Episode 148: Alicia Barton, CEO of FirstLight Power
This week's guest is Alicia Barton, CEO of FirstLight Power.
FirstLight Power is a renewables and storage company that integrates and delivers clean power to New England homes and businesses. It operates the Northfield Mountain energy storage facility and other hydroelectric, solar, and energy assets in Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Dedicating her career to fighting climate change, Alicia is a cleantech industry veteran. She earned a JD from Boston College Law School and a BS in Natural Resources from The Ohio State University. Alicia has experience in both private and public sector leadership roles. She co-chaired the Energy & Cleantech Practice at the law firm Foley Hoag LLP, served as Chief of Operations for SunEdison's global utility business, and worked in environmental public policy for the state of Massachusetts. Alicia later went on to serve as the President & CEO of NYSERDA (New York State Energy and Research Development Authority) and the CEO of MassCEC (Massachusetts Clean Energy Center). In 2020, Alicia assumed her role as CEO of FirstLight Power, where she is working to create a clean energy future.
I was excited about this discussion because Alicia has been on my wishlist for quite some time. Alicia walks me through how cleantech has evolved over her career, her role at FirstLight Power, and how hydrogen fits into the renewable landscape. We also dive into climate policy on the federal and state levels, barriers to adopting a clean and reliable grid, and the future of renewables. Alicia is an excellent guest, especially for those interested in how policy and innovation can work together to bring about a clean energy transition.
Enjoy the show!
You can find me on Twitter @jjacobs22 or @mcjpod and email at info@myclimatejourney.co, where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.
Episode recorded February 26th, 2021.
In Today's episode we cover:
What led Alicia to focus on climate
How her experience in the public and private sectors have shaped her view of the climate problem and the biggest levers for change
What led her to go to law school
What Alicia did at MassCEC and NYSERDA
What prompted her to leave the public sector and work at FirstLight Power
What FirstLight does, it’s mission, growth, and the future of the company
FirstLight’s green initiatives, how they came about, and how FirstLight will achieve its goals
The role of state government versus federal government in the climate fight
The role government should play in regulating the private sector
How states like NY and MA are pioneers in this space
-
Jason Jacobs: Hey everyone, Jason here. I am the My Climate Journey show host. Before we get going, I wanted to take a minute and tell you about the My Climate Journey or MCJ, as we call it, membership option. Membership came to be because there were a bunch of people that were listening to the show that weren't just looking for education, but they were longing for a peer group as well. So we set up a Slack community for those people that's now mushroomed into more than 1300 members.
There is an application to become a member. It's not an exclusive thing, there's four criteria we screen for, determination to tackle the problem of climate change, ambition to work on the most impactful solution areas, optimism that we can make a dent and we're not wasting our time for trying and a collaborative spirit. Beyond that, the more diversity, the better.
There's a bunch of great things that have come out of that community, a number of founding teams that have met in there, a number of nonprofits that have been established, a bunch of hiring that's been done, a bunch of companies that have raised capital in there, a bunch of funds that have gotten limited partners or investors for their funds in there, as well as a bunch of events and programming by members and for members and some open source projects that are getting actively worked on that hatched in there as well.
At any rate, if you want to learn more, you can go to myclimatejourney.co, the website and click to become a member tab at the top. Enjoy the show. 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 Alicia Barton, CEO of FirstLight Power, operator of the Northfield Mountain energy storage facility and other hydroelectric, solar and energy storage assets in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Before joining FirstLight, Alicia served as the president and CEO of NYSERDA or the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and before that was CEO of the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center or MassCEC.
She also co-chaired the energy and clean tech practice at leading Boston law firm, Foley Hoag and served as chief of operations for SunEdison's global utility business, leading teams building utility scale wind, and solar projects. I was super excited for this episode as Alicia has been on my wishlist for guests for quite a while, and she does not disappoint.
We have a great long form discussion in this episode about Alicia's background and how her thinking on clean tech and climate tech has evolved from when she first started working in this area many years ago to today, we also talked about how her key levers have evolved from policy and mandates to actually building stuff on the corporate or innovation side.
And finally, we talk about the important work at FirstLight, we talk about hydro and where it fits into the renewables landscape when we talk about where renewables fit in to the broader clean energy transition. I enjoyed this one and I hope you do as well. Alicia, welcome to the show.
Alicia Barton: Thank you very much, Jason.
Jason Jacobs: Although we both work in clean tech or climate tech, if you will, they're pretty different parts and also you've been doing it one heck of a lot longer than I have.
Alicia Barton: [Laughs]. Be careful, don't say how long.
Jason Jacobs: We're the same age, no, we're the same age. I checked, so it's not an age thing.
Alicia Barton: [Laughs].
Jason Jacobs: It's just that even though I'm two and a half years in now, which I don't know how that happened so quickly, I mean, I still feel like basically a beginner.
Alicia Barton: Well, you don't seem like a beginner to me, but I'm really psyched to have the opportunity to talk with you about this work, which I have been doing for a long time and I've been doing it for a while 'cause I love it.
Jason Jacobs: Well, I'm only two and a half years in, but I have to say, I love it too and it's hard to imagine work on anything that's not this directionally though I guess I'll see where life takes me. But for starters, typically where I start with guests is just to take things from the top with your current role, which is at FirstLight Power. So what is FirstLight Power?
Alicia Barton: Sure. So FirstLight Power is the largest clean power producer in New England today. We have a number of clean power plants, the majority of which are hydroelectric facilities and some of them date back really to the turn of the last century and the industrial revolution and were part of powering mills and industry in New England's history.
