Original subtitles

You couldn't really miss Gianni Agnelli.

He was involved with everything Italians love.

Sex, cars, and sports.

Every woman was in love with him.

Every man wanted to be him.

People that were around him, they were all in awe of him.

Gianni had a great eye.

Obsessed by aesthetics.

Everybody tried to copy him.

When he was around, the face of life changed.

Electricity.

Gianni played a big role in saving Fiat.

Fiat put the whole of Italy on four wheels.

Then the unrest started.

We had the sense of evolution.

He had great sympathy for workers

and also for their plight.

The industrial comeback of Italy is Fiat.

And it changed Italy completely.

Mr. Agnelli. He was the king of Italy.

Are you aware of what's going down on the street today?

You know what's going on down the street? Nope.

You know that there's a climate march

going on down the street? You don't know.

Do you know there's a climate march going on down the street?

What is it? A climate march.

No, I didn't know. You don't know about that.

There might end up being more people waiting for the new iPhone

than for the parade. We'll see.

And if that's where the parade's gonna be,

it's completely empty, so.

I've always been a little skeptical of marches.

I feel like they're more for the marchers than anything else.

I had no idea what it was gonna be like.

All I'd been told is that they were expecting about 40,000 people.

A little bit more energy going on down here.

I think there's more people

than they thought there would be.

No. Just touch the screen?

Yeah, just touch the screen. Don't touch the...

No, keep it this way. Oh, like that.

- We're a radical group. - You are?

Yeah. What's so radical about you?

Well, we advocate for a separate hypothetical militant underground

to actually carry out direct actions against industrial infrastructure.

Good luck with that. Thank you.

Hey, Habitat animal, come here!

How's it going today? It's a bad, bad day for polar bears.

Yeah, it is.

Climate change has got to go!

Hey, hey, ho, ho!

Climate change has got to go!

Hey, hey, ho, ho! Yeah! Whoo!

There's often a disconnect.

Like, people say they're green, but they still drive everywhere.

And they make thousands of copies at work.

Sandy was that wake up call

to us as New Yorkers, to say,

"Climate change is actually a real issue that we have to deal with."

- Whose streets? Our streets! - Whose streets? Our streets!

Look who showed up at the climate march,

Mark Ruffalo. Hello.

Walmart, Google, Apple,

Crayola, Johnson & Johnson...

all of these companies have moved to a hundred percent renewable energy,

not because they necessarily care about climate change,

although I think in their hearts they do... Yeah.

...but because they see it's economically better for them.

Well, I'll tell you something.

You know, you see something like this

and see all the commitments that organizations are willing to make,

and then I'm like, "Really?"

I can't turn my thermostat from 72 to 68?"

Close to a half a million people

wanting some action on climate change.

The whole thing left me thinking about some very specific questions.

So I'm thinking back on that climate march,

and the bottom line to me is

that 400,000 people showed up

and said, "Do something!"

I mean, it was oddly like, celebratory in a way.

I can't help but think that renewable energy

or the hope of it is tied up in that somehow,

because, as far as I'm concerned,

I don't know what else would give people a sense of hope, right?

The question is, "What about renewable energy?"

I mean you hear a lot about, "Oh yeah, they promise," or this and that.

But honestly, honestly...

can we make enough renewable energy

to supply the world and replace fossil fuels?

How would we do that?

And will we do that? Most importantly.

That's what I want to know.

You know, there's a family angle to this business about energy.

Like a lot of people, my grandfather, Charlie Redford,

he struggled supporting his young family during the Depression.

Eventually, he got an accounting job at Standard Oil.

And 30 years later, he retired near the top

of the Chevron corporate ladder.

His son, Robert, my dad, took quite a different path.

He started out working at the loading bays at the Standard Oil refinery,

but his penchant for the arts took him in a whole other direction.

the movies.

And well, that worked out pretty good.

I'm Alexander Pierce.

My father served in the 101st. Come on in.

But being in Hollywood was never going to be enough for my dad,

or my mom, for that matter.

I grew up in a home with active and engaged parents,

particularly when it came to the promise of solar energy.

They even made an Academy Award-nominated short film about it.

- I'm very worried. - Somebody do something.

- Don't look at me, man. - Find more oil!

One of the most important solar energy developments

involves photovoltaic cells.

So you'd think with this sort of pedigree

that I would have an honorary degree in renewable energy, right?

But the truth is, I don't.

Luckily, I have a friend who's doing well with energy

and environmental projects on the global markets.

And in his spare time, he helps connect philanthropic capital to energy innovation.

Hey, hey! How are you?

Good. Good to see you. Good to see you!

So about 10 years ago, there was this epiphany that I had.

I worked at a company where we tried to forecast

the future of the Internet and digital media.

But then I realized that that's what the last 30 or 40 years had been about,

sort of the story of humanity was about the microprocessor

and all the things that it enabled, that changed our lives.

But I felt like the next 30 or 40 years was about energy,

because that's the lowest common denominator of every other resource.

If you have infinite energy,

you can boil the ocean and make water you can drink.

If you have infinite energy,

you can reconfigure the chemical bonds in a plant

and make a fuel you can put in your car.

So if we're going to scale the world for 11 billion people,

energy is what it's about.

What you just described to me is exactly what my problem is,

because it...

I... I just keep on bumping up against these Uber realities...

And it's too big. It's too big!

So first and foremost, it sounds like you are not doing much

and that you have... energy paralysis.

It's very hard to get excited and do something meaningful

about something you can't see, right? Right.

You have never seen energy.

What you have seen is the result of it.

You've seen the car move. You've seen the light come on.

Maybe it would be, for me, for my own edification... Yeah.

...if you could take me on the journey of the lonely electron.

The easiest way for me to think about this

has been the analogy to water.

So think of the electricity grid

exactly like a set of water pipes.

The amount of water that's flowing, right,

the current is the size of the pipe.

And then how much power we're delivering,

how strong that motion is is the pressure,

how hard we're pushing that water. That's voltage.

So if you want to think about electricity,

moving electrons just like moving water,

the size of the pipe is current,

the force of the water is the voltage.

That make sense so far? Yes.

Okay. So there is a power plant somewhere,

and at that place, we make some form of heat,

like we burn coal or gas

or we have some radioactive reaction that makes heat,

and we use that heat to boil water.

