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Episode 52: Miranda Ballentine

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This week, Jon Powers speaks with Miranda Ballentine, CEO of the Renewable Energy Buyers’ Alliance (REBA). REBA works with businesses and organizations, such as Google, Facebook, and GM, seeking to procure renewable energy across the US. This conversation centers around how the buying power of these large energy consumers is changing energy markets and driving America’s shift to a clean energy economy.

Prior to REBA, Miranda was the CEO of Constant Power, Inc.; Managing Director of Rocky Mountain Institute’s Business Renewables Center; and served from 2014 to 2017 served as the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Installations, Environment and Energy. She also was the Director of Sustainability for Global Renewable Energy at Walmart Stores, Inc. Miranda holds a BS from Colorado State University and an MBA from George Washington University.
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Full Transcript:

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 intersection of energy, innovation, and finance with leaders across the industry. Thank you so much for joining us. Welcome back to Experts Only Podcasts. This is Jon Powers, your host. And today, we have an incredible conversation with a wonderful Miranda Ballentine, who’s the CEO of the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance, REBA.

Jon Powers:

Miranda joined the organization last fall and really has led it through its rebirth in May as an independent trade association, working with members such as Google and Facebook and GM among others who are seeking to procure renewable energy across the US. They’re uniquely positioned as we’ll talk about throughout the conversation, but Miranda’s uniquely positioned to lead this organization as well. She prior to this was the CEO of Constant Power, but had been the assistant secretary of the Air Force for Energy, where I worked closely with her, as well as she served as the director of sustainability and renewable energy at Walmart.

Jon Powers:

So she’s seen all sides of this renewable energy space, and I think you’ll find our conversation both interesting and fascinating and help understand what these members are looking for. And I think you’ll find this conversation fascinating, and it’ll help really provide some light on the trend we’re seeing in the industry of growing corporate procurement in renewable energy. Miranda Ballentine, thank you so much for joining us at Experts Only.

Miranda Ballentine:

Always a pleasure to talk to you, Jon.

Jon Powers:

So for the audience, I’ve known Miranda a long time. She’s been an incredible mentor of mine. She’s had a great set of experiences working in the private sector, working in government and the Pentagon. Sort of back in the public sector, she’s led and sold companies. It’s really unique to have that diversity within an individual and a leader and bringing that to the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance in helping set the organization apart from what’s out there. But before diving into all of that, Miranda, I just want to step back and talk about you growing up in Colorado, what led you into the energy space?

Miranda Ballentine:

Well, it’s kind of a funny story, Jon, because my undergraduate work was in a completely unrelated field. I studied neuro-psychology as an undergrad. So I spent my undergrad days running rats through mazes and dissecting brains.

Jon Powers:

Really?

Miranda Ballentine:

Yeah. So really unrelated entirely, but quickly sort of discovered that I probably wasn’t meant to work solo in a laboratory somewhere. I’m just too extroverted as a human. So spent a little bit of time just out in the working world and discovered I loved business and also grew up in parts of the world where I had cultivated a real passion for both the environment, but also for international development. So how I got into all this crazy clean energy work was actually when I first moved to Washington, DC about 2000. I started working for a small DC-based nonprofit, really actually more focused or I was more drawn to it for the international development and poverty alleviation work.

Miranda Ballentine:

It was called the Solar Electric Light Fund. It was a small NGO that brought solar power to remote parts of the developing world. And as you know, access to clean, affordable electricity is really critical to improving people’s health outcomes, educational outcomes, economic outcomes. Without basic electricity services, it’s very hard to break the cycle of deep, deep poverty in remote parts of the world. And so that’s really where I became very passionate about clean energy and the role that clean energy can play in solving the world’s toughest challenges. And then from there decided to get a master’s degree in business administration, because I found I did really enjoy being in the private sector.

Miranda Ballentine:

So focused my master’s work on energy and the environment, and then had the great fortune of being able to do some consulting work here in DC and had clients across the spectrum of large corporations and clean energy investors, as well as most of the large environmental organizations. And that’s really what led me to Walmart. I became very interested in what the private sector was doing around sustainability and clean energy, and just had an opportunity to join the team at Walmart in the early days of launching and maturing and growing the Walmart sustainability team. And then my career has sort of grown from there.

Jon Powers:

So a little dichotomy of working at a small nonprofit doing interesting work to working at Walmart and then working at the Pentagon. In those different environments, right, you’re having a lot of different probably experiences working within bureaucracy versus sort of a more entrepreneurial endeavors into the nonprofit space. What are some of the sort of biggest lessons you learned once you got into the Walmart space and then even in the Pentagon space in terms of leadership, not so much on the energy side, but in terms of sort of leading organizations in driving change?

Miranda Ballentine:

So I think one of the greatest things that each of us can learn about ourselves professionally is whether we are more entrepreneurial by nature or whether we’re more intrapreneurial by nature. They are rather different skill sets, different tolerance for ambiguity, different tolerance for process or lack of process. I have seen entrepreneurial people go inside of large organizations and just really hate it because the amount of process and so-called bureaucracy really frustrates people that are naturally entrepreneurial. Conversely, people that are very intrapreneurial thrive in those environments and really bring a skillset of persuasion and influence.

Miranda Ballentine:

And the number of zeros behind each ton of carbon emissions, you can influence when you’re working within an organization the size of Walmart, the Fortune number one company in the world, when you’re working within an organization the size of the US Department of the Air Force, largest energy user in the nation. When you’re inside those size of organizations, you can really have a profoundly significant impact in the world, but it does require a different skillset than the entrepreneurial skillset, which is more break things from the outside and drive change that way.

Miranda Ballentine:

So I think that’s one of the most important things one can learn about themselves in their career is what skillset are they most comfortable wielding and where will they thrive?

Jon Powers:

For those that aren’t aware, Miranda served as the assistant secretary of the Air Force within the energy division. I sort of explained it in the bio, but really overseeing energy across the Air Force. You came in at a time when the Air Force was making some progress, but you really helped sort of shape and drive the policy that’s still being implemented there today. For those that don’t follow, the Pentagon is doing really aggressive and exciting stuff in the renewable space. But from that experience, right, leading that size of an entity, how do you then go and share lessons with folks that are working in the Starbucks’ of a world and the Amazon’s and some of the people that are members of REBA today?

Jon Powers:

Are there sort of lessons that you share with them about working within that bureaucracy and how they… Because I imagine they’re facing some of the similar challenges where what they do on a day-to-day basis is not the main mission of the company, but it enhances the main mission of the company, right?

Miranda Ballentine:

Right. And I think you just hit the nail on the head there, Jon. It really is about aligning with the organization’s core mission. So at Walmart, Walmart’s core mission is saving people money so they can live better. Clean energy aligns perfectly with that mission. Clean energy allows current citizens to live better lives and allows the next generation to live a better life. And at today’s prices, clean energy helps companies like Walmart and Starbucks save money today and in the future.

Miranda Ballentine:

When you’re talking about a military mission, distributed clean energy generation is not only an important play from the perspective of a resilient mission and the ability for the Air Force to accomplish its mission around the world, but it’s also a supply chain free source of fuel. So an adversary might be able to cut off my diesel supply chain, might be able to cut off my coal supply chain, but can’t cut off the wind or the sun. So it really is all about identifying how the clean energy that you’re looking to procure aligns with your organization’s mission. And that varies by company, but the fundamental perspective of aligning with your mission is the same regardless of what type of organization you’re talking about.

Jon Powers:

Speaking of organizations, let’s talk a little bit about the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance, which you’re the CEO. So can you sort of introduce folks to REBA and the mission? In that, talk a little bit about the history. How did REBA come to be and become the organization it is today?

Miranda Ballentine:

Yeah, sure, of course. So the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance, or REBA as we call it, is the largest group of clean energy buyers, so it’s the demand side of the clean energy equation, that have come together to launch this trade association with a singular vision. And our singular vision is a resilient zero carbon energy system where every organization has a viable path to buying renewable energy. Now, what’s really special about this alliance is that most trade associations… If you think about it, Jon, most trade associations are aligned around a particular industry or particular sector, whereas REBA’s buyer members are really across virtually every industry and every sector.

Miranda Ballentine:

So if you look at our leadership circle alone, we have auto manufacturers with General Motors. We have CPG companies like Jonson & Jonson. We have a number of tech companies like Salesforce, Google, Facebook, Hewlett Packard Enterprise. We have major brands and retailers like Walmart and the Walt Disney Company. It’s really very broad and that’s just the leadership circle alone. Our leadership circle alone has annual revenues of about $1.25 trillion. So it’s a very significant movement of large companies, again, all aligned around a single vision, which is really rather unique from a trade association perspective.

