The three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle of first-of-a-kind, with Dave Stribley (HAMR Energy)

So playing a soccer match are not knowing the rules. As long as you know the rules, people will go out, they'll play, it'll be competitive and you'll drive down cost and you'll have the best outcome. You just need to know the rules under which you're operating. It's like a giant three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. It's the ultimate challenge. You need all of those jigsaw puzzle pieces to come together at the right time. You've got to have the right technology, have your outtake partners, your supply partners. You do need to have government on board with these projects. Similarly, we're building hopefully the first new refinery since 1955. Said this many times, we're on a train and we're heading in a certain direction and it will twist and turn, but ultimately we know the final station that we're going to and it might take us longer to get there, but ultimately we're heading there. We might be at Kathmandu and we've got to get to Everest, so we're in the right country. That's the important thing. We've got a long way to go. Think all the things are aligning up really well. Welcome to the Forward Scales, the podcast about first of a kind, clean energy and industrial projects, the people building them and what it takes to get them across the line. I'm Joy, a principal here at Sion Ventors and I'm joined today by my cohost Fraser Thompson, the co-founder of Sion. Before we begin, we'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands on which we are recording today and the traditional owners of the lands on which you are listening. We pay our respects to elders past, present and future and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Today's episode is one we've been really looking forward to. We spent a lot of time talking about the policies, the finance structures and the technologies needed to get first of a kind energy projects across the line and today we're going inside a project that's doing exactly that. Our guest is David Stribley, co-founder of Hammer Energy. There's a lot to learn about Hammer, so we're going to get right into it. We've welcomed you before it scales. Thank you Joy, thank you Fraser for having me and looking forward to, yeah, having a good discussion about first of a kind projects. So perhaps we start with a little bit about how you got here. You and your co-founder Alex, I believe, both came out of Exxon Mobile. What was it that made you leave one of the world's largest energy companies to start a renewable fuels business? Yeah, so I spent the best part of 15 years with Exxon Mobile, so I'm a mechanical engineer to start with Alex Smith. He spent over 20 years with Exxon Mobile working on life scale projects. And we left about five years ago now and really our theory at the time was, well, one, I returned from Australia from the Middle East and that was actually removed all weeks. So I'd spent 10 years supporting the best rate assets here in Australia. An amazing set of assets there. There's about 22 facilities out there, but they've come to their end of life oil and gas is declining there. But at times, I mean, that supplied all the gas that we know on the East Coast. I returned to remove those back in early 2021 and really felt that wanted to go and create something where there was a gap in the market. And in particular, we felt that gap was around our transition on liquid fuels. So our theory when we started was we'd probably know the solution when we think about how we're going to decalbinise electrons and that sort of market. We know that it's going to be a combination of wind, solar batteries, they'll be gas peaking in there as well. But they've felt to me a gap in the market where we still use about 30 to 40% of our primary energy is still liquid fuels. And we really haven't started that journey at all. And if we forecast that out to 2050, our strong view is we will continue to use a large portion of liquid fuels. So we established how to really start building something out in that space to support customers who will need to use low carbon liquid fuels to decalbinise. And for us, that's very much focused on the aviation, the maritime, heavy industry and the chemical sectors. They're the sectors we see need to decalbinise through the use of liquid fuels. Dave, for listeners out there that are not familiar with hammer, perhaps you can give us an overview of what you do. So hammer energy is a low carbon liquid fuels development platform. So we have a number of angles but and a number of projects ongoing. So we have one flagship project which is a large scale renewable, methanol and SAF development. So it is an integrated development that takes everything from biomass all the way through to SAF, SAF being sustainable aviation fuel. That project has two components to it. One is the methanol plant which is located in Portland, Victoria and then it has a methanol to jet upgrading facility which will be located in Adelaide. We also have another arm to our business and that is hammer fuels. Hammer fuels is an entity that supports customers today to access low carbon liquid fuels. And the reason that entity was formed was really talking to customers for our large scale projects and seeing a demand in the market where they needed help to actually use these fuels. So go