Scot Bryson's Orbital Farms: NASA Insights and a Bold Vision for Space and Earth

Scot Bryson's Orbital Farms: NASA Insights and a Bold Vision for Space and Earth

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode 166 of the business development podcast. And today we are chatting with the founder of Orbital Farms, Scot Bryson. This is a man who has spent time with NASA. And one day he might just put a farm on the moon. Stick with us. You are not going to want to miss this episode.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said, Business happens over years and years.

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And you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs, and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business. Brought to you by Capital Business Development. CapitalBD.ca. Let's do it. Welcome to the Business Development Podcast. And now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode 166 of the business development podcast.

And oh boy, do we have an absolutely rockstar expert guest for you today. Today, I am bringing you the founder of Orbital Farms, Scot Bryson. Scot's journey is a testament to the transformative power of grit, vision, and unwavering dedication. Starting from humble beginnings where he honed his work ethic, picking stones and baling hay in farm fields, Scot's path led him through a series of remarkable achievements.

His entrepreneurial spirit ignited at a young age, accumulating in the founding of Stone Canoe, a digital advertising agency that soared from modest origins to become a multi million dollar powerhouse. Under Scot's leadership, Stone Canoe crafted groundbreaking campaigns for prestigious clients, earning acclaim for its innovation, creativity and impact.

Transitioning from the realm of advertising to the forefront of global problem solving, Scot embarked on a new mission with Orbital Farm, a visionary endeavor aimed at addressing some of humanity's most pressing challenges. With a keen understanding of the urgency poised by climate change and food insecurity, Scot spearheads Orbital Farms initiatives to develop a closed loop system capable of producing essential resources like food, medicine, and energy using cutting edge technology.

His commitment to a sustainable future extends beyond the business realm, as evidenced by his involvement in ethical investing, climate resilience initiatives, and advocacy for impactful change. Today, Scot stands at the helm of a movement that transcends borders, industries and conventional boundaries.

With Orbital Farm as his platform, he envisions a world where innovation meets compassion, where space exploration and earthbound challenges intersect seamlessly. Scot's journey is more than a testament to his personal achievements. It's a call to action, a reminder that each of us has the power to shape a better future.

As he continues to chart new frontiers and inspire others to join him, Scot Bryson's legacy will resonate far beyond the confines of our planet Earth. Scot, it's an honor to have you on board.

Scot Bryson: That was epic, Kelly. Thank you so much for that great introduction.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh dude, I was so excited to have this interview with you.

I know since our like first conversation we just clicked immediately and I was like, dude, what you're doing is so flippin cool.

Scot Bryson: Thanks. It is, it is. infinitely fun. Like I, I get up every day and go to bed every night, just excited and interested. And yeah, it is a, it's a fun time to be alive in the world right now.

Kelly Kennedy: Totally. Totally. And as a kid of the nineties, who spent a lot of time playing with model rockets and looking up at space, I love space. I, you know what I mean? I, I didn't spend as much time, you know, in space. In like space camp as, as some other people, but my gosh, like I love aviation. I love space exploration.

I think that frankly humans going to space is like the coolest thing ever. The Saturn five rocket, like the biggest machine ever known to man. And we built it like what, 70 years ago at this point, like. It's, it's unreal. It's unreal. But anyways, huge space nerd. I love space. I love aerospace. I love all things like that.

And so to have you on and your vision and honestly, like your time with NASA, which is also super cool. We'll get into that is just, honestly, it's an honor. It's an honor to have you on.

Scot Bryson: Thanks. Yeah. I mean, it's, to me, space was always this really cool, this, this amazing thing that what an achievement that we've been able to do.

Like, I think. If we think back to humanity and, and what, what we have achieved as a species, just our ability to be able to thrive in there. And we've had astronauts permanently on the international space station for 22, coming on 23 years, continually. And that is the most expensive thing that we've ever built as a species together and like collaborating between all these countries.

And I just, you know, to me, when, when, when I When you, when you're trying to think about inspirational elements, that is the pinnacle of this.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, totally. And like, when you think about it, on Earth, everything is separated by country. But when you're on the, you know, the International Space Station looking down, we're just humanity.

Scot Bryson: Totally. And, and, and, and the, like, the part that actually is really interesting when, and, and, That really draws into even the approach of why I'm working in space and working in that sector is that, you know, it's, it's really the formula one of the sustainability movement, you know, the, the NASA and these extreme environments that, that it takes to operate and the technologies it takes to operate in that, in that space or in space is, you know, That's where creativity really comes.

These constraints for every gram matters. Every watt matters to operate there. Every molecule to reuse really matters. Those, those extreme constraints is really what allows creativity to flow. You, you talked about my, my previous history before all of this work, you know, running an advertising agency, you know, running a consulting business, what you're doing is, is, is you're really diving deep into a business.

You're really understanding what these constraints are and, and you know, if you just start with a blank page with no, no idea or no constraints at all, it's really difficult to, to come up with something. But if, if you're just given a limit and saying, you know. Do something with a red crayon and it has to fit in this box and you put in these elements and constraints.

This is really where start, you can start to make something more beautiful and something interesting. And when we think about how do we influence changing our world to a more sustainable place, tackling climate, tackling energy transition, tackling businesses and supply chains. Like the, the, the problems are so vast and so large that you need to work through inspirational pathways and space really does provide that capability.

And totally it's, it, it, it offers us a capability as a humanity and species to really develop in an unlimited fashion where earth, we are very clearly limited and we're reaching the limits of, of our planetary boundaries of how much we can do. Land we've deforested, how we've dealt with our oceans, how we've dealt with our atmosphere, how we've dealt with our lands.

Right. So the, the, we have hit those limits, but space is just so vast, mind bogglingly vast. And just even within our close proximity. solar system where we have huge capabilities. So to me, that is the exciting pathway for us as a species.

Kelly Kennedy: Totally, totally. And I think like, you know, people hear space and they don't really connect with it because it's so far away, right?

It's like, Oh, you mean like just looking up, but like when you really get down and deep with what space is, it is. It's mind blowing. It really is. It's like, holy crap, we're just this little tiny speck, this little piece of sand in a gigantic galaxy with endless opportunity. And so for me, I agree. I can look up and I can think of, holy crap, we've been on that moon, you know, and all of the engineering and ingenuity and, and bravery.

That frankly went into anybody ever strapping into a rocket and shooting themselves up into space blows my mind. I, I can't imagine what must have been going through their minds the first few times.

Scot Bryson: A little bit of fear, I think. But incredible adrenaline and, and just complete and utter awe. You know, there's something that's called the overview effect.

That that astronauts describe as this moment when they're up there and looking back and down at the earth. And this is, you know, when you're, you know, it's one thing to look at Google earth and Google maps and satellite view and not have, see the borders on the, on, and it's another to look out the window of the international space station and look down and see the earth and you're going around the planet and every 90 minutes, like that's how fast they're, they're traveling.

Wow. And, and, I mean, We say space is far, but it's actually really close. Like they're 500 kilometers, 550 kilometers away. Like we're, we're, we're very short distance between here and there. From, you know, the context of the moon or Mars or anything else. But you know, the, the, the speed at which you travel around the earth and see so much so quickly, it's.

Yeah, it really, it really is an eye opening experience to, to be able to do this. And they say, you know, even the, the commercial launching companies that are like Virgin Galactic and blue origin that, that are launching astronauts into space, really getting that sit, that overview effect being up in space and really have coming back down with a different perspective on what it means to be.

