 Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to this afternoon's briefing. My name is Carol Werner and I'm the executive director of EESI, the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. For anyone who is not familiar with the EESI, we are a non-profit organization that was set up in 1984 by a bipartisan group of members of Congress who cared deeply about energy and environmental issues, wanted to find a way to provide additional resources to members of Congress in a bipartisan way to further explore issues around energy and environment, problems that needed innovative solutions and ways to get solid, credible, timely information to policymakers. So that is what our role has been throughout these past few decades and so we have always sought to work closely with people also at the state and local level so that we can learn about what kinds of things work, how we can learn from all of those living laboratories, what kinds of information do policymakers need in terms of looking at the issues coming before them on energy and environment and how can we best build bridges across the sectors and across all levels of government. So today we are taking a look at the topic of electrifications, options for consumers in the environment. So electrification is something that many of you may have been hearing a lot more about. There's certainly been many more articles, stories being written about electrification and you've probably been hearing about it mostly with regard to thinking about greater electrification in our transportation sector. But there are many aspects with regard to electrification and I should also tell you that within a whole variety of groups organizations have their own nomenclature with regard to thinking about electrification and so you will find that for example our first speaker who comes from EPRI, the Electric Power Research Institute, EPRI talks about it as efficient electrification. Well on the other hand you will hear, you will also be hearing today from NRECA, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, they talk about it from using the terminology of beneficial electrification. What's critical is that with regard to how we are talking about electrification today and in terms of these organizations, the point of the whole thing is to look at electrification from the aspects of how it can truly provide greater options to consumers that make sense for them on an economic and on an access side as well as providing an overall environmental benefit to them and to the environment at large. So to start off our discussion today as we hear about this and what's really going on with regard to this whole topic, how is it being approached, why does it matter, why should we be concerned about it up here on Capitol Hill, what does this mean to constituents across the country. So to start us off we're going to first hear from Barbara Tyron who as I mentioned is the Executive Director for Government and External Affairs with EPRI, the Electric Power Research Institute and Barbara Beer is the Principal Liaison between EPRI Executive Management at the Congress, the Administration, other National Trade Associations, the National Leadership of the State Public Utility Commissions as well as State Legislators, Regulators in the Washington Energy and Policy Community overall. So she has that job of keeping her pulse on kind of all of the things that are moving in this important policy space and EPRI is very well known for all of its research, its conferences, its journals and how it has really pioneered in looking at approaches around electricity in innovative ways over the last many many decades. Barbara. Thank you Carol and thank you all for being here. I'm Barbara Tyron as Carol said from the Electric Power Research Institute and I'd like to take a show of hands please and ask you who's heard of EPRI before today? Oh my goodness okay that's that's great I'm very pleased to hear that for anyone who doesn't know we were founded about 45 years ago to conduct the research and development for the electricity sector. We're a non-profit organization and our work spans everything related to the generation, transmission, distribution and then end use around electricity. We're today a global institution in over 30 countries and continuing to expand internationally. Actually since we're here up on Capitol Hill it was Congress that actually came to the utility leadership 45 years ago and the Public Utility Commission leadership and they said this was after the outages in the northeast they said you're going to have to do something about this because if you don't we'll have to step in and so that's when they created EPRI. So that's that's our origin and how we were founded. So again thank you so much for the chance to be here and to talk for a moment about electrification. We use the term let's see if I can get back there we go. We use the term efficient electrification as Carol said and when we say efficient it's because we want to use less electricity where we can so we can use more where we should and let's expand on that concept now. So as we look on the screen there there are a number of applications for electricity of course we're all familiar with the lighting area and appliances but what I'm going to be focusing on today is the opportunities in the transportation sector as well as the opportunities that are coming along that some haven't even been created yet so we will delve into that now. Now as a research organization we always want to have a technical foundation for the work we do we ultimately are scientists and engineers trying to come up with objective technical information and so in keeping with that the technical premise for all of this electrification work is around the convergence of many sectors with advanced meters data is being generated and that is happening not only in the electricity sector where as of 2016 50% of homes or businesses had advanced meters that were generating data smart meters sometimes people call it but we're also seeing that in the natural gas sector and in the water sector they also are advancing with new technologies that will have smart meters so with that all this data is now being generated across electricity gas water telecommunications it's all converging so how do we take that data and make it valuable how do we translate that into something that can improve the performance of all those systems reduce the cost of operations and be environmentally sustainable across all those different sectors that was how we started our work in electrification so beginning to look at what's happening with transportation you see there on the screen hopefully that in February of last year we were approaching about 700 800 000 cars that had been sold that were EVs actually in October October 31 of this year we celebrated the one millionth electric vehicle sold in this country so you can see that that trajectory means that we're going to be continuing to see more electric transportation in the years ahead now why is that well we know our technical researchers know in this space that actually having more choices in the marketplace drives customers to EVs we started as you probably all remember or know that we only had a couple of different models and makes available but now what we're seeing is that by 2022 there will be over 90 different choices and customers interestingly resonate with more choice and so that is actually driving EV penetration in this country similarly we're also seeing the range of the battery increase from what used to be 35 to 45 miles now expanding up and out and so that increases the security that customers have in trying an electric vehicle because they don't have the what used to be called range anxiety they're not worried about sort of quote unquote running out of gas somewhere because they know they have many miles before they have to charge and that increases their comfort level when they're converting to electric transportation so as we look ahead we know that we're going to have more choices more models coming forward we know that the battery range is going to increase autonomous driving interestingly is driving a lot of this no pun intended driving a lot of this because what happens is that technologies are very compatible between autonomous driving and electric transportation so they couple with each other very well so we're seeing that which frankly no one predicted 20 years ago but that's essentially what the factors are going into the marketplace today and then finally because customers don't like to spend a lot of time charging while what we're looking at is a possible level three charging which is very fast charging so you can drive in and out much more quickly and recharge your car so with all those developments we see a very bright future for electric transportation going forward one of the ways that we see a bright future actually happened