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The Little-Known Office With $400 Billion to Fight Climate Change · What's Your Problem?

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin. So Congress has given you up to four hundred
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: and twelve billion dollars to lend. Yeah, you have like
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: a bank account you can log into to see what
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: you got left? Do you log in? Like I log
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: into my Chase account to see if I can whatever
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: pay my credit?
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: There is there is a log in. It's very complicated
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: and it requires multiple like you know those keys that
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: two people have to turn at the same time.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Well, like the nuclear codes or something. I'm Jacob Goldstein
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: and this is What's Your Problem? The show where I
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: talk to people who are trying to make technological progress.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: My guest today is Jiggershaw. Jigger founded the solar power
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: company son Edison and spent decades working in green energy,
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: and then in twenty twenty one took a turn. It
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: became a government bureaucrat. Specifically, he took a job running
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: the loan Program's office at the US Department of Energy,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: and then last year, as part of the Inflation Reduction Act,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Congress allocated hundreds of billions of dollars for Jigger's office
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: to lend out. The loans are supposed to go to
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: companies that are helping the US economy move away from
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: fossil fuels. That can mean everything from building new nuclear
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: plants to creating a giant hydrogen battery in an underground
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: salt cap. Ultimately, jiggers problem is this, what's the best
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: way to lend out all that money and do it
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: fast enough for the US to meet its climate goals?
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: And you know, my feeling is is that for many
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: years entrepreneurs have felt a lack of support from the
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: US government. Right, there's tax credits which they've they've had
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: access to, for sure, but when it comes to commercializing technology,
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: that step is always risky, right, Like you've demonstrated the lab,
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: you've done a full scale demonstration. Now you need a
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: first of a kind facility, manufacturing facility. And many of
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: those companies have gone to Europe or Asia to commercialize
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: those technologies and not stayed here. So what I think
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: our job is is to make sure they all choose
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: America for their commercialization and they tie that to the
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: American worker and to American communities. We have for many
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: years been the leaders in innovation, but not the leaders
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: in commercialization. Like all the solar panel technology that China
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: uses to manufacture solar panels were invented here in the
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: United States, or by Martin Green at the University of
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: New South Wales in Australia. None of it was invented there.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: The same thing's true with lithium phosphate batteries, and so
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: they are all these technologies where we're saying China's beating us,
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: We're like, well, it's our technology. We decided not to
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: commercialize it here. Now we're going to commercialize it here.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: So in terms of how you decide what loans to make,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: is there some amount of money that you want to
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: lend by some time?
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So to me, the goal is not the amount
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: of money. Right. As a country, we want to hit
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: certain targets, right the President has laid down decarbonization targets
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: by twenty thirty five and twenty fifty. But we also
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: have national security concerns, like we want to make sure
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: that if people are building new nuclear plants, they're building
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: American nuclear plants, not Chinese, Russian, French, or Korean nuclear plants, right,
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: And so we want to make sure that we're proving
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: that technology here in this country so that folks in
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: other countries feel comfortable choosing our technology. And they have
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: been choosing our technology, and so we want to win
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: that national security battle too, and that's on hydrogen, that's
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: on transmission, and so we want to make sure that
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: we're winning. We want to meet the moment so that
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: these sectors actually get fully commercialized and become low cost
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: enough that countries around the world think that they can
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: use them.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: So one of the reasons I'm very happy to be
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: talking to you is that your job gives you this
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: really interesting big picture of what's happening right now in
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: the sort of business of energy transition in America. Right
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: where we are we need to get where we need
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: to get, and maybe in particular, like what do you
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: see as the key bottlenecks there where you're really eager
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: to fund projects that will you know, kind of remove
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: or or help expand what is now whatever is the
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: rate limiting step.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: What we've learned is Americans want more electricity, right. They
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: want electric vehicles, they want new manufacturing plants, they want
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: ai chat GBT alone is going to use ten thousand
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: megawatts of new power, and so we need more bulk generation.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: We need nuclear power, right. I love solar and wind power,
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: but we're not going to put all of our eggs
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: only in that basket. We need enhanced geothermal, we need
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: a low IMPAC hydro and each one of those sectors
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: has their own problems, Like geothermal basically is leveraging the
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: fracking industry. It's all the innovations in the fracking industry,
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: So the oil and gas sector actually has to lead
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: that sector. The hydro sector, we have thirty seven gigawatts
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: of old hydro dams We're built in the nineteen twenties, thirties, forties,
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: fifties that need to be relicnsed and extended and a
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: lot of those owners are very conservative. How do you
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: figure out a way to help them make that decision
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: with next generation fish friendly technologies, right, So that's on
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: that front. Then you've got the grid. We have a
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: bunch of technologies that we invented twenty years ago that
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: have been fully deployed in the UK and Belgium and
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: Brazil and India, but haven't been deployed here. And so
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: how do you align incentives to get the electric utilities
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: to use really cheap technologies. For three billion dollars, we
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: could actually upgrade the existing grid by thirty percent just
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: by basically changing the capacity of our line based on
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: temperature outside. Right now, we rate all of our transmission
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: lines to the worst possible day.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Uh huh, so you're saying so you're saying transmission lines
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: on almost every day could carry way more power than
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: they do. That's right, but we don't allow them to
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: do that.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: What do we need to do differently in order to
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: do that? What's the problem?
