Transcript: Climate, Technology and Sustainability

MS. BAIRD: Hello and welcome. I’m Kathy Baird. I’m the chief communications officer here at The Post and the general manager of Washington Post Live. It is great to have all of you here with us today in person for an important set of conversations about climate change. Today's program focuses on solutions and policy and technology and nature. According to a sweeping UN report released in March, the world is likely to pass a dangerous temperature threshold within the next decade unless countries transform their economies and adopt new environmental approaches.

We are joined on our stage today by some key figures working to respond to that challenge. First, my colleague, Leigh Ann Caldwell, will speak with Delaware Democratic Senator Chris Coons, who is co-chair of the Climate Caucus. Next, Juliet Eilperin will discuss conservation and biodiversity with Janis Searles Jones, CEO of Ocean Conservancy, and Marcene Mitchell, senior VP of Climate Change for the World Wildlife Fund. And finally, Bina Venkataraman will speak to ARPA-E Director Evelyn Wang about the innovative technologies her agency is researching.

Before we begin, I'd like to thank today's sponsor for this event, Hitachi, and we want to thank all of you for coming.

After this short video, my colleague, Leigh Ann Caldwell, will take the stage. Thank you.

[Video plays]

MS. CALDWELL: Good morning. Welcome to Washington Post Live. I'm Leigh Ann Caldwell, an anchor here and also co-author of the early morning newsletter, the Early 202

Today to talk about climate, we have Senator Chris Koons, a Democrat from Delaware. Senator Coons, thanks so much for joining us today.

SEN. COONS: Thanks, Leigh Ann. Great to be here with you.

MS. CALDWELL: So we're talking about climate and innovation and technology, but first, there's some news of the day I have to ask you. President Biden is meeting with four congressional leaders today at 3 p.m.--

SEN. COONS: He is.

MS. CALDWELL: --about the debt limit. We are less than--about two weeks away from where the X-date, the debt limit could be reached. So what do you think the chances are that the country could default?

SEN. COONS: I think we're in for a very unsettling couple of weeks. Anyone who followed closely the process by which Speaker McCarthy became Speaker McCarthy knows that he has very little running room, and his caucus includes some folks who have somewhat extreme ideas about our economy, about the debt limit.

It was in no way constructive to have the former president in a recent televised town hall urging Republicans to go ahead and default, A. B, our president has said over and over, we should not negotiate about default. I agree. We have to pay the bills that have already been accrued.

It is understandable that we are also negotiating about spending, revenue, the budget, and appropriations. In fact, I'm going from here to a full Appropriations Committee hearing about China and the investments that Defense, State, and Commerce, those departments, are asking for to improve our competition with China.

So what are the odds we're going to default? Higher than they ought to be. It would be an unforced error that would profoundly weaken us globally if we're literally going to have all the Democrats and Republicans on the Appropriations Committee spend several hours debating about the investments we need to make in order to compete better with China. I'll make one suggestion, don't default. That's the single, most important thing we could do, to shore up our allies and strengthen our position at home and abroad.

MS. CALDWELL: I want to ask one detail about that, because part of the discussion that Republicans want to have is to roll back the Inflation Reduction Act--

SEN. COONS: Right.

MS. CALDWELL: --which is the president's and Democrats' big accomplishment of the last Congress regarding clean energy and green energy.

SEN. COONS: Mm-hmm.

MS. CALDWELL: Is that a red line for Democrats? Is that something that they would even be willing to consider, any sort of rollback of that monumental legislation?

SEN. COONS: I don't think so. It's not just some landmark accomplishment by President Biden. It's already producing real and concrete impacts on the ground, creating more than a hundred thousand new clean energy jobs, attracting tens of billions of dollars of private-sector investment, the majority of which, by the way, are going to red states. So we are seeing foreign auto manufacturers, foreign clean energy manufacturers bringing new plants and new projects to the United States.

The intersection of the CHIPS and Science Act, the infrastructure bill, and the Inflation Reduction Act is driving a dramatic reshoring or onshoring of advanced manufacturing in the United States. President Biden has been president during the period of the sharpest and most rapid growth of employment in manufacturing.

I'm from a state that was once a heavy industrial manufacturing state. I lived through the period where we lost our two auto plants, our steel mill, several of our other manufacturing plants, and the impact on the middle class in Delaware was really hard. That's part of why President Biden feels in his gut the importance of restoring manufacturing. I think he will fight very hard to resist peeling back some of these critical incentives that are re-industrializing the heartland of America.

MS. CALDWELL: You mentioned how some of these investments, a lot of these investments are actually in red states. Are you seeing any sort of shift in tone? Of course, you have some Republicans in the House--not all, but many who want to repeal the IRA and the green energy investment. Are you seeing a shift in tone among your senators or even among mayors and local officials in these red states regarding green energy?

SEN. COONS: Well, one of the things that's been striking is the number of mayors and governors and senators in red states who've come to groundbreakings, in a few cases, ribbon cuttings for projects financed through the Inflation Reduction Act. That's because good jobs are popular, and people care less about whether it's part of the green economy or the clean energy transition than they do about whether there's new good jobs available in their immediate community.

I do hear from Republican Senate colleagues, friends of mine, that they're excited about the transformation in our economy, and most of them don't see this as incompatible with energy independence, with an all-of-the-above strategy. They--the Republican senators with whom I work closely--forgive me--

MS. CALDWELL: [Laughs]

SEN. COONS: --are not those sorts of folks who vigorously oppose any investment whatsoever in the clean energy economy.

As I think you know, Leigh Ann, I co-founded the Climate Solutions Caucus, which has 14 members, seven Republicans, seven Democrats, who talk about the climate is changing, it's the result of human activity, and we have to adopt policies that will change our trajectory and produce a cleaner energy economy.

So the folks I tend to talk to are ones who, while they may not have voted for the IRA, are not fundamentally opposed to it. At the farther edges of the Republican caucus, I think there are those who still insist on following the former president's insistence that this is all a Chinese hoax and there is no climate change.

MS. CALDWELL: So President Biden and the White House and the administration are focusing on implementation of the IRA. What are--there's been some challenges. What do you see are the biggest challenges of making sure that this massive clean energy bill comes to fruition?

SEN. COONS: First is workforce. Something that all senators I think agree on, certainly talk about, is the challenges of workforce. If we're going to scale up a generational level of investment in infrastructure and advanced manufacturing and deliver the transmission grid that's needed and produce new manufacturing plants for batteries and for vehicles of all kinds, we need a workforce that is skilled and available and engaged in that sort of work, first.

Second, we have permitting reform that we need to get done. We tried at the end of the last Congress. This was the piece of the Inflation Reduction Act deal between Chairman Manchin of West Virginia, the chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and our majority leader, Senator Schumer. We put it on the floor. It did not get the votes to pass. I expect that will be coming back because we have abundant clean energy sources, offshore wind, solar, and onshore wind. That is a long way from where the concentrations of population and heavy industry are in the United States.

And our grid is creaky and old. You may remember an incident where a freak snowstorm in Texas just crashed their grid. Texas has its own grid. It's really not fully interconnected. If you look at the grid nationally, it does not look like a single, planned, unitary nationwide grid, because it's not. It's been built out by a group of regional power pools. In some parts of the country, it's very strong and resilient. In other parts, it is really old.

So what do we need to do to scale up the deployment of the new clean energy economy? Workforce, permitting and actual construction. Good news, lots of great jobs. Bad news, really tough to do on a short timeline.

Last piece, critical minerals. I was just at a conference in Toronto, a city which I didn't realize was really built on mining and financing mining, where we were looking at what are the critical mineral resources of North America, not just of the United States. Canada, like the United States, is blessed with abundant mineral resources. There are old mines that are now being reexamined and reconsidered, because in this energy economy, some of the critical minerals coexist, co-occur with what were previously commodity minerals and metals.

I've also recently been to countries like Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia, where there's huge potential for us to both develop the human potential of those nations and the mineral potential of those nations.

And there's a real race on. China dominates, not just the mining from other countries but the processing of critical minerals. Right now, that's probably our single greatest challenge is securing reliable access to the processing of critical minerals, something that needs strategic focus and investment by the United States.

MS. CALDWELL: I want to stick on permitting for one question--

SEN. COONS: Sure.

