Instituting Sustainable Energy: Interview with Peter Fox-Penner
In Peter Fox-Penner’s book Smart Power, he talks about new energy systems needing not only engineering, economics, but also computer science expertise, so I asked him how he recommends people learn all three of these areas, or how people might best work across these fields. He said that people from these fields are already working together, with interesting results. The grid has to get smarter — more digital, bringing those core competencies together. Those and other skills are needed “to create new modes for customer interaction and new products, new services and still keep the grid running reliably.” Other needed skills are market research skills, marketing skills, and with transportation electrifying, research on people’s transportation patterns, “There’s lots of multi-disciplinary collaboration is going to be needed to plan and operate the energy systems of the future.”
Peter has been running the Institute for Sustainable Energy (ISE), housed at the Questrom School at Boston University for nearly a year, and I asked him how his projects are going. Highlighting a few of their interesting projects, he said that ISE was chosen to help out — as one player among many — with the Quadrennial Energy Review (QER), “looking at wholesale power markets and what’s happening and what’s not happening.” He said that the work has been interesting and they have learned a lot. The Department of Energy has their results and is folding those into the QER report on national energy policy, which will be delivered this winter.
ISE has been working with Boston’s Green Ribbon Commission all summer, scoping the next phase of the city’s climate action plan, called Carbon Free Boston, “an ambitious, long-term planning effort focused on huge 80% reductions of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions by 2050”. They reviewed options for climate policies, talking to stakeholders and technical experts, reading many, many decarbonization plans by cities, states, and countries as ground work, for digging into that more in the fall. He is looking forward to the full meeting of the Green Ribbon Commission to set the next phase in motion.
I asked Peter about the U.S.-China Climate Leaders Summit, which will take place in Boston in 2017. He said that he is monitoring that conference closely, and the government to government dialogue that is being planned by the U.S. and China, the Commonwealth, and the city. He hopes that the Green Ribbon Commission and the ISE will be able to present their work. He thinks it should be quite interesting for all, with the two leading carbon emitters, who are both making strides, but who both have unfinished business.
I asked Peter if he considers Boston a leader in addressing climate change, and he said that Boston is in the upper most tier. He can’t rank the cities, or give a complete list of top tier cities, but there are others that are doing very extensive work, including San Francisco, New York, Portland, OR, and Copenhagen, and Vancouver.
I said that I thought it was odd that Boston created an innovation district in the area of the city most at risk to rising sea levels and he said that it is something that he worries about. He suggested that I talk to Tony Janetos, a BU professor, who is an adaptation expert, about that subject.
Returning to other projects at ISE, he said that they have self-funded — while seeking outside funding — work on the UN’s Least Developed Country Fund, which was established under the Kyoto and now Paris Climate agreements, helping those least able to cope with climate change. It has an important mission, focused on financing, adaptation, and mitigation, which is why they are supporting it, working with the organizer, the Oxford Climate Policy, and Quebec, who is contributing. They are approaching cities and states in U.S. and are also looking into crowd-sourcing. Next spring, they hope to present at the EPA Climate Conference in Chicago.
Peter is keenly interested in the transformation of the electric industry, and is working on a sequel to his book, Smart Power, which should be finished by next summer, with release activities during the next academic year.
Jacqueline Ashmore, ISE’s Director of Research and Outreach Activities, is establishing an industry council, speaking to several partners in the sustainable energy space to develop dedicated research projects of interest to them, and to have them participate at ISE.
Given Peter’s mention of city, state, federal, and international actors, I asked if he has a preferred level of focus for his work. He said that to today, his focus has been largely federal, especially as he was based in Washington, D.C. for over 20 years. He has also focused a lot on states, having appeared before regulatory commissions, noting that there is a lot of state policy work going on. Coming to BU, a world class university, with students from more than 100 countries, he was hoping to do more international work; however he has not done a lot of international work yet other than the work with Oxford Climate Policy. Working with the Green Ribbon Commission and similar work reminds him that there is “quite a lot energy and environmental policy-making at the city level.” He says that all four levels have a lot going on and he does not want to focus on only one level. They are all interesting and all matter in addressing the climate challenge.
I asked Peter what companies were doing innovative work in the energy space and he was hesitant to single any out given that he is doing consulting work for some of them. He thought that both big companies and startups were doing interesting energy work. When asked about technologies he was excited about, he said that “solar PV and wind were making giant progress, continuing to dominate clean power additions worldwide, but would be great to have a few more option on the table, like geothermal, tidal power, and concentrating solar. That would be good, just to round out the portfolio.” Peter also believes that storage is making enormous progress, that it is a critical technology. Other options would help to bring the total cost down and speed the future. He would like to see more rapid adoption of electric vehicles. The number of electric models jumped from 5 to 30 models last year, “a mark of tremendous advancement. But there are 250,000,000 vehicles in the U.S., virtually all gasoline, and it is a long process to change them over.” This is a huge issue since worldwide people are adopting U.S. levels of vehicle ownership and use. Cities are designed around single or double passenger full-sized auto transportation; but he would like to see a redesign of urban areas for more efficiency in buildings and better transport.
Peter says that energy efficiency is continuing to improve substantially, “Relative to everything I have said, energy efficiency is right at the top of the list. There is a huge suite of technologies; in aggregate it is is probably the largest single resource — it has been since the 1970s — and it probably remains the biggest in terms of technical potential. So one focus of good energy and climate policy has to be to pursue that resource and that’s a very challenging assignment.” “Energy efficiency is difficult to access. You can’t create a single Amazon or Netflix to harvest all the energy efficiency opportunities out there– or maybe you can; so maybe we need to search for that.”
This article was originally posted on Medium.