Emmanuel (Manu) Masini – Mantle8

David Hunt (00:03.592)
Hello Emmanuel, welcome to the Leaders in Cleantech Podcast.

Emmanuel (00:06.786)
Hi David, thank you.

David Hunt (00:09.5)
It’s good to have you with us and it’s good to see some of the developments since we first met not so long ago. I it was at Berlin, at Eco Summit, was it there was also an event in London with Robert at IP Group, I think.

Emmanuel (00:23.63)
bother it. It was first in Berlin for the Eco Summit I think. It was very good meat, yeah.

David Hunt (00:30.182)
Yeah, very good, very good. Cool. So there’s lots I want to explore clearly because not many people necessarily were fully familiar with natural hydrogen. So I certainly want to dig into your background and mantelate, but perhaps we can start with maybe just a sort of a higher level explanation of what natural hydrogen is, particularly the world in which you’re developing your technologies.

Emmanuel (00:51.224)
Yeah, well, I mean, of course, it’s starting to be a bit more clear for people. I people are just discussing a bit, but that’s very important to clarify. So natural hydrogen, or also called geological hydrogen or white hydrogen, depending on where you’re coming from, The hydrogen that you don’t need to manufacture, which is just coming from the ground. That’s why we speak about geological hydrogen, right? So that’s naturally produced by Earth with

a broad variety of processes. People are really surprised because sometimes they say, well, is it really existing or not? That’s not the real question, because you can find that in many, places worldwide. Even the Romans, like 2,000 years ago, knew it exists. What we were still ignoring is if it was possible to exploit it and use it. So that’s created by nature. And now people just say, well,

David Hunt (01:44.338)
Mm-hmm.

Emmanuel (01:49.934)
on the way to net zero, is this opportunity offered by mother earth could be evidently a way to reach what we want, right, to decarbonize the economy? And the proper answer from a geological point of view is potentially yes, what we need is just to exploit, right? So that’s what it is. So you don’t need to manufacture it, you just need to find it, not at the surface, but you need to drill and to produce it.

David Hunt (02:14.522)
Okay, well we can certainly dive much more into where you find it, how you find it, and how we look to exploit that, but I think that’s an interesting change in the hydrogen conversation really, because again, there’s a lot of, clearly there’s a huge need for green hydrogen, but it’s exceptionally expensive and it’s exceptionally rare. So we need, obviously, if we’re going to challenge some of these hard-to-weigh industries solutions, such as potentially this natural hydrogen, which could, I think we were talking before, could effectively be almost like a fusion kind of.

game-changing solution from some of the numbers that we were discussing. So we’ll certainly dive into that, but hopefully that’s just given people some bit of context into, we’re not talking about a manufacturing process of a type of hydrogen, it’s something which, I should say, Mother Earth has kindly produced for us, and we’re very good at exploiting Mother Earth’s resources, and have been for many centuries, or certainly decades, if not centuries. Let’s talk a little bit about your background then, because again, it’s always a pleasure when we have people on the podcast who come from various different types of…

paths to get to founding a startup. So perhaps you can share a bit of yours Manu in terms of your path from a scientist to an entrepreneur.

Emmanuel (03:22.904)
Yeah, well, of course. actually that’s a combination of luck and geology. So I’m a scientist as you mentioned, I’m just coming from the academia first. And it all started with geology like 20 years ago. I was just developing myself into the Alps in France, in Switzerland, different places.

And my job at that time was to understand how a piece of rock that we call mental rock, normally at 30, 40 kilometers at depth underneath the continents, can eventually arrive to the surface into what we call ophulites. Okay, that’s a very complex word, but these piece of rocks, if you go in the central part of the Alps, you can touch them. They are there and they are not there like randomly. There are some geological processes that could explain that, right?

David Hunt (04:20.818)
Yeah.

Emmanuel (04:21.278)
That’s what I was doing during my PhD. And of course, this rock just gave the name then to Montellite, right? Because this rock has its amazing possibility to generate this hydrogen. But at that time, I ignored it totally, right? And I was developing this research. We were publishing quite a lot on this. And then it was very interesting for oil and gas companies to get this knowledge. Those piece of rocks and the way they are arriving at the surface actually is combined with

David Hunt (04:44.722)
Mm-hmm.