MS. CALDWELL: --because that's also a discussion that's wrapped up in these debt limit talks. So--

SEN. COONS: Go figure. How timely.

[Laughter]

MS. CALDWELL: Go figure. How timely.

So do you think that that is the best--that has the--these talks have the best chance to move permitting reform? You have Republicans who want permitting reform, but they want to expedite fossil fuel production.

SEN. COONS: Right.

MS. CALDWELL: You have some Democrats, not all, who want permitting reform. The ones who want it want to expedite the renewable projects.

SEN. COONS: Right.

MS. CALDWELL: How--what is the secret sauce to come to an agreement on something that most people in Congress think is necessary.

SEN. COONS: It's not that secret. It actually goes back to the Founders. If you read Federalist Papers and some of the deliberations of the Framers, it's compromise.

There is a proposal. My senior senator, Tom Carper, who's the chairman of Environment and Public Works, is putting out--they're having a hearing this week. There's a proposal from Senator Manchin that's won some support, both from the administration and Senator Schumer. There is a proposal led by, I believe, Senator Capito and Senator Barrasso. I think the right result is a mix of these.

We cannot gut NEPA. We cannot overturn critical environmental protections.

MS. CALDWELL: And NEPA is the agency that does the--

SEN. COONS: It's an act. Yeah.

MS. CALDWELL: Okay.

SEN. COONS: It's National Environmental Protection [sic] Act?

MS. CALDWELL: But it's the regulations that--

SEN. COONS: It's the regulatory framework through which permitting goes.

MS. CALDWELL: The hoop that you have to jump through for permitting.

SEN. COONS: Yes. It's funny. I don't, off the top of my head, know the name of that statute. Forgive me.

NEPA review is often pilloried as taking too long and allowing too many bites at the apple.

MS. CALDWELL: Mm-hmm.

SEN. COONS: Having a single agency responsible for marshaling the review process and getting to an answer, whether positive or negative, having distinct timelines that agencies are required to follow for their review process is something I think there may be some agreement around.

You are right that there is an agenda from--let's just say, hypothetically, Senator Barrasso of Wyoming--to accelerate fossil fuel discovery, development, deployment, and there is an agenda by many in my caucus who want long distance transmission in order to facilitate the deployment of like wind and solar at scale, a better access hydro, offshore wind. These are not irreconcilable, but it will be difficult to get to a common point that we can all agree on.

MS. CALDWELL: Let's talk about one bill that you have, which is a culmination of bills--

SEN. COONS: Just one. Come on. [Laughs]

MS. CALDWELL: --about hydrogen, which is four bills--

SEN. COONS: There you go.

MS. CALDWELL: --in one package. Can you explain what is hydrogen technology, and how long is it going to take for it to be an actual legitimate source of energy?

SEN. COONS: It's a legitimate source of energy right now. Go outside and look at the sun.

MS. CALDWELL: At scale.

SEN. COONS: At scale.

MS. CALDWELL: Yes.

SEN. COONS: For human use on the planet, right.

MS. CALDWELL: Yes.

SEN. COONS: Sorry. The most abundant element in the universe. Hydrogen is not as energy-dense as gasoline, petroleum, derivatives that have really long--the hydrocarbons that have long driven the industrial revolution but which have the unfortunate side impact of pollution, air pollution of all different types, whether CO2 or methane.

Hydrogen is now and has been for a long time relatively easy to produce from water. Do you remember high school chemistry?

MS. CALDWELL: Mm-hmm.

SEN. COONS: That--of course, you do. One of the very first experiments--

MS. CALDWELL: I loved chemistry, actually.

SEN. COONS: --that you do, right? Do you remember? You've got a thing of water. You've got two little test tubes. You take a battery. You run the charge through the water. At one end, it bubbles. You gather the bubbles, and--[indicates popping sound]--it pops blue. That's hydrogen. There you go.

A fuel cell and an electrolyzer either can take hydrogen and oxygen, mix them to produce water and electricity, or take electricity and split water into hydrogen and oxygen, very coarse summary.

MS. CALDWELL: Mm-hmm.

SEN. COONS: The technology of those membranes, of the anode and the--the whole process has gotten more and more efficient.

There happen to be--surprise--four companies in Delaware who are world leaders in this specific work. Air Liquide is probably known to many in this room. It's the world leader in industrial gases, but there's other companies that are spinoffs of DuPont, like Chemours, that specialize in this.

So, A, we have to get to scale the production of hydrogen, preferably in my view, green. It may initially be pink hydrogen from nuclear power. Green hydrogen--there is a lot of debate about the different colors, about whether it should be only green or initially blue and gray and some green.

There is a competition underway right now for massive investments by the federal government in a constellation of hydrogen hubs around the country. The point of that competition is to get regions to identify where can they generate hydrogen, how can they distribute it, and then who's going to use it. And the critical question, to your point, about scaling is who's going use it?

Part of the legislation that Senator Cornyn and I have been working to move forward is to accelerate the adoption of hydrogen as a fuel, for example, for long-haul trucks, for truck fleets. One of the easiest ways to use hydrogen as a fuel is if you've got heavy vehicles that begin and end the day or the week at one common fueling point. So for example, UPS, FedEx, Amazon, these are all companies that both, because they have very large warehouses--and hydrogen has already been demonstrated to be capable of fueling, you know, the loading material and the forklifts, and you've got truck fleets that go out and distribute and come back to one common point where they can be refueled every day. That's a likely early adopter.

Buses. We already have a hydrogen, a fuel cell-powered bus that the University of Delaware has been running for, I mean, gosh, 20 years at this point. Fuel cell technology that uses hydrogen to generate power is not exotic. I think it was first patented 150 years ago. It's the membranes, the technology, and the distribution of the fuel that is.

There are some promising, potential opportunities in sustainable aviation fuel. In decarbonizing heavy industry, those parts of heavy industry, like the production of steel, cement, glass, that are the hardest to decarbonize are most likely to be decarbonized through the use of hydrogen as an advanced fuel.

And back to that company I mentioned before, Air Liquide is a world leader at figuring out how to use advanced fuels and fuel mixtures to decarbonize heavy industry. So the incentives in these bills that Senator Cornyn and I hope to move would address many of these: ports, heavy industry, long-haul trucks.

MS. CALDWELL: You talked about the colors of carbon.

SEN. COONS: Yes.

SEN. COONS: Those colors also determine how much--you know, how clean those carbons--

SEN. COONS: Correct.

MS. CALDWELL: --that carbon--or that hydrogen is. So you mentioned gray and blue, but those derive from fossil fuels.

SEN. COONS: Correct.

MS. CALDWELL: So what is the point of hydrogen if it is also polluting the environment? Shouldn't it all be green hydrogen?

SEN. COONS: Today we cannot possibly run our entire economy on green hydrogen. So if the point is all of us are going to get in some vehicle of some kind and go to our homes tonight, how many of them are fuel cell cars that are running on hydrogen? Anybody? Anybody? Anybody?

[No response]

SEN. COONS: Nobody. Okay.

So there is a transition that has to happen from here to there, and that's part of the whole point of the Inflation Reduction Act and of coming up with a common strategy with our core allies, which is to figure out how to decarbonize our industries and our economies on a scale and a timeline that prevents us from cooking the planet.

The Inflation Reduction Act, I will remind you, which put $369 billion into a transition to a green economy, is the single biggest investment by any government in human history in the transition to a clean energy economy. But it's not going to happen overnight. I mean, the goals are--you know, there's a 2030, 2040, 2050 key waypoints, but we have to keep moving on it. To repeal this, to turn backwards would be disastrous.

So why produce any blue or gray hydrogen? Well, because we spent decades and decades building out a nationwide infrastructure. Between here and Delaware where I happen to live, how many gas stations are there? Dozens and dozens and dozens. How many electric charging stations are there? A few dozen. You can now make it up and back, and there's electric fuel, right? You can find, right? How many hydrogen stations are there? Two. There are hydrogen fueling stations being built out, but they do not currently exist in a nationwide grid. So that's one of the things we have to do is to begin methodically building out access to this new fuel, which is going take investment and take time.

MS. CALDWELL: Why is hydrogen better than electric? Why not just--I mean, electric technology is far advanced--or more advanced than hydrogen. Why not just continue to invest there?

