From Taps to VCs: How This Water Rebel is Flooding Silicon Valley with H2O Startups
Water scarcity is the new oil crisis, but Silicon Valley is asleep at the wheel
In a world grappling with water scarcity and climate change, innovation in water technology has never been more crucial. Yet, the water sector faces unique challenges in attracting investment and fostering entrepreneurship.
In this episode of Liquid Assets hosted by Ravi kurani, Scott Bryan discusses the evolution of Imagine H2O from its inception in 2009 to its current status as a leading accelerator for water startups. He highlights the unique challenges faced by water entrepreneurs, including long commercialization timelines of 10-15 years and the need for non-dilutive funding sources.
The conversation delves into the global landscape of water innovation, spotlighting forward-thinking markets like Singapore and the EU. Scott emphasizes the importance of water security as a national priority and how different regions are tackling water-related challenges in the context of climate change. He also addresses the complexities of the water sector, including the fragmented nature of water utilities in the US and the need for localized solutions.
Looking to the future, Scott outlines his vision for water innovation through the lens of four key concepts: digitalization, decentralization, decarbonization, and democratization.
What you'll hear in this episode:
- The Genesis of Imagine H2O: Discover how Scott identified the need for a dedicated water innovation ecosystem and transformed it into reality.
- Navigating Long-Term Horizons: Learn why water startups face 10-15 year commercialization timelines and how to strategically approach funding.
- Global Perspectives: Gain insights into forward-thinking markets like Singapore and the EU, and their approaches to water security and climate change.
- The Four D's of Water Innovation: Explore Scott's vision for the future, focusing on digitalization, decentralization, decarbonization, and democratization.
- Practical Advice for Water Entrepreneurs: Uncover valuable tips on market focus, team building, and securing non-dilutive funding for pilot projects.
Listen On:
Watch the interview:
Meet Scott
Scott Bryan is a visionary leader in the water innovation sector and the driving force behind Imagine H2O, a nonprofit accelerator for water startups. With a background in finance, Scott spent seven years in wealth management and asset management, focusing on cleantech investments. During this time, he noticed a significant gap in the water sector – despite its critical importance, water was often overlooked as an investable space. Frustrated by this lack of attention and capital, Scott helped launch Imagine H2O in 2009, aiming to create a robust ecosystem for water entrepreneurs by connecting them with resources, funding, and industry partners.
Under Scott's leadership, Imagine H2O has evolved into a globally recognized platform, awarding over $2 million in pilot funding to projects in 20 different countries. His vision for the future of water revolves around what he calls the "four Ds": digitalization, decentralization, decarbonization, and democratization. Influenced early in his career by seminal works like "Cadillac Desert" and "Milagro Beanfield War", Scott's passion for water issues continues to drive his work. Through Imagine H2O, he champions innovative solutions to some of the world's most pressing water challenges, bridging the gap between entrepreneurial ideas and real-world impact.
The Book, Movie, or Show
Scott Bryan's worldview on water issues has been significantly shaped by two influential books. The first is "Cadillac Desert" by Marc Reisner, a seminal work that explores the complex history of water management in the American West. This book provided Scott with a deep understanding of the intricate challenges and personalities that have shaped water policy and infrastructure in the region. It left such an impression that Scott even had the opportunity to meet Floyd Domini, one of the key figures mentioned in the book, during his college years.
The second book that profoundly impacted Scott is "The Milagro Beanfield War" by John Nichols. This novel, which delves into the cultural aspects of water conflicts in the American Southwest, resonated with Scott's interest in the human dimension of water issues. These literary works, read early in his life, played a crucial role in cultivating Scott's enduring fascination with water and ultimately influenced his career path in water innovation.
Contains affiliate Amazon links.
Transcript
00:00
Ravi Kurani
Welcome to Liquid Assets. I'm your host, Ravi Kurani. Liquid Assets is a podcast where we talk about the intersection of business, policy and technology, all as it looks at water.
