Episode 132: Dr. Melissa Lott, Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University

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Nov 23

Today's guest is Dr. Melissa Lott, Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.

Melissa leads the Power Sector and Renewables Research Initiative. She has a Masters Degree in Mechanical Engineering from University of Texas, Austin and a PhD in Sustainable Energy Resources & Engineering from University College of London. Melissa has worked in many aspects of the energy sector, where she focuses on the intersection of power and public health. She's worked in government, the public sector, and academia. Melissa briefly worked on the Council for Environmental Quality under President Obama in early 2009. After finishing her Masters degree, Melissa was a Program Analyst at the US Department of Energy and an Energy Analyst at the International Energy Agency. Melissa has been a Program Director at the Energy Transition Forum and spent time as a lead energy writer for the Scientific American's "Plugged In". Most recently, she was the Assistant Vice President of the Asian Pacific Energy Research Centre before being tapped for her current role. Melissa has expansive knowledge of the energy sector and has seen many different approaches between industry, academia, and public service.

Melissa and I have a great discussion, in which we dive into her background and origin story, what brought her to working in energy, how she sees the energy transition playing out, how we can successfully decarbonize power, and how energy and environmental justice can’t be decoupled. We also discuss how her team decides which projects to take on, and goes about doing their modeling and research.

Enjoy the show!

You can find me on Twitter @jjacobs22 (me), @mcjpod (podcast) or @mcjcollective (company). You can reach us via email at info@mcjcollective.com, where we encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.

Episode recorded November 10th, 2020.

In Today's episode, we cover:

Melissa’s climate journey and energy experience
Her projections for the energy transition
How to successfully decarbonize power
The intersection of energy and environmental justice

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Hello everyone. This is Jason Jacobs, and welcome to My Climate Journey. This show follows my journey to interview a wide range of guests to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change and try to figure out how people like you and I can help. Today's guest is Dr. Melissa Lott, a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University where she leads the power sector and renewables research initiative.
She's worked as an engineer and advisor for more than 15 years in the US, Europe and Asia. While her work has spanned the entire energy system, she's internationally recognized for her work in the electricity and transportation sectors. Dr. Lott specializes in technology and policy research, working to increase our understanding of the impacts of our energy systems on air pollution and public health.
We have a great discussion in this episode not only about the power and electricity sector, but also about global health and the intersection of those two. Dr. Lott is rare in that her expertise and her research stretches across both. And if there's one thing I've learned over the last couple of years focused on climate, it's how interrelated those topics are. Dr. Lott, welcome to the show.
Dr. Melissa Lott: Thanks for having me, Jason. It's fun to be here. I'm looking forward to this.
Jason Jacobs: I'm looking forward to it too. It is the 13th or something of November. Is that right? What's the date?
Dr. Melissa Lott: It's the 10th, my computer tells me. It's a Tuesday.
Jason Jacobs: Oh, the 10th. No, I'm only mentioning that because I'm like glued to the news, even though the election's over. So this is a nice mental vacation from the BS that I'm watching online. So thank you for that.
Dr. Melissa Lott: Thank you as well. I think I broke the refresh little icon on my [laughs], my news apps over the last like five days. It's like, okay, do we know anything new? Where are we now? It's been exciting. And I think the next month and the next two months will be active period with a lot of excitement.
Jason Jacobs: I am excited to have this discussion. As you know, I've had some of your colleagues on the show. I've had, uh, Jason Bordoff and Varun Sivaram and really impressed with the, with the team at Columbia. I have to say, when I was doing some prep for this discussion, it's really hard to put you in a box. And you have some electrification stuff, some transportation stuff, some health stuff, and pollution stuff. And I saw that you moderated a nuclear panel recently, so really diverse in terms of your body of work.
Dr. Melissa Lott: For me I think that if we look at all the different things we need to do when it comes to the energy sector, 'cause I'll, I'll say if you wanted a box, I guess energy is my box. I don't do much with agriculture and food sustainability and food systems, but within energy, it's like if we want to actually have a solution that gets us to where we want to be on a timeframe that is remotely close to how quickly we want to be there, we need to understand the interactions between all the different parts of the energy system.
So power systems, electricity and cars, 50 years ago, maybe didn't make a ton of sense. Now as we're seeing more electric vehicles on the road, and as we look at electrifying even more vehicles in the future, of course, I want to understand the connections between the two. So I look at all the different parts of the energy sector, electricity industry, transport, buildings, I've done a lot of pieces of it. Power is at the heart of what I do though and health, I would say those are where I spend the bulk of my time for a bunch of different reasons. So we can chat about if you're interested.
Jason Jacobs: And I'm curious, so the different sectors of energy, it seems like, and correct me if I'm wrong, but that there are specializations in each one of them. So as you look across these systems, how do you think about your specialty and the role of specialization for someone who's looking across systems?
Dr. Melissa Lott: I mean, we need all different types of people, right? To get to a really robust solution and a really robust set of outcomes. So you need the person who's going to be pouring the concrete, you need the person who's going to be looking at whatever that concrete or that steel is going to connect to, you need people like me who look more broadly across the whole energy system. And I look at it from a de-carbonization and public health lens, but then you need other people who are going to look at water and land impacts and who are going to look at individual little technologies.
It was like Captain Planet was that cartoon back in the day, you know, where their powers combined, we are Captain Planet. It's one of those things. I need the person who's obsessed with improving battery technology. And then I'm going to be the person who says, how do I use that battery technology to support overall energy system de-carbonization and maximizing public health? So we both have roles to play.
Um, this is the one that I'm passionate about and that I like spending my time in, but folks I used to work with at the national labs and then in very techie circles that I used to run in, they're extremely valuable in this whole process as well. We need everybody.