Human and not a Canadian or not an American or not a European, but really human on an, an earthling specifically. So, and I think that's the, that's the world we're in now. And if we need to take that perspective, we need to take that perspective in our businesses. We need to take that perspective in our, in our daily lives.

And, and we have the ability and we have the capability to do that.

Kelly Kennedy: Agreed. Agreed. Yeah. I think like If we had an existential threat, man, could we ever come together as humanity, couldn't we? But it's too bad that that's frankly what it would take.

Scot Bryson: Yeah, you know, we could just, we could just, if there was some sort of existential event that might happen to bring us together and do some, some things that we couldn't have done before, I wonder what that could be.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, hopefully not, not an asteroid or an alien invader who wants to wipe us out.

Scot you know, I want to just get into who you are, man. How did you end up on this path? It's such a cool one. But you know, who was Scot Bryson? You know, 20, 30 years ago.

Scot Bryson: I was the kid in school that asked questions all the time. Was the kid that, you know, was always raising my hand and going to bed.

My, just one more question, mom. Like, how does the, how does the signal go through a wire to come all the way down to the TV and I can watch the Simpsons and my mom being like, Go to bed, Scot. I'm closing the door. Like I was the kid that, you know, was, was in shop class in high school and learning, you know, how to take apart all the dirt bike and my snowmobile and, and tinkering with all those things and really started learning about the Wankel engine.

Bought an arc seven and wanted to take it apart and, and, and bought one that had a blown rotor. And so I had to buy a second one that had been T boned and had a still good engine, but didn't realize it was a fuel injected one and swap the motors out. And, and built a Frankenstein arc seven with a fuel injected from a carbureted.

Oh, it was, it was a nightmare, but I got it working and I built it and I sold it. I broke even on the car. It took me way too long, but yeah. Diving in and understanding, you know, how this, this engineering components technology, how things work that like a deep curiosity. I'm, I'm a kid that grew up in, in the country on a gravel road and and spent my summers and afternoons playing in the, the, the field and out in the forest and in nature and camping and, and backpacking and canoe trips.

And I, I infinite. Capabilities within nature and the, the incredible specialization that's part of it. I really grew up appreciating that part of things, but also this really deep appreciation for technology. My, my, my dad's was a pilot with Air Canada for his career and my mom was a flight attendant. So I grew up and, you know, having the opportunity and fortune of traveling and seeing the world and knowing what else is out there and what other countries look like and what other people are.

And I think that that really set a pretty. Good stage from a worldview perspective you know, realizing how fortunate we really are here in Canada and what capabilities we have and what, what luxuries we've got. You know, it's really an unbelievable from when you dig picture of what the average, you Human life experiences like, and, and I think those things really were part of this.

I graduated at a high school, really being quite divided. I, I, I applied for to Coventry university for transportation design and engineering. I loved physics. Physics was one of my top marks in school. I really, you know, love fluid dynamics and I loved understanding how things worked. But I also really liked art and design and I had my other top marks were, were in, in, in my design courses.

And, and, and I really felt designed divided between these two different worlds. And I had taken some marketing courses and I had known somebody in it through my family. My, my grandmother's friend's son ran an advertising agency and I went and, and, and did a two day internship with them. And he's like, he's like, come down and I'll throw you in a bunch of departments.

So he threw me in with the producers and then he threw me in with the creative department and I spent the day brainstorming ideas on how to advertise Canadian tourism to American tourists. And I was just like blown away that that was a job that you could just sit down and come up with ideas for as a job.

And I, that, and so I. Relentlessly pursued that and got my degree in this and and, and that was really exciting. And what my degree was really around was in social psychology, consumer behavior. It was really a degree focused on ideation and understanding how thinking and how memory functions how our eye sees and processes information.

What behavior change really looks like these elements that you're really important if you're going to go into communication and distilling ideas. And that, that really set me up to work in the advertising world. And then even still then, while I was still in university, I. I, I was working the whole time I worked during the day and I took my courses in the morning and at nighttime.

And, and so I worked full time through school. And I, during the summer, between 3rd and 4th year, I started an advertising agency because there was no one that could figure out what to do online. We were doing all the storytelling in TV and radio and print and at a home. And no one really knew what to do with digital video.

No one really knew how to storytell online. And I figured out how to. Okay. Code and action script too. And I figured out how to, what flash was and how to make banners and how to make websites and how to make little apps. And we worked with some of the first smartphones to like the first Motorola phone that could record video.

I had to like help write a Kodak so we could edit it and near at the time, like that, these things just didn't exist in the internet. Like this was 2005, the like. YouTube didn't was the same year as it was founded. So it was like the digital timestamp was a very different world. And it just, Figured stuff out faster and it was infinitely cool.

And that really spiraled into a 30 person agency. And, and wow, you know, my, my business partner and I, we've been best friends since we were 12 years old and still are best friends today. We, we, we built this business and, and worked with agencies across the country and then transitioned to being a full agency ourselves and working on, on big multinational brands.

And a lot of the work and the clients that we were doing back then was really focused into the finance world and into the engineering world. And that work really opened my eyes to what. Big capital looks like how, how do multi billion dollar projects get finance? How, how does the billion dollar sustainability fund get get structured?

And so the, the, that really gave me a big lens into the capital side of. How the world works. Some of the other clients that we did work with were in general electric, digital power division. We did some work with, and that really got us, got me into understanding big infrastructure projects are put together.

How do you sell a grid infrastructure project to a grid operator? These are multi-billion dollar, multi-decade long projects. And you know, before this they were selling things with spreadsheets and, and a couple of PDF files and we brought them into helping to. Create a big digital, immersive, interactive experience and really helping to.

Describe and define how do you tell these stories? And that work was also really enlightening because what it really opened my eyes to was, gosh, we have got a lot of really cool technologies that we've, our ability to use hydrogen has been, you know, a hundred plus years. Our ability to capture CO2 and use that has, has also been incr like since, since the early 19 hundreds.

We, we, we've, we've got wind turbine capabilities, we've got hydro dam capabilities, we've got solar farm capabilities. And all of these assets that we could, we can utilize, and we've got huge amounts of money that's looking for places to go. And this was really an eye opening moment for, for, for some of my work that really catalyzed me into starting Orbital Farm and, and my work at Impactful Capital.

Like these, these areas are really important and needed, but the gap isn't that, hey, we We need to invent something brand new. We have a lot of really great things. The gap is we need to be really deploying things at a much faster pace and rate than we are. And that's a business model challenge. And frankly, if you're in business development and if you're in, you know, running a communications firm.

That's what you do. You, you sit with clients, you understand their businesses. You know, we did a lot of work in, in helping business model design frameworks for that. And so the consulting work and this ideation that you really build up those capabilities in that business, it was really well tailored for, for this type of work and deeply understanding a number of core technologies, but then being able to bring the finance layer and the data layer into it was, was really.

I think catalytic. So I think, you know, I clearly didn't design my career pathway to, to get into what I'm doing today. But I mean, I, I think it's very well positioned from, from that standpoint to be able to influence big changes, it sort of takes a bit of this understanding and this wider view instead of what is traditionally done, where you're coming at it from a specific engineering and I'm designing this really cool widget that I think this widget should be everywhere.

And you're trying to sell your one widget. Versus the solution architect, you know, what I'm, what I try to do is I, I'm sort of an architect itself, but for sustainable industrial technologies where you're understanding all the different assets that comes in, come, come into building a building and an architect helps to coordinate between that and the engineering teams and the construction teams and the finance and what that design looks like and create something inspirational.

