 Hey, good morning. Good morning from California. It's good to welcome everybody to Storge X and Palsim again. It's my great pleasure to welcome two of our speakers today. One is Susan Yuta Yakuma from Pro-Rogers. She is the Chief Sustainability Officer from Pro-Rogers. And the second is Lincoln, our own Lincoln, Blivance. Lincoln is in charge of our energy facility here at Stanford. Let me welcome Susan to the stage for the first presentation. Let me do a quick introduction about Susan. Susan is the Chief Sustainability Officer of Pro-Rogers. She is responsible for evaluating and scaling both existing and emerging energy solutions across the whole company's platform. This is a global company to ensure Pro-Rogers continue to be the leader in the sustainability and the real estate industry. Before Pro-Rogers, Susan was the president of Schneider Electric's Sustainability Business Division. During her 16-year tenure with Schneider Electric, she was instrumental in transforming Schneider Electric into a digital power and automation technology company, driving sustainability. And before that, she served as the CEO of Schneider Canada. Susan recently was recognized as a 2021 Environmental Energy Leader 100 Honorary for successfully delivering climate mitigation action to enterprise customers. While Susan has a lot of experience previously, so I will not repeat. Susan has executive MBA from Northwestern, the K-Lock School of Management. In addition, she holds Master of Accounting and Bachelor of Degrees from the University of Waterloo. With this introduction, Susan, I would like to welcome you to share with us about your will in storage and energy in general space related to Pro-Rogers. Please, Susan. Thank you very much. And thank you, everyone, for your time with me today. So I'm going to talk about storage from the perspective of an industrial logistics company and why it's so important to us and what our customers are asking. So for those of you that may not be aware of who Pro-Rogers is and why storage is so important at this point for us and why renewable energy is so important for us at this point, I'm going to start with what you're thinking. So I am super clear that we're at an inflection point. And what I mean by that is we all know that the consumption of energy worldwide is increasing. I looked at some stats the other day and if you look at the energy consumption today versus what it was in the 1900, it's 40 times more. And if you look at the energy consumption that we're going to have to have in 2050 versus it is today, it's 50% more. So the world needs more electricity and energy. And at the same time, because of the focus on climate mitigation as the world and governments and companies work towards a net zero by 2050 pathway, you know that you can get that energy from burning fossil fuels. So understanding this, we know that the world has to run on renewable. We're all clear that the grid, the way it's designed, it wasn't designed to have so much distributed energy in that that we together, whether it's businesses or academia have to work with governments and utilities to solve for that problem. So we at Prologis are super cognizant of this. And then the other thing that we have in mind as we figure out how we want to operate is what's happening in the regulatory environment globally. For me, the Inflation Reduction Act is one of the most impactful legislation that has come into play. It's a signal number one that we are transitioning to renewable energy. It's important. And it's facilitating the adoption of energy by making it economically feasible in so many more states than it has been in the past and really favoring alternate renewable technology when it comes to energy generation. I'm in New York today and local law 97 is super important for us when we build because it's the focus on energy efficiency. And it says that if you exceed the allotment of energy that you can have for big buildings, you're going to pay for each metric ton of CO2 $268. So that adds up when you're building large buildings like we do. The other thing that I'm super cognizant of is the SEC climate disclosure. Yes, there's a lot of debate on when do we have to disclose in exactly what's specifically related to scope three. So it's emissions from your value chain. But we know that it's going there. Then let me step back and look at Europe where we also have facilities. Are we power? It says that if you have buildings that are 250 square meters, and if you're a commercial building, you must have solar power generation on the roof for all new buildings by 2026 and for existing buildings by 2027. That's really around the corner for us and EU has been also very specific that all of the buildings in EU has to be net zero by January 2030. So you look at the legislation around the world and you can see they are moving towards a direction of renewable energy. They're moving towards the direction of decarbonization and with the grid capacity where it is, storage becomes really important hence the discussion today. Now before I go into what we're doing from a technology standpoint on ProLogis, I want to introduce the company itself because not all of you may be aware of the company or the scale. So ProLogis is the world's largest logistics company and it's present in 19 countries and to give you an idea of scale in the 19 countries, 4% of the world's GDP in those countries go through our logistics center. So the value of those goods are $2.7 trillion. We have 1.2 billion square feet of real estate worldwide and why that scale matters is we primarily impact the flow of goods everywhere. And if you are to decarbonize the world and if you are to decarbonize the supply chain, we have to take action and we have to take the leadership of that for sure. And then in our facilities, we have 6,600 customers and those customers are your Fortune 100, your Fortune 500, as well as medium and in small companies who may not always have the resources in terms of what does it mean from a decarbonization standpoint or what does it mean from an energy system deployment standpoint. We have almost 5,600 buildings around the world and today we are the second largest on-site energy generation in the US with 409 megawatts that is operating on our roofs. If you ask me where we were at the beginning of last year, we were at 295 so we are scaling up very fast and that scale up is being driven for a couple of reasons. One is we realize as the logistics company, we touch two really hard to decarbonize segments, buildings and transportation. If you look at what you see on the screen, 65% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation or how the construction of buildings and the operation, the heating and cooling of those buildings. So knowing that we play in these segments, we've decided that it's something that we need to address at prologes. The other thing is a lot of our customers have their own net zero and sustainability goals and they're saying to us, you know, it's great that you provide us high quality real estate, but how are you going to be a partner in our sustainability journey? How are you going to make sure that you give us facilities that meets our needs and our standards? So with all of this in mind, what we did last year is we assessed what our ambition is relative to net zero. And we were the first real estate read to adopt a science-based target in 2018. So it's a natural progression for us to get to a net zero ambition. And our ambition is to be net zero on our scope one, two and three. So the emissions from our own operations, as well as the emissions from our value chain, so the customer emissions in our facilities and the emissions that come from our supply chain as we build buildings by 2040. So if you think about 1.2 billion square feet of real estate, and if you think about the fact that we have to solve for embodied carbon and the energy consumption of our customers in our premises, it's a pretty tough challenge. And in order to make sure that we can deliver on our commitment that we have made, we have interim goals. And those interim goals are that we would be net zero in all our operations by 2030. So it's scope one and two. And that by 2025, we will deploy one gigawatt of onsite solar and that we would be carbon neutral in our construction. So we are piecing to these commitments. And I want to specifically come back to solving for the energy consumption of our customers. If you look at our scope three, which makes up 99.9% of our emissions in total, 67% of that is coming from onsite consumption of power by our customers. So our solutions in terms of energy, in terms of storage, in terms of mobility is critical to us getting to our net zero ambition. So I want to talk a little bit about what does that mean. So at Prologes, we have, I have actually two responsibilities. One is the chief sustainability officer that you spoke to earlier, but I also run the global energy storage and mobility businesses. And these are revenue generating activities that solve for the customer emissions. So let me walk you through what it is that we do. First of all, we have front of the meter solution. So these, this is where the utilities are customers with the, with our locations, which are in industrial urban environment. You know, we're also present where there is good congestion. So we solve for that by partnering with utilities, and we provide them utility scale generation on our on our roofs. We provide utilities scale energy storage, you know, in order to ensure that utility can utilities can have good resiliency. And we, we, because where we're located, sometimes we have the advantage of having substations near us and having interconnections that have capacity. So we really start from the standpoint of what is the capacity of power. And then we design our solutions to ensure that we can deploy, deploy our, our activities faster. As you know, the grid, the, the interconnections and, and the grid access is a, it's, it's, it's, there's delays. I mean, there's so many things that are happening. And utilities are, are, are, are, are really striving to do what they, what they can do, but the demand for, for their services