Jason Jacobs: I have a bunch of questions about the work that you're doing currently. But before we go down that path, maybe take us back, how did you come to be doing this work? When did you fall into it? And why did you fall into it?
Dr. Melissa Lott: I was an undergraduate studying engineering at University of California, Davis, which is a very short drive to Tahoe. Not that that had anything to do with my decision [laughs] when I was 17, um, and going off to college, but great school up in Northern California. And I was studying engineering and this was pre Lord of the Rings days.
I had this desire to go to New Zealand. I just wanted to study abroad in New Zealand, it was a thing for me. And one of my favorite professors, Professor Dan Chang in the civil and environmental engineering department, he said, "Hey, I've got this research project in New Zealand. Do you want to come along and work on it? So you get to go New Zealand, but you've got to do this project, it's on solar energy." And I was like sold, like [laughs], "Let's do it."
And I ended up in Christchurch working with a whole group and it was like one or two students per topic depending on the size of the topic. There were two of us working on solar and I discovered energy and I went, "This is incredible stuff." I had just hadn't thought about it. I flipped on my lights and they came on and, and that was about as far as my brain went at that point.
And it just took a hold of me and I couldn't let it go. And it pulled together so many different things that spoke to me at that time. And that's really how it happened. It was an accident. And I'm so glad that I had mentioned to Professor Chang that I really thought New Zealand was a cool country, [laughs] and the rest is history.
Jason Jacobs: Did I read right that when you came out of school that you started in the corporate sector?
Dr. Melissa Lott: Yep. So what I ended up doing is I did my bachelor's and I had a full ride for a PhD and I was sitting there at 21 going, "Does this make sense to take? Am I ready for a PhD? Do I know exactly what I want to do?" And I was debating between kind of the three. So industry, government and academia, which one was going to be the place I wanted to spend my time.
And I had a really interesting job offer. I was interviewing for jobs and interviewing for PhD programs. And I decided to put the PhD on hold to get later. So a few more years than I thought it would be, [laughs] I wouldn't put it on hold, but I went into industry and I worked for General Mills. So a company I was making, um, Cheerios, but what my job was was saying, where do we waste energy and materials and how do we cut down on it?
And a lot of that was around, sure, wanting to save money. You don't want to throw something out or pay for something you're not using, but the other pieces of it were about regulatory compliance. So what kind of agreements have this big food production facility made? I was in Albuquerque, so with the state government, New Mexico and with the city government, and how were they going to comply with that? So it was really fascinating.
And then I went back and got my masters at UT Austin, went into government. I was working in government while I was studying and then I went to DC after. And then I spent the next decade after that working in the US and then over in Europe for the International Energy Agency and then up in the UK and then Asia, got a PhD in the middle of all that doing really interesting stuff.
And if I had to sum it up, the work that I do is about putting numbers to concepts. So you have this theory, okay, if I do this, it'll reduce carbon emissions or reduce air pollution, whatever it is. I'm going to put a number against it to say, really and truly, what does the science tell us will happen if we do this? And given a set of goals, how do we optimize our policies and our technologies to get us there as quickly and efficiently as possible?
Jason Jacobs: And so talk about the decision to enter academia after the different tours that you were just describing.
Dr. Melissa Lott: I was in the Council on Environmental Quality, Obama's first term briefly working for Jason Bordoff, who you know, and who people who listen to this program know, [laughs], great guy, really smart guy, uh, loved working for him. Just learned a ton and also really enjoyed being able to contribute in the ways that I was when I was at CEQ, was able to.
And so I kept in touch with him and we talked over the years. And I was in Tokyo kind of finishing up the round of things I committed to do at the Asia Pacific Energy Research Center. I was leading a program where we put together an energy demand and supply outlook for all the APEC countries, all 21 of them. And looking for the first time at decarbonization, I said, "Wow, we did it. First time ever doing a two degree scenario for these 21 countries. This is a big deal. I'm really proud of this."
And I already recruited my successor, my number one point, sorry, number one person, number one picked to replace me. And I was like, "Do I stay for the next round?" Which is another three years. And I was talking to Jason and the timing was right for me to come to Columbia. So transitioning back into academia from government research, which is where I was before that, the timing was right, the topic was right, CGEP was the right home for me.
So I'm at Columbia now and no regrets. It's been an incredible first year on top of the last week. I mean, just the last year at CGEP has been full of so many different projects and engaging with so many different, interesting people, all trying to work on things you're learning about, the things your listeners are learning about. It's like, how do we fix this? How do we put this puzzle together and get ourselves where we want to be when it comes to moving to net zero carbon?
Jason Jacobs: Coming into Columbia a year ago, what was your charter? And how does that manifest in terms of the quantity and the types of projects that you work on at any given time?
Dr. Melissa Lott: I was asked to come in and stand up what we call the power sector and renewables research initiative. What that is, it's a group of really smart people working across a bunch of different buckets of research questions. We couch them in things like markets and finance and security. But backing out of that for a minute, what it's saying is we've got this sector, the power sector, electricity that is in the midst of an incredible transformation because of declining solar and wind costs, declining battery costs, um, increasing attention to things like climate and air pollution and water.
But it's also something that if we want to get to net zero across an economy, powers the backbone. We not only need to decarbonize what we already have, we need to build a ton more of it, and we need to make many more things dependent on it. And so how do we do that in a way that is equitable and just and healthy? How on earth do we get there quickly on the timeframe we want to? And so that's kind of what I'm chartered to do.
