Literally unearthing a climate solution with Cody Finke of Brimstone

Episode Summary

The podcast discusses how cement production creates substantial carbon emissions, accounting for about 8% of global CO2 emissions. The majority of cement's emissions come from heating limestone, which releases the CO2 stored inside. Cody Finke, a chemist, realized he could eliminate these emissions by using a different calcium-rich rock called calcium silicate to make cement. Finke co-founded a company called Brimstone to produce cement from calcium silicate. This rock does not contain CO2, so no emissions are released when heated. Additionally, the process creates a magnesium carbonate byproduct that can sequester CO2 from the air. So Brimstone's cement could potentially be carbon-negative. Brimstone has developed a patented process to create ordinary Portland cement from calcium silicate. This allows their product to be a drop-in replacement for regular cement. Now, they are working to scale up production and build their first commercial plant. Their goal is to license their low-carbon cement process to established industry players to maximize its climate impact.

Episode Show Notes

When it comes to carbon emissions, there’s a major culprit you might not have heard about: cement. The production of cement emits almost as much carbon dioxide as cars do - but Brimstone CEO and co-founder Cody Finke says they’ve found a way to change that.

This week on How I Built This Lab, Cody explains where all that carbon dioxide is coming from, and how swapping out a key ingredient in the production of cement could take it from carbon-intensive … to carbon-negative.


This episode was produced by Alex Cheng with music by Ramtin Arablouei. 

It was edited by John Isabella with research help from J.C. Howard. Our audio engineer was Patrick Murray. 

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Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_02: Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to how I built this early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Here's a little tip for your growing business. Get the new VentureX business card from Capital One and start earning unlimited double miles on every purchase. That's one of the reasons Jennifer Garner has one for her business. That's right. Jennifer Garner is a business owner and the co-founder of Once Upon a Farm, providers of organic snacks and meals loved by little ones and their parents. With unlimited double miles, the more Once Upon a Farm spends, the more miles they earn. Plus, the VentureX business card has no pre-set spending limit, so their purchasing power can adapt to meet their business needs. The card also gets their team access to over 1,300 airport lounges. Just imagine where the VentureX business card from Capital One can take your business. Capital One. What's in your wallet? Terms and conditions apply. Find out more at CapitalOne.com slash VentureX Business. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. If you're a small business owner, it isn't just your business. It's your life. Whatever your business might be, you want someone who understands. And that's where State Farm's small business insurance comes in. State Farm agents are small business owners too, and know what it takes to help you personalize your policies for your small business needs. Like a good neighbor? State Farm is there. Talk to your local agent today. This episode is brought to you by Vital Farms. No matter how you like your eggs, scrambled, over-easy, or sunny-side up, the people at Vital Farms believe in one thing. Keeping it bullsh** free. That's why their pasture-raised eggs come from hens who each have over 108 square feet of space to roam and forage all year round. So you can spend less time questioning your food and more time enjoying it. I love Vital Farms eggs. I buy them every time I'm at Whole Foods or at another store. And it also gives me peace of mind knowing that the hens are treated ethically. Look for the black Vital Farms carton in your grocery store and learn more at VitalFarms.com. Vital Farms. Keeping it bullsh** free. Hello and welcome to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. So when it comes to carbon emissions, there are the usual suspects we hear about all the time. Fossil fuels, livestock, transportation. But there are other sources of carbon emissions that are less flashy but just as impactful on our climate, including a material you might be standing on right now, which is cement. Yes, cement. We use it to glue together just about everything we build. The production of cement worldwide actually emits almost as much carbon as cars do. The majority of that carbon comes from one of the main ingredients in cement, which is limestone. To make cement, you basically cook limestone at high temperatures. But limestone is actually a carbon sink. It contains a lot of carbon. And when you heat it up to make cement, that carbon is released into the atmosphere. Well, my guest today says there's another way to make this critical building material. Cody Finkie discovered the concrete problem when he was studying chemistry at Caltech. He realized there