Welcome to zero I am Akshatrati this week a hidden electricity giant.

The demand for electricity is soaring, and you likely know why.

It's because of air conditioning, electric cars, and data centers powering artificial intelligence.

But if you looked at a list of the single biggest electricity consumers in the world, you would be surprised.

It's not just tech companies like Google or Meta, oil and gas firms like PetroChina or Shell, or retail giants like Amazon and Walmart.

It also has companies that you may not recognize linder, air licked air products.

These are all producers of industrial gases.

That's right.

These companies make things like nitrogen and oxygen and hydrogen gases that get used in steel manufacturing and refrigeration and chemicals production, among many other things that you are consuming on a daily basis.

Together, these three companies control about seventy percent of what is a one hundred and twenty billion dollar global market for industrial gases.

And because the production of these gases is energy intensive, individually, these companies consume as much electricity as small to medium sized European countries.

So as the world looks to electrify, faster and do so at lower energy prices and with fewer carbon emissions.

It's important we understand what these electricity giants are doing.

Today's guest is Sanjivlamba, CEO of Linda, the biggest of the three industrial gases companies, with operations in more than eighty countries.

What Linda does is a strong reflection of where the industry as a whole is going on climate goals.

So I wanted to find out from sun Jeev how he sees electricity demand changing, what Linda is doing to transition to cleaner sources, and whether low carbon hydrogen can ever become big business.

Do also check out a more deeply reported story I have on this topic of hidden electricity consumers on Bloomberg Green.

The link is in the show notes.

Also, if you have any feedback about this episode or any others, please write to me at zero Pod at Bloomberg dot net.

Welcome to the show, Sanjeef.

Thank you, Aksha.

Delighted to be here with you today.

So I grew up in India and there was a series of books that got me hooked on science and engineering, which is why I ended up studying chemical engineering and then doing a PhD in chemistry.

But I'm a journalist now, but that series of books still stays with me.

It was called How Things Work, and it had these engaging explanations and diagrams showing the insights of everyday things like a refrigerator or an iron, and it revealed the inner workings of everyday objects that most people didn't say and give me an insight and made me feel a little smarter than everybody else.

You run Linder and it does something that most people just aren't aware of.

So let's start with just trying to understand what does your business do.

That's a great way to start, uc SHOT and I'm delighted you read those books.

I remember reading them as well.

So industrial gases such as oxygen, nitrogen, organ hydrogen, carbon dioxide are largely invisible.

You can't smell them.

But the reality, uc shot is, and I say this often, you know, jokingly, to my friends and colleagues, they are in every bit of the world around you.

If you have an iPhone, we have a bit of our gases helping manufacture the chip that goes into the iPhone, or indeed the glass.

You know, if you're having a nice beer or a coke.

You know, the carbonation we provide in there makes all the difference.

Imagine a flat coke or a flat beer, it would be terrible.

So it's in different ways that we contribute to either the industrial processes, being very much part of the industrial process or in other cases we kind of as an example, will freeze about two billion pizzas a year.

I'm not quite sure who eats them.

Probably most of them go to my kids.

But that's another example of where industrial gases come into play.

What do we do These invisible molecules make our lives better, Whether it's your vegetables that are that are fresher, whether it's your television that is brighter and gives you a better quality picture, or of course your beer or your coke that that you will enjoy.

Maybe one example to try and give you the breadth or the diversity of applications as well, I'll start with oxygen.

It's a well known molecule.

You and I are breathing it as we speak, so it's obviously important to life, but we use it in manufacturing across a range of industries.

And I want to give you that breadth because it kind of is breathtaking if you.

Will, breadth giving too, bread.

Giving too indeed, but outside with metals right, so steel, No steel can be produced without oxygen, nitrogen and argon being being part of that.

But oxygen particularly or glass for instance, you know, if you're having a you know, a drink, you're using a glass that's had some oxygen built in it.

Aquaculture increasingly more oxygen usage in aquaculture today.

Now on the slightly more esoteric side, we help rockets launch using oxygen as part of the fuel that cambus.

