Decarbonizing energy: The government’s role

Kara Miller: I'm Kara Miller.

Robert Stoner: And I'm Rob Stoner. 

KM: And this is What if it works?

From the MIT Energy Initiative, this is What If It Works?—a podcast looking at the energy solutions for climate change. I'm Kara Miller. You might know me from the public radio program Innovation Hub, which I hosted, and now I write the “Big Idea” column for The Boston Globe. 

RS: And I'm Robert Stoner, the president of the Kendall Square Project and former director of the MIT Energy Initiative.

KM: And today we're talking with Ernest Moniz, former Secretary of Energy under President Obama, about what role government has played in the energy transition, what role it can play, and what role it will play. 

Ernest Moniz: I think the first thing to say without being Pollyannaish about this is that Trump 1.0 had far less impact on what was actually happening in decarbonization, for example, than many think. 

KM: And yeah, you can't really talk about decarbonization, at least not in the U.S., if you don't look ahead at our looming election and how a second Trump term might unfold. 

EM: Sure, the Paris Agreement was tossed out, and now tossed back in by President Biden. But the Paris agreement in and of itself does not present solutions to the carbon challenge, to the clean energy transition. 

KM: Moniz is now the Cecil and Ida Green Emeritus Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems at MIT. He's the founding director of the MIT Energy Initiative and the CEO of the Energy Futures and Nuclear Threat Initiatives. I asked him, if Trump were to return to the White House, having explicitly said that climate change is, quote unquote, nonexistent, would the private sector step in? What would happen and what would become of President Biden's marquee energy legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act—the IRA—legislation that Vice President Harris, were she to become president in 2025, would presumably build on. Moniz says it's not all about the president, whoever that is. Frankly, it's complicated. 

EM: The reality is Congress has supported the clean energy technology innovation agenda pretty consistently. 

KM: In a bipartisan way?

EM: In a bipartisan way, especially in areas like nuclear energy, carbon capture and sequestration, etc. Frankly, you put your finger on one of the important dynamics, namely, the private sector in many ways kept carrying the clean energy transition forward during Trump 1.0 and obviously with the support of the current administration, Biden 1.0. But the reality is private sector takes a lot of risk with a lot of capital. They don't have a four-year time horizon—in the energy business, for sure; it's a much longer one. And I believe that for many years now, the private sector has almost entirely acknowledged that we are having, and we will continue to have, a low-carbon transition. The pace and the scale are not fully understood. But I think there's an understandable reluctance to put a lot of money on the table for carbonization when those could easily become stranded assets. 

However, if former President Trump wins the election, I think we have to distinguish between two different pathways. One is that Trump wins and the Republican Party takes both chambers of Congress versus Trump wins and the Democrats retain one chamber of Congress or both—but at least one—because the legislative options are then quite different. However, if President Trump wins and controls, if you like, both chambers of Congress, then a very important approach to anything with budgetary implications can come into play. It's called, technically, “reconciliation.” Basically, what it amounts to is any budget-related activity can then pass with a simple majority in the Senate versus the usual 60 votes. The dots often aren't connected. The last three presidencies, Obama, Trump 1.0, and Biden 1.0, have all had their signature legislative achievements accomplished through reconciliation: Obamacare, Trump Tax cuts, and IRA. So, the difference between controlling both chambers and only one chamber can be quite significant. 

If the one chamber scenario plays out, however, a Trump presidency, while being very limited in its legislative flexibility, will still retain enormous administrative flexibility. So, for example, the IRA, I would find it very hard to believe that the IRA would be repealed in that scenario, or that it would be even modified in any very, very substantial way. However, the president, it's not immediate, it takes time to go through rulemaking, but the rulemaking done in this case by the Treasury Department is very, very significant in terms of how the tax credits in this case, the IRA, let's say, can be utilized. There clearly will be pushback in that scenario from some Republican governors and states, including members of Congress, because they have already grown to like various aspects of this legislation. 

