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You’re listening to KABC 790 Unite heal America this is Matt Matern, your host and today we’ve got the Rex Parris, guest on the program why ask Mayor Rex to be on the show was kind of beyond the obvious accomplishments as mayor. Rex has led the city to be one of the most environmentally sustainable cities on the planet since he became mayor in 2008.

So I think what Rex has done in Lancaster as many ways a roadmap for the rest of the country and the rest of the wider world. So we should be studying Lancaster kind of like the Harvard Business School does case studies on successful companies to see what’s worked, and what was their secret sauce.
So mayor, without further ado, please tell us your secret sauce, and what has brought about the great success that you’ve had and Lancaster has had over the last 14 years.

Basically was after I got elected I’ve been when I got elected, I was believing the mantra that you know, climate change was a Chinese plot to take over the world. And when I realized in studied it and became aware that we really are facing extinction as a species, we’re gonna if we don’t do something dramatic, very soon, we will not exist. And once I realized that, then it becomes pretty easy to set your your vision and set your priorities.

And once the rest of the city staff and the rest of the council caught on to that we just have a united goal of trying to save the planet. We’re not even trying to save the city. We’re trying to be the model for other cities to follow. So that we might have, we might have a fighting chance. And that was the goal, you know, in 2008. And it’s still the goal today.

So yeah, that’s, that’s great. You got to start at the top. And you’ve got to have a goal and a vision, certainly to shoot for how is your goal? Or how is your strategy changed over the years in terms of effectuating the plan?

Well, when we started, there was no ability to effectuate the plan. I mean, we were doing piecemeal things. We were the first city that required solar panels on all houses. We were the first city that required all housing to be net zero, meaning you produce your own electricity and you store it in a battery. And you could go off the grid if you want it to the state of California now adopting that model, there was a lot of firsts in what we did.

A lot of was just common sense stuff. You know, when one day I looked at it, and I realized it was taking him six months to get a get a permit a building permit to put solar panels on a roof. And you know what, I when I heard that it was really easy to fix it. I went in and I said from now on it takes 45 minutes. That’s all it takes now. Yeah, it was that simple. The input, there was a lot of other things, you know, we traveled the world. You know, my, my wife and I are blessed with the level of success that I can afford that and so I you know, I did it on my my money, not the city’s money took city staff with me.

And we found ways to effectuate these changes that other cities were doing across the planet. And then since then, you know, the world has caught on that we have got to put all of our resources into this. And you know, now I think there is a technological solution. Matter of fact, I think there’s a couple of them. So we have a chance, you know, but but it’s still the number one priority in Lancaster, where we will be the first hydrogen city in the in the country. We’re slowly going to be switching everything over to hydrogen fuel cells.

But you know, it took a while to convince people that this was real. But what sold them was not that it’s real and not that it’s it’s, you know, an existential threat. It for Well, it’s not an existential threat, it’s an existential certainty, existential meaning the end. But it was profitable, you know, we made so much money doing this stuff that, you know, I actually see a day where we will double our budget and not raise taxes at all. I mean, think about it, you know, if you, if you get your energy, you know, 18,000 feet down in a, and you have to drill for it, that’s really, really expensive.

But if you take it from the sun for free, who do you think’s gonna have the competitive advantage? So we, you know, we started our own community choice to aggregate where we buy and sell the power. Now I’m able to set rates for new businesses coming in, so we can do inducements to get them to come in.

Everything we’ve done, has created more money, not less, to the our transportation agency, we were the first. And I think we still are the only transportation agency in America. That’s all electric. All of our buses are electric. But there’s, we were first in something else. We’re the only profitable public transportation agency in the country, the only one and why we don’t have to pay for gas.

I mean, it’s just what and we get carbon credits to be perfectly frank. So even people who are climate extinction doubters, they see this as oh, wait a minute, this is a good idea. It is a good idea. Well,

I think that that’s brilliant. And I’m kind of of the mindset of doing things that are utilitarian. I mean, if we can make it makes sense, and also do good. So you can bring along those people, like you said, that are doubters because you say, forget the fact that this is saving the planet, we’re making money. And that’s, that’s a hard one for people to turn down. When you say, hey, dollars and cents this pencils out.

