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TRANSCRIPT
[Energy Solutions theme music plays]
Todd Snitchler, President and CEO, EPSA
Welcome to the Energy Solutions podcast, where we showcase the voices and stories behind a changing energy grid. Stay tuned for a special announcement at the end of the episode.
Our guest this episode is Christina Hayes, executive director of the Americans for a Clean Energy Grid, a nonprofit consisting of a diverse group from the energy industry, including transmission developers, utilities, renewable developers, and more.
One of ACEG’s main focuses is to improve the transmission permitting process to bring more capacity to the grid where it’s needed most.
I’m your host, Todd Snitchler, President and CEO of the Electric Power Supply Association. In this episode, you’ll hear what drives ACEG to make change for the reliability, affordability, and sustainability of the future grid.
You’ll hear an intricate breakdown of why exactly transmission is Christina and her members’ number 1 priority, and what other issues she would like policymakers to pay attention to.
And, you’ll hear what Christina sees as the needed approach to the energy trilemma – that is, building a reliable, cost-effective, and clean energy future for Americans.
Here’s Christina.
Christina, thank you very much for taking some time to chat with me today. We’re glad to have you join us. I’m not sure everybody knows about a really well crafted op-ed, that two people put out a couple of weeks ago. So I want to thank you for your help in sharing some views where people, people may not think we have some commonality, but it turns out we actually do.
Christina Hayes, Executive Director, Americans for a Clean Energy Grid (ACEG)
My pleasure.
Todd Snitchler
And we’re going to talk about some of that as we go through our conversation today. But I certainly appreciate your willingness to do that and try to show that there are opportunities for people to partner that might seem like they’re strange bedfellows, but it actually does make a lot of sense. So, I wanted to thank you. Before we get started.
Christina Hayes
Absolutely. The energy world is small, right? We come from a common background state regulatory, federal regulatory, a lot of common interests. I think we all want the system to work well.
Todd Snitchler
Indeed. And we are going to cover all of that. So before we really get started, can you talk a little about ACEG and I have to say it because even though it’s on your logo up there that people can’t see, I always want to make sure I get it right. So the Americans for clean energy grid, people who aren’t familiar with the organization, what is it? What are your objectives and kind of what are the things that you’re working on?
Christina Hayes
I appreciate that. So we call it “A-Seg.” Some folks sometimes call it “A-Keg.” I don’t know what party they’re going to. It might be a little different, but ACEG is a 501C3. It is a nonprofit. We are a diverse coalition of labor groups and environmental groups, clean energy buyers, renewable developers, transmission developers, utilities, and on and on and on, focused on the need for high-capacity transmission as the most cost effective and reliable way to decarbonize the grid. So often transmission is the thing that gets left on the cutting room floor. We’ve seen it time and time again, right? There was the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, transmission fell out. “Oh, next time.” When Build Back Better became the Inflation Reduction Act, again, transmission: left on the cutting room floor, pushed off to siting and permitting. We’re still looking for siting and permitting reform, so because transmission is so often the thing that’s put off, we are a targeted group that works closely with a lot of other trades in town. So we have utility members who are part of EEI. We work with ACP and ACORE and SEIA and so many others who recognize transmission as a really important part of the energy equation that so often is left as an afterthought.
Todd Snitchler
Yeah. You really point to some of the very critical issues that are facing our sector and our our industry more broadly at the moment.
Let’s take two steps back. Kind of. How did you get into energy and how did you get where you are today over the course of your career?
Christina Hayes
I appreciate that question. So I was always interested in public policy, public interest. You know, my dad served in the military, you know, I came from a family where that was really important. And so, the idea of serving the public interest was always really important to me. So I literally started paging in the state legislature when I was 12 years old, like I was always interested in public policy, and I worked in every branch of state and federal government. My state being, my home state of Oregon and energy as a component to that I I came to that kind of through that journey through public policy, so it was in law school when I started working for the Public Utility Commission of Oregon as a law clerk for the ALJ’s. That was really interesting experience. I also was in DC for the Telco act of ‘96, you know, just to completely date myself. [Laughs] But it was interesting to see how these utilities that are intrinsic to everyone’s lives, I mean, it’s really what makes us a first world country, how it how strongly they’re impacted by public policy and how it intersects with industry. And so working through—and then I kept running into energy sort of on accident. When I was in law school, I spent time working for a 9th circuit judge, who had been a Public Utility Commissioner, I clerked for a judge on the Oregon Court of Appeals. My whole interview revolved around the Hope Standard. Like who else nerds out about the Hope Standard, right? And so from there I went to the, I was an ALJ at the Oregon Public Utility Commission, and that was a fascinating experience, really focused on the public interest. And at that time, the local utility, Portland General Electric, was owned by ENRON.