Emmanuel (04:50.498)
the new oil and gas exploration opportunities within the deep offshore Atlantic, for instance, that was like the target of oil and gas companies 30, 20 years ago with huge discoveries like in Brazil, those different places. And mental, those rocks in this case, and those processes was considered to be a huge problem. So we needed to understand the processes to be better in predicting where to go to find these oil and gas. So that’s the reason why

David Hunt (04:55.751)
Okay.

Emmanuel (05:15.918)
by the end of my PhD and my research, I was asked by some oil and gas company to apply my knowledge to be able to do this work. so of course, very happy to apply your knowledge to develop some kind of technologies, but still you are working in a carbon intensive part of the business and so on. And as soon as you’re a kid, it changed a bit your life, right? And you need to…

David Hunt (05:34.194)
Right.

Emmanuel (05:39.032)
to explore a different way to make your job meaningful for the future of what we need to face, which is climate change, right? So I decided to leave industry, oil and gas industry. And that’s how I created Montellate, which was in its former version, actually, MNU, a service company. And the idea was to say, well, now we understand the process that makes this piece of rock coming to the surface. And actually, these rocks and those processes, they are associated to two very interesting opportunities.

David Hunt (05:47.218)
Okay.

Emmanuel (06:07.884)
in terms of exploration, which is on one hand, some critical minerals and material, we call this ultramafic-hosted metals, for instance, so nickel, cobalt, vanadium, and so on. And on the other side, when those piece of metal is in contact with water, it’s generating hydrogen. And it came to this natural hydrogen potential. So we first developed that in France, in the Pyrenees, and in the Alps, as I discussed.

David Hunt (06:14.504)
Mm-hmm.

Emmanuel (06:37.12)
And it was very secondary when we started to explore this potential and to understand how we can scale an exploration, predict where to go to find significant quantity of hydrogen produced by those rocks. And the more we are developing the company, the more we were helping some exploration companies for those commodities, including hydrogen, the more we told ourselves, my goodness, it could be amazing. We actually need to unleash the potential of it.

David Hunt (06:49.552)
Yeah.

Emmanuel (07:06.378)
And we need to scale this exploration. We cannot just go into areas where we know there is these metals or hydrogen. We need to develop technologies to know exactly where to go and to quantify the quantity. Therefore, you can develop a business and you can go faster. You can deliver it now, not like in 10 or 20 centuries. We need that now. So that’s how we clarified the technology needed.

David Hunt (07:19.794)
Yeah.

Emmanuel (07:34.51)
to define like a region and then some prospects and where to go to unleash it. And it came to some new areas who were helping companies to back permits first in France and elsewhere in EU. We were rewarded by a bit of equity and so on. So we’re supporting this. That’s how we developed those service company. And certainly some amazing investors like Braxology Ventures, Kiko Ventures.

David Hunt (07:56.616)
huh.

Emmanuel (08:01.868)
that became then my investors during my seed round, just came to me and said to me, well, Manu, what we want is to scale this. So what we need is science. What we need is technology. So we would be very happy to participate into creating Montelate that is not totally a service company, but which is dedicated to further develop and apply those technologies to scale natural agene exploration. Are you happy to do this?

Then you say, well, now it would be ridiculous not to take this opportunity. mean, just back to what I got during my own experience just facing the kids. You say, well, we don’t want to wait. We don’t want to waste time. So let’s make it and push it even further at the other level. Therefore, let’s make Montelay. Let’s create it. And that’s how we arrived to Montelay last year. And it was.

just not a dream because of course we got the benefit of those experiences from research down to &U and then to Montelate. We were starting to back in to construct a portfolio and we applied already our technology. we were, for instance, just using this new financial capacity, we’re able to prove

David Hunt (09:04.56)
Yeah.

Emmanuel (09:22.51)
the capacity of the technology with an amazing pilot, technological pilot, we were launching this spring, for instance. So it’s my first startup and it was for me amazing to see that the best way to accelerate is to join IDs, technologies with a little bit of capital and then boom, you can deliver something that could be fantastic and meaningful when we think about the climate issue.

