Adam Torres and Alicia Eastman discuss FII PRIORITY.
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Show Notes:
Listen to FII PRIORITY coverage. In this episode, Adam Torres interviews Alicia Eastman, Managing Director, APC Investors; Co-Founder & Board Member of InterContinental Energy, explore emissions elimination utilizing all low emissions intensity resources coupled with energy efficiencies and FII PRIORITY.
About Alicia Eastman
Frequent speaker at green hydrogen, sustainability, shipping, and ammonia conferences and webinars and contributor to industry publications including Financial Times, Bloomberg, UNIDO, UN, COP26-29, WTO, Reuters, Sustainable Energy Council, World Hydrogen Leaders, Climate Council, DeCarb Connect, the Economist, WEF, Argus, IRENA, Maersk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping, Getting to Zero Coalition, Global Maritime Forum, and S&P Global Platts.
Co-founded InterContinental Energy (ICE) in 2014 and President until 2024, building some of the largest green hydrogen projects and partnerships in the world to decarbonize the most difficult to abate sectors such as shipping, heavy industry, chemicals, transportation, and power.
About InterContinental Energy
InterContinental Energy was founded in 2014 to develop large-scale renewable energy projects in coastal deserts with the ideal diurnal profile of strong solar during the day and heavy wind at night, creating the least expensive, essentially base-load power that leverage economies of scale.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be our guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today I have Alicia Eastman on the line, and this is part of our FII Priority Miami Coverage series.
Alicia is the managing director over. A PC investors, and she’s also co-founder and a board member of Intercontinental Energy. Alicia, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me on. Alright, now, I, added all the other titles, but one of my personal favorite titles of yours is of course gonna be podcaster ’cause you’re also a host of everything about hydrogen.
So, great to have a fellow podcaster on the line. Thank you. So first thing first I know that we were connected through FII Institute and FII priorities. So maybe just to get us kicked off here, talk a little bit more about your history with, FII and , how you were introduced to the organization.
I. Sure. I’ve actually had a partnership in Saudi since 2007. Mm-hmm. Um, And essentially a merchant bank where we did a lot of structuring of big industrial projects that could get, lots of different incentives from the government. And on the side for the governments, you get a lot of FDI going into Saudi from big companies that have domain expertise so that they can diversify from just oil and gas.
Mm-hmm. So this sort of vision 2030 for Saudi came out under Mohammad bin Salman, but this has been the, the the really big focus for the country since 2000. Mm-hmm. So basically we’re, trying to do that to diversify the economy into different entities, different types of businesses.
Mm-hmm. And that’s still going. And it’s been fantastic partners like family to me. Mm-hmm. I wanna go a little bit further back in your career and maybe let’s start with talking a little bit more about Intercontinental Energy and really how that originally, set you up to start and set up a PC investors like talk.
Maybe just start with Intercontinental Energy. Sure. I’ll just throw in, in the beginning that I spent about 20 years in private equity before Intercontinental Energy. Mm-hmm. Um, And then about 11 years ago my co-founder and I started the company. Yeah. And he had been in renewables his whole career.
And when I was investing, if I, had a question about a typical technology or partners mm-hmm. I’d always call him up and be like, dude, you know who these guys are. Does this check out? Does this sound bogus to you? Yeah, yeah. You know, do you think this technology will work? And then he had a great idea.
He had noticed over the years working all around the world that the best sites to make green electrons, it are coastal deserts. And if you look at the satellite maps, you can see. All of the coastal deserts that have the same pressure system where you have oldest sun all day long, very hot sun. Mm-hmm.
You know, excellent resource. And then in the night it’s windy. Mm-hmm. So because of that, that coastal desert structure, you actually get 24 7 power, which is the biggest complaint of renewable energy is intermittency. So you’d be able to have that online and then we would send the electrons to another area that has the consumer demand, but did not necessarily have the resource.
Mm-hmm. So for instance, we looked at OMA and as one of the best sites in the world, and we had intended to send electrons via undersea cable to Bombay. Mm-hmm. And then we realized that. There’s a reason that most of the world is run on molecules instead of electrons. And so we, figured out that we could actually make the electrons cheaply enough that we could make hydrogen.
Mm-hmm. Which is something people had always wanted to do, but it was very expensive given, you know, 24 capacity factor for solar. Very, very low capacity factors for the equipment but not with us because of this diurnal resource for, in all of our sites. So we now have 30,000 square kilometers in two projects across Australia and one in Oman.
BP came into one of the projects in Australia and shell came into one of them in Oman. And we’re partnered with the native title holders in Australia as well. They’re true partners on our side of the table, which is pretty great. I mean, it’s really nice feeling to be really contributing to the community, not just, not just the whole world in terms of.
Decarbonization, but also you know, jobs and all the things that you can provide to communities. And that has done so well that after 10 years, I just, it was too easy. The part that I like is the hard part. I want, to make the pitch that, oh my gosh, you’re one, you’re one of those.
