Jon Powers: Welcome to Experts Only Podcast. Sponsored by Clean Capital. You can learn more at cleancapital.com. I’m your host, Jon Powers. Each week, we explore the inner section of energy, innovation, and finance with leaders across the industry. Thank you so much for joining us.

All right, thank you so much for joining us on today’s Experts Only Podcast. For those in the room that don’t know, we explore the intersection of energy, innovation, and finance. We talk to industry leaders about what’s going on in the marketplace today and where they see the marketplace going in the future. For the folks listening to the podcast, we are here today at the New York Green Innovation Showcase. I’m having a conversation with the president and CEO of NYSERDA, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, Alicia Barton.

For those that aren’t familiar with NYSERDA, we’ll talk a lot more about it, but NYSERDA is really leading the way in the energy transition that we’re facing here in this country and setting the standard for many other states to follow. We’re going to talk a little bit about Alicia’s background and then get into the work that is happening in NYSERDA and really where we’re headed here in New York. So Alicia, thank you so much for joining us.

Alicia Barton: Oh, I’m so happy to be here. This is a really fun way to have this conversation.

Jon Powers: Yeah, appreciate it. So Alicia’s got an amazing experience both in the public and private sector. You were the CEO of the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, but you also co-chaired Foley Hoag’s Clean Energy and Clean Tech Practice.

Growing up in Ohio, you went to Ohio State, focus on Natural Resources. It seems like clean energy probably was something you were thinking about back then. What led you into that space?

Alicia Barton: Well, you know, it’s funny you start with the hardest questions. Talking about myself is definitely more uncomfortable for me than talking about clean energy, which I’m so passionate about. I am maybe one of those relatively unusual people that sort of knew what I wanted to do when I grew up, even back in school, and was really focused on, at that time in the 90’s, the growing awareness around the crisis of climate change that was coming our way, and focused on environmental issues. So yes, I started as a science major and undergrad and then ended up going to law school and taking it from there.

Jon Powers: What led you to law school from science?

Alicia Barton: Loneliness. I did a bunch of internships and three different labs. I interned at Ohio EPA and did a bunch of work in the field. In all of those jobs, you were sort of singularly focused on your project and kind of getting your data collected and analyzing it and all of that, which is great, obviously important, but it wasn’t as collaborative and I kind of wanted to go into something where I was going to be working in teams and maybe talking more, which law school obviously afforded.

Jon Powers: So for all those lonely scientists out there, there is a path ahead. Outstanding. So you’ve had, as we’ve mentioned, such a vast career, and you’ve touched so many different parts of the sector. We’re witnessing such an amazing transformation, which we’ll talk more about in the energy market and the way we receive our electricity, the way power is delivered, but in those experiences, how has that helped transform you as a leader for NYSERDA?

Alicia Barton: Oh, wow. That’s an interesting question. So I have been focused on this space my entire career, as I just said, in different roles. Some public sector, some private sector, some legal, some non-legal. In and around all of those roles, just kind of focused on progress, trying to aim at moving away from fossil fuels, build a clean energy alternative, and figure out how to make life a little more sustainable for the long term.

That has changed radically for me, even in the last year I would say. Then even in the last couple of months. So the amount of momentum that we’ve been picking up in recent times in terms of markets moving and also public awareness around these issues has been eye opening for me, even having been singularly focused kind of on this issue. Then when you add on the IPCC recent report that came out that, to me, was again sort of almost jaw dropping and really confronting how urgent the climate crisis is and how soon the effects of climate change are going to start being perceived and felt on a more serious basis, that was something that I think has reinforced to me just this sense of urgency, right?

I think all of those experiences, it’s been a long term effort. We’ve been aiming in this direction for awhile, but the sense of urgency could not be greater, and I guess from a leadership perspective, that’s what I try and instill in our team and focus on at NYSERDA. We don’t have the luxury of time to get this right, which has a lot of implications, but that’s one of our, I think, foundational principles.

Jon Powers: Yeah, we’re no longer talking 100 years from now. We’re talking 12 years.

Alicia Barton: It is. It is. That’s what the report says. 2030 we will start experiencing severe effects from climate change already.