David Hunt (09:33.67)
Thanks

David Hunt (09:51.962)
Absolutely. And people, by the way, because I know you’re building a team with some super smart people as well. yeah, it’s really cool. I’ve been blessed to work with a number of the companies backed by Breakthrough on these ventures and of course Robert and the team at Keiko. Smart people. They back good horses, so to speak. So it must be very rewarding for from you as a founder to, as you say, have that money to enable you to follow that dream and to…

I should say live a more, I guess, purposeful mission to the knowledge that you acquired over the years. So tell me what exactly at this stage then is the mantelite proposition? What is the technology? Because you’re a tech company rather than a natural services company. So what is the technology and where are you at at the moment in terms of your commercial pathway?

Emmanuel (10:41.634)
Yeah, very good question. I think that we may need to make a step backward to understand why technology is needed because people may say, well, if we know that you have hydrogen and that, well, just use the technologies of oil and gas company, you make a drill hole and you will produce it, right? So you don’t really need to be a cutting edge scientific companies or to develop critical technologies. Well, the real issue is not to detect at the surface or just to take the benefit of what was already discovered.

as many companies is just accusing on scalability in this case is about predicting where to go. So from this point of view for us for Montelite, what is really needed here is to develop technologies to know where to go. And as soon as you know where to go, you need to quantify what is the size of the value and therefore what could be the

that the CAPEX is you need to use to develop it and to provide this to a market and what could be the actual value of such an opportunity, right? So that’s all of the idea of Montelic. What we want is certainly not to take only the benefit of what was observed so far the surface and then try to develop that, but to scale exploration.

David Hunt (11:40.008)
Yep.

Emmanuel (12:02.038)
not in a random way, but through technologies. And for this, what you actually need to clarify from a geological perspective is what are the good ingredients you need to find. And then you can actually adapt the technology and develop the technology that is dedicated to find those ingredients, those geological ingredients. And what is very interesting in this sector

David Hunt (12:06.941)
Okay.

Emmanuel (12:30.83)
at the moment is like there are many views, many ideas about what could be the good ingredients. Some people are just trying to find mantle rocks and these production processes that we call serpentinization processes that just like iron reacting with water, making oxidation and to produce this hydrogen, right? You have all the piece of rocks actually that could get some significant concentration into iron. You have other processes like natural radiolysis.

David Hunt (12:50.375)
Yeah.

Emmanuel (13:00.517)
So you need to clarify what kind of rocks you need, right? And that’s not only about this. Of course, that’s a chemical reaction. So when it turns to be a chemical reaction, you need to find a place where you have the good conditions. So temperature, acidity or alkalinity, pressure. You need, of course, to get water to be able to reach those rocks. So all of this is basically about mastering a geological environment.

David Hunt (13:04.391)
Yeah.

David Hunt (13:29.532)
Yeah.

Emmanuel (13:29.55)
As soon as you clarify this, you can start to develop your technology on this. And that’s what Montellegh did. So the idea was to say, now if we start from scratch globally, what are the different technologies we need to stack through time to be able to pass from targeting a global region and then to be able to define the prospects and its value. That’s about the geology. And then of course, you combine that with the business reality, which is about

Well, transporting is very expensive or transforming the agile is very expensive. So you prefer to be very close from your customer. That is in our view, even the industry first, right? So, and that’s the way we clarified our techno stack. The first one that we call Geologics is about defining, originally speaking, if you have stacked a bunch of geological conditions. So you predict this, you define broad regions. here I have my potential.

David Hunt (14:05.532)
Yep.

Emmanuel (14:28.386)
and you can already deploy it all around the globe. Then step two, as soon as you do this, you need to quantify the potential. So you need to go literally in the field, you take the fluids, you take the piece of rock, you make your chemical analysis, and then you say, this rock has this potential, it can generate such a flux at depth today, right now. Now what I want is to quantify this flux and be sure that I could get some accumulation, some reserve somewhere.

And then you change the scale of your exploration. What you need is actually to image this, right? Where is my hydrogen? What is the quantity? What is its productivity? Do I have pressure or not? Because if you have no pressure at depth, you won’t produce it as a flow at the surface. And then the ultimate piece is what we call OREX. That’s what we did recently through a technological pilot, which is about making a 4D scan of the earth as a specific location where you know you have a potential. You can measure it.

David Hunt (15:12.189)
Yep.

David Hunt (15:27.613)
Yeah.