Obviously we talked about breathing it.

Therefore, for health care, you know, during COVID, we had to bring medical oxygen from all over the world to hotspots where COVID patients were essentially gasping for oxygen, and we had to do our best to make sure that that was available.

Now, levels of purity, how the application actually happens, et cetera, that varies.

But the molecule itself is life giving.

It provides industrial you know, momentum in every industrialty or almost every industrial activity, and can be used to help humanity generally.

Give me an example of a weird gas.

Maybe it's not a big business, maybe it's not something you think about daily, but you know, is interesting is weird?

Oh, there are many at the most interesting levels in nitros oxide obviously also known as laughing gas, essential in many surgeries and procedures as an anesthetic.

Yes, but also there's recreational use of nitrosoxide.

Let's be careful here.

We have done a lot of education around to make sure that that you know, is not something that is actively done.

And I think, but you're right.

I mean every you know, every product in the world has elements that can be abused around it.

Helium is the other one which is an interesting gas.

I think it's it's one that has you know, wide usage from semiconductors to MRIs for cooling of course, and then I mentioned, you know, cryogenic cooling using helium and helium isotol for quantum computing.

Just because I am a nerd and I feel like this is a stat that people should know about.

The fact that people could perhaps share is that hydrogen, the first element on the periodic table, is so light that if it escapes, it can escape the gravity of Earth and go into space.

Helium does that too, to some extent, but not as easily as hydrogen does it let's come to the business side.

You talked about all these gases.

Just talk me through where are you seeing the business grow, where is it shrinking, and where is it most uncertain?

So industrial gases, because of the nature of the application that I just described to you, the breadth that we see are embedded in every industrial activity and beyond.

So for us, growth is intrinsically linked to how the economic activity is progressing around the world, and we often, you know, kind of think of ourselves as a proxy for industrial activity.

So for us, the industrial production index or IP is really where you know, we see the most level of correlation, if you like, in terms of where growth for gases comes from.

Clearly, you know, we've been in a kind of an industrial recession over the last two two and a half years.

When we look around the world, industrial activity hasn't been growing at that level.

But intrinsic to every industrial activity and every industrial cycle is the growth of gases.

The growth today is coming from largely the resilient markets, which are healthcare, food, and beverage.

It doesn't matter, you know, if the economy is doing well or otherwise.

People have to eat and they have to go go and visit a doctor or oftentimes even go to the hospital.

Electronics, which because of this momentum around AI, data centers, et cetera, is finding, you know, a lot of opportunity providing a lot of opportunity for growth as well.

So again, I think those resilient markets are proving to be exact actually that being resilient through this economic cycle and providing some growth for us.

So this is a climate podcast, and I want to spend a lot of our time talking about energy and emissions and hydrogen.

Now, as a trained chemical engineer, I knew these gases are very energy intensive to produce, but there were still things about Linda's scope one and two emissions that surprised me when I was looking at your sustainability report, because if you add up your scope one and two emissions, they're actually comparable to what we think of as carbon giants like Chevron or BP, or even retail giants like Amazon and Walmart.

So what have you done as a company to reduce your scope one and two emissions?

That's a great question.

And Acsha, let me start off by providing a headline and then I'll break it down and tell you how we think about sustainability and the impact that we have, and I'm going to give you some real examples to kind of illustrate and make the point.

The headline that I want to just leave you with is our products and services and technologies have helped our customers avoid ninety six million metric tons of COOTO equivalent.

That's an important piece.

That's two point six times the emissions that we have on our own.

So that's an important piece to just keep in mind.

And where does that happen.

So let's give those real examples to underpin that.

Let's start with steel, right, a large customer for us.

For steel, every one percent of oxygen enrichment that we do in a blast furnace increases productivity by about five and a half percent, and that's important because that leads to lower emissions.

If you look at Linda's contribution in the last year, so twenty twenty four, you'll see this in our sustainable report as well.