So we've got a bunch of different scholars on the team, fantastic brains who know way more [laughs] about US regulation and law, a bunch of attorneys, than I do, which is fantastic. And then we bring in economics and engineering and ask the really hard questions and say, what does the research tell us, what does the data tell us? And how do we translate that into policy action? How do we translate that into investment structures? Like how do we translate that into actionable things?
So in terms of the different, you know, pieces of the pie, I'm trying to think about [laughs] how many different manuscripts I have in my inbox right now. I think I don't want to know 'cause it's more [laughs] than I can get through the next few days. But for us, what we ask ourselves is what are the key questions that we need to answer and that we see coming and how do we get ahead of it and answer those things in a way that is accessible and again, actionable?
So letting people see what the analysis tells them and giving it to them in a way that they can digest. And so right now, one of the things we're asking ourselves is, okay, we've got a president, Joe Biden, presumably, it's not all finalized, inauguration hasn't happened, but you know, that's, that's the path that we seem to be clearly on. And then we've got a split House and Senate, probably. Um, we're still waiting for all the votes to be finalized from recording.
But one of the things that Biden has said is that we want to decarbonize the power sector by 2035. So what does that look like? And what does the research tell us around technology and economics and policy that we need to do to actually achieve that? It's a tough but possible target. So how do we get there?
Some of the answers are ones you'd expect and some... they're certainly not ones I expected when I was 19 or 21 or even 25 when I was just getting into this, things I learned along the way that now seem glaringly obvious, but I have to remember that, no, you know I hadn't spent that much time looking at it. And it wasn't obvious to me when I started. And it's not obvious to a lot of people who haven't been as nerdy as I am and [laughs] nerdy is the people I hang out with, have gone into it and seen.
Jason Jacobs: What are some illustrative examples of that as you think about the power sector, elements that will be required that would have been most surprising to your younger self?
Dr. Melissa Lott: So when I was in New Zealand and just as a tiny bit of context, so at the time about 70% of the electricity in New Zealand came from hydro, now it's like 80% total comes from hydro and geothermal. I have to get my numbers right there. And you can throw some wind in there and basically on that system, because you have so much water, which is basically a massive battery that you can use to store energy over seasons, and if you want to, they can get to a hundred percent renewable future with those resources because they've got firm, dispatchable power.
So one of the things that I didn't realize in the very beginning of when I started modeling these systems, looking at how they operate, how do we make sure the lights always come on when we want them to? I might've thought, and I did at different times, that, "Okay, throw some renewables in there with a battery and you'll be fine." And especially as costs came down, you could see that as being a pathway that might make sense.
But when I do the modeling, what you realize, I'll give Jesse Jenkins, I think the most, but there's a lot of people who have done this work and I want to give them credit for it. They said, "If we want to transition, what happens if we use a hundred percent renewables?" Technically, engineering wise, sure, we can decarbonize an economy that way, but it's so incredibly expensive. It's like a hockey stick.
Do we want to do that? And what are the other resources that we should put in the mix as it were to make sure that that is actually the transition, is not one that has a hockey stick, jumping costs, which has significant equity issues and resulting health issues, which is a huge rabbit hole I'll just skip over for now. But that was something that surprised me a bit in the beginning.
And I think part of it was jumping from that I was a classically trained engineer, I still am. My PhD is in engineering, master's, undergrad. I have a master's in policy as well. But realizing that technology is just part of the challenge and technology and economics is still not all of it.
You need tech, economics, policy, regulation, you need all these things to really understand, okay, what's the net effect on the person who's going to be paying the bill and on the communities that are going to be paying the bill for these things? So we need more than just wind, solar. Basically we need it all. If it's zero carbon, we want to have an option to use it [laughs].
Jason Jacobs: When this type of modeling is done, how often does it need to be refreshed? And I guess the followup question is how often is this work actually revisited to make sure that it reflects the ever-changing landscape?
Dr. Melissa Lott: In the work that I do there's a bunch of different like types of models that you use. So one of them is this very high level model that says, okay, let's just look at technology and economics. So the target is what? The target is zero carbon by X date, 80% reduction by another date and just back up from there. So let's say, given this perfect four set of our future, we know where we're going, how do we get there in the lowest cost way?
So you run that first and then you say, okay, that was in like big steps, five-year chunks or one-year chunks whilst looking in the future. Let's make sure that, that actually works in a grid. So every minute, every hour, every day of the year, you have what you need to have. So we do double check. So there's all these different steps in it. Those models are refreshed at least once a year.
Typically for like the International Energy Agency when I was working there, same with the Department of Energy in the US when I was there and APEC in Japan that I mentioned, we always updated them on at least an annual cycle in terms of costs. And some of the reports we would only publish every two or three years because when you're looking out to 2050 or 2100, one year change, I mean, we're not seeing an 80% reduction of costs in one year. So maybe every two or three years is enough.
But you don't want to let those numbers go stale. And anyone who's looked at any of those graphs about the costs of wind, solar and batteries knows that if you took the numbers from 10 years ago, you're probably going to get a different cheapest solution cheapest path to the future. So you want to update those a bunch. In terms of other bits of modeling in there one thing I'll say is that my answers are quite different if I'm looking at like the US or other developed wealthy countries versus developing countries.
Because in a developing country, if you're like in Papua New Guinea where you have 14% energy or electricity access, one big power plant or one big line can really change your numbers like shockingly in a quick period of time once it's built. So being aware of those things, things that can just move the needle real fast, I think that's important to keep aware of and make sure you incorporate your models. But yeah, once a year, that's about where we were.
Jason Jacobs: Who are the consumers of this research?
Dr. Melissa Lott: For the most part, our consumers I'd say in the first instance were governments, because we were this trusted resource, they still are this trusted resource. I'm just not there anymore. But like the work that I do at CGEP, I don't have skin in the game. Like I'm not trying to sell you a product. It doesn't matter if you buy X or Y. So those conflicts of interests or perceived conflicts of interest for me, are, they're not there.
