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00:00:00You couldn't really miss Gianni Agnelli.
00:00:10He was involved with everything Italians love.
00:00:13Sex, cars, and sports.
00:00:16Every woman was in love with him.
00:00:18Every man wanted to be him.
00:00:20People that were around him, they were all in awe of him.
00:00:24Gianni had a great eye, obsessed by aesthetics.
00:00:28Everybody tried to copy him.
00:00:30When he was around, the pace of life changed.
00:00:34Electricity.
00:00:36Gianni played a big role in saving Fiat.
00:00:40Fiat put the whole of Italy on four wheels.
00:00:44Then the unrest started.
00:00:46We had a sense of evolution.
00:00:49He had great sympathy for workers and also for their plight.
00:00:53The industrial comeback of Italy is Fiat.
00:00:56And it changed Italy completely.
00:00:58Mr. Agnelli.
00:00:59He was the king of Italy.
00:01:00He was the king of Italy.
00:01:04The End
00:01:06The End
00:01:12Oh, oh, oh, oh.
00:01:42Are you aware of what's going down the street today?
00:01:49You know what's going on down the street?
00:01:51You know there's a climate march going on down the street?
00:01:54You don't know.
00:01:55You know there's a climate march going on down the street?
00:01:57What is it?
00:01:58A climate march?
00:01:59No, I didn't know.
00:02:00You don't know about that.
00:02:07There might end up being more people waiting for the new iPhone than for the parade.
00:02:12And that's where the parade's going to be.
00:02:14It's completely empty.
00:02:15I've always been a little skeptical of marches.
00:02:36I feel like they're more for the marchers than anything else.
00:02:38I had no idea what it was going to be like.
00:02:42All I'd been told is that they were expecting about 40,000 people.
00:02:49A little bit more energy going on down here.
00:02:51I think there's more people than I thought there would be.
00:03:02You know, just touch the street.
00:03:04Yeah, just touch the street.
00:03:05Don't touch me.
00:03:05No, people just play.
00:03:07Oh, thank God.
00:03:07We're a radical group.
00:03:11You are?
00:03:12Yeah.
00:03:12What's so radical about you?
00:03:14Well, we advocate for a separate hypothetical militant underground to actually carry out direct
00:03:18actions against industrial infrastructure.
00:03:20Good luck with that.
00:03:23Hey, habitat animal.
00:03:24Come here.
00:03:26How's it going today?
00:03:27It's a bad, bad day for polar bears.
00:03:30Yeah, it is.
00:03:31There's often a disconnect.
00:03:43Like, people say they're green, but they still drive everywhere, and they make thousands of
00:03:48copies at work.
00:03:50Sandy was that wake-up call to us as New Yorkers to say climate change is actually a real issue
00:03:56that we have to deal with.
00:03:57Look who showed up at the climate market.
00:04:03Mark Ruffalo.
00:04:04Walmart, Google, Apple, Crayola, Johnson & Johnson.
00:04:09All of these companies have moved to 100% renewable energy, not because they necessarily care about
00:04:13climate change, although I think in their hearts they do, but because they see it's economically
00:04:19better for them.
00:04:20Well, I'll tell you something.
00:04:32You know, you see something like this, you see all the commitments that organizations are
00:04:35willing to make, and then I'm like, really?
00:04:38I can't turn my thermostat from 72 to 68.
00:04:47Close to a half a million people wanting some action on climate change.
00:04:52The whole thing left me thinking about some very specific questions.
00:04:56So I'm thinking back on that climate march, and the bottom line to me is that 400,000 people
00:05:12showed up and said, do something.
00:05:16I mean, it's oddly like celebratory in a way.
00:05:22I can't help but think that renewable energy, or the hope of it, is tied up in that somehow,
00:05:28because as far as I'm concerned, I don't know what else would give people a sense of hope,
00:05:34right?
00:05:35The question is, what about renewable energy?
00:05:38I mean, you hear a lot about, oh, yeah, they promise of this and that, but honestly, honestly,
00:05:43can we make enough renewable energy to supply the world and replace fossil fuels?
00:05:51How would we do that?
00:05:53And will we do that?
00:05:56Most importantly, that's what I want to know.
00:06:02You know, there's a family angle to this business about energy.
00:06:05Like a lot of people, my grandfather, Charlie Redford, he struggled supporting his young
00:06:10family during the Depression.
00:06:13Eventually, he got an accounting job at Standard Oil, and 30 years later, he retired near the
00:06:18top of the Chevron corporate ladder.
00:06:21His son, Robert, my dad, took quite a different path.
00:06:24He started out working at the loading bays of the Standard Oil refinery, but his penchant
00:06:29for the arts took him in a whole other direction.
00:06:33The movies.
00:06:34And, well, that worked out pretty good.
00:06:39I'm Alexander Pierce.
00:06:40My father served in the 101st.
00:06:43But being in Hollywood was never going to be enough for my dad, or my mom, for that matter.
00:06:47I grew up in a home with active and engaged parents, particularly when it came to the promise
00:06:52of solar energy.
00:06:53They even made an Academy Award-nominated short film about it.
00:06:57So you'd think with this sort of pedigree that I would have an honorary degree in renewable
00:07:12energy, right?
00:07:13But the truth is, I don't.
00:07:18Luckily, I have a friend who's doing well with energy and environmental projects on the global
00:07:22markets.
00:07:23And in his spare time, he helps connect philanthropic capital to energy innovation.
00:07:28Hey, hey.
00:07:33How are you?
00:07:33Good to see you.
00:07:34Good to see you.
00:07:35So about 10 years ago, there was this epiphany that I had.
00:07:40I worked at a company where we tried to forecast the future of the Internet and digital media.
00:07:45But then I realized that that's what the last 30 or 40 years had been about.
00:07:50Sort of the story of humanity was about the microprocessor and all the things that it enabled
00:07:54that changed our lives.
00:07:55But I felt like the next 30 or 40 years was about energy, because that's the lowest common
00:08:01denominator of every other resource.
00:08:03If you have infinite energy, you can boil the ocean and make water you can drink.
00:08:07If you have infinite energy, you can reconfigure the chemical bonds in a plant and make a fuel
00:08:13you can put in your car.
00:08:15So if we're going to scale the world for 11 billion people, energy is what it's about.
00:08:20Well, what you just described to me is exactly what my problem is, because I just keep on
00:08:27bumping up against these uber realities.
00:08:31And it's too big.
00:08:32It's too big.
00:08:33So first and foremost, it sounds like you are not doing much and that you have energy paralysis.
00:08:39It's very hard to get excited and do something meaningful about something you can't see, right?
00:08:45You have never seen energy.
00:08:46What you have seen is the result of it.
00:08:48You've seen the car move.
00:08:50You've seen the light come on.
00:08:51Maybe it would be, for me, for my own edification, if you could take me on the journey of the
00:08:57lonely electron.
00:08:58The easiest way for me to think about this has been the analogy to water.
00:09:03So think of the electricity grid exactly like a set of water pipes.
00:09:07The amount of water that's flowing, right?
00:09:09The current is the size of the pipe.
00:09:11And then how much power we're delivering, how strong that motion is, is the pressure, how
00:09:18hard we're pushing that water.
00:09:19That's voltage.
00:09:21So if you want to think about electricity, moving electrons just like moving water, the
00:09:25size of the pipe is current.
00:09:27The force of the water is the voltage.