We boil water, we get steam.

And that steam goes, "Do-do-do-do-do-do-do," up.

And when it goes up, it turns a turbine around.

That turbine turning makes electrons move.

And out of that power plant, we're pushing a big number of electrons...

...down a big pipe.

But then you come to this little thing called a substation.

And what happens at the substation is

we take these really high voltages that are kind of dangerous,

and we're going to step them down, so we're now pushing less electrons,

less hard than we did right out of the plant.

And then that electron moves through the wires to go to your home.

It goes out of the socket through your phone,

making the screen light up, then goes back in,

and then... goes through the rest of the system.

And by the way, you can actually do this.

You can track it yourself. I am a trail runner,

and the most instructive exercise for me

to understand the power system

was to find a power plant

and then track the power line corridor

where the transmission lines go,

and just start running.

So off I went, just me and my phone camera.

Coming in here, they're going that way,

they're going that way, and they're going over there.

There's towers going everywhere.

Super trippy driving by the Chevron refinery.

That's where my grandpa worked.

And it's just so ugly.

What do you mean you're looking for electricity?

What is that about? I just thought I would try

to figure out where the hell

my electricity comes from.

Can't you check your meter and find out that way?

Well, but it doesn't say where the origin is.

It doesn't tell you literally where it's from.

Well, what an interesting little journey you're on.

- You could say... - And incredibly boring.

Yeah.

Pretty sleepy little town.

I mean, it seems like it's holding it's own economically.

Probably because there is a power plant here, right?

Here it is!

Here's my nearest power plant.

The Pittsburg Generating Station.

I found it.

Just a tangle of utility lines going over everything.

It is suitably depressing.

And as you can see, it makes electricity,

and everyone says, "Oh, all right, well, that's good enough."

But when you turn this way...

and look across the bay...

Whoa!

Tons of windmills.

So, you tell me,

how you do you want to make your power?

I mean, intuitively speaking,

is this what you want your power plant to look like?

Or that?

Holy shit, they're massive!

Wow!

I've been impressed by a lot of technology in my lifetime, but...

I don't know if anything tops this.

- Where are you?

I'm probably about an hour and a half from home.

As you can imagine,

I'm not going to be home in time for dinner.

Oh, you won't be home for dinner?

I've been out in the garden. Don't worry.

No, no, no, no, don't worry. Don't worry.

Good. I'll see you in a few hours.

- Hey, Dad! - Hi, Leens!

What's up? Yeah.

I'm thinking, you know, when you come home,

how about you come on a road trip with me

to explore some renewable energy in the desert?

What? Why would I go?

Because you're really fun, and I just...

I'm always looking for an excuse to be around you.

Don't you feel like you should...

bring someone who actually knows about... that stuff?

Like someone who could counter your ignorance?

We can't just have two dumb-dumbs out there on the road.

I'd like to say that was the first time

my daughter dropkicked one of my plans,

but it would be a lie.

However, I did have better luck

with an entrepreneur musician friend

who builds guitar amps in his spare time.

You can make an argument that, "Well, maybe it's too late."

That's one argument, right? "Screw it."

We're all doomed," you know?

Suck the carbon down... Yeah.

...and you know, wait for the apocalypse. Yeah.

The counterargument is, "Every little bit helps."

We're on the site of the world's largest

commercial solar thermal facility.

So we have almost 180,000 heliostats,

what we call heliostats...

the mirrors that are surrounding us...

and three, you know, significant towers.

I'm going to do something at great risk to my own image,

and that is try and explain what this plant is doing right now.

Great. It's not that hard.

That makes it even worse. Yeah.

There is a star up here emitting ultraviolet light.

It's coming down... I'd go with "infrared" on that, Jamie.

Okay, all right, infrared 'cause we're talking about heat.

And it's hitting hundreds of thousands of mirrors.

And the cool thing about these mirrors, they're all aiming at that!

And that's why that thing is glowing

like the Eye of Sauron as we're standing here.

That's not the end of it, though.

Apparently there's water in there, and it super heats,

and it drives that steam down that tower,

and goes somewhere and turns turbines and makes electricity and goes off.

Touché. Touché, Jamie.

From our perspective, if you thought that we were going to burn coal

a hundred years from now and that that was going to be a sustainable approach,

I think you're grossly underestimating the trajectory of technology.

Right. So there's very competitive electricity from renewables.

The problem is the intermittency.

Yeah. So solar thermal is clearly aimed

when we compete against renewables,

we're competing against the fact that we can deliver energy on demand.

So we're dispatchable.

When we compete against a gas plant,

we're competing against the fact that we don't have emissions.

They do.

And we're supplying power to California grid.

That's right. We're part of the renewable mix.

We think the current grid system

could sustain 25 to 30 percent renewables.

With a smarter grid... meaning we could manage

the intermittency of renewables better...

you can get an even higher penetration.

California's talking about a 50 percent standard.

There were, of course, environmental issues building this plant out here.

Sure. But very significantly,

you didn't clear a bunch of land.

You can see there's... there's weeds growing

underneath these, uh, these reflectors.

Right. It was all done in place, basically, right?

Any power plant is going to be invasive by definition.

Mm-hmm. It's a physical facility. If you build a building,

- you build a power plant. - Sure.

So the trade is, what can you do

to be least environmentally impactful?

There's a small group of people who wouldn't want

the desert intruded on for any purpose.

Sure. And for them, there's no solution.

There's nothing you can do to say, "We've mitigated.

We've done the best we can."

I went to West Point, got my engineering degree at West Point.

- Oh, you were military? - Tell me again,

you think this is invasive, so you'd rather go out

and protect our oil interests in places that hate us.

And for that, you're willing to trade dollars and bodies,

and that's a good trade for you? That's a good trade?

The true price of foreign oil.

No one is more familiar with that

than the US Armed Forces.

Interestingly, the Armed Forces,

the Navy in particular, was beginning to embrace renewable energy,

and I was determined to understand why.

I'm in San Diego, man. I'm going down to look

at what's happening with the Navy.

They have a target, I think, that's 50 percent renewable energy.

And it turns out that Ray Mabus...

he's the Secretary of the Navy...

is behind a lot of this.

And I was able to wrangle an interview with him today.

The ship you're standing on, the America,

is a hybrid. Okay. Ah.

