Speaker 1:
This episode of Energy Cents is brought to you by S&P Globals, Financial and Capital Markets Energy Advisory Group. Our team of experts provides the investment community with actionable insight, the integrated thought leadership that identify the trends and trend makers of global energy markets. Solutions cover the full energy and natural resources' sector from traditional fossil fuels to emerging cleantech ideas and supply chains and are available via recurring reports, webinars, robust data sets, and personal engagements with experts.

Hill Vaden:
[00:00:30] All right, welcome back to EnergyCents. An S&P Global podcast devoted to covering topics that lie on the intersection of Finance and Energy Markets. This is Hill Eve, and I'm here today as usual with Breanne Dougherty. Breanne, it's Monday. How was your weekend?

Breanne Dougherty:
You know what? The weekend was pretty good. It was beautiful weather. Had a couple of dinners picnic-style outside, which was a nice treat. This morning, I guess it makes it easier to get back to work because it's absolutely pouring outside. Happy Monday [00:01:00] in that regard, I don't feel as guilty sitting outside, staring out the window.

Hill Vaden:
[crosstalk 00:01:06].

Breanne Dougherty:
I don't have any complaints and yourself?

Hill Vaden:
Is all right. We went indoors to a restaurant for the first time. I was going to ask, were you able to eat indoors in a restaurant or?

Breanne Dougherty:
You do see some people eating indoors. Interestingly, I ran out to pick up takeout on... I think it was Friday or Saturday, and the restaurants were packed, so the street dining was [00:01:30] packed, which was wonderful to see it so European style right now around New York City. I actually love it. A couple of places started pro... Space heaters, so it's keeping everything really nice. What was interesting as I walked by a restaurant and I heard people asking for a seat and they said, "Well, it's an hour wait for outside, but immediate seating inside because you're allowed." I think it's 25% occupancy you're now allowed inside, right? The people said, we'll wait, so there was a long lineup of people waiting to sit [00:02:00] outside and nobody was sitting inside. Again, it was beautiful weather, so I guess that has something to do with it. Apparently, you can start eating inside. We have not done so but to be honest, we haven't [inaudible 00:02:11] mostly pick-up, pickup, takeout because it's just easier.

Hill Vaden:
Less than a year we've done take-out until this, I guess Friday or Saturday night, but we went at 5:30 in the afternoon trying to avoid any potential crowd [crosstalk 00:02:29]

Breanne Dougherty:
[00:02:30] You're out there with the senior citizens and the people with children.

Hill Vaden:
Exactly.

Breanne Dougherty:
Typically is the 5:30 dining atmosphere.

Hill Vaden:
We were home in time to watch our stories and be in bed by eight o'clock. All right. So we're joined today by Xizhou Zhou who leads Global Powers and Renewables here at S&P Global, and Xizhou, it's late in your evening in Beijing, so thanks so much for joining us.

Xizhou Zhou:
No problem. Thanks for hosting.

Hill Vaden:
Yeah. How was your weekend? I guess you've heard that we're still battling some of the restaurant [00:03:00] challenges here in the U.S., and I think y'all are coming off a big holiday. What 10 days or holiday week or so?

Xizhou Zhou:
Yeah. It was a eight-day holiday week. I didn't go anywhere and I'm glad I didn't because the trains were pack, the planes were packed and the tourist sites were absolutely packed. People are climbing mountains with basically the person before you right in your face and they couldn't move. Everybody wished they had not gone to the tourist spots.

Breanne Dougherty:
[00:03:30] Wow.

Xizhou Zhou:
I just hang out here in the city. Last weekend, went to a park with a few friends with the dogs, had a nice little picnic before the temperature starts to drop, so it was nice.

Breanne Dougherty:
Sounds like it was the smart move.

Xizhou Zhou:
Yeah. It was. People have not traveled for eight months, right? A lot of delayed holiday budget that they were supposed to spend earlier this year. Now they be like, okay. We got all this money-

Breanne Dougherty:
[inaudible 00:03:57] eight days.

Xizhou Zhou:
... we have to spend on travel. So everybody [00:04:00] went then they realized that it wasn't something they probably should do.

Hill Vaden:
Somewhat, it sounds like a feeling of normalcy, I guess, relative to some of the other parts of the world.

Xizhou Zhou:
Yes. It's basically things are normal now. I went on my first business trip a month ago and the clients are starting to see us face-to-face. They're asking for face-to-face meetings now. This thing is weird just two days ago, another city Qingdao, everybody knows Qingdao beer?