in Korea last year at the Olympics now I think everybody knows that that's a ice rink cleaning machine they are actually called Zambonis they were created in 1949 and they have been cleaning ice ever since 1949 but what happened last year at the Olympics in Korea was that for the very first time it was an electric Zamboni and so you can imagine if you're a world-class athlete you don't want to have a diesel engine indoors cleaning the ice you want to be able to have pristine air indoors and so with that the Zamboni became electric and so we're very pleased within the upper family to see this development we're also seeing a new area which is indoor agriculture and what is happening is that with LED lights they can replicate the same kind of lighting that the sun can but you can do it more effectively because you can monitor plant growth in ways that you couldn't do it just in a typical outdoor setting and so with LED lighting we're finding a number of benefits such as again cleaner air they use 90% less water if they're grown indoors you don't have to use pesticide and furthermore you can put these indoor facilities anywhere and that reduces the transportation of fruit particularly fruits and vegetables having to go long distances that helps then that reduces vehicle emissions and also the cost of transportation but it also then enables the food to be fresher when it arrives for the customer because the distance has been so short so we're seeing a lot of applications and possibilities around that if anybody here would like to see an exhibit of what of what that looks like Senator Murkowski's office across the hill actually has an exhibit and so she has an indoor ag exhibit over there so feel free if you're on the senate side to go over and see it now I talked about the fact that we're looking at vehicles and then we're looking at some of the new areas and so we I think all are familiar with bitcoin which is very energy intensive and that's of course a new phenomenon blockchain again energy intensive and also what we're seeing is that we can use augmented reality which is a new application for electrification so rather than assume there's a power outage that there's been a storm and the typical process today is that the utility will send workers out to the field they'll go out and take notes and review the damage and try and understand what's happened and then they will go back in their truck to headquarters get the proper equipment and then go back out and fix the problem now with augmented reality they can wear a headset that actually will scan the damage done it after the power has gone out and figure out what the problem is what equipment is needed and furthermore send the GPS locators back to headquarters so you have precision around that and you're not trying to remember like what street did this happen on but you can actually in real time radio all that information back so that the trucks can start rolling to do the repairs and you save several hours of time so it's not a sequential process as it is traditionally with note taking trips back and forth it's all happening in real time and so this is an area where we're running pilots around this now but we see this as being a huge area where again we can begin to use new applications for electricity and also the restoration of electricity now epri's been working in this area for quite some time on april third of last year we actually released a national electrification assessment at the at the national press club talking about what what are the trajectories going forward around electrification what can we hope to expect here and and what is really scientifically possible and the conclusion was reached that end use elect electricity will continue to go up i mean you all have devices that didn't even exist 25 years ago and and we anticipate in 25 more years there'll be many more of those kinds of devices they're all electricity based so we will see an increase in end use electricity but we also will continue to be using natural gas in the end use sector as well as a fuel for generation of electricity so there's actually a sort of a win-win situation here going on where we will start to see the benefits of electricity with lower costs with affordability with increased environmental sustainability but we will also see that other fuels will play a role going forward as we look out so what does that all mean we see that the customer is going to be driving a lot of the decisions the customer wants more control they have control in other areas of their life through all those devices we just talked about that you own and operate so they want to have more control around the electricity sector as well not everyone wants to have that but some will and so what we will need to do because the customer base is not monolithic what we will need to do is to make sure that those who want that and want to exercise that choice will have the ability to do so those who prefer to let it be managed by someone else will have the ability to do so but they will have more choices around that they will be able then to control their costs they will then be able to have presumably a more comfortable environment because they're regulating themselves the system should be operating even more cost effectively with all this data and information cycling through it so there are a number of customer benefits associated with energy management of the future and with that we look forward at every to shaping that future of electricity with you so thank you so much thanks so much Barbara and as Barbara indicated we are just seeing so many changes in terms of technology applications where so many technologies are becoming ever more efficient things are well I guess the only constant really is change and that as as Barbara also indicated there I think that there are so many things on the horizon that we can't even conceive of yet so this is all going to be quite a grand adventure so we are very delighted to be joined today by someone from western Wisconsin that Steve Kepp is here with us and Steve is a founding advisory board member of the beneficial electrification league he brings over 25 years of of important experience dealing with with the electric utility industry to develop new opportunities for leading edge energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies and he has particular expertise in this whole evolving electric water heating demand response renewable storage and beneficial electrification markets welcome Steve thank you Carol good afternoon and thank you for the opportunity to be with you today here we go as as Carol mentioned we're approaching electrification in a similar fashion but not necessarily from the direction of research we're focused more on application public awareness market development and we'll we'll talk a little bit more about that the beneficial electrification league who I represent today was formed late last year by a partnership between the national rural electric cooperative association and the national and that national natural resources defense council and you might not think that an electric utility organization and a an environmental organization would be teaming up together to promote electrification but that but that's exactly what's happened and a lot of this has come from work that was done to develop a grid enabled product category a few years and I'll a few years ago and I'll touch on that so as an introduction you know Carol mentioned my experience but I just wanted to share that you know I started out as an environmental studies major and an energy auditor I put in solar hot water systems and you know I was on I was on the cutting edge of all this technology in 1985 so we're we're we've made we've made tremendous progress and a lot of the things that that we're working on today are similar to things that we were working on then and it's it's it's been it's been a lot of fun to have the opportunity to interact with the electric utility industry for most of these years because my and larger electric utilities are generally trying to do the right things for the right reasons and I've found that a compelling proposition in in my career building a little bit on what Barbara mentioned about research there's also some research being done by the national renewable energy lab and I think Epri is a partner in that but I had the opportunity to be on a program with a gentleman from from that organization last fall and and in his we were talking about electrification specifically and he made the point that you know through through their work you know they're looking at a variety of electrification futures reference a reference point a medium electrification future and a high electrification future and I can I can tell you that I'm I'm only interested in high electrification futures I think that's that's where the action is that's where the opportunities are and I think