The Cheapest Grid Is the One We Already Paid For

When something's comfortable, you're going to stick with it. But we are in a very uncomfortable moment, you know, in Northern California. It's pretty normal to have a $800 utility bill or a $1,300 utility bill. We are trying to be like, Hey, here's an effective way that might be a little uncomfortable. That's going to allow you to continue to run your business and do your thing. But it's going to save everyone a lot of money. Hello, my name is Jigger Shaw and I'm a clean energy entrepreneur. And I'm Jamie Nolan, a clean energy communications consultant. And this is Energy Empire. Welcome to the show. Hi, Jigger. Hey, we had a fantastic launch. Like I, I thought it was, it was so great. I got tons of positive comments and I think people are hungry for the personal story behind the story. Yeah, I think it went great. I was very nervous, but my friends were so supportive, lifted me up. I, we really appreciate all the LinkedIn posts and all the love. So keep it coming, keep the reviews coming, rate, review and subscribe. As they say, thank you so much for the support and stay tuned because we are, we have a lot of very exciting guest planned. Well, I got a lot of feedback that the only reason they're listening is you. So I appreciate you being on this journey with me. Thank you. Well, I have to balance out, you know, all these podcasts feel these energy podcasts are so broy. So it's nice to have some female energy in the conversation. It's good. Well, you know, we're breaking on one of our good friends today. Are not Paul, as you know, we worked with him at the loan programs office, but more importantly, I think he's just a fantastic friend and collaborator and he has always had way better political instincts than me. And so he's kept me a lot out of a lot of messes that I otherwise would have gotten myself into. That's definitely true. And yeah, I think between the two of us, he on the political front and myself and the media front, we were definitely very focused on trying to keep you from putting your fun in your mouth. Stepping in it. I think that's what the technical term is stepping in it. And I think we were mostly effective at that. But yeah, so another friend of the pod and our knob founded a clean energy advocacy group called deploy action that is really doing something very different from any other group in the space. Well, I mean, the thing that I love about it is, I mean, we're clearly in a very crowded space, right? Lots of organizations, et cetera, but I do think that, you know, he has a dispassionate perspective, which I find really endearing where the work matters to him. Don't get me wrong. But what he really cares about is making these governors look good, right? Like, and that's kind of what they want, right? Like, like, there's a lot of trade associations and others who want what they want. And they don't care what the governors want. But I think he comes at it going, how do I make sure the politician looks good out of this? And so they're enthusiastic about helping me. And that is a completely different point of view, I think, than most other, you know, folks have who are in the advocacy space. So I know that you have been involved in deploy action from the very beginning jigger. So what's your role there and kind of what do you, what do you do with our knob and how do you support their work? Well, when our knob came out with, you know, his plan here, you know, I helped fundraise for it and some aboard chair at deploy action. But also, you know, like every once in a while, he needs me to show up and, you know, and and press the flesh with, you know, the legislators in California or in other places to get people enthusiastic about the work, right? And I'm happy to be helpful. Yeah, I'm excited for our audience to get to know our knob and deploy action and learn more about what they're trying to do and why. This episode is supported by S2G investments. If you've been listening to me, you know that I'm done talking about R&D. We have the technology. The real question is, can we deploy it at scale? When I joined Sunjeev Krishnan on the S2G podcast, we skipped the hype and talked about what actually matters, affordability, fit for purpose capital and getting real infrastructure built. S2G investments is one of the only firms who brings that same deployment first mindset to energy, agriculture and the oceans, connecting the dots across the real economy. Listen to the S2G podcast on your favorite podcast app now and start with my episode on energy affordability. Are not Paul welcome to the podcast. I think our second friend of the pod, um, actually having me. Well, you don't have a choice. I mean, we were going to draft you onto the pod regardless. So I barely have a choice with you, Jitter. Arnav, you're the executive director of the Clean Energy Advocacy Group Deploy Action. And of course, before that, we were all colleagues at the Department of Energy's Lone Programs Office. And you and I were senior advisors. Well, senior consultants, as they say, advising jigger on political and media strategy. But tell us a little more about how you made got your start in energy. Yeah. So, you know, I, it all started kind of with that KPM juja, where I, you know, I think we've all been through this in, in lives when we're, we're young. We take a job for the money and a lot of us like me, like while we loved the people we worked with, we absolutely hated what we did. And we, you know, I was like 23 years old, wondering like, am I just going to do this rest of my life show up at 8 a.m. Leave at 8 p.m. Eat some C p K on the way out the door and down 10 L.A. You really work California through and through. That's like California pizza kitchen. Yeah, exactly. It's right across the KPM G tower. It's where here's where I realized not to be a lawyer. Cause like I would go home at 8 p.m. and take my C p K to go and all the lawyers at L.A. P.M. and walk ins would go take their C p K and go back to the office. So I was like, yeah, no, I'm not doing that for a living. So I, I basically was like, Hey, I want to do something that I like doing. I became an AmeriCorps volunteer for a year to both see figure out my life. I worked for goodwill industries. Then I went back, I went to grad school for the first time. I went to grad school twice. Anyone listening to this podcast, you don't need to do a grad school twice. It's really not. Wait, wait, I need to understand. Did you like, did you get anything from goodwill that you still own today? Oh, yeah, tons of stuff. They have these like, so they have these like really nice goodwill's like in Palo Alto and San Francisco where they have like really nice clothing for, for cheap. And like they, the people never wear them. And it's like brand new essentially. And it's like 90% off. So yeah, I'd buy some stuff from there. I think I still own a coat from goodwill. So all right. I mean, you know, like it's good to be a value shopper. Yeah, always. I mean, you know, like it's, it's why we're friends. You know, you like to, you like to eat at Panera bread and I like to buy cheap clothes. Rifted is very on trend right now, you guys. So wait a minute. Wait a minute. Thanks, Jamie. I appreciate that. So when and how did you get to DC? You know, that's a great question. So I, it was all done by Zoom, right? Because it was during COVID. It was during COVID. So I think, you know, at the time I've been watching homeland like every episode, like every night. And I really