The POWER Podcast

Brazil is blessed with a wealth of natural resources. It gets almost two-thirds of its electricity from hydropower facilities, and it also has enormous potential for wind, solar, and natural gas-fired power. Yet, the country is saddled with higher than average electricity prices compared to most developed nations. A study conducted by McKinsey & Company analysts found that Brazil’s electric power rates for captive industrial consumers were 65% higher than rates in the U.S. in 2019, and 35% greater than Canada’s, which has a similar reliance on hydropower. “The price of energy in Brazil only goes one way, and that’s up,” Lisarb Energy Chairman Jamie MacDonald-Murray said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. “It's driven by inflation, but largely, it’s also driven by the fact that the grid operators are having to reinvest in the infrastructure. They’re having to renew the grids. They’re having to add capacity and modernize the grid, and that cost they’re passing on to the consumer.” Lisarb Energy is focused on developing large-scale solar projects in Brazil. These include distributed energy solar parks for the corporate power purchase agreement (PPA) market, as well as high-yielding utility-scale solar parks for the free market and government auctions. The company was established in 2017, and has already become one of Brazil’s fastest growing solar developers. “We’ve been very successful,” MacDonald-Murray said. The ability to lock in power prices through a PPA is one of the key incentives for Lisarb Energy’s corporate clients, according to MacDonald-Murray. “We now have over 200 MW of PPAs signed with some of Brazil's largest companies, and we have another 700 MW in various stages of negotiation that I think will close out 2021 with just over 1 GW of corporate PPAs signed,” he said. The fact that legislation will be enacted next year requiring solar generators in Brazil to contribute money toward distribution costs has incentivized PPA agreements in the near term. “The price that we can offer won’t be as attractive [in 2022] because obviously, if we’re going to have to start contributing to distribution costs, then, obviously, we’re not going to be able to offer such a competitive price to our off-takers,” said MacDonald-Murray. Still, Lisarb Energy believes solar power’s growth potential in Brazil is enormous. The company cited a forecast by the Brazilian Solar Photovoltaic Energy Association, ABSOLAR, which says “solar will take the largest share (38%) of the Brazilian electricity matrix, producing 125 GW by 2050.” Brazil’s government recently exempted various types of solar equipment from a 12% import duty, which Lisarb Energy said shows that officials recognize “the strategic importance of the solar market.” Lisarb Energy has already secured land for 3 GW of solar PV development in Brazil. The majority of the company’s existing projects are smaller in size (about 2.5 MW), but it is currently working with a mining company on a 250 MW system. “That one’s slightly different,” said MacDonald-Murray. “We’re working with a partner to provide a battery system to obviously increase the usability of the energy that’s generated.”

According to a report released in 2019 by the U.S. Department of Energy, geothermal electricity generation could increase more than 26-fold by 2050—reaching 60 GW of installed capacity. That may seem like a pipe dream to some power observers, but if new well-drilling techniques allow enhanced geothermal systems to become economical, the reality could be much greater. In fact, Quaise Energy, a company working to develop enabling technologies needed to expand geothermal on a global scale, claims as much as 30 TW of geothermal energy could be added around the world by 2050. Most of the geothermal systems that supply power to the grid today utilize hydrothermal resources. These tap into naturally occurring conditions in the Earth that include heat, groundwater, and rock characteristics (such as open fractures that allow fluid flow) for the recovery of heat energy, usually through produced hot water or steam. Enhanced geothermal systems contain heat similar to conventional hydrothermal resources but lack the necessary groundwater and/or rock characteristics to enable energy extraction without innovative subsurface engineering and transformation. The technology that Quaise Energy is working on would allow drilling down as far as 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) to utilize heat from dry rock formations, which are much hotter and available in almost all parts of the world. “The key thing is we’re going for hotter rock, because we want the water to get hotter,” Carlos Araque, CEO of Quaise Energy, said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. “We want it even to be supercritical, which is the fourth phase of water—when it goes above a certain temperature and pressure—that’s what we’re looking for.” But drilling to those depths is difficult. “It really boils down to temperature,” Araque said. “The state-of-the-art of drilling technologies is in the 200C neighborhood, and the