 Today has been such a great day for me, meeting a lot of your colleagues, meeting a lot of the professors, spending some time here on campus. And I'm truly humbled and just I feel really grateful to be here today. So thank you all very much. It's a wonderful opportunity. I don't know how many of you guys like to hike, go hiking in the woods, urban hiking, rural hiking. As you're walking down those paths and you're starting to smell the trees, hopefully there's a river nearby. And you're starting to get a sense of the path you're on and where it's taking you. And you've checked your iPhone or your Samsung or your Google phone and you've got that map. You even were safeguarding and downloaded it before just in case there's no service. You've got a paper map inside and you know where you're going and you're ready for that four mile hike. You even chose a loop hike to make it easier on you. And you're thrilled about this adventure ahead. Two miles in, you're looking around, you're enjoying the sights. You're seeing some wildlife, you're hearing great sounds. You haven't run across another human yet. This is a great day. And all of a sudden there's a huge ginormous tree. It's a walnut tree, redwood tree, an oak tree that's across the pathway. What are you going to do? You can't climb over it because it's enormous. On the other side there's rocks have piled up. You can't go down around it because there's a lake that's actually just two feet away. What's your next direction? Do you turn around and go back? Do you find another route? Well, I think as many as you know, this is kind of life in tales. And it's always nice to kind of see that there are other pathways. It's never straight A to Z. There's always a lump, log, tree, something in the road that's going to challenge you. And instead of looking at it as a frustration, look at it as an opportunity. So with that I kind of wanted to show today, there's a lot of ways to look at energy and environment, policymaking. And I was asked to kind of weave in my history and my jobs and the path that got me here today because from what I've been told it seems pretty unique. So, and it is, it's been a great journey, but it's really kind of woven in certain elements that have brought me here today. So why should we care about a reliable electric grid? What are these regulations? What's the interconnection aspect? Enter the environment. A lot of this seems very black and white. But when you dig into it, there's a lot of gray areas. I bet a lot of you weren't expecting to see this picture. So I started my career in Washington, DC, leaving Southern California and heading to the Department of Energy as a present management fellow. And was tasked to work on freedom fuels. And during President Bush's years from 2001 to 2009, one of the initial tasks was to look at clean diesel, hydrogen, fuel cells, natural gas. Now all these different kind of components that could be our future. And look at what the strategies were for, what does the infrastructure look like? What is the freedom highway we were working on from Southern California, San Diego up to the Pacific Northwest? Highway that you could take where you could stop and have different types of freedom fuels available to you. As you're working on this and a variety of other aspects within the administration, this happened. Do any of you remember the 2003 blackout? Couple of hands in the air, so it was massive. It really kind of just surprised not just the legislator, not just the policy makers, home owners, business owners. It all walks the life we're affected by the 2003 blackout. And this is such a big deal because lives were lost, eight lives. Canadian provinces and eight US states were affected. Some people were out of power for two weeks. Anywhere from four to ten billion dollars were lost in the economy during this time frame. This was a huge, huge detriment. And kind of see like a true blackout on our system, our economy. And it kind of made everyone take a step back and realize, all right, we just had an enormous fault in our system, what happened? And the Department of Energy was tasked to take an investigatory look and do what happened and work with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on to piece together the pieces of the pie of where did this start? How did it start? Who's at fault? How do we make it better? And how do we move forward? So I was asked to participate in the blackout investigation. And I am not an electrical engineer. So I felt like this, standing in front of a fire hydrant with tons of information throwing at me and trying to digest it and it was exhilarating. And I was so inspired by the many engineers, mentors around me saying, this is such a great opportunity to really jump in and truly understand what's at stake. We had this electric grid, this infrastructure, this as some people have called the backbone of our society that's out there and exists provides livelihood and we really don't understand it fully. And we have some experts in the room that can help us dissect this. And so I was on a team that we could have pulled together the resources to do for the first time ever a look of actually mapping out what had happened. And at this time there was not a lot of material technology tools out there to look in 2003 how to decipher what happened. So we spent about a year interviewing the operators, interviewing the various individuals involved. There's a lot of finger pointing, there's a lot of you did this, you did that. But it kind of came down to four causes. One, that there was just basic miscommunication and adequate system understanding, not knowing what your neighbor, who you're attached to, who's running part of the grid is doing. There was inadequate situation awareness, not being able to see the picture in front of you and your neighbor's pictures. There was no communication to view this. And when we went in to do some of the investigations, for example, First Energy went into their control room and set a scene aboard that's from this wall to this wall with tons of beeping red lights and lots of lines and gadgets. There are some paper maps and it was kind of like, this is interesting. This is not what we've seen in other control rooms. So there was no set standard for control rooms across the country. It wasn't that it was right or wrong, it was just very different. And then there was inadequate tree trimming. The trees that were in the right to ways were touching the conductors when they got so heavy from all the power being generated, they started