Infrastructure in Real Life: Electricity
When the power goes out, it's like a record scratching and pushing our normal lives into a weird pause. For most of us, we take for granted the predictability and reliability of our power supply. We count on the infrastructure that brings us energy, but that system needs attention.
On this, the second episode of our Infrastructure In Real Life series, we're talking about energy, climate, jobs, and the politics of how these things intersect. We're sharing more insight from our Brookings Institute friends and can't wait to hear what you think, too.
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Guests
Adie Tomer, Fellow at the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program
Joseph Kane, Senior Research Associate and Associate Fellow at the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program
Resources
Access to Energy (Our World in Data)
Energy secretary says adversaries have capability of shutting down US power grid (CNN)
A Finer Future: Creating an Economy in Service to Life by L. Hunter Lovins
Rebuild with purpose: An Affirmative Vision for 21st Century American Infrastructure (Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings)
America's Infrastructure Scores a C- (Infrastructure Report Card)
Breaking down Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan (Politico Pro)
Transcript
Misc. Voices: [00:00:00] Day Four of the US winter weather crisis and things only seem to be getting worse, especially in Texas.
Encore has a lot of tough questions to answer.
It's not just Encore. It's ERCOT and in state lawmakers.
A half million people are still without power and heat.
And PG is right in the thick of it.
But how did this happen and could the grid have been better prepared?
We need a better grid and now if we get this through, we will have the means to be able to bring our grid up to speed for both capacity and for resilience.
Sarah: [00:00:53] From today's bill to tomorrow's jobs.
Beth: [00:00:54] We're looking for the government at work and our tap water, light switches and bridges and broadband.
Sarah: [00:00:59] You're [00:01:00] listening to Pantsuit Politics’ summer series
Beth: [00:01:03] Infrastructure in Real Life.
Sarah: [00:01:17] Welcome to the second part of our infrastructure series. We kicked it off with water and now we're moving on to everyone's favorite utility, electricity. I don't know. Do we pick, do we pick favorites among the utilities, Beth?
Beth: [00:01:37] I don't like to tempt fate that way cause water is pretty important, but if we have to rank them, probably water is my gold and electricity is my silver, how's that.
Sarah: [00:01:47] That's good and I think that's appropriate because again, while water and the infrastructure supporting it, they have always been essential to human life, most of human history was written without the use of electricity. Now we've always had energy, obviously, [00:02:00] but not electricity. Electricity is made from the particles that are charged by movement so electricity in a form of energy has always existed in nature. No one invented electricity. Now, a lot of people and a lot of cultures, including good ol' Ben Franklin and his sturdy kite did contribute to our discovery and understanding of electricity, but it's not like it didn't already exist. It wasn't until the mid 1800s that we began to see inventions that really harness that energy. Specifically, Thomas Edison's incandescent light bulb that could burn continuously for hours and really, I think changed the course of human history.
Beth: [00:02:38] For a century, Americans had been depending on wood as a primary energy source, but in a relatively short amount of time, electricity became the dominant source for both heat and light and our demand for energy grew to the point where America was doubling its energy consumption every 20 years. Today, over half of our electricity in the United States comes [00:03:00] from natural gas and coal. It might be helpful to think for just a second about what fossil fuels actually are, because we learned this stuff in science class and then move on.
When we're talking fossil fuels, we mean that dead organisms have decomposed in a very particular way over thousands of years resulting in a highly combustible liquid and there are two major problems with using that highly combustible liquid. One, we only have what we have of them, we cannot just make more and two, they release enormous amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Sarah: [00:03:35] And that's where we get to renewable energy. Renewable energy sources get at those two problems. We want to move and extract energy from substances that are plentiful, and that can be used over and over and over again, that don't emit harmful amounts of carbon dioxide. There are several types of renewable energy sources: biomass, geothermal energy, hydro power, solar power, and tidal and wave power. But the biggest problem, especially with renewable energy is that it can't be [00:04:00] stored in large quantities. Electricity mostly has to be produced as it is.
Beth: [00:04:05] And that gets to the question of reliability. We have a feeling right now that coal is a reliable source of electricity because even though we can't store the electricity created from coal, we can store the coal. The challenge with renewable energy sources is that we need to create technology allowing those sources to have that same level of reliability.
Sarah: [00:04:27] And so we have all these different energy sources. We have them coming together across the country in what we call the grid. It's coming from different sources made in over 7,300 power plants across the United States, transmitted over nearly 160,000 miles of high voltage power lines, millions of miles of low voltage power lines and distribution transformers and we connect all of these so that the electricity can be rerouted as needed. That's a major difference between electricity and water. Electricity is [00:05:00] much easier to share across massive regions. When we talk about the grid, we mean all of these substations, transformers, power lines that have been connected to improve that cost and reliability that we see in our electricity.