through the management of change, where do they access the fuels, how do they get their teams on board with those fuels. And that is really to try and work through and we will talk about it a bit today that supply chains are so important to these projects and any new project. So it is to start participating in the supply chains and we have just announced our first deal where we supplied a thousand tons of biofuel to BHP recently for one of their own all carriers which is very exciting. Maybe we can chat a little bit about your 10 million dollar series A earlier this year with Quantis Airbus and Tissin Group Uda. I hope that's the correct pronunciation. Which is an unusual investor base I would think being your customers and technology partner. How did that all come together and what is the signal? We're really proud that we managed to close that series A in January this year. So as you mentioned it brings on board Quantis and Airbus from the aviation space Tissin Group Uda as well who is more on the technology side of things and then our existing shareholder base as well. Really I guess bringing on customers like Quantis for us was really important. Being aligned ultimately with what your customer wants is really important in these any project actually or any product you're trying to create to make sure you're producing something that your customer ultimately wants. I think is really important. So we did make a deliberate choice to bring in a customer early because when you look at these projects one of the single biggest missing things in any of these new liquid fuel projects is ultimately the customer. And being able to talk to them basically daily about what they need is really really important for us. We also have Airbus in there as well and they're a massive advocate when you just think about the industries we're trying to participate in and what they need is an ultimate manufacturer of aeroplanes a massive stakeholder there. And then Tissin Group Uda well done on the pronunciation. And bringing in another stakeholder who ultimately has a lot of expertise in this space but also somebody we need to be aligned with and how do we drag costs down in the long term on these types of projects so that we can bring down the cost for our customers. So we were very deliberate in how we structured that series A bringing in strategic partners. And the Portland Renewable Fools project could you tell us a bit more about it? How does it work and where are you at with it? Yeah so that projects it is a large scale biomass to methanol development. It uses residual forestry biomass from an area called the Green Triangle which is located on the border of South Australia and Victoria. It's Australia's single biggest forestry region and I'm going to say forestry plantation forestry so think of that as essentially farmers that are instead of growing crops they're growing trees. Now the vast majority of those trees go into lumber for our homes and out of that process there's always some sort of byproduct that is left over. So we're using that as essentially the carbon feed stop so if you think of any liquid fuel today it's primarily made up of carbon and hydrogen that's all fuel basically is. So we're using that biomass as our carbon source. Again down in that region in Portland it is Australia's best onshore wind resource with significant power infrastructure all the way down to the aluminium smelter. So we tap into the power system there and we use hydrogen. And the way we use hydrogen is just the same as a refinery does today. It's just another one of our feedstock so every refinery in the world uses hydrogen the only difference here is we use low carbon hydrogen. So we add those two things together and we produce methanol. And methanol is a really for us when we started a really interesting intermediatory product because it allows us to go to so many different markets it gives you a lot more commercial flexibility on whether you go to things like we're now doing which is around jet fuel whether you go into the maritime sector we use methanol today in the chemical sector or ultimately you can use it as a neat fuel as well. So again it gives you a lot more commercial flex there about what you do with that intermediatory product. I've read about your your hub and spoke model that Hammer is using maybe you could explain that approach in and why you chose it and how it compares to what other developers are doing. I think our big challenge coming out of oil and gas was how you go into scale this industry and bring down cost. And with that comes two things. One, you could build these mega trains and I guess I spent three years working in the Middle East on Qatar's LNG mega trains and they are ginormous. And they are amazing and they brought down costs to eye-watering low numbers because you could go to I think the biggest is 7.8 million tonnes per annum. The first LNG trains were around a million. So they are almost eight times the capacity of the first trains. But you also need to design things that are built for a customer and can you ultimately find that customer at the back end to do that. So what the hub and spoke model allows to do is ultimately recognize that you can't go to a mega train for a low carbon liquid fuels plant today because the customer base is not there yet. You've got to drag along that supply chain. You've got to bring your customers along