It allows us to be able to just swap slots. So as the markets really starts to continue to evolve on power, on the cost to sequester the CO2, some projects today that look to be more economic, by 2027, 2028, they may be less economic than another project. That our markets in that area spark spreads really spike. And the entire back end of that curve really moves up on the power side that we say, it will be more economic to accelerate this project over that project. And because we have the standardized plant design and everything inside of that plant fences identical from one project to the next, that gives us so much flexibility to be opportunistic and take advantage of those really attractive economics as soon as possible. And really allows those projects to rise to the top of the queue.
And so that’s really going to be like the really interesting part of the backlog as we build that is OP2 — OP1 today may not necessarily be that second plant online. If there’s another project that comes along that we originate or that a customer wants that is even more economic and even more beneficial to the community and to the environment that we say it makes more sense for this project to take the next plant that’s in that manufacturing process. But that’s something you can only do if we have the standardized plant design. And that’s certainly one of the strategic reasons why we designed this thing to not bespoke plant like every other thermal plant in the industry today.
Bryce Mendes: I think that makes a lot of sense. One more, if I could squeeze it in, anything cooking internationally that you can speak to?
Danny Rice: The pot’s boiling. We’re getting ready. Yes. No, there’s a whole lot of things substantially. I think as we talked about when we were completing the destocking, we just talked about what are the key things you need of this recipe for this thing to be successful. You need access to natural gas, The lower the cost of natural gas, the better just because the more competitive you’ll be on the cost of power. You need access to a place to store the CO2 and certainly markets where there’s value in that CO2, either on the voluntary side like for enhanced oil recovery or on the involuntary side through federal credits, federal subsidies, federal taxes, like the 45Q here in the United States. Those all make that — the carbon part of the equation valuable.
And then the third piece is you need access to a lot of power demand because these are really, really large power plants. And one, we’re looking at deploying four NET Power plants. You’re talking about a gigawatt. So this is grid scale sort of power. And so you need those three things. You need access to the gas; you need the subsurface, a valuable subsurface; and you need power. And so when we look internationally, Canada, Western Canada is pretty amazing. It has all three of those criteria. The Middle East is really, really exciting to us. Southeast Asia, where we’re forming a joint venture with SK Group is really interesting. And then parts of Australia are also really, really interesting. Europe’s one that everybody says, what about Europe?
And Europe should make great sense. They’ve been sequestering in the North Sea for almost 20 years now. So they’ve demonstrated that you can safely and responsibly store that CO2 for Millennia. But I think Europe’s challenge right now is they’ve stopped developing their own gas supply. And so right now what they’re facing is a high cost of natural gas, which is leading to a high cost of power. And so I think if Europe can really just figure out its energy procurement strategy around low-cost, reliable natural gas, Europe becomes a really, really interesting market for us. But I think right now they’re facing bigger problems, which is just procuring energy security right now. Because right now, they’re really at the mercy of a whole lot of other countries and they don’t have control of their energy destiny.
So energy security is, above all else, the most important thing. It’s the foundation of a sustainable energy future that you can then decarbonize with NET Power. But first, you have to secure that energy and I think Europe has a lot of work to do to make that happen.
Operator: Our next question comes from Betty Jiang with Barclays.
Betty Jiang : Good morning. Thank you for all the helpful comments on today. Just a question on CO2 transport. One of the major proposed CCS pipeline was canceled last month and a lot of that due to regulatory issues and local community pushback. I know you’re focused on just short distance transport of less than 40 miles. Are there any lessons learned there? And how do you limit your risk in your CO2 transport strategy?
