Latest / Energy Empire / Jennifer Granholm's Data Center Playbook for Governors

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Jennifer Granholm's Data Center Playbook for Governors · Energy Empire

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  And the thing I would campaign is the data centers coming to
• 0:02
  town. That data center is going to
• 0:05
  have to buy batteries for everybody in the area.
• 0:09
  And those batteries you're going to get compensate if you get a
• 0:11
  battery and you're not paying for that battery.
• 0:13
  The hyperscale is paying for the battery.
• 0:15
  But if you get a battery, you're going to be compensated by the
• 0:18
  utility for using that battery if you choose to opt in.
• 0:25
  Energy isn't just an industry, it's how the world works.
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  I'm Jigger Shaw, a clean energy entrepreneur.
• 0:32
  And I'm Jamie Nolan, a clean energy communications executive.
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  Welcome to Energy Empire Jigger. I am excited.
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  I'm so excited. You've been waiting a long time
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  for this one. I I don't think you've actually
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  hidden your excitement. Yes, I am fangirling for this
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  episode. When you first asked me to be a
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  Co host of Energy Empire I, one of the reasons I said yes was so
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  that we could record with today's guest, former Secretary
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  of Energy Jennifer Granholm, who is a personal hero of mine.
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  Like, I mean, I obviously think the world of her.
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  She was, you know, by far the best boss.
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  I don't know if you know the back story, but like when they
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  offered me the job to run the loan programs office, I was told
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  my by by my board at generate capital like we need to figure
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  out a way to get out of this because you don't want to take
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  this job. And so we wrote this like long
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  Word document that basically had all of these unreasonable
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  requests. And then I got Secretary Grant
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  Home and Ali Zadie and Brian Deese on the phone, and they all
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  said, OK, we'll give you everything you wanted if you
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  take the job. And I was like, damn it, now I
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  got to actually take it, you know?
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  And then but it was such a joy to work for her.
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  And I honestly can't imagine another secretary letting us get
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  away with all of the things that we were doing because we were
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  breaking the rules the whole time trying to figure out how to
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  get this damn thing restarted and done.
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  And like, her personality was probably the only one that would
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  let us do that. We absolutely were breaking the
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  rules in the best ways. I mean, I think she knew there
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  was a method to our to our madness.
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  And your leadership obviously was also so strong and she put
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  so much trust in you and in the team.
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  And one of the reasons that you were able to build the type of
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  culture that you were at LPO was because of her leadership.
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  And I also have to say I have served at the Department of
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  Energy. You know, I did like about 9
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  total years across 3 presidential administrations
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  under 4 different secretaries of energy.
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  And the culture at DOE was the strongest under her leadership,
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  and the churn was much less. So like a big thing that you'll
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  see in federal agencies, particularly with political
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  appointees, is that usually, I mean, it's a grueling job.
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  They are incredibly hard working.
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  I was a contractor employee, but a lot of the political
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  appointees work like 82, 100 hour weeks.
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  And so they burn out and they tend to leave after, I would say
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  like 18 months to two years. And the majority of her team
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  stayed for all four years, which I cannot even tell you how rare
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  that is. And it's a testament to her
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  leadership. And people were just like very
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  empowered by her vision and she was just great to work for.
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  Well, part of the reason I wanted her to be on this show is
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  that we live in unprecedented times.
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  She, you know, stewarded us through the Ukraine crisis and
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  worked with all those energy ministers to figure out, you
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  know, how to get Europe through that crisis.
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  I I'm curious what her thoughts are really on this current
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  strict of Hormuz crisis. But also she used to be a
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  governor, right? A2 German governor out of
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  Michigan. And as you know, we've talked
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  about the fact that governors are really under fire because
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  their voters are saying, what are you doing to protect us from
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  data center load growth and electricity inflation and
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  utility rate increases? And so like, you know, I think
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  that in this moment, you know, her perspective is one that I'm
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  really curious about. But and then the last thing
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  really is around, I do think the Biden administration and her
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  leadership is really known for kicking off this entire project,
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  which we call industrial strategy, right, which allows
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  for the US to be more muscular and figuring out how to like
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  restart battery manufacturing in this country and solar
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  manufacturing. And I was so giddy to hear about
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  the fact that, you know, how much you sells that we provided
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  a loan to in Georgia is fully up and running now manufacturing
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  their solar cells and modules. And you know, Rivian just
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  announced that there are two is like fully launched, which we
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  helped put the loan together for Rivian.
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  And so like, I'm just like so happy to see things that we
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  started getting finished. And I think that I'd love for
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  her to take a victory lap on some of that.
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  It's such a great point and just can't wait to hear from
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  Secretary Jennifer Granholm, who will always be the secretary in
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  my heart, that's for sure. Well, I know you also can't help
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  yourself around, you know, flogging our merch and so I'm
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  sure like our merch store and some of that stuff will come up
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  at Energy Empire dot FM. I'm very excited, personally,
• 5:14
  Very, very excited about the merch store.
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  Can't wait. Without further ado, Energy
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  afternoons a year. Thanks Natasha Crowe, vice
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  Energy. The link is in the show notes.
• 6:45
  So now when do I stop using the formal phrase secretary?
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  Like is it like is it something I can call you forever?
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  Call me Jennifer. I feel like that's just wrong on
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  many, many levels. Like you have earned the
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  honorific title. It's so true.
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  And I have to tell you, secretary, which I will be
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  calling you. I'm so sorry, Jigger and I, when
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  you come up in conversation and we say the secretary, we're
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  talking about you. Like I know it's been 18 months,
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  but it's it is a forever honorific, especially I served
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  10 years at DOE. Like it's a huge feel for me to
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  have you here. This is the episode I have been
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  the most excited for since we launched the podcast.
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  Wow. Really.
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  Oh. That's so nice.
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  Well, good, I hope I don't screw it up.
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  It has been so crazy. It seems like I think we're on
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  #39 for the president announcing a deal with Iran, although this
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  one seems more real than the rest.
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  Are we really 39? Is this this 39th time he's
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  claimed we have a deal? CNN had did this montage of like
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  every time he claimed that there was a deal.
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  And I think this is number 40. And I'm just curious, you know,
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  putting the details to the side. I mean, you actually lived
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  through the Ukraine conflict, right?
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  And you had to talk to all of your fellow energy ministers,
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  right from around the world. I'm just trying to understand
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  how that probably is happening since February like 28th.
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  Like how does that actually happen?
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  It all happens at the IEA, the international, you know, energy
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  administration. That's where we all gather and
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  we all compare notes and we all freak out.
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  And that's I, I can guarantee you that I hope you get Fatty
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  Barrel on your podcast at some point because he's, he's such a
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  Peach of a, of a human and is, you know, trying to navigate all
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  of this as well, including the relationship with the United
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  States, given that the IEA has been historically really under
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  his leadership championing the transition to clean energy.
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  And, you know, So what has happened?
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  You know, this, obviously it is Ukraine 2 point O.
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  And the energy ministers, I have no doubt, are in a slightly
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  different phase than they were with the Ukraine war because
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  they learned their lesson. So the lesson that was learned
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  is obviously you can't rely on a single source for your energy
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  supply. And then that case, it was
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  Russia. So they turned to us.
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  And now they realize they can't rely upon the Middle East or
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  can't rely upon obviously transit through the straight or
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  any single point choke point like that, nor can they rely
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  just on one supplier. So they're not just going to
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  rely on us. And so their whole effort, you
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  know, in the in in Ukraine, the freak out was about getting
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  supply, but also making sure that costs, don't you know, that
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  citizens don't bear the cost? And so they ended up spending
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  the EU and the UK ended up spending $870 billion to
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  subsidize rates to keep, you know, to keep so that citizens
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  didn't feel it. That is just a huge amount of
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  money in a short period of time. And, you know, it obviously did
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  not have the impact on demand side strategies, you know,
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  because if you're subsidizing it, the people are going to
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  continue to use it. So in this round, go around
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  their focus less on subsidies because it was so expensive.
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  And now they're focused on investing money for domestic
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  supply. So you see this whole movement
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  toward what is known as ever energy sovereignty.
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  And that's what's happening with all of them.
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  And they're really, you know, you know, despite the deals for
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  LNG that the Trump administration announced and all
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  of that, they are really looking to be domestic.
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  They really want to have homegrown energy or at least a
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  variety of suppliers. And so it's a, it's a really
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  challenging time for for everybody concerned.
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  And who knows how long the latest deal will last, you know,
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  and whether it will actually do what we hope it will do, which
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  would be bring down gas prices for people.
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  But the lesson should be etched in stone by now that you do not
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  have a single supplier. You do not.
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  You must diversify and you must grow your own.
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  How would you contrast that with how the Trump administration is
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  reacting to this moment here in the United States?
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  So, of course, we've released 172 million barrels of oil from
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  the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is something that you were
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  responsible for when you were the secretary.
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  And meanwhile, we have the administration waging, like,
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  this ideological war against wind and solar power.
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  I think I saw that Stephen Miller had like a tweet go viral
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  yesterday about offshore wind, calling it like visual insults
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  on God's creation or something very dramatic and over the top.
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  I'm sure like sitting on the sidelines.
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  It must be tough for you. But what you know, what is your
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  thought about how they're approaching this domestically
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  versus the way that you see other countries handling it?
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  Well, first of all, it's it's just unwise to cut off major
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  source of supply of energy at a point where you are, you have an
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  energy dominance council and you want to be energy dominant and
• 12:32
  you want to push for AI and all of these, you know, AI companies
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  have commitments to their shareholders to power their by
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  clean energy. So you're not allowing them to
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  do that and you so you've cut off the ability to permit for
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  wind or solar on public lands, therefore taking away a source
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  of the cheapest form of energy. How ultra productive is that
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  then the insanity of of buying off, not just not allowing, but
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  buying off offshore wind permits.
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  I mean, it's just so illogical and so bizarre if you really
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  want to be energy dominant. And so the perverse outcome of
• 13:15
  this though, and I know I think you guys have probably covered
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  this a little bit, but it still makes me chuckle a little bit
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  that the perverse outcome is that we're seeing a huge
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  expansion of solar. The private sector is jumping in
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  with both feats. Now, maybe they're not waving
• 13:32
  their hands about it, but their head is down and you better
• 13:34
  believe they are deploying, deploying, deploying.
• 13:37
  So this year is so our last year was a record year, right, for
• 13:41
  deploying clean energy with almost 60 gigawatts.
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  This year it's going to be 86 gigawatts added to the grid in
• 13:48
  the United States despite all of that.
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  So yeah, I mean, it is, it's a weird, it's a weird outcome,
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  isn't it? I mean, the, the perverse notion
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  that you cut off all of the tax credits for electric vehicles
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  and because of your action in the Strait of Hormuz, you've had
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  a 30% increase in the purchase of EV hybrids or used EVs.
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  I mean, it's just, it's unusual. We'll just say that it's an
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  unusual outcome. And it was.
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  So much of that, of course is because of the Cliff that they
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  added, which of course goes into effect next week.
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  So you have to, your project has to be under construction by by
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  July. And so all of these developers
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  got very busy very quickly to commit and move dirt so that
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  they can still safe harbor these tax credits.
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  So despite the rhetoric, the action underneath the rhetoric
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  by the private sector has been amazing.
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  And knock on wood, that will continue.
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  And also one other thing is that despite the cancellation of our,
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  you know, LPO loans and grants from DOE, you see the courts
• 14:55
  have really stepped in and decided to and has have said you
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  just can't cancel the stuff that went to blue states.
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  It's just not you can't do that on the ground.
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  You can't hold back the private sector.
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  It is happening. Yeah, I'm not a man, sister.
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  Oh my God, totally. I but on that front, I mean, I
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  want to ask you about the narrative, right?
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  Because last year Ember said that basically 100% of
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  everything that was net, net added to the grid global was
• 15:28
  solar, wind and a little bit of nuclear from, you know, our
• 15:32
  friends at Vogel as well as China.
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  And that is expected to continue over the next three or four
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  years. And now with the strain of
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  Hormuz, as you suggested, all of the energy ministers are trying
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  to figure out energy sovereignty, which also leads
• 15:47
  you to a little bit of coal, but mostly solar, wind, battery
• 15:52
  storage and more nuclear. And so how is it that on this
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  side, the narrative seems like, you know, there's a war against
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  solar, wind and battery storage. And on this side, practically
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  everything that we're adding to the grid, even in the United
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  States, is solar, wind and battery storage.