KM: Like they have wind farms and they employ people. 

EM: They have wind farms, they have hydrogen hubs, they have all kinds of things existing or coming. But nevertheless, I think in that scenario, one would see some significant administrative actions taken by a Trump presidency that would certainly slow down, although not entirely derail, in my view, the low-carbon transition. 

KM: You know, I have a question kind of for both of you, since you both thought a lot about companies and how they intersect with governments. You said something very interesting about this idea of that Trump 1.0 didn't set back the clean energy agenda as much as you might think, that a lot of private industry stepped in. Are they doing that because, A) consumers demand it? B) they've made like ESG commitments to shareholders. Like, why are they doing that? Why are they stepping in? 

RS: I think it's my sense that there's a global social movement toward decarbonizing the economy in recognition of the importance of addressing the climate change problem. So, it's happening, and I don't think the U.S. is in a position to go it alone in the opposite direction, nor is it in our self-interest to do that. 

KM: Okay so they might be culturally ostracized for not making the transition, even if the administration says, well, we don't care about this transition. 

RS: I don’t think they will be culturally ostracized. I think they'll be investing in stuff that's not going to have any value in the relatively near future. And that's a problem.

EM: Well, I would just add that, of course, many of the large corporations, all of the very large corporations for sure, are global in nature. So, they are satisfying market requirements in many, many different places. And of course, the large markets are by definition in the developed countries. I'm not saying that they are ignoring in any sense the developing and emerging economies, but the really big markets, the really big economies, the United States, Europe, Japan, of course, you have to add China in there, which is, I would say, mixed in terms of developed and emerging economy. But China itself, of course, has moved its market in many sectors pretty strongly towards the energy transition. Not in all. Coal plants remain obviously a very important part of their electricity generation. But for example, right now in the news, it's all about electric vehicles and what's going to happen as they strive for the export market. We know that they are already a leader in deployment and in export of renewable technologies. They've made major commitments in this area. And when all is said and done, I would go back to what I said earlier. 

Even if the pace and scale of the clean energy transition is not understood, not easily predictable, I mean, we know what we would like, but we don't know what we're going to get, when the reality is we are following the historical path of decarbonization of the energy system. You know, we can go into why that's happening. But I think it's a fact. I think the private sector understands. And that's why fossil fuel companies, for example, the oil and gas companies, it would be incorrect to not think that they are genuinely hedging their bets on the future in terms of looking at connected areas to what they do, like carbon capture and sequestration and hydrogen. But you also see some of the, especially the international oil and gas companies, some of them going heavily into the power sector, for example, with renewables. So anyway, I just think it's a real secular trend, just with uncertain pace and scale. 

I personally think that the public interest in and pressure towards decarbonization will tip the political system, including in the United States, mainly through the impacts of extreme weather. The reality is, and I'm not going to get into the science of it, but I think the reality is that polling shows that the public is more and more certainly associating extreme weather with global warming and climate change. They are seeing in many parts of the country impact of things like skyrocketing insurance rates. We've had some significant electricity outages in various parts of the country from extreme weather. It's only going to increase. It's been predicted for a long time. It's happening. And frankly, I don't want to sound curmudgeonly here, but the reality is the extreme weather and the consequences of extreme weather are more and more bringing a focus on the impacts to the current generation as opposed to future generations. We all knew the arguments about preserving the environment, etc. for our grandchildren and we love our grandchildren and our children. But when it's being felt in the pocketbook right now, I think that the attitudes are shifting dramatically. And eventually that is what tips the political system. 

RS: In my sense is that globally, governments around the world have taken on board at some level, as have their societies, that there's a problem here and they have to address it. And they've begun to move that way. And it's amazing the degree there is inertia now in this transition. I mean, large segments of the Chinese economy, for example, now are focused on becoming the renewable energy manufacturer to the world. And they did it with solar panels and they've done it with lithium-ion batteries. They're trying to do it with EVs. Even in other areas, steel; they are a huge steel producer. And they're very aware of carbon border adjustment taxes beginning to come into effect in Europe. Talk of tariffs in this country and the use of tariffs as a weapon. They're very aware that their economy is vulnerable to being too carbon intensive in the not very far future, and in a curious way, they are the ones who are driving the transition by enabling us and moving very quickly themselves. 

