What we can do today to build a better future
Recorded at Climate Con 2021 on November 10, 2021
What we can do today to build a better future
Let’s shift our focus to the actions we can take today and hear about solutions already in motion. We'll also touch on projects we can bring to our neighborhoods right now to get things moving. We’ll dive deep into clean energy, community, solar, jobs, and powerful reasons why now is the time to electrify our lives.
A conversation with:
Saul Griffith (OtherLab and Rewiring America)
Kiran Bhatraju (Arcadia)
Keith Kinch (BlocPower)
Jonathan Shieber (FootPrint Coalition)
Resources:
Electrify: An Optimist's Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future Book by Saul Griffith
Transcript
Cody Simms: I'm pleased to welcome John Scheiber up to host this conversation and I hope it will bring you some real hope about what's actively underway in this world. So John , come on up!
Jon Schieber: Thanks so much for taking the time. Everyone who's watching. I appreciate it. And thanks so much to my fellow panelists.
Saul Griffith, the founder of Other Lab and Rewiring America. Keith Kinch, the co-founder of BlocPower in general manager there, and Kiran Bathraju, the founder of Arcadia and CEO. Gentlemen, thank you so much for having this. One of that the precis to our conversation from Carol Sanford, how do you make a system healthy?
I think actually applies to our conversation as well, because really what we're talking about is how. The electric system healthy and how to make power healthy and how to make our built environment healthy. And I know all have thoughts about how that's going to be done best the way I'd like to kick this conversation off.
And I think that there, there are lots of different avenues to pursue there's news coming from BlocPower there's news, coming from Arcadia. So all has been prolific writing. Op-eds about what needs to get done to make America electric and electrify. I think the American populace and get people excited about the steps that they can take for climate change.
Hey, and he even wrote a book about it. There we go, which you can find on lots of places just don't buy it off of Amazon or buy it off of them. It's up to you. But I think what we're going to do to kick things off is salt. I think that the real thrust of all of these businesses and all of these initiatives that, that each of you are undertaking is the electrification of America in a real way.
And I know that you have some thoughts about that. So I was hoping that you might kick things off with a little bit of an explanation about what rewiring America is and does, and then a little bit about how you think things are going on the process to electrify America and would focus.
Saul Griffith: That's a lot of questions in a short time.
Jon Schieber: I thought you'd felt like two minutes. We'd get it done and then we'd move on to some other stuff.
Saul Griffith: But, so I think I founded an organization last year called Rewiring America. I also finished writing a book last year called Electrify. And then. Based around the same thing that we need a centrist climate movement that has an optimistic north star that's achievable and approachable and relatively simple.
And I believe we now have that. We know that. Yeah, carbon sequestration, won't get us to the end goal. No will biofuels. And really as a simplifying theme, if we just understand that we have to electrify everything on our own personal lives and our at homes in our small businesses. And then as a nation, we know where the goalposts are and then to emphasize or underscore the urgency.
Any machine that you own today that uses fossil fuels needs to be the last of its kind in your life. So it doesn't mean that tomorrow we need the whole world or the whole country to go out and buy a new electric water heater and new heat pump space heater, et cetera. But it means the next time it fails in your life. These machines that, to name them and shame them, our cars, our motorcycles, our hot water heaters are space heaters. And there are electrifying at kitchens and electrifying our laundries there. That's where all of our oil and natural gas goes. Anytime any of those machines fail, it's about a billion of them in the U S we need to replace them with the correct electric one.
And then what that will do is triple the demand for electricity in the U S. Curiously have the amount of total energy we use in the U S because the electric machines are just that much more efficient. And we need to create all that new electricity with wind solar renewables and depending on which form you're talking, even some nuclear power, and that's honestly our recipe for success on climate.
Cody Simms: So I think this is a great overarching vision and we can dig into some of the ways that folks can advocate for this and local communities hopefully soon, but picking up the Baton and running with it, Keith, like you all actually just announced that BlocPower an initiative to electrify an entire city.
You're going to decarbonize our town, the town of Ethicon, New York. And working with them y'all are going to actually affect this process of making these last fossil fuel machines, the last fossil fuel machines in this town. How did that come about was that you driving that initiative and how did it work?
Keith Kinch: The residents and the people of Ithaca drove the initiative started with really the may and the common council thinking about how indigo can be an example, not just for New York state equal for the country in the world on what does it take to electrify a city? So it started there and they've, I know they've been having conversations for you.
