Listen: Mingling molecules: RNG wins market share in heavy-duty trucking

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Hill Vaden:
This is Hill Vaden with S&P Global Commodity Insights EnergyCents podcast. And I'm here as usual as always with Sam Humphreys on June 27th, a holiday here in Houston. Happy June 27th, Sam.

Sam Humphreys:
Thanks, Hill. Happy June 27th to you. It's the neatest holiday in the world.

Hill Vaden:
And it's an unofficial holiday. It is-

Sam Humphreys:
You're going to have to explain it because it's nuts.

Hill Vaden:
Today, is the almost 30th. So in 1996, DJ Screw, who is a local hip-hop legend, released a mixtape that he titled June 27th because he named all of his mixtapes the day they were produced. And it was the most popular mixtape in Houston forever. It's a 35-minute freestyle. You can find it on YouTube. It's recognized all over Houston. It's recognized less outside of Houston, but it is an unofficial Houston holiday.

Sam Humphreys:
Now, do you have the recording as an actual cassette tape from back in the '90s or have you upgraded to Spotify?

Hill Vaden:
I think bits of it are on Spotify. I do not have-

Sam Humphreys:
Oh, it's that niche?

Hill Vaden:
It's that niche. I do not have the tape. I used to have a lot of Grateful Dead and Fish tapes, but they've all... I don't have anywhere to play them anymore.

Sam Humphreys:
Oh, what a shame.

Hill Vaden:
And VCR tapes. So we just finished a podcast talking about RNG, Renewable Natural Gas or biomethane for those of you not in the US, with Greg Jeanette and Tom DiChristopher where we were able to combine utility-focused conversation, gas market conversation and transportation engine, CNG transportation. Sam, what do you think?

Sam Humphreys:
I mean, I think the timing was great because my whole family just walked through the door at that point. But that aside, this was a great conversation. So I don't know anything about US trucking. So even from that perspective, it was great. It was interesting to just understand what makeup of the gas infrastructure or gas percentages this is going to be or this is at the moment and could potentially scale up to be in the future, which heads up is not huge at the moment, but that could all change.
It was also interesting to know how states are approaching things in a slightly different way. We mentioned California quite a lot. I say we. Tom and Greg mentioned California a lot and some of the things they're doing in the policies they're implementing and how that compares across the US. So it was really, really interesting. Hill, what about you? What were some things you think people should listen out for?

Hill Vaden:
As you know, Sam, I've developed a fascination with RNG over the past several months, and it's one of these low carbon fuels or clean tech innovations or whatever that is able to use the existing system. And you're seeing so much more take up if we're trying to, the word energy transition is somewhat controversial, but if you're trying to transform the makeup of the current energy mix for a fuel or an electron to be able to use the existing system gives it access to market. And that is such an advantage relative to so many of these other investment opportunities. And RNG is one of those beneficiaries because you just drop it into the pipeline and it can move around just like any other molecule of methane.
So I think the whole thing is an interesting space. It's not going to be huge. We're never going to fill the pipelines with 100% RNG, but it's an interesting play and it's carbon negative, I guess. So in that respect, it's good.

Sam Humphreys:
It is good. We didn't talk about cows nearly enough. Maybe we'll do that another time, but hopefully everyone will enjoy it.

Hill Vaden:
Yes. Enjoy the podcast and perhaps one day we'll be back with cows or a conversation about cows.
Hello and welcome back to EnergyCents, a podcast where we cover all topics that sit on the intersection of energy and finance. This is your host, Hill Vaden, and I'm here as always with my co-host, Sam Humphreys. I'm going to ask you about the Olympics because we got a little bit of time, but we've been watching... My son and I have been watching the qualifiers all weekend long, the track qualifiers. Are you watching any of them? I know you run. Are you paying any attention to it in the UK?

Sam Humphreys:
Well, the Euro is one at the moment, so that is dominating all sports coverage.

Hill Vaden:
But you don't pay attention to soccer, to football?

Sam Humphreys:
No, I don't, but you can't get anything else. But I love the Olympics. So my very first job out of university was working on the London 2012 Olympics. Just on a little backstory. I was an environmental consultant, so I have run on the 100 meter track that the guys ran on. Granted, it's in steel toe cap boots but you get the deal.

Hill Vaden:
What was your time?

