Green Giants – Episode 95

Wes Ashworth (04:10)

Well said there. I love several things. It’s funny, you know, I talked to several leaders, obviously on the show and beyond that have done these infrastructure projects successfully. They all say similar threads so what you just shared in terms of that success and I think understanding the people side of it, that buy in as well. Then I love that sort of “rigidity as the enemy of progress.” Was that the quote?

Salim (04:31)

Yep, that’s it. “Rigidity is the enemy of progress.” Absolutely.

Wes Ashworth (04:34)

I like that one a lot. I like that one a lot. It’s finding that balance, obviously, being very structured, organized, having some rigidity, but being flexible as well is critically important.

Salim (04:40)

Having the framework and then there’s, I hate to call it that, but slop, but there’s some flexibility in there. This perfection also that gets in the way, you can’t have perfection. Maybe you’ll nail it, but there a lot of factors that go into that.

Wes Ashworth (04:47)

No doubt. Another great quote I like is, “done is better than perfect.”

Salim (05:02)

Yeah, absolutely.

Wes Ashworth (05:05)

We’ll shift over to hydrogen a little bit. Hydrogen has been declared the future multiple times over the past century. Very misunderstood. What made you believe this time was different enough to just really take a stake and bet your career on hydrogen in the future?

Salim (05:19)

I think after this many decades, you could say over the past 60 years, there have been five or so, you could say plus or minus, efforts to bring hydrogen to the forefront. Really, this particular time, it’s a shift from experimental to essential. What we’re seeing is a global drive toward decarbonization. It’s no longer optional for high emitting, hard to abate sectors, industrial sectors. It’s heavy duty transport and natural gas power, for example, that are in the forefront right now. It’s unlike previous architectural cycles.

The architecture now is in conjunction with the IRA and then the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and even global mandates, looking at it more broadly in a global context. But more even as a driving force is corporate ESG commitments. People think ESG, bad word these days, but the reality is there. If you’re a multinational, ESG isn’t essential because ultimately you to sell to the customer. If the customer is concerned about it, you’re concerned about it. These are really important. What it’s done is it’s created a permanent market floor.

Hydrogen, it’s now recognized as the only viable solution for long duration electricity storage and carbon capture and utilization. That’s argumentative to some degree, but arguably, it’s a solution. It’s the solution. We have to figure it as a part of the broad solution and not get stuck into, for example, electrification and say, everything has to be electrified. It’s not within reality to say that it’s just electrified.

Wes Ashworth (07:00)

Agreed. Molecules are important and critical. You gotta have both. To me, the cycle does feel different, not just because of standard excitement and hype, but because of industrial necessity that you hit on there, heavy industry, resilience, decarbonization mandates. The context has really evolved, and we’ll get into some of that as we go. Going back to, so when you stepped into PowerTap and started there. what was that fundamental problem you believe the market was solving incorrectly and what you set out to do?

Salim (07:27)

At that point when we entered the market, we were focused on transport. That’s broadened a bit as the industry has shifted, the markets have shifted. But generally speaking, our primary focus at that time was the delivery of hydrogen fuel stations. It was not hydrogen fueling stations that take deliveries of hydrogen and then dispense it, but rather producing that in a distributed sense with on-site production at the fuel station.

Very challenging in the environment, but that was the solution that we were bringing to the table. We have IP that can bring that. The market was trying to solve the problem with a hub and spoke model that relied on expensive carbon heavy trucking. Our solution is low CI. It’s not just selling the fuel, but it’s eliminating the logistical bottleneck that exists. Still exists, by the way. Five years later.

Wes Ashworth (08:17)

Absolutely. It’s cool to see sort of where you started. Obviously, the flexibility is so important as well too that you evolve and you have to evolve kind of as the market does and correct there. I’ll segue a little bit. Moving to a chapter, maybe most founders don’t openly sort of talk about and discuss, but I want to get into how hydrogen had this surge around 2020/2021. Capital is flowing, SPACs were everywhere, valuations were aggressive.

