Mar 28, 2023 · 26m · green-blueprint
Live: The most ambitious city energy transition in America
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this live podcast recorded at Intersolar North America, host Stephen Lacey interviews LADWP General Manager and Chief Engineer Marty Adams about the technical, financial, and equitable strategies required to transform Los Angeles's power grid to 100 percent clean energy by 2035.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 4.4 Guest teaching 3.0 Guest disagreement 0.9 The hosts pushing back 1.3
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 10:04 Pushing back on the battery-only assumption
Adams gently but firmly rejects the simplistic idea that batteries alone can run the grid, noting that generators are still required to recharge them overnight after peak heat days.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 11:01 Pinning down the generation mix numbersLacey recites specific percentage estimates for LADWP's fuel mix (renewables, nuclear, gas, coal) to hold the utility accountable for how it will phase out fossil generation.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 16:20 Explaining rooftop solar accounting in CaliforniaAdams educates the audience and host on the nuance that California rooftop solar counts as energy demand reduction rather than utility renewable generation, requiring LADWP to retain full backup capacity.
The host holds their own ▶ 13:24 Highlighting tenant rooftop solar barriersLacey brings informed analysis to the conversation by citing the statistic that nearly two-thirds of LA residents are renters unable to access rooftop solar.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Announcement of Live Show at Greentown Labs | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Solo host monologue introducing an upcoming live event at Greentown Labs and laying out the background context for LADWP's clean energy transition study. | |
| Marty Adams on Technical Leadership at LADWP | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Lacey highlights Adams's long career and revival of the Chief Engineer title, prompting Adams to explain the necessity of technical leadership for massive infrastructure challenges. | |
| Phasing Out Fossil Generation and Deploying Green Hydrogen | 6 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Lacey cites LADWP's power mix percentages to probe how fossil fuels will be phased out; Adams fine-tunes the figures and explains the technical need for in-basin green hydrogen generation rather than relying solely on batteries. | |
| Addressing Technical and Social Barriers to Green Hydrogen | 5 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Lacey presses on community and technical resistance to hydrogen combustion, and Adams details scaling economics, pipeline transport safety, and public education hurdles. | |
| Scaling Renewables, Distributed Solar, and Grid Equity | 6 | 5 | 1 | 2 | Lacey brings up the statistic that two-thirds of Angelenos are renters who do not own rooftops; Adams explains the split-incentive problem and how current net metering structures cause an inequitable cost shift onto non-solar users. | |
| Managing Transition Costs and Infrastructure Affordability | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Lacey asks which systemic risk weighs most heavily, and Adams zeroes in on the $60B to $80B price tag and ratepayer bill affordability. | |
| Workforce Development and Local Economic Opportunity | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Lacey asks about the city's equitable hiring mandate, and Adams describes local training initiatives, lineworker shortages, and keeping LADWP's multi-billion dollar capital spend within the LA basin. | |
| Open Solicitations and Industry Collaboration Opportunities | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Lacey requests actionable advice for the clean energy practitioners in the audience, leading Adams to describe LADWP's open RFPs for emerging renewable and energy storage technologies. |
Statements from this episode (20)
Adams: NREL studies prove LADWP can reach 100% clean energy by 2035
“Somebody could say it's an aspirational challenge, and it's not. I mean, it's something that we actually know through our studies with NREL. It's possible.”
Adams: LADWP currently averages 40% to 46% renewable electricity generation
“Yeah, we're a little over 40% now on, on average. You know, there are days that we're probably in the high seventies percents, and days in the summer we're in the teens. So on average, 40, 45, 46%.”