that we're we're moving into I guess what I would call a second age of electrification I'm gonna help a little bit thank you my parents grew up on on farms in rural minnesota and they grew up on farms that had no electricity so the first age of electrification was rural electric cooperatives bringing electricity to the farm for light bulbs and electric motors and everything else the second age of electrification that we're entering into now is is bringing electricity not only to people who've never had it but also bringing the full capabilities of electrification in terms of all the new technologies that are that are available to to use this resource nobody buys electricity with the idea that I'm going to use a kilowatt hour today we buy it for what the electricity will do for us and it's heating and cooling and hot water and electric transportation and I think that as as as people understand that better they begin to understand that it's important to know where your electricity comes from how it's made and the fact that our grid is getting greener and the fundamental fact that everything plugged into the grid is going to get greener right along with it that's basic concept that that people can understand and can take into consideration when they're thinking about whether they want to put in a central AC system or or an air source heat pump but the last thing I'll mention about a national room renewable energy lab is that he made a very important point that I had not considered in all of my work on this is that electrification is a global mega trend I mean this is not just happening in in the United States this is it's in China and India and all all over the world people are working on this second age of electrification and what we like to call beneficial electrification so the beneficial electrification league was formed late last year and we were formed for one purpose and that's to promote beneficial electrification there are a number of organizations that are dedicated to research we're very much focused on public awareness and and public engagement and and public policy so we more or less developed a definition that that we thought we could use to convey to people what our our understanding of beneficial electrification is so very simply is the application of electricity to end uses that would otherwise use fossil fuels where it satisfies at least one of the following conditions without adversely affecting the others it saves consumers money over time so that that lends to the efficiency aspect of electrification it benefits the environment it reduces greenhouse gas emissions that that speaks directly to the greening of our grid and the fact that more and more of the electricity we get comes from carbon free sources it improves product quality or can or a consumer quality of life and it fosters a more robust and resilient grid all of these are important if we can if we can satisfy one of these without adversely affecting the others we think it's beneficial electrification i won't i won't hit every one of these points but a lot of this is is directly developed from work that that Keith Dennis has done and others to introduce the idea of environmentally beneficial electrification we started promoting this idea through the peak load management alliance a couple years ago we were very excited to be at the epri conference in long beach in august they drew 1800 people to long beach in august for an international conference on electrification it was tremendous we have a we have a website you can visit beneficial electrification dot com and you might ask what kind of a league are you going to have around beneficial electrification well it it's not so much that we have a a league structure it's more or less that we have a league idea which is that everybody plays i have a grandson who plays baseball and i went to one of his games and i noticed that you know nine nine guys play the field but everybody bats what a great idea i wish they had had that when i was coming up but this is this is where the idea of a league came from is that everybody has an opportunity to participate and along those lines that's how we came up with this electrification ambassador program so if if you ever get one of my emails you'll see i'm i'm self identified as a beneficial electrification ambassador i mentioned that it started with electric electric water heating the work that we did to develop a grid enabled product category when the department of energy wanted to force the entire market to heat pumps not so much that we don't like heat pumps which we do but the fact of the matter is that there were about over a million controlled electric water heaters around the country that would need to be replaced at some point in time and and at at the point that electric heat pump water heaters were being introduced they weren't a plug-in fit everywhere in the country so we needed to be able to be able to replace those water heaters when needed and to continue to build those demand response programs if you look at the country in terms of electric water heating market share which is a lot of what i've worked on for for a number of years you can see that it's highest in the south and they say you know the west it shows 26 percent but in the pacific northwest it's higher but the point of reference in california where it's probably closer to 90 percent gas water heating they've got a full-blown effort to electrify their their their water heating sector over the coming years so even even california is is moving in in the direction of beneficial electrification for water heating and the water heating resources is is is huge and if with 45 plus million electric water heaters around the country they pretty much operate as needed but if we can coordinate that usage and dedicated to off-peak times when wind energy is cheap we can change the carbon footprint of of electric water heaters all over the country by maximizing the amount of renewable energy that we get to them so this water heating has has an important role to play in this electrification future that we're talking about just to give me an idea of how important it is pjm the regional system operator in the mid-atlantic and in new england in 2017 i think 69 of of their regulation registrations were electric water heaters so it's it's huge in that market and it's it's it stands to be that large and larger in a number of other markets as well so the league recognizes that electricity is getting cleaner it's getting less carbon intensive electricity production also is becoming more intermittent and variable so the grid needs to get more sophisticated consumers are getting more sophisticated as barbara mentioned they want to decide when they use energy can they use energy when it's when it's greener can they use it when it's cheaper they want to be able to do all of those things and our climate change goals and our climate responsibilities are not going away so we need to be able to work together to to manage this effort for the benefit of all of us we think that beneficial electrification is is an effective and a very inclusive greenhouse gas reduction strategy everybody's making decisions on a day-to-day basis for their home are they going to what what type of water heater are they going to put in are they going to put in an off-peak grid interactive electric resistance water heater are they going for a heat pump water heater that is twice as efficient as electric resistance decisions on replacing central AC systems do they just put in a more efficient AC system or do they upgrade to a heat pump or they can get some high efficiency electric heating in the shoulder months in the spring and fall so these are messages messages that we think are valuable and that that we're trying to move into the marketplace we work with a number of stakeholders as I mentioned not just utilities and environmental organizations but manufacturers and policymakers all across the country immediate opportunities electric vehicles are getting I think the the bulk of the attention in terms of electrification and it's not a space that we as a league feel that that we probably have a lot more to offer except to be supportive of those efforts we think our our most effective area is going to be electric space and water heating and also you know those similar technologies is in commercial environments and then there are also a number of electric technologies that hold great potential in the industrial space and agricultural as well so our objectives to build a stakeholder coalition to promote the definition of beneficial electrification not just to stakeholders and not just to industry participants but also to the general public to build strategic partnerships some of the work that we're doing we're doing on a state-by-state basis in november of last year we did in a meeting was called electrify minnesota and we drew a great crowd to great river