The Exchanges

Q What about the union path? We talked about that earlier. Don't, don't the unions train people as well, like through the apprenticeship programs?

A That's another really interesting point. So the unions have this robust training pipeline. They offer free classes, paid apprenticeships, and they can offer those because of union dues, but they can only admit so many people. And so I spoke to labor advocates who think we need to strengthen the unions. Right now, union electricians, they don't really do that much work on houses because they're undercut by non-union electricians who can pay their workers less. And I was told that If some of the public funding that was coming out for electrification had labor standards attached to it, that that could sort of level the playing field for the unions and help them compete for those jobs, and then they could train more workers.

AI assessment note: “unions have this robust training pipeline. They offer free classes, paid apprenticeships”

Q And what about people like Boren at the top of the show? He was talking about how he was doing some worker training too, right?

A Right. And so I heard from a lot of people that solving this also really hinges on involvement from people like Boren. And that's partly because, you know, they already know how to do this work. They're the people that will ultimately hire these workers. The obstacle there, as Boren talked about, is that training people eats into his profits. That's part of the reason he can't hire and grow right now. Panama Bartholome, who you heard from earlier, he told me that one way to solve this issue might be to provide funding for this kind of training. Like, for example, the Inflation Reduction Act, it has funding for state energy offices to do workforce development, and some of that could be used to pay, let's say, half or three-quarters of the wages of a trainee so that contractors like Boren can afford to take them on.

AI assessment note: “solving this also really hinges on involvement from people like Boren.”

Q Coming up after the break, the gas industry's influence campaign and the potential collateral damage to clean energy. What did you find when you dug into the local utilities involvement in these legislative efforts?

A What we found in Florida was there was a money trail between the Tampa Electric Company and Travis Hudson, so Tico, Tampa Electric Company, funneled about 15,000 dollars to him, like, right before this legislative session, and kind of as he was working on these bills. Tico also had six registered lobbyists on the bills, and we obtained public records through The Energy and Policy Institute, which is a sort of watchdog of utilities and how they're blocking climate action all over the country, and there were a set of internal emails from a municipally owned gas utility in Clearwater, Florida, and this was really interesting. Basically, these internal emails had the executive director of this utility referring to the bills that Hudson had Introduced and saying, you know, this is the bill that Florida Natural Gas Association is championing. Their public affairs manager at Clearwater Gas said she would donate to her senator's reelection campaign if he gets it through. So this is just sort of like internal dialogue at this gas company about these bills and how they're supporting them. And then kind of one step beyond that, there were Also older emails from around 2019 where these same figures were sort of looking at this pattern of kind of local climate action happening all over the country. They had seen an agenda from, um, the U.S. Conference of Mayors that had a bunch of kind of d…

AI assessment note: “What we found in Florida was there was a money trail between the Tampa Electric”

Q There's another consequence to this legislation in Florida. It's so broad that many fear that it will stifle renewable energy promotion policies as well. What are the potential unintended consequences?

A Yeah, so it stems from the language in the legislation, and this is specifically the bill that had to do with the types of fuel sources that utilities can use, and it says in the bill that a local government essentially cannot take any action that restricts or prohibits or has the effect of restricting or prohibiting The types or fuel sources of energy production that can be used. And so this language, um, or has the effect of, it just leaves so much leeway for interpretation. And so some of the folks that I spoke with in Florida were worried that, that, you know, so many different things could be interpreted as having the effect of restricting the use of natural gas, for example. Like, if you had a program where, um, You were incentivizing the use of solar, rooftop solar, maybe that could be seen as having the effect of restricting the use of natural gas at the local power plant. It's just very broad, and, and when it first was introduced, people really didn't know how it was going to be interpreted.

AI assessment note: “incentivizing the use of solar, rooftop solar, maybe that could be seen as”

Q So why is TECO in particular so against these bans? What is it specifically doing that it's, it's afraid that we'll get derailed?

A Well, so recently, TECO has been investing in new natural gas power plants. So they have, um, a major coal plant called Big Bend in Florida and Tampa, and they're in the process of converting part of that plant to run on natural gas. So I think this isn't, this is true of many utilities around the country where we're seeing a utility set a big climate plan, like a net zero climate plan, But their plan includes burning natural gas for decades to come, and in part it's because many of them are invested in these very long-lived natural gas assets that they don't want to have to retire early, and so I think that's part of what was playing into it with TECO.

AI assessment note: “TECO has been investing in new natural gas power plants.”

Q it. He's got this partnership with an EV charger installation company, but in my experience in talking to my electrician, for example, who's been really great, but also pretty skeptical of whole home electrification, it seems like there is a hesitance among some of the old school contractors about Electrifying homes entirely, or about EV chargers and heat pumps. So what is the spectrum of reactions that you're, you're hearing?

A Yeah, I mean, I, I also heard a lot of stories about this. I heard homeowners talk about their contractors who told them, like, you're gonna need natural gas backup for your heating system, or I also talked to some contractors who were kind of skeptical of, of electrification. But I think this hesitancy is something that California is really working on. I heard about this program called Tech Clean California, and a big part of the program involves training contractors on how to install heat pumps and other technologies, and so they're giving them information about not just, you know, how to install them, but what incentives are available and how to, like, sell them to customers, and so far they've trained about 600 contractors. Here's Panama Bartholomew talking about it.

AI assessment note: “I heard homeowners talk about their contractors who told them, like, you're gonna need natural gas”