Nacho Gimenez – OXCCU

David Hunt
Hello and welcome back to the Leads in Clean Tech podcast. delighted to have with me another outstanding guest. You will also perhaps have seen recently that I’ve been a bit of through a bit of a career transition, stepping out of my full time role at Hyperion and into a role at a non exec director, an advisory. Now, my guest isn’t quite at that stage of their career yet, but they have been through a bit of a progression or a transition recently from a a very well known investment.

type of role within the clean tech sector to now into an operational role. Going back to harking back to your roots, Nacho, from from chemical engineering as I as I understand it. So welcome to my guest, Nacho Jimenez, currently the COO at Ox C U. Nacho, welcome to the podcast.

Nacho Gimenez (00:43.064)
Thank you, David. It’s a pleasure being with you here today. Great to talk again.

David Hunt (00:46.248)
So yeah, though there’s lots to talk. Many of our guests, of course, I’m sure will will know you. You’ve got a storied background in the sector, but let’s do a little bit of a deep dive into just a a little bit of that journey from perhaps from obviously your your sort of academic or the the engineering side of things through your investment career and and then obviously leading into where you are at the moment.

Nacho Gimenez (01:06.19)
Yeah, sure. I’m a chemical engineer by background. I did chemical engineering in Spain. And right after finishing university, I sort of found myself starting a PhD. I was researching catalysis. And after a few months, I realized that maybe there was not enough human contact in that pathway. And I joined BP in refining in Spain. That was, I’m going back now to 2001. I learned about fuels.

I learned about refining, I learned about all the specifications and how fuels are made. And in 2005, I had the opportunity of moving to London, to the BP trading floor, where I was optimizing the imports and exports of the refinery and connecting different teams, traders, logistics, and the refinery. And it opened my world into a new intersection of engineering and economics.

and how both of them working together can really make a difference in the world. I love that I stayed in that role a couple of years and then moved to origination, finding new business for the trading floor. I learned about energy markets, financing, developing large assets and relationships that are win-win on both sides. And I had a great time, grew a lot into who I became later on.

I stayed there until 2017 where I was a little bit uneasy about climate change and I thought I had to do something about it. So I left trading and I joined BP Ventures at the time that BP was going into, was starting to lean into the energy transition for the second time. And I had a fabulous time. Great friends. I invested in carbon markets, power markets, and became a managing director of the team. It was my dream role. We went through the pandemic.

work with portfolio companies and I loved every single day there. In 2024, it was time for me to leave and I left to join DTEK, a Ukrainian energy company to build clean tech and innovation teams. And it was a profound experience working with people in Kiev during the war time and geopolitics going the way in 2025. I thought it was time for me to leave.

Nacho Gimenez (03:31.192)
because of situation, geopolitical situation. And it was very sad leaving friends behind. And that was last year. I took some time off in summer to think about what I wanted to do next. And I did a bit of advisory to startups into fundraising strategies, KLab. And in 2025, the CEO of Oxxie CEO, Andrew Symes.

who used to work with me in VP Ventures gave me a call and said, come to Oxford, come and see the pilot plant. And invited me to see the pilot plant. We over lunch, we talked about the technology, the challenges, the market, the scale up path and how they were really aiming to make a difference. And I go very excited. And I decided to join the company in September last year.

David Hunt (04:15.126)
Yeah.

David Hunt (04:19.071)
Yeah, yeah. And it’s been quite a ride so far. I had the I had the pleasure of course coming down to see you in Oxford, for for a for a coffee and it was like it was like in a really positive way seeing a a kid back in the s candy store. You know, you you’re the you could see the chemical engineer and you back excited around the the the plant, so

Nacho Gimenez (04:36.182)
It feels a bit like coming full circle, right? Starting in catalysis, chemical engineering, learning about many of the things, and then coming back to my roots. But yes, I feel like it ticked too many boxes for me, and go very excited about the technology. yes, I’m going back to what I was doing maybe 25, 26 years ago, but it’s very exciting.

David Hunt (04:59.093)
Yeah. Well sap’s a really important topic, but just to to close on that, I I’m not the most prestigious visitor you’ve had, ’cause I think you had the king with you not so long ago.

Nacho Gimenez (05:09.068)
We had the pleasure of hosting His Majesty, King Charles III, and he was fabulous. His curiosity, interest in the technology, talking to people, understanding the challenges, unbelievable, amazing, incredible experience, unforgettable.

