 Welcome to panel two on Pathways to Decarbonization, the role of technology and science. My name is Marilyn Brown, and I'm the Brook Byers Professor of Sustainable Systems at the Georgia Institute of Technology. And I'm also in my second term as a presidential appointee to the board of directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation's largest public power provider. So I have a few, where a few hats. So in keeping with the theme of this year's C3E symposium, The Role of Women, Internationally and Decarbonizing Our Energy Future, our panelists are three women who are global leaders in clean energy. We have Peng Chen, first, on my left, a professor at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and an expert in hydrogen storage for mobile applications. She is also an international C3E ambassador. Healy Antila is the chief technology officer of the Fortum Corporation, headquartered in Finland, and is an expert on grid integration, particularly of large scale renewables, but also demand side management. And she too is an international ambassador for clean energy. And finally, we have rounding out the panelist, Wanda Reeder, who is the chief strategy officer of SNC Electric Company in Chicago, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. She has also served with me on the Department of Energy's Electricity Advisory Committee, and she launched the IEEE Smart Grid, which enjoys over 90,000 followers. I'm just picking a little pieces of their bios out. We could go on much, much longer, but incredible women here to talk with us. So C3E came about from a recognition of the many subtle and nuanced ways that women's participation in the field of energy science and technology is challenged. While women have made many strides in clean energy science and technology, the innovation ecosystem is flawed. It's not taking full advantage of our capacities. And as Rebecca Pearl Martinez said, all hands are not yet on deck. The establishment of C3E is grounded in a commitment to close this gender gap to empower women to overcome these barriers. And I had wanted to begin my few remarks with a couple of personal anecdotes to provide some context for perhaps how we've gotten to where we are in terms of seeing so few women of power in the United States entering a rising tide of up and comers here in the room. But what was it about this innovation ecosystem that made it so difficult when I was coming through? And you might be able to reflect on some of these and thinking about your own careers. So first, when I was a PhD student at the Ohio State University, I was a modeler, a mathematical quantitative social scientist and policy analyst. So I was modeling the diffusion of energy innovations. It was post-Arab oil embargo. And I wanted to see what we could do to try to displace our reliance on petroleum fuels. And I wanted to get my PhD. I kept coming across comments from both professors and friends and family that the state of Ohio spending its presidential four-year dissertation fellowships on me was a very big risk because I was probably just going to go get married and have children, right? OK, so I persisted. I didn't have any children at that point. So it wasn't a problem. But we need to be ready with clear answers. And today, it's certainly easier to get your PhD and have children, as has certainly happened with my PhD students. So then I go to take an assistant professorship position at the University of Illinois, Champaign, Urbana. And I do do pretty well in the Department of Geography. There is no maternity leave. I do have a child at that point. And I used up all of my sick days. And my salary is kind of slipping relative to the new hires coming in. So I go to my chair and I say, shouldn't there be a little gender equity adjustment to my salary? And I get the answer, well, your husband is teaching in civil engineering. The salaries there are really high. And my faculty are all men. And they are single bread earners. So I'm sorry. But in the interest of family betterment, we cannot give you a raise. Well, I persisted. And I got my tenure. I didn't fight it too much. Then left, gave my tenure, and went to Oak Ridge National Laboratory with my husband. We had nice joint job offers. And then I learned I was told by many of my colleagues that it was generally assumed that I was hired in order that Oak Ridge National Laboratory could secure the employment of my husband. So now I've got to carry that around with me. OK, so well, I didn't let that get in my way. We are the gender rogers dancing on heels backwards. We just keep going, persist, persist. By the time I left, I had spent 10 years in charge of the energy efficiency renewables and electric grid program. And was tied with Michelle Buchanan as the highest ranking female at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. But it was a tough slog. When I did leave, I now had a reputation. And people were coming after me. So it was no longer a problem of who am I? Am I just Frank's wife? The one that's good to leave and have babies. So I go to Georgia Tech. And I set up the Clean Energy, the Climate Energy Policy Lab. And there created a pretty good critical mass of graduate students, half of whom are female, and two of whom are in the room here. Caroline and Xiao Jing, you're here somewhere, aren't you? Yeah, yeah. And one thing I learned when at Georgia Tech was that there is this need for critical mass. You don't want to be the one female dropped onto a board or dropped into a corporate structure, leadership team, or faculty, and have to do it on your own. That is really uncomfortable. So finding a place that has some women that you can work with is, I think, a big key to success. I did want to talk a little bit about these dual career situations, because I know some of you are at that point in your career where you're having to negotiate jobs jointly for you and your spouse. So it can be done, persist. I think that that's certainly what I learned. Now, I challenged each of the other panelists to come up with stories. I don't know if they have, but I've given them some time now and some ideas. But I know they're also going to talk about