and the queue is just so long that as a company, you have to be very strategic on how you go about solving that. So when we, when we, when we provide our solutions front of the meter, we also think about our customer needs and we provide behind the meter solutions. And what that is, is we put in energy systems that, that address the, the, the self consumption in our building. And we couple that with back of the meter storage so that we can deliver on savings to our customers by managing the load where resiliency is really important. You know, we also build data centers, for example, then we provide microgrid solutions depending on the ask of the customer. And as we design these, these offers, what we, what we thought about is, you know, if you think about a logistics center, a customer may move in and then a customer will move out one day. And in, and that is a deterrent to putting up energy systems because they don't want to worry about the, the, how long they will be there, what is the payback period, et cetera. So what we have said is we'll deploy the capital, we will install the system, we will maintain the system, we will ultimately manage the meter for our customers and we will be a partner to the utility, you know, based on their capacity needs. And when we do that, obviously we're leveraging the existing asset, the real estate asset that we have. And it only makes sense that if we're using that building to generate the energy, that we decarbonize that building itself. So we ensure to retire renewable energy credits against that building. So it is decarbonized. I know I'm going super fast, but I want to cover a couple of other things. So as we look at our portfolio of storage, we started last year, we really started mid-year last year in terms of thinking about, should we do storage? Why is it relevant to our customers? What's the opportunity for us? And today, I would say not even a year into it in our facilities in the US, we have a pipeline. And these are, these are, these are real opportunity that amount to 2.5 gigawatt of storage in the US and 2.5 gigawatt in Europe. So we're working with the likes of Southern California, Addison, PG&E, Ilia in the Netherlands, so forth in determining what is their need. So as we realize the opportunity for storage, we realize that we really need to work with the ecosystem to determine how to optimize the deployment of storage. Therefore, what we do is we work with Stanford, we will be part of StorageX very shortly, we work with the CATLs and the BYDs, these are the large battery manufacturers to determine how should we also move the technology from where we are today. But before I go into it, I wanted to share with you a real life example of what we're able to do when we deploy back-of-the-meter storage in our facilities. As I mentioned earlier, there's no upfront cost to our customers to install or maintain. We pretty much guarantee savings to them so that we really motivate our customers in terms of thinking about energy management and greening of the brown power that they may be using. And you can see that before we use back-of-the-meter storage, the peak demand that you see on the screen was equal to 900. And once we deploy storage, it's reduced to 600, so it really makes sense for us to do it. And when we share these findings with our customers, it allows them to see the benefit and the savings. And we're able to then move on our decarbonization journey. When we do solar deployment, we do exactly the same thing. So we deploy our own capital, we install and maintain and operate the system, and we make that green power available to our customers at the cost of grid power. So it becomes really a no decision on their part. And as we kind of thought about how we're scaling up, we realized that maybe it's easier for our customers if we manage the meter ourselves. So we are working on taking the meter in Prologis's name so that we then understand clearly, we have the data of the energy consumption, we can then side the system appropriately, and we can then optimize that energy. So this is the direction that we're going in, bringing real estate and energy together. And maybe 10, 15 years ago, we would not have thought about it. But today, when we're having the conversations, whether it's with customers like the DHLs or FedExes or Amazon, power, access to power, management of power is actually forefront in their mind. They know that fleet electrification is coming. And we also provide charging as a service. So they are asking us to solve for those things that are happening in our external environment. I also wanted to share a real-life example of solar smart. We call our solar solution, solar smart, and a storage solution, storage smart. And he's a real-life example in Redland, California, with a customer that wanted to decarbonize their operation. And they said, you know what, design is the solution. So we provided them on-site solar generation and storage. They needed five megawatt of energy. It took up 1.3 million square feet of that building. And we were able to offset 83% of the energy consumption of that building in line with the customer expectation. And what I would say to you is maybe I will go to how we're thinking about our storage deployment. So I shared with you our pipeline. We are obviously today deploying battery technologies that's commercially viable, lithium ion. However, we are starting to work with many people in the ecosystem on what are the new technologies that we need to solve for from a battery standpoint. And once we identify that solution, how can we help scale up that supply of it? Because sometimes scale is a challenge to new innovation that's really available. The last thing that I would highlight to you is I mentioned to you that we do charging as a service. If you think about a logistics center, there are so many heavy-duty trucks that are coming into our facilities. And the easiest way for them to charge is when those trucks are loading and unloading. So the downtime is minimized. And when you provide charging as a service or the charging infrastructure, storage is a huge part of it because the grid, it could be two years before you can connect the infrastructure to the grid. So what we're starting to do is we're also providing temporary power by means of renewable gas and coupled with storage. So, Jimmy, I think I'm going to stop there. I've shared quite a bit and I think I'm up in my time. Susan, thank you so much for sharing this really wonderful, I think, the company plan and the examples right here. Maybe I will ask some questions first, Susan. Sure. She's handing to Jimmy. It's fantastic to see the example, particularly this last one, this charging station right there. You actually install a storage right there. I really like the point you made, you know, connected to the grid. It might take two years. You have your local storage right there. So the storage will be used to charge up your truck. For the application like this, I think the audience right here cares about storage a lot in terms of power, the loading, the charge, the charge time, how many hours are you looking into? That's related to charging speed, yeah. Yeah. So right now we're looking at one-hour batteries because they are the most commercially viable. But really, once we have the charging as a service operating fully, we need long-duration batteries. So we need four plus hours. In some cases, ideally, we need eight-hour battery power. And that's what we're solving for, obviously, you know, working with Stanford as well as CATL and BYD. And we need to get there sooner than later. That's what I will say. Yeah. Okay, Susan. So Susan, so far for the storage of your solar and also output this power, what will be the, I would say, I shouldn't say pain pumps, you know, the lease of desired property of storage technology you are looking into beyond the current technology can provide? I think if you look at the energy consumption of our buildings today, I can solve for it. You know, when you don't have fleet electrification, when you don't have automation with like 40% of the up the roof. And so that's okay. But when I look at the future, when we electrify everything in the building, like the heating and the cooling, when we automate, a lot of our logistics customers obviously need more and more robotics and automation. And you bring in the electrification of fleet. Even if I put solar in every space that we have on the roof, I cannot meet the power demand of the building. So that's what I really worry about. So optimizing on storage is super important for us. And optimizing on the ability to deploy those solutions sooner. Sometimes the wait time is three to four years, that the trucks are coming now, you know, that's the problem that that's what I lose sleep over. Oh, yeah, yeah. So you showed this number, right. So very impressive number. You have 1.2 billion square feet. That's right. A rooftop right there. Would you would you have solar on what's the percentage thinking for the long term to get it to be there to to all to become solar loop? Yeah. So if I put if we put solar in every all our groups, we can generate 10.5 gigawatts of energy. Today, I've got 410 megawatt that's operational that that takes up only 4% of the of the of the square feet of of roofs that we have. We've got lots of lots of more capacity to install. But at the same time, you know, when you put solar on the roof, you have to really care about the structure of the building. There's so many things that you worry about. So we're also looking at innovation like what are building in an integrated PV. So not only do you can you use surfaces that are lightweight solutions, but that also removes the need for some of the concrete which which reduces the embodied carbon. So we're always looking for innovation to to see how do we increase the generation of power? And then how do I how do I then use that that material as substitute material for concrete? And we have a couple of solutions that we've identified. Oh, you are also thinking about the building's vertical wall can be so solar as well. Absolutely. Yeah, things that that can generate solar, but can also be the building envelope, which