wanted to go work for the CIA, which is what you do during COVID, because you don't know what's going on in your board. And so I applied it to being the CIA. I got through like the first round. And you know, I think I got any further than that. And if I did, I don't think I'm allowed to say so. Your charisma wasn't enough to get into the CIA. It was not enough to take them. But not enough for the CIA, not enough ribs for that. Yeah, it's just disappointed. But I also got a call from, you know, I interned in DC in college from an old mentor of mine who said, you know, the congressman I worked for at the time at Marquis, he's now a senator, needed a new energy advisor. His last one went to, went to the administration. So I interviewed on Zoom, you know, basically gave the pitch. Just to why, you know, I thought I could help them pass a climate bill. They bought it, which is great. So, you know, I went from Zoom in California to DC in 2021. And I spent the next two years, which, you know, trigger you were part of unofficially or officially in some ways and working on what became the inflation reduction act. So, and, you know, I think a lot of what we do today also is shaped by the fact that we were able to get something really big done and keep some of it from, from, you know, even the repeal in 2025. So look, that was a, you know, a great life experience. It's, you know, it's how we met early on in the process. And, you know, I think the two things I sort of learned from it was one, nobody really knows what they're doing and nobody has any projections on what's going to happen. So the key, the key is to just always stay ready because, you know, anyone who worked in there with me knew that there was a very slim shot, we were ever going to get anything done. And somehow in the end, it all worked out. And, you know, I played a small part in that, but, you know, there were so many people that were naysayers in that process. And, you know, you have to stay ready with, with the legislation and the ideas and coalitions because at any moment, you could have a chance. When President Biden got elected, a lot of promises were made. And everyone was afraid to break those promises. So we were all pretending like we could pass a bill for six trillion dollars. And deep down everybody knew that wasn't even close to possible. And the reason why it took so long to get there is because it took us 18 months to come to terms with reality. And I think when we look at this next time around, we should come to terms with reality a lot quicker because we could probably get a lot more done. And what happened in that first year is we danced around and made everyone feel good. And eventually we realized we weren't going to get there. We jeopardized the chance to do anything. And in the end, we, we got a little lucky with a lot of skill in the background from a lot of really smart senators and congressmen and women. And we were able to, to salvage something which became the Inflation Act. All right. So like, so we were really close. It sounds like to not having the Inflation Act. Yeah, absolutely. That was like the likely scenario. We snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. Yeah. I mean, if they had Calche markets, like I think, and if, you know, staffers were allowed to bet in those markets, I think everyone would have bet against us. So after you served in the US Senate, you left and joined us at the Loan Programs Office. We had gotten this incentive program called the state energy financing incentive, um, Sefi. And I guess the state energy financing initiative, so many acronyms, so little time. In any case, um, we were not getting enough loan volume from California, where, even though we were getting accused of sending all the money to blue states. And so like, I sent you to California and said, like, figure out what the hell's going on in California, right? Like, and I wonder what you think of that experience, right? Because we didn't in the end give a lot of loans to California. But I do want to understand like why? And, you know, what is the challenge with the coordination between the states and the federal government? Yeah. And to be fair, it wasn't just California. I think, I mean, California is where I worked, but I think the interesting thing we found out was in a lot of the places where we expected there to be interests in our programs, there weren't the kind of uptake we thought there would be. So New York, California, Massachusetts, whereas there was tons of money being put out in, you know, Georgia, Michigan, Tennessee. And part of it is, you know, a lot of what we did was tax credit and loan based. And you need to be willing to build projects. And people are less likely to want to build big projects in California, New York, than in those other states. So that led you in some ways to start deploy action, right? Like so after we left office, you were like, I want to, you know, contribute. I want to give back. I want to understand, you know, like why these dynamics are what they are. And like tell us the origin story of deploy action. Yeah. So look, I think we started thinking about deploy action. And I used the proverbial we because there's so many people involved really like last in the fall of 2024. And the idea was like, Hey, if there's going to be four more years of the inflation reduction act, like we should work in these states and get them ready to really bring the money in. But when I say bring the money in, I don't mean like the grant dollars, right? There's always like cities and counties and groups set up to bring in the grant money. It's like, but who's going to help the project developers want to build those projects so we can bring in all the tax credit dollars and all the loan dollars, which are really like with the big pieces of it. I think along the way, you know, even after the election occurred the way it did, we realized like, Hey, these states still need help. And, you know, I think there's a different way, a different paradigm. It's like if you're going to be a state that's a clean energy champion, I think you need to actually champion the building of those projects and make sure you don't have ones that are constituents who want to protect the environment, but also want to stop these projects from getting developed. And another set of constituents who are trying to develop these projects and are getting blocked in their process. All the while, while these states have these goals to like build up so much clean energy. So that's the like the policy rationale behind all this. And you know, there's obviously like spiritual and communications pieces to it as well. What is deploy action? So deploy action is a 501 c4 with the 501 c3 sister organization deploy action fund organization that is dedicated to building out clean energy affordably in in the states. And we start with the states that that have always wanted this that have built the policies for this. And are now having some trouble actually getting across the finish line on these bold and audacious goals they put out there. I mean, there's a lot of clean energy organizations out there, right? Trade associations and environmental nonprofits, advocacy groups. I mean, why does deploy action need to exist? So what does it add to the fray? Yeah, that's a great question. It's a very existential one, right? Look, we should take this. I'm taking this conversation a little bit in a different direction. I think the policy rationale is what I just explained to you