Air Date 7/12/2024

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JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast. From solar scams to controversial congestion pricing and the smart grid that's needed to connect it all, we look at the messy and difficult path to a low carbon future. Sources providing our top takes in under an hour today include Today, Explained, The Energy Gang, DW Planet A, VOX, 99% Invisible, Democracy Now!, and The Brian Lehrer Show. Then, in the additional deeper dive half of the show, there'll be more on energy policies, the intentional solar scam, and public transportation. 

Now, just a quick note, like so many others I've been glued to the ebbs and flows of the fate of the Joe Biden candidacy. And even though that's not what we're here to cover in depth today, I did have some additional thoughts. Maybe even just for the sake of commiseration, I'll say that I have gone from actually quite hopeful, from the day right after the debate, now to like legitimate feelings of depression. [00:01:00] Like millions of others, I thought the debate was so bad that it was incredibly likely that Biden would bow out of the race, which made me hopeful at a time when most were still wallowing in despair. But the last week of news about Biden's reaction to the outcry been so blind to reality and the arguments being used by the Biden camp being so flimsy and pathetic, I now fear that he really will allow his ego to bring down his party and the country along with his doomed candidacy. So that's where I am right now, but I do have some more thoughts to share, including a small amount of hope that I'm still hanging on to. But I'll save all that for the editor's note in the middle of the show.

When solar power leaves you feeling burned - Today, Explained - Air Date 1-2-24

ALANA SEMUALS: My name is Alana Samuels and I'm a senior economics correspondent at Time. My husband and I bought a house in Beacon, New York, and moved in in July. We were told that there was a lease solar system on the roof, which we were excited about. And we had called the company beforehand, [00:02:00] and they told us, here's how you find out how much the panels were producing. We logged on to the site, it said they were producing a decent amount. And then we got a high energy bill. And it didn't seem quite right to me since we had solar panels on the roof. So I called the solar panel company, which did not respond. I called them again and the person on the other line told me that they had actually been disconnected some time ago and were not even hooked up.

So it was a solar lease, which is something that was really popular in the last 10 years. 

BARRACK OBAMA: Over the past few years, the cost of solar panels have fallen by 60%. Solar installations have increased by 500%. Every four minutes, another American home or business goes solar. 

ALANA SEMUALS: It was basically the people had agreed to lease these solar panels for 20 years. And they had only done this eight years ago or so. So, when they sold us the house, [00:03:00] they said, Hey, can you take over this lease? We looked at it and said, Eh, this doesn't look like the greatest deal. How about we split it? So, we each paid about $6,000 to split the remaining cost of the lease. And the reason we did that is so that the company that owned the panels could keep maintaining them and make sure everything was fine. We just didn't really want to have to deal with that. 

The company that sold it to the previous homeowner went out of business. And this is pretty common, that the company that sold the solar panels initially goes out of business. 

NEWS CLIP: A solar company has gone bankrupt, leaving some customers here in West Michigan with systems that don't work.

The solar panels are on the roof, but they aren't producing any energy at this home in Compton.

Thomas Yagi of Kailua said he noticed one of his panels was not working, but the company he used is no longer in business.

This system cost about $82,000, and right now it's not producing any usable energy.

ALANA SEMUALS: Our lease had been taken over by this company called Spruce Power, and it's [00:04:00] actually the largest privately-held owner and operator of residential solar in America, basically buying up all these leases across the country and collecting money from people and supposedly maintaining the panels.

NOEL KING - HOST, TODAY,EXPLAINED: But yours were not maintained. 

ALANA SEMUALS: They were not maintained. It's still a little unclear what happened. They say that the previous owners had stopped paying the bills, and so they disconnected them. But they also sent a third party repair technician to come, and he said he thought it was that squirrels had chewed on our wires.

So something happened that made the panels not work anymore. I'm still a little unclear on what it was. 

NOEL KING - HOST, TODAY,EXPLAINED: You write that one of the problems here was that the company that originally leased the panels to the other homeowner had gone out of business. How big of an issue is that? 

ALANA SEMUALS: A lot of installers have either gone out of business or just dabbled in installing for a little bit and then decided to do [00:05:00] something else.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: I didn't know people would do you like this. 

ALANA SEMUALS: There was one study from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory that estimated that about 8,700 different companies installed at least one residential solar system between 2000 and 2016, and only about 2,900 were still active by 2016, and that number is probably even a little bit smaller now.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: I don't expect it's fair for me to pay a company that didn't finish the job. 

ALANA SEMUALS: So you had thousands, literally thousands of companies that did this, maybe on one roof, maybe on a hundred roofs, and then stopped doing it, or went out of business. 

There's the cost of the financial pieces of it, but then just the stress of all the rest of it, too.

It's been a lot. 

NOEL KING - HOST, TODAY,EXPLAINED: Eventually, I would imagine Spruce Power fixed your solar panels? You had, in fact, paid for them, right? So you've given them the money. What are they giving you? 

ALANA SEMUALS: Right. We've given them the money for the next 12 years, [00:06:00] supposedly. They basically ignored me at first until I said I was a reporter.

NOEL KING - HOST, TODAY,EXPLAINED: Ha! Nice trick. 

ALANA SEMUALS: Yeah. I wish everyone could use that trick. 

NOEL KING - HOST, TODAY,EXPLAINED: After letting Spruce know he was talking with the I Team, Phelps says a crew came out and fixed his blacked out panel. 

ALANA SEMUALS: Then they sent the repair company. The repair guy came, climbed up on the roof, said, I can't fix everything, I'm gonna have to come back.

Then another guy, repair guy, came back at 6 in the morning and still couldn't fix it. So, most of them are working now, and Spruce gave me some money back for the months that they didn't work. To my knowledge, they have not given any money back to the previous homeowner. 

NOEL KING - HOST, TODAY,EXPLAINED: So what you and your husband experienced in Beacon was terrible. Let's pull back from the terrible to talk about how common this is in the United States broadly. How many people in the US have these rooftop solar panels on their homes? 

ALANA SEMUALS: So around 4 million US homes have rooftop solar, that's up from about 300,000 a decade ago.

[00:07:00] So I started looking up some of these solar companies, including Spruce, and was really surprised to find that a lot of them have Fs from the Better Business Bureau. 

NEWS CLIP: Harness Power has a slew of negative reviews on Yelp, after customers claimed they were left with inoperable solar systems. This review says they took my down payment seven days before they closed their doors.

ALANA SEMUALS: And if you go online, you find these threads on Reddit and these groups on Facebook of people who are just really upset about their experience having solar panels installed on their roof. 

NOEL KING - HOST, TODAY,EXPLAINED: And one common thread, the inability to get in touch with Spruce. The complaints say things like "awful to work with," "cannot get a live body on the phone."

And since the Spruce company took over, it has been a nightmare. 

ALANA SEMUALS: Lots of different companies, lots of people from all over the country, and I was just really shocked at how many people were having this problem, and some of the stories were just even worse than mine. The [00:08:00] FTC has this database where you can complain about what you think is fraud or, you know, shady business, and there were more than 5000 complaints containing the words "solar panels" submitted on report fraud at FTC.gov in just the first nine or so months of 2023. And that's up 31 percent from 2022, and 746 percent since 2018. And that's just people who complained to the government. There are people that maybe did not go through that step, but are still having problems.

How can we develop new energy technologies and get them deployed at scale - The Energy Gang - Air Date 3-5-24

ED CROOKS - HOST, THE ENERGY GANG: And in this first section of the show, what I want to do is talk a bit about policy and to think about different types of approach to energy policy and climate policy and to think about the Inflation Reduction Act and so on. But just before we get into any of those practical details, if you were to summarise your views on what the evidence shows about how best to support innovation, how you can drive innovation and get [00:09:00] deployment of new technologies, particularly, I guess, in an area like energy, where it is so important to accelerate the deployment of a whole raft of new technologies, what does the evidence tell you? 

JESSIKA TRANCIK: I think this is really the key question, right? We have limited time. There's always constraints on our financial resources for addressing the challenge of climate change. And so it's really important to put our time and our efforts and our financial resources into promising solutions. But then you're always dealing with uncertainty, you know, which technologies are going to take off, which ones are going to be beneficial. There's always downsides to any technology. Can we anticipate those? Can we limit those? So, those are all the kinds of questions that we try to work on in this research area and that I'm particularly interested in.

I mean, I guess one relevant insight, if we think about the role of policy, let's say, in encouraging innovation and clean energy technologies, you know, what is [00:10:00] that role and what's worked in the past? How did we get to where we are today with cheaper, high performing solar energy, wind energy, batteries? You know, how did energy efficiency improve and so forth? So, what have we learned about what worked there? We know that policies around the world were rather piecemeal. There wasn't as much global coordination as we might've liked, but nonetheless, there's been substantial technology innovation. So, we looked at this and kind of developed a methodology—I won't go into too many details, but—for looking at, you know, what really worked and what can we learn for the future? And so we started with looking at the level of the devices, the physics, how did they improve? And then from there we can actually learn about what we call higher level mechanisms that drove these improvements. 

Now, we know that a lot of this started with policy because there was no incentive for the private sector to invest on its own, aside from some companies [00:11:00] that felt this was important decades ago to start developing these clean energy solutions. But on the whole, there wasn't enough incentive for this market to really get going. So, policy was critical there, and one of the important things we have learned from this research is that both government funding for research and development and government policies that stimulated market growth were very important, because they drove different kinds of innovation.

So, they were complementary to one another, and this goes back to a long standing debate about whether government should be stimulating markets or should it focus entirely on research and development funding, but when you start with that engineering level, you see that both kinds of policies really play an important role, in that market expansion policies kick-started a lot of private sector competition and innovation. So, it wasn't really policy or the private sector, there was actually this really [00:12:00] interesting effect of policies jumpstarting a lot of innovation that led to improvement. 

MELISSA LOTT: Can I say one thing that I've learned about innovation here in the last couple of decades of doing this? Putting it out there, so you all disagree with me if you see it differently. The tech is cool. You have to get the ecosystem right. The ecosystem, I'm talking about policy, regulations, education, like, there's so many components. I'm an engineer, first love right there. I do policy as well and I have degrees in that. But, the tech is cool. You got to get that ecosystem. Agree, disagree, shades of color on that statement. What do you guys think? 

JESSIKA TRANCIK: I definitely agree, Melissa. I think we can spend all of our time working in the lab, developing cool technologies, but what do people want? What do consumers value? What is going to take off and be adopted and so forth. I think that's really important and that's really where that bridge to the private sector is key.

Government-funded research can also support those kinds of analyses to really anticipate what technologies are going to be desirable to people, but bringing in the private sector [00:13:00] is critical. And, you know, what we've seen from what's worked is really that policies that stimulated that interest in the private sector were very important.

