NJIT’s Green Energy and Climate Adaptation Panel

came across. I was doing some research. Uh, and we were doing research and there was something from Accenture that was entitled the end of abundance thinking empty shelves during the pandemic. You think about supply chain problems that we had during the pandemic still do pushback on globalizations going on, higher energy costs, shortages and services and things that we took for granted have resulted in a rethink when it comes to abundance thinking. So this last hour we are

going all in unsustainability. We've got a great panel lined up this afternoon joining us. We've got some Metra who is Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Environmental Science here at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. To his right, we also have a joining us Jonathan Menard, Deputy Director for Research and Chief Research Officer at PPL Princeton and Plasma Physics Lab. That's p p p L three piece and no holding up three fingers there. And we've also got

joining as Dina Prasto's founder of Indigo River. It's an environmental consulting firm. It's good to have you all with us this afternoon. Dina, I want to start with you and just give us big picture here. How you are thinking at Indigo River about um when it comes to energy and climate adaptation? How should we all be thinking

about it? So? I attended n j A t nearly twenty years ago, and if you would have told me I had to I was going to found a company focused on climate adaptation through means of sustainability and resiliency, I would have said, what does that mean? What does that look like? Sorry? Were you even talking about climate resiliency or sustainability twenty years ago? Sustainability, surface level sustainability, absolutely resiliency. No, I didn't quite understand what the difference

was inn in today. I feel like a lot of professionals in in consulting don't know the difference. And all I'll sum it up very briefly to say they're two sides at the same coin. And when we talk about sustainability, we are looking at human kinds impact on the environment, and the flip side of that is when we look at resiliency, we look at the environment's impact on the built world. So I actually in mice practice focus primarily on waterfront infrastructure, and what we look at most often

is the environment's impact on that infrastructure. So I look at resiliency, but it is an inextricably linked to sustainability. Donathan, come on in on this conversation. How do you think about resiliency. I think fusion power fusion energy that we're working at our lab has the potential to provide baseload energy.

One of the challenges we see with some of the renewables or with wind and solar for example, as they can be intermittent, they depend on, you know, the power coming from the sun to blow the wind and solar energy and nuclear power in particular could form a or a source of energy that we need to drive electricity and other other industries that we have they rely on so much so that that's our real role at the Plasma Physical Lab as advancing fusion energy and studying the

plasma physics. That's really good foundation of the energy. So you're using fusion energy as a synonym for nuclear. You're using the terms interchangeably, right it is. So it's funny. I don't know if you guys followed Josh Wolfe on Twitter as a venture capitalist at Lux and he argues that we need to rebrand nuclear power and I call it elemental power because nuclear has this terrible connotation. What do you make of that it has a brand image?

It does? I mean, think about right, you know, you've got Fukushima, You've got three Mile Island here in the US, and then of course Chernobyl in the nineteen eighties, and it's very mature. I was actually trained as a nuclear engineer and got got the bug for fusion looking at some of the waste concerns, safety concerns for fission nuclear power. But nevertheless, the safety issues associated with fission and energy are quite manageable and really is an important source of

energy and electricity. For example, of our electricity in the United States comes from fission power and nuclear energy. Frances Se, South Korea just under. So it's a very important part of the energy portfolio, and I think it's one of the few options we have for a few firm energy uh to really take up the baseload energy that we need in our in our economy and to empower the world. So I'm come on in on this conversation. You're teaching chemistry,

you're teaching environmental science here at NJ. I t how much I mean, let's let's piggyback on what we've been talking about. I am shocked how much we've talked about nuclear energy here because it doesn't come up a lot. Everybody's solar. So we like just closed Indian Point Nuclear Power plant here in the Tristate area. So there's a

perception problem too. I think, yeah, you know, I'm not really an expert in nuclear energy, you know, but talking about the big pitch of sustainability, I think, um, you know, but is it part of that, like do we need to think about it? Is? Oh? Definitely, yeah, definitely, you know, I mean definitely, I mean, you know, if you factor in the safety issues, and if we can really factor in the safety issues, uh, and we can have safety

clear energy. Absolutely yeah, definitely. Well, expand to in terms of your teachings for the students who are here, maybe some of them in this room and in general, when you think about you know, sustainability, when you think about, um, the climate, climate adaptation, where do you go with your students and how do you tell them to think about you know, it's five years from now, ten years and now that we've got to make sure that we can