SEN. COONS: So I think they are in tandem. I think they smile at each other, as it were. But the scale of what we're talking about doing--let me go back to a point I made earlier. Creaky old grid that has to be sustained and in many ways rebuilt to be resilient, A. B, if you want to double the amount of electricity being generated, you got to build a lot of new generation. C, you got to transport it. D, a lot of that offtake is supposed to be going into electric vehicles.

Okay. How is that electric baseload going to decarbonize the things that we still all use every day?

Cement, steel, aluminum, glass, those hard-to-decarbonize sectors in particular are amenable to decarbonization through hydrogen, far less amenable through electricity. It is not impossible but very difficult.

So we've got more steel in things around us than we realize, and one of the things I'm excited about working on is a carbon border adjustment mechanism that allows us to harmonize what the EU is doing on their CBAM, which will soon be imposing tariffs on American-exported goods if we don't work this out, and our own climate ambition, ideally--and I've discussed this with national leaders from Canada, the UK, EU, Japan, South Korea, and Australia. Ideally, we would end up with a common approach to climate ambition by those economies that, like us, are committed to open societies to free markets, and we could have a system that welcomes in products from any source, ultimately, that is manufactured in a verifiably low-carbon way.

But today, the carbon intensity of our steel and our aluminum and our glass is much closer to what's being manufactured in the EU than it is, speaking purely hypothetically, to things manufactured in Russia or China or India or, to some extent, even Mexico. So if USMCA gives us the opportunity in North America--this is NAFTA 2.0--to come up with a common carbon agenda market for our heavy industrial products, the negotiations that are already underway for a partnership around clean steel and aluminum between the U.S. and EU may actually create the kind of market scale and market driver that then has the potential to pull the two most important at-scale manufacturing players in the world, China and India.

I'll leave you with this, to me, unsettling thought.

MS. CALDWELL: Mm-hmm.

SEN. COONS: China and India continue to build coal-fired power plants faster than anywhere else on earth and will continue to do so for decades to come. Their emissions will swamp everything we do in the United States in terms of the trajectory of the climate globally, if we don't find some way to incentivize a transition to a genuinely clean energy economy in those two critical countries.

A market the size of the U.S., EU, UK, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia is that driver, and we can get them to change towards lower carbon production if they see this as the only way, if their products are subject to tariffs and ours are not.

MS. CALDWELL: Well, I was going to--yeah. So I was going to ask.

SEN. COONS: Sorry.

MS. CALDWELL: Is tariffs the answer, and is that--

SEN. COONS: Yes. [Laughs]

MS. CALDWELL: So you do have a carbon tariff plan, and what are the practicalities and realities of something like that passing through Congress?

SEN. COONS: So the good news, several Republican senators have already been speaking publicly about this. There is an important piece by Senator Cramer, Kevin Cramer, about this last year with the former National Security Advisor in Foreign Affairs, I believe. There have been both speeches, bills in drafting, and position papers by a variety of Republican senators. I'll just mention Senator Cassidy, Dr. Cassidy of Louisiana, who's been really engaged on this as quite thoughtful, as well as Senator Cramer and Senator Graham.

Is it easy to pass a carbon border adjustment mechanism? No, it's not easy.

MS. CALDWELL: Mm-hmm.

SEN. COONS: But if we were to begin the work, there is some prospect that we could harmonize with Europe. If we don't, we're going to face a challenge with Europe where their CBAM requires them to impose tariffs on our products going into the European market. I'll remind you, they were not happy with the Inflation Reduction Act. They initially were really quite alarmed--

MS. CALDWELL: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

SEN. COONS: --particularly French and German leaders, the relevant ministers who I met with in Europe with Senator Manchin, not long after the bill was passed and signed into law. They were irate. They were predicting the de-industrialization of Europe at their expense and our benefit.

The implementation has been modified somewhat by the administration to reduce unintended harmful consequences for our allies and partners, particularly those with whom we have an FTA.

But there ought to be a balance back where the Europeans are not imposing carbon-based tariffs on our market, but we're going to have to show movement in their direction if we'd like to harmonize these two common approaches towards climate ambition.

MS. CALDWELL: We are almost out of time, but just big picture, is there any chance that the United States can meet the climate goals of reducing carbon emissions by 50 percent by 2050?

SEN. COONS: Yes. Reelect Joe Biden, president of the United States.

[Laughter]

SEN. COONS: And there is a chance that this will happen.

MS. CALDWELL: What if he is not reelected? What if a Republican wins?

SEN. COONS: If that Republican is the former president, I predict catastrophe, which is not too strong a word to use. We lost a critical four years with an administration that insisted climate change was a hoax and we should not do anything to prepare for it. That is not true of all Republicans. I don't mean to suggest that, but the president of the United States absolutely critically sets the tone for negotiations with our allies, for engagement with the world, for investments by key agencies.

ARPA-E, for example, a critical part of our research and innovation capabilities, needs to be fueled and unleashed. There is a new foundation associated with the Department of Energy that I helped create that will mobilize and leverage private-sector and philanthropic research.

If we have a president who is leading us towards climate ambition and showing how it can actually benefit working people from all backgrounds all over our country, we can do this. We are the most innovative country on earth, and we can lead the way in these solutions.

MS. CALDWELL: Senator Coons, thanks so much for your conversation today.

SEN. COONS: Thank you.

MS. CALDWELL: And stay with us. Our program will continue in just a moment.

[Applause]

[Video plays]

MS. KOCH: Good morning. I'm Kathleen Koch, a longtime Washington correspondent, and we just heard a lot of discussion on energy production, and right now, we would like to drill down a bit into the challenges that the U.S. is facing, that creaky grid that the senator kept referring to. The good news is that digital solutions are available to help the energy industry pivot toward carbon neutrality and really start to meet the growing demand for greener resources.

I have got a great panel here with me today to discuss it right next to me, starting with Bo Yang. She is center director--senior director of Energy Power at Hitachi America Limited; next to her, Rajesh Devnani, vice president of Energy and Utilities at Hitachi Vantara; and finally, Pat Hoffman, principal director of the Grid Deployment Office at the Department of Energy. Welcome.

MS. YANG: Thanks for having me.

MR. DEVNANI: Thank you.

MS. HOFFMAN: Thank you.

MS. KOCH: Pat, I'd like to start with you. Could you, broadly speaking, give us an idea of where we are right now in our progress toward net zero?

MS. HOFFMAN: Well, thank you, Kathleen. I think President Biden has set a necessary and ambitious agenda for climate initiatives in the United States, and companies are moving towards net zero. They're actively promoting net-zero policies and where their investments are, but writ large as a nation, year over year, we're seeing the amount of electricity generated coming from renewable resources. This is going to be accelerated and emphasized with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, which is going provide an opportunity to invest in our future, to invest in both climate and resilience.

MR. DEVNANI: Great. I would just like to add to what Pat said. I think definitely public policy, government intervention has been really key in terms of providing a great build-up to the whole net--it went towards the net zero.

I think one initiative I'd like to call out is your Department of Energy's Earthshots Initiative as an example. That's the game changer in a way. So what we did with solar and wind in the last decade, that's what we are trying to do with the other set of technologies like geothermal and carbon neutrality and things like that. So there's a bunch of initiatives being run by DOE, which are going to really take us there in that journey towards net zero and make a progression there.

MS. KOCH: Rajesh, by way of a follow-up, reaching net zero obviously is going to require us switching from fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas to renewable energy sources, wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal. What would you say are the biggest obstacles that you see currently to these electrification efforts? And, Bo, if you want to chime in as well.

MS. YANG: Sure.

MR. DEVNANI: Oh, there are many, but I like just to point out three of them. So essentially, financing is one key challenge we face. The extent of financing that is needed to get to our net-zero ambitions is we have to run this up to about 4 trillion. A lot of that has to come into the emerging and developing economies, but there's a scarcity of capital. Capital, you have to make capital available to those countries because that's where the growth is coming. So currently, we stand at even like 214 billion at the moment, and we have to scale that to more than a trillion. And getting access to that level of financing, getting everyone to align towards financing, those capital projects, which are risky in nature in those geographies and those economies is definitely a key challenge.

MS. KOCH: So we have to find the funds to make that happen.

