My name is Suzanne and I'm the CEO of NitroVolt. I am incredibly optimistic about the future because every time I go to climate tech conferences, I get so inspired by all the cool, ambitious entrepreneurs who are working on these amazing climate solutions to solve problems I didn't even know exist. So I think we're going to fix this climate issue with, yeah, cool technology coming out soon. That's great, no pessimism to be found, I love it, that's good, we got a note at the beginning of it. I also agree, talking with people such as yourself and other founders in the space is very revitalizing. You get a chance to experience all of these incredible minds who have their hearts in the right places, which is such an amazing thing. So before we jump into some of your backstory, tell us about the mission. Just give a quick 30 second overview of who you are and what you do. Oh, at NitroVolt, our mission, our dream is for every single farmer in the world to at least have heard about us because what we produce is a container size solution that can make ammonia, which is used as a nitrogen based fertilizer from just air, water and green electricity. This means you will have nitrogen fertilizer production at the farm that is sustainable, that doesn't have any CO2 emissions in the production, and it gives the farmer control over the process, there's no supply chain dependencies. So we really want to bring this technology out to developing countries in the world that today don't have access to this crucial fertilizer that is needed for plant growth. So the dream is every single farm in the world will have heard about us. That's a very noble goal. I don't know if you're familiar with the author of Vaklav Smil. I know I'm butchering his name, but he has a book called How the World Really Works, and he lists ammonia as one of the four most important pillars of modern society, together with concrete and steel and plastics, I think. What is the significance of ammonia? Why is it such an issue? Why is it such a potential problem? I like to call it the keystone of modern human society, because ammonia production is, right now, it feeds half of the world's population. It supports 50% of the entire agricultural sector because it's used as an nitrogen-based fertilizer, so half the food we grow need ammonia. So without it, we simply wouldn't have had all the technological advancements of the previous century. Plus, it's also used in basically any industry you can think of, whether it's pharmaceuticals, textile, refrigeration, fuel, beauty products, like it's everywhere. Any form of activated nitrogen you buy in any product, the first step of that is ammonia production. But it comes through this process called the Hababush process, which is a century-old reaction that needs high temperatures and high pressures. It uses this thing called a catalyst. So this is something that enables a chemical reaction where it takes nitrogen from air. There's a lot of it in air, about 80%. And then fossil fuels as the input in order to get hydrogen. Then it takes this nitrogen-hydrogen, combines it over a catalyst to produce ammonia, which is NH3. And this ammonia can then either be used directly as a fertilizer or further be processed into basically anything else. So you can use it in an Oswald process to make nitric acid and so on. But because we use fossil fuels today to produce ammonia, the Hababush reaction today emits around half a gigaton of CO2 emissions every year. To put it into perspective, it's not far off from the entire shipping industry, just to produce this one chemical ammonia. That's insane. So is it not sustainable primarily because of the fossil fuels used to achieve this process? Or are there other bits of this that aren't being replenished? So it's a bit twofold. It's both because of the fossil fuels that goes into the process in theory. And this has also been done in practice. You can greenify that process. Instead of using fossil fuels, you can take water. Yeah, I mean, water is H2O. You split it, you get hydrogen. And then you can feed that into the system. But in order for the process to be green, then the electricity supply to run this reaction also needs to be green. And it's very difficult to supply enough electricity to these huge central production facilities. We're talking billion dollar facilities. And that's because you have these very harsh reaction conditions. It requires around 200 bars of pressure and 400 degrees Celsius to run. And that also means it's not a facility you just turn off. So if you want renewable energy sources, the sunshine's when the sun shines and the wind blows when the wind blows. And it's not always that you have access to this. So it's a huge problem. And furthermore, these facilities, because they're so large, they're centralized. And that means it's primarily the developing world. That's sorry, the developed world. Countries like Russia, China, Europe, US that produce this ammonia. And that means regions of the world that can't afford to build these billion dollar facilities have to transport it. And that emits CO2 emissions as well. So a farmer in say Rwanda or Kenya is actually buying fertilizer from Russia. And the US, halfway across the world, transporting it and then distributing it. And that has