We also have much larger and newer hydroelectric facilities as well, including our largest asset, which is called Northfield Mountain, which is a special kind of hydro-power. It is a pumped hydro facility, meaning it's actually a very, very large battery, and we can talk more about what that means. We also do have other assets in our portfolio, including solar and battery storage. So we're really, the way I like to think about it, is a renewables and storage company that integrates and delivers clean power to New England homes and businesses.
Jason Jacobs: And it seems like there was surprisingly little information on the history of the company online, which I thought was interesting, but it seems like was it a, like a private equity roll-up of hydro facilities back in 2006? Is that the origin story?
Alicia Barton: The origin story is actually goes back a bit farther from that. So essentially some of your guests may know the electric industry was deregulated back in late 1990s, they call it electric restructuring or deregulation. And at that point, most of the assets, except the newer ones that are in FirstLight's portfolio today, they were in the utilities portfolio back in the day.
And so when the electric industry was restructured, that's the time when FirstLight became an independent power producer, that's kind of the term of art you hear in the industry, IPP, and has had different owners during that time, including some that looked like private equity, some that are more like a global utility. So Engie, which is based in France, was the previous owner of these assets until 2016 when our current owners bought the portfolio. And we are a hundred percent owned by PSP Investments, which is one of the largest pension funds based in Montreal, one of the largest Canadian pension funds based in Montreal.
Jason Jacobs: Got it. And that's interesting. So the assets were under one roof historically before that. It's not that they come together from disparate places, it's just that they had changed ownership various times over the years.
Alicia Barton: That's pretty much right. And you may be familiar or not, pension funds have become a major investor in the clean energy space. So FirstLight's not totally unusual in that respect. These are funds predominantly that would historically look at just investing in infrastructure. They look at long-term stable returns and also invest because they invest in this case, the public money of people in Montreal and Quebec, they take care and a lot of responsibility in what they invest in as well is generally kind of the profile of a pension fund investor.
And so a number of years ago, I think clean energy started to look very attractive to an investor with that particular profile. So you see a number of companies, assets, and others that are increasingly being sponsored by pension funds like ours. And we're very proud to have the parent and the partner that we do in PSP. They are really focused and have made major commitments on corporate ESG and inclusive growth. And really we're proud to be part of a portfolio of companies that are led by a team with that kind of vision.
Jason Jacobs: Now, I know on the venture side it seems like it's been more bursty where there was that big influx of capital in the early 2000s through say 2008 and then it was kind of the dark years for a while and there was some hardcore people that stuck around, but a lot of the capital was focused in other places, and now it seems to be picking up again. But on this more infrastructure investing and institutional investing at the pension fund level, has that been more consistent all the way through or how has that trended over the last say decade or so?
Alicia Barton: I think it is somewhat of a newer trend. It did not follow the venture boom and bust cycle, but it is I think following the venture boom and bust cycle and realizing that I think clean energy, clean tech, now many people call it climate tech, whatever term you want to use, that it resembled something riskier in the past. And we've seen that with other companies as well, that had kind of, again, a private equity or venture backing end up being sold to more institutional investors as you described it. That's definitely a clear trend we see in the space.
And as we sit here in February 2021, I would say, we are now witnessing truly unprecedented levels of investment into this space. And there's a lot of opinions you could have about that and whether it's actually getting a little too overheated, as some people think. You've probably seen a lot of announcements around companies going public in our space that's been really predominant over just the last three to six months.
We have seen a massive jump, particularly in companies going public via these SPAC entities, which is a special purpose acquisition company or a, sometimes called in the industry, a blank check company. And again, that's really being fueled by, I think, a global recognition that this is not a cyclical business any longer, but is really set up with significant macro economic tailwinds in terms of where the world is going for how we get the energy we need to power our lives.
Jason Jacobs: And well, there's so many things I could dig into there, but before we get too far down the path, I think I read that you've spent your entire career working on climate, is that correct?
Alicia Barton: Yeah, that's more or less correct. I jumped into my career wanting to work on climate. So I'll say that for sure, and that even applies-
Jason Jacobs: And where did that come from? Before you start talking about what you've done with your career, like how did that happen?
Alicia Barton: I think like a lot of people, I just feel strongly about nature and the environment, and that was kind of instilled in me as a child. Our family vacations were all camping and frankly, I think it's 'cause we didn't have a lot of money to go to like Disney World every year. But as a result, that's where we spent our free time, was really in nature and doing things like camping. And so I also gravitated early towards science. So I studied environmental science for my undergrad and I guess I will reveal my age by saying this was back in the late '90s when I was at the Ohio State University for my undergraduate studies.
Jason Jacobs: I was '98 so I'm actually older than you, you don't need to feel bad. [Laughs].
Alicia Barton: [Laughs]. But like, I don't know, Jason, did you think about climate change back then? Like I did. And I think people think like we didn't know about climate change in the '90s, but we definitely did. And maybe we didn't do a lot about it, but it actually was already widely scientifically recognized at that time.
Jason Jacobs: I mean, different people derive their anxieties from different things. And if I look back over my life, well before I was working in this area, I remember as a kid hearing about the hole in the ozone layer and that would just like put me in a tailspin, I was like a little third or fourth grader. And then when I was running Runkeeper, a fitness app company, the whole deep water horizon thing where it was like the hole in the ocean floor and I thought we were cooked.
