This is a great podcast about the importance to get to Carbon Net-Zero through a plan to deliver the lowest cost kWh to everyone. Let’s use the markets and use the best energy source at the lowest cost and lowest impact to the environment. This is not a Climate Change discussion, but rather how we get to Carbon Net-Zero the fastest.
Drew Bond is the CEO of 3C Solutions. An organization dedicated to protecting America’s natural and economic environment. This is a great talk about letting industry and businesses help solve the energy and climate change problems. Getting over-regulated is actually doing more harm and the open market could help avoid the world energy crisis we are in. We had a blast talking about Drew’s trip to COP26 and his report that was extremely well received. Getting to visit with people around the world about this critical issue is fantastic, having your report being well received is even better.
Reach out to Drew on his LinkedIn Profile Here. Get involved and make a difference in the discussions about energy and protecting our environment. Sign up for his newsletter at 3csolutions.org.
Drew, thanks for stopping by the ENB Podcast, and I am looking forward to reading your report from COP26. It is always fun talking with other fans from Oklahoma University. Even though I went to Oklahoma State University!
The following is an automatic transcription of the interview. We disavow any mistakes or errors unless they make us appear to be smarter or funnier.
Stu Turley, CEO, Sandstone Group [00:00:04] Hello, everybody. Today is a fabulous day. First, I would like to welcome Drew Bond. He is the founder, co-founder, president, and CEO of C3 Solutions, and I’m sitting here. He and I had such a fantastic talk last week, and I’m looking at his pedigree here, guys. So buckle up. We got a great podcast today. Welcome to the Energy News Big podcast.
Drew Bond, CEO, C3 Solutions [00:00:33] Well, Stu, thanks for having me. I look forward to our discussion.
Stu Turley, CEO, Sandstone Group [00:00:37] I’ll tell you. Tell us a little bit about your pedigree where you came from because C3 Solutions is very cool. When you’re talking ESG, what do you think about energy? Tell us a little bit about it. C3, how you started it and what are your beliefs on energy because I’m sitting here looking at all your data? It’s good stuff.
Drew Bond, CEO, C3 Solutions [00:01:00] Well, thanks. You know, I’ve got a varied background and I got my start on Capitol Hill working for Senator Don Nickles from Oklahoma. And just a delight. One of the best bosses I ever had and have done a number of things, including as chief of staff at the Heritage Foundation Conservative Think Tank in D.C. and was chief of staff for Denise Bodey in Oklahoma when she was corporation commissioner.
So that’s where I cut my teeth on energy and oil and gas and electricity restructuring and all that. And actually, I also have a solar company which, you know, who knew that that went together, right? Heritage and solar. But you know, I’m an entrepreneur. I’m a serial entrepreneur. I’m on my sixth startup. And, you know, with my solar company, for instance, I saw that somebody had created a better widget and just thought, Man, that’s the coolest thing since sliced bread.
Let’s go see if we can build a company. And I really the same is true for Sea three solutions. You know, when Sea three solutions first came about it, you know, it’d been kind of, you know, brewing for a little while because I’d been operating in and out of these policy circles. So one of the other things that I failed to mention that I did was I was a senior adviser for President George W. Bush and the Department of Energy, and there I was, working on energy technology commercialization.
And so it’s the question that we were trying to solve day in and day out for taxpayers was how do you get inventions that are in the national labs, out into the marketplace? And how do you get the marketplace also to, you know, inform our research so that our research that we do in those national labs is relevant?
And so you put all those pieces together, and you know, me and a friend, John Hart, were talking one day, and John was a long-time communications director for Tom Coburn. You know, stalwart conservative. You know, John was with him when he was in the House and in the Senate through his career helped him write a couple of books. And so John and I were talking one day and we just got a good laugh because he had bought a sixty-two-acre farm in rural Maryland and wanted to put solar on his farm.