This is this is the moneymaker, it’s going to just prove itself even more in the future. I mean, you know, we’re incredibly vulnerable, the grid is incredibly vulnerable, that big earthquake, we’re going to be without power for a long time. Hopefully, at least Lancaster, we’re going to have micro grids everywhere. And we’re not going to need the grid. That’s the goal.

Well, that’s, that’s something that I’ve talked a little bit about on the program. But probably a lot of listeners are not tuned into the micro grid concept, which is I’ll explain my kindergarten understanding of it, which is people have batteries, whether individuals or businesses or communities where they’re storing some of their power that they’re generating from their solar rooftops, or maybe they have a wind device. And then so they’re kind of off the grid. So if the grid kind of fails, they they have some power source. I don’t know if that’s correct, exactly.

But yeah, that’s, that’s sums it up. You know, there’s a lot of ways to do it, you know, we got one, one housing track that’s being built right now, that will use flywheels. And, you know, when the, when the energy is cheapest, or when the, in this case, there’ll be solar power. When the sun is up, it’ll spin those flywheels. And then they continue to spin throughout the night, powering the house, there’s a lot of ways to do it. That’s a kinetic application of storing the energy, the course the best way to store energy is hydrogen.

And so we’re using solar panels to create the hydrogen through electrolysis. And then we’ll power the fuel cells with it, and the only the only byproduct of that will be water. And we’ve got several different types of plants to create the hydrogen that are now being constructed. Bill Gross from Idealab has put it a massive project in where they use mirrors focusing on a vessel about 40 feet high, it heats to 2000 degrees and it cracks the hydrogen out of the water vapor. So you get hydrogen and oxygen, both of which you’re able to sell. That’s going to be a huge plant.

We put the proof of concept was done here in Lancaster initially, with land we let them have for nothing, you know, they could use it as long as they needed to. So we’re very supportive of any type of new technology. You can get it permitted much, much faster here. You know, when I first broached the subject of a netzero house with BYD out of China, who makes the batteries and KB Homes, which was America’s largest homebuilder they had a meeting with them. That’s first thing I learned about being mayor you can call a meeting and people come it’s really cool.

And so, you know, I was asking them to make a home that was affordable, and was Net Zero. They all everybody at the table and it was a big table now couldn’t be done couldn’t be done. And so I said, Well, what will it take for you to try? You know, what do I got to do to make you just try? And it turned out their biggest concern was the length of time to permit it. And they said, How long will it take to permit? I said, How long do you want it to take?

You know, and I looked at my watch, you know, at the end of the day, the merits issues the building permits. That’s why this really will be solved on a local level. You know, it’s been a it’s been an easy ride. And for those of you who don’t know, when the ride is Disneyland, that was the best ticket. They used to give you a five tickets and the ride was that was the Pirates of the Caribbean.

Well, everybody’s taking the E ride today getting to listen to Rex Paris, and we’ll be back in just one minute. I KABC 790 This is Matt Matern, your host, Unite and Heal America and talking about some very exciting stuff that Rex is done in Lancaster and continues to do up there.

You’re listening to KABC 790. Again, Matt Matern, your host, Unite and Heal America, and I got Rex Paris Mayor of the City of Lancaster and Rex you were just talking about the E ride Disneyland the old days.

And one of the things that you discussed was the hydrogen and and how Lancaster has become the at the forefront of the hydrogen revolution. Tell us a little bit about that. And it sounds like the hydrogen you’re creating is green hydrogen, meaning that it’s not using any fossil fuels to create, is that correct?

That’s correct. Most of it is green, some of its blue, we’re building a digester. And what that’ll be as you you put all of your garden waste, you know, bio waste into it, and it will digest it, turn it into compost, and methane. And then you turn the methane into hydrogen. It’s not as great as green hydrogen. But it also solves a lot of problems.

