Name: The Power of Energy Innovation
Uploaded: 2022-09-30
Duration: 11 min 30 s

A rise in energy prices around the world. Unreliable grids and power shutoffs across the country. A dramatic increase in the number of electric cars sold every day. And to all of that, add the rise of conscious consumers who are decarbonizing their homes to save money and lower their emissions. The energy transition is under way and the demand for electrification has never been higher, so how is the industry responding and innovating? 

The Power of Energy Innovation

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The energy transition is under way and the demand for electrification has never been higher, so how is the industry responding and innovating? 

and welcome panelists, thanks so much for doing this. We're gonna jump right in because time moves very quickly on the fortune stage. Um, so I want to ask sort of a couple of broad questions directed to each of you about this idea of energy innovation, which is of course the title of our session here, Annette, I'm going to start with you. It seems like there are two key parts to accomplishing this energy transition through innovation, technology and business, you know, really the business models and the rollouts here. So, and then I know that in many ways, uh, Snyder's wheelhouse is the technology part of this. And so I was hoping you could give us sort of a high level look at what needs to happen, what can be innovated upon in order to move this transitional loan faster. Thanks molly and, and thanks mary as well for being on this panel. I, you know, look, Schneider Electric is uh, was voted last year as the world's most sustainable company by Golden Knights. And with that comes a huge responsibility uh, to not only to carbonized ourselves, uh, and to drive more sustainable sources of energy, but for our customers as well. And, you know, we are an impact company, which means an impact company, you know, does good by being good. And that means that we have to help our customers navigate this very complex landscape of, you know, what to do in the face of energy. And I think the first thing we do and, and, and, and molly it's, it's sometimes not as uh, sexy, I suppose that some of the other things we can talk about. But the first thing we do is help customers with energy efficiency. It's a bit the unsung hero in all of this is the sort of the megawatt, a lot that you don't use. And our core businesses around helping customers visualized C and and really understand their energy. Their energy uses both commercial, industrial but residential as well. The next one is around actually more sources of renewable energy. And of course, I know mary would agree with me that, you know, really helping customers understand where they can access renewable energy and how they should think about renewable energy. And then the last one is helping them understand their entire value chain. And you know, we talk about scope 12 and three, but scope three sometimes is 11 times more carbon consumption than the other two, scope one and two. So understanding your value chain. And I give just a quick example, uh for example, we have a big project with walmart called project gig aton and it's actually leveraging their entire supply base and trying to help their entire supply base de carbon eyes in a way that helps walmart reduce scope three same thing. A project energize 12 pharmaceuticals who are working across many times a common supply base and helping that common supply base to carbon eyes on behalf of these of these farmers. And then, you know, you talked about micro grids and I wanna make this a quick point on the decarbonization, decentralization and digitization we call it the three Ds. But their core core core and microgrids are are becoming, you know super important in in all three of those Ds. And honestly uh in a couple of weeks here I'm gonna be going to a ribbon cutting for Montgomery County where they're electrifying there bus depot. And the thing I love best about this is not only the sustainability aspect of it, the resiliency aspect of it in case of storms but it's the democratization of renewable energy for the people of Montgomery County that you know ride the bus? It's a high high elderly, high high divers uh community that really needs more access to renewable sources of energy. So we say it's minor, you know, life is on when energy is on but life is on when more sources renewable energy are on. And that's kind of how we're thinking about it. Right? Well I want to piggyback off of decentralization as I turned to mary and talk about the structure, right? The structure of energy. Roll out the business models behind it the way that consumers consume and pay for energy. Um what do you see happening in that regard? And how important is it to rethink the idea of one big grid and start talking about how every E. V. In every driveway is a little baby power plant 100%. So it is it's really nice to be having this discussion today. And Annette thank you so much and I love what you're doing. I love what you're talking about. Um you know particularly the importance of the megawatt you know as we need to strategically electrified society. So as folks know like Sunrun we exist to have a positive impact on the planet. Like that's why we were founded, that's how we've gotten to 15 years and now being America's leader in providing customers with not just the ability to you know create their own energy through solar, store their own energy through battery storage and then drive their own energy through. You know, again we're wrapping in, you know, not just solar not just storage but Evie charging. And we've partnered with ford on the F 1 50 to utilize the bidirectional charging. So that again you can you can drive your storage or can you can use your storage To back up your home. So again, the technological innovations