So this kind of like natural disasters and existential threats and stuff that's like kind of like the power of the ocean, like just stuff that like as a mere mortal you don't have much control over, that's the stuff that's really gotten me. But you're right. I mean, we were talking about it growing up and about what a big deal it was, greenhouse gases and global warming. And yet, I mean, even today it seems like although people are celebrating because there's more energy momentum, it's just taken so much too long and too slow and too incremental relative to what we need.
Alicia Barton: There's no two ways about that. I feel like sometimes it's a dubious distinction almost to say how long I've been working on some of these things. On the one hand, obviously I'm passionate about it and that goes back a long ways, but we haven't made as much progress over 20 years essentially of, of my career that I would like to be able to report on. That being said, like as I look forward at the next 20 years, I think we're totally going to start to see the force multipliers happening here. We are going to be running at a much, much faster pace, no doubt in my mind.
Jason Jacobs: You're pretty uniquely situated because you... I mean, we do not need to go through your career sequentially, but I know, I mean, you've come at it from the state government side, you've come at it from the legal side, you're now running a big company. You ran a big state agency in New York. You've had a number of different perspectives here.
And I'm curious, I guess, I mean, this is going to be too big a question for a single question, but I'll give it a shot anyway, act... Okay, two separate questions. The first question is just all of these years working on this problem, how has your perspective changed on the problem, not on your role or your organization's role or anything like that, but on the problem now versus when you started?
Alicia Barton: Essentially, I think the biggest pivot and my perspective really came, gosh, I want to say it was like not quite halfway into the, this 20 years of working on this issue that I talked about, but maybe seven or eight years in. And when I thought about what could I do to help tackle this problem when I was in college, when I went to law school and then when I was earlier in my career, I really had in mind the models of, I guess, the environmental regime that we had in place at the time, which is very much a regulate the problem to solve it. And that was what I was focused on.
I wanted to see us get to cap and trade or see us get to just much more stringent requirements on power plants and the like. And what I really shifted my own perspective on, and it, can see it clearly in moving from predominantly legal background to moving to more of the management type roles I've had is I decided that building the alternative was going to be the best way to alter the status quo, was not necessarily just to regulate the current system out of existence, but to build a system that was better, that was really going to be better the way around and to demonstrate that for people.
Jason Jacobs: Just to double click on that for a moment, the decision to move from working on the policy and regulation side to the building the better solution side, how much of that was because you came to believe that that was more effective irrespective of who's driving it versus just being more fun and fulfilling and a better fit with your personal skillset?
Alicia Barton: I do think in many ways it's more effective. And I don't say that to the exclusion of regulation at all, I certainly support robust regulation on pollution. That's again, kind of where I've worked my whole career. But the thing about clean energy and building this future is it's not just about sort of the shortest path to the highest number of electrons, although that's really important.
It's, we're building an industry. It comes along with jobs, it comes along with not only climate benefits, but air quality benefits. There's just a lot of things, including at this point, lower costs that are indicia of why it is a better product, as I like to say. And in that way, I think we've been more effective at gaining momentum through telling that story than to telling more of a negative story about what we're going to tax people for doing, for example.
So in my experience, being in front of the state legislature in New York and convincing those state legislators to sign on to what ultimately became the most ambitious climate law in the country, I talked not about the horrors of climate change, although they're very real, I talked about how wind and solar had become so much more cost-effective than we had realized even two, three, four or five years prior to that. I talked about all the jobs we could create in the state if we sign on to a vision that's about the future rather than looking backwards. And I think those messages actually are more effective at gaining momentum for progress.
Jason Jacobs: So does that mean from a regulatory standpoint that you would advocate for more of a light touch approach from government as it relates to this transition?
Alicia Barton: I don't think a light touch from government would be the way I would describe it because with the urgency of the climate crisis, we need to basically pull every lever at this point. So that in general, I think incentives have worked better than punishment, but we do need to actually look at a pretty comprehensive set of ways to approach this from government.
And again, it's easy to focus on it in the context of like a single power plant, but we're talking about economy-wide transitions at this point, regulations in the financial sector to disclose climate risk. For example, the regulations to set minimum standards for efficiency in new buildings, that's something that is incredibly cost effective and productive and raises the bar and that I would advocate strongly for. So again, it's not kind of one size fits all. There's definitely a lot of tools in the toolbox that we're going to have to use to tackle this very tricky problem.
Jason Jacobs: Well, that actually leads into a natural question then. Given that the most effective ways to sell the things that the people value and give them a carrot versus shame or guilt or mandate or that kind of thing. And that makes sense. I mean, who likes to be told what to do. As we shift from things like coal and natural gas, let's say, to more renewables, of course, from a carbon standpoint, it's better.
But one of the things that maybe we lose at least for some messy middle period with the caveat that I don't know what I'm talking about, but from what I can piece together is we lose some stability due to things like the intermittency of solar and wind. So how do we navigate that and what is the pitch given that we're moving from a more stable world of keeping the lights on literally to a world that is bumpier in that way and can cause more things like what, I don't know if this is actually because of what happened in Texas, but when the things like what happened in Texas happen, then that's what people go right back to, is they want the most stable energy source that they can get, regardless of the emissions footprint.
Alicia Barton: I gotta say like straight out, it is fake news to say that renewables were responsible for what happened in Texas or that they will lead to widespread grid instability in general. So I don't just view... And I know you're right, that a lot of people think that and that there is a lot of fear about moving forward and away from tried and true approaches, but we really have to embrace a vision of a grid that is both clean and reliable and I absolutely think we can do both.