00:09:29That make sense so far?
00:09:30Yes.
00:09:30Okay.
00:09:31So there is a power plant somewhere.
00:09:33And at that place, we make some form of heat.
00:09:36Like we burn coal or gas, or we have some radioactive reaction that makes heat.
00:09:40And we use that heat to boil water.
00:09:42We boil water, we get steam.
00:09:44And that steam goes up.
00:09:46And when it goes up, it turns a turbine around.
00:09:49That turbine turning makes electrons move.
00:09:51And out of that power plant, we're pushing a big number of electrons down a big pipe.
00:09:55But then you come to this little thing called a substation.
00:09:58And what happens at the substation is we take these really high voltages that are kind of
00:10:01dangerous, and we're going to step them down.
00:10:04So we're now pushing less electrons less hard than we did right out of the plant.
00:10:10And then that electron moves through the wires that go to your home.
00:10:14It goes out of the socket through your phone, making the screen light up, then goes back
00:10:18in and goes through the rest of the system.
00:10:21And by the way, you can actually do this.
00:10:22You can track it yourself.
00:10:23I am a trail runner, and the most instructive exercise for me to understand the power system
00:10:28was to find a power plant and then track the power line corridor where the transmission
00:10:33lines go and just start running.
00:10:39So off I went, just me and my phone camera.
00:10:53I just thought I would try and figure out what's going on.
00:10:58And it's just so ugly.
00:11:12What do you mean you're looking for electricity?
00:11:20What is that about?
00:11:21I just thought I would try and figure out where the hell my electricity comes from.
00:11:27Can't you get your meter and find out that way?
00:11:31Well, but it doesn't say where the origin is.
00:11:34It doesn't tell you, like, literally where it's from.
00:11:37Wow, what an interesting little journey we're on.
00:11:40It's incredibly boring.
00:11:42Pretty sleepy little town.
00:11:47I mean, it seems like it's holding its own economically.
00:11:50Probably because there is a power plant here, right?
00:11:54There it is.
00:11:56There it is.
00:11:57There's my nearest power plant.
00:11:59The Pittsburgh Generating Station.
00:12:02I found it.
00:12:04Just a tangle of utility lines going over everything.
00:12:11It is suitably depressing.
00:12:13And as you can see, it makes electricity and everyone says, oh, all right, well, that's good
00:12:21enough.
00:12:22But when you turn this way and look across the bay, whoa, tons of windmills.
00:12:34So you tell me, how do you want to make your power?
00:12:38I mean, intuitively speaking, is this what you want your power plant to look like or that?
00:12:52Oh shit, they're massive.
00:12:59Wow.
00:13:01I've been impressed by a lot of technology in my lifetime, but I don't know if it even
00:13:17helps this.
00:13:18Where are you?
00:13:19I'm probably about an hour and a half from home.
00:13:33As you can imagine, I'm not going to be home in time for dinner.
00:13:34Oh, you won't be home for dinner?
00:13:35I've been out in the garden.
00:13:36Don't worry.
00:13:37No, no, no, no.
00:13:38Don't worry.
00:13:39Don't worry.
00:13:40Good.
00:13:41I'll see you in a few hours.
00:13:47Hey Don.
00:13:48Hi Leans.
00:13:49What's up?
00:13:50I'm thinking, you know, when you come home, how about you come on a road trip with me
00:14:02to explore some renewable energy in the desert?
00:14:17What?
00:14:18Why would I go?
00:14:19Because you're really fun and I just am always looking for an excuse to be around you.
00:14:27Don't you feel like you should bring someone who actually knows about that stuff?
00:14:33Like someone who could counter your ignorance?
00:14:38We can't just have two like dum-dums out there on the road.
00:14:42I'd like to say that was the first time my daughter drop kicked one of my plans, but
00:14:47it would be a lie.
00:14:48However, I did have better luck with an entrepreneur musician friend who builds guitar amps in his
00:14:53spare time.
00:14:56You can make an argument that, well maybe it's too late.
00:15:00That's one argument, right?
00:15:01Screw it.
00:15:02We're all too, you know, suck the carbon down and, you know, wait for the apocalypse.
00:15:08The counter argument is every little bit helps.
00:15:12We're on the site of the world's largest commercial solar thermal facility.
00:15:24So we have almost 180,000 heliostats, what we call heliostats, the mirrors that are surroundings,
00:15:29and three, you know, significant towers.
00:15:31I'm going to do something at great risk to my own image.
00:15:35And that is trying to explain what this plant is doing right now.
00:15:38Great.
00:15:39It's not that hard.
00:15:40That makes it even worse.
00:15:42Yeah.
00:15:43There's a star up here emitting ultraviolet light.
00:15:47It's coming down.
00:15:48I'd go with infrared on that, Jamie.
00:15:50Okay.
00:15:51Infrared.
00:15:52Because we're talking about heat.
00:15:54And it's hitting hundreds of thousands of mirrors.
00:15:57And the cool thing about these mirrors, we're all aiming at that.
00:16:02And that's why that thing is glowing like the eye of Sauron as we're standing here.
00:16:08That's not the end of it, though.
00:16:10Apparently there's water in there.
00:16:12And it superheats.
00:16:14And it drives that steam down that tower and goes somewhere and turns turbines and makes electricity and goes off.
00:16:23Touché.
00:16:24Touché, Jamie.
00:16:25From our perspective, if you thought that we were going to burn coal 100 years from now,
00:16:30and that that was going to be a sustainable approach, I think you're grossly underestimating the trajectory of technology.
00:16:35Right.
00:16:36So there's very competitive electricity from renewables.
00:16:39The problem is the intermittency.
00:16:41Right.
00:16:42So solar thermal is clearly aimed, when we compete against renewables, we're competing against the fact that we can deliver energy on demand.
00:16:49So we're dispatchable.
00:16:50When we compete against a gas plant, we're competing against the fact that we don't have emissions.
00:16:55They do.
00:16:56And we're supplying power to California Grid.
00:16:58That's right.
00:16:59We're part of the renewable mix.
00:17:00We think the current grid system could sustain 25 to 30 percent renewables with a smarter grid, meaning we could manage the intermittency of renewables better.
00:17:09We can get even higher penetration.
00:17:11California's talking about a 50 percent standard.
00:17:13There were, of course, environmental issues building this plant out here.
00:17:16Sure.
00:17:17But very significantly, you didn't clear a bunch of land.
00:17:20You can see there's weeds growing underneath these reflectors.
00:17:24Right.
00:17:25It was all done in place, basically, right?
00:17:27Any power plant is going to be invasive, by definition.
00:17:30It's a physical facility.
00:17:31If you build a building, you build a power plant.
00:17:32Sure.
00:17:33So the trade is, what can you do to be least environmentally impactful?
00:17:38There's a small group of people who wouldn't want the desert intruded on for any purpose.
00:17:43Sure.
00:17:44And for them, there's no solution.
00:17:46There's nothing you can do to say, we've mitigated, we've done the best we can.
00:17:49I went to West Point, got my engineering degree at West Point.
00:17:52Oh, you were not.
00:17:53Tell me again, you think this is invasive, so you'd rather go out and protect our oil interests in places that hate us.
00:17:58And for that, you're willing to trade dollars and bodies, and that's a good trade for you.
00:18:02That's a good trade.
00:18:03The true price of foreign oil.
00:18:06No one is more familiar with that than the U.S. Armed Forces.