Beth: [00:05:12] We started connecting our localized systems after world war two, and it has massively impacted our economy and our lives. Now the network covering the 48 contiguous us states has three major interconnections: the Western, Eastern and the Electric Reliability council of Texas, which covers most of the state of Texas. Not all of it.
Sarah: [00:05:35] Perhaps you've heard of them recently.
Beth: [00:05:37] We are all learning a little bit more about, about ERCOT than we knew a couple of years ago. The Eastern and Western interconnections are also linked with Canada's power grid and all of this redundancy helps prevent service interruptions. Now we do not want to forget our friends in Alaska Hawaii and the U S territories. The biggest point that we can make without getting into like a whole other series is that it is [00:06:00] really difficult and expensive to give power to Hawaii and the territories. Alaska has very plentiful resources for electricity, and it has its own power grid that is separate from Canada's or the contiguous United States.
Sarah: [00:06:15] So on the note of that grid, as we get into the present day, we're going to start on a hopeful note.
A lot of time talking about what's not working in water, we're going to spend more time in other pieces of our infrastructure about what's not working, but you know what? We don't want to miss an opportunity to talk about what is, and there is lots to celebrate when it comes to our energy infrastructure that works so much of the time. In fact, it's dependability is the exact reason that it often drops off our radar. Here's Adie Tomer from the Brookings Institute who we heard fromin [00:07:00] the first episode.
Adie Tomer: [00:07:01] Infrastructure, people take it for granted. Americans are so quick to complain when something doesn't work and when they have something that doesn't work, people freak out. Right. I grew up in Florida, right? So we got a lot of lightning and thunder storms. The power goes out for 15 minutes. It's not that big a deal. People will start calling Florida power and light like crazy being like what is going on, forgetting the fact that Hey, for the almost every single minute, not hour of your day throughout the year, You had your TV on. You're able to like play video games and like to say nothing of businesses and things with generators where they just never lose power. The element that's really hard when you work in this space is how much people take it for granted and then get angry when the little systems don't work for them. Now, imagine when infrastructure doesn't work for you everyday.
Beth: [00:07:51] And that's an important reminder. 940 million people across the world still do not have access to electricity. 3 billion [00:08:00] people don't have access to clean energy that they can use to cook indoors. Electricity is absolutely crucial to create living standards that allow people to thrive
Sarah: [00:08:08] And our economies to thrive and when we talk about that, the infrastructure that is the foundation for a growing and flourishing economy, the electrical grid that the United States has built over the past 100 years is absolutely essential to that and for the most part, people are willing to pay for it. Our listener survey showed that energy costs are fairly consistent across the country. The average monthly bill among our listeners was $150 to $170 a month. That was the same, whether you're living in the Northeast or the Midwest or the South.
Now we did have people tell us that they see those big fluctuations in energy costs so that monthly cost can really jump. Some listeners listed $450, even $600 as a peak charge for winter heat or summer air conditioning, depending on the location and we have listeners also who made the switch to solar and they want to talk about it. I want to talk about it a lot [00:09:00] and they want to make sure everybody understands that their electricity bill is actually zero and that sometimes they're even getting paid for their own energy production.
Beth: [00:09:08] Listen, I would talk about it all the time if we had it. It is our next goal to put solar panels on our roof to get in on that action. So while those people are a growing part of the population, people using solar and other forms of energy, we're still pretty reliant on coal and natural gas. That's about 61% of our national electricity production and we know that that mirrors our listener survey, about 60% of listeners use natural gas to heat their homes.
All of that energy does not go directly to our homes and businesses. About 65% of the energy inputs to the electric power sector are forgotten due to the conversion loss of electric power plants. That means most of our energy is lost in producing and transmitting more energy. 65% and producing energy uses [00:10:00] massive amounts of water. About 40% of the total water usage in the United States is tied up in creating more electricity. So when we talk about the need to get more efficient, effective, and environmentally friendly, we have opportunity on numerous dimensions.
Sarah: [00:10:16] Well, this is the other statistic, just like the wooden pipes that I was like, wait, what do you mean we lose all of it and just trying to produce it? Poor Adie, he was like, I'm not a physicist. I can't explain to you exactly what it is. I'm just telling you, in creating and trying to transmit the electricity, enormous amount of energy is lost. So for example, when it comes to solar, just based on the potential measurements of energy production, which is the process of semiconductor materials, creed, and energy, when they are exposed to light, US buildings alone could provide 39% of our national electricity needs. So there's all this opportunity for not just innovation, but more effective and efficient production of energy.