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  I just, I don't understand how that narrative mismatch
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  continues forever. You're, you're assuming that
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  there has to be some logic behind it.
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  They want to support fossil fuels.
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  They know the private sector. I mean, there, there's fossil
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  fuels, there'll be fossil fuels. But the notion that you should
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  force uneconomical coal plants to stay open at the same time as
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  you were calling upon a reduction in prices for energy,
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  come on. It's just, I don't know, I don't
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  think anybody has dubbed this administration to be the most
• 16:47
  consistent ever. So this is another another log
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  on that fire. I think there's still so much
• 16:54
  misinformation. Like I I want to see some
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  polling on what Americans would guess is the cheapest energy
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  source because I'm willing to bet it's certainly not solar,
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  even though utility scale solar is the cheapest electricity
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  source. Like on the face of the planet.
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  I just don't think people get it.
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  And it it's, you know, it's tough.
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  Like you're an incredible communicator.
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  It's definitely one of, I mean, one of your biggest strengths.
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  And as somebody who's worked in, in communications, it's, it's
• 17:22
  endlessly frustrating just the amount of misinformation about,
• 17:26
  you know, what has absolutely become a main, a mainstream
• 17:29
  energy source. And there just continues to be
• 17:31
  this disconnect between the misinformation, also known as
• 17:35
  lies, coming out of the White House and like, the reality on
• 17:39
  the ground and what we're seeing and what actually is keeping
• 17:42
  price. It's keeping utility rates at
• 17:44
  Bay, if anything putting more solar on the grid right now.
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  This is one of the big regrets that I have from our
• 17:50
  administration. I was out there every day on,
• 17:54
  you know, CNN or MSNBC, you know, talking about what we were
• 17:58
  doing. But honestly, only 3 million
• 18:00
  people watch cable and there is a huge swath of social media
• 18:06
  that we were on little bits, you know, we did some TikTok.
• 18:09
  But we need our team, team clean.
• 18:14
  We need a huge on effort at coms that encompasses all forms of
• 18:21
  media with all forms of spokespeople, including everyday
• 18:25
  citizens who are saving money. I mean, I want to see their
• 18:28
  energy bills because they have solar on their roofs and how
• 18:32
  much deduction they got off their bills.
• 18:34
  I'm going to see those. We we did those.
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  I mean, you know, our team remembers we would go to
• 18:39
  weatherization homes and we would look at their energy bills
• 18:43
  and we would compare it to before and after and we would
• 18:46
  have the local media they're talking about it, etcetera.
• 18:49
  That was great. But we need 1000 more of that,
• 18:53
  you know, 1000 times more of that.
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  If you can do 1000 times, which you can't, 100 times more of
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  that you need. We need just to have a huge
• 19:02
  effort at communicating this that we did not have and that
• 19:05
  the industry, you know, has not been good about.
• 19:08
  I mean, the industry itself, I mean, Jigger, you've been great
• 19:10
  about tapping the industry to be more vocal about and supportive
• 19:16
  of candidates who who are supportive of clean energy and
• 19:20
  these solutions. But we also need to really get
• 19:23
  these associations and the industry itself to invest more
• 19:26
  in telling their story in a compelling way because people
• 19:30
  don't believe politicians when they get out there and talk
• 19:32
  about it anyway. And we need to create permission
• 19:35
  for the politicians to be able to be supportive of clean
• 19:39
  energy. And the way that happens is if
• 19:41
  bottom up, people are saying, yes, I want the cleanest form of
• 19:45
  energy. And by the way, that's solar so
• 19:47
  we can all yell it. And on this types of channel,
• 19:50
  we're talking to people who know what we're talking about and
• 19:52
  who. But everyday folks probably
• 19:54
  aren't watching the energy Empire, at least yet.
• 19:57
  Maybe they will be very soon, but.
• 19:59
  We're working on it. We're we're trying to grow it in
• 20:01
  that direction. You know, we're trying to bring
• 20:03
  us to a broader audience of people.
• 20:05
  I definitely think on YouTube breaking through to to maybe
• 20:09
  weren't weren't don't know very much about energy.
• 20:12
  And so we're trying to make it more digestible and we're
• 20:15
  working on our use of acronyms because we've gotten.
• 20:18
  So flexible. Exactly.
• 20:20
  Exactly. You have to make it palatable.
• 20:22
  You know, we, we did, I work do a little bit of work with an
• 20:25
  organization that does an assessment of the social media
• 20:28
  landscape and their assessment Media Matters after the in
• 20:34
  January of 2025, the social media landscape, YouTube, tic
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  tac toe, etcetera was 80%. And I don't not getting partisan
• 20:45
  here, this is just a fact. 80% lean right and 20% lean left and
• 20:51
  the candidates on the left, the Democrats did not go on the red
• 20:55
  spaces except for Pete Buddha. Judge maybe would would go on
• 20:59
  Fox and Stephanie was great, but not many others would.
• 21:02
  So we have to tell our leaders to go in uncomfortable places
• 21:06
  and tell the truths that are maybe what you where you'll get
• 21:10
  pushed back, but be confident in your facts so that you could
• 21:14
  you. You're not just preaching to the
• 21:15
  choir. You've got to grow.
• 21:17
  And so that's a project. We need to add more, more
• 21:20
  cultural and bubbles that are open to having this kind of
• 21:26
  conversation. But part of this honestly is
• 21:29
  just paying people. What do you mean paying people?
• 21:31
  Like if you look at residential solar, the amount of customer
• 21:35
  acquisition cost they pay for every year is about a billion
• 21:38
  dollars a year, right? Of door to door salespeople who
• 21:42
  annoy you during dinner to buy solar power, right?
• 21:45
  And if they spent 110th of that money just paying right wing
• 21:50
  influencers like Katie Miller or others to just say nice things
• 21:55
  about the solar industry, which they all believe because they
• 21:58
  all hate the utility as much as anybody else does.
• 22:01
  They all want a $0.00 bill, right?
• 22:03
  They all want independence. They don't care about the fact
• 22:06
  that it's green. They just want to give somebody
• 22:08
  the middle finger. And so whatever it is, you know,
• 22:12
  it's just like, but you pay them $1000 a post and then they post
• 22:15
  on it. Well, I don't know if pay to
• 22:17
  post works as well as getting people who truly understand the
• 22:21
  facts and it's and I would just say just the facts alone.
• 22:24
  You don't need to shade it. You know, it's just the truth,
• 22:28
  tell the truth. And I do think that like the
• 22:30
  balcony solar and the movement to be able to do that will give
• 22:34
  us a better opportunity because people will be able to take
• 22:37
  their energy destiny into their own hands, at least feel a
• 22:41
  little bit more empowered than just being, you know, stuck with
• 22:45
  a big bill. Balcony solar.
• 22:47
  So exciting, Jigger, Can you tell folks a little bit about
• 22:51
  what that is that they've never heard of it before?
• 22:53
  Oh gosh. Balcony solar.
• 22:54
  So the way that normal solar works is you put it, you know,
• 22:58
  on the roof or on the ground, and then you have to hire an
• 23:00
  electrician to wire it into your electrical panel, right?
• 23:04
  The panel that has the Breakers that you go and when something
• 23:07
  goes off, you're like checking every breaker.
• 23:09
  With balcony solar, you can actually, you know, just hang
• 23:12
  the panel off of a balcony and then plug it into the outdoor
• 23:15
  outlet. And you know, our friends at UL
• 23:18
  and others are making sure that all of that safe, but you can
• 23:21
  just plug it right into the outlet.
• 23:23
  So anybody can do it. You can just order it on Amazon,
• 23:27
  have it shipped to your house. You can hang it yourself.
• 23:30
  You plug it in. So there's no like sales cost,
• 23:32
  there's no installation cost. There's none of those costs.
• 23:35
  You just plug it right in and there's, you know, over 4
• 23:39
  million systems that have already been installed in
• 23:41
  Germany. There's lots of other countries
• 23:42
  that are doing it. And we have a whole movement.
• 23:45
  I think we've got Utah and Virginia that have already
• 23:47
  passed laws to to say it's legal.
• 23:49
  And we've got five more states that are passing it as we speak,
• 23:52
  and then 10 more that have introduced legislation.
• 23:55
  It's going viral. I love it.
• 23:57
  Yes, it's very, very exciting. My next door neighbor had, I
• 24:01
  have a solar array on my roof, the hardwired kind, but my
• 24:04
  neighbors had a balcony solar system out on his back porch for
• 24:07
  a while now. So yeah, it's a I'm seeing it in
• 24:10
  real life. It's really, really cool.
• 24:12
  I want to circle around to around to electricity rates and
• 24:15
  energy affordability, you know, specific typically utility
• 24:19
  bills, because that we know that the current administration made
• 24:23
  a lot of promises about lowering people's utility bills.
• 24:26
  Meanwhile, the Edison Electric Institute, which is the trade
• 24:29
  association for the big electricity companies, the
• 24:32
  utilities in the United States, is bragging that budgets are up
• 24:36
  40% from just in the past year from their own estimates.
• 24:40
  Because utilities are basically just building so much new stuff
• 24:44
  and that's how they earn their profits.
• 24:46
  So rates are climbing everywhere.
• 24:47
  In some places across the country, more than 15% in one
• 24:51
  year, which is unprecedented. You governed Michigan through a
• 24:56
  really difficult economic time. You know what an affordability
• 25:00
  crisis does to a family? You, you are like literally had
• 25:03
  a job where you where you met people in their homes and talk
• 25:06
  to them about these things day in and day out.
• 25:09
  So when a utility bill jumps like that, who do you who do you
• 25:11
  find that voters blame versus who they should blame?
• 25:14
  It's clear the 1st entity they blame is the utility company
• 25:17
  because it shows up on their bill.
• 25:19
  And then with all this anti data center stuff, the second entity
• 25:23
  they blame is the potentially if they're in an area that has a
• 25:28
  lot of data centers, like in Virginia, they blame the data
• 25:31
  centers. And then the third or maybe the
• 25:33
  second person they blame is the executive politician, not the
• 25:37
  legislature. But they'll blame the governor,
• 25:40
  they'll blame the president. And in this case, and they
• 25:43
  should blame the president because of the actions that the
• 25:46
  Trump administration has taken to keep us away from the
• 25:49
  cheapest form of energy. But clearly they ought to be
• 25:55
  blaming the fact that we've got, and you guys have been talking
• 25:59
  about this, but the fact that we've got a utility business
• 26:03
  model that rewards rate basing expensive poles and wires when
• 26:09
  there's existing capacity on the grid.
• 26:11
  And they and, and the business model and they're, you know, the
• 26:14
  utilities are doing what, you know what the model says that
• 26:18
  they should do, right. But if the model were better and
• 26:22
  if the utilities were rewarded for lowering costs, actually
• 26:28
  rewarded for bringing down costs, rewarded for obviously
• 26:32
  using grid enhancing technologies, Advanced
• 26:35
  conductors were rewarding for demand response, rewarded for
• 26:38
  virtual power plants, were rewarded for using that
• 26:41
  additional capacity that that headroom on the grid that we
• 26:44
  know exists because at any given time only 50% of the grid is in
• 26:48
  use. I mean, why we we have got this
• 26:52
  is what governors got to do. They've got to appoint PUC
• 26:56
  members who understand this so that I mean, you can do it
• 27:00
  through the regulatory side, you could do it through legislation.
• 27:03
  But this is the problem that exists is that governors in many
• 27:07
  places, because it's complicated, don't understand
• 27:10
  their power in appointing members of the regulatory body.
• 27:14
  That could ensure that the utility business model was not
• 27:19
  simply rewarding rate basing huge expenses, but instead was
• 27:24
  rewarding investment and even OpEx.
• 27:27
  That reduces CapEx. But let's go deeper into that.
• 27:30
  I mean, you were a governor running for office and now, you
• 27:33
  know, Mikey Cheryl in New Jersey just ran for office and won.
• 27:37
  She ran on the fact that she was going to freeze rates.
• 27:39
  And certainly a lot of governors have taken notice of her
• 27:43
  successor thinking about, you know, using that same tagline,
• 27:47
  right? And then you served on her
• 27:49
  transition team to put together a sort of a plan.
• 27:51
  And now she's going into the state legislature to pass bills
• 27:55
  and, you know, the Board of Public Utilities, which is their
• 27:58
  regulator, right? And, and nominating somebody, I
• 28:01
  think, who is a fine candidate there.
• 28:04
  And so, but this is hard, right? I mean, the utilities are
• 28:07
  usually the largest donor to local.
