Congressional Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Policy Forum (EXPO 2022): Energy Security

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) and the House and Senate Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (REEE) Caucuses held the 25th Annual Congressional Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Policy Forum (EXPO 2022) on July 25, 2022. In the fourth panel, panelists discussed the importance of domestically-sourced energy from renewable resources, U.S. business leadership and innovation, and how our investments now can lead to greater energy security, more competitive industry, and the creation of many secure, domestic jobs.

• Joseph Bryan, Chief Sustainability Officer and Senior Advisor for Climate, Department of Defense (DOD)
• Timothy Unruh, Executive Director, National Association of Energy Service Companies (NAESCO)
• Andrew Bochman, Senior Grid Strategist, National & Homeland Security, Idaho National Laboratory (INL)
• Charles Bolden, Director of Congressional Affairs, Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA)

Highlights

Joseph Bryan, Chief Sustainability Officer and Senior Advisor for Climate, U.S. Department of Defense (DOD)

• Clean energy, sustainability, and energy efficiency are essential to the Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) mission. Military installations rely almost exclusively on the commercial electric grid for power; however, this grid is at risk due to severe climate change-induced weather (e.g., hurricanes and extreme heat) and cyber attacks.
• Adversaries are interested in targeting critical infrastructure to affect the United States economically and the country’s ability to mobilize forces.
• The best ways to mitigate risks to the grid is to make the grid as efficient as possible, to take pressure off it in the first place, or to use distributed generation and storage as a backup in times of crisis if the grid goes down.
• Two-thirds of DOD’s energy use is in operations. In times of crisis, adversaries want to keep the DOD from having the fuel needed to support a mission, which is known as contested logistics. In order to prevent this issue, it is important for the DOD to have efficient ships, tactical vehicles, and airplanes, so operations require less energy.

Timothy Unruh, Executive Director, National Association of Energy Service Companies (NAESCO)

• Energy service companies work towards efficiency, resilience, and the need for general facility improvements.
• The National Association of Energy Service Companies’ (NAESCO’s) members do about $7 billion of energy performance savings work a year with public facilities across the country.
• NAESCO’s members uses energy savings performance contracts to make energy improvements to public buildings, including better weatherization, lighting, building controls, water efficiency, and indoor air quality.
• Accountability and clear leadership are important in performance contracts to make sure that more can be accomplished than what is presently happening.
• NAESCO members work to get the most out of project funding by combining tax money with private financing and intends to bring resilience and efficiency together.

Andrew Bochman, Senior Grid Strategist, National & Homeland Security; Idaho National Laboratory (INL)

• It is imperative for the United States to move as rapidly as possible from carbon-emitting fossil fuels toward wind turbines and solar panels; however, this is a difficult task.
• As electric vehicles become more mainstream along with other trends towards electrification, more power will need to be added to the grid. Grid stability issues like voltage support and ancillary services pose significant challenges.
• In the context of building energy security in a carbon-constrained world, here is a five-part business case for coal to nuclear plant conversion:

• Coal plants are being closed without fully accounting for the lost baseload generation that they provide. Renewable energy is necessary and helpful for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but with few exceptions, renewable energy is not ready to play the role of coal plants on its own. Gas plants provide baseload power, but they must be phased out. Given the time gap between the potential retirement of coal plants and starting up nuclear plants, consideration should be given to how to handle transmission rights in this transition.
• For job retention, all or most jobs in a coal plant can convert, some directly and some with training, to comparable positions in an advanced nuclear plant.
• To minimize the need to site, permit, and build new transmission lines, building nuclear at former coal plants fully leverages existing transmission lines and already existing infrastructure elements.
• The public’s attitude towards new nuclear energy is improving swiftly as climate concerns begin to eclipse fears of nuclear energy, as described by a recent Pew Research Center study.
• Having nuclear energy as a baseload energy source provides confidence that the grid can grow to support additional requirements for electricity while remaining as reliable as national and economic security considerations require it to be.

• Kemmerer, Wyoming, will likely see the first real-world commercial conversion of a coal plant to a modular nuclear reactor.