sagging, hit the tree, sparks flew out of just our coin. And this happened to more than just one right away. And all this is gonna be tested later in some linkages that I hope you guys can convene back to. So inadequate tree trimming. And then inadequate reliably coordinator diagnosis. A reliability coordinator is kind of like an air traffic controller for the electric grid. So they're overseeing many different utilities or balancing authorities, a group of utilities, watching how the power flows on the grid. Well, they weren't talking with each other. They didn't know how to or maybe they were, but not at the right times. We were listening to the conversations back and forth. There was a lot of scare tactics and profanities cuz everyone was pointing the fingers saying, no, this is you, no, this is you. And truly no one could see cuz no one had the appropriate tools to see the entire big picture of the electric grid. So with tons of stakeholder involvement, lots of input from experts in the field, policymakers, experts, professors, different stakeholder groups coming together to educate the team that was doing the investigation and trying to get to the bottom of what happened. We came out to finding these causes and then deciphering these solutions. There was a need for mandatory standards. Surprisingly in the electric industry, they were all voluntary. You had regulated utilities and gas, other entities had mandatory standards. But surprisingly so, there wasn't any for the electricity entities. And so this was kind of a big surprise moment. And then once you have these standards that are mandatory, who make sure that they are actually adhered to? Where's the compliance mechanism? And if you were gonna have an entity that was going to oversee the entire grid operations, would this be funded independently? And so that was a big, you don't wanna have vine interests kind of guiding the thought pattern of the operator of the grid. And so how is this group and how are these entities gonna help with the deficiencies? How are they going to really boost up and promote the capabilities of a reliability coordinator? How do you make them and ensure that they do watch the electricity of the grid and make sure it's actually flowing the directions and have the power and authority that the utilities adhere to them? And then also one of the biggest things was just training. Taking for granted how important it is to touch base and just see what else is out there, how to constantly improve and make better how you're running the grid. And sharing those lessons learned, it wasn't happening as much as it could. And then last but not least, kind of the first started beginnings of cybersecurity and physical security assets. What's at stake here? We were just starting to bring on different tools, energy management systems that were starting to bring in the internet and talk back and forth. And there was really no protections on it. And so how to kind of boost that up to protect who's got what inside your, who's protecting your data. So with most things, when you have a giant crisis and entities and people have been awoken by the fact that there is dire needs. And we gotta rush and fix it now. The energy policy act of 2005 was passed. So we had the blockout in 2003. The report came out saying we have to have these standards, we have to have a new grid operator, we have to have a new system. And then we had legislation. And anything to do with energy policy had not really been passed before 1993. So it was due to kind of revamp the system and look at this. So there was a lot of pork in this 1200 page document that had a lot of different rules and regulations. But two key pieces that was tied to the work I was doing was one, the energy policy act enforced and created the mandatory letter standards. And the organization to set it up. So you have the mandatory standards and you have the independent organization that would oversee the process of creating them. And then it also pointed out there's just a lot more need for coordination among agencies to work better together to know what other agencies are doing with their time and portfolios and to better be more cost effective and efficient. Including those 1200 pages was also a lot of work on energy efficiency, on energy star, on biofuel initiatives, on CAFE standards. The repeal of the very public utilities act and improvements to the public utilities regulatory act. There was a renewable energy tax credits. And then surprise there was extended daylight savings time. A lot of these things that kind of realized, wow, this actually all happened in 2005. There was a lot of discussion over fracking. And there was a lot of discussion over land leases for both federal and state lands. There were a lot of introductions for subsidies. And then there was a lot of discussion over federal lands and then relationships to tribal lands. And this is just 10 out of the 25 titles that are there. So there's a lot more there. There's a lot of meat in here. And kind of if you ever curious about the history of some of the things where we are today, it stems from the 2005 policy act. The 2007 Energy Security Act built upon some of these aspects and woven more boundaries for cyber securities and physical assets. One theme that was throughout the blackout report and through the DOE work was this constant focus on reliability. What is it? What does it mean? How do we enforce it? How do we keep it? How do we make it better? And how do we make a system adequate? And again, that kind of tile to security. So this kind of became the foundation of reliability services. It's gotta be adequate and it's gotta be secure. And it's always, always gotta be reliable. We have to keep the lights on because it keeps our economy alive. So after finishing the blackout investigation, I was asked to work on a first of its kind bridging building bridges and bridging gaps with the Department of Defense. Department of Agriculture, Department of Interior, Department of Energy. To come together and work on creating a map to amend the land use plans that were outlined in the legislation to say, okay, right now they disconnect. Some of that was done on purpose so that things couldn't be built or abused. But now we need to connect them and be more efficient in our overall planning for all of federal lands. And since all of these different entities have assets in different Western states, how do you connect it? And so there had not existed a memorandum of understanding until we got together with these agencies