Speaker 1: You want to be an Amfican.
Speaker 2: All right, it's a great return after the big stuffing
Speaker 2: sloany here seven hundred ww you welcome to it, and
Speaker 2: welcome to the cold. And with that cold means energy
Speaker 2: demand is starting to peak again. And we take it
Speaker 2: for granted because we have this little thing called a
Speaker 2: thermostat and we set it and we don't you know, here,
Speaker 2: kick on you. Oh, thank goodness, we've got some heat
Speaker 2: and you really don't think about it until you get
Speaker 2: the bill. And the reason why we get the bills
Speaker 2: as high as they are is because of demand. So
Speaker 2: the surge is driven by well, look look around us
Speaker 2: or Butler County, Columbus. Right, we've got these data centers
Speaker 2: going up.
Speaker 1: AI. We have electrification of vehicles.
Speaker 2: Twenty percent of all new car sales are either hybrid
Speaker 2: or the nine percent are just full of evs. Heat
Speaker 2: pump sales are going up. That's your air conditioning and heating.
Speaker 2: It's a heat pump now. And six out of ten
Speaker 2: heating installations here in Ohio are heat pumps. And so
Speaker 2: we're especially vulnerable things like brownouts because the supply doesn't
Speaker 2: meet the capacity in them. So the buck guy Institute's
Speaker 2: tasked with working with the US Department of Energy on
Speaker 2: solutions for this, and Ray Hedderman is here once again
Speaker 2: to discuss Ray.
Speaker 3: Welcome back, Hi Ben, I'm doing well, Scott, Thank you
Speaker 3: for having me.
Speaker 2: All Right, that's the thirty thousand foot view down to
Speaker 2: Earth here. What's really driving this whole thing? But I'd
Speaker 2: imagine part of this has to do with innovation is
Speaker 2: the regulatory barriers. Typically with energy, we see a lot
Speaker 2: of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, I mean, let's just recap what's happened. Normally,
Speaker 3: energy projects take a long time to build out, and
Speaker 3: energy demand was flat, so you're not going to go
Speaker 3: out and you're not going to build a whole bunch
Speaker 3: of new power plants if you're not expecting customers. Then
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, the last few years, you know,
Speaker 3: artificial intelligence. Everybody has phones, people are looking at Instagram, Facebook,
Speaker 3: you know, using AI. AI takes about ten times as
Speaker 3: much power today to get that answer as a Google
Speaker 3: question ten years ago. So energy demand is skyrocketing and
Speaker 3: so now we need those data centers. The problem is, Scott,
Speaker 3: regulatory regulations have made it so painful to build energy
Speaker 3: power plants that we're simply not getting electricity online fast enough.
Speaker 3: And that's where we're going to see start seeing power spikes,
Speaker 3: potential brownouts. We're actually seeing data centers being told no,
Speaker 3: you can't be built because we don't have enough energy
Speaker 3: to meet the needs. What we've done at the Buckeye
Speaker 3: Institute is work with state lallmakers and now we're working
Speaker 3: with federal regulators to say this is what needs to
Speaker 3: be happen so we can build the electricity to keep
Speaker 3: electricity affordable and reliable.
Speaker 2: How I just also has to do with the political
Speaker 2: whipso of Washington, DC. Whereas you had Trump We're going
Speaker 2: to do the Keystone XL pipeline. Great, we're gonna roll
Speaker 2: that thing out, and then Biden comes along says, no,
Speaker 2: we're not doing it anymore. Now Trumst's bag at office
Speaker 2: wile we're going to start doing it again.
Speaker 3: Well, you know you've seen that. You've seen like the
Speaker 3: Trump administration saying hey, we're going to close intermittent energy.
Speaker 3: You've had Democrats saying we're going to phase out coal plants.