for that journey and demonstrate you can bring down costs. And then as demand grows you can then start to increment putting on additional what we would call trains onto that and bring down the cost by having the shared infrastructure, share the logistics, building all that out and then you start to see costs coming down over time. But it's sort of this you can't get too far ahead of your customer but you also need to scale to bring down the cost. And that's the beauty of the hub and spoke as it allows you to do that. Dave, can I jump in then and you're one of the key questions that always get asked is do you have enough feedstock for the scale of production that we're talking about? And I'm interested that you've obviously located in a in a heartland of a really rich area for to get some of those byproducts. But how are you thinking about that as this scales? Is there enough feedstock there that you can reliably tap into for the ambition of where you want to get to? Definitely. So if you think about the green triangle today produces about 8 million tonnes of fodder per annum and we're taking some of the byproduct from that. So the green triangle alone would easily have enough to support two projects like what we're doing. And then you think about other regions and you just consider forestry for instance between Tasmania, New Zealand, WA, there's a lot of fibre byproduct there. And then you start to get into the agricultural waste and there's a whole heap of that as well. So as the industry matures, we will get better at using these lignus resources I would say. And then for us the pathway to methanol was important because methanol can be produced from either natural gas, from bio gas through a hybrid approach like we're doing or ultimately an E approach, an E methanol pathway. So the beauty of going down this methanol to jet pathway is ultimately I do think E fuels are probably the way you can scale this to almost an infinite level. The fact of the matter today is they are infinitely expensive as well and they shouldn't necessarily be the first in our view in but as technology and as we see how particularly electrolyzes might interact with the grid, that's where I think we can scale that. So yeah, I think the beauty of why we chose methanol to jet was because you had that scaling that went across the whole life cycle of technology basically. Yeah, very interesting. Yeah, it's quite a flexible pathway. Yes, yeah. Would you like to share a bit more on the BHP as being a new customer or is there still some sensitivity around that? No, no, we announced that I think two weeks ago. So that was a transaction where we supported BHP around a biofuels trial. So BHP are quite progressive on what they're doing around their shipping fleet and recognising that biofuels will be a solution for what they need for that fleet. So the transaction was we supplied a thousand tons of biofuels. 500 of that was made here in Australia based on tallow feedstock and 500 was derived from use cooking oil by a diesel. So the transaction, the project was really to look at using different feedstock, heifer-based feedstock to make these fuels blend them together and show that you could use those essentially in a ship. And BHP did that with Burj Bulk to burn 100% bio diesel, which was a pretty cool deal. The project was bunkered in Singapore and we did that alongside our research partners the Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation. Very exciting, very cool. So you've obviously come a really long way. Maybe you could share a bit about the partnerships that have been critical to getting these projects to the stage. Partnerships are, I mean they're so important all the way from our customers through to our technology providers, to how we've got to this far. And I'd say we've got a lot, lot further to go, but just to this point. So if I think about our offtake partners, I mean really critical and quantises obviously critical to that, but also the other partners we talk to and really listening to our customers ultimately what do they need in this marketplace. And also what are the external signals they need to see in order for them to make ongoing commitments around offtake and really collaborating with them on what that looks like. Like it is really hard for people to commit to offtake in this space. And I think going in with an open mind on helping them and recognising this is a massive challenge for them has been really important for us. Our technology partnerships with Ties and Crippootah and Honeywell, honestly couldn't speak highly enough about the amount of effort and time that they've put into these projects. And then the stakeholder aspect of it from the local community in Portland through to the work we've been doing in South Australia. Again, these things are really hard. So you need a coalition of the willing and that goes for government as well to try and bring these projects to reality. I want to shift now and talking about what are some of the key building blocks you need to get projects of this scale and ambition to happen. And if you look at Australia, we've got all the ingredients to be, this low carbon fuel super power. We have the feedstocks, we've got logistics, we've got a large domestic market for demand and we're also sitting on the doorstep of one of the most vibrant demand centres globally. One of the missing pieces that often gets talked