Freeing Energy

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You have found Authentic Business Adventures.

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A business program that brings you the struggles,

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stories, and triumphant successes
of business owners across the land.

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We are locally underwritten
by the Bank of Sun Prairie.

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Today we are welcoming/
preparing to learn from Bill Nussey,

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a career tech CEO and author
of Freeing Energy.

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I got to say Bill has got a Ted Talk,

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which is cool though I
guess he let me know.

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It’s still outdated and he’s just
got a lot of stuff going on.

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So I’m excited to interview Bill and I

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guess for the world to get
to know what he’s got going on.

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So Bill, how are things going today?

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James yeah, I’m excited to be here.

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I love what you’re doing with the show.

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I shifted my whole career over to clean

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energy a couple of years ago and honestly
this is probably the biggest week

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for everyone in that industry
in the last ten years.

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The government just passed this giant law
that’s going to make it one of the best

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businesses you could possibly
be in for the next 20 years.

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It’s an exciting time for business
people in this space.

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So I know this much,

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I guess as far as what that bill includes,
so you are probably way more into it.

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So can you tell me specifically
what’s included in the bill?

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Just myself and the other listeners?

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Yeah,
there’s all kinds of debates about how we

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should power our cars,
power our grid and the fact is that we

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have been powering these for decades,
century really with fossil fuels.

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It works great.

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We built an entire one of the greatest
nations on earth with it.

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People started realizing 34 years ago
that well, the consequences of burning

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fossil fuels has issues
for the environment and so there’s been

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this giant battle politically
over the last 30 years.

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What do we do about that?

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Some people say hey,
it’s not that big a deal.

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Other people say it’s destroying
the future and they don’t get anywhere.

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Well someone, amazingly
Congress managed to do something,

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they shoved it through,
the Democrats did and they passed a law

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that’s going to create huge incentives
for businesses to make investments in this

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in every area of renewable
and clean energy.

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And that’s the what I love about this is
things that people talk about carbon.

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Right.
That’s really important.

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I love about it, in addition to that is
that this is going to create

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millions of jobs all over,
not just in concentrated places where we

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have oil or where the wind blows
the strongest all over the country.

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It’s going to create thousands,
tens of thousands of new businesses so

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people that want to take care
of themselves and have their own control,

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their own future, this is going to make it
easier, faster and more lucrative to get

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into this industry than
it’s ever been before.

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Nice.

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The cool thing is this is in my view I’m

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not a policy expert,
but I sort of live, really.

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I pretend to be one on podcast.

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This is a business centric plan.

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Let’s just write checks and give
it to the local government.

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This is let’s get businesses,

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let’s motivate businesses
to get into this business.

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And they’re doing it through the mechanism

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used almost everywhere
in this is tax breaks.

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If you build something or you make some

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energy, you’re going to get a tax break
and you could have a big discussion.

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I’ve done months of research, talk to
experts on fossil fuels, get tax breaks.

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Solar gets tax breaks.

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So we can debate how much.

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Suffice it to say that if

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solar and wind got tax breaks of X,
now they’re getting three or four X.

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Interesting.
Okay.

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And I would say that kind
of equalizes it with fossil fuels.

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But someone who does this for a living
might argue with my generalization there.

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But it’s a big step and it’s going

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to create tons of business opportunities,
which is what I love.

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You know, it’s interesting.

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I’m based out of Wisconsin.

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My wife drives a Prius,

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and she’s going to pay more for her Prius
because it’s a hybrid than a person

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with a non hybrid car has to pay
every year when she renews.

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Really interesting, honestly, is extra
$50 a year or something like that.

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And I love to see both
sides of every story.

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And the answer for that is here

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in Georgia, where I live, the electric
vehicles, of which I drive one.

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You pay a larger tax and like, what?

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How can you charge me more?
We’re clean.

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Well, it turns out that the government

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actually keeps the highways maintained
by taxing a little bit of gasoline.

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So if you buy less gasoline or no
gasoline, in the case of an EV,

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the government doesn’t get as much
money to maintain the highways.

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Interesting.
All right.

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That’s what I love about this is if you

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dig down on really anything in the world,
but in this case, this energy thing,

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sometimes it’s not as
crazy as it looks.

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I would counter that a little bit

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with the Prius because when I drive
that thing, the mileage is not that great,

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but I put it in power
mode have fun with that thing.

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As much fun as you can have with the
Prius, which is actually kind of a lot.

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Yeah, you get fixated
on that little screen.

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I had a Prius for years and shows you

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like, what’s making the drive train
turn and you’re watching this.

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It’s like watching Tetris or something.

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It’s fun.

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This is the new world.

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And three years ago, no one
thought they’d drive an EV.

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And right now no one can get an EV because
they’re back order for three months.

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And it’s honestly,
it’s about to be a lot worse.

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Oh, is it?
Really?

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Interesting.

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While we’re talking about the Congress

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and all that kind of stuff,
one of the concerns that I have

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is that if I were to start a business
in this, let’s just say I start,

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I don’t know, wind farm company
or something like that.

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I don’t know if that’s a thing,
but let’s just say I do.

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That it is.

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And then
Congress changes shifts and they’re like,

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hey, funny story, we’re no longer
going to give these incentives.

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And now my business that was making
bank throwing up windmills everywhere.

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Now there’s less customers
and all this kind of stuff.

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Now my business doesn’t have anything
to fall back on because I feel like

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there’s an ebb and a flow
where people are like.

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You raw rah environmental stuff and then

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the next group of rulemakers
come in and say.

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Nah.
We like the way it was before.

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I hear you.
It’s like a pendulum, right?

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The cynical view is that the United States

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can’t make policy past the next
presidential election cycle.

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And we have been in a whipsaw.

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And I’d say there’s a pretty good chance,
I mean, who knows,

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you probably follow this up closer than
me, but there’s a pretty good chance we

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will swing the other way
in the next two or three years.

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But here’s the thing.

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One of the reasons I like this new law

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is the number of people,
regardless of how they vote,

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that are going to get upset if you take
money out of their pocket is pretty large.

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The original grandfather of all these laws
was something called investment tax

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Credit, which was put
out under George Bush.

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Okay, this is back when Republicans
thought that clean energy was a good thing

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and they shifted in the
last couple of years.

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Bush renewed it, obama renewed it,
trump renewed it.

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And then finally it was
starting to wind down.

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And what this does is it just pushes it

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back up to instead of giving it a four
year and then it’s going to wind down,

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it gives it a ten year
and it’s going to wind up.

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All political parties have supported

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the singular thing is called
the Solar Investment Tax Credit.

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And all it does is if you put up a solar

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thing on your roof,
you put it up in thousand acres in a field

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outside your city, you’re going to get 30%
of the money you spend as a tax break

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on anything where you’re going to make
some profit that’s substantial.

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All right?

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And so what they did with this
law was that idea worked.

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And so they’re applying it to other kinds
of renewable and clean technologies.

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So now nuclear gets it

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the one kind of energy not energy,
but the one kind of clean technology.

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Everybody loves the right, the left,

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the center, europeans, Chinese,
everyone loves hydrogen.

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And scientists can debate,
economists can debate whether hydrogen

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really is the future thing or not,
but politicians love it.

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And so hydrogen also gets this nice tax

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incentive that has been
historically for solar.

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Interesting.
So your hydrogen is the idea.

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Hydrogen to me, I guess I pay attention
to cars and all that kind of stuff.

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And I remember 2009 ish hydrogen
was like the Uran next big thing.

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And then it seemed to kind of go away.

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So it’s back.

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Or is it more gridlike?

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Not necessarily more gridlock.

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One of the things I love about businessman

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is that I love about business is you can
get all the PhDs and the economists

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and the politicians,
they could do their four quadrant graphs

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and here’s what the future
is going to look like.

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And so we’ve been asking those people

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for 20 or 30 years,
what’s the future of transportation like?

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And they all said hydrogen.

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And then this dude born in South Africa
who made a bunch of money on PayPal says,

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you know what, I’m going to take a bunch
of laptop batteries,

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throw them in the bottom of a car and make
an electric vehicle called Tesla.

