Jordan Blum, editorial director, Hart Energy: I'm Jordan Blum here at OTC with this Hart Energy LIVE exclusive. I'm joined by Chris Lee, the CEO of Tidal Energy Corp. Now, the name of the company is almost quite literal. We're talking about power generated by the ocean tides. Can you explain the business model and how it works?

Chris Lee, CEO, Tidal Energy Corp.: So, Tidal Energy Corp. is a project development company, and what we're planning on doing is developing the site, which has a FERC [Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] pre-application license in upper Cook Inlet at a site called Turnagain Arm. An NREL [National Renewable Energy Laboratory] study in 2020 predicts that there's 2,300 terawatt hours of potential power in marine energy in American waters. 1,100 of that, nearly half of it, is in Alaskan waters. And that's split between tidal and wave energy. While wave energy devices are a few years behind tidal, it is a much bigger resource and we'll be going further out into the ocean. But at the beginning, tidal energy is the move and we have one of the best sites in the world. This one site alone could, could theoretically power the entire state of Alaska. So then the question becomes, if you build more capacity, what are you going to do with that energy?

Well, the answer's going to be: turn it into green hydrogen, turn that green hydrogen into a derivative like ammonia or methanol ... liquid power that you can move via ships to power buyers around the Pacific Rim. The first phase is resource assessment and feasibility analysis. So we're in the middle of that. We expect to have that done in the next 18 months. We've had some early funding from DOE as well as a recommendation for funding from the Alaska Energy Authority. But at the end of that, we hope to put in a pilot phase of say, five megawatts a few years later, a commercial demonstration phase of perhaps 50 megawatts. And then finally a commercial grid scale phase. The timeline on that is probably close to a decade.

JB: And it seems the Inflation Reduction Act and some recent legislation factor pretty heavily into some of this?

CL: Yeah. The Infrastructure Act and the IRA are instrumental in our belief we can get this done. First of all, the Infrastructure Act changed the tax code so that projects like marine projects would have the same tax code that the solar and the wind industry have enjoyed since 2009. So that's a 30% ITC plus a 10% American made bonus versus a 2.5 cents kilowatt hour production tax credit. Then that's from the Infrastructure Act. And in the IRA, they've put a lot of money into funding for exactly these kind of clean energy demonstrations. The Department of Energy has gotten behind marine energy in a big way recently. They're about to drop a funding opportunity announcement for $45 million for startup costs, for just such a development of the U.S.' first tidal energy grid scale site. So it's very encouraging. It's a good place to be. I'm excited to be a part of it at this moment.

JB: Thank you so much for joining us for this Hart Energy LIVE exclusive. For more information, please read and watch online at hartenergy.com.

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