Hydrogen and the Future of Power For AI

0:00Hey, I like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you'd like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters.com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. Today is a very special episode. We have a return guest, Patrick Lang on the line, and he's founder and CEO over at Certainty Management, and I also, he's also an author, a co-author, one of our Mission Matters books, a return guest, and just an advocate for Mission Matters that I surely appreciate who's been with us really almost from the beginning. It's been many years now, Patrick, man, so good to see your face, and welcome back to the show. Always a pleasure, my friend. It's good to be back. All right, so we got a lot to talk about today. I know we've had some back discussions about some of the projects you're working on. Also, you have another book coming out. I want to talk about that as well. What you've been doing in the hydrogen space and AI and talking about solving some of those problems that are going to be on the horizon are actually already here when it

1:03comes to creating the energy and the power needed to sustain these data centers for AI and the growth of what's going to happen next and what's currently happening. So we got a lot to talk about today. But Patrick, you already know the drill for those that you that don't, we start every episode with what we like to call our Mission Matters Minute. So Patrick, at Mission Matters, our aim in our goal is to amplify stories for entrepreneurs, for executives, for experts. That's what we do. Patrick, what mission matters to you? You know, I have several. But if I had to pick one, it's to help create certainty in the lives of our clients. We save in their lives and in their businesses. We do that in several ways, as you know, I own a number of companies, certainty management is a consulting firm, certainty global is our technology firm. We just started a company called certainty veterans to help veterans get their benefits and their back pay. But it's all about creating more certainty in their lives. That's my, that's my brand, that's my mission and it's, it's really my biggest goal is

2:07to do that for as many others. Love having you back on and, and love bringing mission-based entrepreneurs and executives out here to share why they do what they do, how they're doing and really what we can all learn from that. So we all benefit and grow together. So get great having you back on. And I guess just to get, just to get us going here, I want to get into some of the updates and some of the things you've been working on. So first off, I've known you for how many years we know each other now. It's been like three, four, five years. It's been at least three, four. Yeah, it's, it's moving. We're moving. Yeah, and I don't think I've had you in the show for a solid year or so. So if I want, I just want to get into the book, like I know you have a new book coming out, or I should say a second edition of a book called Empower AI, take me back to the beginning. Where did this project start from and really where did it come from? I think you were the first book or series that invited me to try, I did one, I did one

3:09chapter on accountability and was on the cover there with you and I think I even helped write the introduction, but yeah, yeah, you did. Following that, I was invited to be in another one called the Visionary CEO with Jason Miller, you know, called Business Culture. And then that evolved into this latest project doing this book. We call it a playbook for governors or policymakers, but it's called Empower AI. The biggest book, I've been a co-author of the entire book, not just a chapter. So that's been, that's been fun. But it's a, it is just one of those projects where we are in the right place, right time. And then we're excited about what it can do and what it can mean for all of us involved. So now you get into this, the AI side of things and you're talking about Empower AI. Now I know understand there was a first edition, then now the second edition is coming out.

4:10Where did that happen? Like talk about the company and all of that piece of it. Sure. So through our consulting firm, certainty management, you know, we help our clients to improve their profitability, or what's known as an efficiency firm. One of the divisions, we have 10 divisions and one of those is focused on energy, helping our clients reduce the power costs. Well, that blossomed into this relationship with our sustainable energy provider, with our facilitation team, and just grew into this, really this partnership and this, this ecosystem that we didn't even imagine, right. For one, AI is obviously the hottest topic on everyone's lips right now. Every time we turn around, we're hearing our government leaders and others saying they're, they're considering every option, et cetera, et cetera. It's a big deal. We're seeing it more and more in our lives, but there's an enormous bottleneck and when

5:11it comes to powering AI, a lot of pushback from people who are worried their rates are going up. They're already seeing their rates go up, they're, you know, they're talking about building 16 new coal fire plants or starting up nuclear and a lot of people don't like that. Yeah. A lot of pushback, a lot of environmental lawsuits and so forth. And so as I was saying, we're just, we're in the right place right time because we do have a solution, that's what our book talks about, phase approach that can address the need for AI, for, for, for powering AI with no, all of the upstream and downstream challenges or dilemmas that so many other options are causing. Now, I understand the book is kind of laid out and roughly and correcting it from off on this. And basically like three major parts, like there's kind of like three different things that run through the books, let's, let's tackle them one at a time, maybe maybe start at the first thing. Sure. There are three phases, as we call it, phases, there you go, I know there's another word

6:14there. Go ahead. The first one is, it's really the foundation because everyone's looking for energy right now. They're considering lots of options, solar and even nuclear and so forth. But our preferred methodology, our preferred technology is hydrogen power, in a long ways over the last half a century, right, our partner in that space, our sustainable energy provider, they've been in the energy realm for 50 plus years, they've been in hydrogen for over 20 years. Yeah. And they're doing some really extraordinary things. So the first phase talks about how hydrogen can produce the power that we need to do so very quickly, very safely. We like the fact it's a carbon neutral power source. So there's no emissions, right, and it should be carbon negative if you use, depending on the feedstock. So it's a, I didn't know a lot about it a year ago or two years ago.