Sam Humphreys:
But no, I can't wait. Is it August it kicks off? I can't even remember. End of July, August.

Hill Vaden:
Yeah, I think August. I don't know. I love the Summer Olympics because they're so accessible. If you were going to be an Olympic skier, you need to have access to a lot of money.

Sam Humphreys:
Yes.

Hill Vaden:
Anybody with a pair of shoes or even some people without pairs of shoes can run 100 meters. And so it's-

Sam Humphreys:

Really true.

Hill Vaden:
It's so democratic, which I was going to try to segue into natural gas, but I'm having trouble with that. Let me introduce our experts. So Tom DiChristopher and Greg Genette are here to speak with us today about renewable natural gas or RNG, or if you're outside of the US Biomethane. And Tom is a repeat offender. We did this, what, maybe a year or so ago, two years ago. It was some time ago that we talked about gas bands at the LDC level.

Tom DiChristopher:
Yeah, we did.

Hill Vaden:
But this is Greg's first time and I think you guys just met as we began the recording here. So this will be fresh for all of us. Greg is focused on heavy duty vehicles and so he's going to be talking really from the angle of natural gas use and transportation. And Tom more from the utility side of things. So maybe just to set us up, Tom, we'll start with you. Can you help us to understand the current market for RNG, how it's dropping in? One of the great attractions to RNG as a low carbon fuel is that it uses existing infrastructure and then that seems to be such the game changer for investments in clean tech is when you can use the existing system or low carbon tech, whether that's electrons that are pulling on solar or natural gas pipelines that are using RNG. So can you help us out talking about the US and how RNG is increasingly a part of the story?

Tom DiChristopher:
Yeah. So a lot of the companies I cover, which you mentioned are gas utilities or US gas utilities are really interesting in essentially bringing that RNG to market. So building a pipeline interconnection between an RNG production facility and their pipeline network. As you mentioned, RNG is pretty much chemically the same as the natural gas that we all think of that's drilled from the ground.
It's a low carbon fuel that can just be put in this expansive distribution network that we have built in the United States over decades. So unlike hydrogen where there's thoughts that you need to adapt that network to carry hydrogen, it's a today solution. And the opportunities for gas utilities to interconnect to these facilities is growing because the number of facilities is growing. The last count I saw from the RNG coalition said that there are currently 338 facilities, RNG production facilities in North America.
That's up from about 30 in 2011 and there's currently about 489 facilities that are planned or under construction. Maybe not all of those will get built, but that gives you some sense for the interest in building these facilities. I think one of the main reasons that there's interest in building these facilities is that there's the low carbon fuel standard in California. There's the US renewable fuel standard, and these are markets where you can essentially monetize the environmental benefits of RNG.
So that's creating some pretty rich valuations for these projects. And obviously, for anybody who's not familiar, the environmental benefit of RNG is essentially that you are, rather than allowing organic matter to break down at a farm or a wastewater treatment plant or a landfill and just vent into the atmosphere, you are taking that organic material, putting it in a vat, breaking it down through a process called anaerobic digestion, capturing that cast and putting it to use.
So rather than letting it just vent in the atmosphere, and as we all know, methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas over the short term than carbon dioxide. So yes, when you burn that gas, that RNG, you are putting carbon dioxide into the air, but you are also avoiding those really potent short-term methane greenhouse gas emissions.

Sam Humphreys:
So you talked then very briefly about the sort of sources of this new bioelectric gas. Now, is there a reference on source at the moment, whether it's waste treatment plants, landfill sites, or agricultural waste, I suppose. And if so, which way is it leaning and why. Why would one be preferred over the other?

Tom DiChristopher:
Yeah. It depends on who you are and what your purposes are. I've heard some of my gas utilities say we would prefer to invest in landfill gas production facilities because you can get a lot of scale there and the costs are a little bit lower. This is something that Greg might know a bit about. I know that in the low carbon fuel standard, dairy RNG is very richly valued in that California market. It's very carbon negative. So that creates sort of an incentive to build dairy farm projects because you know that the credits that are linked to the environmental benefits of that facility are going to be really richly valued in that market. And that's a market that's built around essentially reducing the carbon intensity of California's transportation sector.

