Robert Bryce, Energy Expert — Breaking Down the Energy Grid  (#64)

“European countries have looked at Russia and saying, oh, well, we can’t rely on Russian gas and they have a choice of paying, $12 or $13 for gas at TTF or having nuclear or coal. So, they don’t have another choice. They have been forced into nuclear effectively. Right. And then meanwhile, here you have big tech finally realizing with AI. Oh, we’ve been playing around with you know posing around wind and solar and you know.”

— Robert Bryce

Join us for this discussion with Robert Bryce, journalist, author, and energy expert, as we explore the complexities of global energy systems and the myths surrounding the energy transition. From the staggering scale of energy demands to the nuances of copper mining and nuclear power, Robert shares insights that will change the way you think about energy and its role in shaping the modern world.

In this episode, Robert and Jamie discuss:

• The distinction between energy and power and why it matters.

• The myths of energy transition versus energy addition.

• Challenges and opportunities in copper mining and renewable energy.

• The nuclear renaissance and its implications for energy demand.

• Why community opposition to renewables is growing worldwide.

• The intersection of AI, data centers, and escalating energy needs.

Please enjoy!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, or on your favourite podcast platform.

Enjoyed this episode? Sign up to our free newsletter to access to the latest podcasts, expert insights, and exclusive reports on our recent deals.

The transcript of this episode is included below.

Note: Transcripts may contain a few typos.

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Jamie: All right, Robert, we got you for a total of 55 minutes today. Welcome to The Resource Insider Podcast. You are, I believe, I was thinking about this before coming on here, our first published author on this podcast. So, I’ve had the chance to read at least one of your books. I read power hungry. I’ve been reading your blog slash sub stack, which you have recently monetized. And I am a happy subscriber with today I want to talk about your career. Who you are, what you do. And I think most importantly for our listeners. Your view on the energy markets and the world of energy and what maybe many of us are missing there. Can you start with your sort of 30,000 ft Bio for those of you who have not heard for those out there who have not heard of Robert Bryce? 

[00:00:55] Robert: Sure, of course. Well, first things first happily married to the same woman. My wife, Lauren, and I’ve been married 38 years. We just got back from Chile, had an amazing trip to Chile. Where I talked about mining and talked back, talked to a mining company signal coppers had some amazing birdwatching experiences there. So, I’m very fortunate in my life. And we have three great kids, Mary, Michael and Jacob. So those are, my wife, my family, those are the most important things in my life. So, let’s get the first things first. I’m a reporter. I’m an author. I’ve been a reporter my whole career, never had a real job. This is what I do. Been doing it now for 35, going on, well, pretty soon 40 years. And began writing about politics edited my high school newspaper, I guess, so I, even going back to my high school years, so I’ve always been interested in journalism, always loved newspapers. And then it was started in the newspaper trade back when there were newspapers actually broadsheet and wrote for the biweekly paper here in Austin, the Austin Chronicle. One thing led to another. I went to a high-tech magazine or a technology magazine in early 2001, wrote about high tech, visited the Enron building in the summer of 2001. And was introduced to Enron broadband, which I didn’t understand. And I asked the guy at Enron broadband, well, I don’t understand your business model. Can you explain it to me? And he went through it a couple of times. I said, well, look, I’m still, I’m. I don’t really know what you’re doing here. And he, eventually just said, well, you’re too dumb to understand. So, we need to find somebody smarter than you. Long story short, five months later, they were bankrupt. And I wrote my first book on Enron. I wrote it in 6 months called Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, and the Death of Enron. It was published in October of 2022. I can say without bragging, it was really the first serious book on the Enron failure. And then that led to another book. And I’ve now I’ve written 6 books. My latest is A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations. I’ve co produced two documentaries latest one is called Juice Power Politics in the Grid. So, I’m very fortunate in my career to do what I do. And really focused on energy and power now. And these are the biggest and most important industries in the world and every other business depends on them. So, very fortunate to do what I do. And still, now at age 64, feel like I’m still learning about what’s really going on because so big and so complex. 

[00:03:01] Jamie: So, there’s a couple of things I want to touch on. One you’re, I want to understand what, I mean, you touched on it, but what attracted you to the energy industry? You’re from Austin, not, I mean, obviously Texas is a bit of an energy hub, but not Austin in particular, but two your transition out of, call it traditional journalism into independent journalism. I’d love to hear how you made that journey as well. 

[00:03:26] Robert: Well, so, I’m from Oklahoma. Tulsa’s my hometown, which as a kid, my dad had a, he had an old Pontiac station wagon or no Pontiac sedan. And on the front, he had one of those old license plates that said Tulsa oil capital of the world. Well, it was the oil capital of the world for about 20 minutes. And now it’s clearly Houston, Texas. But the Glenpool, of course, and Oklahoma was a big oil producer and its oil production peaked in the 1920s actually. And, but Tulsa, but Oklahoma is still a big gas producer today. And so, as a kid, I grew up around the oil and gas industry. I had a quail in the oil fields. I was around the business and my dad had friends. He was in the insurance business, but he had friends in the energy business. And so, I grew up around it, understanding. Well, this is really international business and really an interesting one. And then when I started in journalism, I was writing about politics, but in the 90s, I started realizing, oh, I, I can write about energy and there’s a real interest in this and not very many people understand it. And so. Yeah. One thing, some accidents, some happy accidents, but I started writing about high tech. I started writing about power demand and data centers, believe it or not. And in 2000 and so made the switch to this technology magazine, which was, went defunct a few months later, but that was really a great, a happenstance to write about power demand and data centers back then. And I’m still writing about it today. But, in terms of my. Shift from working for newspapers because I wrote for the New York Times. I wrote, as a stringer of the Christian Science Monitor and a bunch of others. But the rise of Substack and my own journey through journalism, and I worked for a couple of think tanks unhappily and now, got fired by the Manhattan Institute five years ago. And I’ll tell you just being on my own. It’s just been the best part of my career. I’ve, saved the best for last. But being on Substack, being independent has been a real blessing because I think this is the trend in journalism now away from, I think it’s partly, we met in Vancouver a few months ago. I think we talked about this, but a general decline in the public’s trust of institutions of any kind. And I think the journalism business, the media business has really betrayed in many cases, the public trust and people. Now, what I see is people, individuals, readers looking for individuals who they trust and not institutions. And so, that’s one of the reasons I’m very happy to be on Substack robertbryce.substack.com. 