science and technology. So the panel is going to explore the latest advances in science and technology and decarbonizing the energy sector. Some technologies and solutions that we need are already in hand today. So one question for you all is, what are these accomplishments that have occurred in your field that represent breakthroughs? There is a rising tide of ingenious solutions in sight. What are these breakthroughs that we really need to be able to go further toward that deep decarbonization? And then finally, what co-benefits or unintended consequences do you foresee in your field or outside of your field being created by a transition to a clean energy economy? So those are the questions for our panelists. I'd like to start first with Ping Chen. Thank you. Hi, everyone. It's great to be here. And it's my first time to join the CISRI symposium. And I'm a professor in the Dali Institute of Chemical Physics. And before I talk about my research, I'd probably like to introduce myself a little bit. I was in a chemistry department in PhD students. And I say that my career somehow is not managed by myself. And when I was a PhD student, I conducted research. And externally, I found something very interesting. And those things are carbon nanotubes. That was the 1990s. So carbon nanotubes is still a very hard topic, a very hard material. And before I graduated, I met a professor from National University of Singapore. And he was very interested in that study. And he invited me to be post-doctor at university. So I got my first job post-doctor there. I haven't applied for that, but you were interested in the material we studied. And after that, also by accidental funding, I got very interesting data from carbon with lithium. And we found that those materials can absorb hydrogen. And at that time, I have no idea what hydrogen storage could be that important for nowadays technology. But at that time, I'm just purely of scientific interest. Then led by this scientific funding, I moved on to hydrogen storage. And after spending almost 11 years in Singapore, and I met a director from the University of Chemical Physics in a conference. And he listened to my talks. And he invited me to join his institute. So I joined the University of Chemical Physics. So it seems I didn't plan for that. But my research seems led me to from this place to other places. And back to our research, as Marilyn mentioned, that hydrogen will have been in hydrogen storage for 70 years. And probably you know that hydrogen is in gaseous form. And if you want to use hydrogen in your car as fuel, you have to compress hydrogen. Or you have to liquefy hydrogen. Or you can store hydrogen in solid material, either by physical way or by chemical way. And our research is by storing hydrogen chemically in solid material. And before the year 2000, the main focus on material development for hydrogen storage is based on metal and metal alloys. For example, magnesium hydride or nickel, niacinam hydride, et cetera. And those hydrides have certain advantages. But still, they have drawbacks like high temperature to release hydrogen, or low capacity hydrogen storage. And also by external funding, our team noticed that nitrogen-containing materials can also absorb hydrogen. So we introduced nitrogen to the hydrogen storage material and established a metal-nitride hydrogen system. So by doing so, we can have more chemicals or more materials to be developed for hydrogen storage. And nowadays, I've seen that in the past 20 years, tremendous efforts from worldwide has been devoted to hydrogen storage research, especially from department energy. Probably you know that a few years before, there's a very strong program in hydrogen storage research. And I'm one of the collaborators with San Diego National Laboratories for the research. And I also involved in the IPHE hydrogen storage program. But still, the challenge is still there. Although we have spent 20 more than 20 years in this area, we still couldn't have materials that could meet the practical requirements. For example, if you have material, you could store a lot of hydrogen in that material. But that's not enough. You have to release hydrogen at near ambient condition. You also need the material to be stable, to be reversible, to be recyclable. And by doing all these things, nowadays, none of the material can do the job. So the challenge is still there. But I was forcing that if we could have better technology but better materials for this area, we probably could change the system of the hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Nowadays, we have 700-bar hydrogen cylinder in our car. Those cylinders for storing hydrogen. If we replace 700-bar cylinder by a material only of tens of bars, then you probably will feel much better than that. So that's the answer to Marilyn's question that I would very look forward to the big breakthrough in the materials development engineering. Thank you. Healy. Healy, you want to go ahead? OK. Thank you very much for this invitation. It's great to be here. And you asked a story. And this happened to me just a few months ago in China. I was there visiting Beijing. And then we agreed that we will visit the coal mine in East Mongolia. And we left there early morning from Beijing at 5 o'clock, 6 o'clock. Then we had a flight there about two, three hours. Then we drove with a car a couple of hours. Finally, we were there. And our hosts gave us lunch. Then they told us, now you can have some rest. And finally, when it was 3 o'clock, then they came that now it's time to go to the mine. But unfortunately, women are not allowed to go to the mine because it brings bad luck to the miners. So I made this 15-hour trip there. And finally, I was not able to go to the mine. So sometimes you get surprises. But luckily, not too often. I'm coming from European utility. So I think I'm giving you a brief background of our company FOTUM and then about our development activities toward the new world. So we have operations in northern Europe, Russia, and India. And it has been quite a long time already our target to decarbonize our production. And now we are around one-tenth of the average