John Belizaire on Soluna's Evolution and Clean Energy Innovation

John Belizaire - Soluna Computing - Building Clean Energy Infrastructure for the AI Era

Overview

• Introduction
• The Evolution of Soluna: From a Wind Project in Morocco to Building Data Centers for AI
• Defining Serverless Computing and Edge Computing: How They Work and What Makes Them Different
• Understanding Hybrid Cloud Strategy: Combining Public Cloud with Private Infrastructure
• Flexibility: The Core of Soluna’s Scalable and Renewable-Ready Computing Model
• AI Growth and Clean Energy: Building Infrastructure That Can Keep Up
• A Landmark Deal with EDF and Masdar: How Soluna Integrated Data Centers with a Wind Project
• Advice for Businesses Partnering with Developers: What You Need to Know
• Navigating Community Pushback: Building Trust Through Local Hiring and Long-Term Impact
• Transparency in Running a Public Company: Going Beyond the Typical Playbook
• Storytelling as a CEO: Building Trust, Creating Content, and Driving Visibility
• Closing Words: Purpose-Driven Leadership

My latest Scaling Clean episode is with a familiar guest: data center developer and CEO John Belizaire, the CEO of Soluna Computing.

Because we’ve already talked to John about hiring and firing, I had more time to explore a topic near and dear to my heart: generating attention.  

A committed pro himself, Belizaire's advice on how to build a profile was excellent. He made three points I wholeheartedly agree with (time stamp: 34:20), and I’m paraphrasing them below. 

• Just do it. If you are just getting started, you've got to put in the time. In John’s words, “The more you do it, the more fruitful it becomes. So I think the first piece of advice is if you're not doing it, start doing it.” Say yes to opportunities—panels, podcasts, anything— so you can hone your interview and stage presentation skills. (I’ll add to that: even experienced public speakers know that each new audience is another opportunity to test material and tweak your stump speech.)
• You need a voice. You have to have a unique point of view. One way (not the only way) is to play contrarian: flip the script. The media love controversy and outlier narratives. Can you offer something different than what everyone else is saying?  
• Tell a story. Practice not just talking about it, but telling a story around it. In Belizaire’s words, “What will be true if what you're saying is true? What will change, and how will that affect different communities? What role will you play to make that happen?” 

I also asked John about the importance of merging computing with renewable energy. If we pair energy-hungry tech like AI with wasted renewable power, we can unlock huge benefits without straining the grid — but only if we do it in a way that helps communities instead of taking from them (time stamp: 2:24).

Thanks again, John, for being a repeat guest and for sharing your wisdom with the cleantech community. And congrats to Soluna on their first solar-powered data center — Project Annie,  a 75 MW site co-located with a 114 MW solar farm in Texas! 

Also listen on Apple, Spotify, Radio Public, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

Introduction

Melissa Baldwin:

Hey, cleantechers. This next episode is unique because we're bringing back one of our former guests. If you've listened to our show, you might remember the interview with John Belizaire. At that time, we took the unusual step of publishing two segments with him because the conversation was so incredibly rich. Now we're bringing John back for a second conversation. John Belizaire is the CEO of Soluna Computing, which co-locates data centers on-site with renewables to harness wasted energy from applications like AI and Bitcoin. 

A serial entrepreneur, this is John's third company. Soluna recently struck a deal with a major renewable power developer, and we'll talk more about that and all the buzz around data centers in this show. John, it's great to have you back on Scaling Clean. How are you doing?

John Belizaire:

I'm doing great. It's exciting to be back on the show. Thanks for having me.

The Evolution of Soluna: From a Wind Project in Morocco to Building Data Centers for AI

Melissa Baldwin:

All right. So now we're going to start this interview with some questions about Soluna. You've already been on the show, and we've heard you talk about the business of being a CEO. So in this episode, I just wanted to talk more about your company. So I'd like you to narrate for me the evolution of Soluna. Where did the company start, and where are you now?

And how has your company's offering changed to meet the evolving needs of the marketplace?