reason for that is electronics that go with the drilling systems. Making higher-temperature electronics is a very, very difficult task.” Another problem is the hotter the rock gets, the faster drill bits wear out. “So, if you imagine drilling at five kilometers below the surface of the earth, your drill bit will only last a few hours, because the rock is so hot and so hard,” said Araque. He explained that pulling the drill string out of a five-kilometer-deep hole so that the drill bit can be changed, and then pushing it back into the hole can take a significant amount of time. “So, a week to pull out of the hole, a few hours to change the drill bit, a week to push down into the hole to drill a few more hours. It becomes exponentially impossible to do that,” he said. “That’s where the drilling technology that we’re proposing comes into play. We’re basically trying to do directed-energy drilling with millimeter waves,” Araque said. “Imagine a microwave source on the surface, it’s called a gyrotron. We beam this energy through a pipe into the hole. Together with this energy, we push a gas—could be nitrogen, could be air, could be argon, if necessary—and at the bottom of that pipe, this energy comes out, evaporates the rock, and the gas picks up the vapor of that rock and pulls it back out. What comes out of the hole looks like volcanic ash, and the hole actually burns its way down, you know, five, six, 10, 15, 20 kilometers, as needed, to get to the temperatures we’re looking at.”

Open-Source Technology Benefits Transmission and Distribution Operators The term “open source" is well-recognized in the technology world, but may not be as widely understood in other sectors. What open source means is that the software code is publicly available so that anyone can contribute to the code base and create add-on extensions. This enables the growth of a market of providers that can offer hosting and add-on functionalities that can be utilized by all users. In the energy sector, LF Energy has taken a leading role in facilitating the development of open-source technology. LF Energy is part of The Linux Foundation, which is the umbrella organization for more than 425 open-source projects. Among LF Energy’s projects are platforms that help automate demand response; assist electricity, water, and other utility operators in managing systems; monitor and control microgrids and other distribution assets; and perform dynamic power flow simulations, among other things. Arjan Stam, director of System Operations with Alliander (a distribution system operator [DSO] in the Netherlands), and Lucian Balea, research and development program director and open-source manager with RTE (a transmission system operator [TSO] in France), were guests on The POWER Podcast and explained how open-source technology is being used by their companies. “We are talking about applications that would help assist the grid operators in operational control rooms to manage the power system in real time. We are talking about applications that help us to simulate the behavior of the power system to make sure that we can operate under safe conditions. We are talking about application that would increase the automation of the power grid so that the grid can react automatically in an optimized manner,” Balea, who is also the board chair for LF Energy, said. Stam, who is also an LF Energy governing board member, said DSOs are less experienced than TSOs when it comes to managing energy flows on the grid. He suggested it’s hard to start from scratch in developing greater power management capabilities. “It's really helpful if you can find an example that you can use to build this new capability,” said Stam. With open source, that’s what Alliander found. “We needed also new applications, and also the knowledge you need, and standardization you need, and interoperability you need,” said Stam. “The best way to build that and to create it is with other parties that have the same challenges. And that’s what we found in working with open source. So, it delivered us quite a lot.” Stam suggested open-source technology can also help speed the transition to renewable energy. In order to increase the level of renewable energy in the system, he said, “we need quite specialized applications that are not yet really available in the market.” However, by teaming up with other companies that have the same needs, development of the technology can happen more quickly. “And that’s actually what’s happening in open source,” Stam said. “Open source has to be seen as an accelerator. That’s the lesson that we learned from the experience of other industries,” Balea said, specifically mentioning cloud services as an example. He said by relying on open-source collaboration, cloud services technology was built and scaled very quickly. “In LF Energy, we apply this open-source acceleration lever to a great cause, that is, the energy transition,” Balea said. “If we look at the projects that we have, they are all guided by the need to adapt to a future energy system that will have to cope with a high share of distributed renewable energy resources.”

