 So, I'm Lynn Orr. It's my pleasure to welcome you all this afternoon for what I think will be a very interesting and lively discussion of California's energy future. We have some big, strong, hard goals to reach in this state, and this, the group that's presenting today can help us think about all those questions. So, my job to begin with is to introduce Secretary Ernest Moniz. So, first the important stuff. Ernie is a Stanford grad PhD in physics in 1972, and he was the founding director of the MIT Energy Initiative, which I have to admit is a pretty strong and definitely friendly competitor for our own pre-court Institute for Energy here at Stanford, and you should know that there's, we have had a multi-year running debate over which of those two is the strongest, and you can guess who argues for which role. In addition to his distinguished physics career at MIT, he played lots of roles in public policy around the nation. You all know that he was the Secretary of Energy in the second Obama term, but you might not know that he served as Undersecretary of the Department of Energy in the Clinton administration, so he knew his way around the department before he got there in a big and deep way, which made all the rest of us work hard because he knew all the things that needed to be fixed work. He also was an associate director at OSTP, and then later served on the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. He's fully burst on nuclear matters from power generation to spent fuel disposal to nuclear weapons. He played a pivotal role in the Iran negotiation, for example, and he's been at the forefront of dealing at the national level with the challenges of clean energy and climate change. He was therefore deeply qualified to lead DOE when he was appointed as Secretary. Now, you might have noticed that that ended at noon on January 20th, 2017, but he's been every bit as busy since leaving office at DOE with work on clean energy and climate change, the topic for today at the Energy Futures Initiative, and on nuclear threat reduction as Board Chair and CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative. So it's with great pleasure that I welcome Ernie back to Stanford to help us think about California's energy future. Well, thank you, Lynn. Actually, I can close this, I assume. Right. It is good to be back at Stanford, as Lynn mentioned. I got my PhD here, although he didn't have to be so cruel as to mention the year. But that's what I expect because of our continuing dispute over Stanford's number two energy program. But I really do want to thank all my Stanford friends. Starting with Lynn, I might say that Lynn was the Undersecretary for Energy and Science. It was, frankly, a great move to combine the Energy and Science portfolios because they're so integrated. You can tell by my statement that this is a past tense for the moment, but hopefully in the future we will see that integration again. But it had Lynn, therefore, really in a position to oversee basically our entire lab system, because even the nuclear weapons laboratories then in terms of cross cutting laboratory issues really were part of the leadership that Lynn could bring to that. And then in addition, and relevant to today's discussion, if I hadn't... Oh, it's still up there. The question of innovation, Lynn really did Yolman's work in organizing and executing a quadrennial review on technology that really looked at how the entire DUE portfolio in science and innovation would be organized. So we had a great time and actually got stuff done, in fact. But let me also thank Mark Zoback as well, and he'll be up on the stage later on, and also for our team to thank, not here at the moment, but earlier today, George Schultz, obviously a great person who you all know and an old friend. He, George, has been part of this debate about MIT in Stanford, since he's obviously Stanford through and through. But he was the inaugural and remains the chairman of the advisory board of the MIT Energy Initiative. So he has actually helped drive breakthrough technology collaboration between MIT and Stanford that's been going on now for quite some years. So today, what we're doing is talking about a report that we've been working on since last year in terms of decarbonization pathways in California. And you will note that that is the subtitle of the report, because what we're really going to do, and we'll come back and discuss this, is really discuss the importance of viewing the path to a low carbon future through the lens of optionality, flexibility, and innovation. And frankly, I have to say, those are not characteristics that are always put into the discussion in terms of how the energy future should look. After I give some introductory remarks, I'm going to introduce my colleague, Melanie Kenderdine, another principal of the Energy Futures Initiative, and I'll explain more in a bit where her focus will be. We were approached last year by a group of California natural gas distributors and users led by SoCal Gas, a group with an obvious interest in the evolution of California's energy system into the future. That resonated with us very much for a variety of reasons, certainly the scale of California's economy, the leadership that California exercises in the clean energy and climate space, and frankly, the assets that California has to pursue these goals, ranging from a better climate than the one I come from, at least where the people are, the fact that there is a tremendous innovation system in California, the fact that California is the country's largest manufacturer, all kinds of assets come together to make this extremely interesting. Earlier today here as well, I don't believe the moment, Kevin De Leon has been on campus. We've been meeting because Kevin, of course, is one of the architects of the California legislative energy requirements, and what we hope is to shed some light at least on what might be pathways for reaching those. I'll also mention that I'm a distinguished fellow of the Emerson Collective here in Palo Alto, and so that's another connection that we have, and I don't know if Andy Karzner is here, no I don't see Andy, anyway, so many, many connections here. I want to emphasize that, as I mentioned, the study was requested. I see Andy coming in now. Andy, I just introduced you. The, and Kevin, I also introduced you as an architect, Kevin, of much of the clean energy goals, so pleasure to see you again. The, but I want to emphasize that the study is not a natural gas study. We are a non-profit. We do analysis, independent analysis. We stand by the results of the analysis, but of course natural gas, just like all the other energy sources, is part of the integrated look at what is possible going forward. So again, the purpose is an analysis of pathways and technology options for meeting California's relatively near, I mean 2030, and mid-term carbon emissions reduction goals. It is not a policy document. It takes the existing California policies and asks the question, what are the, especially the technology pathways that might address those, and what are the prospects of actually reaching the objectives that have been, that have been put forward. The guiding policy objectives, there are more, and in the report, you'll find a graphic that puts them all together, but high level, 2030, the two real drivers are 60% renewable portfolio standard in California, where the renewables are quite a few of them, but excluding large hydro, and a 40% economy-wide reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. In the mid-century timeframe, let's call it 2045 to 2050, I will certainly add, perhaps add the word, stress the word, net zero emissions for a clean energy standard for electricity, again part of SB 100, and an 80% or more economy-wide reduction, and potentially net zero. Again, we'll come back a little bit to that distinction. As I've already said, the title is optionality, flexibility, and innovation, and particularly in the mid-century timeframe. We believe that it is bluntly a fool's errand to think that one has a scenario that will bear any resemblance to what we actually see in 2050. As I will discuss, we will talk about a strawman that is a possible manifestation of the requirements, not that it's expected, but just as an existence proof, but really emphasize the innovation portfolio that needs to be stepped up now in order to provide the breakthrough technologies, which I believe will be essential for meeting the mid-century goals in contrast to the 2030 timeframe, where genuinely new breakthrough technologies have virtually no chance of having a scaled impact on meeting the 2030 goals. Therefore, we will be led to address those two time periods in a rather different way. I'm just going to emphasize a few points of our analysis before turning it over to Melanie. It's important, I think, to take some lessons from historical context, lessons for optionality and flexibility in particular, from the recent history of California's energy evolution. First, by the way, of course, California has now for quite some time been a tremendous leader in energy intensity reduction, energy efficiency and the like. As you will see later on, not surprised, that's the long pole in the tent. If there is one, that's the one where we will have to go to get a major progress towards meeting the goals described earlier. A second point I'll make. From 2011 to 2012, there was a precipitous, unplanned drop-off in electricity production in the state. That's when we had sent an off-ray, essentially go off, and at the same time, the first year of the major drop in large hydro as the drought was coming in. A four-year drop, which actually took away two-thirds of the large hydro capacity over the four years. But in that one year, 2011 to 2012, we're talking the order of a 15% drop in generation. What's interesting, how was that made up? It was only one option, natural gas, because we need to have that kind of optionality, flexibility, with fuel availability and infrastructure availability in order to meet these kinds of events. 