is super efficient for us is something that that we're actually piloting and deploying right now. Yeah. So, since I'm your application projects application is the storage and your warehouse your building is very close to each other. So I'm thinking if you have very safe battery technology, for example, you might be able to do building integrated storage. Is that attractive to you? Like so because of safety it becomes no concern anymore. Maybe that maximize the efficiency. You know, I never thought about that, but of course, I mean, if you can have safe, if the building could generate and store its own energy like I've solved for quite a bit of demand that we have for those are the type of innovation that would be that would be very valuable for us. We are looking at number of different technology. Of course, we're looking at hydrogen because you would have to when you have such amount of transportation that you're trying to decarbonize. But again, there's no commercially viable solution that doesn't take up the space of a truck, right? Like the spacing of whether it's batteries or hydrogen or whatever is super important in terms of maximizing the space of a truck. We're looking at nuclear SMR technology just because we have data centers that the energy needs are so so critical. So we're looking at all kinds of innovation where you can optimize energy really is the best way I can put it. Wow. That's I think that's very impressive. You are prologous is already an ecosystem. There's a really multiple things. I didn't know you have your data center as well. Yeah, you know, when you think about it really like when you think of real estate, that real estate is valuable when it's powered, when it has resiliency, when it has reliability. I mean, that's what you know, like I if you think about the customer need, it is really there. And I think people hadn't before thought about the two together. But but as energy becomes more and more not guaranteed, I guess, is a way I would I would I would I would think, you know, I would I would I would say it becomes you really are trying to solve it together. And that is also for us a differentiator in the market. And that that meaningful to us. Yeah. So Susan, let's now open this up more. So for warehouse for for logistic company, if you look at, you know, beyond prologous, and there will be others. And also at different, well, let's say just commercial building in general, we'll probably go to the level in the future in general, why it doesn't need to be a warehouse company and so on. Yeah. Would you imagine this the solution you develop? Can how to how to how does that translate? Can can that have other impact and propagate? Yeah, that's a great question. So really, our ambition is to help decarbonize supply chain, like you know, that's sort of how we started with. So, you know, you have to then think about the collaboration with the ports, right? Ports need electrification. And we think about that to say we are very good at buying and developing land. We have land banks. So if we can use some of those land banks to provide solutions to whether it's a port or whatever it may be, we would be we would be very focused on that. We in our current charging solution that we've provided, we're providing them to a customer mask, you know, they are they want to decarbonize the flow. And they're not always in our facility. So we do do out of platform solutions. If it's if it's if it's in the interest of our customers. And if it's in interest in the corridor, I would almost call them green corridors. If we can green specific corridors, then you can have an impact on the flow of goods. So that's how we think about them. Yeah. So maybe I'll ask the last question. If Jimmy wants to ask please to chime in or any time. So this is a storage X audience right here carrying about storage technology. Do you have I already touched upon a little bit about safety. Do you have a list of idea characteristics for the storage technology? Yeah, your wish list wish list. Yeah, to motivate our researchers. Yeah, so I've got I've got two two current list. And then and then you gave me another idea because I wasn't thinking about building integrated storage. So I'm going to start with that would be really awesome for us to have long duration storage is what a four four hour battery storage is is really critical for us. And we've got major grid scale projects that we're going to be deploying in 2025 to 2026. So so you know moving that needle forward is going to be very important to us. And then the other thing that I would say is any technology that's other than lithium iron is super interesting to us because because right now when I look at the because we are I mean we do things where when it makes economic sense as well right we can't just deploy solutions because we want to. So the cost curve of that's my my my other huge wish list is how do we bring the cost curve of batteries down and and for us manufacturing in the US is also important. So how do we get the the the the volume of batteries in the local areas where we're in whether it's you know China for China Europe for Europe us for us is very important to us. So that's my wish list. Wow this is very fantastic. Yeah that's very exciting. So I do have a few questions Susan. First of all before I before I forget it's very exciting the way you're thinking about the energy transformation and real estate writ large right not just in traditional terms but I just thought a few other ideas in addition to this integrated storage Stanford is also looking at passive heating and cooling in fact he has a couple of innovations in that space with respect to fabric but we're also looking at it from the standpoint of other things so that's another thing that you might want to add to the things you're thinking about this is integrated passive and passive cooling and heating that might be built into your building itself as you as you move forward that would be very interesting because you know one of the things that we struggle with is that we are we're we're a logistics center warehouse so the the doctors are always going up and down and and and you know so we can't really condition the space for most of them and we lose a lot of energy so so having passive cooling and heating would be of interest we are as we're decarbonizing the buildings we are moving to heat pumps and electrification which is actually in efficiency right because I can tune more and it sounds counterintuitive but I know I know you will you will realize this I actually increase my emissions because I need more electricity to heat and cool as I electrify so yeah so I need solutions that are that are that are more efficient honestly yeah no fantastic I'm really excited about what you guys are doing by the way this is fantastic seeing we're really excited about partnering with Prologis on on your journey um thinking about the way you were describing it earlier are you thinking that of going to 24 by seven and being completely self-sufficient within your buildings almost like uh completely independent or you could just you know disconnect from the grid as appropriate or necessary and then reconnect is that the vision so so we haven't thought we haven't declared that will be 24-7 though I'm starting to really think about it right now what we have is for all our own operations it's powered and renewable so this is Prologis's operation itself but but the next one would be 24-7 renewable and if we can be just self-generation and self-management then that would be for me that would be a that would be a great accomplishment to manage that okay I see so when you're going to put in the storage and the generation renewable generation um your vision in in 2030 is to power the operations that you currently have yeah by which we already have done so so today we you know in our own operations we run on on renewable power the thing that that I need to do one step further to decarbonize is I need to to um we need to to um change over all the fleet that we have to electric and then to provide that's what that's what we're working on in the constraint for us to get there it's just making sure we have enough supply of uh ZEV vehicles so we can switch to that that the power infrastructure to do so we can oh that so that was my next question I see you sort of so you um so the bottleneck for you is actually the availability of ZEV vehicles not the power to for these ZEV vehicles yeah because we don't use so many of them so so there's a there you know if if I if we were using large volumes of ZEV vehicles then the power will be a constraint but as prologous we don't have so many so so it just for the for the supply that we have it's not the power that the constraint is making sure that we get the the ZEV vehicle itself which we're working on oh that's fantastic well that's a message I have to pass along to some of our our collaborators in the ZEV vehicle space is that you guys are open for business you guys I think they know it I mean because we're probably speaking to the same people you know and uh so that that's on the way but please do pass on the message okay fantastic you know and I was also really excited to see that part of your strategy is actually to utilize the available real estate and actually provide power and services to the utilities uh as you know as part of the strategy which is amazing um when when you do this um do you also consider in markets like uh like ERCOV and stuff where you will provide this to the general market or you're thinking about you know how how will yes so that's my question yeah you're going to become an independent independent service uh power provider you know what what is the vision behind you're thinking about this in front of the meter so so today we're working on a 200 megawatt solution in ERCOT itself I mean with with with Texas relying so much on wind power there's such a need for storage there um and that's where we we that's exactly where we started first so in in Texas with ERCOT we are we are providing um we're taking on merchant risk really to provide that that solution to to the the community and to the and to the grid in in California it's going