to sit down and negotiate what this looked like. Who did what? Who had authority? How are we gonna do this? And we went back to Congress and said, are there guidelines? They said, we task you to do it, go do it. So we ticket upon ourselves to say, okay, well, we don't really have the tools yet, let's start creating these things. And GIS didn't really exist yet. And so this was the first time we got Argonne National Lab to work on pulling together the different data layers we could have and also start creating some from scratch of what's out there. Where are these federal lands? What are the tribal lands? What are the state-owned lands? Where are the different categories within the Department of Agriculture? So where are the Forest Service lands? And then with Department of Energy, where are the Bureau of Land Management lands, where are the mineral lands, all these different layers. And bring it all together. Again, this had not been done before. So imagine a room with five people who have very different mission statements and vision statements for what they're supposed to achieve and can't come to any agreement. And imagine that again for another six weeks of discussions and enlightenment and sharing philosophies and shared perspectives to come to some type of agreement where we can come up with this. And then once we come up with a map and meeting with all the field offices for each of these agencies, getting input from the public on, does this make sense? Does it work? Can we build something here? From the legislation, we were tasked to build energy infrastructure. So it was gas pipelines, hydrogen pipelines. We were kind of thinking of those freedom fuels again. Could it be carbon sequestration pipelines? And then kind of the back of their heads, are there renewable energy, transmission lines? But what's there? And asking utilities and other stakeholders to come forward with, if you could put anything in these corridors, what would it be? And do you think it's the right width, the right size? And having a lot of these negotiations going to each of the states, meeting with the governor's offices. And because when you're in the federal government, you let to come in and say, hi, we're here to help or from the federal government, you have that big X on your back as you leave. It wasn't always a pleasant conversation, but it sure was enlightening. And so this really was an amazing challenge to really start understanding the different dynamics at play, the players, the interests, and the kind of short-term and long-term goals that we had to work with. When you first came out with this map, all the lines were attached. And we got so many phone calls with screaming and cities saying, what are you doing? You're in the federal government, you're taking over our lands. And we thought it would be easier to connect the lines as a possibility, but realizing that that's not where all the federal lands are. And so it was kind of a great first lesson of make sure you truly understand what you're looking at and that we're here to help can only go so far. You have to get feedback to make sure you are truly helping. And so through the process, we brought this out and then came out in 2008. In 2009, there were some lawsuits that were against this because it said that you did not incorporate renewable energy in other aspects. You did not do a complete NEPA, which is the National Environmental Protection Plan, to really look at the probity and siding and parts of that were done. And then there was a whole year spent on negotiations to re-evaluate this process and kind of find out how to make this better. Because it was 6,000 miles of land. There is all of this opportunity, but also a lot of caveats. So after the lawsuit was settled, the entities kind of came out and said, all right, now that we know that there's more renewable energy zones, we know there's more infrastructure, they got brought in third-party contractors so that you could hear from other entities that could view these lines differently. So one was the Western Electricity Accordion Council, which is an entity that oversees the Western electricity system and kind of plans for the future. And they said, well, here are these zones, here are these areas. Let us kind of draw for you the graph that really connects to and emulates the transmission lines. So lay over what's real with what you have and make it something that can be used for siding for local projects and regional projects. So this kind of became one of the next things that came out of the planning. And the great aspect is that two transmission lines have already been built for renewable energy using majority of these rights-of-ways. Now there are other areas where entities do not want these to be used at all and that's also very understandable. So there's still constant partnership, negotiation, ongoing discussions about how best to use this. But it's a living document that continues to thrive and push and pull different perspectives. And so I put up this picture from Keith Herring because it kind of inspires me in what I was about to do next. Break some molds, kind of change the culture and do something that I didn't think was going to be on my path. And so I was asked to go help NERC, who I'd already done some investigation work with and realized that I don't know if I want to go back to NERC. I saw what you guys did and I saw who you guys were doing it with and I'm not sure about this. So it was a lot of negotiations and the CEO Rick Sergo asked me to come and help redefine the culture and help look at the oversight. Before NERC became the independent entity, it was a pre-existing entity that had relationships with these NERC regions. The Western Electricity Corridor Council that I mentioned earlier, New York Air, Reliability First, the Southeast, Florida, Texas, the Southwest Power Pool, and the Midwest. And all of these groups kind of used to, in some ways, some would say run NERC. And now the tables have turned and now NERC was overseeing all of these entities and so the culture had completely shifted and so it was a renegotiation of right rules and procedures and authority. And so kind of with that task at hand went forward to rebuild the brand of NERC to regain integrity and credibility with Congress, with state agencies, with the utilities, with trade associations, with customers, because this was now the entity that was going to be both ensuring that standards were created, that were reliable, that protected the grid and that were mandatory, but at the same time