David Hunt (05:29.089)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well again it’s hot testimony to to what you and Andrew, of course, I know Andrew well from his IP group days are building there. And it’s of course really timely, as is often the case, through reasons which aren’t desirable in terms of wars and things that which happen, often those catalysts bring attention to the energy transition or to energy broadly and of course then to the transition. And what’s going on in Iran, of course, has put a lot of focus on on fuels and in particular.

but for some time, of course, there’s been a a leaning towards biofuels and and SAT in particular. perhaps you can just give us a flavor firstly, just an overview of of OxyCU’s technology and what it is you’re looking to do. And then obviously a little bit later we can dive much more deeper into that. But that’s a headline. What is it that the the technology that you have and that you’re looking to develop?

Nacho Gimenez (06:20.78)
Yeah, we are an Oxford University spin out with a novel catalyst. The origin of the company comes from Tian Kun-Shihao, a professor in Oxford, who in the mid 2000s developed a catalyst, a new Fischer-Tropsch catalyst. Fischer-Tropsch is a type of catalyst that transforms CO2 or carbon precursors into hydrocarbons, which is what fuels are made of.

David Hunt (06:47.798)
Yeah.

Nacho Gimenez (06:48.174)
And in 2010, he thought, how about instead of starting from carbon monoxide, which is very active, we go one step earlier and we start from CO2. CO2 is a very inert molecule. And to do anything with it, you need to put energy and you need to have something to help you with the thermodynamics. So he did that research, that research in 2010, that finished in 2020 with a…

paper published in Nature, in the journal Nature. And it’s about using CO2 as a feedstock, not as a molecule that you discard. That is the origin of the company. The company really is bringing fish and crops to the 21st century. So it has innovation before the process, in the process, and after the process. Before the process, we do two steps into one, traditional.

chemistry has reverse water gas shift and fissure tropes and we do everything with one reactor instead of needing two. In the process we have a catalyst, it’s ion based, so it’s very abundant, we know the chemistry well, and it activates CO2, so we don’t need to start with something more active. And it’s not easy to poison, so it’s very resilient to contaminants. And after the process, we only get to produce

David Hunt (07:49.367)
Okay.

David Hunt (08:03.841)
Yeah.

Nacho Gimenez (08:12.737)
hydrocarbons which have up to 16 carbon atoms. So they are liquid and in room conditions and they don’t go into make waxes and heavy stuff. So we don’t need to build hydrocrackers, which is what most fissure trucks need as an upgrading process later on to produce stuff or other types of fuel. Overall, we have three parts of the innovation that helps us reduce the cost of what we are.

David Hunt (08:19.456)
Mm-hmm.

Nacho Gimenez (08:41.389)
of the physiotropics process. That’s what we do.

David Hunt (08:44.436)
Okay. Okay. Now you must have obviously during your time with BP, in particular with the venture side, you would have encountered many different types of of technology in the transition. and clearly would have thought long and hard about jumping into this executive role. Talk to us a little bit broadly a around the the SAF opportunity and the SAF market, because again it’s often misunderstood around power fuels. That’s most of our clean technologies often there are lots of myths abounding to to to be negative about

what’s going on. But perhaps you can talk a little bit about where the where the SATH market is, where the SATH opportunity is, and and what the opportunities there are for for OxyCU.

Nacho Gimenez (09:22.701)
Yeah, globally, 370 airlines have committed to net zero by 2050 or earlier. 370. That represents 85 % of the air traffic. And I would say not a single one of them has a definite plan into how they’re going to get there, which is fine. They just want to get there, but they’re going to have to find out how to get there. We talk, there has been companies that are developing

hydrogen planes and battery planes and that is fine. But for long haul aviation, those are still really far away in the future. So for long haul aviation, SAF is not one of many options. It is the option. It is the option to keep the same planes, put in fuel that has a very high energy density and allowing us to fly long haul. So…

The problem then becomes, okay, the cost, this is expensive. And yes, it is more expensive than mineral jet. But the question is, what is the cost trajectory? And who has the technology to drive that cost down? And that’s what we are working on. So for us, removing the hydrocracker cuts the capex of the plants that we can build.

having flexibility in the feedstock. We can start from CO2, as I mentioned, but we can also start from biogas or biomethane to produce the same molecule of SAF. That allows us to have flexibility to install plants in different parts of the world with different feedstocks. So it’s different architecture from what we have been doing. The SAF markets today, there’s mandates.