[00:05:45] Jamie: So. Given that you’re now independent and can talk about whatever you want, whenever you want to do it, what is the message you’re trying to convey or the stories that you’re trying to tell to people? 

[00:05:59] Robert: I like that question. I think it’s more than anything. I, what do I do? What do I focus on? I pound the math and I pound the physics. I pound the numbers because as I say, and I do a lot of public speaking, that’s really how I make my living now is I’m, I’ve got 48 engagements on my calendar this year, so I’ve travelled a lot and very fortunate to do so. I’m going to Idaho Falls tomorrow, and then I’m in Savannah next week, and then Wisconsin talking to the cooperative’s electric co-ops in Wisconsin. But I say these are the numbers and I present the numbers on the global systems, on the US electric market on the scale of global energy use and. And try. What is my mission? What do I hope to achieve? And what in my reporting is to help people. And I think about my mother, my late mother, when I write Ann Bryce that she could understand it the first time, right? That I can present numbers and the ideas that I’m presenting in the simplest possible way. I just did a wrote a piece on the cost of natural gas versus electricity. There’s a big push on for electrify everything and to ban the use of natural gas. Well, it’s a regressive tax because you’re going to force people to use a more expensive form of energy. So that’s what I hope to do is really use the math and physics to under underscore what’s really happening in our power and energy systems. And also, to make people understand how complicated it is. 

[00:07:19] Jamie: Now if you were to convey to our audience in a sort of a quick, simple way, what are the numbers that they should think about when understanding the reality of our energy and electrical system and electricity systems? What do people miss that they should be aware of? That the general po population, the general audience doesn’t know? 

[00:07:38] Robert: I’ll, I’ll put it this way. What is the first thing they must understand before they go forward is that energy and power are not the same things. They’re commonly confused. It’s not the same thing. Energy is the ability to do work. Power is the rate at which work gets done. Energy is a sum. Power is a rate. We don’t really care about energy. What we care about is power. So, I think about your vehicle I don’t know what kind of car you drive I have a you know a Toyota pickup well I don’t care I could put peanut butter or popcorn or lima beans in the fuel tank if I thought it would give me the motive power that I want. We don’t really care about what the energy form is. We care about the power like lighting power, magnification power, communications power. That’s what we’re after. So, energy is worthless unless we can make it flow. And that’s a key distinction. And even people who are in the energy sector don’t understand it. They don’t understand the difference and we use them interchangeably. And that’s a mistake. So that’s one of the starting points. The other is just the absolutely staggering scale of global energy use. And that people assume oh we can just substitute one thing for another no no no no no no no no no no no. It’s not the substitution is not so easy because the scale is so staggeringly large people talk about electric vehicles in the United States. Okay, great Oh, well sales are up and they’re this percentage of new car sales. Okay, well then that there might be 5 or 10% of new car sales. But of the existing fleet in the United States one example 285 million motor vehicles. Of that number, 3 million are electric vehicles. So that’s less. That’s about 1%. So, when you think gasoline is going away, you need to rethink because the scale is so infinitesimally small.

[00:09:25] Jamie: Yeah, I think about that a lot when you look at when they talk about in hard numbers of the rise of renewable energy and they talk about its growth rate, but it’s very I’m struggling to find the word here, but it’s almost like it’s intentionally presented in a way to be opaque so that you cannot see what a small portion of the pie that it actually makes up. And, I think it’s someone we both read and know of someone a blogger called Doomberg who talks about this idea of there’s no energy transition. There’s purely just an energy addition going on, right? That every molecule of energy gets used by someone. And that, even though China’s, investing, however, many billions of dollars in solar panels or wind farms, they’re investing even more in, in fire power plants, and it’s just growing and growing. And people do not understand how that system works. The number that was like truly staggering for me. And I think I only read this about a year ago was that I think it was oil surpassed coal as usage of fossil as like the percentage of energy in something like the 1950s, but that the use of coal today is still four or five times bigger than it was in the 1950s, even though it’s a much smaller portion of the pie. 

[00:10:46] Robert: That’s right. 

[00:10:47] Jamie: So. 

[00:10:48] Robert: And I’ll just build on that. So, I presented I did a webinar this morning for some folks in news data and one of the points that I made in that is that today, not my numbers, the numbers, right? I pride myself on the numbers, but if they’re not mine, this, so International Atomic Energy Agency and Global Energy Monitor today in China, there’s 100 and not under construction, not talked about, not in blueprint stage under construction, 173 gigawatts of coal fired capacity.

[00:11:15] Robert: They’re building 29 or almost 30 gigawatts of nuclear. So, they’re building nearly six times more coal fired capacity in China today than they are nuclear. In India, it’s roughly the same 30 gigawatts of new coal and about 5 gigawatts of new nuclear. So, we have to be that’s the other thing I really hope to achieve and what I do is we have to be very sober about where we are as Westerners right Canadians Americans Western Europeans about what we do in decarbonization and how it affects the big picture because that’s lost amidst all these claims about oh, we’re going to lead the world and all those, other people are going to follow us. No, they’re not. They’re going to look after themselves. 