00:18:11Interestingly, the Armed Forces, the Navy in particular, was beginning to embrace renewable energy.
00:18:18And I was determined to understand why.
00:18:21I'm in San Diego, man.
00:18:22I'm going down to look at what's happening with the Navy.
00:18:25They have a target, I think, of 50% renewable energy.
00:18:29And it turns out that Ray Mavis, he's the Secretary of the Navy.
00:18:33He's behind a lot of this.
00:18:34And I was able to wrangle an interview with him today.
00:18:38The ship you're standing on, the American, is a hybrid.
00:18:44The Marines, at the height of the fighting in Afghanistan, were losing one Marine, killed or wounded, for every 50 convoys of fuel that came in, guarding those fuels.
00:18:55That's too high a price to pay.
00:18:57So if you can make energy, solar, wind, where you are, and don't have to have it brought to you.
00:19:04You talk to SEAL commanders of some of these teams.
00:19:08This one guy said, you know, we turned off the generator, and all of a sudden we could hear.
00:19:15We could hear when people were trying to sneak up on us.
00:19:18And he said that generator running all the time, it was like a bullseye.
00:19:22Come on over here.
00:19:23Yeah, we're here.
00:19:24This is where we are.
00:19:25Right.
00:19:26It makes us better fighters.
00:19:27Yeah.
00:19:28Now, it's got some great collateral.
00:19:30It lowers our carbon footprint.
00:19:32It makes us better stewards of the environment.
00:19:35The Department of Defense is the largest single user of fossil fuels in the world.
00:19:39Navy and Marine Corps, about 40% of that.
00:19:44By no later than 2020, at least half of all our energy, afloat and ashore, will come from non-fossil fuel sources.
00:19:51We're going to be there on shore, on our basis, by the end of this year.
00:19:56We'll be five years early.
00:19:57No.
00:19:58Yeah.
00:19:59No.
00:20:00We're a seagoing service.
00:20:01But we own three and a half million acres of land, and we have 117,000 buildings.
00:20:07So we use a little bit of energy on shore, too.
00:20:11But the next step is to do microgrids, so that if something happens to the big grid, we can pull ourselves off and still do our military job.
00:20:22Welcome to the bridge, sir.
00:20:24Is this progress at risk of being rolled back by political process, or do you feel like that there's this sort of straight course moving forward?
00:20:33I hope and I believe that it's becoming the new normal.
00:20:38DOD put in its quadrennial defense review that energy was a national security priority.
00:20:45It's a whole of the federal government, but it's also America is changing the way it views energy.
00:20:52America is changing the way it uses energy.
00:20:55Was America really changing?
00:20:58As it turned out, the answer was hiding in plain sight, right in the middle of central Texas.
00:21:04You know, when you think of Texas, you think of oil derricks, you think of gas.
00:21:23And so here's this little city that goes 100% green with the second city in the country to go 100% green.
00:21:30Burlington, Vermont was the first.
00:21:32Our duty to our rate pay was to provide the lowest cost energy.
00:21:38When we compared wind and solar to natural gas, wind and solar was about equal, but the providers would give us guaranteed contracts for 25 years on wind and solar.
00:21:50And natural gas providers was only for six years.
00:21:54So that made the decision pretty easy.
00:21:57Do people see solar and wind as, oh, no, it's going to ruin our way of life and our legacy and our history, or do they just say, hey, man, more energy?
00:22:08When you do something new and different, if it involves change, I think some people get concerned.
00:22:14They just want to make sure that it works and it doesn't impact them negatively.
00:22:18And in the job markets, I mean, we're still doing tons of oil and gas in Texas.
00:22:24Right.
00:22:25Well, you can just use it for other sources other than make electricity.
00:22:29That's good.
00:22:30Republicans don't like to raise taxes.
00:22:32And so we're doing all kinds of wonderful things, and the tax rates stay in the same.
00:22:36And so I'm spending money like a Democrat, OK?
00:22:42But it's OK, because you have to invest in these things in Georgetown.
00:22:46We do have a banker on here.
00:22:48He's a good friend of mine, and sometimes I just cuss at him.
00:22:50And I'm going, look, what the fuck do you want your legacy to be 100 years from now?
00:22:54Do you cut the tax rate by a penny?
00:22:57You want that on your tombstone?
00:22:59Really?
00:23:00I didn't run on small ideas, and I didn't run to go cut ribbons.
00:23:06I ran to make a change in my community in a meaningful way.
00:23:11And what we need to do now is we need to spend money.
00:23:15If we don't spend money right now in this economy, what, will we spend money when we go back in a recession?
00:23:22No.
00:23:23We've got to spend the money now.
00:23:27Money.
00:23:28Lots of it in the Bay Area these days.
00:23:31And more and more of it's headed towards clean energy products.
00:23:35Hydro Helio.
00:23:40That sounds good.
00:23:41So it's designed as a giant Lego.
00:23:43You build it as modular as you want.
00:23:46This got my attention because it reminds me of a good humor truck.
00:23:49I expect to open that and see some ice cream or something.
00:23:51Put some beer in there.
00:23:52No ice cream.
00:23:53But it's a DC refrigerator, so it's solar direct into it.
00:23:57I love the model.
00:23:58It's like no drought going on here.
00:24:00Oh, I knocked over the car a lot.
00:24:02Holy cow.
00:24:03Call the system.
00:24:04Be careful.
00:24:05He's a high voltage.
00:24:06Yeah.
00:24:07There's so many options here.
00:24:08I'm totally freaking overwhelmed.
00:24:11You have 60 seconds to pitch your idea to an investor industry exec that is sitting in front of you.
00:24:18And then entrepreneurs will get up and move to the chair to your right.
00:24:22So this is like solar speed dating.
00:24:26Good.
00:24:27We've never met, I don't think.
00:24:28I certainly know your name.
00:24:29I know who you guys are.
00:24:30Is that a fully integrated solution or are you just selling the batteries?
00:24:34It's a fully integrated solution.
00:24:35With our software platform, we just want to sell and support as much of it as possible.
00:24:39That would be an awesome.
00:24:40They're not going to be developing their phones.
00:24:42Absolutely not.
00:24:44No.
00:24:45In 47 states, by next year, solar will be as cheap, if not cheaper, than fossil fuel.
00:24:5047?
00:24:5147 states.
00:24:52Who are those three?
00:24:53Well, there's actually five states, including Florida, where solar still is illegal.
00:24:58It's...
00:24:59Wow.
00:25:00Crazy.
00:25:01And they're just missing out.
00:25:02It's like, at this point, why wouldn't you?
00:25:04Yeah.
00:25:05When it's creating more jobs than Google, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter combined in the U.S.,
00:25:09that's how many people the solar industry employs.
00:25:11Where are the jobs?
00:25:12What's going on?
00:25:13So unlike fossil fuel, where it's all top-down and centralized, it's inherently decentralized.
00:25:18It's distributed and it democratizes energy production and consumption.
00:25:22And that requires a lot of jobs.
00:25:23That requires a lot of hands.
00:25:24One nuclear power plant only needs so many people to operate it.
00:25:27Mini micro-grids on homes around the country requires a lot of labor.
00:25:32Solar used to be about hardware.
00:25:34It was about panels.
00:25:35It was technological.
00:25:36And now we're moving to the place where it's psychological.
00:25:39It's about how to change minds and hearts and give people a choice in where their energy
00:25:42comes from.
