Below is the text version of the webinar, "2020 Peer PReview: Remarks from Daniel R. Simmons." See the video.
David Nemtzow:
Now we have our distinguished keynote speaker for the Peer PReview and that is as I said earlier our assistant secretary, Daniel Simmons. And I'll introduce Daniel briefly. He's going to speak, and then he'll take questions, and Karma Sawyer of BTO will curate the questions. So put those in the Q and A function if you can, and Karma will manage that. So Daniel, all of you know here, is the assistant secretary for efficiency and renewables. And in this position, he oversees this 2.8 billion dollar clean energy division of U.S. DOE and EERE as a whole, not just as energy efficiency and demand-side oriented offices like BTO, but of course ones that focus on other demand-side sectors, vehicles and federal facilities and manufacturing, as well as renewable energy, both stationary and transportation-based. Before Daniel came to DOE just about four years ago, just under four years ago, he was at the Institute for Energy Research, where he was vice-president for policy. He's been very active in the field. He is a graduate of Utah State University as well as George Mason University School of Law. And I will say, Daniel, we talked bicycles earlier today, so I will say Daniel is an avid and I will say serious bicyclist. So that's important to at least me, if not all of us here. But let me also just say before we asked you to speak, Daniel, I just want to say, Daniel, when he became assistant secretary early on made clear to all of us at EERE that his three priorities were energy affordability, and that means the affordability of both the energy itself in terms of price and consumption, but also the affordability of the efficiency, renewable technologies that we're all working on, from you know solar panels to LED light bulbs. Energy affordability has been the heart of the work that Daniel has led as assistant secretary. Number two was integration and collaboration, and the distinction there is integration of efficiency, demand-side renewables, storage, etcetera, vehicle charging. And you can't integrate those substantively unless the offices at DOE are collaborating. And Daniel has led us on that, and it's changed our culture, I think, quite considerably and very happily. And his third priority after affordability and integration has been storage. And that is such an important topic and Daniel has defined storage broadly to not only include batteries of course but thermal storage and demand flexibility that can act like storage. And of course a major DOE priority has been the Energy Storage Grand Challenge. That's a little bit of what Daniel's leadership has meant to us at BTO and at EERE. And without further adieu, very glad to have you, the assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy, Daniel Simmons.
Jeremiah Freeman:
Hey, David, this is Jeremiah. I'm not Daniel Simmons, surprise. But I just wanted to reach out and say that we're having a tough time seeing Daniel so we are sending him a direct link to relog in. He was on, so he heard that great introduction. So bear that in mind, but we're just trying to get him relogged in so he can get moved over. So please bear with me.
David Nemtzow:
OK, well, while he's doing that, I will just say for those of you who don't know that many things in life have factions within them, right? Even within things there are -- I don't know I'll get in trouble for this -- Catholic and Protestant and Eastern Orthodox. So within bicycling, there's two kinds of bicyclists. There's roadies and there's mountain bikers. The difference is unlike other things in life, one can do both of them. I don't know if Daniel's -- I do so little of each, but, Daniel, I don't know if you're a mountain biker. But Daniel is a very serious road biker. So I will say that. So I hope that has interested; I hope that hasn't alienated any fellow mountain bikers here. What else can I say to fill the space while the technology moves on, besides biking? ... Let's see, um. Jeremiah, we're saving our jokes for tomorrow for the social hour so we can't use those up today. ... Hey, Jeremiah, one thing that came up in the chat is folks can only see the chat from the panelists; they can't see each other's chat.
Jeremiah Freeman:
We had our staff trying to change that. It hasn't worked. Let us know and we'll see what happens. And I see Daniel's video now, so I believe he is appropriately connected now.
Daniel Simmons:
All right, I should be.
David Nemtzow:
We can hear you and see you. Thanks.
Daniel Simmons:
Excellent, excellent, thank-you.
David Nemtzow:
You didn't have to wear a necktie just for us but we really appreciate the respect you passed ...
Daniel Simmons:
I would definitely wear a necktie just for you, but you know, thank-you all. Thank-you for the introduction, David. You know, you mentioned -- I came back for a second I heard you say something about mountain biking. After spending 20 years almost exclusively road biking, I visited my parents and there's like this new mountain bike trail. My parents live in Utah. They live less than a mile from the national forest. It was ridiculously fun. But anyway, if I could ride my bike every day, I definitely would. So I thank you David for your introduction and your dedication over the past several years.