all. And I think what the other piece of this is really like looking back in time. So I go back to 2017 when Trump was first selected. The environmental movement was extremely successful over the next four years to a point where they made climate change and addressing climate change the number one issue for a new democratic president and a democratic Congress, which just wasn't the case in the the previous administrations, both Republican or Democrat. And you know, going back to the IRA, you know, days, as we started to move towards chopping off parts of the build back better or whatever it was. The last thing that remained standing was the clean energy tax credits and the climate mitigation pieces. And that was because of the narrative that was developed by a lot of great, you know, green groups in the process that said like, Hey, this is our existential crisis. We must address it. And I think it was successful. And when I thought about, well, do we just run that playbook again? I also thought about the things we didn't accomplish the things we failed in that while climate and energy and and and the environmental protection is a very popular issue. It's not a strong issue in that it's never people's top one, two or three issue. So when I look at how we rebuild in 2025, I didn't want this to just be a climate or environmental group. I wanted it to address an issue that people cared about every day, which is their pocketbook, right? It would just always been a top three issue. And my thinking is if we can build an organization that addresses, you know, clean energy deployment, but really through the lens of affordability, we can not only be popular like, you know, climate environment was, but we can also be a forceful issue that people actually vote on. And that's the real thinking behind this. I mean, there's some nuance to this, though, right, which is that the environmental groups had their own political rails, right? They like elected people to office. They had all sorts of other things that they did. But oftentimes they couldn't get to the finish line with just those rails, right? They needed labor. They needed, you know, other groups, right? I mean, part of, I think what you recognized in California, which I think has been super impressive, but also in some of the other work that you've been working on in Virginia and other places. Is it each state has their own mix of reasons why things pass, why they don't pass. And I think you've been more scientific about studying it, right? Sometimes the environmental groups are the right way to pass something. And sometimes it's, you know, other issues that I think come to the foreground, right? Yeah. And look, this is like sort of inside baseball versus outside baseball. So I think what a lot of us realized is, you know, when it comes to inside baseball, the environmental groups have been around for a long time. I think they're trusted as advisors. I think they're technically very sound. But ultimately they don't deliver votes in some of these capitals the way, you know, a healthcare organization would or a woman's organization would or a labor organization would. So I think it's going to take some time for those groups to build up that kind of capacity if they want to. But in the meantime, you know, they, they really need to partner with the people who can bring those votes. Both, you know, internally in the halls of Albany and Sacramento and, and these state capitals, but also like on the ground, right? Like so when someone runs for state office in California, especially on the democratic side, which is almost three. record as a legislature, like they generally run their campaign out of the IDW office, right? They're not running it out of the NRDC office, right? And that's not a problem. So the natural follow up to that question then is like, is a lot of people actually, particularly in the clean energy area, you know, try to claim that they're going to stay above the fray, right? They're not going to get political. They're bipartisan, whatever. But like, I don't think you're staying away from the fray. You're right in the middle of the fray. Yeah. And to be clear, we're nonpartisan. Like we will, you know, we'll work with, we'll work with anyone. You know, we have bills that we've championed that have gotten unanimous support from Republicans and Democrats. I think when you're thinking about California and New York or some of these, you know, more democratic states, it's, you tend to be with one side of the aisle because that's where the action is. Yeah, no, you have to. And look, I think a lot of this is like, people don't realize like when you're a state legislator, especially in a consensus state with one party, you, you have a lot of power with the pet. And you can do a lot of good things and making sure the right people are elected and the right people are in the right committee chairs. Like that's how good policy happens, right? A lot of the early climate policy that California did was because they were right people in the right places, you know, and it's not just writing bills and just, you know, posting on social media is like, that's great. But it's not enough. You have to champion the people who champion you. All right. So can you give me an example of, you know, your impact like where you've helped move policy or drive, you know, driven measurable results? Yeah. So one of the things that we're really focused on here is the utilization of the grid, which I think we'll talk about more. But, you know, to really address affordability, you need to be able to control the costs of building infrastructure. So, you know, we have this concept that we've worked on with, you know, so many other partners in the business community and the environmental community that utilities should use more of their existing infrastructure. And we've already seen that legislation pop up in multiple states. There's a bill in Virginia that the governor is championed that is, you know, that is still not all the way through but has made tremendous progress. So we're already seeing our impact here in less than a year. That's awesome. So, if you zoom out five years, what does winning look like for deploy and what happens if we don't get this right? Yeah. So, again, I go back to the template of what I saw between 2017 and 2021. I really think winning is everyone acknowledging that the next generation of the clean energy and climate fight is not so much about getting people to buy into the existential crisis, which obviously is true and occurring. But for these folks to realize that like what this industry does benefits their lives every day, not just humanity, you know, over the course of the next 50, 100,000 years. And success is taking that and putting into frameworks that are, you know, that that states can push. But success is also like building a national platform and that's not just going to be deploy action. It's got to be a whole host of groups working together so that the next time there's an opportunity to address the grid and clean energy that there is an affordability plan that every consumer in America is going to benefit from. So our knob you and Jigger are co-authors of a new white paper dropping today called grid growth utilization and affordability. And I know it's meant to be kind of a playbook for states, governors, regulators, other state officials on energy affordability. So let's start there. Are governors about to get blindsided by a grid affordability crisis? Well, I don't know if they're