Todd Snitchler
Everybody’s got an ENRON connection every time we go through this exercise. Everyone has an ENRON.
Christina Hayes
Oh, right? [Laughs] It’s everywhere. So there was the ENRON piece. When Berkshire Hathaway Energy acquired Pacific Corp, I was around for that. That was a fascinating experience. And so just seeing how utility and utility regulation intersected with everyone’s lives, right? So energy is only 5% of GDP. But is it the first 5%? From the Oregon Public Utility Commission, I went to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for nearly a decade. I worked on the 11th floor for Chairman Wellinghoff. It was a fascinating experience. I was with the law firm. I made it about 15 minutes, I think, and decided that that was my billing time was up. My billing increment was quite over. [Laughs] And then I went to the parent company, and I went to work for Berkshire Hathaway Energy for about 7 years. Parent company of Pacific Corp, NV Energy and Mid-American as the vice president of federal regulatory affairs. And so working on rulemakings, making sure that folks in the states knew what’s happening in DC and making sure that folks in DC understood the impacts of their of their policies in the states. And you know, especially when you get those calls, there’s a big storm coming and, you know, a big heat wave and we’re worried about being able to keep the lights on. So many so many, you know, resource issues and you know, just really interesting things from that side. And transmission was a huge part of the equation. There’s a huge amount of focus on transmission development and really what it means for making sure that the grid is ready for what comes next, you know?
Berkshire Hathaway Energy Berkshire Hathaway really has a long view, as you can imagine when you know the person who heads up your company is in his 90s, you tend to take the long view right? You know, because you’re thinking about it for generations. And that’s really a great perspective to have on what energy means to the quality of the country. And so from there to leading ACEG, which has really been a treat, I’ve built up the team. I was the first steady employee, so open up an office. I’m about 3 blocks from FERC, three blocks from the United States Senate. And we’ve built up the teams where we have a legislative guru, a regulatory guru, and I’m learning communications like this podcast, so important and really enjoying working with all the different parts of DC—inside DC and also outside DC, on the evolution of the energy industry.
Todd Snitchler
Yeah, I know you’ve been in and out because I’ve seen you in both places doing work and various panels and programs, so I can certainly commend you for the amount of miles that you’re putting on. While we all try to solve some of these problems. And I think your really deep experience—and I mean that as as sincerely as one can—you have a broad and deep background in the energy space, your perspective about the energy trilemma is perhaps better informed than most given the experience that you’ve had both the state and the federal level. So, the push and pull that exists between reliability and cost and sustainability or environmental goals. Put whatever label on you want to put on it. How are you looking at that in your current role, given your significant background and really you come from a different part of the country where hydro is a thing and environmental goals are a thing, and then you come to other parts of the country where those issues just aren’t the same, but you’ve seen kind of the full depth and breadth of what’s facing us. So I’m really interested in your perspective about the energy trilemma because you really bring a fulsome view to it.
Christina Hayes
I appreciate that question. Nothing in the energy industry happens quickly, right? This is the Titanic; we’re trying to make sure that we don’t sink it, right? We’re trying to keep this afloat. And part of that means that, you know, taking all of the factors into consideration as decisions are made without expecting any rapid changes in one direction or another. Part of the challenge is you can set yourself up for analysis paralysis, you know, let’s make sure that we have all three pieces balanced at all times, and then you end up doing nothing, which is really unfortunate, you know, and we’ve seen that, I think about transmission development after Order 1000, right? I always insist “That was meant to be iterative!” You know, in energy policy, things are constantly changing and mistakes are being made and you need to take another look, you know. Are we doing things right? Do we need to make adjustments? And you know, a lot of transmission buildout after Order 1000 really got sort of frozen in place and that’s not right. We need to shake the snow globe. We need to, you know, take another look. Figure out, you know, take another crack at rebalancing those three factors, as you said, because not doing anything is not an option, right? The rest of the world is not standing still, and it will only get worse if we give up trying to balance the pieces. But that’s honestly why we support the build out of high capacity transmission, that’s the best way really to balance to think about how to accommodate as many different needs on the system as possible at once, rather than one of my favorite terms is spaghettification. You know, building a transmission line to every single resource, and that’s the most expensive way to do things. So really kind of taking a step back, trying to take an honest assessment of what’s coming around the corner and iterating, you know, on regular intervals rather than getting frozen in place, you know. Come up with a transmission plan. Build it. OK, now do it again. MISO is doing that really well where they, you know, built out what, 10, 12 years ago? And then they started running out of capacity. Well, let’s do it again. As opposed to in Texas, where they did a great job of it 12 years ago and then they forgot to do it again! So, you know, they’re starting to run into capacity problems.