The UK has the UK SAF mandate and European Union has refuel EU aviation and those mandates force airlines to, or the blenders, the fuel sellers, to blend some SAF in the jet. Until now we have been blending biofuels or what is called heifer in the industry, which is fine and it’s more sustainable than mineral oil.

Nacho Gimenez (11:44.802)
But there’s so much feedstock that can be used for that type of stuff. So we will hit that ceiling in two, three, five, or 10 years. At some point in time, there’s no more feedstock for that. And we need to find a way of making fuels that really hasn’t got that ceiling in terms of feedstock available. We have plenty of CO2 available in the atmosphere. We have plenty of CO2 sources available to us. And what we are doing is bringing that CO2 in to make that fuel.

I would also add that the story here is about SAF, but what we are making ultimately is hydrocarbons. It’s making molecules that have applications for many other things, from plastics to medicines to fuels. So we’re focusing on the SAF market at the moment, but this is about redeveloping the industrial, the chemical industry and seeing CO2 as a feedstock, more than as a waste.

David Hunt (12:42.912)
Yeah, it’s a fascinating thing where again everybody knows of or or broadly be familiar with the the the the issues from a climate perspective of CO two, but don’t consider it as a as of a natural resource, which is a usable resource in the way that you’ve you’ve described there. Because again, that’s one of the things that often gets leveraged that biofuels is the availability of food stock and we can’t feed the we can’t feed the planet, how are we gonna feed

ourselves in from an energy perspective. So it’d be good to perhaps elaborate a little bit on the the availability of feedstocks in different locations for for for your solution. And also maybe to see where you are in the TRL journey and the development of the of the technology at what point and what scale are are you now and where are you looking to get in the coming two or three years.

Nacho Gimenez (13:26.509)
Sure. So in terms of fixed stocks, we start from CO2. And if we want to be very sustainable, we can start with biogenic CO2. Biogenic CO2 meaning that comes from residues that were plants before or organic residues that have grown and have taken that from the atmosphere. But we can’t start from any CO2. If we have industrial CO2 that is going to be emitted into the atmosphere, we can give that CO2 a second life and convert it into something useful.

David Hunt (13:41.186)
Mm-hmm.

David Hunt (13:50.082)
Yeah.

Nacho Gimenez (13:56.271)
As I said, we can also start from biogas. So biogas is a mix of methane, which is natural gas, and CO2. And we can start from those biogas plants that are produced today from farm residues or agricultural residues or sewage to transform that into usable hydrocarbons or feedstock for other industries. So we need a source of carbon and ideally waste carbon.

Of course, the more sustainable the carbon, the better the sustainability credentials of the final product. That flexibility of feedstock, as I said, allows us to plant different units or different, slightly different chemical plants in different locations around the world. There’s areas where we will have plenty of farming and that is good, good feedstock. In other areas, will be sewage.

that produces biogas and that biogas can be used to produce this in other areas. will be CO2 captured from the atmosphere or CO2 captured from the seawater. You can have many different ways. We know that the energy transition is a little bit messy because many different solutions are competing and finding what is the niche and where can they be applied. It’s not going to be one solution work for the whole world. Like we can see, for example, in solar or in wind or all the types of renewable energy.

That’s terms of feedstocks. In terms of TRL, today we are TRL6. We have a pilot plant in Oxford Airport, just north of Oxford in Kedrington, that produces up to one kilo of fuel a day. It’s a small pilot plant, shipping container style, with a chemical reactor inside. And a chemical reactor is nothing more than a piece of pipe full of catalyst that you can control the temperature.

So very simple. And we are in the process of building the demo plant for 25 kilos a day, as well in Oxford Airport next to OX1. We call that demo plant OX2. That demo plant will take us into TRL 7. And that plant will also demonstrate the two main processing modes, power to liquids, PTL.

Nacho Gimenez (16:19.885)
So transforming CO2 into hydrocarbons and GTL, gas to liquids, transforming biogas into hydrocarbons. So we are demonstrating the integration and the way different plants can work. We are also inactive conversations with potential partners to build that next plant, OX3, and that first commercial plant, OX4. We are talking to energy companies, oil and gas companies, hydrogen companies, industrials.

David Hunt (16:25.996)
Okay.