going to get blindsided, but they're about to deal with a grid affordability crisis. So and I think they're well aware of it. And that's really why the motivation behind putting the time into this paper and thought and getting people together to really put our thoughts down. Yeah. I think when you think about, you know, there's sort of a tale of two governors here, right? I mean, governor Spanberger and governor Cheryl both got elected at the same time. I think, you know, governor Spanberger has really pushed this grid utilization concept. And frankly, I think has gotten a tremendous amount of people enthusiastic about this, right? Folks in the grid utilization category, folks who focus on distributed energy resources, folks who are interested in battery storage, folks are interested in reforming the way in which the electric utility deploys innovation, right? So I think that there's really a big tent of enthusiasm, not just of entrepreneurs, but also of like capital that wants to, you know, run into helping to solve this problem, which I think has to be part of a solution that, you know, the governors are pursuing. Like we need a lot of investment, you know, frankly, to drive this affordability into innovation, right? I'm pretty excited about the approach that, um, that is outlined in the white paper, but, you know, what do you think, aren't I? Yeah, so look, I think these are like common sense ideas for the most part, as in like use more of the existing grid. Uh, let's see how we can incorporate, you know, distributed resources to, to address reliability. Redenhancing technologies, rate design. So I think the issue, and this goes back to almost, you know, the climate opinion issue is if you ask someone, oh, should we use more of the existing grid to save money? Everyone's like, yes, but it's not really top of mind to anyone, anywhere, right? Like there's always like, hey, we're going to do this grant program or we want to do this EV program or there's always something or we want to, you know, in California, like take, you know, take, take all the polls and wires away from PG&E and start a new utility, right? There's, there's always stuff that's just way shinier than this, but if the shiniest thing out there is to bring down costs for people, then this is the object we should all be looking at. I mean, there are certain things that I think people just don't know, right? I mean, when people think about electricity, they really think about electricity generation. They don't really think about the polls and wires that serve them. And it happens to be that, you know, since the global financial crisis in 2008, right, the cost of generation has actually come down from the perspective of inflation adjusted level, right? So the fact that we have really expensive bills right now are really driven by the fact that we've had a lot of increases in cost in the transmission and distribution grid that serve us, right? And we frankly had a lot of innovation in that space, right? So when you think about like green enhancing technologies, a lot of what it does is realize that we measure the capacity of our transmission grid using a slide rule, right? Like, if you use modern sensors, like you can actually unlock 30, 40% more capacity out of that grid than people thought was there, right? I think the same thing is true with, you know, like batteries, right? When you think about, we have a lot of generation that goes underutilized, right? Because the transmission grid is clogged. If you put batteries on both sides of the transmission grid, you can use that existing transmission grid more efficiently. So when it's not fully utilized, you use it to charge batteries on the other side, closer to customers, right? So think like batteries at Walmart stores, battery at community centers, battery at churches, right? Battery at government facilities, batteries in people's homes, right? I mean, and this then alleviates the, you know, like sort of stress and the traffic jam on the grid for the several hundred hours a year where there's congestion, right? And that's way cheaper, like 90% cheaper than doing things the old way, which is like building new generation, upgrading transmission, upgrading distribution. And what you find is that that's the old familiar playbook that the utilities like to do. That's what they've known how to do for 50 plus years. And a lot of the technologies we're talking about, we've been piloting for 20 years. So it's not like it's new technology. It's just, you know, hasn't been scaled up. Yeah. And look, it's human nature when something's comfortable, you're going to stick with it. But we are in a very uncomfortable moment, right? Where prices are going up, everyone is seeing, you know, in Northern California, it's pretty normal to have a $800 utility bill or a $1,300 utility bill. This is the case in many parts of the East Coast. Like that's not comfortable anymore. So part of what we're trying to do is in the nicest way possible. And sometimes not the nicest way possible. And after we explain it, people get it. But you got to explain it like 10 more times. That's got now this works. Absolutely. So in the paper, you all make a pretty bold claim that virtual power plants are the fastest megawatts we can build. And I know we've talked about them in a couple of episodes now. But our VPP is really that impactful. And can you help me draw a line to how they help lower costs or reduce upward pressure on rates? It really is a sea change, right? And so the way that the utility works today is that you as a residential customer or commercial customer, if that matter, can do whatever you want with your house. Like you can turn every single thing on in your house at the exact same time. And the utility has an obligation. to serve you, right? And so as a result, they keep over building the distribution system. So like if five of your neighbors get an electric vehicle, they're like, well, just in case they all plug it in at the same time, we're gonna have to upgrade the substation for another $50 million, right? And what you find is all of the stuff is digital. You can control it on an app on your phone, right? And so if you say, hey, I'm willing to subscribe to a virtual power plant, 'cause I don't care when my electric vehicle charges, as long as it's full by the morning, right? I'm plugged in for 13 hours a day, and it only takes two and a half hours to fully charge it, right? And so as long as it's charged, I'm good. Then you can have a computer program actually make sure that not all five cars are charging at the exact same time. Same with electric water heaters, same with a heat pump. I mean, it's got to the point where Carrier now has a battery that they install in their next generation heat pumps so that they can avoid some of these peak demand issues, right? And so these are all features that you get when you buy an appliance. So it's not like you have to go out and buy something custom just to be subscribed into a virtual power plant. All of these new appliances come with an app on your phone, right? And so once you have an app on your phone, you can coordinate them. And that coordination saves a ridiculous amount of money, right? And so part of the challenge right now is that consumers are like, yeah, I'll take a 20% discount on my bill to subscribe to a virtual power plant. But then the utility also has to have a computer program on their side to be able to use the virtual power plant to actually make sure that they're using the grid