Transcript - Episode 78: Preparing Students For The Energy Transformation, With Tucker Perkins The President & CEO Of Propane Education & Research Council Episode 78

Sep 13, 2022

00:00:00 Tucker

And now, Cummins has built this purpose-built propane engine, which is as thermally efficient as diesel - we thought that'd never happened. As durable as diesel, we thought that would never happen. And then when we start talking about benefit to the environment, 25% reduction in greenhouse gases from the next best technology on the market today; easier to maintain, cheaper to maintain really will kind of revolutionize not only on-road transportation, but off-road transportation.

                

00:00:31 Christina

The workforce landscape is rapidly changing and educators and their institutions need to keep up. Preparing students before they enter the workforce to make our communities and businesses stronger is at the core of getting an education.

                

00:00:43 Christina

But we need to understand how to change and adjust so that we can begin to project where things are headed before we even get there. So, how do we begin to predict the future?

                

00:00:55 Salvatrice

Hi, I'm Salvatrice Cummo, Vice President of Economic and Workforce Development at Pasadena City College and host of this podcast.

                

00:01:04 Christina

And I'm Christina Barsi, producer and co-host of this podcast.

                

00:01:08 Salvatrice

And we are starting the conversation about the future of work. We'll explore topics like how education can partner with industry, how to be more equitable, and how to attain one of our highest goals; more internships, and PCC students in the workforce.

                

00:01:22 Salvatrice

We at Pasadena City College want to lead the charge in closing the gap between what our students are learning and what the demands of the workforce will be once they enter. This is a conversation that impacts all of us. You, the employers, the policymakers, the educational institutions, and the community as a whole.

                

00:01:42 Christina

We believe change happens when we work together and it all starts with having a conversation. I'm Christina Barsi.

                

00:01:49 Salvatrice

And I'm Salvatrice Cummo, and this is the Future of Work.

                

00:01:53 Salvatrice

Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Future of Work Podcast, I am your host Salvatrice Cummo. Today, we'll be talking about the propane industry from a conservation and sustainability standpoint. We will certainly dive deeper into propane's role in infrastructure, new technology investments being made by the propane industry, and really what renewable propane is all about and how it impacts our future.

                

00:02:18 Salvatrice

With that said, we are excited to welcome Tucker Perkins, President and CEO of the Propane Education and Research Council, which is a Washington DC-based on-profit that invests in research and development of propane-powered innovation that promotes a safe, efficient use of propane through safety training. And of course, educational programs.

                

00:02:39 Salvatrice

Mr. Perkins has 40 years of experience in the propane industry and is active in many industry organizations, of course, including the National Propane Gas Association, the World LP Gas Association, and the Industrial Truck Association, just to name a few.

                

00:02:56 Salvatrice

With that said, thank you so much, Mr. Perkins, how are you?

                

00:02:59 Tucker

Well, Salvatrice, it's great to be with you and I'm doing well today, but I'm looking forward to this conversation. So, thanks.

                

00:03:05 Salvatrice

I'll tell you what, impressive 40 years. And we've got to jam-pack it in about 30 minutes.

                

00:03:10 Tucker

Well, that's good. We'll take a good try.

                

00:03:13 Salvatrice

Well, with everyone of my guests, I always like to open up the podcast and really talking about your interest and really what led you to the industry. So, if you can share with us a little bit about what led you to this career and why are you still in it?

                

00:03:28 Tucker

So, in college, I was an engineering graduate and I really wanted to do what engineers, I guess, do; build things, design things. So, I started as a consulting engineer, but I was quickly drawn to the energy industry just because I really love the scale of the business, keeping people warm, seeing people were fed, keeping businesses operating.

                

00:03:49 Tucker

But I think the truth is what has drawn me to the propane industry and held me there, is probably has a really unique mix of two things. I think the people are just salt-of-the-earth people, blue-collar, down-to-earth, people that you want to hang out with, but they also, to a person, have a strong entrepreneurial spirit.