Nacho Gimenez (16:49.389)
and many different partners have different interests and those conversations are very active at the moment. The idea is that that OX3-OX4 will take us into the TRL8 that we need to become a bankable solution. So we are aiming for scale. We’re trying to do this fast. The simplicity of our process allows us to build these plants with a fraction of the CAPEX that I can’t see other plants being announced at.

David Hunt (16:54.326)
Yeah, of course. Yeah.

Nacho Gimenez (17:19.373)
but we just need to find those partnerships and the locations, the right locations, all want to build them.

David Hunt (17:25.248)
Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting also with with Deep Tech, as you know, obviously there’s a lot of you know VC or money going into a degree, but some of these things were the longer term durational plan, the strategic partners and or investors is is much more beneficial or or there’s much more to leverage there. You clearly have a better insight than many in terms of the the sort of the the funding of these types of technologies. What’s the I guess the makeup of of

the the the the fundraising so far. Is there a VC input? I I think from memory IP group, maybe one of the early investors if if I’m not wrong. maybe. but of course what’s that sort of growth trajectory look like? Is it more likely to come with those industrial partners who bring both the money but also the access to markets?

Nacho Gimenez (18:10.837)
Yeah, I have to say, Andrew Simes, CEO of OxyCeo has done a great job telling the story and getting support on the funding side. We have a great cap table with VC money, but also corporates as well, like ENI, Orlen, the Polish refiner, Aramco, AIG, and a few others. It’s all public. It’s all in the website.

But we have a really good cap table of shareholders that support us when we are moving these conversations forward. Yesterday, for example, I was having a good conversation with Safran, the French aerospace company, about our field and how to take it forward. But yes, we are at the stage where as we go into a series C at some point in the future, we need to start looking at new types of investors. Because when we build things, things

chemical plants cost money and our chemical plant may be costing less money than the alternatives, but still we’re not talking about building something with one or two million. We want to build something with scale that makes a difference. So we are having conversations with private equity and strategists that are interested in being part of that journey, maybe them influencing where the first plan could be.

David Hunt (19:10.978)
Yeah.

Nacho Gimenez (19:36.276)
And the first plan being just the seed for the first commercial plan. So we cannot really aim to build a plan for 50 million that we’ll have to multiple six months later, right? Can we build that plan for 50 million and then make it commercial with a bit more investment later on? So those conversations are currently going, but yes, you are right. The type of investors that we’re gonna be looking at for the next round is gonna be different type of investors. Of course, the current ones hopefully will continue supporting us.

David Hunt (19:51.138)
Yeah.

Nacho Gimenez (20:05.931)
seen the results that we are taking and the path. But yes, we will need that new type of investor. We have also had great government support. OXICU has been awarded two grants from the AFF, the Advanced Fee Refund, the UK government, and by the ATI, the Aerospace Technologies Institute in the UK as well.

And we are very thankful for those because they have really helped us to get where we are today and build that pilot and the demo that we are building on.

David Hunt (20:42.464)
Yeah, yeah. And I had the pleasure, of course, of seeing seeing the pilot. So how are you finding the the transition yourself, Nasha? You you obviously started your career in in in in operational roles, but then spent quite a lot of time with an investor’s hat on. And now back into the the weeds and the challenges is always I I always feel that the COO is always the don’t tell is the hardest role in many ways because so many things fall under that umbrella. But how are you finding the transition back into an executive role? Well you certainly

Like I say, it seemed like you were enjoying it when we caught up last time, but it brings a different set of day to day challenges than than the investment hat that you were wearing before.

Nacho Gimenez (21:18.349)
It is a very different role, you are right. I keep smiling every day. I have to come to work with a smile. whenever there’s challenges, just see those challenges are massive opportunities, just these guys as challenges. It is very different role and it requires very different skills to what I have been used to. What I keep thinking, I keep reminding myself on is all the things that I have done until now are leading me to where I am today.

And it’s good training, right? So I have to lean on my experience and always calm down, lead with curiosity. But yes, as an investor, you want to be very analytical and you want to be thinking before you act and you want to be looking at metrics and you want to be testing different scenarios. And when you become an operator in a startup like OXICU, you have to move fast. You have to take decisions that don’t have

within complete information and just take assumptions and make sure that the down case, the worst case is not too bad and just keep moving and move forward. There’s no time to start running too many cases. when I was an investor, particularly with BP Ventures, I really enjoyed working with the boards of the companies and supporting the CEOs and think through the strategy.

culture, the people. Now I find myself in a role where I have to really deeply know the people, care about the people, and provide to the people what they need to be motivated to come every day to work saying, I’m going to make a difference. And provide a space for experimentation, safe experimentation, a space where people can openly speak about the challenges so that we identify and we take them head on. And provide that psychological safety that is so

critical for a startup to grow. So what we are doing is very hard, as many other companies will say as well. And it’s about having the right culture and the right tools. But yes, definitely the mindset is very different to the mindset I have been using for the last 15, 20 years.