As David mentioned, I've been here for almost four years at the Department of Energy. And it has been great. You know, we've really executed on some very comprehensive approaches to energy to our buildings portfolio overall, and I think that these are very important. So thank-you all very much for joining with BTO on this adventure to overall increase our energy efficiency and really to move the ball in terms of energy efficiency. And you know none of you would be here if you were not keenly aware that our nation's 125 million residential and commercial buildings use about 40 percent of our energy and nearly 75 percent, nearly three quarters, of electricity at periods of peak demand. And as we were discussing this over the weekend -- I will see if I can share my screen -- this is what happens when I have too much time over the weekend. We'll see if this works. Can you see this chart? Can you see it? Ah, good, yeah. So this is -- I was curious because I had -- I had my talk, and I was reading my talk, and I was like, OK, well, what does this look like? This is from Energy Information Administration's monthly energy report. And you look at this in some sense and you're like, wow, that's a rapid increase. And it was a pretty rapid increase from 1980 through about 2000, but since then we see how flattened this has been. And by the way, if you look at total energy, not just, you know, residential and commercial energy, it is also totally flat. And then we see population continuing to increase. So this is something that I think really should be celebrated, that in our total energy consumption hasn't really gone down, except for this year.
You know this COVID thing, it's an anomalous year. However, this is really steady, even though population has continued to increase. And so this I think is great, and as David has mentioned that as I think about energy efficiency, as I think about our use of energy overall, one of the things that you know, that the three things that David outlined that emphasize, that energy affordability, which includes not only energy itself but the things that use energy. And I'll dive into more of that, and the integration bringing together, I mean, when you're the assistant secretary for EERE and you have all the renewables and you have these consumptions like energy consumption, in terms of what's going on in manufacturing, what's going on in buildings, what's going on with appliances, all of this, we have to think, I believe, that the future of bringing together, you know, this a different energy system. And buildings play an important role there. And then energy storage. And this is key, not only for things such as electric vehicles or other types of vehicles, but also for energy storage and buildings. And you know, one of the things in terms of energy affordability that I really care about is these numbers really surprised me, when I saw them a couple years ago. This is, again, from the Energy Information Administration. And really what it shows is that a third of families feel some energy insecurity over the course of a year. Now, this is from a survey. I don't know if that survey is done every five years, but if it's done this year, it would look uglier, I imagine, with COVID. And the challenge, I think, is if we have these issues around energy affordability in the United States, we know that these issues are global. And I'll get to that in just a second. Our work, what Congress has told us to do, is to improve the energy efficiency of the United States. But as we think about these technologies, the real goal, I think, is to expand them globally. This weekend, I was going through some, you know, organizing some folders on my computer, and I came across this picture that I shot in Ecuador 25 years ago when I lived there.
So thinking about buildings and energy and this woman washing her clothes, yes ...
David Nemtzow:
Daniel, we can't see the picture yet. Is it -- whoa, is it a different app or something?
Daniel Simmons:
No, it's in that -- that would be a gigantic bummer, because who cares about the charts. Anybody can see the charts, right? We've come for the picture. I'll try it one more time.
David Nemtzow:
Ah, nah, we got it good now.
Daniel Simmons:
You got it, good. Cool. OK, so this is the picture I shot 25 years ago. This is in Guayaquil. And this is probably at the time the poorest neighborhood in Guayaquil. And the -- so these are houses made out of bamboo. These houses use hardly any energy. You cannot have air conditioning in that house where there is -- and in terms of air singling does not exist. And you know, thinking about this and wondering about how this has changed in the past 25 years. And this is what -- this is a few streets away. I'm not exactly sure where I took that picture, but it's pretty close to this one. I mean, we're less than a quarter mile from that last picture in this picture, and you see some pretty radical changes. We see some, definitely some nicer buildings, buildings with glass. You could have air conditioning. You're able to use, and people are using, a lot more energy today. And then I was also thinking about this in terms of this energy affordability and the affordability of energy efficiency. You know, energy efficiency ideas, was a picture, I shot it just a couple years ago in India. This situation that you just saw in this little microcosm, and one tiny part of India is, I mean, in India, in Ecuador, is happening in India, in terms of hundreds of millions of people, hundreds of millions of people are moving up that economic ladder. And they want to use things like air conditioning. And that is massive consumption of energy. When we were talking about a billion people, probably more than that that are looking for these technologies, these energy consumptive technologies that make their lives better but definitely use energy.
