Podcasts about arpa e

Welcome to The Zenergy Podcast. Today, host Karan Takhar sits down with Jon Glass, Senior Technology-to-Market Advisor at the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy or ARPA-E. They discuss his role at ARPA-E and how the opportunity to work there came about as well as what inspired him to do this kind of work. Jon shares an overview of ARPA-E's process, how companies or academics can get involved, and how much weight ARPA-E puts on which early-stage companies have the most potential to bridge the gap from bold research to commercialization. They go on to discuss how ARPA-E brings in private sector advisors, like Jon, to help companies get to commercialization, and Jon shares several surprising and unconventional innovations he and his co-workers have supported over the years. Karan and Jon talk about the convergence of AI and the climate tech space, the hard lessons Jon's learned in his career, and Jon gives advice to young investors looking to engage in this sector. If you haven't subscribed to the podcast yet, be sure to do so, and follow us on all the socials. New episodes go out every Thursday. Listen to The Zenergy Podcast:    Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5HEZXoEfuDa548Ty81gBWN     Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-zenergy-podcast-climate-leadership-finance/id1556215421 Follow The Zenergy Podcast on all the socials:   X (Twitter): @TakharK2    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Znrg.org    Instagram: @zen_rgy    LinkedIn: ZNRG    YouTube: ZNRG – The ZENERGY Podcast Connect with Jon: https://liftoff.energy.gov/  Timestamps: 0:00 - Intro  2:00 - Welcome 3:15 - What is ARPA-E? 5:15 - How Jon started working with ARPA-E 8:30 - Jon's experience in working with early-stage clean-tech companies 12:30 - Details about ARPA-E's funding opportunities 18:00 - The process of reaching out to ARPA-E for funding  19:50 - Anyone can make a proposal for funding 26:10 - Qualities of companies that have a lot of potential 32:30 - ARPA-E program directors 34:23 - ARPA-E tech-to-market team  37:00 - Bowtie model  42:08 - Pathways to commercial liftoff 43:50 - ARPA-E employees' private sector experience, and why they switch to public service 46:30 - Unconventional innovations - geologic hydrogen, powerline undergrounding, applying quantum computing to energy 53:15 - Convergence of AI and climate tech 57:20 - Advice to young investors  1:01:13 - Have a “connector” mindset 01:04:35 - Red flags in early companies that young investors should be mindful of 01:07:15 - Lessons learned

This month we're joined by Ilan Gur, CEO of the UK's Advanced Research and Invention Agency (or ARIA), a government body set up last year to fund ambitious, breakthrough innovations.Before joining Aria, Gur was a programme director at ARPA-E, the US government's Advanced Research Projects Agency, which was established to develop new cutting-edge technologies to generate, store and use energy. He's also been a founder — starting two companies in Silicon ValleyWe discuss what technologies he's most excited about today, covering topics from neuroscience to “programmable plants” to fight climate change.

Liminal uses ultrasound and machine learning to create a new way to inspect battery manufacturing, elevate cell quality, and improve cost and safety. They've raised over $35M from investors such as our friends at ArcTern Ventures, EIF, and Northvolt, as well as the federal government, including ARPA-E and NSF. Andrew brings a PhD and post-doc work at Princeton University to the creation of this venture. He's also an Active Fellow and Board member, as well as a skilled photographer. In this episode, you'll learn these four important takeaways and much more. How they sell to customers (it's not what you think) How they generate revenue from three sources of value How a random Youtube video about bouncing batteries led to the creation of this technology How he reads the late-night scribbles on the notepad by his bed each morning

The Department of Energy's ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy) is an agency tasked with the research and development of advanced energy technologies. Since 2009, they've provided nearly US$4 billion in funding for more than 1500 potentially transformative energy technology projects. One particular area of focus for them at the moment is advanced nuclear. There's a lot of potential for nuclear to deliver reliable power to millions of American homes, but projects are still finding costs prohibitive. Could advancements in technology be the thing to change this? Jenifer Shafer is Associate Director for Technology at ARPA-E, and she joins David to discuss initiatives in her department, and the focus on reducing imports, reducing emissions, improving efficiency, and enhancing American competitiveness in clean energy manufacturing. What are the priorities for nuclear? Is it advancements in technology, getting costs down, or removing regulatory barriers to deployment? To analyse the current state of the sector, Jenifer and David are joined by David Brown, Director of Energy Transition Practice at Wood Mackenzie, for the second half of the show. Together they explore the impact of the Biden administration's US$900 million support for nuclear small modular reactors, and the government's role in sponsoring new supply sources for uranium. To keep up to date with everything we talk about on the show, sign up for the newsletter. You'll get extra analysis from Wood Mackenzie and be notified when a new episode of the podcast is out. https://www.woodmac.com/nslp/the-inside-track/sign-up/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode, we take you on an exciting journey to the ARPA-E Innovation Summit in Dallas, Texas. ARPA-E is a division of the government's advanced research and projects agency, tasked with finding and funding the latest and greatest technology innovations to transform America's energy production and use. Join Molly Wood on a walking tour of the summit's expo hall, where she dives into the world of electric airplanes, laser-manufactured steel, and innovative solutions for the oil and gas industry.Links:ARPA-E Summit: https://www.arpae-summit.com/All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Subscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member and get an ad-free version of the podcast: https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-poolPlease subscribe and tell your friends about Everybody in the Pool! Send feedback or become a sponsor! in@everybodyinthepool.com To support the show and get an ad-free listening experience, please jump in and become a member of Everybody in the Pool! https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Pour a mint julep and join us on DrinksWithAVC as we dive into the dynamic world of Leshika Samarasinghe, founder and GP at Twine Ventures. In this episode, Leshika recounts her beginnings at Google, where she was instrumental in developing core platforms like mobile search and Blogger. She also shares insights from her time at ARPA-E, where under President Obama's administration, she worked on pioneering energy projects. Now at Twine Ventures, she's dedicated to investing in startups that leverage AI, data, and software to revolutionize healthcare, climate tech, and financial services.Be sure to listen/watch until the very end as Leshika does not hold back in our Fidelity Five Questions segment, sharing answers that are as refreshing as her drink of choice!Links:www.twineventures.comwww.dwavc.comwww.fidelity.comwww.ravixgroup.comwww.greencow.vc

What role should Nuclear Power play in energy production? This episode of the podcast explores the case for Nuclear Energy. I speak with Rachel Slaybaugh, who was an Associate Professor of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Division Director at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She also served as a Program Director at the Department of Energy's ARPA‑E, where she created the nuclear fission program. She is currently a partner at DCVC. We discuss three of the main problems that people have with nuclear power: (i) The risk of plant meltdowns, (ii) the storage of nuclear waste, and (iii) the expense of setting up new nuclear plants. We also cover the environmental benefits of nuclear as a low carbon energy source, as well as some of the exciting new advanced reactor designs that are coming online right now. ►Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/BIMj1-GAE4E ►You can find out more about Rachel Here: https://www.dcvc.com/team/rachel-slaybaugh/ ►Follow rachel on twitter: @RachelSlaybaugh These conversations are supported by the Andrea von Braun foundation (http://www.avbstiftung.de/), as an exploration of the rich, exciting, connected, scientifically literate, and (most importantly) sustainable future of humanity. The views expressed in these episodes are my own and those of my guests.  

The Department of Energy's 17 national laboratories conduct research and development on some of the world's most vexing challenges—from climate change to the origins of the universe.  Most recently, six labs have turned their attention to speeding cleanup of underground tank waste at DOE's Hanford site in Washington State. The labs are using $27 million in DOE funding to research everything from tank integrity and the impact of corrosion to robotic handling of tank waste.  Estimates show this and other work could save $150 billion in cleanup costs and shave up to two decades off a 60-year timeline. This week, Gone Fission host Michael Butler talks with Connie Herman, Associate Director, Savannah River National Laboratory, and Delmar Noyes, DOE Tank Farms Manager at Hanford.NOTE: The work Network of National Laboratories for Environmental Management and Stewardship (NNLEMS) performs is overseen by the EM Laboratory Policy Office with the support of the EM Technology Operations Office, Hanford Site Office as well as the Office of Science, and ARPA-E.”Visit the Gone Fission Nuclear Report channel on youtube.com for a videocast of episodes since November 7, 2022.

Episode 14 of the "Aerospace Ambition Podcast" featuring Dr Peter De Bock from the ARPA-E is out!Talking Points• How did Peter learn to tackle moonshots projects?• What is the ARPA model, and how is it similar to a hackathon?• Why is PRE-TRAILS a moonshot program?• What motivated Peter to pitch the PRE-TRAILS program to his leadership?• What are the technical and economic hypotheses?• How does PRE-TRAILS combine better sensors, observation mechanism and advanced models for better contrail prediction?GuestDr. Peter de Bock is a distinguished expert in electronics thermal management and aviation propulsion systems, currently directing programs at the ARPA-E. With a rich background that includes 18 years at GE Research as a Principal Engineer and numerous leadership roles in power and thermal management, Peter has been at the forefront of advancing electrification in aviation. He's an innovator with around 40 patents, chairs the K-16 committee on Heat Transfer in Electronics of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and boasts an impressive academic journey from the Netherlands to the University of Cincinnati.ResourcesARPA-E PRE-TRAILS Projects: https://arpa-e.energy.gov/technologies/exploratory-topics/aviation-contrailsARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit: https://www.arpae-summit.com/ AAMBITION Newsletterhttps://mailchi.mp/55033eb444bd/aambition-n

March 20, 2024 Fusion News Dr. Leigh Ann Kesler, engineer and fusion consultant specializing in science communication, gives an update on the global development of fusion energy. Links to all the stories mentioned are given below. 1. Inverting Fusion Plasmas Improves Performance https://phys.org/news/2024-03-inverting-fusion-plasmas.html 2. Tests show high-temperature superconducting magnets are ready for fusion https://news.mit.edu/2024/tests-show-high-temperature-superconducting-magnets-fusion-ready-0304 3. First Light Fusion hails success of initial test in Z Machine https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/First-Light-Fusion-hails-success-of-initial-test-i#:~:text=The%20UK's%20First%20Light%20Fusion,new%20pressure%20record%20for%20quartz. 4. Japan laser fusion startup seeks more partners https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/Interview/Japan-laser-fusion-startup-seeks-more-partners 5. Longview Fusion selects Fluor to design laser fusion plant https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newslongview-fusion-selects-fluor-to-design-laser-fusion-plant-11594517 Bonuses: Fusion Focus at Congressional Hearing on “ARPA-E's role in Developing Breakthrough Technologies” https://www.fusionindustryassociation.org/fusion-focus-at-congressional-hearing-on-arpa-es-role-in-developing-breakthrough-technologies/ New European Union Report Outlines New European Public-Private Partnerships for Fusion Energy https://www.fusionindustryassociation.org/new-european-union-report-outlines-new-european-public-private-partnerships-for-fusion-energy/ Congress Increases U.S. Funding for Fusion Energy Sciences Research https://www.fusionindustryassociation.org/congress-increases-u-s-funding-for-fusion-energy-sciences-research/

Welcome to Episode 9 of the “Aerospace Ambition Podcast,” featuring the one and only Prof. Steven Barrett (MIT). Join us for a riveting dialogue that promises to enlighten!Talking Points• Are we talking about contrail management too much?• How is ARPA-E with the PreTrails program related to Star Trek?• What has Steven's umbrella to do with predicting ISSRs?• What are the 3 biggest problems in running contrail management at scale?• Are we running the risk that false positives deviate flights into ISSRs hence creating a double negative effect?• Is the concept of “big hitters” helpful in preventing contrail cirrus warming?GuestSteven holds the prestigious H. N. Slater Professorship of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Leading the Aeronautics and Astronautics Department and directing the MIT Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment, he focuses on advancing the aviation field towards zero environmental impact. His areas of research include developing low emission propulsion technologies, contrail avoidance strategies, and assessing the sustainability of SAFs.Links• Steven: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenrhbarrett/• Marius: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariuswedemeyer/• Kieran: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kieran-t-7b9952102/• AAMBITION Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/55033eb444bd/aambition-newsletter

The DOD, DOE national laboratories, ARPA-E, and NASA are collaborating to reduce the cost, volume and weight of batteries while simultaneously improving battery performance (power, energy, durability) and resilience to abuse conditions and extreme temperatures. In addition to the current federal emphasis placed on battery and energy storage technology, the state of Georgia is positioned to become a regional and national leader in renewable energy technology. Manufacturing of electric vehicles and EV components is accelerating, especially in the Southeast. Tesla, Kia, Volkswagen, and Apple are just a few of the many companies contributing to the Governor's Office push to establish Georgia as the technology innovation hub of the Eastern US. All-Solid-State Batteries (ASSBs) have gained great attention due to their inherent safety advantages over conventional lithium (Li)-ion batteries, which use flammable liquid electrolytes and are vulnerable to Li dendrite growth when paired with Li metal anode. The focus of this research into is two-fold: from the bottom up, the fabrication of high-performance cells, and from the top down, a parametric model to envision insertion of this research into a feasible future circular economy.

Believe it or not, steam is still a big deal in industries. It stands for 8% of the global primary energy use, generating over 2 gigatonnes of greenhouse emissions per year. Facing that scenario, innovators like Addison Stark see this as an opportunity and need for change and emerge as sustainability champions.   Addison's journey fuels his passion for the decarbonizing industry, from spearheading energy innovation at the Bipartisan Policy Center to pioneering technology development at ARPA-E. In this episode, He unveils the transformative power of Boiler 2.0 — a pioneering steam generation tool harnessing air heat, boasting unmatched efficiency and zero carbon emissions.   He also speaks about founding his company, AtmosZero, aiming to redefine the traditional boiler room for a decarbonized future, and how the electrified Boiler 2.0, with its versatile applicability across industries and built environments, stands as a beacon of sustainable innovation in the steam-centric world.   Addison uncovers the mechanics behind the technology, from extracting heat from the air to converting it into heating energy, and how it presents a cost-effective, scalable solution, delivering consistent carbon-neutral steam at temperatures surpassing 200°C.   AtmosZero's Boiler 2.0 integrates seamlessly, accommodating variable, intermittent, or constant streams, enhancing plant efficiency and paving the way toward a sustainable, zero-carbon industry landscape.   Follow us on Instagram: @someonelikeyoupodcast. 

“The theme across all of this, this clean energy transition, it is private sector led, but government enabled. So, we as a government are trying to enable the private sector to move faster so we can meet our very ambitious goal, which includes a 50% reduction from 2005 levels of greenhouse gas pollution by 2030… There's a lot of clean energy technologies that are underpinning all of this and, includes things like, clean hydrogen, advanced nuclear, virtual power plants, carbon capture and sequestration and so forth.”  Vanessa Chan on Electric Ladies Podcast While leaders across countries and sectors meet in Dubai this week for the UN climate conference known as COP28, engineers, scientists and business leaders across the country are transforming our energy system to be zero carbon emissions. They are powered in part by the billions of dollars in federal funding and incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act, the Infrastructure Investment Act and the CHIPS & Science Act. Where's that money going? Listen to Vanessa Chan, Ph.D., Chief Commercialization Officer and Director of the Office of Technology Transfer at the U.S. Dept. of Energy, explain it in this fascinating discussion with Electric Ladies host Joan Michelson.  You'll hear about: The cool technologies transforming our energy system – and how innovating it works How they are spending the billions in the Inflation Reduction Act, the Infrastructure Investment Act and the CHIPS and Science Act How you can track their investments and progress What it means for how you power your home, business or school Plus, insightful career advice, including what she learned by working in distinctly different jobs – corporate, academia, as an entrepreneur, and now in government: “Always live below your means. I cannot say that enough. You know, my late husband and I, we, shared a house where the four of us, including two kids, shared a bathroom. And this was when I was a McKinsey partner, and he was in a senior executive…which meant that we could bank all our money, which gave us huge financial flexibility going forward, which means you can take more risks, right?... I think second is, really be willing to follow a north star that matters to you and no one else. And so, my North Star has always been, am I interested in what am I doing and am I learning?” Vanessa Chan on Electric Ladies Podcast Read Joan's Forbes articles here too. You'll also like: Melissa Lott, Ph.D., Director of Research at the Center on Global Energy Policy, Columbia University – on what it will take to get to carbon zero. Lauren Salz, CEO & Cofounder, Sealed, heat pumps company  - on how heat pumps work, and how you can leverage the new federal funding to get one inexpensively. Halla Hrund Logadottir, Director-General, Iceland's National Energy Authority, on how the country has become 85% renewable energy. Meredyth Crichton, Ph.D., Clemson University Energy Innovation Unit  - on wind power Jennifer Gerbi, Ph.D., Deputy Director and Acting Director, ARPA-E, the innovation arm of the Department of Energy Subscribe to our newsletter to receive our podcasts, blog, events and special coaching offers.. Thanks for subscribing on Apple Podcasts or iHeartRadio and leaving us a review! Follow us on Twitter @joanmichelson

What technologies can get us to net-zero steel? Dr. Christina Chang knows this space as well as anyone in venture capital. She's a PhD chemist and inventor in fields from solar PV to advanced manufacturing, a former steel startup CEO, and now a partner at Lowercarbon Capital. Join us to learn: -- Which technologies can help cut steel emissions -- and why near-commercial options like CCUS and hydrogen can't get us to net-zero -- How modularity can help electrochemical iron-making drive down the green premium -- What the Inflation Reduction Act means (and doesn't mean!) for green steel production costs Christina's full background: A chemist, climate tech founder and CEO, Dr. Christina Chang has invented technologies across nanomaterials, catalysis for mining waste remediation, thin-film solar panels, solar water-splitting for H2 production, and sustainable steel. She is a Partner at Lowercarbon Capital, the multi-billion dollar VC firm backing kickass companies that fix the planet profitably. Previously, Dr. Chang led federal funding for sustainable manufacturing research ARPA-E, including steel, chemicals, cement, rare earths, and carbon-negative building materials. Dr. Chang earned her PhD in Physical Chemistry from Harvard. On the Marshall Scholarship, Dr. Chang earned an MSc in Sustainable Energy Futures from Imperial College London and an MPhil in Chemistry from the University of Cambridge. She graduated summa cum laude from Princeton with a Bachelor's in Chemistry, with Certificates in Engineering Biology, Applications of Computing, and Materials Science and Engineering. She is a United States Presidential Scholar, a Goldwater Scholar, a Draper Laboratory Fellow, and an alumna of the Research Science Institute.