Charles Bolden, Director of Congressional Affairs, Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA)

• The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) has set a target goal of 100 gigawatts of renewable energy manufacturing capacity, including 50 gigawatts of solar manufacturing production, by 2030.
• Job creation is a significant benefit of growing domestic renewable energy manufacturing. As of 2021, the solar industry employed over 250,000 people in solar jobs spanning a variety of fields.
• An increase in domestic solar production will generate jobs in research and development, manufacturing of solar power materials, construction and operation of solar power plants, and solar power installation and maintenance.
• To create a domestic solar supply chain, long-term federal investment and a suite of policy options to incentivize investments in manufacturing capacity are necessary. Support for ongoing factory production and demand certainty in the industry are also essential to promoting domestic manufacturing.
• Domestic manufacturing allows for oversight to make sure products are produced ethically and sustainably.
• SEIA encourages solutions to maximize access to solar energy for all families and communities, regardless of zip code, income level, or any other factor.
• Many low- and moderate-income communities miss out on the benefits of solar plus storage technologies such as cost savings, resilience against natural disasters, and health improvements.
• The House-passed Build Back Better Act (H.R.5376) includes $162.9 billion to advance environmental justice priorities. The Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grants proposed in the bill would provide funding to reduce pollution and climate threats in communities on the front lines of the nation’s most dangerous environmental and health hazards.
• The clean energy economy must be centered around justice and equity for all Americans and support communities that have historically been left behind by environmental policies. It is essential to have intentional advocacy that prioritizes environmental justice and creates regenerative and sustainable economic wealth in local communities.

Q&A

Q: What investments provided by the Infrastructure and Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) would boost energy sector resilience and security?

Bryan:

• There is no funding for the DOD directly in the bill, but there is important funding that relates to transmission and grid resilience, which have been needed for a long time.
• There is a lot of money in the infrastructure bill for demonstration projects, such as long-term energy storage, which is extremely important for the DOD—a big energy user on the grid.
• The DOD also has a fundamental interest in the supply chain investments that are in the bill. The United States is behind other countries as it relates to the battery supply chain, particularly regarding process minerals and anode and cathode manufacturing. Future capabilities rely on having a secure supply chain.

Unruh:

• By leveraging money from the IIJA and private funding for federal facilities, there could be a 10 times multiplier on the federal money, meaning that $250 million could easily equate to $2.5 billion in facility improvements.
• Benefits of these facility improvements include microgrid support to improve resilience, and alternative generation sources from renewable energy to nuclear reactors.
• The IIJA also has funding for non-federal facilities, such as $500 million for K-12 schools, which will be leveraged with private funds to make the money go further. This will likely be leveraged by a factor of three to five.
• IIJA money will help adapt buildings to be more flexible and efficient. By putting in different types of heating, cooling, and ventilation systems and changing the construction of the building, communities will be able to use buildings in new and unique ways.

Bochman:

• The National Climate Adaptation and Resilience Strategy Act (H.R.6461/S.3531) can form a focusing function to make sure that the key climate adaptation and resilience targets that the United States needs to hit are aimed for in IIJA.
• When the United States builds new infrastructure, it needs to be built for the century we are in—designed to deal with climate impacts and cyber security—and not the previous century.

Bolden:

• The $65 billion investment, the largest in U.S. history, for grid resilience and transmission is important due to the current climate impacts damaging transmission lines. These funds are needed to extend and improve existing transmission lines and create new ones.
• Another key sector in the IIJA is transportation. Policies related to using solar panels to charge electric vehicles and battery storage are key.

Q: What is your vision for energy security and energy sector resilience in 2030?

Unruh:

• Efficiency offers an opportunity to have more micro control over the way that the grid uses power, which can allow for a balance with the way that power is being generated.
• Today, there is still a small amount of renewable power on the grid, but as it grows there will be more need for the load to be flexible. The load can be flexible through efficiency projects.
• We need efficient projects that are not only operationally efficient, but also make buildings smarter and future-proof. We need to think beyond efficiency projects just using less energy, we need to build assets to help the grid transform to what we want to see in 2030 and beyond.
• The private sector offers the ability to implement control measures in a project, bring the building up to more modern grid capabilities, and provide the service to manage and coordinate that with the local utility.

Bochman:

• This period in human history is likely to be known as the energy transition. Variable generation, solar, and wind will be brought online in addition to hydropower, and there will be a retirement of older technologies like burning fossil fuels.
• This energy system modernization needs to happen in a way that makes sure the changes are as reliable and dependent as they need to be so that the grid remains strong.

Bolden:

• Controlling the supply chain is essential. Bringing domestic manufacturing to the United States will improve our resilience and our economy.

Bryan:

• 95 percent of power capacity additions globally, over the next five years or decade, will be renewable energy––solar or wind.
• In the past year, China has installed more offshore wind capacity than the rest of the world has in the last five years combined.
• The entire global transportation system is going electric quickly. Every major manufacturer in the world has made explicit commitments and investments toward going electric.
• We are in the middle of a massive global transformation. The challenge for the United States is to understand and acknowledge what is happening and to reach a consensus that the country must lead this transition.

Compiled by Stephanie Didier and edited for clarity and length. This is not a transcript.