Podcasts about hydrofracking

(Mar 28, 2024) The majority of North Country's and New York State's fire departments are staffed by volunteers and have been for over a century. Fire chiefs say they're struggling to recruit the next generation; both houses of the state legislature have passed a bill that would close a loophole in the state's fracking ban; also, we talk with a Plattsburgh artist who has created a thousand hand-carved signs during her career.

Paul Prud'homme, Dinner with the President You all probably know of Alex Prud'homme as co-author of Julia Child's best selling memoir, My Life in France. Come join us as Alex takes us into the White House to talk about his latest book, Dinner with the President. Alex will serve us a capsulated history of American food and politics, from the grim meals eaten by George Washington and his starving troops at Valley Forge, to Donald Trump's burger banquets and Joe Biden's “performance enhancing” ice cream—what they ate, why they ate it, and what it tells us about the state of the nation. “At the White House, every meal, every bite, has consequences – some intended, some not,” Alex says. “Some of the most significant moments in American history have occurred over meals, as U.S. presidents broke bread with friends or foe,” Alex says. “Thomas Jefferson's nation building receptions in the new capitol, Washington, D.C.; Richard Nixon's practiced use of chopsticks to pry open China; and Jimmy Carter's cakes and pies that fueled a détente between Israel and Egypt at Camp David.” Alex will also detail overlooked figures, like George Washington's enslaved chef, Hercules Posey, whose meals burnished the president's reputation before the cook narrowly escaped to freedom; and pioneering First Ladies, such as Dolley Madison and Jackie Kennedy, who used food and entertaining to build political and social relationships. “Food is not just fuel when it is served to the most powerful people in the world,” Alex says says. “It is a tool of communication, a lever of power and persuasion, a form of entertainment, and a symbol of the nation.” You may purchase his book from your local bookseller or directly from his publisher. Alex Prud'homme is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and many other publications. He coauthored with his aunt, Julia Child, her memoir, My Life in France, and has authored or coauthored: The French Chef in America, France is a Feast, Born Hungry, The Ripple Effect, Hydrofracking, The Cell Game, and Forewarned. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York. Recorded via Zoom on July 12, 2023 CONNECT WITH CULINARY HISTORIANS OF CHICAGO ✔ MEMBERSHIP https://culinaryhistorians.org/membership/ ✔ EMAIL LIST http://culinaryhistorians.org/join-our-email-list/ ✔ S U B S C R I B E https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6Y0-9lTi1-JYu22Bt4_-9w ✔ F A C E B O O K https://www.facebook.com/CulinaryHistoriansOfChicago ✔ PODCAST 2008 to Present https://culinaryhistorians.org/podcasts/ By Presenter https://culinaryhistorians.org/podcasts-by-presenter/ ✔ YOUTUBE https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6Y0-9lTi1-JYu22Bt4_-9w ✔ W E B S I T E https://www.CulinaryHistorians.org

Any conversation about climate policy and energy in the United States has to take Texas into consideration.  Texas leads the nation in energy production, providing more than one-fifth of U.S. domestically produced energy.  Texas also uses more energy than any other state and accounts for almost one-seventh of total U.S. energy consumption.  The state’s industrial […]