was a different rock that could replace limestone in concrete production. It's a rock that really doesn't emit any carbon when heated. And so Cody co-founded a company called Brimstone that could become the future of construction materials. Cody spent his time at Caltech looking for a climate issue to solve, and he started with solar-powered toilets. SPEAKER_01: I wanted to work on problems that were massively underworked on, had environmental and social implications, and wastewater treatment for applications in low-income countries was an obvious choice. And that was something that one of the labs at Caltech was working on, so I enthusiastically joined that lab. I've done some travel in India and seen that firsthand and how it impacted people. And the idea was we built a system that didn't need a sewer, didn't need a grid, it was just fully independent and treated wastewater on site. But through that project, I also learned that deploying these sort of do-good technologies is not trivial because people don't just buy them and install them out of the goodness of their heart, or at least not enough. There needs to be a compelling economic case. And after three or four years of working on that solar-powered toilet system, I realized that there just wasn't a compelling economic case, and therefore, no matter how well the technology worked, it was not going to make an impact. SPEAKER_02: This couldn't be a sustainable business as you kind of got to that conclusion. SPEAKER_01: That's right. And if it's not a sustainable business, then it's also not going to have the environmental impact I wanted to have because it just isn't going to achieve the scale. SPEAKER_02: This project that you worked on, it won an award from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. So it was no joke. It was just a serious... And essentially, it worked, right? What you put together worked. Yeah. SPEAKER_01: I spent a lot of time in India sort of wallowing around in human wastewater as I was working on that project. And yeah, it worked. SPEAKER_02: So you ended up continuing your studies at Caltech and you did your PhD there. Yeah. I guess while you were there, after that project, you decided to tackle another project around water electrolysis. Can you tell me a little bit about what that project was? SPEAKER_01: Yeah. So after this solar-powered toilet situation, I was looking around for what else to do. And a lot of folks at Caltech were working on splitting water in order to replace fossil fuels. And the idea was we could use clean renewable electricity, split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and then use that hydrogen as a fuel to fuel everything we do today and we wouldn't have to use any fossil fuels. And the scale of that solution was really compelling to me. That's 70% of greenhouse gas emissions. But I realized that the technology had been around for over a hundred years and we don't make hydrogen by splitting water today. We make hydrogen a different way from a fossil fuel actually. And we do that because it's the lowest cost way to make hydrogen. And I didn't see a route for hydrogen production to become lower cost than the production from fossil fuels. And therefore, ultimately, I didn't see a chance for there to be a big impact. So I ultimately stopped working on that project too. But clearly you were thinking of a project that you could get behind. SPEAKER_02: I guess the question you were asking yourself is what are the things that create carbon emissions? It's interesting because it's a similar question that like Pat Brown asked himself before he started Impossible Foods and his realization was raising livestock, right? Clearing forests to create grazing spaces and raising livestock for human consumption accounts for 15% of global carbon emissions. Presumably you're asking yourself the same questions. What are the things that cause the most pollution that I might be able to fix? So what kinds of industries or materials are you looking at? SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I found this really interesting graph from the IPCC report. I think it was- This is obviously the UN panel on climate change. Exactly. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC. And this graph kind of broke down emissions by sector. What really attracted me were the chemistry problems because I'm a chemist. And there are several categories that have these things called process emissions where the chemical reaction we use to make the thing actually emits a greenhouse gas. It's not just energy, it's the chemical reaction. And the four big ones are production of steel, production of aluminum, production of hydrogen actually, and then production of cement. This is a huge problem. I then looked at the amount of funding, right? And one metric that was really interesting to me was the dollars invested in decarbonizing the product per ton of greenhouse gas emissions. And I couldn't really find anything lower than cement. SPEAKER_02: It's interesting because I guess concrete and cement, they're slightly different. That's right. Concrete is a product that comes from cement. That's right. But together they account for