Hello, welcome to Gevo's First Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Towanda, and I will be your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. Later, we will be conducting a question- and- answer session. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Geoffrey Williams, Gevo's Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary. Please go ahead, Mr. Williams.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining Gevo's first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. I would like to start today by introducing the participants from the company. With us today is Patrick Gruber, Gevo's Chief Executive Officer, and Carolyn Romero, Gevo's Chief Accounting Officer. Earlier today, we issued a press release that outlines the topics we plan to discuss. A copy of this press release is available on our website at www.gevo.com. I would like to remind our listeners that this conference call is open to the media and that we are providing a simultaneous webcast of this call to the public. A replay of today's call will be available on Gevo's website. On the call today, and on this webcast, you will hear discussions of certain non-GAAP financial measures.
Non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are contained in the press release distributed today, which is available and posted on our website. We will also make certain forward-looking statements about events and circumstances that have not yet occurred, including but not limited to projections about Gevo's operating activities for the remainder of 2021 and beyond. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current beliefs, expectations, and assumptions, and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties, including those disclosed in Gevo's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020, which was filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and in subsequent reports and other filings made with the SEC by Gevo, including Gevo's quarterly reports on Form 10-Q.
Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements speak only as of today's date, and Gevo disclaims any obligation to update information contained in these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. On today's call, Pat will begin with a discussion of Gevo's business developments. Carolyn will then review Gevo's financial results for the first quarter of 2021. Following that presentation, we'll open up the call for questions. I'll now turn the call over to Pat.
Thanks, Geoff. Well, we're on track to accomplish our goals for this year. The engineering of Net-Zero 1 is on track. The debt solution with Citi to finance Net-Zero 1 is actually ahead of schedule. We still have a lot of work to do, but so far, the Net-Zero 1 project is looking very good. We broke ground on our RNG project. It should come online next year. This project is targeting production of 355,000 million BTUs per year and should generate free cash flow for Gevo of approximately $9 million-$16 million on an annualized basis beginning in late 2022. Tim Cesarek, our Chief Commercial Officer, has managed to increase our customer contract pipeline by severalfold. We now are discussing and negotiating upwards of $10 billion of take-or-pay offtake agreements on a revenue basis.
Recall that for each 45 Mgal of contracted product sales, which is the current approximate design capacity of our Net-Zero plants, the sum of the anticipated product sales revenue during the expected take-or-pay contract terms of six to seven years should be about $1.5 billion. It's real money, real business. If we're able to ink some or all the contracts in our pipeline, it would mean several more additional plants would be needed to be built. These take-or-pay contracts are nontrivial to obtain because they require the customer to back it with their balance sheet or some other credit support method. We expect to announce the customers and volumes when we can after the contracts are signed. I think it is likely that we could have more than one Net-Zero plant being built at the same time in the coming years.
Based on our current modeling assumptions, we believe that the EBITDA for a Net-Zero plant should be more than $100 million per year once operating. We believe that subsequent Net-Zero plants would likewise model out to be in that same range. As we get more plants booked with take-or-pay contracts, it'll be interesting to see how strategic investors in Wall Street view us. We would hope that the increased visibility into more potential cash flow streams would result in better recognition of value for Gevo and its shareholders. Now with strategic investors, it's a slightly different perspective. As the tangible demand in the form of take-or-pays becomes bigger, then it becomes even more undeniable as to the potential for our business.
The more take-or-pay contracts we ink, the more Net-Zero plants we will need, the more attractive we should become to strategic investors. Next, I want to address questions from several investors about one of our proposals in our definitive proxy statement for our annual meeting of shareholders to be held on June 9th, 2021. The questions are specifically on proposal number 4, which is an amendment to our amended and restated certificate of incorporation to increase the total number of authorized shares of common stock. This proposal seems to have created confusion for some stockholders, namely, a reaction that this proposal means that there would be immediate dilution to current stockholders. Proposal number 4 is asking stockholders to approve an amendment to the company certificate of incorporation to increase the number of authorized shares of common stock from 250 million- 500 million.
