to debate the political left at 10:00 p.m.. and we wrap up our prime time programming with journalist liz len's report on faith and religion in middle america. check your program guides for more information. now, here is russell gold on alternative energy sources. >> today i'm pleased to introduce russell gold, politics and prose. in 2010 he was part of the award-winning wall street journal team that covered the deepwater horizon explosion and oil spill. his first book the boom was long listed for the financial times and mckenzie book of the year award in 2014 his newest book "superpower" examines michael scally, an infrastructure builder who began working on wind energy in 2000 and help create the second

largest wind power company in the united states. beginning at a time and many consider the wind industry a joke. alongside scally a cast of characters who helped and tried to sabotage him. ryan borough author of public enemies writes "with repulsive storytelling russell gold presents one of the most ambitious groundbreaking products for renewable energy. following larger-than-life men and women seeking to reshape the current energy landscape "superpower" is an essential and compelling look into the nation's power grid. today gold will be joined in conversation with amy harter who covers energy and climate change for axial. please join me in welcoming russell gold and amy [applause] >> good afternoon.

>> can you wait for us to make you up. [inaudible] thank you to everyone here and for those watching online when it airs. it's such a treat to be here with friend and former colleague russell gold barry work together at the wall street journal i cover similar

issues energy and climate change ask yes and had pleasure of learning about something that i had very little knowledge about and i was wondering how i missed it because i was able to read it later by russell was really great. something i really loved there's a couple things i really love about this book there are so many books predictably apocalyptic about climate change. those books have their place and it read those book is much as i read books like russell. what is good about russell's is a positive story about how to address the issue of climate change through the eyes of people trying to get it done. as opposed to people out there protesting on the street. they have their role but this is far more unique. i described it as a part narrative and biography of this guy who i know we will learn a lot more about but also a

history lesson of electricity and throughout the book you get a historical take on the world through the eyes of electricity. for those of us who did lose power yesterday it was only for 45 minutes but your world stops. i think it's important we understand and appreciate the power of electricity no matter what kind of energy is powering it. i want to open with asking you to give us a big picture take on who michael skelly is and why you decided to focus on him. >> thank you very much for coming out and thank you for all of you and to politics and prose for hosting this. i wanted to write you alluded to this i wanted to write about an energy developer. somebody who was out there trying to build the infrastructure that we would need more of if we are going to have an energy transition. energy transitions don't just appear magically in thin air they have to be built. i started asking around this is about five or six years ago who

was interesting who would be worth meeting and writing about. a few people came back to me and said you got to meet this guy skelly, everyone calls him skelly, i said why and they said he was one of the first wind developers started building windfarms when they were just 20 megawatts and got out of it when they were about 300 or 400. but he's got this big idea. he's got this really important idea and the idea was to build transmission because there are places in this country that are incredibly wind and solar rich. there are places in the country that are wind poor and solar poor. one of the questions is how can we get low cost wind power from the great plains worth about it, to the coast. he was trying to tackle that. >> how many miles is that? >> he had about the company he cofounded had four different projects going the one i ended up profiling was it called ã

was about 750 miles it was going to go from the oklahoma panhandle all the way into memphis. just a little north of memphis. >> people like happy endings. that's why people go to movies. >> there he is part of this book ends not the way i expected it to end. i sort of jumped into this project not long after he had gotten federal partnership to build it. he had the backing of the federal government.at this point things are going to work out. it doesn't quite turn out to turn out the way i expected to end it was doubly surprising because at the end they were offering clean line was offering power at $18.50 per megawatt. that might not mean a lot to people here we don't buy our power in megawatt hours but

it's about as inexpensive as you are going to find wholesale energy these days. >> it would not get more expensive bc switched to fossil fuel to renewable energy? >> one of the fascinating things i learned recording this book and reporting and energy for the wall street journal is that these days certain wind projects and increasingly certain solar projects are less expensive in terms of generating electricity that existing coal plant. it made me think about that, he go out and build a green feel a brand-new wing farm and places in this country and you can generate electricity at a lower price than existing fully paid for fully appreciated goal plans. >> that wasn't the case when scully started out 2019 there's no question anymore and it keeps getting more and more competitive. >> when you started this book it was can you tell us about how in your mind you responded

to the fact that it wasn't succeeding as much as you had hoped. how did you handle that as a writer? >> 2017 is when things got rocky. when you are nonfiction writer you take what you are given and i was fully committed to seeing this project through. >> i think many of us are familiar with the keystone xl pipeline that's what i was doing the whole time writing this book.