The Benefits of Flow Batteries Over Lithium Ion Lithium-ion (Li-ion) is the most commonly talked about battery storage technology on the market these days, and for good reason. Li-ion batteries have a high energy density, and they are the preferred option when mobility is a concern, such as for cell phones, laptop computers, and electric vehicles. But there are different energy storage technologies that make more sense in other use cases. For example, iron flow batteries may be a better option for utility-scale power grid storage. An iron flow battery is built with three pretty simple ingredients: iron, salt, and water. “A flow battery has a tank with an electrolyte—think of it as salt water to be simple—and it puts it through a process that allows it to store energy in the iron, and then discharge that energy over an extended period of time,” Eric Dresselhuys, CEO of ESS Inc., a manufacturer of iron flow batteries for commercial and utility-scale energy storage applications, explained as a guest on The POWER Podcast. Iron flow batteries have an advantage over utility-scale Li-ion storage systems in the following areas: • Longer duration. Up to 12 hours versus a typical duration of no more than 4 hours for large-scale Li-ion systems. • Increased safety. Iron flow batteries are non-flammable, non-toxic, and have no explosion risk. The same is not true for Li-ion. • Longer asset life. Iron flow batteries offer unlimited cycle life and no capacity degradation over a 25-year operating life. Li-ion batteries typically provide about 7,000 cycles and a 7- to 10-year lifespan. • Less concern with ambient temperatures. Iron flow batteries can operate in ambient conditions from –10C to 60C (14F to 140F) without the need for heating or air conditioning. Ventilation systems are almost always required for utility-scale Li-ion systems. • Lower levelized cost of storage. Because iron flow batteries offer a 25-year life, have a capital expense cost similar to Li-ion, and operating expenses that are much lower than Li-on, the cost of ownership can be up to 40% less. “People have been really interested in flow batteries for a lot of reasons, but the most common one that you’ll hear about is the long duration,” said Dresselhuys. So, why haven’t iron flow batteries overtaken Li-ion batteries in the power grid storage market? “I think lithium has had an advantage for a couple of reasons historically,” Dresselhuys said. “The first is that it’s been more broadly available.” Dresselhuys explained that even though Li-ion batteries weren’t specifically developed for grid applications, the fact that they are well-suited for cars and other uses, where the energy density that lithium provides has real advantages, allowed manufacturing efficiencies to develop. That, in turn, has brought costs for Li-ion down and accelerated growth. Therefore, it’s taken some time for other technologies to catch up. Still, there are companies implementing iron flow battery projects. ESS announced in April that it had contracted with a Chilean utility to provide a flow battery system for use in the environmentally pristine Patagonia area. ESS’s 300-kW/2-MWh Energy Warehouse system will be integrated with renewable resources in a local microgrid with the aim of eliminating about 75% of the diesel-fueled generation previously used to power the area. “The project there was actually originally designed and spec'd out to be a lithium project, because, of course, that’s what people thought was available,” said Dresselhuys. ESS’s team of experts talked to the owners about the advantages of the iron flow battery system and came away with the order.

