Green Giants – Episode 45

Mark Little (01:56)

Well, it’s interesting. The answer to that is probably a little more simple than I would like. But I grew up in Calgary. so when I went to the University of Calgary, I did a computer science degree. I came out and looked for, hey, what are the jobs that are available? And Calgary is known for its oil and gas and energy focus, as is Alberta. But boy, back then, it was even more so. A huge part of the economy was linked to it. And so, as a result of that, oil and gas was a logical place to go because that was a lot of the companies within the city and stuff here. But going into an oil and gas company with a computer science degree was quite unique because of my background and such. I wasn’t. If you were a reservoir engineer, you’d spend a lot of time doing reservoir engineering or geophysics or whatever your expertise was. But because of that, I ended up going into Imperial and had an enormous breadth.

I worked in the upstream, downstream, midstream, and saw a large portion of the industry from multiple different perspectives and stuff associated with it. So, as time’s gone on, I’ve started to appreciate the complexities and the challenges with each of the energy forms. I feel like a lot of the conversations are quite high-level and often lack a lot of substance. And so because of that, we have these high-level conversations that sound fantastic.

 But often, they skip over the complexities and challenges of each of the energy forms. And this is an area that I’ve spent quite a bit of time weighing in on. And in Canada, I would say it’s almost an even more unique situation because we’re so richly blessed with energy that I think within our country, we often take it for granted and waste opportunities to improve our economy and provide energy to parts of the world.

Wes Ashworth (03:57)

Yeah, it is a super cool story, and just kind of hearing it all come together. And I love talking to folks that just have such a breadth of experience in a lot of those different energy sectors and just kind of understanding how the whole picture works. Thinking about that, in your experience across multiple different facets of the energy landscape, how does your experience in those different energy sectors shape your approach to innovation today?

Mark Little (04:21)

It’s interesting because it’s had a lot of impact on me. And to some degree, I would say my focus on innovation has focused on the transformational steps that we can take within the energy space. Obviously, rolling out new technologies, lots of people are focused on it, whether it’s wind, solar, all these types of things. And I just said new technologies, I don’t view those as new. But commercially, they’ve penetrated the commercial space, and so they’re getting scale now. So that’s fantastic and there’s lots of people and lots of companies focused on that. But I’ve actually focused my attention on what I view as missing in the energy system and so the breakthroughs that are required to make that happen because with my background I’m excited about transforming the energy system with filling some of these gaps.

Wes Ashworth (05:04)

Yeah, in a perfect segue to Jotson what you’re doing now, which is tackling that sort of major gap in energy awareness. Most people don’t really know how much energy they use, where it goes, or how to optimize it. I guess what was the moment you realized this problem needed solving, and what do some of those early days look like?

Mark Little (05:35)

Well, this has been going way back to my days when I was at Suncor working in the industry. And I talked to lots of people, whether it’s in the educational side, within the industry, the political system, policymakers, all sorts of different things. And one of the things I realized in the conversations is that often people kind of like miss the challenge. Hydrogen becomes the latest buzzword, and you run around, you think we’ve been making hydrogen in the country for 70 years.

We know quite a bit about it. Suncor, at the time that I was there, was making about 15 % of all the hydrogen in the country and consumed about 20 % of it. And people talk about it as the panacea, but when you actually get down to hydrogen, its energy content’s about 40 % of natural gas. So you need to consume a lot more of it. And often, that’s missed in the conversation. So then everybody’s running around talking about, we found this energy, hydrogen, it’s going to save the world.

And you think the cost is like exponentially higher to go from natural gas to hydrogen. And so I really felt like a lot of people in the energy space, this conversation sitting at 50,000 feet. And if we could actually get the facts on the table and have real conversations about the pros and cons of each of the energy forms, we would make much better decisions.

I think that’s true about our country. I think that’s true about the entire global energy system, I think it’s true about us as consumers because one of the things I’ve realized is most consumers know very little about their energy consumption and where their money goes and how they can optimize it.

Wes Ashworth (07:07)

Yeah, and we’ve talked about that. Many consumers, and I would say the vast majority, if not almost all, see energy as a simple transaction. They pay a bill, they get power. But that’s pretty much it. You know, they don’t look really past that amount, right? As you’ve pointed out, understanding energy use is the key to efficiency and cost savings. Can you talk to us a little bit about that and what are the biggest misconceptions people have about their own energy consumption?