The Marines, at the height of the fighting in Afghanistan,

were losing one Marine, killed or wounded,

for every 50 convoys of fuel that came in, guarding those fuels.

That's too high a price to pay.

So if you can make energy...

solar, wind... where you are

and don't have to have it brought to you...

you talk to SEAL commanders of some of these teams,

this one guy said, "You know, we turned off the generator...

"and all of a sudden we could hear.

We could hear when people were trying to sneak up on us."

And he said that generator running all the time,

it was like a bull's-eye. "Come on over here." Yeah. Yeah.

"We're here!" "This is where we are."

Right. It makes us better fighters.

Yeah. Now it's got some great collateral...

lowers our carbon footprint,

it makes us better stewards of the environment.

The Department of Defence is the largest single user

of fossil fuels in the world,

Navy and Marine Corps about 40 percent of that.

By no later than 2020, at least half of all our energy,

afloat and ashore, will come from non-fossil fuel sources.

We're going to be there on shore, on our bases by the end of this year.

No. No! We'll be five years early. Yeah.

We're a sea-going service,

but we own 3.5 million acres of land,

and we have 117,000 buildings.

So we use a little bit of energy on shore too.

But the next step is to do microgrids

so that if something happens to the big grid,

we can pull ourselves off and still do our military job.

- Welcome to the bridge, sir. - Is this progress at risk

of being rolled back by political process

or do you feel like...

that there's this sort of straight course moving forward?

I hope and I believe that it's becoming the new normal.

DOD put in its quadrennial defence review

that energy was a national security priority.

It's a whole of the federal government,

but it's also, America is changing the way it views energy.

America is changing the way it uses energy.

Was America really changing?

As it turned out, the answer was hiding in plain sight,

right in the middle of Central Texas.

You know, when you think of Texas,

you think of oil derricks, you think of gas.

So, here's this little city that goes a hundred percent green.

We're the second city in the country

to go a hundred percent green.

Burlington, Vermont was the first.

Our duty to our rate payers

is to provide the lowest-cost energy.

When we compared wind and solar to natural gas,

wind and solar was about equal,

but the providers would give us guaranteed contracts

for 25 years on wind and solar,

and natural gas providers was only for six years.

So that made it... the decision pretty easy.

Do people see solar and wind as,

"Oh no, it's going to ruin our way of life,

our legacy, and our history"?

Or do they just say, "Hey, man, more energy"?

When you do something new and different,

if it involves change, I think some people get concerned.

They just want to make sure that it works,

and it doesn't impact them negatively.

And in the job markets, uh,

I mean, we're still doing tons of oil and gas in Texas.

Right. Well, you'd just use it for other sources

other than making electricity.

Us good Republicans don't like to raise taxes.

And so we're doing all kinds of wonderful things

and the tax rate's staying the same.

And so I'm spending money like a Democrat. Okay?

But it's okay, because you have to invest in these things in Georgetown.

We do have a banker on here. Yeah.

He's a good friend of mine and sometimes I just cuss at him.

And I'm going, "Look, what the fuck do you want"

"your legacy to be a hundred years from now?

"That you cut the tax rate by a penny?

You want that on your tombstone? Really?"

I didn't run on small ideas,

and I didn't run to go cut ribbons.

I ran to make a change in my community in a meaningful way.

And what we need to do now is we need to spend money.

If we don't spend money right now in this economy,

what, we're going to spend money

when we go back in a recession? No!

Oh. We got to spend the money now.

Money.

Lots of it in the Bay Area these days.

And more and more of it's headed towards clean energy products.

Quick Rack is fully tested and...

Hydro-helio. That sounds good.

So it's designed as a giant LEGO.

You build it as modular as you want.

This got my attention 'cause it reminds me of the Good Humour truck.

I expect to open that and see some ice cream or something.

There's some beer in there, no ice cream.

But it's a DC refrigerator, so just solar direct into it.

I love the model.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, "No drought going on here."

Oh, I knocked over your powerline!

Okay. Holy cow. Call the system.

Be careful, these are high voltage, yeah? Yeah.

There is so many options here.

I'm totally freakin' overwhelmed.

You have 60 seconds to pitch your idea

to an investor industry exec that is sitting in front of you,

and then entrepreneurs

will get up and move to the chair to your right.

So this is like solar speed dating.

We've never met I don't think. I certainly know your name. I know who you guys are.

Is that a fully integrated solution or are you just selling the batteries?

It's a fully integrated solution.

With our software platform, we just want to sell and support as much of it as possible.

That would be an awesome... They're not going to be developing their own...

In 47 states, by next year, solar will be as cheap

if not cheaper than fossil fuel.

Forty-seven. Forty-seven states.

Who are those three?

Well, there's actually... Alaska?

...five states including Florida, where solar still is illegal.

So... I know. Crazy. Wow.

And they're just missing out. It's like, at this point,

why wouldn't you... Yeah.

...when it's, you know, creating more jobs than Google, Apple,

Facebook, and Twitter combined in the US?

That's how many people the solar industry employs.

Where are the jobs? What's going on?

So unlike fossil fuel where it's all top-down and centralized,

it's inherently decentralized, it's distributed,

and it democratizes energy production and consumption.

And that requires a lot of jobs, that requires a lot of hands.

One nuclear power plant only needs so many people to operate it.

Mini microgrids on homes around the country requires a lot of labour.

Solar used to be about hardware, it was about panels.

It was technological, and now we're moving

to the place where it's psychological.

It's about how to change minds and hearts,

and give people a choice in where their energy comes from.

And the companies that are up here today are doing that.

They're using software and finance to make solar

the most abundant and affordable energy resource in the world.

Well, thank you so much for taking the time. You're welcome.

Do you go off at the end of this evening

like a lot of people that have conventions

and party it up, do something fun, or what?

Of course. I hope we're going to Solar Battle of the Bands. What happens?

That's my plan.

♪ Come sunrise, putting power on the grid ♪

So, clean energy products seem to be moving

off the shelves at a good pace.

But who was actually making these products and where?

As it turned out, the largest solar panel manufacturing plant

in the western hemisphere had just broken ground in Buffalo, New York.

Put that on. There you go, and it's got that Velcro...

All right, we going to go four-wheeling?