what i find interesting is that it's not just that this is failed but it's really emblematic of trying to do big infrastructure things in this country. >> incredibly difficult. it's difficult because there are multiple layers politics involved there was a point at which i know skelly thought that and i ended up thinking as well why can't they just be some sort of process so that within five years you will have an answer. it's not to rubberstamp a project necessarily, the answer could be no this is not the public interest or yes but the process doesn't go on for years and years. there is a reason because this is a privately funded project. they spent about $100 million on it if they gone to construction would have been a

couple billion dollars. it was completely privately financed but the investors were sitting around saying we can't wait forever. we need to know what's going to happen. this is something that happened after the book was done. skelly's investors said you need to sell the parts and let's get what money we can from the project. one of his projects looks like it's actually going to be successful with greenbelt express. that's running from the southwest corner of kansas up to almost chicago. skelly was very clear about this he sat out he wanted to make money. he was an energy developer, he doesn't hide that but he also wanted to ask the question is it possible these days to build long distance transmission

projects. or long distance pipeline project. he wanted to ask the question because it he said if the answer is no, we are unable to do it, let's find the answer out now and figures of the else out now. even though he might not ultimately be wrapped in glory and cut the ribbon for the opening project he shepherded through looks like it's actually going to make it through. >> we hear a lot about the green new deal it's getting a lot of attention by the media and other people here in washington and around the world. embedded in that is this idea we have 100% clean if not wholly windy renewable wind and solar electricity by something like 2030 and right now wind and solar along with hydropower which is actually the largest source of renewable energy is like 18 percent. >> wind is fastest.

>> that's what you wrote the book. [laughter] >> it depends on which month. some months wind is passing ã these days. >> articles like that achievable if project like this are blocked? >> no. i think the answer is no. maybe the bigger picture is that when we talk about the green new deal we talked about a commitment into the paris accord all of these are different ideas that are going to require big investments. and big projects. i think we need to as a country begin to make that real, to realize this that it's not enough to write about it and argue about it and talk about it if were to be serious we need to start building these projects. sometimes it's going to be long distance transmission offshore wind is another possibility there are lots of different projects but we need to start moving these through.

i'm a wall street journal reporter one of the things i recognized is that there is an enormous amount of money sitting in canadian pension funds and other investment pools. that want to invest in these kinds of projects that are interested who have representing retired teachers who want to be invested in this. much more then the project. if we can give you these projects off the drawing board into starting to get built it will speed up the process. you mentioned 100% renewable energy am actually of the opinion that 100% renewable energy is not feasible and we probably don't even want to go there. once we get if we can insist on 100% renewable the cost is going to be extraordinary. but 80% with the right infrastructure with the right transmission we can get to 80% at current prices. >> with current technology?>> no question.

we don't need to build something new. >> the batteries are need to be where they need to become a battery prices? >> transmission you can go to siemens or ge and say i need to build this and want to build this big dc line and they say great we got it. the price of ãis coming down this is all doable. wind is getting cheaper existing technology, batteries are still a little expensive, solar is a little expensive. both of those prices are coming down. depending on where they start flagging out you can certainly put those into the mix. when you have a great transmission system that allows you to harness and harvest low-cost renewable energy where it's available and move it to where it wants to go you can put in other things like storage and batteries. electricity is a very comp located system.