This increase doesn't mean we are issuing these new shares immediately. I want to be clear that we're not asking shareholders to approve an offering of common stock at this time. That's not what we're doing here. It's important to remember that Gevo has used most of its existing authorized shares of common stock over the years. The board of directors believes it is in the best interest of the company to increase the number of authorized shares of common stock in order to give us greater flexibility in considering and planning for future potential business needs, including but not limited to potential strategic transactions, strategic partnerships, business combinations, of course, financing the construction of accretive production facilities, as well as other general corporate transactions. Now, I will turn the call over to Carolyn, who will take us through the financials. Carolyn?
Thank you, Pat. Gevo reported revenue in the first quarter of 2021 of $0.1 million, as compared to $3.8 million in the same period in 2020. During the first quarter of 2021, there were no hydrocarbon revenue, compared with $0.1 million in the same period in 2020. Hydrocarbon sales decreased because of lower production volumes at the South Hampton Resources, Inc. facility in Silsbee, Texas. During the first quarter of 2021, no revenue was derived at the Luverne facility from ethanol sales and related products, compared with $3.7 million during the same period in 2020. As a result of unfavorable commodity environment during the three months ended March 31, 2020, we terminated our production of ethanol and distillers' grains, which resulted in no sales for the current period.
Cost of goods sold was $2.0 million in the first quarter of 2021 versus $8.1 million in the same period in 2020. Cost of goods sold included approximately $0.9 million associated with the maintenance of the Luverne facility and approximately $1.1 million in depreciation expense. Gross loss was $1.9 million for the first quarter of 2021 versus $4.3 million for the first quarter of 2020. Research and development expense increased by $0.8 million during the first quarter of 2021 compared with the same period in 2020, due primarily to an increase in personnel and consulting expenses. Selling, general and administrative expense increased by $1.2 million during the first quarter of 2021 compared with the same period in 2020, due primarily to an increase in personnel and consulting expenses.
Preliminary stage project costs increased by $2.6 million during the three months ended March 31, 2021 compared with the same period in 2020, due primarily to increased consulting and research and development expenses related to our RNG and Net- Zero projects. Within total operating expenses for the first quarter of 2021, we reported approximately $0.8 million of non-cash stock-based compensation. For the first quarter of 2021, we reported a loss on operations of $9.9 million compared to $8.0 million for the same period in 2020. In the first quarter of 2021, cash EBITDA loss, a non-GAAP measure that is calculated by adding back depreciation and non-cash stock-based compensation to GAAP loss from operations, was $7.8 million, compared with $6.2 million in the same quarter of 2020.
There's no interest expense for the three months ended March 31, 2021, a decrease of $0.5 million as compared to the same period in 2020, due to the conversion of all of our 12% convertible senior notes due 2020-2021 to common stock during 2020. For the first quarter of 2021, we reported a net loss of $10.1 million, or a loss of $0.05 per share on a weighted average shares outstanding of 183,566,524. This compares to a loss of $9.3 million in the first quarter of 2020, or a loss of $0.64 per share based on a weighted average shares outstanding of 14,472,798.
In the first quarter of 2021, Gevo recognized net non-cash loss totaling $0.1 million due to changes in the fair value of certain of our financial instruments, such as warrants and embedded derivatives. Adding back these non-cash losses resulted in a non-GAAP adjusted net loss of $10.0 million in the first quarter of 2021, or a non-GAAP adjusted net loss per share of $0.05. This compares to a non-GAAP adjusted net loss of $8.5 million in the first quarter of 2020, or a non-GAAP adjusted net loss per share of $0.59. I will turn the call back over to Pat to wrap things up.
Thanks, Carolyn. Overall, things are on track and looking good. We have the catalysts that are coming up between the offtake agreements and such. I'm pretty pleased with where we are. Let's open up this call for questions. Operator?
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star then one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. Again, that's star one to ask the question. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Amit Dayal with H.C. Wainwright. Your line is open.
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Appreciate taking my questions. Pat, did you say that you are pursuing $10 billion worth of offtake agreements?
We're more than pursuing them. That's what's being worked on and actively negotiated in various forms. That's a threefold increase. This is a game-changing kind of a thing for us, considering where we had been and what we're doing. People are figuring out that we have a solution here. It's going to be exciting, and we're going to be in the position of having to supply product from multiple plants at once. Today, good thing we did a greenfield cookie-cutter plant and are designing it the way we're doing it. We got it. Okay, it was foresight, lucky. Well, we did good. My people did a really good job. It's kind of an exciting space we're in. As always, I never know when we're going to get the darn agreements done. Some of these are really big deals with not that many customers.