Todd Snitchler
So I think I know based on your last answer where you may be headed with this, but I’m curious what you view as the most significant challenge or opportunity to solving the energy transition. You know, that’s a term I don’t really care for. I like “energy expansion” because I think we’re gonna need more and we’re gonna need to be able to move it, as you said, to where it’s going to be needed. But if we’re going to have reliable, cost effective and clean energy that’s deliverable across the country, I mean. [remove pause] I think I know at least one of your answers will be, but what do you think of the biggest hurdles or opportunities that we’ve got to address?
Christina Hayes
[Laughs] I think I think you’ve guessed already. and I think we use all the same words. I mean I agree with you in terms of an energy expansion, and evolution, and you know, and resources do change. How—we have a lot of older resources on the system, that you know, are aging out and need to be repowered or redeployed or replaced. I mean, there are a lot of different, a lot of different things that are happening on the system. It’s a very large country, right. There are a lot of things that need to happen on the system, OK. So if I’m not allowed to say transmission, which is of course the answer. It’s getting everybody else to think about transmission as the answer. How about that?
So thinking about it from the state perspective, for instance, you know you, we both come from O states, right? You know from the State Commission perspective. You know, if you’re looking at an integrated resource plan and you’re looking at the generation mix, you’re only looking at part of the solution. You know, if you’re trying to keep costs down for one piece.
You’re not looking at the overall, the overall picture. And so thinking about co-optimizing, coming up with the best system of looking at transmission costs with generation costs, the best combination, providing geographic diversity, resource diversity, that kind of reliability and resilience that gets built into the system. If you’re not relying on one particular kind of thing from one particular place. So yeah, I’m a little bit jealous, to be honest. You know, with Ohio having, you know, robust access to both PJM and MISO at the time, right? Or is it now only PJM only now?
Todd Snitchler
It’s only PJM now. It was both historically.
Christina Hayes
Ohh see you had it made, where you had access to, you know, most of the eastern interconnect and all of the resources that are available and, you know, having that wide variety of resources really provides a kind of reliability and resilience access to the lowest cost resources that are out there. You know, let’s bring more things on the system. Wherever you know, wherever they might be, and so building out the wires to access low-cost generation really is where we need to be going.
Todd Snitchler
I thought you might have included permitting and siting as some of the things that are opportunities that need to be addressed.
Christina Hayes
Ohh, good! Well, and siting and permitting is perfect to bring up today because as we know, there is legislation currently pending in Congress. And we have been told pretty much since it passed the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee several months ago that no further thought was going to be given to that bill until the lame duck session began after the election, so this a little bit, you know, with the election being held today, it’s a little bit of like a starting gun, everybody’s pleased and ready, ready to take on.
Todd Snitchler
Right. What may actually happen?
Christina Hayes
Wouldn’t it be great to finally have something happen? Right. So this is a holdover from 2022, and you could tell, so Senators Manchin and Barrasso really developed this, you know, with their staffs together. And they really kept a pretty close hold on it, right?
Todd Snitchler
Yes, they did.
Christina Hayes
And in 2022, they came out with a product and you can see that they really listened. They took a lot of feedback. But then in 2024, they have come out with their bill. And yeah, I’m waiting to see what happens next.
Todd Snitchler
The other issue, aside from permitting and sitting, of course, that’s on everyone’s mind, is rising demand. We had a whole conference about Co-location on Friday at FERC last Friday as we’re recording this. And you’re seeing virtually every part of the country at some level of an increase in rising demand. We haven’t seen that really anywhere in 20 years, probably maybe even a little longer.