ED CROOKS - HOST, THE ENERGY GANG: And is it the case also that different types of policy are appropriate for different stages in the life cycle of a technology? So, if I think about photovoltaic solar, for example, so that starts in the 50s, I guess, when they're putting solar panels on satellites, and then it's, whatever it is, $10,000 per watt. And it comes down and down and down, and it gets to, I don't know, $100 a watt or $10 a watt, whatever it was, I mean obviously, where are we now, then 20 cents a watt or something like that if you get a low cost Chinese panel. But the subsidies and support for innovation and R&D and so on are a good idea for getting from $10,000 a watt down to $1,000 a watt. If you want to go from $1,000 to 20 cents, that's when—and it certainly was the case with solar—things that made a huge difference were Europe putting in place all of these feed-in tariffs, [00:14:00] creating this very generous subsidy regime for solar power. And then also having basically open markets and the Chinese industry responding massively, having a huge increase in capacity and just working really aggressively to drive costs down to take advantage of that market, which was opening up first in Europe in the 2010s and then increasingly around the world as well. Have I just described the story of kind of solar development and solar innovation accurately, or was there more to it than that? 

JESSIKA TRANCIK: Yeah, I mean, I think it's a good overview. We see that market growth was pretty steady from the early days, you know, the 70s, 80s. So, you actually saw at the global level, roughly exponential growth going way back. So, that early market growth was really important, too. And you had Japan with important policies that started these markets. And then you had Germany taking over, as you said, with the feed-in tariffs. China. The US also played a really important role in funding research and development throughout this period.

So, [00:15:00] I agree with you that these different policies are important at different points along the development trajectory of these technologies. We do, though, see that it's beneficial to have continued investment in research and development along the way, some from government. I mean, that depends on the different technologies and the mechanisms that are important, which, by the way, we can analyze and try to anticipate, but you do see generally that R&D both from government funding and private sector investment is important along the way. But economies of scale really started to dominate the cost decline in solar in the last couple of decades. Overall, though, research and development was really important and, you know, that continued investment in research and development was important. 

So, I think the traditional picture of innovation and what's driving it has all of the important components. The interesting thing we see when we look at the details of these [00:16:00] technologies is that you see some more research and development-driven changes really being important all the way along the trajectory.

This is what's REALLY holding back wind and solar - DW Planet A - Air Date 6-2-23

MALTE ROHWER-KAHLMANN - REPORTER, PLANET A: The 15th of January, 2023, was a strange day for Germany. It was windy in the north--so windy that the thousands of wind turbines studded across land and sea were spinning at full force. At times, there was almost enough wind energy to power the entire country. Well, theoretically, because practically it couldn't get to where it was needed.

Eventually, the wind turbines had to be slowed down, meaning cheap and clean electricity got wasted. 

In the south, meanwhile, people were urged to save energy. Neighboring countries were asked for backup capacity, and dirty coal power plants fired up. 

So while one half of the country was drowning in electricity, the other was taking precautions not to run out of it.

What happened here highlights probably the most overlooked challenge [00:17:00] of shifting to renewable energy--not just in Germany, but everywhere. Building wind parks and solar farms is one thing. Another is to get electricity to where it's needed, when it's needed. So, what exactly needs to happen? And why?

When's the last time you plugged in your phone and it didn't charge? Well, depending on where you live, this might have never happened. 

KELLY SANDERS: And we kind of take it for granted that most of the time, electricity is coming out and your device works. 

MALTE ROHWER-KAHLMANN - REPORTER, PLANET A: This is Kelly Sanders. She's an engineer who researches how energy systems evolve.

KELLY SANDERS: But what's going on behind the scenes is actually quite complex. 

MALTE ROHWER-KAHLMANN - REPORTER, PLANET A: The electricity you use is only generated as you use it. And to get to you, it travels through an intricate network of wires, cables, and transformers called the grid. 

The grid is made up of the generators that create the electricity, like gas or nuclear power plants or wind turbines. The transmission lines that carry it [00:18:00] to so-called substations, which transform it to a lower voltage. And the distribution lines that finally deliver to homes and businesses.

All this needs to be in perfect balance at all times. The supply or generation must exactly match the demand or load. If there's too much power, there can be a surge that damages infrastructure. If there's too little, there can be a blackout. To make sure this doesn't happen, there's a grid operator. 

KELLY SANDERS: You can think about that as the conductor of all the power plants and all of the loads, making everything come together very seamlessly. 

MALTE ROHWER-KAHLMANN - REPORTER, PLANET A: And this has become a lot harder recently, because to stay in the metaphor, some new musicians have joined the orchestra.

KELLY SANDERS: So, solar panels and wind turbines, they kind of have a mind of their own. So we can't quite control them as well as we can these dispatchable generators that we've had in the past. 

MALTE ROHWER-KAHLMANN - REPORTER, PLANET A: Dispatchable means electricity sources we have available pretty much on demand, [00:19:00] like coal or gas power plants. 

KELLY SANDERS: You turn them up and turn them down according to how you want them to operate. 

MALTE ROHWER-KAHLMANN - REPORTER, PLANET A: Solar and wind are the opposite of this, non-dispatchable. We need the sun to shine and the wind to blow for them to work. And this flakiness has changed the way our grids are managed. 

TIM MEYERJURGENS: I wouldn't say it's so much a problem, but it's a different challenge that we have compared to the years, 20, 30 years back.

MALTE ROHWER-KAHLMANN - REPORTER, PLANET A: This is Tim Meyer Jürgens, the COO of one of Germany's four grid operators. In Germany, more than 40 percent of electricity comes from renewable sources. It's supposed to reach 80 percent by 2030. So, what challenges does a high share of wind and solar throw up? Well, for one, they make you depend on the weather.

TIM MEYERJURGENS: It's more difficult to exactly forecast what we can expect the next day. 

MALTE ROHWER-KAHLMANN - REPORTER, PLANET A: We have fortunately gotten a lot better at this, but even the best forecast can't change the weather. [00:20:00] The German word Dunkelflaute, dark doldrums, describes times when there's little sun and little wind--a grid operator's nightmare.

And even on days with plenty of both, they might not be there exactly when they're needed. Look at this graph charting solar energy supply throughout a typical summer's day in California. During the day, when the sun is up, it covers a good share of total demand; that's the blue line. But towards the evening, as the sun starts setting, it quickly plummets, widening the gap between supply and demand.

KELLY SANDERS: Somebody has to be waiting in the wings from a generation resource to turn on really, really quickly. And so that, unfortunately, here in California, becomes natural gas. So you have these little combustion turbines that are really, really dirty. 

MALTE ROHWER-KAHLMANN - REPORTER, PLANET A: And then, remember that story from Germany, when the North had to throw away electricity while the South was running short?

TIM MEYERJURGENS: The renewable energies, if you like, look at Germany, for example. are not always there where [00:21:00] you have to load. 

MALTE ROHWER-KAHLMANN - REPORTER, PLANET A: Germany produces most of its wind energy in the north, most of its solar energy in the south. There's currently no way to get large amounts of wind energy down south, where there's a lot of demand from industry, or much solar energy up north for that matter.

It's a similar story in the US. Most wind energy is generated in the middle of the country, but more than two-thirds of the population live here, within 100 miles of the border. So that's where the demand is. Consequently, wind and solar are causing grid operators a whole lot of headaches. But what if they aren't the problem, but the grids?

PATRICIA HIDALGO-GONZALEZ: For the last 100 years, we have been expanding and designing our grid as a centralized exercise. 

MALTE ROHWER-KAHLMANN - REPORTER, PLANET A: This is Patricia Hidalgo Gonzalez. She researches how to best build more renewables into our energy system. Historically, we've put power stations close to our cities and brought fuels like coal or gas, or later, uranium, to them. The electricity usually didn't have to [00:22:00] travel far. 

Solar and wind, on the other hand, have to be put where they're fuel, so sunshine and wind is most abundant. And utility companies aren't the only ones generating power. 

PATRICIA HIDALGO-GONZALEZ: Of course, we have the infrastructure of this centralized grid and we'll continue having it because it's cost effective to have this type of system.

But now we also see that there's a lot of distributed energy resources. 

MALTE ROHWER-KAHLMANN - REPORTER, PLANET A: People are putting solar panels on their roofs, for example. Traditional consumers are turning into generators of electricity. Things have changed since the old days, but our grids haven't. They don't fit the energy system we're trying to build.

And that leaves us with basically two options. One, we forget about all those renewables mumbo-jumbo, and just stick with good old fashioned coal and gas--which would be an interesting choice, given we're in the middle of a climate crisis. Or, option number two, we make our grids more flexible.

How to fix clean energy’s storage problem - VOX - Air Date 4-27-23

REPORTER, VOX: This is the typical demand for electricity on a spring day in California. It starts growing around [00:23:00] 6am, then rises again around 6pm. Now, this line shows when wind power feeds the California power grid. Wind is variable, but often picks up at night. Solar panels, on the other hand, kick into gear around 7am, generating a lot of electricity until the sun sets around 7pm. On most days, neither comes close to meeting the peak demands of the day. So, the power company relies on fossil fuels, like natural gas, to make up for the gap, which widens significantly when people use electricity the most. Since the power company can't store the solar and wind energy it has to use fossil fuels at these times, which can be stored in barrels and tanks.

NEEL DHANESHA: It's kind of the big gap in our renewable energy system right now. If we don't figure out a way to store renewable energy, there's a chance that we're going to be still dependent on fossil fuels. 

REPORTER, VOX: So how do we store some of this solar and wind energy for later? Right now you might be thinking, "Just use a battery."

And you're not wrong. Batteries have improved immensely over the past few years, [00:24:00] particularly lithium ion batteries, which use a chemical reaction to store energy. Individual homes that have solar panels often use lithium ion batteries to store energy. 

NEEL DHANESHA: But there's a few reasons lithium ion isn't perfect for the grid.

REPORTER, VOX: This is Neel Dhanesha, a founding writer at Heatmap, a climate news site, and he wrote about this for Vox in 2022. 

NEEL DHANESHA: One is just the scale that's needed. We would need a lot at a level that we just don't really have right now. 

REPORTER, VOX: That's a challenge because lithium is only found in a few places on earth. 

NEEL DHANESHA: But more importantly, like we need lithium ion batteries for other things. Lithium ion battery is really good for stuff that moves because it's relatively light. 

REPORTER, VOX: Meaning it's better suited for things like electric cars and portable electronics, not power grids that stay still. Luckily, there's another energy storage solution that's actually been around for a long time.

CLIP: This is the site for the first pumped storage hydroelectric station in Southern Ireland. 

REPORTER, VOX: This is a type of energy storage called "pumped storage hydro." They were first built in Europe. The US built one in [00:25:00] 1929. And many more were built in the 1970s and 80s as a way to store nuclear power. Today, these facilities are all over the world.

There are 39 of them in the US and they store energy in a really fascinating yet simple way. When energy demand is low renewable or fossil fuel energy is used to pump water from a reservoir or river up a mountain into a higher reservoir, basically converting this energy into what's called potential energy.

NEEL DHANESHA: So potential energy, you might remember from high school physics. When a thing is up at a height, it has stored potential energy. When it's let go, it turns into kinetic energy. 

REPORTER, VOX: When that energy is needed, the water is released down the mountain, where it's converted into kinetic energy that spins a turbine and generates electricity for the grid.

It's a way of combining water, a mountain, and gravity into a battery, and it can be about 90 percent efficient, meaning only 10 percent of this energy is lost in the process. Pump storage hydro works really well, but it's difficult to build more. 

NEEL DHANESHA: Uh, well, for starters, you need a mountain, uh, and you need to hollow [00:26:00] out a mountain to put pumps inside it, and it takes a lot of money, and we don't have mountains everywhere.