David Hunt (23:31.393)
Yeah.

David Hunt (23:35.607)
I always think that having had a foot in both camps is so useful because you have an understanding, even if you’re you obviously your your mindset is in a certain way when you’re in a certain role. But having had that set of experiences and worked obviously with founders and in in in your investment career. But that’s the interesting thing. I think when your operational role, that whole thing around culture is so fundamentally important to every startup, every company but certainly every startup, because you are daily going through such speed of challenges.

Like you say, incomplete data, certainly not guessing, but at times maybe it can feel a little bit like that. You know, there’s a you’re having to fill in a lot of the gaps and trust judgment and trust the team around you. But you know, it looks like we’re y you have quite a quite a quite a young, quite a vibrant team that’s that’s growing and that’s supporting you and Andrew at the moment.

Nacho Gimenez (24:24.631)
We have a fantastic team and I’m incredibly proud of absolutely every employee you have in the company today. I come to the office and just getting to know people, understanding where they come from, understanding the challenges they’re facing that day at work from the R &D, from the chemist in the lab that is working on a new formulation and is trying to see how to replace something that is more expensive for a cheaper metal.

understanding how that works, how that will perform, understanding how to make the catalyst in different shapes and different forms to the engineer that has to come at night to work because we are activating the catalyst. In a chemical plant, you have to operate 24-7. Sometimes you need to be here at night and sometimes you have to just be keeping an eye on things and make sure that you understand when something hasn’t gone well. So the level of…

Human energy that they that you have to use every day is really high and is one of the most rewarding bits or areas of the work, right? Really going deep and understanding where everyone is and what you can provide for them to do the work better to have a better work-life balance to Make sure that they all see that made them making a difference But yeah incredibly proud of the team It was very young when I joined now is less young not that I made the difference but

that we have other people that has joined us with more experience. And it’s great to see the interaction as well across different people in different career stages. Fabulous thing to see.

David Hunt (26:03.978)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And how’s you you’ve kind of alluded a little bit to that, but one of the things that you know made you’ve made the transition i i i that we’ve talked about, but the that the rewarding aspects, clearly that deeper level of interaction, as much as you with the in companies and portfolio companies, you had lots of interaction for sure. But now you’re in the Wii’s day in, day out, you see the the highs and the lows, the challenges and everything else. But it seems to be that that’s given you a given you an energy and something that you’ve really enjoyed grasping.

since since joining the company.

Nacho Gimenez (26:35.115)
Yeah, working a startup is hard. And there’s good days, there’s bad days, there’s excellent days, and there’s really bad days. There’s a bit of everything. And it’s about how you balance everything so that you don’t despair when things go bad and you don’t get too excited when things go well. You have to celebrate the highs, but don’t despair when there’s lows. You have to see data as just data. You do an experiment, and experiment is an experiment because you don’t know what the outcome is going to be. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be an experiment.

David Hunt (26:51.682)
Yeah.

Nacho Gimenez (27:04.525)
So you run an experiment, whether in pilot plan where we’re trying to scale up maybe a new solution or a new catalyst in the lab. And you just have to detach yourself from the data and say, OK, what I’ve learned here, right? was Thomas Edison who said, I don’t know how to make a light bulb, but I know 100 ways of how not to make it. So similar here. We just take the data, and what is the data pointing towards? It’s pointing towards a.

this formulation has some potential or we go back to where we were or do we go into a new route? And then when you have that way forward on the lab, how do you bring that into engineering, into a bigger scale? And it’s not as simple as, just make it a bigger scale and put it in a bigger tube. There’s safety implications for that. And you have to understand how do we make this safely?

David Hunt (27:55.926)
Mm-hmm.

Nacho Gimenez (27:59.598)
What are the risks? What is the thing that can go wrong here? And that is really, really important to me because I worked in a refinery. A lot of refineries work 24-7 and they don’t have accidents. They don’t have accidents because we take safety very, very seriously and we have to do that here as we scale up. So those are the challenges. But at same time, keeping calm, keeping curious, staying curious, making sure that…

David Hunt (28:14.028)
Yeah.

