>> From WXXI News.

This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour is made in your energy bills, especially in the utility bill that you might struggle to pay.

The energy crisis is getting worse around the world thanks to the war in Iran and several million New Yorkers are behind in paying their utility bills.

In a new piece, energy entrepreneur Jigar Shah writes that New York state needs to take charge of its energy future, not next year or after the next election.

Shah says the crisis is now, and people need relief now, not after another round of studies or discussions.

Shah, writing alongside his colleague Suzanne Hunt, argues, quote, The New York state government needs to reach out to the entrepreneurs who are deploying the innovative energy technologies needed to address the affordability crisis and create the conditions for us to invest in New York.

We know what policies will unlock the investments required to scale up these solutions and drive down costs.

We also know what has worked and what has not worked in other jurisdictions, and which policies leverage scarce public dollars most effectively, the enormous loss of federal funds since Trump took office makes this even more urgent.

There is no budget for subsidies.

We need New York to align its regulatory and policy environment, to encourage technologies that save money to be deployed at scale in the state, end quote.

But the opposition to this is substantial, and it doesn't just come from Republicans who might question climate change or prefer fossil fuels.

It comes from, at times, Governor Hochul.

It also comes from some on the further left who don't trust entrepreneurs or the private sector to do just about anything.

Shah would say that's a mistake.

His piece lists a number of specific action items he served in the Biden administration.

He understands how government can bog down or how it can get moving.

And we've invited him on this program today to talk about it.

So let me welcome our guests now.

Jigar Shah Co-managing partner of Multiplier Jigar Shah.

Welcome.

Thanks for being with us.

>> Thanks for having me.

Welcome.

Great to be here.

>> And by the way, tell us what Multiplier is.

Jigar Shah.

>> Uh, we help entrepreneurial firms, uh, get better exits, right?

So what we found is, is that, um, we are seeing an extraordinary amount of deployment of clean energy solutions across the country, less than New York state, but across the country.

And, uh, and a lot of these folks are now looking to go public on the stock exchange or somehow otherwise get exits.

And so we're helping them.

>> Welcome back to the program to Suzanne Hunt Vice president of policy at Generate Upcycle.

Suzanne, thanks for being with us.

>> My pleasure.

Thanks, Evan.

>> And Marguerite Wells, executive director of the Alliance for Clean Energy New York.

Marguerite, welcome back to you as well.

>> Glad to be here.

Thanks.

>> Jigar's time is a little limited, so we're going to spend much of the first half hour working through this piece.

And then in our second half hour, we're going to talk more about possible solutions.

The piece is interesting in that you kind of take us through some of how we got here, and then the solutions.

You'd like to see you and Suzanne write about that.

So let's just be brief here.

We're not going to spend too much time on this, but I do think a little backstory on how you want the audience to understand how we got to this moment where you say, maybe other states are more aggressively deploying some of these ideas.

New York State might be a little behind what's going on here.

What would you want people to understand about how we got to this moment?

>> So I think that New York State is an extraordinary place, right?

A place where electricity was largely born, a place that, frankly, has had fantastic public policy for many years with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, with the New York Public Service Commission, with many of the utilities that are there.

But I think what happened in the 2013 or so timeframe was we decided that we were going to go big.

We had the reforming the energy vision effort that Audrey Zibelman and Richard Kaufman had led.

And then we had a climate law that was passed.

And in those laws were a lot of ambition.

For instance, Nyserda awarded a lot of contracts to renewable energy projects about five years ago.

And, you know, we had this perverse incentive where when projects failed and I sort of didn't want to talk about it because then they would have to be able to they couldn't say that they had awarded three gigawatts of renewable energy projects.

And so they sort of kept giving people extensions, um, instead of reallocating those credits to people that were actually prepared to build.

And so as a result, we've missed all of our deadlines, we've missed all of our numbers like, you know, and so we've, we have, uh, taken some power plants offline in the state of New York, but we haven't replaced them with clean energy.

And so now we have less power generation in the state of New York today than we had when we started this effort 5 or 6 years ago.

And that makes bills go up.

And it didn't have to be that way.

We have extraordinary entrepreneurs that were prepared to take those failed projects and replace them with great projects.

But, you know, perception was more important than reality.

And so we ended up in a situation where folks didn't want to admit that certain priorities were not working and reallocate resources towards the entrepreneurs that really were doing big things in the state.

>> Suzanne, can I ask you as well, you know, your name is on this piece here and there is some urgency to it.

The budget's being crafted now.

New York State's making some decisions.

Do you feel like with the energy crisis now that some of what you and your colleagues are talking about this hour can be achieved, you know, not sort of years down the road, but the environment could actually be ripe for.

I don't know, the word rapid or pretty rapid solutions that could affect people pretty quickly.

>> Well, Marguerite Will can jump in here and, and on the one hand, nothing in in building energy infrastructure is fast.

On the other hand, Marguerite and Jigar Shah can tell you about all kinds of different things that we can do to help reduce, if not people's bills, reduce the amount of pressure on prices going up.

Um, and, and I'm going to hand it over to Jigar to talk about grid utilization and, and some of the other, you know, virtual power plants and some of his favorite other topics.