On Monday's Mark Levin Show, Congress is back in session and they're looking at gun control and impeachment. The Democrats suggest that supporters of the Second Amendment are bought and paid for by the NRA despite the NRA not even existing at that time. The media talk about gun deaths but never talks about Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard deaths. Since 1975, this has been the biggest threat to the left because the automobile represents the ability for citizens to exercise their liberty. So the left attacks combustion engines and the CAFE standards failed to improve the environment or curtail the use of cars. More Americans are killed and maimed by these CAFE standards than soldiers that have fought in both Afghanistan and Iraq. This is a truth that CNN won't report. Then, Hydrofracking has paved the way for the U.S to become energy independent, but the left is trying to stop that too. MS-13 gang violence is hurting America yet the media — our destructive free press — turns a blind eye. When the media doesn't do its job and become complicit in advocacy and misinformation it does a disservice to the very same people it's supposed to protect from disinformation. Later, Rep. Jerrold Nadler has reintroduced his idea to impeach the president now that U.S Attorney John Durham has made headway on the criminal investigation that he's overseeing into the abuse of the FISA Court. Nadler's committee is eviscerating the very process that they falsely claim they're trying to defend and they don't even realize that they have opened Pandora's box. Finally, Mark Morgan, the current Acting Commissioner of the Customs and Border Protection, joins the show to discuss the Administration's success in building sections of secure fencing and decreasing the number of illegal border crossings over the past three months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Monday's Mark Levin Show, Congress is back in session and they're looking at gun control and impeachment. The Democrats suggest that supporters of the Second Amendment are bought and paid for by the NRA despite the NRA not even existing at that time. The media talk about gun deaths but never talks about Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard deaths. Since 1975, this has been the biggest threat to the left because the automobile represents the ability for citizens to exercise their liberty. So the left attacks combustion engines and the CAFE standards failed to improve the environment or curtail the use of cars. More Americans are killed and maimed by these CAFE standards than soldiers that have fought in both Afghanistan and Iraq. This is a truth that CNN won't report. Then, Hydrofracking has paved the way for the U.S to become energy independent, but the left is trying to stop that too. MS-13 gang violence is hurting America yet the media — our destructive free press — turns a blind eye. When the media doesn't do its job and become complicit in advocacy and misinformation it does a disservice to the very same people it's supposed to protect from disinformation. Later, Rep. Jerrold Nadler has reintroduced his idea to impeach the president now that U.S Attorney John Durham has made headway on the criminal investigation that he's overseeing into the abuse of the FISA Court. Nadler's committee is eviscerating the very process that they falsely claim they're trying to defend and they don't even realize that they have opened Pandora's box. Finally, Mark Morgan, the current Acting Commissioner of the Customs and Border Protection, joins the show to discuss the Administration's success in building sections of secure fencing and decreasing the number of illegal border crossings over the past three months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stanford professor Mark Jacobson is a specialist in climate modeling and alternative energy and has spent much of his career trying to understand, and find solutions to, global warming. He thinks the US is now equipped with the necessary technology and economic means to get off of fossil fuels. He and colleagues, including UC Berkeley researcher Mark Delucchi, have created 100% clean, renewable energy all-sector energy plans for all 50 United States and 139 countries worldwide that include how each can achieve such a transition by 2050. To solve the problem of political will, he co-founded The Solutions Project -- with actor Mark Ruffalo, businessman Marco Krapels, and activist Josh Fox -- to engage policymakers, business leaders, and the public to try to put the 50-state plan into action. An interactive map summarizing the plans for each state is available on The Solutions Project website.TRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:Method to the madness is next. You're listening to method to the madness. I Biweekly Public Affairs show on k a l x Berkeley Celebrating Bay area innovators. I'm Lisa Keifer and we're taking a field trip down to Stanford today to interview the clean energy mastermind. Professor Mark Jacobson. What do you do here at Stanford? Speaker 2:Well, I teach and do research and I study clean and renewable energy systems and air pollution [00:00:30] and climate problems and how to solve them through clean and renewable energy. Speaker 3:I read about you recently in the new republic. Bill McKibben has written a really thoughtful article saying that our current climate crisis, what we need to do, he likens it to what we did in World War II to gear up to fight the Nazis and the Japanese. And he mentioned you in the work that you're doing. He talks about the solutions you have that are ready right now for all 50 states in the United States. What is that project? Speaker 2:Well, we do research on developing [00:01:00] plans for states and countries and we've completed plans for all 50 states and also now working on 139 countries around the world using all renewables and yeah, the idea of the plan is to electrify all energy sectors. That's transportation, heating and cooling industry, agriculture, forestry and fishing and provide that electricity with clean and renewable energies such as wind and water and solar power, but combined with some energy storage combined with energy efficiency and some additional transmission. When did you come up [00:01:30] with this plan? Well, our first plan was in 2009 it was really a world plan, just gross numbers to see if it was possible to power the world entirely 100% with wind and water and solar power for all purposes. And it wasn't broken down into countries, but from a on a worldwide scale, if we're just looking at the raw numbers, there was possible because there's enough wind resource, there's enough solar resource and existing water resource. And also we looked at the materials required, we looked at the costs or we looked at the land use required and we found that all these are within reason and [00:02:00] then potentially possible to do. Speaker 3:How many years did it take you to come up with these very specific plans? [inaudible] right. Speaker 2:So then, uh, after that there was in 2009, and then subsequently we started working in 2011 on a state plans specifically for New York state that you got completed in 2013. So that took, why did you choose New York first? Well, I started working with some people, activists in New York, probably people who are fighting against natural gas, fracking. Hydrofracking they had wanted some alternative. What's [00:02:30] their, you know, what else can we do besides natural gas in the state of New York? And in this group was mark refollow, who's, I'm also an actor and a Marco cripples who is, um, he's a business person who lives actually in California and Josh Fox, who is a documentarian. And we kind of brainstormed and thought, well, why don't we take our energy plan for the world and squish it down to a state level answer. That's right. I did with some help with Mark Delucci, who's a doctor researcher at UC Berkeley. Speaker 2:Right. And also eventually got some students involved [00:03:00] and Reese Chris down a plan for New York, got some new data and uh, it took a while to get all the information we needed. But by 2013, we had a New York energy plan from 13 to now you've rolled out the rest of the 50 states plus 127 countries in the world. We're, we will correct the Xero since then. In the middle of completing the New York plan, we started a California energy plan. We thought, well, we have one for New York. Why not apply to another state? So we got more experience improving the plans as we went along. And we did one for Washington state [00:03:30] long at the same time. Uh, I thought, well, why not just do all 50 states? We can not about ties the process simultaneously. So we did that and we completed those plans in 2015 for all 50 states and then at the same time as we were completing that and we started working on thought, well, why not go to the world and go to all individual countries as many as we could. Speaker 2:And so we found data for 139 countries and that's what we're working on right now and try to complete that. Okay. How many people are on this team who had crunching the numbers? Well, going out into [00:04:00] the field since 2009 we've had about 80 scientists and students working on these energy plans, although there's kind of a core group of people who are doing most of the work. The group I talked about initially with Mark Ruffalo and Josh Fox and Marco Cripples, we started a nonprofit together. It's called the solutions project. And the idea of this was, well, why not take these energy plans that were developing these scientific science-based plans, but then we try to take those plans and educate the public and policy makers about them and do outreach [00:04:30] and try to reach communities that might not normally be engaged in the sense to me when I read this article in then new republic, I thought, wow, they probably been working on this for years and yet it took this long to hear about it. Speaker 2:That must be the biggest challenge. Getting this information out to the lay person so that we can make political decisions in our communities to support it. Correct. I mean that's my opinion is that, you know, getting information out to large numbers of people. I mean keep in mind there are 7.3 billion people in [00:05:00] the world and you know, as a scientist I might reach a few hundred to a few thousand at most. And you know, even with a good outreach you might reach 100,000 or something like that. But we really need to reach hundreds of millions of people to have an impact worldwide. And so, so are you capitalizing on some of your successes? Like for instance, what are some states who are doing this right now and how do we find out about that? Yeah, we've actually had some really good success and feedback. So the states [00:05:30] of both New York and California have basically adopted a portion of our plans. We proposed 80% conversion to wind water and solar by 2030 and all energy sectors and 100% by 2050. California in New York have adopted a 50% conversion for the electricity sector, which is only one of those sectors by 2030. And they've also adopted some other energy efficiency goals. But part of that is because we publish these papers for those states. We, uh, talked with the staff members of the governors [00:06:00] and so they are right, they're aware of these plans and that it was possible. And so that enabled them to push the envelope into what policies, Speaker 3:but they're still not pushing it as far as you say they should. Correct. They're not at, what's the downside of that? Speaker 2:There is downside because it means we'll have climate problems that are persist for longer period of time and we'll have air pollution problems that will persist for longer. So we're still trying to inform them about the necessity of getting to 80% by 2030 in all sectors. Uh, so there was, there was a ways to go but um, we are making in roads I should say there is a house resolution [00:06:30] now based on our work, based on our 50 state plans, a house resolution five 40, which is calls for the United States to go to 100% clean renewable energy for all sectors by 2050. So that actually, well it's just a resolution, but if it did pass, if subsequent bills were passed to support it, it would actually get to the end goal that we proposed. I think it has 44 46 co-sponsors, including Nancy Pelosi as one of the co-sponsors. Speaker 2:All three Democratic presidential candidates actually supported a a hundred percent goals by 2050 [00:07:00] and Bernie Sanders had our maps on his website. Hillary Clinton, we have a video tape of her supporting 100% clean renewable energy by 2050 and Martin O'Malley was the first one to go out there with 100% by 2050. There were also three senators I've mentioned they were going to propose 100% renewable energy by 2050. I should also mention that the a hundred percent idea has galvanized lots of nonprofits, dozens and dozens of nonprofits that are no, uh, centered around this goal. And they've actually been also helped to convince cities [00:07:30] in many cities want to go to 100% clean renewable energy, including, you know, several in the United States into southern Canada and companies as well. There are at least 60 to 70 companies, including many of the major ones that want to go to 100% renewable energy, have committed to go to 100%. For example, Walmart today, apple and Starbucks, Johnson and Johnson, there are many of the top companies Speaker 3:on the ride over here. I was in horrible traffic and I couldn't help but thinking about how are you going to convince consumers to [00:08:00] buy electric cars? How will they afford it? Number one, are we going to have to have subsidy programs along with a national grid or community redundant grids? Where does that all fit into this? Speaker 2:Well, I think electric cars, I mean most people, once I drive an electric car, they never want to go back Speaker 3:of course, but how can they afford it? Like in let's talk about outside of the coast, well Speaker 2:there are many electric car companies now that are selling commodity cars and so and there is a $7,500 tax credit. So that basically [00:08:30] brings the price of an electric car, even a low cost electric car into the same cost as an equivalent gasoline car. So I think that the costs are equivalent and it's actually, it's a lot cheaper to actually drive an electric car because the cost of the fuel is one fourth to one fifth the cost of gasoline per mile driven. So over the life of a car, if you drive a car 15,000 miles per year for 15 years, you will save $20,000 in fuel cost. The main thing that people have been concerned about is range. And so many of these electric cars now [00:09:00] actually have longer range. I mean, of course the Tesla, which is the model s, it's 275 miles a range. Um, but the, you know, even the new lower cost Tesla, which hasn't been public yet, but as people have taken orders for it, it's the thing, it's over 200 mile range. Speaker 2:And then even the, the leaf I think is over a hundred, 125 miles. Right? And so that's the limiting factor for most comedians. 