00:09
Ravi Kurani
Today we have a special guest, Scott Bryan, one of my first mentors and the driving force behind Imagine H two O, an accelerator for water startups. In this episode, Scott shares the evolution of Imagine H two O and how it's transforming the water sector by supporting innovative water solutions. Tune in at minute two to hear about the early challenges of water innovation and the need for a robust ecosystem for water entrepreneurs. We dive deep into the complexities of securing funding for water startups, especially in a sector where commercialization can take ten to 15 years. Scott highlights the importance of non dilutive funding and strategic partnerships. Jump to minute ten for insights on how startups can navigate these long timelines and secure crucial pilot funding. Scott also provides a global perspective on water innovation.
01:02
Ravi Kurani
Discussing forward thinking markets like Singapore and the EU, he explains how these regions are tackling water security and climate change with innovative technologies. Don't miss minute 20 for a detailed look at these international efforts and the role of water in national security. Finally, we explore Scott's vision for the future of water innovation. Touching on digitalization, decentralization, decarbonization, and democratization, these four ds represent a hopeful and strategic approach to solving our most pressing water issues. For a glimpse into this forward thinking vision, tune in at minute 30. Scott's passion for water innovation is truly inspiring and this episode is packed with valuable insights for anyone interested in the future of water management. Stay tuned for an enlightening conversation. Let's jump in.
01:52
Ravi Kurani
Scott, how are you doing today?
01:54
Scott Bryan
I'm doing well. Thanks for having me on, Ravi. It feels like it's just yesterday, but I think I was 2014 when we met in San Francisco and you were just coming into the sector.
02:06
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, let's actually go ahead and jump right into that. So you run imagine h two o as an accelerator for water companies. Let's just talk through the evolution of it where I had entered at 2014. I think you guys were around a little bit before that, but I what's the story of imagine h two o?
02:22
Scott Bryan
Yeah, we really started with our first program for startups in 2009. We were based in San Francisco, looking around at the innovation ecosystem in other sectors, mostly the renewable space in Silicon Valley, and realizing it just wasn't a home for water entrepreneurs. And if you had a new idea in the space, it wasn't clear which conferences you go to or where you go find an investor and we really felt for resources as important as it is from a humanitarian, ecological standpoint and from a market perspective, there should be a much larger innovation ecosystem. This is definitely a sector that's always innovative, but that's really amazing things if you think about it.
03:05
Scott Bryan
On the other hand, if you look at the sector today, or especially when were launching in 2009, it just wasn't getting the attention from the financial markets or even really from talent entering the sector. And that's what we wanted to change. We wanted to make water be more about a positive approach around opportunities and innovation. Not that's going to solve all of our water challenges, but we really wanted to focus on the entrepreneurial opportunities in water. And how do we change the paradigm where new ideas can flow into the sector along with capital and talented and.
03:43
Ravi Kurani
Let'S just get into the belly of the beast of how imagine h two o works. I have a few questions on point made sure, which I'll ask later, but like, what exactly is imagined h two o? It's an accelerator. So if I'm a startup, what happens? I apply. And then what does the program look like?
03:57
Scott Bryan
First off, we're actually a nonprofit organization. We're structured as a 501 in the US. We are supported by philanthropic dollars and industry sponsors. But I mention that upfront because we don't take equity in our companies. That's not our business model. Impact is our business model. When an entrepreneur comes to us with an idea, there's a level of trust and a neutral convener role that we play that allows us to see a lot of ideas, but also help entrepreneurs then take their idea and efficiently look at a pretty fragmented landscape of customers, investors and talent and help them connect the dots faster. It's a race against time for any entrepreneur in any sector. Water just happens to be one where the timelines are even longer. Oftentimes you're looking at ten to 15 years to commercialize and successfully bring something to market in this space.
04:49
Scott Bryan
And we want to change that, Trey.
04:52
Ravi Kurani
And in this ten to 15 years, it seems. I had a very similar conversation the other day. There was a wastewater company that was like the fundraising cycles in Silicon Valley run at a one to three year timeframe. You raised for an 18 month timeframe from a tech standpoint. And if you're looking at a ten to 15 year horizon of product adoption, how does imagine h two o string all these disparate parts together to actually get a startup to quicken up that timeline?