[00:11:56] Jamie: You, do you see the Chinese or the Indians or these sort of call it non-Western powers, even if they’re paying a lot of lip service to the concept of an energy transition? It doesn’t appear to be happening now, but they say, by 2050 or beyond that’s going to happen. Do you think that’s something that a lot of other nations care about? Or do you think they’re purely paying lip service to that to the West to placate people? I think I’m asking you to speculate here, but what do you find in your research? 

[00:12:24] Robert: It’s all lip service, I think, and China said, oh yeah, we’re going to get right on that. No, trust us. Well, look at what is really happening. It’s that old line about watch what they say and look at but pay attention to what they do So they’re saying oh, we’re going to peak sometime in the future Well, okay. Yeah, sometime but you also look around your point about the energy addition and it’s a point I made and I show pretty much show one slide in pretty much every presentation I give which is that since 2004 according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, there’s been something like 4.7 trillion spent on solar and wind, 4. 7 trillion. And over that time frame from 2020 to 2023, wind and solar grew by, what was it, about 37 exajoules, something like that. At the same time hydrocarbon use grew by 120 exajoules. So, it grew three three times faster despite these trillions invested in wind and solar. So, this idea that we’re under some major sea change and that wind and solar is suddenly going to take over the world. No. Wrong. I mean, it’s just not the case look out the window and see how many cars go by and count how many are electric and count how many are using diesel or gasoline? It’s just you know, it’s vanishingly small. 

[00:13:34] Jamie: What are the challenges in wind and solar, right? Because you do hear these narratives that, they become economic and in many cases it’s cheaper than conventional fossil fuels etc. So, if that is true, then why aren’t they being rolled out and and out perform it? 

[00:13:50] Robert: Well, the physics reason is very simple. It’s power density. It’s low power density, and this is one of what I call the iron law of power density. The lower the power density, the higher the resource intensity. So, consider corn ethanol. Well, it has a very low power density because you’re trying to convert photosynthesis, which is a great process. Love me some photosynthesis, but it requires vast amounts of land. So, Bloomberg one of the very clever guys at Bloomberg calculated that in fact, the corn ethanol footprint in the United States is the size of Nebraska. The whole state that is set aside just for corn ethanol production. So, imagine the amount of inputs, the amount of land, the amount of fertilizer, diesel fuel, all, pesticides, all these things that you have to do to cover an area, the state of the size of the state of Nebraska. Well, so then go up from there where the power density of corn ethanol is measured in tenths of a watt per square meter. Wind energy is 1 watt per square meter. Solar is 10. So that’s better. Right. But still, what we see, what the limits are land use. And you see it. You’re Canadian. Look at what is happening in Ontario. I mean, a backlash all across the province against wind and solar projects. Look in, I know you’re in British Columbia.

[00:15:03] Jamie: Yeah, but you know, I’m from Ontario and where I grew up where my parents live is covered in wind farms now. It’s covered in, yeah, 

[00:15:10] Robert: I know. And the local people hate them. And this is what is happening all across all around the world. And so, I’ve maintained the renewable rejection database, which I think drives the 

[00:15:21] Jamie: Renewable rejection database. So, you track where the communities and whatnot, or local governments are coming out against it. 

[00:15:28] Robert: Yeah. And it’s, 

[00:15:29] Jamie: What are you seeing? 

[00:15:30] Robert: Well, increasing, the number just keep, the numbers just keep going up. So, these are just a few weeks out of date, but it just the US alone, at least 461 rejections or restrictions of wind energy since 2015 on the solar side, at least 274 since 2017.

[00:15:47] Jamie: And what’s the pushback? Is it they’re ugly? Is it they’re using land that could be used more productively? Like what is the pushback you see most commonly? 

[00:15:55] Robert: Very prominently. The diminution of local property values, which numerous studies have found that when you put up wind projects, local property values go down. There are people, this is the part that just, just frankly, just freaking pisses me off. You know that there are these NGOs climate activists who act like these rural people. Oh, they just don’t understand what’s good for them Oh, or it’s the hydrocarbon industry is convincing them to oppose solar and wind projects, right that there’s some big conspiracy No, there’s no conspiracy. I’ve talked with dozens of people all across the country all around the world. What are they doing? They’re fighting to protect the integrity and the character of their neighborhoods. Everyone everywhere cares about their neighborhoods and they don’t want to have their whole region covered in solar panels. A year ago, April. I was in Christiana, Wisconsin this little township. It’s in southeast of Madison. You if you picture in your mind’s eye what the bucolic perfect Wisconsin farmland looks like yeah, right. Black dirt jet black dirt, right? Perfect for corn and soybeans. The perfect silos, a lot different from the kind of the farms in Oklahoma, Texas aren’t quite so picturesque.

[00:17:08] Jamie: Yeah. 

[00:17:09] Robert: The plan is afoot to cover something like eight square miles of some of the best farmland in all of Wisconsin with solar panels. And the people in this township are saying, we don’t want this bullshit here. We don’t want this for some green. Oh, no, we want maintain this AG land. And this is the AG pushback.

[00:17:27] Robert: And there’s a group here in the US called Farmland First, that local people are concerned about maintaining agricultural land for agriculture. And this is happening again, all over the world, including in Italy.

[00:17:38] Jamie: But 

[00:17:39] Robert: it’s something, by the way, that I get worked up about. 