2016 and 2017, we've looked at day-by-day data for the year on solar and wind production. Wind is very spotty. There are as many as 10 days in a row in each of those years where there was essentially no wind in California to speak of. So again, this brings up the obvious issue. Where is our storage going to come from? Not for a few hours, but for days, weeks, and eventually, actually I'll say it now, seasonal. If you also look at the data in California, this is just framing the challenges, that if you look at the annual data, smoothed data for solar and wind, and you may see a slide on this later on, is no surprise when you think about it that solar in the summer is more than two times the amount in the winter. In California, in contrast to other places, it happens that wind is also two times more in the summer than in the winter. In other words, if these are going to be dominant sources of electricity, it immediately defines a large seasonal storage problem that must be resolved. And I think it's fair to say that there are not a lot of good solutions today for that. Another factor, I would say, is today we are seeing in the electricity markets with California in the lead in terms of the penetration of solar resources, that there are clearly stresses in the system in terms of all the various generators. There are issues of curtailment, which are growing, etc. So there are going to be issues in terms of needing to revisit market structures to make sure all of the sources can play together for a clean, reliable system. I'll also note that I mentioned earlier the role of efficiency as being critical. I just mentioned, and you'll see this later on, but just to give a flavor right now, that transportation is by far the largest emitting sector in California, 39%, and there, as we will see, certainly in the 2030 timeframe, the longest pole in the tent to get CO2 emissions down is efficiency. It's essentially cafe standards in light duty vehicles. In fact, we should say that there's a lot of focus on electricity, but electricity is only 16% of the emissions. That doesn't mean it's a misplaced focus. It's a well-placed focus because electricity can be decarbonized sooner and in decarbonizing sooner and looking at the spillover options for electrifying parts of other sectors of the economy, it's a very well-placed focus. It doesn't change the fact that where the carbon is or the carbon equivalent is in greenhouse gases, it's transportation, industry, agriculture adding up to 70%, and those are tough sectors to decarbonize. So, having said that, let me tell you about the structure of the study broadly. Really the core of the study is a bottom-up sector by sector. That's a choice that we made to analyze by sector. And for each sector to look bottom-up at a whole class of technologies, they add up eventually to 31 technologies that can lead to carbon reductions in that sector and sometimes contribute to multiple sectors. And then in looking at that carbon reduction potential, then we will rack up kind of where we stand with regard to the goals that I mentioned earlier. Right up front, I want to say in my view, the good news is California can meet those goals. It's not easy. It's a stretch goal. I think Kevin had in mind pushing the envelope. And I think it is a stretch goal, but as you will see, our conclusion is that with a lot of hard work and a lot of pulling together across stakeholders and et cetera, and working across all the sectors in the energy economy, success can be achieved. You will have, Melanie will present slides that go through that story. And so I'm going to leave that now for her to cover. I would just say a few words about the 2050, the mid-century approach. The way we approach it, as I said earlier, is to start with a straw man. That straw man is very simple. Let's look at an economy that is wind and solar driven for electricity production. There are many issues that I'm glossing over, like meeting the daily dynamics of a reliable system and all of that. But just this is macro. If you, as I said, that immediately presents a seasonal issue with a tremendous amount of overproduction, if you like, in the summer. In the model, that goes to producing hydrogen, clean hydrogen. And then you have an electricity and hydrogen economy. A lot of direct electricity use, hydrogen used as a fuel for heavy vehicles, for industry, maybe for some combined heat and power with fuel cells and the like, et cetera. The interesting point is, if you look at the number, the actual numbers for this, it kind of works out. You can satisfy the needs of the energy economy on a macro scale with that combination of electricity and hydrogen production. There are tough issues. For example, the level of electricity requirement would be four to five times that of current electricity needs in California. So the big build out, big infrastructure needs for electricity and for hydrogen in that picture. So many, many challenges. But what we're saying, okay, not predicting it, but here's a way in which you can get to that, essentially, zero or near zero carbon economy. But what we really believe is that, first of all, today, that would be quite expensive. Electrolysis of water to make hydrogen is about five times the cost of making hydrogen today from natural gas team reforming. It's much more, it's even more expensive than combining that way of making hydrogen today with carbon capture and sequestration. In fact, when you think about it, maybe there'll be a coexistence in that picture of both natural gas sourcing hydrogen with carbon capture and electrolysis. And they will compete in different ways in the economy. So that's possible. But what we say is we have spelled out in the report, and I think we can go through it later if it's of interest, what would be the innovation portfolio for breakthrough ideas, particularly suited to California's challenges. And what we believe is it's that broad innovation portfolio that needs to be addressed so that there are, there is as much optionality and flexibility to meet the stringent mid-century goals around 2050. And finally, I'll just say that now having introduced the idea that even in this electricity and hydrogen economy, maybe natural gas is a bridge there as well as it has been and is in the electricity sector in producing hydrogen, but that's clearly not a zero carbon option. And that comes to another critical element we believe of the innovation agenda, which is not being pursued nearly strongly enough. And that is negative carbon technologies. I believe that this will in fact be essential, not only in California, but nationally and globally to meet our goals. But right now, we're not close in terms of the kind of cost structures and scalability that we need. That's the innovation agenda we have to pursue. California, as I said earlier, is a place that is awash in innovation assets, including on this campus, including 3D-OE laboratories, some of the other research universities obviously, the manufacturing sector, historically an important driver, the investment groups, the Silicon Valley, etc. So again, we think that there is also for the mid-century the clear option of meeting the stringent goals as long as you give me my, I would say, experienced view that I will believe I will take the outcomes stemming from innovation before I will take those that are predetermined by somebody's prediction of what mid-century will look like. So I think we have got a tough road to hoe, but one that can lead again to making Kevin DeLeon a happy person in terms of meeting the tough homework assignment that he gave all of us to match up. So that hopefully gives you kind of a flavor in the context. I'm now introducing Melanie Kenderdine, who is again the principal of the Energy Futures Initiative, a little bit of history. Melanie was the executive director of the MIT Energy Initiative, and there's no need to go back to the rankings on that, Lynn. But Melanie was also the founding director of the Energy Policy and Systems Analysis Office at the Department of Energy in the Second Obama term, and the lead, the point person on producing what are called quadrennial energy reviews, big integrated policy documents. So putting together something like this was just easy for her with her experience. Melanie, why don't you come up? Thank you all very much, and it's wonderful to be here today. I would like to say I think that this has been an incredible effort, an incredible piece of work. I would like to thank Alex and Sam. Alex runs our analytical shop. Sam works for him. We've had a small team of analysts, distinguished associates, and people at MIT who did modeling work for us, et cetera, et cetera. And I haven't slept in 96 hours. So it's not fun today, but it's