“People who have been to space really do speak about it with great reverence. And it is for that reason that we want to take people to space in our car. Neutral zero emission spaceship, spaceship vacuum, which as you saw is not a rocket. Enormous balloons. It's a very gentle flight. We want to take leaders to space. We want to take artists to space. We want to have teachers go to space.” Jane Poynter at Earth Day Network's Climate Leadership Gala As Virgin Galactic takes another set of civilians into space, think about all the emissions they are adding to the very airspace they are celebrating.  Space Perspective says they are doing similar space travel but without hurting the planet. Imagine how much energy those trips use. And, though they are also doing climate research up there, the capsules and rockets are not generally carbon neutral. Can they be? Listen to veteran space executive and former Biosphere 2 leader Jane Poynter, CEO and cofounder of Space Perspective describe how they are doing carbon neutral space travel in this extraordinary conversation with Electric Ladies host Joan Michelson conducted at the Earth Day Network Climate Leadership Gala (so there will be a lot of background sound).  You'll hear: How Space Perspective is making space travel carbon neutral (from fuel to materials). Who is paying for it (and what it will cost you to take ride with them) The general carbon footprint of today's space shuttles and private companies' space travel. How her experience in Biosphere 2 led to Space Perspectives. Plus, insightful career advice, such as… “There are so many ways to make a difference, right?... I think at the end of the day, you have to be true to yourself and what is it that fires you up. And, and what is it that that does light that fire within you that you have to pursue, that you're driven to pursue, and then go pursue it. And, you know, sometimes it takes going in at a level that maybe you don't feel is your level. Maybe it's beneath you, but if you are trying to move into a slightly adjacent career, you have to do that. Cuz you have to work your way up sometimes. And it's also the best way to learn.” Jane Poynter on Electric Ladies Podcast Read Joan's Forbes articles here too. You'll also like:         Kristen Siemen, Chief Sustainability Officer of General Motors         Suzy Deering, Chief Marketing Officer of Ford – on bringing change to a legacy industry as an outsider.        Neha Palmer, Founder/CEO of TeraWatt Infrastructure on charging for EV trucks        Jackie Birdsall, Toyota, Senior Engineer, Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles Jennifer Gerbi, Ph.D., Deputy Director and Acting Director, ARPA-E, the innovation arm of the Department of Energy Subscribe to our newsletter to receive our podcasts, blog, events and special coaching offers.. Thanks for subscribing on Apple Podcasts or iHeartRadio and leaving us a review!    

Crazy Wisdom Show Notes: Episode Guest: Jonah Messinger, PhD student of physics at Cambridge and writer for The Breakthrough Institute (check out his article here) Topics Covered: Fusion Developments: Recent developments in the fusion sector. The last 3-4 years have seen significant investment in plasma-based fusion technology from private startups, amounting to around 5 billion dollars.  Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR): An overview of LENR or cold fusion, a sector of nuclear physics that has been castigated for 30 years but is now undergoing a resurgence. Jonah is part of an MIT research team awarded an ARPA-E research grant in this field. Physics Fundamentals: Explanation of plasma-based fusion and how it differs from LENR. Discussion includes protons, neutrons, and electrons, the strong nuclear force, and the relationship between mass and energy.  Controversies around Cold Fusion: Delving into why cold fusion is considered heretical, including its inconsistencies with conventional theories and unexpected reaction pathways. Jonah outlines why despite its challenges, it still holds potential.  In-depth Look at Cold Fusion Experiments: Discussion on various cold fusion experiments, highlighting experiments with unambiguous results. Jonah recalls his entrance into the field after reading a Nature article in February 2022 and how it influenced his research.  Radiation and Cold Fusion: Conversation about nuclear energy outputs with chemical inputs, the theoretical framework of LENR, and how one can potentially engineer nuclear pathways. A discussion on radiation types and the relative low radiation of cold fusion also unfolds. Quantum Coherence and Fusion: Exploration of the role of quantum coherence in LENR, with reference to a quote challenging traditional assumptions about nuclear interactions.  Commercialization and Future of LENR: Discussing the potential future of LENR commercialization, using the transistor's history as an analogy. Jonah emphasizes the importance of more people and resources coming into the field for LENR's progress.  Additional References: Jonah Messinger's article on The Breakthrough Institute: https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/fusion-runs-hot-and-cold Jonah Messinger's Twitter: People Mentioned: Fleischman and Ponns, prominent researchers in the field of cold fusion.

The Advanced Research Project Agency - Energy (ARPA-E) recently announced $100 million for its SCALEUP program, which funds start-ups and emerging companies that need support commercializing products.   The agency serves as a research and development group for the Department of Energy. ARPA-E is often described as a venture capital fund, because of its focus on getting new technologies to market. Crucially, it garners support from both political parties because of its emphasis on innovation and national security through transformative energy tech. Still, ARPA-E's $450 million budget is much smaller than other research and development agencies. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), part of the Department of Defense, has a $4 billion budget this year. So, what technologies will ARPA-E focus on this year? How will it make the most of its budget? And will it continue to see bi-partisan support in the current political environment?  This week host Bill Loveless talks with Evelyn Wang and Laurent Pilon about ARPA-E's unique approach to developing and launching high-risk energy projects.  Evelyn Wang is the director of ARPA-E. Prior to joining ARPA-E in 2022, she served as the Ford professor of engineering and head of the department of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Laurent Pilon is a program director at ARPA-E. His research focuses on solar, thermal, and electrical energy storage. He was previously a professor in the mechanical and aerospace engineering department at the University of California, Los Angeles. 

“Persistence and resiliency” are words to live by, according to trailblazer and innovator Dr. Evelyn Wang. During her successful tenure as Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), President Biden nominated Dr. Wang to lead the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), the “crown jewel” and research arm of the U.S. Department of Energy. Dr. Wang and her team of brilliant inventers identify, develop, and fund disruptive energy innovations in their developmental stages. Tasked with thinking boldly and outside the box, ARPA-E is a catalyst for early-stage R&D. Having participated in ARPA-E's Energy Innovation Summit to now leading it, Dr. Wang is strengthening the community of industry leaders and innovators who share her passion for solving energy problems and powering the clean energy future.   Dr. Wang joins hosts Dee Martin and Carolyn Spector to discuss her work as Director of ARPA-E and her experiences as a department head, beloved professor, and mentor at MIT. From geomechanical pumps to thermal batteries, Dr. Wang breaks down ARPA-E's process to transform early ideas into proof-of-concept demonstrations. Dr. Wang discusses the importance of supporting young innovators, especially women, and how women in STEM should reject “imposter syndrome” and instead “savor the spotlight.” Tune in now!

Curious about the one of the government's driving force behind groundbreaking innovations in the construction industry? Join Seth as he engages in a riveting conversation with Joseph King, an esteemed authority on sustainable construction and energy innovation. Gain exclusive access to the inner workings of the Department of Energy's ARPA-E and explore its audacious mission to revolutionize the way we build. From unraveling the challenges of enhancing concrete durability to reducing emissions, we dive deep into the cutting-edge materials and technologies fueling this transformation. Don't miss this captivating episode to uncover the untold stories and extraordinary vision of the ARPA-E pioneers. Tune in now to unlock the secrets of sustainable construction innovation! Episode References  Guest: Joseph King | Golden Bear LLC. | ⁠josephakingjr@gmail.com Guest Website: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephakingjr/ Producers: Jodi Tandett, Dr. Jon Belkowitz Become a Producer: https://concretelogicpodcast.com/show-support Music: Mike Dunton | ⁠⁠https://www.mikeduntonmusic.com⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠mikeduntonmusic@gmail.com⁠⁠ | Instagram ⁠⁠@Mike_Dunton⁠⁠ Host: Seth Tandett, ⁠⁠seth@concretelogicpodcast.com⁠⁠ Host Website: ⁠⁠concretelogicpodcast.com

