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Why Does the Cost of EV Charging Stations Vary So Much - Dave Mullaney, Rocky Mountain Institute6/1/2022
The cost of installing an electric vehicle (EV) charger can vary from $400 to $150,000. Dave Mullaney of the Rocky Mountain Institute's Carbon-Free Mobility team takes us through their recent report - Reducing EV Charging Infrastructure Costs - to help us understand why, and how these costs can be reduced.
If you've ever installed an electric oven or clothes dryer where there wasn't one before, you have some idea what it's like to get the necessary 220 volt electrical source installed. Unless you've been involved in building a large factory, electrified rail line or commercial computing center, you probably don't know what it's like to get a megawatt or more of electrical infrastructure planned, funded, permitted and installed. Dave introduces us to some of what's involved and how we can make it less expensive, faster and more predictable. Dave also explains why we should have different expectations for charging EV's than we have for fueling conventional gasoline and diesel powered cars. Whether you fill your tank all at once in a few minutes, or over several hours, it costs the same. Charging an EV is orders of magnitude less expensive if you do it overnight vs. all at once at the fastest available charging station. One the one hand, this will require big adjustments in people's expectations. On the other hand, wouldn't it be nice to wake up each morning to your car being fully charged, without having to go anywhere?
As the federal government gears up to spend new climate money, it is vital to look at some of the failures in the past. This is especially true with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) since the DOE announced last week that it plans to spend a whopping $3.5 billion on four new carbon capture demonstration plants. This week we meet with Bob Bauman, a veteran government investigator and auditor, to discuss how the Department of Energy (DOE) wasted nearly half a billion dollars on failed carbon capture and storage (CSS) technology demonstration projects in the past.
The failed CSS projects are described in a report released by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in December 2021 called CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE: Actions Needed to Improve DOE Management of Demonstration Projects. CCS is a controversial technology with an unproven past and this GAO report is another cautionary tale on how climate money can be wasted away. As most in the climate community knows, we do not have time for do-overs and waste. Bob uses his 30+ years as a government investigator to explain how this kind of waste occurs, and what it portends for the $3.5 billion the Department of Energy recently announced they're investing on behalf of U.S. taxpayers in CSS projects. Bob is the former partner of CMW Executive Director Dina Rasor in the Bauman & Rasor Group. They worked together on various federal fraud and waste projects for 27 years, espeically in bringing qui tam False Claims lawsuits on behalf of whistleblowers that returned over $200 million to the federal government and authored two investigative books together. Before running the Bauman and Rasor Group, Bob worked as an investigator for the federal government for 36 years including 12 years for the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS).
There seems to be interest in our national electric grid only when it is damaged with major blackouts due to weather or hacking. Many overlook that very little of the ambitious efforts to move to 100 percent renewable energy or the change over to electric vehicles can't successfully work without an expanded and smarter grid. This is a foundation for the new world of climate change that we have to get right and use the money wisely or climate mitigation will slow or fail.
So this week we're joined by Mark Dyson, Managing Director for Carbon-Free Electricity at the Rocky Mountain Institute to discuss his recent report, Reimagining Grid Resilience. Mark describes how investing in distributed energy resources, such as "behind-the-meter" photovoltaic solar panels both do more to improve the resilience of the grid and provide carbon and cost reduction benefits when everything is operating well. These "blue sky" benefits pay dividends around the clock and around the year. On the other hand, "hardening" against outages ("black sky") only provides benefits when systems would otherwise be malfunctioning. Such vulnerabilities to the grid itself do exist, as were demonstrated by the 2013 Metcalf sniper attack in the United States and the 2015 Ukraine power grid hack, but efficiency, insulation, and residential wind and solar represent far greater potential. Mark also comments on the thoughtfulness of grid funding programs that are part of the bipartisan infrastructure law, including Energy Improvement in Rural Areas, Preventing Outages and Enhancing the Resilience of the Electric Grid / Hazard Hardening, Program Upgrading Our Electric Grid and Ensuring Reliability and Resiliency and the Smart Grid Investment Matching Grant Program. Solyndra: A Cautionary Tale - Eric Thorson, former Inspector General of the U.S. Treasury Department5/11/2022
As many environmentalist know, fraud, abuse and waste can be a killer for important government programs and be used by climate antagonists, such as U.S. Senator Barrasso, as an excuse to limit spending on the climate crisis. Soylyndra, a federal loan guarantee program to manufacture solar panels during the Obama Administration was one such project. Senator Barrasso released a report last year using Solyndra as an excuse to not fund future climate projects. Although the federal loan program under Obama's Recovery Act overall ended up making the federal government more money than what they spent, the government lost $535 million when Solyndra went bankrupt. This week the Climate Money Watchdog podcast will talk with Eric Thorson, the former Inspector General for the Department of Treasury, who actually did oversight on the Solyndra project. He sees the Solyndra failure as waste because the federal government, in a hurry to get the money spent and jobs created, did not do the due diligence on the project. In this podcast episode, he explains this and other reasons