For steel making a loan, we helped avoid eleven point nine you know, million metric tons of COEO to equivalent.

So there's an example where obviously we have an energy intensive process in the air separation, but the gases that we provide then help reduce and abate eleven point nine million metric tons of ZEO too equivalent for steal alone.

The same applies for desalturization for fuels.

Right here we provide hydrogen as an agent for cleaner fuels, and essentially last year we helped our customers avoid sixty seven point two million metric tons of COEO too equivalent through this desulfurization process, making clean fuels.

Well before people were thinking about you know, clean hydrogen, clean energy, et cetera, we were already on the path to doing that.

But we're not satisfied with that.

So we set out a sustainability roadmap and we set some goals for ourselves for Scope one and two.

Our goal is to reduce our Scope one into emissions thirty five percent by twenty thirty five, while we continue to grow and help our customers continue to reduce and abate SEO two at their end.

So I think that's an important metric to keep in mind.

We've also said that by twenty fifty we expect to be climate neutral, and that's again a big obligation.

Now I have to be honest and tell you lot needs to happen around the grid.

Scope to emissions, which I think we have less control over, but we obviously are doing a lot of work around that, doing our bit to make sure that we're supporting the planet.

And it's at a time where I think that that change and sustainable effort is essential.

I think remains a critical piece on our agenda and something that we take ownership of.

Let me come to electricity as well, but before I do, the measure around two point six times of emissions avoided relative to what you produce is a useful measure to know, so that you know that there are impacts that are positive on the carbon balance sheet.

But I'm sure you're also aware that avoided emissions as a accounting method has its challenges and are tricky to use and sometimes very much open to abusing, and which is why there has been some movement towards making these scope for emissions sort of these emissions that are influencing or helping some other to account for them, but they don't really negate, so to speak, the emissions that the company is generating in the process.

Those still need to be reduced.

So that's why you said you have this climate plan, which you know is there for a good reason.

It's not just that you can only help others avoid emissions, you also have to reduce your own.

Actually, i'll make two points over here.

The first I want to make is our first Sustainabiley Report came out in twenty thirteen, well before it became fashionable to talk about sustainability and set goals.

Our carbon productivity measure was instituted at that point in time.

It's almost twelve thirteen years ago.

It's not new, it's something that stood the test of time.

It's something that we've publicly communicated every year.

So I just want to make the point that we don't do this because it's fashionable or you know, esgs, you know, in everyone's focus.

We do it because it's the right thing to do.

Our mission as a corporation is to make our world more productive sustainably, and I think our sustainably roadmap, you know, kind of leads us into that mission that we're trying to achieve.

So you're absolutely right, and I think from our perspective, we are not really you know, either concerned or excited about the carbon accounting of a measure of abatement and support that replied to a customer.

We believe it's right for the planet that we do that, and I think that's one of the reasons we will continue down that path.

So coming to electricity, Yeah, it is kind of surprising that Linda consumes as much electricity as the entirety of Denmark.

And even if we look at just comparing you to other companies, Linda's electricity consumption is as much as Google or Microsoft, or if we look at oil and gas companies, as much as Sinopeck and Total Energies.

Linder consumes a lot of electricity and that also means that electricity must be a big part of your spending.

So what have you done to try and reduce the amount of electricity that you are using.

That's a great question.

So you know, most of these large industries have outsourced their gas requirements to US, which previously was captive and therefore you know those emissions scope to emissions would sit in their balance sheet.

They've outsourced that to us for a number of reasons, including the fact that we are constantly thinking about how we make that process more efficient.

But also more importantly, actually the fact that we are a large consumer of electricity is in some ways a good thing because it gives us the leverage that we need to push to say how renewable energy can become a larger part of that portfolio of energy that we consume.

Let's talk about what are we doing about it?

That was your question.

Let me answer that fairly directly.

In my mind, our sustainability goals put us on a path to ensuring that every action we can take to reduce electricity consumption and to ensure that we increase the portion, the proportion of low carbon energy that we can access, you know, for our operations is a key measure, not just a key measure.