energy in in in maple grove minnesota where we talked about the opportunities for electrification within the state coming out of that we have requests from several other states to do similar meetings we are planning one in wisconsin and also in colorado and we're in north carolina all within the next three months so the opportunity to work at the state level we think really fits well with with how we can promote beneficial electrification we're all trying to be active in promoting this the idea of an ambassador program if you go to our website and you buy into our principles guess what you're now an ambassador if you want to be there's not there's not a lead ap test or a certified energy manager test beneficial electrification is is a lot more simpler than that so we're trying to establish a national presence for beneficial electrification going forward and we're very much focused on public awareness and and market development and you know going forward from the speakers that will come after me you'll you'll learn a lot more about the work that's being done by their respective organizations and us together as as as an effort coming to washington dc i want to quote lincoln that in this age in this country public sentiment is everything with it nothing can fail against it nothing can succeed those are our marching orders that's how we're approaching beneficial electrification by engaging the public and trying to raise public awareness and get public sentiment behind the idea that electrification is is is the right future for for our country and for our utilities every time i go to great river energy in in minnesota on the wall they have the times they are a change in from another minnesota boy by the name of bob dillon most people remember the song they remember that line of the song but if you ever look up the lyrics you'd be surprised how far advanced bob dillon's vision was in 1963 come gather around people wherever you roam and admit that the waters around you have grown and accepted that soon you'll be drenched to the bone if your time to use we're saving then you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone for the times they are a change and i always add the line we better start swimming or we're going to sink like a stone because the times they are a change and with that i will say thank you very much and look forward to your questions at the end thanks very much steve we will now turn to keith denis who is with the national rural electric cooperative association where he is a senior director in the business and technology strategies division steve brings a long interdisciplinary background in engineering business and law and works with nr ecas across the board in terms of nr ecas legislative regulatory policy and technical teams on issues related to energy and use which includes demand response and energy efficiency he has published numerous papers on this issue of beneficial electrification and is leading this initiative on behalf of nr ecas and he also is a board member of the beneficial electrification league that steve just talked about is keith thank you i really appreciate the opportunity to be here i love the ees i events and i've i've titled this beneficial electrification changing the way we think about electricity but i just want to reiterate the point you'll hear folks talking about electrification sometimes let's say electrification sometimes let's say strategic electrification sometimes efficient electrification the idea is that we're all have a shared vision of an electrified future we use the term beneficial electrification a little bit as a term of art and that's what i think steve was describing um the america's electric co-ops i work for nr ecas for the trade association for 900 electric co-ops we were the folks who brought probably the first light bulb to steve's parents farm we brought the first light bulb to a lot of places in america during the the new deal we serve 43 million customers we're in 47 states you can see our map up here of where we are um that that kind of uh background of electrification we have that in our dna and the idea that there's another wave of electrification coming that's part of the future of our energy uh energy system is really uh exciting um so i think that the the the message is that there's a lot of opportunity here and i have some takeaways the the the first thing is that there are a lot of stakeholders out there if you read like academic papers or labs or different um different debris studies there's a great amount of stakeholders who think that if you're going to meet aggressive greenhouse gas goals you need to electrify more things the idea is that you can't really reduce greenhouse gases by a large scale if you're driving around in millions and millions of vehicles to burn gasoline or if every house has uh fuel oil natural gas and and there's diesel on every bus i mean it's just not going to happen so the future that these folks put the future that folks like n r d c put forth is has these kind of pathways and the pathways go through electrification of what we can and so that's sort of the the genesis of this uh this idea and it's it's happening because of a few trends one the emissions in the electric sector are just going down down down down i'll show you a chart in a minute down down down and the efficiency of devices on the other hand is going up up up think about light bulbs you can't even really buy the old light bulbs anymore now you have cfls or leds really efficient heat pumps to heat your house like 200 300 percent of efficient so you have efficiency up emissions down and it's a double whammy and all of a sudden you're better off to choose electricity than you are to choose something else we also need flexible loads because wind doesn't blow all the time and sun doesn't shine all the time and when it's available a resource we need to put it somewhere and one of the things you can do is put it into a car put it into a water heater take a shower later drive later it stores the energy it's a flexible load you don't have to use it right away and that's that's really another reason why we need more electrification to help integrate renewable uh energy it's an important side of the equation to balance the grid this scenario as as as you've seen the n rel study and and the uppery study leads to situations where we're using more electricity but overall we have fewer greenhouse gas emissions so steve mentioned our the definition we we we have an assertion that if if if uh if you're saving consumers money if you're benefiting the environment if you're improving quality of life if you're making the the grid better and you're not harming any of those it's clearly a beneficial activity um there might be some balancing that goes on but clearly if you're saving money and you're not harming the environment that's beneficial if you're improving the environment and you're not and and it's not costing you any money that's clearly beneficial and when you have that pocket of overlapping where people can all agree that's beneficial you have the opportunity to incentivize that behavior to say that's a good thing sort of like we we encourage people to do energy efficiency you can encourage people to do beneficial electrification it's something that's in the public good you reduce greenhouse gases you save people money you improve their lives that's all something that we can strive for it provides a really good opportunity for groups like n r d c and n r e c a who aren't always on the same side of uh of every issue to come together and say this is common ground we can work together on this and that's what we need to do uh in in with complex things like energy in this country work together when we have common ground so the league has brought us together really excited about that opportunity i like to talk a lot about the consumer facing things like cars water heaters and space heating water heating be very important as steve mentioned but cars are the things that people think of those are the things that you might want you see your neighbor has a electric car you're like i want one of those electric cars maybe if you have the money but they drive fast they're they're good for the environment they're cool kind of cool right so the idea of why you like that electric car um doesn't really translate to your water heater your water heater kind of goes out and like is a gas or electric like i'll go get one at the store right but the idea needs to be the same it's electric if if if someone asks you what type of water heater is going to use renewable energy would you know to say hey that's solar energy and wind energy it turns into electricity i need to get electric water heater or else i'm not using renewable energy the whole point of its moot you know um i need electric space heating i need in the future we're going to need to pick electricity if we're if we're really