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And everybody said, you can’t use a bunch

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of laptop batteries to make
a car that’s ludicrous.

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You got to do hydrogen,
electrolyzers and all that stuff.

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And guess what?
This one guy and a team of brilliant

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scientists changed the world and hydrogen
went away because Tesla showed that you

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can actually make a better
car with batteries.

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Yeah, and so hydrogen is,

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you might see hydrogen in like airplanes
and trains and other things that have

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a lot of weight, need to run for a very
long time because batteries,

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energy density is the thing
everyone measures it by.

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Hydrogen is more energy dense
than a lithium ion battery.

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Gasoline is also very energy dense.

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And so you’ll see hydrogen in some places,
but where it’s really going to be big

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is heating, home heating,
industrial heating.

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One of the debates is grid storage.

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So if I take a bunch of solar and wind,
maybe I have more than I need right now.

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So I turn it into hydrogen,

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stick it underground,
and then when it’s dark,

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it’s night time or the wind isn’t blowing
or it’s winter or whatever,

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I take it out of the ground and I run it
through something called a fuel cell,

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which directly converts hydrogen directly
into electricity, water and water.

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And so basically you do that and then
you got a basically giant battery.

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So that’s another area.

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But hydrogen is already
a massive industry.

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We use it as a feedstock
for all kinds of products.

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And today we get hydrogen by taking
natural gas and breaking it apart.

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So it’s a lot of CO2 when you make
hydrogen today, but so we make it cleanly.

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You’re just going to take a giant industry
and shift it to a clean industry.

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But then all the new things we just
talked about could make it even bigger.

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Interesting.

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I love talking with people about this
that understand the business aspect,

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the environmental aspect,
what the end goal is,

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which I think I’d like to believe,
that the majority of people’s goal is

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to just keep the world
spinning and have fun.

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Yeah.
So I feel like everyone’s kind

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of on the same team, but they’re
acting like around on different teams.

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Amen.
Anyway, you know what everybody wants?

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They want a cold beer or a hot shower.

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Everybody wants that, right?

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Both of those sound great.

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Yeah.

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I haven’t tried that.

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But it takes the tremendous
systems to make that happen.

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Heat, water to make the beer,
to ship the beer, to make it cold.

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But it’s always sort of that one thing
that everyone agrees on is to joke, right?

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But they want a hot
shower and a cold beer.

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And so how do we make that happen?

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How do you not mess with my hot
shower and cold beer?

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Right.
Interesting.

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My father in law and I had this

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conversation when we saw I don’t know if
we saw a Tesla robot or whatever,

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and I was talking about how I can see
semi trucks on interstate and stuff like

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that within a few years actually
being driverless.

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Yeah.
And he’s like, no way.

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And I’m like, Well,
I just crossed the country on the road.

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And I can tell you I like to drive

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at night when there’s not
that many people on the road.

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I can tell you when I pass an exit ramp
and it’s backed up with semis that have

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to park for X amount of time
and they have nowhere to go.

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But they’re not just parking there because

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they like it that’s
parked out of necessity.

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And if I’m the guy that owns that semi,

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if I have the choice of that thing working
23 hours a day instead of 12 hours a day

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or whatever it is, I’m going
to choose 23 every time.

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So it’s interesting because he’s like, no.

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Hey, well, people can’t
get their head around it.

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But my son worked at Waymo,

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which is the company that Google
created that has self driving cars.

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Oh, yeah.
And I signed a stack of NDAs and now

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anyone can do if you go out
to Arizona and California.

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But at the time this was kind
of secret and this car drove itself.

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And I’m not talking highways,
which is relatively easy.

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I mean, it was navigating intersections
with 30 cars and 50 people on bicycles

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and pedestrians and it was
navigating all computer.

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So I’ve seen the future,
my friend, and it is autonomous.

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Trucks and highway are super easy compared

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to driving a small car
in a crowded pedestrian area.

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Yeah, I guess from my point of view,

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I always thought it’s like
last mile is the hardest.

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Yes.

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But if you’re doing warehouse,
warehouse on the interstate across

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the country, wherever, I can see
that being very low hanging fruit.

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I think I’m in your camp on that one.

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I think it’s going to happen pretty soon.

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But it’s an exciting time.

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A lot of change, people make change.

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And that’s why I wrote
this book, for energy.

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Because I think there’s a much bigger

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change happening in how we generate energy
than even the story of clean energy.

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There’s a bigger shift coming.

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And I got so excited about it
and nobody was talking about it.

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So I set aside this decades of building

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and exiting software tech companies
to write this down and tell the world.

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And it was kind of fun and it’s been a ton

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of fun because it started some great
conversations and hopefully inspires a ton

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of people to get into businesses,
which was my goal.

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I love to see small
businesses get started.

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I love to see entrepreneurs, someone wake
up and say, I’m paying my own salary now.

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Maybe I have some equity and a venture
capitalist, I’m really going to go crazy.

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But most businesses don’t
need that, don’t want that.

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Either way.

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Just every time you create a business,
I think it’s the best thing ever.

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And this is clean energy is going
to create a lot of businesses.

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But my books about is a side of that.

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Just the small scale stuff,
the rooftop, the commercial.

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I think it’s going to be much
bigger than anybody talking about.

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Nice.

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Let’s talk about you and where you
originally started in business.

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Way back when.

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It’s a long time ago.

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We were not going to discuss my age,
but I started my first software company

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when I was 15, and that was
fairly unique back then.

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And we were writing code
and selling it nationally.

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And I learned something really important

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early in life that I couldn’t
throw a ball to save my life.

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Didn’t have an ounce of cool about me,

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but if I had my own company,
I could actually get dates.

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And I fell in love with
business and it was cool.

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And so for the first time
in my life, I was cool.

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And ever since then, I’ve been building
businesses, trying to be cool.

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All right, so I had my first serious big

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company in college
and ended up selling that.

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After I graduated,

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I went to business school,
got involved with a couple of other early

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stage companies and grew them and took one
public, got to ring the bell,

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which was cool, nice,
and been an adventure capitalist,

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apologized to anyone who ever
had to deal with one of those.

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And then I figured clean energy was

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the biggest business opportunity
in the history of the world,

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so I had to be in it, which is why I wrote
that book, so I could figure it out.

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Nice.
Tell me about the IPO, because

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that process is still something that I
always want to learn more about.

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And I feel like there’s a dark art,

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I guess, to it, but it
seems so freaking cool.

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Jeez, it was one of the most stressful
things I’ve ever done in my entire life.

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Yes, but that’s what
you have your show for.

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People read about somebody who thinks you
read about so and so,

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who raised all this money and they’re
flying around in their jet and dating

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supermodels guys or girls,
but that’s not what it’s really like.

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And the term I use is almost
everything I’ve ever done is a slog.

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Someone wants to ask me, Bill,
what’s the secret to how do you get to be

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a CEO that takes companies
public and has exits?

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And I sold my last company
to IBM for $300 million.

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How do you do that?

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And I said, because I’m
too stupid to give up.

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And it’s grueling.

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So on the IPO, we had grown this
company at an amazing rate.

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It was one of the top
companies in this field.

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And this was in 99 when
things were really hot.

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And this is the hottest
of hot times, the Internet.

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And all the Internet was new.

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And we basically went the company.

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What it did was it worked with very large

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corporations because no one was on the
Internet then, no one had a website.

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So we would go to the largest companies

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in the world, like General Electric
and Virgin and Home Depot,

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and we basically built them their
first ever Internet business.

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Oh, wow.
Okay.

[00:17:22]
And everyone was lined up.
We used to joke,

[00:17:25]
this is such a hot business,
it shows the age of the company.

[00:17:28]
But we used to joke that we had a bad

[00:17:29]
sales week when the fax machine
ran out of paper, right.

[00:17:36]
So it was a heady time.

[00:17:38]
And everyone says, hey,
it’s a hard business.

[00:17:42]
You got to take a public.
So that was tough.

[00:17:44]
So what you do is you hire
an investment banker.

[00:17:47]
And we found one of the top
investment bankers.