Do you think we’re going to be able to get the power that we need on the system as well as move it from where it will be generated to where it needs to be or are you troubled by the difficulties we have with building big things right now? Because the challenge before us is pretty sizable, and it’s going to require a lot of moving parts to all happen simultaneously. I’m curious your perspective because you’re sort of the delivery vehicle for some of the electrons that are produced to ultimately where they need to be utilized. [cut pause]
Christina Hayes
I think to be in energy policy you have to be an optimist and take the long view. So I’m going to say of course we’re going to solve it, Todd, we’ve got this. [Laughs]
Todd Snitchler
[Laughs] That Hathaway thing really that like, it stuck.
Christina Hayes
[Laughs] Yeah, so I’ve been thinking about this a little since this might be like the third call about this subject today. And I’m sure everyone’s in the same boat. It’s requiring us to use muscles that we haven’t had to use in quite some time, and so, you know, we haven’t had to build big in quite a while between energy efficiency and, you know, not needing a lot of new demand for quite a while, you know, sending things overseas, we haven’t needed to build a lot of new things quickly in quite a while, which is unfortunate. So a lot of lessons that we had learned before, like there is one grid, right. We all do better. We, it is the most cost-effective thing, cost effective system, when we are all on the same grid. When you have two grids, that gets more expensive, it gets more difficult, and we saw that a little bit in the FERC order that came out 15 minutes after the Co-Location Tech Conference ended. And so I think there are some short-term solutions.
Todd Snitchler
Right.
Christina Hayes
I think there are a lot of solutions out there, and we need to do a lot of work to get there is to build out the transmission and the generation more robustly to meet the need and that’s going to require much better load forecasting at the regional transmission position. You know, right now it’s being done through load, serving entities and utilities. Which is, you know, I completely understand that. You know, those are their customers and you know when I worked for the parent company of envy energy, you know their biggest load were casinos. Casinos were great load, but data farms are on such a much bigger scale and it’s difficult to, when you look at utilities having to double their footprint overnight practically, that is really, really hard to do. And so, working with load serving entities, but also looking at a bigger level, at the regional level, I think is going to make it easier to put the pieces together to be able to digest this really, really large load, these large load requests that are out there, so I’m really hopeful that we can do that better through regional transmission planning through larger generation procurement.
I’ll. I’ll detour here just a minute. We took a we took a family trip over spring break. We were in a third world country. I had always wanted to hike Machu Picchu. We had had a great time but but because I can never turn off the transmission piece, we’re driving through kind of their equivalent of Yellowstone, this huge national park and I asked the local guide—we had, you know, these big beautiful transmission lines. “What do you think of those?” And she was like, “Well, we hate them.” “Oh, you know, it ruins the landscape” or, “You know, you know, the natural wildlife.” And she’s like, “No. The large companies put them up, but they bypassed the communities. We’re still getting a couple hours of power a day from diesel generators. We would love to be able to access that energy.” She’d grown up in the area and you know, 20 years earlier when she’d been a child, you know, she used to bathe in the hot springs. Like, they didn’t have running water. They didn’t get electricity till she was 18. And so, this idea that we would build out two grids and bypass the community, that’s third world stuff, and we’re better than that.
Todd Snitchler
Yeah. That’s an interesting perspective, something we don’t always appreciate, because we’re kind of spoiled—as I like to say and it’s in every podcast I say this, I think people want three things, lights on, beer cold, water warm and in America, that generally happens.
Christina Hayes
[Laughs] Yeah.
Todd Snitchler
I mean, with very rare exceptions, we find that that’s the case and we want that to continue to be the case. That’s what reliability is all about. That’s making sure we have appropriate resource adequacy, all the things that you and I have been talking about.
As you look at transmission, I mean what needs to be done in order for us to get a better handle on that co-optimization to actually see the utilization and deployment of the resources from your perspective, which are of course the wires from our perspective, it’s the generating resources. But what are the roadblocks? What’s keeping you from getting where you need to be? Is it purely federal legislation? I suspect that it’s not that easy, but I’m kind of curious what your laundry list of you know, if I could solve these two or three things, it would go a long way towards addressing the challenges that we’re experiencing on transmission buildout.