That is visionary. The same thing needs to be applied to our industrial ecosystems, to our supply chains. And, and that's that's the work that I'm doing today. That really launched me into into doing this. I want to, I want to say one other thing that was also pretty catalytic to, to, to me, making a big career change was, you know, one of the clients that we did work with was the World Health Organization, and we were pitching and doing campaigns for the soliciting donations around Christmas time.

Buy some clumpy nuts for, for some kids or you know, really helps them pull out a bit of starvation or buy a goat for a family. And it really makes a significant impact. And the campaigns traditionally had been around, you know, we lifted X many million people out of hunger, you know, your, your donations really go a long way.

And in 20, 2013, that number wasn't really that impressive, what, what had happened in 2013 compared to 2012. And then in 2014, it was the same, it was flat. And then 2015, it, it went in the opposite direction for the first time in a very long time. And that was a really eye opening moment. I, I, I remember that very clearly, like, this is, this is a problem.

And when you understand. You know what, what's happening in the agriculture sector, what's happening in our food system. And as the climate starts to get warmer, the, the weather gets more volatile. You get rain in more places in some places versus dry spots. And other, you get heavier and larger thunderstorms that the hail is much larger and therefore pretty detrimental to crops.

And when you've got a lot of rain and you're washing off all your fertilizer that you put down, or, or, you know, it's, it's not the. I mean, tornadoes are terrible and hurricanes are awful, but that's not really the thing that disrupts our food systems. The thing that disrupts if you're a farmer is a wet spring that you can't drive your tractor and plant your, like, if you miss the crop planting date, you're not planting that crop.

You're, you're going to move on to the next one. That's the, that's going to be able to go in that in a shorter cycle. And if you miss that planting date, you're going to leave your field follow for the year. And so that's a direct hit on your income, but at a wider level, that's The yield and the production that we're actually able to produce as a food basket of the world, it's a big problem.

So it's these minor fluctuations that, that really drive much larger, bigger problems. And so I really, I really felt like, We need to address this in a different way. Like, we really need to look at, you know, agriculture is the most vulnerable sector and exposed sector to a changing climate. And we have these capabilities of, of producing food in different and alternative ways.

And we have the technologies to transition our energy sector. Agriculture has an opportunity to To sink carbon. Plants use carbon to grow. You know, if we treat the soil properly, if we design systems in ideal ways, like this, we can, we can really move the needle on this and we're not. And we're not for, for a variety of reasons, but that, that piece the work with the World Health Organization really helped catalyze that living in Southern Ontario.

We feel all the climates and as a kid, I still won't be able to high school. Sometimes I couldn't wait till November 1st happened and the trails would open up and I could stop tearing up my parents grass in the front yard and I could, I could go out and like, that was so fun. You can't own a snowmobile around here anymore.

Not that that's a problem. Like, whoa, is me. You can't snowmobile. And I live, I live in Toronto nowadays. So it's not, there's no snowmobiling happening here.

Kelly Kennedy: They frown upon that in Toronto.

Scot Bryson: But you know, the, the point more is like, you really feel it. Like I, I shoveled snow two times. This entire year, two times.

And it was an inch, maybe. Like it's, it is a dramatic difference and I'm 41 this month. Like this is not a long time.

Kelly Kennedy: I would agree completely. We had the weirdest winter here in Alberta. That I can ever remember we basically didn't get snow like it was plus degrees until like past Christmas and I can't even tell you the last time and then it snowed like a handful of times we had about a week of cold like really cold I think it's take hold like minus 30 minus 40 somewhere there for about a week and then it was right back to warming up again we got one really big dump of snow which is like super unusual where like overnight it was like probably two feet which was crazy.

But then it was like, it was it like we skipped winter. You literally skipped winter in Alberta. And I can't even tell you the last time that that's happened. And then obviously last year we had the worst fire season that I can ever remember in history. And it just seemed like fire after fire to fire.

Nobody could breathe. Like you couldn't see west. Like that's how bad it was. There was fires within 100 kilometers of where I was living. Like. We are, you know, there's no question things are changing, whatever you want to say about it. Yep. It is not the same weather it was 20 years ago.

Scot Bryson: Totally. That, and I don't, I don't really care which side of the fence people sit on with, with regards to climate change.

It is, it is different. And we need to prepare our systems. We need to prepare supply chains. We need to prepare ourselves for what this, what different feels like and is going to be. And if we're not doing that, I think we're not doing fiduciary responsibility to our investors. I think that we're not, we're not doing the right thing.

Responsibility to our businesses and our staff and our employees that rely on our businesses to keep going and so have to be complacent to, to these challenges. And we don't have to fall into the, the, the politics of, of, of who is whose fault is it? Who's not. What we need to do is we need to build more sustainable systems and, and that at the core of it is really what's important.

Build more efficient systems, build more sustainable supply chains, build more locally so that you can, you can near source food products all these different components. This is really the core of the opportunity. It's the, it's the opportunity for investors. It's the opportunity for businesses. It's the opportunity for job creation.

It, it, it's regardless of. Of the wider climate change discussion. I clearly believe that the climate is changing and that we have done it, but I don't really care if my customers or my partners do or not. You know, I've I've had conversations with with an investor who doesn't believe that humans cause climate change and we have come to an agreement that.

Is it a bad thing if I use carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to make products? And, and, or is it bad if I, if you make money off of financing a project that, that utilizes CO2 or, or uses hydrogen in its process? And he's of the opinion that, no, that, that I really don't care as long as it's a good investment.

That's all that matters. And I can completely agree with that. And I can perfectly happy to not have the, the bigger, wider debate on what's going on. And he can believe what he wants to believe. But as long as we're, we can align on business goals, that's great.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, the part that scared me in this whole conversation thus far is, like you said, it's not a big change that's going to, like, you don't need a big change to not have a crop for the year.

That part freaks me out because it's like, we live in Alberta, you know, at least I do. You know, we got Saskatchewan next door, like the breadbasket of Canada, right? But like, we, we don't know what it's like to be hungry. Like, let's get real. In Canada, we don't know what it's like to be hungry. That most people have food.

I don't think, I don't think finding food is really our challenge, but I can't imagine how fast things would change if for whatever reason, most of Canada didn't get a crop that year.

Scot Bryson: I, yeah, that, that is a scary, that is a very scary situation. I don't think that we're going to be in that situation foreseeable time frame.

So I don't, yeah, I don't, I don't think that that's going to be the case, but You never know the world always will throw something funny at us, but I don't think we need to prepare for that. It's more like we need to prepare for things changing in unexpected places. The weirdness, right? I think that that captures a big spirit of.

Of, of what's happening and we can prepare for things like this. That's, that's the great thing about when you, when you get past the, the fear mongering, and when you get past the, the, the scary situation of what's going on, you can get into, well, actually this is. This is a bunch of opportunities like we can put solar panels in line with our solar with our food production fields.

You can put the solar panels completely vertical. And so it can capture the morning sun and the afternoon sun and not the daytime sun. And you can still drive your, your tractor through the field. You can still harvest. Yeah, you're losing a little bit of crop, but the yeah. The return that you're getting on leasing the land for generating that energy or investing in just producing the energy and making money off of that, that's consistent revenue.

That's revenue for 20, 30 years of time. That, that is, that is a different revenue stream than you may be used to from harvesting wheat, but it is, it is a valuable thing to diversify your income. And so these systems and approaches then keep more moisture in the soil. They, they help you fertilize less because now you don't have as much runoff.