We have another factory we’re building where you, you heat it up to 4000 degrees with plasma torches, and you dump all your paper waste into it. And that splits off the hydrogen. And then they the CO2 that’s left, they actually use that in pig farming to euthanize the pigs, interestingly enough, but that, you know, it solves a lot of problems. You got this huge paper waste problem now, because nobody’s taking it. It’s just stocking up. Right?

So in terms of CO2 sequestration, is that anything that you’re working on up in Lancaster?

Not at this time? You know, we really don’t, we really don’t have the ability to do that. We don’t have the means we don’t have, you know, we don’t have the deep wells to put it in. But you know, 50 miles away, you have Kern County. And they got all those wells, depleted oil wells, you could actually store this stuff in, right?

Well, I guess the other thing is, if you’re running a netzero city, you’re not really creating the carbon to sequester it. So kind of getting around entirely.

Some of the hydrogen methodologies create carbon that you got to get rid of. But I think, you know, a lot of progress is being made on what to do with the carbon, I think, ultimately, we’re going to be selling it, it’s going to have some value.

Now, are we able to pull it out of the atmosphere? Were there a ways away from that now in terms of the hydrogen that you’re creating, are using that to power vehicles? Or what do you what’s the use that your end use that you’re having for the hydrogen you’re creating there?

Oh, we just signed a deal with Chofu out of Japan. And what they do is they have a product that comes in a shipping container, and you hook it up to your solar panels. And it makes the hydrogen fuels the it’ll fuel the city fleet. And it will also provide all of the energy for the City Hall. That that’s the first project we’re doing. I think we only have one hydrogen car now, but ultimately, the whole fleet will be hydrogen soon as we have the ability to produce it, and that that’s really only 18 months away.

How about your buses? What about that?

There’s not any plan at all. We just bought the buses you know, you’re gonna there’s a lot of debate as to whether or not the hydrogen is more efficient batteries, you know, and I haven’t really We made it it made a decision yet as to what it’s going to be. But ultimately, if they’re able to reduce the cost of the hydrogen like they hope to, yeah, that will, you will eventually get rid of battery powered vehicles and go to hydrogen fuel cells, simply because the current expectations are if we, if we continue on the path we are now to convert to electric vehicles, we need another three gigs to power and that’s a lot. You know, the that’s a Hoover Dam. LA said three gigs, would that just be for Lancaster? Or is that for California?

I think that I think that’s for California. And I may be I may be understating that by a lot. But you know, the power consumption of charging those batteries in those vehicles is enormous. You know, the, the High Speed Rail they’re talking about, that’s three gigs.

Yeah, that’s Hoover Dam. Hoover Dams, two and a half gigs. So often what we fail to do is see down the road, you know, what’s the end result of all this? That’s why hydrogen really is probably going to be the solution?

Well, I think that if we can create enough power, which we had a landmark day recently where California produced 100% of its energy from renewable sources, which, I mean, it was just for a day or a few hours, but we’re close to reaching that.

So I think that’s with, without us really putting our pedal to the metal, I think if we push harder, we’re going to be able to create even more energy through solar and through wind. If we tap this, the sources more, and if we do, then we can create hydrogen at a reasonable cost. And then that’s a cleaner fuel than having electric batteries, which requires a lot of mining.

And then like, there’s a lot of problems with batteries. So that scale, you know that that you just don’t have with hydrogen. Ultimately, I think everyone recognizes that that will be where we land, if we have enough time to land anywhere. But you know, the it’s gotten so dire, that people don’t even want to think about it. You know, that movie don’t look up.

Right? That’s real. That’s absolutely what’s happening. Just look at a few of the things that are going to happen. We’re about 15 years away from Central America being absolutely uninhabitable. You cannot live there and survive 15 years from now, in the in the amount of land we’re talking about. There are 400 million people in where do you think they’re going? You know, like the, you know, I always thought that whole idea of a wall was was absurd.