EM: There's always in the climate business, the tragedy of the commons, if you like, but the reality is that a place like China, for example, the leadership recognizes that the impacts of global warming and climate change are going to be felt very, very directly in China. And there are other parts of the world, the Middle East is an example where their predictions of heat and drought, etc., are really very, very substantial. And of course, fires in the United States, we've had that. But look at Canada, look at many places. The exact manifestation of the issues can be quite geographically different, but they tend to be pretty uniform in terms of something at least being very, very socially disruptive. 

If I could go back, Kara, to your original question, just add one more element of a stabilizing influence in terms of how we go forward irrespective of the coming election. The Ukraine war, in particular, clearly put energy security onto the front burner. And personally, it's frankly, it's something that I've been saying for a long, long time, that the climate discussion, the energy security discussion, and the social equity discussion should be viewed as one discussion and not three separate ones. 

In the energy security world, after Russia's initial invasion of Ukraine, which I remind everyone was in 2014, not in 2022, the G7 and the EU—I was Energy Secretary at the time—very explicitly came together to kind of refresh how one looked at energy security, a refreshment that really had not been done since the oil embargoes of the 1970s. And one of the aspects of that relook, if you like, was to explicitly connect decarbonized energy sources with energy security. Turning it around, energy insecurity is all about carbon. And so, I think those conversations coming together is also part of the reason why we clearly will have change depending upon the election outcome, but perhaps not as extreme as many think. 

RS: And interestingly, in the new world of renewable energy, you can become energy insecure by failing to have access to critical materials, by failing to have a robust manufacturing sector, by failing to have access to cheap capital. It's an opportunity for China to become very energy secure where they haven't been in the past, except for coal. But it's an opportunity for the United States if it falls behind to become energy insecure in a way that we really don't want to. And so this is, I think, it's a transition in the motivations and thinking that governments have had to undergo. 

EM: The third element just to put it on the table now, again. The social equity part. And here at MIT, at the MIT Energy Initiative and the Center for Energy Environmental Policy Research, we've been doing now for six years, the so-called Roosevelt Project. The Roosevelt Project, is all based on the premise, which I think is incontrovertible and regrettably becoming more and more clear, that if we do not address the legitimate concerns of workers and communities about the clean energy transition and have affordable energy, have a future for these workers and communities, we will have intense headwinds in the clean energy transition. 

KM: Like political opposition?

EM: That's been seen. The Yellow Jackets in Europe, for example, was all about the cost of energy. We've seen it here in the United States. We're seeing it in some of the major, especially again, in Europe. Their recent elections, well, let's face it, have not been pretty. And the issues of what is bubbling to the top of the priority list was part and parcel of their drift to the right. So, we have to balance clean energy transition pace and scale with energy security, with affordability, reliability, social equity, if we are going to succeed, in my view, at any of them. And we need to succeed at all of them. 

RS: You know, I think the Europeans have once again reinforced Kermit the Frog’s claim that it isn't easy being green. And the Greens suffered a real setback in this election. And that's because I think they're perceived to be driving the cost of energy higher. Maybe not rightly, but with policies that insist on renewable energy and investment in renewable energy. I'm not an expert on European politics, but I think that the politics are shifting around this as well, becoming more pragmatic in many ways. 

KM: So I think this brings up an interesting question, which is: If in Trump 1.0 climate policies did not get set back as much as one might think, that the private sector…

EM: I didn't say climate policies didn't get set back. Climate decarbonization did not somehow halt. 