that we've already paid for more efficiently, right? And so we're headed in that direction. There's over 433 utility virtual power plant programs in effect now across the country, across 2,000 plus utilities, right? So like almost 20% of all utilities in the country have one of these programs and more adding them every month because they don't have any other choice as our novice suggesting. They can't keep raising rates 9% here. So if you look at like someone like Duke Energy, you know, they had a very robust plan to invest in their grid to meet load growth. And they just increased that plan by another 18% because they wanted to do things in the most expensive way possible. Build new central natural gas generation, upgrade transmission, upgrade distribution. They separately have 7,200 megawatts worth of utility scale solar in the state and North Carolina that they already have contracts with, right? None of those projects have batteries. The hyperscalers have already offered to install batteries at all of those locations, which would dramatically reduce rates for everyone in the state of North Carolina. Duke finds that weird. I get it. It might be weird. You haven't done that before. But Lord Almighty, they're asking for a 15% rate increase right now to implement their current plan. That's a lot of money, right? That's a lot of money. And Jamie, if I can just add one point to this, you know, I think Jigger uses virtual power plants as like the ultimate utilization tools. But there's many ways to do this, right? It's a broad term. So like one of the things that we've been looking at is like, is there a program to sort of procure front of the meter distributed batteries, which, you know, used to be community storage in a way and corresponding community solar? Like, can we do that to ease, you know, burden on the distribution system and bring down costs? And the utilities can either rate-based procure own be a part of that. Like what we're talking about is not like a violation of the utility business model. Like we're not telling that they have to stop, you know, existing and doing what they're doing. We're just telling them that they have to fundamentally change what they're doing. And it will work for them in the long term. - So how's this being received by utilities? I know the playbook is about to be released, so they maybe haven't seen that yet. But just kind of the concept of grid utilization, VPPs, this entire kind of paradigm shift that you all are proposing. How's that being received, you know, in the private conversations that you're having? - Yeah, so look, nobody disagrees with the problem. Everybody agrees that this is a potential solution. I think that, you know, there's the pushback is, oh well, you know, there's a reason why we don't utilize the grid more. It's because we have to account for reliability and, you know, the equipment could go bad if we use it to a certain point. And, you know, I think they're sometimes missing the point because they have these set of arguments that they always like to use, no matter what, anytime tries to post something different. And what we're trying to say is like, hey, look, if you're utilizing 50% of your grid, you could utilize it at 65%, maybe even 70%, and still hit all your reliability targets. This is more about a culture shift, right? The culture has been our number one priority is to keep the lights on. Now your number one priority is to keep the lights on and bring costs down. And there are very smart people that work in the distribution and transmission planning groups in these utilities, they can do it. They can do both these things. I have all the faith in the world in them. And we need to sort of shift that culture and be like, now you have multiple problems to deal with and solve for. Part of that is having to make changes regulatory and legislatively, but part of it is just acknowledging that hey, we're in a unique moment and we need to change the way we operate. - I mean, digging just a little bit deeper into the culture change piece, I'd say that the CEO and CFOs of all the utilities are sort of required to be in sync with the governor, right, because the governor of the state actually regulates their utility, they get it, right? They can't keep raising rates this fast. And their Wall Street analysts get it, right? Like their Wall Street analysts are like, wait, what, you want to raise more equity over the next five years than you've raised in the entire history of your utility company? That seems Kuku, right? And so they get it, right? But like, they are sort of secretly or not so secretly saying, we like this criticalization stuff, because this now like allows us to blame the state legislature and the governor for forcing us to do this stuff. And it allows us to force the regulators to do this stuff who don't think that they currently have within their mandate, the ability to regulate grid utilization from the utilities. So the regulators are like, this gives me another tool by which to keep rates down. And the CEO and CFOs like, thanks, 'cause now I don't have to say this is my idea, I can blame the state legislature and the governor for forcing us to do this, right? And you know, like, it is what it is. Look, do I want everyone to just be all knowing and just do the right thing at every single time? Yeah, but right now, the utilities make more money by spending more money. It's not like odd to me that they want to make more money by spending more money. - So what do you want governors or regulators to take away from this report? Like if you could just sum it up in one sentence, what would you like to see them take away when they go to deploy-action.org and download the playbook? What should they take away? - I'll let Jigger answer after me, 'cause I'll go first, but my takeaway is the pathway to both controlling and reducing rates for your customers is to get utilities to smartly use more of their existing infrastructure. - Yeah, the only thing I'd add is just that load growth is your friend, right? If we accommodate load growth in a way that uses all these modern technologies, then rates might go down. Like I think everyone is like weirdly obsessed with making sure that rates don't go up as fast. I don't think what they realize is that if you follow this report, rates could go down, right? I think that's pretty awesome. - But Jigger, and let's clarify that, 'cause I think this is something that comes up a lot. These two things that you and I said are so related, right? They are tied at the hip, because there are a bunch of people going around saying, "Oh, well, if we have more customers and we divide the amount of money we have to spend by more customers, rates will go down." It's simple math, that's true. What has historically happened is when we bring in more customers, the cost it takes to build infrastructure to bring those customers in exceeds the benefit of having more customers, right? So rates go up. - Totally. - If you mandate or suggest or whatever you wanna call it, grid utilization, then you can do exactly what Jigger said, which is, "Hey, we have a bunch more customers, but we're using less of our infrastructure incrementally for each one of those customers." - No, I think that's exactly right. Using modern technology to take grid utilization from roughly 40 to 50%, which is where it is today for most utilities, up to 70%, which is where it was 30, 40 years ago, right? Is possible, right? That doesn't mean that we don't have to build new generation. It