So it's a trusted partnership where governments say, hey, I want you to look at these things, let me know what you find. And you come back and you tell them what you found. The second largest consumer in my experience with that information was industries, big industries, especially ones that own a bunch of different things. They don't just make one widget. They own power plants with lots of different fuels and lots of different places trying to figure out where they want to spend their money next and how they position themselves in the future to be successful.
And then I personally have made it a priority to take all the things that we do, that we try in the first instance to communicate clearly, but to translate it 15 steps forward and say, okay, what does this matter in your life and in your community and in your very local kind of situation and to do as much of that communication as I can. But that's outside of the scope of what I do in my 40 hours a week or what I did in my 40 hours a week in my previous jobs.
Jason Jacobs: And then who are the stakeholders in determining which projects you take on? And then quick follow-up to that is who are the stakeholders in determining the output of the projects as well?
Dr. Melissa Lott: At the Center on Global Energy Policy, it's like every academic organization. You can pay for the work, you can't pay for the answer. And if you don't like that, you're not going to pay me money. And [laughs] I say that phrase again and again, and again, just 'cause it sums it all up. So you can pay me to go do the research, but I am going to publish whatever I find. That's the bottom line.
This isn't marketing where I give you a bunch of pitches for a commercial and you tell me which one you like and you pick it. This is saying, hey, I want you to go investigate something and tell me what you find and report back. And that's what we did. So at CGEP, I mean, that's how that works. And at academia in general, I mean, I've never had an instance in academia where that hasn't been the case in my experiences, and then in the projects I've been involved in.
And that goes back to academic freedom and integrity. That's a big thing. In terms of determining where I spend my day to day, it goes back to that, how do we maximize our positive impact conversation? I love being a part of a team. The lawyers and the economists and the maybe engineer and policy person, we all get together and we talk through, where should we spend our time?
Because I got so many hours in a week, I've got a really young kid, like [laughs] there's not enough hours in the day. We all have things in our lives that we spend time on. And so it's more a question of, we want to do 50 things, what are the four we're going to do? What are the two we're going to do in the short term?
And that is less about someone telling and dictating to you what that is and more about a bunch of really smart people who care a lot about it getting together and talking it out and making a decision together. It's hard to twist arms in academia. It's not really how it works. It's more like hurting a bunch of cats. That's really, that's really [laughs] like what I think it is, at least in my experience.
Jason Jacobs: Last kind of general question then we can get into the content of the work. But it sounds like there's corporates, for example, that can engage you to do a set of work, but they can't affect the output of that work. What percentage of your work is stuff that gets directed by people with wallets versus things that you just personally are interested in and want to take on?
Dr. Melissa Lott: It's a mix. I would say I can't think of a project that I've taken on that I didn't want to do and thought was important. And it goes back to that whole, there's 50 things I could do, but what are the four I'm going to do? And so really you got to have both, otherwise it's not gonna make it above the line. [Laughs] like it's not going to make the cut.
So someone can come into me with something that they have a lot of money to support and we're very lucky and privileged at, at CGEP to have a bunch of supporters and donors who allow us the freedom to pick the areas that we do a lot of our work in. I'm honestly racking my brain right now to think of any exceptions where it wasn't actually more of a conversation about someone saying, "Hey, I see this as being something we need to know more about. Do you agree? Is that what you see?" And we have a great discussion about it.
And then the nitty-gritty of the project, that's on us. That's on us and the researchers to say, okay, what are the details we're going to go into? And what are the really important things that we need to explore in depth? And then allowing ourselves to be surprised in the research process 'cause that's part of research, right? You don't know the answer when you go in, it's a scary world, but a lot of fun. [Laughs].
Jason Jacobs: And then as you look at these types of problems, I mean, gosh, we're talking about transportation, we're talking about power, we're talking about equity. I mean, these are huge topics and areas. As you look at this transition, is it count them on one hand levers that get you 80% of the way there, and then it's long tail for the rest or is it just kind of scrapping and clawing every step of the way and there's hundreds or thousands of different things, and there's no one outside thing, but it's just like doing the dirt, like getting your hands dirty day in and day out? I mean, how do you look at the most effective ways to address this transition and catalyze it?
Dr. Melissa Lott: I think that what we've been doing in the US is a good example of this in a lot of ways. So right now in the US we have a lack of cohesive federal policy, right? Like we do not have a federal climate change act or something that says we have to reduce emissions. But we have a bunch of states doing stuff, we have a bunch of communities doing things, and we have a bunch of corporations and private organizations and private people doing things.
If you want to get to zero as quickly as possible, you need push and pull. You need carrots and sticks. You need all the things. I'm trying to think of every analogy I can [laughs] come up with, but you need the push and pull on this. And so you need policies, you need leadership and you also need demand and people saying, "Go faster, go now."
So right now we're a lots of different parts of the country, you know we're at home, I'm at home right now. I've been working at home for a while. We've seen emissions go down because of changing behaviors. We've also seen emissions start to go up again, because nothing structural has changed. So big levers, we need the structures. We need the supply systems of our energy to change.
We need to decarbonize our power. We need to decarbonize the fuel that goes into our cars. We need to decarbonize the supply side of things. We also need to, if we want to get there as quickly as possible, say, okay, what can we do on the demand side as well? So what can we do to make that transition smoother, faster, cleaner?
Jason Jacobs: Can we double click on each of those separately? So supply, okay, I'm with you. We need to do the big things on the supply side to decarbonize. What are those big things?