KM: …because maybe the private sector understands that if you're a car company where you still have to compete with companies around the world, you know, it doesn't necessarily…presidents change, but there's a sort of competitive trajectory you have to understand. Then what is the right role for government? Like, what things should governments be doing? And what things do governments not need to do because other parts of society will take care of those things? 

EM: Well, first of all, let me emphasize the innovation agenda involving technology and business models and policy. Those are all part of an innovation agenda. Now, the business model innovation is, by definition, primarily, obviously, in the private sector. In the technology innovation side, there's no doubt that there remains a critical role for the government at the early stages, if you like, of the innovation roadmap. Certainly, supporting a lot of the cross-cutting basic science that is needed, supporting some of the early stage of technology developments building on that science in general. But I would posit, and this becomes more and more controversial, that the place where we are at in terms of addressing climate change, in the technology innovation space, I think needs to go to the advanced demonstration and early deployment stages. 

KM: So concretely, what does that mean? 

EM: Well, so you are seeing it today. The infrastructure law with regard to the energy sector is supporting things like, for example, hydrogen hubs. There's going to be seven, or up to seven, hydrogen hubs in different parts of the country. That is trying to say that, “Look, we the government, we want to kickstart both hydrogen supply and hydrogen demand formation.” Whether that will happen remains to be seen. But that's a bet, if you like. 

The infrastructure law similarly put forward carbon capture and sequestration hubs. Same idea to make hubs—specific locations to advance that. The government has been very, very active in trying to promote nuclear power deployment in the United States. We just had recently the celebration of the two new nuclear power plants that came online in Georgia. 

RS: That was more of a sigh of relief than a celebration.

EM: No, it was a genuine celebration. The budget and the schedule were not for the faint of heart. But I will say, that I was there. These are called the Vogtle 3 and 4 Units. But I was very happy to have an extensive tour of the new plants. And I have to tell you, there was a visual there that really impressed one. Namely, there was a screen showing the instantaneous power output of the four Vogtle reactors. Every one of them basically pegged at 1.2 GW, 4.8 GW of clean electrons coming out. It's pretty impressive. 

RS: It's similar to the total amount of offshore wind energy we might ever get. 

EM: Well, we'll see. And it emphasized that it's serving a very important function, having those almost five gigawatts of firm power, not variable power, but firm power. 

KM: Like all the time, like at midnight? 

EM: All the time, dispatchable, etc. And in fact, so the reason I really mentioned Vogtle: Vogtle 3 and 4 were the two new units. The governor of Georgia, Governor Kemp—Republican, going back to the earlier conversation—he said publicly, surprised a lot of people when he said, “I want to see Vogtle 5.” That means 6 as well. But the point is, in this case, for example, the Department of Energy provided the loan support to build those reactors. The Department of Energy has provided funding for two so-called “Generation IV” that has advanced non-light water reactors for the future. So, the government is playing certainly an important role there where the motivations include the economy, energy security, and the like. 

But the fact is, it's clean, firm power that we are going to need a lot more of in the United States, in my view, as we necessarily also build up wind and solar with some storage attached to it. Because the reality is wind and solar, very, very attractive, the costs have come down dramatically. The cost of batteries have come down dramatically for storage. It doesn't change the fact that they are weather dependent sources. And even in a place like Texas, where we have the most wind by far in the United States, the reality is in Texas, in a typical year, there are probably 90 days—nine zero days—in that year with essentially no wind in Texas. And the order of a week and a half in a row of no wind? You got to have firm power to complement the variable power. And we're going to have to find new ways of organizing our electricity system to value much more the firm power contributions to value the backup contributions. You can't run the system if half or 70% of the electricity source may go away for over a week. You're going to have to have backup. Somebody has to pay for it. 

So, we have a lot of work to do to make this system work together. But frankly, if we don't get there, it won't be because the technology isn't ready. We have a lot of technology now. We're going to have a lot more technology in 10, 15, 20 years. But we need the whole system to function together, including with business model policy and regulatory innovation. Right now we have a lot of silos. I would argue that, for example, there are not very many people in government who really understand how large investment decisions are made by the various players who do have very deep pockets but are very committed to using those deep pockets to get them deeper. 

