Sam: 0:00

Yeah.

Liz: 0:01

Which gets us into the topic of climate change.

Sam: 0:03

Is this the perfect We have the benefit of recording on a peak demand day? So we're Oh my God.

Liz: 0:08

What does it mean? I'm so excited to learn some things. I watched the video that you sent me. I watched the talk, and it was so helpful to like get sort of anchored in this thing that I know literally nothing about.

Sam: 0:20

Well, I have to say that's a commitment because that's like an hour of your life that you're I watched the whole thing.

Liz: 0:24

Oh yeah. I watched the whole thing and jotted down some thoughts. Not things that I could actually ask because I have to like process for four weeks, but in four weeks I'm gonna have incredible questions for you. Welcome to New Hampshire Has Issues, the podcast that dares to ask how much energy will I use learning about this topic? Yeah, it's such like a dad joke. Like my father, if he were to ever listen to this, he'd be like, I could have done it better. But still, like I've I've tried with my with my tagline.

Sam: 1:06

Yeah. Uh it's funny. I I should, because I am a l I am a listener, you know. Oh my god. But I didn't come prepared with a tagline at all.

Liz: 1:14

Uh I don't grade you on the homework.

Sam: 1:16

And I hope you won't grade me on mine either.

Liz: 1:19

You know, you can spitball it, what you think might be your tagline.

Sam: 1:22

Uh welcome to New Hampshire Has Issues. Is is it always the podcast that dares to ask?

Liz: 1:26

The podcast that dares to ask.

Sam: 1:28

Okay. The podcast that dares to ask, could we do it any worse than we're doing Yes we can.

Liz: 1:36

That's perfect.

Sam: 1:38

I will say, like, I am frustrated daily in my job, which many people are in New Hampshire. Yeah. But there's actually there's lots of places that are doing it worse than New Hampshire. So, you know.

Liz: 1:47

Want to name some? Wanna tell us some of the ones that are doing it way worse? Yeah. Well, I mean, it's one Massachusetts. We hate Massachusetts here.

Sam: 1:55

So I am prepared to list things that Massachusetts does not is not doing right. And in fact, I think there's there's a tendency amongst climate advocates to say, like, why don't we just do what Massachusetts is doing? And and I'm ready to be like, well, here's a litany of things that they do wrong. And and there's a thing in in like, you know, my space, which is like clean energy and also sort of like abundance-pilled bros, uh, which is like we like to point to Texas, which is building clean energy faster than any state in the country. Whoa. Uh, and they're doing it just through markets, which uh our Republican friends say is what they want to do. So uh so there's there's plenty of there's plenty of laggards that are both red states and blue states, and they each have their own pathologies.

Liz: 2:45

My God. Sam Evans Brown's top laggards of clean energy. Maybe it's a bonus episode. I don't know. We could just go into all of the folks who are doing it worse.

Sam: 2:54

Well, so it's by it's kind of by we're immediately gonna go wicked nerdy, right? So it's by balancing authority. Uh so it's really like the Southeast part of the nation, which have which they have like the least liberalized electricity markets. Uh, and so it's all monopoly utilities, and monopolies do what monopolies do, which is uh, you know, it sort of ignore public input and do really expensive things because that's how they get paid more.

Liz: 3:23

My guest today, here we are. So I'm Liz Canada, I'm your host, and my guest today is a celebrity, and I am extremely intimidated to have him on the podcast, but I'm so thankful that he's here. Sam Evans Brown, thank you for being here, Sam. I'm so appreciative of your time.

Sam: 3:38

Uh thank you for having me. Like I said, longtime listener, first-time caller. Um, celebrity with like the smallest possible C, the state of New Hampshire, uh don't got no celebrities, is what I would say.

Liz: 3:50

Okay. Well, I don't know that that's true, but we don't have to debate that.

Sam: 3:54

No Laura Kanoy. I'll just say that.

Liz: 3:58

Shout out. So uh I've confessed to you via email that I know nothing about this topic of clean energy. And I want to be really candid that when I say I know nothing, like I'm not being humble, and actually I have all these amazing questions for you. Like I know nothing. And in high school, when I should have learned things about energy, like I had a science teacher named Mrs. Gubick, and I slept through her class. I just slept right through science, was not a great high school student. And so starting with a simple question, as I always like to do, when I hear the phrase clean energy, what is that actually referring to? What is clean energy?

Sam: 4:40

Yeah, well, and and immediately I'm gonna dodge your question because there's there's no standard answer to that question. Uh, in fact, there's not even really like a standard answer to what is renewable energy. And depending on how you define it, um, you get public policy outcomes that are different. And a perfect example of this right here in New Hampshire, um, we are one of many states that has something called a renewable portfolio standard. It was passed under Governor John Lynch. Uh, and the the motto, the sort of slogan for that standard when it passed was 25 by 25, 25% renewable energy by 2025. And uh, but when they made that definition, they didn't include certain things. For instance, um, New England gets a whole bunch of hydropower, which meets almost every definition of renewable energy from Canada. And that was not included in the in the definition of what would count as renewable under our statute. And there's lots and lots of reasons for that. And essentially, you know, those the it's a subsidy, the renewable portfolio standard is a subsidy trying to encourage more local, new renewable generation. And the renewable portfolio standard said, well, like Canadian hydro is a mature industry. It's not new, it doesn't need help getting built. And so we're not gonna define it as renewable in our state statute. But to give a less evasive answer, I think most folks who say clean energy are referring to any source of electrical generation that doesn't emit carbon dioxide. So that would also include nuclear, which is where things get really controversial.

