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The Guy Who Built American Wind — and What He’s Betting On Next · Energy Empire

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I think you have to name it after him because the only thing
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he responds to his plays to his vanity.
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So I would name it the President Donald J Trump offshore wind
0:10
farm and I would paint all the wind turbines gold and he would
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love it. That's.
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All hello. My name is.
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Jiggershaw and I'm a clean energy entrepreneur.
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And I'm Jamie Nolan, a clean energy communications executive.
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And this is Energy Empire you're.
0:34
You're an executive. I know well a longer he dinged
0:38
me because he told me that he's been getting feedback that I am
0:42
underselling myself and not adequately describing my
0:47
expertise. So I'm working on that.
0:50
I'm just saying you're a baller. Thank you, I appreciate it.
0:53
We got to speak at Climate Week. That was so, so, so cool.
0:56
That was I don't do a lot of speaking engagements, so that
1:00
was really fun for me. Oh, for folks who missed it, we
1:04
had to improvise a session and I interviewed Jamie on stage about
1:10
all of her accomplishments and how she, you know, really
1:15
schemed to get the loan programs office back to its stellar
1:19
reputation that it deserves, which she did brilliantly.
1:23
And the audience ate it all up. They had never heard this type
1:29
of interview and they were like all about it.
1:32
Well, it was me alongside a lot of amazing colleagues at LPO.
1:37
It was definitely a joint effort, but it was fun because I
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have been to so many conferences and trade shows with you.
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And it's really funny because people will queue up to talk to
1:48
you, and Jigger will have like 10 people, like, standing in
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line when he's like, on the trade show floor at a big
1:55
conference like Mari Plus. And we stepped off the stage
1:59
from Climate Week and people were queued up to talk to me.
2:02
So that was fun for me. And so thank you.
2:04
So much I had to be your body. Person I had to be like, you
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need to wait in line like she's talking.
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To somebody, it was like the roles were reversed.
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It was hilarious. I really enjoyed it.
2:12
So thank you to the DC Climate Week organizers for inviting us
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and looking forward to, to doing more things like that and seeing
2:19
the the climate and clean energy community in DC and how much
2:23
bigger it's gotten. And it's just cool that we can
2:25
support an event like that, a whole week of events.
2:28
So today I'm excited we are having our this is our first
2:31
episode that will be really focused on wind energy.
2:35
Wind energy has been the OG right, because it was cost
2:40
effective in the late 90s. It had its big heyday in the
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late 70s with all those wind farms that were built out in
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California and, you know, solar was sort of too expensive.
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And so folks were focused on wind.
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George W Bush famously had a wind mandate in Texas when he
2:58
was governor. And so he's been around and
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people like Sandy Rice Key and, you know, Mike Hoss and you
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know, Michael Skelly and all those folks come out of that
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time and it's amazing to see what they've accomplished.
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I think over 10% of all of the electricity in the United States
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now comes from wind power. And when you look at the region
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from North Dakota all the way down to the Panhandle of Texas,
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it's like 30 to 50% of all of the power in those states.
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And so it's massive. It really is.
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I really, I don't know if people really have captured that.
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I don't, I don't know if that's really understood.
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You know, I think a lot of Americans, you know, you plug in
3:39
your toaster, you don't think about where the power is coming
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from. You certainly, I think if you
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were to pull Americans on their, their guess about where all that
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power comes from, I bet they'd be surprised to find out that
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wind makes up such a, a large portion.
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I know I'm back when I started in this sector back in like
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2010, wind dwarfed solar. I mean, solar was tiny.
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We were all working to try and get wind projects built.
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You know, one of my first big campaigns was working on the
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offshore wind campaign in Maryland to just even set up the
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policy mechanism so that offshore wind was just even a
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power generation possibility for the state.
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But it was really cool to talk to Sandy.
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I'm really excited to share this interview and hear more from him
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about what it took to to get the US wind power industry to where
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it is today. Oh yeah, no, it it was a great
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conversation. And it's one of those things
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were not only did we really cover, you know, his wind power
4:37
days, but the fact that he was early to figuring out community
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relations and marketing, I think was a super interesting thing.
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And I think the other piece that I want to dive into and was
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amazing was like, he really has been a fixture of the
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Charlottesville community, right?
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I mean, when you think about, you know, all the room energy
4:58
companies are from. Charlottesville, it's because.
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Sandy was in Charlottesville. He attracted them all to work at
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Apex and then they spun out of Apex and started awesome
5:07
companies. Let's talk to him.
5:13
Energy Empire is powered by octopus energy.
5:17
I hear it at every conference. We need more generation, more
5:21
transmission. You're saying we don't?
5:24
We do, but we're ignoring something faster.
5:27
Sitting in people's homes and EV is basically a 60 kWh battery
5:32
idle most of the day across the US.
5:36
That's gigawatts we're not using.
5:39
Utilities have pitched demand response for 20 years and it
5:42
still hasn't scaled. Why is this time different?
5:46
Because we're not asking customers to change behavior,
5:49
we're automating it. The grid treats customers like
5:52
demand. They're actually distributed
5:54
infrastructure. Connect those assets and you can
5:57
shift load overnight at scale. So the constraint isn't
6:01
technology, it's. Coordination the solutions
6:04
already deployed, we just need to use it.
6:07
Thanks, Natasha. That was Natasha Crowe, vice
6:11
president of marketing and comms for Octopus North America, if
6:15
that's the version of the Grid you want.
6:18
Check them out, the link is in the show notes.
6:27
Sandy, welcome. I'm not sure that I've ever
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heard you on a podcast before. Is this your like first?
6:34
Not my first but I I have not done many.
