SUMMARY KEYWORDS

solar, grid, battery storage, hydrogen, energy, reach, Midwest, clean energy, wind, toehold, clean, interviewed, transition, interconnection, Biden, building, markets, thermal, episode, sales

SPEAKERS

Tim Montague

Today on the Clean Power Hour, we're going to do something a little different, we're going to do what I call a quick take, hey, I'm Tim Montague, check out all of our content and clean power hour.com. We're on all the audio platforms, and of course, here on YouTube where you can see the video. And, you know, I've just been thinking about the grid, and what's going on with society. And there's a tremendous opportunity for the United States right now. And that is reflected in what's going on in Washington DC. And it's kind of a both… and situation. On the one hand, technology has now reached an important threshold globally. Meaning, we have some new technologies that leverage renewable energy, wind, solar, and battery storage being the three core technologies. These technologies allow us to green the grid, and take solar, for example, solar panels, otherwise known as solar photovoltaics, they convert sunlight to energy. Photons are superabundant, we get 10,000 times more sunlight from the sun than we need to power all of society 10,000 times look it up. It's a thing. And then of course, those photons are also creating the wind. So, all wind comes from the sun. The sun is the source of all life on Earth. Without the sun, we're just a dark, cold rock in space. So, but the Biden administration got this infrastructure bill passed last year in 2021. And now that's turning into real opportunity. And so today, I'm going to talk about two of those opportunities. And if you like this content, please subscribe to the YouTube channel. Subscribe on your favorite podcast player, whether that's Apple podcast, Google podcast, Spotify, Amazon, etc. Give us a like, give us a thumbs up, give us a rating and review that really helps other people find the content, which is my mission, here at the Clean Power Hour and the Clean Power Consulting Group, which is a consulting, consulting business that I've launched now, which is helping cleantech companies accelerate their sales. So, I do strategic sales and marketing consulting. And, and I do also special projects. So, for example, if you're a developer looking to get into new markets, I can help you analyze those specially here in the Midwest. And I can help contractors who are trying to same thing break into new markets or expand in their existing markets. I've been in the solar industry full time now for five years. But I grew up with energy in my blood, I was doing backyard solar thermal with my dad in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I'm born in the Midwest but grew up in in the southwest. So, I've come full circle, and I'm here for you. And I'm here to speed the energy transition. So, let's get into the new stories that I want to cover today. And I want to put this on screen. The DOE has launched what's called the clean energy core. And this is a $66 billion program. With a be big program, they're going to hire over 1000 individuals to speed the energy transition to clean energy core is a diverse group of talented individuals committed to public service and with a mission of supercharging, the clean energy revolution. This is your opportunity to join us in making that future a reality. Regardless of whether you're new to clean energy, or have been doing this work for years, we want you as part of our clean energy Corps, and it goes on to list a bunch of types of people they're looking for. Okay, so listen up. If you're a young professional, a career changer, or just getting into school, this will give you a guiding light Business Administration, communications, engineering, finance, grants and contract management, human resources, information technology and cybersecurity. Huge topic there. Legal, Legislative Affairs, physical science program and portfolio management, project management, public policy, safety, and occupational health. So, as I've said many times on this channel, it really doesn't matter what your passion is, you can find a toehold in the clean energy transition. And I can help you as well. So, reach out to me on LinkedIn, I'm TG mountain have you on Twitter. And I will respond to your messages. So please reach out to me. And I will help you get your toehold in the clean energy economy. The second story that I want to talk about today is the US is tackling transmission barriers to net zero ambitions. And this is also related to the infrastructure bill. Let me put this on screen. And this is a story in wind power monthly. You know, one of the challenges with connecting renewable energy systems to the grid is grid capacity. The grid, you can think of it as a system of pipes. It's made of wires, of course, or cables, as we would call them, that are, you know, carrying electrons around the grid. It is the largest machine that humans have ever invented. It has been largely the same for about 100 years since it was invented by Thomas Edison and his colleagues. And so now 

Building a Better Grid

As part of the Infrastructure Bill of 2021 the DOE is launching an initiative to invest $20 billion in what they call ‘building a better grid.’ This is very important. There's a bottleneck for wind and solar projects across the US where there isn’t capacity on the grid and so these projects are stuck in limbo. They have willing landowners who want to lease their land for solar and wind projects. But they can't get interconnection with the utility. This initiative is to support the build out of long-distance high voltage transmission facilities to help us reach Biden's goal 100% clean electricity by 2035. Okay, that's in 13 years! The backdrop here is that we are going to triple the grid with the electrification of transportation so we need to greatly expand the grid. 