[00:17:50]
We sat down and spent
a ton of time with them.

[00:17:51]
They loved us.
They were ready to take us public.

[00:17:53]
And they looked at us and said one day,
called me up and said, you know what?

[00:17:57]
You’re not ready to go public.
What?

[00:17:59]
Wait a minute.

[00:18:00]
Why did we spend the last
six weeks preparing?

[00:18:01]
Why do we write these documents?

[00:18:02]
They say, well, you’re just not ready.
Well, guess what?

[00:18:05]
Two weeks later, they took
my arch competitor public.

[00:18:08]
So I’m just telling you,
this is not for the faint of heart.

[00:18:11]
I aged a lot.

[00:18:13]
So then you get a banker that’s not going

[00:18:15]
to stab you in the back,
and we found a better one.

[00:18:20]
So basically, you spend three weeks

[00:18:22]
at least that’s how we did it
back a couple of years ago.

[00:18:25]
And you go into and talk to three or
four large investment banks a day.

[00:18:32]
And so you get in front of this
like Fidelity or Tiger.

[00:18:37]
These guys make private investments now,

[00:18:38]
but back then, the only thing you would
buy is pre public companies,

[00:18:41]
and you pitch them and they hit you,
well, we don’t like this number.

[00:18:44]
Your growth in Asia is not good,
or your CFO doesn’t have this background.

[00:18:48]
And then eventually some of them decide

[00:18:50]
to write checks and then what they do is
the bankers corral all that together,

[00:18:54]
and they put together what they call
the book, which is where they add up all

[00:18:58]
the people they’re going
to write the checks.

[00:18:59]
So the Fidelity is in for 20
million and Tigers out.

[00:19:03]
They’re not going to do it.
And so, and so the California pension fund

[00:19:06]
is going to come in for 2 million,
and they add it up until you get

[00:19:09]
to a certain number, and then they
want to get a clearing price.

[00:19:12]
So you want the stock to be X,
and the bankers do all this.

[00:19:16]
And meanwhile, your heart is
racing at 150 beats per minute.

[00:19:19]
You’re sweating, and you can’t sleep
at night, and you’ve got ulcers.

[00:19:22]
And what happened in this,

[00:19:24]
the very first time we did this was
we couldn’t get the clearing price.

[00:19:30]
So then you’re like, this whole thing,
all this work isn’t going to work.

[00:19:35]
And so then you just pull that’s
where the entrepreneurs come in.

[00:19:39]
And we had a chairman
as a company who was just a machine.

[00:19:43]
And he gets on the phone, and I’m
on the phone and we’re just calling.

[00:19:45]
People say, Listen,
come in for the clearing price.

[00:19:47]
You got to do the clearing price.

[00:19:48]
By the end of the night,
we had to hit the clearing price.

[00:19:50]
And the next morning we put it out there.

[00:19:53]
The thing, you know, declared that we were

[00:19:55]
public, everyone could start
trading our stock public.

[00:19:58]
We went to Nasdaq.

[00:19:59]
There’s a button there.

[00:20:00]
It’s not actually a bell that’s
the New York Stock Exchange is a button.

[00:20:03]
Bang.
You press the button and all the screens

[00:20:06]
light up with your name, and you got
to see your name on the Times Square.

[00:20:11]
You’re kind of famous for like,
24 hours, and then that’s cool.

[00:20:15]
Then all the investors are like, well,
how come you haven’t grown more?

[00:20:17]
How come your profits aren’t better?

[00:20:19]
How come you have this
number that we don’t like?

[00:20:20]
And then you do that for the next
couple of years, which I did.

[00:20:23]
Wow.

[00:20:25]
So is the business still around?

[00:20:29]
It got acquired and the acquired
company is still around.

[00:20:33]
Gotcha.
Okay, because 99, that was forever ago.

[00:20:37]
It was a long time ago, actually.

[00:20:38]
For a website company.

[00:20:40]
It was one of the first in the world.
Wow.

[00:20:42]
And I did this company that was one
of the first to do digital marketing.

[00:20:47]
The first book I wrote was how the Digital
Marketing is going to Become a thing.

[00:20:51]
Because no one thought digital
marketing was going to matter.

[00:20:53]
It’s going to be television
and billboards and newspapers.

[00:20:56]
And so I said, no, digital marketing
is going to be really huge.

[00:21:00]
Here’s how it’s going to work.

[00:21:01]
It’s Targetable, it’s going to have
ads and search and all this.

[00:21:06]
And we built a company
around that and it worked.

[00:21:08]
And we sold that company
to IBM for $300 million later.

[00:21:12]
And it became the IBM’s marketing cloud.
Wow.

[00:21:15]
Well, that’s impressive.

[00:21:16]
So here I am, sitting in the conference

[00:21:19]
room with all these IBM execs,
doing interviews with the Financial Times

[00:21:22]
and Wall Street Journal
about this acquisition.

[00:21:24]
I stepped outside,
went into another conference by myself,

[00:21:28]
sat there,
and getting the company

[00:21:32]
to that acquisition was probably
the most soulcrushing thing.

[00:21:36]
It was slog with a capital S, capital L,

[00:21:38]
capital O, capital it was hard,
and, I mean, it impacted my marriage.

[00:21:44]
It was hard to get to that point.

[00:21:46]
So for the moment, I was really in that
glory 30 minutes where it all came

[00:21:51]
together and it might
have even been worth it.

[00:21:54]
And I was sitting there thinking,
well, I could retire.

[00:21:56]
I could do it.
What am I going to do?

[00:21:58]
And I just got hit.

[00:22:00]
I didn’t expect it just hit me, like,

[00:22:03]
there’s all these people that are trying
to make a difference in the world

[00:22:05]
in a bigger way,
and they don’t have my resume and they

[00:22:08]
don’t have my bank account, and they
don’t have my business experience.

[00:22:12]
Now we’re going to say,

[00:22:12]
how could I not put as much back into the
bigger world as these people are doing?

[00:22:19]
Then I’m like, Damn, that’s not as fun.

[00:22:22]
But I started a quest to find,
what could I do that would matter?

[00:22:25]
What could I do that would
make a difference?

[00:22:26]
And that’s what started me down the path

[00:22:27]
over the next couple of years, what is
the most interesting new business area?

[00:22:31]
Because I was part of the rise
of personal computers.

[00:22:34]
I was in the Internet business,
smartphone business.

[00:22:38]
Digital marketing came about.

[00:22:39]
I was part of these massive transitions.

[00:22:41]
What’s going to be the next big one?

[00:22:43]
And that’s when I got
stumbled into clean energy.

[00:22:45]
Big enough.

[00:22:47]
But the way I was looking
at it, James, no one is.

[00:22:50]
People say no, Bill.
You’re an outsider.

[00:22:52]
You don’t understand and you’re
optimistic or you have too much idealism.

[00:23:00]
Instinctively,
what a real entrepreneur would do is

[00:23:03]
they’d go and start some
billion dollar company.

[00:23:05]
But I write a book.

[00:23:07]
And so I travel all over the world.

[00:23:10]
I talked to the founder of the largest
solar manufacturer in China.

[00:23:13]
I sat in mud huts with people that had
just gotten electricity for the first time

[00:23:17]
in their lives, climbed
to the top of a wind turbine.

[00:23:20]
300ft in the air with a wind turbine,
and I was having a great time.

[00:23:25]
And meanwhile, my bank account is going

[00:23:27]
down because we’ve given away
the biggest chunk of the money.

[00:23:28]
That was my wife’s mandate when
we sold the company at IBM.

[00:23:32]
She says, you can’t have enough money

[00:23:34]
to retire because you’re
going to lose your fire.

[00:23:36]
Oh, you’re not hungry?
Yeah.

[00:23:38]
So she said, you are going to give
it away, which has been awesome.

[00:23:40]
We’ve been giving it away mostly

[00:23:42]
to electrify poor places in the world
and to finish fund me to write this book.

[00:23:48]
All right,
so we finally got the book finished,

[00:23:52]
got it out, people said the whole thesis
of these small scale systems are going

[00:23:56]
to disrupt the grid in the same way the
personal computers disrupted mainframes.