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: You just clip a sensor onto the line. It's super cheap.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: Is it really as dumb as that? And if so,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: why hasn't it already happened?
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Because the utility companies in the past made money from
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: deploying money, right, So that's how they like if they so,
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: they're like, why do I want to solve that problem
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: for one hundred thousand dollars when I can solve it
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: for a fifty million.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: Dollars by what building a new power plant instead of
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: making the lines more efficient.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: Or upgrading the entire distribution system?
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Uh huh. So it's basically bad incentives in the in
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: the utility.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: Right, But today they feel like their back is up
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: against a wall because so many new plants are coming
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: online they can't keep up, and so they're like well,
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: we may be forced to do this one hundred thousand
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: dollars solution because it's the only one fast enough to
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: meet our needs.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Okay, so that's a good one. You are in the
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: middle of a list. I love a list.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: Well, there's only three parts that we list.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: So we were at part number two. What's part number three?
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: Part number three is demand flexibility, virtual power plants. Okay,
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: So what you're finding is is that there's a lot
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: of people buying electric vehicles, and it really is neighborhood
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: by neighborhood. When one person gets when of a neighborhood,
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: ten more people get it. And if everyone plugs in
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: their EV at the exact same time, then you're basically
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: inefficiently using the grid. Today, our grid, which is one
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: of the most expensive machines in the world, is used
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: about fourty percent of the time, right, so sixty percent
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: of the time it's actually underutilized, not used. And so
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: so if everyone plugs in at the same time, then
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: that peak becomes higher. So what you want to.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: There is an incredible surge of demand for power, that's right.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: And the thing about power is you have to give
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: everybody power at the exact second they want it, and
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: that's the store. The supply demand balance with power is notoriously.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: Difficult, but it turns out the vast majority of electric
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: vehicle owners plug in their car and leave it plugged
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: in for thirteen hours.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: From when they get home from work in the evening
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: till they leave the next day.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: That's right. So then, and they only charge for about
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: three hours of that thirteen so it doesn't matter which
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: three hours they're charging.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Right, right, right, So you don't have to charge everybody's
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: car at six point thirty when everybody gets home and
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: plugs it.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: You can plug in everybody's car at six thirty, but
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: the power isn't to flow. So Duke Energy, for instance,
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: just launched a plan. They give you a fifty percent
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: discount on the electricity for you to be more flexible
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: as to when you charge.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Huh, that's if you say, sure, as long as you
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: charge my car between six at night and six in
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: the morning, I don't care when you do it. If
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: you give me a big discount, I'll charge it whenever
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: you want in that.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: Way, that's right. So, and then there's a lot of
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: folks who have backup batteries because they chose to do
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: a backup battery instead of diesel generator or a gas
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: generator for their home, right, so that battery now can
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: be used to help manage the grid. Some folks want
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: to opt in their thermostat and they don't really care
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: when their house gets cool, as long as it's cool
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: for when they get home, right, so that we can
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: make it cool at two in the afternoon, where electricity
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: is cheaper because there's so much solar power than at
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: five o'clock.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: So I like that you're sort of enumerating some of
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: the easy ones, right, some of the relatively cheap, huge return,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: low hanging fruit, and I hope that we get all
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: of those, and that we get them soon.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't call nuclear easy.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: No, okay, never mind nuclear. I like that those last
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: couple ones you are enumerting, you know, demand flexibility and
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: transmission flexibility at some level. Like those ones as you
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: describe them, they're like, oh my god, it's so dumb
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: that we're not doing that already. And that's great that
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: those exist you mentioned nuclear. Obviously, nuclear is very hard
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: along many dimensions, not least of which is the political dimension.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: There are other things that have to happen that are
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: hard as well, right, Like, what are some of the
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: other hard ones?