that federal programs can fail, before and after the government loans or appropriates the money. He also explains oversight needed before a project is approved and what to do if there is a problem after has started. Since the current climate money programs will include partnerships with state, local and private industry, the process is complicated and needs constant oversight all the entities involved, including informed and active climate advocates. Eric Thorson served as the Inspector General of the U.S. Treasury through three presidents; George W. Bush, Barrack Obama, and Donald Trump. He also worked as an investigator for two U.S. Senate committees, served as the Inspector General for U.S. Small Business Administration as well as serving twice as Deputy Assistant Secretary for the U.S. Air Force. Eric also ran his own small business for executive jet services. He is currently an Executive Partner at the William and Mary College School of Business. We hope that you will listen to this informative episode either through this website or you podcast portal of choice and will inform other climate people about this podcast episode on social media. Dina Rasor
This week's episode of the Climate Money Watchdog's podcast features a long time environmental leader in local government. John Gioia (joy-a) is county supervisor for California's Contra Costa County representing 210,000 people in the San Francisco East Bay area, right across the Bay from San Francisco. He was elected in 1998 and has been re-elected five times with high margins. He has had many years of official work on environmental issues, including serving on regional government boards such as the California Air Resources Board, the Bay Area Quality Management District Board, the Bay Area Conservation and Development Board and is Vice Chair of the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority. This work has led him to have extensive experience working with state and federal funding at a local level and why we asked him to do a podcast episode with us to talk about ups and downs of working with all the requirements and issues that state and federal environmental funding bring to local government entities.
In this episode, we have wide ranging discussions of various issues that will be raised with increased climate and environmental funding. This includes a detailed discussion on the many complications of federal spending for electric vehicle charging stations. Publicly funded EV charging stations is one of the larger programs in the recently passed federal infrastructure law with $7.5 billion appropriated and $5 billion of that amount going to the states. This is one of the programs that Climate Money Watchdog is watching because of the amount of the funding mixed with the complexity of local, state and federal governments working together. Supervisor Gioia gives great insight to the complex issues that arise for local governments to make these types of appropriations a success. Supervisor Gioia grew up in the diverse city of Richmond, California and has a BA degree from the University of California, Berkeley where he also earned a law degree. We hope that you will listen to this unique episode with a local government official who brings up issues that many in the national climate movement may not have thought about. Supervisor Gioia is my county supervisor and I look forward to his advice as we continue to follow and investigate on how the climate money is spent. Dina Rasor, Executive Director of Climate Money Watchdog.
Danielle Brian is the Executive Director of the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) and is considered one of the most authoritative people who watchdogs the spending of the federal government. In fact, yesterday (April 27) she was named by Washingtonian Magazine as one of the most influential people in good government. Dina Rasor founded POGO and Danielle Brian took over the executive director position from Dina Rasor in 1993. She worked at POGO with Dina in the 1980s and with Greg Williams, the Chief Operating Officer of Climate Money Project. We are delighted that she did this podcast and passed on her valuable knowledge so that the climate community can benefit from her experience in not only passing appropriations but also how to put in safeguards and oversight so that the money is spent well with as little of fraud and waste as possible.
In this episode, we will talk about Danielle’s knowledge and concerns of what can happen when the federal government spends a large amount of money, like the recent climate appropriations, without the bureaucracy now being ready to process and oversee the spending, the pros and cons of the federal Inspectors General ability to audit and investigate large amounts of new money, how the Congress and the Executive Branch can out in safeguards for spending transparency and prevent unnecessary fraud and waste, and the important role of whistleblowers and anonymous sources in this process. We would love your feedback and suggestions on our podcast episodes as well as suggestions of anyone you think would help the climate community better understand how the climate money should be spent and overseen. We will be bringing you a myriad of experts, scientists, attorneys, local, state and federal officials, and advocates to help all of us prepare to make climate money work well. If you like what you hear, please sign up to receive our podcast episodes and please tweet on Twitter and post on Facebook our podcast link to help us get this information out to the people who are determined to make climate mitigation work. Thanks!
Bill McKibben is a founder of Third Act, which organizes people over the age of 60 to work on climate and racial justice. He founded the first global grassroots climate campaign, 350.org, and serves as the Schumann Distinguished Professor in Residence at Middlebury College in Vermont. In 2014 he was awarded the Right Livelihood Prize, sometimes called the ‘alternative Nobel,’ in the Swedish Parliament. He’s also won the Gandhi Peace Award, and honorary degrees from 19 colleges and universities. He has written over a dozen books about the environment, including his first, The End of Nature, published in 1989, and the forthcoming The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at his Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened.
