6.4 How the Department of Energy is Catapulting Clean Energy Innovation to Commercial Liftoff

 

The most complicated part of solving the climate crisis is not developing clean energy technologies—we’ve already made enormous strides there—but, rather, funding the deployment and widespread adoption of those technologies. The Loan Programs Office (LPO) at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is working to overcome that barrier by financing large-scale energy infrastructure projects to help the United States reach its climate goals. In this episode, Dan and Alison are joined by LPO Chief Strategist Jonah Wagner to discuss DOE’s Pathways to Commercial Liftoff Reports, the role of the private sector in the transition to a decarbonized economy, and some of the clean energy technologies on the front lines of this transition.

 

Show notes:

• The Latest on the Clean Energy Tax Incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act: https://www.eesi.org/briefings/view/092823ira

• The State of Play for Nuclear Energy in the United States: https://www.eesi.org/briefings/view/041923nuclear

• Investments in Clean Energy and Transportation Innovations in the Federal and Private Sectors: https://www.eesi.org/briefings/view/041323eere

• Briefing Series: Scaling Up Innovation to Drive Down Emissions: https://www.eesi.org/tech2022

Sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions, for insight on the latest innovative climate solutions and environmental policy in action.

Follow us on social media @eesionline

 

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Episode Transcript:

Dan Bresette: Hello, and welcome back to The Climate Conversation. I'm Dan Bresette, president of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. And I'm joined today by my co-host, Alison Davis. Hey, Alison, how's it going?

Alison Davis: It's great to be back again for another episode of the podcast. You know, I've really enjoyed covering climate adaptation and resilience so far this season. But I think the time has come for us to switch back over to the mitigation side of things. And what better way to do that than to cover the work being done at the U.S. Department of Energy or DOE?

Dan: I'm not sure there is a better way to do that than to talk a little bit about the Department of Energy. And in today's episode, we're specifically going to talk about the Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office, or LPO, and the Pathways to Commercial Liftoff Reports. There are so many innovative technologies out there that have the potential to catapult our nation's transition to a decarbonized economy. But too often we lack the capital necessary to actually deploy these projects. And that's where LPO steps in. LPO finances large-scale energy infrastructure projects to help the United States reach its climate goals of cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half from 2005 levels by 2030, and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

Alison: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act have enacted historic investments in clean energy. DOE is leveraging these investments to accelerate the growth and commercialization of clean energy technologies by increasing federal funding for demonstrated projects and unlocking trillions of dollars in private investment over the next decade. The Pathways to Commercial Liftoff was launched earlier this year to provide the private sector with a common fact base and a tool for ongoing dialogue regarding various clean energy technologies. As of this recording, DOE has released Liftoff Reports on advanced nuclear, clean hydrogen, long duration energy storage, carbon management, industrial decarbonization, and virtual power plants.

Dan: Here with us to talk about the Pathways to Commercial Liftoff is LPO’s Chief Strategist, Jonah Wagner. In his work at DOE, Jonah focuses on Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act implementation, as well as defining pathways to scale for clean energy technologies. Before joining DOE, Jonah was an associate partner in McKinsey and Company's public finance practice, and was regional director of Latin America for Delterra, a rapidly growing nonprofit focused on strengthening recycling systems and circularity. And in the more distant past, Jonah also worked for the New Zealand Treasury on infrastructure and environmental policy, and led business development and strategy for a distributed water purification infrastructure company in Western India called Piramal Water. Jonah received a bachelor's degree from Princeton and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Jonah, welcome to the show!

Jonah Wagner: Thanks so much for having me, Dan and Alison.

Dan: Jonah, there are so many innovative solutions out there in various stages of development and adoption. And it seems like we could spend all day and never totally come up with a comprehensive list. How does your team decide which clean energy technologies to showcase? How do you come up with the ones that you want to put front and center in the Pathways to Commercial Liftoff? And what technologies are you most excited about coming down the line?