John Belizaire: 

Okay, great. Well, thanks for asking, Melissa. The journey that led me here started in Morocco. That's where my colleagues and I were developing a project to harness one of the best wind resources in the world. The wind is so great down there, they have a name for it; it's called the Harmattan Wind. And we were having difficulty developing the project because the grid wasn't ready to accept the magnitude of power that our wind farm could produce. 

In fact, in our research and engineering innovation, if you will, to find a solution to the problem. It occurred to us that computing and the blockchain are a perfect and immediately deployable solution to absorbing the excess energy that we would produce. So the market could absorb some of it, and the rest we could use computing to absorb. And once we identified this solution, we realized it was unlikely we were the only people who had this challenge or had that challenge.

And it turns out that this was during COVID. We turned our focus to places beyond Morocco and did more research, asking people the question, Have you ever experienced this problem? How big is this problem? 

And it became clear that curtailed energy, turns out, is nearly a universal problem in clean energy development. Up to 30 to 40 % of clean power generated on solar and wind farms can be curtailed or wasted, which increases the likelihood that the project won't be profitable or decreases the profitability of these power plants. And the energy problem, this curtailed energy, is a problem in the US because our grid isn't flexible. In many cases, there has been an overbuilding of solar and wind energy in parts of the country. 

And it's also the grid is based on the legacy architecture of equalizing supply to demand as synchronization. And it's not designed to handle the volume of clean energy that's in the pipeline that's coming even today. And so the question has been and still is, will we limit ourselves to just batteries and transmission as the only solution to making this transition? They're both important. Storage technologies can play a role. Transmission can play a role.

But I think what the grid needs is more immediate, available solutions to absorb the excess power, to retroactively give it the flexibility that it needs for absorbing this new type of energy. 

Today, we have evolved to providing that solution to some of the largest IPPs in the world. We solved their curtailment challenge. We have proven we can solve it.

And we are now a growing provider of data center space for public companies that are looking to do Bitcoin mining, that use this wasted resource and these data centers we've built. We also provide demand response services to the grid. So our data centers, because of the flexible technology we've built, can actually act as an absorption layer or a battery for the grid to absorb that excess energy, release it when they need it.

Something they'd never had before at the scale that we can provide it. And now we're on the path for developing renewable energy-powered digital infrastructure for AI or data centers for AI.

Defining Serverless Computing and Edge Computing: How They Work and What Makes Them Different

Melissa Baldwin:

That's great. I remember discussions around it, it was almost like a stranded asset that you had there in Morocco until you solved the problem of what do we do with all this great resource that has nowhere to go.

So I want to talk to you, I'm reading some of the articles about you. You use a term, a few terms here, I'd love you to define for our listeners. Serverless computing. And what is serverless computing, and how is it different from edge computing?

John Belizaire:

Yeah, so let me play ChatGPT here for a second. Serverless computing is basically a model for developing software and technology where you write code without having to think about the servers or the hardware where that code will run. It abstracts away what's happening underneath and the resources that you have to dynamically create. 

Let's say you create a really exciting new app called TikTok. People can load up their pictures and share them with friends and so forth. 

As more users join that app platform, you need more servers and computing power to support that platform. Serverless computing abstracts away what's happening underneath; you can write your software, and it just scales as the computing needs scale. 

Edge computing, on the other hand, is about bringing processing power closer to where the data and the application are running. Think of it as computing at the source, whether it's a wind farm or a factory. It's about bringing computing closer to where the demand for computing is, and the reason you would do that is to increase the speed with which you can deliver the content and improve the performance because the data doesn't have to move very far. Applications that fit that are gaming and streaming. I'm watching all these cool new shows on Netflix and Max, and it would really suck if they were choppy and not very smooth. 

And the reason they are not is that there are servers close to me that can feed that content to me. That's what edge computing is. Or if you're doing a collaborative gaming platform, the performance of that should be high so your clicks get into the game and you can win the particular match.

So that's the difference between serverless computing and edge computing.