Breanne Dougherty:
[00:04:30] Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Xizhou Zhou:
That's a City in the Eastern part they had I think yesterday six cases that were locally transmitted. We thought it was going to be zero for a long time, but flareups here and there, and now that city has essentially gone into lockdown and the entire population has to get tested.

Hill Vaden:
Oh goodness. Well, you'll have interesting perspective, I guess because you're also in the process of relocating to the U.S. here in the next few weeks, right?

Xizhou Zhou:
That's [00:05:00] right, and it'll be an interesting experience to see how Washington and DC copes with it compared to Beijing. I'll see if my mentality or what I think is acceptable safe levels are accepted in Washington so.

Breanne Dougherty:
Yeah. I'm really interested to see how that goes for you because obviously, you're in a unique position that you've actually lived in a region that does things traditionally [00:05:30] very different than potentially how things are being done here. I'm interested to hear what your take is once you arrive in DC.

Xizhou Zhou:
Yeah. I don't want to be that person on the plane to wear a hazmat suit, [inaudible 00:05:42] suit, and [inaudible 00:00:05:44]. I will get off the plane with the media crew running after me and be on national news. Next thing you know and some politicians might point to me as the worst example of [crosstalk 00:05:57]

Breanne Dougherty:
[00:06:00] Things to try to avoid.

Xizhou Zhou:
Unless they recognize your celebrity perhaps from this podcast then maybe it's just so further validation that we've finally made the big airwaves or something.

Breanne Dougherty:
We are a launching pad for celebrities. Aren't we, I think at this point, right? We've reached a whole new level.

Hill Vaden:
All right. So, Xizhou, we wanted to speak with you today on a paper that you led the research of... [00:06:30] I guess it was about a month ago, but this was on the back of the news from, I think it was September 22nd Chinese president Xi, announced that China is going to achieve net carbon neutrality by 2060.

So 40 years from now, and that the country's carbon emissions are going to peak by 2030. So, 10 years from now, and really just to put this into perspective for all our listeners out there, I think China emitted what was 10 billion metric tons of carbon last year, and that's more than twice as much as any other country [00:07:00] in the world, the second largest being the United States, and one of the things that I'll confess to as I was reading this at my son's soccer practice.

Upon finishing, I texted Breanne, and I think I just said, well, in the text, but it begins your opening paragraph done right, this pledge would not just create a new energy system, but a new economy which doesn't feel like exaggeration.

Xizhou Zhou:
That's right. [00:07:30] I mean, just given the amount of carbon as you mentioned, emitted, it's basically how the energy system has been set up. It's an energy system that's being set up really just over 20 years, really just the past 20 years that went along with the economic development of the country. So Between 2000 and now carbon emissions essentially quadrupled. So that's where it all happened then most of that is coal usage.

So [00:08:00] if we essentially had to do away with what supported 20 years of phenomenal economic growth within the next 40 years, and the change the entire system that's provided energy for that growth, it is a transformative task that had to be completed. So in our view, one of the things we've been saying is that the past 40 years since the reform era started in 1978, really [00:08:30] that China went through a transformation than nobody would recognize. If there were time traveling back four years, so maybe this is another sort of 40 year period that will be coming if they really get serious about these not zero emissions target.

Breanne Dougherty:
But I think what's interesting is in your piece you also highlight, so even though there's obviously been this huge growth that China still has a very low per capita energy usage. [00:09:00] So when we think about it from that perspective, do we think that that is going to make this easier to possibly do, or is it more challenging as we try to move towards this 2060 pledge, pardon me, how does that play in?

Xizhou Zhou:
It's definitely much more challenging by if we think about per capita energy usage, the average Chinese person consumes 40% less than the average German and 67% less [00:09:30] than the average American, which essentially means that energy consumption will continue to grow just us... There are still households that are buying their first air conditioning unit, and then they're also households here in the city that are buying their third plasma TV, right?

So these are all just energy consumption that will be added over the next 40 years. Now, if we compare China with some of the other countries that have announced net-zero emissions like [00:10:00] Germany or Canada, those are countries also within the EU. Generally, if you look at the energy consumption in those countries, they have either peaked or they've plateaued. So what you need to do is only just to displace existing energy supply with non-fossil fuel sources. Whereas China has to do that plus meeting additional energy demand with also clean energy sources. So it does [00:10:30] make it more challenging in many ways.