Jon Powers:

I mean, it’s interesting if you look at the… We’ve obviously talked to a lot of the different players with SIA and AWEA and ACORE on this podcast. They represent very specific parts of the industry and the players in that industry. And a lot of the same folks that are within your membership may play a role in those helping to influence the policies to drive more renewables, but your members have a very unique demand. I do want to talk a little bit more about the role they’re playing on the policy side, but I do want to just go back to…

Jon Powers:

In May of this year, you guys announced sort of the relaunch of an independent trade association, basically breaking off and absorbing parts of the World Wildlife Fund, Rocky Mountain Institute, BSR, World Resources Institute. talk for a second about that experience and how you brought those players together and what you sort of see as the vision now that those teams have come into one place.

Miranda Ballentine:

Yeah, it’s really incredible actually because the idea for REBA goes all the way back to the fall of 2013 when the World Wildlife Fund brought together for the first time a group of large clean energy buyers. There were about 12 or 13 large companies in the room. Many of the leaders that we’ve been talking about, so Walmart and Google and Jonson & Jonson and Coca-Cola and General Motors and Hewlett Packard, really came together in 2013 to talk about how could we better leverage our demand side capabilities and power to drive the clean energy future, and what barriers were we each facing that we might be able to better tackle together than we could on our own.

Miranda Ballentine:

And it was at that meeting that this idea of a demand side trade association was first germinated. But back then, and it’s hard to imagine that was only six years ago, not quite six years ago, there just weren’t that many companies actively transacting in the clean energy markets. And we just simply didn’t have critical mass. So this group of really phenomenal leading environmental NGOs with WWF, WRI, the World Resources Institute, RMI, the Rocky Mountain Institute, and BSR, who at that time was the Business for Social Responsibility… I think they’re just BSR now. Sort of like a Prince, right? They’re just BSR.

Miranda Ballentine:

These four environmental NGOs came together and said, “Hey, let’s really focus on function over form.” And they each took on one of the big barriers that these large buyers had identified and started to build programs around them. And really remarkably, as someone who’s worked in and with the environmental NGO community for a long time, the partnership between these four NGOs from the get-go was just incredibly strong and remarkable. No competition for resources or relationships. Just a really mission first partnership. And so those programs were actually wrapped in the brand name of Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance even as early as 2014.

Miranda Ballentine:

So the brand has been around and the programs have been around for several years. Well, fast forward to 2017, and the scale of these programs, which I consider 2014 to 2017 sort of the pilot phase, and the scale and the demand for these services just grew exponentially. So by the end of 2017, only a few years later, that community of large energy buyers had grown from that original 13 to about 200 buyers participating in that community of programs. So it really had just grown exponentially. And many of those original companies kind of stepped back and said, “Hey, look at this. Now we do have the scale to really launch a trade association.”

Miranda Ballentine:

And the value of a trade association, Jon, as you know and as many of your listeners know, is that it really gives us a lot of freedom to not only do the educational part of our mission, but also to engage much more actively in policy and legislative and regulatory proceedings to ensure that the policy environment supports the clean energy markets that our buyers are looking to have. So in 2018, those four NGOs sat down together all the way up to the CEO level. And again, I just think it’s an incredible statement to the personalities and the mission focus of those four CEOs, Jules Kortenhorst, Carter Roberts, Andrew Steer, Aron Cramer, that they were willing to spin off their programs.

Miranda Ballentine:

They spun off resources. They spun off people. They spun off relationships with some of the largest brands in the world into a new business led trade association. I’ve really never seen anything like it. It’s quite remarkable.

Jon Powers:

You talk about scale and growth. I mean, in parallel to that scale and growth of a group like REBA, the scale and growth of the corporate procurement has just continued to skyrocket. I just recently had Lisa Jacobson from Business Council for Sustainable Energy and Ethan Zindler from Bloomberg New Energy Finance or Bloomberg NEF as they call it now to talk about the fact book and amazing takeaways that corporate PPAs grew 300% from 2017 through 2018, right? A lot of your members and others are now getting into the game and the space is growing. What I think is fascinating about that is not just that folks are taking an active role now in acquiring and procuring their own energy, right?

Jon Powers:

You flash back 10 years ago when people pay the utility bill. Now a lot of these sophisticated buyers that are your members have sophisticated energy procurement shops. Even ones that don’t are looking to find ways to get involved, but they’re also playing a major role in terms of policy. So when you look at a place… I’m going to pick on Virginia here for a second. Virginia has struggled putting the right renewable energy programs in place. But then when big players like Microsoft or Apple come in and say, “We won’t move our data centers here until you have renewable goals,” it changes the dialogue completely. And you now are seeing just great strides from Dominion Power, right, putting massive PPAs out there.

Jon Powers:

How do you sort of shepherd those voices from all the different members to sort of have an impact on policy?

Miranda Ballentine:

There was so much in what you just said, Jon.

Jon Powers:

Lots. I’m sorry.

Miranda Ballentine:

All the way back to Ethan and Lisa, this is such an amazing community of people that work on these issues. I was on the phone with Ethan this morning. I’m having lunch with Lisa next week. It’s just an incredible group of people. So for any of your listeners that are not in the industry thinking about it and you just want to work with a really cool, passionate, smart group of people, this is the place to be.

Jon Powers:

Yeah, I agree. That’s why I started the podcast.

Miranda Ballentine:

It’s why you started the podcast. It’s full of smart people from across political spectrums, from across different backgrounds. I just think it’s a really cool place to be. It’s got something for business people, for independent people, for national security people, for clean energy. It’s a great space. So enough of that soapbox. Corporate buyers and I would say all large buyers, not just corporates. So REBA also has cities as members. We have universities as members. We have healthcare systems. I would say that the large energy buyer space is really booming. Lisa and Ethan were right for large scale deals that about tripled between 2017 and 2018.

Miranda Ballentine:

It was a banner year with 6.6 gigawatts of large scale renewables, announced deals signed, and a huge increase in new buyers. So we went from 31 different buyers in 2017 to 76 buyers in 2018. Dramatic increase. Interestingly, you’re not seeing that same dramatic increase in new developers doing projects. I think what we’re seeing is buyers going with developers that have a strong track record. So I think that’s kind of an interesting little sidebar, but yes, last year was a banner year. As of May of this year, we’re already at 1.5 gigawatts of announcements, and it’s gone up even since May. So we’re on track for another real banner year.

Miranda Ballentine:

You are absolutely right that policy, regulatory, legislative interventions. I would anticipate you’re going to see much greater increase of activity from the buyer community. And you’re right that states and state policy makers definitely sit up and listen when there are big companies, whether it’s a data center or manufacturing company, with the promise of new jobs coming into their market. It does open some doors to have that power, so to speak. No pun intended.

Miranda Ballentine:

But I do want to point out that the REBA members that are really engaged on the policy side are really focused on game changing policies that allow all types of energy buyers the opportunity to choose where their electrons come from and what kind of electrons they’re interested in. I think that’s a really important point to make, because I do think that some folks feel like it’s a little self-serving for a data center to come in and say, “Well, I want green power, and so create a special policy that works for me.”

Jon Powers:

Give me the special tariff just for me.

Miranda Ballentine:

Right. I mean, you have seen some of that happening and less out of self-serving interests and more to start a conversation and start a dialogue. But what you’re already seeing is a change in how those discussions are happening. How can we really change the system so that we can get to a zero carbon energy system very rapidly? We look at the timeframe that the IPCC has put out for us, and we have a super short window to get to a global grid that’s 60% renewable on top of a whole bunch of other zero carbon energy sources like nuclear. So we don’t have a long time, and company by company bespoke solutions really simply aren’t going to work.

Miranda Ballentine:

So the great thing about the REBA community is that it’s really focused on game changing, market changing policies and regulations that make our vision, the second half of our vision… I don’t know if you caught it, but the second half of our vision is every organization has a viable path to buying clean energy. So it’s not just these guys there because they come with new jobs or those guys there because they have the biggest lobbying voice.

Jon Powers:

Well, I think it’s so important because I think a lot of the fact that the Starbucks’ in the Google’s and the Apple’s can put into policy teams and energy procurement offices is really important, but how do you get the mid level companies that don’t have that capacity the access, and that’s exactly what you’re creating. So I’m going to talk a little bit about sort of the cultural awareness that’s happening around renewables today. We talk a lot on the show about I think we’re living in a fascinating moment on climate change and a lot of it’s being driven by renewables. I mean, you had Anheuser-Busch to go to Super Bowl airtime to win energy for their beer.

Jon Powers:

You’ve got companies like Starbucks who tout their positive announcements and others. Where for your members do you sort of see their voice playing a role in the sort of cultural awakening we’re having in the space?

Miranda Ballentine:

You know, I think it varies quite a lot. I do think that when you have sort of great American heartland brands like Budweiser giving clean energy a prominent feature, it really does sort of democratize clean energy.

