The Clean Energy Transition, Explained Through Football

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

If the clean energy transition were a football game, how far down the field would we be right now? Is it time for a Hail Mary, or can we keep marching slowly and steadily down the field? Today, we go beyond just the clean energy playbook and instead position the entire energy ecosystem as a football game. And Ahmed Moussa, founder of Electric Bridge Consulting, is here to coach us towards the end zone. And if you're watching on YouTube, be sure to subscribe and like this video. And let's get into it.

So, Ahmed, you came to us a few weeks back excited about an interesting metaphor that spoke very personally to me, comparing the energy sector today to the sport of football. And apologies to our World Cup fanatics, but I am talking about American football. Can you give us a high level overview of this analogy?

Ahmed Moussa (0:46)

Yeah, thanks, man, for the opportunities. Always a pleasure talking to you in Energy Central. A lot of states are very active in their, I would say, race towards 100% clean or renewable energy. So I always thought that, you know, the 100% clean energy, let's say in New Jersey, is the goal or is the price, or in this case is the Super Bowl. So there's a lot of steps that the teams, the managers, the players, the fans, like a lot of people have to work together pretty much towards that common goal. You know, it's football season, as you mentioned, you know, the 60 Hertz football, so it's easy for the others. And we just had the other football, the 50 Hertz football, soccer.

So I think it's best to get to understand, and then I could just spend like a second. Pretty much is very simple if you never played the game or watched the game. You want to go from point A to point B. You could go ideally, as you mentioned, you could take a Hail Mary and go all the way in one shot, but usually that's not really the case. So imagine you have a 100 yards and then you break it down like 10 yards at a time. So the discussion today is, that's really what we're trying to do. At the end of the day, you have to go through so many games, and after you qualify in many games, you get to the Super Bowl, or in this case, a very reliable, resilient, and a cost-effective manner to the 100% clean energy. So that's really what we're trying to do.

I've been very blessed to have worked a lot of places, focused on the planning, and in my last role, utility of the future. There's one thing the utility of the future group should focus on, is how would we, as utilities, survive in the 100% clean or renewable energy.

SPEAKER_1 (2:11)

Excellent. That's a helpful background. I want you to walk us through this, and starting at the end, you kind of tease it out there, but what is the ultimate end goal, which would be a touchdown here for energy stakeholders in your review? You mentioned 100% clean energy. Is that alone the goal, or is there a bigger picture, what that touchdown looks like?

Ahmed Moussa (2:29)

That's definitely the goal, but I think what we have seen recently, number one, it's a very hard goal to attain. I would say, and Energy Central did a great job on this one, the biggest, I'm not going to say the issue, but we have to be very focused on customer affordability. It's one thing to get to the 100% clean energy, but you can do it in a way, number one, it's not sustainable, it's not technical, and it's not financially, I guess, feasible, which we'll talk about. So that's why I thought when we break it down to a simple game that people are used to seeing, and the idea is just in case you've never watched the game, you could keep going again from, let's say, 10 yards at a time, but a lot of time, you would lose some yards. So you do something wrong, or there's a penalty, or there's a safety event, or something happens, you take multiple steps back. So how do we continue marching?

Again, for today, think of it to be reliable, resilient, and an affordable manner. That would be kind of the triangle that we try to get to the end line within this triangle piece.

SPEAKER_1 (3:24)

Yeah, and for people who, again, are maybe newer to the game of football, the instinct might be, well, why don't you just go for that touchdown right away? And we call that a Hail Mary, going for it all in one high-risk but high-reward heave. But what you're telling us is that's not necessarily the Prudence approach, and what you should be doing is going one first down at a time. So can you talk to us about how that parallels what you see as the right and wrong approach to move towards that end goal?