REPORTER, VOX: So the ideal way to store renewable energy would be something that's cheaper and smaller than a pump storage hydro plant, but works in roughly the same way. One company, Energy Vault, is also using gravity to store renewable energy, but without the water or mountain. Instead, renewable energy is used to lift heavy blocks of concrete up into the air where it becomes potential energy. Then, when it's needed, the blocks are released, spitting a turbine which converts the potential energy back into electricity. Energy Vault calls this "gravity energy storage." And while it's still being tested, the company claims it could be more than 80 percent efficient.

A company called Quidnet is working on a different version of the same principle. Their geomechanical pump storage unit uses renewable energy to pump water underground into a pressurized hole, where it can be stored as potential energy, then released back up to the surface to spin a turbine [00:27:00] and generate electricity.

Both techniques are betting on potential energy as a solution for storing renewable energy for the grid. 

NEEL DHANESHA: I think this partly because potential energy has shown itself to be pretty efficient. Also, realistically, fewer moving parts. If all you're doing basically is using gravity to work with you, you have a pretty massive force of nature on your side right there.

REPORTER, VOX: But potential energy isn't the only possible solution. Other companies are using renewable energy to superheat salt, insulating it, then releasing that heat to create steam or hot air to drive a turbine, basically storing renewables by converting them to thermal energy. Then there's a company that's betting on…rusted iron?

NEEL DHANESHA: They're called "iron air batteries" and what they do is they utilize the chemical reaction that creates rust to store and discharge energy. This thing that we all think of as an inconvenience could be really useful. It's just beautiful to me. 

REPORTER, VOX: Right now, these ideas are all in various stages of development, but they are attracting investors, and the hope [00:28:00] is that several will work, because one might not fit every power grid. 

NEEL DHANESHA: The grid, like renewable energy overall, is going to be a sort of patchwork solution. The more we try these solutions, the closer we get to figuring out exactly what the right mix is for what we need for the grid of the future. 

How can we develop new energy technologies and get them deployed at scale Part 2 - The Energy Gang - Air Date 3-5-24

ED CROOKS - HOST, THE ENERGY GANG: And you were just looking at some data. You were talking about this before we came on. There's some new data out on what the US is doing in terms of progress on emissions reduction. 

MELISSA LOTT: Yes. This is the fact sheet I was mentioning or the fact book by the Business Council for Sustainable Energy. So, they talked about 2023 emissions in the United States and how emissions in the US from the energy sector fell even as the economy grew. I think overall that the number was that the US economy grew by 2.4% percent and emissions dropped by 1.8%, falling in every sector but, drum roll please: transportation. It was interesting. So, they broke it down, you know, record sales, record renewables, all this stuff. When it came to renewables, they talk about setting new highs and also how coal's contribution to [00:29:00] power generation is down to just below 16 percent in 2023. That, for someone who started looking at these numbers in the US 20 plus years ago, that's just, wow. To read that number out loud is pretty incredible. 

ED CROOKS - HOST, THE ENERGY GANG: Absolutely. It's fascinating, isn't it? Wasn't it, I mean, as recently as 2010, it was about 50%, right? 

MELISSA LOTT: Yeah. So, Ed, if you look at the numbers and where it's gone, one thing I will highlight is they said point blank in this fact book that coal's contribution to power went down to just below 16%, it was 15.8 they said, on their numbers. And it was largely replaced with natural gas. Another statement that 15, 20 years ago, I would've been like, Hmm? Gas prices aren't that low. But of course we all know what happened there. But two things I'll flag. One: transportation was the one part of this energy sector analysis where emissions didn't go down, but the numbers are saying that electric vehicle sales surged nearly 50% to one point almost five million vehicles sold in 2023. And there's those new federal EV incentives, there's price cuts, there's more models released. I would say as an EV owner, there's also more infrastructure to connect to, which is [00:30:00] huge in my decision to actually buy that vehicle and use it. 

But putting it in broader context, if we look at the pace of emissions reductions, we're still not on track for climate goals. I'm hopefully celebrating, you know, what has been done. Like that's impressive. That's great. If you asked me 15 years ago, if we'd be here, again, that 15 percent number? No. Natural gas replacing coal, all these things, like, I would have bet against me saying these phrases. But, under the Paris Agreement, the US committed to reducing 50-52% compared to 2005 level baseline. And when we're looking at it, we're sitting at something like 16-18% below 2005 levels. 

So, those are big differences. But, for me, going back to the headline number, economy grew as emissions fell. That's not insignificant. And all the stuff underneath it is really encouraging. And it goes back to just a ton of innovation that happened over decades of investment that led us up to this place where we are now, whether it's fracking, solar, battery chemistry, all the above. It's a lot of work behind all that. 

JESSIKA TRANCIK: Yeah, definitely. And I think about all the people we don't hear about that did that work, you know, the [00:31:00] champions of policies at the subnational level, you know, city, state level, federal level as well, people working on these technologies. That's what we see actually when we model technology evolution is you really see the signature of the work that many people did in getting policies enacted and working on the manufacturing floor, working in research labs. It wasn't a single innovator that brought us to where we are now. So, I totally agree with you, Melissa, that was a lot of work by many different people that went into that. 

ED CROOKS - HOST, THE ENERGY GANG: So let's talk about EVs a bit, because I do think that issue of transport, as you say, Melissa, is very interesting in that, as of last year, emissions were not falling, but there's some pretty positive trends in terms of EV sales.

I've been really struck by what seems to be this huge disconnect between the narrative and the data on EVs. Prevailing narrative has been, you know, industry is a disaster, everything's going terribly wrong, and so on. I mean, certainly it is true that growth in sales last year perhaps [00:32:00] was not as great as some people hoped it would be.

But still, it's pretty remarkable. As I look at the data, these are the Argonne National Laboratory's figures, and that has sales of battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, so what you might call plug-in vehicles, in total, up to about 1.3 million in the US last year, that's up 54%, and that compares to 47% growth in 2022. So, it's actually an acceleration, not a slowing down of growth. And it is true that we've seen some of the manufacturers scaling back their targets, people thinking perhaps they were over optimistic a couple of years ago. I see Mercedes just recently said that they've now expected only about 50% of its sales to be EVs by 2030. And three years ago, they were saying they hoped to maybe possibly be at 100% EVs by 2030. So, perhaps the pace of the transition is slowing, but still it does feel like there is a big change happening and it is still making progress in quite a remarkable way. 

Melissa, what do you think? [00:33:00] What's your sense of it in terms of where that transition to EVs is heading?

MELISSA LOTT: I mean, there's a lot of momentum behind EVs. It's not just because of climate. It's not just because they're fun to drive. It's not just because the cost makes sense. It's not just because the maintenance is really nice. It's not just because of any one thing. There's just a lot of stuff that's putting wind in the sails of EVs.

We can hyper focus on individual companies at individual moments in time, but when I just zoom out a lot, there's a lot of EVs on the road now in the United States and around the world, and they make a lot of sense on many, many different levels. They are certainly key—a key technology—to bringing emissions down over time. But where I think of it is—and I'll just focus on the US because those are the numbers I was talking about earlier—we have a lot of electric vehicles going into the system, and we're now pressure testing our systems, and we're now putting a lot of additional impetus between figuring out how are we upgrading our grids. And I'm not just talking about the big wires. I'm actually not talking about big wires right in this moment. I'm talking about the small wires that connect to the individual charging stations that connect to our homes. We might have a home charger. I mean, this week is full of, uh, whether you're on Bluesky, Twitter, other [00:34:00] things, lots of discussion about transformers and, you know, distributed energy systems and all of that for a lot of obvious reasons. And within that, it's are we actually investing enough in our power system, the backbone of our future energy systems, to actually ensure that it's affordable and reliable? 

So, I think we're still not far enough along in those conversations, the practical conversations of what we need to do and how we need to do it. But I'm not in the camp of... the evidence is not pointing me towards a place where I think that these systems are going to prevent EVs from continuing to deploy. It may slow a few things down, but it won't prevent them from deploying. 

The Lost Subways of North America - 99% Invisible - Air Date 5-21-24

ROMAN MARS - HOST, 99% INVISIBLE: One of the most famous transit systems in the US is, of course, the New York City Subway.

New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority, or MTA, has the largest and busiest subway system on the continent. New Yorkers love it. They hate it. They love to hate it. They love to love it. And whether you love it or hate it, you ride the subway. 

JAKE BERMAN: The subway is indispensable. It's something that needs to be there, and New York cannot function [00:35:00] without a working subway.

ROMAN MARS - HOST, 99% INVISIBLE: By and large, for over a century, New York's transit system has stood as a shining example of what works. It's the one place where you're usually better off taking the train as opposed to driving to get from point A to point B. A big reason for this success is that most of New York's subway system was built pretty quickly and efficiently. The first New York subway lines started getting built in the year 1900. And by the time it opened in 1904 the train ran from city hall—downtown—all the way to Harlem. By 1940, the New York subway system had over 400 stations. 

By the mid 20th century, after going through a series of mergers, financial challenges, and a decline in ridership, all that construction basically ground to a halt. Since 1950, New York has added only 30 more stations, and as of today, the city has been trying to finish just one additional subway line—the [00:36:00] 2nd Avenue Subway—for almost 100 years. 

JAKE BERMAN: They were promising to build the 2nd Avenue Subway in the 1930s. They would tear down this elevated line—which was ugly, old, noisy, kind of an eyesore—and replace it with a clean, fast, underground subway line.

That didn't happen. And for the bulk of the 20th century—World War II, the Civil Rights Movement, Apollo 11, the Berlin Wall, 9/11—they still hadn't finished the 2nd Avenue Subway! 

ROMAN MARS - HOST, 99% INVISIBLE: What's the current status of the 2nd Avenue Subway? 

JAKE BERMAN: The 2nd Avenue Subway has a mile and three quarters right now, and they promised 10.

Neighborhoods like Spanish Harlem, the East Village, the Lower East Side, they were promised this really great service to the East Side for decades, and it still hasn't happened [00:37:00] yet. And it became a kind of municipal joke among New Yorkers, such that there are snippets on Mad Men, where people are shopping for apartments on 2nd Avenue, and the real estate agent is saying, "Oh, this is on 2nd Avenue! When the 2nd Avenue Subway gets here, you'll make a mint." And I'm thinking to myself, "Aha. I get the joke. This thing is set in 1965. Got it." 

ROMAN MARS - HOST, 99% INVISIBLE: After almost a hundred years of the 2nd Avenue Subway planning, all that New York's got to show for it are three new stations on the Upper East Side, which were finished in 2017.

It's the perfect example of a system that is so close to having it all. It could be fast, frequent, reliable, and widespread if it weren't for a political gridlock that sets it apart from functional systems all over the world. 

JAKE BERMAN: Being able to do these kinds of things at scale requires extremely patient planning at the front end.

But once you make a decision to go, you do [00:38:00] things as quickly as possible. So, if you think about a place like Madrid, they built subways in bulk for decades, and so they got very good at it. They have all of this institutional knowledge and they have the capacity to do this within their own bureaucracy.

That's not really the case in the United States. Instead, you have a million different changes once the plans get released in New York. 