Jon Powers:

And you got to see this at the Pentagon too, right, when you talked about the Air Force, people who were not as aware of what was going on, it definitely perked them up.

Miranda Ballentine:

Yeah. When it comes to wind and solar, I think what’s really been game changing is these are just not seen as new technologies anymore. These are technologies that are proven. There is no technological risk being taken by the off-takers or the developers or the financiers. I think we’ve seen a big shift in how projects are financed, and you can speak to that better than I can because the technology risk has just come down. That’s not really a factor anymore in project finance, whereas in the not so distant past, it still was considered some technology risk.

Jon Powers:

Yeah. I remember just a few short years ago, one of your members… When I was working in the White House, we had one of your members come in, a very senior person and I won’t name her, but she was having trouble at her company. They were doing tremendous stuff around renewables, but one of their senior C-suite executives saw that Sun Edison had crashed and just assumed the whole solar market was gone.

Miranda Ballentine:

Right.

Jon Powers:

And it was just not understanding what was happening in the space. They just sort of tied it to a stock of one company. And now I think people are starting to see that perception change, right? This is no longer an alternative energy. It’s a mainstream approach.

Miranda Ballentine:

Yeah, that’s exactly right. So what we find is that our members talk about their clean energy projects from a range of perspectives. Yes, they are absolutely focused on doing their part to solve the climate challenge, the climate crisis really. Commercial and industrial energy users are the number one source of energy related greenhouse gas emissions in this country. And so they know that the power needed to run their facilities, to manufacture their products is a singular significant challenge causing the climate crisis and they want to solve that. They believe it’s their moral duty to solve it, and they know that we as humans need energy to have.

Miranda Ballentine:

Coming back to how I started my conversation and how I started my career, without power, you can’t have strong economies. You can’t have healthy economies. You can’t have strong education. So these companies know that power is needed in order to have all of those things, and they want to do so in a way that doesn’t compromise our children and grandchildren’s ability to live on the planet. So that is an important part of their communications. At the same time, an important part of their communications is that these investments and these choices are good for the bottom line, are good for shareholders. They’re good for our country’s resilience.

Miranda Ballentine:

They’re good for our country’s energy security challenges that they are also all dealing with. It’s not just the Pentagon that has concerns about grid security and grid vulnerability. It varies a lot what a member chooses to focus on in their communications depending on that particular company’s interests.

Jon Powers:

So I want to end with two sort of final questions, Miranda. The first, we’ve had a sort of regular theme the last few episodes talking about sort of diversity within the industry. SIA has an initiative pushing for diversity weekly, and Capital are pushing that for ourselves, but we also have talked to really phenomenal leaders in the space that are women and veterans and others. How are you seeing within your members sort of a push for diversity within its own rights?

Miranda Ballentine:

Oh, that’s such an important question, Jon, and one that I think our industry is challenged with. I’m very proud that at REBA we have incredible gender diversity, ethnic diversity, diversity of educational background. And when you come to REBA events, that diversity is not as broad as I think we all would like. Part of that stems from the fact that, there’s a little pun, stems from the fact that we are in a STEM industry. And as you and I know, as folks that have thought about this and studied this and tried to promote it in the military.

Miranda Ballentine:

In the military, the part of the Air Force that I was in was really overseeing the civil engineering career field, which was not a highly diverse career field, although the Air Force tends to have a greater diversity than some of the other services with the exception of the Coast Guard, which I think has the best diversity of their services. When you look at the STEM industries, it really goes back to childhood and building that pipeline of people of diverse backgrounds and different genders and interest in STEM fields all the way back to childhood. Because as you get closer and closer to career age, you see that that diversity gets smaller and smaller.

Miranda Ballentine:

And when you’re trying to hire people, you’ve got a certain pipeline. We, as a community, really do need to be thinking about how we engage really all the way back to the elementary school level, making sure that women and people of color and of different ethnic backgrounds have an opportunity to go talk to elementary school kids, talk to middle school kids, mentor them, get engaged with them. And the energy industry I would say is really not particularly different than most other STEM fields.

Jon Powers:

Right. So I want to go back to the time when you were in Colorado coming out of high school or coming out of college and you were dissecting brains of frogs or whatever you said you were doing. If you could take yourself to grab a cup of coffee and give yourself a piece of advice, what would you say?

Miranda Ballentine:

Oh gosh. I think what I would say is embrace the diversity of your career. For some people, you know really young what you want to do, and you’re single-minded, and your education aligns with your profession. And for many others of us, it’s not that way and that is okay. And it took me until I was about 40 before I really got comfortable with my own set of boundaries in what I wanted in a career. And for me, it really comes down to for my career, I need to be making the world a better place in some form or fashion. I need to be having fun. I need to be learning, and I need to be able to support my family. Now, that’s a pretty broad set of guardrails.

Miranda Ballentine:

It doesn’t work for everyone, but it took a couple of decades of people telling me, “You got to pick. You got to pick. You got to pick,” before I got comfortable with, actually I don’t got to pick. It’s okay to work in retail one day and in the Pentagon the next day and start up a trade association the next day. That’s okay to have a career that way if it works for me. And it’s also perfectly okay to have a singular career that is very focused on one industry and be a deep expert in that. It’s a personal journey. And so I would go back to that young lady and tell her, “For you, it’s okay to embrace that diversity.”

Jon Powers:

That’s great advice. My dad worked at Allstate for 35 years, and there were many points throughout my career he’s like, “What are you doing?” And then finally I was working in the White House, he’s like, “Oh, I get it. I get it.” Awesome. Miranda, thank you so much for your leadership in the space, and thank you so much for being part of the show. I look forward to being an active member in REBA. CleanCapital will be joining very soon. And if folks are interested in joining, how do they learn more?

Miranda Ballentine:

They can go to rebuyers.org, rebuyers.org. Unfortunately, we don’t get REBA.org because Reba McEntire owns all of those. So rebuyers.org and you can go to the membership section or give me a call or an email and we’re happy to talk through the value and benefits of membership.

Jon Powers:

Thanks for the fascinating conversation. I look forward to having you back as the organization grows and your members continue to make just incredible strides in changing the way that our country acquires its energy. Special thanks to our producer, Carly Battin, and our intern, Courtney Flynn, for their hard work. And you can always get more episodes of cleancapital.com. As always, please provide your thoughts on other guests. Look forward to continuing the conversation. Thank you.

Miranda Ballentine:

Thanks, Jon.

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.
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Jon Powers: Welcome to Experts Only podcast sponsored by CleanCapital, you can learn more at CleanCapital.com. I’m your host Jon Powers. Each week we explore the intersection of energy, innovation, and finance with leaders across the industry. Thank you so much for joining us. Welcome back to Experts Only podcast. This is Jon Powers, your host, and today we have an incredible conversation with the wonderful Miranda Ballantine, who is the CEO of the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance, REBA. Miranda joined the organization last fall, and really has led it through its rebirth in May as an independent trade association, working with members such as Google, and Facebook, and GM among others who are seeking to procure renewable energy across the US. They’re uniquely positioned as we’ll talk about throughout the conversation.

Jon Powers: But Miranda is uniquely positioned to lead this organization as well. She, prior to this was the CEO of Constant Power, but had been an assistant secretary of the Air Force for energy, where I worked closely with her, as well as she served as a director of sustainability and renewable energy at Walmart. So she’s seen all sides of this renewable energy space. And I think you’ll find our conversation both interesting and fascinating, and help understand what these members are looking for. And I think you’ll find this conversation fascinating, and it’ll help really provide some light on the trend we’re seeing in the industry of growing corporate procurement and renewable energy. Miranda Ballantine thank you so much for joining us at Experts Only.

Miranda: Always a pleasure to talk to you Jon.

Jon Powers: So for the audience, I’ve known Miranda a long time, she’s been an incredible mentor of mine. She’s had a great set of experiences working in the private sector, working in government, and Pentagon, sort of back in the public sector. She’s led and sold companies. It’s really unique to have that diversity within an individual and a leader, and bringing that to the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance is helping set the organization apart from what’s out there. But before diving into all of that, Miranda, I just want to step back and talk about you growing up in Colorado. What led you into the energy space?

Miranda: Well, it’s kind of a funny story, Jon, because my undergraduate work was in a completely unrelated field. I studied neuropsychology as an undergrad. So I spent my undergrad days running rats through mazes and dissecting brains.

Jon Powers: Really?

Miranda: Yeah. So really unrelated entirely, but quickly sort of discovered that I probably wasn’t meant to work solo in a laboratory somewhere. I’m just too extroverted as a human. So spent a little bit of time just out in the working world and discovered I loved business. And also grew up in parts of the world where I had cultivated a real passion for both the environment but also for international development. So how I got into all this, all this crazy clean energy work was actually when I first moved to Washington DC about 2000. I started working for a small DC based nonprofit, really actually more focused or I was more drawn to it for the international development and poverty alleviation work, was called The Solar Electric Light Fund.

