The Future of Climate, Environmental Regulation, Clean Tech, and More | The Atlantic Festival 2024

please welcome Alice maau publisher and chief Revenue officer of the Atlantic hello everyone I am Alice mown I'm a publisher and chief Revenue officer of the Atlantic thank you so much for joining us today for this incredibly important conversation on our changing climate climate change is one of the defining issues of our time we will need transformational modification in order to hit our Global Climate goals and protect our plan for future Generations there still is time for Meaningful action so how can we gain bipartisan support for Environmental Solutions and What new technologies are needed in order to ensure a sustainable future today you'll hear from leading policy makers climate experts Visionary scientists and activists as we discuss the path towards Equitable solutions for people and the planet before we begin begin I really want to thank our underwriter all state for their support of Atlantic's journalism please take a moment to silence your cell phones but keep them close by if you see something or hear something that captures your attention please share it with your social networks and use the hasht ta24 now let's begin today's [Music] conversations for a conversation about two sides of climate action please welcome Sam SAR senior vice president for programs at Earth Justice Chris Barnard president of the American cons conservation Coalition with Van R newerk thei senior editor at the Atlantic all right well thank you all for joining us and thank you Sam and Chris for uh taking the time to be with us today uh we're talking about two sides of climate action and I have a real treat for you what we are going to do is bring a bell and you two are going to fight right here in this red circle uh but seriously thank you for being here and what I want to do to start is to just get a sense of you your organizations and uh what you do let's start with you Sam sure my name is Sam Sankar I'm the senior vice president uh for programs at Earth Justice we are the nation's leading environmental law organization and you could cut leading by lots of different ways but we are the largest we have about 200 attorneys and about 15 offices Nationwide and about 600 staff we've been doing this for 50 years uh L on behalf of communities environmental groups renewable energy Advocates uh you name it fishing fishing Fisherman's associations uh Building Trades all those things uh so our tagline is we're here because the earth needs a good lawyer and as for me myself uh I am been working in the environmental world for about 30 years everything from uh corporate Council a general electric to the justice department to the nature conservancy and big Law Firm practice and now at Earth Justice all right Chris want to tell us more yeah so my name is Chris Barnard I'm the president of the American conservation Coalition we the largest conservative environmental organization in the country we have over 50,000 members at over 100 chapters across the country and our contention is that once upon a time conservatives talked about these issues uh and in the last few decades they've stopped doing so if you go back to Teddy Roosevelt many ways the founder of the modern conservation movement in America he was a Republican president uh Nick a Republican president founded the Environmental Protection Agency uh and really like I said in recent decades Republicans and conservatives have taken a step back from this conversation uh as a young conservative I'm 26 I was born in 1998 it was frustrating to me that my entire life basically as been Al Gore through AOC and I never felt represented in that conversation because my side wasn't talking about it and ACC exists to fill that Gap and to show that conservatives care and that we can also contribute solutions to this conversation so why in in your view in your organization's view did Republicans stop talking about the environment I mean there are various Dynamics here I think one of them honestly is that they didn't like the solutions that were being proposed and so they ran the other direction um I think there's there's some Merit to that but also my view is that if you don't like the other side Solutions you should come up with your own better Solutions uh but a lot of conservatives especially in recent years saw oh the green new deal that's what the left is proposing the to climate change and therefore we're just going to say climate change is is not real altogether and I think that's a copout answer uh and our view is that actually Innovation not regulation uh coming up with bottom-up Solutions is the way that we can tackle these problems um and a lot of conservatives have have failed to embrace that approach but I think we're we're seeing some change honestly there's a conservative climate caucus now which we helped found which has 85 Republican members of Congress in it uh so we're making progress but obviously recognize there's a lot more than that needs to be done Sam we are uh assessing the the effects of one of the largest pieces of climate policy uh in this country's history the inflation reduction act uh what is your uh assessment of so far of uh what that act has done and aims to do well the scale of investment involved the inflation reduction well I should back up the inflation reduction Act is absolutely the most transformative piece of legislation that we have had on climate uh in certainly in my lifetime which extends several decades longer than Chris's Lifetime and uh it it's a profound uh action and a profound transformation it's unfortunate that it had to get past the way it did uh but what that limited to doing was investing and it invests in all kinds of positive things uh Energy Technologies of all kinds and of all kinds it includes a fair amount of investment in fossil fuel infrastructure and in fossil fuel adjacent infrastructure so what has it done so far it's put a lot of of money into a lot of different things and moving that kind of money believe it or not moving billions of dollars takes time and energy and we have agencies that are that could be doing this faster there's no question about it but the money is there the impact is coming and you're seeing this as politicians around the country if they were opposed to it have become awfully quiet about it and if they're in favor of it are clamoring to make it land in the way it should now Chris not a single Republican voted for the IRA uh what does your organization think about that law especially now that it's been enacted yeah obviously there's a few Dynamics here the first is the IRA often gets touted as the the biggest climate law in American history but it's not just a climate piece of legislation right there is a lot when it comes to IRS agents and and other various elements um and I think Republicans just didn't feel like they were part of that process um a lot of the bills that actually made their way into the final package had bipartisan support when they were loone bills especially on the energy tax credit stuff but you'll probably uh not be