Hello Thanks for joining us for this edition of Sustaining US here On KLC US PBS I'm David Huizar Life is All about choices What kind of car you drive where you live Your career with cars for example you could choose a Gas guzzling four wheel drive SUV or an electric Vehicle with zero emission What if the same were true for Your house What if you could choose exactly what type of energy you have Delivered to your home without taxing the environment Well now You have that opportunity if you live in parts of L.A. and Ventura County We begin our broadcasts with an innovative Community choice energy solution known as Clean Power Alliance Energy It's something we almost have to survive Energy is derived from things like coal and Oil fracking into nuclear Then there are more sustainable Sources of energy As most environmentalists and even some business interests Now argue things like solar wind Geothermal these types of energy are considered green Energy because they are renewable resources meaning they're naturally Replenished from sources such as sunlight wind the earth's natural Heat and rivers So what if you as a Southern California resident Could have this clean renewable energy delivered directly to your home Well now you have that opportunity In 2017 an organization Known as Clean Power Alliance was formed Clean Power Alliance A locally controlled electricity provider in SoCal A community Based government agency promoting a clean energy future where local Communities are empowered and customers are given a choice about Their energy source Simply put Clean Power Alliance purchases Cleaner electricity and then sends that electricity through Localities since transmission lines So Cal Edison then delivers That energy to your home or business so Cal Edison also read your Electric meter sends you a monthly bill and provides all the maintenance Check out this animated explanation Joining me Now to discuss is Ted Barsky Ted is the executive director Of Green Power Alliance and has spent a career working on Sustainability policy Ted thank you so much for being here Thanks for having me David What is your definition Of sustainability Well there's really three legs of The sustainability stool The first leg is What we commonly think of sustainability as the environmental And that can be clean air clean water Mitigating and adapting to climate change Sort of those aspects of it but there's also Economic leg to that sustainability stool that talks About having a high quality of life high standard Of living And then there's an equity leg of the stool Which is how can we ensure that all members Of society have access to the environmental Benefits as well as a high standard of living So there's really Three legs to that school economy equity And the environment So then how are you aligned You being green power alliance with sustainability Yes So on the environmental side we are very Much about expanding the supply of Renewable energy carbon free energy that supply Southern California So we use the Dollars that we charge our customers for electricity To invest and expand the supply of renewable This year we will meet California's aggressive State mandates 10 years of So we're very much on The environmental saw that on the economic Side that that money that we're using to invest and expand The supply of renewable energy is invested In new projects that generate good paying Middle class jobs that are real career pipeline For people in and then expanding Part of our economy And then and then the third piece On the equity side is we Provide that electricity at rates that are Affordable not just to our wealthier customers but To our low income customers across our Very diverse district And with all due respect I do Take some issue with that If you look at all the data Everything points to the fact that your green energy cleaner Energy is not cost effective in fact it's quite A bit more expensive And then we the taxpayer Or we the consumer have to pay that bill So The our rate for 100 Percent green energy 100 percent carbon free Is about 7 to 9 percent more expensive than people Would be paying Edison are Competitor and partner in this So that is a 7 To 9 percent bill increase What we find is that customers Over 90 percent of the customers who are on that rate Stay off at that rate So we find that there's Broad consumer acceptance of that higher cost The other thing is our service allows people if they don't want to pay that Too immediately and at any time opt for lower Rates we have some less renewable energy Content but still all of the benefits of choice and being Part of a mission line company is Ever going to be a day when it's more zero emission Clean energy is going to be cheaper So yes So today what it Costs to buy all renewable Energy it's still the cheapest power out there available If you decide to build a new gas plant or new coal plant versus Building a new wind farm or a solar wind and solar Are cheaper The issue is that they're intermittent and NATO supply 24 hours a day and that's where Your cost increases come in So what we will the Day things will be cheaper once we figure out how to Cost effectively store all of that wonderful renewable Yet You are a fan of your Renewable energy There's half the country that says we Want our coal We want our oil We want our fracking We Want our natural gas What do you say to those folks How do you convince them That yours is the better option If in fact it is Well so I would say that You know the gas and the coal The external costs in terms of Water and air and especially climate change and pursuing That continuing to pursue that fossil fuel path Is going to lead to broad problems Already leading to broad problems in our society with Regards to to pollution and you know in Reversible impacts to broad sectors of our Economy ranging from agriculture to real estate To things like flood protection and and Other parts of our infrastructure I think The other point to this is that we can in fact Create jobs and provide economic development across The country by investing in low Carbon and zero carbon technologies We Don't have to have this false choice between economic Development and clean energy clean power alliance Is if I'm not mistaken part of a broader Narrative community choice aggregation Explain what community choice aggregation is So community choice aggregation is a construct here in California That allows cities and counties to join together And pool their purchasing power and the