[00:24:03]
And it’s going to be just
as big a deal, all right?

[00:24:06]
In 10, 15, 20 years,

[00:24:08]
we’re going to look at a giant coal plant
the same way we look at a mainframe today.

[00:24:12]
We need them, glad they’re around,

[00:24:15]
but gosh darn it, that’s not
the interesting stuff anymore.

[00:24:17]
And the future doesn’t involve more

[00:24:20]
mainframes, and the same thing
will happen with the grid.

[00:24:23]
And so people still told me I was crazy.
The book came out,

[00:24:25]
and I don’t think anyone who’s read
the book said I’m crazy anymore.

[00:24:28]
I mean, I researched the dickens out of it

[00:24:30]
and interviewed 400 people, have
350 citations with government data

[00:24:36]
and spreadsheets and all this
in the cases and lots of fun stories.

[00:24:40]
Like, I visiting that guy
in the hut in Africa.

[00:24:44]
His name is Francis.

[00:24:45]
I’m sitting down with Francis,

[00:24:47]
who a translator, and Francis
ragged clothes, poor mud huts,

[00:24:52]
and he tells me that he has a family
of children, but they left him.

[00:24:57]
And I see an empty bottle
of gin on a piece of furniture.

[00:25:03]
And he said, so he says,
look up at the ceiling up here.

[00:25:05]
And I’m looking up, and it’s
all black on the ceiling.

[00:25:07]
And he said, that was from the kerosene.

[00:25:10]
And my children were choking.

[00:25:11]
And they tried to study,
and they wouldn’t study because

[00:25:14]
the kerosene, it was so expensive,
I couldn’t afford it.

[00:25:17]
And he said, Then these guys
came here, and they sold me.

[00:25:20]
Actually, the listeners can’t see it, but
I got this little thing right behind me.

[00:25:23]
Whoops.
Here it is, right there.

[00:25:25]
It’s a little solar light.

[00:25:26]
And he had a bigger version of that,
and it charged it today.

[00:25:29]
And then at night, you turn it on.

[00:25:30]
It’s a light, and it’s kids could study,

[00:25:32]
and they didn’t have to choke,
and it was much cheaper than kerosene.

[00:25:35]
And he said so I’m sitting there in his

[00:25:38]
house, and he says, I don’t have
enough money to pay for it every day.

[00:25:42]
I pay for it by the day.

[00:25:43]
I go to my cell phone and I wire
this is how it works in Africa.

[00:25:48]
Use your mobile phone.

[00:25:49]
They don’t do cash,
and they don’t do checks.

[00:25:51]
They just mobile phone that money to each
other, like Venmo and mobile phones.

[00:25:56]
$0.40 in when he has the money,

[00:25:58]
and then he gets power, and he can
charge his phone, and he gets light.

[00:26:02]
And I said, So how’s it changed your life?

[00:26:05]
And he looks at me and he says,

[00:26:07]
well, there’s this woman down the road,
and I kind of like her and my system.

[00:26:13]
When I can afford it,
she comes over and charges her phone.

[00:26:16]
And he says, I think she’s
starting to like me.

[00:26:18]
I was like, you know what?
That.

[00:26:20]
Was, it was all about this guy’s had
the same thing you and I have

[00:26:23]
and everybody
you want to meet people that you care

[00:26:27]
about, you want to hang
out with people you love.

[00:26:29]
And it was so interesting to see how

[00:26:30]
electricity was that for this man and how
this crazy technology,

[00:26:36]
this little device that you and I wouldn’t
think twice about with pocket changes.

[00:26:39]
It’s a tip we give
for a nice dinner for him.

[00:26:41]
It changes life.

[00:26:42]
And I said this is an amazing industry.

[00:26:45]
It’s not just Africa.

[00:26:46]
It’s not just other poor or
lowincome parts of the world.

[00:26:49]
It’s also resilience in Puerto Rico
and Louisiana and Texas and California.

[00:26:54]
And this small scale stuff
is changing the world.

[00:26:57]
And that’s where the whole mission

[00:26:58]
of my Free Energy podcast,
my Free Energy book is about.

[00:27:02]
That’s what I was kind of happy to excited

[00:27:04]
to talk to you today to sort of just put
that little bug in people’s ear

[00:27:07]
and they’re thinking about maybe I want
to do something that really matters.

[00:27:09]
How do I make some investments?

[00:27:11]
The next hot thing.

[00:27:12]
That’s really the message
I want to get out there.

[00:27:14]
I got nothing to sell.

[00:27:16]
If someone doesn’t have the money to buy
the book, I’ll give them a free copy.

[00:27:19]
Seriously, just let me know.

[00:27:20]
I’ll send you some free copies.

[00:27:21]
But

[00:27:24]
I think this is just something that’s like
if I could go back and tell people in 1992

[00:27:28]
there’s going to be this
thing called the internet.

[00:27:30]
That’s what I’m doing.

[00:27:32]
Alright, very cool.
So tell me.

[00:27:34]
Let’s start.
We touch on a lot of stuff there.

[00:27:36]
So I want to talk about starting.

[00:27:39]
The microgrids they touch on a little bit,

[00:27:42]
because this is kind of top of mind now,
because this is part of the same

[00:27:47]
conversation I had with my father in law,
where I’m like because he was talking

[00:27:52]
about
a few weeks ago in California complaining

[00:27:56]
that the grid can’t handle electric
vehicles because everybody’s coming home

[00:28:00]
at night, turning the AC on,
charging their Teslas.

[00:28:04]
And because of that, no one has
lights or anything like that, right?

[00:28:08]
Keep in mind this guy’s from northern

[00:28:09]
Minnesota, so little touch
of he’ll be in them.

[00:28:13]
All right.

[00:28:14]
I hope your father in law does not
listen to this podcast and hear you.

[00:28:18]
I would love it if you did,
but probably not.

[00:28:19]
No, we’re not a sports talk channel.

[00:28:24]
There you go.
All right.

[00:28:27]
Anyways, I was telling them,
I don’t think that the grids,

[00:28:33]
like you’re saying,
are going to be this huge thing,

[00:28:35]
and then distribution from there, I think
they’re going to be more localized.

[00:28:38]
So I’d love to hear more information

[00:28:40]
on that because that was me,
pure speculation with no data.

[00:28:45]
Well, you have the intuition towards this,
so I would say the vast majority of people

[00:28:50]
don’t, because, hey, listen,
it’s worked this way for 100 years.

[00:28:53]
We’ve had giant power plants
for 100 years, got the utility.

[00:28:56]
I don’t know who they are, what they do.

[00:28:57]
I pay them some random
amount of money every month.

[00:28:59]
But it seems to work really well,
generally speaking.

[00:29:02]
Why would I want to mess with that?

[00:29:06]
People just don’t get their head around

[00:29:08]
that these small scale systems
are a viable alternative.

[00:29:12]
But here’s the thing that really makes
the big difference with two things.

[00:29:17]
First of all, wind and solar and batteries
are all part of this equation, right?

[00:29:22]
But wind and solar are very different

[00:29:24]
things, both awesome,
love as much as we can get.

[00:29:27]
But wind is a giant machine
that requires trucks and cranes to make.

[00:29:32]
Solar is a little thing that I can have

[00:29:34]
on the shelf behind me that the guy
Francis in Africa can use.

[00:29:37]
Solar is a technology.

[00:29:39]
It’s not a fuel, and it’s not a machine.

[00:29:41]
It’s a technology.

[00:29:42]
And this is the part that people
who think about the grid miss.

[00:29:49]
Technology follows these cost curves,
like your iPhone, right?

[00:29:54]
It doesn’t surprise you if you go back
and look at your iPhone from ten years ago

[00:29:59]
that your current iPhone,
or whatever it is, whatever smartphone you

[00:30:02]
have, is way better,
and you’re not sitting there stopping

[00:30:05]
and saying, holy cow,
I’m paying the same amount.

[00:30:08]
I’m getting a phone
that’s 100 times better.

[00:30:10]
But that’s exactly what
solar and batteries are.