6:37
OK. Well, I'm so glad to have
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figured out a way to get you on. You have been building wind
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projects, I don't know, since like 2000, maybe before
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investors thought of it as an asset class.
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Is that right? Is it 2000?
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Yes. So when did you believe wind
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power would actually become a business?
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I was living in the Czech Republic for a couple of years
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and living in Germany for a few years and the Eastern Europe
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countries, the the snow can be sort of black.
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You know, it can, the pollution is, is, is really you can, you
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could feel it back then especially.
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And the thought was if I could ever put my career in a way
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where I could be sort of applying myself towards, you
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know, pollution mitigation. That was the big, a big idea.
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And you know, spooling forward in in the year 2000, there was a
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death in the family and I sort of had a career, but I wanted to
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step back and, you know, evaluate what to do next.
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And I've been the CEO and CFO of a software company and didn't
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really have any background in, in wind.
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But I remembered, you know, sort of what, what would I really
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want to focus my life on? Where, where would I want to
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have impact? And I came upon, you know, clean
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energy. It's clean energy would be a
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place where, where I could really address the issue of
8:00
pollution. And so at the time, solar was
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way too expensive, but when really presented itself as a
8:06
solution, it was competitive. And were you already in
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Charlottesville? Yeah, I was in Charlottesville
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at that time. OK, so you built Green Light
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Energy, sold it, and then you started Apex Clean Energy and
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scaled that up. So what did you learn the first
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time around that made the second company scale faster?
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It's it's about the team really. By the time we started Apex, we
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really knew who to hire and we really invested in the team.
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We recruited Mark Goodwin as the COO.
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He came from EDPR and formerly Horizon and he really knew what
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scaling a company looked like, right.
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And, and so our, one of our key strategies was just bring all of
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the key functions in house. So that's interconnection, GIS,
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legal, financing, engineering, construction, everything.
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And our, our other big strategy what, what we sort of figured
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out was we wanted to invest in the energy resource.
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So it was all about building value by understanding we are in
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the energy business, not in the project development business.
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And and so that that meant creating a portfolio of assets
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that were as big enough and that you really put money behind it
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such that you could be building consistently because that's the
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only way to have a business is to have consistent revenue.
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And this is an industry fraud with risk and, and are are real,
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you know, core competency was was just squeezing down that
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risk and, and figuring out how to how to survive in an
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environment that was very, very challenging.
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Yeah, I remember meeting Zelka and Mike Skelly way back in the
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day because we were backed by Goldman Sachs.
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And I remember, like, early wind power projects, you know,
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required convincing land owners, electric utilities, banks,
10:00
regulators about the sector's potential all at once.
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I mean, did you find any one of those parties harder than the
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other? I mean, you can sit down with a
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landowner, you can work with a utility.
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The regulators have their processes, but I'd say banks are
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where the big hurdle. Specifically, how do you
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monetize the tax credits that Congress wanted to give you?
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So if you think about it, you know, these transactions are
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huge and you're getting all these credits and you're never
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going to be able to use them all if you're if you're a developer.
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So you bring in a bank and the bank takes the role of
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essentially lending their balance sheet so that they can
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absorb the tax credits and they pay for that upfront.
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And that's how you use project financing to to get it built.
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Well, here's a fun question. What is your favorite win
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project you ever developed and where is it?
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What makes it special? For example, when I was in
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Hawaii over Christmas and my husband and I had just arrived
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and we just rented a car and we're like driving over, you
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know, through this mountain range and then suddenly there,
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there's these wind turbines and they're huge.
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And I was just like, like, sometimes like these, these
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projects are really visually stunning and they, they really
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just stick with you. Like obviously I was immediately
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like taking pictures and I, I'm sure I, I actually didn't look
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up what the project was, but it's beautiful on the island of
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Oahu. So what's your favorite project?
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Like make it real for our audience.
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Like tell them where it is and what it's like and and what's
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special about it. That's an easy question.
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My first and favorite wind farm was Elk River Wind Farm.
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It's the landowner we got to know right from the outset was
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Pete Farrell was in Kansas and 150 MW project and and had had
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many challenges took about five years.
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And so I guess you you learn to love the things you work hardest
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for. Is it still operating?
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Yes. 150 megawatts was large at that time.
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It was, yeah. I mean, today, I guess that's
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probably on the smaller end of what folks work on, right.
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But when you and I, I remember you and I talked a lot when I
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was at Generate Capital, because in 2015, you bet the farm on
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wind power when the tax credits had run out, right?
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And Congress was deliberating as to whether they wanted to extend
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the tax credit. And you really made a big bet,
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right? You bought up other people's
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development projects when they were less short, right?
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And So what made you so confident to make those big bets
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in 2015? It's a great question.
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I mean, I think that there are so many positive attributes to
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the, to the asset class and I just, I, I think that the
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industry even at that point was, was too big to fail.
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You know, GE was a player, GE is a picking, you know, U.S.
12:58
company. It's not as if I had any, you
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know, anybody's ear in Congress and, and people were whispering,
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but we certainly heard, you know, reassurances that, you
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know, people working hard at it. And frankly, you know, it was a,
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a calculated risk. We saw that a lot of our peers
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and, and smaller players had run out of money and, and really
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needed somebody to, to pick up the, the cost of carrying the
13:22
projects and, and pushing them forward.
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And we were, you know, of the mindset that this was the right
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thing to do. Certainly, you know, incredible
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value and we got a lot of them built.
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Yeah, you did. So far, listeners, you may not
13:38
be familiar with the stats around wind power.
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What's the state of the industry today like?
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How much power does the industry produce nationally, and how has
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it grown since you first started out?
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The growth has been near exponential.
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I mean, it's, it's, it's a perfect S curve.
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Recently wind hasn't been growing as fast.