00:25:43And the companies that are here today are doing that.
00:25:45They're using software and finance to make solar the most abundant and affordable energy
00:25:50resource in the world.
00:25:51Well, thank you so much for taking the time.
00:25:53You're welcome.
00:25:54Do you go off at the end of this evening like a lot of people that have conventions
00:25:57and party it up or do something fun or what happens?
00:25:59Of course.
00:26:00I hope we're going to Solar Battle of the Vans.
00:26:01That's my plan.
00:26:02So clean energy products seem to be moving off the shelves at a good pace.
00:26:19But who is actually making these products and where?
00:26:22As it turned out, the largest solar panel manufacturing plant in the Western Hemisphere
00:26:26had just broken ground in Buffalo, New York.
00:26:32All right.
00:26:33You going to go four-wheeling?
00:26:34Yeah, I figured it out.
00:26:35I think I'm ready for it.
00:26:52This 88-acre parcel is what will now host the Solar City panel manufacturing facility.
00:26:58But the state said, we will finance the construction of the building.
00:27:03And we will also finance the baseline equipment that you need to function within that building.
00:27:08And you'll be our tenants in that building.
00:27:10Solar City said, what you've got going in Buffalo sounds great.
00:27:14But you're thinking about building a 225,000 square foot structure.
00:27:18We want to do a 1.2 million square foot structure.
00:27:21Almost overnight, Buffalo was made one of the centers of the solar industry in the United States.
00:27:30That's not the world.
00:27:32When my parents were born and raised in the 30s, even with the Depression, Buffalo was a mighty industrial community.
00:27:39It had all the steel mills and all the other manufacturing facilities.
00:27:42They saw it all starting to fall apart.
00:27:45We really saw it fall apart.
00:27:47This facility will put more people to work, approximately 3,000 people, than the steel plant
00:27:55that once sat here that actually polluted the community that we're still dealing with.
00:27:59All we have ever wanted is to have a community, again, like what our parents took for granted.
00:28:13Yeah.
00:28:14That it's vibrant, vital, sustainable, hip.
00:28:19Yeah.
00:28:20You know?
00:28:21And it's got all that.
00:28:23Buffalo, a city on the rebound, economically for sure.
00:28:27But it didn't seem to stop there.
00:28:29The social fabric was rebounding as well, and renewable energy was no small part of it.
00:28:41Push Buffalo.
00:28:42Basically, they're like about creating sort of energy-independent affordable housing.
00:28:49The idea being making their own power, they're conserving, making it affordable.
00:28:53So, I got to check with these folks.
00:28:56Well, PUSH stands for People United for Sustainable Housing.
00:29:00It came about in 2005.
00:29:02They are a nonprofit organization.
00:29:04What do you call this?
00:29:06This is basically a small area that we're taking care of, doing green infrastructure
00:29:11on the west side of Buffalo.
00:29:13Solar as a sector is killing the rest of the economy with job creation.
00:29:17So, we know that there's potential there, and we want to bring that potential home to roost here in the neighborhood.
00:29:22We want that rebound to include everybody.
00:29:24What's your favorite thing?
00:29:26Banana.
00:29:27Banana.
00:29:28Ah.
00:29:29When did you start actually working on houses?
00:29:31I did.
00:29:32So, yeah, I think right when the organization started, one of the co-founders bought a property in the neighborhood here.
00:29:37We actually put together some local tradespeople like Eddie and put them to work on that first house that was purchased,
00:29:43kind of a volunteer brigade that rehabbed it on a shoestring budget.
00:29:47From there, you know, we went after funding with our state affordable housing agencies, some charitable foundations.
00:29:53By the end of this year, we'll have 60 units of affordable housing occupied.
00:29:59As you see, the gutter system here runs down to our rain garden back here.
00:30:06And as you can see, we have solar panels on top of this house.
00:30:11And what you don't see is up under the panel in here, we have radiant floor heating, which will also help save money on your heating bills.
00:30:22The south face of the roof, there's a solar thermal system, and that provides all the domestic hot water in the house.
00:30:28So anytime Maxine draws water for a bath, that water has been preheated by the sun.
00:30:36It's very cool in here.
00:30:37Yes, the way it's made, we've got radiant floors.
00:30:42Right, so, okay, so that's what I've got to remember.
00:30:44Like, having a floor that's got, like, mild or just sort of 60-degree water will keep it from getting too cold in the winter.
00:30:51But in the summer, that's going to keep you cool.
00:30:54Yes.
00:30:55There's both ways.
00:30:56Yes.
00:30:57So does it take much from you?
00:30:58Do you have to do anything, or are they just sort of doing their own thing on your roof, the solar panels?
00:31:02Oh, they do.
00:31:03I don't have to do nothing.
00:31:04Does the electricity from those panels go into the grid?
00:31:08It flows into the grid.
00:31:09It flows into the grid, and basically the amount that flows is kind of set against the amount that Maxine would consume.
00:31:15And if her system produces more than she uses, then she'll get a credit on her bill.
00:31:21So, what do you hear from the neighbors?
00:31:25They want to know about it, tell them how to get involved, because change just doesn't happen.
00:31:32It takes a process.
00:31:34You've got to work at it, and PUSH is working hard, forming relationships to get things changed.
00:31:41The state's committed to this transition, and we want to make sure that the people are leading that,
00:31:46and that they have ownership opportunities, that they have ways to redistribute those economic benefits,
00:31:51the environmental benefits, right in their neighborhood.
00:31:56Some people might be surprised that Buffalo is now a player in the new energy economy.
00:32:01But it's not as surprising as you might think.
00:32:04If you drive 20 minutes north, you'll see a network of Canadian and American power plants making clean energy from moving water.
00:32:15Five million cubic feet every 60 seconds.
00:32:19If you look at the word renewable and generating power, the one that's killing it is the one that's been killing it all along.
00:32:27Hydroelectric power.
00:32:28Two million kilowatts on this side, two million on that side, how much power is that?
00:32:34Four million kilowatts, a whole lot of power.
00:32:36What can you do with four million kilowatts?
00:32:38You can power up seven states and two provinces, which is what they do with this.
00:32:43Wow.
00:32:44So it's a lot of power.
00:32:45Yeah.
00:32:47Stand at the edge of Niagara Falls, and it's easy to see the allure of massive hydropower.
00:32:52And yet, this kind of clean energy, well, it's not so clean.
00:32:58Hoover Dam, Grant Cooley Dam, Garrison Dam.
00:33:03Buried under their deep waters are scenic rivers, historic towns, sacred Indian lands.
00:33:12If only there was a way to capture all that hydropower without so much destruction, right?
00:33:17Well, some smart folks have done just that amidst the vast farmlands of central Oregon.
00:33:26Look where we are, right?
00:33:27I mean, if I was cruising down this road and I went by this building, I would say, uh, flow control, overflow building, uh, maybe some water quality monitoring station.
00:33:42I would have no idea that that's generating energy.
00:33:45Yeah, and that's kind of, you know, maybe not the whole point, but one of the points.
00:33:50To take this existing infrastructure, so one important piece to understand, of course, is that the water that you see coming over that concrete drop right there,
00:33:58that is the original irrigation canal drop structure.
00:34:01So if you wipe away the building itself, basically that channel, continuing all the way downstream, has been here again for something like seven or eight decades.