emissions as well. So it's sort of twofold. Even if you greenify the production process, which you can do, although it is expected to be costly. And the end green ammonia produced will be more expensive than the gray ammonia. So that's the fossil fuel produced ammonia we have today. So there's a lot of nuances to it. There's a lot of people working on greenifying it. But I think we also need smaller solutions. We need small scale, distributed ammonia generation systems. And that's what we're doing. I'm not sure. I'm sure you're doing. And the process you said, it will take a long time, best case scenario, right? There's no real roadmap for greenifying the existing solution, right? There's a lot of money being poured into these huge projects by very big players who are saying we would like to greenify it. But it takes, I mean, most of these things aren't going to roll out until 2030 and beyond. We know that climate. We got time. Action to do. No, no, no, we've got plenty of time. I solemnly swear that I'll do better by 2070. That's my commitment to you. If I'm still alive, that seems to be the traditional plan. We just kick it off 20 years, 30 years, just pick a number far enough in the future that nobody's going to ask any questions about it. And that's the end of it, right? That's the traditional solution. So there's a lot of people who would like it to be that way. Yeah, just, you know, will an act change conveniently the day after I retire? And I don't have to worry about it. It's your problem now. But you have always been passionate about this. You are clearly the definition of an overnight success. You just started this yesterday and you became a millionaire 48 hours later. So as soon as you had the idea, you became rich. Is that how your life arc has gone? Not quite, I would say. What we're doing is a completely new way to produce ammonia. Instead of using these really harsh reaction conditions of high temperature and pressure, we want to use electricity to drive the process. And that means you can do it in a small-scale system. It operates at room temperature. That also means that you don't need to wait for things to heat up and cool down. So if you turn on the system, say when the sun starts shining, then it starts producing ammonia immediately. And this, because we don't need these high pressures and temperatures, we can do a small-scale system. So it's container-sized. It's something called an electrocatalytic process, electrochemical cell. And this is not a novel idea. I'm not the one who came up with it. There has been many scientists, researchers who've been working on this for decades. But it's really difficult to split nitrogen. It's the second most, the second strongest bond in nature. So it's this triple-bonded dinitrogen molecule. And in order to split it, you need a lot of energy. And that's why in the haplobush process, you need these insane reaction conditions. So to do it electrochemically has been quite tricky, but we found a way. So this was my PhD project back in 2017. Yeah. And yeah, when I joined the research team, the professor in question was like, "Yeah, we've been trying to do this for 15 years and we haven't managed." And I was like, "Great, that's the project I want." It's like the chalkboard scene in Goodwill Hunting. They just put the problem up and you're expected to solve it. Nice. Okay. But it was one year into my PhD. It was very much a group effort, I should say. So I was the first full-time person that dared hire onto it, because I was like, "I want this." And the professor was like, "Well, you know, if it doesn't work out, you need to graduate." So maybe if it doesn't work, we can put you on CO2 reduction, which is a similar electrochemical process. You'll publish a paper and actually get to graduate. But we managed. So we found this method. And since then, once you have something that works, it's really just an engineering challenge to make it work better. So the professor managed to hire a lot more PhDs and postdocs onto the project. We were like 12 to 15 working on his full time at its peak in academia. And there is just breakthroughs almost weekly. Like if you missed, if you went on vacation for two weeks, the process had just moved and you had to catch up. Dang. That's incredible. So you've clearly been working on this for a very long time. I want to get back. Is the number one carbon, by the way? Is carbon more? You said nitrogen was the number two most difficult to split. Is it first one? CO. CO. CO. So carbon to oxygen. Carbon oxygen, that's the most difficult. Okay, got it. Not that I'm a chemist, but I'm just curious what it was. So your own personal passion for this. I think in your bio, you said, which is a very poetic way. I assume due to translation, you went to Iceland and you saw... The icebergs weep, which is probably a metaphor for describing the rapid melting of the icebergs and realizing that they might not be there in your lifetime. Is that what motivated you to get into climate change? Why do you care about climate action so much? I think that was a very pivotal moment in my life. Poetically, you say weep. I mean, I was standing in front of this glacier. It was called "Sölheima yokkülsh." I'm sorry, it's all the ice water. It's like this 10,000-year-old chunk of