Retiring 90% of our Coal Power Plants would Save Money - Michelle Solomon, Energy Innovation
03/02/23 • 62 min
Michelle Solomon is a Senior Policy Analyst in the Electricity program at Energy Innovation, working to accelerate the transition to a clean, affordable, and equitable electricity sector in the United States. We’ve invited her to talk about their recent publication of the third edition of their report - Coal Cost Crossover – which argues that over 90% of coal-fired power plants in the U.S. could be replaced by renewable energy generation at a net cost savings.
Prior to joining Energy Innovation, Michelle earned her Ph.D. in materials science and engineering at Stanford University, where she studied nanoparticles with applications in purifying chemicals for use in medicine and the environment. During graduate school, she also pursued an interest in energy policy and spent a summer working on electric vehicle policy at the California Energy Commission. After graduating, she transitioned full-time into policy as a Congressional Science and Engineering Fellow. As a fellow, she had the chance to work on energy and environment policy for Senator Ed Markey, focusing on a wide range of issues spanning environmental justice to electric vehicle charging.
Michelle holds a Ph.D. and an M.S. from Stanford University in materials science and engineering. She also completed her B.S. in physics at Boston College.
Further Reading:
· Coal Cost Crossover Interactive data visualization
Visit us at climatemoneywatchdog.org!
Michelle Solomon is a Senior Policy Analyst in the Electricity program at Energy Innovation, working to accelerate the transition to a clean, affordable, and equitable electricity sector in the United States. We’ve invited her to talk about their recent publication of the third edition of their report - Coal Cost Crossover – which argues that over 90% of coal-fired power plants in the U.S. could be replaced by renewable energy generation at a net cost savings.
Prior to joining Energy Innovation, Michelle earned her Ph.D. in materials science and engineering at Stanford University, where she studied nanoparticles with applications in purifying chemicals for use in medicine and the environment. During graduate school, she also pursued an interest in energy policy and spent a summer working on electric vehicle policy at the California Energy Commission. After graduating, she transitioned full-time into policy as a Congressional Science and Engineering Fellow. As a fellow, she had the chance to work on energy and environment policy for Senator Ed Markey, focusing on a wide range of issues spanning environmental justice to electric vehicle charging.
Michelle holds a Ph.D. and an M.S. from Stanford University in materials science and engineering. She also completed her B.S. in physics at Boston College.
Further Reading:
· Coal Cost Crossover Interactive data visualization
Visit us at climatemoneywatchdog.org!
Previous Episode
Citizens Prevail over Venture Capitalists and Carbon Capture - Mike Eisenfeld
In this climate fight will Big Fossil Fuel, it is hard and rare to have a clear-cut victory. The last time we did a podcast episode with Mike on 7/12/22, his group was fighting to prevent a closing coal-based power plant in Farmington, New Mexico from reinventing itself to keep open using the questionable technology of Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS). This was described a June 29, 2022 High Country News article. A company named Enchant led this effort with the backing of financial groups to force this unproven technology through to keep the highly polluting plant open. Once they could not raise enough money privately, they were trying to get federal money to keep the plant going. However, this did not work out and the activists like Mike kept pushing to stop it. Last month, Enchant abandoned its efforts. We wanted to have Mike back on the program to explain what led to the closing of this plant for good and to explore and celebrate the loss of one less coal power plant.
Mike points out that this project was billed as a “demonstration project”, intended to show the potential of carbon capture and sequestration as an approach to combatting climate change. Back in December of 2021, the General Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report titled, “Carbon Capture and Storage: Actions Needed to Improve DOE Management of Demonstration Projects” which showed essentially no success among demonstration projects. Of eight projects, for which we, as taxpayers, paid $684 million, only one achieved operational status. That one plant operated for only three years, closing due to economic infeasibility.
Eisenfeld questioned when DOE and companies promoting these projects will be held accountable for this poor track record. Within the aforementioned report, DOE was described as addressing this by creating a dedicated Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations. After waiting nearly a year, the Biden administration appointed David Crane, the CEO of NRG, the company in charge of Petra Nova, one of the failed carbon capture projects described in the GAO report.
Climate Money Watchdog will be following up on this and other appointments relevant to environmental spending.
Visit us at climatemoneywatchdog.org!
Next Episode
Introducing the Climate Money Watchdog and Climate & Capital Media Partnership - Peter McKillop
In this episode we welcome Peter McKillop, the founder and CEO of our new partner, Climate & Capital Media.
Peter is the founder of Climate & Capital Media. Climate & Capital Media is a mission-driven information platform exploring the business and finance of climate change.
Climate & Capital delivers original reporting, intelligence and insight from our global network of journalists, researchers, and investors with a focus on climate-related businesses, technology, and public policy, particularly for the emerging generation of economic leaders who will shape tomorrow’s global agenda.
Prior to Climate & Capital, Peter McKillop was a Managing Director at BlackRock, where he was responsible for leading the firm’s strategic communications and messaging for its iShares ETF and Indexing business. He has also held senior communication leadership positions at J.P. Morgan, KKR, UBS, and Bank of America. Before entering the financial communications field, Peter was a senior correspondent and bureau chief for Newsweek in New York, Tokyo, and Hong Kong.
Our discussion ranges across the following topics, among others:
· Why it’s especially important and vital to have good oversight over the hundreds of billions of dollars of climate money about to be spent?
· Our goals for this new oversight collaboration between Climate Money Watchdog and Climate & Capital Media
· How the climate community will react to the idea of needing oversight unemployment money and the need to police itself.
· What we should do as climate money watchers when the climate deniers try to use spending failure and scandals to discredit all climate work.
· How important sources, especially inside sources within the climate effort are to finding out what is going wrong
· Why we are concerned about whistleblowers in the past who have dumped un-vetted, un-redacted into the public arena. How practices of people like Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning can hurt the communities they’re trying to help.
· As a long-time journalists, what concerns us now about the state of journalism, it's sustainability, and its ability to do oversight.
Visit us at climatemoneywatchdog.org!
Climate Money Watchdog - Retiring 90% of our Coal Power Plants would Save Money - Michelle Solomon, Energy Innovation
Transcript
Thanks for joining us for another episode of climate money watchdog where we investigate and report on how federal dollars are being spent on mitigating climate change and protecting the environment. We're a private, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that does not accept advertisers or sponsors. So we can only do this work with your support. Please visit us at climate money watchdog.org To learn more about us and consider making a donation.
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