In this podcast, we reflect on the recent launch of Third Act, and the need to pursue climate change mitigation and environmental remediation with "equanimity". Support the show Tomorrow (April 21), we will be launching the first episode of our podcast featuring the inestimable Bill McKibben, a top leader in the climate field. Next week on Thursday, we will have Danielle Brian of the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), the organization that I founded and serve on their board. Danielle is one of the best experts on spending and oversight of federal money. Greg Williams and I have also recorded an episode to explain the goals of Climate Money Watchdog and why we believe that our mission is so vital.
The Climate Money Watchdog podcast will feature people who know about the successes and pitfalls of government spending in many fields and others who know the various and complicated issues surrounding the climate emergency and know what can go wrong with either the technical, practical, or political in the climate debate. You can get the podcast from the Climate Money Watchdog website blog or the link to our podcast page on the website. We will be listed in most of the usual podcast distributors. More about us: we are a non-profit, non-partisan organization. The goal of CMW is to follow and watch government spending on climate issues to ensure that the precious spending on climate actually goes to solutions to the pending climate meltdown. We are doing investigations into various topics and problems, launching this podcast on pitfalls of climate spending that could lead to waste, fraud and abuse, and will become a place where sources and whistleblowers can come to seek public or anonymous help in exposing problems. We are also solutions oriented and will work to inform the public and the government where there are problems and potential solutions. Check out our goals and our new introduction video on this website. Getting the necessary climate appropriations passed is an issue that many groups have been working on for decades. However, given the urgency and importance of this issue, there is little room for fraud and waste which can be used by climate skeptics to kill off the necessary funding to get the job done. (Remember Solyndra?) If you like what you hear and read, I would like to ask you to help us in getting the word out. We have a Twitter page @WatchdogClimate and a Facebook page under my name, Dina Rasor, with a CMW logo. I would really appreciate it if you could go to the pages to follow and befriend us and retweet it and send it to friends to get the word out about our work and podcast. And if you know of anyone who would be interested in supporting us financially, please have them contact our Director of Operations, Greg Williams, gwilliams@cliamtemoneywatchdog.org. If you or anyone else would like to make a donation of any size, we have a donate page on our website and an introductory video on our efforts. All contributions are tax deductible. Many people who know me realize that asking for money has always been a stumbling block, but I will set that aside for this important work. That’s it! Thanks for reading this and please check out our podcast. I would love to hear from all of you for reactions and suggestions on this new endeavor. Dina Rasor Executive Director Climate Money Watchdog climatemoneywatchdog.org Through generous donor support, and by driving hard bargains with our vendors, we have put in place insurance and everything else we need to officially launch in April of 2022. Keep an eye on our web site for an episode schedule soon and look forward to downloading our podcasts from fifteen of the most popular podcast platforms, including Apple, Amazon and Google. Visit our Podcast Directory Listings page for a full list.
Whether you've donated before, or are new to Climate Money Watchdog, and you value our pressing work and investigations in our podcasts and web site; we hope you will contribute. We plan to release episodes on a weekly basis and will post a schedule soon. As always, if you are interested in a deeper partnership, please contact us at info@climatemoneywatchdog.org. We'll be eager to share our plans and budgets, and the new research and interviews as we continue to develop them. Yesterday's tornadoes in Kentucky are widely accepted as a grim reminder of the threat of increasingly frequent extreme weather events attributable to climate change, but the 74 reported deaths (so far) may be the tip of a far greater "iceberg" of impact. Today's civilized world is so densely populated and so tightly integrated that even small deviations from expected patterns can create huge disruptions. The photo above, which shows some of the 80,000 Kentuckians with unprocess job claims associated with the COVID 19 pandemic in June of 2020, illustrates how many of today's government systems are built for average, not peak load. The private sector is no different, with backlogs of shipping containers growing by the day due to people's buying behavior changing by a few percent in response to the pandemic.
Much of the fragility of our society comes from our desire to minimize risk, and much of that comes in the form of insurance of one kind or another. Insurance works pretty well as long as the insurance industry isn't subjected to big violations of their assumptions: Car insurance companies cover the cost of replacing thousands of wrecked cars every year without breaking a sweat. But when disaster strikes, as it did with Hurricane Katrina in 2005, it can threaten the whole industry: In 2005, Louisiana insurers paid out in claims as much in claims as they'd received in premiums for the last 20 years. To deal with the risk of major events like this, the insurance industry depends on their ability to predict how often such events take place. To do that, they rely on lots of information about weather patterns that has been collected over a hundred years or so, that hasn't been and can't be widely and reliably updated to reflect the unpredictable results of climate change. Remember that the global financial crisis of 2007-2008 was caused by faulty assumptions of the risks associated with mortgage-backed financial products. I can only imagine that as the assumptions of the insurance industry and other commercial and government system are rendered invalid, we may be in for disruptions on a scale that makes a few inches or feet of sea level rise look tame. Greg Williams |
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