>> Um, yeah, let's do that.

And as we start that, Jigga, can you also just sound one note?

I want to ask you just briefly at the outset, because I will probably get some emails from folks who are probably in the activist class or those who've done a lot of work in, in, in activism, who want to see government in control and don't necessarily feel like they'll hear you in your piece, say, bring the investors in.

Welcome, welcome us in.

And they'll say, oh, so there's money involved.

So you're going to make money like, so that's what this is about, as opposed to real solutions for for that suspicion which is out there.

What would you say?

Jigar Shah?

>> Well, look, I think it's important to note that New York has both, right?

We have the New York Power Authority, which is a public entity, and we have private sector firms.

So when Konig or National Grid or others invest money, those are private sector companies that are investing money that are making a return and raising people's bills and raising people's rates.

So we're not talking about private sector versus public sector.

What we're saying is, is that we have an old system that says that in order to meet load growth, load growth from electric vehicles, load growth from heat pumps, load growth from new manufacturing facilities, um, the old way of doing things was building more generation, building more transmission and building upgraded distribution.

And that process has led to 9% rate increases every year, which is nuts.

It's much higher than inflation.

Now you've got a bunch of private sector folks who said, we can get a lot more out of the grid that we've already paid for, right?

So we can allow people's water heaters to not, you know, uh, turn on right after somebody finishes a shower, but turn on three hours later, you can figure out a way to use thermostats to like shift, uh, some of the load you can have behind the meter batteries that people have put in, right?

We have had a robust community solar program here in the state of New York.

Almost none of those community solar projects have batteries at those same sites.

But the interconnection and all of the, you know, paperwork has already been completed.

So all they need is a signal from the utilities that they're willing to do things that are 90% cheaper with batteries than upgrading those wires.

Right.

But, you know, I think we're in this weird situation where we're arguing over whether someone should make a profit.

And then on this side, people are charging you ten times more than it costs to be able to get things done.

And on this side, you've got entrepreneurs with solutions that are 90% cheaper.

And so, you know, I think that it's time for us to get out of some of the old tired arguments and start to figure out how New York State builds again.

>> Uh, what are the forces standing in the way then Jaeger.

>> I think it's analysis paralysis.

I think when you look at what's happening right now in Texas, they are building a huge amount of load growth, right.

And as a result, they have had unprecedented strains on their grid.

What did they do?

They built a crap load of solar and battery storage.

Technical term as well as, um, a lot of load flexibility, right?

So there's a lot of people with, you know, batteries in their homes.

They can bid that capacity into the market.

They can do all sorts of things.

And guess what?

Electricity rates have gone down as a result, right.

And so these are all variables that exist in New York State.

New York runs its own independent system operator.

New York has its own regulator.

They have the exact same structure as Texas.

But instead of actually moving at that level of speed and scale, they are still in year five of analyzing whether they want to do the right thing or not.

>> So looking through the article, there's a lot of specific proposals here, and I was struggling on where to even start, but Suzanne mentioned enacting grid utilization.

And Gigi, are you right that it's similar to what Virginia recently did?

What do you want to see done here?

>> So in Virginia, they passed a law that basically said, we have to use the grid that we've paid for more effectively and more efficiently.

And so the first thing is the utilities all have to reveal what the grid utilization is of their existing grid.

Some of the grids are used 20% of the time.

Others are used 40% of the times others are used 55% of the time.

In the 1970s, they were all used 70% of the time, right.

And so we have so much additional capacity we can use.

And a lot of the flexibility that we talked about, whether it's driven by batteries, whether it's driven by appliances, where you pay people to allow their load to be more flexible.

So they opt in, right?

No one's imposing this on people.

It's things that they can do to get a discount on their bill.

These are all programs that were pioneered by the New York State Energy Research, Research and Development Authority in New York State, and never rolled out.

So all of those companies are based in New York and are doing business in Texas.

>> Again, the way you describe it, Jigar Shah makes it sound so common sense, and I'm just tempted to ask why we're sitting here and talking about it.

If it is as straightforward as you say, who's stopping the the grid utilization?

>> Well, in general, I would say that it's the utilities, right?

I mean, you know, Audrey Zimbelman and Richard Kaufman, uh, started this effort in 2013, right?

I mean, regularization was a word that we used back then.

Um, and, uh, it never happened.

Right?

The utility said, well, I don't know if you do this too fast, we might have rolling blackouts.

I don't know if you do this too fast, then we might actually end up, you know, having all these problems.

Of course, you know, folks who are not PhDs in electricity can be scared by that.

And so they moved more slowly.

And as a result, rates skyrocketed in the state of New York.

And now you've got 1.3 million households that are two months behind on an energy bill that is outrageous in a state that invented electricity and has been supporting all of these startup companies for years.

Right.

And so, you know, fine, maybe it did require 13 years of study by the utilities, I don't know.

But like next week would be a good time to make all these changes and get, you know, the public service Commission to work.

>> Suzanne, you want to jump in on that?

>> Yeah.