Nacho Gimenez (28:25.505)
that people can feel that they’re making their best here and that they are in a good place, it’s really making the difference when you come to work. That’s what gives them the smile.

David Hunt (28:37.408)
Yeah. And it’s an amazing mission, of course. I mean, we we we found post COVID we we we all thought perhaps there’d be a reduction in flying because people got used to the fact that you could make calls and and lose them, et cetera, and not not have to travel quite so much. But if anything, there was little bit of a post COVID backlash where everybody was traveling everywhere, which we all got caught up in. But even now it seems that that you know that that there there isn’t a lack of or or or an indication that’s gonna be any less flying. so the challenges of decarbonisation.

And the availability of fuels is i is ever increasing and not decreasing. So what’s the sort of size and scale of the opportunity for for for for the business? But also what are the what are the how fast do we have to move to start making an impact and s start decarbonising aviation as an industry?

Nacho Gimenez (29:22.989)
You are right. We come from the commodity economy into the services economy. And today, I think we are in the experience economy. People want experiences and for that you have to travel. We’ve all learned that, yes, you can keep in touch with people online, or video conferences, but when you go and meet them, those memories fade very quickly as we learn in the pandemic.

So we all want to travel, we all want to be moving, and we all want to maintain the style of life that we have or that we are used to. The SAF market, the way it’s designed, it starts with mandates, and those mandates increase with time. So we start from, I don’t know, I believe we’re blending something like a 2 % SAF in jet, and that 2 % increases.

to five, 10, 20, and until we get to 2050, which is, I believe, of the carrel pool, most of the jet pool. Part of that is also a PTL, or power to liquid sub-mandate. So we are in a growing market here. It’s a growing market by regulation. But as the market grows, we have the responsibility to make sure that we push the price down, because we cannot accept that we double the price of flying only

because we are going to be now, we’re gonna be using a cleaner fuel. For some people that will be totally acceptable, for others it will not be acceptable. We are all different, we have different mindsets here. But we have the obligation to show that we have a course curve and we’ll have to reduce the cost of producing that stuff. But overall, if we achieve that, and I’m a strong believer that we will, I have no doubt that we will, we’re in a growing market, a growing market that

David Hunt (30:51.639)
Yeah.

Nacho Gimenez (31:15.84)
will be a sustainable market, will produce a sustainable fuel and something that will not need to be substituted 50 years later because he’s producing something else. So we are finding a way of doing clean chemistry for good for the future.

David Hunt (31:31.072)
Yeah, yeah. I think it’s such an interesting point actually. You know, I’ve I’ve long been, as we’ve probably talked in the past, you know, a fa a fan of electrification as much as we can, and it’s quite exciting. We now see like recreational aircraft and you know, local aircraft in in batteries, which perhaps is faster than many people perceived five, ten years ago. but for sure I should say long distance aviation, long distance shipping is something which really does certainly for the s foreseeable need molecules. And the the better we can make those molecules

sustainable and clean, or the quicker we can do that, then obviously the better for for for for everything in terms of the transition.

Nacho Gimenez (32:04.427)
Yes. Sorry, I interrupted you there, you are a spot on. We must electrify as much as we can, and we are doing that. But as you said, the clothes that you’re wearing, the medicines that are in your hospitals, and some of the fuels, like the fuels for long-haul flights, they all come from crude oil today, and we all know that that has to change. So the earlier we change, the better for the planet and the better for future generations.

David Hunt (32:33.994)
Yeah, yeah. It’s an interesting point, actually, because people perhaps don’t totally all gr understand just how much of of plastics and the things we use on a day-to-day basis are derived from from from crude oil. so from what you’re saying, also this technology is able to to essentially replace or certainly contribute to the replacement of of that in the longer term as well. So that’s another if you’re like Saf, of course, takes the headlines because we all fly and we want to do so more cleanly, but clearly there’s a massive market opportunity for

Nacho Gimenez (32:33.995)
That’s what we’re doing.

David Hunt (33:03.266)
for actually liquid fuels which are sustainable for for the making of the things we use on a day to day basis in our lives.

Nacho Gimenez (33:09.869)
Liquid fuels, yeah, plastic precursors, so we could make sustainable plastics. Solvents to produce medicines, for example. Lubricants. Many, many molecules that we use today come from crude oil, and we have the capability of doing all those sustainable from waste carbon. So yeah, the market is really big.