05:19
Scott Bryan
Yeah, well, early on we really, were gunning for that intro between a venture fund and an idea. And that's how it works in theory, in other sectors, but in water, because of those timelines, were starting to see that the earlier entrepreneur brought in equity investors. Not to say it's a bad thing, it's really, are you ready for that? And sometimes you saw entrepreneurs just, they launched the idea, get the business plan in place, maybe hire a person or two, then go out and fundraise. When in fact, in water, if you're going to be around for that kind of time cycle, you really need to be looking at non dilutive funding resources, of which there are more and more. I can't say it's amazing, but that's where organizations like us come and where we can actually fund a pilot with non dilutive strategies.
06:07
Scott Bryan
They're more in a program to the federal level in this country, but in the EU, Singapore, where we work, where there are some pretty compelling opportunities for entrepreneurs, the right ones, to find non dilutive financial resources.
06:22
Ravi Kurani
Let's just double click into that for a second. You said Singapore or the US, if we're looking at forward looking countries or forward looking markets where there is non dilutive funding available, you mentioned a handful. Can we just get a list of those? And maybe what is the parallel technology or market that companies would best building against? Be that wastewater, be that drinking water in those countries, like building a matrix here of markets or products given country.
06:50
Scott Bryan
Sure. Outside the US, we have a team that's based in Singapore that's working in the region, also in country, with new solutions. Water is a national security issue for them, and thus there's a different approach to innovation, but they're really looking at water availability, but in the context of climate change, they're looking at how do we create new resources of water, but with very limited land space and energy resources, how do you do that? They're really a place to look for in a water energy nexus place, if you will. But also anything around water conservation is pretty amazing. What they've been able to do, and that includes water reuse and recycling, too. Other countries that have done it really well, Australia, Israel, has certainly had to do quite a bit.
07:41
Scott Bryan
But I think it's also changing in the EU now, where you see these stormwater events that they've had, and all of a sudden, that's a massive market opportunity for new ideas. Looking at the UK, I can't remember the data, but there's some pretty amazing spend numbers from the UK alone just on stormwater management in the future.
08:03
Ravi Kurani
And when you compare that against funding in climate and even the larger picture of just funding in general. You mentioned earlier, you guys started off imagine h two o as a renewable energy accelerator or energy accelerator.
08:19
Scott Bryan
We've always been focused on water. We just were surrounded by other accelerators and renewables and clean tech that have the advantage of maybe looking broader than water, but we really wanted to go exclusively focused on water and have that be our mission and cause.
08:37
Ravi Kurani
Got it. So then back to my question of investment in water from these countries, the UK, Europe, Australia, US, Singapore, what is the general percentage if you have a rough number in water compared to climate investments, and then climate investments even cater against other investments writ large, are we looking at small percentage points? Is it increasing now? Like where does that stand in the grand scale of things?
09:02
Scott Bryan
Yeah, the data is always a little fuzzy, but it's about, I think water is about 2% of all climate tech venture flows in the last few years. I think that will change. They're more water tech companies now saying, hey, we're a climate solution. So I think that will change over time. But yeah, I think that's one of the real opportunities for our sector is for people to craft their solutions in the context of not in the past we've just looked at water savings, but water is cheap. But now how do you think about your solution in the context of someone's carbonous budget, if you will?
09:43
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, yeah, entirely. And you kind of mentioned this earlier of looking at water from a market perspective. I think in the conversations that I've had on this podcast, it's interesting because we look at water from a very binary perspective of something that you just turn on your tap or something that you flush your toilet with, or even something that's used to grow our food, but it is way more multidimensional.
10:08
Ravi Kurani
And the impacts that water has in everything from industry to cooling water towers to drinking water to flushing your toilet, if we take this broader scale of looking at it as a market perspective, and if you take your lens of seeing all the companies that have come through, imagine h two o question here is where do you see the peaks and valleys in whats getting funded right now and what should we be building that needs to get funded?