                

00:04:10 Tucker

I worked for a while in the utility industry, and while I love the business and I really love the people I work with, at the end of the day, it's really about utilities. You get lost in that. And the propane industry tends to be a collection of smaller, more nimble, and certainly entrepreneurial-style people. And that's really what has kept me there.

                

00:04:27 Tucker

I think the quality of the people and then their general spirit. I would say the last five or six years as we really moved into a world that thinks much more about the environment, they think beyond comfort or cost. Now, they really think about comfort and cost and impact on the planet. It's been really challenging and interesting to kind of represent this fuel that is arguably often lumped in with coal or oil or wood as a fossil fuel.

                

00:04:56 Tucker

So, to take a position where to begin to educate just the typical consumer or the typical industrial customer that using propane, or in many cases, natural gas, is actually good for the environment compared to what they have been doing. So, it's been a great career and I think the crowning statement would be, I think if I had to do it all over again, I'm not sure I'd do anything different.

                

00:05:17 Salvatrice

Oh, that's wonderful. Well, that's always great. Most of us would say, gosh, I would do it so differently, but the fact that you're saying you would still do this again.

                

00:05:24 Tucker

I think I would still be an engineer undergraduate. I'm glad that I got a master's degree in business. I'm really happy to be in this space, this energy space.

                

00:05:32 Salvatrice

Yeah, speaking of which, I mean, during this time of multiple energy sources emerging, why is propane still a valuable resource for us while we have all these others that are just kind of emerging for the sake of our environment?

                

00:05:48 Tucker

Well, and it's such an interesting conversation and a different one in America than there is in Europe, and there is in Africa, and perhaps that there is in Asia. I mean, everybody's in a little different space, about how they use energy. But certainly in America, at least for me, today, it's about trying to use less coal, oil, wood.

                

00:06:07 Tucker

Whether you heat your home or how you power vehicles that you might drive, or that bring you your packages and food and milk to the grocery store. And certainly, while we like to think about solar and wind and maybe hydrogen as the three kind of new forms of energy that are coming, the truth is it's not going to be an overnight transition.

                

00:06:28 Tucker

In fact, I never talk about an energy transition. I said transition implies smooth and almost imperceptible. We're going to have an energy transformation. And you see it in California, actually have seen it in Ohio this week. You know, where the grid just is overtaxed. And I do think there is an element of fuels and they're almost limited to two.

                

00:06:48 Tucker

Really, natural gas and propane. And then their renewable counterparts; renewable natural gas, renewable propane that really begin to fill in this gap during this transformation when hydrogen's not quite here, solar and wind really aren't quite here. And you're kind of seeing it today in Germany.

                

00:07:05 Tucker

I always have looked to Europe for maybe five years as a little bit of a preview into where I think we might be in five years, and you kind of see how they tended to get a little bit ahead of physical implementation and physical infrastructure. And I think that's where propane and natural gas - I don't think you can have this conversation about propane independent of natural gas, because we're somewhat inseparably linked.

                

00:07:28 Tucker

Natural gas in cities where the mains exist, propane to pick up the areas beyond the main - and to a degree, to fill in the energy gaps where there are big gaps.

                

00:07:38 Salvatrice

You touched on electric just a little bit when we talked about grid, but thinking about the transformation that we are seeing now to electric and the majority of the companies switching their transportation to electric as well, and not thinking about natural gases or propane and other traditional methods of energy. Why should companies continue to think about propane as being their number one choice of energy or fuel versus electric.

                

00:08:06 Tucker

"Companies" is a broad word, but we'll confine it now to transportation, but we can go a little bit broader. Really, because one, companies can't afford to make that step. And then if we think about transportation, and again, this is a fundamentally different conversation for you and me as a consumer, as we drive our car to and from the store, to and from to see our kids and friends.

                

00:08:29 Tucker

Our trips are 40, 50, 60 miles, almost always with an occasional vacation trip, as opposed to a company and even Amazon or FedEx, UPS up to Budweiser, and the people that deliver your bread and milk, we're deeply involved right now with the postal service. Trucks and medium-duty vehicles that generally weigh 25 to 35,000 pounds that might drive 3 or 400 miles a day, might have an irregular route. They might drive all day for a couple days.