power the world. Um. You know. For me, sustainability is like you know, they are saying that, you know, think globally, act locally. So sustainability starts from your morning coffee cup, you know, I mean you take by a Starbucks coffee. Do you think how many trees when goes into making you know, all those Starbucks coffees for example, how much water pollution is coming from all those coffee cups? You know, things like that. So then you dig down to every

little thing and seeing you know, what is happening. So for example, let's say hand sanitizer. Right, typical hand sanitizer is about profile alcohol three water. Now, the waste water from the hand sanitizer is seven percent suprofile alcohol. So what do we do with that seven percent is profile alcohol? We mix it with solvents and we burn it. So

so there we produce carbon dioxide. Now, is there a way we can take that seven percent isoprofile alcohol and concertated to So now it's back being a you know, hand sanitize. And that's the kind of thinking we need at a grassroots level. This is what I think, Professor Matter, we're gonna I want to broaden it out to where batteries come into this conversation because I know a lot of your research has to do with increasing the life

of standard household batteries. But I have a personal question first, when are you going to extend the life of those household batteries. I have a three year old and I go through about a dozen double A batteries a week, and it's definitely not sustainable. So so these are the kinds of things we are not thinking about. You know, we keep thinking, I mean, the big picture has to be there, the carbon diox you know, you know, the

climate change, that's all. It has to be there. But at the same time, we have to start thinking at very grassroots level. So for example, in the US, we have we use thirty billion batteries and that's about hundred eighty thousand tons of waste. Does that include car batteries?

To Yeah, that's not that's the whole thing. Okay. Now double A and triple A for example, and the technology is mainly it's alkaline battery, which is like from the nineteen sixties night I think that's when double A alkaline batteries came into pictures. So we said, okay, I mean, you know, there's all this lithium battery work. Can we do something without double A battery? You know, I mean

that's something to think about. Just like you said, you know your house, you're going through, you know, hundreds of these per year, and of the hazardous waste in this country is basically household batteries. You know, we want to think about that. So if we can extend the life of the battery. For example, our research focuses on changing the catolde you know, so that the life of the

battery is three times that a regular alkaline battery. Now you have one of the waste, right, you know, instead of you know, instead of what about a hundred thousand tons, you know, you have thirty thousand tons. You know, at least you've done something, you know, you know those things

like that use rechargeable. We do use rechargeable. Well, you know, tell them we're thinking about waste and you know, forgive me again, I'm going back to I think about at the beginning of my career and going and thinking about yuck a mountain and you know, where do we put the radioactive waste? And you know, visiting a nuclear power plant and seeing the pools where they cool the rods, and you know, and wearing a monitor and realizing that, you know, I could be at risk, Like it really

scared me. I'm going to be quite honest. But how do we be smarter? What's the smart conversation around nuclear that we need to be having, and what do we think about when it comes to the waste, what do we do with it? Yeah, I would say every source of energy has risk associated with a coal for example, you know has in the past release sulfur dioxide and acid rain things like that. Uh, coal to ailings can lead to environmental issues. Burning of fossil fuels clearly has

impacts on on the environment. There's no free lunch in the energy picture, and other countries have have taken on the challenge of storing this waste, and there are new reactor designs that are more efficient a burning up the fuel and producing less waste. But ultimately we think fusion energy could really replace vision energy. It's much more inherently safe, doesn't have the chance of uncontrolled reactions. The fuel is ubiquitous, you can find it in seawater and in the ground.

Lithium and deuterium are are readily available, and it's it's really could be a game changer, we think for for energy production, but it's very technically challenging, and that's why we've been working so long on that technology. Do you know, we got about ninety seconds, Then we're gonna do some

news and then we're gonna come back. But connect coastal resiliency to this, because we think about the idea of waste, we think about climate change and think about the way that burning coal actually contributes to cli to change, and the coastal projects that you've had to do across Manhattan to make sure that well Manhattan doesn't go under water.

