Speaker 2
In this podcast, we traverse disciplines, industries, and opinions to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change and all the ways people like you and I can help. Christina, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1
Thanks so much. Excited to be here.
Speaker 2
Well, I'm excited too, because looking at your background, you have charted a fascinating course through the last decade or so, as really, the entire corporate world has started paying attention to what is their energy mix? How do they buy a clean power? And you've built your career along that same curve currently at one of US's largest privately held companies. And before that, at a giant hyperscaler, you've worked at a major power utility. And of course, it seems like you started your career in environmental organizing with the Sierra Club. So I can't wait to dive in. We're going to talk all about power purchase agreements and how companies are buying power today and what they want. But maybe let's hear from you about your own path and journey.
Speaker 1
Thanks so much for having me. It's really such a pleasure to be able to be here and have this conversation today, Cody. I would start with a story that I don't often tell, which is how I would say my climate journey really began, which was, well, I think first, spent a lot of time outside of the kid adventuring in a number of different locations, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts when I was growing up. But my climate journey really started in college. So in college, I was often sitting in contemplative prayer and meditation. I had a regular practice. And when I would sit, I would feel this very deep interconnectedness to the ecological world and also to a shared sense of humanity. So something that was very impactful for me. This was all happening as I was an international studies major at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. And I was struck by the fact that communities who were most disproportionately impacted by the impacts of climate change, communities of color and low income communities were those who were at least contributing to the problem. So that really moved me to want to make a difference and go into the climate field. And in college, some internships directly in international development. But then I took my first full time job with the Sierra Club and my very first job was working for their environmental partnerships team. We were building relationships working on campaigns together with communities of color, diverse communities, environmental justice communities. And for me, it was a total dream job. How I ended up in renewables was actually a bit happenstance because in the O8 recession, we lost funding for those programs. That's often happens when nonprofits lose funding. It's often the diversity, equity, inclusion, environmental justice work that goes first. And so I took the first job I could see within the organization. And that was in renewables advocating for clean energy and climate legislation at the federal level. You
Speaker 2
want to continue on and chart the second part of your career
Speaker 1
arc? Absolutely. So the next four years, I should say, we're spent advocating on the Hill for clean energy and climate legislation at the federal level. Got to see the Waxman, Markie bill move through the house, which was first cap and trade legislation that we'd seen here actually moved through the house of representatives and then didn't get taken up in the Senate. And so that for me was really devastating at the 20 something who was very excited about the space. And so I decided it was time to go back to school. I did my MBA and an environmental management degree at Duke University. And in school, I interned with General Electric in their wind business. My project was a strategic project focused on looking at the additional opportunity for wind uptake in the southeastern United States. I think this would have been the 2013 timeframe. And so if you remember at the time, it was primarily large utilities who were buying renewable electricity in the US. What struck me was that it was buyers were really setting the tone for what the renewable energy space would look like. It really wasn't happening in the policy space as much as I had hoped. It was really on the buy side. And so I took a job with Pacific Gas and Electric coming out of school. I spent one year in their asset management group and then moved over to their structured transactions team where our team was responsible for sourcing, structuring and negotiating long term power purchase agreements, wind, solar, biomass, energy storage in front of and behind the meter for the electric utility in Northern California. Really enjoyed that work. But my husband had a chance to move home to his hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota. And so we decided to move to Minneapolis.
Speaker 2
And you really were on the vanguard of clean power buying at that time, I suppose. This was really before large corporates were starting to structure their own power agreements. So really, as you said, it was the utilities somewhat leading the charge there.
Speaker 1
That's right. Absolutely. And I would say a few interesting points about that. So when I got to Pacific Gas and Electric to their structured transactions team, the immediate work that was given to me was looking at some of their existing contracts. So particularly wind and thinking about how we could amend existing contracts to manage things like negative pricing. So when they had originally executed these deals, they hadn't thought that we'd ever have a need to curtail a wind asset. And so we were opening up existing contracts and trying to amend them to start to adapt to some of the changing aspects of the marketplace that are now very commonplace today. Another primary component of that job was looking at battery energy storage. So similarly, something that is very common in the market today, but at the time for California, they were really on the cutting edge of determining how would companies contract for battery energy storage.
Speaker 2
And that timeframe, which was the mid-20 teens, I guess, was sort of the tail end of the shale boom. What were the reasons that these large utilities, specifically PG&E, I suppose, were leaning in on renewables? Was it more exploratory still? Or were they starting to look to replace larger swaths of their overall power generation?
Speaker 1
The utilities, there were some different reasons that they were making these decisions, but in large part, it was related to compliance obligations that they had in relation to renewable portfolio standards that states had passed. And so it's a great point. And when I sort of go back to the GE project that I had looking at potential additional wind off taken to southeastern US, there were more nuances to the results of what we found that summer. But what we found was that investor owned utilities in the southeast really had no incentive to buy renewable power. And as a result, that really wasn't the place that GE should focus on trying to sell more turbines.
Speaker 2
Then let's fast forward in your career to where you started actually buying power on behalf of larger corporate entities. How did you see that path emerging to where you decided, hey, it's time to go in-house somewhere and actually help purchase power and had confidence that these companies were serious about wanting to do this?
Speaker 1
I spent two years working for Edison Energy, which is now TRIO. They're a renewable energy advisory group. It was leading engagements, helping companies set science-based targets and then implement their scope to emission reduction plans. And so that was, again, sourcing, structuring and negotiating corporate renewable energy power purchase agreements. And it was a very fun time. I think for corporates, we had begun to see some of the large tech companies execute power purchase agreements. And corporations were trying to get their hands around, how do we make good on these decarbonization targets when ultimately the tools that corporations are using to transact in this marketplace are these highly technical swaps and they're exposing our companies to a significant amount of risk. And so you would end up with sustainability teams needing to reach out to their technical accounting group and their tax group and work as a very cross-functional collaborative team to try to understand what were these very new and what continued to be very complex contracting structures.
Speaker 2
How have you seen power purchasing evolve inside corporates? I mean, it feels like the initial pass at it was through primarily renewable energy credits, where you weren't actually buying electrons, you were essentially buying offsets and it was sustainability motivated. Do you still see the sustainability and emissions reduction motivation driving this or is it moving to become much more of a financial asset, financial leverage type of decision internally?
Speaker 1
This kind of plays into the sort of arc of corporate procurement in the sense that there was a point in time for renewable energy procurement where there was a chance that by executing a power purchase agreement that your implied rec value or the value when you look at what you anticipate the cash flows from that contract will be over time could potentially be positive. And so you might expect that instead of buying a unbundled rec that you could buy this bundled product, commit to this long-term revenue stream for the developer and that you might actually make money per megawatt hour of energy generated from that facility from the corporate perspective.