We are fortunate enough to put a proposal. We were telling them the lead program manager, the Carbonite. And it's an amazing moment, last Wednesday when they voted 1,000 to do it, it was amazing from Sharon Allen, Darnell, the founder of the companies at Coke, 26, and he's in Liz bound.
And they're talking about, like you said, this city. That's located, upstate New York. It's a big deal to your point, Jonathan, and to Saul's point, yeah. We're trying to electrify every building costs. Everything across a guy and, utilize that as a case study to say if the was the first city who's next, who's the city, not just in New York state, but in this country. And some people reached out to us so excited and we want to, add a couple more cities to keep this.
Jon Schieber: If a lecture and thank you so much. We'll get into that a little bit more too. And how BlocPower is working with communities to make sure that this electrification process also comes with a job creation as well.
Kiran, to what's going on at Arcadia these days. When you think about the strategies we need to decarbonize stuff it's more than just, and forgive me for being less than articulate, but that it's more than just electrification. It's also the adoption of renewables to power that electrification and where Arcadia slots into this process really seems to me to be on enabling that kind of adoption of renewables for more people more broadly.
And can you talk a little bit about how y'all are doing that? Exactly.
Kiran Bhatraju: Yes, solves right. We need electrify everything. There's a big thing standing in the way, and that is the power grid as it stands today, data's a massive problem to electrification utilities, stove, pipes.
The ISOs don't tell us how carbon intensive it can be rates and tariffs. We have to pull from PUC documents that are coffee stained and faxed. He's smiling because he knows exactly what I'm talking about. We have a monstrous data problem in the U S and then collectively across the world around data access, data, fidelity, data portability.
And so what we're doing at Arcadia is trying to unlock the day. So we can electrify buildings, homes, and get rid of every fossil fuel device and make it simple for third parties. And so that's where Arcadia wants to play long-term right. Is if you want to connect to community solar project and find thousands of subscribers, how do you make that simple and easy and do the billing and payments if you're an EV company that wants to make sure you're charging is at the least carbon intensive moment.
On the grid. That's a lot of disparate data sources need to come together to make that happen. And so as we have this conversation, this is the path we need to go down. I think one of the things everyone should be thinking about. And you see it in the financial world in healthcare like data access and portability will become crucial to making better products, better services, easier adoption, better optimized products.
And that's where we want to play is being able to, take digital infrastructure solutions or singing to other markets, create APIs around this stuff so that the block powers of the world. All sorts of other, companies EVs that OEMs can create better solutions because right now we really do have a massive problem that is, stovepiped monopoly utility structures.
Jon Schieber: So it seems like there are a few things going on. One, there, there are things that individuals can do. And so I'd love to talk to you a little bit about the build that, that you've been supporting. Around direct rebates at the point of sale for electric appliances. And that's at the individual level there's levers that can be pulled to get people, to adopt this stuff more readily.
And then for Keith and Kiran, it's more a sort of systems level approach where if company or if individuals can push for their communities to adopt these kinds of policies for systems or for multi-tenant buildings or for commercial buildings. Then you can get you can move further down the pathway towards the 20- 30 goals we need to hit where we're hitting sort of 50% decarbonisation of America and society.
So Saul, can you talk a little bit about that? The legislative initiative at the federal level, and maybe some things happening at the state level, that might be interesting.
Saul Griffith: So Alex Laskey nine founded Rewiring American. To build a movement, really, but also to take the whole country on a journey to electrification and decarbonization, because to be very honest, there's maybe only one or two households in the whole country that have done this. And they did it by throwing huge amounts of money and at the problem. So if we got to get the whole country there and then the whole world, they've got to think about how do you make this process, the simplest cheapest and easy thing for everyone to do. And we take that into, we use that view for federal policy, which we've been heavily involved in because you get this narrow window in the first hundred days of any presidency in the U S so we've been, we rolled up our sleeves heavily in the building residential sector with the bill back better and the infrastructure plan. But it also means engaging at state level. And it also means engaging at local level because very honestly, the utility rules are very often say at state level federal government doesn't actually have that much play in econ spend money, but most of the money actually goes through state programs. And actually the barriers, the things that artificially increase the cost of the solutions often happen at the local city level, where it's building codes that are in conflict with electrification, it's all sorts of perverse incentives.
So you need to engage on all those levels. What we were very focused on in the federal piece of policy was making sure that the money would be there. So that. Anyone who goes. So imagine, we already know that 40% of people replaced their hot water heater on the duress. That's two probably means is the middle of the winter.
