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.