So in the article, we we divided the recommendations up into what the executive branch can do on its own and what the legislature needs to, to, you know, get involved in, in, in, in, in legislation and the grid utilization bill that we listed, um, we literally linked to the bill in Virginia that Governor Spanberger and the legislature there just passed in her first, what was it, month on the job or something?

Um, it's literally a bill that is one page long.

Um, and so New York State Senator May and her team saw the article and they already introduced us a New York version of the bill.

So there is a bill, it has a number.

Um, last I heard a couple of days ago, they were looking for an assembly co-sponsor.

Um, so some of these things are starting to, to move.

Um, hopefully they'll get over the finish line.

>> Uh, Marguerite, um, as someone who directs the Alliance for Clean Energy New York, are you an optimist that some of what we're going to be talking about this hour can get over the finish line this year?

Virginia.

Suzanne is making a really interesting point.

Spanberger just got elected and they're doing it.

So what do you expect to happen this year?

>> I think one of the challenges is that the budget negotiations continue now, and the budget was due nine days ago.

And so that tends to suck up all the oxygen in Albany.

And so it's hard to move pieces of legislation outside of that, except in a few weeks that remain at the end of the legislative session.

So that's where I'm going to pin my hopes in terms of getting bills advanced that can help solve the energy issues here in New York, because I agree with what Jigar said, that the answers and the solutions are out there, and it's a question of deploying them here in New York and having the leadership who really wants it.

I think, um, there are a lot of different entities in New York who have a finger in the pie of energy, and they often pull in different directions, and that leads to inaction.

>> Well, we'll post in our show notes the article that is guiding this discussion that is divided in solutions on what the governor's office could do, what the legislature could do.

Staying on the legislature's side of things, I want to ask Jigar about legislative legislatively mandating a not cap and trade, a CNI cap and invest program.

What is that?

How would it work?

Jigar?

>> Well, I think when you think about, uh, a cap and trade program, a cap and trade program basically has, you know, folks who are polluting, paying people who are, um, you know, like reducing their, their emissions and a cap and invest program.

You actually collect the money from folks who are polluting and you start to invest in real new infrastructure in the state.

When you think about some of the ambitions within the state of New York, around landfills and food waste, right?

A lot of the garbage that's produced in New York City travels over 700 miles before it finds a place to get buried.

Right.

And so figuring out how you actually take a lot of the organics out of that waste stream and figure out how to do things that are very interesting, like Generate Upcycle does with some of that work, or figuring out how we actually, you know, use some of those, um, you know, waste streams to, uh, to recycle, right.

Uh, and much higher rates and things like that.

These are all things that require investment.

And so you need a pot of money by which to make those investments to be able to make sure that, you know, municipalities and counties and others have choices, uh, for a lot of these infrastructure projects, right?

And so a cap of a cap and invest program really helps to support that level of ambition within the state.

>> Okay.

Anything to add there, Suzanne?

>> I, you know, I have a lot of colleagues that have been closer to the cap and invest, uh, discussions than I have, but I think part of the idea with it in New York was also to set aside some money to help offset any increases in, in people in low and moderate income New Yorkers bills, um, energy bills.

So I think there's also, you know, the idea that we have to invest in, in, in our people as well.

>> Down the list further here, there's the passing the ASAP act.

Uh, jigger, you're right that this would raise state targets for DG solar distributed generation solar in New York, which you say is the most successful renewable sector in the state so far, while also supporting bill reductions for LMI households through the statewide solar for all program.

Explain a little more on this one.

>> So this gets tied to the grid flexibility work that we were talking about, right?

When you think about what happens in the state of New York, we have a tremendous number of distribution transformers that are over 50 years old.

Interestingly enough, those transformers don't go bad.

It's fine that they're 50 years old.

What happens is, is if five people buy an electric vehicle, then the utility says, I don't know, it may actually get a little dicey.

We're going to have to spend $50 million to upgrade that transformer right now.

Instead, what they could do is encourage people to put solar and battery storage in their homes, and then use those batteries to make sure that the peak load on the distribution circuit doesn't get so high as to require a new transformer.

And so what ends up happening is, is that each person is putting a solar and battery storage system in just to protect their families.

Right?

To reduce bills and to protect their families.

In the case of an outage.

But while the grid is working fine, which is 99% of the time, right, they could be helping their neighbors reduce their bills, right?

But that requires a level of coordination to be able to unlock that value.

So what we've done is we've proven that the rooftop solar folks are fantastic at convincing folks to put solar on their roof and battery storage in their garage.

But what we haven't proven is the coordination part with the utilities to then use those batteries to reduce bills for their neighbors.

And that's what that provision would do.

>> Okay, Suzanne, you want to elaborate there?

>> I'm going to let Marguerite jump in.

This is her bailiwick.

>> All right.

Marguerite.

>> You're up.

Yeah, I think I'd add that, um, that because utilities business model fundamentally as it stands here in New York today, incents them to want to make very large, expensive investments as the way they make their money.

They are not fundamentally that incentive to do what Jigar was just describing, which is do sophisticated coordination at the distribution and customer level.

How do we think about power on the neighborhood level and integrate it and plan it and balance it?

That's just not being done here in New York.

It is being done in other jurisdictions.

So it's certainly can be done.