to be more capacity in Netherlands it's going to be more capacity so it really is market by market based on what the opportunity is and and from de-risking the project standpoint I really prefer capacity storage you know we are we make the capacity available for the for the utility to charge and discharge as they need to we provide the capital we make sure that the system is operational the dispatching is managed by the utility itself right whereas in ERCOT we're going to have to manage that ourselves so you guys are business yeah so but we're gonna we're gonna if you look if you ask me Jimmy what's the mix of business that we're going to do we're going to focus more on where the utility is doing the dispatching and and managing of that we're going to provide capacity so I would say you know 70 30 in terms of how that mix will be is sort of what we're aiming for okay fantastic this is a yeah it's amazingly exciting what you guys are undertaking here and the scale the scale of this is really uh really amazing I mean when uh when I looked at the amount of storage in your slide that you're going to be deploying that's huge those are really big numbers yes I know you know I was kind of curious when you were saying 2.5 gigawatts in the US and 2.5 in Europe are you think is a timeframe 2030 or earlier or what what kind of time is 2030 it's 2030 so what we've done is um so there are some projects that are 100 megawatt or 200 megawatt utility scale storage that's in our pipeline so that's adding you know you have you have four or five of those projects they become pretty large what we've also done is for example cluster 15 interconnections is just opening right so we kind of anticipate our need and we're filing for those now so we're getting our access to power solve for first and that gives us a good view to what the opportunities are before we were operating a different way we said okay what's your need utility okay here's our our land now let's go solve for the power uh that that's not that's not the the most efficient way you're solving that's a long call yeah so we pivoted it we pivoted and said no we can't do that so let's figure out where we've got the capacity and then let's put the solutions and we transparently discuss this with utilities you know they have such such an incredible need for storage they're very open to having these partnership discussions and and another thing that we did Jimmy that was sort of a what a business innovation is you know utilities kind of look at who the customers are right like like certain customers will show up on their list as huge power consumers but in our facilities as the meters were owned by the different customers they don't know that it's in prologous facility they don't know the the consumption that's happening as we are putting the meter in our name the aggregation they're like okay here is a pretty large customer right that's changing the discussions right now they're like oh prologous oh big big consumer big consumer lots of discussion yeah yeah and sometimes sitting next to substations or have land that we're willing to to work with the utility to solve for the power problem you know we were we're having a discussion with national grid in in the uk data centers no power right and like especially in west of london no power so we're saying can we can you know is there any way we can solve for this together right using using land that we have so those are the discussions that we're having oh absolutely i think it must be very exciting for the utilities to consider having a partner in prologous especially if they have bottlenecks in their grid now on sunday have a partner that could help them resolve these bottlenecks by putting in storage as needed and having that access to that oh this is amazing so pivoting a little bit i know that in the case of plug power and they you know they supply a lot of the forklifts and stuff for many of the warehouses and they're primarily based on hydrogen as a fuel and then so what is your thinking regarding alternative behind just batteries in terms of storage how are you thinking about this for sure hydrogen is something that we're evaluating and we keep in touch with the number of start a number of companies that are commercializing it we have not come across one jimmy that we say okay this is the solution that we're going to go with you know when you think about fleet electrification we're going to need a lot of it however we are we are doing something that that is in in anticipation of that so when we think about our charging infrastructure we do three things we do workplace charging that's just for passive you know people that drive into our our our centers and they need to charge their their vehicle so that's one we will just provide that as part of our as our net zero standards as we move into our buildings the second one is deeper charging so when companies customers are in a facility they're unloading and loading they need the charging they ask for it we make um level two chargers or or higher available in our premises the third thing that we're doing we're starting to think about is um just like hubs so charging infrastructure that are hubs that are fuel renewable fuel agnostic it could be battery it could be hydrogen it could be any other technology where should they be located who should be our partner um so we're having those discussions with the likes of of DHL FedEx you know amazon those people those companies that really need to get ahead of of having that infrastructure so that's the that's the evolution again it's not a simple thing to solve for right because you need to have utilization to make economic sense um and and and the companies that need these need to do that sometimes don't have fleet or they have the fleet but they haven't thought about the the the infrastructure that's needed so you kind of have to bring this ecosystem together right that's where i think you all can do a great um service to to everyone because because what i saw um jimmy and ye you know in your in the in the energy week is a lot of representation of this ecosystem is there yeah yeah that's that's exactly right and part of what we see is uh our contribution to this is bringing the is convening the various stakeholders together to have dialogue and also exchange information and you know a lot of times it's they find that they're they don't necessarily disagree they just don't have the latest information and it's fantastic to see that light bulb go off and then once i think oh well actually if that's the case we can do this and and so on so it's it's great to see yeah um we do have a question from the audience so i'm going to throw this out to you susan um so there's a little bit about technology so uh from a long duration energy standpoint uh greater than one day to five days what are the ideal technologies that you are seeing both from a technical economic and reliability and efficiency standpoint so we so we no go ahead okay um so we first of all you know i've got people smarter than i am on the technology in my in my team that i think you got you you have met um but we are reviewing a technology today that's called the blade technology with one of the largest producers um the second largest producer of battery um which is which which so when you think about battery when you think about installing that battery safety is a is a huge concern for us because we have to to we have to bolt these batteries to to specific um specific specific sites and there's a technology where um the safety of it is is maximized by having something called the blade technology i don't know if you all have heard of it or not we're evaluating that um more than that i know my technical team is looking at at at specific things which i necessarily am not the expert to speak to um but it's really the the how can you operate the battery for longer duration without having the degradation that you see is what the my team is focused on okay fantastic and i i really appreciate you uh participant in this i know you're you're concerned and rushing off to the airport you're looking and just like oh my god you know i have to go to the airport and so susan i want to thank you on behalf of uh storage x and stanford university and we look forward to working with prologists in yourself as you as you continue your journey and we continue ours so uh i would like to thank you and on behalf of us and ye do you have any final words for susan but just thank you susan this is fantastic look forward to seeing you again uh on campus thank you thank you both for for having me and you know what i'm always looking to stanford for innovation so if you can if you can help me solve my my battery battery cost curve and uh integrated storage then then it will be it will be super valuable thank you again for having me yeah so susan i do have on my calendar the uh the little biking tour that we talked about so we'll bike over take a look at the central energy facility we'll take a look at all this other stuff and so it's on my list susan just let me know when you're going to be visiting we'll do germy and it's great to meet your lincoln and and um and i'll look forward to meeting you in person bye fantastic bye susan thank you bye susan okay fantastic so we're going out to our second speaker and like to do a brief introduction to lincoln so lincoln is stanford's stanford's own executive director of energy operations sustainability and energy management lincoln has been executive in the global energy industry for nearly 30 years and uh leads a lot of our our meaning stanford university's mission critical operations uh leading us in our world leading us in our innovation and sustainability um he's also a mentor and board member for technology startups in north america europe and india and uh he in fact he has his own podcast climate changes everything so with that lincoln i'll turn it over to you great thank you very much and it is an honor to be here so uh what i'd like to talk about today is decarbonization at stanford we have come a long way as i'll show you but we also have a long way to go and energy storage has tremendous roles to play in that and i say roles in the plural