[00:17:41] Jamie: Yeah, no, I can see that 

[00:17:43] Robert: These people getting run over by big money by big NGOs, big corporations, big law firms, because there’s so much money at stake under the Inflation Reduction Act, billions of dollars at stake. And so, in many cases, these, these big outfits are suing local communities to try to force them to take projects they don’t want.

[00:18:02] Jamie: And is that what it is? Like we can look at this from different ways. What is driving the aggressive output to renewable energy? On the one hand, you can take the quite optimistic view that people care about the environment and the climate and they’re trying to do the right thing and yada yada. Then you can go I know many of our listeners like this, the more conspiratorial view it’s, it’s the World Economic Forum or some shadowy group of figures that’s trying to get control of people and take over everything. And then I think there’s the middle view that there are economic incentives to make this happen and people are acting towards those incentives. What, where do you, what do you feel is happening here? What do you see happening? 

[00:18:40] Robert: Well, the big push for wind and solar has nothing to do with climate change. It’s all about money. It’s just, there’s no, these corporations, they don’t have an ideology. Their ideology is their bottom line. They’re trying to make as much money as they can.

[00:18:55] Jamie: So, explain that. Why are they making so much money on this type of energy? 

[00:18:59] Robert: Because the Inflation Reduction Act is providing tens of billions of dollars in incentives. So why are companies like well BP is now saying it’s getting off of the offshore wind business. But Orsted, Equinor European companies coming into US waters to try and build offshore wind projects It’s because they can collect up to 40% or maybe even slightly more of the project cost in tax credits. So, it’s all driven by the desire to feed at the federal teat. This isn’t about climate change. There’s no moral behind this that this is about cash. And that’s the part that I see over and over again and how you know, some of these climate activists. Oh, you know these local people they’re just you know, they’re being misguided and they’re being swayed by fossil fuel interests. No Damn it. No, they’re fighting to protect their neighborhoods their homes their homesteads and well they should and I get worked up about it because I’ve met so many of these people. I’ve considered some of them my friends. And, they are motivated and they’re outgunned and outmanned and out mediated. But it’s a lot of middle-aged women working at their kitchen tables, trying to, fight off forces that they don’t really even understand how big and how powerful they are. 

[00:20:13] Jamie: Across the United States. What do you have these small, often rural communities affected by this. What are, how do local politicians respond to this? Like are congressmen on side with the people or are they more side of the corporations? What, how do you see that? 

[00:20:28] Robert: That’s interesting because the answer is it depends, right? But what I’ve seen over and over again, in fact, Madison County, Iowa, home to the bridges of Madison County, right? A famous movie, famous Broadway play, famous book in that County. They had a recall election on the board of supervisors and or actually, I don’t know if it was a recall or it was a scheduled election, but the election hinged on the candidates positions on solar and wind energy. And so, they, the people who were in favor of wind and solar got voted out and the ones who were opposed got voted in. And so, this I’ve seen many times in small in rural towns, rural cities, where the election hinges on this one issue. So, when it gets to more of the federal level, where congressmen are involved in some, it’s not quite as prominent. Although what I have seen, in fact, just in Oklahoma I’m from Tulsa. A new friend of mine, Jim Shaw, was elected to the Oklahoma House, defeated a four-term incumbent, and he ran on an anti-wind platform. And he won in Chandler, Oklahoma. So, these issues are very, getting, they’re prominent and getting more so. 

[00:21:35] Jamie: So, if you had to look ahead in the United States, say 10 years into the future maybe a little longer than that, maybe 20, because it’s going to take some while to work through all that money. How do you think the grid looks at that time? Are we, obviously you don’t think we’re all running on solar panels and wind farms. What do you think the U. S. grid looks like? 

[00:21:53] Robert: Well, it’s going to look. I think a lot like what it looks like now. I think coal will largely disappear and that coal share will largely be replaced by gas by within 20 years. We should have a fair amount of new nuclear on stream in the United States. I’m guessing you probably have maybe 10 gigawatts on by 2035. But remember, and this is something I presented on this morning. Yeah. Was that the scale again of the US electric grid is so staggeringly large. So, it’s 1300 gigawatts, 13, it’s 1.3 million megawatts. I mean, it’s hard to get your mind around. So. 

[00:22:31] Jamie: It’s hard to visualize that. 

[00:22:33] Robert: So even if you add so for instance the Vogtle three and four there are two new nuclear reactors that were added in Georgia. These are the there are no nuclear reactors under construction in the United States today. They’re projects that are moving dirt. But they’re not building the reactors themselves. So, there were two reactors built in Georgia. They’re AP1000s roughly 1100 megawatts of capacity 1.1 gigawatts. So together 2.2 gigawatts. Even if you added 10 more of those. It would still add about 11 gigawatts. That’s about 1% of the total installed capacity of the United States electric grid. I mean, so it’s going to take a long time for nuclear to move the needle in the United States. In the meantime, what’s going to be added? Well, I think a lot more solar. We’re going to add a lot more batteries this has been something that’s frankly has been surprising to me in Texas for instance where it’s a deregulated market or supposed free market. There’s no such thing as a free market in electricity but batteries have played a bigger role in Texas than I expected. And that’s been an interesting development, but I think solar and batteries are going to be where most of the investment is going because wind out wind production, wind installations are declining and solar is is far outstripping the growth in wind in the United States now.

[00:23:42] Jamie: What do you think about the conversion of coal fired power plants to nat gas? Is that going to play a bigger and bigger role? I read something the other day and I bet you know these stats better than I do, but it’s something like 2/3 of the decarbonization that’s occurred in America over the last decade or so can be attributed from moving from coal to natural gas.