And I think that's a huge opportunity to allow investment in the kind of equipment that is going to both help keep rates low and get to the grid of the future that we need, because a lot of our equipment is aging out.

That's part of what's expensive on our bills right now is replacing aging infrastructure that sometimes has to be replaced, but we want to replace it with 21st century equipment, not 20th century ideas.

>> Marguerite, who do you need to convince most to get on board with this one?

>> A lot of state leadership.

I think there's different agencies involved here, but I think it's it's a doable thing.

>> Okay.

>> Another another thing in terms of trying, I know, you know, you did a show recently on on, you know, people understand helping people understand their power bill.

And one of the things that Jigar and I wrote about in the article is, is, you know, we referenced how the electricity rates are set in New York and, um, the rank order pricing model means that the effectively are the wholesale electric prices are pegged to natural gas because whatever the price of that last most expensive asset that had to come online to produce the power at a given moment is what sets the price.

And that ends up being natural gas in New York.

Which is why even though Marguerite and all of her colleagues in solar and wind industry are putting really low cost electrons onto the grid, they're not the price setters.

So so, you know, I moved back to the Finger Lakes a 11 years ago.

And so, you know, 15 years ago in DC, my utility installed a smart thermostat in my apartment and they paid me 100 bucks a year to be able to turn my thermostat up or down a degree a couple times a year.

I never noticed it.

Um, and they did that with thousands of homes.

And that was essentially a virtual power plant.

And that meant they didn't have to turn that last super expensive peaker plant on.

And so we, you know, 15 years ago, they were saving us all money and saving pollution, uh, with innovations like that, that are, that, that are totally available.

Um, but with the utilities in New York just aren't doing it.

They certainly aren't doing it.

At least in, in, in my area.

>> Well, before we let you go, because I know he's got a cut off here.

Let me just ask briefly.

Jigar Shah number one on the list for what Governor Hochul could do even without the legislature, is appointing an energy czar.

And you said this is not cannot be a symbolic person.

It's got to be real world, real world experience who's sort of been there and done it and can really help direct some of this.

And I'm wondering if that person might be Jigar Shah.

>> Well, I'm not a New York State resident right now.

>> Okay.

>> I've been in the past and I served on the New York, uh, Nyserda board in the past.

And so I'm a big fan and lover of New York.

Look, I think the real question here is I think the governor has a lot on her plate.

And I think that a lot of the folks who work within the administration are busy doing lots of things, and this stuff can get complicated.

I'm not going to deny that.

That being said, it really affects people and the affordability of living in the state of New York.

When you think about 1.3 million households behind on, um, you know, their energy bills, that's a dignity issue.

People don't want to be behind on their energy bills.

They're not deadbeats or anything like that.

Right.

But like rates have gone up so fast.

And I don't think the governor understands why that is the case.

And so she relies on these kinds of experts to help her get that done.

And we have been missing that expert for a long time in New York State.

And so for Doreen, who I love to pieces, who runs Nyserda, she's running around trying to figure out how to build a new nuclear plant over here and how to save the offshore wind farms over here.

And like, and you know, Rory, I think is trying his best over at the New York Public Service Commission, but he has a lot of people at the Public Service Commission who are taking the side of the utilities and saying, we need to go extremely slow, right?

We need to go slower than Texas, slower than Georgia, slower than North Carolina.

You pick the red state.

We need to go slower than them.

And I think at this point, like we need real leadership to be able to say New York can and has done really big things in the past.

It cannot be mired in all of this, you know, just arguing back and forth between this faction and this faction.

We've got to put these 1.3 million households in our sights and say we have to deliver for them.

We have to figure out how to reduce bills for them.

>> Gigi, I know your time is up here.

Thank you for making time for the program today and let's talk again soon.

Let's see what the legislature does.

>> Of course.

Thank you for having me.

>> Jigar Shah is the co-managing partner of Multiplier.

And when we come back with Suzanne Hunt and Marguerite Wells, we're going to work through more of these proposals.

I've got a few emails I want to read from listeners.

We're talking about what our guests think.

New York State could do this year to start addressing the energy crisis more effectively.

That might, you know, as you heard, one of our guests say, um, ease some of the pressure upwards on prices and costs and might eventually bring costs down for a lot of people who are really struggling.

We'll come right back with them next.

I'm Evan Dawson Friday on the next Connections.

It is our Friday news roundup with the team from WXXI.

If you're wondering why you're not hearing as many birds singing, my colleague Jeremy Mull is looking into, it could have something to do with wildfires.

And we're going to talk about what we are learning there.

My colleague Mona Seghatoleslami joins us from classical 91 five.

It's the Friday Roundup.

Talk with you on Connections.

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>> This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson a couple of emails to read.

Tim writes in to say.

Evan, 1.3 million households are behind on their utility bills because their wages are too low.

It's the economy, stupid.

That's from Tim Suzanne Hunt.

What would you say to Tim?

>> I mean, I. I'm sure there's lots of different reasons, and I'm not going to wager a guess.

But I think the point the point is that, um, people have had bills that have doubled.

I mean, our little volunteer fire department is getting $900 a month electric bills.

And it there's not even anyone in it most of the time.