They'll take time, but we're stacking them up in multiple Net-Zero plants. It's pretty exciting.
Are these potential agreements with the airlines or with players in sort of the middle of the value chain? Who are these agreements being negotiated with?
I think it would be fair to say I can't comment on this stuff like that. We are sworn to secrecy about these things. I know we get this question all the time. Everyone wants to tell us who is it early. We can't do that. I will say this, it's a mix of those.
Okay.
What you just asked me about, it's a mix.
Okay. I guess I'll ask the obligatory feedstock-related question. As you are getting visibility into the size of these opportunities, how are you thinking about managing feedstock requirements, et cetera?
What's interesting is because these carbohydrates are feedstock, these are incredibly abundant. For example, the corn supply here in the U.S. is, what, 14.2 billion bu a year ago, and it's increasing. We use the carbohydrate portion. We separate out the protein. 1 billion gal would require several percent of corn supply. Of course, that's really not an accurate count because we're separating. It's close to an accurate count, but we're separating out all the protein that goes with it. There's more than enough feedstock availability, especially when ethanol, well, it's made a little bit of a comeback, but the ethanol supply has gone down a bit. We're in pretty good shape in terms of feedstock, and that puts us at a comparative advantage compared to some of the other feedstocks that are out there for renewables.
Of course, around the world, it's not corn. In Germany, we would work with something else, and in India, it's definitely molasses and things like that. I think in South America, as we get going, you'll see us work with molasses and other products. Carbohydrates are a great feedstock because they're so ubiquitous in such large amounts, especially compared when one's looking at oil seeds or one of those other things.
These Net- Zero plants don't essentially have to be in the U.S. They could be in other geographies?
Sure they can. It's a concept. What we're doing is building plants and building in the renewable energy infrastructure that goes with them. Because of the way we process things, we have the ability to take input like a wastewater plant and put that wastewater plant in. It makes biogas. We use that to do the thermal demand for the plant, displacing the fossil-based natural gas. Of course, we want renewable electricity. Electricity is the thing that causes in between electricity and natural gas. That is the thing that causes the bulk of our footprint. This is true of all energy. When we're trying to drive the footprint down on greenhouse gases, it is about electricity. This seems to be lost on the world at large, and the same thing is true with the natural gas. It's fossil-based, both of them.
Well, okay, electricity is 60% fossil-based in this country, and around the world it's about the same. There's an enormous amount of work to do. We think of it as every time we do a Net- Zero plant, we'll have done something about renewable energy. In fact, our company is, in fact, a developer of renewable natural gas. That's a fact. We are a co-developer of wind. We did a project last year. We're going to do another around our Net- Zero plant. You know what? We're going to continue to be active in the renewable energy. It was just a different mentality about what needs to be done to solve these greenhouse gas problems and make money while we do it.
Understood. The green bond for the RNG that you issued, is that allowing you to pay a lower interest rate versus a regular bond, I guess?
Hey, Lynn, are you on the line, Lynn? There's an interest rate, and I thought we published it. It's public stuff, so it's there.
Okay. I'll check that. I'll look up that.
Yeah.
No problem. Yeah. I guess my other question was around how much we need to factor in with respect to the interest burden related to this, but I can look that up also.
Yeah, it's there.
Essentially the payments on this will begin in 2Q 2021, right?
Yeah. You know what you should do is call in and talk to him and find out more color on it. The thing that I'm paying attention to is I want this plant built and mechanically complete by the end of the year. I want it operational in the first quarter of next year so that we can get all of our qualifications done to get the stuff certified so we can start generating cash, get that done. I want the money in the door in the third, fourth quarter of next year, whenever that timing works out. I want the cash coming in the door. When we're talking about $9 million-$16 million of cash, that might sound small to people, but dang, that's like real money. We want it. That's after the debt service and all the rest. I want it.
Pat, what accounts for the delta between the $9 million-$ 16 million in that range? What could be the difference between you coming in at $9 million or $16 million?