95% of commutes or all the electric cars are within range. And you can charge them in your home if you have just a regular electric plug outlet or, or a special [00:09:30] charger that can be put in your home. So that's an advantage. Another advantage of electric cars is you can charge them in your house or in your garage or just a gasoline car. You can't, you know the disadvantages of course it's, it takes longer to refuel and there when you're, when you're out on the road, there's currently fewer charging stations, but there are a lot of charging stations out there now and there are a lot more coming and there is a plan to roll out many more. Yeah, there really has to, if we want to do this on a large scale, we need a lot more charging stations. But the electric grid is there, is there, it's really a question of hooking up new charging stations to the [00:10:00] grid and these charging stations don't take up much space. Speaker 3:We're doing this planning state by state. Are you also, are you setting up redundant grid systems in each state so that, you know there is a national grid, but are they going to be able to, let's say there's a climate catastrophe in one part of the country, will the other pieces of that grid be able to pick up the difference? Speaker 2:Yeah. Well the grid is interconnected already across the United States. So there the actual flow of electricity is limited by the size of the transmission lines. So we would need, we've got to 100% we will need [00:10:30] to expansion of the transmission grid or at least increasing the capacity of the grid so that you can send more electricity long distances. For example, we will have a lot of wind turbines in the great plains or we already do, but we'd have more and we might want to transfer more of that electricity to the east coast because the electricity is so cheap. The generation is so cheap and the great plains, it's, it's 2 cents a kilowatt hour now with the subsidy and in three and a half without a subsidy and that compares to natural gas, which is five to 6 cents a kilowatt hour as the actual cost of energy. Wind is the cheapest form [00:11:00] of electricity in the U s but a lot of it is in places that are far away and so transmission would be beneficial. Speaker 2:It also helps because if the wind's not blowing in one place, it is usually pulling somewhere else or having a more interconnected transmission system would actually make things more efficient. Same thing with solar. I mean it's not always sunny in some places because you're all in the clouds and the u s there are some long distance where it's called high voltage direct current or HVDC long distance transmission lines going up. I mean there's like what's called the clean power line or it's a company that has [00:11:30] proposals for several long distance corridors across the u s and I think they've had one or two of them already approved in that. They may even be building, but I can't say for sure what stage they're out. Yeah, Speaker 3:kind of controversially have left off nuclear power in your renewables. Can you tell me why you've taken that stance? Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting because the other people who are supportive of nuclear power just say, you know, I'm biased against nuclear, but you know, this is all based on a scientific research that while nuclear is, is better than a lot of energy [00:12:00] technologies such as coal, gas and oil. For the most part, it's not as good as clean renewable energy such as wind, water and solar. And that's just a scientific conclusion. I mean, aside from the fact that it, it takes so long to put up a nuclear plant between 10 and 19 years between planning and operation and we don't have the time. It's the same two to five years is typical for a wind or solar farm. So not only do we delay getting that energy, but it also, right now it costs, uh, about four times more than onshore wind. So it's 12 and a half cents a kilowatt hour [00:12:30] for the unsubsidized cost of nuclear versus the unsubsidized costs of onshore wind is three and a half cents a kilowatt hour subsidizes 2 cents. Speaker 2:So we're talking one fourth of the cost. So not only do you have to wait three times longer to get the nuclear up, but you also have to pay four times more for the same power. And that's the only at the beginning. The other problems are, some people say even more severe, I mean there's a meltdown risk. 1.5% of all nuclear reactors ever built up, melted down to some degree. Nuclear weapons proliferation risk. How many intergovernmental panel on climate change says there's, [00:13:00] there's robust evidence. And high agreement that a nuclear energy proliferation leads to nuclear weapons proliferation. And this is because several countries of the world who have developed weapons secretly under the guise of civilian nuclear energy programs, there's waste issues. We haven't figured out what to do with all the waste that accumulates and you have to store it for 300,000 years and that takes a lot of energy. Speaker 2:That's in costs of storing out that don't, aren't even accounted for in the cost of energy today of the nuclear. Yeah, and then there's a, the carbon dioxide emissions, people say that, oh, nuclear is a zero carbon. Well, it's not [00:13:30] zero carbon whatsoever. I mean you have to, when you're using the uranium and you have to mine the uranium that takes fossil fuels, then you have to refine it. It's a very energy intensive process to refine uranium and you have to do that throughout the life of the reactor. Fossil fuel, carbon dioxide emissions, and there are other air pollutant emissions. And the fact that it takes so long to put up a nuclear plant, the difference in the time it takes to put up the nuclear plant versus the wind or solar plant, you're running the irregular electric power grid. And so you have to assign those emissions to the nuclear as well. Speaker 2:And so we're talking when you [00:14:00] actually add everything up, it's between six and 24 times more carbon and air pollution per kilowatt hour compared to wind energy. So no brainer. Yes, it's not just one problem. If you, you can't just solve one problem and say, oh, nuclear is good. You really have to solve instead of 5% idea. I mean, I can remember reading in the 90s that thought that had to be a part of the mix to put a little people in the world. So I met a lot of people, nuclear supporters think that nuclear is necessary because it's uh, it's very high energy density. So you can, you can, you can provide a lot of power [00:14:30] in a small area. But the fact is it has so many side effects that, um, you know, it's just not as good at this point. If nothing else worked, then yeah, maybe try that. Speaker 2:You've, you're up against a massive opponent and that's the carbon industry. I'm surprised they're not pushing back more. I mean, I get more pushback from nuclear people, different philosophy people. They know that they have enough power and control the, you know, they don't have to respond to, you know, studies or other people will think about them. They can just, just keep doing what they're doing. And they, you know, they find that they don't really need to respond. [00:15:00] But if we get a congress that will pass this plan, well yeah, no, our plans would have them completely phased out and they would be eliminated. So they should be worried. But you know, on the other hand, there's, most of the energy is still produced by fossil fuels by far most of the energy worldwide. And so it's such a, such a large penetration still the, you know, they haven't felt any risk it of, of disappearing. Speaker 2:But you know the writing is on the wall and they will eventually disappears. It's a question of time. I was reading that Washington [00:15:30] State is actually the farthest along in terms of percentage of renewables toward that goal of 100% in 2050 it is, but it's because of hydroelectric power that's existing hydroelectric in the states. You won't be building more dams. You're going to make present dams more efficient. Right. Our plans call for no new conventional hydroelectric dams and just making existing dams more efficient. I should point out that there are, in the United States there are 80,000 dams and only I think 10,000 produce electricity. [00:16:00] So there most of the dams in the U s are non power dams and so in theory you could power some of those without actually creating a new dam just to create power from them. And you could also like, cause a lot of people want to remove dams and so there are literally 70,000 dams available to remove without reading moving. Speaker 2:For example, the powering dams. The reason hydroelectric power is so useful in the solution is that a hydroelectric reservoirs basically a big battery and when you need like the windows and all this blow in the centers and all the shine. [00:16:30] And so when, when you, let's say you have no way to know sunlight texted, very valuable to have hydroelectric power cause you can, you can basically turn it off and on instantaneously. Uh, and then allowing it to provide the power when you need it to fill in gaps and supply. What's your plan for say Louisiana? We just experienced horrible rains like the thousand year rains and flooding. What would a state like that look like with your plan? The South in general, it was pretty a very weak winds except off shore. Um, but they have good solar radiation, [00:17:00] although it's not as good as the south west, which has more clear skies because there are more cloudy skies in the southeast, but there's a lot of sunlight in Louisiana. Speaker 2:So solar is a major part. Then they have offshore wind as well. So those are offshore platforms? Yeah, they've offshore platforms, but offshore wind and solar are the two major sources there might be advantageous Tulsa to have transmission into the state from other states that have much greater wind to the west. What is the most challenging state or country that you've had to come [00:17:30] up with a plan for so far? I would say Singapore basically it's a very small country that is very high population density so it's population really covers most of the land so there's not a lot of room to put clean renewable energy. You have rooftops and the rooftops aren't sufficient enough but there is offshore wind as well. Um, so we might have to go to off shore floating solar. In fact, I should point out though that that's only if we decided the Singapore had to be powered entirely with its own energy. Speaker 2:It could actually just transmit energy [00:18:00] from nearby. There is a solution to that problem too, just from transmitting from outside of it. But if you're just wanting to have it provided its own energy, these kinds of, some of these smaller countries like Gibraltar has a similar issue, but there is a solution to everything. If you add transmission, people complained that the sun isn't shining, but if you do have batteries you can then provide more reliable electricity either either back to the greater for your own use in your home. So basically if you have batteries and solar on your roof, you know you're a power plant and you can provide, uh, you have the ability to [00:18:30] smooth out like the rest of the grid. Tesla bought solar city and so they want to really, Tulsa wants to become a battery storage company as well as a motor company. Speaker 2:And so the idea is to take the solar panels on the roof and then use batteries to store that electricity. So integrate the batteries with the solar panels on the roof a lot more and even make roofing material that has solar panels in them, which is a great thing to do to integrate batteries with rooftop solar. But are there technologies on the horizon that wouldn't [00:19:00] be called batteries that they're a whole different kind of, yeah, actually. Well we look when we developed plans for all 50 states a, we did a study where we said can we keep the grid reliable over the continental United States? It's 48 states and we found that we can, if we combine generation of wind and solar, which are what are called intermittent or does wind, does nose blow and the sun doesn't always shine with low cost heat and cold storage and electricity storage. Speaker 2:I should point out that first of all, if you electrify all sectors, if you electrify heating, cooling [00:19:30] industry transportation, you make it easier to match power demand on the grid because there are a lot more low, what are call loads of energy require more energy requirements that are what are called flexible. You don't have to hook a wind turbine up to your car to drive the car, your battery. So you can charge the car anytime of day or night by electrifying all sectors. And then you use low cost heat and cold storage. So, for example, ice, you can have an ice cube under a building in fact at Stanford has had an ice cube in our building since 1998 and during the night when electricity [00:20:00] prices low, it produced the ice. And then during the day instead of using high cost electricity for air conditioning during the day, you would run the water through the ice. Speaker 2:And so you basically, by using cold storage in ice, you eliminate electricity use in the afternoon and during the peak. And you can do the same thing with hot water and cold water. Uh, you can store, yeah, you can store heat and uh, in water and store cold and water as well. But then there's another, I mean there's a community in Canada, Oca, Tokes Canada, which is an hour south of Calgary that [00:20:30] they have 52 homes that have 'em on there. The garage roofs have the solar collectors that collect sunlight in the summer in a glycol solution, that glycol solution gets transferred through pipes to a building where it passes by water, heats the water, the water then gets piped underground to heat rocks that stored underground. The rocks got heated up to 80 degrees Celsius until wintertime. They're insulated around them and in winter the whole thing is run in reverse and provides 100% of our winter time heating when snow is on the ground and you can't even tell this facility's [00:21:00] there because the rocks are under a park. Speaker 2:Well, yes, it's a, yeah, it's called seasonal heat storage, so it's a way you can actually store heat over the season and it's so inexpensive. I made a battery. Battery. Electricity is $300 a kilowatt hour. Rock energy is $1 a kilowatt hour, so it's cheaper in fact that the ice is $30 a kilowatt hour, $38 a kilowatt hour. Same with hot and cold water. They're all like one 10th the cost of batteries. There's also what's called pumped hydro electric power. When [00:21:30] you, you have two reservoirs, a and when you have excess electricity, you pump water up the hill. When you need electricity, you let the water drain down the hill. And so you basically, you don't lose water that way. And it's not a dam necessarily, but a reservoir. And it could, one of the reservoirs could be the ocean or a lake. And then, uh, there's concentrated solar power where you in the deserts where, because normally with photovoltaic tags, unless you have batteries, it's hard to store the electricity. Speaker 