They help reduce in strong winds and reduce from, from a crop standpoint. If you're having normal solar panels that are just spread out a little bit wider, you can even protect from hail or other more extreme rain events that really may make, may cause other issues. So you, you've really got these beneficial opportunities just in that one piece alone that help to.

Go through our energy transition, produce more sustainable, sustainable food products and produce more income for our farmers and agriculture sector. That's what we need to do at scale across this country and in the places where we do produce food and in the places which are vulnerable to major changes.

You know, we need to put more greenhouses. We have greenhouse capabilities and we've got 4, 000 acres of greenhouses down in Leamington in Ontario, you know, I think the largest under glass area outside of the Netherlands in North America is right here. And, and we have vertical farming capabilities and technologies and they're popping up in these niche places.

You know, the, there, there are opportunities for us to develop more sustainable food system products and, and more energy energy transition assets that really become investable for investors and good practices from our supply chains and from our businesses.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, for sure, for sure. And I think I see the world pivoting that way, right?

Like I do see, and that's a big thing to say for Alberta. Like the fact that Alberta and a lot of companies that I've worked with definitely have They're trying to be more green. They're trying to do more. They're taking, you know, the environment into consideration. Like, Edmonton has been without plastic bags now for a year.

I grew up in Spruce Grove. They've been two years. So, like, things are happening. I think, are they happening? Like, do they all make sense? No. Some things are like, okay, is this really helping? But, I do see people making a conscious effort. I think there are people saying, look, like, we get it. Things are shifting.

I'm seeing a lot more electric cars in Alberta than ever before. Yeah, that is, that's a big shift when you consider that most people here drove four by four pickup trucks.

Scot Bryson: But this, this comes back to the economic decision, right? It, it's so much cheaper to, to charge your car than it is to fill up with, with, with the tank of fuel.

Like that is, that is, it's a big difference from that. And they're really cool. And they're so fast. Like they've done such a good job at creating a really better product than, than we can get with combustion engines. So that, that's, that's great. And that's, that's great. I think, I think that really helps illustrate the point that we can, we can do.

Kelly Kennedy: I do like electric cars. I think, I think they're designed sweet. I think, I think most of them look super cool. I'm a little bit on the edge about it. I'm still one of those guys that drives a 4x4 truck. I drive a 4x4 truck though. I'm in business development. I drive across the country. I go to Calgary and back on a regular basis.

We go up to the mountains on a regular basis. Everywhere is like, 600, a thousand kilometers. And to me, I'm just not ready to make that jump to an electric vehicle. But I think when they get to that point where it's like, yeah, you can go 1600 kilometers between charges. Like to me, then it's like, it's a no brainer.

It covers all my needs, but for now we're not there, but we're getting there one step at a time.

Scot Bryson: Yeah. And that again, you know, from a business development standpoint, that, that is the opportunity. You know, when, when the reason that you say that is because we don't have charging infrastructure that's across the country, that's across the trans Canada country.

Like we don't have that. And infrastructure built in because we haven't invested in it and the, the, the opportunities are there and it's growing, but we're still always stuck in this chicken and egg problem. And whether it's the electric cars and the charging infrastructure, or it's the renewable energy to be able to charge that or it's, or it's the the battery energy storage systems to go alongside manufacturing facilities, you know, that the, these, these technologies that.

Do exist. It's there's not technology risk. It's just are the customers there and, and is the business model or the, the actual flip side is that, yeah, we know the customers are going to be there. It's really the time equation. How fast is that really going to happen? And, and is that really my best place?

If I'm an investor that does care about this is doing a charging station in the middle of Saskatchewan for people that are traveling across the country. Between Alberta and Saskatchewan, is that really the first place I should put my money? And if I've got a few million dollars to make these investments?

No, I'm going to do it in the middle of the city. I don't really care about the people transiting between. I'm going to do it in the places where I know there's going to be a high amount of traffic, and there's going to be a lot of people, and it's going to be a lot of use. And so this is, this is how we optimize our systems in order to advantage a wider, a huge country that we are in.

We need to spread out that benefit across the country. Different places.

Kelly Kennedy: I, I respect your, your opinion on this so much more than other people because you have spent time in marketing, in advertising. You understand that what people are looking for is how do I make money or how do I save money with this?

We got to show people, how do you make money or how do you save money? If the answer is it's for the good of humanity, but you're not going to make money or save money. It's a pretty hard sell.

Scot Bryson: That's a donation. What you're describing is a donation. And if you're going to donate, sure. If it's not, then if we're talking about a business decision, then let's talk a bit of business decision.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, and so I feel like it's one thing for the government to set climate goals and to say we are going to achieve these goals, but unless they put in the infrastructure to show people how they're going to make money or save money, how the hell do they ever expect to accomplish these things or to move the needle at all?

Scot Bryson: Well, we'll double click into that for a second. So what what's important to understand is the government doesn't. Do that the government isn't the one that's that's building the charging infrastructure and the government can support that and they need to support that. And then they are doing that in different ways.

And the projects that I develop aren't charging infrastructure. So this is a little difficult for me. So I may, I may say things incorrect here. So don't don't judge me too much on my, how I'm describing charging infrastructure and what the The specific policies are because I'm not direct. I'm not familiar with them here.

But the, the, the general idea is the government should support the. Ability for private investors to be able to finance these. And so the way they can do that is, is they can de risk investment opportunities. They can say, okay, every 50 kilometers, we want to make sure that we've got one of these, we're going to be the power purchase agreements we'll, we'll, or we will support X number of charges per year or per month in these places, regardless if you get customers there or not.

So it reduces that risk for investors to finance. Putting in the few million dollars it takes to build a charging station. You know, the, the government's role in, in enabling any of these opportunities shouldn't be paying for it. And I don't. Frankly, nobody wants all of their taxes to go and just build a bunch of infrastructure that sits, sits doing nothing.

But if they can be the element that de risks it for other investors to put in capital and, and where normally, if, if that role wasn't there, nothing is going to happen. But if they do come in and de risk these, in these areas that may just not be as attractive, where the return on investment may be 10 years instead of three in a city, they.

The government comes in and provides a subsidy for five years.

Kelly Kennedy: No, I get what you're saying. Yeah, like there needs to be. There needs to be some way to make it more attractive, right? And, and you know what? Like, I would be totally cool if the government came out and said, Hey, Kelly, with all your carbon taxes that you guys are paying, this is what we're doing with them.

This is how we're actually moving the needle. I think the problem is, is that nobody's showing us where any of that money is going. And so, unfortunately, it's created a really bad taste for a lot of people.

Scot Bryson: You know, I think, Where, where this comes into opportunities in, in, in the, you know, not charging infrastructure, but in the hydrogen space, which is where I do spend a lot of time focusing hydrogen, I think, is a, is an amazing molecule to be able to transition a lot of elements from our fertilizer product, we, we reproduce fertilizer to, to energy for, for transportation in, in the heavy trucking industry Like, if you're trying to go long distances to move a lot of things and not have batteries that take up half of your truck, you know, or a third of your truck you, you, you want the ability to be able to use a really.

You want to be, be able to use hydrogen in, in heavy trucking, in trains in boats and in and in medium in short haul planes. Like those, these are the places that we're gonna use that. And we can use it in our food systems as well. Like there, there's fermentation technologies that even use, even use hydrogen itself.

And so I spent a lot of time working and trying to develop hydrogen, hydrogen projects at large industrial scales. Yeah. And the opportunity for big companies. In their transportation infrastructure, this is really where, where the opportunities come in, because, and again, back to how, how do we, how do we talk about sustainable systems?