00:34:08The design objective that we have is to basically be able to come in, put some power capture on these existing drops, but do so in a way that, yeah, doesn't really disturb the landscape, that someone just driving by would not necessarily have to know, per se, that something had really changed on the canal in any particular way.
00:34:26Our father had the idea that making ecologically sustainable hydro is something that everyone can get behind.
00:34:36He was a sailor and a pilot, and he had this idea of what if we could create a hydropower turbine that uses the same kind of concepts that we use in sailing, where you can scale to really large power with low pressure flow.
00:34:53When the electricity from this unit is sold, who's buying it, and who gets the dough?
00:35:06The electricity from this project specifically will be purchased by Pacificor, which is a utility that has a big footprint across the Northwest.
00:35:14And the project itself was actually developed in partnership with the irrigation district, but was purchased by Apple.
00:35:24Purchased by them?
00:35:26So Apple was getting into the micro hydro business? What was that all about?
00:35:31The Apple data center in the middle of Eastern Oregon. When you think of the iCloud, this is where it all happens.
00:35:49So tell me, in the grand scheme of things, where is Apple with how much renewable energy it uses?
00:35:54So in the United States, every facility that we have, every Apple facility, is 100% renewably powered.
00:36:01Around the world...
00:36:03Wait a minute, wait a minute. Every store?
00:36:06Every store in the United States, every office building that we have, of course, our big complex, our home in Cupertino, but also in Elk Grove, California, in Austin, Texas, 100% renewably powered.
00:36:16And then our four data centers, also 100%. And around the world, we're 87% renewably powered.
00:36:24You are at the Natal site, so you know that we don't stop at the conventionally available sources of energy.
00:36:31We could buy, and we do buy wind power from the grid here in Oregon.
00:36:35And that's great. And we actually buy solar in California, and that's great.
00:36:38But when we decided that, we needed a data center in North Carolina, if we had gone with the grid mix, we would have been using a significant amount of electricity from coal or nuclear or natural gas.
00:36:51And so what we did there is we built our own solar farm.
00:36:57All right, let's take a look.
00:37:01Think about what a data center is.
00:37:02It's, you know, servers working all the time. So if we know we're going to use a lot of power, if we know how much that power costs, if we have control over our source of energy, that's a huge business advantage for us.
00:37:15Yeah, because, you know, you're not subject to the spikes in the volatile energy prices, and you know where it is, and you're making it yourself.
00:37:22You've got to be kidding me.
00:37:26How to get my hands around how a future says.
00:37:32Let me just put you in sort of virtual world. Every single day, hundreds of billions of eye messages, billions of photos, and then millions of FaceTime chats.
00:37:43All that has to happen. It has to happen quickly. And these are the centers that make that happen.
00:37:49Instead of having to use conventional energy, brown power, it's all clean.
00:37:53You know, we're here in high desert. There's no air conditioning in the server rooms.
00:37:59The facility is cooled 70% of the year with outside air. Today it's a little bit warmer, but it's cooled with air running over wet material, just evaporative cooling.
00:38:10There's a high likelihood that right now my daughter is FaceTiming with her boyfriend.
00:38:15Is there any, what are the, what are the chances that that's happening in here somewhere?
00:38:22Pretty likely.
00:38:23Really?
00:38:24Pretty likely she's on this coast.
00:38:26That date is moving through here somewhere.
00:38:30Is there a moment in the last decade in terms of energy and renewables and efficiency?
00:38:35Does anything stand out?
00:38:36Probably five or six years ago I used to say, I know it's going to change because I know when I talk to young people, they're not even questioning that this is happening.
00:38:46They just understand it. I feel like it's just happening.
00:38:49Okay. Well, full disclosure here. I looked into solar panels for my home over a decade ago, but they were way more expensive and less effective in those days.
00:39:06And the sales guy, well, he just kind of bugged me.
00:39:09But after a decade of improvements, solar panels have gotten way more affordable.
00:39:12And folks like me who either can't or don't want to fork out the bucks for panels, there are now companies that will put their panels on your roof and sell you the electricity, often for less than you're currently paying.
00:39:26What's not to love about that?
00:39:28It starts with determining where the best positioning is on the house to get the most out of your solar panels and designing it from there.
00:39:37So each panel has its own inverter?
00:39:39Yeah. If one of these goes out, it doesn't affect the other one.
00:39:41The entire system, yeah.
00:39:42Yeah, with some of the others.
00:39:43Sort of like the better kind of Christmas lights.
00:39:46Exactly like the better kind of Christmas lights.
00:39:48Yeah.
00:39:49No, that's exactly what it is, too.
00:39:50It doesn't take the whole system.
00:39:51Yeah.
00:39:52Uh-huh.
00:39:59Here I have this car charger.
00:40:01Is that charger actually accessing the solar charged electrons from my roof?
00:40:07Essentially, once your system is active, we are feeding your house.
00:40:11With solar power.
00:40:12So your car charger will be feeding off of that, and your house will be feeding off of that.
00:40:18I'm driving a solar powered car.
00:40:19Oh, cool.
00:40:21That works.
00:40:23Okay.
00:40:24I realized, what's the point of having solar if you've got, like, super crappy light bulbs?
00:40:42like, you know, the overall upgrade option.
00:40:54Are you okay?
00:40:55Yeah, just inhaled some flame retardants.
00:40:58So here's the thing.
00:40:59I'd rather do more than less, more workouts
00:41:02instead of less ice cream, that sort of thing.
00:41:04So the notion of efficiency has never really lit me up.
00:41:08But waste is waste.
00:41:10And if I was going to be making clean energy, why waste it?
00:41:16Hey. Hey, Jamie.
00:41:17How are you, Brian? Good. How are you?
00:41:18Good to see you.
00:41:19Yeah, good to see you again.
00:41:20Yeah.
00:41:23Give it to me straight, Doc.
00:41:24You know, the report's great.
00:41:26It provides you with a roadmap of what you might be able to do
00:41:30towards, you know, energy efficiency improvements,
00:41:33comfort, air quality, everything outlined herein.
00:41:35The building shell, we have two arenas.
00:41:37One is the amount of draft,
00:41:39and one is insulation.
00:41:41We use the blower door,
00:41:42and that sucked all the air out of the house.
00:41:44And air starts coming in from all these other places.
00:41:48Can lights from the top.
00:41:50Geez, I never even thought about that.
00:41:52Yeah.
00:41:53Supply boots, that's part of your heating system.
00:41:55The amount of energy going in to this unit,
00:41:58only 80% of it comes out.
00:42:00So you're losing 20 cents on the dollar.
00:42:02That sounds really bad.
00:42:03And then you're just dumping carbon monoxide into the garage.
00:42:05Oh, that's nice.
00:42:08So, um, give me the bottom line, Doc.
00:42:11What do you think's the most overt, simple, obvious for dummies thing to do is?
00:42:16Turn your temperature down in your water heater.
00:42:19Really?
00:42:20Yeah.
00:42:21That's the turn of a dial.
00:42:22That's such good news.
00:42:23Turn it down to 120, and you're saving money.
00:42:26So easy, isn't it?
00:42:28Yeah.
00:42:29There's a long list of simple stuff, and...
00:42:31Really?
00:42:32Yeah.
00:42:33Long list, but simple.
00:42:34Yeah.
00:42:35I can deal with that.
00:42:36Yeah.