2:But if you have what's called concentrated solar power, you focus light off of mirrors onto the central tower, the tower as a fluid, molten nitrate [00:22:00] salt for example, that heats up and that fluid can be stored and used at night to generate electricity. By the past, the hot fluid by water creates steam from the water. The steam runs a steam turbine to generate electricity. So that's called concentrated solar power storage. And if you do this on a large scale, that's a lot of solar energy that can be stored batteries. Yeah. And you can use it at night or with when it's cloudy. And that's also one 10th the cost of batteries for electricity storage. It sounds like there's going to be a lot of potential solutions in the [00:22:30] future that you could incorporate into these 50 plans. Yeah, well these are all existing solutions but they're not on a large scale so we just need to scale them up to huge scale. Speaker 2:I read about your organization that you actually give grants out the solutions project. It's a nonprofit that um, I mean the goal is to take energy plans and educate the public and policymakers about them and try to engage the public. But part of their mission right now is to give out small grants to groups that mostly non profits [00:23:00] that have creative ideas of how to get information out better, how to make more effective change. I wanted to ask you about how this idea came into fruition. Yeah. Well, I mean, my whole career I've been, I started at Stanford as a professor in 1994 but you know, it was way back when I was a teenager and my goal was to try to solve, understand and solve air pollution problems and soon after climate problems. This was back in the 19 early 1980s in Los Altos. [00:23:30] So I've always had that goal and passion to try to understand and solve large scale pollution and climate problems. Speaker 2:But when I first started doing research at Stanford, I focused on the problems and understanding them, but I then did a lot of inner comparisons of energy technologies and their impacts on health and climate. Late 1990 started looking at wind energy in particular as a potential solution to some of these problems. And so did studies on the analysis of wind energy was with students as well. But then in around 2008 [00:24:00] I decided I had enough information, I wanted to start comparing different proposed energy solutions to climate and air pollution. So I did an inter comparison study value of what are the best technologies and that's when I came up with the conclusion that it was wind and water and solar power that were the best on nuclear and coal. With carbon capture, we're kind of more mediocre and then things like, you know, natural gas and biofuels were the worst in terms of health and climate and water supply and and land use and catastrophic risk and things like that. Speaker 2:But then the [00:24:30] next question was, well, if you have wind and water and solar is the best of technologies, can you actually then power the world with all the, with these technologies given, you know, resource limitations, land use limitations. And we did a study, that's why I started partnering with Mark Delucci at UC Berkeley and we concluded that it is possible. It's technically and economically possible, but there are social and political barriers. And we said, well, it's even technically possible by 2030 but for social and political reasons it's unlikely we can get to 100% until 2015 that really once we did a paper on that, [00:25:00] that was a global paper that's, you know, nobody controls the whole globe. So we eventually had to go down to state levels and country levels to see if it was possible to do a practical plan. Do you really think based on what's happened so far that will reach the goal of 100% by 2050 based on what you've done already? Speaker 2:I think there is a, there's a growing, I mean we're a lot further now than even two years ago. I mean I think people's mindset any more people are talking about getting to 100% so that in itself is growing exponentially in terms of how people were talking and thinking [00:25:30] about that catastrophic weather that's pushing this kind of attitude. Yeah, well it's a combination of problems are getting worse. The climate problems are getting worse and more people are saying we need to solve the problem. The insurance companies are saying it's an Oh my God issue. Yeah. So are there more people on board? But it's also fortunate that the costs of especially wind and solar and batteries, even batteries and in electric cars are coming down, especially the, when the electric power sector, people are suddenly thinking, wow, we could actually, we could have a high penetration of wind and solar because it's [00:26:00] so cheap that we can really ramp it up. Speaker 2:So it's kind of a combination of more people being aware of it and wanting to solve the problem. And simultaneously costs have come down and there've been technology improvements and existing technologies that are needed. So all the problems. So a lot of things are coming together, but there's still also growth, especially in many countries like you know, even though China for example, is putting in a lot of renewable energy, it's also putting in a lot of coal still. And that's troubling. And, but there are other countries in the world also growing and the pollution, the [00:26:30] emissions are still going up and a lot of places, although they're coming down and some other places, but you do see trends in several countries in Europe. So you can see their admissions are going down already. Uh, but not as fast as we need them to. We are going to experience some pretty wild weather. Speaker 2:Even we were on a hundred percent renewables today. By definition, I mean climate is the average of all weather events and so weather is very variable in the first place. But we do get more extreme weather with higher average temperatures. Yeah. On average, I mean this'll probably be one of the warmers if not the warmest year on record and an individual months [00:27:00] as well. But climate, again, you have to average over a long period look at the trends relevant, the actual value in a given year. It's really the trend that matters. Definitely the trend. It is everything is warming up and there were temperatures are over one degree Celsius higher than, uh, in the 18 hundreds. And you know, that's, that's significant on the rate of change. The temperature today is faster than any time, even since deglaciation from the last ice age. So the Paris agreement that, you know, there, they agreed to try to avoid two degrees Celsius, but it's really [00:27:30] one and a half degrees that a lot of people wanted, um, to avoid. And we're already at one degree, so we're only half a degree away from that. How many parts per million are we had already? We want, we should be at three 50 and where are we? Where are we today for a little over 400 parts per million. Yeah. Speaker 3:And so this is significant. I mean, I think sometimes we don't scare the public enough about what's coming down yet Speaker 2:in 50 years and oh yeah, no, the problem is actually much worse than most people think because half of the warming in the atmosphere is being [00:28:00] hidden by pollution and air pollution particles because they're both reflective in general and the enhanced cloudiness. So if you actually just cleaned up air pollution particles, which you want to do because they'd cause 90% of the air pollution health problems, which killed four to 7 million people every year as you clean up that air pollution, you actually make the warming worse because of the masking that's going on. And so that is another reason it's so urgent to not only eliminate the particles from a health point of view, but also the greenhouse [00:28:30] gases from a climate point of view simultaneously. And the only way you can simultaneously eliminate greenhouse gases and the particles is by changing the energy infrastructure by electrifying everything and producing that electricity from clean and renewable wind, water and solar power. There is a solution to this problem and that's changing the energy infrastructure of cities, states, countries in the world change your own home to the extent you can by electrifying everything. And if you can put solar on the roof, then you can provide that electricity from your own power. You can even add some batteries to [00:29:00] store it so you don't have to pay for the remaining power that you do use. If you do use it, you know, try to select policymakers who are more supportive of clean and renewable. Speaker 3:And here we are coming up on an election cycle and that's to me is extremely important and especially a congress that will pass something like this. Do you have a website that people can go to if they want to find out more about this project solutions project? Speaker 2:There's two websites that solutions project.org [00:29:30] that's one word. Then one hundred.org the number one hundred.org so that's a subgroup of the solutions project, which is basically the idea is to bring 100% clean and renewable energy to 100% of the people 100% Speaker 1:of the time. I really appreciate you being on method to the madness, so thank you very much. I thank you for having me on. Speaker 4:Okay. Speaker 1:You've been listening to method to the madness by weekly public fair show. Katie l x Berkeley Celebrating Bay area innovators. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Eric Sorensen is CEO & Founder of award-winning Carbon Roots International, whose mission is to encourage and enable the adoption of sustainable green charcoal in Haiti & the broader developing world to reduce deforestation, create jobs, & improve lives.TRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:Method to the madness is next. You're listening to method to the madness. I Biweekly Public Affairs show on k a l x Berkeley Celebrating Bay area innovators. I'm Lisa Keifer and we're taking a field trip down to Stanford today to interview the clean energy mastermind. Professor Mark Jacobson. What do you do here at Stanford? Speaker 2:Well, I teach and do research and I study clean and renewable energy systems and air pollution [00:00:30] and climate problems and how to solve them through clean and renewable energy. Speaker 3:I read about you recently in the new republic. Bill McKibben has written a really thoughtful article saying that our current climate crisis, what we need to do, he likens it to what we did in World War II to gear up to fight the Nazis and the Japanese. And he mentioned you in the work that you're doing. He talks about the solutions you have that are ready right now for all 50 states in the United States. What is that project? Speaker 2:Well, we do research on developing [00:01:00] plans for states and countries and we've completed plans for all 50 states and also now working on 139 countries around the world using all renewables and yeah, the idea of the plan is to electrify all energy sectors. That's transportation, heating and cooling industry, agriculture, forestry and fishing and provide that electricity with clean and renewable energies such as wind and water and solar power, but combined with some energy storage combined with energy efficiency and some additional transmission. When did you come up [00:01:30] with this plan? Well, our first plan was in 2009 it was really a world plan, just gross numbers to see if it was possible to power the world entirely 100% with wind and water and solar power for all purposes. And it wasn't broken down into countries, but from a on a worldwide scale, if we're just looking at the raw numbers, there was possible because there's enough wind resource, there's enough solar resource and existing water resource. And also we looked at the materials required, we looked at the costs or we looked at the land use required and we found that all these are within reason and [00:02:00] then potentially possible to do. Speaker 3:How many years did it take you to come up with these very specific plans? [inaudible] right. Speaker 2:So then, uh, after that there was in 2009, and then subsequently we started working in 2011 on a state plans specifically for New York state that you got completed in 2013. So that took, why did you choose New York first? Well, I started working with some people, activists in New York, probably people who are fighting against natural gas, fracking. Hydrofracking they had wanted some alternative. What's [00:02:30] their, you know, what else can we do besides natural gas in the state of New York? And in this group was mark refollow, who's, I'm also an actor and a Marco cripples who is, um, he's a business person who lives actually in California and Josh Fox, who is a documentarian. And we kind of brainstormed and thought, well, why don't we take our energy plan for the world and squish it down to a state level answer. That's right. I did with some help with Mark Delucci, who's a doctor researcher at UC Berkeley. Speaker 2:Right. And also eventually got some students involved [00:03:00] and Reese Chris down a plan for New York, got some new data and uh, it took a while to get all the information we needed. But by 2013, we had a New York energy plan from 13 to now you've rolled out the rest of the 50 states plus 127 countries in the world. We're, we will correct the Xero since then. In the middle of completing the New York plan, we started a California energy plan. We thought, well, we have one for New York. Why not apply to another state? So we got more experience improving the plans as we went along. And we did one for Washington state [00:03:30] long at the same time. Uh, I thought, well, why not just do all 50 states? We can not about ties the process simultaneously. So we did that and we completed those plans in 2015 for all 50 states and then at the same time as we were completing that and we started working on thought, well, why not go to the world and go to all individual countries as many as we could. Speaker 2:And so we found data for 139 countries and that's what we're working on right now and try to complete that. Okay. How many people are on this team who had crunching the numbers? Well, going out into [00:04:00] the field since 2009 we've had about 80 scientists and students working on these energy plans, although there's kind of a core group of people who are doing most of the work. The group I talked about initially with Mark Ruffalo and Josh Fox and Marco Cripples, we started a nonprofit together. It's called the solutions project. And the idea of this was, well, why not take these energy plans that were developing these scientific science-based plans, but then we try to take those plans and educate the public and policy makers about them and do outreach [00:04:30] and try to reach communities that might not normally be engaged in the sense to me when I read this article in then new republic, I thought, wow, they probably been working on this for years and yet it took this long to hear about it. Speaker 2:That must be the biggest challenge. Getting this information out to the lay person so that we can make political