• 28:09
  Oh, totally. But we've got to make it in
• 28:11
  their interests, right? I mean, it's you can share in
• 28:14
  the savings with them. Just make it right now.
• 28:17
  It's not in their interest. But if you make it in their
• 28:19
  interest, then sure, they would be on board.
• 28:23
  Why not? New Jersey is a great example.
• 28:25
  So Mikey, Cheryl comes out to campaigns on a rate freeze.
• 28:29
  First executive order she does is essentially a rate freeze.
• 28:33
  And underneath that she's calling upon the Board of Public
• 28:37
  Utilities to, I want to say open up an affordability docket, if
• 28:41
  you will make make sure that they they review the business
• 28:45
  model so that they are supporting things like demand
• 28:49
  response, like distributed energy resources, like virtual
• 28:53
  power plants, etcetera. And then she appoints this new
• 28:57
  member who will be the president of the Board of Public
• 29:00
  Utilities. His name is Ben Hertz Shargel.
• 29:03
  He is an expert in this very thing.
• 29:06
  He knows all of this stuff. He is.
• 29:08
  It's going to drive this agenda from the regulatory side.
• 29:12
  So she did all of that, which is great, in the first six months.
• 29:17
  And she lifted New Jersey's moratorium on nuclear, which was
• 29:21
  decades and decades old. And she signed legislation to
• 29:26
  make sure that there's more battery, you know, utility scale
• 29:30
  and home battery use. And she issued an executive
• 29:34
  order about increasing solar generation.
• 29:38
  So she's done all of these things.
• 29:40
  And my hope is that the BPU process will result in maybe one
• 29:46
  of the first actual states that fully sign on not just to a
• 29:51
  pilot virtual power plant, but to really commit to that is that
• 29:57
  is a part of their regulatory process and that frankly the
• 30:00
  utilities apart our partners in making that happen.
• 30:03
  That's impressive. When she announced that rate
• 30:05
  freeze like as a policy position, Jigger, you were, you
• 30:09
  were doubtful about that. I I don't remember if we talked
• 30:12
  about it. It it sets you up right because
• 30:16
  as everyone knows, I mean the utility has the right to get a
• 30:19
  return on the investment that they make right?
• 30:21
  And so when you do a rate freeze, it just delays the
• 30:24
  inevitable. So if you don't actually, then
• 30:28
  solve the underlying business model challenge. 100%.
• 30:31
  You end up having a 30% rate increase right when you're
• 30:33
  running for reelection in 40 years.
• 30:35
  Sounds like a lot of follow through by Mikey Cheryl though,
• 30:38
  and I'm really. That's the thing.
• 30:40
  Yeah, that's exactly Reggie. Man, I'm so happy that it wasn't
• 30:43
  just a, you know, day one executive order, take it or
• 30:47
  leave it and then run away. She's she's reshape now, you
• 30:50
  know, the board of Public Utilities had two appointees
• 30:52
  that were from previous governor, but when she was taken
• 30:55
  office, so she didn't have a chance to fully remake it.
• 30:57
  But she's appointing this new guy is the is the president of
• 31:00
  the BPU. So, and assuming that he's
• 31:02
  confirmed, I think, you know, and the directives that she's
• 31:07
  given to what the BPU must look at, including this utility
• 31:12
  business model thing and distributed resources and, you
• 31:17
  know, demand response. I, I, it's, it's, it's heading
• 31:20
  in this direction. They're like one, one meeting
• 31:24
  away from being able to actually take this on full bore.
• 31:28
  So it's kind of exciting. That is exciting.
• 31:32
  I feel like I need to tune in and and follow this work more
• 31:35
  closely because I didn't. Know what I say?
• 31:37
  You know who her energy advisor is?
• 31:39
  Elizabeth Null, who worked at the Department of Energy.
• 31:42
  So there. She's amazing.
• 31:47
  We have a, we have a running joke secretary that former DIA
• 31:51
  weirs are taking over the world because without naming names, a
• 31:55
  lot of our friends have been placed into very influential
• 31:59
  positions where they are able to get incredible work done in
• 32:03
  terms of transforming the energy system in this country.
• 32:07
  I feel like there's another announcement dropping on
• 32:09
  LinkedIn every week. And so we're really excited
• 32:12
  about it and it was really hard. I mean, leaving, leaving the
• 32:17
  Forestall building, which is the DOE headquarters building is
• 32:20
  always very sad. Jagger and I walked out together
• 32:23
  on the last day. It's it's sad at the end of an
• 32:25
  administration, but it's so exciting to see where everyone
• 32:29
  has landed and all the incredible work.
• 32:31
  I'm sure you must be so proud to see that from all of the your
• 32:35
  colleagues at DOA. Yeah, 100%.
• 32:37
  And they, they've created this great DOE alumni network.
• 32:41
  And, you know, it's just, it's really, it's really exciting to
• 32:44
  see what people are doing and how energized they are about
• 32:48
  what might happen if there is another opportunity to be able
• 32:52
  to either enter back or at least advise those who will be coming
• 32:56
  into power. So it's, you know, there.
• 32:59
  I'm so, so I love our DOE team so much and I'm so happy that
• 33:06
  people are landing in great spots to be able to carry on the
• 33:09
  mission of deploy, deploy, deploy, right Jigger.
• 33:12
  Absolutely. We have a new merch shop open,
• 33:15
  by the way, and we have a deploy, deploy mug if anyone, if
• 33:18
  anyone is looking for one. Yes, yes.
• 33:20
  Yes. Wait, wait, what's the website?
• 33:24
  I. Think it's the show notes to the
• 33:28
  work store. But yes we're going to be adding
• 33:30
  things. But we do have a deploy deploy
• 33:32
  deploy mug we may need. We may need to do some merch
• 33:36
  with your DOE headshot secretary with deploy deploy, deploy.
• 33:39
  Oh, you don't want my headshot, but but definitely let us I'm
• 33:43
  I'm looking for a T-shirt. Come on.
• 33:45
  All right, we'll get a T-shirt in the mail.
• 33:49
  It's in the mail. It's in the mail.
• 33:51
  All right. What's coming your way?
• 33:53
  There are 36 governorships on the ballot this year, and data
• 33:56
  centers have become a really that rare thing that
• 33:59
  occasionally hits in American politics when something that
• 34:03
  people on both ends of the political spectrum, like Steve
• 34:06
  Bannon and Bernie Sanders, can agree on.
• 34:09
  Candidates in Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin are campaigning on
• 34:13
  data center guardrails, and polling shows that nearly half
• 34:16
  of Americans expect data center energy costs to be a campaign
• 34:20
  issue. You have never lost an election,
• 34:23
  so if you were on a ballot this November, what would be your
• 34:26
  energy message and particularly around data centers since that?
• 34:30
  Yeah, I mean, I definitely would campaign on your energy.
• 34:33
  The energy bill is too damn high.
• 34:36
  And let's we are going to fix the damn energy bill as Gretchen
• 34:40
  Whitmer would campaign on fixing the damn roads and whoever else
• 34:43
  was campaigning on the rent is too damn high.
• 34:45
  It is too high. But I would also be super clear
• 34:49
  that data centers done right, can be an ally in bringing down
• 34:54
  your energy bills. And you're going to see, you
• 34:56
  know, we've seen the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab study, the
• 35:00
  Brattle group study that for every GW of new power you add to
• 35:04
  the grid, you can reduce loads by 1%.
• 35:07
  But it doesn't 1 to 2%. It doesn't resonate with people.
• 35:11
  And so you have to say to them that, look it, I don't like AI
• 35:17
  either, but data centers actually can help bring down
• 35:21
  your load. But they can also, the data
• 35:24
  centers can give the community an opportunity to say what they
• 35:29
  want to happen. So, for example, in Louisiana,
• 35:33
  there was just an announcement last week that teachers in an
• 35:37
  area where a data center is located, big data center are
• 35:40
  getting a $50,000 bonus because of the increase in sales and
• 35:46
  property tax that the, that community had in Loudon County,
• 35:51
  Virginia, they learned the hard way.
• 35:53
  They didn't offer tax breaks for property taxes.
• 35:55
  They offered it for sales and use taxes.
• 35:57
  And what, what difference that makes is that the data center
• 36:00
  and, and the property taxes really impact your, whatever
• 36:05
  your local officials can, you know, can decide to invest in
• 36:09
  and the coffers of the municipality.
• 36:12
  And so if you have a big load bearing entity coming in paying
• 36:18
  property taxes that are huge, you can see your property taxes
• 36:21
  decrease like in Loudoun County where they had a 25% decrease in
• 36:27
  their property taxes. Now, if they had had guardrails
• 36:31
  around the increases in their electricity prices, that would
• 36:36
  have been amazing. But they didn't.
• 36:38
  So they learned it the hard way. And that's why people are coming
• 36:40
  out with pitchforks and they're using Loudoun County as an
• 36:43
  example of energy bills going through the roof.
• 36:46
  So This is why the guardrails have to be super clear.
• 36:50
  I'm, I'm running for governor and I'm going to ensure that
• 36:53
  data centers pay their fairway fair share.
• 36:55
  I'm going to ensure that you're not paying for the data center's
• 36:58
  power, that you're not paying for the upgrades needed to
• 37:01
  connect the data center to the grid.
• 37:03
  I'm going to ensure that the data center actually brings
• 37:06
  value to the grid by becoming a component of reliability for the
• 37:11
  grid. So when the when the grid is
• 37:13
  full and it's the hottest day of the year that the data center
• 37:17
  agrees that it's not going to use as much power or it's
• 37:19
  brought batteries to be able to absorb that additional power or
• 37:23
  it's moving work to another area of the country.
• 37:26
  So it's not using so that that data center itself becomes an
• 37:29
  asset. And the thing I would campaign
• 37:31
  is the data center is coming to town.
• 37:34
  That data center is going to have to buy batteries for
• 37:37
  everybody in the area, and those batteries you're going to get
• 37:41
  compensated if you get a battery and you're not paying for that
• 37:43
  battery. The hyperscale is paying for the
• 37:45
  battery. But if you get a battery, you're
• 37:47
  going to be compensated by the utility for using that battery
• 37:50
  if you choose to opt in. There was a study just published
• 37:53
  by the Center for Net 0, which is owned by Octopus Energy, that
• 37:58
  said exactly that. They said when you make
• 38:00
  financial promises like lower property taxes or whatever it
• 38:04
  is, people just don't believe you because they don't view it
• 38:07
  as permanent, right? But if you get a piece of
• 38:09
  hardware, they view that as permanent.
• 38:11
  They're like if I have a battery in my garage and a solar system
• 38:15
  on my roof because of that data center that feels permanent and
• 38:18
  it switches from data center support was like 20% in the
• 38:23
  scenario they they, they proposed and it went all the way
• 38:26
  to like 65% support. You give people batteries and
• 38:30
  solar. Yeah, or you, you subsidized
• 38:32
  their purchase of an electric vehicle, like make them pay for
• 38:35
  the tax credits that were taken away by the Trump administration
• 38:38
  so people could see you can use a vehicle battery to be and,
• 38:41
  but, but the kicker is they got to know like, well, I don't want
• 38:43
  to like give away my battery usage.
• 38:46
  What if I need it? But you say to them you won't
• 38:49
  even notice #1 if you sign up, we're going to do it at a time
• 38:52
  where it won't matter to you at like a night or whatever.
• 38:54
  And #2 you're going to get and you know, Green Mountain Power
• 38:58
  in Vermont and all of us have proved this.
• 38:59
  But you can, you're going to get 100 bucks a month, maybe fifty
• 39:03
  100 bucks. You can get a couple $1000 a
• 39:05
  year just by allowing the utility to use these batteries
• 39:11
  that have been supplied by the hyperscaler.
• 39:13
  Now the Voltas deal that was just announced over at PJM with
• 39:17
  Google, that's interesting because that organization like
• 39:21
  Octopus is going to amass all, all of these existing
• 39:26
  distributed energy resources, cumulate, you know, put them all
• 39:30
  together, get to 100 megawatts and then take that 100 megawatts
• 39:34
  and bid it into the capacity auction at PJM.
• 39:39
  Now that's super interesting, but there, but Google's not
• 39:41
  buying those resources there. Voltas is going out just trying
• 39:45
  to identify those who are willing to participate.