So no source of energy, for example, is not immune to challenges. And what really drove the situation in Texas, although there certainly will be ongoing investigations, but clearly the failure to winterize and particularly failure to winterize within the gas sector, both gas extraction, as well as gas generation was a significant, significant driver, far in excess of the failure to winterize some of the renewables that also experienced troubles during that time.
So that's really specific to that situation. I think looking forward, what we definitely can take away from Texas is the weather we've observed in the past is not the weather we're going to have tomorrow. That is unfortunately crystal clear. And of course, scientists have been telling us this for a while. It has been difficult for us as a society to really internalize that and start to plan for it in the way that we need to.
But that is not, planning for that more extreme future is not mutually exclusive with a clean powered future. And what you have to really think about is it's not all going to be variable renewables, like wind and solar being the primary examples, but it is going to be a portfolio approach of clean resources. And you'll not be surprised that this is a great segue into the role of hydro power in a clean power future.
So for example... and hydro is only one example, we can talk about all of them if you want, I love talking about this stuff. But hydro-power, for example, in many cases, depending on the type of facility is controllable, dispatchable. It has onsite storage, meaning you have a dam, the fuel you use to generate power is located behind the dam and the operator can control when to turn it on and when to turn it off.
So for example, even at a very simple example, if you've got a grid that has a lot of wind and solar on it, if you can fill in the gaps in generation with things like dispatchable hydro, including, I would say in particular things like pumped hydro like we operate in Western Massachusetts, that is like just a great, that's a home run combination of pairing renewables together to get firm generation that is both clean and reliable.
Jason Jacobs: From an adoption standpoint, it seems like hydro and wind maybe are in a similar place, somewhere around say 7% adoption in the US. But if you went back many years, it seems like wind was smaller and hydro was maybe in a similar place so... Or two different questions, one, how do you think it will play out in the future and two, like how should it play out in the future and what path are you pulling for and working hard to make happen?
Alicia Barton: What I think is going to happen is we are going to continue to build a tremendous amount of new renewables. I think the vast majority of that will be solar given that it's inherently more modular, you can have five panels on the roof of your house, or you can have a 300 megawatt project that takes up many, many acres. It's very cheap. When you look globally, solar is really, in many places, the lowest cost of new electricity and in other places, it's one of the lowest costs of new electricity.
Wind is also very cost-effective. And in certain places there will be a lot of wind built, it does depend on having the right wind resource and topography, for example. So it doesn't go everywhere. Offshore wind is a huge asset to places that have the right combination of water depths that can support offshore wind and strong wind resources and we're going to see a tremendous amount of offshore wind being built in the years ahead.
Hydro, as you mentioned, has not had the same type of growth. We do see a lot of development out there still for hydro, but it can be challenging at times, given the scale of the facilities to site them, and that's something that will continue to be a challenge. It makes a of sense in the right place, but it doesn't make a lot of sense in every place. And so that's going to, I think, restrict hydro to a smaller forward-looking build out than those other resources, but an incredibly important one.
And you do see a lot of places, and I'll talk again about pumped hydro specifically, which is basically you can think about it as a hydro plant, or you can think about it as a giant battery, which is really how it functions. Again in places where we see really high penetration of renewables, there is a lot of development of pumped hydro on the drawing books, both in the United States and places like California, as well as in other parts of the world, places like New Zealand, for example.
Jason Jacobs: And given that it sounds like a sighting issue that's been holding back hydro, I mean, is that one that there's anything that can be done about whether it's on the innovation side or on the policy side, or is the natural landscape the natural landscape, and there's not much we can do?
Alicia Barton: No. There are companies that are trying to innovate inciting of hydro. And so that's absolutely something that will happen. A lot of that tends to focus on trying to replicate more natural conditions for particularly fish, meaning that a lot of times they will be so-called run-of-river hydro assets, and in that inherently are smaller than large new dams, which again, I think there will be large hydro projects built in the US as well as globally. I don't know how many, I think that remains to be seen given the siting challenges, but there will also, at the same time, I think the substantial build out of smaller hydro. I don't think right now that it will remotely rival though the deployment of solar, for example.
Jason Jacobs: And when we tease this episode on Twitter, leading up to this discussion, there were a couple of good questions. One question from Brendan Anderson was around how the new Massachusetts climate bill and how that will impact FirstLight and its customers, and also more of a general question around how policy impacts the FirstLight Power business in general.
Alicia Barton: So as we're sitting here on February 26, I should note that the bill being referenced is with the legislature, it has not been passed. But I think we have some pretty good indications that it will get passed and sent back to governor Baker. And I'm certainly hopeful of that and we're supportive of that legislation. It does a bunch of things, one of them in particular that's really at the heart of it is set a very aggressive greenhouse gas reduction target for the year 2030.
And that is something that will again, really reinforce the value for all clean energy resources. And in that case, I'm not just talking about on the electric grid, but also in the transportation or heating sector that will certainly create some market conditions that will help accelerate the trajectory of those technologies.
One of the other things the bill does is a little bit closer to home for FirstLight and something we're very supportive of, which is it requires municipal electric utilities in the state of Massachusetts to also meet climate targets alongside the larger utilities who have been historically subject to the Commonwealth's clean energy policies, meaning I think I said that it possibly can be the same way, but typically Massachusetts has applied its clean energy targets to the larger investor owned utilities and left out the smaller municipal electric utilities.