So in the United States, we have this issue where we have, with it, it's awesome. We have flattened out our use of electricity globally. Our use of energy is going to continue to increase, and the affordability is critical for improving people's lives. But then the technologies that people adopt, and I think that this is the key. They have to be affordable so that these energy-efficient technologies don't just spread just in the United States, but they spread globally. So that's why I was a little bit fired up about thinking about this, this weekend. I don't have any more pretty pictures, unfortunately, but those were -- I just wanted to share those with you, because like this idea, I just think is just so incredibly important in terms of affordability, that we need to drive these technologies forward. Because the technologies that we take for granted in the United States are proliferating around the world. And making sure that they're affordable, that energy-efficient technologies are affordable, that's what people are going to take up. And so it's why I'm fired up about that.
So in our work here in BTO, since we last met in 2009 a couple Aprils ago, we've provided 130 million dollars in funding to drive affordability in the United States, in terms of cutting-edge energy-saving building technologies, systems and practices through our two BENEFIT funding opportunity announcements. We've also -- we're looking at new technologies to help buildings use less energy directly, but also the affordability in the manufacturing, installing, maintaining, and replacing those components. I mean, this is again, to my point about that affordability, the affordability in manufacturing and installing, that's really important, is the building stock is growing worldwide, even though obviously in the United States we have new buildings. But we also have a very large supply of buildings that have been around for decades. So we're also -- a newer initiative is our Advanced Building Construction or ABC initiative, which I was honored to help launch in July, where we provided 33 million dollars in funding to drive this forward, to drive breakthroughs in offside and modular construction, 3D-printed integrated design, new building materials to really drive this, to drive these new technologies forward in terms of building construction. But also it's not -- and again, this is a global issue not just a U.S. issue -- is how are we integrating buildings into this larger and evolving energy system? So the buildings play an integral role in the energy system, as opposed to being just kind of like dumb consumers of energy. So that integration has at least two different ideas. The first one is integrating a suite of energy-efficient improvements. Together, our BTO-funded research has found that by looking at over 12,000 retrofit projects across the United States, that when you engage in not just like a single component upgrade, but like in a suite of upgrades, that it can deliver between 50 to 80 percent more energy savings than just the energy component upgrade. So that's looking at buildings as an integrated system, we think is very important. And then integrating the building into the end of the grid using integrated or connected system, so that we can -- as we deal with this rapidly evolving electric grid and a rapidly evolving energy system overall. And this is where I think it is.
I've been very grateful for the work that BTO has done in terms of their grid-interactive efficient buildings, or GEB, that the office I think has really like taken this idea and really run with it. And to really drive these ideas forward. A couple years ago, I testified before the Senate about this idea. Today our portfolio in terms of these grid-interactive efficient building R and D portfolio, now has 60 different projects. And we've learned a lot about the true value propositions of what is possible and the best technologies for providing load flexibility to optimize buildings to deploy these flexible loads, and how to validate and verify grid services work as intended. Now, you know one of the things that we see is that when we're talking about this connectedness, both inside the building, connecting buildings to the grid, connecting a bunch of buildings, you know, together, networks to the grid, that connectedness, that with that digitalization or digitization comes at a price. And part of that price is cyber-security concerns. And not just concerns, but you know concerns about the cyber-security reality. And we recently have funded more than 10 million dollars of work on cyber-security for GEBs. And we'll continue to invest in prevention, detection, and adaptation to ensure the resilience of our building energy system. In fact, just last week I visited Idaho National Laboratory. I visited their cyber, because they call it cyber corps, which is their building dedicated to cyber-security. And I was very grateful to see some of the work that was going on. But more importantly, one of the things that I was happy to see from their perspective was just how important the building office takes cyber-security, because we cannot have this connectedness if it is just a cyber-security disaster. And so it was, cyber-security will be able to drive these ideas forward. The only way that we can go forward in terms of the connectedness and the opportunities there is if it is cyber-secure. I'm grateful that I've had the opportunity to see some of the first kind of community-scale experiments with GEBs. I visited Hoover, which is just outside Birmingham, Alabama. And it was really cool. There are 62 single-family homes there that now use 44 percent less energy than comparable all-electric communities, and 34 percent less power demand during winter peak hours. And so that was great. And the success of that community that they worked on a similar concept instead of that one was in Mississippi. The other, Mississippi, my goodness, is this no, Alabama. When I spoke down there, I forgot where I was. Honestly, I can't get it straight. Birmingham,
David Nemtzow:
Daniel, we'll correct the tape so you're not having trouble with anybody.