                

00:08:58 Tucker

They just don't have the luxury of having the recharging systems in place. And the technology really doesn't exist. I don't think people realize it, the technology that powers your electric car, even I thought it would be similar to the technology that powers your big truck, and that's not the case at all. It's just completely different style of batteries and charging, and companies just aren't able to afford that yet.

                

00:09:21 Tucker

We've been in school transportation for probably 12 years. So, school buses, and to me, it's the perfect - I've said for the last five years, there are only two ways to take your children to school safely. And one is to choose battery electric bus, the other is to choose a bus fueled by propane.

                

00:09:37 Tucker

And the differences are frankly much less than you would realize. If we think about where electricity comes from, what it takes to produce power, to charge your batteries - the differences are quite minimal. There's a big difference. An electric school bus cost about $400,000. A propane school bus cost about a hundred thousand dollars.

                

00:09:58 Tucker

So, we go back to companies and always love to hold up UPS or FedEx or even Amazon as pretty good examples. I think they would love to drive electric vehicles, but between the impact on range and payload, and then the difference in cost, it's not a choice they can afford to make overnight. They still need to be cost-competitive in how they deliver bread or milk or packages.

                

00:10:19 Tucker

And that's why. I think this conversation will be fundamentally different in 30 years when hydrogen is probably more developed network, when we've figured out how to make the good kind of hydrogen. And I would say when batteries look nothing like they look today.

                

00:10:33 Tucker

I think that's the wildcard for all of us is not so much how fast can solar and wind appear, but how long before batteries become something that are light enough and not so mineral-rich that they can store the energy that we need at prices that we all can afford.

                

00:10:51 Salvatrice

That's right. Shifting gears, just a little bit thinking about policy and the investment in JOBS Act; what is the role of propane in this infrastructure design of the investment in JOBS Act?

                

00:11:04 Tucker

We were really happy. I mean, again, so many people will say to me, "Tucker, how does the fuel that powers my grill ... that's how I know propane; how is it a relevant fuel in this energy transformation?" So, it's nice to see when governments and institutions kind of come together.

                

00:11:21 Tucker

In that particular bill, we received about $9 billion of funding into really three big buckets, if you will. One was all-around transportation, clean school buses that are powered by propane. And I think that was about two and a half billion dollars of it alone.

                

00:11:38 Tucker

A really interesting investment into ports. Ports today, even though we all aspire to this cleaner economy, and yet when I travel, I was in Hawaii not long ago and doing something as a guest of the government there, and moved into the port, and I said, before I even went in, I said just stop at the gate.

                

00:11:55 Tucker

And it was shocking to me in a place that's concerned about the environment as Hawaii, full of great solar and wind, but that port was intensely diesel. The forklifts running around, the trucks running around, the lift equipment that picks up the containers and moves them around, they're all running on diesel.

                

00:12:13 Tucker

I remarked at the time we could cut the emissions of this port by 90 to 95% by just moving them from the existing diesel technology to our best-in-class propane technology. And so, that bill sees a great investment yet again, in ports.

                

00:12:32 Tucker

And a port doesn't have to be a Marine port, a port can also be an inland port as we begin to substitute diesel fuel for propane. And at the time that bill was written was kind of before that whole run-up in gasoline and diesel prices. It's even more relevant today as we think about diesel fuel costing at that time, $6 a gallon; today, closer to $5 a gallon, I guess. But propane is certainly under $2 a gallon in those applications.

                

00:12:58 Tucker

So, not only is there these massive savings in emissions, but a massive savings in dollars. And depending on who's saving that money, it really means something right. If a school bus fleet cuts their fuel costs by two-thirds, we can all acknowledge that is great for the school system. It means more teachers, better band, better football helmets, whatever you want - more computers.

                

00:13:21 Tucker

And frankly, if UPS saves that kind of money, it also ultimately, translates, I think the lower packages delivered to your door. So, the two big buckets were in transportation and ports. The other bucket was about just as being a part of getting a more robust fueling network.