Actually we have that metric sitting in the compensation program for our leaders as well, including my own, to make sure that it has the focus that it deserves.

There are two ways we address that issue.

The first is by reducing consumption, and the way we do that is by continuously looking at our operations, finding innovation, finding solutions that ensure that we're creating a higher efficiency ratio within that, investing in technology that shows that happens.

A good example of that is, you know, we've introduced a flex asu flex a su a sus you know are notorious for not being able to turn down effectively quickly.

Yeah, I think it's worth explaining what an ASU is because that's the core part of your gases.

So an air separation unit, which and tell me what one looks like, because I feel like most people haven't seen one.

But it's supposed to use energy, typically either coming from electricity or from some form of fuel that is making steam which is then running a compress, right, and so yeah, describe what an AESU looks like and tell us what part of it needs to become more efficient and how do you move away from fossil fuels in the process.

So I could spend hours describing an air separation I'll resist that temptation.

Actually, then just say that if you're driving down and you see a very large one hundred and fifty to two hundred meters tall white column, usually with the Linder logo on it, that is the column that does the distillation for an air separation.

What effectively happens is we take air, we use electricity, and through a process of distillation, we're able to separate the gases.

We have large storage tanks, usually also white and large, into which we will take the liquid oxygen, liquid nitrogen, and liquid organ After having liquified the gases.

Some amount of gases will go to a gas pipeline and serve a customer directly as steel mill or a semiconductor fab and the others will go into these tanks and be stored as liquor quid cryogenic liquids, which will then be put into row tankers.

Again, you may see some of these and transport it to our mid sized customers where we would provide that liquid oxygen nitrogen organ for their industrial processes and usage.

And people should realize, like even though air is everywhere, to be able to separate these gases requires just a ton of energy compressing a gas.

And you know, if you're providing gases that are at minus two hundred degree celsius, you know, nitrogen is minus one ninety six degree celsius.

That's a lot of energy that needs to be taken out of the system, which is what these separation units are doing.

Now, you said electricity, but some of them also just use fossil fuels, right, They'll generate steam and then the steam is running compression plants.

Actually it's not our preferred option to use steam, but there are steam drives and that usually happens when the customer has excess steam available and wants to find a way to utilize that.

So in some ways that excess steam is effectively utilized using a steam drive that runs the ASUS and provides the power that would otherwise have come through the grid, And I think that's one way to think about it.

I have to say, most of this steam driven assets that we have sit in China, which are integrated into an industrial park where customers typically would have excess steam available, and many of those are going through a process of conversion to electric drive.

So from our perspective, that is an area that we would like to address as quickly as possible, and in fact, I'm pleased that really we've already undertaken I think two to three conversions already, and I expect most of the other conversions will happen fairly quickly.

But let's talk about the grid, because that's where most of our power consumption comes from.

So as grids are seeing more and more renewable power, you're also seeing greater volatility on the grid and the ability to access power the FLEXASU and I said earlier on for a ASU to turn down at short notice is quite a challenge.

Our FLEXASU design is being specifically done allowing production levels that can be optimized to synchronize with the availability of renewable energy, and that flexibility I think will go a long way.

We have, as you know, a flex asure currently operating, and we're looking at deploying many more for exactly the reason that we can now synchronize with the ebbs and flows that come from renewable energy coming into the grid.

We're now using AI based models that we've trained over the last few years, using our own propriety technology and models to find ways of increasing operational efficiency as well.

So you know, a good example of that is when we know that there is variability on access to power, we're able to you know, run the power up, run the ASU up using the power available, build some stock levels through a predictive mechanism which kind of looks at what the grid is doing, you know, what our production levels are, what the customer inventory is, and triangulating a lot of that data and trained to focus is to the level of production we can have whereby we are actually running the air separation units at the most optimum level that we can.

The second piece I want to just talk about is sourcing low carbon power.