Yeah, I figured you were ready for it. All right, good.

This 88-acre parcel is what will now host

the SolarCity panel manufacturing facility.

But the state said, "We will finance

"the construction of the building,

"and we will also finance the baseline equipment

"that you need to function within that building.

And you'll be our tenants in that building."

SolarCity said, "What you've got going in Buffalo sounds great,

"but you're thinking about building a 225,000 square-foot structure.

We want to do a 1.2 million square-foot structure." Whoa!

Almost overnight, Buffalo was made

one of the centers of the solar industry

in the United States, if not the world.

When my parents were born and raised in the '30s,

even with the Depression, Buffalo was a mighty industrial community.

It had all the steel mills and all the other manufacturing facilities.

They saw it all starting to fall apart.

We really saw it fall apart.

This facility will put more people to work...

approximately 3,000 people...

than the steel plant that once sat here,

that actually polluted the community, that we're still dealing with.

All we've ever wanted is to have a community again,

like what our parents took for granted. Yeah.

That it's vibrant, vital, sustainable...

hip. You know? Yeah, yeah.

And it's got all that.

♪ East Coast, where you at? Let me get... ♪

Buffalo, a city on the rebound,

economically for sure.

But it didn't seem to stop there.

The social fabric was rebounding as well,

and renewable energy was no small part of it.

PUSH Buffalo.

Basically they're about creating

sort of energy-independent affordable housing.

The idea being, making their own power,

they're conserving, making it affordable.

So, I got to check with these folks.

Well, PUSH stands

for People United for Sustainable Housing.

It came about in 2005.

They are a non-profit organization.

What do you call this?

This is basically a small area

that we're taking care of, doing green infrastructure on the west side of Buffalo.

Most of the people that garden here...

Solar as a sector is killing

the rest of the economy with job creation,

so we know that there's potential there,

and we want to bring that potential home

to roost here in the neighbourhood.

We want that rebound to include everybody.

What's your favorite thing? Mmm, banana.

- Banana? - Ah.

When did you start actually working on houses?

We did. So, yeah, I think right when the organization started,

one of the co-founders bought a property

in the neighbourhood here.

We actually put together some local tradespeople, like Eddie,

and put him to work on that first house that was purchased,

kind of a volunteer brigade that rehabbed it on a shoestring budget.

From there, you know, we went after funding

with our state affordable housing agencies, some charitable foundations.

By the end of this year, we'll have 60 units

of affordable housing occupied.

As you see, the gutter system here

runs down to our rain garden back here.

And as you can see,

we have solar panels top of this house.

And what you don't see is up under the panelling here,

we have radiant floor heating,

which will also help save money on your heating bills.

The south face of the roof, there's a solar thermal system,

and that provides all the domestic hot water in the house.

So anytime Maxine draws water for a bath,

that water has been preheated by the sun.

It's very cool in here. Yes, the way that it's made,

we got radiant floors.

Right. So, okay.

So that's what I got to remember.

Like, having a floor that's got mild

or just sort of 60-degree water

will keep it from getting too cold in the winter,

but in the summer that's going to keep you cool.

Yes. Yes. It goes both ways.

So does it take much from you?

Do you have to do anything or is it...

or are they just sort of doing their own thing

on your roof, the solar panels?

They do... I don't have to do nothing.

Does the electricity from those panels go into the grid?

It flows into the grid, and... and basically,

the amount that flows is kind of set

against the amount that Maxine would consume,

and if her system produces more than she uses,

then she'll get a credit on her bill.

So, what do you hear from the neighbours?

They want to know about it.

Tell them how to get involved 'cause change just doesn't happen.

It takes a process. You got to work at it.

And PUSH is working hard, forming relationships to get things changed.

The state's committed to this transition,

and we want to make sure the people are leading that,

and that they have ownership opportunities,

that they have ways to redistribute those economic benefits,

the environmental benefits right in their neighbourhood.

Some people might be surprised that Buffalo

is now a player in the new energy economy.

But it's not as surprising as you might think.

If you drive 20 minutes north, you'll see a network

of Canadian and American power plants

making clean energy from moving water.

Five million cubic feet every 60 seconds.

If you look at the word "renewable"

and "generating power," the one that's killing it

is the one that's been killing it all along.

Hydroelectric power.

Two million kilowatts on this side,

two million on that side. How much power is that?

Four million kilowatts, a whole lot of power!

What can you do with four million kilowatts?

You can power up seven states and two provinces,

which is what they do with this. Wow.

So it's a lot of power. Yeah.

Stand at the edge of Niagara Falls,

and it's easy to see the allure of massive hydropower.

And yet, this kind of clean energy... well, it's not so clean.

Hoover Dam, Grand Cooley Dam,

Garrison Dam...

buried under their deep waters are scenic rivers,

historic towns, sacred Indian lands.

If only there was a way to capture all that hydropower

without so much destruction, right?

Well, some smart folks have done just that

amidst the vast farmlands of Central Oregon.

Look where we are, right?

I mean, if I was cruising down this road,

and I went by this building,

I would say...

flow control, overflow building,

maybe some water-quality monitoring station.

I would have no idea that that's generating energy.

Yeah, and that's kind of, you know...

maybe not the whole point, but one of the points.

To take this existing infrastructure...

so one important piece to understand of course,

is that the water that you see coming over that concrete drop right there,

that is the original irrigation canal drop structure.

So if you wipe away the building itself,

basically that channel continuing all the way down stream

has been here, again, for something like seven or eight decades.

The design objective that we have is to basically

be able to come in, put some power capture on this... these existing drops,

but do so in a way that, yeah, doesn't really disturb the landscape,

that someone just driving by

would not necessarily have to know, per Se,

that something had really changed on the canal in any particular way.

Our father had the idea

that making ecologically sustainable hydro

is something that everyone can get behind.

He was a sailor and a pilot,

and he had this idea of,

"What if we could create a hydropower turbine

"that uses the same kind of concepts that we use in sailing

where you can scale to really large power with low-pressure flow?"

When the electricity from this unit is sold,

who's buying it and who gets the dough?

The electricity from this project specifically

will be purchased by PacifiCorp,

which is a utility that has a big footprint across the Northwest.

And the project itself was actually, uh, developed in partnership

with the irrigation district, but was purchased by Apple.

Purchased by them?