Alicia, I, I’m just a little bit, I got some problems I can hand to you now. You’re like, no, I didn’t ask you. I’m not alive problems, buddy. I don’t feel alive unless I’m solving problems. Oh man. You’re one of those Continue. That’s amazing. Yeah. So you know, we call it ice ’cause it’s intercontinental energy.
Mm-hmm. But obviously. Once again, we have to stop calling it ICE because of the other famous sites. Yeah, I understand. So now we’re saying, you know, Intercontinental Energy again. But it is on a, wonderful path forward. Mm-hmm. It’s very linear, it’s going extremely well. Great investors, you know, it’s fantastic.
So I felt comfortable stepping down and I had been wanting to do something in the industry that could be even more helpful. Mm-hmm. And so two things that I noticed one was that it’s much easier to convince someone to switch fuels from a fossil fuel to green hydrogen or to methanol or any of these.
Less emissions intensive fuels. Mm-hmm. If you can get the price down as well, and we saw that with solar, right? Mm-hmm. We saw once it got cheap, almost everybody would use solar. Yeah. There was no issue once, once it was cheap enough. So if you’re looking at the shipping industry, like you really have to think about total cost of ownership.
Yes, it’ll cost them more to have this fuel. But if you also partner up with these different efficiencies technologies, they could need less fuel. And the only thing better than a green molecule is no molecule is. So if you can reduce the demand, that means that that demand can go elsewhere. That means that we can continue to grow and be greener.
So, you know, we don’t wanna hurt our economies by holding back, mm-hmm. Energy. ’cause it’s really. it sits under everything we need to have energy to do pretty much anything. Mm-hmm. And we also need it to be green though, because, you know, as you’ve seen the climate does not seem to be settling down anytime soon and it’s getting worse.
So what I had noticed was that a lot of companies in this space. Had not really thought about the buyer and how you could relieve their pain with more than just money or regulations or a mandate from their governments. Mm-hmm. How you could actually find a way to partner up and, you know, bring efficiencies.
And so it, it really is not painful for the company at all. And the other thing I noticed is that, I mean, I do a lot of speaking at a lot of conferences. And I noticed that people, I. Did not really understand project finance. And a lot of the future of the energy transition is not, necessarily software.
And I think anybody, your grandmother could probably tell any, tell you how you get a technology company listed, you know, on Nasdaq. Mm-hmm. Like there, for the past 40 years, we’ve been doing very asset light, very, you know, IP heavy types of in investments and mm-hmm. People are comfortable with how that works.
They understand how that works, but they’ve completely forgotten. Project finance and project finance is very useful, not just in developing countries that are building a bridge, but you can actually use it to finance a, new facility like a, new warehouse. you can use it. For some of the other benefits that you get from different players, like export credit agencies mm-hmm.
A lot of people had never even heard of export credit agencies and they’re essentially I’ll give you an example of one. Denmark has an export credit agency called IFO. And Denmark is known for a vestus, which is the wind turbine. They’re known for Maersk, which is the shipping top. So, which is like, you know, methanol and all these different creations, all the chemist, all the chemicals, and pretty amazing stuff coming outta Denmark.
And Iffo basically helps them to sell abroad. So they will it’s like vendor finance, but it’s also insurance. It’s commercial insurance. So if you’re actually scaling up the technology, you have insurance. If it doesn’t work out quite like you, like mm-hmm. Um, There’s just a huge number of benefits that ECAs can bring to the table so that these companies and these projects can move forward.
And what I had seen that I was seeing a lot of companies that were a growth stage and they were hitting what people call the development desert or the. double dunes of death there, there’s a lot of names for it. Mm-hmm. Essentially, it’s a period in, during fundraising when the risk return profile is not attractive.
Mm-hmm. It seems more risky and the return seems lower. So investors tend to head all the way to the beginning, to the vc or all the way to the end. We’re talking about, you know, leveraged buyouts or mezzanine. Mm-hmm. But the in-between is still necessary and so I figured. I have a way to help them to change their risk return profile and make them attractive to investors.
And I’m so confident about that, I feel I should set up a new fund to do just that. And so a PC investors focuses on basically that growth stage and impact investments in anything that is really emissions, elimination and efficiency. Mm-hmm. It’s that combination of the, reducing the emissions and the efficiencies increasing, as we talked about before.
And because of a great network that I’ve had over the years I can help these companies to get off takes. I can help do a lot of things to the, I can make their. Profile look more attractive to the next round. And so a PC stands for agile purposeful, catalytic, and those are the words, and those are sort of the mandate for the fund.
It, this position, it is catalytic because getting the financing at that crux. in the development of the company is so important. And then that opens up a lot of doors for everyone. Mm-hmm. A lot of options and solutions. So again, we can actually make changes, but we don’t have to suffer. And I can give you one example of one of our first Please.