ice, like monumentally large chunk of ice. And I was told in eight years it wouldn't exist anymore. That's incredibly sad. And I actually went back and visited it two years ago. And you could see how much it had receded. It's absolutely crazy to me that it's happening at such an accelerated rate. And I remember I was just standing in front of it. I was like, I have to do something. And me as an engineer with a background in physics, I thought the way that I can potentially have the most impact is within catalysis. Because the catalysis is so important to everything we do in modern society. The conversion of chemicals or the conversion of energy to chemicals is just crucial. Everything we have, literally everything around you. It comes from catalysis. It comes from this conversion. That makes sense. Do you think that the ammonia boost? Because again, in that same book, he talks about it as being one of the key factors that lifted a billion Chinese people out of poverty. Do you think that ammonia has that impact? And is that the kind of impact that you'd like to see? And maybe you can imagine where I'm going with this line of reasoning. If we lift other people out of that kind of poverty and into cars and into other CO2 polluting and emitting devices, how do you see that? I should start by saying, I haven't read the book. I've cited many of his papers, so I don't know where he's talking. But if you look at the continent of Africa as an example, it sits on something like 50% or 60% of the world's arable land. But it only produces 4% of the total agricultural yield of the world. And the reason being their average fertilizer application, nitrogen application, when I checked, which the numbers might be eight years old, it's around 15 kilograms of nitrogen per hectare per year. The global average is 75. That's five times higher. And there are some countries who are up at 120, 130 kilos supplied per hectare per year. So you can imagine that if you can just give access to nitrogen fertilizers, the crop yields would significantly increase. And this is going to help the most remote regions of the world, the countries that really need it the most in terms of food security, and therefore help them rise out of poverty. Which is, I mean, obviously that's an incredibly noble goal. I'm completely with you. One of those things from Kung Fu Panda, I always just think about this philosophically. He says, you meet your destiny on the path you take to avoid. Is the consequence of lifting people out of poverty, which we can all agree is a very noble and wonderful thing to do. The westernization of all of these societies, and therefore leading to greater consumption. Because if you look at China and what's happened, many incredible things in the last century, and remarkable things. But also their level of pollution went through the roof as they industrialized and all these other things happened. Do you see that happening? Best case scenario. And this, I know, is purely hypothetical. I'm just curious. I think it's a difficult question to answer without making people feel bad. Yeah. But if you look at, so it's statistics show that as people rise out of poverty, they end up having less children. So you end up having less growth rate as you come out of poverty. And if we look at the developed countries today, ours annual, we call it the carbon emissions, per capita carbon emissions have steadily been going down. That's been the case since, I think it's the 90s. Something like that. If you look at the average European country, China is still obviously going up because they are experiencing this huge boom and going from poverty to actual living standards. But I would imagine that this will eventually level off. And we're actually seeing this as the global per capita emission has been steady over the last decade or so. And that is a key indicator towards the fact that we will soon reach. The per capita emission doesn't really matter. What matters is the total amount of CO2 we put out into the atmosphere. And this is an indicator that we will also soon reach that peak and then it's going to start declining. And this comes from a rise in out of poverty. Do you think that we can skip steps? Sometimes all of this seems like a chemical reaction itself. All of the evolution and growth of humanity feels like a predetermined chemical reaction. If we look at London in the 1800s, the burning of coal and smog. Now, China and India, where we have so much pollution in the air, is all of that a necessary step towards the cleaner phase in the evolution of a society? Do we need to go through that to get to a greener, more sustainable part as a society? Or is it possible to skip some of the steps as we lift different cultures out of poverty? I think that absolutely it's possible. And that's the optimist thing coming out again. I mean, you saw that with technological development, we had landlines first and then we got mobile phones. Now in Africa, they skipped the landlines. They went straight to mobile. Good analogy, yeah. And now they're all doing mobile banks. Yeah. So I think we can skip some of those steps in the way. And this comes back to all of the cool technology that I see other entrepreneurs developing. So I think it's absolutely possible. And I think that will help