Dr. Melissa Lott: I lead this power sector program, but part of the reason I lead it is 'cause the backbone of decarbonization, if you look at any of these pathways, I mean, then there's a bunch of them out there for different countries and parts of the world. The consensus is we need a stronger and bigger power sector. We need it to be zero carbon and we need it to supply a lot more of our demands.
So we need to electrify what we're doing and we need to supply that with zero carbon electricity. Getting away from coal, making sure that any fossil fuels we still have in the system have carbon capture utilization sequestration, some combination of CCS or CCUS, we need to make sure that's in there. We need to make sure that we are keeping the zero carbon things we have and adding more and more zero carbon things to them to enable us to change the lives on this side, on the demand side where I'm sitting so that we have a electrified and zero carbon system. That's what we need.
So power plants, we gotta move them fast. On the transportation side, you need to get those things electrified. That seems to be one of the cheapest pathways that we have available to us. And where it's not cheap, we need to find other zero carbon fuels. The last part I'll pick is industry if you don't mind me mentioning it real quick, 'cause it's complicated.
So one thing we talk about is let's electrify everything, and that is a super great clicky headline and I love it in a lot of ways [laughs]. But we need to electrify everything that makes sense to electrify, which is a lot more than today. And then for everything else, we need to figure out other alternatives.
So in industry, you can electrify a lot of processes, but the emissions, the carbon emissions from industry aren't just about combustion. They're not just about burning stuff to produce heat or electricity. It's also about processes that have chemical reactions that produce things. So we need to electrify everything that makes sense to electrify and then make sure we're innovating to figure out the rest of it.
Jason Jacobs: What about the how? Is that also part of your body of work in terms of, I mean, you mentioned carrot and stick and we need to hit it from all ways, but is there some subset of policies or education or subsidies or incentives or mandates, are there one or a small handful of things that would have an outsized impact? It's very frustrating when I hear we need it all and I get why that's the answer.
And I'm not even saying it's the wrong answer, but it's just very hard when someone says, we need it all to actually figure out where to sink your teeth in and what to put your weight behind. That's the one thing. And any one thing is hard and any one thing seemed insurmountable without all the other things softening the clay, if you will, to [laughs] enable that one thing. It's like chicken and egg and it feels paralyzing. So how do you think about that?
Dr. Melissa Lott: I think in my experiences and it's also in my modeling, like I see it in the modeling, but in my experiences one of the hardest things that I think, one could argue this is the biggest lever, I just think of levers differently. But this idea that this is my one thing and I'm for that and I'm against everything else. I think when I say we need it all, I more mean that we need to be open-minded to it.
You talked about the term technology agnostic. That's the idea of, I'm not putting one flag in the sand and saying, this is the one tech I stand for or on the flip side of it, these are the two secs I stand for, which means I don't stand for anything else and I won't accept anything else. There's only one solution. I think that's paralyzing. I'm certain that slows us down because then we get in this fight of, okay, you won't even consider my favorite thing so I'm not going to consider your favorite thing.
And then it ends up being like a fight we had on the playground as kids. Like, I don't like red, you're wearing it, well, I don't like blue, you're wearing it so we're just not going to talk. And it's like, no, right? How about we say, I like red and you like blue and you like green, and why don't we just have all the colors?
Like, let's just have all things. That's what will get us down this path much more quickly. Because when we stand there and go, there's a bunch of solutions, but I like these better so I'm only going to let those things get through, not everyone sees it the same way. And so being more open-minded about it and thinking about it being and, not or, but, but and.
Jason Jacobs: I don't disagree. The one thing that's come up though, I think I can't remember which guests, but it's come up in some other discussions, is that in some cases actually picking winners and putting a real weight behind them from a subsidy standpoint is very helpful as a catalyst. Do you agree or disagree with that statement?
Dr. Melissa Lott: Well, I certainly agree. And I, but I would add one thing too, which I might've spoken about, which is, if you look at just the research, I mean, there's nothing that beats from an efficiency standpoint of having that all the above comprehensive, lovely policy that the federal level to say, okay, we're all going to zero and here's how we're going to do it. But that's not reality.
And so if you want to successfully decarbonize quickly, finding those things that people can all get behind, one of them in this country has been subsidies. It's been production tax credits and investment tax credits. And like the wind story has been incredibly positive. You look at these things and PTCs, and ITCs have helped, subsidies have helped for sure.
And so if that's the thing we could agree on, well, that's better than not agreeing on anything. And it's helping us to move more quickly than we probably would have without that. And the reality is we haven't gotten to a point where we've been able to agree on a comprehensive, very efficient high-level policy. I'm an advocate for taking what we can get to get us as quickly down the road as we can. And so far that's been production tax credits, investment tax credits and other similar things.
Jason Jacobs: Do you feel similarly when it comes to focus on deployment versus new science breakthroughs at the earlier ages? I just think back to the last couple of years that I've been thinking about this stuff and talking to people, and it seems like you're talking about the playground fights, right? And so it's like renewables and nuclear is a playground fight, right? And carbon tax is a playground fight. Another playground fight is around deployment versus innovation.
And when people say innovation, they actually mean it differently than I think of innovation. When I think of innovation, it's just startups trying to disrupt the way that things have been done with new ways that are better, right? But when other people hear innovation, I think they think of like the Bill Gates moonshot kind of innovation, um, versus like just figuring out how to take the stuff that we already know that's already proven and just getting it deployed through a mix of whatever it takes to get it to scale because we don't have time. I'm not framing my question very succinctly, but I'm trying to get at just how you think about that tension?
Dr. Melissa Lott: I think of it, it goes back to the and versus or. The idea is if you look at, let's just focus on the power sector, because as you say, there's a lot to chew if you look at the whole system. So let's focus in on power real quick. So 2035 is a target that's out there to decarbonize it by. And you go, "Okay, what do we have today that can help us get there? Will it get us all the way?" That's question one.