on purpose um but as you'll see from this we're like susan we're still uh at a stage where we have many more questions and answers we're trying to define the problem as we look to solve it so let me walk you through that give you a picture and invite you to join us in that in that exploration so my goal is to give you that perspective from an operational and planning perspective as opposed to say a scientific or or technical perspective i think it's very very important to frame the problem so that we can answer it appropriately and this is as you'll see kind of the mother of all problems from an energy perspective so quick structure uh i want to give you a quick sense of background on me and so you know where i'm coming from the stanford context what our drivers are and then what our energy system looks like today and possibly tomorrow with a particular emphasis on energy storage uh yeah just a quick background on me i've been very very fortunate to be up and down the value chain in the energy business globally for almost the last 30 years and uh i think it brings a unique perspective to the challenges that we face now i've seen the world of power go from a fossil a default to fossil to a default to renewables and with that the change in the way the systems are operated the way the utilities are run and frankly the way the customers interact with energy uh i bring that experience to what i call the coolest job in the world um as jimmy described i'm in charge of all sorts of mission essential utilities and infrastructure sustainability and resilience and a few other things across the stanford ecosystem and it's very important when the outside world thinks of stanford they think of stanford in the singular those of us on the inside think of it in the plural stanford is a whole lot of different things and i'm very lucky to be able to operate and plan and interact across that whole ecosystem and we do that too across time and expertise we are looking we are doing 24 seven operations 87 60 a year but also multi decade planning and investment to position stanford to succeed in the future and we do that in this incredible ecosystem i would say the world best world class ecosystem of staff and faculty students um the various schools including the new door school of sustainability and then this incredible alumni and silicon valley ecosystem that we work in so here's the context and as i said stanford is is really something we think about in the plural and thus whenever we look at a challenge at stanford we have to define what is stanford for the purpose of answering any given question here's the stanford that most people think of and that's the research university uh world best i'm a little biased but i think that's true in in research teaching health care non-stop mission essential needs both when things are going fine and when things are not going fine and very very ambitious goals so this is a situation if i can paraphrase from mark zuckerberg a little bit um move fast and create the future here's the picture that i see though and this is what i have to plan for and serve and that is stanford as full service city we are vertically integrated across all sorts of different essential elements we have a temperate climate of course from a weather perspective but we are exposed to almost every climate risk that you can think of um and this is a as a full service city we simply can't stop uh we have to instead of moving fast excuse me in creating the future we have to move to liberty and not break anything as we move forward though we have to bring those two visions together we have to make innovation real with what we call stanford as a living lab and that is bringing together academia operations infrastructure and we do that both for stanford and for the world so i'm trying to move pretty fast create the future don't break anything and optimize for stanford while i'm also providing a template for the rest of the world and we do that in the context of uh and susan alluded to this too a fundamentally changing world uh climate change obviously endemic uh an increased emphasis long overdue in diversity equity inclusion justice a generation z a younger generation are students who won't take no or even slow for an answer and finally technology transformation like artificial intelligence like the zoom that we're now on uh a hybrid life that are fundamentally changing the world that we live in and the one thus that we need to plan for and build for and we do that at stanford in the context of very very ambitious goals we are looked uh we're targeting zeroing out scopes one and two by 2030 and then the mother of all goals which we are all feeling our way towards together zero net greenhouse gas by 2050 so scopes one two and three as was alluded to though in in the earlier conversation i believe that stanford and my group in particular is perfectly positioned to be the catalyst to be the pivot for these incredible changes that we need to make from intellectual resources resources to research the opportunity spectrum across this full service city and this research university and finally being able to be a convener of the larger ecosystem and with as an honest broker uh we we have an alignment of interests that that few other sorts of institutions have so let's go a little deeper what is what we call stanford energy system innovations uh or sassy as frankly uh what most people refer to it as um this is a system this is our district energy system vertically integrated the keyword there being system and i'm going to touch on each one of these points each one of these components in more detail but i want you to think about it as a system because it really is back in 2015 we had a big decision to make that led to sassy we had a car generation plant absolutely standard at the time uh considered frankly back in the early 2000s even both the cost effective and the environmentally effective choice for running a campus um natural gas backup from the grid moving to sassy where we completely rethought it um chillers both conventional heat recovery chilled water and hot water instead of steam utility scale solar and a fundamental dependency on the california grid and i'll talk through this too so none of these innovations were magic in and of themselves again it's challenging the assumptions and thinking about those and then bringing them together synthesizing them into a system that that in some does things completely differently we went from retail power uh retail power to wholesale status in the market we went from fossil to solar we instead of exhausting weight to the atmosphere waste heat to the atmosphere we are now recovering that heat as fuel we've gone to a much lower temperature product in hot and chilled water and we've gone from about zero energy storage to both electricity storage and thermal storage and here's what that looks like solar left to right solar out in the out in california into the grid into the substation some of that power goes to drive the campus as electricity others it goes into our thermal energy plant our central energy facility to create hot and and chilled water and then of course we have emergency backup generators plus about 30 miles 50 kilometers of uh thermal pipe both outbound and in return this is my favorite chart this is what happened when we switched that new system on our carbon footprint went from a boot to a ballet slipper it fell off a cliff you see that dark that dark line heading up into the sky which is the business as usual case versus what's actually happening we've got a long way to go obviously i think of it as a long way because it's the last 20 percent and it's a whole lot of cats and dogs much smaller applications we won't get this sort of giant step change again but um holy cow what a step change what an impact and it's not just greenhouse gases it's criteria pollutants water consumption um engines or costs even without a cost of carbon our service reliability has gone way up our thermal distribution losses have gone from something in the 30 percent to something in the 3 percent an order of magnitude so not just a carbon wind but a wind really across the board that said all energy is compromised and we need to be very very frank about the compromise that we've made compromises that we've made so that we can then try to mitigate them a couple to point out here um we have um sorry um offsite electricity generation so we are tied to the california grid um that is the primary one we've also kept those emergency generators because they're required by code and we need them for for some measure of business continuity when we lose the grid so here are those drivers um fundamentally it's electricity as i think what susan said was just spot on thinking of power first and then everything else we found that out back in june of last year exact almost exactly a year ago when we had a fire under our primary distribution our transmission feed and we had a three and a half day outage now we had a cup we had we were able to get some power from our backup feed but things stopped um almost everything stopped it was really catastrophic and the impacts were really across the board um we realized after and i'll show you after many years of really superb transmission electricity supply reliability that that we were actually quite at risk and so when we look at those risks it's not just teaching and research it's healthcare it's dollars it's credibility it's public safety um we are an intensely electrified world and it's not just a nice to have anymore obviously it is an absolutely need to have and it's not just at the transmission level it's also the distribution level we have a comprehensive electric distribution system that my team runs across stanford to keep the lights on and everything else that's powered directly with electricity and like i said we were before last year very very very very good pgne hats off to them incredible job of keeping um our transmission running in our power supply at the at the substation level um since then still pretty good but not nearly what we needed to be and where i i apologize i don't have the numbers yet on the trans on the distribution side but