Because we need the labor force right now. It was just ridiculous. It makes no sense. Until I thought 15 years from now, we really, were going to need that wall. And everybody living here is going to want it. I just hope they don’t build one in Canada. They but that’s really what’s coming, you know, and it’s, it’s coming faster than we thought. And the reason it’s coming faster than we thought all of a sudden the ocean is letting go of credible amounts of methane.

And we’re not even sure where it’s coming from. But it was never anticipated. And you know, they like to say that methane is like 30 times more damaging to the environment than CO2. No, no, that’s over 100 years, over 10 years, it’s 100 times more damaging. And we’re now at that juncture where 1020 years is all we’ve got. It’s being released in amounts, the scientists just don’t understand.

Then on top of that, you got the permafrost melting, and there’s enormous amounts of methane in the permafrost. This is not an existential threat. It is an existential certainty. Now, we’re going to continue to do everything we can to provide the roadmap for people to follow, but quite frankly, I’m getting discouraged.

Well, it’s it is certainly, you know, challenging beyond belief, and it’s going to require all of us to focus even more I applaud your efforts in focusing on for the last 14 years and and making tremendous strides. The rest of us need to kind of step up and and start taking the actions that are going to resolve this problem. But I I hear you I had the opportunity to sit on on Dr. Lesley fields class at Stanford the last few weeks. She was a guest on the program and she I studied the Arctic, she’s got the she led the Arctic ice project.

And she created a silica, which was used to help extend the life of ice. And then she, you know, one of the couple of the researchers she had in her class, we’re talking exactly about the oceans and, and both the Antarctica and the Arctic, and how the ice is melting a lot faster than they thought. And a lot of factors are coming into play that huge amounts of ice are just coming off the shelf in Antarctica, which they did not expect.

So, as to your point, things are happening in a dynamic way, which are far worse than even the doomsday suggestions were 10 years ago. So you’re listening United heal America and KABC 790 My guest, Rex Paris, we’re gonna be back in just one minute. So stay tuned you’re listening at KMBC 790. This is Matt Matern, your host and you’re listening united to heal America. I got Rex Paris on the show. And Rexha like to talk to you a little bit about a defamation case you have against PG and E. What’s going on with the case and tell us a little bit about it.

You know, it’s a case in Bakersfield I represent a farmer who his employee breached what’s called a transmission line, it’s a 34 inch pipeline, under 700 pounds per square inch of pressure. So when it goes off, it goes off like a bomb, it will kill everything within 600 feet. You know, there were people that were badly burned. And at the the operator of the tractor, he was, I’ve never seen a body so badly burned.

But what PG unable to I mean, this is a company that that has either been convicted or pled guilty to over 90 counts of manslaughter. I mean, that’s a serial killer in anybody’s book. Right? Right. And they have this culture of, I mean, the government gives them money, and gives them rate increases, to provide a safe working environment and to protect the pipelines protect the power lines, and protect the nuclear power plants they have, right.

They took that money and gave it to executive bonuses is what we’ve discovered. And they didn’t spend the money on protecting the pipeline. This pipeline runs under our schools or hospitals or neighborhoods. I mean, it’s everywhere. And when it blows, everything dies. It’s that’s what happened in San Bruno. So I took the case of the farmer who they blamed for this, and as I get more and more engaged in it and find more and more things out, you know, you got employees that are whistleblowers, and then what they’ll do is they’ll settle the case with the employee.

But part of the deal is, is they can never reveal what they know. No, one guy that gave $4 million to it, but he can’t ever reveal what he knows. And he said, You know, I can’t be a party to more people dying. And he’s just taking the chance, you know, whatever happens happens, but he’s coming forward. You know, I don’t like any of these fossil fuel companies.