So Apple was getting into the microhydro business?

What was that all about?

The Apple Data Center,

in the middle of eastern Oregon.

When you think of the iCloud,

this is where it all happens.

So tell me, in the grand scheme of things,

where is Apple with how much

renewable energy it uses?

So in the United States,

every facility that we have,

every Apple facility

is 100 percent renewably powered.

Around the world... Wait a minute, wait a minute.

Every store? Every store in the United States,

every office building that we have...

of course our big complex, our home in Cupertino,

but also in Elk Grove, California, in Austin, Texas...

a hundred percent renewably powered.

And then our four data centers, also a hundred percent.

And around the world we are 87 percent renewably powered.

You were at the Natel site, so you know that we don't stop

at the conventionally available sources of energy.

We could buy and we do buy wind power from the grid here in Oregon.

Right. And that's great.

And we actually buy solar in California, and that's great.

But when we decided that we needed a data center in North Carolina,

if we had gone with the grid mix,

we would've been using a significant amount of electricity

from coal or nuclear or natural gas.

And so what we did there is we built our own solar farm.

All right, let's take a look.

Think about what a data center is.

It's, you know, servers working all the time.

So if we know we're going to use a lot of power,

if we know how much that power costs,

if we have control over our source of energy, that's a huge business advantage for us.

Yeah, because, you know, you're not subject to the spikes

and the volatile energy prices,

and you know where it is and you're making it yourself.

You've got to be kidding me.

How do I get my hands around how huge this is?

Let me just put you in sort of virtual world.

Every single day, hundreds of billions of iMessages,

billions of photos, and then millions of FaceTime chats...

all that has to happen, it has to happen quickly,

and these are the centers that make that happen.

Instead of having to use conventional energy,

brown power, it's all clean.

You know we're here in high desert.

There's no air conditioning in the server rooms.

The facility is cooled 70 percent of the year

with outside air.

Today, it's a little bit warmer,

but it's cooled with air running over wet material.

Just evaporative cooling.

There's a high likelihood that right now

my daughter is FaceTiming with her boyfriend.

Yeah, I know, my sons too. Is there any...

What are the chances that that's happening in here somewhere?

Pretty likely. Really?

Pretty likely. She's on this coast,

that data is moving through here somewhere.

Is there a moment in the last decade

in terms of energy, renewables, and efficiency... does anything stand out?

Probably five or six years ago I used to say, "I know it's going to change,"

because I know when I talk to young people,

they're not even questioning that this is happening.

They just understand it, feel like it's just happening.

Okay, well, full disclosure here:

I looked into solar panels for my home over a decade ago,

but they were way more expensive

and less effective in those days.

And the sales guy? Well, he just kind of bugged me.

Come on in! But after a decade of improvements,

solar panels have gotten way more affordable.

And folks like me who either can't

or don't want to fork out the bucks for panels,

there are now companies that will put their panels on your roof

and sell you the electricity, often for less than you're currently paying.

What's not to love about that?

It starts with determining

where the best positioning is on the house

to get the most out of your solar panels,

and designing it from there.

So each panel has its own inverter?

Yeah, if one of these goes out,

it doesn't affect the other ones.

The entire system, yeah.

Yeah. With some of the other...

Sort of like the better kind of Christmas lights.

Exactly like the better kind of Christmas lights.

That's... no, that's exactly what it is.

It doesn't take the whole system down. Yeah, uh-huh.

Here I have this car charger.

Is that charger actually accessing

the solar-charged electrons from my roof?

Essentially, once your system is active,

we are feeding your house

with solar power.

So your car charger

will be feeding off of that,

and your house will be feeding off of that.

I'm driving a solar-powered car.

Oh, cool!

That works.

I realized, "What's the point of having solar

if you've got super crappy light bulbs?"

So I'm going for the overall upgrade option.

Yeah, just inhaled some flame retardants.

I'd rather do more than less...

more workouts instead of less ice cream, that sort of thing.

So the notion of efficiency has never really lit me up.

But waste is waste,

and if I was going to be making clean energy, why waste it?

- Hey! - Hey, Jamie.

How are you, Brian? Good, how are you?

Good to see you. Yeah, good to see you again.

Yeah.

Give it to me straight, Doc.

You know, the report's great.

It provides you with a road map

of what you might be able to do towards,

you know, energy efficiency improvements,

comfort, air quality, everything outlined herein.

The building shell, we have two arenas:

One is the amount of draft, and one is insulation.

We used the blower door and that sucked all the air out of the house,

and air starts coming in from all these other places.

Can lights from the top.

Jeez, I never even thought about that.

Yeah. Supply boots, that's part of your heating system.

The amount of energy going into this unit,

only 80 percent of it comes out, so you're losing 20 cents on the dollar...

That sounds really bad. ...and you're just dumping carbon monoxide into the garage.

Oh, that's nice.

Thank you. So, um, give me the bottom line, Doc.

What do you think's the most overt,

simple, obvious, for-dummies thing to do is?

Turn your temperature down on your water heater.

Really? Yeah, that's the turn of a dial.

That's such good news. Turn it down to 120, and you're saving money.

It's so easy, isn't it? Yeah, there's a...

there's a long list of simple stuff and...

Really? Yeah.

Long list, but simple? Yeah.

I can deal with that. Yeah.

So I just finished my first month

with my panels on the house,

so I thought I'd check and see how it went,

how much power I made. And it turns out

I made more than I needed.

So, that clean energy went onto the grid

that I didn't need.

Hey, you know what?

Do you know that we made more clean...

we made more clean electrons

than we used last month?

Cool! Yeah.

You don't seem so excited.

No, it's very exciting. Good for us.

Come on!

We're like a solar...

we are a solar household.

Yeah, well, that's like... we're one... one house.

Eight billion houses to go. That's how we're going to go about it.

Jesus.

What a buzzkill.

Okay, so I was doing something about my house,

doing something about my car,

but as annoying as it was, my daughter's point was not lost on me.

What about everything else?

How are we going to tie it all together

and make clean energy work

at the massive scale that it needs to?

Good to see you, Jamie.

The cavalry has arrived.

How you doing?

I don't know, man.

I don't really understand how we're ever, you know...

I-I... I see how we're scaling up the panels,

the centralized, the microhydro.