Your partner is pregnant and you can't find a technician. And you certainly don't have the cash to go out and buy. So most people are buying this appliances that last 20 years at commune emissions, but they're buying it under financial duress. They buy the cheapest item at that point of purchase. And that's often the fossil fuel thing.
So we were trying in principle to always make policies that would make that experience in that moment, easiest to make the correct decision. And we, instead of taxing, there are also tax incentive mechanisms, but tax incentives are regressive, they can, there, they only work for the people who probably can afford to solve that problem because they can afford to pay tax, but we needed, we made sure that it was rebates at the point of purchase for households that honestly just needed the subsidy upfront to join this electrification world.
And once they're there, we already know that if they're buying those appliances, then they will be saving money month after month, year after year. So you're helping them buy into the cheaper long-term. And solution as well as the obviously climate crisis.
Jon Schieber: And I think that this is an example. It's just that specifically, when you talk about this municipal how things really get done at the municipal level for people to be engaged, right?
This is a matter of creating a sort of.
Saul Griffith: Let me give you the screaming example of this and why regulation matters. And I'm sick of my Silicon valley colleagues through Earl a little bit too libertarian these, I don't understand that in nearly every case, the majority price of any energy that you're purchasing is a regulatory burden.
The US example that is extraordinary to me is if you go and buy rooftop solar in the U S it'll cost you on average, a little over $3 per watt to install it after financing and everything. That's about 20 to 25 cents a kilowatt. That's more expensive than the grid in nearly every places. This is why there's only one or 2% of penetration on rooftops in the U S because it's not really economic. In Australia it goats, which has, they actually have a higher prevailing wage, about $35 for solar install. This it installs on the roof at under $1 watt. After financing that's five or 6 cents a kilowatt hour that is cheaper than any utility delivers electricity to anyone in the U S even if utilities can maybe electricity for free, they can't get it to you for five or 6 cents.
The difference is permitting regulations and AHJs, which is basically a city and county level. Jurisdiction over who can install and who can inspect Australia, solved it with a certification and training program, which built capacity. And it also certified the install it to be the permitter and the inspector, the government carry the guarantee on that.
And Australians now have in some locations, 50% penetration of rooftop, solar, and across the whole country, it just topped 30% last week. That could be true in America with a signature of the regulatory pen, but it has to happen in every county in the country. So you need an army to go and change these things.
If we change these things, we have the capacity to make the future that we all want cheaper and easier, but it's a lot of regulatory work and we've got to face up to that and go do it.
Jon Schieber: There are so many things to unpack there, and luckily I have the perfect panelists to help unpack that. And we're going to get to all of it. I would be remiss if I didn't put on my leg venture partner hat for a second and talk about sealed, which is one of our portfolio companies that actually smooth the process of installation of energy efficient upgrades for homeowners, individual homeowners and is operating across the Northeast and in other states as well.
So there are like, there are businesses that are working to help solve some of these problems, BlocPower as well as looking at doing this and multitenant in commercial and in other spaces as well. So I want to get at one ways to overcome these obstacles at the local level. And is Arcadia sort of community solar as a service or virtual community solar offerings to folks?
Is, would that be one way to unlock that problem, Kiran? Or do we need. To actually start advocating or certain services like yours. So there are others as well that are working on this too.
Kiran Bhatraju: Yeah, absolutely. There should be thousands of companies going to the consumer and in offering new services.
So Arcadia is the, what Saul described as is a very real problem with rooftop, solar and actually almost every rooftop, solar proposal. It goes through a tariff calculation and has to understand how much energy is being used in the home. Usually that gets done by someone printing out a PDF or asking, and, our tools are trying to bring those soft costs down.
We're trying to make that simple and easy, but to that point, not everyone can do rooftop. Solar, not everybody has a roof. Nobody, everybody has a south facing roof without trees overhead. And so community solar popped up in the last decade as the solution for the 75% of America that won't be able to self-generate on their own roof.
Now idea is you build an, a field, you build a scale, you get the economies of scale, it's on the distribution grid. And we build software to help deliver savings and clean energy to let's say, thousands of subscribers in that local utility and the way we structured it is it's cheaper, cleaner energy.
So incredibly simple. To engage with we've taken out regressive credit checks and credit scores. We've taken out regressive 20 year terms. We make it stupidly simple to say, you want five to 10% off. You may not even care about the climate. You just want to save some money from a local power project.