Emmanuel (15:27.986)
literally see the rock at depth forming the hydrogen, the hydrogen and the fluids moving at the subsurface and to accumulate within a reservoir. In the best case, what we think by getting further is to directly detect gas accumulation with the same technologies. And if you accumulate this technostack you did the very head, then you have the bad chance to produce hydrogen at the surface, right? So if you are lucky enough, you have your

David Hunt (15:47.163)
Mm-hmm.

David Hunt (15:54.888)
Thank

Emmanuel (15:56.302)
your customer nearby. So that’s how you define where to go first. And we’re really lucky. So because you were asking, Manu, where are you with your technology and your business? So we are really lucky to announce that we already backed very promising areas. The first one is in France, and there are many others across the borders that we’re developing right now, but I cannot disclose too much on this side. And on this specific project, which is Comanche in France,

we were able to deploy our Technopilot and to detect all of those things. And moreover, just to show that the business part is very important, we can get off-takers nearby, directly. that’s an industrial region. And the first ESAF factory in France is literally at 20 kilometers away from where we are making our exploration and where we think the prospects are.

David Hunt (16:36.86)
Mm-hmm.

David Hunt (16:52.487)
But

Emmanuel (16:52.494)
So we apply already this take the snack and now the idea is to scale it of course, right?

David Hunt (16:54.983)
Yeah.

David Hunt (16:58.888)
Well, that’s the interesting part. We touched on this before. It’s moving, I guess, from geology to geography in terms of location, because as you say, hydrogen is very difficult and very expensive to transport. We’ve worked with many companies trying to solve that solution as well. But it is the case. much, I guess, like with any renewable technology, particularly with solar, it’s around how can you bring the power or the product or the resource.

close to where the off-takers and the industry is. Now, we know that obviously it’s largely a lot of the heavier industries, the big energy-intensive industries that really have a big need for, or potential use for, for hydrogen. So going back to that point of you saying you can explore many places to a real strong degree of certainty, as much as anything, you know, a good degree of certainty that there’s the hydrogen there for resources. So I guess it’s going back to the point of how do you then roll out in terms of location,

for exploration and who’s sort of funding or partnering that? Obviously at the moment, I guess there’s a little bit of, maybe a little bit of luck that where you are happens to be a situation, like you say, where there’s this ESAP factory quite close by, where this initial place that you found. But how do we then roll that out? How is the scalability? How do we try and find these hydrogen resources in an area where there are opportunities for offtake?

Emmanuel (18:18.958)
I think it could simply be answered by the size of the opportunity because of course if you can literally develop different opportunities in a very small region like in South-Western France for instance, just considering the geological ingredients that are at play locally, you have already multiple areas in Europe only to explore and when you are in Western Europe you are always very close from the consuming point, you are not in the middle of the desert.

David Hunt (18:47.474)
Yeah, yeah.

Emmanuel (18:47.982)
So at the moment, just applying the ingredients that Montellet sees as the most productive ones, as the most efficient ones, we already defined 12 different big regions in EU only where we could develop multiple projects, so multiple permits and multiple prospects then. And just considering that one single prospect could be developed and could

and could host millions of of hydrogen to be produced, I let you calculate the actual quantities that you can take, that you can pin.

David Hunt (19:27.986)
Well, let’s dig into it little bit. Because again, I think there was an article on the BBC, but also I think if memory serves me correctly, there’s one in the Financial Times not so long ago around just the scale or the potential, the just amount of natural hydrogen there is that makes it potentially game changing and therefore low cost, which of course is a big issue for hydrogen, is the cost. yeah, just a little bit, maybe what is the, as far as your researches are going, what is the potential, do we feel, of hydrogen or natural hydrogen specifically?

to play its part in the energy transition.

Emmanuel (20:02.328)
Well, that’s very difficult to evaluate right now because we need to unleash it, literally. there are many people thinking that this is a niche because it’s going to be very local. We don’t think that way because literally, right, we could just thinking about this idea of a SAF factory, which is nearby a field, just with a percentage of the production that we hope to get from this field, we can cover the complete need for a SAF factory.

the way it is right now, at the way the project is right now, because what they need is some tens of kilotons, hundreds of kilotons of hydrogen a year, and we can literally cover this really easily. So of course, locally with EV industry, it makes sense. Then at EU scale, that’s one single prospect. And as I mentioned already, literally, we can develop tens of them, right, with their own

volumes and so on. So you can literally cover a significant part of the demand, but we still think that, well, that’s not really a competition with other clean solutions than green, for instance. It’s going to be like a nitrogen mix within the industry. just imagine the issue with green is actually for now we produce a kilogram of hydrogen in Europe at about 6.

five, six, or is per kilo. If you don’t need any kind of energy to produce your hydrogen because that’s created by nature, when you make the integration of the cost of the capexis and so on to get your kilogram of hydrogen, we believe you can be significantly below one euro per kilo on natural hydrogen. So if you combine all of this,

David Hunt (21:30.184)
Yeah.