Liz: 6:17

Yeah, that is a little controversial.

Sam: 6:22

That's not what we're up to. We're mostly about encouraging renewable generation, wind, solar, hydro, batteries, uh, electric vehicles, the stuff that the stuff that you probably associate with clean energy.

Liz: 6:35

Clean energy versus dirty and messy? What's the what's the opposite of it? But like what are they? Fossil fuels. Fossil fuels, yeah. Yeah.

Sam: 6:45

And that sort of gets at what we're trying to do, which is that we're trying to reduce carbon emissions so that, you know, the oceans don't rise and we don't boil in our homes, and you know, we don't see waves and waves of climate refugees coming to places like New England, which are actually well poised to uh to adapt to a warming climate. And when you say dirty energy, um, as you had said before, there's all of these other benefits that one doesn't have to just care about climate change. Uh air pollution is one of the number one killers of human beings around the globe. Uh, so we'll have longer lifespans. And as I like to argue, these technologies are just also pretty awesome. And so we'll have better lives too. So uh, you know, that's the all the things that fit under our ages.

Liz: 7:31

So you're the executive director of Clean Energy New Hampshire. You work with a ton of different groups and individuals, um, all sorts of uh actual companies, but advocates. And maybe you can talk a little bit about what does Clean Energy New Hampshire do?

Sam: 7:46

I came to Clean Energy New Hampshire uh because I knew the two previous executive directors, Kate Epson and Madeline Minaud. And when I was a journalist prior to taking this job, they were the people who I would call in New Hampshire energy policies and programs and and you know what was happening in New Hampshire, and also would not lie to me as a reporter.

Liz: 8:07

Check and you know things and you don't lie, like you're superstar individuals.

Sam: 8:12

And and and obviously both have an agenda, right? It says it says it on the tin, right? Trying to do clean energy stuff. Yeah. But we're a we're a nonprofit 501c3 that's just trying to advance clean energy technologies in the granite state. So we're we're laser focused on New Hampshire policies and New Hampshire programs uh and New Hampshire communities. Uh so much so that occasionally uh people will try to draw us into ISO New England. Uh so ISO New England is the entity that when you flick the switch, uh, they're sort of the air traffic controller of the grid and they ensure that the electricity turns on. They're they do the reliability, they decide which power plants turn on to meet our demand, um, they run the wholesale markets, uh, and they matter a lot to where our electricity comes from. But whenever I'm tried, whenever people try to draw me into that world, I say, no, that's in Massachusetts. I don't go there.

Liz: 9:01

That's it, big X.

Sam: 9:02

Yeah, that's right. And so what we do is we focus on New Hampshire policy. We go to the State House, we talk to lawmakers, we engage in regulatory dockets at the Public Utilities Commission, which is, you know, we make the laws at the State House. They're interpreted by this quasi-judicial body called the Public Utilities Commission. Uh, and then uh with the Department of Energy, which writes a lot of rules, and the Department of Environmental Services, which permits projects. Um, but then we have this growing arm of what we do, which is we advise local communities on how to do clean energy in their towns. So, how to put like solar on the library and how to swap out your light bulbs in your school for LEDs, and really like any project that that will save you money on your municipal energy bill and therefore help you save your local property taxes. And so we have a team of seven staff called the Energy Circuit Riders that do that with mostly municipalities and small businesses all over the granite state.

Liz: 9:54

You said solar panels on the library, and it feels a little close to home in our town, where I think we just had a big library upgrade, and then after the fact they were like, we can't put the solar panels on. And we're like, what? Anyway, it's a little, a little touchy subject.

Sam: 10:10

Well, Exeter has a very high-flying uh local energy committee that has done lots of great stuff, including a what, a two megawatt landfill solar project that is the first one in the state that is actually owned by the town, which is great because it means the town realizes most of the financial benefit.

Liz: 10:29

Yep.

Sam: 10:29

So every everybody misses once in a while, but uh but exeter's doing a lot of great things.

Liz: 10:35

That's good. I can send that to uh my wife who serves on the select board. Don't worry, you're doing a great job over there. It's perfect. You know, this is much larger than one little community, obviously. So the podcast is New Hampshire has issues. You focus your work in New Hampshire. So what issues are we facing when it comes to clean energy? Like what are the things that you're advocating for?

Sam: 10:59

Yeah, there's a lot of ways that one could answer that question. Yeah. I think it's hard to ignore the fact that the federal government is currently really waging an all-out war on wind and solar specifically. The national GOP has gone from being the all of the above party to the some of the above parties, some of these things that we like. And for some reason they have fixated on wind and solar as the as the technologies that they're trying to stamp out, which is unfortunate because wind and solar actually are the cheapest thing that you can build today. It's very high upfront cost, but there's zero fuel costs. And when you when you average it out over the lifespan of the technology, which can be 25, 30, 40 years, uh, it's the cheapest thing you can build today. And so there's a lot of cutting off our nose to spider face that's happening at the federal level. Um, we have found that that level of polarization hasn't fully trickled down to New Hampshire yet and actually have a lot of uh conservative supporters.

Liz: 11:58

Nice.

Sam: 11:58

Um, you know, New England historically has the joke, the energy joke, is that we're the end of the pipeline, right? There's we do not have fossil fuels, we don't have coal, there's no natural gas, there's no oil here. Right. Everything has to be shipped in from away. That's why our electricity has been expensive since forever. Um, we don't even have a ton of hydropower. Uh, so uh so anything that we can do to reduce the amount of fuels that we're bringing in from elsewhere is going to save us money in the long run. Um, so so that has been the argument that we have found is is the winning one. And we have found that there's a lot more support here locally for that energy independence uh that that we think that we that our technologies provide. So locally, what we focus on really are the smaller projects, because that's the easiest thing to do in in a place like New England. Yeah. Um Barack Obama's energy secretary was a guy named Ernie Moniz, who encouraged you to Google and his hair in particular.