Now that's not everywhere. We're in 14 states. We'll be in 17. Next year. It's growing rapidly. But state legislatures and Pete, public service commissioner still have to allow third parties to build these projects, but that is a solution, right? That is increasing access. For frankly, everyone that can't, put panels on their roof.
Saul Griffith: We should expand. So that's just one problem. We are, we're now implementing this same problem with vehicle charging and we're making you permitting. So we are artificially increasing the soft costs of all the solution. Soft costs are things that aren't the actual piece of hardware.
We're also doing this with heat pumps in a huge number. Jurisdictions in Chicago, you're not allowed to use a modern heat pump that has plastic connections because unions have decided that they have to be braised in copper. The way we did it 150 years ago, so it is important to emphasize the solar one, even though it doesn't affect everyone, but none of these problems affect everyone, but all of them affect all of us.
And we got to get in there and roll. Sleeves up and understand it, as much as I do believe this is a technology problem, I love startups. We also must understand this is a regulatory political barrier. It's an own goal of humanity.
Jon Schieber: Yeah. I completely agree. And hopefully we can get into some of the ways that folks can engage on the municipal level.
In a bit, I also wanted to talk about. The the jobs aspect of this, where you talk about these really great solar installation jobs that are coming. And this is an area where BlocPower is actually working on solutions as well. Keith and I was hoping you could speak to that a little bit, like how folks can get involved in and maybe train up for one of these.
Keith Kinch: Sure. I want it. I want first, I want to say the fact that it's an own goal on humanity as someone who loves premiere. Maybe the best things I've heard. That's amazing.
Yeah, the one thing I was still people myself know to know will not be installing solar panels or source associate pumps across Ethica or any state we'll be working with contractors. And for every project we queue up or we complete someone has to do that work. And obviously when you think about Saul's point.
Thinking about equity and how do we make sure that frontline communities benefit from this, multi-billion dollar bill, that's coming down to help local communities to scale. And you thinking, see, we want to make sure that the benefit is not just a built in they're living in is green and healthy and safer, but they also have a job, a career path to it.
Over the last five years, The New York city block power, we've been you've been framing and managing a civilian common Hyman for 1500 people where we train them and then we placed them on clean energy jobs. And that sounds great. And people were excited. And the one thing I had to remind myself, as well, as, there's levels to what we consider unit planning and climate jobs than any job, most people think about. Inner source heat pumps. And I love it, there's easy charging stations, right? Someone's got to manage even charging stations. Someone's got to make sure the car is charged properly. The car has to work, there's a software component. They make sure that those are jobs, if we're doing any weatherization, someone's got to make sure that you value in the. Makes sense and there's no thermal bridging, who's going to do that. That's a job there. So when we think about this job component, it's very broad and vast. So when we do training with our participants, that's what we need to show them.
Let's think about what your skills are now, what can we train you on before? And even Wi-Fi right. To, we can't get any data. We can't even have access to wifi. We cannot have a system. It real-time information on. If you do your job, you and I head into the store and we got to make sure the heat works well.
We're going to press our phone with it is a work at home. It doesn't matter. So that's important. We have a chance to have a triple bottom line, right? We can lower carbon emissions. We can create jobs. There are people that actually, our program is I don't want to work and it's not a bad thing to like almost all my own company.
I want to be a contractor. I'm going to do this. I want to be in. We can create new companies and then, we can bridge a very generational wealth, especially underserved communities to get this done. So the workforce component is huge. Now we have a gap, right there are folks in the labor industry, the boomers late gen X-ers they're retiring.
They're not coming back to the business. They are. Late gen X, millennial, gen Z kids. And I don't do construction that I don't like the business. I want to be YouTube or, I'm a gamer, I'm going to this stuff. So now there's a gap, right? And we have this opportunity to like bridge that gap with the next generation and whether you're hands on or not, if you're a software driven, great.
If you're going to get your hands dirty type of put in refrigerant line, there's tons of opportunity and that's what we're working on a daily basis.
Jon Schieber: And the adoption of solar also can be made a little bit more seamless to write with this kind of data integration. And Kiran, that's what you're talking about with Arcadia and the new offerings there.
Kiran Bhatraju: Yeah. We have a data problem, that How ma how much capacity should I give you, John? Let's say versus Keith, let's say you've got two hot tubs in an Evie, maybe Keith
Jon Schieber: five hot tubs and ATVs. It's true.
Kiran Bhatraju: And so how do you, this happens, guys. This is a real problem. We've got the tool, is a
Saul Griffith: white hot tub just for record.