Do we have everything we need? Do we have the tech? Do we have the markets? Do we have everything we need? So just from a technology standpoint, if we look at wind, solar, storage, if we look at all these different technologies, we find out that depending on where you are in the US with renewable, so wind, solar, batteries, let's zoom in on those, you can get about 50 to 90% of the way there, depending on exactly where you are in the country.
And the rest of the way is we refer to it as the gap. And it's saying that on a given hour, in a given day, those things won't be there. So for two weeks, at a time of the year in California, when the wind doesn't blow, that's not going to be there. You got to have other things to kind of back it up. And a battery for even eight or 12 or 24 hours isn't going to get you there.
When you're thinking about how do I fit all these things in, that's where I start thinking about innovation and breakthroughs. So, okay, if I can with my current markets, like my current tech get 50% of the way there, okay, what do I need to get the other 50% or 10%, depending on what state you're in and what resources you have? In that space it's clear that technology breakthroughs would help us a heck of a lot.
Cheaper, longer, better storage would be great to have, but also it's not just that that's kind of in our way. We need to figure out markets and having markets that incentivize the use of zero carbon things, that acknowledge all the environmental impacts and health impacts that come with systems that aren't zero carbon.
When I think about the need for innovation and breakthroughs, if I can look at my current set of technologies, my current markets, all the stuff, and I can get to a hundred percent and I'm not breaking a sweat, there you are. That's not the case with [laughs], with where we are, not even in the power sector, which one could argue is the easy part of the energy sector to transition. The rest of it is three steps starter, maybe five.
Jason Jacobs: I'm going to ask you a similar question, but around the all the above mindset, or at least as you said, keeping an open mind to the different options and not having religion around any one specific technology or way to do things. I mean, that seems like a good thing.
One potential downside that I could see with that approach is that there are some things that at least if you listen to some subset of people, actually not just be not as impactful, but could potentially even be detrimental and make some of the things that are impactful harder or slower or less effective to get done. So I guess my question is two parts. One, is that a risk? And then two, do you have any things that come to mind that are on your list of things that we should not have an open mind about because they will make things harder for the right things?
Dr. Melissa Lott: I think one of the biggest risks in this area, I'll just use the 2035 power example 'cause we're riffing on it, let's just keep riffing on, is thinking about that as an end point as opposed to a way point. And so you'll see discussions that focus on how do we decarbonize what we have today in our system, which admittedly is not easy.
But I'm saying, how do you actually set up a system that you can continuously grow and continuously decarbonize well beyond that, get to net zero and support an economy that continues to grow, continues to thrive that has this backbone that is the power sector? So how do you make sure that you're developing things now to get to a hundred percent, this goes back to what is your goal. If your goal is to mitigate the impacts of climate change, then you're looking at net zero.
You're not looking at 60%. You're not looking at 70%. Those are way points. You're looking at, how do we get to zero and well beyond our own transportation? It's looking at everything. And so making sure that you are keeping an eye on that, which is one of the many reasons why I haven't just stayed in one small part of the system, because it speaks to me to keep an eye on, okay, how do these things evolve together?
How do we create a structure that doesn't build us a road to 80% and then leave us hanging? And we have to take such a hard left or right if we'd just kind of known it was coming a long time before that, we could've made course corrections, turn this ship earlier, these types of things.
Jason Jacobs: Where I find it gets tricky is so people might say, not enough corporations have net zero commitments. So then corporations make net zero commitment. It's like, well, that one's too far out or that one, they made it, but then they don't have the details around the incremental progress steps so that there's no accountability, they're just buying air cover so they can punt on it if they can down the road to some other time.
And then it's like, well actually they do have details, but there's too much offsetting and not enough actually cleaning up their act and they're offsetting, there's no transparency or quality standards and there's no additionality and the offsets are crap. Or they're doing carbon capture so they can just like keep burning coal. They'll agree to a carbon tax because they know if they agree to a low one, it's not going to materially change what they do and it's going to get people to off their backs.
That's where I get tripped up is that each one of these things, as you double click, there's debate. So it's just very hard. It's like we're in a rush and we got to go, but then no one can agree on the right direction to go. And then people pulling us in different directions to mean that there's no one direction that can make headway fast enough.
Dr. Melissa Lott: I think that in these conversations, the most productive ones that I'm a part of and the corporate stuff is one example. But this is true in governments as well is celebrating what's been accomplished to date, acknowledging where you want to go and never getting complacent in the conversation. Like we're [laughs], we're done 'cause we're so far from done, but we all know that.
And so you can say, so let's look at Google 'cause they had a recent a, announcement that took them the next step. But they said, "You know what? We're going to go zero carbon. Like, we're going to do this thing. We're going to change at least all the electricity that we buy. We're going to go to zero carbon." So they procured a bunch of renewables and they said, "Okay, on an annual basis. Yay, we did it." I think that was 2016, maybe it was 17, but I think it was 16.
But we're still going to be real with ourselves. What did we actually do? We reduced our emissions, we did not eliminate them because the reality is we procured enough electricity, that zero carbon for a year in one chunk. But back to like modeling and why you have to measure things finer increments in that, hour, hour, hour by hour by hour, 365 days of the year, uh, we actually depended on the grid, which was not carbon free for a chunk of that time.
So they upped the ante on themselves. And I think this is something where we should celebrate the amount of corporate action we have. But we'd, should also say, okay, now let's think about where we go next. And so we are at net zero until we are at this more sustainable place, we've got more work to do. So let's celebrate what we've accomplished and then let's push for the next step in the same thing.