Hill Vaden:
Let's bring Greg in on that. So part of the attraction to RNG is its use in transportation, and there's a couple things that have happened, a couple pieces of innovation. One of them is a CNG, a compressed natural gas engine released by Cummins within the past two years, maybe a year or so ago. Can you talk a little bit both addressing some of Tom's considerations related to the California transportation priorities, but as well as the coincidental timing of some of these activities from the heavy trucking side?

Greg Genette:
Yeah, thanks. I think so starting with the new Cummins engine, they're actually launching a 15 liter natural gas engine, which is actually the first time that they're launching an engine larger than 4.9 liter, 8.9 liter, whatever they've had in the past. So it's really, they have a lot of expectation for this. And sort of the game-changer or the potential more optimistic view on this would be that they've said that they've obviously put all the learnings in from their 12-liter into the 15-liter.
It actually has a 10% fuel economy improvement compared to other natural gas engines, which as you know is very important for trucking. It's a low margin of business that any sort of improvement on fuel efficiency is going to be very important. What they're claiming and what we'll hopefully get to see as this engine launches with fleets on a more wide scale is that they're saying that for the first time a natural gas engine will have diesel like performance torque power and things like that.
So moving away from the engineering side, from a market side, this really opens up the market for new segments. So in trucking, there's so many different end segments. You have your garbage truck, your refutes, long haul, regional haul, there's all these sorts of applications that trucks be used for. And if a natural gas engine can only be used for certain vocations or segments, which we might talk about later, if you open that up for more long haul, regional haul, that's where we can see some market growth.
And I think my expertise is really in the United States, but this as actually happened before, just so we can have a historical point of reference. In China, we did see some market growth as they launched some heavier or larger displacement natural gas engines. So it's really a combination of a lot of things, but it definitely could boost the market in terms of natural gas moving forward. Among other things like regulations and things like that.

Sam Humphreys:
Well, we're looking at renewable natural gas. Is there a price difference in fuel? So is it cheaper to use renewable natural gas in trucking compared to traditional diesel or is it too early to say?

Greg Genette:
So total cost of ownership is a metric used throughout trucking. So what we model and we're forecasting is purchase costs, everything, owning and operating the vehicle and things like that. So I think the question is right on in terms of looking at the market balance. Natural gas trucks are a bit more expensive than the diesel counterpart and depending on maybe Tom or one of you guys might know this better, depending on the cost of natural gas from the pump is going to impact obviously the total cost of ownership over time.
So we do see a bit of a premium just based on the purchase costs and other things compared to a diesel. However, as Tom alluded to as well, the benefits really in the reduced emissions, especially in this timeframe right now in the US, the regulatory roadmap is getting very stringent, let's say by the end of the decade. So that could potentially outweigh things. One last thing I want to point out is diesel truck is very highly regulated, but we see big cost increases for a diesel engine in 2027, 2028 timeframe, and that can balance it compared to a natural gas engine.

Sam Humphreys:
One thing I wanted to ask, in the UK, diesel engines are being taxed or levied higher than petrol at the moment. And so in all our clean air and emission zones, there is an additional fee that people have to pay to go into those if they're driving a diesel engine. Is it the same in the US? This is just a really selfish personal question so I can get a handle on this.

Greg Genette:
Fair. Right now there's no sort of zones, low emission zones. I think I actually have an article up on my screen. I think New York was looking at that, but maybe backing off. But what there is, as California and some other states have signed on for what they're calling advanced clean trucks, it's basically mandating OEMs to sell an increasing amount of zero emission vehicles. So that's as far as we go in terms of actually mandating certain things and as far as taxing you.

Hill Vaden:
Tom, can you maybe talk about some of the policy side of this? So LCFS, the low carbon fuel standard helps to, I suppose, keep the price of renewable natural gas competitive diesel for sure. But with traditional methane, maybe not so much. And it's in our grid, so it's going to be hitting our homes. But it seems to be more of an optimal application within transportation necessarily than home heating. Is that the right way to look at things?