And here we are. You know, two conservatives both talking about sustainability and, you know, we thought, look, there’s not that something unique about us in the sense that conservatives care about the environment, right? We just don’t talk the language of the environmental left, and we certainly don’t subscribe to their policies and positions. And we tend to take a more bottom-up approach than a top-down approach. So, you know, we had a thesis that you know, that was and continues to be that conservatives care about the climate and we care about the environment.
We care about energy. Really, all of those things are intertwined. And you can care about the climate. I know the climate sometimes makes people’s stomachs turn, but you climate change. You cannot talk about energy without talking about change these days. And so think about it in terms of an umbrella term, right? And the reality is, again, like conservatives care about the climate, farmers care about the climate.
We’ve, you know, farmers were the first environmentalists, so you couldn’t be any less conservative to think that you can care about climate change. And in fact, if you really think that climate change is the most important issue in the world and this guy is going to fall tomorrow, if we don’t do something about it, then you have to innovate fast. And yes, what is equipped to innovate faster than anything else on the planet is the private sector. It’s entrepreneurs, it’s innovation, right? Not the government.
Stu Turley, CEO, Sandstone Group [00:04:59] Drew, what I just heard is you think that let’s take the fact that we have to get to carbon-neutral as soon as possible. That is just to give it there. But how we get there is such an argument with one side versus the other side. They all get violent and start having a talk. I think you just said energy tech is how we’re going to get there the soonest. Is that what I just heard?
Drew Bond, CEO, C3 Solutions [00:05:27] Absolutely. I mean, it’s energy innovation across the board. All the above. It’s oil and gas. It’s unclear; it’s renewables. It’s hydro, i t’s you name it, carbon capture and utilization. It is innovation. And so.
Stu Turley, CEO, Sandstone Group [00:05:42] So you also hit on another point see three solutions. It sounds like you are bridging the communication gap between every. Did I get that right as well?
Drew Bond, CEO, C3 Solutions [00:05:54] Well, I hope so. I mean, you probably said it better than I did, but you know, we are.
Stu Turley, CEO, Sandstone Group [00:05:59] I don’t think so.
Drew Bond, CEO, C3 Solutions [00:06:00] 3C Solutions stands for the conservative Coalition for Climate Solutions and intentionally put conservative and climate and solutions in our name. And we also recognize that you have to work in coalitions, right? You’ve got to build an ETS, and you’ve got to add, multiply, not subtract and divide. And so. Yeah, look, we we absolutely believe that conservatives care about the climate. And again, if you want to solve for climate, you have to do it through innovation. You’ve got to focus on solutions. And for too long, conservatives have been stuck. And I’ll say, losing the war of ideas on whether or not you know, the climate is changing and to what degree it’s going to change and buy win.
And, you know, like, we can have that argument. And the truth is that science is never settled. Science by nature is never settled, right? But the truth is also that the climate is changing. Men and humans have an impact on the environment like that should be a no-brainer. So, yeah, well, the real question is, how do you reduce carbon emissions as fast as possible so that people and the planet can prosper? That’s the question.
Stu Turley, CEO, Sandstone Group [00:07:12] That’s right. And I think it’s pretty funny with COPD. This was kind of cool. The other day is because I felt that with COP26, it was a stealth launch of natural gas being snuck in there, that it’s now available for renewable funding as well. And then, oh, nuclear, that turned into a whole big thing. And in the end, you were there, say they’re going to do it. And all the folks over here said, Oh, wait a minute, you can’t do it. It’s Fossil. But you were there, right? You are. Tell me about it. I want to hear it because I was over here doing a closet. Holy smokes. This is big news.
