Podcast appearances and mentions of dan reicher

Solar siting, the future of hydroelectric dams, and grid transmission buildout have been some of the most contentious and important areas needing attention as the U.S. builds out the electric grid of tomorrow. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Dan Reicher who is a former Assistant Secretary of Energy and is associated with the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, as well as Dartmouth's Irving Institute for Energy and Society.The discussion centers on a program at Stanford called Uncommon Dialogues which aims to sort out divisive issues and make progress solving them.“I started to look into this Uncommon Dialogue program, and I was really quite intrigued given the difficulties we have in resolving some of today's big energy, climate and environmental issues,” said Reicher.The idea is to get opposing parties together at least once and see if there's any interest in really trying to resolve some of their big differences.“I think we've got a good process, and we've tested it now in both hydropower and big solar, and I think it could work well on a lot of other issues. We got some of the biggest solar developers in the United States to sit down with some of the big environmental groups including The Nature Conservancy, the largest U.S. conservation group, and with tribal representatives and a whole host of others.”The result was the groups bought in on an agreement about how to proceed.“We've been moving forward ever since to really try to improve the way we site, operate, and transmit the power from these big solar projects, often measured in the hundreds and hundreds of megawatts and some of them approaching 1,000 megawatts.”Dan Reicher is a former Assistant Secretary of Energy in the Clinton Administration. Mr. Reicher is currently attached to the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. Mr. Reicher joined Stanford in 2011 as the executive director of Stanford's Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy & Finance. Before joining Stanford, he was the Director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives at Google.Mr. Reicher holds a B.A. in biology from Dartmouth College and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. 

One of our most popular episodes of 2023 is back, with this encore presentation, just in time for Earth Day!  Dan Reicher's interest in and advocacy for environmental protection and clean energy began when he was a child and has continued throughout his life.  In addition to teaching at Stanford University, has served three U.S. presidents, testified before the U.S. Congress more than 50 times, led the launch of Google's pathbreaking climate and clean energy work, oversaw a $1.2 billion annual clean energy R&D budget as U.S. Assistant Secretary of Energy, and co-founded the nation's first investment firm focused exclusively on renewable energy project finance.  In this Blue Sky episode, Dan provides his take on potential climate change solutions; from hydro, solar, wind, and nuclear power, to conservation and reforestation.  He explains that while he's realistic about the massive amount of work and resources that will be required to solve the climate crisis, he's optimistic about our ability to get it done. 

Some questions fall far outside the scope of what governments are designed to answer. How will we explain ourselves to extraterrestrials? What can we say to warn humans 10,000 years in the future about the nuclear waste we're leaving behind? Assuming we develop the proper technology, would it be beneficial to breed glowing cats?Two decades after NASA shot a message to aliens into deep space, one of its authors joined an eclectic group of experts and went down a similar rabbit hole regarding nuclear waste. The result was one of the most outlandish, mind-bending, and heartfelt reports ever commissioned by the US government. This episode features artist Jon Lomberg, former NRDC lawyer Dan Reicher, and futurist Ted Gordon.

Dan Reicher's interest in and advocacy for environmental protection and clean energy began when he was a child and has continued throughout his life.  In addition to teaching at Stanford University, has served three U.S. presidents, testified before the U.S. Congress more than 50 times, led the launch of Google's pathbreaking climate and clean energy work, oversaw a $1.2 billion annual clean energy R&D budget as U.S. Assistant Secretary of Energy, and co-founded the nation's first investment firm focused exclusively on renewable energy project finance.  In this Blue Sky episode, Dan provides his take on potential climate change solutions; from hydro, solar, wind,  and nuclear power, to conservation and reforestation.  He explains that while he's realistic about the massive amount of work and resources that will be required to solve the climate crisis, he's optimistic about our ability to get it done.