[00:30:14]
Their technology is just like your phone.

[00:30:15]
And yet the people that plan the grid just
absolutely do not have their head around

[00:30:19]
the fact that, like, phones in ten
years are going to be crazy cheaper.

[00:30:25]
Now, you take a look at

[00:30:29]
any forecast by serious people,
including fossil fuel people, like BP,

[00:30:33]
and they’ll tell you the price
of solar is plummeting.

[00:30:35]
The thing is, people just don’t
think through what that means.

[00:30:38]
So that’s the first thing is the solar
and battery or technologies,

[00:30:41]
we make them by the billions in factories
all automated all over the world.

[00:30:45]
Now with this new law,
we’ll make them in the US.

[00:30:47]
Again, thank goodness, right?

[00:30:49]
And so they’re going to just
get cheaper and cheaper.

[00:30:51]
So people kind of they don’t
plan on that, but that’s a fact.

[00:30:54]
No one’s disputing it.

[00:30:55]
When I really think about it,
they don’t think about the implications.

[00:30:57]
But one of the implications,

[00:31:00]
it kind of really was a story I tell
in the book is I was talking to a big

[00:31:04]
utility executive and he says, and he
agrees, solar is going to get cheaper.

[00:31:09]
He’s excited about it.

[00:31:10]
And he says, Listen, Bill,

[00:31:12]
if someone wants to put solar on the roof,
they want to do their environmental thing,

[00:31:15]
check the environmental box,
more power to them.

[00:31:18]
But I’m just a dollar
and cents guy, he tells me.

[00:31:21]
He says, in the end,

[00:31:22]
it’s always going to be cheaper to build
a giant solar farm in a giant field

[00:31:26]
someplace than it is
to put it on the roof.

[00:31:27]
It’s so much more expensive to put it

[00:31:29]
on the roof per kilowatt hour,
generator or whatever,

[00:31:32]
than it is to put in the field
and let it hang there for a second.

[00:31:36]
And I said, It’s cheaper
for you, the utility.

[00:31:39]
No one ever said that to him before.

[00:31:40]
He said he thinks about it for a minute.

[00:31:42]
I said, Let me pressure
test that with you.

[00:31:46]
I said, So if you build that giant solar
farm out in that field,

[00:31:51]
will my electric bill go down
the day after it’s turned on?

[00:31:55]
Exactly.
Right?

[00:31:56]
You get it?
And he says, nothing.

[00:31:58]
I said, now, if I put solar on my roof

[00:32:01]
and I turn it on, my electricity
bill goes down immediately.

[00:32:05]
So I’m confused about what
you think cheaper is.

[00:32:08]
I think what you’re saying is it’s cheaper
for you to build a giant solar farm.

[00:32:14]
But the cool thing about solar is this

[00:32:16]
cheaper and if you’re the utility
and you build it, your profits go up.

[00:32:20]
Love solar, right?
It’s not that simple.

[00:32:23]
But generally speaking, generally,
if you put it on your roof,

[00:32:27]
the consumer has more money in their
wallet at the end of every month.

[00:32:31]
And so part of the debate about this small
scale stuff that my book talks about

[00:32:35]
and talks a lot about,
the actual debate and the laws

[00:32:37]
and the stories is who gets
the profits from cheap solar?

[00:32:42]
Is it the utility, or is it you and me
and our neighbors and our father?

[00:32:46]
Suppose you have where you’re supposed

[00:32:48]
to have public service commission
that should govern that.

[00:32:51]
But I think that’s made up, at least
in Wisconsin, of utility companies.

[00:32:57]
Here in Georgia,

[00:32:58]
the federal government has declared
the way that we elect public utility

[00:33:02]
commissioners in the state
of Georgia is illegal.

[00:33:05]
Shut down the election money.

[00:33:08]
We’re one of 13 states
where we actually were.

[00:33:11]
The citizens vote for them in most
places appointed by the governor.

[00:33:14]
Okay.

[00:33:15]
But I would say 99.99% of Americans have
absolutely no idea what a public utility

[00:33:19]
commissioner is,
who they are, what they do.

[00:33:22]
But in my book, I’ve got a section
called the 201 People 20.

[00:33:27]
One people that control all
electricity in the United States.

[00:33:30]
Wow.
That’s a cool job.

[00:33:32]
Right?

[00:33:33]
If you’re in Georgia, you’re one
of the five people that we vote.

[00:33:36]
You get to do things like, yeah,

[00:33:38]
let’s build a let’s build
a $10 billion nuclear plan.

[00:33:41]
That’s going to be cool, a bummer.

[00:33:43]
It’s going to be $30 billion,

[00:33:44]
but we’ll just raise rates
on everybody to COVID it.

[00:33:47]
Right.

[00:33:48]
Actually, I know these people.

[00:33:50]
They’re great people.

[00:33:51]
These are hard decisions.

[00:33:53]
I don’t mean to make too light of it,
but it’s a cool job that

[00:33:58]
you have the utility looking over your
shoulder and everything you do,

[00:34:00]
and you got a couple of advocacy groups
looking over your shoulder,

[00:34:03]
but generally you have a lot of power
that no one really appreciates.

[00:34:07]
Yeah.
Interesting.

[00:34:08]
Literally, those folks generally are
looking after our best interests.

[00:34:11]
But out in California,

[00:34:13]
they got darn confused last year and they
decided that California,

[00:34:18]
which is typically the most green state,
always doing the best for its citizens.

[00:34:22]
Of most states, at least from the citizens
point of view,

[00:34:25]
they just did a 180 and they were
going to make solar so expensive.

[00:34:28]
Rooftop solar is so expensive that it

[00:34:29]
would have stopped the industry
and killed the dead in the next day.

[00:34:32]
Wow.

[00:34:33]
So even California,
it’s complicated stuff.

[00:34:36]
This is policy and politics
and tax breaks and incentives.

[00:34:40]
It’s complicated.

[00:34:42]
But the other one that was
crazy was down in Florida.

[00:34:47]
Some journalists down there found
that Florida legislator passed a bill

[00:34:51]
that basically makes rooftop solar was
the economics and the policies around it

[00:34:55]
would make it so expensive that would
shut down rooftop solar in the state.

[00:34:59]
And it was passed along
party lines and legislature.

[00:35:03]
Republicans voted for it,
Democrats voted against it.

[00:35:06]
And some journalists found that the
freedom of information I can email.

[00:35:11]
This is what I’ve read.

[00:35:13]
I wasn’t there, but the law was
actually emailed from the utility.

[00:35:18]
Please pass this law.
Right.

[00:35:19]
So they did.
And everyone expected that the

[00:35:24]
famous governor of Florida, Ronda Sanders,
would of course approve the bill.

[00:35:27]
What do you do?
He vetoed it.

[00:35:30]
This is why.

[00:35:31]
Local energy, not this giant clean stuff

[00:35:34]
the federal government’s focused on,
but this local stuff where families,

[00:35:37]
communities, entrepreneurs,
small businesses, everyone loves it.

[00:35:45]
Ronald Anders does not
want to mess with it.

[00:35:46]
He said 85%.

[00:35:48]
Why did you veto this, Ron?

[00:35:50]
He said 85% of Floridians
want rooftop solar.

[00:35:54]
And he said it’s driving massive small

[00:35:57]
business growth, puts money
in the pockets of floridians.

[00:36:01]
Why would I stop this?

[00:36:03]
So this is what’s cool about freeing

[00:36:06]
energy and what I call local energy,
is that it actually rises above all

[00:36:11]
the political mess because
everybody likes it.

[00:36:13]
Everybody likes it.

[00:36:14]
All right, very cool.

[00:36:17]
So you wrote your book how long ago?

[00:36:20]
It came out December last year.

[00:36:23]
Okay, so that’s pretty recent.

[00:36:24]
Well, maybe, I guess,

[00:36:26]
besides this bill that just recently
passed, have things changed from, I guess,

[00:36:33]
what you learned in the book,
or what you were sharing in the book?

[00:36:36]
Because it seems to be just like with any
new technology or newer technology that’s

[00:36:40]
got some muscle behind it,
things are changing fast.