Mark Little (07:47)

Yeah, I think that some of the way people view it is because of the complexity of the energy system. So one of the things we love, if you think of North America, it’s like, my goodness, we have like incredible amounts of energy and all sorts of different forms. I would say from a consumer’s perspective, infinite amounts of energy and it’s safe, it’s reliable. And so these are like fantastic attributes. And quite frankly, if you go around the globe, North America is the envy of the energy system. Everybody would love to have our energy system. But you know, when you when you start getting below the surface and start asking like, well, what do you know? Are you getting more efficient? Have you made improvements in your system? How much do you consume? It’s so complicated for the consumer. Like, you know, there’s a variety of different reasons why this happens. But one of the things Wes that I realized is, you know, we sell energy in every unit possible. Like we sell electricity in kilowatts, we sell natural gas in BTUs if you’re in the States or gigajoules or dollars per meter cube, sell gasoline by volume, and we sell propane by weight. So if you were trying to make it confusing for the consumer, it’s like, well, we succeeded. yeah. But a lot of these were because the people needed that to run the energy system. This was designed for the companies delivering it and making it reliable.

So I would say, in that regard, it’s been fantastically successful. But it certainly made it super complex for the consumer. So what we’re trying to do is actually go in and figure out how do we engage the consumers so that they can go from believing today that I can never understand this to not only understanding it being powered to actually manage it.

Wes Ashworth (09:32)

Yeah. And can you share a little bit for those that are unaware of Jotson, How it works? How are you solving that problem, helping solve that problem? I guess give a little bit of overview in terms of how it works today and what that looks like.

Mark Little (09:46)

Yeah, I mean, basically, people will buy energy from multiple companies. And so there is really no logical integrator of the energy system. They get these bills in all different units. Some of them break out taxes and fees and infrastructure, and some don’t. And so it’s like, if you tried to sit down and figure out how much energy do I consume on a common basis, it would take hours to figure this out. And so what we’re trying to do is we go through a couple of steps here. We translate what we call, we kind of call it disparate data today is the way the system works. And we try and convert that to information so that normal humans can understand it. And then we try and educate consumers. So, like just as an example, one of the things that we’re doing is we will show you the cost of energy all on the same units. So you can now compare the cost of electricity to natural gas, to gasoline, to fuel or whatever.

And so you can start realizing like, okay, wait a minute. There was a time two years ago in Alberta where electricity was eight times the cost per unit of energy as natural gas. And people are like, okay, whoa, wait a minute. What? How is that possible? So we try and do that. And then the third step is we start to build in operating analysis so you can understand, okay, am I consuming more this year than I did last year? If so, where?

Where is it? Is it in natural gas or electricity or gasoline or whatever it may be? And then we take it to an investment analysis. So if you’re doing things like investments and such, you can go, OK, wait a minute. Now, I can switch fuels. I’m going to replace my furnace. I’m going to switch to heat pumps. Does that make sense or not? Will it increase my cost or not? What happens to my emissions? Do I become more efficient? And these are getting as, you know, the consumers in the past haven’t had the ability to switch often. We didn’t have EVs, so you bought gasoline or diesel to drive your vehicle. But now, electricity is in that mix. And now people are like, well, how do I even compare these two? And how will I know whether my operating costs are higher or lower? What happens to my maintenance costs or insurance or whatever? And this is happening in the house. We can now heat our houses electrically. You know, should we have a heat pump or an air conditioner? Or should we get rid of the furnace and actually go to a heat pump? If I do that, then wait a minute, do I need a supplemental energy system? And if so, what is it? And so it was complicated before, and people were disengaged. And now I would say people kind of blink out. And then when you go and talk to, we’ve seen this actually happen when a consumer goes and talks to a vendor, the vendor will say, yeah, you’ll save money, it’ll be X amount or whatever. And then when you say, where did you get the math from?

To tell me that when you don’t know how much I consume, what I’m doing, where I am, none. And instantly, they’ll confess that, well, they just made it up or they read it on a brochure and they were told to tell everybody the same thing. And it’s hard. So, what we’re trying to do is customize this analysis based on you or whatever the consumer, it’s a business or a household, so that they can start to learn. And it’s still early days; we’re just kind of getting into this investment analysis now of the operating analysis. You compare you to you, year over year, and you’re starting to see that analysis is looking pretty good.