emissions per produced power unit in the EU. What we are doing, for example, we just inaugurated biomass compound heat and power plant in Stockholm, which is one of the biggest ones in the world. What I'm very happy is that we have just announced our strategy that we want to focus also on wind and solar and to build a gigawatt scale portfolio there. And we have, for example, wind power project in Russia. I think this is the first one in Russia, which we are constructing. And in solar, we are building portfolio in India. Just recently won a couple of auctions. So we will have around 200 megawatts by the end of this year. So I'm very happy that we are going towards renewables. And luckily, the cost of renewables is decreasing all the time so that wind and solar really are, in very short notice, the cheapest way to produce electricity. And that is very good news. On the other hand, it takes a lot of systemic innovation to enable that. So we have to find ways how to make the system work. And there, our focus is to find new flexibility sources so to develop customer end solutions. And we have a couple of examples in electricity consumption. We have already in the market a product where when we have an hourly price in Finland, the customers can have the hourly price and then optimize the electricity consumption in their heating based on the market prices. So we offer this solution for them. And of course, this helps the system to manage. Another which is still in the commercial piloting phase is that we have aggregated customer water heaters together. And then we bring this aggregated load to the market. And we carry out frequency regulation, this fastest regulation market on second basis. So I feel that these kind of solutions help renewables to enter the market. But then it's important to remember, take all the advantage of the different structures what we have in different markets. So it's not only electricity. It's also heat, traffic, and what we already heard today also water. And in Nordics, we have a lot of district heat. And we are also bringing district heat to help electricity system and increase the demand response activities there. And how can you do that with district heat? It's that you can decide when you produce district heat. You can produce also electricity with combined heat and power plants. But you can also consume electricity when producing district heat. So it's actually a very important source of flexibility to bring flexibility to electricity system. And I think so you can't have a solution that fits all. You have to find what is the best for different areas and then build on that because that is for the society the most cost-efficient way to do that. Thank you. All right, Wanda. My turn, huh? Yeah. Well, thank you so much for the opportunity. It's just so energizing to see all of you here. So it's been quite a journey and to have this many women in one room that supports clean energy is absolutely amazing to me. I'm in Chicago, as Marilyn said. I'm the Chief Strategy Officer at SNC Electric Company. And we manufacture switch gear and protection equipment. So for those of you that have been involved in, especially the distribution utility space, you probably know of our gear. But our portfolio is broadened. We have applications that find their way into microgrids and renewable interconnection through our power electronic solutions as well. So I found microadv very fascinating. I actually didn't have a grand plan to be in clean energy. I grew up in a ranch in Western South Dakota, had no idea what engineering was at the time. And it was my algebra teacher, who actually was also my rodeo coach, came up to me in the hallway once it tapped me on the shoulder and says, you know what, you are so good in math. If I had to do it over again, I would have taken engineering, but I didn't even know it existed when I went to school. So that's how I found my way into engineering and how I found my way into power. I was one student on the Dean's Advisory Council for Engineering at South Dakota State, which Marilyn and I found we have something in common there. But anyway, through that, last semester before I graduated, one of the gentlemen that was serving on that board was in charge of research and development at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. In Washington, D.C. So well, I figured if I can live in Washington, D.C. and get back, I could probably get by anywhere, which in hindsight was not far from the truth coming from my roots. But anyway, at NRACA, at the time it was on DuPont Circle, I was collecting all the different research that they were funding at the time and found, first of all, power to be absolutely fascinating. But then it was, I guess, 85. Conservation, load management, demand-side alternatives is especially interesting, which launched myself into a career at Northern States Power Command and then ultimately an excellent role. So that's been my utility background. Through there, I've had a tremendous opportunity to learn to bring technologies into the field, whether it's automated meter reading or automation, cable testing, unregulated subsidiary, and the list kind of goes on. I found my passion to be bringing technology into the space and I happened to hit it just right that, as an industry, we've been going through transformation for a while and on the bell curve, I was one that liked to do the change management and bring technology in. So it's been tremendously interesting. I've also been very active in IEEE, which I think has given me a stronger voice than just in my workplace alone. Marilyn mentioned that I led the IEEE Smart Grid Initiative, launched it. I was also the first president of the Power and Energy Society in 2008 and 2009 as a female. We changed the name, we knew we needed to rebrand it because the demographics was one where we just weren't recruiting, it wasn't only gender issue, it was a demographic issue. Those in their 20s, 30s, and even 40s that had been on the decline consistently for 10 years. So we knew we had to do some rebranding in order to have sustainability in the society itself. So hence a significant rebranding effort of which then on the