And really, what is the benefit aside from, is it just a do good for the world thing and feel good about the plants and animals? No, it's, it's sustainable. Different business models that got unlocked with, with these types of systems approaches. And, and if you're not looking at something as just, Hey, I'm just trying to sell this one little widget.

It's how do I create value? How do I make truly make a one plus one equals equals three type of situation. The way you do that in the transportation sector with sustainable energy or renewable energy assets and hydrogen and transportation, it's you, you want to finance a solar project or wind project on on a fixed.

Agreement for the next 25 years. If you can get an agreement that says, I'll sell you electricity for 25 years at this price, it'll go up. You know, the panels are going to degrade half a percent each year. So the price is going to increase, you know, call it 1 percent a year because I'm going to have to pay my employees raises each year.

And there's, there's a few additional costs, but, you know, each year it's going to go up a little bit, but it's predictable for the next 25 years. You're able to fix that cost and have predictability in your business. Okay. As a, as a business operator, having predictability in what a major cost structure is for my business is huge amounts of value.

And, and, and there's, and then from a using that hydrogen or using that energy to produce hydrogen perspective, if now that becomes the fuel that you are using to fill your trucks to move your product from your manufacturing plant to your distribute distribution facilities or to your customers, you know, now what you can do is.

You can lease your truck and you can have a fuel contract with fixed costs over 25 year time periods. The fossil fuel industry doesn't do this. You could never get that predictability. The best you could get would maybe be three years if you were crazy lucky. And that doesn't even happen in the train in the rail sector.

So the opportunity then becomes for the transition and for companies that are taking first mover advantage here is to be able to get secure these contracts With with with fixed costs, and that allows much more predictability in their supply chains and in their cost structure moving forward so that that predictability drives investable opportunities for investors to be able to support it, and it drives predictability into the into your profit and in the future, and in the business models, you're able to develop with the products you're producing, and it creates a competitive advantage for you in a market that that customers and continually multinational firms who have made climate commitments and made net zero commitments and have no idea or understanding of actually how to practically achieve that. And most of their emissions exist in their scope 2 or 3 emissions, which is scope 2 is your energy that you're that you're buying to power your facility scope.

1 is your direct operations scope. 3 is the supply chain that supports the products that you're making. So, you know, again, for back to the context of business development and the opportunities for businesses here, if you've, if you've transitioned your product to becoming more sustainable and have have the ability to move your product from your facility to your customer without a carbon footprint, that will make a major difference in terms of how you can price products on a long term basis, how you can export products into the European market that now have import costs carbon taxes.

So regardless of whatever happens here in Canada, the rest of the world is moving in this direction and we'll be, we'll be applying a carbon tax to your product if you want to sell your product in Europe.

Kelly Kennedy: And even carbon taxes are going to be coming to supply chains as well. Like not just the product, but you know, everything that it took to get it there.

So yeah, we're, we're in for, we're in for a shift, whether we like it or not.

Scot Bryson: But this is, this is, this is the exciting part, I think. And I think that it's these opportunities, it's It's understanding how to identify these opportunities and how to make these things, make them investable, both for businesses to make investments in this, but also outside investors to participate.

I think, I think we're, we're, if you think about how do we make investments and really what makes, what, what. What allows you to have an advantage is predictability that predictability in investment. If, you know, a market is going to continue going and growing and growing, putting an investment in today and taking it out 10 years from now, and, you know, it's going to have a growth rate over that period.

That's a pretty safe investment. So versus trying to play do stock picking on the market that is controlled by so many factors outside of your control and does not follow logic and does not follow good, good business sense. It's controlled by, by high frequency trading systems and people with trillions of dollars just sitting around controlling the market for their own purposes, not for any individual or credited investor here.

And the opportunity here in this space is, is actually. In Canada locally, or even in other places around the world is to really be the catalyst to starting these, these bigger investment opportunities. That was, that's something I want to make sure that, you know, it's very clear in, in executive minds when they're trying to go through these transitions and trying to figure out what to do and don't get lost in the, the politics of it all, you know, bring it back to the practical part of business and how do we, how do you turn what seems like.

You know, Oh, everything is going to get more expensive to, okay, well, what does that translate into opportunities?

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. And entrepreneurs are, are entrepreneurs for a reason. They, they can see these opportunities ahead of the need. And I can see that you're already there. You know, one of the things I wanted to talk about though, Scot, is orbital farm.

Yeah. I want to spend some time on your baby because this thing is freaking amazing. What is an orbital farm?

Good

Scot Bryson: question. So it is an integrated system to be able to support large numbers of people in space. That's the, that's ultimately at the end of my career, what I hope to have achieved. I hope to be able to have a system that 10, 000 people could go and spend a week on the moon.

Like it and, and you would be able to bet your life that's going to work and that you're gonna have enough power. The power's not gonna go out, that you're gonna have enough food and water and, and all the waste is gonna be dealt with and the temperature's gonna be gonna be great and or exactly whatever you want it to be.

You know that that is reliable system to operate and we've tested it and we've integrated all these systems and that it works. We have all of the ingredients to make that happen, and that's possible today. Just to be clear, like we could technically do it. We have just have not done things or integrated things at those scales.

Like that, that work hasn't been done. You know, we have greenhouses, we have hydrogen production, we have thermal management systems, we have water treatment systems, we have fuel cells, we have solar panels, we have all the pieces of a puzzle. So, We've got these, the corners worked out of the puzzle and maybe the outside lines, but the actually filling it in actually figuring out, okay, well, is it dealing with our waste?

Should we be doing anaerobic digestion? Should we be doing plasma gasification? Should we be using a different process to deal with the waste? Should we just dump bags of garbage on the moon? Like. 94 of them right now of diapers and garbage on the moon from the Apollo era. So, you know, that's what we did.

Should we keep doing that and just build a massive trash dump? I don't think we should do that.

But like that, that's what I'm, that's what I'm working to try to achieve. You can't take a straight shot at that because there's too many variables. There's too many unknowns and the amount of capital to be able to make that happen isn't. It is not feasible unless, you know, there's a multibillionaire person listening to this right now that just wants to fund exactly that and wants to allocate billions of dollars towards doing that.

Sure. Something like that could happen, but that's not realistic. It's not a good investment. What a better investment and the approach that we're taking is break that Big challenge down into achievable, small, smaller components, figure out how to integrate some of these systems and do that here. And so this is why I spend my time working on green hydrogen production projects, because we're going to the first economy on the moon is going to be water extraction.

And hydrogen production and oxygen production for fuel. That's what we're going to do from a commercial activity there. And so integrating hydrogen production systems here and renewable energy assets here and water treatment systems here and testing a variety of different approaches and technologies and different ways of doing it in Saskatchewan and in Ontario and in Canada and in the Arizona desert or in a, in a, in a rainforest climate, like.

Taking the variety of different areas and different types of water qualities and different technologies trialing them and then comparing that data set and saying, okay, well, this system, what it integrates with this system works much more efficiently and it's Breaking that super big challenge down into small bite sized pieces and how do you make those into investable projects today that feed into and lay the stepping stones to, to figuring out that bigger problem that we're trying to do.

And so this, this takes us into a variety of different types of projects, and it takes us Working with manufacturing companies, it takes us working with energy companies. It takes us to working with water treatment facilities. It takes us to working with master planners and developers. So, you know, having a conversation with a.

A master community planning, engineering and architecture group where they're planning, they have communities that have 120, 000 residents, but they've got wastewater treatment plants. They've got 5 different grocery stores in their, in their community. They've got. Huge amount of energy needs for those, those people.