Jonah: So fundamentally, when we're developing our priority list release reports, we're looking for three things. First, we're looking for sectors and technologies that can drive major gigaton-scale greenhouse gas emissions reductions, or our critical paths to unlocking those reductions, enablers. The second is, we're looking for places where there's emerging private-sector momentum, right? We're seeing capital form, but the sector still hasn't reached what we call “commercial liftoff,” or the point at which there's irreversible momentum—that thing can compete on its own two feet, and there's low-cost capital in large quantities. And then the third is, where does DOE have real resources and ability to move the needle to enable liftoff? And just to set the scene here, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act were the largest increase to DOE's resources ever, for a cumulative total of about $100 billion across programs for the Loan Programs Office. It increased our loan authorities from about $40 billion to $400 billion. And so we have—on that third item—we have a lot that we bring to the table. And we also have a real mandate from Congress, from the Administration, to focus on major demonstrations and deployment, including the creation of the new Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations. And so we had these huge programs that we needed to implement and execute against, right? We had the regional hydrogen hubs funding—the announcement should be coming out this fall—eight billion dollars. We have the direct air capture hubs, another three billion, the substantial amount of carbon management funding writ large, long duration energy storage—we just made a recent announcement I think last week, about $350 million of grants going to that sector. And then the advanced reactor demonstration program that used to sit in the Office of Nuclear Energy was rolled into the office of clean energy demonstrations, and that's a little over $2 billion for two big advanced reactor projects underway. And LPO obviously has loan applications that sit across all of those technologies. And so those four areas that I just mentioned, those are the four areas that we picked first, for the Liftoff Reports. And it's not a coincidence, right? This is where we wanted to make sure that we got the program design and execution right, and the Liftoff Reports were key to doing that. So that was the first wave. The second wave that we just published, focusing on industrial decarbonization and virtual power plants, I think is quite similar. Industrial decarbonization, we have a major funding opportunity that's just closed. And we're going through the process now, and this was a key input. Similarly, the 48C tax credit implementation for the IRA also has a big element on industrial decarbonization, and this is the input. And then virtual power plants, the Loan Programs Office has over $10 billion of applications for VPPs, not including the loan we just closed to Sunnova. That happens to be the first VPP deal we've ever done.

Alison: And I'm wondering out of the reports that you all have published so far, which technological solution are you personally most excited about? And why? And are there any that you feel might be slightly less practical at this point, whether that's due to the cost or the need for more research or other obstacles?

Jonah: So to be clear, every one of these technologies can or could be critical for achieving our clean energy and decarbonization goals. So just like right off the bat, we feel at DOE like we need to do all we can to give every single one a shot at achieving commercial liftoff. And then the other thing I would say is all of these technologies have practical pathways to commercial liftoff, right? They're hard. All of them are hard. But every single one has a pathway, even industrial decarbonization, which obviously colloquially when the industry people call the “hard to abate” sectors. But that doesn't answer your question, obviously. So personally, when I first started at the Loan Programs Office, the director of the office, Jigar Shah, my boss, asked me if I could figure out what LPO could do to help make nuclear happen, right? Help bring nuclear back. And back in 2011, the Loan Programs Office had over $100 billion of nuclear applications in our pipeline. And then the shale gas boom happened, the great recession happened, Fukushima happened—every one of those applications either paused or fell out except Vogtle advanced reactor outside of Augusta, Georgia. And that was the one nuclear project we financed. And your listeners may know this, but July 31, unit three of that reactor turned on. First new nuclear power plant built in America in a generation with substantial support from our office. And what we found in our Liftoff Report, which we published, is that the least-cost path to net zero for the U.S. grid involves a huge amount of clean firm power, which used to be called baseload power, and something on the order of 550 to 770 gigawatts—right, or about a little over half the size of the total grid today in the U.S. And your options for clean firm power are pretty limited. You've got nuclear, geothermal, hydro, maybe natural gas with CCS depending on how good the carbon capture is. And so nuclear is the one that, when we looked across all of them, that's the one that really has—it's flexible in citing and has all these other ancillary benefits. It has huge potential for the fossil energy transition because a lot of the skills that you might need as a pipefitter or electrician or an operator of a plant apply in a nuclear context, plus the salaries are even better. So the coal-to-nuclear opportunity is one that we are very excited about. And then stepping all the way back, nuclear—there's an opportunity right now to reestablish U.S. leadership. And when we think about this sort of geopolitical context, like if you look back in time in the 60s and 70s and 80s, the U.S. supplied about 40 percent of the global nuclear fleet. Now it's closer to 8 percent. And today, I think China is building 22 reactors. And when you look at the technologies that we have in the U.S., I mean, we have the best nuclear technologies in the world. And so the opportunity now is, many of the technologies that we're looking at as part of the energy transition, not just about decarbonization, but also about competing and winning globally with the best technology, innovators, and entrepreneurs in the world.