In this episode, Emily Morris of startup Emrgy discusses the promise of small-scale hydropower and the opportunities it could provide for both power infrastructure and water management.(PDF transcript)(Active transcript)Text transcript:David RobertsHello Volts listeners! I thought I would start this episode with what I suppose is a disclaimer of sorts. I suspect most of you already understand what I'm about to say, but I think it's worthwhile being clear.Every so often on this show, like today, I interview a representative from a particular company, often a startup operating in a dynamic, emerging market. It should go without saying that my choice of an interviewee does not amount to an endorsement of their company, a prediction of its future success, or, God forbid, investment advice. If you are coming to me for investment advice, you have serious problems. I make no predictions, provide no warranties.The fact is, in dynamic emerging markets, failure is the norm, not the exception. My entire career is littered with the corpses of startups that I thought had clever, promising products — many of whom I interviewed and enthused about! Business is hard. In most of these markets, a few big winners will emerge, but it will take time, and in the process most promising startups will die. Such is the creative destruction of capitalism. I'm not dumb enough to try to predict any of it.More broadly, I am not a business reporter. I do not have much interest in funding rounds, the new VP, or the latest earnings report. (Please, PR people, quit pitching me business stories.) I do not know or particularly care exactly which companies will end up on top. I am interested in clever ideas and innovations and the smart, driven individuals trying to drag them into the real world. I am interested in people trying to solve problems, not business as such.Anyway, enough about that.Today I bring you one of those clever ideas, in the form of a company called Emrgy, which plops small hydropower generators down into canals.Now I can hear you saying, Dave, plopping generators into canals does not seem all that clever or exciting, but there's a lot more to the idea than appears at first blush. For one thing, there are lots more canals than you probably think there are, and they are a lot closer to electrical loads than you think.So I'm geeked to talk to Emily Morris, founder and CEO of Emrgy, about the promise of small-scale hydropower, the economics of distributed energy, the ways that small-scale hydro can replicate the modularity and scalability of solar PV, and ways that smart power infrastructure can help enable smarter water management.Alright, then, with no further ado, Emily Morris of Emrgy. Welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.Emily MorrisThank you for having me. It's exciting to be here.David RobertsYou know, I did a pod a couple of weeks ago about hydro and sort of the state of hydro in the world these days. And one of the things we sort of touched on briefly in that pod is kind of small-scale, distributed hydro, but we didn't have time to really get into it. And I'm really fascinated by that subject in general. So it was fortuitous a mere week or two later to sort of run across you and your company and what you're doing. Your sort of model answers a lot of the questions I had about small-scale hydro.Some of the problems I saw in small-scale hydro, just because it just seems to me so at once small, but also kind of bespoke and fiddly. And your model sort of squarely gets at that. So anyway, all of which is just to say I'm excited to talk to you about a model of small-scale hydro that makes sense to me and some of the ins and outs of it.Emily MorrisYeah, absolutely. And I'm thrilled to be here. I'm thrilled to tell you more about our model. And I love that you called small-scale hydro bespoke because I was talking with one of the larger IOUs a few weeks back and they referred to hydro as artisanal energy. And I got such a kick out of that because it is in so many ways, hydro can often be a homeowner's pet project that has a ranch or something like that. And bringing hydro into a world in which solar panels are taking over distributed generation and utility scale, and doing it in such a standardized, modular, repeatable format, bringing that architecture into water, is something that hasn't yet really been done successfully. And what we're trying to do here at Emrgy.David Robertsit is kind of like a lot of this echoes solar. It's sort of an attempt to sort of replicate a lot of what's going on with solar. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's start the business model is, to put it as simply as possible, is you make generators and you plop them down into canals. So let's start then with canals, because I suspect I am not alone in saying that I've gone almost all my life without thinking twice about canals. I know almost nothing about them. Like, what are they? Where are they? How many are there?This water infrastructure kind of surrounds us is almost invisible. So just talk about canals a little bit. What are they used for and where are they and how many are there? What's the sort of potential out there?Emily MorrisYes, canals are almost invisible, but my goal is that after this podcast, you'll never look at a canal the same way you'll look at it, as a source of energy. That, man, we should be tapping that energy and using it. Canals are our main target market. They're really our only target market right now. We get asked all the time, well, couldn't you do this in a river? And couldn't you do this in tides? And the answer is yes. If you're focused on the engineering but as a commercial founder at Emrgy, I'm focused on the market and where can we install projects today that can be immediately delivering economic benefit and environmental benefit.And so canals are that market. A canal is an open channel of water conveyance that's moving water from one place to another for a specific purpose. That purpose might be because it's raw water that's being delivered into the city to be treated for drinking water. It could be that it's an agricultural channel taking water from a river out to farmland. It could be an industrial flow of water that's coming from a large brewery or a large factory and delivering that into either a river or another piece of water conveyance. But canals are seemingly invisible. I'll be honest, when I started Emrgy, I thought that the technology would first thrive in a water treatment environment.There's 30,000 water treatment plants in the US. And many tens of thousands all around the world. And that water is running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365. And man, the ability to take something modular that looks and feels like solar in terms of its ability to seamlessly integrate into the surrounding infrastructure, but deliver power in a baseload format was something that immediately, I thought, water treatment. Yet when I was really early in my entrepreneurial journey, we did our first pilot at the city of atlanta's largest water treatment plant. And I went out to Los Angeles and gave a white paper on it at LADWP.And when I was there, the city of Denver had two representatives there. And they came up to me after my presentation, and they said, we think you're thinking about this all wrong. You got to come to denver and see what we've got in terms of water infrastructure. And when I went out to Denver that next couple of weeks, I spent three days touring probably 500 or 600 miles all around the Denver metro area of canals that are transporting water. You may not know that the water you drink in denver actually comes from the other side of the continental divide, and they bring it into the city of denver through a series of canals and storage reservoirs that allow for the appropriate amount of treated and stored water for the city.And so when I was there, I thought about, okay, as a business model, being able to deliver one to ten of these modules at 30,000 water treatment plants sounds like I need a big sales force. And then looking at the Denver infrastructure and seeing hundreds of miles of uniform canal that's transporting water where thousands or tens of thousands of these generators could be deployed with one partner just made a ton of sense. And so then I started peeling back the curtain on that.David RobertsYou say one partner. So are most of these two of the sort of features of canals? That came as somewhat of a surprise to me, and I'm sure you're familiar with this response is, first, when I thought of canals, the first thing I thought of was agriculture. I assumed they were mostly out in farmland. But what you have discovered is that they are laced throughout urban infrastructure, they are in cities.Emily MorrisOh, absolutely. It's both. It's certainly both. Our project we have a project with the city of Denver that overlooks the Denver skyline right there near the city. And if you overlay a map of Phoenix roadways with map of Phoenix waterways, you can see two highly sophisticated transport systems all throughout the metropolitan area. Not just Phoenix, think of Houston 22 canals and bayou's flow all throughout the urban metro area that are both a source of water or even an attraction for the city, but also have an inherent energy, sometimes too much energy during hurricane season and whatnot to be able to harvest and hopefully deliver value from as well.David RobertsYeah, and so the other feature is they're not privately owned for the most part. Most of these canals are operated by a city municipal water district.Is that sort of the standard?Emily MorrisYeah, that's correct. Typically there is an organization that manages the water infrastructure, the canal infrastructure. It is often public. It can be a political subdivision, like a municipality or a local not for profit organization or co-op. It also can be a private canal company, although those typically remain nonprofits. They're typically a public service for the good of the recipients of the water.David RobertsBut the point is, you are not having to track down a bunch of individual owners of individual canals. You can get at a bunch of canals through one partner.Emily MorrisThat's absolutely the case. And it's all public record the managers of water infrastructure and their contact information. You're not going and knocking on someone's home asking if you can put something in the backyard or something like that. This is an operated and often, from their contractual perspective, they're typically buying water from an entity and selling water to a series of entities, buying water from the US Government and selling it to farmers, something like that. And so the reporting aspects about that water that flows through, they tend to be detailed. They tend to be long running. And so as you think about developing a resource assessment of how much energy is inherent in that water that you can produce electricity from, it's not necessarily like needing to go build a MET station and understand exactly what resources there.They're typically well organized, well operated, and well documented.David RobertsA well characterized resource.Emily MorrisAbsolutely.David RobertsOkay, so you go to these canals. You make a deal with the owners of these canals, and then you go plop down energy generators into the canals. Let's talk about the generators, try to give the listeners kind of a sense of how big one of these things is and kind of what it looks like. What are you plopping down into the canal?Emily MorrisIn terms of physical size. Our generators are an eight foot cube, and they have their own precast concrete structure that holds them together. So you can think of sort of half of a precast concrete culvert, if you are familiar with the construction world, that is an eight foot cube. We do that strategically, they are easy to lift and handle.They're easy to transport by trucking or other means. You can even containerize them if you need to. And we place those into the channels without doing any construction, any modification, any impounding of the channels, which is a really important part of the canals, because, as I mentioned before, that water is going to a destination for a purpose. And so going in and saying, yeah, we're just going to build a dam right here in the middle of your canal doesn't seem to resonate so well. And so being able to bring something in that's fully self supported can be placed into the channel and held there by its own weight.And it only weighs about seven tons, so it's not a super heavy lift, but it's hydrostatically, designed to not shift or slide or overturn once the water hits it. And inside of that culvert or the concrete structure, there is a vertical axis turbine that looks probably very similar to vertical axis wind turbines that many of the listeners will be familiar with. And so they take advantage of the kinetic energy in the flow using the swept area of the turbine and the speed of the water, and generate torque and speed around the shaft up to the power takeoff and the generator. And so physically, they're eight foot cubes.But from a power perspective, our smallest turbine that we sell is a 5 kilowatt turbine. And it's the same physical footprint that the 8 by 8 cube, but it can generate mechanically and electrically up to 25 kilowatts per turbine based on the depth and the speed of the water.David RobertsI was going to ask whether the sizes vary. So the generator, the eight foot cube is standard. All the generators come in these eight foot cubes, but the generators themselves vary in size based on the water flow.Emily MorrisYeah, that's exactly right. We do have a deeper water platform that goes up to about 18ft of water, and then we're working on an even deeper platform in conjunction with the DOE. But right now, our main platform is the eight foot cube. And the beauty of water is that the power is exponential by the speed of the water. And so we can place a turbine in and it can generate 5 kilowatts at say a shallower, slower speed. Or that very same equipment can put out five times the power output if placed in a different location. And so as we think about coming down the cost curve, growing to scale, we can immediately find higher density resources that make sense today, even as a young company that hasn't quite gotten fully to the quantities that other adjacent industries like solar and wind have.David RobertsRight. So I have a bunch of questions about that. But just this question about size brings up the question about canal size. If you have a standard sized module, I'm assuming that canals themselves are relatively standardized in size. With this eight foot cube, can you confidently say, we can go to more or less any canal and it'll work? Or do canals also vary?Emily MorrisCanals vary, but not substantially. There are standard sizes, and our eight foot cube does cover a wide envelope of canals in the US. And abroad. We do see, though, that this is the array planning and array specification, which is how we deploy these. We never deploy them as single turbines, but really as arrays, just like solar and wind, that with the arrays. It's a very similar planning method to solar is you look at your total square footage across the canal, you look at the gradient of fall along the canal, and you plan out the optimized number of turbine modules that make sense for that canal.So sometimes if you have a canal that's 18 feet wide, rather than build two 9 foot cubes, all of a sudden, you do two 8 foot cubes, right. And you standardize and you optimize for cost even if you're not squeezing every single ounce of power out of that flow. And I think that's one big thing that differentiates energy and distributed hydro from traditional sort of small-scale hydro is we're optimizing for cost and scale rather than for utmost efficiency, which is typically where hydro really focuses.David RobertsRight. And Volts listeners are very well educated on the fact that the modularity, the small-scale and modularity of solar panels are a huge piece of why they have proven so adaptable and grown so fast. Like the advantages you get from standardization and modularity vastly outweigh whatever sort of marginal gains you could get on either side in a particular canal.Emily MorrisAbsolutely. We're big believers in that, our smallest module is an order of magnitude larger than a solar module. But you should think of it absolutely in that same way. We do have people, especially the folks that are really focused in hydro, they say to us, "Oh, your modules are so small, 5 kilowatts or 25 kilowatts, that's so small." And I say to them, "No one ever goes to the solar field and say, 'Hey, your panels are so small.'" It's a totally different mindset that you have to be thinking of the module as the panel, as the individual generator that ultimately goes into the array. And yes, our arrays will likely continue to be on the distribution scale rather than on the utility scale or the large transmission scale. But no question the aggregation of modules is how power grows, this generation of renewables.David RobertsWell, let's try to get a sense of just how big they are power wise. So, 5 kilowatts to 25 kilowatts, what's a typical array, and then what's the output of a typical array, and then maybe just to help the listeners kind of get their head around it, how does that sort of compare to an array of solar panels? Like, if I'm the owner of a canal or a network of canals, and I'm trying to decide, do I want to put a bunch of these in there or do I want to say cover the canals with solar panels? What's the scale comparison there?Emily MorrisWell, if you're asking me which one you should do, I would absolutely say both. The answer is both. One does not preclude the other, because this is a great real estate segment to be able to convert to renewables of all types. But when you think about our systems at 25 module, let's say that's 40 turbines to be a megawatt. And some canals are on the smaller side that we look at maybe enough for two or three modules across, some of them maybe ten modules across, just depending on the width of the canal. And so you could place 40 modules as close as, say, half a mile away across those four rows of ten, or it could be spread a much longer distance, it could be a mile or 2 miles for that.And really we're optimizing for spacing. Obviously, you don't want to run cable to the point of interconnect any further than you have to. We're optimizing for hydraulics. You want the energy to recover after being taken out by our turbines as it flows downhill. And then ultimately, we want to co-locate these with the offtake and whether that's directly into the grid or behind the meter with a particular industrial or municipal client. Those are typically how we think about this. But when you think about covering a canal in solar panels, I don't have the specific statistics on how many linear feet equates to a megawatt or things like that, necessarily, but you're going to see, most importantly, that you need three times the power output or potentially more to overcome the differences in capacity factors. So with our system, they're typically operating 24 hours a day.David RobertsSo in these canals that water flows through, water is constantly going through there 24 hours a day. I would think some of it at least would be sort of like scheduled or go in one direction and then another direction. Are they all steady 24 hours flows?Emily MorrisNot everything is consistent, of course, but I would say that in the water space, the capacity factor is determined by seasonality and or maintenance schedules, but less by intermittency. It's actually pretty bad for a canal to be turned on, turned off, turned on, turned off, because you end up having other maintenance challenges, things that break issues in the canal.David RobertsSo they want to run them?Emily MorrisThey want to run them continuously. Yes. And so depending on what the water is being used for, whether it's a certain area of cropland and therefore there's a seasonality to the flow that's fairly common, or if it's municipal, it may be a year round flow. Or depending on your region in the arid Southwest, you'll see perennial flows a lot more frequently than you will, let's say in Montana or Idaho, where there's obviously quite harsh winters.And so in our case, we target canals that can be the most predictable in their flow and the most continuous. Yet if you have a site that is only running six months out of the year, getting to that 40% to 50% capacity factor because let's say it runs constantly through that six months of the year can still lead to an incredibly exciting impactful project overall with good returns, even though it's not on every day. Right? It's a different mindset.David RobertsRight.Emily MorrisI have definitely had water districts say. "Well, what do I do in November, December, January if we're not flowing water?" And I said, "You may not think about it, but every night when you go to sleep, your solar panels also aren't working." It's just a different mindset of something not working every day for 90 days rather than not producing every night. And so doing that educational piece to where projects in terms of their output and their economic value can be highly competitive even at the shorter seasons with canals.David RobertsRight. So the basic point here is that while these generators may not crank out as much power as a solar panel while they're generating, they are generating much more often. They're generating around the clock. And so you have to have kind of three times the power output from a solar panel to end up matching the total power output.Emily MorrisThat's right.David RobertsThey have the advantage of being base-loady, basically.Emily MorrisExactly. That's typically what we see is that for canals that are running the majority of the time, you'll ultimately need if you want the equivalent amount of annual energy, you'll need a power capacity on your solar that would be about three times larger than what you would need on the hydro side.David RobertsInteresting. Okay, so you go to a water district, you say, "Hey, we want to generate some power from your canals." You do an analysis of the sort of optimal kind of spacing and placing and then what, a truck comes in or a crane comes in and just sort of like drops these things one by one in the canal. It sounds like installation would be pretty straightforward and pretty low footprint, is that true?Emily MorrisThat's absolutely true. It sounds too simple to say in some ways, but yet simply lifting the turbines and placing them into the channel, making sure that they're level, making sure they're not sitting on top of debris, or boulders or something like that, that may have fallen in the canal is important. But placing them in the canal correctly is the most important aspect of the installation. That's unique to Emrgy.David RobertsSo they're not connected in any way it's just the weight of the thing holding it in place. It's not literally not connected to anything. There's no screwing or attaching or bracketing.Emily MorrisThat's correct. There is nothing that is physically attaching it to the canal.David RobertsSo easy to take out.Emily MorrisOwners love this. Yes. Because they can take it out if they needed to ...David RobertsOr move itEmily Morris... often. Because these are operated channels they often will, once every five years or on some periodic schedule, drive up and down the canal or drive a bulldozer down and make sure that all the debris is out or something like that. So they love the flexibility. We tend to see that canal owners like the flexibility of being able to take them out. Now onshore each turbine, or each cross section, I should say, has a power conversion system that has both the control system as well as the power conditioning. And that is something we deliver as well. And it sits on a concrete pad on the side of the channel. But then as you connect those together electrically and then connect them to the grid, there's no innovation from Emrgy there. It's just optimization based on the appropriate electrical balance of system design.And so as we think about partnerships with other types of developers, other renewable developers, there isn't a special skill set that installers would need to have to be able to install our system. The balance of system is essentially exactly the same as distributed solar. And all you would need to do is be able to place the turbines in the canals correctly.David RobertsInteresting. Yeah, I like simple and dumb. That's resilient and that's what can spread fast.Emily MorrisAnd maybe I'll just mention that when I first started this business, I thought it was too simple. I assumed that somebody had already done this before, that it seemed pretty obvious. And as I looked deeper into it, I learned really the two things that I believe have held this space back that now are no longer barriers. One of them is regulatory. And that gets a little bit back to why we focus on canals in general, is that up until 2015, I believe it was all water in the US was permitted for power in the same way. So to place our system in a canal would have been permitted and regulated the same way it would in a river. And in 2015, FERC enacted the qualifying conduit exemption which stated that electric projects within water conduits or conveyance systems were exempt from FERC licensing up to 40 megawatts per project.David RobertsInteresting.Emily MorrisAnd so now our projects are fully exempt from FERC licensing. And it's a 30-day notice of intent to FERC requesting that exemption, which is lightning fast compared to other projects.David RobertsYes. So you're not dealing with permitting issues, NIMBY issues, all the sort of like land issues, all the stuff that's bedevilling wind and solar right now you're sort of doing an end run around that stuff.Emily MorrisWe'd like to think so. I mean, projects are always controversial to some extent, and every neighbor may have an idea of what they'd like to see in the canals. But in terms of general regulatory approvals and project buy in, we tend to see this being much lower barriers than many of the other types of land based systems. The other thing that was a major barrier that has since been lifted is the growing ability to use solar designed or solar inspired smart inverters for technologies and generators other than solar.David RobertsLet's talk about that first. Maybe, I don't want to assume first, maybe just tell listeners what does an inverter do and what does it mean for it to be smart? And maybe tell us about how those were developed in solar.Emily MorrisSure. So the generation of the power from the water or from the sun typically has been done over many decades and even centuries in terms of hydro, very successfully. The physics of getting energy out of a resource is something that is fairly straightforward. Now, the modern scalability of being able to replicate that in thousands of locations all around the world, conveniently into our modern electricity grid, is something that I would say has been hugely influenced through the development, industrialization and scalability of the smart inverter. And what I mean by that is actually readying the power, conditioning the power, making it grid compliant and ready for delivery into the grid, has received billions of dollars of industrial development in the solar industry to take it down in size and form factor as well as in efficiency.And if that was not available to us, and Emrgy had to build out an industry much like solar to drive industrial development of power conversion and power delivery, to be able to install it globally, we would be on a 20- to 30-year timeline. We would need billions of dollars and or it would just be really slow. If we had to do all custom power equipment, then every utility would have to come in and do a full engineering review of what we were building, whether it would cause problems to the grid. And what we have been able to take amazing advantage of is the ability to utilize a smart inverter that was originally designed for solar and largely used in solar, and be able to use that to control our hydro-generator without invalidating its utility certifications.You have to know quite a bit about power systems, perhaps, to know that controlling the power curve in a hydro-turbine and controlling the power curve in a solar panel is very different, a lot trickier than one might think. And being able to manage the torque and speed, to be able to manage and optimize a power point along the curve is tricky when you're trying to use a device that was made for a different industry. And so one of the biggest areas of Emrgy's technology, development and innovation is not necessarily in the. Physics in the water of how we're getting energy out of the water.It's really how are we delivering that electricity now to the grid in the most cost effective, high efficiency and streamlined way. And being able to use the same inverters that the solar industry is using helps put us on a much closer playing field to be able to deploy these projects in an apples to apples way. And even, as you mentioned, do you do solar or hydro and canals? It's great to do both and potentially even put them right into the same inverter. And that's the beauty of where distributed generation, I believe, is going, is to a flexible environment where you can have that base load, have your peaking load, have your energy storage and share as much of the cost along the system as you can.David RobertsSo you can just use smart inverters that are designed for solar off the shelf. There's no engineering or tweaking or fiddling you have to do.Emily MorrisSo we're prohibited from doing a ton of tweaking inside the inverter because obviously they go through quite a level of utility compliance and we can't necessarily change that. However, what we have is a power controls unit. It's a NEMA panel that looks like a standard electrical panel that sits right next to the inverter and that contains all of our fairly sophisticated controls and mechanisms to allow us to control our system and have it communicate with the solar inverter in a language that the solar inverter understands most of our innovation. And IP in that area sits in that power controls unit rather than in the inverter itself.David RobertsGot it. And so what do we mean when we say smart inverter? I've always kind of wondered, do people just say that because it's like sophisticated? Or is there a clear distinction between a dumb inverter and a smart inverter?Emily MorrisI'm probably not best equipped to handle that question, but I can say that from our perspective, using the inverters that we do use enables us to have both the smart capabilities as it relates to grid following, ensuring the grid islanding or other types of issues are matched. But also for us, having the data aspect of what's collected in that inverter and the amount of information that we can pull off of it is very helpful for us. I mean, we collect data in a number of ways and using the solar inverter or the smart inverter helps us to triangulate and calibrate that data to ensure its accuracy. So, for example, the inverter will give us power output, real time data in that regard, while we also have sensors off board the system in the water that reads flow information, speed information.And so we know if there's a change in power, is that related to a change in flow and we can calibrate that via the sensors, or is it related to an issue in the system? And using both the data off the inverter as well as off of our other data collection systems, helps us to diagnose and monitor device health as well as to especially as we continue to innovate, predict and alert water infrastructure owners of decisions they may need to make.David RobertsThe obvious service you're providing to a water district is we're going to give you some power, some economical power. But I'm wondering about, if you're collecting so much information about water flow, is that information helpful to the canal owners? In other words, are you able to improve the actual operation of the water infrastructure itself?Emily MorrisWe are, and I believe that this will continue to evolve as the industry continues to evolve as well. But right now the water management, especially out in the field, is managed by an aging population. I think the last figure I saw that the average what they call a ditch tender or ditch rider, someone that is monitoring the health of the water conveyance system, the average age of that title is 56 years old.David RobertsA familiar story in so many of these areas.Emily MorrisYeah. So recruiting young talent, recruiting the right type of personnel is tough and so being able to provide data that can integrate back into a SCADA system or otherwise be able to inform those that are not in the field things that may be happening in the canal is definitely valuable. Now over time as well. The canals have been operated for mainly one purpose for many decades now, which is to deliver water and earn revenues off of delivering that water. They're selling the water now as they will be running water and earning revenues from generating power along the way.Working with water districts to optimize their irrigation schedules or their deliveries, to be able to take advantage ...David RobertsSo they could change the way they do things to optimize power delivery too?Emily MorrisYes, I mean, this is one of the very few generation types, particularly on the distribution grid, that is a controllable feedstock. And so to the extent that a water district can generate double the revenue by flowing water during specific times, there are incentives to do so.David RobertsInteresting.Emily MorrisAnd we can provide those. And so aligning incentives between the water district Emrgy and the farmers that they serve to be able to really bring a powerful force of renewable energy onto the grid at the right times of day or the right times of year is something that we believe distributed hydro has a unique ability to do.David RobertsSo I'm guessing that this is in early days, this idea of a water district sort of co-optimizing water usage and power output. I would guess that there's a lot of running room there to find efficiencies and find better ways of doing things.Emily MorrisThat's right there is it's early days. I mean, we are working one of our municipal clients, the canal that we're installed within, its only job is to manage water levels between two reservoirs. So there is a ton of operational flexibility within that section and being able to work with them on optimization of the water flows to drive power is something very straightforward. Now, there are other districts that have been doing things the same way for 50 years. And perhaps they're going to be more of the districts where you have to put the incentive out there first, let them start to see how it changes their income with a change in flow and guide them on that, and we'll see it over time.But this is one thing that we talk about a lot at Emrgy, is how to adequately predict future behaviors with water as a function of how this partnership can work together and provide them both the data, the revenues and other services that are helpful.David RobertsYou could even imagine water districts with an array of these turbines installed maybe playing a role in demand response type things. In other words, they might have the ability to sort of turn it up and down on demand as a source of value.Emily MorrisAbsolutely, and they can do it both on the water side as well as somewhat on the power side as well. If you're familiar with the energy water nexus, the concept that it takes quite a bit of electricity to move water, move and treat water, a lot of these water districts are huge electricity consumers. And so one thing we often talk about with districts is what are their highest consumers of electricity? Is it a particular groundwater well? Is it a particular pumping plant? Is it a particular water treatment facility? How can we both utilize the water to drive demand response and to drive smart operation of water and therefore power?As well as should we cluster these systems around some of those highest consumers even in some ways behind the meter or along with energy storage to where they're able to keep that demand down into a whole different echelon from what they've been operating at?David RobertsRight. Well, this raises the question of in your installations so far, who's buying this power? Who's the modal kind of consumer? Is it the water districts themselves? I mean, they're big electricity consumers. You can see this as kind of a self contained loop kind of thing where they're sort of generating the power that they're using or are you selling it into the grid? Are you selling it to particular off takers or is there a standard model yet?Emily MorrisThere's not a standard model yet. I would say the most common models are power purchase agreements directly with the water district so buying power from us rather than from the grid. And in many cases, if we're in states that have advantageous net metering, which I know are becoming fewer and fewer each year, but able to use that type of arrangement where essentially they're receiving a bill credit and then remitting those savings onto EmrgyDavid RobertsAnd net metering works the same here as it does for solar panels?Emily MorrisYeah, exactly the same. Exactly the same. Down to the same form you fill out from the utility, all the same. And then there are certain states that have advantageous hydro avoided cost contracts where we can just pull directly on a standard offer from the IOU in the area that can allow for a bit of a streamlined contract negotiation. Then when you're meeting with the district, you're only talking about how much we're going to be paying the district to host the system and share those revenues with the IOU rather than contracting with them on power purchase directly.David RobertsRight. A little easier for them. And that sort of raised my next question, which is, is the business model that you go to a water district and sell it these turbines and then it operates these turbines, or is this a power as a service type of arrangement where you own the turbines and operate them and just sell the power to the districts?Emily MorrisYeah, Emrgy has always been organized with a goal toward power as a service. We're currently doing that, although in our first reference projects, we needed to sell the turbines just to get equipment out there, get people familiar with it, which we were successful in doing. Now we're focused primarily on a power as a service model. Although water does tend to be an industry with a high value on ownership. And so many of the districts we work with, they're either interested in being a part owner, they're interested in a future buyout option or transfer of ownership option, just because it's quite common that the manager of the water district grew up at the water district, had maybe a father or grandfather that worked there.And so they focus on generational outcomes. They want to see long lasting systems. They don't want to see us come in, plop something in and then blaze off. They want to know that we're going to be there for the long haul, which with water power that is one of the other benefits is that this is an electromechanical system that if properly maintained, will last for many decades. It doesn't have that inherent chemical degradation.David RobertsRight, solar panels are I think the official is 20 years, or in practice they last a little longer than but I think they're like generally certified for 20 years of operation. What's one of your turbines? Is there a specific fixed time period that you guarantee or how long will these last?Emily MorrisYeah, well, we market 30 years. We seek out 30-year contracting arrangements on both site hosting and power production and sales. But truly there's nothing that drives that 30 years aside from that's what our clients are used to seeing from solar or wind or other types. For us, if these systems continue to be maintained, well, we do do an overhaul every 15 years and make sure that all the equipment is well maintained. But ultimately I was just in Idaho, a few weeks ago and there was a hydro-plant there that had similar materials, similar bearings, similar turbine blades, generators.It was 113 years old. And I won't live long enough to know if one of our turbines can last that long, but there isn't anything inherent of the system that just breaks down and ultimately causes it not to function.David RobertsRight. So another question is which these days I find myself asking every guest, which is what is IRA doing for you? Is the Inflation Reduction Act helping you in some specific way either in manufacturing these things and by the way, they're manufactured here in the US?Emily MorrisThey are.David RobertsSo that's domestic content, what's your relationship with the IRA?Emily MorrisWhile we are still early in how the IRA is being implemented and transacted against within our projects, the understanding of how the IRA will provide advantage to the projects is massive for us. You're spot on. Our systems qualify for both the production tax credit and the investment tax credit. And by both, I mean either we can use either one. We meet the requirements for the domestic content requirement, and many of our projects that we're seeking are in energy communities as well.David RobertsOh, right.Emily MorrisAnd so the opportunity for quite a substantial tax benefit as a function of these projects. And I'll say, in addition, some of the other major IRA programs or BIL programs that funded both the Department of Energy's Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, OCED, or the USDA's Rural Energy for America program, the REAP program, are also incredibly advantageous to our projects. A substantial amount of our project pipeline right now is in USDA REAP eligible census tracts, which means that they qualify for either loan guarantees, which provides for commercial lenders to be able to offer lower interest lending to the project, or grant programs for renewable energy systems up to a million dollars each. And so these can provide, especially given that these are not exclusive, so we can bring in both REAP loan guarantees as well as the IRA tax benefits into the same project, making them incredibly attractive even in an earlier stage of a company where we haven't yet optimized cost and whatnot.David RobertsInteresting, so you're already in a position where you can go to a water district and offer them a pretty sweet deal, very low upfront costs, a new revenue stream, fairly minimal maintenance. A couple of final questions. First off, you talk about sort of scale and reducing costs. These are pretty simple, as I said before, as one of the benefits. Sort of simple. You have a concrete bracket, there's a vertical turbine, there's some wires and some power control stuff. Where is the room here for technological advancement or is there room for a lot of tech advancement or are you going to get more cost reductions out of scale?Or are you, do you think, pretty close already to this being as cheap as it can get?Emily MorrisYeah, I mean, in terms of tech advancement. I often describe our systems as sort of like when you drive past a wind farm and you can just tell that it was built in wind 1.0 all the turbines are sort of facing the same direction and they're sort of spaced in a finite manner. And then you drive by a newer wind facility and you can tell they're taking advantage of all of the wake of all the different turbines and they're all oriented differently and they're spaced differently. I call our system still a bit of like that 1.0 feel right?We're designing systems and optimizing them for the canals, but there's things that we just can't simulate in any fluid dynamic software until we've got hundreds or thousands of these turbines out there operating.David RobertsSo learning some learning by doing here.Emily MorrisOh, absolutely. I mean, there are times we've seen in practice where the turbines are all generating and then let's say the water district starts to they lower their flow and the turbines are no longer fully submerged in the water. And we found that if you ease off of one of the turbines in terms of its electrical loading and it starts to spin faster in freewheel, then it can ultimately push water levels up and the turbines upstream push into their optimal generating capacity. And that gets a little technical. Maybe folks listening want to call me a nerd out about that sometime, I'd love to ...David RobertsAbout hydraulics.Emily MorrisBut nonetheless, we are definitely at the tip of the iceberg in terms of understanding all the different wake effects and how to create an array that is more than the sum of its parts. So I'd say that's a big area for tech advancement. We are currently funded by ARPA-E in advancing that what we call the term we use is called dynamic tuning, tuning the systems as things dynamically change around them. Another area for advancement is certainly around hybrids and micro grids. So you made the comment earlier about solar or this and we really believe that to really become carbon free at the distribution level, it's going to be many different technologies, not one silver bullet.And so there's no reason why you shouldn't combine either floating solar or ground mounted or spanning solar together with our system, share as much of the balance of system as possible, drive LCOE down and have a hybrid. Adding in energy storage or even adding in renewable fuels production is absolutely something that you could use our system with. And we're actually, we're funded with DOE on another one of these projects looking at micro-grids for resiliency, because a lot of times that resiliency piece in a micro-grid is diesel, right? When all else fails, you have your diesel.And so how can we create something where hydro can be that resiliency piece as something that we're currently working on as well for tech advancement?David RobertsInteresting.Emily MorrisAnd I think you'll see a lot of we see Emrgy as sort of the base platform, the distributed hydro as the base platform. But ultimately we're interested in pursuing how water infrastructure, which spans, as we already talked about, both rural and urban environments, can ultimately become a key facilitator of the energy transition, not just something that's invisible.David RobertsWould you Emrgy get into designing and installing hybrid systems or would this be like a partnership with a solar company? Or is it too early to know?Emily MorrisWe already are into designing and specifying hybrid systems and really more so on creating, for lack of a better term, sort of the universal plug right, where you could plug our system and solar and other things into our overall power architecture. And so we're not necessarily out there innovating on the solar side or on the energy storage side, but creating a way that whether it's with a codevelopment partnership or whether it's something that we can source from a manufacturer, the same way that other developers do, with a very flexible and universal application for combining generation and storage types.David RobertsYeah, because if there are efficiencies available in optimizing one of your systems, I can just imagine once you get into optimizing systems that are small hydro turbines and solar panels and batteries, the more pieces you have, the more sort of room for optimization and efficiency you have, and the more sort of runway there is to bring down costs for the total system.Emily MorrisAnd the more controllability you can add, then the more ultimately this becomes meaningful. At the distribution scale, I think we need more controllability and dispatchability at the distributed scale and providing that baseload resource is one of the key pieces to getting there. And so we don't claim to be experts in microgrid controls or anything like that and definitely seek partnerships in that regard. But I definitely see this as an important piece to the puzzle in how we get to be a more resilient set of carbon-free communities.David RobertsMaybe just say a word or two about why you think, because there's a long running argument in the clean energy world where you see this, especially in solar, where people say, well, the industrial size, utility scale solar, you get cheaper per kilowatt hour output, which I don't think is controversial. Like if you're just measuring on a per kilowatt hour basis, you're going to get cheaper power out of giant fields of solar than by scattered multiple installations. So what do you see as kind of the advantage of doing all this work in a distributed way rather than just say, like adding some big new dam or some big turbine to some big river somewhere? What do you see as sort of the advantages of power generation being distributed through urban and rural areas in water infrastructure like this?Emily MorrisI wouldn't call myself an expert on the math, but while I think you're right that at the field the cost per kilowatt hour of a large solar farm is less. Although I don't know that that math holds. If it's the cost of that kilowatt hour to your home, and if you calculated the per kilowatt hour cost to your home for utility or transmission level solar versus local distributed energy, whether that's solar or Emrgy or anything else, I think the number is probably a lot closer and maybe surprising. I'm sure people have done the math. I personally don't know it, but I believe that as we start looking and staring down the barrel, truly, of what it's going to cost our grid, our transmission grid, to maintain modernization and resiliency, if all we do is keep building large utility scale solar farms, the price of delivery to the house is no question going to become higher and higher.And if we can successfully generate local energy, then it should be lower cost because you're not going to have those massive grid upgrades. It should be more resilient so that if there's a wildfire halfway across the state, it doesn't affect you.David RobertsThe micro-gridding and ability to island is huge, especially if you imagine it sort of multiplied out to every place with a series of canals, which is more or less every city of any size.Emily MorrisNo question. And so we're big believers in the distributed scale, but again, large hydro and large solar provides such a huge benefit. I think we often take strong stances without realizing all the benefits we enjoy from all the various types of assets that are on the grid. And so I think there's a need for all of it. But I absolutely think that there is a better way to becoming net zero than just covering all of our remote fields in solar and all the batteries that are needed to get there. So being able to bring that more locally in a more continuous format is one solution of, I think, all the many that we'll need to truly become net zero.David RobertsSo, final question is a question that, as you say, you get asked a lot. Do you have an eye on other kinds of distributed water infrastructure or is this like a canal play more or less exclusively? Or are there other like, I didn't even really know about canals, so are there other hidden water infrastructure that I don't know about hiding around? Or can you imagine something this simple and modular and low footprint working in natural water features, streams or rivers or something? What's the sort of next step beyond this?Emily MorrisYeah, I mean, we get asked for all sorts of applications that would probably not be on your radar. Whether we can hang these off of oil rigs out in the Gulf, or can we take advantage of the intercoastal waterways on the barrier islands in Florida, or could we use these in tidal environments in Australia or in LNG plants in Singapore? I mean, you name it, we definitely get asked about anytime someone either is driving in their car, looks out the window and sees a flow of water, and they think, "Oh, we should be able to tap into that energy."David RobertsRight, there's energy in all of it.Emily MorrisThey're absolutely right from a physics perspective, but Emrgy is super focused on what we can do and bring value today. Because for me, a clean kilowatt hour generated today is far more valuable than a clean kilowatt hour that I have to plan for and engineer for and design for that can be generated in 2028. And so we're focused on what are near real term opportunities. I would say that we're coming full circle back around to some of the water treatment applications.David RobertsYeah, I was going to ask, what if there's stuff in the water? I meant to ask this much earlier. Are most of these canals carrying clean water? And if it's not clean, if there's stuff in it, does that muck with your turbines?Emily MorrisCertainly. If there's undesirables in the water, it's going right through our turbines. We design the turbines to avoid as much as that as possible with some fluid mechanic designs, but we have an operating mode that essentially will flush the turbines if needed. If they're stuck, if there's debris or algae or something on there, that's a very similar mechanism to what you find in a pump to flush it and get rid of any alien items. But nonetheless, I would say that in terms of water treatment, we'd be focused on effluent channels of already treated water that's returning out to a different water source.As I mentioned before, we are doing some R&D work related to riverine and tidal resources. When I started Emrgy, I said, "Hey, we're going to pick a market that we can really master. And if we can master the product and master the base platform that can scale, amending it for a specific environment is much easier than trying to create a product in lots of different environments at the same time." So over time, perhaps you'll see us in rivers or you'll see us in tides. I don't think it'll be anytime soon. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that there's 2 million linear miles of surface water infrastructure in the world over the globe.And so we'll be pretty busy in the canal market for a long time. And I think building a really impactful technology for this space along the way. But certainly we'd be open to collaborations or exploring other markets as those become, I believe, more accessible and developable.David RobertsIt's exciting to me because this is sort of, as we said, modular and repeatable in the way that solar was, but at the very, very beginning of that journey that we've seen solar go through, which is scale expands, it gets cheaper. You find your ways into new niches. You find your way into applications you didn't even know you were going to get near. Just sort of like it's a self reinforcing cycle of sort of scale and cheapness and then spreading to new applications. That's been fascinating to watch in solar, and it's sort of just at the outset here in small-hydro.Emily MorrisAbsolutely. We hope we can leapfrog some of that, having learned from all the things that they've done and being able to actually adopt many of their innovations like the inverters and whatnot. But no question, this is an emerging asset class. There's still tons to learn. And as we scale, I'll like to look back on this podcast a few years from now and see how many of my predictions help.David RobertsYeah, we'll have to have you back on. Alright, Emily Morris of Emrgy, thanks so much for coming on this really intriguing and exciting new area here, so I appreciate you sharing with us.Emily MorrisThis was great, thanks for having me.David RobertsThank you for listening to the Volts podcast. It is ad-free, powered entirely by listeners like you. If you value conversations like this, please consider becoming a paid Volts subscriber at volts.wtf. Yes, that's volts.wtf, so that I can continue doing this work. Thank you so much, and I'll see you next time. Get full access to Volts at www.volts.wtf/subscribe