Jon Powers: Yeah, and as both parents of toddlers, it’s the year our kids walk into middle school, we’ll be facing serious effects of climate change.

Alicia Barton: Yeah, as a parent, you can’t help but think about that, and really even focusing on the fact that this is again, this is when my son’s in high school. That’s what we’re talking about for 2030.

Jon Powers: So for folks that aren’t in the room today, can you talk a little bit about what NYSERDA does and the mission?

Alicia Barton: Yeah, so NYSERDA is a really unusual platform is kind of the way that I think about it, for government’s role in advancing innovation and clean energy markets. So not a lot of organizations nationally that are comprised the way NYSERDA is where we are fortunate to have a lot of tools in the toolbox is kind of the way that I think about it. We are the energy policy office for the state of New York. We are also an investment fund, certainly, in clean energy technologies and companies. Everything from early stage R&D to a direct investment fund for more mature technologies in early markets through, for example, our efforts at the New York Green Bank. We are a market participant as well. So we play a role similar to what utilities do in a lot of other states where we procure renewable energy on behalf of the state of New York and we participate in energy …

Jon Powers: For the state entities? For the state entities?

Alicia Barton: No, really on behalf of all rate payers in the state of New York. So in many cases and including in Massachusetts where I used to work and live, the utilities are required to hit RPS targets. You think about that, and they will go out and procure under power purchase agreements renewable energy projects. NYSERDA actually performs that function and then allocates those obligations to what’s called the load serving entities, the LCE’s to use the energy jargon.

So we centralize that procurement under the umbrella at NYSERDA and we’ve been making some very big moves in that area.

Jon Powers: Excellent.

Alicia Barton: So all of those things together, it’s kind of an unusual combination.

Jon Powers: Yeah, it’s unique. Here we are really focused on innovation. Talk a little bit about what today’s summit is about and some of the folks that are in the room.

Alicia Barton: Yeah. So this is the New York Green Energy Showcase. This is my first time at this event, although NYSERDA has hosted this event previously and this is one of our signature gatherings to bring together the world class group of investors and partners in innovation that we work with on a daily basis and bring them together with the leading emerging clean tech companies in New York State to foster obviously a lot of conversations around how to advance, but also really with an emphasis on match making and curating some of those conversations. It’s a really awesome event and I’m really excited to see all of you here. Thank you for participating.

You know, big picture, we’re really focused on putting New York squarely on the global map for clean energy leadership and clean tech innovation and gatherings like this are a big part of that.

Jon Powers: Yeah, as a company that just moved our second headquarters to Buffalo, we’re very excited about that.

Alicia Barton: And welcome to New York State.

Jon Powers: Thank you. So before we dive into the amazing things that are happening around the REV process and some of the real leadership New York is showing, let’s just step back and talk about what’s going on across the country right now. You’ve got really incredibly leadership happening out of California. You’ve got certain states wrestling with the path ahead, but really we are facing a market that’s completely being transformed right now, utilities that are struggling with the changes of business models that are being, in some cases forced upon them and in some cases that they are leaning forward and trying to address with things like distributed generation. You literally have new technologies coming on board, whether it be solar storage, micro grids that are helping to really change our ability to even do that type of distributed generation. What are your thoughts about sort of where the market is and where you sort of see it going here in the next several years?

Alicia Barton: Well, you’re quite right to point to the pace of change and innovation. Globally, we are experiencing a transition in our energy systems that I believe has no historic precedent. We’ve never attempted to overturn large infrastructure and move to alternative infrastructure modes in such a condensed period of time, at least in the energy sector specifically. Maybe there are some analogs in other industries that have been disrupted.

The way New York looks at that is saying, again, we’re bringing a sense of urgency and an intent to help play a leadership role. That has been Governor Cuomo’s kind of signature vision. The Reforming the Energy Vision, or REV initiative that New York has embarked on is really … you can think of it as an umbrella for a lot of our efforts around clean energy advancement and energy innovation. We have these ambitious targets for greenhouse gas reduction and deployment of renewable energy. For example, getting 50% of our renewable energy … 50% of our electricity from renewable energy by 2030.