Christina Hayes
Well, we always point to the the three biggest obstacles being related to planning, permitting and paying. So I’m sorry, I’m going to talk about permitting. And so honestly, we would love to have parity with pipelines for how transmissions permitted. So having multi-state lines or lines of a certain size, certain capacity being subject to sort of one and done, one stop shopping at FERC. And FERC is very good at setting out the rules, you know, FERC gets a lot of grief, you know? “Oh, they rubber stamp pipelines,” like, no, no, that’s because they have pre-selected and pre-established the rules. There is so much vetting and work that happens before an application even drops at FERC and so, you know, let’s set up the rules. Let’s make them very clear, very specific and developers would love to know what they are so they could meet them. And then have a, and DOE have set a bit of this up with their 216 H authority. You know, let’s have a one-year pre-application process. Let’s have two years from application a record of decision. I would like to add we should have one year from record of decision to notice to proceed, you know, you’re talking about those 18-year lines, a lot of those are out West where it took 10 years to get a record decision, and another seven or eight years to get a notice to proceed. And in part that’s because you have six years of judicial review on NEPA. And so, I appreciate—and I appreciate the concern for those who feel like they want to make sure that they’re not getting overrun, that they people have sufficient notice and opportunity to comment and to relocate the line and to make sure that they’re using the best possible technology to have the least impact on the land. Those are all really valid. But making sure that you don’t have federal and then state and then local obstacles, obstacles to every transmission line. But it doesn’t all have to be done through federal legislation. Nevada does it really well where Nevada is something like what, 90% federal lands. So they decided not to have a whole separate state process, but instead to participate in and make the most of the federal process.
And so, you don’t have that consecutive, you have, is it contemporaneous?
Todd Snitchler
Or concurrent, but yeah.
Christina Hayes
Concurrent, exactly, where they work together. And so you minimize the burden on state resources. They have a great BLM director in Nevada where they say instead of going through every single field office, we’re going to do this one time through the state office where you have long linear infrastructure that’s not meant you know the the rules about, you know, citing a particular facility within a particular BLM field office, right, is not well suited to transmission. And so you know, consolidating some of those efforts to make sure it’s robust and done one time. That would be really helpful.
Another piece that’s really helpful in the sitting and permitting bill is cost allocation just because cost allocation is so challenging. I’m sure that’s no surprise.
Todd Snitchler
It is. I’m curious if you think that that state, federal, local and private enterprise model can be replicated in other jurisdictions. Did you, did it work because of the unique situation that exists in Nevada, for that example, or is that a model that ought to be copied in other jurisdictions because it did function in a way that actually enabled you to get from here to the decision, let’s get moving on things.
Are there things that you say, “Yeah, that that actually does make sense. We should be replicating this in other jurisdictions.” Because I think that’s half the battle, is “We found something that works. Now how do we transfer it to other places so they don’t have to reinvent the wheel themselves?”
Christina Hayes
Oh, I absolutely think that is a model that could and should be replicated. Another idea is again with DOE having set up that 216 H the siting and permitting system where they want to be sort of the single point of accountability for siting and permitting in at the federal level, much like FERC has for pipelines, they really want to engage states. And I think honestly that would be great because not only would you have the states, the states working together under 216 H or 216 I, but then also the states who know how much they need the power for their own economic development and their own, you know, ability to provide value to their constituents. They can hold the feds feet to the fire as well. And I think that’s equally important.
Todd Snitchler
Talk to me a little bit about how the public engagement piece needs to fit into that state, local, federal, private enterprise piece because clearly the public wants to be involved. They do not want to be steamrolled back to your example a moment ago. But what’s the how do you go about doing that? What are your thoughts about making sure that we keep the public informed in order to successfully achieve the needed infrastructure buildout because it is significant. And how do we get communities to be encouraged to participate and be supportive or what do we need to do differently that’s been done in the past because we have plenty of examples where that didn’t work. So what’s the how-to-make-it-work formula?
Christina Hayes
I’m glad you asked. I was actually at a conference. You’d be so surprised.
Todd Snitchler
[Laughs] Go figure.