00:42:37So I just finished my first month with my panels on the house,
00:42:43so I thought I'd check and see how it went, how much power I made,
00:42:47and it turns out I made more than I needed.
00:42:50So that clean energy went onto the grid that I didn't need.
00:42:55Hey, you know what?
00:42:57Do you know that we made more clean...
00:43:00We made more clean electrons than we used last month.
00:43:05Cool.
00:43:06Yeah.
00:43:10You don't seem so excited.
00:43:12No, it's very exciting.
00:43:14Good for us.
00:43:19Come on!
00:43:20We're like a solar...
00:43:21We are a solar household.
00:43:24Yeah.
00:43:25Well, that's like...
00:43:26We're one house, eight billion houses to go.
00:43:29That's how we're gonna go about it.
00:43:31Oh, Jesus.
00:43:35What a buzz kill.
00:43:40Okay, so I was doing something about my house,
00:43:43doing something about my car.
00:43:45Stop.
00:43:46But as annoying as it was, my daughter's point was not lost on me.
00:43:50What about everything else?
00:43:52How are we gonna tie it all together and make clean energy work at the massive scale that it needs to?
00:44:00How are you doing?
00:44:01How are you doing?
00:44:02Um, I don't know, man.
00:44:03I don't really understand how we're ever, you know, I see how we're scaling up the panels, the centralized, the micro hydro, but in terms of your, our everyday life, what is the key to being 100% renewable online?
00:44:17What is the key to being 100% renewable on the grid then?
00:44:30What components are missing right now that need to happen?
00:44:34To be 100% renewable?
00:44:36Yeah.
00:44:37Energy storage is an imperative.
00:44:38That has to happen.
00:44:39Yeah.
00:44:40No way around it.
00:44:41It's weird.
00:44:42We have storage for like every form of commodity.
00:44:45We don't go out and pick every afternoon precisely the number of ears of corn that will be eaten that night.
00:44:50We have silos.
00:44:51Yes.
00:44:52You know, and we don't expect the rain to fall and precisely the amounts needed for you to shower tomorrow morning.
00:44:57You know, we have reservoirs.
00:44:58Yes.
00:44:59We don't do that for energy, for electricity at least, because it's super, super, super expensive.
00:45:05But there are a lot of people working on this.
00:45:07On that topic, I presume at this point you have been to California ISO.
00:45:11Um.
00:45:12You followed the power.
00:45:13No, I, no, I did.
00:45:14I followed the power.
00:45:15If you've been thinking about this topic for this long, this is the traffic cop of the grid.
00:45:19We need some system to be able to make sure that stuff comes on and comes off without wrecking everything.
00:45:25That's what Cal ISO does.
00:45:27Every day in America, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of electricity is made, sold, sent, and used
00:45:35through the use of transmission lines and relay stations, otherwise known as the power grid.
00:45:41The California Independent Systems Operator, or Cal ISO, is one of five U.S. entities created to make sure
00:45:48these grids run well, 24-7, 365 days a year.
00:45:54This is where California electricity all comes together and sings, right?
00:45:59That's right.
00:46:00That's right.
00:46:01The grid started over 100 years ago.
00:46:03It started small and it became bigger.
00:46:06As it became bigger, someone had to manage it.
00:46:10But now we found that the scale is even more important.
00:46:13We have more renewables on the grid.
00:46:15And that's really what we're grappling with.
00:46:17As we transition this grid from one that's got traditional power plants on it to one that's renewable-based,
00:46:24it may have a few traditional power plants to take care of things.
00:46:27For instance, when the wind's not blowing and the sun's not shining, storage is also going to play an important part of this, too.
00:46:34You can't shape solar, you can't shape wind exactly like you can a traditional power plant, but you can supplement it with storage.
00:46:41Big sets of batteries could be used on the system.
00:46:44Compressed air can be used for storage.
00:46:46As renewables go on the grid, we have to open our mind to how we knit it together.
00:46:52It's not your parents' or grandparents' grid anymore.
00:46:55Right.
00:46:56As a matter of fact, several times this spring, we had up to 40% of our power was provided by renewables.
00:47:03Those kinds of levels weren't even contemplated 10 years ago.
00:47:06Really?
00:47:07Yeah.
00:47:08Wow, that's amazing.
00:47:09So this tells me, in a nutshell, I can tell where the wind is blowing.
00:47:12It's down south.
00:47:13Are you overseen by federal or state or, like, what's the authority above the California ISO?
00:47:20Everybody's got a boss.
00:47:21In my case, we have a five-member board.
00:47:24I think it may make sense for you to reach out to one of them.
00:47:27Are you Angelina?
00:47:28Yes, I am.
00:47:29Oh, great.
00:47:30Always.
00:47:31It took me ages to even find out about the ISO.
00:47:32Why does it seem so little known?
00:47:33I'm puzzled.
00:47:34I mean, it's a huge, huge organization.
00:47:35Means we're doing a good job.
00:47:36The grid is operating well.
00:47:37There's no outages.
00:47:38And you don't know that the grid is there.
00:47:39I detect an accent.
00:47:40I was born in Bulgaria.
00:47:55I became interested in energy early on.
00:47:57I had the fortune of living in Africa when I was very young.
00:48:01Grew up with very little electricity or very unreliable electricity where there was electricity.
00:48:06electricity or very unreliable electricity where there was electricity, we returned back
00:48:12to Bulgaria. That was another interesting perception in terms of energy and how energy
00:48:17can form your future. There was a Chernobyl accident.
00:48:22An accident has occurred at the Chernobyl atomic power plant as one of the atomic reactors
00:48:28was damaged.
00:48:31One of the things you hear about the argument for nuclear is people say, well, look, we've
00:48:39got to get a lot more energy out into the world in order to meet the demands of humanity.
00:48:46And we're never going to get that amount of energy created unless we go nuclear.
00:48:51I have a very different point of view. We don't need to be recreating nuclear energy down here
00:48:56on earth. We already have the sun with plenty of nuclear energy hitting the earth every single
00:49:01day. If we were able to capture the solar insulation that hits the globe every single day just
00:49:07for two minutes and store it, we could power the whole globe for a year, even the billion
00:49:12people who have no electricity right now.
00:49:16How do we work to get to 50, 60, 70, 80, even 100% renewable into the future, what that time
00:49:23frame would be? We believe that the ISOs are going to be major players in making that a
00:49:28reality.
00:49:29Finally, I was seeing how it could all come together. But I'd forgotten about one little
00:49:35thing. Politics.
00:49:37It's no secret that folks here in our valley are fuming over the latest change with solar
00:49:43rates. They feel cheated after making an investment in solar energy. And today, hundreds of those
00:49:48people made a very clear point about it. The original decision calls for an increased service
00:49:53charge for rooftop solar users, as well as a reduction in the amount of money homeowners
00:49:57are reimbursed for excess power produced by their solar arrays. Right now, people who generate
00:50:02solar energy get reimbursed by NV Energy for what they don't use at about 11 cents a kilowatt
00:50:07hour. That could go down as far as 4 cents a kilowatt hour.
00:50:14We're here to speak on behalf of 31,650 petitioners who are petitioning the commission to retain
00:50:21the current rate structure.
00:50:22We want solar! We want solar!
00:50:26Raise your hand if you have rooftop solar. Raise your hand if you're here as part of an
00:50:37environmental organization.
00:50:39We have paid money in order to do what they wanted us to do, and that was to go alternative
00:50:45energy and go rooftop solar.