“People who have been to space really do speak about it with great reverence. And it is for that reason that we want to take people to space in our car. Neutral zero emission spaceship, spaceship vacuum, which as you saw is not a rocket. Enormous balloons. It's a very gentle flight. We want to take leaders to space. We want to take artists to space. We want to have teachers go to space.” Jane Poynter at Earth Day Network's Climate Leadership Gala With all the news coverage of NASA and private companies going to space, including with civilians, it's important to remember the carbon footprint of those journeys. Imagine how much energy those trips use. And, though they are also doing climate research up there, the capsules and rockets are not generally carbon neutral. Can they be? Jane Poynter says they can be carbon neutral and is putting her money and reputation on the line to prove it. The veteran space executive and Biosphere 2 leader now founded Space Perspectives, with the blessing of Carl Sagan's widow too, to take civilians into space in a carbon neutral way. Listen to Jane Poynter explain how in this extraordinary conversation with Electric Ladies host Joan Michelson conducted at the Earth Day Network Climate Leadership Gala (so there will be a lot of background sound).  You'll hear: How Space Perspective is making space travel carbon neutral (from fuel to materials). Who is paying for it (and what it will cost you to take ride with them) The general carbon footprint of today's space shuttles and private companies' space travel. How her experience in Biosphere 2 led to Space Perspectives. Plus, insightful career advice, such as… “There are so many ways to make a difference, right?... I think at the end of the day, you have to be true to yourself and what is it that fires you up. And, and what is it that that does light that fire within you that you have to pursue, that you're driven to pursue, and then go pursue it. And, you know, sometimes it takes going in at a level that maybe you don't feel is your level. Maybe it's beneath you, but if you are trying to move into a slightly adjacent career, you have to do that. Cuz you have to work your way up sometimes. And it's also the best way to learn.” Jane Poynter on Electric Ladies Podcast Read Joan's Forbes articles here too. You'll also like: ·       Kristen Siemen, Chief Sustainability Officer of General Motors ·       Suzy Deering, Chief Marketing Officer of Ford – on bringing change to a legacy industry as an outsider. ·       Neha Palmer, Founder/CEO of TeraWatt Infrastructure on charging for EV trucks ·       Jackie Birdsall, Toyota, Senior Engineer, Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles Jennifer Gerbi, Ph.D., Deputy Director and Acting Director, ARPA-E, the innovation arm of the Department of Energy Subscribe to our newsletter to receive our podcasts, blog, events and special coaching offers.. Thanks for subscribing on Apple Podcasts or iHeartRadio and leaving us a review! Follow us on Twitter @joanmichelson

1. What sparked Director Wang's interests in science and technology and how she got into the energy field 2. How innovation, discoveries, and ideas turn into real world applications 3. Examples of programs that have made the full journey from research and development to the commercial space 4. How ARPA-E encourages innovators and program directors to ponder potential policy and regulatory challenges, as well as some of ARPA-E's goals

“The goal is net zero, which is a balance between the emissions we put into the air and the emissions we take out….We have solutions and…it's not that the technologies don't work, it's not that we don't know how to use them. It's because  we haven't made the choice to actually use them at the size and scale that we need to, as quickly as we want to, to avoid all these really terrible, terrible impacts of a changing climate.” Melissa Lott on Electric Ladies Podcast An extraordinary new Nova documentary on PBS hosted by veteran science journalist Miles O'Brien gives a deep dive into what “carbon zero” actually means – in plain English for us non-scientists – and how we can get there in time to save the planet and our lifestyle. How? Listen to Melissa Lott, Director of Research at the Center for Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, and the lead scientists in the documentary, explain it in ways we can all understand in this fascinating discussion with Electric Ladies host Joan Michelson.  You'll hear about: What carbon zero really is – and how to get there The impact of the new trifecta of federal legislation – the Inflation Reduction Act, the Infrastructure Investment Act and the CHIPS and Science Act. Where we get our electricity from today and what has to change to eliminate emissions The impact on each industry – in ways that may surprise you Plus, insightful career advice, such as… “Create your path because it probably hasn't been created before. And follow your passions and the things you want to contribute to…At the end of the day….it's about understanding where you want to have impact and then creating the path forward….When I started in this work, the thing I do now did not exist. It didn't, now it does. And I'm so glad that I positioned myself to be able to do the work that I do today because it speaks to me on many, many levels and it brings together different pieces of me, and it's a way that I can contribute. So,….It's about how are you going to create and be that change you want to see?” Melissa Lott on Electric Ladies Podcast Read Joan's Forbes articles here too. You'll also like: Halla Hrund Logadottir, Director-General, Iceland's National Energy Authority, on how the country has become 85% renewable energy. Sandrine Dixson-Decléve, Co-president of the Club of Rome (global leaders), on how to pivot the global economy to net zero Janet Gail Besser, of Smart Power Alliance, on their 5-point plan to get the U.S. energy system to net zero. Michele Wucker, thought leaders and author of “You Are What You Risk: The New Art & Science to Navigating an Uncertain World.” Jennifer Gerbi, Ph.D., Deputy Director and Acting Director, ARPA-E, the innovation arm of the Department of Energy Subscribe to our newsletter to receive our podcasts, blog, events and special coaching offers.. Thanks for subscribing on Apple Podcasts or iHeartRadio and leaving us a review! Follow us on Twitter @joanmichelson

