clean energy

Cool Clean Tech

Otto Pilot — Fri, 25 May 2018 00:01:00 +0000

Cool Clean Tech

01/25/2019

Over a century ago, the industrial revolution brought wealth and opportunity to a generation of American innovators. It also brought us dirty coal power and a sky clogged with carbon emissions. The good news? There’s a new generation of entrepreneurs eager to make their fortune by fighting global warming. Creative start-ups are coming up with fresh, climate-friendly ideas for getting around town, powering your cell phones, and even eating breakfast. And there is a growing number of forward-thinking venture capitalist firms eager to seek out and nurture those innovative thinkers.

A discussion about clean-tech startups and how they could help save the world.

Guests

Lidiya Dervisheva

Associate, G2VP

Davida Herzl

CEO and Co-Founder, Aclima

Gabriel Kra

Managing Director, Prelude Ventures

Announcer: This is Climate One, changing the conversation about energy, economy and the environment.

On today’s program, news from the front lines of the clean tech revolution.

Lidiya Dervisheva: So it’s not only, you know, solar, wind, tidal and so on but it’s actually the way we use energy, the way we conserve energy. The way we figure out better ways to use the resources that we currently have.

Announcer: Creative start-ups are coming up with fresh, climate-friendly ideas for getting around town, powering your cell phones, and even eating breakfast.

Gabriel Kra: Milk, yogurts, cheeses; it turns out there's a lot of carbon embedded in that production ecosystem. So if you can just take cows out of the dairy equation then you can actually save a lot of energy and impact climate change.

Announcer: The promise of cool, clean tech. Up next on Climate One.

Announcer: Can clean-tech start-ups save the planet?

Welcome to Climate One – changing the conversation about America’s energy, economy and environment.

Today on Climate One, Greg Dalton digs into some of the exciting innovations coming our way from the world of clean tech. His guests represent three companies that are already in on the ground floor. Two are venture capitalist firms with a front-row seat to the fresh ideas needed to power our economy, and one is a start-up that’s developing new and better ways to understand our environment.

Gabriel Kra is Managing Director at Prelude Ventures. Lidiya Dervisheva is an Associate at G2VP. And Davida Herzl is the co-founder and CEO of Aclima.

Here’s Greg Dalton.

Greg Dalton: Davida, let's begin with you. Climate infrastructure is often by governments with scientists for government scientists and you're kind of democratizing that with hyper local data. So tell us how Aclima is doing that.

Davida Herzl: So we’re filling the critical need around the world for hyper local emissions and pollution data. Now that we know that we are facing a climate crisis that is intricately connected with health impacts from those same emissions, we need data hyper locally to really understand and manage those emissions, right. The foundation of managing risk is measurement. And so we’re leveraging a lot of advances in technology that we all hear about every day from ubiquitous computing to ubiquitous communications. The capability now to really shrink sensors down to something that can fit in the palm of your hand and merging all of those technologies together to be able to build distributed sensor networks that measure all of the pollutants that are important for human health or that impact human health. All of the core greenhouse gases and be able to do it at a fraction of the cost from traditional methods and do it in a way at that makes that data broadly accessible for decision-makers for citizens to really empower the kind of change that we need to see around the world.

Greg Dalton: So tell us a little bit how you're doing that. You're putting sensors on cars they drive around neighborhoods?

Davida Herzl: Yes. So last year we published the results of a major study in partnership with our partners at Google, the Environmental Defense Fund and the University of Texas, where we proved that our methodology where we take our sensing platform what we refer to as our environmental intelligence platform instrument vehicles and then drive around communities and cities to be able to take a snapshot of pollution sort of the urban scale, but at hyper local resolution so we can understand emissions down to the scale of a parcel. We can understand risks to pollution exposure down to that level.

Greg Dalton: And do some companies who are emitting pollution are they trying to push back against because that kind of transparency hasn't been available before, right? So are polluters pushing back?

Davida Herzl: So, you know, I think what's happening is that industry is really coming to terms with the fact that these new technologies are becoming broadly available. And instead of pushing back what we're really seeing is one, hunger and a desire to really understand this data because in many instances, it can actually help companies reduce their own emissions. But also I think there's been a massive gap in the marketplace for this kind of environmental risk data, right. Environmental risk is now financial risk. Not just the society at large but to a lot of these companies and the emitters themselves, who now are embracing this development and really engaging in conversation with us. That's the approach that we’re taking and seeing.

Greg Dalton: Gabriel Kra, you invested in a company called Ripple Foods by a couple of veteran entrepreneurs. Tell us what they're doing trying to do Ripple Foods.

Gabriel Kra: Sure. Well Ripple Foods makes pea milk and a lot of other non-dairy products. The two founders, each of whom were successful entrepreneurs, took a look at how dairy is produced. Milk, yogurts, cheeses; it turns out there's a lot of carbon embedded in that production ecosystem. Raising cows takes a lot of energy and carbon and then cows produce a lot of methane in how they digest their food.

So if you can just take cows out of the dairy equation then you can actually save a lot of energy and impact climate change. But you're not gonna do that just by telling people to drink something that doesn't taste good. So Neil and Adam make a delicious frothy nutritious milk product that is made entirely out of plant protein. And so this thing, this company it impacts tons of people's lives. We get calls we get testimonies from parents who are saying, “Wow, my kids couldn't drink milk and now they have a delicious product that they want to drink.”

But we don't want to just go after the part of the market that was already drinking dairy alternatives. We’re going after the mainstream market and we now have milks, we have traditional milk or unsweetened milky, we have chocolate milk we have vanilla milk. We have yogurts that are launching, we have half-and-half and not only are we selling this but we’re saving CO2 and we’re making a bunch of money. So it's kind of for us the best kind of thing the best kind of company to invest in. Great entrepreneurs, a huge opportunity just in the United States, milk is a $79 to $80 billion-dollar market forget yogurt and cheese and all this other stuff. It has huge impacts on climate and it has great positive benefits for people's lives.

Greg Dalton: Lidiya Dervisheva, lot of wealth is expected to be created in this transition from fossil fuel economy to a cleaner economy and yet Silicon Valley kind of walked away from clean energy. Tell us about that.

Lidiya Dervisheva: Sure. So the fund that I work for is called G2VP, G2 Venture Partners. And we spun off from the Green Growth Fund at Kleiner Perkins what used to be the clean-tech fund started back in 2008 at the dawn of clean-tech when everybody was investing in solar and new biochemical biofuels and that was kind of where all the hype was.

And what ended up happening is that a lot of these investments didn’t really transform into these, you know, unicorns that everybody was expecting; not everybody made their returns in fact, many people lost a lot of money. And that sort of led to this second-generation the Cleantech 2.0 movement that’s one way to call it which is sort of like a new way of thinking of what clean-tech means and what you can perceive as clean-tech. So it’s not only the way we generate energy. So it’s not only, you know, solar, wind, tidal and fusion and so on but it’s actually the way we use energy the way we conserve energy. The way we figure out better ways to use the resources that we currently have. And that's where a lot of new interesting business models come in. And that's where what we are focusing on G2 is how do we leverage these new business models. How do we, you know, create new exciting startups out of technologies that already exist, but apply them in a new creative way with, you know, amazing teams and scale these companies.

Greg Dalton: And so Gabriel Kra, let's talk there are terms of like different kinds of capital. She mentioned institutional capital, there's foundations, there’s universities. Categorize kind of, you know, where the big buckets of money and how they're playing are they involved in this Cleantech 2.0 or they just sitting it out because the smart people got burned? Where are they, Gabriel?

Gabriel Kra: The whole institutional capital value channel, try and summarize that quickly. But there are, you know, at the earliest stages of company formation there’s folks like us venture capital firms there's still a bunch who are still doing A round and B round the first institutional money. Before those there's a lot of angel investors or seed investors and there's sort of an ecosystem of them. Many of those are either individuals who have a lot of wealth and want to invest in either any kind of super early stage company or also people who raised money, you know, on a limited partnership arrangement, a traditional fund structure, but to do very early-stage stuff. Where we’re seeing new entrants, where we’re seeing people who weren't necessarily driving a lot of capital into the sector in that first wave and the oughts, we’re seeing a lot of corporate ventures who are getting very smart, very sophisticated in partnering with us. You know there's everybody from big chemical companies have venture firms. The big software companies have venture firms that are venture arms, excuse me. Some of the oil majors have them, you know, there’s this steady group of investors that come in either right at the same time that we come in, or even with us for a little bit later. And then later funds, bigger strategic sovereign wealth funds are getting involved.

I think there's some traditional venture capital that is now returning to the sector. And then when you’re doing projects, you know, there's infrastructure funds there's big banks who have infrastructure investment arms and they help fund the projects. They help fund the plants and there's still a gap, you know, there’s still this sort of traditional venture valley of death where you don't want to fund something on your equity with the money that was invested in the capital in the company, excuse me, but you don't have enough proof points to say let's raise $150 million to build this plant on what's essentially a debt instrument. And that's still one of the places where we’re looking for new investors to come in and help us. But that group of institutional investors, corporate investors, strategic partners, people who want to own those plants and assets are coming in. And I’m talking about, what you’re talking about these are the still the more capital-intensive the more software oriented businesses don't have as much of a challenge.

Greg Dalton: Good summary of the value chain in 90 seconds.

Gabriel Kra: Gosh. Thank you.

Greg Dalton: Lidiya, Gabriel mentioned super majors, are you finding that there are some energy companies that might be threatened by the transition, that are investing to find a little hedge to get information or, you know, you’re raising a fund I don’t know you can tell us about who's, you know, who are the players, who's coming forward with capital for something that is not no longer in high-fashion in Silicon Valley?

Lidiya Dervisheva: Right. So we're currently finalizing our funds but as a venture capital firm we are seeing that there's actually increased interest in how to change the way we do things and especially what is next for clean-tech, like what is next in technology. How do we use what is happening with the cost curves of solar with let’s say transportation getting electrified how do we create new business models around sensors becoming ubiquitous and data and analytics being very easy to scale and going on the cloud and on the edge. So looking at investors and sort of energy majors, I would say there's a lot of interest as Gabe mentioned also corporates. So currently I was just reading so there's 270 corporate venture capital firms that are currently active today. So it's one of the highest we've ever seen. And it's something that we can collaborate with corporates on deals we can syndicate it's very interesting to be in a place where it's not only the institutional capital anymore, but we have this whole ecosystem support where institutions are now finally interested. Sort of the government is on board and provides very interesting, you know, very supportive grants to early-stage companies. But then you also have the more traditional like utilities. You have, you know, Intel and Google and Samsung all setting up their funds to support these companies.

So we as a financial player in the middle of all that what we can do is leverage all these connections and introduce for example the startups that we work with to our, to LPs who are much more interested in working with these startups and could bring them, you know, to the next stage of their business.

Greg Dalton: LPs being limited partners. Lidiya, let’s also talk about career paths. Been a lot written lately in terms of, you know, the kind of male culture in Silicon Valley. You have four partners who came over from Kleiner. So tell us about the career paths particularly for women in venture and in energy, not an industry known for a lot of women executives.

Lidiya Dervisheva: Sure. Oh it's definitely a very exciting place to be and I'm honored to be here and I can tell you a little bit more of how I got to where I am today, how I got to venture capital. So I started as an electrical engineer back in undergrad. I got really interested in the energy clean-tech space, environmental space. Was able to take advantage of my liberal arts curriculum to explore what energy means, what global warming means for the world and look at it not just from a technical perspective but also from a policy perspective, from an econ perspective, and see that it's a problem that we cannot just solve with technology alone when it's something that it's a much more, you know, broad and difficult problem that you need a lot of different skill sets to tackle. So that's how I got really interested eventually to go into business school. And in between I worked at a startup which was doing energy efficiency. So I was in Asia for two years working adds commercial industrial energy efficiency and figuring out how do we make, you know, large commercial buildings, save energy, save water, and resources.

And combining that with my path to business school and kind of seeing how this all ties together like what it means to, you know, for a business to put together its business plan, its marketing strategy, its, you know, channel, sales channels put together a team. How does all fits together with everything I knew from before. So this now allows me to be a much more productive venture capital investor and look at problems not just from a technical perspective but also from a business perspective. And I would say it's a very male-dominated industry for sure and being at conferences and I was just at a logistics conference last month in Atlanta where it was almost all men but it's exciting to see that the change is happening and we just hired another associate who is also female. So there’s change going in that direction.

Greg Dalton: And the women are associates, the men are partners, is there a plan for making that equal?

Lidiya Dervisheva: Right. Yeah, I would say it's not there yet but that's the best, yeah.

Greg Dalton: Davida, let’s hear your experience as a female CEO, you know, raising money, how was your experience going out there with a new company saying trust in me, invest in me.

Davida Herzl: Sure. I mean, you know, I can only speak from my experience but I can say that my experience certainly reflects the numbers. Right now about 2% of all venture capital goes to women founded companies. Half a percent goes to women of color. And within that pool there's a very small group of women founders that are going after hard-tech problems and so or a small group of women founders going after hard-tech problems that are getting funded. So I was just saying, you know, that was definitely my experience and it did introduce a lot of challenges. I think that there is a need for role models for women founded companies to get funded for those companies to get celebrated those stories to get told and to elevate that. So that it’s not just, we’re not just an anomaly but we’re an example of what's possible.

And I think, you know, like Lidiya spoke to, you know, any complex systems challenge is going to require a lot of diverse perspectives. And so that is fundamental to solving the challenge of climate change, to solving the transition to a new energy foundation. And that requires a diversity of representation and voices and insights and domains. And so I think it's, you know, a lot of work needs to be done in this space but it's exciting to be in the middle of that transition.

Announcer: You’re listening to a Climate One conversation about the promise of a green economy. Coming up -- will electric scooters replace Uber?

Gabriel Kra: In the city, how we choose to get around and what's the quickest, most cost effective and maybe fun way to get around, that's changing a lot of things.

Announcer: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

Announcer: We continue now with Climate One. Greg Dalton is talking about discovering and nurturing innovation in the clean-tech realm. His guests are Davida Herzl of Aclima, Lidiya Dervisheva of G2VP, and Gabriel Kra of Prelude Ventures.

Let’s get back to their discussion. Here’s Greg Dalton

Greg Dalton: Gabriel, let's ask you when you're looking at you get lots of pitches, lots of companies, you know, do you look for women CEOs, founders, entrepreneurs? Is it hard, do you try extra hard, how do you approach that?

Gabriel Kra: So this is a topic that we talk about a lot internally. Like G2VP we’re a small firm there's two partners both of us are men. And then we have two principals, a woman and a man. And we are acutely aware that while in that one metric we’re doing better than most firms we’re you know, that's actually the recent development for us and it's not sufficient. I don't want to be up here on stage and sort of claiming a leadership mantle on this. It's something we talk about it’s something we think about. And I think the model that I have in my head is that and we haven’t – excuse me, we haven't succeeded enough in investing enough women CEOs and I think our portfolio right now is I don't know that we have any right now in our portfolio, which is not anything to be anything but embarrassed about.

But I think it has to be something that we’re aware of that we focus on and that we continue to try and improve. I had a conversation with my wife two or three days ago where she was telling me about somebody who came to speak at an event and she said yeah, my friend invited this professor from Stanford to talk about this issue, a law professor from Stanford to talk about this issue. And I said, oh yeah, so this guy showed up and she said, “Oh my God that was implicit bias.” And I said, “No it wasn’t, I was just using that term generically.” She said, “No, you weren’t.” And I stopped and I said “Okay yeah, you're right.” She said this conversation is not moving forward until you acknowledge that. And so I stopped and I said, “Okay you're right.” And it's just something we have to continually work on. We’re not doing enough but we’re trying.

Greg Dalton: I have a 14-year-old daughter who hits me with “That’s a gendered statement” you know, and stops me in my tracks.

Gabriel Kra: Yup, my daughter does the same as well.

Greg Dalton: Just to show the transparency, Climate One thinks very closely about the speakers we bring up on stage. We think we have a role we kind of give people a spotlight. Over the last couple of years it’s about 60/40 men, women; not what it should be but we look hard, you know, in an energy sector and senior government positions, senior corporate positions, right. We still want to get to that 50/50 point. We think that's okay given the population of people that we have to draw from.

Lidiya, you talk about being a bystander, you get to invest in companies. Do you ever get the itch to kind of get in and run a company yourself?

Lidiya Dervisheva: Right. I guess it’s something probably that a lot of venture capitalists think about or maybe even struggle with. I do, so having been at a startup for two years. It was really exciting to see what it means to be in the trenches what it means to, you know, meet sales forecasts and decide about what's next for the company. I guess I was just, you know, as a businessperson and engineer. But just seeing how difficult it is to make all these steps really makes me appreciate now when I look at companies and I listen to pitches to hear the stories and the big vision that every entrepreneur comes to our office with. And to understand like what it would actually mean to scale this business, to really get to where this entrepreneur wants to be in the next let's say 3 to 5 to 7 years. So I would say I do have this, you know, itch to maybe go into that back into the startup world. But for now it's been really, really exciting to, you know, to be on the investor seat and really get to explore so many different technologies and sort of be able to jump through, you know, different industries from energy to transportation to agriculture on a daily basis which is something I probably couldn’t do in a startup.

Greg Dalton: You have the variety but you’re on the sideline. Gabriel, ever have the impulse to kind of get in the game and have to deal with guys like you who invested in company –

Gabriel Kra: No, I wouldn’t wish that on anything but my entrepreneurs. I worked at startups and in operational companies for eight or 10 years and that was amazing and it was an incredible education. And then my first CEO here in Silicon Valley sort of told me and I didn’t quite understand what he was saying he’s like your first job is to hire your replacement, right. So when I'm looking for an entrepreneurs I just want to find people who are better than me who are harder working, smarter, more creative.

And the best ones, gosh, they do things that -- they solve problems and tackle challenges that blow me away. And so, yeah I'm kind of content being able to find incredible people, find great people with huge ideas and maybe help them execute rather than being the one in the frontline because I don’t think I could handle that. They’re awesome.

Greg Dalton: So Davida, you’re the awesome one the brave one on the front lines. If you weren’t running a company, what other role would you like in the clean-tech field what do you think is really exciting?

Davida Herzl: Probably running another company. You know, I am really and that's true. I mean, I am just, you know, I see so much opportunity right now at the nexus of the Iot and sensors and data and analytics and AI to really help us understand to provide us the data and insights to adapt to climate change and to mitigate its effects. And so, you know, I think now that I've run a company and in the middle of sort of, you know, really sort of taking the company to market. I think maybe you know, partnering with other entrepreneurs who are trying to solve really hard problems and maybe one day I'll, you know, sit in their seat. Being some of my favorite investors are the ones that have been operators in the past and who really understand how difficult it is to get companies like ours off the ground. And so I think there's a lot of value that comes from that synergy in the ecosystem.

Greg Dalton: So serial entrepreneur, okay. We’re talking about clean-tech at Climate One. I'm Greg Dalton. We’re gonna go to our lightning round. Quick true or false questions to each of our guests starting with Lidiya Dervisheva. True or false. Venture capitalists are not as smart as they think they are?

Lidiya Dervisheva: False.

Greg Dalton: Davida. True or false. Silicon Valley has a poor record investing in innovative startups in the energy sector?

Davida Herzl: True.

Greg Dalton: Gabriel Kra. True or false. The HBO series Silicon Valley is an excellent documentary?

Gabriel Kra: True.

[Laughter]

Greg Dalton: Lidiya. True or false. The best way to attract capital from white men who attended Stanford is to be a white man who attended Stanford?

Lidiya Dervisheva: False.

Greg Dalton: Davida, you have a fully stocked earthquake disaster kit in your home. True or false?

Davida Herzl: False. I like risks.

[Laughter]

Greg Dalton: Lidiya, you have a fully stocked earthquake disaster kit in your home?

Lidiya Dervisheva: False.

Greg Dalton: The risk takers here. Final one for Gabriel Kra. True or false. Your company considered sea level rise when it leased office space on a pier extending into San Francisco Bay?

Gabriel Kra: True.

Greg Dalton: You made the bet, well we have to wait until the end of the lease to see about that.

Gabriel Kra: Exactly.

Greg Dalton: Let’s give them a round of applause for getting through that lightning round.

[Applause]

Lidiya, you said something that I rarely hear from Silicon Valley people which is you think there's exciting careers in the regulatory space. What do you mean by that?

Lidiya Dervisheva: Right. So going to energy there is the policy side, then there is technology or the way at least I see it, policy, technology and business. You can contribute in one way or another and you’re always going to be probably an expert in one of these or really hone on your skills in one of these and probably understand a little bit of the others.

And from my experience, I've developed a little bit more on the technical and business side but really not that much into policy. And I think that there's a lot to be done, you know, in the White House. A lot of what can be changed and as we’re speaking like things are changing. I mean as you read in the news like every new home in California will have to have solar very soon and every home and every small residential building. So that's a big change that mostly came from regulations. Whether that's, you know, the right decision or not it's definitely a step in the right direction. And I think there's, you know, just policy as enabler of a lot of the technologies that we invest in and a lot of, you know, interesting companies we look at, policy, is one of the key things that we always consider. Is there a policy risk, is there a policy enabler, is there something really to think about that would change in the future that is related to energy policy?

Greg Dalton: Davida, how about you. Is policy a supporter or an obstacle in what you're trying to do? Because you’re providing information, a real gap that wasn't there for people on a local level.

Davida Herzl: Right. I mean I think we are showing that there's new opportunities to fill in that gap. And regulation, I think one of the reasons regulation will be so powerful is it can create entirely new markets. And so I think, you know, although, you know, there's big changes happening at the federal level, we see a lot of progressive movement at the state level, at the city level. Recently the state of California, you know, passed an amendment to the cap-and-trade bill that is going to require local monitoring and it's because these new capabilities are now emerging. And so I think there's tremendous opportunity as regulation catches up with these new technological capabilities.

Greg Dalton: Gabriel Kra, there's a lot of talk these days in American cities and around the world about new electric mobility. Bike sharing, we have scooters now on the streets, electric powered skateboards in the bus lanes. That's, you know, driven by, you know, cell phone battery technology largely. Address that in terms of, you know, the disruption that's bringing, the policy, regulation, whether that's a good thing for getting around town.

Gabriel Kra: Well, you know, you gave us a little warning that you wanted to talk about this. I was in Beijing last week and I got to ride around on a bike, share bike, which was it actually changed my opinion a bit. Because it was A, it was fun, B, it was the most convenient and the quickest way and it was super cheap. So three different things.

So I think that, you know, what we’re talking about and these things is the last mile of how we get around, right. A bike share, scooter is not gonna change how we go from here to Palo Alto or let alone here to New York or something like that. But in the city, how we choose to get around and what's the quickest, most cost effective most convenient and maybe fun way to get around, that's changing a lot of things. And I don't have an honest firm opinion about what is going to win and what I’ve really like there. I walk out and see all the electric scooters on the streets of San Francisco that, you know, just appeared overnight and I'm dubious. And I’m dubious not whether they're fun or whether they're cost-effective I don't know necessarily about the unit economics. Although they appear really attractive to own those assets. I'm dubious of whether I want those things all over the city that I spend, you know, so much of my time on. And, you know, if you go to Beijing you see, there are cart loads of bikes being schlepped around the city at all times because they end up where they don't want them and they end up where they don't need them and they got to move them. And apparently there's piles and mountains of bikes being discarded there.

Greg Dalton: Yeah.

Gabriel Kra: So there's negative ramifications to that to. But I think it is absolutely, you know, in 10 years or even probably five years when things start to settle out the mode of transportation that we choose at different places is gonna be fundamentally different from what it was and is today.

Greg Dalton: Lidiya Dervisheva, you noted that one of the scooter, electric scooters actually started in a very unlikely place, Los Angeles.

Lidiya Dervisheva: Right, yeah.

Greg Dalton: So tell us how that unfolded and whether you think and if we know whether the scooter rides are displacing Uber and Lyft rides.

Lidiya Dervisheva: Yeah. So I wanted to briefly talk about Bird which you've probably seen around and they're not the only company, they’re one of three actually deploying scooters right now on the streets especially in San Francisco and now soon in other cities as well. But as Gabe said, I think it is about electrifying the last mile and those modes of transportation they are _____ they are shared and they’re electric and that's a big change from how we, you know, get around today. And that's similar to what our investment thesis it’s to look at what are new business models of existing technologies of what, you know, of something that will get traction and will actually change the way we do things. And in terms of sort of the people's aspect that is very fun to be there, you know, to scoot through the streets and it has, you know, a social aspect, it has a community aspect that you can do these things with your friends of course you’re not allowed to ride them with more than one person. But it's an exciting new change that I think has large potential.

Greg Dalton: Do we know if it's displacing – are those people just not walking and hopping on a scooter is it, you know, is it displacing taxi rides do we know that yet?

Lidiya Dervisheva: I don’t think there's been enough studies done. But at least when I have the choice it's typically between – where these modes of transportation work is that less than 2 mile trip. And that's typically, it's a long walk or a short bicycle ride if you have a bicycle or it can be a very short Uber ride which will take you some time to order and, you know, get the car but it just happens to be much more efficient fast and easy to just take an electric shared vehicle.

Announcer: You're listening to a conversation about cleaner, greener ideas for powering our economy. This is Climate One. When we come back – the secret ingredient every entrepreneur needs to succeed.

Lidiya Dervisheva: If they’re too, you know, too pessimistic or the vision is not big enough sometimes we would pass on the deal just because we want to see that, you know, that passion and that optimism to create something big.

Announcer: Up next, when Climate One continues.

Announcer: You’re listening to Climate One. Greg Dalton is talking about the future of the clean tech industry, with Lidiya Dervisheva of G2VP, Gabriel Kra of Prelude Ventures

and Davida Herzl of Aclima, a pioneer in environmental sensing technology.

Here’s Greg.

Greg Dalton: Davida, let’s ask you, what are some of the big exciting sectors you think, you know, other than what you’re doing yourself if you were to start that second company. What’s the sector do you think is ripe for disruption or where there’s really exciting things going on?

Davida Herzl: I mean I think what's happening in ag right now and food and feeding the world’s population is probably one of the most exciting areas. I think the impact of ag on climate emissions are something we critically need to address. And so a lot of the type of work that Prelude is investing in in alternative sources of things like milk, alternative meats, sources I think this is really a tremendous opportunity that's critical to solving the climate challenge.

Greg Dalton: Lidiya, you looked at some agricultural firms. Placed any bets yet in ag?

Lidiya Dervisheva: Not yet actually but it's a sector that I'm also really excited about. Also from an imaging perspective there's a lot that now we can find out just by looking at pictures of, you know, crops or a field and understanding what are the actual issues with the crop, what are the humidity levels, what is the soil like. Does the plant get enough nutrients like do we need more pesticide. So there's a lot of data -- so combining, you know, data with imagery and where we've gotten with data analytics to create these new solutions is a very, very exciting vertical that we’re looking at.

Greg Dalton: Gabriel Kra, there’s a company called Pivot Bio. Tell us about that.

Gabriel Kra: So I think we firmly believe that food and ag is a majorly exciting impactful and hopefully very, very profitable segment to invest in. And before I get to Pivot, you know, there's a bunch of different ways to tackle that problem something like 3% of all the electricity produced or consumed on the planet is to fix nitrogen. Which means the nitrogen in our atmosphere, N2, is not accessible to plants, it has to be reduced and that's called fixing nitrogen in trade jargon. And there's this big industrial process that was invented in the 1900s, early 1900s, that produces ammonia and from ammonia you can make things like fertilizer. Now that’s a big carbon problem because it takes so much of energy to do that, it's a big pollutant problem because we dump so much fertilizer on our fields that eventually we deplete them of other nutrients, we cause toxic algal blooms all sorts of problems.

But when that was invented it actually was the biggest impact on world hunger that the world has ever seen. So like this thing that was amazing also had a lot of negative ramifications.

So what Pivot Bio is doing is, the company was founded by a PhD a couple of guys and I'm not using that in a gendered way, they were two guys, excuse me. But a couple of PhDs from I think USF and they said, you know, there used to be microbes that lived on the root systems of corn and other row crops that were able to fix nitrogen meaning take atmospheric nitrogen and turn it into a form that the plant could grow, could utilize. And those things all went dormant once we started dumping fertilizer onto the fields. And so what they said is we can take these microbes, we can improve them. They do it in a way that's actually still not a GMO not a genetically modified organism. And then we put them on the corn roots and as the corn grows, as the plant grows, the microbial population grows with it. So it's giving it a constant steady micro-dose of fertilizer produced in a completely non-destructive non-energy intensive way. That’s Pivot Bio that's one of the things, one of the ways we see using really sophisticated technology that, you know, the techniques that they use didn't exist 10 years ago, five years ago even they were still being developed, to have a huge impact and build a really big profitable company.

Greg Dalton: Before we get to audience questions. I want to start with Davida and ask about the urgency. We’re talking about technology, a lot of things happening. We know that we recently the world spent a month I think at 410 ppm; if you’re in the climate conversation that number kinda stops you for a minute. Seems like we just pass 400 not that long ago. So Davida, let's talk about, you know, technology is known for moving fast, how do you feel about the urgency of climate numbers that you know?

Davida Herzl: I mean I think it's probably what I struggle with the most, right. I have to have the discipline to build, you know, all the foundations of the company and bring in investors and I wish I could snap my fingers and just, you know, and just be scaling this solution globally right now. Because we know for a fact that this data, we see what the data is telling us and all the stories embedded in the data not just about global emissions but about hyper local communities that are impacted and exposed to levels of pollution that you might see in countries that have no regulatory framework. And so the urgency of the problem is so tremendous it’s the reason, you know, my team and I work the kinds of days that we do and put in the effort that we do.

But I think getting this data and this information out into the hands of millions of people can then distribute action so that we can and empower distributed actions so that we can actually start to aggregate lot of small actions around the world to really provide that accelerant. That’s how we see our position in the world ultimately, and that's our vision for what we want to do. But there is the human path to getting there, right.

Greg Dalton: Gabriel, do you ever get a lump in your stomach when you, you know the math. The math is daunting. Do you ever get a lump in your stomach and say oh this tech is great, but, you know, is tech gonna save us, a lot of people think that the techno optimism, technology will save us.

Gabriel Kra: Yeah, I mean absolutely. Not once in a while. I mean my kids and I we love skiing and my family we go skiing all the time and we have semi regular conversations about, you know, will there be skiing in Tahoe in 20 years. And, you know, it's an emotional issue for me; that's why I got into this eventually. I had a long winding path to get where I am. But it was that urgency that lump in the throat or the, not in the belly that got me where I am.

Greg Dalton: And do you talk about that with investment people, you know, I mean, I’ve been finding the climate conversation people don't, you know, either wallow in it or push it away. They don't really want to deal with it and they have a hard time kind of holding it in balance acknowledging it you either kind of some people sink into it and go dark and I would say Jim Hansen has done that. Your staring at models will do that. How do you find that balance?

Gabriel Kra: You know, I mean we are may be in a unique or very uncommon situation. At Prelude we invest in companies only in companies that we believe can have a big impact on greenhouse gas or greenhouse gas equivalents when they’re successful. So we look at that, that's, you know that's what you need to have to come in the door and pitch us.

Greg Dalton: And you’re doing that because you think you’re gonna make a lot of money or because you're worried about looking your kids in the eye in 20 years and saying daddy what did you do?

Gabriel Kra: Well from a personal perspective certainly the latter is a large part of it. But from a limited partnership managing group of general partners from people who are managing other people's money. We are looking at it like we can do this and make a lot of money with it. And we found limited partners who believed in that vision and who invested who are investing on an ongoing basis their money to enable us to do that. But, you know, so we have the luxury of not spending a lot of time worrying about it because that's all we do. So we don’t have to weigh one against the other. So once we see something that can have that impact then we just flip it over and say okay is this a good investment or not.

Greg Dalton: And Lidiya, you’ve been out, you know, pitching trying to get investors, VCs, you know, it’s about the numbers, right but, you know, how do you handle that human emotional part of the urgency that we’ve been talking about?

Lidiya Dervisheva: Yeah. I would say similar to what Gabe said it’s about finding what the business is and the business models that also have an impact. And as these businesses scale you not only scale financially and you expand your, you know, product and services but you also create more impact. So it becomes like a synergy that works together. So when you find these businesses that both impact the environment, but also have a viable model of how they make money that's where you really have a sustainable model that you can grow forward. And of course having the right people to do that with the right vision.

So the human aspect I would say it is mission driven like I’m very excited about what the entrepreneurs that we support are doing and it's amazing to be part of that journey. I mean still, I'm still not on any of these boards, but being able to be part of the path and as a venture investor to support these entrepreneurs to give them advice to do everything you possibly can to guide them along that path both scaling and business model and changing the climate change scenario.

Greg Dalton: Interesting. We’re talking about clean-tech at Climate One. Our guests are Gabriel Kra, Managing Director at Prelude Ventures. Davida Herzl, CEO of Aclima and Lidiya Dervisheva, with G2 Venture Partners. I'm Greg Dalton.

Greg Dalton: We’re gonna go to our audience questions. Welcome to Climate One.

Male Participant: Hi. Lidiya talked about policy being a driver. And in this world of post Paris accord with the U.S. technically are trying to withdraw. Do you still see policy being a driver globally, and other nations still embracing that and those policies helping to drive forward investment in the sector?

Greg Dalton: Lidiya Dervisheva.

Lidiya Dervisheva: Sure. I would say definitely yes. Just look at transportation. So many countries have already made their commitments of their ban on the internal combustion engine and that's huge. That's something that we've been used as a mode of transportation for decades that's now going away. Very slowly but gradually and it's happening so we have for example France and the Netherlands have committed to just banning, you know, diesel and regular cars where China is thinking about the ban. The U.S. I'm not sure is there yet but California is actually considering, you know, either having all cars on the road to be electric by a certain year or some other form of regulation. But that is definitely something that's like a huge impact that's global it's a trend that we're seeing and I think it will take a few years but it's happening.

Greg Dalton: Let’s go to our next question. Welcome to Climate One.

Male Participant: Hi I’m Charlie. I’m an automotive journalist. And I know you talked about modes of transportation, but I’d love to hear your comment on actually adaptation of electric vehicles. I mean, I know it's a great promise in the future, you talked about internal combustion engine is being prohibited, but again here in the U.S. they’re just not been adapted a very significant percentage.

Greg Dalton: Autonomous connected electric and shared, aces. Who’d like to talk about that? Lidiya.

Lidiya Dervisheva: Sure. Well, so you're right the adoption rate for electric vehicles is much slower than people initially thought it would be. But what I wanted to add is things are changing. So this year we’re expecting a million cars, electric cars in the U.S. to be sold, which is still, I’m not sure if you know the numbers but that’s still a very small percentage of total cars.

Greg Dalton: About 16 million sold in the country.

Lidiya Dervisheva: Right.

Greg Dalton: Are you saying a million will have a plug maybe some gasoline maybe all electric.

Lidiya Dervisheva: And some of them are electric some of them are electric-hybrid. But what is changing is the trend. So it’s gonna take time until we see the majority of cars to be electric and there's gonna be a lot of changes in infrastructure required a lot of charging stations both, you know, out in the streets and in the city and also at homes. But also figuring out what are let's say new car ownership models. How do we actually share it this new infrastructure. How do we finance these new vehicles that are now shared that are, you know, electric and it becomes more of a car as a service model rather than car ownership or it’s something probably hybrid in between. But it's a trend that is definitely happening right now in U.S.

Greg Dalton: Davida, you're working with Google a lot of the initial Google cars were burning gasoline. How does electrification fit into your business plan?

Davida Herzl: Yeah. So initially, right, we wanted to prove our methodology and we were doing oversampling. So we were driving every day for years, but ultimately that's our vision is to really leverage what’s happening in mixed mode transportation.

So attaching our sensors to different kinds of vehicles but also ultimately number one providing the data to validate the shift towards electrification and ultimately really leveraging electrified vehicles to do this kind of mapping.

Greg Dalton: Gabriel Kra, I’d like to ask you looking back at your career. Some of the deals that got away, ones that you’re like, uh, you know, you had a chance at Tesla, you and the firm had a chance to Tesla path. What are some ones that you’re like, uh, I’d like to get that back.

Gabriel Kra: The negative portfolio, you know. We met this entrepreneur, I met him gosh, your colleague Brooke introduced me to this guy by the name of Ryan Rzepecki who had a company called SOBI, social bicycles. So I mentioned my trip to Beijing riding around on a bike share that I just did a few days ago. Ryan is a great entrepreneur. He came by, he talked to us. He invested – not invested, he started talking to Victoria the principal of my firm and we never quite got the economics of bike sharing models and, you know, what exactly he was gonna do even though we really liked him, he seem like a really good entrepreneur and I knew the other investors the seed stage investors. And they said, no, Ryan is gonna figure it out and they sold for an undisclosed amount of money to Uber recently, JUMP bicycles, they changed their name. And we had every opportunity to invest in that.

Greg Dalton: Lidiya, you maybe haven’t been there long enough to see lots of pitches. And maybe you have tips on some pitch foibles, things not to do if you're pitching like pitch just like, uh, really?

Lidiya Dervisheva: Sure. Yeah, so something interesting that comes to mind is maybe having an idea, but being very, you know, maybe a bit too realistic of where your business will go. So I guess as a founder you always kind of look into the future and say okay we’re gonna grow this business, you know, 5X next year and 3X again and, you know, get to a hundred million revenue in five years. And most venture capitalist say yes sure, you know, it's very hard to get there but this is impressive that you're seeing this path and you're seeing, your margins improving, you're seeing, you know, expansion to all these new markets and new channels. So I would say we like entrepreneurs who are realistic and if they’re too, you know, too pessimistic or the vision is not big enough sometimes we would pass on the deal just because we want to see that, you know, that passion and that optimism to create something big. And most founders are huge optimists.

Announcer: Greg Dalton has been talking about innovations in cool, clean technology. His guests were Davida Herzl, the co-founder and CEO of Aclima, Gabriel Kra, Managing Director at Prelude Ventures, and Lidiya Dervisheva, and Associate at G2VP.

To hear all our Climate One conversations, subscribe to our podcast at our website: climateone.org, where you’ll also find photos, video clips and more. If you like the program, please let us know by writing a review on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts. And join us next time for another conversation about America’s energy, economy, and environment.

Greg Dalton: Climate One is a special project of The Commonwealth Club of California. Kelli Pennington directs our audience engagement. Carlos Manuel and Tyler Reed are the producers. The audio engineer is Mark Kirschner. Anny Celsi and Devon Strolovitch edit the show. The Commonwealth Club CEO is Dr. Gloria Duffy.

Climate One is presented in association with KQED Public Radio.

Play

SF Climate Week 2024: Is California on Track for an Affordable and Just Energy Transition?

BenTestani — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 19:01:22 +0000

SF Climate Week 2024: Is California on Track for an Affordable and Just Energy Transition?

04/24/2024

Searching for Solutions

The Golden State has staked much of its reputation on its green credentials, with state leaders often touting its role on the leading edge of global and national climate progress.

But California is falling behind in meeting its ambitious emission targets, and has been criticized for over relying on emerging clean energy technologies that may not bear out — and worse, increase harm to communities of color and low-income households. What role should regulators and community advocates play in ensuring our clean energy transition remains equitable and on track?

Guests

Liane M. Randolph

Chair, California Air Resources Board

Mari Rose Taruc

Energy Justice Director, California Environmental Justice Alliance

SB 535 Disadvantaged Communities (calepa.ca.gov)

Note: Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. Please check the actual audio before quoting it.

Play

Nearly 2 Years In… Is the Inflation Reduction Act Delivering Yet?

BenTestani — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 23:19:46 +0000

Nearly 2 Years In… Is the Inflation Reduction Act Delivering Yet?

04/12/2024

Searching for Solutions

Almost two years ago, Congress passed the biggest piece of climate legislation in our nation’s history: The Inflation Reduction Act, which put $400 billion into boosting the transition to a clean energy economy over the next ten years.

The IRA is a huge bill with many tax incentives for investors, manufacturers, business owners and homeowners. It seeks to do two things: One, to push “mature” clean energy technologies further into the mainstream – think solar panels, electric cars, batteries. And two: it’s supposed to help emerging technologies – like green hydrogen, carbon capture, and sustainable aviation fuel – get more fully developed so they can be useful in curbing carbon emissions down the line.

Most of the benefits are focused on tax incentives and other “carrots” for individuals and companies that choose to shift to lower carbon emitting systems, rather than regulatory “sticks.”

“Overall, the IRA is working largely as expected,” says Trevor Houser, a partner at Rhodium Group, an independent think tank that has been tracking clean energy investment throughout the economy in collaboration with MIT. A couple months ago, they released a progress report that shows how different projections of the law’s impact stack up against what's happened so far.

“The pace of deployment of clean energy technology is accelerating dramatically. We have seen really explosive growth in clean energy manufacturing in the U.S.” Houser says. “Last year, there was $239 billion of investment in clean energy technologies throughout the economy, up 38 percent year on year, double the pace just a few years ago.” Notably, this was additional, private investment, incentivized by government action.

Still, many are dissatisfied with how the pace of progress has been stymied by non-funding-related obstacles like inflation, transmission interconnection and permitting timelines.

“We need just a quicker response rate and more alacrity from those that are promulgating [the IRA]. I know it's too important to rush and I understand that, but I think we need to work out how to build things with intent,” says clean energy investor Danny Kennedy.

“We need ‘yes in my backyard’ sort of approaches and concierge services from state development agencies and people that are in the business of clearing the lines and connecting the dots so that these developments can be built. We've got a decade to do this work and we can't take 18 months to just sort of get the instructions.”

As part of President Biden’s Justice 40 Initiative, a large portion of IRA grants and projects are targeted at communities that were home to fossil fuels production or have suffered the pollution burden from the industry. Bineshi Albert, a climate justice advocate, says the IRA legislation should have focused on a more wholesale phase out of fossil fuels.

“I think where this kind of project sort of missed the mark is creating opportunities, even for tribal nations, to change their economic base,” Albert says. “And instead, we have these programs in the IRA which basically say, ‘okay, you can still produce as long as you invest in these offsets or invest in these programs that, you know, you can reduce carbon in other ways.’”

The Inflation Reduction Act seeks to accomplish a 40 percent reduction in the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2030. Much could change in the years ahead. But at this point in time, Trevor Houser says if the pace of utility-scale, clean electricity investment does not increase meaningfully soon, we’ll fall short of that goal.

“We need to dramatically expand the amount of wind and solar and storage and other clean electricity technologies like geothermal that we're adding to the grid. The good news is that the cost of those technologies is very cheap now, thanks to the IRA. The challenge is, can we build it fast enough? Can we train the labor source needed? Can we mobilize supply chains? And can we expedite the permitting processes so that those plants can be built in the timeline needed?”

This piece also includes a reported feature from Emily Jones of WABE in Atlanta and Grist.

Guests

Trevor Houser

Partner, Rhodium Group

Danny Kennedy

CEO, New Energy Nexus

Ozawa Bineshi Albert

Former Co-Executive Director, Climate Justice Alliance

Clean Investment in 2023 report (cleaninvestmentmonitor.org)

New federal laws have lots of money for climate projects – if cities can actually get it (wabe.org)

Climate Justice Alliance (climatejusticealliance.org)

New Energy Nexus (newenergynexus.com)

Note: Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. Please check the actual audio before quoting it.

Greg Dalton: I’m Greg Dalton.

Ariana Brocious: I’m Ariana Brocious.

Greg Dalton: And this is Climate One. This week – we’re checking in on the impact of the largest US climate bill ever passed – the Inflation Reduction Act.

[music change]

Ariana Brocious: Let’s back up for a minute: you’ll probably remember that in August 2022, Congress passed a bill intended to jumpstart our transition to a clean energy economy.

Greg Dalton: And a lot of other things… but today we’ll be focused on the climate aspects. The IRA was a huge bill with many tax incentives for investors, manufacturers, business owners and homeowners. – about 400 billion dollars over ten years.

Ariana Brocious: The legislation was trying to do two things. Number One: to push “mature” clean energy technologies further into the mainstream – think solar panels, electric cars, batteries. And it’s also supposed to help emerging technologies – like green hydrogen, carbon capture, and sustainable aviation fuel – get more fully developed so they can be useful in curbing carbon emissions down the line.

Greg Dalton: There’s something in it for everybody - big industrial companies and small growth companies. Notably: Most of the benefits are focused on tax incentives for individuals and companies that choose to do things. So it’s not a big regulatory stick forcing anyone to do anything.

Ariana Brocious: It’s only been about 20 months since the bill passed, and of course, an effort as massive as shifting the way we power our country is going to take time. But it’s still worth checking in to see how much the law has done so far, and what direction we’re headed.

Greg Dalton: On today’s show we’ll hear from a think tank analyst, a climate justice advocate, and a clean energy investor on how they grade the Inflation Reduction Act’s progress so far. And it’s not all glowing reviews.

Ariana Brocious: Right. One of the major criticisms of the IRA was that the law continues to support fossil fuels. And that was by design – the design of West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat with deep ties to the fossil fuel industry. He was instrumental in writing the bill and getting it passed…. AFTER he blocked President Biden’s Build Back Better bill, because he thought it cost too much. But Manchin says he was ready to support new green energy technologies… as long as they ALSO aligned with the goals of his constituents.

Joe Manchin: I didn’t think this administration was committed to fossil production so we weren't getting leases done, weren't getting production done. So I made sure when we wrote the bill that you’re not going to put a solar farm or a wind farm on BLM lands or territorial waters unless we’re extracting the minerals we have under our feet. So they can’t do one without the other and that’s why we have a balanced approach.

Ariana Brocious: That’s Manchin back in March, speaking at CERAWeek by S&P Global… a major oil and gas conference. He explained that as he sees it, the IRA was designed to ensure U.S. energy security, and he pointed to record domestic oil and gas production as proof of its success.

Joe Manchin: It was done basically so the United States of America could have the energy we need to be energy independent, provide energy for our allies across the pond, and be able to invest in technology for the energy of the future.

Greg Dalton: A lot of climate people villainize Manchin– after all, he does represent coal country… but that’s his job and he did get this bill passed. And that’s how change happens, it can be messy and full of compromise… but it is a way forward. The way it includes policies favored by the fossil fuel industry and Republicans does give the IRA broad support. For example, I heard the CEO of a major US oil company praise it at the UN climate conference in Dubai last year. It’s a little like Obamacare — people like the policies in it even though they may bash the law and the president who signed it.

Ariana Brocious: And there’s an important way that the IRA is different from other climate legislation that came before it. I talked about that with Trevor Houser, partner at the Rhodium Group, an independent think tank that focuses on the transition from fossil to clean energy.

Trevor Houser: So the last time there was a big push in Congress to pass large-scale climate legislation was in 2010, and the beginning of the Obama administration, and that was in the form of a cap and trade system. So the way that operated is you put a price of carbon on the kind of emissions and energy system activity you're trying to discourage. So if you're burning coal in a power plant, if you're burning natural gas in a house, if you're burning oil in a car, there's an additional tax that's put on that to try to discourage that activity. That legislation did not pass. It passed the House of Representatives and it didn't pass the Senate.

Ariana Brocious: And that was Waxman Markey.