                

00:13:36 Tucker

That's where battery-electric struggles, it's where hydrogen struggles, it's really where natural gas and propane have struggled in that the gas stations, I don't know about your neighborhood, but on mine, there seem to be four gas stations on each corner, 10 blocks apart. And we just don't have that fueling infrastructure yet for any of these other alternatives. And so, the last bucket was to really make the fueling network a bit more robust.

                

00:14:03 Salvatrice

Nice. Now, are you seeing any additional investments in new technologies within propane?

                

00:14:07 Tucker

Yes.

                

00:14:07 Salvatrice

What are you seeing right now?

                

00:14:10 Tucker

We are so excited about really two or three-type investments. We're a part of all of that. I think probably the very near-term investment for us is we're in partnership with Cummins Engine Company. And if you don't follow the world of engines, that universe continues to shrink down where Cummins just has more and more market share.

                

00:14:29 Tucker

But Cummins probably five years ago saw how difficult it would be to ultimately meet the emissions requirements for diesel, and to a degree, sometimes gasoline. And so, they worked with us to develop first off, just a prototypical propane purpose-built engine. And now, that engine is moving into production.

                

00:14:48 Tucker

It's just exciting to see how for a long time - and we've been so respectful of it ourselves; diesel was durable and it was thermally efficient. It just happened to be pretty dirty. And we required a lot of after-treatment to clean up. And even after that, I'm not so sure I would call it clean.

                

00:15:03 Tucker

And now, Cummins has built this purpose-built propane engine, which is as thermally efficient as diesel - we thought that'd never happened. As durable as diesel, we thought that would never happen. And then when we start talking about benefit to the environment, 25% reduction in greenhouse gases from the next best technology on the market today; easier to maintain, cheaper to maintain, really will kind of revolutionize not only on-road transportation, but off-road transportation.

                

00:15:30 Tucker

The other area of excitement for me, we'll talk about renewable fuels and massive investments moving towards renewable fuels. But the other area that's exciting for me is to see propane begin to have a seat at the table for power generation.

                

00:15:43 Tucker

10 years ago, we were still probably the fuel of choice for residential backup. You know, you would call your local Generac dealer, your local Briggs & Stratton dealer, or maybe your local Kohler, and you would put a backup generator at your home. And it just worked when the power went out.

                

00:16:00 Tucker

But today, we are already the fuel that powers the Virgin Islands, makes their electricity. Roatán Bay in Honduras makes all of their electricity. And in America, we have microgrids kind of across the country now and so many more on the drawing boards.

                

00:16:16 Tucker

So, whether you're looking for some small residential scale power generation, or really, utility-scale and everything in between, we're beginning to achieve a lot of conversation and power generation. And it's really happening for three reasons.

                

00:16:31 Tucker

Power is less reliable than it was a decade ago. Your power is interrupted for lots of reasons; weather, shutdowns. And for most everyone, power is more important today than I guess it was a hundred years ago, for sure. Our computers, our cell phones, we need it.

                

00:16:47 Tucker

And so, not only is power becoming less reliable and more expensive, we need it more than ever. And so, beyond the natural gas main, you begin to see propane being really a strongly considered fuel for power gen; not just for your house or my house, but for companies. And then lastly, for utility-scale solutions, microgrids.

                

00:17:09 Tucker

It's really exciting to see, and we've been in the middle of all of that for the last couple of years. And we're just now beginning to really touch the next evolution of equipment.

                

00:17:20 Salvatrice

That's very, very exciting. And you mentioned the word renewable, and the concept around renewable propane for those listeners who don't really understand what renewable propane is, how it works, what is the process - can you share a little bit about that? Basically, how does renewable propane work, and how does that really kind of fit into the grand scheme of the future of propane?

                

00:17:42 Tucker

I have to say, and again, as a person who watches Europe and has watched the rest of the world - you talked about I belong to the World Propane Gas Association. And the real benefit of that is to have colleagues that I can work with in Africa that are using propane in entirely different ways. We're trying to move people there from cooking with charcoal or wood or animal dang frankly, changing their quality of life immensely.