But in terms of your... our everyday life... Yeah.

...what is the key to being 100 percent renewable on the grid then?

What components are missing right now that... that need to happen?

To be 100 percent renewable? Yeah.

Energy storage is an imperative. That has to happen.

No way around it. It's weird.

We have storage for like every form of commodity.

We don't go out and pick, every afternoon,

precisely the number of ears of corn

that will be eaten that night. We have silos.

Yes. You know, and we don't expect the rain to fall

in precisely the amount needed for you to shower tomorrow morning.

You know, we have reservoirs. Yes.

We don't do that for energy, for electricity at least,

because it's super, super, super expensive.

But there are a lot of people working on this.

On that topic, I presume at this point you have been to California ISO?

Umm, no, I... You followed the powerlines, right?

No, I did. I followed the power.

If you've been thinking about this topic for this long,

this is the traffic cop of the grid.

We need some system to be able to make sure

that stuff comes on and comes off

without wrecking everything.

That's what Cal ISO does.

Everyday in America,

hundreds of millions of dollars worth of electricity

is made, sold, sent and used

through the use of transmission lines

and relay stations, otherwise known as the power grid.

The California Independent Systems Operator,

or Cal ISO, is one of five US entities

created to make sure these grids

run well 24-7, 365 days a year.

This is where California

electricity all comes together

and sings, right? That's right.

That's right.

The grid started over a hundred years ago.

It started small and it became bigger.

As it became bigger, someone had to manage it.

But now we've found that the scale is even more important.

We have more renewables on the grid.

And that's really what we're grappling with.

As we transition this grid

from one that's got traditional power plants on it

to one that's renewable based,

it may have a few traditional power plants to take care of things...

for instance, when the wind's not blowing and the sun's not shining.

Yeah. Storage is also going to play an important part of this too.

You can't shape solar, you can't shape wind

exactly like you can a traditional power plant,

but you can supplement it with storage.

Big sets of batteries could be used on the system.

Compressed air can be used for storage.

As renewables go on the grid,

we have to open our mind

to how we knit it together.

It's not your parents' or grandparents' grid anymore.

Right. As a matter of fact, several times this Spring,

we had up to 40 percent of our power was provided by renewables.

Those kinds of levels weren't even contemplated 10 years ago.

Really? Wow, that's amazing. Yeah.

So this tells me in a nutshell...

I can tell where the wind is blowing.

It's down south.

Are you overseen by federal or state,

or like what's the authority above the California ISO?

Everybody's got a boss.

In my case, we have a five-member board.

I think it may make sense for you to reach out to one of 'em.

Are you Angelina? Yes, I am.

Oh great. Always.

It took me ages to even find out about the ISO.

Why does it seem so little known? I'm puzzled.

I mean, it's a huge, huge organization.

It means we're doing a good job!

The grid is operating well.

There's no outages,

and you don't know that the grid is there.

I detect an accent.

- I was born in Bulgaria. - Oh.

I became interested in energy early on.

I had the fortune of living in Africa

when I was very young, grew up with very little electricity

or very unreliable electricity where there was electricity.

We returned back to Bulgaria.

That was another interesting perception

in terms of energy and how energy can form your future.

There was the Chernobyl accident.

An accident has occurred

at the Chernobyl atomic power plant

as one of the atomic reactors was damaged.

One of the things you hear about the argument for nuclear

is people say, "Well, look, we've got to get a lot more energy"

"out into the world in order to meet the demands of...

"of humanity, and we're never going to get

that amount of energy created unless we go nuclear."

I have a very different point of view.

We don't need to be recreating nuclear energy down here on Earth.

We already have the sun.

We have plenty of nuclear energy

hitting the Earth every single day.

If we were able to capture the solar insulation

that hits the globe every single day,

just for two minutes, and store it,

we could power the whole globe for a year,

even the billion people who have no electricity right now.

How do we work to get to 50, 60, 70, 80,

even 100 percent renewable

into the future and what that time frame would be?

We believe that the ISOs are going to be major players in making that a reality.

Finally, I was seeing how it could all come together,

but I had forgotten about one little thing:

politics.

It's no secret that folks here in our valley

are fuming over the latest change with solar rates.

They feel cheated after making

an investment in solar energy.

And today, hundreds of those people

made a very clear point about it.

The original decision calls for an increased service charge

for rooftop solar users, as well as a reduction

in the amount of money homeowners are reimbursed

for excess power produced by their solar arrays.

Right now, people who generate solar energy

get reimbursed by NV Energy for what they don't use

at about 11 cents a kilowatt hour.

That could go down as far as four cents a kilowatt hour.

I'm here to speak on behalf

of 31,650 petitioners

who are petitioning the Commission

to retain the current rate structure.

We want solar!

We want solar!

Raise your hand if you have rooftop solar.

Raise your hand if you're here

as part of an environmental organization.

We have paid money in order to do what they wanted us to do,

and that was to go alternative energy and go rooftop solar.

When are folks in here afraid

this is going to start hitting their pocketbooks directly?

Right away. It already has.

It's not the basic fee that we care about.

It's the net metering fee.

It's what we get for producing them power.

I spent $48,000 of my own money

on a solar power system, no subsidies.

And we got the PUC three stooges...

not elected but appointed by the governor...

that are deciding the fate for the entire state.

They're basically ripping us off.

I think it's... this is grand theft in my opinion.

17,255 people have had their systems commissioned.

If you give them each three minutes

and you allow a half a minute for them to switch seats,

that's 60,000 minutes, 1,000 hours, 25 weeks

where you would have to listen to people who really don't like what you're doing.

I don't know whether this is cowardice or convenience,

but frankly, it's not leadership.

They're not going to be able to sell these homes.

With all these tariffs and rate increases that are going on,

nobody's going to want to buy their homes for 20 years,

so they're stuck with these homes.

With these actions, hundreds of jobs are lost.

I don't know how many thousands of dollars these people...

millions of dollars these people...

all of that is done with your actions.

There's a big plaque that says this is a green energy building,

and you have special parking for hybrid cars.

You are hypocrites! This is hypocritical!

Yeah, Mark! Hello, Commissioners.

My name is Mark Ruffalo, and I'm... I'm coming from New York State

as a advocate for solar.

It's a shame that you are on that screen and not here today

because outside of this building...

and you should really feel the energy here...

there's a thousand workers out there.