Then sort of the correction came and so you spent that last three years just navigating that correction in real time, which I think is a great lesson for others to hear and really speaks to resilience and getting this right. You know you had capital almost closed, market shifts, counter-party risk, and I want to just spend some time there. You’ve been in a capital raise environment for roughly, you know 36 months or more. With what you described as as fits and starts it felt like successes but weren’t. I guess talk us through that a little bit if you can share and just what that does to a founder psychologically and just how you’ve gotten through that.

Salim (09:12)

I appreciate that and it really tests your fundamental belief in your product. I personally, and the team definitely as a whole, has had a certain stick to it, stick-to-it-iveness, I’ll call it. The team has stayed together in a way that I’m just surprised. By the numbers, 90 % of the team stuck together. Why is that?

It’s that stick-to-it-iveness, that’s for sure. That’s what enables you to weather the shifts that are caused by bad actors in the industry. We’re building a future market, and that requires convincing long-term investors to look past the quarterly noise. It’s well beyond that. We believe in our tech, and that’s really important. But resilience is that ability to maintain our conviction when the market is lagging behind the reality of the need. The need still exists. It has been there.

The issue that investors have long term is, is hydrogen really going to be a part of it? More and more every day, every month, every quarter, we see that becoming the absolute reality.

Wes Ashworth (10:11)

Absolutely. I love the focus there on one belief, which I think is so important. You don’t have belief, you don’t believe in it, then the rest is kind of sunk. I think we all get those points where our belief is shaken or wrestled, but just to be able to maintain that and that stick-to-it-iveness as you said the team buys into that as well, too. You’re believing, they’re believing they’re in it. You see the solutions there. It’s just kind of weathering the storm. I heard somebody say sort of staying close to the rim. You know, you to stay close to the rim and be ready.

Because market’s going to turn if your solution is there and is viable. Love that, love that story. I think just seeing that and so many successful businesses, that’s the journey, right? It’s not this, everything just went as planned and the market’s great and everything’s wonderful and we got off the ground. It’s a lot of fits and starts and kind of adjusting on the way and those kind of going through those tough times and maintaining beliefs. I love that, love you sharing that.

You mentioned to me in previous conversation as well, your wife reminds you that you didn’t intend to bootstrap this business, but how has this journey just changed your relationship with risk personally?

Salim (11:13)

Primarily, you need to be able to explain it to your spouse or your partner as well. I think that personal support has been, yeah, it’s waned on occasion and we’ve had to deal with it. But, you know, I think that it’s bringing everybody back to the reality that, this has really got some play in it. Look what we’re doing and look what’s going to happen when we pull it together.

Right? Hard to convince when you said that, and then it didn’t happen the way you said that. Those are the points of navigation. Make sure that it doesn’t become a, “give it another month.” Don’t say that, because you just don’t know. It could happen then tomorrow when you say give it another month.You still get that squiggly. Wait a minute, you said it was a month away now. Now I’m wondering if you’re really telling me the straight and skinny if it happened tomorrow.

Anyway, that’s kind of a weird one that you don’t expect, but definitely the other way around, right?

Wes Ashworth (11:59)

I appreciate you sharing. I think, you know, sometimes the human layer often gets overlooked. We talk about gigawatts and valuations and all these kind of other things, but the families behind these founders, these entrepreneurs, like how important that is. I appreciate you just opening up and sharing that side of it as well too, which I think is really important.

Salim (12:21)

I’ll make one more point there, is that when we deploy, it’s a similar kind of discussion, but there’s a lot more certainty in a six month deployment or what ends up being an eight month or 10 month deployment, right? You have similar discussions, but the parameters are different. Then the other perspective is, “hey, that was 10 years ago.” Here we’re further down the path, right? You’re an entrepreneur at your age? That kind of thing, right? Not that I’m trying to age myself, but the reality is there.

Wes Ashworth (12:51)

Keeps you young. Growth happens when things are uncomfortable, a little uncertain. You gotta step out there. There’s another quote I love. It’s George Adair, I believe. It’s everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear. I try to I live by that. It’s like if you step out on that place, it’s not gonna be comfortable. But everything you’ve ever wanted is right on the other side.

Early on in the business, you leaned into sort of that light duty hydrogen. You partnered with Andretti, even sponsoring an Indy car that we’ve talked about. But in hindsight, you said, maybe that may have been too early. What did the experience teach you about investor driven momentum?