Liz: 12:59

Oh, okay, yeah.

Sam: 13:01

Sort of like Benjamin Franklin uh is kind of the the look. And Ernie Moniz, when there was a panel and they asked him which will be the hardest part of the country to decarbonize, and he said, New England. And people said, my, you know, look at all these, you know, these blue states, these aggressive goals. And he said, New England is the land of no. Hard to build things here. We're the most population-dense part of the country, um, with maybe like the exclusion of like the New York, Connecticut zone. Yeah. Um, and it means it's just, you know, there's not a lot of space to do really big things. So we focus on smaller projects. And when I say smaller, the the cutoff, uh, that's it's kind of arbitrary, but it's it's uh established by the by the FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, uh, between electricity that has that that might cross state boundaries that will impact the transmission system and might cross state boundaries and therefore be interstate commerce is about five megawatts. And so for many, many, many, many years, we've been fighting about trying to make it easier to build things up to five megawatts in size, because that's kind of this sweet spot of big enough that it's a community-scale project and can power lots and lots and lots of homes. You don't have to have, you know, solar on your rooftop to benefit from it.

Liz: 14:14

Right.

Sam: 14:15

Um, but small enough that you don't suddenly trigger all sorts of federal permitting uh and it's all state jurisdictional. So that's that's really our sweet spot.

Liz: 14:24

What is five megawatts? What does that really mean?

Sam: 14:30

What is a megawatt?

Liz: 14:31

What is uh what is a watt and what's a megawatt? Yes.

Sam: 14:35

So uh you've got a watch, which you know, if you screw in a light bulb, 100 watt light bulbs are what we used to have. All the LEDs are now like 10 watt light bulbs. Yep. You know, a thousand of those is a kilowatt. Um, a nice round number to remember is that your average New Hampshire home on on average throughout throughout the the year is usually about one kilowatt or 1.25 kilowatts of demand. Um, so that's like your average home pulls about a kilowatt. And then a megawatt is a thousand kilowatts. So we're talking about like a thousand-ish homes worth of power. Um that's all, those are all really round ballpark numbers. Another way to visualize it is that a five kilowatt solar array is about the average that you'd see on a roof. So you when you drive by, you'll see about five kilowatt bunch rooftop array, that's five kilowatts. Um one megawatt array is about five acres. Uh so when we're talking What is an acre? No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. It's the amount of time it takes a mule to make it.

Liz: 15:38

What is a mule?

Sam: 15:39

Exactly.

Liz: 15:40

How do you get one? Yes, right, right, right.

Sam: 15:43

So five acres, yeah. When we're talking megawatts, you're starting to talk about substantial land use. But, you know, for instance, here in Concord, we're about to, and and in Exeter, we just mentioned the landfill. Yeah. Uh Concord is about to do a five megawatt array on our capped landfill, which is like a 25-ish acre project. But there's lots of like little 25-acre parcels of land tucked in throughout New Hampshire that are not really suitable for other kinds of development that we can use to build these community scale uh solar projects, um, which we think is like the immediate term thing we can do right now. Like there's lots of technology that might come down the line in the future. When it comes to like what can we do right now? It's wind and solar and batteries. That's like the only stuff that's getting built. If you were to try to build a natural gas power plant tomorrow, which I I can see in your eyes, you're hoping maybe we'll it's on my to-do list. And you were to like go to GE and be like, give me a turbine, it would take them seven years before they could even get it to you. Whoa. Electricity demand is growing, and the stuff we can build now, in New Hampshire in particular, is like solar and batteries, and that's the only thing that's gonna meet that demand. And if we don't build that stuff, prices are just gonna go up.

Liz: 16:50

I was at a friend's house recently, he works in the solar world and mentioned that the federal budget bill that has been passed impacts solar. He explained it to me. I understood about 12% of what was happening. So I'm hoping you can fill in the gap.

Sam: 17:10

Yeah. So if you want to do rooftop solar, the time to make that decision is right now. There's a 30% federal tax credit that was included in the what was called the Inflation Reduction Act, which all of these bills have misleading names, right? Uh unlike the OBBVAA, the the one big bad bill, uh, the Inflation Reduction Act actually was fully paid for, which is how they argued and how Joe Manchin argued this will reduce inflation at the time. But the Inflation Reduction Act included mostly unprecedented tax credits for clean energy technologies, not just wind and solar, but wind, solar, batteries, geothermal, you know, nuclear, like the whole gamut of of anything that does not produce carbon dioxide was subsidized under that bill. The OBBBBA, O B B B B B B A, uh specifically reeled back the tax credits just for wind and solar. Batteries actually continue to have subsidies for another, you know, for quite a while. Um, it's really just wind and solar that were specifically targeted. Rooftop residential solar, those tax credits go away the end of this year. Larger scale commercial solar, the types of the types of projects like what Exeter just put on their landfill and what Concord is putting on theirs, have basically a two-year runway where they're still eligible for the tax credits. So unfortunately, what that means is there's going to be a rush to the doors where everybody who's been thinking about solar is like, now I got to do it right now. And I can tell you I've had like dozens of those conversations with friendos who are like, hey, Sam, I was thinking about it. And it's just like, you know, everyone's trying to get their array installed now, which unfortunately I think will mean that there's going to be a bit of a uh like supply crunch where there's not enough installers in the state to get to all those jobs and people are gonna get booked out. I think that some of those prices will be higher than they should have been otherwise because people because installers will be able to charge a premium if if it means, you know, they'll still be able to fill their book of work, which is an unfortunate outcome that is sort of like a needless own goal by getting the rug out so quickly. For the commercial projects, there's a similar thing going on where a lot of them have been waiting to get what are called interconnection studies from the utilities. You know, when you when you put in one of these big projects, you have to make sure that you're not gonna like fry a substation or melt any power lines, which is perfectly reasonable. Unfortunately, the utilities, Eversource in particular, has been taking a really long time to do those studies. There have been there projects that have been waiting two years just for the privilege of knowing how much they're gonna have to pay to get connected to the grid.