ROMAN MARS - HOST, 99% INVISIBLE: In other words, Madrid makes a plan and moves forward with it quickly at large scale. But that's not the case with New York. Because even if the MTA started out with the best plan imaginable, there's often too many factors slowing things down.

For one, there are too many cooks in the kitchen. Decisions about the subway system have to be made jointly between the mayor, the governor, and various government consultants and contractors, who all have to agree on the same plan. 

JAKE BERMAN: Everyone wants to have their two cents, even though everyone agrees that this subway line really [00:39:00] needs to get built, or at least there's a political consensus that these subway lines need to get built.

ROMAN MARS - HOST, 99% INVISIBLE: To make matters worse, doing things so slowly is expensive. By building piecemeal instead of all at once, the MTA loses out on the economies of scale. Each station ends up being built to its own unique blueprint rather than a standardized layout. And instead of having experts on staff, the MTA hires different sets of contracts on a "per project" basis, which means that a mile of subway track in New York costs six times more than in Berlin or Tokyo.

It's just too expensive and too slow to grow in the way that riders need it to.

NYC Congestion Pricing Advocates Slam Hochul for Halting Plan to Reduce Emissions, Fund Transit - Democracy Now! - Air Date 6-25-24

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: When you heard the governor speak and cancel this program, that she had long advocated for, as the governor before her and beyond, what was your response?

KEANU ARPELS-JOSIAH: It was outrage. I mean, this is a program that Governor Hochul, as you mentioned, has spent the past five years advocating for. And all of a sudden, just weeks away from its implementation, just weeks away of the [00:40:00] traffic, of the cameras, the toll cameras, coming on in Lower Manhattan, she completely reversed it.

And that completely fits with the governor’s general policy on climate. She has been failing our generation on climate across the board. In her State of the State address back in January, she only spent one sentence of the hourlong address talking about the climate crisis. And that fits with the amount of action her administration has been doing on climate.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: You know, we’re talking on Primary Day. This is a primary —

KEANU ARPELS-JOSIAH: That’s right.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: — in Colorado, but also here in New York. Very significant she canceled this just before this primary. But if you can talk about the climate effects? You know, today we wanted to have two generations on, from David Jones, you know, an icon here in New York, to you, Keanu. You just graduated from high school. You’re wearing a pin that says “Climate Can’t Wait.” You’re, for your age, going to be 19 tomorrow, a longtime climate activist, which is amazing. What [00:41:00] does congestion pricing have to do with the climate?

KEANU ARPELS-JOSIAH: Yeah. So, the climate crisis, as we know, is here and now, as you mentioned. The air quality in New York City is getting worse and worse. And we know that we’re at a dire point in the climate crisis. The U.N. head of climate recently said we have two years left to save the world, and that is not exaggeration.

In New York City, we’re the third-biggest emitting city in the world, and 25% of our emissions come from vehicles. So, that’s what congestion pricing aimed to tackle. It aimed to begin to cut down those emissions. It aimed to begin to actually meet our climate goals. We know we have to reduce emissions by 50% by 2030 here in New York state, and we’re far, far below that. So, congestion pricing aimed to begin to do that.

And with Governor Hochul’s cancellation of this program and her failure on climate across the board, she continues to refuse to sign critical climate legislation to make fossil fuel companies pay their fair share, like the Climate Superfund Act, and [00:42:00] she’s failing our generation across the board. And it really brings us to a moment where one of the biggest blue states in America, New York state, one of the biggest economies in America, is failing on this issue of climate. And my generation is horrified.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Well, we have David Jones on the phone with us right now. David Jones, if you can talk about what this means for the MTA? You’re an MTA board member, also president and CEO of Community Service Society. You’re talking about billions the MTA is losing. Who would have gained from congestion pricing, David?

DAVID JONES: Well, [inaudible] congestion pricing was passed in 2019 by the Legislature, signed by the governor at the time, Andy Cuomo. And up until about a week and a half ago, it was about to be implemented at the end of this month. It was going to mean a [00:43:00] tremendous boost to the capital needs of the MTA, in not only subways and buses, but the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North. And basically, it was only going to capital. So, this was going to be state of good repair, as I’ve said repeatedly, so the wheels don’t fall off, but also the 2nd Avenue subway, something that had been promised to the people of Harlem decades ago. It also was going to mean making accessible, pursuant to numerous lawsuits, ADA accessibility for the handicapped. And all of that now has been put into question.

But it also, obviously, as your speaker before me mentioned, not going to deal with congestion that’s in the central business district in New York, which leads to trucks, buses and cars idling for literally hours [00:44:00] and spewing out fumes that impact air quality.

JUAN GONZALEZ- CO-HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Both David and Keanu, I have to confess to you, I have long been a skeptic on the congestion pricing in the decades that it’s been proposed in New York City for two reasons I’d like you to respond to. One, Keanu, on the pollution issue, why not just do what Mexico City has done for decades, which is limit cars coming into the metropolitan — into the city by license plate numbers? And Mexico City sharply reduced its pollution as a result of that kind of policy. And, David, to you, I respect you immensely, but the MTA is notorious for wasteful spending of billions of dollars on capital projects. How are we to expect that the new revenue from a regressive tax, largely on working-class and middle-class people, is going to make the MTA [00:45:00] more efficient in its use of public dollars?

KEANU ARPELS-JOSIAH: Yeah. So, I’d like to respond to that first, if I can, just on your presumption that the tax is mostly a regressive tax on lower- and moderate-income New Yorkers. It’s, first of all, not a tax. It’s a toll, right? And second of all, that is not beared out in the statistics. Fifty-five percent of workers traveling into the central business district zone, which is what the congestion pricing plan affects, are higher-income. Eighty-three percent are higher- and moderate-income. So, that means also if you look at the statistics for how low-income New Yorkers are traveling into Lower Manhattan, for every one New Yorker who might be traveling via car into the central business district, there are 50 who are waiting for a delayed subway, waiting for a delayed bus. Every New Yorker has a story of waiting for a bus or subway for extreme amounts of time.

And the solution to affordability in New York, as the governor has herself been saying for 50 years, [00:46:00] is not canceling congestion pricing. It’s funding the MTA. It’s giving us reliability. It’s giving us accessible subway stations. That’s really what congestion pricing is about. It’s about what future we want for New Yorkers. Is it one where we have reliable subway? Is it one where we have air that we can breathe without getting asthma? Is it one of climate and environmental justice? Or is it one where we have to wait on hours in gridlock traffic?

Comptroller on Congestion Pricing's Indefinite Pause - The Brian Lehrer Show - Air Date 6-17-24

BRAD LANDER: I get that it's hard to envision a city with fully accessible mass transit, with better transit that people feel comfortable and safe and accessible taking. There's no substitute for getting New York City there, and we can't do that without the resources to invest. I really think when we have a 95 percent accessible system, so many people will be able to use it, and this is the resource we have to do that. 

Now, most of the people on that list that I heard say "I come in frequently" are more business related users like that freelancer. [00:47:00] For those folks, the reduction in congestion and in traffic, I think will actually be a great boon for their businesses. People will be able to make more deliveries, and get more business if the traffic isn't moving at six or eight miles an hour.

So, my hope is that folks that are coming in for work and who may do it on a more frequent basis will see the benefits of reduced congestion and that the folks who are coming in once or twice or three times a year will benefit over time as those trips become more possible via the Mass transit and as the city has the economic health that comes from better mass transit as well.

Look, no one wants to pay for the things we all need, but we're not able to fund our mass transit system just on the fares alone. Those resources have to come from somewhere and funding them while reducing traffic and emissions is the way cities around the world have done it. [00:48:00] There's always those feelings like you just read right before it goes into effect, but in the places around the world they've implemented it, where it works, congestion comes down, transit gets better, and people's anger diminishes over time as they see the real results. 

BRIAN LEHRER - HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: And listeners, I'll just say as an aside, that that's our first example of bringing some of your responses to the question in our newsletter onto the show. We will continue to do that on a regular basis.

And again, if you want to sign up for the newsletter, which is going to go out. To people's inboxes every Thursday. You can do so. It's free, obviously. WNYC.org/BLNewsletter. Listener writes just now, Comptroller, in a text message, "Why has the MTA put such weight on congestion pricing for its budget? What were other funding options for accessibility upgrades to the subway?" 

BRAD LANDER: It's a great [00:49:00] question. Unfortunately, what the MTA has done in the past is borrowed a lot of money without clear revenues to fund it and then gotten in real trouble. That's why the MTA was facing a fiscal crisis and it could be again.

Unfortunately, no one has put on the table a really good, solid, fair revenue source. Otherwise, the one that the governor proposed a payroll tax really hits the economy and hits workers, and I don't believe is a good idea at this moment. I'm open, you know. Maybe you can use the newsletter next week, and if people have creative ideas, of course, we'll consider them. 

I will say none of—in addition to this $15 billion hole—none of the ideas for funding would reduce congestion, reduce traffic, reduce emissions. We're about to have a heat wave this week with poor air quality, and this, in addition, is one of the steps we can take to reduce emissions and to reduce traffic congestion, which will reduce crashes [00:50:00] and make our streets safer.

I'd like to see us use some of the street space that will free up in Manhattan to try new things like micro mobility lanes to get the mopeds and the ebikes like in dedicated lanes—and enforce that they have to be there rather than on the sidewalks. So, there's real opportunities here. That said, we're all ears if people have other ideas.

We just have not seen a real plan B. 

BRIAN LEHRER - HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: I think a lot of people listening right now, because we get so many calls also on the dangers of the mopeds and the ebikes going every which way on the sidewalks and the streets, wrong way on one way streets, in ways that cars would never do or hardly ever do—how would those micro mobility lanes work?

I can just hear the voices of drivers in my head saying, "Wait, we already have fewer driving lanes on many city streets because of the bike lanes. Are we now going to have a sidewalk, a bike lane, a micro mobility lane, and then something for cars?" 

BRAD LANDER: [00:51:00] Well, look, we've got so many more ebikes and mopeds than we did a couple of years ago, and we just have not evolved our rules, our enforcement, or our infrastructure to catch up, and that's why they're running like haywire. 

This really is a management challenge. Unfortunately, the city has not stepped up. The mayor and city DOT haven't stepped up to say, "Let's have a real and comprehensive plan." Congestion pricing—where it has been implemented—results in, and we project here, about a 20 percent drop in traffic in lower Manhattan, and that is streetscapes that you can use for things to pilot micro mobility lanes.

That's got to go along with enforcement because people have to then stay in those lanes, and that means making sure people have the licenses if they're a moped or an ebike that is effectively a moped. That means making sure the businesses that are employing them are held accountable. And that means some real enforcement as well.

But infrastructure is part [00:52:00] of the solution, and congestion pricing creates one opportunity to try something to get control of what has indeed become chaos that pedestrians, and drivers, and cyclists all feel. 

Editors Note on how to make the case to Biden to step aside

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with Today, Explained describing the scam filled rooftop solar industry. The Energy Gang, in two parts, discussed the policies and infrastructure to get new energy technologies deployed at scale. DW Planet A discussed the obstacles to wind and solar. Vox looked at the solution of energy storage. 99% Invisible told the story of the New York subway. Democracy Now! examined the controversy of congestion pricing in New York. And The Brian Lehrer Show also discussed congestion pricing. And those were just the top takes, there's a lot more in the deeper dive section. 