                

00:18:05 Tucker

Europe has been the hotbed where we look about their migration to renewable fuels in general early. So, I'll answer your first question directly; today, we take fats and oils - I mean, it could be as simple as the restaurant oils that come from McDonald's or Burger King, but it could also be crops that are grown - canola oil, corn oil.

                

00:18:28 Tucker

As long as they're fats and oils, we can actually take that, put it through a process that's fairly simple process. And we can make really one of three things. We can make renewable propane, we can make renewable diesel, or we can make sustainable aviation fuel.

                

00:18:43 Tucker

And frankly, most of those facilities make all three. And so, that has been a big part of the renewable propane story using waste oils and fats that are commonly used in restaurant or agricultural situations to turn that into renewable propane. I'll pause there because some of the most exciting stuff I'm involved in now begins to talk about the next generation.

                

00:19:08 Tucker

Let me answer why that's important because I study this every day and it's so complex to talk about. So, it all comes down to how much carbon is in the fuel you're using. And it's interesting, we study the carbon intensity of the electric grid today and the carbon intensity of the electric grid nationally.

                

00:19:26 Tucker

If you boil it down to a quantity, it's this much nuclear, this much coal, this much oil, this much solar and wind, and hydroelectric - the carbon intensity of the grid across the country is about 154. Now, I would say to you, Vermont, I think the number in Vermont is three (by the way, low is good).

                

00:19:44 Tucker

So, because Vermont is almost all hydroelectric, you can't get cleaner, a power grid than Vermont. But the current carbon intensity of propane today is about 80. So, round numbers, almost twice as clean as the electric grid today.

                

00:19:58 Tucker

But all of us agree that the grid will get cleaner, needs to get cleaner, should be cleaner. And we all want to talk about truly zero carbon. Well, we can talk about zero carbon as we think about using renewable fuels. The carbon intensity of the renewable propane we just talked about that comes from fats and oils and grease is about 11 where it's produced.

                

00:20:20 Tucker

Now, we transported around. So, I've been fortunate to be a part of it in California, New York, and Vermont, and kind of in those three places, the carbon intensity of their fuel's about 20. But you see already, we've cut the carbon intensity 75% from conventional propane.

                

00:20:35 Tucker

This is the innovation though that I'm probably most interested in. You and I had had this conversation six months ago, I don't think I would've been able to talk about this, but the next generation are some specific non-food cover crops. The one that comes to mind is a weed called camelina, and never heard of it before, but University of Minnesota and some others kind of realized it.

                

00:20:58 Tucker

So, it doesn't compete with corn - it's a non-food crop, drought-tolerant. And the last couple years, they've been genetically modifying this crop to be actually even more able to be converted into fuel. So, you grow it, you combine it like you do anything else. We crush it and quite easily, it becomes renewable propane.

                

00:21:21 Tucker

The carbon intensity of that particular feedstock is zero. It's moving into production. The plant that's going to make that is actually being built as we speak. It's all funded, it's all permitted, and should be making renewable propane in just a couple months. So, kind of shows this evolution.

                

00:21:40 Salvatrice

Excellent, that's exciting.

                

00:21:41 Tucker

And that shows you, I mean, again, as a person who kind of bumps across the whole energy spectrum, you see this tremendous innovation in solar and wind, and we talk about it, and innovation in hydrogen, for example, or even innovation in nuclear power.

                

00:21:55 Tucker

I had a nuclear physicist on my podcast this week talking about nuclear fusion, something that we hadn't really talked about. Well, I guess we've talked about for 130 years, but all of a sudden, we begin to believe that there's a new way to make nuclear power just around the corner.

                

00:22:12 Tucker

People, I think fail to remember the innovation that could be happening, not only in our engines and in our systems, but in our fuel itself. And for us, what's really exciting, is we model where we think the grid ultimately, can go, what will make up those power sources, and how carbon-intense it will be.