Trevor Houser: That was the Waxman Markey bill, exactly. So the Biden administration, kind of learning from that history, decided to take a different approach, which was, instead of trying to make energy more expensive, they decided to make clean energy cheaper. That would be a more politically palatable approach and using the types of mechanisms that were already in place for different types of technologies, grants, loans, tax credits, but really supercharging those programs and expanding their scope. And so what the Inflation Reduction Act does is it makes a wide range of clean energy technologies and transportation sources much cheaper. And it effectively makes them cost competitive with fossil fuels almost everywhere in the country and in almost all applications.

Ariana Brocious: So carrots instead of sticks.

Trevor Houser: Carrots instead of sticks.

Ariana Brocious: The Rhodium Group has been tracking clean energy investment throughout the economy in collaboration with MIT. A couple months ago, they released a sort of IRA progress report that shows how different projections of the law’s impact actually stack up against what's happened so far.

Trevor Houser: And what we found is that overall, the IRA is working largely as expected. The pace of deployment of clean energy technology is accelerating dramatically. Last year, there was 239 billion of investment in clean energy technologies throughout the economy. Up 38 percent year on year, double the pace just a few years ago. Within that there's some technologies and sectors that are doing a little bit better than expected and some that are doing a little bit worse than expected, but by and large, the legislation is operating consistent with what was expected.

Ariana Brocious: So it's doing what it was intended to so far.

Trevor Houser: So far it’s doing, in broad strokes it’s doing what it was intended to do, which is using public dollars in the form of tax credits and grants and loans to attract private investment into clean energy technology and to accelerate the sales of that technology by making it cheaper for consumers. So if you look at fiscal year 2023, We estimate that there was 220 billion in total investment in clean energy across the country. Of that only 34 billion was taxpayer funded.

Ariana Brocious: Wow. So, one thing that we've been following on Climate One is the recent surge of electric vehicles or zero emission vehicles and battery factories that have been popping up all over the U.S. There's this new so-called, you know, battery belt. So how has the IRA impacted the manufacturing and clean energy supply chain for electric vehicles and batteries here in the U.S.?

Trevor Houser: It's been pretty transformative. So the IRA provides tax credits for manufacturers of critical minerals, of battery component materials, of a battery cell and module assembly. So the whole electric vehicle supply chain can receive incentives under the IRA. And we have seen really explosive growth in clean energy manufacturing in the U.S. largely as a result of that legislation. So over the past two years, there's been 156 billion in new investments in manufacturing announced in the U.S. And that's 165 percent increase over the two years before that.

Ariana Brocious: Whow!

Trevor Houser: So we're really seeing a dramatic amount of investment in manufacturing. And in places that I think people were skeptical, there would ever be U.S. manufacturing.

Ariana Brocious: And so there's this manufacturing side but then there's also the consumer side, and there were provisions in the IRA that give tax credits to average people who want to buy electric vehicles or zero emission vehicles, up to 7,500 for a brand new vehicle, I think 4,000 maybe for a used vehicle.

Trevor Houser: Yep.

Ariana Brocious: But those had some specific restrictions about where those vehicle components were made, if they were U.S. made and so forth. So it did actually limit that pool of what was eligible. So, as you take a look back at the EV market, how did that all shake out?

Trevor Houser: So there were, before the IRA, there were tax credits for electric vehicles, but they were limited to the first 200,000 vehicles that any manufacturer sold. So like the biggest producers of EVs, Tesla, GM, buyers of those vehicles were no longer able to take tax credits. So what the IRA did is it extended that. So that's 7,500 tax credit is now available for any manufacturer, for the purchase of those vehicles. But as you noted, there's some new restrictions. One is income based. And then the second set of restrictions are around the content in the battery itself. So, whether the battery assembly happens in North America and whether the critical minerals that go into the battery come from either North America or a country with which the U.S. has a free trade agreement.

Ariana Brocious: There've been reports that EV sales are declining or that there's sort of a, you know, a lull, but actually your report shows that they're doing well, right? Better than expected.

Trevor Houser: Yeah, so last year, EV sales grew by 52 percent year on year, and accounted for 9.2 percent of all passenger vehicles sold in the U.S. And that's up from just 2 percent a few years ago. So the growth has been really dramatic. A lot of what the news reporting is focusing on is that the pace of sales growth is starting to slow. That doesn't mean total sales are declining. It means that that really rapid pace of growth is going to slow down, and that is normal and expected.

Ariana Brocious: And one thing I'm wondering about here is whether, and this is sort of more speculation, but you know, there's sort of a psychological role that some of these incentives play because I was interested in getting an electric vehicle, looked at the incentives, ended up getting a vehicle that was used, did not qualify for the credit so I'm not actually taking advantage of it, but it was kind of like there was a lot of momentum you know, I was seeing more of them around my neighborhood and whatever. There was more talk about them in the news. And so I wonder if that also has some effect, though it's not actually a financial impact.

Trevor Houser: Yeah, part of the goal with these incentives for the early deployment of technologies is you want to get enough of them into the market to normalize the technology and to dissuade concerns, right? And you can see this with electric vehicles. I mean, we've driven electric vehicles since 2015 in our household and, you know, each generation of cars gets better and better. And as anyone who's driven an EV knows, they are incredibly fast. The acceleration beats any gasoline car by a mile. And when people start to experience the performance benefits of EVs, plus the convenience, that for 360 days out of 365 days a year, you're just charging by plugging it in your house overnight and never have to go to a gas station. Once people experience that convenience, it broadens the appetite and market for the technology.

Ariana Brocious: Mm hmm. Okay, so we've talked a bit about some of the consumer incentives but where are we at with utility scale electric generation and how has that industry or those sectors benefited from the IRA?

Trevor Houser: Yeah. So we had a record year in 2023, almost 33 gigawatts of new utility scale, clean electricity generation and storage was added. And the pace of growth in wind and solar and storage has been accelerated by the Inflation Reduction Act. We're coming in at the lower end of the range of what was expected by modelers for the IRA. And there's a couple of reasons for that. First, high interest rates hit clean energy particularly hard, because all of the cost of a clean energy facility, like think about a wind farm, all of the costs of that is the capital. It's the equipment that you're installing compared to right up front compared to like a natural gas power plant, where a lot of the cost is just the natural gas you're buying on an ongoing basis to operate it. So when interest rates rise, it creates particularly strong headwinds for renewable electricity. Second, renewable electricity has to be moved from where the resources to where the demand is. If you think back to the power system we've had in the past, you moved the fuel to where customers were, right? So you'd build a natural gas plant near a city, and then you would move the natural gas to that plant and burn it there. So, but you didn't have to transport the electricity that far. With wind and solar, you can't move the wind and you can't move the sun, right? So you need to generate it where those resources are best. And then you have to move the electricity to where demand is. And so while the cost of building a wind farm is quite low now, with the exception of the high interest rates over the past year or two, you also have to invest in transmission lines to connect that electricity to the market. While there's no cost barrier to building those transmission lines, it does require getting permitting approvals for the full distance that a transmission line has to go through. And sometimes you have individual communities that are opposed to having a transmission line routed through their community or don't want the wind farm sited in a place where they can see it. And so renewables compared to fossil fuel is a little bit more vulnerable to these types of non-cost barriers of delays and siting and permitting and transmission construction.

Ariana Brocious: And some of this is simply because they are newer and, you know, these coal and gas plants, in many cases, have been in communities forever, and they have their own share of downsides of pollution, air pollution, noise, so forth, but maybe it's just become embedded in the fabric of life, whereas a new wind farm going up in your farming community can be a more visually distracting thing.

Trevor Houser: So that's a useful frame. So think about if I'm going to, if I want to build an offshore wind project off of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, right? That is going to allow a coal or natural gas fire power plant to shut down and the shutdown of that coal and natural gas fire power plant is going to have huge public health benefits for the communities that live around that power plant. But the people who live along the coast in Cape Cod that are upset that there might be a wind turbine in their view, they're not the ones who live near the coal fired power plant. And so the challenge for policymakers is figuring out how to navigate those issues, in a way that is the best for everybody involved, even if it means that certain people lose out in the process.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah, and this is a super critical part of this transition, you know, because there has been a very unjust distribution of power generation and siting thus far. A lot of the communities where those power plants exist now are bearing the brunt of that pollution. So there was a focus of some of this legislation to really target certain communities that have been disproportionately impacted. So of the 118 billion in federal programs in the law, 40 percent of the benefits are required to go to disadvantaged communities. Can you tell me a little bit about how the implementation of those programs has gone so far?

Trevor Houser: So looking at the first year, low income communities account for about 38, 39 percent of the U.S. population, if you're looking at a census tract level. And 41 percent of clean investment went to those communities, so they received a larger share of total investment than their share of the population. It's even more impressive for energy communities. Energy communities account for 18 and a half percent. of the total population, but they received 37 percent of total investment, in the first year following the Inflation Reduction Act.

Ariana Brocious: So it's working as intended, so far.

Trevor Houser: Yeah, so far the communities that policymakers were most focused on helping are receiving an outsized share of the investment under the IRA.

Ariana Brocious: The major goal of the Inflation Reduction Act is to reduce emissions. The act seeks to accomplish a 40 percent reduction by the year 2030. Taking a look now, how are we doing in that ultimate goal of reducing emissions?

Trevor Houser: If we look at the pace of progress in 2023, it looks just from that year that, you know, we're certainly on track to come in on that range. But if pace of utility scale, clean electricity investment does not increase meaningfully over the next couple of years, then we'd likely fall a little bit short of that 40 percent reduction. We would come in, you know, more in the thirties range. To get to a 40 percent reduction, let alone a 50 to 52 percent reduction, we need to dramatically expand the amount of wind and solar and storage and other clean electricity technologies like geothermal that we're adding to the grid. The good news is that the cost of those technologies is very cheap now, thanks to the IRA. The challenge is, can we build it fast enough? Can we train the labor source needed? Can we mobilize supply chains? And can we expedite the process? Permitting processes so that those plants can get built in the timeline needed.

Ariana Brocious: Trevor Hauser is a partner at Rhodium Group. Thank you very much for joining us on Climate One.

Trevor Houser: Thanks, Ariana.

Greg Dalton: When a fossil fuel plant closes, the skies clear… But whole communities can be left behind. President Biden’s climate agenda is supposed to address that too, with job opportunities and direct investment. Coming up, how are those programs going?

Bineshi Albert: I think where this kind of project sort of missed the mark is creating opportunities, even for tribal nations to change their economic base.

Greg Dalton: Where the IRA is coming up short. That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

Ariana Brocious: Please help us get people talking more about climate by sharing this episode with a friend. And we’d love to know what you think of the show. Please give us a rating or review. You can do it right now on your device – and it really helps people find the show. Thanks!

Greg Dalton: This is Climate One. I’m Greg Dalton.

Ariana Brocious: And I’m Ariana Brocious. This hour, we’re talking about the Inflation Reduction Act. It allocated 400 billion dollars for climate friendly initiatives. A big chunk of that money is supposed to go to places that have been supported by or disproportionately hurt by fossil fuel production. Now it’s been about a year and half since the bill passed and we’re checking in – are the promises of the IRA being fulfilled in those places?

Greg Dalton: Bineshi Albert is an Indigenous leader from Oklahoma of the Yuchi and Anishinaabe peoples. She’s a longtime climate and environmental justice organizer and recently served as co-director of Climate Justice Alliance. I asked her to give me her sense of how the Inflation Reduction Act is playing out for the communities she serves.

Bineshi Albert: Legislation like that is, you know, there's the hype at the beginning and then there's the implementation, right? And the cogs of implementation move incredibly slow. So, you know, I think there's still yet to be seen, some of the like real output and outcomes of it. But there are some pieces being implemented for sure, but you know, it's a slow process with the government. It's like trying to get the Titanic to turn on a dime.

Greg Dalton: Right, and some of that's by design, the way our government was designed, a lot of rules to be written, etc. A lot of money moving, we want to make sure that it goes in the right way to the right places. What are the bright spots that you see of things that are happening? What's happening well in your view?

Bineshi Albert: You know, we were always optimistic about some of the funds that were addressing some harms that had happened in system communities. But also around, you know, some of the funds that were reducing different kind of emissions. But even in those funds, like my grandma would say it's the salt with the sugar, right? There are some that are investing in reducing diesel emissions. Absolutely great. Reducing emissions through forestation can be a little tricky, and nuanced, particularly as it impacts the communities surrounding those forests.

Greg Dalton: So you mentioned things are just starting to move and moving slowly and yet climate is seen as this urgent crisis. We got to move quickly. So how does that make you feel with like, Oh, it's going slow, but everyone's saying we gotta go faster, faster. And sometimes that can be at tension with tribal consultation and community input.

Bineshi Albert: Yeah, absolutely. And how, how do we ensure that these resources actually get to community and not just to industry who are in community, right? You know, because a lot of these are still accessible to oil and gas companies, and some of them are primarily directed to oil and gas companies. And so it's both, you know, the things that we're looking forward to, that would be helpful, like around some of the rebate programs, some stuff around rural electric, but even in the rural electric, like some of the language, oil and gas corporations can say, oh, we're doing that work –

Greg Dalton: By bringing methane gas, electricity built from methane gas, that sort of thing.

Bineshi Albert: Yeah. And it, you know, some of those, some of those projects also, you know, allow for some initiatives that are really not getting us to the benchmark that we need to. People use the term false solutions or, I call them, climate scams. It says we're reducing emissions, but it's also a way to just allow the industry to keep producing if they can say they're doing offsets in other ways.

Greg Dalton: Yeah, and those are always a little squishy and murky.

Bineshi Albert: Yeah. They're murky and they continue to contribute to the problem. Right. So if you have, you know, a climate scam where it says, Oh, we're going to do emissions in this, rural agriculture kind of project, but you're still producing the megatons of carbon emissions, then we will never meet our mark, right? We will always fall short of meeting the carbon reduction marks that we need to, if we're still producing at the levels that the U.S. and other countries have always produced. And so that I think that was the missed opportunity with the IRA, you know, how can we include not just the funds and the programs, but how can we include how we're going to phase out coal or how we're going to phase out, you know, producing energy in this kind of way that produces carbon. And instead, we have these programs in the IRA, which basically say, okay, you can still produce as long as you invest in these offsets or invest in these programs that, you know, you can reduce carbon in other ways.

Greg Dalton: Right, so it sounds like you're saying that the programs are adding renewables, but not really shrinking the core problem of fossil fuels. Both can happen, right? The IRA contains over 700 million for tribal specific programs like tribal electrification, climate resilience. Can you speak to any specifics about where that is happening?

Bineshi Albert: My most recent work with the Climate Justice Alliance included lots of communities, not just tribal communities. But yeah, like there are a number of tribes who are like trying to think through what does that mean? What does the resiliency mean? And I think where this kind of project sort of missed the mark is creating opportunities, even for tribal nations to change their economic base. I mean, I'm based in Oklahoma, right? And, you know, Oklahoma as a whole state, its identity and economy is based on oil and gas extraction. So, for example, in Oklahoma, you know, we have, special fees if you want to do residential solar on your home, you have to pay extra fees to have that. It's almost like a tax to have solar.

Greg Dalton: Wow. Taxing the sun. That's the kind of thing that, yeah.

Bineshi Albert: So that's the kind of government that we have here in Oklahoma. And so, there’s 39 tribes here. You know, they all have oil and gas leases, right? And so it's an economic base for them. And, you know, even though I have very strong feelings about that kind of extraction and what it means, it also means that those tribal nations are able to take care of their nations, right? And so if we're not providing a sort of economic opportunity for Tribes to like shift their economic development away from fossil fuel extraction, then you're, you're just pitting them to like continue to support it.

Greg Dalton: That's interesting. Because I often think, you know, fossil fuels often hurt communities of color, turn them off and people of color will benefit. And you're saying, oh, that's more complicated than that. There's actually quite a complicated relationship and even dependence with tribes and communities on fossil fuels. So turning it off today is not, it ain't that easy or that simple.

Bineshi Albert: Yeah. I mean, definitely. I'm an advocate of keep it in the ground like that will always be my point of reference, but I'm also not going to demonize tribes for taking care of their people. I will push against the economic system that we have as a nation that relies pretty heavily on fossil fuel extraction, right? Our whole country is based on that. Our history, you know, the oil boom, built the economic wealth that we have in this country. And, I live in a state who have, you know, professional sports teams called the oilers and the drillers. We have national sports teams who are called the oils and the drillers.

Greg Dalton: hmm. Mm hmm.

Bineshi Albert: But we have to create more sort of economic opportunities and that was one of the missed opportunities with the IRA is, yes, there's lots of funds here, but much of it was still funding the existing oil and gas infrastructure and doubling down on some even. And then, you know, there was some investment into some other pieces that are also, you know, kind of scary when you think about it. So, you know, the investment into nuclear.

Greg Dalton: Yeah, the IRA has a little bit for everybody. There's hydrogen, there's nuclear, there's like something for everybody in that, you know, some of that was needed to be in there to get the votes. Justice 40 is an initiative of the Biden administration that's meant to direct 40 percent of the overall benefits of federal investments to disadvantaged communities. Many of the elements in the IRA fall within that initiative of Justice 40. How's that working out? Is it meeting its expectations? Is money going to the places you think it should go to?

Bineshi Albert: I think there are some places where that's happening well. There's some places where community voices, even EJ voices, are giving input into what Justice 40 can be. When I was with Climate Justice Alliance, you know, we helped engage communities to talk to the WEJAC, the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Committee about their input about Justice 40, but also their input in other areas, you know, like, CCS, hydrogen and –

Greg Dalton: Carbon capture and sequestration. And that, that White House group was a big deal when it was created, like, this is the first time we have this group at the White House level advising on climate justice and environmental justice.

Bineshi Albert: I think they get it and they are giving their input and advice. And their purpose was to give input advice to the White House about what should be done. And so I think that was definitely an opportunity to like, engage communities. But then what happens to that, those reports and advice, right?

Greg Dalton: I heard a term recently from the activist Kumi Naidoo, who talked about handshake activism and he said he learned that, you know, access doesn't mean influence. Getting a photo or getting a report to the White House doesn't mean that the White House listens or acts, acts upon that, that consultation and that input.

Bineshi Albert: Oh, yeah, because even with tribal nations, like you have that act of consultation, which means I've just discussed with you. Consultation doesn't mean I have to do what you say. So a lot of tribal nations now have been engaging also in this term of consent.

Greg Dalton: Prior consent, yeah.

Bineshi Albert: Yeah prior informed consent. It's like, yes, you can't just do consultation. You have to also engage to say, yes, do we want this or no, do we not want this? Tribal nations are pushing that. And I think that kind of consent should also be for communities to say, we don't want this. This is not what we're signing up for.

Greg Dalton: Last time you were on the show, you said that President Biden should declare a climate emergency. Haven't heard about that as much lately. There was some reporting from E and E News and others that the administration seriously considered declaring a climate national emergency. And then the inflation reduction act passed, and it was like, okay, we don't need to do that because now this is legislation. What's your reaction to that? Do you still think that declaration would be helpful?

Bineshi Albert: I have mixed feelings about the climate emergency now. And for a couple of reasons, one, I absolutely think that the Biden administration, the world governments in general need to move with the urgency of emergency, right? Like they need to move with that kind of haste. And that's not what we're seeing. And so that part I'm 100 percent you know, will double down on that. The actual enactment of a climate emergency, you know, I started thinking about like, what are the what, what gets implemented if that happens? You know, like, me asking for a climate emergency was, you know, I want the government to move like their pants are on fire, right? That's what I want.

Greg Dalton: Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Bineshi Albert: But when I think about the history of a state of emergency being declared in this country for any other acts, like, would that be the same for climate emergency? And in those situations, I worry then about communities of color, right?

Greg Dalton: Well, I think of Japanese internment, right? That's one thing that comes to mind.

Bineshi Albert: Yeah, I think I, I worry about communities of color and what does it mean for an emergency to be declared for the military to be engaged you know, does that mean that there's a engagement of martial law and then I don't know, these are questions I honestly don't know, but I was started thinking through some of these questions of what does it actually mean to implement in policy and in practice, a state of emergency.

Greg Dalton: Biden is losing voters of color. Can you see why? Yeah.

Bineshi Albert: Absolutely. I mean, there, communities of color are, are really pushing for, we need immediate relief now, both in environmental issues and social issues and, and funding, for a number of different programs and are just not seeing that investment and are really, you know, had some hopefulness, in the previous election, like, all right, this is, this is the champion. And now a lot of folks are like, you know, the two party system, neither of the parties are looking out for our best interest. And, and so, you know, it becomes, are they just invested in the health and wellbeing of corporations? Of our current economic system. And even though I, you know, I want to see a shift in our economic system. I'm very clear what the impacts of the poorest of the poor in a shift in the economic system, right.

Greg Dalton: And, you know, climate is not a leading message of the Biden campaign in this season. What would you say to the Biden camp, from your perspective as a leader, on climate justice?

Bineshi Albert: I mean, I would say, if your term is coming to an end and you may or may not be elected going forward, then go out with a big bang, do something big on climate and just be like, this is it. This is my legacy. And instead, the legacy is pretty ho hum when it comes to climate, you know?

Greg Dalton: But to be fair, I mean, you know, he got through historic investments, the IRA, the Infrastructure Act, the CHIPS Act, it's not enough, but, you know, his climate wins are not trivial, they are significant and historic.

Bineshi Albert: They're significant, they're historic, but it was like, yeah, but we didn't have anything before. So–

Greg Dalton: Compared to nothing. Yes.

Bineshi Albert: It's great. It's great. It's phenomenal. But it doesn't mean that I don't still expect more from the administration and from any administration. I mean, regardless of how I vote, I'm holding whoever's feet to the fire to make sure they do this because I need my government and world governments to act like their pants are on fire, and to move in that urgency because, if we don't change how we are moving forward, even in the next five to 10 years, we're coming to, there's no turning back. There's no fixing, you know, we're, we're very close to that, tipping point.

Greg Dalton: Bineshi Albert, thank you so much for sharing your insights on Climate One.

Bineshi Albert: Thank you.

Ariana Brocious: Communities across the country are trying to protect themselves from the impacts of climate change – everything from shoring up coastlines to raising roads. And that’s expensive. The IRA and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill aim to send tens of billions of federal dollars to help. But actually getting that money? can be very difficult. Now we’re going now to a small island off the coast of Georgia, not far from Savannah… Emily Jones of WABE and Grist has this report.

Emily Jones: Tybee Island has a rain problem. The stormwater system, fed by storm drains across the island, funnels into a pipe that comes out on the beach at the southern tip of Tybee. But that pipe gets regularly buried by sand.

“What happens is when it gets covered with sand, and the tide rises, there’s nowhere for the stormwater to go,” said Alan Robertson, a Tybee resident and consultant for the city.

The water backs up in the system and wells up out of the drains, flooding the roads. It’s a problem the city is trying to solve, Robertson said. And it’s a daily hassle.

“The city has to clear this every day,” Roberston said.

Tybee’s not alone. All over Georgia, old stormwater systems struggle to keep up with increased rainfall due to climate change. On the coast, rising sea levels — also from climate change — squeeze the systems from the other end. Infrastructure like roads, hospitals and wastewater plants need to be shored up against flooding. Residents need protection from heat and floodwater.

All of that is expensive. The good news for local governments tackling these problems is that lots of state and federal money is out there to fund resilience projects. The recent federal infrastructure law and Inflation Reduction Act are adding hundreds of billions of dollars to the pot.

But there’s also bad news: that money is often hard to actually get, and that difficulty can amplify inequities for communities that need help most.

“One of the major capacity constraints of a lot of these local governments are that they have few grant writers on staff,” said Michael Dexter, director of federal programs for the Southeast Sustainability Directors Network.

The funding often comes through competitive grants, which are complicated and highly technical to apply for. Local government staff, often under-resourced and with plenty of work on their plates, can struggle to stay on top of the different funding opportunities, coordinate the necessary partners or come up with the local match funding some grants require.

“A lot of communities shy away from going after grant funds just because of that,” said Jennifer Kline, the coastal hazard specialist with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources Coastal Management Program.

Without a dedicated, expert grant writer and plenty of staff, communities may miss out on these huge amounts of money. That’s especially true in communities of color where old, racist policies like redlining discouraged investment and growth, according to Nathaniel Smith, founder and chief equity officer of the Partnership for Southern Equity.

“If you look at many of the communities that face the greatest challenges, a lot of times people just assume that it happened by happenstance,” Smith said. “And that couldn’t be furthest from the truth.”

For many of the same reasons, those communities stand to be hit hardest by climate change: they often have less shade to reduce heat, are less protected from flooding and face more of the health problems that climate change makes worse.

The Biden administration is trying to address this disparity with its Justice40 initiative, which promises to put 40% of federal climate funding toward historically disadvantaged communities. Through a program called the Justice40 Accelerator, Smith’s group offers funding and technical support to help eligible places get that money.

“It takes real resources and time and support to ensure that local communities are positioned to compete,” he said.

Many of the state and federal agencies that dole out grants offer help as well. Kline’s DNR Coastal Management Program provides assistance. Dexter said his group, the Southeast Sustainability Directors Network, does too.

What’s not clear is whether all of that is enough.

“I was gonna say that’s the $100 million question,” he joked. “No, that’s the $1 trillion, multiple-trillion-dollar question.”

Tybee Island faced down these challenges when Hurricane Matthew devastated the island in 2016. But that city got lucky: Robertson, a resident with grant writing experience, stepped up.

“We’re in a pretty good space now,” he said. “We can be much more responsive to many more opportunities because we have identified these projects.”

While stormwater remains a problem, they’ve gotten grants to build protective dunes and elevate flood-prone houses. Now, Robertson works with the city to keep a running list of projects to fund.

As the wave of new federal funding comes, other communities could use similar help.

Emily Jones, WABE News.

Ariana Brocious: That story was part of a partnership between WABE in Atlanta and Grist. Thanks to them for sharing it with us.

Greg Dalton: We’re spending today’s show checking in on the Inflation Reduction Act – how well is it addressing climate disruption? Coming up, trying to pivot from old, dirty energy sources to new, clean ones:

Danny Kennedy: You know, the better, cheaper version of a future energy system is definitely wind and solar powered, not fossil fuel based. But we invested heavily in the latter for much of the century so far.

Greg Dalton: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

Ariana Brocious: This is Climate One. We’ve heard from an analyst and climate justice advocate, now let’s bring in the perspective of someone from the clean energy industry. What are they seeing of the 400-billion-dollar investment from the IRA? Danny Kennedy is CEO of New Energy Nexus, which offers funding and programs to boost the development and innovation of renewable energy. He chatted with my co-host Greg Dalton.

Greg Dalton: So let's talk about the IRA, the IRA, I guess people call it the inflation reduction act now about 18 months old.

Danny Kennedy: Uncle Bill and Auntie Ira, I've heard it referred to in the Beltway, yeah.

Greg Dalton: Right. The bill being the bipartisan–

Danny Kennedy: Bipartisan infrastructure law.

Greg Dalton: Yeah. Bill and IRA. Okay. So what grade would you give IRA so far? We start simple here in terms of implementation. How would you rate it?

Danny Kennedy: Good way of putting it, I think, the grading of the student is probably a B in intent, and the first, draft or first semester performance, which was the production of the actual legislation was a B. I think we're looking to see in the second semester, the actual implementation or execution of the vision that was written into the law, and I'm not sure they get a B yet.

Greg Dalton: Ah, so what's going well, what's lagging? Where does the student need to kind of up their game a little bit?

Danny Kennedy: Well, clearly the inflation reduction act has spawned a whole lot of commitments, a lot of announcements. America, however, has a risk of what some people call checkism, which is kind of writing checks, but never really spending them, you know, never really cashing that and putting concrete in the ground and factories up and running. And you know, certainly that is the fear some of us have that while there's been many battery factories and downstream EV factories and all sorts of energy infrastructure declared, we've got other reasons those things may not be made manifest in the world. Interconnection queues we've heard about with solar and wind farms into the grid and other permitting snafus, which delay to the point that final investment decisions can't be made and factories may not get built. We need just a quicker response rate and more alacrity from those that are promulgating it. I know it's too important to rush and I understand that, but I think we need to work out how to build things with intent. You know, we get in our own way sometimes we need yes in my backyard sort of approaches and concierge services from state development agencies and people that are in the business of clearing the lines and connecting the dots so that these developments can be built. We've got a decade to do this work and we can't take 18 months to just sort of get the instructions.

Greg Dalton: Right. I hear you saying there could be lots of announcements, but those announcements may not always follow through. I think of Rivian, which is a big factory announced, billion dollar factory announced in Georgia. You know, a lot of buzz around that, other things happening in Georgia, and then Rivian just pulled back and said, Well, we're not so sure. So that's one example. We heard a lot last time after the global recession of, you know, shovel ready projects. I don't hear that term, these days, where has that gone? Are we concerned about shovel ready things that can happen fast?

Danny Kennedy: Look, I think the scope and scale of the IRA is so big that, you know, there probably weren't enough shovel ready projects to fill the book that it described, so they've actually had to go back out to market and inspire and incept some big projects and that's fair. That's what an industrial strategy is, which our great nation, the United States, is undertaking, is whether the strategy can be seen through is kind of the question now, but, there have been some shovel ready projects and it's not to say that they're not doing anything. We're clearly building in places and parts and in California where we work with New Energy Nexus, we've seen factories open that are already, Putting the production lines in place and groundbreaking down at Lithium Valley in Imperial County for a large lithium production facility combined with a new geothermal power plant. That's exciting to see, you know, the shovel in the ground for that first turn of the sod. But we need more of those, I guess, and, and soon.

Greg Dalton: Though big picture, you know, global investment in energy transition technologies was 1.8 trillion last year compared to 1.1 trillion for fossil fuels. That's according to Bloomberg NEF, the gap has steadily widened since 2020. How do you hold those, those two things in your mind that both, there's more money going into clean, and yet we seem to be not meeting, not on track for meeting the decarbonization goals that we need to make.

Danny Kennedy: Well, there's a couple of levels there. One is the global, where you're absolutely right. You know, we are now way outpacing and have been since 2015, spending more money on the clean side of the ledger than the dirty side. Year on year, it's more solar and wind added to the grid than anything else. And last year it was like 80 percent globally. Not so true in the US. is the reality. We've had a hush hush boom. I don't know if you've heard of that. That was what some pundit called the gas fracking phenomenon and the recent gas export in interests that have grown in the United States. You know, we don't want to talk about it. Hush hush. But we're having a boom. Largest producers of oil and exporters of gas. You know, so, the reality that you described globally is not so true in the States even though we've also passed these laws to try to create new industries and, and spawn this shared prosperity. And the results matter. And last year, natural gas was the thing that grew by a country mile and generation from combined wind and solar grew a lot less, you know, and the rates of growth of one versus the other are quite marked and that's going the wrong way.

Greg Dalton: So does this mean that the IRA is not delivering on its promise? And are some of these things outside the influence of the IRA, which is just getting started because the fracking boom you're talking about started under Obama, right? The U.S. became the number one global oil producer, changed the law so it could export crude oil, which was previously outlawed. So we're a big energy producer. That's a good thing for some people, investors and jobs, but we're, we're more of a carbon source. So yeah, connect that for me.

Danny Kennedy: I think this is the challenge, you know, I don't want to say that it hasn't worked yet. We still have to let it run its course, but in the early innings, if you will, it's complexified by the fact that, we ran an industrial policy as a country since the turn of the century to make gas and oil cheap and then to export it to the world. And that's been a common position of all the administrations. It was the confusion of an all of the above energy policy in an era when we needed to switch to clean energy for carbon and cost reasons. You know, the better, cheaper version of a future energy system is definitely wind and solar powered, not fossil fuel based. But we invested heavily in the latter for much of the century so far, and just in the last few years have been trying to turn that ship around with the IRA and the rest.

Greg Dalton: There's been some tension between should we build solar in this country? And there is some manufacturing renaissance in this country with some people of solar, which some people thought would never happen. So is it better to get the cheapest, most readily available inputs solar panels or so things from China? or isn't there a tension between going cheap and fast? There's a tension between kind of the political economy and the global climate.

Danny Kennedy: Look, Greg, there's a tension in a lot of these things, and the tension's been created by a century of burning fossil fuels and sticking carbon in the atmosphere and causing the planet to heat, and now the time value of carbon that we generate today is really important to consider. So, you know, cheap and fast might be an important thing to do, and it's not cheap in the sense of not well made, it's cheap in the sense of low cost, you know, and, and the, the, the incredible machine that was invented in America in 1954 called the solar panel is now being made in scales and, and, and cost structures that we didn't even imagine a decade ago. And I think the world should take advantage of that. That doesn't mean don't diversify the supply chain. Don't build elsewhere, including in America, and maybe blend the costs of the different inputs and supply chain so that you get an average blended cost that's still really great for photovoltaics, the solar panels. But, you know, we've got to think about time as a factor here, but we can't go fast if we don't do fair, I think is the reality. So it's gotta be fast and fair as we drive this energy transition.

Greg Dalton: You say that finding money used to be a bottleneck for clean energy growth companies, and you've been working in this field for some time. Now there's trillions of dollars. Most of the new investment is going into the clean side. Now you say that one of the bottlenecks is finding human talent. Where is the evidence of that? And what's the labor piece of this?

Danny Kennedy: Yeah, I mean, you know, we could always have more money of the right kind at the right time in the energy transition value chains that we're talking about, you know, there is a lot more of it, a trillion dollars, as you cited up top, we need probably two or three trillion dollars more in the system by 2030 annually, so we've got a triple sort of spend right, but the good news is that capital’s around and it's looking for something to do because the stuff that used to invest in is no longer viable, but the constraint now is more of the human capital if we can call people capital, you know, talent effectively.

Greg Dalton: You're such a capitalist, Danny.

Danny Kennedy: You know, there's, there needs to be another million electricians in America to electrify everything, all the heat pumps we want to install, all the circuit boards we want to upgrade, all the EV charges we want to implement. We just need a lot more sparkies, uh, electricians. Where we're working in Imperial County in Southern California on power and prosperity for the inland counties of California, which are fairly, you know, broke in some ways, um, socially and economically, the limiting constraint there is not the lithium that's coming out of the geothermal power sector bubbling up from underground, it's not the money which is willing and able to invest, particularly with the inducement of the IRA support that they can attract. It's, there's not enough workers. There's not people to stand on factory lines, if we build the factories. This is true across the states, by the way, you know, the kind of vocational training for production line engineers, you know, the two not four year courses, we just don't do as much anymore. And so community college districts and all of these different institutions need to gear up for the new skills and new workforce. We call them new energy skills. training opportunities, which are huge, and very exciting. Yeah, and you know, this is not to say we take shortcuts, we've got to work out how to do it right, and so we don't have unintended consequences and harm folk in any sense, and in fact, you know, the idea was to do it right and lift people up that have historically been harmed by the other energy system of the 20th century of the past, but going into the future, we have to work out how to do it right with some alacrity, But if this drags out, the enthusiasm for it, the faith in it will drain. And I think that's one of the biggest consequences. We need a narrative strategy, you know, the mission economy that JFK set the country on when he said, let's go to the moon and back safely, you know, 400,000 companies were engaged in that all sorts of government agencies. It wasn't NASA, it was a whole of economy effort and we did an historic, amazing thing. This is bigger than that. And how do we engage government to enable private sector and public sector, civil society to do all of those things is the question.

Greg Dalton: Danny Kennedy, Chief Energy Officer at New Energy Nexus. Danny, thanks so much for sharing your insights into Uncle Ira or Mr. Bill. Uncle Bill and auntie Ira.

Greg Dalton: Auntie Ira. Okay. Thanks, Danny. Appreciate it.

Danny Kennedy: Thank you.

Ariana Brocious: It’s been 20 months since the IRA passed – and a lot of its investments have flowed into conservative states. Now that we’re on the precipice of a presidential election, there's a lot of talk about how this policy and the climate priorities set by the Biden administration could change if Donald Trump is reelected. Before we end today’s show, I want to return to my conversation with Trevor Houser, a partner at Rhodium Group, the think tank that’s been tracking the progress of the IRA. I asked him how durable he thinks this law is now that the money has started flowing.

Trevor Houser: So I think for a large-scale repeal of the provisions of the IRA, you would need not just a change in administration, but Republican control of both chambers of Congress. Even then, I think it's unlikely that we would see the totality of the IRA repealed. There no doubt would be desire among political leadership and the Republican Party to roll back what was a marquee legislative achievement of the Biden administration. At the same time, that would be at tension with the very real economic interests of a number of Republican members who are seeing new factories, new job creation occurring in their districts, in their states as a result of the IRA. So it's a little unclear to know how the Republican Party would navigate those tensions. But the fact that so much money is already flowing, the fact that the IRA is, is working largely as intended means that repealing it would have real costs. And as long as over 2024, the IRA continues to expand the amount of clean energy investment that's occurring, continues to drive job creation, then I think the politics of wholesale repeal would be pretty tough.

Ariana Brocious: And that’s our show. Thanks for listening. Talking about climate can be hard, and exciting and interesting — AND it’s critical to address the transitions we need to make in all parts of society. Please help us get people talking more about climate by giving us a rating or review. You can do it right now on your device. Or consider joining us on Patreon and supporting the show that way.

Greg Dalton: Brad Marshland is our senior producer; Our managing director is Jenny Park. Ariana Brocious is co-host, editor and producer. Austin Colón is producer and editor. Megan Biscieglia is producer and production manager. Wency Shaida is our development manager, Ben Testani is our communications manager. Jenny Lawton is consulting producer. Our theme music was composed by George Young (and arranged by Matt Willcox). Gloria Duffy and Philip Yun are co-CEOs of The Commonwealth Club World Affairs, the nonprofit and nonpartisan forum where our program originates. I’m Greg Dalton.

04:00 – IRA is carrots instead of sticks
06:00 – Trevor Houser on how IRA is boosting energy investment and manufacturing
10:00 – EV sales are still high but growth of sale rate is slowing
16:30 – Distribution of funds/grants to communities prioritized through Justice 40
20:30 – Bineshi Albert on slow pace of IRA rollout
24:00 – IRA missed opportunity to phase out fossil fuels
31:30 – What to tell the Biden admin about climate justice
33:30 – Emily Jones news feature
40:00 – Danny Kennedy grades the IRA on intent and implementation
48:00 – Need for job training and labor recruitment for clean energy industries
52:00 – Durability of IRA if Republicans win November election

Play

Geothermal: So Hot Right Now

Jenny Park — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 21:51:50 +0000

Geothermal: So Hot Right Now

02/23/2024

Searching for Solutions

When most people hear the phrase renewable energy, they imagine fields full of solar panels or giant spinning wind turbines. But another source is heating up: geothermal.

According to Amanda Kolker, Laboratory Program Manager for Geoscience and Geothermal Technologies at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), geothermal energy has been used for a long time. “The first generation, the conventional kind of older technology, started in 1906,” she says.

Most forms of electricity generation require the turning of a turbine, often by using steam. Geothermal is no different. Traditional geothermal energy production, as Kolker explains, “requires drilling a well in a place where steam exists in the subsurface at relatively shallow depths, and then this steam is channeled to a turbine generator where it pushes a series of blades mounted on a rotor shaft. And then the force of that steam on the blades spins the rotor shaft to the generator, which in turn converts that energy into electrical energy.”

“Everywhere in the world, below the surface, geothermal exists. Everywhere. The question is only, how deep is it?” says Jamie Beard, founder of Project InnerSpace. In a bit of a twist, technological advances made by the oil and gas industry might have unlocked the ability to build scalable geothermal energy, just about anywhere. Kolker says, “We're actually in an exciting period because I think we're undergoing a new revolution in geothermal power technology.”

Because the technology used in these new geothermal systems originates in the oil and gas industry, it offers workers in the fossil fuel sector a way to work in the clean energy space without having to completely be retrained. “Everybody feels and sees a way that they can win in supporting geothermal climate groups, environmental groups, oil and gas groups. People see a path,” says Beard.

As with the other sources of clean energy, permitting is once again a hurdle to be overcome. “On federal land, you can develop an oil and gas project at lightning speed compared to geothermal. Geothermal projects can take 10 or more years to work through the permitting process on federal land, which kills projects,” says Beard. But geothermal power stations may be able to avoid the community pushback that goes on over solar farms and wind fields. Beard says, “These are not invasive projects; they're pretty cool once you have them installed. Would I have a 50 megawatt geothermal power plant on my property operating and connected to the grid? For sure.”

Generating electricity is not the only application people have been using the earth's heat for. Some use it directly for heating. In Boise, Idaho, geothermal heating has been used since the 1890s. Mayor Lauren McLean, says, “My office, like the entire city hall, is heated with geothermal heat. You've got all the pipes, it looks like a puzzle, with a whole bunch of hot water coming in and that hot water and those pumps heat the city hall building as well as just under a hundred buildings downtown.”

Guests

Amanda Kolker

Laboratory Program Manager for Geothermal Technologies, NREL

Jamie Beard

Founder, Project InnersSpace

Lauren McLean

Mayor of Boise

Project InnerSpace (projectinnerspace.org)

Geothermal in Boise, Idaho (cityofboise.org)

Biden puts $60M into three geothermal energy projects (thehill.com)

NREL: Geothermal Research (nrel.gov)

Geothermal is the hottest thing in clean energy. Here’s why. (canarymedia.com)

Note: Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. Please check the actual audio before quoting it.

Greg Dalton: This is Climate One. When it comes to clean energy, solar and wind tend to dominate the headlines, but another source may be heating up.

Amanda Kolker: Right now we're actually in an exciting period because I think we're undergoing a new generation, a new revolution in geothermal power technology.

Greg Dalton: Geothermal. We used to think that you could only harness the earth’s heat in very particular places, but that turns out not to be the case.

Jamie Beard: Everywhere in the world, below the surface, geothermal exists. Everywhere. The question is only, how deep is it?

Greg Dalton: And the key to unlocking that clean power comes from a surprising place: the fossil fuel industry.

Jamie Beard: What we need to do is a lot of technology transfer, learning transfer, and workforce transfer from oil and gas into geothermal.

Greg Dalton: Geothermal Energy: The Heat Beneath Your Feet. Up next on Climate One.

I'm Greg Dalton.

Ariana Brocious: I'm Arianna Brocious.

Greg Dalton: And this is Climate One.

Greg Dalton: When most people hear the phrase renewable energy, they imagine fields of solar panels or giant spinning wind turbines. But today we're talking about an often overlooked source of clean energy. It's underground: geothermal.

Ariana Brocious: So let's quickly start by unpacking what geothermal is.The word itself offers some big clues. Geo meaning earth and thermal meaning heat. So basically geothermal energy is derived from heat within the earth.

Greg Dalton: Right. Often in the form of steam. And if you go to a hot spring or see the geysers in Yellowstone, you can see it bubbling up right from the ground. In other cases, it's deep beneath the earth's subsurface.

Ariana Brocious: Later in the episode, we'll get into exactly how we turn that heat or steam into electricity and how some people are using it to heat homes and buildings. And I'll admit this was a new field for me and I found it fascinating, particularly to learn how long we've been using geothermal energy.

Greg Dalton: And pretty widely too, geothermal is a bigger deal than many people realize. In California, it generates around 5 percent of the state's electricity. But I thought of steam as old school technology, choo choo trains. As I learned researching this episode, the technology has advanced.

Ariana Brocious: Right, and one of the more surprising twists in the climate space is that a lot of the technological advances that have helped geothermal improve and innovate have come from the oil and gas sector and fracking. Which is a contentious form of energy extraction and also a contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.

Greg Dalton: Right, and it's also made the U. S. a leading energy exporter. It's complicated. Jamie Beard is founder of Project Innerspace. Her organization is trying to get people in the oil and gas industry to turn their knowledge and skills to geothermal.

She made a similar pivot herself almost two decades ago.

Jamie Beard: I was at a startup company, an MIT spinoff that was working on high temperature energy storage. And it turns out there's a lot of applications for that sort of thing, defense and space and all these cool things. And one of the applications was oil and gas drilling. And so I found myself suddenly, as a startup founder thrust into the world of oil and gas, and you know, I had been an environmentalist all my life, so that was a weird experience at first, but it was right at the beginning of the shale boom, when there were all sorts of really cool, innovative things happening in the field. And around that same time, there was a report published. And it also came out of MIT called the future of geothermal energy. And this report laid out a really big vision for what geothermal could be for the world, really big. Like, you know, it could solve all of our energy needs many thousands of times over, but it's you know, it's just a set of engineering challenges. And for me, it was this kind of eureka moment where you had me watching oil and gas in the field innovating through the shale boom, solving engineering challenges in real time, and then reading this report saying, wow, if we only knew how to solve really tough drilling challenges, we could solve energy. And it was just like, bam, I got to move to Texas.

Greg Dalton: Right,

Jamie Beard: So that’s how I got into geothermal.

Greg Dalton: That's interesting because you say you were an environmentalist. A lot of environmentalists hear about the shale boom as this terrible thing that made America the world's biggest oil supplier. And you're talking about it as this exciting technological innovation that related to this other cleaner energy source, geothermal that we're talking about today, that’s an interesting contrast.

Jamie Beard: Yeah, and you know, it wasn't, It did not happen overnight. This was a process for me psychologically, frankly, to make the jump, um, from oil and gas as villain to oil and gas as massive opportunity in terms of mitigating climate change.

Greg Dalton: And 15 years ago, the consensus among energy people I talked to was that geothermal works well, but it's kind of geographically limited to maybe 10 percent of places on land. How has your understanding of that changed where we can get geothermal?

Jamie Beard: Yeah, so this is the really cool part about geothermal. And I think this is what the world doesn't yet know, but really urgently needs to hear. So right now in, in the world, geothermal exists where it's really close to the surface. So most of the time, if you think about geothermal, you think about that hot spring you sat in on vacation, likely in Iceland or something, right? Something, something like that

Greg Dalton: or Old faithful. And Yellowstone. Yeah.

Jamie Beard: These, these dramatic surface manifestations of what we call geothermal energy, which by the way, is derived by this massive molten ball of energy in the center of the earth, right? And that happens to be the temperature of the surface of the sun. So it's a massive source of energy. And we see in some places in the world surface manifestations of that massive ball of energy. And those are erupting volcanoes and geysers and things, right? And so in the world right now, we have geothermal energy in places where it's literally bubbling up to the surface and we can see it there. But everywhere in the world, below the surface, geothermal exists. Everywhere. The question is only, how deep is it? You know, and in some places it's not very deep at all, it's really easy to get to, in other places it's deeper, but it's always there, everywhere in the world. And I think that is the opportunity that makes geothermal really promising and really massive, because that means that we don't need to go to the windiest places, we don't need to go to the sunniest places, we don't need to go to the places in the world where there's oil and gas, right? Geothermal can be produced. You could drill for and produce geothermal feasibly anywhere in the world where there's demand. So that means geothermal could be relevant near the biggest population centers in the world. And that's something that is totally overlooked, but massive opportunity in terms of growth and clean energy. And so the, you know, the way that I look at it, Greg, is like this. If you think of the way the world developed oil and gas over the last century, we didn't start with deep water oil and gas platforms offshore, right? We started with oil and gas laying on the ground in puddles, right? And, and someone walked up and said, look, there's oil and we burned it.

Greg Dalton: We've all seen that the Beverly Hillbillies bubbling up in the backyard. So,

Jamie Beard: And then the spindle top and the, you know, and all this. So this was, 100 year long process of realizing something was laying on the ground, drilling for it. And now we drill billion dollar ultra deep water, incredibly complex oil and gas wells.

Greg Dalton: So that gets to the question I have of costs, you saying geothermal power generation can be nearly anywhere. It's a matter of depth, which raises the question of, okay, deeper cost more.

