The fact is that it's equivalent of seven Super Bowls happening every day in Los Angeles. So that's a lot of people, it's a lot of energy, it's a lot of stuff, that's a lot of people to move around. It often feels like you have, in the run-up to a game, a lot of talk about, oh, this will deliver huge infrastructure benefits for our city, and that's one of the things that cities like to talk about when they're bidding to secure games. and sometimes that works out, sometimes it doesn't. You know, what a great opportunity to use the games to both inspire and help accelerate and motivate people to take advantage of this moment to provide lasting investment that isn't about, you know, stadia or arenas but is about creating more economic opportunity and accelerating equitable climate action. With the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games just around the corner, the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator, or LACI, is working to accelerate clean air, clean energy, clean transportation and other sustainability solutions for Los Angeles while inspiring global action by the time of the 2028 Games. Learn more about how you can join LACI on the road to 2028 at laincubator.org slash road to 2028. Hello and welcome to The Energy Gang, a discussion show from Wood Mackenzie about the fast-changing world of energy. I'm Ed Crooks and on this show we're going to be talking about the Olympics. The 2028 Olympics and Paralympic Games are going to be held in Los Angeles and that's of course both a huge challenge and also a huge opportunity for the city's infrastructure. To discuss that challenge and the opportunity. I'm joined by Matt Peterson. Matt is the president and CEO of Lacey, the Los Angeles cleantech incubator. Hello, Matt. Welcome to the show. Thanks, Ed. It's great to be with you. Great to have you. So look, we want to talk about the Olympics, as I say, in a moment. Before we do that, one of the things we always like to do when we get new people onto the show is talk to them a little bit about their background, the career paths that took them to the roles they now hold. Perhaps before we do that, even, could you tell us a little bit about Lacey? What is it? What do you do? Great question. So the Los Angeles Clean Tech Incubator, our mission is to create an inclusive green economy for Los Angeles and far beyond. And we were founded in 2011. It was really an outgrowth of an economic development initiative of the city of L.A. At the time, Mayor Antonio Villargoza wanted to make L.A. the clean tech capital of the world, building on the legacy of the aerospace industry and other industries and engineering based industries in Los Angeles. and really embraced this opportunity and worked with the city partners and agencies to manifest, where I'm sitting, you can't see it, but this campus that's 60,000 square feet in the middle of the Arts District, which at the time was a neighborhood you really wanted to be careful about walking around. It had been historically an area of manufacturing, and the building we're in actually was the warehouse where furniture that was manufactured across the street was stored before it was sent out to retail stores to be sold to customers. And so this place is a place where entrepreneurs gather, investors gather, policymakers gather. So we really use this beautiful campus as a catalyst and then do our work out in community to do three things. help unlock innovation by helping the startups and lots that we could go into there. We provide access to capital. We have a debt fund. We have a sidecar venture fund. We give them access to pilot funds. The city of LA allows us to provide the sweat equity to lean in to help these companies. Our other programs are market transformation. How do we really transform markets by recognizing that policymakers send market signals to entrepreneurs and then bring the public and private sector together to accelerate progress around shared priorities in responding to those market signals, as well as informing them for the future. And then last but not least, the third piece of our holistic approach is enhancing communities. How do we bring in the workforce that's underrepresented, train them in green technologies, and then we place those graduates into paid internships with our startups. So it's really a microcosm of the green economy we want to create in the world. All right. Got it. So what about your story then? How did you get interested in energy and sustainability? And what was the path that led you to that role you now hold as president and CEO at Lacey? Yeah, it's, you know, everybody has their own unique origin story. For me, as a kid, my dad, when he was still alive, would tell this story to anybody who would listen as a proud father, often does, is wax on about something about their kid. He would tell the story. We were in the park on a Sunday afternoon and it was a busy weekend. And he said, I think I was four or five years old. and there was trash everywhere strewn about. And he said, I looked up to my dad and I said, dad, we got to do something to take better care of our planet. And I have no recollection of this, but as I look back upon things that are embedded in my memory around that age, I remember my older brother who was nine years older. He made a Super 8 film that must have been around the first Earth Day that was in the early 70s that was, he shot, I remember vividly, the tailpipe emissions, the missions from a jet plane flying overhead back then where I grew up in Modesto actually had jet plane service. And that stuck in my brain. And I mean, there are other aspects around that time as a kid that I remember really just like didn't sit well with me and didn't make sense. Why were we polluting? And I, you know, I jumped forward to when my son was around the same age and we were driving at the time I drove a Prius. And he asked me as he was strapped into the back and his kids car seat. He said, Dad, if people know how to make cars that aren't stinky, why do they make cars that are stinky? And, you know, from the wisdom of babes, it really is true. And so I mean, as a father, of course, I do this work for my son and other in future generations that how do we make sure humanity can just not just survive on this planet, but thrive. And that's what motivates me. So over the course of my career, there was a lot, obviously, between the four or five year old kid in Modesto and where I'm sitting now here in the arts district in Los Angeles. You know, but working in politics