Fueling the Digital Revolution

Mary: This is Fissionary, a show exploring how nuclear powers your world. I'm Mary Carpenter. 

Jordan: And I'm Jordan Houghton. Let's jump in. Welcome to Fissionary. Thanks for tuning in for another episode. Hey, Mary. How's it going? 

Mary: Hey, Jordan. It's good. How are you? 

Jordan: I'm just back from CERA week, which, for those who don't know, is like an energy Super Bowl in Houston. And I feel like the the permeating theme through the week was AI and data centers. It was tied to so many different sessions covering so many different energy types. And I, I it's apropos since that's what we're talking about with our guests today. Tom Mapes. 

Mary: Yeah. Was there any big highlights that you remember from CERA week? 

Jordan: While I will say that nuclear got a lot of love and this was my first year going it, it's huge. It was completely overwhelming. My understanding is in previous years, nuclear really wasn't as big of a part of the conversation as it now is. And now it was popping up in conversations all over the place, talking about climate and decarbonization and clean energy and reliable energy. So it was really interesting to see it part of the mainstream conversation. 

Mary: Yeah, that's interesting because when I was at South by Southwest, actually the week before Jordan was at CERA week, AI, data centers, Chat GPT all of that was a big focus of a bunch of sessions at the conference that I was at as well. And, I mean, it's crazy to think how much we use this technology in our daily lives and we don't really realize it. Like if I'm online shopping and I want to chat someone, I get connected to a chat bot. Or if I go to the airport on the way to South by Southwest, I use my clear membership and they do like facial recognition. Every morning Alexa tells me what the weather is when I wake up, but like it is just ingrained in our daily lives and it's something I use so much, but you don't even think about, like how much energy all of this stuff takes to power. 

Jordan: I really, until I ended up listening to so many conversations about it and this conversation we had with Tom, I had no idea about the energy draw for these things, because it's like if you use ChatGPT, you type a question in, it's like a Google search, right? And you get almost an instantaneous reply. And you I don't know, I'm like, this just takes a second, how much energy can it really take? But it really does. 

Mary: Yeah. And Jordan and I are in the DC area right outside. And Northern Virginia is kind of the hub of all the data center, buildings. And if you drive through Northern Virginia and this one specific area, I mean, you go for miles and miles and miles, you see all these big buildings that are filled with data centers and a lot of the world's internet traffic run routes through Northern Virginia. So we can kind of put a face to kind of what we're talking about. And it's it's massive. 

Jordan: Yeah. And only going to get bigger. Right? I mean, I feel like every day, like you said, South by Southwest and CERA week where I was, it's it's just AI is becoming part of almost every conversation. 

Mary: Yeah. When you think about it, I mean, it's nonstop, right? Like people will be using the internet, scrolling on your phone, asking Alexa things in the middle of the night, in the middle of the day, in the morning. It's constant power usage. And we've seen actually recently some interesting announcements about these companies turning to nuclear energy to power their data center campuses. We saw AWS, acquired Talon's Nuclear Data Center campus in Pennsylvania. And it makes sense why nuclear so appealing to power this? Because, I mean, just think about the reliability factor. Like you need constant power. 24/7 365 when the wind's not blowing and the sun's not shining, people still need energy for all of these new uses that we're using it for, everything from being on your computer to medical issues. I mean, anything that touches our daily lives basically routes through data centers these days. 

Jordan: Yeah. And I thought it was interesting that Sam Altman, who is the founder of OpenAI and which they're the chat GPT creator, he's also works with the nuclear firm Oklo, has said that he doesn't see a way for us to get there to meet the energy demand without nuclear. 

Mary: Yeah, it seems to be becoming more and more of a trend. And I mean, it makes sense. So I'm excited for you guys to hear what Tom has to say about this today. Tom Abes founded and leads the Digital Energy Council, a nonprofit group dedicated to advancing energy modernization and resilience through digital innovation. Previously, he spearheaded the first mining focused government advocacy campaign in the US and served as Chief of Staff for International Affairs at the Department of Energy, overseeing energy coordination across the U.S. government with experience on Capitol Hill. Mapes brings a wealth of expertise to DC, promoting best practices and collaboration within the energy industry. Tom, thanks so much for joining us today. 