I mean, at the end of the day, they’re killing or they’re gonna kill my grandchildren. I mean, any any way you say it, that’s what’s going to happen. But in my opinion, pg&e is the worst. I mean, the absolute worst, and they keep threatening to take away their franchise to take away their license and give it to somebody else that will do it more safely.

But they don’t, you know, and PG, and he puts a fortune into the politics of this. And then, so I got this lawsuit going on in Bakersfield. And all of a sudden, there’s these commercials running constantly about how safe the pipeline is, and all the things they’re doing to keep it safe. You know, it. It borders on jury tampering, I think. Yeah, that’s pretty stunning, because I’ve never seen a pipeline commercial in my entire life. And now all of a sudden they’re throwing him up in Bakersfield.

That’s pretty crazy. Tell me about the threads to taken away pee genies license and how have they skated around that given that they’ve been found guilty or pled guilty to 90 counts of manslaughter? How did how did they do that? Because it seems so if this was a person which corporations are persons under the law, they would be in jail, but I hear they continue to operate and make 10s of billions of dollars.

And it’s worse than that, you know, the federal judge put them on probation for five years, the judge that was supervising the probation came out and said they haven’t done a damn thing. You know, they haven’t improved at all. They they’ve just thumbed their nose at us. Now, I’m paraphrasing what he said. But it was a scathing report that came out. One of the things they have when you when you dig near a pipeline, you get the it’s called, it’s a permit, but they call it a ticket, they found that they had 137,000 falsified tickets, meaning fraudulent tickets.

Nothing really happens. They find them I mean, they find them a lot of money, billions of dollars. But this, they make so damn much money. They just pay the fine. You know, they continue to operate the way they want to. It’s just shocking to me that that is going on around us. I’m I’m a pretty callous guy. I see a lot of rotten stuff. But I had no idea. It could be this corrupt.

I just wonder like 137,000 falsified tickets is on top of 90 counts of manslaughter, which governmental officials are responsible for pulling this license? Who should we be calling to say, hey, it’s about time to pull PG and E’s license.

Ultimately, it’d be this state assembly and State Senate, they would make the decision PUC the public utilities commission would have to make the move to do it. But you know, the PUC has always been a captive agency of the fossil fuel industry. I mean, that’s not a secret. No. You know, I’ve seen when people that are in the PUC tried to do something they ended up getting getting transferred or demoted. PG and E’s reach is incredible.

The National Traffic Safety Board came out and said they obstructed their investigation. They were found guilty of obstructing the National Safety Board investigation. Now, the only way you do that is you lie. Well, you know if you can put Martha Stewart in prison for lying, why can’t pg&e executives who are lying to the federal officials be put in jail.

They’re immune. The president the CEO of PG and E when they killed eight people in San Bruno. I mean, they burned them to death. And then they they wiped out a whole neighborhood, their CEO that time got a $35 million bonus when he left the company $35 million bonus. You know, Don Corleone never did anything that bad.

Right. It’s it’s crime on a scale that’s beyond comprehension, almost.

And it’s sanctioned. It’s sanctioned by our state government. It really is.

Well, it’s about time for US citizens to stand up and say, hey, you know, we’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore. You know, I would like to think that that could happen. But it is so pervasive. You know, I mean, it’s, it’s almost like we got to throw it away and start over.

Well, that’s, that’s crazy the level of corruption that they, you know, because you think that the the State Assembly and the Senate and the Governor have all railed against PG and E after the massive fires and all the other things that they’ve been responsible for. Certainly, there’s been no lack of grandstanding by the politicians to say we’re upset with this. But I have not heard enough about it’s time to pull their license.

They did say it once they said it in a Senate hearing. And, you know, I think and we think that’s why they went after the farmer. You know, they’re the consummate bully. I mean, they tried to crush this guy. And he’s a small business owner in Kern County, who started out with one tractor, you know, you ended up with 13. The, there merciless, they will tell any lie, they will destroy any evidence they need to destroy. At least that’s what I’ve seen.