Miranda: It was a small NGO that brought solar power to remote parts of the developing world. And as you know access to clean, affordable electricity is really critical to improving people’s health outcomes, educational outcomes, economic outcomes. Without basic electricity services it’s very hard to break the cycle of deep, deep poverty in remote parts of the world. And so that’s really where I became very passionate about clean energy and the role that clean energy can play in solving the world’s toughest challenges. And then from there decided to get a master’s degree in business administration because I found I did really enjoy being in the private sector.

Miranda: And so focused my master’s work on energy and the environment. And then had the great fortune of being able to do some consulting work here in DC and had clients across the spectrum of large corporations, and clean energy investors, as well as most of the large environmental organizations. And that’s really what led me to Walmart. I became very interested in what the private sector was doing around sustainability and clean energy. And just had an opportunity to join the team at Walmart and in the early days of launching, and maturing, and growing the Walmart sustainability team. And then my career has sort of grown from there.

Jon Powers: So a little dichotomy, working at a small nonprofit doing interesting work to working at Walmart. And then working at the Pentagon. In those different environments, right, you’re having a lot of different, probably experiences working within bureaucracy versus sort of more entrepreneurial endeavors into the nonprofit space. What are some of the sort of biggest lessons you learned once you got into the Walmart space? And then even the Pentagon space, in terms of leadership, not so much on the energy side, but in terms of sort of leading organizations and driving change.

Miranda: So I think one of the greatest things that each of us can learn about ourselves professionally is whether we are more entrepreneurial by nature or whether we’re more intrapreneurial by nature.

Jon Powers: Right.

Miranda: They are rather different skillsets, different tolerance for ambiguity, different tolerance for process or lack of process. I have seen entrepreneurial people go inside of large organizations and just really hate it because the amount of process and so called bureaucracy really frustrates people that are naturally entrepreneurial. Conversely, people that are very intrapreneurial thrive in those environments and really bring a skillset of persuasion and influence. And the number of zeros behind each ton of carbon emissions you can influence when you’re working within an organization the size of Walmart, the Fortune number one company in the world.

Miranda: When you’re working within an organization the size of the US Department of the Air Force, largest energy user in the nation. When you’re inside those size of organizations, you can really have a profoundly significant impact in the world. But it does require a different skill set than the entrepreneurial skillset, which is more break things from the outside and drive change that way. So I think that’s one of the most important things one can learn about themselves in their career, is what skill set are they most comfortable wielding? And where will they thrive?

Jon Powers: Yeah. So let’s, for those that aren’t aware, Miranda served as the assistant secretary of the Air Force within the energy division, it’s hard to explain in a bio, but really within the overseeing energy across the Air Force and you came in at a time when the Air Force was making some progress but you really helped sort of shape and drive the policy that’s still being implemented there today. For those that don’t follow the Pentagon’s doing really aggressive and exciting stuff in the renewable space. But from that experience, right, leading that size of an entity, how do you then go and share lessons with folks that are working in the Starbucks’ of the world, right, and the Amazon’s, and some of the people that are members of REBA today? And are there sort of lessons that you share with them about working within that bureaucracy and how they… Because I imagine they’re facing some of the similar challenges, right? Where what they do on a day-to-day basis is not the main mission of the company, but it enhances the main mission of the company, right?

Miranda: Right. Well, and I think you just hit the nail on the head there, Jon. It really is about aligning with the organization’s core mission. So at Walmart, Walmart’s core mission is saving people money so they can live better. Clean energy aligns perfectly with that mission. Clean energy allows current citizens to live better lives, and allows the next generation to live a better life. And at today’s prices, clean energy helps companies like Walmart and Starbucks save money today and in the future.

Miranda: When you’re talking about a military mission, distributed clean energy generation is not only an important play from the perspective of a resilient mission, and the ability for the Air Force to accomplish its mission around the world, but it’s also a supply chain free source of fuel. So an adversary might be able to cut off my diesel supply chain, might be able to cut off my coal supply chain, but can’t cut off the wind or the sun. So it really is all about identifying how the clean energy that you’re looking to procure aligns with your organization’s mission. And that varies by company. But the fundamental perspective of aligning with your mission is the same regardless of what type of organization you’re talking about.

Jon Powers: Speaking of organizations, let’s talk a little bit about the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance, which you’re the CEO. So can you sort of introduce folks to REBA and the mission. And in that talk a little bit about the history. How did REBA come to be and become the organization it is today?

Miranda: Yeah, sure, of course. So the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance, or REBA, as we call it, is the largest group of clean energy buyers. So it’s the demand side of the clean energy equation that have come together to launch this trade association with a singular vision. And our singular vision is a resilient zero carbon energy system where every organization has a viable path to buying renewable energy. Now, what’s really special about this alliance is that most trade associations, if you think about it Jon, most trade associations are aligned around a particular industry or particular sector.

Jon Powers: Right.

Miranda: Whereas REBA’s buyer members are really across virtually every industry and every sector. So if you look at our leadership circle alone, we have auto manufacturers with General Motors, we have CPG companies like Johnson & Johnson, we have a number of tech companies like Salesforce, Google, Facebook, Hewlett Packard Enterprises. We have major brands and retailers like Walmart and the Walt Disney Company. It’s really very broad and that’s just the leadership circle alone. Our leadership circle alone has annual revenues of about one and a quarter trillion dollars. So it’s a very significant movement of large companies. Again, all aligned around a single vision, which is really rather unique from a trade association perspective.

Jon Powers: Yeah. It’s interesting if you look at the… We’ve obviously talked to a lot of the different players with SEIA, and AWEA, and ACORE on this podcast, and they represent very specific parts of the industry and the players in that industry. And a lot of the same folks that are within your membership may play a role in those helping to influence the policies to drive more renewables. But your members have a very unique demand. And I do want to talk a little bit more about the role they’re playing on the policy side. But I do want to just go back to in May of this year you guys announced sort of the relaunch of an independent trade association, basically breaking off and absorbing parts of the World Wildlife Fund, Rocky Mountain Institute, BSR, World Resource Institute. Talk for a second about that experience and how you brought those players together? And what you sort of see as the vision now that those teams have come into one place?

Miranda: Yeah. It’s really incredible actually because the idea for REBA goes all the way back to the fall of 2013, when the World Wildlife Fund brought together for the first time a group of large clean energy buyers. There were about 12 or 13 large companies in the room, many of the leaders that we’ve been talking about. So Walmart, and Google, and Johnson & Johnson, and Coca-Cola, and General Motors, and Hewlett Packard. It really came together in 2013 to talk about how could we better leverage our demand side capabilities and power to drive the clean energy future? And what barriers were we each facing that we might be able to better tackle together than we could on our own. And it was at that meeting that this idea of a demand side trade association was first germinated. But back then, and it’s hard to imagine that was only six years ago, not quite six years ago, there just weren’t that many companies actively transacting in the clean energy markets.

Jon Powers: Right.

Miranda: And we just simply didn’t have critical mass. So this group of really phenomenal leading environmental NGOs with WWF, WRI, the World Resources Institute, RMI, the Rocky Mountain Institute, and BSR, who at that time was the Business for Social Responsibility. I think they’re just BSR now. Sort of like Prince, right? So they’re just BSR.

Jon Powers: Okay.

Miranda: So these four environmental NGOs came together and said, “Hey, let’s really focus on function over form.” And they each took on one of the big barriers that these large buyers had identified and started to build programs around them. And really remarkably as someone who’s worked in and with the environmental NGO community for a long time, the partnership between these four NGOs from the get-go was just incredibly strong and remarkable. No competition for resources or relationships, just a really mission first partnership. And so those programs were actually wrapped in the brand name of Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance even as early as 2014.

Miranda: So the brand has been around and the programs have been around for several years. Well, fast forward to 2017 and the scale of these programs, which I consider 2014 to 2018, 2017 sort of the pilot phase, and the scale and the demand for these services just grew exponentially. So by the end of 2017, only a few years later, that community of large energy buyers had grown from that original 13 to about 200 buyers participating in that community of programs. So it really had just grown exponentially. And many of those original companies kind of stepped back and said, “Hey, look at this. Now we do have the scale to really launch a trade association.”

Miranda: And the value of a trade association, Jon, as you know, and as many of your listeners know, is that it really gives us a lot of freedom to not only do the educational part of our mission, but also to engage much more actively in policy, and legislative, and regulatory proceedings to ensure that the policy environment supports the clean energy markets that our buyers are looking to have. So in 2018, those four NGOs sat down together all the way up to the CEO level. And again, I just think it’s an incredible statement to the personalities and the mission focus of those four CEOs, Jules Kortenhorst, Carter Roberts, Andrew Steer, Aaron Kramer, that they were willing to spin off their programs. They spun off resources, they spun off people, they spun off relationships with some of the largest brands in the world into a new business led trade association. I’ve really never seen anything like it. It’s quite remarkable.