doesn't mean that we don't have to build really hard to build long transmission projects. We should do all of that stuff, right? But right now, in this moment, where everyone feels like we're in a crisis, we have the tools. We've piloted them. It's ready to be deployed. And if we do it correctly, we can reduce rates for everybody. Well, our knob, like you were sort of our political guru, like going. back aways here and like still are. There was a little fight that was started recently by Madaglaceus's New York Times op-ed that basically seemed to say that we all need to be like pro-oil and gas. And you know, our friend, Representative Sean Caston, went to town on Twitter on that. Like, can you break that down for us a little bit? Because I do think it matters how folks are positioning themselves going into the, you know, 2026 midterms in 2028. - Yeah, so I think there's two camps and you're using, and I don't know if they're actually two camps, but there's two different thoughts here. One represented by Matt Iglesias, the other one represented by Representative Caston. And what Madaglaceus is basically saying is like, hey, when we were all of the above like Barack Obama was, you know, we used to win elections. And now we don't win elections, and it's because we're a bunch of climate sellets and I'm overstating this. And Sean Caston's response is like, yeah, the world is on fire. Like, and you know, leading isn't, it's, you know, it goes back to the old statement. It's like, there's those who read polls and there are those who move polls. And leadership is about moving polls, right? And, you know, I think it's a little bit of a false choice this argument, because, you know, I think the reason why we won elections 15 years ago had nothing to do with, you know, us supporting oil and gas and being all the above. I think there was a lot of other reasons for it. I think the bigger thing here is that we need to be more open-minded and we need a new North Star, right? And all of the above in 2026 doesn't necessarily mean cheaper, right? And our North Star to help people every day is like, how do we bring down their costs? So in 2012, that might have been the case, but Chikr, we now know that the way to bring down people's costs isn't necessarily opening up a new natural gas plant. So my answer to the debate is, you know, yeah, we shouldn't, we should not hide away from climate, 'cause I think people still care about climate. It's still popular. It's not a forceful issue, but it's a popular issue. But we need to address people's problems, not be like, oh, we're for gas and oil, versus we're for solar and wind. That's not how people look at it. They look at it as like, how much money did I spend on my utility bill this month? - Yeah, I mean, when we were serving in office, I don't remember ever vilifying the oil and gas industry. So I don't think like there's any need to. There are hundreds of thousands of extraordinary people who work in that industry, who bring their whole selves to work every day. And frankly, some of them do really dangerous jobs so that we can fly on airplanes and do all the things that we wanna do. That being said, what I highlighted for them was that their stock price sucked, right? That like, their stock price is a reflection of stock analysts saying they're gonna divot in doubt all of their profits for the rest of time, and they just discount that back. That's like Warren Buffett 101, like how you like measure stock prices, right? They're not trading at like 50 times earnings. They're trading at like 12 times earnings, right? Because people don't believe that they're part of the future. They believe that their best days are behind them. I don't know why they would want people to believe that. And so I think that they should use their extraordinary skills to unlock geothermal power. Figure out how to do carbon sequestration and storage. Figure out how to get nuclear power off the sidelines. There's all sorts of things that they do that like, you know, they have the smartest applied engineers in our country, that they should be bringing to the table. So their stock price goes up. I think in general like this, like one dimensional way of looking at energy, bugs that crap out of me, right? Like I just think that our country has the best technology in the world. And the Department of Energy has funded it all. And it is sitting on shelves gathering dust. It should be deployed at scale as fast as possible to what you said, Arnab, to help people reduce their energy bills and to help maintain energy abundance for our country. Yeah, and look. I think that, you know, we, when we look at the oil and gas industry and we see historically how they've tried to get involved in more emerging energy technologies, the track record's not that great. I mean, I see right now they're really leaning in the direction of petrochemicals and that's really a lot of how they're making their money as plastics essentially. So, you know, what would you say to oil and gas executives at this moment? Looking back on, you know, their foray into, for example, solar, you worked at BP solar jiggers. Maybe you have a perspective on this. I know they have a tremendous workforce, very highly trained specialists. You know, they could be putting their expertise to good use with critical minerals, geothermal, nuclear as you suggested. Why not? Why are they leaning in the direction of plastics? Well, plastics are profitable, right? So that's why they're leaning into plastics and, you know, like people are addicted to a throwaway culture and I think we're gonna have to work hard to figure that out. But I do think that they are also leaning into innovation. I mean, Devon energy is an investor in Furveau and I think continues to want to do that. Darren Woods has stood up, I think, to President Trump and said, we're gonna still do our carbon secretation projects, we're still active in a lot of the other projects that we want to do. And so I think, and, you know, he's the CEO of ExxonMobil. And so like, I think that there's a lot of interest from the oil and gas after to do this. But I think that, I think that all of these arguments and I think third-way leaned in on this as well, like are on the wrong playing field. Like we should not be saying that these technologies are blue and these technologies are red. To me, energy abundance and prosperity, like are all like kitchen table issues. Everybody wants this stuff to go away from the top two and three issues and they want it to be a number 22 issue again. They want to not think about their electricity bill. They don't want to think about their heating bill. They don't want to think about these things, right? And we have the technologies to do that. So I think the playing field we should be on is, why is it so damn hard to do big things in our country? Right? When you think about the fact that we only have 5% or 6% of our rooftops with solar on it, why don't we have 40% like Australia has? When you think about just how hard it is to figure out how we actually have sufficient housing in our country, like we can make manufactured houses now in a factory and we can drop ship them places beautiful houses for like $300,000 all in delivered. Why don't we have those things? Because things are regulated at the local level and they don't want you to do that and the local home builders are against it. Like I think we've got to figure out why it's so hard to do things. And I think that if we actually had a good reason for