>> very few people pay attention to it. >> i mean all of the people who do it and understand how to do how to balance grids on a continuous basis. they will say, batteries would be great but transmission is even more important in some ways as batteries. >> are willing to throw it up to you guys in a few minutes for questions. please don't be shy. one story i read with such interest that you did a few years ago was actually a medium post about your experience going up a turbine one thing i remember about that is that you were very tired. can you tell us about that?>> was actually reporting i was out in the oklahoma panhandle group ordering meeting with people who wanted to develop wind farms out there the oklahoma panhandle is a gorgeous place. take about the dust bowl this was the epicenter of the dustbowl. flat. i got permission from og&e, oklahoma gas and electric to climb up one of their turbines.

i climbed up a couple hours, it was sort of a last-minute arrangement, it was a particularly well dressed for it. >> were you wearing a suit? >> was not wearing a suit but i had a button-down shirt and then it got to put on fire retardant coverall on top of you. it was either june or july in oklahoma and it was incredibly hot and then you get inside the monopole's the big polls they are not air-conditioned. >> seems like a missed opportunity for an energy company. [laughter] >> here's where it gets interesting. he actually had this thing called climb assist, lift assist. you sort of strap in and you click on and it helps carry you up the ladder. you just going straight up the ladder but takes 100 pounds off you. >> you had that? >> no. i had it for the first 10

stories and then you stop and then you have a little break before you get on the next. >> how many stories? >> about 30 to 40 stories. >> these things are massive if you've ever seen them up close it's much bigger than you think. >> i was with these two young guys they were pushing pushing i was in my mid-40s i think that was the first time i realized i'm not a young guy anymore. it was a lot. i think i'm in relatively good shape for someone my age. i was really impressed this was not an easy job. i got to the top and it was a sea man's turbine and the great thing is they open up almost like opening up the hood of the car. they open up all the machinery in your standing there 40 stories above the oklahoma red dirt prairie the view is

gorgeous. somehow they convinced me strapped in harnessed into standup on the whale's tail which is the part of the back of the turbine not for the faint of heart. i probably would have done it if they were egging me on but i'm glad i did it. i would suggest you try it.>> that's on my to do list. [laughter] i think everybody should see wind in all types of ãbi've been to a underground coal mine which was also incredibly impactful as well. for very different reasons. many of you may know if you don't know you should know that russell has written another book before this called the boom it's very interesting. it chronicles the rise of the ã boom in the united states. tell me how you came to think you had done so many different energy how does this book differ from that one? and how you decided to do this? >> one of the things i wanted to do when i wrote "the boom" i

was writing about a technology was partially a personal story. i was trying to answer the question, should we be doing this? what i wanted to do this because i wanted to write a book that had a narrative. that had people in it. he read a couple chapters there was characters. the people you meet and follow in this book stay with the story the hallway. i wanted to do that because i wanted to get people engaged and interested in energy. i've been very fortunate to cover energy for 15 years or something like that. i find people who are involved with it and the technology is really fascinating and i wanted to tell that story. i wanted to write it like a throw in.

>> senator lamar alexander was one. what was the thing that really put the nail in the coffin? certainly one of the final males if not the final nail was solidified by lamar alexander. >> republican senator from tennessee. >> he gave a passionate speech about how great nuclear power is and how horrible wind is and basically if delivered the message that the tennessee valley authority which is federal agency did a deal to buy this wind power even though with lower cost that he was going to be extraordinarily unhappy about it. as i write in the book he was sort of singing the praises of how much better nuclear is and i've done nothing against nuclear but at the time it was interesting the nuclear power plant he was describing as how great it was had just shut down

because it had a problem and ended up being out of order for eight or nine months. it is a pretty significant issue. no source of energy is perfect, no source of energy is without its issues. i happen to think right now wind and solar are for a number reasons great sources of electricity. we seem to be getting in front of ourselves and preventing the development these days. >> one thing i found interesting that i was annoyed with myself that i had somehow missed was the fact that the trump administration actually put this transmission line on its priority list to build. president trump is not a fan of what he apparently calls the wind. for a few reasons that may be

russell can tell us. talk to us about what kind of support this project did have in the trump administration. be compare and contrast with the president himself thinks. >> almost have to go back to the obama administration. i wrote about this pivotal meeting after obama's been elected before inaugurated he gets together with all his key economic advisors and they are trying to figure out what is the stimulus can look like? how do we assimilate the economy. there was serious consideration given to let's get behind long-distance transmission. his advisors said it would take too long we can't get it out the door it would be too controversial. the obama administration well supported this did not do it with much alacrity.it took basically eight years to move this project through the approval process. you bring up keystone pipeline.