supporting supporting that type of future so while it's not while it's not sexy or something to a utility the ability to control when you heat water is actually kind of exciting so there are reasons that that electric technology has advantages and and not all of them are completely obvious to the consumer and that's a challenge this graph is what's happening one of the trends i mentioned with um with emissions in the electric sector and you see the emissions are just going down down down down um that's 2005 to 2022 and uh the solid lines already happen and what that means is that anything that you plug into the electric grid today is performing better than it did a few years ago and it will perform better in the future just by virtue of being plugged in so if i plug in a water heater today in five years it's actually performing better for the environment than it is today and that's before it start changing the time that is used or that or the or the fuel mix that's coming in so um we have that going for us some of the types of things that you can do besides what we've been talking about maybe is diesel pumps out in farmland can be turned over to uh to electric um saves a lot of money reduces emissions from from from electric use there's a lot of pumps out there that could be converted to uh to electricity space heating there's folks out there who are on fuel oil they burn fuel oil in their house get them on us on a heat pump they'll save money they'll reduce their emissions they'll be more comfortable it's a win-win-win situation um things that you wouldn't think of this is a rock crusher in our service territory in illinois um by having uh electric rock crusher not only do you not have really loud diesel equipment with smoke coming out but you're also able to crush the rocks better and have better product quality and there's a lot of things that are electric that are better um quality i'd say like a lawnmower you don't have to yank on it it doesn't have smoke coming out you don't get grease on your hands you don't have to pour gasoline and it's it's quiet it you know you can have it like a rumba someday um uh propane uh propane forklifts converting those to electric they're not loud anymore you don't need earphones you don't need to vent it if you're in a mine with a with an electric product it's not burning gas you don't need to vent the mine out and have all that condensation there's a lot of things about electricity that are just um make the quality of life better and product quality better in the future we'll see more opportunities on farms uh john deere has a electric tractor that tractor could sit on the side of the field at night and take wind energy all night in charge never have to use any more diesel ever again it also matches up with other electric technology that can help do precision agriculture so you can see if you need to actually water the water the areas and and connect it to the connect it to the wi-fi so you can you can turn it off remotely uh or or or broadband projects like uh the suena project up in minnesota where uh a co-op will give you a free water heater if you buy into community solar so that your your uh water heating is tied to uh solar energy use water water heaters are actually pretty expensive if they go out uh five hundred dollars a thousand dollars if you can get a free water heater because it can be controlled in the time when when the sun's shining that can save you a lot of money and improve your life as a consumer school buses we already heard about school buses little kids sitting out in a in a big thing a school bus is you know some of them have asthma stuff they're breathing this this diesel these school buses go on set routes electric school buses make a lot of sense for that reason um you can you can charge them whenever you want at night when the price is very low for electricity when there's nobody with their lights on put that energy in a school bus drive it around all day we spend two billion dollars on fuel for for school buses we could cut that down to one billion if we used electricity when you think of a smart home all the cool things you can do you can drive up in your car your your lights turn on your security goes off you touch your phone your heat goes up your refrigerator supposedly tells you when you're out of eggs it puts your kids artwork up there for you all this stuff that your house can do it's a smart house that's electric stuff that's that's that's not you know fuel oil and and propane and things like that it we have a good future of of of cool products and it's not all to do with the environment it's not all it's not even all to do with saving money it's it's what people want it offers you a better quality of life and so what's next i've been doing this for for several years and people were asking me what's next and i said oh you know maybe cars you know one day i'm driving to work and all of a sudden i look around and there's electric scooters everywhere and i said oh how did i miss that that came out of nowhere you know these things is people fighting to charge them and and all kinds of stuff um you know so i sort of started half joking around it what's next electric shoes and then i start seeing people going around dc and like like a wheel that they're just standing on and and i go to the wal-mart and there's electric shoes like in the kids sections that the kids can drive around on and so you don't know what the future is but i'll tell you what the future is electric it's not you know my kids aren't going to be pulling some rope on their shoe and like getting the gas shoes anytime soon so um i think that that that's important for us to figure out what drives the consumer how if if we have a shared goal of an electrified future how do we get to that high high penetration scenario and that's what the league's about and that's why we have these great partners helping us do that and we'd love to help you do that too so thank you thanks keith and now we know who to ask about what's coming next right to catch all of those new trends um so we are now going to hear from derrick morrow who is the senior director for climate and energy programs at the natural resources defense council uh derrick overseas nrdc's teams that analyze and advocate for federal level climate energy and clean air policies both at the congressional and administrative levels so welcome derrick thanks carol um and thanks for the invite today i am i'm going to be pretty quick because i think we want to make sure that we have some time for questions um it was really great to have keith lay out some of the detail it's kind of exciting policy or uh technology opportunities and um i wanted to step back a little bit and and talk about the why um why is this important um and we've talked about some of the consumer choice reasons and economic reasons and a little bit on environment but i just thought i would put this electrification opportunity and need and perspective in comparison to some of the other changes that we need to see in the economy to address the climate crisis and um and talk a little bit about different policy frameworks and and what the federal government could do to help push this along so um probably hard for a bunch of you to see this in the back but this is a um a set of emissions scenarios from a couple different sources um uh the the historic emissions are shown there economy wide uh in in black and then there's a dotted red line going up to a o 20 uh 2005 which is the forecast the always forecast in 2005 as to what would happen with carbon emissions um more recent forecast is a o 2007 and green there so you can see um the forecast has been wrong significantly emissions are down significantly we're making some real progress we're not where we need to be um we're not uh on track the power sector is making a lot of progress um but across the economy we have a lot more to do um we did an analysis uh well about a year and a half ago looking at deep emissions uh decarbonization of the economy and looking at an 80 percent reduction by uh 2050 um one of the things that we have recognized uh since the latest IPCC report is that's probably not enough um you know we probably need to get to net zero uh by the middle of the century and and if you think about the u.s current emissions and historic emissions probably the u.s should be doing better than that um so i'm going to show you a little bit of that uh pathways analysis that keith alluded to but um we also need to figure out how to go deeper so we're we've got a lot of progress to make and the electric sector is a really important part of that um in in this analysis that we did looking at just getting to the 80 percent reduction number um there were three really important takeaways in terms of the the technological change and the changes in the economy that we need to see to achieve these goals um the three big efforts and and kind of