enable these... Yeah, it will help us avoid the worst of the temperature rise. Well, that sounds great. You mentioned that you have a strong goal of commercializing this technology, which is to say that at those climate tech conferences that you go to, and people like me who discuss this kind of thing, there's this belief in what we could call perhaps conscious capitalism or eco-capitalism or eco-tech. There are many different ways to spin it. But in acting progress while at the same time running a business, how do you see something like this as a business, especially knowing that perhaps you have to send this technology to places where people can afford it less, which might not be the ideal market, where you might say, "I want to sell my thing to the wealthiest people who can afford the most money." So what is the business model of sending these container-sized devices to these rural communities? It has to be at price parity with what's there today. It cannot be more expensive. So we in Europe and in the US, we can afford to pay the green premium. And we are doing that by enacting these carbon taxes. Denmark in a, I would say, landmark. They just put an actual carbon tax on agriculture. No other European country has done this today. And this is huge. This means that we're actually steering the right way. We're pushing people. We're pushing farmers to come up with greener solutions. But at the same time, we're also helping them because there's also these carbon subsidies that the government is also enabling. So in the end, not the farmer who actually pays for this, for switching to greener solutions, it's the whole of society. But our technology, the nitro-volt technology, needs to be affordable to the developing country. We cannot come with this green premium. And that's something that we're working on enabling. So whether that's by selling the system with wind turbines or with renewable energy that comes with the container, because it's not all farmers who have access to renewable energy, and we want to ensure that it's not just connected to a diesel generator, because that sort of defeats the purpose. So these are business models that we're working through as well. Okay. I've seen the container. It's a very cool concept. How large of a farm could one of these containers serve? So we're aiming for around 150 kilo of ammonia production per day, which is a large farm. It's, say, around 300 hectare farm. But that also means that it could be shared in a community of farmers. If we look in Denmark, the average farm size is quite large. It's around 100 to 200 hectares. If you go in southern Europe, already there the average farm size is a lot smaller. But farmers have a tendency to pull together in cooperatives. So 10 farmers would get together. They would buy fertilizer together, mix it together, and then share it. And then you could envision that you would have one container that's shared between multiple farmers. And the same goes for African farmers. So there you have even smaller farms. I mean, smaller farmers in Africa is like one hectare, two hectare. So then one container would fit into a very large community. It would essentially be a very localized, but I wouldn't call it regional production within a big farming community. That's awesome. What a cool concept. You're in your seed round now. You're nearing the end of it, I believe. What has been the most effective tool for you in getting people on board with this project? What have people resonated the most with in investors? Honestly, it surprised me how interested everyone is in this. We're in the very unique position that we did not do any sort of investor outreach. They all came to us. They'd heard about green ammonia. They understood how important it is for our society to function. It's both is this nexus of both. It hits agriculture, but we can also supply green ammonia to industrial uses. Whether that's the textile industry, precision fermentation, they all use ammonia. So there is an interest in greenifying this process and doing it decentralized. And we never, investors just came to us. We're very lucky in that sense. I mean, our fundraising round, we'd actually intended on fundraising in fall, but we just had so much interest that we decided to do it in spring and just ride that green ammonia wave. By the great nights, that's awesome. Have there been any challenges in communicating the message? Yeah, there has. I think our solution is not a fix all for all agriculture. Different crops require different sources of nitrogen, and it's very dependent on the soil, the weather, the crop, when you apply it. Ammonia is a great fertilizer to use, especially in spring, because it's this sort of slow release. Once you inject it into the soil, it stays there for a really long time. It doesn't wash out like nitrates. So it has this sort of slow release that if you do it when you plant the crops, when it's still a seed and it doesn't need a lot, then slowly over time the seed will get the fertilizer it needs. But that doesn't mean that it works very well in fall when you don't want the slow release, because typically then you want the plants to grow bigger or you don't want it to release over the winter. So in the end, we're going to need all different types of fertilizer. It's