about is the demand side. In terms of how do we create a signal that will turn this sort of potential into something concrete that you in turn can use to get your projects through to financial close? Can you talk a little bit about why demand is so crucial here in an emerging industry like low carbon fuels? Maybe I'll talk about it in any industry. It doesn't have to be low carbon liquid fuels. So the Australian government is doing a lot in this space. If we just, if we stacked up the things you need to make work in this industry for early phases, I'd break them up into sort of facilitating services. So you may be aware we're one of four projects under the Investor Front Door Program and that I would describe as a facilitation service. How do we get these projects from start to finish as quickly as possible? I'd then say there's the supply side signals and that's things like the low carbon liquid fuels program, the 1.1 billion, the arena, 250 million, they've got their even hydrogen head start. They're all programs that are designed to even just all the arena grants. They're all supply side support signals to try and help suppliers like us. And then as you said, Fraser, there's the demand side of the equation. And without demand side, it's very hard for industry and customers to have the certainty on whether they should buy a certain product. And that probably doesn't just go for liquid fuels, but I can give some analogies on liquid fuels. Probably the most recent example would be the switch from heavy fuel oil in ships to very low-sulfur fuel oil. So that was a change from 3.5% sulfur down to 0.5% sulfur. That was a global change. So you think about a global change. Why did they do that? That was because the IMO valued the health consequences of having that higher sulfur and sulfur dioxide imports. So they said, we're going to value that that is really important to us. We need to stop that and we're going to put a standard in place. So not a mandate necessarily. We're just going to put a value on sulfur dioxide in our ports. Now it took about 8 years to get through, but it meant that you had to go and sell very low sulfur fuel oil. And I remember I was in Qatar at the time that this came out and it was like the world was going to end in shipping. It was literally, we are not going to be able to get this fuel. The world is going to end. The fuel is going to be twice as expensive. But what a drove was a very known standard for all suppliers that this standard was coming. We have to go and meet that regardless and we'll go and meet it. The world didn't end. In fact, the price did peak a little bit, but then a plateaued very quickly. And we now don't have that sulfur dioxide issue in our ports. And that was from a relatively modest change. You can look at lead petrol removal, again where we value to health consequence, where we remove that. Again, at the time, the refiner said that was probably in the 70s before my time. We're not going to be able to get this fuel, the engines won't run. We actually valued ultimately that we should remove the lead from our fuel system. Now I think something like what we're looking at here, what all those standards did was they just drove certainty for private enterprise. That's all they did. They just said, these are the boundaries of which you are going to operate. This is what we want you to do because we value an externality, which in both those cases were sulfur and lead. Now, in this case, if we don't value the externality around CO2, for instance, then it's very hard for private enterprise to know what they should do or commit to in the future. I think that's probably the only piece we're missing is do we value having something like a low carbon liquid fuel standard, similar to sulfur removal or lead removal? That will then allow private enterprise to have the certainty around the business decisions they need to make to buy these sort of fuels. On the, let's dive into each of those areas for a moment. You talked about the different packages of support. On the demand side, globally, there's got over 60 countries now that have some kind of low carbon liquid fuel if a standard or mandate in place or in the process of being put into place. In Australia, we just announced in the last budget we heard the federal government's planning to introduce a demand side mechanism for low carbon fuels. Either we go into consultation soon and asking the industry for various inputs in that. At a high level, what are the kind of things that you think the must have for a really credible demand signal in the Australian market that will help projects like yours get to financial close? Yes. So, it needs to create certainty for private enterprise. I think that's part of the challenge, particularly maybe Europe has had Fraser, that they've just, to some extent, there's still a lot of debate around what might happen. But I think you need to ultimately have certainty and say, this is what we are going to go do. I think we'll make a big difference. I think you ultimately do need our view is it should also have some sort of carbon intensity link. So, it should be outcome driven for what you're trying to achieve. So whatever the outcome the government wants, it should ultimately be. It should ultimately head in that direction. I think the other piece to it is it really, and this is a really hard one, but it should have what is our