Tom: Thank you very much for having me. 

Mary: Can you start by telling us a little bit about yourself and how you got interested in digital assets and energy policy? 

Tom: Yeah. As you mentioned, my background is in more of, probably considered traditional energy policy. I worked on Capitol Hill in the House and also in the Senate. And my boss in the Senate at the time was the chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Following that, made my way over to the Department of Energy, and it was kind of, towards the end of my time at the Department of Energy. I kept hearing about this whole digital asset mining, Bitcoin mining, you know, crypto mining. How you know, it was framed within the publication or the articles or whatever I was saying or reading. But ultimately I saw a kind of. The more and more I read and learned about. It struck me as an energy opportunity and energy play, particularly when it comes to flexible data centers and this, kind of emerging data center ecosystem that that as currently kind of been overtaking the news of sorts. So I always tell everyone I come, I come at this with an energy background and see it. I see all the good sides of it now. But what I really first got into it, it was it was kind of learning about the energy opportunities at the Springs, as it's kind of a tool in the tool belt for development. 

Jordan: So the Digital Energy Council is the first member association focused solely on digital energy. For our listeners who may not know. Can you talk a little bit about what digital energy is and how you decided to get started with the DC? 

Tom: Yeah. So more or less oversimplify it. Digital energy is kind of the ability to to monetize these stranded energy assets. It's converting energy into crypto or Bitcoin or similar. You know, there's new AI integrations is coming in. And we're going to be turning power into, you know, technology that that powered your day to day lives, things like that. So it's kind of this idea encompassing, this, this digital movement within the energy, sector. It seemed to be, particularly on the policy front, a bit of a bit of a blind spot here. I'm based out of Washington, DC, and there had been a bit of a blind spot of no one was really speaking about this or kind of connecting digital piece with the energy piece. You know, the kind of the technology with the traditional energy sectors, and that's kind of a gap we're trying to fill here, as there's been a lot of these, siloed conversations, you know, between, you know, individual companies and maybe whoever the purchasing power from or, you know, similar, you know, one off conversations being had within, within the industries. But ultimately, you know, we saw that there was a real opportunity. No one here was. Supporting or driving the industry. Educating policymakers on this, new emerging technology. You know, supporting the industry, developing the industry, really, you know, representing, the industry. And on a policy front. You know, it was of the mind that as we grow and we keep seeing this, this idea of digital energy becoming more and more ingrained in your everyday lives. Energy is one of the most, regulated industries in the world. So you better believe at some point this is going to become more and more regulated. And we wanted to be kind of proactive out in front of some of these, you know, laws, regulations, policies being developed as opposed to in ten years from now having to kind of circle back and, you know, fix any errors we had. 

Mary: That's smart because it seems like a lot, a lot more people are actually starting to talk about this. I actually saw a recent Washington Post article that said swaths of the United States are at risk of running short of power as data centers and clean, technology factories pull up the country. The article said that in Georgia, demand for industrial power is surging to record highs. With the rejection of electricity use for the next decade, now 17 times, what it was only recently, Arizona Public Service, the largest utility in that state, is also struggling to keep up, projecting it will be out of transmission capacity before the end of the decade, absent major upgrades. Northern Virginia needs the equivalent of several large nuclear plants to serve all the new data centers planned there and that are under construction. Can you touch on why these new technologies require so much energy? 