like 8% I read of global CO2 emissions, which is the same amount as all the cars around the world. SPEAKER_01: Yeah, just about the same. And just to clarify the cement and concrete, concrete is the building material and cement is the binder, the glue. And about 90% of the emissions come from cement. SPEAKER_02: Yeah. And I mean, it's amazing because like cement is critical. Like we need this building material to build on planet earth. And so it seems like a kind of intractable problem, right? It's not like, I mean, even fossil fuels, there's a backup, right? With renewables, but with cement, there's no easy backup. I mean, this is what you're sort of discovering, I guess, in 2015, 2016, when you're looking into it. SPEAKER_01: That's right. Actually, I really liked that because it made the solution space really simple. And I think you need to simplify the solution space in order for a human brain to be able to think about it creatively. So yeah, that was one of the things that attracted to me, how simple the solution space was. SPEAKER_02: All right. So let's break down the problem. Why does cement create so much carbon emissions? SPEAKER_01: Yeah. So the emissions associated with cement production come from two places. The first is you need to burn a lot of fuel because you need to use a lot of energy to make cement. And that's about 40% of the emissions in cement production. To heat it up very hot. Oh yeah, you have to do a chemical transformation and that chemical reaction requires heat or requires energy. SPEAKER_02: And by the way, the main component is limestone. SPEAKER_01: That's right. So that's where the majority of the emissions come from. So in order to make cement, you need a source of calcium. And the current way we make cement, that source of calcium is limestone. Because why? Because at the time that cement was invented, it was the lowest cost source of calcium. SPEAKER_02: And this isn't like the 1700s, I think. SPEAKER_01: Different people have different timelines. But yes, like the first poly calcium silicate cement was in the 1700s. SPEAKER_02: Right. And so limestone was used because it was readily available and relatively cheap. And now that's just the standard. That's right. SPEAKER_01: And in order to get the calcium out of the limestone, you use all that heat to do a chemical transformation which removes the CO2 from the limestone. And if you use heat, all that CO2 will go up into the atmosphere and you'll be left with the calcium that you can then turn into Portland cement. SPEAKER_02: Wow. So basically, it's like a double whammy. You're using heat to heat it up and the heat, just that energy alone is emitting carbon. But then there's also carbon dioxide in limestone. So when you heat the limestone to break it down, you're releasing all that carbon into the atmosphere. SPEAKER_01: That's right. And the majority of the CO2 emissions from cement come from that chemistry for releasing the CO2 from the rock. SPEAKER_02: So limestone is a carbon sink, basically. SPEAKER_01: That's right. Yeah. So in the global carbon cycle, an enormous amount of Earth's carbon is stored in limestone. Wow. SPEAKER_02: So this is, it's like you hear about the tundra, you know, the tundra that's defrosting in the Arctic. And that's a carbon sink. And obviously, when it defrosts, it releases carbon. So this is a deliberate process to make cement, but it's essentially just releasing all this carbon and which is a huge problem. SPEAKER_01: That's right. Yeah. It's just another way that humans are perturbing the global carbon cycle. In a normal environmental carbon cycle, CO2 would be released from volcanoes and would react with calcium that's been dissolved in the ocean and precipitate limestone. And then that limestone would sit around forever. For several billion years until it was subducted down to the Earth's crust again and then decomposed under the Earth and the CO2 was released through a volcano. And humans have, by digging up limestone and heating it up to volcano-type temperatures, we release that CO2 prematurely, which perturbs the carbon cycle, just like with fossil fuels. Wow. SPEAKER_02: All right. So when you came across this realization, presumably you thought, this is the thing. Maybe this is the thing that I can try and fix. SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was quite interesting. It had all the attributes, right? It was the giant problem. Basically nobody was working on it. And it seemed tractable to me because it was a chemistry problem. The chemistry problem was most of the CO2 emissions have nothing to do with energy. They have to do with the chemistry of making cement. So can I change the chemistry such that it doesn't make CO2 emissions? SPEAKER_02: We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, Cody finds a solution to that chemistry problem right beneath his feet. Stay with us. I'm David Ross and you're listening to How I Built This Lab. Now, I want to talk about a part of Miro that many of you probably have never heard of before. It's called the Miroverse. Sometimes starting work on an online visual workspace can feel overwhelming, but with Miroverse you can select pre-made