David Hunt (21:50.834)
for Natural Origin.

Emmanuel (21:55.586)
with the actual market size that we have right now, because the market is already there. Well, look, natural hygiene is a serious way to decrease the price of hygiene within the market, which is for now the main issue to accept hygiene as a solution to decarbonize the hard to decarbonize sector of the economy, like key industries. So that’s the way we think. just, and now we need to explore.

David Hunt (22:20.285)
Yeah.

Emmanuel (22:25.006)
Just by developing this locally with certain projects at a national scale, we play with sovereignty because if you can just deliver million tons of hygiene in EU, I’m sure that everybody is going to be very happy to see this happening because you will decrease the global price. that would be a crime not to produce it as simple as this, right? Especially as a geologist. So that’s the vision that we have in this. Scalability is about exploration and therefore technology.

And then the market is already there. And the geological possibility, just considering our thesis, is already very important. Then if you discuss with other companies with other point of view on what kind of other rocks you could use, or if you can stimulate, because there are some company, they want to stimulate the generation at depth to get more. That’s not what Montellet want to do, but those companies want to do it. Then you add extra possibility to bring natural hydrogen

within the market. So just gathering out of that, it’s going to be huge by definition.

David Hunt (23:25.842)
Yeah.

I think people underestimate sometimes that just the amounts of hydrogen we do use as a society now for industrial and agricultural purposes, etc. And obviously the predominant of that is fossil fuel generated and therefore is it the carbonation issue, not a carbonation solution.

Emmanuel (23:45.182)
Exactly. that’s interesting because, well, you know how it works. People say, well, now we are going to a nitrogen world. I mean, the conception of hydrogen is growing 10 % per year organically, so that’s really good. Yeah, but more than 90 % of this hydrogen just come from the classical hydrocarbons, right? So you are making your hydrogen just with this. Then your next issue is about…

managing the CO2 you have generated then, right? So you need to to inject it. So you make blue hydrogen, instance, blue, that’s what we call blue hydrogen. You are making CO2 injection and storage. That’s a possibility and that’s also a market. But what we think is like, yeah, I mean, that’s not really clean. You are just displacing your CO2 somewhere. Natural hydrogen has this amazing capacity to say, well, no, if you get super-cure hydrogen.

then you don’t have anything to mitigate. Therefore, you are directly on point to decarbonize industries, for instance. So we were speaking about SAF, yeah, fertilizers, refining, steel industries, for green steel, for instance. So you already have these markets and market size in EU right now is already huge.

David Hunt (25:01.212)
Yeah, exactly.

David Hunt (25:05.318)
Yeah, yeah. Let’s jump back a little bit to your mental eight because you clearly are hugely passionate about the technology and the essentialist, Rox. As a scientist and as a geologist, I was thinking about you. I’ve just come back from Cornwall and Cornwall is a fantastic geological area, but that’s my own nerdy upbringing. But going back to the, you created your PhD, lot of time and effort into the science and the technology, you find this solution, but now also you were the head of a CEO, right? So forgetting about Rox for moment, it’s about building a business.

looking after investors, spending their money wisely, growing the team. How have you adapted to having that mindset as well as having this almost like childlike passion for the geology and for the technology?

Emmanuel (25:47.342)
Well, I mean, that’s where the challenge is when you are a founder, a scientist, and you are just building up a startup in a company, right? Then you suddenly discover the realities and also the quite surprising world of VCs, for instance. say, oh, you have all of your preconceived ideas to say, well, those VCs, they are just arriving to money. They are playing with probability and they are making profit on one in 10 companies, kind of thing, right?

And suddenly you are meeting some of them, like breakthrough, Kiko, for instance, tech lovers, and they are just challenging your perceptions. say, well, the question they ask, the deep dive they are able to do within what you are doing, even geology, chemistry, all of that. Wow. I mean, they are real scientists. say, yeah, potentially you are not at the right place. I would love to get you in board because you’re amazing scientists, actually. So suddenly you realize that there is a compatibility.