Tell us a little bit about that. What did you learn through going through that, and what are the takeaways on the other side?

Salim (13:23)

Certainly. I think the concern when you sponsor an Indy car, or in our particular case, are you in front of consumers? If you’re in front of consumers, that’s great because who’s watching that race? Who’s watching your car go around the racetrack and it has your name on it, right? You’re in the public, right? But if you’re early, meaning that we’re a B2B and even then that’s okay.

But it has to be in the forefront. Hydrogen— and lot of people ask me the question, PowerTap hydrogen? You mean that race car where PowerTap hydrogen is the biggest name on the car is a hydrogen car? No. It’s because the Andretti’s are really interested in hydrogen as a future. That it could end up becoming in racing, but definitely it’s on the roads today in some limited form. Hey, there’s possibility it could really expand.

That was what they were kind of betting into. Maybe that’s the long-term investor question. Is what you’re doing predictive of what the future is going to be? Enough so that we’re buying in. That’s really the question that we’re answering with long-term investors.

Wes Ashworth (14:34)

Absolutely. Again, kind of back to that belief, right? People sort of follow suit to that of, this person that I really respect, they believe in it. You know, that makes me a little bit more curious and like, maybe I should think about it as well. Maybe I should believe in it. But I think visibility is always important to your point. You’re getting in front of your customers, people seeing the name, building a brand.

Salim (14:53)

I’ll make sort of one more perspective, give one more perspective on that. It’s really about, it’s about strategic pacing, right? You have to look long-term, you just can’t, and I don’t mean to denigrate anybody in this case, but you can’t just say yes to every investor. You might have to, you may not have a choice. I think that was partly what we saw as a a market entry with a partner like that made a lot of good sense. Strategic pacing is important as well, assuming that you can withstand it financially.

Wes Ashworth (15:23)

Great point. After this too, you structured a hydrogen purchase agreement with Nikola. When Nikola collapsed, what went through your mind? Tell us a bit about that from your perspective.

Salim (15:32)

I think that while it delayed the immediate need for the truck station infrastructure, it wasn’t the only OEM. What we really understood, that was a shock to us for sure, because we were focused on them at that point, because we had just written in less than maybe a year before we had written this hydrogen purchase agreement. It was really important for us to focus on that.

But the reality is there are OEMs, and we’re talking about seasoned OEMs that are bringing their trucks that they’ve said, “we’re going to bring them out in the 30s, in the 2030s”. We know that it’s critical to put technology infrastructure in place in advance of those trucks showing up because it’s a chicken and egg, but we choose to be the egg. This the essential part of it. Knowing that those trucks are coming in the early 30s, things might shift. But at least we have a pretty good sense from solid OEMs that’s sort of our target.

Wes Ashworth (16:29)

I love this story of resilience is going to shine through. But I think really at that point, many founders would have stepped away and just called it quits or whatever, tuck, tail and run. But you didn’t. You stayed true there. You really pivoted and kind of doubled down. What convinced you to just pivot again instead of instead of shutting down and just stay with it, kind of stick to it, as you said, and just continue?

Salim (16:56)

The pivoting had to do with just really monitoring the market. The market shifts, the data points there, their unmistakable indications. Our product still solves a market pain point at that point. It’s a matter of, and I think that’s an important point to really focus on is as you shift, is there still a demand or are you just flailing and hoping that it works?

We really have to analyze the market and make sure that you have that capability in that new vision. As a startup, we can make those shifts relatively quickly. The board is small. I can move quickly. I think that the startup aspect is really important. How do you expect today is when a big multinational needs to make a change like that? That’s not easy.

Wes Ashworth (17:39)

Not at all, not at all. Kind of getting into sort of more recent shifts. Late last year you added that data center backup electricity component. Suddenly  investor interest increased. I love these kind of pivots and shifts and you figuring it out. Tell us a bit about that. Like, why did that resonate differently and what went into that?

Salim (17:55)

What really drives it is the dual track revenue stream, which is amazing. The data centers are desperate for reliable carbon free backup power. It’s by applying our hydrogen tech with the energy storage and backup market that we were significantly able to change our addressable market, the TAM, right? That provided a hedge towards the slower rollout of heavy duty vehicles, it turns out, right?