boards for pretty much any use case. It saves you the hassle of building from scratch. And what's really cool is that a new template has just been added, this time from me. We partnered with the folks over at Miro to create a how to build a podcast Miroverse template to help kickstart your journey to making a podcast. So check it out and let me know what you think. Head on over to Miro.com slash H-I-B-T. That's M-I-R-O dot com slash H-I-B-T to check out our Miroverse template for yourself. SPEAKER_00: Hi, my name is Jesus Rubelcaba. I'm the owner of Paper Tacos greeting cards. And my favorite episode of how I build this is May of Chesapeake Bay candles. I could really relate to her, especially when she talks about going to trade shows and people just passing her by, trying to reach out to buyers of several department stores and hoping to get an order, scaling, trying to create manufacturing and all the struggles that she faced there are things that I'm currently trying to overcome. So I really resonate with her story and really appreciate that you all shared it with us. SPEAKER_02: If you want to share your favorite episode of how I built this, record a short voice memo on your phone telling us your name, where you're from, what your favorite episode is, and why. A lot like the voice memo you just heard. And email it to us at H-I-B-T at I-D dot wondery dot com. And we'll share your favorites right here in the ad breaks and future episodes. And thanks so much. We love you guys. You're the best. And now back to the show. SPEAKER_02: Welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. My guest today is Cody Finke, co-founder and CEO of Brimstone. His company has found a way to produce cement that eliminates carbon emissions, which could have a big impact on our climate. Back in the late 2010s, Cody had just started exploring the idea at Caltech. SPEAKER_01: We looked around at the existing solutions and we saw that most folks were working on making a novel material, not Portland cement, which makes a lot of sense because if you make a novel material, then you don't have to use limestone and you therefore you don't have to make the CO2. SPEAKER_02: And Portland cement, we should mention, is like the most common type of cement used around the world. It's probably in your home or on your sidewalk. It's basically just the term for cement. It's not from Portland, Oregon or Portland, England. That's what it's called. That's right. All right. So you initially thought, okay, let's just take the same materials, the limestone, I think it's like aluminum and there are a few other components that go into making cement. Let's use these components, but just change the chemistry and see what happens. SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Or maybe even use some different components. Maybe we could just make a different material that still works like Portland cement, but is not Portland cement. And one of my early mentors was one of the women at Caltech who was leading the entrepreneurship program. Her name is Stephanie Janczynski. And she was like, well, you should go talk to customers. And we learned that it'd be very hard to enter the market with a novel cement. SPEAKER_02: And when you say a novel cement, a cement that was not Portland cement. SPEAKER_01: That's right. Yeah. And the reason for that was is basically it's just risk. If you're a structural engineer or a builder or a concrete provider, then you want your material insured in case there's a problem with it. And you also don't want construction delays. You want to make sure that everyone who's building the building knows how to work with the material. Yeah. Because both structural failures and construction delays are way more expensive than the cement for like 10 to a hundred times more expensive. And because of those things, we basically found that no one that we talked to was excited about using a novel material. It seemed just too structurally hard. And that was actually the big aha moment, which really simplified the problem. We realized that, okay, if we want rapid adoption, which is important for climate, but we want to solve the problem quickly, then you need to produce ordinary Portland cement. So we said, okay, great. Where's all the calcium in the world? We found that the calcium was in three places. There's limestone, which cement is made out of today. There's gypsum, which cement has been made out of in the past. And then there's calcium silicate, which no one had ever made cement out of. SPEAKER_02: And from what I understand, these calcium silicate rocks are abundant, right? I think you're talking about rocks made out of silicate materials that also have calcium in them. So I guess like basalt would be an example. Yeah. But I mean, presumably there's a reason why limestone is still used. I mean, I know that maybe an answer could be, well, it's just been tradition or it's just what people are used to, but there must be some reason. Is it stronger? Is it cheaper to get to? Like why, if these other natural resources exist that have the necessary components to make cement, why weren't they used in the past? Yeah. SPEAKER_01: The thing that we have to