Energy Capital Podcast

Solar energy has the potential to revolutionize Texas’ power grid, lower costs, and provide resilience in extreme weather. But what happens when some companies selling solar systems aren’t playing fair? In this episode of the Energy Capital Podcast, I spoke with Sara DiNatale, an investigative reporter whose in-depth four-part series “In Broad Daylight” for the San Antonio Express-News uncovered disturbing scams from unethical and predatory companies. DiNatale was honored for her work on this series as one of only 15 out of 500 entries to win the George Polk Award for “intrepid, bold and influential” reporting.The series started with a few homeowners’ struggles but quickly exposed a larger pattern — solar systems that weren’t properly installed, homeowners left with massive loan payments for panels that didn’t work, and a lack of consumer protections to hold bad actors accountable. DiNatale detailed how some homeowners were aggressively targeted by door-to-door salespeople, pressured into signing contracts that promised energy savings but often resulted in tens of thousands of dollars in debt for non-working systems.In Austin and San Antonio alone, 18% to 24% of solar installations failed their first inspection, meaning homeowners were left with what one expert called “expensive roof decorations.” Some systems continued to fail on second and third inspections, leaving families with long-term loans for technology that wasn’t even functional.One of the most heartbreaking cases she covered was the Duncan family in Corpus Christi, a low-income, hearing-impaired couple sold a $100,000 system they never should have been sold. Their credit was destroyed and the installer vanished.We also explored how some solar companies operate like multi-level marketing (MLM) schemes, recruiting young salespeople with promises of making six figures, teaching them to target elderly homeowners, and encouraging deceptive sales tactics. Some of these companies even offer cash incentives upfront to make the deal seem more appealing, without disclosing that this money is really just wrapped into the loan.The good news? There are many great solar companies and ethical solar installers in Texas, and there are steps consumers can take to protect themselves. We talked about what consumers should look for. We also discussed legislative fixes, including a requirement that no company gets paid until an installation passes inspection, licensing standards for solar installers, and consumer protection laws to crack down on deceptive financing practices. A bill was filed by Senator Zaffirini at the Texas Legislature (SB 1036) to address many of the problems mentioned by DiNatale.Solar remains one of the most promising energy solutions for Texas, but without proper oversight, these scams could continue to spread — especially as the demand for distributed energy grows.This is an episode you don’t want to miss. If you or someone you know is considering solar, listen before you shop, much less sign any contracts.As always, please like, share, and leave a five-star review wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for being a part of this conversation!Time Stamps00:00 - Introduction to the Energy Capital Podcast05:14 - The Importance of Inspections and Approvals07:49 - Real Stories of Victims in the Solar Industry10:26 - Legislative Solutions and Consumer Awareness12:44 - Sales Tactics and Red Flags in Solar Companies18:09 - The Solar Sales Landscape21:47 - Understanding Financing and Dealer Fees29:43 - Consumer Complaints and Industry Accountability30:09 - Positive Actors in the Solar Industry35:09 - Advice for Potential Solar Buyers37:20 - Financial Considerations for Solar Energy Investment38:53 - The Importance of Battery Storage in Solar Systems39:47 - Challenges in the Solar Industry: Trust and Education42:10 - Consumer Protection in the Growing Solar Market44:01 - Regulatory Measures and Licensing in the Solar Industry46:48 - Tracking and Accountability for Solar Sales Practices49:31 - The Need for Consumer Guides and Resources51:52 - Engaging with the Solar Community and ResourcesShow NotesConsumer Protection and Solar Industry Scams* Sara DiNatale’s Four-Part Solar Investigation (San Antonio Express-News) – The full investigative series exposing deceptive solar sales tactics in Texas.* Sara on X (Twitter) * Texas Attorney General’s Consumer Complaints Division – Where Texas residents can report fraudulent solar companies.* US Department of the Treasury Solar Scams Resource – Guides on avoiding deceptive home energy sales tactics.* FTC Consumer Solar Awareness Articles - 1 & 2Grid Reliability and Interconnection Failures* Austin Energy Solar Program –* CPS Energy Solar Information * ERCOT Interconnection Process – How solar systems connect to the grid and what happens when they fail inspections.High-Pressure Sales Tactics and Deceptive Financing* Better Business Bureau (BBB) Solar Complaints – Reports on misleading solar sales practices in Texas.* Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) Consumer Guide – What homeowners should look for when considering solar.* NABCEP Solar Installer Certification – How to verify if a solar installer is certified.Legislative Fixes and Future Protections* Senate Bill 1036 - 89th session bill relating to the regulation of residential solar retail transactions. * Texas Legislature Bill Tracker – The Legislature’s site for monitoring bills and hearings.* Nevada’s Solar Consumer Protection Program – A model Texas could adopt for preventing predatory sales.* California Solar Licensing Requirements – A look at other states’ approaches to regulating solar contractors.Key Quotes from the Episode* "We found Texans paying for solar panels that don’t even work, systems that failed inspections multiple times, leaving homeowners with nothing but massive loan payments." – Sara DiNatale* "In Texas, you don’t need a license to install solar panels, which means the person drilling holes in your roof might have zero experience." – Sara DiNatale* "This is a problem that needs urgent legislative fixes, requiring an inspection before payment is one simple way to protect homeowners." – Doug Lewin This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.douglewin.com/subscribe

In his State of the State speech this week, Governor Abbott acknowledged the obvious: “Our rapidly growing state also needs an increasing supply of electric power.”The Governor didn’t specify what types of energy we need, though he did give an implicit nod to an all-of- the-above approach, including renewables and storage:“We now provide more power than ever before. In the last four years, we increased power by 35%. As a result, Texas ranks No. 1 for electric power generation.”The fact check on this: it’s all true. Texas produces more power than any other state by far, and we added the most power over the last four years — bringing our full nameplate capacity from about 125 gigawatts before 2021’s Winter Storm Uri to an astounding 170 gigawatts today. Moreover, 92% of that 35% increase Gov. Abbott cited is from wind, solar, and storage (75% from solar and storage alone).Yet as the Governor rightly noted, we need more. A lot more.The Texas Legislature is nearly four weeks into its 140-day session, and legislators have a lot of important decisions before them. But there is one threshold choice that could change the trajectory of the state for generations:Will Texas leaders focus their time and attention on building vital energy infrastructure that capitalizes on a once-in-a-generation opportunity to grow our economy? Or will they try to harm the renewable energy and storage that’s supporting the grid, lowering bills, and bringing massive investment to rural Texas?One path will propel Texas’ economy and energy leadership for decades; the latter will leave us poorer and more vulnerable. One would build up our state, the other would tear down a vital industry.It is a time for choosing.The PromiseIn his speech, the Governor rightly prioritized the funding of water infrastructure. The effort to fund a secure water supply is absolutely vital to our state and deserves undivided attention.He also called “for Texas to lead a nuclear renaissance in the United States,” having previously appointed an Advanced Nuclear Reactor Working Group that last year recommended the creation of a fund to support new nuclear reactors and a Texas nuclear industry. This effort should also rightly take up significant legislative focus.In addition to those critical items, the legislature this year also will need time to consider major pieces of legislation dealing with:* Large loads like data centers and how to pay for transmission and other grid costs;* Energy waste reduction to increase reliability, particularly during winter storms;* Consumer protections from predatory solar installers; and* Backup power to ensure that nursing homes, water treatment facilities, fire stations, and other critical facilities have reliable onsite power during and after natural disasters.That’s just a start, and that’s just energy. There's a lot of work to do and not a lot of time to do it — which is precisely why it would be so foolish to spend any time on punitive, anti-energy proposals to tear down our state’s nation-leading renewable energy and battery storage industries, and the 60,000 Texans employed in them.The DangerTexas needs more power, the Governor said. Unfortunately, the legislature is now considering Senate Bill 819, which would strangle the vast majority of renewable energy development in Texas. With rising load growth, inflation, and $30 billion in potential transmission costs, mostly to support Permian Basin oil and gas operations, this is a terrible time to take the lowest-cost resources out of the mix — not that there’d ever be a good time to raise Texans’ electric bills by tens of billions of dollars.If SB 819 (or a similar anti-energy bill) passes, then electricity inflation will skyrocket. Your electric bill will skyrocket. And legislators will never hear the end of it.Supporters will say that such efforts are not about kneecapping renewable energy, but just look at the language below. With SB 819, the preamble asserts the importance of protecting our state’s natural resources and limiting the development of “renewable energy generation facilities,” but somehow never mentions toxic coal ash “ponds” or the mercury, arsenic, selenium, and other poisons they hold. Nor does the bill even mention oil and gas drilling. Wind turbines would have to be more than half a mile from anyone’s property line, while oil rigs would still be allowed right up to the edge of the line and only 100 feet from a state park or school. This is not about protecting natural resources.Remarkably, the bill directly invokes “the police power of the state” to put the nation’s most draconian regulations on private property owners who want to develop renewable energy on their own land — quite an invocation for some supposedly conservative legislators.In a speech known as “A Time for Choosing,” Ronald Reagan said: “What does it mean whether you hold the deed … or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property?” Indeed.For many Texans, the ability to put solar, wind, or batteries on their land is a matter of life and death for their family farms and ranches — these resources provide vital income streams that allow them to hold onto property in their families which, in some cases, has been in their families for generations.Former Republican legislator John Davis testified last session that the seven wind turbines on his ranch provide “steady, reliable, predictable income that allows my family to keep the ranch intact and make investments into its future as well as for the future generations of my family.”Why would anyone want to take that away from him?Why would a conservative state government so severely restrict private property owners as SB 819 proposes to do? Moreover, renewables have pumped $50 billion into rural Texas ranches, farms, and local governments for schools, roads, and other infrastructure — why cut off that funding for communities that need it?And if the bill’s supporters really want to protect Texas land, why aren’t they including all energy projects?OutlookThis isn’t the first time Texas has faced this threat — SB 819 closely resembles a 2023 bill that would have radically expanded government regulation and restricted private property rights. The conservative Texas House of Representatives stopped it.Hopefully this session, the conservative Texas Senate won’t waste time on this effort to slow down the development of new power sources that Governor Abbott says we need. Hopefully, conservatives, moderates, and progressives alike will choose to protect private property rights and oppose efforts to expand “the police power of the state.” If they do so, they’ll also be voting for lower electric bills, and a stronger Texas economy.There simply isn’t time to waste. The legislature will only spend so much time on infrastructure and energy issues. They have less than four months to expand our water infrastructure, launch a nuclear industry, figure out how to connect large loads, reduce energy waste, protect consumers, ensure backup power at critical facilities, and more.The choice is clear: set up future generations for success, or waste time trying to hobble the fastest growing source of power in the state which we desperately need.As our Governor reminds us, our rapidly growing state needs an increasing supply of power. So it’s time to choose: More energy or less energy? Freedom or “the police power of the state?” Private property rights or big government? Abundance or scarcity?It is indeed a time for choosing.This is a free post. Please share it widely and please consider a paid subscription to support the Texas Energy & Power Newsletter and the Energy Capital Podcast. Thank you! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.douglewin.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.douglewin.comIn this episode of the Energy Capital Podcast, I had the pleasure of talking with Jimmy Glotfelty, commissioner at the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) from the summer of 2021 through the end of 2024. With decades of experience across the private and public sectors, Jimmy is the rare person who brings both a developer and a regulator’s perspecti…

In this episode of the Energy Capital Podcast, I spoke with Congressman Greg Casar about some of the most pressing challenges and opportunities facing Texas’ energy system. From addressing worker protections during extreme weather to rethinking Texas’ grid structure, our conversation explored a range of ideas championed by the Congressman, including* The Connect the Grid Act: Casar introduced the bill on the three year anniversary of Winter Storm Uri. The bill aims to improve grid reliability by interconnecting ERCOT with the national grid. We explored the positives and negatives of that proposal, including a recent MIT study that found the bill would reduce outages by 40-80% in a system similar to Winter Storm Uri, assuming comparable power plant failures— depending on how many transmission lines are built to interconnect ERCOT. Casar also highlighted the economic benefits, including new revenue opportunities for Texas through clean energy exports. And I asked him about the potential downsides including a lot more regulations before Texas builds more infrastructure. * Balancing permitting reform with consumer protection: While Casar supports streamlined permitting to speed up transmission and clean energy projects, he also emphasized the importance of keeping key consumer protections in place. * Protecting workers in extreme heat: With heat the leading cause of climate-related deaths, Casar discussed the need for federal heat safety standards to protect outdoor workers, including those in construction and delivery services. He pointed to recent preventable deaths as evidence of why this issue demands immediate attention.* Opportunities for workers in the energy transition: Casar also focused on the challenges facing oil and gas workers during the energy transition. Through his American Energy Worker Opportunity Act, he hopes to provide a clear path for fossil fuel workers to transition into high-paying clean energy jobs without sacrificing pay or benefits. This approach prioritizes stability for workers while supporting long-term economic growth. We talked about how, even though Texas is producing more oil and gas than ever before, there are 100,000 fewer oil and gas workers in Texas today than in 2014. This episode and the many I’ve recorded with Republicans, including the one last month with Governor Rick Perry, isn’t about picking sides — it’s about being more curious than judgemental. I hope you’ll listen regardless of your political leanings, and I hope you’ll find this discussion as interesting and thought-provoking as I did.As always, please like, share, and leave a five-star review wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for your support!This is a free episode, but many of the episodes, as well as the archives, Grid Roundups, and more are for paid subscribers. Please become one today!The Texas Energy and Power Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction to Congressman Greg Casar06:29 - The Climate Crisis: A Personal and Political Perspective12:51 - The Connect the Grid Act: Addressing Energy Reliability19:28 - Interconnections and the Future of Texas Energy25:37 - Bipartisan Opportunities in the Energy Economy33:50 - Worker Protections in a Changing Climate39:11 - Transitioning Fossil Fuel Workers to Clean Energy JobsShownotes: Grid Interconnections and Reliability* The Connect the Grid Act – Congressman Casar’s proposal to interconnect ERCOT with the national grid, reducing outages and enabling clean energy exports.* MIT Study on Grid Interconnections – Research demonstrating how linking Texas to neighboring grids could have prevented up to 80% of power outages during Winter Storm Uri.* Southern Spirit Transmission Project (Pattern Energy) – Transmission line connecting Texas to the Eastern Interconnect.* Grid United El Paso Project – Connecting ERCOT to the Western Interconnect to expand energy sharing and improve grid flexibility.* The Southern Spirit transmission line could connect Texas grid to the southeast. Will it ever happen?Clean Energy Investments and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)* Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) Overview – The largest federal clean energy investment package in U.S. history.* 45X Advanced Manufacturing Tax Credit – Providing incentives for clean energy manufacturing, including solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries.* Clean Energy Investments Dashboard (E2) – Tracks jobs and investments related to clean energy projects spurred by the IRA.* Texas Enterprise Fund – State program that Casar highlighted as a model for attracting clean energy manufacturing.* DOE Loan Programs Office – Supporting financing for large-scale clean energy and grid-related projects.Worker Protections and Climate Safety* American Energy Worker Opportunity Act – Casar’s initiative to transition fossil fuel workers into union-backed clean energy jobs.* Federal Heat Safety Standards – Proposed by the Biden administration to protect workers from extreme heat exposure.* Workers Defense Project – Advocating for better working conditions and stronger labor protections for Texas construction and energy workers.* Texas Observer Article: Heat Deaths and Worker Protections – Coverage of heat-related worker deaths and the ongoing push for heat safety regulations.Energy Transition and Technology* Texas Geothermal Energy Alliance – Mentioned as a potential growth area for transitioning oil and gas workers due to transferable skills.