pathways or some people talk about wedges uh to achieve these emissions reductions are energy efficiency across the economy so doing uh everything with less energy so that's um and and a number of the technologies keith talked about do both they're both more efficient and uh and running on electric um but that's really everything from vehicles to buildings to uh industry um then cleaning up the electric grid so that's adding renewables uh you know potentially other technologies like carbon capture and sequestration um but really cleaning up the grid that's a significant effort we're making progress but have a lot a long way to go and then the third big part um biggest wedge is this electrification wedge and um you know in this uh figure it's a little smaller than the others in yellow but if we don't do as well in efficiency we're gonna have to do more on electrification um so there's some interaction but between them and then we're uh you know really looking now at how would we close that gap and and really get to net zero which probably means ramping up all these and then doing doing more um one other quick trend that I wanted to flag um is that we're making tremendous progress in the cost side as well and this is across many technologies but uh as we get back to the at the end um to what the federal government can do um a lot of this has been driven by federal and state policy um and you see research programs at DOE and utility programs really deploying new technology building a lot of it and getting out of the market we're seeing costs come down really significantly so this is just a few examples where we see you know across photovoltaics wind electric vehicle batteries led light bulbs you know more than a 70 percent reduction in cost over 10 years so really tremendous progress um across a range of technologies so I don't think I need to spend a lot of time on the you know opportunity um that's been well covered um I would say though that um you know just to reinforce what Keith was saying that you know it's just we need to think about this very broadly so there's like transportation and buildings are the obvious big categories of electrification opportunity but it's there are opportunities in industry as well um there are significant uh energy storage uh opportunities that are electric based um that we're only beginning to evaluate and so we really we need to think broadly about um all the the opportunities across the economy federally right now um you know I'm particularly interested in is there's something in the infrastructure space and appropriation space that we could do on buses for instance um you know wouldn't it be great if the uh you know urban uh reps and and rural reps got together in school buses in transit um you know could we really ramp up an effort in that space uh in addition in addition to all the infrastructure needs and opportunities that that an infrastructure bill could help deliver um on the building decarbonization front I wanted to mention a couple things quickly um you know we think about three components to building decarbonization there's that the energy efficiency of the buildings are doing more or less and lots of opportunities and buildings for that from appliances to building envelope to to heating and cooling um obviously electrifying from the cleanest fuel so that's cleaning up the grid and then really just want to reinforce that this demand flexibility that Keith alluded to is is really key to make sure that we're we're able to use energy at the right time I also wanted to flag on the natural gas side that you know some some concern about what happens with natural gas in buildings and we do think that there's an opportunity for kind of renewable gas or or power to gas um I almost think of it as an energy storage tool going from you know renewable electricity to a gas that you can use more flexibly and store but you know there may well be roles for for uh cleaner gas as well so on the policy front uh we we think about all of our policy we're kind of going in a cycle and this can be by technology or by sector and and starting with research and development DOE is the key actor here federally on research and development in the energy space but you know programs to do basic science on lighting or heating and cooling to to get that to begin to get that technology from the lab out into the marketplace with demonstration projects and then ideally the the federal government and the state government comes in and helps move that technology from the lab to market in a more aggressive way with incentives they could be tax incentives you know we've seen that for instance right now there's a need to renew and and update the electric vehicle tax credit um those those technology those incentives drive technology to market get get people across what what folks call the valley of death for you kind of how do you get to commercial um it's a really important part of the innovation cycle and then ideally you bring in uh standards or other other tools policy tools to make sure that the technology is deployed more widely so um you know that can take on a lot of different forms DOE has authority to do appliance and equipment standards that help kind of lock in uh levels of efficiency we also see uh vehicle standards like the the clean cars program for instance it's really helping to to deploy cleaner and more efficient vehicles so just as an example of how this might play out you know you'd have DOE working on LED light bulb research the utilities might have incentives through their efficiency programs to get those light bulbs out into the market and then you could have a lighting standard that comes in to kind of make sure that everybody rises to that level um so again just a flag in the near term on the on the policy front um I think there's real opportunity in an infrastructure bill uh there's real opportunity in the tax space um right now and uh then also opportunity on the DOE front with three authorization bills and plusing up uh DOE's uh um research and development budget so just a couple things to flag happy to talk in more detail about that if folks have questions I'll stop there thanks thanks great thanks Derek and a recurring theme also that I hope everybody noticed um to was how important the whole role of efficiency is so that the less energy we use is really really important so that by becoming ever more efficient the less we have to actually produce is is really really critical and there are so many exciting changes underway um before we uh open Q&A I also just wanted to mention for anybody who is following our briefings that on and this all kind of fits together with this theme too on April 1st we will be doing a briefing with the sustainable um talking about the sustainable energy fact book we'll be doing that briefing uh with the business council for sustainable energy and Bloomberg new finance uh so we hope that you will look for that information because it all kind of fits in with this whole theme too in terms of looking at where investments how investments are really changing what we're seeing in terms of penetration rates with regard to uh efficiency renewables in natural gas technologies um both domestically and globally so let's open it up for your questions or comments and uh do we have any to start it okay start here and then we'll go back here go ahead and wait for the microphone thank you hi i'm kathleen i'm in congressman car rights office i'm curious about the energy storage opportunities so i liked what you had to say you know you're charging at night but what other opportunities are there for more storage go ahead you might all want to talk about this go ahead um i'll just give you a little bit of history with with our group the the beneficial electrification um league actually sort of came out of this group called community storage initiative and i think everyone's sort of very familiar with the idea that that you can have batteries for storage but one of the things that you don't think about is that there's a lot of storage opportunities and sort of everyday things that are that are around so uh electric vehicle is a storage device it has a battery in it a water heater is a storage device there's lots of thermal storage out there i think that there's a lot of low hanging fruit in terms of low cost things that we can store energy and and that's sort of that the flip side of the the flexible load situation so if i'm taking energy from from wind power when it's cheap at night or from the middle of the day in california when there's negative pricing and putting it into a water heater for example i'm storing that energy there until i need to take a shower if i'm putting it into a into a car i'm storing it there until i need to drive if i'm if i'm at a at a university and i'm have a big thermal storage unit i'm i'm storing that um so i think i think what we need to do is is is look at