We’ve also done it, and what I think is unique about rev in comparison to some of the other states that are also doing awesome leadership things is we’ve been clear about the fact that the business models of yesterday are not the ones that are going to be sufficient to tackle this enormous energy transition. We have to be thinking differently. That, I think, starts largely with investor owned utilities in the first instance, but has a lot of ramifications obviously.

Jon Powers: So in that process, there’s so much transformation happening. There’s so many different stakeholders at play, right? You have investors, you have utilities. You have the actual customers out there. How are you guys having those stakeholder conversations to really help form the REV decision making?

Alicia Barton: Well, one of the things I guess REV is famous, or maybe infamous in this instance, for is having a lot of stakeholder conversations. We have been really kind of focused across the board.

Jon Powers: But it’s so needed. I mean, you’re changing the game. I get it. People are going to look at it and say, “Oh, this is bureaucracy.”

Alicia Barton: Yeah, there’s a lot of process.

Jon Powers: But it’s such a dramatic change in the way we’re doing business. It’s an important step.

Alicia Barton: It is. It is. We are making a lot of progress coming out of that, and that’s by drawing on, again, not just the regulators and the utilities, but the market actors and service providers and investors in that conversation as well to make sure that we are putting in place the regulatory backdrop that will allow, again, new business models to actually be successful and to attract capital and investment.

Jon Powers: How’s that sort of in that looking to sort of accelerate innovation and support things like early stage start ups that could make a big change in that structure?

Alicia Barton: Well, we’re doing a lot in that regard. You know, making New York State one of the leading innovation ecosystems for clean tech, making it one of the best places to start and grow a clean tech company is absolutely squarely within our set of goals because we know, again, similar to the business model kind of conversation, the technologies and approaches have to be different. We have to be looking forward, and again, we don’t have a lot of time to get there. So we’re pushing hard on trying to accelerate innovation where we can. We have just a wide range of programs, and everything from, again, early stage R&D to support for early stage companies, and that’s direct support, financial support from NYSERDA.

We have a number of grant and investment opportunities that are available to New York based clean tech start up companies. We work with partners like proof of concept centers, incubators. I think one of the things that’s pretty cool about New York and maybe a little different than some of the other clean tech hubs or tech hubs nationally is a lot of this activity is spread across the state. Your company would be a great example of that, being located in Buffalo.

Jon Powers: Buffalo is the new Brooklyn if you don’t know.

Alicia Barton: You know, that poses an opportunity and a challenge, right? You know, geography is a challenge sometimes. It’s a big state. So it can be hard, necessarily, for investors to see everything in one spot, but NYSERDA tries to do that work and build those bridges in a lot of ways for the companies that are coming out of Rochester and Buffalo and Binghamton and the like.

Jon Powers: It’s hard enough being a start up to begin with. Most folks in the audience here that are running start ups are creating an app that’s going to go take someone’s picture and spread it on social media. We’re dealing with a regulatory, heavy environment. So you really have to think through the business models, the regulatory structures, the target communities you’re going into. Probably deeper than many other start up communities, and I think NYSERDA’s role in that is really critical in helping to coach folks and bring them through. So I think the leadership is going to be incredibly helpful to help scale some of the start ups that are here in New York, which for us was an attractive thing to bring us out here.

Alicia Barton: Yeah, clean tech is hard, right?

Jon Powers: It is hard.

Alicia Barton: It is a notoriously hard space, and we do think that part of our role at NYSERDA is to help de-risk that or navigate it or provide bridges where needed. One of the programs we have for early stage companies that are located or are partnered with our statewide network of incubators are called ignition grants. They are relatively small dollar grants, but they’re meant to help companies get through a specific commercialization milestone that’s ahead of them that may not be technology based. It may be understanding regulatory or legal risk around one of their product offerings. We rolled that out earlier this year, and are in the process of making our first awards. We’re excited about being able to offer those type of resources.

Jon Powers: That’s great. I’m going to open it up to the audience here in a second. So if you have any questions, please line up at the microphones. Before we do that, I want to talk a little bit about empire state development, the New York State’s economic development agency. Can you talk a little bit about their role and maybe how you guys work together?

Alicia Barton: Yes.

Jon Powers: Developing clean energy?