heels came IEEE Smart Grid, new publications along the same lines and sustainable alternative energy and of course a lot of collaboration along a lot of different disciplinaries in order to pull it off. So I laid that out there because I wish I could come in here and say I had a grand plan. No, I just followed my passion. And I really enjoyed it along the way. You know as I go back into the questions that Marilyn asked they're pretty broad relative to a five minutes feel but I kind of boil them down into about four clusters of things. And the first is we are in a significant transition as an industry, it's huge. You look back five years ago and you know half of the supply in the United States just from coming from coal. That changed almost overnight. And we as an industry have never changed that fast. So just having the delivery infrastructure in order to have that kind of flexibility was significant in itself. And that's only been of our five year period. Now as we look forward there's a whole lot more that we need to do. We've heard the other panels and speakers talk about you know we've got a clean energy plan but it doesn't go far enough. And you know if we're really gonna stay within the two degrees C, no, we know it doesn't need, it isn't going far enough. We need to look at the whole technology portfolio. Some of which the readiness we've come a long ways. You know we look at that solar curve and how that cost came down and the installation rents went up really fast. And we're not done there yet. I mean we go out in the poster sessions and there's ideas out there that suggest that the costs are gonna even come down more. And that cost curve is also a precursor to storage and others. And I think we're gonna have kind of a convergence of you know the solar, the wind and then the behind the meter opportunities in buildings and transportation that is just offering us a tremendous opportunity. And I think some of the interesting space if you will is where these areas of disciplines overlap. Because we've learned in silos, we've grown up in organizations that are relatively siloed. And where those edges overlap, a lot of times there's efficiencies that we haven't been able to gain. And actually I think as women, you know it's a tremendous place for us to excel because generally we're collaborative, we're open to new ideas, we wanna solve problems, we wanna connect to issues in a much bigger way that we can see relevance to society and mankind. And boy if this thing, this is really what connects I think to prosperity overall. So you know it's kind of a message I think of, you know how do you get to folks? It's tell the story and the story starts, my rodeo coach in high school, right? Somebody touches you somewhere along the way. We all have those stories, but it doesn't end there, that's just the beginning. We know that the pipeline is not near what it needs to be, we need to support each other. And I agree, I've been a lone voice for a long, long time but it's a whole lot easier if there's multiple females in the room. So here, here to you, I'm glad that we're all in here together and it's a journey, we'll figure it out. Okay, fabulous careers. Thank you for sharing all of that. So that's been about 10 minutes. Any questions from the audience and these terrific participants? And then we'll do a lightning speed kind of around the comments at the end with one surprise question. Anyone, a question for any of our panelists? I know that other companies in Finland are looking at supplying heat for district heating through geothermal. Does your utility have any plans for geothermal heating or combined heat and power projects? Thank you. Actually, there's a project where we are involved. So there is a deep, deep geothermal project ongoing and it will be in our district heating network area. And it might be a disruptive technology. So looking forward how it goes on. I think the Scandinavian countries are pretty much ahead of the US when it comes to managing so much intermittency and putting together the supply side and the demand side and the frequency regulation store you told. I know in Copenhagen, they're using the Nissan Leafs students in the middle of their classes and they're helping to line up this storage capacity and put it back on to the grid when it's needed. So we can get there too. I think it's interesting that we're just a little bit behind. I don't know why that is. Do you know? I think one part is the electricity market model, what we have because for example, this frequency regulation aggregated business model. It's actually, we are offering that commercially to TSO and it's going according to their procedures. So it's regulatory model is very important. And to add to that, I think that having a line of sight with certainty around the business model helps the investment piece tremendously. So I kind of compare and contrast the European activity to the states and especially an investor owned utility where you don't necessarily know what the rules are different state commissions take different roles relative to the utility leadership. And it seems like we're finding our way, but there's 50 journeys at the state level and a little bit of federal help too. And so the process isn't quite as clean as perhaps from the European model where there's been a plan that's been pretty obvious and that's I think allowed investment at faster clip. I do have a story to share though along the community side while some questions grew up. We just finished a project in Ohio and this is where I think the unusual business model coupled with solar and storage makes this a winner and there was no subsidies involved whatsoever. So a third party ended up actually putting in a solar facility and also a battery. And they had three different kind of large industrial type companies within their service area and they wanted to get into some renewables. So they did, it was a seven megawatts of storage and on it goes. But the bottom line is that the little municipality could buy energy back from the solar facility, cheaper than what they were getting at otherwise. The battery was used to clip peak about 10 times per year so their