Wes Ashworth (13:17)

Yeah, you could definitely see the value obviously come into play. I think one, you’re seeing consumers that want to be more informed, you know, and want to be more educated and want to kind of know what’s going on and what am I spending, why am I spending, what’s good. You know, I think that’s more and more that trend is continuing across the board. But also, I think just there’s such a huge power in awareness in just knowing, you know, and you’re kind of going, whoa, my usage has spiked from the previous year, like What the heck, what changed? And just that awareness is really powerful. And I know you are still early on, but your platform is already serving 1,200 households or more, expanding into businesses and new markets. What’s the biggest challenge in helping consumers take control of their energy data?

Mark Little (13:46)

Well, Wes, I think it’s what we already talked about is like, you know, people just like send money and I keep getting energy. I stoppe sending money. I don’t get energy. That’s kind of the extent of it. Often, when we talk to people, they have a hard time telling you where they buy their energy from. So this isn’t getting a lot of attention. So, to take them from a belief that just send money, I’ll never understand it to, wait a minute, I can understand this and I can take control and I can make decisions and I can optimize my energy system.

That’s a big transformation, and I would say, you know, my entire life, we’ve never been in a position where we could understand it. So trying to get people to like, wait a minute, I could understand this? Okay, how do I understand it? Then let me engage and such. And I think so the biggest challenge for us is getting penetration where people want to understand, how does this work? And we need to be able to integrate it with all the utility data, and there’s lots of utility.

So we’re kind of doing this region by region. So it’s complicated, but it’s been very successful. Literally, when I started Jotson, I never dreamt in a million years that I would be using it on myself to improve my efficiency. But I actually literally, because you start getting real benchmarks of similar houses and stuff and you start going like, wait, how could I be twice as much consuming twice as much energy? I have solar on my roof.

Wes Ashworth (15:03)

Yeah. Right? It’s a true test.

Mark Little (15:28)

What in the world’s going on? And then you start exploring it. So I’ve cut my household. I’m a very large consumer. This isn’t representative. But I’ve cut my household energy consumption by 39 % year over year, which is shocking. But we’re expecting for normal consumers, it’s 5 to 15%. And so, the more you consume, the bigger the opportunities. But I found there were certain things in my relatively new home that had never worked since we moved in. And when you start seeing the comparisons, I start explaining like, what in the world’s going on? How is this even possible? And then you realize, this isn’t even working. So these are examples where people think like, well, we sit in the dark and eat dinner every night. Actually, our lifestyle hasn’t changed at all. I’ve made some tweaks and fixed some things. And now I’m working on the next stage of efficiencies, which I think will get us below 50 % of what we were consuming before.

Wes Ashworth (15:59)

Yeah. Wow. That’s awesome.

I actually have a friend that has solar, and they finally kind of looked into it, but it was just unaware. Just pay the bill, like not really looking into it with anything. Their system was basically switched off for like two years, and they had no idea. Never knew it, never.

He found that out. This exists out in the world, just as an example. Jotson’s name is really cool. He’s inspired by Jule, which is energy, as we all know, Watson, which is facts and figures and kind of blending together. So super cool name. Anything else you want to share just in terms of how the platform works, how it turns complex energy data into simple actionable insights? Did we cover it there, or did we miss anything?

Mark Little (16:54)

Yeah, I think you’ve covered most of it. I mean, our objective is, I kind of view that, and I’ve been a big believer that you can’t optimize something you don’t understand. And I’m of the belief that, we literally have met with folks, and I think that it’s probably less than 1 % really understand their energy consumption. People are busy. And so one of the things we’re trying to do is build an app that’s constantly analyzing and trying to understand and help you manage your energy without you downloading and building spreadsheets and looking at rates and on and on and on. And so that’s the journey, and still early days. We’re operating in Alberta in Canada, and we’re just in the process of entering Ontario, which is a third of all the homes in the country. So we’re excited. That’s a big step for us, for sure. Yeah, so it’s early days, but we’re excited, and we think there’s lots of things you can do with the app that you could have never done before already, and there’s lots more coming. So we’re excited about it.

Wes Ashworth (17:58)

Yeah, I love it. And I know you kind of look at expansion in Ontario as you mentioned, looking toward the US market at some point maybe in the future as well too. I guess that is the vision. What’s the long-term vision for the company?

Mark Little (18:19)

Great. Our focus, Wes, is actually to go to the developed world. You know, if you’re in Africa and you have very limited energy, often they’re starving for energy. And so it’s really targeted where we have high energy consumption, lots of choices, lots of options associated with it. We’re trying to reduce our costs. We’re trying to become more efficient. We’re trying to reduce our emissions. So that’s where it’s focused. We think it’s about 10 % of the world. It’s Western Europe, North America.

