Dr. Lola Infante is the Portfolio Director for the Department of Energy's Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations at Management Solutions LLC.
What Does the Work Entail to Support an Ambitious New Agency with the Hefty Charge to Ensure Clean Energy Projects Across the Country?
Infante: The Management Solutions team is essentially an extension of the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED). That's how I like us to see ourselves. We provide expert support on demand and à la carte to help the office achieve its goals of scaling the adoption of new energy technologies through over $20 billion worth of partnerships with the private sector. We provide support in a wide variety of areas, so the federal staff have time to do what they do best, which is execute on policy and get amazing projects going as soon as possible. For example, we have helped the OCED team set up the office, which is relatively new, only a couple of years old. We have supported them with the development of guides, procedures, and policies and the selection and implementation of platforms and other business infrastructure. We've helped them hire a lot of their staff and continue to help them run the office efficiently so they can get to work. We have also provided technical expert support for the office to make the initial project selections. We are now supporting them through the negotiation process for those projects and helping the different teams through all the technical, regulatory, and administrative hoops that are required to get the projects awarded and up and running so we can really start the acceleration and scalability that we all need.
What Should We Keep in Mind as We Move Through Another Record-Breaking Heat Summer? Are Clean Energy Projects the Answer to Grid Overload for the Future?
Infante: I think renewable energy, energy storage, and distributed energy resources can certainly be helpful to make the grid reliable and respond well when there is an extreme weather event like the heatwave that we've just experienced. They help diversify the power supply and, especially in the case of batteries, can provide the operational flexibility that the grid needs. The main things we need to make the grid ready for these extreme weather events are having enough system capacity to provide the electricity we need and having enough flexibility in the system so the grid can adjust quickly to production or demand fluctuations. Each type of energy has different characteristics. They all provide electrons to the system, but they all do that differently. Solar, for example, performs well when there is sunlight, but not so great when there's a hurricane. Another example is how nuclear power is a very reliable source but has limited ability to go up and down quickly, so it has more difficulty adjusting if demand varies rapidly.
In these important weather events, flexibility is key. We need all the technologies—the 24/7, the variable, the quick response, and the not-so-quick response—to make sure that the grid can respond to rapid changes of demand or production, especially in the case of a heat wave, but also in case of other weather events like hurricanes, wildfires, etc.
What is the Most Important Thing About the Energy Transition?
Infante: When it comes to the energy transition, I think it’s important to understand that it will take time and a lot of commitment from a lot of different stakeholders. We have a lot of new technologies that we can work with, but deploying them at the scale that we need is going to take time. Experience shows that it can take several decades to bring new technologies to full commercialization from the pilot stages.
Also, deployment at scale will also require a regulatory environment that is conducive to that scalability. For example, we need enough transmission to take the power where we need it. And we need regulations that will facilitate and accelerate regulatory permitting and siting so we can start breaking ground earlier rather than later so we can really get this transition going.
What is the Relationship Between Energy Security, Clean Energy, and National Security?
Infante: I understand energy security as having secure and affordable access to vital energy sources. Energy security and national security are one and the same. We need electricity to power our critical infrastructure, such as water systems, computers, and phones that are needed to operate our economy, for example. We also need other energy sources, such as gasoline or natural gas, for example to power our cars and some vital industrial processes.
What Keeps You Up at Night?
Infante: We have big goals that we want to achieve, both national and international goals, but also corporate goals. I'm afraid that the private sector and civil society are not going to be able to achieve those major goals on their own. A successful and accelerated energy transition needs government support and regulatory enablers. There are a lot of efforts going on at the same time and they all contribute to the transition, but there is no coordination. It would be helpful to have a holistic, cohesive national energy policy that will make sure that all the different pieces come together in a way that optimizes our efforts and maximizes their impact throughout the energy economy.
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