You have to go through California and get certified as to what exactly the pathway is, and they look at your dairies, and they'll judge them in some way. We're trying to be conservative. In the worst case scenario, we say it's $9 million. We think it's more like $16 million. We're just giving ourselves a range so we can hit something that's reasonable. Whenever you got to go through the certification process, which is normal, you got to get their blessings to say, "Yes, that's legit." It depends on how they're looking at things at that time. Because it's in future world, we just say, "Okay, we plan on $9 million hoping it's $16 million as the cash out." On the revenue side, what that means on the revenue side is it's like $23 million-$28 million for revenue.
Okay. This will get narrowed down once you get the certification with California.
That's it. Well, we would know. We will know. If they do what they have done in the past, it's the high side.
Okay. Understood. I guess my last question was around what the expected cash levels would be as you exit 2021. I don't know if Lynn is online, but I can follow up with him if he's not available.
Yeah, I'd follow up. It may be that we have some long lead time items. I think we talked about that once before, where we may have to put money down for long lead equipment for Net- Zero plants. That might tie up $20 million or something. I don't know. We have to ask him exactly, and we'll have to sort through that as we get further along. Lynn, you're here?
Yeah. I'm sorry, I was dropped. I'm back. What was the question?
The question was where do you expect to be with your cash position as you exit 2021?
Ballpark?
Yeah.
About $490 million.
Okay. Understood.
Okay. Look, everybody, that has a big error bar around it. It depends upon if we do long lead equipments and pay for them or not. Don't write that one in stone, okay? It depends upon what we do.
The question, as I understood it, was expectation. Expectation to me is based on the development cost that we incur as we develop Net-Zero 1. It does depend on a lot of things, especially around long lead equipment deposits to advance the construction schedule. That's the big uncertainty. There is an error bar around that, but that's a point estimate.
Yes. There you go.
Thank you for that. Just one last one, I guess. The amendment with Scandinavian Airlines, Pat, was this related to volume or pricing or something else?
Volume.
Okay.
It was volume. They came back for more. I think we'll see more of that in the future from others.
Understood. That's all I have. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Shawn Severson with Water Tower Research. Your line is open.
Great. Thanks. Hey Pat, I'm trying to understand, when you talked about $10 billion, when would this pipeline want to start? Are some of them saying they'd want to start taking delivery in 2027 or 2030 or are you talking about basically as fast as you could build plants? Which means you'd have many in parallel to facilitate.
It's in the game of wanting it sooner, faster and all the rest. It is about gasoline, alkylate and jet fuel both. We can't do them fast enough. We got to go through the cycle we're in to pin things down. The Net- Zero 2 plant, I think it'll be done overlapping with Net- Zero 1 is the hypothesis. Net- Zero 3 could be done exactly at the same time, potentially. It depends upon when we get the contracts done. It's going to get interesting. We got to think about how to do even bigger chunks all at once because it's that kind of a pipeline. It's getting to be interesting. People want the stuff fast. Net- Zero 1 is expected to come online in first part of 2024. I think it'd be interesting to see.
Could we push it and get the Net-Zero 2 online in 2024 as well? The Net-Zero 3, maybe. This is the how we're thinking about it and why we're going to such detailed work to get it right on this engineering is so we can cookie cut these things to make them work with certainty.
Are you seeing any interest or inclination in that pipeline where they want you to work with a strategic, or are you basically operating fine on your own? Obviously signing offtake agreements, you're operating fine on your own. I'm just trying to understand if there's a nuance there that they're saying, "Hey, we want big partners in this," or just the mentality of these customers.
No. They get it. We're interesting and unique as a company because we do development of our own renewable energy. We've learned how to do it. We are the experts in the fermentation chemistry side of things. We've run these big processes in our past lives. Everybody knows that. Everyone vets us, and they look at it and they go, "Well, you guys know how to do stuff we don't know how to do." Are people interested in investing? Yeah. There'll be times when we can take project investment in, or there's people who have been approaching us around corporate investments as well, and it's just we got to figure out the right timing. It's going to get interesting, but as far as execution goes, no. That's easy. Not easy.