Daniel Simmons:
This second home -- the second development is in Georgia just outside Atlanta. Secretary Brouillette visited, and he visited the Alabama site, but he announced our 65 million dollar funding opportunity through our Connected Communities funding opportunity, that will expand this program overall by fivefold. To really continue to understand how idiosyncratic are these communities. How can we really deploy this idea in a much grander fashion? So it has been rewarding, I think, to see how far this concept has come. And remember that we are still accepting concept papers for the 65 million dollar Connected Communities funding opportunity through February 17, so please check that out. Please get in your ideas.
I have an important announcement to make today. There was an early question that I think is about robotics that feeds right into this announcement. As I mentioned earlier, as I was talking about our Advanced Building Construction initiatives effort to make retrofits easier and more affordable, I didn't fully describe how hard it is to execute on some of these retrofits. Building and envelope retrofits only account for about one percent of all building retrofits projects in the United States. And there are many reasons for this. There is hazardous materials sometimes that was used in construction. There're sometimes unsafe oddly shaped workplaces, not to mention that retrofit projects in general can be disruptive, invasive, and costly. And so what our research has shown is that robotics could be a complementary alternative that helps contractors gain access to spaces where they can't otherwise fit, such as ducts to perform air-sealing and augment tasks that are repetitive and difficult. So we hope to change that. Today I'm announcing that we are releasing five million dollars in funding for our first-ever American-Made Buildings prize on -- this is a heck of a name -- Envelope Retrofit Opportunities for Building Optimization Technologies, which you can now just forget and just call it the E-Robot prize. So E-Robot, with today's announcement, we are working to harness American ingenuity to deliver low-cost, minimally invasive, robotic, building envelope retrofit solutions that reduce building envelope retrofit cost by 50 percent and envelope and envelope contributed energy losses by 30 percent. So successful ideas will work to create safer and faster retrofit process and circuit consistent higher-quality installations, enhance construction retrofit productivity, and improve overall energy savings of the built environment. As someone who lives in a home built in the 1940s, I would definitely like to see some improvements in terms of energy-efficient retrofits, particularly around building envelopes. So this new prize is a great example of public-private partnerships.
As I laid out, the Building Technologies Office, working with the national labs, and all of you have been great partners as I've had the opportunity to work with you over the past four years. I really appreciate that. I really appreciate all the engagement that all of you have had to drive together, to drive forward and improve the energy efficiency of the built environment. So thank-you for your time, and I'll be happy to answer some questions.
So Karma has been looking at some questions, and hopefully there'll be a few in whatever time it's remaining.
Karma Sawyer:
Hi, Daniel. How are you? Good, so nice to have you joined us today. We really appreciate it.
Daniel Simmons:
Thanks, it's good to be here.
Karma Sawyer:
Yeah, it is exciting. It's something. I haven't seen your office. I have a couple of questions here from our participants. The first is related to your photos. You will appreciate that we also got some requests for additional photos. They seem to really like them. But Reshma Singh asks a few related questions, one being, do you think that we can take American energy-efficiency technologies to emerging tech economies like India? And kind of the related part of that is, would you also consider bringing affordable low embodied carbon or energy construction principles from other countries?