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: Well, hydrogen is hard, right, figuring out whether you know
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: there's all these colors of the rainbow. Right, So, green
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: hydrogen comes from renewal energy. Blue hydrogen comes from natural
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: gas with carbon sigustration storage paink hydrogen comes from nuclear power.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: But ultimately to me, it's just low carbon hydrogen. And
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: each one of them has their own technology cost curve,
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: and we're just at the beginning of that cost curve.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: After the break the salt cavern in Utah that may
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: soon become a gigantic hydrogen filled battery. That's the end
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: of the ads. Now we're going back to the show.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about a few of the specific projects that
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: a few of the specific loans you've made are about
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: to make. I mean, are there some that are just
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: fun or weird or cool or interesting for whatever reason.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm a nerd, so they're all fun and interesting
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: and cool. But I'll name a couple for you. So, Delta,
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: Utah has one of the largest coal plants in the
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: country and a straight transmission line from there to Los Angeles.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: And they also are on top of a bunch of
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: salt caverns. It happens to me that these salt caverns
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: are some of the best salt caverns in the world
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: at storing hydrogen. So one of the projects we just funded,
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: called Delta Aces, had a big electrolyizer, one of the
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: largest electrolyizers in the world when we announced it, and
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: it's under construction and it will it will store one
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: hundred and fifty gigawo hours of hydrogen in each salt cavern.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: To put that in perspective for you, the entirety of
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: the United States doesn't have one hundred and fifty gigawe
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: hours of battery lithium ion batteries in this country. Huh.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: And one salt cavern is going to have it, and
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: they've like seven salt caverns they could tap into if
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: they wanted to.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: Let's do a little more contextualizing, Like gigowot hours is
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: one of those classics hard and that you're contextualizing is
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: like lithium ion battery, Like that's like nerd on nerd action.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: So like, what's another way to think of you said
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty gigawat hours, Like, how I don't
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: know what's another way to think of how much that is.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: So that could power the entire state of California for
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: an entire day.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: Okay, that sounds like a lot.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: It's a lot, right, It's a lot. And so this
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: is this is what I'm saying, is that, like, and
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: we're going to need that much storage, right, and not
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: just for solar and wind. Everybody wants to say, well,
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: these intermittent technologies need a lot of storage, but also
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: for nuclear, Like nuclear really wants to run twenty four
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: x seven, even though you can turn it down, it
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: wants to run all the time. And so when there's
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: access nuclear power, you need to do something with it.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: You can turn it into hydrogen, right, and so so
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: like in general, storage makes everything better.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and so is the idea. I want to talk
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: more about storage broadly in a sect, but a giant
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: salt cavern full of hydrogen is cool enough that I
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: want to spend another minute on it. So is the
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: idea that this project, this hydrogen in a giant salt
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: cavern project will essentially be a way to take energy
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: that's produced when there is not that much demand and
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: essentially use the energy to separate the hydrogen out of water.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: And then that's it's like a battery, it's like a
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: hydrogen battery that's just sitting there.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: For the entire Western grid for sure?
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: And is that going to like work for sure? Is
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: it maybe not going to work? Like? How like? Is
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: there technical risk? Is there execution risk? Or is that like, well, yeah,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: that's going to work.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: Great question, Just need the money. So the loan Program's
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: office never takes actual technology risk, Okay, right, not today.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: We may have in the past, but not today. So
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: this will not have any technology risk associated. We know
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: electoralizers work. For the cell caverns work, there will be
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: execution risk. Can we take that risk all the time
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: because we're doing first of a kind deployments?