• 39:48
  I do think the next step is going to be that these
• 39:51
  hyperscalers are going to actually offer to buy and
• 39:54
  purchase as part of a community benefit agreement or just as
• 39:57
  part of their capacity that they're going to bring to buy
• 39:59
  batteries for folks. I'm such a nerd for this stuff.
• 40:03
  I actually like got goosebumps when you started talking about
• 40:06
  it. And it's because you're because
• 40:08
  you're a politician. You like really know how to sell
• 40:11
  it. Like you just totally, you
• 40:13
  totally sold me on it. But I don't know if you know
• 40:15
  that. There's the most amazing acronym
• 40:17
  ever for this. It's Beyoncé.
• 40:19
  Bring your own new clean energy. Have you heard that?
• 40:22
  Is it got 2 CS, clean, clean energy and capacity or is it
• 40:26
  just you're counting clean energy as part of the as the
• 40:30
  capacity as part of clean energy?
• 40:32
  I don't know, I'm just going. With it I just love like.
• 40:35
  Somebody made it fit like bring your own new clean energy.
• 40:37
  We have shirts, by the way, also in the merch store for this
• 40:40
  Beyoncé. Bring your own new clean energy.
• 40:42
  I think. That's the T-shirt, that's the
• 40:44
  T-shirts going. No wrapping this so hard,
• 40:47
  Secretary. I love it.
• 40:49
  I love it. And then you just play her song
• 40:52
  energy in the background, right? Yep, absolutely.
• 40:56
  That's exactly right. We need like a walk out song and
• 40:58
  AT shirt and the whole thing. I can see it now.
• 41:02
  Well, we just want to make sure that capacity, bringing extra
• 41:05
  capacity and additional generation are both needed.
• 41:09
  And the capacity stack thing is a little more complicated.
• 41:14
  And so this is, you know, I've been, I mean, I jigger, I know
• 41:18
  you talk to these people all the time, Jamie, you probably do as
• 41:20
  well. The notion of getting this into
• 41:23
  their head about what I have to go out and find, you know,
• 41:27
  40,000 homes that are willing to, and how do you get them to
• 41:31
  agree and all of that. I mean, Octopus is a great
• 41:34
  example because they don't, they know how to sell it.
• 41:37
  They know how to sign people up to enroll them, to make it easy
• 41:40
  for them. And so fine, you know, I think
• 41:43
  we need, you know, a lot of Voltas's and octopuses and
• 41:47
  rewiring America's because I know Ari Matusiak is going to be
• 41:51
  doing the same thing. You know, we need a bunch of
• 41:53
  them who are experts at that because it's hard to explain.
• 41:56
  And the data center companies, you know, the tech companies,
• 42:00
  this is not their area, right? So they're, they may be a little
• 42:03
  skeptical or certainly utilities are skeptical because they
• 42:07
  haven't done this before. So it's a whole new wave.
• 42:10
  But if we can get consumers begging for it, consumers who
• 42:14
  are pissed off and coming with the pitchforks, and they say
• 42:17
  that I I'm going to let you use the battery, but you're going to
• 42:19
  pay me, I think that changes the game.
• 42:22
  So I just want to dig one layer deeper into this because I feel
• 42:27
  like there's 36 governors races and they all want to use the
• 42:31
  talking points you just gave them.
• 42:33
  But like when we were running DOE, when you were running DOE,
• 42:38
  you know, there was a leadership piece there, right?
• 42:41
  You brought all the data center companies together.
• 42:43
  You talk to them about it, you sort of, you know, wrestle them
• 42:45
  to the ground. You do a little job owning,
• 42:47
  etcetera, etcetera, right? You got got stuff done.
• 42:50
  I'm not sure that that's happening here.
• 42:52
  So now you've got Governor Abbott sort of just like
• 42:55
  mouthing off about how much he hates data centers and then, you
• 42:58
  know, the governor of Wyoming mouthing off about how much he
• 43:00
  hates data centers and then this guy and that guy and this woman.
• 43:03
  And so I'm just curious, like, how does one do this, right?
• 43:07
  Because, you know, without federal government leadership,
• 43:11
  like really driving the governor's right, even though
• 43:13
  they regulate the utilities, right?
• 43:16
  I don't know that every, you know, the Electric Power
• 43:18
  Research Institute and their DC Flex is going to make it happen
• 43:22
  or whether it's like nonprofit XYZ and their top 10 things you
• 43:26
  can do as a governor is going to make it happen, right?
• 43:29
  How do you get all this technical knowledge that you
• 43:31
  procured like into the hands of these governors?
• 43:35
  You hire former DOE employees. Yes, exactly.
• 43:42
  Do hire Elizabeth Knowles all across the country.
• 43:46
  Yeah, I mean, Jigger, it's a really great question because,
• 43:49
  you know, obviously in in 2 1/2 years we'll have hopefully a
• 43:53
  chance at the federal level to have that leadership role, but
• 43:56
  it doesn't exist right now. I do know that the Democratic
• 43:59
  Governors Association and the National Governors Association
• 44:02
  have had a number of sessions on this topic because there are, I
• 44:06
  mean, the governors understand that when a data center comes to
• 44:10
  town, if it's done right, it could be the golden ticket, even
• 44:14
  though the pitchforks are there for, because citizens don't
• 44:18
  realize that. And so they want to be able to
• 44:20
  get this right. And This is why, I mean, Jamie,
• 44:23
  to your point, a number of them are campaigning on, they're
• 44:26
  starting with guardrails for data centers, which is great.
• 44:29
  They should, but that doesn't mean they are campaigning on a
• 44:32
  moratorium for data centers, even though at the local level,
• 44:36
  there's been over 100 moratoria passed against data centers.
• 44:41
  No moratoria has been passed on the state level yet.
• 44:46
  There have been 15 bills introduced, but they haven't
• 44:48
  been signed yet because governors know that, you know
• 44:51
  that the economic effect of a cluster of data centers or or a
• 44:56
  data center, the cluster of indirect employment, including
• 45:01
  not just the jobs for building, not just the jobs inside, but
• 45:04
  the services around. It's a nine to one effect
• 45:07
  multiplier effect. So, you know, it's economic
• 45:11
  development and if they're going to go especially to former coal
• 45:15
  plant sites or former industrial sites, and they're going to fill
• 45:19
  in gaps where they significantly exist, that's pretty, you know,
• 45:25
  that's amazing. So I, you know, it's, but the
• 45:28
  guardrails have to be the first thing you talk about.
• 45:31
  I'm not going to let them in unless they have guardrails.
• 45:34
  That's probably the language you have to use.
• 45:36
  I'm going to be tough on data centers.
• 45:38
  They're not coming in here. If you're paying for their
• 45:40
  power, you're not paying for their power.
• 45:42
  You are not paying for their upgrades.
• 45:44
  You know, you have to be clear about what your guardrails are
• 45:47
  and that you're going to ask either, I mean, even asking the
• 45:50
  legislature, you're going to order your public utility
• 45:52
  Commission to ensure that the data centers are not spreading
• 45:55
  the cost to everyday citizens. And we're going to get a
• 45:58
  community benefit agreement that is really going to help the
• 46:00
  citizens in that area. You know, I was when I was at a
• 46:04
  Chamber of Commerce event in Mackinac and I in Michigan, and
• 46:08
  I was saying to them, if I were governor, I would ask my
• 46:13
  Michigan economic Development Corporation to identify the full
• 46:17
  supply chain for data centers and make sure I got that supply
• 46:21
  chain in Michigan so that it's not just the data center, but
• 46:24
  all the stuff feeding into it, the racks, the coolers, the you
• 46:28
  name it we could be making. It's an industrial state.
• 46:32
  We should have that whole supply chain here.
• 46:34
  And that really does create a multiplier effect.
• 46:36
  On that topic, I mean, you presided over the largest
• 46:39
  expansion of manufacturing in the energy sector, you know, in
• 46:43
  my lifetime, you know, when the Inflation Reduction Act passed
• 46:46
  in August of 2022, full of manufacturing incentives, right,
• 46:51
  you had 900 expansions announcements, you know, plants
• 46:56
  under construction, all that stuff.
• 46:58
  The O Triple B actually left almost all of it in place,
• 47:02
  right? I mean, most of the 45 X
• 47:03
  credits, a lot of the manufacturing credits stay in
• 47:06
  place. Some of the demand stuff
• 47:07
  obviously was rescinded, But I'm curious, when you look back on
• 47:12
  that moment, what endured, right?
• 47:15
  I mean, I feel like Americans got a little bit of their groove
• 47:19
  back, right? They thought that they could do
• 47:21
  big things again, right? We weren't giving people the
• 47:24
  business card of their Shanghai connection like we were doing
• 47:27
  before, right? I mean, I don't know.
• 47:29
  What do you think came out of that time?
• 47:31
  Well, OK, first of all, Jigger, it was 950 announcements, not
• 47:35
  900. Did you be?
• 47:38
  Picky down there was a beautiful map on the DOE website to
• 47:41
  detail. Can I Can I get it for?
• 47:43
  You of course you can get the. Map for us.
• 47:46
  I want to see the map. We love the map.
• 47:49
  The map. Oh, I love it.
• 47:53
  I love it. All of those bubbles, all were
• 47:57
  people who were incentivized to manufacture clean energy
• 48:01
  equipment in the United States, moving to the United States,
• 48:05
  expanding in the United States millions of jobs because of the
• 48:09
  Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
• 48:12
  Amazing. And you, Jigger, you know, this
• 48:14
  is so near and dear to my heart as the former governor of
• 48:17
  Michigan, when we saw all these manufacturing jobs leave, this
• 48:20
  was the first industrial policy of America that actually said,
• 48:25
  yes, we have to partner with business to make them successful
• 48:28
  in a global economy in the United States.
• 48:30
  It made America irresistible for investment in the United States.
• 48:36
  How fantastic was that? It was so great.
• 48:40
  So when the new administration comes in and decides to start to
• 48:45
  dismantle the Inflation Reduction Act, I mean, yes,
• 48:48
  Jigger week, the great news is that we still have incentives
• 48:53
  for geothermal, for long duration energy storage,
• 48:56
  amazingly for nuclear, for hydroelectric power, all grid.
• 49:01
  But of those 950 factories, 450 of them were for electric
• 49:07
  vehicles and the supply chain, which means batteries for
• 49:11
  electric vehicles, etcetera. And so all those, you know, OEMs
• 49:16
  were trying to figure out the car manufacturers are trying to
• 49:18
  figure out what, what if there's no demand because those demand
• 49:22
  side incentives have been taken away for the purchase of
• 49:25
  electric vehicle? What are we going to do?
• 49:28
  Look at how creative the private sector is.
• 49:30
  So they decide they're going to turn those EV battery factories
• 49:34
  into utility scale battery factories.
• 49:37
  And how great is that? So you see Ford stock jumping
• 49:41
  through the roof because of that smart strategic shift.
• 49:46
  So yes, the O Triple B was not the death knell.
• 49:49
  And as I've heard you say, Jigger, it is if you took away
• 49:52
  the Inflation Reduction Act, it would be the largest investment
• 49:55
  in clean energy in American history.
• 49:58
  And that is true, although I will say the loss and the lack
• 50:02
  of certainty around the tax credits for wind and solar and
• 50:06
  obviously the stupidity of canceling all of these offshore
• 50:09
  wind projects is ridiculous. But I'm excited that there's
• 50:15
  still that the private sector is still very busy, as I was saying
• 50:18
  earlier in getting these, you know, getting all of this clean
• 50:22
  energy on the grid and still manufacturing, that the
• 50:24
  manufacturing tax credit still exists.
• 50:27
  It's very exciting that the storage tax credit, which you
• 50:31
  know, it used to be solar plus storage and now it's storage
• 50:35
  plus solar. You know, it's the storage
• 50:38
  that's leading all of this investment.
• 50:40
  But that's great because we did it.
• 50:42
  So I look forward to restoration of some of this in a new
• 50:47
  administration. I love it.
• 50:49
  Thank you for for reminding us about that beautiful map and I
• 50:53
  we're, we're all sitting here smiling, including our our
• 50:57
  friends off camera who are here joining us for this recording.
• 51:00
  It was a special moment to be there.
• 51:02
  And I was, I mean, it was, it felt like some of the most
• 51:06
  important work of my career when I was working there at the loan
• 51:09
  programs office under your under your administration at DOE.
• 51:12
  And we were all very lucky to be there at that moment in time
• 51:15
  doing that work. And I'm so happy that a lot of
• 51:18
  that work has prevailed and still is moving forward.