We have to have infrastructure in place for the trucks in early 2030. It happens to be that data center backup electricity has some serious play, especially with the size of the grid and the delays in interconnection are behind the meter. A hydrogen approach with the ability to store lots of hydrogen and lots of electricity in that case, means that you can back up a data center for weeks, months, even a season with hydrogen. Those are the key elements.

Wes Ashworth (18:47)

Absolutely. Seeing that sort of massive AI driven data center demand and real concern around grid reliability. That pivot for you, it fills in line with macro energy reality. It’s not just hydrogen enthusiasm, but I love how that it’s all coming into play. What’s a single biggest sort of capital markets lesson you’ve learned in the last three years through this evolution?

Salim (19:07)

Great perspective question there. In the clean tech space, the story is the technology, but the survival is the narrative, right? That’s the story. This is what we’ve been kind of talking about. You have to be able to translate the complex physical infrastructure into a value proposition. That has to align with the global shift towards decarbonization in this time, even when the local policy environment was volatile.

Clearly that’s the case, right? In the US. But the rest of the world is seeing it differently. If we are going to play in that environment, in that sandbox, then we better be able to accommodate the broader picture. I think that applies to the auto industry, kind of maybe a number of industries.

Wes Ashworth (19:49)

Absolutely, great points there. I’m going to zoom out a little bit, we’ve kind of touched on your journey and some of the points of resilience and kind of sticking through it. I want to zoom out a bit from maybe capital markets talk about perception Hydrogen tends to trigger immediate reactions, a lot of safety concerns, political narratives, cost assumptions. Yet the physics, as you said, physics don’t lie. Physics have not changed. Let’s separate myth from reality.

When you mention hydrogenm someone inevitably brings up the Hindenburg and safety concerns and all this sort of stuff. What’s the most persistent safety myth you have to correct? Help set the record straight on that a little bit.

Salim (20:24)

In reality, it’s the fear of the unseen, right? It’s colorless, it’s odorless. People just generally assume it’s the uncontrollable ghost. I mean, when you put the Hindenburg out there, everyone assumes the hydrogen was a thing that caused that. It wasn’t. It was the fabric wrap around that blimp that caused the problem. The hydrogen just was part of it at that point.

But the reality is, that the physical properties of hydrogen, being that it’s 14 times lighter than air, it makes it safer than traditional liquid fuels. What do liquid fuels do? They pool on the ground, and that’s really flammable. As long as you set the right parameters for hydrogen, letting it float up with unconstrained sort of arrangements there, then you don’t have a problem.

Wes Ashworth (21:14)

Absolutely. One of the other safety concerns, you pointed out the hydrogen has been transported safely for nine decades, barely registers as compared to petroleum incidents. Nobody bats an eye at that. Gas trucks, petroleum, riding around the interstate all day long, every day being transported, and we don’t think twice about it. Tell us bit about that sort of comparison and why hasn’t the data shifted the narrative?

Salim (21:36)

In some cases, and obviously in this case, it’s perception that’s often driven by historical anecdotes. It’s not driven by data. It just demonstrates that we have, as an industry, have not done a good job of really showing that the historical anecdotes don’t really demonstrate where we are today. We really have to be a little bit more transparent, maybe a lot more transparent in identifying the safety protocols and the inherent physical advantages of hydrogen too.

We have a lot of work to do in the industry to educate better. I mean, I’ll tell you one thing is really important and no denigration again on people here, but engineers are great at understanding how they do things, but they don’t have a real great success necessarily at communicating that to stakeholders, the community, the population.

Wes Ashworth (22:26)

You’re spot on there. Part of the reason we’re doing this podcast is it’s get more education out there. I think make it more familiar. Also, fuel cell companies have quietly reduced their use of the word hydrogen recently. What does that signal to you?

Salim (22:29)

Just to say before I answer the question, I just want to touch on a point here that safety isn’t a checklist for us. It’s a digital ecosystem, right? It happens to be that with our particular system, we’ll have IoT sensor all over the place in terms of each of our deployments. Then we have digital twins for each one of those units. Safety then becomes a predictive performance rather than being reactive. That’s really important in that broad sense, just to finish out the safety discussion there.