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And I'll say that's in in part because solar and batteries are
14:01
a little bit stealing the show. They are easier to develop and
14:04
faster and not quite cheaper. But when does is, you know, it's
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really applicable in the best spots and and when it's when you
14:12
get those spots, it's unbeatable.
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And it certainly has advantages in the winter time or obviously,
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you know, it produces power 24/7.
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But I think it's bigger than the solar industry.
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I think solar is sort of approaching 8% of total
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electricity production in the US and I think winds at like 12 or
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13, right? Correct.
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Yeah, from a market share standpoint and the two of them
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together are bigger than coal. Yeah, super exciting.
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Kind of a stock and a flow thing.
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The, the, I think the flow of solar projects coming online is,
14:46
is bigger, you know, in any given year these days, then then
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when. So when was once the leading
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edge of clean energy? I know when I started working in
14:55
in this sector, that's what everyone was excited about then.
14:59
And solar was so tiny at the time.
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This was in like 2010 or so, around the time they get started
15:05
today. Solar and batteries, as you
15:07
mentioned, often get more excitement.
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They seem to have a lot of the political momentum and certainly
15:12
more capital attention. So what do you think has changed
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that has led to that shift? It's economics, it's the cost
15:18
curves accelerating. And again, when does, if, if
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you're going to be in the business of, you know, bringing
15:26
new power plants online when power takes longer and costs
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quite a bit more and you need a lot more engineering.
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And one of the big, you know, things you need to do is study
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the wind for, for a couple of years in order to get a really
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firm understanding of the wind resource and, and to underwrite
15:45
that resource. So, you know, it's consequently
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solar is easier for folks to develop.
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It's for the most part applicable more across the
15:56
country. And, and as such, you know, as
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soon as it started becoming economic it it really got a big
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lift. One of the things that you and I
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talked about and then Mark Goodwin also I think talked
16:08
about was the fact that you guys really took community engagement
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seriously early on, right? You put together big budgets for
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each project. As soon as you knew this project
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was likely to move forward, you got in early.
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You met all the political folks there.
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You put together ad campaigns, right?
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Who championed that within Apex? And you know, and the follow up
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question is like why did so much of the rest of the industry
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treat that as optional? That's a great question.
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I think, you know, we had been burned.
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It's not as if we got it right immediately.
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Maybe we we knew from from earlier years how, how tough it
16:44
could be. But the, the person who led that
16:47
effort at at Apex and ended up heading up a team of like 14
16:50
people was Davi Wilson. So she came from a background of
16:56
organizing, community organizing, and she brought a
16:58
lot of skills about understanding, you know, power
17:01
maps and who understand, you know, who across the community
17:05
is going to be the most influential and how to engage
17:08
early, you know, tell your story.
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And, and she had a way, she, she had a map that that that showed
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it was a really sophisticated way of assessing the risk that
17:21
any given community might really not like the idea of a wind farm
17:26
and not be interested in hosting 1.
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And that helped us calibrate how we would invest in order to, you
17:33
know, try to match in most cases, the fossil fuel interests
17:38
who were who were spreading misinformation.
17:40
And, and it was a real political battle in many communities in
17:45
these days that's still going on.
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Which brings us to our a great next point, which is that
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President Trump famously hates wind power.
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He is like, talk about community engagement.
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Somebody in Scotland really needed to get to him.
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They needed to power map that project and they needed to
18:02
neutralize him because no one hates wind power more than the
18:07
president. And he's even taking the
18:09
extraordinary measure of paying multiple companies now because
18:12
there were more headlines yesterday that he has now.
18:16
He's now paying off additional companies to stop developing
18:19
offshore wind in this country. So if you had two minutes to
18:22
sell him on wind power and try to change his mind, what would
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you say? My I don't think you can reason
18:30
with his convictions. I believe he's dug in and it's
18:36
probably for more reasons than than Scotland.
18:38
Well, you know what I would say, I'd say, Mr. President, I just
18:43
bought that wind farm and put a bunch of dynamite at the, the,
18:49
you know, sort of foundations of each one of those towers.
18:53
If you push this button like, we'll blow this thing up and
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then we'll like you just put your hatred for wind energy in
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the rearview mirror. That would be the easiest $200
19:04
million I've ever spent. I think you have to name it
19:07
after him because the only thing he responds to his plays to his
19:10
vanity. So I would name it the President
19:14
Donald J Trump Offshore Wind Farm, and I would paint all the
19:18
wind turbines gold and he would love it.
19:22
That's all mine. Yeah, I guess on that front,
19:27
Sandy, like is the anti wind fervor mostly an American
19:32
problem or have you actually seen that in Europe and other
19:34
places? There's push back all over the
19:36
world, but I don't think it's nearly as strong as in this
19:39
country. I mean, I'm interested in your,
19:42
you know, your perspective. I I never really tried to
19:45
develop wind outside of North America.
19:47
Yeah, I think you're right. I think that in general, there
19:50
is a level of minority power in the United States that you don't
19:55
have in other places. So like here, 20 very vocal
19:58
people can shut down a project when 98% of the community
20:04
actually wants the property tax revenue and, you know, and all
20:07
the other revenue that comes in. And those 20 people can make it
20:11
feel like, you know, everybody's against the project.
20:15
And and I find that whole thing to be weird.
20:18
It's weird and they're really working against themselves,
20:21
right? Because these are power plants,
20:24
they have very little impact. You can farm all around them.
20:28
It's it's it's then the land owners really want to do it.
20:31
So often times there's 40 to 200 land owners that are ready to
20:35
start collecting royalty checks and, and then it gets ripped out
20:39
from under them, usually after years of work.