• 51:23
  Which brings me to, I want to talk about Puerto Rico because I
• 51:26
  know that during your time as secretary, that was really
• 51:28
  important to you. And we all, we all had a part in
• 51:32
  that work. What are some of the stories
• 51:34
  from the folks that you met there that have just really
• 51:37
  stuck with you? And now that DOE has stepped
• 51:40
  back and some would say actually kind of abandoned a lot of that
• 51:43
  work on the island. What do you what do you think is
• 51:45
  next there? Yeah.
• 51:47
  I mean, it is almost criminal that they took away the Puerto
• 51:51
  Rico Energy Resilience Fund, which was the fund that Congress
• 51:54
  passed the billion dollars for rooftop solar for vulnerable
• 51:59
  people in Puerto Rico. And let me just emphasize
• 52:02
  vulnerable. I mean, when we we were tasked,
• 52:05
  of course with deploying this billion dollars and we did 11
• 52:09
  town halls across the island, we heard from everybody on the
• 52:13
  island. And the Puerto Rican people
• 52:14
  really helped us to design this in a way that really responded
• 52:18
  to the intent of the legislation, which was that
• 52:21
  rooftop solar and storage would go to the most vulnerable.
• 52:25
  And it was amazing the difference that it made for real
• 52:30
  people on the ground. And for them, it's not about
• 52:32
  climate, it's not about clean. It is just about being able to
• 52:37
  turn the lights on. And so for vulnerable people, I
• 52:39
  mean, I visited one family. I just, it breaks my heart
• 52:44
  because this family in the middle of the island, which is
• 52:47
  in the mountains, they're the last ones to get their power
• 52:49
  back on. We went into this home,
• 52:53
  extremely poor family. There's a young man who had
• 52:57
  cerebral palsy, palsy in the bed.
• 52:59
  He was on a ventilator. Without power, he would die,
• 53:04
  period, right? So they had all these backup
• 53:06
  diesel. They had a backup diesel
• 53:08
  generator generator. They got accepted into the
• 53:11
  program, which is great, and he has since passed away.
• 53:15
  The program was rescinded. They didn't get the benefit of
• 53:19
  being able to put the solar and storage on the home.
• 53:23
  We heard stories about people who were, they brought the
• 53:27
  equipment and they were about to put them on the roof and the
• 53:32
  grant got yanked. And I mean, there, there are
• 53:35
  thousands of people who felt like they could sleep at night
• 53:39
  because they knew their power wasn't going to go off and that
• 53:42
  their children would not be unsafe, especially if they had
• 53:45
  medical, you know, they needed medical equipment to operate,
• 53:50
  you know, the senior citizens who are so, so utterly poor.
• 53:54
  And they, they would have this is what they would be charged.
• 53:56
  They'd be charged $11.00 a month for having security.
• 54:02
  And that just is a game changer. If you're poor and you and you
• 54:05
  don't have a otherwise have another opportunity for a
• 54:08
  lifeline. When 5000 people were killed in
• 54:11
  Hurricane Maria and they didn't have this, the community, the
• 54:14
  island said we are going to adopt and insist upon a future
• 54:20
  that allows people the freedom to have rooftop solar and
• 54:23
  storage and these storage, these solar panels are designed to
• 54:27
  withstand hurricanes. These are serious effort and
• 54:31
  serious effort. I know that there is a movement
• 54:34
  to sue over the pullback of these grants for the poorest
• 54:39
  people. The solar industry on Puerto
• 54:42
  Rico has, you know, they've put now solar panels on the roofs of
• 54:47
  what, like 250,000 homes. So it's huge success.
• 54:51
  They've actually got a virtual power plant in Puerto Rico
• 54:55
  thanks to some of our friends, Arushi and others who are
• 54:58
  helping to design that. But the fact that they have lost
• 55:03
  the opportunity to serve the most vulnerable is just
• 55:07
  heartbreaking. And that is exactly the intent
• 55:09
  of the legislation that was passed by Congress.
• 55:12
  So it is unlawful to undo that at the whim of an administration
• 55:16
  who just doesn't like solar. So I'm hopeful that this too
• 55:21
  will be taken to court and they will be a successful outcome.
• 55:25
  Do you still have hope for energy resiliency for Puerto
• 55:28
  Rico even despite all that? Oh yeah, totally.
• 55:31
  I believe so strongly that between the Puerto Rican
• 55:38
  diaspora in Congress, who are very vocal and very powerful,
• 55:43
  and Bad Bunny, we will get resilience in back to Puerto
• 55:48
  Rico. So I want to talk a little bit
• 55:51
  about DOE as it stands today and the culture.
• 55:56
  And as I mentioned, I served 10 years across 3 presidential
• 56:01
  administrations at DOE. So I have seen so many different
• 56:06
  kind of DOE cultures. And, you know, despite all of
• 56:10
  it, like across all of it, there's a lot of intense
• 56:14
  pressure inside of federal agencies around.
• 56:17
  Like we were talking about some of the formality and like rule
• 56:21
  following. And there's a lot of etiquette
• 56:23
  and there's a lot of like, this is how it's done and this is how
• 56:25
  it's always done. Jigger and I, by the way, bang
• 56:29
  our heads against that a lot. And I've definitely been accused
• 56:32
  of being a bulldog and like just running through walls over there
• 56:35
  and certainly got in plenty of trouble doing that too.
• 56:39
  Not for me, Not for me She. Was like keep doing it, keep
• 56:43
  doing it, I got your back. God bless Charisma Troiano
• 56:46
  because I knowingly broke the rules so many times.
• 56:48
  Love you Charisma, love you so much.
• 56:50
  But I, I definitely knowingly broke the rules to try and get
• 56:54
  things done all for the greater good.
• 56:56
  But you know, I look at this DOE and how they just flipped the
• 57:01
  tables and in one regard, I'm like, I'm a little jealous of
• 57:05
  that because I think that they're intent on like flooding
• 57:09
  the zone and like questioning the way that things are done.
• 57:13
  They've been extremely ruthless about execution.
• 57:16
  But you know, maybe DOE, not DOE necessarily, but I would say the
• 57:20
  Trump administration in general, ruthless about execution.
• 57:24
  Sometimes it's like, fuck the rules, move fast, use every
• 57:27
  lever of executive power. Don't let the process slow down
• 57:30
  the agenda. So, so to me, I'm like, wow, we
• 57:34
  really need to reconsider if and when we get to come back in a
• 57:38
  couple of years, how we're approaching that and like
• 57:41
  building a new Department of Energy, which I hope I get to go
• 57:44
  in and like do another tour later in my career.
• 57:48
  But when you see that, what do you, how do you, how do you
• 57:50
  think about that? Like what they're doing.
• 57:52
  And what do you think we should potentially like, borrow from
• 57:55
  their playbook when we are lining up at the doors of the
• 57:59
  Forest Hall building, ready to March back in?
• 58:02
  Jamie, I'm going to hire you first thing I'm going to ignore.
• 58:05
  I would say it to the next secretary.
• 58:07
  Hire her first thing because you're totally right.
• 58:09
  You explained it so eloquently. Yes, we are good little rule
• 58:13
  followers. And you know, there's decades of
• 58:16
  rules that were built up around process.
• 58:18
  Oh, you can't do this, you can't do this.
• 58:20
  And some of us were new like me. I'm like, OK, if that happened,
• 58:25
  we have to do it. That have to take that long.
• 58:28
  What the heck? So I think we have to completely
• 58:33
  borrow from that impatient playbook that we have got to
• 58:37
  flip the tables on the previous slowness that we've got to break
• 58:43
  eggs, not break laws, but break eggs to be able to get things
• 58:47
  done. I would say this as well through
• 58:49
  the interagency process, which took forever.
• 58:52
  If you recall, the Treasury rules for any of the deployment
• 58:58
  strategies for there was hydrogen, I mean you name it, it
• 59:02
  just took forever. So I would completely bust
• 59:06
  through all of that and assume that we can do it unless we're
• 59:11
  sued and, and, but of course you don't want to court that.
• 59:16
  But nonetheless, I just feel like the in service to the
• 59:20
  agenda and knowing that you have 4 years, I mean if there's any
• 59:24
  lesson from ours that took, it took two years to get the
• 59:27
  Inflation Reduction Act passed and then it took another two
• 59:30
  years to finish writing the rules for the Inflation
• 59:32
  Reduction Act. That 950 number could have been
• 59:36
  well over that if we had been able to get it done to get the
• 59:41
  Inflation Reduction Act passed a year sooner and get it deployed
• 59:45
  two years sooner. We just got to realize all this
• 59:48
  has to happen in year 1. We have to just plow through it
• 59:51
  in aggressively in year 1 and borrow from that, from that
• 59:56
  playbook. I will say one thing we don't
• 59:57
  want to borrow from is firing all of the capable staff or at
• 1:00:01
  least getting them early buyouts so that no one is there to
• 1:00:04
  answer the phone. If you really want to move
• 1:00:06
  quickly, you have to have people who are answering the phone to
• 1:00:09
  get their questions answered. And if people can't even get a
• 1:00:12
  decision? About whether their conditional
• 1:00:15
  loan was is going to go forward or not, you know, 18 months
• 1:00:19
  later that is not conducive to speed, I'll just say that.
• 1:00:23
  Just building on that, I'm curious what you think would be
• 1:00:28
  the best thing to do in the 1st 100 days of a new
• 1:00:32
  administration. Like one, you're breaking the
• 1:00:34
  eggs when you're doing all these things, right?
• 1:00:36
  Because I, I feel like when you think about the Straits of
• 1:00:38
  Hormuz and data center load growth and all these things, we
• 1:00:42
  are in this magical time where the amount of pressure on
• 1:00:47
  electric utilities actually does allow you to change their
• 1:00:50
  business model, right? You actually do have this
• 1:00:54
  ability for data centers to pay for batteries and, and solar for
• 1:00:57
  people who live around them, right?
• 1:00:59
  You are in this situation where we have the technology today in
• 1:01:04
  a way that I don't think was actually there in 2021 to
• 1:01:07
  actually help solve all the problems in Puerto Rico.
• 1:01:10
  I mean, the cost of batteries have come down by another 75%
• 1:01:14
  since 2021, right. And so I just I'm curious in
• 1:01:18
  that first 100 days like which eggs do you break first?
• 1:01:23
  Well. I would first, I mean assuming
• 1:01:25
  that you have control of the Congress, right?
• 1:01:28
  So you get a president and a Congress on the same page.
• 1:01:31
  I would say 1. You push through Congress very
• 1:01:36
  quickly. A clean energy and affordability
• 1:01:40
  bill, or affordability is not a word people like to use either.
• 1:01:43
  Prosperity. Prosperity Bill.
• 1:01:45
  Well, I've been a cheap power, a cheap and clean power bill.
• 1:01:50
  How's that through Congress where you reinstate these tax
• 1:01:53
  credits for solar and wind etcetera, where you include an
• 1:01:59
  ITC on infrastructure? Because we do need, we need, we
• 1:02:03
  need transmission and that transmission especially in the
• 1:02:08
  places where we know we've got to move power.
• 1:02:11
  We don't want to force again utility everyday citizens to be
• 1:02:14
  paying for that. So who pays for you have to have
• 1:02:16
  an ITC to buy down the cost of that.
• 1:02:20
  You would launch an effort, maybe you launch a framework for
• 1:02:25
  VPPS across the country or you, you, maybe you say in 100 days
• 1:02:32
  we are going to go to the states.
• 1:02:33
  We're going to incentivize in the 1st 100 days 100 gigawatts
• 1:02:40
  of power through grid utilization.
• 1:02:44
  And you say by by 2032 we're going to have 100 gigawatts of
• 1:02:49
  grid utilization of you know, you know, strategies for demand
• 1:02:53
  response etcetera, for grid enhancing technologies that you
• 1:02:56
  get 100 gigawatts from that by 2032.
• 1:02:59
  And you incentivize the states, you put a competition out there
• 1:03:01
  or whatever you you incentivize the states to do that.
• 1:03:05
  You know, you undo all the bad stuff that they did, not just
• 1:03:10
  the tax credits, but their, you know, refusal to permits on
• 1:03:14
  public lands. In fact, you accelerate the
• 1:03:16
  permitting on public land. You grant speed permits.
• 1:03:20
  You get, you know, if a shot clock for six month permitting
• 1:03:23
  for clean energy on public lands right away you use the Defense
• 1:03:29
  Production Act in a way that helps to shore up, you know,
• 1:03:34
  transmission grid equipment, advanced conductors, etcetera.