why we can actually solve that problem, I think everyone would be super excited. And look, I actually do think there are people that are trying to figure that out. I think a lot of our problem is the discourse, which sort of goes back to the question that we had about Eglaceus versus Sean Caston. It's, I think on one end, Madaglaceus is right and that we shouldn't demonize other sectors that provide value to society. And whether you are a climate activist or not, like the oil and gas industry has provided a lot of value to society. Like if we go back to that 2012 era, one of the reasons why we were successful in the Obama years is because natural gas kept energy prices down, which kept inflation low and we were able to build a very strong economy, right? I think what's changed and I think where I disagree with that is that he now says like, oh, well, we need to be all the above in support of the gas. Like it may not make the same economic sense it did 15 years ago. It most certainly doesn't. I mean, just to be clear, if we build all of these natural gas power plants that everyone wants to build, we'll use 10 billion cubic feet of gas a day to power those gas plants. That will most certainly raise the price of making stuff in our country. Like we should be using the cheap natural gas that we have to outcompete Saudi Arabia and Europe and all these other places for manufacturing, right? Whether you're manufacturing solar panels or you're manufacturing batteries or you're manufacturing other things, you oftentimes use natural gas to help provide process heat to provide other services, right? The fact that we can get that for the equivalent of a penny a kilowatt hour, right? Our cost of natural gas is roughly a penny a kilowatt hour equivalent, right? That's awesome. I'd like to keep it that way. I'd like to make sure that we benefit from all the cheap natural gas that we have in our country. I don't know why there's a bunch of people out there that are like, hey, Jigger, let's double the price of natural gas in our country. Really? I don't think we should double the price of natural gas in our country. I get the fact that a lot of oil and gas people would like that because they'd be a lot more profitable. But I don't see how that's good for affordability. So recently, the Climate and Community Institute argued that when voters were asked to rank abstract issues, climate seems to lose to cost of living. No surprise there. But the real question is whether voters want policies that tackle climate change while delivering material benefits. They say that the evidence is yes, and they implicitly push back on messaging that hides the word climate. I know this has been a conversation with a lot of folks in my industry. Do we talk about climate? Do we bury that messaging? Do we lean on other benefits right now? What's your viewpoint on this, our knob at this political moment in time? Yeah, so I'm going to start by going back in time on some research I did as a grad student with a man by the name of Tony LeCerre. For which graduate degree? For the forestry school or now the environment school, school of environment, but good question. You don't do research in business school. So Tony LeCerre would say climate communications expert and him and I looked at one question in the general social survey, which is, are you willing to pay more to protect the environment? Yes, no, maybe it's a pretty standard question. They've asked it for like 70 years. This is important because it's this. It's not the aggregate numbers. Anytime there's a democratic president and we found statistical significance when controlling for variables, etc. on all this. Anytime there's a democratic president, that willingness to pay, that the answer that goes down over the course of the presidency because the thinking is that there's actually a lot of environmental work being done and people are like, we may not need as much of this. And then as soon as there's a Republican president, that willingness to pay goes up and people are willing to do more. I think we're going to be in the moment over the next two or three years where people are going to be mad about, you know, not having environmental protection and to completely eliminate that from our discourse as we talk about this is foolish. Yeah, I mean, didn't they just roll back like the mercury rule for coal, like as if pregnant women want to not be able to eat fish anymore because we have all these thermometers getting broken and you know, putting our mercury into our water streaming. It's while it's not and overturning the endagement finding very bad couple of weeks for climate policy, just absolutely gutting. I mean, I would push back on you a little bit, Arnau, because my viewpoint and whether we talk about climate is that you always, you always customize the message to the audience. And there are some rooms where climate works as a message and a lot of rooms where it doesn't. I have to say that most of my families, Republicans, I grew up in a very red, rural area of Maryland and talking about environmental protection and reducing pollution and conservation, open lands, like all of that plays so much better than talking about climate because in certain rooms it is so politicized that you just lose people. And so for me, I'm like, do you want to be right or do you want to be effective? And so I guess, you know, our good friends at third way pushed back on kind of this message from the Climate and Community Institute. And they actually tweeted and said, if climate and community wants to talk more about climate change, that's their prerogative, but will be over at the winners table. Yeah, I think that is narrow-minded. And here's why. I agree with you, Jamie. I think affordability is the number one issue. And, you know, that's where the focus should be. But there are people who care about different things in this country. And you're going to need all the people who care about affordability and how clean energy addresses affordability, plus all the people who care about climate change. And you need them to vote for the same things. So to exclude one of those groups, that's subtraction. And that's not how politics works. I think third way should note better. So, you know, I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying, but the way you win is by bringing everyone into a big tent. And sometimes you talk about climate. Sometimes you talk about affordability. You probably talk about affordability with more people, but to shy away from one of the, you know, most the biggest, one of the biggest issues, facing humanity, where there is a small but powerful constituency behind it, you basically lose the passion of those of those voters and those constituents. And that's not smart either. So, don't you think those voters and those constituents get it though? And that they're like, we're not talking about it this way right now, but we know what's actually behind all of this. I mean, I do think that like, I mean, at least from all of the speeches I've given, I mean, I really lean in on the economic message just because I think that's my natural state, but I don't lean back from the emotion behind my views on climate, right? I mean, I do think we're two storms away from Florida being fully uninsurable. We're already close to Florida being uninsurable. I think we're two storms away from every single company, including the backstop insurance provider from the state being fully bankrupt, right? I think people who live in Florida