Grid Talk is back for its third season, and we kick things off with a discussion about the impact of the massive Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which will funnel more than $60 billion to Department of Energy.Host Marty Rosenberg talks with former U.S. Assistant Energy Secretary Dan Reicher about where and how that money will be spent.“Some of that's going to be in the so-called ‘innovation hubs' where they're going to certain areas of the country and focusing on certain technologies and how to get those accelerated in terms of their development and deployment. Some of this is going to go through existing programs like the low-income home weatherization program to make buildings more efficient.”Mr. Reicher talks about specific items for infrastructure spending and explains what he calls the clean energy triangle.“If we can integrate around that triangle: technology, policy, and finance; if we can find more common ground than we are finding to date, I think we've got a real chance to do well and to do good in clean energy and have a real shot at successfully addressing the climate crisis.”Dan Reicher is a former Assistant Secretary of Energy in the Clinton Administration. Mr. Reicher is currently a senior research scholar at the Stanford Woods Institute for Environment.  Mr. Reicher joined Stanford in 2011 as the executive director of Stanford's Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy & Finance. Before joining Stanford, he was the Director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives at Google.Mr. Reicher holds a B.A. in biology from Dartmouth College and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. 

Though movies like "Dune" and "No Time to Die" are opening in movie theaters, attendance is still way down from pre-pandemic levels. KPCC entertainment reporter John Horn tells us more. And, researcher Dan Reicher joins us to discuss hydroelectric dams, which provide 7% of the U.S. energy portfolio.

In this week’s Energy 360, Energy Program Director Sarah Ladislaw talks with Dan Reicher (Stanford's Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance) about clean energy options in the economic stimulus packages. Dan was a member of the Obama administration's transition team, which passed a $90 billion clean energy stimulus package. They discuss what lessons could be learned from previous stimulus packages and what new options the Congress and Administration have to revive the economy which could also promote clean energy and address climate change impacts.  Dan is the founding executive director of Stanford's Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, formerly Google's director of climate and energy initiatives, DOE assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy and the Department’s chief of staff in the Clinton administration, and a member of the Obama administration's transition team and Secretary of Energy Advisory board. He recently wrote the op-ed, Turning the Virus into a Virtue — for the Planet. 