Tom: Yeah, it's, with the digital asset mining. Bitcoin mining traditionally is due to the fact of, proof of work and uses the proof of work consensus mechanism, which ultimately is the most secure way to, validate blockchain transactions. And that is ultimately the energy use is, creates an objective way to validate these transactions. And it also, is the as I mentioned, the most secure consensus mechanism that prevents attacks within the, blockchain mechanism. So proof of work is it's in the title there. You have to prove the work aka energy being used to work within the Bitcoin network and secure the network. Ultimately, AI is the main energy component. There is the, GPU processing, which is specialty type of chips that are being used within these datacenters. And ultimately the the processing piece is, is why these are in high demand for for the energy sector. 

Jordan: What opportunity do you see this presenting for nuclear energy? 

Tom: If we want to run clean baseload power, there's no better way to do it than the nuclear. Things, with nuclear being a reliable source of clean power. Datacenters need reliable, clean power that's able to be scaled to these large numbers that they're looking for. So nature provides that. It's also particularly on the digital asset mining or the bitcoin mining there or flexible load data centers, which as you all know, nuclear power doesn't always want to kind of ramp up or down. They like to stay as level as possible. So miners and these flexible load data centers offer incentives to kind of fill in those peaks and valleys. But the expression is the user of first and last resort of power or energy, meaning they can come in there and be an anchor tenant for the build out of maybe in the Newkirk case and some are being deployed or something like that. It could help an alternative financing stream for them or on the back end. As I just mentioned, you know, if they don't have the demand at all times during the non-peak time, they can go to fill in that curve or fill in the gaps in the peaks and valleys there, among other reasons, if we want to deploy seven reactors in more rural areas. A lot of these flexible load data centers, particularly, are location agnostic. So they can go to the source, they could be, developed, on site or nearby power of them. 

Mary: So where are you already seeing nuclear being used to address these growing energy needs? 

Tom: Yeah. I know at the Digital Energy Council, one of our members is mining directly on site at a nuclear facility in Pennsylvania. And it was a way to kind of extend the life, of a reactor there so that that goes into the alternative financing component to it. I know within the space there are companies that have agreed to, m.o use for future smart development. Like I said, being able to be deployed in rural areas and offering kind of an anchor tenant to them. Hopefully we'll see some of them being built out more and more, particularly with the news recently from Congress, that that is kind of hoping to expedite some of the smaller permitting that we're seeing out there. So hopefully we could play in those, you know, swim in those lanes as well. But yeah, like I said, it's it's a, you know, kind of to back up a little bit. One of the big components to all this that doesn't get spoken about enough, I think that all energy here is, is we have a real generation conundrum on our hands. The demand for energy is only increasing it is not decreasing anytime soon. Everything. You know, energy is kind of the lifeblood of everything we're doing here. So the more clean generation we can get on to kind of build out within these data centers. You know, I think it's a net positive for everyone. 

Jordan: What's going to happen if we don't solve this problem in time? 

Tom: That's $1 million question. I frankly don't have a great answer for you. But what we're seeing in our industry, and I hope it doesn't become more common, is, you know, there are policymakers and stakeholders who take a look at bulk users of power that what you're using that, for lack of a better expression, picking winners and losers of who could use this power. The digital asset mining space has been very much, under a microscope recently for for some of this. And then I know AI and data centers as a whole are starting to get more and more attention for, energy use. And and I am of the mind that gets a little dangerous with, telling who you know, which energies of power can and cannot use them. As we know, energy is one of the most regulated industries in the world. It is regulated at the point of generation, typically. And I think that's that's where it should stay. Does the government start peeling off what they deem most necessary or or important? I don't know. I think everyone's starting to kind of look around and I think, you know, having offtake opportunities like, you know, digital energy or digital asset mining. I, it keeps going back to kind of alternative funding streams for some of these generation projects. I think that's the no matter what side of the aisle or where you come out, energy as a whole is clearers better if you can, within reason. But I think at the end of the day, these these power providers are businesses and they are looking for some sort of income stream to their projects, but they need to go go somewhere to ultimately transmit to consumers. It's a real conundrum right now. 

