3 Questions with Alison Silverstein

Alison Silverstein is an independent energy consultant, researcher, and former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission senior advisor. With nearly four decades of experience in the electricity industry, Alison has had huge impacts on several parts of the clean energy transition: technology adoption, grid reliability, design, transmission and distribution, energy efficiency, and more. Alison spoke with us about her role in the industry, innovations to come, and surprising industry developments.

What about the energy industry drew you to make it a career?

I joined the utility industry originally because I thought energy was fascinating and an important leverage point for society. And being in the utility industry is consistent with growing up as a Girl Scout or Boy Scout — the work can be boring but it is important, and it requires a combination of common sense, expertise, and a willingness to learn and work through tough problems. The electric business has become wilder and more fun over the past few decades as key assumptions, like economies to scale for large power plants, gave way to new technologies, fuel sources, competition from disrupted generation, transmission, and customer-side options. I have been concerned about climate change and worked to advance clean energy opportunities for decades — but today, the electric industry is a critical nexus and leverage point for climate, the economy, equity, public health, safety, and even cultural and human survival in too many locations. So, if you want to feel like your work matters, the energy industry and the electric industry offer a wide variety of problems worth working on.

What are some key innovations necessary to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United States?

I see three key innovations necessary to achieve deep reductions in GHGs in the US electric industry:

1. Widely deployable, low-cost, long-term energy storage, including batteries distributed across the grid and energy-efficient buildings hosting photovoltaics (PV), batteries, and even thermal energy storage, so we can survive three-week lapses of wind and solar resources. I do not see electric vehicle batteries as that magic bullet because of high transactions and infrastructure modification costs, as well as slow and inequitable rates of deployment, particularly in dense metro load centers.
2. Way more transmission with far better throughput. We need to build much more transmission to support the development and delivery of clean energy resources. And we need to upgrade all the transmission we have using better conductors, better transformers, better sensors, and software to get more throughput and better resilience from the T&D assets we have already. We will need even more equipment standardization, interoperability, and interchangeability to lower installed costs, improve manufacturing and deployment speed, and improve system resilience as the environmental and human threats increase
3. Some highly reliable, low- or zero-carbon resources to take the place of coal, natural gas and big nuclear plants. Carbon sequestration will not be getting cheap any time soon, natural gas generation has methane emissions associated with gas production and fenceline community costs, small modular nuclear does not look like it will be economic real soon, and we still haven’t solved the nuclear waste disposal problem. The?rumors late last year about a new fusion reaction are very cool, but that’s a long way from widespread technology deployment. In the meantime, it would be great if US engineers could help decarbonize emissions from Africa and southeast Asia by sending them PV, solar stoves, and batteries to help them burn less wood and dung for lighting, water pumping, and other basic uses.

What energy-related event surprised you the most in the past 12 months?

Two things. First, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which apart from the fact that it’s a heinous, brutal act of terrorist aggression and murder, the war drove energy prices up globally and highlighted the harmful human and economic consequences of fossil fuel dependence in modern societies. Russia cutting off most gas supplies to Europe has driven huge appreciation and adoption of energy efficiency measures like heat pumps and building insulation worldwide. Second, the fact that the Biden Administration was able to assemble and pass both the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is amazing. Both will have big impacts on America’s built infrastructure and the way we produce and consume energy at home and eventually worldwide, advancing the tipping points for adoption of energy efficient appliances, housing, electric vehicles, lower carbon industrial manufacturing, and more.

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