Adie Tomer: [00:10:58] The pricing on solar [00:11:00] cells is coming down so much. Look, we're gonna have a huge debate in this country because we don't manufacture the cheapest solar cells. So we're probably gonna be buying them globally to get our electricity onto more renewable source but that of course can bother American industries, which would love to sell their own solar panels to all of these consumers. Right? So the pricing keeps coming down, which is great, but we're not necessarily the ones we're pushing pricing down.
So we've got a huge opportunity to install these, both on rooftops, even bigger one is utility grade solar installations, which is by the way, that's what energy experts push much harder. They agree with the rooftop installation, but they'd love to kind of centralize it cause there's a whole bunch of business efficiencies for that. Either way, we're going to have to decide what's more important to do it as cheap as possible, or to try to potentially do it slower, a little bit more expensive, but help grow American business.
Beth: [00:11:51] It's interesting to me to think about the capacity of solar, because most of our energy is created through turbines, [00:12:00] right? We're trying to spin something to create that flow of electricity and when you have the ability to harness light and convert it directly into energy without that step in the process, you can imagine how much more efficient that is and how much more cost-effective it is and as Adie points out, we have some hard decisions to make because a lot of that semiconductor material, which is something we've talked a lot about on the nightly nuance, um, is manufactured throughout the world, but mostly not here. We have a very small share of that market in the United States and so the question is, do we want to get into this fast or do we want to slow it down and let American businesses catch up to make those parts so that it's adding to our economy on numerous levels instead of just a couple.
Sarah: [00:12:45] Well, I think what's so difficult about energy infrastructure and as we talk about the needed transition to more renewable energies is that it would be really great if we could just deal with the scientific reality and the [00:13:00] pragmatic data on the ground but that is, that's not how this works in a democracy. We also have the political reality that we really have to deal with and this entire debate really sets us apart from many of our international counterparts, both in our political debate over how to handle climate change in this transition to renewable energy and what Joseph Kane, who we heard from in the last episode describes as a lack of a national infrastructure.
Joseph Kane: [00:13:30] We're skipping a valuable step of why are we doing this to begin with? What's, what's the vision we have for, for our infrastructure nationally. Uh, many of our, our peers, internationally, uh, Canada, the UK, Australia, Japan, Germany, these countries all have national infrastructure. They have national infrastructure visions, where they look at collections of projects and collections of places and investments in those projects and then those places in [00:14:00] view of these bigger priorities, including I would argue climate issues, digitalization and technological change, workforce development. Once you build, build a facility, you actually have to manage and maintain it and that requires certainly human capital and people to be involved in that and then fiscal health. How are we going to be paying for this in a reliable and sustainable way?
Beth: [00:14:21] The question is how do we go about creating that national strategic vision in a country that is as complex, diverse and contentious?
Sarah: [00:14:31] Polarized.
Beth: [00:14:32] Yes
Adie Tomer: [00:14:33] A lot of the ways we manage these infrastructure issues is siloed, it's broken up at a federal level. That's also true down to, to a local and municipal level, whether you're a large metropolitan area or you're a rural locality. They're there different departments. There are different service areas for those departments. Our political boundaries don't necessarily define our infrastructure, service boundaries. Water utilities can often [00:15:00] stretch over many different municipal borders. They can match our watersheds for example, which don't necessarily naturally or geologically follow how we demarcated our cities or towns and so certainly a regional approach to these issues, I think makes sense and that these different infrastructure owners and operators can come together, begin to understand where their needs are actually overlapping, how they can build that collective capacity in planning, not just in investment per se, but in planning, to understand how they add up to a bigger whole for their region.
Sarah: [00:15:38] The geographic enormity of our country can make a unified infrastructure visions seem nearly impossible, but there are positives as well because different parts of our country can act as incubators or pilots for innovation.
Adie Tomer: [00:15:51] So a lot of places that are seeing larger and growing populations that are seeing increases in economic activity that provides the certainty [00:16:00] in terms of revenues, um, for utilities to take on a lot of these projects. Of course, in these regions too, you have leadership that tends to be more imaginative and that isn't necessarily a political thing. It's just because they have that extra capacity, they have the extra wiggle room to try new things, to try new types of designs and new projects. I like to emphasize the economic foundations of the region as being directly tied to well, how we invest in our infrastructure, period. Even though it is out of sight and out of mind, for many of us, the reason that it can be better performing or more forward-looking is directly tied to how our region is doing economically.