So, as you said, you know, we do consume a fair amount of power, and we have made some really good progress in sourcing renewable power, and I think that's an important piece as well in trying to manage our scope to emissions, but more broadly, provide the impetus that the renewable energy development needs by ensuring that we are signing PPAs we are in some cases even participating in those projects directly ourselves, either through equity or providing bankable guarantees to those projects, and ensuring that those projects then come to fruition.

And I think since twenty twenty one, I think, if I'm not wrong, our data would be that we have literally, you know, through pow purchase agreements in places like the US and China and India, Spain and Philippines and many other markets.

You know, we've almost now doubled our consumption of renewable energy.

Let's look at the fine print of that.

Forty seven percent of electricity comes from low carbon power, according to your sustainability report, but only about twelve percent comes from power purchase agreements that if you directly signed up rest of it.

So the thirty five percent is green because of things called energy attribute certificates or renewable energy credits, and those are at one point they were very important instruments to try and bring on more renewable energy onto the grid when it was more expensive.

It needed this additional layer of payment in the form of a renewable energy credit.

So what power plant producers did is not just provide the power, but they also got this additional layer, which is like, because it's green power, we can also provide you the attribute of green power.

So anybody can consume the electricity, but we'll give you the attribute if you give us a little premium.

Those certificates and those attributes now are by most experts considered non additional, which is to say, they are not driving more renewables to be added to the grid.

So what are you doing to move away from renewable energy credits or energy attribute certificates.

We've never been fans of credits or attribute certificates, to be honest, and our view always has been that we want to be participating in additionality the point that you just made in creating new renewable energy assets on the ground.

So as an example in India where we have a very aggressive Program for Sourcing renewable energy.

These are all PPAs that we signed with new generation facilities that are coming up, and we continue to push, push hard on that you talked about twelve percent.

I mean, I want to go back and remind you that over the last four years we've doubled that.

So there is an active push today to move forward and ensure that we're signing PPAs that allow us to be able to access the clean electron that actually goes into our system.

I think that's the way to go.

There isn't there isn't another way.

I think that, you know, has to be the purpose that we all embrace and kind of move forward with.

So I'll give you two examples just to kind of illustrate the point where we think we've been successful.

And obviously it's been helped by the fact that those countries have you know, done a lot of work to get there.

The UK is a good example of that.

You know, in the UK, almost entire user power that we have is actually renewable.

Another good example of that is Brazil, where most of our power comes from hydroelectric and again those are great sources of renewable energy, and those countries have over time build those assets in We're just hoping to see the same scale of build up.

And again I mentioned India because I'm excited about what I see in terms of developments in India at the moment, I'm excited about China.

To be honest, I'm seeing a lot more push three years ago that wasn't the case.

I am pretty bullish on the fact that we will see the renewable energy development happen now.

There is all this AI data center hype that's not hype.

Should correct myself there and say, there is an AI data center development that is going to pull on that renewable energy.

At the moment, any electron is welcome, but renewable energy will clearly be a target electron for them as well.

So there will be a little bit more increased competition in sourcing those electrons, but we remain quite committed to moving forward in that direction.

Join us after the break for more of my conversation with Sanji Blamba and Hey, while I've got you here, fancy writing us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Recently, Moira wrote my number one podcast for Climate Updates.

Thank you, Moira.

Coming to hydrogen and your role as the co chair of the Hydrogen Consoles Board.

It's a that obviously does things today in the real economy that are very important and crucial.

Most of the hydrogen that is produced used in places like a refinery come from natural gas, so gray hydrogen, as it's known.

There is a move to try and a move that to green hydrogen, but also find ways in which green hydrogen could play a role in cleaning up other areas of energy use.

Where do you stand on hydrogen as an opportunity for the industry.

It's been something that people have talked about as a promise to thing for a long time, but it needs renewable electricity to be produced, It needs in many places government subsidy to be actually affordable for industry.

Do you see this as a business opportunity or do you think green hydrogen's time is never going to come?

So I'm going to rephrase that respond by saying, I absolutely believe clean hydrogen is a great opportunity for industrial decarbonization broadly and for US as an industrial gas company.