[00:36:47]
I don’t even know if that would be new.

[00:36:49]
Bigger, fancier solar panels.
I don’t know.

[00:36:52]
The solar panels are kind of like
your phone.

[00:36:58]
Every time you upgrade your phone,
you’re probably paying roughly the same

[00:37:01]
amount for the previous phone,
but you’re getting more phone for it.

[00:37:04]
The solar panels, every month or two

[00:37:07]
get a little cheaper, and over the course
of a year or two, they’re much cheaper.

[00:37:10]
And that’s a very exciting change.

[00:37:13]
But here’s the crazy thing about,

[00:37:16]
I think, people are realizing in 2022,
so if you go put solar on your roof

[00:37:22]
and you buy solar panels,
you get an inverter,

[00:37:25]
you hire an electrician and a team
to put it on your roof in the US.

[00:37:29]
It’s going to cost you pretty
consistently about $3 a watt.

[00:37:34]
So that means that if you put up a small

[00:37:36]
average size system of 4 watts,
it’s going to be about $12,000.

[00:37:41]
That’s a very predictable,
consistent number across the US.

[00:37:44]
Now, if you take that exact same solar

[00:37:46]
panel, same manufacturer, same skew,
you take the exact same inverter and you

[00:37:49]
put a bunch of people on the roof
in Australia, it’s a dollar ten a watt.

[00:37:55]
US.
Dollar ten.

[00:37:56]
Whoa.

[00:37:57]
So people are like,
Wait a minute, what am I missing, right?

[00:38:02]
How about the exact same?

[00:38:03]
Because it turns out in the US,
we have crazy bureaucracy.

[00:38:10]
Crazy bureaucracy in Australia had this,

[00:38:13]
I don’t know, call it just
a spasm of practicality.

[00:38:18]
And they said, Why don’t we just pass

[00:38:18]
something nationally
that streamlines this?

[00:38:21]
Because, listen, there’s only
20 or 30 brands we care about.

[00:38:24]
We just check any solar
brand of this, it’s fine.

[00:38:26]
Any invertebrand of this,
and if the team is qualified, fine.

[00:38:29]
You know, they’re going to do it’s
the same thing every house,

[00:38:31]
so we don’t need to inspect it like it’s
a brand new bridge every single time.

[00:38:37]
Basically, in Australia,
you call up on Monday morning and say,

[00:38:39]
like, solar, and Tuesday afternoon
your house is powered by it.

[00:38:42]
And in the US, it’s two or three weeks.

[00:38:45]
Sorry, two, three months, yeah, I was.

[00:38:47]
Going to say at best.
Yeah.

[00:38:49]
When I got my solar on my roof a couple
of years ago, the county inspector listen,

[00:38:55]
the county is trying
to do the best they can.

[00:38:57]
They want to make sure that this bozo is
not going to burn my house down because

[00:39:00]
electricity,
a lot of electricity involved here.

[00:39:03]
But it turns out these guys aren’t bozos,
have done maybe a thousand of these.

[00:39:06]
They know what they’re doing,

[00:39:08]
but the county doesn’t have
an ability to care about that.

[00:39:10]
So the county said, listen,

[00:39:12]
I’m going to come out Thursday
and I’m going to inspect the system.

[00:39:16]
And so I’m thinking I asked this silly,

[00:39:19]
silly question to the installer
who’s managing this for me.

[00:39:21]
I said, well, what time Thursday?

[00:39:23]
He laughed at me.

[00:39:24]
He says, that’s not how it works.

[00:39:26]
I said, what do you mean?

[00:39:27]
Because they come whenever they want.

[00:39:29]
I said, well, wait a minute.
What do I do?

[00:39:32]
I call you.
And I’m not sure I’m going to be home.

[00:39:34]
He says, no, I got it covered.

[00:39:35]
So, you know, my installer,

[00:39:38]
the head project manager of my installer
sat in my driveway until 02:00

[00:39:43]
in the afternoon, his pickup, waiting
for the county inspector to come by.

[00:39:48]
County inspector came by and said,
hey, good to see you, man.

[00:39:50]
Oh, good to see you again.

[00:39:51]
That’s good to see you guys doing
a lot of solar projects around here.

[00:39:54]
All right, let’s go through
the list, check you’re good.

[00:39:56]
All right, goodbye.

[00:39:58]
And so built into the cost of my solar
installation was the most expensive guy

[00:40:03]
and that solar team waiting
in my driveway for 6 hours.

[00:40:07]
They don’t do that in Australia.

[00:40:08]
You know how they do it in Australia?

[00:40:11]
The installer who’s done 1000
of these is this magic thing.

[00:40:15]
It’s called a camera phone.

[00:40:17]
He takes the iPhone, he takes a photograph

[00:40:19]
of the installed wiring
and submits it to a system.

[00:40:24]
And the system says,
this guy’s done a thousand of them.

[00:40:27]
He’s certifying use the right equipment

[00:40:29]
and he says, submit,
and it comes back approved.

[00:40:33]
Some questions, you might get a call.

[00:40:35]
They might say, well, can you just
show us a photograph of this?

[00:40:37]
Okay.
All right.

[00:40:38]
20 minutes later, you’re approved.

[00:40:41]
That’s why I get excited about the local

[00:40:43]
energy, because even if the price of solar
panels doesn’t go down, which it will,

[00:40:46]
the price of batteries don’t go down,
which will go down a lot.

[00:40:49]
We just get rid of this bureaucracy
and think about it, because like today,

[00:40:53]
$3 a watt from with everyone in America is
actually cheaper to put solar on your roof

[00:40:59]
than it is to buy
electricity from the grid.

[00:41:01]
That’s today when it’s $3 a watt.
Wow.

[00:41:04]
What do you think is going to happen
when it’s one third the price?

[00:41:09]
Yeah, that’s impressive.

[00:41:12]
And no one’s thinking this through.

[00:41:13]
The utilities aren’t
thinking this through.

[00:41:15]
But there’s a lot of things.

[00:41:17]
I just traveled to Peru with my family
and I got a lot of feedback about what

[00:41:21]
people outside the US think of Americans,
generally nice, at least to my face.

[00:41:25]
But

[00:41:28]
there’s one thing about all Americans is
there’s no American that’s going to

[00:41:34]
embrace her, except
the following sentence.

[00:41:37]
Well, I know you could do it a lot cheaper

[00:41:39]
if you did it yourself,
but we want to make sure that this giant

[00:41:41]
corporation you’ve never met and don’t
care about it remains really profitable.

[00:41:45]
This is not going to work
in America, right?

[00:41:48]
So the only reason it’s not happening

[00:41:49]
today is because people don’t
know that it’s cheaper.

[00:41:52]
That’s one of the reasons
I wrote the book.

[00:41:55]
Interesting.

[00:41:55]
And I want people not just putting solar
on the roof or on their buildings or other

[00:41:59]
schools or churches,
but I want to get entrepreneurs,

[00:42:02]
business people to say,
this is like the next Internet.

[00:42:05]
This is like the next crypto.

[00:42:07]
This is like the next cannabis.

[00:42:09]
This is a business I want to get
into that’s growing like crazy.

[00:42:12]
And unlike all those three things I

[00:42:14]
mentioned, this actually
helps the World fair.

[00:42:17]
Totally fair.

[00:42:18]
Whatever happened to the solar
shingles that Elon had?

[00:42:22]
Really hard to do.

[00:42:24]
And while this guy can design rockets

[00:42:26]
that can go around the moon,
it’s actually so hard.

[00:42:29]
The details of making solar shingles work.

[00:42:31]
He’s now on version three of the solar

[00:42:33]
shingles, and he still
doesn’t have it right.

[00:42:35]
So I have some friends that have solar
shingles and have to sign this non

[00:42:39]
disclosure saying, when I’m finished,
I swear I won’t tell anybody.

[00:42:42]
I promise.
Legally binding.

[00:42:44]
I won’t tell anybody
what I think about it.

[00:42:46]
And a lot of people are pissed off because

[00:42:49]
it didn’t go the way they wanted
and it looked right or it’s flaky.

