‍Julian: Hi everyone. Thank you so much for joining the Behind Company Lines podcast. Today we have Armand Paradis, co-founder and CEO of ComboCurve, the fastest growing technology platform in energy. Armand I'm so excited to chat with you, not only to learn about you as a founder, but also to share with the audience some interesting insights to things that are really becoming more and more prevalent with Prevalent, which is power and energy, and in how companies will kind of.

Using technology to not only evaluatetheir currency consumption and use and performance, but also improve and makethese improvements for positive initiatives, things that we all care about. But before we get into all that, what were you doing before you started ComboCurve?

Armand: So, I always been inthe energy space, so yeah, I was working for a, a large energy company andbefore starting ComboCurve.  

Julian: Yeah. And whendescribe, I was looking at your background and, and I, I'm not sure what areservoir engineer is. And so describe for our audience to give some context,what does a reservoir engineer do and why is their job function so important toenergy in, in this whole field?

Armand: Yep. So what areservoir engineer does it basically all these energy companies, they spend billionsof capital yearly. Yeah. So to and to spend that capital wisely, you need torun a lot of forecasting and a lot of economics. And and that's what thereservoir engineer do. Like, it allows companies to figure out where to spendthat capital and optimize it to get the highest return on their capital.  

Julian: Got. And so it, it'smore around the economics component as well. Right. And, and what in particularare they spending money on? Is this like the regular products that they'rerunning, or is this the capital that they deployed to say decrease energyconsumption? What, what in particular is that capital?  

Armand: So, yeah, energycompanies that, like a lot of 'em are focused in general. Generally differenttypes of energy. Correct. So like some of it can be fossil fuel, some of it canbe just solar, wind. So that's, that's what they do. Any, any source of energy,they focus on that, generating those energy.

So, so what, what what, what isimportant for this huge amount of capital that they need to spend is to, again,spend it wise. And and making sure that generating, they generate the highestbang for their buck. And and that's what that's what I'm specialized on andthat's what the ComboCurve does.

It, it gives them, gives modern toolsand modern platform for the. For the energy industry to make the right decisionin terms of generating and highest return on their capital.  

Julian: Got it. And when yousay highest return on their capital, is that the money that they invest intobuilding the infrastructure to be able to generate energy and then the energythat they then generate is then distributed to others?

And then that essentially is, is is,kind of, compared against the cost of what it took to operate those, thatmachine. Is that kind of what what you're seeing? Is there anything elseinvolved in that capital?  

Armand: So, yeah, so basicallyanything in, in terms of building infrastructures mm-hmm.

The facilities like any, any sort ofoperation they have, like where to buy assets, where to sell assets any ofthose optimization to figure out if they wanna invest in this project or thatproject. And again, a lot of these companies are focused on generatingdifferent types of energy. It can be natural gas, it can.

Oil, it can be solar. Yeah. Like allthose, so basically what ComboCurve does allows you to spend your capitalwisely they predict the future, and also forecast your emissions.  

Julian: Yeah. And what arethey, and when you think, think about different types of energy that they'rethat they're generating and the different projects.

What are the, most common types of,energy that, that these companies are investing in to. And then outside ofthat, what are some things that we may not know that they're experimenting withor working on in terms of other projects that are, feeding into that pool ofenergy?

Armand: Yep. So if you see theenergy breakdown in the world, More than any 80% currently is coming from thefossil fuels. Yeah. And then the other is from other sorts of energy. So, so,and, and within that 80% is a, you're talking about We have diesel, we havenatural gas, we have oil products, and we have we have coal, correct?

Mm-hmm. And then there is nuclear, thereis solar vent and the hydro plant. So these are the other 20%. So, currently a.A lot of dollars being spent on the renewable sources. Mm-hmm. But so far wehaven't seen tremendous amount of percentage growth. So like we still sub sub10% from the renewables, but it's growing very rapidly.

So, so that's, that's the overallbreakdown. So currently a lot of companies that we are dealing with, they'respending a lot of their, a lot of their capital on them. Oil, gas, they spend aton of their capital there, a lot of 'em moving to renewable energy very quickly.Mm-hmm. They're spending a good chunk of their money investing in renewablesand also in geothermal.