Once again, there’s no need to watch any other program. No need to go out there and waste your time with the mainstream media.All you have to do is watch this show because we’re going to tell you everything that you need to know and we’re going to tell you the inside story that nobody else is talking about.This morning, we got Hillary Clinton clarifying her comments. Apparently, the blowback from her comments about how businesses don’t create jobs was too severe.We’ve also got Britain is ending it’s combat mission in Afghanistan and there is a new poll out of what Brits think. And we have the young woman who’s returning home back in Maine after her ebola quarantine. -----If you would like to discuss anything with John about the show, email him at Jason@TheLiveShow.TVYou can also use the hashtag #TheLiveShowFollow Jason on Twitter: www.Twitter.com/TheLiveShowTVFollow Us on Facebook: www.Facebook.com/TheLiveShowTV-----If you are really enjoying the show and would like to support what we're doing at The Live Show, please consider donating to our cause. You can do that at www.Patreon.com/TheLiveShow-----Are you interested in advertising on The Live Show?Reach out to us at Advertising@TheLiveShow.TVWe’d love to talk with you.-----SponsorsTrade Pro Futures: http://tradeprofutures.com/The industry's top futures and forex trading platforms.Trade Empowered: http://www.tradeempowered.com/Learn how to day-trade, swing-trade, or become a profitable long term trader.Main Street Alpha: http://mainstreetalpha.com/A social site that links up professional successful traders with verifiable track records to capital.----- Let me reiterate, ladies and gentlemen, ebola is not a threat.It’s not. The risk of you getting ebola are super low unless you happen to be in Sierra Leone as a medical worker dealing with people who are on their deathbed with ebola. Then your risk of contracting ebola is very high.What I find difficult to understand. By the CDC’s own projections they put out 2 weeks ago, they said that they estimate by January 2015 there will be a total of approximately 550,000 ebola cases. They’re the ones calling for saying that it’s a massive pandemic.But when we actually have people that are over there, that are of the highest risk cases, who end up coming back to the United States, they just simply say ‘don’t worry about it. If you get a fever, let us know’. And then when you call and you say you have a fever, they say ‘you can get on the plane anyway’. Is this not the most impudent organization on Earth?I’m starting to think that the CDC has no idea what they’re talking about. It was the CDC who said that they cannot confirm whether ebola was an airborne virus or not. They don’t know. They admit they don’t know. Yet they don’t think it’s necessary to quarantine people who are coming back from overseas.Now, don’t get me wrong, I have a great deal of respect for doctors who are willing to go over to third world countries in order to try and help those places who have the least amount of medical care possible.But think about what America is asking of you when you’re coming back. You’re willing to go to Sierra Leone. You’re willing to work with one of the most deadliest diseases that we know of right now. You’re willing to help people and save lives with that terrible disease. You’re putting your life on the line to go over there.And yet, when you come back, it’s somehow a violation of your liberty to be in a quarantine? You made the choice to go over there, we all appreciate the fact that you went over there and I’m sure there are people who didn’t die because you were there. But now that you’re back here, there is a responsibility and you have a responsibility to the people in this country that you wait out the quarantine period to make sure that you’re not sick. Nobody knows what’s really going onFirst it was global warming. Then they realized it was getting colder. Now it’s climate change because who can argue against that the climate is changing? Al Gore said we weren’t going to have any polar ice caps anymore. They were going to be all gone by today. And we find out that no, they’ve actually doubled in size, that they’re growing.This goes along the same lines with the CDC and this ebola scare. I believe wholeheartedly that it is nothing more than an attempt to control you. An attempt to gain power from the people by scaring them with all of these ideas. And global warming is just another one of those ideas.The surest way to get yourself in a panic is to listen to what the government tells you because they are virtually always wrong. They’re almost never right.What frustrates me is that nobody looks at the outcomes of their principles and the outcome of their claims. And the reason that they become overly excited about these things is because if they didn’t and there was a real pandemic, well then they get blamed.But if they go way overboard on it, like tell us that a million people are going to die, well then all of a sudden, when only ten thousand people die, well then they say they took all this action and did something about it. Hillary Clinton is in a lot of trouble. She’s had to backpedal big time.This is so typical of politicians to do things like this, to say things so utterly ridiculous. What’s funny is, I’m fairly certain that this was scripted, that she was reading from a prepared speech to this group of supporters when she said these things.If you haven’t heard about this, basically, yesterday she made this comment.“Don’t let anybody tell you that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs. You know that old theory, trickle-down economics. That has been tried; that has failed. It has failed rather spectacularly.” - Hillary Clinton Well, in response to that, she had to come out and clarify her statement today. Hillary Clinton clarifies comments on job creationhttp://onpolitics.usatoday.com/2014/10/27/hillary-clinton-businesses-job-creation/So-called trickle-down economics has failed. I shorthanded this point the other day, so let me be absolutely clear about what I’ve been saying for a couple of decades: Our economy grows when businesses and entrepreneurs create good-paying jobs here in an America where workers and families are empowered to build from the bottom up and the middle out — not when we hand out tax breaks for corporations that outsource jobs or stash their profits overseas. This is not a clarification. This is what we call a total reversal. A contradiction.On yesterday’s show, I explained that trickle down economics is not a real economic theory. What it is is it’s a way liberals have been explaining a principle about economics that the do not understand. Hillary Clinton has absolutely no idea what she’s talking about on an economic scale.If you ask her what trickle down economics is, she will tell you it’s when you give money to the rich in form of tax breaks in hopes that then the money will trickle down to the little guy. And we went to great efforts yesterday to explain that that is not how free market capitalism works. When you reduce taxes on people who save and invests, that investment dollars that is made first goes to the worker.You can go back and watch yesterday’s episode as well as read the show notes for the complete analysis. It’s pretty simple. If you give tax breaks, you give tax breaks across the board to everyone in every sector.You equally disperse those tax cuts because, here’s the thing, a subsidy is something that a company gets that another company doesn’t get. So, it is the government picking who is going to get capital and who isn’t in the form of tax refunds, grants, or whatever it may be. We, as libertarians, believe if you are going to give tax relief or