and my parents both being in public service, my mom active in democratic politics, my dad an educator and a public servant for his entire life certainly shaped me. And along the way, the people that I worked with and worked for shaped me in a way that really took me in this direction in this career. And, you know, I think what cemented it, though, was after I ran, when I went to grad school, I wanted to get involved in running a nonprofit after working in politics and got this opportunity to run a nonprofit a month in. And it was an environmental nonprofit working to stop this radioactive waste dump in an unlined dirt trench near the Colorado River that could have made tritium get into the Colorado River and pollute the water supply for 20 million people. And that was the beginning of my professional work directly in the environment. But what really cemented it was the bet towards the end of that role. I got connected with an amazing woman named Diane Maraj-Saman who Gorbachev, Mikhail Gorbachev, the former head of the Soviet Union, had asked to help him start this environmental organization called the Green Cross in the United States. And that was in 1994. And so that really kicked off the 30 plus years since that I've been working in the environmental space. Yeah, it's amazing to think about Earth Day all those years ago and that kind of event, sort of starting on this journey then many decades later, you know, planting that seed that has now grown into this shows what kind of an impact those things can have if they catch your imagination at a young age. absolutely you know i mean it's yeah it's it does you'd never know what nugget might stuck and stick in someone's brain or touch them so that's that's that's why you know one of the reasons we we do this work is hopefully you can touch someone's life and then they go off and do great things and you're just cheering them on and following that lead yeah absolutely so tell me about the olympics then so as i was saying the 2028 olympic and paralympic games will be held in Los Angeles. What is your involvement there? Yeah, number one, I'll just say really upfront, Lacey has no formal role in the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games. That is the role and responsibility of LA28, the organizing committee. Yet we have been hard at work using the fact that the world is going to arrive in 2028. Millions of people will be coming to Los Angeles. And And during that time, as LA28 leaders have said, the fact is it's equivalent of seven Super Bowls happening every day in Los Angeles. So that's a lot of people. It's a lot of energy. It's a lot of stuff. That's a lot of people to move around and things to move around. Within that is an opportunity to use the games as a catalyst. That's why in 2018, a little less than a year after I got here as CEO of Lacey, we really embraced that opportunity and said, let's create a public-private partnership to work together to see how we can accelerate progress around transportation electrification. It's a – you know, that transportation electrification touches every part of the economy and it's – you know, as it transforms our economy really and how we change, how we move goods, how we move people. And so we we set about the work of setting a goal at the time. We said we wanted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a further 25 percent beyond the 2018 baseline, which we set as at the time, Governor Brown, Jerry Brown's executive order. he released that year, did the modeling, played with the dials and knobs, and set a series of targets that we've been working towards with the public and private sector involved. And at the table were, of course, the electric utilities, Southern California Edison and LA Department of Modern Power, LA DDP, which is actually our landlord and core partner here at the campus. And then the Air Resources Board, the chair, then it was Mary Nichols, a legendary climate leader. And we sat in a room along with the mayor of L.A. and other partners and said, let's do this. And we attracted automakers Nissan BMW BYD and then later companies like Audi and others Neat Rivian have joined us along the way to say all right well this is the largest urban auto market for every one of these OEMs LA So what we do here matters. California is the most important regulator, although that's obviously being challenged from efforts out of Washington right now. But the fact remains that this is still, you know, L.A. is the third largest metropolitan economy in the world within the fourth largest economy in the world, California. And what we do here matters from an early adopter perspective in terms of scaling. And so that's really the spirit of what we brought together with the Transportation Electrification Partnership and the work we began in 2018. and then later looked with a clean energy partnership, how do we set the targets around making sure we have the power that's needed, the clean energy needed to power the transformation that is transportation electrification, as well as building decarbonization, ensure grid reliability. So we set a number of other targets in that process for clean energy. Right. So to be clear about that, then when you think about the carbon footprint of the Games as a whole, It's going to be transport that's going to be absolutely critical to that. Is that right? Yes. I mean, look, the biggest footprint of the Games are going to be air transport by far. I mean, then you look at the movement of goods and then the movement of people once they're here. And so one of our partners in the Transportation Electrification Partnership is Metro, which is the regional transit agency that is building out historic levels of funding, using historic levels of funding for building out the light rail and subway system, as well as bus system in Los Angeles. And they'll be responsible for the bus system that takes people from a park and relocation to the final destination, the venues. And we're working with them this summer during the World Cup to pilot a couple of solutions. One is a shading structure how people, as they wait for the bus, be able to stay cool during periods that are likely going to see extreme heat sometime this summer here in Los Angeles. We're already seeing it in different parts of the country, of course, and around the world right now. But how do we do that? And then mobile charging where we can't get permanent charging into these parking lots that people, there's a lot of people showing up to park their car that they, if