Sarah: [00:16:41] I think this is a really nice call back to our conversation surrounding water infrastructure and what we see when there is investment. There is not just more money and political wiggle room, but there also is more capacity to [00:17:00] invest in the future and not just invest in the future monetarily, but invest in the future with smart ideas and innovative thinking and really forward looking leadership and I think that's really a call to action for all of us and in our communities, whether it's a growing community that has that bigger base of rate payers, but back to, you know, that ongoing conversation about how we act more like citizens than just consumers and so how we really provide support and advocate for this type of investment and advocate for this type of innovation in our own local communities.
Now, that's not to say that even if your entire community shows up as the gold star citizens that they are, there still won't be some politics [00:18:00] involved because the reality is we're really never going to be able to fully disentangle these discussions from politics.
Beth: [00:18:05] And the reality is we do not have unlimited resources. Even if we had unlimited dollars, the resources themselves are constrained in ways or constrained by our understanding of how to use them and so we really have to look at money as investments and we also simultaneously have to recognize that we must put some money in places that do not have a huge rate of return because we cannot allow parts of America that are not currently growing, that don't currently feel like economic engines to fall too far behind. That one, is immoral and two, really limits the economic growth potential for the rest of the country at some point. So again, we don't want to be in, as Joseph Kane put it when he was talking to me, like a duct tape and chewing gum approach to certain sections of the country. We have to think [00:19:00] in a much more strategic way about where we put dollars and what we invest in.
Sarah: [00:19:06] One component of turning from a consumer mindset to a citizen mindset is moving from a transactional idea around our utilities that we give you money, you give us this and that's the end of the story. We're expanding beyond just a transactional model. The other component I think is that our timeline needs to expand when we're thinking as a citizen, that we're moving beyond just, what does this mean right now? What does this project mean in my life right now, or even five years from now, or even 10 years from now that we have to expand far into the future and we have to think about what we want these utilities to look like for our kids and our grandkids and so I think that's the other component.
And then I think exactly what you just named. The other component of taking that citizen mindset, moving outside of the individual perspective, right, that this is really [00:20:00] about me, but that it is about me as one member of the group, right and so we are only, especially when it comes to infrastructure, not to like preach a gospel, but it's really about the least of these, right? Like the weakest part of the infrastructure is something that we should all keep ever present in our mind, even if we live in the strongest part of the infrastructure and I think the electrical grid is a perfect place to examine that because we have that history.
We have history of parts of the United States, not cutting electricity for decades after other parts of the United States and we know that was a drag on those, those areas of the country economies and their economies are a part of our economy and I think that keeping all that layered complexity and our interconnectedness, if we can't keep that interconnectedness front of mind when we're talking about a literal grid that interconnects all of us, then man, we have our [00:21:00] challenges.
Beth: [00:21:00] The grid is a beautiful metaphor for how we need to operate, right? That you must have some redundancy that you must have some overlap that you must kind of borrow sometimes and sometimes you put more in than you're using, and that there's shared costs and shared responsibility for it. I don't think we need to put all our chips in one type of renewable energy, right? As we look at an approach that includes solar, geothermal, biomass, nuclear perhaps. You know, as we think about where we're headed, a lot of it is not going to feel good to us as consumers.
We might have moments where we think I just cannot fathom that this wind situation works and I think we have to trust that the people thinking about this really want it to work consistently and reliably all the time and are considering those factors but it reminds me of our conversation about water reclamation. That sitting in my house, the idea that water is part of our sewage and then gets cleaned up for me to drink it, [00:22:00] that doesn't feel awesome. I have questions about it, but I also have read enough to be convinced that it works and that it is safe and it's not only safe, but it's responsible and I think we've got. Kind of take that leap of faith with renewable sources of energy as well.
Maybe, maybe it doesn't feel to me like wind is reliable, but that's because I cannot fathom the scale of the grid and all of the redundancies and the interconnectedness in it and how we are miraculously able to deliver electricity across millions of miles through that interconnection.
Sarah: [00:22:33] Well, and I think that interconnectedness as it pertains to the grid is, is an excellent jumping off point to consider other parts of this particular infrastructure, but how this applies to all parts of our infrastructure, which is, you know, we talk about the pipes or we talk about the electricity grid or we talk about the roads. We talk about these, these physical assets, but every physical asset [00:23:00] that we have put in place as a part of an infrastructure to prop up the functioning of our communities and our country are themselves propped up by infrastructure, by human infrastructure. The human capital that not only lays the pipes, maintains the grid, builds the potholes, but is thinking about how to store when an energy is out there doing the research and doing the science or the technological infrastructure that props up.