So, so basically geothermal energy isgetting popular as well.  

Julian: Yeah. And, and whyhasn't it, why hasn't renewable energies been at more at the forefront? Is itbecause they have some sense, is it easier to, to deal with fossil fuels? Is itmore abundant? Is it more difficult? Is cheaper?

Why? Why are we focusing on those typesof fuels versus others that are renewable? Is the lack of technology, justcurious on what you know, why that transition hasn't come?  

Armand: So it, it's happening,but it just takes time. Something that has been like, we are so embedded withthe fossil fuel hundred, we've been using it for over a hundred years.

Correct? Yeah. Yeah. So it just takestime to get away from something that we've been used to for a very long time.Sure. And, and a lot of, a lot of times, if you look at it, the energyconsumption is growing. Mm-hmm. So it is not. I see it more of energy expansionin a lot of cases than just transitioning because we are using more and moreenergy.

Mm-hmm. And everybody wants to have abigger house, more cars, and they want to travel more. So these all burn moreenergy. So, so yeah. So the lifestyle a lot of those are again, Coming with thelifestyle adjustment, which a lot of people are not comfortable to change.Correct? Yeah. So, so yeah. So, and it, it takes a lot of time, but why, why alot of, a lot of capitals still being spent on the oil and gas because we stillneed them heavily for foreseeable future.

And and then one of the. Problem withthe solar and wind is basically storage of the solar and wind and, and the costof storage is very expensive. You're talking about bar buying, battery storage andthe other forms of storage, which, which are very majority more very, veryexpensive. Yeah. So like for example, using the barrier storage The barriersare very expensive.

So, so everything has is, is positivesand negatives, you so you, you cannot just say renewables amazing. Because ifyou think about renewable energy, a good chunk of those materials are comingfrom. Countries like China. So you're gonna be, you're gonna have fulldependency on China if you just only completely move away from fossil fuelsimmediately.

Right? Got it. Majority of thosematerials. And and like let's say if you wanna buy solar panel, all thosematerial, all the solar panels are coming from China. So you shift I dependencyfrom US. China, you see? Yeah. Which is, hasn't been very well working out verywell these days.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. Thereseems to be, I, I think, localizing the, the energy production or anythingproduction-wise is just better in terms of the supply chain, but in, in, inregards to emissions, I think a lot of, people just on average, those outsideof the industry think it's like a basic input output.

You input x. Activity and then outputs Xamount of, or y amount of energy or emissions. But that's technically, that'snot the case. Mm-hmm. Describe the, the ecosystem around energy and howemissions kind of, is this measurable but can also be distributed with othercompanies, with, with other kind of ways you can facilitate that.

It's not necessarily you own thatemissions, right? You can also distribute it and get other credits and thingslike that, that. Help kind of balance out the, the overall cost of that. Sodescribe a little bit more about the emissions life cycle and why it's not justa simple input, output measure that a lot of us, a lot of us think.  

Armand: Yep. So if you, if youlook at a big company, like let's say, let's just use a, a big oil company asan example, correct? Yeah. So they have so many different types of moving partsand operations. Correct. So they have, obviously they have emission becausethey're using electricity in their office, so, or they drill oil in ya valves,which the when you drill something, you're gonna use the rig and the rig isgonna.

Diesel and the diesel is a emission. Soif we convert the CO2 and a emission, they have operations that and thoseoperations like around maintaining those oil and gas production, that meansthey're gonna emit energy emit and CO2 and emit carbon mh c4. So, so the, thecarbon can be emitted from so many different so many different ways, correct?

Mm-hmm. And just figuring out. What isthe percentage is coming from this operation? What's the percentage coming fromthis part of the running business is very challenging and but, but our platformallows you to figure that out very quickly. And also figuring out thosestrategies to reduce emissions.

Correct, for example, One of the, one ofthe things that a lot of companies used to do, but they're not doing thatanymore as much is flaring. So, so, so, so you can go and figure out if youreduce your flare, how much emission reduction are you going to have, andwhat's the economic impact? Correct. Yeah.