[00:24:02] Robert: That’s right. And that’s definitely the case. I mean, that’s true. And those are EIA numbers. I mean, something like 60%, something like that, 61, 62%. And wind and solar I don’t call them renewables. I don’t call them green; I don’t call them clean. They’re alt energy. Wind and solar, they have had a role there as well. But almost all of the decarbonization that’s occurred in the United States has just been on the electricity side. Transportation is going to be very hard and will take decades if. 

[00:24:28] Jamie: Yeah. 

[00:24:28] Robert: If it ever happens because I’m not bullish on electric vehicles. 

[00:24:33] Jamie: I mean, you look at what’s happening right now, nat gas prices in Texas and the Permian where they’re basically giving it away for free sometimes paying people to take anything that gas went negative earlier this year. I mean. 

[00:24:45] Robert: It was negative. It was -$4 in July. I think it was. I mean, so it wasn’t just a, a, a few pennies. It was it was you had producers paying a lot of money to get rid of their gas and still prices went up for a little bit. I’m just looking at the front month price for Henry Hub. It’s $2.33 and it went up to about $2.60/$2.70 but now it’s back down to $2.30. 

[00:25:06] Jamie: And these prices, these numbers were like $10 during peak COVID times as well too, right? So, they’re way, way down. And what are they in Europe now? Something like $15, right? So, it’s, I think we’re trading in North America at like a quarter or a fifth of the prices in Europe at any given time.

[00:25:22] Robert: Yeah, it’s generally about a fifth or a sixth. Let me see, TTF right now, that’s the Dutch trading hub, is $12.50. So almost 6X. So what? And then in the JKM marker I keep these bookmarked the JKM. It’s about $13 bucks. Yeah, it’s it’s $12.98. Yeah, so $13. 

[00:25:41] Jamie: I mean, when you look at the US having what I believe are the biggest nat gas reserves in the world, they’re generating them at almost free much of it’s a byproduct of oil generation. I mean, when you think about that on the one hand you think about how much less carbon intense it is than coal. And then you think about the, how, what did you say? $5 trillion that have been spent on solar and wind and subsidies. I mean, what does like, what would the United States look like if that $5 trillion or a fraction of that was invested into capturing that gas, doing some form of carbon capture and sequestration, maybe if your priority is stripping CO2 emissions out of that. I mean, what would the grid look like then? To me, that just seems like such an obvious no brainer use of capital but no one, but people hate it. So why do they hate it? I know I’m asking you to answer an unanswerable question, but why?

[00:26:34] Robert: I mean my, my counter to that would be that 5 trillion should have been spent on nuclear power, right? That should have been on developing new, safer, smaller reactors, and deploying them. And instead, it was put toward wind and solar because they pull well, people like the idea of wind and solar. But I think, this is again about scale, but it’s also about money. And it’s also about this kind of romance about, alternative energy, right? That, oh, the wind and the sun are free. Well, that may be the case, but turning them into usable power is not. It’s very expensive and it requires a lot of land. And the other part of that I talked about briefly, I’ve touched on the iron law of power density. The lower the power density, the higher the resource intensity. Well, this is key because, I mean, a lot about mining and I’m getting more and more acquainted with it and understanding what the scale problem is there. And It’s not just that corn, ethanol and solar and wind require a lot of land, they require massive amounts of steel, copper, concrete, other, neodymium iron boron magnets, silicon, all of these things are required to counter the low power density that’s inherent in those forms of dilute forms of energy that they’re trying to convert into concentrated energy in the form of electricity. So, it’s one of the reasons why I’m so pro nuclear, super high-power density, 2000 watts per square meter. Wind energy is one. So, when you have that high power density, you necessarily use less stuff. So, I, we talked about copper when we chatted back and we had coffee in Vancouver, and this is one of the parts that to me is really among the most interesting things in the, in terms of the commodity markets today and about, well, what happens now? Because as I said, I was in Chile last week and talking to the guys at Sigdo Koppers and there are a lot of projects projections about oh, we have to double copper output to meet demand for EVs and for alt energy, and the Chileans are saying, are you kidding me? Well, our production has been flat for 20 years. We’re not going to double. 

[00:28:25] Jamie : So by the time this podcast comes out, the one I recorded last week should be out, which was a guy with an, by name, a guy by the name of Adam Simon from the University of Michigan who wrote that report that’s quoted by, I think every basically copper executive in the world has quoted this at least a hundred times in every presentation they’ve done, which is by 2050, we’re going to need to mine more copper than has been mined in all of human history. And we talked at length about, it doesn’t exist. It’s like, it’s not even that those mines haven’t been built. They haven’t even been found yet. And we don’t know that we can find them or where we can find them. So, what brought you like, what got you into copper? Cause that’s what we met in Vancouver a couple of months ago to talk about. You were starting to really dive into that. What piqued your interest there? 

[00:29:10] Robert: Well, I’ve been interested in it for a while, and but I was hired to do a speaking engagement in Viña del Mar in Chile, and this happened about six months ago, and I was invited, and I thought, well, okay, I better try and I better really apply myself to think about what is really going on here. And this is the part that you know once I started to look at it, I thought now this is really fascinating in terms of, you compare it to let’s we’ve been talking about shale gas in the United States Well, shale gas production, that, and nat gas production in the United States has doubled since about 2005, roughly in the last 20 years, it’s doubled and it’s incredible. Right. So that now the US produces more natural gas than what was it? Qatar. Yeah, we’re producing more natural gas in the United States and Canada, China, Iran, Norway, and Qatar combined. It’s just incredible. 

[00:30:01] Jamie: Wild. Yeah. 

[00:30:02] Robert: The Permian basin in mostly in Texas and partly in New Mexico is now producing more natural, as much natural gas as Canada. 18 billion cubic feet a day. 