tax benefits or tax reductions, you do that equally across the board.If you’re going to raise taxes, you’re going to do it equally across the board to all companies in all sectors, giving them more capital with which to invest with and you allow those businesses to stand on their own merit without subsidy, without special hand outs.Unfortunately, Hillary Clinton does not understand even the basics of all this. She goes on to talk about more hot button issues that liberals hate, which is this idea of tax breaks of corporations who outsource jobs. So let me just put that issue to rest as well. There is not a single company in the United States that’s given a tax cut to send their jobs overseas, nor are they given tax cuts to keep capital overseas.What happens is companies can get better tax rates and cheaper labor overseas than they can get it over here.Why can they get that? For one, standard of living is higher here. Low wage workers, there’s a floor on where you can pay low wage workers so the minimum wage hampers their ability to stay here in the United States. And the overall tax burden on them is lower so you see many companies looking at it and they say ‘look, it’s cheaper for me to uproot my entire company, move it overseas, then ship the goods and services back to the United States, and sell them here. I can actually make more money doing that’.And, as I stated yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, instead of trying to fix the problem of an undue tax burden on individuals who create jobs by Hillary Clinton’s own admission and we need to fix that so more companies will want to come here to work so we create an environment here that will increase GDP, that will increase growth, instead, what do they do?Instead, they want to put into place laws that prevent people from moving overseas, to prevent people from leaving this country. We need to put a fence around America. When that is the situation that you are faced with, you’re wrong. You’re making terrible mistakes and something has to change.But I guess some people were listening to this show and this is why you don’t have to listen to anybody else. You don’t have to go anywhere else for your news. You just have to watch this show. Because, as I said yesterday, if you want the clearest indication of what creates wealth inequality, all you have to do is look at the principles that liberals promote: deficit spending, money to the banks, all of these things. Draghi May Help Europe’s Rich Get Richerhttp://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-10-27/draghi-may-help-europe-s-rich-get-richerEuropean Central Bank President Mario Draghi, fighting a deflation threat in the euro region, may need to confront a concern more familiar to Americans: income inequality.With interest rates almost at zero, Draghi is moving into asset purchases to lift inflation to the ECB’s target. The more he nears the kind of tools deployed by the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan, the more he risks making the rich richer, said economists including Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, chief economist for the World Bank from 1997 to 2000.In the U.S., the gap is rising between the incomes of the wealthy, whose financial holdings become more valuable via central bank purchases, and the poor. While monetary authorities’ foray into bond-buying is intended to stabilize economic conditions and underpin a real recovery, policy makers and economists are increasingly asking whether one cost may be wider income gaps -- in Europe as well as the U.S. Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economyhttp://amzn.com/0465022529A must read to educate and empower you to understand the basic tenets of economics. Stealthy Norwegian entrepreneur aims to revolutionize U.S. energy storagehttp://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/27/us-energy-storage-eikeland-idUSKBN0IG29T20141027Jostein Eikeland, a Norwegian entrepreneur with a mixed record of success, is hoping to jolt the world of energy storage.On Tuesday, Eikeland's latest venture, Alevo, will unveil a battery that he says will last longer and ultimately cost far less than rival technologies.The technology, which is meant to store excess electricity generated by power plants, has been developed by Eikeland in secret for a decade. Alevo's approach stands in stark contrast to the public announcement last month of Tesla Motors Inc's planned $5 billion factory in Nevada, which will make batteries for electric cars. Tesla says its plant will employ 6,500 people by 2020. It will receive more than $1 billion of state incentives."Building a $1 billion facility in stealth mode is definitely unusual," said Dan Reicher, executive director of the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford University. Reicher, a former green technology investor, said he was not familiar with Alevo or its technology.State and county officials in North Carolina confirmed that Alevo has not sought any business incentives.One of the most interesting pieces of this article is that apparently he has taken no federal money for it. Amazing. You mean, you have an entrepreneur out there with an idea?Who risked his own money and his own capital on the line to try to create something?And he didn't need a government grant to do it?He didn't need the support of the public sector? He didn't need tax money to achieve his goal?No. Eikeland, 46, said Alevo, named for the inventor of the battery, Alessandro Volta, has $1 billion from anonymous Swiss investors and has taken no state funding or incentives.Alternately brash and self-deprecating, Eikeland did not shy away from discussing his up-and-down past. He founded software company TeleComputing Inc during the dot-com boom, helped take it public on the Oslo stock exchange, then left in 2002 after the tech bubble burst.He later invested heavily in and took the helm of Sweden-based auto parts manufacturer, TMG International, which went bankrupt in 2008. Broke, he was forced to sell his lavish homes to pay his taxes, according to media reports that were confirmed by representatives for Alevo.After TMG, Eikeland spent a few years investing in software and battery technologies, many of which he admits failed."I know how hard it is to lose eight of your 10 fingers," he said. "I wish I had somebody else to blame."Ladies and gentlemen, this is the true entrepreneur. This is what entrepreneurs really go through. It's not a situation where suddenly they make all kinds of money and they're rich forever now, and their constantly exploiting people.No, what is he doing? He made a lot of money during the tech boom. He took that money, he tried to invest it in other places and he failed. He failed again, and again, and again.He went broke. He had to sell his lifestyle, sell his home to pay his taxes. And then he goes right back at it again.That's what producers do. And this is the misunderstanding that I want to get across to you about the difference between producers and workers. The progressives, the Democrats, would have you believe that it is the worker that is the producer.Unfortunately, that just isn't the case. If you're a worker, you're labor.The producer is the guy that can create regardless whether you are there or not.The employees are there to create economies of scale. The real producer is the guy who creates the widget. The guy who puts it together. The guy who took the idea and turned it into reality.And if all of the workers were gone, the producer would still be able to make a living because he could still churn out the widgets on his own.This is the difference. This is the guy that invests, who risks his life's savings.Support the show.