We know how to do that, and the engineering firms that we work with, and there's lots of them that we're working with, it's a big group of them. They are pretty good at this stuff, too, and my folk are really good project managers and leaders. You got to remember that we've been here and done this before in our past lives, and so this isn't like a new rodeo for us. No, people look at us internally and go, "God, you guys are self-sufficient." The other thing that you got to remember, and everyone should remember, and this is fundamentally different about us than most other companies. Most other companies make some kind of a soup as a product that has to get refined, and so they need a refinery. We don't. We make it deliberately, the jet fuel and the octane.
We can change if we want to make more stuff for gasoline, we can do that, without changing anything in the plant, just change the conditions, or if I want to make more jet fuel. In that sense, we're like a chemical plant. This is a fundamental difference, and it is important when you think about how this marketplace can unfold. We've got a competitive edge, I believe.
I want to go, another question about the pipeline. How diverse is it? I know you kind of nuanced it. You said there are some large ones in there, but just how diverse is that group? For modeling purposes, should we assume that most of these, the plants and the offtake agreements have similar economics?
Yeah. The way we think of it as every Net- Zero plant of 45 Mg al generates an EBITDA stream of $+100 million. That's how we think of it internally. I'd have to do the math. You have to do the math to figure out the cost of the life of the contract, six to seven years, so 6.5 years, $1.5 billion of revenue across the life of the contracts divided by 45 Mgal is $5 and whatever it is, $0.10-$0.15 a gallon.
What I mean is there is a big variation in these contracts, I guess is what I meant.
Yeah.
When we sign up contracts and it's starting to fill up, we should think a very similar economics, use the same economics for all of them.
Yes, we do.
Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. We found a sweet spot on pricing where it works for everybody, and it works well. It keeps the customers incentivized to work with us because they get some of the green value. It's interesting.
Just to clarify the diversity in that pipeline?
Oh, yeah. The diversity of the pipeline. What do you mean by diversity? Like give me some-
Is this 30 or three that are in there? I'm trying to understand, are these smaller?
Oh. There's probably of the $10 billion, I think it's like I'm going to call it [$15 billion-$20 billion].
Got it. Okay. That's helpful. Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, that's star one to ask the question. Our next question comes from the line of Craig Irwin with Roth Capital Partners. Your line is open.
Thanks. Good evening, and thanks for taking my questions. Pat, I understand the enthusiasm of your customers out there. Jet fuel is the one fuel that really has the least environmental compliance of all the liquid fuels. It's high sulfur, high emissions, high particulates, and really one of the best opportunities, for environmental remediation with clean fuels. Can you maybe talk a little bit about what you're seeing as one of the leaders in this industry on the regulatory front? I think many of the customers out there are acting today in anticipation of regulatory action. What do you see as possibilities on the horizon that could bring the rest of the industry along with the thought leaders that have already signed up as your customers?
Yeah. I think what'll happen, there's several things. You're exactly right. Jet fuel needs work. The industry can't get to the goals without having sustainable aviation fuel available. There's a couple things that are happening. One is that the industry itself is pushing to go up from the 50% blends to the 100%, and that's going to take a mixture of stuff. People like us, we could go make more, build all the components as well, but there's lots of guys who can do that. I think mixing and matching is probably the right thing. The key is to drive to low carbon. The lower the carbon, the better. How you count carbons matters a ton, and you got to do it on a fair basis and legit. Otherwise, you start doing really weird behaviors.
There's a bunch of things like that that are being cooked. The important ones are around, there's some bills proposed, like for blenders tax credits, that would give like $1.50 a gallon for jet fuel produced in the States. That would help the economics. The airline industry itself does not want to pay a premium for these fuels. They know they have to buy them. The model that we have for selling fuels allows them to share in the environmental benefits. We aren't quite as dependent upon this as other people, which is why we get some of these contracts and maybe others don't. Remember, we're getting on a take-or-pay basis, a real take-or-pay basis, and that makes us slightly different than most.
Okay. Excellent. Just economics are something that's going to be a little bit of a wiggle as production comes online.
Today, really, everything's based on forecasts. Can you maybe talk us through just the basic process that you see when you talk to regulators? Traditionally, for example, CARB starts with production today and looks at what you can achieve versus that baseline. If you start off with, I don't know, whatever it is, 600 ppm, I'm probably off, of sulfur in jet fuel. You can bring that down to 500 ppm by mixing in 20% clean fuels. That move down in the baseline is where the economic value is uncovered. That's a much bigger move down in SOx emissions than you're going to get in almost any other investment out there environmentally. I mean.