MR. DEVNANI: We have to find the funds to make that happen. I think the second is more in terms of--the senator referred to that in terms of access to critical minerals, which will make this happen. What we need is the ramp-up of at least four to six times of what we currently mine and extract and process for all the critical minerals, and we do have a geographic concentration of those minerals. So the supply chains are complex, convoluted. We do have a dependence on certain nation-states for that. So we have to figure out a way in terms of how do we make that broadly accessible or we find alternate sources for making it happen. So that's the other challenge.

MS. KOCH: Let's let Bo chime in now. What were you thinking, Bo, or what keeps you up at night on this?

MS. YANG: Yes, yes. So I think, as we discussed today, that heading for net zero will require more renewables, more EVs, and more energy storage on the grid. So these new resources will also introduce new operational challenge. So there are--from technology innovation point of view, I think there's three things to keep in mind. The first thing is that, you know, our social infrastructure are built to last. So new technology not only has to be future-proof but also has to fit in the legacy system.

MS. KOCH: Right. Yeah, the creaky grid.

[Laughter]

MS. YANG: Exactly.

The second thing is affordability, right? So social, you know, infrastructure project is an impact on millions of people. So we need to make sure that they're affordable for all the communities out there.

Last but not the least is that we see increasing needs for cross-organizational collaboration. So technologies have to be accessible and transparent to all the stakeholders in the game.

MS. KOCH: Pat, what policy initiatives, particularly within the U.S. government, do you see as really being the critical ones that are going to get us to where we need to be on this issue?

MS. HOFFMAN: So thank you. I think the biggest initiative that we have is the funding and the financing that's available through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act to transform and really invest in our future. And so some of the things that we're looking at, through the Department of Energy, we got over $60 billion at the Department of Energy, but specifically with the electric grid in our office, the grid deployment office, we got $26 billion to invest in our future, to look at investments on the transmission system, to rebuild that highway, to transmit the offshore wind, to city centers, to look at those investments, to streamline the siting and permitting activities, but also to add intelligence to our electric grid. Part of this in the digital revolution is that we want to make our grid smarter, more flexible. We want to be able to understand our assets and operation of our assets and provide the maximum flexibility that the grid has to offer, which also will improve the resilience of the electric grid.

MS. KOCH: Such a huge issue after what we saw in Texas and then other areas that have had these severe weather challenges.

Rajesh, how are public--the public and the private sector working together on these initiatives, like Pat mentioned?

MR. DEVNANI: I think it's truly important and fundamental for the public and private sectors to work together and from multiple perspectives. So first and foremost, it's in terms of the public policy provides really a [unclear] momentum towards this whole addressing the net-zero dimension and acts like a catalyst towards that.

The second is investment in innovation and basic research as done by the public and then obviously scaled by the private sector. So it takes two to tango, as they say. So we need the public and private to both come together on this initiative, and there's already a lot of momentum building globally across the board. So look at India on the solar space. There's a lot of collaboration happening in terms of grid-scale solar. So that's one initiative.

Look at UK. We are doing a lot of the offshore wind farms, and there's a lot of collaboration happening between public and private there.

And it goes across the board. In Africa, we are looking at how do we ensure energy equity by virtue you have public and private working together.

I mean, in the U.S., one initiative is around the fusion rate, and we recently had a breakthrough on that in terms of ignitions. So the DOE is supporting a lot of the private further development on that technology.

So across the board, there's a lot of collaboration already happening. Obviously, this needs--the momentum needs to grow even further, but truly, if we are to scale this monumental problem, we'll have to all work together as a public-private partnership for the long run.

MS. KOCH: Bo, how can digital innovation make a difference? So I understand that Hitachi has a new digital solution that's really making a difference. How does that work?

MS. YANG: Yeah. Kathleen, thanks for asking that. Hitachi is very committed on technology innovation. In fiscal year 2022, we actually invested about 6 billion U.S. dollars, R&D. About half that goes to green and a sustainability-related topic.

So along the digital transformation journey, we realized that taming the integration challenge introduced by these greener, you know, resources is a critical piece. So we created this collection of digital solutions.

I'll give a couple of examples. The first one, in collaboration with California Energy Commission, is a digital simulation platform. It allows policymakers and power companies to evaluate the impact of these greener resources on their, you know, control area and then make optimal investment decisions.

Another one is a solar aggregation platform, by the way, funded by DOE. Big shout out to them. So this kind of platform can greatly enhance the situational awareness for better reliability and the resilience of the grid. It will smooth the integration challenge and maximize the benefits of having more greener energy, greener resources, our grid, and also, you know, enable our grid to host more of them. Yeah.

MS. KOCH: So, Pat, as we look to the future, where do we need to be investing our money now to really make a difference and get us to net zero? Because it's still such a challenge.

MS. HOFFMAN: There is a lot of investment that's required, but where we have the opportunities is really to capitalize on the information revolution in the electric grid, and it's adding sensors to the electric grid to better understand performance and health of the grid, to improve operations of the grid. So it's adding sensors, but it's adding technology that will provide flexibility in the operations.

So energy storage, clean generation really allows that to happen. Then it's investing in transmission and distribution system, the wires, the creaky old grid. We need to invest. We need to invest in the future.

MS. KOCH: Have we not invested enough as compared to other countries?

MS. HOFFMAN: For the goals--

MS. KOCH: I don't know where we stand on this.

MS. HOFFMAN: For the goals that we have established, we need to invest in a different portfolio and a different way to operate that portfolio. In the traditional grid, you would have generation that you could ramp up or ramp down. In the new grid, we're going to have variable generation when the sun is shining or when the wind is blowing. So we need to change how we think about operating that grid and really invest in the capacity and capabilities for that grid to operate seamlessly, to really operate under different conditions. We have higher temperatures that are coming out. We have derechos and weather events, and so our grid really needs to be flexible to the future, and we also need to think about what does the future look like as we think about higher temperatures and increase in demand. We got to think about the capacity that we have to support those needs. And so it's building together the electrification of the vehicle industry, the management of the buildings moving forward, but then the operation of the electric grid, which pulls all these pieces together and is so critical from an investment point of view.

MS. KOCH: Rajesh and Bo, what is Hitachi looking toward in the future? Where are you committing your resources, where you think they'll have the most promise and make the biggest difference?

MR. DEVNANI: Hitachi has always been at the forefront of what we call a "social innovation," and this is the most defining existential issue of the century that we are faced with.

So this plays right into the Hitachi sweet spot. We are all about protecting the planetary boundaries. We are all about sustainability, and we have initiators both in-house and externally in terms of kind of realigning a complete portfolio of product solutions and services towards--with the goal of sustainability and addressing the climate change equation.

So internally, we have made commitments to be net zero in our internal operations by 2030 and in the extended value chain by 2050.

On the external side, we are--we have innumerous initiatives that we are doing. So we are making offshore wind power a reality by supporting that initiative. We are into the MBR space, modular-built reactors. We are doing a lot from the digitalization standpoint in terms of ensuring that we are able to provide for a resilient and reliable grid. So there's a lot of initiatives. We have complete portfolio of solutions that addresses that space.

So this is right. This is the issue very close to our heart at all--for all of us at Hitachi, and there's a lot of traction, momentum building towards helping shape the future of tomorrow, which we all want to be net zero.

MS. YANG: Yeah. If I may add, from R&D perspective, we follow a philosophy called a "customer co-creation" religiously. So what it means, essentially, we will engage with stakeholders, the partners, and the customers early on in the game. So they will help us shape, formulate the problem, and make sure that whatever we're going to invent there, it's relevant into a real-world issue. And then we will be able to work together to validate our technology innovation using real industry data, real industry use cases, and then verify the technology feasibility and the value proposition in a real-world pilot project. So we will follow, continue that path, and make sure that our digital innovations are relevant.

MS. KOCH: And are the businesses listening? I mean, are they partnering? Do they see the urgency of this challenge?

MS. YANG: You mean industry partners?

MS. KOCH: Right, correct.

MS. YANG: Absolutely. I think this is where I would like to share my favorite quote: "We don't inherit earth from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children." I think this is one of the decades of time that it seems that the whole village is aligned towards this mission, this grand vision. So I do see a lot of willingness to collaborate from different industry stakeholders.

For example, in the collaboration with the California Energy Commission project, we have power companies. We have regulators. We have vendors, and we also have project developers under the same project. So everybody have opinion on the--on what--you know, how to shape this technology. So we make sure all voices are heard in our innovation process.