purchasing power Of their residents to invest in clean energy And have that clean energy delivered to their homes and businesses So it's really been a vehicle for communities That want to be aggressive and aggressive On battling climate change To really see these wonderful regulations in California be the floor for how we're Combating climate change but not the ceiling They want to move faster Quicker and that's what they do Ted what have been the greatest Challenges for CPA Clean Power Alliance if At the very least trying to win in the court of public opinion And prove to residents all throughout the Southwest Because certainly You want to go beyond that that this is the better choice So I think that the The biggest challenge has been just Education And most people Just you know get their electricity they Want their lights to turn on and they pay their bill And we come in and we be We are a little bit disruptive In that in that In that in that space not that Your lights don't go on or anything like that But the bill looks a little bit Different And the the we're Asking people to really engage and make A choice whereas previously they haven't had a choice And that's that's new and new things often Lead to some confusion So I think our biggest challenge with the Consumer is just explaining what we are and how we and How we operate and the benefits both short and long term That we're bringing to themselves It is certainly new This is certainly innovative I do believe I read Somewhere that there are some other cities throughout the country That have a similar program However you've got The greatest challenge I haven't seen any city that has a million plus Residents that they're trying to supply Energy to That in itself must be a monster challenge Yes so around the state of California there's 20 operating CCAR is 20 like us Most of those houses Disco Bay Area and Then in and around Sacramento and up into the foothills is served By an entity like us There are five operating CCD here in Southern California And San Diego is going to launch next year Most analysts believe That between half and 80 percent Of all California residents will get their energy from Entities like us by 2025 So As I mentioned a lot of the challenge has been consumer Education But we will become the norm For most of California over the next five years We're going to leave it there Thank you so much Ted Barclay of Green Power Alliance really Appreciate the interview Well thank you for having me David and I Look forward to coming back anytime Definitely And now could fusion energy be an alternative Energy source for California the US and the rest of the world Researchers at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab which Is part of the U.S. Department of Energy are trying to find out lay In Michigan with PBS station NJ TV in New Jersey Has our story What if there was a way to recreate the Process that powers the sun and the stars A way to bottle It on Earth as a new source of energy for the world's sounds Impossible But scientists have been working to achieve fusion Energy for nearly 70 years What happens In the center of the sun is you have really really hot dense conditions Really high pressure and atoms in those conditions are forced Together and when they collide they collide with enough force that they fuze And turn into heavier atoms So hydrogen turns into helium And in the process a whole lot of energy is released and so what we're trying to do Fusion energy is to recreate those same kind of conditions on earth Plasma physicist Andrew Zwicker gave us a tour of an experimental Fusion device at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory The United States National Laboratory for Fusion Energy It's managed by Princeton University for the Department of Energy This type of device is called a token Mac So How do scientists think they can use it to recreate the process That's happening in the sun on the earth Here's how it works We start off with something that's shaped more or less like a hollow Donut But it's made out of stainless steel and that's our back to the vessel We take all of the air out of that so that we recreate Conditions close to what's in outer space We then put a small amount of hydrogen gas into This donut into this vacuum vessel And the reason why we Are doing this because we want them to fuze what the hydrogen to fuze into Helium So the way we're going to do that is we're going to heat It up so that the hydrogen is faster and faster and faster until When they collide the collide with enough kinetic energy to fuze into Helium and they give off some energy for them to fuze They have to be traveling at an incredibly high speed Which is equivalent to a temperature of one hundred fifty Million degrees ten times hotter than the core Of the sun And then we need to hold onto it And the Way the sun does that is with gravity But we can't do that here on So he's very powerful magnets And so the blue bars That are going this way are some of the red ones over here are powerful Electro magnets and that allows us to hold onto This hot plasma and create a magnetic bottle And so if we can hold onto it with our magnets if we can Heat it up hot enough for fusion to occur Often enough then we are creating a fusion Reactor What makes it an attractive energy source compared To current forms of energy the raw fuel is The starting point So there are fuel for fusion is hydrogen we Can extract hydrogen from the oceans we have enough for many billions Of years so essentially forever And the process itself doesn't Need very much fuel Just one hundred pounds of fuel Would power a city of one hundred thousand people for over a year Fusion does not contribute to global warming It doesn't produce Any greenhouse gases unlike solar It doesn't need The sun to shine and unlike wind it doesn't need the wind to blow And unlike Vision which is what most people think about when I think of nuclear energy It doesn't have any of this long lived dangerous radiation That we have to worry about what we're going to do with when we're done burning it in Fission reactor So fusion is in many ways an ultimate Source of energy clean unlimited Safe New Jersey has been a leader in fusion energy Since the 1950s Around the time this laboratory was built It grew and significantly in the 70s during The energy crisis In the Carter era there were experiments In the early 70s that Princeton large Taurus that actually demonstrated we could get the plasmas to the