been, I think, more than fun important because what California does is sets an example for the rest of the country and the rest of the world, quite frankly. And it is the fifth largest economy in the world. You all know that. And it's important that California succeed in meeting these goals, that the world needs to meet these goals, and that the state of California and the innovation in California actually be transferable and I think commercialized around the world. I would like to see many of the technologies that we are talking about here today deployed worldwide. We need it. Secretary Moniz mentioned the study approach. We looked at 2030 and 2050 deadlines. What you are seeing here, one thing, one difference that we made, it's not California state law. The baseline for California state law is 1990. We chose 2016 as our baseline because a lot of things have changed since 1990. And I'll just go through what these are. Overall emissions in California completely flat. A couple of tons difference. But, and these are a million tons, okay. And the, but what you see here, transportation has gone way up. Transportation is up 11%. Industry has gone, is flat. These are the emissions reductions that you actually need to get, or the difference. I'm sorry, the difference. Residential buildings are down 11%. Commercial buildings are flat. Electricity, the easiest sector to decarbonize. Electricity is down 36% since 1990. And so, and here, let me go back just a second. Your high GWP, and that's foams, fire retardants, et cetera, et cetera in buildings. Your, those have gone up about 567%. So, a lot of things have changed since 1990. The products of innovation. And I'd say certainly innovation in the electricity sector. But it explains why we took 2016, not 1990. And, and we also worked within, within, I don't know what's going on here. We also worked within the policies of California. The, and took these into consideration. SB 100, 60% renewables by 2030 was a big driver for us. SB 32, economy wide, 40% below 1990. A couple of executive orders, 2050, 80% below 1990 numbers again. And then, and then a couple of EVs, one's a law, that's a million EVs by 2023 and an executive order 5 million by 2030. So, those guide, those policies guided what we did. They, to some degree, guided our analysis. We did not, this is not a critique of California policy. And, and it's not, we don't make policy recommendations in here either. So, so that was our approach to the, to the analysis. This is a Sanky diagram. I'm having trouble here. Sanky diagram of energy flows and end uses and, and intermediate electricity is intermediate. This is one reason it's not, it's not a natural gas study at all. But it shows you why natural gas is so important, such an important part of the energy mix here. Natural gas is 30% of energy flows, resources here. And it's heavily, plays heavily in industry buildings and in electricity. So, so all of these hugely important, what happens to natural gas happens to all of these sectors. Then, then petroleum, obviously huge in transportation, a little bit in buildings and in industry. Electricity intermediate 22% of energy and it is in industry, in buildings and a little tiny line there in transportation. But electricity losses are large too. That was a surprise to us when we did this study. So, that just gives you a picture of the energy flows in California and the relative importance of the various fuels and, and electricity and what they're for. The, this is in state generation by fuel type. In 2001, we couldn't find a 1990 number on this. Okay, but we got 2001 and compared it to 2016. And not surprisingly coal is down 89%. I was surprised geothermal is down 14%. It is, there's an RPS. It's in the RPS, but geothermal is down. It's got issues. Nuclear down 43%. Natural gas, natural gas down 15%. I was a little surprised by that. Large hydro up 21%. Small hydro and other one that surprising is down. And then you've got your wind and solar. I should add that these, this is in state generation. Okay, it doesn't have imports on it. But what you're seeing here, natural gas is 50% of the, of the generation. You're in state generation from sources that are currently covered by California's RPS, 28%. Generation from large hydro, nuclear and natural gas is 72%. This shows you some of the challenges with some of the targets that people are talking about. And generation from natural gas is 50%. So, so that's 2016 numbers. I think it's come down a little bit. This is percent of total CO2 emissions by sector, transportation, 39% industry, 23, electricity, 16 buildings, nine agriculture, eight. These are pathways that the technology pathways that we looked at and calculated the emissions savings you could get from the range of pathways in the various sectors. And as Secretary Moniz said, you can meet goals here, the California goals in policy and in law and executive orders, et cetera, et cetera, with these pathways. And, and so elect, these are the, these are a million metric tons. And, and I'm only going to show you the top ones, highlight the top ones. In electricity, NGCCs with CCUS is by far the largest, largest savings you get from carbon savings. Transportation, as Secretary Moniz mentioned, the biggest savings you get are from CAFE standards. So, so these, and again, these are, these are up to 2030. The industry, biggest savings you get CCUS and industry, there is also a tax credit on that. I'll talk about that in a minute. Then energy efficiency in buildings is, is hugely important. And in agriculture, we only had one pathway, very difficult to decarbonize agriculture, but you've got biofuels, biogas from agriculture, you get it from landfills, et cetera, too. Okay. But in agriculture, it gives you a fair amount of emissions reductions. Something else I would say about this, and we'll make these slides available, but what I would say about this is these are not additive. Okay. You can't look at these and add them up and get carbon emissions reductions total because some of them work against others. Okay. And, and, and, and they're just, we've got to be very careful about adding them. Don't add them. These, we also did, we also did cross cutting technologies here, and, and efficiency. We did energy, energy efficiency and demand response. Okay. That shows up energy efficiency and demand response heavily in transportation, in industry, and buildings, but a little bit in electricity. Fuel switching, transportation, obviously, that's electricity. Industry, you get, you get, you can electrify some parts of industry, others you cannot. There are not technologies for that right now. So, and, and it's a very industry, very important for California. And then CCUS, that's electricity and industry. Okay. R&G, biogas, I mentioned that earlier as an, as a pathway for agriculture, but you can use R&G and biogas in industry, in electricity, in buildings, and in agriculture. So it, like energy efficiency, has enormous cross cutting potential, and, and is important in that regard. Storage is electricity only. Electrification, that's important for transportation and buildings, and then smart technology and clean imports. We've got industry and clean imports are, are important for electricity. You're importing electricity here. It could be an issue. I am from New Mexico. They just passed a 100% clean electricity standard there. They've been exporting electricity to California for a long time. It's been cold from four corners, but, but these states that are passing these clean energy, clean electricity standards are going to have to meet their standards before they send their electricity to California. So I think that's going to be an issue in the future. So I go back to the sectoral emissions, and this just does not assume any growth in CO2 emissions. It's from the 2016 baseline that I showed you before. Two of those pathways for transportation, the top two, get you 44% of the way there. Industry, two top pathways get you halfway there. Electricity, two top pathways get you 100% of the, of the goal in 2030. Buildings, two top pathways, 93%. And agriculture, the one pathway that we identified gets you only 35% of the way there, showing again, very difficult to decarbonize that sector. Secretary mentioned seasonal variation in California. The left is metered solar generation, and it shows you one 1.5 terawatt hours in January 2018, 3.2 in June. And the delta is 1.7 terawatt hours, that's a lot. Wind generation, same thing, 0.6 terawatt hours in January, 2 terawatt hours in June, delta 1.4 terawatt hours. Total difference, January to June, wind and solar is 3.1 terawatt hours. So that is significant. Then you have hydro. Hydro, and what you're seeing here, this is over 2001 to 2016, huge declines in hydro generation because of drought. You can see the drought 2007 to 2009, drought 2011, 2016, enormous dropoff. So wind, solar, hydro, and hydro has seasonal peaks like wind and solar. Besides the drought climate affected, peaks and valleys that you're seeing here. And so that is an issue for managing a grid when you see that much difference. What you're seeing here, this is every day of wind and solar generation in California in 2017. The wind is blue, the red is solar. And what the numbers that are coming up here, I actually animated this myself. This is what you do on long plane rides. I was on my way to Poland to go to COP 24, and I did this. And it's 