surprised that Republicans aren't going to vote for more IRS agents or things like that um and so I think the the political dynamics of it were just very weird um and Republicans were not part of the process we have seen some shifts lately on on this because of the Investments so 60% of Ira investments in clean energy are going to Republican districts 19 of the top 20 districts across the country that are receiving clean energy Investments are Republican District districts uh and recently a letter was signed by 18 House Republicans to speaker Johnson saying look we we think the political process around the IRA sucked there are things in here that we don't like for example the IRS agents and other aspects um around for example electric vehicles but there are aspects that are beneficial to our communities we're seeing investment in americanmade energy um and that's something that we should be taking a closer look at rather than just a wholesale repeal I think one of the other things that Republicans have been talking about in this context is look at the end of the day the IRA is somewhat useless if you don't have the permanent reform to actually build these things there's a study from Yale that found that 80% of the emissions reductions that could come from the IRA will not happen if we can't build the infrastructure fast enough that is currently uh being stopped by our permanent process and so I think that's really where the conversation is happening now among Republicans is how can we actually start making it easier to build this stuff so that those dollars can be put can be put to good use yeah that's uh you mentioned the fact that so much of the this the dollars being spent are going to conservative districts are going to rural districts to things like lead abatement in Appalachia um I'm curious if that slow Embrace of the money that's already out there is that changing Republican attitudes towards spending as a lever for climate change yeah I mean everyone will embrace it for different reasons think you have margerie Taylor green embracing some of the Solar projects happening in her District I'm pretty sure she is not embracing it because she's a climate hero she's embracing it because those are jobs and economic opportunities for her district and everyone will have different reasons for embracing it I think we shouldn't have a puritanical approach to this some people Embrace clean energy because it's one of the best ways we can be competing with China in the 21st century I think that's a fairly legitimate argument to be making some people are concerned about the climate impacts and see these Investments as critical to reducing emissions I think that's important as well um but there's really different Dynamics and it depends on the district Sam are there any deficiencies in that uh act uh from your perspective in the ira yes well there are certainly inefficiencies and one of the problems that we have in our political Dynamic right now is that the price of moving on clean energy and on transmission and permitting and all the things that we need is often Provisions intended to incentivize fossil fuel leasing fossil fuel export fossil fuel development so for example you see the that man Joe mansion and uh and baraso John baraso were proposing a bill that was originally touted as some sort of uh method of Expediting energy uh infrastructure but what you see is that it's often tied to guarantees of additional land additional federal land uh for oil and gas leasing to revamps of the oil and gas leasing process to expedited approvals of ly pipelines and Export so what you you see is this political Dynamic that is really problematic if you want to take action on climate change you have to recognize that fossil fuels and the fossil fuel industry can't be preserved subsidized further in order to make progress on this stuff it's just really hard when you look at the climate deadlines we have five years right to make transformative change and it's hard to see how transformative change includes a ton of oil of gas export terminals uh Terminals and guarantees of 10year leases for offshore oil and a host of other changes to the federal you know per changes to federal law intended to make it easier for the federal government to lease and Export fossil fuels could I could I wait on that real quick I'm I'm curious because some of the data that we're seeing looking at the mentioned baraso bill is estimating that the emissions reductions impact could actually be 17 to1 in terms of reducing emissions versus new emissions from more fossil fuel use um like is that something that's factoring in like your side of the debate like isn't that a very good deal for the climate I think the modeling so we're not a modeling organization but the modeling organizations that we've talked to are profoundly skeptical of the models that are coming out and if nothing else you need to look at the proponents of this bill two people from hugely fossil fuel dependent States so when you have baraso from Wyoming a a coal and gas State and mansion from West Virginia a coal state it is it's it's hard for me not to look for the fine print and the fine print is there in all of the legis ation and Regulatory reforms reforms many of which are not accounted for in the modeling so the modeling looks at the LG stuff uh and and Compares that against the transmission stuff with because for those who don't know one of the major problems we have right now is that our transmission and grid infrastructure isn't sufficient to move the renewable energy that is waiting to come online and in places like the southeast many of the incumbent generators are reluctant to have those reforms happen because right now with limited transmission grid they have a captive audience if you have coal and gas fir plants and your customers can't get their energy from somewhere else that's great for you so transmission can be a problem for folks like that yeah yeah sorry like you got it you got it uh I mean so the modeling was done obviously by Third Way Rocky Mountain Institute not particularly like seen as conservative um organizations um but the other thing you mentioned the LG exports obviously for those of you that don't know the bill would uh overturn Biden LG export pause uh which is something that my organization has actually criticized by Administration for our view is that if we don't export American LG will be just empowering countries like Venezuela and Iran to or Russia to be exporting their LG to other countries or increasing the Reliance for people on coal some of the studies that we've seen at least uh show that American Energy exports to Southeast Asia for example could reduce emissions by up to 50% and and this is not at all a gotcha but just a genuinely curious question I understand that a lot of folks on the left are skeptical of anything that mentions fossil fuels but in a world where we still have a lot of Reliance on coal wouldn't moving to LG be a better alternative so to be clear right the United States would be investing in further fossil fuel infrastructure for a long period of time these are