• 1:03:39
  You have a whole strategy around what is it that's going to get
• 1:03:43
  us cheap clean power that's reliable in this country.
• 1:03:48
  You do have a battery strategy. I mean, you, you know, just This
• 1:03:53
  is why we have to have our own project 2029 and I know that
• 1:03:58
  there are I'm. There, I mean, you know, well I
• 1:04:01
  just think that I mean and the one thing I think that the IRA
• 1:04:04
  missed, which I think we have to do better the next time around
• 1:04:08
  is put in. Tell me.
• 1:04:09
  Is putting stuff in people's houses, like I think a lot of it
• 1:04:12
  was like 950 like manufacturing facilities, etcetera.
• 1:04:16
  But I don't think that the weatherization program was large
• 1:04:19
  enough. I don't think that like the
• 1:04:21
  Putting Stuff in People's houses program wasn't large enough.
• 1:04:25
  That is so true. And that's a whole nother
• 1:04:28
  example of to Jamie's point about slowness is that to get
• 1:04:33
  this, you know, we had this whole homes program which was
• 1:04:37
  doing weatherizing homes, but you know, not all the states
• 1:04:40
  were quick to take up on it. You know, we have got to fix
• 1:04:44
  that and not just do weatherization, but to your
• 1:04:47
  point, add heat pumps and you, you know, incentivize the, I
• 1:04:52
  mean the hyperscalers are already incentivized to put them
• 1:04:54
  in there, but to get figure out as many ways as possible to put
• 1:04:57
  stuff in people's homes that ends up compensating them.
• 1:05:01
  And I would say in contrast to what the Trump administration
• 1:05:04
  has done in pulling back grants from blue areas, I would say
• 1:05:08
  let's deploy our technology in red areas.
• 1:05:11
  Let's go into rural areas and like change people's hearts and
• 1:05:15
  minds by like deploying our technology amongst people who
• 1:05:19
  maybe have been more hesitant because they they don't know
• 1:05:21
  what to believe and like. Where are you and I grew up?
• 1:05:25
  Yep, absolutely. I'm proud proudly from the
• 1:05:28
  Eastern Shore of Maryland. I just returned from there and
• 1:05:31
  was, you know, was just talking to some of my neighbors about
• 1:05:33
  about actually, I was telling them that I was recording this
• 1:05:36
  podcast with you. So because I was so excited.
• 1:05:38
  But you know, I'm never sure what to say when I'm out there
• 1:05:41
  about like it can be tough like these these technologies have
• 1:05:45
  been politicized and they shouldn't be.
• 1:05:46
  So I think, you know, going to some more doubtful groups and
• 1:05:53
  and I think that you're totally right about.
• 1:05:55
  This, but remember that all of these factories we had a huge
• 1:06:00
  amount in in in red country, in fact like 70% of the
• 1:06:05
  announcements. But the kicker going back to
• 1:06:08
  your original point is we did not communicated well enough.
• 1:06:11
  So if stuff is going into people's homes, they better know
• 1:06:14
  where it came from, what it's going to do for them.
• 1:06:18
  That came right on the piece of equipment brought to you by the
• 1:06:22
  administration, I mean right there.
• 1:06:26
  Because they had no idea, you know, we had all these great
• 1:06:28
  announcement. In fact, I, I joke that because
• 1:06:31
  of the slowness of the rollout, we had a lot of groundbreakings,
• 1:06:35
  but not a lot of ribbon cuttings.
• 1:06:36
  And the ribbon cuttings are what what people will know because
• 1:06:39
  people are starting to get hired.
• 1:06:41
  So, but yes, you're so right about that.
• 1:06:45
  So, Secretary, looking back on your time leading DOE, what,
• 1:06:49
  what are you most proud of? Oh, I'm so proud of our team and
• 1:06:55
  the stuff we accomplished. I mean, we used to say all the
• 1:06:58
  time that, you know, sometimes when you're in the middle of
• 1:07:01
  history, it's hard to know because you're in the middle of
• 1:07:03
  it. And we were in the middle of
• 1:07:05
  this historic period of time. But to Jeer's point, it's still
• 1:07:10
  an historic period of time. I'm so proud of the amount of
• 1:07:14
  manufacturing of clean energy equipment that came to the
• 1:07:17
  United States. I'm so proud of how much clean
• 1:07:19
  we were able to add to the grid. And that that is continuing, you
• 1:07:24
  know, but there's a lot more work to continue to do.
• 1:07:26
  The deploy strategy was amazing. We had a second to none team.
• 1:07:30
  I mean, I'm still in awe of the people we hired to be able to do
• 1:07:34
  this deployment. I'm in awe of the work being
• 1:07:36
  done at the labs, the people at the labs, the scientists, the
• 1:07:41
  technology. They're just amazing.
• 1:07:45
  And so I'm super proud of what we did.
• 1:07:48
  I am, I will forever be proud of what we did.
• 1:07:51
  And I know we can build on it. So look forward to helping
• 1:07:54
  whoever is elected from the outside at least, encouraging
• 1:07:59
  folks to continue on that trajectory.
• 1:08:01
  I mean, the one thing I would say to you on that is just, I
• 1:08:06
  can't underestimate how important it is to give people,
• 1:08:11
  you know, hope and confidence from the position that you held,
• 1:08:16
  right? I just think that for a long
• 1:08:18
  time, and you gave the story all the time, you know, it was the
• 1:08:21
  right decision to pull up roots and go to Mexico, right?
• 1:08:26
  And it just, it wasn't the right decision to do that because of
• 1:08:30
  your leadership that, you know, like we went to people and made
• 1:08:33
  the case to them and said, no, pick South Carolina, pick
• 1:08:38
  Georgia, pick Tennessee, pick Texas, find a state and go
• 1:08:42
  there. And then we actually went to the
• 1:08:43
  economic development boards of those States and said, do you
• 1:08:46
  know what's in this bill? We are matching your money.
• 1:08:49
  12:50 You should be more aggressive in attracting these
• 1:08:52
  people. And I just, I'm going to this
• 1:08:55
  reindustrialist conference in Detroit tomorrow and the next
• 1:08:58
  day. And that's happening.
• 1:09:00
  And it's all center right people.
• 1:09:02
  And it's happening because you gave people the, like,
• 1:09:06
  confidence to believe that we could do big things in this
• 1:09:09
  country. Well, thank you, Jigger, but it
• 1:09:12
  wasn't just me. Obviously we had this incredible
• 1:09:14
  tool which was the Inflation Reduction Act.
• 1:09:16
  And when you get a 30% tax credit, and that's a, that's a
• 1:09:20
  transferable tax credit, you know, you have a partner in the
• 1:09:24
  federal government. And to break the mindset of it
• 1:09:28
  is only the private sector that must do this, that you can't
• 1:09:31
  have government partnership, you can't have industrial strategy
• 1:09:35
  when every other country is engaged in industrial strategy
• 1:09:39
  is insane. So having the leadership of the
• 1:09:42
  country saying, yes, we are going to partner to make you
• 1:09:46
  successful in the United States, you, you get a 30% tax credit
• 1:09:50
  for your project, You get an additional 10% If you locate in
• 1:09:54
  a challenged community, you get an additional 10%.
• 1:09:57
  If you use a domestic product that's a 50% partnership and you
• 1:10:03
  get, you know, it's not like we're taking ownership.
• 1:10:05
  We're giving you tax credit to be able to do it.
• 1:10:08
  Although I will say, you know, some kind of, I mean, I'm
• 1:10:11
  interested in some of what the Trump administration has done on
• 1:10:14
  ownership positions in like the critical mineral space because
• 1:10:17
  it shows you that right and left people want to see the United
• 1:10:22
  States be leading in these things.
• 1:10:24
  And for the United States to lead, that means we have to
• 1:10:26
  manufacture it in the United States.
• 1:10:28
  We have a lot of work to do on supply chains.
• 1:10:30
  We want to get those supply chains here.
• 1:10:32
  We have got to Co invest with the private sector to make that
• 1:10:35
  happen. And that's what the Biden
• 1:10:36
  administration did in the Inflation Reduction Act.
• 1:10:38
  And that's why we've got to build on that going forward.
• 1:10:41
  Well, you haven't lost a single step.
• 1:10:44
  Thank you so much for being. I've lost an eye, but not a
• 1:10:48
  single space. I didn't lose my eye.
• 1:10:50
  Just for those who don't have a pen.
• 1:10:53
  You're about to go viral with secretary.
• 1:10:59
  It has it has truly been a huge honor for me to get this time
• 1:11:02
  with you. Thank you so much for joining
• 1:11:04
  us. It was an honor to serve under
• 1:11:07
  you and we Jigger and I just have such tremendous respect for
• 1:11:10
  you. And I'm so excited to see what
• 1:11:13
  you do next. And I'm so glad that we still
• 1:11:15
  have all your brilliance contributing to the future of of
• 1:11:19
  this country and to our clean energy economy.
• 1:11:21
  So thank you so much. Thank you so much Jamie, right
• 1:11:24
  back at you. Really appreciate you guys.
• 1:11:26
  Great to see you. So, so miss you all and I'm so
• 1:11:30
  glad of the work that you are doing on the outside Jigger.
• 1:11:32
  Slow down a little, will you? Energy Empire is supported by
• 1:11:40
  S2G Investments. If you haven't checked out their
• 1:11:43
  podcast, I highly recommend it. They have a great recent episode
• 1:11:47
  on the long term effects of the Iran war and the blockade of the
• 1:11:51
  Strait of Hormuz. In the episode, Sanjeev Krishna
• 1:11:54
  and Frank O'Sullivan and Bala Nagarajan make a compelling case
• 1:11:59
  that this disruption could be the most powerful accelerant for
• 1:12:03
  renewable energy in a generation.
• 1:12:05
  And in future episodes they'll be exploring how those forces
• 1:12:08
  are reshaping our food systems and ocean intelligence.
• 1:12:12
  Sound interesting? Go find the S2G podcast and
• 1:12:15
  start with the global energy order has changed.
• 1:12:19
  Now what? My goodness, did we catch the
• 1:12:28
  Secretary on a fiery day? Yes.
• 1:12:31
  Oh, I was very excited by how hyped she was.
• 1:12:34
  Very high energy. She cursed.
• 1:12:37
  That was very exciting for me. Wasn't expecting that.
• 1:12:40
  But she she really. Yeah.
• 1:12:42
  She had hot takes for days today.
• 1:12:45
  And so it's just great to see her kind of like unleashed and
• 1:12:49
  like really coming through. And honestly, I think she was
• 1:12:52
  like speaking truth to power like multiple times during our
• 1:12:55
  interview with her. We also talked a lot about
• 1:12:58
  communications. We did.
• 1:13:00
  We did. You know, you and I used to
• 1:13:02
  bitch so much about the fact that like, you know, we were
• 1:13:07
  only using mainstream media while she was in office.
• 1:13:12
  And like, you and I got to do all the podcasts and all the
• 1:13:15
  other stuff. And like, for her to say one of
• 1:13:17
  her big regrets was that she only did mainstream media and
• 1:13:21
  that only reached like 3 million people.
• 1:13:23
  And like, all these other people were getting their news on
• 1:13:27
  podcasts or TikTok or other things.
• 1:13:29
  And that she wished she did more of that.
• 1:13:31
  I thought that was very revealing.
• 1:13:33
  And, you know, something that I think that all of us should talk
• 1:13:36
  more about, right, is how do we better communicate these really
• 1:13:40
  important ideas to the American people?
• 1:13:42
  Absolutely. I mean, I think when we were
• 1:13:45
  there at DOE, we found this little niche where we could slip
• 1:13:50
  these podcasts under the radar and get permission for you to do
• 1:13:54
  a lot of them even though they weren't mainstream because
• 1:13:58
  frankly, people just underestimated how important
• 1:14:00
  they were. I mean, that was only five years
• 1:14:02
  ago, but I, I think very clearly things have changed.
• 1:14:05
  I mean, we know that podcasts specifically were such an
• 1:14:08
  important venue for conversation for the 2024 presidential
• 1:14:12
  election. So I think that that she sees it
• 1:14:14
  now. And I'm, I'm really grateful
• 1:14:15
  that we, you know, worked so hard to have such an impact.
• 1:14:19
  And now here we are with our own show.
• 1:14:20
  But yeah, I will say that the I'm not going to lie, that was a
• 1:14:23
  little gratifying for me to hear that because we really were
• 1:14:26
  trying to push the envelope and we were told no a lot.