You are the Public Utility Commission.

Public! That's first.

And the actions you're taking today

are taking from the mouths of the people

and giving it to a single monopoly utility.

Well, I take offence and I'll take notice

to all of the comments about

"We don't know what we're doing. We didn't do our homework."

This commission has been working tirelessly

not to penalize people or favour one technology over the other,

but to create a path forward for rooftop solar in this state

that treats all rate payers fairly.

Thank you. That concludes my questions.

Commissioner Berkshaw, do you have any?

I don't. Hearing no additional questions,

Commissioner Noble, do you have a motion?

I would move that we deny the motions

and issue the order as memorialized in the proposed order

along with the changes that were discussed today.

- Do I have a second? - Second.

- All those in favour say, "Aye." - Aye.

The motion carries.

And that brings us to agenda item 3A.

Just about five, 10 minutes ago,

the PUC voted to uphold

the solar rate hike

they had previously passed.

This after opponents came out en masse today.

We want solar!

Well, the verdict was in,

and 20,000 existing solar customers

in Nevada were officially screwed.

It seemed like people were too disappointed to say much.

Except for one woman, Debbie Dooley,

founder of the politically conservative Green Tea Party.

From state to state to state,

I hear the same talking points.

"Non-solar users are subsidizing solar users."

That is totally ridiculous. I'm a conservative.

I'm appalled that fellow conservatives

are hypocrites when it comes to free market principles.

They're willing to throw principles out the window

for the sake of protecting their financial donors.

We've always led, but on energy we're falling behind,

because a lot of people are still entrenched

in the technologies of the past that pollute the Earth.

For more than a century,

Nevada Energy has been Nevada's only utility provider.

In fact, Nevada's state constitution grants Nevada Energy

the right to operate as a monopoly.

By providing consumers a way to make their own clean power,

the rooftop solar industry had found a way to compete, in spite of that.

Yet the commission's recent ruling

seemed specifically designed to bring

the rooftop solar industry to a screeching halt.

Of your fleet that was here prior

to this announcement by the PUC...

is this your full fleet?

This is our full fleet. This is every single truck we have,

and the reason that they're all here

on a Wednesday at 3:00 p.m.

is that we're not doing any installs.

Everything has completely shut down.

This is where we handle our permits, schedule our installations.

And here is actually where you can see where our culture was.

These are the faces of the 6,000 people

who have lost their jobs.

I've personally been part of training over 150 people,

and now, I mean, this is it.

If you have a mortgage, a wife and children...

Yeah, yeah, yeah. ...you don't just pack up and say, "Let's go."

The company wants me to look at options for relocating.

I have kids. I... It's... I...

My daughter doesn't want to move again.

I don't know what I'm gonna do. I don't know.

I'm telling you, when you see up close and personal...

the human toll...

that bureaucratic and corporate chess playing

takes on individuals, it makes me really mad.

This is yet another example of...

the interest of the mighty against the interest of the many.

And that's... that's upsetting to me.

Because you know what? Those kinds of situations

don't change without amendments...

without congressional action,

without Supreme Court victories.

You can't innovate your way out of the bullshit that I witnessed today.

It's going to take... a fight.

It's just too bad.

What if we all still burned whale oil to light our homes?

What if the whaling industry had used its money and power

to bury Thomas Edison's light bulb?

Well, that didn't happen.

The light bulb was just a better product.

Today we use electricity much the way we did

when Thomas Edison invented the electrical grid over a century ago.

And many powerful and profitable fossil fuel and utility companies

are fighting to keep things just as they are.

And after what I saw in Nevada,

it seemed like it would be unwise to bet against them.

But then again, I've never been very good at betting.

New at 6:00, solar companies and solar customers

are watching the state capital

this week as they debate

the future of a number

of green energy bills.

Bill 405 would bring back those net metering credits

to 95 percent of what they were when the industry was at its peak.

So just last week,

I bumped into one of my advisers.

He was like, "Jamie, have you been following what's going on in Nevada?"

And I was like, "Oh God, no. Now what?"

And he was like, "No, no, no, no, no.

"All these bills are going

"through both the Senate and the Assembly in Nevada.

All these pro-clean-energy bills."

Needless to say, I'm... I'm blown away

to the point of almost confused,

because this is a 180-degree shift

since... last year.

Assembly Bill 405 really brings back

the net metering and rooftop solar industry.

What it does is it... Now is the time to do it.

It's a fantastic day. It really is a fantastic day.

It feels so great to be coming and speaking,

and going, and coming and coming,

and then to finally have things to celebrate.

Give yourselves a big round of applause.

Thank you all for being here.

Good morning, today is

a historic milestone for the Silver State.

The Nevada legislature passed

the solar triple crown of energy bills:

AB206, SB392, AB405.

The last week, there's been a tremendous activity

in the Nevada legislature

with renewable energy bills. Mm-hmm.

Could you walk me through that

from your point of view?

I started the first net metering company

here in the state almost 20 years ago.

I got very familiar with how the process works

with the public utilities commission and this legislature.

And when I saw what happened,

I had moved on and been working in the utility world

and been doing things like that.

But I... I dropped everything and...

and decided to run for office, because it...

I felt that it needed to be fixed in the legislature.

And so Assembly Bill 405,

which was one of the bills I worked on,

it is a net metering rooftop solar bill.

And what it did is it restored some rates,

and it put into place a renewable energy consumer's bill of rights.

We passed that out of the senate,

and we'll send it to the governor to see if he can sign it.

We urge Governor Sandoval to support these measures

and bring renewables back to the state.

You know recently, I was in another state,

and introduced myself as someone from Nevada.

And one of the people in the group commented,

"What in the world were you all thinking?"

Referring to the PUC ruling in December.

And I said to them at that time,

"We're going to go back in 2017,

and we're going to fix it." And guess what?

We came back in 2017, and we fixed it.

We have more sunshine in Nevada than they have heat in Hell.

And it's a sin if we don't do something with it.

I mean, really? We do...

320-some days of sunshine.

So was there a public outcry

after the utility commission decision?

I mean, does the average Nevadan even know about any of this?

Here's what I will say. In talking to my constituents,

there's one issue... one issue that was present,

every door that I knocked on.