[00:42:54]
It doesn’t generate enough electricity.

[00:42:56]
So
I think Tesla is doing a reasonably good

[00:43:00]
job of just iterating this
product until they get it right.

[00:43:03]
And people that want to sign

[00:43:04]
at the beginning, pigs probably wish
they’d waited, but they’ll get it right.

[00:43:08]
No question they’ll get it right.

[00:43:10]
And that’s one of my favorite topics
in free energy,

[00:43:13]
is this thing called building integrated
photovoltaics bi TV hot term.

[00:43:19]
Three or four years from now,
everyone’s going to know it.

[00:43:21]
But basically what this means is
that the stuff that makes your house

[00:43:25]
you’re building, that you’re going to do
anyway, it just happens to be solar, too.

[00:43:31]
Rather than taking my roof and putting

[00:43:32]
panels on my roof, I just built a roof,
the solar shingles, as your example.

[00:43:38]
And then I got a solar power roof
and shingles at the same time.

[00:43:42]
I only have to have the crew on my roof

[00:43:43]
once,
and I don’t have to pay for actual

[00:43:48]
shingles because I’m covering
that with a little tile shingles.

[00:43:51]
I don’t have to buy,
like, asphalt shingles.

[00:43:52]
I just have no solar shingles.

[00:43:54]
So it’s actually cheaper.

[00:43:57]
Even the stuff that Tesla struggling

[00:43:59]
to get right, it’s still
significantly cheaper.

[00:44:01]
If you have to replace your roof, say,

[00:44:04]
your 15 years is up, you got
to replace your asphalt shingles.

[00:44:06]
It’s cheaper to go ahead and get Tesla

[00:44:08]
solar shingles
than it is to get a new roof of asphalt

[00:44:13]
shingles and then have someone
come put solar panels on the roof.

[00:44:16]
So it’s already cheaper.

[00:44:18]
I just talked to the CEO of a company
the other day, and they’re an industrial

[00:44:22]
company, and they’ve got this
technology that looks pretty real.

[00:44:26]
And they can put a coating
on windows on skyscrapers.

[00:44:31]
This is cool.

[00:44:32]
So the problem with windows
and skyscrapers is that you got to put

[00:44:36]
a coating on it because if all
the infrared light comes

[00:44:38]
into the building, it just
heats it up in your area.

[00:44:40]
Yeah.
Greenhouse.

[00:44:41]
Yes.
So they have all the modern

[00:44:44]
skyscraper glasses coating on it to keep
the infrared from coming through.

[00:44:48]
Right.

[00:44:49]
These guys figured out is,
let’s just take that infrared rather than

[00:44:51]
bounce it back out,
let’s turn it into electricity.

[00:44:56]
They just basically say, listen,
put our windows in your skyscraper

[00:44:59]
and we’re going to generate 40% to 50% of
all the electricity your building needs.

[00:45:03]
And you won’t have to air condition it
much because we’re going to bounce.

[00:45:06]
We’re actually going to absorb the
infrared and turn it into electricity.

[00:45:10]
Wow.
So this stuff, I mean,

[00:45:12]
the thing is so cool is that all these
entrepreneurs are jumping and all these

[00:45:15]
inventors, these small businesses are
jumping into this,

[00:45:18]
and they’re all creating in their garages
and in their basements,

[00:45:20]
in their university labs,
are creating all these new ideas.

[00:45:24]
And just like the Internet,
we’re going to wake up one day and we’re

[00:45:26]
going to have Netflix,
and we’re going to wake equivalent.

[00:45:29]
We’re going to have these amazing things

[00:45:30]
we could never have imagined in 2000
that are just going to be commonplace.

[00:45:34]
Because the base of this technology
innovation is changing so quickly.

[00:45:39]
That’s what gets me excited.

[00:45:41]
That’s cool.

[00:45:42]
I’m excited for you.

[00:45:43]
And it’s one of those things that I’m just

[00:45:46]
watching just from the sidelines, I guess,
because I have friends that have solar

[00:45:52]
panels, some fairly new and some
that have been around for a long time.

[00:45:55]
And good bad things.

[00:45:58]
I got my wife with the Prius.

[00:45:59]
Whatever.

[00:46:00]
You guys are bleeding edge, right?

[00:46:02]
You’re the pioneers of the arrows in your

[00:46:03]
back because you’re the first
people to be doing it.

[00:46:05]
But these things are getting better

[00:46:07]
and better every year,
and it’s no longer hard or risky.

[00:46:10]
It’s so funny.
I used to have a company where I needed

[00:46:13]
vehicles, and I had some
of the old Honda insights.

[00:46:17]
Oh, wow.
Yeah.

[00:46:18]
And I love those cars.
But it wasn’t I mean,

[00:46:21]
the environmental thing was cool,
but I love them mainly because they’re

[00:46:24]
super fun to drive
that manual transmission.

[00:46:26]
And they were dirt cheap to run.

[00:46:28]
So when you got your tax thing for
per mile every year, I was making money.

[00:46:34]
The more we drove.
Right.

[00:46:37]
It’s interesting because
people are like tree hugger.

[00:46:40]
And I’m like, I’m actually
just really cheap.

[00:46:43]
James everyone thinks this is some kind
of ideological, environmental,

[00:46:47]
tree hugging thing,
and that’s why I wrote this book.

[00:46:50]
This is business.

[00:46:51]
And this isn’t just big business.

[00:46:52]
And Wall Street and giant
publicly traded corporations.

[00:46:56]
Those are an important part of it.

[00:46:57]
But for 100 years, that’s all it’s been.

[00:47:00]
You wanted to be in the
local energy business.

[00:47:03]
Ten years ago, your choice was to go get

[00:47:06]
a loan for $500 million and build
a coal plant in your backyard.

[00:47:09]
Right.
No one’s going to do that.

[00:47:11]
But because solar has become so cheap,
anybody can be in their own energy,

[00:47:15]
it can be their own power plant now,
the cheapest kind.

[00:47:21]
And it really was only two years ago when
it became cheaper, on average in the US.

[00:47:24]
To put solar on your roof, and it was
to buy electricity from the grid.

[00:47:27]
You have no idea.
That’s the case.

[00:47:29]
So that with this new bill,
will that go even further down?

[00:47:33]
It’s great question.
So the bill

[00:47:37]
indirectly, the bill will cause it to go
down, but the bill from a residential or

[00:47:40]
commercial solar project,
it continues a straight line of getting

[00:47:47]
cheaper and cheaper every year,
but it doesn’t make a huge step.

[00:47:50]
But if you’re in the hydrogen business or
the nuclear business, this is a big step.

[00:47:54]
Got it.

[00:47:56]
Next thing I want to ask you about
was converting cars to electric.

[00:48:03]
Some of the talk about,
I guess, just the direction that I see

[00:48:07]
the vehicles going as they seem to be
going electric at a pretty decent pace.

[00:48:13]
You could argue it’s glacial,
but it’s ramping up pretty fast.

[00:48:16]
And people are general,
even just normal, run of the mill, even.

[00:48:20]
Some of my hillbilly friends are getting

[00:48:22]
excited for the electric trucks
and all that kind of stuff.

[00:48:24]
Ford 150 lightning.
Got it.

[00:48:26]
I’m on the list.
I got to own that.

[00:48:28]
Yeah.

[00:48:29]
And I can’t think of the other name.

[00:48:31]
Not Texas.

[00:48:33]
Yes.

[00:48:34]
These are like the new posters,
vehicle on the wall of these instead

[00:48:38]
of Lamborghinis when we were kids kind
of thing, which is kind of interesting.

[00:48:42]
So I’m like, Wait a second.

[00:48:43]
They all go electric.

[00:48:45]
My old cars aren’t going to be
able to get gas anywhere.

[00:48:50]
You have no problem getting gas.

[00:48:51]
I promise you that.

[00:48:53]
Your grandkids will be
still finding gas stations.

[00:48:55]
But I hear you.

[00:48:58]
I have a Jeep Wrangler.
Right.

[00:49:00]
It’s got the most inefficient engine in.

[00:49:01]
The world there is that.
Yes.