Drew Bond, CEO, C3 Solutions [00:07:54] Yeah, yeah. You know, it’s interesting. So it’s, you know, this was cop 26. So cop, as you know, stands for the Conference of Parties. It’s the 26th meeting that all of these countries, including the United States, have gotten together to talk about climate change and figure out how we’re all going to solve it. And the discussion is always about big government solutions, government commitments, you know, ceremonial commitments by politicians that are not going to be around by the time they have to live up to those commitments. Not skeptical,
Stu Turley, CEO, Sandstone Group [00:08:30] but cynical, you
Drew Bond, CEO, C3 Solutions [00:08:32] know, but. So this is my first time there. And you know, we went. So see, three solutions went, and we thought, Look, if we’re going to go, I don’t want to go and just observe. I want to go right. So earlier this year, we had published a report called Free Economies Our Clean Economies. And this report took data from two reputable organizations that have been collecting data for a long time.
Heritage Foundation conservative organization has published something called the Index of Economic Freedom for twenty-seven years now, where they rank countries around the world based on their economic freedom. Yale University publishes something called the Environmental Performance Index, where they rank countries based on their environmental performance.
So when you put economic freedom together with the environmental performance where we wanted to find out was what happens? Well, the good news is that economic freedom leads to a cleaner environment. So we published this report called Free Economies or Clean Economies, and we promoted that report at COP 26 and intentionally so because again, there’s not much that you’re going to hear there about entrepreneurship, capitalism, free markets, economic freedom, right?
You’re going to hear the kind of the headliners like Red Tune, Berg, and others will come out and shame the policy leaders and tell us why we should be, you know, scared for the next ten years before the world ends with institutions. And we’re saying, No, no, no, look. Climate change is real.
\We’re not here to debate that we’re here is the real solutions are based on economic freedom. And let’s talk about what that means. You know, economic freedom, by definition, is having private property rights. It’s having the rule of law. It’s, you know, less government, not more. It’s lower taxes, not more.
Stu Turley, CEO, Sandstone Group [00:10:26] It’s having the lowest cost of energy you possibly can. That is has got the least amount of impact on the environment.
Drew Bond, CEO, C3 Solutions [00:10:33] Absolutely, absolutely. So anyway, that’s why we were there over at this COP26 meeting. We were thrilled to be there. We had Liam Fox, the conservative member from the U.K. Parliament, give just a great keynote speech if you get a chance to look it up. And we had other, you know, an all-day event at the. Mercy of Strathclyde, the CEOs of energy companies, renewable and nonrenewable other think tanks worldwide.
We helped in the organization and signing of a document called Market Environmental Principles that was signed by one hundred and fifty organizations around the world. There is a movement of conservative organizations that understand the private sector is what is needed to solve climate, and you just don’t hear what you.
Stu Turley, CEO, Sandstone Group [00:11:22] know you really don’t. And the in the at least in the oil and gas base, it’s been very frustrating over the last 20 years is that it’s old school. It’s been around for a hundred and eighty years beforehand. This is the way we did it. We’d done it this way. Now we’re going to keep doing it, done it this way and there they need the change and those that are greenwashing. And just saying that we’re ESG here is a given a bad name for the ones that are actually doing, you know, the right things going down the energy path. So this is really cool, but I’m going to ask it really kind of an interesting question here, at least in my mind. Were you just going around handing out your white paper or how did you get people interested in your white paper and the other 100? And how did you get there? Because those are two big things that you were doing.
Drew Bond, CEO, C3 Solutions [00:12:14] Yeah, you know, so because it was our first time, part of this was kind of a, you know, learning process for us with great partners. And you know, we did have I created these, you know, little note cards with a QR code on them that I handed out and, you know, so know basically, I continue to hand them out. And when I meet with members of Congress, because it’s just a simple way to hand somebody or, you know, a copy of a real nice data on why free economies or clean economies, you know, we plan on going there again this next year for COP 27, and we want to do something even bigger and better. You know, I think the movement globally is growing, as I said. Yeah. And so, you know, but you know, it’s we got some media traction, you know, John Hart, my co-founder, was interviewed on BBC News. You know, we’ve been on Fox and Friends. But you know, there’s a lot more work to do. So, you know, we’ve got to keep grinding every day to just plow that field.