* NuScale Power – Casar briefly mentions nuclear energy, including advanced technologies like Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), as part of the future energy mix.* Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy – Supporting nuclear innovation and new projects.* U.S. Climate Alliance – Texas is not currently a member, but Casar highlighted federal initiatives for state collaboration on climate resilience.Key Quotes:* “We’re no longer talking about preserving the planet for future generations—we’re talking about saving lives and livelihoods today.” – Greg Casar* “The Connect the Grid Act isn’t about taking control away from Texas. It’s about making sure the lights stay on and Texans don’t suffer through another Winter Storm Uri.” – Greg Casar* “We need to support oil and gas workers as they transition into new roles. They powered this country for decades, and they deserve stability and good jobs in the clean energy economy.” – Greg Casar* "We’re not asking Texas to give up its independence. What we’re asking for is smart interconnections that allow us to export clean energy and prevent major grid failures." – Greg Casar* "The Inflation Reduction Act isn’t just about solar panels—it’s about creating stable, well-paying jobs in manufacturing, geothermal, and other industries that can benefit everyone, including oil and gas workers." – Greg CasarTranscriptDoug LewinCongressman Greg Casar, welcome to the Energy Capital Podcast. Congressman Greg Casar Thanks so much for having me. Doug LewinSo you obviously made a big splash when you introduced the Connect the Grid Act just about a year ago on the anniversary of Winter Storm Uri. And I do want to talk to you about that. But before we go there, I'd like to just get a sense of your vision for energy, dealing with climate change, anything related to those issues, both as an individual, but also obviously as the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Doug LewinWe're recording nine days into the Trump administration. It's a really fascinating time to be chair of the progressive caucus. So just want to get a sense of, of, your vision and the caucus's vision, for energy and for climate action. Congressman Greg Casar Well, tragically, climate issues are now front and center in our daily lives. We're no longer talking, as we may have a decade or two ago, about preserving our planet for our grandchildren. We're talking about helping protect your life today. We're no longer talking about how this may cost us money in the future if we don't invest in clean energy. You're fueling the climate crisis in your mailbox right now as home insurance rates shoot up. If you're in places like Florida and increasingly in Texas, there's entire home insurers ditching the state. so even though I'm a relatively young elected official, I remember when I was first campaigning for office 10 years ago, we were talking about the looming climate crisis or the threat of climate change. But now I think progressives are pivoting. To make this no longer just a progressive theoretical issue in the future, but instead a bread and butter daily issue for voters right now. I wish we weren't in that place where the climate crisis was already hitting us so hard, but now that it is, we should be talking about this as an issue that affects voters of all political stripes and all political backgrounds. Because when I knock on a door now, people do talk about Winter Storm Uri and how that hurt them and their families. They recognize that the cost of rebuilding Los Angeles after these wildfires could wind up, I think, being greater than the entire cost of the entire Inflation Reduction Act, the biggest climate investment in our nation's history. So that's where I think things stand right now, is that this is a bread and butter issue for working people. We've got to make this, we've got to take on energy issues, both for our safety and for just not just our prosperity, just to make sure that things don't end up costing a huge amount. Doug Lewin Yeah, absolutely. You know, it definitely seems like with each passing year, as these various climate fueled events continue to add up, it seems like we would pass some kind of a tipping point where things would really change. And yet it doesn't. I you talk about 10 years ago, I remember 20 years ago with Hurricane Katrina and thinking, this will definitely be a point where things will change and it doesn't necessarily change. Let's get into a little bit more of, where you think change should happen. you introduced, as I just mentioned, the Connect the Grid Act. Can you describe for the listeners what that would do and why you think it's so important? Congressman Greg Casar Winter Storm Uri, I think, changed everything as it relates to energy and the grid here in Texas because it just hit everyone so hard, except critically. Almost all of us here in Texas have family or friends or people we know in places like El Paso or places like Beaumont that are on the edges of the state that were interconnected to other parts of the country. And so I was in touch with my family and friends and places all over Texas to check in on them and we clearly saw that those who are interconnected to other parts of the state did not have the huge, massive power outages demanded by ERCOT that the rest of us did. And suddenly, people like governor Abbott going and blaming wind power or whatever, just felt that those excuses suddenly fell completely flat. Before the idea of Texas's independence from the rest of the country maybe sounded cool, but it didn't serve us well in our immediate needs. And so when I got to Congress, I thought I would co-sign onto whichever bill there was that said that Texas's grid should be internet connected to the national grid. And I found no such bill. In fact, all of the big grid legislation championed by both sides of the aisle, all of the transmission legislation basically always had an exception for Texas, always said, all of the supplies everywhere except for ERCOT. Everybody just decided to leave a big Texas-sized hole, donut hole, in the middle of the country. And that's just not going to work. I mean, if we're supposed to be the energy capital of the country, how is it, one, that the lights can go off and people keep on tracking to see if the lights will go off? And two, how are we going to serve this entire country's electric needs as our needs for electricity continues to grow if we think about transmission, just cut Texas out as a Texas-shaped hole every time. So we filed the Connect the Grid Act because the federal government does guarantee electric reliability basically as a right in this country. And what we don't do is say that there needs to be a certain amount of transmission connectivity in order to achieve that goal. But in Texas, I believe that because of the lack of interconnectivity, we aren't achieving the level of reliability guaranteed in the United States. And therefore, we want to set a reliability standard and require a certain amount of transmission to be able to go in and out of the state in a certain level of connectivity. so that if the Great Act passed, essentially that would require this level of connection to start being built out between Texas and its neighboring National Grids. Doug Lewin So I want to talk about both the positives and the negatives of that, the upsides and the downsides and get your thoughts. So on the upside, on the positive side, there was a study that MIT put out over the summer, and we will link to that in the show notes, that showed that if we... Congressman Greg Casar I've never gotten a call from MIT saying, hey, we're going to study your bill and see if it does what it says it's going to do. We all crossed our fingers. like, well, we sure hope this works. Doug Lewin If they came back and said, sorry, Congressman, your bill is crap. It would have been a bad day, but they did not do that. They actually said what they did was really interesting. They took a thousand different simulations of a Winter Storm Uri type of event. just to get this out of the way, because I hear this all the time, people are like, oh, that could never happen again. It could happen again. It happened in the 1980s. It was 1989. There was a very similar system. it was not a one in a million. It's actually two within 40 years. There's nothing to think we couldn't get another one. it might nothing to think it might not even be worse. But they took a Winter Storm Uri situation modeled the same number of outages that we had during Uri like 50 % of the natural gas plants are offline, 40 % of wind, 43 % of coal, etc. And then looked at if there were interconnections as laid out in the Connect the Grid Act, and you have a range in the bill. And so they said the range of reductions and outages would be between 40 and 80%. It might've been like 43 and 79 or something like that. But basically between 40 and 80 % less outages. One thing I don't think they actually got into in that study was what's called Black Start, had we lost the whole grid. We would have actually been able to get back up quicker if we had more interconnections. It's harder to bring the grid back up if you're only sort of, indeed, indeed. But if you did, if you ended up in that situation, more interconnections would make it easier. So those are two of the big upsides. Do you want to say any more about those or add any other positives that you see if we went down that road? Congressman Greg Casar Sure would be great good to just not lose the whole grid. You one, you would, of course, save a bunch of money if you don't have the mass outages. mean, there was there's calculations that you had over $100 billion in damages, economic damage, just from the ERCOT outages we had during Winter Storm Uri alone. So there's a real economic savings in the disaster moments. But what isn't talked about as much is also the economic output for the state of Texas when other people are in disaster moments. Because part of the idea of the United States of America is that people help us out when we're in trouble and we help other people out when they're in trouble. And Texas, of course, has a lot of land available for energy development. And there are plenty of states around us that if they have a giant storm cloud on over them or they have a massive economic development project they want to engage in. Rhat we might be able to export and sell energy from Texas. And the MIT study shows that there would be likely over $100 million in revenue yearly back into ERCOT to be able to lower our own energy prices or be able to strengthen our own grid. Because sometimes, or oftentimes, the sun is shining and the wind is blowing and workers are at work in Texas, and there might be trouble in Oklahoma or in New Mexico or in Louisiana. Doug Lewin Yeah, or even more to the point, like on the East Coast or the West Coast, right? Because there's the saying, the wind is always blowing, the sun's always shining somewhere, right? So if you have the more interconnections you have, the more ability you have to move that power. Congressman Greg Casar And of course, we want to address the increased energy need across the country as we electrify things more and more, not just for climate reasons, but also because we know that it's more effective and cheaper, then it's better for the whole country. Now, I know we're primarily talking to a Texas audience here, but part of how we get the U.S. Congress on board is that it's much better for the entire country for us to be able to move electricity all across the country. As our electricity demand continues to increase, an increased electrical production, increased electrical use and transmission makes us competitive around the world. Doug LewinYeah. And it is kind of weird when you think about it, just in the sense that we're, you know, Texas has been an energy exporting state forever, but that's not forever for a hundred years, right? But that's plus spindle top, right? 120 years. So, but that's oil and gas. And for some reason we, we don't export, energy to power, I should say. Yeah. Congressman Greg Casar Yeah, that's weird, Doug. Everybody feels like we want to set up export terminals for liquid natural gas but don't want to electric molecules from and sell them between here and Louisiana. Doug Lewin So I do want to get your thoughts about this though, because I think there is a potential sort of like a different path, which would be additional interconnections between ERCOT and the East and the West without a full interconnection, which still would achieve that aim. So there's a couple of projects. I'm not sure if you're familiar with them, but one is by Pattern Energy. call it Southern Spirit, I think is what it's called. It's like from. West Texas, Houston Chronicle had a great series on this. We'll put a, we'll put a link to that in the show notes too. From West Texas into the Eastern interconnect. Uh, there's a project that, uh, grid United, Michael Skelly and his group, uh, are working on that would connect. Um, it's actually within the state. It's kind of a really interesting one, but it's from within ERCOT into El Paso, but thus would connect to the Western interconnect. And with those, you could export the power. Then if there's an emergency, you turn around the flow and bring power in. But you wouldn't have the full interconnection, which then would have Texas under FERC jurisdiction, which like heading into a, you know, four years or just the very beginning of four years of the Trump administration, like I would think, you know, that you might see that there's be some benefit of not having Texas under FERC jurisdiction. ERCOT has this slide they put out all the time that shows if you have to go through the FERC process to build transmission takes 10 to 12 years in Texas, we can usually get it done in five to six. So there are advantages to not being interconnected. And I'm just wondering if you've thought about maybe like this different path of having these additional interconnections without the full interconnection. Congressman Greg Casar Look, I'm a supporter of the Southern Spirit line, a supporter of interconnections between the state. You know, even if you had Southern Spirit at its at sort of its largest end of transmission, you would need multiple times that if you really wanted to deal with the problem. And I'd say go ahead and build multiple times of those. I think one of the challenges that you see and you can it's not hard to read between the lines on this, even if you're not fully plugged in and just reading the media reports on it is that they're having to continue to maneuver to make these connections smaller or kind of more smart and interesting like you just described within the states, but going into El Paso in order to try to avoid the question of, well, how do we deal with federal regulation? And some of those federal regulations, I'd be fine with figuring out how to streamline them and accelerate things. Some of them are there to protect the consumer. And I'm always skeptical of maligning the entire process when sometimes some of it's really there to take care of you and me against somebody that wants to take advantage of us and make a bunch of money on it. And so I do think that there is a real benefit of those interconnections. But I also believe that if we just. Bit the bullet and just said, look, we're part of the United States of America. We should stop trying to use all of these loopholes to not be a part of the United States of America. Once we get over and just figure out what parts of the FERC process we want to improve, I think a ton of these interconnections would quickly get built because the market demand is there. I don't think anybody thinks that it's in our economic interest or safety interest not to have these interconnections and everybody just keeps dancing around the FERC question. So I'm fine for people to keep dancing the best they can and build out those interconnections. But I think that we get there way quicker and way faster if we just do the right thing rather than continue to dance around it because we don't want something to maybe cost us a couple of years here or there, but it ends up costing us 20 years of dancing. I that makes sense. some of the things that slow down transmission projects and generation projects in other states don't apply in Texas. And that has to do partly with how we've structured our grid, which we would still have a lot of say over even under FERC. Also Some of those studies that I've looked at don't always take into account how other states deal with zoning and planning and permitting on their own. So I wouldn't lay, of course, I don't have the slideshow in front of me that you're talking about, but just in general, when somebody says to me, hey, if suddenly we're under FERC, Texas is going to go from six years to 12 years on transmission. I take that with a full salt shaker of salt. And, you know, as a former city council member that has been a big advocate for a lot more housing supply and on the board of Austin Energy or Public Electric Utility here being a big advocate of a lot more energy supply, I am deeply sympathetic to people that say there's stuff in permitting processes that we don't need to have and also deeply knowledgeable about there being corporate shills that want to say something is wrong with the permitting process. That's actually the main thing we want in our permitting process. We want plants to be safe. We want transmission lines to work and be smart and not be duplicative. But then we also need to make sure we plow through sort of NIMBYISM and concern trolling and needless red tape. Both of those can exist. And I think that you know, this old way of thinking of you're either team more permitting or team less permitting is just, you know, not the right way of thinking about it when you're talking about energy, just like when you're talking about housing. Doug Lewin Yeah, totally. And this is actually one of the things I most love about doing this podcast is to be able to go kind of a few levels deeper than just what kind of appears on the surface and really kind of understand where people are coming from. Because, yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people would assume different things about different members of Congress based on what letters after their name on what they would think of permitting reform. it's the truth is actually much more complicated. Speaking of areas where there might be things that are not intuitive based on the letter after somebody's name. I do want to talk to you about these early days of the Trump administration and particularly where the Inflation Reduction Act is headed, what is kind of the future of some of the spending. We're recording on January 29th. Just yesterday the administration gave a directive and Congressman Greg Casar You're recording in the post-constitutional world, Doug LewinWell, we'll, we'll see. We'll see where this goes in the courts. Yeah. It's a pretty wild thing, right? For the executive branch to say an act of Congress, and the previous administration with contracts signed that those contracts wouldn't be honored, which is what it looks like they're saying. We'll see how all this shakes out. what, what I want to, I, I'd be interested in your thoughts on that for sure. I also though want to kind of, I want to understand, I mean, you've been in Congress for a while. You've worked there for a while. You've seen kind of where different members come out on this stuff. I'm really interested in the areas of the Inflation Reduction Act, for instance, like 45X, which is the provision that is for manufacturing incentives. And we're seeing a lot of manufacturing come into