Liz: 19:46

Whoa.

Sam: 19:47

And so now there's a big, hey, hurry up, finish these studies so that we can see if we can commence construction. And so there'll be a similar rush to the doors that'll come, you know, next year essentially for the big commercial solar projects.

Liz: 20:01

I fear asking this question out loud, but why is it? Why did this happen? Why are we uh you know targeting solar and wind?

Sam: 20:18

Politics has become very tribal in a way that is is unfortunate and nonsensical. In this instance, the United States is one of the largest producers of fossil fuels in the world at this point, because of because of the quote unquote fracking revolution. Right. Uh, and the fact that we have very unique geology. I mean, the the geology that the United States has doesn't exist in other places in the world. Like it's not actually that easy to like frack other rocks in other places. We have we have weird geology down in Texas in particular and in and in Pennsylvania.

Liz: 20:50

Yeah.

Sam: 20:51

It has made us a petrostate. And the fact that wind and solar at utility scale are now the cheapest thing that you can build is a threat to those industries. And so I think we're seeing a bit of a like thermostatic response where the last administration said, hey, let's go. You know, we have a whole climate movement that was trying to that was trying to really uh dial up the urgency going into the 2020 election. You know, the sunrise movement. Um, I don't know if this is common knowledge, but uh, in my world, it was a big deal. But you know, the sunrise movement was this uh group of young people who were sort of demanding climate justice. They would go to Nancy Pelosi's office and asking. Oh, yeah, I remember that's gonna do, and she gave a slightly dismissive answer. And so they pulled the Democratic Party left. Uh, and that is how the Inflation Reduction Act got passed. And now I think the fossil fuel industry sees it as an existential threat. And so says, not only do we have to get rid of the subsidies, but we have to actually try to stomp this industry out of existence or else we're in trouble. And and the thing that I think is crazy about that is that the rest of the world is now at this point racing towards these technologies at unprecedented speeds that I think are really shocking to people who aren't paying attention to it. I mean, there's so many countries now that are installing solar and are adopting electric vehicles there that are gonna leapfrog the United States. And these are not rich countries. You know, um, Pakistan has joined the ranks of countries that are getting 25% of their energy from solar. Um, Ethiopia has banned internal the import of internal combustion vehicles. And and so we're gonna wind up falling behind the rest of the world because just because we're trying to stomp out these industries doesn't mean the rest of the world doesn't want cheap energy.

Liz: 22:32

Yeah, it's really interesting to think about how our country handled like the space race or like wanting to be number one and go towards that. And like we are going to be the best in the world in this thing, and we are, you know, neck and neck. And it seems like we're taking our fossil fuel toys and going home and saying, like, we're not going to work on this right now. And why is that not a threat to our country of like our pride of like we are number one?

Sam: 22:59

I think that in the grand arc of history, this will be a historical anomaly because the only thing that's going to happen as a result of this administration's policies is that people's electric bills are going to get more expensive. And we're seeing that already. And yeah, we are. And you know, you the the reality distortion field can only go on for so long. People are gonna pay their electric bills, they're gonna get mad, and it's gonna be really easy to say your bills are going up because these programs were eliminated, um, which which and they keep getting canceled every day. You know, last Friday, uh, the state's grant, Solar for All grant, was canceled. $43 million that the state of New Hampshire received that was going to go to low-income solar on multifamily housing complexes, uh, and and also in resident-owned communities, which are manufactured housing communities where people have a lot their their land for their trailers. And it's probably an illegal decision, uh and and it's just gonna make affordable housing less affordable. So it's it's all nonsensical to me.

Liz: 23:59

You know, this issue of clean energy, but just how we pay for turning on our devices and and living our everyday lives, the intersection with things like the housing crisis and housing affordability. And I think about folks who are renting, and sometimes when you're renting, like your utilities are included in that. And so if we have property taxes going up and we have utilities going up, like folks, their rent is gonna Sam. How are people gonna live in New Hampshire? Tell me. If they're not ultra wealthy, what are they gonna do?

Sam: 24:34

It's yeah, I mean, you've you've hit on it. It's I mean, it's crazy. It's there's a couple things to say here. One, if you're a renter, there's there's what's called a split incentive. Typically, many, many, many landlords, I think the majority of renters in in in New Hampshire pay their own utilities, which means the landlord has zero incentive to invest in any of these technologies. And the renter, because they don't own the building, cannot. So you can't make your home more efficient home. So you have no control over your bills.

Liz: 25:06

What an excellent point. Wow. Wow.