4 years, right? Or 13 years 2035. We're here we are in 2022. And there are hundreds of gigawatts of wind farms stuck in interconnection, this article points out due to lack of transmission capacity. Okay, so we need more grid capacity. What does that mean? We need more grid; we are going to triple the grid in the United States when we electrify transportation. Right now, new car, electric vehicles are only a few percentage points of new vehicle sales. Okay, but mark my word, we are at the tipping point. And by 2025, between 2025 and 2030. All it's going to completely shift. And we're going to completely phase out internal combustion engine cars, which is great, because then we have less carbon pollution going into the atmosphere, and we can begin the process of decarbonization, we really haven't begun that process. We've started to but the PPM of co2 in the atmosphere is still going up globally. Okay. So that's what I mean when I say that even though the green energy transition or the clean energy transition is moving along, and wind, solar and battery storage are the fastest growing sources of new energy on the grid globally, we're still growing our carbon footprint, through things like the expansion of internal combustion engine transportation, through the expansion of coal and natural gas power plants. We're not building coal here in the US, but we're building coal plants in places like India and China still. So anyway, we're going to triple the grid, we need a lot more electricity on the grid. When you stop using internal combustion engines, that is a huge amount of energy that you need and you're going to we're going to get that from grid power from wind, solar and storage. Remember, there's 10,000 times more solar hitting the earth then we need in a year to power all of society. Okay, we're rich in solar energy. 

Now I also want to encourage you to check out more of our content here. There's so many great topics and I'm going to just go to clean power hour. Okay, Clean Power Hour, done. Calm. Let me put that on screen and show you around here. Now, in the top, you find episodes, Link videos, that'll show you the link to the YouTube videos. There's also a YouTube channel link right there. And then you see all the episodes here. Just last week or this week we dropped James Geshwiler the co-founder of Catalyze Energy; they are bringing rooftop solar to non-owner-occupied facilities. This represents 90% of the real estate in America a huge percentage of real estate, just all these rooftops, a lot of warehouses, but also hospitals and office buildings. Those buildings can host solar arrays, and the owner can then collect rent from this developer named catalyze. So anyway, that's the thing. Matt Lensink and Lisa Katz at cm engineering, cleaning up thermal power. Great episode, we talk a lot about next gen. thermal solar thermal, we talked about carbon taxes, they're influencing the Canadian market, and hydrogen and hydrogen is coming. You're going to see a lot more content for me about green hydrogen, you take green electrons from solar wind, right, so we're in wind, or wave or hydro. There's all kinds of clean energy sources and water. You zap the water with an electrolyzer and produce hydrogen and oxygen. And then you store the hydrogen either in a compressed form in a tank, or you can make it into a solid form. And this is a thing. It's also going to be used in industrial applications. You can make green steel with green hydrogen, land stewardship in the solar industry with Rhett Kirby of Kertec. Great episode on land conservation as it relates to solar construction. And Rhett and his colleagues are down there in Texas but working across the Great Plains and the Midwest. Just lots of lots of nuggets of wisdom there. And then we broke down the new CG legislation, I will continue to bring you lots of information about CEJA. Here, Illinois is now gunning for 100% Clean, clean grid by 2050. Okay, and so lots and lots of new solar wind and battery storage coming into Illinois, we have an amazing battery storage program, incentives for storage which make the battery cash positive in two years. And then, and then of course, me and John Weaver, my co-host, are bringing you the news roundups. We've been doing those a little less frequently because we have so many interviews but and then long-term storage, talking about hydrogen with Ally power and Joseph Alfred dome energy with Claudio Spadacini of Energy Dome. Great episode. So, and then I'm going to do a series on Bill Nye C's book freeing energy. I did a great interview with him. You can see here I think that's episode 60. November of 2021. Check that out. And Bill Nussey has a great podcast also called freeing energy. But he wrote this great book that I'm going to do a series I'm going to do like a five- or six-part series on this book called free energy. I probably won't go through it chronologically, but I'm going to kind of pick and choose and, you know, Bill interviewed some real thought leaders like Amory Levin's who founded the Rocky Mountain Institute, and soup to nuts, he's just he's covered the distributed energy, the Digi world soup to nuts and interviewed many thought leaders from the US and beyond. So, you can look forward to that in future episodes, please visit clean power hour.com. And check out our audio content, check out our video content, subscribe to the YouTube channel. And please reach out to me. I can't tell you how much I love to hear from my listeners. I do this for you. And I do this for the clean energy transition. And so, get into dialogue with me and good things will happen. I promise I have a huge network on LinkedIn. I love to connect with people on LinkedIn. So please reach out to me. I'm Tim Montague. Let's grow solar and storage. Take care everybody