00:50:47When are folks in here afraid this is going to start hitting their pockets directly?
00:50:52Right away?
00:50:53It's not the basic fee that we care about, it's the net metering fee. It's what we get
00:50:58for producing them power.
00:51:00I spent $48,000 on my own money, on a solar power system, no subsidies, and we got the
00:51:07PUC, three stooges, not elected but appointed by the governor, that are deciding the fate for
00:51:12the entire state. They're basically ripping us off. I think it's...
00:51:16This is grand theft in my opinion.
00:51:1917,255 people have had their systems commissioned. If you give them each three minutes and you
00:51:28allow a half a minute for them to switch seats, that's 60,000 minutes, 1,000 hours, 25 weeks,
00:51:36well you would have to listen to people who really don't like what you're doing.
00:51:40I don't know whether this is cowardice or convenience, but frankly, it's not leadership.
00:51:47They're not going to be able to sell these homes. With all these tariffs and rate increases
00:51:52that are going on, nobody's going to want to buy their homes for 20 years. So they're
00:51:56stuck with these homes.
00:51:57With these actions, hundreds of jobs are lost. I don't know how many thousands of dollars these
00:52:03people, millions of dollars these people, all of that is done with your actions.
00:52:09There's a big plaque that says this is a green energy building. And you have special parking
00:52:16for hybrid cars. You are hypocrites. This is hypocritical.
00:52:21Hello, commissioners. My name is Mark Ruffalo, and I'm coming from New York State as an advocate
00:52:32for solar. It's a shame that you are on that screen and not here today. Because outside of this building,
00:52:41you should really feel the energy here. There's 1,000 workers out there.
00:52:47You are the Public Utility Commission. Public. That's first.
00:52:55And the actions you're taking today are taking from the mouths of the people and giving it to a single
00:53:05monopoly utility.
00:53:07So I take offense, and I'll take notice to all of the comments about we don't know what we're doing.
00:53:14We didn't do our homework. This commission has been working tirelessly not to penalize people
00:53:20or favor one technology over the other, but to create a path forward for rooftop solar in this state
00:53:26that treats all ratepayers fairly. Thank you. That concludes my questions.
00:53:32Commissioner Berkshaw, do you have any?
00:53:35I don't.
00:53:36Hearing no additional questions, Commissioner Noble, do you have a motion?
00:53:39I would move that we deny the motions and issue the order as memorialized in the proposed order,
00:53:48along with the changes that were discussed today. Do I have a second? Second.
00:53:55All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye.
00:53:58The motion carries. And that brings us to agenda item 3A.
00:54:04Just about five, ten minutes ago, the PUC voted to uphold the solar rate hike
00:54:09they had previously passed this after opponents came out en masse today.
00:54:13Well, the verdict was in, and 20,000 existing solar rate hike
00:54:17customers in Nevada were officially screwed.
00:54:22It seemed like people were too disappointed to say much.
00:54:25Except for one woman.
00:54:27Debbie Dooley, founder of the politically conservative Green Tea Party.
00:54:32From state to state to state, I hear the same talking points.
00:54:37Non-solar users are subsidizing solar users. That is totally ridiculous.
00:54:43I'm a conservative. I'm appalled that fellow conservatives are hypocrites when it comes to free market principles.
00:54:51They're willing to throw principles out the window for the sake of protecting their financial donors.
00:54:57We've always led, but on energy, we're falling behind.
00:55:02Because a lot of people are still entrenched in the technologies of the past that pollute the earth.
00:55:09For more than a century, Nevada Energy has been Nevada's only utility provider.
00:55:15In fact, Nevada's state constitution grants Nevada Energy the right to operate as a monopoly.
00:55:22By providing consumers a way to make their own clean power, the rooftop solar industry had found a way to compete in spite of that.
00:55:30Yet the commission's recent ruling seemed specifically designed to bring the rooftop solar industry to a screeching halt.
00:55:37Of your fleet that was here prior to this announcement by the PUC, is this your full fleet?
00:55:54This is our full fleet. This is every single truck we have.
00:55:56And the reason that they're all here on a Wednesday at 3 p.m. is that we're not doing any installs.
00:56:03Everything has completely shut down.
00:56:11This is where we handle our permits, schedule our installations.
00:56:14And here is actually where you can see where our culture was.
00:56:17These are the phases of the 6,000 people who have lost their jobs.
00:56:29I've personally been part of training over 150 people.
00:56:32And now, this is it.
00:56:35If you have a mortgage, a wife, and children, then you just don't pack up and say, let's go.
00:56:42The company wants me to look at options of relocating.
00:56:45I have kids.
00:56:46It's...
00:56:48I...
00:56:49My daughter doesn't want to move again.
00:56:52I don't know what I'm going to do.
00:56:54I'm telling you, when you see up close and personal, the human toll that bureaucratic and corporate chess playing takes on individuals, it makes me really mad.
00:57:19This is yet another example of the interest of the mighty against the interest of the many.
00:57:30And that's...
00:57:31That's upsetting to me.
00:57:34Because you know what?
00:57:35Those kinds of situations don't change.
00:57:38Without amendments.
00:57:40Without congressional action.
00:57:43Without Supreme Court victories.
00:57:45You can't innovate your way out of the bullshit that I witnessed today.
00:57:52It's gonna take...
00:57:54A fight.
00:57:57It's just too bad.
00:58:00What if we all still burned whale oil to light our homes?
00:58:18What if the whaling industry had used its money and power to bury Thomas Edison's light bulb?
00:58:24Well, that didn't happen.
00:58:26The light bulb was just a better product.
00:58:29Today, we use electricity much the way we did when Thomas Edison invented the electrical grid over a century ago.
00:58:36And many powerful and profitable fossil fuel and utility companies are fighting to keep things just as they are.
00:58:44And after what I saw in Nevada, it seemed like it would be unwise to bet against them.
00:58:51But then again, I've never been very good at betting.
00:58:57New at six, solar companies and solar customers are watching the state capital this week as they debate the future of a number of green energy bills.
00:59:14Bill 405 would bring back those net metering credits to 95% of what they were when the industry was at its peak.
00:59:22So, just last week, I bumped into one of my advisors who's like,
00:59:27Jamie, have you been following what's going on in Nevada?
00:59:30And I was like, oh, God, no. Now what?
00:59:34And he's like, no, no, no, no, no.
00:59:36All these bills are going through both the Senate and the Assembly in Nevada.
00:59:41All these pro-clean energy bills.
00:59:44Needless to say, I'm blown away to the point of almost confused.
00:59:50Because this is a 180-degree shift since last year.
01:00:03Assembly Bill 405 really brings back the net metering and rooftop solar industry.
01:00:09Now's the time to do it, man.
01:00:13It's a fantastic day.
01:00:17It feels so great to be coming and speaking and going and coming and coming and then to finally have things to celebrate.
01:00:25Give yourselves a big round of applause. Thank you all for being here.
01:00:28Good morning. Today is a historic milestone for the Silver States.
01:00:32The Nevada legislature passed the solar triple crown of energy bills, AB 206, SB 392, AB 405.
01:00:41The last week, there's been a tremendous activity in the Nevada legislature with renewable energy bills.
01:00:48Could you walk me through that from your point of view?
01:00:51I started the first net metering company here in the state almost 20 years ago.
01:00:55I got very familiar with how the process works with the Public Utilities Commission and this legislature.