want to live in Florida. I think they like Florida, but like they will be unable to live in Florida soon, right? And I think that is a climate change issue, right? I just think that in general, when you think about just how emotional this can get really quickly, like people's lives will be turned upside down very soon because of climate, right? And I think they are turning upside down. They're already turning upside down for sure. Yeah. I mean, and I just think that like, so I don't lead with that argument almost ever, but I certainly am fluent in the argument and believe very strongly in the emotional purchase of the argument. I mean, Jamie, I'll give you an example of a different topic, but I think has a similar arc. So if you go back to the Affordable Care Act, generally the most popular provision was that people under 26 could be under their parents' insurance. And one way to talk about it would be like, we're only going to talk about that, right? And that's got like 70% approval. But I think the folks that did that work and knew that this is something that people are going to remember for generations. And for people to remember that, you need to talk about the moral benefit of what's going on. And look, the Affordable Care Act, not that popular when it was passed. We talked about how people who wouldn't have insurance would get insurance. And over time, it's become very popular. Part of that's because we won the moral argument. So I think you can lead with the most popular thing. And in this case, I think it's affordability. And I think everyone's going to benefit from clean energy bringing down people's costs over time. But I think if you want this to be a generationally changing issue, you also have to include the moral argument. And call it Obamacare. I mean, I think it depends if we're, are we talking about national messaging splashed on every front page and international ad campaign? That's one thing. But I mean, this is a tale as old as time. It's not new when I was at the Solar Energy Technologies office and we were all shocked the day the Donald Trump won in 2016. And we thought we, we were preparing for a Clinton administration. We were like having meetings talking about how we would execute on her solar rooftop bowl. So we were shocked. And then I spent the next three months rewriting every single piece of communication, like completely redesigning the identity deck. The might the top line talking points for the office, all the website to be Republican friendly. And I mean, the messaging hasn't changed jobs, economic competitiveness, national security. Like, you do not lead with climate. And so I guess I've been in this work. And you know, I worked, I worked under the Trump administration for a couple of months before I left. But I don't really care. I just want to win. So I think I'm on, I'm taking a page at a third ways book here. And I think that our technologies are superior and we are winning. And it's inevitable. It's going to take time, but it's inevitable. And I don't need to talk about climate for this technology to win on, you know, an even playing field. And so as long as we get where we're going, I don't really care what we call it. Well, our knob, like I think that like you are going to be able to keep coming back onto this podcast to continue this conversation. So like as the second friend of the pod, you will be back. But, you know, look, it's obviously not settled, right? You know, the Madagascar's Fish of Sean Caston, the third way talking points. People are going to keep talking about this. But either way, I feel like deploy action has cemented its role in, you know, move the ball forward, which I think is fantastic. So thanks very much for joining us, our knob. Thank you guys for having me. Well, we ended pretty spicy there, Jamie. And, you know, like, I like it. We did. I think I had some of my first hot takes. So I'm proud of myself. I'm a baby podcaster. So I'm growing. I'm looking forward to a lot more hot takes. I mean, but I will say that I was consumed in the last couple of weeks by the Olympics watched all of the like events and all the gold metal races, the hockey performance was extraordinary. I love the fact that at the very end, the guy was like missing two teeth and, you know, like bleeding out of his mouth, which is like totally prototypical hockey. So amazing. The Olympics have been on constant rotation at my house and I have to admit, my daughter was homesick. a strip last week on the best day because it was the day of the women's figure skating final. I don't know if you know this about me, but I very briefly was a figure skater. I did that for a couple of years. So I've got-- - I didn't know about this. Can you do a triple axle? - No. (laughing) I actually participated in a related sport. They call it synchro now, but it's basically synchronized ice skating and it's team, kind of like synchronized women. And there is a campaign to make it an Olympic sport. And it's so cool. So I really do hope that it comes to the Olympics. But I have to tell you that Alyssa Liu has got me picking my ice skates back up. I've been going ice skating. So thank you to the Olympics for the in-spell. - I mean, I have to say that like, I was fascinated by the fact that she has like teeth jewelry. - She does. She did her own piercing and she obviously has that very unusual hair color situation. I mean, I just think she's very cool. She's-- there's not a ton of opportunity to really express herself very differently, but she really leaned into it. And yeah, I think she's a great role model. So I've really enjoyed watching that with my daughter as well as all the other just badass women on the US team. And of course, I've been very closely monitoring Lindsey Vaughn's injury recovery. I don't know. Have you been paying attention to that? I'm a big Lindsey Vaughn stand. - I'm not. I like Lindsey Vaughn, but Lord Almighty. I'm all for geriatric skiing, but come on. That seems like a sport for young people. I'm not going out there 40 something years old. - Absolutely. I definitely the last time I went skiing a few years ago, I think my husband throughout his back the next day and we were done. That being said, Lindsey Vaughn and I are the same age. So she's like a major inspiration. I love seeing people in their 40s at the top of their game because not that I'm about to do that, but still like knowing that it's possible is very comforting. - I have a rule that I use with all my friends, which is that like at my age, which I am very active, you have to give a solid 85%. You cannot be giving 100% at this age. That's how you create all of these injuries. So I'm not saying you shouldn't be active and I love Lindsey Vaughn to be clear. She's an inspiration, but I'm just saying, give 85%, do yourself a favor and don't rip a muscle or like tear a tendon or all the things that people do when they give 100%. I'm happy to lose. I just want to sweat. I want to enjoy the sport. I don't want to be in a hospital bed for like two weeks. - Sure. I think that's very good advice for the pickle ball court. I don't know if it works as well for the Olympics, but I hear you. (laughing) - Well, thank you so much. It was so great to see our knob. And this is another edition of Energy Empire. You can find us wherever you find your favorite podcasts on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, absolutely on YouTube. You gotta smash that subscribe button as my son likes to say. And we will be back with you next week. (singing)