Um, so I just think the point with using that statistic in our article is that bills have gone up and there's a lot of folks that are struggling to pay them.

And there are a lot of things that we can do right now.

Um, and I, I don't think we should try to tackle every other wage and other issue right now.

I think Marguerite and I are best, best, our time is best used right now helping with the the energy piece.

>> Yeah, I think the bigger picture Marguerite Wells is not that Tim is wrong.

I mean, certainly people are struggling.

More people are out of work wages.

I take Tim's point there, but I think that ignores some of what you are arguing, which is that, you know, separate to that, energy prices are too high, in your view, for a reason.

And that that there is there are remedies out there as you see them.

Fair enough.

Marguerite.

>> Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

And I think one of the things that has had a lot of upward pressure on electric rates in the past year really has caused a doubling in just the electricity supply, not the overall bill, but the electricity itself, uh, is the price of natural gas, uh, because President Trump has made it a policy to start exporting more natural gas.

That means that the price goes up because it's all about supply and demand.

And so with, um, if you look at the difference in average electricity price last year, it was about $35.

Now it's $75.

That's driven entirely by the natural gas price.

And so to the degree to which we can get off natural gas and depend on it less, the the less volatile our pricing will be.

And, you know, over 90% of the new electrons that were brought on the grid in 2025 across the whole United States was renewable energy, wind and solar.

And that is not subject to export laws.

It is not subject to wars overseas.

And that's the best way to bring stability to our electricity pricing.

The places that have the most amount of renewable energy on their grids have the most stable and often the lowest electricity prices.

If you look at Texas, if you look at North and South Dakota, Iowa, they have huge percentages of renewable energy on their grid, and they are less subject to the price of natural gas.

As a result.

>> MM.

Uh, before we get back to the proposed solutions here, um, Francis and Webster writes in and Suzanne, Marguerite, are you familiar with the Fort Edward solar farm?

Is that something that is on your radar?

>> Yes.

I'm familiar.

>> Okay.

So Francis wants you to address.

She says, please ask your guest to address the total overreach of o r e s the Office of Renewable Energy.

Siting and Electric Transmission.

Regarding Fort Edward's solar farm, specifically, um, Marguerite, do you want to hit that one?

>> Sure.

So I would raise for the listeners that permitting of all large energy facilities, whether it's renewable or it's fossil fuels, has been permitted by the state of New York for 40 years or more.

Um, before ours existed, there was something called article ten.

It was a very analogous set of regulations, uh, in terms of the state running the process.

So I would want to highlight that ours is not doing anything new here at Fort Edward or anywhere else.

I think the other thing to know, the reason the state manages the permitting for all large energy facilities is to ensure rigor in the process and to ensure fairness, so that any project that meets good technical, uh, details to the project can move forward.

Whether or not there is, you know, political swirl around it or not.

If it's a technically good project that's well sited and it's mitigating its environmental impacts, then it should move forward.

And I think one of the challenges with Fort Edward is that there's a lot of confusion around the impact that that project would have to grassland birds.

And I think there was a very interesting hearing a couple of weeks ago on that subject, in which the agency staff, including DC staff, really teased that out.

So I think that shows the rigor that was used in that process.

>> All right.

I hope that answers that question in a moment.

I'm going to ask Suzanne Hunt to kind of get back to the article.

And again, we're not going to hit every single proposal.

There's a lot.

We're going to post the article in our show notes for listeners to find it and share it if you want.

Um, but Suzanne will, can, can choose a few more points here for us to really zero in on as possible solutions.

But let me just get one more email in, uh, Willa writes in as a former school board member in Rochester, she says, I'm in favor of increasing renewable energy.

But if there's one area I think the state was misguided in, it was mandating electric school busses.

Easy enough, though expensive for urban areas, but not so much in rural areas.

Suzanne Hunt in a rural area.

Do you agree or disagree with Willa here?

>> I am not an expert on electric school busses.

I know that, uh, the I think there is quite a bit of misinformation out there at the moment.

I know that the performance of the Tesla semi truck, the 18 Wheeler, uh, actually, I don't know how many wheels they have, but you know, the Tesla Semi, um, all electric is going 500 miles on a, on a charge.

Um, you know, a big vehicle like that does need, um, a certain amount of charging infrastructure.

Um, and, and grid capacity.

Um, so that could be what the, the caller is, is referencing, um, you know, anytime you switch systems or technologies that there are investments and changes that have to be made.

Um, I mean, we've heard this throughout history.

The incumbents always want to keep their business.

So they put information out saying how bad the new technology is.

And then eventually, once it's adopted, everyone wonders why it didn't come sooner.

So, you know, I, I think, um, there's probably, uh, a whole show to be done on this with folks that work on this all day, every day.

So we can, um, really dig into this because I think, um, you know, I know for a fact that the, it, it that at least according to the EPA, um, the biggest threat to your child's health during its day is the fumes from the diesel bus on their way to school.

Um, the biggest health threat, um, for a long time at least was, was the diesel exhaust.

So I do think that there's real merit to getting kids into cleaner vehicles.

And we should probably just do a show on, on, on what's needed.

>> Yeah, I think that is a separate conversation.