Jon Powers: Yeah. And you talk about scale and growth, in parallel to that scale and growth of a group like REBA, the scale and growth of the corporate procurement has just continued to skyrocket. I just recently had Lisa Jacobson from Business Council for Sustainable Energy, and Ethan Zindler from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Bloomberg NEF as they call it now, to talk about the fact book. And amazing takeaways that corporate PPAs grew 300% from 2017 to 2018, right?

Jon Powers: A lot of your members and others are now getting in the game and the space is growing. What I think is fascinating about that, it’s not just that folks are taking an active role now in acquiring and procuring their own energy, right? You flash back 10 years ago when people paid the utility bill. Now a lot of these sophisticated buyers that are your members have sophisticated energy procurement shops, even ones that don’t are looking to find ways to get involved. But they’re also playing a major role in terms of policy.

Jon Powers: So when you look at a place, I’m going to pick on Virginia here for a second. Virginia has struggle putting the right renewable energy programs in place. But then when big players like Microsoft or Apple come in and say, “We won’t move our data centers here until you have renewable goals.” It changes the dialogue completely. And you’re now seeing just great strides from Dominion Power, right, putting massive PPAs up there. How do you sort of shepherd those voices from all the different members to sort of have an impact on policy?

Miranda: There was so much in what you just said, Jon.

Jon Powers: Lots and I’m sorry.

Miranda: Going all the way back to Ethan and Lisa, this is such an amazing community of people that work on these issues. I was on the phone with Ethan this morning, I’m having lunch with Lisa next week. It’s just an incredible group of people. So for any of your listeners that are not in the industry thinking about it, and you just want to work with a really cool, passionate, smart group of people, this is the place to be.

Jon Powers: Yeah, I agree.

Miranda: Not just REBA.

Jon Powers: That’s why I started the podcast.

Miranda: Yeah. That’s why you started the podcast. So it’s full of smart people from across political spectrums, from across different backgrounds. I just think it’s a really cool place to be, it’s got something for business people, for independence people, for national security people, for clean energy. It’s just, it’s a great space. So enough of that soapbox. Yes, corporate buyers, and I would say all large buyers, not just corporates. So REBA also has cities as members, we have universities as members, we have healthcare systems. I would say that the large energy buyer space is really booming. Lisa and Ethan were right for large scale deals it about tripled between 2017 and 2018. It was a banner year with a 6.6 gigawatts of large scale renewables announced, deals signed, and a huge increase in new buyers. So we went from 31 different buyers in 2017 to 76 buyers in 2018.

Jon Powers: Wow.

Miranda: Dramatic increase. Interestingly, you’re not seeing that same dramatic increase in new developers doing projects. I think what we’re seeing is buyers going with developers that have a strong track record.

Jon Powers: And that’s right, absolutely.

Miranda: So I think that’s kind of an interesting little sidebar. But yes, last year was a banner year. As of May of this year, we’re already at one and a half gigawatts of announcements and it’s gone up even since May. So we’re on track for another real banner year. You are absolutely right that policy, regulatory legislative interventions, I would anticipate you’re going to see much greater an increase of activity from the buyer community. And you’re right that states and state policy makers definitely sit up and listen when there are big companies, whether it’s a data center or manufacturing company with the promise of new jobs coming into their market. It does open some doors to have that power, so to speak, no pun intended.

Jon Powers: Right, right.

Miranda: But I do want to point out that the the REBA members that are really engaged on the policy side are really focused on game changing policies that allow all types of energy buyers the opportunity to choose where their electrons come from and what kind of electrons they’re interested in. And I think that’s a really important point to make because I do think that some folks feel like it’s a little self serving for a data center to come in and say, “Well, I want green power. And so create a special policy that works for me.”

Jon Powers: Right. Give me the special tariff just for me.

Miranda: Right. And you have seen some of that happening and less out of self serving interest and more to start a conversation and start a dialogue. But what you’re already seeing is a change in how those discussions are happening. How can we really change the system so that we can get to a zero carbon energy system very rapidly? We look at the timeframe that the IPCC has put out for us and we have a super short window to get to a global grid that’s 60% renewable on top of-

Jon Powers: Right.

Miranda: … a whole bunch of other zero carbon energy sources like nuclear. So we don’t have a long time. And company by company bespoke solutions really simply aren’t going to work. So the great thing about the REBA community is that it’s really focused on game changing, market changing policies and regulations that make our vision, the second half of our vision. I don’t know if you caught it, but the second half of our vision is every organization has a viable path to buying clean energy. So it’s not just these guys there because they come with new jobs.

Jon Powers: Right.

Miranda: Or those guys there because they have the biggest lobbying voice.

Jon Powers: Well, I think it’s so important because I think a lot of the fact that the Starbucks’, and the Googles, and the Apples can can put resources into policy teams and energy procurement offices, is really important. But how do you get the mid level companies that don’t have that capacity the access? And that’s exactly what you’re creating. So I want to talk a little bit about sort of the cultural awareness that’s happening around renewables today. We talk a lot on the show, but I think we’re living in a fascinating moment on climate change. And a lot of that’s being driven by renewables, you had Anheuser-Busch to go to Super Bowl air time to wind energy for their beer. You’ve got companies like Starbucks who tout their positive announcements and others. Where for your members do you sort of see their voice playing a role in the sort of cultural awakening we’re having in this space?

Miranda: I think it varies quite a lot. I do think that when you have sort of great American heartland brands like Budweiser giving clean energy a prominent feature, it really does sort of democratize clean energy.

Jon Powers: Yeah. And you kind of see this at the Pentagon too, right?

Miranda: Sure.

Jon Powers: When you talked about the Air Force people who are not as aware of what was going on, it definitely perked them up, right?

Miranda: Yeah. And when it comes to wind and solar, I think what’s really been game changing is these are just not seen as as new technologies anymore.

Jon Powers: Right.

Miranda: These are technologies that are proven. There is no technological risk being taken by the off takers or the developers or the financiers. I think we’ve seen a big shift in how projects are financed. And you can speak to that better than I can because the technology risk has just come down. That’s not really a factor anymore in project finance, whereas in the not so distant past it still was considered some technology risks.

Jon Powers: Yeah. I remember just a few short years ago, one of your members, when I was working at the White House, we had one of your members come in, a very senior person, and I won’t name her. But she was having trouble at her company, they were doing tremendous stuff around renewables, but one of their senior C-suite executives saw that SunEdison had crashed and just assumed the whole solar market was gone.

Miranda: Right, right.

Jon Powers: Right? And it was just that not understanding of what was happening in the space that has sort of tied it to a stock of one company. And now I think people are starting to see that perception change, right? This is no longer an alternative energy, it’s a mainstream approach.

Miranda: Yeah. That’s exactly right. So what we find is that our members talk about their clean energy projects from a range of perspectives. Yes, they are absolutely focused on doing their part to solve the climate challenge, the climate crisis really, C&I, commercial and industrial energy users are the number one source of energy related greenhouse gas emissions in this country. And so they know that the power needed to run their facilities to manufacture their products is a singular significant challenge causing the climate crisis, and they want to solve that. They believe it’s their moral duty to solve it.

Miranda: And they know that we as humans need energy to have, coming back to how I started my conversation, and how I started my career, without power you can’t have strong economies. You can’t have healthy economies. You can’t have strong education. So these companies know that power is needed in order to have all of those things. And they want to do so in a way that doesn’t compromise our children and grandchildren’s ability to live on the planet. So that is an important part of their communications. At the same time, an important part of their communications is that these investments and these choices are good for the bottom line-

Jon Powers: Right.

Miranda: … are good for shareholders, they’re good for our country’s resilience, they’re good for our country’s energy security challenges that they are also all dealing with. It’s not just the Pentagon that has concerns about grid security and grid vulnerability. So it varies a lot, what a member chooses to focus on in their communications depending on that particular company’s interests.

Jon Powers: So I want to end with two sort of final questions Miranda. The first we’ve been at a sort of regular theme in the last few episodes talking about sort of diversity within the industry. SEIA has an initiative pushing for diversity, we at CleanCapital are pushing that for ourselves. But we also have talked to really phenomenal leaders in this space that are women, and and veterans, and others. How are you seeing within your members sort of a push for diversity within its own rights?

Miranda: Oh, that’s such an important question, Jon. And one that I think our industry is challenged with. I’m very proud that at REBA we have incredible gender diversity, ethnic diversity, diversity of educational background. And when you come to REBA events, that diversity is not as broad as I think we all would like. Part of that stems from the fact that, there’s a little pun-

Jon Powers: Right.