But before we continue on, more on the slow moving train wreck that is the Biden campaign and his refusal to [00:53:00] withdraw. It really is the worst case scenario, as he muddles along in interviews and public appearances, not being quite as bad as he was at the debate, giving hope to the Biden diehards, but not actually instilling any confidence in anyone else. And the arguments they're making are so thin, so desperate. What it shows me is that they're basically willing to say or do anything to make the case, maybe even just to themselves, for him to stay in the race, which completely strips bare the claim that he always wants to do what is best for the country rather than himself. 

Which brings us back to ego. Of course, an ego is a prerequisite for anyone who runs for president, but there are still a range, and I think where he falls on that range as being exposed right now. From everything I've read about Biden in the last week, including the apparent reality that the more people tell him to drop out, the more it makes [00:54:00] him determined to stay in. That is certainly troubling. 

It reminds me of a concept that I am only tangentially aware of, maybe someone out there knows better than me and will actually like send me a message and fill me in. Because I feel like I find myself referencing this a lot in my personal life and conversations, but I it's one of those factoids, I don't actually know the details of. But anyway, it goes something like this. Many, maybe actually nearly all cultures around the world have something akin to the concept of saving face. So I heard this in relation to Japan, where there is a very high value put on saving face, but it can certainly be applicable elsewhere. 

And the vague concept involves a style of argumentation that utilizes maybe an extreme degree of restraint in order to allow one's opponent to maybe recognize defeat and gracefully back down without admitting fault or losing face in the process. Now the outcome may not be as [00:55:00] satisfying as forcing your opponent to admit that you're right or admit that they're wrong, but you actually get the end result that you want or need, which is more important. 

A lot of the talk about Biden is emphasizing how he's embarrassing himself, letting the country down and so forth. And these things may all be true. I mean, in my opinion, sure, but that's not where the discussion can end. I already said before that my ideal scenario would have been for Biden to have announced his intention to be a one-term president from the beginning. And some say that's not advisable because of how you're seen in office, but I disagree, particularly after the circumstances or during the circumstances of 2021, and Biden's advanced age. I think he could have actually pulled it off as a power move rather than being seen as weak, but, you know, bygones. 

That said, the next best thing would have been for him to have recognized the writing on the wall and taken the [00:56:00] initiative by focusing on a plan to step down that would have been graceful and driven by selflessness. Now we're in the worst case scenario where he's basically challenging people to pry the presidency from his cold dead hands, and any attempts to do so would leave him with no possible opportunity to save face. Given that his pride and ego are all wrapped up in this whole mess, his attitude can't be overcome with brute force or logical argumentation that doesn't take face saving into account. 

Now as depressed as I am right now about the state of affairs. I think the best thing that could happen is for the conversation to be allowed to cool down for a bit. Hopefully not too long, but long enough for tempers to settle. Then the case needs to be made to him by very kind, emotionally intelligent people. Probably, not because of the nature [00:57:00] of men versus women, but because of a Joe Biden's perspective, I'm guessing. Probably women should be the ones to confront him, because I think he would find them more disarming, whereas the presence of men, I imagine, would challenge his male ego simply by being in the room. And this caucus of emotionally intelligent women working behind the scenes should make the case for him to leave the race with all of the focus on how to go about it in the most pride-preserving way possible. 

As an example, and I'll give a friend of mine credit for the idea that Biden should take some quiet moments of contemplation in a church or something like that, but probably a church, before announcing his change of heart. So they can use it as part of his story about how he changed his mind. He needs to be able to say that he came to the conclusion himself without being forced. Talking to God and seeing the light or quiet contemplation and realizing, that the [00:58:00] greater good, whatever, those are all great excuses for things like this. He said this week that no one is going to force him out. And I believe him. But that doesn't mean that he can't be led. To come to the right conclusion himself without feeling like he's been forced out. And without losing face. 

Now, before we get back to the show, a quick reminder that July is our membership and awareness drive. So, if you get value out of the show, let this be the time that you decide to chip in and help sustain its production and tell some friends about it to help grow our base of support. As thanks to those who make this show possible, we release weekly bonus episodes in which the production crew here takes center stage and holds conversations on serious topics while remembering to laugh, even if it's just so we don't cry. 

In the most recent episode, we strayed pretty far off our planned topics to talk about how we were feeling after the debate and the reason Supreme Court rulings. It was not a good week. We were not [00:59:00] feeling very good. And that definitely came through in the episode, which we hoped was cathartic for listeners. 

Plus of course members get ad free versions of every regular episode, and for this month, memberships are 20% off. So sign up now and keep that discounted price for as long as you keep your membership. Just head to BestOfTheLeft.com/support to grab your discounted membership, and then tell someone about us.

SECTION A: ENERGY POLICIES

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now we'll continue with deeper dives on three topics. Next up, section A: energy policies. Section B: the intentional solar scam. And section C: public transportation. 

When solar power leaves you feeling burned Part 2 - Today, Explained - Air Date 1-2-24

ANDREW MOSEMAN: Think about a big solar farm out in the desert, like we have here in California. At certain times of the day, we're already making so much solar energy that we can't even use it all. And so some of those solar panels are simply turned off and we can't get it to other places where it might be used.

And it means the potential of a lot of the solar infrastructure we already is simply going to waste. And then [01:00:00] On the flip side, there's also the scale of an individual home with solar panels. What's happening is you're starting to see a pushback against some of the incentives, economic incentives that allow people to do that in the first place.

This generally happens through an effect that's called net metering. And what that means is if you've got a big setup of solar panels on your home and you know, it's sunny out, you're not using a ton of energy at your house. You might be able to make more solar energy than you're consuming, at which point, if you're connected to the grid, you can just sell that back to the grid.

The way that that's typically worked is you make back the exact amount you would have paid per kilowatt hour for energy. Now that more and more people are getting solar on their rooftops in more and more states, you're starting to see governments and power companies push back against that. Trying to reduce the amount of money that people get paid for selling their own solar back to the grid.[01:01:00] 

NOEL KING - HOST, TODAY,EXPLAINED: Because there's too much. Is that right? 

ANDREW MOSEMAN: Well, that's part of it. It's, it's a complicated issue. There's technical infrastructure issues. Yes. When you can sort of have a grassroots distributed energy system of all of us making our own energy, it does get more and more complex to figure this all out. 

NEWS CLIP: And so until we overcome the problem of permitting reform of building transmission lines, allowing new power plants of any kind to be built, we're not going to get to that promised land of having a clean energy superpower. We're going to be stocked really with what the kind of assets we have now, 

ANDREW MOSEMAN: there's also a flip side, which is sort of a political argument. And what you'll normally hear in this case is basically an argument of fairness, which is if you have solar panels, you're not only not paying the power company for energy, you're not paying for the upkeep of power lines, the grid infrastructure, basically all the maintenance fees that's built into [01:02:00] the power bill that the rest of us pay at the end of the month.

Okay. 

NEWS CLIP: Those poor people struggling, some of them in subsidized housing, trying to put food on the table and still pay the light bill, they don't need to subsidize. Solar panels for those who can afford to have them. 

ANDREW MOSEMAN: And therefore, as more and more people get solar, more and more of the burden is going to be placed on everybody who doesn't have it.

NOEL KING - HOST, TODAY,EXPLAINED: Gosh, that's really interesting. So when I get my power bill in the mail, this had never occurred to me. I'm not just paying for the electricity that I use. I'm paying also to support the electrical grid, to improve the electrical grid, to keep it working. Okay. So California, the state from which you wrote this piece, the state that you were focused on, it has two problems.

There's too much solar power and the people who are getting solar power and selling it back to the grid, they aren't kicking in their quote unquote fair share. How is the state of California responding to those two problems? 

ANDREW MOSEMAN: Well, we'll start with [01:03:00] the latter. Because that's sort of the most pressing one right now, which is despite having been one of the leaders in the rooftop home solar industry, California is really putting on the brakes right now.

NEWS CLIP: A decision by the California Public Utilities Commission will make it much more expensive to get rooftop solar starting on April 15th. 

ANDREW MOSEMAN: The new rules that the Public Utility Commission put out slashed the amount of money that people can get paid for net metering by about 75%. 

NEWS CLIP: Under the new plan just approved, homeowners who install solar can expect to save 100 a month on their electricity bill, paired with battery storage, 136 a month.

So everybody else 

ANDREW MOSEMAN: who, you know, has already had them for years is grandfathered in. They, you know, in perpetuity probably are going to be making That sort of retail rate of electricity. 

NEWS CLIP: Current solar panel owners pay or save based on the power they generate. And in many cases, they don't have to pay anything because their solar panels [01:04:00] absorb enough sunlight to cover their entire bill.

And owners even get paid by the utility companies if they generate excess power. But 

ANDREW MOSEMAN: now, if you go and put solar panels on your house, you're getting paid. a fraction of that, a quarter of that, if these new rules go into effect. Because of this, you've already seen a huge slowdown in the, in the number of, um, new homes getting panels, because without net metering or with a much lower rate of net metering, uh, it's just going to take you much, much longer to recoup the major investment of putting that in.

ALANA SEMUALS: The market in real time under the new net metering is 80 percent below where it was last summer. 

NOEL KING - HOST, TODAY,EXPLAINED: So California is a sunny state. It creates a lot of power through solar sources, too much of it, in fact, as you've laid out. Why can't it send it over to, I don't know, Washington State, famously rainy? What's preventing California from sending its excess electricity there?

ANDREW MOSEMAN: Hey, well, [01:05:00] Washington state doesn't necessarily need it because they have a ton of hydropower. So they're actually doing okay on renewables. They have one of the greenest grids actually, but your point stands. So basically what stands in the way of doing this is that it's insanely hard to build power infrastructure.

Building something across such a vast distance requires too many stakeholders to be in line, you know, landowners, governments, power utilities. When you cross state borders, you're dealing with, you know, a new power bureaucracy. That's just where we are, that the Biden clean energy buildout is putting out funds for and calling for more transmission lines to be able to, to do this, to get renewable energy where it needs to go.

So it's not wasted. It's just an insanely difficult thing to do politically. 

NEWS CLIP: I want to join my other colleagues talking about it. bipartisan permitting reform. It's something we have to do in order to achieve whatever the future looks like in terms of green energy. It's going to require building things.

We have to talk [01:06:00] about permitting reform in a reasonable period of time, uh, to get things done. 

NOEL KING - HOST, TODAY,EXPLAINED: Is California the only state having this problem? We have too much solar energy? 

ANDREW MOSEMAN: Uh, no. I don't know the stats on some of the other states, but, uh, Texas has the exact same problem, but primarily with wind. The reason is obvious if you start to think about it, you know, the, the place you'd build big wind farms to take advantage of the, the breeze on the high Texas plains is way out.

Out west where there's not a lot of people and there is a lot of land. But that means that you've got to get all that energy across the state to, you know, San Antonio, Austin, Houston, Dallas, where all, you know, the majority of the people are, the majority of the energy is going to be used. And so at varying points, Texas has had this exact same problem they had it 20 years ago when they first made a big push into wind.