“At ON Power, we operate three power plants… and combined we produce just under 20% of the energy produced in Iceland…. We are removing carbon from our operations. So… there are low emissions associated with the production ther, from our operations. There's around seven grams of CO2 per produced kilowatt hour, compared to 800, if you produce the electricity using coal.”…Plus, we have been operating a carbon removal station, since then, mineralizing and removing from the atmosphere just over 10,000 tons (of emissions) a year.”  Begga Olafsdottir on Electric Ladies Podcast To expand on a CBS News' “60 Minutes” segment this past weekend on how Iceland is capturing CO2 and storing it underground, here is a replay of an in-depth interview I did in Iceland last year about this issue, and how this small Arctic country became an 85% renewable energy economy. Listen to this fascinating interview, live in Reykjavik, Iceland, with  Berglind “Begga” Olafdottir, CEO of ON Power , with Electric Ladies Podcast host Joan Michelson. ON Power operates the largest geothermal plant in the country, which produces 20% of the total energy Iceland produces. It's also partnering with its sister company Carbfix to remove CO2 from the air. You'll hear: How ON Power captures the CO2 it emits and mineralizes it. How ON Power is partnering with its sister company Carbfix and with Climeworks to bring ground-breaking technology to market that captures CO2 from the air. not just their own emissions. About their business parks that only take tenants that can share products and byproducts of other tenants, creating a circular economy in each park. How geothermal energy works in Iceland. Plus, great career advice....such as: “Women, we have a tendency of underestimating ourselves in general, and I think my advice would be that, if you're mid- career and you want to take a step up in the corporate ladder…I think it's important for women not to discount their experience and the knowledge. Try to be a bit bold. If you're applying for something that is advertised, don't not submit the application because you don't check all the boxes, because people are also hired on potential….and you might be the right person.” Berglind “Begga” Olafsdottir on Electric Ladies Podcast You'll also like: Halla Hrund Logadottir, Director-General, Iceland's National Energy Authority, on how the country has become 85% renewable energy. Birta Kristin Helgadottir, Director of Green By Iceland, on their unique business parks that are each circular economies. Sarah Golden, VP of Energy at Greenbiz, on how geothermal energy works (Sarah traveled to Iceland with Joan in 2022) Kathryn Pavlovsky, Deloitte Energy, Resources & Industrials, on the energy transformation and ESG Jennifer Gerbi, Ph.D., Deputy Director and Acting Director, ARPA-E, the innovation arm of the Department of Energy Subscribe to our newsletter to receive our podcasts, blog, events and special coaching offers.. Thanks for subscribing on Apple Podcasts or iHeartRadio and leaving us a review! Follow us on Twitter @joanmichelson

This time on Cleaning Up, Michael welcomes Kirsty Gogan back to the show to update us on developments across the world of nuclear energy. Kirsty is co-CEO and founder of TerraPraxis, an NGO and climate solution accelerator, and a leading expert on nuclear power. It's been three years since Kirsty's last appearance on the show in August 2020, during which we've seen new reactors come online across the globe, as well as supply dropouts and wholesale nuclear phase-outs. Kirsty walked Michael through the headlines, as well the rise of SMR (Small Modular Reactor) technology and its potential applications. Michael and Kirsty end discussing whether nuclear is offering too little, too late on the path to net-zero in the coming decades, as renewables continue to rise to meet global energy demand. As a one-stop update on all things nuclear, today's Cleaning Up is not to be missed. Make sure you like, subscribe, and share Cleaning Up. We're growing fast on LinkedIn, and we'd love for you tell your professional network about us: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cleaning-up-with-michael-liebreich/ You can find everything you need to keep up with Cleaning Up here: https://linktr.ee/mlcleaningup  Relevant Guest & Topic Links Read the European Commission JRC's Technical assessment of nuclear energy: https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC125953 Watch Kirsty's first appearance on Cleaning Up Episode 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83oUuo9Af_c&list=PLe8ZTD7dMaaBcbo3W_zva0ChNZ9R9rL-U&index=16 Watch Julia Pyke, Financing Director of Sizewell C on Episode 94 of Cleaning Up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fUcx9RT6hQ&list=PLe8ZTD7dMaaBcbo3W_zva0ChNZ9R9rL-U&index=4&pp=gAQBiAQB Watch Tom Samson, former CEO of Rolls-Royce SMR on Episode 116 of Cleaning Up: https://youtu.be/sjThq8c3tT4 Learn more about the work of TerraPraxis: https://www.terrapraxis.org/ Learn more about the work of LucidCatalyst: https://www.lucidcatalyst.com/  Guest Bio Kirsty has more than 15 years' experience as a senior advisor to Government on climate and energy policy, including 10 Downing St and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. Kirsty is managing partner of LucidCatalyst, a highly specialized international consultancy focused on large-scale, affordable, market-based decarbonization of the global economy. LucidCatalyst was recently commissioned to produce the widely cited  Energy Technologies Institute Nuclear Cost Drivers Study, and by ARPA-E to conduct a study on Cost and Performance Requirements for Flexible Advanced Nuclear Plants in Future U.S. Power Markets. 
Kirsty sits on the UK's Nuclear Innovation Research and Advisory Board and the board of the Nuclear Innovation Alliance. In addition to being an authority on nuclear, Kirsty is an award-winning expert on science communication, climate change, and competitiveness. Kirsty is also co-founder and Global Director of Energy for Humanity (EFH), an environmental NGO focused on large-scale deep decarbonisation and energy access.

Geothermal Energy 101 – Sarah Golden, Greenbiz VP of Energy “Geothermal very broadly put, is just the collection of energy from the heat that comes from the earth's core. And so it's, it's tapped into by just going to underground reservoirs and capturing some of that heat. There's a couple of broad categories I'd like to split geothermal into from the outset, and that's geothermal for electricity generation versus geothermal for direct heat applications. And so primarily with geothermal and electricity generation, it is done through drilling into the earth's crust and tapping into either dry steam… or flash steam…and using that to turn a turbine to generate electricity. The other form in direct applications is usually just tapping into the ground to do some sort of heat pump where it's primarily used for heating buildings or heating water.” Sarah Golden on Electric Ladies Podcast The new trifecta of federal legislation – the Inflation Reduction Act, the Infrastructure Investment Act and the CHIPS and Science Act – include a range of funding for alternative energy sources, one of which is geothermal. But most people don't know what geothermal is, so today we'll find out. Listen to Sarah Golden, VP of Energy at Greenbiz – who traveled with Joan to Iceland last year in part to explore their geothermal energy – in this fascinating discussion with Electric Ladies host Joan Michelson.  You'll hear about: How geothermal works. How geothermal energy gets to the grid to provide electricity. How Iceland became a country run on 85% renewable energy, in part by using geothermal energy. How the by-products from geothermal energy companies in Iceland are being used by other companies in a truly circular economy. Plus, insightful career advice, such as… “What's top of mind for me right now is, around recognizing the finite nature of what you are able to do and the way the sort of obsession that our jobs have and the way our economy is set up for productivity and churning things out…….So what I'm working on right now, and I would encourage other people to do, is to respect our finite nature, not buy into the never ending cycle of hustle culture and be thoughtful about where you really want to spend your time and design your work and personal life to make space for that without trying to please everyone else.” Sarah Golden on Electric Ladies Podcast Read Joan's Forbes articles here too. You'll also like: “Begga” Olafsdottir, CEO of ONPower, geothermal plant & second largest energy company in Iceland, which captures CO2 also. Halla Hrund Logadottir, Director-General, Iceland's National Energy Authority, on how the country has become 85% renewable energy. Birta Kristin Helgadottir, Director of Green By Iceland, on their unique business parks that are each circular economies. Michele Wucker, thought leaders and author of “You Are What You Risk: The New Art & Science to Navigating an Uncertain World.” Kathryn Pavlovsky, Deloitte Energy, Resources & Industrials, on the energy transformation and ESG Jennifer Gerbi, Ph.D., Deputy Director and Acting Director, ARPA-E, the innovation arm of the Department of Energy Subscribe to our newsletter to receive our podcasts, blog, events and special coaching offers.. Thanks for subscribing on Apple Podcasts or iHeartRadio and leaving us a review! Follow us on Twitter @joanmichelson #infrastructure #geothermal #energy #ESG @Greenbiz #SarahGolden @JoanMichelson @ElectricLadiesPodcast @ElectricGalsPod #electricity #infrastructureInvestmentAct #climatechange

On the latest episode of the On the Rocks, we had the pleasure of chatting with Doug Wicks, Program Director at ARPA-E, about his rabbit hole interest in geologic hydrogen and its potential as a primary energy source! In this episode, we delved into geologic hydrogen 101. Doug outlined the different "colors" of hydrogen, and discussed what makes geologic hydrogen so fascinating. It could even be a game-changer in the energy industry. We also talked about the challenges associated with mining hydrogen, including the energy sources required and the environmental impact. Doug shared his vision for a future where geologic hydrogen could become a primary energy source, and what it would take to get there. As part of his work at ARPA-E, Doug is reaching out to students to talk about the future of mining and the challenges and opportunities it presents. He emphasized the need to transform the mining industry and bring it into the 21st century. However, he acknowledged the challenge of reaching beyond the "bubble" of those already interested in energy technology. Overall, it was a fascinating conversation about the potential of geologic hydrogen and the work being done to make it a reality. If you're interested in the future of energy, this episode is definitely worth a listen!

In this episode our host Elena Melchert talks with Conner Prochaska about his time at DOE including his work as Senior Advisor and Chief of Staff at ARPA-E, as DOE's first Chief Commercialization Officer for DOE in 2018, and then as Direct of for DOE's Office of Technology Transitions related to moving research results from lab scale to the marketplace. DOE's Blueprint for the Quantum Internet https://www.energy.gov/articles/us-department-energy-unveils-blueprint-quantum-internet-launch-future-quantum-internet Bohr Quantum Technology https://bohrquantum.com/# This episode is made possible by TechnipFMC Click here to take it one question survey and receive OGGN hardhat/laptop stickers Brought to you on Oil and Gas Global Network, the largest and most listened-to podcast network for the oil and energy industry. More from OGGN ... Podcasts LinkedIn Group LinkedIn Company Page Get notified about industry events

On today's episode of the Planetary Regeneration podcast, Gregory speaks to Alan Ransil, PhD, of the Filecoin Green team at Protocol Labs. Alan and Gregory discuss voluntary carbon markets, improving methods for carbon accounting, and building informational infrastructure for carbonizing web3. Through Filecoin, Alan is building web3-native tools to pull verifiable environmental information through the economy in real time. He has worked to accelerate the transition to renewable energy for more than a decade, approaching this as an academic and industry researcher, and startup co-founder. During his doctoral research at MIT focused on energy storage systems, he worked on projects for ARPA-E and DARPA. You can find Alan on Twitter @rransil. Find the transcript for this episode here: bit.ly/058_PRP

You've seen the buzz about nuclear fusion, but when and how will it affect our energy systems, and what comes next? And what role will nuclear fission continue to play in decarbonization of our electricity grid? Here to answer these questions and more is Rachel Slaybaugh, nuclear engineer and investor at early stage deep tech venture capital firm DCVC. Rachel earned a pHD in nuclear engineering and has worked across industry, academia, and finance, including as an associate professor at UC Berkeley. In her work as Program Director at ARPA-E, she oversaw millions in government funding for advanced nuclear. And now in the private sector, she serves as Principal at DCVC, directing venture capital investment in promising energy startups.  Tune in for expert insight on how nuclear energy can enable our transition to a 100% clean grid and what we need to make that happen.   [5:27] The case for nuclear: why it should be included in our energy mix [7:08] Key obstacles and challenges for nuclear energy [10:51] The geopolitical considerations of nuclear and nuclear fuel supply chains [13:42] Uranium mining and resource availability [14:57] Different categories of reactors [20:03] Nuclear startups and small modular reactors [22:27] Nuclear fusion: what we should expect [24:18] Financing: public and private sector funding [26:23] Opportunities and getting involved   Mentioned in the episode: Nuclear Innovation Bootcamp: https://www.nuclearinnovationbootcamp.org/    And follow us on: Newsletter: https://www.energy-terminal.com/newsletter-signup  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/energy-terminal  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/energyterminal/ 

“There's a few reasons why a building owner might want to electrify their building and get heat pumps. One is that it is a better experience for the people who are living in those units. It's really, really quiet. it's healthier, it's safer…and then secondly, there should be less maintenance cost over time. Just having one system that's really efficient.” Lauren Salz on Electric Ladies Podcast Heat pumps are suddenly getting a spotlight. Between big financial incentives for them in the new U.S. Inflation Reduction Act's climate provisions, Germany's ramp up of these pumps to help manage the cold winter as Germany stops using Russian oil and gas, and even Consumer Reports doing a "heat pumps buying guide," you might wonder what heat pumps are and how they can help mitigate climate change. Enter Lauren Salz, Co-Founder and CEO of Sealed, an innovative heat pump company that helps homeowners reduce their energy bills. Listen to Lauren explain how these work and more in this engaging conversation with host Joan Michelson on Electric Ladies Podcast. You'll hear: How heat pumps work, including how they reduce energy bills. What financial incentives are out there to reduce the cost of installing heat pumps in your home or apartment building or commercial building. How Sealed works to help homeowners and property managers find the right heat and air conditioning systems for their budget and buildings (HVACs), including questions to ask. Plus, insightful career advice …. “Career women who are looking to progress in their career (should) really be raising your hand for opportunities and letting people know at work that here's where you want to be heading and you're looking for help and advice on how to get there.…Because…sometimes people can kind of get stuck a little bit in middle management, and the way to progress is to let people know that you are ambitious and you want to keep on progressing in your career and you want to know specifically how you can go and do that.” Lauren Salz on Electric Ladies podcast   You'll also want to listen to: (some might be recorded under our previous name, Green Connections Radio) Jennifer Gerbi, Ph.D., Deputy Director and Acting Director, ARPA-E of the U.S. Dept. of Energy (Advanced Projects Research Agency, for Energy), on innovating energy solutions Halla Hrund Logadottir, Head of Iceland's National Energy Authority, on how that country achieved 85% renewable energy. Meredyth Crichton, head of the Dominion Energy Innovation Center at Clemson University, on wind power. Rasha Hasaneen, head of Innovation at what is now Trane Technologies, formerly Ingersoll Rand, on innovation HVAC systems and related products Katie Pavlovsky, head of Energy, Resources and Industrials at Deloitte Subscribe to our newsletter to receive our podcasts, blog, events and special coaching offers.. Thanks for subscribing on Apple Podcasts or iHeartRadio and leaving us a review! Reach us on Twitter @joanmichelson  

On this episode, hosts Peter Ravella and Tyler Buckingham connect with Simon Freeman and Dan Rogers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). Not strictly focused on ocean technology, ARPA-E seeks to advance high-potential, high-impact energy technologies that are too early for private-sector investment. ARPA-E sees the tremendous potential of the ocean and coastal space to revolutionize energy solutions, and has a crack team of professionals advancing several programs that explore a wide range of technologies from the Macroalgae Research Inspiring Novel Energy Resources (MARINER) Program, to the Aerodynamic Turbines Lighter and Afloat with Nautical Technologies and Integrated Servo-control (ATLANTIS) Program, and many more. Come along as we explore how ARPA-E is thinking about the coast and ocean, and how the future technologies they are working to develop might someday shape our lives. Dr. Simon Freeman serves as a Program Director at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. His focus at ARPA-E is on maritime energy and environmental sensing technologies. Dan Rogers serves as a Tech-to-Market Advisor at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, where he focuses on transformative, high-impact marine technologies to address our society's most pressing ocean-related energy and critical resource needs.

Washington Post Live anchor and co-author of The Early 202 Leigh Ann Caldwell speaks with Will Hurd, former Republican congressman, Jennifer Gerbi, ARPA-E acting director, and Varun Sivaram, senior advisor to the U.S. climate envoy, about the rewards and challenges of being part of the federal workforce. Conversations recorded on Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2022.