Looking for Carbon-Free Energy Resources? Don’t Forget Nuclear Power As leaders around the world take steps to decarbonize energy supplies, many people have focused their attention specifically on wind and solar power. What they may fail to recognize is that nuclear power provides more electricity in the U.S. than all other carbon-free sources combined. This is true in some other countries, such as France, Sweden, and Ukraine, as well. “I think it’s a really exciting time to be in [the nuclear power] industry, not only because of all the technology that is starting to really be leveraged and come all together into a system to deploy a new reactor concept, for example, but the fact that our product has always been a clean energy source,” Dr. Rita Baranwal, former head of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Nuclear Energy, who now serves as vice president of Nuclear Energy and Chief Nuclear Officer with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. “It can be a solution to decarbonization, not only for states and countries, but the world as a whole. And so, to me, it’s a very exciting time and a great time to be in the business,” she said. EPRI is an independent nonprofit organization that conducts research, development, and demonstration projects in collaboration with the electricity sector and its stakeholders. It focuses mainly on electricity generation, delivery, and use, with a goal of benefiting the public, and the organization’s U.S. and international members. EPRI has many programs designed to support the nuclear industry including in the areas of materials management, fuels and chemistry, plant performance, and strategic initiatives. “Some of the things that we’re working on are deployment of small modular reactors—SMRs—and other advanced technology. We at EPRI have partnerships in this area with Kairos, NuScale, and LucidCatalyst. That’s one area. The other is around workforce opportunities and development. EPRI does a lot of work in developing training and delivering that kind of training,” Baranwal said. While most of the world’s existing reactors are large units with capacities as high as 1,000 MW and greater, advanced designs, such as the SMRs Baranwal mentioned, may open up opportunities to use nuclear power in new applications. For example, microreactors with capacities under 10 MW may be suitable for use in very remote areas or on islands. They could also be important for Department of Defense installations. “Let’s talk about Alaska,” said Baranwal. “Right now, they rely on extensive diesel to be driven in to help generate electricity for them. If you can envision a microreactor instead, you are reducing the reliance on that fossil fuel and also creating small communities that can have a microgrid and a microreactor, and be very self-sustained.” She suggested a similar arrangement could be used in places like Puerto Rico. Baranwal said what keeps her enamored with the nuclear industry is its clean-energy attributes. “I want to leave our environment as good or better than what we are experiencing today, and I know that nuclear—it being a clean energy source—will absolutely have a vital role to play in the decarbonization efforts that we’re all experiencing and trying to accomplish,” she said.

How Artificial Intelligence Is Improving the Energy Efficiency of Buildings. A lot of energy is consumed by buildings. In fact, the Alliance to Save Energy, a nonprofit energy efficiency advocacy group, says buildings account for about 40% of all U.S. energy consumption and a similar proportion of greenhouse gas emissions. Some estimates suggest about 45% of the energy used in commercial buildings is consumed by heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, of which, as much as 30% is often wasted. Most power companies these days have energy efficiency programs that help customers identify waste and implement energy-saving measures, but there are also non-utility providers working on solutions. Montreal, Canada–based BrainBox AI is one of them. It’s using artificial intelligence (AI) to significantly reduce energy consumption in buildings. “We’ve developed an autonomous artificial intelligence technology that applies to commercial buildings in order to render their heating and cooling needs, which is typically the single largest consumer of energy in a building, and to make those much more efficient and certainly much more flexible to outside demands and occupant demands,” Sam Ramadori, president of BrainBox AI, said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. The company’s autonomous AI HVAC technology studies how a building operates and analyses the external factors affecting it. It identifies potential improvement opportunities and then acts to optimize the building’s system. It requires no human intervention and reacts to changes in the built environment immediately to maintain the highest tenant comfort and energy efficiency at all times. “What’s exciting is you don’t have to picture a room full of dozens of engineers managing and monitoring these buildings. It’s truly the AI optimizing the building in real time without human intervention,” Ramadori said. Surprisingly, the BrainBox technology does not require any changes to be made to most buildings’ HVAC systems. It simply connects to what’s already installed and utilizes existing sensors and data, along with third-party resources such as weather forecasts and occupancy information, to drive decision-making. It’s easy to imagine how a building’s HVAC needs change through the course of a day. For example, east-facing offices may require more cooling in earlier parts of the day as the sun rises, while west-facing offices may require more cooling later in the day as the sun shines through windows in the afternoon. The BrainBox technology accounts for those sorts of changes and adjusts dampers to keep each zone optimally heated or cooled. But it doesn’t end there, the AI is constantly learning and evolving. Ramadori explained how changes in a building’s surroundings would also be picked up and accounted for by the technology. “What happens if across the street on the south-facing side, right now there’s a parking lot, and then in a year, they build up a tower right next to it? Well, what happens, that tower is now throwing shade onto part of your building for a part of the day. So suddenly, the behavior of those rooms has changed,” Ramadori said. “What’s exciting is no one has to tell the AI that there’s a building that just went up next door, it will just learn that ‘Wait a second, those rooms that used to get hot at noon, you know, for the bottom half of my building, no longer are getting that hot anymore.’ It doesn’t know why, but it doesn't matter. It just knows. It’ll relearn—by itself without a human reprogramming it—it’ll relearn the new behavior caused by that building built next door.” “We’re cutting energy consumption in a building typically by 20 to 25%—so, it’s a large reduction—and we do so without turning one screw, which makes it super exciting and powerful,” said Ramadori.