Are these the things that are factoring into the sort of regulatory considerations out there and some of the potential economic compliance values that will impact the credit values as we look out onto the horizon? I assume there will be credits at some point for the compliance value of these fuels.
Yeah, that's a really interesting point. What Craig is asking about is that there's going to be the NOx and the SOx and the particulates are big deals. The sulfur problem is something that is hard to deal with, and it's inherent with petroleum-based products. You're right, we can eliminate that. It's a clear cut. We can avoid it. We don't have it. This is a good thing. Likewise with particulates, we can get rid of those, and those are usually these aromatic compounds. You're right, they're valued. What I think is going to happen is we're going to see more regulation upon those things. In fact, even as part of the Clean Air Act, and I know you know this already, is that's already there. It just hasn't been implemented yet. Will the new administrations start to push that stuff? They should.
They've been delaying it for how many years? A decade already. They should clamp down. That would benefit guys like us. We normally don't talk about those benefits. Now, that said, one of the ways that we price our product is that we do an index like to jet fuel or gasoline on some of these, like a premium gasoline. Then we get paid a premium on top of that just for its technical properties, which in part are related to its lack of particulate, lack of sulfur. In our pricing models, we're starting to see value for that already, which is pretty darn interesting because it's way early on. It's our customer's problem. They see it's coming at them, and they're trying to figure out what to do.
Excellent. Congratulations on the progress on Net-Zero 1. I know we're really in a capital phase now, and a lot of this value is going to be realized as production comes online. What would you say we can look at today for best indicators of economics of production of that plant when it comes online? It's difficult to compare a 10x scale-up, is there anything else out there in sort of the broader universe of industrial that maybe we can look at?
Yeah.
Say, "This has been done before, and we understand the economics.
Yeah, you bet you. There is. The last time a plant of this scale that was done that was a non-ethanol fermentation that did a combination of a genetically modified yeast in a new fermentation system and then had to make it work right to do chemistry was back when we did PLA plastics at Cargill. That we genetically engineered a yeast. The fermentation plant was giant. In fact, at the time, it was the world's biggest fermentation plant. The team I have at Gevo were the leaders of that. They did it. They're the guys. They're still with me at Gevo. This helps us in that there's like the lessons we learned about what works, what doesn't, what the problems, what the pitfalls.
This is knowledge you can't get any other place because you got to know how to do this stuff at large scale and the subtleties that go with it. Well, my group has been there and done it before. That gives me enormous comfort. You know Chris Ryan, my Chief Operating Officer. He led that. My Ron Borchardt, my head engineer, he's the guy who built those plants. We have them here, and they've been working with it ever since, and that's been on our mind and the lessons we learned. This Net- Zero plant that we're talking about is on the order of that kind of a plant that we did back in the day at Cargill, and it'd be a little bit smaller than one of the giant ethanol plants.
Excellent. Well, congratulations on the progress. I look forward to tracking things going forward, and I'll hop back in the queue. Thank you.
Thanks, Craig.
Thank you. I'm not showing any further questions. I would now like to turn the call back over to Pat for closing remarks.
We have made great progress. I wish I could tell you all the details that I know. You'd get really, really excited, and I just can't, and it'll be fun to unfold them, and it takes patience for me, too. I want to see more of these contracts with customers done. They're exciting. More than one Net-Zero plant, that's a nice problem to have. It'll also be interesting to see as that volume stacks up on take-or-pay contracts. It really does end the debate about what will people pay for this and are they interested really if you're sitting on the sidelines watching. It's going to be interesting to see the impact on others around us and what happens. Then the engineering, we keep plugging along, and we'll get her done. It takes an enormous quantity of work.
We're doing something unusual here, integrating renewable energy, called Renewable Energy Island, into our plant. Remember, we got to do the optimization of the wind. We're going to be making hydrogen. We're having a debate about how much hydrogen should we make? Because we think that's the very best way to store some energy from the excess wind we'll have. There's a question of should we sell the stuff? We got a lot of things to sort out about how to conduct the integration. Thank God the technology itself is solid and worked out. With that, thanks for joining us. Everybody have a good evening.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.