[00:49:03]
Super cool.

[00:49:04]
To convert it to electric just because
it’s slow and it burns a ton of gas.

[00:49:08]
There’s no advantage.
That engine shive a to B.

[00:49:11]
My dream is to get one of those old
Volkswagen

[00:49:16]
buses, the little camera things,
and put an electric drivetrain in that.

[00:49:21]
That would be so fun.

[00:49:23]
If I had the time, I would do it.
But yeah.

[00:49:26]
So there’s lots of shops.

[00:49:28]
There’s one here in town,

[00:49:30]
Atlanta, called EXO Set that will do
the conversion for you, I believe.

[00:49:35]
I know, they’ve done it for some people.

[00:49:37]
Generally speaking,

[00:49:38]
you got to have a master mechanic
and someone that actually understands not

[00:49:41]
just how to replace an engine,
but how to replace the whole drive train.

[00:49:44]
And there’s risks that you don’t
do or write some safety issues.

[00:49:47]
It’s not for the faint of heart,

[00:49:49]
especially if you want real cars,
especially if you want performance.

[00:49:53]
But the price of electric cars
is just like your iPhone.

[00:49:56]
Every year you’re going to get more car,
less money in two, three, four years.

[00:50:01]
It’s going to be cheaper to get
a fantastic electric car the last 215

[00:50:05]
years, and it will be to get a gas
powered car the last two, five.

[00:50:09]
All right.
Yeah, it was one of those things.

[00:50:12]
I had a student in one of my business

[00:50:14]
planning classes five, six years ago that
he wrote a business plan on creating.

[00:50:19]
He was an engineer and creating a business
to convert vehicles to electric.

[00:50:24]
It was one of those like this almost seems
like it was so cutting edge that you may

[00:50:29]
have a hard time finding clients,
at least.

[00:50:33]
But if I had a car, would I drop ten
grand to have someone electrify it?

[00:50:36]
Maybe.
It’d be fun.

[00:50:37]
Especially a classic car.
Right.

[00:50:38]
I used to have a
thing hauled, and if I had it still,

[00:50:45]
I would totally find someone to put
an electric drive train in it.

[00:50:48]
But that’s going to be
a very small market.

[00:50:51]
It’s cool, but small, I think.
Interesting.

[00:50:54]
Okay.
Got you.

[00:50:55]
I didn’t know if that was going
to be the new thing or if.

[00:50:57]
That’S no, it’s all right.

[00:50:59]
Anybody that can really change out a car,
that’s a pretty special set of skills.

[00:51:04]
Yeah.

[00:51:04]
So I don’t think it’s
going to be a big mark.

[00:51:06]
So much cheaper just
to make one from scratch.

[00:51:09]
Assembly line in Detroit,
those are flooding out like a tsunami.

[00:51:13]
Can’t get them out because
they’re so popular, right?

[00:51:15]
Gas being so high.

[00:51:17]
Got you.
All right.

[00:51:19]
We are running on time here, Bill.

[00:51:20]
Is there anything, any place,
or you’d like to point?

[00:51:24]
People website they should go to,
or just a place they should look at?

[00:51:30]
People want to learn more about this,
especially if they’re innovators or

[00:51:33]
entrepreneurs they want
to get in, or investors.

[00:51:36]
They want to know where to.

[00:51:37]
I’m not an investment advisor,

[00:51:38]
but if you want to see if they’re
interested in the underlying trends

[00:51:42]
driving the largest business shift
in the history of humanity,

[00:51:46]
I got this book, Free Energy
you can get on Amazon, get it anywhere.

[00:51:50]
You buy books for people like me that
don’t like to read and want to listen.

[00:51:53]
I got a great audio version.
Nice.

[00:51:55]
And people like podcasts.

[00:51:57]
Got a podcast called Freeing Energy

[00:51:59]
and super proud that we just got ranked
the number one renewable energy podcast.

[00:52:03]
So any of those are available.

[00:52:08]
It’s a fun book to read.

[00:52:09]
It’s all about stories.

[00:52:12]
There’s some math and some graphs,

[00:52:13]
but mostly it’s stories of people
and entrepreneurs and things like that.

[00:52:16]
So.
Yeah.

[00:52:17]
People want to go dig on it.
Love it.

[00:52:19]
And hopefully if they enjoy it.

[00:52:22]
Let me know what makes you think.

[00:52:24]
And we’re just trying
to one person at a time.

[00:52:26]
Get the message out there.

[00:52:27]
That the future is very different
than most people think.

[00:52:29]
And it’s a heck of a lot more control.

[00:52:32]
More money in your pocket.

[00:52:33]
Cleaner than most people
are realizing as possible.

[00:52:36]
Nice.
I love it.

[00:52:37]
I love looking at it from the business
side, the environmental side.

[00:52:42]
Enjoy.
I understand.

[00:52:43]
I appreciate all the jazz because what

[00:52:45]
good is money if you don’t
have a world to spend it in?

[00:52:48]
But from the financial side,

[00:52:49]
I think it’s way easier to convince
people to go the direction.

[00:52:53]
That’s why I wrote it, man.

[00:52:55]
I haven’t found another book like it,
so hopefully if people are interested

[00:52:58]
in this space, I’ll take a read
and let us know what you think.

[00:53:02]
Nice.

[00:53:02]
Do you have a website or how
can people get a hold of you?

[00:53:05]
So freeing energy, not free energy,
freeingenergy.com/bout-the-book to read about the book.

[00:53:14]
And generally that’s where you can see our

[00:53:16]
podcast or articles, information about
the book, all of it’s in that one spot.

[00:53:22]
Nice.
Super cool.

[00:53:24]
Well, thank you so much,
Bill, for being on the show.

[00:53:27]
This is been enlightening.

[00:53:29]
I mean, one you talked about
selling businesses, IPO.

[00:53:32]
We got solar, we got
the environmental thing.

[00:53:36]
I guess it’s safe to say
you haven’t retired.

[00:53:38]
No, sir, I’m not retiring.

[00:53:41]
I want to try to make
a dent in the universe.

[00:53:43]
I’ve been very lucky in life,
love and health, and so I want to pay it

[00:53:47]
forward and see what I can do
to make the world a better place.

[00:53:49]
That is my mission.
And I love the fact that you have me here

[00:53:52]
today and let me share with your listeners
who are so grateful to share their time

[00:53:55]
with you and let me
share a bit of my story.

[00:53:59]
Thank you for letting me pass it
along and hope some folks enjoy it.

[00:54:03]
Super cool.
I love it.

[00:54:04]
This has been
Authentic Business Adventures,

[00:54:06]
the business program that brings you
the struggle, stories and triumphant

[00:54:09]
successes of business
owners across the land.

[00:54:11]
We are locally underwritten
by the Bank of Sun Prairie.

[00:54:13]
If you’re listening or watching this
on the web, you can do us a huge favor,

[00:54:17]
smash that subscribe button,
give us the big old thumbs up,

[00:54:19]
and of course, we’d love it when you get
comments and let us know what you think

[00:54:23]
of this, what’s going on, and what you’d
like to see going on in the future here.

[00:54:27]
My name is James Kademan
and Authentic Business Adventures is

[00:54:30]
brought to you by Calls On Call,
offering call answering and reception

[00:54:33]
services for service
businesses across the country.

[00:54:36]
On the web at callsoncall.com. And

[00:54:39]
of course,
The Bold Business Book,

[00:54:41]
the Entrepreneur in all of us
available wherever fine books are sold.

[00:54:45]
We’d like to thank you,
our wonderful listeners,

[00:54:46]
as well as our guest, Bill Nussey,
the author of Freeing Energy.

[00:54:50]
Bill, can you tell us
that website one more time?

[00:54:53]
Freeingenergy.com. Easy enough.
Freeingenergy.com. Yeah, love it.

[00:54:59]
Past episodes can be found morning, noon,

[00:55:01]
and night. Podcast link found at drawincustomers.com. Thank you for listening.

[00:55:05]
We’ll see you next week.
I want you to stay awesome.

[00:55:06]
And if you do nothing else,
enjoy your business.