Alison: And you can correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems like nuclear also has above-average potential for bipartisan support.

Jonah: Yeah, I stay out of the politics of it. But one of the things that has been interesting is public opinion on nuclear has shifted dramatically. This has always been a technology that I think conservatives have been largely supportive—over 70 percent of conservatives, from the stats I've seen, are pro-nuclear. Democrats were less enthused, but one of the big things that's happened is as people have come around realizing how big of a deal climate change is, it becomes less and less tenable to be a staunch environmentalist and also be anti-nuclear. And so we're seeing a big shift among liberals towards embracing nuclear technology as a key part of the path to net zero. And so I think that swing has, at least in the data, been pretty pronounced over the last few years.

Alison: And the Liftoff Reports are primarily targeted towards the private sector to elevate discourse. But DOE is also mindful that social acceptance for a wider audience will be key to adoption and commercialization. So could you talk about how pitching clean energy technologies to the private sector is different from pitching them to everyday consumers? And I'm wondering if you do any sort of outreach directly to communities.

Jonah: Public adoption of energy technologies is clearly a meaningful part of their path to achieving lift off. And I think good examples of that are, you know, the incredible trajectory of demand for electric vehicles and the $4 billion every month that Americans spend on distributed energy resources—rooftop solar, smart thermostats and heat pumps and electric water heating and cooling and everything else. That said, you know, it's super different to talk to a consumer versus to talk to an intermediary or private sector and the Department of Energy is fundamentally G to B, government to business, not government to consumer. We don't have that muscle, and I would argue we shouldn't. It's just a very different skill set, and requires a different type of resourcing and programming. But what that means is we rely heavily on partnerships. So we lean on industry and investors, nonprofits, labor organizations, trade groups, state and local government, tribes and territories, other ecosystem organizations, and frankly, other government entities that are better at going directly to the consumer than we are when we want to. And we lean on our partners because they understand the communities they work in, they understand the workforce they work with, they understand their consumers and customers better than we ever could. And so DOE is organized and has offices that are sort of aligned to these different partnerships. So we have a State and Community Energy Programs Office, we have an equity and diversity office and Indian Energy Office, there's an interagency working group on energy communities that we’re a part of. And in each of these cases, and these are just kind of broad examples that come to mind, but we're figuring out the best way to engage with our partners who are in turn engaging directly with communities, workers and consumers that we're trying to reach. And the Pathways effort really taps into those DOE offices that are having these types of engagements. And for the record LPO, we are talking to hundreds, if not thousands, of CEOs on a monthly basis, and by virtue of our own authorities, and that all feeds into the Pathways effort as well. One thing I do want to say, though, is it's clear that while public opinion does matter—and this is now I'm just speaking from my own point of view, I don't think this is necessarily representing the department in this perspective—but the practical consumer decision making around the energy transition is from what I've seen pretty low-engagement. People, generally speaking, don't spend a lot of time thinking about their electricity. It's a little like insurance where you know, you care a lot when your bill spikes or your power goes out. Or you might go out and buy an electric vehicle because it's a better car. But generally speaking, it's like a pretty passive experience. And so a lot of the hard work of transforming the system is actually happening behind the scenes through these partnerships. And the experience that consumers ultimately feel right, like lower prices, or more or live electricity or an objectively better car to drive. Like that's the stuff they experience once all the systems change stuff has happened in the background. And so yes, we care about public opinion as an outcome. But many of the changes we need to make are behind the scenes and more structural.