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: So what could go wrong in this instance? In terms
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: of execution risk?
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: In general, I would say very little can go wrong.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: What could go wrong is that it would be too expensive,
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: that it costs them double what they think it's going
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: to cost them to get it working right, and then
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: they make a much lower rate of return and now
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: they're less interested in keeping it going. But in general,
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: the salt cavern concept has been tested and proven forever,
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: and the electoralizers have been around since the nineteen fifties,
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: although this version of it is far more advanced than
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: the old one. So I don't think anything will not work.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: I think what will not work is it could be
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: two xover budget.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Right, and therefore not make economic sense.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: So I want to go back to storage for a
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: secon because you were starting to talk about storage in
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: a bigger way, and storage is one of the things
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: that smart people seem to worry about when they worry
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: about the energy transition. So tell me more about storage.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: So, in terms of storage, the electricity system, as I
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: think you suggested earlier, is the largest commodity chain in
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: the world that doesn't feature storage. Like every other commodity chain,
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: like agriculture or transportation fuels, you have like tank farms
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: right in like agriculture you have like grain silos.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: Sure, perhaps the most ancient storage humanity has y is
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: grand slamless.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: Everyone feature storage, so electricity has some. So the vast
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: majority of our storage in the US electricity grid and
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: mostly around the world is pumped hydro. Right where you
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: pump hydro uphill when you have access power, and you
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: let it flow back downhill and generate power when you
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: need power. So you start with that. So now what
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: you say is is storage valuable? Yes. When you have storage,
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: the variables become a lot easier to manage because you
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: have this built in capacity within the commodity supply chain.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: So everything doesn't have to work perfectly just in time,
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: which we'd learned during COVID is not something you want
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: to do anyway. Long supply chains just in time leads
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: to all sorts of disruptions, right, and we're seeing those
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: disruptions more acutely now when you have heat domes in
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: Texas or you know, winter storms in North Carolina, et cetera. Right,
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: and so so storage is now being featured. Now, the
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: question is how do you do storage. The utilities generally
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: like to do things in big, big sections, right, So
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: this is like Tesla mega packs in central locations. But
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: it turns out there's a lot of people who want
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: to do distributed storage. So, for instance, in Puerto Rico,
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: almost every solar system comes with batteries, and Luma, who's
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: operating the grid now, has just launched a program to
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: be able to unlock those three hundred megawatts of batteries
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: in people's homes to act as a grid battery.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: All these people who get a solar panel, who get
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: solar panels on their house and like a battery wall
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: to go with it, they can essentially sell the stored
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: power in their battery wall back into the grid totally.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: And in Texas they have launched this program to do that,
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: and people who participate in that program got their entire
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: summer electricity bill zeroed out because the electricity being sold
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: by the battery back into the grid was so valuable
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: that it zeroed out their whole summer electricity bill.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: So I mean again, these are like the happy versions
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: of the storage. People talk about there being hard technical
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: problems to solve in terms of finding you know, utility scale,
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: cheap enough storage.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: So I don't think that's true. Right. So remember, like
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: in the late seventies early eighties, we all decided as
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: a country that we wanted air conditioning, so there was
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: a lot of air conditioning added to the grid, and
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: the way we solved it was through natural gas peaker plants.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: So we built gigawatts and gigawatts over like three hundred
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: gigawatts of natural gas peaker plants and more transmission distribution,
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: and so that made the curve of how we use
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: electricity a higher peak during sunny days right where it's hot,
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: and then lower peaks at night. Right, So you can imagine, right,
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: So that made our grid less efficient. So that is
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: how we live today.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: Cause those peaker plants are an inefficient way to generate power.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: They sit there all the time, they're kind and.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: They run less than eight percent of the year.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: Right, So giant, huge, expensive capital equipment just sitting there
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: depreciate it.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: That's exactly off. And so so that budget can be
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: diverted to batteries, right, and today the technology that we
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: have today can be fully paid for by that budget.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Good framing, good framing more generally, just to step back again,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: you know, beyond storage, sort of the big picture. What
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: are you worried about?