long term vision? Like where are we ultimately, what does good look like and where do we want to head to? And we recognise that will change, but ultimately these are big long term decisions. What, where do we want this industry to ultimately get to? Because if we set a really clear, this is where we want the industry to get to. Enterprise will help or they will get there because they'll know again the framework at which they're playing in. It's like playing a soccer match and not knowing the rules. Like as long as you know the rules, people will go out and they'll play and you'll end up, it'll be competitive and you'll drive down cost and you'll have the best outcome. Yeah, very clear. Very clear. So, you mentioned the investor front door. Can you talk a little bit more detail for listeners here about what exactly is that and why is it important for a project like yours to get that kind of support? Yeah, so the investor front door programme was launched around the same time as the National Reconstruction Fund and it was a programme that was established on the back of government consulting with Private Enterprise and saying what's the challenge in getting these large scale projects through to FID and ultimately being executed. And one of the things that keep hearing from Private Enterprise is our regulatory system is complex, interactions with government and different funding elements within government is complex. We'd really like just a single point within the federal government that we can say, hey, we've hit a roadblock. What do we do? Sort of thing. So, for us, what it opens up is it gives us that single point around, if we've got a regulatory thing we need to work on that we can consult with them and say, here's the regulatory thing and we're doing the right thing. It doesn't change what we have to go through. It just helps us instead of talking to multiple agencies. We can go to one point and they can say, go here, do this, join the dots for us. And then the other element is how it interacts with things like the National Reconstruction Fund, export credit agencies, those elements within government, just to make sure it's all a little bit more coordinated and make it easier for Private Enterprise. You've said publicly that the real barriers to your project are not technical, the technology is there. So, what are those barriers that you see that the ones that you have to overcome now, to get from where you are now to that final stretch to financial close? It's like a giant three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle is the ultimate challenge and you need all of those jigsaw puzzle pieces to come together at the right time and ultimately have that last piece that is FID in the projects, well, it's not even the last piece FID. You've got to then build it and get it operational. And you've got to have all those bits, as you said, Fraser, you've got to have the right technology. You've got to have your off-take partners, your supply partners. You've got to have, you do need to have government on board with these projects. I mean, ultimately we're building probably, hopefully, the first new refinery since 1955. So it's complex. So you need all those bits to happen at the right time. So I wouldn't have said it's any individual piece. It's the fact that you need every bit of that being there at the right time as well. That's why it's three-dimensional. The timing is really important as well. You can't, for example, you can't go and sign an off-take agreement if you haven't done the engineering in time, but it's very hard to raise the money if you don't have an off-take agreement to do the engineering. So you've got to work out creative ways to solve those problems so that when it all comes together in that final piece, yeah, you can get it over the line. Dave, you are trying to finance a $1.8 billion project. I don't know if that's still the right number. Correct me if I wrong. You're trying to fund this ginormous project in a market where the product you're selling doesn't really exist yet as a trade of commodity. And you've emphasized the importance of the customer and what they need. But I'm curious about how you navigate those conversations when you talk to investors and lenders on this demand issue and the customer when the market is not developed yet. How did those conversations happen and go down? A very good question, Joy. I think everybody recognises this market will be created. I mean, it is where I want to say this many times, where we're on a train and we're heading in a certain direction and it will twist and turn, but ultimately we know the final station that we're going to. And it might take us longer to get there, but ultimately we're heading there. So I think all investors get that and again, it's a bit like that jigsaw puzzle. It's about the timing that you have to play those last pieces and how you get there. I think particularly when you talk to banks and your institutional type investors, everybody recognises that. It's just when can you get to the point that you have these long term offtake agreements? And we are starting to see that more globally. Now we are seeing more sustainable aviation for your projects. We are seeing more renewable projects as well, going through as well. So I think we're starting to see it, but definitely it's a journey for those funders as well, along with the offtake partners on how