Melissa Baldwin:

You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of distributed energy and rooftop solar. Essentially, it's bringing the power to the source so that the supply and demand are in the same location.

John Belizaire:

That’s right. Yeah, that’s a great analogy. Inside your house, you turn the temperature up and you don’t really care where the energy to provide that comes from, or you turn the lights up and don’t really care where the energy comes from. So there’s an abstraction layer, right? You don’t have to go into your basement and fire up some big coal boiler or something like that. The energy is where it is, and it just comes to your location. It could be from your rooftop, or it could be from the grid.

Understanding Hybrid Cloud Strategy: Combining Public Cloud with Private Infrastructure

Melissa Baldwin: 

That's great. The follow-on question there is, what is a hybrid cloud strategy?

John Belizaire: 

A hybrid cloud was something that came up over the last decade or so. And that is focused around the basic concept of combining cloud services, which are AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, for example, with private infrastructure, usually infrastructure that’s on premises or specialized data centers that the companies using these services own.

And again, the reason you would do that is because some of the things that you’re using for your enterprise, you don’t feel comfortable putting them on the cloud, or you’re not ready to put them on the cloud. In which case, you combine your enterprise architecture in a mixture of those two things.

So let me give an example. Let’s say you have this old ERP system that was built many years ago; it works, your financials rely on it, and you’re not ready to rip that out and move it to a cloud version of that yet. But your email, totally comfortable moving that. It’s fairly straightforward. It’s not a super important application for your business. You can move it to the cloud. The fact that you’ve got cloud as part of your architecture and on‑prem as part of your architecture is a reason you would have a hybrid cloud.

Another example is where the application you’re using is on the cloud, but the data and some of the downstream services that that application is using are not on the cloud. It might be a healthcare application where it’s challenging to move some of the HIPAA-compliant data off of your platform; you’d like to have it inside the company. 

So a hybrid cloud is this sort of hybrid solution, if you will, to solve for those types of problems.

Now, recently, due to power use and the complexity of GPUs for AI, for example, the hybrid cloud has really evolved to serve customers who want to own the equipment but forget the management complexities of running that equipment. 

Most enterprises have no idea how to use these really sort of super‑advanced NVIDIA GPUs. In this instance, the customers would purchase the equipment but allow the third‑party colocation provider to run the equipment and do all the work. And then again, that would be in the quote unquote cloud, but the data might be in-house, or the enterprise data might be in this private location, while the AI model and its training might be in the cloud.

So one of the things we’re doing at Soluna is beginning to offer essentially infrastructure that would be part of a hybrid model. When I talk about that private infrastructure, where people are a little uncomfortable putting their proprietary data in, let’s say, OpenAI to help improve their business, they might want to download an open-source model and then deploy an instance of it in a private cloud or some infrastructure that they would lease. And then that would be the system that serves their employees and this sort of internal AI tool that they would be hosting.

In that case, they would have a hybrid nature: where you can use OpenAI for enhancing your email and things like that, but if you’re doing the super hyper-proprietary process, like, tell us where we can improve our supply chain; you want to use our internal AI engine that’s running in this private place.

Melissa Baldwin: 

I absolutely see the value of that and things you want to protect versus things that you're more comfortable leaving in the cloud.

John Belizaire: 

It's going to be a big topic over the next few years as enterprises start to dip their toes further into AI and try to understand how best to leverage this very advanced technology that most people don't even know how it really works and combining it with what is their crown jewels data to deliver what every CEO has wanted forever, and that is, ‘please tell me what I should focus on in my business right now to help us make more money!’

Melissa Baldwin: 

We ask that question all the time.

John Belizaire:

And they have hired countless consultants who never really tell them the right answer at all. And now this AI might give them insights that they never imagined.

Melissa Baldwin: 

Well, especially if you can trust the model to be operating in a system that you know is private and internal.

John Belizaire: 

Exactly. That's right. And you're not using other people's information to enhance your own business, right? 

Imagine if McDonald's used Burger King data or maybe it's the other way around. Which one is doing better? I don't know.