20:41
It's really a shame. And that, you know, the, the,
20:44
the schools, the fire trucks, the bridges that you know,
20:47
aren't going to be repaired because there's no big taxpayer
20:51
parachuting in. I mean the places that get these
20:54
wind farms they have and solar they, they really get
20:58
significant benefits and then millions of dollars, sometimes
21:01
10s of millions of dollars a year.
21:02
Well, though you've stepped back from the day-to-day at Apex and,
21:07
and you and I reconnected after I bought my house here in DC You
21:13
know, I got one of the first houses that I think got a Pearl
21:16
certification. And so that's when I realized
21:19
you were part of Pearl, another Charlottesville company, And it
21:23
was so informative. So for listeners ever heard
21:25
about it, what problem is Pearl solving?
21:28
Wow. I mean, there is just a massive
21:30
blind spot in the real estate industry.
21:33
If you think about buying a car, you go up and look at the window
21:36
sticker, you'll see the safety ratings, you'll understand what
21:40
comfort features it has and be all listed there for you.
21:43
You're going to understand about operating efficiency, right?
21:46
You know, miles per gallon. You're going to see like what
21:49
fuel it uses. You're going to understand the
21:51
energy that's powering it, right.
21:53
Is it is it gasoline or diesel or electric?
21:55
All of that's right there in front of you when you buy a
21:58
house, that information is there, but it's you often have
22:02
to look for it. It's not put in one place for
22:05
you. So Pearl actually moved away
22:08
from just certifying houses because we are only addressing a
22:12
very small part of the market when we are certifying the best
22:15
houses. But over like 9 years, Pearl
22:21
developed very, very sophisticated, you know, using
22:24
building science, just a way to score the performance of a home.
22:29
There's hundreds of data points about any home and Pearl has
22:33
collected all of them and has ranked homes and scored them by
22:40
their performance. So the Pearl has a product
22:43
called the Pearl Score and that's an acronym for, you know,
22:46
SCORE. So safety, comfort, operations,
22:51
resiliency and energy. And energy is not efficiency.
22:55
Energy is like, have you invested in energy assets?
23:00
Do you have solar panels? Do you have a home battery in
23:03
your basement? Is your house ready for for an
23:05
EV? All kinds of things related to
23:09
essentially a whole new asset class that that consumers can
23:13
choose and they are choosing real estate and industry hadn't
23:17
and still doesn't really have a way to to assess them.
23:21
While Apparel Score takes each one of those pillars and and
23:27
ranks your home based on those and then gives you an overall
23:30
number that's comparable across houses.
23:32
I love this concept so much. I sold my house.
23:36
I sold a house in DC eight years ago and had a solar array on the
23:41
roof and definitely did not feel a solar array that was paid off
23:46
and did not feel that I earned the value of that or you know,
23:51
solar system back. Now the solar incentives in DC
23:53
are so good that that system had already paid for itself because
23:57
the S RAC market was so strong plus the net metering and it
24:00
penciled out. But here in Virginia, where
24:04
Dominion is my utility company, that's not the case.
24:08
So essentially, I mean, I put the solar on my roof because
24:13
that follows my personal beliefs that I want that solar energy
24:16
system to exist. But I did so with the assumption
24:19
that I may not get that value back when I sell this home in
24:24
like, say, 10 years or so. And this is the experience for
24:28
so many homeowners. Like, homeowners could spend so
24:31
much money on insulation, solar, efficient HVAC, batteries, and
24:35
often get little to no credit when they're selling.
24:38
And you're trying to change that story.
24:40
So why do you think the market has been so slow to value
24:43
efficiency? The information is buried.
24:46
It's you know, the information about the investments you've
24:50
made in the efficiency is buried.
24:52
The energy audits and other contractor invoices, other
24:56
documentation you might have is sort of disconnected completely
24:59
from the transaction itself unless you hand somebody a
25:01
binder, and even then it's not part of the listing.
25:04
And also, I just want to say there's a very important nuance
25:07
that that Pearl's picking up here.
25:09
Efficiency is hard for people to understand or relate to.
25:13
It's abstract. It's hard to get people
25:16
interested in a concept. What people want to hear about
25:19
is the benefits. So safety, comfort, operations,
25:23
resiliency, and, and energy assets.
25:26
Yeah, I'd I'd like to learn about all of those.
25:28
Those are things I care about and I understand.
25:31
So that's what people value. And Earl takes those benefits
25:36
and and translates all the technical language and
25:40
everything into a scoring system.
25:44
And, and it's they worked with the Department of Energy and
25:47
National Renewable Energy Lab. They, you know, the appraisal
25:50
institute, the I Triple E building Performance Institute,
25:54
they've all come over 9 years and helped Pearl because Pearl
25:58
was trying to certify homes. And so when we, when we made the
26:01
pivot and we, we, you know, essentially raided every home in
26:05
America, that foundation, that block is, is the engine that,
26:12
that, that helps people see the performance.
26:15
And we need now like the next step is, is to get, you know,
26:20
Realtor and Zillow and all those people to list it as part of the
26:23
listing. You know, they like data and,
26:26
and this is very legitimate, you know, data on homes.
26:31
And the fascinating thing is we're not going to be totally
26:33
right, right with, with all the public data that we have.
26:37
And there are hundreds of data points.
26:39
We let the owner, homeowners look at their score, obviously
26:44
go to the registry and if something needs to be corrected,
26:47
they can, if, if they got a heat pump 6 months ago or something
26:50
that can be updated and their score will update.
26:53
And so it's a way to, you know, build transparency for
26:57
everybody. It's not kind of not like FICO.
27:00
So in a way we are scoring homes from a lot of different
27:04
directions. We also, the operations piece
27:07
does tell you how much it cost to, we know, we estimate how
27:09
much it cost to operate your home over a year's time.