Stu Turley, CEO, Sandstone Group [00:13:19] Well, what were some of the biggest things out of COP26 or COP26? Which way is the best way to say it? So I’m not socially inept, which I did go to OSU. So I am socially inept, and I saw on the bottom of your LinkedIn you went to a little school called you. That’s right. That’s right. So all these Oklahoma legislators and everything else and like, I know them so and I got COP26.
Drew Bond, CEO, C3 Solutions [00:13:50] That’s kind of what the insiders call it, I guess. But OK, whatever. OK. You know, I think key takeaways for me were, look. There’s a recognition that the private sector is needed. I think from what I was told. Again, not having been there before, there was probably a larger private sector presence this year than in the past. Right. So, you know, for try and paint a picture in people’s minds, you know, it’s a big conference and and you imagine a big exhibit hall and you’ve got exhibits full of countries that are promoting what they’re doing on energy and climate. And then you’ve got another event hall full of companies that are promoting what they’re doing on energy and climate. And there was probably, you know, a fair number of companies there more than in the past. And I think there was also a recognition. I think you tip your hat on this earlier than, you know, there was a recognition that natural gas is part of the solution. And so, you know, in the years past, it was probably all about just keeping fossil fuels in the ground. Well, obviously, gas is a fossil fuel. But you know, we and in the world, you know, have started to hopefully recognize that, you know, we, the United States, have reduced our carbon emissions faster than anybody based on natural gas fracking and the United States actually opening up reserves that, you know, before then we really couldn’t get to economically. So, you know, I think there’s a there’s, I think, a growing recognition that the private sector has got to be involved, that you’ve got to have capital markets involved, right? Natural gas and other fossil fuels will be part of the transition. And who wins out and win is going to be, you know, really up to the market?
Stu Turley, CEO, Sandstone Group [00:15:45] So do you think carbon capture is also part of your interest in talking? So, you know, it’s one thing to go ahead and cut down your emissions, but what about the energy, tech and carbon capture?
Drew Bond, CEO, C3 Solutions [00:15:59] Yeah, I think carbon capture is a big part of the solution. You know, a lot of the talk is about renewables, you know, carbon capture. If you can do it economically, then you can take coal right? Not just coal, but natural gas and other fossil fuels diesel, but primarily, I think the opportunity is gas and coal. And now you can generate electricity on-again, utility-scale, national scale when we do it now, right? If you can capture that carbon and utilize it for something, if you can make a product out of it and do it economically, I mean that that is kind of the holy grail of of fossil fuels. And in the United States was the Saudi Arabia of coal. We have so much coal, and it’s clean coal compared to a lot of the other, you know, resources of coal around the world. So if we can produce electricity in a way that is truly clean, it’s not just greenwashing, but it’s clean doesn’t emit particulates in the air. It takes the CO2 and watches it and uses it for something like now you’ve got this just incredible resource and we are true, you know, energy independent. And I hesitate to use the word energy independent because, as you know, the energy markets are so intertwined, and you’re always dependent on one country or one industry or another, for one thing, or another. But, you know, we’re certainly moving closer towards independence or at least toward security because of that.
Stu Turley, CEO, Sandstone Group [00:17:30] Well, you know that you just nailed Drew a gigantic point, and that is that the New England area is importing a lot of Russian oil. I mean, Russian oil and natural gas through LNG, they’re dependent on Russia, Norway, and I believe it’s Trinidad for their LNG. It’s kind of crazy when we’re producing so much natural gas and LNG; we’re importing Putin’s energy. I mean, it just and then when you go, look at California. California is destroying the rainforest. They’re importing 70 percent of the oil in and coming out of the rainforest by China companies is going to the ESG friendly in California. So the two coasts are the ESG capitals of the world for energy, and they’re burning most of the non-ESG sources. Go figure this out.