Serious Power Transmission without Wires Is Closer Than You Think Most people are aware that wireless charging technology is available today for small electronic devices, such as cell phones and watches, but when it comes to larger-scale power systems, the concept of wireless transmission of electricity probably seems like science fiction. The truth, however, is that systems have been developed and are being tested that could result in kilowatts of power being transmitted over distances of kilometers very soon. “We are looking to have these sort of higher-power, kilowatt-class devices at kilometer-scale distances out for early customer testing and use in the next couple of years,” Tom Nugent, co-founder and CTO of PowerLight Technologies, said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. Unlike most wireless cell phone chargers, which produce a magnetic field that a small coil in the device receives and harvests energy from to charge the battery, PowerLight uses optical power beaming technology, which converts electricity into high-intensity light. PowerLight’s system then shapes, directs, and beams the light to a specialized solar cell receiver that converts the light back to direct-current power. Through the beam, the company says “power can travel over long distances, at high altitudes, and in the deep sea—maintaining uptime, from near and far.” The innovative beam-shaping design “optimizes the energy of the beam at the start, to minimize losses across the transfer medium and maximize power in the end.” “This is a way to take energy from somewhere where it’s easy to generate or access, whether that’s a generator or an electrical outlet, and we convert that electricity into light, and then project it either through the air or through optical fibers to some remote location where it may be very difficult to get power to,” Nugent said. “What this really is, is a wireless extension cord.” PowerLight has already conducted demonstrations in which it delivered as much as a kilowatt of continual power. “One of the advantages of using near-infrared light, as we do, is that it allows you to go very long distances—kilometers or even more,” said Nugent. In fact, the company has delivered power over distances of one kilometer in demonstrations. Currently, PowerLight is focused on providing solutions for the telecommunications and construction industries, and for the military. Some of the applications that seem particularly promising include powering communication nodes, security sensors, and drones. However, as the technology evolves, Nugent envisions scenarios where megawatts of power could be delivered over hundreds of kilometers to remote military bases or small islands—places where it would be impractical to run wires. Nugent said PowerLight is getting very close to releasing some new products to the market. “It’s something that many people haven’t heard of, or don’t realize where the technology is, and it’s actually much, much closer to reality than a lot of people may have thought,” he said.

