What’s the most powerful job in clean energy?
Welcome back to Bright Ideas, a weekly newsletter about the rise of clean energy. I’m your host, L.A.-based reporter Julian Spector. My day job is covering the clean energy sector for Greentech Media. I write Bright Ideas for fun, because interstate travel is currently frowned upon.
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Somehow, it’s almost December, and I’ve run through a good number of the Energy Debate topics I laid out when I launched this chapter of Bright Ideas. I’ll have to think of something new to organize my writing in the New Year, but then again, a climate-focused Biden administration will be taking office, so there should be some content to mine (sustainably, obvi!).
Before we move on, I have a few more energy topics to hash out for you. Today’s topic is: who’s got the most powerful job in clean energy? There are a ton of ways to frame this debate. I could go full March Madness bracket if I wanted. But, for the purposes of argument, I’m picking two roles and pitting them against each other. These are archetypal roles, not specific human beings, as I’m really looking at the structural power conferred by different job titles.
The two archetypal roles that will throw down today are: the President, and a State Utility Regulator. It’s a battle over where effective clean energy leadership takes place: federal, or state level? Let’s rumble.
The President
Hi, I’m the president. You may know me from that time I garnered majority support from the electoral college. I wield the power of the Executive Branch, and boy do you Americans love ceding power to the Executive Branch!
I’m not a clean energy professional, per se, but I sure can influence the energy sector. My subordinates decide who gets to lease public lands for fossil fuel extraction, and how much pollution power plants can emit into the air we all breathe, and whether fossil fuel pipelines are legal to build.
My cabinet also disburses billions of dollars of funding, earmarked by our friends in Congress, which can support early-stage energy research. Many of the biggest energy technologies grew out of government-backed research programs—like fracking, or lithium-ion car batteries, or nuclear power.
Sure, I can’t decide what the budget looks like—Congress gets to do that. But I get to influence it. I’ve got a big microphone, as they say. I should’ve been a podcaster!
Respect the badge, or face a veto threat!
The Regulator
Hello, greetings, salutations. It is I, an archetypal state-level utility regulator. You may know me from your local PUC. You know, your Public Utilities Commission. No? What about a Public Service Commission? Or a Corporation Commission? You’ve never heard of any of those? Can you name a single person who regulates where your life-giving power comes from?
OK, well, in some states we get elected, in others appointed, to a quasi-judicial body that decides what utilities are allowed to build with your money. In some states, utilities have monopoly control over electric poles and wires. In other states, they own the wires and the power plants. In other states, it’s more complicated, but utilities still need permission from us before they can make deals that their customers end up paying for.
If that all sounds kind of boring to you, maybe you just lack a taste for raw power. The president can say what the president wants, but I decide if new power plants get built or not. The key questions for clean power now are how soon coal plants shut down, whether new gas plants will be built at all, how fast new clean power plants get built, and whether existing nuclear plants shut down. Those are decisions where I make the call.
The President can promote national policies, but clean power happens at the state level, and that’s my domain.
Back to you, President
This is ridiculous, how could some regional functionary no one’s ever heard of have more power to accelerate the adoption of clean energy than me, The President? If I give the command, the Department of Energy could hand out low-seven-figure grants to any number of moonshot technologies that could reach commercial viability in a decade or more, assuming Congress continues to fund ARPA-E at the level it has done. That’s raw power!
As President, I can negotiate climate pacts with other world leaders, signing commitments to reduce carbon emissions that we as a nation will find some way to heed and accomplish. I can ask the Pentagon to put more clean, distributed energy on our bases, to maintain national security in case of a grid outage. I can get our government office buildings to procure more efficient appliances. What can’t I do?
And what about all those interstate power markets that get regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)? Those markets cover a huge swath of the country, and I get to appoint those commissioners. They’ve got “federal” in their title; that makes them more powerful than you.
Regulator replies
Cool, so how has FERC wielded its power to advance clean energy? While you try to think of something, I’ll offer examples of what state-level regulators like me have done.
Remember when Arizona put a freeze on new gas-fired plant construction? The state utility commissioners did that: they thought it was imprudent to invest in big expensive machines at a moment when grid technology is changing so fast. They followed up just last week by voting to require the utilities they regulate to produce entirely carbon-free power by 2050. This is, again, Arizona.
But look to New Mexico and Colorado for regulators signing off on utility plans to exit dirty and uneconomic coal plants, and build wind, solar, and batteries instead. Should utility shareholders foist the cost of coal ash cleanup on their unsuspecting customers? Ask your local regulator. If a state wants to shut down gas plants and nuclear plants and not replace them with enough on-demand power to keep the lights on, it’s up to their regulators to do the math and figure out what’s needed.
Name an ambitious grid cleanup plan being immortalized in a white paper in Washington, and I’ll find you a utility regulator already saying yes or no to it in the real world. You don’t need to have heard of us for us to govern the conditions of your life.
Reader, who was victorious? Email me your thoughts, or requests for future matchups. You can also tweet me @JulianSpector or drop some words in the comment section.
The Queen’s Gambit is dark and luscious
Literature tends to undersell the fun you can have at an orphanage. But you’ve never seen an orphanage like the one in new Netflix original The Queen’s Gambit. This 1950s era institution gives out tranquilizers like candy, and the smart kids save them for a psychedelic trip to sleep at night.
Beth Harmon doesn’t just use these drugs to make friends and be cool; she visualizes three dimensional chess boards on the ceiling and uses them to play and replay games until she masters each strategic choice. This is an instance of a concept popular among the Venice Beach crowd: the idea of manifesting.
Without spoiling anything, I can share that Beth gets out of that orphanage and starts competing in chess tournaments, and the more she plays, the more stylish her mid-century outfits become. And don’t get me started on the hotel lobby decor.
If the combination of chess and underage narcotics doesn’t hook you, I’ll just say this. Queen’s Gambit is serious enough to not feel frivolous, but bizarre and lush enough in its plot and production design to feel wholly transportive. I may not ever choose to read a book about chess, but I’ll watch Beth crush some dudes at it any day.