Below is the text version of the webinar, "2020 Peer PReview: Message from Alex Fitzsimmons." See the video.
David Nemtzow:
Next we're going to turn to our hard tech panel. I don't have the -- sorry, I don't have the precise name in front of me because I've been calling it hard tech since it was first proposed. And as you know, it's great to do the work that we do together, at universities, at labs, at research institutions, and invent new things and develop new things. What's even better is for those inventions and developments to make it into the real world through the marketplace. So how do we commercialize these products is of course a long-standing issue. I worked for a startup, a distributed thermal storage company. It's always hard but it's especially hard these days with so much capital and attention going into software. To get things that are hardware if you're not named Elon Musk is pretty challenging. So with that said, I would like to turn it over to our Deputy Assistant Secretary Alex Fitzsimmons. Alex -- I trust you all know -- has been at DOE for four years. He was chief of staff initially to Daniel Simmons, and then a year before last became deputy assistant secretary for energy efficiency, the post he holds now. And in that role as DAS for energy efficiency, Alex has led a number of initiatives. And I will say, Alex, I think the ones that are most important that you've done and have had the greatest impact on EERE and on BTO in particular, is one, the work you've done to bring together the different offices under your stead -- the Weatherization office, the Federal Energy Management Office, Advanced Manufacturing, and us -- and making sure we're all rowing in the same direction to the work I referenced earlier. I don't know if you're on yet with Nasio, the return to work initiative, so that we can deal with the states and move quickly without a large influx of new appropriations. And three, and I think most importantly, your impact on field validation, field verification, to make sure these technologies can be trusted and that we can validate their performance and we can verify that. So thank-you for that work, Alex, let me turn it over to you, and introduce the hardtech panel.
(Another speaker:)
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Alex Fitzsimmons:
All right, hello, everyone. Can you hear me now? Yeah, perfect. All right, well, thank-you, David, for that introduction. And I've just so you know, I've been on for about the last 15 to 20 minutes so I heard a lot about what you had to say. You said a lot about a lot of things, a lot of which I agree with, and you know whether you're coming at this -- whether you're coming at energy efficiency or you're involved in the Building Technologies Office for the economic reasons, the environmental reasons, or climate reasons, I mean, there are a lot of reasons to to engage in the work that the Building Technologies Office does. But I'll talk a little bit about climate because David focused on it so much. I think it's an important issue to focus on, and it's important to recognize all of the progress we've made within the last several years. I mean, if you would ask people five, 10 years ago that today the United States would not only be the number one energy producer in the world, producing more oil, natural gas, than any place on earth, but we would also be the number one country in terms of reducing CO2 emissions, people would have thought you were crazy. But that's exactly what's happened. The United States is the number one producer of energy in the world. We're exporting our LNG to 35 countries around the globe and counting. We produce more oil than any country on earth. It's led to a lot of energy independence and more energy affordability for people, which is a high priority for us. At the same time, we've also dramatically reduced wind and solar costs. And so we see much more wind and solar coming onto the grid, more energy storage with, you know, EV battery cost declining 90 percent in 10 years, LED light bulb costs declining by 90 percent in 10 years, thanks in part to a lot of the work that BTO has done over the years, while at the same time making sure that our regulatory environment preserves consumer choice and a wide range of lighting options for people. And so those are some of the things we've done. We've helped, contributed to, and it's resulted in an energy system that is more affordable, more resilient, and cleaner than at any point in our history, at least in the industrial age. So that's a true achievement, and what it's meant is that even though the United States is not in the Paris climate agreement, we've actually been able to reduce our energy-related carbon dioxide emissions by more than any other country on earth. In fact, most countries' energy-related CO2 has been rising, and ours has been falling. And so this is a true achievement that's been driven largely by technological innovation, which is what we focus on here at the Department of Energy. And it's why it's so exciting to be in the energy-efficiency space. The reason I wanted to become the deputy assistant secretary for energy efficiency is because energy efficiency touches on more parts of our energy system and our economy than any other office or program within DOE. And that's not an exaggeration. You look at, buildings consume 75 percent of our electricity, more than 80 percent during peak demand. You look at our manufacturing sector, and as David pointed out, I oversee our Advanced Manufacturing Office, as well; that represents about the other 25 percent with the entire economy covered. Everything we do, every time, from the moment you wake up in the morning and turn on the lights to the moment you fall asleep at night, everything we do, energy efficiency permeates our entire lives, our country, our economy.
And so what we have worked to do and what we've worked with David on is deploying our energy-efficiency resources to strengthen the competitiveness of our building sector, our homes, our businesses. And I think as David has pointed out, we have a lot of successes to point to. And so I'm really glad to be joined here today, to be introducing this panel, because -- and by the way, David, the panel's titled "Hardware is Hard: How Do We Commercialize Hard Tech Building Innovations Faster," which is an important question at an important time. Because as we know, everything from concrete to insulation and light bulbs, as I mentioned, to advanced sensors, that are part of our grid interactive buildings program, we're seeing this cutting-edge innovation that starts in early-stage hard tech. And it's going to be hard tech innovations such as these that will help us address the world's biggest challenges in energy resilience, economic growth, environmental protection, and climate. But you know, unlike many of these, you know, traditionally venture capital funds software-based innovations. In contrast, all that hard tech technologies -- and what we mean by that are physical products -- these technologies often take much longer and require more capital, more patient capital, to get to market. And so hard tech innovations are often viewed by traditional VC as too risky to be supported by industry, and in part because the time to market and the capital that's required often scares away traditional investors. So this session is going to discuss a lot of those complexities. We have a fantastic panel of experienced experts in energy finance to really parse through a lot of the complexities that are inherent in advancing hardware-based innovations or physical products.
And so you know, as David mentioned, one of my top priorities within the energy-efficiency sector has been field validation because we have to find a way, as a personal priority of mine, to make sure that we have mechanisms in place to sufficiently de-risk the early-stage technologies that we're working on. Because otherwise, you know, what's the point of it all if we can't commercialize it and and get it into the hands of people who can mass-produce it and have these markets grow? So we've done a lot of efforts in this area on field validation. BTO has its proving ground, public-sector field validation funding opportunity that's focused on just this, in partnership with state governments. And we've had a fantastic relationship with Nazio and all the state energy offices. Another example is our recent Connected Communities FOA that Secretary Brouillette announced a few weeks ago in Charlotte, North Carolina, which is the the culmination of years of work in grid-interactive efficient buildings. It's a 65 million dollar funding opportunity that's focused on demonstrating how groups of buildings and distributed energy resources, whether it's solar or storage or EV charging, can connect and reliably and affordably integrate together to manage and optimize energy performance across a set of buildings and provide valuable services back to the grid. And so through these fields, through this suite of field validation activities -- everything from testing, measurement and verification, all the things that are necessary to help de-risk technology -- we're focused on increasing the the flexibility on the demand side and verifying our results in real-world operating conditions so that we can increase market acceptance of many of these technologies.
So without further adieu, since we're already running quite a ways behind, let's get the panel started. You know, we're going to hear from a distinguished panel of experts who will discuss many of the biggest challenges across the hard tech space, and so we hope you'll learn from this panel. We hope you'll take away some interesting information, you'll make some good virtual connections. And because, as David said, we're here to work for you. So with that, I'd like to hand it over to Ilan Gur, CEO of Activate, to introduce and lead the panel.