• 1:14:30
  Well, the other thing that I thought was amazing was she not
• 1:14:33
  only answered our questions on the 36 governors and, you know,
• 1:14:38
  Beyoncé work, but she actually provided a very detailed script
• 1:14:45
  of exactly what every governor should say and how they should
• 1:14:48
  say it. And some of it was a bit
• 1:14:51
  performative, right? Some of it was saying, look,
• 1:14:54
  even if you think you're, you know, basically on the same page
• 1:14:58
  as the data centers, you need to like, actually say you're not,
• 1:15:02
  right? And like be fiery and tell the
• 1:15:05
  data centers you're going to basically impose restrictions on
• 1:15:08
  them and make sure that they know exactly, you know, how
• 1:15:12
  you're going to put them in their place because that's what
• 1:15:15
  the voters want to hear, right? That's the level of intensity
• 1:15:18
  that the voters want to hear. The other thing I thought was
• 1:15:21
  fascinating was she was like, look, you know, consistent with
• 1:15:25
  the Octopus Energy research results from the Center for Net
• 1:15:28
  0, Like you got to give people free stuff, right?
• 1:15:32
  It's not enough to make them promises.
• 1:15:34
  You got to like, actually give them a battery in their garage
• 1:15:38
  or, you know, a solar system on the roof.
• 1:15:41
  Totally. I mean, I think I feel like we
• 1:15:44
  just got like an accounting of like all the things that keep
• 1:15:47
  her up at night. Like it felt cathartic for her
• 1:15:50
  potentially to just like rattle all those things off.
• 1:15:53
  I mean, you can tell that she's still got the DNA of a governor.
• 1:15:57
  And she was just like, this is what I would do 1234, you know,
• 1:16:01
  she had it there. So, so it was a really powerful
• 1:16:03
  playbook. And I mean, she was right every
• 1:16:07
  step of the way. I mean, it was great to hear her
• 1:16:09
  talking about community benefits plans because that is something
• 1:16:12
  that under the Biden administration's DOE, we really
• 1:16:17
  championed. And LPO specifically worked
• 1:16:19
  really hard with all of our borrowers to develop very
• 1:16:22
  detailed community benefits plans in the communities where
• 1:16:25
  all of our projects were located.
• 1:16:27
  And absolutely, the hyperscalers need to take a page out of our
• 1:16:30
  playbook in terms of that now. And that's, you know, one of the
• 1:16:33
  ideas that she's really advocating for very effectively.
• 1:16:37
  I mean it's so damn sad that she was born in Canada because she
• 1:16:41
  is one of the most talented politicians like I have ever
• 1:16:44
  been around. Truly, I mean, I was like, at
• 1:16:47
  one point I got chills because I was like so inspired by what she
• 1:16:50
  was saying. And then it there was also like
• 1:16:52
  a very sad moment. And she told like that very
• 1:16:55
  poignant story about the family in Puerto Rico with the son with
• 1:16:58
  cerebral palsy who needed access to the power that was they were
• 1:17:03
  hoping would be provided by the Puerto Rican Resilience Fund
• 1:17:06
  that was at DOE. And of course, that project was
• 1:17:08
  cancelled. But I mean, clearly, like the
• 1:17:11
  work that she did at DOE was, was transformative, very
• 1:17:15
  powerful, everything from like the stories from on the ground
• 1:17:18
  in Puerto Rico to when she pulled out the map.
• 1:17:21
  I love that. Her pulling out the.
• 1:17:24
  Map was. Like so quintessential Jennifer
• 1:17:27
  Granholm. But like, I mean, she oh, my
• 1:17:31
  goodness. But like, I mean, I'm the Puerto
• 1:17:32
  Rico piece. I don't think I've ever told
• 1:17:35
  anybody this. But like, I was really
• 1:17:37
  constrained, right? Like people really hated when I
• 1:17:40
  called the secretary because she wanted to hear from political
• 1:17:44
  appointees and she wanted to like hear good ideas.
• 1:17:47
  And then she then it creates a lot of work for everybody else.
• 1:17:49
  And so they're like, don't call her like.
• 1:17:52
  Also, there are rules. You can't just like call the
• 1:17:54
  secretary. That's the thing.
• 1:17:55
  Like we alluded to this, but the etiquette is so real.
• 1:17:58
  I mean, yeah, whatever. Like, I don't, I don't care.
• 1:18:03
  So, you know, Maria is obviously the big storm where a lot of
• 1:18:07
  people died. But then there was another storm
• 1:18:09
  that hit Puerto Rico while we were serving and they lost power
• 1:18:13
  again. And and I remember I was like on
• 1:18:17
  the road somewhere and I pulled the car over as soon as if I not
• 1:18:20
  and I called the secretary and I was like, God damn it.
• 1:18:24
  Like, I can't believe that no one has done shit to like, fix
• 1:18:29
  the situation in Puerto Rico because because like part of the
• 1:18:33
  NPR News story I was listening to was it only like 4% of all
• 1:18:36
  the money allocated under the Trump administration by the
• 1:18:39
  Congress had been spent. This was 18 months into our
• 1:18:43
  like, basically our term, right? And, and then the president
• 1:18:47
  basically nominated her to like lead this effort.
• 1:18:50
  And she was like, well, you're the person who calls me during
• 1:18:54
  that period, so you're going to be on this task force too.
• 1:18:57
  And I was, it was an honor of a lifetime for me.
• 1:19:00
  I had traveled to Puerto Rico several times with her.
• 1:19:02
  Like, we had a dedicated team of people at LPO who worked on
• 1:19:06
  Puerto Rico. We got all those loans out the
• 1:19:08
  door for Puerto Rico. I mean, it was just an honor of
• 1:19:12
  a lifetime to be able to be part of the solution in Puerto Rico.
• 1:19:17
  And just like, such a shame that the current administration just
• 1:19:21
  cares so little about the people of Puerto Rico that they didn't
• 1:19:24
  want to continue to do that good work to make their lives better.
• 1:19:28
  It is very sad. But that being said, the the the
• 1:19:31
  systems that were deployed and the work that got done, it
• 1:19:33
  stands right. I mean, that's what we were just
• 1:19:35
  saying about the 950 factories, several hundred of which did go
• 1:19:40
  forward because of the work that we all did together.
• 1:19:43
  And so I walked away from the conversation with her still like
• 1:19:47
  feeling encouraged and feeling heartened.
• 1:19:49
  And, you know, she mentioned when you're making history, like
• 1:19:53
  you don't realize it at the time.
• 1:19:55
  And I still think that our term was historic and what we
• 1:19:58
  achieved was very important. And she's got me.
• 1:20:02
  She's got me pumped up about what comes next.
• 1:20:04
  And you know, I've said a couple of times that I'd be like ready
• 1:20:07
  to like line up outside of the. Forestall building on day one
• 1:20:10
  and you know I oh. She she held you to it.
• 1:20:13
  She said she's going to tell the next secretary to call you.
• 1:20:15
  So I think you like you, you know, have already, you know,
• 1:20:20
  offered yourself up and so you can't take it back now.
• 1:20:23
  I I mean, I love DOEI know, you know, government, working in
• 1:20:26
  government is not for everyone, but I will say the most
• 1:20:29
  passionate, the smartest, most devoted, caring, talented people
• 1:20:35
  I have ever worked with. I'm at working in government and
• 1:20:38
  I can't say enough good things about it.
• 1:20:40
  So I have to say, you know, if you're interested, like consider
• 1:20:44
  that as a future career. I mean, you can get really big
• 1:20:46
  things done. And it's, I mean, even now
• 1:20:50
  looking back, it's still just feels very fulfilling to me.
• 1:20:53
  And I'm so grateful and so grateful that I had this time
• 1:20:57
  with Secretary Jennifer Granholm.
• 1:20:59
  This is it was everything that I wanted it to be.
• 1:21:03
  Well, I'm glad that we could make it happen for you.
• 1:21:10
  Welcome to Ask Jigger, our weekly segment where Jigger
• 1:21:13
  answers your questions about energy and honestly anything
• 1:21:16
  you're wondering about. Huge thanks to our sponsor
• 1:21:19
  Octopus Energy for making this segment possible.
• 1:21:22
  Before we get into this week's questions, a bit of news.
• 1:21:25
  We have a brand new merch shop. I am so excited about this and
• 1:21:30
  right now it's mostly energy empire merch, but we have plans
• 1:21:34
  to add the energy merch of your dreams.
• 1:21:37
  So if you have ideas like drop me a note, I'm taking
• 1:21:41
  suggestions. And to celebrate, anyone who
• 1:21:44
  sends in a question that Jigger answers on the show will get an
• 1:21:46
  Energy Empire hat. So send them all in.
• 1:21:49
  OK, let's get started. All right, Jigger, your first
• 1:21:53
  question is from Peter Sinclair, and he says, Jigger, you've said
• 1:21:57
  some would be hyperscalers haven't done their due diligence
• 1:22:00
  on whether gas supply is actually reliable across all
• 1:22:04
  87160 hours of the year. And you've pointed to pipeline
• 1:22:08
  capacity as a constraint. I'd add a wrinkle.
• 1:22:12
  In a lot of systems, home heating gets prioritized during
• 1:22:15
  peak events like a polar vortex, so that gas wouldn't even be
• 1:22:18
  available to keep a data the center running at the 99.999%
• 1:22:23
  reliability that these facilities demand.
• 1:22:26
  Can you get specific? Are there projects out there
• 1:22:29
  with unrealistic expectations of their gas supply, and what are
• 1:22:32
  the more reliable pathways you'd actually steer them toward?
• 1:22:37
  This is a great question and one that I continue to struggle with
• 1:22:41
  because, you know, for those of us who remember when we came
• 1:22:45
  into office of the loan Programs office, we had this horrific
• 1:22:48
  storm called Winter Storm Uri that affected Texas.
• 1:22:51
  And people died during that storm because it got so cold and
• 1:22:55
  folks lost power. And during that period of time,
• 1:22:59
  there was all this reporting that came out, and one of the
• 1:23:02
  things that you saw was that residential customers actually
• 1:23:04
  got priority on natural gas supply and that power plants had
• 1:23:09
  to shut down because of the way in which that order occurred.
• 1:23:13
  And so, like, a lot of us got educated about these issues, not
• 1:23:17
  just me. And so we're in a situation
• 1:23:20
  where people are building unprecedented amounts of natural
• 1:23:23
  gas generators. They want to run them 24 by 7 as
• 1:23:26
  a bridge to the grid getting turned on.
• 1:23:29
  And there's no firm supply available.
• 1:23:31
  Like, you know, the way firm supply works is you actually pay
• 1:23:35
  the pipeline company for a percentage of theirs, their
• 1:23:39
  pipeline capacity. And if anything happens such
• 1:23:43
  that like there's too many people who want that pipeline
• 1:23:45
  capacity, you get your pipeline capacity.
• 1:23:48
  You can't even buy that firm capacity even if you wanted to
• 1:23:52
  in some of these markets. Some of the markets that I would
• 1:23:54
  recommend people look at is Ohio, right.
• 1:23:57
  That's one of the places where Meta put that data center in
• 1:24:00
  that has 31 different types of generators in one place, right?
• 1:24:04
  That the Williams company, which is amazing, like, you know, did
• 1:24:07
  all the engineering on etcetera. And it's really hard to get
• 1:24:11
  secured, you know, firm capacity.
• 1:24:13
  And if you do want firm capacity, they have to build new
• 1:24:16
  pipelines or upgrade the current pipelines.
• 1:24:18
  And that easily takes five to seven years as well, even with
• 1:24:21
  the streamlining that this administration is doing.
• 1:24:24
  And so part of my challenge in this current situation is people
• 1:24:28
  are saying the grid is unreliable, it's taking too
• 1:24:31
  long. I'm going to, you know, skip to
• 1:24:33
  the front of the line and figure out a way to go off grid.
• 1:24:37
  Well, that's no picnic. And it's actually faster to just
• 1:24:41
  work within the grid that we have, then try to skip the line
• 1:24:44
  and, you know, do something more unreliable.
• 1:24:48
  Yeah, building a pipeline, Oof, hadn't, hadn't thought about
• 1:24:51
  that in terms of this data center boom.
• 1:24:53
  But I wonder when that will come into play.
• 1:24:55
  Have you seen any pipelines proposed specifically related to
• 1:24:58
  the data center build out? Oh, yeah.