MS. KOCH: Such important collaborations. Thank you so much, Bo, Rajesh, Pat. What a wonderful discussion, and now I will toss it back to my friends at The Washington Post.

MS. YANG: Thank you.

MR. DEVNANI: Thank you.

MS. HOFFMAN: Thank you.

[Applause]

[Video plays]

MS. EILPERIN: Hello. I'm Juliet Eilperin, deputy climate and environment editor for The Washington Post.

We continue the climate conversation with two leading voices on conservation. Janis Searles Jones is the CEO of the Ocean Conservancy, and Marcene Mitchell is the senior vice president of Climate Change for the World Wildlife Fund.

Janis, Marcene, welcome to The Washington Post.

MS. MITCHELL: Thanks. Thanks for having us.

MS. SEARLES JONES: Thank you so much for having us.

MS. EILPERIN: Janis, the oceans cover about 70 percent of the earth's surface yet is often missing from the conversations about climate change. To what extent do you think that the ocean is underappreciated when we have these discussions, and what are the implications of that?

MS. SEARLES JONES: Can I say a thousand percent?

[Laughter]

MS. SEARLES JONES: The oceans really had to fight for a seat at the table in climate change conversations, and you really didn't see--until about five years ago, the ocean just wasn't part of the conversation. And that is a real tragedy because the ocean is both experiencing climate change in very profound ways that have really significant impacts for us land dwellers and for the animals, the marine life, and the communities that depend on a lively ocean.

And I think that the ocean is also a very important source for solutions to climate change; in particular, our energy needs. There is a lot of opportunity for offshore wind. Offshore wind could power the planet four times over, and there is technical capacity for offshore wind in about 115 countries around the world. But right now, only 19 countries have installed offshore wind right now, and that is almost entirely in G20 countries.

So the ocean is both experiencing climate change in profound ways, but it also is a really important part of climate solutions.

MS. EILPERIN: Marcene, how does climate change fit into the work and the larger mission of the World Wildlife Fund, and what are some of examples of the nature-based solutions that you're pursuing in this context?

MS. MITCHELL: Great. Yes. So we think of climate change as part of--one of the missions of a conservation organization like WWF. Climate change and the biodiversity crisis are very much interlinked. You cannot really solve one without the other. So climate change contributes to all the things that we know of the floods and the storms, et cetera, impacting us also impact our wildlife and our biodiversity.

And the same thing is that the wildlife biodiversity can also help solve some of our climate change problems. Nature, land, and oceans absorb almost 52 percent of the emissions that we send out to the atmosphere. So they're really important in terms of helping us deal with climate change, and if we don't protect and keep our oceans and our land intact, our forests, then we have a big issue to deal with.

A good example was this weekend, my daughter graduated from college at the University of Miami, and it was also Mother's Day. And so they know that I love museums, and they took me to a museum. And the Museum of Science in Miami has both a planetarium and an aquarium. So I got to learn about black holes and coral reefs, and what I learned about coral reefs is that Florida has one of the largest, third largest coral reef in the world. And that coral reef helps protect our shores against all of these storms and things that are happening. So that's nature helping protect against climate change.

But also, because we are heating up the oceans, as you pointed out, we are destroying that coral reef and with it all of the animals in the sea, millions and millions of sea--which we depend on in terms of our economy. So that's a really good example of how climate change and nature are intertwined, and we know we can't solve one without the other.

MS. EILPERIN: And actually--and then just to follow up on that, the Inflation Reduction Act, which had a considerable amount of funding to address climate change, did specifically look at and target nature-based solutions. I was wondering if--

MS. MITCHELL: It does. So the Inflation Reduction Act, I think of as the clean energy bill, is $370 billion. It's the largest investment we've made in generations into climate change, and in that, they have about $26 billion, over $26 billion specifically to help us protect our forests, work with endangered species, you know, regenerate areas for refuge, for wildlife. So it's a real climate and environmental bill.

But most importantly, it helps us with energy transition. So we know that we have to reduce our emissions. We cannot do this just through sinks of nature, which is great and they can help us, but we have to invest in things such as offshore wind, renewable energy. We have to reduce our emissions.

So the Inflation Reduction Act helps us, gives us incentives to invest in renewable energy, in electric vehicles, in our homes, getting gas out of our--you know, heating, out of our stoves, out of our cooktops. So it is really, really a great opportunity for us to bend that curve on emissions, which we have to do, and we're running out of time.

MS. EILPERIN: Now, obviously, Marcene, you mentioned the idea of how the oceans and land absorb 52 percent of our carbon emissions. According to a study and a team of international scientists published in the Journal of Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, the five hottest years for the oceans all happened in the past six years, and the speed at which oceans are warming, it's only accelerating. We're seeing that even this year with incredible temperatures starting in March.

Janis, what does a warming ocean mean for the climate and for us?

MS. SEARLES JONES: It means a lot. The oceans actually--the ocean is what has allowed life on this planet to flourish. It's really buffered us from the impacts of climate change already. The oceans absorbed about 90 percent of the excess heat that we have caused because of greenhouse gas emissions, and but for the ocean, life on land would not be tenable right now. Our temperatures would be so much higher.

But for the ocean, that means a lot of different things. One is that it's hotter, and so for ecosystems like coral reefs, for example, some of the most biodiverse areas in the ocean, they're very sensitive to temperature. So we've had massive ecosystem impacts, and the difference between a 1.5 future and a 2 degree future is maybe 30 percent of corals survive. Maybe 1 percent of corals survive. So it's a very stark difference for actual marine life, and coral reefs provide surge protection and so many other things for humans.

The other thing that warming ocean does is it gets bigger, and so sea-level rise as a result of warming temperatures. And it also gets stratified. If you think of the ocean like a layer cake, the warmer water is lighter. It's more buoyant, so it sits on the top, and you have less mixing in the ocean, which means there's less oxygen going down to the deeper depths and less coming up. And so it creates a stratified ocean rather than a mixed ocean.

And then the thing that we all experience so much is when you have that much heat energy in the ocean and you have storms forming over the ocean, those storms are supercharged, and they have more rain. So for every degree Fahrenheit warming, you can have 4 percent more rain. So if you look at Hurricane Ian last year, third more--most destructive weather-related disaster, more deaths caused since 1935 and 10 percent more water, 10 percent more rain because of those supercharged storms that form over the ocean. So it has a huge impact on the weather. It has a huge impact on extreme weather events, and that's something I think we're all experiencing, whether you live on a coast or you live inland.

MS. EILPERIN: Got it.

Marcene, the World Wildlife Fund is globally recognized, in part, because many of us are familiar with the panda, which serves as your symbol.

[Laughter]

MS. EILPERIN: And many people, particularly, certainly some of those in the room today and watching online, are aware that the number of species in the globe have plummeted and are at severe risks in part because of climate change. Could you talk about how climate change is helping fuel some of these extinctions and where we're headed when it comes to biodiversity?

MS. MITCHELL: Yeah. So the WWF put out a report called "The Living Planet," and in that report, our last report, we noted that 69 percent of the wildlife population has declined since 1970--69 percent. And we know that climate change is the third leading cause of species' extinction. So again, here's that interlink between climate change, the things that we experience, the storms, the floods also impact our--you know, our species and our wildlife.

So we need to find a way of changing that, of building up our wildlife, reconnecting our land pieces, et cetera, in order to help. Again, the good news is that nature can be our friend in the fight against climate change. For example, in the Amazon, what I call the "lungs of the planet," this helps us in terms of putting clean air, being a sink for carbon, being a home for species and wildlife, and with climate, where the temperature is heating, we find there's less arable land. And so farmers, who now have been seeking land, cut down more land, which again then hurts the species. It hurts our climate, and it becomes this, you know, bad cycle.

So what we need to do is change that cycle. We need to give incentives. We need to do finance in order to help build up our forest and reconnect our lands. The WWF, we have a program called "Enduring Earth," and in that program--because this takes lots of finance. In that program, we bring together governments. We bring together philanthropy. We bring together businesses to invest in the long term. So we have a long-term lead to rebuild these--and preserve these iconic areas that we need in order to protect ourselves.