Sam: 25:09

And and so so I actually prefer it when landlords bundle the utilities in with the rent because it means they have an incentive to invest in efficiency. And we're starting to see that, particularly with the multifamily developers. I've I've had we have developers that are members of Clean Energy New Hampshire because they want to learn how to do these things better. And they've realized that, like, hey, we can roll the utilities in with the rent, invest in a really efficient building. So the utilities are quite low. We can charge market rate rents, and we'll actually make more profit as a landlord for a more comfortable, healthier building that these people will live in. And so that's a development that I'm really supportive of. And uh, and actually, there's a lot of reasons to think that that for multifamily, that's gonna keep getting better because the trends are moving in that direction. Um, single family is is is a real problem. And and it's not just if you're a renter, it's also if you're a home buyer. There's a problem with the incentives between home builders and home buyers, right? A home builder who's gonna build you a new house wants to sell you, wants to sell you the house. And so the sticker price is the most important thing. But you, as the buyer, you're gonna live in that house for on average eight years, but many people much longer. And the operating costs of the house are what you pay. And so the home builder has an incentive to build a cheaper, lower performing house. Whereas you, if you were an educated home buyer, you would want them to build a more efficient house with lower utility bills because that'll pay for itself in a few short years. And so there's a lot of there's a lot of problems that we could fix with public policy if there was a will to do so.

Liz: 26:48

We touched a little bit at the federal level. We have an administration that is pretty openly hostile to solar and wind. Like, I I don't think they've made any secret about wanting to squash that as much as possible. But what is it like in New Hampshire? And I think about like the issue that I work in, I work in reproductive rights. Like historically, we had a lot of bipartisan efforts and we've worked, you know, I work with Republicans still, but it's it's changed over the last few years. Like it has shifted, and I think part of it is like trying to blend in with the cool kids from the federal level. But what is it like in your work? What is the will of the lawmakers in Concord?

Sam: 27:29

I think it all comes down to affordability. I think that's where the the political will comes from. Yeah. Um, and so we find that we can get bipartisan support if we're pushing for policies that will reduce costs. Um, there can be a great deal of debate as to whether a given policy will or won't reduce costs. So a great example is we have our ratepayer funded energy efficiency programs, which are also known as New Hampshire Saves. So if anybody who's listening, quick plug for you, uh, whether you're a renter or a home buyer, nhsaves.com, you're paying for these programs already through your electric bill or your natural gas bill. They are subsidies for you to go do energy efficiency, even as a renter. They have little kits that they'll send you to like little things here or there in your apartment that don't require you to own the building. Very cool. And if you're a homeowner, this is just like picking up a dollar bill off the sidewalk. Like you, you should be checking out to see if you're eligible to get your house tightened up. So those programs cost money and we pay for them uh with a little time, time, time surcharge on our electric bill. It's about $80 million a year. And for a long time, um, businesses in particular were fixated on that tiny, tiny little surcharge. And they're saying you got to get rid of that surcharge because that's making our electricity more expensive. We've now come to a nice place where I think there's a fairly strong bipartisan consensus. The New Hampshire Saves programs are great because there are enough businesses that have used them and they're like, wow, that really helped us reduce our bills. Uh, that in 2021 there was an effort to dismantle these programs. We sued the state and made a lot of noise with a not a very great legal argument that we lost in court, but uh we got a lot of attention and got a bill passed that overturned a regulatory decision on a completely unanimous bipartisan basis. Every Republican and every Democrat voted to to save New Hampshire Says. Wow. That's not nothing. That's a that's a huge deal. Yeah. And and sort of flew under the radar. I mean, and this is the big problem, right, in energy world is that all of this flies under the radar. It is a low salience issue. But nobody, everyone just wants to know like I flick the lights, the lights turn on, yes or no. It's magic, is what I thought before we started talking.

Liz: 29:35

It's just a magician was like, and electricity is here now. Yeah.

Sam: 29:39

Yeah. And so as long as your bill is not going up crazy fast, yeah, most people are paying very little attention to this issue. I think the it all comes down to the pocketbook and making this a kitchen table issue. And fortunately, the technologies that we're advocating for are, in my opinion, the only way out of this mess.

Liz: 29:56

Aaron Powell And they're they're here. Like the technology exists. We can't Ready to go. Yeah.

Sam: 30:02

You know, I got I got clean energy pilled early because I was a journalist studying stuff.

Liz: 30:08

Right.

Sam: 30:08

And we got really lucky in our life. You know, we became homeowners right at the end of the housing crash. And so it was before the affordability of homes uh became really untenable and made investments in an energy efficient home. And that became genuinely like the bedrock of our of our family's economic well-being is that our energy costs are so low that it's it's like a hedge against all this uncertainty that that we've been living through. And then we kept going, right? Like I like put my own rooftop solar up there. I was up there on the roof with a buddy, plugging up the panels. Oh my god. I and then we which isn't that hard, by the way. Like if anybody's handy, solar installation is not that hard. There are plumbing's worse.

Liz: 30:51

Uh let's rank them. Solar. That sounds too dangerous. It's fine. It's fine. I don't do wiring, right? Yeah, right.

Sam: 31:00

Wiring up a rooftop array, you're literally just plugging them into each other. And then and like all the wiring is wire management, which is just like zip tying them to things.

Liz: 31:09

Sam, are you trying to persuade me to put up my old solar panels? Because I love a challenge. I was just saying I need a new challenge in my life. And is it me up on a roof? Maybe. Maybe it is.