27:12
The energy point does tell you, you know, what's the net present
27:15
value of your solar system or the energy assets you've added,
27:18
you know, that you've invested in.
27:21
And so there's a real financial impact to the value of the home
27:25
for sure. And, and, and, but the, you
27:30
know, across the, the myriad of things you're looking at when
27:34
you're buying a home, this, this is going to stand out.
27:37
And the executives at Pearl, we've, we've got people from
27:40
Rocket and Zillow and other of the, the very large industry
27:44
players who we've recruited, you know, working to bring this to
27:49
market. We're sort of an alpha stage
27:50
right now. You can go now on to the Pearl
27:53
score.com and put in your address and you'll see, you
27:56
know, you'll see your, your Pearl score and can can go to
28:00
the registry. I'm I'm very excited about this.
28:05
I actually just got an eco city home award from my the city of
28:10
Alexandria. I and I'm about to put my sign
28:12
in the front yard like I want my credit.
28:14
So I want my Pearl swore Sandy. So I'm going to go get that, but
28:18
I also want to know if if homes start being priced fairly on
28:22
energy performance, like I really do believe it's such an
28:25
important factor. Does Pearl have evidence or like
28:29
data to show that this will change consumer behavior in a
28:33
meaningful way? Please say yes.
28:36
We believe so, yes. The certification certainly did.
28:40
So when Jigger got his certification for his efficient
28:44
home, the research showed over the years we could, we could
28:47
demonstrate, you know, empirically that that homes that
28:50
had certification sold for more 5% more was the the figure.
28:55
And I think that again, since we're not focusing on the words
29:00
efficiency, we're really ranking homes based on the safety and
29:04
the comfort. And just to bring this home for
29:06
a second, if you haven't a gas stove, the safety of your home
29:11
is the, the rankings going to go down, right?
29:13
Because the air quality, you know, people are concerned about
29:16
air quality and they should be, if you don't have the
29:17
ventilation, right? That can really harm you and
29:21
your kids. 40% of homes that have gas stoves have children
29:26
with asthma or, or conditions of some type.
29:28
So this is a a really real thing that that we're capturing and it
29:33
and it, it spans all types of categories.
29:36
It would be great to get to a place where you know, this sort
29:40
of Pearl score is a fixed every home, just like you have square
29:44
footage or school district comps.
29:47
I wanted to transition to communications.
29:50
I mean, you've really argued that we should stop saying
29:54
energy transition and start saying a replacement, right?
29:59
What's the difference? I mean, not going to be militant
30:02
about it. I say transition all the time as
30:04
well, but I think it's sort of more direct if you think about
30:10
what's happening, the entire energy industry is going to
30:16
change and we are heading to a place where we're just not going
30:20
to be using fuels anymore. And so you think of everything
30:24
that that burns something like cars or furnaces or the whole
30:29
sector needs to to swap everything out.
30:32
And these are multi trillion dollar markets.
30:36
And, and there have been companies like Tesla and many
30:40
others who see the car market and they say we've got a better
30:43
type of car and they bring it to the consumers and put it in
30:46
front of consumers and consumers can make that choice.
30:49
Once a consumer chooses an electric car, they've kind of
30:52
replaced their car. They, they haven't transitioned
30:55
per say, you know, transition suggests that they're doing it
30:58
slowly. Just the, the speed of the
31:01
change as well is, is I think more along the lines of of
31:06
replacement. So if you think about who gets
31:09
to choose what our future will be, it's, it's not the demand
31:12
that people selling stuff, It's, it's the consumers, both
31:16
businesses and private individuals.
31:18
And they're all leaning in and the growth curves all show that,
31:22
you know, people are choosing electric cars and, and they're,
31:27
they're choosing solar for their homes.
31:29
And those two choices, you no longer need to ask permission,
31:33
right? Like 20 years ago, you could go
31:35
to your utility and say, boy, I wish you'd do some, some clean
31:39
energy, but you wouldn't get very far.
31:40
This is a totally different game.
31:43
It's, it's like moving from Blackberries to iPhones.
31:47
It can happen really fast. And, and I think obviously the,
31:52
the war that we're fighting now in Iran has a lot of people, you
31:56
know, sort of looking very closely at electric cars because
32:00
they are now the more predictable, you know, stable,
32:06
you know, source of, of transportation.
32:09
It's, it's, it's scary to see your gas prices, you know, going
32:13
up. It's, it's a real economic
32:15
hardship globally and electric cars now are just so much
32:19
better. And they're, they're at a point
32:21
where they're actually at par or cheaper than the, the upfront
32:25
cost of the ICE car. So you one hand you're paying
32:29
the same or less for the car, then the operating costs are
32:32
much lower and and you're not paying for fuel, right?
32:36
Especially if you've got solar panels on your on your roof.
32:39
Yep, I've never I've never appreciated my solar array more.
32:43
I just charged my car for free. I just drive around for free.
32:47
I like never. I forget about gas stations
32:49
except when I need a snack. Yeah, snack stations.
32:53
Sex papers exactly. That's what they are now in my
32:56
family. People ask me like, how long
32:57
does it take you to charge your, you know, your electric car?
33:00
And I'm like. I mean I.
33:01
Don't even think about it. I don't know what's in my
33:03
driveway. Plug it in like we don't.
33:05
I don't. Have time?
33:06
Charging in my in dominion in Virginia yet although please,
33:10
please add that I would love to have that.
33:12
I don't even think about it. I don't even think about it.
33:15
I can't even tell you how how like the Peace of Mind
33:19
associated with that. But Sandy, I love what you're
33:22
saying about like basically you're, you're suggesting that
33:25
the bottleneck for scaling all of these solutions is not the
33:28
technology, it's permission. And that's certainly something
33:32
that Jigger and I talk about all the time.