And the legislature actually did manage to sort of come together and create these special zones for new lines to be built, and they managed to sort of solve the problem [01:07:00] then. But those lines they built then can't handle the amount that they've got now, and so they're coming back around to the same problem.

NOEL KING - HOST, TODAY,EXPLAINED: Washington state is good. It has the hydropower. California has too much solar. Texas has too much wind power. Did we just move too quickly? On the clean energy transition without first asking what are we going to do with all of this clean energy? 

ANDREW MOSEMAN: I wouldn't say that. No, there is something to that, obviously, since we're talking about having built out more capacity than we can use, but I wouldn't say that for one thing.

It's it's not all all of the time. Summertime here in California because of the energy demand for AC and stuff like that. You're not seeing that same effect where. 10 percent or more of the solar energy is getting wasted because we just need it. And at the end of the day, I think it's sort of a cart before the horse question.

It's like, yeah, we need all this extra renewable energy capacity [01:08:00] to fix our energy sector and move it to renewables. And in order to take advantage of that stuff, we also need to build out our grid infrastructure and, and really get more sophisticated in the way that we do it.

How can we develop new energy technologies and get them deployed at scale Part 3 - The Energy Gang - Air Date 3-5-24

ED CROOKS - HOST, THE ENERGY GANG: And what does that history of lithium ion batteries show? 

JESSIKA TRANCIK: Well, you know, it's interesting. It's not all that different from solar modules. The role of policy is a bit more complicated because of course lithium ion batteries are used in.

Many different devices and there were market forces driving their development, you know with the development of information technology and so forth But policy was also important for lithium ion batteries for electric vehicles But you know, we really see and this is work I did with Micah Ziegler who a former postdoc in my group that I just started on the faculty at Georgia Tech and is doing great work in storage.

What we see when we look at that trajectory is just how important research and development was all along the way in developing these technologies. Now I say these technologies because we [01:09:00] have different kinds of lithium ion batteries that came online. Now we do see again, as we saw with solar modules, that economies of scale had a very substantial impact in driving costs down.

In the last couple of decades, so it's something somewhat similar, but not exactly the same as solar. And then the other thing is, of course, energy densities were important to develop in the case of lithium ion batteries. 

ED CROOKS - HOST, THE ENERGY GANG: So in the context of that, then let's think about what the U S government is doing today and the inflation reduction act in particular, given what we know, given what your research has found about history of innovation, what it takes for energy innovation to be successful, to drive down costs, to accelerate deployment.

When I think about the inflation reduction act, I think about it as having two kind of key salient features. One is that it's all about carrots rather than sticks. So it's about. trying to incentivize low carbon energy rather than increase the burden on high carbon energy. And the other factor is that it's got a [01:10:00] lot of detailed provisions for different types of technology.

And so there'll be production tax credits and investment tax credits for wind and solar and storage. Then there's a different set of tax credits for low carbon hydrogen and different credits for carbon capture and storage and different credits again for nuclear, different credits and other regulatory.

incentives for EVs, which again are all changed by domestic content requirements and how much the manufacturer has done within the US and so on. Does that make sense as an approach, do you think? If you were designing an optimal policy for the energy transition in the US, would you do it this way? 

JESSIKA TRANCIK: Uh, yeah.

Well, you know, of course one has to be pragmatic in terms of what policies are people willing to accept. We have limited time. Let's go with what works. I think that makes sense to a certain extent with technology specific policies, people may have an easier time seeing what's coming down the pike, so to speak.

So that may be one reason why [01:11:00] they're more acceptable in some context. So. You know, the policies that you described, Ed, are targeting specific technologies. It could be that that's, you know, something that's more acceptable, more popular because we can kind of see what's coming. But of course, a carbon price does have some advantages, you know, and that it's more flexible.

It allows for more competition. So I guess what I mean by flexible is it allows for the market. to select across demand side changes like energy efficiency and supply side changes like different types of power plants. However, even when selecting a carbon price, we know to some extent, at least in the near term, what technologies will be favored.

And that's because we know their costs in different markets. We know their carbon intensities. So it's actually pretty clear, so you can't actually get away from selecting technologies. Now the argument is that you select a carbon price that's equal to the societal costs of those emissions, but that [01:12:00] also requires making some forecasts about technology specific evolution pathways.

And then we come back to essentially what's required in designing technology specific policies. You have to make these forecasts about what technologies are going to do, how they're going to perform and deem which ones are more favorable. So there is still that challenge about evaluating and forecasting technology, even with a carbon price.

ED CROOKS - HOST, THE ENERGY GANG: Right. That's a really interesting point. You mean, effectively, there's no such thing as a genuinely technology neutral policy, even if you're kind of trying to be technology neutral and just saying, well, this is the carbon price and then let a thousand flowers bloom and let everyone do what they want to do to adjust to that price.

In practice, you're actually taking some views on which technology is favorable and which aren't. 

JESSIKA TRANCIK: Yeah, that's right. I mean, when you're estimating those societal costs of carbon emissions, that's going to be. At least in part determined by technology [01:13:00] innovation. If you're selecting a carbon price at a given point in time, if it's 10 or 100 a ton, you know, pretty well.

What effects that's going to have in terms of which texts the market will select.

This is what's REALLY holding back wind and solar Part 2 - DW Planet A - Air Date 6-2-23

MALTE ROHWER-KAHLMANN - REPORTER, PLANET A: And there's a number of ways we can do that.

TIM MEYERJURGENS: So we have to transport the electricity from where it's produced to where it's needed. Uh, so we have more transport of energy than we had in the past. 

MALTE ROHWER-KAHLMANN - REPORTER, PLANET A: This means we have to better connect our grids. That's why grid operator Tenet is building SüdLink, a 700 kilometer high voltage transmission line connecting Germany's north to its south.

When the sun doesn't shine in the south, it could get wind energy from the north. At least that's the idea. 

KELLY SANDERS: Building out those transmission lines, those very, very large transmission lines, is really difficult. So, you have property rights issues, you have issues over, you know, people that are concerned about endangered species and environmental [01:14:00] impacts.

So, building those projects take a really long time and they become really, really expensive. 

MALTE ROHWER-KAHLMANN - REPORTER, PLANET A: SüdLink is a case in point. It was originally planned as an overhead line in 2012. But amid huge public backlash against the monster line, politicians in 2015 decided it was to be built underground. 

TIM MEYERJURGENS: We had to start from scratch again.

Because a cable route looks different than an overhead line route. So that alone, only this line. Decision was at least three years. 

MALTE ROHWER-KAHLMANN - REPORTER, PLANET A: It also roughly tripled the cost of the project to 10 billion euros, and it's still facing resistance, especially from farmers and landowners. By the end of 2022, when Zoot Link was originally supposed to be finished, not a single cable had been laid.

It's now scheduled to be finished in 2028, but despite these challenges. Building infrastructure to shift renewable energy to where it's needed is a key part of making the grid more flexible. Another is to build storage [01:15:00] into it, to supply energy when it's needed. To cover shorter periods, huge battery packs are already popping up more and more.

KELLY SANDERS: Shining or discharge it when those solar resources or wind resources wind down. 

MALTE ROHWER-KAHLMANN - REPORTER, PLANET A: Some grids also store energy with pumped hydro. You use surplus electricity to pump water up a hill. and let it run down through a turbine when you need it back. Both these solutions can only shift a few hours worth of energy though.

For days or weeks, for example, to cover a dunkelflaute, we need other solutions. Like hydrogen. We can make it from renewable electricity and then burn it in power plants without any CO2 emissions. 

TIM MEYERJURGENS: That doesn't mean that we should, uh, burn hydrogen all the time because it's not a very efficient way. But for certain [01:16:00] situations, we will see.

Still need it. 

MALTE ROHWER-KAHLMANN - REPORTER, PLANET A: And then there's another part of the solution, which up until recently hadn't really been discussed. 

KELLY SANDERS: We could be the opportunity. So you can increase generation to meet demand. You can also lower demand to kind of meet supply somewhere in the middle. 

MALTE ROHWER-KAHLMANN - REPORTER, PLANET A: We could, for example, hold off on doing our laundry or running the dishwasher when the grid is stressed and instead do it when there's plenty renewable energy available.

Some utilities already offer their customers lower rates for doing exactly this. And we could let grid operators tap into the electricity from the solar panels on our roofs or the batteries of our electric cars. 

PATRICIA HIDALGO-GONZALEZ: But now with distributed energy resources, we're thinking about a two directional flow, where now not only from generators to consumers, but now from consumers, which now we would be calling them prosumers, because they would be producing electricity, and then supplying a backup stream to a transmission network when it would need it the most.[01:17:00] 

MALTE ROHWER-KAHLMANN - REPORTER, PLANET A: The vision is to build a technology driven smart grid that gives operators a lot more information to flexibly balance supply and demand. If all this sounds incredibly challenging and expensive, well, that's because it is. This industry study calculated that, to hit our net zero targets, grids worldwide need 1.

1 trillion dollars of investment. Every year until 2050. And that's excluding new solar panels and wind turbines. Changing the grid is a monumental task. But it's one we need to tackle if we're serious about quitting fossil fuels. 

TIM MEYERJURGENS: Because in the end, our grids are the backbone of the energy transition. So if we are not successful, the energy transition will not be successful.

And for me, this is a race we must win. So there's no alternative.

SECTION B: THE INTENTIONAL SOLAR SCAM

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering section B: the intentional solar scam. 

The Solar-Powered Scammer - Scamfluencers - Air Date 2-5-24

SARAH HAGI - CO-HOST, SCAMFLUENCERS: Things are pretty rough for a while, but then one day in 2007, Jeff has a conversation that [01:18:00] changes his life. He's talking to his neighbor who's building a vacation house. The neighbor wants to power his new place with solar panels, but he's worried that someone might steal them off the roof when he's not there.

So Jeff has an idea. What if there was a trailer covered in solar panels powering the house instead? That way, his neighbor could roll it into the garage or hitch it to his truck and drive it home with him. Jeff draws a simple trailer design on a napkin. He doesn't know it yet, But this little sketch is going to make him incredibly rich.

It's 2008, about a year after Jeff comes up with this trailer idea. By now, Jeff actually has a prototype and he's ready to show it off to potential investors. Like Dave Watson. He's a Silicon Valley software consultant, the type of guy who wears a fleece vest everywhere he goes. He and his friends are looking for new technology to invest in, which means they're used to getting pitches in stuffy boardrooms.[01:19:00] 

But today, they're huddled in a parking lot to see something different, an invention by the guy who used to fix Dave's car. Dave and Jeff met a while back when he got his car repaired at Roverland, and they've kept in touch even after the shop closed. The last time they talked, Jeff told Dave about his mobile solar powered generator.

Dave thinks it's a compelling idea. They could be used in places where there's no other way to get power, like remote disaster relief areas or movie sets. Most generators are diesel powered. They burp out ugly black smoke, and they're awful for the environment. Dave knows that if someone could actually build a workable solar powered generator, they could turn a serious profit.

The US government is offering all kinds of money to green energy companies, and he wants in on it. 

COMMERCIAL: Despite being a nihilist, this does sound like a really good invention if they can get one that that doesn't spew out black tar every time you [01:20:00] use it. 

