The Race to Net-Zero Emissions by 2050 With Jennifer M. Granholm | The Atlantic Festival 2024
for a discussion about America's Energy Future please welcome US Department of energy secretary Jennifer granholm and here to lead the conversation is Atlantic senior editor van R newerk II how y'all feeling y'all wait secretary thank you so much for joining us and uh I guess we'll Jump Right In we want to talk about America's Clean Energy Future and I imagine you might have a few things to say about that you want me to go yeah go ahead all right everybody who cares about uh climate change and This Clean Energy Future should feel really really great about where we started and where we're going um you know the president has this goal of getting 100% of clean electricity on the grid by 2035 and you should know that because of the passage of the inflation reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law by 2030 we will have in America 80% of our grid powered by Clean zero carbon emitting energy fantastic right so I feel really great about that and about the greenhouse gas reductions that go along with it let's let's take a step back what exactly is the Department of Energy's role in this energy transition yeah we are we are in it top to bottom side to side and everywhere in between so the department of energy for those of you who may not follow this so closely and who would um we uh we we have been historically a research science and development agency we have 17 National Laboratories we're doing all of this research in Next Generation en products how to make them better Technologies and we also shephered the nation's nuclear stockpile when we came in when this Administration came in and passed those amazing laws we we reorganized the department of energy entirely to have a column that focuses on deployment so while we have done research and development and early stage demonstration of clean energy now we do full-on deployment our motto inside the department is deploy deploy deploy we've hired a thousand people to make sure we can get these clean Technologies out across the country and that's the results that that we are seeing is because of the efforts inside of the Department of energy and the great folks who who work there top to bottom so what are your big ticket items in the department in uh over the last couple years and in the future well because of the inflation reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law the department of energy was given about a hundred billion doar to get these Technologies in partnership with the private sector out and so for example um the bipartisan infrastructure law is largely a law that allows us to offer grants to key Technologies to be able to see them deployed and the inflation reduction act offers incentives for companies like tax credits Etc to lure them to the United States um so we have since the passage of those law seen half a trillion dollars invested Across America $6 by the private sector $1 by the public sector in pockets all across America we have over 800 factories that have announced that they are coming or expanding in America to produce the Clean Energy Technologies that will get us to this big goal of 100% clean that's happening all across the country and so the big players in that of course end up being solar and wind from just a deployment point of view we're also obviously investing in all other kinds of energy I know we can talk about these next Generation Technologies but um you should also be excited that um you know if you look under the hood of those stats that I was giving by 2030 we're going to see this year in terms of the amount of energy we add to this grid we will be adding 60 gaw of energy to our transmission grid this year 60 gaw is essentially 30 Hoover dams and in that 30 Hoover dams that we're adding and of course we have to add more clean energy to the grid because we want to Electrify transportation we want to make sure that we have enough power for all these data centers with AI that that are coming on board and then all these factories that are opening up across the country require all this new energy but on the solar side we will be adding this year 38 GW so you know 19 Hoover dams of just solar on our grid this year now you mentioned powering our data centers is there are there uh sort of is there competition in that grid now will we have enough uh grid capacity for America's AI uh goals in the future and also uh be able to meet our clean energy gos yeah that's exactly what we are focusing on this is why we're adding so much power to the grid now and we are also investing in Next Generation Technologies in addition to solar because these power these data centers and everybody wants to see clean baseload power right and that's power that is not just solar when the sunshines and not just wind when the wind blows but also what are the technologies that make those Technologies like Basel load so that they're available 24/7 and the the biggest technology to do that of course is battery battery storage and so we've invested in long duration battery storage for utilities if you can get batteries that last 10 hours or more that wind and solar become like Basel load but we're also investing in other types of clean energy that's that's 247 for example one of my favorites is enhanced geothermal bless you enhanced geothermal and that is the heat beneath our our feet um and that is very exciting because we think we've got you know 150 Hoover dams worth of Base load power from enhanced geothermal to be able to add to the grid so these next Generation Technologies are exciting but we're also seeing these data centers partner with Next Generation geothermal companies or small modular reactors nuclear companies that are building these smaller reactors not just the big AP 1000s that are 1 gaw but maybe they're 300 megawatt uh plants that are more modular and and uh can be used in all sorts of ways so bottom line is we're we can totally add the amount