Miranda: … stems from the fact that we are in a STEM industry. And as you and I know, as folks that have thought about this and studied this and tried to promote it in the military, the part of the Air Force that I was in was really overseeing the civil engineering career field. Which was not a highly diverse career field. Although the Air Force tends to have greater diversity than some of the other services, with the exception of the Coast Guard, which I think has the best diversity for their services. But when you look at the STEM industries, it really goes back to childhood and building that pipeline of people of diverse backgrounds, and different genders, and interest in STEM fields all the way back to childhood. Because as you get closer and closer to career age, you see that that diversity gets smaller and smaller.

Jon Powers: Right.

Miranda: And when you’re trying to hire people, you’ve got a certain pipeline. So we as a community really do need to be thinking about how we engage really all the way back to the elementary school level, making sure that women, and people of color, and of different ethnic backgrounds have an opportunity to go talk to elementary school kids, talk to middle school kids, mentor them, get engaged with them. And the energy industry, I would say is really not particularly different than most other STEM fields.

Jon Powers: Right. So I want to go back to the time when you were in Colorado coming out of high school or coming out of college. And you were dissecting brains of frogs or whatever you said you were doing. If you could take yourself to grab a cup of coffee and give yourself a piece of advice, what would you say?

Miranda: Oh gosh. I think what I would say is, “Embrace the diversity of your career.”

Jon Powers: Wow, that’s great.

Miranda: For some people you know really young what you want to do, and you’re single minded, and your education aligns with your profession. And for many others of us it’s not that way. And that is okay. And it took me until I was about 40 before I really got comfortable with my own set of boundaries in what I wanted in a career. And for me it really comes down to, from my career I need to be making the world a better place in some form or fashion. I need to be having fun, I need to be learning, and I need to be able to support my family. Now that’s a pretty broad set of guardrails. It doesn’t work for everyone, but it took a couple of decades of people telling me, “You got to pick, you got to pick, you got to pick.” Before I got comfortable with, actually I don’t got to pick.

Jon Powers: Right, right.

Miranda: It’s okay to work in retail one day, and in the Pentagon the next day, and start up a trade association the next day. That’s okay to have a career that way if it works for me. And it’s also perfectly okay to have a singular career that is very focused on one industry and be a deep expert in that. It’s a personal journey. And so I would go back to that young lady and tell her, “For you it’s okay to embrace that diversity.”

Jon Powers: That’s great, great advice. My dad worked at Allstate for 35 years and there were many points throughout my career he’s like, “What are you doing?” Then finally I was working at the White House. He’s like, “Oh, I get it. I get it.” Awesome. Miranda, thank you so much for your leadership in this space. And thank you so much for being part of the show. I look forward to being an active member in REBA. CleanCapital will be joining very soon. And if folks are interested in joining, how do they learn more?

Miranda: They can go to REbuyers.org, REbuyers.org. Unfortunately we don’t get REBA.org because Reba McEntire owns all of those. So REbuyers.org, and you can go to the membership section. Or give me a call or an email, and we’re happy to talk through the value and benefits of membership.

Jon Powers: Yeah. Thanks for the fascinating conversation. I look forward to having you back as the organization grows, and that your members continue to make just incredible strides in changing the way that our country acquires its energy. I want to say a special thanks to our producer Carly Batten, and our intern Courtney Flynn for their hard work. And you can always get more episodes at CleanCapital.com. And as always, please provide your thoughts on other guests. Look forward to continuing the conversation. Thank you.

Miranda: Thanks Jon.

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.
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Episode 51: Lisa Jacobson & Ethan Zindler

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This week, Jon Powers talks with Lisa Jacobson, President of the Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE) and Ethan Zindler, head of Americas at Bloomberg NEF. Bloomberg NEF produces and BCSE underwrites the Sustainable Energy in America Factbook, which provides up-to-date, accurate market intelligence about the broad range of industries that are contributing the country’s move toward cleaner energy production and more efficent energy usage.

This discussion highlights some of the insights in the 2019 Factbook, what the future holds, and how businesses, advocacy organizations, and governments are making that research actionable as we drive toward a clean energy economy.
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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 intersection of energy innovation and finance with leaders across the industry. Thank you so much for joining us.

Welcome back to Experts Only. I’m your host Jon Powers. We have a little bit of a different episode this week, instead of our standard one on one conversation, we’re actually talking with Lisa Jacobson, who’s the President of the Business Council for Sustainable Energy and Ethan Zindler, who heads the Americas for Bloomberg NEF. And we’re going to talk about their annual Sustainable Energy in America Factbook. This is the seventh year they’ve produced it. The Factbook provides amazing up-to-date and accurate market intelligence. It’s been a leading resource for folks in industry and our dialogue is going to talk a little bit about the history of the Factbook and how they started doing it, but talk about some of the trends that we’re seeing.

So bear with us as we’re trying our first multiple guest interview. But I appreciate your interest and look forward to the conversation. Lisa and Ethan, thank you so much for joining us here at Experts Only podcast. It’s great to have you back on the show.

Lisa Jacobson: It is great to be here again. Thank you.

Ethan Zindler: Thanks for having us.

Jon Powers: So, Lisa, I want to start off with the Business Council for Sustainable Energy and it’d be great if you just talk for a second about your role in the market and some of the work the BCSE does.

Lisa Jacobson: Sure. Well, the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, it’s hard to believe we are nearly 30 years strong as a coalition.

Jon Powers: Wow.

Lisa Jacobson: Yes, we represent a very broad set of energy industry players with both North American and global markets. Our core areas of focus from an industry perspective have been supply side and demand side, energy efficiency, the broad portfolio of renewable energy technologies and the natural gas industries. And when the council was formed in the early 1990s this portfolio of efficiency, natural gas, renewable energy, was really emerging as the growth sectors of the US energy economy. And, we’ve seen tremendous growth in all areas and a continued evolving marketplace. And the BCSE’s role is to educate and advocate on policies that will hopefully continue that accelerated market growth.

Jon Powers: Thanks. And Ethan, most folks are familiar with Bloomberg New Energy Finance. If you follow a lot of folks in the industry’s Twitter accounts are constantly putting out the great data that you guys are working on. But you lead the Americas for BNEF. Can you talk a little bit about the role of BNEF and there’s a great episode, an earlier podcast, that you mentioned something I quote all the time, that you’ve been around and seen the industry mature from folks walking around with ponytails, to people in business suits. A lot of the amazing information that’s feeding the industry today comes from the work you all do. So, could you just talk a little about the work?

Ethan Zindler: Thanks. Yeah. Thanks for having me back. So, you have the Bloomberg NEF as we’re now called. We were no longer… We’ve dropped the New Energy Finance with sort of like IBM, or I would say on a good day we’re like IBM. And maybe on a bad day we were kind of like KFC. But it’s three letters.

But Bloomberg NEF, and actually that’s a reflection of the fact that the research we do is not just energy and finance anymore, but we actually are also starting to do some additional research into other areas around sustainability, including around materials and technology that we consider to be part of a larger, so-called, circular economy.

But as you mentioned, our history and our heritage has been that we started off life as a renewable energy research firm, essentially a boutique research firm about 15 years ago. Started in the apartment of our founder, Michael Liebreich. And then eventually we grew and were bought by Bloomberg and now we are known as Bloomberg NEF. And we’re essentially the energy markets research division of Bloomberg doing research very specifically on sort of microeconomic and macroeconomic factors. We don’t do public equities research but we focus on things like what the price of a wind turbine should be or levelized cost of electricity, things like that kind of stuff.

Jon Powers: Yeah. So I want to sort of step back and when most people in their marriage, seven years is an important point in a marriage. When you get your copper gift and, [inaudible 00:04:45] make or break. Well this is the seventh year of the marriage between Bloomberg NEF and BCSE. Can you, Lisa, I’d love you to talk a little about the history. How did this come about? And I do want to talk about the trends you guys have seen, but how did this marriage sort of get started?

Lisa Jacobson: Well, first of all, very happy to be seven years strong and this partnership is going well. And I think one of the themes about a good marriage and a good working relationship is good communication and a very collaborative working relationship. And I think that’s what started this project and why it continues to thrive. And I also think that at the moment in time when we decided to do this work, it was right on the cusp of being able to trace with data a lot of these changes, which we knew were happening, but they weren’t really evident in a multi year fashion.

So I think the BCSE board of directors and Ethan really could see that there was something very significant happening and the project always kind of is ahead of the curve in a number of areas. But it certainly was in terms of trying to knit together all the trends that are happening in US energy markets in a quantitative way, and basically as close to real time as you can get it.

But just to share the little anecdote of how the project was started. When the BCSE was about to turn 20 years strong, we invited Ethan Zindler, who we had been working with when it was just a New Energy Finance, before it was acquired by Bloomberg, to talk about renewable energy and energy efficiency market data. And we had a very robust conversation and it was clear across the table that, while there were some industries where there was very good data, across the board there were gaps, certainly for the industries that the BCSE represents.