Well, that’s, it’s an unbelievable story. And I know that you will present the case as powerfully as anybody and get a victory for your client and hopefully a victory for all of us in the state of California to shine a light on these practices, so that we can we can stop these fossil fuel companies from doing the types of things that they’ve been doing, as you said, really moving us towards an existential not threat but certainty because of their conduct.

And they knew and they have known about the potential consequences of their actions. Timing Exxon had a report back in the 80s, saying that they knew that the carbon CO2 content would rise to 430 parts per million and that all of these consequences would occur. They of course, buried the report and continued to do exactly what they could to increase the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, putting us all at risk and putting the entire planet at risk.

I mean, you can’t think of anything more criminal and heinous than that conduct. But that’s what they did. So you’re listening to Unite and Heal America and KABC 790. We’ll be back in just one minute with my guest Rex Parris. You’re listening to KABC 790. This is Matt Matern, your host of Unite and Heal America. I’ve got Mayor Rex Parris on the show. And Mayor just kind of wanted to pivot back a bit to what’s the percentage of power that the city and the residents of Lancaster are using that come from renewable sources?

Depends on how you do the math. But how we do do the math is? What is our consumption? And it’s about 150 to 160 bags. And how much do we produce from the sun? Well, it’s over 200. Meg’s now it’s just simple arithmetic, would you use the grid to exchange your following? You transfer through the grid? And we’re the first city to have reached that.

That’s pretty amazing. So you’re getting it from solar? And from, from wind? What percentage is from solar? And what percentage from wind?

98% from solar.

98%. So now is is there a plan at some point in time to do a little bit more in the area of wind? Are you doing everything with solar, you know, the problem was when it is it’s so erratic, the whole state 100% renewable right now, if we could store it. And that’s why hydrogen is so critical. Because hydrogen is just a way to store the energy.

You use the solar panels, you use the wind, whatever, you could even use nuclear and electrolysis to make the hydrogen. And now you store it. It’s nature’s battery. It’s what powers the sun. But that’s the problem is the storage not in the production? We absolutely could produce all the energy need. It’s how to store it.

You have, do you have any dams up in the Lancaster area where you can store some of the energy in the in the dam? And then have it run down at night? and things of that nature?

You know, that’s, that’s kinetic storage, and it’s great. But no. Not everybody is lucky enough to have a dam in their backyard.

Right. Right. So in terms of your collaboration with other governmental entities, have you collaborated much with the state of California and the political leaders in Sacramento and achieving the environmental successes Lancaster has had? Or is that something that you all have been able to accomplish, mostly locally without state help?

Up until the last few years, it was just us in the wilderness? The but now the state has become really responsive, and they’re working with us. And I’m very hopeful. It’s hard for them to do that. Because, you know, I’m a Republican, you know, and that does make a difference. But they turn a blind eye to my Republican philosophies that are now working with me.

I don’t I don’t block step with any of them. And just because I’m working with you on energy, doesn’t mean I’m going to approve of how you’re handling the COVID epidemic, you know, as an example. And so that creates kind of a an obstacle for them sometimes, but you know, it seems like the people in in charge have finally said, Yeah, but he’s able to make it happen.

Right? Because, you know, we do we proceeded at a, an incredible speed that nobody else can can touch, you know, and primarily it’s because I have this great council and a great city and like the school districts, the hospital district, that water district, they’ve all kind of coalesced around the idea that if it’s energy, I’ll I’ll make the decision. They trust me now. You know, they trust me to make the right decision.

And so we’re able to proceed much quicker across the board. It’s sort of like happened in a lot of communities with COVID. You know, the threat of COVID was such that everybody started working together who had never worked together before. And that that is what you have in this city in regards to alternative energies.

Well, that’s, that’s great. And collaboration is so important I, I had Senator Ben Allen on on the show a couple of times. And he’s also worked, you know, done a lot of great work on environmental issues. And I just thought that he would be a great person to work with you to get some stuff done, you know, with you, as a model for what other communities can and should be doing.