realize is that the production of Portland cement has been around for at least 150 years. And the reality is, is the production of commodity chemicals, the production method, tends to change every 50 or 100 years. It takes a long time. The global economy really has to change in order to make a new system more economical. For over a century, limestone was the most economical way to make cement, but there's been some massive structural changes in the economy that have made a pretty recent phenomenon that we no longer think limestone is the most economical way to make cement. The current production of cement actually relies on the production of electricity and steel from coal. And both of those industries' growth have slowed and that is leading to a domino effect where the price of cement has been rising. So why was cement made from limestone? Because it's the cheapest way, or it was. The economy has now changed over the last 150 years and we believe that it's no longer the cheapest way. SPEAKER_02: So is it more expensive to make it from calcium silicate? SPEAKER_01: In the modern economy, we think that we'll be lower cost at scale. And that's core to our philosophy because we don't think that the technology will scale globally if it's not lower cost. And if it doesn't scale globally, it doesn't have a big impact. And if it doesn't have a big impact, then I'm not interested. SPEAKER_02: So what about the strength of the end product? I mean, is it as good as Portland cement? SPEAKER_01: So it is Portland cement. It is. Yeah, it is Portland cement. So that's the key thing, right? We don't think global adoption will happen if it's not Portland cement. Right. Or at least it won't happen quickly. SPEAKER_02: All right. So you basically say calcium silicate, which is a type of rock that's abundant, it's available around the world. It has all basically the same essential properties as limestone that make it a great material for making Portland cement. And essentially, it's not a carbon sink, right? Carbon is not stored inside of calcium silicate. SPEAKER_01: That's right. So calcium silicate rocks, they don't have any CO2 in them. SPEAKER_02: So you, how does your process eliminate carbon emissions? I mean, when the rocks are heated, I understand they don't release carbon like limestone, but there still are emissions in the process, right? SPEAKER_01: So there could be emissions in the process if you use a dirty fuel for producing the heat, right? Heat can be produced via clean electricity or fossil fuel or anything else. But the beauty of our process is that actually could be substantially lower carbon or even carbon negative under a wide range of energy sources, including the use of those dirtier fuels. And the reason that is, is because the calcium silicate rock, A, does not contain any CO2. So we eliminate 60% of the emissions just by using a different rock. And then B, it produces a magnesium-based waste product. And that magnesium-based waste product will passively sequester CO2, just sitting on the ground to react with CO2 in the air to permanently sequester CO2. SPEAKER_02: So the byproduct, so when you essentially what you're saying is when you make the cement, the byproduct of it actually sequesters carbon in this magnesium byproduct, which you can then do what with you bury it underground? What do you do with it? SPEAKER_01: Yes, there's a lot of things you could do with it. Basically, the simplest thing to do with it is just put it in our tailings pile and then backfill our quarry with it at end of life. SPEAKER_02: So when you've got an empty quarry, oftentimes it gets filled up with water, right? But you would just fill it up with this material. And there's no risk of it leaching or anything. It's just basically a carbon store. That's right. SPEAKER_01: This is a normal rock. SPEAKER_02: Essentially, if you can do this at scale, what you're saying is not only can you eliminate carbon emissions from the production of cement, but you can actually remove carbon from the atmosphere by sequestering it in this byproduct that comes out of the process, this magnesium. SPEAKER_01: That's right. And magnesium carbonate is baby powder. So we basically make synthetic baby powder passively that removes CO2. SPEAKER_02: So you founded a business, co-founded a business with, I think, with a partner that you worked on at graduate school on this water project. That's right. Hugo Leandry, I think is his name. Yes, that's right. And together, you've basically founded the company called Brimstone. Yes. And the idea of the company is to what? Is to become a cement company like some of these huge, massive legacy cement companies. Many of them are in China and Mexico. There are some in the United States. Is that the idea here? SPEAKER_01: Yes. The idea is to develop the processes to make the building materials of the future in a more economically appropriate and most importantly to us, zero carbon way. And cement is the material that we are starting with because it's the most obvious output of our process. But ultimately our process actually produces aluminum and iron. So we hope to really decarbonize all of the major emissions producing building