So what, what our platform does, Itcombines emission forecasting with the economic forecasting in 1 1, 1 area, oneplatform. So meaning you can run so many scenarios of emission reduction. Seethe economic impact to see if, yeah, to see, to see if you reduce your emissionby, let's say, changing. Your rig from a diesel to electric rig, what's theimpact on your emission?

Yeah, so let's say if you're moving awayfrom a diesel truck to electric truck for, for moving your equipments and andall. Or let's say if you're changing your company cars from let's say Gasolineto electric cars. What's the impact on your emission for your company? So theseare the types of analysis that ComboCurve has allowed you to do very quicklyand see the economic impact on your assets and on your, on your company'sbalance sheet.

Julian: Yeah. And do you haveto, as a company, do you have to consider, say the, the minute detail of,energy consumption? Say if we did move to electric cars as a company, but thenwhere is that material where is the material to build that car? Where's thesupply chain there? How much emissions do you have to go in that granulardetail? Or where kind of does the buck stop?

Armand: Yeah. Cause as ofRhino, we don't go to that level of detail yet because it can get crazy if youwanna follow the supply chain. It just, it can get way too complicated.Correct. So at the stage that we are is, is look scenarios like, okay I havehundred gasoline card, or I have 10 Gasol.

Rigs, I'm going all diesel rigs. I'm,I'm gonna move a number. I'm, I'm going to convert 'em to electric. What's theimpact? Or let's say if I have so much equipment that emit this much co2, if Igo and fix those valves and equipments, how it going to impact my emission andwas the economic burden and how much how is it going to, I impact my netpersonality of my assets?

So, yeah. To that level of detail, ithandles it very well. But if you wanna follow the supply chain and thosethings, it can get very complicated. And then, I mean, we have it in ourmilestones, but as of right now, sure. It's not something that a lot of ourclients are requesting.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. Andthinking about just, the, I guess the previous incumbent to ComboCurve, how arethey tracking emissions before, having a platform like yours that does it sosophisticated?

And then secondly, why is it soimportant to keep better track of your emissions and your, your capital inwhere you, where you're deploying it?  

Armand: Yeah, so before us,they were using Excel. For most part, there wasn't a real good platform or somesome platform that is wasn't necessarily designed for the energy space.

It was just general platform thatmm-hmm. You have to go and force it for your, to basically to make yourworkflow easy. It's just like some of 'em weren't as easy to use and verydesign necessary for the energy space, but what you. Literally for the energyspace, for their workflow, day-to-day work workflow.

So it resonate a lot better, and that'sa lot of functionality that allows them to do more granular and more balance upanalysis. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. And so that's the,  

Julian: yeah. Oh, I was gonnasay, what's the most, and then why is it so important now? Are there, more kindof restrictions or legislation or, what, what in particular is pushing energyto start adopting technology?

To have more, intelligent, accurateestimates of the capital they're deploying and the, the energy that they'reemitting.  

Armand: Yeah, the push iscoming from several aspects. Obviously it's coming from the government andregulatory firms. So, so obviously government is pushing for more, less, andless emission moving toward more and more green or renewable energy.

So that's one big push. And then theother push is from the investors and the ESG related metrics. So they want.Their comp their capital with the companies that they have lower emission.Mm-hmm. So, and that's very important factor. And the third one is from thepublic and their employees. So that everybody, a lot of people care about theseemission reductions efforts.

So yeah, for the company to be able toab to absorb great talent. So they, they wanna be proactive about theseemission reduction efforts. Yeah, so the push is coming at least from threeaspect government and and the, and the regulatory and the investors and thepublic and their employees.  

Julian: Yeah. And describe alittle bit more.

I think a lot of us assume, the energythat we consume is coming from one location. We play one, we pay one provider,say in my area, it's like, I think Southern California Edison or something likethat is, is my provider. Other areas is pg and e and, and all and, and, and soforth. They're not necessarily the.