Tom DiChristopher:
Yeah. It's actually, I guess tremendously complicated is one way to put it. So what happens is essentially when you're producing RNG, you're producing two things, right? You're producing a physical gas that very often what happens is, like I said, "You build an interconnection to a distribution system and it goes and it gets blended in with that fossil gas or geological gas." And then it just gets used. But you're also producing what's called an environmental attribute.
And as I mentioned, that's a fancy way of saying it's the environmental benefit of RNG. It's the avoided emissions. And so when you produce that environmental attribute, that turns into a credit that you can basically cash in, in these markets. So the LCFS that you mentioned, it's very similar to the US renewable fuel standard where you've got obligated parties, people who create fuels, and you can drive down your... In LCFS, it's the carbon intensity of your fuel by either reducing low carbon fuels or by purchasing these credits that are tied to the renewable attributes.
So essentially what the low carbon fuel standard is doing is if I am a transportation fuel supplier selling into the California market, I'm able to comply with this regulatory mechanism by buying a credit high to the environmental attributes of RNG. Now, that RNG may have been produced from a dairy farm in Iowa and the physical gas gets consumed close to that RNG facility.
So we have to really think about this as splitting. There's the physical gas that gets consumed probably in a gas distribution system where the fuel is produced and then there's the credit, and that's how it helps California fuel suppliers to reduce their carbon intensity and to basically help California decarbonize its transportation sector. Because the idea here is that we all share a climate, so reducing those methane emissions in Iowa helps California, right? Because methane emissions don't know borders, right? So that's how this all works.

Sam Humphreys:
You mentioned California a couple of times. Are there any states that are further advanced in implementing RNG where there's more facilities and there's more of a rollout and is that California?

Tom DiChristopher:
So there's a few things that have happened. So one of my colleagues over at Regulatory Research Associates has actually tracked which states have regulatory mechanisms to facilitate RNG development or use of RNG. So one of the laws that's really this treasured law that hook has utilities want to have originated in Oregon, and it basically allows Oregon gas utilities to rate base investments in RNG or purchases of RNG.
And for people who aren't familiar with gas utility regulation, rate basing is just passing on the cost of an investment to your rate payers. So basically you are allowed to purchase RNG as part of your fuel supply that goes to your customers and you're able to pass on that cost to your rate payers. That's something that we're starting to see in other states. Virginia has a policy like that and you're not only allowed to rate base the investment in the RNG infrastructure, which supports the whole RNG market, but you're also allowed to get a 100 basis point bonus on your return on equity for any of those investments.
So it really encourages building RNG interconnections to get that RNG to market. California has actually another program that's very unique and is completely... Just to confuse people further, is completely separate from the CFS. Back in 2022, they finalized some regulations that actually require gas utilities to purchase RNG or biomethane as part of their gas supply. So they have an annual amount that they have to purchase by 2030 in it. And essentially as it's calculated right now, it's about 12% of their gas supply for their core customers.
So they are actually required to purchase RNG and that helps California with some of its other linked environmental goals as well. So we're seeing a growing network of policies in different places to allow gas utilities to invest in those connections that bring RNG to market supports the whole market. But there is still, I think, skepticism because RNG does trade at a premium, the natural gas. And there's concerns that, "Well, if something bad happens with the LCFS market," then where does that leave us? Where does it leave this policy? Does it leave ratepayers on the hook for high cost RNG? So people, they're exploring it, but they're sitting with caution.

Hill Vaden:
Greg, can you talk a little bit about infrastructure around RNG? One of the constant complaints or concerns that one hears about electric vehicles is that the charging stations aren't close to the highway. You've got to pull into an airport and charge there. You got to pull into an Ikea and charge there. There aren't enough of them. And so people have range anxiety. One of the attractions that I understand with RNG, particularly in commercial use is all these trucks drive the same freeways every day and it's a line from Jacksonville to LA. It's a line from LA back to Jacksonville or whatever the road that you happen to be on.
So it's a little bit easier to predict the refueling habits of it. I've also heard that the duration, the range anxiety isn't truckers have to stop to use the restroom. And so they're going to stop regardless, and it's easy enough to fill up as long as the CNG or the gas system is there. Is that infrastructure being built out? Do range anxiety problems or concerns exist within commercial trucking?