do you get there. And ultimately, how do you share that risk in a market that is less defined than a traditional market? You talked a little bit about risk before we started recording. We mentioned that it is really all about risk at the end of the day and how that gets mitigated. Have you changed the way that you think about risk or have you really had to be quite explicit in the way that hammer is approached risk and the way that you communicate it to investors and lenders? Everything we do is just based on risk. From our technology partners, we look at it from when we plotted sort of hammer's path very early on. We plotted it out always what's the risk of even working with this partner? How does that mitigate that risk? How do we, I mean, ultimately everything is a risk-based decision on where you get there? So it is all, everybody has a piece of that risk pie. Let's call it that we've got to play a role line. And that will go for government as well at some point. And they might ultimately be that last piece that needs to come into play to mitigate that last risk to put that in. I think what we is private enterprise and our offtake is need to do a better job of doing is articulating what that risk is and how could government support mitigating that risk? Because we just go to them and say, we just, we need a billion dollars. And then this will work. If it doesn't actually mitigate a risk that gets the project off the ground, that's not actually all that helpful. If we go forward and say, hey, we've got everybody together, we've got an offtake agreement, we've got this, we've got our constructor, we're ready to go. We've got this last bit of risk that we just, we don't know how to deal with. because it's an emerging market, we don't know how to solve it. Is there a role that government can play to solve that risk? I think that's a better discussion ahead with government than we need capital. And maybe just on a more personal note, you mentioned that you've seen sort of a full life cycle of project development from being at Exxon Mobile and seeing multi-billion dollar projects come through there. What have you had to unlearn or rethink about project development in this context where it's first of a kind and it hasn't been done before, there hasn't been a refineries since the 50s. How have you had to change your thinking or the way that you approach things? I actually don't. When I think about first of a kind, all projects actually all have the same risk. It's just a first of a kind project might have different risks in terms of. So your strategy still needs to be the same and that is understand all your risks. It's just how you might need to mitigate different risks might be different. So if you're building a new LNG gas terminal in Qatar, for instance, and maybe the giant mega trains are a good example, there'd never been a 7.8 million ton per annum train ever built. So there was a heap of technical risk on that. But the counter to that was you didn't have a lot of commercial risk because you knew you could sell your 7.8 million tons per annum into the Japanese and Chinese markets. So it's probably about. When we think about when we get to financing our project, for example, where are the risks that. If it's technology or if it's off-take, do we really need to focus on? Because that's where this package, for instance, this project has more risk than other places. than if it was a straight up LNG train. So again, I think it just comes back to risk in every project. So it has that. It's about how do you identify them, manage them, and ultimately mitigate them. So Dave, let's fast forward into the future for a little bit. And, you know, Hammer is a huge success. You've launched a series of projects. You've spearheaded this Australian low carbon fuels industry. And you're writing your autobiography. Let's call it working title, Hammer Time, but we can workshop that. And you're giving advice to first of a kind project developers, based on the kind of some of your learnings. And maybe just from your learning so far, what would you tell some of these developers? There may be a bit earlier in the journey about things that. The less intuitive things, the less obvious things, that you think are really important for them to pay attention to. Some of these would be a bit cliché, but obviously team is really important. You've got to have the right people. If you don't have the right people, then it's just going to be a real challenge. And we are really, really lucky from our board team down to our core team. I think we have an exceptional team. I'd say don't underestimate industrial logic. So just if you're trying to push something uphill in a hard industry already, in a sort of first of a kind type space, you really want to make it as easy as possible. So where you can leverage existing infrastructure, existing businesses, don't try and recreate everything. Try and make it almost look identical to an existing market. It's going to be a lot easier for you to articulate what the business is trying to do, but also share those services so that you don't have the same high cost base. I would say my other big, big learning would be ultimately listen to the customer. I think this is where hydrogen, some extent failed. I feel it was almost a solution trying to find a problem and not ultimately listening to what a customer wanted to some extent. And should