Speaker 3: I mean the last year the Biden administration, they said
Speaker 3: we're going to eliminate basically make it almost impossible for
Speaker 3: coal and natural gas plants to operate. That's why you
Speaker 3: know pjm Our energy grid that Ohio shares with a
Speaker 3: lot of other Blue states on the Atlantic Ocean. Dave
Speaker 3: Yost many other states sued the federal government saying, you
Speaker 3: can't do this because if you're turning off coal plants
Speaker 3: are twilling off solar plants, where's our electricity going to
Speaker 3: come from? That's dependable. I mean, if you look outside
Speaker 3: Ohio right here in central Ohio, it's not an uncommon
Speaker 3: December day, right, it's great, the sun doesn't shine as much.
Speaker 3: Solar is great for some states, it's not ideal for
Speaker 3: the state of Ohio and scott The other thing that's
Speaker 3: happened is you've had a lot of other states that
Speaker 3: have made a big deal, like New Jersey. Again, we
Speaker 3: share the energy grew with New Jersey. They destroyed their
Speaker 3: coal plants, that destroyed natural gas, and they based it
Speaker 3: all on optional wind and intermittent injury sources. But those
Speaker 3: simply don't have the same reliability or produce the same
Speaker 3: amount of base load power, and so now do New Jersey.
Speaker 3: A lot of other states have found themselves in an
Speaker 3: energy crisis. And are scrambling to meet the growing demand.
Speaker 2: Ray if you travel through well the central part of
Speaker 2: the state where you are, but up north a little bit,
Speaker 2: or to drive Indianapolis to Chicago, you see a ton
Speaker 2: of wind farms, a lot of turbines out there. But
Speaker 2: as good as that, as fine as this is, how
Speaker 2: much of energy productions? That represent what percent?
Speaker 3: I thought them five percent? In the state of Ohio. Look,
Speaker 3: we get most of our stuff from natural gas. Historically,
Speaker 3: Ohio has been a coal heavy steak. Coal produced the
Speaker 3: majority of Ohio's electricity into the last ten years when
Speaker 3: natural gas, you know, you being able to tap into
Speaker 3: the shell crescent, has taken the place. So we get
Speaker 3: most of our energy from natural gas, coal, nuclear, and
Speaker 3: then it falls down the solar and wind. And again
Speaker 3: you know that's true for a lot of states, particularly
Speaker 3: on those of us east of the Mississippi. You know,
Speaker 3: we get a lot from natural gas nuclear. And what
Speaker 3: we're seeing right now again is, you know, because of
Speaker 3: the spike, people are scrambling to get power online. You know,
Speaker 3: a Microsoft, for example, has investing hundreds of millions of
Speaker 3: dollars to re open three Mile Island nuclear power plant.
Speaker 3: That tells you what businesses are looking at when they
Speaker 3: see the demand for future energy production and what they
Speaker 3: need to do. And really what needs to happen is
Speaker 3: Washington needs to say, Okay, why are we not seeing
Speaker 3: power plants come online? We see prices are increasing. You
Speaker 3: open up your electricity bill, you know, you know when
Speaker 3: it's time to rebid, you're going to be facing higher
Speaker 3: electricity prices. So why aren't we seeing more production being built?
Speaker 3: And part of it comes back to those regulatory barriers,
Speaker 3: you know, the blocks that are at the local level,
Speaker 3: state level, federal level lawsuits for environmental review those have
Speaker 3: all created a massive choke point that means that we're
Speaker 3: really facing a deficit and electricity production that is choking
Speaker 3: out the growing economy.
Speaker 2: I mean you mentioned the environmental reviews. How much does
Speaker 2: that bogg the process down?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, you take a look at there's so
Speaker 3: many album and what you're seeing is nif the environmental
Speaker 3: review that by the way, people on both the left
Speaker 3: and right are saying, hey, this is not meant to
Speaker 3: be a weapon to slow things down. We've seen that
Speaker 3: being able to slow those productions down for years. That's
Speaker 3: the National Environmental Policy Act about four and a half years,
Speaker 3: slowing down from the review connections. And so you know
Speaker 3: what happens, Scott is the way regulations work is they
Speaker 3: move in sequence. Right. It's kind of like a to train, right,
Speaker 3: you know, one car starts moving, the next car, the
Speaker 3: next car, the next car. So if you take you know,
Speaker 3: a year at the local level, a year at the
Speaker 3: state level, a year at the federal level, you're taking
Speaker 3: four and a half years or some environmental reviews. You know,
Speaker 3: you can sit there and be taking your six plus
Speaker 3: years for some big power plants to be built. And
Speaker 3: we've seen action take at the state level, you know.