also holding the compliance hammer so that if these standards weren't followed and if problems occurred, $1 million per day per violation could be had on any of the entities involved. So it both had the carrot and the stick and so one thing we learned early on is you're never going to please both sides. So if you were in the middle, it was a good place to start. And so this is what it kind of felt like at times and this looks more zen than it actually was. I guess even getting it straight in line was hard. But you know always at the top was like balancing reliability. That was the theme, that was the word, that was the reality that all the different stakeholders could coalesce with. How we got there was a different measure but at least we could at least connect on the word reliability. What were the utilities doing? How were they participating? What was the training? How was the security being incorporated? There was a constant debate over at this time was cyber more important than physical? Was physical more important than cyber? Where did we go from the side? And so you kind of had to kind of each day look at what was going on in the grid and communicate and find out what that situational awareness was. And starting to have more of these communications was something that didn't always exist before. So again it was that changing culture to kind of really bring all these entities to the table. And then at the same time as you're reaching out, building bonds, communicating, building relationships, you also have to keep that independence. So again balancing act. And at the same time you're an independent entity with a tie to the government and with a tie to the industry and oversight over you. And so it's this, you know, NERC trying to balance again who they were and what they wanted to be. And again the standards and compliance element and then stakeholders. A lot of times stakeholders get left out of the picture but they're a key part of the entire picture. And on this one, my daughter was joking that if you could choose one of the rocks, which one would you pull out? I'll leave that to all of you. But on the NERC side, you know, some things that even though it was a constant balance act and that sometimes we would be given the hat of compliance and enforcer and don't come into our office versus relationship builder, stakeholder, networker, let's build reliability standards together, shared expertise, you know, bringing this back and forth. We were able to open up a DC office to brand ourselves, to make sure that we were there in DC to work with both the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and Congress and state regulators. And again all those trade associations that had different needs and wants, you know, come together and have that access point. There were over 50 mandatory standards that were implemented that's still in effect today. I think it's even grown some more and if you include all the little sub-requirements, it's over a hundred. You know, as I showed earlier on that map with the regional entities, you know, the delegated authority, they're kind of really outlining the roles of responsibilities so they were clear so that entities could really understand who was accountable. And then also a lot of new tools. I mean, we're spoiled today with all these new types of technology, but back then it was an ah moment when you had one screen up and it had a connective, you know, to another office that was miles away and another one that was to another state. I mean, that was a big deal and to have it in real time was even more of a ah moment. So, you know, where we are today is amazing, but you know, just getting these tools up and being able to share and understand what was being communicated on these tools was a significant step forward. And then again I mentioned just the back and forth of security. Is it your substation? Is it your nuclear plant? Is it your power plant? Is it your wind station? Wind generators? Is it your transmission lines? You know, what kind of assets do you have? At the same time, your data centers. You're collecting all this data from the utilities. How are you storing it? And so, I'm really trying to make sure that those physical and cybersecurity standards were understood. At that time, there weren't many cybersecurity experts in DC or even in Congress. There was maybe three or four staffers and two legislators who were interested in this. So trying to raise the awareness, you know, was a big deal. There was a moment when there was a cyber attack that kind of, again, a crisis moment where people woke up and said, oh my gosh, that just got hacked. Well then you had to say, what's hacking? What's the cybersecurity aspect? Why wasn't the password changed? You know, why was it still password? It was just a lot of awareness. I'm serious. There were a lot of awarenesses that we had to do. So it was a big deal. And it was just, you know, really trying to understand what we had and take it as a learning opportunity. And I think one of the best things was all the partnerships that were created. And there are a lot of allies who never thought they would become allies by coming together because of that foundation of reliability standards. We all are now on the same page. We are all accountable and we can move forward. So that was a big one. So after working with some amazing people to accomplish those goals, I wanted to move back to the West Coast, continue to build some bridges and also acknowledge that there are silos everywhere we go. And so I wanted to kind of see what kind of challenges were out here. So one of the things after starting my own business, I went to go work for Clean Line Energy Partners. Have any of you guys heard of them? Oh, two people. So they're a company that started based in Houston and wanting to build high voltage direct current transmission lines to connect wind and solar to load centers. And so this was exciting for me and a new challenge because I'd come from the policy side, the regulatory side, and now I get to go build something. Not realizing that transmission lines take 20 years to build, but if you're lucky. And it was an exciting task at hand. And to be a project developer, to work with communities, work with local leaders, work with different government agencies, to kind of tell the story of why this is important, especially to our future where we want to build kind of a green economy if that's what we're interested in. And so this was a solution. And these four projects that you can see here, Rock