always be talking to your customer. And that's why for us, hammer feels is so important that it gives us the ability to talk to customers about what is their actual experience in using these fuels. Why do they want to use these fuels? What's important to them? Because ultimately if we build a cool project and a cool business, but nobody ultimately wants it and we can't drive down the cost, then ultimately that's all it is. And then probably so that's fourth one would be collaboration. I've not, I was blown away and continue to be since we started hammer just about how willing people are to help. And just want these industries to exist and they recognize how hard it is. That's from our seed investors through to our current investor base through to our service providers. Having that collaboration and people all wanting to pull in the same direction. Yeah, it's massive. We did talk a bit about supply chain. We touched on it briefly. Is there anything else you wanted to say about the importance of the supply chain? Yeah, supply chains are one we're quite passionate about. And that's because you can end up adding a lot of cost through your supply chain and not thinking about how you ultimately get it to the customer. And again, maybe it comes back to understanding what the customer wants. Does a customer want jet fuel in the middle of nowhere, for instance, or do they want it at Sydney Airport and understanding how you get your product from point A to point B. And maybe again, it comes back to that industrial logic. Having really, really good supply chains is important. And we will get better at those supply chains. But again, even if you think about the LNG industry from its early stages and say Indonesia in the 1970s and then building out those supply chains. So when they had those mega trains, again, you can save so much cost. You look at the huge LNG carriers now versus the first ones about moving product around. And all of that builds into this ecosystem that drags down cost. And I think that's actually what we've seen China, where they now are building these low carbon liquid fuels plant so cheaply. It's not just the physical piece of kit you built in the middle of that box. Let's call it. If you've got hammer fuels here, you've got development here and supplied. It's the whole ecosystem. And every one of those, if you can bring down costs, you can get to a cheaper product. And that's ultimately why getting these first of a kind projects off the ground are really important. Because once you start that ecosystem and you start the supply chain, you start to build scale and you start to drag that down. And maybe just to close Dave, what are you most excited about right now? It sounds like you're excited about a lot. But is there anything that you're like, oh, this is going to be such an exciting era ahead? I think it will be a really exciting era. I just think one, as you said, Fraser, we have all the technology. We have all the resources to do this. And I think we're now seeing both political and public will to build out these sort of facilities. Be that even around domestic capability or fuel security. I think over the last five years, I'm probably more excited about where we're heading. I mean, don't get me wrong. We're sort of, I think I said to the team the other day, we might be at Kathmandu and we've got to get to Everest. So we're in the right country. And we've got a long way to go. But I think all the things are lining up really well. Dave, I always say thank you for joining us. Hearing the hammer story is terrific. And I think inspiring not only for those people in low carbon fuels, but also for those other first-of-kind project developers who are trying to scale a different mountain. But albeit with similar challenges. And I wish you and the team the best of luck. I think the progress you've done today has been terrific. And I think that kind of that persistence that under- under-emphasized quality of project developers, which you and your team have. And that resilience, I think, will make sure that you'll get through to financial clothes. And we'll be great to see hammer produced in Australia. And being the cornerstone of this industry. So thank you again for your time sharing with us. Thanks, Rose. Thanks, Troy. It went great. Thanks, Lord Dave. So, hey, Fraser, that was a great conversation with Dave from Hammer. Very interesting. And so exciting to hear about a real project and how it's all been working and how they are making such good progress. What was your number one takeaway from that chat? Well, I've known Dave for quite some time. He's a really inspiring guy. He's very thoughtful as we heard about that discussion of just how he's broken down all bits of the project and understood the different risks and how to think that through. But as I alluded to in the discussion is that that is necessary, but not sufficient to get these projects through to financial clothes. And I think the persistence and resilience of him and his team to get with our now. And he'll say that he's still got more to go. And that's true. But those qualities of persistence and resilience, those are the things that I often find are the differentials to get projects from a good idea to something that actually sees a light of day. So I thought it was super interesting. What about you, Joy? What did you take away from that? Yeah, I found it really interesting. And