And then we're going to talk about what we felt, sort of what you see trend lines, including Colorado, because it has, there's a pretty clear trend going on with blue states like Colorado.

Yeah, absolutely.

So what we did is we took the Global Energy Monitor.

They have this report that shows the natural gas power plants that are being built all over the world.

We look specifically at the United States and we wanted to see where are new natural gas plants being built, how much new gas is being built compared to other resources like wind or solar.

And, you know, that's really going to tell us the future of the American economy.

Like, The definition of energy is the ability to do work.

It is a state that seems to say we're closed for prosperity in the coming future or in the near

This sounds like, you know, a game of three card money to me.

So PJM doesn't actually close the power plants themselves.

The owners of the power plants decide whether to retire them or not based on the economics.

And PJM is kind of left trying to restack the blocks in the Jenga Tower.

So essentially what's happened over the years, states like Virginia, New Jersey, Maryland have implemented policies that have forced or incentivized the retirement of their reliable coal plants like the Virginia you clean economy act required the coal plants to shut down and they thought that the amount of electricity that we were going to need was going to keep going down forever and then all of a sudden data centers you know become a large consumer of electricity and all of these blue states that have been artificially constraining the supply of coal and natural gas plants on the system are now blaming the data centers for wanting electricity instead of their own policies for causing the shortage of reliable power plants in the first place.

Is that where we're headed in this? Is like, okay, you won't let us use coal to make the steam to spin the generators, but maybe we can use it for other stuff?

I think that, you know, places need to use the resources that are available to them in the smartest way possible.

But, you know, let's not focus on... exclusively generating electricity within your state borders either because you know there are some states where they don't have a lot of coal natural gas or you know suitable sites for nuclear plants so if you need to import it that's fine i mean people out east import food from the midwest all the time and we don't have a problem with that and it's actually good it you know keeps the uh the prices from spiking or going down too much for everybody so You know, it's good to have those resources.

yeah and as you mentioned there isaac they funded these climate alarmist radical activist groups and now um i always think of that scene in hunt for red october they dropped the torpedo in the water and now it's coming right back in their face um and you know i i would actually enjoy the the shouting friday on that if not the fact that um i think opposing data centers for climate reasons is bad and yeah same and not

scientific I mean, but I don't think a lot of the people who oppose data centers actually oppose them for climate reasons.

Like you have your kind of this is like a classic horseshoe theory test.

You have like the people on the left that oppose them because like either just kind of skeptical about AI in the first place, right? Job losses, but also like the big climate angle.

and then people on the right who are in these rural areas who don't like them because they would prefer this land to stay farmland like that is like i think the main driver because like honestly like my parents and the people who live in the areas where i grew up like ai is not going to take their job like driving a tractor or driving truck like at least not anytime soon.

So I think that's kind of the main dichotomy there.

But there is a lot of overlap between those two groups right now because you're seeing all kinds of local municipalities looking to ban data centers.

But

you know,

intermittent weather driven sources are going to be able to power our society.

And I'm glad you brought up the coal plant closures, Steve, because the J.H. Campbell plant in Michigan should continue running for another 10 or 15 years.

And that's really part of the story when it comes to, can we accommodate data center growth at a reasonable cost? Those coal plants are some of the most affordable, reliable sources of power in Michigan.

And you would be able to accommodate more data centers if you keep them online instead of shutting them down and replacing them with something else.

So, you know, the first rule of holes is to stop digging.

And if you're in a reliability hole from a power perspective, the worst thing you can do coal and nuclear power plants.

Where is the Campbell plant and when is it slated to shut down?

See terms.

Yeah, I mean, this is a great question.

It's a it's basically a political wheel question.

So like Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, they're all supposed to have these carbon free electricity mandates by some of them are like 2035.

It's pretty, pretty aggressive.

And We just saw New York reform its climate laws to push back the gates.

I think Rhode Island or Connecticut, I always get those two mixed up in my head, but they push back their climate commitments by 17 years.

If you had the ability to give advice to the powers that be, the people that are making these decisions, if you could speak directly to them and lay out a plan to... to get us out of this mess the best we can, like, your kind of perfect plan to get us out, right? And I get that you're saying before, like, there's gas, there's nuclear, just go all in, you know, but what advice would you give them right now to really get us out of this kind of mess that we've set ourselves up with?