not that everyone can only use ammonia. There will be other types of fertilizer there as well. And our intention is not to replace the Habibush process. Our intention is essentially to unlock new markets that the centrally produced fertilizer today cannot reach. So this can be in developing countries that have very high distribution and logistic costs of distributing the centrally produced fertilizer, where we can offer a local solution that also gives resiliency. It should be said, we've got a lot of interest from European farmers, especially after the Ukraine war, because prior to the war, everyone just thought, I can just buy my bag of fertilizer from Yara or Neutron or whoever is providing it. Why should I want to produce it myself? But after the war, the prices of fertilizer skyrocketed. It went up by a factor four, meaning many farmers just could not afford fertilizer, and therefore their yields went down. This was a huge issue, and this dependency on the global supply chain is a problem. So even in Europe, where we have centrally produced fertilizer, and there's good distribution of it, many farmers are interested in producing it themselves and gain the self-sufficiency and resiliency. That's great. Do you feel that you're in the right place in the right time? Obviously, here on the west coast of the United States, and while we have pockets of very forward thinking in well-known areas, I think the impression that I have is that Scandinavia in general is much further ahead in terms of accepting the realities of things like climate change and not debating it. Do you feel supported in your climate? Do you feel where you are as a good place to be for launching a business like this? I think the US is a really good place to be as a startup, because it's very easy to get a lot of money for just an idea. And then it's a lot, things happen faster. You have access to talent a lot more than you do in a country like Denmark, where we're located. Denmark is a tiny country. We're only like 6 million people. And that also means that attracting talent can be difficult. So things, I mean, in the end, what progresses a startup is the people, because it's the people who do the work and enable the technology. And therefore, there is a bit more things happen slower here. And investors are also generally a bit more hesitant. It's a lot more about bootstrapping and lean startup and go as far as you can on as little as possible and prove as much as you can ahead of time. Which I think in some ways is good, because it's also less wasteful. Let's put it that way. But I would say that innovation happens at a much greater rate in the states. And we see that. So you think you might be able to quicker rise, potentially quicker fall, but definitely more money at the outset. Yes. And to have the investors that have approached you mostly been European or have some Americans or others. Oh, it's been mixed all over the world. And we're very, very fortunate we have investors from all across the world, actually, multiple continents. We were very lucky in that we had an oversubscribed round and we could cherry pick the investors we wanted. I should say it's not closed yet. And so money is in the bank. It's not a done deal, but yeah, we were very, very fortunate in that regard. And I would also separately say that it's been a very big focus for us to make sure that we have this broad cultural approach. So we're nine people. We just signed our ninth Nitro employee joining the company. Congratulations. We come from eight different nationalities. Wow. So it's really been a push for us to ensure that there is diversity on the team, both culturally but also gender-based diversity. So we're four women, five men, and we want to keep up that trend. So diversity both in investors and in the Nitro world team. That's awesome. So I'm curious, thinking about the differences, knowing the Sinkerswim mentality that we have here in the United States. And you mentioned the farmers themselves not being responsible in Denmark. Do you feel that the social safety net makes for more innovation, the feeling of comfort and being supported by society on an individual level? Or do you think that causes complacency and maybe less innovation because you don't have to or else the worst can happen? I want to start by saying it's not that the farmers don't feel responsible or don't feel the responsibility. It's more that the government here is supporting them in coming up with these climate-friendly solutions. It's difficult to say, and when it comes to agriculture, we've spoken with now 180 actors within the space, which is both farmers, farming associations, farming advisors, farming cooperatives, fertilizer distributors, and so on. And we see that when we first started talking with farmers three years ago and we would ask them, do you have renewable energy on site? Most of them would say no. Today, it's around half of the farmers we talk to in Europe, we'll say, yeah, we have solar panels on the roof of the barn, or in some cases, even they bought a wind turbine, which is crazy to me because that's a huge upfront investment. But yeah, it's changing. The mindset is changing. Farmers want to be more self-sufficient, whether it comes from energy or fertilizer production menu or installing