Alison: I'd like to turn quickly to the actual process of developing these reports. There are several offices within DOE that contribute to this process. What is the role of the Loan Programs Office in this collaborative effort? And are different offices involved in different reports, or do you always stick with the same core team?

Jonah: Yeah, so it's very much a collaboration. I would say it started out when we first 18 months ago, but it was really a coalition of the willing between the Loan Programs Office, the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, the Office of Technology Transitions, which interfaces with all of the seventeen national labs and helps bring clean energy technologies from the lab to market, and the Office of Policy, which handles policy matters for the department. So basically, the way that it started was we, in LPO, were developing these white papers based on what we were learning from our application pipeline. So we right now have about a quarter of a trillion dollars worth of project value across technologies in our pipeline today. I would encourage your listeners to take a look at our Monthly Application Activity Report online, which has a breakdown where we're seeing those applications. But we were learning all of these cool things about like, what is it—pick a sector—that's actually limiting its bankability? Like where is the actual risk? Because we're not equity investors, we weren't looking at it through the lens of dazzle me and tell me how you're going to change the world. We were looking at it through the lens of debt, which is we want to get paid back, we want to understand what's going to limit your ability to pay us back. And so we want to see a cash-flow model. And we really want to get under the hood of all of the risks that you face. And so we thought, if there's a way for us to synthesize what we're seeing, and then feed it back in a way that is consistent with the Trade Secrets Act, which our applications are subject to, that that would be helpful for capital allocators to get more comfortable with the sectors they were investing into. So as we were reading these white papers in parallel, Vanessa Chan, who is the Chief Commercialization Officer for DOE, she had just joined to become the Director of the Office of Technology Transitions. And she brought this incredible wealth of private sector and commercialization experience. And so she had come on board, and this was clearly an area where OTT had a really important voice to play. And ultimately, OTT is now really quarterback in this full effort. OCED, the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, is ramping up, I think they had about eight people in the office 10 people and half a dozen of us from LPO were detailed over there to help stand the office up, right because they were just getting started. And we had $30 billion to put to work. And so we had a chance to sort of really get to know each other in that interaction. And then all the while the Office of Policy run by Carla Frisch, they were connecting all the dots between the infrastructure law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and figuring out sort of the big picture of how DOE fits into decarbonizing our economy. And so these four offices got together and assembled the steering committee to oversee the first four reports, and then we pulled in subject matter experts and leaders from across DOE to write that. But frankly, after we started rolling these reports out, it's really expanded. And it's become more of a platform within DOE, that we now use as a fundamental part of how we engage with the private sector and broader ecosystem and also each other. And so now, when we're writing these Liftoff Reports, each report has a cross-department steering committee, they're putting in investment themselves to develop it. I'll just give you an example. So we just published virtual power plants, right. So LPO was, I guess, primary author on that. But we had as part of the core team members from the Solar Energy Technology Office, the Buildings Technology Office, the energy efficiency guys, vehicles technology office, the Office of Electricity, Grid Deployment Office, State and Community Energy Programs, Equity and Diversity, plus OCED, OTT, OP, like these were truly collaboration, acronym word soup, right. There was a lot of engagement. And then we also have subject matter experts that extended to national labs, the White House that were also involved in coordinating this agenda. And the last thing I'd say is increasingly, what we found is that there's a direct linkage between the Liftoff effort and what many of your listeners may know as the Earthshots that DOE publishes and champions, where the Earthshots are really commitments that the department is making to achieving extraordinary breakthroughs in innovation. Right? So it's more on the research and development side, right? We're gonna get to $1 a kilogram for clean hydrogen in a decade. And then what we're finding is there is this flywheel between the breakthrough innovation and deployment and scaling through major demonstration and commercial scaleup. That is really important to understand and iterate back and forth on.