Mary: It seems like some are starting to take their energy needs into their own hands, right? Like we're seeing these big tech companies make investments in nuclear. Specifically, Amazon Web Services purchased the data center in Pennsylvania, and Microsoft hired a director of nuclear technologies. How do you think the support of these big tech companies like Amazon and Microsoft and others, will impact nuclear and the energy industry more broadly? 

Tom: And kind of an odd way. I'm surprised you kind of took this long. You know, if I have the funds, of some of these huge corporations. I hate to sound so crass about it, but why not start running the power by yourself? That's maybe a little cheeky, but. Does that affect the consumer's being able to purchase power? Does it? You know, in theory, at times, maybe it should create a cheaper, fairer for consumers in certain areas, maybe creates more expensive power for consumers in certain areas. I think that at the end of the day, when they ask about how is this going to affect the energy world? I think to oversimplify it, it's has going to affect the consumers of power. The average person that you're worried about, these Microsofts, Googles and things like that. Pulling off this power does affect their day to day until they can't get power to their house for a reasonable price. Yep. So I think that's the real question is if there's a way to figure out a coordination between. Power providers, power off takers and how it trickles down to the consumer. I think more and more of them will be going to the behind the meter, but in some sort of creative way. For instance, you mentioned the the agreement. So let's go ahead and do your PowerPoint in Pennsylvania. One of our members of DC was, on site there for. Couple of years now. But in Bitcoin, a lot of these I can kind of foresee maybe some sort of coordination in terms of. Behind the meter will will buy of X amount from the power provider. And during times of need for the consumers, nearby route will turn off or turn up or down in some capacity and push that back out to the consumer. Get it creative with the power purchase agreements within these, areas, onsite and beyond the meter. I think you're going to see some, some variations of that. And then, yeah, like I said, I was seeing more and more companies kind of dipping over into this energy sector. And I think that's going to be good, bad and indifferent. You might see some some folks going to buy some old abandoned coal plants because they're cheap right now. You know, it's you might see some great stories with the color piece, but everywhere in between, so.

Jordan: So we're seeing momentum building. Obviously you mentioned we talked about Amazon. We talked about Microsoft. You mentioned other companies getting interested in this. And I'm wondering do you think this will help gain more support for clean energy on a government level? 

Tom: I hope so. Like I said, for that, that funding, the funding opportunity it brings, one of the biggest issues we have right now is there's a lot of good things within, current administrations, the IRA, Biden's IRA that's, supporting a lot of these projects. We can keep building all these projects, you know, till we're blue in the face. But that power needs to go somewhere. Which means you need customers to offtake this power. And as mentioned, you know, getting creative with some of these power off takers, these data centers can maybe work within it, particularly the Bitcoin mining piece. Because as mentioned, they can kind of pick up moves around if needed, flex on off, at or variable times. You know, it offers an off taking incentive that we may not have right now, but at the same time it's it's a catch 22. There's arguments, saying, why do you need all this power? You know, what are we doing with all this power? And, and I personally kind of fall in the line of disagreeing with some of that. In terms of goes back to that big winners and losers I mentioned earlier. But I think in theory, this energy build out, if there's money to be made out there, people will people will go to the cheapest form if they can get renewable energy as cheap as possible. I know all my members would go run, run for that in a heartbeat. It's just building it out. And to that extent particularly that the bitcoin mining piece is not. It's kind of an oversimplification. It's not exact apples to apples, but it's almost like a one way battery of sorts for these peaker times. You either have batteries which if we want to build out this renewable. You have batteries that we don't, necessarily have the capability to harness enough power in turn to run talon's or, you know, have this backup for when the wind's not blowing. The sun's out shining. So your next your next option is to, turn on a peaker plant, which are generally coal or oil and gas. And your third option now with this new technology is to, put in some of these data set that particularly the flexible load data centers and then some of these regions which you've got to keep your offtake, a little higher. And then during those spike times, turn off the data center and put it back to the consumer. Frankly, it's the cleanest way to do it right now. It's new technologies drive a lot of this, just like anything. And, you know, you're still working out some of the kinks, but, you know, there's there's a lot of real opportunity here. 