Australia, New Zealand are really kind of the big target market. And we think that there are other examples that have come forward outside of that where people go; this is really applicable in some of these other jurisdictions, maybe for different reasons than what I just described. But no, we’re very excited about it. I think it’s a transformative experience, but it’s an early transformation. We still have a long way to go.

Wes Ashworth (18:56)

Sure. Yeah, without a doubt. Excited to see the future and where that goes. Transitioning a little bit to some of your other ventures. So, you’re on the board of General Fusion, a company pioneering a new approach to fusion energy. What excites you the most about the potential of fusion to revolutionize global energy?

Mark Little (19:34)

Well, I think it’s exactly that it will revolutionize global energy. Unlike any energy source that we’ve seen, there are lots of energy sources. As you know, we talk about wind, solar, LNG, nuclear, oil, gas, hydrogen, biofuels, and all sorts of different things. But this is a game changer. It’s super safe. It will, I think, be very competitive on the cost associated with it.

Safe that we can put it where the demand is so we can get rid of often the complexity of all these grid issues that we talk about and reduce the amount of money that we’re putting into grid investment. and it’s clean as can be. I mean, our reactor that we’re working on runs off of water. So you know we’re not putting uranium in it and all these types of things which cause a whole bunch of other issues associated with it. So, I just think this is the most transformational technology in the energy space that I’ve seen in my lifetime. And my focus is, if there’s one thing that I could do to help transform the world, it would be to get fusion on the grid.

Wes Ashworth (20:41)

Yeah, cool. That’s a powerful statement.

So, I know many people still think fusion is decades away, and or they really don’t know much about it at all. I know you feel we’re sort of at that inflection point. Any sort of recent breakthroughs, or what makes you confident that fusion will be commercialized even in the near future?

Mark Little (20:58)

Yeah, it’s interesting, Wes. Maybe I should just stop and say, the way the sun works is fusion energy, right? This is constantly generating heat and energy and stuff associated with it. And just think, solar panels are around trying to capture that energy that’s gone through all this massive distance and atmosphere and everything else to try and transform it. What we’re trying to do is basically recreate the conditions of the sun in a controllable system on Earth so that we can then harness that and use it for the globe. And when you think about technology just at 50,000 feet, it’s like, we’re doing DNA, we’re cloning various biological forms, we can put equipment on Mars, we’ve done AI, we have people that have been on the moon. It’s like incredible the things that we’ve achieved, but we’ve never been able to create a fusion electric reactor to generate energy for the globe. I think there are billions of dollars pouring into this technology set. There are different approaches around the globe. There are breakthroughs almost regularly now on fusion. And so as more and more money is poured into this and more and more resources are deployed, we’re seeing more and more breakthroughs. And I think that many of the people in this space believe that within the next 10 years, we’ll have commercial fusion on the grid. So, you saw a US lab last year or maybe even a year and a half ago generate net positive energy out using fusion that had never happened before. You’re seeing all sorts of things. So, like there are so many breakthroughs, all sorts of resources. It’s a really exciting time. and we’ve been working on fusion since the late 1940s. But boy, it’s a whole different world now, and think technologies like, you know, advanced sensor technology and quantum computing and AI and all of these things that have happened have all kind of bolstered the capability for us to actually make this a reality. It’s exciting.

Wes Ashworth (22:59)

Yeah, now absolutely. It is exciting. It’s super exciting. And one of the other perceptions that’s out there with fusion is it’s just an extension of nuclear energy or people kind of throw it in that same bucket, you if they’re unaware. I know you’ve shared that fusion really is fundamentally different. And as you shared there: safer, more scalable, even suitable for downtown city centers and you know, those sort of things. Can you talk through that a little bit and explain your why behind that?

Mark Little (23:24)

Yeah, it’s interesting because the reaction that we have with fission reactors today, basically what we call nuclear reactors, is a nuclear process that’s self-perpetuating. So, once you get it going, it just keeps going. And all of the control systems are around keeping it under control. You don’t have to know much about nuclear to know that if those control systems go wrong, it can be a very bad day because we’ve seen it with meltdowns in various reactors and such.