Those utilities now I think really have embraced their participation in these clean energy targets for a couple of reasons, one being that their customers are asking for it, they hear that loud and clear. And then the second is because it can be very cost effective. Again, I think it's putting to rest some old notions about renewable energy being uneconomic or unaffordable.
Last fall, FirstLight announced the largest renewable power purchase deal with New England municipal electric utilities that had been done in New England to date and will be directly again, supplying more than 25 municipal electric co-ops directly with clean power from locally produced hydro-power. That is a huge win-win for them. Again, it's cost-effective, it's locally made clean power and it gives their customers something they want while meeting a requirement that they're going to have to meet.
Jason Jacobs: A related question. This one was from David Brewster, one of the EnerNOC co-founders was asking about managing, the interplay between the federal wholesale market rules and the state policy objectives as it relates to renewables.
Alicia Barton: And that is a huge issue that we need to confront as an industry and something I do spend a lot of time on. So to set up where we are today, essentially clean energy and climate policy has been driven at the state level. And some of it has occurred at the federal level, largely not under the Trump administration, but certainly under the Obama administration, and even going back prior to that.
When it comes to wholesale electricity markets, which admittedly is a pretty wonky area of life that not a lot of people spend a lot of time thinking about, but our electricity really is governed by federal rules that cover regions and interstate areas like New England is its own region for the purposes of regulating federal power. And so the disconnect between a federally set program in that context for the region of New England and the state policy objectives of some states in the region, and they're not all uniform, has been difficult to reconcile.
And we've come to a place where frankly, there is a significant amount of conflict between the state rules and the federal rules. And that leaves a number of companies, mine included in a difficult spot for getting the stability and reliability of market signals that we need to see to continue to invest in our business. This is something that now that the Biden administration has taken office, their new commissioners at FERC or the new chair at FERC, and one of the new commissioners have certainly highlighted this is going to be a priority for them to look at, is how to harmonize the federal rules and the state rules.
David asked a great question, of course, coming from David, but it's too early to say which way that's going to go. I can share my perspective on it, which is we need to take this head on and we need to address it sooner rather than later. Again, I think that's just basic for any business wants stability in these markets and we'd like to see that as fast as possible, acknowledging that it does take time to overhaul market [inaudible 00:30:31].
We need to embrace a system where we understand that the states are focused on de-carbonization and that should be our goal. FirstLight strongly supports the New England States and their push to decarbonization. And when we do that, we need to do what I said before, which is like use every tool we have available that is both clean and reliable.
And that means supporting new renewables, it means supporting existing renewables, it means supporting new energy storage and supporting existing energy storage, and again, trying to come up with a set of rules that will really wean us off of the fossil fuel infrastructure of the past and put us on a stable path towards again, that clean, reliable grid that we really, really need.
Jason Jacobs: Another piece. Going back to what you said before about the importance of getting to a clean and reliable grid, one of the concerns that I've heard from people as I've kind of gone on my climate tour is around the topic of storage. And I know that you mentioned that the hydro or pumped hydro can be one form of storage, almost like a battery.
And of course, there's lithium-ion, there's flow batteries and other long duration storage technologies that are emerging. So I have two questions as it relates to storage. One is just how big a blocker is it? Is that overblown or is it actually a blacker and like when and how fast will that be... and how impactful will that be as an issue? And then secondly, what should that mix look like in the future and where are the biggest gaps right now?
Alicia Barton: I think we do need a lot of storage to make the renewable powered future work. And thankfully we're seeing a lot of opportunity to make that a reality. I think it comes primarily in understanding that various storage technologies, and you highlighted that there are more than one, will each need to play a role, and we need to try to channel them to the roles they are best suited to play.
So for example, lithium-ion batteries have gotten very cheap in recent years compared to historic costs. They will continue to get much cheaper, particularly as we see electric vehicles really scale and continue to drive down the cost of battery technology. Those tend to be in the four or two hour duration is mostly what we see today, and we're going to need a lot of those. And they do a number of things, they can be located behind the meter so that they act in a way like energy efficiency to curtail peak demands.
They can be on the front of the grid to give short bursts again, two to four hours of energy when they're needed. They can provide regulation to the grid, helping stabilize the grid. But we also are going to need much longer duration storage technologies, for example, pumped hydro, which again, I think is a key solution and tends to run at various durations. Our facility is just under eight hours and that fills a different need. It really can be for one thing, tends to be at larger scale.
Our project is 1200 megawatts and we also have a smaller pump storage facility as well, but having fast dispatch, 1200 megawatts able to run for almost eight hours is a massively important tool for integrating things like offshore wind off the coast of New England here. We are also going to need longer duration than that as well. And so you have to put it in the buckets of more modular, shorter duration, larger scale, longer duration, as well as multi-day or seasonal storage opportunities. And there are a bunch of technology companies that are really pioneering in that longer duration space that I'm super excited to watch, a number of them in the Boston area, just as FirstLight is.
Jason Jacobs: Nice. And in terms of that clean and reliable grid, where are we today in terms of getting to that vision? And I mean, we just talked about storage, but is that the biggest blocker or are there other things that need to be unlocked or changed in order for us to truly fulfill that vision?
Alicia Barton: We have a lot of work to do to get to that vision, but I also think we have a lot of momentum towards that. So in terms of where we are today, depends what part of the country you sit in. California has done a very impressive job of adding a lot of renewable energy in recent years and is getting to a grid that is more substantially renewable than almost anywhere else in the country.