Jamie Beard: Yeah, well that's true. And so if we go back to that analogy of it took us 100 years to get to offshore drilling, what does that mean for geothermal? Well, the way I look at it is this: Right now it's laying on the surface just like oil and gas was 100 years ago. And we're drilling for it in those places like in Iceland. But we don't have to reproduce the last hundred years of technology development that it'll take to drill for geothermal, even in deep places. What we need to do is a lot of technology transfer, learning transfer, and workforce transfer from oil and gas into geothermal. And therefore we can make technological leaps and save a whole lot of time developing those technologies.

Greg Dalton: We’ll hear the rest of my conversation with Jamie Beard later in the show. But I want to step back and talk through all the different ways to use the heat that’s naturally underground.

Ariana Brocious: I talked about this with Amanda Kolker of the National Renewable Energy Lab. She explained that there are two basic flavors of geothermal energy: It can be used directly to heat buildings. Or the heat can be used to make electricity.

Amanda Kolker: The first generation, the conventional kind of older technology, started in 1906. very mature technology, but it requires drilling a well in a place where steam exists in the subsurface at relatively shallow depths, and then this steam is channeled to a turbine generator where it pushes a series of blades mounted on a rotor shaft, and then the force of that steam on the blades spins the rotor shaft to the generator, which in turn converts that energy into electrical energy.

Ariana Brocious: This Is how we generate a lot of our electricity: Whether it’s a coal plant or a nuclear plant, for over a hundred years, we’ve used heat to boil water, to make steam, to turn turbines to make electricity. Traditional geothermal power works the same way, except it uses steam that’s already coming up out of the ground.

Amanda Kolker: And that was the first generation. That was in places where we had steam deep in the earth, which is not everywhere, right? So right now we're actually in an exciting period because I think we're undergoing a new revolution in geothermal power technology. Right now there's technologies that, rather than looking for hot water, hydrothermal resources underground, which aren't found everywhere, they're looking for just hot rocks. And in theory, that's everywhere in Earth's crust.

Ariana Brocious: And here’s where the technology gets a little more complex. Steam and water don’t exist everywhere underground. That’s what limited geothermal energy so far. But the earth is hot everywhere, if you go deep enough. So a newer form of geothermal injects water down hot rocks to produce the steam.

Amanda Kolker: So two technologies you might be hearing about that is part of this new generation are enhanced geothermal systems or otherwise known as EGS, and then closed loop geothermal systems. The way that enhanced geothermal systems work is, you're looking for hot rocks underground and you're engineering a man-made geothermal reservoir where there is none, creating one by injecting cold fluids into hot rock and heating them up through circulation in these engineered reservoirs. Closed loop geothermal doesn't actually require engineering underground reservoirs, but rather relies on a series of closed looped pipes that are drilled deep into the earth and that hot rock.

Ariana Brocious: That’s an important distinction. One criticism of geothermal has been how much water it uses. But closed loop systems could go a long way toward avoiding that downside because the water is used over and over.

Amanda Kolker: What's interesting is, this could revolutionize geothermal power and it could also revolutionize geothermal heat. A lot of times when you've invested in a geothermal well to bring up hot water to the surface, you send it around in a series of interconnected pipes. It's called district heating, and that's nothing new either. This is old technology. This is actually, there are systems that are still running today that have been around for over a century.

Ariana Brocious: This was news to me – I had no idea geothermal had been around that long, but later in the show, we’ll talk with the mayor of Boise, Idaho, which has used geothermal heat since the 1890s. Today they have nearly a hundred buildings all connected to one series of pipes that bring hot water from deep underground to heat the buildings. It’s called “district heating”. Amanda Kolker says there’s also innovations in that space.

Amanda Kolker: Now a lot of the modern district energy systems provide heating and cooling, and they use this ambient loop that allows very efficient heat exchange. And you can actually use different buildings as heat sources and heat sinks and get highly efficient, you know, zero emissions heating and cooling,

Ariana Brocious: It's really exciting. For example, let's say like you had a system of residential properties connected to a big office building or a university or something where you have all of our body heat concentrated in this building because there's so many people and then you could essentially trap that and then maybe distribute it to people's homes when they leave?

Amanda Kolker: Exactly, or say like a data center has tons of waste heat coming out and you can put that into the ambient system and then use it somewhere else where they have a heating requirement.

Ariana Brocious: And there’s at least one more way to take advantage of connecting buildings together with heating pipes: storing that heat for months.

Amanda Kolker: When you have a large field of pipes buried in the ground, you actually can use that earth medium, which is a fairly good insulator, as a storage device. So you can seasonally inject your heat, say in the summer, waste heat coming from your buildings or other sources, and store it in earth’s subsurface and then extract it in the winter.

Ariana Brocious: So if we have a district again, this is an interconnected network, and we're cooling a bunch of buildings in the summer. You're taking the heat and actually putting the heat underground in like a series of pipes? And it would stay hot? And then you would pull it back out and it would heat the buildings in the winter.

Amanda Kolker: Yeah. That's the idea. it depends what your subsurface looks like. But there are places where the heat is stored efficiently and effectively in subsurface media that can be used later.

Ariana Brocious: That’s so cool! Or warm, depending on the season. And this gets me thinking about another technology that’s already in use today: ground-source heat pumps – also called geothermal heat pumps.

Amanda Kolker: Geothermal heat pumps are really interesting. They allow both heat exchange at the individual building scale, but they can also be networked, and used at the district scale.

Ariana Brocious: So I have a heat pump in my house. I got one last year. And this is an air source heat pump. So as best I understand the way it works is it's like an air conditioner part of the time and then a reverse air conditioner. So it exchanges heat from inside my house to outside my house in the summer. And in the winter it does the opposite. It brings heat from outside into my house. So this is much more efficient and safer for my family than the gas furnace I had before. How does an air source heat pump work compared to a geothermal heat pump?

Amanda Kolker: Great question. In some ways are very similar. They both move heat from one place to another using electricity and refrigerants, right? So in heating mode, the heat pump works kind of like you said, like a refrigerator in reverse, where instead of cooling a space, it uses refrigerants to warm your home. The difference is, is that geothermal heat pumps, they are placed underground and therefore they can take advantage of constant underground temperatures because there's a constant 55 give or take temperature and earth subsurface, um, it can exchange that heat a little bit more efficiently than exchanging with outdoor temperatures, which might be, you know, substantially lower than what you're trying to heat your indoor spaces to or higher.

Ariana Brocious: Let's turn to some of the benefits as we move toward a fossil free future. Where do you think geothermal fits in this broader energy generation system?

Amanda Kolker: When it comes to all of the geothermal technologies, we have to understand that this is a reliable, baseload, always available resource. And so from the power perspective, what that means is geothermal power can provide reliable, you know, renewable power and provide that stability that's needed for our power grids. And then also provide resilience to communities with a source of heat or cooling that's always available 24/7. So that's one pro, you know, around energy security and resilience. In addition to those, all of the geothermal technologies have a very small surface footprint. Since most of the magic happens underground, this means they're fairly resilient to things like weather disruptions.

Ariana Brocious: That's a big pro in an increasingly climate disrupted world, right?

Amanda Kolker: Yes, Another benefit is the long lifespan. These power plants, there's many that have been going for a half century, some for longer than that. Same goes for direct heat,, also geothermal heat pumps tend to be long lived. So all, all of the flavors of geothermal technologies operate for a long time with high reliability, and then I would bring in two other benefits that we're currently looking into at the labs. And so, you know, because of all these benefits, whether it's the resilience or energy security benefits I talked about, grid stability, or community resilience, we think that geothermal technologies may be able to ensure a just energy transition.

Ariana Brocious: Well, this is really exciting. And thanks for sharing your expertise around geothermal technology and all the really interesting ways it can be deployed.

Amanda Kolker: Thank you.

Ariana Brocious: Amanda Kolker is Laboratory Program Manager for Geoscience and Geothermal Technologies at the National Renewable Energy Lab.

Greg Dalton: You’re listening to a Climate One conversation about the heat beneath your feet. If you missed a previous episode, or want to hear more of Climate One’s empowering conversations, subscribe to our podcast wherever you get your pods.

Please help us get people talking more about climate by giving us a rating or review. You can do it right now on your device. You can also help by sending a link to this episode to a friend.

Coming up, it seems nearly impossible to get people on the same page about climate solutions. But could geothermal be the exception?

Jamie Beard: Everybody feels and sees a way that they can win in supporting geothermal: climate groups, environmental groups, oil and gas groups, every right and left, dogs and cats, red and blue, whatever you want to call it. People see a path.

Greg Dalton: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

This is Climate One. I’m Greg Dalton.

In 1989, an oil tanker called the Exxon Valdez struck a reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. The collision tore the ship’s hull and 11 million gallons of crude oil gushed into the ocean. It devastated a vast area and the cleanup took years. Founder of Project Innerspace, Jamie Beard, says that environmental disaster made a huge impact on her.

Jamie Beard: I was a child during the Exxon Valdez, and that was my entry point into environmentalism. So, you know, oil soaked birds and oil and gas is going to burn kind of mentality when I was young. And, you know, I wanted to devote my career to putting an end to oil and gas and everything related to oil and gas. It's very easy to regard oil and gas as a monolith. And it's very easy to place an us and them mentality on it, right? What I've found in engaging with oil and gas, meaning the individuals that are working in these entities, right, is as soon as you get across the table from geophysicists who are really excited about making geothermal work, but they just so happen to work for the big bad guys, right? They're no longer villains. You can't even try to say villain because they're not. They're just people. They're people with a really awesome skill set that we need. And so, you know, it's, it's, it's hard, it's hard for me to even regard oil and gas as villainous anymore because now I'm engaging with hundreds of individuals, right? So it's,

Greg Dalton: Real people. Yeah. Mm-Hmm.

Jamie Beard: with skills that we need. So I'm, I'm, I've, I've switched my mentality there to there is a massive opportunity and these folks can solve our problems in geothermal. So we need them, right?

Greg Dalton: It sounds like you're saying that geothermal could provide an off ramp for oil and gas individuals. How about at the company level?

Jamie Beard: So off ramp or opportunity, right? So it might even be an on ramp to a future of doing the same thing that they know how to do, which is searching for, drilling for, and producing a subsurface energy asset. But instead of hydrocarbons, It's heat, right? So it's like do everything you know how to do, everything you've built your career doing, everything your education supports, but for geothermal instead of oil and gas. So, right. It's, it's, it's, it's in my view on ramp into something that could be really, truly a massive opportunity in terms of global scale. And if you think about it. potentially bigger than oil and gas. Oil and gas is limited geographically too, just like geothermal is now. It's in very specific places in the world where oil and gas exists under the ground.Geothermal is everywhere, meaning that it's an opportunity that could be really massive.

Greg Dalton: At the UN climate conference in Dubai last year you announced a project you're doing in collaboration with Google called GeoMap, what is GeoMap and what's it gonna do?

Jamie Beard: There are some things that are holding geothermal back in terms of its ability to scale. And, you know, what, what I'm focused on at Project Innerspace is actually addressing those barriers, and we're trying to do that before the end of this decade. So we've, we've given ourselves an expiration date to achieve our mission. And the mission is to remove the major barriers that are standing in the way of exponential growth of geothermal. And one of the, one of the major barriers, and it's going to sound weird that we don't know this, um, in the world right now, but there is no single source, no global atlas or map of where geothermal exists in the world. So you can't, before GeoMap, you couldn't go to a website and click on a place in the world and see, you know, what the subsurface looked like with regard to the geothermal resource below. And because of that, there's not a very good understanding in the world right now. I mean, it's very exciting geothermal and all these new technologies. But a fundamental question is, well, where should we try to do this first? Like where's the low hanging fruit? Aside, aside from Iceland, where all the, you know, these are obvious places, but what about in places where it's not obvious, where we can't see it, where should we go first and where should we try different concepts first? That didn't exist. So Innerspace set out to try to build such a tool and make it freely accessible to the public and world. And we did build that partnership with Google to build GeoMap. So it's essentially the Google Earth for geothermal. So you can go to the, go to the, go to GeoMap, press on a place in the world. Not only does it show you geothermal resources below the surface, but it also shows you what's on the surface, right? Which matters because we don't want to be in protected areas. We do want to be near population centers and transmission lines. You know, there's a lot of ways that the subsurface resource and, and what's happening on the surface are really related in terms of geothermal prospecting. So GeoMAP tries to solve for that barrier in geothermal.

Greg Dalton: And you know, this is something that came up recently. Someone said why isn't there a you know, Google Map overlay for like indigenous lands? Does GeoMap take into consideration you because Indigenous people have been trampled on for so long with oil and gas and it's like, Oh, here's another way that you're going to come after our land to take something. Does that exist in GeoMap?

Jamie Beard: Yes. So GeoMap is rolling out continent by continent. We just announced Africa at COP28. The United States rolls out later on this year, and one of the surface layers in the United States, um, of course, protected areas, national parks, but also indigenous lands. So yes, that's that's something that's part of the of the surface package.

Greg Dalton: Good to hear. You mentioned about the scale of large oil and gas wells and how that could be replicated in geothermal. Yet small modular geothermal plants also seem really intriguing as a distributed power source. That's part of what happened in the shale revolution. You talked about poking, lots of um, sort of fast wells, small quickly, you know, how promising are these modular designs?

Jamie Beard: There's a controversy now in geothermal about who's going to win. Is it going to be micro grids? So, a regional or, or town based or even military based geothermal power plant that serves a micro grid that is not connected with the proper grid, um, in, in the location, also for critical infrastructure, like data centers and hospitals. So a geothermal power plant to serve those needs and those needs only that's not connected to the grid. I love the idea. And I think geothermal is a really great contender for those types of applications. They also, and this is really helpful for geothermal, at least in the early days when you're doing first of a kind concepts that tend to be more expensive than a proven and optimized system, critical infrastructure, data centers that really benefit from baseload energy sources, but also that are run by companies who have made massive carbon neutrality commitments. So you have to have clean baseload – and military bases. So if you think about national security, these entities will pay a premium to have clean, firm power. And so it very well may be that geothermals, you know, niche opportunity over the first five or 10 years of development are these types of applications.

Greg Dalton: So what I heard there is that, you know, we know that sun shines during the day, wind often blows at night. And there's sort of this intermittency that's talked about with wind and solar. You're saying that, that geothermal could be steady and reliable, sometimes called baseload. But how do you compare the environmental pros and cons?

Jamie Beard: This is one of geothermal's really strong points, in my view. We're talking about very, very low carbon emissions, you know, 99. 9 percent carbon-free emissions from hydrothermal plants.

Greg Dalton: But aren't there water and land impacts if you're, you're poking holes all over the place, there's, there's going to be the surface impact of all these wells.

Jamie Beard: yeah, any, any energy source, hard stop, even, even renewables like solar and wind have, have a surface footprint and, and geothermal if it goes head to head with solar and wind, you're talking about. between 1 percent and 10 percent of the surface footprint, depending on the size of the plant, the type of plant, megawatt for megawatt, compared to solar and wind. I will say, though, water is a good one to bring up, and I think that's really important, and it's part of the reason why geothermal has kind of progressed into this next generation stage of concepts and technologies. Many of these technologies are aimed at actually reducing geothermal's consumption of water. So, as geothermal exists today in the world, hydrothermal, they are producing water from, from under the ground that is there naturally and making energy out of it. And a lot of hydrothermal plants re-inject that water, so they put it back into the aquifer, but it's not perfect and you can't get it all back. So there is a decline over time in the amount of water in the aquifer. And some geothermal plants don't put it back at all. So they, they put it in pools on the surface. If you think of Iceland's Blue Lagoon, that's a geothermal power plant, and the water that's in the Blue Lagoon is actually the effluent from the power plant. So it's the water they've already, they've made, they've made electricity with it, and they flow the water into the Blue Lagoon, and you sit in it with, with your glass of wine. So that's an example of not re-injected water. Right? But if you think there, there are places in the world that are very wet in the subsurface, Iceland is one of them. They have no shortage of aquifers, but there are places in the world that do. And if we start looking at, you know, 2050 fresh water demands on the world and we think of population density, we need to be very careful about using subsurface fresh water for energy production. And so that's why, um, you know, many of the next generation geothermal concepts, and like the closed loop systems, for instance, that Amanda mentioned are, are considering using not only water in a closed loop, so you're not losing any of it, you're recycling it fully, but some concepts aren't even using water. So they're using engineered working fluids that are not water based. Think supercritical CO2 as a working fluid, which is super cool. So replacing the water use entirely with something else and just producing the heat without the water.

Greg Dalton: I don't know what supercritical CO2 is, but if you think it's cool, I'll take it. You're a founder and executive director of Project Innerspace, which funds disruptive research and collaborations that aim to jumpstart the growth of next generation geothermal energy as we've been talking about. I would think that a high tech venture like next generation geothermal energy, particularly with the potential you've mentioned, would be attractive to venture capitalists, yet you've chosen to pursue philanthropic funding instead. Why?

Jamie Beard: Yeah. Um, well, there don't get me started on this one, Greg. But there's a, there's a lot of unfamiliarity with geothermal and the venture capital community. Early in the days of getting some startups spun out of oil country, um, led by oil and gas veterans who are now leading geothermal startups. I sat in on quite a few pitches. It's not like we didn't try. We tried, so some, some pitches to VC firms in Silicon Valley. And I, you know, I'll say the culture clash between those two, um, parts of the world, so the buttoned up, suited, oil and gas veteran, um, pitching to the hoodie wearing, uh, Silicon Valley venture capitalists, these were probably the most cringe worthy meetings I've ever, you know, I, I'm saying this laughing now, but it, they were really, really uncomfortable. I mean, there's just a, there was a clear mismatch in

Greg Dalton: I'm seeing episodes of the satire documentary Silicon Valley coming into my mind. Yeah.

Jamie Beard: I mean, it's funny thinking back on it, but it's really not funny at all, because what we're getting at there is bias and polarization. Coming from both sides, but what that meant is very few deals. It means almost no deals for venture capital. There are other reasons venture capital has declined to engage so far: very capital intensive projects, the risk profile isn't quite right. I mean, there are some issues and there's a valley of death. Which brings, which brings me to why a non profit then. And that's because there are enormous pools of capital in the world that are philanthropic that are increasingly looking at climate as a way to invest funding and they don't have the adversity to risk as much as venture capital. They don't expect 20 plus percent returns like venture capital and it's very well positioned to take on these big vision problems like, wow, we could solve energy and climate if we could just do these couple of really, really hard, potentially high risk things, right? So, GeoMap, for instance, the global atlas of geothermal resources. This is a community asset and community assets are actually quite hard to fund with a for profit motive. They benefit everybody, but they're expensive. Nobody really wants to pay to do it. And, you know, so there are

Greg Dalton: As someone who gives away a podcast for free, I can relate to that. Yeah, creating public goods that people, yeah, yeah. And so,

Jamie Beard: And that's not really the VC thing, right? It's not the, that's not the flavor.

Greg Dalton: because they don't, yeah, they don't capture the returns of their investment. So speaking of these cultural classes between Silicon Valley, you know, investors and the oil and gas industry, Palo Alto and Houston. Um, another dimension to that. is, is gender. LinkedIn recently released a report on the gender gap in renewable energy. Women are underrepresented in green jobs and skills underrepresented at the conference of parties. I'm curious as a female founder in a male-dominated field of energy, how has that experience been for you?

Jamie Beard: This comes up all the time. Every, in every, almost every conflict or tension that has come up over the past years, there has been some layer of insidious bias there, right? And some of it is not outward, but you know it when you feel it, and you know it when you see it, and it might be disguised as something else, but you know it, right? And so it's very real. The funny thing is, for geothermal, it's a really interesting development. There are many female founders and leaders in geothermal. There are many female CEOs of geothermal startups. And, I would say some of the most bold leaders in the space are women, and you're right that we are attempting to engage with a male-dominated industry. And navigating that is not entirely straightforward. But it's something that is, is, is happening and it's working. It just requires patience and, uh, a focus on the bigger vision, I think.

Greg Dalton: You were involved in a bipartisan legislation passed in Texas, and I want to say that again, bipartisan legislation passed in Texas, to support geothermal energy. That happened in a session that you say was hard on renewables. So what is it about geothermal that it hasn't been dragged into the culture conflicts as wind and solar have?

Jamie Beard: All right, so this, this is the amazing thing about geothermal, and I'm glad you brought that up. So Interspace published a report called The Future of Geothermal in Texas, and it was, you know, a collaboration of, of many research institutions and, and oil and gas entities and scientists to talk about what it would look like if oil and gas engaged at scale in the opportunity of geothermal. And it was written by Texans for Texans, right, which is important when you're thinking about engaging with oil and gas and being bipartisan in the state of Texas. Now, that report served as the foundation for the launch of an alliance, an advocacy group called the Texas Geothermal Energy Alliance, that then went and built a legislative agenda in support of geothermal in the last Texas legislative session. And that entity is supported and funded by all types of entities. I mean, oil and gas, but also utilities, and with the support of environmental groups. That in itself was amazing and interesting. But yes, the outcome in Texas in the first try, so this is the first legislative session after the report was published. And in the first year of existence of this Geothermal Alliance in Texas, we saw all of the efforts that were being pursued by the alliance passed in the state of Texas with bipartisan support in a legislative session where solar and wind were targets, and they they lost legislative support in the state of Texas, geothermal advanced. Why is that? It's because it's everybody feels and sees a way that they can win in supporting geothermal and everybody meaning everybody, right? So climate groups, environmental groups, oil and gas groups, every right and left, dogs and cats, red and blue, whatever you want to call it. People, people see a path.

Greg Dalton: So what policy and regulatory strategies have you seen that work best to incentivize new geothermal development?

Jamie Beard: We need to do a lot on this topic. So, geothermal is very far behind in terms of incentives and regulatory support. And, and this is federally, but also in the states,

Greg Dalton: kind of the poor, the poor stepchild, it seems. Yeah.

Jamie Beard: For sure. Um, completely neglected stepchild of renewables. Um, now that, that, um, is changing slowly, and it's changing faster in the states, so it's why Innerspace is focused on states, and we're in particular focused on states with robust oil and gas industries, like Texas, but also Oklahoma and Pennsylvania. And others, And it's because it's very easy to get traction for incentives and support and supportive regulatory environments in states. On the federal side, there have been decades of efforts to try to come to an agreement about how to support better support incentivize geothermal, and that's a really complicated and slow issue that has not advanced terribly quickly. But we need to be doing all kinds of things in the United States. both on the state and federal level, in terms of, you know, subsidy, yes, but I just mean removing red tape to make sure that we're able to develop projects as quickly as we can develop, say, oil and gas. So this is a, here's a, here's a factoid for you: On federal land, you can develop an oil and gas project at lightning speed compared to geothermal. Geothermal projects can take, you know, 10 or more years to work through the permitting process on federal land, which kills projects.

Greg Dalton: Would you, would you have one in your backyard? Or drill.

Jamie Beard: Sure. Yes, absolutely. I can't, I could not be in my job without being able to say that with certainty. When it comes to the everyday person's engagement with geothermal, it would probably be through a heating and cooling system for your home, with a ground-source heat pump. These are the types of engagements that, like, folks in your neighborhood might have with geothermal. And these are not invasive projects; they're pretty cool once you have them installed. And, you know, wholeheartedly, yes. Would I have a 50 megawatt geothermal power plant on my property operating and connected to the grid, Greg, for sure. If I had the ability to have that, yes. Because geothermal is quiet and small and a huge benefit to community. So if I had the opportunity to do that, you have me on the record saying I would. Any geothermal developers out there who want to plop one down right here in Massachusetts, you can, you can borrow my, you can borrow my place.

Greg Dalton: Jamie Beard, founder of Project Innerspace, thanks for sharing your passion for geothermal.

Jamie Beard: Thanks, Greg.

Greg Dalton: You're listening to a conversation about an often overlooked source of clean energy: Geothermal. Next, geothermal is heating up in Boise, Idaho.

Lauren McLean: We we rely on geothermal heat that's deep, deep, deep into the earth.

Greg Dalton: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

This is Climate One. I’m Greg Dalton.

I used to think that geothermal technology was something that could only be deployed in a couple sites around the world – remote places like Iceland or The Geysers in California. But as we heard from Jamie Beard earlier in the show, geothermal energy is everywhere in the world – if you just go deep enough. The question then is: how do we tap into it? To find out, reporter David Condosbtakes us to a research project in western Utah.

David Condos: There's a new hotspot in the world of geothermal energy, a seemingly sleepy valley in Beaver County, Utah. Its secret: It sits on bedrock that reaches temperatures up to four hundred and sixty five degrees.

Joseph Moore: So if you think about ovens and turkeys, you can cook a turkey in that well if you wanted one.

David Condos: Site manager Joseph Moore points across a dirt parking lot to a well at the Utah Forge Project. It's the University of Utah's subterranean lab. The mission here is to test geothermal technology through trial and error, paving the way for other projects that could someday power your home or office without greenhouse gas emissions.

Joseph Moore: This is the best site in the country. There are hundreds and hundreds of square miles of area that could be made into a reservoir.

David Condos: Geothermal has been around for decades, but it's generally been limited to places that naturally have hot water below the surface. Think a geyser or hot springs. So these researchers are here to answer a big question. Can you pipe cool water through cracks in underground rock? And heated enough to create a geothermal plant almost anywhere? That’s called enhanced geothermal. And American researchers have been trying to make it work for five decades. High up on the site's drill rig, a team of workers screw together pipes taller than a two story house. Giant pieces of metal swing into place suspended from wires. Twist. Lock, then plunge underground.

John McLennan: Pull the slips, and now he'll

David Condos: John McLennan, the project's technical lead, watches it all through a window while monitoring readings on a computer screen.

John McLennan: So we've drilled to just under 11,000 feet in depth.

David Condos: Six years after drilling began, his team recently completed a major milestone. They proved for the first time they can, in fact, pump water from one well through underground cracks to a second well. Now, this type of geothermal system does require quite a bit of water, which may set off alarm bells in the parched West Utah desert. But there are two big reasons why McClennan says it still works. One, it draws from aquifers where the water quality is too low to use for drinking. And two, it's a closed loop system. So the same water keeps recycling through over and over, cooling, heating, and becoming steam that turns turbines. But remember, this is a research lab. So it's more guinea pig than power plant.

John McLennan: What we're doing here, we are not producing electricity, we are developing the technology so that the private sector can adopt this methodology.

David Condos: One of the private companies building on the FORGE project's research is Fervo Energy. It recently hit a milestone of its own, generating power for the first time at its geothermal pilot plant in Nevada. Fervo government affairs and policy manager Ben Serrurier says these recent breakthroughs are proving it’s possible to drill deeper and more efficiently than before.

Ben Serrurier: There is no longer that technology question. We answered that question. Can you reach temperatures to produce electricity, in our case 375 degrees Fahrenheit? Yes. Can you produce flow rates over 60 liters a second that are required to produce electricity? Yes.

David Condos: And Fervo has already broken ground on its next geothermal project, right here in Beaver County. But even as the technology catches up, there are still more hurdles before geothermal power becomes a bigger part of the country’s energy mix. One is easing the regulations around building geothermal projects, says Jeremy Harrell. He's chief strategy officer for ClearPath, a DC-based research and advocacy group focused on clean energy. Harrell says it's often harder to get permits to drill for underground heat than it is to drill for oil or gas. In a climate crisis, he says that's not going to cut it.

Jeremy Harrell: Our regulatory structure in this country was created in the 70s when climate was an urgent problem, right? And so now we need a different structure in place.

David Condos: Geothermal can have some environmental impacts, from habitat loss to an increased risk of earthquakes. But Harrell says geothermal's impacts pale in comparison to those from fossil fuels.

Jeremy Harrell: Everything has trade offs, right? Like, you're not going to have zero environmental impact on building anything. And so we need to look for the forest over the trees, right? Like, climate is a central challenge ahead.

David Condos: The Department of Energy's long-term goal is to multiply domestic geothermal capacity nearly twenty-five fold by 2050. But Harrell says if regulators don't speed up the permitting process, the U.S. will have a hard time tapping into geothermal's potential fast enough to curb global warming. For Climate One, I'm David Condos in Beaver County, Utah.

Ariana Brocious: This story was originally produced by KUER Public Radio. Thanks to David and the team there for sharing it with us.

Now let’s travel from Beaver County Utah, 500 miles north to Boise, Idaho where geothermal heating has been used for quite a long time.

Lauren McLean: I get so excited when I talk about our system because in Boise itself, we have the sixth largest geothermal system in the world and the largest geothermal system in the United States.

Ariana Brocious: That’s Lauren McLean, mayor of Boise.

Lauren McLean: But in addition to ours, the state of Idaho has one, our state capital, it's a gorgeous building is heated with geothermal heat. The Veterans Administration campus. that's near downtown has their own system. We have a neighborhood that has a system that was started by the folks that built the houses there over 100 years ago.

And we rely on geothermal heat that's deep, deep, deep into the earth. It comes up and it heats, it heats our buildings.

Ariana Brocious: So, how do you get heat in your office?

Lauren McLean: My office, like the entire city hall is heated with geothermal heat. on the kind of basement floor of city hall. You've got all the pipes. It looks like a puzzle. With a whole bunch of hot water coming in and that hot water and those pumps heat the city hall building as well as,just under a hundred buildings downtown.

Ariana Brocious: So, what's the potential to expand the amount of geothermal heating within Boise?

Lauren McLean: Yes, we look often at how we can expand this because in our own climate action plans, where we seek to be a carbon neutral municipal government by 2035, and a carbon neutral city by 2050, we're going to rely on that. And so we look for opportunities to expand the system, which we've done. We've expanded our system over the years across the river to Boise State University. They have some buildings now that are heated with geothermal clean heat. And we've expanded it to other districts downtown to do the same. It depends on water rights too. So we're innovating in that we're, we pull the hot water up, it heats a building, we inject it back in slightly cooler and we can pull it up again. And so we've innovated around reuse of the water. And, but we're always looking for additional water rights to be able to give us more opportunities to expand the system even further into the future.

Ariana Brocious: So what do you hear from constituents about their concerns around pollution, carbon pollution, and climate?

Lauren McLean: Boiseans have been loud and clear. in terms of their expectations that we lead when it comes to climate action.

Ariana Brocious: So you're mayor, an environmentally focused mayor in Boise, in the capital of a fairly red state. How do you sort of place yourself within that wider context

Lauren McLean: I often get that question from folks that are, you know, from other places. You know, how does this translate across political boundaries and politics, but in Idaho, it crosses in many ways so easily because we are tied to the land, to open space, to nature in ways that I, that I believe in the West are unique. And so whether you live in Stanley, Idaho or Sandpoint, Idaho or Boise, Idaho, you value clean water. You value access to public lands and open space. You want the same for your kids and grandkids. And you're seeing it change with our days getting hotter and skies getting smokier. And know that action needs to be taken. And so Boiseans, you know, look to me and want, want me and the city council and the folks that they elect to lead.

Ariana Brocious: As we wrap up, based on Boise's experience, what advice do you have for mayors of cities that don't have this geothermal legacy Boise has?

Lauren McLean: All of us as mayors have to look at the tools in the toolbox that we have, um, and figure out how to meet the shared goals that so many cities have now, which is being carbon neutral by 2050 because we must, we know we must, I find it super fascinating to see how mayors and other towns that don't have these systems are looking at how they can tap into geothermal anyway, building by building, using heat pumps to use geothermal in a different way than we do, but to still cool or heat their buildings into the future. And I just encourage all of us to work together to expand the opportunity to take advantage of the natural systems that exist in the country while also working together to do as much research and development for solutions that'll work in cities that don't have the systems as well, because ultimately, while ours is unique, it will help our state and our country meet carbon neutral goals as we continue to rely on it.

Ariana Brocious: Lauren McLean is mayor of Boise. Thank you so much for joining us on Climate One.

Lauren McLean: Thank you.

Greg Dalton: On this Climate One... We’ve been talking about geothermal energy.

Climate One’s empowering conversations connect all aspects of the climate emergency.

Ariana Brocious: Talking about climate can be hard-- AND it’s critical to address the transitions we need to make in all parts of society. Please help us get people talking more about climate by giving us a rating or review. You can do it right now on your device. You can also help by sending a link to this episode to a friend.

Greg Dalton: Brad Marshland is our senior producer; Our managing director is Jenny Park. Ariana Brocious is co-host, editor and producer. Austin Colón is producer and editor. Megan Biscieglia is our production manager. Wency Shaida is our development manager, Ben Testani is our communications manager. Jenny Lawton is Consulting Producer. Our theme music was composed by George Young (and arranged by Matt Willcox). Gloria Duffy and Philip Yun are co-CEOs of The Commonwealth Club World Affairs, the nonprofit and nonpartisan forum where our program originates. I’m Greg Dalton.

1:52 - Jamie Beard on her journey to geothermal energy

4:27 - Jamie Beard on what makes geothermal cool

8:41 - Amanda Kolker on how geothermal energy works

14:08 - Amanda Kolker on geothermal heat pumps

18:38 - Jamie Beard on what made her an environmentalist

27:12 - Jamie Beard on the surface impact of geothermal wells

41:38 - David Condos reports on geothermal energy testing in Utah

47:01 - Lauren McLean on geothermal heating in Boise, Idaho

Play

Busted: The Newest Emission Cheaters

BenTestani — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 23:07:11 +0000

Busted: The Newest Emission Cheaters

02/09/2024

A settlement for the largest civil penalty resulting from the Clean Air Act has just been reached. The EPA, DOJ and the State of California have agreed to a $1.7 billion fine for engine maker Cummins Inc. The fine is the result of Cummins being caught using “defeat devices” to fool the emissions testers and regulators into thinking the engines pollute less than they really do.

The settlement’s announcement was fairly surprising to many in the industry, as Cummins had been seen as a leader in sustainability. In one of their online promotional materials, they say, “We want to do our part to address climate change and any other environmental challenges that threaten our future. Our mission is to leave a positive impact in every community where we operate.”

This sounds like a rerun of the famous Volkswagen Dieselgate story from nearly10 years ago. Like Cummins today, Volkswagen made headlines for using defeat devices to cheat on emissions tests. So what is a defeat device? Rachel Moncrief, Acting Executive Director of the International Council on Clean Transportation, says there are many different kinds of defeat devices. In general, “they're reducing the effectiveness of the emissions control device without getting prior approval from the EPA.”

Car manufacturers have turned to defeat devices for decades. In one early example, a car company designed a system that would trigger a more efficient engine mode when the hood was open. They did this because they knew that the only time the vehicle would be running with the hood up was during testing. Now defeat devices are much more complex.

The California Air Resources Board tests every vehicle before it can be sold in the state. In the case of VW, CARB did their normal testing but found that their results did not match the results of tests that the University of West Virginia had done. The big difference was that much of the university’s testing was done by driving the cars in the real world.

“When they took the cars out on the road. They were getting very different readings,” says California Air Resources Board member Hector De La Torre.

In the end VW were fined $2.8 billion in criminal penalties and around $25 billion overall.

Fallout from theVW scandal can still be felt today. VW had been focused on diesel; now they have a robust EV lineup. Money from the settlement has been used to electrify transportation throughout the US, from building out charging infrastructure to replacing dirty vehicles with clean ones, including electric school buses. One of the biggest outcomes of the settlement was the requirement that VW build out a nationwide charging network, now known as Electrify America. Unfortunately, maintenance on Electrify America’s stations have not kept pace with demand.

“Almost every company has cheated, from Toyota to GM to Honda,” says Margo Oge, Former Director of the Office of Transportation and Air Quality at U.S. EPA. Cheating is an industry wide problem that will challenge regulators as long as they are emissions to test. So as CARB’s Hector De La Torre says, “The variety of cheating scandals on internal combustion engines, whether they are gasoline or diesel shows that we have to get away from combustion period.”

Guests

Rachel Muncrief

Acting Executive Director, ICCT

Hector De La Torre

Member, California Air Resources Board

Margo T. Oge

Former Director, Office of Transportation and Air Quality, U.S. EPA

Alberto Ayala, PhD, MSE

Executive Director, Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District

Volkswagen's huge diesel emissions scandal: the full story (theverge.com)

Cummins to pay record-setting $1.675 billion US environmental fine (reuters.com)

ICCT Guide to Vehicle Nox Emissions: The Basics (theicct.org)

California Air Resources Board Explainer: VW Diesel (ww2.arb.ca.gov)

Note: Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. Please check the actual audio before quoting it.

Greg Dalton: I’m Greg Dalton.

Ariana Brocious: I’m Ariana Brocious

Greg Dalton: And this is Climate One.

I'm in California, which is still drying out from some record rainfall and big storms recently. Some places in Los Angeles received 10 inches of rain in two days. That's a month's worth of rain.

Ariana Brocious: And all that rain means a lot of flooding, it means downed trees, it means power outages, it has some real severe consequences. And, you know, the same day I was reading about the California floods, I was also struck by news about Chile's wildfires. These huge wildfires that have been ripping through Chile's coastal region, which are also really devastating. And this is climate change. This is the stuff we're seeing with increasing frequency happening around the world.

Greg Dalton: Scientists tell us they know, they have measured from space that for one degree of warming since industrial times, there's 7 percent more moisture in the atmosphere. We remember from high school science, warm air holds more moisture, that means more severe storms and rainfall.

Ariana Brocious: And we know why this is happening. It's because of emissions. Emissions that we as humans are creating, a lot of which are coming from our tailpipes of our gas fueled cars.

Greg Dalton: That's right. Vehicles are the biggest source of emissions in the United States, and they're growing where other emissions are declining. One story that caught my eye that didn't get a lot of attention recently is that the engine manufacturer Cummins has been caught cheating on their emissions tests.

Ariana Brocious: So you may have not heard of this company Cummins, but that doesn't mean you haven't encountered their products because they make engines for hundreds of thousands of trucks and buses. And most notably for today's episode, the Dodge Ram, which is a truck you've probably heard of.

Greg Dalton: Every vehicle sold in the U.S. must get tested for how much pollution comes out of the tailpipe before the vehicle can go on the market. So passing these tests is critical. And it was discovered that Cummins installed so called defeat devices to fool the lab tests into thinking that the engine's emissions are much lower than they really are.

Ariana Brocious: It's pretty extraordinary that they can build technology that is that smart, that it can outsmart the emissions detection, but it can't actually solve the problem. Um, and you know, this really reminds me of what we heard about with VW Volkswagen, not so many years ago. So Cummins and state and federal regulators have reached a settlement of around 1.7 billion for using these defeat devices. And that's a pretty big fine.

Greg Dalton: It is the largest find ever under the Clean Air Act. And the other thing that was really surprising was this:

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We want to do our part to address climate change and any other environmental challenges that threaten our future. Our mission is to leave a positive impact in every community where we operate.

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Greg Dalton: Cummins had been known in the industry as a leader on emissions reduction, and even used that as a big talking point in their promo material.

And a couple of years ago at a transportation conference, I was on stage CEO Jennifer Rumsey on stage.

Ariana Brocious: And I’m sure that’s not the only time an executive has been slippery…but it’s particularly disappointing in this case. AND, let’s point out Cummins wasn’t the only company in the news.

Greg Dalton: BMW is facing a new government investigation in Germany into another possible emissions scandal. GM, Ford, Daimler, Subaru, Nissan have all faced litigation or investigations into their emissions. Cheating - especially on diesel engines - seems to be so common in the industry.

In the wake of the news about Cummins, I reached out to the Alliance for Automotive Innovation for comment. No response.

Ariana Brocious: You also talked with Rachel Muncreif [Mun-creef], Acting Executive Director of the International Council on Clean Transportation about the news of the Cummins settlement.

Rachel Muncrief: I was surprised. I was definitely surprised about the fact that they were using defeat devices. I guess we were not as much surprised about the fact that there was elevated emissions on, on a bunch of RAM trucks because actually my organization had analyzed emissions, and we had actually found elevated emissions on some RAM models back then. At that time, Cummins and the EPA had announced that they had discovered, um, some emissions deterioration issues, that they were recalling some vehicles around. So we sort of thought. That was the main reason. So we were surprised to hear that there was also defeat devices,

Greg Dalton: Can I just ask, what is, uh, emissions deterioration? I'm not sure, does that mean it gets worse as the car is driven more miles?

Rachel Muncrief: Yeah, so there's, there's basically like almost a mini power plant on the back of some of these diesel vehicles to control the emissions. It's a fairly sophisticated system and like a key part of that system is a catalyst. just like all of the cars out there have a catalytic converter, and, If not made properly, they can sort of deteriorate faster, than they should and so that sometimes happens and then typically, um, the manufacturer will work with the EPA, to recall those vehicles and fix them.

Greg Dalton: So it sounds like kind of a filter on the tailpipe that gets clogged and doesn't work as well over time. So Cummins installed defeat devices in RAM and other trucks. How do they work? What do they do?

Rachel Muncrief: Well, there's many different kinds of defeat devices. In general, what it is, is they're purposely reducing the effectiveness of the emissions control device without getting prior approval from the EPA. And that can happen. in many different ways, because there's a lot of sort of sensors and controls and everything again around these pretty sophisticated emissions control devices but we don't know exactly what it was in this particular case. That hasn't been released publicly.

Greg Dalton: Right, so, cars and trucks these days are, you know, mobile entertainment platforms and they're highly sophisticated. Is it possible that defeat devices were there unintentionally?

Rachel Muncrief: I would say no. Typically what happens is these emission control devices are calibrated by the engineers, you know, working on these systems and they know them quite well how they're going to behave. I would think it would be unlikely that they could sort of accidentally install a defeat device.

Greg Dalton: Okay, so it's not possible that someone like, oh, turned a screwdriver or changed some code and it slipped in there. The settlement has forced a recall as those Cummins engines are almost in a million vehicles. Many of them are Ram trucks. What's been the fallout for Cummins so far?

Rachel Muncrief: Yeah. It's still early days, I think, so it's really difficult to say. I'll tie it back, I think we're all familiar with the VW scandal. When that happened, we weren't kind of sure what was going to happen with VW. I would say to VW's credit, they really did sort of turn around the culture of the company from everything we've seen. They did huge investments in battery electric vehicles. They have very public targets now for EV sales goals for all of their brands pretty much globally. So I'm, you know, curious if something similar will happen at Cummins, if there's anything that they will do to sort of get more aggressive around really moving towards fully zero emission vehicles.

Greg Dalton: Right. And Cummins and VW aren't the only ones to receive hefty fines and get caught cheating. How common would you say this type of cheating is in the auto and truck sector?

Rachel Muncrief: Cheating versus finding loopholes in the regulations are something that I would like to mention. So what we've seen is that it is very, very common. In fact, in many, many tests that we do, the emissions from vehicles, and I'm not just talking about sort of like diesel NOx emissions, which is this particular case, but even the CO2 emissions of vehicles can be much, much higher in real world driving than it would be in the lab or what you would think it should be based on sort of the official targets that have been set, and that is something that's very, very prevalent, whether those are all cheating or whether those are just exploiting loopholes is a lot of times difficult to say from, from where we sit. I will sort of just give a little plug that that's one of the major benefits that we see with battery electric vehicles because they don't have a tailpipe, so we don't have to worry about this problem.

Greg Dalton: Sure. Yeah, it's hard to get intent. and also shows how laboratory conditions don't reflect real world driving, right? In fact, That's how West Virginia caught VW because they actually put their cars on the road and drove them around with human beings and realized, wait, this is different than the lab. Something's going on here.

Rachel Muncrief: Yeah. And, and hey, we contracted West Virginia to do that work. So just to give a little plug for that.

Greg Dalton: Thank you. Yeah. Your, your group was, your group was part of that revelation.

Rachel Muncrief: Yeah, yeah. That cheating by VW in that particular case was very, very egregious because the, the emissions were, were like an order of magnitude higher than they should be. But a lot of times we might. be seeing things that are just only double something like that, I do think it's very prevalent, and I do think, you know, we should actually consider ourselves fairly lucky in the United States, we have a environmental protection agency, we have a department of justice who has the authority, and I guess in this case, you know, the political will to really pursue these kind of cases. In many or maybe even most markets that we work in across the world, that's just not the case.

Greg Dalton: Right. And also outside groups such as ICCT checking the regulators, et cetera. There's different layers of, um, kind of observation and verification. How do you think this will change how Cummins operates? You said it's early days. Do we know, and there's some, I guess there's some litigation going on with the Department of Justice. What do you think this is going to mean for Cummins and, and for trucks?

Rachel Muncrief: Yeah. I would like to say that the way that we're seeing the world going is that I think we're all seeing in the light duty car sector that EVs are really coming now. We already have regulation in Europe that's going to go to 100 percent EV sales by 2035. We have a regulation that's about to be finalized ideally in the U. S. here on a similar trajectory. Heavy duty vehicles are a little behind, but the really good news is that I think we're finally at the stage where we can confidently say we have the technology, um, and it's going to be cost effective from a total cost of ownership perspective to actually be able to move away from needing to have an internal combustion engines in the trucking sector. And I think most trucks. that are on the road today can be replaced by, by battery electric trucks. a lot of the manufacturers are sort of already getting on board with that. They're doing massive investments. They're making commitments. The infrastructure is slow, but it is coming. and so, you know, I just hope that Cummins will be sort of getting on board with that as well.

Greg Dalton: And meanwhile, there's still this calculus. And, we've heard that GM, Ford, uh, we know about VW now Cummins. What is it about the incentive to cheat that makes these companies risk billion dollar fines and settlements and VW stock got it took a huge hit. You know, the CEO of Audi got a suspended jail sentence for one year and paid a million dollar fine personally. What's the payoff for cheating?

Rachel Muncrief: Yeah. I would say specifically in the VW case, it's very interesting. I think that was a very sort of built in culture. at the time VW, they weren't like a massive player, obviously in the U. S. market at the time, but they were selling a lot of diesel vehicles in Europe and in Europe, they basically were not doing very much enforcement. And we had known this for years. I mean, there was a lot of very high emissions coming from diesel cars in Europe, where diesel cars were much more prevalent. And. The manufacturers were really not held accountable. Um, so I think, you know, what probably happened is VW came to the U. S. and was like, Hmm, we can just kind of do a similar thing here and maybe we'll get a slap on the wrist. I think they were very, very surprised at the level of penalties that they got, both civil and criminal.

Greg Dalton: What was learned from the years after Dieselgate that could make the Cummins settlement more effective at preventing this happening again or more effectively using the money that comes out of it?

Rachel Muncrief: Yeah. Because the Volkswagen settlement, obviously the, the, for the, the civil case, the Cummins settlement slightly larger than the Volkswagen settlement, but they, Volkswagen also had much larger criminal findings. So they hadn't, there was another like 20 billion, basically, and so the actual like money that went back into trying to undo some of those harms from that excess pollution that had been happening, was higher in the Volkswagen case than it will be in the, in the Cummins case, but that being said, I mean, I do think, you know, the fact that we had the VW settlement going to states to help them sort of get ready to install, you know, electric vehicle charging and all this stuff. I mean, it did help us to get prepared for where we are today, where the EVs are kind of getting more mainstream and coming out. I think it did set us up for, for a good situation now.

Greg Dalton: What is the most important outcome of dieselgate?

Rachel Muncrief: Yeah. So, I mean, to me, Dieselgate really, really changed the game, um, not just in the work that ICCT does, but just, um, overall in especially to speed up this transition that we know is going to have to come anyway if we have any hope of,staying anywhere close to the Paris, uh, climate targets, we need to transition to battery electric cars. And I think in the end, if you look back, Dieselgate actually did a lot to help accelerate that transition.