Well, how, how do we now build a food production system that could support 10, 000 of those residents and deliver them food boxes or provide food into the grocery stores that, that, that is produced directly there? And so in doing that project company, Now we're creating an investable asset for investors that is, you know, of 50, 100, 150 million dollar scale.

And now we're learning how to integrate a vertical farming system with a water treatment system with a renewable energy project and an energy storage asset. And we're learning how to combine those systems together and evaluate those technologies to, to, to work in that bigger context. And so that.

That extreme challenge and engineering component of my work in space sort of drives the infrastructure selection and the technologies that we work on some of the, some of the pieces that I, I continue to do in the space environment in the space domain is, which is still a really super fun part of my, my work and You know, I, I get to, to help evaluate different proposals and different ideas and help provide suggestions.

I've been a coauthor and in a, in a large book that's going to be published later this year with, with a number of different, you know, specialists in, in this field that are NASA scientists and, and from other space agencies as well, contributing towards this work is, it is incredibly rewarding, but it also really helps work at that bleeding edge of what, The technological capabilities are something that would never be feasible or we'd never explore or be very difficult to find an investor to support something like this here on earth.

Just maybe nowhere near cost competitive to do, but in that environment or domain, you really can, can, can explore these ideas. You know, But it leads to innovation. It is what led to using LED lights to grow plants. It was a NASA researcher and scientist that was like, well, we can, we've, we're doing this with fluorescent lights.

They've, they've created these new like Silicon things that these light emitting diodes. What I wonder if we could, Choose a couple of them and find the right, the spectrum here that the plants are going to need. And maybe we could do this with these that are much smaller and much use much less like electricity.

And that work, that research work is what birthed our the, the capability of using led lights to be able to grow, grow plants.

Kelly Kennedy: And my fiance got one of those for Christmas a couple of years ago. We have one in the house.

Scot Bryson: I mean, and it, and it, and it's amazing.

Like changed the way that we look and how the types of food products and it, it will have a major impact in our food production systems.

So, you know, that's, that is just a very simple example. Solar panels is another really good one too, right? Like the developing those, the capability of producing the most amount of energy in a small footprint. Yeah, that's, that's another. And so there's so many of those in, in, in each of these different sectors that are really.

Really push the needle forward.

Kelly Kennedy: So, just so that we can be clear, because I know the listeners are hearing this and they're saying, okay, like, we get it, like, it's a bunch of systems put together. But ultimately, and correct me if I'm wrong, Scot, but what you're talking about is essentially creating a circular farm where everything Everything is self sustaining, basically, like once it's all hooked up, it's a self sustaining system that you can put anywhere on Earth.

You could grow this thing in a desert, you could grow it on the moon, you could grow it, you know, like you said, in Antarctica, or like, but it, it can create its own ecosystem, essentially.

Scot Bryson: We have to do that. So to go and live on Mars. You have to be, that is the, that is the threshold of what you either, you either need to bring all of your food with you and bring all of your waste back, or you have to be able to produce all of those products if you want to stay for long periods of time.

And so it, you, the, the time that it takes to get to and from Mars, for example that just. How are planets align? It's going to be 2. 5 years of time between here and back a little more than 2. 5 years to go here and there and back. And you're going to be you're going to be on that on the surface for for a significant amount of that time.

If you miss that. Orbital alignment. You may be there for you may be there twice as long. And so I think that what we need to design our systems that can survive for six years and produce enough food to support 200 astronauts because the Elon and SpaceX are designing Starship to be able to support 100 humans to get to Mars.

If you land 100 humans on Mars and they survive and land there and thrive for a couple of years, and then the fuel production depot breaks at some point, they're able to fix it, but they miss the launch window to come back. And that breakage happens after they've launched the next crude coming forward.

You're not going to have 200 people that you've got to be able to support cause they're going to be stuck on that surface. You've got to have the capability of supporting 200 people for six years of time that you're betting on. Every 1 of their lives that it's going to keep working, and so it has to be the self sustaining system.

Wow. On Earth here, we don't, on Earth here, like, we don't need to have something perfectly closed. It's not, that's not the engineered requirement. You know, Biosphere 2 is a facility down down in In the US that was built in the late 80s to try to replicate all the Earth's ecosystems and their idea was okay.

Well, if we bring in a desert environment and an oceans environment and a rainforest environment, and we bring all these environments in and put them under under glass and keep all of the air molecules locked in and and and put a steel floor underneath. So nothing goes in or out. This is this is the system that we need to do to bring to Mars and and it's really complex and it's really hard.

And they didn't get enough protein and they didn't account for the, the, the carbon dioxide emissions from the from the concrete that, that was we're admitting, and that they didn't account for the social dynamics of the people that they locked in there for That self lock themselves in there for a couple of years.

And so, you know, it demonstrated many of the problems with it. And so the types of systems that I'm trying to do here are not that. I'm not trying to build perfectly closed domes and closed ecosystems here on earth many different times. Doing that for research purposes is great. And that, that is what our space agencies need to fund and finance.

And we need to do that in many different places and communities from a University and from a space agencies perspective, but from a, that, that is a rounding air in, in, in the work that we're trying to do. The work that we're trying to do is have the more open systems and take smaller components of those pieces, but thoughtfully collect the data to be able to eventually build a much larger, big closed ecosystem that people could be around.

Kelly Kennedy: And obviously like. The space side of this is so cool, but there's so many applications right here at home that we need this for. I know one of the things that you're passionate about is is, is helping, you know, hungry people is trying to kind of solve those challenges. And I know when we got into that conversation about, about hunger.

And how it happens around the world, you really opened my eyes and said, Kelly, like on the TV, you know, I guess as a kid, we looked at really go. These people are starving all the time. They're not starving all the time. You said hunger is not a 365 day problem. It's like a 90 day problem. It's like a three month problem.

But that three months kills a lot of people.

Scot Bryson: Yeah, so, so thank you. Hunger, hunger is a complex issue. I don't want to, I don't want to paint myself as a, as, you know, washing over it. Like it's an easy problem. It's not. And there are, there are millions of people that die every year from, from it. There are children that, that are dying and wasting away and will never be able to grow to their full self because of, because of the malnourishment that they're, that they're exposed to.

Hunger is driven at the core of hunger. It's a, it's a money problem, right? They have no, Elon Musk isn't going to starve anywhere on the planet and frankly off the planet. The ability to be able to access enough money or earn enough money and have enough money to be able to buy the food is the core of the problem.

Conflict is, and wars and refugees are in a 365 day food problem. Their supply chains are Disrupted or cut off they, they, they, or they've been completely displaced from where, where they are and have an inability to be able to produce revenue or produce food or even access supply chains of, of food.

So there are millions maybe hundreds of, I don't know, I don't know how many refugees there are in the world, but there are tens to maybe hundreds of millions of people that are in that situation. And sadly we are going to have many more people that fall into that camp. So that part is, is a bigger problem.

The, the large part of the, the people that are food insecure have no ability to access income when it's the rainy season and they can't produce any, any, anything they, they, when it's a drought situation and there's no water for their crops to grow or their, their crops do their crops die. Like this, this Part is, is really the, the key part where it's a really big, big problem.

And so, and I think that the challenges and my work and the technologies that we're trying to develop here, what we're ultimately doing is building a vertically integrated system where we convert energy into food. And it costs a lot of money to build the assets to make that happen. It's, it's a big upfront cost to build all the solar panels, but those solar panels are going to generate power for the next 25, 30 years.