Flexibility: The Core of Soluna’s Scalable and Renewable-Ready Computing Model

Melissa Baldwin: 

And it depends. Good. That's helpful. So I have one more question for you about Soluna. So over the years, I've heard you use the term flexibility. And I see this term used a lot in different ways when we're talking about the grid. What does flexibility mean to you? Like when you're using that term, how are you using it? And why is that important to your business?

John Belizaire:

We’re using it in a number of ways, but it is core to our model. That’s probably why I talk about it a lot. Flexibility is what sets us apart in both the energy and computing spaces.

Our data centers are built to align with the intermittency of renewable energy. Right there, you have to be flexible, because now you’re dealing with a resource that may not be available all the time.

So you have to redesign the data center so it is aware of that fact and create a system that can ramp up when energy is abundant, like during peak solar and wind production, and dial down when energy is scarce and needed somewhere else on the grid.

This sort of dynamic load behavior, which has traditionally been a challenge in renewables, variability in those power plants, we turn into an asset by focusing on flexibility.

When we talk about flexibility for IPPs, it is a game-changer. Many are sitting on stranded and underutilized energy assets due to curtailment, congestion, or lack of local demand. Our model provides a scalable, co‑located demand source that can absorb surplus power and convert it into revenue for them, instantly creating value for the project without relying solely on long‑term power purchase agreements. Even if they do have those agreements, they usually do not solve curtailment; our model adds flexibility without affecting existing PPAs, solving curtailment, and ending up making more money.

From the computing side, this flexibility also lets us offer customers a different kind of resilience. AI workloads, especially inference and training at scale, often have varying computing requirements. Some need constant uptime, while others are bursty or batch‑based. We can architect solutions that blend the mission‑critical, always‑on nature of some computing with flexible workloads that follow the energy and are batchable. It is simply a smarter, greener way to build infrastructure for AI and HPC.

As we start to deploy this at our projects, we have to teach the market that just because a facility is integrated with an intermittent resource does not mean you cannot deliver the same level of uptime as other locations. In fact, we show you can do both and gain access to a resource that is becoming incredibly hard to find.

Flexibility for us serves multiple stakeholders at the same time: grid operators for dispatchable loads, IPPs for better project economics, and customers for scalable, sustainable computing. In a way, it is not just a feature of our business model; it is a new way of doing things that we hope becomes the norm.

AI Growth and Clean Energy: Building Infrastructure That Can Keep Up

Melissa Baldwin: 

Perfect. Okay, great. All right, so now we're going to switch up the topic, and we're going to talk, actually, more about AI and data centers. And this has been such a huge topic for a lot of the customers that we work with right now in renewable energy, the energy demand from AI and data centers. So there's been a lot of discussion around how energy demand is skyrocketing, and that's in large part driven by AI. 

But when China came out with a more efficient AI, some people were questioning are the projections were overbuilt. Are we really going to see this huge peak in demand? What is your view?

John Belizaire:

This is a great question. When the DeepSeek news came out, I’ve lost count of how many calls I got saying, “Hey, is it over? Is all of this excitement over?” I said, “I don’t think so.” A friend of mine is writing a book, and the concept is that AI will not only drive an energy surge but will reshape the energy industry and manufacturing across the US and beyond.

Here’s my view. There is no question that AI is driving a surge in energy demand. Training large language models, running inference at scale, and supporting the infrastructure behind AI products, and there are a number of them coming to market now, is all incredibly power-intensive.

At the same time, there is a parallel conversation about efficiency. People ask, “If we use this hack that the DeepSeek folks released and it becomes more efficient, will demand level off?” Efficiency gains are inevitable; we are building a technology that is designed to help us find efficiency, so it is no surprise that we have found hacks to improve it.

We are already seeing innovations like more efficient algorithms and specialized chips such as GPUs and TPUs designed specifically for AI workloads. These developments will help reduce the energy intensity of individual tasks. We will have more purpose‑tuned hardware, but efficiency does not necessarily mean less demand. History shows the opposite. When technology becomes more efficient, we tend to use it more, not less; that is Jevons paradox.

