen in these, you know, superheated non oxygen environments, you, you can actually break down toxic waste like a railroad tie or utility pole. Those things are the dirtiest, grossest things, right? They're just, they're soaked in tar and preservatives and all sorts of chemicals and pretty much every city in the United States has a stack of them somewhere because they can't get rid of them. They're just this terrible toxic pile.
You can feed those into a pyrolysis machine to generate hydrogen or to generate syngas and the superheated complex will actually break down all of those toxins into its basic elements and you can suck off the hydrogen and suck off the oxygen and leave the carbon behind.
So I really think hydrogen could do itself a big service by not just talking about the energy capacity and trying to compare themselves in terms of efficiency with other energy sources, but bring up the huge additional benefit if they can literally eliminate toxic waste. I don't know why they don't talk about that more, but sorry, that's a side note. I just wanted to touch on hydrogen
[00:21:40] Speaker A: because you're actually the first person that has been able to actually identify that other application and use of that hydrogen process. So I'M thoroughly shell shocked that you're able to bring that up because it's not a common topic, but I find it interesting.
[00:21:56] Speaker B: It is.
It's a huge additional benefit if you can both reduce waste, and particularly toxic waste and generate power at the same time.
That's awesome. That's. That's great.
[00:22:08] Speaker A: Yep.
Now, audience though.
[00:22:11] Speaker B: So I know we're running out of time on the segment, but I will tell you, the really cool thing about liquid natural gas right now is we're starting to see more hybrid solutions where you're powering a facility with a hybrid solution where you have a renewable energy source like wind or solar or biomass, and you pair that with liquid natural gas. One of the limitations of solar or wind is they're intermittent. Right. They're not available 24 7. So you have to build an energy storage infrastructure to make that possible. Right. You have to build a big battery complex to capture all the energy so your solar power power is available at night.
If you pair it with liquid natural gas, you alleviate the need, or you certainly dramatically reduce the need for that battery storage infrastructure. You can build a solar farm and connect to liquid natural gas. In the day, when the sun is shining, you power your facility with clean, cheap solar. At night, when the sun goes down, you turn up the liquid natural gas. It's really efficient, it works well.
It's a great solution. Then if you pair that with connecting it to the grid, micro grid or your local grid, where you have grid utility management across the entire system, where that facility is no longer a passive node on the grid that's just consuming energy, but instead it's an interactive part of the grid that can consume energy when it needs it, and it can send energy back to the grid when it has excess capacity.
That's grid utilization management, or demand capacity response. And that can provide huge efficiencies and reduce the total amount of energy capacity you need in a given community.
And it spreads the cost of all that infrastructure over the entire community, including those manufacturing facilities. So the net result can be a reduction in localized energy costs.
[00:24:02] Speaker A: You know, this is a 10,000 foot conversation that I feel like a lot of people are just not aware of. And it's intriguing because it's not as complex as we want to think it is.
And there's still complexities there, there's still unknowns, there's still development that needs to take place, but the conversation just needs to be had. It needs to keep moving and it needs to just be open and a little more transparent. But, you know, to our audience. Next, we will turn to the financial and operational challenges of building data centers that could, you know, that can adapt as energy markets change. So don't go anywhere, grab some popcorn or whatever it is you need. We'll be Back for more.
5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Welcome back to the Bottom Line. This is a show where we like to cut through the chaos to simplify what does it take to be successful and whether it's business life or anything in between. But I am still here with Todd Thomas and having an incredible conversation around AI, the energy and the infrastructure really required. Now, Todd is joining us and the discussion we're having here is the AI infrastructure decisions with the operating economics that ultimately determine profitability.
So what we're looking at here, you know, a project can be technically impressive and still struggle financially if it's power, cooling, uptime and capital assumptions do not hold.
Now what we really want to kind of dive in in this part of the segment is we really want to discuss data center economics, you know, the operating efficiency, the resilience, the financing horizons, and how leaders can measure performance without relying on speculative forecasts. So, Todd, I know this type of topic is not really being talked about enough and in the ways that matter. We all see some of the scary stuff surrounding it in media. But to be able to have this conversation with some depth and meat looking at the reality and facts has been quite refreshing for me. But to dive into this segment, I'm going to open up with another big question. We like to do that here. But, you know, what are the biggest drivers of long term operating costs for AI focused data centers?