SARAH HAGI - CO-HOST, SCAMFLUENCERS: Yeah, I mean it actually is a good idea. And when Dave and his friends see Jeff's new gadget in the parking lot, it looks pretty straightforward.

It's a trailer with some solar panels on it. Fun fact, when Jeff eventually files a patent for this thing, he literally calls it trailer with solar panels. But it also has a few bells and whistles. Like he's attached the panels to rotating beams, which means it can catch the sun as it moves. Dave and his buddies talk for a few minutes.

Then they give Jeff the good news. They want to invest. They lend Jeff almost 400,000 and set up a company to help sell his new invention. Dave even comes on as VP of sales. With this seed money, Jeff is ready to grow his new business and get his life back on track. And he's about to meet someone whose vision is bigger than anything he could have imagined.

It's 2010, two years after the [01:21:00] parking lot meeting. A lawyer named Forrest Milder is sitting in his office in Boston. Forrest is a middle aged guy with a ginger beard and professor vibes. He kind of looks like Walter White before he breaks bad. He's a big time tax lawyer who's been working in the field for 30 years.

He's got degrees from Boston University, Harvard, and MIT. He also practices a very specific type of law at his firm, Nixon Peabody, helping corporations maximize tax credits. And he's really good at what he does. He bills clients 900 an hour just for advice. Or at least he used to. Since the recession, Nixon Peabody has been struggling.

Forrest's boss has started telling his employees to try new strategies for drumming up business, like offering free consultations to potential clients. So when one of Forrest's friends offers to hook him up with a small business owner named Jeff Karpoff, Forrest is immediately [01:22:00] interested. And when he looks up Jeff's company, which is now called DC Solar, he's impressed by what he sees.

Their solar power generators have made their way onto Hollywood film sets. Leonardo DiCaprio is a huge fan and has been talking about them in interviews. He says he's pushing the CEO of Warner Brothers to use more solar power, which could mean more trailers and more business. Forrest also knows there are huge tax incentives for businesses to invest in green technology.

They can get back a full 30 percent of the money they spend on things like solar generators. Together, Forrest and Jeff figure out a strategy for attracting big corporate buyers. They know that these buyers are primarily looking for tax breaks and don't necessarily even need the generators, so DC Solar decides to offer them a deal.

If a corporate buyer puts up the initial funding to order and build generators, DC Solar can then lease them out to people who actually want to use [01:23:00] them. At sporting events, film sets, and anywhere else. The money they make off the rentals will get split between DC Solar and the corporate buyers. 

COMMERCIAL: That sounds a little convoluted to me.

SARAH HAGI - CO-HOST, SCAMFLUENCERS: Yeah, it's a confusing plan, but corporate investors aren't asking a lot of questions. All they need to know is that they'll rake in a lot of money, and it's nearly risk free. Companies that buy these generators don't even need to use them if they don't want to. They just pay for the generators, let DC Solar rent them out, and when their loan is paid off, sit back and collect money.

And all the while they get to brag about their investment in renewable energy. Obviously, Jeff loves the idea. He even tells Forrest that they should value the generators at 150, 000 each, which is 50 percent higher than the price he initially proposed and more than 10 times what the generators are actually worth.

He thinks clients will be attracted to the higher price tag. because it means they'll get a bigger [01:24:00] tax credit. Forrest is skeptical about this at first, but eventually gives in. And Saatchi, it actually works. They start pitching the deal around to different companies, like the insurance company Progressive and East West Bank.

And a lot of them are, uh, Very interested between Jeff's great invention and forest's brilliant tax scheme, this unlikely duo is about to launch D. C. Solar into the stratosphere, but Jeff is about to learn that even at a solar energy company, you can fly too close to the sun.

The Solar-Powered Scammer Part 2 - Scamfluencers - Air Date 2-5-24

SARAH HAGI - CO-HOST, SCAMFLUENCERS: in 2017, DC Solar Reports record breaking sales. The company tells our investors in employees they've sold over 5,000 generators and made nearly $750 million. They've also gotten new digs to prove it. About a year earlier, D. C. Solar moves into a brand new office just across the bay from Martinez. The office is lined with [01:25:00] security cameras.

Jeff's wife, Paulette, walks around with two Belgian melon wads. They're named Diesel and Fou. Here's a picture of Fou with Paulette. He's trained to attack people on command. Uh, he looks like he's being held hostage. This 

COMMERCIAL: dog is a man in a dog costume. He's so big. Yeah, he's the size of a small horse 

SARAH HAGI - CO-HOST, SCAMFLUENCERS: and he looks like he just wants to be set free.

Yeah. By this time, DC Solar has also started sponsoring NASCAR races and leasing out equipment to its racetracks. The optics are great. DC Solar's generators are so popular that they're being used by race car drivers. Jeff uses this deal to drum up more business for DC Solar, but he hides the fact that this contract is a joke.

It says that NASCAR only has to pay for the generators if DC Solar dumps tons of money into sponsoring and advertising for them. Even though Jeff is effectively losing money on these generators, he's [01:26:00] still throwing tons of cash around, literally. Employees say he pulls stacks of hundred dollar bills out of his pockets during meetings and gives it to whoever can guess how much money he's carrying.

He and Paulette buy a box at the Raiders Stadium in Vegas and invest in a winery in Napa Valley. They buy real estate in places like the Caribbean and Mexico and a subscription to a private jet service. service. And Jeff returns to his childhood roots. He buys a baseball team and an ice skating rink for his hometown of Martinez.

He also pours huge amounts of money into his first love, cars. By now he's got roughly 150 of them, including a handful of Chevy pickups from the 1970s, a bunch of gangster era Cadillacs, and for some weird reason, Nearly two dozen Dodge Rams in the middle of all this crazy spending, Jeff and his inner circle are clearly getting nervous.

They've started moving millions of dollars [01:27:00] into offshore bank accounts and they buy a 5 million house in the tax haven of St. Kitts and Nevis. They call it the Sea Grape Villa. The sale happens to make them eligible for a government program that grants citizenship to homeowners. They reportedly even asked their office manager to take photos for new passports that they want to have fast tracked.

And they're right to be paranoid. They don't know it yet, but one of their former employees went to the SEC in July. And there aren't enough attack dogs in the world that can protect them from what's coming next. In December 2018,

about Four months after Jeff and Paulette purchase Sea Grape Villa, they throw a huge company party. They even hire Pitbull to perform. The day after that, Jeff goes on Twitter and posts a photo from the holiday concert, calling it epic. He writes, quote, Thank you to all the people that work hard to make my dreams a reality.

Had a fantastic time [01:28:00] celebrating with my team. But the good times are about to come to an end. Because two days after that, D. C. Solar is raided by the FBI, the IRS, and the US marshals Service. One team ransacks D. C. Solar's headquarters. When Jeff calls the office and hears that the agents have taken his and Paulette's brand new passports, he yells, Oh fuck, and hangs up.

Agents find almost $2 million in cash in the office. When they search Paulette's Purse, they find another 18 grand. 

COMMERCIAL: Sarah, is it a crime to have $18,000 in your purse that you stole? Is that really a crime? No, it's in cash. How do they know where she got it from, right. If it's in cash, it doesn't count.

That's girl 

SARAH HAGI - CO-HOST, SCAMFLUENCERS: math. Exactly. And the other team goes to Jeff's house and finds, among other things, a warehouse filled with his massive car collection. About nine months later, the US attorney films a video of [01:29:00] Jeff's car collection. Here he is listing out types of cars. 

JEFF CARPOFF: Big work trucks, muscle cars, small little put putt cars, uh, an amazing collection, uh, that should prove a great value to people interested in purchasing them.

SARAH HAGI - CO-HOST, SCAMFLUENCERS: But when they try to start them, the agents learn that almost none of the cars have any battery power. Those cars aren't the only things that are totally out of juice. Jeff May have managed to keep this crazy scheme going for years, but he's finally run out of road. Just a couple days after the FBI raid, Jeff calls a high school buddy turned employee named Joseph Bayless.

Joseph has been writing all those fake vehicle inspection reports. Jeff tells Joseph to meet him in a Burger King parking lot. Nothing 

COMMERCIAL: good ever happens in a Burger King 

SARAH HAGI - CO-HOST, SCAMFLUENCERS: anywhere. When they meet, Jeff tells Joseph to buy a burner phone, head to the warehouse where DC Solar has been keeping all their fake VIN stickers, and destroy [01:30:00] everything.

He also tells him to keep his mouth shut when the feds come calling. But that plan only works for so long. Eventually, there's too much evidence for even Joseph to deny. In October 2019, he pleads guilty to conspiracy to commit an offense against the federal government. So does Ronald Roach, who's slapped with an additional charge of securities fraud.

Two months later, Rob, DC Solar's CFO, pleads guilty to the same conspiracy charge plus a charge of beating and abetting money laundering. Finally, in January 2020, the karpovor themselves fess up to their crimes. They both plead guilty to money laundering among other charges. When all is said and done, The SEC says that DC Solar made almost 3 billion from deals and took in more than 900 million from investors.

And the US attorney says that the government was robbed of 1 billion in tax revenue. Even after the election. [01:31:00] actual billionaires were swindled. Warren Buffett's investment firm, Berkshire Hathaway, blamed DC Solar for a 377 million loss in the first quarter of 2019. At a sentencing hearing, Jeff tries to defend himself by saying he could have never come up with a tax evasion scheme on his own.

He actually tells a judge that DC Solar was just on the verge of being able to pay its back. I believe him. I believe him. Okay. Sure. Yeah. He could have paid them back a million times with all that money. And the judge snaps back that Jeff is selling air. He's sentenced to 30 years in a medium security prison in Victorville, California.

He's also ordered to pay almost $800 million back to his clients. The government ends up recouping $8.2 million just by selling Jeff's precious car collection. Paulette gets 11 years and three months in prison. Despite the letter, Jeff writes to the judge pleading for a [01:32:00] softer sentence. It ends with the words sent from my iPhone.

Ronald and Rob each get sentenced to about six years in prison. Joseph, who cooperated with the feds, gets off with a three year sentence. Ari, the outside counsel, is indicted on federal charges in October of 2023. He pleads not guilty. A bunch of DC Solar's former clients also get together to sue everyone involved in the scheme, including Nixon Peabody.

They deny wrongdoing and settle for an undisclosed amount. Forrest was never charged. And actually, he's still giving out tax advice. He writes a monthly column about renewable energy for a journal about tax credits. Saatchi, At the end of the day, no two Ponzi 

COMMERCIAL: schemes are really alike, you know? Upon reflection from this entire story, it just sounds like they had a bit of an idea, they saw how maybe it could work.

Instead of doing it, they [01:33:00] didn't do it, but they did lie to everybody about doing it. And then they got caught. Like, it's really so simple in how dumb it is. 

SECTION C: PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally, section C: public transportation.

The Lost Subways of North America Part 2 - 99% Invisible - Air Date 5-21-24

ROMAN MARS - HOST, 99% INVISIBLE: The next city on our list is Atlanta, Georgia. There was a time when Atlanta was so close to having a really amazing subway system. But ultimately, it was derailed by the same force that had tanked initiatives in many, many other North American cities. And that is plain old racism. 

JAKE BERMAN: I don't think it's an accident that the big turn against public transport coincided with the period of desegregation.