Texas has also added a lot of wind and solar. In the Northeast here, New York, where I've spent a lot of time and New England where I live now, we are at smaller numbers. We have a pretty healthy base of installed hydro for example, and then a few thousand megawatts of wind and a few thousand megawatts of solar, rough numbers in both cases for New York and New England. We need those numbers to increase dramatically.
And there is a huge pipeline that is waiting to be built both in New York and New England of things like again, offshore wind or larger utility scale solar projects, as well as land-based wind projects. And the gating criteria there at this point is really getting through the permitting process and the siting process, which I do think is going to be nationally one of the single biggest challenges we face, is whether our regulatory processes for building large infrastructure and community acceptance of building large infrastructure will allow us to go at the pace that we need.
I don't think it's a technology problem in those cases. And again, starting to see increasing development pipelines for battery storage as well. The economics in some cases are not there yet, in other cases, I think they'll be there very soon. But we will only run as fast as our ability to actually build large new infrastructure, which frankly is a challenge and has been a central part of the challenges I've faced in my career and trying to push forward on clean energy.
Jason Jacobs: And what should the role of fossil fuels be in our future and what should the role of the current oil majors be in our future?
Alicia Barton: The role of fossil fuel in the future is going to have to change dramatically. And frankly, there's going to need to be less of it, just no two ways about that. And that's not an easy shift and it's not a popular one depending on some people's perspectives, but it is something that we're going to have to do if we are going to get to our climate targets, which I would argue strenuously, we need to do to preserve the inhabitability of the planet and safeguard our communities and our families.
That doesn't mean fossil fuel will be behind us in the next 10 years, like no way, that's not going to happen. And there will continue to be reliance on fossil fuel generation for a number of years, exactly how many I think actually is an open question. And part of that open question will also not only involve sort of considerations of like how fast we can build renewables and how cheap they get, but also things like alternative fuels to repurpose our fossil fuel infrastructure.
So if you can get to things that are talked about a lot now, like green hydrogen as a replacement fuel for some of the fossil fire generation infrastructure, that means we could probably move away from some of those fossil fuels sooner rather than later. On the role of the oil majors, again, most of them are global and we are going to see uneven progress on this transition globally, so that I think will be something that will keep them locked into their primary business for quite a while as they serve global markets.
But they are also pivoting rapidly. They are, I think, virtually to accompany, although maybe not everyone, adopting climate targets and themselves investing in renewables. Offshore wind again is a great example here. The companies that are most aggressive in building offshore wind globally and in the US, primarily many of them have a background in the oil and gas industry, and through their expertise in extracting oil and gas in the open ocean have pivoted that to building wind turbines in the open ocean.
You see like firsthand in a lot of different ways, not just in the offshore wind sector, but also venture funds, dollars that are being channeled into early stage innovation are increasingly coming often from some of these oil majors. I'll put in a strong plug for Greentown Labs in the Boston area, which I've served on the board of for a very long time and is the largest clean tech incubator in North America, and has recently launched an expansion into the Houston area specifically to create that tie in and capitalize on the financial capital and the talent capital that exists in a place like Houston around the energy industry and channel that into climate tech going forward.
Jason Jacobs: So there's a segment of the environmental community that believes that the big oil majors cannot be trusted and that they will have these flashy marketing campaigns, highlighting the green things that they do, but then behind the scenes, they'll be actively working against those interests, in some cases, just keeping their hands clean by working through trade groups and things like that and that the only path is to divest and kill. How do you think about that viewpoint? Is it a healthy one?
Alicia Barton: I think keeping everyone honest is a healthy thing. So I certainly hope and expect that many organizations will keep a keen eye out on these organizations and what they're really doing and whether what they're saying matches what they're actually doing and where they are sending money. I think that kind of transparency is really critical.
And that's why I mentioned for example, earlier, the need to reform financial regulation so that things like climate risk are disclosed as well as where investments from companies go with respect to climate risk. So that transparency and holding these companies accountable is definitely important, and there's a role for that.
I do think that my personal view is that we will actually not get as far along the way to our goals if we do not use the opportunity again, to grab the financial capital, the technical expertise and the human capital of people that really know the energy business and just retrain that on a different target and allow those companies to be part, not the only, but some part of what will generate climate solutions for the longterm.
Jason Jacobs: So as a retail investor that cares about climate changes, is divesting a mistake?
Alicia Barton: I don't think that's a mistake necessarily for retail investors. And in fact, I'll say for example, on behalf of the employee pension funds that we oversaw at NYSERDA, we undertook to divest those funds from fossil fuel investments as you might imagine, given our mission at NYSERDA and our role as a public entity, but we were also thinking about the long-term financial future of our employees.
And there is a lot of data out there to show that portfolios with lower fossil exposure have been performing better and I think we will continue to see that. Again, the trick going to be that some of these companies look a little bit like both, and that's a harder call, which is why, again, I think the information disclosure and the transparency is key.
Jason Jacobs: And one of the things that I personally wrestle with is, so take like carbon capture and the storage at point of emission, for example, where you can continue to burn dirty fuel and you could just capture the emission either at the plant or with a piece of hardware attached to the car or things like that or another example would be like using sensors to monitor natural gas pipelines to identify leaks and plug them.
Some would argue, "Well, of course, we want to do that because leaks are bad, methane emissions." And then others would say, "Let's not waste our time with that. Let's just get off of natural gas as quickly as possible." And that's a bandaid that's going to give people an excuse to not move faster to get off of natural gas. So do you wrestle with that tension or do you have a clear view there one way or another?