[00:26:19] Speaker B: Well, it's definitely energy costs and the building of that infrastructure. And I think right now, if you want to build, you want to develop a new AI data center, there are really two huge obstacles you need to clear. The first is, how are you going to power that? How are you going to get powered land to power your data center?
And the second is community pushback or community support.
So if we look, you know, first at just the power and how do you do that? So once upon a time, the traditional way that you would develop this, you would put your data center plans together, you'd submit that to the city and you'd request permitting to connect to the local grid. You'd order your equipment. There's like the actual physical equipment required to connect your facility and get energy from the grid.
The challenge there right now, today is timeline to go through. That permitting process can be three to five years, maybe longer, depending on where you're doing that, the equipment, the actual equipment required to connect your facility to the local grid has lead times of five to seven years. So how in the world are you going to do that?
You can build a data center in two to three years, but if you're not going to have power for five to seven years, you've got a real problem there. And that's why really the only solution is to bring your own capacity. And that's why you're seeing more and more developers that are buying excess land and they're building their own capacity along with that. Whether that's liquid natural gas or solar or wind or biomass or nuclear.
That's really the only way to get around. You have to build your own behind the grid power.
Another strategy is to take over older facilities. We're seeing this a lot in the east where you have retired or retiring coal facilities, right? So they are connected.
They've got this big piece of land. So you can take an old coal facility, convert the power supply from coal to liquid natural gas or to nuclear and take advantage of the existing connection. So that, that's another strategy.
So those are kind of the approaches that we're seeing around people that want to develop data centers quickly and have them powered on the same timeline with which they can actually build the data center.
So then of course you get into the whole discussion of what is that power source. If you're going to, if you're going to build a net new power source and you're going to build your own capacity, what is the right energy source for you to build?
Is it liquid natural gas? Is it one of the renewables, Is it nuclear? And again, you need to look at what the constraints are in your given geography to make the most informed decision there.
The next huge hurdle is community pushback or community support.
And again, the old strategy of just developing it and, and bringing it online, that doesn't work anymore. It's too visible. And communities want a say. And communities need to ask the right questions.
Power, water, taxes.
But there are good answers to all of those things, right?
People building data centers are going to bring their own capacity. In the ideal scenario, they build excess capacity. So whatever the capacity required for their development, if they build a little bit more than that, they have access to feedback to the local community. That's a win win for both sides.
Water really should be a non issue. Nobody is building evaporative cooling systems anymore. Evaporative cooling systems take a ton of water. That's absolutely true. And for a long time that's what A lot of these facilities were cooled with. But it's become a huge topic. I mean, if you're in an area where there's absolutely abundant water, right. You're sitting right on the Mississippi or something, yes, you can still use evaporative cooling, but if you're not, if you're in an area where water is a challenge, there are closed loop cooling systems where you charge the system with water and you don't use additional water. It's charged minimal additional water. So water really is a non issue. There are cooling systems now that are moving away from water. They're going to other materials to cool. So that's a. Water is a very solvable problem. And the third piece is the taxes. These centers generate a ton of tax revenue for wherever they are building built. When you're building a data center for two to three or four years, you're going to have thousands of construction workers that are coming into town to build this facility. All your local construction guys are going to have jobs and you're going to bring in extra guys. And all those people need somewhere to live that they're going to pay for. They're going to buy lunches that they're going to pay for. They're going to buy beer on Friday night that they're going to pay for. It's a huge economic boon to your area. Once the data center is built, a lot of those construction jobs of course will move on to the next development. But the data center remains there and continues to generate tax revenue. We talked about this in the first segment. Depending on the community, it could 5x your local tax revenue. Could 10x your local tax revenue. Again, it depends on how big your community is to begin with.
But it's definitely a net positive or should be and can be a net positive from a tax benefit. If you are one of those communities that's really pushing back right now and you put moratoriums or pauses on data centers, that's a pretty risky move right now because the reality is these data centers are going to be built. So if your community puts a moratorium or a pause, you can't expect that AI data center developer to just continue the conversation with you for two years while you make your mind. They need these data centers online. They're going to take their investment and they're going to go to another community. So you need to decide as a community, if you put a moratorium or a pause, you're not necessarily delaying this investment or this development. You may well be saying no, even if that's not your intent, that's what's going to happen, that that investment is going to go somewhere else. So before you put a moratorium in place or a pause in place, make sure that's the decision you really want to make. Because you may well be passing up on that investment and giving it to your neighbor. And a couple of years from now you may be disappointed when your, your neighbor, the next county over is rich and you guys are struggling. That's. So I think make an informed decision. If that's really what you want, great, do that. But make an informed decision.