Water, energy, transportation. Like that's another, this human capital and this technological foundation is fundamental to every piece of our infrastructure, particularly the electricity grid and when we talk about transitioning to renewable energy, that's a huge point, a political contention, and we hear it from our listeners all the time. Well, when we think about changes to our energy infrastructure, What's [00:24:00] going to happen to all those jobs. When we transition away from fossil fuels, what's going to happen to those jobs. What's kind of happened to the communities whose economies are dependent on fossil fuel energy and I think that, you know, naming that and owning that and discussing that is really important and valuing that human infrastructure that props up all these essential components of our lives is going to have to be a part of the conversation is going to have to be a part of the process as we transition to renewable energy.
Beth: [00:24:35] You know, having this conversation from Kentucky and so, you know, we have family members who have worked in coal mines. We have family members who have experienced the danger and the health jeopardy of working in coal mines, along with the financial security of it. I had a conversation with one of our listeners, Christine in preparation for this series that centered a lot around adjust [00:25:00] transition for people who work in oil, for people who work in coal and it really helped me get clear about how much our attitudes about infrastructure connect so deeply to our values.
I hope that you heard some of that in our water discussion and as we talk about the fact that we need to invest in making sure everybody has reliable access to electricity, you know, that's also about our values and thinking about job loss is also a valuable component and making sure that we don't leave people behind as we make these transitions. What Christine helped me understand and we heard this from Adie and Joseph Kane as well, is that the skill set does translate quite nicely. If you know energy, you can make the transition to renewables. Now is every job going to be exactly the same? No and there is a hard reality that some of the jobs are going to be in different [00:26:00] locations.
Some of the jobs are going to require different skill sets. They're going to be different types of jobs and that's difficult. The flip side of that difficulty is that there is so much opportunity to create really good jobs around some of this renewable energy and even folks who don't transition from energy today to renewable energy tomorrow are folks that we need to put our arms around and figure out what is next for you as we make these transitions and also not to just belabor electricity metaphors, but it's not going to be a light switch. It's not like moving toward renewable. It's toward, right? Not to. We're not going to immediately be done with all coal and gas as we make this shift.
Sarah: [00:26:41] Well, and the reality is that this human infrastructure has not been maintained either. The reality is that this workforce, this energy workforce is 80% male when half of our total labor force is female so there are already struggling to fill some of [00:27:00] these jobs and the reality is that there aren't just issues of gender and diversity within the workforce, but there are also issues of age.
Adie Tomer: [00:27:08] It's grey. It's way too white, meaning relative to our overall demographics so there are all these awesome career paths and not just for those who wear hard hats, which by the way, is not a male profession. It's just a hard hat. Women and men can wear hard hats, right. But it's also a range of, let's say engineering professionals, freight workers, right. Including at warehouses, right who move stuff around. It's people work inside government like environmental scientists who make sure our communities are staying safe. So there's a huge range of jobs here. You know, it's over 10% of our workforce. It's bigger than a whole other sectors of the economy. You're talking 17 million workers right now and if those big bets we're hearing coming out of Washington, we're talking potentially $2 trillion over 10 years in new spending.
You know, we're going to need a whole lot of workers to help execute those projects. Again, to [00:28:00] design them, to build them and to operate them. It's a big upside for the economy and last point that really matters here when folks are going okay, well, that sounds great, but I know that the jobs that are growing in economy right now, right, they require a college degree. There's all these barriers century. That's not the case. Most of these jobs, these are classic blue collar jobs outside of those advanced, kind of truly advanced science jobs like engineering. These do not require often four, if even at two year post high school degree and they will train you on the job. So as people are looking for new careers, this is a really important area to look into, and we've got a lot of exciting work.
Beth: [00:28:35] And so I asked Joseph, I hear that we're going to have these exciting new jobs. Tell me about what they are?
Adie Tomer: [00:28:42] There are many different types of careers here, not just jobs, but careers involved in skilled trades. There's an emphasis on STEM skills or science technology skills. There's an emphasis on, on the job training, uh, that many of these opportunities depend on [00:29:00] work-based learning and so when you think of the types of experience and skills that workers need to translate to realize better opportunity, it can't just be about a singular construction job on one project over the next couple of years, but it's actually about these long-term multi-decade careers involved in operation and maintenance and there's multiple branches in career pathways. Whether you're a technician and engineer, a water treatment operator, you know, you name it and the fact is there are many different steps to these careers, depending on the amount of experience and skills you build.
Sarah: [00:29:36] So we have this human infrastructure that needs maintenance and investment in innovation because it's graying and there's problems, particularly that we need to address so we can make adjustments and transition to renewable energies, but there's also this issue of technology. Not only that we are using technology to make the most efficient and effective use of the energy sources, but also [00:30:00] weaknesses in our security that exposes us to lots of vulnerabilities. I mean, we all saw that recently with the ransomware attack on the colonial pipeline and our infrastructure at all levels, but particularly our energy infrastructure is very vulnerable to these types of cyber attacks and a vulnerable energy infrastructure is a national security issue.