[00:30:10] Jamie: And that’s like a byproduct too, right? Like they’re not looking for gas there. They’re looking for oil, 

[00:30:14] Robert: There’s no single natural gas rig running in the Permian. 

[00:30:18] Jamie: Yeah. 

[00:30:18] Robert: Back to the mining part of this, to me the key differentiator in the part that really cap is to me is so captivating is. Okay, well, the shale producers and they have a drill rig and how do they produce the gas there? They drill the bore well bore and then they pump a ton of sand and I mean a ton like tons of tons into the well bore and gas flows out, right? So, they put a lot of mass and volume down in the well and then the liquid and the gas flows out. Which is a very interesting just from a mass balance standpoint with the copper you can’t get around the mass and volume problem because you have to move so much of it physically out of the pit and to the surface and then you have a dilute or body that has to be concentrated. So, from a simple, math and physics standpoint from an energy in energy out standpoint. It’s a much more difficult problem to address. And then I assume Adam and Simon, and I’m familiar with that report. I’m very, I looked at it extensively. S&P just did an analysis earlier this year, new mines that are came on, have come online since 2000 have taken 18 years to come online. 

[00:31:30] Jamie: From permanent from discovery through permitting to construction. Yeah, that’s the average. 

[00:31:35] Robert: Actual output. So, 

[00:31:36] Jamie: and they used to be like 5, it used to be about 5. 

[00:31:40] Robert: Right? So, so these you take these, this, these ideas around demand. And then you put them actually into practice and you think, well, what does this really mean in the physical world? And I see just this collision here and you and I talked about, well, where is this investable? I mean, because if the company, if the copper companies have lower grade ore, they might be getting more dollars per pound or per ton, but their costs have gone up. So, I don’t have an answer. I’ve just, I like puzzling it puzzling over it in my head. 

[00:32:11] Jamie: Yeah. I mean, we think about that a lot. I mean, the thing that’s interesting about copper is it’s one of the most inelastic commodities in terms of bringing more online to your point, 18 years to permit built, construct and operate a new mine, and then you look at the existing copper mines in the world. I think something like 24 to 30% are all in Chile and they’re all these mega super mines, like the Escondida’s of the world that are getting deeper and deeper every year. And they’re going lower grade every year and it’s getting. The pushbacks of the pits are getting bigger every year and then the cost of loading up a mega truck full of ore and driving it to the top and the diesel you burn increase every year. So, it’s getting deeper, lower grade and more expensive to get out of the ground, right? Now, logically, one would think that the price of copper would have skyrocketed under that scenario, but it hasn’t. And you said something to me that I think you put it very eloquently that, a pound of copper today is almost as cheap as it has ever been, or cheaper than it’s ever been when you actually control for inflation. So why is that happening? And I don’t have a necessarily good answer for that, but it’s like, is that happening because we’ve just gotten so much more efficient in the whole copper supply chain that it’s just. It’s worth less today or is that price or is it priced wrong, right? Are we pricing it wrong today? And at one point, some point that, that switch flips and the true price of copper has to come into effect. And it’s not, whatever it is today, $4 or $5 a lb it’s $10, it’s $20. It’s whatever it is. 

[00:33:46] Robert: Yeah. 

[00:33:47] Jamie: I don’t know the answer to that or what has to happen for that to occur necessarily. 

[00:33:52] Robert: Yeah. Well, I just, I don’t know if your listeners are familiar with tradingeconomics.com, but this is a website that I go to a lot because you can get commodity prices there. And so, I’m looking at the copper price chart. This is the 25-year chart. So today it’s at $4.32 a lb. It was at $4.32 a lb in 2011, 2012, right? So, an inflation adjusted $, then it’s substantially cheaper, right? So, this is one of the things that to me is really fascinating about it. But the other. And this was from a Mackenzie report that was done oh, this was just a few months ago. It’s all and this was something I talked about when I was in Chile was that it’s about China. I mean, this is really a China story and that it was a Wood Mackenzie story or Wood Mackenzie report called securing copper supply. No China, no energy transition. It was fascinating. The graph there that shows since 2000, essentially all of the new smelting capacity in the world has come on stream in China.

[00:34:50] Jamie: Yeah. 

[00:34:51] Robert: And so, China is not just going to be the place where the ch the copper is smelted. It’s also where the key demand is and further that the production, you mentioned the geopolitical risk. So, Chile is 22%, Peru, 8%, about 9%. China 7% and Congo is 7%. So, you got 46% of the world’s supply of copper coming from just four countries and three of those four. Well, two of the four. I would say Chile is pretty stable, but Congo and Peru are not. And given the inelasticity of the supply, it implies, as you said, that the price should be far higher, but for whatever reason, it isn’t. So again, another interesting point, like the price of natural gas, given how much we’re burning should be higher, but we’re also producing just staggering quantities of it.

[00:35:41] Jamie: We’ve talked a lot about supply. Let’s talk about demand. So, you have mentioned, you started writing data centers, I think, in the early 2000s. That is obviously all the rage of these days. We see Microsoft partnering with the guys that own Three Mile Island, bringing on nuclear power back online. You what do you make of the potential impact of all these data centers that we’re going to be coming online to support and power AI and the effect on energy and electricity demand in the United States? And I read the other day, and this number is so high as to be unbelievable. So, I don’t know if it’s true, but that data centers alone would increase energy demand by something like 40% over the next decade or so. And I read that and I was like, that can’t be true. And like, if, even if it’s a quarter true, that’s astronomical. 