Greg Genette:
Yes, absolutely. So I'll first start with the range anxiety question and then go to the infrastructure. So we're not only talking about range anxiety rate, we're also talking about time to charge the truck. So these trucks have massive batteries compared to light vehicles, and you would need a megawatt charger to even get close to 30, 40 minutes. So the time it takes to charge is really key to the operations. You're paying a driver. So that's very important.
So range, costs and time, if we compare it to natural gas. And then also according to the DOE, alternative fuels data center, there's about 800 natural gas stations in the US. Now, I think we'll just use that as a benchmark. It's going to be tough to say if a 80,000-pound class A truck can get in that station without looking at all of them, but there's definitely more natural gas stations available for trucking versus battery electric charging stations.
And that's I think one of my key points as well is that the electrification ecosystem isn't developing as much as we thought maybe 24 months ago in this trucking market, which is another upside for natural gas because we have lower emissions and things like that. So that's a key point I think the listeners should take away. And then also to answer your question regarding the infrastructure of natural gas, I think you make a good point on the routes because where we see a lot of natural gas today is in things like buses a bit.
We see it in refuge or sanitation and both of those vocations or segments I want to highlight have very predictable routes. And the fleet can obviously set up their own refueling, whether that's public stations, like I mentioned, 800 or if it's their own private station. If you have a garbage truck doing the same route every day or every week exactly when you can refill, exactly when you can put the refueling station and things like that.
And that is a plus for electrification as well. But then you get into the cost and the charging time and things like that. So definitely comparing it to electrification is something we can draw for the future.

Sam Humphreys:
So just on that, going back to my last question on distribution of these fueling stations. You talked about specific routes. I am not from the US. I don't know what Hill was talking about, so I don't know whether that was a hundred miles or a thousand miles. But again, are these fueling stations focused in certain states? And if so, does that impact where trucks are being bought and fleets are being established in certain states? Or is it still kind of, I was going to say universal, but universal to the US? You know what I mean?

Greg Genette:
Yeah. No, I get what you're saying. I mean, I'm not going to say that there's certain states that are leading in the infrastructure. What I can tell you is I've looked up some of the park, or if we call it vehicles in operation. If we look at the total US natural gas vehicles that are currently registered, we have California, we have Indiana, we have Florida, we have Texas, are all leaders.
But it's hard to tell because those are also the leaders in the biggest states with the most trucks. So again, I go back to the actual locations or the segments of where we're really going to pin this down for natural gas. I will say I'll end on the California. I heard Tom mentioned California quite a bit. I am too, because they're obviously more aggressive with some of the regulations regarding trucking as well. So we see a bit of an uptick even so far this year in natural gas registrations there as well.

Hill Vaden:
So, Tom, how big can RNG get? One of the questions, or one of the headaches that people say when need to ask them about RNG is like, "Oh, it's not big enough to be great. We're never going to fill the pipeline, the grid with a bunch of cow produced natural gas." If we were at 0% makeup numbers 10 years ago and we're at... Maybe you have a percentage now if we're at 5% or whatever it is now, do we get to 50% or is there a limit on trash and cow dung that we're only... Even if we do this perfectly, we're only going to get 10% natural gas or whatever the number happens to be? You have any idea?

Tom DiChristopher:
That is the question. There are some serious limitations and they're not just supply limitations. One of the big things that you have to think about is the further an RNG supply facility is from the pipeline system. The more expensive it is to build, the less economic it is. I mean, you already have a situation now where sometimes you will not build an interconnection to the RNG facility.
You'll send in a compressed natural gas truck to fill it up and bring it to a pipeline and stick it in the pipeline at an injection point. So that's one limitation is just that you might just not be close enough to the pipeline to make it economical. There's supply concerns in different states. There's supply opportunities in different states. Do you live in a state that has a really robust agricultural landscape?
Your waste treatment plants tend to be located relatively close within cities. So where you've got big cities with those, that's an opportunity. But yeah, I mean I think most of the gas utilities that I've been following have in general at best about mid-single digit percentage of their gas sales, their gas volumes that are comprised of RNG. I think some of the near-term limits on purchases in that Oregon law that I mentioned are around 3 to 5%.
So I think it's really hard when we go out to the US level and say like, "Hey, what percentage of US gas sales could be RNG?" That's really hard because it really does depend on your state and local conditions. So I think it's valuable to start looking at some of those gas utilities and how much RNG they've managed to include as a percentage of their overall gas sales. And it's still pretty low for most gas utilities.

Hill Vaden:
Is it low like 1% or is it low like 5%?