the batteries as the cost come down but also not forget that a lot of these other things really are energy storage and there's a lot of opportunity for that um and and steve i don't know if he would have the the numbers memorized but 50 million water heaters when you add it up it equals a very large number of storage that we have just sitting in our basements with with hot water alone so yes and who wants barbara go ahead yes there is so um Keith's been talking about renewable energy and of course we at every year are supporting renewable energy research as well and what we see is that with community renewable energy you can have community storage and that helps to amplify those resources so you have a 24-hour cycle an example where that's happening happening in real life is eliso canyon in california where they actually have some limited capacity around natural gas and they are using storage to actually as a as a source of fuel to actually bridge the summer months when they have peak load just really quickly i mean i think one thing to think about that da we could potentially ramp up is some some of the longer term storage research and needs to think about kind of interseasonal uh storage um you know i think we can do a ton in the near term with with what we have but as you think about deep penetration of renewables and um you know think about minnesota and wisconsin and the kind of planes wind resource and how you know it varies by season we we also need to be looking at some of that long-term interseasonal storage research compressed air storage is it is a technology just like pump storage in terms of using water that can be pumped at night when it is you know not when that power is not needed and then to release it during the day you know for for higher when there is higher peak demand and i think there are a whole variety of storage technologies that include you know in addition to batteries and the the technologies that we just talked about that there are things like ultra capacitors that have a role i think derrick's point about the opportunity for looking at many more things you know like flywheels are used in other places too for for very short term storage opportunities or needs but that there are i think going to be really really important opportunities and needs to look at a really broad vastly emerging area of technologies with regard to storage it's all pretty exciting right um anybody else want to add okay so we have a question right back here yeah i have some concerns about what seems to be enthusiasm for natural gas because of what the evidence of harms from the extraction and the toxic chemicals used so i have some concerns about that and i also have concerns about indoor agriculture because it's the soil that determines the nutritional levels in the food and i don't see how growing food indoor i see greenhouses still incorporate the original soil that is used to grow vegetables and fruits i don't see how that can be replicated in an indoor setting away from sunlight completely so i have concerns about the quality of that um and my my other concern is that there seems to be a trend toward replacing big oil with big wind or or big solar with these huge solar farms but there's a documentary entitled garbage warrior where he built affordable homes in new mexico in the 1970s made of cob straw bale insulation there were wind turbines inserted underneath the roofs of the house there were solar panels on the house there was geothermal and so these were off the grid but yet on a small scale and have lasted the um in terms of the test of time because they're still there and they're still functioning as they were intended to function but some of his innovations have never been replicated thank you and i would just say you know i think it's really important to think about a whole broad swath of technologies and practices that that are going to be deployed and needed across so that it's never going to be sort of just one thing and either or barbara do you want to talk great thanks so um i heard three actually three different questions if i'm correct in in what you just asked so first regarding indoor ag what you can do is it's grown hydroponically and as i mentioned it uses less the plants use less water actually the growth cycle is accelerated over growing in the ground we find that ahead of lettuce for example can mature within five weeks nutrients are added to the to the growth structure there and so um anyway we're getting very high quality lettuce we actually have some at epri and in one of our offices and i can assure you there's a very abundant lettuce crop that's constantly available so it's it's been a very successful experiment um regarding fracking which is assumed which talking about with natural gas so if first of all at epri we're completely fuel agnostic we embrace all fuels that support the generation of electricity however we want to make sure that those fuel sources are as clean as possible and as cost effective as possible and so we want to advance the technology to support our public interest mission regardless of fuel type so we're not in the business of doing fracking but we're trying to encourage and do research around ways that you can reduce emissions and improve the performance of electricity generation from all sources um i sensed your last question was about community renewables versus rooftop solar is that correct where this architect had built his developments um everything he did has lasted and it's not being replicated so i i think there there is a room for small scale solar wind geothermal integrated um that would reduce the cost reduce the amount of land that might be needed to put these solar farms that have some problems attached to them and i don't really see any downsides to doing it on a structure by structure basis so technology is changing rapidly i think kieth talked about that so whatever was done a few years or a few decades ago is probably being evolving today i'm not familiar specifically with what you're citing but i can tell you they are introducing new technologies where you for for example have a thin membrane on windows in buildings that actually then picks up the solar energy and it not only is helps to insulate so you have a more energy efficient home or business but it also is capturing that energy and then converting it into electricity so there's all sorts of possibilities right right yeah thank you because i think i i think that your point is well taken that there needs to be a whole combination of looking at small scale as well as as uh larger scale and always trying to do things better um question back here okay hi my name is kevin jarzomsky and with the us energy information administration and uh i just uh kind of following on with barbers comment about technology changing and also derrick's comments about uh kind of the uh the the future of energy consumption in the different sectors um and i appreciate all of the the research and analysis that goes into estimating the effects of all these different technologies and what the the future could look like i know for the annual energy outlook for instance it's you know particularly tricky looking out through 2050 um and i just also want to remind folks what the annual energy outlook is it's a the annual energy outlook reference case is a projection not a forecast based on current laws and regulations current levels of r&d spending and technology development and so that you know when you're when you're doing your uh your comparisons of looking forward you know be aware that technology will always move at a pace that we cannot always uh expect and look at the led lighting for instance that's a uh uh the last uh five ten years of that alone has has advanced has reduced energy consumption and lighting so much more than certainly than i would have expected so uh it's just very interesting to see how that technology has changed over the years great thank you and i must say look at how fast keeps as electric scooters have moved did you want to say anything helpful clarification thanks yeah and i mean when i think about modeling and analysis and forecasting or scenarios i think one thing we know is that we're always wrong across the board and and innovation happens and you know we're we're trying to get a snapshot of you know what might occur so really helpful clarification great thank you any other comments or questions okay in the back chef thank you i'm uh jeff overton for anyone on the panel i wondered if you could comment on the changes and improvements that might be required for the grid to support to increase electric electrification for all segments of the economy thank you why don't you all i can start and then i'm sure the other panelists may want to add into this so there were similar concerns interestingly in the 1950s when air conditioning was introduced into people's homes and businesses that oh my gosh you