decisions in our communities to support it. Correct. I mean that's my opinion is that, you know, getting information out to large numbers of people. I mean keep in mind there are 7.3 billion people in [00:05:00] the world and you know, as a scientist I might reach a few hundred to a few thousand at most. And you know, even with a good outreach you might reach 100,000 or something like that. But we really need to reach hundreds of millions of people to have an impact worldwide. And so, so are you capitalizing on some of your successes? Like for instance, what are some states who are doing this right now and how do we find out about that? Yeah, we've actually had some really good success and feedback. So the states [00:05:30] of both New York and California have basically adopted a portion of our plans. We proposed 80% conversion to wind water and solar by 2030 and all energy sectors and 100% by 2050. California in New York have adopted a 50% conversion for the electricity sector, which is only one of those sectors by 2030. And they've also adopted some other energy efficiency goals. But part of that is because we publish these papers for those states. We, uh, talked with the staff members of the governors [00:06:00] and so they are right, they're aware of these plans and that it was possible. And so that enabled them to push the envelope into what policies, Speaker 3:but they're still not pushing it as far as you say they should. Correct. They're not at, what's the downside of that? Speaker 2:There is downside because it means we'll have climate problems that are persist for longer period of time and we'll have air pollution problems that will persist for longer. So we're still trying to inform them about the necessity of getting to 80% by 2030 in all sectors. Uh, so there was, there was a ways to go but um, we are making in roads I should say there is a house resolution [00:06:30] now based on our work, based on our 50 state plans, a house resolution five 40, which is calls for the United States to go to 100% clean renewable energy for all sectors by 2050. So that actually, well it's just a resolution, but if it did pass, if subsequent bills were passed to support it, it would actually get to the end goal that we proposed. I think it has 44 46 co-sponsors, including Nancy Pelosi as one of the co-sponsors. Speaker 2:All three Democratic presidential candidates actually supported a a hundred percent goals by 2050 [00:07:00] and Bernie Sanders had our maps on his website. Hillary Clinton, we have a video tape of her supporting 100% clean renewable energy by 2050 and Martin O'Malley was the first one to go out there with 100% by 2050. There were also three senators I've mentioned they were going to propose 100% renewable energy by 2050. I should also mention that the a hundred percent idea has galvanized lots of nonprofits, dozens and dozens of nonprofits that are no, uh, centered around this goal. And they've actually been also helped to convince cities [00:07:30] in many cities want to go to 100% clean renewable energy, including, you know, several in the United States into southern Canada and companies as well. There are at least 60 to 70 companies, including many of the major ones that want to go to 100% renewable energy, have committed to go to 100%. For example, Walmart today, apple and Starbucks, Johnson and Johnson, there are many of the top companies Speaker 3:on the ride over here. I was in horrible traffic and I couldn't help but thinking about how are you going to convince consumers to [00:08:00] buy electric cars? How will they afford it? Number one, are we going to have to have subsidy programs along with a national grid or community redundant grids? Where does that all fit into this? Speaker 2:Well, I think electric cars, I mean most people, once I drive an electric car, they never want to go back Speaker 3:of course, but how can they afford it? Like in let's talk about outside of the coast, well Speaker 2:there are many electric car companies now that are selling commodity cars and so and there is a $7,500 tax credit. So that basically [00:08:30] brings the price of an electric car, even a low cost electric car into the same cost as an equivalent gasoline car. So I think that the costs are equivalent and it's actually, it's a lot cheaper to actually drive an electric car because the cost of the fuel is one fourth to one fifth the cost of gasoline per mile driven. So over the life of a car, if you drive a car 15,000 miles per year for 15 years, you will save $20,000 in fuel cost. The main thing that people have been concerned about is range. And so many of these electric cars now [00:09:00] actually have longer range. I mean, of course the Tesla, which is the model s, it's 275 miles a range. Um, but the, you know, even the new lower cost Tesla, which hasn't been public yet, but as people have taken orders for it, it's the thing, it's over 200 mile range. Speaker 2:And then even the, the leaf I think is over a hundred, 125 miles. Right? And so that's the limiting factor for most comedians. 95% of commutes or all the electric cars are within range. And you can charge them in your home if you have just a regular electric plug outlet or, or a special [00:09:30] charger that can be put in your home. So that's an advantage. Another advantage of electric cars is you can charge them in your house or in your garage or just a gasoline car. You can't, you know the disadvantages of course it's, it takes longer to refuel and there when you're, when you're out on the road, there's currently fewer charging stations, but there are a lot of charging stations out there now and there are a lot more coming and there is a plan to roll out many more. Yeah, there really has to, if we want to do this on a large scale, we need a lot more charging stations. But the electric grid is there, is there, it's really a question of hooking up new charging stations to the [00:10:00] grid and these charging stations don't take up much space. Speaker 3:We're doing this planning state by state. Are you also, are you setting up redundant grid systems in each state so that, you know there is a national grid, but are they going to be able to, let's say there's a climate catastrophe in one part of the country, will the other pieces of that grid be able to pick up the difference? Speaker 2:Yeah. Well the grid is interconnected already across the United States. So there the actual flow of electricity is limited by the size of the transmission lines. So we would need, we've got to 100% we will need [00:10:30] to expansion of the transmission grid or at least increasing the capacity of the grid so that you can send more electricity long distances. For example, we will have a lot of wind turbines in the great plains or we already do, but we'd have more and we might want to transfer more of that electricity to the east coast because the electricity is so cheap. The generation is so cheap and the great plains, it's, it's 2 cents a kilowatt hour now with the subsidy and in three and a half without a subsidy and that compares to natural gas, which is five to 6 cents a kilowatt hour as the actual cost of energy. Wind is the cheapest form [00:11:00] of electricity in the U s but a lot of it is in places that are far away and so transmission would be beneficial. Speaker 2:It also helps because if the wind's not blowing in one place, it is usually pulling somewhere else or having a more interconnected transmission system would actually make things more efficient. Same thing with solar. I mean it's not always sunny in some places because you're all in the clouds and the u s there are some long distance where it's called high voltage direct current or HVDC long distance transmission lines going up. I mean there's like what's called the clean power line or it's a company that has [00:11:30] proposals for several long distance corridors across the u s and I think they've had one or two of them already approved in that. They may even be building, but I can't say for sure what stage they're out. Yeah, Speaker 3:kind of controversially have left off nuclear power in your renewables. Can you tell me why you've taken that stance? Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting because the other people who are supportive of nuclear power just say, you know, I'm biased against nuclear, but you know, this is all based on a scientific research that while nuclear is, is better than a lot of energy [00:12:00] technologies such as coal, gas and oil. For the most part, it's not as good as clean renewable energy such as wind, water and solar. And that's just a scientific conclusion. I mean, aside from the fact that it, it takes so long to put up a nuclear plant between 10 and 19 years between planning and operation and we don't have the time. It's the same two to five years is typical for a wind or solar farm. So not only do we delay getting that energy, but it also, right now it costs, uh, about four times more than onshore wind. So it's 12 and a half cents a kilowatt hour [00:12:30] for the unsubsidized cost of nuclear versus the unsubsidized costs of onshore wind is three and a half cents a kilowatt hour subsidizes 2 cents. Speaker 2:So we're talking one fourth of the cost. So not only do you have to wait three times longer to get the nuclear up, but you also have to pay four times more for the same power. And that's the only at the beginning. The other problems are, some people say even more severe, I mean there's a meltdown risk. 1.5% of all nuclear reactors ever built up, melted down to some degree. Nuclear weapons proliferation risk. How many intergovernmental panel on climate change says there's, [00:13:00] there's robust evidence. And high agreement that a nuclear energy proliferation leads to nuclear weapons proliferation. And this is because several countries of the world who have developed weapons secretly under the guise of civilian nuclear energy programs, there's waste issues. We haven't figured out what to do with all the waste that accumulates and you have to store it for 300,000 years and that takes a lot of energy. Speaker 2:That's in costs of storing out that don't, aren't even accounted for in the cost of energy today of the nuclear. Yeah, and then there's a, the carbon dioxide emissions, people say that, oh, nuclear is a zero carbon. Well, it's not [00:13:30] zero carbon whatsoever. I mean you have to, when you're using the uranium and you have to mine the uranium that takes fossil fuels, then you have to refine it. It's a very energy intensive process to refine uranium and you have to do that throughout the life of the reactor. Fossil fuel, carbon dioxide emissions, and there are other air pollutant emissions. And the fact that it takes so long to put up a nuclear plant, the difference in the time it takes to put up the nuclear plant versus the wind or solar plant, you're running the irregular electric power grid. And so you have to assign those emissions to the nuclear as well. Speaker 2:And so we're talking when you [00:14:00] actually add everything up, it's between six and 24 times more carbon and air pollution per kilowatt hour compared to wind energy. So no brainer. Yes, it's not just one problem. If you, you can't just solve one problem and say, oh, nuclear is good. You really have to solve instead of 5% idea. I mean, I can remember reading in the 90s that thought that had to be a part of the mix to put a little people in the world. So I met a lot of people, nuclear supporters think that nuclear is necessary because it's uh, it's very high energy density. So you can, you can, you can provide a lot of power [00:14:30] in a small area. But the fact is it has so many side effects that, um, you know, it's just not as good at this point. If nothing else worked, then yeah, maybe try that. Speaker 2:You've, you're up against a massive opponent and that's the carbon industry. I'm surprised they're not pushing back more. I mean, I get more pushback from nuclear people, different philosophy people. They know that they have enough power and control the, you know, they don't have to respond to, you know, studies or other people will think about them. They can just, just keep doing what they're doing. And they, you know, they find that they don't really need to respond. [00:15:00] But if we get a congress that will pass this plan, well yeah, no, our plans would have them completely phased out and they would be eliminated. So they should be worried. But you know, on the other hand, there's, most of the energy is still produced by fossil fuels by far most of the energy worldwide. And so it's such a, such a large penetration still the, you know, they haven't felt any risk it of, of disappearing. Speaker 2:But you know the writing is on the wall and they will eventually disappears. It's a question of time. I was reading that Washington [00:15:30] State is actually the farthest along in terms of percentage of renewables toward that goal of 100% in 2050 it is, but it's because of hydroelectric power that's existing hydroelectric in the states. You won't be building more dams. You're going to make present dams more efficient. Right. Our plans call for no new conventional hydroelectric dams and just making existing dams more efficient. I should point out that there are, in the United States there are 80,000 dams and only I think 10,000 produce electricity. [00:16:00] So there most of the dams in the U s are non power dams and so in theory you could power some of those without actually creating a new dam just to create power from them. And you could also like, cause a lot of people want to remove dams and so there are literally 70,000 dams available to remove without reading moving. Speaker 2:For example, the powering dams. The reason hydroelectric power is so useful in the solution is that a hydroelectric reservoirs basically a big battery and when you need like the windows and all this blow in the centers and all the shine. [00:16:30] And so when, when you, let's say you have no way to know sunlight texted, very valuable to have hydroelectric power cause you can, you can basically turn it off and on instantaneously. Uh, and then allowing it to provide the power when you need it to fill in gaps and supply. What's your plan for say Louisiana? We just experienced horrible rains like the thousand year rains and flooding. What would a state like that look like with your plan? The South in general, it was pretty a very weak winds except off shore. Um, but they have good solar radiation, [00:17:00] although it's not as good as the south west, which has more clear skies because there are more cloudy skies in the southeast, but there's a lot of sunlight in Louisiana. Speaker 2:So solar is a major part. Then they have offshore wind as well. So those are offshore platforms? Yeah, they've offshore platforms, but offshore wind and solar are the two major sources there might be advantageous Tulsa to have transmission into the state from other states that have much greater wind to the west. What is the most challenging state or country that you've had to come [00:17:30] up with a plan for so far? I would say Singapore basically it's a very small