Paul Lau, CEO of Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), compares emissions from SMUD's generation assets to regional emissions from transportation and buildings.
Opinion
Lau: Decarbonization requires breakthroughs in long-duration storage, hydrogen, and CCS
“We do need breakthrough technologies, you know, that would be critical. So that we're focusing on long duration storage, hydrogen as a replacement fuel in the power plants, and carbon capture and sequestration.”
Disclosure
SMUD is investing $2B to cut 1M metric tons of carbon in transport and buildings
“We're also investing two billion dollars, you know, in the building and transportation sectors along with energy efficiencies and the low flexibility because that's really where a lot of the, you know, that, that's a much bigger impact. So our plan actually ca…”
Assertion Supported
California mandates 5M EVs by 2030, with SMUD targeting 300k vehicles
“California is mandated to basically put in about 5,000,005 million electric vehicles by 2030. And SMUD's contribution of that is about 300,000 vehicles.”
Assertion Supported
Lau: Widespread smart thermostat pre-cooling can provide hundreds of megawatts
“So certainly, you know, something as simple as a smart thermostat, right? That you help pre-cool the home, you know, before the peak comes and then have it ride through. If everybody does it, that could add up to hundreds of megawatts.”
Disclosure
Lau: SMUD offers $500–$2,500 incentives for virtual power plant battery enrollment
“Convince them to put batteries in and have them sign up for programs like Smite is doing right now, what we call the virtual power plant, that you offer them incentives to sign up if they have a batteries from, you know, some simply just say, hey, I am going t…”