So, which I think is a bit crazy, so much so that we’ve kind of lost in a lot of jurisdictions around the world the support for nuclear energy. You think like it’s infinite, it’s reliable, it’s clean. You would think in this debate of energy and climate, this would be a great technology. We’ve seen literally some countries shutting down nuclear reactors in favor of coal or wind or whatever. It’s incredible. But fusion is the exact kind opposite in that. Instead of splitting molecules apart and it being a self-perpetuating action, fusion actually is merging molecules together, and so the control systems in fusion are to create the perfect conditions in which fusion would happen. And so obviously, if you lose control of your control systems or you have an outage or whatever it may be, fusion just stops because things don’t just naturally combine that we need to create the conditions for. So as a result of that, it’s you just can’t have these runaways and meltdowns and stuff that you would have. So, you know, from a safety perspective, that’s huge. It actually has the same radiation signature as a hospital. We put lots of hospitals in downtowns because it’s very acceptable. We don’t have the long-term waste issue.

And then I actually think one of the things that’s one of the biggest challenges around building the industrial systems is building the grid investment because it goes through jurisdiction and people don’t want it in their backyard and all of these types of issues. The ability to take Fusion because it’s so safe and put it right where the demand is, whether it’s in an industrial facility whether it’s in a downtown environment, hugely impacts the safety and the complexity of the grid investment. So, this is a hugely transformative technology, and ours breeds its own fuel and basically runs on water. So, it’s a very different experience than what we think of as nuclear technologies today.

Wes Ashworth (25:58)

Yeah, love it. Love a lot of those comparisons as well, switching a little bit to just the bigger overall energy picture, as we’ve touched on a couple of times, you spent your career working across energy systems, fossil fuels, renewables, hydrogen, fusion, kind of like you name it, the whole gambit. When you look at the global energy landscape, what’s the biggest misconception you wish more people understood?

Mark Little (26:24)

Well, I think that it’s just the vastness of the energy system, Wes, is to me the thing that people don’t understand. So, when people come out and go, shut all this stuff down. Let’s just ditch it in the next four years and replace it with solar panels or wind farms. The thing that people totally miss on this, is that in my lifetime, I think this is true. I’m not sure it’s entirely true, but certainly in the last 50 years, you’ve that 80 % of the energy system, between 80 and 90 % of all the primary energy in the world has been hydrocarbon based. Today, it’s right around 80%. And the thing that’s interesting is although that percentage is slowly declining, the absolute value of energy is going up. So, when people talk about we’re transitioning away from oil and gas, it’s kind of like, in which world? Because every year we use more.

We’re still using more coal every year than what we did the previous year, even though the percentage tweaks down slightly. So, it’s kind of like, wow. And you think like we have people in energy poverty, we have extreme poverty around the globe, we continue to add people to the earth. So, you know, I’m very much a believer that for us to win, we need to pull all levers across all of these energy forms. So, things like, you know, some people are against carbon sequestration. It’s kind of like,

well, if you’re against carbon sequestration, it means that 80 % of the energy system is going to continue to admit, and we’re not going to make any progress on it until we phase it out and some people view well, tomorrow we’ll phase it out. It’s kind of like, well, not in my lifetime, and when you look at it, the amount of money that’s been poured in politically across the globe into transforming the energy system, and we’re still at 80%.

So this, I think that if people understood the vastness of the energy system, a lot more people would be like, hey, all hands on deck across all energy forms, we need to go hard across the board. And then how do we do that to try and deal with the balance of energy and climate?

Wes Ashworth (28:43)

In thinking about that, you’ve made that point in terms of, I don’t know that we’re in an energy transition, we’re actually in an energy expansion. And we’re seeing that demand continue to increasing. A lot of talk, obviously, around AI and data centers, and sure, that’s certainly a big part of it, but we keep requiring more. so demand keeps outpacing renewable growth. I guess. Can you expand on that a little bit? And what does that mean for climate and energy policy?

Mark Little (29:09)

Yeah, I actually think that there are lots of forecasts that have been put together. Well, they don’t call them forecasts. They call them scenarios that show that, okay, we’re going to solve all of this. You don’t need these energy forms and all that kind of stuff. But then when you get below the surface of that, and this is maybe back to my comments about people not necessarily understanding, but when you go to it and say, okay, so everything’s going to be electric. Okay, fantastic. It’s all going to be wind and solar. So then you go and you say, okay, well, how much copper do we need? How much steel do we need? How much concrete do we need? How much of all these types of things? And you find out we’re not even in the ballpark. It’s like, we need to be able to have all these copper mines go. And then it’s kind of, well, do we know that are they happening? No, nobody’s even permitted them. And so you’ll see that there’s some growth. So the issue with it is, and often the people that are putting these scenarios up know this. But, you know, they’re getting a lot of support by supporting transition. And so, I think a lot of times we’re not having real conversations. I love renewables.