states like Georgia and South Carolina and Tennessee and Texas. And I think if the administration just halts all of that funding as it appears they want to do and all of those tax credits, there's probably going to be a lot of Republican members of Congress and Republican governors that are pretty upset at that. Where do you think there might actually be bipartisan areas to kind of work together on the energy economy, the clean energy economy, however you want to talk about it over these next four years? Congressman Greg Casar I do want folks to have this in context of where we are right now. It was just yesterday that it became clear the Trump administration froze or said they were going to freeze basically all federal funds that flowed through states and municipalities and grants, which everybody rightfully freaked out about. I mean, there are nine states that receive over 45 % of their overall state budget in the form of federal funding and federal grants, all nine of them. In fact, being Republican controlled states from Wyoming to South Dakota to most prominently Louisiana, where the Speaker of the House and the House Majority Leader are both from. Medicaid portals got shut down because so much of Medicaid is administered through the state. And then the Trump administration said, sorry, that was a glitch, website glitch. They're back on. You know, a court then quickly halted the order based on multiple Supreme Court precedents that have existed, including a unanimous one. And so that's where we are. What I hope and expect, but don't know, you if somebody's listening to this podcast a month or two from now, what will happen. I hope and expect that we are not really in a post-constitutional order, like I joked about here earlier, and that courts make it very clear. That when Congress has passed a law and appropriated dollars, that those dollars are then sent out. Because if we wind up, I do want to spend more of my time assuming that that is what happens, but if we wind up in a world where that isn't held up, will become a whole new world about how budgets and laws are passed in the United States of America. Because how could you have a bipartisan law where I say, okay, I'm happy to fund this program and this Republican state, but we do need money for these hungry children in this democratic city or what have you, or we need disaster funds. We're going to vote for this bill that I may not love, but it has funding to rebuild North Carolina and California. And then what happens if President Trump just gets to say, well, I just not going to rebuild California, even though that got passed into law. I mean, how could Congress operate? How can a budget ever get passed? How can we do almost anything if the president can just say take back seas. I it's just totally nuts. And so my hope is we don't wind up in that world because if you wind up in that world, I just don't know how to tell what nobody will be able to tell you how this is going to work anymore. Doug LewinI mean, at some point the Supreme Court's gonna have to make that decision, right? I mean, at some point this has got to be headed to the Supreme Court and they're either gonna weigh in or not weigh in, but by not weighing in, they will have affirmed the lower court. At some point the Supreme Court's gonna have to say whether or not a president just has absolute power to void contracts. I mean, this is like, yeah. Congressman Greg Casar And the point being is the Supreme Court has already weighed on this multiple times on the side of if Congress puts something into the law, the president's got to follow it. The question is, this Supreme Court that was packed by Donald Trump and that he's testing out deliberately right now, will they hold that up? I think I expect that they will, but we will see. In the world that they do uphold that precedent, Doug LewinExactly. Congressman Greg Casar and when we pass something into law, actually has to move forward. Then there are real opportunities, there are going to be some opportunities, many opportunities to save the Inflation Reduction Act from being slashed. Because as you pointed out, some of the biggest recipients of the kinds of Inflation Reduction Act investments to bring manufacturing back to the United States. Are places like Marjorie Taylor Greene's own district. These are communities that need these jobs the most are seeing a resurgence of American production and manufacturing, and we need that so badly. And so the house has extremely slim margins. Once Trump finishes appointing some house members to his cabinet, then you could have many cases where it's just a one vote margin in the House to get anything passed. So any Republican who could potentially lose significant investments in their district can essentially veto a bill. So you have some members that, you I think at the core of the Trump agenda, in my view, is to pass continued corporate tax breaks and billionaire tax cuts to essentially repay the major industries and the big billionaires that not only bankroll Trump in the Republican Party, but that also are just Trump's buddies at this point. You know, when you see the front row of inauguration being these billionaire buddies of Trump's, I think that's really at the core of the agenda. But there are then these warring factions within the National Republican Party that want to, you know, continue to shrink government to strangle it and drown it in a bathtub and won't want those levels of billionaire tax cuts without cutting programs and Medicare and Social Security are extremely popular programs. They're the one of the biggest parts of our budget, the military. They don't want to cut even though there are certainly some war contractors that are profiteers that we could potentially try to take a look at. But I doubt that they'll actually go there because there are again members that are so tied in with those private defense industries that that may not get cut. And so now they're trying to go after what they see as quote unquote sort of woke and Green New Deal policies, which is really a very, you know, what they might call that would be a tiny sliver of the budget. And once you look at the major investments in what they might call, quote unquote, the Green New Deal or whatever it is they want to call it, you look at it, it's, you know, investments in making sure that there's a battery manufacturing plant in a part of the country that has lost industrial jobs and wants to regain those industrial jobs. So it really puts them in a rock and a hard place. And I think in the positive aspect of this is that between that rock and a hard place, maybe we actually get past the name calling and the labeling of stuff and people start saying, hey, you know what? This is just a good idea. Even though Joe Biden signed it into law, building our capacity for manufacturing solar panels, building our capacity for manufacturing batteries, researching the energy technologies of the future is a good idea, whether it's because you want to stay competitive with China, whether you want to bring back manufacturing jobs to the United States, whether you just want to be a politician that makes sure unemployment goes down in your community. Maybe regardless of the letter next to your name, this is a good thing. I hope that's where we wind up. It hasn't been my experience this last term in Congress, but I'm hoping to make it our experience because it's where we need to get to is just get some of these things off of the partisan chopping block and make sure that if it's just good for the country, that it should just be good. Doug Lewin Yeah, mean, bizarrely, ironically, whatever, we're in a place now where if you were to design like Tabula Rasa, a, you know, American energy dominance, America first energy agenda, like a lot of it would be the stuff that's in the IRA, like manufacture it here, compete against the Chinese, don't let the Chinese, you know, government and industry control clean energy over the next decades. yeah, mean, hope springs eternal. hear you that the experience doesn't always like match up with what you think might make sense, but there's at least an opportunity maybe I think for some the, for some bipartisan work to happen over the next few years. Hope Springs eternal. I do want to ask you before we run out of time about the American Energy Worker Opportunity Act and your work related to the, some of the federal heat rules. I mean, this is, this seems to me like one of the biggest issues that just doesn't get talked about that much. mean, look, I, and, and I hope people from all parts of the ideological spectrum listen to this. I interview Republicans and Democrats both for this pod. And I hope people listen to folks of the other letter behind their name, but whatever like letter you associate with, whatever party associated with, even whatever you believe about climate change and what is causing it, what is just a simple empirical matter is the temperatures are higher in the summertime. I don't think there's really any debate about what's causing that, but even if I were to grant that, like, you could debate what's causing that, what you can't debate is that 2011 was the hottest summer Texas ever had recorded. 2023 was the second hottest 2024. Seemed very cool if you lived in Texas because 2023 had just happened, but was actually the sixth hottest summer. Basically the average of any last 10 years is the hottest average last 10 years period. And so when you talk about a state where you have a lot of construction workers working outside during summer times where it's a hundred degrees every day and there are not required breaks, that's a big deal. I know you're background, having worked for Workers Defense Project, this issue is near and dear to your heart. I'm not going to ask you a specific question. I just want you to speak to the importance of having protections for workers in the heat and what you think those policies should look like, maybe what's in the American Energy Worker, or the American Energy Worker Opportunity Act, has more to do with oil and gas worker transition, but the federal heat rules, climate change mitigation, talk about any and all of that that you'd like to in the time we have left. Congressman Greg Casar On top of the key consumer issues around making sure you have power when it's hot or when it's cold, we also know that climate affects us with what we're doing most of our days, which is at work. And it is getting hotter and hotter. Heat is actually the biggest climate killer we've got, more than killing us in hurricanes or tornadoes or in floods people die because it's just so hot. And especially if they're working really difficult outdoor jobs, or even if they're in some of these warehouse jobs or work in the baggage belt at the airport where it gets really hot. And if workers aren't prepared or aren't able to take a break, then people get sick. that obviously hurts us economically. And it also obviously hurts our families. So needlessly. When people say, know, like, well, shouldn't employers already give workers a break? I've heard from far too many instances where that doesn't happen. On a construction job, when somebody's trying to hit a deadline before the next construction crew comes in, hey, we've got electrical coming in tomorrow. We need to wrap this up. Don't come off the scaffold for the next six hours. And somebody runs out of water in their water bottle. That's when somebody gets a stroke and dies. A postal worker here in Dallas just recently died getting pushed to wrap up his route. He'd been working for the postal service for decades. They're in these trucks without air conditioning. They're walking from door to door and that over 100 degree heat, dedicated public servants, church going member guy that everybody knew and loved in the community. know, Mr. Gates dropped down and died a federal employee. And so the Biden administration, totally preventable, the Biden administration put forward a proposed rule after lots of scientific study and support across a lot of business industries to say, look, when the temperature gets above 90 degrees, then people deserve a quick little break every couple of hours. And this is going to prevent deaths. And this kind of rule has been killed by oftentimes big industry lobbies, especially in big ag and in construction. But I pushed our own postal service, Postmaster General DeJoy recently, to implement this rule himself. This rule would have applied to him as well. And they said no. And so there's this resistance at the industry level that says, OK, we've got this handled. But clearly, it isn't actually being handled. And so here in the United States of America, we're hoping to finally win this basic right for workers. The rule has been proposed. And it could be finalized if the Trump administration chooses to finally put it into effect. The Biden administration has gone through all these hoops that were put in place essentially by Newt Gingrich back in the day to make it, know, he had to go through all these hoops to propose the rule, get it written up, get it vetted, and it just has to go into effect. And we'd love for it to go into effect in time for this summer and ready to work with anybody, with any letter behind their name to try to get that done. The American Energy Worker Opportunity Act, as you've noted, is a different topic. I led that bill, bicameral bill, between the House and the Senate. Senator Sherrod Brown carried that bill in the Senate and he tragically lost his race here in Ohio recently. But the vision behind that is that too often, talking about a just transition, workers on the ground, especially in places like the Gulf Coast, have heard those words and think they might be empty words. Or as I heard from one union leader in the fossil fuel industry that we just heard that that's a fancy funeral and we don't want that. We want to make sure that as we transition to cleaner energy, that fossil fuel workers are at the table and that we make sure that people are able to pay their mortgage and pay their rent and do their jobs. I can hold Exxon accountable for polluting our communities while still caring about the folks that work there. So I want to make sure that those workers transition into jobs that pay the same salary. that we actually recognize that part of the cost of transitioning to an economy that is cleaner and better for us in the immediate and the long term is also taking care of the workers that are just doing their jobs and have done their jobs honorably and power this country for a century. And so I want those fossil fuel workers to be taken care of. I want to make sure that if they are unemployed that we immediately move them over into equal paying clean energy jobs. want those jobs to be union jobs, just like so many of our fossil fuel jobs are. And so that bill really is, know, traditionally has been a bill that's been supported by the mine workers, has been supported by the utility workers, has been supported by the steel workers and the electric workers. Those, we need to make sure that those folks are a part of this conversation, because we aren't just telling people in fossil fuel, hey, sorry, you know, we've moved on. But no, actually, we're we're making this transition with you as the energy workforce. We're so grateful for those workers' contributions. We're not going to leave them out in the cold as we try to save the planet and save the country. Doug Lewin Yeah, I know you've got to go in a minute. I don't think, I just want to say this kind of in closing. I don't think people really realize this, even though drilling and production in the Permian Basin of Texas is up dramatically. actually produced more oil and gas in Texas 2024. Well, in the United States in 2024, then fueled by Texas, then in any country in the history of the world produced more than Saudi Arabia ever has. the the amount of workers in the industry is down 100,000 from 2014 when it was about 300,000 workers according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, down to about 200,000 workers now. So even with increased production, because there's so much automation, and this will be increasingly true as AI comes into production more and more, there's going to be more and more workers left looking around for what's next. And I think there are big opportunities in geothermal and nuclear, you know, lot of people talk about oil and gas to solar. doesn't make a lot of sense. That's like electricians, but geothermal is drilling, nuclear is a lot of fabrication. Like there are opportunities there. So I'm really glad you're working on that. And again, there's a theme here. Like I can't imagine anybody of any ideological stripe not caring about that. Who wouldn't want to see oil and gas workers that for whatever reason, whether it's automation or less drilling or whatever the reason, have a really good next opportunity. That seems like that would be pretty universal, right? Congressman Greg Casar Well, Sherrod Brown famously was able to continue to be reelected in Ohio in a state that overwhelmingly was voting for Donald Trump at the top of the ticket. so clearly this message of putting workers first moves that core group of voters that don't necessarily associate somebody just with having a D or R next to their name. They want somebody that's going to be fighting for them. And so I've made that pitch. across the island hopefully can continue to build out the group of people that are going to care about working people and the power coming on and the jobs being good more than just sort of the letter next to your name and whether you're on that team or not. Doug LewinCongressman, thanks for being on the Energy Capital Podcast. Is there anything that I didn't ask you that you wish that I would have anything you'd like to say in closing? Congressman Greg Casar No, that was great. Thank you so much for having me, Doug, and for keeping these issues top of mind for all of us. My real hope, yeah, is that here in the energy capital of the country and of the world, that we can wind up having a grid that is reliable when it gets real cold or real hot. Like you said, I grew up here in Texas, and I know it's hot, but not this hot, this early, this long at these temperatures, and also this cold. I mean, I remember when it just used to be a field day at school when there was like a little bit of snow that would melt on the ground. Now it feels like, you know, this is a regular thing that it's freezing over here. And so it's just, it's, got to be a real concern to us and we've got to work together on it. So thanks a lot, Doug Lewin Thank you Congressman. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.douglewin.com/subscribe

Rick Perry, the longest-serving governor of Texas and former U.S. Secretary of Energy, shares his impactful journey in shaping the state's energy landscape. He discusses the importance of an 'all-of-the-above' energy strategy, advocating for nuclear power and innovative technologies like Small Modular Reactors. Perry highlights the balance between government and free-market principles, emphasizes bipartisan opportunities for clean energy, and presents creative solutions for Texas' water challenges. He also champions plant-based medicines for veterans' mental health.

Mary Powell, CEO of Sunrun and a pioneering force in solar energy, discusses the rapid growth of solar and storage in Texas. She highlights how consumer-led initiatives are reshaping the energy landscape and fostering independence. Powell debunks myths surrounding energy storage and emphasizes the role of virtual power plants. The conversation also dives into Texas's rise as a leader in solar, showcasing community resilience and innovations that enhance energy sustainability and practicality for homeowners.