Daniel Simmons:
So on the first one, on that visit to India, one of the things, well, actually in that was two and a half years ago, in the lead-up to that, where I was briefed, we saw some of the challenges that we had working with India. I mean, this isn't like a challenge working with India itself, like in terms of buildings. The building stock in the United States and India is substantially different. So the key, I think, in working together and having a a successful collaboration, as we think about these things, again, is where is their overlap? Where are there technologies that can work both in the United States and in India? And yeah, I didn't -- I guess I could have shown some better pictures of Ecuadorian construction techniques, which are much closer to India's, given the various thermal demands. But yeah, we need to like work hard on the front end to figure out the areas where there can be overlap. I very much believe that especially in areas of connectedness that those concepts will translate rather directly in the United States and in India. And given India's technological forwardness, that picture was actually a picture of Bangalore, India, which is really the tech capital of India. So in that way, I think that there's a lot of opportunities. And again, like one of the reasons that we have seen a widespread like foldable tech solar adoption around the world, and it is just going to continue, is because that is low-cost technology. What are these technologies that are low-cost that work for us and that could work around the world? I think that's a key area to consider working on. I mean, obviously one of those things is on air conditioning, just given the dramatic rise that we will see. How can we have lower cost and more energy-efficient air conditioning, I think, is a very important area for collaboration.
Karma Sawyer:
Yeah, I completely agree, and I would be in so much trouble if I didn't point out that passive cooling is also a huge opportunity. And you can look at things like shades and cool roofs that I think are really used in a savvy manner. And we do a lot of support, too, a lot of work to support those efforts here, too. So you know these challenges do have some universality to them, I think.
Daniel Simmons:
Yeah, agreed, agreed.
Karma Sawyer:
So I know we've got our next session. I don't want to go too far over. So I do have a bunch of questions, but I'll try to pick in a savvy way. Do you think, would you be able to speak to how you think EERE priorities are going to change moving forward under a Biden Administration?
Daniel Simmons:
Obviously, I mean, so if you go to buildbackbetter.com, which is the Biden team's like transition website, you can see where they're coming from. One of their four priorities is climate change. Like on one hand, I don't think there's going to be a like -- there will be definitely an increased emphasis in terms of CO2 emission reductions. There's no doubt about that. I'll let them speak to that, to how they want to accomplish that. I'll say that like in many ways that there might not be as big of a difference. You know, they're going to have different priorities, but when we do these, when you do an energy efficiency, when you use energy more efficiently, you're not emitting as much carbon dioxide emission. It's as simple as that. When we drive down cost of renewable energy and that's what gets deployed on the grid, we're not releasing carbon dioxide emissions. And so those are areas of common interest. Now there's obviously going to be some changes, but I believe that much of the work will continue, with just a different area of emphasis. It's kind of my take on that.
Karma Sawyer:
Yeah, that makes sense -- that's great. We really appreciate you giving that insight to us, and to all of our guests here. Well, we are at 1:15. I'm going to ask you one quick question before we hand it over to our next panel. Kind of in the same spirit, if you can give a piece of advice to some younger folks that are entering this field and are really excited about being involved in clean energy and energy efficiency, what would that be?
Daniel Simmons:
Well, just given my current thoughts, is about scalability and low cost, because like these are technologies that will literally change the world. They will make our lives better in the United States, which you know is something I care about, but it'll make the lives of people better globally. When we can have low-cost energy-efficient technologies, whatever those may be, that energy is critically important. You know, I love the picture of the woman washing her clothes. I have no desire to wash clothes. I don't think there's anybody out there that really loves to wash clothes. That we have better things to do with our lives and with our time than have to do that. And so as we can drive down the cost of the various ways that we use energy, it makes people's lives better. And you know, I'm grateful for this opportunity that I've had to work on that over the past four years. And thank-you all for all of the work that we have done together. I really appreciate it. And with that, I will hand it back to you, Karma, David.
Karma Sawyer:
Dniel, thank-you so much. That's a great way for us to end this. And we've really appreciated working with you and your leadership, as well. Thanks, David. I'm going to hand it over to you. Thank-you all for the chance to let me take some questions from all of you. I very much appreciate the opportunity.
David Nemtzow:
Great; thanks, Karma, and thanks very much to Daniel. Look if you don't know Daniel Simmons personally, you just saw an important element of his style. He's not only the leader of EERE, but he does it in a very collegial manner and a very helpful manner, with candor and humanity that makes our jobs day-to-day so much easier to do. And so that's been greatly appreciated. And besides, he brought us some nice photos, and you know, no offense, Jack, to you or me or Maddie, I loved our video, but those are really nice photos that Daniel brought, and humanizes the work that we all do, whether it's a lifestyle like the role of technology in our lifestyles or energy affordability. Or we could also have photos of the impact of climate change and the role of renewables, etc. So the human part is easy for us to forget in a technical field.