Dan: Yeah, I was gonna comment on that bowl of alphabet soup. You just went through, but it is incredible. And I was just thinking, Jonah, you're with us today—LPO. But we've also had Alexandra Moreno when he was acting at Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Katie Huff who’s the Assistant Secretary of Nuclear Energy. Mandy Mahoney, the Director of Building Technologies, Henry McCoy, who is running all of the home energy rebates and electrification rebates. We've had so many DOE panelists and guests and every one this year, it's been incredible. We're just scraping the surface, there's so much work going on at DOE. It's incredible. I've never worked at the department. But my guess is that it's a pretty exciting place to work and surrounded by pretty exciting people.

Jonah: Well, so one thing, and I used to be in government consulting, and what I will say is, the three things you always look for in a client are number one, that there was a burning platform to change and actually do something different, right? Burning platform today, climate change, and, frankly, global competition. And a lot of the other ancillary challenges that we're facing in this moment. Number two, we looked for money, right, you actually look for a place where the agency could actually have more to do more with because as much as we'd like it, you can't do more with the same. And the last thing we looked for were leaders that were willing to take risks. And we've had that in spades with Secretary Granholm. She has role modeled exactly what this looks like, and to say, “We want to take more risk, not less.” What is government for other than to take risks that make it possible for private capital to move into sectors? Because that is effectively our job. And we have to do it. And then the last thing I would say is one of the challenges that we're facing and why the liftoff effort, we found it to be so helpful, to your point around all of the different and all the folks that you've named, we're obviously going to have been integral parts of developing these reports, always, the leaders you mentioned at DOE, is that the way that funding comes to our office is fragmented. Congress doesn't just say, here's $100 billion, go solve climate change, like that 100 billion dollars is chopped up into very specific boxes that have all kinds of rules and authorities associated with them, pretty clear accountability by law, and many of them dictate also how we have to organize to deliver them. So our office is, in many cases, stood up around these highly fragmented resources. And so everybody's in their lane, doing the best they can with what they have. But what we found is for VPPs, for example, that there's 25 different programs that directly or indirectly can enable VPP deployments. But until you put the lens of we're going to deploy VPPs on it, it just looks like 25 programs. And so that's a huge part of what we're trying to do with this Liftoff effort. And it's a huge part of what the Office of Science Innovation has been doing around these Earthshots, right is to create clear goals and alignment around many programs to achieve a certain set of absolute outcomes.

Dan: Well, I'm glad you mentioned Earthshots, I can't go into any details, but we're going to do something about that. So that'll be something that we cover, I have a pretty strong hunch. So listeners keep an eye on Climate Change Solutions over the next couple of months. Just saying. And then you know, mentioned you, Jonah, but also you've got great colleagues and LPO to like Lucy—who is incognito on the Zoom right now and I’ll let her talk Alison out of editing this out—but also part of that great team you all have over there.

Jonah: Well, we agree and very much look forward to listening to the Earthshot podcast.

Dan: Oh, I didn't say podcast. It's just the thing. Anyway, I want to get into virtual power plants. Because that's one of the most recent reports, I think the most recent report that you've done, right? It's super interesting. A virtual power plant, according to your website, is a connected aggregation of distributed energy resource technologies. What does that mean? And what does it mean from a consumer’s perspective? And how are the Congressional investments in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act pushing you all forward toward commercial adoption of virtual power plants?