Folio companies. This is called Chipex. It’s a, it’s a great company. It is focused on semiconductors. Mm-hmm. They have the IP for the packaging for, with, the, packaging has both IP in terms of nanotechnology, but also the materials, the ceramics that it, uses. Mm-hmm. And basically these are lower latency chips.
They’re lower cost, and the fab, the, unit that makes semiconductors fab stands for fabrication, but people to them as fabs. They’re very expensive, mm-hmm. Just to build, but also to operate. And currently most of the fabs. Also use 10,000 year chemicals, and they’re releasing these into the atmosphere, which is much worse than CO2.
Mm-hmm. So this company essentially can run a fab with 40% less energy. So they use green energy for the remainder, but they actually reduce the amount necessary overall. Mm-hmm. There chips again, lower latency, lower cost, better performance. And they don’t use these 10,000 year chemicals. They use hydrogen instead.
So it is really exciting. and the other thing is geopolitical. Because most of our semiconductors are made in Taiwan or the us it’s good for the world to have a few other places where semiconductors can be made. that are not just stuck behind, two protectionist economies or mm-hmm.
One that is sort of sitting right next to another, is not looking very yeah. Stable. So yeah, so the idea is to actually take them to other places in the world to diversify. And that helps everybody because everything that we’re building. Requires chips and semiconductors, everything we wanna do requires just more and more of these.
And we can’t afford these 10,000 year chemicals. We can’t afford even afford literally the cost of, all this energy. Mm-hmm. So I think this is just a, an incredible example of a catalytic company that can really change things for a lot of industries. So none. That’s just one. But, you know, there’s a lot we invest in the whole supply chain from critical metals and markets all the way to heavy industry and transportation.
And we focus on Europe, CIS, middle East, and Asia which is where we have our networks and where we have really close connections. Mm-hmm. I wanna spend some of the time we have left here, Alicia. I couldn’t let you off the show without getting into your podcast at least a little bit. Everything about hydrogen, like, talk to me about the content and I want my listeners to go check it out.
Talk about what people can expect. Well, it’s a little bit irreverent. It’s, it’s a little bit on the fun side for this industry. So, you know, it’s, I guess, a narrow focus because not that many people are, are in hydrogen, but the people that are are listening to our podcast at least.
That’s amazing. I didn’t start it actually. It was three guys who were all students at Johns Hopkins in the international relations. You know master’s program. Mm-hmm. And I actually went to Fletcher, which is like the only other competitor in the United States for, diplomacy. So That’s funny.
And one of the guys just didn’t have enough time to continue doing it. And they had actually had me on the podcast and it had done really well. So they asked me if I would, I would be up for joining. And so I, now I’ve been doing that. So you inherited it? Yeah. That’s amazing. Yeah. So. Two years now.
Maybe a little over that. What’s your favorite part about being on a podcaster now? Because you’re a podcaster, you’re a veteran. Well, I mean, you would know this because I think you interview even more people. But I just love not just what I learned from the podcast itself, but in the prep before and after I get to know these companies and businesses and technologies so much better.
Mm-hmm. And it’s just fantastic. And they are. It’s usually the most high profile thing the guest has ever been on, even though mm-hmm. They, they could be the head of a huge company. It’s just not the kind of thing that people follow. And, they get that through our podcast, which is, which is like, it feels good because, you know, we are only really positioning mm-hmm.
Companies that are doing good things in, in this space. But yeah, I really enjoy it. think we geek out a bit, but we also argue about things. That’s the best part. That’s the best part. Geeking out, having fun, learning your guest and like it, builds a connection and you’re giving value. You’re creating a really, a legacy, not just for yourself, but for the content and all the ideals like your historians of your day.
There’s so, so many different layers. To what goes into this, and I’m pleasantly surprised to have met you. Not surprised, but I’m pleased to have, have met you on your podcasting journey and also all the work you’re doing. So this is I’m excited after you solve this to I know you have a lot of work outta you on solving this, but then when you get to the point to be like, this is too easy too.
What’s not? Like I said, call me first once you’re done with this and this is too easy. And then let me give you some things too. Yeah. But in all sincerity, Alicia, thank you for coming on the show. If people wanna continue to follow your work, listen to your show. How do people do that? It’s easiest to reach me via LinkedIn.
Mm-hmm. Or the podcast is on Apple and there’s contact address there, but there’s also a website that has the entire back catalog of, episodes. Mm-hmm. And that is at pod.com. so you can find, the contact there.
And you can also actually just go in, dig in and start listening to podcasts as well. Amazing. And for everybody listening, just so you know, we’ll definitely put the links in the show notes so you can just click on it and head right on over. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit.
That subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way on your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Lisa, thanks again for coming on the show. Thank you.
Let’s chat.