permanent legal changes to the way the federal government does offshore leasing natural gas permitting natural gas export policy I guess my question back is is why would we want I mean is it just the political price or do you believe that it's affirmatively good policy to increase fossil fuel extraction and Export at this point in the climate crisis well not all fossil fuel extraction is the same right you have coal you have oil you have gas you have LG you have different countries have different profiles of emissions uh for example American LG export to Europe is 42% cleaner than Russian LG export to Europe I think our approach is look we have to look at not just political reality but also economic and energy reality and with like 40 30 to 40% of the world still relying on coal it is absolutely a net benefit for the climate for that to be transitioned to LNG which would be a 50% emissions reductions cut while we invest in transmission while we invest in battery storage while we in our view invest in Next Generation nuclear um I think we're probably just a little bit more practical about that side of things and understand that we all want to reduce emissions but there are different ways of doing that well for you uh and I think for the general sort of conservative climate movement is there a long-term view that a total energy transition to Renewables is necessary in the future I mean our view is that we need an all of the above approach not just 100% Renewables We Believe nuclear will be part of that we believe geothermal will be part of that we believe um carbon capture and storage will be part of that like one of the things I think that maybe sets concer slightly apart in this conversation is that we don't know what Innovations will necessarily come out of the market but we need to try and incentivize as much Innovation as possible so it's entirely conceivable that by 2050 there might be some places around the world still using natural gas but they're storing the emissions from the natural gas through CCS I don't think that's a solution that we should be uh getting rid of okay Sam yesterday I uh spoke to secretary grolm about uh the department of Energy's uh plan for the future and one of the things she mentioned and I think you you've heard often is uh as Chris just talked about there are security concerns there are Global policy concerns about our energy capacity about our exports uh for you and for Earth Justice are those uh where do those rank among the priorities well one of the reasons it's interesting one of the reason reasons we're talking about energy policy and affirmative investment is that uh the system we've got which is a system EPA doe all these agencies typically engage in regulatory policy to adjust the cost of manufacturing not just through taxes but through regulations that internalize costs to achieve the policy outcomes we've got and one of the Dynamics we're not talking about here is that the reason why uh a lot of work is being done to spend money is because we currently have a supreme court that is extremely hostile to any attempt to regulate the economy and for those who've been paying attention the Supreme Court's been uh very aggressive in Striking down regulations aimed at addressing climate crisis adding addressing health issues uh and that's a real that's a major issue for us at Earth Justice we're not an energy policy organization we're primarily an organization that works to enforce uh and improve our existing laws one uh thing that been reporting on uh for seven years now is is uh we just talked about the fact that conservative districts are receiving a good portion of the Ira's funding uh I'm concerned with also minority communities whether they are being supported whether the IRA funding uh through things like justice 40 is actually reaching them uh what's your assessment now of of of that part of the IRA so that that movement of money is even slower one of my biggest concerns right now is the the Supreme Court decided a bunch of cases recently that suggest that any decision-making that might consider the historical impacts of racial race based decisions and you know well about this you've written about this uh are are impermissible and that means that uh many communities that are environmental justice communities are in that status because of historical decisions about redlining about zoning about permitting and about sighting and if you can't consider those historical issues if you are forbidden from thinking about that because uh in by thinking about race and by thinking about uh the the bases on which those decisions were made it's very hard for programs like this that are intended to redress those harms to actually land so a I'm concerned about the operational role out of this and B I'm concerned about the ability of the federal government to make decisions that redress historical wrongs Chris one of the things Sam just mentioned uh there were a couple of Investigations by the EPA uh into places like the denka uh Plastics facility in Louisiana that are uh right next to minority communities and so a group of I want to say 19 uh Republican Attorneys General uh sent a petition to the EPA asking it to essentially stop its disperate impact title 6 civil rights investigations I'm curious uh for you are there uh ways to uh make this conservative Vision work that can reduce these disparities racial disparities in uh effects of climate change and also the the the sort of larger picture of our environment yeah it's a great question and and I don't profess to be an expert on the specifics of of especially the law and with the EPA and all those things um our view overall is that look there's definitely a a disproportionate impact on lower income communities often minority communities um we try to broaden this environmental justice conversation to not just think take that into account but also take into account the impact of policies in terms of how it might make the lives of those communities harder for example having higher energy prices or electricity prices um I think at the end of the day our view is that the solutions to these policies should not be worse than the problem itself uh and one of my concerns when you look at places like California where you have energy prices through the roof or other countries like that that also disproportionately impacts the poorest communities and so that's why we we take this all the above approach we we take an approach that it should be uh Market Le bottom up um and it should be through Innovation that actually tries to balance reducing emissions and reducing pollution with not making the lives of these communities uh economically harder either um so again I'm I'm not necessarily an expert on these issues but our view overall is that we should be trying to balance those different considerations uh while recognizing that these these problems do disproportionately impact um those kinds of communties now it's not often that I am not the youngest person on the stage so I I need to ask you this um for you you you grew up in a time I I think sort of past the ability to say