There's no Other way to slice it. 

ROMAN MARS - HOST, 99% INVISIBLE: Back in the 1950s, post war Atlanta was booming. Along with other American cities in the Sun Belt, Atlanta experienced a rise in population after World War II. Cheap and widespread air conditioning brought a solution to the [01:34:00] unbearably hot summers, and many manufacturing jobs were moving to cities in the South.

Atlanta wasn't just booming, though. It was proud. As the most racially progressive city in the former Confederacy, Atlanta called itself. The city too busy to hate. As people flooded into Atlanta, city planners decided to build a new expressway so all these people could move around the city. But a lot of residents opposed the highway construction.

There was an Atlanta anti highway movement that sprung up in the 1950s, along with calls to build a new state of the art Atlanta metro. 

JAKE BERMAN: And the fact was that the anti freeway and pro metro movement had both black and white supporters and in particular the kinds of rich white folk who were opposing the freeway network were on board with this.

ROMAN MARS - HOST, 99% INVISIBLE: Across racial lines, people wanted this subway. That is, until desegregation. When Atlanta's buses were desegregated [01:35:00] in 1959, many white people, even in the city too busy to hate, stopped taking the bus. 

JAKE BERMAN: So much public transport cut down during the era of desegregation. Atlanta's bus ridership dropped by double digits when the buses were desegregated.

ROMAN MARS - HOST, 99% INVISIBLE: It turns out many white people only wanted public transportation so long as they didn't have to share it with black people. Before the metro could actually be built, white support petered out and the idea was dead in the water. The lesson being that ultimately it doesn't matter if the subway you're building is fast, frequent, reliable, and goes everywhere people want to go if half the population refuses to use it.

JAKE BERMAN: Atlanta's not the only place where this happened. You also see this in Detroit, where the northern suburbs of Detroit fought for decades to not take 600 million in federal money to build a subway, because there was a lot of fear in [01:36:00] the northern suburbs of Detroit to having Black people come into these otherwise white neighborhoods.

Even in places like, say, the San Francisco Bay Area, you have a major cut down of the BART system due to racism in San Mateo County, which is immediately to the south of San Francisco. 

ROMAN MARS - HOST, 99% INVISIBLE: San Mateo County, by the way, was 96 percent white in the 1960s when this was all happening, and the people that most vocally resisted BART very much wanted to keep it that way.

JAKE BERMAN: Which meant that the lines beneath Geary Boulevard, across the Golden Gate Bridge, and to Marin County, as well as the line to Palo Alto, where Stanford is, both got canceled because there was no money. 

ROMAN MARS - HOST, 99% INVISIBLE: For any city to have a comprehensive and successful public transportation network, it is so important that the communities that make it up are willing to fund it and use it.

So every time a white suburban neighborhood bows out of a subway line, it shakes the very foundation of the city's entire public transit. [01:37:00] And too often, the result is a much scaled back system that can't go everywhere people want to go.

Comptroller on Congestion Pricing's Indefinite Pause Part 2 - The Brian Lehrer Show - Air Date 6-17-24

BRIAN LEHRER - HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: Are you going to court for congestion pricing? 

BRAD LANDER: Very likely, yes. Look, Governor Hochul took a disastrously wrong turn when she halted the implementation of congestion pricing. Leaves a 15 billion hole in the MTA's capital program.

We can't modernize our decades old signal technology. We can't install the elevators we've been waiting decades for. decades to make the system accessible. That's a legal obligation on the American with Disabilities Act. Congestion pricing is the law of New York State. Governor Huckel does not have the unilateral authority to cancel it.

We actually saw that on Friday when the federal government sent their final approval. Um, so we've assembled this broad coalition of legal experts and plaintiffs who have been harmed by this decision. Um, and we are preparing to help take their cases to court. 

BRIAN LEHRER - HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: And as often happens, when we just say [01:38:00] the words congestion pricing, our lines are exploding, so I want to make sure that everybody has the phone number.

Pro, con, mixed, just questions. Other topics for Brad Lander, they are welcome too. 212 433 WNYC, 212 433 9692. Call or text as some of you already are. Um, you said plaintiffs who have, who are being harmed by the delay in congestion pricing. Who are some of those plaintiffs and how are they being harmed? 

BRAD LANDER: So it's a real mix.

Number one for me are New Yorkers with disabilities. It's been a four decade struggle to get a real commitment from the MTA to make almost all, 95 percent of the 472 subway stations accessible. It's still planned to take another 30 years if we delay congestion pricing. It won't happen. Those are folks 20 percent estimated of our neighbors who [01:39:00] really can't use the subway system and they're relying on those resources, but it's residents of the central business district who are impacted by the emissions, uh, businesses in the central business district that are impacted by congestion.

Uh, one of my favorites here, I think, a, a potential claim is, comes from some MTA board members. They voted on a capital plan counting on congestion pricing revenues and they have a reasonable expectation, uh, that the state will comply with their responsibilities under the law. 

BRIAN LEHRER - HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: Um, why haven't you filed yet?

And I guess you're not looking for an immediate injunction against the governor so the toll can go into effect. on June 30th as planned? 

BRAD LANDER: So the actions that need to take place, uh, that haven't yet happened are still coming. The state transportation commissioner needs to sign the final tolling agreement.

That was always going to happen in the coming days. The MTA [01:40:00] board is anticipated to vote on June 26th. So it'll be helpful to have more clear information about what is and is not happening in the coming days. There's an argument that simply by her statement, The governor has violated the 2019 law, but there'll be a clearer and better case as we see what happens over the next few days.

BRIAN LEHRER - HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: Which means this is not happening on June 30th, right? 

BRAD LANDER: Unfortunately, the governor's action is definitely is going to be an indefinite pause. It's not going to happen on June 30th. I mean, hope springs eternal. I still hope she'll change her mind. There's still time now. We've already spent a half billion dollars on the infrastructure.

The cameras are up. It's ready to go. Um, but I suspect it will be delayed, uh, at least some, uh, hopefully our lawsuits and public pressure and clarity that we need those resources and the heat we're going to have this week with bad air quality days and the clarity we need. The emissions reductions [01:41:00] will turn things around very soon.

The Lost Subways of North America Part 3 - 99% Invisible - Air Date 5-21-24

ROMAN MARS - HOST, 99% INVISIBLE: The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 changed the game.

Coming off the tail of World War II, the US government believed that America needed big roads spanning the country in order to move troops should there be a ground invasion in the future. So, under the act, the government subsidized almost the entire cost of building new highways. We never did have that ground invasion, but we're still dealing with the consequences of the act for one It did provide an easy way to move between cities But it also incentivized cities and states to literally bulldoze many black neighborhoods to make way for all the new development It also happens to be one reason that America really loves cars But there's a notable place in North America where the Federal Aid Highway Act didn't apply, and that would be Canada.

As highways went up like crazy in post war America, Canadian cities saw a cautionary tale in all this. So when Seattle built highways in the 1950s, [01:42:00] Vancouver, just across the border, decided to do things differently.

I want to talk about Canadian cities and, and how they kind of had this sort of benefit of seeing what highways did. When they were planning, um, can you talk about that a little bit? 

JAKE BERMAN: So, Vancouver got started late on its freeway system. And, for a point of comparison, Seattle got started with its freeway building extravaganza after World War II.

Vancouver didn't really get started with the planning process until the 60s. So there was about a 10 to 20 year gap in there where Vancouver could see the results happening in its neighbor three hours to the south. And what they found was they didn't like those results. They didn't like the smog, they didn't like the pollution, and further afield, they saw the results in Los Angeles.

There was a strong political contention that used the specter of [01:43:00] Vancouver turning into the next LA that ultimately defeated all of the freeway plans for Greater Vancouver. 

ROMAN MARS - HOST, 99% INVISIBLE: Wow. And so what did they end up with? 

JAKE BERMAN: Well, then they ended up with the famous Skytrain, which was the product of a weird confluence of circumstances.

Vancouver bid and won a World's Fair for 1986, and it was a World's Fair about transport. Now Vancouver didn't have anything special in their transport department, and so the provincial authorities had to go scrambling to find a transport system that they could build between 1980 

ROMAN MARS - HOST, 99% INVISIBLE: Without really any other options, Vancouver asked the government of Canada for help building a train system in their city before the big event.

And basically, the Canadian government said, yes, but under one condition. They planned to use the World's Fair as a product placement for a Canadian rail car company that had been floundering for years. 

JAKE BERMAN: And the government of Canada decided that [01:44:00] This was a perfect opportunity to bail out a failing rail car manufacturer that was owned by the province of Ontario.

The province of Ontario had developed this automated subway system that nobody wanted to buy. As a result, the government of Canada said, Fine, we will fund your World's Fair, we will fund your construction of your subway, but you must use this technology. Like, the company is based in Ontario, and not even the Toronto Transit Commission wanted to buy this thing.

ROMAN MARS - HOST, 99% INVISIBLE: The new system was so hard to sell in part because it did have this one major drawback. It required non standard components, which meant cities wouldn't be able to easily switch vendors down the line. 

JAKE BERMAN: Thankfully, it worked and the SkyTrain is a huge success, but It had huge risks to what they were doing at the time.

ROMAN MARS - HOST, 99% INVISIBLE: And all because they were trying to impress, you know, like, or fulfill this mandate of this transportation based, um, expo. 

JAKE BERMAN: Oh, yeah. 

ROMAN MARS - HOST, 99% INVISIBLE: So could you [01:45:00] describe the SkyTrain, like, how it works and, you know, what it's like to be on it? 

JAKE BERMAN: So the SkyTrain is an elevated, like the one you have in Chicago. The difference is its trains are shorter and it's fully automated.

ROMAN MARS - HOST, 99% INVISIBLE: Meaning the SkyTrain runs without a driver. 

JAKE BERMAN: Yeah. So. Because they're automated, you can run frequent service all day. And as far as operating costs, this dramatically reduces them compared to having a manned system. 

ROMAN MARS - HOST, 99% INVISIBLE: How common is the automated system? Why doesn't everyone do that? 

JAKE BERMAN: Most modern subway lines can be designed with automation in mind, but it's very difficult to retrofit them to an existing subway system which was not designed without a driver.

For more information, visit www. FEMA. gov So in a place like Chicago or New York or Boston, or for that matter, Montreal or Toronto, it's really hard to convert a system from manual control to fully automated control. Um, in North America, Vancouver is really the best example of an automated system that works [01:46:00] well.

There are some in North America which were designed for partial automation, like Bard in San Francisco or the Washington Metro, but because these ancient systems haven't always been maintained the right way, a lot of them are still stuck on manual control. Interesting.

Credits

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today. As always keep the comments coming in—I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or anything else. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at (202) 999-3991 or simply email me to [email protected]. 

The additional sections of the show included clips from Today, Explained, The Energy Gang, DW Planet A, Scam Influencers, 99% Invisible, and The Brian Lehrer Show. Further details are in the show notes. 

Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our transcriptionist quartet, Ken, Brian, Ben, and Andrew for their volunteer work, helping put our transcripts [01:47:00] together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her bonus show co-hosting. And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. 

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So, coming to from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington, DC, my name is Jay!, and this has been the Best of the Left Podcast coming to twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show from BestOfTheLeft.com