I thought his emphasis on risk. I mean, I think it's been, I've underappreciated how important it is to consider the different buckets of risk and how that's even sort of more important for pre-revenue. He said that it's the same. across all projects, but it's something that for me has become really interesting to understand. And I know we're doing a lot of work on this right now, so I guess it's really friend of mine to understand what the different types of risks are and how they typically mitigated. So I think that was my takeaway to see that sort of in real life, how that's actually worked out in a project. He talked a little bit about Demonstride Mechanisms and the low carbon liquid fuel policy architecture. So it's really now has a Demonstride measure that's going to be coming in to help get projects through, but is there something else missing? What else do we need to get low carbon liquid fuels through? Well, let's just clarify that one because it's been announced that there will be some kind of Demonstride Mechanisms. So we don't yet have the details of that. And it's the details that make all the difference and that those details include, you know, what kind of fuels it covers? Is it a decarbonisation approach? Is it a mandate approach? What time period will it come into play? What will be the level of targets in the trajectories? All these kind of details and what will really be important to flesh out? And the government has announced that they'll be going into consultation phase very shortly and hopefully we'll get some real alignment on some of those topics and then get something that's really meaty. And I think once we have that, we have that kind of real clear robust demand signal, then I think that'll make the world a difference for a whole bunch of low carbon liquid fuel projects, including Hammer. And we're recording this around mid-June. So we'll see how that starts to develop. Do you know what the timeline is roughly on? We'll start to sort of get some sense of what exactly this is going to look like. Well, it has been announced that the consultation will be coming out hopefully by the end of June and then there'll be a short, relatively short period about six weeks I believe of consultation with the industry and then with the aim of getting clarity on the key design aspects at least at a high level by the end of the year. And then hopefully the all the other details that go with this on the implementation arrangements will be fleshed out in 2027. But if we can get to the end of this year with something that's got the building blocks in place of exactly what this will look like, then I think will be in a great place. And this matters a lot. So we do work with this clean deal tracker, a clean deal monitor with Mission Possible Partnership. And we've got a future episode. It's going to be discussing this, but the insight from our surveys of those low-carb liquid fuel projects is that the demand signal is the signal biggest unlock for these projects to progress through to financial close. So getting this right, it really is the main game. Yes, there's other things that have to be addressed in parallel, but this is the real meaty one that we have to get right. Which David emphasised as well. So important. And before we close off, Fraser, what are you keeping an eye on this week? What are you excited about? What's new for you? I mean, I know the answer because the Greenfields accelerator has just been announced. So maybe you're going to talk about that. Well, yes, we're very excited, so we have announced last week a Green fuels accelerator. So that's supported by Arena and we're implementing this together with industry partners, including Quantas and Boeing and the host of others. And what we're doing is taking seven high potential low-carb liquid fuel projects and giving them really targeted support, including with various different experts from financing to offtake, etc, to help them increase the probability and speed to which they hit financial close. And the reason we're doing this is that in these kind of first of a kind sectors, you need a whole bunch of expertise to get these projects right. And even the best founder teams will not be able to do everything. And so this is trying to provide that kind of targeted support to help these real high potential projects get to that finishing line. So we're really excited by this and stay tuned for further updates as we progress. But we're hoping that this model will be something that becomes a permanent fixture in low-carbon fuels. But also that we can take it to other sectors of first of a kind areas and apply the same logic to help these projects reach financial close. So yeah, we're really excited, but and how about you, Joyce? What are you watching at the moment? Well, I'm there's a lot of work being done by the Melbourne Business School and others to understand whether a blended finance model could help Australia better understand, also a better fund, some of these exciting industries of the future. So I'm spending time learning and engaging on that in the finance community. So hopefully there'll be more to say about that at some point. That's it for this episode of Before It Scales. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen and sign up to our newsletter at cyanventures.com.au for episode club centronotes. We'll see you soon before it scales. [BLANK_AUDIO]