Tyler Cole catches up with Jake Russell, Research Fellow at ARPA-E, to unpack his recent FreightWaves article on disaggregation as a tool to decarbonize freight. Jake talks us through new ways of adding resiliency, efficiency to freight networks and proposes a paradigm shift in switching to smaller, less polluting methods of goods movement.Love's Truck Care & Speedco is the nation's largest preventative maintenance network over the road. With more than 1,500 maintenance bays offering light mechanical services and DOT inspections, Love's and Speedco are invested in getting drivers back on the road quickly and safely. Visit www.loves.com to learn more about our services.Follow Net-Zero Carbon on Apple PodcastsFollow Net-Zero Carbon on SpotifyMore FreightWaves Podcasts

Mission and history of ARPA-E Jennifer Gerbi, acting director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for the Department of Energy (ARPA-E), discusses the process of evaluating and funding high-risk, high-reward energy projects and getting the technologies to market   DoD's civilian harm reduction plan Todd Huntley, director of the National Security Law Program at Georgetown University Law Center and former Judge Advocate General, discusses the Defense Department's new Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan and implementation challenges

William Bonvillian does a deep dive about his decades of research on how DARPA works and his more recent work on advanced manufacturing.  William is a Lecturer at MIT and the Senior Director of Special Projects,at MIT's Office of Digital Learning. Before joining MIT he spent almost two decades as a senior policy advisor for the US senate. He's also published many papers and a detailed book exploring the DARPA model.  Links William's Website The DARPA Model for Transformative Technologies Transcript [00:00:35] In this podcast, William Bonvillian, and I do a deep dive about his decades of research about how DARPA works and his more recent work on advanced manufacturing. Well humans, a lecturer at MIT and a senior director of special projects at MIT is office of digital learning. Before joining MIT. He spent almost two decades as a senior policy advisor for the us Senate. He's published many papers and a detailed book exploring the DARPA model. I've wanted [00:01:35] to compare notes with him for years. And it was a pleasure. And an honor to finally catch up with him. Here's my conversation with William [00:01:42] Ben: The place that I I'd love to start off is how did you get interested in, in DARPA and the DARPA model in the first place you've been writing about it for more than a decade now. And, and you're probably one of the, the foremost people who who've explored it. So how'd you get there in the first. [00:01:58] William: You know, I, I I worked for the us Senate as a advisor in the Senate for for about 15 years before coming to MIT then. And I I worked for a us Senator who is on the on the armed services committee. And so I began doing a substantial amount of that staffing, given my interest in science technology, R and D and you know, got early contact with DARPA with some of DARPA's both program managers and the DARPA directors, and kind of got to know the agency that way spent some time with them over in their [00:02:35] offices. You know, really kind of got to know the program and began to realize what a, what a dynamic force it was. And, you know, we're talking 20, 20 plus years ago when frankly DARPA was a lot less known than it is now. So yeah, just like you know, kind of suddenly finding this, this Jewelbox varied in the. It was it was a real discovery for me and I became very, very interested in the, kind of the model they had, which was so different than the other federal R and D agencies. [00:03:05] Ben: Yeah. And, and actually um, It sort of in your mind, what is the for, for people who I, I think tend to see different federal agencies that give money to researchers as, as all being in the same bucket. What, what do you, what would you describe the difference between DARPA and the NSF as being [00:03:24] William: well? I mean, there's a big difference. So the NSF model is to support basic research. And they have, you know, the equivalent of project [00:03:35] managers there and they, they don't do the selecting of the research projects. Instead they queue up applicants for funds and then they supervise a peer review process. Of experts, you know, largely from academia who evaluate, you know, a host of proposals in a, in a given R and D area mm-hmm and and make valuations as to which ones would qualify. What are the kind of best most competitive applicants for NSFs basic research. So DARPA's got a different project going on, so it doesn't work from the bottom up. It, it has strong program managers who are in effect kind of empowered to go out and create new things. So they're not just, you know, responding to. Grant applications for basic research, they come into DARPA and develop a [00:04:35] vision of a new breakthrough technology area. They wanna stand up. And so it's, and there's no peer review here. It's really, you hire talented program managers. And you unleash them, you turn them loose, you empower them to go out and find the best work that's going on in the country. And that's, that can be from, from universities and often ends in this breakthrough technology area they've identified. But it also could be from comp companies, often smaller companies and typically they'll construct kind of a hybrid model where they've got academics. Companies working on a project, the companies are already always oriented to getting the technology out the door. Right. Cause they have to survive, but the researchers are often in touch with some of the more breakthrough capabilities behind the research. So bringing those two together is something that the program manager at DARPA does. So while at [00:05:35] NSF, the program manager equivalent, you know, their big job is getting grant out the door and supervising a complex selection process by committee mm-hmm . The role of the, of the ARPA of the, of the DARPA program manager is selecting the award winners is just the beginning of the job. Then in effect you move into their home, right? You work with them on an ongoing basis. DARPA program managers are spending at least one third of their time on the road, linking up with their, you know, with their grantees, the folks they've contracted with sort of helping them along in the process. And then, you know, the typically fund a group of research awards in an area they'll also work on putting together kind of a thinking community amongst those award winners. Contract winners so that they begin to share their best ideas. And that's not a, that's not easy, right? Yeah. Yeah. If you're an academic [00:06:35] or you, a company, you stuff, you trading ideas is a complicated process, but that's one of the tasks. That the DARPA program manager has, is to really build these thinking communities around problems. And that's what they that's what they're driven to do. So it's a very, very different situation. This is, this is the different world here that Dar is created [00:07:01] Ben: and, and sort of actually to, to, to click on The, the how DARPA program managers interact with ideas. Do you have a sense of how they incentivize that idea sharing? Is it just the, the concept that if you share these ideas, they might get funded in a way that they wouldn't or like what, how do they sort of construct that That trust that people for people could actually be sharing those ideas. [00:07:28] William: Yeah. In, in some ways then it starts out at an all stage. So before, you know, a new [00:07:35] program manager arrives at DARPA and often they'll have, I mean, this could be ape. It could be I RPA, which worked slightly different ways, but similar kind of approach RPE is our energy DARPA. I, APA is our intelligence Dar. Right. And then soon we'll have a help DARPA, which has now been funded. Yeah. I wanna [00:07:55] Ben: your opinion on that later. [00:07:57] William: Okay. Well, we're working away on this model here. You know, you hire a program manager and you hire somebody. Who's gonna be, you know, talent and dynamic and kind of entrepreneurial and standing up a new program. They get the DARPA and they begin to work on this new technology area. And a requirement of DARPA is that really be a breakthrough. They don't wanna fund incremental work that somebody else may be doing. They wanna find a new, new territory. That's their job, revolutionary breakthroughs. To get there. They'll often convene workshops, 1, 2, 3 workshops with some of the best thinkers around the country, including people, [00:08:35] people who may be applying for the funding, but they'll, they'll look for the best people bringing together and get, you know, a day long process going um, often in several different locations to kind of think through. Technology advance opportunity. How, how it might shape up what might contribute, how might you organize it? What research might go into it, what research areas and that kind of begins the kind of thinking process of building a community around a problem. And then they'll make grant awards. And then similarly, they're gonna be frequently convening this group and everybody can sit on their hands and keep their mouth shut. But you know, that's not often the way technologists work. They'll get into a problem and start wanting to share ideas and brainstorm. And that's, that's typically what then takes place and part of the job of the, of. Partner manager DARPA is to really encourage that kind of dialogue and get a lot of ideas on the table and really promote it. Yeah. [00:09:34] Ben: [00:09:35] And, and then also with, with those ideas do, do you have, like, in your, your having looked at this so much, do you have a sense of how much there there's this tension? You know, it's like people generally do the best research when they feel a lot of ownership over their own ideas and they feel like they're, they're really working on. The, the thing that they want to work on. But then at the same time to sort of for, for, for the, a project to play into a broader program, you often need to sort of adjust ideas towards sort of a, a bigger system or a bigger goal. Do you have, do you have an idea of how much Program managers sort of shape what people are working on versus just sort of enabling people to work on things that they would want to work on. Otherwise. [00:10:24] William: Yeah. The program manager in communication with DARPA's office directors and director. Right, right. So it's a very flat organization. You know, and [00:10:35] there'll be an office director and a number of program managers working with that office director. For example in the field of, of biological technologies, a fairly new DARPA office set up about a decade ago. Yeah. You know, there'll be a group of DARPA program managers with expertise in that field and they will often have often a combination of experiences. They'll have some company experience as well as some academic research experience that they're kind of walking on both sides. They'll come into DARPA often with some ideas about things they want to pursue, right. And then they'll start the whittle down process to get after what they really wanna do. And that's, that's a very, very critical stage. They'll do it often in dialogue with fellow program managers at DARPA who will contribute ideas and often with their office. Who kind of oversees the portfolio and we can feed that DARPA program manager into other areas of expertise around DARPA. So coming up with a big breakthrough idea, then [00:11:35] you test it out in these workshops, as I mentioned, right. As well as in dialogue with your colleagues at DARPA. And then if it looks like it's gonna work, then you can move it rapidly to the approval process. But DARPA is, you know, I mean, it's what its name says. It's advanced research projects agency. So it's not just doing research. It very much wants to do projects. And you know, it's an agency and it's a defense agency, so they're gonna be, have to be related to the defense sector. Although there's often spill over into huge areas of civilian economy, like in the it world really pioneer a lot. But essentially the big idea to pursue that's being developed by the program manager and refined by the program manager. And then they'll put out, you know, often what's called a broad area announcement, a BIA. We wanna get a technology that will do this. Right. Right. Give us your best [00:12:35] ideas. And put this out, this broad area announcement out and get people to start applying. And if it's, if the area is somewhat iffy, they can, you know, proceed with smaller awards to see how it kind of tests out rather than going into a full, larger, larger award process with kind of seedlings they'll plant. So there's a variety of mechanisms that it uses, but getting that big breakthrough revolution or idea is the key job at a program manager. And then they'll, they're empowered to go out and do it. And look, Dora's very cooperative. The program managers really work with each other. Yeah. But in addition, it's competitive and everybody knows whose technology is getting ahead, whose technology is moving out and what breakthroughs it might lead to. So there's a certain amount of competition amongst the program managers too, as to how their revolution is coming along. Nice. [00:13:28] Ben: And, and then sort of to, to go sort of like one level down the hierarchy, if you will. When [00:13:35] they put out these, these BAAs do you have a sense for, of how often the performers will sort of either shift their focus to, to, towards a APA program or like how much sort of haggling is there between the performer and the, the program manager in terms of Sort of finding this balance between work that supports the, the broader program goals and work that sort of supports a researcher's already existing agenda. Right. Because, you know, it's like people in their labs, they, they sort of have this, the things that they're pursuing and maybe they're, they're like sort of roughly in the same direction as a program, but need to be, need to be shifted. [00:14:20] William: Yeah. It's, you know, the role of the program manager is to put out a new technological vision, you know, some kind of new breakthrough territory. That's gonna really be a very significant [00:14:35] advance that can be implemented. It's gonna be applied. It's not discovery. It's implementation that they're oriented to. They want to create a new thing that can be implemented. So they're gonna put the vision out there and look the evaluation process. Is gonna look hard at whether or not this exact question you're raising. It's gonna look hard at whether or not the, the applicant researcher is kind of doing their own thing or can actually contribute to the, to the implementation of the vision. And that's gonna be the cutoff. Will it serve the vision or not? And if it's not, it's not gonna get the award. So look, that's an issue with DARPA. DARPA is going at their particular technology visions. NSF will fund, you know, it's driven by the applicants. They will think of ideas they wanna pursue and see if they can get NSF funding for it at DARPA's the other way around the program manager has vision [00:15:35] and then sees who's willing to pursue that vision with him or her. Yeah. Right. So it's a, it's more of a, I won't say top down because DARPA's very collaborative, but it's more of a top down approach than as opposed to NSF, which is bottom up. They're going for technology visions, not to see what neat stuff is out there. right. [00:15:56] Ben: Yeah. And just to, to shift a little bit you, you mentioned I a RPA and ARPA, E as, as other government agencies that, that used the same model you wrote an article in 2011 about ARPA E and, and I I'm interested in. What like how you think that it has played out over, over the past decade? Like how, like how well do you think that they, they have implemented the model? Do you think that it, it does work there. And like what other places do you think, I guess do, do you have a sense of like how to know whether a DARPA, the DARPA [00:16:35] model is applicable to an area more broadly? [00:16:39] William: Yeah. I mean, look that's, and that's kind of a, that's kind of a key question, you know, if you wanna do a, if you wanna do a DARPA, like thing, is it gonna work in the territory that you wanna work in? But let's, let's look at this energy issue. You know, I was involved in, you know, some of the early discussions about creating an, a. For for energy and, you know, the net result of that was that Congressman named bar Gordon led an effort on the house science committee to really create an ARPA energy. And, and that approach had been recommended by a national academies committee. And it you know, it seemed to make a term on a sense. So what was going on in energy at the time of formulation of this. Like the 2007 rough time period. You know, 2008, what was happening was that there was significant amount of investment that was moving from, in, [00:17:35] in moving in venture capital towards new energy, clean tech technologies. So the venture capital sector in that timetable was ramping. It's 2006, 2007 time period was ramping up its venture funding and Cleantech. And that's when AR was being proposed and consider. So it looks like it looked to us, looks everybody, like there would be a way of doing the scale up. Right. In other words, it's not enough just to have, you know, Cool things that come out of an agency, you need to implement the technology. So who's gonna implement it. Right. Who's gonna do that scale up into actual implementation. And that's a very key underlying issue to consider when you're trying to set up a DARPA model. DARPA has the advantage of a huge defense procurement budget. So, right. It can, you know, it can formulate a new technology breakthrough, like [00:18:35] saying stealth, right. Mm-hmm or in you know, UAVs and drones. And then it can turn to the defense department that will spend procuring money to actually stand up the model on a good day. Cause that doesn't always happen. doesn't always go. Right. But, but it's there, what's the scale up model gonna be for energy? Well, we thought there was gonna be venture capital money to scale up Cleantech. And then the bottom fell out of the Cleantech venture funding side in the 2008, 2009 time table and venture money really pulled out. So, you know, in 2009 is. Harpa E first received it, significant early funding. Got an appropriation of 400 million had been authorized for the science committee and then it got an appropriation. Could you say that again? And the there was a big risk there. So look, RPE was then created, had a very dynamic leader named Maju. Who's now at Stanford leading the energy initiatives there. Aroon [00:19:35] saw the challenge and he frankly rose to it. So if they weren't gonna get this, these technologies scaled up through venture capital, like everybody assumed would work. How are they gonna do scale up? So who did a whole series of very creative things? There was some venture left. So we maintained, you know, good relations with the venture world. But also with the corporate world, because there were a lot of corporations that were interested in kind of moving in some of these directions. If these new technologies complimented technologies, they were already pursuing, right. So room created this annual. RPE summit where all of its award winners would, you know, present their technologies and, you know, fabulous, you know, presentations and booths all around this conference. It rapidly became the leading energy technology conference in the us wide widely attended by thousands of people. Venture capital may not be funding much, but they were there. But more importantly, [00:20:35] companies were there. And, you know, looking at what these technologies were to see how they could get to get stood up. So that was a way of exposing what was RPE was doing in a really big way. Right. Right. Another approach they tried was very successfully was to create what they call the tech to market group. So in addition to your program manager at RPE, You stand up a new project and assigned to that project would be somebody with expertise in the commercialization of technology by whatever route the financing might be obtained. And they brought in a series of experts who had done this, who knew venture, who knew startups, who also knew federal government contracting in case the feds were gonna buy this stuff, particularly a D O D and this tech to market group became, you know, that was part of the discipline of standing up a project was to really make sure there was gonna be a pathway to commercialization. In fact, that approach. [00:21:35] Was so successful and DARPA for a number of years later hired away RPE tech tech to tech, to market director to run and set up its own tech to market program. Right. Which was, you know, the, the new child is just taught the parent a lesson here is what the, what the point was. So there's now a tech to market group at, at DARPA as well. Another approach they did. Was, you know, there's a, there's a substantial amount of other R and D funding, more incrementally oriented at the department of energy. The E E R E program, but other programs in different energy technology areas will support, you know, companies, company research, as well as academic research. So RP built very good ties. With E E R E the applied research wing for renewable energy and other applied research, arms of department of energy so that they could provide the kind of next stage in funding. So you do the [00:22:35] prototyping through APA E and then some of the scale up could occur through through. Some of the applied agencies within the department of department of energy. So that was, there were other things they attempted as well. But those were some of the most creative and, you know, they got around this problem. Now there's an underlying issue in energy technology and, and it's true for many. DARPA like approaches the technologies don't stand up overnight. In other words, you don't do your applied work and end up with an early prototype and expect it to become a major business within two weeks. Right. Right. That process can take 10 years or 15 years, particularly in the hard tech area. Right. Anything that requires manufacturing? Yeah. Energy technology stand up. That's a, that's a 10 to 15 year process in the United States. So RPS only been around what, you know, 11, 12 years, something like that. They're still, you know, their technology are still emerging. They have made a lot of [00:23:35] technology contributions in a lot of technology areas that have helped expand opportunity spaces. Yeah. In many interesting areas. So they really helped, I believe. In identifying kind of new territories where there can be advances. But you know, have we transformed the world and solve climate change because of RPE yet? No, no, that's, that's a longer term project. So you have to have that expectation when you look at these different story of software and in some it sectors, DARPAs played a huge role in the evolution of those. Those could be shorter. Yeah, but anything really in the heart tech area is gonna take a much more extended period. Yeah. So you have to be patient. The politicians can't expect change in two weeks or two years. They're gonna have to be a little more patient. [00:24:24] Ben: And, and another sort of just issue that I, I, I'm not sure is, is a real thing, but that I've noticed is that a difference between DARPA and RPE is that [00:24:35] with, with DARPA, when you have the, the DOD acquiring technologies, they can sort of gather together all the different projects that were in, in, within a program and sort of integrate them into an entire system where. When you have a, an ape E program ending there's, there are a number of different projects, but there, there, isn't a great way of sort of integrating all the different pieces of a program. Is that an accurate assessment or am I, am I off base on that? [00:25:07] William: No, Ben, I think that's, I think that's accurate. I know. I mean the part of energy doesn't have a procurement budget. Right, right. Like the defense department does, it's not spending 700 billion a year to make things. So it can't play that system scale up kind of role in the kind of way the defense department does. Now. Look, I, I don't wanna overstate this because DARPA has definitely stood up technologies outside of defense, above procurement. So [00:25:35] most of its it revolution stuff. Where it played a, you know, big role, for example, as you know, in the development of desktop computing and, and a huge role in, in supporting the internet development of the internet. Absolutely. You know, those got stood up, not particularly through DOD, they got stood up in the civilian sector. So DARPA, you know, works on both sides of the street here. If it appears advantageous to, to stand it up on the civilian side, let it scale up and then the can buy it. Right. Mm-hmm , it'll do that. But on the other hand, there's, you know, there's very critical areas. Defense's gonna have to be a lead on like, you know, GPS, for example and really scale up the system. And then it can be shifted over to serve a dual use. [00:26:22] Ben: And, and then, so, so sort of like looking forward to the, the future how do you see all these considerations playing out with with ARPA H the, the health ARPA that is, I think been approved, [00:26:35] but hasn't actually started doing anything yet. [00:26:39] William: Yeah. It's got money appropriated. So you, and it's a priority of the. Of the current administration. So, you know, I believe it's gonna happen here. I mean, look, you know, there, there's some things that just need to be in place for a DARPA model to work well, mm-hmm, scale up is one that we've talked about and, you know, there is a pathway to scale up for new breakthroughs in in, you know, biomedicine and and, and medical device. We've got strong venture capital support in that area for a series of historical reasons. So that follow one pickup in many fields, right, is gonna be is gonna be available in many biomedical kind of fields. Know, there are issues. There, there was a big debate about an issue that I'll call island bridge, right? What you want, what you wanna do [00:27:35] with your DARPA is you want to put your, your DARPA team on an island. You wanna protect that island and keep the bureaucracy away from it. Right? Let 'em do their thing out there and do great stuff. And don't let the bureaucracy, the suits interfere with them. Yeah. On the other hand, they really need a bridge back to the mainland to get their technologies scaled up. So DARPA, for example, reports to the, in effect to the secretary defense and can undertake projects that the secretary defense can then, you know, in effect force the military services to pick up or, you know, use, use budgeting authority to encourage the military services to pick up DARPA has it's an island. It's got a separate building. It's about five miles away from the Pentagon. It's got its team there. It's got its own established culture. But then it's got a bridge back to the mainland, through the secretary of defense, into the defense procurement system. What's gonna be ARPA HS [00:28:35] relationship there. So there've been a lot of. About where to put ARPA-h do you put it in NIH, which is another, like NSF, another peer review, basic research agencies by far the biggest it's got its own culture and that culture frankly, is not a DARPA culture, right? That's not a strong program manager culture. It's a peer review culture. Do you really want to put your DARPA like thing within NIH? And within that NIH culture on the other hand, where else are you gonna put it? Right. So at the moment we've gotta compromise the ARPA H is gonna report to the secretary of HHS, but the secretary of HHS. Doesn't have money to scale up new technologies to speak up. Right. Right. There is an assistant secretary of health who oversees BARDA and some other entities. So, you know, that's, that's a possibility. But NIH has got a lot of ongoing research going on. [00:29:35] There could be a lot of following research that came out of NIH, NIH. So it's, this is a challenge. This is a challenge to set up the right kind of island bridge model for this new ARPA H. We've kind of got a compromise there at the moment. It will be located somewhere on the NIH campus. Hopefully in a separate, you know, building or location. Yeah. And then report to the secondary of HHS. But how are these, how is this scale up gonna work here? What's the bridge to the mainland gonna be and will it be protected enough from a very different culture at NIH? With lots of look, lots of jealousies, you know, when RPE was created for energy, the labs saw the, you know, there's 14 major energy labs, right? They saw RPE as a big competitor for funding that was gonna take money away from the labs. It took a long time to build those relationships so that the lab saw RPE, not as a competitor, but as a way in which their stuff could help. Move ahead. [00:30:35] Yeah. Uh, And that took a while to kind of sort out. So there's a series of these issues that are gonna have to get well thought through for for this new ARPA H that opening culture is absolutely critical. Say more about that and it, yeah. In other words, the culture of strong program managers that are empowered and ready to pursue breakthrough technologies. That's the heart of the darker culture, that culture locks in, in the opening months. If you get it wrong, it's very hard to fix it later. You really can't go back. Yeah. So hiring the right people, having a DARPA director who understands, for example, an ARPA age director who really understands the DARPA model and how to implement it that's gonna be key in setting that culture upright to the. [00:31:23] Ben: Yeah. And, and, and you've mentioned a, a couple of times the, sort of the effect of physical location on, on the culture. Have you, have you seen that, that, like where [00:31:35] people are physically located really like have an effect on, on resulting cultures? [00:31:41] William: Yeah. I mean, look, obviously post pandemic, we're exploring remote work a lot. Yes. But there's a lot to be said for getting your, your thinking team in one place where they're bouncing off ideas, each other with each other all the time. Yeah. Where they're exposed and, and critiqued and evaluated. And they just can't see each other, remind each other kind of all the time. So creating that island. With your talent on it so that they can interact and, and inevitably work pretty intensively together. Yeah. That's a, you know, I think that's a, something of a prerequisite to getting these kinds of organizations together. You've gotta build that earliest free to core and that early culture that that's very empowered. [00:32:30] Ben: And, and so just sort of to, to take, to take a, a right turn [00:32:35] and, and talk a little bit about your, your work on, on advanced manufacturing. This is, this is an area I personally know much less about. But like, I guess one, one sort of basic thing is I think a lot of people Like don't have a good sense of what sort of advanced manufacturing actually means. Like what, what is, what is, what, what, what does advanced actually entail in this situation? [00:33:00] William: Yeah, let me, let me tell you know, a little bit of a story here. Yeah, please. The there are a suite of new technologies. Corresponding processes that are kind of emerging, right. And some have, you know, some have emerged. Some are earlier at an earlier stage but areas like robotics, you know, 3d printing, additive manufacturing obviously digital digital production technologies. Where it is built into kind of every stage. All of your factory floor equipment is all [00:33:35] linked. You're doing continuous analytics on each machine, but then able to connect them to see the processes as a whole that kind of it revolution side. Then there's a whole series of advances in critical, you know, materials. that will enable us to do kind of designer materials in a way we've never done before, because we can now really operate at the medical level in designing materials. So, you know, we can have, you know, in the, in the clean tech space or automotive space, for example, we can have much lighter, much stronger materials. And in a related area, composites are now, you know, an emerging opportunity space. For a lot of, kind of new manufacturing. We may be able to do electronics, which is a whole new generation of electronics based on light and with whole kind of range of new speed for electronics as a result of that and new efficiencies. So there's a lot of technologies that are, that are [00:34:35] available. Some are starting to enter. Some are further back like Flo for example. But they could completely transform the way in which we make things. And that's what advanced manufacturing is. Can we move to these new technologies and, and the processes that go with them in completely transforming the way in which we make. [00:34:57] Ben: Yeah. And, and like, so, so this is, I'm very interested in this and it, it feels like there isn't like, like sort of answering that question involves real research. Right? Cause you, you sort of need to, to rethink processes, you need to rethink how you do design. But at the same time, there, there aren't a lot of. Institutions that are, are organized to do that sort of research. [00:35:23] William: Yeah, that's look that this has been a big gap in our R and D portfolio in the United States. So at the end of world war II, Ben you know, veever Bush designs, the postwar [00:35:35] system for science. Right, right. So. We do this amazing connected system in world war II. We have industries working with universities, working with government that're closely tied. We do incredible advances that lead to, you know, the, they lead to the electronics industry. They lead to the whole aerospace industry, right at the kind of scale we have now, they lead to, they lead to nuclear power. Amazing stuff comes out of world war. I. And we had a very connected system. Then we, we dismantled the military at the end of the work. Cause we thought mistakenly there was gonna be world peace and all those 16 million, you know, soldiers, sailors, airmen that are overseas start to come home and VIN Bush steps in and he says, wait a minute, let's hang on to some of this. We built this amazing R D capability in the course of the war. Let's hold on to some of it. So he says let's support basic research. That's the cheapest stage, right? Applied research costs a lot more. Yep. So we decided let's hang onto that. [00:36:35] And then we began during the war with a lot of federal research funding and universities really for the first time. So my school MIT got 80 times. Amount of federal research funding in four years of world war II, as it did in all of its previous 80 years of history, wow. That's happening at a whole bunch of schools. We're creating this incredible jewel in the American system. We're creating the federally funded research university. So it leads to that which is big, positive, but neighbor Bush's basic research model leaves out the applied side. And the assumption he's got, it's kind of a, what he, what others refer to as a pipeline model. But the federal government role is let's dump basic research into one end of the innovation pipeline. Let's hope that mysterious things occur and great products emerge. Right. And it's the job of industry to do that interim stage. That's kind the model. That is what it, [00:37:35] your fingers hoping something is gonna happen in that pipeline. And whereas in world war II, every stage that pipeline was pretty well organized in a coordinated kind of way. So we move away from that world war II connected system to a very disconnected system. We in effect institutionalized the valley of death, right. There's gonna be a gap between research side and on one side of the valley. And. You know, the actual technology implementation applied late stage applied side on the other side of the valley with a big gap, big valley gap in between the two and very few bridging mechanisms across. So we built that into our system. And look, VIN Bush was worried about science. How are we gonna fund basic science? That's his worry. And we built, you know, the us, wasn't the science leader going into world war II. Yeah. Germany, Britain, war. We weren't, we managed [00:38:35] to bring over lots of immigrants to help lead science in the us. And they, they took up the reigns and we trained a lot of great talent here in the course of the war. And you know, we got ourselves in a position where the us was the science leader by the end of the. We were going into the war, the world manufacturing leader. We weren't the science leader. We were the world manufacturing leader. We had built a system of mass production that nobody else had ever seen. Right? Yeah. We went into the war with eight times the production capacity of Japan and four times the production capacity in Germany going into the war. You can only imagine what were coming outta the war. Yeah, exactly. So the least thing on Genever Bush's mind was manufacturing that's in great shape. He sort [00:39:24] Ben: took that as a given [00:39:25] William: almost right. That's a given we're always gonna have that. Right. But he was wrong. We weren't always gonna have that. Uh, And Japan taught us, [00:39:35] you That ended up costing the us it's electronic sector leadership in the electronic sector and leadership in the auto sector, two industry sectors that we had completely dominated. So, and then, you know, comes to China and we have further erosion as well. So the reason why advanced manufacturing is important is you. We, we got two moves to compete with China. China's lower wage, lower cost. We can lower our wages to Chinese wage levels. That's probably not gonna happen. Right. Or alternatively, although we've been working on it, cause we've definitely stagnated wages in us, manufacturing, believe me. But secondly, we can get much more efficient, much more productive. We can apply our innovation system to manufacturing. Right. So NSF doesn't have an R and D portfolio related to manufac. Star doesn't have an R D portfolio that's terribly related to manufacturing either. Right? NIH certainly [00:40:35] doesn't we don't do manufacturing. We don't do these manufacturing technologies and processes in our I D system. Let's get that very talented, still very able us innovation system onto manufacturing. So that's the basic idea and that's the way we're gonna have to compete. We sort of got no other move. Right? We can just have continued erosion with all kinds of social disruption. And a real decline in the American working glass, we can continue to do that and we watch what that's doing to our democracy, or we can get our act together and do advanced manufacturing. Yeah. And, and [00:41:12] Ben: do you look, I guess, like, what are some of the most sort of promising efforts in that area, in, in that you've seen? [00:41:21] William: Well, there's, there's amazing work going on that we already see in a whole new kind of robotics. You know, the old industrial robots weighed 10 times. They're very dangerous. You have to put cages around them and make sure that the workers don't go near them. [00:41:35] And they do, you know, they lift up something heavy and they'll do like one perfect spot weld, and then they'll move to the next, you know, next piece of, you know, next piece, moving down the assembly line. Yeah. That's the old kinda robotics. The new kind of robotics are lightweight, collaborative robotics. Just as you know, we're talking on cell phones, it's like the relationship between me and the cell phone. It's a big enabler for me. It helps me I can do voice commands to the robot and it's, you know, and can work in a precision kind of way, but it was also knows me works around me. Doesn't endanger. It's a helper, not a, you know, a caged beast that has to be behind a fence. So we're moving to that kind of new robotics. That's a whole new C change in manufacturing. We're doing 3d printing, which you know, is instead of. Instead of subtractive manufacturing, where you cut away a huge piece of metal [00:42:35] and end up with a smaller part with real limits to what the shape and dimensions and content of that, that, that part can be additive enables you to build a part from scratch with these, with powders shape it to exactly the role you want often with new materials and we're moving into. Metal 3d printing. So it's no longer plastics and resins only, it's a whole new kind of it's metal of production. And look, you know, we haven't figured out yet how to get the volumes that are similar to, to mass production for 3d printing, but there are plenty of product lines where you you're making limited numbers that are, have to be extremely precise, right? Yeah. Like. Jet engines, right. You know, you're not turning out millions of jet engines every day. You're turning out small numbers, but the precision that additive [00:43:35] can bring potentially with new materials, like ceramics to creating those turbine blades is really quite dramatic. So there's a whole series of industrial sectors that'll be suited to, to additive. And that's already moving in on some of these sectors and we're learning how to. All kinds of, of new materials for additives, you know, particularly in the metal side and new material side. So that's another huge territory of opportunity to transform their actually new ways. [00:44:03] Ben: And, and something that I'm particularly interested in is, is so. You could think of, of many of these, these new technologies as sort of components in a broader system. And what it seems like I, I don't personally see a lot of, is kind of like the like process research work to really sort of rethink the entire The the, the entire, like, call it a manufacturing line or the entire system and sort of ask, like what, how would you like redesign the product around how you're making it? Have you seen any [00:44:35] sort of like institutions that are sort of trying to do that sort of work? [00:44:40] William: Yeah. I mean this, this whole idea of, you know, for a long time, you know, we gear. The design had to fit the manufacturing, right? So we moved to, you know, design for manufacturing, right. To make it easily manufacturable. But now. The manufacturing can be much more embedded into the design process because you can come up with a whole new suite of capabilities that will effectuate new design opportunities. Right? So rather than manufacturing, being a limiting factor on, on design, it's a, it's now an enabler of design and additive manufacturing is an example of. So a whole new relationship between the production process and design process really possible here with these new technologies. And then getting back to your systems point. You know, now we've got the opportunity through digital [00:45:35] technologies to really take a look at a production. Operation, not as this, a series of isolated machines where material has to be carted from one machine suite to the next machine suite. Right now we've got the ability to integrate them in, in ways that we have never had before with running the kind of level of data analytics on, on performance for each machine, but also running a new level of analytics on the system itself. Right? So we're now in a position to really connect, collect the metrics. To a very fine scale and level on the production process itself in a way that we've never really had before. So the opportunities for efficiencies here I think are quite dramatic. And I think that's the way we're gonna have to compete. But a lot of people worry, you know, are we gonna eliminate all work? Right? Are the, are the robots gonna displace the workers? But the reality of advanced manufacturing is actually something [00:46:35] of the opposite. You know, the robot will display some jobs, but much more frequently, the robot will create all kinds of new possibilities within existing jobs. Yeah. And then thirdly, there will be jobs to get created because we need to make robots right. And operate program. And so they're gonna be a lot of jobs. So the net job loss problem, I just don't think is a real. Right. Yeah. Instead we get these new possibilities of kind of moving ahead and look at the center of these kinds of new factory systems are gonna be people, right? Yeah. People in the are the ones that have ideas you know, software and AI. And robotics just can't do a whole lot of things that people are, are able to do. They don't have the kind of conceptual frameworks and the ability to kind of Intuit [00:47:35] change that people have got. So I think in a way the new manufacturing system is going be, you know, more people centric than it's been before. Instead [00:47:47] Ben: of people just acting like robots. [00:47:49] William: Yeah. Lot people act acting like robots. It's people, you know, doing the organization and designing and management and the systems and the programming and the processed way that we're gonna need. Yeah, [00:48:07] Ben: This was awesome. I'm so grateful. And now a quick word from our sponsors. If you listen to podcasts you've surely heard about advertisements for all sorts of amazing mattresses ones that can get hot or cold firmer or softer but now with the pod you can sleep in a tank of hydrostatic fluid make gravity while you sleep a thing of the past [00:48:35]  