33:34
So can you talk a little bit about that where you see that
33:37
theme of, of permission being most valid?
33:40
Is it like in terms of permitting, politics, culture,
33:44
utility, incentives, all of the above?
33:47
Where are we on that topic? I mean, it's all of the above.
33:52
We've talked about permitting. There's a real like predatory
33:55
delay. You can credit Alex Stefan for
33:57
that quote for that terming. But the the fossil fuel industry
34:01
is making it hard to get permits.
34:03
The politics are absolutely challenging these days.
34:06
And culturally, you know, I think climate is bearing down on
34:14
the fossil fuel industry in the sense that every day we're all,
34:17
you know, the question is being presented to us, when are we
34:20
going to, you know, when are we going to respond to this?
34:23
And are we just going to drift? And I think that when society
34:27
decides to act on climate, it'll be a real paradigm shift.
34:31
And that's I think culturally what's what's needed, the
34:35
politics of today is, you know, it's noise, it's incumbents
34:39
resisting change. It's divisive politics, it's
34:43
denial, it's misinformation, it's chaotic and there's a lot
34:47
of uncertainty and that's stalling decisions, that's
34:50
keeping society from moving forward and seeing what really
34:53
needs to be done. And and so that discord and and
34:58
strife is holding us back. You know, the old script is
35:02
we've been, we've we've had a diet of bread and water, right?
35:06
The old script is we're dependent.
35:08
The problems too big futures, Grimm, there's clean energy
35:13
myths, climate denial. We need like a new narrative to
35:19
confront the doom and the gloom and the fact is and and not many
35:25
people know this unless you're in the energy industry.
35:27
We're making huge progress and we're dominating the like new
35:31
additions of clean energy globally.
35:34
You know, over 90% of what's new capacity coming online for
35:39
utility scale is solar or when 90%, you know, there are
35:44
solutions like EVs and and you know, huge public support.
35:50
And so the trends are favorable. I just say that the narrative
35:54
then if we're talking about politics and culture, the
35:57
narratives missing, we need people to understand that their
36:00
choices matter, that this is actually working.
36:03
The industries done decades of work and and the products are
36:07
here. Well, we're certainly in that
36:09
moment today. I mean, I just, I think with
36:12
what's happening in Iran, it is very clear to everybody around
36:16
the world that like we need to start scaling, right?
36:18
You saw that China, China's exports went up 21% just in the
36:22
month of March alone versus February.
36:25
And so I think they exported 2 and a half million cars last
36:29
year. They're going to export almost 7
36:30
million cars, electric vehicles this year, right?
36:33
And so I do think in the areas where it's obvious solar,
36:37
battery storage, EVs, you're going to see this massive scale
36:41
up this year. I wonder, though, what
36:45
advantages fossil fuels still have in your mind that the clean
36:49
energy people underestimate. Obviously you're not going to
36:52
power your Boeing 747 with solar panels right now.
36:56
Definitely not. And the advantages they have, I
36:58
think it's just goes back to influence.
37:00
It's the last, it's the last thing they have.
37:03
They've lost the the battle of physics, they've lost the battle
37:05
of economics, they're losing in the markets.
37:08
And at this point, you know, somebody should call the game.
37:11
They are losing market share and and it's time to stop, you know,
37:15
fighting progress, I would say, but they.
37:17
Well, China does feel like they're trying to call the game,
37:20
so it does feel like there's somebody in there.
37:23
You've got to admit it's like we've got the electron sorted,
37:26
but not the molecule, right? I mean, we still, like you
37:29
mentioned jet planes. That's where my mind immediately
37:32
goes. I mean, I know we were trying
37:34
really hard to get some work done on sustainable aviation
37:37
fuels back when we were at LPO, but that it just realistically
37:41
the technology it's, it's not there.
37:44
It hasn't scaled yet, right? And then the other thing is the
37:47
biggest accelerating use of fossil fuels is in the
37:52
production of plastics and it goes up and up and up every
37:55
year. So I mean, I think that we've
37:58
got electrons sorted. I think we have so much more to
38:01
do on the molecule. And So what do you say about
38:04
that, Sandy, in terms of what what needs to happen there?
38:07
What do you see as a trajectory in terms of replacement when
38:11
we're looking at that that kind of area specifically?
38:17
Those areas are tough. The products are coming, but
38:20
they're not as far along as the electric sector for sure.
38:24
And I and I think that it's not an area that I have a lot of
38:27
expertise. But the other type of energy
38:31
that we're all using a lot of is just food, how we feed ourselves
38:35
and the, the progress there is staggering fermentation and, and
38:39
cultured meats and all kinds of food products that in some cases
38:44
you're actually already consuming because they're,
38:47
they're not coming at you as a, as a consumer.
38:50
They're going into the supply chain.
38:52
And they're identical molecularity to other products,
38:56
other proteins that are, you know, might end up in your, I
38:59
don't know, condensed milk that you're drinking at Starbucks or,
39:03
you know, in your, your vitamin powders or, or that type of
39:06
thing. So, you know, there's a lot of
39:08
work to do there as well. And it's an area of incredible.
39:11
There's a lot of progress that that could be made and and
39:14
people that are working hard at it.
39:16
So Sandy, I, I wanted to finish out on just your experience in
39:23
building a clean energy ecosystem in Charlottesville,
39:28
right? Because not only did you start
39:30
Apex in Charlottesville, not Houston or San Francisco, but
39:35
you actually invested in a lot of, you know, companies locally.
39:39
So let's start with like, what's so special about Charlottesville
39:44
and what advantages did that give you?