So I think the conversation about waste is an incredibly relevant one, and it has to do beyond coastal measures um but certainly how we live our life, and it's certainly where we're spending our money, whether or not it's going into our community, or whether it's going to ron, whether it's it takes five connections with shipping and excess energy and excess waste, or if we can begin to look at more closed loop systems and how we can

reduce waste. And a perfect example of that is nature, and nature does that, it has its systems that if we can imitate nature a bit more in coastal resiliency certainly um but in our daily life and in our practice, so we can figure out ways to eliminate waste and find purposes for every element of our interactions. That's a direction, that's a foot in the right direction. The food industry

says we can do it better. Well are people who are innovators disruptors, and yet it's the Mega food UH participants who seem to have a tougher time with it. Carol mass So along with Tim Stanovik, we're live at New Jersey Institute of Technology, and we are live of course on Bloomberg Radio, on YouTube and on Bloomberg Quicktake, and we're talking all about really going on all in on green energy and climate adaptation and a great panel.

Jonathan Man, our Deputy director for Research and Chief Research Officer at p p p L the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. Also with us is Dina Prastos, founder of Indigo River it's an environmental consulting firm, and Dr Sam Metro, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Environmental Science at n j I T in front of UH students here at n j I T, and I want to ask a question. I was going to go one place, but I'm gonna go

somewhere else. Are we doing better? Dina? When it comes to climate change, sustainability, our impact on the environment, It doesn't feel so, but tell me what you're seeing and what you're hearing. So our awareness is increasing, which is certainly a step in the right direction. We have new we have access to newer technologies where we're able to monitor and set metrics and set goals, and it's very

hard to manage you can't measure. So that is an initial step and so we are certainly doing better, but there's many ways that we can do even better. Jonathan, what do you think. I agree we're increasing our awareness, and I think UH companies are waking up to the need to generate a more sustainable environment and energy systems.

We see it particularly in the investment from the private sector in fusion energy, many billions of dollars aging in the last couple of years, showing interest in that that that needs to grow more to really make fusion and reality. But that is a recognition that this is a potentially very important part of our energy sector. You talk a

little more about that. That's really interesting to me, the fact that private companies would be investing in something that doesn't necessarily have public buy in at this point, if you look at what's been happening across the country. I mean, I'm from the central coast of California. They had to fight to keep Diablo Cana Nuclear Power Plant open. It's the last operating nuclear power plant there. I grew up being, you know, with iodine pills in the cabinet because of

concerns over what happens if it melted down. I do think the public is more are onto the differences between fusion and fission. That fusion is potentially much safer and has doesn't have the long radioactive waste and other another risks. And we need an all the above strategy means certainly solar and wind power essential and other green technologies also, but we need these firm energy sources such as Vision now,

and we want to have fusion replaced that later. I think these private investors see the potential for fusion to really have an impact on the energy economy, and they're also side benefit the investments they get. Other high technologies will on their way to fusion. Professor Mitchell, you know one thing, uh, the conversation around fossil fuels and energy usage and then the pivot to a more sustainable energy future has really changed as a result of the Russian

invasion into Ukraine. And I'm curious about how you bring that into your teachings about the impact that might have on either expediting our move towards alternative energy or does it slow it down down? How do you see it? I think the you know, you saw the food shortage for example, You see the problem with the you know, nuclear reactors being attacked, You see the water infrastructure being attacked.

You know, that makes us aware that how you know, we may have great technology, but we are so reliant on natural resources. You know, which is energy, which is water, and the third is air. You know, UM, I would not. I mean, nobody is talking about the air pollution in um. You know, in Ukraine. But I'm sure it's a huge thing. The water quality, it's a huge thing. So there's a lot of discussion on climate change these days. But the other big problem I see in the world is the

water shortage. You know, uh, you know what is also known as the water draw You know, we are using a lot more water than we are replenishing our you know, our you know, groundwater, rivers and lakes and you know, things like that. You must have seen the drought recently. The Mississippi River is kind of drying up in things like that. So, I mean some of the statistics I have seen, by twenty thirty will have sixty of the water that we need. You know. Again, it's just like

the battery and everything else. You know, you've got to reduce consumption, you know. Do we have a water crisis? I think we do. Yeah. I think the water crisis is much bigger than we think. Uh. And and and it's it's it's not in the conversation right now, but but it is. You know. For example, let's say we use uh you know, um, I forget what the exact number is, like a billion, you know, a ton of pesticide. Where is it all going you know, it's all ending up in our in our waters. You know, a lot