MS. EILPERIN: And Janis, just to follow up on that, let's talk a little about to what extent can public-private partnerships actually work or to what extent are they overhyped when it comes to protecting nature and doing some of this, because clearly, at a moment when there are both constraints in governments in terms of what they can afford to fund and also, you know, recognition of how the private sector plays a key role in all these decisions--what's your assessment of the interaction between these two actors, as Marcene has laid out?

MS. SEARLES JONES: Yes. And a couple things, I want to pick up on one thing you said, which is the Amazon is the lungs of the planet. I want to add to that. Most people don't know that the ocean actually produces 50 percent of the oxygen that we breathe, and so it is that terrestrial-ocean interface that we really need to pay attention to because I think we all really like to breathe.

[Laughter]

MS. SEARLES JONES: In terms of the public-private partnerships, they're hugely important for a clean energy transition. Ocean Conservancy is very much focused on a rapid, responsible, and just transition to 100 percent clean ocean energy and zero-emission shipping, and particularly in the ocean space but also true in the land space, you can't get there only with the private sector. You can't get there only with the public sector. And you need the civil society actors like WWF, like Ocean Conservancy participating in that conversation because we bring nature to the table, and we bring communities to the table.

And particularly in the ocean, which is not privately owned--it's not allocated the same way that land is--you really need government to help de-risk and set the policy conditions where you can have the private sector come in and make those investments.

And you mentioned the IRA. When you look at the CHIPS and Science Act, the JOBS Act and the IRA, you have a pretty amazing green industrial policy put together that really requires and supports that public-private partnership to get where we need to get as a planet when it comes to clean energy. And so it is a fundamental part of what needs to happen. Particularly, the scale and the pace at which we need to operate requires those three sectors, public, private, civil society, working in concert to get where we need to be as fast as we need to get there.

MS. EILPERIN: And I--oh, go ahead. Sorry.

MS. MITCHELL: I was going to say I'd like to and add in there, community--

MS. SEARLES JONES: Mm-hmm.

MS. MITCHELL: --because it's so important that we bring the people who are impacted by these changes into the conversation and have their voices heard, because a lot of this, where people are living close to the land, Indigenous communities, local communities, they're feeling the impact of the drought. They're feeling the impact of the floods. They're feeling the impact of their forests being taken away. So we need to hear their voices, and bringing them together, each of these different groups brings something to that conversation. Businesses have not only money, but they have technology. The technology is--satellites and drones and things like that can take us a long way. Governments, of course, have to be part of the conversation, but we can't forget the people because, any changes we make are only going to be sustainable if the people who are affected, the people who are living in those areas, you know, benefit from it and buy into it and will maintain and protect these areas. So it's really important to--

MS. EILPERIN: Got it. And now just to tackle in the context of what you just said, we've got--there are two really big global commitments that have made--recently that have implications for biodiversity and for the oceans. So, Marcene, during the recent UN Convention on Biodiversity, 200 countries, roughly, pledged to protect 30 percent of the planet by 2030, by the end of the decade. Could you talk a little about, you know, to what extent you think countries will deliver on that commitment and, you know, how it could possibly be enforced?

MS. MITCHELL: Great. So again, this is called "30 by 30," and the idea is that we protect 30 percent of our lands and our oceans by 2030. And it started actually in Glasgow, COP26, where about 150 countries came and made that pledge. Then this past year in Montreal, as part of the UN Framework on Biodiversity, which actually the U.S. is not a part of--we did not--we're actually not a signatory, but we have played a leading role in terms of laying out and pushing other countries to be a part of it. And the idea here is that you need--as you pointed out, can we get this done? You need the governments to put aside--and President Biden has just put aside a huge amount of area in the Pacific Coast, which is--will make our 30 percent in terms of on the ocean side, right? We need to work on the land side, but we also need civil society to keep people accountable, right, because at the end of the day, targets and pledges only take us so far. It's action that's going to get us all the way there. So we need these partnerships. We need philanthropy. We need the civil society as well as those local communities to make this actually happen and keep it top of mind, keep people accountable.

MS. EILPERIN: And, Janis, after nearly 20 years of negotiations, we had another pact on the high seas that was agreed to recently where--to protect the areas that lie outside of national borders, which occupy nearly two-thirds of the world's oceans. Could you talk about that pledge, how again it could possibly be enforced and what are the implications of it?

MS. SEARLES JONES: Yes, the High Seas Treaty is huge. It's the first treaty we've had in a long, long time to actually govern the oceans, and high seas. You mentioned, two-thirds of the world's ocean are high seas. And what that means is for the most part, nation-states have governance over the 200-nautical-mile band around their countries. And so if you imagine a globe, think of all that space that's beyond 200 nautical miles. It's huge. Two-thirds of the ocean, essentially lawless. There are very few international agreements. To the extent there are international agreements, they tend to govern an industry. So there is the shipping is governed by the International Maritime Organization, but it's not a holistic approach to what actually happens on the high seas.

And so the High Seas Treaty, as you said, 20 years in the making, took a long time to hammer out the details, and it does several really important things. One is that it sets a framework to actually establish marine-protected areas in the high seas, which is the first time we've actually had a governance structure to do that, which will be a really important tool to get to the 30 by 30 commitment that so many countries have made on land and in the water.

And it also does some really interesting things around marine genetic resources and making sure that there is access to--equitable access to marine genetic resources, because there are a lot of countries that actually don't have the resources, the financing, the capacity to be exploring the deep seas. So it sort of democratizes science and who actually can benefit from those marine genetic resources.

And for the first time, it sets up sort of an environmental assessment protocol for thinking about activities that will happen in the high seas. So it is a significant advance. Wish it had happened 40 years ago, but at least we have something in place now.

And you can already see the opportunities that are presented by having these governance tools, and I'll just use an example of the way things can happen before we actually had these governance tools. In 2018, several countries, Arctic countries, the U.S. included, in the Central Arctic Ocean, which is one of the last intact and largest marine ecosystems, mostly because it's been protected by ice for the most part, a bunch of countries got together, and they established a fishing moratorium. Basically, let's not go do commercial fishing in the Central Arctic Ocean until we actually know what's there.

The next step now, Ocean Conservancy and our partners in Canada, Oceans North, are calling on the United States and Canada to think now about deep sea mining and shipping in this large intact marine ecosystem, again, that has been protected from human exploitation because of ice. And so these are the kinds of things that can happen even without those governance tools, and when we actually have a holistic approach, the ocean will be much better off. And all of those things that we need from the ocean, we'll have better tools to protect them to make sure it can continue to allow us to flourish on land.

MS. EILPERIN: And we're running out of time, but I want to, as the last question--we've been talking about climate solutions from different perspectives, and I wanted to ask you both whether the world can avoid a climate catastrophe without dramatically changing consumption patterns and behaviors by every one of us. And as you've mentioned, we've talked about shipping, and obviously, there's the pressure on many ocean species because of also what's happening in terms of the food that we eat. Could both of you just briefly comment on what you see that needs to happen?

MS. MITCHELL: Yeah. I mean, I think that the takeaway for everyone is the urgency of this crisis, and it's not only a climate crisis, as we talked about. It's a biodiversity crisis. It's an ocean crisis, and so right now, that means that it's all hands on deck, right? So you ask, is it about us changing our behaviors? Yes. Is it about the corporations changing their behaviors and their footprints? They are--60 percent of our emissions come from corporations. Yes. Is it about the governments changing policies and making policies and giving us incentives? Yes. So it is in all-of-society push at this point. We are running out of time. We have 2030 to start bending that curve, and we all need to take a piece of that and really move this crisis into over-gear and address it.

MS. SEARLES JONES: I would agree with that, and I will just emphasize there are huge opportunities, opportunities for a clean energy future. It's not that we all have to put on burlap sacks. There is a lot of good that can be done. We have a lot of the technologies. It's all about investing and accelerating them.

MS. EILPERIN: Thanks so much for this fascinating conversation. Janis Searles Jones, Marcene Mitchell, thanks for joining us here at The Washington Place today.

MS. SEARLES JONES: Thank you.

MS. MITCHELL: Thank you.

[Applause]

MS. EILPERIN: And please stay with us. My colleague, Bina Venkataraman will be on next after this short video.