39:48
It's in the water, right? It's, it's Jefferson.
39:50
It's the ghost of Jefferson. It's a great question.
39:54
I mean, it's a great place to live.
39:56
I was born and raised here. I have accumulated, you know, a
39:59
lot of capital over the years, building and starting and, and
40:03
selling companies. And I've always felt like it's
40:08
not really. It's, it's, it's the product of
40:11
the work of our teams and, and, and, and the, you know,
40:14
attractiveness of these products and, and how much success we've
40:17
had. These have been for the most
40:18
part, really profitable businesses.
40:21
And so there's, there's a lot to work with there, a lot of
40:24
resources. And I've been plowing it back
40:25
into, you know, climate solutions.
40:27
And so since I'm here, I'm like, looking around the solutions,
40:31
maybe, you know, people in Charlottesville are, you know,
40:33
knocking on my door and saying, Hey, you know, I've got an idea.
40:37
Well, when I started S Edison in the DC area, I mean, we were the
40:41
only major clean energy company you could work for on the East
40:45
Coast. And so like we really attracted
40:47
the best and brightest. And you know, most of the folks
40:50
who we were attracting, we're getting paid on the GS schedule
40:54
in the DC area. And so our salaries were a lot
40:57
more, you know, sort of reasonable, but also nobody
41:00
would, would be able to steal our folks, right, Because they
41:02
didn't want to move to California.
41:05
Their their grandparents who live nearby, like everybody was
41:08
here. So like, we was great for
41:10
retention. I mean, we, we really lucked out
41:12
and had, you know, the best people.
41:15
Yeah, I mean, there's plenty of people who have left Apex and
41:19
and started other companies in Charlottesville as well.
41:21
So the people are, you know, obviously key to that whole
41:25
ecosystem. We brought a lot of people in
41:28
town. A lot of people were really
41:30
thrilled to get out of the big cities.
41:32
They had young families, they were professionals starting out
41:35
on their career or, or pretty well advanced and it was, you
41:40
know, an easy choice. So Sandy, I mean, just to finish
41:43
this out, I mean, you've been building extraordinary companies
41:47
for, you know, 2 decades. You spotted wind energy early.
41:52
You have invested in, you know, sort of waved and title, you
41:57
know technologies, you've obviously invested in home
42:01
certification and seen that through.
42:03
I mean, that's been a bit of a journey, right?
42:06
What opportunities are smart people still underestimating
42:09
today? I.
42:11
Think smart people are investing and they believe, you know that
42:14
we're going to electrify everything.
42:16
The opportunity is so big, it's possibly more approachable, you
42:21
know, getting into utility scale, anything of getting into
42:25
the energy business at that scale is got more, potentially
42:29
more hurdles. But the fact is that solar is
42:33
modular and scalable and, and it's this sort of energy
42:36
democracy that's just flowing all around the world.
42:40
And so homes, the distributed energy, I think has all kinds of
42:45
innovation, you know, ahead of it and, and, and tons of
42:48
deployment. I mean, we're just a few
42:50
percentage points compared to, you know, Australia's like is it
42:53
40%? Oh, yeah, No, I I'd say my
42:56
answer is for as large as batteries have become, it's
43:02
still grossly underestimated. Like I feel like batteries are
43:06
just going to change the world. I mean, the notion that like, I
43:09
have an electric vehicle whose battery is so large that it
43:14
could power my house for a week, right.
43:18
And I think vehicle to grid technologies are going to come
43:21
out like next year for almost every electric vehicle.
43:25
And if you have a power outage, you could just plug your car
43:29
into the to the panel and flip a switch and just, you know, run
43:33
your house off your electric car.
43:35
It's just it's not how much more progress we have to deploying
43:41
batteries. Completely.
43:44
And the whole transportation sector is going to lift the
43:48
electricity sector. It's going to add so much
43:50
flexibility to the grid. There's, there's a river, Amazon
43:54
River, of course, coming into the market, all with these huge
43:58
batteries and and they can, they can provide services to the grid
44:03
that that, you know, individuals would be paid for and that's
44:06
like a self reinforcing loop right there.
44:09
It's it's. Really exciting.
44:11
Well, Sandy, I'm just so pleased that you were able to join us to
44:15
Share your story with us. It really has been an
44:19
extraordinary journey and one that frankly has resulted in the
44:23
fact that every state from North Dakota to the Panhandle of Texas
44:27
is, you know, dominated by wind power production right from your
44:33
first project in, you know, in Kansas to, you know, like the
44:37
fact that I think I was now over 50% wind powered.
44:40
And so just just extraordinary. Thank you for being with us.
44:46
Thanks for having me. It's been, it's been a pleasure.
44:48
It's been delightful. Energy Empire is supported by
44:56
S2G Investments. If you haven't checked out their
44:59
podcast, I highly recommend it. They have a great recent episode
45:03
on the long term effects of the Iran war and the blockade of the
45:07
Strait of Hormuz. In the episode, Sanjeev Krishna
45:10
and Franco Sullivan and Bala Nagarajan make a compelling case
45:15
that this disruption could be the most powerful accelerant for
45:19
renewable energy in a generation.
45:21
And in future episodes they'll be exploring how those forces
45:25
are reshaping our food systems and ocean intelligence.
45:28
Sound interesting? Go find the S2G podcast and
45:31
start with the global energy order has changed now what?
45:40
Wow, well I mean that didn't disappoint.
45:42
It is amazing how calm Sandy is for having basically started the
45:50
wind energy industry, the modern wind energy industry in the
45:53
United States. Calm.
45:54
Yeah, that definitely he was. I really, really wanted to hear
45:59
the details about his favorite projects.