of it is ending up in our water. So even for nuclear energy, you know, the water is going to be a huge issue. For example, cooling towers, right, cooling towers crystal. Yeah, so you are spraying the water to cool your system, and as the water evaporates, you're getting more saline water. What do you do with that? So now that saline water is going to end up in rivers, in the ground, water, in lakes, and how do you deal with that? You know, the desalination of this water

is very difficult. Like seawater is about thirty five ppm, some of the cooling tower waters could be about three or four times that of you know that of you know, the seawater, So it's very very difficult to desalinate. Same with frac water. You know, much of the fracking is done with millions of you know, gallons of water. And for example, some of the frat sites, I mean it varies the plant situation, So some of the frat sites

the water is tentimes saline than that of seawater. You know, how do you what do you do with that water? You know, how do you treat It's pulled out every metal out of the soil that you can think of, so it has every possible contabinants in it. You know. So these are huge problems that you know that we are not really talking as much as we should. Yeah,

it's pretty remarkable. I mean, going back to the California example, I grew up with a drought and even in I believe in Santa Barbara now there is a desalination plant that has been brought back online. And I talked to friends who lived there, and you know, I asked them if they're worried about the water, and they're like, yeah, we got this decail plant. So um. You know you're in you're in a marine architect of the background. As a marine architect, how do you think about the water shortage?

It's something not something that you know, we typically think about in the northeast part of the United States, But as the professor said, it's not something we think about with the Mississippi River either, And that's what we've been talking about over the last week. Well, I quite literally hit home. I live in New York in Rockland County and we experienced to drought in through August and September.

So it absolutely is an issue, whether or not you want to classify it as a crisis, the awareness to understand it as a vulnerability. We're talking about sustainability, the ability to sustain, to sustain what, to sustain life. We need water to live. Um so I identifying it as a vulnerability vulnerability and focusing on it to make sure that that's not something that's lost and that we can continue to replenish our resources and have diverse means of

doing that. What I do wonder, Jonathan, like, is it a case of innovating and disrupting our way out of it? Or is it also a case of us stop buying so much stuff, stop you know, turning off the water, like changing our mindset because not all of this stuff is going to last maybe forever. Certainly, conservation is a big part of it. I mean, if you're seeing that already in the Southwest as certain states or you know, losing their access to water and it's impacting agriculture and

that impacts our food access throughout the country. Not necessarily relevant to our fusion research, but certainly climate change and the long term impacts on water availability is going to impact potentially every country and continent on the planets, so we need to do with it now. Is water though, concerns about what are affecting your research at all or how you're thinking about it? Not really, We have other

supply chain issues. Water New Jersey is actually pretty wet this year, so I think I think we're okay, but not not directly. But there are other issues. But but you know these kinds of energy sources. If you want to do salonization, where is the power going to come from? It could come from solar or even from fusion, or it'll come from the nuclear power plant ninety miles north

of the Decail plant. Right. Hey, forgive me because and I'm not going to throw this question at any one of you in particular because it's a little out of what you study. But we're a business and market show here, and what I find particularly fascinating is that we're not necessarily seeing this type of I don't want to use the word catastrophe, but that's how I think about it.

When I see those pictures of the American West, we're not necessarily seeing that priced into real estate at this point, Like we're not necessarily seeing people say, well, I don't want to move to this house in California, which, by the way, mit surpassed Germany soon as the fourth largest economy in the world, because there's a drought there. Um, feel free anyone to weigh And why is that I want to buy in Iowa because that'll be beachfront property.