Mary: I want to dig more into, bitcoin mining since you brought it up and cryptocurrencies are having such a moment right now, how important is clean energy, particularly for that industry? I know it needs a lot of energy, but how important is clean energy? 

Tom: Yeah, I would say the market at this point is kind of driving, you know, most of our members are publicly traded Bitcoin mining companies, and the market is kind of driving them to they all have, you know, some sort of sustainable mandates and or definitely leaning towards if they could purchase that power. You know, if all things equal, they will go to the more sustainable, greener power. And frankly, a lot of their power pricing is getting cheaper on that front. The market's kind of, driving up there as well. And I know that's, you know, it's one of the more transparent industries out there. You can kind of look at most of their. Public records and they'll openly talk about what they're tried to run there. Not to say there are actors within every space that are just looking for any sort of power they can get and know there's it's cold, cause if it's renewable, it's renewable and it's whatever they can get. But, you know, they they are they're definitely diving headfirst into a all that one of our companies, is clean spark, therefore a renewable energy company that has kind of pivoted into this in the Bitcoin mining space. So it's a lot of work. Similar similar type companies. 

Jordan: Beyond creating a case for clean energy, the growing need for digital energy has an economic benefit by helping secure local jobs and create new training opportunities. And I'm curious if you've seen any examples already where where you've seen a benefit in communities. 

Tom: Yeah, come down as much and I actually it's a good segue. Clean spark A lot of their sites are located down in rural Georgia and within several of the towns they are in. They're the highest tax revenue within the town in the county. We went down for a tour with the with their congressmen this past summer, and the mayor of the town has come out publicly and said, this is the best thing that's coming to our to our area. It's tech jobs in these rural areas that might not otherwise be there, frankly. It's tax incentives. It's job creation. I know up in New York some other members are working at one of our companies is at Tara Wolf was up at a former coal plant and they retrofitted it, and now they're running hydro up there, and they're able to kind of save a bunch of the jobs that were otherwise at the coal plant that otherwise would have been abandoned. Now they turned it into this opportunity. So, you know, tax incentives, job creation. And that trickles down to the whole local community. Clean spark, who I was talking about earlier in rural Georgia and some of these towns, there's not a whole lot of financial opportunities there. And, you know, having some of these incentives and jobs and kind of creating a larger, footprint out in some of these areas. So I think you'll see that throughout all of this, all these emerging technologies and industries. I know that's historically, whenever a new technology comes in, a lot of one of the first reactions people have is, you know, we're in they're losing jobs or this is going to take out this job or that town. But if you ever notice, throughout history, there's always some near job comes in that what otherwise wasn't there were some new, skill sets or some you know, there's always something that emerges within these, these sectors. So I think we're only scratching the surface of some of the, job creation or economic creation that that these will bring. Because, you know, as we said a few times up, I don't think this is going anywhere anytime soon. This whole digital development. 

Mary: Where in Georgia are these towns you visited? 

Tom: So the, particular ones I've been to with them, and it's on their website. Washington, Georgia, it's about 45 minutes west of Augusta. I know they have some and they've they retrofitted a former Nextel, site in Norcross, Georgia, which is closer to Atlanta. But it was an old I don't know anyone who still uses the Nextel phone. So that was going out of commission, and it had all the hookups, so it repurposed, you know, they had the whole building set up for power already. So they put their monitors in there and they love showing that one off there. So areas like that Washington, Georgia's the site where I was at. 

Mary: Very cool, as a native Georgian I had to ask. I love seeing jobs going to the state. 

Tom: Yeah, I know that they have a few there. It was really cool that the mayor of Washington, Georgia came and, told us all the great benefits has been helping with the town. 

Mary: Awesome. I want to go back to crypto for one more minute just because it's all over the news and my dad's very into it. So I get texts about it pretty much every day. So I want to ask you how you see nuclear playing into this 2024 crypto boom, as some are calling it. 