biogas installations. So there is starting to be this shift towards more renewable solutions. Yeah, that's wonderful. On a brief tangent, I just had the birth of my second child, a son. He's three months old. And of course, here in the United States, when an event like that occurs, nobody cares. You show up to work the following Monday or you're fired. I have a friend who had a child who coincidentally lives in Copenhagen of all places. And she's like, yeah, I get a year off, paid maternity leave. I don't have to do anything for a year, and the textures keep coming in. And I think her husband gets roughly the same. And sometimes when I hear stuff like that, you think, what are we doing over here? Because there are so many aspects. Yeah, I think there's a lot of innovation. And having lived in Europe for an extended period of time, I can fully see the advantages and disadvantages of each culture. But there are definitely some times, especially like after having a child, where I think, geez, what are we doing here in the United States from an individual perspective? It's, I would say the welfare system is phenomenal, especially in the Scandinavian countries. We, I actually lived in California during my high school year. Oh, well, okay. I ended up moving back to Denmark, because we get paid around $1,000 a month to take a university degree. Yeah. So it's a different type of system, right? There's a lot of support. We want people to get educated. We want people to feel that if they have a child, they can take nine months off, paid maternity and paternity leave, to actually be with their child in those crucial early months. But that also comes at the cost of higher taxes, right? Yeah. It's, it's a willingness of what you want out of the system. Yeah, that's true. That's true. What struck me in my time in Scandinavia was just how friendly and polite and educated everybody that I met on the street was. I was looking for a hostel, actually near Copenhagen, not a hostel, a hotel. And I couldn't find it on the street. And one person stopped and told me where to go in perfect English. And then somebody else saw that I was struggling. And then within a minute or two, a group of five or six different strangers had all come and accepted the mission of helping me find my hotel in perfect English. And in moments like that, you have to pinch me a mentality. You think, what is this? What is going on here? None of this makes any sense. Maybe in Canada, but yeah. There's a lot of trust here. There's a lot of support here. It's, it's amazing. It's crazy to most actually many of our employees are trying to learn Danish. And it's difficult for them because as soon as any day in here is them struggling, pronouncing, they need to switch over to English. So you end up not actually learning Danish because people are so willing to, yeah, want to help you. Everybody has a college degree. You can just get that sense. I don't know what the percentage is, but I'm sure it's very high. Do you know what the percentages of people who have adults who have a college degree is 90%. I don't know, but given that you get paid to do it, I imagine it's high. And then we're, I mean, we're a tiny country. We don't have anything. Our people is our only resource. So we want them educated. What a way to think about it. I know you have ambitious plans for the next couple of years. I know you're going to try to roll this out here in the middle of fundraising. If everything goes according to the best possible scenario for you, what does that look like? What does the next five years look like? Your wildest dreams come true. Right now we are working on building the first demonstration unit, which will be a standalone tiny 10 foot container unit that will be placed at a local Danish farm producing ammonia on demand from air water and green electricity. And once we have that proof point that this actually works, it's out in a container. The farmer is using the ammonia. I should say that there's a lot of certifications and regulation. We need to overcome to get to that point. That will essentially be the paved the way for us to build the bigger systems. So we intend to, with our future Series A, be start building these full scale systems of around 100 to 200 kilos of ammonia production per day. Amazing. And I hope in five years we'll be providing these systems, not just the Denmark, but the broader EU. And we want to start setting up the right partnerships in order to reach Africa. And one of our potential seed round investors is actually partially located in Africa. And that was a very conscious choice on our part, because we want to get the foot in the door early. So this is where we see ourselves going long term. This is where we can have not only climate impact, but also societal impact. Does that motivate you on a day to day basis, the idea of having that kind of impact? Does that motivate you more than money? I know that's a very loaded question, but what do you think is the primary reason? Absolutely it does. I've been in academia for seven years now in PhD and postdoc. I could have gone out into the private industry and got maybe twice the salary of what I have now. So money is not a factor. Being able to look at myself in the mirror and say, I'm actually trying to fix