I’d love to work with them. You know, I’m looking forward to the change in Board of Supervisors, because I think Bob Hertzberg is going to win. And I, I’ve been to Energy Conference after Energy Conference after over the last 10 years across the world where I keep running into Bob Hertzberg. He understands this issue better than anybody. And I’m looking forward to it, which is kind of difficult, because I like Stern, too, you know, but, you know, sometimes, sometimes two good men run against each other.

Right, right. Well, what about same question is the national government in Washington DC, you’ve been through a couple of administrations, both Republican and Democrat? Have? Have you gotten much help from the feds in terms of forwarding the work that you’ve done on the environment in Lancaster?

Well, you know, the Trump administration was not a big believer in all this. You now have the Biden administration, but he’s having to rebuild, you know, all of these agencies, and they really haven’t got their feet on the ground yet. The EPA a lot, you know, they gave me the award, the green power lead entry. But I don’t see a lot of, I’d like to see it go faster.

You know, I mean, if the Feds wanted to, they could come in and convert this city to hydrogen tomorrow. And now we’d have a functioning city that’s hydrogen based that the world could follow. And, you know, but the politics gets in the way. And, you know, whenever it’s an entitlement of any kind, nobody looks at, well, can you actually do it? You know, they just compete for the money that they would then proceed to waste.

I mean, look at the homeless, billions went into in no progress whatsoever. Look at our homeless center, you know, it is state of the art. It’s far more cost far less than anything anybody else is doing. The politics is going to be the death of us.

Well, let me let me ask you about the Biden administration’s, I think, first Earth shot goal, which I don’t know if you’ve heard of the earth shots that they have, it hasn’t been a big PR success, because I don’t see it ever on any kind of mainstream news site. But it was to create hydrogen at $1 per kilo. And that if they did that, then hydrogen would be less expensive than gas and any other power source. So what do you think is happening on that front? And I can tell you,

I can tell you what’s happening, you know, I get calls from from different state assembly members or senate members, and they want to talk to me about hydrogen. And I’m always, I’m always surprised how little they know about it. But they’re competing for those funds. It’s disappointing to me, you know, because it’s, it’s, it’s still just a political decision.

You know, if you really want to make hydrogen, the source will do it in three years. You know, I don’t have any doubt. In three years, we could convert this whole city, we could, the surrounding cities will be producing hydrogen at an incredibly low rate. I don’t know if we’d hit the dollar right away. But, you know, instead, what they’ll do is they’ll put those programs out and they’ll talk about it for two years.

Let me ask you, Rex, because we only have a minute or so left is like what would you do what’s kind of the blueprint, or at least the rough blueprint for three years to get to to Lancaster as a city run solely on hydrogen, we’re already moving in that direction. We’re, we’re opening we’ll be building a factory within the next couple of months to do the fuel cells.

The we now know how to produce the hydrogen. We just need to put those fuel cells on the buildings, and we need to get Southern California gas out of our way. You know, we need those pipelines, they have the distribution lines, they have to distribute the hydrogen to the home. So we did that it would be we’d already be there. The stop gap to that is 30% of the gas content.

We could convert to hydrogen right away and that lowers the footprint in the poison gases that are in here. Her home’s because of natural gas that people don’t really realize. demonstrably, I mean, much, much, much less. That’s, that’s the thing we could do today. Today.

That’s, that’s a great point. And I think a lot of people don’t recognize this. I didn’t recognize it until a hydrogen expert had been on the show who was a professor at UCI. And he said, Yes, we could put a percentage of the natural gas that’s currently coming into our stoves could be hydrogen. So if we could do 30% of our, instead of natural gas, hydrogen, we’re cleaning up our environment right there.

So, you know, these are the types of changes we can make immediately. Rex, it’s been a pleasure having you on the show, as always, and I look forward to having you back at some point in time and, you know, keep up the great work you’re doing in Lancaster and we’ll, we’ll stay in touch.

Okay. Thank you very much, Matt.

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