The question you brought up is why is there this shift away from hydrogen in terms of using the term? Fuel cell companies, just to broadly understand, you produce hydrogen, that’s what we do, in order to turn it into electricity, you put it through a fuel cell, and then you capture the oxygen on the back end. You have electricity that’s not a motor that’s providing you the electricity. That’s the important aspect, or an engine rather that produces it.

Right now that hydrogen term, it’s being minimized because, first of all, government actors are moving away from favoring your renewables as a catch all, number one. But also, decarbonization is an efficiency play. People don’t often see it as a move towards efficiency, but we focus on it as an improvement in industrial processes.

You can call hydrogen, you can call it advanced molecular energy, that the real goal is increasing the efficiency and then decreasing the impact to the industrial economy. When you decrease that impact, that’s where you get the efficiency. You can fight the decarbonization fight and say, that’s not necessary. But if it makes your process easier, cheaper, then obviously you’re going to go that direction. That’s the way people are moving. That’s the way industry is moving.

Wes Ashworth (24:26)

It’s super interesting to that evolution and it’s interesting, like language shifts often follow capital shifts and just how that all comes into play. We talked a little bit of previous conversations just around electrolyzers and with them being portrayed as a clean solution, but you’ve argued they’re significantly more expensive in both capex and operating costs. Tell us about that. What’s being overlooked?

Salim (24:46)

The biggest misconception, I think, is that it’s being seen generally that electrolyzers are the only answer. Yes, eventually, electrolyzers will achieve economies of scale by replacing the old non-decarbonized systems, taking advantage of that efficiency we talked about. But we need a bridge. Our solution, which is steam methane reformation with carbon capture utilization, it provides clean hydrogen today.

If we were to wait until electrolyzers get rolled out enough so that we can get the cost down so that people will demand it, we’re never going to get there. We need to have an infrastructure in place today. When the time comes in 10, 20, 30, 50 years, who knows? We just don’t know. But we need to put the infrastructure in place now so that when that time comes, you can swap out the SMRs with the electrolyzers. Yes, you have to make sure the feedstock is there, but you have time to prepare for that and get those costs down.

Just to mention that we’re finding off-takers for the CO2 we produce, and that just replaces a carbonized way of bringing CO2 to the table where it’s needed because there is demand for it, and then replacing it with this decarbonized approach. We create a bridging technology that’s essential to meet the global decarbonization goals and those are again set by multinationals, not just countries, but both.

Then it’s outside the US, right? That’s where the climate actually interesting. This is crazy part. The climate impact is being felt in those areas. Maybe it’s not that crazy, right? Because then they’re more likely to act.

Wes Ashworth (26:19)

Absolutely. Good clarification there and kind of going through it. Just stay on just hydrogen. I want to just help kind of spell that out as well, too. I know for your company, sort of your thesis or approach centers on on-site production. Walk us through that sort of the economic advantage of eliminating hydrogen transport and why that’s the focus.

Salim (26:39)

Sure, we characterize it as what you might call the logistics tax. We eliminate the logistics tax. When you produce on site, you’re not at the mercy of trucking costs or fuel surcharges or supply chain interruptions. It’s the most direct path to reaching price parity with diesel. In this early market, eventually there’ll be pipelines. There won’t be any need for onsite production anymore. But in the current environment, to get to that point this is the most cost-effective way.

Wes Ashworth (27:07)

Makes perfect sense. I think ,as we kind of transition a little bit too, most people still associate hydrogen primarily with vehicles. I think that’s where they kind of lump it all together. But hydrogen is already embedded in industries. Most of us interact with every day without realizing it. I want to unpack the broader industry role. Where are some of those areas that hydrogen is already deeply embedded in our economy that may surprise most listeners?

Salim (27:30)

People don’t really picture it when they think about aerospace vehicles, we’re talking about rockets, right? That’s one area people don’t think about, but that’s where hydrogen really is used a lot. But also there’s oil and gas. Hydrogen is crucial for hydrocracking. You may have heard the term enhanced oil recovery. Again, there’s that decarbonization effort that makes it more efficient, that makes that an appropriate way to reuse resources that you’re not able to reuse typically, but that gives that capability. So that’s important.