When I was a kid, we had solar panels on our cabin. We used to go and adjust them on a little pulley system throughout the day to make sure that we were capturing as much sun as possible. But it’s, you know, I don’t think a lot of this is realistic. And to see Canada, there are only two democratic nations on the surface of the Earth with massive oil, Canada and the United States. And for Canada to be like, we’re not gonna ship this, we’re not gonna support it to other jurisdictions, unlike the US, because the US has been very bullish on this. They’ve been increasing production, they’re exporting it. The president today would say, no, we’re actually gonna continue to grow production. Because there are lots of democratic nations that are kind of well, if Canada won’t provide me energy, what do I do?

I go and align myself with some totalitarian regime. And often I put in a compromising position. And you’ve seen that in Europe over the last several years with Russia. So, you know, this is a complex system. I think we need to work to do it. But I think that more resources into technologies like fusion would make sense to me because we will never solve this with the tech set that we have. And I guess some people actually believe, I don’t think we will. We’ve never solved problems by continuing to do the same thing over and over and expect different results.

Wes Ashworth (31:46)

Yeah, exactly. And I do think it is so important to hear all sides and just to hear them and really be open to that and really listen and pay attention to all of it. As you said, sometimes it’s just things are just thrown out there and they’re 50,000 foot view and nobody’s really giving like concrete data and things like that. So I do think it’s important to hear all of it and consider all of it and think through that. One of the other things we touched on is that energy density is often overlooked in public discussions.

Wes Ashworth (32:15)

Why is this such a critical factor in deciding which energy solutions are scalable and viable?

Mark Little (32:20)

Well, it’s often, you know, when you get into it, especially with transportation fuels, like whether you’re talking about jet fuel or whatever, it’s kind of if you lose energy density, then you can go further with, or you go less distance with the same amount of fuel, essentially. And so, energy density is kind of what makes it work. And it often drives economics. So, hydrogen, the comments I made about hydrogen is exactly that, is if you extract all of the carbon out of natural gas, yes, it’s cleaner, it’s just hydrogen.

But when you burn hydrogen, you only get 40 % of the fuel by volume of what you would have if it was natural gas. So, it’s kind of like, okay, so who’s going to pay for consuming, you know, two and a half times the volume? And then you find out, well, hydrogen is actually more expensive than natural gas. So now your cost just went up five or sixfold. How does everybody feel about that? I think people quickly start realizing often, you know, the rest of the story is missing from these discussions.

The result of that, people just like, what are you talking about? You’re going to increase the cost to heat my home by sixfold. Like, how’s that ever going to work? This doesn’t make sense. And so often, you know, we get everybody excited about something. We will literally spend years on it. And then it kind of disappears from because all of a sudden everybody realizes it’s crazy. But. All of it’s like you said, all of these signs, all of these energy forms, they all have their pros and cons associated with it. And if we can understand them all, and we can progress all of these and figure out where are the niche applications for hydrogen that make sense, where are the things where we could apply solar and wind where we were using diesel before or whatever it may be. But it needs to be thoughtful, and often, in our excitement and euphoria of one or another, we just plow ahead and start doing stuff. And in hindsight, we go like, this was a bad idea.

Wes Ashworth (33:57)

Yeah, I think more and more that’s becoming a point and will continue to be. It’s just those specific use cases and applications where it makes the most sense. And there are different ones. You’re seeing that with hydrogen now. Where there are those ones, where, yes, in this specific use case, in this specific circumstance, does make sense. I think we like to look at things as this blanket solution that’s going to be the fix-all and try to apply it everywhere. And it’s like, no, we need to be smarter about…

Yeah, there are some places where it’s going to make sense, other places not going to make sense. It’s not going to be the cure-all that some people think it is. And, you know, it’s just looking at it practically thinking about it too. international climate agreements often prioritize political compromises over practical solutions. I’m a big advocate for de-politicizing this. It is not a partisan issue and shouldn’t be about that. But you said that if we were serious about carbon reduction, we’d invest where we get the highest return.

Wes Ashworth (35:09)

What’s your take on how to make global climate efforts more effective?