Hill Vaden:
What's the reception? We're all looking at this from the perspective of people who've been in the energy researching consulting business for many years. What's the perception from folks in China? Are people paying attention to this and concerned, excited, ignoring it?

Xizhou Zhou:
It's a huge thing here in the energy industry. I think even for people, veterans in the Chinese energy industry, some of them were surprised [00:11:00] because they really didn't see this coming in many ways. I think it's not just on the energy strategic move. I think there's also a strong geopolitical move here, coupled with many other developmental ideas for China as a country.

If I look at the energy industry here, I've been speaking to some of our clients in the oil gas industry, in the power industry, they are a little skeptical about what can be [00:11:30] done and they think it's too ambitious, but that said because president Xi announced it, most of these companies probably have to follow on show something because most of them are state -owned companies, and if the top leader has announced that this is a goal that we're marching towards, really, they have to show something or do something about it.

So you may not get to it, but over the next five years, 10 years, you need to... As an energy company, you do have to carry out something [00:12:00] that shows that you are moving towards that direction.

Hill Vaden:
You have all the typical citizen, are they skeptical as well?

Xizhou Zhou:
We haven't heard too many people from the citizens, one thing that's very interesting to observe is really the climate debate. On the science front, there really isn't a whole lot of debate that's whether or not it's textbooks, it's national TV, it's magazines, it's pretty well accepted that the climate change challenge [00:12:30] is really directly related to a fossil fuel usage, and on the science front, we don't hear a lot of debate. So people are generally saying that's something we do have to clean up.

They connect oftentimes the climate change challenge with that of the air pollution challenge that they've experienced over the past decade, which has improved over time, but they had to pay extra money. In some cases, the government had to provide extra subsidy as they switch from [00:13:00] coal to cleaner sources of energy to clean up the air in cities like Beijing.

So to a lot of citizens they have already gone through the sort of a little bit of environmental movement over the past decade, and they generally see this climate change policy as a continuation of that. Now I don't think it's really [inaudible 00:13:23] bottom line yet in terms of why the implications are for electricity prices, for [00:13:30] natural gas prices, et cetera.

So I think there will be a period where people start to balance that with economic development but one thing that China is doing that's helped a little bit is that residential energy prices are generally regulated at the fairly low level, and they're cross subsidized by industrial and commercial customers who actually pay a little more, and that way you don't get as much sort [00:14:00] of grassroots discontent on energy prices being too high.

Breanne Dougherty:
So when we think about this, obviously there's a huge amount of investment that's going to have to happen and [inaudible 00:14:10] of the energy system, right? So I can expect the Beijing's going to issue some effective measures. You mentioned that there's been subsidies for instance in place, and things like that to accelerate renewables development. But it's interesting when we think of Europe, there's been a lot of policy that's been put in place that sort of driven their efforts on this energy trans [inaudible 00:14:28] but then you look at something like [00:14:30] the U.S. where there's some policy, [inaudible 00:14:32] is kind of being turned to from the financial sector or from individual companies themselves to sort of drive some of the shifts that we have here.

What do you think is going to happen in China? How is all of this going to get financed? Is there a way for non China investors to actually integrate themselves into this transition or do we think it's going to be very much a domestically driven initiative?

Xizhou Zhou:
I think there are a couple layers to [00:15:00] this. One is that we generally know that Chinese banks don't lack money. So they've generally financed all of these projects themselves. If I've looked at the past 20 years in terms of new power projects, new oil gas projects, refining projects, these were all financed domestically by the Chinese banks. And it's really a result of China having one of the highest savings rates in the world. [00:15:30] Average Chinese person just saves a lot of money. So they're able to finance this but on the other hand, there's a call from both the U.S. and many other countries for the Chinese economy to be more open, right? For foreign investors, to be able to access to opportunities, you have more directly.

And that's certainly had already... You see the past four, five years had an effect on how the government year sees the role of foreign [00:16:00] investors. For example, foreign automakers could only build a joint venture car factories here in China if they could find a local partner. That was the rule for the past essentially 20 years.

And it was probably joined the fastest growth period of Chinese car sales and starting last year, they've said that foreign investors could... If your GM or your Ford or a [00:16:30] Toyota, you can build your own car factory in China. So I think there will be more opening of this [inaudible 00:16:37] economy overall, especially in some of the high-tech areas where they probably would welcome new technologist to compete together that can essentially drive down the costs of new technologies and then provide the best solutions.