I mentioned clean hydrogen and I'm going to kind of elaborate a little bit more on that.

I'm sure you're going to ask me that anyway, But let's just talk about the Hydrogen Council for a minute.

So the Hydrogen Council recently issued this Global Hydrogen Compass Report, which I think is a really good piece of work, and you know, as it's a CEO led organization, therefore, the insights that we're able to marshal out of that, you know, are quite amazing.

And I think the conclusions that came out of that was the hydrogen development is maturing.

We're over the hype cycle, HiPE cycles done, We're now seeing a more mature development.

They pointed out that there have been about five hundred projects that have gone to a FID or are under construction, commissioning, or operational.

That's an investment of about one hundred and ten billion, which has picked up significantly over the last three or four years.

And I think that that's an important measure of validating the role that hydrogen is going to play going forward, particularly clean hydrogen is going to play in helping the process of industrial decarbanization.

It's also true to say that while we went through this euphoria or hype around clean hydrogen development go back three or four years ago, hydrogen today and the demand and the supply side dynamics that we see are real now.

In our case, we've selected those projects carefully.

Not only that, for us, there are some conditions to be met.

A good condition for that is we need a binding long term off take agreement.

For us, that's a critical measure of whether a project is going to move forward or not.

And I'll give you two examples where we've achieved that, which are under construction today.

The first is, you know, our example of working with Woodside as a partner in Beaumont, Texas.

Here we will supply low carbon hydrogen to their world scale ammonia complex.

You know, we will produce the hydrogen.

We'll also produce the nitrogen.

In the case of hydrogen, we'll be doing auto thermal reforming, which provides for a highly concentrated SOEO to stream which can be captured.

In this instance, about just over two million metric tons of CO two will be captured, and we are using a partner to sequester that down hole.

That's not expertise we have, so we have to work with a partner to do that.

We'll be working with them to sequester that downhole and there by providing low carbon hydrogen to wood Side for their Cleanneumonia process that they are instituting.

The other example is, you know, spending more than two billion dollars in Alberta, Canada, and there it is for helping Dow on their Path to Zero project, which is you know, basically providing hydrogen and atmospheric gases to help them decarbonize their ethylene and derivative production facility that sits over there that they're also in the process of expanding.

Here's an example of bringing up an investment case together, working with a good counterparty like Dow and making sure that you put that whole design parameters in place to provide low carbon hydrogen to DOO to allow them to move down the path of fuel switching to get to the decarbonized ethylene and downstream products that they will be looking at.

So two examples.

Now, for the last four plus years, maybe five years now action we've been operating an ATR and clearly where we've been capturing the CO two and are now providing that to Selenese who is a customer in terms of low carbon hydrogen captured CO two which they will then use for methanol production, which is an input into their process.

Here's a good example of something that's been operating for a number of years already.

This is not fictional, right, So when I say hydrogen supply side dynamics are real and available today at scale and competitively cost it.

Now you asked a question about green hydrogen.

We are building a number of electrolyizers around the world, but electrolyzer technology and what I call renewable hydrogen, I don't like colors.

Just to make sure that I make this point now.

My view is we should walk away from colors which tend to be very emmotive and usually lead to misunderstanding and talk about carbon intensity, and I think that really is is the way to go, and reducing carbon intensity must be our purpose.

There is no option around that.

But you know, we are building a number of electrilyizers which will produce renewable hydrogen.

The challenge with the electrialized technology today is a scale and maturity.

We're currently building electoralizers from almost every conceivable OEM who can provide that technology, because we want to test each one of that and see, you know, where we can bring our expertise to enhance the efficacy and allow for that scale up to happen.

But I still see that at you know, probably five six seven years out to achieve scale maturity.

We like to run things twenty four to seven.

Electrilized technology isn't that robust, and it has a challenge around carpal intensity.

Capital cost for electricizers need to come down by sixty to seventy percent for them to be a viable with some marginal premium to higher carbon content hydrogen production.

And last, but not least, we talked about electricity.