Christina Hayes
And it was a collaboration between NASEO and NARUC, NGO. I’m sure I’m forgetting some other things that start with N, but really coming together and talking about how to develop energy infrastructure in order to make sure that they have adequate resources, let alone meet their policy goals, but in a way that brings their constituents along. And it’s really first of all, it’s incumbent on the developer to make sure that they engage with the communities. At the very least, it’s good business practice because it mitigates litigation risk on the back end and same with—
Todd Snitchler
And that’s true for generators as well. I mean, we’re in the exact same boat as you on this.
Christina Hayes
Absolutely. It’s one of those. Is it an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, right?
Todd Snitchler
Yes, yes, exactly.
Christina Hayes
And then certainly, you know, state agencies, elected officials, you know, they do not love angry constituents on their doorstep by any means.You’ve been that guy, right?
Todd Snitchler
Yes. That is not the phone call that you want to get.
Christina Hayes
No, no, not from your governor’s office, not from your neighbor. No. None of this. And so yeah, they really they. They did a good job of looking at a spectrum of levels of participation. 1 is do you not tell them at all? Is there a postcard you get in the mail? You know, do you hold a town hall and provide more information? Do you take input and respond to that? And there’s really a spectrum that goes all the way to communities deciding that they want to host infrastructure.
I’ll be honest, like having come from the developer side, I’m not really sure how that works because I know so many of the decisions that developers have to make in terms of economically designing a system and siting infrastructure. That’s kind of tough to leave that to communities, right? That’s an expertise issue, but there are a lot of places along that along that spectrum.
And so engaging communities early and often. So one of the things that ACEG has done, we put together a a roundtable with DNV is the consultant and, you know, brought together members from the tribal community, environmental justice, environmental labor, developers.
I am sure I’m forgetting somebody, but the idea of, you know, bringing a number of folks together and say, “OK, what practices work for everybody?” You know, something that it’s not, it’s not such a burdensome cost that it makes energy projects infeasible because yeah, that’s a nonstarter. You know, everybody like you said, wants to keep the lights on.
But also. how do we have robust enough outreach and collaboration so that we minimize litigation and are able to effectively build infrastructure? You know, honestly one of the biggest things that sounds so minor but is looking at payments over time, like an annuity rather than an upfront payment, making sure that communities and landowners continue to be bought in to the value of this resource over time, not as one and done. And I’ve talked to developers where they say, you know, they’ve, they’ve engaged, they’ve gotten eminent domain rights and then they keep going on with their project and they get a call from the landowner like, “No, no. We’re bought in now, like we’re your partner now. You better tell us how it’s going. We want to know.”
Todd Snitchler
Right. I think that’s probably a best case scenario, right? To have somebody that’s positively engaged as opposed to the opposite.
Christina Hayes
Yes. Absolutely.
Todd Snitchler
So, we’ve kind of danced around it, so I’ll just ask you directly, what’s your vision for a clean, reliable, cost-effective energy grid? Pick your time horizon. People like to say 20-30. That’s like tomorrow in our world. So I’m not sure if that’s the right timeline or not, but what are the milestones to get from here to there as you look at it and say, you know, “I think it’s going to be X period of time for us to do it, but these are the things we need to see in order to actually get there from here and deliver the system that I think all of us agree we are trying to achieve.”
Christina Hayes
It begins with planning and building the infrastructure that’s needed to deliver the resources for economic development. For, you know, maintaining our lives and our lifestyles and you know, in a first world country that we’re lucky enough to live in, especially today on Election Day, right. And so looking at—and we have some good sort of signposts as to what that looks like, right? There was the SEEM study about a decade ago that the labs put together where they said if you if you built some high-capacity lines and it would require then significant integration, right? This is not like you. You put out a, you, you put the autobahn on the system and you’re done. No, you actually have to, like, build the secondary lines and the service roads and you have the off ramps and all of that. You have to integrate it. I think that has evolved over time. We saw the DOE came out with a study last month. There’s always a study last month, right? Where they talked about sort of their base case, what the AC build out would look like. What point to point would look like, and then something called multi-terminal. And I’m not even sure really what that is yet. It’s a mesh interregional. It’s sort of like the Holy Grail system. So they’re able to show what benefits yield from the costs invested and it gets to be pretty significant. It’s more than $1.50 per dollar invested. So it really is worth it to take a step back, look at how to not just plan the bigger system, but also how to operate it in a way that’s more efficient so that also involves looking at some of the market mechanisms.