country that is very high population density so it's population really covers most of the land so there's not a lot of room to put clean renewable energy. You have rooftops and the rooftops aren't sufficient enough but there is offshore wind as well. Um, so we might have to go to off shore floating solar. In fact, I should point out though that that's only if we decided the Singapore had to be powered entirely with its own energy. Speaker 2:It could actually just transmit energy [00:18:00] from nearby. There is a solution to that problem too, just from transmitting from outside of it. But if you're just wanting to have it provided its own energy, these kinds of, some of these smaller countries like Gibraltar has a similar issue, but there is a solution to everything. If you add transmission, people complained that the sun isn't shining, but if you do have batteries you can then provide more reliable electricity either either back to the greater for your own use in your home. So basically if you have batteries and solar on your roof, you know you're a power plant and you can provide, uh, you have the ability to [00:18:30] smooth out like the rest of the grid. Tesla bought solar city and so they want to really, Tulsa wants to become a battery storage company as well as a motor company. Speaker 2:And so the idea is to take the solar panels on the roof and then use batteries to store that electricity. So integrate the batteries with the solar panels on the roof a lot more and even make roofing material that has solar panels in them, which is a great thing to do to integrate batteries with rooftop solar. But are there technologies on the horizon that wouldn't [00:19:00] be called batteries that they're a whole different kind of, yeah, actually. Well we look when we developed plans for all 50 states a, we did a study where we said can we keep the grid reliable over the continental United States? It's 48 states and we found that we can, if we combine generation of wind and solar, which are what are called intermittent or does wind, does nose blow and the sun doesn't always shine with low cost heat and cold storage and electricity storage. Speaker 2:I should point out that first of all, if you electrify all sectors, if you electrify heating, cooling [00:19:30] industry transportation, you make it easier to match power demand on the grid because there are a lot more low, what are call loads of energy require more energy requirements that are what are called flexible. You don't have to hook a wind turbine up to your car to drive the car, your battery. So you can charge the car anytime of day or night by electrifying all sectors. And then you use low cost heat and cold storage. So, for example, ice, you can have an ice cube under a building in fact at Stanford has had an ice cube in our building since 1998 and during the night when electricity [00:20:00] prices low, it produced the ice. And then during the day instead of using high cost electricity for air conditioning during the day, you would run the water through the ice. Speaker 2:And so you basically, by using cold storage in ice, you eliminate electricity use in the afternoon and during the peak. And you can do the same thing with hot water and cold water. Uh, you can store, yeah, you can store heat and uh, in water and store cold and water as well. But then there's another, I mean there's a community in Canada, Oca, Tokes Canada, which is an hour south of Calgary that [00:20:30] they have 52 homes that have 'em on there. The garage roofs have the solar collectors that collect sunlight in the summer in a glycol solution, that glycol solution gets transferred through pipes to a building where it passes by water, heats the water, the water then gets piped underground to heat rocks that stored underground. The rocks got heated up to 80 degrees Celsius until wintertime. They're insulated around them and in winter the whole thing is run in reverse and provides 100% of our winter time heating when snow is on the ground and you can't even tell this facility's [00:21:00] there because the rocks are under a park. Speaker 2:Well, yes, it's a, yeah, it's called seasonal heat storage, so it's a way you can actually store heat over the season and it's so inexpensive. I made a battery. Battery. Electricity is $300 a kilowatt hour. Rock energy is $1 a kilowatt hour, so it's cheaper in fact that the ice is $30 a kilowatt hour, $38 a kilowatt hour. Same with hot and cold water. They're all like one 10th the cost of batteries. There's also what's called pumped hydro electric power. When [00:21:30] you, you have two reservoirs, a and when you have excess electricity, you pump water up the hill. When you need electricity, you let the water drain down the hill. And so you basically, you don't lose water that way. And it's not a dam necessarily, but a reservoir. And it could, one of the reservoirs could be the ocean or a lake. And then, uh, there's concentrated solar power where you in the deserts where, because normally with photovoltaic tags, unless you have batteries, it's hard to store the electricity. Speaker 2:But if you have what's called concentrated solar power, you focus light off of mirrors onto the central tower, the tower as a fluid, molten nitrate [00:22:00] salt for example, that heats up and that fluid can be stored and used at night to generate electricity. By the past, the hot fluid by water creates steam from the water. The steam runs a steam turbine to generate electricity. So that's called concentrated solar power storage. And if you do this on a large scale, that's a lot of solar energy that can be stored batteries. Yeah. And you can use it at night or with when it's cloudy. And that's also one 10th the cost of batteries for electricity storage. It sounds like there's going to be a lot of potential solutions in the [00:22:30] future that you could incorporate into these 50 plans. Yeah, well these are all existing solutions but they're not on a large scale so we just need to scale them up to huge scale. Speaker 2:I read about your organization that you actually give grants out the solutions project. It's a nonprofit that um, I mean the goal is to take energy plans and educate the public and policymakers about them and try to engage the public. But part of their mission right now is to give out small grants to groups that mostly non profits [00:23:00] that have creative ideas of how to get information out better, how to make more effective change. I wanted to ask you about how this idea came into fruition. Yeah. Well, I mean, my whole career I've been, I started at Stanford as a professor in 1994 but you know, it was way back when I was a teenager and my goal was to try to solve, understand and solve air pollution problems and soon after climate problems. This was back in the 19 early 1980s in Los Altos. [00:23:30] So I've always had that goal and passion to try to understand and solve large scale pollution and climate problems. Speaker 2:But when I first started doing research at Stanford, I focused on the problems and understanding them, but I then did a lot of inner comparisons of energy technologies and their impacts on health and climate. Late 1990 started looking at wind energy in particular as a potential solution to some of these problems. And so did studies on the analysis of wind energy was with students as well. But then in around 2008 [00:24:00] I decided I had enough information, I wanted to start comparing different proposed energy solutions to climate and air pollution. So I did an inter comparison study value of what are the best technologies and that's when I came up with the conclusion that it was wind and water and solar power that were the best on nuclear and coal. With carbon capture, we're kind of more mediocre and then things like, you know, natural gas and biofuels were the worst in terms of health and climate and water supply and and land use and catastrophic risk and things like that. Speaker 2:But then the [00:24:30] next question was, well, if you have wind and water and solar is the best of technologies, can you actually then power the world with all the, with these technologies given, you know, resource limitations, land use limitations. And we did a study, that's why I started partnering with Mark Delucci at UC Berkeley and we concluded that it is possible. It's technically and economically possible, but there are social and political barriers. And we said, well, it's even technically possible by 2030 but for social and political reasons it's unlikely we can get to 100% until 2015 that really once we did a paper on that, [00:25:00] that was a global paper that's, you know, nobody controls the whole globe. So we eventually had to go down to state levels and country levels to see if it was possible to do a practical plan. Do you really think based on what's happened so far that will reach the goal of 100% by 2050 based on what you've done already? Speaker 2:I think there is a, there's a growing, I mean we're a lot further now than even two years ago. I mean I think people's mindset any more people are talking about getting to 100% so that in itself is growing exponentially in terms of how people were talking and thinking [00:25:30] about that catastrophic weather that's pushing this kind of attitude. Yeah, well it's a combination of problems are getting worse. The climate problems are getting worse and more people are saying we need to solve the problem. The insurance companies are saying it's an Oh my God issue. Yeah. So are there more people on board? But it's also fortunate that the costs of especially wind and solar and batteries, even batteries and in electric cars are coming down, especially the, when the electric power sector, people are suddenly thinking, wow, we could actually, we could have a high penetration of wind and solar because it's [00:26:00] so cheap that we can really ramp it up. Speaker 2:So it's kind of a combination of more people being aware of it and wanting to solve the problem. And simultaneously costs have come down and there've been technology improvements and existing technologies that are needed. So all the problems. So a lot of things are coming together, but there's still also growth, especially in many countries like you know, even though China for example, is putting in a lot of renewable energy, it's also putting in a lot of coal still. And that's troubling. And, but there are other countries in the world also growing and the pollution, the [00:26:30] emissions are still going up and a lot of places, although they're coming down and some other places, but you do see trends in several countries in Europe. So you can see their admissions are going down already. Uh, but not as fast as we need them to. We are going to experience some pretty wild weather. Speaker 2:Even we were on a hundred percent renewables today. By definition, I mean climate is the average of all weather events and so weather is very variable in the first place. But we do get more extreme weather with higher average temperatures. Yeah. On average, I mean this'll probably be one of the warmers if not the warmest year on record and an individual months [00:27:00] as well. But climate, again, you have to average over a long period look at the trends relevant, the actual value in a given year. It's really the trend that matters. Definitely the trend. It is everything is warming up and there were temperatures are over one degree Celsius higher than, uh, in the 18 hundreds. And you know, that's, that's significant on the rate of change. The temperature today is faster than any time, even since deglaciation from the last ice age. So the Paris agreement that, you know, there, they agreed to try to avoid two degrees Celsius, but it's really [00:27:30] one and a half degrees that a lot of people wanted, um, to avoid. And we're already at one degree, so we're only half a degree away from that. How many parts per million are we had already? We want, we should be at three 50 and where are we? Where are we today for a little over 400 parts per million. Yeah. Speaker 3:And so this is significant. I mean, I think sometimes we don't scare the public enough about what's coming down yet Speaker 2:in 50 years and oh yeah, no, the problem is actually much worse than most people think because half of the warming in the atmosphere is being [00:28:00] hidden by pollution and air pollution particles because they're both reflective in general and the enhanced cloudiness. So if you actually just cleaned up air pollution particles, which you want to do because they'd cause 90% of the air pollution health problems, which killed four to 7 million people every year as you clean up that air pollution, you actually make the warming worse because of the masking that's going on. And so that is another reason it's so urgent to not only eliminate the particles from a health point of view, but also the greenhouse [00:28:30] gases from a climate point of view simultaneously. And the only way you can simultaneously eliminate greenhouse gases and the particles is by changing the energy infrastructure by electrifying everything and producing that electricity from clean and renewable wind, water and solar power. There is a solution to this problem and that's changing the energy infrastructure of cities, states, countries in the world change your own home to the extent you can by electrifying everything. And if you can put solar on the roof, then you can provide that electricity from your own power. You can even add some batteries to [00:29:00] store it so you don't have to pay for the remaining power that you do use. If you do use it, you know, try to select policymakers who are more supportive of clean and renewable. Speaker 3:And here we are coming up on an election cycle and that's to me is extremely important and especially a congress that will pass something like this. Do you have a website that people can go to if they want to find out more about this project solutions project? Speaker 2:There's two websites that solutions project.org [00:29:30] that's one word. Then one hundred.org the number one hundred.org so that's a subgroup of the solutions project, which is basically the idea is to bring 100% clean and renewable energy to 100% of the people 100% Speaker 1:of the time. I really appreciate you being on method to the madness, so thank you very much. I thank you for having me on. Speaker 4:Okay. Speaker 1:You've been listening to method to the madness by weekly public fair show. Katie l x Berkeley Celebrating Bay area innovators. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Greg Kozera is a registered professional engineer with a masters degree in environmental engineering and over 35 years of experience in the natural gas and oil industry including hydraulic fracturing. He is the author of 3 books, numerous articles and technical papers. Kozera’s latest book, Just the Fracks Ma’am: The Truth about Hydrofracking is available from all online outlets. Kozera is also a professional speaker and the current President of the Virginia Oil & Gas Association. He is a father and grandfather whose oldest son just returned from deployment in the Middle East.