Creating all the energy, are theycollecting it, storing it, and distributing it? How's, how does that work? Arethere a bunch of energy, I guess, producers that, that distribute networks likethis? I, I feel like the public is generally pretty far removed from where theenergy comes from. And, but we all want sustainability and emissions, but don'tknow necessarily the impact that has on, on the whole chain.

So describe where the energy isproduced. How do we get it and how we can better understand that supply chainsto manage our expectations for emissions and, and esg.  

Armand: Yeah, absolutely. Socurrently, more than 80% of the energy that we are consuming is coming fromfossil fuels. Right? Right. And that comes from the.

Oil and gas companies, they generate,they go and drillable and they generate natural gas and oil and those oil andgas valves. So, so that's the majority of the energy and the remainder 20% iscoming from solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, and other types biofuels. So, so oiland gas still has a huge percentage of the energy contribution.

So like, for example, pg and e and theother ones, they still rely. On, on natural gas for, to a great extent. Mm-hmm.To be able to generate electricity. Mm-hmm. So, so a lot of electricity iscoming from, again, from natural gas or, or some cases coal. So, and this is,so, and again, the reason behind it is because like I mentioned, the energystorage very.

As of right. Mm-hmm. So like even ifyou, cuz the sun doesn't always shine and the wind wind doesn't always blow. Soif we even can generate unlimited amount of energy from solar and wind, youhave to store it somewhere because at night there's no sun obviously. So, butthe fossil fuels and the coal and nuclear, they, they themselves is the, likeis is a form of energy storage, right?

You see like, like, coal is. You canstore coal and locally and as much as you want. Correct. So, and it doesn'tmatter if it's, if the AT is available at any time, day nights, pretty much anytime. Correct. So it is just, they don't require energy storage. Got it. Got.So it's just, that's why we are so, we need, we need fossil fuel forforeseeable features until until we have plenty of energy storage and solarevent available.

Even, even if we have unlimited amountof energy storage, you're still gonna need Oil and gas because of the, you needraw materials, you see? Yeah. So a lot of, if you look around yourself, 90 per95% of materials around you, it has oil and gas in it. Yeah. So, so you need,you need oil and gas for the materials.

So again, it comes from oil and gascompanies. Degenerate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what And what we do, we helpenergy companies like oil and gas. To be able to spend their capitalefficiently to to to emit less carbon. Yeah. To generate energy. Cause evenwhen you wanna generate driller oil and gas flow, you're gonna emit CO2 during,during drilling operations.

And also you're produ producing yourvalves. So what we give them, we give them a platform so they can reduce theiremission, figure out ways to reduce their emission, and be, be moreefficient.  

Julian: Yeah. And tell us alittle bit more about ComboCurve. How many, I know you, you've, you've beenrunning the company now for what, six years?

And, and tell us a little bit about thetraction you've seen up to this point now and, and where the future is inComboCurve and what you're particularly excited about this year and, and whoyou'll be working with and, and in anything that, that really is exciting.  

Armand: Yep. So, we, wereleased our product in May, 2020 22. May, May, 2020 during the Covid. And so.It was at that, at that time we were 15 people full-time. So, so it was crazytime. It was, again, because of Covid, we were thinking the world is going toend. But during that time we didn't have any client and we were very, verysmall company and we started working remotely.

So in the course of. Two years and ahalf post Covid. We, we have Rhino, more than 300 companies using our platformfor their day-to-day work. And and we went from 15 people full-time to over 150full-time. So that's a 10 x growth. So that has been the most exciting and.And, and also the, the amount of clients that we brought on.

Yeah. Such a short period of time. So wehave, we have companies like individual levels using all the way to big,massive corporations using our platform. So it is been very, very exciting. Andthe, and the, and the, the market feedback. Amazing. So a lot people love ourproducts and and the feedback has been great.

So our goal is to build a, a pretty muchan operating system for the energy industry. So meaning you can run yourbusiness in one platform. Yeah. And so you can connect all your workflows inone place. So, so basically taking you from raw data from different sources toa boardroom presentation.

Yeah. Using one platform.  