Speaker 3: With House Bill fifteen, Ohio is saying, look, we need
Speaker 3: to speed this up. We need to make sure that
Speaker 3: regulators have only a certain amount of time to review
Speaker 3: so they can't delayies in those projects. And we'd like
Speaker 3: to see the same thing done at the federal level,
Speaker 3: because I mean, at least we can still build things
Speaker 3: here in Ohio. Other states that have more state regulations,
Speaker 3: like California, New Jersey, for example, they can't build anything
Speaker 3: because people were able to block production using these rules
Speaker 3: using lawsuits, which means electricity prices are going to remain high.
Speaker 2: Ry Hetterman's here Buckeye Institute working with the US Department
Speaker 2: of Energy and Solutions to fast track improving our infrastructure
Speaker 2: and power supply because we are near at peak demand
Speaker 2: and you know with the winter months here too, we
Speaker 2: also have data centers and the light going online. The
Speaker 2: demand for electricity is greater than ever, and yet the
Speaker 2: infrastructure is way behind. We've often talked about brownouts and
Speaker 2: blackouts that have happened at West and it's and it's
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know how close we are, but
Speaker 2: they say, certainly the Midwest ray is very vulnerable to
Speaker 2: this because of those data centers are going online at
Speaker 2: record numbers. These are like small towns, and I think
Speaker 2: most people don't understand just how much energy one of
Speaker 2: these data centers requires.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, you know, It's basically you can sit there
Speaker 3: and say, look, you know, one of these data centers
Speaker 3: can consume more energy than the Manhattan right in New
Speaker 3: York City, And so that just kind of called everybody
Speaker 3: by surprise, and so they're saying what can be done. Well,
Speaker 3: you know, one of the things that we again that
Speaker 3: Hospital fifteen did that I'm a big fan of, is
Speaker 3: what we call behind the and what that means is
Speaker 3: if you're building a data center, you can actually build
Speaker 3: your own power plants, you know, to directly power your business.
Speaker 3: You can fast track that through the regulatory process and
Speaker 3: be able to power your own business. And that's kind
Speaker 3: of what we want to see the market working. We've
Speaker 3: seen some of those basically power plants be approved. One
Speaker 3: was approved just before Thanksgiving. I think those type of
Speaker 3: solutions right where businesses working together, maybe they're going to
Speaker 3: share a power plant with another business. Those are the
Speaker 3: type of solutions that are going to get us out
Speaker 3: of this crisis and help us move ahead because relying
Speaker 3: on the way we've been doing things simply doesn't work. Scott,
Speaker 3: to give you an idea, just very quickly, there are
Speaker 3: one hundred and ninety seven thousands power requests to pjm
Speaker 3: Ohio's grid. One hundred and ninety seven thousand by somebody
Speaker 3: who wants to generate power to connect to the PGM grid.
Speaker 3: To PJAM doesn't have enough personnel to get through them.
Speaker 3: And part of the problem is, you know, these are
Speaker 3: everything from five megawatts solar and whim smaller production plants,
Speaker 3: but that takes the same amount of power, has a
Speaker 3: two hundred and fifty megawatt natural gas plant. So, you know,
Speaker 3: we have a lot of requests that are going online.