Tom DiChristopher:
I think low. Well, I mean, a lot of companies are just starting to do this. So for some companies, it is 1%. But for the companies who are more advanced, I think it's more around like three, four, or 5% of their annual gas sales. But I mean, I think the thing you have to remember too is that you get those climate benefits from injecting RNG into the system. You don't actually have to fill your pipeline with 100% RNG, right? Because people will argue about how carbon negative RNG is.
Then people do have very robust debates about that. But at the end of the day, it is greenhouse gas emission negative, right? Because we're capturing that methane that would've gone up in the atmosphere. So we'll have a debate about how carbon negative it is, but at the end of the day, if you can get 20% of your gas volumes as RNG, then that has a pretty big impact on the emissions profile of that gas system.

Sam Humphreys:
All right. Well, looking at the time, Greg, I'm going to come to you first, but we always round off with what we think some things that we should be watching in the next six to 12 months whether it's infrastructure, policy changes or changes in commercial tracking. So I'll let you kick things off and then Tom you can finish off, but what are some things that we should be looking out for?

Greg Genette:
Yeah. So I think I want to divide this into what could be positive. Positive in terms of an increase for natural gas trucks in the US. So we talked about electrification. I think any further sales of electric trucks moving slow infrastructure, things like that. Anything that subdues the electrification outlook could potentially be positive for natural gas trucks in the US. This Cummins 15-liter engine, I think is going to be essential game changer like we talked about.
However, if more OEMs and brands start to offer this truck or this engine, excuse me, because a reminder for those listeners that don't know Cummins is just an engine manufacturer, so these truck OEMs have to offer this engine. That could be a game-changer. And then obviously the cost of natural gas or fueling stations would be a positive outlook as well. Some negative or maybe things that could subdue the forecast to where we have it today is any changes in the regulatory environment.
And maybe the elephant in the room looking at the next six months is obviously the US election. So if we were to get a change in administration in big changes within the regulatory roadmap, that could have an impact on oil, natural gas, but the power chain outlook in general. So I think I'll probably leave it at that and those are some of the main things we're really looking at for the next six to 12 months.

Sam Humphreys:
Awesome. All right. Tom, what about you? What are you thinking?

Tom DiChristopher:
Right. So one thing that comes from one of our colleagues, Erin Tully who puts together our low carbon fuel standard scorecard just told me about, is that the California Air Resources Board is actually considering making some changes to the low carbon fuel standard. That could mean that Dairy RNG is less richly valued. She said that that decision could be happening towards the end of the year. So that's definitely something I think that bears monitoring.
I'm still continuing to track investments in RNG production facilities by gas utilities and their interconnections. I think there was a concern as some of the oil giants started entering the RNG market that would kind of crowd out investment. But gas utilities have said those that are choosing to invest in RNG production facilities, usually it's through an unregulated subsidiary. They've said, "We think we can still invest. We think we can kind of play the data to the Goliath here and invest in certain types of smaller production facilities."
And then I think as a last thing, what I'm watching, and Hill alluded to this at the top of the podcast was, the other big thing that I watch is building electrification policy and gas bands. So in states that are trying to decarbonize, there's not one path to decarbonization. And to what degree does electrification policy crowd out the use of some low carbon fuel? So just as an example in Oregon that has that law that I mentioned that everybody loves and everybody wants to emulate, and every gas utility would love to have that law in their states, a gas utility called Northwest Natural put together a gas supply plan and they really wanted to purchase the maximum amount of RNG that was allowed under this law.
And the regulator said, "Actually, we would prefer that you prioritize building electrification and put the RNG on the back burner. We just think this is more cost-effective." We've seen that in some other places. In New Jersey, some of the utilities there had proposed some low carbon fuel projects, RNG and hydrogen and the state regulator said, "Actually, we're in the middle of a future of gas proceeding where we're exploring the future of natural gas in our state and whether we want to electrify. So just put that on the back burner for the moment and we'll consider that in the future."
So that's a big one we're watching. To what degree does building electrification policy reduce the opportunity for using low carbon fuels like RNG and the gas distribution system as a decarbonization strategy?

Hill Vaden:
I think Tom just set up another podcast now.

Sam Humphreys:
Yeah, I think he did.

Tom DiChristopher:
It's the five-year anniversary of the Berkeley gas ban. So happy to come on and talk about that.

Hill Vaden:
All right. Well, thank you, guys. This has been, I think, fascinating that I've learned more, I mean, from this podcast and then from other conversations with colleagues about cows and all sorts of stuff. There's so much in RNG to unpack. So thanks for the first of what I hope is more than one podcast on the subject.