demand costs went down. They had to do some investment in reactive power anyway which they're able to defer, so that helped. But the interesting thing is back to the frequency market. It happened to be within PJMs, service area ISO and they were able to leverage the frequency market. So the individual third party investor is breaking even within three to four years on that project. And it's less cost to the municipality. So I think it just shows that it's not just technology alone. It's coupling kind of a community interest with the market as well. Great. Was there another question out here? Right there. I have a question about storage and I know that at the National Renewable Energy Lab we've partnered with a couple other organizations on different reports and different analyses on storage. We did a renewable energy futures project a few years ago where the results showed that we won't need, with integrating renewables into the grid, we won't need storage until there's a pretty high penetration. But when you go to different energy conferences you don't necessarily hear that. People say, oh, with 20% or 15% you're gonna need some storage. So I'm wondering what your opinions are about that because we've found in our analyses that that's not true. Well, I think it depends. So anybody that's been on there that models side of this question, it really depends a lot. And to the extent that there's significant renewable penetration, we've learned that we can probably get further than when we first thought when we started down the journey without storage. But we've also seen that there's times when you approach stability challenges and some storage, especially facts to acting makes a big difference. And then you also gotta look at the mix that you have. I mean, you've got the Upper Northwest that has a lot of hydro. So I don't think there is one answer. It's very location specific. I will say that the planning around this changes a lot because we used to have normal and contingency and we understood what the loads were and what the low growth was. And now with the intermittency and the negative aspects of this, I think that we have to learn how to get much better prepared at scenario analysis. And the one thing that storage does is it provides us some flexibility and nimbleness so that to the extent things happen that are a little unexpected, we got some shock absorber built into the system. But I might defer some added comments. Actually, I fully agree with you. On the other hand, if you think of demand response compared to storages, then you don't have to invest in new assets or you think electric vehicles that you can have the vehicle to create what is now in piloting phase, it's a huge capacity available. So I think it's balancing that how fast you can bring these assets into operation where you don't actually have to invest again. So yeah, yeah, very interesting question. And I think there really isn't exact answer for that. Tremendous opportunity on transportation and also buildings and how these intersect. All right, so I have a final question then. I'd like each of you to respond. What needs to happen to attract more girls and women into the energy sciences and engineering thing? Yeah, I'm professor in the institute. So every year I have a two or three student join my district group and normally half and half, half boy, half girls. And I will say that some of the girls are really, really intelligent. And I did my best to encourage them to continue their scientific research after PhD grade, PhD degree. For example, two of my students continue their scientific training as post-doctors after receiving PhD. And two of others are joined, as faculty members join universities and still continue their research. So those girls with very right talents in scientific research, I will strongly suggest them to continue their this direction because they have this talent. But not all girls have this capability. But for those who really have this one, but I think that people conducting research, people has to be pretty good assistant and if you can hold this, your dream strongly probably can go through everything you encountered. So those girls who have this characteristics and our characters, I will strongly encourage them to do this. Yuli. I think we need these role models and here we have hundreds of role models here. And I think this example of how to influence this mentoring, I like it very much and we hope that we can bring this to our Finnish ambassadors and to find out a way to do mentoring there. So I think again, not only one thing, it's several things. I agree there's no silver bullet. Yeah. I would boil it down into three things. I think it's telling the story and that means not only story in the fourth through eighth grade, I mean that's where it begins, but also along the way. I think that we need to provide a support infrastructure. There's now getting to be a few of us. It's no longer just a single voice, but we still need a lot of support and kind of affirmation. And the third one is recognize the biases and address them. There are reality biases in the workforce and along the way and it is what it is, but you know what, together we can change them. And I've been noticing that where I work, we're certainly making this front and center. I believe that it's very important for the rate of innovation. We're moving faster than wherever we have before. We need the best and the brightest and we need the different perspectives. So this is a matter of success. And so, you know, making sure that to the extent there are some resistance elements in the process, we need to acknowledge them and put infrastructure in place in order to just. Okay, so my final comment will be we also need better textbooks. And I happen to have two that I, one I published this year and one last year and they're flyers for them on the table up front. One is on energy efficiency policies and markets and the other's on global energy policy. So they tell a story and I think they get people excited about the problems and the opportunities and it's all about getting people excited, men and women. So thank you so much for hearing us out. Thank you.