climate change is not happening you see it your generation sees it uh it is clearly there it is clearly hotter now than it was 5 years ago uh I'm I'm curious if you see more interest among young conservatives on the issue and more willingness to sort of move and uh consider climate action yeah well absolutely and the polling bears that out uh 81% of Republicans under the age of 35 say they believe in climate change and want to do something about that really this is a generational thing if you're under 35 doesn't matter if you're on the left or on the right red or blue you care about this issue and I think where the conversation should be nowadays is not about the science but about the solutions and I think that's the the direction that we're trying to push this and like I said even among like older Republicans now there's 85 Republican members of Congress in something called the conservative climate caucus if you would have told me 5 years ago that that would be happening today I would have called you crazy but they're responding to the fact that their younger voters are holding them accountable to this um and I think at the end of the day they realize that the writing is on the wall if they don't talk about an issue that is so important to the Next Generation can I jump in got it so what I like what's it going to take to get the the members of Congress to actually vote these principles because what I see in things like project 2025 is uh you know pretty wholesale assaults on the on the idea of addressing climate dismantling all the agencies that are going to do anything about it repeal of the IRA uh and all the way down to to questioning climate science defunding the people investigating doing the science on it and defunding the agencies that would be doing anything about it and I mean is that is that mainstream at this point I think as the interm movement battle over project 2025 between the Heritage Foundation and the Trump campaign like explicitly disavowing it shows I don't think there's any one entity that speaks on behalf of the entire movement I think where some of the energy in Congress is when you're talking about specific policies and taking those votes is like honestly things like the pering Reform Bill like our view is that the mention baraso bill would actually disproportionately impact benefit clean energy in America benefit emissions reductions and yet you have nearly 400 climate and environmental groups that have written a letter saying that we should oppose it and so I look at that and I think well actually if Republicans are for this and you have people like baraso sender baraso leading it and climate groups are the ones opposing it there seems to be a little bit of a narrative shift that's happened um same with nuclear energy right like there's just new sad and if you saw that constellation is reopening Three Mile Island because they struck a deal with Microsoft to power an AI data center we think that's fantastic we believe that we cannot actually tackle climate change without nuclear energy yet you have environmental groups that are campaigning to shut down nuclear energy like the Indian Point Nuclear Plant in New York was shut down in I believe 2021 and Emissions went up 30% in the next month because you're replacing clean nuclear power with fossil fuels that to me doesn't make sense and yet that's something where climate groups are actually advocating for shutting down nuclear and so I think the the conversation is a lot more nuanced than Republicans bad climate activists good um obviously they're still deniers and we completely disavow them but also I think there's a lot of folks on the other side that aren't very productive in this ation either and let's find both people uh both sides where the people are that are want to have a rational conversation like I think is happening now to talk about what we can actually be doing to solve these problems Sam unless you have a robutt I'm not here to do an argument I I do this professionally but I charge a much higher rate one all right all right um but I do want to ask you Earth Justice comes out of this tradition uh that sees the courts as a uh an effective lever of uh affecting change I'm curious if recent developments on the courts if uh things like now the Chevron Doctrine being overturned if the uh the I would I would say much more politically active bent of certain courts uh does that make that strategy less viable to you yes we have the most conservative Supreme Court oh I should say the Court's a problem yes we can use the courts and we can make great progress and we are doing it every day we want 85% of our cases under Donald Trump and at the same time I clerked for justice Sandra de o Conor 2003 and that was 20 years ago in a court that by any stretch of the imagination would be called conservative Justice o'conor a republican legislator from Arizona appointed by Ronald Reagan was the Centrist vote on that would have been horrified at what she's seeing this supreme court do I am horrified as the former clerk for a very Centrist judge and uh I've spent a lot of time working in the federal Judiciary and with the federal Judiciary we are seeing the most active activist court and de explicitly deregulatory Court of our lifetimes the court isn't just deciding cases in certain ways and destabilizing Bedrock doctrines of administrative law principles like what used to be the Chevron Doctrine which PS PS the reason it's called the Chevron Doctrine is because it was a case that Chevron one that was a case in favor of an oil and gas company but not conservative enough apparently had to come out when you see the court doing that that's one thing and now when you see the court do many people here who are who are paying attention probably know about the the shadow docket where the court is now reaching out aggressively on its own to take cases at ear early stages and to issue decisions that block regulations from coming into effect at the request of red States and industries they don't ever want to be subject to this and know that even if they lose in the lower courts which remain productive venues for Progress they can get a doover in the Supreme Court this is uh a development that everybody in America should be worried about many people are worried about the court in terms of individual liberties and choice regulation and the fabric of our country they're under attack at the Supreme Court obviously the cases you take are not just those that that affect people who agree with you that you you take cases across Rural America for people who are disadvantaged uh for communities that are being polluted I'm curious if your work if interfacing with communities that may not have an inherent proclivity towards uh the liberal view of climate change if it changes we represent ranchers in Montana conservative ranchers who are concerned about the impact of coal mining on the springs and watering areas that that feed their stock we represent profoundly you know Republican historically Republican shrimp uh shrimpers in uh in Louisiana who have understood now the impact of pipelines on