7:17Why, and I want to stick on that for a moment, why do you think that it doesn't get more media attention or just attention in the, because I, you know, when you say this, hydrogen is been one of those things that keeps on coming up for me. It gets comes of my radar, comes of my radar through interviews just like this. And then it kind of like, you hear other things in the news all the time. Why do you think it doesn't get more play? You know, it's interesting. It's because I think more than anything, the industry, utilities in general, but power and these various providers, they don't do a lot of advertising. There's no billboards, there's no marketing campaigns, there's no, you know, solar is maybe the one that's done a lot of that type of thing, because they're marketing to consumers. Yes, yes, that makes sense. Power, these are utility scale, base load, hydrogen projects that are billions of dollars, right? They're not, they're not selling individual homeowners where you have to do that kind of marketing campaign, they're selling cities and states and AI dinners and those manufacturers,

8:20you know, defense installations and the like. So it's just a different, it's a completely different animal. All right. So that's phase one, let's get into what phase two is in the book. Sure. We refer to it as energy efficiency and it is the crux of the book. The first chapter talks about hydrogen and the rest of the book, much of it talks about how we believe there is no such thing as an energy shortage, we are utilizing our energy correctly, okay? There is, we call it energy wastage, energy star states that we waste about 10 to 30% of all of the power that is flowing into our commercial buildings as we speak. That's a huge number, very big, it's significant. And today there is software and hardware and AI itself that can measure and manage and monitor and recapture that power that's being wasted and then redistribute it back into

9:23the grid to help power AI and other things. And so it's simple things, it can be like just making sure the lights are turned off at night rather than keeping them on, AI monitor those things automatically turn them off and save you who knows how much every year, right? And a lot of those things, whether it's heating and cooling systems or faulty insulation or filtering, you know, there's a lot of different elements to go into that. This energy efficiency piece is very big because we do need to build more infrastructure. AI, one AI data center requires the same amount of power of tens of thousands of homes. And our grid can't handle it, right? So we're already maxed. And so when they're bringing a data center in, two things happen, either all of the rates go up and everybody else has to pay for it, or now that President Trump has deregulated power in many of the states, you're seeing data centers are being told, you have to become

10:25your own power center, your own power plant, if you will. And that's a good news for the constituents because they're not going to see their rates go up as quickly and all potentially. It's bad news for the data centers because they're all scrambling to try to find out where they can find power that will actually work, right? A lot of more using guest turbines and trying to do solar and so forth and so on. But such an elegant solution, I'll just give you one example as a comparison to produce 500 megawatts of power with hydrogen. You need about 10 acres of land, you can put it up in about 14 months or less. And we can, we can produce that very quickly, a very small footprint. If you compared that to solar, it would take years to install and you would be 2,500 acres of solar. So, you know, it's like a no-brainer, right?

11:28Yeah, that's a lot of acreage, I mean, years, right? First to install it or maybe a year, right, to get it up and running with the shovel ready project. Right. There's just no comparison from that standpoint, they're both green, supposedly, right? They're both carbon neutral projects, but if you can, it comes down to time to power, the footprint, the different feedstocks, how are you operating it? What are the biggest bioproducts of hydrogen is potable water, so it's actually creating more water produced power. So, there's a lot of interesting elements to it. What do you, what kind of feedback do you get when you approach these, you know, these data centers or other individuals that could be potential users of this hydrogen and things? Because obviously, when you say these numbers, it's like 10 acres versus 2,500 up time, you know, less than a year, more, and then for other project or alternative, maybe more than a year, like, it seems kind of like, obviously, like I'm curious, what response do you get to this?

12:28Yeah, it's, it's very interesting. I've been in sales my entire career for 40 years, I've always had to chase the sale, chase the death, right, and ask for a, ask for a big deposit or financing or whatever. So, we got into this space, customers are chasing us, right? We went to a conference about a month ago in Waikiki, it's called PTC 26, stands for Telecom 26, used to be about 90% Telecom and 10% AI and Compute. Now it's 90% AI, 10% Telecom. We were there for three days at them, and we came home with 127 new relationships. Wow. And people who heard what we're doing and enth, and through their card out, the elevator is, it was closing, and said, call me, right? You know, it was the most interesting, because this is a fairly new space for us. Right? It's an interesting experience in my entire career. How anxious and eager people are, they're desperately looking for what we have.