Then chemicals, not only for chemical production more broadly, but also metal heat treatments and even food production. I’m talking about specifically hydrogenation. It’s an order, hydrogenation of fats and oils, for example. Then I talked about aerospace, it’s rockets, and then agriculture. The absolute foundation of agriculture is ammonia for fertilizers, NH3. There’s the H. Ammonia for sure.

Wes Ashworth (28:24)

Absolutely. It is fascinating. It’s in so many different places across so many different industries. So many wide uses, it has been around for a really long time. Just because it’s like recent years getting like publicity and press. People think it’s like, it’s the new kid on the block. Hydrogen’s been around a really long time and widely used. Of those sectors you mentioned, which represents me the largest decarbonization opportunity?

Salim (28:45)

Steel, would assume that electricity will produce enough heat to be able to produce steel, not there. Hydrogen is what gives you that capability. Cement and maritime shipping, I think these are really important areas. require high grade heat and energy density that electricity just can’t provide.

Wes Ashworth (29:01)

In some of these areas, heavy industry and others, maritime as well, the impact, it’s just massive, what that could be, as well too. We talked about a little bit of sort of you know, electrons and molecules and the importance there. They’re in sectors that you can’t realistically electrify. Is hydrogen a bridge or a permanent pillar? Like, where do you see that kind of coming into the equation?

Salim (29:23)

It’s not a bridge, really. It’s an essential element anyway. I think the bridging part is the decarbonization, the strive towards decarbonization.

The current technologies are there that can be decarbonized over a period of time. It’s not immediate. CCU, carbon capture and utilization, and even the storage part needs to be scaled up. There’s no doubt that that’s the reality. It’s the issue of just having the ability to get to that point. But you’ve got to get there. We can’t snap our fingers and say, “hey, we’re at zero carbon now.” Just not feasible. Not everybody’s Microsoft.

Wes Ashworth (30:02)

We talk about that a lot. It’s not an instant fix. People want it to be a light switch sometimes, but it’s not how it works. You’ve got to start with step one and get to cover all the steps and it’s a process. You’ve got to go through it.

Salim (30:13)

The Microsoft reference I’m making is they’ve gotten to a point where they’re zero carbon by buying credits and growing forests and things like that, right? Those are good. But again, not everybody is in that position.

Wes Ashworth (30:26)

Not everybody can do that. Talking about just hydrogen, so if political support fades, we’ve seen that already and some of the impact, but can hydrogen stand alone on just economics by itself? Can it stand on its own?

Salim (30:41)

It needs some support. We had previously talked about the low carbon fuel standard. It’s not government funds. It’s emitting industry, paying for credits, carbon credits that are produced with renewable development like what we’re doing. Those credits help a lot and that’s outside of government funding. It’s an incentive of a type, but it’s a market incentive rather than a government incentive.

I think that it can stand alone, but part of the issue is convincing investors that demand will be there. Again, it’s the chicken and egg. We’ve got to get to the point where we communicate it well enough that hydrogen has to be part of the energy system. Again, decarbonization gets you efficiency, so that makes sense as the only way to go.

Wes Ashworth (31:30)

It reminds me too just why so many clean energy companies, whether they’re hydrogen, wind, we could name them all, how much of a focus is on just the communications point and being able to correctly communicate this to investors, to consumers, to political authorities, all these sort of things. Being able to tell that story and present it in the right way, it’s an underrated thing how important that is to the industry and we’re seeing some very bright minds, you know, come into the industry from that sort of marketing and communication standpoint and some of those affairs issues as well too. Made me think of that and seeing that trend.

Salim (32:10)

At the beginning of our discussion here, we talked about what it takes to entitle projects that that 95 % target that you heard, you saw in my bio and what sort of is my focus. It’s driven by educating, and it’s educating stakeholders, right. The stakeholders include the guy sitting behind the desk that’s going to sign the final entitlement or final permit. It’s also all those people that stand behind or stand in the audience and say, we like this project or this is bad.