Sam: 31:19

But then but then we said, you know, we kept going, right? So in in 2021, we bought our first electric vehicle. It was a used Nissan Leaf, which was like the first generation. And my joke is it's the car on a leash, like it doesn't go very far, but it's a great just like picking up daycare, and it was so cheap. Like used, used Nissan leaves. You can get them for like five grand at this point for a car that's got less than 100,000 miles on it. Wow. And then they drive at like the equivalent of like a buck 25 a gallon gas. And and so for me, we're in this like bizarro world where I've been living this life where pursuing these technologies has saved me tons of money and has been like the bedrock of our financial well-being. And then we have like the national political rhetoric around it is about how this is all too expensive, um, which then I think saps the will for any action for a lot of people in their own personal lives. Uh, and and also like saps any desire to do anything from a systemic level for many politicians. And I find myself sort of screaming into the void that like it's all cheap. And like nobody believes me.

Liz: 32:26

I was thinking about like, I'm scared of change. Like that is a big part of just my personality. I don't like change. I want it to be exactly the same every single time. So, you know, my wife and I have said, like, eventually we're going to need a new car. Like that is going to need to happen. So we've sort of said, like, do we dare go into the electric vehicle world? Like, is this a thing we are going to do? And so, like, for folks like me who are scared of change, of things that are different than what we have been accustomed to. And I feel like New Hampshire, we love doing things the same way we've been doing it. But like, what are the pieces that folks should know about, you know, if you're thinking about moving from your gas-powered car to an electric vehicle, if you're thinking about solar, like how how can I jump over these hurdles of fear of change? What are what are your ways to compel me to take the leap?

Sam: 33:16

I firmly believe that the inflection point will be when more and more and more people know somebody who's done it. Right. And and so, like, imagine if you could borrow a friend's, if you're like, hey, I'm thinking about doing an electric car. Would you swap your car with me for like three days? So I could just try it. Uh, and like, and like help me figure out how I would charge it and where I would charge it. Uh, and that friend walks you through it. And I think that in part because like I'm that guy for all my friends. Like, we had sold so many solar rings and electric cars. Uh, like I should do it on commission. And there's there's great studies about rooftop solar adoption that show that it has this sort of like viral quality where like one person does it in a neighborhood and then all of a sudden all the neighbors start doing it. And so I I think that's the inflection point that will really drive it. I mean, there's a fascinating effect in I I mean, Australia is weird in a bunch of different ways. Like, in one way, it's like lots of venomous animals that will kill you if they touch it. But another way is that they have they have like the highest rooftop solar adoption rates in in the world. Um, tons of solar in Australia, and it's mostly super small scale stuff on people's roofs. And it's totally, it's totally just this flywheel effect where it's sunny there, it people started installing it, more people started installing it, that made the price get lower and lower, that meant that more people were seeing it. And it led to the point where rooftop solar in Australia, so one of the big, it's like maybe an aside, one of the big divides is that rooftop solar can be like three to four times more expensive than utility scale solar, the really, really big arrays. Um, in Australia, rooftop solar is the same price because they've just been they've just like figured out how to do it because they've installed so much of it. Uh oh, but do we can we go back to the political question?

Liz: 34:59

Of course. Go wherever you'd like. Take the journey. Where do you want to go? Let's go there.

Sam: 35:05

Let's do it. Um, so politically in New Hampshire, what we find is that we have strong bipartisan support in the Senate. And then in the House, we have 10 knuckleheads on one committee.

Liz: 35:18

Oh my god, can I guess who they are? Never no, I won't I won't name them. I never name them. I never name the Yahoos. I call them Yahoos personally.

Sam: 35:25

But then I think I think actually like most of the Republican House caucus really just like doesn't care about our issue, and they look to the committee to tell them what to do.

Liz: 35:34

Yeah.

Sam: 35:34

And I know this because I because I I talk to folks everywhere, everywhere I go, and mostly what I find is no opinion. And they haven't really thought about these issues, and and they really are just looking to these 10 knuckleheads on a certain committee to tell them what to do. And and so I think that there's a point where that dam will break and the politicization of these technologies will will start to fade, maybe after this sort of like thermostatic reaction that we're getting in the Trump administration goes away. Um and I I think that that a lot of this will start to calm down as as people's bills get more expensive.

Liz: 36:09

And it seems like they will. I I've seen some folks sort of posting about their, you know, electric bills saying like this is a big increase that's already happening.

Sam: 36:18

Right.

Liz: 36:18

In the video that you sent in your talk, you mentioned that Governor Ayatt, when she was a US senator, she was behaving in a way of like caring about this issue or you know, doing the right thing.

Sam: 36:31

Yeah. Back in the days uh of the the early days of the Obama presidency, there was this question of like, you know, health care or climate. And they said we're gonna do healthcare first. And so that was the ACA.

Liz: 36:44

Yep.

Sam: 36:44

And then the next thing they tried to do was pass a cap and trade bill, and it went down in flames.

Liz: 36:48

Yeah.

Sam: 36:48

Uh and then the Tea Party happened, and then that was the last time that we got serious about trying to address this through uh through bipartisan legislation.

Liz: 36:57

Right.