46:01
That's my favorite thing. I love it when we make the
46:03
projects real and we can really describe like what it looks like
46:07
for and what it feels like and what it sounds like for people
46:11
who maybe don't live near one of these projects.
46:14
I love wind turbines. I am always delighted when I see
46:17
them in real life. And it's kind of like a nerdy
46:19
thing that I do that I will always take photos of them.
46:23
And it's, I'm like, oh, look, you know, I'm like excited.
46:26
My daughter's rolling her eyes in the back seat of the car.
46:28
So it was really fun talking to him because he's been personally
46:32
responsible for getting gigawatts.
46:34
Gigawatts and gigawats, Yeah, big.
46:37
Watts and big watts of wind turbines out into our landscape.
46:41
Yeah, my son makes fun of me now because he watched Back to the
46:45
Future and now he's like, hey, they said jigawatts.
46:48
The other thing that I loved about talking to Sandy is just
46:51
how excited he is about like the Pearl score and the work he's
46:56
doing in Charlottesville and all the other stuff he's doing.
46:58
And then it was just like, and then the detail that he went
47:01
through around the marketing and comms focus they had for each
47:05
project, like it is it crazy that everyone doesn't take that
47:10
stuff as seriously as he did? It's definitely refreshing
47:14
whenever you come across an executive who really gets it,
47:16
particularly on the community relations piece of how.
47:20
I mean, you can't skip it. The permission structure for
47:24
building a large industrial project is so fragile.
47:29
And I think we're seeing that now with data centers that you
47:31
really cannot skip that community relations component.
47:36
And he really understood that from the very beginning and
47:39
that's one of the reasons he was such a big success.
47:41
And then as you heard, I am very, very enthusiastic about
47:46
the Pearl score and I will be getting one soon.
47:49
Oh yeah, no, it's worth it. The reports really great.
47:52
One other thing I wanted to highlight was he talked about
47:55
the big bets he took in 2015 around the tax credit
47:59
expiration. I think what people don't
48:00
remember is this is the tax credit deal where Obama traded
48:06
oil exports for the extension of the wind and solar tax credits.
48:09
So it was a big deal. If you remember, during that
48:12
period of time, all of the environmental groups were
48:15
against extending the solar and wind tax credits in exchange for
48:20
the oil export ban being lifted, right?
48:23
And so it was touch and go like people really thought that we
48:28
were going to lose the tax credits.
48:30
And and it was in that like moment that Sandy went to all of
48:35
the wind developers that were desperate and saved their
48:38
projects and bought them all believing that the wind tax
48:41
credits were going to get extended.
48:43
And Apex has, you know, been spending the last, you know, 10
48:46
years building all those projects that he bought at the
48:49
time, but like living through that moment because he was
48:52
trying to borrow money from Generate Capital at the time.
48:54
And so I was in the middle of it, like, it was touch and go.
48:58
A lot of people were like, I don't know that this is going to
49:01
get extended because the environmental groups are all
49:04
against this, right? And so Obama, like, had to go
49:08
over the heads of the environmental groups and say,
49:10
we're going to cut this deal. Wow, that's, I mean, that's an
49:15
amazing lore. I mean, no risk, no reward, but
49:17
that's what makes him a visionary, right?
49:19
To like really have faith in that moment that that wind and
49:23
solar would win out in the end. Is is really extraordinary.
49:26
And then, you know, just connecting that political deal
49:31
back to where we are now. Imagine if we weren't exporting
49:35
oil and gas to the extent that we are now with the Strait of
49:38
Hormuz still closed and those exports have become really
49:42
important. And because of the actions of
49:45
President Obama, we have the domestic oil and gas industry
49:48
that we do, which is cushioning us from the worst impacts of
49:53
this crisis in Iran. Oh, yeah.
49:55
I mean, you know, like, obviously everybody is crediting
49:58
President Trump for all this oil and gas production.
50:00
But I mean, a lot of the LNG was built under Obama.
50:03
Like Obama was like pretty pro. All the above, right?
50:07
And all that's below, as it were.
50:11
Yep, well, the Trump DOE is definitely trying to credit the
50:15
president for all of this, and I may or may not have left a
50:20
comment on a LinkedIn post and the.
50:23
Energy. Oh, Jamie, you could not help
50:27
yourself. Did this man, Obama did this?
50:29
We're not going to credit him for that.
50:32
Oh my God, you cannot help yourself, Jamie.
50:35
I can't help it. Well, listen, I like across a
50:38
couple of social media platforms, I had to hit the
50:40
unfollow because early on I was feeling very triggered.
50:44
But when I see things that are just patently untrue, there are
50:48
limits. OK, there are limits.
50:50
Yes, there really should be, but it doesn't appear that there are
50:54
limits right now. I feel like people just make
50:57
stuff up in whole cloth, but, you know, but it's, it's, it's
51:01
getting bad out there. I mean, like gasoline went up
51:04
twice in one day in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, to $5 a gallon.
51:09
And so it's it's getting bad. Wild.
51:12
But again, imagine if Obama was president.
51:15
Oh my God, he'd. Be freaking out.
51:17
Everybody would be freaking out at the the level of chill.
51:20
We're too chill. We're too chill.
51:22
We are too chill. And with that, thank you Sandy
51:26
Reisky, the Chill Wind Energy executive.
51:30
Thank you so much for listening to our podcast and thank you to
51:33
our sponsors. We are so grateful for your
51:36
support. And it allows us to not just do
51:39
1 episode a week. Recently we've had like bonus
51:41
episodes regularly. So thanks to Simon and Haley for
51:45
all their extraordinary work to get a lot of that stuff out the
51:48
door. And, you know, obviously, we
51:52
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51:55
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52:00
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52:05
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52:08
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