Jonah: VPPs are a great example of another one of these extraordinary opportunities that's mostly happening behind the scenes like we were talking about before. But this is not something consumers are demanding. Most of them would have no idea what a virtual power plant is. But once these things are in place, it's just going to feel like to the average consumer, like an obvious and easy way to reduce your electricity bills, or even get paid by your utility around your distributed energy resources. So VPPs, as you mentioned, are aggregations of distributed energy resources. We call those DERs, like rooftop solar with batteries, like electric vehicles and chargers, smart appliances, flexible commercial and industrial loads, right that you can use to help balance demand and supply just like a traditional power plant. You can respond to a signal from the grid and act like capacity on the grid. And so at VPP is used different DERs in different ways. And so one example would be the timing of demand or peak demand. Right? And so, if you can imagine, you know, it's a hot summer day and your neighbors come home around 6pm, they plug in their electric vehicles, they turn on their air conditioning, they start running their television fridge and everything else. And that creates a big spike in demand. Right. And so now imagine a different scenario where instead, smart thermostats have pre cooled those homes before they come home. Smart charging systems have scheduled their EV charging to start at night, right 10 or 11pm, they set up right away, all of a sudden the maximum peak demand, what happened at that very expensive time for energy is much lower, with little to no inconvenience to the EV owner or the smart thermostat owner. And instead of firing up polluting peaker plants, natural gas plants, that increase the supply of energy, utilities can use these VPPs to manage the demand side. And then instead of Americans paying for fuel in the form of their electricity bills, the utility would pay those same American consumers to shift their demand and shrink the peak. And so it's just goodness, all the way around. And that's just one example. Right? And so you asked how the Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act would actually support this. So as I mentioned, DOE has quite literally 25 complementary programs that that support VPPs, many of which came the infrastructure law, the IRA, LPO is going to play a huge roll of this right, our focus on VPPs is in particular, supporting low to moderate income communities in order to lower their cost of financing so that they can access these technologies. They're smart with grants, there's a grid innovation program that provides financial assistance to states, tribes, local governance and public utility commissions to deploy projects that use innovative approaches to transmission and distribution such as VPPs. There's a DER compensation initiative, working with the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissions just last week, oh said that we've set $50 million funding opportunity focused specifically on DERs. And concept papers for that are due November 16. The top line takeaway from this report, which I would encourage you all to read, and your listeners, to me that lift off that energy that Go is that by 2030, in seven short years, VPPS could be used to create about 80 to 160 gigawatts worth of peak load capacity or the equivalent, which is about the same as 10 to 20 percent, of total peak demand in America. And by doing that, it would save American consumers on average, about $10 billion every year. And that's the beginning. That's just the beginning.

Dan: Yeah, it's one of those. It's an example you were kind of talking about earlier like, Inflation Reduction Act, infrastructure bill provided all this stuff, it's good stuff that people will like, we just have to get it to them. You know, they don't know that a peaker plant isn't running, but they'll know that there's a bill credit, and no wonder maybe where it comes from, but they'll be happy for it.

Jonah: And if you can imagine, most Americans aren't in love with their utilities, some less than others. But utilities play this fundamentally and absolutely critical role in the lives of every single American. And so the opportunity for utilities to come to them, and instead of saying, “Sorry, your rates have gone up,” instead to say, “We would like to offer you a deal. If you give us some control over your thermostat, we're going to pay you. And if you agree to sign your new EV—or maybe it's even just simply you have to opt-out for it, right? But we're going to make that clear to you—we're gonna pay you for that, too.” All of a sudden, it's a very different relationship, right? I'm actually making money off the solar panel on my roof, or the car in my garage, as opposed to worrying about, you know, whether I'm going to be hit with an extra high bill this month.

Dan: Well, this has been fascinating. And it's been really fun to talk with you today. Jonah, for my last question, or for our last question, I wanted to just ask sort of what's next? Could you give us a little peek into what's coming down the line for LPO, the lift off reports. And then, you know, just generally in terms of our strategy to clean up our grid and decarbonize our economy.