I appreciate that, Willa.

So, Susanne, back to your article here.

Um, again, two categories.

One, what the governor could do without the legislature and two, what has to happen legislatively?

What haven't we hit that you think we that you want the audience to hear?

>> Um, well, you know, since, since I, uh, am representing Generate Upcycle, the largest food waste recycling company in North America at the moment, I should probably touch on that.

That piece Jigar Shah touched on it a bit, but, um, the world Bank just put out a report just, just this past week, um, kind of reiterating that nearly 40% of garbage worldwide is food.

Um, and, you know, I've learned a lot about food waste working with, with this, uh, this team at upcycle.

You know, I think of it as, you know, my banana peel and, and coffee grinds and, um, pits and seeds and things going into my little bucket to go out to the compost.

But, um, at a society level, at a state level, a lot of that food waste is, uh, industrial and commercial food waste.

Uh, it's things like, uh, expired yogurt or off spec, something that has to be destroyed or, um, oftentimes, you know, free power will go out, freezers will go down, and then all the food has to be destroyed.

So, um, you know, just one of our facilities, uh, can recycle 225 000 tons of food waste a year and, um, capture that all the energy in that food and turn it back either into heat power or green molecules.

Um, and so one of the recommendations that we made is that, um, New York State actually invest in enforcement, um, of the food waste diversion law that we passed in 2019.

Um, it's a great law just hasn't been enforced.

So the same amount of food waste is still going to landfills and there's lots of fights going on over landfills right now and expanding whether we should expand landfills.

And when you think about, you know, a huge portion of the material is food waste that could actually be recycled.

Um, it's an important solution.

Um, also, uh, another recommendation we made was to, for the legislature to pass, uh, renewable natural gas blending bill.

Um, so these facilities that take waste is destined for landfill.

Uh, and recycle it, recapture the nutrients, recapture the energy.

One of the things that can be made is basically a renewable version of, of the natural gas that's in the pipeline.

So you displace that fracked gas with the renewable gas.

Um, not all of it, but you can, but there's an important contribution there.

Um, and that's just, you know, one of the tools in the toolkit that, um, the utilities actually are eager to start using.

So, um, at least there isn't a fight there.

>> Well, then who's to fight with on this?

I mean, anything that hasn't passed, I'm wondering what is standing in its way.

>> I mean, honestly, there's a lot of misinformation.

I think folks, um, there's a lot of confusion about renewable gas versus fossil gas.

There's, there's concern that if you put, uh, resources into a renewable gas, you're going to delay electrification.

Um, that's something I've heard quite a bit.

Um, unfortunately, you know, we have just an absolutely massive appetite for energy.

We have manufacturing, we have the, we have, um, all kinds of high heat applications where there isn't an immediate electrification.

Um, solution.

Um, and also we're in the middle of an energy transition.

It's not an, it's not an energy switch.

So we still need molecules for the foreseeable future.

And if we can make them, um, by, by taking like diverting waste away from landfills, um, where it would break down and leak methane into the atmosphere, which is a super climate, super pollutant.

Um, it's a win-win to turn it into green molecules.

So, um, there's just, I think there's a lot of confusion.

There's also, um, you know, I'm not going to list all of the different concerns, but different folks have different concerns.

>> Good faith concerns.

>> This is an example where, um, where the perfect is the enemy of the good in that there are those who think that we should be doing away altogether with all methane products and just stop using pipelines.

And so that means that that precludes the use of things like biomethane, even if it would be a good thing to be harvesting it from our waste stream and not having it leak out of landfills.

Um, but I think Suzanne's point is a good one that in this transition, there is room for a lot of different options.

>> Well, Marguerite, I'll start with you.

I'll ask both of you to respond to Alex's email.

He says, um, great discussion.

Take the profit incentive away from all parts of energy.

Utility should be publicly owned.

Are your guests advocating that on their lists?

Uh, Marguerite.

Alex says utilities publicly owned.

Yes or no?

>> No, I don't think that solves anything.

Um, I think there is so much investment that needs to be done across the energy sector that there is no one pot of money that is big enough to fund all the work that has to be done.

So we can't just say, oh, well, the government or whatever state owned agency needs to do X, Y, and Z, they couldn't possibly afford it, and neither can the private sector alone.

It takes all entities working together to be able to leverage enough capital to get this done.

And I think removing the profit motive fundamentally removes the motive to actually get things built.

I think part of the challenge in New York is that trying to preclude a profit motive has been part of what has slowed projects down.

Saying, no, that's too much money.

You can't do this.

You can't do that.

So they don't get done.

>> Margaret, why do you think a public utility, especially here in Rochester, for example, is is such a big focus of where the activist class has put some of their energy recently?

>> Well, I think there's a hope that it would do better for its constituents.

And I think that that's a good, um, a good motivation.

I'm just not sure it's actually going to serve the goal that the folks have set out for it.

Um, because it doesn't necessarily reduce rates or increase reliability.

So it would mean that the profit margin that a, that a private utility company would get is, is lower and any profits that are, that are earned are returned to the owners of this municipal power entity.

And that's done in many places.