What’s Been Holding Hydrogen Fuel Cells Back, and How to Change That The technology used in modern hydrogen fuel cells is not new. In fact, NASA used fuel cells for its manned space missions in the 1960s. But fuel cells have not really “taken off” (pardon the pun) in earthly applications since that time. Some industry insiders believe that will change very soon. “We’ve been sort of monitoring hydrogen for a number of years and doing some research in it, and it became clear to us over the past few years that hydrogen can play a huge role in fighting the climate crisis and decarbonizing hard to decarbonize sectors,” Amy Adams, vice president of Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Technologies with Cummins, said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. Among the ways Adams envisions hydrogen being utilized is in fuel cells powering such things as trucks, buses, trains, and ships. There are also stationary applications, including for electric power generation, that could be a good fit. So, what’s been hindering deployment of fuels cells to date? Adams suggested there were four main things holding back widespread adoption of the technology. “First of all is just technical readiness,” said Adams. However, she noted that fuel cell technology has been evolving, and advancements have led to longer-lasting, better-performing, more-efficient, and larger-scale fuel cell systems. “They’re now ready for primetime, if you will, in several applications.” Another barrier has been infrastructure readiness. “That’s got two pieces,” Adams said. “One is the availability of hydrogen, so having hydrogen refueling stations, and then the cost of the hydrogen at the pump.” Adams noted that Cummins has been involved in a number of refueling station projects that use electrolyzers to produce hydrogen. The company has also partnered with ETC in a joint venture called NPROXX, which is based in Europe and will provide customers with hydrogen products for both on-highway and rail applications. Adams said many companies within the industry are working to address the infrastructure challenge, so she expects that to build out over time. A third obstacle has been regulation, but policymakers around the world are beginning to help on that front too. “We continue to see a lot of government activity to accelerate the role of adoption, both through mandates and incentives, tax credits, carbon taxes, etc. So, that’s going to help accelerate investment in both innovation and R&D [research and development], as well as larger-scale deployments,” she said. Lastly, in the past, total cost of ownership has not been where it needed to be. “With any technology adoption, it has to make sense for the customer from a business perspective,” said Adams. But that is also changing. “The costs have come down significantly, and will continue to go down as we go throughout this decade,” she said. According to Cummins’ total cost of ownership analysis, fuel cells will reach parity with diesel engines in heavy-duty truck applications by 2030 or sooner. “We’ve seen positive progress in all of those areas, which is why we see increased interest now and what we believe will be increased adoption over the next few years,” Adams said. One country that has already seen significant growth in fuel cell usage is South Korea. POWER reported on three new electricity generating facilities based on fuel cell technology that were deployed in South Korea last summer: a 50-MW power plant placed in service by Hanwha Energy at its Daesan Industrial Complex in Seosan, a 19.8-MW installation in Hwasung, and an 8.1-MW facility in Paju. “Part of the magic that we’re seeing in Korea as it relates to stationary power using fuel cells is incentives,” said Joe Cargnelli, director of engineering for Cummins’ Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Technologies division. “So, they have incentives that promote the deployment of stationary fuel cells and [they’ve been] highly successful, and I think it’s a great strategy.”

Solar Energy in the Sunshine State: FPL Leads the Way Florida is known as “The Sunshine State,” so it’s no surprise that solar energy is growing rampantly across the state. Among the utilities adding solar resources to their energy mixes is Florida Power and Light Co. (FPL). FPL claims to be the largest energy company in the U.S. as measured by retail electricity produced and sold. The company serves more than 5.6 million customer accounts supporting more than 11 million residents across Florida. FPL—a subsidiary of Juno Beach, Florida-based NextEra Energy—says it operates “one of the cleanest power generation fleets in the U.S.” “We are big fans of solar energy, and we’ve been working to advance solar in the state for more than a decade,” Jill Dvareckas, senior director of development with FPL, said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. “We currently have 37 solar energy centers in operation, with seven more under construction, which makes FPL the largest producer of solar power in Florida.” FPL stuck its proverbial “toe in the water” back in 1984 when it constructed a 10-kW PV facility in Miami, but it didn’t really get serious about solar until 2009 when it built a 25-MW solar energy center in DeSoto County. Since then, 35 similarly sized installations (74.5 MW each) have been added. “Our commitment to clean energy is evidenced by our groundbreaking ’30-by-30’ goal to install 30 million solar panels by the year 2030,” Dvareckas said. If the company succeeds in reaching that target, solar energy will make up about 20% of FPL’s power capacity at the turn of the decade. In her position, Dvareckas is also responsible for the deployment of other cutting-edge technology, including electric vehicle (EV) and battery storage programs. “There’s no doubt that the electric transportation revolution is underway already,” she said. “FPL has been investing in clean transportation for over a decade. We were the first electric company in America to place the hybrid electric bucket truck into service in 2006.” Today, the company has one of the largest “green” fleets in the nation, with nearly 1,800 vehicles that are either biodiesel-fueled, plug-in hybrids, or EVs. FPL also has an EV charging infrastructure pilot program, called FPL EVolution. “Our goal with the program is to install 1,000 charging ports in 100 locations in our service area across the state to increase the availability of universal EV charging by 50%,” Dvareckas said. Ultimately, more chargers means less range anxiety for EV owners, which many consumers cite as a reason for not wanting to purchase an EV. “From our perspective, this is a pilot program that is really enabling us to learn as the utility ahead of mass adoption to ensure that the infrastructure upgrades and placement that we’re making in the future is done in a thoughtful manner that benefits all of our customers,” said Dvareckas.