[00:36:40] Robert: This is another area, like the copper market that I look at and I think, okay, what, how do you separate the bullshit from the real story? Right. And there’s no doubt that the potential demand for AI is enormous. And you’re right. These recent announcements you’ve had Microsoft announcing that they’re going to reopen the closed reactor at Three Mile Island. You have Amazon announcing the deal that they’re going to they’ve already done it to bought the data center from Talent Energy. So, they’re going to use 900 megawatts from the Susquehanna plant. And then you have Google just announcing a deal with Kairos SMR company, Amazon announcing with X-energy Equinix and Oklo, Oracle with some unnamed SMR company. So, there’s a lot of froth around these ideas around nuclear, but remember Jamie, none of this capacity except for, well, even the Three Mile Island project, that’s going to be a couple of years before they get that back online. This is going to take a long time the nuclear sector didn’t wither over a year or two it withered over decades So it’s going to take decades to bring it back. So, in the near term, what does it mean? It means more gas demand and that’s one of the things that’s been interesting to me So you have you know companies like just presented on this that? Kinder Morgan is saying AI is going to require 10 bcf a day of additional gas demand Morningstar saying 16 JP Morgan saying 6 so and Goldman is saying that power demanded for data centers is going to go to 8% of US power by 2030 up from 3% in 2022. I’m not so sure. And the key pinch points are going to be, the gas supply, the permitting and supply chains. And this is something I’ve written about a lot of my Substack lately is availability of high-power transformers, the availability of frame class gas turbines, which now the wait times are 4 years, wait times for high power transformers 4 years and Amazon and Google for all of their money, aren’t going to be able to jump the queue.

[00:38:34] Jamie: So, what happens? They don’t get built. 

[00:38:37] Robert: They don’t get built or they get built much more slowly than people are anticipating. And, I, as we’re just talking about it, I’m spit balling here, but I think it’s gonna maybe something like the copper story, right? Where, S&P and Daniel Jurgen’s reported a lot of respect for Dan Jurgen, but he said, oh, we need to double copper supply. Well, yeah maybe, but that doesn’t.

[00:38:57] Jamie: That’d be nice. 

[00:38:58] Robert: It doesn’t happen. If it doesn’t happen, it just doesn’t happen, right? 

[00:39:01] Jamie: Yeah. 

[00:39:01] Robert: So, these things happen much more slowly than people are anticipating. The prices may increase, but it doesn’t necessarily, if the price increases, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to see more supply because the constraints on the supply chain are such that there’s just no more slots in the factory. There’s no more labor that’s available to make the transformers or to make the, these F class turbines. 

[00:39:26] Jamie: What do you make of This nuclear renaissance that’s appears to be happening in the United States right now. I mean, if we go back, like, call it, so at Resource Insider, our newsletter, we had a little uranium fund that we started in 2018 and we bought up a bunch of uranium stocks and invested. Obviously, it’s done extremely well over the last few years. And we exited that recently. But when I started that, people told me I was an idiot and that no one was ever going to be using uranium again. And the reason I did it was very simple. It was to what you say, it’s the math. So, at that time, the price of uranium was below the incentive price that basically every single mine in the world would require to grow or build a new mine. So, I looked at that and I’m like, well, if there, are we never going to use uranium again, is there going to be no nuclear energy? Cause unless the answer is yes to that, then we need more uranium and the prices to go up and there’s value to be created here. So that narrative is totally shifted now. I think the price I’m going to get this wrong, but I think it’s gone from when I invested something like $20 a lb to like, now when we’re in the 80s, everyone loves uranium, everyone loves nuclear now. Why has that happened in your opinion? 

[00:40:46] Robert: Well, there are a number of factors. One, I think there’s a generational shift and this existed before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But you know, I’m an old guy, I’m so security eligible now I’m 64. But when I was growing up, the specter of nuclear war was always with us and people and everyone societally conflated the idea of nuclear energy with nuclear weaponry and nuclear war. It was very effective, right? It was the 70s, right? This was part of that whole era. But today that age of my children’s, my children, Mary’s our oldest, she’s 31. That was never part of their youth, right? The idea. And instead, there, right or wrong, the fear that has been pushed on them as a generation has been climate change. So nuclear has had a different and the leaders of the nuclear pro nuclear movement in the US. A friend of mine, Mark Nelson from he’s now living in Chicago. He’s head of the Radiant Energy Fund. He’s been one of the most prominent advocates. Well, he’s in his thirties, right? So, he’s a different generation. So that’s been key. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has also been another key where in the European countries have looked at Russia and saying, oh, well, we can’t rely on Russian gas and they have a choice of paying, $12 or $13 for gas at TTF or having nuclear or coal. So, they don’t have another choice. They have been forced into nuclear effectively. Right. And then meanwhile, here you have big tech finally realizing with AI. Oh, we’ve been playing around with you know posing around wind and solar and you know. We’re going to buy a bunch of renewable stuff and then they realize oh, we can’t and Amazon essentially said that we can’t do this with wind and solar. So, you know, it’s taken a while Jamie but I you know, it is gratifying to see that finally this reality is setting in. So, a number of different factors that have come together at once. Let’s hope we don’t have another, another major, nuclear accident in the near term, because that could slow down some of this. But I agree, there is a unprecedented amount of momentum now in the modern era. Toward nuclear that I haven’t seen in my lifetime and really even in the last few weeks around big tech finally pivoting and saying, okay, we’re going to do this. But one last caveat, I just, I’ve made a list and I presented it. I’m going to be in Idaho Falls speaking later this week, there are 36 different companies that have SMRs that they’re trying to market 36. Only 2 or 3 of them are going to succeed. Maybe 4 or 5. 

[00:43:20] Jamie: We might be in a little nuclear bubble right now, right? In the markets. Yeah. Sorry to cut you off. 