So for me, it's not this antagonistic or you're fighting relationship, it's much more conversational and dialogue and like relationship building. Okay, let's have a real conversation. You want to go to net zero, yay for how far you've come. That's fantastic. Genuinely, let's go to the next step. And here's where we can go next and here are the tools that can help you get there.
I think that's a much more productive conversation. And it ends up in a pleasant dinner table [laughs] instead of a Thanksgiving brawl. Like I like that better. And beyond liking, it doesn't matter if I like it or not. I know that it will get us there faster and I've seen it get us there faster and lead us to very productive conversations that help us to up the ante.
Jason Jacobs: The last topic that I wanted to cover, and it's not in any way in order of priority, but it is around the equity and inclusion piece. I guess, for starters, you list equity and health and power kind of in the same three pillars on your CV. Uh, is that rare to have those co-exist as key pillars on the same background?
Dr. Melissa Lott: In my experience, yes, which is the huge reason why I'm doing it 'cause it's a gap that needs to be filled. 'Cause when we look at equity issues, like the energy sector falls in the middle of it so often. And so having someone who looks at these things with all the lenses together and combines it in that way, I think is very useful. I'm not the only one who does it.
But look at why I went down this path in my research, part of it was around a conversation where someone said to me, "Oh yeah, we model the health effects in this model and we model the energy system in this model. And then we kind of look at the results." And I went, "Well, do we ever connect them?" And the answer was no. And in some cases we're not allowed to connect them. But even when we are, we've got one person who all they do is look at air pollution and one person is, all they do is look at energy technologies.
And back to the beginning of our conversation, those things are very important, but you also need someone to marry them. And you need someone to think about these localized impacts. You can't just always model a country or a region, you need to look at a community and a person to really understand how these things are going to affect that person in that community. And either exacerbate gaps or close them between different groups that have been historically disadvantaged. If we want to close that gap, we've got to think about it and we've got to incorporate it all in the work. And so it's a big part of why I'm doing it.
Jason Jacobs: Speaking to the people that think about equity all day long but maybe aren't as familiar with the power sector, what are some things about the way the power sector works and the transition that needs to happen that might not be intuitive to them that you think it's important that they understand? And then, and then the same question, but flipped around.
Dr. Melissa Lott: I run into a good amount of conversations where again, it's different people and different communities excelling and doing incredible work. And I'm learning a ton from them and in the work that they do in their communities. But they look at air pollution or traffic or power bills, rent.
They look at these things again, installation, and I'm saying, okay, how do we create a system and a transition, while it's tempting to think that the transition is just, you know, all ships rise with the tide and everyone's going to do great and the gap's gonna narrow, there are actually some ways in which the gap could widen. Let's make sure that doesn't happen.
And back to the whole renewables versus more of an all the above or an and versus or conversation, by having an and conversation, we end up with cheaper, cleaner electricity faster. And by electrifying more things and supplying with that cheaper, cleaner electricity, we can do that in a way that is inclusive instead of exclusive.
Jason Jacobs: What are some examples of negative consequences that you think could come or have come by those being separate models and not being interwoven and compared?
Dr. Melissa Lott: Well, I'll give an example in the UK, this is all published and people can find this and read about it, you know, in great nerdy detail. But effectively they have a climate change act. This is, they have to reduce emissions and they also have an air pollution problem, not just in their cities, but predominantly in their cities. And they're saying, well, if we want to fix that air pollution problem, which has a strong equity component to it, because you look at who's in some of the most polluted places.
And there is a good dose of very wealthy people in those areas. But on the socioeconomic spectrum, you are more likely to have asthma if you were poor and there's all kinds of contributions to that. But okay, if we go to zero carbon, the air pollution thing is going to get better. And so we said, "Well, will it?" And this goes back to putting numbers on theories.
And so we put numbers on it and we realized that the current set of plans, which were going to particularly rely on biomass burning in boilers and cities led to air pollution hotspots that were very concerning. Like we thought we'd broken our [laughs] model, Jason. I was like, "No, no. I forgot to like divide by a hundred in somewhere. This can't be right." So reproduce it, get other modelers involved, check the numbers, put it through a different model. And it just didn't go away. And we said, "Okay, we got to look into this. We really need to understand what this is."
And so we were able to, instead of having a pathway where things would get better for a little bit and then start going bad again and undermine progress around decarbonization, but also progress around health, we said, "Hey, why don't we just skip that, that bump in the road? Like, let's skip it. Let's just keep the beautiful improvement, improving health pathway going."
And that was something that did change where investments went, changed how the policy was written. And it was something that we all sat there and went, "Okay." After the fact you go, "Well, of course that would happen." But the reality is in these complex systems, something that seems obvious after the fact it's that whole 2020 hindsight thing. At the beginning, the pathway looked excellent, what was going to be done until we looked at it through this combined lens of health and climate and all these things together.
Jason Jacobs: And when you look at the equity portfolio as it relates to the clean energy transition, is pollution and health the biggest piece of that, or are there others that you think are important and meaningfully represented?
Dr. Melissa Lott: I mean, I think pollution and health, very important. Like climate change is already affecting our health. It's not something that's going to happen in 2050. The data are crystal clear on this. It's already affecting our health and it's already affecting our health here in the US and transitioning will improve that. But also jobs.
We've seen this conversation evolve quite a bit in the last decade where we say in this transition, there are going to be winners and losers. I mean, that is what will happen and let's do much more than a surface level treatment of that. So let's make sure that in this new economy, this zero carbon economy that we've thought about, how do we train people, transition people, how are different people with different skill sets and different geographies included in the transition. So not just the really brilliant PhD in the lab designing the next material for a battery.