“At ON Power...combined we produce just under 20% of the energy produced in Iceland…. We are removing carbon from our operations....Plus, we have been operating a carbon removal station, since then, mineralizing and removing from the atmosphere just over 10,000 tons (of emissions) a year.” Becca Olafsdottir on Electric Ladies Podcast In a recent whirlwind trip to Iceland, one of the fascinating companies Joan's visit to that beautiful Arctic country is ON Power, which operates the largest geothermal plant in the country, which produces 20% of the total energy Iceland produces. It's also removing the carbon emissions from its plants, and partnering with its sister company Carbfix to remove CO2 from the air.  This is ground-breaking technology that can get us to 100% renewable energy, like it is doing for Iceland. How? Listen to Berglind “Becca” Olafdottir, ON Power CEO in this engaging conversation with Electric Ladies Podcast host Joan Michelson during her recent trip there, conducted live in Reykjavik. You'll hear: How ON Power captures the CO2 it emits and mineralizes it. About their business parks that only take tenants that can share products and byproducts of other tenants, creating a circular economy in each park. How ON Power is partnering with its sister company Carbfix and with Climeworks to bring ground-breaking technology to market that captures CO2 from the air. not just their own emissions. Why women play an important role in driving the innovations in Iceland's renewable energy economy. Plus, great career advice.... “Women, we have a tendency of underestimating ourselves in general, and I think my advice would be that, if you're mid- career and you want to take a step up in the corporate ladder…I think it's important for women not to discount their experience and the knowledge. Try to be a bit bold. If you're applying for something that is advertised, don't not submit the application because you don't check all the boxes, because people are also hired on potential….and you might be the right person.” Berglind “Becca” Olafsdottir on Electric Ladies Podcast You'll also like: Halla Hrund Logadottir, Director-General, Iceland's National Energy Authority, on how the country has become 85% renewable energy. Birta Kristin Helgadottir, Director of Green By Iceland, on their unique business parks that are each circular economies. Michele Wucker, thought leaders and author of “You Are What You Risk: The New Art & Science to Navigating an Uncertain World.” Kathryn Pavlovsky, Deloitte Energy, Resources & Industrials, on the energy transformation and ESG Jennifer Gerbi, Ph.D., Deputy Director and Acting Director, ARPA-E, the innovation arm of the Department of Energy Subscribe to our newsletter to receive our podcasts, blog, events and special coaching offers.. Thanks for subscribing on Apple Podcasts or iHeartRadio and leaving us a review! Follow us on Twitter @joanmichelson