Alicia Barton: Absolutely. So they are more broadly focused, obviously, on all things economic development in New York State. NYSERDA does partner with them. They have a couple of signature efforts, including a venture investing arm that they host for, again, promising New York based companies as well as investing in the statewide innovation resources that, again, sort of bridge tech and clean tech and other areas as well.

Jon Powers: Excellent. Any audience questions? And if you’ve got, please feel free to line up at the mic and we’ll come back to you in a second. So NYSERDA just recently released its clean energy job support. I think there’s a lot of great news in there. Can you fill us in on some of the findings?

Alicia Barton: Absolutely. I’m a huge evangelist for clean energy jobs. I’d encourage all of us that are doing this work to focus on really being clear about that story because it is such a good news story. We all know it gets lost in the national media, right, that focuses on coal jobs, which are a tiny fraction of solar jobs, let alone clean energy jobs. This is why we have to have some clarity and focus around it.

For New York State, the report we released showed that clean tech is a somewhat small at this stage but rapidly growing part of the New York economy. It’s not small in an absolute sense. There are over 150,000 people employed in the clean energy industry across New York State. That sector outpaced growth in the overall economy, and we all know we are in a historically hot economy, pretty much 2 to 1 over the last year, adding almost 6,000 jobs in one year alone.

The employers in the sector are really bullish. They are predicting another 8% growth in the year ahead. We know that that’s a direct link to some of the policies that are being put in place in the state. You know, sending market signals around our renewable energy targets, our energy storage targets, and the like.

Jon Powers: So you can’t say this as a employee of the government. I will say it as company managers, owners, investors. We’ve got to take that message out to our local political elected officials and tell that story to support these types of policies. So those types of job reports are really important to tell that story, because I feel like for a long time it was what we could be doing, and now it’s happening. The growth is here and it’s happening.

Alicia Barton: Yeah, and it’s all real, right? You think about clean energy. I just worry people think it’s so far in the future and it’s not tangible, and we’re starting to make some progress there. Certainly the national growth and growth in New York State specifically of the solar energy helps a lot because the panels are so visible, but I think it really becomes real to people and to local officials and to local chambers of commerce when they know that their neighbor is running a business in this industry or they work for an energy efficiency company. Those are the types of things that make people think, “This isn’t a crazy idea. We can do this.”

Jon Powers: And they’re localized jobs that can’t be sent overseas because the wind technician lives right there in the rural community.

Alicia Barton: Absolutely.

Jon Powers: Excellent. So we have a question from the audience.

Speaker 3: Hi. My name is Paul Schwartz. I’m the CEO of a company called Thermo Lift. We were part of a grant program with NYSERDA for a half a million dollars in our early stage development in 2013 with Joe Bar  as our program manager and some familiar faces around the room. Nick and Mike Shumatsu know us very well.

What I want to ask about is the story of electrification as it relates to renewable energy, but how much electrification do you think can be accomplished in New York State with the grid capacity? Because grid capacity and electrification go together. You can provide a lot of electricity into the system, and if you’re going to replace all power generation, but if you’re using electricity for heating homes in the winter time, you need a lot more electricity. So you need to double, maybe triple the grid to replace the fossil fuels being used.

So the story of electrification is interfering a little bit with what our objective is, which is to cut carbon in a home by 50% so what’s REV’s vision on that and NYSERDA’s vision on the electrification story as that relates to heating and cooling?

Alicia Barton: That’s a great question. It is a huge issue. So we tend to think for New York State policy at NYSERDA around a lot of our 2030 targets. Then beyond to 2050. They are carbon based targets and that’s something that’s been a shift in recent policy evolution, getting away from just looking at megawatt hours and thinking of energy efficiency as needing to decrease reliance on electricity as opposed to looking at carbon reduction which drives potentially an increase in reliance on electricity, but one that is cleaner overall.

So we actually see that. As we look forward, we do a lot of modeling and projections about the energy system for New York State. It doesn’t show up immediately, but as we start to push on beneficial electrification, we absolutely do see that when you think about you’re going to have a system that’s 50% renewable energy, that’s going to be on a bigger denominator, right? We’re going to actually have to see load growth to actually hit our target goals.