13:33I say, right place, right time, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. I mean, every conversation, two things happen. One, it evolves into more conversations, because they say I have a friend, I have a partner, I know another develop, they're all looking for what you guys have. Right. And every conversation, the projects get larger. I've seen this, I've seen this many times over the last few months. They come when they say, we're looking for 50 megawatts of power, but when they start talking to us and understand our capacity and what we do, they say, well, we actually want 10 gigawatts of power, but we didn't even come close to doing that. So we see those two things happen, more conversations spiral out of the first one, and most of the projects get larger right before our eyes. Man, that sounds like good problems to have Patrick. Yeah, I'm telling you it's, it's like nothing I've ever experienced. There's still a, and the third phase of the book, what's in the third phase of the book? The legislation, unions, the data center, developers, investors, etc.

14:36It lays out the ways for that they can work together, right? This is very much a bipartisan need, right? It's across the aisle. The investors want to return as quickly as possible, the environmentalists want to save the planet. They want carbon neutral solutions, etc., etc. And this really addresses both of those. The last few chapters of the book talk about working with unions, how policymakers can use this as a platform for their local campaigns, really just, it's funny because we joke about, they're sitting around in conference rooms trying to come up with solutions to this problem. And admit, I hate to say it, but many of the ideas are coming up with our, are not very good ideas, right? Yeah. You know, I mean, do we really want 16 more coal-fired plants built in America, right? And more environment, our pollution levels go through the roof. Probably not. They're desperate for solutions, and until they come across or stumble across or find

15:38out of what is possible with hydrogen, many, many organizations, I'm surprised they don't know already. I mean, I was surprised how the size of the companies we met, you would know the names. Right. I was surprised they don't already have this figured it out, but we were like the, the hot cheerleader at the dance, everyone wanted to date. Yeah. It was the most, again, just a really interesting situation, but that's what the last few chapters are. We work together to implement chapter, you know, phase one, the hydrogen route, phase two, the energy efficiency, what we call tuning up the commercial buildings, how do we work together to make it all come to fruition? What are some of the big hurdles you see in kind of implementing and going in this hydrogen direction? Is it education? Is it politics? I don't know. Like, what are some of the hurdles that you see that'll be ahead? You know, I haven't seen a lot of them, honestly.

16:39Obviously, for us, it's finding clients that are qualified, right? We actually can, depending on the scenario, for qualified clients, we can provide funding for them. You would call our partner in that space, we'll do what's called a power purchase agreement. You can do it with or without blended capital, depending on the scenario. Literally, depending on who the customer is, we can, they can enter this, have it built, funded with a zero upfront and zero out of pocket cost, who they'll even pay for the, all of the feedstock, whether it's natural gas that's feeding it, or we can even use things like landfill and wastewater, sewage and methane and even saltwater, you know, things like that that are, which is great for applications all around the world. But I think that really just, for us, the hurdle is making sure we're talking to those

17:40who are legitimate projects, they are qualified to take part in it. Yeah. We don't want to waste our time on tire clickers. We don't advertise, nobody in this industry advertises, it's all word of mouth. They know if they're qualified and, but we do occasionally waste our time with people who were just curious, right? Yeah. And so that's a challenge. And then, honestly, the hardest part is getting through all the 127 leads we got three weeks ago, calling people back and setting meetings and getting together with them and their boards or their teams. And it's a good problem to have, like you said, that it's, we're very busy and it's pretty exciting to be honest. Now, I'm curious about the construction of the book. I know you're a writer, I know that, that's a big piece of your background. What was it like to kind of go through to update? I know this is a second edition that you're part of. What was that piece of it like for you? Like to kind of get all the, get all the red marker out there. Yeah. Yeah.

18:41My, my degree is in English. Technical writing. I thought so. I don't know if it was English or so. Philosophy, I just know that you are, you're a writer writer. Go ahead, please. I, I majored in English because I thought about going to law school and I worked in, I did sales jobs during the summers and found out I was pretty good at it and decided to stay with it. That's the same as me. I didn't know that I was accepted to law school. I did my first sales gig and I was like, wait a minute, like I'm, I just now may basically half that year's salary is a first year, like lost law, first year coming on law school. I made it into sales job and I was like, I'm going to do this. Go ahead, please. I know that about you. That's it. I was making hundreds of dollars a day in the summers. I'd worked for two months and take off the last month, come back to school with money in my pockets and I thought, pretty good at this and I like it. So yeah, so the book, our, our partners in this space, it's the company we work for. They're the deal sourcing company for these large men, these large sustainable energy

19:42providers that we work with. And so they had written this book fairly quickly, the first edition in, in part, I believe it was for a political, a policymaker who wanted some information. So they put it into a sort of a manual format, it was about 50 inches. And when I saw, they said, we can use it as a sales tool. And when I saw, they also said, we're working on a second or third edition, we want to write a couple more chapters, we're going to expand some things. And when I looked at it, it was really well written as far as the information was, there were typos, you know, there was an index was lacking, no photos in it, right? No references, no, no glossary and those types of things. I said, do you mind if I help you improve it, right? Let's, let's take it to the next level. I said, I have a secret weapon in the fact that my dad's a professional editor, my mom is a retired honors hangware professor from Brigham Young University.