Hill Vaden:
And doesn't Tesla have a plant in Shanghai, didn't they open one within the past year or two?

Xizhou Zhou:
Exactly. They opened one [00:17:00] and they are offering cars at much lower prices than even some of the Chinese domestic evie manufacturers. So it's already changed the landscape a little bit.

Hill Vaden:
Which I think also came out right around the same time as this paper was published in the announcement happened, Dan Yergin book on, The New Map, in terms of geopolitics, the full title is, escaping the new map, energy climate and the clash of nations. China [00:17:30] was one of... I haven't read the full book, I've read some of the experts from [inaudible 00:17:34] journal and elsewhere, but China was one of the predicted big winners of this new map. This seems to potentially further accelerate or at least give further apprentice to that idea?

Xizhou Zhou:
Yeah. I think that this is one of the key... I actually wrote a op-ed on how low carbon future might be inevitable for China, because one of the things that's happening, we're already seeing the past few years [00:18:00] is that the government sees clean energy technologies as really of an industrial policy. They wanted Chinese companies and the country to be in the forefront of clean energy technologies. Basically how future energy sector will look like. So that's as much of a driver as a climate change, they want China to be EV leader, hydrogen leader. China's already a leader in solar panels and wind [00:18:30] turbines, et cetera. So it's as much of a technology play as a climate change play.

Breanne Dougherty:
And of those technologies, you mentioned solar them already being a leader, so do we expect... When we talk about the transition to this 2060 goal, is it sort of that comes out in the front solar batteries, where does nuclear play into this equation? How do you think that fuel mix really looks as we move into this progression, and are some clearly going to be bigger winners we [00:19:00] think than others?

Xizhou Zhou:
Yeah. That's a great question. We're still working through that. I think many people in the Chinese energy system whether or not government or companies they're trying to work out which technology will come to the forefront as well. I think it might end up being what president Obama used to say about the U.S. energy option, which is a quote, "All of the above," end quote.

So this, this might be something that [00:19:30] we're looking at over the next five years. They'll probably let different technologies all develop as long as they're carbon neutral and see which ones provide the most immediate benefits. From our perspective, we certainly see solar plus energy storage as a very important part of this equation. That's something that China can do domestically. They have all of the solar manufacturing capability and they're developing battery technologies very quickly, [00:20:00] mainly as a result of the EV industry growing rapidly.

So if you can scale up the EV industry the battery side, you could potentially really change how the power system generates its electricity. Nuclear is a very interesting one. It's carbon-free, China is right now home to 40% of all of the nuclear plants under construction in the world. They're doing a lot in the space. We actually visited a couple of companies [00:20:30] recently that are building nuclear plants here or investing nuclear plants here, and they think this is still an important play for them.

It provides very good base low when you need to retire coal plants whereas renewables still need to work through the battery technology learning curve. Hydro still has some potential here, but some people argued that hydro resources might be reaching a certain limit that you can only build so much. [00:21:00] So a lot of things are happening. We're still looking at more gas-fired power plants been built, so that story of gas bringing less carbon intensive electricity and being the bridge fuel might still be true for some time.

Breanne Dougherty:
On sort of, and I won't quote you on it necessarily, although this is recorded so I guess we're technically quoting, but just around that [00:21:30] gas discussion. As we know, China is very much a huge growth region for the global gas story at the moment. How long do you think that timeframe that it could remain this bridge fuel conversation? For instance, are we talking that that seems pretty much set in stone that at least on the front 10 years of what the wheels have already been put in motion for or do we think that it's kind of the next 20 years, at least [inaudible 00:21:55] through the 2040 before we start seeing that turn away from gas? Do we have any sort of opinion [00:22:00] on the timing of that inflection, where gas goes from being growth within the mix to sort of maybe one of decline?

Xizhou Zhou:
Yeah, it's a little bit a hard what to predict how long gas will go for. Right now, they're owning 5% of the carbon emissions in those countries. It's sort of marginal to it, and not a whole lot of attention has been paid to it, and even if you allow it to continue to grow [00:22:30] it might get to say 10% of the energy mix. It's still not the biggest part. So in our view, it probably can grow for another 10, 20 years before you really have to address it as long as you didn't get the consumption of coal and oil down significantly.