So we’ve been working through that shift and it’s something we’re still, I think, kind of working through in a number of areas. One of the things I would point to would be something that was very significant for New York State earlier this year. Governor Cuomo set a new energy efficiency target and we released a very detailed policy white paper alongside that called New Efficiency New York. We didn’t title it that just because it’s catchy, but really trying to focus on the fact that we need new ideas around energy efficiency. In that paper, specifically recommended going to carbon based metrics so that we wouldn’t undermine our path towards beneficial electrification.

We’re considering what we can do to scale up the market for heat pumps and clean heating and cooling technologies very aggressively. It’s a huge issue for New York State. The podcast listeners don’t know, but we’re in this room with a beautiful view of Lower Manhattan, and you can see that a big part of our energy story is in buildings for this part of the state in particular. So we’ve got to figure out some of those clean heating and cooling solutions if we’re going to actually hit the targets.

Jon Powers: Thank you.

Speaker 3: Thank you.

Speaker 4: Hey, my name is Eniv,. I’m the CEO of Solar Cal. Alicia, we met with 76 West winners, and Jon, I’m a big fan of the podcast.

Jon Powers: Thank you. Can you tell the people in the audience and the radio what 76 West is?

Speaker 4: So 76 West is a NYSERDA sponsored competition to facilitate more job creation in the Southern Tier of New York. So to bring different clean tech companies to come in and open new offices there. We now have an office in Ithaca. We have a few clients there, and we’re going to do broker two and a half megawatts there, which I think would never happen without a 76 West support. So thank you for the support.

Alicia Barton: Yeah, that’s great.

Speaker 4: My question for NYSERDA, obviously REV and what we do all as clean tech entrepreneurs is a lot of infrastructure project require some support from local towns, counties because we’re changing the infrastructure of the state. How much works do NYSERDA do on top of project finance and company finance on working with the local towns and municipality and counties on having them support us when we come in with projects. I feel there is a lot of friction between these two sides. So NYSERDA I guess also doing some work on that front. I’m curious to hear more about what’s happening on that.

Alicia Barton: Yeah, absolutely. It’s a huge issue and it is an area that we are focused on. That’s where the rubber meets the road, so to speak, for all of these technologies and projects is getting them actually built and sited. That can be, at times, a complex process for a number of reasons, including just education and awareness at the local level. So NYSERDA has been doing a few things. One is we have a clean energy communities program that directly partners with communities across New York State and encourages them to take certain actions that makes them eligible for NYSERDA grant funding. Those things can be along the lines of adopting a unified solar permit, for example. So they’re streamlining their solar permitting process as part of that process.

We also have teams that are focused on hands on outreach with communities, and really going statewide and talking about what’s real and what’s misunderstood. There’s a lot of different issues around certain technologies, even solar, which is probably the most kind of accessible a lot of local municipalities don’t have a lot of experience with. So they don’t know how to tax it. They don’t know how to permit it. Obviously that makes the permitting process, let alone sales cycle process if you’re trying to sell to a municipality, even longer.

So we’d certainly be eager to hear more input on where you’re seeing those challenges, but it’s certainly real and something that we have to collectively kind of tackle.

Jon Powers: Yeah, right. I mean, you look at some really complicated things that are trying to be done like the prize initiative. It’s such an exciting sort of game changing innovative approach, but when it comes down to push comes to shove, it’s a localized project and without the education … those who don’t know, I was the chief sustainability officer for the federal government. So we worked across the federal agencies in terms of energy and sustainability, and when you had folks that were focused on it, then you would have a center of excellence to help educate those that have never done a PPA before how to get it done.

So those type of tools can be really helpful to bring those communities who may be scared of committing to a 20 year power agreement they’ve never heard about say, “No, don’t worry about it. Walmart’s doing it. Ebay’s doing it.” It’s where we are today.

Alicia Barton: Yeah, I think they often feel an information and an expertise imbalance in a conversations with companies and developers. The good news is though our experience has been with the clean energy communities program and other outreach opportunities, they are raising their hands and saying, “We want to work on this. We agree that this climate situation is urgent. We know that we have to do things differently and we have to say yes to projects. We just want to make sure that we get the details right.”

Jon Powers: Yeah, how are you … right now we’re facing obviously a much different federal environment than we have in the past in terms of focus in this area. There’s so many … I’m not going to ask you about the administration. I’m going to ask you about what other states that are trying to catch up to New York, how are you sharing information with them and what you’re learning to REV, how you’re pushing these innovative policies forward, or flip it around. What are you learning from other states?