Julian: Yeah. It's incredibleto think about how much data and, and the, the ability for technology nowadaysto be built, to be able to communicate with other pieces of technology to giveso much insight to, to companies and, and to be able to make not only accuratepredictions, but to understand where they are even at that current presenttime.

And just outta curiosity, in terms ofComboCurve, whether it's external, internal, what are some of the biggest risksthat you think the company faces today?  

Armand: So, the, the risks soI mean, some of 'em is going, is going to be macro risks. Mm-hmm. Like, forexample, a huge fluctuation of the in.

Commodity prices, it impacts us. So,because that means companies have less time to focus on adopting technologies. Yeah.So, so any, any major changes in the commodity prices that, that impacts us?So, so we, we are, so that's one of the biggest risk. And the the other riskthat I see again is, is around macro, if you have recessions and and thecompanies.

Less and less more and more concernedabout their budget and less and less concerned about adopting new technologyand more concerned about just maintaining their cash and just maintaining theirbusiness.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. And ifeverything goes well, what's the long term vision for ComboCurve?

Armand: Yeah. So the long,long-term vision is again building a platform that energy company. Collaborateinternally and offer externally, and to be able to run their business in oneplatform. And so without the need of jumping from one software to anothersoftware and basically removing all the silos and bring all the data togetherto be able to make.

Economic decisions very quickly andrapidly and, and more accurately. So, so again, our goal is to make them a lotmore efficient and to be, to be able to spend the capital a lot more wisely anda lot more a lot more efficiently in terms of emission. Correct. So you want toreduce their emission while they're increasing their production.

Julian: Yeah, I would likethis next section I'll call out my founder faq. So I'm gonna ask you some rapidfire questions and we'll see where we go. Okay. First question, just to open itup, what's particularly hard about your job?

Armand: So, scaling thecompany effectively and building systems, and also making sure making sure anyhiring that we do.

They're aligned with the company'svision and the culture and and also align in terms of the scaling the companywith the pace that we want to be to a scale.

Julian: Yeah, yeah. Thinkingabout more about the industry and, and more specifics about just, just energyand, and overall, where does the innovation in your opinion, need to come?

I, I know you mentioned there there'sdifficulties in storing renewable energy. Maybe there's something there. Butwhere in particular in the whole supply chain of energy. Does a lot of theinnovation need to come outside of, of course understanding the, the, the, thedistribution of capital and also the inter the emissions the mission costs.

But where else would the, does theinnovation need to go to become a little bit less harmful to the environmentoverall as a process?  

Armand: Mm-hmm. So, again, theway that I see it, a lot of moving away from fossil fuels and using less ofthat, that means we're gonna be more dependent on renewable energy.

But the currently majority of thematerial, That we need to build renewable lesser solar panels and when we arefull dependency on foreign countries. Yeah. Which again, is not very positive.So, and then, and there's gonna be a lot of more mining cuz we need a ton ofmaterial and raw material to be able to get there.

And a lot of those raw materials arecoming, coming from countries like China. So, so. We just have to make sure we,we take in, we take everything to consideration and just don't make oneindustry completely evil. And the other ones like, sure. Our angels. Correct.So just this whole approach of black and white is not wise.

So I, I see any form of energy haspositive and negatives. Yeah. So we have. Look, look through the, like yousaid, the whole supply chain and see the full impact. And instead of justgetting emotional and just, yeah, this is terrible. This is amazing, let's go.Yeah. Right. It requires a lot more detailed analysis.

So I would say any, any hugebreakthrough on the energy storage and the barrier storage, that would be, thatwill, that can accelerate a lot of I would. Renewable energy. Mm-hmm. Growth,correct. Yeah. So, so that, that would, that's, that would be one of the, oneof the game changer technology if it comes, comes apart around the barrier.

Yeah. So I think that would be the mostimpactful.  

Julian: Yeah. And from acompany standpoint, thinking about the ways not only your technology can impactthe company, but how many companies out there you could potentially work with?How do you focus on, staying in a particular region, being that your technologycan be used probably, internationally and with other companies and.