Understanding Energy Crises of the 1970s and Avoiding Problems Today. If you were alive and living in the U.S. during the 1970s, you probably remember waiting in long lines to fill your car with fuel. Yet, gasoline wasn’t the only item in short supply during the “Me Decade”—natural gas was seemingly running out and electricity demand was growing so much that new power plants were going up all over the country. “I would argue, and I think a lot of historians would agree with me, that the 1970s was the most important decade in U.S. energy history, and I say that because of the gasoline interruptions. We had three big crises in the Middle East that reduced our supplies of oil, and that got so bad that at one point, in some states, less than 50% of the stations had any gasoline to sell at all,” Jay Hakes, author of the forthcoming book Energy Crises: Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Hard Choices in the 1970s, said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. “It was also a time where electric demand was expanding at a very rapid rate. There was a lot of optimism that nuclear would fill most of that void,” Hakes said. However, as fate would have it, the Three Mile Island (TMI) accident in 1979 pretty much put an end to the nuclear power construction heyday. In addition to writing books, Hakes has served as the administrator of the U.S. Energy Information Administration during the Clinton administration and as director for Research and Policy for President Obama’s BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Commission. He was also the director of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library for 13 years, and he has had access to some of President Carter’s personal diaries, giving him unique insight into the events that occurred during Carter’s presidency. “Jimmy Carter worked for Admiral Rickover when they developed the first nuclear submarine,” Hakes pointed out. “So, he actually knew the technology of nuclear reactors—obviously better than any president and better than some of the people that worked at the Atomic Energy Commission.” Carter had also spent time on recovery efforts after the world’s first nuclear accident, which was at the Chalk River site in Ontario, Canada, in 1952. Carter was part of a group that was sent into the containment vessel to clean it up. “So, he would be the best president you’d want to have if there was a nuclear accident.” Hakes noted that reports being sent to the president during the first couple of days after the TMI accident were mostly positive. However, on the third day, Carter decided he needed someone with technical expertise at the site to provide him with better details, so he had a direct phone line set up with Harold Denton, who was onsite following the situation as the head of nuclear reactors for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “The short story is the coolant system, which keeps the core from melting, broke down, but the containment vessel—that four-feet thick concrete structure that is around the reactor—did its job, and so, very little contamination reached the public,” Hakes said. Following the incident, Carter formed a commission to investigate and recommend reforms for the nuclear industry. “I think that commission did an excellent job,” said Hakes, noting that many improvements were made based on the lessons learned. “The industry and the government both did a good job of fixing those safety problems. So, you know, in that sense, it’s a good model for dealing with energy crises.” Hakes explained some of the policies, not only of Carter’s administration, but also of Nixon’s, that exacerbated the energy crises of the 1970s, and he shared his insight on how President Biden’s agenda could affect the energy industry going forward. He noted that Biden has put a pause on leasing on federal lands, but said he doesn’t expect that to affect production, at least for several years.