                

00:22:31 Tucker

And using our renewable propane sources, we find that not only can we be as clean as the grid, in many cases, we believe we can be cleaner than the grid. So, it's really exciting. It gives you total comfort that there is a path forward, even as we think about a world at zero carbon.

                

00:22:50 Salvatrice

And speaking of those innovations and I have my academia hat on, I have my community college hat on. And one of the things that excites me - there's many things that excite me about this conversation; but one of the things that I'm super excited about is to hear you say, there's these innovations that are happening, there is work around X, Y, Z, all those wonderful things that you've shared.

                

00:23:10 Salvatrice

How do we as educators or as a system of community colleges, how do we best prepare? And I know that's a loaded question, but what could we be doing in academia to support some of that innovation or to prepare our students for entering this field or who have an interest in it?

                

00:23:28 Salvatrice

And I would even take a step further; are any of the associations that you belong to, what are they talking about? What are they talking about what needs to happen within institutions to get to a point where we have a no-carbon future? What is their influence in institutions?

                

00:23:46 Tucker

Well, we see a great role for institutions, probably in three different areas. And yes, we talk about it often because I work with a multitude of groups. I work with home builders and they're always looking for more workers and that doesn't just mean laborers or plumbers or carpenters. That means people that can manage projects and be architects and professionals.

                

00:24:05 Tucker

But whatever industry I'm in - you mentioned that I'm a member of the Industrial Truck Association; really at the heart of the supply chain, moving goods and containers, they're dying for more workers. So, we're all trying to compete for this worker.

                

00:24:19 Tucker

So, we spend a lot of time talking about how do we at least educate the future of people that are in high school, community college, colleges; really even in their first jobs, how do we at least educate them about this big energy world.

                

00:24:35 Tucker

And again, not just so they'll come into our particular niche, but that they'll find the niche that involves them. I would say one, anytime we can get people to at least understand science and technology, I mean, that stem - even if you're not inclined to be a scientist or a technologist to have a basic understanding of math and science, it's so relevant.

                

00:24:57 Tucker

But I would say the more I work in this, the more I realize it's well beyond science and technology, particularly in the energy, I accuse my colleagues of it all the time. It's so often not about science and technology, it's often about human factors.

                

00:25:11 Tucker

You know, we see it today, all the time. I know I believe that solar and wind are good. I want to use solar and wind, but no, I don't want a power line in my backyard that connects solar and wind where it's made with solar and wind where it's using.

                

00:25:28 Tucker

So, I do find that there's this element of a broad approach, this multidisciplinary ... yeah, we need engineers and scientists, but we also need lawyers, we need social scientists. So, for you, the one piece is just to kind of have people thinking about their careers and a broader view.

                

00:25:45 Tucker

But lastly, and I view this really, maybe the most important thing you could be doing is to see that the conversations become ... I'm going to use the word fair and balance, but I don't mean to make that sound like in the Fox news way.

                

00:25:59 Tucker

But I do find we're in a spot where the narrative, as a person who studies it and reads voraciously, I'm not sure that I'm on board with the current narrative is right. I would say that the overarching narrative is that electrification is good and anything outside of electrification is bad.

                

00:26:17 Tucker

And it doesn't take you very long to realize, well, that's electrification, isn't even really a form of energy. Oil, coal, wood are probably pretty bad. Oil, coal, and wood that makes electricity is also pretty bad. And I think for me, I find that universities, community colleges are where often this balanced conversation occurs.

                

00:26:39 Tucker

How do we move forward to a clean climate? By the way, with great regard for our health as well; you live in a place where, to me, I'm quick to say the quality of the air is probably much more impactful on your quality of life than temperature-wise.

                

00:26:54 Tucker

I always talk about a trifecta. It's about the climate, it's about health, and then it's about justice. Can you afford the solutions, who in fact is paying for the solutions? And I find that at least in the collegiate system, that's where you have at least this scholarly discussion going on.