KM: We're talking about private sector companies here? 

EM: I'm talking about corporations, talking about banks, talking about pension funds. There are many, many pockets of deep capital which have also, especially in the financial sector as opposed to the corporate world, they have many, many options as to how to deploy those funds for maximizing return, which is probably the highest-level priority for them. They do want to diversify and they are also hedging their futures, etc., etc. But fundamentally, you have to make the investments investable. And often policy makers don't realize when a policy is not constructed well to encourage the deployment of that capital. But turning it around, I would say there aren't that many players on Wall Street, for example, who really understand how policy is made. So, we need a lot of convening also of these different sectors, and of course, the strategic investors like the corporates, for example, they really need to come together in ways that support the “investability” of clean energy projects. 

RS:  They're the ones that have the trillions, maybe the tens of trillions, in this country that need to get deployed to get these things out there. And they've got to have a profit motive for doing it, I think. Our colleague David Victor, who I think is at UCSD, said the other day in a conversation, you know, “clean energy finance isn't going to be clean energy finance until it's just finance.” And I think that's right. I mean, we've got to get these costs down there. But that doesn't mean that policy consistency by the federal government and strong signals isn't needed. Both are. And I do think we're at some risk with the Trump administration, although I don't think we're at risk of the IRA or the BIL being canceled or unfunded or maybe slowed down a bit. I think we're more at risk of inconsistency in policy that might cause some of that private sector money to hang back a little bit because we’re not sure where we're going. 

EM: Well, on the positive side, I think one of the very positive developments, let's say, in the IRA was precisely by changing the time horizon for the credits to 10 years rather than the historically, you know, one- or two-year kinds of horizons, which really impeded progress. That's an example of the policy world not having really understood how to put their incentives in place in ways that would really incentivize. But the reality is today, including the Biden administration, has put some pretty forward-leaning programs out there. But the reality is, our approach in the United States, I would call “carrots and twigs.” 

KM: A variation on a theme, okay. 

EM: Correct. And eventually there won't be enough carrots. That is, if we succeed in this incentivization approach, eventually, we don't have enough money in the public sector to just keep pouring money into clean energy programs that are, in fact, scaling. That's where we have to make that transition to the private sector, and it's very unlikely for that to happen, in my view, until we get to a real carrots and sticks. I mean, by sticks, what do I mean? I mean, for example, a carbon emissions price would be an example and that resets the whole playing field. It resets how an investor makes decisions because once we go to a carbon price, it's kind of assumed that will be in place for a long, long time and maybe growing over time. And that influences which projects are going to be profitable. 

So, I think that carrots and twigs is the right policy now. Frankly, it's the only practical policy right now. But eventually, and I just can't say when, I do think that the extreme weather is going to tip the political equation towards a real negotiation in terms of how we are going to condition the energy marketplace for a transition. And I do want to emphasize the word transition, because unfortunately, too many of our colleagues involved in the climate discussion indulged themselves into telling us how wonderful it's going to be in 2050, but don't want to talk about the hard work of 25 years of transition. That's what it's about. Because if we don't have that viewpoint, again, to connect dots earlier, we'll never be able to address the social equity challenges without a real focus on transition getting from here to there. What's the roadmap? And so, the point is we have a lot of these pieces on the Go board, but we have to start connecting them and having a long-term plan of how that game of Go finishes. 

RS: So, Ernie, you talked about conditioning the marketplace, which I assume is a euphemistic way of talking about carbon taxes at some level. You mentioned carbon taxes. 

EM: I said pricing. 

KM: That’s how it goes in government. I remember interviewing a couple economists years ago—I mean, had to be ten years ago, one of them being Jon Gruber here at MIT—of various stripes, there were Republicans, people who’d served in George W. Bush's administration. They all agreed there should be a carbon tax, which I just remember being the most shocking conversation because at least economists at that time were kind of on the same page. 