Now the gas story, I think becomes more complicated when many companies are already looking at coming up with new technologies like hydrogen or other renewable gas, [00:23:00] and that's already spilled into China. We have a hydrogen forum here that's a hosted by [inaudible 00:23:06] market, and we're seeing a lot of interest from both Chinese companies and international companies.

So if the hydrogen industry, especially green hydrogen, that is electrolysis from renewables, if that can develop faster, and if China can use its manufacturing powerhouse to really [00:23:30] reduce the cost of for electrolyzers, then it could shorten the bridge life of natural gas and you fill the natural gas system or the previous gaseous energy system with what we would call either green hydrogen or other types of renewable gas.

Hill Vaden:
How about carbon sequestration? And that would seem to be a huge opportunity potentially for investors inside or out, but if you're already the world's [00:24:00] feeding carbon emitter, just kind of managing those carbon emissions has huge opportunity to either flatline or decline as the per capita energy usage decreases.

Xizhou Zhou:
Yeah, CCS is hugely important. Now, I think the challenge is just given the scale of the emissions here, right? 10 billion tons. You obviously can't put CCS through all of those, so you really have to see a decline in carbon emissions in a very meaningful way [00:24:30] to a very minimal level, and then you can really see capture and sequester the rest of it. We do see some geological potential for it here. I think capture technology can mature, but you really have to find the right sequestration or utilization methodologies for it.

For example, there just aren't that many depleted oil and gas fields in China, right? How much can you really store in [00:25:00] these caverns or do you need to find new geological formation for it? And that's actually something that the upstream industry could have say a very important part in. We are already hearing about some of the international oil companies here in China now looking into working with the Chinese national oil companies on some of these sequestration initiatives.

Breanne Dougherty:
I think it's an interesting question. So, I mean, obviously we're seeing a lot of the IOC shift focus towards [00:25:30] renewables and to cleaner technologies. How much do you think that the Chinese national oil companies might be in pledge? Are we going to see massive shifts within their portfolios do you think? And where their focus is going to be, is that something that we expect?

Xizhou Zhou:
Yeah, they're asking themselves the same questions, right? They see Shell and BP and Total really coming out with very aggressive, clean energy [00:26:00] strategies and energy transition strategies. So they're asking themselves what they should be doing. We actually here on the ground think they're sort of in between a rock and a hard place, because their main mandate from the national government, which has basically their owner is to secure the country's energy supply. So oil and gas supply.

And that's their [00:26:30] probably utmost task in their whole existence to make sure that there's secure oil, secure gas supply that they work with international companies to make sure that China will have good partnerships around the world in bringing the needed oil and gas. That's sort of their main mission.

If oil and gas are no longer needed, say 40 years from [00:27:00] now, what do they do? Do they become like what Shell has said, a power company that develops renewable energy, probably not easy because there's a whole set of other national companies under the government that are power companies. And these power companies are tasked to do power projects. So these very well-defined roles for the different state owned companies in the country.

So there's already many power companies [00:27:30] that have developed the current Chinese power system, which is the largest in the world then it's very secure, very reliable, and they're also lean dosing renewable energy. If you already have a group of companies that are really good at doing that, why would we need the oil and gas companies to do that? It's a little bit of a hard question but I think there are some places where they could find a position like what we just [00:28:00] mentioned the CCS, that's not something that the power companies know how to do. They could work on hydrogen gaseous fuels, right? So not necessarily becoming a power company, but there are certain other things they could do as part of their energy transition plan.

Hill Vaden:
Would they need a government directed mandate to begin doing that? I hadn't really thought about this, but the bureaucracy involved with some of the national companies, does that really inhibit or potentially delay some of the ambition here?

Xizhou Zhou:
I [00:28:30] think it would be really difficult for them to fully go into the power and renewables business. Also, partly they just cannot compete with the incumbents. The power generation business was liberalized about what is it now 20 years ago? So in addition to the five big state on the power companies, they're probably hundreds of smaller power generation companies out there competing, and it's really hard to [00:29:00] see how a big company like a CMTC or Sinopec could really compete with those guys.

I think they'll have to find some other niche area, maybe like electric vehicle charging stations, or renewable gas or CCS along those lines, that they can claim still as part of their traditional oil and gas business, but otherwise for them to get into the power business, there's [00:29:30] just way too many obstacles, both in terms of competition, as well as administrative restrictions.