Um, but it doesn't necessarily lead to that big a difference.

>> Okay.

Suzanne, anything to add there?

>> I would just say it at a high level, the ideal that we're that we should be aiming for just generally is for the government to set the guidelines to say, you know, our job is to represent this, you know, the needs of society, the needs of New Yorkers.

Um, and, and set the guidelines like learn the lessons learned.

There have been publicly owned utilities tried in different places.

There have been lessons learned from those experiences, both positive and negative.

Um, and so ideally, we want the government to set the guardrails to set the parameters that allow the private sector that use the tech sellers very, very efficiently.

And, and, you know, keep people's tax bills down.

Um, but unlock the private sector investment and, and all the innovation and entrepreneurial spirit that is, you know, one of the, uh, signatures of, of America and we have a very entrepreneurial society, we have very innovative society.

You know, I've been hearing my, my friends in Europe complain about how they don't have the same, you know, innovation ecosystem that we have over here.

Um, and so I think that the problem and what a lot of the activists are focused on is like the excess profit, the, the greed, the, um, you know, the over the top profit motive.

And that's again, where government policy needs to come in and, and make sure that things are not getting out of balance and out of whack and, um, you didn't ask about it, but campaign finance reform would certainly solve a bunch of, of problems in terms of just actually getting competent people in there who don't have debts of their own, um, to pay and can just write the best possible policies.

>> Okay.

>> Another thing I'd add to that with respect to the profit margin, profit motive element is that there is a significant difference in my mind between private companies who are unregulated and earn whatever they can and lose if they lose, versus a regulated utility with a guaranteed rate of return.

That's hugely different because the guaranteed rate of return means that the utility can do whatever it wants effectively, and it knows that it's going to make its 10% profit, no matter what a private company like the one Suzanne runs and the one I used to run.

If you make if you make a bad decision and you take a loss, that's on you and your investors and it's not on the public.

And so, for example, in, in Long Island, there's Lipa that's a publicly owned utility.

There's 30 some years ago, they built a nuclear plant that never turned on the utility customers on Long Island are still paying for a nuclear plant that never ran for a single day.

And so being a public utility didn't mean it got a good, good decision for its ratepayers.

And that's not unique.

I mean, I was just hearing yesterday about a about a municipally owned co-op in Colorado that owns a coal plant, which now can't be shut down because the government has told it.

It has to run.

And the thing is, the most expensive plant in the state, they want to shut it.

They can't shut it.

That's a risk.

That dollar is put on those local ratepayers.

Yeah.

>> I also think that's a really, really good, important point, Marguerite.

And I also think that there's very valid concerns that the activists and citizens are raising about the fact that all of our public, our investor owned utilities in New York State are majority foreign owned.

And so I think folks also have concerns about security, but also concerns about, you know, our dollars, you know, staying here.

>> Well, uh, let me get some more feedback here.

Alice in Rochester on the phone next.

Hey, Alice, go ahead.

>> Hi.

Sounds like I'm chiming in.

I'm one of the local activists and wanted to just make the point that our G and E is different from a lot of the smaller, more local, uh, entrepreneurs whom I think we would all say, hey, that's great.

It's the large multinational corporations that are doing the things that we talked about earlier in this, in this segment, uh, about, uh, making changes that keep the prices high, but keep the profit high for the multinational corporation, things like ignoring all of the, um, the virtual power, you know, the virtual, which we call it power centers, power plants using batteries.

Yes.

I think that's enough.

>> Okay.

Uh, Suzanne.

Marguerite, you want to respond to that?

>> Well, I think, you know, we've talked about some of this and some of the ideas we've put in the article.

We, you know, we couldn't cover everything.

And, and part of why we wrote this article right now was because the budget fight is going on in Albany right now, and they're looking, you know, because as Diego was mentioning, New York is behind on its its climate targets and because the governor, the governor's administration was, was sued by um, a group of environmental and environmental justice groups.

She now feels that she has to, uh, roll back some of the climate targets or I can't speak for the governor, but my understanding is that that her, her team feel that they need to, to roll them back.

And so that's causing a lot of folks to get very right, you know, understandably upset.

Um, and so we were trying to come in with recommendations focused on this moment where there's a budget fight.

Um, you know, and if is Marguerite kind of alluded to, if it doesn't get done in the budget, in negotiations, you don't have a very good chance of getting your law passed for, you know, who knows how long, maybe till the next year's budget fight.

Um, and so we were putting, we were trying to say, here are things that can be done now to help with, like getting us back on track to meet our renewable energy and climate targets and, and acknowledging and addressing the fact that energy prices are going up.

And, and we, we haven't even mentioned Iran yet, you know, the electricity bills were going way up and people were getting shocked by their bills before the Trump administration in in Netanyahu started a war in Iran.

And, and resulting in, in oil prices going way up and diesel and gasoline prices going up.

So I think, you know, we did not weigh in on who owns the utility, but what we weighed in on is, is pushing the Public Service Commission to to push the, you know, basically require the utilities to enable virtual power plants.

So your bills go down to enable, um, all of these different, you know, enhanced grid technologies and grid utilization strategies.