Greg Dalton: Sure. Tens of billions of dollars in capital was moved by VW. And that to me, pressure GM and other companies Rachel Moncrieff, thank you so much for sharing your insights on climate one.

Rachel Muncrief: Thank you.

Greg Dalton: We know that companies try to cheat the system for a reason: there are financial incentives to fool these tests.

Ariana Brocious: Right, cheating allows them to basically cut corners and save money on every car or truck produced.

Greg Dalton: (react) And in VW’s case, they wanted to build market share in America but their diesel engine couldn’t meet our emissions standards, so they used defeat devices to cheat the emissions test. After a few years of selling the cars, they actually did crack the technology to make their diesel engines meet the standards – but they decided it would still be cheaper to keep using the defeat device.

Ariana Brocious: (react) I had one of these diesel VWs, they were great cars, and it seemed like such a great combo– super long range and low emissions.

Greg Dalton: But regulators had a hunch that something was up, and over the course of years, their investigation got sharper and sharper.

Greg Dalton: Coming up, how did VW get caught?

Alberto Ayala: We really put them in a corner. It really was a point where they just had no other place to turn than to admit that it was a defeat device.

Greg Dalton: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

This is Climate One. I’m Greg Dalton.

Ariana Brocious: And I’m Ariana Brocious. Recently, the engine manufacturer Cummins got caught cheating on their emissions tests. They were making engines that you find in trucks like the Dodge Ram – and those engines were fitted with a device that allowed them to pass emissions tests, when they should have failed them. If that sounds familiar… 10 years ago, the same thing happened with VW and their diesel cars.

Greg Dalton: Ah yes, Dieselgate. And uncovering that deceitful practice was a huge feat in and of itself. It took a whole army of engineers working in different organizations to crack the case.

If you want to understand how they did it, you’ve gotta start with an organization called the California Air Resources Board.

Hector De La Torre: the California Air Resources Board touches anything that emits, um, so that's pretty much everything in our economy, right? It's vehicles, it's factories, it's, uh, farms, it's trees, uh, everything that emits, we regulate, um, and interestingly, a lot of people don't know the California Air Resources Board was created by Ronald Reagan in the late sixties, uh, and the California Air Resources Board predates, uh, the United States Environmental Protection Agency. It predates the United States Clean Air Act. So California was a leader, uh, even back then, and it was bipartisan.

Greg Dalton: That’s Hector De La Torre, a member of the California Air Resources Board.

we are a board, with about 1,600 staff statewide, mostly technical staff, a lot of engineers, a lot of scientists, um, that are doing the analysis that leads to the regulations

Greg Dalton: He says it actually took years for regulators to figure out that VW was cheating. At the time, regulators really didn’t know much about diesel technology.

Alberto Ayala: Diesels had never been very popular in California or in the U.S. for that matter

Greg Dalton: Alberto Ayala worked at the California Air Board and led the investigation.

Alberto Ayala: and as we began to promote and expect, uh, the, uh, fraction of, uh, diesel cars in the fleet to grow, we quickly realized that we didn't really understand the technology. We had not tested it. We had not researched it to the level that We had other technologies like gasoline cars, for example, and that was really the beginning of our interest in, um, as I often say, just kick the tires, just trying to get our feet wet, trying to understand the technology. Just by the mere fact that we started testing, uh, as many different types of cars as we could get our hands on, um, it was, that's when it became clear to us that some cars were not performing the way that we expected them.

Greg: And that’s when the authorities came in… but not the ones you’d expect. Hector De La Torre remembers that moment well.

Hector De La Torre: It's actually a really great story. the European Union wanted to affirm that, um, clean diesel was a thing.And because, you know, they have a lot of manufacturers over in Europe that were making diesel vehicles and claiming that they were very, very clean. And these vehicles had passed all of the CARB tests, the normal ones, for every vehicle that's sold in California, it has to be tested by CARB. So, what happened was they hired the University of West Virginia, uh, to affirm that, that these cars were fantastic and clean. But then they got some odd test results that were not matching the test results that CARB had done when the vehicles had been built in the first place. And the California Air Resources Board had analyzed the vehicles like it analyzes every vehicle that is sold in California, regardless of what the federal government does. California has its own stricter Uh, rules and regulations.. And part of it is because we have some areas, namely in the Central Valley and the Los Angeles Basin that are more polluted than the rest of the state or, in fact, more polluted than the Clean Air Act allows. So California has its own authorities. We have to check in with the feds, but we have our own authority. So for that, we do our own testing of all vehicles and the two didn't match. the testing that was done by CARB when the vehicles were. First sold and throughout their tenure, uh, and the test results that University of West Virginia was getting. So they asked us to double check what they had done because they thought they had done something wrong. And what we found out was that the University of West Virginia had done much more on road testing than is normally the case. Normally you do it in a lab. You put the vehicle on a dyno.

Greg Dalton: Kind of like a treadmill kind of thing, yeah, mm hmm, mm hmm.

Hector De La Torre: So, uh, so most, most of the time, that's how cars are tested. And there's this, there's a cadence to it, right there. You speed up, you slow down. And so the testing is all kind of very rote. But when they took the cars out on the road. Um, they were getting very different readings and so they, again, they thought they had done something wrong. Um, uh, you cannot control, uh, the patterns on the road, right? You're going to hit a light, you're going to speed up, you're going to slow down, uh, at different cadences

Greg Dalton: and there's a lot of driver variability too, people's got a, you know, people have a heavy foot or they, yeah, so there's human variability and all that sort of thing, which is why I guess I understand to get consistent results you do it in a lab. That allows companies to cheat.

Hector De La Torre: And that's exactly what they did. They put in what is known as a defeat device. It is a computer in the vehicle that can tell when there is a pattern to the driving that is happening, and if there's a pattern, then it assumes it's being tested and it downshifts everything to reduce emissions,which if it's random, the computer would turn off and the defeat device would not engage, and it would just do its normal thing. So that is that was the key to this case was, uh, taking the car out, and they normally are driven out, but for very, very brief periods compared to the lab. And so in this case, they took it out and drove it more out In the wild, so to speak, and found the same things that West Virginia was, the University of West Virginia was finding, and then we knew there was something wrong.

Greg Dalton: And when the dust finally settled, VW was fined $2.8 billion. How was that money spent?

Hector De La Torre: Well, the feds got, um, a good chunk of it, and we got a good chunk of it, again, because California has separate rules, and they broke our laws, too, not just the federal ones, and that's why we were entitled to part of this. Um, the part that was spent in California was put into a multi year commitment to mitigate the pollution that they had done with these diesel vehicles. And so over the last few years, in fact, just last week, we did the last vote on the last tranche of 800 million, uh, from that settlement that went back into the communities, back into, uh, the transition to zero emissions. So we have done things like supported a zero emission car share. with that money from Volkswagen. We have supported building new charging infrastructure in the state of California. We have supported promoting EVs in the state of California. Uh, and then we've done some other things that were direct emissions reductions. Purchasing clean vehicles to replace dirtier vehicles so that we would reduce the emissions. All in all, it cost Volkswagen over 20 billion dollars when you take into account the vehicles having to be taken off the road, um, Uh, recalls that they had to do, et cetera, et cetera, over 20 billion. It costs them for cheating our systems. And interestingly, I mean, we started with Volkswagen, but we've been doing this for a while. Uh, the, one of the earlier cases was in 1997, when General Motors, uh, did something, uh, similar. They had software on, uh, their vehicles that was not taking all of the data that was being produced by the vehicle as it was running. And so it was giving a false impression of the emissions that were being produced by that vehicle. So it goes back 1997 and beyond that, um, car companies tried to cheat, uh, California's laws and they were caught

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Greg: Even after regulators knew VW was cheating, Alberto Ayala says it took years to break the news to the public.

Alberto: The agencies did not announce the violation until 2015. And the reason for that is because we spent all that time doing a lot of testing, going back and forth with the company. It wasn't a trivial issue. But at one point in time in, in late 2014, The company, for other reasons, had already planned a recall, and before they can do that, they have to get approval from the agencies, and they sold it to us as an opportunity to fix the more recent problem, and that makes sense to us. We figured, uh, let's be efficient about it. They're going to be bringing the cars to fix this completely unrelated problem that will present the opportunity, and it made sense to us at the time, and that's why we approved it.

Greg: So they’d confirmed the cheating. The next step was to take that evidence back to VW.

Alberto: After years of work with the company going back and forth, we really put him in a corner where they had no other answer, which was a lie. Now we know other than just to admit that it was a defeat device. It really was a point where they just had no other, place to turn than to admit the cheating.

Greg: One important thing to remember is: VW wasn’t the only company trying to cheat. Here’s Margo Oge, has been a top pollution regulator for the EPA.

Margo Oge: Almost every company has cheated from Toyota to GM to Honda. What was different here is the level of cheating. I mean, 40 percent above the standards. And the fact is, Alberto said they kept on lying. Let me give you an example. In 2009, under the president Clinton, we caught all diesel track manufacturers cheating for a decade. They were improving fuel efficiency, and they were cheating. It took us 10 years to figure out. Nitrous oxide. Nitrous oxide. The first company that we caught, because we tested the engine, Cummins engine in our lab, I brought them into the office, and they said, Well, you know what, you know, uh, we really could not read the regulations. They're maybe vague. One company after the other, all seven of them came in. Within six months, the Department of Justice had to deal with them. They polluted 1 million metric tons of NOx. By the way, we never recover more than 10 percent of that. The total penalty for these companies, all seven of them, 1 billion dollars. Why? Because they admitted early on. They didn't keep on saying, you know, we're not cheating. We haven't done anything, you know, keep on lying. So every company for the most part cheats. And in the U. S., the good news is that we do have strong, you know, federal programs and California is very strong. So between California and EPA, we enforce those laws. In Europe, they have never had an enforcement case against the car company until the dieselgate broke.

Greg: So this is how VW was able to get away with their scheme in the US. But how about Europe?

Margo Oge: So basically what happened, Mercedes, for example, I'm not picking on Mercedes, could be any of these companies, goes to Portugal, and they ask a private company to certify their car. And they pay them. They don't pay EPA, they don't pay California in the U. S. So the company in Portugal, gives them a certificate. Then Mercedes takes it and can introduce their cars in any country in Europe. No penalties, no enforcement, until now, after the disalgate, that things have changed.

Greg: After years of investing heavily in diesel, VW changed their tune.

Margo Oge: They had a religion when it comes to diesel. Diesel was everything for them. So starting 2015, 2015. VW has made huge commitments to electrification of the 90 billion the industry totally is going to spend on electrification, 40 billion comes from VW. So Tesla was there showing the way, but Tesla is not the only way. You have a company like VW, which still is the number one company. 600,000 employees that is committed to this point. I cannot speak for them what's going to happen next year or the year after, but right now I can tell you with a lot of certainty that they are serious about electrification and they're making the investments. So, looking at the economics of electrification, that soon, in the next five years, electric cars will be as cost effective as diesel cars on the internal combustion engine. The fact that in Europe, in Germany, um, Stuttgart, the house of Mercedes, Munich, where BMW is, the highest court in Germany said that these cities can ban diesel. You can imagine the chill factor that is going down the spine of all these companies. So setting Tesla aside, dieselgate has a huge impact beyond what happened in the U.S., in Europe and other countries, to get citizen states realizing that the air pollution that they're facing comes from diesel cars, London, Paris, they're talking about banning diesel, even India, even California. But actually what is happening in Germany, where these most powerful companies are, to ban diesel cars, I think, is a big, big win for electrification.

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Greg: So the regulators and the car company had wrestled it out. But over the span of years, hundreds of thousands of the cars they had been arguing about were on the road, being driven by actual people – who had places to go and needed those vehicles to get there. How did this news hit them?

Phillip Forbes: I own a 2013 Volkswagen Passat TDI 6 speed manual.

Greg: That’s Phillip Forbes, a VW owner in Hollister, California.

Phillip Forbes: I got a job that I knew was going to involve a lot of driving, about 50, 000 miles a year. And the day after I started, I went and bought this car. Mainly, it was just purely financial. I wanted to save money. My environmental concern was more the, uh, non renewable resource of fossil fuels. You know, in my mind, this was a vehicle that would consume less of that resource, and so that was a good thing. My car is one of, I believe the number is 12,000 or fewer out of the almost 500,000 in total, there will never be a fix available for my model. Honestly, this hasn't really impacted my views on Volkswagen. I know they're far from the first company who's done this. Obviously, it's wrong, but uh, I'm gonna keep driving the car. You know, I'm driving 50,000 miles a year. I've driven this car over a thousand miles between fuel stops before. That's insane. I mean, if I had 11,000, but not this car today, I have no idea what I would replace it with. So, uh, you know, I'll keep driving it.

Edward Niedermeyer: There's a saying it's actually I really like the saying, which is your mileage may vary. Right?

Greg: That’s Edward Niedermeyer, author and auto industry analyst.

And, and this is something I think everybody who's ever owned a car knows, right? You get the window sticker, uh, which comes out of the testing that the regulators do. Um, and that's sort of a, a, a baseline that you kind of hope to achieve. And some cars are better at, at hitting that, and some are not. And, and actually a lot of it has to do with how you drive the car. You know, how aggressively you accelerate. And certainly at a, in this country we don't really think or talk or, or teach people about how to drive more efficiently. It's not really part of our, our discourse around cars, right? Um, and so the Challenges with catching cheating really comes down to this issue, right? Um, the, the regulatory system is set up to be an even playing field. That's why we test in labs. We can control the variables, right? Um, and as a result, once you get them out, cars out into the real world, there's going to be variation from that because the conditions vary. A headwind, a tailwind, things like that. Um, and so, um, I think people are, are very used to sort of seeing some variants. And I think the car companies, that's one of the reasons it's so hard to catch this kind of cheating, is because people just expect these variations to exist. And rightly so, because, you know, the real world is, is very, you know, chaotic and, and, and variable. Um, and also, um, you know, consumers are, are quite conservative. They get used to certain things, and they want to keep doing them that way. Uh, things like You know, time between gas stations, uh, you know, stops for fuel. That's actually really important, and it's actually a really big challenge when you start to think about the new technologies that are coming down the road that will hopefully replace, um, some of these, these more polluting ones. You know, new technology is, is hard to develop, but I think when you compare that to changing people's behavior, uh, it's actually easier.

Ariana Brocious: You’re listening to a Climate One conversation about emissions cheaters. If you missed a previous episode, or want to hear more of Climate One’s empowering conversations, subscribe to our podcast wherever you get your pods.

Please help us get people talking more about climate by giving us a rating or review. You can do it right now on your device

Coming up, what is the best way to handle an industry that won’t stop breaking the rules?

Hector De La Torre: These cheating scandals just lead us back to needing to get to zero emissions.

Ariana Brocious: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

Greg Dalton: This is Climate One. I’m Greg Dalton

It’s been 10 years since the VW emissions scandal known as “dieselgate.” With the recent news about the company Cummins doing much the same thing, you might wonder: did the action taken after the VW scandal have any impact? Let's hear the rest of my conversation with Hector De La Torre – he’s a member of the California Air Resources Board, which helped uncover the Cummins cheating.

Hector De La Torre: Well, we have had multiple defeat devices. That's been the new leap forward. And I think, you know, talking about Volkswagen, um, we put everyone on notice after Volkswagen that we were going to revisit every single vehicle in production and being sold in California, and so we went out and retested with this new knowledge about defeat devices, because again, that was like that was new to us, um, having software that doesn't include certain things like GM in the late nineties, or Uh, Ford, uh, in 2014, right before Volkswagen, uh, they had, uh, some, uh, limitations on their emissions control systems, same, same kind of thing as what, uh, GM had done, uh, but, but the idea that you would have a defeat device that is specifically there, uh, to, uh, cheat our testing and, and make it seem cleaner than it is. That was a new, uh, dynamic. And so we had, um, Volkswagen. Then we had Fiat Chrysler. Uh, we found that they were, uh, cheating with their Jeep grand Cherokee and Dodge Ram 1500s. Uh, that was one that came right after Volkswagen, um, and a Navistar another. Uh, diesel, uh, truck manufacturer, they cheated by submitting one thing and producing something completely different.

Greg Dalton: in the case of Audi, which was owned by VW, Rupert Stadler received a suspended jail sentence of one year and nine months for fraud in the diesel gate scandal. Also find about a million dollars. Does the California air board have power to put executives on the line? It's one thing to a billion here, a billion there. It's kind of the cost of doing business, right? Can the, does the California have the power to go after the executives themselves?

Hector De La Torre: We have not done that. And I do not think that we have that authority. Um, maybe the Attorney General does, uh, through through his authorities, but CARB itself does not.

Hector De La Torre: Yeah, but it's not just Electrify America. It's not just VW. We have found that most of the charging infrastructure is substandard. And that is why, again, we at The California Resources Board need to be more focused on the consumer protection, that it's reliable that it's available throughout the state underserved communities have their share obviously near the highways for folks who are on road trips, et cetera that these are all available and working for the general public,

Greg Dalton: Air Board that we're talking about, the California Air Resources Board has brought in, as we said, billions of dollars by catching car companies cheating. Some would say that you're interested in busting companies because you fund your own coffers. Is the Air Board becoming too dependent on these big fines to fund the agency?

Hector De La Torre: not at all. The money does go right back out in the form of programs. I mentioned some of them for Electrify America. We also, we also enforce our regular emissions regulations. For example, we have had situations where trucking firms were not complying with our, just our regular diesel emission regulations.

And in those sense, in those situations, we will find them and then the money goes right back out. In the form of mitigation for the pollution. So I have been at many a ribbon cutting at schools that are right alongside some freeways like the 7 10 where they put in filters in classrooms to protect the students from that diesel that is right next door.

And there are many. Programs like that we run that are based on the fine monies that we received. So it is not a, it is not a situation where we're getting the money for the agency to pay for staff or things like that. No that funding is built into our budgets every year funded by the legislature

Greg Dalton: What do you think is the real end game that should be done on light and heavy duty trucks regarding local pollution and climate change.

Hector De La Torre: Well, I think, you know, the variety of cheating scandals on internal combustion engines, whether they are gasoline or diesel shows that we have to get away from, uh, uh, combustion period. And so we have the advanced clean cars rule for passenger vehicles. We have the advanced clean trucks and advanced clean fleets rule, which is a supply and demand regulation for medium and heavy duty trucks going forward. By 2035 there will not be for sale a new internal combustion engine passenger vehicle. And there will not be new, uh, internal combustion, medium and heavy duty trucks sold in the state of California. They will all have to be zero emission. That doesn't mean we're taking away people's cars. It just means you will not be able to go buy a brand new internal combustion engine. And again, these cheating scandals just lead us back to needing to get to zero emissions on all of our transportation, and we are absolutely doing that with these regulations that have a glide path over time so that by the time we get to 2035 there will be significant numbers of zero emission vehicles on the road. In fact, California, last year, around 25% of new car sales in California were zero emission. Uh, that and that, that's way above our targets. So that is the market speaking. Those are consumers that are deciding they want these vehicles because of high gas prices, because the lifetime cost of a zero emission vehicle is less than an internal combustion engine. There's a lot less moving parts that can break. Uh, and, and the fuel is cheaper, um, as well than gasoline. And then on the diesel side, we already today, are two years ahead of our targets on medium and heavy duty trucks that are available today. Um, that are being used today. So we're very proud of that. And we're going to keep pushing on medium and heavy duty, uh, trucks to be transitioned to zero emission as well, specifically because of the diesel issue.

Greg Dalton: The road to zero all across our economy. Hector De La Torre is a member of the California Air Resources Board. Hector, thanks for coming on Climate One.

Hector De La Torre: Always a pleasure to see you, Greg. And, uh, thank you. Um, you know, we, we just, uh, we are here. To protect the public and, uh, the way, the way we do that is by cleaning up pollution that gets into our lungs and harms us, uh, in multiple ways. So we are, uh, absolutely honored to be representing the state of California that is a leader in the United States and in the world.

[music change]

Greg Dalton: There are still a lot of questions we can’t answer about the Cummins settlement, since other than the use of defeat devices and the settlement amount, not much has been made public.

Ariana Brocious: Right. And sadly it sounds like that kind of cheating is a pretty common occurrence in the transportation industry.

Greg Dalton: And it’s been like this for decades. I talked with an insider who told a story about an early attempt to cheat the emissions test. When the hood on the car was open, a device triggered the engine to run more efficiently because they knew the only time it would be running while the hood was open was in a lab…for testing. And as the cars get more sophisticated, so does the cheating.

Ariana Brocious: Now it’s complicated computer programming to try and achieve the same thing.

Greg Dalton: So the fines obviously make headlines, and there are some genuinely good things that come from these settlements. More EV charging, more access..

Ariana Brocious: And here’s one that many people may not know about: electric school buses. A school in Montana applied for money from the state to buy electric school buses. And that money came from…you guessed it, the VW settlement.

Greg Dalton: I read that story too, and they seem to really love their electric buses.

Ariana Brocious: And the buses they are replacing are diesel, so it comes full circle.

Greg Dalton: Another headline grabbing result of the VW settlement was the EV charging network called Electrify America. It was supposed to provide more charging infrastructure to help pave the way for more EVs.

Ariana Brocious: Well, why don’t we ask our in house EV correspondent more about that, producer Austin Colón

Austin Colón: Hey Ariana and Greg, thanks for having me on. As you both know, I’m a bit of a road trip lover. In just the past year, I’ve put about 30,000 miles on my EV traveling around the US.

Greg Dalton: So what is the state of Electrify America?

Austin Colón: Well, in my experience it’s not great. I don’t think I’ve ever stopped at an EA station where every stall works. And it’s not just me, it was rated the worst charging network in a J.D Power study.

Ariana Brocious: I imagine in a time when we need to be moving quickly to decarbonize, that could be a significant speed bump.

Austin Colón: Yes. It’s a real bummer. I want people’s early experience driving EVs to be as positive as mine. But they’re often not. YET. Just about every major EV manufacturer in the US has decided to switch to Tesla’s charging standard. And a bog part of their decision is because of their frustration with Electrify America’s network. And that’s going to slow down EV adoption because people don’t want to buy a car with an outdated charging standard. And right now, outside of Tesla, that’s what they’re being offered.

Greg Dalton: Meanwhile, the Biden administration is looking to put money into building more charging infrastructure.

Austin Colón: Right, and the administration has included standards and benchmarks that the chargers must hit to be funded, so hopefully that can help with some of the frustration EV drivers have been feeling. But I can’t help but feel like we would be much farther along had regulators created strict operating standards for the charging network from the beginning.

Ariana Brocious: Thanks for that Austin.

Austin Colón: Anytime.

Greg Dalton: It’s pretty amazing that we can still see the aftermath of the VW cheating settlement affecting our lives today. Both good and bad.

Ariana Brocious: Though I wish these companies getting caught would be more of a deterrent.

Greg Dalton: Right it still feels like these are parking tickets and the cost of doing business. And the best way to stop this kind of cheating is to stop burning fossil fuels.

Climate One’s empowering conversations connect all aspects of the climate emergency. To hear more, subscribe wherever you get your pods. Talking about climate can be hard-- AND it’s critical to address the transitions we need to make in all parts of society. Please help us get people talking more about climate by giving us a rating or review. You can do it right now on your device. You can also help by sending a link to this episode to a friend.

Greg Dalton: Brad Marshland is our senior producer; Our managing director is Jenny Park. Ariana Brocious is co-host, editor and producer. Austin Colón is producer and editor. Megan Biscieglia is our production manager. Wency Shaida is our development manager, Ben Testani is our communications manager. Jenny Lawton is consulting producer. Our theme music was composed by George Young. Gloria Duffy and Philip Yun are co-CEOs of The Commonwealth Club World Affairs, the nonprofit and nonpartisan forum where our program originates. I’m Greg Dalton.

Play

Indigenous Perspectives: What Makes a Just Transition?

BenTestani — Thu, 25 Jan 2024 23:05:21 +0000

Indigenous Perspectives: What Makes a Just Transition?

01/26/2024

We often talk about a “just transition” from dirty to clean energy as if the term means the same thing to everyone. Indigenous people have seen their resources extracted and exploited to further the wealth of others for centuries.

Indigenous people are not a monolith — there are so many different tribes and experiences. Many of those experiences have been shaped by a long history with colonization: white outsiders, and later the U.S. government, systematically killed, abused, and betrayed Native people over the course of centuries. Tribes were forced from their historic homelands to reservations, which were often on very undesirable land.

The young U.S. government signed treaties with tribes, acknowledged them as sovereign nations, and then routinely ignored those agreements in service of its purposes. And in the years since, major corporations have extracted resources from Native land — leaving behind poisoned water and soil. Steven Wadsworth, Vice Chairman of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, says, “We've seen what kind of damage, you know, doing mining does. And you're asking a small amount of people to let us destroy everything that you've fought so hard for generations.”

Now another industry is looking to expand to indigenous land: renewable energy. While many welcome the opportunity for clean energy, others are wary of being exploited once again. Chéri Smith, President & CEO of the Founder at Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy, says, “For it to be just, it should include our Native people building it. It shouldn't be outsiders coming in and usurping all of the value of these systems and sending it off res, or out of the community.”

“Solar energy is important for the tribe and it has been for many years. So, before the big movement of installing solar farms, the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe was one of the highest numbers per capita of solar energy,” says Billie Jean, a Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribal Elder. Despite embracing solar, the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe currently gets most of its energy from a methane-burning power plant off the reservation, sold to them by the outside utility, NV Energy.

The Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, was supposed to make the transition to clean energy more economically feasible for everyone, including Indigenous communities. But because Tribes are considered sovereign nations, the funding mechanism is unworkable for many. Tribes would have to put up lots of capital for the projects and then file for a tax refund, but that poses a huge problem. As Steven Wadsworth says, “You can get 40 percent of that back when you file a tax return. However, Tribes, we're independent sovereign nations. We don't file tax returns. So how are you supposed to recoup that money with something like that in the IRA?”

Outside the United States, Tribes can face additional challenges when it comes to a “just transition.” “In my home province, we are not even allowed to say the term just transition,” says Raylene Whitford, Founder of Canative Energy. “That is a bad word because I come from a very petro-centric oil producing province in Canada. But in her opinion, “We need to be thinking forward. We can't continue to do what we're doing because it is destroying the environment”

“Modern society think indigenous people want to go back, turn the clock back a thousand years. It's not about that at all. It's about taking those lessons and those values and that wisdom that's accumulated over thousands of years and applying it in a modern day context,” says Maui Solomon, Executive Chairman of the Moriori Imi Settlement Trust.

This episode was produced in collaboration with the show On Shifting Ground with Ray Suarez, featuring Suarez as a guest host. Additionally, Sarah Howard provides field reporting.

Guests

Chéri Smith

President & CEO, Founder at Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy

Steven Wadsworth

Vice Chairman, Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe

Raylene Whitford

Founder, Canative Energy

Maui Solomon

Executive Chairman, Moriaori Imi Settlement Trust

Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe (plpt.nsn.us)

Native Americans are Building Their Own Solar Farms (bbc.com)

Native Americans fight lithium mine on site of 1865 massacre (theguardian.com)

On Shifting Ground (worldaffairs.org)

Note: Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. Please check the actual audio before quoting it.

Greg Dalton: I’m Greg Dalton.

Ariana Brocious: I’m Ariana Brocious

Greg Dalton: And this is Climate One.

Greg Dalton: We often talk about a “just transition” from fossil fuels to a renewable energy as if the phrase means the same thing to everyone.

Ariana Brocious: Yet the reality is that different communities have different needs. This week we’re going to hear from indigenous people about what a just transition means to them .

Greg Dalton: Now we know that indigenous people are not a monolith – there are so many different tribes and experiences. We’ll hear from a couple of them today. But many of those experiences have been shaped by the historic backdrop here: from the earliest days of colonization, white outsiders and later the U.S. government have systematically killed, abused, and betrayed native people. Tribes were forced from their historic homelands to reservations, which were often on very undesirable land.

Ariana Brocious: The young U.S. government signed treaties with tribes, acknowledged them as sovereign nations, and then routinely ignored those agreements in service of its purposes. And in the years since, major corporations have extracted resources from native land - leaving behind poisoned water and soil. Just one example of this is the decades of uranium mining on the Navajo Nation, which has contaminated land and water.

Greg Dalton:That story of extraction by non-native people is the story of “Killers of the Flower Moon.” And the bulk of the benefits of that extraction rarely go to the local people.

Ariana Brocious: So it makes sense that tribes may be wary of partnering with outsiders to install renewable energy projects on their land.

Greg Dalton: But a lot of tribes don’t have the capital to develop large-scale wind or solar farms on their own, even when their sovereign lands get plenty of wind and sun. Rich is land and minerals but not rich with money.

Ariana Brocious: Right. There's also an issue of “energy poverty.” According to the US Department of Interior, here in the Southwest, 21% of homes on the Navajo Nation and 35% of Hopi Indian homes are unelectrified.

Greg: Wow I think of energy poverty in Africa, not in the United States.

Ariana: So while you and I might talk about transitioning the electric grid from coal-fired to wind or solar, people on the Navajo reservation, for example, talk about transitioning from no electricity to any kind of electricity.

Greg Dalton: Wow. Yeah. I can see that. So a “just transition” doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone. Another term I’ve been hearing a lot when talking to indigenous people is the idea of being in right relation or right relationship. I still don’t claim to have a complete understanding of what that means, but generally I think it means that if we as people are in relationship with each other and nature itself, then we also have to have a responsibility to each other and other living things. So an important part of a just transition is doing so in right relation.

Ariana Brocious: We’ll hear the terms “just transition" and “right relation" more in this episode, starting with Chéri [Sherry] Smith. Chéri is a descendant of the Mi’Kmaq [Meeg-em-ach] Nation and President and Chief Executive Officer of the Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy. Here is what a “just transition” means to her.

Chéri Smith: A just transition, broadly speaking, means... by the people for the people. It means that indigenous people have the opportunity to design what their energy system looks like going forward, they have an opportunity to get some help with it. Because of the oppression that they've suffered for so many centuries. You know, a little help, please, is, is welcome to build an infrastructure on which our communities can start the next economy. And, and for it to be just, it should include our Native people building it. It shouldn't be outsiders coming in and usurping all of the value of these systems and sending it off res, or out of the community. It should be the tribes themselves or partnerships that are in right relation. And it should be built by native people for native people and that applies to any community. It should be built by the community. The jobs should be in the community, the operations and maintenance should remain with people in the community. If not, it's not just and the money just goes out of the community and into the pockets of the settlers again.

I'm of Indigenous descent. I descend through both of my parents from the Mi'kmaq Nation of so-called Maine and the Canadian Maritimes. But I did not grow up on a reservation. And tribes on the East Coast and in California as well, we were assimilated really. a long, long time ago. So we don't have, um, the experience that our, uh, plain state tribes, our Midwest tribes, uh, Southwest tribes have. We live in typical cities and towns, for the most part. So when I first after being in the clean energy space for the better part of three decades, when I first encountered what I call energy poverty, I was, I was devastated, astounded, shocked, you know, all of those adjectives to see that in the 21st century in America, that there were Native people living in abject poverty. Without access to electricity sometimes, and that's one form of energy poverty. But the one that struck me the most was the high costs of energy for Native people simply because they're Native people. And the culprit is oftentimes small cooperative utilities served by big suppliers. And the rates that Native people are charged versus non-Native are sometimes double or more for the same electrons down the same line. And when I saw how that contributed to this dilemma of heat or eat on reservations, I knew in that moment that my whole career in, in energy and in education, living at that nexus, that I, I, I had to do something. So that's how I came to the work.

Greg Dalton: Chéri Smith spoke with Ray Suarez, host of On Shifting Ground.

Ray Suarez: Isn't there an intense paradox embedded in the heart of this? Native people have significant presence in places that supply energy, whether it's hydroelectric in the Great Lakes, natural gas in Utah, uh, uranium and oil in the Southwest. But those resources haven't made Native people rich, or as you just told us, even secure. What has to change?

Chéri Smith: Well, it's a good point, Ray. Many tribes, despite the promise of riches under their feet, have not succumbed to, um, that pressure, and these, these tribes have upheld their sacred covenants to protect and preserve the earth, and so in, in exchange for that, they suffer from poverty. Those that have allowed the extraction on their lands have benefited. But it's usually the outsiders, the settlers, the Western corporations that are having most of the benefit. And clean energy represents an opportunity to move away from those extractive economies and extraction period and towards clean and regenerative practices, which are very much in line with Native ethos. And, and that's what has to change. When we're talking about energy development, clean energy development, and all the opportunity that exists right now, because of the IRA and related legislation, we have to make sure that we don't repeat what happened in our last build out of the electric grid in our country, for example, where it was built squarely on the backs of Native Americans. We need to make sure that tribes are not only having a seat at the table, but they're building the table and inviting everyone else to it. That's, that's what has to happen.

Ray Suarez: Recently, I've been on Crow tribal land in Montana, on the land of several different bands in New Mexico, and one thing they have in common, a lot of sunshine and not a lot of solar collectors. Is that one road that's, so far, not being fully taken toward energy independence?

Chéri Smith: Well, you've got to look at the history. For example, the Crow have a fossil development history and they went that route because they did not want their people to suffer from poverty. And they have had challenges with fossil development in their communities. There's addiction and missing and murdered indigenous women and people and all the things that come with outside developers being on your land and, and the extractive industries have harmed the tribe in many ways, even while paying the bills. So some tribes are not opposed. We don't see a lot of opposition to solar or to other renewables in themselves. It's just they don't want to have to give up a reliable source of revenue. So we have to do everything all at once. And solar represents a tremendous opportunity. It is the low hanging fruit. We work with tribes on all kinds of renewables, but solar represents the cheapest form of new energy generation in our country, right now in the world. And with tribes controlling 2 percent of all land in our country, 5 percent of that is ripe for renewables development. And it makes Indian Country a very valuable place to do business and to develop solar. So our job is to protect the tribes best interest and to vet those developers with direct pay and elective pay and the wonderful tax incentives that are now available as well. We are standing shoulder to shoulder with tribes and our subject matter experts are helping to, uh, ensure that their best interests are protected throughout the process.

Ray Suarez: Earlier on, you mentioned that there's been broken promises and exploitation and failing to live up to their side of the covenant from energy production industries. Is there at long last enough accumulated expertise on how to shape these agreements, how to shape these covenants so that Tribal organizations don't get fleeced, don't get exploited, don't end up with falling way short of what they're promised on the front end.

Chéri Smith: That expertise, that wisdom has always existed, Ray. It's just a matter of whether or not the federal construct wants to acknowledge it and do what's right.

Ray Suarez: Tell me more about that.

Chéri Smith: This administration is, in my lifetime, uh, it's, it's the first time we're seeing a genuine dedication to righting the wrongs of the past. And when you think about the history from the deliberate extermination of the buffalo by colonists, westward expansion, manifest destiny, all of those things put not only Native people, all of us, um, every walk of life, every human that lives in this country is a victim of colonizationThat legacy is going to take, you know, my lifetime and my children's lifetime before I think we see a true reconciliation. But we're on the right track. I have hope.

Ray Suarez: If we're going to rebuild, uh, let's say a right relationship between governments and the tribes, between tribes in the land, between Americans in general and the land. What does that look like?

Chéri Smith: Well, first, it takes an acknowledgement of how we got here. And then a willingness to, in the words, there's a word in my ancestral language, the Mi'kmaq, when they were colonized very early, you know, the one of the hereditary chiefs I descend from on my mom's side was baptized Catholic in 1605. So you think about they were being colonized then and they I coined a term eduapdemonk, and I won't ask you to pronounce it, but eduapdemonk literally translated to English means two eyed seeing, and it means seeing the benefits of indigenous wisdom and knowledge and ways of being. And also appreciating and using responsibly the wisdom and technology of Western ways. We have to get to that point where both are considered equal by all. And we have to, uh, in our government, meet tribes where they're at. Don't make decisions and come later and tell us about them. Don't seek forgiveness instead of permission. And they don't even seek forgiveness throughout history, right? So what it looks like from here is having Native people in those conversations from the get go, not as an afterthought later, not as a checkbox on a federal application. Native people, marginalized communities all across the country, not just Native communities, need to be a part of the planning and the discussions from the very start.

Ray Suarez: Does recognition of tribal sovereignty, almost force a seat at the table where in other eras, uh, one might not have been assumed or given.

Chéri Smith: You would think, based on the term sovereignty, that it would, but it hasn't. And tribes being sovereign nations, but beholden to the federal government if they want federal recognition, which comes with, you know, certain benefits that tribes need to, many tribes that don't have economies of their own, need to survive and so that in itself is problematic and when you're talking about clean energy development there is still, uh, we are supporting tribes right now who have wonderful viable projects that could be life changing for their people. They could actually set them on a path towards energy sovereignty but the systemic inequities in the interconnection system and in just the grant application system in itself present hurdles. So it's, it's, it's one thing to pump billions of dollars into Indian country. It's another thing for tribes to have the capacity and the ability to, to actually get these projects done. There are too many hurdles. And that's what we're focused on now, is eliminating those hurdles. And philanthropy has been picking up the slack of government and, but it, it's going to take radical change within Washington for this to be a just transition.

Ray Suarez: Certainly in the western United States, a lot of tribal land sits on pretty big parcels, but is thinly populated. And the energy infrastructure is terrible in those places. Now, if you look at the example of the telephone, in places where telephone infrastructure was terrible, it just sort of leapfrogged the home, hardwired phone, and we just went past it, when finally, in a lot of places in the world, people could have telephones. They never had a wire that ran up to their house. Is there a way to leapfrog and not lay hundreds of miles of copper to each individual homestead? And are there possibilities offered by more recent developments in transmission and distribution, that mean that, okay, instead of trying to get a do over for the 19th or 20th century, we go right to the front of the line for something new and better.

Chéri Smith: Absolutely. As I was saying earlier, lack of access to energy can be considered a form of energy poverty. There are, as we sit here today 35,000 homes on the Navajo reservation that do not have access. to energy 800 on the tiny little Hopi reservation, for example. Those lines don't go there yet. Do we want to wait for that copper infrastructure to reach them? No, what we're, we're looking at is developing microgrids and completely self sustained islanded communities that can use clean energy instead of worrying about all that comes with even being connected to the grid in those communities in many parts of the plains in the southwest being connected to the grid doesn't mean you have reliable electricity. If you're in a lot of these tribal communities you get it. It's at the end of the line You know, and, and you're the first to lose power, and it doesn't come back on for days. Right? And so because of colonization, we are dependent on electricity. So when, when your power goes out, and you're not used to being without power, you don't have refrigeration, you don't have pumped potable water, you don't have air conditioning when it's 120 out. So, yes, that's problematic and that's why clean energy, especially solar, represents such an opportunity to, to, to solve those problems. But the costs of acquiring the money from the federal government to do those projects and the systematic barriers that still exist are the issue. And when you can offer community solar or residential solar to your people, the avoided costs there, you know, when you take that bill away from a family that is struggling, they're not buying, you know, Gucci bags with it, right? They're, they're buying clothing and better food and, and medicines and it's, it's a tremendous impact on a family that's in poverty to have the energy bill go away. And so it is smart for any tribal community and any community in general to take advantage of what clean energy means.

Ariana: Cheri Smith is the founder, the president and CEO of the Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy. She was talking with Ray Suarez, the host of our sister podcast: On Shifting Ground.

Greg Dalton: You’re listening to a Climate One conversation about a just transition for indigenous communities.

Our podcasts typically contain extra content beyond what’s heard on the radio… so if you missed a previous episode, or want to hear more of Climate One’s empowering conversations, subscribe to our podcast wherever you get your pods.

Ariana Brocious: Please help us get people talking more about climate by giving us a rating or review. You can do it right now on your device. You can also help by sending a link to this episode to a friend.

Greg Dalton: Coming up, a tribe considers bringing more solar energy to their land, even though their first experience with solar hot water didn’t go very well…

Steven Wadsworth: Back in the seventies, we weren't there yet. And they were actually, um, all taken out. They just were not working. I was told we just had pipes burst left and right during the winter.

Greg Dalton: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

Ariana Brocious: This is Climate One. I’m Ariana Brocious.

Our next stop this hour is in Northwestern Nevada – on the Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation. When you look at a map, you’ll see that at the center of the land is a 27-mile long lake, sort of in the shape of a teardrop. Most of the tribe’s income is currently generated by that lake – including fishing and recreational activities on the water. Now the tribe is trying to use the renewable resources on their land in new ways. Reporter Sarah Howard takes us there.

SARAH HOWARD: When driving north from Reno on highway 80, you can feel the landscape change as you turn off the highway and reach the edge of the Paiute Tribe sovereign territory. The mountain range opens up to a valley and you can see the lake off in the distance. I expected the vast desert landscape, but I didn’t anticipate the fierce wind that whips across the terrain, cutting through anything in its way. It's a character in and of itself.

SARAH HOWARD: This land is the ancestral home of the tribe which includes their namesake lake. Billie Jean is a tribal elder and director of the Pyramid Lake museum:

BILLIE JEAN: We know that our ancestors lived here thousands and thousands of years ago. And they were able to survive based on Native plants and utilizing a lot of local resources for making baskets and hunting and gathering. We're known as the Cuyuhi Takata, meaning the Cuyuhi Eaters, basically, fish eaters.

SARAH HOWARD: On my drive in to visit the tribal offices, a long sleek black mass slid over the horizon. A solar farm that comes right up to the edge of the reservation, stopping just at the border line. That farm - not owned by the tribe – shows the vast potential for more solar in the area.

BILLIE JEAN: The solar energy is important for the tribe and it has been for many years. So, before the big movement of installing solar farms, the Pyramid Lake Paiute tribe was one of the highest numbers per capita of solar energy. The highway 447 was named the solar highway because we had so many installations of solar arrays.

SARAH HOWARD: Billie Jean says the early adoption of solar is a point of pride for many in Pyramid Lake.

BILLIE JEAN: We have been solar powered for a number of years. In fact, my son designed some of the solar arrays here at the Pyramid Lake Museum. The advantages for the museum with solar power is that we have lower power bills as far as electricity goes.

SARAH HOWARD: The array designed by Billie Jean’s son sits right near the circular shaped museum meant to evoke a tribal meeting house. The array is shaped like an arrow and points from the building to the mountains.

BILLIE JEAN: With the museum, we're responsible for educating the public, including our tribal membership, our tribal youth, so that they can understand where they come from.

SARAH HOWARD: Across the street from the museum is the High School, which is also solar powered, something all the students know a bit about.

JAZMIN: My name's Jazmin. We're at Premier Lake Junior Senior High School. I think it's really cool. I like it that it's solar because it helps our environment and more because it helps us as a school. Think it's important because it really helps keep our environment safe. It's not polluting our lake and it's not polluting the air quality here.

SARAH HOWARD: The tribe would like to build more solar – a LOT more.

JAZMIN: My dream for this community and its future is that it really grows into something more than what people see it as now. Us as a people is a strong community who knows what we like, who we are, and I think more people need to know about us.

SARAH HOWARD: At the moment, those plans are on hold due to investment and infrastructure limitations….. But Billie Jean is optimistic:

BILLIE JEAN: As Indigenous people, we've been here a long time. We've survived all kinds of trauma and tragedy. And so, as very strong people, we want our youth to be the same way and be able to carry on traditions.

SARAH HOWARD: With ample wind and geothermal resources – in addition to solar – the tribe hopes to become a literal powerhouse in the region.

BILLIE JEAN: We entrust our tribal leadership to make the best decisions because when decisions are made, not only do we have to think about today, but we have to think definitely for our future generations, our unborn generations.

SARAH HOWARD: The challenge for that tribal leadership is how to turn all that renewable potential into actual income. That will take savvy negotiation to access outside investment. Then, like so many renewable energy projects on both Native and non-Native land, it will join the long line to get access to the electric grid. Currently, the wait time to connect new wind or solar projects is about five years. For Climate One, I’m Sarah Howard.

Ariana Brocious: Right now, most of the Tribe’s electricity is generated by burning methane at a power plant off the reservation, sold to them by the outside utility, NV Energy. Steven Wadsworth, Vice Chairman of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, is excited about the potential to get significantly more solar on their land, both to reduce electric bills for his people and to generate income. He says the tribe was an early adopter of solar technology.

Steven Wadsworth: One of the earliest projects we did was it was in the seventies. Um, when we were building some new homes out here, we actually put up solar panels on the roofs specifically for the hot water heaters. And, you know, I mean, I know the technology is vastly improved today, but back in the seventies, we weren't there yet. And they were actually, um, all taken out. They just were not working. I was told we just had pipes burst left and right during the winter and, you know, causing flooding. So that was one of our first.

Ariana Brocious: So maybe a bit of a negative taste first,

Steven Wadsworth: Yeah, and then in the last 12 years, we've, uh, we partnered with a company that came out of Burning Man called BlackRock Solar, and they're the partners that we used to put up the infrastructure that we have now, and we have solar panels, I mean, we, oh gosh. We've got them through our, uh, elementary school. They're right in front of the elementary school. We have, um, we have a few different spots around our junior, senior high school. We have them powering our clinic, our senior center, our tribal offices, our police station, our museum. Our museum's the big one cause it's actually in the shape of an arrowhead.

Ariana Brocious:So even with this amount of solar that's integrated into some of these buildings and, you know, very important structures for the tribe. You're still dependent on this outside utility for the bulk of the energy. What is your dream or hope, um, that the Pyramid Lake Paiute could get developed on your own property?

Steven Wadsworth: Currently, you know, we, we would like to see something that would benefit our people, you know, um, if it, if it offsets their power bill, that's a big one. You know, we're, we're a very poor tribe. So, um, we have, I believe we are at 40 percent unemployment rate on the reservation. So that's just one of the things that we'd like to try to do. I mean, we definitely have the land. So if we could incorporate something like that, where we could, you know, provide, give something back to the membership, I should say,

Ariana Brocious: And there are solar farms, um, owned by others that go right up to the edge of your border. That's demonstrating that it's a great place to develop solar and you have the land for it. So what's stopping you perhaps from partnering with some of those companies to do larger scale installations on your land?

Steven Wadsworth: You know, there's a couple of different roadblocks. One of them would be, you know, trying to partner with the tribe. Like I said, we're very poor, so we can't really do the infrastructure ourselves. And then, um, various governmental programs like the, the inflation reduction act, getting some of that going, some of the, uh, language in there is It's a good idea, but it's a horrible execution because one of them is, you know, you, you do it and then you file a tax return and then you get refunded, you know, up to 40 percent back. But the problem with the language in there is that you have to do big projects. I mean, and then you have to put up the money upfront. We're talking, you know, I think, what was it? 60 million. And then you can get 40 percent of that back when you file a tax return. However, tribes, we're, we're independent sovereign nations. We don't file tax returns. So how are you supposed to recoup that money with, with something like that in the IRA?

Ariana Brocious: So there’s not a framework even to give tribes a way to access the money in the way that other companies or, or, you know, uh, groups can.

Steven Wadsworth: Yeah. There, there really wasn't the framework for that. Um, I, I know they were working on trying to redesign that language in there so that tribes can access it, but until they do, it's kind of just like, great. The money's just sitting there and what tribes can access it.