90 days in California with little to no wind. And the Secretary Moniz mentioned what you're seeing here is 10 days, seven days, nine days, six days in a row with no wind. The red line or the black line there is basically peak. It's more technical than that, but it's peak generation. And you see periods where wind and solar do not meet peak either. So that's another issue with operating a grid that is problematic. The next slide, this is challenges with integrating intermittent renewables. The what you have here, PJM East Coast, this is their battery storage and the duration of their battery storage. You've got an hour and less. PJM is using battery storage for ancillary services. California is a little better over here. Cal ISO, a little bit of 14 hour storage and some seven hour storage. I don't know what that is. Most of it's four hour storage. And I show this when you've got the seasonal variation that we had without I showed you when you've got days and weeks at a time with no wind and solar, we don't have batteries that can manage a system with those kinds of that kind of variability. And we just don't have it. So it's not, it is, it's one of our recommendations for the long term. I'll show you in just a minute. And I have slides that are for each of the sectors, but I'm going to shorten this. I put up decarbonizing agriculture and what we've done here because the biogas biofuels have significant cross cutting opportunities, which I showed you earlier. We've gone through and created a map for the country and for California showing you renewable natural gas generation potential. And the dark color is the greatest potential. I don't have the total numbers on here. Supply is an issue. California wants to go heavily into renewable natural gas. It's going to have to import a lot. And from Arizona and New Mexico and looks like Washington state, surprisingly enough. And that's the 4.5 metric tons, million metric tons that you get from biogas capture. I mentioned, I don't know if I mentioned 45Q yet, the Congress last year passed expanded 45Q tax credits. And 45Q tax credits give you credits for carbon capture utilization and sequestration. Those credits vary. You can see they go up to $50 a ton for dedicated geologic storage. For storage with enhanced oil recovery, they go up to $35 a ton. And for other utilization processes, $35 a ton too. So Congress in expanding this statute, actually put a Republican Congress, by the way, put a value on carbon, not a price, okay, not a tax on carbon. They placed a value on carbon. And that's what the value is. Then over here, I think these are, I don't know whose numbers these are, estimated and measured first of a kind costs for CCS. And when I look at this graph, you look at fertilizer, biomass to ethanol and natural gas processing, industry, difficult to decarbonize. The cost, first of a kind cost are all within the range of what you see for the tax incentive. This is the last one. Secretary mentioned the 2050. Everything I've talked to you about so far is 2030. Making those 2030 goals very tough, but doable. And many of the technologies that we describe in the 2030 portfolio and those pathways that I showed you need incremental improvements. They need regulatory structures, they need policy changes. Again, this is not a policy document. Okay, so they need those. This is 2050, however. And we went through and looked at California-specific needs, resources, demographics, et cetera, et cetera, and came up with a breakthrough technology for Leo post 2030. Smart cities, hydrogen from electrolysis, seasonal storage. You can see why we need seasonal storage. Building performance technologies, bioenergy, floating offshore wind. Floating offshore wind appears in both 2030 and 2050. I think there's great potential. I've seen offshore wind take a long time to get cited. People in Massachusetts know all about that. And this is floating offshore wind. You really need to do floating offshore wind in California because the water is too deep for fixed bottom wind offshore. And you saw the problems with onshore wind generation in the earlier slide. You've got much higher quality wind resources offshore. And so this is important. And I think you'll see some of it before 2030, but the vast bulk of it, if it happens, will come post 2030. The Navy also has a lot of restrictions on this offshore, South and Central California, which is where the good, where the demand centers are, too. So a lot of issues to work through, but it's there. Advanced nuclear, a lot of issues to work through in California on advanced nuclear. And clean cement. Cement's hugely important here for your construction industry, manufacturing, et cetera, et cetera. I was surprised when we started doing this study, what a center of manufacturing California is. And so clean cement cements highly greenhouse gas emissions intensive. Lithium ion battery recycling, advanced photovoltaics, and direct air capture or large-scale carbon management. And this is just a little unseasonal storage. We talked about storage earlier, and you can see the millisecond, second, minutes, hours, days and months. It's the days and months that we really need to focus on in California. And these are just a couple of examples. And I mentioned direct air capture and large-scale carbon management and capture from dilute sources, concentrated sources, utilization products. There are a lot of startup companies starting products using carbon. And then finally, excuse me, biological and geologic storage. So I have a whole bunch more, but I'm not going to show them to you. So thank you all very much. Thank you. All right. Well, I can say that Ernie and Melanie were not any better at staying on time for the presentations here than they were at DOE. So we're all behaving in character here. So we have a great panel this afternoon. We'll start with a few questions for me, for them. And then we'll invite Ernie and Melanie back up here and we'll have some conversation with the audience as a whole, especially the students in the audience. So starting at the other end, Lisa Briggs is Director of Government Affairs for Con Edison Development. It's a division of Con Edison Clean Energy businesses, and they develop, own, and operate utility-scale renewable energy assets throughout the country. Sally Benson is next. She's a very well-known professor here in the Department of Energy Resources Engineering, and she's co-director of the Stanford Precourt Institute for Energy, the number one energy program in the country. And she also directs the global, Stanford's Global Climate and Energy Project. And then Armand Cohen is co-founder and executive director for the Clean Air Task Force, which he has led since its formation in 1996. And he's an expert on this full range of efforts to deeply decarbonize the global energy system. So Lisa, let me start with you. You heard that we have lots of renewables in between now and 2030, and a whole lot more needs for them after 2030. Are companies like yours going to be in a position to supply that market both on those kinds of time frames? I will say yes, absolutely. And just in the interest of full disclosure, we do handle build, own, and operate large-scale solar and wind throughout the United States. So a lot of my responses are going to be sort of driven through that, that prism. So yes, I think that the industry is uniquely positioned to be their assist and deliver. But that assumes that there are also going to be some changes with infrastructure and how infrastructure is regulated, how it comes to market. It's not just transmission lines, it's all the things that accompany that. And so it's going to be critical to update our infrastructure, make it stronger to get those megawatts to market. Great, thank you. Sally, so this report calls for quite a bit of use of carbon capture and storage. I know Melanie admonished us not to add the columns, but of course I did add these CCS columns for the, and in that case it even outweighs cafe or maybe even energy efficiency. In any case, it's a lot. And so my question to you, you're an expert on CCS. So how confident are you that we can do this at the kind of scale that we need to, either for the near term or for the large scale carbon management in the future? Okay, I just have to say one thing for all the students from energy 104. I hope you knew a bottoms up model. That was really happy when you said that. And you know all about energy sectors. Okay, I'm answering your question now. So carbon capture and storage, basically you take carbon dioxide from a concentrated source, you can you separate it, you can press it and you can pump it deep underground. So that's the technology that we've been talking about. So you can either put it into oil reservoirs, you can put it into gas reservoirs, or you can put it into something called saline aquifers. And you can just think of those as rocks that are filled with very salty water that the water really has no value because it's so salty. So California is really fortunate in that it has actually very large sequestration resources or CO2 storage resources. Just to put it in perspective, I think if we look at your numbers, we had 17 million tons a year for electricity. And I think when you added up the industrial one, it ends up being like 30 million tons a year. So the current estimate of saline aquifer storage capacity is from 2,000, I mean 200 to 500 