This week’s episode is a bit different. I’m not hosting the podcast — I’m the guest. During the Texas Energy Summit, former Public Utility Commission Chair Becky Klein turned the tables and interviewed me live, right after a panel of legislators and a keynote from current PUC Chair Thomas Gleeson.In this fast-paced conversation, Becky and I covered a wide range of energy topics, including grid reliability, distributed energy resources, and the untapped potential of energy efficiency. We also discussed my personal journey in the energy field, from working on air quality issues at the legislature to founding an energy efficiency non-profit to working in the energy industry and hosting this podcast.Throughout the interview, I shared my vision for the next 5–10 years of Texas’ power market. I’m optimistic about seeing advancements in geothermal energy, energy efficiency, and heat pump adoption. I also believe we’ll see greater decentralization of power, with more distributed generation and expanded transmission. These changes could lower costs, improve grid reliability, and create a more resilient energy future for Texans.But with opportunities come challenges. Texas lags far behind other states in energy efficiency programs and policies, ranking last among states with efficiency goals. I discussed what needs to change — from improving HVAC and heat pump incentives to rethinking how we value distributed energy resources (DERs) for their resilience benefits.Becky brought her wealth of experience and thoughtful questions to the discussion. We also touched on what excites me most about the energy industry today and my advice for students and young leaders entering this field: ask questions, read widely, and develop a strong personal philosophy.I hope you enjoy this unique episode and the conversation as much as I did. Timestamps and show notes are below.Please like, share, subscribe, and leave a five-star review wherever you get your podcasts — it really helps!Timestamps01:21 - Introduction to Energy Efficiency and Demand Response04:14 - My Journey in the Energy Sector07:25 - Vision for Texas Power Market10:09 - Barriers to Energy Efficiency13:31 - The Role of the PUC in Energy Efficiency16:20 - Current State of Energy Efficiency in Texas19:13 - Technological Innovations in Energy Distribution22:21 - Valuing Resiliency in Energy Systems25:28 - Addressing Energy Affordability and Equity28:20 - Advice for Aspiring Energy Professionals ​Show NotesBooks:* The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday* Climate of Contempt by David Spence* Confronting Climate Gridlock by Daniel Cohan Podcasts:* How to Overcome Ideological Divides and the Climate of Contempt, Energy Capital Podcast* The Past, Present, and Future of the Texas Energy Market with Former PUC Chair Becky Klein, Energy Capital Podcast This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.douglewin.com/subscribe

This episode was recorded just three days after the U.S. presidential election. My guest, UT Law Professor David Spence, recently published an exceptional book Climate of Contempt: How to Rescue the U.S. Energy Transition from Voter Partisanship. I believe this book is perfect for this moment and one of the best I’ve read on climate policy—and I read a lot on climate policy.David and I dove into the roots and contributors of America’s current partisan and ideological divides which have grown rapidly over the past few decades. We discussed not only the challenges this divide presents — though we talked about those extensively — but also some possible solutions. David shows how we can bridge these divides, re-establish trust, and find common ground. We also talked about the Inflation Reduction Act and why energy policy could, maybe, be a unifying area in an increasingly polarized landscape.I found this conversation both important and thought-provoking, and I hope you will too. I highly recommend David’s book; it’s a remarkable piece that is particularly relevant now. If you’re interested in the energy transition, the history of energy-related regulations, or want a deeper understanding of our current political landscape, especially as it relates to climate and energy, I think you’ll enjoy this episode as much as I did.As always, please like, share, and leave a five star review wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for being a listener. Timestamps2:31 - The major ideas in Climate of Contempt4:06 - How the thesis of the book connects to the outcome of the US presidential election5:54 - Discontent with the status quo in the US8:09 - The depth of the ideological divide in the US13:27 - How to bridge ideological divides and actively listen (and why it’s so challenging)17:51 - Effectiveness of deliberative polling and in-person, offline interactions. The role of media and social media in driving polarization.23:52 - The importance of active listening, education over persuasion, and not being too sure you are right.29:05 - Is energy a place we can find more common ground? Challenges and opportunities. 37:54 - The future of the Inflation Reduction Act 43:31 - Regulatory uncertainty… what happens next?Show NotesClimate of Contempt: How to Rescue the U.S. Energy Transition from Voter Partisanship by David B. SpenceDavid’s website and blogEnergyTradeoffs.comWorks from Katharine Hayhoe”Spirit of Liberty” – speech from Judge Learned HandAdvanced Manufacturing Production tax creditTranscriptDoug LewinDavid Spence, welcome to the Energy Capital Podcast.David Spence Happy to be here, Doug.Doug LewinIt's great to have you here today. You have written what I think is a really remarkable book and I hope it is read widely. I think it is really illuminating for the moment we're in. We'll of course put a link in the show notes so people can find it easily, but it's called Climate of Contempt, the subtitle, How to Rescue the U.S. Energy Transition from Voter Partisanship. We're recording on Friday, November 8th, the Friday just after the reelection of Donald Trump. So I think that this book is even, I thought it was incredibly relevant before the election, I think it's even more so now. Can we just start David with you just explaining the thesis of the book generally, but also in light of the political earthquake that happened this week?David SpenceSure, happy to. So the main point of the book is to try and reintroduce into the popular debate and also parts of the scholarly debate what I think are some underappreciated forces that are driving regulatory politics and, in the case of what we're both interested in, energy transition politics. And that missing element is what I would call the bottom-up forces that are driving what particularly members of Congress, but all elected politicians do. We hear a lot about the top down forces, about how elites are controlling the regulatory process or the policymaking process. And that's part of the story and not an unimportant part of the story, but a really neglected part of the story is how receptive and sensitive elected politicians are to what voters want or more particularly what they don't want. And so politicians work hard to avoid the kind of mistakes that might lose them the next election. And those forces I think are much more important than most people realize. And that's what the book explores and applies to the energy transition.Doug LewinYeah, and so talk about that a little bit in light of this week.David SpenceSure, sure. So we've all seen probably 40 or 50 takes on what happened the other day in the election. In fact, the New York Times alone has had at least 10 different takes depending upon who's doing the writing. And voters' decisions are complicated. They only get to choose one of two choices, but they're motives and reasons for making those choices are varied and complex. And so among the takes we're seeing are takes crediting fears about inflation, racism, sexism, Harris being too progressive, Harris being not progressive enough, other worries about all kinds of other issues.And again, these tend to be the kinds of things that pundits look at, but among the takes that the New York Times had was one today in which a writer said that what Trump was betting on was that he could make a majority of voters believe that the situation that they face is miserable and getting worse under Democratic administrations. And that's the take that probably comes closest to the way I analyze politics in my book, which focuses on how the changes in the modern media environment make it harder for the truth to win out. And so I analyze that in the pre-election environment, but we can see that same sort of dynamic at work in understanding the results of the election the other day.Doug LewinYeah. And I think, to that latest take, there's also some really good data floating around on the internet now about anti-incumbency globally. This is, I believe, one thing I saw was this is the only time in recorded history, which for this particular metric goes back to 1905, that every incumbent party lost voter share in developing countries. That's never happened before. That every single, whether they were right, left, moderate, that the incumbent party lost voter share. So if Trump's strategy was to lean into the anti-incumbent sentiment, he was definitely picking something up in the zeitgeist here and globally. And sometimes we forget here that we do exist in a global context and media is very global at this point too.David Spence Yeah, and on that, you meant developed countries, right? You said developing, but you meant developed.Doug LewinDeveloped, excuse me, developed, you’re absolutely right.David SpenceYeah, and there's no doubt that the disruption of the pandemic had a huge effect on people's perceptions of where the economy is and where it's going. If you look at charts comparing inflation in the United States, coming out of the pandemic with inflation in other countries. It went up everywhere because of the supply chain disruptions. While we were able to get it under control right before the election, that doesn't mean that voters weren't sincerely shaken by the influence of inflation on their everyday lives. So I'm not meaning to discount economic forces entirely here. But clearly there was a belief that all sorts of conditions of daily life were a lot worse than they actually are heading into the election. We can see that in the exit polling.Doug LewinYeah, I think we all feel it to a certain extent. Like every time I go to a grocery store I'm still kind of shocked at what the prices are. There's obviously some truth to all that and I think that that's why the anti-incumbency sentiment is there. But here's what I wanna zero in on a little bit, David, from your book that I think is so striking. And this has been written about obviously other places, but I think you do a great job applying it to how we deal with energy and climate issues. The ideological divide has gotten so strong. You summarize some of that research. Can you talk a little bit about just how bad it's gotten? And I know people have probably heard this before. Where I want to go with it is really where you go in the book, which is how we actually have conversations across these ideological divides. So let's do both of those things. Part A, the ideological divide itself and how strong is it, sort of this partisan, almost like tribal partisanship. And part B, what is at least part of the recipe for dealing with that fundamental problem.David SpenceSure, so I break that divide into sort of two main parts. One is the familiar ideological polarization, which has been getting worse since the mid to late 1980s. And we measure that as political scientists. And the book summarizes those measurements. But both in the electorate and in Congress, we have seen a steady divergence ideologically between the parties.It started with the Republican Party moving to the right after the Reagan administration. And a couple of decades later, the Democratic Party started moving to the left. And we are now as measured by political scientists, at least in Congress, further apart than at any time since before the Civil War. So those philosophical ideological differences have gotten very sharp, which makes it harder for voters to find the ability to talk to one another across these partisan divides, particularly difficult for members of Congress to reach across the aisle and get things done when there's not somebody in the other party with whom you share at least a little bit of a policy framework. We used to see ideological overlap in both houses of Congress as recently as 25 years ago. There's none in either now. And so that's half the story in terms of how voters have changed. The other half is really what you referred to as tribalism and what I do as well in the book. And this is really what political scientists would call affective partisanship or negative partisanship. This is animosity or even in some cases hatred of the other party that we're also seeing in the data. And we see this in a number of polls that are administered by Pew Research and by the University of Michigan under their national election study. But they show sharp increases in the 21st century, so this is a little bit more recently, we've seen sharp increases in dislike of the other party by members of each party. And those, the levels of animosity that respondents are showing is getting extremely concerning. And so these two things together give members of Congress and other elected politicians the incentive to not cooperate with the other party and to express their contempt for what the other party stands for and what it wants. Hence the first part of the title of my book. And so, reaching across the aisle, working together, talking to one another has gotten very difficult. And I argue that the modern media environment, that is the replacement of traditional daily newspapers, daily news, network news, or the displacement of that in today's information flows by much more fragmented sources of information, a lot of its ideological media, along with bots and press releases and all this other stuff that's trying to persuade us more than it's trying to educate us. This exacerbates both the ideological polarization and the partisan tribalism. And as we start talking to each other more online and less offline, we end up in these echo chambers that amplify these effects even further. And so that's the problem, that's the part A, as you put it in your question. The part B is about breaking down those barriers of communication and talking to one another more. After this election this week, I'm seeing more people emphasizing that, which is really encouraging. In my book, in the final chapter, that's the prescription I offer. It's not quick. It's not a magic bullet. It's not the only thing that will get us back from the sort of decline in our democratic institutions and norms that we're seeing. But I think it's an important part of the solution. And I can go into that in more detail if you'd like.Doug LewinYeah, yeah, I do want to talk more about that, but I just, first of all, yeah, I want to give you a quick break, but also just kind of add in a couple other notes from your book that I think are just spot on in this particular situation. You talk about, I'm not sure this is in the book. I may have actually heard you speak about this when you're lecturing or when I've heard you speak other places, and you just said it now, education, not persuasion. I think part of that too is that really active listening component, really trying to understand where somebody else is coming from. You have two quotes in your book that I particularly love. You might be the only person to quote both Ted Lasso and Learned Hand in your book. Congratulations. I should have written down the whole Learned at Hand quote. We'll put it in the show notes. I don't know if you've memorized it, but it's the spirit that is not too sure, right? That like we enter a conversation not thinking I have the right answer and my job is to get you to adopt the same answer I already have. And building on that, you quote Ted Lasso saying, be curious, not judgmental. Because if you do enter a conversation with like, hey, I'm right, you're wrong. If the other person doesn't end that conversation with your same belief, you're going to end up being judgmental. And there is so much of that going on across the partisan divide right now. So the spirit that is not too sure it is right, this openness, this willingness to listen to others, I think is really fundamental to this. And so you can, I want you to elaborate on that, but I am also curious about, I wanna hear more about what you go into in that last chapter of the book of how, what are the actual mechanics? Because I agree with you, I'm hearing that sentiment a lot this week. But what I don't see a lot is the how, and you get into that in your book.David SpenceYeah, so the Learned Hand quote that you reference is from a 1944 speech he gave back in the days when a judge who's not a Supreme Court justice could be famous and a public figure. He was asked to give a speech on Constitution Day 1944. So we're coming to the end of World War II, fighting against fascism in Europe and worrying about another authoritarian type of regime, communism in the Soviet Union and ultimately, a few years later, the Eastern Bloc of Europe. So he had those two things in mind when he talked about what he called the spirit of liberty. And that's the name of the speech. It's a short speech and I consider it a brilliant speech, but he says the spirit of liberty is the spirit that is not quite sure that it is right, that weighs the other person's view. These are not precise quotes, I'm paraphrasing. Weighs the other person's view without bias, at least to the extent you can. And that is something that sort of modern psychologists might call actively open-minded thinking, or we might call it fallibilism. The idea that I might be wrong and I can learn by having other people audit my beliefs. That's the spirit or the idea or the mental state that I think is really hard to sustain in today's political environment and the modern sort of information environment, particularly social media and ideological media makes it even harder to sustain. And I explain in chapter four of the book, the sort of structural reasons why that is. It's not that people are lazy or people have become less tolerant. It's that the incentives they face are pushing them toward premature certainty about things, which makes it harder to entertain the possibility that we might be wrong about this or that or this aspect of our beliefs. And so recovering that actively open-minded thinking, being curious, more curious and less judgmental, in Ted Lasso speak, means that we have to find places where we can talk across ideological and political boundaries with people in ways that can be productive. And that sounds really difficult to modern audiences because we are fed a steady diet of the most unreasonable representations of those on the other side of the political divide. And it seems futile. If you're watching Jordan Klepper interview people at a Trump rally, and that's your conception of the Trump voter, it probably feels like a futile thing to try and talk to people across the political divide. But there are ways to do it. And so as you say the last chapter of the book gets into what a lot of the research suggests about how to be influential and how to maintain that actively open-minded thinking mindset while having dialogue with people who think about politics differently than you do. And I'm happy to go into that in more detail unless you want to sort of steer me in a different direction.Doug LewinI do want to talk about that at least a little bit. I do obviously encourage the audience to get the book. And again, we'll have a link for how to find it. But I would like to get into that a little bit. I have been thinking a lot about, and I've talked about this on the podcast before, there were in the 1990s as Texas was looking to restructure the electricity market, a series of meetings in Texas. I believe according to Pat Wood, the chairman of the Public Utility Commission under George W. Bush at the time, 16 different meetings, 16 different cities. They were one- or two-day long meetings. They had 100 to 200 people at each of them chose randomly across a broad cross section of Texas. They paid them for their time to come. They gave them some education. It was education, not persuasion, right?  You have a chapter on energy trade-offs. It was exactly that kind of thing, right? Here's the benefits of this kind of generation and the pros and cons of each one. And this was an extraordinary process. And Pat Wood says it was one of the reasons they were able to pass the restructuring bill with near unanimous votes in both the House and Senate. It's almost hard to imagine such a massive piece of legislation passing with that kind of support. But people understood, the legislators understood, that the people of Texas had a chance to learn about this, voice their opinion about it. I've been thinking about that a lot. That was a system developed by Professor Fishkin at University of Texas called deliberative polling. Maybe we need something like that these days. Cause where else are we going to have an opportunity for people from around the state of totally different ideological backgrounds, like you said, to not see each other as a caricature.  