20:43So, so anything I'm going to go ahead and send the blood. And so that's my, that's my secret weapon, but the, so I spent probably a thousand hours on the book, did all the photos in it, the photographic citations, the, the, the table of contents, the references, the, in addition to editing and helping right, the, the, the next few chapters that they added, now the second edition, which is coming out probably in about two weeks, it'll be on Amazon, it's a hundred and eighty pages and four, right? And just significantly better, they did, I mean, the covered loss, see, they did, they just said, they've done a really good job. It's been a joint effort, it hasn't just been me, but, but a lot of work that's gone into it, and it's significantly better than it was, a lot of the same information, but just the overall presentation and so forth, it's just fantastic. Now, now I know there's many things in many takeaways you want the readers to have, but

21:46if there was one central theme or takeaway, that, that you want the audience to get that takes away, it reads this book, what would that be? Now, really that the, the empowering AI, I mean, everyone has different opinions of AI, right? People think it's still a lot of jobs, and those who, as to know, it's going to create far more digital workforce jobs, high-paying jobs, just like when we went from agricultural to the industrial revolution, it eliminated some jobs, but it created many more. And so it's going to happen with AI, it's already happening, but the thing is, and obviously we're focused on the power side of it, our message would be, if there was one takeaway, is that there is enough power, right? There is power available more easily, or quickly, without many of the upstream downstream headaches and challenges or risks, and we can do it together, right?

22:47And you don't have to fight the unions, the unions can be involved. There's significant jobs available. The investors don't have to sit and wait for years to get power. There are data centers right now that are full, completed, full of servers, old, it's going to be three to four years before they get power. Wow. You can understand why when they hear from us, we can have it in six to 12 months, or maybe 18 months, even for a gigawa, and 18 months, they can't even believe that, right? I mean, we have to overcome skepticism once in a while, right? But that's, but it is very real, and that's music to their ears, right? So just that message that we can do it, it is the future, it's not going to go away, but let's do it right without ruining our environment, without overwhelming our grid, outfiding each other, the environmentalists in the capitalists. All of them can win, with energy efficiency, and with AI, and it's, that's what we're

23:51doing. It's kind of a wild ride, but we're really enjoying it, and there's enormous opportunity to bless lives, and help it come fast, right? So it's wonderful. I can't wait for this new book, so I can be as well, better educated about hydrogen, and really how that fits into the future of energy and creating energy, especially for these data centers. Oh, there it is. That it is. I'm not over it. Beautiful. What's next? I mean, what's next for you? What's next for certainty management, this project, what's next? Cost reduction, or what do we call our profitability firm, is doing really well in several areas. Energy is going to eclipse everything else we do. Just based on the experience we had at PTC 26, the value of attending as many of the AI data center conferences around the world, that will be our focus over the next couple of years. And I have talked a little bit about what you guys do, and it's just, literally, we

24:55could walk around with a t-shirt that we've got power, and every person there would talk to us, right? It's kind of crazy, right? So that's our plan for the next, over the next couple of years, to attend at least one conference a year. There's several around the world. Yeah. I just gave a keynote speech and Dubai. Oh, that's right. How'd that go? Well, they asked me to come back and speak again and come on, and get in Dubai next December. So I guess it went okay, but it's in great connections. I mean, when I got done, a dozen countries came up to me, people from different, from all over the world and said, we need, we need what you're doing. When can we meet? So it's, it's, I tell you, it's like nothing I've ever experienced in, I love it. I love it. How do people follow up? How do they learn more? Connect with you on this opportunity, on the book, of course, and on, and on certainty management in general. How do they connect? So you can find us at certaintyteam.com. Our website is currently being updated, so it'll be different in the next few short weeks,

26:00but you can call me direct at our office, 888-684-3122, again, 888-684-3122. It's talked to anyone who's serious, has a legitimate project isn't just going to kick tires, right? We're happy to answer questions, but we're very busy, and so we're, we're being very selective about who we spend our time with. Fantastic. And for everybody listening, just so you know, we'll definitely put some links in the show notes so you can just click on the links and head right on over and speaking of the audience. If this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven't done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show. Yes, you heard me right each and every day. We're putting out new content, bringing you new ideas and interviews to hopefully fuel your success and also inspiration. So hit that subscribe and follow button and Patrick. Man, it's been so, so fun to catch up with you, and thanks for coming back on the show. Hey, man, it's my favorite place to be online. You know, you know, you're what, top 2% now in the world.

27:01Yeah, baby, we've been working. I do. That's incredible.