Drew Bond, CEO, C3 Solutions [00:18:33] Yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, there’s so many good examples like that of where, you know, kind of the environmental left. I’ll say the extreme environmental left. In many cases, the states that are run by extreme democratic politicians, you know, say one thing, and they put a policy in place to try and, you know, implement that. And then the consequences of that are actually the opposite. And we’ve I mean, we can I mention our news magazine on this?
Stu Turley, CEO, Sandstone Group [00:19:01] Absolutely.
Drew Bond, CEO, C3 Solutions [00:19:03] Because if folks, you know, listeners, so we’ve got a news magazine called C three NewsMax.com. So just go to see three newsmax.com, and there’s story after story on there. There’s one on there today. I think about, you know, how you know this very green town in Massachusetts actually doesn’t want solar. You know, as much as they want renewable energy, they don’t want solar in their own backyard.
And you know, Stu, as you point out, I mean, you’ve got scenarios where the politics and policies of the far left, who are you know, who say they want more renewable clean energy, you know, are disallowing pipelines of clean natural gas to get to them right? And the geopolitical implications of this are serious. I mean, this is what we’re seeing today in Ukraine, right? I mean, you’ve got Germany, a country that, you know, had a fair amount of nuclear energy that was safe and clean and non-carbon-emitting decided to shut it all down. And then they started, you know, needing not only coal for their electricity, but they needed Russian natural gas for their electricity.
And so they got, you know, you’ve got what you hear in the news today about, you know, Nord Stream two and whether or not Germany is going to continue that pipeline to go forward. I mean, that is scary stuff from a national security perspective. If I was a German citizen thinking that, well, wait a minute, yeah, I want to be good for the environment, absolutely. But I’m not going to do it at the cost of my national security and be tied to Russia.
Stu Turley, CEO, Sandstone Group [00:20:40] Well, guess what? You know, when Putin announced this morning or late last night that he’s sending peacekeeping troops into those two regions that are now independent, right? You peacekeeping. Now those are troops. And this has been going on since 2014. And so by him taking Crimea and all of the pipeline to here’s was something I just found out the other day drew all of the pipelines through Ukraine.
Go to Germany, and then Germany takes that because it’s a lower gas contract and sells it back to Ukraine right now. And then they’re charging all of that. Then they’re buying it back from another corner and charging the German citizens even more money. So the government is taking advantage through their people’s policy so they can charge them more for electricity. I just found that out. I’m like, You’ve got to be kidding me. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, that’s horrible.
Drew Bond, CEO, C3 Solutions [00:21:49] It is horrible. It’s bad policy. It’s just really bad policy. Which again, is why, you know, we had C3 Solutions one to promote bottom-up solutions to this one.
Stu Turley, CEO, Sandstone Group [00:21:58] Now you mentioned corporate involvement. It’s got to be the industry coming together in innovative capitalist solutions. But you also have to deal with energy policy. You mentioned you said, Hey, I’ve got all this experience. What are you doing up in D.C.?
Drew Bond, CEO, C3 Solutions [00:22:17] Yeah, so, you know, we’re C3 Solutions is a viable one c three organizations that would we’re a nonprofit and we have kind of, you know, three primary functions. One is to educate policymakers, right? So we work closely with Capitol Hill and try to, you know, educate them on, you know, how free economies are clean economies.
And then, you know, not only the principles but then what policies flow from that to, you know, we have to communicate our ideas. And so, you know, we’re out there selling ideas and like any good think tank. And so we market, you know, through opportunities to be on, you know, shows like this one and also opportunities to promote good ideas through our news magazine and others.