[00:43:26] Robert: What’s the size, what’s the size of the reactor that will gain the most commercial acceptance? And what will the chemistry be? Will it be light water? Will it be high temperature gas? Will it be mol molten salt? I don’t know. I wish I did. 

[00:43:39] Jamie: I I think it’s the tech money. I’m glad you touched on that. I think that like about a year and a half ago, I started listening. I listened to several sort of tech podcasts and you would hear like the Mark Andreessen’s of the world Mark Andreessen, the head of a16z, Andreessen Horowitz, super venture capital fund, him talking about nuclear energy over and over again. And like, when I started to hear that, I was just starting to think like, there’s something happening in the zeitgeist right now. And the powers that be are starting to push this narrative down through the system. And yeah, it’s really fascinating to me. I have this. 

[00:44:13] Robert: And it’s been a process of elimination. Like, well, you throw coal out and coal has effectively been thrown out. Well, you wind and solar, you can’t and batteries just aren’t going to work at the scale that you need if you’re going to build a gigawatt data center, gas is going to fill the, to me, the interesting part is what is that gas demand going to be between now and 2035, right? And can there be enough, can you move enough molecules to the location where the data center is to then turn it into power? 

[00:44:39] Jamie: Yeah. 

[00:44:40] Robert: That’s going to be the interesting part of it and you know I’ve been talking with different people about that capability. But again, that’s going to be limited by permitting availability by high power transformers all of these other things that are supply chain related that aren’t necessarily land use related or even manpower. Because that’s the other constraint with that I keep hearing about one quote from a couple of weeks ago talking to these big EPC companies there said. The line was, if we had the parts, we don’t have the people, and if we have the people, we don’t have the parts.

[00:45:08] Jamie: Yeah. We’ve spent basically the entirety of the 20th century building out the physical capacity of North America, the roads, the highways, the power centers, everything. But the last 20 years, basically my entire adult life has been totally focused on information technology, right? That’s where almost every dollar has gone into. The Microsoft’s or the Facebooks or the whatever and trillions of dollars have been created and generated from that. But I think.

[00:45:35] Robert: Laying fiber optic lines, in the streets, right. And to the neighborhoods and yeah. 

[00:45:41] Jamie: But I feel like our now the demand of that industry, the tech industry exceeds the physical ability to service it right where we’re seeing there’s just not the energy, there’s not the infrastructure and I my pet theory and maybe I’m being hopeful on this. Is that a lot of that money is going to start being diverted back into the physical world and that we’re going to see a renaissance of engineering of physical things, material science, energy, et cetera. And I, I think where investors are going to see the most money were engineering students when I are going to have the greatest careers are going to be in the energy and the physical world. Over the next couple decades. So, I’m pretty excited about that. I don’t know if that tracks with what in your research, but that’s been my sort of pet theory for the last couple years. Now that we’re started to see the cusp of that. 

[00:46:31] Robert: Yeah, I like what you’re saying there because I think that matches with what I’ve been hearing. I’m lucky to travel a lot, meet a lot of people in my travels and, I’m doing something like 40 and 45 engagements, 50 engagements this year. I spoke to the Virginia Manufacturers Association in Virginia Beach back in July. And I remember one of the presenters they were talking about data centers and they were talking about construction in the, in that region in Virginia. And he said, I can remember it almost exactly. He said, we don’t need any more engineers. We have plenty of engineers. We need welders. We need pipe fitters. We need electricians. We need people who know how to do the physical work. And the EPC guys told me as well they’re turning down work because they don’t have the skill, enough skilled tradesmen to do the jobs. So, I think you’re right it’s the investment, not in the infrastructure. And I think I’d include roads and, the grid more broadly, high voltage transmission local distribution, but it’s also going to be about this change. And this is one of the inflationary things in the market that I think is interesting and doesn’t have an easy solution is We’re at the end of the baby boom and number of incoming college freshmen is declining. The number of people who retired during COVID has gone up. So, the number of people who are active in the particular in the United States, you can track it, who are in the labor force has gone down. And so, talking with some of these, folks about, how they’re having to pay their electric lineman more the union wages to non union workers, these are inflationary aspects that aren’t going to change because of the need for people who can turn a wrench.

[00:48:05] Jamie: All right, Robert, you got to go in a few minutes. Where can people find out more about what you’re doing? If they like what they heard here, where should they go? 

[00:48:13] Robert: Well, they should like what they heard here. 

[00:48:17] Jamie: I liked what I heard. So, thank you for taking the time. 

[00:48:19] Robert: No, it’s great. I, well, look this, I’m so incredibly lucky in my career. I’m, this is my purpose and my passion. And we got to meet and, I’m fascinated by the things you’ve been doing and how you’re investing and how you’re looking at the world. But yeah, this is I’m so so fortunate to do what I do I’m easy to find on the interweb. I’m on I write almost exclusively now on Substack robertbryce.substack.com. You can find my latest docuseries juicetheseries.com. It’s been viewed over 3 million times on YouTube It’s five-part docuseries is out now. I have 6 books. I, if I were a better marketer, I’d have one right here, holding it up called A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations.

[00:48:54] Jamie: I’ll see if I can photoshop it in for this. I’ll do my best. 

[00:48:59] Robert: I need to get up my game here on my marketing, but remember you don’t have to read it. You just have to buy it. That’s but yeah, that’s it. I’m on Tik TOK. I’m on LinkedIn. I’m on Twitter. I’m on all those social platforms. So, I’m easy to find.

[00:49:13] Jamie: All right. Thank you very much. Robert. 

[00:49:14] Robert: It’s been great, Jamie. Thanks a million.