Beth: [00:30:24] I've been thinking about this because everything I'm reading suggests that the more we see information about our usage of water, of electricity, et cetera, the better we'll be in managing our own personal uses of that energy and I totally agree with that and as I was reading about it, I kept thinking doesn't that make us even more vulnerable to hacking. If something in my house is measuring and displaying for me, how much energy or water I'm using, doesn't that increase the likelihood that someone can come in and hack it and then the secretary of energy, Jennifer Granholm just [00:31:00] tells us on a Sunday morning show, we're already vulnerable. Another country already has the capacity to come in and just shut down our entire grid.
News Anchor: [00:31:09] You told Congress last month that using the energy sector needs to do better at defending itself against cyber threats and just so people understand, most of the energy sector, most of how we get power in this country is the private sector. It's not, it's not government. Do you think that adversaries of the United States have the capability right now to shut down the power grid?
Jennifer Granholm: [00:31:32] Uh, yeah, they do. I mean, I think that there are very malign actors who are trying, even as we speak, there are thousands of attacks on all aspects of the energy sector and the private sector generally. The meat plant, for example. We it's happening all the time and this is why the private sector and the public sector have to work together. And this is what the president is doing. He's working with our allies, he's working with countries around the world because [00:32:00] other countries, even Russia, they don't want to see their sectors attacked by malign actors, by rogue non-state actors, not to mention state actors. So working with other countries, working with the private sector, working inside of our own government, the president has issued these executive orders to make sure that our own house is in order, making sure that citizens are able to protect themselves.
Beth: [00:32:25] So just having that awareness, I don't think it's a moment to step into fear about adding technology to our grid. It's just a reminder that securing those systems also costs money, also creates jobs, also creates opportunity for people, but it requires significant focus and innovation.
Sarah: [00:32:48] I think there's an important moment of clarity as we talk [00:33:00] about all these layers of investment and innovation needed in our electrical grid, because it's at a moment of transition in a way I think many other pieces of our infrastructure isn't and transitions are hard. Transitions are hard in your personal life. Transitions are hard in a community. So when we're talking about the transition of a massive piece of our national infrastructure, a transition, because we're moving to more technological solutions, transition because we have a graying workforce that's going to need to be either retrained or invested in a completely new way and transition because we're moving to another type of energy and we didn't even really get into the electrical grid we currently have and all the maintenance that it needs.
So we're trying to maintain the boat while we're trying to build a completely new ship, all while at sea [00:34:00] and I think just acknowledging that and, and seeing that clearly is, is key because this is when we talk about being a good citizen in relationship to our energy grid, it feels like this piece of the puzzle is going to involve a lot more personal choices, personal awareness, prioritization than other pieces of our infrastructure.
Beth: [00:34:30] It also to me, to me is the clearest example of the fact that status quo is not an option. We cannot do nothing around our electrical grid, even if we wanted to. Even if we wanted to say forever and always we're going to run on coal and natural gas in the United States, we can't do it. The rest of the world is moving on. Technology is advancing to the point where we're not going to want products that work the way products today work. Climate [00:35:00] change is necessitating these shifts and so the best thing we can do is put our problem solving hats on and sit down together and say, okay, what are our values? How do we ensure that we do this in an equitable way? How do we ensure that that it's a net gain for everyone as we move forward? And I really believe the more I learn about these techniques.
That that is possible that it's not only the difficulty of the transition, but like many transitions, the possibility of the next step is so much healthier for all of us and so much richer in terms of opportunity and so much more just, just on its own terms because the energy is cleaner. So I'm excited about where we're going here and I hope that we can all kind of dig in and keep learning and feeling that excitement to kind of move us through the pain of the shift.
Sarah: [00:35:54] I just think we have to increase our capacity for change and I think if we look back, we have more capacity than we [00:36:00] give ourselves credit for. We started this episode talking about the incandescent light bulb, which nobody uses anymore. We all use led light bulbs, right and so I think just acknowledging that we do have capacity for massive change. You and I are turning 40. When we were born, nobody use cell phones, right? Like we have the capacity to dramatically shift our practices and our products and our budgets to adapt to more costs. You know, people found room in their budgets for cell phones and they're not cheap.
So I think that just reminding ourselves that we can do this and that nothing stays the same, especially when it comes to infrastructure and not just that, you know, like we talked about with water that we need to maintain it for the normal changes of everyday life, but that we have some big existential changes, like climate change and renewable energy on the horizon and just reminding ourselves that we do have the capacity to change and that we do do it and even [00:37:00] if there some of those aren't particularly slow, but we manage them just the same.