i make the point in my book if you want to build in interstate pipeline you know exactly what office to go to. you know what office to go to. if you want to build interstate transmission line there is no office.scully had to basically create the project on his own. so then you have this transition and skelly along with many of the people did not think trump was due to be elected so he gets elected and skelly like many energy developers admit he's an optimist. he figures his job is to keep the troops going keep them excited. he rallies everyone and send an email and says, when george bush was governor of texas no one thought he was going to be a champion but he ended up bringing the huge boom to texas. maybe trump will be this great renewable champion. then trump puts another one the grand belt expressed two different lines since skelly had developed.

these were more or less shovel ready privately financed project. the wind is good because when the wind stopped blowing you can't watch tv. which is sort of a moral enemy of the president. it's so fundamentally flawed. >> that's not accurate. >> if there's one thing i really got really excited about was meeting all these grid operators. these are these unsung heroes of the united states. maybe not here in washington yesterday but they keep the power on 24 hours a day seven days a week. >> yesterday's was not due to wind energy or any energy source. >> they know how to balance the grid. it's an incredibly fickle thing. you have to balance every second of the day. you have to balance demand they

are very good at it and when the wind stopped blowing and here to tell you you can still watch tv. >> that's one reason why you can't necessarily in our lifetime have 100% renewable electricity because of this need to have a backup. >> not necessarily. once you have a big network that's one of the things that girds the book. there's always good to be windy somewhere in the united states. if you have a big enough transmission system you can make up for the areas. >> why do you only think 80%? >> because the last 20% gets very expensive. you need some sort of process you need seasonable backup you need a four hour backup.

transmission gets us pretty for and then stored gets the rest of the way. right now with current technology without coming up with pie-in-the-sky wistful technology we are only at about about 20 to 22 percent nationally. >> which is a huge increase let's get to 50%, figure out how to get to 50% in a way that's tackling climate and not increasing prices maybe even bring down prices then we can start talking about. >> that's a good segue to audience questions. we have a microphone right there. please don't be shy and ask questions. although as a reporter i never run out of questions. i will ask in lieu of any questions. [inaudible question]

>> maybe what i'm hearing you say is one possible way to get this president excited about it is to explain that you build enough transmission lines you won't have these? >> actually have a real question rather than comment. it's simple, a little more details on what slows the process down. it sounds like some of it is taking place within the department of energy and some of its taking place out locally where there is objection. >> the simplest answer is someone had a great observation we do not have a single electrical system in the united states. we have 50. every date has its own electrical system overseas etc.

simply thinking about a bill the transmission line across three states you have to get oklahoma, arkansas commute get tennessee on board.we had this deal set up a long time ago where to get a company to go out in arkansas and build arkansas light and power and build the grid we they said you will get a monopoly. you will be able to charge for electricity won't have any competition so you can go to wall street and get the money you need. that all worked great in 1920 and 1930 but the rules are still in place. when skelly wanted to build transmission line to arkansas he encountered sketch 22. there is a rule that said you cannot build the transmission line unless you are serving customers but can't serve customers once you have asset like a transmission line and he was sitting there saying this rule is to make sense. there is no way around it. part of the problem is we have antiquated laws they don't allow private transmission

development. whobefore? the audience tells me, they are very smart. >> this is a very unique audience. >> i would think the first thing you would need to do is to have federal leadership that says this is a priority for us and that we want to streamline the process and make it easier to do. i do not get into every bump and bureaucratic because i'm trying to make the book interesting and exciting. >> are you surprised, i'm a little bit surprised that the

obama administration wasn't more supportive of it. it seems like it has everything they want. talk about taking time keystone was a debacle. >> the arkansas delegation in no uncertain terms said we do not like this. so monies had to go to the hill. >> is that republicans and democrats? >> am not sure there any democrats left in arkansas delegation. [laughter] [inaudible question]

we don't have a lot of examples of big interstate transmission projects like this. here in the united states. one was built in california the pacific intertie in the 1960s it took the direct intervention of two presidents, john f. kennedy and lbj to get it done. it was not easy. had to bring three governors had of several utilities together. there was another big dc project in minnesota which i also write about which started something called the energy war which literally was this great forgotten episode in the 1970s where the farmers in minnesota were literally out there with their tractors attacking people trying to survey for lines. it has never been particularly easy and one of the things skelly wanted to do is once it was up, once the first line was up he wanted to say, see, look

at the benefits it's generating. it's not destroying people's lives. sometimes the problem is that until you have that first one it's really hard to imagine what it's going to be a really easy to be against it. >> you mentioned texas managed under governor bush built a lot of wind plans and transmission because it was in one state. and because there was no ã involved. [inaudible] is the problem that the states have the right to cite transmission lines? if they don't give you permission to cite it and then you can't have it.