again pretty good on the distribution side although no distribution system is perfect and thus we have to plan for for outages there as well and we have to do that in the context of increasing electrification increasing intermittency on the grid increasing renewable penetration we are just we're at the end of the beginning in terms of understanding the new relationship and planning for it and building for it and operating for it the like the relationship between electricity and our and our brave new world and we do that of course in the context of unprecedented resilience risks climate change is here and we have seen most of these um in just over the past year we haven't seen an earthquake in the last year but i knock on what does i say that because that's our other resilience risk here at stanford but everything else we've seen here's where i have a lot of hope though and on the one hand technology innovation which is those ones and zeros over there but the also is ambition ambition and commitment in incredible incredible ambition and commitment to solve this problem in all of its various forms so what does the stanford look energy systems of innovations look like today call it 1.0 from a storage perspective here's that system again a couple of components i want to highlight upstream we have some energy storage some batteries at our second solar farm called slate which is in lemore california we have some batteries behind the meter we also have the grid itself of course which is not just the california iso but the entire western interconnection on campus we have thermal storage um two chilled water storage tanks one hot water storage tank at the energy facility we have the line pack whatever happens to be in the lines um say when the power goes out and then finally the fuel in the emergency generators or feeding or available for the emergency generators and get this there we go so outside the campus obviously the california iso and in fact the western interconnection it is an imperfect system but that is a huge battery for us it's huge battery for everybody and then as i said at our second solar farm we call it stanford solar generating two we have about 200 megawatt hours of behind the meter storage there now it's easy to think of that as a resiliency or reliability asset it really isn't that is dispatched by the iso the california iso because that's the way the system works so um it's not a direct reliability or resilience benefit to stanford but it does provide revenue that offset our costs so it gets us part of the way there but still overall a lot of storage um if you think about storage broadly outside of the campus inside the campus we have those thermal tanks um in ordinary operations the operators do a tremendous job of optimizing energy costs around those um that storage capacity in outages if we see a heat wave coming we fill the tanks up usually the chilled water tanks because it's a heat wave and we can get a couple of hours depending on ambient temperatures and everything else out of those tanks um and then we have about 110 diesel powered emergency generators now those are great those we rely on those in emergencies but whether whether or not we there's a generator to building how big it is how big the fuel tank is how it's wired how the plugs are loaded that's not something that my team has control over or much visibility into so that's a challenge there we've got we're trying to sort that out but also in outages theoretically you could you could you've got kind of infinite storage in the ability to refill those tanks but if the bay area has an earthquake everybody and their brother is going to be looking for diesel fuel and so we can't count on that so what is it what might it look like tomorrow and this to me is where it gets really interesting we have to start with the most fundamental definitions um of sustainability and resilience and even in california i don't think we're quite there yet i tend to think of it as the first row but a lot of people think of it as the second row and until you define the problem till you define exactly what you're trying to do you can't do it you can't solve it so the next question is and this goes right back to genitive last year what are we solving for traditionally emergency generation outage generation was egress egress and escape path lighting and running fans um what we're finding is that the world's definition and Stanford's definition i think of emergency power is now much more about business continuity basically the power might go out but the campus can't be affected by it the campus can't see it so instead of emergency generators and perhaps small batteries we're now talking about much bigger pieces of equipment microgrids backup generators um large-scale storage on campus of course the capital cost goes way up when you do that and you therefore have to have some very difficult conversations about priorities across your business here's the other part and this comes with my my bald head and my my gray beard in 30 years in the under energy business i've seen the definition of climate virtue go from natural gas cogens to where we are now which is annual energy offset with renewable generation but we haven't we're not stopping those definitions are going to continue to tighten 24 7 clean energy is going to be an expectation well before we can make it a reality but we have to get ahead of that and frankly given how long it takes to amortize energy assets um we've got to be planning for the tip the 2030 something definitions as opposed to today's definitions let alone yesterday yesterday's definitions we owe that to the world we owe that to the institution looked at from another perspective we're also in a situation where today's definition of climate virtue tends to focus on operations and it tends to focus on greenhouse gases and i happen to think that it's going to be a very short period of time before the picture looks a lot like this and again long live assets how do we plan for tomorrow's definitions of what we need while we're building it today and finally looking across the entire value chain most people would rather have their picture taken next to us next to a solar farm than an air handler or an led light bulb but we really we have to look across the whole value chain that's where the best solutions come from so what might it look like in the future here are the things that i'm worried about and i say this in the context of stanford as research university slash full service city slash living labs we have an extraordinary optimization challenge so many variables it makes my head spin if not my head explode with the the way we need to solve for this everything from power quality to grid outages distribution recloser operations we literally need to solve for all of these things across this full service city of stanford and because we are vertically integrated we have to think in terms of most of this functionality wheel when we think about energy storage we have to think like utility we also have to think like a customer and so our our our needs are varied and vast but so are our options but again massive optimization exercise that we've got to go through so let's go back to that i have a couple of ideas where i want to see what the analysis comes out with but a couple of ideas for what to do with energy storage in the near term one is at the grid level somehow firming up the energy supply into campus making that more resilient hardening that is that a big flow battery at this at our substations maybe but something to do something to make that energy supply coming into campus much more resilient the other part of it is those emergency generators how do i decarbonize those while simultaneously providing a much more robust service going from business continent from emergency generation escape path lighting to business continuity how do i do that while simultaneously getting rid of ideally my diesel generators is back up power so micro and macro there and when we do that we're looking at again more variables from location to technology duration recharge ramping we've got all sorts of use cases and all sorts of possibilities and how do all those things fit together as an optimized system as we lean into this to one of those big optimization one of the things that we need to solve for of course is 24 seven and i'm starting to work with the silicon valley ecosystem i think we need to solve this together i think we need to get all the all brains on deck so to speak to solve this but that's where like i said that's where the world is heading from an expectation standpoint and that's where we need to head and of course there's the duck we are facing this in the macro and the micro whether it is the system itself the california iso any sort of microgrid we put together we're facing this this is the australian ducks quacks with an australian accent but that the the circumstance is the same and this to me says grid scale storage but it also says demand side solutions to flatten that low curve the other thing that we're seeing is a a distinction an increasing distinction between cost and value and that goes to this very complex very dynamic system that we're trying to solve for now when i was a system planner a resource planner in my utility days i looking back on it it seemed like checkers what we're looking at now is more like chess and probably three-dimensional chess if you're a star truck fan i also am starting to think about it not just in terms of energy storage but what i think of as capacity storage and that is stretching optimizing and if i can coin a phrase optionalizing existing infrastructure how do we do more with what we have now infrastructure is notorious for being uh very purpose built very short on options how do we change that is that ai for dispatch is that expanding our definition of thermal sources and sinks for a thermal system is that granular demand forecasting around individual rooms in a building and needless to say we're looking at all of this right now but there's a lot that i think we need to do in terms of stretching what we have as a as a prelude to building more and leaning into those dynamic definitions