01:01:01And when I saw what happened, I'd moved on and been working in the utility world and then doing things like that.
01:01:08But I dropped everything and decided to run for office because I felt that it needed to be fixed in the legislature.
01:01:16And so Assembly Bill 405, which was one of the bills I worked on, it is a net metering rooftop solar bill.
01:01:23And what it did is it restored some rates and it put into place a renewable energy consumers bill of rights.
01:01:31We passed that out of the Senate and we'll send it to the governor to see if he can sign it.
01:01:36We urge Governor Sandoval to support these measures and bring renewables back to the state.
01:01:41You know, recently I was in another state and introduced myself, someone from Nevada.
01:01:50And one of the people in the group commented, what in the world were you all thinking?
01:01:57Referring to the PUC ruling in December.
01:02:01And I said to them at that time, we're going to go back in 2017 and we're going to fix it.
01:02:07And guess what? We came back in 2017 and we fixed it.
01:02:15We have more sunshine in Nevada than they have heat and hail.
01:02:18And it's a sin if we don't do something with it. I mean, really? We do. 320 some days of sunshine.
01:02:26So was it a public outcry after the utility commission decision?
01:02:31I mean, does the average Nevadan even know about any of this?
01:02:35Here's what I will say. In talking to my constituents, there's one issue, one issue that was present.
01:02:42Every door that I knocked on, because that's how I ask people for their vote, I go to them.
01:02:47Every door I knocked on, every one of them, energy. Why don't we have solar?
01:02:53There are more people who are concerned about what we're leaving to our children and our grandchildren.
01:02:59There are more people who are concerned about the economic disadvantage of being on the grid.
01:03:05And the more that happens and as the adoption rate increases, more people say, I want it.
01:03:11Expanding investments in renewable energy, Nevada has the potential to bring billions of dollars to the state's economy and create tens of thousands of additional jobs by 2030.
01:03:22I think that our state is uniquely positioned to take advantage of renewable energy.
01:03:28I mean, just the amount of land we have, the amount of sunshine we have, the resources, the transmission.
01:03:35I mean, we are in a great position to take advantage of those things.
01:03:39So when you start making the argument that it's an economic model, that shifts the conversation to where a lot more maybe traditional Republicans can certainly get on board.
01:03:51Have you seen evidence of this growth in renewables being very real here in Nevada in terms of economic activity?
01:03:58We'll have the most electrified highway system in the nation here shortly, meaning that you will not have to worry about where you can plug in your vehicle if it's an electric vehicle from here to all through the rules all the way to Las Vegas.
01:04:12And that's in partnership with Tesla.
01:04:14It's in partnership with other folks.
01:04:15And I think at this point in the game, markets are driving us and companies are demanding the need for renewables.
01:04:24They want to be green.
01:04:25The session ended at midnight last night.
01:04:28And I see in Reuters and in Forbes and in some industry mags, Tesla and Sunrun and others are hiring and have announced that they're back in Nevada and they're doing business.
01:04:39And so that is, as a legislator and as a Nevadan and a business person, I can't think of a better outcome.
01:04:46It's time for Governor Sandoval to sign the solar triple crown of solar bills.
01:04:50Let's reclaim Nevada's rightful place as a clean energy powerhouse.
01:04:55Let's go see a governor about a signature.
01:05:00Two weeks ago, did you think you'd be standing here today with this result?
01:05:05This is the product of a lot of hard work and a lot of sacrifice.
01:05:12In 2015 when the PUC decision came down, a lot of businesses had to lay off employees in the time span between Christmas and New Year's.
01:05:21These were beloved employees, they were part of a family, and today we just made that right.
01:05:27We just undid all of that damage and made Nevada a clean energy leader again.
01:05:33It's overwhelming how much support that there is for a clean energy economy amongst very diverse segments of Nevada.
01:05:43The forces that are fighting against it, they're grasping to an old way of doing business when most other businesses and most other Nevadans, and I think it's true across our country, they want to move forward with this.
01:05:58We're here to deliver letters to Governor Sandoval, 7,000 letters and signatures.
01:06:03Nevadans want clean energy and we just wanted to go ahead and put him out.
01:06:07It is a moral imperative.
01:06:09Everyone, wherever you are, whatever your status or station in life is, we all have a responsibility to address this issue.
01:06:19And if Washington will not, we will.
01:06:49You know, I've been thinking back on that climate march, all the people hoping for action, and I wish they knew what I've learned, that this is the dawn of the clean energy era.
01:07:06It's just better, cheaper, inevitable.
01:07:11When is it going to happen, you might wonder?
01:07:13Well, as American citizens, voters, consumers, that's entirely up to us.
01:07:19We have what we need to do this, in our own cities, our own communities, our own homes.
01:07:25It doesn't matter who you pray to, who you vote for, where you live, or how you live.
01:07:33There's a good reason and a good way for you to connect to clean energy.
01:07:37Maybe you don't like driving around on imported oil.
01:07:40Or maybe the unpredictable prices threaten your bottom line.
01:07:44When the pipelines leak and the gas lines explode, it always seems to happen in our struggling communities.
01:07:50And maybe you've seen that happen in yours.
01:07:53Or maybe you accept the science of climate change.
01:07:57And maybe you know that burning fossil fuels sickens over 2 million Americans a year, with our children taking the biggest hit.
01:08:06Or hey, maybe you just like the latest technology.
01:08:10You see, there's a story for everyone.
01:08:13A story that will make you want to do something.
01:08:15And the sooner that happens, the better.
01:08:18For all of us.
01:08:20Two rocks, a hammer, and some chains too.
01:08:25Tie my hands, two boots, the dirt, some food, some land too.
01:08:31Dig it in, I cut the wood, tear down, build up four.
01:08:37Moving in to hold a mud, a pipe, a gallon.
01:08:43Yes, this is happening.
01:08:50Every day's another way to make things right.
01:08:55Oh, this is happening.
01:09:01Every day's another way to make things right.
01:09:06She's out walking now.
01:09:07She's out walking now.
01:09:09For what's good.
01:09:12Put her body on the line.
01:09:15She's not hiding.
01:09:18She's out fighting.
01:09:21She's out fighting, a more healthy.
01:09:24She's out fighting.
01:09:26You're on fighting time.
01:09:28Do not want to play.
01:09:29You're on playing Gravy.
01:09:30It doesn't have to die.
01:09:31One this part mandı.
01:09:32A First lifet
01:09:46It's another way to think things right. I'm thinking about my friend now. What you gotta do somehow. Be headed back home to the eye of the stone. How you gonna get past it without breaking all the glass?
01:10:07Throwing out what's good. Are you screaming at the badness? Bridges will fall down. Walls will build up. Bridges will fall down. Walls will build up. Slow it down.
01:10:28Can we slow it down?
01:10:34Now, this is happening. Every day is another way to make things right.
01:10:53You and I always happening. Here we are with another day to make things right. Every day is another way to make things right.
01:11:11Walls will fall down. Bridges will rise up.
01:11:22Walls will fall down
01:11:26People will rise up
01:11:28Walls will fall down
01:11:31Now people will rise up
01:11:39Will rise up
01:11:42Will rise up
01:11:45Rise up, rise up
01:11:47Rise up, rise up
01:11:50Rise up, rise up, rise up, rise up, rise up.
01:12:09The walls will fold down our people.
01:12:20You