that's a states rights issue and the government says bug off. how do you see that? [inaudible question] arkansas delegation tried to pass a bill that specifically allowed the states to stop projects like this. those bills and skelly head to's hire a lot of lobbyists. there is a federal. [inaudible speaking] all of these things exist. my big concern is that we are going to be fighting over this and tell something like a big regional blackout or cyber intrusion the grid happens and all the sudden it would be really helpful to have some big

dc lines because the reasons i'm not going to get into right now if we suffer a large-scale blackout how many dc lines that can ejected move powers to specific area to restart the grid really helpful. my concern is that we will be sitting around here arguing until we have something like that and then say we should have done something five years ago. the answer is, this the federal government does have the ability to do that. does have the ability to say to states, we are partnering on this we want this to happen. >> it never happened here. >> absolutely. you need a federal government that is willing to exercise and play a little rough when the states play rough back. >> you think the trump administration silence on the issue was due to concerted effort they didn't want it or dysfunction? >> i think the trump administration when it comes to energy policy they are very

focused on a couple specific issues and none of them have anything to do with wind development. >> have you gotten any background people in other countries facing similar issue of the transmission. >> germany is doing some of this as well because they've got a great resource of offshore wind and most of their industrial loaders in the south of germany so i forget a few hundred miles from one to the other. they are spending a lot more money then prepared to right now to underground the wires. the idea is if you don't see the wires and this came up in the book, if you don't see the wires there's a lot less opposition. that's one way germany is responding to it. and china is great at building ãbthe stuff china has built puts the 700 mile to shame. there are multiple thousand

eight or 10 gigawatts they can move in their wires whereas this was the .5 gigawatts. what china is doing is a magnitude larger than what we are contemplating. [inaudible speaking] [laughter] >> can he quote you on that. [laughter] [inaudible question] >> that's a really good question because you make the point that companies, facebook, google, anheuser-busch, many of

them, want renewable energy and they wanted for several reasons. they wanted because, anheuser-busch had the big add on the super bowl last year touting it, part of is that it's good publicity for them. part of it is that when you are google and you are massive energy user, you really just don't want to have to worry about price fluctuations. you want to be able to sign a long-term contract. right now businesses are very much pushing for this. they are dragging some utilities, utility companies along. what i worry about is that if you have your google and facebook come in that they cut, and we've seen this, a special deal with the special great for google and facebook and nobody else get the advantage.

so google could buy capacity on it and say we want 500 megawatts we want the sixth of this. but other people also benefit. it's sort of companies ultimately are going to work look out for themselves and they are not trying to the leaders are companies like excel and colorado sitting right on top of the great plains. they walked to the car and know how windy it is. i read your first book couple weeks ago on vacation, i recommended to everyone i thought it was amazing story. he became the secretary of energy and three policies you

could push to get us to 80% what would those be? >> he how about itc, income tax credit, ãbincentive. that would be one. >> that exists now for solar. >> it existed for wind, it's being phased out, when can stand on its own. it exists for solar, that will be phased out eventually for solar, possibly extended. what's bigoted for transmission and i would appoint a commissioner whose job it is to make sure frontline is something that's real and bring in private money to do it cool. not just building transmission but doing it mostly with private money.