Don't make that decision on bad information myths that are no longer true about data center development.
[00:32:40] Speaker A: It is such a good point. And you know, like you said, just, just trying to put things on pause could completely remove the opportunity altogether. Because these businesses, they're going to keep moving forward. They're not going to cater to people forever.
They have to keep serving. I mean, the reality is we're all utilizing AI many different ways nowadays. You even Google something, you're utilizing AI in some sort of way. Doesn't matter what it is, it's all over the place. It has been for a very long time. Just now it's getting bigger and bigger, you know, part of the conversation. But there's a lot of misinformation out there and you might unintentionally be, like you said, passing up an opportunity to significantly improve the tax revenue and passing that on to your neighbor or another county nearby because they're going to move no matter what. It's just a matter of where are they going to be and what are we going to do when they're there. And you know, even that temporary, you know, fluff of the economy with construction workers, things that nature being, you know, going on, as you mentioned, that is still generating revenue. There's still a lot going on with that. And I like that you brought up the water cooling systems because that is a really big hot topic that even myself through just some basic conversation and looking that is a non start, that's not really a problem anymore. There are so many other solutions and opportunities.
It's just one of those old talking points that raised some attention that's just being repeated now. And I think with the advancement of technology and opportunity, it's changing the way that we can really look at what it means to have a data center really established in an area. But to the audience that wants to learn more about you, what you're doing and hear more about this type of conversation, where can they find You,
[00:34:17] Speaker B: I'm Todd Thomas. You can find me on LinkedIn pretty easily.
Our company is woodchuck and we'
[email protected]. that's not woodchuck.com woodchuck AI. So check out Woodchuck if you're interested in this conversation and you're enjoying it. This is absolutely what Starving for Innovation talks about. So go to Amazon and look up Starving for Innovation and you can check out that book. Or if you just go to Amazon and type Todd Thomas, you can, you can see my whole Abundant Energy series and pick any of the books. I would tell you, if you're only going to buy one book, buy the new one, buy Starving for Innovation. I think it's by far the best.
[00:34:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Based on what you were able to say kind of, you know, in the start of the first segment about the new book that you have released, I mean, it sheds a different kind of light. And like you said, you know, you're able to communicate things a little bit differently. But the fact that you have so much information out there, I think it really does raise the question, are we really looking at this the right way as the stuff that we're hearing out there? Is it really accurate? Is it relevant? Or is there more to this? Because it's something that's going to move forward no matter what we feel, no matter what we think. Because frankly, we all want the service, but we don't necessarily want to look at how it's being delivered. And the reality is there's an infrastructure behind it that does matter. And within the infrastructure, there are things that have to be measured, there are impacts that have to be weighed. And just like any business, you've got to. Just like when you mentioned, you know, these, these centers are bringing their own source of energy along the way, at least to create kind of a, a micro grid in the sense, you know, there's an evaluation between efficiency, reliability, and the cost associated with it. So, I mean, it's not like these big industries are just jumping in to cause problems, make waves. No, they're actually evaluating what is the benefit of this, what's really going to happen here. And I think it's easy to misinterpret that. But to our audience, we are going to be moving into our third segment after this. And, you know, after the break, we will be focused on the leadership choices needed to turn the energy challenge into a durable opportunity. So don't go anywhere. We will be back with more of the bottom line.
Ready whenever you are. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
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Now we are closing out our final segment. We with Todd Thomas, who works on Abundant Energy and the Unleash Abundant Energy trilogy, explores how innovation could meet rising power demand more responsibly. Now, Todd was able to share with us his new book that he has recently published and launched and it dives into a lot of the conversation that we really need to get into. A lot of the questions he's able to answer that a lot of us have. But what we want to look at is the long term opportunity and that it depends on aligning economic incentive, technology readiness and the practical needs of the people paying for the system itself. So we want to explore entrepreneurial opportunities, investment discipline, cross sector collaboration, and the leadership decisions required to scale solutions responsibly.