David Hunt (33:23.698)
Yeah.

Nacho Gimenez (33:37.153)
The question then becomes a matter of economics. How much are you willing to pay for your plastic? And if we see it all as a commodity, as we have seen it for the last 50 years, people will just go and get the same plastic because at the end of the day, the molecules at the end is similar. It’s just the origin of those molecules. So it’s a matter of how do we recognize that the cost of emitting that CO2 molecule in the atmosphere at the end into the cost of the things that you are buying.

In SAF regulation is doing that. The regulation what it’s doing is a more level playing field into when you are using something that is not increasing the CO2 in the atmosphere. That should have a higher price and by pushing the blending mandates we are in a way creating the market. But how do we create the market for the rest of molecules that come from crude oil?

is a good challenge that we’re going to have to tackle over the next decades.

David Hunt (34:39.766)
Yeah, comes other things like carbon price and essentially having a more more appropriate price on on on those polluting technologies that sort of negates or certainly makes a better balance between the initial cost of doing things more cleanly, which takes time to scale as we’ve as we know and as we’ve seen. But it’s good that there are those legislations right now. obviously geopolitics is always a a tricky thing to manage as you’ve experienced yourself lately, but I think hopefully the the the the regulations will will stick. But equally we need to make sure that we are pricing and and you know.

putting an accurate cost on the pollution of of of people who are doing things in the more old school and traditional fossil derived ways. But let’s hope that that continues and that doesn’t get watered down because there has been good movement across the pricing of carbon in the rice in in the recent years.

Nacho Gimenez (35:25.418)
Yeah, totally.

David Hunt (35:27.786)
Yeah. So let’s touch on something. We you know we have spoken I think I do remember when you were having your little break a year or so ago, talking about books. So let’s return to that. I always like to do so at the end of the podcast is to to look at perhaps some of the books that have inspired you or or or or motivated you or that you turn to for for reflection or or support. So again, w without making this another podcast for another forty five minutes, but perhaps you can highlight one or two that have been important to you.

Nacho Gimenez (35:59.064)
Thank you David. There’s a bit of lag on the line. Can you hear me well?

David Hunt (36:04.042)
I can hear you fine, yeah. We can adapt if if that’s it doesn’t have an issue on my end, so but we can edit the the platform is good that it records yours and mine pr separately, so we can blend that fine. But yeah.

Nacho Gimenez (36:15.637)
Okay, okay, brilliant, because I heard you a little bit robotic, but anyway, I heard the question. Okay, let me pause and we go. Yeah, thank you, thank you, David. I love books. I love reading, I’m a bit of a bookworm. And so it’s on my family, which is great. We are snowed on the books at home. I’m gonna cheat a little bit on the question and I’m gonna give you more than two.

David Hunt (36:19.297)
Okay.

David Hunt (36:42.828)
Okay.

Nacho Gimenez (36:44.169)
I will start with something I read must have been a year ago, a year and a half ago, just as I was thinking, what do I want to do with my career? And it’s a book that my wife bought for me called Moral Ambition by Rutger Bregman. It’s about finding your purpose and committing to make a positive change in the world. And there’s a line in the book.

something like do not underestimate the change that a small group of committed citizens can make and it’s the only thing that has ever changed the world. And it resonates with me into following your purpose in life and changing roles and going into areas where you can make a difference. through my career, if you see particularly the last 15 years, BP Ventures and then going into

working with a Ukrainian company and then coming to OCCU. That made a big impact in me and the book really resonated with me. It’s about pushing yourself into the uncomfortable area to make a change in the world.

David Hunt (37:55.127)
Yeah, he’s a good challenging author, isn’t he? I think he’s no friend to to the parties at Davos. But I haven’t actually read that book, but I have read and seen other others of his of his intent. And yeah, he’s certainly I guess an author and an economist who is a good voice against the tide sometimes.

Nacho Gimenez (38:12.684)
Yes, yes, have great admiration for him. My second one is a book that I read must have been five years ago, six years ago that made a big impression, very famous book, Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. And for me, that book made an impact. It’s told me about the power of stories and to build culture, to build civilizations, to build movements and to rally people behind the course, right? Similar to…

Rutger Bregman, but from a historic perspective and the book challenged some of my assumptions that I had about history. When I was a child, I didn’t like history, I loved science, and as I’m getting older, I love history. I keep still love science.