that are being driven across the space including at Schneider are just so important to get us to that way more affordable resilient way to power homes across America. Um and you know, again my background, I was a utility ceo for over 12 years working towards actually this exact same future because it was so obvious to me by a I would say 2005 that you know, not just is America's grid system really economically inefficient. It's it's you know, at like 40% economic efficiency, but it's not built for climate change, it's not built to provide customers with what they've been craving so much, which is reliability, resilience independence and the ability to power through any kind of event. And we've seen that, you know, sadly real time happening this week, you know, in the context of what happened to Puerto rico now, what's happening in florida? So again, the work we've been able to do isn't just about dramatically improving the lives of customers of communities. You know, Puerto rico actually as an example after Maria, we worked with the san juan, um you know, uh the fire department to make sure that they had solar and storage so they were able to power through the whole event, utilize communication systems to better serve people that were impacted by the event. So one of but back to sort of your question molly about how it makes the whole grid operate more effectively. That was actually my first, an initial fascination with it as a utility leader and why like we leaned in way back in 2008 to put incentive solar on homes and then to providing storage in homes way back in 2015 because we always saw that the path to a more economically efficient, environmentally sound and resilient grid was to create the grid of the future, which is about leveraging technology leveraging innovation leveraging as I said, these thousands, millions of points of light in the system and working to provide a more cost effective grid for all. And as a great example, again, really unfortunate event, the heat wave we had in California, but to really put a point on that the 17,000 customers we had were supplying 80 megawatts of support back to the grid during six PM and nine PM, really helping to avoid blackouts. So there's just so many proof points that this is the way to a more innovative, resilient um energy future for America. So again, from a socioeconomic perspective, it is profound um from a sustainability perspective, you know, we're we're focused as a sustainability company and you know, back to the nets point on the scopes, you know, scope 12 and three. And making sure that what we deliver really provides just in tremendous environmental and economic value. But I want to throw at you though both of you in the last four minutes, what are there our system, even as we know, how urgent this is. Right. There are systemic business and technology barriers. And I'm seeing actually the chat raised the same question, which is what are the obstacles politically and in terms of infrastructure and existing business models that are preventing us from moving forward faster because, you know, you brought up the example of the power outages in California. I have solar, but not a battery. And I was sleeping on a pool chair because the power was out for eight hours, you know, it still is very real and there are some things in the way and I'll give you a minute and a half to answer this gigantic question. I think, you know, as uh as probably everybody on this call call is trying to figure out how do we de carbonized and what are the right ways? How do we get the resiliency that mary is talking about and the sustainability that our investors, our shareholders and our employees really want us to to go after. I think microgrids are a good approach. Energy as a service is a good approach. You know, if you think about your core business, you don't want to spend your R and D dollars on on something that isn't driving your own business. I think the energies of service models are really important. We have a joint venture with the Carlyle group called infrastructure and what alpha structure does is it actually creates a p P a environment for uh you know, for company where they can they can actually not spend their capital dollars on the micro grid, they can get the benefits, the resiliency and also the the sustainability uh through, you know, through long term energy service and what we find is typically not only do they carbonized, it's it's something they can talk to employees and investors About, it helps their sustainability goals and frankly it helps their bottom line, we have to remember at the end of the day, less carbon, less cost and you have to really get our heads around this. Yeah, yeah, 100%. I mean, you know, we've saved customers, you know, over $800 million. They're saving against utility costs in a dramatic way. And all of these things can be paired together to create again, as many microgrids as we want in terms of barriers. Um, you know, and really to your point, the reality is the fact that the market supply chain challenges have hit the storage market. You know, we could be at probably an attachment rate of, I would say easily 60 to 70% storage, which is our, which is our goal to make sure that every solar customer has storage if it weren't for some of the supply chain challenges. So again, we see those easing, we see the ira as really turbocharging the space. I mean we are, we are seeing, you know, we've guided to 25% year over year growth. Um, so again, demand is there we are at a tipping point, it is happening more innovation is going to happen as a result of that. And I could not be more excited about the ability to really combat climate change through, you know, a customer driven revolution, incredible. Annette Clayton ceo of Schneider Electric and mary Powell Ceo of Sunrun, thank you so much to both of you for this incredible conversation. Thank you