Jonah: So very tactically, we're kicking off wave three of the Liftoff Reports. And so that's happening now. I guess, as a teaser, for your listeners, one report will be on grid modernization, and another will be on advanced geothermal. And so there will be a couple of noise relative to areas that we're really excited about. Zooming all the way out, like none of this stuff matters that we're talking about. None of these technologies matter if they don't scale both sides. And the reality is we have most of the technologies we need already. The IEA just published a report that estimates that we had over 80 percent of the technologies we win and ready to go through 2030. And we have about two thirds of the all of the technologies will be by 2050 in order to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. And so we need to figure out now how to use the resources we have to enable the private sector to lead in deployment of these critical technologies that are ready to go and the goal is for us now. I would use lift up reports to use them to inform the policy decisions and priorities that we pursue at DOE at the Loan Programs Office. And so just to give you one example, right at this moment, there is a live request for proposals for demand side measures for clean hydrogen. And this was a decision that was taken after intense private sector discussions in which we learned that one of the biggest areas of concern in creating the hydrogen market in America was the lack of solid credit worthy often, for offtake agreements that could be signed with the customers liquid nitrogen, it was just impossible to get. And if you can't secure offtake, it's very hard to raise money, if you can make money, you can't build things. So we decided with the $8 billion that we have that we shall hydrogen house, we had the authority to set aside some part of that money up to a billion dollars, we chose for demand side mechanism that would directly shore up the demand side of the equation to get hydrogen. And that RFP will close at the end of this month. And the intent is to find a partner or partners, to work with the DOE to support our ability to scale up this market. But fundamentally, we're going to do our best as government as the Department of Energy to enable private sector deployment and entrepreneurialism that we're going to meet to achieve our clean energy deployment, quality jobs and competitiveness priorities that we now have as a country.

Dan: Thank you, Jonah, for joining us today. Like I said, really great to talk with you, learn about all the cool stuff at LPO. And absolutely endorse your suggestion for all of our listeners to go check out those Liftoff Reports. They're really exciting. It's actually hard to read them and not sort of get excited about what we're capable of. So thanks for all your hard work and everybody else at LPO.

Jonah: Thanks so much, Dan. Thanks, Alison.

Dan: Well, Alison, that was a great conversation. I think we said at the beginning, right, what better way to talk about this than to talk with DOE, and Jonah proved our point. It was pretty great. I think one thing that, you know, Jonah said right at the beginning, that actually I was reminded quite a lot of our briefing last week—or last week, as of the taping—about the tax incentives in the inflation Reduction Act, is there's actually so many things, right. Like, this is not a challenge where there's a single solution. There are so many technologies, so many parts of the clean energy sector, you know, ranging from energy efficiency and buildings to biofuels—which we didn't really talk about today, but liquid fuels with, you know, low-carbon liquid fuels—to carbon sequestration and storage. And I forgot to mention Steve Capanna, who's with the Office of Policy at DOE, he was a panelist at the IRA briefing talking about industrial and manufacturing advancements. So you know, it's pretty cool, where Jonah sits, he gets to see sort of all of these different pieces and how they potentially fit together. And I really am glad he made the point that for most people, you know, they might read about this stuff, but for the most part, they'll only realize it's happening after it's happened. And I think one of the things that sort of moves us forward at EESI is sort of this fundamental belief that this is good stuff that people will like. And it actually represents improvements of how we do things and how we live our lives and doesn't really require the trade-offs that other people might have us believe.

Alison: I’m particularly struck by what he was saying about consumer engagement. I thought it lined up really well with something you said, actually, in your recent article about distribution transformers, you said that people love to turn the lights on and not really think about all the things that need to be working in order for that to happen, but we sure want to talk about it when something doesn't work or when the cost goes up. I think that's generally a fair assessment. And I also appreciated his explanation of VPPs and what it looks like in terms of the end-use applications in people's homes. It's a difficult topic and a difficult technology to explain, and I thought he painted a really good picture that helped me understand it a lot better. And my last point is that I will absolutely not be cutting out your shout out to Lucy because she has been a delight to work with. If you'd liked this story and want to learn more about EESI’s work related to clean energy technologies, head to our website at eesi.org. Also follow us on social media @eesionline for all of our recent updates. The Climate Conversation is published as a supplement to our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions. Go to eesi.org/signup to subscribe. Thanks for joining us and see you next time!