- Good to see you. - It's good to see you too.
- Thanks for having me out. - Yeah, absolutely.
- This place is-- - Do you ever get out of your office? - I mean, well, honest
answer, yes, all the time. - Clearly, well, this is--
- This place is cool.
- You're seeing a little sunlight today. - It's beautiful out there.
- I know. - It's a perfect spring day. We're not gonna get a lot
more of these, are we? - [Monica] No, it's probably
gonna get hot really soon.
- Well, this is a good place.
- Have you ever been here? - I have not.
- Oh, I love it here. - Yeah.
- Maxwell Wine Bar. It's like the hottest place in Washington. - It's nice, it's small,
it's cute, it's cozy.
It's got exposed brick, it's got wine. - [Monica] It's got wine. - Like I say, you can't really be a wine bar without wine, can you? - That's right. - It's been awhile.
- It's been a long time.
- [Both] Yeah. - Let's see... (Upbeat jazz music) A year and a half, at least? - God, yeah, I guess.
- I mean, the last time we saw each other was--
- Well-- - November of 2016.
- I vaguely remember it because I think I was
short of sleep that day. - I think we all were.
- Something happened the night before. Some unexpected result. - That's right.
- And we, boy, we had two scenarios in our
models, but I'm glad we had two. The second one was a little
smaller than the first one.
We had somebody bulk it up.
- Yeah. So we see states sort of
at these points of needing to make decisions on how to move forward with their own clean energy policies. So what's kind of that formula that you think is the sweet
spot for states to be hitting? - Well, I don't know. I don't know that you can
find a one size fits all because you have such a different, I mean states pick the resources
they picked in large part because the industries that
they wanted to attract.
The resources they had in
other parts of their portfolio. If you look at the coal
fire generation base in the Mid-West, and you
think about the low cost of coal and the need for
industrial power supply to be running constantly so that factories could
generate process lines and run and run and run and run. In the Southeast, nuclear
power where you didn't have a lot of wind, a clean
resource, yeah, it made sense. So these are very individualized, state utility commission
controlled, parochial decisions, and a one size fits all
approach, it could be difficult because in many ways,
you have legacy players who have their own interests in mind.
And also, national players
who are looking for economies of scale, and the system
isn't necessarily always going to be set up that way. I mean, if you look at how
there have been solar car valves in a number of renewable
portfolio standards, they're not necessarily in
the sunniest places, right? Those were done because
someone would then invest in economic interest,
successfully marshaled the political process to get a result, but it's interesting because
from a market perspective, you can't deregulate demand. So we have a lot of supply in
the United States right now. Everything is well supplied
and making more supply is the inevitable consequence
of lowering the cost of production, deregulating
stuff, making things happen.
And what do you do with that more supply? Well, you have to export so
very quickly, one thing moved to another thing, and the
administration really got engaged on that pretty quickly as well. - So what is this abundant
supply mean for the grid, the electric power grid?
- Well, you know, what was electric power security
for so many years, right? If you go back to the
Energy Policy Act of '05, think about what we were talking about. We're talking about like
federal transmission corridors, where the federal government could plow through states' rights, essentially. Something that was near and
dear to Republicans at the time, and therefore, very hard,
politically, for them to do and get priority transmission corridors to get power lines built.
We were talking about generation where generation was maxed out
and distributed generation, anything could take some of the edge off of a maxed out grid had,
well, now where are we, right? Now, we have, well, sort of
flat power demand growth. Sometimes, it's kind of a little bit down. And there's a lot of things
pushing resources onto the grid, other than economics themselves. Now, you have a different kind
of electric power security, sort of a different template.
It's not necessarily a question of whether or not you have enough. There's some cases too much. It's a question of you rationalize and manage different kinds of resources and how the attributes of
those resources are assessed and valued by market. - So how, what is the
Trump administration meant for energy markets? - Well, you know one of the
things they came into do was to deregulate, and
if you think about it, there's a lot of regulation to deregulate.
And the process takes just
as long, if not longer, as regulating in the first
place 'cause you have to write a rule to undo
rule, and so, it's been long and slow and cumbersome and full of paper. And they don't have a lot of wins to post. They've taken out a couple of rules. There was a fracking
rule on federal lands.
There's evaluation rule on federal lands, but a lot of the big, marquee
items that I think you and I talked about, things
like the Clean Power Plan, fuel economy standards, they're
still just getting started. - When we think about
just admissions, right, and the admissions reduction
goals that we have here in the US and that our
international counterparts have, does the math make sense without nuclear? - Well, so, to the
extent that nuclear power is a huge part of our
generating portfolio, not only does the math of
admissions not make sense, the math of generation
doesn't currently make sense. You can't take away 20 percent of something and have that something. - What surprised you the
most over the last year and a half as the Trump
administration has been in office? - You don't really hear a
lot about climate anymore.
I think the last we seriously
had a televised media coverage of a climate issue was in June of 2017 when Scott Pruitt was standing there, watching the President promise to leave the Paris Climate Accord. It has been surprising
how quickly it's moved from the forefront,
even here in Washington. You go to conferences, and people who would ordinarily
have talked about climate as one of the first or the
second or the third topics in a range of issues at a meeting, it's like number seven
or number eight now. - That's really interesting.
- It is interesting.
- Right, because it's still something that's there and relevant and happening and certainly, very paid
attention to internationally, but it's just the
political climate, right? - Well, so to say, I mean,
there's different ways to address the issue and
get to the same result. I think some companies
that are still taking a very strong activist stance
on climate have started to talk about other aspects
of the energy system rather than the climate implications. So if you're capturing methane,
there's a value perspective. If there's an efficiency gain, then there's an economic perspective, and they've changed their language but not necessarily their orientation.
- It's so fun to catch up.
- Yeah. - Did you have your wine? - I, well, I will take
instruction, and I will get it. (Monica laughs) So I mean, what do you think
the biggest changes have been? You've been, you've
hosted probably everybody in Washington who knows
anything about energy, and you've heard all of
us give you our best shot. Like what do you see
from your perspective? - To your point about climate discussions no longer really being on the
map, that is a 180, right? Because we went through eight years of climate being really the focus.
I will say, you know, also
having lived in Washington for as long as I have for 12 years now, the town feels different too. I think the political climate's different and that's reflected in
the restaurants and bars. And I'm not saying good or
bad, it just feels different. It's a different Washington.
- It's my hometown, you know,
I'm originally from here, and I grew up in a neighborhood where people had political
jobs and didn't act political. And it's not, I don't live
in that neighborhood now, but I live near it and
it's not like that now. So I think there's definitely, you know, you still hear senators
talk about being chummy and friendly with one another. But you don't see as
many of them doing it, and in a 51, 49 Senate, anyone who's wearing the number
51 jersey's the winner of whatever concession
they can possibly eek out of their party.
So you also have more gamesmanship within each partisan grouping. - We should probably eat, huh? - I'm pretty much hungry, yeah. - Okay, so I ordered a few things. They have this awesome Burrata, and I've got some
charcuteries, some cheese.
And they have other things on the menu too so we can order-- - Let's get down to it, I mean. - Yeah, okay.
- Let's not let it get cold. Well, I guess isn't really hot. - Well, I'm Italian so
I can't turn down food.
But it's kinda of overall--
- I'm there with you. Not Italian, but I've got
the same food relationship. (Monica laughs) (smooth jazz music).
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