Kiran Bhatraju: Maximizing the energy we direct to your home, right? First, the next home, like you guys would laugh, but you've got McMansions, you've got studio apartments, people to get community solar and then unlocking data to say what kind of air source heat pump does it, does this home need?
How many panels, if you do rooftop, solar, how many panels do you, can you put on, what are the rates and tariffs available to this home? To optimize exactly when the load shifting happens. When you're using energy at different times of the day, when the car strikes is there, these are massive data problems that we're trying to unlock, which, we're trying to stay way ahead of where utilities and regulators.
There's a very great, there's a great example in the financial tech space. A lot of you probably have used a company called plaid, but probably don't know it. If you've used Robin hood or other fintechs apps, it's a way to connect to data to financial data that lives in your checking account so that you can go do.
Get a brokerage account, go to trade stocks, go invest for your kid's college fund. We want to be that connective tissue around data. So people can do community solar projects. They can do rooftop. They can electrify buildings, set up Eby charging. No, that's that's there's a lot of. A lot of innovation that I think will come from our platform, allowing a software engineer or a big corporate to use these tools and build new products.
But there's also, there's a, there's another human problem. I think that. Keith and solar hitting on it. If we're going to electrify as fast as and Keith was talking about this from the human capital side, like I fear we're not going to have enough electricians.
Saul Griffith: Now we are a million electricians, a million HVAC technicians on it.
Kiran Bhatraju: Yeah. That's a real, that's a huge problem. I don't know. And that's part of, part of the work we need to do. Sure. There's people in those roles.
Jon Schieber: Some of that, I think that there, these are opportunities, right? These are obstacles, but they're also opportunities for folks to come in and provide services to change that trajectory, to make these things.
And like in an ideal world, right? That's what we're doing. We're trying to to engage people to to support these kinds of initiatives, but also, if you're interested in becoming an entrepreneur or service provider or getting involved in this stuff, help with. Build some of these services that need to get built, to make sure that we can do the things that we need to do.
There's a question that came from someone who's listening in and I really wanted Saul to address it to everybody. And that's this this question of having specific language that a town ordinance could use to move closer to the kinds of adoption that you have been in Australia. So these would be things like requiring electric replacement on failure, or smoothing the path to install solar installations.
Are there off the shelf stuff that folks can try and promote or propose.
Saul Griffith: I think there's a huge amount of off the shelf stuff, typically at the state level, some cities, and there's a lot of experiments going on and the problem is what I, my concern is we're not going to run the experiments fast enough.
So I have friends in Massachusetts who are working on natural gas bands and new build homes. And then in retrofit homes that work has also been done in Berkeley and Oakland. And now it's, they're trying to do that statewide in California. So that's should hopefully prevent that from getting in there.
I haven't seen in the U S yet a city council that overrules the AHJ and the utility on the solar connection rules. And I would like to see that I hear rumors and mumblings. There is the work of Andrew Birch with N rail in the solar app, which has meant to streamline the permitting process.
That's step one in the Australian experience. That was something that we already did there. I think, honestly, you want a little bit of Norwegian Navy policy and you want a little bit of Australian rooftop, solar policy, and you look for the best cases on us. I think we should try to do this at the federal level, cut and paste the Australian certification and training program into the American experience.
And similarly, try and cut California and EVs. Policies into the Australian experience. And I think we got to do that across nations, across state boundaries and across cities, but that actually gives the mayor the reason to exist. The mayor of ethic had just stood up. There's the mayor of Alameda and wants to do this.
And the mayor of Oakland do be ambitious. And actually, I think it's our job as the entrepreneurs and as the policy you think is in a space to help them. Because the reality is different. Building architectural vernacular in different places is going to make the hacks a little bit different everywhere.
And because, like we said before, there's no city in the world where this work. There's no Suburb. There's no street, there's one or two homes, but we need to like experiment with the set of rules. That's going to make it the easiest experience for halls suburbs and all cities. And I think that means a lot of people in a lot of places, writing legislation and then creeping off each other so that the best of the best rise up. And hopefully we can make our federal exemplar policy that can be cut and paste.