So what does that look like? We have the DOE study out there. What does that look like? FERC recently issued its Order 1920, requiring regional rules requiring regional planning for transmission. It could be regions under 1920 using the DOE study as a gut check as a, you know, sort of a way to check their homework, CliffNotes. You know, if they start looking at if regions start looking at interregional planning, maybe using that as a guide or you know as a way to corroborate planning that that takes place, we do have to get beyond the level of planning we have had for the last decade, 15 years like it, this is not where we are now is not OK in terms of our rate of build and we’ve heard we’ve seen some really great projects be proposed, PJM. There’s the AEP Dominion FirstEnergy proposal that came together so, so joint ventures are really exciting. So I think there’s the possibility that industry is going to meet the moment, you know, see what’s required to meet it and step up. I think government has been providing some good kind of fillers where needed. You know the transmission facilitation program provided some funding for various interconnection lines, interregional lines between planning regions, and so I think those are really exciting, but if industry doesn’t meet the moment, then I think government is going to have to do more and more. Because as you noted, the large load issue isn’t just a commercial issue. It’s a national security issue. The government has an interest in the national security of the grid, I mean we could talk about like, you know, building out the big interstate highway system for the grid. Interstate 5 to Interstate 95. All of that is obviously very heavily federally regulated. That’s not the grid we have today. I know it would take a lot for us to get from where we are today to that kind of a system where the grid I have, I have hope and I have faith in so much of the industry is focused on the public interest, as you know and as we experienced through our roles with state commissions, the public interest really does just rise to the top of so much of what we do in the energy industry that I hope we can get there.
Todd Snitchler
Yeah, your analogy makes me think where where does that put our members? I mean, we’re, I think we’re in effect the auto manufacturers who are building the electrons that have to get onto that highway system and move and the highway system is great. But if you don’t have anything to put on it. What do you have? I mean, so we’ve got to make sure we’re marrying—and I think that’s what you and I tried to talk about is how we co-optimize some of these things to get where we want to be. And one of the issues that I think we both tried to stress in the op-ed, that we did together was the need to kind of rise above some of the partisan bickering. I know that’s kind of the things we do here in Washington.
Christina Hayes
Yes.
Todd Snitchler
More often than not, but we’re trying to find that common ground that makes sure that we can achieve the outcome that I think all policymakers deep down really want. That’s what we as industry really want and that’s frankly what the consumers expect. So, do you think we’re—as I sometimes say, I’m becoming more optimistic that we’re at the reality check moment where people are going to have to realize that all this sounded great when it was academic. But it’s a reality now. So, we’re going to have to think harder about really getting to solutions. Do you share that optimism, or are you optimistic in a different way? I kind of used the terrible—since we’re doing all these analogies, you know, we’re going to have to break a couple eggs to make an omelet. And the “omelet” is a highly functional power system, from generation to delivery to utilization. That’s probably going to mean that some things are going to get prioritized differently than some of us would like, depending on where we sit on the value chain, but I’m curious if you think we can get past the partisan bickering, and get to a point where we realize and implement the solutions that will be necessary to deliver the grid that we want going forward. I mean, it’s not 1950 anymore, we’re moving towards 2050. What’s that grid you actually got to look like?
Christina Hayes
Yeah. The hard part is, is that I think our biggest obstacles aren’t necessarily partisan related. Frankly we have bigger problems than that, right? There’s so there’s so many challenges in terms of just financially and affordability issues and you know what people can take. We were talking earlier about, you know, running into a mutual energy colleague I ran into at the grocery store on Saturday and we’re talking about the election and inflation. I was looking at, you know, the rotisserie chicken in my basket that used to be $5.99 and now it’s $9.99 and yeah, you know, I can afford the price of chicken that’s doubled. But, you know, for groceries to have gone up that much, that really has a huge impact on families.
Todd Snitchler
Yeah. It’s a real thing, yeah.
Christina Hayes
Oh, it is. And I’m feeding teenage boys. So looking at the cost, right? So, so much of our transmission grid is aging and needs to be replaced. Well, what are we replacing it with? So much of our generation fleet is aging out and no longer suits our needs, and that’s being replaced. And supply chain issues became a real thing during COVID and especially with these horrible storms that we keep having. And certain parts of the country having to rebuild, functionally rebuild their grid on a semi-regular basis.
Todd Snitchler
Over and over, yeah.