And maybe even create more of an aggregatenetwork of, of companies in an ecosystem where not only you understand a lot ofthe energy emissions and, and where capital being dis deployed but you can alsokind of help people work together. How do you focus on expansion and, and Iguess, offering your product to more and more, whether it's people, companies,countries.

What, how do you kind of focus on whereto expand with a product like this?  

Armand: Yeah. First of all,Our goal is to to kindly, we are mainly focused on oil and gas and and and whatwe are moving. We have plans to move to renewable very quickly as well. So wewant to take care of all forms of energy.

So, and a lot of companies that are.Focus on the oil and gas. They are, they are they're investing in renewableenergy as, as we speak, like investing in the solar and geothermal, so, whichis, which is pretty cool. So that's one way of expansion and the other oneexpanding overseas. Currently, majority of our clients are located in the usbut yeah, you.

All, all these workflows and that we areproviding to our clients are applicable to a lot of overseas clients as well.Yeah. So, so it would be ex expanding within all forms of energy and alsoexpanding to internationally.  

Julian: Yeah. And thinkingabout, the product in particular, I always like to ask founders, how has yourproduct changed from the initial idea the.

Build from that mvp. What has changedwith the product from that point, and what's, what's particularly interestingabout, say, like the, the business model, the pricing that, that you had tokind of figure out along the way?  

Armand: Mm-hmm. So, our visionhasn't materially changed since the the zero. So, because again, we understandthe workflows of these companies very well, so it is just, and so what, whathas changed?

We have significantly bigger diff teams.So, so we are adding a lot more features and functionality very quickly. So,but again, division is still the same vision. We, we want to aggregate datafrom different sources, many different sources, bringing it to one place andAnd we started from the cashflow forecasting and economics, and we are buildingall the other adjacent workflows, such as planning and scheduling and emissionforecasting all in one platform.

Yeah. So, so we are working toward thatvision and adding, adding more and more adjacent workflow to the core workflowjust to make sure everybody can collaborate in one place. Yeah,  

Julian: yeah. As a founder,what's something that you, you know now that you wish you learned earlieron?  

Armand: Yeah. So, and that's avery good question.

So, yeah, I would I would put moreenergy on bringing people who are completely aligned with the company's visionand culture. Yeah. So that's, I think I found that that's the key, like bringing.Hiring the right people. Yeah. So that's, that's the key. And also buildingsystems that can scale. Yeah.

So that's another one, like buildingmore of a process oriented company that can scale. So, so that's the top twothings that I would say I would've put more focused on.  

Julian: Yeah. I always like toask this, this as well, cause I love how founders extract knowledge fromanything that they ingest. Whether it was early in your career or now, whatbooks or people have influenced you the most?

Armand: That's a goodquestion. So, so I would say the book is influencing People by DaleCarnegie.  

Julian: Yeah, yeah. What inparticular w was impactful about that?  

Armand: So it's, it is justhuman interactions and communicating with people is extremely important and Iunderestimated that. But as a company grows, and you'll see how important it isto have a, to have a better communication with people and how to deliver the message.So, and, and reading that book, it helped me a lot.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. I alwayslike to ask this to, I know we're coming to the end of the episode here, butbefore we, before we close out just to make sure we didn't leave anything onthe table is there any question I didn't ask you that I should have or that youwould have liked to answer?

Anything come up at all?  

Armand: So, yeah, one thingthat I always encourage people is, See that like moving, like, so a lot ofpeople thinking moving away from fossil fuels can happen very quickly and justmaking those decisions. Let's go and ban X, Y, Z, let's go not investing X, Y, Z,but the consequences can be very dangerous.

We know what happened to Europe lastyear. They had huge amounts of energy problems. They had cases that people wentback. Coal is starting more coal fire plants and start starting burning,burning wood and like very primitive way of generating energies, which issignificantly more harmful than using let's say cleaner sources of fossil fuel,like such as natural gas.