Jon Schieber: Anyone else want to weigh in on that? Does anyone? So how adaptable is the Ethica model? Let's say you, do you have a sense of whether or not this is something that someone could take wholesale and say, okay, if it goes done, it look at their sort of procedures that the steps they took to get there. I want to propose this and it, I live in Atlanta. I want to propose this in Atlanta. I want Atlanta to say that we're going to decarbonize, which looks a hell of a lot different from Ithaca, right? If the guy had what, 6,000 buildings or something that needed to be electrified
Saul Griffith: both more different than you think of less it's
Keith Kinch: yes. It's scalable. It's just a matter of understanding the building typology in a city first, and it goes back to the point of our data, having access to data and gathering data. And then to, having the right partners on the ground by the local partners around to make this scale and then having the right codes in place.
The right tools in place. I think most of them without enough, What about innovation in private sector? And that's great, right? I'm sitting in a private perspective, government utilities is all to get on the same page. It's gotta be, three, three to three pronged strategy of policy investment in codes that push some of this work rights go forefront and make it almost managing.
So it's yes. If Ethica, if they didn't do it, they will do it. Atlanta could do it. A couple of cities, I talked to Massachusetts, some other cities down near the Southern parts of this country have reached out and they've asked the same questions, which is the right question.
It's what can we put together in our ordinance? What can we do? On a policy level first to set this environment to start the process. And then obviously you're right. If the good is not going to be Chattanooga, it's not going to be like Cambridge right in Massachusetts. But the idea of the same, get an idea of how many buildings you have, how many you want to do, what is the carbonization look like for a city?
And then what's in place already. And that not every building, And it turns to these one on oil. But also we know that not every building is electrify, but what does that mean? Infrastructure-wise and then finally we're got to create jobs, right? If it takes five years to get Jonathan city, get Atlanta electrified, it's going to be five years that you can have a growth across the area.
And see, we're going to start a business, create a job, sending kids to college, buy a home, do things that are. And it's going to help across the board. So that, so if it goes full decarbonisation, it's not just about electrifying the city and, coming off fossil fuels is like whatever we created from a generational wealth side as well for folks on the ground.
So that's exciting. I think every city's going to be different, but in a positive way.
Jon Schieber: And I think what's interesting there. And I think Kiran, you looked like you were about to say something. So I want to let you do that, but I want to emphasize one point that ethics is not just doing it alone.
They're leveraging a lot of private equity funding. They're leveraging a lot of other kinds of monies to get this stuff done in a way that isn't going to be that much of a burden on the taxbase. And these sorts of renewable energy policies have payback periods for citizens that are pretty tremendous and significant.
So I, you were poised sir, to say something.
Kiran Bhatraju: I just think it's important to note. There are very specific pressure points that are important. Public service commissioners, 50 states, 50 generally unelected folks who basically set rates and set policies for the utilities, some city councils that manage and own municipal utilities.
We have an example of activating our customers in Virginia. To effectively get a community solar bill passed against the will of the utility. So these things are, I think these things can move with the right pressure points. It's not just the federal works. It has to be happened, local municipalities, public service commissioners, we're trying to unlock this through our platform.
Through the half a million customers we have across the country, we've created tools to help them go to state senators, state legislatures, public service commissioners, but those pressure points exist. And I think coordinated well, we've seen it work for community solar and clearly it's working in Ethica and other places too.
Saul Griffith: Honestly, if six, all ladies show up to the PUC commission, that's enough. In the favor of the right thing. Like we engage people who are underemployed or retired to show. And then that's it. That's all it takes.
Jon Schieber: So w what where were those resources on Arcadia's? Was that on your site or?
Kiran Bhatraju: Yeah, for our customers, literally in the digital experience we've built a widget with our regulatory team and our product team to help push a message to the right folks in the state or in the city around it, around expansion of community solar initially, but we want to be able to do more. But we have a whole advocacy part of the product, and I think that's important because of everything we're describing.
Jon Schieber: I was just going to say that, again, it comes down to these three levers, there's a personal lever where you can swap out these appliances yourselves and ideally on, in a way that's economical. And it should be there is the one level up from that is, is getting.
Institutions that, or your businesses where you were employed or where you're working the office buildings talk to the real estate owners and operators and managers, and say, Hey, look, we want, or your companies and have them do it. We want our buildings to be electrified. We want to work with companies like BlocPower to do this.
We want to work with somebody. To make sure that we're decarbonizing this built environment. And then there's the sort of the public lever to pull, which is advocacy at public utility commissions at a local town councils at the state level. And these are things that can be framed. I think in a way that is nonpartisan or bipartisan. Look, it's better jobs. It's more jobs. It's more tax revenues.
Saul Griffith: It's my God given right to have solar on my roof. God dammit.