Also, you are challenging yourself because suddenly you say, well, as a scientist, for instance, you are building knowledge, you creating new things. Super, super cool, right? But yourself, the team dimension is really limited. So your name is really important. You put your name on papers, you put yourself forward and so on. At some point, there is something missing, which is like the team adventure. You need to build something, a story, and you need to share it.

And while you discover those guys from these visible worlds, while you get the significant capital from them to develop your company and you can start hiring some key talents and so on, suddenly that’s mind blowing. say, wow, not only the science is exciting, but we can turn that into an amazing business adventure. You can make profit and you can also make a huge impact on the climate side. back to your…

David Hunt (27:38.119)
Yeah.

Emmanuel (27:45.422)
to your own person say, wow, that’s super rewarding because not only the science is exciting, I’m applying this, we can create value both on the financial side, but also on the human side, right? So, I mean, from this point of view, you can just consider yourself super, super lucky. That’s fantastic. So of course you need to challenge, you need to learn fast, right? I was not doing MBA or those kinds of things.

David Hunt (27:59.005)
Yep.

David Hunt (28:04.424)
Perfect.

David Hunt (28:12.997)
You

Emmanuel (28:13.592)
So that’s how at some point you need to get the critical person around you to align the visions with the business reality. But that’s totally doable. And as soon as you get like a very constructive board, still a person around you, understanding and very interested about the vision and the technology, but also into the business reality, I think that the best chance to go to success, right? That’s how you develop it.

David Hunt (28:21.693)
Yeah.

Emmanuel (28:41.74)
So you become not only passionate by science, but you are just becoming, I think, an entrepreneur. That’s what I think being an entrepreneur is, right? So you build value in all of those directions, and then you speak with your team, which is just expanding through time, and the feedback that you have is crazy. say, wow, you know, the energy is fantastic.

David Hunt (29:02.696)
Exactly. How rewarding is that, right? So I’ve been doing cleantech essentially since 2007 and obviously I speak to many founders, people active in the industry. Sometimes maybe we even forget because it is hard and we’ll maybe touch on some of those challenges in a moment, but it’s what else is a better way to spend your time in your life, right? You can do this fun stuff, but also you make a difference in the world. And it sounds a little bit of a cliche, but you obviously showed very clearly just there your own.

passion and it comes across more of the entrepreneurs that we interview is that just opportunity to really build something but be about something meaningful.

Emmanuel (29:38.633)
It’s meaningful for your life, meaningful for the others. so, of course, well, you can do everything. So what is very important is to focus. You can develop something if you’re not clear on your vision and you’re not staying focused. So sometimes that’s really challenging as scientists because you’re super curious, you want to do many, many things. And at some point you need to say, well, you need to correct this because the best chance to achieve is actually to stay focused.

So that’s where the key challenges are. But look, that’s really demanding. You need to get an amazing energy. And trust me, we have a lot of energy with the team. Every single person just arriving and being part of this is just bringing this extra piece of energy you need, So sometimes, that’s so hard. It’s really demanding. And then say, what we are able to achieve in such a short time.

David Hunt (30:35.272)
Yeah, yeah.

Emmanuel (30:35.63)
That’s fantastic. So suddenly what is a prime into it is also the momentum. This momentum is just bringing you and you need to do it. And then suddenly you are back home. Of course you are spending less time with your family. Of course that’s a bit complex. But then you face your kids and they are still too small to understand. But you say, well, actually what we do in this company makes sense for you. Right? And then say, you the effort is.

David Hunt (31:01.244)
Yeah.

Emmanuel (31:04.822)
It’s worth it, you need to do that.

David Hunt (31:06.908)
Yeah, we’re talking about that timeline because that was quite interesting in terms of some of the pilots or some of the opportunities presently, but also perhaps go back to some of those challenges and the business model and the strategy because one thing that dogs, for example, pretty much any form of decentralized energy, know, renewable technology, for example, is permitting. I’m guessing that it’s not so easy from what you’re doing to have those kinds of issues. And so how is it perceived and what are some of the challenges for us to be able to not just technologically

explore and exploit this natural hydrogen but from a regulatory and a legislative point of view, are some of the challenges to make the best of this resource?