So few things that I kind of want to really kind of highlight here, Todd, in this segment, segment in particular is your piece of the pie here. You know what we've talked about with your business is you really focus on reducing waste and just kind of a win, win, win scenario. Can you dive into that a little bit and how you do that and what that looks like for those that are wanting to build a data center?
[00:38:22] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So my company is called Woodchuck AI and we are a waste to energy company.
So traditionally when you build anything, any of the material that's left over is waste. It goes in a 40 yard dumpster and somebody comes and pulls that and buries that in a landfill somewhere. That's, that's the way the world works right now.
What Woodchuck does is we come in there and we say, look, you've got a ton of really valuable materials that you've already paid for. You own them and you're just throwing them in a dumpster and you're hauling them away and burying them. I would tell you, last year in the United States, the US spent $2 billion to bury $1 billion worth of resources in landfills. So what Woodchuck does is we say, look, let's quit burying all these valuable resources in the landfill. We separate each of those materials. So we separate the wood the cardboard, the plastic, the metal, we can do concrete, we can do asphalt. Whatever the materials are on that job site, we want to separate them, consolidate them. So like a bunch of loose cardboard and loose plastic and a Burger King bag all mixed together, that's trash. But if you separate out that cardboard and you bail it into a thousand pound bale. Thousand pound bale of cardboard is worth 40 bucks. And there's a market for. It's a commodity.
1,000 pound bale of clear virgin plastic is worth 90 bucks. Yeah, that's a commodity. There's a, there's a market for that.
Say 90 bucks, big deal. Well, if you got thousands of those coming off of a job site, those numbers add up fast.
Wood is an incredible material. It can be used in so many different ways. We talked about hydrogen earlier. You can use wood waste to produce hydrogen. You can use wood waste to produce electricity. You can use wood waste to generate biochar. That can be used as a cement additive or a soil additive. Wood is just an incredible material. We should not be buried in landfills. So when woodchuck comes onto a job site, we're typically able to recover 75 to 90% of the material that normally is thrown away and find a second value for that. So what we're doing is reducing waste. Because of those efficiencies and the cost savings, we're reducing costs and we're generating more energy. So right now, today, we have way too much waste. We don't have near enough energy. We're tying those two problems together, reducing waste and turning it into energy. So it's really kind of a simple, elegant solution that can make any development more sustainable, more cost effective, and more energy independent.
[00:40:55] Speaker A: You know, I like that you took something that people would see as a constant problem. You turn it into, well, a promising business opportunity, a way to kill multiple birds with one stone. In the sense of you're taking waste, turning into energy, and just being more efficient and effective and reducing costs altogether. I mean, when it comes to business, that's a win, win, win. I mean, you can't really beat that if you ask me. And any one of my clients would love the idea of, okay, how can we accomplish all these things all at once? But outside of just that, is there anything else or where do you possibly see the most promising entrepreneurial opportunities created by that intersection of AI and energy? Are there any other opportunities there?
[00:41:35] Speaker B: There's so many opportunities. It is absolutely ubiquitous. I mean, we're seeing this really interesting convergence of big tech, construction, utilities, all converging into the same space. You know, like utilities, electric utilities that have been around forever, right? Decades and decades, just this sleepy industry nobody thinks about. Your electric bill comes, you pay it, you never think about it. Well, now, today, it's the forefront, right? All of a sudden, electric utilities are really sexy and everybody's talking about them. And construction has been around forever, doing construction for the same way for decades and decades. But we're seeing this convergence now where it's all coming together in the AI infrastructure required to meet all of this demand for AI energy demand. So we're really seeing a resurgence in the United States and really the world in building infrastructure. And I've seen lots of different quotes.
Our current increase in energy capacity is the single biggest infrastructure investment since the Industrial Revolution. We are rebuilding the world right now. And, and it's really, to some extent, it's a race. Whoever, energy and I cannot be separated the same. When we talk about data centers, we define them in terms of how much energy they consume. Is it, is it a 1 gigawatt, a 2 gigawatt, how big is that data center? And they're just, they're inseparable.