“I think now, business models will have to somehow rely more on collaboration rather than competition, So, I think, and maybe, naively hope, (this) will be the future of business models…We've harnessed geothermal power for ages, and then we decided we needed to… harness the effluent stream, the excess material that comes from, for example, the geothermal resource. And from that we are developing aquaculture, agriculture, the future of food, cosmetics and, spa life. So, enhancing the quality of life tremendously.” Birta Kristin Helgadottir on Electric Ladies Podcast On Joan's recent whirlwind tour of some of Iceland's unique technologies and business models that help its economy run on 85% renewable energy, one of the things that fascinated her was their unique collaborative business parks that share resources in clever ways, creating miniature circular economies on each property. This seems like another way Iceland could be a pilot project for the rest of us on how to run a country on 100% renewable energy. What are these unique business parks? Listen to Electric Ladies Podcast host Joan Michelson's fascinating conversation with Birta Kristin Helgadottir, the Director of Green By Iceland, their public-private partnership driving their initiative to be a 100% renewable economy, conducted live in Reykjavik. You'll hear: How these business parks in Iceland share products and byproducts among the tenants, creating a circular economy in each park. Examples of two of these unique parks and how they choose which businesses can be housed there. Lessons we can all learn from these creative business models. Why women play an important role in driving the innovations in Iceland's renewable energy economy. Plus, great career advice.... "Always follow your gut. You want to advance that's one thing. You want to make money, that can be a totally different thing… So you have passion… go with a gut feeling and go with your instincts, because sometimes you just go with what you think society would think is right….(And,) the traditional path towards a great career and a perfect life that there is an ideology about that, but you need to shape your own ideology. " Birta Kristin Helgadottir on Electric Ladies Podcast You'll also like: Halla Hrund Logadottir, Director-General, Iceland's National Energy Authority, on how the country has become 85% renewable energy. Michele Wucker, thought leaders and author of “You Are What You Risk: The New Art & Science to Navigating an Uncertain World.” Kathryn Pavlovsky, Deloitte Energy, Resources & Industrials, on the energy transformation and ESG Sandrine Dixson, Co-president of the Club of Rome (global leaders) and Ambassador to the Climate Jennifer Gerbi, Ph.D., Deputy Director and Acting Director, ARPA-E, the innovation arm of the Department of Energy Subscribe to our newsletter to receive our podcasts, blog, events and special coaching offers.. Thanks for subscribing on Apple Podcasts or iHeartRadio and leaving us a review! Follow us on Twitter @joanmichelson

Iceland runs on 85% renewable energy. How did they get there? “My favorite part of Iceland's renewable energy story is that it started small. It started with innovation, entrepreneurship. In terms of how has this developed, originally organically and then supported by the government and by policies and funding, which is essential for any development.” Halla Hrund Logadottir on Electric Ladies Podcast I was privileged to tour some of the unique technologies and business models that fuel Iceland's remarkable 85% renewable energy economy recently. It seems that Iceland could be a pilot project for the rest of us on how to do it. How did they do it? Listen to this fascinating interview with Halla Hrund Logadottir, the Director-General of Iceland's National Energy Authority (INEA) with host Joan Michelson on Electric Ladies Podcast conducted in Reykjavik to hear strategies we can all implement today. You'll hear: How Iceland leverages its topology and natural resources to run the country on renewable energy - and how they plan to get to 100% renewable energy soon. The unique database of best practices, solutions and partnerships Iceland developed and continues to build upon. Lessons we can all learn from their evolution for our own countries. Why women play an important role in driving the innovations in Iceland's renewable energy economy. Plus, great career advice.... "Don't let fear get in your way. And if you don't feel like you have the courage, borrow it from a friend or from an expert, go out there and, borrow it. So you can actually make sure that fear is not standing between you and the opportunity that the world has for you to make a difference." Halla Hrund Logadottir on Electric Ladies Podcast You'll also like: Michele Wucker, thought leaders and author of “You Are What You Risk: The New Art & Science to Navigating an Uncertain World.” Kathryn Pavlovsky, Deloitte Energy, Resources & Industrials, on the energy transformation and ESG Sandrine Dixson, Co-president of the Club of Rome (global leaders) and Ambassador to the Climate Jennifer Gerbi, Ph.D., Deputy Director and Acting Director, ARPA-E, the innovation arm of the Department of Energy  Subscribe to our newsletter to receive our podcasts, blog, events and special coaching offers.. Thanks for subscribing on Apple Podcasts or iHeartRadio and leaving us a review! Follow us on Twitter @joanmichelson

Today's guest is Rachel Slaybaugh, Principal at DCVC.In her role, Rachel is focused on climate, sustainability, and energy investments. Before joining DCVC, Rachel was an Associate Professor of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley where she held leadership roles in several data science and entrepreneurship efforts. Concurrent to being a professor, Rachel was a Division Director at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where she ran the Cyclotron Road Division. She served as a Program Director at the Department of Energy's ARPA-E, where she created the nuclear fission program and managed the agriculture portfolio as well as solar and virtual reality teams. Rachel co-founded the Good Energy Collective and currently serves as Chair of the Board. Rachel received a B.S. in Nuclear Engineering from Penn State, where she served as a licensed nuclear reactor operator, and a M.S. and Ph.D. from University of Wisconsin–Madison in Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics. We have a wonderful discussion about Rachel's climate journey and how she has prioritized her professional pursuits. We also talk about what Rachel has learned working in academia, government, early-stage innovation, and now as a venture capitalist. Additionally, the conversation touches on where VC and equity capital fit into the climate problem as well as key learnings from the last cleantech wave, and so much more. Enjoy the show!  You can find me on Twitter @jjacobs22 (me), @mcjpod (podcast) or @mcjcollective (company). You can reach us via email at info@mcjcollective.com, where we encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.Episode recorded June 7, 2022.

“I think one of the most important starting points, whether it be on social or environmental, is back to the measurement, setting a goal and making progress every single day towards that goal with actions….Even if that goal seems unattainable, challenging, unsure of what the steps are between X and Y. I think the fact that we put stakes in the ground and work towards them drives the behavior that we want to see.” Denise Naguib on Electric Ladies Podcast   As more of us start to travel more, including planning summer vacations, think about the environmental impact of where you'll stay. Most hotels these days have sustainable practices and goals, but how do these massive properties really control their carbon footprint and water use, for example, and their waste?   Listen to Denise Naguib, VP of Global Sustainability at Marriott in this wide-ranging conversation with Electric Ladies host Joan Michelson at a live net zero event in Washington, DC. (Electric Ladies was formerly known as Green Connections Radio.) You'll hear: How Marriott sets and achieves their sustainability goals How the executives incentivize their teams to follow through on the company's sustainability goals. How Marriott is supporting Ukrainian refugees who escaped the war by going to Europe. Plus, insightful career advice. And much more! “You can make a difference in any role that you are in. I think that is a really important thing to say. It is not about being part of the sustainability or social impact team that only then you can make a difference. Every single role in a company has the opportunity to make meaningful change, whether you are in finance or legal or operations or whatever it is, public relations. I think identifying how you can make that based on the skills that you bring forward, based on the opportunities that you can get involved in things I think is really invaluable.” Denise Naguib on Electric Ladies podcast   Read Joan's Forbes articles here. You'll also want to listen to (some of these are under the name Green Connections Radio): Janet Gail Besser, Smart Electric Power Alliance, on their 5-point plan to get to net zero in any industry Kristen Sullivan, Deloitte Sustainability Practice lead, on the transformation and ESG Jennifer Gerbi, Ph.D., Deputy Director and Acting Director, ARPA-E, the innovation arm of the Department of Energy  Michele Wucker, thought leaders and author of “You Are What You Risk: The New Art & Science to Navigating an Uncertain World.” Roberta Rincon, Society of Women Engineers, Director of Research, on the status and careers of women in various types of engineering roles.   Subscribe to our newsletter to receive our podcasts, blog, events and special coaching offers.. Thanks for subscribing on Apple Podcasts or iHeartRadio and leaving us a review! Follow us on Twitter @joanmichelson   and @electricgalspod

"(ESG tracking software) needs to be comprehensive. It needs to be accurate, you know, full proof. It needs to be integrated into other systems. It needs to be easy to use…. And I think, fifth, it's got to be providing you a road map for where to go" Suzanne DiBianca on Electric Ladies Podcast The need for solid systems to track “net zero” emissions and ESG initiatives – environment-social-governance – are more and more critical, especially now that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has announced their proposed climate risk disclosure rules.  There are lots of software systems being adapted to do this tracking, including Salesforce, which is known for their sales-focused software.  But what should we look for in a good software to track this stuff, some of which is intangible? Listen to Suzanne DiBianca of Salesforce explain it in this fascinating interview with Electric Ladies host Joan Michelson. (Electric Ladies was formerly known as Green Connections Radio.) You'll hear: What net zero really means, no matter what industry you're in. What to look for in good emissions-climate-ESG tracking software. How Salesforce developed theirs to help them track their own carbon footprint. Plus, insightful career advice. And much more! “More venture money has gone into climate tech than ever in history in the U.S. in particular, but all over the world. And there's great companies that are doing direct air capture, that are doing clean energy, that are doing renewables, that are….(doing) such amazing innovation….You can work for an amazing company like that as a marketing professional, as an HR professional, as a sales professional…(in all kinds of roles)… So, either, stay put where you are and look are places to make impact based on your skill set and what the company's committed to, or, there's all kinds of incredible entrepreneurs out there doing amazing things in the world. Find a passion area, whether it's workforce development or education or climate (or whatever) and go do it.“ Suzanne DiBianca on Electric Ladies podcast Read Joan's Forbes articles here. You'll also want to listen to (some of these are under the name Green Connections Radio): Janet Gail Besser, Smart Electric Power Alliance, on their 5-point plan to get to net zero in any industry Kristen Sullivan, Deloitte Sustainability Practice lead, on the transformation and ESG Jennifer Gerbi, Ph.D., Deputy Director and Acting Director, ARPA-E, the innovation arm of the Department of Energy  Michele Wucker, thought leaders and author of “You Are What You Risk: The New Art & Science to Navigating an Uncertain World.” Roberta Rincon, Society of Women Engineers, Director of Research, on the status and careers of women in various types of engineering roles. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive our podcasts, blog, events and special coaching offers.. Thanks for subscribing on Apple Podcasts or iHeartRadio and leaving us a review! Follow us on Twitter @joanmichelson and @electricgalspod

In Episode 6, Michael and Hope talk with Dr. Eric Rohlfing, former acting director of ARPA-E and executive-in-residence at the Duke Energy Initiative. In his time at ARPA-E, Dr. Rohlfing oversaw dozens of projects across all areas of the energy space that received billions of dollars of follow-on funding. Tune in to hear about the most important trends and emerging technologies that will transform our energy systems.   Shownotes: The role of government funding for energy research The most exciting emerging energy technologies Trends and future developments in the energy transition Advice from a career-long energy expert   Connect with us: Email: team@energy-terminal.com Website: www.energy-terminal.com Instagram: @energyterminal Twitter: @energyterminal LinkedIn: Energy Terminal Apple Podcast: Energy Terminal Spotify: Energy Terminal

"Net zero means that you may have some emissions, but you're going to offset them in another way...When you talk about net zero buildings, meaning...that it's generating as much energy as it's using. But when you talk about a utility commitment to be net zero by 2030, 2035, 2040, they may mean net zero in....the energy they produce to sell to customers. They may mean net zero across the organization." Janet Gail Besser on Electric Ladies Podcast   Companies and governments announce their “net zero” goals, saying they will get to net zero by 2030 or 2035, for example, but what does that really mean and how will they do it? If you work in an organization that made this commitment, you also need to figure out how you'll guide your organization that way.   Listen to Janet Gail Besser of Smart Electric Power Alliance explain “net zero” and their framework any organization can use to get there in this fascinating interview with Electric Ladies host Joan Michelson. (Electric Ladies was formerly known as Green Connections Radio.) You'll hear: What net zero really means, for companies, utilities, buildings and more. A 5 point framework that organizations can use to get to net zero, regardless of where their power comes from or how they use it. How to hold companies and organizations accountable for their net zero commitments. How utilities and the grid can transition to net zero, using innovation. Plus, insightful career advice. And much more! “There are a lot of new opportunities. And so one piece of advice I give is to be open to anything. If you have been at a utility for 15 years, look around at some of …the new technology providers, look at some of the startups, look at some of the opportunities in clean energy finance, if that matches your skillset. Look beyond where you are now at what's happening and be open to new opportunities. My other big ad advice is network, join the organizations that are supporting women and energy in the environment.“ Janet Gail Besser on Electric Ladies podcast   Read Joan's Forbes articles here. You'll also want to listen to (some of these are under the name Green Connections Radio): Meredyth Crichton, Clemson University Energy Innovation Unit, on the grid, wind and solar power. Jennifer Gerbi, Ph.D., Deputy Director and Acting Director, ARPA-E, the innovation arm of the Department of Energy  Michele Wucker, thought leaders and author of “You Are What You Risk: The New Art & Science to Navigating an Uncertain World.” Kathryn Pavlovsky, Deloitte Energy, Resources & Industrials, on the energy transformation and ESG Kristen Sullivan, Deloitte Sustainability & Supply Chain practice, on companies “doing” ESG, and the supply chain. Roberta Rincon, Society of Women Engineers, Director of Research, on the status and careers of women in various types of engineering roles. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive our podcasts, blog, events and special coaching offers.. Thanks for subscribing on Apple Podcasts or iHeartRadio and leaving us a review! Follow us on Twitter @joanmichelson   and @electricgalspod

Rajeev Singh is the chief technology officer of AutoGrid, a company which is known as a pioneer in the energy management space—and the first company that was backed by Arpa-E to pursue research in smart grid applications. Mr. Singh was AutoGrid's first engineer, and in this conversation, we discuss AutoGrid's work with helping grid operators integrate renewable energy. Hope you enjoy my conversation with Mr. Singh! Topics covered in this podcast: ​ The story behind AutoGrid and Mr. Singh's initial attraction to the company How AutoGrid leverages Cloud servers to help manage supply and demand flows Why is elasticity important for AutoGrid's functionality? What is AutoGrid Flex and how do utilities benefit from this service? How is AutoGrid able to manage renewable energy generation at such a wide scale? The variables AutoGrid takes into account when forecasting generation and consumption What is the energy storage management system that AutoGrid has developed?

PODCAST GUEST BIO: Led by CEO and Co-founder Dr. Shreya Dave, Via Separations is an MIT spinout enabling industrial process efficiency with novel chemistries that allow manufacturing facilities to slash energy consumption while making more product. Targeting the 12% of US energy consumption that is wasted each year separating chemical compounds with heat, Via Separations reduces the load of the process by 90%, electrifies the most energy-intensive step in chemical production, and generates additional revenue for the customer. Today, Via is deploying its technology in pilot trials at pulp and paper facilities to eliminate 500 million metric tons of CO2 by 2050. Via's investors and partners include Prime Impact Fund, Safar Partners, The Engine, Embark Ventures, ARPA-E, the National Science Foundation, and Greentown Labs. ------- QUESTIONS THAT WE COVERED: Business What does your company do? What makes you unique versus the competition? How are you funding your growth — e.g., revenue, VC, CVC, government grants, M&A? What are 1-2 lessons you've learned along the way? Outside of your current business, what other 1-2 climate or sustainability sectors seem like promising areas in which to start a business? What might those solutions look like? Personal If you had to start over, what are 1-2 tips you'd give yourself in order to be faster, more effective, and higher impact? What are some habits and routines that keep you focused, healthy, and sane — e.g., meditations, exercise, productivity hacks? What recommendations do you have for our audience — books, podcasts, quotes, tools? What's the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you — outside of your own family? ------- PODCAST HOST: Entrepreneurs for Impact is the only private mastermind community for growth-stage CEOs and investors fighting climate change. We're on a mission to help climate leaders supercharge their impacts, share best practices, expand their networks, and reach their full potential. Our invite-only cohorts of 12 executives catalyze personal development and business growth via monthly meetings, annual retreats, a member-only Climate Investor Database, and 1:1 coaching and strategy calls. Today's highly curated Mastermind members represent over $4B in market cap or assets under management, and are influencing corporate priorities and infrastructure much bigger than that. Peer groups are led by Dr. Chris Wedding who brings $1B+ of investment experience, 60,000+ professional students taught, 25 years of meditation, an obsession with constant improvement, and far too many mistakes to keep to himself. Website: www.entrepreneursforimpact.com Membership benefits: https://bit.ly/3l12Gyg Sample Mastermind members: https://bit.ly/3ipSehS Request more information on membership: https://bit.ly/3mj48eM --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/entrepreneurs-for-impact/message

The Advanced Research Projects Agency Energy, ARPA-E, is spending big to unearth the next generation of technologies for energy. It's launched a $175 million grant program for everything from wind to fusion. For details, ARPA-E's deputy director for technology, Jenny Gerbi.

Today's guest is Ross Youngs, CEO of Univenture and a long time entrepreneur. He has successfully taken businesses from small investments to hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Today's we will be talking about disruptive innovation and how it's not a game that is only for the biggest companies like Microsoft or Apple but is actually something you can follow with a couple key steps. Ross has spent over 30 years inventing products, technologies and processes for a variety of industries, and holds over 75 patents worldwide. He is driven to innovate by a focus on what is better, faster and less expensive. Ross' recent major innovations include an R&D 100 Award for collaboration on biopolymer technologies. In 2009, Biosortia was awarded a $6 million ARPA-E grant for its algal harvesting technology, which helped lead to the development of Biosortia's drug discovery platform. After listening to today's episode, check out https://www.biosortia.com/ to learn more about Ross Youngs and Biosortia.