Alicia Barton: Some of these solutions are in conflict, and I think in each case it's really like, what's our alternative? So again, if you're talking about the output of a conventional fossil fueled fire power plant and whether to install air capture, I think to myself, what's the alternative? Well, in this case, I think actually renewables paired with batteries is like a pretty good alternative to that. And so I don't see why, and I would not personally invest in direct air capture for those assets.
When it comes to the fact that we have, in much of our nation, a very widespread build out of natural gas infrastructure that under any scenario is just not going to go away immediately, I don't think that's realistic. And meanwhile, while we are generating methane emissions from those pipelines, we absolutely should try to reduce methane leakage as much as possible.
That's something that we can do in some cases immediately, and it should be done and should not wait for a longer solution where we move away from natural gas more systemically. I do think we basically need to make that move, but I would not personally avoid short-term or interim solutions and let the perfect be the enemy of the good here. We've got a lot of carbon to reduce and we need to go grab as much of it as we can as fast as possible.
Jason Jacobs: I've heard similar recently in some back and forth on Twitter, about things like carbon removal and how people knock offsets and they say negative emissions instead. But negative emissions is actually a distraction because we should just be focusing on reducing our footprints and changing our lifestyles and getting off of the dirty sources faster, versus just again, like we should stop producing so much trash versus figuring out how to store the trash that's already out there. Do you feel similarly, you know, kind of an all of the above?
Alicia Barton: I just don't think it's one size fits all. All of the above is actually a bit of a way to term, I think in climate circles, because that was a prior government policy that many people would argue, kind of gave cover to keeping fossil fuels in the mix longer than we might otherwise want. So I'm not going to like borrow that term specifically given that, but it's not one size fits all. And I think location matters a lot.
And we have to remember that we are undertaking a period of transformation that really does not have historic precedent. The amount of changes we need to see and how we use and generate energy, not just electricity, but all forms of energy over the next two decades has never been done even though we've had historic changes in our energy supply and we went from whale oil to coal and then we went to natural gas and all this, but it was done over time periods that don't resemble anything like the compressed time period that we have in front of us or the scale that we're talking about.
So I don't think we can with like intellectual honesty, say if there's a clearly right or wrong answer to this, and depending on the circumstances and the location and what's really possible from not only an infrastructure and technology standpoint, but from a human acceptance and ability to absorb the pace of change standpoint
Jason Jacobs: And given what we've talked about before about how mandating and regulating isn't necessarily the best way, but at the same time it is important that we get policy done, but we should do so by talking about jobs and a cleaner future and better health and things that regular people can relate to, I guess, given that context, what do you hope to see out of the Biden administration and also, what do you hope to see from the federal government that maybe could carry over from administration to administration regardless of what side of the aisle they happen to be on?
Alicia Barton: I hope and expect we're going to see a lot of ambitious policy coming out of the Biden administration. And then I in turn hope that and expect that a lot of it will be durable because once you start to show that these policies work and that we're getting better outcomes, I think most people will agree that, that it's something we should continue.
I think in particular, the Biden administration has tried to, I think, build upon the successes at the state level and places like for example, California, New York, but now basically a dozen other states that have requirements for a hundred percent clean electricity by some certain date. As a candidate, president Biden adopted a target of 2035 for a hundred percent clean electricity. That's more aggressive than any state in the country right now.
So he's certainly trying to raise the bar and not just replicate what states have done, but challenge every state to go even farther. And he's also doing it with an emphasis on important related policies, and that's kind of, again, you touched on. And then I'm a big proponent of talking about the jobs and I think president Biden has put jobs front and center. He had a great line during his campaign that said when president Trump thinks about climate change, he says hoax and when I think about climate change, I say jobs.
And we're going to see that emphasis on, particularly in the wake of COVID, building back better, I think is the term that he uses and investing in infrastructure and investing in clean energy infrastructure is like a huge economic opportunity for the country. I'm really... I think it's awesome to see him marrying those two policies together. But he's also doing it with a focus on those that have been left behind in the past as well and specifically trying to target the benefits of a clean energy transition to disadvantaged communities.
And I am proud to say that that is something we had also put in place in the climate law in New York and I think is really important that we focus on that part of the conversation. But I want to be really clear here. I think unfortunately, sometimes when we talk about environmental justice and disadvantaged communities, we end up getting a lot of process solutions and we're studying the problem. And I think like studying the problem's important and obviously we won't solve the problem if we don't understand it.
And when we cite new infrastructure, we need to disclose its impact on disadvantaged communities. All of that is like really good, but not sufficient. And what president Biden's plan does is kind of put the money there, which is going to be really important and say, "We're going to channel investment to these communities. We're not only going to protect them from bad investments going forward, but we're going to affirmatively try to channel some of this huge economic opportunity around building clean energy to these communities." And that's, again, something that I really hope to see adopted beyond the Biden platform
Jason Jacobs: When it comes to ambitious policy, how do you think about a price on carbon, whether that be tax or cap and trade or the various different kinds of systems that we might put in place? 'Cause I talk to some people in the climate world who say it's the most impactful thing we could do and other people say it would help, but like we could take it or leave it. And then other people that say... that are actually like really bold as it relates to climate action that the state would actually, could even be detrimental. So where do you come out on that just as like someone that cares about climate and also what are the implications of that potentially as it relates to FirstLight?