And so as we're looking at this, this interesting convergence of all these different, you know, what once were separate verticals now into the same space, there's so much opportunity for innovation. Where are the efficiencies that we can drive here? What are the old processes that we've been using over and over for decades that can be improved? How do we find efficiencies and how do we drive those efficiencies to reduce costs and improve the cost effectiveness of that project? So there's tons of opportunities.
Energy is a huge piece of it, right? There's so many smart minds building innovations, launching startups in the energy field. And that's almost, I would say, limitless because again, we've got, we don't have a clear energy solution right now. There's a lot of different options, but we didn't even know what all of our options are yet. And a lot of these options are still in development.
So huge opportunity there.
Construction is an old industry. And you can put in waste hauling along with that and material recovery along with that.
Industry's been around for a long time doing things the same way. So there are opportunities to bring today's new technologies to and disrupt or re energize those old industries. What Woodchuck does in particular.
We're taking AI technology. We're not creating new AI technology, we're using existing AI technology Computer image recognition. And we're applying that to this sleepy old industry of waste management to completely turn the tables on the cost efficiency. So we're using AI to drive so much more cost efficiency within the waste handling industry.
There's a thousand opportunities like that. We found one in the waste area, and we're diving in and leaning hard into bringing this solution to the construction of data centers and providing real value to the, to the people there.
So look at construction, look at energy, look at utilities. And where can you apply today's technologies to identify old inefficiencies and drive new efficiencies, reduce cost and improve profitability?
[00:44:59] Speaker A: I love that because you were also able to outline some of those partnerships between the technology companies, utilities, investors and communities and kind of why that all has to flow together and throughout some of the other segments, you know, previously you're able to kind of talk about how, you know, the benefits of that. But I think you're also really touching base on when all of those things work together and find opportunities together. There are things like you found, you know, that the, the bridge between AI, waste management, utilization, things like that. There's a lot of new opportunities that are underway, and some we might not even see yet, but we might miss a lot of those things if we're not really paying attention and collaborating on the new emerging opportunities with data centers, the technology growth, and the new ways to utilize energy better. But, you know, it does kind of raise a bit of a question. You know, briefly, you know, what's one assumption about the future of energy that business leaders should be challenging right now?
[00:45:58] Speaker B: Challenge all the assumptions. Don't take anybody's word for it. As you and I talked about in between segments, I have a perspective, right? I make my living in the building of data centers, right? That's how I make my living. So question everything. I tell you, I have a perspective, I have an agenda.
Don't take my word for it.
Go out there and find real information. But again, also like we talked about, don't take your information off Facebook or TikTok. Go and find actual sources of real information and make informed decisions. Because everybody has a perspective. And every answer you get, the first question you should ask is, who gave me that answer? And what's their perspective? Why would they answer that question that way? Right?
But there's so many opportunities out there.
One of the questions we get at Woodchuck, like we explain to people what we do at Woodchuck. Yeah, we take wood and instead of sending it the landfill, we turn it into energy. And the question we get all the time is, why aren't people already doing that? That's a great question. Why haven't we been doing that for decades? Nobody has. For whatever reason, because nobody thought to do that.
How many more opportunities are there like that out there? Hundreds. Limitless, right? So go find your problem. Go find your inefficiency.
Create a solution to solve it and build your solution. Bring it to the market.
[00:47:16] Speaker A: Exactly. When someone tells me there's no new ideas under the sun, it doesn't stick well with me because there's things like this that really, we just don't see it yet. We haven't figured it out yet. And for whatever reason why no one else has been doing what you do, there is opportunity there and there's countless other opportunities. So I've got to say thank you first and foremost for joining me on the show and diving into such a touchy yet big topic that is pretty relevant right now. I know it's not always, not always easy to dive into this type of stuff in a way that helps people truly understand and maybe even let their guard down, but I do appreciate you being here. It's been an absolute pleasure. And what I've got to say, you know, the future of AI will depend not just on software, but on the infrastructure and financial choices that truly power it. So, Todd, again, I'm just glad you're able to join me. It's been an incredible episode with you and I've learned a lot myself. Now to our audience again, I'm Ryan Herpin. This has been the bottom line. And don't forget, success isn't given, it's earned. And to earn it, you've got to become the person that deserves it. We'll see you next time on the Bottom Line.