this. I'm trying to prevent that glacier from melting to the best of my ability. That's what gets me up in the morning. So do you think that makes you smart or an idiot? Because I feel like the YouTube comments section was said. What? You're not maximizing personal wealth. How dare you? How dare you? I think maybe that's because I'm located in Denmark. We have this great welfare system. If things goes wrong, there's a safety net. I don't need to worry about it. If I get drug listeners, you can get, you know, pay from the state. So that's true. I'm going to go ahead and share it with you. No, I mean, that's a very loaded question, but that's why I wanted to chat with you. Because I love talking with the people who are motivated by a different set of priorities. We're bombarded by one set of priorities. And there's so much content in media that tells us we need to have one set of priorities. And what I find interesting is that's often associated with being smart. Being smart is extracting as much as you possibly can from a system with the least possible effort. Consequences be damned. I've never seen it that way. And maybe that makes me an idiot. But I think being smart is taking into consideration other factors than just personal wealth. But that might make me a very bad one. I'll be an idiot in that way. I think a lot about my carbon footprint. I'm personally like single use item as much as possible. I try to not have them. I'm a vegetarian beading towards veganism when I have the capability and energy. It's just you have to make these choices. If you have the energy and bandwidth to make these choices, I think everyone should be trying. But it's not always that it's a perfect system. People struggle with different things in life. No, it's true. And we just have to all find our own way of contributing and at different stages and in different locations what it means to contribute is something completely different. And we have to recognize that. But feeling the same way you do, I feel the same way. I stopped eating meat over 10 years ago. Just a lot of little changes. And I know that I'm imperfect. I still ride my bike everywhere. That's a holdover of my Dutch experience. I use my bike as transportation all the time. It's my favorite thing, my e-bike. And I just got one that can have two kids and people in my neighborhood look at me like I'm insane. They look at me like I'm the biggest maniac that ever lived. And I'm thinking of the Dutch days. Look, this is nothing. I've seen mothers with two kids in the front of their bike, their non-e-bike, two kids in the back going to get groceries. We're just scratching the surface of it. But there's certain holdovers that I think are better. And if you ask me, gun to my head, what I prefer more, riding with my kids in a bike outside or having a $100,000 luxury car, that's an easy choice. The bike, for me, is better in every single way, even in the way of comfort and enjoyment. But again, it's a special type of person, maybe an idiot. I also have an e-bike and I bike to work, so I'm there with you. It's the best. It's the single greatest thing in the world, I think. What was the one invention that I love the most? It's the e-bike, the one invention that is just like finally we have this thing. I would say the e-bike qualifies for that. It's fantastic. I mean, Denmark, we're actually Copenhagen as a city. They're banning non-electric vehicles. I think in 2025, you're not allowed to purchase new. And then the goal is, but I think it's 2030 or 2035. They want to just have many regions in the city be completely car-free. So it's only bikes and pedestrians. And I think that's the way forward. Yeah, absolutely. And think of how much quieter all of the cities will be when that's the case. I long for that. People race their cars all the time. I can't wait for the silence of no more internal combustion engines within earshot. Because every day I hear somebody blowing, leaf blowers somewhere, car racing somewhere, so much of the noise that gets in our brain comes from these engines. And I can't wait for the day when that's no longer the case. But yeah, us idiots have to seek out and support each other. So that's what we're doing. Before we wrap things up, you mentioned going to these conferences. I'm curious if there's any conferences in particular that have really helped you or changed the way you've seen things or where should people such as myself go, who if they want to get more plugged into this space and start feeling more optimistic about the future? I think a lot of my optimism actually comes from podcasts. Other podcasts that, so there's yours, which I love listening to. There's a few others like what it takes that talks also with entrepreneurs who are doing this deep tech climate stuff. And I think it just, I mean, some of the guests that come on these podcasts are so cool. They are coming up with these solutions to problems I didn't even know exist. And it's just inspiring to hear that there's all this technology being developed by these driven passionate people. So I think that to me is where my optimism comes from. And also, I mean, I was recently at the Breakthrough Energy Summit in London a couple of weeks ago, where it's just these entrepreneurs who are coming up with ways to prevent