Deploy24, Plenary 4: Keynote: American Leadership

Secretary Jennifer Granholm. Okay, I think I'm the last person between you and drinks or whatever you want. So thank you for sticking around for a minute because I just want to take a moment and recognize this is the last time probably in terms of a larger setting that I'll be speaking as secretary. But I say that because it has been such an amazing privilege to be in this role at this time with the tools that we have, with the incredible teammates like Jigger, like David Crane, like so many who are here as part of DOE. It has been an amazing time. I often say to our group that sometimes when you're in the middle of history, it's hard to tell because you're in the middle of it, you know. But it's not just us that have been making history, and we have, but it's all I embrace all of you as history makers as well. This past four years has been full of action. So, you know, when you're energy secretary, of course, climate change is a global thing. As we know, you have to form relationships with energy ministers from around the world. And when I first became secretary, one of the great partners that we've had is the UK. And so I went over to the UK to meet with my counterpart. And while we were over there doing bilateral meeting, I asked, could I see Churchill's bunker underneath 10 Downing Street? Have any of you been there to see his war cabinet? It's very cool, right? Well, in the war cabinet, he has got this sign. Action this day. I shouldn't say it's his sign. He had labels that he would put on every action that came across his desk, saying that he was not going to be patient. He wanted action every single day, of course, being at war. I brought home labels and put them in the secretary's offices. And if you've been to our office, perhaps you've seen them. Action this day, which is all about deploy, deploy, deploy. And so we have been blessed with an incredible team to be able to make this happen. An incredible team of career people who have been shepherding us, an incredible team of scientists and researchers who've been doing vetting, an incredible team of private sector folks who we brought in, like Jigar, Vanessa Chan, who I know was here earlier, Leslie Biddle, so many who we brought in to make sure that the technology that we're vetting is able to be successful in the market. And so as a result of that, 98% of the programs that the department was given under the Inflation Reduction Act or the bipartisan infrastructure law, 98% have had at least one round of funding go out the door. 98% is amazing in government speak, and the only reason why it's not 100% is because some of the programs require a start date beyond our term. And some of them are multi-year programs. I like to joke that David Crane is the $80 billion man, although Jigar could rival him on that. But the bottom line is more than half a trillion dollars has gone invested in the United States since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law. Amazing! It has, right, more than half a trillion dollars just since the passage of these laws. These laws have made investing in America irresistible. It has made this energy transition inevitable and inexorable. I want to talk a minute about why I feel hopeful, but here's one reason. This map just depicts the 900 factories, 900 plus now, that have announced they are expanding in America or coming to America to make clean energy projects since the passage of these bills. 900 factories, which is amazing. And the sound you hear is another announcement. That's so far, so far, every day there are new announcements of expansions of clean energy in this country. Honestly, and those are not just dots. Those are communities that have been in. I'm the former governor of Michigan, and when I was governor, it was during the Great Recession and before all of these manufacturing jobs left this country. And communities who were impacted fell to their knees and sidewalks rolled up. What this shows is that these communities are being brought back to life. In fact, 80 percent of the half a trillion dollars that have been invested, 80 percent more than that, are going to communities that have below average college graduation rates or below average weekly wages. We're healing the world from an era of disinvestment and offshoring. We are reversing that. It is an energy revolution in this country. It makes me so happy because I was governor at a time when it was so sad that so many jobs were leaving. This is an amazing thing. Who knew policy works? It's a great thing. But it's not just the manufacturing, of course. You've heard this, I'm sure, while you've been here talking about it, but the fact that the generation of clean energy is astronomical. We've got, this year alone, 60 gigawatts of clean energy being added to the grid because of the incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act. All those developers who are out here are very busy making sure that they can get their projects in the ground and take advantage of the tax credit. 60 gigawatts, 30 Hoover Dams worth of clean energy in just this year, which is more than double what we have installed in any other year. And that trajectory is going to continue to rise. Bless you. So this is an amazing, amazing revelation and part of that history that is being made. And we're on our way just because of these two laws. 80% clean electricity by 2030, 40% reduction in emissions by 2030. Just these two laws. That doesn't take into account the reduction in the CO2 emissions. That doesn't take into account, for example, what states and local governments or the private sector or NGOs are doing. This, we are on our way to getting to the bigger goals of 100% clean electricity by 2035 and net zero by 2050, which is the big goal. So if I go back to our map here and look at what's going on across the country, let me just look at a couple of technologies that I think illustrate what the amazing thing has been that has been happening because of the loan program office, because of the manufacturing and energy supply chains office, because of what's been going on at DOE and for other reasons as well. These dots represent batteries, battery assembly, but supply chain for batteries as well. There are over 300 announcements of batteries since the passage of Bill and Ira. 300 battery firms, right? And of course, for those of you who are in this battery space, you know a battery has anode, cathode, separator material, electrolyte, critical materials. And so what has been going on in that space as we try to build back supply chains? We know that China has had over 80% domination of battery making in this world, and we are bringing it back. So this is just an example. We have cut the lithium dependence on China by half, or we will have by 2030 because of the investments that have been made by the loan program office and MASC and our manufacturing and energy supply chain office. You know, 375 kilotons per year of lithium carbonate in 2021. 