Ariana Brocious: So you've mentioned, money is an issue getting the capital to begin one of these projects. Um, land is not an issue, uh, but the sort of rebate or, um, incentives that are built into the Inflation Reduction Act don't work as they're currently written. So if there are these hurdles, how are you hoping to move forward with developing more solar? Are you looking for investors to come in and provide that upfront capital, but still allow the tribes to have ownership? Are there hybrid arrangements you can work out? Um, you know, what's possible?

Steven Wadsworth: I think we're taking into consideration everything. Um, one of the things that we've actually thought about too is ownership of the panels. Currently it's one of those, one of those weird. I guess weird takes on, do we want to own the panels or, or would we just rather, you know, rent the land, which I think is kind of more, more where we're moving to, um, because, you know, with ownership, with something breaking, you know, something not working, we have to go out there and fix it. And then the other part also becomes a reclamation. With all that land, you know, in 25, 30 years when the panels are no good anymore, do we want to be on the line to try to get them out of there, to recycle them? To bring in another project, you know, maybe the technology vastly improves, but it's still that cleanup and reclamation is always on our mind, just because we've seen, you know, what's like, we have a mine on the reservation, we've seen what kind of damage that can do. Um, and especially when they leave, who's cleaning it up, who's responsible?

Ariana Brocious: This episode broadly is looking at the idea of a just transition, which is a term that's gotten a lot of, um, more usage lately. It's been talked a lot about in terms of energy and renewable energy. But maybe it doesn't mean the same thing to everyone. And so I'm curious what do you think when you hear just transition or what it means to you?

Steven Wadsworth: Well, to me, it means, you know, I guess being fair. Oh gosh, I mean, you know, it's, it's real hard to think about, you know, just, just from the history of how America treats Native Americans, you know, when it comes to what land, you know, a lot of us were forced on their land. We, we at Pyramid Lake are very fortunate because this is our ancestral homeland. Oh gosh, it's just, it's very difficult because, Native Americans have just been treated so unfairly since the beginning. But now we're just right at the time it's gosh, you know, I, I, I think about Thacker Pass, which is not, you know, a hundred miles from here with the lithium mine and it's. It's just, again, I'll say it again, it's not fair, how can you expect, you know, a small amount of people to, I guess, save the world? That's what it feels like, because we've seen what kind of damage, you know, doing mining does. And you're asking a small amount of people to let us destroy everything that you've fought so hard for generations.

Ariana Brocious: So let's stop there for a second. And for people who don't know, because I think this is a great example, but I want the listeners to know what we're talking about. Thacker Pass, as you mentioned, is a lithium mine. Can you say a bit more about it and why it's, it's been controversial,

Steven Wadsworth: So yeah, Thacker Pass has the potential to be the largest lithium mine in the world. And you know, with mining, any mining, you know, you, you just destroy everything around there. There was, um, there were, that was the site of a Native American massacre back in the 1800s, which is why they try to protect it. Um, it's not, it's not my tribe. It's another tribe out that way near, um, Winnemucca. Um, but again, you're, you're asking a native tribe where that's their ancestral homelands, you know, to let's just destroy it. We know it's sacred to you, but we're gonna, we're gonna do what we can because, you know, the world's heating up. It's, uh, it's tough.

Ariana Brocious: When you think about the future of the Pyramid Lake Paiute, what's your hope for what that looks like when it comes to energy production?

Steven Wadsworth: I'm hoping we can get some projects going out here. I know it's just my hope, you know, it's for the people. You know, that's, that's who elects me. That's why I sit up here. You know, I spent, I spent three years as the senior services director here on the reservation. And it's mostly women and talking with those old ladies. I call them my old ladies. You know, it was. It was just so funny just to hear them talk, you know, because a lot of these ladies were born in the thirties, and they've seen, they've seen this place when it was nothing. They've seen it go from little shacks. We had little shacks, um, wigwams and you know, four, four walls, a roof and a dirt floor. That's what they've seen growing up in the thirties. And then they've seen, of course, you know, where we're at today and progress has kind of stalled. So I'd like to see progress continue. And I think the next, next bit would be that electricity, the solar, uh, and you know, making the, making a, making this a place where our people can come back to, getting something out here, a big project like solar, where we can make some money, offset power bills for our people. And that way we can, you know, save that money and let's say, build more homes because, you know, we have, we have, oh gosh, I think our housing list here is 60 families looking for a home. And so if we could just do more to build more homes, when we do those projects, that'd be great.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah. Stephen Wadsworth is vice chairman of the Pyramid Lake Paiute tribe. Stephen, thank you so much for joining us on Climate One.

Steven Wadsworth: Oh, thank you very much.

Greg Dalton: You're listening to a conversation about how Indigenous communities are tackling the clean energy transition. This is Climate One. Coming up, Revenues flowing from fossil fuel projects make it difficult for some indigenous communities to move away from them.

Raylene: A plethora of communities are dependent on oil production, gas production, transport, etc. The way our industry has developed has tied us to the economic, prosperity that these projects can bring.

Greg Dalton: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

This is Climate One. I’m Greg Dalton. The challenges indigenous people face in transitioning to clean energy are by no means restricted to communities in the United States.

I want to turn now to a conversation with two indigenous leaders: Maui [Mau-ee] Solomon is Executive Chairman of the Moriori [morr-ee-OR-ee] Imi [ih-me] Settlement Trust in New Zealand. And Raylene Whitford is founder of Canative Energy, a Canadian social enterprise dedicated to economically empowering Indigenous communities who have been impacted by extractive industries.

Raylene and Maui spoke with Ray Suarez for our sister program, On Shifting Ground.

Ray Suarez: Raylene Whitford, there have been many times, and certainly in the western United States as well, when indigenous people who were often, um, taken off their ancestral lands, parked somewhere else, and when they found out the somewhere else where they were parked was now very valuable, they tried to move them again, and they just said, No, are we at a point where we can't go back to? Those old ways of, uh, of handling indigenous people. Are their rights recognized in a way that makes that backsliding impossible?

Raylene: What I'll offer as a response is that, One, I want to recognize that all Indigenous people, we're not a monolith. We have a massively diverse, um, set of cultures, governance systems, spirituality, languages. So you know, it's, it's one thing to advocate for the recognition of Indigenous rights and inclusion, um, but we are not the same. And, you know, in Canada, Latin America, Asia Pacific, you know, the, the one thing, well, one of the things that we have in common is the oppression and the colonization and the process of being removed and kept away from any of the, the decisions that are made about us. So it's been a very patriarchal approach in Canada. And I would say that, you know, we're only at the beginning of recognizing and upholding Indigenous rights in, in, in my country.

Maui: I'd just like to have the chance to also respond to that question. Um, because it's not about going back to the past. And this is the issue a lot of, um, the developed nations and, um, Modern society think indigenous people want to go back, turn the clock back a thousand years. It's not about that at all. It's about taking those lessons and those values and that wisdom that's accumulated over thousands of years and applying it at a modern day context. You know, we talk about traditional knowledge. Traditional knowledge continues to evolve. We have modern day traditional knowledge based on our ancestral values. How to care for the earth, how to care for the sea, how to care for the sky. These are the things that I think need to be factored into how we're managing our planet. And, uh, if you look at it, we've managed it just in the last two hundred years is the reason why we're now facing this crisis, this climate crisis, and yet, indigenous peoples, we've, we've traded Maitre Nor forever, for, for thousands of years. Um, but, when indigenous people come to the, to the, table to do, um, you know, to talk economics and trade and commerce, you know, it's not about, it's about putting people and the planet, uh, above profit because if profit is the sole motivator, which it has been for the last hundred or so years in our capitalist and materialist and consumer society, then we're failing, and we're failing as a planet. We're failing as a species. And I think this is where indigenous people have a really important contribution to make.

Ray Suarez: One of the themes this year's is making a just transition to a new energy economy. I understand that you both have problems even with the phrase, so why don't we pick that apart and talk about, uh, justice and transition. Raylene,

Raylene: So in my home province, we are not even allowed to say the term just transition. That is a bad word because I come from a very petro-centric oil producing province in Canada. Um, I think the term just. That means different things to different people. Um, I think that to me, it means being as inclusive, uh, as possible or as, I don't even know how to put it into words. It's being inclusive as you can of the unheard. Um, I don't like the term underserved because I think that's imbued with a power differential. And, you know, that is not going to help us get through the challenge that we have in front of us today, but I think it is involving the unheard and these different perspectives, these different knowledge holders, these different rights holders to participate in the, the change that we all have to make. If we don't, we will continue to have projects delayed, permits, uh, revoked, and just in this terrible conflict that, you know, we've faced, um, well, in Canada and in the U. S., for example, to date, so we have to be inclusive, we have to listen, and we have to be open to a diversity of perspectives.

Ray Suarez: Well, right at the beginning of your answer, you noted that, uh, you come from a part of Canada that's involved in energy extraction. In fact, in Alberta, the tar sands, uh, are both a treasure trove of, uh, of British thermal units, BTUs, and also some of the dirtiest energy possible to use on the planet. So when we think about the Alberta tar sands, and we think about just transition, what would you tell Justin Trudeau? What would you tell your fellow Albertans? What's the answer?

Raylene: There's no simple solution. So, for example, in my province, we have a plethora of communities who are dependent on oil production, gas production, transport, etc. So, you know, the way our industry has developed has tied us to the economic, um, prosperity that these projects can bring. I do think, though, that we need to be thinking forward. We can't continue to do what we're doing because it is destroying the environment, and the world is moving on. So, what I would encourage, uh, my relatives, our communities, our Indigenous people, and the Canadian public is to find a, a meaningful path forward that involves the input of everybody and prioritizes Indigenous rights holders. Um, there are several communities in, in my home province and across Canada who strongly support oil production. Now, should we make that decision for them and say that that should not happen? Well, that doesn't allow them to be self determining nations, which the United Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples provides us. So, I think being open to having that conversation and bringing a diversity of perspectives is key. I also think that it'll be a reiterative process, so we can't come up with one report that has a very clear, linear pathway to net zero, but I think working better together with stronger relationships will give us a better possibility of arriving at that.

Ray Suarez: Maoi Maui Solomon, when you hear that phrase, just transition, what does it mean to you? And do you have any hesitancy about using it?

Maui: As a lawyer, um, in a previous life, I thought about the word just, and, and it's, um, It's a relative term, really, isn't it? What's just to you might not be just to me or to Raylene. And so, who's determining what's just? Because if you're a multinational, sort of, um, oil producing company, um, you, you might say it's just, just to continue, you know, producing fossil fuels to, to provide, uh, you know, to, to help the economy. But if you're a tribe, or if you're, say, people in the Pacific Island nations who are suffering from rising sea levels and acidification of the ocean because of the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere, you're going to say, Oh no, that's not just. So it's a relative term. And so with anything you need to actually understand what are we talking about? The way that it's being discussed is to ensure that disadvantaged and vulnerable communities in transitioning away from fossil fuels to a net zero carbon and to alternative uses of energy aren't unfairly prejudiced or left out. And if I look at my own small island community of Rekohu Chatham Islands, which is an island based 800 kilometers off the east coast of New Zealand, you know, we're addicted to diesel. Because, uh, diesel, you know, we've got a relatively small population, 600 people, but our mains power is supplied by diesel generators. Our fishing fleet is fuelled by diesel. Um, farm machinery is fuelled by diesel. The third aspect of our economy is from visitors, from tourists, and they get here from flying over from New Zealand and Australia. So, you know, if suddenly we were to go to a alternative, or, or to be weaned off diesel, that's, it's not going to happen overnight. It has to be transitioned or happen over time. There needs to be a clear plan. But, we need to look at what resources we do have. There's the sun, there's solar energy, there's wind. Uh, we've got a lot of wind on the Chatham Islands. In fact, my father once told me it blows so hard on the Chathams, it blows everything off the land except the mortgage. And it's quite true. So we can utilize, um, that the sea is a great... its got two tidal movements within 24 hours, so we could be looking at generating power from the sea. And so, it's looking at what are the alternative sources of energy, and transitioning over time towards a more sustainable net zero carbon, uh, societies. But that's going to take time and, um, you know, when you're an addict, it, it takes time to be weaned off those things, right?

Ray Suarez: Well, yeah, I mean, and as Raylene noted, uh, you're both not a monolith, and in her particular case, there are tribal groups advocating for the continued exploitation of fossil fuels. So, if you look across the world, many of the poorest communities are indigenous people. They need economic growth. They need economic growth in order to become full shareholders and have that burden of poverty relieved and, and be able to live the life expectancy of their fellow citizens in, in these countries. Can you be for economic growth and, and what, uh, what the oil companies might consider against it at the same time? How do you strike that balance, Maui?

Maui: Yeah, no, that, that's a, that's a very good point. But, um, again, if, if we're just going to continue on the path we're on, we don't have a future. You know, that's the bottom line. And, and we're already at, you know, a minute to midnight. Some would say we're actually, we're past midnight, but I, I tend to live in hope. So, um, you know, we've got other, um, We've got wonderful technology today, and we've got wonderful natural resources. The sun is the greatest source of natural energy, um, on the planet. Well, not on the planet, but in the sky. We've got the seas, we've got wind, we've got these magnificent resources available, and we really need to do more to utilize them in driving our economy, our vehicles, our, our fishing fleets Like my ancestors, Polynesian ancestors, um, settled. You know, 30 square million miles of ocean over 3,000 years in the Pacific Ocean. And they did that by sailing, by using the, the wind. So, you know, why can't we be looking at, um, wind and solar to, to drive these big tankers around the world instead of fossil fuels? Um, some might say, well, that's impossible. But I, I think humans have demonstrated, you know, by going to the moon in the 60s, anything's possible.

Ray Suarez: That's Maui Solomon. He's the chairman of the Moriori Imi Settlement Trust. He joined me on Shifting Ground along with Raylene Whitford, director of the Canadian Sustainability Standards Board. Great to have you both. Good to talk to you.

Raylene: Hi, hi, Ray.

Maui: Yeah. Thank you, Ray.

Greg Dalton: On this Climate One... We’ve been talking about what a just transition means to indigenous communities. This episode was a collaboration with On Shifting Ground – you can hear more wherever you get your podcasts.

Climate One’s empowering conversations connect all aspects of the climate emergency.

Ariana Brocious: Talking about climate can be hard, and it’s critical to address the transitions we need to make in all parts of society. Please help us get people talking more about climate by giving us a rating or review. You can do it right now on your device.

Greg Dalton: Brad Marshland is our senior producer; Our managing director is Jenny Park. Ariana Brocious is co-host, editor and producer. Austin Colón is producer and editor. Megan Biscieglia is our production manager. Wency Shaida is our development manager, Ben Testani is our communications manager. Our theme music was composed by George Young. Gloria Duffy and Philip Yun are co-CEOs of The Commonwealth Club World Affairs, the nonprofit and nonpartisan forum where our program originates. I’m Greg Dalton.

3:20 Chéri Smith explains what a “just transition” means to her
6:35 Chéri Smith on extraction from indigenous land
14:11 Chéri Smith on the recognition of tribal sovereignty
20:24 Sarah Howard on solar projects and the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe
25:34 Steven Wadsworth on the tribe’s first experience with solar heating
28:05 Steven Wadsworth on the difficulty for tribes partnering with outsiders
37:35 Raylene Whitford on the recognition of indigenous rights
38:31 Maui Solomon on indigenous rights
44:04 Maui Solomon on a “just transition”

Indigenous Perspectives

8 Episodes

Play

This Year in Climate: 2023

BenTestani — Fri, 15 Dec 2023 00:56:14 +0000

This Year in Climate: 2023

12/15/2023

It’s been a year of weather extremes — again. But there’s also been cause for renewed hope about our climate future.

This year, the 28th annual United Nations Conference of Parties, or COP, was held in Dubai. Negotiations went into the wee hours of the night and ended with a surprising result: The final agreement not only uses the words “fossil fuels” for the first time, but the nations of the world have now agreed to a global pact that explicitly calls for “transitioning away from fossil fuels” beginning this decade. They also agreed to quit adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere entirely by midcentury.

The agreement is unenforceable, and polluters could still exploit loopholes to ignore the promises. But words matter. This signals to investors and policy makers that the end of fossil fuels is finally beginning.

Meanwhile, 2023 was the hottest year on record. The world saw raging wildfires, catastrophic floods, and many other extreme weather events. Between 2018 and 2021 deaths from heat alone rose 56%. Kathy Baughman-McLeod, Director of the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center says,“The scary part is a lot of times these [heat] deaths and illnesses are masked. You know, it's called the Silent Killer for a reason. We don't hear it. We can't see it, and we don't have a lot of data that tells us.”

This year also saw the policies embedded in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act begin to be implemented. White House Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi says that people's lives are at the heart of the Biden Administration’s efforts to reduce emissions and prevent dangerous warming. “When we go about tackling the climate crisis, we're not just measuring our progress in terms of clean energy, gigawatts built or greenhouse gas, million metric tons reduced. We measure it in the people who felt left out, left behind,” says Zaidi.

This past year was not only a time of extreme weather, but of increasing demonstrations protesting that not enough isi being done to address the climate crisis. Jane Fonda, a famous actress and activist, says, “I have found that every single time I start to get depressed, if I take action it disappears. Greta Thunberg said, don't go looking for hope, look for action and hope will come. And she's right.”

Nailli Cobo, a young climate activist based in Los Angeles, personally experienced the consequences of fossil fuel extraction. She was afflicted with horrendous nose bleeds stemming from the oil well just across the street from her apartment. “It got to the point where the nosebleeds got so intense I couldn't sleep in my own bed anymore. I would have to sleep in a chair to prevent choking on my own blood. I developed asthma and that's something I'm always gonna have to live with.” Cobo became an activist at age nine, helping to secure passage of an ordinance that banned new oil and gas development and will phase out existing wells in LA County. This year, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill banning new wells within 3,200 feet of schools, homes and buildings. But oil companies have managed to put an issue on next year’s ballot to overturn those community protections.

It can be easy to feel overwhelmed by the climate crisis. And sometimes that can cause people – especially in wealthy countries in the global north – to ignore the problem or even just stop trying to address it altogether. But author Rebecca Solnit says, “We who are relatively comfortable, safe, affluent, and therefore powerful, I think have no moral right to give up.”

Reverend Lennox Yearwood Jr.,CEO of the Hip Hop Caucus, says, “You have to have a strong faith. To believe that it's just not you. That it's something bigger than you. And that's something that will carry on this fight. And that one day, and at this time, my goodness, with all that's going on and so much pain and so much trauma and so much hurt, you just got to believe that one day, the more that we keep fighting for justice, one day as humans, we will come together and we will make this planet a good place.”

A previous version of this episode incorrectly stated that the COP28 agreement includes a transition from fossil fuels this decade. While the deal calls for the transition to happen in “a just, orderly and equitable manner,” it does not include a timeframe. We regret the error.

Guests

Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr.

CEO, Hip Hop Caucus

Kathy Baughman-McLeod

Director, Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center; Senior VP, Atlantic Council

Ali Zaidi

Assistant to the President and White House National Climate Advisor

Jane Fonda

Activist and Actor

Nalleli Cobo

Cofounder, People Not Pozos

Ralph Chami

Assistant Director, Institute for Capacity Development, IMF

Bernie Krause

Soundscape Artist; Author, Voices of the Wild

Paolo Bacigalupi

author, "The Water Knife"

John Curtis

U.S. Representative (R-UT)

Cory Booker

U.S. Senator (D–NJ)

Rebecca Solnit

Writer, historian, and activist

COP28 Agreement Signals “Beginning of the End” of the Fossil Fuel Era (unfccc.int)

Tracking Climate Action (wri.org)

These 8 Countries Are Scaling Up Renewable Energy the Fastest (wri.org)

Global Oil Demand at Record High (foreignpolicy.com)

Judge sides with young activists in first-of-its-kind climate change trial in Montana (npr.org)

Note: Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. Please check the actual audio before quoting it.

Greg Dalton: I’m Greg Dalton.

Ariana Brocious: I’m Ariana Brocious.

Greg Dalton: And this is Climate One.

[music change]

Rev. Yearwood Jr.: It's time to stop polluting our communities, polluting our world. We don't have much time and we must end the climate crisis now.

Ariana Brocious: That’s Reverend Lennox Yearwood, the inspirational leader of the Hip Hop Caucus, and one of our most compelling interviews of 2023. We’ll hear more from him later in the show.

Greg Dalton: A lot has happened in 2023 and we’re spending today reflecting on what made us feel a pang of fear and a jolt of excitement. We’ll talk about the year that was, and look ahead to 2024.

Ariana Brocious: In this hour we’ll hear from a bunch of amazing, insightful people with ideas for real climate progress.

Greg Dalton: First we're going to start with the news.

Ariana Brocious: The 28th annual UN climate conference has just wrapped up in Dubai. And you were there.

Greg Dalton: I was. And I’m surprised by the outcome reached in overtime. The Conference in an OPEC country resulted in nearly 200 nations agreeing to “transition away” this decade from fossil fuels – oil, gas and coal.

Ariana Brocious: This is a really noteworthy achievement. It’s a big surprising win for conference president Sultan Al Jaber. For decades, petrostates such as Saudi Arabia had blocked even mentioning the words “fossil fuels” in these climate agreements - which is pretty shocking in its own right.

Greg Dalton: Right. And Al Jaber faced fierce criticism for being an oil executive leading a conference aimed at reducing fossil fuels. Now he proved his doubters wrong.

Sultan Al Jaber: We should be proud of our historic achievement. We have given it a robust action plan to keep 1.5 within reach. It is a plan that is led by the science. It is the U.A.E. Consensus.

Ariana Brocious: This is big news for climate.

Greg Dalton: The agreement is unenforceable, and there are still lots of loopholes and opportunities for polluters to ignore the promises. But words matter. This is a signal to investors and policy makers that the end of fossil fuels is finally beginning around the world.

Ariana Brocious: There’s a lot in the agreement so we’re just going to hit a couple of other highlights: It also aims to halt and reverse deforestation. The deal also calls for tripling renewable energy production by 2030. And that in itself is a big audacious goal that will be challenging to meet.

Greg Dalton: Right, though we can’t possibly stop using fossil fuels until there’s enough clean power to replace it.

Ariana Brocious: The agreement overcame objections from fossil fuel producing nations including Saudi Arabia and Iraq – and emerging economies such as Nigeria and India that are running on fossil fuel or dirty energy.

Greg Dalton: This whole process is based on peer pressure. Individual countries still get to decide their own timelines for transitioning away from fossil fuels.

Ariana Brocious: And those timelines are running out. Turning to other climate news… IT WAS SUCH A HOT YEAR, AGAIN. This October was one of the hottest ever, and I bet listeners could feel it. Here in Arizona, I certainly could. I kept waiting for things to cool down.

Greg Dalton: Yeah me too. And that's a dangerous trend. Deaths from severe heat increased 56% in the U.S. between 2018 and 2021. We talked with Kathy Baughman-McLeod from the Adrienne Arsht Rockefeller Resilience Center, who’s working with communities to deal with extreme heat.

Kathy Baughman-McLeod: The scary part is a lot of times these deaths and illnesses are masked. You know, it's called the Silent Killer for a reason. We don't hear it. We can't see it and we don't have a lot of data that tells us.

Greg Dalton: As climate awareness has moved into the mainstream, we find ourselves talking more about all the ways burning fossil fuels impacts our lives. And the truth is that energy (and water) intersect with everything around us. If you are wealthy you may not notice the strains on the food, energy and water systems. If you are poor, you probably feel those strains more directly.

Kathy Baughman-McLeod: The story of extreme heat is a story of race and a story of discrimination. Exposure to extreme heat increases asthma. It means that you have to run the air conditioner more, and if you don't have air conditioning, that heat exacerbates underlying conditions that people have and people in food deserts with little access to healthy food and healthcare end up having their conditions like diabetes or heart disease exacerbated by heat.

Greg Dalton: This is an environmental justice problem – one that the Biden administration has been working to address. Earlier this year I spoke with White House Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi about the administration's work on gathering momentum and excitement around big ticket climate initiatives:

Ali Zaidi: We have a relentless focus on getting greenhouse gas emissions down, but we have such a bigger opportunity right now, and that opportunity is to restore that American dream. And so when we go about tackling the climate crisis, we're not just measuring our progress in terms of clean energy, gigawatts built or greenhouse gas, million metric tons reduced. We measure it in the people who felt left out, left behind. How many of them can we pull into the fight as we move forward.

Greg Dalton: If 2022 was the year of big legislation – with passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and Inflation Reduction Act, 2023 was a year of policy implementation. Of course that will take a long time to roll out and see the benefits. But it's starting to get underway.

Ali Zaidi: The amount of investment we've seen triggered by this policy means that by 2030 the US will be capable of producing 13 million electric vehicles worth of batteries. That's a really big deal. We sold 16 million vehicles total last year. So think about the pace of the transformation. We have increased, by the end of his first term, we will have increased our ability to manufacture solar panels by eight x. We're conserving land. We are dealing in the agriculture sector. 60,000 farms, 25 million acres of farmland in the US signed up for climate smart agriculture. So, you know, if you're a climate voter in 2020, you did what everyone bet against was possible for decades, what had seemed completely out of reach, that every single sector of the economy would be now lined up with irresistible economics driving towards decarbonization, and that we'd be doing it in a way that's centered around workers and communities and justice. I don’t know what greater evidence there is of democratic power in propelling a system that had run on emissions for decades toward decarbonization.

Greg Dalton: The scale of the things he’s talking about really are broad and deep. The concern of course is that a Republican president might try to claw back some or all of those gains.

Ariana Brocious: Right and that would really slow the momentum we’ve started to see. Let’s each share something positive and negative about the year in climate news, and then we can talk about other things we’re keeping an eye on.

Greg Dalton: Let’s do it.

Ariana Brocious: I’ll start. My high was the successful case brought by Montana youth against their state, using language in the state constitution about the right to a safe and healthy environment. That was a big legal victory for climate and we’ll see what it means. We did a whole episode on the rise in climate court cases and I’m watching that space to see what develops. What about you Greg? What was your good news story from 2023?

Greg Dalton: Oh it’s so hard to pick. There is so much good news happening. Eight countries are scaling renewables at a pace that shows the Paris goals are achievable and possible. I had a mangrove awakening: they’re really powerful at sequestering carbon. My biggest one is when I heard Al Gore say that once greenhouse gas emissions reach zero, global temperatures would stop rising in just a few years. That’s really powerful and means that global leaders could actually see and experience the benefits of decarbonizing.

And your low, Ariana?

Ariana Brocious: My low would have to be the continued slowdown in actually taking the action necessary to address climate change. We’ve know for a really long time what needs to happen. This year we saw the UK prime minister roll back climate goals, which was really disappointing since they’re one of the global leaders in taking action. And here at home, we’re waiting to see the outcome of next year’s presidential election and what THAT could mean for the climate agenda President Biden has put in motion. Greg, what’s keeping you up at night?

Greg Dalton: So many things. I’m a terrible sleeper. And most importantly the human cost of involuntary migration of people thrust from their homes due to drought and food insecurity. At this year’s climate summit in Dubai and last year in Egypt, we sought out people from the global south who have these stories to tell. I looked them in the eye and really listened. And they’re suffering. And that suffering is caused by us burning fossil fuels.

Ariana Brocious: And that’s going to continue as long as we don’t take the action that’s needed. Okay now let’s quickly talk about what we’re watching in 2024. For me that’s a couple things: climate litigation at home and abroad, as I already mentioned, and also the continued developments around the electric grid. This is something we covered in another episode and it’s wonky and complex, but so essential! Because we have to be able to move all the renewable power we’re building out to the places that need it. Greg, what are you keeping an eye on?

Greg Dalton: Ballot boxes. The Economist reports that 2024 is the biggest election year in history. Countries with more than half the world’s population - four billion people - will send their citizens to the polls. Elections in the US, UK and India will have a major impact on how fast we move away from fossil fuels.

Ariana Brocious: And you know, as we cover all this climate news it can be easy to maybe get bogged down or depressed about where we’re at. But a lot of people – including many we talked with on the show this year – say taking action makes them feel better. One of those was the incomparable Jane Fonda.

Jane Fonda: I have found that every single time I start to get depressed, if I take action it disappears. Greta Thunberg said, don't go looking for hope, look for action and hope will come. And she's right.

Greg Dalton: Yeah, there's research that backs that up, that doing, it helps, and the community you find in doing is part of that, the relationships, it's the action in concert with other people.

Jane Fonda: Exactly.

Greg Dalton: You were arrested in Washington, D. C., it was your first time since the 1970s. You were arrested with a bunch of celebrities,

Jane Fonda: And a bunch of non celebrities. I mean, this wasn't just all about, what I loved about it is celebrities introduced active, frontline activists, you know, who normally, whose voices wouldn't be heard and it was all recorded, and we have it in perpetuity, and hundreds of, I mean, lots and lots and lots and lots of people watch this stuff. And people travel from all over the country, mostly women, mostly older women.

Greg Dalton: Many of whom watched your videos and that's why they were there.

Jane Fonda: Well, they like Grace and Frankie too. You know, I mean, I've been out there in the trenches as an activist when people really hated me. And then I've been out there in the trenches when I was Grace and Frankie and people loved me. And so I've been at both, and it really helps to have a good, successful TV series behind you if you're going out there.

Greg Dalton: You had your mugshot taken. You were handed a bologna and cheese sandwich. You were locked in your cell. Take us to that moment. What were your thoughts and feelings? When you click, you're in a jail cell in Washington, D. C. for protesting on climate.

Jane Fonda: This, this may sound weird, but when you are putting your body on the line for something that you would give your life for, the deepest thing you can possibly believe in, there is, while they're putting the handcuffs on, those white plastic things, they hurt like hell. But you feel so liberated.I felt so free. It was weird, huh? But, you know, I'll have to be honest. I'm white, I'm famous, I'm privileged. So I knew they weren't going to hurt me. I knew that I was safe. So, it was really my job to kind of like record what was going on.

Greg Dalton: So you did that for a period of time. Many people were arrested. Famous people, regular people, lots of brave people. What do you think that Fire Drill Fridays accomplished?

Jane Fonda: Okay. We were not, as has been reported in the press, our goal was not to affect government. Our goal was, look, we know from the Yale Communications Project, Climate Communications Project, that... There are a majority of Americans, like 70%, are very concerned about the climate. But they haven't taken action. And they say because they haven't been asked. The great unasked. This is our job now. Is to reach the great unasked.

Greg Dalton: We've also got a lot of active climate folks with far less privilege, people who are making a big difference in their communities.

Ariana Brocious: One young person giving me hope is Nalleli Cobo. She lives in South Los Angeles, and her apartment is right across the street from an oil well. She became an activist after she started having severe health problems starting around age 9.

Nalleli Cobo: It got to the point where the nose bleeds. Got so intense I couldn't sleep in my own bed anymore. I would have to sleep in a chair to prevent choking on my own blood. I developed asthma and that's something I'm always gonna have to live with now. I had heart palpitations and I had to use a heart monitor for several weeks. I got body spasms that were so intense I couldn't walk. My mom would have to carry me from one place to the other. Unfortunately the list goes on and on, and it wasn't just me. My mom developed asthma at 40, which is really rare, and my grandma developed it at 70, which is unheard of.

Ariana Brocious: Nalleli ended up with reproductive cancer as a result of her exposure. She was incredibly resilient and sacrificed her youth to fight the industry and its toxic exposure.

Nalleli Cobo: Because I was so young, I didn't realize what I was up against. I just thought I was fighting grownups. But I did not understand that I was fighting big oil, a multi-billion dollar corporation, and I think it helped a lot not to know that at the age of nine.

Ariana Brocious: She had a few BIG successes–shutting down their neighborhood well and helping to secure the passage of an ordinance that banned new oil and gas development and will phase out existing wells in LA County. This year, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill banning new wells within 3,200 feet of schools, homes and buildings. But oil companies have managed to put an issue on next year’s ballot to overturn those community protections. So Nalleli is still fighting.

Nalleli Cobo: Lives are on the line. There are over 4 million Californians living a mile or less to an active or idle oil and gas. Think of your mom, think of your grandma, your niece, your nephew. Because these are human lives, oftentimes we get distracted by the big number or the dots on the map, and we forget that every dot represents a human. And for me, I felt like at the age of nine, someone could look at me in the eyes and say, you don't deserve to breathe clean air. But what they didn't know was that I was a nine year old who was, still is, obsessed with Justin Bieber, that I love dance, that I love music, that I love eating, that I love hanging out with family that makes me who I am.

Greg Dalton: You’re listening to Climate One’s year in review episode. If you want to go back and listen to one of the previous episodes we’ve mentioned today, check out the show notes for links. Or simply subscribe to our podcast wherever you get your listen.

Please help us get people talking more about climate by giving us a rating or review. You can do it right now on your device. You can also help by sending a link to this episode to a friend.

Up next: how knowing the carbon-holding value of a blue whale could make us appreciate them more:

Ralph Chami: So, if they could speak our language or if we could understand their language they’ll be saying, hey, dude, why don’t you pay me? I’m helping you survive.

Greg Dalton: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

This is Climate One. I’m Greg Dalton.

Ariana Brocious: I’m Ariana Brocious, and it’s our annual year-in-review show.

Greg Dalton: We talked about a LOT of different issues and ideas on the show this year: including the role of agriculture, how to decarbonize the trucking industry, and the role of nuclear and hydrogen in a clean energy future.

Ariana Brocious: We talked about the crazy energy demands of bitcoin, and the history of the American Buffalo. We had great conversations with economists, scientists, activists and musicians, and even people who helped us understand what some animals might think or say about climate changes. One of those was Ralph Chami, an economist with the International Monetary Fund who fell in love with blue whales.

Ralph Chami: I remember that moment it’s like today. I looked at her and I thought what are you how is it that I didn't know you existed? And by the way, you have to understand the blue whale is the largest creature that has ever lived. You can fit an African elephant inside her mouth and would disappear completely. I mean, she could've swallowed us and no one will ever know but she didn't. She fed gracefully around us.

Ariana Brocious: He came up with an economic argument for why we should protect them. When they’re alive they eat plankton, which absorb CO2, and when the whales poop, it sinks to the sea floor, effectively removing that carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. And when a whale dies, it also provides a carbon sequestration service:

Ralph Chami: And what I was interested in because economists and finance people think, on average, how much does a great whale capture carbon on average. I had to calculate it myself. And that's the number now that you see all over the world. People talk about 33 tons. That's basically my number.

Ariana Brocious: And put that number in a context for us. What does that represent when people are thinking about carbon?

Ralph Chami: That represents 1500 trees on the body of a whale. And that whale because they are negatively buoyant because they’re so heavy. When they die, they sink. And anything that sinks below a thousand meters is sequestered forever unless you disturb it.

Ariana Brocious: Ralph Chami wants us to consider the value whales are providing to us and compensate them for it, by protecting them and their habitat.

Ralph Chami: Think of it this way. I work for the IMF and I provide the service and they pay me a salary. The IMF does not pay me a salary because Ralph is a nice guy, nor that Ralph is a husband or a father or a good citizen. They just because I provide a certain service that the IMF is interested in. Okay, well, here's a whale and it’s providing a carbon sequestration service on behalf of humanity. If she could speak our language what would be the wage that she would demand? That’s it. Because after that people said, oh, you’re pricing a whale. I said, no man, what I’m trying to tell you is the whale, unfortunately, doesn’t speak English, doesn't speak dollars and cents. And so, we've taken them for granted. Well, they are going around helping us fighting climate change. The whale, unfortunately, doesn’t speak dollars and cents. And so, we've taken them for granted. Well, they are going around helping us fighting climate change. So, if they could speak our language or if we could understand their language they’ll be saying, hey, dude, why don’t you pay me? I’m helping you survive.

Ariana Brocious: When you think about it that way, there are so many species who might have a thing or two to say about how humans have ruined the environment.

Greg Dalton That reminds me of a conversation I had with Bernie Krause. He’s a soundscape ecologist and he uses audio recordings to document ecological collapse and biodiversity loss. He can literally hear extinction happening.

Bernie Krause: When an environment is healthy, the sounds are defined in these very carefully illustrated niches. When it’s under stress that all breaks apart and especially when the human noise is an issue that's causing the stress in that habitat. And all of the critters search for their niches so that their voices can be heard so that they can survive. When a habitat is sick, it shows in its voice. And I think we got to pay some attention to that because we can hear the changes that are taking place now.

Greg Dalton: Right. And so much of the mainstream news media is filled with images of melting glaciers, etc. burning forest. You once wrote “A great silence is spreading over the natural world, even as the sound of man is becoming deafening.’ How did you come to that conclusion?

Bernie Krause: Well, because in my recordings over the years I’ve been recording now since 1968. My recordings over the years I'm seeing the changes over time when I go back and visit revisit these places that I've captured years before. And the density and diversity of wildlife of focal wildlife, birds, insects, frogs and some mammals has changed radically.

Greg Dalton: It’s amazing and heart-breaking. He can hear the changes over time when he returns to places where he made recordings years ago. One place in particular was Lincoln Meadow in the Sierra Nevadas in California.

Bernie Krause: They had told the residents around that area that they were gonna do a new model of logging called selective logging, taking out a tree here and there. It was relatively new at that time. And that there be no environmental impact as a result. And I said fine I said can I go up and record before you do that. And I did. I went up in June, right on the solstice of 1988, recorded that habitat in the Sierras at about 06700 feet. And that summer the logging company did their selective logging bit and I came back exactly a year later under the same conditions and recorded again. And what I found was that not only were there not a lot of birds there, but they weren’t singing very much. And even though with a photograph the place looked unchanged. There didn’t seem to be a stick or a tree out of place. But to the ear the difference was astounding. It was so quiet and so scary.

Ariana Brocious: I find it really exciting all the ways people are using creative tools to talk about climate change. Another person who comes to mind is the author Paolo Bacigalupi. He writes speculative fiction, and his stories are filled with dark climate futures. Some of them are really scary. And Paolo told me that’s intentional.

Paolo Bacigalupi: I hope to wreck their home. Like, I mean, I hope to make them feel like the walls of their home are closing in on them. That nothing that they live in is stable or secure. I hope that like they are horrified and think, oh, just because today looks good doesn't mean tomorrow is safe. To leave them so profoundly disturbed that their home no longer feels like a safe place and they have to start engaging with the external world that like is sending us signals all the time, but we continue to find our ways to ignore.that either with our, you know, our Netflix or our Instagram or whatever the thing is. It's like keeping us involved in the slap fight of the moment or whatever it is, instead of like looking at the big pattern of like, where is our future headed?

Ariana Brocious: Denise Baden, who's the editor of this No More Fairy Tales anthology, and she says that, , Fear is an effective driver of plot and it can be an entertaining tool., stories that instill fear, but that overall that's counterproductive and actually generating the change we wanna see like in the climate

Paolo Bacigalupi: I am sympathetic to the idea. , I think that if you want to create, , change in a democratic society, people have to believe that there is actually a threat., in order for them to believe that climate change matters, they have to extrapolate forward into what climate change is, and they have to have that grounded well enough in their world, in their physical spaces that they. It's no longer an abstraction that they think, oh, maybe in 30 years they have to think maybe my property values are gonna die in five, and that's a problem. And so we need to deal with it. If you don't make it visceral and bring it into their world, , I'm not sure that you get the kind of democratic sort of upwelling of concern that moves politicians or that gets people onto planning boards or planning commissions and stuff. I think in very young people, I think that there's a, a stronger sense of emergency, but, , I. I think that there's a huge value in generating unease in people who are otherwise feeling like I can probably skate by. Um, you really want to kind of illustrate like, well, what happens if our insurance industry completely collapses because we didn't do the, um, sort of risk analysis correct on how hurricanes and other climate emergencies are going to damage. You know, our, our infrastructure, um, you want them to feel like, oh, just because I live in a safe space doesn't mean that that actually is a safe space. You want it to impinge and impinge and impinge.

And so I get the critique of, you know, dystopian stories or apocalyptic stories. I mean specifically apocalyptic more than, you know, dystopian. But like that these things might be. You know, bad or motivate people in bad ways or create the wrong framework for people to understand how to engage with big challenges.

Um, it's totally possible. , I think though that there is this element that. A well-written story of warning can create a sense of unease and a sense of awareness that otherwise doesn't exist for people.

That means something finally to them. And so that means that they're suddenly alert and engaged, in a way that they weren't before.

Ariana Brocious: Of course people understand and experience the climate crisis in so many different ways. Making progress on climate solutions starts with communicating and understanding each other. And that can come down to the words we use.

Greg Dalton: Yeah, this year I had two conversations with Representative John Curtis, a Utah Republican who chairs the Conservative Climate Caucus. And we talked about how the words we use can contribute to miscommunications that distract us from what we have in common.

John Curtis: I think we do this on a number of issues and not just climate. I think you could point to immigration and other issues where we just quickly bring up these, these, these words or these terms that are divisive that spread us apart. And at the end of the day, there's actually very little that separates us on climate as Republicans and Democrats. And there's far more that we agree on. And Republicans do want to leave this earth better than we found it. We have ideas on reducing emissions and I think a lot of Republicans make the assumption that to be good on climate, they have to embrace the green new deal. No, they have to bring their ideas to the table. And I also talk a lot about the fact that the myth is that we need to give up energy independence. The myth is that we need to give up low prices. The myth is that we have to give up affordability to reduce emissions. And I think that's turned a lot of Republicans off – that myth. And so we talk about the fact that like, let me show you how we do this without sacrificing energy independence. Let me show you how we do this without sacrificing affordability, reliability.

Greg Dalton: I saw that you met with some Olympians about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Utah's in the running to host the 2030 Winter Olympics. Many of those events would happen at ski resorts in your district.

What do you see as your role in that effort from a climate standpoint?

John Curtis: First of all, let me say, use this opportunity to point out, uh, in a, in a very red state, Utah, very, very conservative state. Uh, we do a lot of oil and gas and coal that, um, one of the, one of the ways that we can get people turned on to this conversation is to show them how it impacts them directly. So in Utah, when you talk about the ski industry, um, people, all of a sudden sit up and listen and say, okay, I'm listening, right? And it's not and so it's it's easier for me to point out the shortness of the ski season the the that is starting later and ending sooner than it is something you know 10 000 miles away or 2 000 miles away And so I think this is a really good opportunity to say look local situations sometimes are what What it's going to take to get people engaged. And for me, two things. Well, really, three things have been very important pointing out what it's doing to the ski industry in Utah, pointing out the wildfires that we're having and the drought. And these are three easy place for very conservative Utahns to jump into this conversation. And to care. And let me tell you, they care deeply about the Great Salt Lake and the shortage of water. Utahns, regardless of the political affiliation. They care deeply about forest fires. They care deeply about the ski season. And these are not political issues. And so for me, having these things in my state has been a good opportunity to get people engaged who might not otherwise engage in this conversation.

Greg Dalton: Those myths he’s talking about are rooted in the information bubbles we live in. And we can actually have a lot of the same things. Renewable energy is cheaper and cleaner and can be all-American.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah. And this idea of needing to connect on shared values and terms is something we also talked about with Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey.

Cory Booker: I want people to expand their understanding because the most toxic threat to our nation right now I believe this. we have real problems in America and we have real problems globally. But I think the most toxic threat is the hate that is growing on Americans for each other. And this is creating an environment where we can't even talk to each other or far more common values. I was campaigning pretty hard in the last midterm election traveling all around the country. And I sat down on a plane and I often have people saying nice things to me. Often, unfortunately, people usual send me Mother's Day cards because I often get called “you mother" or something else. So, I get all kind of reactions across America as I crisscrossed the nation. But people are being really nice to be on this plane ride and I sit down next to a mom and a daughter 80 and 60 and they don't know who I am. And here I am large African-American male and for my ego some people might think this is wrong, but for my ego I love hearing what they said. They go, sir, who are you? Are you a professional athlete? And I'm like, well, I could be if I wanted to. But I said no ma'am, I'm a United States senator. And immediately all of us in America, if you need a politician congressperson you want to know what tribe they’re in. Are they in your tribe, their tribe or my tribe? The other-izing, the impersonality of that. Where do you stand with me or against me? And too much we have a binary world in America. And I said ma'am, I'm a Democrat. And she looks angry at me and says, I should've brought my Trump hat. Now there is a moment, all of life our power is not in what happens to us. Our power is never in the stimulus, it's always in the response. And we have a choice to respond with love, empathy, compassion, or to respond with negativity, hate lower frequencies of our being. And I look at the woman and I'm not dancing to this tune. And I look at her and I go, oh my gosh, Donald Trump, he signed two of my biggest pieces of legislation into law. And she seems surprised by that. And I go through some of the common values of that legislation. One on criminal justice reform. One on getting investment into low income rural and urban areas in America. And the record was scratched. It’s a long flight, but at the end of the flight we are talking about our personal lives. I learned about their family, they learned about mine. We’re affirming our commonality and talking about some of the problems in America being we don't talk to each other.

Ariana Brocious: Cory Booker is a compelling, compassionate speaker, and you can tell that he’s also a deep listener.

Cory Booker:

As consciousness grows more things become possible. Civil rights legislation failed for years until consciousness grew and we all get things done. But for now, we have got to be better at looking for win wins and not falling into a partisan divide. We have to commit ourselves to creating more dialogue, more ability to affirm each other's humanity and still believe that we have common cause in this country. Because when America acts with a sense of increased compassion and empathy and common cause we dazzle humanity in what we achieve. From immigration laws that let the entire plan is diversity come here and breakthroughs in science defying gravity going to the moon to even affirmations of human rights and human dignity that have put us as a standard bearer for our planet. We can do these things when we stop hating each other. And even if we disagree, find ways to affirm this commonality. I call it love, people who call it just affirming your fellow citizenship.

Ariana Brocious: You're listening to Climate One’s end of year episode. Coming up, in the midst of a climate catastrophe, humans show up for each other – sometimes in surprising ways.

Rebecca Solnit: What's encouraging about how people respond to disasters, you see this deeper sense of who we are and what we really want, who we could be.

Ariana Brocious: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

Greg Dalton: This is Climate One. I’m Greg Dalton. We’ve been talking about some of the most compelling conversations we had on the show over the last 12 months. I feel grateful there are almost too many to mention.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah, I agree. You can hear all of them on our website, or in our podcast feed. One of my favorites this year was with activist and author Rebecca Solnit, a person who’s written many many books and articles on climate, feminism and human rights. And says she finds a lot of value in taking the long view on making progress.

Rebecca Solnit: I think if I have a superpower, it's slowness, which means that I see long... stretches of time, which lets you see change. And one thing I run into a lot with climate is people often conflate impossible with unimaginable. Nobody in 1973 could have imagined 2023, but everything good in 2023 is because somebody in 1973 or some past moment fought for it. It behooves us all to do everything we can towards that better future for human rights, for biodiversity, for 30 by 30, and beyond, and for the climate. A lot of despair, et cetera, comes often from people thinking that if we have, if we make demands of a government on Tuesday and they don't fall to their knees and say they were wrong and we were right and give us everything we asked for by Thursday, then we failed, and that's just not how change works, although it's how defeat works.

Ariana Brocious: Rebecca also talked about why the white, western world can't just give up on addressing climate disruption:

Rebecca Solnit: I wrote an essay last year called Despair is a Luxury because for most of us giving up, at some level we secretly know that we can give up and our lives will still be relatively comfortable and safe.

Ariana Brocious: It's easier to give up.