materials in a more efficient way. SPEAKER_02: We're going to take another short break, but when we come back, Cody looks to the future of Brimstone and faces a big, expensive challenge, scaling. Stay with us. You're listening to How I Built This Lab. AI might be the most important new computer technology ever. It's storming every industry and literally billions of dollars are being invested. So buckle up. The problem is that AI needs a lot of speed and processing power, so how do you compete without costs spiraling out of control? It's time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or OCI. OCI is a single platform for all your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. OCI has four to eight times the bandwidth of other clouds, offers one consistent price instead of variable regional pricing, and of course, nobody does data better than Oracle. So now you can train your AI models at twice the speed and less than half the cost of other clouds. If you want to do more and spend less, like Uber, 8x8, and Databricks Mosaic, take a free test drive of OCI at oracle.com slash built. That's oracle.com slash built. Oracle dot com slash built. This episode is sponsored by Nissan. Nissan has a car for everyone. Every driver who wants more. More fun, more freedom, more action, more electric, more head-turning style. From sports cars to sedans to EVs, pickups, and crossovers, with Nissan, there is no compromising on your next adventure. Whether you're taking a detour or going way off the grid, Nissans like the Frontier, Pathfinder, or Rogue have various forms of four-wheel drive that are built to take on off-road challenge with a suite of capabilities that make them truly fun to drive on and off-road. Learn more at NissanUSA.com. Welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. Here's more from my conversation with Cody Finke, co-founder and CEO of Brimstone. They've developed a carbon-negative process for manufacturing cement, which could have a massive impact in reducing carbon emissions around the world. I know you've started to raise a lot of money. You've raised over $60 million. Tell me how far along you are in proving that this works. Yeah, so just this last July, we got a third-party certification that the cement that we made SPEAKER_01: passed the existing standard for ordinary Portland cement, showing that it's chemically and physically identical to the conventionally produced product. So we have now developed a process that is the third-ever process to make ordinary Portland cement. Wow. And now we're working on scaling up to pilot scale a version of that process that is optimized such that we are confident it will be lower cost at scale. SPEAKER_02: So right now, I think you're based in Oakland. And I think you might have another facility in Idaho. And so I guess in terms of your business model, because obviously you have a mission, but you're also a business with investors. That's right. I mean, I know, for example, here in California where I live and where you're based, I think by maybe by 2035, I think, the cement sector in California has to achieve emissions 40% below baseline levels, right? That's right. So that's significant. And then by 2045, it's been net zero. That's right. So that's good for a business like yours because developers in California will have to use your product. But that being said, what's to prevent Cemex, which is a Mexican multinational, or Alamo, which is a big US-based company, or Cal Portland, another US-based cement company, from just doing the same thing? Is your process so hard to replicate or is it patented or what? SPEAKER_01: Yeah. So the process is patented and the utilization of this rock to produce Portland cement is also patented. So another company would need to license or joint venture with us in order to make cement via this process. SPEAKER_02: Wow. So essentially what you're saying is unless they can come up with a different method, this is going to be the standard way to make Portland cement, at least in places like California and other countries with stricter laws in the next 10 to 20 years. That's right. SPEAKER_01: And there are no other major sources of calcium besides these silicate rocks. So the other two are limestone and gypsum. Those produce CO2 or sulfuric acid as byproducts. So this is the beauty of our product. SPEAKER_02: So tell me about conversations you're having, if at all, with some of these legacy, big legacy cement, these massive companies that produce cement. SPEAKER_01: Yeah. We are trying to understand the right way to work with these companies. We've had many, many conversations with them and basically we kind of decided that the right time to work together is when we have a process working at scale. If we were to work together earlier, then we would potentially jeopardize our intellectual property, which is the only thing that basically how Brimstone maintains its investability is by keeping its intellectual property secure. But once we have the process at scale and we're at cost parity or better, then we're basically eager to joint venture or license to these existing cement companies so that we can get the process out into the