Sam: 36:58

Um after the failure of uh uh the Waxman-Markey bill, which was the cap and trade bill, uh, they the Obama administration said, fine, we'll do it through regulations. Um, there had been a Supreme Court case, Massachusetts versus EPA, which had said carbon dioxide is a pollutant, you can regulate it with the Clean Air Act. Uh and so they they spent many years formulating a very reasonable approach to trying to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant, and it was called the Clean Power Plan. Kelly Ayott was, when she was a U.S. senator, the sole Republican who broke with her party and said, This Clean Power Plan is a good idea. Wow. All of the other Republicans said, This is communism and it's gonna result in the death, the downfall of human civilization. They escalated it a little bit. And the funny thing to me about all this is like, is like I was a reporter this time following this, and I like read the plan, and like and then like each state had to like say how they were gonna comply with the plan. I read the New Hampshire plan and I was like, they're really just saying like we're gonna continue on current market trends. And sure enough, all of the targets that were in the clean power plan, we hit, even though the clean power plan was never implemented. And so it's one of those things like the sky is falling like cats and dogs living together. And we hit those targets even without the regulation ever being put in place. Wow. But Kelly Ayatt was the only one who endorsed it. And then, and then subsequently to having left uh the the US Senate, went on to serve on a number of boards of clean energy-friendly-ish companies and organizations. Um, and then on the campaign trail, has has several times said, I'm gonna have a different approach to this issue than Sununu. And so we've just had a very long and bruising budget fight. Don't we know it? My goodness. And it has been our perception that the Aude administration hasn't really turned to this question yet. And I think we're gonna see over the course of the next session um how it is that they might want to do that.

Liz: 38:53

And that's something that is possible outside of like a budget financial piece. Like we could just reach to the apple tree and pull down a good thing we could do.

Sam: 39:02

Yeah. So I mean, one of the core issues that we have we have at been working on forever is our net metering policy. Our net metering is the policy that's the bedrock of the solar industry.

Liz: 39:11

Sam, can you explain what the hell is net metering? What like what is it? This phrase. It's so embarrassing for me to ask, but also it's my podcast. I can be as embarrassed of myself as I want. What the h is net metering? What does it mean?

Sam: 39:27

And and and frankly, uh, the fact that that's the bedrock of the soul industry is like embarrassing. It's like it's like if I it's like a 1990s policy that I wish we could move beyond, but but instead of having rational adult conversations, we're all just like swirling around the same things forever because energy has become politic politicized. Uh yeah, but net metering. Net metering. Uh, one of the stories I got to do at NHBR, I met the person who installed the first net metered solar ray in the country. Oh my god. Wow. Stephen Strong. He was an architect. Excellent name, superhero name, too. Still around. Uh uh, he had been like, he had worked on the Trans-Alaska pipeline and was like, this oil stuff seems like a bad idea. Uh, and so he wanted to work on renewable energy. And it was like the very, very early days uh where it was like solar was so expensive that the only thing you would do is like put it on a satellite in space because that's the only thing that could power a satellite in space, which was which is where solar started. And he got really excited about it and wanted to wanted to figure out ways to uh try to do more solar. He put the first grid tide, so which is to say, if when the solar panels were making electrons, they went back out onto the electric grid. Um, the first grid tide solar array in the United States on a public housing complex in Quincy, Massachusetts, designed. And uh the policy of net metering came about because he basically was like, okay, the solar panels are on the roof and they generate in DC and the grid is AC. But I think if I put this inverter thing here, that like it'll just like, you know, the meter, when you're buying electricity, the meter is just a wheel on a stick and it spins this direction. You know, you start to like, and they they come to read what the number is. But I think if the electricity is going the other way, the meter, this wheel on a stick will just spin the other direction. And that's net metering, right? So so when you're buying electricity, the number on your electric meter gets bigger. And when you're selling electricity, it gets smaller, and they come at the end of the month and they read the net, the net of imports and exports. And that's why it's called net metering.

Liz: 41:24

I I regret not trying to explain at first of what I thought it was because it was definitely not that. It's not what it was.

Sam: 41:32

So net metering is a thing that we can do, right? We can improve our net metering programs so that they are encouraging the right kind of solar development in the right places. We could improve our efficiency programs so that maybe they're doing efficiency in ways that are more targeted to certain communities, or maybe we care less about, you know, swapping out an old inefficient gas boiler with a slightly more efficient gas boiler. Maybe we want to encourage electrification of heat, you know, the so we could change our efficiency programs to uh to do those types of things. We could uh we could encourage more publicly accessible EV charging. It's crazy to me that this is as controversial as it is because uh having chargers on main streets and in parking garages does so many valuable things for communities. A people will pay for the electricity, right? Like it's we're not giving it away for free. Like you can give it away for free if you want, but you like you don't have to. Uh, so they can pay for themselves. B there's not enough charging in New Hampshire, and we're a tourism economy in the middle of New England, which is a really blue part of the world, and there's a lot of people with electric vehicles in uh southern New England, which is a place that you need to visit New Hampshire. And by the way, Quebec is electrifying their transportation fleet incredibly quickly. Yep. And so it's like a real threat to the tourism industry that that there's not enough charging. But then the third thing is just that a lot of the charging that's the most affordable to install is the slower chargers, what are called so level, there's one, two, and three. One is like plug it into that wall outlet, yeah, right there, which is like an underrated, by the way. Level one charging, underrated. Like average American drives 34 miles a day. You can just plug a car into the wall and you'll get 40 miles overnight. So many people who are like, I could never, it's like we have two electric vehicles, one of them we just plug it into a normal outlet, and it's fine. Wow. So, so PSA. Yeah, you too can charge level one.

Liz: 43:39

Uh this gets over my hurdle of being worried. I can literally plug it into my own outlet that I have. Okay, all right, all right, love that.