Dan Reicher '78, Executive Director of the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford University

Dan Reicher '78, executive director of the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford University, talks about how Dartmouth cultivated his interest in sustainability.

Energy Innovation: Overhaul or Tweak? Severin Borenstein, Co-director, Energy Institute, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley Richard Lester, Director, MIT Industrial Performance Center Dan Reicher, Executive Director, Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, Stanford America’s innovation engine is the envy of the world, yet it struggles to deploy new technology at the scale commensurate with its economic might. This panel of experts from three of the nation’s leading universities says that the U.S. risks falling behind if it refuses to address the technical, financial, and political barriers slowing energy innovation. Richard Lester, Director, MIT Industrial Performance Center, lays out what he calls the three waves of energy innovation: energy efficiency in this decade; the scaling of low- or de-carbonized energy supply technologies beginning in 2020 and running through about 2050; and breakthroughs we don’t even know about today, or may know about but are in the lab stage, but that can take decades to mature. Dan Reicher, Executive Director, Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, Stanford University, is especially bullish on the promise of Lester’s first wave, energy efficiency. “It is the low-hanging fruit, and it’s also the low-hanging fruit that grows back. We don’t use it up,” he says. Reicher says that energy efficiency and other low-carbon technologies are needlessly held back because we ignore one or more critical criteria: technology, policy, and finance. And even when easy efficiency gains are there to be had, such as in new cars, says Severin Borenstein, Co-Director, Energy Institute, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, we are slow to act. “The technologies are getting better, but gasoline, for the most part, remains cheap. When you ask people how much they need to save to drive a smaller car, it’s a lot more than most people are willing to give up,” he says. These difficulties and more – think our broken political system – have convinced Richard Lester that a new approach, one not dependent upon raising the price of energy, is necessary. “It may be time for a shift in the policy debate to focus less on what is certainly the key requirement of increasing the price of energy to reflect these costs and focusing more on the other half of the equation, which is figuring out how to reduce the cost of the things that we actually want, which are low-carbon energy technologies and efficiency,” he says. Dan Reicher shares Lester’s concern about our broken politics, particularly as it is manifested in the GOP focus on the bankruptcy of Solyndra. “We may be demanding that anything that we put money into has got to show very reliable, very quick success. And not allow for what innovation requires, which is placing bets,” he says. Severin Borenstein urges policymakers to ramp up funding for basic science research, in part because he is pessimistic that existing renewable energy technologies will be sufficient. “The technologies that are going to solve this problem don’t exist yet,” he says, adding that “most of the technologies that exist don’t have the potential to be cost-effective with fossil fuels.” “We can’t take our eye off the price on carbon,” he says. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on November 3, 2011

Dan Reicher lectures on his work at google.org and explains their purpose. This lecture is part of the Energy Seminar, an interdisciplinary series of talks primarily by Stanford experts on a broad range of energy topics. (March 12, 2008)