Speaker 3: People are gaining the system, flogging it up, and so
Speaker 3: we just need a way to cut through prioritize better
Speaker 3: which power plants are going to deliver reliable energy to
Speaker 3: keep prices load for consumers, to keep light time for businesses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense if you've
Speaker 2: private interested. Hey, you know what, we'll build our own
Speaker 2: infrastructure here. The hell with you guys. What kind of
Speaker 2: power plants are we're seeing going online?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Sure, so right now, we've seen a lot of
Speaker 3: natural gas here in Ohio work and moving forward on that.
Speaker 3: You've also seen some renewable behind the meter as well,
Speaker 3: you know. I mean people sometimes will drive by you
Speaker 3: might see a big windmill at a car dealership, for example,
Speaker 3: you know, trying to produce power on site to deliver
Speaker 3: to those businesses. Other states are starting to see experiments
Speaker 3: with small nuclear power plants. Again. You know, I mentioned Microsoft,
Speaker 3: for example, investing in reopening Three Mile Island for the
Speaker 3: benefit of Microsoft by themselves. Other companies are also contracting
Speaker 3: to build a smaller nuclear power plants using hydro using
Speaker 3: geothermal energy. You know, there's a lot of ways to
Speaker 3: be able to get electricity in businesses or reacting the
Speaker 3: way you'd expect them to do. What makes the most sense,
Speaker 3: what's the most cost competitive, and where my business is located.
Speaker 3: And so that's what the beauty of what we see
Speaker 3: kind of free enterprise working out is coming up with
Speaker 3: solutions and trying not to burden rate payers. You know,
Speaker 3: that's what we want to make sure is that we
Speaker 3: have affordable energy and businesses aren't taking advantage of rate
Speaker 3: payers and hopefully not you know, seeking out special tax breaks.
Speaker 3: It would be great to roll back some tax and
Speaker 3: centers handout to big industry, big utilities, big tech along
Speaker 3: the way to make sure taxes are low, energy prices
Speaker 3: are kept affordable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, Ray, it makes a lot of sense. And
Speaker 2: I'm a big proponent of these small nuclear plants, and
Speaker 2: I think, you know, once again, it's a great example
Speaker 2: of how private industry will lead the way and solve
Speaker 2: the problems that government can't. For those who believe in
Speaker 2: government solving all problems, well, there you go. There they're
Speaker 2: actually standing in the way. Are there going to be
Speaker 2: some trials tribulations, heartbreaks, accidents, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Sure, there always is.
Speaker 2: When it comes to technology, sadly, but that's part of
Speaker 2: the learning and growing experience as long as those responsible
Speaker 2: are held to a standard. That said, though, I think
Speaker 2: this is the advent of new power generation, and I
Speaker 2: think about you know, some of the like Microsoft reopening
Speaker 2: through Mile Island, or smaller like suitcase type of nuke
Speaker 2: facilities or machines that produce enough energy to fire a plant.
Speaker 2: But it also is hoped to typical America. I mean,
Speaker 2: imagine the day where and I don't know if it
Speaker 2: will be in our lifetime, but imagine that the technology
Speaker 2: gets so good you just buy one of these power
Speaker 2: units on Amazon, they ship it to you, You PLoP
Speaker 2: it in like a battery, and it lasts probably longer
Speaker 2: than you're alive, and then you know, it goes back
Speaker 2: to the recycling center and what they do with they
Speaker 2: spent phil Rodgs is yet to be determined. But nonetheless,
Speaker 2: it seems like neighborhoods Hoa's small towns will have their
Speaker 2: own many nuclear plant to power or we may just
Speaker 2: have one in our own house in fifty years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, Scott, that's exactly right. I mean you're
Speaker 3: looking at the space talking to people involved in these businesses,
Speaker 3: both from producers and high energy consumers. There's a lot
Speaker 3: of innovation that's going on through private enterprise. People saying, hey,
Speaker 3: you know what, let's try to use gia thermal right
Speaker 3: out less where it makes her sense. You know, given