Adie Tomer: [00:37:04] There's a famous Churchill quote that I'm going to totally butcher. That's basically like give the Americans every opportunity to do the wrong thing until they do the right thing. I think we're kind of at that stage now where I think, I think we've been building roads like a drunk sailor, just like keep winding our roads. Who's going to pay for it and who cares? We'll figure it out. We've been losing so much water. You know, we talked about the power loss, but like the amount of water we lose to underground. This energy system where, you know, every time you drive by a power plant and you see those smokestacks, you're just like. It's almost like watching a crash and you don't want to look at it. You know, that someone's giving you power and it's shameful.
I actually think we're at that stage where folks are exhausted of doing the wrong thing and they know enough to start doing the right thing. I'm also hopeful because I really do believe this. We have such an all-star team in Washington inside the [00:38:00] federal government right now. So I mean, Congress sure too, and there's great staff all over the place there, but I have no problem saying it's on the record. I mean, the professionalism of the current administration under Biden is so fantastic and so they really want to make a difference and they want to advance to this more equitable and kind of sustainable approach to infrastructure and that's why I think you're seeing it.
It's the number one priority of them now that they got, you know, the recovery plan over the finish line. This is what they want to hang their ha on, politically by the way. I think they want a private run on this in 22. So they really want to get over the finish line. So when you combine all this, we know what we've been doing wrong, we know now what to do, right and we've got actors who want to help us do the right thing. That's a really potent combination.
So I think we're going to look back on this period, honestly the way we now look back on what our grand and great grandparents did during the new deal and be like, you know, what they knew what to do in terms of investment and they made the necessary investments. I really think we're going to look back on this. It's not gonna be just one year. It's going to be five plus years or [00:39:00] so we're going to look back with the world and be like, that was the time. That was the moment when you finally did the right thing.
Beth: [00:39:05] So we ended our water episode asking how to live as good water citizens. How can we live as good energy citizens? I think just like with water, the first step is to understand where our power comes from, who is providing it? Do you have renewable options available in your area or not? What can you learn about those options if they are available? We can think about our own energy usage. We do have access to that information. We can certainly watch how much electricity we're using every month and think about whether we're using it wisely in ways that are consistent with our values, and then getting on board to support those renewable energy efforts and thinking about where we can make a difference in ensuring that that transition is the best one.
Sarah: [00:39:48] Well, and I think there's room inside good citizenship with regards to this particular piece of our national infrastructure to also [00:40:00] advocate for a healthier model of consumerism, right? To have conversations with your friends and your family and inside your community to say, yeah, I invested in solar panels and I'm really glad I did or I invested in switching out, you know, every light bulb or I went to my local city commission and I advocated that our streetlights moved to led just to you know, say I'm willing to pay more. This is important to me. Those conversations, it's not just our, you know, Our choices that we're making when it comes to energy and energy consumption, that matters but it's like the way we talk about them among our friends and family and the way we say, like it was worth it, right. This was worth it for me to pay for and I'm glad I paid more and I think it was a good investment in my family and in my community and in the future.
Beth: [00:40:51] And look, those things can solve multiple problems at one time. We put a sensor in our laundry room because it's the [00:41:00] kind of entrance to our house through the garage and you guys, I turned that laundry room light off about 600 times a day prior to putting the sensor in there. It was a constant source of frustration that people would walk in, flip the light on, not turn it off and putting that sensor in. It's fun.
You know, it just, it tickles my girls that they walk into the room and the light switches on, and it has solved the problem of us fighting over who has switched the light off and it really makes a difference in how much energy we use in our house. It's a small thing, but those small things add up and I do think we tend to talk about these transitions in such burdensome ways, in ways that sounds so negative and come from such a place of scarcity when the opportunities in front of us are to like walk into more abundance because of how we're using technology and our resourceS.
Sarah: [00:41:52] Well, and I can hear, I can hear the cute millennials who think that matter, geriatric millennials IF people are being particularly cruel, who thinks it [00:42:00] matters if you turn your lights off and what it really matters is like who you vote for and this is an existential crisis and we have to dial it up and that's all true. I th you know, both things can be true. You can make individual choices and also advocate for societal change and advocate for power shifts and national leadership that prioritizes renewable energies, not just, you know, in Congress, but in your local power utility. But I think that every little conversation we have in every little choice, we have not just adds up in the moment, but we don't know the ripple effects of that, right.