Um, and to the first commenters question, you know, it, it also helps with some of the, the fairness issues because, you know, if you know, Marguerite and I are, are doing well and Evan, you're doing well and, and one of a couple of our neighbors are, are, you know, working low paid jobs.

We can put batteries in our houses that the power plant can leverage to keep our neighbors bills down.

So, you know, and it's our money.

It's not being rate based.

Like anytime the utility puts in infrastructure, they charge us for it like that, that power plant in Long Island that never got built.

We, we all get charged for it.

Meanwhile, all of these, these strategies that enable more distributed technologies, it's my own money.

And I decided to put a battery in my house, but now everybody else gets to benefit from it.

And you didn't have they didn't have to pay for it.

So there's also like more of a shared benefit based on, you know, people's, you know, personal decisions to invest in their own, their own properties.

>> All right.

>> Back to you.

I would.

>> Go ahead.

>> Marguerite.

>> Yep.

Go ahead.

>> That I think Alice puts her finger on something interesting that if if there were a municipally owned co-op that ran the grid in whatever region, that that would give the local accountability for people to say, hey, we want VPP and we want these other technologies.

And you as the local community are Muni are responsible to us, your owners, to do these good things.

So it might help with the enactment of these things.

A different way to do it is what Susan just described, where the Commission has to rule on all the utilities have to do.

Um, there are two different ways to the same end.

>> Alice, thanks for the phone call.

Fred in Brighton.

Got to keep it tight.

Go ahead.

Fred.

>> Yes.

Thanks for taking my call.

I'm late to the conversation.

I'll try to keep it brief.

Um, with regards to, uh, municipally owned utilities, uh, did you Google Central Maine Power, which is affiliated with R&D and either there was a community effort to, uh, convert that to a municipal, uh, operation.

Uh, the amount of money that utilities spent on an ad campaign to beat back that effort, uh, is, would be you'll find it staggering.

It was in excess of $1 million.

Um, and I, I have read about this before.

I am an ex contractor for r g there's, I think quite a bit that the, uh, public at large really doesn't know what's going on.

And, um, I think part of the problem also is that you're dealing with a multinational corporation.

So, uh, that's just my two cents.

>> Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Fred.

And, um, just briefly, Marguerite, maybe one way to kind of put a bow on this is, I mean, I hear what Fred is saying.

I hear Alice, um, Alex's email, I mean, there's a lot.

And if if the opposition to the proposals that we've been talking about comes from both the political right for its own reasons and also the political left, that sort of has an aversion to any profit motive at all.

Then there's probably going to be kind of this intractability that will continue.

And I wonder if you think, Marguerite, you can build bridges with people who are suspicious of of the profit motive or, or just entrepreneurs in general, because there's a, it's not a monolith.

I mean, I say that as a journalist who's talked to a lot of different people in a lot of different spaces and, um, it's a diverse group of people with a diverse group of ideas, but it'll shut down if that suspicion sort of throws gum in the works there.

Marguerite.

>> I think that's right.

And I think fundamentally the challenge before us is how do we have both government that's responsive to people's concerns and to make genuine progress on controlling people's electric bills?

I think one of the unpleasant realities is that there's no making our bills go down.

Like actually slow down anytime soon.

The costs that are built into them are things that are not easily changed.

I think the thing before us is to prevent them from going up more steeply, and to control that rise, and that's the best we can do.

And that's not a politically palatable message, but I think it's the truth of the matter.

>> Yeah.

Last minute or so.

Suzanne Hunt on that point, you mentioned the war in Iran, which we did not talk about much.

I wonder if, you know, jigger mentioned this idea that there's analysis paralysis.

There's a lot of well-intentioned people that he sees in the legislature, but there's a ton of ideas and it could get easy to get stuck.

Do you think the war in Iran and the worldwide energy crisis is going to create urgency that will sort of maybe clear things up a little bit for for people in charge?

>> Oh, I mean, I certainly hope so.

I think, you know, what we've seen is, is, uh, there's a lot of flurry of activity whenever there's a price spike like this.

And whenever folks are reminded of how there are very significant energy security, uh, chokepoints, um, in the fossil fuel supply chains.

Um, but then it's out of when it's, as soon as the crisis has passed, people kind of go back to, to, um, status quo.

So I think, again, like we have a moment right now and we really need to, to, um, do everything we can to make sure Albany doesn't fail in this moment.

And I think, um, there's an opportunity to, um, help keep costs under control and get back on track to meet our climate targets and, and, and unlock a lot more investment in New York.

I think, you know, companies like mine and others would invest a lot more in New York if we could get some of the policies and regs.

Uh, improved.

>> Well, we're going to post the piece that Suzanne wrote coauthored with Jigar Shah, who joined us earlier this hour, and that will be in our show notes section.

If listeners want to see that.

Suzanne Hunt Vice President of policy at Generate Upcycle, thanks for being on the program.

>> Talk to you soon.

>> Thank you.

>> Evan Marguerite Wells, executive director of the Alliance for Clean Energy New York.

Come back sometime.

Marguerite, thanks for being here.

>> Delighted to be here.

Thanks, Evan.

>> All right.

Thanks, everyone.

We'll talk to you tomorrow.

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