Christina Hayes
Over and over, exactly. And inflation. And, I mean like and, interest rates, and the cost of debt. And I mean like, so many “ands”. So honestly by the time we get to the partisan bickering, that’s almost like the least of our worries. Because what you said, we want the same thing for everyone. We want something that’s cost effective, affordable, reliable and moves in, it’s moving into the now, right. It’s, you know, being prepared for what comes next. And so, you know, appreciating that, OK, well, since we’re using all our bad metaphors, let me bring out bring out another one as a Sunday school teacher. Right. And so there’s the parable of the man who takes a tour of heaven and hell, so man goes to hell. There’s the long table. It’s piled high with food. People have little T-Rex arms and these long spoons, and they’re starving and they’re hungry. And they’re angry because they can’t feed themselves and go to heaven. Long table piled high with food, little arms, long spoons and they’re happy and smiling and satiated because they can feed each other.
Christina Hayes
The long spoons are the transmission lines. We really need this to feed each other. We need. We need this in order and so the idea that my resources can be exported to meet somebody else’s energy need, especially in times of storms, that’s right and appropriate. It’s also right and appropriate that if my resources are being exported, that I should be compensated for that. And so I think there are a lot of parts of the country that feel kind of abused and put upon that. You know, what do you mean that I have to bear the burden of all of this infrastructure to meet somebody else’s energy needs. You know, that’s that. It’s part of the bargain of us being one country and again having that incredible standard of living and and standard for economic development so, thinking about cost allocation, thinking about, you know, putting together the whole system in a way that meets all those needs is really important.
Todd Snitchler
And is probably one of the most difficult issues to navigate. So we will continue to work on how we solve that issue. So I have 3 lightning round questions that I’m going to ask you. You have to give short answers. So are we still going to be talking about gas, electric and transmission reform in another dozen years?
Christina Hayes
Hopefully there will be a new version of it. Hopefully we will not be having the same fight, but some sort of new and improved discussion. Do you think?
Todd Snitchler
That would be, that would be a welcome change. What do you think energy legislation will be focused on 20 years from now?
Christina Hayes
I’m excited to see what new technologies it will implicate, you know we’ll have some sort of new form of generation, new form of transmission. We have new wires, new technologies all the time. I’m excited to see what sort of new services that’s going to bring to customers to people.
Todd Snitchler
Yeah. OK. Last one, what’s your best golf story?
Christina Hayes
Oh, did I never tell you? I met my husband on the golf course.
Todd Snitchler
[Laughs] No, that’s a great story. That worked out well.
Christina Hayes
It did. It did! Even worse, I beat him. [Laughs]
Todd Snitchler
Wow.
Christina Hayes
Just that one time he’s beat me every time since. But, but yeah. And that first hole I stuck it to about 6 feet from 180 yards and I’ve been duffing it ever since. How about you? What’s your best golf story?
Todd Snitchler
Oh, that’s that’s terrific. I don’t have a great golf story. It’s a work in process. It’s always a work in process.
Christina Hayes
Ohh no.
Todd Snitchler
So my my best golf story is that I got to volunteer at the US Open this year and we were working on the 18th hole when Bryson and Rory came down 18. And so, the shot out of the bunker was—I was holding the crowd back for a hot second, and then he made the shot and the crowd was like the Red Sea coming together so, yeah, that’s my best story.
Christina Hayes
That’s a great story!
Todd Snitchler
Yeah. So, Christina, I can’t thank you enough for taking time to visit with us today. Certainly, there is a lot of interplay between generation and transmission. There’s a lot of commonality about the issues that we face and we’re always happy to find partners who are willing to find that common ground to work together. You’ve been exceptionally helpful in trying to find those avenues and we’re certainly appreciative of your work in this area.
Christina Hayes
Thank you, Todd. It’s always a pleasure to see you.
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Todd Snitchler
Thanks for listening to Energy Solutions. For more from Christina Hayes, check out our joint op ed on Utility Dive, linked in the show notes.
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Energy Solutions is brought to you by the Electric Power Supply Association. EPSA represents America’s competitive power suppliers, which bring about 165,000 megawatts of power generation resources to customers throughout the United States. The music in this episode is written, produced, and performed by Let Me Hold That, Ltd. Discover the power of competition at www.epsa.org.