RS: And that's late in the game. I mean, Waxman-Markey in 2008, 2009, 2010, we were so close and Obama made a choice. It was, was he going to spend his political capital on that or Obamacare? And I think he probably made the right choice at that time. But it does beg the question, are we ever going to get to a carbon tax in the United States or anywhere? Or is that just a latent threat that the government can sort of hang over the head of the economy that drives the economy toward doing the right thing for other reasons? 

EM: I personally believe that we will. That tipping point I mentioned, I think will end up with an emissions tax, price, whatever you want to call it. I think that something like this eventually is going to happen where the big tension will be in how the revenue is used. 

I cannot name the name, but let's just say I not that long ago spoke with a prominent former Republican government figure, well-respected in the finance tax arena, and I was quite surprised when this person said unequivocally, he supported the carbon tax. And we talked more. And then we found where there was a bit of a breakdown in our views. Namely, his view was all the funds should go to deficit reduction. Well, that, of course, is completely regressive. In the end, that may be the negotiation. How much of this funding is returned to the population in a progressive way? How much goes to budget balancing? If I had to guess, I would guess that we may end up with that as the final negotiation. 

KM: Do you think that the U.S. has a tendency to be preachy in terms of, you know, of course we want big economies like China and India to try to use cleaner energy to transition, but in a case like China, a lot of our stuff, potentially, like the stuff that we buy in the store from toys to bikes to blenders and whatever is potentially contributing to their emissions. So, do we not look at ourselves enough when we say to other countries, hey, use cleaner energy?

RS: Buy fewer bikes. 

KM Or, yeah.

EM: Obviously offshoring is an issue. But of course, now what we're doing, particularly with the Biden administration, legislative activity where there's a lot of onshoring going on. 

To switch the subject slightly, not intentionally, but it raises a different issue as we are onshoring and building data centers galore, especially with AI, and electrifying transportation and electrifying space heating and maybe making green hydrogen—electrolysis of water—and maybe supporting a cryptocurrency world. Who knows? We have today, we are seeing enormous growth in our own electricity requirements. This triggered by mentioning China in that context. And frankly, I think the utilities are just saying the truth, that in the near-term, the only way that this load can be satisfied is by building more natural gas plants. 

So, we have our own little carbon load, electricity load, train wreck in a certain sense. But I think that once again, if we had some real planning, we could offset that, because we understand, you know, pretty well the forcing of global warming from greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and what we need to do is not just catch up in terms of the emissions level, but catch up in terms of the integrated forcing of the atmosphere and the warming. But those discussions just are not happening. I think they are. I don't know, they would require some sophistication. They would require some serious analysis and modeling and everything else. 

RS: And decision-making about priority. 

EM: Decision-making about priorities. 

RS: I mean, AI, you know, is consuming a lot of energy for things like Google Assistant, you know, and basically a lot of trivial nonsense that we could easily dispense with. But you're not going to selectively tax it. I keep coming back to a carbon tax as being the right answer for a lot of this stuff. 

EM: I agree with that, Rob. But also, I would say, look, the reality is today the near-term load growth in many parts of the United States is driven 80, 90% by data centers. That fraction will decrease as more of the onshoring manufacturing plants come online and more EVs and the like. But today, it's really driven there. But I would argue that in a digitized world that, frankly, meeting the load for data centers and AI, large language model training, and the like, is frankly a national imperative. For all kinds of reasons, including security. So, I think that rather than arguing about it, we should just be talking about, okay, how are we going to do this in a low-carbon world? 

RS: And there is a lot of technological innovation going on to make it possible. I mean, probably, even things related to this hydrogen initiative we were talking about earlier. 

EM: Yeah, and by the way, even in the AI sector. I think the amount of power, for example, being required for these, you know, GPUs driving AI, that can come down by an order of magnitude. Now, whether it will just create ten more cycles per cycle, we'll see. But certainly, for energy efficiency, the surface has not been scratched in that world. 