And then there were very few that, as I said, were really putting it together in a smart way that was factually oriented. And this project has been a collaboration. I know I learn every year, I know our members learn and hopefully our key audiences learn, which are policy makers, also media and others that are following the energy and environmental arenas.

Jon Powers: So, Ethan, when you guys started this seven years ago, you really did establish almost a baseline of where folks can start to measure the industry from. And before we get into sort of the 2019 report, what trends have you seen over the last seven years as the data becomes better and more defined and obviously the market has matured. And sustainable energy is no longer an alternative energy. It’s a mainstream energy. So what are the trends that you’ve seen over the last seven years?

Ethan Zindler: So I mean, just to sort of piggy back on some of what Lisa was saying. When we first started doing this, I think the rationale was that there was a dearth of facts or let’s put it this way, there was a dearth of facts put together in a very timely and simple manner that people could relate to. And, I also, I think, always tried to make the argument that if you were looking at information about the clean energy sector, that was, let’s say, any more than 12 months old, it was quite dated.

In fact, you could argue even more than three months old. It was dated, given how much we were seeing photovoltaic prices move around. So, that was sort of one of the initial rationales here, was that, in particularly in the context of Washington where we both are, is to try and make sure that they were the right set of facts on the table, easily accessible for folks to understand so that they could make good policy decisions, whatever those would be, based on what we’d have to say.

And over the seven years, I think we, as BNEF, have really benefited enormously from working with Lisa and her team because we learn new things every year from them and from her members and the coalition. Everything from understanding about biomass build or lack thereof. And, making sure that we get it right on talking about hydro generation versus capacity, things like that, that her team and again, affiliates, are always great about sort of working with us on and helping us also to think about new issues and new technologies that we wouldn’t necessarily have on our radar. So, it’s been very symbiotic in that way.

Jon Powers: Lisa, it’s probably hard to be surprised now as you’ve seen the data and the trends moving in a pretty clear direction in the last few years, but is there anything before the 2019, you guys published the 2019 report, that really surprised you?

Lisa Jacobson: Yes. Actually, one of the things that I talk about most when I’m doing kind of big takeaways for the Factbook, and 2019’s issue in particular, and Ethan will correct me if I oversimplify or I get this wrong. But I mean, the whole activity of the corporate space is making very significant strides, not just for renewables, but this little statistic is… Or big statistic I should say, relates to renewables. But basically, if you look at the deployment and the build across all renewable technologies in 2018 and you match that to the corporate pledges, and the gigawatts of corporate pledges that were assigned in 2018. Now, of course these projects, as you know very well, don’t happen in the same year, but it’s basically represents half of the build.

So the corporate market is putting a very strong forward signal here for the cost and other co-benefits of renewable energy. So that definitely surprised me. I think that is a very significant, again, forward looking benchmark. But what do you think Ethan?

Ethan Zindler: No, I think that… I mean I think that that seems to be a growing space and Jon, you’re probably thinking this too in your world in developing projects, that that seems to be a real source of demand in the amount of pledges that have been made on clean energy under the RE 100, which has been organized and also, there’s increasing number of carbon pledges as well, which are, I think, they’re going to have some effect on that, I think has been very positive and we know that market’s continued to grow.

I would say in terms of one other thing, on the sort of downside of things that surprised us, or at least surprised me a little bit last year, was that even though we are seeing the actual power sector more broadly decarbonized as we move more towards renewables and natural gas, and away from coal, which has continued to decline last year. Actual emissions kind of ticked up last year and that was definitely not… That was a little bit of a surprise and definitely not a happy surprise either. Reflective of the fact that if you want to look at it very optimistically, you could say, “Well it’s because the economy really picked up.” But there were multiple reasons that are kind of hard to parse out, but from an emissions perspective, is definitely not great.

Jon Powers: Oh, it’s a tough story, right? For all the work we’re putting into reduction, that we saw it tick up. I agree. That shocked me. I do want to go back, let’s go back to the corporate PPAs here for a second. I was going to come back to this later, but it is an important part of what we do at Clean Capital for sure. But, I also think there’s an argument to be had that they are also, because of their commitments, because of the demand that they’re creating, they’re also creating a lot of the policy drivers that we’re seeing change happen at the state levels right now. When you’ve got big players like Amazon and Google and others who go into a state like Virginia and refuse to bring their operations until they can contract for renewables.

And then you’ve got the big players in places like Richmond, who may have been hesitant to move in before, want those businesses and as much as the advocates could make the case when you’ve got jobs on the line, it’s helped push some of those policies ahead. I know BCSE, Lisa, does a lot of advocacy work. Are you seeing more of the corporations sort of at the state level playing a role?

Lisa Jacobson: Yes. And actually, the 2019 Factbook has new data to track this. So, we have a chart where we have a map of all states that have some type of window in, some kind of green tariff, all different shapes and forms. And it notes appropriately that some of them work quite well and others may still need some improvements. But that map wouldn’t have existed five, six years ago and it wouldn’t have existed without these large corporate players discussing what they need in terms of their energy management and energy choices and pushing through some very challenging marketplaces.

And I think as I look forward, having 50 different ways to procure clean energy is not going to be the most efficient. So, how do we learn and evolve as time goes by? I’m not suggesting there needs to be one federal way. I think all of these things really do need to have local benefits and so, they might need to be adjusted to work in that environment.

But what we are seeing, I think, is a sea change, especially in states where there’s been more resistance in the past to seeing that this is something they need to address and at least try to meet halfway the corporates or others that are asking for more clean energy. So it’s a little messy right now. It may need a good number of years to sort itself out, but definitely more states are open to it. And the fact that the corporate community in partnership with with other stakeholders are finally being able to make some headway in places that have been challenging is really important.

And I would also say the city. It’s not just at the state level. A lot of times these breakthroughs are happening in large cities, which then can be a driver for things at the state level or they just remain at the city level but it still is a significant population.

Jon Powers: Yeah, I find it interesting when you’ve got… A lot of the big corporations have that capacity to sort of follow all these policy moves. What the Factbook does well and I think what BCSE does well is provide an insight for those that want to better understand that the constantly shifting, right now, policy game at the state level. I mean, you’ve got states like New York where I sit where it has had a massive new piece of climate legislation move forward. You’ve got what’s happening too in Oregon, when literally you’ve got the governor trying to chase down the Senate with police officers to bring them in back to vote. It’s hard to track all the changes that are happening right now in the states. That the Factbook does a good job of helping introduce people to those options.

Ethan Zindler: Yeah I think, I mean we’ll certainly have for, not to get ahead of this and assuming we do this again, because I think we are going to. We’ll have a lot of policy updates, I think, into this next year and more states that we can sort of fill in as having supportive long term RPS. And in fact, the number of states just with 100% clean energy goals is now, covers a decent chunk of the map actually.

Jon Powers: Absolutely. So Ethan, I want to step out of the US for a second. Some of the data in the report show that across the world wind and solar now present the least expensive options for adding new power generation. I mean, I think if you went back even five years, people weren’t sure this was ever going to happen. Can you talk a little bit about this development and what does this mean for business leaders, for investors and for policy makers?

Ethan Zindler: Well, I mean, I hope, at the very least, it stops the conversation around, “Oh, we can’t afford this. Oh, it’s too expensive.” I think, it’s funny in how quickly the conversation can switch. If you look closely at power markets, the real threat isn’t that these technologies are too expensive. It’s that they’re too cheap and that they’re going to drive down wholesale power prices for other existing players.

And so I think that’s the new sort of fear of incumbents. But it is ironic that after, for years, some of those same folks think, “Oh, we can’t afford to do this.” Now we hear complaints about how they’re feeling threatened by these technologies. So, I think things have definitely changed very quickly. And I think when you do, these technologies do have a meaningful impact on market prices once they reach some kind of real level of penetration as we’re certainly seeing in California and Texas and in other places as well.

So it’s a really interesting time because it’s not like renewables or, as I’ve said many times, there’s nothing alternative about this. And now, as you enter the mainstream though, you start to encounter the larger dynamics of the power markets overall and affect them in really interesting ways.

Jon Powers: Can you talk a little bit about too, moving outside of just… I think a lot of folks culturally just assume wind and solar, right? When they talk about renewals. There’s other things like biogas and biomass and wasted energy it’s moving. But the report, it also really highlights an interesting continued growth in the natural gas industry, which is now the number one source of power in the US. What did you guys see in sort of total investment and the growth in that space?

Lisa Jacobson: Well, I mean, natural gas is a rather incredible story. And if you look at the amount of gas that the US is producing, that’s been surging in record years that we’ve been seeing for production and for consumption of gas in the last several years. And actually we’re just about to put out a report tomorrow talking about how we think Permian gas from the Permian, again, that there’s an enormous amount of it additional capacity to come next year and about half the generation that was added last year, about half of the 40 gigawatts last year was with gas and, was one of the biggest years for build for gas since about 2004 or so.