• 1:25:00
  Every single data center that has a a pipeline that's
• 1:25:04
  specifically allocated to them, particularly in Ohio but also in
• 1:25:07
  Texas, have requested dedicated pipeline capacity be built for
• 1:25:12
  them. And then that has to go to the
• 1:25:14
  Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
• 1:25:15
  That then has to get approved. There are, you know, steps that
• 1:25:19
  have to be gone through to be able to do that.
• 1:25:21
  Then you got to find contractors that are available to do that
• 1:25:24
  work, which is not easy. Everybody is like working on
• 1:25:27
  building a data center right now and getting paid a lot of money
• 1:25:30
  to do that. So there's a lot of bottlenecks
• 1:25:32
  in the system. OK.
• 1:25:34
  Our next question comes from Rudy Malfabon.
• 1:25:36
  And Rudy, if I have mispronounced your last name, I
• 1:25:39
  am sorry, Rudy, says Jigger. Here's something I don't hear
• 1:25:43
  discuss much campaign finance reform as it applies to utility
• 1:25:46
  regulation. Across the country.
• 1:25:48
  A lot of utility and public service commissioners have their
• 1:25:51
  campaigns largely financed by the very utilities they
• 1:25:54
  regulate. To me that's a major problem.
• 1:25:57
  Do you agree it's an issue and what do you hope gets done about
• 1:26:00
  it? It's a very complicated
• 1:26:03
  conversation, and the episode that we just did with Secretary
• 1:26:07
  Jennifer Granholm talks about it a little bit.
• 1:26:09
  Because the utilities are generally the most powerful,
• 1:26:14
  biggest donors to governors and state legislators, because many
• 1:26:19
  of them view their customer base as just being the regulators,
• 1:26:23
  right? Not actually the customers that
• 1:26:25
  they serve, but that their board is really just the regulators
• 1:26:28
  that they have to get past to get approvals for rate
• 1:26:31
  increases. Many states have passed laws
• 1:26:34
  that don't allow you anymore to use ratepayer funds to do this
• 1:26:40
  stuff. For a while people were funding
• 1:26:41
  this stuff using customer bill money, right?
• 1:26:45
  And now you have to the very least use shareholder money,
• 1:26:49
  right? So that's the umbrella company
• 1:26:51
  above the investor owned utility for many packs.
• 1:26:55
  The utility say, look, if you want to be an executive here,
• 1:26:59
  you have to put $7500 into this pack.
• 1:27:01
  Otherwise we're going to limit your upward mobility within the
• 1:27:05
  utility, right? So that's how they get all this
• 1:27:08
  pack money to basically then which is a political action
• 1:27:11
  committee. Then that's how they then use
• 1:27:13
  money to like try to elect the right state chairman for the
• 1:27:17
  right committees that regulate them.
• 1:27:19
  The whole thing is ridiculous. And you don't see that
• 1:27:23
  happening, by the way, with municipal utilities and Royal
• 1:27:25
  Electric co-ops. And part of the reason for that
• 1:27:28
  is because they don't get paid as much.
• 1:27:29
  And so they don't have all this slush fund money to give around
• 1:27:33
  to folks, right? But in the investor owned
• 1:27:36
  utility space, it is a huge problem when people are
• 1:27:39
  basically in some ways, you know, paying to influence the
• 1:27:44
  people that regulate them. Yep, seems like a pretty
• 1:27:48
  significant issue to me and but also probably sticky to unwind
• 1:27:52
  it because we know how powerful the electric utility lobby is
• 1:27:56
  and all of these states clearly we need so much utility reform.
• 1:28:01
  So hopefully now with rising electric rates and all of this
• 1:28:07
  focused interest on this topic, maybe they'll be an opportunity
• 1:28:11
  for us to change some things. OK.
• 1:28:13
  Our next question comes from Karam Dean.
• 1:28:16
  And he says Jigger. Can battery swapping for
• 1:28:19
  electric vehicles play a role in grid management in China?
• 1:28:22
  Swap stations are running at scale.
• 1:28:25
  Each one basically acts as energy storage.
• 1:28:27
  And across the network, it becomes distributed storage the
• 1:28:30
  grid can lean on. I'd love your take on battery
• 1:28:32
  swapping generally its potential for the grid, and why China has
• 1:28:36
  gone all in while the US never really took it seriously.
• 1:28:40
  Well, if you remember, there was a company called Project Better
• 1:28:43
  Place, and Project Better Place was built upon battery swapping.
• 1:28:47
  It started in Israel, then it went to, I think it was Denmark
• 1:28:51
  and then, you know, to the United States and then they went
• 1:28:53
  to Australia and then went to too many markets.
• 1:28:55
  And probably if they focused on Israel and Denmark, they would
• 1:28:58
  have actually been successful. But we also have a company in
• 1:29:01
  the United States that is continuing to try to do it.
• 1:29:05
  You know, it's, it's hard, right?
• 1:29:07
  Because it's custom hardware, right?
• 1:29:09
  And it requires you to basically build something that looks like
• 1:29:12
  a car wash. The car goes through it, takes
• 1:29:14
  off the old battery pack, puts in a fresh one and then takes
• 1:29:17
  the old one, sticks it on the shelf and then recharges it.
• 1:29:20
  Even in China, not all electric vehicles use this battery
• 1:29:24
  swapping technology. It's only one or two brands that
• 1:29:27
  use it, right? So, so they basically have two
• 1:29:29
  parallel systems, one that has this battery swapping and the
• 1:29:32
  other one that doesn't. The reason why people like it is
• 1:29:35
  because while the batteries are being recharged in that car wash
• 1:29:39
  like situation, you can then do virtual power plant stuff with
• 1:29:45
  the batteries. You can like discharge, you can
• 1:29:46
  charge, you can do all sorts of other things that make it a grid
• 1:29:49
  resource. Now we can do the same thing,
• 1:29:51
  right? So when you think about all of
• 1:29:53
  the electric vehicle charging stations in the United States, a
• 1:29:57
  lot of them now are coming with batteries that are being placed
• 1:30:01
  at the electric vehicle charging station because the demand
• 1:30:05
  charges are so high. When you just put in a electric
• 1:30:08
  vehicle charging station that it's better when people aren't
• 1:30:11
  using the chargers to be refueling that battery and then
• 1:30:15
  use that battery as a buffer to the chargers.
• 1:30:18
  It makes everything much better integrated into the grid, but it
• 1:30:22
  also allows you to then have that battery that you can
• 1:30:25
  provide the same grid forming and grid services.
• 1:30:28
  So I think we do something similar.
• 1:30:30
  But in general, I'd say that look, we have an extraordinary
• 1:30:33
  grid in the United States. And so, you know, being able to
• 1:30:36
  do level 1 chargers, which is just an extension cord into the
• 1:30:40
  wall, which takes 30 hours to recharge your battery or a level
• 1:30:43
  2 charger that you know, charges more at, you know, 8 to 10
• 1:30:47
  kilowatts of charging, which then can recharge the car in 4
• 1:30:51
  to 8 hours. Or going into DC fast chargers
• 1:30:55
  works for us. And we have still, even under
• 1:30:57
  this administration, 1000 plugs a week being installed every
• 1:31:02
  single week across the country of DC fast charging.
• 1:31:05
  And so I think what we're doing works.
• 1:31:07
  And at some point, maybe we will do swapping, but it'll probably
• 1:31:10
  be for like, Ubers and Lyfts, like things that, you know, need
• 1:31:13
  really fast charging and every minute matters.
• 1:31:17
  That's a great idea. 1000 chargers a week, fast chargers a
• 1:31:21
  week going in across the country.
• 1:31:22
  That's incredible. I think that number would really
• 1:31:24
  surprise people, so I'm glad you highlighted that.
• 1:31:27
  OK. Our last question is the good
• 1:31:29
  stuff. This is my personal favorite of
• 1:31:31
  the day, and it comes from Dana Whitfield.
• 1:31:33
  And she says, jigger burning question.
• 1:31:36
  Every time I see you on stage on a panel, wherever you're in,
• 1:31:40
  pristine white sneakers, always spotless somehow.
• 1:31:43
  What's the back story? Why sneakers?
• 1:31:46
  And please tell me there's a brand deal in here somewhere.
• 1:31:49
  Let me start by saying there is not a brand deal, but Energy
• 1:31:52
  Empire is definitely looking for a brand deal.
• 1:31:55
  So if anybody wants to do it, but we will start, I will wear
• 1:31:59
  them and we will feature it in the merch store.
• 1:32:01
  So like absolutely we are open for business.
• 1:32:06
  You know, I think that when I entered the Biden
• 1:32:09
  administration, I had just finished working at Generate
• 1:32:12
  Capital. Generate Capital was based in
• 1:32:14
  San Francisco, so I was within the culture of never wear a
• 1:32:18
  suit, never wear a tie. And then we went into the Biden
• 1:32:21
  administration with COVID, and so we weren't going into the
• 1:32:27
  office every day. And so I was very comfortable.
• 1:32:31
  And then when I finally went into the office, I was asking
• 1:32:35
  people for fashion advice, right?
• 1:32:37
  Because our friends on Twitter were talking about fashion.
• 1:32:41
  I think Jack Andreessen from Breakthrough and others were
• 1:32:44
  like talking about it. And they were like, hey, Jigger,
• 1:32:47
  you should wear sneakers. And I was like, that's great.
• 1:32:51
  I would love to wear sneakers. Which one should I wear?
• 1:32:53
  And I think they gave me some brand and it was like $940 for a
• 1:32:57
  pair of sneakers. I was like, that is definitely
• 1:32:59
  not happening. First of all, I'm cheap, but
• 1:33:02
  second of all, I'm a political appointee.
• 1:33:04
  I can't be wearing $960 sneakers.
• 1:33:06
  So then I got, you know, Jordans which were like $150.00 or
• 1:33:11
  something. And so I started wearing those
• 1:33:14
  and then I got like some special, I don't know, soap and
• 1:33:17
  thing the like clean sneakers with.
• 1:33:19
  And so I try to keep them pristine and white because I was
• 1:33:22
  told that scuffed up sneakers are not good.
• 1:33:25
  And then? Who told you that?
• 1:33:27
  Well, you know, like, obviously you did, but also, you know, I
• 1:33:32
  was at the Latitude Media event and Carolyn Golan was on my ass
• 1:33:39
  about how terrible my sneakers looked.
• 1:33:42
  And so then I had to go out and buy another pair of sneakers.
• 1:33:44
  And so between you and Carolyn, like I think I've replaced like
• 1:33:47
  half of my wardrobe recently. I love the Stan Smith's.
• 1:33:53
  That's what I remember you wearing when we started at the
• 1:33:56
  OA. Yes.
• 1:33:58
  I have also heard from Caroline about your wardrobe.
• 1:34:02
  And yeah, there are lots of opinions.
• 1:34:04
  I have weighed in here and there.
• 1:34:05
  I have like pulled a lot of punches though.
• 1:34:08
  In terms of this, you usually do a really nice job.
• 1:34:11
  I love the sneakers and you have empowered me to also sometimes
• 1:34:15
  wear sneakers because like my feet hurt, man.
• 1:34:18
  You know? It's like wearing sneakers is
• 1:34:20
  free and I highly recommend. It's the best.
• 1:34:22
  Well, we had a long conversation about this during Sarah week.
• 1:34:24
  I remember because you have to walk like 2 miles a day during.
• 1:34:27
  It's crazy. So you were like, can I wear
• 1:34:30
  sneakers? And I was like, hell yeah, you
• 1:34:31
  could wear sneakers. What the heck?
• 1:34:33
  I will absolutely be wearing sneakers with a suit or
• 1:34:37
  whatever, whatever outfit. If you see me at a trade show
• 1:34:39
  like I am done. The days of me suffering and
• 1:34:43
  stilettos are over. So I personally applaud you and
• 1:34:47
  yes, but we, we are very open to to sponsorships from sneaker
• 1:34:51
  companies. Please reach out.
• 1:34:52
  Thank you very much. And that's all for Ask Digger
• 1:34:56
  this week. Remember, you can send in your
• 1:34:58
  own questions. And like I said, if yours gets
• 1:35:00
  picked, we will be sending you an Energy Empire hat.
• 1:35:03
  The link is in the show notes. Thanks for listening as always.
• 1:35:07
  You can find us at Energy Empire dot FM and wherever you get your
• 1:35:12
  podcasts. And if you've got a second,
• 1:35:14
  please leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and
• 1:35:17
  subscribe on YouTube. It helps new listeners discover
• 1:35:21
  the show.