billion tons. Okay, so it's enormous relative. So you mentioned it sound like a lot, but actually even 30 million tons a year is not really a lot. But it's also possible to look at the oil reservoirs. And I quickly made some calculations. It turns out that if you look at all the oil we take out of underground reservoirs in California today, it's about equivalent to 17 million tons worth of CO2. So I thought that was a very interesting number. So it's not the total 30, but about half of it. If you simply replace the oil we're taking out with CO2 that we're putting in, that takes care of about half of it. So California's easily can accommodate the level of sequestration that was described. Okay, well that's good to know. One or two things probably have to happen to make that to pull that off. But we'll just go with that for the moment. So, Armand, I actually want to ask you what I suspect is a harder question. And it really applies to both the both of the time scales. We were talking really about a significant transformation of the energy systems for the state and more broadly around the world. And I believe that these are going to have to function in energy markets. And maybe we should take electricity as an example that makes it a little more concrete. But those markets are complicated enough already. And we're going to ask them to do a whole lot more things. And one thing that I worry about is can we induce enough investment to make all this happen both on the infrastructure side and so take that as a cue and go to work? That is the 60 billion ton question. Can we get these markets to perform? California like my home state of Massachusetts is deregulated kind of, right? It's kind of half regulated because you've got these other mandates coming in from the environmental side and procurements and so forth. So then I see two problems with these deregulated markets. The first is capital formation. You know, who the characteristic of a lot of the technologies that Melanie talked about is they tend to be very high capex and have low energy costs. But you've got an energy market and I know capacity markets are very controversial and are kind of a second best. So how do you get your money back if you're an investor? And by the way, if you have a company that's in serial bankruptcy and may continue to be as wildfires continue, I mean, who knows? But the first problem is who's the counterparty in this world of deregulation and very, very low energy prices. So that's problem number one, the missing money problem I think it's often called. The second problem is a planning problem challenge. The system that Melanie described is one that brings together short-term low cost renewables with relatively high cost in terms of initial capital costs but critical technologies over the long run. And again, markets don't handle that very well. So what I puzzle over and I say this with full regret having been part of the deregulatory movement of the mid-90s is who's going to plan this system. And what you now have is like it's being planned piecemeal by various pieces of legislation but someone's going to have to look at the whole and say what's going to produce the lowest cost electricity system. I don't know how you solve that problem. I find it interesting that Excel Energy, which recently made a commitment to 100% decarbonization is pretty confident since they're regulated up and down in all their states. They have integrated resource plans, they have a rate base, captive rate base, they can do it. Now there'll be fights over this or that but there'll be some place to go to collect the money. And that's what I worry about in California. Yeah, Lisa, maybe I could ask you to jump in on this because it seems to me that your company certainly sells to all these utilities that are trying to meet all this. Is there, from your vantage point, can they deliver on the Ernie wanted five times electricity with it being very clean? Does the regulatory structures that you all have to deal with allow that? And if so, what do we need to do there? Well, the thing about both regulatory structures and markets is they tend to lag behind what innovation is out there already doing. That's not new. But it's something that we are going to have to take care of if we really want to get to this point. Relative to the question of markets, I'm reminded of when we first started building utility scale solar in the early 2000s, you couldn't get financing from traditional sources. It just wasn't there. So the DOE loans, tax incentives, sales tax abatements, that really bridged for so many developers getting to market, getting these things normalized. Now you can go to a Wells Fargo. You can go to traditional funding sources to invest in those technologies. We're not there for some of the newer ones that we were discussing today, but I think we'll get there. Lisa kindly stuck the innovation word in there, which gives me a good cue to ask Sally a question that has been much on our minds here and really much on our minds at DOE as well. And that is this sort of the whole area of energy innovation. You have led Stanford's energy innovation program for a long time, and I'm wondering if you're confident that we have the horsepower distributed between the two energy programs at MIT and Stanford plus a whole lot of other good players as well. I mean, can we deliver on that? Well, I think some things are relatively straightforward. I think steam methane reforming with carbon capture and storage is something we could do today if we had to. I think that'll be a pivotal piece. I think that imagining building an infrastructure around that for hydrogen and over time, I think we'll see electrolysis and fuel cells, those prices will come down and so we'll sort of build a system on the back of perhaps fossil fuels and eventually do that. So I think we can do that. I think that very long-term energy storage does remain a really big challenge. And when we think about very large-scale energy storage, there are two things. One, we have to make something that will store that much energy, but then we also have to think about finding a form that it's practical and convenient to store. And things like hydrogen, you know, yes, we can store them in salt caverns, but there aren't salt caverns in that many places. So we'll have to find an alternative means for storing massive amount of hydrogen. So that's where liquids come in. So there's a great deal of interest in basically combining carbon dioxide and basically hydrogen from water with lots of clean power coming from nuclear or solar or whatever to make basically synthetic fossil fuels or renewable hydrocarbon fuels that would be sort of drop into our current system. We could store them at massive volumes. That's something we're still working on and I think that, you know, 2040, 2050, you know, maybe around right, but we need a tremendous amount of work on that. Regular batteries for four hours, six hours, eight hours, you know, 12 hours storage. I mean, batteries are quickly coming down the cost curve. So that's encouraging. So yeah, I'm optimistic. You know, some parts are easier than other. So it's a portfolio. Armin, I want to take advantage of some of your background to ask about nuclear power. A bunch of us were in a meeting earlier today where there was a lively discussion about whether nuclear would play any role on either timescale in California. What do you think? Is there a future for nuclear power in here? It certainly has low greenhouse gas emissions. Well, I'm going to take Ernie's advice and not be foolish and predict anything, but let me make the advertisement and then the caveats. The advertisement is obviously if you decide as a society that you want to deploy this technology, you can decarbonize power grids very, very fast. All right. France did it basically in 15 years. Sweden took about 20. Ontario took about 20. But, you know, if you have the social acceptance, you can move very fast. It's a very scalable technology. That's the advertisement that the caveats are obviously cost and public acceptance. And there's this small problem that you have a legislative ban in California as well based on the absence of a long-term repository. But let's focus on the first two. I've done a deep dive on this and with some colleagues in the UK. And we've looked at reactors around the world. And reactors around the world built by South Korea and other countries are coming in at about a quarter of the cost of what we've recently built in the United States and Europe. And the studies which was done for the UK government suggest this was not done, this was not due to lower regulation, more lax regulation or lower labor costs. It's about project management and building the same thing over and over again. So there is a prospect, I think, for reduced costs. I don't even think it depends necessarily on advanced technology. Lightwater plants are being built at rates competitive with gas and coal around the world. It's just that you need to get your act together and figure out how to do that. So that's the cost issue. Public acceptance, I think, is the big question. There's no question that there is a substantial social taboo on nuclear, particularly with those, ironically, with those who favor climate change solutions. So we have this kind of perfect mismatch here. Republicans all love nuclear, but they're not necessarily too excited about climate