[Video plays]

MS. VENKATARAMAN: Hello, everyone. Welcome. Thanks for being with us today. I'm Bina Venkataraman. I'm a columnist here at The Post, and it's my pleasure to be in conversation today with Director Dr. Evelyn Wang. She's the director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, also known as ARPA-E. Welcome to The Post.

DR. WANG: Thank you, Bina. Thank you very much for having me. It's really a pleasure to be here.

MS. VENKATARAMAN: Well, let's get started because we have a lot to talk about in this moment, and I think the first thing I want to ask you--because ARPA-E is fairly young in terms of a federal agency beast, established by the America COMPETES Act in 2007, funded finally by the stimulus bill in 2009. What exactly is ARPA-E, and how does its work and mission differ from the Department of Energy proper?

DR. WANG: Yeah. Thanks for that question, and first, I just want to say what an honor and privilege it is to be director of ARPA-E in this very exciting time.

APRA-E is an agency that supports high-risk, high-reward, transformational energy technologies, and we do this by providing funding for this kind of disruptive, early-stage research and development, and with that kind of funding, then we can completely transform the way we think about how we use, generate, and store energy.

MS. VENKATARAMAN: So early stage development. We know that this idea of ARPAs--we now have an ARPA-H for health. We have ARPA-E, of course, for energy--is modeled after DARPA, the legendary Defense Advanced Research Project Agency. And DARPA has brought us such famed technologies as GPS, the internet. When you think forward 10 years, 20 years, how do you want to be looking back at ARPA-E? What do you want to be able to point to as transformative technologies that comes out, come out of your agency?

DR. WANG: Absolutely. I think it's a very good question, and we are relatively early-stage agencies still. We're 14 years old, and DARPA has a very long history. And certainly, it's a question we think about all the time, and we want to think about what our impact is as an agency in kind of the future. And we think about how we can develop these disruptive energy technologies that could be deployed at scale in the market that can really change the way energy is distributed, generated, all of that.

And so I'll give you a few examples, maybe of technologies that we see a lot of promise in already. An example is in addressing the methane emissions from oil and gas industry. We know that methane has significant greenhouse gas emissions, much worse than CO2. And about eight years ago, we started a program called "MONITOR." This was a time when the oil and gas industry felt like it was not easy and very difficult. In fact, they used hand, and they would take a sensor to go around the oil and gas infrastructure to try to detect these leaks.

And what we did is we started this program. They said, "No. I think we can develop disruptive technology that can do this at scale and to be able to actually get the sensitivity we needed to be able to sense even the smallest leaks." So that was eight years ago.

MS. VENKATARAMAN: So how did you do that?

DR. WANG: And so we had a portfolio approach. So the way ARPA-E works is that we always fund a variety of technologies that are able to potentially now achieve the goals. And in fact, out of that, we have two companies now that are doing extremely well. One is called "Bridger Photonics," which is in Montana, and in fact, they're using a LiDAR. So they're using a very highly sensitive LiDAR in a way to actually detect these methane plumes by flying this LiDAR around the oil and gas infrastructure and figuring out where the leaks are the most prevalent and then addressing the leak problem.

And this now is being able to now be distributed across different oil and gas companies, and I will say that even though we were working on this eight years ago, in the way it's making an impact is, in fact, that now the oil and gas industry are talking about it, that there's a lot of different companies working on methane emissions now. And that's just one example of a company.

And we have another company called Bridger Photonics, and they have a very different way to also now sense these methane emissions using a dual-comb frequency spectrometer. And the way they do that is also another approach by which now we can do this continuously and at scale.

So that's how we think about the impact, and I think this is just one example of technologies that we've supported through our time that we believe will really make a difference as we think about the clean energy transition.

MS. VENKATARAMAN: So let's talk a little bit more about that approach. When you prospectively, before you get to that eight-year mark where you can look back and say, look, we did something, and it made a difference in terms of climate emissions, methane being more concentrated in the atmosphere and living longer, what are the things that you use to measure whether you're actually making progress when you're investing at such an early stage where we don't know if it's actually going to make a difference?

DR. WANG: That is a very good question. So we are a quantitative agency. So we look a lot at metrics, and we track all our metrics. So we look at, for example, how much funding are we putting into the program, the various programs, and also then what's the follow-on funding, right? We want our projects to then get follow-on funding from the private sector or from other areas so that they can then further develop their technologies and then ultimately deploy them.

And so we look at measures of follow-on funding. We look at also IP-generated, because we want to encourage startups to now be able to take the technologies on, and so these are all metrics as we think about, you know, what does success look like for us as an agency.

MS. VENKATARAMAN: So we're here today talking about the clean energy challenge and the climate crisis. We just heard some really interesting remarks about where we are with respect to climate disasters and the role of the oceans. Of course, we heard the senator earlier talking about some of the technologies he's a proponent of. What are the technologies--what are the moonshot technologies that you are excited about that ARPA-E is investing in now that you think will make a difference on both of these fronts?

DR. WANG: Absolutely. So we are investing in it quite a bit, and we're also thinking about the future, right, and so things that we're always kind of stirring up in our agency.

I'll give you a few examples of things that we're working on now. We have a program called "GOPHURRS," and this is an acronym. And it's actually a fun one because this is focused on a program that's developing a way, technological solutions to underground the grid, and one of the big challenges, in fact, is reliability, as we know, of the grid. But the reason we don't underground is because of cost and safety.

And so we're pushing out a program right now by which we can imagine a new way to develop undergrounding, and the way we do this is by imagining now autonomy and controls and robotics playing a key role as to how do we then get the cables where we want them.

MS. VENKATARAMAN: And what does that do for us? I know there are other countries--Japan, for example--that have elements of the grid underground. Why would we want the grid to be underground?

DR. WANG: Well, we certainly know that one of the challenges we have with the grid is just the reliability, challenges with the weather, climate disasters that we see, and so this is a really important aspect as we think about also national security, which is part of our mission also in terms of just reliability, so we give access to electricity for all Americans.

MS. VENKATARAMAN: So when there's a hurricane that takes down a power line, for example, or disrupts the grid, an underground grid would be more resilient?

DR. WANG: Absolutely.

MS. VENKATARAMAN: So let's talk a little bit about hydrogen. We heard Senator Coons of Delaware earlier talking about hydrogen production and the effort he's putting forth to advance that. With respect to the senator, we do know that hydrogen is still a largely inefficient fuel to produce. The electrolysis process, in many instances, is being powered by fossil fuels, and so that's why this term "gray hydrogen" comes up. What is ARPA-E doing in this space? Do you see hydrogen as an area where we should be investing? Should we be saying, "Forget that. Let's just turn to clean electricity"? What's your view on that?

DR. WANG: Absolutely. So I think hydrogen has a lot of potential, and administration has invested a lot in hydrogen and using electrolyzers. And I think there still is a lot of potential there.

The way our agency works is that we focus a lot on, well, are there other ways to access hydrogen? Are there other disruptive ways that potentially can be even more efficient, lower cost? So one area that we are looking into is called "geological hydrogen." In fact, it's known that under the subsurface, in fact, there's a lot of hydrogen. The key question is, how can you access it? And there is a lot of questions as to, well, if we are able to now get water into these areas, in these porous rocks, can we actually stimulate the hydrogen? Can we access it? And what are the implications in terms of reservoir management? And so these are the things that we're pursuing, potentially pursuing in the future in terms of exploring kind of access to hydrogen in a different way that potentially also can be lower cost.

MS. VENKATARAMAN: And you're an engineer by training. So we have to take your word for some of this, but I want to probe that a little bit further. Can that really be efficient to go underground to get hydrogen? Does the math work on that? Can we actually get hydrogen out of the ground without expending large amounts of energy to get it?

DR. WANG: It's a really good question, and I will say we don't know, right? And this is why we want to pursue it. I think as we explore areas, there is some math that we can do, and we can look at, say, the permeability of the rocks that we're trying to now access with the water as we're trying to react, say, iron with the water to actually get the hydrogen out.

However, there's still a lot of unknowns, and I think the real question is, can we do it at a rate such that we can access a lot of the hydrogen in a reasonable time scale? So the kinetics, the rates are extremely important in this, and that's something we just don't know, or whether you have to actually do--introduce a catalyst, for example, to accelerate that. These are questions we don't know, and we have to explore.

And I think the first step then is to do actually some experiments in the lab and actually do the science and the engineering that's possible, to understand whether it's possible, and then imagine what the system could look like there.