And they're going to have a warranty that says they're going to even do that. A greenhouse, you build a greenhouse, it's going to sit there and it's going to keep producing food as long as you're managing it properly. And as long as you're running it as long as you've got water to put into it and recycle and reuse that water.

That's. That's going to continue to produce food in a pretty efficient and a pretty consistent basis. You can use biotechnologies to be able to produce proteins that can be the protein components to make, to, to, to, to make food products from that. You can have it produce vitamins and nutrients and carbohydrates in, in the same type of process in ways.

And essentially you're converting A supply chain that is predictable and consistent and is produced irrespective of a changing climate. And those technologies and systems are the things that if you convert those into food, you can start building those in places where they do struggle with, with, with water and they do struggle with, with resources.

But. You know, in a place where there's a ton of sun, it's still producing a lot of energy for for producing food products. And so these areas and changing where we can build and develop industrial systems to make and produce products, that's really, you know, that's really what I think is going to shift and change the ability for people to make income in some of these areas that are really stricken and with, with, with really big problems that stem from an inability to make money.

I think something that's important to illustrate or at least understand is as a species, what we've done over. You know, as, as we've grown, we, we optimize to low energy solutions and, and that was treats and we, we, we used to be trees. And then, then it, then it was whales. You know, we use whale oil for, for a lot, for, for, for, for producing products.

And then we figured out we could use oil from the ground. And, and then we figured out, Oh, there's natural gas that's in there. And then nuclear energy and wind power and solar power. And what ultimately at the end of the day, we have organized our societies around what that low cost energy system is the new low cost energy system is the intersection of where solar resources exist and when resources exist, where those two overlap.

This is the lowest form of electricity costs that you can access, and those places are going to be the new map of where it will be the most. Economically efficient to produce and manufacture a lot of products and that those areas have been very forgotten areas on the planet. And, and those really are today.

You're seeing big wind farms like look, look, look through West Texas. Like it was. It was nothing really there. Now there's a whole bunch of wind resources that have been built. And even there in Alberta, like there's, there's a whole bunch of solar resources that have been built and there was just, there was just farms there before that now the ability for us to Generate more energy and resources and produce products from that low cost energy.

That's really what's going to advantage things. And then when you take that in the context of sub Saharan Africa and look at a country like Namibia, Namibia is a country of 2 million people, but they've got some of the best solar resources on the planet, like the sun shines and the number of hours that it shines there.

And it is, is one of the greatest places on the planet and it's got a huge shipping port. So you can move products from there to a bunch of different places. It's a stable country. It's got good infrastructure that's been built up. It's also got a big hunger problem. It's got a big energy problem. And so these become now interesting investment opportunities to be able to build manufacturing facilities and projects there, export products into other countries, develop.

Jobs, job creation, wealth generation in a now in a country that otherwise would have nothing and would be in a worse situation in a warming world. Now that now we've got an opportunity to really leverage that low cost electricity to make and manufacture products in those places. And that's the big mind shift that that we go through.

And if we do that and advantage it to produce food products that that can be supplied into a local market that you can now produce the lowest for cost form of food right there. To a population of people that don't have that opportunity. That's where I think we can make really big shifts and changes in how we develop these systems and how we support people that need support.

And how we use some of our advanced technologies in places that it's going to be good for investment. It's going to be good for development. It's going to be good for, for, for people in poverty.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, for sure. Like that's, you're absolutely right. It's like, I see that. And then I question, because like you said, we've had these technologies a long time and yet, you know, that country still doesn't have solar panels all through it.

Right. What is it going to take? Like what has to happen before we're going to say, okay, like Their problem is they don't have enough energy and that's leading to poverty. Who, who's going to step up and fix it, right? Because if we haven't done it now and we could have done it the whole time, heck, maybe we could say we could have done it for the last 20 years, but we didn't.

What does it take to make, to make that shift?

Scot Bryson: Well, so, so the, the big change that's happened in the last 10 years has been the tipping point of renewable energies. Going below the cost of natural gas production. So generally natural gas production somewhere around, you know, 5 or 6 cents a kilowatt hour in in in today's prices in North America.

That's sort of what you see, you know, once you've built a facility, the incremental costs somewhere 3 and a half cents a kilowatt hour for 4 cents a kilowatt hour pricing you know, today. In large renewable energy projects that are in in the U. S. I'm not as familiar and in the mid part of of Canada and Alberta specifically, but certainly larger projects in the U.

S. there are big projects that that were financed and doing. Under 3 cents a kilowatt hour pricing for, for multiple hundreds of megawatt scale projects. And Namibia specifically also has that opportunity. The thing that that it takes, you know, the reason why that hasn't happened to date is because it all stems from the customer back to.

Back to business development 101, who's the customer? How reliable is that customer? Can I bank in this, in this case, specifically, can I build a bankable project on that customer being there? And are they going to consume enough power for me? And am I going to rely that they're going to be around for the next 30 years?

That's going to take me to pay off these solar panels in this example, that are they going to be around for the next 30 years? And I can, can I trust that they're going to keep paying their bill for the next 30 years enough that I can convince a big bank? From another country to put money into, into, into this business.

And it's really hard to do that in a place of a country of 2 million people, but it's not so hard to do that in the context of, well, we're going to produce a product and we're going to sell it to people in Europe or produce a product and sell it to people in, in, in, in other countries. And, and we can do it there because.

This is the lowest cost of electricity and we can manufacture those products here. And we using this, the shipping port that's already existing. We can move it to our ports in our places here. I mean, this is, this is global development 101. This is how this is before we were taking advantage of labor. Now we're taking advantage of the energy.

Kelly Kennedy: I see it. Okay. I see it. I see it. It had to come together for me to understand. I get it. They need to be able to sell something to a reliable buyer, right? Correct. I get it. And so really, in a lot of ways, your orbital farm solves that problem,

Scot Bryson: right? It's, it's converting an advantage product, which is something that takes a lot of energy to make into something that, that, that then they could sell to, to an outside market.

And so food, if you, if, if, yeah. If you're going to build a large protein manufacturing facility to build a feed mill to manufacture an aquaculture feed product, that, that is a, that is a good investable opportunity. There's a multi billion dollar market that is growing at like 7, 8 percent per year, and we are We've capped the amount of, of, of ocean fishing that we're trying to, that w we're able to do.

We need to grow it with more. Aquaculture type of systems. We need more food, feed manufacturing facilities for chicken farms, for aquaculture facilities, for pig farms. The, the. The supply chain component and opportunity there is to build and manufacture those products in those, in the places where the lowest form of energy is.

And that, that is a good example of, of a type of business that you could then move a bunch of feed to another country and manufacture it there cheaper than you could.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. Okay. Okay. No, that's awesome, dude. That's so cool. And I know we have like a lot of people listening right now who are like, this is freaking amazing.

How do we help? And so that was one of the things I wanted to kind of put to you was, is there a way that, you know, maybe some of the listeners, maybe some of the investors that are listening right now, could Could potentially help you. And I know that there's kind of rules and restrictions to what type of help you can accept.

But do you want to maybe just go over ways people can help support your initiative?

Scot Bryson: Yeah, you know, I think the first, the first thing that catalyzes any of the projects that we try to try to do is always about the customer who wants. Who wants a sustainable supply chain who wants to improve their, their scope 3 emissions who wants to have price predictability in their products.

So when I sit and talk with with big companies you know, Ideal customers that I work with are are companies that have an official credit rating and, and that that have been around for long enough that that an SMP will rate them and that, you know, I really try to structure and work on large industrial scale project companies.