10:39
Scott Bryan
I think there was probably a peak around digital funding. A lot of people saying we need to digitize this space, and that's certainly there. That's not gone away, but I think there probably were more startups five years ago saying were a digital play and there was more buzz around the space, but that's changed. And I think there's been a little bit of a reset around expectations, around digital, especially in the municipal sector. The reality is, at least in this country, there's over 50,000 water utilities. So getting your idea to any kind of scale takes a long time, even if you have some really big customers. So that's a piece of it for digital. I think more recently, food and beverage has certainly been an industry that's been willing to pay for solutions. And sometimes it's a access to water social license to operate.
11:37
Scott Bryan
But more and more, also on the wastewater side, just discharge rates at the local level. But then from a climate perspective, are there technologies that they can put in place on site that lower their costs but also lower their carbon footprint? So that's been one space, broadly defined as industrial wastewater, that seems to be getting some traction and then emerging issues. This is really a issue driven sector. Something like PFAS right now is getting quite a bit of attention, but there's not maybe as many PFAS companies as one might think. A lot of it's still out of university labs, and the nature of a lot of the solutions are engineered. It's not necessarily an app that you're going to put into place to solve PFAS issues.
12:23
Ravi Kurani
Awesome. Yeah, we actually just had Julie Millen. We just launched episode with her. Iclarity is such a cool company with, I think they were an imagine h two o company as well.
12:33
Scott Bryan
Yes, it's doing great work and we've been really excited to see her go through the accelerator program, but also benefit from some of our pilot funding activities.
12:45
Ravi Kurani
If you had to give, let's pick these two industries, food and beverage and wastewater. Since you brought those up, if there was an entrepreneur outside there listening, which the bulk of our audience is, do you have a things you should do and things you shouldn't do? A checklist that would almost be tactical or something that they can learn from. You had said earlier, don't raise vc funding too early, just given the longer scales of deployment. But what other lessons do you have for water founders out there?
13:16
Scott Bryan
Yeah, if we do a lot of this, some of it just comes down to basics, really identify and nail a beachhead market and then wastewater. There are so many verticals within that space, and the customer needs are sometimes so unique. We've had entrepreneurs just pursue small brewers in northern California that had effluent of a certain level, and that's how focused you have to be. Otherwise you're really going to be out chasing the wrong opportunities and lose valuable time. So it's almost as if you have to start engaging your would be customers before you really go out and build a business. And that's a lot of what we try to do, is say, okay, we're going to put you in touch with a customer. You're not there to sell. You're there to really understand what are they willing to pay for?
14:06
Scott Bryan
What is their purchasing decision process? How do you efficiently navigate that? And at food and Bev, you've also got to understand that oftentimes this will be very local. So just because a majority food and Bev company is using your solution in New York state doesn't mean they're going to do that in Arizona. And I think oftentimes entrepreneurs chasing those big corporate industrial water users and thinking, okay, I've got a solution that once we're in that first facility, we can then scale it throughout their footprint. And that's not really how it always works.
14:47
Ravi Kurani
Interesting you say that we just had Robin Craig, who is actually a policy, water policy from USC, and the kind of other layer here that she mentioned is obviously policy that lays on top of here. Right. Every single state has different policy from freshwater to oceans. And if you're making energy versus water, that has a complete different equation as well. Really interesting that you say that. I just had this conversation the other day.
15:13
Scott Bryan
But, yeah, especially in wastewater, too. There have been times in the past when you had to go state by state just to get approval for your solution. Just because, again, it worked in Washington state didn't mean that Oregon was an open market for you. So a lot of steps that an entrepreneur needs to go through, and that speaks to the lengthy commercialization timeframes. But I think we can also get caught up into this, especially in the municipal space, and say, okay, they're risk averse. There's too many of them. They're too fragmented. Some of that is on us as an innovation community to figure that out. Municipal entities are often conservative for good reason. They have very little margin or error for something to go wrong, especially if it's in water treatment or even wastewater.
16:04
Scott Bryan
So that's, I think entrepreneurs have to have a realistic mindset and have some empathy for the role or understanding of the role that there would be customers are in and not just get so focused on their risk averse. So I can't sell to them. There's risk in any site that you're going to go locate your solution on. It's just how you manage that risk.
16:31
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, entirely. And they are. They're critical infrastructure and a small thing that could go wrong there, could hurt millions of people. And so the Silicon valley of break things and break them fast, maybe is not the best rules to go forward with on a wastewater plant.