And a lot of it happened because ofmaking rush decisions and, and a lot of 'em are emotional decisions. Again,we've been using. Eh, fossil fuels for years. Going away from fossil fuelstakes time and it requires a lot of proper planning and a lot of investment.And but as long as we are, we are moving toward that direction.

But again, you can generate fossil fuelsthat has. That has is carbon negative. There are ways to do that and a lot ofenergy companies actually doing that. And so, and then the other thing is anyoil and gas that has been produced in the US is significantly more cleaner thanany oil and gas that we import.

Like California is a, is a example ofactually important lot of fossil fuels from foreign. That have significantlyhigher emission intensity than the US itself, so it doesn't do any good.Correct. So, right. So it is just not a smart decision. So, so again, we haveto see that as a, as a 30 years, 50 years plan.

And then, and don't rush it and takeeverything into consideration and see that even you can even. Oil and you,you're going to need to oil and gas for foreseeable features because you stillneed material. Correct? Yeah. So even if you, if you removed the, the burningpart of the oil and gas for energy, you, if all majority of the materialsaround you have oil and gas in it.

So even for the energy, even you, forthe renewable energy to be able to to be able to transition to renewableenergy, you're still gonna need a ton of oil and gas to get there. So my, sothe point. This approach of black and white, let's just completely eliminateoil and gas in day zero, moving to far to solar and wind, that's not possible.

Physically and economically, it's notpossible. So you have to see it as a long term and long term strategy. Sothat's the, the. The biggest recommendation for all the politicians andeverybody who's making decisions around these topics.  

Julian: Yeah. What needs tohappen for that transition to complete or at least continue to progress in thedirection and not have a situation like Europe had?

Last year, as you mentioned, I totallyforgot about that difficulty and how that hard, almost like a hard turn in a,in a, in a large cruise ship, it's gonna have some, some negative effects.Right. And what in particular needs to happen for that transition to becompleted?  

Armand: One of the key, one ofthe cleanest source of energy right, is US natural gap.

Mm, it's very clean, significantlycleaner than other sorts of energy. And again, there are a lot of oil and gascompanies currently that they reduce their emission to very, very minimum. Andthey even have plan to go completely zero emission, meaning you can. So, andalso you can always, like you mentioned, you can offset that carbon generationby other activities that reduce your carbon.

Yeah. So basically focusing on the, in.Like one of them is like, planting more and more trees. That's one, one easyexample. Correct. We remove so much, so much of the forest in the past onecentury or so, like we remove on more than 50% of our forest. Yeah. Replantingthose forests. It means while you can basically offset that.

Carbon that you're from burning, let'ssay natural gas, correct? Right. So, and while we are figuring out thosetechnologies like around energy storage that are cheap and effective and theyare not fully reliant on the, on China. Correct. So then more than 90%dependency for renewable energy on China.

That's, that's, again, that's not along. Why the strategy? Correct. Right. So, so, so yeah, so basically this is,this is one of the key recommendation is like, focusing on the energy storagesthat are cheap and effective and can be generated in the US and, and in themeantime moving toward more, eh, cleaner source of energy such as natural gasas a, as a bridge.

I would say bridge.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. Armand,it's been such a pleasure. Not only, listening to your experience and yourbackground, but also understanding not only energy and the whole supply chainprocess, but where the improvements can be made, where the insights can, canreally help companies make better decisions.

Think about their admissions, but alsothink about the different projects that are deploying capital and maybe naturalgas or other ways. That will make an overall more energy efficient and, and Iguess a, a safer way to burn energy and, and to distribute it. Last little bitis I always like to give our guests a chance.

Give us your plugs. Where can we supportyou as a founder? Where can we support ComboCurve as a company? Give us yourLinkedIns, the websites. Twitters, where can we find and support you?  

Armand: Yeah, I'm always onLinkedIn, so Armand Paradis is on LinkedIn, so I'm very active. So if you wantto reach out to me, just send me a message and our website is combocurve.com.So pretty straightforward.  

Julian: Amazing. Armand, it'sbeen such a pleasure having you on the show, and thank you so much for joiningus today.  

Armand: Appreciate it. Thankyou so much, Julian.  

Julian: Of course.

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