their historic livelihood communities up and down the Gulf Coast fishermen these aren't these aren't people who are just impacted by pollution itself these are people who are impacted by the collateral impacts of a of an economy a government that is deeply beholden to a fossil fuel industry and economy and I think it is our view that that continuing to build that economy continuing to invest in that economy is if you if you just look at what every scientist every ipcc report is is telling us the solution to climate is not burning more fossil fuels and further investing in an economy that has brought us where we are right now the free market the free unrestricted Market has brought us to The Climate crisis and and letting things go as they are right now is not going to get us where we need to go Chris I want to ask you if your work in in the course of uh the creation and uh growth of this conservative climate uh movement if you've seen that uh be something that attracts say young liberals and progressives uh to to your side yeah it's a great question because one of the things I think we're most proud of is that on our college campuses across the country where we operate and where we have chapters uh we found that actually we constrict good partnership with like the Eco club or the sustainability Club on campus and honestly part of that is because they're disillusioned with what they consider some of the extremism within the climate movement they look at like protesters that are just blocking traffic or gluing themselves to buildings or throwing tomato stupid paintings and they say I I want nothing to do with that I am not ideologically zealous about this I just care about my future I want myself to have a good future I want my kids to have a good future and I want to do something about that and I want to be productive and so a lot of our our motto is actually we want action over activism um and sometimes that looks like signing a petition showing up to Congress like we do a fly and things like that sometimes that means planting trees in the local park cleaning up trash helping with a conservation project and people need to have that sense of ownership and accountability over their personal Community I think that's actually quite a conservative principle um and really at the end of the day that's what people want and so a lot of liberals kind of look at that and say like actually that's appealing to me I don't want anything to do with extremism I just want to help contribute to a better future and we at least try to offer that to them now I'm from a farming family in eastern North Carolina and uh one of the things that I always try to find in obviously climate action is going to require uh a lot of folks get on board and so I try to find that common ground and the thing that I always say is Farmers always have to deal with climate change and so very quickly I I want to ask both of you maybe yes or no if you think there are uh sort of common principles that we might be able to act on that might create that necessary mass of of public opinion well I think uh we certainly agree that the government needs to be investing in climate Solutions and needs to be uh changing laws adjusting things in order to favor the market in a way that favors the public uh corporations and capitalism they're designed to make profits they're not designed to yield the public good it's the job of the government and the job of good tax policy investment policy regulatory policy to guide that machine that sort of you know unthinking machine to yield public good and I think what most Republicans would app would would agree uh is that that is those are the tools we've got and those are the tools that we need to use and so I think we agree that this that the solution the government has to be a huge part of the solution uh real quick question who here has heard of congressman John Curtis okay uh so congressman John Curtis from Utah is the founder and of the conservative climate cus he represents one of the counties that he represents in Utah is called Carbon County you can imagine what they do in Carbon County uh I visited when when we uh tour his his district with him we visited a coal mine there and we talked to the coal miners and we said how many climate activists or environmental activists have ever come to talk to you to visit you and they said never um do you feel vilified in this conversation they said yes um they told us their number one export is young people because they see the writing on the wall they want nothing to do with it the community feels like it's dying and so they're leaving um but at the same time they said we want to be part of the solution they're actually investing in a carbon capture facility there with some pretty amazing technology funded in part by R&D grants from the federal government and those are the kind of communities that are not a part of this conversation they're not given a seat at the table they don't feel represented and if we continue to have that approach to this we're going to pit this in a culture war that has both sides against each other where you have the the coal miners and the fossil fuel workers and the ranchers and the Farmers on one side and then you have the kind the the coastal Elites and the climate activist on the other and I don't think that's productive for anyone we want to have solutions that represent every single community in America and work for every community and they're desperate to be part of that conversation and so one of the reasons why we exist as an organization is to give them an Avenue to be a part of it without leaving their values at the door you can be conservative and care about this and actually our view is that having personal responsibility wanting to pass on what you inherit to Future Generations there's nothing more concertive than that and so we give them Avenue to be a part of the climate conversation that's all the time we have thank [Applause] [Applause] you the beauty of nature is what moves [Music] me but just as beautiful as it can be it can quickly change when a storm comes through I've lived through an F5 tornado my myself that went right downtown over my workplace my daughter's daycare center was in the path I've seen it I've lived through it I've had this job for 24 years our mobile Claim Centers are just packed full of innovation and Technology we've got drone technology we have aerial imagery and it helps us do business faster so that we can help people get back faster at first it feels like there's no way to recover from it but then you get this glimmer of hope the sun's going to shine [Music] again for a conversation produced by our underwriter all state to discuss building climate resiliency adapting to a changed landscape please welcome Dustin Panther actuary senior manager risk and return management at all states with The Atlantics Alice [Music] Macau all right that was a really incredible glimpse of all State's work in resilience and I I do want to spend some time talking about that but first I'd love to hear a little bit from Justin about all State's sort of long-standing