temperatures That we need for Fusion to happen And that really opened up the possibly For fusion worldwide A big challenge is Being able to produce more energy than it requires to run a device 35 countries including the United States are working together To build what they believe will be the first industrial scale fusion Energy toker Mac It's called ITER The country's Working together represent more than half the world's population Each is designing multiple pieces of ITER but very Supportive of either ITER still has some research Needs that work contributing to solving before it Operates the head of communications of the ITER organization believes They will have an operational machine by 2025 And he says you could potentially start building commercial machines by 2014 if funding keeps pace Max It's been done around the world really since the very very late 1950s and they've always they've there've been hundreds However they've always been too small to talk them out we're building It's going to weigh about the same side same as the Empire State Building But it's it's just a lot lot more compact And you need that size in Order to achieve the output over the input but Not all scientists believe ITER is the best way to achieve fusion Energy Private companies like General Fusion which Is backed by big investors including Amazon's Jeff Bezos Believe they can take different approaches to get a result faster And cheaper There's been a real wave of private Companies emerging and developing and all of them including Ourselves are looking at timeframes which are unknown around a decade So early 20 30 years to get to a practical power plant could go to Sites which maybe have an old coal plant that's been decommissioned and you can use that Transmission infrastructure that's there to build the fusion Power plant and plug right in And so in that way it's really friendly in terms of working With the grid that we have Then you have LP Fusion in Middlesex It's a grassroots operation working out of a storage facility It isn't as grand a production as others around the world but chief scientist Eric Lerner believes his team can create a device that generates More energy than it consumes And they hope to have a completed By 2021 if we get to that Point We estimate that a development program To turn this device into a generator that rolls down an assembly Line like a car would take three or four Years with adequate funding instead of using Token Mac He's working with a device called a dense plasma Focus so that this device was invented about The same time as the talcum back in the 1960s But decisions were made which I think were and many people think Were wrong decisions to concentrate all the money on the talk Mark There are about 40 other groups around The world who work with this device But as far as we Now we're the only one that's actually aiming For fusion So this is the actual Size of the heart of the machine His target Generator would be about three tons To put that into perspective Eater weighs about 360 five thousand tons That's actually an advantage because that gives you distribute Power That means that huge blackouts Become impossible because each neighborhood each town Has its own generator Every one of those concepts is Got a different twist on how we're pursuing it and every one of them has risks Involved but you have to look at the whole field and say you know what are the odds that One of us or more than one of us you're going to succeed in that timeframe And we Think it's pretty good And of course we really like our chances So while everyone Is betting on their device to succeed Each person we spoke with will Supportive of the work being done The competition here is Mother Nature and each It's referred to as the largest and most complex Science experiment with the potential to change the world Layer Michigan NJ TV News Thank you I am Michigan and NJ TV for that report Now to Corona virus and air pollution Could Kovic be helping with clearing the Air as a result of social distancing and fewer cars on the road This next story is brought to you through a special collaboration with KLC s PBS and Arizona State University's Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications as we partner with And mentor students seeking to explore the environment through their reporting Here is Madison Station with Cronkite News I'm 40 Stories up in the middle of downtown Phenix and While many of us are practicing social distancing it's what's right Here outside that has the potential to be the brightest spot Many people are working from home and only essential businesses are Open due to the coveted 19 outbreak there aren't as many Cars on the roads which means there's less emissions going up Into the atmosphere Traffic is less caused Traffic is less we're seeing less air pollution so we're Seeing less of the emissions that come out of the back of cars so the brown cloud The brown cloud is very much reduced in Phenix area I'm All over the country I'm sure daily traffic delays in Maricopa County Have plummeted about 32 percent in one week's time That's according to a travel time delay index by the analytics company In Ricks And it's not just Phenix and Los Angeles That are experiencing better air quality decreases and emissions Are being seen across the globe since the covered 19 outbreaks Started China is the world's largest polluter ahead of the US Their greenhouse gas emissions have dropped by more than 25 percent These emissions contribute to climate Change But state climatologist Nancy Sullivan predicts that at Least for now the reduction in emissions won't have a long term Impact in Arizona At this point in time they're not going to see Those changes and emissions have any immediate impact on Climate Temperature is not going to drop because of that or any of that kind of stuff The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality is gathering Data to further understand the impact Cove 19 has had A department spokesperson says there are other factors for the Valley's Better air quality including the recent wet weather Madison State and Cronkite news Thanks Madison statement and the Cronkite School of Journalism and the Mass Communications for that report For more information about our program Just click on KOCO stories and then click contact us To send us your questions and comments or story ideas so we can hear from you Thank you so much for joining us for this edition of Sustaining US Here on KLC s PBS I'm Dave and as are