1820, obviously a greater percentage of growth, but the amount of dependence on China is significantly reduced by half. So what else are we doing? Like where else are we bringing the supply chains back? Again, China having dominated this space because they had an industrial strategy and we now have one to rival them. Many of you may have seen that it is projected that we will be building enough batteries inside of the United States by 2030 to account for 15 million vehicles. Now, there's about 15 million vehicles that are sold every year, not just electric vehicles, all vehicles. So we will be producing enough to meet our goal to hopefully have half of our electric vehicles electrified, half of our vehicles electrified by 2030. Even if we don't get to that, we will still be producing so much in the form of batteries that we will be able to use them here and export as well. If you look at some of the announcements that you may have been talking about, like ENTEC giving a $1.2 billion loan in Indiana for separator material. These are just a couple of examples that you probably have talked about a little bit here. CELA in Moses Lake and Group 14 doing anode materials in Moses Lake, Washington. Who knew Moses Lake? It's got now an economic cluster of battery companies that have lifted that formerly agricultural town from its knees. All across the country, this is happening with the supply chain. And it's not just vehicle batteries, of course. It's long duration energy storage as well. I love the fact that you've got EOS, which was an announcement this week, again, out of our loan program office. This is one of the things that's great about EOS. First of all, there's zinc bromide batteries, so they're not using lithium. So it's using a much more abundant material. The same thing is true for form energy, because it's an iron air battery. But EOS and form are both located in former factories. So EOS is an old Westinghouse site, now hiring hundreds of people for this long duration 10-hour battery. Form is a former steel plant in Weirton, West Virginia, where the sidewalks had rolled up there. And now on the site of where the steel mill was, they're building an iron air battery there. And again, hundreds of people being employed and hope being brought back to these communities across the country. Very, for me, very exciting. Now, batteries are one thing. This is true with every element of the clean energy economy. I mean, you look, there's 147 factor announcements with respect to solar and solar supply chain. There's nuclear. The nuclear part of things is very exciting. There's 42 announcements that have been made. Who knew, really, four years ago, who was talking about nuclear? Who was talking about nuclear? We have created a revolution of this clean energy. We're not going to get to that goal of 100% clean electricity by 2035 or net zero by 2050 without nuclear. And so small modular reactors, the whole fuel cycle that is being developed in the United States, high assay, low enriched uranium being developed in the United States for small modular reactors, keeping sites online, so making sure they're redeveloped and making sure that the reactors can have a much longer life, shelf life. And fusion as well. All these fusion companies that have started up as well. Huge promise. Again, hat tip to our Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which demonstrated that, in fact, fusion can happen, that it's possible to do fusion, where we had for decades not thought that that was possible. But that has happened in the past, like two years ago. That happened at that laboratory. Fusion, of course, fusing of atoms together to produce more energy than it took to be able to generate the reaction to begin with, and producing no radioactive waste. So very exciting to be able to see that. And just one hat tip, too. My personal favorite, and I know you just had Tim Latimer talking, but I love geothermal. Clean baseload power. We want to see it all throughout the country. There's so much potential with the heat beneath our feet. So very excited about what we're seeing in this geothermal space because of the ability to translate the skills, et cetera, that comes from the oil and gas industry to be able to extract clean energy from beneath the surface. So this is really, when you think about it, a transition that is built to last. I know there's a lot of folks who are worried about the change in administration, but here is why I have hope. I have hope for three reasons. First of all, 80% of the investments of that 500 billion plus dollars are going to red districts and red states, red communities. For every one dollar that's invested by the federal government, six dollars are invested by the private sector. And all those dollars largely are going to red states. It would be political malpractice to undo the incentives that are causing all of this economic activity in those red states. So I have hope for that. I also have hope because a lot of the technologies that we have been focused on are technologies that have bipartisan support. There's an oasis of bipartisan support for hydroelectric power, for nuclear power, for carbon management strategies, carbon capture and sequestration, direct air capture, for research and development. There's huge bipartisan support for what's going on in the labs, for geothermal, as I mentioned, for clean hydrogen as well, and of course for critical minerals and critical materials. So that's encouraging. We've got members of Congress who want to see these investments. And you know that 900 plus map that I showed you, those announcements, a lot of them are announcements. Some of them are groundbreakings. Some of them are ribbon cuttings. But all of that activity is going to happen over the next few years. So I have hope. And the third reason I have hope is because of you, because of the private sector, because of NGOs, because of state and local governments, because of those who've been in this space. It does not matter who is in the White House. This transition has begun. This transition is happening. This transition is moving forward with or without a president that in the White House that is a clean energy advocate. Countries, when we were just in Azerbaijan at COP, countries are raising their hands and saying, we got this. We got this. So, you know, I'm hopeful that you got this. Let's just pretend this is the baton and I'm passing it to you all. I hope you are willing to take the baton and run with it. And to go back to history a bit. In World War II, there was this expression, keep calm and carry on. People, carry on.