world as fast as possible and decarbonize cement as much as possible and as fast as possible. SPEAKER_02: So walk me through the next five years. Presumably it's going to be a while before you guys are bringing in revenue. SPEAKER_01: That's right. Within five years, what we'll be working on is scaling up the process. The next step is building a pilot plant and that pilot plant, we're being very careful to build it so it actually represents a plant that would be lower cost at scale. Then from there, we will work on building our first commercial plant. A commercial cement plant that's been built 3,000 times before, it takes two or three years to build. In the next five years, we will be working on building our first commercial plant. I think it's probably unlikely that it's fully operational. Within five years. SPEAKER_02: Who do you think your initial customers will be? A lot of these huge construction companies probably have massive contracts with massive cement manufacturers. What do you think your approach is going to be? SPEAKER_01: It's a pretty complex market where normally a real estate developer will put out a request for proposal for a building and then someone will answer that request for proposal, typically an architecture firm or engineering firm or both. They will designate a builder or a general contractor and the general contractor will then buy concrete from a concrete company. In order to make the concrete, that concrete company buys cement from a cement company. Usually the cement company and concrete company are the same parent company. The only companies that ever buy cement are concrete companies, which are typically owned by cement companies. But the folks that ultimately pay for it are two or three steps down the value chain. They're the real estate developers. We see as our early customers, real estate developers that are highly motivated to decarbonize because the first plants, the cement is quite likely to be higher cost than conventional produced cement. So you need some environmental motivation. Later, once we're at scale and potentially joint venturing with existing companies or build your own plants or licensing and we're not more expensive, we're cost parity or better than the solution is obvious. Does a company want to buy something that's the same cost or lower that is also better for the environment? The answer is it's obviously yes. SPEAKER_02: It seems like a no brainer, right? That if 8% of carbon emissions come from cement and the technology is there to do it and to do it cheaply, the challenge now is that existing cement factories are essentially at limestone quarries. So there is a cost associated with transforming this system. It's going to take a lot of money and time to do it. SPEAKER_01: That's right. It's just like it's taking money and time to transform a coal and natural gas based electricity generation system into a renewable one. It'll be the same for the cement industry. I don't think there's a silver bullet in anything. There's going to be some cost to doing that and that's going to create some delays unfortunately, unless there's massive regulation at the global scale, which I think also is hard to imagine. SPEAKER_02: Just put your business head on again for a moment. To do this at scale, you're going to have to raise a lot more money presumably. That's right. I mean hundreds of millions of dollars over time. SPEAKER_01: We want to see brimstones technology deployed to produce the world cement. Let's say a cement plant, a modern cement plant costs around a billion dollars and there are 3000 of them today and there probably will be 5000 by the end of the century because we will need to develop the rapidly developing world as well as transition to making new ways to make energy and everything else that's required for the green transition, which all of that takes cement. So at a billion dollars per plant and 5000 plants, that's ultimately $5 trillion. So it's quite a bit, but it fundamentally will make money. So that's the attractive investment solution. Once we can demonstrate the technology works and get down the cost curve by getting to scale, I don't think that financing will be an issue. I think that the challenging part is raising money for the early plants. But luckily we live in a world where there are lots of people that are thinking about those problems. And so I think that the future is actually quite bright. SPEAKER_02: Awesome. Cody, thank you so much. SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thanks Guy. SPEAKER_02: That's Cody Finke, co-founder and CEO of Brimstone. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And as always, it's free. This episode was produced by Alex Chung with editing by John Isabella and research help from JC Howard. Our music was composed by Ramtin Erebluy. Our audio engineer was Patrick Murray. Our production team at How I Built This includes Carla Estevez, Casey Herman, Chris Messini, Elaine Coates, Malia Agudelo, Neva Grant, Sam Paulson, and Kerry Thompson. I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening to How I Built This Lab. If you like how I built this, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.