Rebecca Solnit: Yeah, and so what you're really doing is giving up on behalf of people. You're saying, let those kids starve. Let that ice melt. Let those storms destroy the crops of those people in Central America. Let you know we're you, we, we who are relatively comfortable, safe, affluent, and therefore powerful, I think have no moral right to give up and we're giving up, you know, to let other people die first, other people lose first, other species lose first, I don't think it's ethical, and I think the facts say there's a lot worth fighting for now, and fighting for it is a really good way to live.

Ariana Brocious: I've read a lot of Rebcca’s work, and one concept that really resonates with me comes from book she wrote called “A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disasters.” She explains that in spite of what we may think, true community spirit and belonging and mutual aid emerge in our times of greatest need. And that’s especially powerful considering our need for real resilience in climate disruption and disasters.

Rebecca Solnit: In order to do what the climate requires of us, there's a lot of very practical wonky stuff. You know, and very physical stuff. We need to electrify everything. We need to change how this, what the world runs on. But I also think that we need to change our imaginations, our values, our relationships. What's encouraging about how people respond to disasters, you see this. deeper sense of who we are and what we really want, who we could be. And I feel like we have to escape from consumerism. We have to escape from the kind of loneliness and isolation that Silicon Valley and a lot of other structures in our society have helped create. We have to feel that we can have an age of abundance, but abundance will be in confidence in the future and the society we live in. confidence in our institutions and each other, a sense of belonging, um, a quality of life that will lie in our relationships to other human beings, other species, the natural world. And so I feel like what disaster shows is that this is who we can be. It kind of shows a way forward, but we need to change the stories we tell about what a good life, a good society, and wellbeing look like as well.

Greg Dalton: I think that is a very powerful concept and one I’ve heard from other climate leaders– this idea of framing our future as one of abundance, not scarcity or limitation, which makes us selfish and scared. I had many impactful conversations this year. One that I continue to think about was with Reverend Lennox Yearwood, CEO of the Hip Hop Caucus. Early in his life he was active in environmental and social justice, but moved into climate after witnessing Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

Rev. Yearwood Jr.: Hurricane Katrina impacted me personally because I had a lot of friends in New Orleans and seeing them, well I think anybody, seeing anybody drown and suffer, I don't care if you knew them or not, it's going to impact you, but for me personally knowing those communities, knowing folks in the 7th Ward and the 9th Ward and then seeing the pictures and seeing where the water was, clearly, you realize that if the water was that high, people, could not survive that. And then you just realize that, wow, there are just so many people who are literally dying before our eyes on TV. Something must be done about this. And that was when I guess we sprang into action. at Hip Hop Caucus. We immediately had our networks together from the past election cycle, and people were being bused all around the country. So because of those networks, people were able to then connect with people. And then we just went right to work, and we haven't stopped since. I mean, I had a good friend who lived on Derjewan Street, Mama D. An amazing, beautiful, Black woman with these long, gray dreadlocks, and she lived on Derjewan Street. Pretty middle class community, but a community that was built on the backs of Black people fighting for, just dignity. And why I bring her up now is because when she stayed home, she didn't leave like many people could have, she could have left, but she stayed home and her neighbors, mostly older Black citizens who had to ride on the back of the bus and drink from the segregated water fountains. She stayed around, you know, she was in her own sixties and seventies at the time. And as her neighbors, grandmothers. and grandfathers begin to float down the street. She would go out there and catch them and tie them to the tree in front of her house. And that, for me, is why we do this work. Because no one, and I mean no one, should have to catch their neighbors floating down the street and tie them to a tree. And so for me, since that time, we, Hip Hop Caucus, created the Gulf Coast Renewal Campaign and have been working to stop, literally, anywhere, black or white, Republican or Democrat, neighbors from floating down the street.

Greg Dalton: That’s such a powerful story, reaching out to neighbors floating down the street, saving them and bringing them in. Reverend Yearwood is such a unifying force and such a compelling presence in the conversation.

Rev. Yearwood Jr.: We have a movement that puts people into buckets. They say, okay, if you're environmental justice, okay, well then go over here. That's where the Black, brown, and indigenous people go. If you're a young person, then go over here with Greta and Thunberg and other groups like that, and y'all stand over here. If you're from Appalachia over here, you're from the Arctic over there. And that is ridiculous because the entity that we're trying to stop and curtail the fossil fuel industry is not in buckets. They are not siloed. And so I'm not sure why we ever thought a siloed, segregated, climate movement would be successful, but it's not. And so I think that for me, I am in essence, a silo breaker. And so I work to break those silos to bring us together so we can be successful.

Greg Dalton: He works closely with former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who I don’t associate with hip hop, seem to be an odd pairing, but Rev. Yearwood is frank about the possibilities Bloomberg’s philanthropy provides:

Rev. Yearwood Jr.: David needs some, some stones. Cause we definitely fighting some Goliath. So if Mr. Bloomberg can provide the resources for a few folks on the frontline and first line communities have a few stones in their slingshot, then we're all for that. I understand. I'm going to be very clear. I understand what white supremacy is. I'm very clear on white privileges. But I'm also very clear that we are in a crisis, and we're in a crisis that can literally have extinction-level type events. And because of that, that means that we have to work together.

Greg Dalton: Rev and I talked about how the climate movement needs better storytellers to get the attention of folks across all interests. Take the benefits of electric vehicles over gas ones, for example.

Rev. Yearwood Jr.: There's different ways of telling the same story. I mean, if one person is saying that, Hey, you can plug in and save the planet. And that's a great story. And we need that story. Other story could be like, man, this EV is super dope and it goes really fast and it's a lot of fun to drive that may turn different people on. Sometimes, you know, you got to make things a little sexy, right? I mean, that's what's important also. I think that, I think people need to see it this differently. And that's why I think culture is so important, food and fashion. and how we view things. And also I think the movement had a tendency to only create the deep end. And that's, this is one of my things where everybody has to go to the highest diving board and leap off into the pool, into, you know, 15 foot water. The pool, though, should have two ends. It should have the deep end, which is important, but it should also have this shallow end where the babies can get in and in their little diapers, and they can play around in the water. And that's the same pool, the same water, but it allows for everybody, the babies on one side, but also those who want to dive off the deep board on the other side to be all in the same pool. I think the movement doesn't understand that. I think they just want to create this, the deep end of the pool, but you need to create the shallow end so folks can come in and learn. And I think that's what the Hip Hop Caucus is doing. They're creating a pool, the same water, same pool, same thing, but it allows for different people at different levels to feel comfortable and be in the pool at the same time.

Greg Dalton: I was awed by Rev. Yearwood’s dedication and willingness to give everything he has to the climate cause. Especially in spite of the fact that he feels his activism puts him at increased personal risk of violence.

Rev. Yearwood Jr.: I have children and I have a family and I have friends and so no doubt about it, I would love to be here in old age. But if someone feels that I am in the way they need to harm me, my goal is just that the next one will pick up the baton and run very far with it so that we can have clean air. And clean water. That's the calling sometimes that you have as an activist. You have to make that. And that's where faith comes in, for me. You know, you have to have a strong faith. To believe that it's just not you. That it's something bigger than you. And that's something that will carry on this fight. And that one day, and at this time, my goodness, with all that's going on and so much pain and so much trauma and so much hurt, you just got to believe that one day, the more that we keep fighting for justice, one day as humans, we will come together and we will make this planet a good place.

Greg Dalton: Are you saying you're willing to give your life to this cause?

Rev. Yearwood Jr.: I am more than willing to give my life to this cause because there's a righteous cause and there's a cause we're fighting for. And I know that without clean air and clean water, the next humans don't succeed. And so at some point in time, this is a temporal state regardless. And you know, I'm not going to be here forever. I’m okay with that. To know that the next generation, the same way, the exact same way that there were those who were on the plantations, there were those who were on the slave boats, there were those who were on the underground railroad, and they gave their lives so that a little black boy from Louisiana can work with a former Jewish mayor from New York to make the world better.

Greg Dalton: That’s a great way to wrap up the show, and this year, illustrating how we can reach across divides. Different kinds of people can find common cause. We have more in common than we often realize.

Ariana Brocious: It’s so true. And this episode helps remind us of the innumerable people out there who are working on climate from all different sectors and places around the world, which is an inspiring and hopeful place to end 2023. And we have lots more work ahead in 2024.

Ariana Brocious: You can listen to the full versions of all the episodes we mentioned in today’s show. Find us on your favorite podcast app or at climate one dot org.

Greg Dalton: Climate One’s empowering conversations connect all aspects of the climate emergency.

Ariana Brocious: Climate One’s empowering conversations connect all aspects of the climate emergency. To hear more, subscribe wherever you get your pods. Talking about climate can be hard-- AND it’s critical to address the transitions we need to make in all parts of society. Please help us get people talking more about climate by giving us a rating or review.

Greg Dalton: Brad Marshland is our senior producer; Our managing director is Jenny Park. Ariana Brocious is co-host, editor and producer. Austin Colón is producer and editor. Megan Biscieglia is our production manager. Wency Shaida is our development manager, Ben Testani is our communications manager. Our theme music was composed by George Young. Gloria Duffy and Philip Yun are co CEOs of The Commonwealth Club World Affairs, the nonprofit and nonpartisan forum where our program originates. I’m Greg Dalton.

4:21 - Kathy Baughman-McLeod on the dangers of heat
5:12 - Ali Zaidi on big climate initiatives in the Biden Administration
11:15 - Jane Fona on the importance of taking action
14:41 - Nalleli Cobo shares her personal story living near an oil well.
18:29 - Ralph Chami on blue whales
21:25 - Bernie Krause on how climate changes the soundscape
24:47 - Paolo Bacigalupi on writing climate fiction
28:25 - John Curtis on what we have in common
31:32 - Cory Booker on bringing people together
36:31 - Rebecca Solnit on taking the long view of progress
40:50 - Rev. Yearwood Jr. on the climate activism in the wake of Hurricane Katrina

New To Climate? Start Here.

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Rep. Ro Khanna on AI, Misinformation and Holding Big Oil Accountable

Megan Biscieglia — Wed, 04 Oct 2023 23:30:56 +0000

Rep. Ro Khanna on AI, Misinformation and Holding Big Oil Accountable

10/06/2023

The U.S. is in the midst of yet another election season, with the presidential primary campaigning well underway. Now that big pieces of legislation like the Infrastructure and Jobs Act, the CHIPS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act have become law, the upcoming elections will help determine how those laws are implemented – and whether they will be built upon or scaled back. The climate stakes are high.

Congressman Ro Khanna rose to prominence as a vocal progressive who actually gets things done in Congress. He got more bills passed than any other Democrat during the previous administration.

In 2021, as chair of a subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee, Khannapresided over historic hearings where the CEOs of the big oil companies testified under oath about climate misinformation their companies were responsible for. Khanna compared the hearings to the Big Tobacco hearings of 1994. “For many, many decades these oil companies knew that burning fossil fuels causes climate change. Their scientists have the most up-to-date science and yet they’d have executives go out and mislead the American public.”

At one pivotal moment in the hearings, Khanna asked the oil company CEOs if any of them would stop funding theAmerican Petroleum Institute’s disinformation campaign. The response? “There were crickets,” Khanna says. “I was hoping a few of them would at least say yes, we agree with you; API shouldn’t be engaged in climate disinformation.”

In March, the Biden Administration approved a controversial oil drilling project in Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve known as the Willow Project. The approval caused a significant outcry among climate and environmental activists. The administration claimed that its hands were tied because ConocoPhillips, the company behind the Willow Project, had already purchased the right to drill in that area. But recently the administration made the decision to permanently ban oil and gas drilling on 10 million acres in the reserve. It also plans to cancel seven leases the previous administration issued for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Khanna is a vocal critic of the Willow Project. He says, “There was no reason for the administration for the Department of Interior to approve that; it was a mistake.”

Congressman Khanna was also instrumental in working with Senator Joe Manchin’s office during negotiations over what would eventually be the Inflation Reduction Act. He was the only progressive to do so, at a time when other progressives were raging against Senator Manchin who saw him as standing in the way of President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda.

Khanna represents Silicon Valley and came into office with backing from big tech executives who are known for their hostility toward labor unions. Despite that, he is a staunch supporter of labor unions. Khanna says, “When I was in the Obama administration I had advocated for unionization at Tesla. I said we should be conditioning the Treasury Department funding to allowing Tesla workers to unionize.”

Looking to the implementation of the big legislative climate wins, Khanna is worried about losing aspects of the Inflation Reduction Act if Republicans gain control of Congress and the presidency. He says, “The stakes are too high to move backwards. We have had progress. We finally have climate front and center in Washington. We need to build on that progress.”

Guests

Ro Khanna

U.S. Representative (D-CA 17th District)

Green New Deal for Health (markey.senate.gov)

Oil companies face 'big tobacco moment' in Congress over their climate policies (npr.org)

Record auto profits should be used to address inequality and the climate crisis (theguardian.com)

Willow Project Explained (cnn.com)

Biden Administration to Bar Drilling on Millions of Acres in Alaska (nytimes.com)

Battle Over Electric Vehicles Is Central to Auto Strike (nytimes.com)

Note: Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. Please check the actual audio before quoting it.

Greg Dalton: This is Climate One. I'm Greg Dalton.

Ariana Brocious: And I'm Ariana Brocious.

Greg Dalton: Well, the first presidential primaries are just three months away, and I'm starting to think about what the election might mean for our climate.

Ariana Brocious: I don't want to go through another election cycle. I feel like at this point they are just never ending, and they are so negative most of the time, and there's a lot of stuff that just kind of dominates the news cycle.

Greg Dalton: Right, and divides us, and it seems like every election is the most important one of our lifetime, and yet this, there's a lot at stake for the climate and energy and a lot more. And with elections, now come fake news and misinformation campaigns trying to sway voters on social media.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah, and it's actually kind of frightening how successful some of those strategies are. Just in the renewable space alone, there have been wind and solar projects delayed or even canceled because of misinformation on social media. So it's kind of amazing how much people can be swayed.

Greg Dalton: And it's disturbing that a lot of the social media companies have laid off people recently that are content moderators whose job is to find out and suppress misinformation.You know, a little doubt can go a long way in keeping people clinging to fossil fuels. People are wary of change, and uncertainty favors the status quo. On today's episode, I have a conversation with someone who's uniquely positioned to speak about the intersection of misinformation, artificial intelligence and climate disruption.That's Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna.

Ariana Brocious: Congressman Khanna represents California's 17th district, which includes much of Silicon Valley and the first Tesla factory.

Greg Dalton: And I toured that factory years ago when it was a dark, abandoned, former GM and Toyota factory. A new assembly line was being installed for this little company that was just starting to make cars called Tesla. I was surprised by his comments about Tesla and unions. Tesla's status as a non union automaker, which gives it a cost advantage, is a big factor in the UAW strike now against GM, Ford, and Stellantis.

Ariana Brocious: And what surprised you about his comments about Tesla?

Greg Dalton: He came into office with backing from big tech executives who are known for their hostility toward labor unions. So I thought with a big factory in his district, I was a little surprised how clearly pro union he was taking the side of workers rather than the big company in his district.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah, Khanna won his seat from an eight term incumbent Democrat, who was supported by California's political establishment and labor unions. So Khanna is kind of known as a pragmatic progressive.

Greg Dalton: He is, and that irks people sometimes. He worked with Joe Manchin's office during negotiations for what eventually would become the Inflation Reduction Act at that time, progressives and many Democrats were raging against Joe Manchin.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah, he was. It's seemingly standing in the way of a lot of climate legislation. In 2021, Khanna was chair of a subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee, and he brought some attention to the role social media platforms play in spreading disinformation about fossil fuels and clean energy.

Greg Dalton: That role of social media companies doesn't get a lot of attention in the energy conversation. Images of wind turbines on fire are one example of smear campaigns on social media that sow doubt about renewables. And in fact, renewables are safe and clean.

Ariana Brocious: And maybe the more well known thing he's done recently is that Khanna presided over historic hearings where big oil executives testified under oath about their company's role in climate misinformation. This was a big deal.

Greg Dalton: It was a big deal. Let's hear a moment from the hearing when Congressman Kana asked Exxon CEO Darren Woods if the company would admit that it was a mistake when a former CEO denied the link between burning fossil fuels and climate change.

[PLAYBACK]

Ro Khanna: When I make a statement that's wrong, that most people make a statement that's wrong, they say, okay, it's a mistake. We regret it. I'm just asking you for that. You, I assume now that it's a false statement, that the company regrets making it and would acknowledge that, right.

Darren Woods: I think the expectation would be that we'd, we'd look at that at the time it was said and years ago that wasn't the case.

Ro Khanna: But forget, forget whether it was consistent or not. Can you just acknowledge that it was a mistake to make? If someone makes a mistake, just say it was a mistake. And, and you regret that that statement was out there. Would you say that?

Darren Woods: I don't think it's fair to judge something 25 years ago with what we've learned since that time.

Ro Khanna: I'm disappointed that you're not even willing to say that something is a mistake.

Greg Dalton: I have two things to say about that. First, the basic science of greenhouse gasses goes back a century and scientist Edward Teller warned the oil industry about that in the 1950s.

Ariana Brocious: So Exxon knew.

Greg Dalton: Totally Exxon knew. Second, if Exxon CEO Darren Woods makes the admission Khanna was seeking, the company could be legally liable.

Ariana Brocious: But that’s exactly the point, isn’t it? That Congressman Khanna and others believe Big Oil should be liable for the harm its products have caused.

Greg Dalton: It is indeed the point. Oil companies are trapped by decades of deceit, and that’s what made these hearings so compelling and interesting.

Ro Khanna: Well, it’s a historic hearing similar to the big tobacco hearings. Until then these big oil CEOs had never been brought to the United States Congress to explain their lies about the cause of climate change for many, many decades these oil companies knew that burning fossil fuels causes climate change. Their scientists have the most up-to-date science and yet they’d have executives go out and mislead the American public. So we threatened to subpoena them and we got all of the big executives in front of us and millions of documents where they more or less admitted that in the past they had misled the American people about burning fossil fuels and the cause of climate change. And we try to hold them accountable for their statements. A lot of that the evidence that we discovered is now part of efforts by activists in litigation to hold these big oil companies accountable.

Greg Dalton: And there's an amazing moment in that hearing where you go and kind of, for that kind of nicotine is not addictive moment where you tell the big oil CEOs they could stop funding the American Petroleum Institute's disinformation campaign

[PLAYBACK: You could tell them to knock it off. For the sake of the planet. Would any of you take the opportunity and look at API and say ‘stop it? ANY of you??”

Greg Dalton:What did you expect would happen and what happened in that moment?

Ro Khanna: Well, there were crickets. I was hoping a few of them would at least say yes, we agree with you, API shouldn’t be engaged in climate disinformation. But these big oil companies have become very sophisticated. They don't engage directly now in the climate disinformation they used to in the past, just tell outright lies. Now they have a third-party group that is doing the campaign to spread this misinformation to try to block legislation. They have a fee on methane or to block climate legislation ending fossil fuel subsidies. They let the American Petroleum Institute do their advocacy, put out misinformation and they fund these groups and it’s a really cynical strategy.

Greg Dalton: The committee released a report detailing some of that strategy. What do you believe are some of the most important takeaways from those millions of documents that you obtained?

Ro Khanna: The most important takeaway’s that these companies still they have not come clean. I mean they were plotting against Sunrise kids when the Sunrise Movement was mobilizing and talking about how they could stop these kids from activism. They are continuing to mislead the American public now is claiming that they are clean companies and yet devoting a very small fraction of their budget actually to clean technology. They talk about “regulating” Scope 1 or Scope 2 emissions which are basically the emissions coming out of their actual facilities. But not the emissions that are caused by the burning of oil or gas themselves, which is the vast majority of emissions. So these companies are continuing to engage in misinformation and there was no accountability.

Greg Dalton: Well, what personal responsibility do, I drive electric cars, I don't know what you drive or for people who fly and do burn fossil fuels. Isn’t there some also personal responsibility? I mean, I understand that there's deception from the suppliers. But what's the responsibility of individuals?

Ro Khanna: Oh, I think there is obviously some responsibility to have carbon offsets or to live responsibly. But I don't think that this issue is an individual responsibility issue. I mean when you said, well, let’s recycle or let's do small things. This is a systemic issue where you had certain corporations make billions of dollars on basically being able to pollute the climate. And what we really need is policy, a macro policy that is gonna change that. The most important thing being massive investments in renewable energy is in public transportation. But the second thing being having some price on carbon. And if we have that kind of price on carbon, then we don't have these negative externalities. So I think it's important for all of us to be conscientious but it's really a societal issue.

Greg Dalton: Big oil companies like BP are now reducing their promise to reduce emissions given their $27 billion in profits in 2022. Others are also walking back their emission reduction goals as well. They’re also doing what the stock market incentivizes them to do, right, they’re making profits. That's what they're in the business to do and that's what, you know, some retirees who own oil and stock companies for their dividends are investing them to do. So what do you say about that they're just responding to the market doing what they're supposed to do?

Ro Khanna: Well, first I say that we need to stop subsidizing them. I mean the US taxpayer shouldn’t be giving them the kind of depreciation tax exemptions and tax credits that we do. So we have all these kind of subsidies. Those need to stop. The second thing is that they need to be transparent. It's fine for them to be able to make a profit, but they shouldn't be making profits by misleading the American public. Either there should be an accountability for the past lies that some of these companies have told and there should be a check on what they're saying about their climate goals and whether they’re meeting them. I mean they have to have transparency. And the third thing is they should not be allowed to have excess profits in making an advantage in taking advantage of a war. So a lot of these companies after we went to war with Ukraine started to have extraordinary profits in a time of emergency. And that's why a proposal with Sheldon Whitehouse, the windfall profits tax saying you can't just have these record profits at a time where Americans are hurting.

Greg Dalton: Right. And there's been a lot of talk about reducing subsidies globally fossil fuel subsidies were $7 trillion in 2022 or 7% of GDP according to the IMF. I just want to say that again, 7% of GDP is fossil fuel subsidies. US is one of the biggest offenders, though politicians live in fear of drivers angry about gas prices. If fossil fuel subsidies go away there could be some increase in fossil fuel prices that leads to angry voters, Yellow Jackets in France etc. Is there a political system really ready for that?

Ro Khanna: Well, one, we could stop the export of oil. We used to have the ban on the export of oil from 1973 to 2015. That would reduce CO2 emission and it also would help with gas prices. Second, there are ways of having some price and carbon without having the working-class and middle-class suffer. You could tax the large corporations and provide a dividend to the working and middle class from that taxation to make sure that the burden is really falling on those who are profiting. And I don't think that ending some of these subsidies would really drive up the price of gas at the pump. These companies are making record profits. And the challenge on the price of the pump was the decisions in Ukraine, the war in Ukraine and the Saudi decision to cut in OPEC. And that's where we need to be tougher and that we shouldn’t be exporting our oil.

Greg Dalton: I interviewed a board member of ConocoPhillips earlier this year. And he would say actually that oil companies are not very good at making money. While they have some years like 2022 eye-popping profits, there are some years, they lose a lot of money. And critics of the industry often look at the profitable years and ignore the years where they lose money. And over time, you know, this is Arjun Murti, he’s on the board of ConocoPhillips is actually oil companies are not so good at making money. So, you know, are you cherry picking your timeframe there and if you look broadly they don't make as much money, you know, they make a lot they lose a lot over time.

Ro Khanna: Well, that's an argument for diversification of these companies into renewable energy. And it is an argument for American consumers of why we want to transition to a less volatile energy supplies. I mean we don't want a situation where you got three bucks gas going up to 4, 5, 6 bucks gas and wildly fluctuating profit. So that is an argument for why we shouldn’t be subsidizing the oil and gas industry and should be having more investment in renewable energy.

Greg Dalton: So what's happening now? You're in the minority. Republicans are in control of the House. They have a very different agenda. They got this project 2025 looking at setting an agenda for Republican agenda if they win the White House next year. So how’s the energy landscape shifted now that you're in the minority and Republicans are in charge of the House?

Ro Khanna: Well, there’s no attention to the climate. I mean my committee was disbanded. The committee I chaired where we had the historic hearings on big oil now no longer exist is now called the energy subcommittee where the goal is just to see how you can have unimpeded support for the big oil and gas industry. So there is no talk about emissions. There's no talk about the 162 million greenhouse gases that are emitted every day. It is just a denial of climate.

Greg Dalton: You represent Silicon Valley, you know, your family traces back to India. There’s been horrific heat impacts in India. We’ve seen what happened in Maui. The Canadian wildfires. How have you personally experienced the impacts of climate change from Pakistan around the world, it seems like every day we open the paper there's something happening.

Ro Khanna: Well, the impacts haven’t just been international, they've been local. I mean, obviously the wildfires in California have been awful. The smoke in Washington DC from the Canadian wildfires has been devastating. I have had people I know in Vermont in New Hampshire who have flooding. And then it’s just been heartbreaking to see what's happened in Hawaii. And you point out that there are drought conditions in other parts of the world and this is gonna hurt, particularly farmers in our ability to produce enough food in different parts of the world. So climate change is already taking place. We’re seeing the consequences. And the real question is are we finally gonna have the will to act. I mean I was very disappointed with the decision to have the Willow Pipeline, which is one of the largest oil projects on public land. I mean that is just a punch to the gut for those of us who believe that we need to be investing in renewable energy and transitioning away from an entrenched fossil fuel future.

Greg Dalton: On Climate One today, a conversation with Rep. Ro Khanna. If you missed a previous episode, or want to hear more of Climate One’s empowering conversations, subscribe to our podcast wherever you get your pods.

Greg Dalton: Coming up, young voters are demanding politicians do more to address the climate crisis.

Ro Khanna: They are right to be angry at Washington not doing enough to recognize the climate crisis or to take the types of action we need which is to end the fossil fuel subsidy. Declare a climate emergency. Stop drilling on public lands.

Greg Dalton: That’s up next, when Climate One continues

Greg Dalton: This is Climate One. I’m Greg Dalton

Ariana Brocious: And I’m Ariana Brocious.

Greg Dalton: In March, the Biden Administration approved a controversial oil drilling project in Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve known as the Willow Project. The approval caused a significant outcry among climate and environmental activists.

Ariana Brocious: Yes, though the administration claimed that its hands were tied because ConocoPhillips, the company behind the Willow Project, had already purchased the right to drill in that area.

Greg Dalton: Joe Biden was elected to restore the rule of law. Still, environmentalists say this commits us to burning more fossil fuels at a time when we need to be dramatically cutting emissions.

Ariana Brocious: But recently the administration made the decision to permanently ban oil and gas drilling on 10 million acres in the reserve. It also plans to cancel seven leases the previous administration issued for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Greg Dalton: Which means the administration is doing what it said it couldn't do when it approved Willow. Let’s get back to my conversation with Congressman Ro Khanna, who is a vocal critic of the Willow project.

Ro Khanna: The president ran on saying no new drilling on public lands. No new oil drilling there. Yet the Conoco could have taken the administration to court and the authority may have been challenge and we could've seen how it would have resolved. But there was no reason for the administration for the Department of Interior to approve that; it was a mistake.

Greg Dalton: Right. But there is definitely a shift. Do you think that the Biden administration is worried? What I've heard is they have a problem with young voters who turned out for him in 2020 and they look at Willow and saying, you know, there’s already an enthusiasm gap for Joe Biden’s administration. Are you concerned about young climate conscious voters turning out in ’24?

Ro Khanna: I am. They really were disappointed with the Willow project. They really were disappointed with Mountain Valley Pipeline. Which is a shame because the Inflation Reduction Act was such a win, such a win for climate. The fact that the president is trying to create the Climate Civilian Core through executive order is a win for climate. But these moves were really unforced errors and they sent a very disheartening message to young activists. And when I meet young activists it’s one of the first things they bring up. And so we need to address it, and I'm glad the administration is taking corrective action.

Greg Dalton: You mentioned young activists. There’s a group called Climate Defiance and we’ve seen recently people gluing themselves to airplane runways, you know, disrupting even going after Democrats governor of Massachusetts, etc. I saw a video on Instagram or TikTok where they actually were more friendly toward you. There's a growing somewhat radical youth protest movement because they're scared and they don't see change happening. How do you see that Climate Defiance group and those kinds of more confrontational protests even going after Democrats?

Ro Khanna: I respect them. I mean they’re nonviolent protests. So obviously I don't agree with anything that crosses the line into violence or vandalism. Climate Defiance has been perfectly peaceful. All they’re doing is disrupting a speech or a hearing to make their point. And they are right to be angry at Washington not doing enough to recognize the climate crisis or to take the types of action we need, which is to end the fossil fuel subsidy. Declare a climate emergency. Stop drilling on public lands. These are very commonsense demands that a lot of the young folks have. And they’re frustrated that we haven't been able to do that even with a Democratic administration.

Greg Dalton: Right. The president says he effectively has declared a climate emergency though that doesn't unlock kind of the emergency powers. But, you know, some of those people that are being targeted by young protesters say, hey, we’re the good guys we’re doing as much as we can within the constraints that we have, you know because we have to worry about, I don’t know, swing voters, suburban women in ‘24 who might be, you know don't want prices to go up or are more moderate. Do you recognize a line the administration is trying to walk there looking at the whole political landscape and swing moderate suburban voters?

Ro Khanna: No, because I think one of the things that a climate emergency would allow them to do is put a ban on exporting oil, which is a Richard Nixon policy in 1973 in which we had until 2015. And the reason that was overturned was basically a handout to big oil companies to be able to export this oil for massive profits. And that is increasing the export, the climate carbon footprint, but it's also raising the price of gas because we’re selling it on a global market instead of domestically. So I believe there are solutions that both are good for American consumers and also good for the climate. The Willow project had nothing to do with swing voters. All of that, even by ConocoPhillips would be used for export. It's not gonna help reduce the price and it's years and years down the line. So my sense is that these are areas where we wouldn't be losing swing voters and could be standing with the climate activists.

Greg Dalton: In the first half of 2023, the US became the world's largest exporter for liquefied natural gas. Now a massive new LNG export terminal called CP2 is proposed for the Louisiana coast. Bill McKibben wrote about this in The New Yorker. It would have 20 times a lifetime emission of the Willow project underway in the Arctic that you mention. The US Department of Energy is expected to approve or deny an expanded export permit for CP2 this fall. What's at stake and what should the Biden administration do?

Ro Khanna: It would be a big mistake for them to approve a carte blanche export license there. This is as Bill McKibben writes the fight for like the Keystone Pipeline. And young activists are already paying attention to this. It's one thing to have some liquefied natural gas going to our European allies in a time where we have a war in Ukraine. But we don't need something that's going to have these 20 times the impact and it's a horrible message on reducing emissions. What the climate activists are saying is it's not enough just to have investments in electric vehicle battery plants and investments in solar and wind. That we can't continue to entrench and build new fossil fuel infrastructure and expect that CO2 emissions are going go down or that we’re gonna make any dent in the 162 million number of greenhouse gas particles that we emit every day.

Greg Dalton: Right. Though some would say that's really investors problem whether they gonna invest in that facility or not. Investors might lose money if that gas becomes unburnable on markets there. Is it really the government to say, you know, tell people whether you’re gonna win or lose on that? Granted, the International Energy Agency has said we don't need more fossil fuel infrastructure. We don't need to discover more. There are already enough fossil fuels on the balance sheets of these big companies to fry our home. So it does seem to be insanity to continue doing it. But isn’t that the choice of companies in a free market to do it?

Ro Khanna: Well, it would be the choice of company if it was appropriately priced. But the companies are bearing the gains of selling liquefied natural gas or the oil out without the cost of the harm they're doing to the environment than all of us. And that's because there's no price on carbon. And so if there were an appropriate price then you’d have a functional market. But you don't, and that's why the government has to step in. And this president has said that he did not want more public drilling, drilling on public lands. I'm not sure on the CP2 if that's in private land or public land. But the administration should be taking actions to stop further entrenching fossil fuel infrastructure that is clearly destructive to the environment.

Greg Dalton: Sen. Joe Manchin who was frustrated a lot of people in his own party and sort of scaling down and shaping what became the Inflation Reduction Act. You say that there is a place for Joe Manchin in the Democratic Party. How do you approach him and other Democrats from fossil fuel states, you know, Robert Byrd before him? Jon Tester is facing a tough fight in Montana. You’re part of the Progressive Caucus in the House. How do you see moderate Democrats who are in perhaps a different place on fossil fuels and climate than you are?

Ro Khanna: Well, first of all we need to recognize that the voters get to decide who to send up here and we've got to work with who comes here to make progress. And that's why for almost a year I was the only one Democrat in meetings with Joe Manchin and bipartisan meetings saying whatever is going to come in the Inflation Reduction Act, Manchin’s gonna have to sign off. That was just the reality. And when a lot of other people in the progressive world in the House even some in the White House said, written them off, I was there some criticism on my left saying, no, we’ve got to work with him, we've got to figure out how to do it. And I give Sen. Schumer credit for pulling that deal together. And where I say I played some role is then to get progressives to help support that deal that Schumer and Manchin came up with. Had we not done that we wouldn’t have had any of the Inflation Reduction Act. So I do believe we have to work in the system we have to make progress and that's why often described as progressive was reasonable or wants to compromise to get things done. One more point, we have a massive investment in places like West Virginia places that are traditionally fossil fuel states in new industry disproportionate investment to incentivize them for making this kind of a transition.

Greg Dalton: As we record this President Biden is joining a UAW picket line in Michigan. Donald Trump is going there tomorrow. We have this kind of interesting theater with presidents joining UAW striking workers on strike against GM and Stellantis the owner of Dodge and Jeep Fords, you know, seems to be on a path toward some kind of deal a little bit to the side here now. But workers are concerned about EVs that require fewer workers to build fewer parts, fewer mechanics to take care of them. So how do you address the organized labor demands and the real concerns about this transition to electric vehicles and job security?

Ro Khanna: I was out there in Wayne, Michigan and Toledo, Ohio with the United Auto Workers. And I'm proud of them standing up for fair wages. And it's wonderful actually in this country that we have a president and a former president, both rushing and eager to go there. I mean I believe President Biden has done a lot more actually for workers. But it just shows the sympathy that America has for the workers. Here's what I’d say about electric vehicles. Obviously, it takes less autoworkers to make an electric vehicle. And even if you factor in the battery plant and the supply chains it’s still probably less. But the reality is electric vehicles are going to exist. They’re a percentage of the global market. We can debate whether they’re gonna be 50%, 30% 20% 10%. No one really knows. But there are certainly gonna be a significant percentage. You yourself said you have an electric vehicle. So the question becomes, should those electric vehicles be made in the United States or in China. In my view, they should be made in the United States and they should have good union jobs. Then yes, if you want to make internal combustion engines while those are being made those are good jobs. So the new jobs for this new market should be American jobs and pay well. And that's the debate with UAW at the heart of the debate is should these battery plants should the electric vehicle supply chain be unionized. I believe it should.

Greg Dalton: Though a lot of the investment as, you know, is going to the southeast and right to work states. And the Biden administration through Inflation Reduction Act try to have some domestic content rules, labor rules, etc. But the reality is that, you know, even Ford and some of these US companies are moving to the southeast where there is unions or if not outlawed, make very difficult. That’s just where the industry is going, right. And there’s a concern that this strike could make Ford and Stellantis a unionized car less competitive against other companies.

Ro Khanna: Well, the master agreement would cover those plants in Kentucky and Tennessee and the south. And that's why it's important that they get the master agreement the UAW. In terms of the competitiveness. I mean you have record profits for the big three. You’ve got CEOs that are making $30 million a year. You've got $5 billion in stock buyback. So it's hard for these companies to plead poverty or competitiveness when the workers took massive cuts in 2008 and still haven't been made whole and people see these record profits of these companies. I do believe the administration should have had more safeguards to make sure that if you’re gonna get taxpayer money there needs to be the right to organize. There need to be prevailing wages.

Greg Dalton: Are you concerned about, say, partnering with companies from China as Ford has done?

Ro Khanna: I am, especially if the labor standards aren’t being met. And if the workers aren’t getting a fair wage, I mean, there are also alternative companies that Ford and other companies can look at. Look, there are two competing issues. One is that we have as strong and robust green transition. And the other is how do we have workers paid appropriately and with dignity. And I don't think that in the rush to just try to achieve one goal we can overlook the other goal. Because if you don't have workers buy-in, then you're not gonna get the support public support for the clean policies, clean energy policies. And Shawn Fain and I wrote an op-ed saying the two big challenges of our time are income inequality and the climate crisis. We need to tackle both the Gen Z for change groups, the young voters on climate recognize that. If you go to their social media pages, you'll see some of the strongest support from Gen Z voters for the UAW workers.

Greg Dalton: The largest EV manufacturer in the world is Tesla whose first factory is in your district. The California Department of Fair Housing and Employment sued Tesla last year, alleging discrimination against black workers who are severely underrepresented in the ranks of executive senior officials and managers. Company’s faced other litigation regarding worker safety. As a person who represents Tesla workers presumably if you live around that Fremont factory, how concerned are you about Tesla and its place in this ecosystem and its labor practices?

Ro Khanna: Well, when I was in the Obama administration I had advocated for the unionization at Tesla. I said we should be conditioning the Treasury Department funding to allowing Tesla workers to unionize. And I was outspoken about that and I have remained outspoken about it, and it is unfortunate that the Tesla workforce hasn’t unionized. That's a real concern in this electric vehicle transition.

Greg Dalton: Legacy auto companies and even oil and gas companies have more diverse workforces than some of the solar and what’s called clean energy companies. So where's the US making progress on that front bringing workers, workers of color into this new economy so that they’re not left behind. President Biden, you know, has this Justice40 Initiative trying to put a lot of placement on that. What do you think is happening and where does more work need to be done?

Ro Khanna: Well, we need to make sure that these funds that are going from the IRA are going to places that are union-friendly towns that are going to communities of color. And the investments are going into cities that have large diverse populations. And that we have to be intentional about that, and we need to be intentional in the funds for workforce training. And metrics in measuring that so that we don't just have all of this funding go without any concern about the geography or the inclusivity of the support.

Greg Dalton: This is Climate One. Coming up, what would a Green New Deal for Health mean for victims of climate disasters?

Ro Khanna: We need to have that kind of a infrastructure so that when there are climate emergencies people can get the health care that they need. We don't have that. We didn't have that with the flooding in Vermont. We didn't have that with the emergency that we saw in Hawaii. (:16)

Greg Dalton: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

Greg Dalton: This is Climate One. I’m Greg Dalton. The Inflation Reduction Act is the biggest energy and climate bill this country has ever passed. It’s a huge bill and success will depend on how it's implemented. In my conversation with Congressman Ro Khanna, I asked him what the law gets right and where it can be improved.

Ro Khanna: It was a historic investment. I mean the largest investment ever. I think it does an incredible job in getting solar and wind and electric vehicle and battery plants off the ground in the United States. What it needs to improve is more labor checks so that the money shouldn’t have just been going without conditions for allowing the right to unionize, allowing for prevailing wage. And there needs to be more scale of the investment. I mean to put it in context it's $300 billion over 10 years. Our defense budget in the same time will be close to eight or $9 trillion. So it's an investment. But it still dwarfs the investments we’re making in our military when the climate crisis is a huge existential threat. And we need to have more investment in public transportation and also ending the fossil fuel subsidies and taking policy. So we aren’t just entrenching new fossil fuel infrastructure which the Inflation Reduction Act didn’t really address.

Greg Dalton: Implementation of the IRA the Inflation Reduction Act is going to be critical to meeting US emission reduction goals. About 43% the EPA believes the law is capable of. But what are some of the obstacles are buried you see to implementing the IRA because certainly there are Republican governors who and others who may not be so invested in the success of it.

Ro Khanna: One is the workforce. I mean we need to have training and investment in making sure that we have the workforce to be able to do all the new industrialization that is there. Second is to make sure that the wages are good and that people have the right to organize and bargain so that these new jobs are considered good jobs not just a numerical job but a job that can be family supporting for the middle class. And third, that there is accountability and that we're monitoring the timelines of these projects and not getting delayed in bureaucracy and red tape. So that the American people know we’re capable of doing big things. I mean the Empire State building, most famously was built in a year. And there was a sense at one point in time that America could do big things fast. We've got to have that same kind of urgency. When Gov. Shapiro got the I-95 correctly built after the huge storm in a few weeks there was such a national pride because we weren’t used to that. And we need to be able to do that at the federal level.

Greg Dalton: Utah Republican John Curtis is chair of the Conservative Climate Caucus in the house. He’s less concerned about getting all fossil fuels and I am and we had a good conversation recently on the show. Do you talk to him do you think you can find common ground with conservatives and other Republicans on energy and climate?

Ro Khanna: It’s been hard on climate. I talked and work with Republicans all the time. I work with Nancy Mace on child care. I work with Marco Rubio on economic development. I guess one place there is possible common ground is on the steel bill that I'm talking about. Build new steel plants in America for national security. And it just so happens that those things will have a lower carbon footprint. But if you lead with the Republicans with less lower carbon footprints they’ll probably walk away. If you say let's produce things in America build things in America. They may be open to it and then it turns out the new technology is better on CO2 emissions. The other places, clean air, clean water, let's get PFAS out of communities. Those arguments also can appeal sometimes to more Republican leaning voters and members of Congress who come from a tradition of sometimes stewardship of the land stewardship of the air from a faith tradition. I mean my faith in terms of my Hindu faith is certainly one of respect for the world and planet that we live in and all living organisms that there is a divinity to that. And other faith traditions have the same kind of reverence for the land and the water and our obligation to it. And that is a language that sometimes finds common ground with Republicans.

Greg Dalton: I think language is key and often a barrier that we use it, that language be some coded, you know, you could do a lot about climate if you don't use that C word and use other words.

Ro Khanna: Well, I talk about production and new industrialization and the opportunity to build new things because those are values that many Americans have that Republicans have too. I talk about being stewards of the land and stewards of the planet that we've inherited and responsible stewards about it. I talk about clean air and clean water and healthy communities which we all want. I also acknowledge that there’s genuine room for debate that a lot of times these are values issues and you can't just as scientists have the last word. A lot of time what we’re debating is the probability risk of some really bad consequence worth avoiding and the cost of it may be some economic short-term tax or short-term cost. And that's a values question. It's not simply a scientific question. And a lot of times I think when the other side when you disguise a values question for a scientific question and call people ignorant of science when really, they’re expressing a desire for different values it’s not as persuasive and it actually has the perverse consequences of politicizing science. So a lot of times my view is we should be debating the values and not just hiding behind the science. A lot of that was COVID, I mean, I was very much for masking and I was for a shutdown when it happened. But those are values decisions. Those are saying I’m comfortable with those decisions and that trade-off. It wasn't just a scientific question.

Greg Dalton: That's different than what we often hear from the left, which is, you know, march on science defend science. The reality is most Americans don't know a scientist, don't ever talk to a scientist don't particularly like or fondly remember high school chemistry and physics. So you’re saying talk about values. Science is important, but don't lead with science which is a lot of climate conversations, people are waving that climate stick.

Ro Khanna: Well, this comes from the sense of how do we understand science in a democracy. Of course, we need more scientific literacy. Of course, we need more climate literacy in our schools and people should have that. But we run the risk of politicizing science when we lead with the scientist. Instead scientists should be experts that people can look to but there should be a recognition of values. Then we can make the argument about why we should care about these issues.

Greg Dalton: The Biden administration recently issued a directive requiring the US federal government which purchased $600 billion in goods and services annually to include the social cost of carbon and construction purchasing and other activities. This is kind of a wonky number but it's basically some of the extra turnout we’re talking about earlier the social cost, Biden has set the new number reportedly close to $190 a ton more than four times what it was in the Obama years. So how important is the social cost of carbon and how do you explain it to people because it’s kind of hard to follow.

Ro Khanna: That’s a big step by the president. Sheldon Whitehouse, the senator from Rhode Island, has been pushing this for years. And all it says is that when you're doing business with the federal government, we should look at what the actual cost of what you're selling is. And that's not just the price you're charging. But it's also the carbon that you’re emitting into the atmosphere. And the federal government has huge influence because we’re a big purchaser of goods and services. And so if we can help incentivize people to lower their carbon footprint. that can have a dramatic impact on CO2 emissions in the United States.

Greg Dalton: In April of 2023, you and Sen. Ed Markey introduced the Green New Deal for health. Green New Deal is kind of a rallying cry. It seems to be not really active policy inside Washington. Can you explain what the Green New Deal for health contains and why you're proposing it now.

Ro Khanna: All the Green New Deal means as I understand it, is that we need massive reindustrialization and development in the United States that can lower the carbon footprint. And there's this opportunity as we have to make the new steel new aluminum new cement to do so and processes that will actually lower the carbon footprint and create jobs. With the Green New Deal for health, it actually was a bit prescient, and we did it in April of 2023. And then you have the awful heartbreaking tragedy in Maui. And you saw the need for healthcare systems and emergency response systems to be adaptive to climate emergencies. We don't have that. We didn't have that with the flooding in Vermont. We didn't have that with the emergency that we saw in Hawaii. We didn't have it fully on the storms we saw in Florida. So this is just saying that we need to have that kind of a infrastructure so that when there are climate emergencies people can get the health care that they need.

Greg Dalton: Right. And those costs are just soaring. And we don't seem to sort of, people don't personally feel that cost. They think it comes from, I don’t know, Uncle Sam's pocket somehow that's not related to their taxes. How long can the federal government continue to run to the rescue of these disasters that are happening with increased intensity and frequency?

Ro Khanna: Well, that’s exactly the point of why we need the climate investment. Because if we don't have these investments the cost of these catastrophes is gonna be far more. Now people say, well, even if we do it, what about China, what about India, what about the rest of the world? Well, America will lead. We always have lead. And that leading shapes the markets shape the behavior of other countries, especially if we end up including a carbon tax at the border. We can really shape global markets to reduce global emissions. We are the largest economy in the world. And especially working with Europe we can have that kind of impact.

Greg Dalton: And speaking of the global impacts of this. Climate is obviously a global issue. Vladimir Putin has weaponized fossil fuels in his invasion of Ukraine, you referenced that earlier. Republicans have gone squishy on supporting the Ukrainian people defending their homeland and public support for US funding is softening. The AI tools in deep fakes are much more sophisticated than they were in the 2016 election. Is that on your radar this potential what some people, Scott Galloway, a podcast who I listen to and others have said, there’s a coming wave of Russian disinformation on oil and gas motivated by Ukraine and aimed at the US election.

Ro Khanna: I'm very concerned about the Russian disinformation. I’m concerned about Chinese disinformation. When I was in Taiwan there was so much concern about Chinese propaganda. And there’s gonna be concern about Russian propaganda in the United States. And that's why we need to have some rules adopted by Congress about the use of deep fakes, about the use of AI for propaganda and disinformation. And we need our federal agencies FTC, FEC to try to have those rules before 2024. I fear we can barely keep the government open. It's gonna be hard to come to that consensus with Republicans who may have an incentive in doing anything to aid the Trump campaign. But we really need to have some rules of accountability.

Greg Dalton: So as we look forward, you know, there’s concern about Russian disinformation energy and this clean transition is gonna be very much at the center of the election, as you see with Donald Trump and Joe Biden going to Michigan this week. You know, how do you think that energy is gonna play out in the 2024 election?