Sam: 43:47

Level two is like a dryer, a dryer outlet, like it's a 240 volt um, you know, 40 amp outlet. That's the stuff that mostly gets installed for public chargers. You know, that'll that'll fully charge um, you know, my little old 2013 leaf in like three hours. It would fully charge like a modern EV with a really, really long-range battery in like six hours. And that's the stuff that I think should be on downtowns and in main streets. Uh, and the reason is because you've got someone who's visiting your downtown. You want them to hang out. Yeah, you want them to get a coffee, you want them to go to the park, you want them to go to the museum. You don't want a fast charger. You don't want, you don't want some like, you know, million dollar thing that uses the same amount of electricity as like an aluminum smelter. Like you want a slow charger because that's gonna be good for your town's economy. So um, the fact that it's been so hard to get level two slow chargers on main streets has been a source of constant frustration for me. Yeah. Um and and then the third thing that this would do is it would unlock EV ownership for folks who don't have the ability to install that level two charger at their home. Right. So they they might be able to charge level one, you know, for their daily needs. And if they start to get if their battery starts to get a little low because they're driving more than they expected, then they could just go downtown and plug in at the public charger.

Liz: 45:12

What could somebody who's listening do to help influence that?

Sam: 45:15

We have got a program for you. This is what what I refer to as the energy circuit riders. We launched an energy circuit rider program in 2019 in Coas County after the Tillotson Fund basically said, like, energy efficiency pays for itself, you know, it's the dollar on the sidewalk. Why are these towns not bet not bending over to pick up the dollar? And the answer was like, these towns have 600 people and one part-time town administrator, and they cannot figure this stuff out. So we start in the North Country, and they're basically like a shared municipal staff person. And what what the way that we like for them to work is to go to each town, help establish a volunteer local energy committee that is sanctioned by the select board that looks around and says, what could we do to save to save money or encourage economic development? And a lot of those early on were like, let's do the LED lights, let's let's do the weatherization of the library, you know, solar panels on the town hall. And many of them are now trying to figure out how to do EV charging so that they can bring in more tourists and the economic uh development that would be entailed by all those, you know, high net worth EV owners strolling about sipping lattes.

Liz: 46:26

Right. Rolling into town and silently. Yes, yes.

Sam: 46:31

So to get involved, uh many towns have local energy committees. So the circuit rider team um have a database of of over a hundred energy committees and and you know, hundreds of contacts for in each of those towns that either your town might have one already and you can get involved, and it's all volunteer work. It's just like, hey, how do we do the EV charger? And and and we get traction in red towns, you know, down in your neck of the wood. Kensington just put a solar array on the roof of their town hall.

Liz: 46:59

Oh, that's right. I think I saw that. Yeah, yeah.

Sam: 47:01

And so they came up with a number of measures, you know, it's all black solar panels, so they blend right in with the shingles. They put up these little screens on the sides so that you can't can can't see under them and they're black screens. So, and and they've said we've had a number of people drive by and say, when are the solar panels going up? And it's like, guys, they're up there already.

Liz: 47:16

That's that's really incredible. Yeah.

Sam: 47:18

So and and I think we love working with municipal projects for a couple of reasons. One is that towns are gonna continue to be towns for a long time, right? Like you're gonna be own these buildings for long enough to realize the payback.

Liz: 47:33

Yeah.

Sam: 47:33

Whereas homeowners, you know, I'm the average homeowner owns their house for eight years, which means some of the more expensive uh retrofits you can do, maybe, maybe you're not sure you're gonna be there that long to get that um to get your money back. Um, towns always will. Um, and then the other thing that I really love, which is that's you have this deliberative process by which anybody who's engaged at the local level learns about the beneficial economics of these technologies. And then and then in town meeting, you know, sometimes literally just literally go and vote and say, yes, affirmatively, I agree that this will save us money. Yeah. And so then you've just educated all those people too. I find that many people are terrified to engage with the subject of climate change because it feels so big, it feels like something they cannot have any impact on. And also it feels existential. I'm here to say, as someone who's like read the International Panel for uh on climate change, you know, the IPCC scientific reports on climate science, that it's not as bad as you think. Anyone who tells you like the human race is going to wink out of existence because of climate change hasn't read the science. What they're doing is they're they're looking, you know, the scientists come up with like here's the worst case scenario, here's the best case scenario, here's a bunch that are in between. If you just look at the worst case scenario stuff, and there's a lot of really bad uh things that'll happen. We're not on track for the worst case scenario. We're deploying solar faster than any energy source in human history on planet Earth, which means that we have bent that curve to bring back an expression that maybe is traumatic for people to hear again. Uh and and we're not on track for the worst case scenarios, but not the worst. So A, that's one thing, is that I don't think, you know, whenever I hear people say, like, oh, I didn't want to have kids because of climate change, it's like, whoa, like you're reading too many heads.

Liz: 49:26

It looks like there might be another layer to that, but yes, totally.

Sam: 49:31

Okay, all right. It feels like a thing I could say. Yeah.

Liz: 49:34

It's like, oh, you're wow. Sure. So noble, right?

Sam: 49:41

So, you know, anyway, if anybody wants to have that talk with me, I'm ready, I'm prepared to give that talk.

Liz: 49:45

If you're looking to have children, call say No, that's not the way we say.

Sam: 49:51

Uh but you know, climate change is a big hard challenge, and we do need systemic change to to to solve it. But also the I think uh what I encounter is there's so much skepticism about the solutions that frankly are like a lot of fossil fuel talking points. Like, I can't tell you how many times people have told me that, like, oh, your electric vehicle is just running on coal. And it's just like not true. And and I think a lot of people they're terrified by climate change, they're paralyzed by the size of the problem, and they like to grab on to the talking points about how the solutions are bad because it makes them feel like it was okay to have not done anything. And I'm just here to say that like it is a big problem. It's quite tractable, though, and the solutions are ready and they're rad and they're gonna make your life better.

Liz: 51:04

I like change, change the words, change the theory.

Sam: 51:07

That's like that's like all good, I don't have to change.

Liz: 51:09

Right. Like, there's all these steps that I'm worried about.