Alicia Barton: So one of the silver linings, and there are not many of them, for president Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Accords is that it did create an opportunity for states to start working more closely together and sort of outside the context of the federal government. So really right on the heals of that decision to pull out of Paris, Governor Cuomo, Governor Brown from California, and Governor Ensley from Washington decided to start the US Climate Alliance, which now has 15 different states and Puerto Rico involved.

We are working together on all of those issues, and I’d say as much as we certainly consider ourselves leaders and are committed to staking out a leadership position, I am constantly telling my team to talk to their colleagues in those states, find all the good ideas that are out there to make progress and steal them and bring them back to New York. We have as much to learn from them as they do from us because all of us, again, are trying to navigate something that there’s really not a lot of precedent for.

Jon Powers: Yeah. And as innovative companies or investors or people buying energy, they’re literally working in 50 different systems to try to figure out how to get it done, and watching what New York’s doing, what California’s doing, I think we can also become advocates and say, “Look, these are the policies that may work here in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts or wherever else.”

Alicia Barton: Yeah, and it’s heartening to see so many states opting in. I think collectively, the states represented in that alliance, they’re over 40% of the US population represented in those states. So a good portion of the United States is still represented in this conversation about meeting and exceeding our global obligation to address climate change.

Jon Powers: Excellent. So if we come back a year from today and have this conversation in this beautiful room with this beautiful view, hopefully these companies have progressed and investors have put a lot of money into them. Please do it. How has the landscape changed over the next year?

Alicia Barton: That’s an awesome question and I actually think a lot about that because when I look across the board at what we’re doing at NYSERDA today and again, I’m someone that’s been at all of this for a little while, today is really different. I think a year from now, we are going to look back and say, “2018-2019 was one of those years where things changed substantially, where we finally started taking really big steps, not just small steps, to walk towards those clean energy goals.”

So as I mentioned, NYSERDA’s role in renewable energy procurement, we made a big announcement earlier this year. We’re going to have another one coming in the wake of our second RFP for renewable resources. We are going to be putting thousands of megawatts of renewable generation under contract to get constructed and built over the next few years in New York State. Really, when you think about that 50% target, making up a sizable portion of the Delta we need to fill, and those are contracts that are going out now. I think we will see hopefully the first contracts for large scale off shore wind. NYSERDA is very shortly going to be issuing our first RFP for approximate 800 megawatts of offshore wind and that’s a totally new era for the united states is offshore wind. It’s coming and it is needed and it really can be sort of the workhorse in delivering a massive amount of clean energy to the congested east coast.

I got one more.

Jon Powers: Yeah.

Alicia Barton: Storage market as well, I think.

Jon Powers: Awesome.

Alicia Barton: That is something we’ve been talking about for awhile. The governor set a really big target of 1500 megawatts by 2025, and we are going to be putting the building blocks in place over the next year to really turn that market on. We already just recently announced that we were adding 40 million dollars of incentives to our New York Sun program to support the addition of storage to PV systems being built under that program. So we’re going to start moving from policy and targets to projects being built in a really big way.

Jon Powers: Excellent. So first of all, thank you so much for the time. When I worked for President Obama, he used to talk about us leading by example. Sort of what we try to do across the federal government. It’s amazing to see the leadership that the governor has, the leadership you have for NYSERDA. I hope that we can come back in a year and reflect on some of those changes. We are just at the beginning of a new term. Obviously folks followed the election last night. It’s an exciting time in New York and we hope to continue the momentum and the leadership you’re showing here going forward. So thank you so much.

Alicia Barton: Well, thank you. We are excited and ready to go.

Jon Powers: Excellent.

So thank you for joining us and for folks on the podcast, you can learn more at cleancapital.com and get more episodes. Alicia, thank you so much for your time, and I look forward to continuing the conversation.

Alicia Barton: Thanks. This was fun.

Jon Powers: Thanks for listening in today’s conversation. Find more episodes on cleancapital.com, iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what you hear, be sure to subscribe and leave us a five star review. We look forward to continuing our conversation on energy, innovation, and finance with you.