policy, although that is changing a little bit. So I think, Lynn, those are the two big question marks. I'm more confident that we can address the first. The second, I'm afraid, is the result of many, many decades of, we won't get into the whole question of radiological health, but there certainly is an encrusted set of beliefs that I think are going to be very hard to move. Okay. I'm going to ask a question that several of you will want to talk about, and then we'll do a lightning round, and then we'll go to audience questions. So my question has to do with energy storage, and we've talked about it a little bit, and Melanie did a good job of pointing out the time scales involved. From each of your perspectives, Lisa, maybe we start with you. How do you see storage fitting into this? Well, it's a critical piece. I mean, we're just not going to get there without it. Storage is this wonderful game changer that can, it's a transmission solution. It's a load solution. It's a grid solution, and it does all those things at the same time. And operationally, that's great. From a regulatory standpoint, it's a nightmare, and so CalISO needs to be praised for being willing to step in and try and tackle this. So that's my take on it. Yeah. I think storage is really important for the electricity sector. We've been doing a lot of very detailed modeling of the California grid. We have a 14 node model that incorporates all kinds of details, 365 days a year and so forth. And we make runs where we say we can only have renewable energy. And under those circumstances, you have massive solar generation because we really don't have great wind resources. You have massive amount of storage. You have six-hour storage, 12-hour storage, and so forth. But that's one case. So we've also said, okay, well, let's allow a little bit of CCS. And actually, we come up with very similar amounts of CCS. All of a sudden, you don't need this massive overgeneration of solar. You don't need massive. You still need a lot of storage, but it's much more tangible or much more feasible than trying to do it all. So I think storage is going to be really important. I think we're going to make huge progress. It will be cheaper. It'll be longer duration. But I think we should think about designing a system that doesn't require massive overbuild and really quite inefficient overcapacity that you also end up just curtailing a lot too. Yeah, Carmen. So Lynn, I strongly agree with that. And I'll put a little more edge on it. I think that storage in its place makes sense. Unfortunately, it's being promoted as a panacea for whatever people want to imagine. And I can't tell you how many times a day I open my browser and there's another claim, and I'm sorry to offend any regulators in the room, that somehow storage plus solar will replace gas. I mean, it just doesn't, okay, on any kind of timescale. You've got four hour storage, but you've got those kinds of lulls in solar availability and wind availability that Mellie mentioned. So I think if we take it in its proper place, great. But it's really being hyped as the enabler of this sort of 70, 80% variable world. And I think all the analysis that all of us have done suggests that that's a very, very steep cost curve, even if lithium ion batteries come down by a factor of 10. Okay, lightning round, you each get one breakthrough, and you can have until 2050, but what is it? And do be brief because we have lots of other questions coming. Just more electric vehicles and making sure we've got the charging stations for them. Oh gosh, to add something different, a really cost effective negative and something that takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and puts it in a form that it's easy to use and hopefully useful. Zero carbon fuels, the missing link. If you have zero carbon fuels, you can do a lot of grid balancing, you can deal with a lot of transport that you can't electrify, and you can do industrial heat. Okay, and I will say that the last time Ernie and I were on some panel, and we got asked this question, and what I said was electrofuels that is go from carbon in the atmosphere, clean electricity to a liquid fuel that goes drop in. So we don't disagree there. So let's thank the panel, and then I'll invite Melanie and Ernie to come back up, and Mark Zobak will manage the unruly audience. Come on. In addition to the decarbonization challenge, you've got to address the challenge of Lenore and be unruly. So the floor is open. We'd like to start with students. It's in fact, if I'm not mistaking some of the freshmen from Lenore's energy seminar here, if you're willing to raise your hand, we'll call on you first. Is there a hand up? Okay, please. Microphones are diffusing toward the questioner there. Thank you so much. We are certainly very fortunate to have you here this evening, but my question is, what is your hope for us to communicate after this evening ends, about what sustainable energy means for our family members, our friends, who live in other states where coal, oil, and gas is dominant in the energy mix, but also here, where people have banned fracking, not knowing fracking can decarbonized energy, and fracking can be useful for geothermal energy. Thank you so much. Okay. Oh, well, thank you very much. I think that trying to make the point that a diversity of sources is really important, that we can't solve the problem with all renewables. On the other hand, we have to decarbonize and we need to do it really quickly. I like to use the specific example of natural gas as it's got half the carbon intensity of coal. It also has lower other forms of pollutants that create local air pollution. Then in California, we're the perfect example. We have a renewables energy miracle going on in California, I believe, but I think natural gas is the unsung hero of our renewables miracle because it's so flexible. It provides generation when and where you need it in a flexible way that can complement renewable energy. I think that it's this portfolio that's going to quickly help us decarbonize. That's what I try. I would just maybe add to that. I agree with what Sally said, but certainly as we go to a very, very low carbon future, then natural gas will have to be, if it's going to be a player, it's going to have to be with what you've been discussing earlier, the carbon capture and sequestration. I think there are challenges there that we need to discuss beyond the volume available that's there. But this is an example where what I would say is I think the graph that Melanie showed, the sectoral technology by technology graph, and you saw that in two of the areas, even in 2030, not very far away, that CCS could make a material contribution to meeting the reduction targets, but we're stalled. We're not moving. That's the kind of thing that it's not only in California, it's elsewhere as well. But here in California, is this going to be an option for meeting these goals or not? Doing nothing for another few years answers the question. It will not be part of the solution in 2030. I think that this is a great opportunity, and partly some of the reasons that Sally said earlier in terms of the geology in the state, et cetera, this is not to displace renewables, for example, it's to provide additional optionality in meeting what are tough goals. In fact, as a random comment, I would just add that I said earlier, I gave earlier a straw man for, okay, imagine an all electric situation basically, including making, I used hydrogen as the example in mid-century. Is that a possible outcome? Probably. Cost may be an issue, but do you want to take the cybersecurity risks of that system that's all electric, for example? There are many, many factors that have to come in to a reliable, resilient, and very low carbon system. So I think it's the system thinking that's not advanced enough, number one, and the sense of urgency that if that CCS, as one example, is going to be a big part of a solution. Man, we are behind the eight ball already. Let's get moving on it, and it can be part of meeting those objectives. If not, if that's off the table, and you look at Melanie's graph carefully, and you do a lightning addition of all the numbers of the millions of tons, and you ignore her statement, don't just add them up and do it anyway, what you find is, okay, if you roll the table on everything else, you might be able to make the goals. If I could say something on that, I have a slide for everything, okay, because I think in pictures, but looked at the world and regions of the world last year, the United States was the only country or region, the EU was in there as a region where CO2 emissions actually went down, and they went up everywhere else, even in 2017. We have fundamentally, 61% EIA would attribute 61% of those emissions reductions to switching from coal to gas, and the other 39% from renewables, the deployment of renewables in zero emissions generation. That's in power in electricity. But I'd say a couple other things, too, when we first started, actually the day before we started, the White House called me about LNG exports. We're now exporting significant volumes of LNG. The big debate as to whether you should be exporting gas, and it's going to raise CO2 emissions around the world, it actually lowers CO2 emissions. It depends on what it's displacing, and if it's displacing coal generation, okay, it's going to displace, it's going to lower