history and expertise in building climate resilience well before we get to that I just want to thank you for putting on such a wonderful festival and for giving us the platform to share all state story with all of you here today um all State's been in business for over 90 years and so I'm hopeful maybe cautiously optimistic that most of the crowd has at least heard of the good hands um or maybe seen an advertisement with Mayhem in the past year or two but it's not just effective advertising that has really kept us in business I think what that centers on is a singular shared purpose that we have as an organization and that is to empower our customers through affordable simple and connected protection so that they can fulfill their hopes and dreams and climate resiliency centers squarely on that protection concept because what we're talking about here is not just protecting you today but against any climatological conditions that we might face in the future So to that end I I think that all state has a really rich history in customer advocacy uh a couple examples that that come to mind for me is back in the ' 50s we were among the first to push for seat belts to become standard in vehicles so both the installation and utilization of them and then in the 1970s similar idea with airbags these are proven measures that if they're taken before the accident occurs it's going to reduce damage on the back end apply that from a climate lens that's what climate resiliency is all about and so we're continuing our advocacy today and a lot of that actually happens here in DC so this is a great location for for the conference or the festival um so on Capitol Hill we are pushing for legislators to take meaningful stances one one such piece of legislation that we're particularly excited about is the resilient America Act and what that does is it repurposes funds that would normally be spent on catastrophe cleanup and we're just sticking them earlier in the process so that you can effectively protect communities and properties before the event even happens that actually reduces the cost substantially enough that you're not only better protected but the holistic cost is less so better protection for less money like it's a win-win yeah that's incredible and I think that that sort of leads into the next thing is like let's talk a little bit about building that business case and I think you're kind of leading into that and and it's sort of a two-part question but like what would you describe as the main case for resiliency so that's part one part two would being why is it imperative have that conversation now yeah so maybe I'll tackle part two with a really quick one and then we'll get into some details so the earlier we act the more impact we can have so that's in in itself the case for acting right now but let's add a little bit more flavor around that um I have to warn you and the audience I'm an actuary huge nerd love numbers uh so bear with me I'm going to share some with you uh looking back just to last year we had 28 events that caused $1 billion or more of loss within the US and if you look at that same figure going back to 1980 there have been 332 such events in the US but it's the trend that is concerning we see a clear upward trajectory in terms of the number of events that are reaching that threshold year-over-year so that's data point number one now data point number two is more All State specific we have a different catastrophe definition but based on how we Define catastrophes we are also seeing an uptick in the number per year and where we're at today is we average more than 100 in a given year so there's a one in three chance that any day you choose someone that's an All-State customer has suffered through a catastrophe wow we've paid $12 billion more than $12 billion just in the past three years to help people get their lives back on track after such events occur so I think that those two numbers really paint a clear picture that this is not just a future risk the risk is here right now it's real and people are feeling it and that goes back to these are people just like April in the video that we showed to to kick off this segment that is the reason we need to act the real impact it is having on people right here right now yeah so let's talk about those risks I think that's a good segue so how is allate specifically addressing climate risks so I think there's a two-parter to this um first we've made public statements about our emissions commitments we have a net0 2030 for scope one and scope two and we're going to be releasing our our commitment for scope three within the next year beyond that we are Inc incredibly diligent about who we partner with from a sourcing perspective and then also who we invest our money into as other companies uh so that is focused on essentially dampening the impact of future climate change yeah that's part one but again we have to deal with the here and now because people are feeling the impact right now what we do with that is strategic business Partnerships so one such example of that would be with the Insurance Institute for Building and home safety uh known as IB HS uh it's a really cool organization if you folks haven't heard of it I encourage you to check them out uh but what they do is they essentially test the efficacy of different building materials or construction processes so you can Envision an open field with a ton of different types of shingles in it and they're pelting it with hailstones or putting it in a wind tunnel and having 100 m hour winds blow against it that tells you which are the sturdiest from a construction perspective we take that information and operationalize it through discounts to our customers who are choosing more resilient materials so in that way we incentivize the right behaviors in other parts of the insurance ecosystem and those are the types of Partnerships we want to continue to build and why we're so excited to be working with the chamber yeah so let's talk about let's talk about that partnership specifically so allate has a very key position on preparedness payoff we partnered with the US Chamber of Commerce to create the 2024 climate resiliency report so I'd love you describe the partnership a little bit and explain expl why they are key Partners in creating this this so we have a robust history with the the US chamber uh our CEO Tom wison has actually at different points uh acted as the chair of the board of directors for the chamber and also the the chamber foundation so rich history there uh All State specifically has embarked upon a new two-year partnership with the chamber that we're very excited about and it is focused specifically on climate resiliency so what the first byproduct or the first output from that relationship is the resiliency report that you just talked about and we think it's very effective at highlighting the total cost that comes from disasters and what $1 of mitigation on the front end can do to help save those backend costs all right so last question so what do you think are some key things you hope to accomplish with the resiliency report