The meaning of North American energy independence and how to achieve it has been a hot topic of debate for years.  The oil crisis of 1973 brought into focus the stark reality that the US was reliant on other nations for access to oil. Determined to prevent similar incidents, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was created in 1975 and today the US has the capacity to hold up to 727 million barrels of emergency fuel. Though it sounds like an immense amount of oil, it equates only to an estimated 36 days of use. So the search for an alternative, safe, clean and affordable domestic source of energy has continued. Scientists had known for years about natural gas trapped in a dense layer of sedimentary rock—known as shale—buried a mile or more underground all over the country. The problem with shale gas was it was too difficult to access; a problem solved by 'hydrofracking', commonly referred to as, 'fracking'.  A little over a decade ago scientists created a process to inject water under high pressure into shale, breaking it and releasing trapped gas and oil. This simple idea of injecting water into the ground effectively lit the fuse that has caused an American energy explosion. Shale gas is cleaner than coal and oil. Fracking has created jobs, lowered emissions, kick-started industry and for the first time in decades created an energy surplus in the US.  However, fracking comes with its own environmental costs.Inspired by his previous book, "The Ripple Effect: the Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century", author and journalist Alex Prud'homme began researching the impact fracking has on the quantity and quality of fresh drinking water. The result is a guide that weighs the evidence both for and against fracking. Prud'homme will give an unbiased presentation of the present state of hydrofracking to bring clarity to a debate that, in his words, "has been exacerbated by an absence of hard data and an excess of hyperbole on both sides".Speaker Alex Prud'homme is a journalist and he is the author of "Hydrofracking: What Everyone Needs to Know".For more information about this event, visit: http://www.worldaffairs.org/events/2013/hydrofracking.html