How do we make sure that everyone is included? Not just the person who owns their home and can put a solar panel on it. How do we make sure they're all included? And how do we make sure there are jobs for all different types of skill sets included in that? The good news is the transition really wins on that one compared to what we've been doing to date. So it's not one of those, "Oh, we actually have to trade off and go to a worst position on it." And this comes down to equity as well on a lot of different levels.
Jason Jacobs: I feel fortunate that I can ask this next question, but if president elect Biden's office called you up after he takes office in January and said, "Melissa, the power sector is fundamentally important. We want to accelerate our plans to decarbonize. We want to do it in an equitable way, what are the most important things that we should be doing and thinking about in the first hundred days of this new administration?"
Dr. Melissa Lott: It's clear cut what can we do in the first a hundred days. What do we have in our direct control that we can actually do? So there's a piece that Jason Bordoff, our center's director actually put out the other day that talks about what can be done in the first bit through executive action and then what are the things that we can get behind in a bipartisan way?
So what are the different initiatives that we can push forward on a policy playing field? For me, it's that combination of things and you highlighted it, which is what are the things that are within our control that we can move the ball forward on right now and what are the things that we need a heck of a lot more hands to help us lift? Executive actions, big policies, whether it's around climate and carbon or around innovation, what are the things that we can actually move down the field? Let's not let ourselves be paralyzed, and I don't think we will be.
Jason Jacobs: I might be jaded and so I'm kind of half joking with this, but also somewhat serious. Given the current state of our democracy, do you think that we can get anything done in a bipartisan way?
Dr. Melissa Lott: I think we can. I think that we still do a lot more bipartisan work than maybe is obvious. If president elect Biden comes into office, he and vice president Harris, they have stated that the climate crisis is on their consciousness and on their priority list. That leadership matters a heck of a lot and I think will help us to go down the field.
The reality is if you don't have leadership that makes it a priority, the conversations don't happen. And so the things that appear to be very bipartisan that we can get done, like around innovation, around investing in innovation and deploying clean energy technologies. Like solar is not just popular amongst, I don't know, people who hug trees every day.
And I say that jokingly, but it's popular across the board. So how do we actually make this a priority, again, back, we've got so many hours in a week so that we spend some of those hours on this. So the answer is yes, there's a lot that we can do in a bipartisan way. So now we got to get to work and do it.
Jason Jacobs: Is there anything I didn't ask you that I should have, or any parting words for listeners?
Dr. Melissa Lott: I get asked a bunch, how did you get into this? I mean, you can talk across so many different topics like how did you learn so much? And, and the reality is there's no real shortcut in this and you guys are all doing it. All your listeners are saying, how do I learn more and figure out what I can do and how this works in my life? And that's awesome. Like, it's fantastic.
It's part of why I was really looking forward to today 'cause I think that spirit is inspiring and great. And it's the right questions. Like what do we know? What should we be doing? And how do we do it? Fantastic. I'm going to steal something from a research advisor of mine when I was at UT Austin, his name's Dr. Michael Webber. And he said, he used to love to talk about this man, Rick Smalley, a chemistry professor who was a Nobel Laureate, he discovered buckyballs.
And in the last like decade or so of his life, he said, "Okay, how do we actually fix society's top 10 challenges?" And the list included things like energy, water, food, environment and poverty, terrorism, war, disease. I mean, this whole list of like terrible things you look at and you go like, "Wow, this is pretty terrible." But at the top of that list was energy.
And according to Dr. Smalley, like if we can solve our energy problems, we can solve our water problems, we can solve our water problems, energy and water problems, we can solve our food problems. And Dr. Webber used to quote this a lot. And he was basically saying, don't get overwhelmed by how many things we got to chew through. Let's put them in a list, think about them like that and say, "You know what? If we can sort out this energy business, good night, it makes so many other things so much easier to manage and tackle. So let's not get overwhelmed by how many things there are, but start working through them, make a list and start checking it off."
Jason Jacobs: I like that. And I think that's a good point to end on it. It does feel like it is daunting and overwhelming. But to your point, if your house, you let it go, you're a hermit, you're depressed. It gets way unkempt and there's all kinds of horrible things in there and you don't know where to start because it's just beyond repair as it relates to dirty, stinky mold, all those things. Just start somewhere and just one step at a time and keep putting one foot in front of the other and then progress begets progress and then it gets easier over time.
Dr. Melissa Lott: And you'll be surprised when those breakthroughs happen. Like that analysis we did in the UK, we did it 'cause I felt like we needed a number. The team did it 'cause we were like, "What the heck is going on? We need the numbers." And then we found out after the fact that it had fundamentally changed some things.
Jason Jacobs: But that was a great example. I'm really glad that that came up in our discussion.
Dr. Melissa Lott: I hadn't thought about it in a little bit. It shows I'm onto the next challenge [laughs] [inaudible 00:48:42] what I do next. But yeah, there we go. Good chatting though.
Jason Jacobs: Okay, Melissa. Well, I really enjoyed this and I can't thank you enough for coming on the show. Best of luck to you.
Dr. Melissa Lott: Thanks. Enjoy listening to the show and look forward to listening to all the rest of the ones you put out.
Jason Jacobs: Hey everyone, Jason here. Thanks again for joining me on My Climate Journey. If you'd like to learn more about the journey, you can visit us at myclimatejourney.co. Note that is .co, not .com. Someday we'll get the .com, but right now, .co. You can also find me on Twitter at Jjacobs22, where I would encourage you to share your feedback on the episode or suggestions for future guests you'd like to hear. And before I let you go, if you enjoyed the show, please share an episode with a friend or consider leaving a review on iTunes. The lawyers may be say that. Thank you.