looking ahead yeah so I think this is a great way to close out because if there's one one thing I can have the folks here today walk away with it's that $1 invested in climate resiliency translates to $13 of economic savings $1 for 13 like where else can you get a return on investment like that nowhere so how that breaks down is there's $6 of savings that's associated with the physical risk so there's less damage to buildings we don't have to clean up as much as we might have needed to in the past but there's also a key component that's often missed which is $7 of additional economic savings and those are like squishier things like jobs are no longer available within the metro area or like what we saw with Hurricane Katrina people move away from New Orleans and never come back that has real implications for the areas that are affected so what we want people to take away it really depends on the seat in which you sit but there's a value proposition for everybody within the report so check it out please I can't go into too much detail here uh but for Community planners it's something as simple as just thinking about how you're passing zoning laws and then what building codes do you have in place and how are they being enforced within within your community uh and then down to the individual household level it could be as something as simple as just creating an evacuation plan if and when a disaster occurs because you don't want to have to make that plan when it's actually happening uh so those are the types of takeaways that we want people to have and really it's about just spreading the message so everyone here today uh this is a great topic for parties I promise uh just whip out the paper you can talk about it uhy points exactly but like it's really just about spreading that message because we can't expect people to make the right decisions if they don't have the right information to do so prepared got to be prepared yeah thank you so much that's our time for now thank you Justin thank you thank you all [Applause] Steve and now to discuss innovating to board net zero emissions please welcome Noah McQueen co-founder and head of strategy at heirloom carbon Technologies yeping Chiang Kera Professor Department of Material Science and Engineering at MIT Stafford shean co-founder and CTO at air company with Sarah lasow senior editor at the [Music] Atlantic h H hi everybody uh welcome to this panel on climate technology I'm Sarah laskow I'm a editor here at the Atlantic and I cover climate uh among other things and I'm so happy to be here with my three guests who I'm going to let quickly introduce themselves uh they each work in the Forefront of climate technology and I'm really excited that we're going to be able to talk about the awesome work that they're doing so let's start with sta everyone just say like one minute about yourself your name yourself what your favorite project that you're working on right now is um I'm staff Shen I'm the president and chief technology officer of air company uh at air company we take carbon dioxide water and uh renewable electricity and we turn that into jet fuel um our our business really started by commercializing higher value products because it's always more expensive to make something responsibly than it is to make something in a polluting way so um uh we replace crude oil with uh essentially products that are better for the uh world than climate than fossil fuels yeah all right yet me um Ying Chang I'm a professor at MIT in a department called Material Science and Engineering and uh I do research on all kinds of things related to climate and amongst those are for example very large grid scale batteries to turn renewable electricity into a 2 47 uh kind of a resource uh we have developed technology for decarbonizing cement one of the largest industrial emitters in the world uh we've worked on a lot of different kinds of batteries so not only those grid scale batteries also now we're working on batteries to enable electric Aviation and so these research projects that we carry out in the lab you know frequently lead to spin out companies and to date uh about eight of those in the F Tech sector and thank you hi I'm Noah I am one of the co-founders and the head of strategy at heirloom um heirloom is a company that gives minerals superpowers to remove excess CO2 from our atmosphere to stab off the most catastrophic effects of climate change um most excited about a couple projects that we're developing in Louisiana which we'll dive into a little bit further cool um yeah so let's like talk about each of these things a little bit more like yet Ming you mentioned that you work um with in energy storage like how is that going to help us transform the grid like what does that kind of end up looking like big picture yeah the basic goal is reliable electricity and you know everybody knows about the intermittency of uh solar and wind sure when you look closely at the patterns of uh of think of them as renewable outages in across the United States what you find is that the period that are the most important to bridge are now multiple days it's not part of a day it's not you know the sunny part of day to the evening is now multiple days so there is a category of storage called multi-day storage now and a company called form energy that I co-founded uh with uh several colleagues uh what we're building is a battery that can do that that can cost effectively provide multiple days of storage so kind of painted picture first you know what is this battery it's actually based on iron one of the most you know plentiful the most widely harvested Metals in the world today and uh the way it works is you when you rust the iron in this battery it delivers electricity when you electrically unrust the iron you're charging the battery for the next cycle sounds like magic right it actually works right and so um the uh the place we're doing this it's an interesting location wton West Virginia we're building a gigafactory there and so wton is a town on the uh North just on the Northern side of the West Virginia uh the state of West Virginia on that Panhandle extending towards Pittsburgh I was just there last week uh it's a site where we used to make steel in the United States the W and steel Works were there today uh so actually if we just go back 15 months it was a brown field literally Brown field uh remnants of what used to be a steel mil and today if you go there it's a sparkling million square foot factory uh half a million of that square foot of that acreage is now built out for manufacturing getting ready to produce these batteries cool so that's kind of the uh that's the picture if you go to form energy.com you can track the progress of this gigafactory as as we build it out that's awesome to hear and I mean you mentioned magic I think like the work that Noah does also sometimes might seem like magic you know like you're working on direct air carbon capture which like is something that we're probably going to need even if we do like an entire transition to clean energy there's just that's not necessarily going to get us the last mile