So exactly like what's going on here? You laugh? But should we be thinking about this? No? I was just thinking of Elon Musk and his relocation from California to Texas. So some people are leaving California, maybe for tax reasons, right, it made Texas and housing prices, but Texas isn't pretty expensive. Isn't an oasis of um, you know, moisture and water? Right? Uh? Yeah,

it does have its own water challenge. I know personally in people who really appreciated moving to New Jersey to get away from the fires and the droughts who have come to our institution, I think it really is having impact on real people's lives, and it's not fully priced into our economy yet, but it's coming. We did say in the break, we're gonna talk about your work, and so let's go there. So let me start with you, Dina. Talk to us about the work that you guys are

doing when it comes to sustainability, uh, climate adaptation. What are the things that are kind of front and center that people maybe and it's in its early stage, but maybe might be something that's more than norm going forward. Sure, So we we work on projects that range in in what their programmatic uses are. We work on ferry terminals, we work on marinas, we work on sea walls, on bulkheads,

UM and port facilities. And one of the emerging markets that is an experience in New York and the New York Harbor right now is this incentive for offshore wind and the entire pipeline connected to that, so offshore wind ports and marshaling yards and things to get those rigs set up in the next you know, three to five years. And so that is UM a newer typology that we are working on. It's not new. Port facilities have existed, but the mechanics that go into assembling offshore wind turbines

is newer for this locale. So that is something that we are experiencing growing through UM and and setting up the workforce development programs as well for who will be manning these offshore reports and and UM areas offshore Jonathan, offshore wind, how do you think about that in certain terms of solving the power crisis? Are complementing what you're doing with fish and infusion. From what I've read, I think it could be very advantageous in parts of the

country where that wind is blowing. Unfortunately, in New Jersey is one of those other areas as well. I think it's an important part of the mix. I think there are challenges with getting the grid systems to work to get the energy from that ocean area back into the state, but I know psn G is doing some work on that area. Jonathan talked to a little bit more too about what you guys are doing at your lab, right,

So what do we do? We take hydrogen and isotopes of it's a regular hydrogen and heavy hydrogen and heat it to amazing temperatures hundred million degree temperatures. And the reason we do that is to give these particles enough energy that they fuse together and then have a nuclear reaction that generates other particles and energy that's more energy

out than we put in by a substantial margin. Or our goals to take that excess energy from equals mc squared and converted into electricity or heat or things that the com power industry. So we've actually made those temperatures, including at our lab at PPL, and any given time when those experiments are running, it's the hottest place on the planet and maybe even in the solar system. So

that has been one of our successes. But we need to learn how to sustain those reactions and drive down the cost of making these fusion conditions, and that's where a lot of our innovations are going into. So what does that timeline look like in terms of driving down costs? Give us some perspective on how much it cost to produce energy like that. Yeah, one of the most important things that's happened in our community in the last years.

There's a White House meeting, a really white initiative or decadal goal of getting fusion more deployed within the world. So we're looking at roughly ten years minimum to get to a system that can produce net electricity. That's really our goal. In increasing the investment to do that and then rolling out after that into theties, we think to try to get it to penetrate into the energy market. That's our goal. One other question, and I want to bring some back in. But are you invited to like

the cop events. Well, you know this this year we were. I didn't go personally, but I know a fusion years you've gone. So it's it's part of the conversation that's going coming, coming in, getting more real. For sure. Some talked to us to about some of the things that you know are really top of mind for you, that you think about, um when it comes to this space. UM. For me, you know, I think sustainability in general is a very important thing. You know, before we had a

sort of technology for profit, technology for business. I think that in the future it should be technology for sustainability, you know, you know, and shareholders are going to buy intonet. I mean that's a that's a different question. Uh So most of my work is focused on sustainability. Battery is one we talked about and that at least that i'd got into the battery, I had the same observation that you had. You know, we're throwing out all these double edge battery is going to be make the life of

the battery. Udge, I'm going to get chargeable rechargeable. The rechargeable has its own issues and anyway, let's not Yeah, so that's So that's one area of you know, that's one area of research that I have. The other I'm interested in is water. You know, um, and I find like and several things about water. Can we take a hazardous waste? You know, the hand sanitizer I was talking

to you about, So what do we do today? For example, pharmaceutical Let's say pharmaceutical you make them with something like ten percent a thile aestate in water and then the whole you know, thing is thrown out, you know. And then I said, there are two ways to treat it. One is you treated as a hazardous waste. The other is you burn it. You mixed with people and burn it. So now you're generating a lot of C two that is unnecessary. So I'm thinking, is there a way I

can recover the thile acetate? So I save C O two and I save thile act you know, what is also known as circular economy. And the other thing is, you know, like the desalination work that I told you about this, you know, the the very fat water for example, very high salinity water, and these are all based on

membrane technology. So basically, if how to define some of a big chunk of my research, it is a membrane technology for sustainability when it comes to water and hazardous waste, you know, So so that you know that's that's the direction I'm going into. So, like I said, it has to be fancy science, you know, to get funded these days, but at the same time, it can be geared towards sustainability.