                

00:27:12 Tucker

So, one, preparing people for the future, but more importantly, I think being in the place where a lot of these academic discussions happen and they're balanced is a tremendously important role for you and your colleagues.

                

00:27:25 Salvatrice

And how do we start that? How would we ... I mean, for our list or for our faculty that are listening or any of our community leaders and thought leaders that are listening, how would that balance conversation start, you think?

                

00:27:36 Tucker

You will laugh at my answer, I think, but I think you just have to start. You have to fumble and bumble into a conversation. I speak at a fair number of universities and just about what are the role of low-carbon fuels in transportation? What's the role of low-carbon fuels in residential or commercial buildings? What's the role of low-carbon fuels in agriculture?

                

00:28:00 Tucker

And you just kind of have to stumble into it. And by the way, it shouldn't always be my perspective. There are others who have great perspectives, but I do find just having that. And then it's not a scientific-only conversation. It's about are we willing to settle for those solutions? Can we afford those solutions? How will those solutions impact our quality of life.

                

00:28:22 Tucker

And by the way, that's a fundamentally different conversation in California than it often would be in New York because we all use energy differently. And we really frankly rely on it a bit differently.

                

00:28:35 Tucker

So, I've been in this conversation probably intimately involved for maybe five years. I just think sometimes you just have to start. You're welcomed to start clumsy, you're welcome to start, I think ill-informed in those early days, be a better listener than you are a contributor, but you have to start.

                

00:28:52 Salvatrice

You have to start somewhere. Thank you. This has been such a lovely conversation. And I normally ask my final question as what would be one thing that you would want to share with our listener about this topic and how it impacts their future. And I feel like you've answered that already. You know, it's just like just start the conversation, start the dialogue. It's got to start somewhere.

                

00:29:11 Salvatrice

But might there be another one thing that you would want to share to our listener about this topic that's going to impact their future, how they look at our world and view the world and view their careers, given it's the Future of Work Podcast?

                

00:29:24 Tucker

I love the title of your podcast. And again, it's something that I live every day, but it's something that I don't think about every day. And I'm always proud to say that as I said early on, I think if I had to do it over again, I probably would do it all over again is the good news.

                

00:29:36 Tucker

But I do think that listeners do need, particularly if you're thinking about not an educator, but someone who's thinking about where their careers are going to be, my advice always is to enjoy what you do. Don't do it for money, don't do it for power or fame, do it because you enjoy it. Because I think if you enjoy it, those other things accrue. But if you don't enjoy it every day - every day is labor and life's too short for all of that.

                

00:30:02 Salvatrice

That sure is. What a beautiful way to sunset this conversation. Thank you so much, Tucker. And if we wanted to connect with you, what would be the easiest way for myself or our listener to connect with you?

                

00:30:13 Tucker

Well, I love people actually to go to our website, our website's propane.com, and it's really aimed at a variety of people. But if you're just interested in learning a little bit more about what I've been talking about there, and that's a great place to start - propane.com.

                

00:30:25 Tucker

I'm never afraid to put my email out there. It's pretty simple, I'm Tucker. perkins@propane . com. And if you really are interested in some of this, I'd encourage you to at least search for my podcast, Path to Zero. We talk about nuclear power and we talk about carbon and the climate, and had some of the world's greatest visionaries in this topic to engage with me. That podcast again, is called Path to Zero.

                

00:30:51 Salvatrice

Beautiful. We'll be sure to enter all of that in the show notes. Thank you so very much, and I look forward to continuing this conversation at some point.

                

00:30:59 Tucker

I've enjoyed my time and I appreciate what you do. So, thank you very much.

                

00:31:03 Salvatrice

Thank you.

                

00:31:03 Salvatrice

Thank you for listening to the Future of Work Podcast. Make sure you're subscribed on your favorite listening platform so you can easily get new episodes every Tuesday.

                

00:31:14 Salvatrice

You can reach out to us by clicking on the website link below in the show notes to collaborate, partner, or just chat about all-things future of work. We'd love to connect with you. All of us here at the Future of Work and Pasadena City College wish you safety and wellness.