that we need to carbon reduction so can you you mentioned a little bit about how it works but like how do you actually do this and then what do you do with the carbon once you've got it yeah absolutely and I think it's really important to talk about the context too because as you mentioned that last mile those are the hardest to Abate sectors things like agriculture that we need to feed our growing populations and that's where the need for solutions to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere comes from additionally we've already emitted hundreds of billions of tons of CO2 into our atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution so the way that heirloom actually approaches this is by emulating and accelerating natural processes um a lot of people don't know but the geosphere or literally rocks is one of the largest natural car sinks in the world so what we do is we give those rocks superpowers to accelerate how much CO2 that they can take up out of of our atmosphere so we use Limestone or calcium carbonate um which is the second most mined material in the world it's also Dirt Cheap um so we give it this Limestone um we break it into its two parts it's CO2 and it's calcium oxide and it's roughly half of each so when we break it apart we have a pure stream of CO2 that we can store uh reliably and safely underground um the other component calcium oxide we hydrate to calcium hydroxide and that material becomes like a sponge for CO2 so we leverage Industrial Automation to spread this material thinly on trays and stack them in the vertical Direction so that you expose as much of it to the air as possible and as the air flows through these trays it's scrubbed of CO2 so when your sponge is saturated with CO2 you can bring it out and use that material to capture more CO2 from the atmosphere cool and then where do does the rung out CO2 go ex yeah the rung out CO2 we partner with uh storage Partners so those are geologic Wells underground um and that is one of the largest and most scalable ways to store CO2 away from the atmosphere it's permanent on the order of well tens of thousands of years and you can also um see that we've been doing this over decades so we started injecting CO2 underground decades ago starting 1960s and since we have injected millions of tons of CO2 into the subsurface yeah I feel like I'm sensing this theme where it's like we're looking for materials that are cheap and common and affordable I guess cheap and affordable are the same way um yeah yeah M can you also tell us just a little bit about like another common um material that you work with cement and um how you guys are making low carbon cement hey this was not planned this way but uh what Noah just said is the perfect heal okay so cement uh uses Limestone and what Noah just described as a way of using Limestone cyclically to grab that CO2 out of the air and put it on the ground well the way we make cement we don't do it cyclically what we do today is to burn that Limestone into line and emit all that CO2 uh a huge amount of CO2 huge amount it turns out to be 8% of all emissions today right this's one industry 8% uh it's about 4 gigatons a year so half of that CO2 comes from the Limestone we burn the other comes from the fossil fuel fuels that we use to heat cement to those temperatures this is what is known as Portland cement today uh Portland cement was invented by a British brick layer in 1824 this year is the 200th anniversary of Porton cement uh what we're doing is giving it a nice retirement part all right and so you know here's this incredibly valuable technology enabled the Industrial Revolution enabled society as we know it and today is one of the largest emitters so what we have to do is to get away from the use of limestone number one and secondly uh we have to use lower temperatures and so we actually use electricity to do that this is a company called Sublime systems and we use electricity in order to decarbon to take the calcium the that Noah was referring to out of rocks that contain that calcium but not in a carbonated form right so we don't emit that CO2 then we reacted with silica which is a form of sand think of that way uh at uh much lower temp temperatur near room temperature and we're able to produce decarbonized cement that way uh there was an announcement yesterday it was a big day for us uh we announced both an investment and a partnership with a company called holsen which is one of the largest cement producers in the world and uh this kind of partnership is how we uh want to proceed towards having a having an impact and doing it quickly and at a at you know a massive scale yeah and I think similarly staff you are working with an industry that is difficult to decarbonize to figure out how to cut back um you're making this carbon neutral jet fuel can you just explain to us how it's made yeah so we take carbon dioxide that is emitted by Point sources typically we could also use carbon dioxide captured from the air and we combine that carbon dioxide with hydrogen hydrogen can be produced from uh water using water electrolysis um or you could get it from a variety of other sources um and out of that combination of carbon dioxide and hydrogen we get essentially Chet fuel um where we get what replaces kind of a crude middle distillate uh so you can make jet fuel you can make diesel fuel a variety of different fuels from carbon dioxide using the technology that we have and one of the one of the key pieces of what we do at air company uh a lot of Technologies out there are are going to be needed to fight climate change we need a whole portfolio of Technologies the biggest challenge is economics if it were cheaper to use sustainable products we wouldn't use fossil fuels we would use sustainable products we use fossil fuels because they're cheap um so at air company we have there other advantages to using this approach to make fuel for example um you don't need to reply on to rely on fuel Logistics uh you can produce uh you can produce this from literally air water and uh a power source yeah could be heat could be electricity um so there are a lot of external benefits that come with using the fuel that we produce that enable us to walk down the cost curve and scale our technology in a way that could eventually overtake the cheaper today option of crude oil yeah that's so interesting you what kind of Point sources do you use right now like for the basic building blocks of this that's that's a great question so we use biogenic carbon dioxide uh biogenic carbon dioxide comes from things like uh ethanol production from corn or biomass um comes from wastewater treatment comes from anerobic digestion Pulp and Paper those are products that we currently make today that emit massive of carbon dioxide uh those are the low hanging fruit uh eventually we will need to develop direct a capture technology and other technologies that can capture CO2 in a more economic way I mean Noah technology is a great example of that and there are ways to pull carbon dioxide out of lim

2024-09-28 08:57

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