What would make you know, when it comes to the move towards sustainability in a greener world, what what would make it move faster? At this point, like you know, we come at it from certainly a public market space, and you know, if there's money to be made, investment

dollars will flow there um. And so it's interesting. And the feeling is that when it comes to things like e s g. Environmental, social, you know, and and governance that unless there is a financial metric attached to it, when a company reports it's core, they report you know, results that it's hard to get maybe investors really really excited about it. But I'm just wondering what you think will help you in the work that you're doing, whether

it's governments doing certain things, investors doing certain things. Do you know, do you have some thoughts on that that would help you expedite what you're working on or is it already happening? Sure, I think Um, going back to what I said before about watching where your money goes certainly plays a big part um. And it's it's very hard to argue with capitalist society that values profits, the

financial profits, um. But the conversation that we're having about sustainability is an existential one and its profits don't matter if we don't exist in the future. So it's thinking about descendants. I'm sorry, just say profits don't matter if we don't exist and the right and so this this is an existential crisis, um. And we see what our impacts are doing to the environment and we see that it will not sustain and sustainability is actually a pretty

low bar to set. We're talking about net zero. We should be talking about positive benefiting the world. How are we leaving at right? Better? So what's the way that we can do better? Dina? I mean, does it come down to tax dollars being spent on government programs and then government doling out that money to really accelerate this type of change? I mean, do you need an all

of government approach? So that that certainly plays a part um I think it does come to the mindset of the individual and where they're spending their money um and where they're incentivized to spend it, and how they're taxed on their money. UM. So it can be working down

that way. One thing I do sometimes kind of as a gut check in a reality check is I grew up in Alaska and we would go camping frequently, and it's a news flash every time you go out into the wilderness and you don't have connectivity to power, to running water. We take for granted a lot of what we have and a lot of what society has set up for us to be very easy to access, and as a result, we we take it for granted and

we waste it. Um. So I think if we can all kind of have that cut cut check in reality check of what is our impact, because we might not be thinking that we're leaving a negative impact on this world, but just by participating in much of the way that society has been constructed, we are. Um. So there's there's that kind of removing ourselves from the current system just to see how much we do rely on the systems that have been set up for us and what their

impact is. On the environment. You know, I'm just I've got a pretty good awareness, but yet I still get in my car and fill up my tank and I'm contributing to, you know, the bad part of climate jation. What what else do you guys need in terms of what you're doing that would would help you in the process and maybe expedited. I do think government resources are very important, especially for the basic science and also the technology development to advance tools for sustainability. You know, we

talked about batteries. The lithium batteries in your electric vehicle eventually are going to wear out, so we need to come up with more resilient, longer life batteries. And there's a lot of investment from Department of Energy, which funds most of our research and Natural Science Foundation as well into our and dr It's like that more efficient solar panels, more efficient wind turbines, material science, and for the fusion side, investment both from the public sector and the private sector.

Really the poet isn't it coming in? It's starting to grow in. Other countries are are really investing in it much more heavily than we are. I mean, the US is blessed with quite a bit of its own energy. Many other countries Europe, Japan, and South Korea are not so blessed that way, and they've invested more in some

of these other technologies. Who's who's investing the best right now, arguably Europe and you can see that, yeah, right, I mean, especially with what's going on in in the Ukraine and Germany keeping some of its vision power plants on longer than originally anticipating because of all the pressures on on their energy systems with natural gas, etcetera. So they're the

largest investor, for example, in the Eater experiment. It's the largest fusion experiment under construction in the world in southern France, and that will be the first experiment to down demonstrate that fusion plasmas can self heat and sustain themselves, and that will be a real breakthrough, and we're we're part of that. We provide a key diagnostics for that experiment. For example, give it is there is there a date down the road, Johnathan, that you think that fusion is

more the norm. I think the earliest will see net electric production. This is really the goal of the whole fusion community points to show that we can make net electric power rather than just consume it. It's probably the early thirties and then it'll take off after that, I think in the early to mid But the technological technology development that's needed to make that happen is going to require significant resources, and that's where the money is starting

to flow to with with the private sector. Do we have the students and the education geared in that right direction? I fear not. I fear other countries. For example, China is investing heavily in this. They also need energy resources immense ones and they're producing ten times more STEM students per year than we are. Roughly. Okay, we're getting close to the end of our time, but I want to try to end at least on a positive arc here and talk a little bit about we were not all doomed.