Alicia Barton: Again, gosh, I don't want to be accused of not having conviction on these ideas, but I think it's not one size fits all and I do think carbon pricing policies have a role to play. So I wouldn't be in your last camp of like, they're going to be detrimental. I think that the question gets back to literally just at the beginning of this interview and what I've been wrestling with my whole career, which is like, do I think that a carbon tax will get us progress faster or do I think something like a 100% clean electricity target will get us there faster?
And I do subscribe to the school of thought that people generally are motivated by a positive vision, that seeing something like a target of a hundred percent clean energy is something that people respond to in a much more just intuitively positive way than they do the idea of getting taxed for, for example, driving their car. Which again is not to say that I don't think they have a place anywhere, but I think we got to be results oriented and figure out which one is going to help us get where we want to go as fast as possible.
Jason Jacobs: One key stakeholder we haven't talked about too much is just the ordinary consumer. 'Cause from the climate community, there's very different schools of thought there. I mean, some people say you should stop flying and you should stop eating meat and you should wear the same underwear 10 days in a row and things like that. And then there's other people that say don't change anything and it's unrealistic to even try and just vote, vote. Like that's the most common thing people have said, is just vote.
So, I mean, obviously voting matters. I mean, I don't need to ask you if you think that's important. But what do you think, if I'm concerned about the magnitude of this problem and I am a teacher or a lawyer or a fund accountant or whatever it is that I am, I'm a biotech researcher. Let's say I work in an unrelated field like what is my role? What should I do? What's my responsibility and how can I help most impactfully?
Alicia Barton: We should all do our part, whatever that means for an individual or that person's family. And we have to recognize, again, some of us are lucky and fortunate to have more choices than other people do in terms of how we get to work. Some of us maybe don't have a lot of alternatives to our gasoline powered older inefficient vehicle, but we need it to get to the job that puts food on our family's table.
And so if you can afford to buy an electric car, is that a good thing to do? Absolutely. [Laughs]. And electric cars are going to, I hope soon, be a really cost competitive solution for people. Right now, they're very cost competitive on a, like a lifecycle basis because they have lower cost over time, but they do come with upfront higher cost, which again is not something that everyone can manage.
So if the person's concerned, they should do the things that they can do that are within their power. And then we should all realize that that level of voluntary action does create an important market pool for clean products that will help us scale, but it's not sufficient. I can't stress enough that systemic change and underlying architecture of government regulation and government incentives is absolutely necessary.
We can't individually solve our way out of the problem. And I'm sympathetic to people that don't want to have to worry about it. Like they might care, but they're not really equipped with the time or maybe the background to understand the implications of all their choices. They've got to get their kid to soccer practice and don't have the time to do the research. Like we should make it easy for them by putting really good products out there, and again, requiring them in certain cases like requiring new buildings to be a certain level of energy efficiency so people don't have to think about it is something we've just got to do.
Jason Jacobs: My last question is, I would imagine sitting in your seat that you get a fair number of requests from people that say something to the effect of, "Hey, I'm working in this unrelated field and I've been doing it for a number of years and I like the people and we do good work, but this magnitude of the problem is just weighing on me so much. Like I can't not focus on it, but I don't know what to do." So if and when people will come to you with that question, I get that question a lot, how do you answer it?
Alicia Barton: Well, first of all, if anyone out there is having those thoughts, they should absolutely think about joining a career in this industry. I'm a huge evangelist for working in the clean energy sector because you get to work on a problem that's not only important to solve, but unfortunately it's pretty hard to solve, which also makes it kind of fulfilling from a career standpoint.
You're contributing to the greater good, but it's certainly going to challenge us to bring our best thinking to this. There are a lot of resources out there and that sort of depends on where you live and I'm sure your listeners live all over the place for this particular podcast. But there are often state agencies that do things like compile opportunities in the clean energy industry, there are NGOs and other organizations, and there's a role for basically like every job in this field.
Like if you're an accountant, you can be an accountant at a clean energy company. If you're really an engineer, that's kind of a straightforward one. But even if you were an administrative focused person and your passion is HR, again, there are so many companies in this space that need incredibly important talent in order for us to collectively build an industry that will solve the greatest problem facing humanity. And we need like all hands on deck, we need all the best people. So I definitely encourage people to go look. And this industry is growing very fast, so it's a really smart bet.
Jason Jacobs: Great. Well, this is such a wide ranging and intellectually stimulating discussion and educational. Is there anything I didn't ask that I should have or any parting words for our listeners?
Alicia Barton: Well, I think the only parting words I would say is that through the, as we've said, 20 plus years that I've been working on this issue, I've never been more optimistic about where we go from here. The pace of change is rapidly increasing. We are going up the hockey stick on this stuff and it doesn't happen overnight, and I know that firsthand. I've worked on many things that we still have not accomplished, even though I've been working on them for over a decade in some cases.
But again, those time periods are going to start to collapse and we are witnessing greater than ever levels of public awareness and engagement on this topic. We're witnessing greater than ever priority from our elected officials on this topic. I mean, the fact that president Biden was elected nationally by an extremely wide margin, and the fact that climate was one of his four priorities for his campaign is like, I don't think I would have thought five years ago that we would see that. And so it's not easy, but it's important. And the good part now is that we finally seem to have the wind at our backs and I think we're going to make a lot of progress in the years ahead.
Jason Jacobs: Well, what a great, optimistic point to end on. So Alicia, thanks again for coming on the show and best of luck to you and to the FirstLight team.
Alicia Barton: Thank you very much, Jason.
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.