16:48
Scott Bryan
Yes. Yeah, yeah.
16:50
Ravi Kurani
I feel like there's always lessons to be learned from startup failures as well. Is there a. Maybe a generalization or a handful of bullet points on startups that you've seen that have failed? Okay. If they would have done this differently, that would have been better maybe for the lessons out there for the founders, you don't have to name startup names or any particular person. Hold on. What teachings or learnings you have.
17:14
Scott Bryan
Yeah, I think we've certainly evolved here. In our early days, we would just submit an application to imagine H Joe. We'd work with our judging committee and find the best business plan and give them a gold star and bring them into the family. That worked sometimes, but it didn't always work. We were looking at commercial viability, looking at impact, but we also started to see that, hey, this is really about people and team, just like any businesses. But the founder's got to be somebody that can create a believable story to attract employees, investment and customers. And oftentimes I think we've seen some really good outcomes when there's more than one founder and they're co founders and they're playing complimentary roles, you've got to do a lot of things as an entrepreneur in the space.
18:03
Scott Bryan
So for the technical folks to teach, team up with somebody that is more in a business oriented or customer facing, or maybe it was even been a customer at one point in their past, in their career, that's a win, too. So I think really thinking about whether it's your co founder or the team and your hires, who do they represent and how do they help you even learn more about that beachhead market? So a team is a big one for us now. Yes, I think bringing in the right funding at the right time is certainly another. I think there's also just getting it wrong as far as that customer discovery process. And you see this a little bit more in digital, but in other elements within water, it's okay. I've got a great solution.
18:52
Scott Bryan
I'm going to do this in municipal, I'm going to do it in oil and gas, and I'm going to do it in food. Best. No, that's not how it works. So again, bringing people back to that beachhead focus. So those are certainly some elements beyond that, this is a huge space and opportunity. So you do need entrepreneurs that can think big, but aren't going to get too caught up on, hey, there are ten other companies just like mine india. These challenges are so localized and they're everywhere. Don't get so focused on the competition or if anything, maybe figure out a way to efficiently partner with others in the space. But I do think sometimes we get founders that are just focused on, this is my thing and I know there's competition and that's a bad thing.
19:42
Scott Bryan
Oftentimes you need to create a market, especially it's in an invincible space. You need another few entrepreneurs just so the utility can do an RFP that's successful. So thinking about competition, who you partner with, all that's a piece of it too. And how does that get into your head or not?
20:02
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, I want to pick on this point that you mentioned a few times now of getting funding for pilot projects. Many times in startup world, we think that VC is the only way to raise money initially and to give up equity and to run and run fast. What's a handful of models that are available for water founders out there in terms of getting that pilot funding?
20:26
Scott Bryan
Yeah, so this is something we've been scaling over the last five or so years. We've now awarded upwards of $2 million to projects globally, projects in 20 different countries. So it's something that we're doing at a greater scale and on the cusp of announcing some exciting things around a pilot innovation fund. But yeah, if I could go back to our earliest years and see what entrepreneurs were up against, especially in the municipal sector, you realize that they had a great idea, they had a customer. But not many utilities have budget to go do a pilot. And even a venture backed company doesn't always have the funding there. They're not really budgeted for that. So that's where we've come in as a partner to our companies to say, how much money do you actually need? We're not talking about millions of dollars.
21:23
Scott Bryan
Oftentimes pilots can go from. Sometimes they're $25,000 or less, depending on the geography. Now, if it's hardware, there's more, but that's where we'll go up to $100,000 with our funding. For us, it's a way to create direct impact as an impact organization on a particular issue, but it's also about expanding access to innovation. Let's create a market where it's not just the big players that get to access the cool new stuff. How can we remove those hurdles that might be preventing a utility or community that really needs innovation to be able to trial it to see if it's actually something they can do.
22:03
Ravi Kurani
I love that. That's awesome. I want to take a quick left turn onto what powers you and getting into the kind of mind of Scott. Let's go back before imagine h two. I'd love to learn a little bit about what you were doing and then what got you involved in imagination 2.0 and then your life as you've gone forward from there.