>> i can be his deputy. [laughter] >> it probably would be the other way around but i will take it. none that have been significant. there were some i reported on hurricane harvey when it came ashore, everyone remembers hurricane harvey over houston came ashore very close to windfarm by corpus christi. negligible damage. i think maybe one turbine needed a little work. about the year 2001 of the reasons why wind starts taking off in the united states is that the wind turbine we is to

try to make wind turbines that were completely the most high-tech things ever and then we realize that actually wasn't what they needed to be if they just need to be really durable. wind turbines are pretty durable. there was a concern when you build transmission line in tornado alley and what happens there and that was came up that was a concern. it's a little more of a concern about basically knocking out a big pipeline. [inaudible question]

that's a great question. texas is by far in a way i think it has four times more wind than any state. all that happened under republican administrations in austin. >> and secretary perry. >> he was a big supporter. i always find it kind of remarkable that if i sort of do a blind test with somebody i don't know who they already don't know what they look like but asked them a couple questions about when they come down on energy i can pretty much tell whether the democrat or republican and it infuriates me and frustrates me because i don't think energy should be a partisan issue. what is so partisan about coal? the answer is what's partisan about it is where the jobs are. wind is a little weird because wind is mostly the public

areas. i find it very infuriating i doust see how we are sort of tying ourselves in knots over the politics of energy when there is no particularly good reason why wind sources or energy sources are democrat or republican. we go back? that's a great question. i think maybe people here might have a better answer than i do. i don't know. maybe try a little less of making this a political punching bag. >> and tying it to climate change. by not tying it to climate change it gets left. >> sometimes when i talk about it either me talk often about the cost. wind is now low cost. i'm not talking about climate change. when you start talking about climate change will immediately the blinders go up or go down. i'm trying to introduce these other attributes. i always say, you want your

electricity to be affordable, reliable, and what's the third? and low cost. that's affordable. >> increasingly people want renewable electricity. yes but i personally feel that if we are going out and getting renewable electricity at any cost i don't think that helps in the long run. then people get upset and prices go up i think we need to promote renewable, we can promote renewable energy right now at existing cost. >> is anybody in your book, i didn't see this in your book, was anybody in the saga who was willing to come out and defend this project like a counter to senator alexander eller them scully and i don't remember hearing about that. >> they were definitely were some people, senator heinrich from new mexico was

enthusiastic about it. there were co-ops in east texas coming out in defending this because they wanted to try to get access to when they thought once he got easier. it would be easier for the electrons to go to memphis and come back in the texas then for them to get electricity from the windfarms of west texas. transmission was in the way. he built a very large, environmentalists, labor, he made sure that the conductors and powers in the jobs would be local. that generated some and they were republicans, republican county commissioner in the county north of memphis was one of the most outspoken fans of this. and went toe to toe with the senators from tennessee over this. it became very political.

[inaudible question] if you were to generate electricity for solar panel that's direct-current. you converted to ac. when you plug your computer into the wall there's that

little box that always gets really hot, that's converting it from ac to dc because your computer is running on dc. it's a lot of reasons to say if we could do this all over again we should have a dc grid and remember there was the argument in the 1890s. [laughter] the problem is is that we made the choice to go with ac. imagine saying on january 1 we are all going to switch driving to the other side of the road. that's what we are talking about a multiple of. your question is about microgrid, microgrids have a huge potential role to play in the future. i spent a lot of this year as a journalist reporting on pg&e, on california come a lot of interest in microgrid out there. i microgrid is basically let's say the city block we are on right now would have the

ability to detach from the grid if there's a blackout or to generate electricity. >> which would have been nice yesterday. but nobody even with microgrids is talking about completely vulcanizing the whole grid there is still interconnection and still a need to move power around. i don't see why microgrid and a better transmission can't play with each other. >> i read many long studies about emp's him i hope we don't have one. [laughter] [inaudible speaking] so far we've done okay. we have 100 years track record and we are surviving so far. that might be putting my head a little bit in the sand >> there are transmission lines

overload the country. have any been able to tie them together? on in existing routes. >> the wind exists. we have a grid that moves power all over the place. the way i describe it is that what we have right now is the road system before the interstate highways. you can drive from here to seattle but if you're using back roads if you're not using the interstate highway it's gonna take you a long time it's going to be slow and inefficient. what we are talking about is building a you stop in chicago to spend the night and keep going. much more efficient, it's easier to move power around. we've been building bigger and bigger grids. the name of the book

"superpower" comes from an idea in the 1920s to build a bigger grid to tie together in the southeast. every time we build a bigger grid it gets more efficient, the cost go down, we are building a better network. i think what skelly was trying to do the time was right to think continental. let's stop thinking about coming together in the southeastern united states. let's start thinking about a continental grid. that's what it's going to take if we want to have significant amounts of renewable energy. [inaudible question]