'Cause that's how I... I ask people for their vote. I go to them.

Every door I knocked on, every one of them... energy.

"Why don't we have solar?"

There are more people who are concerned

about what we're leaving to our children and our grandchildren.

There are more people who are concerned

about the economic disadvantage of being on the grid.

And the more that happens

and as the adoption rate increases,

more people say, "I want it."

Expanding investments in renewable energy,

Nevada has the potential to bring billions of dollars

to the state's economy and create tens of thousands of additional jobs by 2030.

I think that our state is uniquely positioned

to take advantage of renewable energy.

I mean, just the amount of land we have,

the amount of sunshine we have,

the resources, the transmission...

I mean, we are in a great position to take advantage of those things.

So when you start making the argument that it's an economic model,

that shifts the conversation to where a lot more...

maybe traditional Republicans can certainly get on board.

Have you seen evidence of this growth in renewables

being very real here in Nevada in terms of economic activity?

We'll have the most electrified highway system in the nation here shortly.

Meaning that you will not have to worry

about where you can plug in your vehicle,

if it's an electric vehicle, from... from here

to all through the rurals, all the way to Las Vegas.

And that's in partnership with Tesla,

it's in partnership with other folks.

And I think at this point in the game,

markets are driving us and... and companies are demanding

the need for renewables. They want to be green.

The session ended at midnight last night,

and I see in Reuters, in Forbes, and in some industry mags, um,

Tesla, and Sunrun, and others are hiring

and have announced that they're back in Nevada and they're doing business.

And so that is... as a legislator,

as a Nevadan and a business person,

I can't think of a better outcome.

It's time for Governor Sandoval to sign the solar triple crown of solar bills.

Let's reclaim Nevada's rightful place as a clean energy powerhouse.

Let's go see a governor about a signature.

Two weeks ago, did you think you'd be standing here today with this result?

This is the product of a lot of hard work and a lot of sacrifice.

In 2015 when the PUC decision came down,

a lot of businesses had to lay off employees

in the timespan between Christmas and New Year's.

These were beloved employees. They were part of a family.

And today, we just made that right.

We just undid all of that damage,

and made Nevada a clean energy leader again.

It's overwhelming how much support that there is

for a clean energy economy

amongst very diverse segments of Nevada.

The forces that are fighting against it,

they're grasping to an old way of doing business

when most other businesses and most other Nevadans...

and I think it's true across our country...

they want to move forward with this.

We're here to deliver letters to Governor Sandoval.

It's 7,000 letters and signatures.

Nevadans want clean energy, and we just wanted to go ahead and let him know.

It is a moral imperative.

Everyone, wherever you are,

whatever your status or station in life is,

we all have a responsibility to address this issue.

And if Washington will not...

we will.

You know, I've been thinking back on that climate march,

all the people hoping for action,

and I wish they knew what I've learned...

that this is the dawn of the clean energy era.

It's just better, cheaper, inevitable.

"When is going to happen?" you might wonder.

Well, as American citizens, voters, consumers,

that's entirely up to us.

We have what we need to do this

in our own cities, our own communities, our own homes.

It doesn't matter who you pray to,

who you vote for, where you live, or how you live.

There's a good reason and a good way for you to connect to clean energy.

Maybe you don't like driving around on imported oil

or maybe the unpredictable prices threaten your bottom line.

When the pipelines leak and the gas lines explode,

it always seems to happen in our struggling communities,

and maybe you've seen that happen in yours.

Or maybe you accept the science of climate change.

And maybe you know that burning fossil fuels

sickens over two-million Americans a year

with our children taking the biggest hit.

Or hey, maybe you just like the latest technology.

You see, there's a story for everyone,

a story that will make you want do something,

and the sooner that happens, the better, for all of us.

♪ Two rocks, a hammer ♪

♪ And some chains to tie my hands ♪

♪ Two boots, the dirt, some food ♪

♪ Some land to dig it in ♪

♪ I cut the wood, tear down ♪

♪ Build up for moving in ♪

♪ A hole, the mud, a pipe ♪

♪ Look out, I'm... ♪

♪ Yes ♪

♪ This is happening ♪

♪ Every day is another way ♪

♪ To make things right, oh ♪

♪ This is happening ♪

♪ Every day is another way ♪

♪ To make things right ♪

♪ She's out walking now ♪

♪ For what's good ♪

♪ Put her body on the line ♪

♪ She's not hiding ♪

♪ She's out fighting ♪

♪ Tonight ♪

♪ Man ♪

♪ This is happening ♪

♪ Every day is another way ♪

♪ To make things right ♪

♪ You are what's happening ♪

♪ Every day is another way ♪

♪ To make things right ♪

♪ I'm thinking about my friend now ♪

♪ What you gotta do somehow ♪

♪ You're headed back home ♪

♪ To the eye of the storm ♪

♪ How you gonna get past it ♪

♪ Without picking on the classic ♪

♪ And throwing out what's good? ♪

♪ Are you screaming at the badness? ♪

♪ Bridges will fall down ♪

♪ Walls will build up ♪

♪ Bridges will fall down ♪

♪ Walls will build up ♪

♪ Slow it down ♪

♪ Can we slow it down? ♪

♪ Now ♪

♪ This is happening ♪

♪ Every day is another way ♪

♪ To make things right ♪

♪ You and I ♪

♪ Are what's happening ♪

♪ Here we are with another day ♪

♪ To make things right ♪

♪ Every day is another way ♪

♪ To make things right ♪

♪ Walls will fall down ♪

♪ Bridges will rise up ♪

♪ Walls will fall down ♪

♪ Bridges will rise up ♪

♪ Walls will fall down ♪

♪ People will rise up ♪

♪ Walls will fall down ♪

♪ Now people ♪

♪ Will rise up ♪

♪ Will rise up ♪

♪ Will rise up ♪

♪ Rise up, rise up ♪

♪ Rise up, rise up ♪

♪ Rise up, rise up ♪

♪ Rise up, rise up ♪

♪ Rise up, rise up ♪

♪ Rise up, rise up ♪

♪ Rise up, rise up ♪

♪ Rise up, rise up ♪

♪ Oh, oh, oh, walls will fall down ♪

♪ Now, people ♪

.srt Extracted, Synced & Corrected by Dan4Jem, AD.XII.MMXVII