Like, you know, we don't know that when your daughter see that you prioritize this and find that it's fun and engaging that, that, you know, opened up something inside them, that, that, that becomes a priority in their work and their future and I just think that that is really, especially because we, we spend a lot of time on this particular piece of infrastructure and jobs and the human component that is so essential to making sure [00:43:00] where adaptable moving forward into the future that exhibiting those values and valuing innovation and adaptability and not being afraid of change and not operating out of scarcity, that is not only an investment in our present time, but as really an investment in the future and investing in the future of our infrastructure is really, and, you know, it's investing in all of our futures.
Beth: [00:43:23] Yeah, we can take a shot at geriatric millennials because that's who we are and that sends sometimes too. What difference does it make if we recycle? What really matters is industrial waste. Like I can get myself in that place, but then I bring in what I hope is a healthy dose of earnestness and realize that my individual actions are about developing a heart for the work and that heart can spread to my people and spreading that heart to my people is how we elect candidates who care about climate change and how we have even business leaders elevated who can bring [00:44:00] that sensibility to these issues. More of us have to have the ethos in order to see those collective action type results and so practicing it in small ways, I think contributes to that stream. It's just like my little cell of the grid, right but I'm trying to do my part here.
Sarah: [00:44:18] It's a piece of that vision that we were talking about before that is essential. There is a pragmatic reality to infrastructure, but cynicism can't be a part of it. Cynicism doesn't build trust. Cynicism, doesn't build political moment but hope does, and a vision for something better and a belief that something better is available to us most certainly does and I think that that's an essential component, not only to conversations surrounding infrastructure, but the work of infrastructure itself.
Beth: [00:44:47] I fully embrace the improv mentality about electricity in particular. It's a yes and. I don't hear people out there making invalid points about electricity very often. We have to hold a [00:45:00] bunch of complex things together. And just keep looking for new answers because the most beautiful thing about electricity is that we have this long history of figuring it out and if we were able to figure it out in Thomas Edison's time, I know that we can figure out what's in front of us.
Sarah: [00:45:17] And to Adie's point that Americans, you know, get every opportunity to do the wrong thing until they do the right thing. I always think about all the time that we were so dependent on whale oil, to the point where there were almost no whales left. Now I don't want to get to that point. I'm not advocating that point, but there is a history of us walking up to the edge and being like, okay, never mind, we're not going to do this anymore and turning around and going in a different direction. We don't have to advocate for that shift. That shift is happening. When it comes to renewable energy period and not just because everybody wants to be good people because there's money to be made and that's a real motivating factor for Americans and everybody else. We have to see that part as clearly as we do the challenges directly in front of us.
Beth: [00:45:59] Well, [00:46:00] thank you for considering this topic with us. We are going to move into transportation on our next episode and we hope that you'll join us again for more Infrastructure in Real Life.
Sarah: [00:46:15] Infrastructure in Real Life was produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director. Megan Hart is our community engagement manager.
Beth: Special thanks to every expert who spoke to us for this series and our series contributors: Alyssa Maxwell, Monte Lawson, Courtney Verclare and Jordan Bond.
Sarah: Ray Creative and Kathleen Shannon put together the very cool groovy graphics for this series. You can purchase a companion book box for the series and join our extra credit book club through Wild Geese bookshop.
Beth: Our show is listener supported. Special thanks to our executive producers.
Executive Producers (Read their own names): Martha Bronitsky, Linda Daniel, Ali Edwards, Janice Elliot, Sarah Greepup, Julie Haller, Helen Handley, Tiffany Hassler, Barry Kaufman, Molly Kohrs.
The Kriebs, Laurie LaDow, Lilly McClure, David McWilliams, Jared Minson, Emily Neesley, Danny Ozment, The Pentons, Tawni Peterson, Tracy Puthoff, Sarah Ralph, Jeremy Sequoia, Karin True.
Beth: Amy Whited, Joshua Allen, Morgan McHugh, Nichole Berklas, Paula Bremer and Tim Miller
Sarah: To support Pantsuit Politics, and receive lots of bonus features, visit patreon.com/pantsuit politics.
Beth: You can connect with us on our website, PantsuitPoliticsShow.com. Sign up for our weekly emails and follow us on Instagram @PantsuitPolitics.
Sarah: [00:47:44] What's the vision we have for our infrastructure, nationally,
Beth: [00:47:47] I don't know where you went. Oh, you have skipped way ahead.
Sarah: [00:47:50] Oh, I did. There was there's the job section, damn it.
Beth: [00:47:55] I was like, where are we?
Sarah: [00:47:56] But I want this part, okay but I like this.
Beth: [00:47:59] Yeah, I think [00:48:00] that's fine. I just, I got lost. Okay. So thanks for playing along with cut and paste with Sarah and Beth, everybody.
Sarah: [00:48:05] I know, right.