of power that's necessary that is clean to the grid and these laws that were passed and signed into law by the president uh and voted the deciding vote by the Vice President um these laws are enabling us to be able to do that as a nation now obviously in the four years prior to 2021 the department had aight slightly different clean energy strategy uh or lack thereof and has it been difficult has it been a challenge for you and the department to ramp up uh quickly after that radical shift in uh priorities you know I think um the the department itself full of an unbelievable civil servants are all about science and they are excited to be able to work on the technologies that get us to these goals of solving climate change and of adding this clean electricity to the grid so honestly the when these laws came into being and we reorganized the department to be able to account for that people have been totally excited and totally enthused about um you know about working in this department we are now one of the best places uh to work in the federal government and people love the mission of course if you've got a mission that you believe you are solving the biggest existential problem we have who wouldn't want to be there if you are investing at an unbelievable rate in solving that problem we're in the middle I mean as we say I have a I have an all hands meeting at shortly after this and so you know I'll remind people that you know sometimes when you're in the middle of History it's hard to know because you're in the middle of it but this is history making what is happening now across the country in this deployment of clean energy our folks really feel that mission it's September midep and the elections around the corner on the other side of this how was the department thinking about with all of these new priorities all of people who are involved in this radical transformation uh safeguarding that kind of work in that strategy well obviously um we are uh we have over 100,000 people most of them are civil servants and so they take that responsibility of shepherding uh the department and its Mission very seriously um we have because we were given a huge amount of resources to be able to do all of this deployment our Focus has been on how do we make sure that we make the selections that are necessary so that that money is secured and and it will go forth uh and so we are uh we have been doing really well in terms of being able to make those selections so by uh the time that there is a transition um we believe that things will have been well in Motion in a way that can't be uh undone under are awake y' are under the Biden administration's uh justice 40 program uh 40% of the overall benefits of federal climate and clean energy programs they should flow to disadvantaged communities how is the department identifying and what those benefits are and how they are Quantified yeah this is such an important question because um well first of all the laws themselves embed Equity into them meaning that there for example say you are a solar uh developer and you decide that you want to put a solar uh Community solar project uh and you put it adjacent to in a disadvantaged community perhaps adjacent to uh public housing so you get a 30% tax credit essentially as a solar developer for doing a solar project that's a tax credit not a tax deduction right so on top of that if you put in those um that development using americanmade solar panels you get another 10% so now it's a 40% tax credit if you locate in a disadvantaged community you get another 10% now it's a 50% tax credit if you locate next to um multif family housing affordable housing you get another percentage tax credit so you can get up to and if you pay prevailing wage and you use apprenticeships you can get another 10% you can get up to 60 to 70% tax credit for locating that clean energy project in a community that has been left behind and that's embedded Equity into these laws which is great number one number two um we when we give out grants to companies these are all competitive grants right so we evaluate them based upon a community benefits plan and that Community benefits plan has to say what are you doing for the community what are you what are are you engaging with the Community how many jobs will go to the community how will you benefit the workforce in that community and I say that because of all of the funding that I was talking about like that half a trillion dollars 81% of that are going to counties with below average wages so that's that's you know rural areas that is urban areas but it is these are communities that are hungry 81% of all of those opportunities are going to communities where people are looking and are hungry for those opportunities so it's working that we are I think you know in in the Jewish tradition they have tuno which is you heal the world the way this has been deployed the way this is working is that we are healing the World by giving opportunities for these communities so we're excited about that let's talk LNG so so recently uh the Department's been in the news because of federal judge uh blocked the administration's Pauls and LG liquified n natural gas exports uh what sort of levers are there left to continue the policy well what what we of course um just to put this in perspective liquefied natural uh gas is the is the gas that's exported from the United States because you have to liquefy it in order to to Transit it uh to to countries who want it right we are the largest exporter of natural gas in this fashion in the world and um there's so much that is queued up to come online that um it we had to pause just to pause the permitting of new ones I mean the existing ones are all going we're still the largest all that but we wanted to take a look using our National Labs at number one what is going to be the global demand for liquefied natural gas going forward what are the greenhouse gas impacts of this infrastructure will we be building stranded