Ro Khanna: We are going to have new energy sources in the world. That is obvious. The question is, will America lead in them or are we going to say, well, we just want to lead in oil and gas and let China and other countries lead in the new energy sources. That has never been the American way. That would be like saying well, we should just continue to lead in the analog world and let China lead in technology. What a colossal mistake that would have been. I want America to lead in the clean energy race. I want those jobs to be good paying union jobs or high-paying jobs in communities. And I want us to help re-industrialize and reinvigorate this country's economic prosperity with this opportunity that we made a mistake by hollowing out our middle-class working-class industrial base. Now we have this opportunity to rebuild it in a way that has a lower carbon footprint. Let's take this opportunity not just to tackle climate but to transform the economy in a way that’s gonna uplift people like the UAW autoworkers who are striking. And that's why that strike is so critical. These new EV jobs these new solar jobs. These new climate jobs have to be good paying jobs and they have to be at least as good as the old jobs.

Greg Dalton: And a lot of those jobs are happening in red districts, even perhaps represented by members of Congress who voted against that. But there's gonna be a significant effort to repeal, to claw some of that back. What are you most concerned about losing in the IRA if it gets, you know, rolled back?

Ro Khanna: I’m most concerned about losing some of the tax incentives for electric vehicles that could just shut down or reverse the market. I'm concerned about losing the funding for new solar and wind plants. I'm concerned about losing the incentives to invest in new clean technology. And if we had that happen, if we had Donald Trump come and had a Republican House and Senate, and that was set back. It could set us back decades because the cleantech investors and the private sector will say we can’t trust Washington they do one thing and then they'd take it away. Let's stay away from this industry. So that's really what's at stake. That's what I tell my friend, my younger climate activist friends whose frustrations I share about Willow and Mountain Valley Pipeline and the expansion of oil drilling in the IRA. And who I believe are right to be demanding climate emergency. I say the stakes are too high to move backwards. We have had progress. We finally have climate front and center in Washington. We need to build on that progress.

Greg Dalton: Congressman Ro Khanna, thanks for coming on Climate One today and sharing your insights. We appreciate it very much.

Ro Khanna: Thank you. Really appreciate you having me.

Greg Dalton: Climate One’s empowering conversations connect all aspects of the climate emergency. To hear more, subscribe wherever you get your pods.

Ariana Brocious: POD version: Climate One’s empowering conversations connect all aspects of the climate emergency. Talking about climate can be hard-- AND it’s critical to address the transitions we need to make in all parts of society. Please help us get people talking more about climate by giving us a rating or review. You can do it right now on your device. You can also help by sending a link to this episode to a friend. On our new website you can create and share playlists focused on topics including food, energy, EVs, activism. By sharing you can help people have their own deeper climate conversations.

Greg Dalton: Brad Marshland is our senior producer; Our managing director is Jenny Park. Ariana Brocious is co-host, editor and producer. Austin Colón is producer and editor. Megan Biscieglia is our production manager. Wency Shaida is our development manager, Ben Testani is our communications manager. Our theme music was composed by George Young (and arranged by Matt Willcox). Gloria Duffy is CEO of The Commonwealth Club of California, the nonprofit and nonpartisan forum where our program originates. I’m Greg Dalton.

4:58 - Ro Khanna on the historic big oil congressional hearings
11:40 - Ro Khanna on fixing energy policy
18:21 - Ro Khanna on the Willow Project
21:28 - Ro Khanna on banning the export of US Oil
25:54 - Ro Khanna on working with members of congress who don’t share his views
27:57 - Ro Khanna on the UAW strikes
32:20 - Ro Khanna on Tesla and Unions
34:42 - Ro Khanna on what the IRA gets right and what can be improved
41:20 - Ro Khanna on communicating values
46:10 - Ro Khanna on misinformation and the 2024 election

Play

Building a Better Battery Supply Chain with JB Straubel and Aimee Boulanger

BenTestani — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 19:49:29 +0000

Building a Better Battery Supply Chain with JB Straubel and Aimee Boulanger

07/28/2023

Batteries are a critical part of the transition away from fossil fuels. From electric vehicles to grid scale storage for wind and solar, demand for batteries is expected to grow 500% by 2030. In order to meet that demand, we’re going to need a lot more batteries. And while companies like JB Straubel’s Redwood Materials are building capacity for recycling, for now that means a lot more mining. How do we build a battery supply chain that meets demand and reduces harm?

This episode is underwritten by ClimateWorks.

Guests

JB Straubel

Founder and CEO, Redwood Materials

Aimee Boulanger

Executive Director, Initiative for Responsible Mining

The DRC Mining Industry: Child Labor and Formalization of Small-Scale Mining (wilsoncenter.org)

Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (responsiblemining.net)

Supply Chain Traceability (rmi.org)

Tesla cofounder’s Redwood shows 95% efficiency in battery recycling pilot (electrek.co)

Dead EV batteries turn to gold with U.S. incentives (cnbc.com)

How does an EV battery actually work? (technologyreview.com)

Note: Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. Please check the actual audio before quoting it.

Ariana Brocious: This is Climate One. I’m Ariana Brocious.

Batteries are a critical part of our transition away from fossil fuels. From EVs to grid scale storage for wind and solar, demand for batteries is expected to grow 500% by 2030. While there are some exploring new battery technologies, for now, making lithium ion batteries requires a lot of earth-bound materials. Lithium mines around the world are opening or expanding, and in the Congo, children as young as six carry sacks of cobalt-laced rocks on their backs. Whether in the U.S. or abroad, the mining industry has a bad humanitarian and environmental track record.

Aimee Boulanger: There is not a country in the world with laws sufficient to prevent significant harm where mining happens.

Ariana Brocious: That’s Aimee Boulanger, Executive Director at the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance, who is working to change that. We’ll hear more from her later in the episode. Part of this supply challenge could be addressed by reusing materials from batteries that have already been made. That's what JB Straubel, Founder and CEO of Redwood Materials, hopes to accomplish.

JB Straubel: The batteries technically they're 99 or more percent reusable. All the lithium, the nickel, the copper, and cobalt, all those critical metals.

Ariana Brocious: Straubel is also former Chief Technology Officer and current board member at Tesla. This episode is underwritten by ClimateWorks. Greg Dalton spoke with JB Straubel in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California, starting with how Straubel became dedicated to focusing on climate solutions.

JB Straubel: Well, probably a passion for the technology in the engineering first. You know, that’s kind of what drew me into climate and sustainability. had a lot of friends in college that were hardcore environmentalists and even activists. I didn't totally understand where they were coming from initially, but I think I've kind of, you know, migrated to really see that side of things. And initially for me it was just a love for the technology and feeling like it was the right way to engineer systems. Where you didn't have sort of some open-ended waste or some, you know, constrained material that would eventually run out. It was very elegant.

Greg Dalton: Right. So there’s many different pathways. People come through technology or a connection to the earth, or perhaps economic opportunity. So how have you come to realize, like your environmental friends, the urgency that they are feeling or they’re conveying.

JB Straubel: Well, I think it's a combination of watching some of the effects you know, basically the commutative effects of what we’re doing. Seeing the trajectory and how difficult it is to actually change some of these industrial systems to me that really resonates. And brings a sense of urgency to this whole problem which is we can't just sort of wake up one day and flip a switch and decide, oh, okay, yeah, we really should stop burning fossil fuels let's do that today. It's a very pervasive very challenging problem. And it touches so many parts of our lives that we need to prepare and really engineer toward a solution way, way ahead of time.

Greg Dalton: Right. And without that scientific urgency business will go at the rate that's comfortable for business which is not fast enough. Tesla's first production model the Roadster used about 6800 batteries essentially laptop battery strung together.

JB Straubel: 6831, actually.

Greg Dalton: 6831. My producer wrote that I rounded it up. Looking back now, how crazy does that sound?

JB Straubel: I mean in hindsight it was --

Greg Dalton: Or genius maybe.

JB Straubel: Well, I don’t know about genius. Many people said it was nuts at the time. You know these were laptop batteries basically way back then. They were slightly tuned and improved laptop batteries, but stringing together thousands of those at the time when laptops were catching fire in airports and causing other problems. Many people were skeptical and they had some data to be skeptical. But in the end, it turned out to be a really quite robust solution. And as far as I know there's never been a Roadster fire in the entire history of that small fleet of cars anyway.

Greg Dalton: Right. and there’s kind of an interesting narrative of how people talked about the company, particularly people in the industry. So tell us about how the auto incumbents, the giants kind of shifted their narrative of Tesla from the Roadster days to today.

JB Straubel: It was fascinating to watch. You know was kind of the innovator's dilemma played out, I mean in live feed. in the beginning we were completely dismissed almost mocked if there was any opinion whatsoever, was impractical it was unsafe. It would never work. I was amazed at how many people thought we were outright lying about, you know, we’d say okay it’s gonna go 200 and some miles 250 miles. And they’d say, ah, that’s a lie. I’m like well no, it’s not. We’ve engineered it it's going to do it we’ll build it and show it. But that was interesting in the very beginning. It was kind of kind of mockery dismissal, and that evolved over time. But there was always the sense of --

Greg Dalton: Then came the Model S and you were like, oh, like a rich boy’s plaything.

JB Straubel: Yup, I mean that, certainly the Model S was 10 times the volume or more. One MotorTrend car of the year, you know, this impeccable safety record had obvious data really supporting it. But still there were a lot of reasons why that couldn't change the industry. Doesn’t have enough range or what about charging or what about, XYZ. It was kind of a lesson really how powerful momentum and even maybe denial could be for whole industries that had so much going in their direction.

Greg Dalton: And what I remember is like yeah but you can't scale. It's one thing to make 50,000 cars a year which is not that long about to what Tesla was making. But making 500,000 that's a whole different game. We've been doing this for 100 years. We know how to scale manufacturing. And Tesla had some challenges.

JB Straubel: Yeah, they were almost right.

Greg Dalton: Right. A couple near-death experiences there

JB Straubel: Well, I mean truly scale is enormously difficult. That is another I think underappreciated challenge. If I can zoom out on the history of Tesla, you know, getting the technology right was a relatively small percent of the problem. It took a small team and a small amount of resources and then getting scale correct and doing that profitably enormously difficult. Took a thousand times more resources and people.

Greg Dalton: And did you think that the GMs and Toyotas of the world would respond faster would change faster to what you were doing?

JB Straubel: Oh, absolutely. We were almost maybe idealistic internally and we kind of, oh, okay, we’ve really shown them now. And this car, you know, will move the whole industry and look at this and then it would be kind of frustrating when we see the reality that no one would change. And everything would kind of, you know, continue on the same way more or less and it's only been quite recently. i think due to customer pressure and economic pressure that a lot of the OEMs have truly and generally started shifting and changing.

Greg Dalton: So what change do they get scared I mean you’re clearly taking away market share from BMW, Mercedes, these premium luxury brands. And now you're moving into the Model Y is what, almost the most best-selling car in a lot of places that's like there’s a new Toyota Camry, the utilitarian affordable vehicle for the masses.

JB Straubel: It’s an incredible vehicle. As you said, best-selling in many different countries and regions. So I think the data on what customers are choosing the fact that that's lasting year on year and growing and not some fad, it’s lasting through high prices of oil and low prices of oil. That’s I think what's finally shifting is really customer voice and the customers demanding this of other brands that they may be are loyal to.

Greg Dalton: Bloomberg has written about the tipping point. Now we’re seeing, you know, what 20% or so of new car sales in California approaching and companies saying they’re gonna stop selling gasoline cars pretty soon 2035. There’s no way that happens without well Tesla. And as a CTO for 15 years you were instrumental in everything from the Roadster, 6830 batteries to other things. I think this is achieved, the speed and scale that is often talked about by investor John Doerr and others to address the climate emergency, we need things at speed and scale. And few companies and honestly few individuals have achieved speed and scale like you and Tesla. So what lessons do you learn from that?

JB Straubel: Well, it was definitely difficult. You know that was more difficult to do both those things than we would've assumed in the beginning. But to make an impact on sustainability on global climate you need scale. Ideas and startup ideas are relatively more common, but we need things that can scale and do it enormously quickly to actually make a dent on the whole problem.

Greg Dalton: Yet the brand has also been damaged by politics, the offensive comments of Elon Musk recently. Why did you step down from your position in 2019 and then you recently came back on the board?

JB Straubel: Well, I mean I love Tesla. I always have. it had some sort of place in my heart and really will for the rest of my life. I love the team there. I love the mission, the products. It’s awesome. Doesn't mean it's an easy place to work, you know, it's challenging. It kind of needs to be to be successful I think. Part of why I decided to leave back in 2019 and it was incredibly difficult personal decision. Probably the most difficult decision businesswise in my life was really reflecting on what I enjoy and what I'm good at. I love being entrepreneur and I love creating and building and being an engineer. Actually, being hands-on and really tinkering and building things. Certainly, that was still possible to some degree at Tesla, but more and more the company needed execution at scale. It needed vehicle deliveries, it needed sales, it needed manufacturing ramp. And there were people that are more passionate about that and frankly much better at it than me. And, you know, that’s kind of a difficult thing to admit sometimes when you’re in the midst of it, and especially if you kind of like grown in an organization that have a position where maybe you're managing these people or alongside them. Yet kind of have to realize that, you know, wow, these people are they’re really passionate about doing the thing that I have to kind of force myself to do because I know it's important. So for me all part of that calculus. I also from a topic point of view, really, I love learning. And I wanted to kind of go into an adjacent supportive, I thought, field where I could do something that would potentially kind of float all the ships and help electrification help sustainability more broadly using kind of what I've seen and what I learned in our struggles and some of our challenges at Tesla.

Greg Dalton: Redwood is positioning itself as a battery component manufacturer though it’s grabbed a lot of headlines on recycling. And so I want to start there. According to one Stanford professor 95% of lithium ion batteries currently end up in landfill. Why is that and how are you planning to change it?

JB Straubel: Yeah, it's pretty amazing. And I think largely that happens because there's no obvious place of where people should take them. If you think about it and you had a lithium-ion battery today where would you take it? Most people don't know. So a lot of people are storing them up. They maybe don't want to throw it in the garbage can. For those people that feel guilty though they’ll put it in a box in their garage or in a drawer somewhere.

Greg Dalton: I have a box at home that goes back to the Trio, yeah. Because I don’t know what to do with them because of the batteries.

JB Straubel: So that’s an opportunity. All those batteries their materials are still in there. They're still usable as long as they get reprocessed and remanufactured.

Greg Dalton: Okay. And a battery is more complicated than a beer bottle or pay for or aluminum so there are more components far more materials. But as new battery chemistries are developed how big a challenge is it for you to separate all these different materials because batteries are changing so quickly.

JB Straubel: Well, that’s part of I think kind of the technology fun of it all is making sure our ways to recycle and separate all these things can adapt. But we also get this weird looking in history of personal electronics because what is largely being recycled is hopefully what's worn out. So we’re getting Trios and blackberries and flip phones, and things like that occasionally. So we have to kind of be relevant and applicable to technologies that were quite old. We still see things like nickel cadmium batteries coming in and even lead acid batteries from huge old devices. The reality of it is a lot more messy than taking a brand-new clean feedstock and then doing something precise to it. And I was used to working in building factories and building automation where we had the parts presented in pristine trays and everything was perfect and even that still a robot would have enormously hard time picking up the part that was in the perfect place brand-new and putting it in the right place on the products and not somehow screwing it up. Here we have a barrel full of damaged effective dirty materials and trying to automate that is a whole different type of challenge.

Greg Dalton: Redwood Materials recently announced that after a year-long pilot program. It was able to recover important metals from used batteries at a rate of more than 95%. And last I checked gasoline is 0% recycled.

JB Straubel: What’s so interesting I think about battery recycling and especially as it relates to EVs is we can imagine this future where you don't need to continually extract and supply some chemical into a whole fleet of cars. The batteries today might be economically 95% but technically they’re 99% or more reusable. All the lithium, the nickel, the copper and cobalt all those critical metals. So what goes into that is quite complex. We have to invent ways to neutralize the battery to separate out electrolyte which is somewhat hazardous to make sure they don't catch fire at the wrong time in the process. And then purify and separate each one of these metals from each other. It is a lot harder than notionally taking an old beer can and melting it and then stamping it into a new beer can. You can kind of look at that and very clearly say, oh, it’s aluminum it's probably gonna be aluminum in a new shape. But batteries are a kind of a complex mixture of chemistry and chemicals all together.

Greg Dalton: So this really is like a dream circular economy. So how does this work? I bought a Nissan Leaf very early EV. It’s ranged kind of around 100 miles. It went down 2016 or so. Time to, I actually gave it away to a public radio station, because I didn’t know what to do with it. So what would happen to that Nissan Leaf or another used EV. Will you take it back to a dealer? How does the battery get in your hands?

JB Straubel: It has a lot of different pathways. We work with auto dismantlers. We work with sometimes consumers directly if that's relevant, we work with service centers that might be associated with an OEM if it’s a warranty battery.

Greg Dalton: A carmaker.

JB Straubel: Carmaker. So it's quite complex. And it's kind of the wild West right now because people haven't really evolved this at scale. we’re even having to kind of invent efficient low-cost packaging to be able to get like your old Nissan Leaf battery back from maybe an auto dismantler or wrecking yard where the battery might turn up sort of dead or a scrap and we need to get it from there to a recycling facility. But I'm confident we will electrify everything. That’s where we’re headed. Every passenger vehicle, every truck boat I think trains it’s all going to electrify; it really has to. And once we’re in that more steady-state where everything is already been electrified, we don't need to keep mining those materials to make the modern version of the fleet.

Ariana Brocious: You’re listening to a Climate One conversation about improving the battery supply chain. Please help us get people talking more about climate by giving us a rating or review. You can do it right now on your device. You can also help by sending a link to this episode to a friend. On our new website you can create and share playlists focused on topics including food, energy, EVs, and more. Coming up, the critical role of batteries in the energy transition,

JB Straubel: I don't see how we make the world sustainable without storage. And right now, batteries, lithium ion batteries largely are the scalable economic solution.

Ariana Brocious:: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

Creating a circular battery production process where the materials from decommissioned batteries are recycled to create new batteries would be the most sustainable way to meet our energy storage needs. But at the moment there simply aren’t enough batteries to recycle to meet growing demand. And the recycling process isn’t anywhere near the scale it needs to be. So what do we do in the meantime? Let's get back to Greg’s conversation with Redwood Materials Founder and CEO JB Straubel.

JB Straubel: That’s the complexity of this transition as we have to do both things. We have to both support and realize that mining responsibly has to happen or else we won't have a transition to recycle. But we also have to be planning ahead and really keeping an eye toward what is that future look like to be ready to recycle every one of those batteries. The worst thing we could do is go to all this destruction and trouble to mine it refine it build the product and then throw it away. That’s the worst pathway.

Greg Dalton: So Redwood Materials, your company, is investing three and half billion dollars in a gigantic new South Carolina manufacturing facility that will produce enough battery components to power a million electric cars. What percentage of the raw materials for those million batteries will actually come from recycled batteries and in what timeframe?

JB Straubel: Well, we’re also building up a large campus in Northern Nevada. So we have sort of two main facilities. Northern Nevada and South Carolina. As part of the materials we make for batteries, the cathode material or the foils that they make up the we’ll target between 30 and 50% recycled material. So we blend some mined material along with the material we recycle and refine to go into a new battery. Now there’s no reason it has to be blended like that but that's basically the sort of balance that we see is about the maximum rate that we can ramp up the feedstock of recycled material.

Greg Dalton: And so I’m thinking about a soda bottle that's like 30% recycled plastic. Will I be able to go to EV and see that like the battery has X percent recycled material. Would that be visible to customers?

JB Straubel: There are already some regulations in Europe starting to happen where certain mandates exist around percent recycled content in things like a battery. I don't know if that’ll be made visible to the consumer. The batteries generally if it’s doing its job right it's pretty out of sight out of mind. It's usually complex. This whole business is the need to get started around basically supply chain traceability and understanding how to really figure out where the materials come from. Was it at the mine that people liked or didn't like or did it route through some country that other people don't like.

Greg Dalton: According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, US has only about 7% of the global battery recycling capacity while China has 80%. How can US compete China has such a head start and so much lower labor costs?

JB Straubel: China in particular but Asia broadly has been investing in the space for decades. Very strategically there have been consistent incentives and consistent support from the governments in those countries to build these industries. The one thing that we have is we’re the consumers. we’re buying these cars we’re bringing them here we’re using them. And that is a really unique advantage. So there's sort of an inherent benefit and economic benefit and industrialization benefit to locally reprocessing these materials once they’re in a region. That’s I think is really part of the toehold. And it's part of why in Redwood we’re focused on linking recycling with the material manufacturing. I think we just attacked material manufacturing we’re competing head-to-head with China. It's a brutal battle. I don't think it's the best battle to fight if you're linking recycling materials that are already in the region we have a toehold and a leg up to make this economic and to make it scale.

Greg Dalton: So you’re combining the recycling and the manufacturing. According to testimony you submitted to the U.S. Senate battery minerals typically travel 50,000 miles from mine to refining to cathode production to sell manufacturing. How do we shorten that supply chain? Things are taken from the Global South they go to China perhaps assembled in Japan Northern Europe come to the US. They move like that’s just mind-boggling.

JB Straubel: Yeah, it's almost a comical supply chain. If you drew this it would look like a joke. It’s like a joke of a supply chain you don't want. partly driven by the geology. These minerals are scattered around in their prevalence. Lithium is super prevalent in South America and nickel and Indonesian region or Russia or parts of Canada. The other problem is the countries that have invested very strategically in refining and converting them like in China and other parts of Asia. So you kind of have a geologic spreading mixed with centralization of refining and manufacturing That’s all separated from the consumer. So by the time you have the poor consumer buying an EV in California this atom of lithium or nickel has traveled all the way around the world perhaps several times to really make it into that final product before it even drives a mile. And of course, that all has some impact that has, you know, can be somewhat negative. And it contributes to sort of the energy payback in an electric vehicle. Which is still very positive. I want to make sure that’s super clear. But, you know, the reason that an electric vehicle has any concept of energy payback just like a solar panel or a wind turbine or something like that is largely because of the embedded energy it took to mine, refine, move these materials around and make the battery itself.

Greg Dalton: So some people are saying we should do more mining in the United States. We have stronger environmental protections. There’s controversial in Nevada where you spent a lot of your time important is it to have more mining in the US?

JB Straubel: I think personally it would be great if we could do more of it responsibly. I think it's going to be very difficult. We don't have excellent deposits of some of these critical metals. We don't really have excellent broad deposits of nickel or cobalt. There are some it’s not zero. But that coupled with just a very complex expensive often times process to develop those mines.

Greg Dalton: So there’s limits to what we can do here. We’re gonna need to have get some of it overseas. This is all moving very quickly. I read about iron-air batteries on the horizon and solid-state batteries. have made progress on this front. I'm not sure Toyota seem to maybe recycling some of its announcements. possible chemistries and how close our solid-state batteries and how could they accelerate the transition we’re talking about?

JB Straubel: There are a lot of different possible chemical couples to make new batteries, but the process to mature a battery into really make sure it's robust and get it to scale is very, very long. There's a lot of companies that have struggled with this and it's I think surprised even some of the smartest people that I know how long that can take. So, I learn to take new battery announcements with a little bit of a grain of salt. frankly we’re also at a bit of a tipping point where coming back at the beginning of our conversation almost more about scale right now than it is about a slightly better newfangled battery. If I had a choice of an electric vehicle that cost half as much, or one that went twice as far. and it's a no-brainer. One of these would result in dramatically, greater adoption The other one, eh, moderate impact.

Greg Dalton: Right. And I think this is a real trouble in the whole climate conversation. That we’re sort of have this pull toward the shiny new thing out there rather than the more known, maybe less sexy thing that we need to do more of right now. I saw a presentation recently on solar power from outer space can beam down without wires. And I’m like, yeah, sounds cool. But what about the solar we have today that is economic. Let's do that.

JB Straubel: Which is already the cheapest source of energy, yeah.

Greg Dalton: As we're talking about electrified system. We’ve been talking about electrifying mobility, but also batteries have important applications in homes on the grid. So what advances are you seeing in batteries for stationary applications?

JB Straubel: Well, it’s vast. I mean energy storage and I think electrochemical batteries are kind of the central technology into many, many sustainability products. And I don't see how we make the world sustainable without storage. And right now, batteries, lithium-ion batteries largely, are the scalable economic solution to that. Doesn't mean it’ll be the only one forever. As you said there's new technologies coming. But right now, this is kind of the core technology in grid storage at the utility scale, grid storage at the home scale, electric vehicles. It's quite pervasive when you really look across all these different products. It’s part of why the bottleneck in getting enough materials to make those batteries and having access to batteries at all is such a scary bottleneck to me. When I looked at this whole transition I said, geez, that could derail simultaneously a whole bunch of different industries and slow this whole transition down.

Greg Dalton: Yeah, we saw that in solar. Solar price has been going down, down, down for decades and then solar ticked up because of the supply constraints. How concerned are you that this country or even your own company will overinvest heavily in a supply chain based on current lithium-ion technology, only to have newer cheaper battery into the market.

JB Straubel: I mean that one I’m really not worried about that one. the timeline is so long on some products like a new EV to conceive of it to build a model year to ramp it, lifetime of that product. Even if the battery technology sort of matured and changed of solid-state promises everything it can do it will be wonderful, but it's relevant a product generation or two in the future. So I don't see really any risk right now that overinvesting, in scaling some of these products. From every angle I look at it dramatically underinvesting. And, you know, underinvesting in the supply chain underinvesting in refining infrastructure products. So that's what keeps me up at night. It's not an overinvestment concern.

Greg Dalton: Sounds like you’re a technologist. You believe in technology. But there's also the other side of JB the human personal side. How do you feel about the broader transition we’re making? Are we going fast enough?

JB Straubel: As you said, I'm an optimist on the capabilities of what technology can do. I can see a pathway. It's kind of frustrating to both see a pathway that can solve things with known technology. We don’t have to invent new physics or chemistry.

Greg Dalton: Just use what we have today.

JB Straubel: We can do it today. But at the same time, we are not going fast enough. We're absolutely not going fast enough. And I don't think we may be collectively realize how bad it probably will get. There are so much inertia in the system that we’re meddling with.

Greg Dalton: Or how bad it is 100 million Americans were under heat watches this week.

JB Straubel: Yeah. it’s part of what lights the urgency for me. Seeing and feeling the fact that this problem is so big it touches every part of our economy. Really, it’s not a dramatization to say that. I think it's something we’ll be grappling with and changing and working to solve decades. Our kids and our kids are going to be working to solve and transition around this problem.

Greg Dalton: There’s a handful of people on this planet who’ve done a lot. And certainly, Tesla has disrupted and changed the whole industry. Not perfect, created a lot of wealth, but certainly Detroit and Tokyo are moving a lot faster. Thanks to you and your work. One of the reasons it is going slow is there is real organized, well-funded opposition. The International Energy Agency, the world's foremost authority in all things energy recently issued a milestone forecast saying it predicts global demand for oil to be burned will peak in just five years. So oil companies are facing a shrinking demand. You and I watched a recent advertisement by an oil company that associates plug-in cars with chains basically enslaved. And that driving a fossil car is liberty and freeing. And this is part of the campaign that really is going more directly at the companies that you're part of Tesla and Redwood saying basically you’re enslaving us.

JB Straubel: I must take that as a little bit of respect. It’s like okay we finally gotten to them a little bit. But unfortunately, it's going to take so long for us to reduce the entire, because really the amount of oil consumption scales with the fleet of cars. Not with the new cars sold. And a lot of times we track our progress on EVs against new cars sold. And we’re celebrating 20% which is huge. It's a great milestone. But that's 20% of the new cars going into a pool that takes perhaps 15 years to turn over. So, you know, that's the sort of math around that has a much bigger inertia to it. But anyway, I can’t imagine what's more free though than driving an EV powered on solar energy at your own house. I mean to me that’s the most free set of products and technology you can possibly have. A cord is linking to your own roof; it's not linking to the Middle East or even a different part of the US.

Greg Dalton: UAW negotiations are heating up around job transition to the EV this so-called battery belt. The region with new battery and EV factories in the southeast right to work states are not welcoming to unions. Tesla has been hostile to unions. Where do you and Redwood Materials stand on worker unions?

JB Straubel: I mean I think it's important to figure out how we fairly transition. Essentially if you look at this whole movement then it has to happen. We have to transition a whole bunch of people who are working on various fossil fuel products and technologies and minerals. And somehow move all of them, if they’re not retiring move them into sustainable industries and sustainable products. So, broadly to me that's sort of probably the most key metric of success is where and when we can do something like that. it’s hard to do because their jobs aren’t in the same regions or maybe the skill sets are different.

Greg Dalton: Very different, yeah.

JB Straubel: But I mean that I think is what has to happen for success here. We can't just sort of say okay those jobs all go away and those people won't do anything. But the other problem is we need huge amounts of jobs to do these new things. So we end up spending a lot of time training and recruiting and hiring. And it's a blend of almost vocational training starting even in trade schools and in community colleges and universities. Because we as a country we don't have enough of the right skills to do some of these things. I would sort of implore students out there right now to really start try and learn little bit more about chemistry, electrical engineering. Some of these sorts of different disciplines that maybe weren’t as trendy over the last few years.

Greg Dalton: Tesla is battling at least for racism-based lawsuits, including allegations that black workers at the company's Fremont factory are segregated into the hardest, most dangerous and lowest paid jobs in an area of the factory that managers allegedly called the plantation. I recognize that as a board member, you won't comment on ongoing litigation, but generally clean tech companies have less diverse workforces than even fossil fuel companies, old-line auto companies. So as CEO of Redwood Materials what are you doing about equity and inclusion?

JB Straubel: Well, I think, you know, basically working to create jobs and to build a company that can grow to me as the first mission. We have to be a sustainable company that can actually provide a sustainable job for someone in the first place. That’s what I worry about the majority of my time and then making sure that we are focusing on the sustainability of our overall company. And maybe totally incorrect but I think some of the skewing on this might be that there aren’t quite as many manufacturing jobs in some early cleantech companies. We’re building a lot of manufacturing very, very hands-on work that has to happen, especially with manufacturing battery components, recycling them. So we’re welcoming to any people. In fact, frankly right now the challenge is how do we find enough employees. really a fairly key challenge as we scale this up. And I hear that same refrain from a lot of other leaders who are launching new battery factories or new EV factories.

Greg Dalton: You said that you don't think anyone's moving fast enough. How can we move faster?

JB Straubel: You know, so much this is driven by consumer choice. It feels both simple and hard. But I really do think that things could move faster if people understood a little bit better how to make truly sustainable choices. That leads to more products that leads to driving behavior of other large companies. So I think we need more investment as I said before in all these different areas, but I'm not sure I have a magic bullet for how to suddenly get more investment. I can see that it's needed but that itself is a slow process.

Greg Dalton: Yeah, we’re all clinging to the things that we know and kind of the things that got us to where we are. How optimistic are you that technology can make the change and what are the kind of changes do you think we need?

JB Straubel: Well, I'm incredibly optimistic about what the technology can do. I'm pessimistic about the speed.

Greg Dalton: You’re pessimistic about the human part of it?

JB Straubel: Well, it’s a good question. I think yeah maybe I guess that is one of the complexities. It’s the human preferences and choices and all the complexity of changing behavior. As we talked about earlier, this transition will move a lot of wealth from company to another. It moves jobs from one region to another as political impacts it has government impacts. So any time that there is something that some technical shift that affects people in such, you know, personal, visceral ways, it's a very complex thing to affect. So I guess I am a little bit concerned about how fast all those human complexities can sort of work themselves through.

Greg Dalton: Yeah. There’s lots of systems we need to change. The economy, water, food, the system between our years is one of the most challenging systems to address. Thank you, JB for joining us on Climate One and sharing your insight and stories. And really one of like true climate heroes for your passion for all that you've disrupted and done.

Ariana Brocious: This is Climate One. Coming up, as battery demand grows, how can mining be done more responsibly?

Aimee Boulanger: We don't need 20 years of research and technology to get at best practice mining. This is not nuclear fusion. We absolutely know already how to do mining with less harm.

Ariana Brocious: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

This is Climate One. I’m Ariana Brocious.

As the demand for batteries continues to grow, mining for the raw materials to make them will be a necessity. Industrial mining has had a troubled history with humanitarian and environmental abuses. Existing oversight and standards are insufficient and vary widely country by country. But Aimee Boulanger, Executive Director at the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance, wants to change that.

Aimee Boulanger: Well I understand the skepticism people have around this. Industrial scale mining is inherently destructive on a landscape. It leaves the impacts that last not just decades, but centuries. It's why we never use the word sustainable, because unless we are doing a lot better recycling and circular economy, it's not sustainable. but we are in industrialized societies using these materials every day. And so we are complicit in that use and we're talking about using it a lot more for energy transition, for wind turbines and solar panels and electric vehicles. And so if that's gonna happen, We're gonna need to talk about how do we access those materials in a fundamentally more responsible way.

Ariana Brocious: One interesting aspect of your organization is that it has representatives from both industry and environmental advocacy groups, and you've described these as having sort of six houses of bosses. So how do you listen to what each member or organization wants?

Aimee Boulanger: So IRMA is governed by these six houses, and they agreed to sit at the table to find value together in a system, while also inherently saying they see value in different ways. but the opportunity moment is that that differences can be complimentary to each other. So you've got mining companies, who are being asked to do something very difficult, which is provide materials that people use every day out of the earth, like broken out of the earth. It's really difficult to get these materials and they're frequently in tiny quantities locked in rock, and a lot of the sector knows how to do that in ways that, reduce harm, but the market hasn't really created value for that, and our laws haven't created value for that. So it's about then how do their customers who buy mind materials, which is another house in IRMA, or how do their investors, which is another house in IRMA, lean in to create value for that and how those, customers and investors are moved by nonprofit, environmental and social justice groups, or the communities who are most affected, or indigenous rights holders, sort of using those tensions between them to leverage a market for these materials that cares more about protecting the earth than the people who live on it.

Ariana Brocious: Well, so speaking to that power of the purchaser, seven car companies are members of your organization B M W, Mercedes Ford, gm, Tesla, Rivian, and Volkswagen. Those are some of the largest companies and we know that a lot of those are really actively committed to transitioning to EVs. So how much power do they have in determining where the materials come from that go into the cars that they make?

Aimee Boulanger: It's really difficult to trace back up a supply chain to where the raw materials come from, and until recently it really wasn't happening. You had. Companies like car makers, who were buying bolts, who were buying sheet metal. They weren't buying raw material from a mining company. And in many cases they wouldn't know the mining companies who were providing the raw material that went into the bolts or the sheet metal they bought. But increasingly they've grown aware that some of the greatest harm and the risks in their supply chain are back at that mine level. And Leveraging their influence there to, expect better performance, to expect more honesty and transparency in the impacts there, and then increasingly they are leaning in, to create value for best practices and for reduced harm.

Ariana Brocious: And when we talked before this interview, you mentioned just the simple quantity that car makers purchase and use as opposed to other kinds of precious metal users like electronics or jewelry. Can you explain just like the scale we're talking about there?

Aimee Boulanger: So in IRMA's earliest years, the leading companies who were purchasing mined material who got engaged were in the jewelry sector first. they really saw that there's a disconnect between trying to craft something beautiful and something that was gonna stand for love and long-term commitment if those materials that go into that ring, that necklace are inherently tied to harm. And so they really led in this space of saying we're going to drive our suppliers, to meet our values and to reduce harm at the mine level. and then you had the electronic sector coming in, particularly when increasing attention was going to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and cobalt mining there and harm there, but also tin in Indonesia, but they also make small things, you know, the electronics we carry in our hand so to have the car makers come in and say, We also want to leverage improved practices. That completely changed the conversation because of the volume of what car makers buy. They just buy so much more. It was a really important signal to the mining industry over the last couple of years that their customer base cares about these issues and is interested to lean in and provide support to them to do better.

Ariana Brocious: So speaking of the Democratic Republic of Congo, there are an estimated 45,000 children involved in cobalt mining, which is just a really horrible thing to think about. What would be the best way to end that practice?

Aimee Boulanger: Well, that's really complicated question because, in the mining sector, There, first of all are, are two different kinds of ways and gross generalization that mining happens. There's mining that's done by mining companies who tend to be large corporations. And then there's also what's called artisanal scale mining, which might be an individual or a family or a small cooperative with pick and shovel, and there are challenges in both spaces and there's need for work in both spaces to improve practices, but it needs really different strategies. Where you see child labor most often is not in the mining company, although it can happen. And in that case, we have requirements in our standard for how you monitor that and how you look for young workers because any place where, Where income security is a huge risk, where you've got poverty, you're gonna have people incentivizing for younger and younger people to come in and help support their families. But those companies have an easier way to look at papers, to look at age, and, oversight. But at the artisanal scale site, where you might have a family trying to basically do the subsistence farming version of mining where they're out with a pick and shovel, You may have their children along with them simply because they don't wanna leave them home or alone. So you've got kids there, you've got people hand digging tunnels and things like that. They may be the smallest human that's there. So if you're trying to get into a tight spot, you've got children who may be lower down into holes and things because they're smaller to get into tight spaces. So really, I mean, how you eradicate child labor in these spaces is really about. What kind of formalization do you have at the artisanal scale side? Like what kinds of support do you have for those people to have training, to have incentives for their kids to be in school, for their kids to be safe? Because while the large scale mining companies provide the greatest volume and majority of the flow of our mine materials, the greatest number of jobs actually is over on the artisanal scale side. So people are going to keep doing this. The question is, what support do they have for their children to be in safe places? And what kind of benefit sharing might be going on between a mining company where there is one, and the government and individual pick and shovel miners like that.

Ariana Brocious: So let's get back to the work of IRMA, the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance, and to give an example of how members get audited, can you tell us about the audit that Albemarle's Lithium Mine in Chile's. Salar de Atacama recently went through?

Aimee Boulanger: Yeah. So, in the case of Albemarle and Chile, First of all, they're the third, company to release an IRMA audit report. So while our work building the IRMA standard for responsible mining and the rules for how it's measured started 16 years ago, it's taken much of that time just to get to agreements on that, what is the shared definition of what is responsible mining and what's a trusted way to measure that? So Albemarle was willing to step into that. and in part because the materials they're providing go directly to energy transition. One of the first things that meant for them is that the whole process is going to be transparent. So that means this is not secret. Most audits are secret, they end up being between like an end brand that we buy our stuff from and their suppliers secretly looking at who is the supplier, what impacts, how can I help them do better? But in this case, we say in order to have truthful information that's gonna be meaningful and trusted, the world needs to be able to participate in this process from the beginning. So Albemarle stepped into that. So they knew, we say to the world, hello world. This lithium extraction operation in Chile is beginning. an IRMA audit. If you would like to comment in any way you can. Here is the emails to the auditors or the WhatsApp for those who aren't, using email and on with easy wifi connection. And they can comment on anything. They can comment about is the company responsive to our concerns? What about noise? What about the impacts to flamingos in the region, or the fact that the Atacama is one of the driest places on earth? How do they respond to indigenous rights holders who are in this region who are concerned with extraction and its impact on cultural heritage and the long-term economy after lithium extraction. So, any are welcome to participate in that process. Auditors are then looking at how the company performs over 400 different requirements. So, and they're looking at that from their desks. They're pouring through documents the company has uploaded and turned over to those auditors. But then they go on site and they're on site for several days. It might be a team of four to six auditors who walk the ground, who will talk to indigenous rights holders, who will talk to workers, who will talk to community members willing to speak, and the company. Then they're using that information to basically triangulate what are the stories here, what can we tell that's really going on. And then the audit report that comes out from that is more than a hundred pages long detailing both what the company achieves, but also what they don't achieve. So you can very much see against the IRMA standards best practice definition, how they have their strengths and also where their challenges are. But even as I say that, this is early days, and so if you're an auditor working against the IRMA system and you go out to rural indigenous communities in Chile and say, we wanna get your perspective, we work for IRMA, of course they're gonna go IRMA, who? like, this is not anything I know about. Why would I think I should talk to you? Why would I think I'm safe to talk to you? What's gonna happen with this information? Is there gonna be some kind of repercussion on me for talking? So we know that these first audit reports may not yet have robust community involvement. And we have to be honest, contextualizing that and hope that we build the trust of local communities and nonprofit groups to feel safe. And same of course for workers as well to feel safe that they can participate and offer honest perspectives. And we count on the companies being audited to help us reassure people in their region of the same.

Ariana Brocious: And I noticed that looking in the list of participating companies, I didn't see any US or Canadian companies and I wanted to check that that's true and ask why that might be that those companies aren't yet members of IRMA. So

Aimee Boulanger: So there are both US and Canadian companies who are confidentially involved using the IRMA self-assessment tool and preparing for independent audit. but. It's a fair question to ask why are US and Canadian companies slower in, and I think some of it is because there has been a perception by some, like maybe we don't need to do this IRMA audit and review because we operate in the US and Canada. So people are probably pretty confident we don't have child labor or gross human rights abuses and that probably our workers are safe and we must be following the Clean Water Act or the Clean Air Act if you're here in the US. In fact, the US has seen a hundred years of impacts from industrial scale extraction. The US Environmental Protection Agency estimates that nearly half of Western watersheds are impacted with mine waste and the pollution that comes from that. and heavy metals that are in our waterways. and even recent mines have had bankruptcies and left impacts for us taxpayers to pick up. And contamination, which continues to flow onto indigenous lands, places like Nevada and Montana, California and otherwise. And so we know we still need to strengthen our laws right here In the US we have the 1872 Mining law, which just like its name says, goes back to 1872. It just infamously celebrated its hundred 50th birthday. It was passed at a time when mining was done with a pick and shovel. It was passed with a set of philosophies of 1872 and European-descended leadership at that time, which was to extract more materials, move more white settlers west, and to, better, control what they saw as a problem with indigenous people in the west and to increase the power of white settlers over Indigenous people. And so the 1872 mining law is outdated for the values of America today. The values of diversity, the values of cultural heritage, the values of protecting our water, um, and the multiple uses of public lands, after a mining company leaves Industrial extraction is a temporary set of jobs. And we wanna know that after those materials come out, can that land be restored in some way to provide economy and wellbeing to the communities who live near?

Ariana Brocious: Yeah. And I wanna spend just another minute on this cuz I think it's important and there have been efforts to update the 1872 mining law that have not happened yet, and though the US is often maybe seen as a safer place, a better place to do some of this mining. As you mentioned, there are innumerable impacts that we've seen, including one listeners might recall hearing about in the news, which was the Gold King mine spill in 2015, where 3 million gallons of contaminated mine runoff poured out of a mine that was in the progress of being cleaned up by the EPA, and it turned the Animus river in Colorado bright orange for a while. environmentalists hoped that would spur more effort to continue these reforms and I don't think we've seen significant reforms. So what kind of pressure can be brought here in the US to improve the laws we have on the books?

Aimee Boulanger: Well, I think first of all, people have to understand what mining is. I mean, most people really don't know where their stuff comes from if it's mined. They don't know both the countries that it comes from, the process that it comes from. To care about changing the laws, they have to see themselves as connected to the impacts from that industry and to the people who live around that. And most Americans, even though we live in a large mining country, don't feel connected to it and don't see that. you mentioned the Gold King mine that actually was a historic mine. It's many decades old. It was left behind as a mess without a company left to pick it up. So that's what you had the US Environmental Protection Agency in there doing that cleanup. Because there was no longer a company to clean up after itself And that's part of why the IRMA standard has requirements in there that we're measuring against for reclamation and closure. What's the plan even before the mining company starts mining to return this land into some kind of. constructive, useful, productive, healthy state for whatever kind of economy or biodiversity or human settlement is around it in the future. Because we're left with a legacy of abandoned mines across the United States and across the world right now that weren't cleaned up.

Ariana Brocious: 79% of extractable lithium in the US is within 35 miles of Indigenous reservations. The Ninth Circuit Court just denied a bid by tribes to block a new lithium mine at Thacker Pass in Nevada. Do you think there's enough industry oversight to ensure that Indigenous people won't once again bear the burden of consequences of this kind of industrial action?

Aimee Boulanger: There is not enough oversight to ensure that Indigenous people won't bear the burden of extraction. There is not a country in the world with laws sufficient to prevent significant harm where mining happens. And you have Indigenous communities who are saying, We are being asked to provide our lands and the resources under them to address the climate crisis. We are not ignorant of the climate crisis, but this still looks like the same white guy with the same briefcase and the same shovel who arrived here a hundred years ago looking for gold and now says, I'm looking for lithium, or I'm looking for nickel, or I'm looking for cobalt, and I'm doing so in the name of protecting the planet from a climate crisis. It sure seems like this is what brought us the climate crisis in the first place. So it is a difficult sell to these communities and it's a particularly difficult sell when we don't have a lot of existing mines that we can show have not harmed water, that their communities are happy to have them as a neighbor. But it doesn't have to be that way. We don't need 20 years of research and technology to get at best practice mining. This is not nuclear fusion. We absolutely know already how to do mining with less harm, and there are a set of companies who are stepping into that space right now, but they haven't had markets that valued it that much. There was a lot of pressure for least cost production of materials that could be sold at the lowest cost. I feel like part of my work is to write a permission slip through markets to lean in and give reward to those geologists and economists working in those companies who already know how to do it better, and who often live in these communities where extraction is happening themselves and who are ready to go and we need to create a set of values that support them to do it better.

Ariana Brocious: What do you think of the idea of sacrifice zones, where those in power agree that, you know, this particular place we can allow destruction to happen here in the, for sort of the greater benefit?

Aimee Boulanger: I think there's a lot of talk about sacrifice zones right now. I mean, I think one hard thing is when it comes to mining, minerals are in the ground where they are. So first of all, you're not gonna just go choose a sacrifice zone. You're not gonna say, okay, over here, no one's living here. So this is a convenient place. I mean, I could do that, you know, with a different kind of manufacturing plant, for example, I'm gonna place this away from human society, or I'm gonna place this in the least biodiverse place. Minerals are in the ground where they are. and I haven't heard too many people who live around those places saying, I'm raising my hand to be a willing participant in a sacrifice zone. in addition, while our soaring temperatures and changing precipitation and floods and fires of climate change are a global experience for us all, so is this tremendous risk moment for biodiversity. we've got, you know, habitats under great stress. We have watersheds that aren't our drinking water right now, but they might be our drinking water in 10 years or 20 years as the planet continues to change, we have watersheds that span hundreds if not thousands of miles or kilometers across countries where we need that clean water for agriculture in the future as well. So while I agree we don't have time to waste in addressing the climate crisis, and we must move off of fossil fuels saying we will just extract lithium, cobalt and nickel with the same disdain and with the same carelessness that we extracted oil and gas is not a path you take when your planet is already living through the climate crisis right now, especially since we have the technology to do it better. Writing permission slips to say we'll just waive permit requirements and we'll say it can be weaker water laws and a planet that's already struggling right now doesn't add up to a solution that is really a solution. We may be trading one problem off of another, which is still global in nature.

Ariana Brocious: You mentioned that, it took 16 years to get to the point now where these companies are submitting themselves to some voluntary audits and beginning to do reviews of the practices under IRMA's standards. What is your projected timeline, if you have one, for when we might see, you know, a significant number of these companies participating in the process and having sort of that tipping point moment where really we begin to see a big shift?