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: What I worry about is that Americans don't believe that
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: we can do this. Like, for instance, on critical minerals,
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: people say, oh, jigger, you guys don't have critical minerals
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: lined up. You're still getting it from China. That's because
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: we weren't even playing in critical minerals for the last
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: until two years ago, like we were not putting our
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: shoulder into it. Today we are, guess what we have
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: more lithium than any other place on the planet, and
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: we can get it out of the ground super cost effectively,
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: and we are going to be self supplying ourselves within
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: four years because it sort of takes that long to
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: get a lithium mine up and running and the processing
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: and all that stuff out of Nevada, et cetera. But
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: we have all the resources, we just didn't choose to
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: prioritize it. But I just feel like sometimes like there's
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: this woe is Me thing going on and I don't
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: understand it. We have all the technologies, we have the
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: ability to commercialize it. We just got to put our
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: shoulder into it.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: I like that. I don't want to bring you down,
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: but I am interested. I'm interested in what you haven't
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: figured out, or what you're uncertain about, or something you
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: tried that didn't work.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: Like, I appreciate your Oh that's a very long list.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Great, what's something now, what's high on it? What's the
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: thing that week? I feel urgently.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: I'll give you an example on nuclear right, I had
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: a number of electric utilities that came to me and
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: basically said we would love to build a nuclear power
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: I was like, great, let's figure this out. We like,
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: you know, got all these things together, et cetera, et cetera.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: And then they came back to us and said, oh,
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: but you have to take one hundred percent of the
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: risk away from us. And I was like, that's not
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: how this works. I don't know what it is that
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: you think is happening. And so we have been working
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: our butt off to like ask them questions because we're
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: not allowed to force me to do something, but we
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: do technical assistance, and so we're saying, is that really
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: what you're solving for? Let's break that down into smaller chunks.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: Are you solving for this? Are you solving for this?
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: And we have slowly been able to make the conversation
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: make more sense. Now. I don't know whether we're going
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: to succeed in commercializing nuclear but without our intervention and
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: our facilitating the conversation through the technical assistance that we
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: can provide, I am one hundred percent sure that nuclear
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: power would be nowhere.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: Right. Your work may not be sufficient, but it is necessary. Yeah,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: we'll be back in a minute with the lightning round.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: Now back to the show. Okay, let's finish with the
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: lightning round. Are you ready? Yes, what's one thing you
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: learned from working with Richard Branson.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: That it is better to be underestimated than overestimated. Say more,
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: Richard Branson comes off as this sort of playboy, but
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: having met him and worked with him, he is as
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: smart as they come. But he doesn't allow people to
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: write these big articles about how smart he is and how,
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: you know, extraordinary he has a business, et cetera, because,
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: like it is, one of his biggest things is to
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: be underestimated.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: You've worked in energy for a long time, right, for decades,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: and I'm curious at sort of big blue sky handwavy level,
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: what do you feel like you understand and about energy
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: that most people don't understand.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: I think that fundamentally energy is innovation, economic growth, right.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: I mean people are talking about how AI is going
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: to take over the world. It's not going to take
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: over the world unless there's enough electricity to supply to AI. Right.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: When you think about all of the things that we're
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: doing to live a modern lifestyle, it all comes from
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: the premise that we have reliable, affordable, safe energy.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: What's the Jiggershaw rule?
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: You shouldn't do dumb policy?
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: Great, thank you for your time. It was a delight
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: to talk to you.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: This was a great conversation. Thanks for letting it go
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: in the ways that it went. It was fascinating for
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: me as well.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Jiggershaw runs the Loan Program's office at the US our
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: Men of Energy. Today's show was edited by Karen Chakerjee,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: produced by Edith Russolo, and engineered by Amanda K.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: Wall.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: You can email us at problem at Pushkin dot fm.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: We are always, always always trying to find interesting new
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: guests for the show, so if there's somebody who think
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: we should book, please let us know. I'm Jacob Goldstein
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: and we'll be back next week with another episode of
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: What's Your Problem.