Emmanuel (31:43.066)
That’s a good question. And really, this regulation part actually is a bottleneck of this nation’s industry at the moment. But at some point, it’s also linked to our technical challenges, because if we prove, then everybody will be really happy to get it. So as soon as you prove it as a commercially valuable solution, I’m sure it’s going to help the regulation development everywhere. But at the moment, there is this problem, because that’s a chicken and egg issue.

You want to prove it, but to do it, you need to take permits because of course a company cannot take its risk somewhere out of getting a kind of exclusivity because you need to produce it then. Well, in France, and the reason why we are really lucky here, the ecosystem is great. Of course, the regulation is, as you know, really complex in France, but at least the regulation is ready. So it takes time.

But literally, you can take a permit to explore natural hydrogen. And that’s great. And that’s why France, I think at the moment, is really leading this sector in the EU at the moment from a scientific point as well as on the industry point.

David Hunt (32:54.588)
Yeah. Okay. But it certainly actually say challenges because even some established technologies like wind and solar still have challenges with permitting and permissions and the like and stuff.

Emmanuel (33:05.173)
Yeah, you got it. And of course, like we are European before being French or Brit or whatever, right? But in the specific view in EU, the rules are changing every time you are going across the And you need to make a

deep dive within the way it works, you need to shake hands, you need discuss with people. So even though you get like big names, you get all of the energy you want, you’re just facing a reality, which is like the system is not ready yet. And that’s very complex to change it. You need to be agile, but that’s extremely complex. And at some points, that’s what is just decelerating the development and the deployment of the technologies. Because for us, that’s exploration. You can explore and deploy your technology if you have the right to do it.

So suddenly the way for now to be pragmatic and to do it is to survey where you could do it and where you can get the potential and therefore you get a match and you focus on those areas. It has to be paradoxical in respect of what the economy needs and what the climate crisis is asking from us, right?

David Hunt (34:08.296)
Yeah.

Emmanuel (34:19.372)
Everybody’s just saying, well, 45 degrees Celsius in France in summertime, that’s not possible. So what to do? We have solutions, but we are not allowed to deploy the solutions. So do something, right? So that’s where, that’s what we are facing. That’s where we need to do something. And I think EU has something to do from this point of view.

David Hunt (34:30.054)
Yep.

David Hunt (34:39.4)
Yeah, yeah. And there’s been a lot of, again, good discussions and good momentum, I think, in the last year or so around this clean deal and various other technical, sort of financial instruments and also permitting instruments to enable things to progress. One thing that I really, really love listening to you and again, in broader context of the work we do is where somebody like yourself has moved from an oil and gas background to this clean technology background. I wanted to touch on a little bit is…

The same can apply, think, because Mentally isn’t an exploration company, right? So we’re not having to reinvent the wheel or necessarily there’s a talent availability for people who are familiar with and able to do the extraction and the refining or this kind of stuff. So perhaps again, you can share a little bit of that kind of partnership, Phil, because you’re actually your front end, the technology is just to secure and define the locations and prove the availability, but then it’s partnerships that are enabled us to then extract and deploy those.

natural resources, right?

Emmanuel (35:37.31)
Yeah, you’re right. Well, first of all, that’s what we need to build is an ecosystem. So of course, we are part of the ecosystem. So we explore and I would say, Montellet by nature and through technology is really about defining where, defining the quantity and preparing everything to go to drilling and go then to production. So we are really at this part of the the sector.

And for this, well, the technology are great. We can do that. But of course, you need also to work with other groups, with other parts of the value chain to make it happening. So a little bit, let’s say, downstream within the value chain. For Montelite as well, as you mentioned, we don’t want to reinvent the wheel. So we need to get inspired by what, for instance, oil and gas or mining industry

did across the last century, for instance. So just imagine, like at the beginning of the 20th century, people were just interested about oil leaks at the surface. And they would say, look, I have some oil. it’s burning. Interesting. I want to use that. Let’s drill here. Potentially, I have more underneath. That’s the way they organized their exploration. And then the same kind of things that we’re just getting with natural legend happen. Say, well,

David Hunt (36:33.361)
Yeah.