22:27
Scott Bryan
Sure. Yeah. I had an interesting seven or so years prior to imagining show where I was in finance. Started out on a team at Piper Jaffrey that then moved over to Royal bank of Canada. We were on wealth management, but doing some interesting asset management plays, especially in the area of Cleantech. So were involved when were at Piper and putting together cleantech fund to funds, which was the first of its kind on the street. We're working with pension funds like Calpers on their green wave initiative, looking at environmental screening, proactive investments, a clean tech venture. But I just couldn't get over the fact that water was often an icon on our pitch deck and not really an investable space.
23:12
Scott Bryan
You look at EV's at the time, Tesla was just an idea getting off the ground, but one could go invest in something like that, or look at solar wind. They were investable plays within those spaces. But in water, there were just a few of venture backed companies and some pretty epic failures that had happened and the space was pretty shy about doing more. And that just struck me as, again, how can you have such an important resource receiving so little and of talent and capital to do new things? And that's not to say that the sector hasn't been innovative. If you think about earlier, you said something about water coming out of the tap. There was a time when we did water infrastructure so well that people didn't see it. You just take it for granted because the design was so amazing.
24:05
Scott Bryan
Now that's changing as those systems and those realities are no longer viable. And all of a sudden the general public is going to care about water innovation because they're going to be paying for it in the form of higher food costs, water bills, insurance, you name it, we're going to be paying the cost. And it's really the burden of climate change through the medium of water is what we're looking at. And that's really been what we've been saying all along, is water is the way that people are going to experience climate change. And innovation is going to play an important role. Not the only role, but innovation has an important role in changing stuff, changing our mindset about an issue that really doesn't have to be another doomsday scenario. Yes, we've got to get climate in check.
24:56
Scott Bryan
That has to be an important piece of this from a mitigation standpoint. But we can no longer look at communities and expect, oh, adaptation. We'll get to that when we've got this mitigation thing done. Plenty of frontline communities where these issues are there now, and we can't forget them. And I think getting it right for those communities is going to be critical.
25:23
Ravi Kurani
And when you look at why EV and these solar and wind were getting funded at that time, is there a few defining parameters or defining metric of why water was not getting funded? Outside of these failures that you've mentioned, was there a reason there wasn't a critical mass?
25:41
Scott Bryan
I think it gets to some of what I've been talking about. If you had a new idea in solar storage or wind, and you wanted to get into the California market, basically they had PG and E and SoCal Edison. That's what you decided. You had to get one of them, and then you had massive market share in California. If you were to do that in water in California, there's just around 2000 utilities alone. You don't get to 30, 40, 50% market share overnight in water. So I think for venture investors with a seven year timeframe, that's where the models are at odds. And that's, I think, the piece of it.
26:23
Ravi Kurani
Trey, do you have any ideas on why there is such discrepancy between California, as an example, having two energy firms and 2000 water? Is it the way that we structured the infrastructure? What's the background behind that?
26:39
Scott Bryan
There's a lot to it, and I probably don't even know enough to begin to scratch the surface here. But it gets back again to water being a very local issue. And right now, when you think about trying to go into communities and say, what if these two utilities that are right next to one another drawing water from the same resources, why don't you become one? That can be a pretty tense conversation, just because we now have decades and in some cases generations of running water utilities the way they are. So it's hard to have consolidation among municipal utilities. There's been some talk about, could you have a virtual or digital consolidation, where at least you could be throwing on some of the same back systems and digital processes? That too can have its challenges. Yeah, it's very localized.
27:31
Scott Bryan
But then in parts of California, if you look where the equity issues are, the greatest particular unincorporated communities in the Central Valley. There's, if it's a tragedy of the commons in those spaces where we've not said, hey, there will be a water utility there. So people are on wells and septic tanks, and when there's drought or flood, it's up to those folks to figure out the solutions on their own. They don't have the infrastructure or even the governance entity to help them navigate through a situation like that. It's changing, but that's been in the past how it's been done.