Think of fuel‑efficient cars. When they came out, they lowered the cost per mile, but people ended up driving more because they had more range. The same logic applies to AI. If it gets cheaper and more accessible to run, new use cases will explode across industries. We are already seeing that. Enterprises have seen a spike in demand for this computing power because people now realize they do not need to spend billions of dollars to get into this stuff.

We should start looking at this instead of sitting around and waiting for OpenAI to solve everything. The unit cost of AI is dropping thanks to efficiency gains. Overall demand for computing will grow, and, by extension, demand for power will also rise. That is where the real challenge lies. We need to ensure this exponential growth in computing does not come at the expense of our climate goals.

That is exactly where Soluna comes in. Our model is designed to build green infrastructure that can scale with AI. There are gigawatts of energy around the world with no home right now, and we go to those locations and co‑locate data centers with those resources. We architect them to flex with the grid, using energy when it is abundant and curtailing when it is needed. That is a win‑win for the grid, for developers, for AI, and for the planet.

A Landmark Deal with EDF and Masdar: How Soluna Integrated Data Centers with a Wind Project

Melissa Baldwin: 

Yep, and you mentioned something just now; you talked about working with developers and making it a win‑win for them. A lot of the clients we work with at TigerComm are seeking the developer as a client themselves. So in March, you scored a big partnership with a well‑known global developer, EDF, and the deal was described in Newsweek as breaking the normal model of power‑transaction deals. Tell us about that deal.

John Belizaire:

I would love to tell you about that. EDF Renewables and Masdar really marked a major milestone in our journey. We first started out on our journey, as I said, in mid‑2020, trying to talk to IPPs; they would not return our calls. They said, “I don’t see how this makes sense; you can’t do computing back there.” Today, we are announcing these ground‑breaking deals. For us, it is not just a milestone for the company, but for the broader energy‑aligned computing space.

This deal was not about a typical PPA; it was about proving that renewable energy and high‑performance computing can scale together intelligently and sustainably. In fact, we believe a convergence is coming where the two assets will be one and the same, and we call it renewable computing.

The deal we did is for a project called Project Kati. This project is our second major renewable‑computing project in Texas. Dorothy is our first, and we are doubling the size of that one. It is co‑located, Kati is co‑located with the wind facility owned by EDF Renewables and Masdar. They are both global leaders in renewable‑energy innovation. 

When fully developed, it will unlock 166 megawatts of renewable‑energy capacity for computing, a massive amount of clean power dedicated to running high‑performance computing loads like AI and Bitcoin mining. Our plan is to do both at that location.

What makes this deal unique is how it is structured. We are not just buying power from the facility; this is not a traditional PPA. We are embedding our data‑center infrastructure directly into the economics of the renewable asset. We buy their curtailed power, and we buy subtractive power.

That means when the project is not curtailed, we draw from the power plant and from the grid. We are monetizing energy that would otherwise be curtailed or undervalued due to grid congestion, especially in markets like ERCOT, especially in South Texas, where this project is located. This integrated approach turns the data center into a kind of virtual battery for the wind farm.

We soak up excess energy when the grid does not need it, creating a new long‑term revenue stream for the project owners. It also gives us ownership of the data‑center project, allowing us to operate with more control and efficiency. From a strategic perspective, it positions us as a key player in the renewable‑energy ecosystem as AI and computing needs grow.

The grid needs more flexibility, so load‑absorbing partners are exactly what we are building. 

Advice for Businesses Partnering with Developers: What You Need to Know

Melissa Baldwin:

I want to talk to you more about something you said at the beginning of your answer there. You talked about how, “when I first started reaching out to these guys, they weren't returning my calls.” And now you've made this landmark deal. A lot of the companies that we work with in the cleantech space are revolving around this utility-scale renewable development, utility-scale solar, and utility-scale wind. Those developers are potential customers for a lot of the businesses that work in this space. So what is your advice to a business that wants to do business with a developer?