Aimee Boulanger: We are definitely in the middle of a tipping point moment right now. I mean if you and I spoke three years ago, the IRMA standard wasn't really known. It was very much driven by jewelry based materials. The early attention that came to issues like blood diamonds and jewelry really had stayed just around gold and diamonds. And climate change and Covid arriving at the same time in the sense of a global crisis, which was then a sense of a need of global action and that future plans should have resilience, future plans, should have environmental health, and social wellbeing at their core mean that all of a sudden the attention was right onto well, what is gonna happen with wind and solar and electric vehicles? How are we gonna power ourselves in a different way? So while the first 15 independent audits are happening in IRMA right now, there are more than 70 companies with more than 95 mine sites who have already registered in and started their self-assessments are coming over and they are looking at the first mines coming out saying, okay, what happens when you're honest? What happens when you say, out of a potential a hundred points in the water chapter or the waste chapter, human rights, what happens if you only get 35% against the best practice measure, or 41% there, or 18% there. How does the world react? Can we tolerate hearing the truth about how we've allowed existing practices to do harm now, but how we want to create incentive to reduce that harm? Because the truth is, existing mines right now are the places where we've got existing jobs and we have existing impacts. so while we might be able to create a set of better mines that are better designed and constructed in the future, and we will, because we're gonna need those materials, It will be less harm as well to take those existing mines and really invest in getting efficiency out of those, getting more materials out of those ones, keeping jobs there where they are and ensuring those communities who've already hosted the mining industry for the last a hundred years feel that they get some kind of benefit sharing and it's not a resource curse, that there really is some kind of shared value for them and investment in their future. And when that reclamation finally does need to be done there, that it happens and it's not just move on to the next site, which will be done better than we did 30 years ago.

Ariana Brocious: Last June, Nauru, the smallest island nation in the world, invoked a legal provision that forces the hand of regulators to finalize rules for deep sea mining. But the International Seabed Authority missed its July 9th deadline to finalize the mining code. Could you give us an update on where that stands and where you stand on deep sea mining?

Aimee Boulanger: The initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance does not currently allow its standard to be used to measure how responsible would a deep sea mining operation be. Foremost, that's because it was not written with the sea in mind when it was constructed some 15 years ago it was written thinking about mining on land. And it is a completely different context when you take this to the sea and miles down into the ocean. If deep sea mining is going to happen on a commercial scale, it absolutely needs something like IRMA, because existing laws and structure to protect the oceans are not sufficient on their own right now, the same way they're not sufficient on land. But at this moment right now, what we do know about the ocean and the seas, as we know, they're under tremendous stress. We know they are suffering from increasing temperatures from ocean acidification, from increasing pressures of different commercial and military uses of the ocean. And it's its own carbon sink for us, it's its own biodiversity. and this is a space where we don't know what we don't know there right now. We know it's fragile, but we don't know how this industry is going to impact that. We also do hear the case that if we are taking some of these nodules off the sea floor in some way, well it will do less harm and have fewer human rights abuses than if we take them from the Congo or we take them from the Atacama. But I haven't heard any companies operating in the Congo or the Atacama agreeing that if deep sea mining goes forward, they'll opt out and stop mining on land. It will be most like a both and obviously it will force those on land to have to compete at a different level. But I think we'll see more. And I think until we feel some confidence that we've got assurance of best practices in place, I think we better walk pretty soberly into our oceans under stress.

Ariana Brocious: We recently had Ian Urbana, founder of the Outlaw Ocean Project on Climate One, and he spoke about the difficulty of enforcing environmental laws on the high seas, How difficult do you think it would be even if there were a set of agreed upon practices to enforce those for deep sea mining?

Aimee Boulanger: At this moment right now, it's difficult to enforce best practices no matter where in the world we're talking about mining. What I'm doing with IRMA will never replace the critical role of laws and government enforcing those laws and holding accountability because I don't have that authority. and when you don't have that authority, it offers an awful lot of latitude for people to just opt out when they don't like it, or when the market signals to them they just don't need to do as much, and we need to send really clear signals right now. The market expects that if you're providing materials that are supposed to be part of the climate solution, they better not be adding to the problem.

Ariana Brocious: As we wrap up here, are there any examples of countries or companies that are moving in the right direction when it comes to mining?

Aimee Boulanger: Oh, there's some great examples of things going well right now. First of all, we don't need 20 years of new research for best practice mining. We've got companies who already know how to do it. We have companies who are being open. That alone is a best practice that is underrated, who are being open about how hard it is to get these materials out and what the impacts are. So transparency itself is a best practice. And then that offers space for innovation to come up with new ways to reduce harm. There are companies who are providing resources to community-based environmental groups to then hire their own scientists to review water quality data, air quality data, to negotiate with a mining company. That is a wonderful construct. It's happening right here in the US right now. It's not a company buying off a community. It's a company investing in basically a watchdog group who has their own independent rights to use those resources to be able to operate on a more level playing field by hiring their own PhD hydrologists to look at the water data and to press companies to do better. And in the places where we've seen companies do that, we have some of the better operating mines, of any in the world.

Ariana Brocious: Well, that's very encouraging to hear. Aimee Boulanger is Executive Director of the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance. Aimee, thank you so much for joining us on Climate One.

Aimee Boulanger: Thanks so much for having me.

Ariana Brocious: On this Climate One... We’ve been talking about building a better battery supply chain.

Brad Marshland is our senior producer; Our managing director is Jenny Park. Austin Colón is producer and editor. Megan Biscieglia is our production manager. Wency Shaida is our development manager, Ben Testani is our communications manager. Our theme music was composed by George Young and arranged by Matt Willcox. Gloria Duffy is CEO of The Commonwealth Club of California, the nonprofit and nonpartisan forum where our program originates. I’m Ariana Brocious.

1:41 JB Straubel on he chose to work on climate solutions
4:33 JB Straubel on his history with Tesla
9:43 JB Straubel on why he left Tesla and then rejoined
11:25 JB Straubel on battery recycling and starting Redwood Materials
17:19 JB Straubel on responsible mining
18:06 JB Straubel on Redwood Materials expansion and battery components
24:58 JB Straubel on new battery applications
36:16 Aimee Boulanger on industrial mining standards
38:56 Aimee Boulanger on supply chain traceability
52:12 Aimee Boulanger on mining oversight
56:44 Aimee Boulanger on reaching mining standards tipping point

Play

Green Energy / Red States

BenTestani — Wed, 12 Jul 2023 22:58:12 +0000

Green Energy / Red States

07/14/2023

Billions of dollars from the Inflation Reduction Act have started flowing into renewable energy projects and manufacturing. That’s bringing jobs and revenue back to the country and to some areas abandoned by the oil, coal and gas industries. Despite the massive investments in their districts, some Republican politicians aren’t fans of the green energy companies moving into their backyards and are doing everything they can to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act – putting them at odds with their constituents. How do we advance the clean energy transition when it’s seen as a partisan issue?

Guests

Emma Dumain

Reporter, E&E News

Heather Reams

President, Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions

Terry Weickum

Mayor, Rawlins, Wyoming

One Reason the Debt Fight is Getting Awkward for Republicans (politico.com)

Chokecherry and Sierra Madre Wind Energy Project (carbonwyedc.com)

Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions (cresenergy.com)

Republicans in the US “Battery Belt” Embrace Biden’s Climate Spending (theguardian.com)

Note: Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. Please check the actual audio before quoting it.

Greg Dalton: This is Climate One. I’m Greg Dalton.

Ariana Brocious: And I’m Ariana Brocious. The Inflation Reduction Act is the largest government expenditure EVER on climate and green industry.

Greg Dalton: The law has unleashed a wave of spending for established renewable energy like solar and wind and newer technologies such as green hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuel.

Ariana Brocious: And much of that money is flowing to states whose Congressional delegations actually voted AGAINST the IRA.

Greg Dalton: That’s right. They voted no, but are happy to take the dough. One utility, Florida Power and Light, is taking advantage of the Inflation Reduction Act solar tax credits and actually refunding $400 million in savings back to ratepayers – nearly 6 million customers. Fifteen Florida Republicans voted against that law. Other examples abound. Texas alone could see $131 billion from the law.

Ariana Brocious: And Texas is already a leader in wind and solar. An analysis by POLITICO found two-thirds of green-energy projects announced since passage of the IRA are going to Republican-held congressional districts.

Greg Dalton: Despite the investments in their districts, some Republican politicians aren’t fans of the green energy companies moving into their backyards – putting them at odds with their constituents, says energy reporter Emma Dumain.

Emma Dumain: The disconnect between what we talk about in Washington and what people talk about back home is very stark.

Ariana Brocious: Some of these investments are bringing jobs and revenue back to areas abandoned by fossil fuels and its associated industries, says Terry Weickum, mayor of Rawlins, Wyoming. And many people in these communities want and need new jobs, factories, and reliable, affordable renewable energy.

Terry Weickum: Quality of life begins with the paycheck. And when you lose thousands of jobs it makes you more open to other types of job producing industries.

Ariana Brocious: It’s kind of similar to Obamacare. When that federal health care program was rolled out, many Republicans opposed it for lots of reasons, but probably in part because it came from a Democratic administration. But many aspects of the law were – and remain – popular across the political spectrum.

Greg Dalton: And to be fair, if the bill had been passed by Republicans, Democrats would probably have reacted the same way initially. We are in a period of hyper-partisanship and political tribes reflexively oppose what others support.

Ariana Brocious: That’s something I talk about on today’s show with Heather Reams, President of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions. We talk about the importance of the messenger to help get all of us working toward the same end goal – a livable planet.

Heather Reams: The alarmist tone that comes with it just gets tuned out. So you’ve got to figure out how you bring the right message with the right messenger.

Greg Dalton: The Biden administration has embarked on a campaign across the country to let the people know which party is really responsible for the growth in jobs and reshoring manufacturing. President Biden recently spoke in a Republican-held Congressional district in South Carolina, promoting $60 million in investments by the solar tech firm Enphase Energy.

Joe Biden [Playback]: Since I took office, we’ve seen over 60 domestic manufacturing announcements all across the solar supply chain. One of the biggest is in Dalton, Ga. You may find it hard to believe, but that’s Marjorie Taylor Greene’s district. I’ll be there for the groundbreaking.

Greg Dalton: Emma Dumain is a reporter with E&E news, a leading-edge publication on energy and clean tech.She says while many of the benefits from the IRA may flow to Republican-led states, the message coming from the White House and Congressional democrats is that the law benefits everybody.

Emma Dumain: It doesn't matter if you're in a red state or a blue state you're going to see the benefits of this bill. That said a lot of the geography of states that happen to be controlled right now by Republican lawmakers. Those are areas that are ripe for expansions of major clean energy manufacturing facilities. The production of the parts for electric batteries for electric vehicles for solar power for chip manufacturing that is used in clean energy endeavors. Either are in rural areas these huge swaths of land where you can build a facility and do this type of construction and hire people from those communities to work there. So my colleague Timothy Cama and I actually wanted to see where the money was going. Who is benefiting from this? Was it true that Republican led districts were really standing to reap these benefits? And what we found was pretty interesting. We confirmed that there were at least 37 congressional districts now represented by Republicans who were welcoming these expansions of these new clean energy operations fostered by these three major Biden era laws. We also found that 21 projects in Republican led districts were direct results of the benefits of the IRA. And 15 were made possible by the Infrastructure Law. Some Republicans had multiple projects in their districts due to one or both of these two laws. Since that time this reporting that we did was a couple of months old. The numbers are probably higher now. Every day we’re seeing different press releases, announcements, ribbon cuttings. And Republicans are having difficulty squaring the benefits they’re seeing that come with their fierce opposition to this law, both of these laws, in many cases.

Greg Dalton: So what I’m hearing is dozens of projects directing billions of dollars and thousands of jobs into red districts. And so what are the politics of that. I mean some people might say, well, if you’re in a safe district either like voters don't vote on these issues or some of the Republicans and Democrats are only vulnerable from a primary threat from their extreme flank. So I can vote against my voters because I’m not gonna lose my job if I do it.

Emma Dumain: It's really tough because you know I have covered congressional politics since 2010. And the disconnect between what we talk about in Washington and what people talk about back home is very stark. I think that if you were to see a repeal of these clean energy tax incentives and these thousands of jobs in billions of dollars’ worth of investments evaporated in communities that were reaping these benefits. I think you would immediately see political backlash. Georgia is like a perfect example of a state that is getting enormous investments in the clean energy industry. You have press release after press release on Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s website. praising this company and that factory and this company and that manufacturing facility choosing Georgia, his state to break ground and expand flagship domestic production of an international conglomerate, etc. etc. without mentioning where the money is coming from and what made this investment possible. And you have members of Congress who are attending the ribbon cuttings and the opening ceremonies in their district saying the same thing tweeting and press releases of their own, not citing the Biden administration and congressional Democrats who supported and carried this law single-handedly. So as long as you have that sort of echo chamber, you're not gonna hear the whole story. And the dearth right now of local news reporting to provide an additional layer of accountability isn't really there either in a lot of these places.

Greg Dalton: Marjorie Taylor Greene who’s another one who's gone to lot of factory going into her district cut the ribbon and then go on Twitter or social media or TV and bash the very policy that made that possible. And the voters either don't connect the dots or they don't care. Reminds me a little bit like Obamacare where the elements of Obamacare were very popular policy across the spectrum and there was an attack on Obamacare. But to your point Obamacare never was repealed, but the policies of keeping kids on your insurance until 26, pre-existing conditions, etc. are all very popular but there was this real attack in attempt to repeal it that never happened.

Emma Dumain: Well, and, you know, you mentioned Marjorie Taylor Greene. I had a chance to connect with her on Capitol Hill for the story and she said explicitly this was going to happen in my district, no matter what this was not the result of the IRA, which isn’t correct. The organization Qcells the company that expanded in her district has said explicitly we are here because of the IRA. So whether she was not telling the truth or didn't realize what the circumstances were, you know, I don't know. But not all of the narratives are truthful or hold up in fact. At the same time, you have someone like Mark Amodei, a fairly middle-of-the-road as they come these days Republican Congressman from Nevada who has two or three projects in his district alone as a result of the bipartisan infrastructure law and the IRA telling me in an interview that he would sacrifice those jobs to repeal the law wholesale people hate it that much.

Greg Dalton: Yeah, maybe it’s a little bit like people supporting a carbon tax. They do it because they know it'll never happen. He could support the repeal and knowing that it might never happen.So what is the Republican energy and climate agenda now?

Emma Dumain: The Republican energy and climate agenda now largely is bashing the Democrats energy and climate agenda. They're talking about energy and climate through the lens of energy security and national security. The need to boost domestic energy production to avoid a reliance on foreign entities like Russia and China. That means producing more oil and gas at home to lower prices at the pump is something you hear a lot. Democrats of course say that you know energy reliance is a problem but disrupting public lands and waters to produce oil and gas here and critical minerals for EV battery production isn't the right way to go where you see a lot of breakdown there. They also were talking about how the permitting process that they are supporting through a reopening of the National Environmental Policy Act, NEPA, would also benefit Democrats. They say that Democrats want renewable energy deployment that also relies on a permitting process. They say that everybody wants this everybody should support permitting that gets a little stickier a lot of what Democrats want out of the permitting process is coming through powers by this other agency, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. It wouldn't really benefit much from the NEPA changes But when something interesting is happening among Senate Republicans many of them are rallying around this idea of putting a tariff on the carbon intensity of imported goods in the industrial center like cement, aluminum, iron, oil, plastics.

Greg Dalton: And there are some bipartisan support there I think. Trade has not been part of climate policy it seems to be coming in there now. And so is there a convergence and some bipartisan support on taxing cement, steel, other things that have a high carbon impact.

Emma Dumain: Yeah, so they want to be careful not to use the word tax. Because tax is a scary word, Greg.

Greg Dalton: It’s a tariff, okay. Tariff.

Emma Dumain: It’s a tariff. but the reason why there is becoming bipartisan support around this idea is Senate Republicans borrowing this rhetoric of House Republicans, which is you know pro-America anti-China. You have the competitiveness against the Chinese government, accusing China of being, you know, the worst emitter in the world and not paying the price for it. What can the United States do to level the playing field with a competitor like China while getting them to lower their emissions. So you have a bill from Sen. Bill Cassidy this Republican from Louisiana that he has not introduced yet but it's going to be called the foreign polluter fee, you know, sort of specifically looking at what they can do to frame this narrative around what bad actors are doing overseas not at home.

Greg Dalton: And particularly China there’s one area that Republicans and Democrats seem to agree on in Washington these days is bashing China, at least in -- I was careful to say it as communist government of China not Chinese people we’ve seen a lot of AAPI hate in this country. So climate progresses in China hawks are coming together with this, make China for and polluter fee, I like, what a title.

Emma Dumain: Yeah, well, no, and I mean and you’re exactly right and fortunately, you know, we’re seeing a lot of Democrats and Republicans making that very important distinction about who the US should be competing against the government, not the people. Democrats are more than happy to go along with that because it serves their purpose, which is climate action. And not to be unfair to Republicans, the Republicans working in the space see it as a win-win. But for their base they are more incentivized to focus on this more geopolitical lens than the climate lens. But, you know, you said it's easy to support repealing something that you know is never gonna happen. There's a lot of politics happening around this idea as well. We saw last week a bill introduced. It was the first bipartisan bill to be introduced around this idea it was called the Prove It Act. It was introduced by Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware and Sen. Kevin Cramer, a Republican from North Dakota. The bill is being touted as the first step in instituting a carbon border adjustment mechanism. Which is the fancy word for you know the framework to slap these carbon tariffs on imported goods for their emissions intensity. The bill that we’re talking about now would require the treasury department to conduct a study of the carbon intensity of certain materials and how they would differ from foreign counterparts. They say that any bill that would achieve a carbon border adjustment mechanism blueprint needs to have this information anyway. So this is kind of like a great first step. On the other hand, it's a study. And from a lot of people I've talked to, it seems like this could be like the bare minimum that members of Congress are able to do in this kind of political environment is let’s study the emissions intensity levels of these industrial products rather than let's move forward with a carbon tariff framework that can take the kind of climate action that we all want to see.

Greg Dalton: Right. But this is why this discussion matters to put it in a little bit of context here. Because it’s been the problem that if we slap emissions or regulations on US companies they’ll just move overseas where the environmental regulations are more laxed and then those products come back to the US. So this is getting at that kind of international equity issue which goes all the way back to Kyoto's like why is the US burdened when China isn't and the whole question of like leakage, you know, we’re just kind of squeezing the toothpaste tube and emissions go somewhere else. And so it sounds like a lot of the energy bills introduced in the House seems like there's no chance of getting through Democratic Senate or being signed by Democratic president. So what's really going on are they laying the foundation for a Republican president and perhaps Congress in ’24.

Emma Dumain: Yeah. So I think that everything that they want to do to speed up the permitting processes around NEPA I think that that's real. I think that there is an appetite to go even further than what Republicans were able to extract from the debt ceiling agreement.

Greg Dalton: NEPA just being the National Environmental Policy Act.

Emma Dumain: That’s right.

Greg Dalton: The rule about how to environmental review of projects.

Emma Dumain: That’s correct. So I think that that’s sincere. I think as we talked about actually repealing the IRA and the clean energy tax credits and the IRA would be more difficult. I think that we would see a problem there politically the same way that we did when it came time to actually repeal the Affordable Care Act. And Americans you know everywhere were going to be left without health insurance. The same way, you know, repealing these tax credits you know you’re gonna have people out of jobs out of work. Local economies really hit hard to say the least. A lot of this is messaging stuff. Republicans in the House just passed a bill in early June that would prohibit the federal government from setting new rules and regulations that would be in gas stoves. This is one of these like big culture war things about you know don't take away my gas stove even though the emissions are really detrimental to the environment, to the atmosphere.

Greg Dalton: And the people breathing them inside the homes increasingly.

Emma Dumain: Yes, that’s right. It’s a public health issue as well as a climate issue.

Greg Dalton: So stoves is an interesting example of energy entering the culture wars. It used to be that a lot of the argument was around affordability. It will hurt clean energy cost more will hurt regular Americans, lower-income Americans. So the arguments the opposition seems to have shifted from affordability to part of the culture war. Have you observe this shift and what does that mean now that energy is part of the culture wars where it used to be part of more than economic frame rather than a cultural frame?

Emma Dumain: Yeah, I mean I think that you know what we’re seeing right now is the federal government using its executive authorities to change the way we live and work to meet the moment of the climate crisis. The same way that there are Republicans saying don't take away my gas stove. You have Republican saying don’t tell me what car to drive. There's a lot of debate right now about the proposed rulemaking that the Environmental Protection Agency is doing around limiting tailpipe emissions.

Greg Dalton: Let me just jump in and say that the IRA was intentionally constructed as carrots. And people aren’t told what kind of car to drive, they're incentivized you get $7500 if you buy an EV. But the tax incentives are voluntary. You get them if you do something and if you don't, you can keep on living the way you do.

Emma Dumain: But when it comes to what the EPA is doing right now to limit emissions, they are going to make it impossible for gas-powered vehicles to survive in a meaningful way, if this rule is finalized and a Republican administration doesn't come in in 2025 to roll it back. You could also argue that some of the tax incentives as you say, not mandates in the IRA are also designed to have a chilling effect on traditional oil and gas.

Greg Dalton: Emma Dumain is a reporter at E&E News. Thanks for sharing your insights on the politics of green energy in red places in America.

Emma Dumain: Thanks for letting me on to talk about it.

Ariana Brocious: You’re listening to a Climate One conversation about green power in red states. Our podcasts typically contain extra content beyond what’s heard on the radio. If you missed a previous episode, or want to hear more of Climate One’s empowering conversations, subscribe to our podcast wherever you get your pods.

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Coming up, will the economic benefits of green energy projects being built in conservative areas change the calculus for politicians?

Heather Reams: We have this interesting dichotomy of Republicans not necessarily being in favor of these tax credits through the IRA, but red states has so much to gain from the investment that's there.

Ariana Brocious: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

This is Climate One. I’m Ariana Brocious. We know we have to make major changes to most of our systems very quickly to avert the worst impacts of a disrupted climate. But we’re still not all working together on this.

Greg Dalton: Democrats often fault Republicans for slowing down the decarbonization of the US economy. That is largely but not always true. Even when Democrats have the upper hand in Washington DC, two US Senators from West Virginia - first Robert Byrd and recently Joe Manchin - have obstructed their party’s clean energy pushes for three decades. But it is the case that more Republicans resist efforts to act on climate through regulations or restricting fossil fuel supplies, especially when those policies come from across the aisle.

Ariana Brocious: Heather Reams is one of the Republicans working to narrow that divide. She’s president of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, a non-profit that works to engage Republican policymakers about how to increase the nation’s economic, energy and environmental security.

Heather Reams: As a parent, I decided that I wanted to do something about the environment and how I was raising my kids. It was just one of these things where you’re like wow everything we’re doing today affects tomorrow affects the next generations. And as a Republican I saw that Republicans aren’t really engaging on climate change or thinking about the outcomes of kids in dealing with the changing climate the health concerns. And I thought we should be more engaged on this issue. So when this opportunity came for me, I’m like, you know what I'm just a mom who’s been working in Washington DC who understands this is a value and I want to change the hearts and minds of Republican, so I'm in.

Ariana Brocious: Well, I wanna say that “just a mom” is an understatement for any mom because it’s a big job as I can attest. But what was it that made you think that this was the place to put your effort?

Heather Reams: Well, I thought there was an area that there was just I think the problem with being the message and the messenger. Like we can have all the great messages we want about why the climate is changing and why we should change it. But the messengers were always off. They were not trusted messengers going to Capitol Hill talking to Republican legislators. And there was always an assumption that someone who is from a different side of the aisle or someone that you don’t ideologically agree with that there is something nefarious going on. So we really had to line up the politics and the policies and the messenger and that wasn't happening. My background has been in Washington DC for the last 25+ years is communications. So I recognize that there was a gap there but I can actually feel this gap. I don't have to be the communications professional kind of in the background. I can be actually, the lead communications person on it. And as a result, over seven years, man, have I learned a lot. I certainly know more about energy than I ever have, certainly more than turning on the lights, which is where I started. And then really understanding the nuances of what's going on with climate. It's not, you know, I'm not a scientist and thinking about that in a lot of other places where Republicans get uncomfortable. But telling Republicans like I started where you are, I wasn't really sure why I cared but I knew I had to care. Let me help you walk through some of the science, some of the facts, and some of the benefits of addressing climate change that all boats can rise if we think about deploying clean energy all around the country.

Ariana Brocious: A study by researchers at the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program showed red states will be most exposed to economic and environmental risks from a changing climate. Yet many of these areas also have the greatest potential for clean energy production. In spite of that, climate does not seem to be a serious consideration in many red states. Why do you think climate messaging has failed in these areas?

Heather Reams: Well, I go back to the message and messenger in some of that too. We really don't have the right messengers bringing forward like this is the why. There's also a lot of you’re thinking about left to center if you’re a Republican. And there's a lot of Republicans in its red states that’s why they’re called red states. And thinking about who’s talking to them and if you’re hearing from a further left of center organization and the alarmist tone that comes it just gets tuned out. So you’ve got to figure out how you bring the right message with the right messenger. And that was one of the reasons why Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions is so valuable because we’re all Republicans who believe that the climate is changing and want to help bridge that gap, that information gap, and really the authentic messengers were typically Republicans. We're with you. We understand that you may not think this is a threat that it is. But let's talk about what's really going on. And having these conversations a lot of times behind closed doors. And over time we've seen Republicans go no one's ever talk to me this way about it. No one's ever said this to me before. We’re seeing a shift in that now. If you don't want to address it. Don't talk about it. It will probably can't get fixed. So it's been a combination of things that have happened. But to your point, the red states are at a tremendous risk, particularly in coastal areas. And that’s where we see the most traction and the quickest traction with Republicans was in those areas like lower coastal areas Florida, South Carolina. Hurricane prone areas as well where we’re seeing hurricanes that may cross as a 1 or 2 category are now crossing always as 4s and 5s and creating catastrophic damage in areas. So I think there's something like, wait a minute, something is different. Who can I trust to talk to tell me what's going on. And hopefully and oftentimes the first call is to us.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah, you’re underscoring things we've heard from past guests. I mean Katharine Hayhoe speaks a lot about the importance of messengers and climate communication. And we had representative John Curtis on recently and he was saying similar thing about the alarmism that can be really off-putting when it comes from you know the other side of the aisle.The Inflation Reduction Act has the potential to send more money and jobs actually to some Republican districts despite being a law passed by Democrats. How will that affect the implementation of renewable energy projects in some of these states?

Heather Reams: Well, the IRA is gonna continually be under threat. These tax credits are so valuable for the expansion of clean energy. They've created an incentive and a lot of certainty at first off for industry to think about investing where maybe it wasn't as profitable to invest before. So they are incredibly important tax credits despite the fact that they were passed in a partisan manner through IRA and signed into law by President Biden with only Democrats voting for it. So as an advocate for clean energy we saw that this could be a real challenge moving forward but these tax credits could be at risk. And here we are certainly they are at risk. But it is interesting to see a lot of the investment are going into red states. So we have this interesting dichotomy of Republicans not necessarily being in favor of these tax credits through the IRA, but that red states have so much to gain from the investment that's there. So there needs to be a lot of education happening in trying to get the politics out of the way so good policy can take root. For example, a lot of the tax credits, let's take the tax credit for energy storage for instance, had enjoyed bipartisan support; both House and Senate Republicans supported this bill. And it had a good chance of passing on its own. We’ve been working on that bill for a while. Well, now it's passed through IRA. So we need to talk to Republicans and remind them that this was actually a bipartisan bill, but the process in which it was passed ultimately was partisan. And also talk about the value of investments that are going to go into their districts. This is called retail politics by the way, now we have to talk to a lot of Republicans individually about the investments that are going into their states because of the process.

Ariana Brocious: And so you’re mentioning the opposition that we’re seeing at the congressional level at national level which is very true. What are you hearing from elected officials at the state and local level about the money coming from the IRA into their states and districts?

Heather Reams: Very different actually. At the state level we have governors who are the CEO of their states. Governors talk about this all the time and this means more economic opportunity, workforce development, a strong tax base. So usually these governors are all in for it. And they are quick to point out that a lot of these tax credits were bipartisan before they got wrapped into a partisan process in a partisan bill. And also, at the local level as well. At the local level we’ve seen have more challenges with like citing issues that are very much more than NIMBYism and others. But at the state level we see a lot of support. So really, we need to marry and this is one of the strategies that we’re looking at is marrying what's going on at the state level and making sure that they're communicating with their federal delegation talking about the benefits. And I think time is our friend here. The more time that these projects take root into these districts into the red districts if you will, they're going to create a tax base they’re going to create jobs. They're going to create economic opportunity. They are gonna likely start producing lower energy costs if you’re producing wind or solar. It’s gonna lower costs to produce goods and services. And of course, the tax base schools, healthcare, community services. This all starts to come into play. And man do you know that governors and state legislators and mayors and city councils love that stuff. They need it and they’re banking on it, particularly in rural areas where we’re seeing a lot of investment. So time is also our friend but there's a lot of education that needs to be done to create the certainty and make sure these tax credits take hold.

Ariana Brocious: So let's talk a little bit about the jobs and the economy because I think this is really important. The Department of Energy just released a report showing clean energy job growth. And while that was occurring in all 50 states and DC two of the top three states were West Virginia and Texas which both saw pretty big gains. And Texas is already a big leader in renewable energy, as well as oil and gas. So what does that say to you about what we’re seeing happen, even in the short term the last several months?

Heather Reams: Well, we’ve had a number of bills that have been passed that are investing into energy development. We earlier had the Clean Energy Act of 2020 that passed that had some development for clean energy. We also had the IIJA which is also known as the Infrastructure Act also contributing to a lot of the infrastructure pieces for energy. So I think that's what we’re seeing primarily right now is the benefits of those laws passed particularly IIJA. But we’re already seeing benefit after two years. So imagine with IRA going in and these tax credits and investments that are starting to happen. Wow we could really see a lot growing exponentially year over year over year. What's holding back a lot of projects though and it's something we need to be as a country concerned about is permitting. Permitting is not just holding up fossil fuels, permitting is delaying renewable projects all across the country. So we need to get real serious about what permitting is helping to do and hurting to do and deploying clean energy is really a problem right now with permitting.

Ariana Brocious: And this is a really powerful and contentious point of discussion right now because both sides of the aisle want permitting reform. We've been hearing a lot about it, especially in some of the talks around the debt ceiling. But yes, there is sort of really different approaches to what should be happening and which kinds of projects should get streamlined. So give us your perspective on where this divide stands and what do you think we can make headway on with Republicans you talk to in getting not just additional reforms for traditional industries gas and oil, but renewables as well.

Heather Reams: Well, the good news is that both Republicans and Democrats recognize that permitting is an issue. So neither side needs to be convinced that there needs to be some changes going on. That is, a huge step in Washington to legislating in some way. But the devil is gonna be in the details here. And there's going to need to be some kind of I get this you get that in trading in some way. And what we see a lot of times is you see traditionally, Republicans leaning in more in fossil fuels and Democrats leaning in more in renewable energy. Although those lines are starting to blur. I think you're gonna see it kind of loud and clear those traditional lines when it comes to permitting. So there are gonna be some give-and-take there. Transmission is something that means a lot to Democrats right now and it means a lot to renewable energy. So I see that it would be a lot of give to be able to get the transmission. Republicans want more than anything right now some kind of legal reform. Ability to sue and the timeframes where judicial changes can be made. And there are lobbyists that want to keep that in place as well that are loyal typically to Democrats. So these are tough politics. And the fact that we didn't see them in the debt ceiling negotiations while it's not unusual because it’s such a complicated issue, it just goes to show in both sides of the aisle want something that even in serious negotiations day after day after day they still couldn't get it done. And I've heard from those who have been in the room or close to the room with the president and the top negotiators Republicans saying that they were not far apart in what we want to do, but getting there is a long slog. So I'm not saying this is not gonna happen. I’m not saying that could happen this year. But there's gonna have to be some give-and-take of what one side wants and wants the other side. And if both sides actually walk away unhappy it's probably a good deal. But we’ll see though.

Ariana Brocious: That’s always the case, right? Both unhappy. I do want to drill in for one second here because I know one thing that has been brought up in permitting reform is this comparison or analogy that natural gas pipelines have essentially this kind of one-stop shop when they go to get permitted and the same is not true for renewable energy projects. Do you see like that specific issue having any chance of movement on both sides of getting to a place of unity?

Heather Reams: I absolutely do. One thing that I think that Republicans pride themselves on is fostering more government efficiency and lowering costs and lowering cost for industry generally to get things built. So I think that's probably one of the easiest lifts that we can see in the permitting discussion. But to give that they’re gonna want something in return. So it's not just one issue by one issue we have to look at all this in a large like what's on the table here and then what will come off the table and we can get to some agreement.

Ariana Brocious: There's a group called Citizens for Responsible Solar, which has a name similar to your organization, but is not in any way affiliated that has been spreading misinformation about solar energy in rural areas to get residents there to oppose new solar projects. What do you think of that effort and what has your experience been with those types of misinformation, challenging the transition to renewable energy?

Heather Reams: Well, it's really unfortunate. I mean first of all; the name is too darn close but there’s nothing I can do about it because I’ve checked. But, you know, it's unfortunate to spread false information about the solar industry and what it can bring. Interestingly, if you have all of these jobs in your districts or you’re producing solar wind or a nuclear plant. Whatever it is there's always sometimes a NIMBYism when it's being built. But once it's there do people appreciate tax base it brings, the jobs and you know whatever other benefits of those we’d think about. In our polling we did earlier this year I think in March showed that 82% of Republicans and 90% of independents have a favorable view of solar power. So this is just Republicans and independents. When you start to talk about those who live near a facility for solar those numbers increase 88% of Republicans support it and 93% of independents support solar because they live near a facility. So that’s the opposite of NIMBYism, that's YIMBYism, yes, right? So I think that the misinformation is probably getting to a few individuals and they are starting to be very noisy. But when you really deal with rank-and-file Republicans and independents for instance, they have no problem with this. But citing is a powerful issue you’re building in our backyard, you're changing the way we live. And there's a lot of fear that can be built on by a few. And this organization is certainly doing a very good job in some areas of trying to scare off local residents about the benefits. So it's fight fire with fire and that’s exactly what we see with a lot of other right of center organizations like the Land & Liberty Coalition that are on the ground, talking about and countering that narrative. These are Republicans also talking about the values of solar as well. So we talked about the message and the messenger. Here's a perfect example where the messenger matters as well. We have Republicans potentially on both sides for and against solar. Let the citizens make the best decision and not use their fear mongering but facts. Facts and figures about really what happens. And I think ultimately, the renewable energy particularly solar in this case will win.

Ariana Brocious: interestingly solar can be very small and locally owned and operated, which can really dovetail with a lot of values of people who live in rural areas who want to be self-sufficient who don't want to have to depend on transmission towers who don’t want their view shed in that sense may be disrupted. And we spoke with a woman named Michelle Moore who is CEO of a group named Groundswell, who's working to do some of this in rural areas. Trying to actually get churches and small organizations to own their own panels and become self-sufficient. So it's interesting to me that there's a divide there when it would seem to be in alignment with some of these other values, right?

Heather Reams: For sure. And another area and there is an independence piece for sure that is attractive to a lot of Republicans. It's also a lot of folks who are getting tired of the power going off during storms because the storms are getting more violent. And in Puerto Rico everyone wants solar right now because of what they've gone through the last several years. And they want the reliability of electricity. Who can blame them? Especially when you've always had it. Solar is also being considered almost like a crop. Like you’re having land that's no longer being used for farming or at the family farm that just not able and doesn't want to farm anymore. But they don't want to let go of the land they want a rural lifestyle and they can lease out their land and still have the lifestyle they want. We saw this earlier with cell phone towers. Leasing your land to have cell phone towers there. It's not that different doing that. So I think it gives people choices about how they want to use their land and how they want to generate their electricity. And I think that’s for Republicans I know a huge issue when it comes to economic choice and energy choice. And like, yeah, if I can have more options, bring them to me and I’m gonna pick the best one for my family and maybe for my budget.

Ariana Brocious: Heather Reams is President of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions. Heather, thank you so much for joining us on Climate One.

Heather Reams: Thank you.

Greg Dalton: You're listening to a conversation about green energy in red states. This is Climate One. Coming up, the view from Wyoming, a major coal, oil and gas state that will soon be home to the largest wind farm in the country:

Terry Weickum: This thing is a history maker. It’s almost surreal, you know, you set there and you think man, 14 years ago we dreamed of this happening. And then I thought to myself, and today it's happening.

Greg Dalton: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

Ariana Brocious: This is Climate One. In spite of how easy it is to brand climate or green energy as a strictly partisan issue, people from all parties care about our current environment and future climate. And as we’ve talked about today, in many communities local economic realities may override national politics.

Greg Dalton: That seems to be true of Terry Weickum, mayor of Rawlins, Wyoming, where the largest wind farm in the country is currently being built – the Chokecherry and Sierra Madre Wind Energy Project. He lives in Carbon County – an apt name in a state that has long derived much of its revenue from exporting fossil fuels. He says at first the wind industry was intimidating.

Terry Weickum: You know, there were some wind towers standing before I was a Commissioner and I marveled at them. Actually, one of the largest wind towers in the northern hemisphere was stood up over by Medicine Bow. It was kind of an experiment. AndI don't know as much about that as I should know, but it was very intriguing. And then all of a sudden wind energy starts coming and we had some put up a footbridge which is by Arlington on Interstate 80. And just mesmerizing to watch and to see and just kind of an amazing feat of engineering. And then all of a sudden there's 52 wind farms being scoped out in Carbon County, which is very intimidating when you think about what would be left of our wide-open spaces with 52 wind farms.So they kind of scared the heck out of us. The fact is that it was a new industry to us, but it wasn't new to the world. And so it just took a tremendous amount of effort on our part to research and to decide what is good about and what isn’t good about them. Where should they be where should they not be.Minimum regulations far as spacing from houses and subdivisions and such like that. It was an open book. None of us knew anything about it. And So it was quite a learning process. It was very intimidating to be honest.

Greg Dalton: So I can see how that's intimidating, new industry coming in. Windfarms potentially all over the beautiful landscapes of Wyoming.What did the ranchers and hunters think and how their attitudes changed over time?

Terry Weickum: Well, as far as the ranchers it kind of depended upon whether they were in the process of leasing their land to windfarms. If they were in that category. were very quietly all forum. And then if they were ranchers that didn't have that possibility of wind energy coming to their ranch they weren’t quite as positive.

Greg Dalton: So if I have a ranch next to yours, Terry, don't want to look at the wind turbines that are making you money and not me money. Is that one way to look at it?

Terry Weickum: Yeah, that kind of describes every industry really. But where the wind towers are so tall and visible for, you know, distances people were pretty passionate one way or the other about them.

Greg Dalton: Well, just last week something quite remarkable happened near your town where Pres. Biden's Energy Sec. Jennifer Granholm and Wyoming's Republican Governor Mark Gordon officially broke ground on a transmission line that will carry electricity from the country's largest wind farm near your town the Chokecherry and Sierra Madre wind farms backed by the billionaire oil man out of Colorado Philip Anschutz. What did you think at that moment where there was one of Pres. Biden's cabinet secretaries, your Republican governor getting there to celebrate a big wind transmission and generation facility there in Wyoming?

Terry Weickum: Oh, it was incredibly exciting. You know 15 years ago is when they started this project or became visible to us in our county. And so amazing perseverance and just tenacity in getting this thing this wind farm built where, you know, it is one of the larger ones in the United States or the largest one I believe in the United States. But you have to understand in Wyoming some big projects are commonplace. This thing is a history maker. I mean it was so exciting we made history that day. The ribbon-cutting for the Gateway West power line because until the power line’s there the wind towers won't go up because they have to hook to the grid within a certain amount of time or lose their federal tax credits. So it’s almost surreal, you know, you set there and you think man, 14 years ago we dreamed of this happening. And then I thought to myself, and today it's happening.

Greg Dalton: Coal jobs and production in Wyoming are declining. Coal companies have declared bankruptcy. Is this a turning point for Wyoming from coal to wind?

Terry Weickum: Well, there's a huge difference between coal production and wind energy production. One is in the way of coal production, it makes a lot more jobs. The coal industry has you know hundreds of people per shift or thousands per shift and such like that. And the wind energy is different. It takes quite a few people to build these windfarms, but not very many people to run them when it's over. So as far as filling one void with this it does different things, but it's not an exact match.

Greg Dalton: What I hear you saying there is that one generates revenue. The other generates jobs. And those are not the same thing for the same people.

Terry Weickum: Well, they both generate revenue. But with the windfarms what they do is create a lot of taxes. Then those taxes do also create other jobs to help support the infrastructure, the people coming and going, the impacts of the construction workers and whatnot. And so it ends up being a very positive thing also, but in a different way.

Greg Dalton: And Wyoming has a wind production tax. It’s one or one of the very few that does that. That’s often seen to be as hostile to industry. Can you say a little more about that?

Terry Weickum: When I was appointed to the County Commissioners Association Wind Task Force Committee, they were paying a property tax. And that was the only tax they were paying. They were sales tax exempt so they didn't pay any sales tax and there was no production fee. All they paid was property tax fees. The problem with that is there a piece of an equipment and they depreciate. So as an example, there were 192 of them on this one wind farm up there by Arlington. In the last year I was a county commissioner the total amount of taxes the county received was $30,000, which would pay for about 30 feet of road. Therefore,if they're not paying their fair share of taxes grandma at the end of the block on a fixed income gets to help pay for some of those things; that just was not fair. So we looked at how best to tax them and it seemed like the best way was to reinstate the sales tax fee because they were exempted and then to add on a dollar a megawatt hour of production fee to help the ongoing expenses of supporting these industries. A lot of people poked fun of us at charging for the wind and whatnot. There are several ways to charge for that. But that was the most fair and equitable way. I don't know if you all studied oil. But in the day when oil first came along, they had the same struggles. You know where do they charge for the oil is it when it comes out of the ground when it goes into the pipe out of the pipe in the truck out of the truck. Where do they and how do they account for all that? This is almost carbon copy of what happened in that industry.

Greg Dalton: I will admit I was one of the people who when I read the stories about Wyoming taxing the wind that I sort of, you know, laughed or snickered at Wyoming tax the wind. But if you view wind as a resource like minerals in the ground or fossil fuels in the ground that are extracted and sent somewhere else, it makes sense that the local economy ought to have a piece of that action. And how do local Republicans and Democrats view wind energy in Wyoming?

Terry Weickum: Well, there's probably six Democrats here. No, not really. There's more than that but they’re by far the minority. And in Wyoming the difference between a Republican and Democrat is almost you almost can't distinguish between the two of them. I mean let’s just face it, quality of life begins with the paycheck. And when you lose thousands of jobs it makes you more open to other types of job producing industries.

Greg Dalton: Then is this transition to wind something to accelerate and embrace?

Terry Weickum: Well, change doesn't come easily to really anybody. And when this wind energy stuff started, we didn't know anything about it, nobody knew anything about it. And so you know the worst fear in the world is the fear of the unknown. You know, we didn't know anything about it. How long do they last? How dangerous are they? What do they do? We heard all kinds of stories but, you know when people talk about this energy transition. It's like one day we’re going to just not have fossil fuels. And if that's the case, I don't know what we'd be talking on because this headset I got on and this computer I'm looking at it’s all plastic. So guess what that was made out of fossil fuels. And if everybody today went out and bought electric car 99.9% of the people in Wyoming would be walking because there isn't enough places to charge them.

Greg Dalton: Ford and General Motors are both selling electric trucks. There’s a big waitlist for the F-150 Lightning when it was announced. Would you buy an electric truck? Do you think your neighbors would?

Terry Weickum: Not living here because you have to buy a wrecker too. You know our town is 100 miles from any other town.

Greg Dalton: One of our producers, Austin, actually charged an EV at a Tesla supercharger in Rawlins as part of a cross-country trip. Both Ford and GM have a new deal with Tesla to use the Tesla supercharging network, which is pretty strong around the country. I’m currently driving from Idaho through Nevada using that charging network. Maybe that day is closer than you might think.

Terry Weickum: How many, when you pull up and you’re filling up with electricity how many people are there charging their car when you're there?

Greg Dalton: It depends. But on the application, I can always know in advance how many are gonna be there. And I never pull up and it's full because I know before I go there. If one is full, the most I’ve ever had to wait is five minutes and there’s usually another one down. I'm driving across Haiti right now on a road trip and that hasn't been a problem.

Terry Weickum: So how many electric cars did you see out there percentagewise?

Greg Dalton: Yeah, small. Totally small in Idaho and Nevada, small.

Terry Weickum: So if you go from the 1% of electric cars and you go up to say 75% electric cars.

Greg Dalton: That’s a growth to manage that could cause some difficulty which is why we need a lot of that wind you're going to generate there in Rawlins.

Terry Weickum: All I'm trying to tell you is that if we all tomorrow in Wyoming switch to electric cars there would be a line from here to California, waiting to charge your car. This electric energy is it's great it’s fun. I've played with wind chargers since I was a little kid. But that transition is not a five-year transition. It's gonna take a long time to get the infrastructure right. I believe the transition may take place in my lifetime but I don't think so.

Greg Dalton: So to sum up, Terry, it sounds like you think wind is a good thing in certain places. It should be in other places not. And that this transition is happening the direction there seems to be a lot of agreement toward wind, solar, etc. There's differences about the pace of that transition and how fast it will happen. Is that a fair summary of your view?

Terry Weickum: Yeah, and I think some of the discrepancy and how long it's going to take in this and that maybe I have a different view because I'm not running for election. I'm not trying to sell anybody anything. It’s just not gonna happen that fast. took 14 years to get to the point where they now have the permit to start building a power line from here to California or Nevada and that will allow them to put up these wind towers. Now that took 14 years, maybe 15. So how long is it going to take before we do enough of those to be able to drive around with a bunch of electric cars.

Greg Dalton: Yeah, I think there is agreement that things take too long to build in this country and environment has need to start saying yes instead of saying no all the time.

Terry Weickum: Yeah, we can be too careful. We can be too careful. You know, so I just dealt with this at City Hall a few minutes ago everybody was like, well, we got to be careful. We got to be careful. Well, if we want to be as careful as we can possibly be we all need to go in and get a cement box, bury it and get in it. Then probably lightning won’t strike you or any of that sort of stuff.

Greg Dalton: Terry, thank you so much for sharing your insights from Rawlins, Wyoming with us here on Climate One.

Terry Weickum: Well, thank you for having me.

Greg Dalton: On this Climate One... We’ve been talking about green power in red states.

Brad Marshland is our senior producer; Our managing director is Jenny Park. Ariana Brocious is co-host, editor and producer. Austin Colón is producer and editor. Megan Biscieglia is our production manager. Wency Shaida [Shey-duh] is our development manager, Ben Testani is our communications manager. Our theme music was composed by George Young (and arranged by Matt Willcox). Gloria Duffy is CEO of The Commonwealth Club of California, the nonprofit and nonpartisan forum where our program originates. I’m Greg Dalton.

3:38 Emma Dumain on who benefits from the Inflation Reduction Act
10:12 Emma Dumain on Republican energy and climate agenda
16:59 Emma Dumain on Republican permitting reform
22:40 Heather Reams on why she works on climate issues
25:24 Heather Reams on why climate messaging struggles in conservative areas
35:42 Heather Reams on permitting reform
41:59 Terry Weickum on his first encounters with the wind energy industry
45:10 Terry Weickum on his connection to the largest wind farm in the country
47:39 Terry Weickum on wind farm taxes
50:33 Terry Weickum on the energy transition

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