Tom: I think there's some real opportunities there. The Digital Energy Council, we co-hosted a roundtable with the Nuclear Energy Institute, and we had, some representatives from our industry representatives with their industry. And, you know, a goal we have with the Digital Energy Council is to kind of show to the traditional energy markets and players, in this case, nuclear, you know, that there are some adults and the industry's maturing. One of the biggest issues is when you go talk to traditional energy companies is kind of the first stigma of crypto Bitcoin. You know, they still have this idea of sandbagging for free and or you know, some of the collapses over time or, you know, these mysterious people running computers in their basement and doing this, that and the other thing. So. So one of our biggest bridges to cross ins is getting everyone together and getting and, kind of showcasing what the bitcoin mining and crypto mining ecosystem has to offer. And that they are building out infrastructure. That they are a consumer. A large bulk power consumer with all those is what's there. They're more comfortable with that instead of you know. I think it's been the key magic word within the nuclear industry forever. But trying to get SMRs up and running quicker. I think if they ever got to that point, here's a here's a great customer that you can go drop these SMRs. As I said earlier, and some rural areas kind of use them as a test subject of sorts. They could be the miners could be the anchor tenant or the anchor customer in that area will guarantee X amount. Get creative with some sort of, purchase agreement, you know, will guarantee X amount of money if you provide us with, you know, y amount of power that that way they can kind of, start the process of kind of building out some of these SMEs around the country. I think that would be a great opportunity. The life, extensions of some of the older reactors I know around the country, some of these reactors are as profitable as they once were. Here's another opportunity to bring them in, bring, bring miners in to kind of work with them on that aspect. I said, there's a great example of such a, nuclear power plant that's happening right now with, with, a miner working there. So, so I think there's some real opportunities to kind of with two very, forward facing technologies. Nuclear's always been, at the technology front of the energy industry. And then obviously crypto mining, Bitcoin mining is a technology all unto itself. 

Jordan: How do you see the relationship between the government and the digital energy industry evolving and. What opportunities do you see for collaboration? 

Tom: I think obviously we've been talking about a nuclear. We're experiencing a lot of the kind of pain points that nuclear had for for many years, particularly, you know, any new emerging technology, there's going to be some hesitations. People are going to, frankly, just not know everything about it. Or, you know, one of our biggest components at the DEC is education. Go in and talk to policymakers. I mean, you wouldn't be surprised of. You know, put it into layers. How many of those members of Congress understand what we're trying to do here with digital energy and digital power? I mean, you can imagine how some of those conversations go. So you have to kind of start, you know, start with their staff, kind of get folks educated on what we're doing, why we're doing it. You know, tried to once once you kind of walk through it, some people, some walk away and say, that's not for me and some kind of have that moment and they go, oh, this is really interesting. And this is this could be important moving forward. So it all starts with that education piece for the policymakers and policy fronts. And then that kind of ultimately becomes some of the policies that are made. And just like anything there's going to be good, bad or indifferent. You know, we are of the mind within our industry. Though basis of of mining is the debt and the whole, frankly, basis of the blockchain and Bitcoin and any other cryptos being used. It's kind of the decentralization factor of it. And one thing we always try to highlight with policymakers is we need some rules of regulation over here in the US. There's no question about that. We can't just have her going running crazy and doing whatever they want. With that said, if we overregulated over here, particularly on the mining front, the United States, I'd say North America as a whole, some of the best regulations for power in the world. And if you don't, if you kind of push it overseas or push it outside of the US and North American oversight because some of our members Canadian equities as well. But, it's going to go to kind of some of the larger countries that are also mining are Kazakhstan, Russia, you know, areas like that where they're just going to run diesel generation, they're gonna run coal. There are much dirtier sources as opposed to if we keep it over here. And in order for some of these renewable incentives, nuclear interceptors, kind of cleaner, cleaner alternatives. So, so the policy front is try to create, you know, develop proactive policies that help support and kind of incentivize the, industry to stay over here. 