28:06
Ravi Kurani
Yeah. I think the really cool thing about accelerators and incubators are you sit at the front lines of basically ideas, right? You have founders and entrepreneurs that come to you with the kind of beginning stages of launching a product. And I wanted to get your view on if you were to write a Sci-Fi novel about water. Apparently there's this new genre of Sci-Fi by the way, called Solarpunk or something, which is about an optimist view on how we solve the kind of climate future, which is really interesting. I need to check that out. I heard that the other day. If you were to think about a Sci-Fi novel and have a series of story arcs, products folks working on cool things, what does the. I don't know, next? I feel like seven to ten is too short because that's.
29:01
Ravi Kurani
We're already going past that in just the pilots that we're having. What does the next 50 years look like? 50 to 100 years? If imagine h two o was to have their way and you guys have funded the right companies, that then blossom into what's next. What does that Sci-Fi novel look like?
29:16
Scott Bryan
Sure. Not Mad Max, I can tell you that. I think imagine show and others are talking about digitalization, not digitization. Sorry, I'm gonna. You're gonna need to edit this out. Imagine ho and others are looking at this through a couple different topics. One is the dcarb opportunity. One is decentralizing and then the digital side of it, and then maybe a fourth, I would say, is democratizing it. That those are three, four deciseconds of water. As we think ahead to the future, decentralization. There's no reason why we can't be doing more on site water reuse in our small businesses and factories, multi residents buildings. So that's where a company like epic cleantech comes into play. And we get pretty excited. On the digital side, there's all us with digital twins thinking about stormwater management.
30:23
Scott Bryan
There's so many ways that we can and opportunities that we can change the way we use water just by having the digital tools. On the D carb side, the math's a little bit all over the place, but some estimates have 10% of GHG is being produced by the water sector globally. I think that's on par with global shipping. So it's a big space and thus an opportunity where there should be a willingness to pay for decarb solutions within water. And then on the democratization side of it, really thinking about how are these solutions accessible? How can we create more equitable outcomes for communities? How do you prevent the cycle where we. You have Flint, then you have Jackson communities that really need solutions. And it's not always a crisis in the water itself, it's a crisis in governance.
31:14
Scott Bryan
How can innovation, especially from the digital standpoint, how can you create a better accounting system and more transparency for how water is used and managed? I think that'll be an important piece of this.
31:28
Ravi Kurani
Really cool. Yeah, we'll have to definitely pull out those four. The four ds and throw them on your show notes. I think that's such an eloquent way of explaining it. I like that. That'd be a great title for the Sci-Fi novel the four Ds.
31:42
Scott Bryan
The four ds, yeah.
31:44
Ravi Kurani
Scott, I asked everybody this question as the kind of last question before we close up is, do you have a book, a tv show or a movie that has given you the overview effect, changed your viewing of how you view the world, or you view the world of water?
32:05
Scott Bryan
Gus Water. Probably the ones that caught my two books. That caught my imagination well before I got into imagine h two o. But I think piqued my interest in water. And first was Cadillac desert. Anyone that's grown up in the american west, it's the book to read and to understand how complex this space is. I even had the opportunity to meet Floyd Domini, who would, you know, built a number of those big dams when I was in college. And just to understand that there was a different era when personalities and big ideas, that's what it took. And to think about how different the reality is now, especially when you look at something like Glen Kenya Dam and what's the future of the Colorado river?
32:50
Scott Bryan
It was really fun to read that book in college, get to understand the personalities and issues, but a good 2030 years before, and we've gotten to where it is now. And then another one that just stuck with me, Milagro Beanfield war. Just about good old fashioned western water fights. But the cultural aspect of water in the region, those would probably be the two that stuck with me at an early age and I think have kept me interested in water all along.
33:21
Ravi Kurani
Awesome. I love those, too. Yeah, we'll definitely spotlight those.
33:24
Scott Bryan
Yeah.
33:26
Ravi Kurani
Thank you so much for coming and joining us today.
33:29
Scott Bryan
Great to be here and look forward to hearing more of your podcasts.
33:33
Ravi Kurani
Thanks, Scott.
33:34
Scott Bryan
Bye bye.
33:37
Ravi Kurani
And for all of those of you out there, if you want to listen to liquid assets, you can find us at liquidassets cc or anywhere else you get your podcasts or on YouTube today.