Mark Little (35:14)

Yeah, that’s a very complex question. Part of the issue with it is the political side of it is, if we’re going to participate in this, then if we’re investing money, I need to make sure it stays within my country because that’s like it has to drive jobs in my economy and all these types of things. I think these are pragmatic pieces associated with it. But the reality of it is like just take Canada as an example. They’ve decided that we’re going to have an emission-free grid in the early 2030s, which means that we’re actually deploying capital to reduce technologies that are producing three to four percent CO2 in the emission stream. And we’re not working on some of the ones in the country that have a 60 percent carbon CO2 content in the emission stream. And you just think this is the craziest thing ever. And so, if you were trying to solve this globally and know, we had a global czar, which I’m definitely not advocating for. But you would say, what is the biggest impact I can have for the least amount of money? And then you would go, it’s some coal plant in China.

It’s kind of like, if we can go and take those emissions out of the system, we really move the needle, and it costs the world very little money. The catch-22 with it is there’s all these carbon agreements and then wait, no, no, you have to trade this carbon and then under Article 6, all this type. So, it’s very complicated. And it’s kind of like, no, we’re, can’t, you can only count the tree if you plant it, but you can’t count the tree if it existed before we did the agreement. So, it’s a country like Canada with 40 billion trees or whatever the number is. It’s kind of like, okay, well, that’s, that’s complicated. So, then this all gets politicized and eventually, you know, I think loses a lot of support because some of these things just don’t make sense and it wastes capital and then a lot of times governments end up driving them into social programs. I think it would be better if we could figure out how to trade these credits and really move the needle by doing things that the lowest cost with the biggest impact would be a huge step forward, but I’m not smart enough to actually know how to do that globally.

Wes Ashworth (37:09)

Yeah, we need a lot of collective minds together. Figure that one out. But no, a lot of really good points there and a good perspective. Let me ask you a few kind of really open questions. Just thinking about the year ahead, this year, the rest of the year going forward. What are some of your sentiments, like just confidence levels with the industry, energy industry, where things are headed? Like, what are the things that are going through your mind at this point?

Mark Little (37:37)

Right. Well, it’s, you know, I think the pendulum is starting to swing back to like a more balanced perspective because we’re we’re, you know, look at the challenges that we’ve seen in Europe. And so even countries like Norway, which are viewed as, you know, fantastic on moving the needle on climate policy and EVs and all these types of things, are trying to grow production to make sure that the world has the energy that it needs. And I think we’re getting beyond some of the brochures and the hype and into much more of a constructive conversation about what are the things we can move forward and what are the things that make sense. Because a lot of this stuff, I would say, you when you get into the details has never made sense. So, and I actually think that it’s kind of the point you made. If we can get all the perspectives and have an adult conversation around the room, we will make a lot more progress. But it’s when we’re demonizing each other and we’re trivializing the challenge and stuff, it’s like all of these things become barriers, our progress slows down and then you know the situation continues to get worse and I don’t think that’s good for anyone even though some people I think do think it’s good, I don’t.

Wes Ashworth (39:07)

Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, think for real progress to be made, I think that’s an important piece of it, you know, and not demonizing other sides or other parties. Like, you have to hear it all. You have to listen to it all come together. That’s true innovation happens to as well when you see that in companies with people that are just highly creative and innovative may have like wild opinions sometimes or things that somebody else doesn’t agree with or somebody’s like, that’s a stupid idea.

But man, you really let that come together. You let everybody be open and start collaborating. And like you said, be the adults in the room. You just see some huge breakthroughs happen, and some crazy things happen. So yeah, that’s my hope that that can happen as well.

Mark Little (39:45)

Yeah. And Wes, one other thing just on that point is like there’s a whole bunch of this that science, right? Like when we get into energy density, when we get into logistics of moving energy, all these types of things. So, you know, you want to make sure that whatever conversation we’re having on whatever energy form it is, that it’s grounded in the science than the foundation of the reality of it. Then we put the cards on the table of the pros and cons. And but often people get so enthusiastic about some energy form that all of a sudden this starts get, you know, we’re only talking about the pros, none of the cons are put on the table, then people are making bad decisions, that’s not good for us moving forward.

Wes Ashworth (40:23)

Yeah, 100 % agree. Closing, getting closer to closing, a couple of other questions just to put out there. And you probably already shared some of this, but I’ll let you reiterate and kind of encapsulate it. So, looking ahead, just thinking about the future, what’s coming, what’s your biggest hope for the future of energy?