Do you all feel like you're all doomed? What what gives you? Professor? I want to start with you and then we'll get your thoughts, everyone's thoughts, But what gives you hope about? You know, where we can go in the future. Uh. I think we as a human race, we are very intelligent, quite intelligent. You know, we can be foolish, but we're also intelligent. If we may say

so ourselves. Yeah, so I think it's you know, or you know, hardship always gives us lessons, you know, so you know, for you know, I mean, eventually we will know that investments are transient. I've lost maybe a third of my four one key, you know. But but the environment is not transient, you know. I mean it takes

a long time to you know, clean up water here, whatever. Right, So I think it's a matter of time before we you know, really no, we have we become convinced that sustainability is probably should have the highest priority, you know, be even above profit. You know, but would you say about existence? None of this matters, right if we're not around? Sorry, go ahead, Yeah, so you know, so how how do we balance you know, sustainability with business, money, finance and

things like that. And I think some of it is it's all about you know, being very very away. Like I said, it starts with the coffee cup in the morning. You know, there's always this big picture, but it starts, like I said, from the smallest thing. You know, almost anything we do needs energy, pauses water pollution, and causes air pollution. There is nothing out there that does not need these three things. So what is done as a life cycle assessment. You know that awareness is very important.

I don't think there's enough of it is especially there's not enough quantitative data to kind of drive home the message of you know, what is what is the product? And besides plastic it also you know there's a water pollution component. Is the transparency is right? I mean I don't know about you, guys, like I've got a nineteen year old and talk about this. You and I on ERA constantly turning things over and trying to understand what's in it is on websites, buying from things that don't

have as much of a climate impacting it. Come on in Like, I agree, let's end on some positive things. What gives you hope as we talk about this subject our ability to adapt, So even more than our intelligence, it will be our ability to adapt that gives us hope. Um, I mean take a train to Darwin. The species that survives isn't the most intelligent one. It's the one that is able to adapt. So if we can harness our intelligence and focus it on adapting with the changing climate,

that is I think we're real find success. I would also say our values can change. You know, the clean air Act, clean water. When we want something changed for sustainability, we can do it as a species and as a society and intelligence. Yes, but especially for the US innovation, I think it's hard to predict exactly what breakthroughs will happen, but we've so far found a way to keep it all going and I'm very hopeful that that will continue.

Do you have any message for our audience here, UM, I would say, you know the all above strategy on energy and sustainability, and value your environment and make your decisions accordingly and invest accordingly. I think that's very accurate from what we talked about in this panel. I think we need to wrap. I think we do too. We could continue this. Uh, it's such an important subject and I feel like that I there's like all these guests I want to book, I want to talk more about Fusion.

I want to you know, UM, it gives me hope that Jonathan is not glowing from all the work based on with Fusion. That's what gives me hope. No, but it's really interesting because I think part of this problem, you know, here we are at nj I T and it's all about education and really understanding what we're talking about and understanding the impact and understanding how to do things, um really means something significant. Alright, we gotta go, guys. Thank you so much, Thank you so appreciate. I hope

we can continue these conversations in the future. Thank you to everybody in nj i T for having us. Jonathan Nard at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, Dr saw Mitra, Professor of Chemistry and Environmental Science here at n j i T, and of course Dna Prosta, she's founder of Indigo River. Thank you again so much. Um wow, yeah, and a big thank you to everyone who came out and joined us. Really appreciate you taking the time and congratulations on what you're doing here at New Jersey Institute

of Technology. It's good to see everybody, all right. You are listening to Bloomberg Business Week, Carol Master, Tim Stenovic watching us as well on Bloomberg Radio on YouTube on our Bloomberg Quick Take service. Uh checks out at Bloomberg dot Com. A lot going on, this is Bloomberg