RS: Yeah, energy efficiency in computer algorithms, in computer hardware, in cooling, hardware, and concepts. I mean, I just see this across the board. Yeah, and it is interesting, but it's really got to bear fruit. 

KM: We've covered a lot of ground. So, if let's say President Biden called you later this afternoon, which who knows, could happen. 

RS: He never calls me, Kara. 

KM: Okay, but it might happen later today. And he said, you know, what's the one suggestion from both of you? What's the one suggestion you would have that maybe like, I'm not doing, blank slate, just tell me what you think it is, but maybe something you think I could do? So, like though you might support a carbon tax, you might also think that's completely not feasible in the current setup. But what's something he could do that is not currently being done. It would be like your top thing. Ernie, do you want to say? 

EM: Well, first of all, I would support the carbon pricing and agree that he can't do it right now. We're just not ready, frankly, ready for that for all the reasons we discussed earlier. But in terms of what may be doable, I would actually say that he and his administration should build on things they have been starting to do in terms of getting the whole electricity infrastructure built out and straightened out. 

KM: This is the grid?

EM: The grid. The fact is electricity has been the lead horse in decarbonization. It is the lead horse in decarbonization. It will be the lead horse in decarbonization. The needs are growing dramatically. 

We've just shifted from a significant period where national electricity growth was about a half percent per year to a place now where I think it's roughly 1.5% per year and maybe growing, and certainly in some hotspots is growing much faster than that. Having a grid that functions and not just regionally, but inter-regionally, would unlock a lot of other possibilities. And there's a lot of innovation that can be used. 

So, if I take, for example, getting very practical since you suggested something that had to be practical, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC, issued an order that was probably its biggest step on transmission in over a decade. And it had some very useful elements in it, like 20-year planning for regional grid buildout. Like very importantly, not discussed enough, I think is the encouragement of technologies to increase the capacity of the existing grid. New conductors and dynamic line rating and new switching technologies and modeling, etc. However, it also falls short. It did not consider inter-regional planning. It did not really consider the permitting issues. This is hard, but I think doable. 

For example, in Congress there has been legislation. It's still kind of knocking around in terms of trying to improve the permitting process. It needs a push. So, I would say really addressing the technology and regulatory structures needed to really build out the grid and to allow all the generation technologies to work, to connect to real loads, etc., to connect faster. I think that's doable in the next four years. 

KM: It's an interesting priority because I think it seems so like pedestrian or unsexy, you know. But in some ways, you're like, well, but we can't do the cool, awesome things if we have, you know, the infrastructure of like…what good is a new car if the roads are all messed up? 

EM: We need a real push on infrastructure. And I agree. I was intentionally being non-sexy in that.

KM: We appreciate that.

EM: But I will degenerate even further and say that it's not only wires, but it's also on pipes. There's a, I think, terrific project in the Midwest to gather up CO₂ emitted from many, many ethanol plants and bury it, sequester it, except they can't get permits to build the pipelines. So anyway, so we have a big infrastructure challenge. Again, I put the electricity right up there as number one and doable potentially, but I wouldn't ignore other parts of the energy infrastructure as well. 

RS: Maybe we could make those transmission lines sexier by making some of them superconducting. 

EM: And buried. 

RS: And buried. 

KM: Have you ever thought if President Biden called you later today, and you had just one thing you could contribute? 

RS: Yeah. So, what I've noticed is where we're successful, and I think of the IRA here, we're operating through the tax code—and just changing the tax code, not passing new laws necessarily, but allowing people to deduct stuff or providing rebates in some ways or subsidies. So, we got to do something there. 

At the same time, we have very high interest rates and it's making it hard for people to buy houses. And I can't help thinking that somehow we can combine these things, you know, allowing them for maybe using federal money to enable people to buy down points on new home purchases to reduce their interest rates if they sign up for some sort of energy efficiency program and reduce their consumption of electricity, natural gas, or whatever it is, maybe by getting their homes re-insulated on purchase or even as a retrofit for people who are refinancing their homes. 