Speaker 3: the geology out there. You know, they're actually experimenting drilling
Speaker 3: down to the Earth's cross being able to tie about
Speaker 3: some of that geothermal energy. That's a great solution for
Speaker 3: some of those companies, you know, small neuclear reactors. You
Speaker 3: are seeing more businesses pulling together and basically forming micro
Speaker 3: grids you know, behind the meter. That a way to say, hey,
Speaker 3: let's go on our own power sources so we don't
Speaker 3: have to wait a couple of years to go through
Speaker 3: the PJAM regulations. That's the type of innovation I think
Speaker 3: that has really made this country great. That's why I'm
Speaker 3: really optimistic about the future because we know what the
Speaker 3: need is, we know the demands there, businesses know what
Speaker 3: they need to do to power themselves, and we have
Speaker 3: a solution for the future. You know, we can sit there,
Speaker 3: work together, innovate development these things and really keep America
Speaker 3: moving forward. And I look at the opposite end of
Speaker 3: the spectrum right again. I looked to Europe where a
Speaker 3: few years ago, you know, they came out and said,
Speaker 3: we can't compete with the United States because our electricity
Speaker 3: prices are so unaffordable. You know, German MENUF factoring has
Speaker 3: fallen off a clock because electricity is so important to
Speaker 3: the manufacturing sector. Europe made terrible policy choices by trying
Speaker 3: to regulate this market. I am thankful that here in Ohio,
Speaker 3: you know, we're making different choices, moving to remove regulations
Speaker 3: on businesses, to encourage innovation, to encourage investment, to try
Speaker 3: to boost energy so to keep prices lower.
Speaker 2: Well, but in Ohio even will the bureaucracy and will
Speaker 2: the status quo machine keep this from moving forward?
Speaker 3: I you know, Scott, I'm optimistic, I think because we're
Speaker 3: already seeing this working again. You know, we've seen a
Speaker 3: couple of billion dollars behind the meter projects already move forward. Right,
Speaker 3: So these private businesses are putting their money where their
Speaker 3: hopes are. That's what I'm looking at again. The Public
Speaker 3: Utilities Commission of Ohio is approving some of these projects
Speaker 3: are all going to be private behind the meter to
Speaker 3: power some of these data centers, to power some of
Speaker 3: these manufacturing I think Ohio is building a model that
Speaker 3: should be emulated copied by other states. You know, we're
Speaker 3: able to take advantage of it, and if federal regulators
Speaker 3: can move faster, that'll be better for us as well.
Speaker 3: But HP fifteen, I think is a really good piece
Speaker 3: of legislation that is encouraging a lot of private enterprise.
Speaker 3: And again, you know, reading from the news reports, reading
Speaker 3: the filings before the Public Utilities Commission, there's billions of
Speaker 3: dollars of private investment that's taking place right now thanks
Speaker 3: to HP fifteen, allowing businesses to power up more quickly.
Speaker 2: All right, He's ray headed been to the Buckeye Institute
Speaker 2: working with the Department of Energy on solutions to solve
Speaker 2: our power crisis.
Speaker 1: And it's looming. It really is.
Speaker 2: Imagine a day like, for example, Class of twenty twenty five, Ray,
Speaker 2: you show them a picture of a flat circular thing
Speaker 2: with a hole in the middle. It's kind of translucent,
Speaker 2: and they don't know what that. It's called a compact
Speaker 2: disc Imagine Class of twenty one, twenty five, when you
Speaker 2: show them a picture of a utility poll with all
Speaker 2: those wires out, and I go, what the hell is that?
Speaker 2: Hopefully that, hopefully that's what the future is here at
Speaker 2: the Buckey's date.
Speaker 1: All the best, buddy, Thanks.
Speaker 3: Again, take a lot, Scott, always a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Take care of.
Speaker 2: Let's get a news update in in just a few
Speaker 2: minutes here moving forward on the Scottslan Show. Another thing
Speaker 2: that is facing extinction social Security. Some sobering news about
Speaker 2: your Social Security benefits that Washington doesn't want you to know.
Speaker 2: That's some clickbait right there. Hang out, we'll get into
Speaker 2: it right after news on seven hundred WLW