John Belizaire:

I'd say there are three things; there are probably more, but let me start with the three that come to mind. Data center projects and projects that are co-located with these development projects or operating projects. It takes a lot of time. There tend to be a lot of factors outside of your control, and so you really have to build the business with that in mind. 

The second is that there are lots of people involved, people involved in these projects because of the way they're financed. You have equity, tax equity, cash equity, debt. Everybody has a very specific lens that they're looking at this potential partnership through, and making sure that you provide them the content they need to analyze it with their lens on.

You need hyper-local knowledge, so find people who are familiar with the location where you're building the project.

The deals are very complex. Make sure you have people on your team who enjoy and thrive in dealing with complicated contracts and legal structures. The devil is very rich in the details, and one misstep early on can sink the project when the world changes every few years. So that's the advice I would offer. What else? Community development. That's probably another one for most developers.

Community development is sort of already in their DNA, but when it comes to that type of project, it's fairly mature, and most of the world kind of understands how these projects work now because it's such a mature industry. But when you go talk to a landowner about building a data center, especially an AI one or a Bitcoin one, they have no idea what you're talking about. And so you really have to be prepared to sit down and talk to these folks in as zero-jargon way as possible so they understand what exactly you're going to do, why it's good for them, and what they should be worried about.

Navigating Community Pushback: Building Trust Through Local Hiring and Long-Term Impact

Melissa Baldwin:

Yeah, you actually answered the next question, which was on community pushback. Because it's a big challenge that a lot of these developers are facing, where host communities are banning projects or putting in restrictive ordinances. Have you experienced any of that, either for your sites or the renewable sites adjacent?

John Belizaire:

We've been lucky. We have very strong local partnerships. We hire locally.  

We work with the local school boards and the local energy companies. If you don't do what you say you're gonna do, then you're going to have a lot of problems. And we really appreciate the relationship we have with the communities that we do business with and the new communities that are coming forward with some of our new projects.

Transparency in Running a Public Company: Going Beyond the Typical Playbook

Melissa Baldwin: 

Great. I'm going to switch now and talk about the business of running the business. And so you're operating a public company. In many public companies, their communication schedule revolves around quarterly earnings. And Soluna, you also provide monthly updates, and you do an Ask Me Anything. Why do you do that?

John Belizaire:

One of our core principles as a company is transparency, and that is something that we live by inside of our company.

People need to understand where you're going, they need to understand the vision, and they need to understand their part in making that possible. They also need to understand when things aren't going well and what you are doing about those challenges, and how they can be helpful.

I think it's our responsibility to gain buy-in from our investors and partners, but it's also to help catalyze the clean energy transition and accelerate the adoption of renewables as a global power source. The more people understand the challenges that those types of resources have and how these innovative solutions can address them, we can have a meaningful shift in people's perception of what's possible and why it matters. I think the most powerful tool for achieving that is transparency.

Storytelling as a CEO: Building Trust, Creating Content, and Driving Visibility

Melissa Baldwin:

I notice that in those Ask Me Anything and in the investor questions that come up on an earnings call, I imagine that's an opportunity to really learn what the investor is interested in. And that's an opportunity to potentially create new content that is centered around, hey, what are the things that investors are wondering about? What are the things they want to know about? So that's actually a great tool for that two-way communication to get feedback from that audience. 

A lot of our clients typically have it's three audiences they're going after. It's either customers or investors, or policy makers. And so I imagine that the Ask Me Anything is a great tool for you to kind of take the temperature of that audience and then ultimately produce content to help address any of those questions, objections, et cetera.

John Belizaire:
Every time we do the AMA, or we put out some news, we then put out the opportunity for folks to ask us questions about stuff like what we didn't cover or what you didn't understand about our business. What's not clear from our public filings? That document we have to put out is very complex. And so what we'll do is we'll answer the questions to the best of our ability, again, within certain constraints. But then what we'll do is quietly and strategically create content that enhances that response. 