Island, Greenbelt Express, all started from mainly huge wind centers. And all of them would push forward over 3,000 megawatts of power to your load centers. So some of these would power over 1.5 million homes. It's a big deal, big projects, billion dollar projects. And the exciting thing is, is that two of these have gotten through all the permanent stages and the NEPA process and regulatory authority and they're going forward. There's a couple more hurdles for the planes in Eastern. It's been sold to another company. They're going to take it forward. Rock Island has some regulatory hurdles. And then you've got Greenbelt Express that just had a huge big win with the Missouri courts. A lot of entities kind of push and pull of the disruptor attitude of you are a new entity. You're not a traditional utility. Why are you trying to solve this problem? We've got it all fine right here. And so that kind of communication and back and forth has kind of ruffled some feathers. And it's been, I think, good for the grid and kind of where we're going that it's not the same old solution. There are other options that are out there. And as we keep pushing forward with new technologies and new ways to move power around, there's still talk about wireless power. There's a lot of different ways that we can go. And so this was a great way to kind of get the ball rolling forward. But as I mentioned earlier, it's a long time to build transmission line and I wanted to focus a little bit more on a local. And so I really wanted to continue the bridging of gaps and building advocacy and was really moved by work I was doing with colleagues in the West with trying to plan a grid of the future with various scenarios. And what did that look like incorporating different stakeholder views from the environmental side, from the industry side, from a consumer side. Different groups that had not traditionally come together were starting to show up at the table in meetings and asked to be part of the solution. And this was exciting to me to see all these different voices with new ideas starting to change and influence a very traditional culture in the utility world. So being environmentless at heart, the wildlife component, the being outdoors and protecting our environment really started to become more of a push in my life. And so I got to work at NRDC and this map was kind of one of the inspiration pieces of there are so many agendas out there. There are so many components to the grid. When you talk about reliability it means something different to everyone but yet there's this connective tissue that with the reliability standards and other components. Can you explain this to us? What does this mean? And can you explain this to other advocates in the environmental world so that we can understand this so we can speak the language so we can go out there and start having conversations? And so once you start dissecting how this map in the corner talks about new transmission lines on the existing grid, how this map shows the existing grid at a certain high voltage level of transmission lines and where resources are for wind and solar. And this map talks about those great big planning entities in the sky who come together and talk about how to plan for the grid for the future and how do you access this? And then you have this with the markets and the different kind of entities wanting to build a market to access these different layers and to bring in a whole new world of reliability coronation. And then you have this map that brings together all the load centers and generation and how you move the power around. And if you're having a market with the influence of these different areas how does this all work? And so trying to communicate and bring this together to new players who'd never been part of grid planning or standard setting or regulatory making for the grid of the future or for solar panels or for wind farms, it's been a great challenge to kind of say that yes, this does all come together and yes, it does tie. And yes, there are key fabric components that once you know and can interpret it, it will empower you to be part of the decision-making process. And so this has been really exciting in the environmental community world to bring together all the different components of reliability planning, transmission planning, grid planning, the seams discussion, what the seams mean to you and all these different layers of connectivity to look at, okay, so we have the grid, it's shooting electricity across these lines, what's happening in real time to now have an environmental component to it where you're thinking, well, those electrons are not just coal, nuclear and gas anymore, there's solar, there's wind, there's all these different elements that are now moving around that are participating in my life. There are all these new layers that are starting to connect to say, well, I have my phone, I need to charge it, do I have power? Now we're getting reconnected to all these elements and a lot more people are starting to ask questions of, well, why does this matter to me and what's going on and that real-time data and transparency is becoming the next kind of big hurdle. We have data questions about all these different aspects in our life and the same happens with the grid. Now what's going on? Where's this power coming from and where it's going? How much am I paying for my bill and who's getting that money? And so all of that's kind of weaving into the discussions and a smart from the start planning is we've wanted to protect the environment but I also wanna have my charging 24-7, how do I balance this out? And so if I wanna have solar and wind and biofuels but I wanna have my green power and I can't pay for it, how do I connect the dots? Or if I wanna protect the land and the trails and different areas where I like to go camping or how do I connect that back to where I don't wanna see a transmission land? I like to see it over there but not there. And so the smart from the start sliding, like protecting those zones, weaving in the environmental component into grid planning with transmission for the future. And then kind of the next element going forward is working with coal plant retirement communities, working with fossil fuel communities on what we're doing for the future. If they are going to retire, what happens to the existing community that's there and how can we work on making sure that their economic needs can continue to grow in the future? And so connecting the energy, the environment, the regulations aspect with all