>> what you are talking about and there's a lot of conversations about this is that because we don't have great transmission we have a lot of waste electricity. what can we do with it. what do you do in west texas in the middle of the night when you are generating gigawatts of electricity that no one wants. and you can't move anywhere else. so the different ideas people talk about hydrogen, bitcoin is a big idea. i don't know where that's going but i'm interested in that.

i think that it's worth taking a step back and realizing that what we are talking about is that we currently have an abundance of good clean low cost electricity impute places of this country. we could build a better transmission system to move it around and share we could come up with an idea like hydrogen to generate more hydrogen in those places. but with that you still have to build new pipeline system to move the hydrogen around. [inaudible] although the ideas are being discussed right now. i'm not smart enough to think figure out what wins but as a reporter it's cool to step back and say wow, we are at a point we have a lot of cheap electricity we've got a lot of potential. we have an incredible wind resource we have a great solar resource how to use the best? >> california has a great problem right now. 4:00 p.m. they got more solar than they know what to do with.

it's a good problem to have and we are figuring it out when i haven't heard you talk about is producing ã [inaudible question] as you know ã >> we can't get ahead of the american gas association. [laughter] >> i wrote my first book about ãbif you are going to have a resource like wind and then every once in a while it's not going to blow you need a system that is nimble to accommodate

that. i've made this argument many times natural gas and the nimbleness of the combined cycle natural gas plant makes all this better. makes it feasible to have this mix. if this is what you want me to say i agree with that. natural gas has been an incredibly important part of this. what's happening i think you know as well as anyone is that natural gas and renewables are increasingly pushing call off the grid valley is searching question becomes in a few years when coal goes from about 20%. >> 25 to 28 percent. if you're natural gas producer or build a natural gas powerpoint they've done such a good job with this how do you create an incentive so those don't go out of business which we've seen recently there was a bankruptcy a couple clients in

california that's an issue we are getting to and we are getting to much more quickly than i thought. but right now i absolutely agree with that natural gas is been incredibly important enabling factor. compared to five years ago there's a big difference. we can export natural gas now. if we figure out a way to use wind here and using less natural gas we can always send it to another part of the world. which is what it looks like we are going to do. [inaudible question]

i will try to give you a pretty quick and easy answer for that. hydro is great, it is difficult to envision building much new hydro these days. i think it would be politically very difficult to think about a new hoover dam and all the changes to the natural world i can only imagine what the environment would look like study would look like or something like that. you see some small run of the smaller hydro facilities going in but it's really not even part of the conversation because they are so small. >> what about pumps? >> i will get there in one second. good question. the other thing is that with the changing weather patterns especially out west lake mead is a very low levels. there are questions about how effective hydro is going to be

going forward because you need water to make hydro work. pump hydro where it exists. pump hydro is kind of a neat idea. when the gentleman was asked before what you do with all the excess power maybe take some of the power and use it to pump water uphill where it sits behind a dam and when you wait it's a great battery when you wait and need it let it run to and generate electricity. we are just not doing that many projects right now. it's difficult for me to see a new big dam being built. >> all i'm thinking of is the ocean in tidal power. has that been the conversation at all. >> total power is the opposite problem it's not being phased and it's just it's a great idea but no one managed to make the academics work.

there were a couple places in the world that seem to have good tides but the crisis is way too high. >> do think there's a chance of that changing the future? >> i think it depends on people putting their brainpower behind it. ... seems to be getting a little itchy looking around and saying what is my next big development projects, so i wouldn't be surprised if he jumps back in.

what's next for me, it's a big utility story and we are coming back on wildfire season in coping for everyone's sake there is not another major wildfire like we saw last year. i'm interested to see whether they shut down large portions of the california grid to prevent wildfires because so far the story has been kind of a regional story that if san francisco loses power for a week then i think that will become public -- >> sounds like you should write a book about that. [laughter] >> i want to say thank you to everybody for joining us today. [applause] if you're interested in the book you can buy a copy at the

register. if you want to get your book signed to the right of the table and please leave your chairs right where they are. thank you. >> i think it is a very exciting time. some are a little bit. worried we are fighting too much, or getting too much, disputing too much like hatfield and mccoy, and i say that's great because that means these are signs of vitality of life, not