So look, this shows no sign of abating. And in terms of cheap gas prices down in the $2 to $3 range, really for quite some time. It will be interesting to see if other countries can sort of achieve their own natural gas. A miracle, obviously, getting this gas to other places has costs and it’s necessarily clear that everybody else is going to see that kind of evolution. In terms of our long term forecast, which we actually put out last week, we’re quite bullish about gas’ role in the US power sector longer term, much less bullish about its role in the power sectors of other countries around the world.

Jon Powers: Thank you Ethan. Lisa, the Factbook is just that, it’s a lot of phenomenal fact and data. Being in Washington DC, where oftentimes facts don’t always matter, you guys are walking into conversations with a lot of evidence and a lot of meat behind your arguments. When you talk about the growth of the clean energy jobs and energy efficiency jobs are over 3 million people now. The growth of the investment, the growth impact that it’s having. What do you find as the arguments that are most effective when you’re trying to make the case in Washington?

Lisa Jacobson: Well, I think you need to have the facts because at a big picture, macro level, there are still questions of is this affordable? Is this reliable? Can I deploy when it needs to be? And I think you have to lay out the broad macro picture, but what really matters to policy makers is the local connection. And just having one or two employers come in and put a face that’s real for a community, that’s what’s going to open up more opportunities.

Now, even if you can open up an individual’s mind to thinking about this as being a valuable economic attributor or energy contributor in their community, it doesn’t mean they’re going to have the same point of view on what mechanisms we should use going forward. But I have seen in the last couple of years very dramatic changes in the way people approach this information. And again, if you can pair it with a local business that’s going to be extremely compelling.

Ethan Zindler: I would just add that the good news for us here in the facts provision business is that the demand for our product never goes down. We launched this seven years ago and I think Lisa and I both felt like there was a lot of sort of misinformation out there, lack of information, I would argue sometimes even disinformation. And then, here we are in the Trump era and a new term called alternative facts has arisen thanks to Kellyanne Conway. The demand for real life facts has never been higher, thanks to events in the last couple of years.

Lisa Jacobson: Yeah. And if I can just give you an example of that this year. So the BCSE, in large part because of the Factbook project that we did with Bloomberg, was invited to speak, be a witness, at the first hearing of the full Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee dealing with climate change and the power sector. And the reason why the council was invited and Ranking Member Manchin asked for the URL like three times is because we had facts to offer.

And so we were with a very distinguished panel, but we had the facts and that’s what they were looking for. They wanted to start the conversation anew based on facts. And Ethan too, and Bloomberg NEF, have been also having a lot of conversations, have been testifying in Congress a great deal this year because we have new Congress with many new members and they’re all trying to understand. And they see energy and resilience and the economic conditions we’re in as extremely important areas of focus in new ways. So obviously the environmental aspects and climate change have had a great deal more attention on the agenda, which is so welcome and it’s been very bipartisan.

But I think the whole energy agenda, it’s no longer… It’s acceptable to just assume you’re going lift a switch and there’s going to be something there. We need to understand and make sure that we cultivate the energy assets we have and that they’re performing in different ways. So it requires more policymaker attention.

Jon Powers: I just want to challenge our listeners to go to bcse.org. You can get the Factbook. It’s highlighted right on the homepage. But the thing that, I think, I love what you guys do with it Lisa, is that you break it out into a lot of info docs. You break it out into brochures. It’s a lot of great, digestible information for those people who don’t have the patience to read an entire report.

And if you’re listening and see this, share this with your local advocacy organizations so they know that it’s there and they know how to access it. And I know that Lisa’s team are also willing to sort of dive into the states and provide information that really can help us push the policies we need to see implemented forward.

So I ask this of both you. I’m going to start off with Ethan. When we come back here next year for your bronze anniversary of the report, the Factbook, what do you expect to see in the trends?

Ethan Zindler: Interesting question. I mean I think that there’s definitely some scrambling going on or let’s say, I would say scrambling is too strong a term, but accelerated activity, as we come up on the sort of unofficial but more important end of the tax credits for Whitman Solar. And I think that that’s kind of… You’re probably seeing a fair amount of hurrying up activity. So I think that that’s definitely something we’ll probably highlight a bit.

I would say that the continued growth of electric vehicles and another record year probably for EVs. What I don’t have a prediction on, and I’m very curious to see, is what we’re going to look like on electricity consumption and emissions. Because I think, first of all, what’s going on exactly with the US economy is very much in question at the moment.

And then second, I know that weather has been very hot in some parts of the country, but as Lisa and I were saying before we joined the podcast, it’s been a very lovely June here in Washington and I would say totally cool in some places on the East Coast. So what that’s meant exactly for emissions, I don’t know. We don’t frankly track it month to month.

So I think that’s a big sort of question mark. And last year’s number on emissions, like I said, that was my surprise. So I hope to be surprised in a pleasant way with them going down this year.

Jon Powers: Yeah, absolutely. I think we all hope it goes down. How about you, Lisa?

Lisa Jacobson: Oh, actually, that was what I was going to say. I think that was the biggest concern with the data that came out in 2019 was and trying to unpack it and one year is very hard to really make any conclusions. I commend BNEF for really being first out of the gate to make an attempt at looking at what was going on in buildings, in terms of heating and cooling and kind of high heating days, high cooling days, which when you need more power or energy to warm your home in the winter when there’s extreme cold days. Or when need more air conditioning when it’s very, very warm.

And thinking about that in the context of what we were seeing in the emissions trends, in addition to kind of what does it mean if our industrial activity increases. And does that mean that we no longer are decoupled our productivity with admissions. So we have very long term. You go back 25 years, we have a very strong trend on energy productivity, but there was a deviation last year and these are… I think, good news compound’s good news, right?

We also work in the international context with the climate change negotiations globally and we want to show that the US is making progress. That will continue to create momentum in other countries that look to the US politically, but also just from the economic choices we’re making. If we’re choosing more clean energy, they’re thinking, “Well you know what? I probably should too.” So there’s just this dynamic set of impacts that are not necessarily always quantitative, but they can feed off of data trends.

So I’ve, not only is it disturbing just towards meeting our climate goals, but I think there’s just a feedback mechanism if we are not on track to continue to make significant emissions reductions nationally, that’s a big concern. And then obviously, we need to understand why.

Jon Powers: Right.

Ethan Zindler: If I could add one other thing. I mean, I would say that on a positive note to what we were talking about earlier, and I don’t know exactly how one would specifically quantify this, but this is, I would say, is probably shaping up to be the best year ever in terms of state level policy making in support of clean energy. I mean we’re halfway through and those 100 pound goals that we’ve been seeing and the efforts. Last year’s election, there was a great deal of publicity around the Democrats taking control of the US House of Representatives.

But, I think arguably the far more meaningful change was the changes that we saw at the state legislative level and the governorships because those are really manifesting themselves in a great deal of change. And so, yeah, I don’t know how you measure it specifically, but by the time this year is over, sounds like we’ll have half a dozen states or more with 100% clean energy goals and a lot of states… And who knows what’s going to happen in Virginia in the elections this fall. So a lot of things moving in the right direction on that front for sure.

Jon Powers: Yeah, I’m going to actually arguing that we’re at a sort of unique climate moment where the national perception is there and the local folks that are witnessing it firsthand are really starting to act and, hopefully we can get Washington caught back up here in the future. I do want to ask, I usually have a pretty standard final question but I’m going to tweak it this time, Ethan because the World Cup’s going on. I know you’ve covered a couple of them as a reporter. Any estimates? Who’s going to pull it off this year?

Ethan Zindler: Well I did see that the US just made it through, presumably by the time this runs, that’ll be old news but they just beat [inaudible 00:29:45] two to one. That’s good. It sounds like they cut some breaks maybe in that match. And so I don’t know. Hard to predict. It’s certainly been very entertaining so far. And I guess I will say go USA.

Jon Powers: There you go. Okay-

Lisa Jacobson: I’ll let go with that. Go USA.

Jon Powers: Outstanding. Well thank you Lisa, and thank you Ethan. Thank you so much for putting this report out first and foremost. And then of course, thank you for joining us today.

Lisa Jacobson: Yeah, thanks for the opportunity, John. It’s a pleasure. And Ethan, thank you so much for doing this together.

Ethan Zindler: Same here. Back at you.

Jon Powers: We’ll have you back on to celebrate the next anniversary. And I’d like to thank our producers, Carly Baton and Courtney Flynn for their hard work. And as always, challenge people to go to cleancapital.com to provide insights and ideas on future podcasts. We just had our 50th podcasts published this week while we’re recording this, so we’re making some good progress. Look forward to continuing the conversation.

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.
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