Mark Little (40:44)

Well, for me, I’m like, all over fusion energy entering the energy system. This will be transformative. This literally could change the energy balance in poor countries. It’s emissions-free. It’s relatively low cost. to me, we need some new pieces to the puzzle. And when you go back and I’ve looked every once in a while, I kind of go like, wow, this is crazy. Literally in decades, we haven’t had a new energy form. And then you go and you look it up and you say, well, what’s the new energy form? And people go, it’s LNG. And you go, OK, we compress natural gas. is like that’s logistics innovation. It’s not an energy innovation in that sense, although it allows us to move energy to places, we couldn’t before. Or wind and solar, which these technologies date back hundreds of years. we’re having an impact. Scaling actually drives them to have a bigger impact, which is fantastic, but I think getting a new energy form like fusion is the most transformative thing, and quite frankly, I think we absolutely need it to be able to transform the energy system.

Wes Ashworth (41:57)

Yeah. One other quick question. Thinking about, you’ve grown and scaled companies, you’re in a startup company now and doing that. What advice would you offer to other entrepreneurs, early-stage companies, people that are trying to bring something to market, or scale a technology. Any words of advice from what you’ve experienced?

Mark Little (42:17)

Maybe there’s a couple Wes that I’ve seen, and I come from deep industry, big industrial complex and such. I find that often, entrepreneurs don’t understand how the client or the industrial partner that they need to scale their technology will look at risk. So, you know, if you’re wanting to stick this into the middle of their operation, if their operation now becomes dependent on this technology, their risk view is gonna explode where you may view, it’s nothing. So, I think trying to get advisors that deeply understand the area that they’re working in to try and see if they can get all these risks on the table. Because if you don’t get the risks on and address them and think them through, you’re never gonna get a deal. Because you’re gonna be talking one thing and they’re thinking another, and you’re never gonna be able to bridge that gap.

And then secondly, I think that trying to understand how do you actually minimize this to a commercial risk of some reasonable proportion for the company and then how do you take on most of that risk so that you can try and do this as riskless to the company as possible. I think that’s a real opportunity to gain traction quickly, but I recognize that once I’ve done that, if I’ve proven myself out, then I can get a contract, or we can start to getting the cash flow going. But I’ve super enjoyed working at kind of the other end of this industry, starting with a startup, coming to work, thinking about innovation, and being agile. It’s been fun, but it’s complicated. I would say I have resources and such that many people in the tech space don’t have. I probably still don’t appreciate just how complex and difficult it is for some of the folks that are starting with nothing, trying to get a technology off the ground. But I’ve been inspired by the people in this space. It’s incredible.

Wes Ashworth (43:53)

Yeah. No doubt. It is incredible and really great insight there in words of wisdom. Final question in closing. So, if you could leave behind one lasting impact on the energy industry, what would it be at the end when you’re done with your career? What would you want your legacy to be?

Mark Little (44:32)

Well, that’s a great question. I think from my perspective, the thing that I have loved, you know, is a purpose to provide energy to the world, to allow people to live their lives, lift people out of poverty. So, I love all of that. But the thing that I’ve enjoyed the most in my career is just the people that go to work every day to deliver energy reliably. I was just up in Fort McMurray in Canada here where the oil sands are.

It was minus 36 degrees Celsius. With the Windchill, it was minus 44 degrees. So, it’s minus 40 Fahrenheit. And so, this is like nasty cold. And I was just reminded once again of the people getting up, like we’re doing this, we’re going to make this happen, and we’re going to make sure that everybody’s warm in their homes and providing the energy. And, so I, for me, it would just be like being kindred spirits with the people that make this industry run because it’s one of those we all take for granted but boy the day that it’s missing for any period of time the outcry and the implications on society are huge and so I you know just continuing to support and be a kindred spirit with the folks in the industry because they are amazing people.

Wes Ashworth (45:39)

Yeah, I love that. Love the focus on people. It’s always a great point and a great way to wrap it up. So, Mark, this has really been enjoyable. It’s been an enlightening conversation, from your deep industry insights to the groundbreaking work you’re doing at Jotson and in fusion energy. It’s clear that your vision is helping shape the future of energy. To our listeners, as always, if you found this discussion valuable, be sure to subscribe, share this episode with your network. Stay tuned for more conversations with Trailblazers driving the clean energy revolution.

And with that, we will see you next time.