But to actually… and we don't, David, like I coach my kids' baseball team. I don't know what the politics of the different coaches are, but I love all those guys. They're great. They would do anything for those kids. I don't ask them what their, there's no litmus test out there. They're good people and they probably have, many of them have very different political beliefs than me.But again, like to your example of the Jordan Klepper interview, and this happens, whether it's left looking at right or right looking at left, and I do think we wanna be careful about equivalency, we should talk about that. But there is at least a large part of that going on on the left and the right. So I'm interested in your thoughts on deliberative polling, like is there maybe the potential to get people together to have a chance to actually talk about policy in an environment where the temperature is turned down in exactly in that Learned Hand ‘the spirit which is not too sure that it's right,’ where people can actually listen to each other and actually find solutions. Cause I'm just worried at this point, when you see those charts of how far apart we have gone, that we are further apart ideologically, thinking lower of people that are different than us, politically than at any time since the Civil War. That's terrifying. Like we need to have structures where we get together and talk to each other and realize we're Americans and Texans first and fill in the blank with whatever adjective, conservative, liberal, Republican, Democrat, left, right, progressive, conservative, et cetera. Like that is second, third or fourth. So that's one I'm curious about your thoughts on deliberative polling. And then what are some of  these other mechanisms where we can actually get people together and learn from each other and talk to each other across the ideological divides.David SpenceSo a couple of reactions to that. So those meetings were probably, what 2000, 2001? Doug LewinA little earlier 90s. Yeah. You're close, 96, 97, 98 right in there.David SpenceYeah, the full effect of the modern media environment hadn't kicked in, at least on politicians at that point. But you're right that those were face-to-face meetings. That's sort of a key factor here. We're talking to people face-to-face. The way we talk to each other face-to-face is different than the way we talk to each other online. In a face-to-face conversation, you are more respectful, you're more civil, you're more cautious, you're exploring each other's views. You probably in many cases want to maintain the relationship you have with that other person. If it's you and the other coaches, you don't want to alienate them if you talk about politics. But it's important that we do talk face-to-face about politics across these divides because it's virtually impossible to sustain productive conversations online.So the benefit of those meetings and the benefit of deliberative polling is that people see each other face-to-face. And the second benefit is that they have a common source of information. What Professor Fishkin did in those experiments was he took people who disagreed on a subject and gave them what experts on both sides of that issue agreed were the sort of common facts that they both shared, the truth. The stuff that they could both agree was the truth. And we found that when presented with that information and given the opportunity to talk across perspectives about it, that their views came closer together. So we can work out problems, we're more likely to work out problems face-to-face. The difference, the reason I asked you about the timing of the Texas meetings was that in Congress, the people who get together and talk about things face to face have to face the voters later. And the voters that are driving their futures are the voters who vote in primaries in most cases, because most members of Congress represent safe seats. And so these are the most ideologically extreme members of their own party and the most negatively partisan members of their own party. So whatever action they take, even if they can sort of privately agree with people on the other side about what a constructive solution to a problem is, they're gonna have to answer those voters. And right now, anyway, those voters seem to punish cooperation and punish working across the aisle with the other party. And that's what we have to change. We have to change that voting behavior, which is a lot, you know, it's a slow process. We have to talk to one another more productively across these boundaries. And I don't know if this is the point you want to get into how that happens, but there are bodies of research out there from a number of different disciplines that all seem to point in the same direction about how to sort of put into practice that Learned Hand/Ted Lasso advice. And it really involves stuff that we do instinctively when we talk face to face with family and friends. And that is essentially starting a difficult conversation, one we expect to be difficult, with questions. Asking the other person what they believe and why they believe it. And then really hearing, you use the phrase active listening. Another quote I have is from a friend of mine who's in the communications business who says that active listening is more than waiting for your turn to talk. It means actually hearing what the other person is saying, considering it, giving it some respect and formulating a follow-up, question usually, based on what you hear. And so it might be something as simple as well. Okay, I can see why you'd be concerned about that. What if that wasn't true? Or what if we could change that? Would you still feel the same way about this issue? So that's just one example. And I give lots of examples in Chapter 6.But those kind of iterated, careful, respectful conversations, I think, can be successful with a significant subset of voters on the other side of an issue. And the size of that subset is debated by scholars. We talked the other day when I was visiting your class about Katharine Hayhoe, who's a climate scientist who specializes in climate communication. She's very optimistic that these methods can work on most people. The polling data that I cite in the book suggests that they ought to be able to work on about a third of the people out there, but that may be enough to make a difference for the climate future. And so I think this is a necessary part of regaining our democracy, the least functioning democracy, the way it functioned when you and I were young.Doug Lewin I agree. Actually, I found the quote from your book from Learned Hand and we will include a link to the full speech, but I do want to just read the part that is in your book. This is the quote from Learned Hand in his Constitution Day speech. “What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it. I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the mind of other men and women. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias.” It's just an incredible quote and I think one that we all, regardless of background, really need to think about, the language you emphasize in the very next paragraph in your book: not too sure, seeks to understand. The fact that he included men and women in a speech in 1944 is pretty remarkable as well.David SpenceYeah, he was a brilliant jurist. He was widely considered the most brilliant jurist, even though he served in a circuit court of appeals, not the Supreme Court at the time. There is a wonderful biography of him that sort of gets into his judicial and political philosophies. And he's a really admirable person because he lived out or tried to live out that ambition that he articulates there.And that was at a time when the specter of authoritarianism was looming large. And as you know from reading my book, there are a number of historians that see that specter looming large again. And so it seems like an appropriate reminder about the norms of political communication that we need to maintain in order for our democracy to function well.Doug Lewin Yeah. Well, and really when you talk about that one-third, and I really hope it's bigger. I want to believe it's bigger. I want to look at the data you're referencing and get really familiar with this because I would definitely want it to be bigger, but let's say it was a third. I mean, really what you're talking about is the center, right? And there is this, this is one of the biggest problems here is when you do move to the poles, you know, to the extremes on either side and there's not equivalency there and it'd be interesting to hear you talk about that too, cause there is some really good empirical data on this, that the right has moved further to the extreme, although the left is moving further in that direction actively as well. When that happens, there's not enough left in the center. And I think what really starts to happen too, is we get into this situation where it's a very zero sum thinking kind of an environment where somebody's like, I'm winning, you're losing, rather than, and I think this is part of that Spirit of Liberty too. If I may expand on Judge Learned Hand's brilliant concepts here, it's not just that spirit, which is not too sure that it's right, it's also that spirit that is willing to give something. It is the same spirit, I think, right? Because I may not be exactly right, the things that I exactly want may not be the full gamut. And this is a place, and this is where I want to go next. You can comment on any of that you want, obviously, but where I want to kind of go next is I really do think that energy and climate, though climate is so partisan coded at this point, but let's stick with energy for a minute.  Energy is one of those places where I think we can find common ground. If we can get people to a place where they are in-person and they are active listening and they are not too sure they are right. And they are willing to compromise. We can make major progress because fundamentally, I think most people want the same things. They want a reliable grid. They want lower costs. Many people, and this is true right and left, like you have a very strong group on the right that really wants solar and storage wherever they live because, I don't want to be so reductive as to call it prepper, cause that has like a very negative connotation for some people. But if you think of it in terms of like, take the baggage away from the term prepper, like they want to be prepared. Like whatever happens, a winter storm, a heat wave, God knows what. They want to be ready for it. And having power at their house is one of those things. The imperative at this point for the United States to be globally competitive, to not cede industries of the future to China. That was one of the rare places where Biden sort of continued a lot of Trump's policies that were pretty tough on China and really trying to incubate and grow energy industries here in the United States. I'm curious of your thoughts on that, the opportunity maybe for energy, if folks can get out of the persuasion mindset and into the more listening mindset, like there might be a whole lot more common ground on energy than we're acknowledging.David SpenceYou're right that there is an empirical literature measuring the spread of misinformation and false belief and negative emotional messages online. There's an entire set of scholars that study that, and I link many of them at the website for the book. Those scholars document more misinformation flowing, more right-leaning messages that are false messages spreading around the web than left-leaning messages. And that's probably an artifact of the fact that right-wing media, ideological media, has grown quicker and is much more popular than at least so far, than ideological left-wing media.  So the history of Fox News, Fox sort of pioneered an approach to broadcast cable news and punditry that MSNBC and other left-leaning outlets have followed to a certain extent, but Fox is much more popular. It has twice the audience of MSNBC and three times the audience of CNN.So you're just gonna see more of this kind of messaging sort of floating around and more sort of online and radio sources that sort of follow that same model. More of those exist on the right or at least the more popular ones are on the right than on the left. And that could change, again, the right got started on this unfortunate project before the left did.  And so it may be that Democrats and liberals are catching up on that. So that's one point. And in terms of sort of putting this open-minded thinking, this Learned Hand philosophy into practice in the energy space, I think you're absolutely right. And people who follow your podcast and your Twitter, you know, will learn about the particulars of this. This will resonate with them because they understand the particulars of Texas energy better than the people who don't follow your work. But yeah, there's lots of common ground in the energy space if we're focused on trying to solve problems. And the right-left divide doesn't map that neatly onto energy arguments right now anyway. So if we go beyond Texas, there are people on the left that are sort of really strong proponents of the energy transition who would like to see competitive markets in their state and they don't have them. And there are other people who are strong advocates of the transition who think that it should be led by investor-owned utilities that are traditionally regulated or, and there's another set of people who think that it should be public power and there's another set of people. So these ideological divides don't fit the energy sector's problems all that neatly. On the other hand, the intense partisan tribalism does seem to be creating a national Republican brand that can be hostile to anything that mentions climate change, as you noted in your question, and increasingly anyway, to utility scale renewables as well. And so we saw this week, one of the Trump advisors sending a note to the FERC chairman telling him to stop doing controversial things, by which I think he meant, you know, pro-renewable energy, pro-clean energy things. Trump has sort of himself famously opposed wind energy. And so we have these two forces butting up against each other, the idea that there are probably practical solutions that have common ground associated with them if we just get together and talk about solving these problems. But we also have the fear of voter punishment for sort of cooperating. And we'll see how it all plays out. I think you know that there are some Republicans in the House that would like to preserve the Inflation Reduction Act and the incentives it provides for energy transition technologies, how many they are and whether their expressions of that preference will translate into votes against repealing it. We may find out if the Republicans take the house. So I share your optimism about the possibility of bipartisan solutions and of finding common ground if we can get away from these political election forces that sort of distort that process.Doug LewinYeah, and I think it's important to acknowledge and this again, to a large extent, because there was that whole process of deliberative polling, when Texas was restructured, it was really a conservative policy that put in place, a market structure and energy-only market as it's often called, which means that only that energy that's producing gets paid. It's highly competitive. But it is, it has been very, very good for clean energy because clean energy is incredibly low cost. It has, according to a colleague at UT, Josh Rhodes, you know, $31 billion from 2010 to 2022. And that was because of a conservative policy that sometimes will drive the left or liberals sort of in general crazy when they look at Texas and they're like, wait a minute, how do you guys have more wind, solar, storage than any other place? But you didn't have a policy adopted by a Democratic governor and Democratic legislature. Important to note that in the nineties, there was a Democratic house, right? It was Speaker Laney at the time. So it was divided government. And that is a really important point, but there was compromise across the chambers. Then Governor Bush wanted to run for president and talk about renewables, he actually would talk about renewables as one of the things he was for, but those conservative policies really did lead to more clean energy, which again, it was a different time, but, and maybe I'm just grasping at straws, but I want to at least think that there's the potential of something to build on there.David Spence No, I think you're absolutely right. Part of it's conservative, most of it's conservative. We have very few barriers to entry at the generation stage here in ERCOT. So it's easy to build. We happen to have good wind and solar resources, and we happen to have hungry cities that are growing that want those resources. But let's not forget, and I know you know this and have said it before, that we also socialize the cost of building big transmission lines out to those windy and sunny areas which also were part of the story of how at least the wind grew so fast, to sort of dwarf wind generation in other states. And I think that's why there are strong energy transition and climate advocates who look to Texas as a model, or at least to competitive markets as a model, for building more wind and solar because they see traditional investor owned utilities as obstacles to that kind of progress.Doug LewinLet me just also ask you about the Inflation Reduction Act. You referenced, I think this is really important and I think will get a whole lot of coverage in the coming months and really over the year, because where they would, where Congress would sort of dismantle the IRA, if they choose to do so, assuming the House is Republican, which it looks like it will be. We’re recording on Friday, November 8th. So when you're listening to this, you probably already know whether the US House is going to be led by Democrats or Republicans, David and I do not. But it looks like it will be Republican. And if that's the case, it would be through budget reconciliation. So this project is going to this, this process rather, will play out over the course of a year. But as much as anything is clear to me right now, and not a lot is very clear, I don't think the entire thing will be taken apart. There will be elements of it that survive. You mentioned the 18 Republicans who sent a letter to Speaker Johnson saying while it was flawed. And so it wasn't like a full throated endorsement of the IRA and they didn't vote for it when it came through. They did say that there were aspects of it that they wanted to preserve. Can you kind of look into the crystal ball a little bit, not asking you to make predictions, but sort of based on probabilities and you're smart on this stuff and follow this stuff. What are some of the areas where you think the IRA might be able to continue? One of those that I think is really interesting is what is called the 45X. It's the manufacturing incentives, right? And we've seen a lot of manufacturing in Texas, but even more so in South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, a lot of states, obviously with Republican governors that are very, very excited to have that manufacturing there. And frankly, like President Trump could go around the country cutting ribbons and take credit for what – I mean, it would be bizarre and weird, but it could happen, right? They could take credit for a lot of the things that were passed if they don't dismantle it, in which case, if they don't dismantle it, they might deserve a little credit. So maybe the manufacturing, are there other elements that you're looking at? Like, hey, heading into this new era, whatever it is, here's some areas where there might be some potential.David SpenceYeah, I will be actually posting a blog on the book website. I do blog regularly, but one of the posts that will be coming up in a couple of days looks at those 18 letter signers and their electoral circumstances heading into the election. And to the extent that there are results, most of them have, their race has been certified by the AP by now, but four or five have not. 14 of the 18 were from districts that Cook Political Report would call relatively competitive. They were either toss-ups or lean one way or the other. Those are the relatively competitive districts under their taxonomy. So these were people that probably had to worry about the other party, Democrats in this case, since all the signatories were Republicans, had to worry a little bit about gaining some votes from the other party. And four were not, four were from very strong Republican districts. And they happened to be people who were getting a lot of IRA or infrastructure bill money. And so you can sort of see this as a contest, or we can look at these 18 letter signers and say, this is sort of the struggle between bringing home the bacon to their district, the