Emmanuel (36:57.73)
we cannot just take care about what is at the surface. We need to get ideas about where to go. We need to be predictive. And that’s how the construction of the technology just developed across the century. But it took a century to come from this and being able to make like 40 images and to see where to go, to make some very complex models and to predict where you can get accumulations. It took a lot of time. the real challenge for Expiration Company for Natural Agents

David Hunt (37:10.94)
Yeah.

Emmanuel (37:27.638)
like us, is certainly not to create new data totally. That’s certainly a way to get the benefit of what was acquired already within the oil and gas and mining industry, because they’re not exactly the same place, right? And then to reprocess them into an innovative way and to develop new techniques, new technology as well, to get a product which is adapted to natural hydrogen exploration. So that’s the first way to take the benefit of it. And therefore, you can

David Hunt (37:41.672)
Mm-hmm.

David Hunt (37:54.14)
Yeah.

Emmanuel (37:58.134)
reduce the time to make this happening not across a century, but across a couple of years.

David Hunt (37:59.271)
Yeah.

David Hunt (38:05.412)
That’s a good point actually because we’re slightly running out of time and I could talk about this forever as most of the topics are fascinating. But let’s look at where perhaps the technology broadly and where manatee specifically is likely to be by 2030. What the next few years look like in your mind of where will natural hydrogen be, where will manatee be by 2030?

Emmanuel (38:27.478)
Yeah, I mean, that’s we have a clear plan, but we are really depending on the the environment. But what we want to achieve by 2030 is really clear for us. So we need to show that not only you can find natural hydrogen in huge quantities, but you can get pressure and you can turn it into a viable solution. Right. So if we are not able to make this happening, this revolution won’t happen. So so first of all, is.

In respect of what we did so far, if we project ourselves, I think our commitment is to find 10 million tons plus by the end of the decades, but even before, we think that’s totally achievable by 2028, for instance, and to drill by that time our most promising prospects. So to prove literally that it could flow at the surface in a commercially viable way. Then in the portfolio side.

a strategy a little bit like investors, for instance, the strategy should never be within a simple kind of asset, right? So you need to diversify your portfolio. So you need literally to build a portfolio where you are managing, you are calculating where your key risks are, and then you diversify them and you increase therefore your chance of success. And that’s what we are doing at the moment. So the technology are there. We will accelerate

the application of this technology by applying more data science, machine learning things, that’s what we are doing at the moment. And the idea is to continue to build our portfolio, which is at the moment already significant. Again, we cannot disclose too much, but we have already the most important one in EU. And the idea is to get diversified, not only in the EU, but in EMEA region.

because the geology is very favorable in these settings, So portfolio development, technology totally unleashed, even accelerated, and therefore produce the first kilogram of hydrogen in 2028. And in total reserve proved what we are aiming is to get more than 10 million tons in place. But I think that’s not only realistic, but we will do more than this.

David Hunt (40:22.182)
Right.

David Hunt (40:37.158)
Well.

David Hunt (40:47.516)
Fantastic opportunity, as you say. It’s one of those things that is, as you say, if you can prove both the financial economic viability and also the ability to bring this pure hydrogen to the surface, it really does change the game. So excited to see how things develop for you. And 2020 is not far away at all. So I’m excited to see, yeah, the first kilogram.

Emmanuel (41:03.534)
Exactly. need to go fast. And I think just before you asking me how you can match your scientific perception with the business, I think what I was learning with my investors, what I was learning with my new team is actually not to do like just from science to business perspective, but at some point making the exact inverse journey to say, yeah, but if you want to turn this as a commercially viable solution, you know,

What is right now the less risky from a geoscience point of view and from a business point of view to do it? And then you develop your strategy based on this. You are really pragmatic because what you want to reach is a point to prove it, to prove that this could be the needed revolution and to make it commercially viable. And I think that’s how basically I see the construction of mental aid. And that’s what is exciting at the moment. So we will do it.

David Hunt (42:03.976)
Well, thank you very much, Manu, for sharing that. Obviously, there’s a lot more that I’m sure people will want to find out. So we’ll push links into the various channels on where they can find more about natural hydrogen, more where they can find more of mantleate. really excited. Hopefully, you’ll come back in 2028 and we can celebrate some breakthroughs and some very cheap natural hydrogen doing its good business. So thank you for sharing and looking forward to see what happens next.

Emmanuel (42:29.966)
Yeah, thank you very much for your time David and looking forward to take some champagne to prove that you were successful even before 2020. Thanks, take care, bye.