You know, being a cop is going to be important. And then working in coalitions is the third. So OK, we work closely with organizations. We’ll work with any organization left, center, right, but our preference tends to be right because, you know, we come with such conservative pedigrees and so we work closely with the Heritage Foundation and, you know, other groups like, you know, CPI, and there are groups like Chris and Clear Path and the U.S. Chamber. And you know, even in the middle, you’ve got bipartisan policy center, and then you’ve got, you know, a lot of corporations out there. But so it’s like, say, we do, you know, we try to play well in the sandbox even with folks on the left when we can find agreement. You know, there are groups like Third Way, which is a left-of-center organization, right? I don’t agree with them on much, but we agree with them. I’d say at least two things. One is that investing in energy innovation is really important. So, you know, our taxpayer dollars, I’m perfectly fine and support, you know, those going to energy innovation for the sake of U.S. American-Made innovation. That’s one. The other is nuclear energy. I mean, I think the left and third way, you know, credit to them right up does come around on this issue of nuclear energy. It’s kind of the extreme wacky left. It hasn’t. But you know, they recognize it. Like if you’re trying to offer climate, the cleanest non-carbon-emitting form of energy is nuclear energy, and you’ve, therefore, you know, you’ve got to embrace that. And the United States have an opportunity to not only embrace it, but innovate here and export that innovation to our allies around the world and don’t. Then we’re going to actually let Russia and China be in that position, which is not a good strategy.
Stu Turley, CEO, Sandstone Group [00:24:51] Now Putin is going to be the energy czar of the world here very shortly. He’s going to have more. I like that term. I wonder if I just created that on energy czar of the world since czar is a Russian word. But how do people get involved with you? Because you’re a movement, you’re working with the politicians, and you’re working with the private sector. Drew, there are not many of you out there. How do people get involved with you besides signing up for the newsletter and offering either donations or investments? How do they get a hold of you to do that?
Drew Bond, CEO, C3 Solutions [00:25:26] Yeah, I think I mean, thank you. Those are the two best ways. I mean, we have a free newsletter that you can sign up for and we send it out once a week and once a month. We won’t spam you. We won’t sell your data that yeah. You know, at least not without asking you. I don’t know. Maybe one day we will, but we won’t ask. We’ll ask you first.
So and you know, more importantly, I think, you know, we really rely on the support of our donors. And so, you know, I think when I guess I would ask people interested in joining us to take a look at our website, see three solutions dot org, that’s our kind of parent website. And then we’ve got the C three newsmax.com and recognize that even if you don’t consider yourself an environmentalist or if you think this is a niche issue, it’s not. I mean, you can’t have a conversation anywhere around the world about energy or climate change or the environment or national security or supply chains or minerals.
We mean we are an economic freedom organization. We are promoting free-market capitalism for the future sake of our kids and grandkids. And it just happens to be that energy and environmental climate are top of mind. So, we would love everyone’s support, whether it’s a dime or a dollar or more. We’re just great.
Stu Turley, CEO, Sandstone Group [00:26:52] Yeah, well, that sounds great. And the energy report, I can’t wait to even see that from COP26, because that sounds like a lot of information. If they actually if it was well-received, I’m hoping we can get that in the hands of some folks as well, too.
Drew Bond, CEO, C3 Solutions [00:27:09] Yeah, we’d love to please go. I mean, go to our website, you can download it. We’ve got other information there again and probably C3 news mag. Dot is the best place to start. OK. You can find your way back to our mothership if you need to, but we’re just grateful for anybody’s support in any way. Maybe to be a part taker of our information. Share our information. You know, just as you said it, the movement that we’re trying to create to recognize that free markets are really what’s most needed in this issue.
Stu Turley, CEO, Sandstone Group [00:27:41] Sounds great. And I’ll tell you what Drew Mr. Drew Bond stopping by the Energy News Beat podcast today. I hope to have you on again next time you have some big, important announcements. And we’re going to put all your information in the show notes, and we’re going to get this rolling right on out. So Drew, thank you for stopping by today.
Drew Bond, CEO, C3 Solutions [00:27:59] Yes, do. Thanks so much for having me. It’s been a real pleasure.
Stu Turley, CEO, Sandstone Group [00:28:02] Thank you.