emissions. And then one other thing I would say is in Africa, and we're working with an organization in Africa, they're burning charcoal. That's basically what they're using just to cook with. They're burning charcoal. The University of Chicago throw in another university here competing over all the best universities in energy. Michael Greenstone just put out a study, particulates are the number one killer in the world. And when you go to Africa and you see they're cooking with charcoal, so displacing charcoal with gas would help with that problem enormously, because gas has no particulates when combusted. So that's what I would say, and I agree with the Secretary, I always do, because he's my boss, that at some point natural gas becomes too carbon intensive, you've got to do CCS or not use it. Mark, can I make a quick comment? I think the question also kind of went to hearts and minds, like really beyond the technical stuff. And as a Green, albeit maybe some people can serve me a brown or green, on the spectrum of things, this conversation is evolving, and I just want to make the plug that I think that the students in the audience have a special responsibility if you care about the planet and the CO2 issues to be very rigorous about this, to be very open-minded. I'll just say personally I've seen a huge change in this discussion in the last two years. Used to be when I talked about CCS or nuclear, people would look at me like I was a Martian. People are getting more educated within the environmental world and within the academic world, folks who care about this. I would just incur, I think you have an enormous role. These kinds of attitudes are led from the top down, from elite institutions like this. So I'm really thrilled to see the kind of work that's going on here and at MIT training another generation to really kind of look at this issue in a much more objective and fact-based way. I think when a one-minute question elicits a 20-minute answer, the moderator is not doing a very good job. But actually in this case, I think it indicates how complex these issues are. They're technical, they're social, they're economic, and they're enormously challenging because they are difficult. Another question right here. Thank you a lot for your insights about our current situation and our future. Secretary Moniz, when you mentioned that the goal is to have a hydrogen and electricity economy based like about 80% by 2050. But as I saw in the slides and as I learned in our class in Energy 104, we have a lot of rejected energy from electricity that's being wasted because we go from a primary energy source and we convert it to a secondary energy source. How are we going to solve that issue? What are your insights about that? Thank you. Well, first of all, let me repeat and strongly emphasize that I was not predicting the electricity plus hydrogen future. I'm saying that that's one of the possible possible directions that could satisfy the very low carbon requirements. In terms of the, essentially what you're talking about is the thermal energy that goes into the atmosphere in effect. And of course there are thermodynamic limits in terms of what we can do. There are opportunities in some cases for using the combined heat and power kinds of issues. Frankly, this is a maybe way off the subject, but I have a strong longing for distraught heating, which just seems to make a lot of sense to me and is completely underused. And just say that we do that exactly on this campus and we reuse the heat from buildings to not buy fuel. Yeah, yeah. And we tried to persuade MIT that it should do it too. Let's go to the audience with it. MIT has got a combined heat and power. Is that a question that's all the way in the back? Keep it down, guys. So I think we're talking about all of this through the lens of carbon reduction and I'm curious what factors, particularly around national security, might accelerate or retard some of these solutions? You're the secretary. I'll start. I'll slide on this too. Well, first of all, I mean, there are, at the macro level, as we've had now for a long time, well over a decade, you know, retired, typically it's always retired, four star and three star officers who have made it clear that there are very significant national security risks from not mitigating climate change. For example, our Africa command, military command, is very, very concerned about that because of dislocations and what it can mean. So that's one component. And by the way, there will be a hearing either this week or next week on these national security implications of changing climate. There are other issues then, of course, in terms of security risks, which can evolve. And maybe this is what you want to say, Helen Lee, but the minerals, do you want to do the minerals? Okay, all right. Well, all right. All right, fine. It was discussed earlier today. We've had the general discussion about energy security for years, going back to the 70s basically, has been based around oil. Then in 2014, there was an evolved view of what energy security was about. This came about, frankly, it was precipitated by the Ukraine incursions of Russia, Crimea, and it led to the G7 and the EU re-looking at it. And interestingly, in the so-called modern energy security principles, essentially, you know, renewables, low-carbon energy took a major position in that discussion, because the energy security problems of the 70s were all about carbon. So going to efficiency, going to renewables, et cetera, mattered. And third, and this is the point Melanie probably would have made, is that as you look ahead to a world with less dependence, for example, on petroleum, I don't know when that will be, but let's assume mid-century kind of time frame, there will be maybe a new kind of energy security issue in terms of all of the minerals, especially the rarer minerals that are needed for all of the new zero-carbon technologies. You know, I mean, the lithium and cobalt are the obvious ones, but there's a whole long list of them. So it's going to be an interesting evolving situation with regard to security. Finally, and I'm sorry, Mark, I'm giving you the wrong answers. Another specific area is, once again, nuclear energy. With the spread of nuclear energy into other areas, the Middle East is an obvious place where there is some and promises to be much more. The United States has an interest in maintaining the non-proliferation regime that we and others, but we have done so much to advance. It's going to be very hard for us to maintain our position if we see the further erosion of our nuclear technology supply chain in the United States. So that's another national security issue. Okay, I can't resist. I'm going to add one more and I will stop. In addition, we have in the United States national security needs for enriching uranium and for making tritium. We do not have the capacity to do that today. Our nuclear supply chain does not have the capability to do this within the law. We are living off of the Department of Energy residual stockpiles of enriched uranium, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that eventually it goes away. And so we have a whole bunch of security issues around climate and clean energy that need to be addressed. Just want to add a couple things. The looking at the metals and minerals for clean energy technologies that Secretary mentioned, Lithium and Cobalt. I've gone through and looked at 25 or so, plotted them on a global map. Which countries are number one? And that mineral or metal? And which countries are in the top five? And what's the concentration of that top five? And what you see when you do that is that it's China and Australia. And looking at it from a geopolitical perspective, I look at where they are on the map. And at some point, and China is buying up lithium mines in Australia like crazy. That was the conversation I had in Katowice and Poland and a person of Australia. And so I think that we need to be mindful of it. We need to look at what metals and minerals we actually have in the United States and in North America. Actually look at the Western Hemisphere, because South America has a fair number of them and pay more attention to Africa too. All the way in the back. Yeah. Hi. Thank you all so much for such an interesting discussion today. I think one of the takeaways from this discussion is that we need a lot of innovation in order to meet our climate goals. And I think we're really lucky to have perspectives from industry, academia, and government about how innovation happens and is fostered. And I'm curious, since we have all these perspectives here, there are a lot of ways that the government can support innovation, a lot of different policy options. And I'm curious, what types of policies really specifically you all would like to see? Is it basic R&D? Is it loan guarantees? Something in between? I'm curious if from the panelists we could hear, what are your sort of top one or two requests you would make if you had the ear of your favorite Congressperson? Well, I think this is another application of the portfolio idea, that you want a rich portfolio of mechanisms. The report makes a point of that there's no single simple solution to any of these problems. That the kinds of things that have worked in the past are tax credits, a carbon price in some way would certainly have an impact, a loan guarantees for things that are