we can't forget this that a lot of the things on this list were not even really in in common words in common usage even a couple of decades ago and of course if you're amortizing something over 20 30 years you've got to think about that now as opposed to worrying about it later and finally because i'm coming at it from an operational perspective it's all about the operational outcomes it is working backwards system thinking starting with the outcome working backwards to the solution it's easy to fall in love with the various technologies it's easy to fall in love with solutions but in my world i've got to start with the outcome that i need and work backwards the great thing is that gives you all your options the terrible thing is that gives you all your options that you've got to you've got to sort through systems thinking if i could teach if i could add one course to the core curriculum of every high school and or college kid in the world it would be systems thinking because that as you've probably seen from this this is all about thinking in systems and not in components another lens is the inflation reduction act and i say this because this is the for the first time available to stanford as a tax exempt and we're looking at this very hard thinking about priorities thinking about capital planning and maybe this is the jumpstart that we need to make to cross that cost effectiveness curve or at least get closer to it but of course for in my world operations first innovation second that is the mother of all lenses stanford must go on it must go on we are the beating heart of the university and that heart has to keep beating we love to innovate but we have to bring put operations first we have to move fast create the future and don't break anything so what's next or as i like to think of it what's now we're in as you can tell we're in a due diligence phase we're in a study phase we're in a collaboration phase we're in a dialogue phase with everybody and this is we've got to define the problem and we've got to figure out how to solve it where the low hanging fruit maybe it's energy supply maybe it's those emergency generators we'll see what the now where the analysis the conversations takes us but i it's we're really looking for every possible great idea that comes our way and those great ideas aren't just coming from the usual sources the usual suspects we're not just looking at technology we're looking at behavior change we're not just looking at how to build stuff and operate it but we're looking about looking at how to communicate that out into the into our ecosystem so that we can make change management effective and that requires every specialty under the sun this is no longer a finance exercise or an engineering exercise this is everybody like i said all brains on deck to solve this problem and i invite you to join us in that we're doing some truly amazing world changing work so with that i would love to take any questions and happy to make the slides available if you'd like and thank you so much for your time and attention fantastic lincoln thank you so much for the overview of the where we are and the challenges ahead and the way that you're thinking about this which is fantastic i'm sure as you know he did this and what makes this job very exciting but also uh never boring uh is this whole idea of stanford as a living lab i wanted to get your thoughts on so your relative to the new to stanford being i think a couple of years now right yeah two years so now you're just you're a babe in the woods you just started to and started to become really understanding and standing the stanford ecosystem what are your thoughts about this whole idea of stanford as a living lab and how can we uh better how can we do a better job of of uh defining this or utilizing this uh in order to meet some of these challenges in a journey ahead i i think it um i first of all the living lab concept is one of the things that brought me to stanford and i see extraordinary opportunity in that and that is bringing together that ecosystem bringing together academia and operations and the whole stanford world which is now not just uh stanford not just silicon valley but the world itself um i see tremendous potential because we do need so much innovation around in in so many different areas from technology to behavior to finance regulatory schemes and we need to bridge a gap that has not really been bridged effectively in the world before and that is the gap between um what energy venture capitalists sometimes call the valley of death where how do we how do we prove things out if we're dealing with an energy system where things tend to cost a lot they tend to be large um they tend to um be serving mission essential needs how do we thread that needle and and get the great ideas operationalized make that innovation real and we see it with with the sassy system um that was an incredible collaboration along those lines and what we're trying to do now is make that systematic and intentional at a level that it's never been before and that's energy and that's water and that's waste and transportation and everything you can imagine we now have fellowships established for students to be paid to do this work and be mentored and take all sorts of you know specialized change management courses and and really become the professionals that the world needs not just to invent the things and not just to implement the things but see that whole picture and make that whole picture happen um so it's just an incredibly exciting opportunity and we've gotten with our living lab fellowship it's the first year we're actually it's kind of a pilot year really and we're already um we've got a very happy problem of having dozens of applications already for the limited number of spots we have and just tremendous enthusiasm across the institution so um really that's that is that's one of the places you know we talked about research universities being the pivot that is one of those really sharp pivots that Stanford can be we can be the we can be the center of uh and we are the center of and we need to make that like I said even more systematic even more intentional going forward yeah it's fantastic to to hear you describe it that way um I can speak for myself but certainly with the launch of the door school sustainability and this whole idea of speed scale impact and scale and impact as as vehicles that could really depend on something like Stanford's the living lab it's great and exciting to you know to have you as a partner in this journey from the operation standpoint and also to see the kinds of the kinds of ideas that are not being brought forth and being entertained I'm sure it's equal parts terrifying and exciting especially given some of the examples where you were describing where business as usual was was dramatically impacted in fact I think it was one of our meetings where the power went out and in the middle of exams too that meeting yeah yeah and there was a tremendous amount of consternation about that I remember that yeah so um I'm not so sure that the audience understands how large a community Stanford is as an example of scale how how many people actually are part of the Stanford community in a typical day the numbers I've heard are say 25 000 on a typical day I don't um that's that's anecdotal but I think it's it's within that range um for the for the energy geeks out there we peak at about 55 megawatts that's our system peak give or take um so it's a it's a pretty substantial um uh uh city really right vertically integrated city and even that peak you know we're just at the beginning of electrification whether it's the built environment or transportation and we're really um just at the beginning I think of understanding you know as I alluded to this this broader deeper uh relationship dependence mutual dependence on on our energy system to make all that work um this is a as you said incredibly exciting and incredibly um uh stress inducing terrifying to try to thread that needle well you know uh as someone who's hosted a number of visits to the central uh Stanford central energy facility uh I can tell you that that is uh among the most photographed uh power plants that I've ever seen everybody takes pictures of that and it's you know the comments I hear about how clean and how futuristic looking is it's very exciting to see um in that same vein you know one of the big challenges and with a community or city up of 25 000 is this whole idea of um well how do you maintain reliability and resilience at the same time that you have optimized between cost um and I think that really comes to a head when you talk about 24 by 7 we are now not just talking about emergency power but now you're actually talking about functioning power throughout the whole day when your solar goes down and I'm curious on how you're thinking about um as you think forward but what ideas you have on how you would actually choose something like that uh to me it's it's um it's very much a bottom up challenge I think particularly for Stanford and given that we have reliability and resilience needs uh approaching approaching perfect um I I think we're going to start working our way uh into micro grids over time I think you know but but even that requires a prioritization of loads a prioritization of activities and thus a prioritization of money uh that is is something that's very hard for any institution to go through this thing is more important than that thing um is a very very difficult conversation to have especially when we've got so many massively important things going on it's very difficult to distinguish but how then do we build micro grid solutions around that um so that we can and and how do we build a renewable ghd free micro grid solutions around that what sort of and and then what sort of resilience are we looking for are we looking for a half an hour or an hour or are we looking for three and a half four days because we've seen both and what are we what are we building for what's our design threshold for that but then I think at the at the at the grid level as well um now you're getting into longer duration larger scale energy storage compressed air