Jon Schieber: Look at that. Come on. Why not? I should have the freedom to put solar on my roof. If I want to.
Saul Griffith: You can easily paint this as freedom in a safe, because the economics are about to flip. You'll start to see this.
Jon Schieber: The economics are already flipping, right? If you look at things just on a macro level, it's more expensive now to drill for oil and have a new oil drilling project than it is to develop a solar project by a lot. So as these things start to wind down the costs of spinning them back up, become more expensive and the cost of solar keep coming down or wind keep coming down.
I don't want to just think that we were biased towards solar on this panel.
Keith Kinch: I'm laughing, but also, New York state, they had a ballot initiative where people voted to say that people have the right to clean water. Like it passed that. Like we had to vote in a state to say, We demand clean water, like legislatively.
So that may have, that's what we are now, and pass that 70%. So naturally the other 30% why they were anti clean water, but it passed New York city for social. We need to continue to push that narrative and the men on our God given right of water and solar.
Jon Schieber: There's a question about how, if it goes financing the conversion and my understanding Keith, better than this, maybe than I do you know what they're working with? Like a few private equity funds, and they're issuing some green bonds and doing some other things, is that right?
Keith Kinch: And obviously we want to make sure that there are a variety of options to finance the projects, from various degrees, from a low to moderate income to market rate, to historical buildings and otherwise. So they don't provide the options one and two even labeled with that model as we go city to city, that's going to change slightly. We're aiming to make sure that this. No money down minimal out-of-pocket costs to building owners, to complete these projects with local hires and a brown to generate capital for the city of Ethica. That's the goal. That's what we're going to do. We're going to get started as soon as possible August hopefully.
Jon Schieber: I want to give him the gridlock that's happening at the federal level. And the seeming inability of..
Saul Griffith: Before the gridlock, it is the largest climate bill we've ever passed. It wasn't what we wanted, but it's not gridlock.
Jon Schieber: Well, but isn't that it's dependent on another larger climate bill to get everything that we need. The infrastructure bill is one thing, but the build back better stuff that would need to get done. And reconciliation that hasn't gotten done is the real prize. We haven't gotten that what 555 billion allocation have we?
Saul Griffith: You know what's in there is not good enough either. So all of these things are roughly 10 X off heating, a 50% reduction by 2030. Let's all be honest with you. I actually think that it's going to be creative private partnerships like the Ethica city one we're running. I also wear a hat called Ray wiring Australia. We're running a competition for cities to vide, to be the ones that go all electric first. And the cities that go first, we'll get larger subsidies because there'll be earlier. But, I think that sets up a race to the top.
And then, once it's being done at city level there, they, they were already coalitions of Mays that talk to each other and cut and paste the best practices. And we'll see if I actually think, we should hope that build back there that goes through as well.
That would be better than what I'd got so far, but, this is another end goal of humanity. We keep writing really complex multi-issue bills. Can we, all of the things that are in there are good, but can we just separate them in different lanes would be a start? I think we gotta be honest with ourselves. If we want to get the climate stuff over the done we're doing it the hottest way right now, the way we're running.
Jon Schieber: No. I completely agree with that. I don't want to put myself in the heads of people in DC to think about whatever the hell they're thinking about. So I'm not going to do it, but what my question was going to be whether, there is enough capital now sloshing around through all the various commitments and whatever else to get this done at the state and city level without relying on largess from the federal government and from DC, if they can't open the wallet to spend the money, it seems like there's appetite from the BlackRocks of the world, the $130 trillion.
Saul Griffith: Supposedly the cA the capital will be there. Let's be really Cru non-US. It is not yet economic to do this. The batteries are installing a $1,200 a kilowatt hour on the side of the house, which is 30 to 40 cents a kilowatt. Cycle. That's really expensive. The cells cost about a hundred dollars a kilo now, and that'll be $50 a kilo it out by 2025.
Then we should be able to get that to a five to 10 cent per kilowatt hour storage cost. You do what Australia does. You get this all to be cheaper than the incumbent. You make sure that you don't quadruple the cost of home batteries by having a help, the building codes associated with it that are driving up the cost even further.
We need all of those things to happen. And then it easily pays for itself. Like I said, for it, if you get batteries installed at $200, a kilowatt hour, you get solar under a dollar, what installed and you get AVS to cost parody with petrol vehicles. All of those things could be done by 2025 with just a little bit of hard work and some regulatory action.