Wes Ashworth (32:40)

The education is everything. As you just said perfectly there, I agree that it’s such an important part of it. Let’s shift a little bit. We’ll close on some leadership, because I think beneath the policy, capital, technology, it’s ultimately about people making decisions under pressure. You’ve operated in the military, you’ve led large infrastructure programs, you’ve navigated capital drought in hydrogen. That kind of experience does create pattern recognition.

After  sort of three years of turbulence, what kind of leader are you now that you weren’t before?

Salim (33:11)

I think more than anything, it’s sharpened my focus. When things are easy, you can afford to be broad. When things are turbulent, you have to be precise. It’s taught me to value transparency with stakeholders and clarity of mission. Absolutely clarity of mission above all else.

Wes Ashworth (33:27)

I love that clarity of mission. That prolonged uncertainty does force clarity, kind of like strips away ego, sharpens prioritization. You really get dialed in. That’s great to hear. Through that too, we talked about this a few times, you’ve led some of these large infrastructure programs before hydrogen. When you look at early stage clean tech founders today, where do you see maybe the biggest blind spots when they try to scale infrastructure businesses?

Salim (33:52)

I think clean tech founders have a tendency to forget that infrastructure is a physical game. You may have the best AI in the world, but if you don’t understand how to get a 20 ton unit through a permitting process in a local municipality, you don’t have a business. Maybe in a federal level, things are smoothing out in terms of getting projects approved. But we’re talking about the municipality level.

If you can’t convince the local community up to the mayor that this is a good thing, you’re not going to get the support you need. There’s, it’s not black and white, there’s everything in between as well. But the key thing is to get in a five-person body, three of them to say yes, two to say no is okay. But just to say that there is that effort that one needs to put in place. It’s a physical infrastructure.

Wes Ashworth (34:39)

Absolutely. You can’t iterate your way out of permitting mistakes at scale and just how important all that is and making it all come together. But it’s cool your background. I love the industry too. It brings in so many people from so many different perspectives and different backgrounds, different experiences, and you kind of bring that value with you. I try to get some of that out there.

Five years from now, you know, if hydrogen has quietly kind of succeeded without hype, what would have to be true for that to happen?

Salim (35:04)

The vision is a heavy duty truck pulling into a station, the driver filling up in 10 minutes, and the fuel being produced 20 feet away by a PowerTap unit. Quietly, cleanly, predictably. You know what’s going to happen? I think that’s success. It’s success is when we stop talking about hydrogen as a technology and start talking about it as the standard for industrial energy. That’s my vision.

Wes Ashworth (35:27)

I  love that. It’s a great vision. It’s a real one. It’s practical and I love it. It really does sum up kind of what that success would look like. Final question. I’ll open up the floor just to you. Any kind of final words of wisdom, things you want to leave the audience with, any parting words?

Salim (35:41)

Sure, and I’m going to get a little bit more focused on the PowerTap unit to some degree. Decarbonization isn’t just a goal. It’s the most significant industrial shift of our lifetime. We have to see it that way. At PowerTap, we’re not just building fuel stations. We’re building an intelligent backbone of the hydrogen economy. By focusing on on-site production and leveraging the AI-driven digital twins I mentioned earlier with the IoT sensors, we’ve eliminated the logistics tax while setting a new standard for safety and performance.

We spent the last three years weathering a market storm that’s been really shaking to our bones. During that time, we refined our Gen 3 technology and we’re ready to rock and roll for sure. It’s to meet the massive demand from data centers and heavy duty transport. From the visionary investor, it’s more than a clean tech play.

It’s an investment in the critical infrastructure of the 21st century. I invite everybody to join us as we move from the future of hydrogen to the reality of hydrogen. It’s coming.

Wes Ashworth (36:41)

It’s coming. Great way to just wrap up there. We’ll put a bow on that. Salim, this has really been just an honest and grounded conversation about hydrogen at a time when the industry needs realism more than hype. Thank you for sharing not just the opportunity, but also that resilience required to build through volatility.

To our listeners out there, thank you for tuning in. If this episode added value, share it with someone building in energy infrastructure or climate, subscribe, leave a review, check the show notes as well for some links and join us next week as we continue spotlighting the leaders shaping the future of energy. With that, we’ll see you soon.