So, I think that's, you know, something that needs obviously to be thought through a lot more than I'm thinking it through right now. But I think we need to look for solutions that are politically attractive and feasible and where there are obvious problems that can be solved at the same time as solving the renewable energy problem. 

EM: I mean, there are programs, particularly for the less well-off parts of the population. 

RS: They tend not to subscribe to those programs. 

EM: They need to be strengthened. And also, I said earlier about policy changes that can help large private sector financial flows to projects. There are also policy changes needed for the other end of the economic spectrum, if you like, in terms of making things usable to them. 

I will note that in the current administration, the legislation passed by Congress has a lot of elements for addressing some of the social equity issues requiring things like community benefits plans or at least incentivizing labor project agreements, etc. The problem is, especially on the community benefits plans, is that it's a new thing and there's still a lot of figuring out how to do this. 

That's another thing which, by the way, a president could also get some more energy behind. Really moving these requirements for planning early with communities in terms of what benefits they will see from projects—get that really, really, really moving. I mean, it's there, but I think there's still a little kind of fumbling around as people try to figure out how to make the system work. 

RS: Yeah, well, the ones who figure out how to make this system work are the rich communities, of course, where there's more capacity to govern, more experience, more lawyers per capita. And they get in there and they scoop up these programs and the social equity problems are exacerbated. So, I think that there's probably a role to play, perhaps a government's part in strengthening these communities in a very deliberate way to enable them to participate. And again, we're seeing that, I think, beginning to happen. 

EM: Yeah. 

KM: Finally, I just wonder what your level of optimism is. I mean, there's a lot of hurdles to overcome. As we’ve talked about what seems like a very close election coming up and could easily go either way, how do you think about not just like the next six months, but I mean the next 10 or 20 years? 

EM: Well, first of all, you're speaking with two physicists who are by nature optimistic. 

KM: I can say that about all physicists? 

EM: Absolutely. 

KM: Oh okay. 

RS: All the ones I know. 

EM: I do think we're going to get there. As usual, we tend to get there a little bit too slow. And that's probably going to be the case, but here as well. But the reality is, when all is said and done, my optimism rests on the fact that we will have all the technology we need available, I think at reasonable cost in the context of what we will be paying by not addressing the problem. 

There are so many examples that I think are going to push us over the top, like the crazy insurance costs that are coming in various parts of the country. The real pain and suffering that people are experiencing from extreme weather, literally having to move in many cases. And of course, globally, we see all of these dislocations of populations. War is part of that, but so is climate change a big part of that. And frankly, those often get intertwined as well. So it may be for unfortunate reasons, but I think we are going to have the kind of tipping point that I mentioned earlier. We're going to have to get the carbon markets right. We're going to have to get policy better aligned with finance, and the technology will be there to hopefully save the day. 

RS: The technology is coming. There's no question about it. The cost reductions are coming, and I think public opinion is coming. And as Winston Churchill famously said, “the Americans can be counted on to do the right thing after exhausting every other possibility.” We're on our normal trajectory here. 

KM: Ernest Moniz was Secretary of Energy under President Obama. He's now the Cecil and Ida Green Emeritus Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems at MIT, founding director of the MIT Energy Initiative. Thank you so much. This was a great conversation. 

EM: Pleasure. 

RS: Thanks, Ernie. 

EM: Thank you. 

KM: What If it works? is a production of the MIT Energy Initiative. If you like the show, please leave us a review or invite a friend to listen. And remember to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can find an archive of every episode, all of our show notes, and a lot more at energy.mit.edu/podcasts, and you can learn more about the work of the Energy Initiative and the energy transition at energy.mit.edu. Our original podcast artwork is by Zeitler Design. Special thanks to all the people at MITEI and MIT who make this show possible. I'm Kara Miller. 

RS: And I'm Rob Stoner. 

KM: Thanks for listening.