know the system won't be able to support this and in fact it did so again uh there are concerns today about that but the system can be very flexible first of all we're making huge advances i didn't i don't none of us have talked about this but but it's certainly relevant to the topic there are huge advances in improving the distribution system and getting sensors that have the ability to communicate and are intelligent on the distribution system so you can now manage that load better you can understand what the demand is better uh you have a better awareness of what's happening within that system and so with all of those technological advances uh we're very confident at epri that we'll be able to accommodate electric transportation very successfully thank you for the question um yeah i we hear this a lot that the folks are worried that if if you if you start adding things to the grid what's the investment have to be um i i think in where we're from in the in the in the rural areas there's a few things one is you don't want to be adding all this load and not have it be flexible and have it be at the wrong time i mean if you add it all if you changed all the cars out in the in the country to electric and had them all charging at the worst time it would be a nightmare you know you you want to you want to make sure that we have the systems to make sure that we're we're integrating in a way that that makes sense um part of the the beauty of the um of the little tests that we have or the or the kind of definition we have for electrification is that if you are able to do it smarter at a more cost effective way or better for the grid you actually improve the the the electricity as an offering to consumers and you can improve the year it comes to you cheaper or it makes the grid grid better and it actually makes electricity more beneficial in more places so it's really supportive of making sure we have those investments but a lot of the times if you're in a in a development in a rural area and somebody's like i want to build you know i want to build a walmart over here it's not like oh my goodness how are we gonna you know support this it's like okay we'll do it you know it we we went from a time when we had no electricity to we electrified all the farms people can add water heaters to their houses a car sort of like a water heater um people can plan to have a a bus depot people can plan to have a electric charger those things can be planned for um the the biggest challenge is going to be you know making sure that consumers are able to participate in some way in figuring out how to have a smart home and not just more and more peeky peeky loads at the wrong time and that's that's that's something that that i think we're we're working on and it hasn't been a huge issue yet i completely agree with all that one thing to add on is that policy making really matters in the space to uh whether it's at the state level with rate design and and thinking about sending the right signals to customers um or at the FERC level um you know thinking about what kinds of technologies qualify and in the markets that they oversee or the planning processes that they oversee and making sure they're taking advantage of and kind of factoring in all these new energy storage or other opportunities um the only thing i would add is that um you're not only looking at the grid in terms of its its capability and flexibility but one of the things that really drew me to this is that in in the midwest and other parts of the country in spring and fall at night there's so much wind there's so much available energy that prices actually go negative which means they will pay you to take this energy you know so particularly if you're if you're charging up water heaters and all of a sudden instead of paying eight cents a kilowatt hour you're paying two cents or the co-op is paying you two cents to take that kilowatt hour of electricity you know so we have to we have to think also not not just the limitations of of of what the grid which is is actually overbuilt for you know for for worst-case scenarios but we have times when we have an overabundance of renewable energy and we have to plan for those scenarios as well and one of one of my members said we used to say what happens when the the sun's not shining and the wind's not blowing and he said what you really need to be asked what what happens when it is shining and it is blowing now you got to get it somewhere and and that's an opportunity and uh and people talk about equity in terms of you know how do you bring some of these these benefits to to um to folks who maybe don't have lots of money one of the one of the things is take an advantage of those low-cost energy times can can be a benefit you could charge your car overnight and if cars were the same price and you're getting an off-peak electric rate all of a sudden you're paying a lot less money to drive around in your car so there's opportunities as well as challenges with all of this and I would just add to that um from from previous briefings that we have done looking at transmission distribution issues and it's been very clear that system operators across the country have in terms of thinking about the grid and and handling of renewables on the grid because as these questions have come up one of the things that that they've talked about has been in terms of how much they've been able to really successfully integrate without any problems so that while there are always concerns at the same time we have seen an enormous amount of renewables put on the grid where it has been going very very well and you know from from system operators own perspectives so which is also encouraging and all of that work obviously needs to really continue other questions or comments okay Terry Hill Passive House Institute in the Green New Deal there's a section that talks about retrofitting buildings and um in listening to a lot of these presentations buildings are over here and electrical grids over here and something else is here a lot of stove pipe stuff are you looking at the role buildings will play in the design of the future grid so at NRDC I think we think our core work around policy work is being focused on three major sectors there's the power sector transportation and buildings and buildings cross over obviously a lot of other topics but those are those are some of the biggest ones we need to tackle and I think a lot of what we've been talking about here today does interact with buildings and and is very much focused on building so whether it's the equipment in the building the efficiency of the building so you get you can use less electricity or where the power comes from for the building you know the buildings whether it's residential or commercial I think are are really essential to or industrial or essential to achieving all of our goals and certainly at EPRI we're doing research around the building envelope I think we've hopefully communicated here today that we've had huge technical technical strides in lighting over the last couple of decades but we see the building envelope is the next target of opportunity I'll also reference heat pump technologies and you know Keith had mentioned the efficiencies continue to to advance and using an electric heat pump water heater as an example for every kilowatt hour you get to that unit it moves two kilowatt hours of energy a geothermal heat pump can move four kilowatt hours of energy for every kilowatt hour of electricity you get to it and take it one step further what kind of energy are they moving they are multiplying renewable energy heat pumps multiply renewable energy that's the only technologies that can do that okay and yeah go ahead it means that if you if you supply a kilowatt hour of electricity to a geothermal heat pump it's going to move it's going to gather heat from the surrounding air which is a renewable energy but it's going to gather four kilowatt hours of energy and move it and you know another another thing to think about in terms of our all of our air conditioning systems AC systems we take heat from inside the building we dump it outside why aren't we putting that in a water heater I mean there's there's this dividing line between HVAC and plumbing that we have to get past but there's there's lots of efficiencies to be gained out there so one one more task that needs to be done by EPRA by national labs by DOE is to look for those synergies so that we really do optimize design engineering designs how we do things because we're once again back to the point where the the less energy that we need to use better off we all are so efficiency is a really really important point in all of this right any last words from any of our panelists thank you no last words thank you then thank you all very very much for being here really really appreciated and look forward to seeing you at our next briefing thanks so much thank you