these different groups who have nothing in common but yet can kind of start weaving together on these standards components, on the security element, on the compliance element and on the environment element, you kind of see that this actually is all part of the game plan. And when we talk about a disruptor and we talk about an aggregator, we talk about partnerships, you kind of realize in reliability that it's interwoven and it's really important that you kind of understand where an entity, organization, or person are coming from to see what their goal is and their drive and their ambition and how you can make it link up so you both can get a win-win. And so one thing that I was asked about was like the gaps, the intersections and kind of the trials and tribulations of going through this process and realizing that our models are good but they could be better. We talk about modernizing the grid where there's all these layers behind modernizing the grid and modeling components are key to that and I'm excited to hear that Stanford is working really hard on creating some great new models to kind of give us the picture, the grid of the future. Improving data access, huge hurdle to jump. I'm constantly hearing from third parties, we can't get access to the data, we can't see the big picture, how can we make policy changes if I can't see what I need to see? How do I interrupt and disrupt and really kind of understand what I'm looking at? And then politics, you have debates and discussions. Politics has no place here, yes it does. And it's amazing, everyone's waiting to see what happens in November, how is that gonna affect the decision makers? It's amazing how things not just trickle down, trickle back up, but intersect. There's all these different touching points that as you kind of see the intersectionality, those gaps start disappearing when you start leveraging the other assets. And I think one thing as we do, just as humans in our organizations and entities, is that we don't do a very good job at long-term planning. A lot of these groups do 10-year planning or scenarios for 20-year planning, but they're siloed. And then if they're not communicated about it with others, you kind of wonder how to make it work and come together. So really trying to get a mechanism so that your long-term planning elements touch these different pieces of your life and your entities' life and various organizations. And then shaping the tools. There's, as I mentioned earlier, GIS wasn't available. We had to create a lot of layers. We had to kind of reinvent. It's always asking yourself, what more can we do? What can we push for? There's always more opportunity and there's always new things that can be done. So really trying to work with other partnerships to push the ball forward. And then just kind of highlighting how this all kind of keeps coming together with that shared perspective. I mentioned earlier. And then really honing in on just the fact that I mentioned earlier, the reliability coordinator and how they're overseeing the grid, the air traffic controllers and how they are connected to the transmission planners and the organization who they need to share data and communicate back. Here's where I see the grid of the future. Here's what's happening in real time. How do we bring these two worlds together to really see the big picture? And how do we do that where we have stakeholder input? And how do we make sure that's meaningful so that they can influence the process and the policy? And how are politics affecting this as we go forward? And again, the overall layer of the environment. We have this environment that we live and breathe in and then how are we making sure that it's a part of the solution and not just part of the problem? So that question I answered earlier, why do we care? Well, as you guys all know, everything that we've talked about today touches our lives, touches our environment, the politics, the policy, the regulations. We power up our devices in our home and then just sometimes we do care, but we just take it for granted because we don't always see the interconnections that are there. Thank you guys. Thank you. Thanks. Someone like me could probably spend 10 or 20 years designing a position just exactly like you described. So I'm darn glad that you're already doing it and looking across all these different domains and agencies and levels of government. So if it's okay with you, I'd like to open it up for questions. We usually go with student questions first, although you've already met a lot of students, student questions, sir. So one of your maps showed both the US and Canada on it. So I'm just curious, in light of the current trade negotiations between the US and Canada, do you think that will have an effect on North America and North America? Which day? You know, there was an announcement today. I don't know. Maybe you're in class. I believe the US and Canada did reach agree with the US. I don't know. It took us probably six months to figure out. Yes, thank you for the question. So the North American grid actually isn't connected to Canada and Mexico. And so when we even did the blackout investigation, even though Canada was greatly affected, there had to be a lot of negotiations of what was already in place and how do we continue relationships? We have a lot of lines that the Department of Energy has helped permit that cross both the Mexican and Canadian borders. The blackout could have lasted a lot longer, but the hydro from Canada helped bring the system up much faster. So it's a great thing that we're interconnected. But as I mentioned earlier, those are reliable, the coinators, and let me go back to the grid, the map. That one, this one's probably better. Yeah, so here, as you can see, Canada is both part of NERC and also part of the grid. So you have the lines, this might be even better to see. And yes, the security clearance on these maps is okay. You can get it, it's online. But yeah, so this right here, this is both the West, but as you can see, like the lines do, they don't stop at the border. A lot of them go across. And so those are both overseen by the reliable, the coinators, the air traffic controllers, and they also are, some of them, the pain on the jurisdiction are held to the same standards. So the Canadians participate in the Transmission Planning initiatives and also in the Reliability Standard initiative. So they are definitely involved. It's the same with the Mexican government. So they are involved. The one caveat is, is that if there was a violation in