That's really at the, The where institutional capital can can come in and be the financer to support this this work. I think that's really what's at the end of the day. What's going to move the needle. So companies and people that work at companies that are are in their supply chain and procurement or in the executive position and sustainability that want to design.

Tailored solutions for their specific manufacturing facilities. Those are really fantastic groups to, to work with. So would love anyone to reach out from that standpoint, you know, and and what we do is we go through, we do an assessment we help to understand what components that might be and what products could be manufactured.

Could it be polymers and plastics that that are part of their supply chain? Could it be proteins or alternative proteins that are part of it? Could it be just. Their energy that they're using to power their facilities or or, or, or energy storage alongside their manufacturing facilities to be able to help, you know, improve their resilience in case there are power outages, but also reduce their peak power consumption.

So there, there are lots of really good opportunities from the customer side and the companies and the executives at big companies that want to do this. The reason You know, alternatively, people and sustainability departments and procurement departments are trying to do this on their own. They don't have, they haven't spent a decade of time looking and understanding all the different technologies and options that are available to them.

And that's really where I can come in and provide a lot of value. The, the other groups that, you know, really want, really intersect well with are, are Investors that really want to figure out ways of impacting and, and using their capital towards impact investments. And so, you know, I, I, I've talked with many different investors around the world on, you know, how they could utilize their capital in, in strategies or in investment structures or evaluate a specific technology that they're considering provide a perspective or opinion on that.

I do that work quite often. So those, those are really some of the big, the big areas. I really think, you know, the, the, the part I want to I guess leave a thought with that, that I've, I'm, I'm working on a on a perspective that I'm calling the velocity of impact. When you, when you think about how we use our wealth and how we use our money when we think about if, if, An outcome based approach, if I want to impact hunger, if I want to impact climate, if I want to impact sustainability how you're using and where you're using that capital to make that those, those investments is really important.

The, the, the measure that I would. Suggest that people look at is if I'm making an investment into something, what is, what is the outcome that that is hoping to achieve? So, if I really care about climate and I make an investment, a 1M dollar investment into a climate tech fund, and that investment goes in and it's going to be invested in 20 different companies maybe 10, 10, 20 different companies in that.

So. That's a 100, 000, 50, 000 going into into a number of different companies of them. What's actually going to work well, 90 percent of those companies are going to be pushed to failure and it's really only 10 percent that are really going to drive any, any meaningful amount of success. And so if you look at your initial investment and what is actually going into impacting from a climate perspective, that's truly what you care about.

It's really only 10 percent of your money and investment into the successful companies that are going through that versus an approach where you're catalyzing investing in starting new project companies. So Taking a, a, a big company, a, a data center that wants to ts to procure renewable energy and catalyzing that into an investment, into an investible opportunity and financing, accelerating that happening or, or shutting down a large coal power plant.

And transitioning that into, say, a fertilizer production facility or a, a renewable energy production facility. Transitioning a big asset like that, that level of impact that you can have at that level happens in a way shorter timeframe and also happens at a way bigger scale of impact that you're really having.

And so those, those are the things that I. That goes into go into the thinking on designing different project companies and, and really trying to bring that lens into, you know, how can we drive a lot of impact at really big scales? And how do we turn that into something that yeah, it's good for the climate.

It's good for the, for, for business and good for investors at the same time at that time. At that intersection,

Kelly Kennedy: it's very interesting. I had I had the Georgian Angel Network on a while ago and they were talking about like, obviously, completely different thing. They're talking about startup investment, right?

But they were talking about how part of their new strategy is to do just that. It's to invest in multiple things and the one that wins start to really double down and triple down into that. And this seems like the same kind of idea, just more climate focused.

Scot Bryson: And, and, and I think, you know, that's the stage that we're at in the world where we're at the stage of the, the, the, the get shit done stage and, and we're, we're in the due moment.

And we have, we were in the due moment a long time ago. We just didn't really step up to the plate. I think, I think we're there. I think the market's there. You know, I think, you know, an early leading indicator. If you look at green bonds, green bonds are large debt instruments. Yeah. 200 million, 500 million, 1.

5 billion. These green, green certified bonds, they're getting four to five times over subscription. What that means is that there is, you know, Canada, we issued a green bond two years ago, a year and a bit ago. And I, was it for, was it 5 billion? I think it was a 5 billion deal. I should have Googled this before.

It's. I think it was a $5 billion deal, and I think there was three times over subscription at the end of that. What that means is that there was $15 billion that wanted to come in and finance and, and for green investment opportunities in Canada. Wow. Now we didn't take $15 billion. That's, that's the reality in this, in, in the bond world, is that you, you pull your.

Potential investors together and you negotiate down the interest rate. And so what happens is that the interest rate gets lower and lower. So in Canada's context, it means we, we borrowed a bunch of money at a lower rate because there's a bunch more money than, than was, was available to use. And what this means is that there is a gap in the, the, in the good investable opportunities that are out there, but there's way more money.

In the institutional investors coffers that they want to finance this, but there just aren't enough good investable opportunities and that work to make a good investable opportunity doesn't, you know, you and I concepted a couple. A couple of projects just on this phone call from from charging stations to alternative feed production facility to renewable energy projects.

Concepts are free. You know, those are those are easy to spin out. We can spin out many of them really quickly. The work is doing the engineering study on that. The work is, is, is putting together the land lease, locking down the supply agreement, doing the contract work that takes two to three years. That takes, you know, a few million dollars to build a billion dollar project.

It doesn't take a billion dollars to do that. It takes 10 million. It takes, it doesn't take 10 million at the beginning either. It takes a 50, 000 feasibility study. It takes, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars to, to, to advance that to the next stage. It takes a couple few million dollars into the next stage.

It's really working through the chunks of figuring out the details of taking this conceptual idea and turning it into saying, I know it's going to be 468 million. It's going to take 19 months to complete it. It's going to be this contractor. That's going to do it. It's going to be this, this is the price of the product that we're going to be able to do.

Like those getting to that point, that's the investment decision that, that institutional capital needs to make. But if you can get to that point, if you can advance things to that stage, and you've got a customer that's at the table being like, yep, we want to buy that product, if you build this, we're, we're here, we're at the table.

If you've got those pieces of the puzzle, that's how we get things built really quickly. And that's how you turn millions of dollars into a billion dollar asset. And that's how you do that at multiple different, in multiple different places and scales.

Kelly Kennedy: It's, yeah, it's, it's an exponential value proposition.

I never thought about it that way.

Scot Bryson: But that's, that's what we need to do, right? We, we, like, we're, we're all sitting around and the headlines that we read in the media is like, oh, we're not making change. We're not, we're, we're not making advancements in, in, in climate at a fast enough pace. We need to go 10 times faster.

We need to go 10, 15 times faster than we're going today. The way that you do that is you design business models that support exponential growth and, and that's. At the core of all of my, my work between all of my efforts, that's what I'm, that's what I'm trying to try to deliver.

Kelly Kennedy: That's amazing, Scot. I'm going to leave you there because we love exponential growth on the Business Development Podcast.

That's what we strive for, my friend. It was an absolute honor having you on today. And you know, the things you're working on are world changing, beyond the world changing, and I wish you the greatest of success in all of them, Scot. And it was, like I said, a true honor to have you on the show. Thank you for taking the time to spend with us.

Scot Bryson: Kelly, it's been wonderful to chat with you. I really appreciate your podcast. I really appreciate the work that you're doing. So, thank you for the time and thanks for the space here. Wonderful to chat.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. Until next time. This has been the business development podcast and we will catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the business development podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020. His passion and his specialization Is in customer relationship generation and business development.

The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.