Breanne Dougherty:
I'm going to ask the... Well, I'm going to be honest. I hope in 2060 that I'm retired. I'm not necessarily having and seeing whether or not everything we said here today on the podcast proved to be true. Let's hope, let's try to think in the next... let's say in the five years, are there things that we could potentially be watching for that [00:30:00] are more tangible than a 2060 type target that we can really expect to see you in the next five years in China? That really is the wheels in motion towards this ultimate goal as an industry or as a financial community, especially that we should be looking for signposts or things that you think are going to see the biggest amount of shift in the nearest amount of time?

Xizhou Zhou:
Right. I think there's one obvious question [00:30:30] that many people are asking, right? It's 40 years from now, is it even meaningful? And the one thing I always remind our friends is that our industry is very capital intensive, partly because our assets have very long lives, right? So a coal fire power plant you build today, could there still be running in 2060. And if you look at some of the existing coal plants in the U.S. they're 50 years old.

What we do today will have an impact [00:31:00] on the 2060 goal. I think the good news is that we're in the year 2020, and this is essentially the very beginning where the tail end of the 13 to five-year plan. Then we have the 14th five-year plan starting next year in 2021, and usually in March there's a national legislative session called the National People's Congress.

And that's when a lot of the [00:31:30] highest level directives or a new legislative sort of initiatives will start to come out and usually there's an energy one. So we probably would look for some signposts after the March sessions and then see where they're headed. What we believe now is that the recent announcement by Xi will definitely change the direction of the fortune's five-year plan towards much more [00:32:00] aggressive climate and the energy transition plans.

So Probably even more scrutiny on new coal-fired power plant built, more scrutiny over anything that will increase the transportation sectors energy, the carbon emissions, because coal burn and transport sector are the two biggest emitting sectors.

Then on the other hand, you could probably see acceleration of the push for new [00:32:30] technologies including renewables, as well as any new mode of transportation or what we call new mobility, right? It could be anything that doesn't emit carbon. People always just think about EBS, but hey, 20 years ago, we have a whole bunch of bicycles in the streets here, right? That's carbon free too.

So there ways where you can connect the existing public transport system with bicycles and really reduce the need for [00:33:00] even personal vehicles. So I think next year in March, we'll probably see some of these high-level signposts coming out, and then they're going to trickle down to different companies, different sectors, and then everybody will be making their own plans for the next five years. This will definitely be a good thing to watch as a direction on how much more aggressive they're going to push energy transition.

Hill Vaden:
But I think this is whether each piece, [00:33:30] it kind of comes out in this over the next five, 10, 15 years is just going to be fascinating to watch, and I understand how some can be skeptical, but China is not short on ambition historically, and has a pretty reliable track record of emitting a lot of that transmission. So this is really in a sense, fantastic to see both from a curiosity perspective and from a climate protection perspective-

Xizhou Zhou:
Most importantly, as soon as the announcement came out, I had a client from DAP sending [00:34:00] a note and just saying that, are all the researchers busy writing yet ? So, I said, yes, we're already giving a report out, and two days later, we had this report out. So they said, there was very timely. Certainly I think for our research consultant companies, we will have to do a lot more to really try to see how this will evolve and many in the industry here really look for us for our advice as well on how they should act in [00:34:30] this new age.

Breanne Dougherty:
Yeah. I think I'll go out and limb here and say that we'll probably have you back in March on the back of the meeting that you just spoke about, because we'll be very interested to stay on top of exactly how things are progressing with respect to this pledge, because it's clearly going to be the space to watch, not just obviously domestically, but the whole world has their eyes on it. I think

Xizhou Zhou:
In a more friendly time zone for me too.

Breanne Dougherty:
Yeah, exactly we'll also get to hear all [00:35:00] about the transition for you into DC and how that's gone and what you think.

Xizhou Zhou:
Absolutely.

Hill Vaden:
Maybe I'll do it in the same office at the same time.

Xizhou Zhou:
That's right.

Breanne Dougherty:
Those are goals helps some day.

That's part of our 40 year pledge as well.

Yeah, is to get back into the office and have some meetings in person. These are things I dream about at this point.

Hill Vaden:
All right. Xizhou, thank you. Breanne, thank you and we will do this again [00:35:30] soon and all of them the same time zone.

Xizhou Zhou:
Okay. That was fun. Thank you for doing this.

Breanne Dougherty:
Yeah, that was really good, really appreciate it.

Speaker 1:
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