So you need access to low cost renewable energy to be able to run these electrolyizers and produce cost effective renewable hydrogen as well.

Yeah, if you look at the stack of a typical green hydrogen project, ten percent capital cost is about electoralizers, forty percent is engineering works, and then forty percent is electricity that's going to be consumed to be able to produce hydrogen.

So your capexlessop x has a little more than ten percent, but it's it's it's still that's just a stack.

The balance of the plant is really where the challenge is.

And you know, balance of the plant is where you know most of the investment has to happen.

And it's interesting the examples you did bring up, were all methane being converted to hydrogen through carbon capture, which is the mature technology that's available now.

One question on carbon accounting is sort of more future oriented.

You do have a lot of businesses in the US.

There have been rollbacks on climate and energy policy in the US.

You know, one recent rollback that has happened is the Environmental Protection Agency has been told to stop measuring greenhouse gases or taking greenhouse gas measurements from companies, that kind of thing.

And I'll just pick that one example just to make a point, which is that it can have all sorts of downstream impacts that can affect your business.

So if the greenhouse gas emissions measurements aren't done, the carbon capture tax credit that comes from this CEO two being sequestered and put into the ground may not be given.

So how are you dealing with uncertainties?

Not just in the US, it's happening now there, but you know you work in so many countries around the world.

Policies changed left and right.

What's your way of dealing with these sorts of changes as.

We think about projects today in the cycle And I think you know a good example of that was the Hydrogen Council providing that that input.

That five hundred odd project's gone to FID and you know, looking to either getting constructed or in commissioning or in operations.

Many of those were banking on you know, regulatory frameworks or incentives or subsidies, and I think it's you know, one of the things that the report also does is creates a call to action, asking regulators to look at how they can provide stability and consistency of policy to help move these projects in the right direction.

There is a call to action both for governments as well as for corporations and advocacy groups to make sure that that urgency is well understood.

But five hundred projects did move forward, and that's an important testament.

So I would say to you what we're seeing in the market today reflecting that is projects of you know, high quality projects which are underpinned by sound economics and usually off takes continue to develop today, and they are reflecting that by putting money in feasibility studies, pre feed studies, feed studies.

All of these cost money, right because these are billion multiple billion dollar projects, so you have to have that investment happen.

People are making those investments.

That's what gives me the confidence to say that my expectation remains at sound economics and good quality projects with continue to see the light of day and will move to a FID as we move forward as well.

So I think that's that's an important pace.

One hundred billion, one hundred and ten billion precisely of investments in five hundred projects over the last four or five years is a pretty tremendous number.

I think we're never satisfied.

I have to agree with you.

I'd like to see more, but the reality is that's a good base on which to start the process.

That's about I think about six million tons maybe one million already in operation, about five five and a half coming on top of that.

So again I think the study provides some really good valid as to how we're moving behind, you know, beyond that hype cycle we saw initially, to a more mature model around this development, and I think there is a little bit more of policy certainty would provide a greater impetus.

And again the study says that we have a potential of unlocking another thirty million tons of hydrogen if we get that consistency to come through, And I think that's that's a good analysis that the Hydrogen Council has done.

Now let me go back to the start of our conversation and to say that you know, as you explain, Linda provides gases to real world projects and to the real economy, and so the way Linda proceeds in its climate plan is a way to look at how the real economy is going to be moving on its climate targets.

You know, it's a company that does so much but isn't always known to people because of the customers you have typically which is industry and not consumers.

But thank you so much for throwing light on the work you do, and thanks for this conversation.

Pleasure Roger, thank you, and.

Thank you for listening to Zero.

And now for the sound of the week.

That is the familiar sound of coffee being ground.

Coffee beans recently hit a record price, partly due to US tariffs, but also because of persistent drought in Brazil, which produces about forty percent of the world's coffee.

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This episode was produced by Oscar boy.

Our theme music is composed by Wonderly Special Thanks to Soamersadi Moses Andim Laura Milan and Sharon chen i'm Akshatrati back soon.