And I’m going to give you two more, if I may.

David Hunt (39:01.502)
Okay. Keep them going, ’cause this is gonna challenge we have read one of those so far. One will have to go on my list, so let’s let’s keep going.

Nacho Gimenez (39:07.852)
The last two may be bit less famous, actually. One is a book by Ben Horowitz. It’s called The Hard Thing. The Hard Thing about hard things. And Ben is an entrepreneur and then a VC capitalist, of course, in the US. And the book talks about the leadership mindset in a startup. And he uses this terminology of

David Hunt (39:18.963)
Very good book.

Nacho Gimenez (39:38.125)
peacetime mindset, when you have time to think, time to be analytical, time to look at metrics. When you are in a wartime mindset, which we talked a little bit earlier, or talk about earlier, you have to take decisions with incomplete data, be decisive, move with speed and protect people. And that is a little bit what…

what is the change that I have gone from being an investor into being an operator. And that book really keeps coming to my mind into he talks a lot about his experience and the challenges that he’s faced because a lot of these decisions are really, really, really hard. And that book, a fabulous read for people making that change.

David Hunt (40:26.4)
Yeah, it’s one I recommend to a lot of the the founders that I I work with. It’s somewhere there on the on the shelf. There’s all the follow-up patchwork, I think, was something like along the lines of you are what you do or something along those lines. But that that Hard Thing About Hard Things I think was a r an excellent book and I think is fairly essential for for someone who’s growing through that growth, like you say, of of of that wartime ability and mentality. So we’ll certainly share that the the the links to to those three. So I’m two for one so far. Let’s have a look at the the last one.

Nacho Gimenez (40:55.18)
Okay, you got a match there. That’s good. That’s really good. The last one is a bit more related to the type of chemistry that we are in Oxy-CU. It’s a book called The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Heger. It talks about the Haber-Bosch process, which is the process that the German chemists used to produce ammonia, which is fundamental to make explosives and fertilizers.

using nitrogen from the air, hydrogen produced from water. how until that time we were using Chilean nitrates for those reasons, for those applications. And Germany find a way of producing that from air. And the book is a great story, great history from a chemistry perspective and from a historical perspective of the whole process and the impact that it had in Germany.

at the beginning of the 20th century. And then the book ends up talking about the next step. And the next step becomes fissure tropics, which is of course what we are doing in OxyCU. How to use CO2 and hydrogen to produce hydrocarbons. Again, how to produce liquids that we have a need for in that term as fuels for Germany from CNR, from gases, right?

and how the catalyst is important to choose and how do you find the process. So I read that book already when I was in OxyCU and it really gave me a different perspective in the chemistry that we are. It’s a way for us to connect into the beginning of the 20th century where German had all these fabulous chemistry, fantastic chemistry and chemical plants that were really second to none in the world.

David Hunt (42:46.69)
Well as a as a both a history and a technology nerd. That that sounds like one that needs to go onto onto the bookshelf. But I know I could rely on you for some good suggestions. So we’ll make sure that we we add links to those books into the episode page. We’ll also of course add links to OxyCU so you can see the more of the work that Nacho, Andrew, and the team there are are developing and the yeah, so the the look at the progress. I don’t know if there may be some stuff on there from from from Oxy1 at that that’s the the site that’s in the thing in in the

Nacho Gimenez (42:54.796)
you

David Hunt (43:15.764)
Oxford. I there’s certainly some stuff online on YouTube as well. We’ll try and link that as well so people can see a little bit of what you’re up to. But listen, it’s great to catch up with you again. It’s fantastic to to to see the evolution of the of the business in this in, you know. Andrew’s there in there, what I think now two or three years. Time flies, maybe slightly more, but I think I remember him. Six, is it? Definitely getting old. I remember when he joined.

Nacho Gimenez (43:31.469)
6.

Nacho Gimenez (43:35.285)
Ha ha ha.

David Hunt (43:37.27)
So yeah, but it’s great to see the evolution of of the business and and of course you and hopefully we’ll catch up for a coffee or so soon. But thank you for sharing your journey, thank you for sharing where you’re at with OxyCU and it’s been great to have you on the podcast. Thanks, Nature.

Nacho Gimenez (43:51.191)
Thank you for inviting me, David. It’s been a pleasure.

David Hunt (43:55.169)
Super, okay, let’s press stop recording.