Not directly, but sort of indirectly to sort of re-infuse that learning into the audience. And we have found that approach to be incredibly effective. 

That is a great question. Yes, we do that. We use the interactions with the community to generate new content. 

Melissa Baldwin:

So in your last interview on Scaling Clean, you talked about how one of the five key functions of a CEO is to be the primary storyteller for a company. What is your secret to success? And what advice would you have for companies that want to get speaking engagements or secure interviews and podcasts?

John Belizaire:
That's one of those ones where the more you do it, the more fruitful it becomes. Go anywhere. Say yes to any gig. You need a voice, and so you've got to have a point of view that is either contrarian or sort of flips the switch to some extent around how to look at the particular problem. And you need to practice talking about it, but more importantly, building a story around it. Like, what will be true if what you're saying is true, right? What will change, and how will that affect different communities? 

What role will you play to make that happen? So, for example, with the rise in AI, we've been saying that, Hey, you don't have to go start digging coal out of the ground again and turning on old nuclear power plants. 

Those are creative solutions to the problem, but you may not know this, but there are gigawatts of energy that are going wasted right now. And if you can figure out an innovative way to solve that, but we have, and that's by bringing that load, and in this particular case, AI is a perfect load for this, to generation, you suddenly unlock lots of energy without breaking the grid. There are parts of the country right now that are literally freaking out. 

They're like writing new laws to prevent AWS, Google from just showing up and taking a huge power plant that's currently on the grid, serving the community offline to power AI data centers. And you know what? I don't blame them because that's not a good way to solve the problem. Like, go steal energy from current constituencies and convert it into a resource for private enterprise. What you want to do is create a symbiotic relationship where the data center becomes a solution to the grid's problem and the grid becomes a solution to the data center's problem. And in our case, we're not taking the power plant offline. We're keeping the power plant online and integrating the facility to the grid, and creating a new resource that has both a generation capability and an absorption capability. Those are insights that people may not be thinking about.

So I guess the question is to ask yourself, what are people not thinking about that I need to communicate with them about? And then just start doing it in as many ways as possible to get a speaking engagement. You start by picking up your iPhone and talking into the phone on video, and then posting that online. 

So you just did a speaking engagement right there. That is very scalable. People pick that up and say, That's a very interesting insight. We've got to get them involved in our conference coming up, et cetera. 

And so that's what we did at Soluna. Built essentially a media company inside the company. And that creates a very large database of content that we push out. The questions that we're raising are real questions that need to be discussed. 

Closing Words: Purpose-Driven Leadership

Melissa Baldwin:

Nice, I like it. I didn't get to all my questions, so I want to give you an opportunity. If there was a question that I didn't ask, feel free to point me to it, or if there's anything else that you want to add that you want our listeners to know, that you want to share.

John Belizaire:

Your listeners are clean energy and cleantech-related people. And I would say most recently, there might be a view that things are going badly for the space, right? And when you are running an innovative company, people may become a little disillusioned.

And that may create some tough opportunities for you as a company. Sometimes, as a CEO, it's hard to imagine what to do. I think purpose is what keeps us going. We are an incredibly resilient company.

The industry we're in is at the intersection of clean energy and high-performance computing. And sometimes that can be volatile. But through all of that, at least here at Soluna, we remind ourselves why we're here. And that's to make renewable energy a global superpower and to decarbonize computing as much as possible.

To solve the energy waste problem, focusing on the mission and the purpose will keep you focused, and just look at your team and give them all hugs when they need them, so that we can all keep pushing together.

Melissa Baldwin: 

That's great advice, John. It really resonates with me. And it reminds me, I think that advice applies not just to the roller coaster of navigating changes in policy and regulations and political landscapes, but I've also found that advice comes from your deeper purpose. It's helpful even if you have to have a tough conversation with somebody. It's helpful if you're nervous about presenting, or reminding yourself of that deeper purpose and coming from that place. I find that's such helpful advice to get people through difficult times. So that's excellent. 

Thank you for sharing that.