economic sort of incentive to make their constituents happy that way versus the sort of partisan side of things. Those four that were in solidly red districts, are they gonna be punished at the next primary for cooperating or for expressing preferences for something that the Freedom Caucus doesn't like? They want to see the entire IRA repealed and they objected to the letter that the 18 sent. And so that'll be interesting. It'll be interesting to watch their futures. Most of them won or look like they're going to win. A few probably will lose. But that'll be interesting to see where they end up. In terms of the kinds of things that could survive in a partial repeal, I share your sentiment that it's probably the things that look more industrial or likely to create permanent high paying jobs. That's another way of looking at it, right?Wind and solar jobs tend to be construction jobs. Building a carbon sequestration facility probably creates more, at that facility, probably creates more permanent jobs. Same thing with a hydrogen production plant or even a geothermal plant, all those kinds of things, or manufacturing, solar manufacturing and so on. Those are permanent jobs. And I imagine they'd be the kind of things that Republicans might be more comfortable with. See them as serving the people they see as their main constituents and their needs, even in a solid red district. And as you know, and probably have said already on your podcast, most of the money is going to red districts. And so it'll be interesting to see how they respond to that. If they repeal popular parts of the IRA, it'll be interesting to see what happens in the 2026 elections to see if they pay for that.Doug LewinYeah, and a lot of the things you just mentioned,you know, geothermal uses a lot of the same skills for oil and gas workers. A lot of oil and gas execs are leading the most prominent geothermal companies. Fervo, Sage, headquartered here in Texas, are two very prominent examples. Hydrogen, carbon capture, even solar to an extent, right? We're seeing oil and gas companies in Texas really wanting to connect to the grid because the power is cheaper from renewables than from diesel generation. So I think that's going to be an interesting dynamic too is how does the business community and particularly some of the industrial players, the oil and gas players. You know, Trump keeps talking about drill, baby drill, the CEO of Exxon, before the election gave an interview on CNBC. And he said, I don't know how drill, baby drill translates into policy because we're already at record levels of drilling. We drilled more in the United States last year than any country has ever drilled in the history of the world, including Saudi Arabia in any year. And if you do end up finding a policy that causes more drilling, guess what happens to prices, right? They go lower and now your oil and gas companies are going out of business. So how does that business voice exist in a second Trump administration is going to be interesting. Happy for you to comment on that if you want. I am going to turn that into a question because you are a professor of law. One thing that companies of any kind really sort of universally disdain is regulatory uncertainty. We are heading into a time of, I think, extraordinary regulatory uncertainty, both because of the election, but also because of some of the things the Supreme Court has done. Can you talk a little bit, I mean, in your book you spend a lot of time on regulations and how they've evolved, just a little bit on kind of where we are with that, some of the things the courts have done recently and how you see that changing in the new political environment?David SpenceYeah, it depends on how far back we go. Certainly when there was more common ground, there was more policy stability. And the historical part of my book talks about those eras when there was common ground and there was sort of more policy stability. But ever since the sort of end of the 20th century, we've started to see, at least in terms of executive branch policies, fairly sharp pivots, what one scholar calls regulatory oscillation, in energy and environmental policy generally, not just climate, but all sorts of environmental policies and energy policies have flip-flopped back and forth, depending upon which party is in control of the White House. Now, there are limits to this that are mostly right now about the attention span of the executive or what they tend to prioritize, because the executive branch produces a whole lot of policy. And so it's impossible really for a president to prioritize everything and to sort of change everything they might want to change. They have to invest resources in changing rules, which require new rule makings, which require following the Administrative Procedures Act, publishing the proposed rule, listening to comments, getting through judicial review. So there's a lot of transaction costs associated with reversing federal policy. But nevertheless, we've seen Democrat and Republican presidents prioritizing environmental issues and climate issues recently enough to want to do that. And so we will see a repeal of the Biden power plant rule and we'll see a repeal of the vehicle standards and other sort of climate initiatives from the Biden administration. Chances are, if the previous Trump administration is any indication, chances are there'll be a lot of litigation associated with that. Presumably, his advisors have learned from some of the failed litigation they had. But now, I would expect to see more and more regulatory oscillation for as long as the negative partisanship and polarization continues to increase. And which is why I spend so much of the focus of the book on trying to change that through promotion of more productive forms of dialogue across party lines.Doug LewinYeah, it really would make a big difference, not only for our society, like first and foremost for our society and the continuation of that spirit of liberty and democracy itself. That's the sort of  first order thing, but there is a second order thing there that I think the policy outcomes on energy and climate would be a lot better there too. This is great. I really love your book. I think anybody that particularly for those that want to understand energy policy and energy regulation at a deeper level. Obviously there are things in the book that I already knew, but in the spirit of Learned Hand, there were quite a few that I didn't. As people who listen to this know, I'm kind of a nerd on this stuff. And I pride myself on knowing a lot of things, but I learned a lot from your book, there were many different aspects of the regulatory history I was not familiar with. So I really can't endorse the book more strongly. I hope folks give it a read. Tell us where they can find you. We've mentioned a few and we'll put them in the show notes. You've mentioned your website where you blog, which is climateofcontempt.com, right? Where else can folks find you?David Spence Well, I'm on the University of Texas Law School faculty pages, which advertise some of my work. I have another website that I am just getting going again after going dormant in the pandemic called energytradeoffs.com. And otherwise, I'm around Austin. I appreciate the kind words about the book and right back at you. I've learned a lot from your podcast and especially about Texas markets. I think we all depend on you among a few, very few others to sort of really get the sort of nitty gritty about Texas electricity markets. And so I appreciate that.Doug LewinThanks, David. Anything I should have asked you that I didn't, anything else you want to just say in closing?David SpenceNo, I really enjoyed the conversation and I appreciate the opportunity to get a little bit deeper into this sort of philosophy of actively open-minded thinking. Not everybody asks me as much about that as you did and I think that's really a crucial part of the book. So yeah, I've enjoyed it.Doug LewinI mean it is the way out of this mess, like, if this experiment in democracy is going to work, we have to get better at that. I firmly believe that. And I think your book is a contribution on that and on the other stuff, which people probably ask you more of, and I think is incredibly important too, obviously, but I really do think that piece is foundational. Hey, thanks for being on the podcast. Thanks for writing this book. The last thing I'll say is I'm going to need to have you back at some point as these different legal processes start playing out. I mean, it's going to be, there's going be a lot to unpack, in the next year or two. And I'll look forward to having you help us do that, David, if you're willing.David SpenceIt's been my pleasure, Doug, and I'm happy to come back anytime you want.Doug LewinThanks so much.  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.douglewin.com/subscribe

My guest this week is Ram Narayanamurthy, the Deputy Director of the Building Technologies Office at the Department of Energy (DOE) for the last two years. Before joining DOE, he led the buildings program at the Electric Power Research Institute, or EPRI, for a decade. He has 27 patents to his name and has worked extensively with builders, developers, and utilities to scale new technologies that can increase grid reliability, reduce emissions, improve human health, and lower costs.I spoke to Ram about his work on DOE’s Connected Communities program which funds projects to advance grid-interactive, energy-efficient buildings and communities across the nation. Ram and the Building Technologies Office are doing cutting edge research and deployment to increase demand flexibility, a key component to strengthening the grid. We talked about the role AI plays to optimize demand and shift loads to times of day with an abundance of power and use less at peak times. We talked about the importance of building technologies that improve energy efficiency and demand response, particularly in an environment of rapid load growth. I enjoyed learning what this important Office within the Department of Energy is up to and how the technologies they’re piloting with utilities around the country could impact Texas in future years.I hope you enjoy the episode. Timestamps, show notes, and the transcript below. Please don’t forget to like, share, subscribe, and leave a five-star review wherever you get your podcasts.Timestamps2:05 - About the Building Technologies Office3:28 - What does demand flexibility mean in buildings6:41 - Energy optimization and flexibility as energy efficiency9:03 - AI11:55 - The grid edge15:28 - What are Connected Communities? What is the Connected Communities program?17:25 - Examples of Connected Communities; results and lessons learned so far25:27 - Who should orchestrate all these distributed energy resources28:36 - Importance of distribution planning; examples of successful strategies32:38 - Replacing resistance heat36:18 - How do we make sure these technologies and the benefits are actually accessible and affordable to everybody; trickle up vs trickle down strategies for technology access42:51 - How do we make demand flexibility and grid edge more understandable and desirable to the public46:29 - Resilience benefits of Connected CommunitiesShow NotesBuilding Technologies OfficeConnected Communities ProgramFERC and NERC report on Winter Storm UriInformation on HOMES and HEARs (or HEEHRA) programsSeattle City Light Electrification AssessmentEPRI Study Examines Impacts Of Electrification For Seattle City Light | American Public Power AssociationElectrification Strategy - City LightTranscriptDoug LewinRam Narayanamurthy. Welcome to the Energy Capital Podcast.Ram NarayanamurthyThank you, Doug, and it's my honor to be here. Thank you for inviting us over.Doug LewinYeah. Thanks so much for taking time, Ram. Obviously the Building Technologies Office where you sit, is doing some really phenomenal work. Can we just start with kind of a little bit about BTO and its mission? Obviously DOE is a great big agency. There's lots of different areas of endeavor, but tell us a little about the Building Technologies Office.Ram NarayanamurthySo the Building Technologies Office, we are about creating healthy, comfortable, efficient, affordable, resilient, and decarbonized environments for people to live in. We spend 90% of our time in buildings, whether it's for work, whether it's for living, it's our home. We shop in buildings, we learn in buildings. So they're all over us and all around us. Part of the mission of our office is to achieve our long-term energy goals while still making sure that we are providing those healthy and resilient environments for people to live in and work in.Doug LewinPerfect. And looking over the website, you guys kind of break it down into research and development, market stimulation, and codes and standards. And while I don't think you work, and you can correct me in a minute if I'm wrong, you don't work on codes and standards. I do want to make sure the audience understands how important those are. Because we're obviously in an environment, we're on just about every podcast run, we're talking about load growth, right? And having these standards in place, bringing the use of refrigerators and air conditioners and lights down, that makes a big, big difference. But what we want to talk about today is the part of the mission, and I'm reading this little phrase from your website, “enable high performing, energy efficient, and demand flexible residential and commercial buildings.” Can you talk for a minute about what you mean by this demand flexibility?Ram NarayanamurthyPerfect, yeah. So at the Building Technologies Office, we just recently released our national blueprint for decarbonizing the building stock by 2050. When we look at our goals to achieve a net zero economy by 2050, buildings contribute about 38% of emissions, overall emissions when you count the energy use, the electricity use in buildings. So for achieving those goals, we have four main pillars. One is around reducing emissions at the building. We have a second pillar, around energy efficiency, which has been core to both affordability and decarbonization over many years. We are working on demand flexibility and we are working on what's called embodied carbon. And demand flexibility for us is the place where the buildings are integrally tied into the overall energy system, especially the electricity system, but also to some extent to the gas system. And demand flexibility means that you are now able to move the energy use. Buildings use about 75% of all electricity that's generated. So the capability and the ability to move that energy use to times when you have more clean power or more clean power generation being able to have that flexibility so that even within a building you are able to run your air conditioner while still charging your electric vehicle, while still charging your battery or discharging your battery, making all of those different elements work together so that you are optimizing at the building level, but you're also optimizing at the overall system level and helping the overall energy grid become more cleaner and efficient. That's really what demand flexibility is about. And we have different ways of achieving it. Traditionally demand flexibility on the utility side has been around demand response, but now we are going to a new era where we have not just the traditional on/off switches, but we have much more flexible technologies, whether it's batteries, EVs, smart term stats, building energy management systems that can provide the demand flexibility. It's a concept that is transition.Doug LewinYeah. And so it's actually, I like to talk to people about this a lot. I've been working in and around energy efficiency for 20 years or so. And we all have to kind of update our priors here because we're rapidly moving into an era. In many ways we're in that era now where energy efficiency actually means using more power at certain times, right? You talked about there's low emission power, that's basically the same as cheaper power, right? So if we can actually get into, you were talking about electric vehicles, charge the vehicles when power prices are low and the power is cleaner and then, stop the charging or even you get into some of these vehicles-to-home, vehicle-to-load, vehicle-to-grid, these kinds of things. But even a more fundamental basic use case would be, and this is where the connection to energy efficiency and demand response come together, right, is with air conditioning. So if you can, particularly with some of the heat pumps, right, they can take a signal. So like you said, the old versions of demand response, direct load control, right. Turn it off and people kind of sweating inside their homes. Now you can actually pre-cool when you have a lot of solar power and then use less during that period when the sun's going down. Are you guys looking at those kinds of things as well?Ram NarayanamurthyAbsolutely, yeah. And like you mentioned, right, technology has evolved a lot in the last 10 years. We have way more tools than we ever did in our tool belt. So, when we think about what we can do today, you take a smart thermostat, like a Nest or Ecobee, and now you have the capability to remotely change the set points. Of course, you're working with the people who live in the homes to make sure they're still comfortable with what you're doing. Butyou can do things now where you can pre-cool a building much more easily than you ever could. You didn't have those capabilities 10 years ago. You could pre-cool a building, make the building comfortable at just the set points so that you're still sitting within a comfort range for the occupants of the building, whether it's commercial building, residential building. But what it does is, you're using energy at a different point of time. And that means that if you're pre-cooling the building, you're using the energy when there's a lot more solar available in the middle of the day. And then you're able to reduce the energy use around 4pm, 5pm, 6pm, when your demands on the grid are much higher, your solar is starting to wane off. This is the kind of flexibility that we are now able to get from the technologies that have evolved in the last 10 years. And I think energy efficiency comes from the fact that if you're cooling your building when it's cooler outside than during the hottest part of the day, then your air conditioner is actually running more efficiently. So now there are more capabilities where we can do both energy efficiency and demand management. And one of the terms we have come up with, Doug, is we call it power efficiency, because I think we are transitioning to an era where you're going to have ample energy available, especially as we get more clean generation on the grid. But power is going to be your currency going forward. So demand flexibility helps us with that power efficiency.Doug LewinI want to ask you a question about this as well on AI. There's so much discussion again, probably at least every other episode of the Energy Capital Pod, we're talking about artificial intelligence and how much. Usually it's in the context-realm of we're going to be adding a lot of load to the grid and are we going to have enough power to serve that? But I think there's the other side of the coin there, which is if people have the opportunity to say, here's my comfort band, right? I don't want it ever hotter than 78, 79 in my house. I never wanted any colder than 70, 71 in my house, whatever. It's up to that person's preference or their family's preference or their business's preference or whatever. Then within that AI can actually kind of move that load around. Does that kind of come into your work at BTO or is it still a little far off?Ram NarayanamurthyIt's a great point, Doug. Yes, it has come into our work. It is something that we have been looking into. We have worked with multiple utilities and even prior to my time at DOE, I'd worked with a lot of utilities looking at the capability to do that kind of adaptive, smart energy management. So, you can imagine a world where, and I don't think we are very far from that world where you can just talk to your smart speaker and say, hey, keep my home between 70 degrees and 76 degrees and let it take care of everything. And those are the capabilities I think we are getting with the evolution of computing, with the evolution of data and how we are able to now interact with our homes and our devices. So it's a great thought and I think we'll get there soon. Sooner rather than we think.Doug LewinYeah, I could even, yeah, I could even envision like we might not even be far away from where, yeah, you say this is your comfort band. And then on certain days, things are getting really dicey on the grid.You  maybe get a message from the smart speaker or it pops up on your phone. I know you don't want it hotter than 76 in your house. Power prices are really high. Would you take a $10 bill credit to let it go to 77. And you can say, nope, I'm having people over. I'm having a party at my house. You know, my elderly mother's visiting. And don't touch my thermostat. And you just say no, or you can say, know