pumped hydro um those sorts of things and that's got to happen as well so it's got to be this a bottom up from us and a top down from the grid um and then of course we talked about energy about capacity versus energy a little bit um in Susan's conversation and there's a real question I think in the california iso as well as every other power grid in the world how do you how do you accurately value the storage forget about cost how do you value the storage and thus compensate pumped hydro or compressed air energy storage and those big long duration projects how do you how do you price that so such that you have a revenue stream that gets those projects built um that's something that as opposed to simply socializing intermittency across the system which is the way most systems do it now so a lot of very big questions both in the micro and the macro yeah I completely agree with you and this is where I think potentially um harvesting uh the different ideas or the different analyses to get to the heart of the question to the heart of the to the answer to the heart of that question is key right now uh because in many ways it's a little bit I guess the way I think it's a little bit like insurance which is when you um when you don't have a power outage right the you know it's like an expense you're just like oh my god when I have to pay this blah blah blah right but when you have the power that's just like oh thank goodness I had that you know and that pivot it's just enormous and uh and ability to quantify that or value that is one of I think one of the big big questions right now uh how do you you know and and and where does that pivot point and what goes into that uh that value uh calculation is key and to justify and or determine return on investment uh to that kind of question is one of the big ones that I see as an opportunity no I actually I see it as I see it as somewhat reactive in that we're now seeing the events um and so I'm I'm hoping that as much as I hate to see the events I'm hoping that those then solidify that price signal uh for for the insurance buy you know so uh so here's a question uh a little bit like what we're asking Susan which is so you're in the process um of putting some of these new ideas uh or Stanford as a living lab with storage and other things in the place so if you had um if you had a wish list that you could give to the Stanford researchers um what would that be as you embark on this journey for them to you know to entertain to work on and potentially that you would value to to as you try and operations um let me give you a a big audacious one first and then a more practical one the big audacious one is I look at this optimization problem and I'm not sure that human beings alone can figure this out optimizing a system like this and just reading an article yesterday about turning AI loose on airplane design and what extraordinary results you get uh that that humans would never probably never come up with and yet are optimized across variables and dynamic variables that that that you know we struggle to to keep in our brains so I think there's a real opportunity to think of AI not just as as an operating system but as a design system so that's my big audacious ask um but at the more technology level to me the big challenge is our is twofold one is how do we reimagine backup power in a way that is without that doesn't have combustion and is greenhouse gas free and is or maybe it has combustion but at least it's greenhouse gas free and it has a refuel ability that gives us confidence over those multi-day outages or god forbid multi-week outages the other part of it though goes back to that definition of virtue and that is that the life cycle environmental impact and economic justice social justice environmental justice impacts of things like solar panels and wind turbines and lithium ion batteries is really terrifying and I worry that we if we if we continue to charge down that road we are creating externalities in the same way that the nuclear business did back in the 70s that we're creating problems for future generations to deal with and solve and I don't think that's fair so for me the other big ask is how can we find solutions that are not just great in operation but check all the right boxes across the life cycle whether that's rare earths or processing at the front end or recycling on the back end reuse on the back end or and everything in between how do we find solutions that frankly our grandchildren are not going to be mad at us for that to me as we ramp up this this new decarbonized world we want to be really careful about about you know seeing the whole picture eyes wide open well that's a great answer you know and I I'm sure you were too was just amazed at Susan's presentation and the scale of their ambition and part of me was just imagining that boy if we could convene a community of people like Susan yourself and others to think about or share ideas on how they're embarking on this journey that that would be amazing I did notice and so I'm gonna I'm gonna review a little bit Lincoln I did notice that Susan's Susan's presentation that included prologous is the conversation goes of 2030 and 2040 were in fact more even more aggressive than Stanford's out there at 2050 so probably was just like okay Lincoln you got the bar now right with uh with Susan and prologous at 2040 and there might be some learnings that Stanford could or you know exchange with what prologous is doing to be so ambitious about what they were doing I just I'll leave the floor open there any thoughts on that uh no it's it's I you know I um right now we're working towards the 2050 target yeah but um my personal view and hopefully not a career limiting thing to say is that you know when you look at the latest IPCC data when you look at what's going on in our world in terms of the actual impact of the change in climate and how quickly and how that's happening in step changes rather than on a gentle curve um we have to keep looking at those targets and we have to keep asking ourselves are we are we moving faster and you know you mentioned the door school absolutely speed and scale um and I frankly I think personally that we need to continue looking at those big uh end dates um 2030 is not that far off anymore and 2050 from in my world 2050 is not that far off either let alone 2040 so I think it's it's incumbent upon all of us not to keep those dates um unexamined as we go forward yeah that's that's very well put yeah absolutely and certainly if we were convene a community of people without it's doing that very aggressively like people like Susan and yourselves it might give us ideas or learnings about how these are being implemented or the value propositions that are being used to uh to validate the return on investment or the value streams that are being created by this which then allows us to you know more easily understand and uh rationalize or justify some of the costs associated with this and maybe even as Susan was saying the potential return that was not anticipated right yeah well and I I put my I put my old finance geek hat on and I think one thing that may turbocharge that effort is ESG as imperfect as it is ESG if we can get a consensus around the financial implications of carbon and all of these other elements and then we can find a way to monetize those right then all of a sudden the economic the economic change and and uh so I'm I'm counting on on the finance geeks as much as the as the engineers and and the uh and everybody else in the equation um to bring all of these answers together so that we can make it happen absolutely and I think uh Susan's in a unique position uh of potentially establishing the value of green facilities and I think it would be fantastic to be able to uh to now have Susan be part of community which is very exciting uh for me to to ponder of all the possibilities is to understand from the marketplace what is the value of those activities and she's starting to get uh I think she's starting to get an idea of what the value is in the marketplace for those kinds of things which would be fantastic because that's exactly kind of information that you would be needing as we proceed uh and decarbonizing Stanford yep well um so uh we're actually um we actually have extra time but I think um Lincoln do you have anything to add otherwise I was going to end it here and then rejoin for the um the um the session where we actually had a backstage and have questions is there any last minute comments that you have Lincoln or anything you want to add no I just want to thank you for the opportunity and thank the audience uh for their attention and I'm really I'm really serious you know it really is you know all brains on deck uh all you know we need everybody's everybody's background everybody's education everybody's you know unique way of looking at the world uh to solve this together it's got to be a big round table um with everybody around it and so um uh just to invite everybody to join us in that journey uh so that we can get this done well fantastic I certainly look forward to working with you on practicing Stanford as a living lab under the carbonization journey please follow us on LinkedIn uh we also have our storage tech tech talks on the first Tuesday of every month and we have um um also our continuing education uh session uh seen there on the right with uh ability to an opportunity to learn from Stanford faculty and Silicon Valley experts for the online course uh finally in two weeks we'll also be having a storage x symposia which is it goes to the heart of exactly what Susan was saying which is around this whole bring up of manufacturing energy storage manufacturing here in the US so please join us in two weeks for that and with that I'd like to go ahead and conclude this symposia and for those of you who have signed up for the backstage we'll begin that at nine o'clock and you have a chance to ask questions to Lincoln and poke a little bit into what Stanford's doing all right thank you everyone and have a great Memorial Day weekend and for our international visitors thank you for joining us at such a challenging hour for many of you thanks again bye bye