Canada or Mexico from defaulting on a standard, our government can't impose fines, but we can work with our government to impose fines. Other student questions, sir? You said in 2003 that the blackout happened in your works for the Department of Energy. And you felt like you were standing at, like, you know, a fire hose being sprayed with information. Would the Department of Energy usually be on the head list of agencies get rid of, and they're not doing the control of the plot? Wouldn't that be a good example of maybe why that administrative or that department's not good to have if they're sending people next to fire hoses that are not prepared for all the information that's coming at them, in the middle of having eight states without power? That's a great question. And there were, I was a policy analyst, so I was the newbie on the team. The 18 people that were working above me and around me were all very qualified to lead the investigation. So it was probably just me and the fire hose. Everyone else was really understanding the process. Did you normally have been sent into that situation or was it because of such an emergency that they sent anybody they could possibly have? There was a negotiation process and interview process, so because of where I was in the leadership at the time out of the 10 of us that interviewed for the job, they gave it to me. Because I think partially audacity, inspiration and jumping over challenges and hurdles to really kind of push down the doors in a polite way to get the information that we needed. Sometimes you don't want everyone to be the exact same at the table, you don't get the diverse thought. That's a good thing to know. Let me come back to that one, that's a good question. Other questions, students, way up there, and then Patricia. Sure. So it seems like a lot of kind of the planning for renewable energy is focusing on kind of large scale generation and transmission. I was wondering maybe you could speak to how micro grids and more localized generation would maybe fit into the plan for kind of the future of the grid is maybe how that would work in your redundancy or reliability scenario. Great question, and when I hinted on seams earlier, one of the many definitions of seams is between transmission and distribution. That's one seam and then you have a regional market seam, you have the planning market seams, you have the planning region seams, the NERC seams, lots of seams, but the distribution transmission seam is kind of the nexus of how do we modernize the grid. We have a lot of the home appliances now that we're starting to better manage and control ourselves and what does this do that we're like with the utilities. We now have new entities, not just developers that are coming in as independent from utilities, but we also have new generators and we have new entities like community choice aggregators who are like say Palo Alto, you have different entities coming in to be part of the solution. It's still being kind of worked out of the politics, the regulators, whoever sees what and what's accounted to. The various tools are kind of bridging the gaps to bring technology to our hands and then also to the data centers with utilities. So again, it's that debate over data and access who's got what control. There are standards that are at both the local level and the federal level, it depends on who's monitoring them. So state and federal same jurisdictions. And then within the utility, you have local resource plans, integrated resource plans, and then you have regional plans. And for most of the regions in the country, the integrated resource plans roll up into the larger picture. Doesn't work everywhere the same, United States of America, lots of diversity. But it is kind of this different buckets of thought and now we're interweaving them. And so because you can have the touch points of getting involved in your utility's plans for the future, you can say, I don't want you to be 100% this, I want you to be 50-foot this, but you can now direct that a little bit more. And so in one state, you might have the regulatory policy pushing for we want to have these mandates, these metrics that's worked out in another state. It'll be here's your metric, figure out who should be part of the decision-making and go forward. So it's a little different, but I think the technology again is making the nexus happen between the two. And so I think as we go forward, we have this regional market and then what happens with more of a distribution level market and how does that move forward? So the discussions are happening, technology is pushing us, lots of different forms to be part of the discussion. And it is an exciting time because it's a new pathway forward. Kisha. I was wondering maybe more of a background question. You showed this map of the NERC regions. And I noticed that especially in the Eastern interconnection, those regions sort of align with existing RTOs and ISOs, but don't align 100%. And I'm curious if you could speak to how those organizations overlap with each other, might end up being redundant or not, and what do you think? Good question. Do I have like three more hours? No. But the NERC was created in 1968 after the 65 blackout and the first blackouts we have. And so these regions were set up on what the grid looked like and the utilities were at that time. So as we move forward, and we had Pat Wood, but FERC, and kind of the creation of some of the regional transmission organizations, that was more of kind of a, who wants to be in this market and who's coming to the table. So the utility footprint's a little bit different. What's interesting about this too is so that Texas, you know, the Texas reliability entity, you know, is almost the same foot butters are caught. And for a while they even were kind of sitting in the same building and having shared efficiencies. The Southwest Power Pool just recently this year dismantled their regional entity authorities under NERC and gave it split up between ERCOT and MISO. So that was the first one that kind of just separated. So more might do that. It's a changing times, but at first it was very much cut in pace to have the efficiencies, but now it's starting to change as the markets change. We're in the back there. Does the business model or strategy of clean line energy is not gonna make a significant impact on moving wind energy around the rest of the nation? It started the dialogue. And it was, you know, a lot of people didn't see the correlation factors of having wind in Wyoming and bringing it