Adams: Fossil fuels met 5,000 MW of LADWP's 6,200 MW peak demand
“Our peak day was a little over 6200 megawatts. At, On that day, we're burning 5000 megawatts, so that 6200 was a fossil fuel”
Adams: LADWP to transition Intermountain Power Project to 100% green hydrogen
“That plan now is to transition that gas plant from an initial blend of gas and about 30% green hydrogen. That's green hydrogen created by electrolysis and stored locally. Using those local water source, excess renewables, and there's ability to store it in sal…”
Adams: LA requires 2,500 to 3,000 MW of in-basin dispatchable generation
“One of the interesting things about the NREL study that Stephen referenced was that in that study, it did say that we actually had to have a certain amount of in-basin generation So we know we need a lot of storage for energy. We need a lot of solar, a lot of …”
Adams: LADWP operates 3,400 MW of in-basin natural gas generation
“Right now we have about 3400 megawatts of in-basin energy generation. Those are for gas plants.”
Adams: Batteries cannot sustain multi-day grid reliability without dispatchable generators
“Well, you can have enough batteries if you have enough land to do a day or so, but it's the recharging of the batteries the next day that gets you in trouble. That's the same thing the state experienced during the last heat waves the last summer. They said we …”
Adams: LADWP plans to convert all in-basin generating stations to green hydrogen
“But our plan now is to move all those generating stations into green hydrogen, so we can have dispatchable power locally, but it burns clean.”
Adams: California curtailed 80,000 MWh of solar in April 2022
“California itself, I think, gosh, it was a, I want to say a year ago, April they turn off 80,000 megawatt hours of solar because there's nowhere for the energy to go.”
Adams: Scaling hydrogen in Southern California transportation will drive down prices
“I think that as we generate this idea of a hydrogen economy in Southern California, looking at as fuels for maybe for heavy trucking, the studies for airline fuels, shipping fuels, and other things like that, will ideally get some economy to scale and start to…”
Adams: Gulf Coast has safely transported hydrogen via pipelines for decades
“And becoming cost-effective, and at the same time, there's a social challenge to get people to understand what this element is that we're talking about, and that is okay to use, and that, you know, hydrogen's been used in the Gulf Coast states, pumped for hund…”
Adams: LADWP has 1,700 MW solar and 1,300 MW wind out-of-basin
“We currently have, About 1700 megawatts or so of out of basin solar capacity and about 1300 plus megawatts of wind capacity.”
Adams: LADWP must add 4,000 MW solar, 3,000 MW wind by 2035
“We need about 5700 megawatts of wind. A part of solar and about 4300 megawatts of wind. So that's a lot, but you know, there's a, what a 3000 megawatt increase on wind and a 4000 megawatt increase on solar that we need to build ideally by 20, 35.”
Adams: Over 70,000 rooftops in Los Angeles are solar-powered
“We've got a little over 70,000 rooftops in LA that are currently solar powered.”
Adams: Rooftop solar is bottlenecked because 64% of LA residents are renters
“The challenge in LA is about 63, 64% of the people don't own their roofs.”
Adams: LADWP runs the nation's largest feed-in tariff program at 450MW
“Then we also have a feed-in tariff program about a 450 megawatt feed-in tariff program. It's the biggest one in the country. We're going to increase it, but we're still working on getting subscription in there. We're not quite at 200 megawatts.”
Adams: Paying retail rates for rooftop solar subsidizes owners at others' expense
“We still pay a retail rate for energy that people produce off the roof going back in the grid. So that means that some people are able to reduce their energy bill, but they're still taking advantage of the infrastructure. As the people who own solar on the roo…”
Adams: LA's clean energy transition will cost between $60B and $80B
“So if you've seen the LA 100 studies, you've seen it's got a 60 to eighty billion dollar price tag, which over time is not unreasonable.”
Adams: LADWP contracts $1B in water and $1.2B in power annually
“We're contracting, I'll tell you right now, we're contracting over a billion dollars a year in capital on water, another billion dollars of capital, probably 1,000,000,002 on capital on power.”
Adams: Current technologies cannot achieve LA's 2035 clean energy transition goals
“Because we're not going to do this by ourselves, and I doubt we're going to do it with the technologies that we know currently alone. We're going to have to have some new technologies that come of age and are ready to be part of the future”