Greg Kozera joins Craig to discuss his new book “Just the Fracks, Ma'am: The TRUTH about Hydrofracking and the Next Great American Boom”. While this topic has recently become controversial, it’s actually been a process in use for quite a while. Greg answers Craig’s questions on water safety, earthquakes and reminds everyone to not take everything you hear at face value…including modern day documentaries. You can learn more about Greg’s new book at http://justthefracksbook.com/

Managing Attorney Deborah Goldberg discusses the Northeast regional office's litigation on fracking, a controversial form of industrial gas drilling that can contaminate the air and water.

Case pits small town's rights against out-of-state gas company's wishes. Earthjustice Managing Attorney Deborah Goldberg comments.

Doctors, scientists and researchers lend support to newspaper's fight in disclosing fracking secrets. Earthjustice attorney Matthew Gerhart comments.

This week on The Farm Report, Erin Fairbanks is joined by wealth of guests to discuss the issue of hydraulic fracturing, better known as hydrofracking. Erin talks with Heather Carlucci-Rodriguez and Alissa Westervelt of Chefs for the Marcellus, a group of New York City chefs and food purveyors raising awareness about the harmful health effects of fracking. Joining via the phone lines is Greg Swartz of Willow Wisp Farm, talking about how hydrofracking circumvents the Clean Water Act via exceptions granted by the Bush-Cheney administration. Also calling in is Luce Guanzini of Highwood Farm. She discusses the “No Surface Rights” lease that prevents gas companies from entering private properties. How do these technologies impact our food systems? This episode has been brought to by Hearst Ranch. “It [fracking] directly impacts our watershed. You can’t do anything without water, namely grow food. It doesn’t relegate itself to farm-to-table…but it really affects everything – industrial food and fast food.” —Heather Carlucci-Rodriguez on The Farm Report “If hydrofracking safe, why do they need an exemption from basic environmental legislation?” —Greg Swartz on The Farm Report

Hydrofracking in the Delaware Basin; guest Jonathan Ben Gordon, Cantor of Woodlands Community Temple.

Hydrofracking in the Delaware Basin; guest Jonathan Ben Gordon, Cantor of Woodlands Community Temple.

Hydrofracking.

Hydrofracking.

The hydrofracking debate is as important as ever and host Katy Keiffer speaks about our water supply with Wes Gillingham of Catskill Mountain Keeper on the 2nd installment of Straight, No Chaser. Listen in and get caught up with recent developments surrounding flowback water and open storage containers. How long do gas wells last? Will drilling affect our water supply and health? Tune in to find the answers to these questions and more. This episode was sponsored by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

The hydrofracking debate is as important as ever and host Katy Keiffer speaks about our water supply with Wes Gillingham of Catskill Mountain Keeper on the 2nd installment of Straight, No Chaser. Listen in and get caught up with recent developments surrounding flowback water and open storage containers. How long do gas wells last? Will drilling affect our water supply and health? Tune in to find the answers to these questions and more. This episode was sponsored by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

This week we have 2004 Presidential Candidate, David Cobb, on the show.  He was the Green Party candidate, dumbass.  Anyway, he's in town on his barnstorming tour to end corporate personhood, working with the Move To Amend coalition.  Go there, sign the petition and if there isn't already a local chapter start one.  Go.  Do it now.  We'll wait.  We talk about hydrofracking, how much Crap-mart sucks, the Park Avenue Festival and independent businesses - and we make it fun!  Get ready for links to David's presentation. Music: Big Bill Broonzy - Get Back Black Uhuru - Plastic Smile Baskery - Shame And Dance Donavan Frankenreiter - Dance Like Nobody's Watching Mike Zito - Until The Day I Die

Phil Monahan of OrvisNews.com has called the development of gas resources in the Marcellus Shale the "Pebble Mine of the East." Hear Chris Wood, CEO of Trout Unlimited, and his guest, TU's Elizabeth Maclin, VP for Eastern Conservation discuss what the Marcellus Shale project entails, what "hydro-fracking" is and the potential impact on coldwater resources of Northern Appalachia.