cows from farting and burping methane by feeding them these different feet. I don't know anything about bio-related solutions. There's startups coming up with enhanced rock weathering solutions that also increase agricultural users. I think I interviewed that guy. The name is escaping, but yes, I'm pretty sure I interviewed them. And that is truly a brilliant, that's like a five win. That's a German necklace clue girl. But anyways, lots of cool stuff, yes. And it's just coming, you hear about these solutions, and you just think, wow, we got this. We're going to figure out a way to get out of this. There's a lot of really intelligent people working on it, and it just gives me energy to listen to these podcasts, listen to these people. Same. This is the last thing. Because obviously, when you're in an environment like that, I think sort of like being in college or being surrounded by people who see the world in the same way. There's a lot of base assumptions. I think there's just an understanding. So you can talk about problems, accepting that the problems are real without having to fight. I think a lot of people in challenge or positions have to spend much of their life fighting or convincing. How do you think the best way to translate some of these novel ideas to broader public adoption is, where it's not so clear? I'm sure even in Scandinavia, there are those who disagree with many of these. I know that even in the Netherlands, where you'd think there would be much more uniform in their opinions, that that's not the case, and that certain trains of thought spread in all cultures. How can we get other people as excited about these ideas as we are? It's difficult to get it out to the general public. One thing that has been extremely useful for us is actually talking to journalists for different agricultural newspapers, because many of the farmers who are our target customers get these newspapers and newsletters. So by talking to journalists and seeing, are you actually interested in writing a piece about this? And typically they are, because they're always looking for stories and telling them what we're trying to do, that there is actually green ammonia coming, you can produce it on your farm. That, I mean, recently we started getting a lot of, on our website, we have this form, contact form. And suddenly a lot of Argentinian farmers were reaching out to us and we're like, what happened? I was like five in a row within three days. Wow. And apparently this Argentinian newspaper had taken one of the news articles and published it locally, and then suddenly these farmers were reaching out. So I think being able to actually go through journalism and reaching people, you know, where they get their information, that's the way forward. Wow. Well, that's really cool. And that's clearly upside of the global network that we're all a part of, where you can have somebody reach out from anywhere in the world at any time and you don't even know. That's very exciting. Well, I hope that the ease of funding continues for you. I hope that people continue to reach out and that the rest of it goes swimmingly and that you get exactly what you need for this round and for the future rounds. And I hope that you're able to keep pursuing what is obviously a very important train of thought. So I hope that the world and the world of capital allows you to keep going down this path. And I also selfishly hope that your ideas take off and that in the next five to 10 years, we start commercializing this. Because again, you may not have read the book, but it is one of the four pillars of modern society, like you said. And I think it's one of the only ones that really has a path towards replacement, concrete, being much more difficult, steel being much more difficult, plastics being a very, very complicated part of our society. If this is a shot that we can take to dramatically improve something, I think we should. So thanks for being passionate about it. I'm glad that you saw that iceberg that will probably not be there by the time was podcasted release. And I'm glad that your tinkering has brought you to here. So you can wrap up the episode. Any final words, parting words of wisdom, or what do you want to promote if you want people to support you or take any action you can close us out? Ooh, that leaves the burial. Very open. [LAUGHTER] I want to say that every little bit that we can do as people matters. Even if you can cut out a few single-use items, if you can think about what you're eating, you don't have to go vegan. You don't have to go vegetarian. Just reduce consumption of meat. I think these tiny steps forward make a difference. And this is something that we in the western world are privileged enough to be able to do most of us, again, not everyone. But it is something that every little bit matters. And separately, if you're interested to learn more about green ammonia, you can find us at nitrovolt.com. And right in that contact form, we will get back to you. And bonus points if you're from Argentina. [LAUGHTER] I want to get at least five from Argentina from this episode. [LAUGHTER] But thank you, Suzanne. It's been an absolute pleasure. And with that, the official podcast is over. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] (upbeat music)