It will be so economic that the Blackhawks will be jumping over each other and probably cheating the system to get their vantage to finance this thing because there is going to be a lot of money to be made, but we're still in the market development phase where we have to build capacity. We have to get those costs down.
We have to get scale up. And that's what these federal programs and state programs should be focused on right now, building capacity, getting to scale, dropping the costs, getting it so that it is a slam dunk for the private market to come in and do it.
Kiran Bhatraju: Saul's right. We've had a decade. Subsidies for solar and wind that have created massive supply and drive driven those down. So what Saul saying is true for a subset of new home electrification and building electrification things, but for a lot of solar in America, community solar large-scale wind, right? Those costs are there and they're ready.
Not true for community solar. It is definitely cheaper than incumbent. It's the reason a lot of you're seeing such a huge growth in this distribution. Sighted large-scale solar is much cheaper and as a resilience factor that utilities when they're doing a cost benefit analysis, community, solar is winning, but there's a point here around the financial markets that when the sec creates rules, if they create.
Around ESG reporting. I think you will see this move into the CFO office and it won't just be the fortune 100 saying we need to do things. It will be the fortune 1000 and beyond say, you need to start thinking deeply about how we report and measure and track our decarbonization efforts that will, I think, shift the market pretty dramatically.
Keith Kinch: We need more money. Maybe that's just the private sector person. But I tell you why everything comes down to investment from federal government. In one sense, Jonathan, that you would talk about you and I would laugh about this a couple of days ago. This was a time where there was a bit of argument around cheating a home.
In oil, people were like, I demand to put my hand over the fire and feel the heat to keep my kids warm. Is that the oil and the building, how to get in it's liquid? I can't see it. It's crazy. It'll never work. We invested millions of dollars in oil and all of a sudden everyone's buildings were being eaten.
And then there was another argument, gas, natural. What does natural gas? That sounds crazy. And how can gas, heat and cool a building it's unheard of. It's nice and warm. I could see it going in the building. It'll never work. We invest in billions of dollars in natural gas infrastructure. We're having the same conversation today.
Oh, electric fireman thing. I don't understand that word. I like natural gas oil to heat my building. How's it gonna work easy. You can have to invest billions of dollars in the electrical grid and the systems and mix the grid. And then it will all be sitting in. And our five or six disease for, for, and we heated and cooled properly through electricity with solar batteries on the side of the building.
And we'll use our phones to turn the jacuzzi up and down. That's what that needs to happen. So yeah there's a ton of private sector money, but the private sector has the buy-in and the utilities you've got to centralize folks that don't have money, is great. If you're a wealthy homeowner or if you have money or third-generation money, you can get.
Three panels on your roof. And the sensors could be $2, but if you're, of those unknown in central Brooklyn, right where this was the only piece of wealth you have, right. For generations. And if you get this wrong, everyone is out. You've got to have the right incentives, that rebates, incentives upfront incentives so get things moving. So I think that's a big difference.
Saul Griffith: I think it's worth pointing out here and just jumping off what Keith said there, like the very nature of infrastructure has fundamentally changed. What we understood the infrastructure in the 20th century was big projects, long way away.
Big transmission networks, whether that'd be transmitting oil, gas, or electricity, but we now understand for the grid of the future, the only way it's going to balance is if your jacuzzi is the demand response for my electric hot rod is, and it's all being charged of Kiran's rooftop, solar, right?
Literally the majority of the loads of the country are going to be in parking in our garages and our small businesses and rest. So it actually really makes the built sector, critical national infrastructure, because the only way it's all going to hang together and work is if we have that data and it's working nicely and we can.
Machel everyone's demands and everyone's responses of these loads. We had a 20th century conversation about energy that was purely about the supply side, and that's how everyone thought about it. That's why we think blindsided. That's why utilities haven't been planning well enough for the last few decades on this new electric future, where you have to always every moment match the demand side, where we live, where.
Children go to school where we work with the supply side and that's the big change. And that's why I think it's worth saying it to everyone all the time. Your car is national infrastructure. When it's electric, you're your jacuzzi is national infrastructure.
Jon Schieber: And with that, I think we have to end our conversations. Gentlemen, it has been a pleasure and a privilege to spend time with you this afternoon. It's great. I hope we get a chance to talk. Someone was talking in the comments about having an Alec for renewables and I'm all for it. I'm here for it.
I'm a hundred percent. Let's talk about getting that done. And in the meantime, y'all enjoy the rest of the conference. Thanks for tuning in and thanks to the folks at climate conference.