to Southern California, for example, or having wind in Oklahoma and taking it to Tennessee Valley. But they started the dialogue to show that with the time differences in, for example, California, and our peak demand is different than the peak demand in the Rockies, if you have wind come on at certain time, you're gonna address the need that's not being met by a local need. That could change a little bit with distributed planning and how that works out, but the fact that you're starting to fill gaps by accessing resources from other parts was a win-win. And the fact that HVDC lines are narrow right-of-ways could be more cost-effective, was point-to-point service, you know, it started a lot more push. And one thing that came out of this was both ABB and Siemens brought forward this kind of HVDC light. And so getting more market conversations and getting more international groups involved made it so that you could actually update and introduce not just one converter station, you could have a converter station in the middle that would move power around a lot better. So technology's gotten improved by the company coming forward, putting hundreds of millions of dollars forward to build these lines. Now, the company is somewhat dismantled and sold off various assets, but other groups have picked this up and starting to continue to push it forward. There's also a vision that was started by Dale Osborne at Myso about the high-voltage direct current highway, kind of putting on top of the entire country about four or five HVDC lines that would just connect the whole system. And so that conversation's been going on for a few years and as we continue to have discussions of regulatory and political aspects, how does that work with state and federal jurisdiction? You know, that could be another solution. So the dialogue continues. Do you think there are too many stakeholders at the table right now? I mean, you mentioned that there's a need to bring together all kinds of folks at all different levels, and it seems like since 50 years ago when this map was drawn, there's been a real sort of pro-proliferation at every level of different institutions and like I mentioned, stakeholders. But a lot of these challenges seem like they are being exacerbated by inefficiencies in negotiations between stakeholders. And for example, I mean, we talked a lot about how the United States and how that could be resolved if there was a significant national reform to reduce the number of stakeholders involved in the system. Do you think that something like that would be beneficial? They are just degraded terms of things like bridging the East-West divide and things like that. More beneficial to increase the number of stakeholders or decrease them? Okay, tricky question. You're gonna make all human babies if you think that would come. Well, that's the balance back and forth is that in my new role as an environmental advocate and most of these forms, I'm a stakeholder. And just recently were we able to change the governance structure of these organizations so that instead of just being a stakeholder, we could actually have a vote on the transmission plan. So that changed it. We are constantly discussing with state and federal regulatory components and commissioners and staff about what is meaningful stakeholder input. Because when you say stakeholders and you open up a meeting, even though the utility meetings are open to the public, two people show up. Even though these meetings are open to different groups, four people show up. So is there true stakeholder input in most of these forms? No. Is there awareness out there? No. Do people care? No. Should they care? Yes. And including market players, regulatory agencies. They might be, but not all the time. It depends on what's in front of them at the moment. And is this important and critical at times? Yes. Right now because of the market discussions with regionalization, you're having different stakeholders come to the table and you're having entities talk about the nexus between these two markets. But are all consumer advocates there? No. Are all labor groups there? No. Should they be? Yes. So it really is trying to get the word out of what does this mean to you? Why should you be involved? And what do you have to offer? From the other side, working with utilities and working with groups, they don't want to have tons of the stakeholder forms either for no one shows up and it's a waste of time or people show up but it's the loudest one in the room that might just be there just to disrupt. And so with those two extremes, and it's kind of hard to navigate where to go for the future. So stakeholder involvement, it'd be great to have it redefined and have it be more attached to what people are interested in. Actually for me on behalf of the audience, I'd like to ask one final if it's okay question and that is, it's kind of a rock question for you personally in your role. What is the biggest barrier to achieving the kind of Western grid integration that people are now talking about? I guess, is that a meaningful question and if so, what's your answer? It's very meaningful and I think one of the biggest challenges is everyone comes at this from a different perspective and then right away people make quick assumptions. So when people say regionalization, they look at it from one lens of, well it's gotta be this entity running this show and they only do these two things. Well that might not be true but no one asks the questions and was there a form to ask the questions? And so there's been a lot of linear thoughts that have been trying to influence the policymaking and to build those partnerships and coalitions to get us there is what we need to do next and I think to get that trust and buy in for why this is important, why people should care and how it's relative to both the entities in Wyoming and California and Texas and Oregon, there is a connective tissue, it's just we haven't bridged that gap yet. So there's kind of the communication part of that? Would you also call this a form of vetting that people can say what's on their mind and they really are passionate about as opposed to not attending meetings and so on? Yes and I think if we can figure out new ways to give stakeholder input, so it doesn't just be showing up but it's also comments and op ed in other ways and that's another way to get the message out there. Yeah, with that thanks for a great talk and great discussion and thank you for all you do. Thank you so much, we appreciate it. We appreciate it, thank you.