what? I'm just about to leave the house. I'll take the 10 bucks. That's great. You know, right? I mean, I don't think we're that far away from that.Ram NarayanamurthyNo, we're not. And if you go back to 2020 when California had the power emergency in August. And what's great was a text message, a reverse amber alert that meant people were responsive and they saved two and a half gigawatts, which kept the grid on, right? So when people can do that manually, automating something like that would probably give us incredible amount of resources for demand flexibility.Doug LewinSo all of this demand flexibility is happening at what y'all call, and obviously people have been talking about this for a decade or so, but again, I think the technology and the discussions are advancing . The term, a term I really like, grid edge. And I think it's very interesting that, in my view, and I think in the episode with Hala Ballouz of EPE, we talked about this where on her company's website, it's a firm of electrical engineers and they have this image where like, you're sort of have this circle that was the grid and what was inside the home or building was kind of outside that circle until fairly recently. And now the circle is widening and we're recognizing that these devices, all the things we've been talking about so far and a lot more actually can be considered as part of the grid. So the grid edge, you know, was sort of like outside the grid, the edge was sort of outside and now the edge is being brought in. Can you talk a little bit about how you guys think about the grid edge and maybe what are some of the other things that might actually become part of the grid that we haven't even talked about yet?Ram NarayanamurthySo, we've been kind of thinking about how the edge is blending, right? As we think about, and there's been a lot of discussion on new loads, as you think about how we are getting more technologies and more integration, whether it's with EVs in the home and trying to balance your EV load with your batteries, for example, right?What it comes down to is that whatever you do inside the home or the building is going to impact what you do on the utility side, what it means for the size of the wires, what it means for the size of the transformers, what it means for the size of the feeders. And so we are taking an expansive definition of the grid edge going from what we call, we are now defining it as going from the feeder on the utility side to the plug on the customer side. And why does that matter? As we look at homes today, many homes have 200 amp panels. You can either go up to a 400 amp panel to get your electric vehicle charging installed and your battery installed, or you can implement technologies. One of the technologies you're working on is what's called low power heat pumps. Heat pumps that can run on 120 volts, so you're not having to upsize your breaker. Technologies that we're working on include splitters so that you can actually manage the load within the home. Smart panels. There's all these technologies that help you manage the energy use so that you're not triggering upgrades on the utility side. There's been many stories where people want to put an EV charger and then they have to wait eight months, pay $10,000 because their distribution line has to be upgraded right there. Their grid edge has to be upgraded there. Meter has to be upgraded. By looking at this as an integrated whole we are now optimizing end-to-end all the way from the plug to the feeder. And what that does is it helps us reduce the time to adopt clean energy, and it substantially reduces the cost to adopt clean energy. So that's why our definition of the grid edge is much more expensive. What it does, it brings in people who haven't worked together before, together. And we are trying to enable that matchmaking to happen. We are trying to enable utilities and grid operators and distribution planners to understand what people on the customer side are doing and vice versa. So that people on this side, like battery installers or EV charger manufacturers can understand how they can help the grid on the other side.Doug LewinYeah, so, so important, such an important mission and work. Let's talk about sort of how the rubber meets the road here. You guys are doing something called the Connected Communities Program and you're personally involved with that. Can you tell us about the Connected Communities Program and how it's connected to everything we've just been talking about?Ram NarayanamurthyYeah, the word connected is in it, right? What I think is happening is a confluence. Which is Connected Communities is about the fact that your good edge is where your electric vehicles, your rooftop solar, your battery installs, your heat pumps, they all come together. So for us, Connected Communities is about understanding how a community of buildings that employ all these different clean energy resources can optimize and work together to right size the grid on the other side. The whole thing is the big discussion has been we have new loads coming. People in utilities haven't seen this kind of or projected this kind of load growth in like 50 years. And the load growth is not just about how much we have to generate. It's actually hitting at the edge of the grid.As we get more electrification, more EVs, it's hitting at the edge of the grid. Upgrading existing distribution lines is very expensive because we already built out our communities, our cities on top of it. So for us, a Connected Community is about how we are going to manage all these new loads and how we are going to right size the grid to manage the load growth. And this way you're optimizing for the entire system, not just a single element of the system.Doug LewinYeah, I love some of the language you guys have on your website, I think is really quite descriptive of this. So the goal of the program you have on there is to “validate grid edge technology innovations in real world situations and provide new tools for utilities, grid planners and operators, automakers and smart charge management service providers and the communities they serve.” Can you talk a little bit about some of the early results of connected communities? You could talk about anything you want. One of the things I'm really interested in though, Ram, is, and you sort of alluded to it, what you were just saying, and it's in that statement that I just read there. There's different levels, different places. And I know you're an expert in grid edge and in demand flexibility, not necessarily in Texas, but in Texas we have this where we've got the transmission system operator ERCOT, right. And then you've got distribution utilities. And sometimes there's not a whole lot of communication between those, right? And I know that happens in other places too. So you can talk about examples from other parts of the country. And then, to say the least, the transmission system operator rarely understands at the plug level. They might understand customers that are really big ones. They talk to the factories, the Bitcoin miners, the data centers, but not necessarily a residential customer. So what you've got in that statement that I just read is trying to kind of, again, connect is in the name, connect those different layers that seems incredibly difficult, incredibly worthwhile as well. How has it gone so far?Ram NarayanamurthyYeah, great question, Doug. Yes, it is incredibly difficult, right? And we're not going to solve everything in one go. But what we're trying to do is take pieces of it and solve for the pieces. One of the unique things we have done, Connected Communities, what we just released is what we call the Connected Communities 2.0, which is focused on load growth. Connected Communities 1.0 came out about four years ago. So, part of what we have done is we have looked at those projects, not as projects by themselves, but as a cohort of efforts. A couple of those projects are working with affordable housing properties, looking at how do you decarbonize affordable housing while still being able to integrate with the grid. So projects in New York, for example, with New York City Housing Authority, where New York City Housing Authority has 182,000 units. They're like the size of a city. And what we're working with them is the fact that, you know, they are sitting on infrastructure that is completely not sized for them to add EV charging for affordable housing communities or for putting heat pumps in. So we're looking at how do you actually structure these, whether it's geothermal, whether it's low power heat pumps, whether it's modifying your steam systems. How do you do all of that so that at that scale, you can actually decarbonize their building stock?Now, with regards to others, we are working with Ohio State, for example. Ohio State is one of those examples where it's a whole campus in itself. And there, they're working with the PJM market. It's a little bit similar to the Texas market, right? In that they are a large scale aggregator. They're working directly at the market. And they're looking at how they can apply demand flexibility within the campus, so that they can minimize their inflow and outflow to the grid. And there's another example where we are working with Rocky Mountain Power, which is a utility in itself. And what Rocky Mountain Power is doing is they are looking, they are implementing demand flexibility in different places in Salt Lake City. They're working with affordable housing, where they have designed affordable housing, put in EV charging and manage the load of that building. They're working with new home developers to have aggregated batteries. They're working with the City of Salt Lake's transit center looking at bus electrification. But what they're also doing is because they are the utility, they are taking the demand flexibility from all these very disparate resources and aggregating it to help them with their system. Whether it's for resiliency, whether it's for resource adequacy, whether it's for avoiding generation, they're taking all these different elements and putting it together for their system. So if you apply it in the Texas context, right? Texas, as you mentioned, is a unique, very unique marketplace in the US. Your distribution and your transmission operators have very little connection, and your distribution operators are not allowed to work with the retail or the end customers, right? So you have these little, what I call silos that they operate in. And so, part of what we would love to see is that we can take lessons learned on how the customer side is able to provide the flexibility and maybe that enables your retailer to work with your distribution operator to actually put those two together and provide a more efficient, better coordinated resource back to your transmission operator. It could also be seen applying for Austin Energy or CPS San Antonio because they are both the retail and the distribution operator. So they could directly apply some of these lessons learned. So that's what we are trying to do with the Connected Communities. There's a whole cohort of 10 projects around the country. Unfortunately, none of them are in Texas, maybe looking into the future, maybe some of the version two, we could have more projects in Texas. But each of them is taking a different example of how to optimize for the grid. There's one in Southern California with KB Homes and SunPower, where they're looking at community microgrid and looking to provide resilience at the community scale and having one neighborhood with batteries inside every home, another neighborhood with a community microgrid, having V-to-G, actually it's V-to-B to provide resilience for those homes. So there's multiple examples and our hope is that we can take the lessons learned from each of those examples and apply it across the country for different utility structures.Doug LewinWith that last example, Southern California, you said it's not V-to-G, it's V to what?Ram NarayanamurthyV-to-B, sorry, vehicle-to-building. Doug LewinVehicle-to-building. Okay, okay. Got it. Got it. So that could be a home or it could be an apartment building. The idea is you don't necessarily need to inject the power into the grid, but if it's going to the home, that's reducing the demand that the grid needs to provide to that home. Ram NarayanamurthyYeah. And it also does provide resilience. So most of the stationary batteries are going in because people want backup power. And if you can provide your backup power to your vehicle, then you don't probably need a stationary battery to provide that resource.Doug LewinYeah, you know, it's interesting. So Texas does have this, aggregated distributed energy resource pilot. And the way it's structured is either, well, so a load serving entity in the Texas parlance has to provide it. So that'd be a retail electric provider or a muni or a co-op. The first one to inject power from this pilot into the grid was Tesla. The second was actually Bandera Electric Co-op.There is a task force working on these issues. So should there be a Connected Communities 2.0 project in Texas, excuse me, we'd want to bring that project into the task force to be talking about what's going on there. But just what you were talking about, like there is, that is a barrier that in Texas, stakeholders are working to overcome is that ERCOT is so used to that transmission level, right? Really, really large loads over 700 kilowatts you know, and so now you're getting down to a customer premise and, and it's one thing for batteries cause you can kind of measure that directly, but then you start getting into aggregations of thermostats and that's not really something they understand. So I would imagine some of these lessons learned actually might be applicable, to the folks that are involved in this pilot and on that, on that task force. Do you think that's probably right?Ram NarayanamurthyThat's probably right, yeah, because getting those pilots, getting the data, and knowing how the data can be transferable to your particular situation. So if it's the electric co-op, yeah, they can adopt those results.Doug LewinAnd it's probably, I guess it's different for each of these areas you're talking about. One of the things I like to think about and talk about and try to understand more basically, cause I think it has really big implications and I don't think anybody's actually sort of figured it out yet is how do you actually like manage, what is the model for managing all those distributed resources? Right, Ram? You hear a lot about a distribution system operator kind of a model where somebody's sort of like, there needs to be some orchestration of all of that. That could be a market and a market signal. It could be a DSO that's sort of just like a transmission system operator is matching supply and demand. I could even envision markets on sort of a small level, particularly though, like behind a really congested area, right? Where power prices are really high and maybe just like in the bulk power market, you have some kind of an auction where big power plants come and offer their power in and then it goes up a bit stack. Maybe you could do that on the distribution side. Does any of that come into this project or is that maybe a little a little further afield than where you guys are going with this?Ram NarayanamurthyActually one of our other offices, Solar Energy Technologies Office is actually looking at a distribution system operator, what I call a test bed, through another effort called Strives. What we are trying to do is, I think of the DSO model as something that's maybe five years down the line, right? And there's some business model implications that have to be worked out that have to be worked out in the regulatory context. So it's a little bit more challenging. But what we're looking at is independent of whether you have a DSO, or it could even be the regulated utility who's actually managing all these resources. How do you actually, we are working on how do you actually get these resources aggregated so that it can provide your distribution services or bulk services. And so for us, it's almost agnostic of having a DSO model but looking more at the technical feasibility. The other thing we are looking at is distribution planning practices, because today a lot of the distribution planning practices,As an industry, we have never really focused on distribution planning. You just added up the loads, you put a transformer and you just walked away, right? Now we are getting to the point where we need a lot of these additional loads on the distribution side of the network. And looking at these new technologies and how the stochastic nature of these technologies, because with controls, you can go up, down, etc. That has never been a part of distribution planning. Now, can you actually use controls, validate with field data, and use that to revise your distribution planning so that you are not oversizing the grid? So that's an area that we are focused on a lot.Doug LewinI think that's really, really smart. And I will often do that. I want to jump ahead to that DSO thing, which is kind of the shiny object. And I do think it'll be relevant in the longer term, but it's a bit of a crawl-walk-run, isn't it? And like the, the crawl or even the walk, if you will, is really doing some of that distribution resource planning where you're really looking at the distribution grid. And like you said, obviously there's some of that that has happened. It's usually internal to a utility. There's usually not a whole lot of, hey, maybe there's a provider out there that could bring this solution at the grid edge that would obviate the need for this transformer or substation upgrade. Now we're very much at the point where if we're not actively doing that work, I'm using sort of the royal we here, but anybody involved in the power industry isn't involved in doing that work. We're just going to see costs pile up so high that the system could potentially break. Right?Ram NarayanamurthyYep, absolutely. I think that's the bigger concern, right? Because you look at the projections for load, whether it's for data centers, whether it's for EVs, whether it's for building electrification, the load projections are pretty, I mean, it's pretty significant. So being able to look at non-wires alternatives, do we really need this transformer, right? And we were meeting with some home builders and it's not just the how many transformers do you need, but also the availability, right? So getting all of these optimized using better planning methods would really enable all of us because it keeps your costs down for the power. It makes sure we are not completely overbuilding the grid because we don't have enough data. That's part of what we're trying to do. We're trying to get enough data at the grid edge so that the distribution utilities can do better planning and optimization of the distribution curve.Doug LewinYeah, I had a meeting recently with a lot of folks that are utilities reps. It’s just a great group to think and plan with. And one of the things that really emerged from this particular meeting was that intersection between planning and operations and how we really need to get better at that and create that kind of loop where there's planning and then you're operating and getting the data and then you're doing better planning, which leads to better operations. And it's like this virtuous cycle. Can you give an example Ram, just pick one of the examples form Connected Communities, where the distribution planning function that is so critical maybe is happening exceptionally well?Ram NarayanamurthyI will take one of the examples, which is in Seattle. There is a project that's going on in Seattle working with a number of the affordable housing developments. And what they're doing is, Seattle is unique in that there's a lot of electric resistance heating. But what we're doing with this project is replacing those electric resistance heating with heat pumps, and then using that extra power that's been released, because now you have extra capacity in the building, right? Because your resistance versus heat pumps, like, you need about a third of the power requirement to actually power the building? Now, how do you use that extra capacity? What do we do with it? Add EV charging, for example, right? But it's also going beyond the building itself. What can you do to relieve congestion on those lines? And that means that you're looking at the loading on that feeder line, and then looking at how you can optimize at the building level to help the overall distribution system. So it is demonstrations at a smaller scale, but data at a larger scale that can then be used for better planning. I think one of the analyses that Seattle City Light has done is that if you have unmitigated expansion of EVs and heat pumps, etc., that they might need maybe one and a half times more power than they have right now. But if you can actually implement energy efficiency and demand flexibility, you could maybe get it down to maybe a 50% increase. What they're looking at is: we don't have infinite amount of power that we can bring into a region. How do we optimize