Jordan: I'm curious what what else is cooking for the DEC? What what other priorities are you looking at? 

Tom: Like I said, a lot a lot of that education piece, a lot of one thing we're very much trying to do is try to build coalitions to support within the energy ecosystem. You know, I mentioned, explaining, some of these emerging technologies to members of Congress. It's not too far off when you go in and talk to some, you know, C-suite and things like that. You know, the energy world is traditionally probably mostly in a good way, a slow moving, slow evolving industry, you know, rightfully so. You don't want to take too many risks or chances. You know, you don't want to blow out a power grid. You know, you don't want to have any sort of, public harm, things like that. And obviously that's first priority. But, you know, after that, when you look into ways that we need to modernize, way to, build out more reliable energy grids in a smaller or larger loads coming on, you know, trying to get in and really, coordinate with, with these. The traditional energy sector is very important to us. You know, coordination on all fronts. This will alleviate potential issues that might pop up, but but it definitely, causes less headaches when everyone's kind of on the same page of the same. on the same sheet of music, you know, particularly the utilities and power providers and things like that. So trying to kind of bridge some of these divides that are just kind of natural in any, any sort of new, kind of moving parts, like, you know, having so many moving parts like this, trying to get some proactive piece of legislation out there on the policy front. 

Mary: Are you feeling optimistic about the path forward? 

Tom: Yeah, I'm feeling optimistic. I think a study will be very important, because once the government starts looking into things and sees some of the benefits there, you start building public private partnerships in any industry and gotten to where you want to go. When people use it every day, don't even think about it. A goal from mine. I don't know what the time frame is, but. And I, and I always very much make sure to reiterate where it makes sense, because there are areas where sticking a Bitcoin mining operation probably doesn't make sense within their local grid. You know, it's it's just too much. It's just too much on maybe that that certain area. But there's other areas where it makes great sense. And if you plug in some of these flexible data centers, you know, maybe that that's an opportunity that like, like we've been talking about some renewable project comes in, says, oh, I have I have a guaranteed customer here I could build out larger than otherwise would be able to. And then ultimately it kind of goes down to the consumers and several pieces. So you know, that that would be the end goal is if these are being integrated within local grids and local municipalities, etc., and, you know, even realize are there that that's when you kind of see the work that get put in and you kind of, I don't want to say made it, made it. But, you know, the the progress is limited. 

Jordan: We this season are ending with asking our guests what their favorite local restaurant is. We are. We love food. You mentioned you are in the D.C. area. Do you have any local favorites? We're in D.C. Too, so we're very interested in this. Invested.

Tom: Well, I want to hear yours then. I want to hear your place.

Mary: Mine's so cliche I'm like embarrassed to say. But I go to Le diplomat twice a week later. 

Tom: Le Dip burgers. Unbelievable. 

Mary: It's so good. Tom, thank you so much for joining us today. This is such a good conversation. Really appreciate your time. 

Tom: Yeah. Appreciate it guys. 

Jordan: Thank you. 

Mary: All right. Now, Fissionaries, you have some great DC restaurant recommendations. Make sure to get to Le Diplomat and try that burger. 

Jordan: We know we're going to have to do like a Fissionary foodie tour at some point. 

Mary: Yes. 

Jordan: We're like, come to D.C. And we'll do like a Fissionary food tour. 

Mary: Yeah, let's take the show on the road. It all forget all the high points, all the restaurants. 

Jordan: Yes. 

Mary: We'll record from there. 

Jordan: I love this, I love this idea. Thanks to Tom for spending some time with us today. It was it was great to chat on this very newsworthy, timely topic. If you want to learn more about the Digital Energy Institute, we've linked their website in the show notes. 

Mary: And don't forget to follow and rate us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. Thanks for joining us today, and we'll see you next time.