infrastructure will there be Demand right and what are the greenhouse gas impacts um what is the demand looking like from our allies like who are looking for natural gas and what are the impacts on the ground where these terminals are often on the Gulf Coast often in disadvantaged communities that have felt the negative impacts of uh these developments so our labs are in the process of doing a study and we said we're going to pause new permits until we get the results of this so that we can evaluate those requests based upon the most recent data the judge came in um and said you can't pause you've got to continue to permit um and so since we got that ruling we have permitted one additional um uh facility but we're evaluating them all as they come in and this study that we are doing doing should be the F draft first draft of it should be out by the end of this year for public comment so that we can continue to um evaluate the impacts both positive and negative of uh LG across the globe depending on the uh results of that report would the department and the administration uh be looking to or be open to changing our LG policy well let's just say that the natural gas act requires us to evaluate uh permits or authorizations uh based upon whether it's in the public interest and so what's in the public interest has to be evaluated based upon science and our best data and so you know we're going to look at what those factors are when it comes in from the studies so there there may or may not be an adjustment depending on what the studies find how is a department managing the workforce effects of this uh transition of the of the of the of the energy clean energy transition uh okay this is amazing to me first of all uh we know that the the job creation rate under uh this Administration has been amazing right more jobs created than any Administration in any time in American history that's great the clean energy component of that is also great just in the clean energy space over 400 ,000 jobs have already been created that is twice the rate of growth than in the rest of the economy and those are happening in all pockets of the country giving opportunity all the way across the nation it's very exciting what is the role of nuclear in uh this portfolio going forward yeah we're very bullish on nuclear um the Next Generation reactors these small modular reactors that I was referring to when we were talking about the data centers um they are very promising uh our allies around the world would like to see them as well we have a gold standard uh regulatory regime in the United States because the first issue is are they safe right um and we have the bipartisan infrastructure law and the inflation reduction act have incentivized additional nuclear now they're expensive nuclear is expensive and so the question is at what point um will there actually be a Tipping Point for because once you can take these small modular reactors to scale you can see more of them because the cost will be reduced we're hoping that these uh hyperscalers the data center folks the microsofts and Googles of the world that they decide to maybe buy a a sixpack or an eight pack of these small modular reactors so that they can be manufactured at scale and those prices uh come down but the incentives for clean energy are still there with nuclear existing nuclear as well as new nuclear and let me just say one other thing about nuclear that I think is very exciting and in the department of so nuclear is about fision right splitting atoms but the Next Generation the really next generation of nuclear is about Fusion which means you push them together and you create energy and that Fusion doesn't create any radioactive waste and that if we crack the code on that so our one of our inter ational Labs achieved Fusion ignition which means that you got more energy out than put in in trying to create the reaction achieved that uh in December a year ago um and so that was the first time in the world that that had happened tells you the importance of investing in basic science and research so we know it can happen now there's a goal of getting a commercial Fusion plant within a decade and there's all sorts of companies that are investing in making that happen happen that kind of clean Basel load power is extremely promising still a little bit out but we are very bullish on that as well while we are still using fision how do we deal with that waste and make sure that it is equitably uh cited yeah this is this is really important too because obviously you want to um you want to make sure that waste is disposed of in a way that is um not um you know the where the Community accepts it so we have we are in the process of something called communitybased sighting a process where we are in conversation with a number of communities who are willing who have the right geography because often this is disposed of deep beneath uh the surface who have the right geography and who are who are um who are willing and eager to be helpful to our nation to serve our nation in that way and would be compensated obviously for doing that so we are we would like to see this happen in a way that that is accepted and embraced by a community to do the the sighting of waste uh facilities so that's number one but number two is there's a lot of work that's being done in recycling as well um France for example recycles their uh spent uh nuclear Fuel and uh if we can look at that as well that's an it's another option that many um that many companies innovators are now looking at as well in the United States before we let you go I want to ask you the question that we talked about backstage do you and the Department of Education have to fight over who gets to be called the doe we are the doe tell that to secretary Cardona no we are we are the doe and as um many of you know who know acronyms we are capital D capital O capital E they are capital D small o Big E so that's the big difference thank you so much secretary
2024-09-24 00:50