what we have? And then how do you optimize it all the way from the bottom to the top?Doug LewinI'm so glad you brought up an example that uses resistance heat. We have a whole lot of resistance heat in Texas and that was one of the problems FERC and NERC cited in their report post Winter Storm Uri. We have something like four million homes and homes includes, of course, single family and multifamily units. And there are a lot of multifamily units. I've been talking to a lot of people that are working in multifamily on energy efficiency projects. That there are some that it's not even the backup heat. I don't know if this is how it was in Seattle. It's the primary heat. And so it's just insanely, massively inefficient, which is, that's the negative side of it. The positive side of it, as you just described is, hey, if you could actually fix that problem, now you're going to have lower bills for the residents that live there. And you've got more capacity on that feeder that now you don't have to go and expand and add cost to everybody. Really interesting example.Ram NarayanamurthyRight. Yes, absolutely. I think one of things with Seattle and it's similar in Texas, right, is that when your electric rates are low, then you get a lot more electric resistance heat. But being able to drive efficiency, and I think it's going to be the same in Texas, if you can drive more efficiency, you're going to free up a lot of capacity on your distribution grid, which, who knows, I don't know what the number will be, but it could even be enough to help you with resource adequacy on the bulk grid.Doug LewinOh, in Texas, I have 100% confidence it would help a lot with resource adequacy, right? Because resource adequacy is, do you have enough to supply to meet the demand, right? And Texas has just taken $5 billion of taxpayer money in order to subsidize new gas plants. You can also, and whether or not that's gonna be enough, we don't know, but what they're doing is focusing on one side where they're increasing supply. The other side of that coring is how do you reduce demand through energy efficiency and in Winter Storm Uri, you know, we don't know exactly what it was, but it was probably somewhere on the order of 20 to 30 gigawatts. I've written about this before. We'll put a link in the show notes to the data on this. And again, it actually appears in the FERC and NERC report. Great stuff there. Do you guys have any sort of case studies published on Seattle? If you have anything on that, send it to us and we'll add it to the show notes. Ram NarayanamurthyThe project is still in development because all these projects are in the phase of trying to get things installed. But I think if you have any analysis, we can send it over to you.Doug LewinThat's brilliant. Okay, great. And I meant to say earlier, Ram, I'll just say now, and we will put links in the show notes to this, that the Connected Communities is not only at the Building Technologies Office, but is a collaboration. Correct me if I've got this wrong, but I think this is what I saw, with the Solar Energy Technologies Office, you mentioned some of the work they're doing earlier, Vehicle Technologies Office and Office of Electricity. It's really great to see there's great work going on in each of those places. Good to see you guys sort of collaborating across those different areas of DOE.Ram NarayanamurthyI think that's the future, Doug, which is that we have to look at this in an integrated manner. If we don't, I think we're going to end up investing more than we have to and increasing costs more than we have to. So I think it's great that we were able to work with all these offices. In fact, we're also working with other offices like the industrial office, which is working on data centers. We are working with a geothermal office. We are working with potential partnerships with the Hydrogen Fuel Cell Office because that's also an element of providing the resilience.Doug LewinAbsolutely. Yeah, not only will cost be higher if we don't have that collaboration, I think that the outcomes in terms of reliability and resiliency, not even to mention sustainability, will be worse without that. Okay, let me ask you, you've touched on this a couple times because you've been talking about affordable housing, but I wanna just dive a little bit deeper into this point is, how do we actually ensure, because there's all this technology coming we're talking about, electric vehicles and heat pumps and thermostats. Obviously all these things have a cost associated with them and there's unfortunately a very large percentage of the population that is just struggling to pay the next bill and isn't really necessarily thinking about getting a heat pump or an electric vehicle. How do we make sure these technologies and the benefits are actually accessible and affordable to everybody, not just those with enough disposable income?Ram NarayanamurthyIt's a great point. So I'll go back to an initiative we launched last year. It's called the Affordable Homes Earthshot. And so DOE launched eight Earthshots. This was the last one that we launched. And the focus there was we said we are going to look at this concept of what we call trickle up of technologies versus trickle down. Traditionally, technologies go to the people who can afford it. And then it becomes more mass produced and commoditized and hopefully it reaches everybody. But what we wanted to do was focus on technologies that can be specifically applied to manufactured homes and multifamily homes. That we can make that happen, especially in an era where we have these great rebates and incentives through the IRA and some of the other utility programs around the country and state incentives in many parts of the country. Can we now have technology specifically addressed to low and moderate income customers that can help us achieve those goals? You don't want to saddle them with the first cost, right? But if we can make these technologies more compact, more efficient, but also a smaller form factor, for example, so that you can actually fit into closets in apartments, for example, right?So how do you actually build these technologies that are unique, that are a unique application, make it cost effective, and then use the rebates and the incentives to offset those costs so that you can get into the buildings. Another area is trying to figure out creative financing for affordable housing, for example, how do you use things like tax credits and use that as part of your financing strategy to get these technologies in. Because if you can get the technologies in, a great example is electric strip heat, right? Getting a heat pump into those homes is expensive. But if you can figure out a way by which, make those heat pumps more cost effective, less cost, and find a financing model that can get those heat pumps into those homes, those people are, everybody's going to have lower bills because of the efficiency, right? So for us, that's a core of what we are trying to do, which is focus on those building segments so that we can get more of these technologies into people's homes and reduce their bills. And once you get those in, then you have the flexibility, additional capacity, all of those benefits accrue.Doug LewinYeah, and I think, and you alluded to this with the Inflation Reduction Act rebates, so the HOMES and sometimes it's called HEARs, sometimes it's called HEEHRA, it has these different names, but these rebates that are coming that are specifically intended for low and middle income and if folks are listening that are of higher income, you don't have to miss out, you can get the tax credits, right? So there's tax credits, but you have to have a tax burden to get the tax credits. So for those that don't have that tax burden, you have HOMES and HEAR.And then I think the next place, Ram, you mentioned financing. So, people are having to pay their electric bill anyway. So if you picture somebody with a, you know, two, three, I mean, in Texas, sometimes it's not uncommon for people to have 400 and $500 bills. And you're basically saying that the heat pump can actually bring that electric bill down by X number of dollars, call it 100, $150 a month. And then they're paying less than that in monthly, you know, payments, whether that's through the bill or through some other mechanism. So that financing piece is really key because while the vast majority of the population doesn't have enough upfront capital, or even if they did, just aren't going to choose that may not be the place they want to put their capital. But if you could spread it out and then reduce the bill, that makes it much more attractive.Ram NarayanamurthyEven for people who can afford it, $5,000 or $10,000 is not an easy thing to put out of pocket.Doug LewinAnd do some of the pilots have that financing piece as part of their… Are there any examples from the pilots that might be worth highlighting there?Ram NarayanamurthyThere's a couple of pilots that are looking at the financing as an integral part of the pilot, but more of it is actually financing the property owners. So one of the projects in Boston is with the WinnCompanies, which owns around 120 affordable housing properties around the City of Boston. And what they're looking at is can they buy all this energy efficient equipment, put it in and finance it. But because they're a property owner, they don't pay the bill, right? So they want to look and can they use demand flexibility and revenues from the market to be able to finance, to pay the financing on these measures, right? So how do you actually make the numbers work out? And can we use the market, the electricity markets as a way of making all these split incentives and the numbers work out. So again, it's all exploratory, right? We have to explore this to figure out if there are models that we can make to work.Doug LewinAmazing. Yeah, no, that's great stuff. I mean a lot of this is going to emerge, you know, whatever somebody had in their plan, they'll get into it and do some learning and find that, actually this thing is going to work better. So yeah, that's kind of the way innovation happens. Right? Ram NarayanamurthyYes. And I tell people, a no answer is actually a very valuable answer when you're doing R&D because that means that you're avoided a whole lot of investments in a direction and you can go invest in a different direction.Doug LewinExactly right. So one more thing I want to ask you, then I'll see if there's anything else you want to add before we end. But I think this is really key. I mean, I'm trying through this podcast to expand the number of folks… the number of folks who are interested in the grid was expanded by Winter Storm Uri and then by Hurricane Beryl. And I think unfortunately, there's going to be more events like this as we get more and more climate extremes. But trying to talk about these things on a level that folks that are in the industry understand, but also folks that just had a tough time during Uri or just even worse than a tough time, just sometimes just tragic or horrific, whatever word you want to put on there. And now they want to know more about the grid. They're not grid experts. So can we talk just a little bit about the communication side of this? Like how does this vision of demand flexibility and grid edge, how do we make this kind of understandable and even desirable to a much broader range of people.Ram NarayanamurthyI'll answer in two parts. So first is: how do we communicate this, right? So when we look at what people want, this goes back to where I started my discussion. People want healthy, comfortable, affordable and resilient homes. So if we can communicate this in terms of, hey, we are going to make your homes healthier. I'll give you an example. When we did work with Southern California Edison, and we retrofitted affordable housing, and you took out single-pane windows, leaky single-pane windows and put in double-pane windows. The biggest thing that people noticed was not all the heat pumps that got put in, but the fact that now they didn't have a dirt ring around their window because they were close to a freeway with high diesel pollution. And now they felt their indoor environment was more healthier. So you have to be able to communicate those. We have to be able to communicate the fact that by doing some of these upgrades, you're actually gonna be more resilient. I go back to some of the tragedy that we heard about during Uri, right? People didn't have great insulation in their homes, which means their homes are now more prone to get colder and create health impacts. So if you're able to insulate the home, right, now you are able to protect that home and protect the people in those homes from getting as cold as they did. And creating, and now you have a real health benefit. You have a real benefit of providing better resilience and maybe avoiding some of the tragedy. So that's, I think, we don't want a disaster to be able to communicate the benefits, but we want to be able to communicate the benefits of better indoor air quality, more comfortable homes, lower asthma rates if you are able to keep the homes better protected. So those are the things I think we can actually communicate and say, hey, this is going to make your home better. And of course, if you're able to get demand flexibility, they're able to get $25 or $50 every month from the utility, that goes into their pocket too. So that's where we have to really work on our communications of these energy benefits. We call it non-energy benefits, but they're actually benefits of energy that are not related to just money. There's so many more benefits and we need to do a better job of communicating them.Doug LewinThat's right. That's right. And it is tricky because people's motivations are different. Some folks are, you know, they've got somebody in the home with asthma and that's really the thing that motivates them. Others, it's that bill and they really don't, they don't want the bill as high. I think control is another piece of this. Cause you've got a lot of like the gadget geeks out there that just wanna, they want to have the app and they want to be able to see there's, there's just, you know, just like you know, humanity is diverse and there's a lot of different entry points to this kind of thing. We have to be able to communicate with them and then connect with people where it's valuable to them.Ram NarayanamurthyThat's where the community organizations come in because the community organizations work in their local communities and they understand what the needs of the community are. So if we can work with the community organizations, understand what the problem is and be able to frame the benefits of what we're doing as solutions to the problems in those specific communities, I think we can do a great job of communication.Doug LewinI think that's exactly right. Ram, is there anything I didn't ask you that I should have? Anything else you'd like to add in closing?Ram NarayanamurthyYeah, one thing I wanted to add is also the resilience aspect. So when we talk about Connected Communities, yes, it benefits the grid, but we are also very focused on customer resilience. And customer resilience for us is not just making sure there's a microgrid and you are able to provide power. It's about every little piece that you do in a home. Whether it's having one of the innovations that we have fostered is a 120 volt induction cooktop that can run for three days and power a fridge for three days. All those little pieces add up together. A better insulated home with the ability to cook and store food for three days means that you actually have a huge amount of customer resilience. So I want to add that we are very focused not just on the bigger policy picture, not just on the bigger goals for the grid, but we want to make sure that we also improve customer resilience as we go through this energy transition.Doug LewinDoes that 120 volt induction cooktop that powers the fridge, does that exist now or is that in R&D?Ram NarayanamurthyNo, it actually exists. It's on pilot runs. So we funded it through one of our funding opportunities in 2020. It came on the market in 2022. It's a company called Channing Cooper that developed this. So, it's essentially an induction cooked up with a battery inside it. So you can even provide good services if you want.Doug LewinYou might've just sold an induction cooktop for Channing Cooper. Cause we're kind of in the market for once. I'm going to go look that up. If I can't find it, I'll ask you afterwards. That's amazing. I have not heard of that yet. There's more out there than any of us could know.Hey, this has been great. And yes, the resilience piece. Look, I mean, you're talking to somebody in Texas, right? We're recording just a couple months after Hurricane Beryl happened. You know, we also had the largest wildfire the state has ever seen earlier this year. And I think we're rapidly heading towards, you know, times when people will lose power in advance of a wildfire. When there's wildfire conditions to hopefully prevent that wildfire, but that means people without power, so that passive survivability by increasing insulation, but then also having the power sources there on site, that is obviously extremely important to Texas. So glad to know about your work. Thanks for taking some time to tell us about it, Ram.Ram NarayanamurthyYeah, and Doug, and one thing I'll finish off with is to say finding these solutions is going to require every entity across the board to work together, whether it's public utility commissions, the grid operators, the utilities, the customers, we have to create these collaborative efforts where all of them are able to work together understand what each other is doing and that will help us build a better energy future for ourselves.Doug Lewin100%. Thanks so much, Ram. Appreciate it. Ram NarayanamurthyThanks, Doug. Thank you for your time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.douglewin.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.douglewin.comTexas is number one in the United States for many energy-related achievements: wind and solar generation, oil and gas production. But Texas is also the number one state for weather related outages, with nearly 50% more outages over the last 25 years than California. Just within the last four years Texans experienced Winter Storm Uri (2021), an ice storm in Central Texas (2023), and a derecho and Hurricane Beryl (2024). But the frequency and duration of power outages can be managed and reduced through many strategies. One of the quickest and most effective ways to lessen the impact of outages is to have widespread onsite backup power, also called microgrids: interconnected resources like solar panels, gas generators, and batteries that connect directly to homes, facilities, and other sites, allowing them to operate independently from the main grid.My guest this week is Jana Gerber, President of Microgrid North America at Schneider Electric. Schneider Electric is a massive company with over 150,000 employees. Odds are, you’ve got one of their products in your home, but you probably don’t even know it. They make all sorts of electrical equipment and they are a leader in microgrids. Jana has been with Schneider for 20 years and understands the business of backup power as well as anyone out there. During the interview, Jana explained how Schneider’s microgrids work, how the role of the consumer on the grid is evolving away from merely being passive recipient. We talked about the financing methods to get these backup power projects off the ground, challenges in bringing microgrids to scale, the value of resilience, and much more.  I hope you enjoy this interview. As always, please like, share, and leave a five star review wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for being a listener. Timestamps0:18 - About Schneider Electric and Jana’s background2:14 - What is a microgrid? 6:16 - Where Schneider has deployed and the mix of technologies used for their microgrids11:11 - State of the microgrid market in Texas13:35 - What is a prosumer15:00 - The role of EVs in microgrids17:02 - Schneider Home20:23 - How significant are distributed resource solutions to Schneider’s business now and moving forward22:04 - Financing options26:16 - The challenge of accounting for and valuing resilience30:06 - Small commercial enterprises and microgrids; reducing costs through standardization33:39 - Additional options for tax credits and financing 36:13 - Financing options and tax credits for the residential sector38:03 - Standardization, islanding, and interconnection42:46 - The role of microgrids in managing load growth45:33 - Fuel cells46:42 - Upcoming microgrid conference in TexasShow NotesSchneider ElectricAbout Schneider HomeMicrogrid Knowledge Conference, Dallas, April 15-17, 2025Special Episode with the Chairman of the Texas PUC, Thomas Gleeson (includes discussion of funding for microgrids at critical facilities)LoanSTAR Revolving Loan ProgramHome energy tax credits (including the Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit and Residential Clean Energy Credit)Microgrid interconnection and cost recovery docket