approaching the full-scale commercialization for a period, all the energy efficiency regulatory structures that have been. So the reason, for example, that Melanie was able to show that California's emissions have been flat, despite a whole lot of growth of the economy and the population was because California has done a good job of leading energy efficiency. So I think that's both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is that you have to work on lots of things, and the opportunity is that you can work on lots of things. I'm just going to add that there are also major gaps in the R&D portfolio in terms of the scale certainly of investment. And one of those I alluded to earlier is the various forms of large scale carbon management, carbon direct removal, etc. And we'll have a report coming out in June on that, that's an example. But let me just throw in one little bit of a different idea, something that we've been working on since the Department of Energy and continue to. And that is that we think that in the United States, federal support for, in all the various forms R&D, to loan guarantees are very, very important. However, the low carbon solutions are going to look very, very different in different parts of the country. The innovation assets are very different in different parts of the country. The structure of the economies are very different. So when all is said and done, what we would advocate, including driven somewhat by federal support, is establishing much stronger regional innovation systems, literally having major innovation systems run out of different parts of the country, they will shape different portfolios. And that could be a real boost. And frankly, it would help also build up those kinds of innovation assets in parts of the country that are not contributing at the level that they should, and from which they would benefit enormously. So I'll speak up sort of for the fundamental R&D. So if you look at things like solar cells, you know what 1954 was for sort of the basic physics of being able to convert sunlight to electricity. In the mid 70s, sort of the first real push to make these into practical devices. And here it is finally, nearly 2020. And all of a sudden we say, oh, these are really cheap. It's the cheapest way to produce electricity. So it takes a long time, but I can imagine 30 years from now, 40 years from now, as we get deeper and deeper into decarbonization, we're going to need a whole new tranche of ideas. And I think it's really investments in not, you know, discovery science, but looking at things where there's a high potential for having a big impact, if successful, that are high risk that can go ahead and just giving you a particular example. So back in, you know, in 2002, when Global Climate and Energy Project got started, it started to invest in this idea of electrofuels. And back then it sounded like a really wild idea. But fast forward to today, you know, we have a whole bunch of different catalysts and so forth that can make a whole variety of different fuel products. They're not economical yet, and they're not as efficient as we like, but we can do this. So we do need that, you know, fundamental, you know, innovation to spur progress. So we're going to be releasing a report in June trying to answer this question by looking at three case studies, carbon capture, fission and fusion. And two things that I think are maybe somewhat novel coming out of the study. We did lots of interviews with people in the industries, folks who've had successes and failures. The first is the importance of not just R&D for R&D's sake or Curiosity's sake, although that's important, but a mission driven approach that actually is strategic as opposed to just, you know, completely random. So a good example would be the SunShot program that took place under the Secretary's watch. I mean, and, but these can be applied in other areas. A cost target, performance targets can really help. The flip side of that is you need to know when to shut the spigot off. So there actually is an argument out there that I think is pretty credible that with wind and solar, we've continued, we have these very blunt incentives, production tax credits and RPSs that just bring in the cheapest stuff, but not necessarily the stuff that's going to be more innovative and maybe slightly more costly. So you might want to think about tapering down on just plain vanilla and moving, you know, successively if you have a limited amount of money moving it over. So that's principle number one is strategy. Principle number two is don't just fund first of kind units because that's a big mistake the U.S. has made. We keep building first of kind units and they're always expensive. And then there's, you know, there's never like the, you never get the cost curve. I mean, nuclear is a perfect example of this. So there may be, and we don't, we don't have all the details on this, but if you're going to think about a lot of electrolysis, low cost electrolysis or hydrogen, refinery scale hydrogen using nuclear or something, you don't just want to fund one plant. You want to sort of think about this as a learning curve and really incenting the sort of the whole spectrum, which is exactly how other countries did nuclear and we chose not to. Everyone has an opinion or something to say on this and in the, I would throw out one other thing. Whether you love it or hate it, the development of unconventional gas and shale gas technologies took place over really everyone thought it happened overnight. It took place over 25, 30 years. And when DOE was first formed, it did a shale basin characterization. Then the gas technology gas research institute at the time was funded with a surcharge based on gas volumes moving in interstate commerce. It was as high as $200 million a year. That organization worked very closely with the federal government on developing a portfolio, but what you got was industry providing input. You had the government support and there was also a time limited tax credit for unconventional gas. And that combination, I think, I did not, I knew about shale gas. I didn't really appreciate the value of the technologies for oil. And that has fundamentally transformed the energy security profile of the United States. And I think surcharges, those kinds of things that help the government and industry to work together, those kinds of structures is very valuable. Well, I'm just, it's a little off of this line of answers, but human capital. We have to have the people who are going to come up with these innovations. And so we'd love to see more investment into the sciences, into driving quality people into these fields. I think that's an excellent note to end on. I was asked to wrap up, and I'm going to do so very briefly. I want to start by thanking Secretary Moniz, Melanie and the EFI team that have put together a truly remarkable report. Because it's not a roadmap, because it's not making strong recommendations about what should be done, what it is, it's just chock full of really basic information that's very valuable. I promise you you're not going to start at the beginning and read to the last page. But if you put it on your bookshelf, I also promise you you'll be going to it. It will probably years to come as you get curious about various things and find the data in it that you're looking for. For the students in the audience, it's easy to get discouraged by the willful ignorance that is coming from Washington these days. But California is not alone in this. And much of the developing world is actively decarbonizing. Many parts of the U.S., many red states, as well as blue states, are decarbonizing. And many of us are engaged in trying to help the developing world develop energy, develop their economies in the greenest possible way. And there's lots of reasons to be encouraged. But those of us who live in California are particularly fortunate that we have these remarkable politicians that set these difficult, difficult goals for us. I mean, it's going to be hard, but it is doable. And this report and what you've heard today point out many of the options that have to be pursued. I can tell you that, you know, five million electric vehicles, I hope Tesla puts in a few more charging stations. You know, the way in which the report was written was kind of matching, you know, the legislative and executive orders that define the goals, the 2030 and 2050. And as was pointed out, 2030 really means we're using today's technology more intelligently, building the infrastructure, and figuring out how to get going with what we have. But for a university community, I think the 2050 goals, which are even more ambitious, really open the door. In this report, they defined 11 aspirational technology goals, everything from massive offshore wind to new nuclear to a hydrogen-based system for heavy duty vehicles and direct air capture of CO2. And these are very, very difficult things and is going to provide lots of opportunity for the students at Stanford, MIT, and 100 other universities to fully engage them, probably for the rest of their careers. So let me end by thanking our panel and thanking all of you. I want to thank all the people from Stanford Energy, Precourt, the natural gas initiative that made this possible. And I encourage all of you to stay for the reception and seek these people out and ask them your personal questions. So thank you very much.