MS. VENKATARAMAN: And what do you say when people express a sort of urgency around these issues? I mean, the climate crisis is worsening as we speak. We're already, you know, dealing with these multimillion and billion-dollar disasters at higher rates. The pace of science and investigative research to then lead to breakthrough technologies can often be a sort of decadal time frame. Why should--what's the argument for why we should be investing in this kind of research when we're so far behind the curve already on climate change?

DR. WANG: Yeah. And I think I'm an optimist in this, and I think there's a significant opportunity to accelerate the development of these transformational technologies, and that's what our role is. We want to be able to disrupt the way that current technologies work, and we know that we don't have sufficiently the technologies to get to our climate goals by 2050. And so it's very important to support early-stage R&D, that's this high-risk, high potentially rewarding solutions that can really change the way we do things, and I think it is going to take time. We know that a lot of the technologies will take some years, but I'm optimistic that while we don't have that much time, that I think there are opportunities in the way we support it, as well as the private sector, the rest of the government, as we're also putting in a lot of resources in. We can do this together.

MS. VENKATARAMAN: So let's talk about one of those technologies that may have a long-time horizon, and we've seen some recent developments actually on the question of nuclear fusion, a lab that reported a net energy gain with a laser-based method. Are these--where are we--are you excited about fusion? Where are we in terms of actually being able to use fusion as an energy source on a climate-relevant timetable?

DR. WANG: Yeah. That's a really good question. There certainly is a lot of excitement in fusion, and we're excited about it too. In fact, we've supported a lot of fusion efforts for many years now, before a time when people thought that it was actually commercially viable, and we still probably are in a relatively longer time scale, but I think there's so much energy and research now around it.

I'll just give you a sense. We are thinking about now continuing to support new efforts in fusion. When I think about fusion, it is such a beast, and even think about the whole amount of resources we have as an agency, we probably couldn't put all of it in to really get to realize fusion.

So just back to what our agency does, we really look at technological gaps. Where are the real pain points in technology? So within the context of fusion, you know, we like to think about it as, well, while others can generate the spark, we think about the fireplace. So one of the big bottlenecks in fusion is the fusion materials, right, and how do we actually now have sustainable materials and these conditions that are so harsh for fusion? And so we are thinking about, well, that's a key bottleneck. Let's put in our resources, potentially, in that space where people are thinking a lot about that spark already. But now the key is engineering around it, and that's what we think is exciting for us to pursue.

MS. VENKATARAMAN: What about the other part of the nuclear equation? There are a lot of people who argue that the U.S. is not going to be able to get to its climate goals; for that matter, the world won't be able to get to its climate goals, despite the progress in wind and solar, without fission, without nuclear reactors, without more nuclear capacity. What's your view on that?

DR. WANG: Yeah, absolutely. So we are an agency that looks at diverse set of energy solutions, and fission is also part of the efforts that we're working in.

I will say that, in fact, we've also been working in fission for some time now, and one of the big challenges is actually at the back end of the process. What do you do with the nuclear waste? And so we have programs that are focused specifically on managing, with making sure there's no pure plutonium streams of nuclear waste, and then being able to think about it for future advanced reactors as well as now current reactor designs as well.

MS. VENKATARAMAN: And where are we with that research? Because this has been sort of the political third rail of nuclear capacity building in this country, right? What are we going to do with the waste? What's your general sense of where we are in dealing with the waste?

DR. WANG: Well, we're still doing R&D in this, right?

MS. VENKATARAMAN: Mm-hmm.

DR. WANG: So, like I said, a lot of the work that we support is figuring out how do we do that, and so we have supported quite a few companies as well as national labs, which play a very critical role. And I think we're making good progress, right, but still at the early stages as to how do we actually manage the waste, how do we actually do it effectively at low cost, and these are aspects in terms of the whole thinking about the whole system that we are--we're still pursuing at this point.

MS. VENKATARAMAN: So is this a gamble you would take? Would you build a new reactor if you were waving the wand thinking that the waste question could be handled in the time frame of the life cycle of that waste?

DR. WANG: Absolutely. I think, in the sense, that I think we want to look at diversity of solutions.

MS. VENKATARAMAN: Mm-hmm.

DR. WANG: I think in the context of our agency, we feel that there's not going to be one silver bullet to addressing the whole challenges of climate in our environment, and so we want to be able to think about this diversity of solutions. And we're--and I think nuclear is going to be a very important part of it.

MS. VENKATARAMAN: So we have these new pieces of significant legislation that affect the clean energy landscape and the innovation landscape, major sources of funding through the Inflation Reduction Act and also some through the CHIPS and Science Act. How does that change sort of the landscape of your work at ARPA-E and how you're thinking about what the scalability is of some of the technologies you're investing in?

DR. WANG: Yeah, absolutely. The historic kind of legislation is just so exciting, and that's why it's such an exciting time to be here and in working with the government. And so our funding is separate from the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, as well as the CHIPS Act. We've been really fortunate to have the bipartisan support to continue to push forward as we think about our goals in this kind of early-stage efforts.

I will say, though, that we can leverage all of this historic legislation. I'll just give you one example. So we have supported a company called Sila Nano. They work on battery technologies; in fact, taking a drop in replacement based on silicone instead of using a typical graphite anode and allows you to now have higher energy density, up to about 30 percent increase in energy density compared to that of a traditional lithium ion battery. So it's very exciting.

And we're leveraging the bill. In fact, they applied for bill funding after they've matured a little bit of their technology. So now they're going have a manufacturing plant in Washington State, and that's how we see we can leverage this funding. And as we develop more of our technologies that get more mature, then we can think about how we interface, for example, even within the DOE, such as Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, where they can potentially take our technologies on and then get them out to market.

MS. VENKATARAMAN: I want to ask you about carbon capture and storage. So in the status quo, there's been a fair amount of criticism of the technology that already exists, that it is not scalable at a level that justifies the way it's being called forth by the oil and gas industry as a solution to the climate crisis, that it's being oversold. What's your view on where we are with current carbon capture and storage technology? Arguably, we need it in order to address the climate crisis. Where do you think the promising areas are for making carbon capture a reality?

DR. WANG: Yeah. It's a very good question, and I would agree. I think we do need it. I think it's all solutions on deck right now, and as we think about carbon capture technologies, one of the big bottlenecks has been, well, what kinds of materials can we use to effectively carbon--capture the carbon? Can we do this at scale at a price point, and can we make it energy efficient? These are always the questions, and we have supported carbon capture-based technologies and innovations in these materials. How do we integrate these materials into components and systems and make it more efficient?

I don't think we're there yet, but I think there are opportunities by which we can still rely on the really exciting innovations of material scientists, the chemists, and the engineers to be able to now realize these solutions at the scales of the gigatons that we need to actually now be it a scalable, viable solution of the future.

MS. VENKATARAMAN: So that leads well to the last question I have for you. Your enthusiasm is palpable for innovation in climate and energy and in emissions reductions and monitoring of various sorts. There is this question of is it far enough, fast enough, given the historic atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases that we're facing, given the rapid warming that is already baked into the climate system. Is innovation going to be enough to address this crisis? Do we need some sort of commensurate policy around consumption of energy in order to actually address this?

DR. WANG: Yeah. I see it--and I've heard it just in the previous panel. It's a really all-hands-on-deck-type situation where I think we do need the technologists. We need more technologists. We need the innovative ideas. We need the government leaders to think about the policy, and, you know, as our role of--our role as an agency is to focus on technology, but we want to give the policymakers solutions and options, right, so they can take that and really accelerate and move the needle as we think about what we need to do to be able to really tackle climate and sustainability.

MS. VENKATARAMAN: Thank you so much, Director Wang, for sharing your insights with us. It's been a delight to talk with you.

I want to thank everyone in the room for coming to the Post Live Center for this conversation. This is the end of the today's event. I also want to thank everyone who's joined us online for being part of today's conversations on climate and clean energy and technology.

If you want to know more about our events and programming, please visit us at WashingtonPostLive.com.

For those who are in the room, if you'd like to be part of some small breakout sessions, just go to the registration desk on your way out. These are brain dates that are going to continue the conversation afterwards. Thank you so much.

DR. WANG: Thank you.

[Applause]

[End recorded session]