So we see classic times coming down across the board. It stays with the EPA and certainly it gets down to less than 12 months. In most instances, if states take primacy over it. On the interconnect side, again, the process is different from each grid system. There’s six major grid systems in the US. ERCOT, the processes is fairly fast compared to some of the other ones. That’s another reason why, Project Permian is where it is. We’re already going through the interconnect process where the ERCOT’s right now. So that’s not going to be a gating item in COD of the Project Permian. But if you look at some of these other states, there’s a lot of bottleneck within their interconnect queue. And so again, it just requires proper planning. It could be a couple of years in some of these states to get an interconnection.
I think if we were talking about trying to get these projects online in ’24, ’25, like a lot of these renewable guys, it would be problematic, but certainly not… And then the last thing on the air, and then I’ll get to the international piece. This is probably one of the most unique features of NET Power that we don’t really talk about because everybody when they think about air quality, people associate that with CO2, but that’s really atmosphere quality. And so yes, NET Power essentially eliminates all CO2 from power generation, which is so differentiated, but we don’t have any NOx because we don’t let nitrogen into the combustion chamber. We don’t have SOx because this is natural gas and it’s not coal, so there’s no sulfur. So it can’t be oxidized.
And we don’t have any particulate matter. And so when you look at those three criteria air pollutants, we don’t have any of them. And so within in the eyes of the EPA and the things that they regulate, which are those criteria air pollutants, we don’t have them. So we’ll be able to get just a minor source permit on the air piece, which is so differentiated versus any carbon emitting plant in the world today. I think when you go internationally, the permitting process is actually a whole lot faster. And it’s mostly just because most of these the nation states and the entities within these states are all kind of controlled by the country. And so you have the national energy company, which also owns the national oil company, which also owns the surface and the subsurface in the whole permitting process.
So things are fairly streamlined in most international markets, whether it’s the Middle East, whether it’s parts of Southeast Asia. It’s a lot different than it is here in the United States where individuals and states have a lot more say in the outcome. And so the permitting process in these other states are obviously going to be a whole lot faster than I think they will in the United States. I think that’s certainly one of the challenges that we have here. But when we look at just why the United States is so attractive to us? It’s just because this is the largest market in the world for NET Power and one of the most economic, both because of our access to the lowest cost gas in the world, our really, really valuable carbon market, and an aging fleet of coal and gas plants.
Like if we could just replace all of the aging coal and gas plants within the sedimentary basins, we’re talking about 1,000 NET Power plants. And so we could just sit here and be fat and happy just deploying these and replacing these aging coal and gas plants over the next 10 to 20 years and not spend any time on the international markets. But I think part of the reason why the international markets are important to us is global warming is a global thing. It’s not just a US thing. And so we have a responsibility if we have a technology that can help other countries achieve their decarbonization goals, we feel like we have a social responsibility to deploy in those areas. So it’s going to be a focus area of ours over the course of the next decade.
And hopefully one of our first 10 projects is something in an international market.
Ryan Levine: Great. And then one other question in terms of some of your comments, it seems to suggest — but correct me if I’m not interpreting correctly — that within the US, the might of Power market may be more attractive relative to maybe some of the other regions. Is that what you’re signaling? Or is there any color you could share regarding what power markets are most attractive beyond the first two projects?
Danny Rice: Yes. I mean, we don’t have a contrarian view of where we think power markets go. Just looking at forward spark spreads. And spark spreads for the listeners is really just the arb between buying a BTU of gas and converting it into an electron. That spark spread is really just that proxy for the value of gas-fired power. And there is a whole futures market for spark spreads. And so all we’re really doing is looking at all of those deregulated competitive power markets where you have these future pricing to really look at what are future spark spreads across the competitive power markets. So from CISO, California; ERCOT; MISO; PJM, Pennsylvania principally; New York ISO; New England ISO; SPP. like when you look across all of those, there’s markets that are better than others, and there’s markets that are worse.