they have an EV, that they can plug in and have a charge when they get back. So we're working hard right now to see how we can accelerate the final deployment of infrastructure, both using the World Cup as an opportunity to pilot different solutions and then lean in to accelerate the final deployment of infrastructure and investment in Los Angeles in these next two years. Right. Because when you talk about the electrification of transport, then that is very critically, is it the electrification of private cars? I mean, obviously, when people think about LA, they think about it as a great city, as you say, one of the largest metropolitan economies in the world. It's also a great car-based city. Driving in LA is famous. The traffic in LA is famous. And realistically, then, if you're talking about electrification, that has to be the main focus, does it, rather than trying to build out more mass transit, public transport of any kind? Yes. And I mean, look, we're our ability as an organization, even as powerful of a convening power we do have as a nonprofit here in Los Angeles, we single-handedly can't build out the transit infrastructure. There's $120 billion being spent, funded by a sales tax measure that my former boss, Mayor Eric Garcetti, led and championed to really accelerate investments, building on a previous tax measure that the previous mayor, Antonio Vidagosa, had championed. That is historic levels of investment that I mentioned earlier. Yet, to answer your question, And that is, you know, we, our modeling showed that, yes, if we get to 70% of all the cars sold to be electric by 2028, that, you know, 40% of the medium duty delivery trucks were electric by 2028. If 40%, 60% of those trucks were electric, if 40% of the drayage trucks, the heavy duty class A trucks that would pick up the goods at the airport, the port of Los Angeles and Long Beach were zero emissions, we would, we still wouldn't get to that GHT target. So we have to get people out of their cars and into transit. So just recently, a new line opened up here, the D-Line. There's been a lot of the Metro and others have had a lot of fun with the D-Line. They ride the D and take your D-picks, and they've been really having fun with it. But it is incredible. The extension of that line to different parts of Los Angeles is a lot of fun. You can get to the new LACMA Museum, this iconic new museum that just opened up in Los Angeles. It just really does open up new possibilities. Now, we still have the last mile, first mile challenge in Los Angeles. And that's why making it easier to walk and bike and use Metro's shared mobility systems. That's why we're piloting with community partners, solutions in South LA with public housing, the public housing authority here. doing EV car share pilots, doing e-bike share pilots. How do people get from that last mile, first mile, or to use the primary source of transportation if they don't have access to adequate transportation? And just a sidebar on that, like this is not about the GHC side, but this is really about the economic opportunity side of our work. In Los Angeles, because of what you just said, it's a place known that you need a car. If you don't have access to adequate transportation, to get to a job for some families, somebody might have to spend two hours on the bus and have three connections because we're still building out the transit infrastructure. So how do they get access to a reliable car? Well, that's why we've been piloting this EV car share program with the Housing Authority Los Angeles and one of our startups that we incubate called, this is now an alumni company called Envoy. And so we've been looking at all these things. So it's a long answer to your question that, yes, at the core is we need to get more EVs on the road, get more charging ports in place. And we've made great progress on that side. And we need to, of course, get people out of their cars and into transit. But the last piece I'll just share that most people don't realize is that 40% of all the goods that come into the United States come in through the Port of Long Beach and the Port of Los Angeles. And that is a huge part of our economy here. And it is the largest source in aggregate of air pollution, and therefore correlates to more of the largest, if not the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, depending on the source. So, those are diesel trucks. Those are the ships that are powered by bunker fuel, the dirtiest fuel used in the world. You've got the cranes and trains that move the goods. So there's a lot of pieces here in LA, not just the cars that we're known for so well for. Right. And as you were saying, then you at Lacey are not specifically responsible for the sustainability strategy of the city, what happens in terms of transport policies, where transport investment goes, and so on. So what you are doing is supporting private sector companies that are coming up with these new innovative ideas for doing things better with improved environmental impact and so on. What are the key companies then that you're supporting in this? And which ones do you think, imagine a visitor coming to the Olympics in a couple of years from now, what are the things they might notice the most? Yeah, it's a good question. I think one of the things they'll notice is that they will be riding transit one way or another. Because there's going to be the LA-28 and the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass and others have said, we want this to be a transit first games. I think making it a transit only games was originally put on the table, but that's going to be difficult to execute. So the idea is that we make it as easy as possible and as difficult to get on transit to the games venues. And as difficult as possible to park at the venues. So that means that people are going to ride transit one way or another. So riding these new transit lines, I think, will be hopefully one of the great experiences that people come. Like, I always thought L.A. was known for cars and traffic and a lot of swimming pools and green lawns in the middle of the desert, quote unquote. They'll experience great transit. They'll see EVs all over the place. It used to be you'd see the Toyota Prius everywhere. Now, of course, it's the Tesla, certainly west of the 405, as we talk about, one of the great delineating lines in L.A. is the 405, among other freeways and interstates. So, those are the aspects, of course. But they're also going to see a lot of charging infrastructure, which is visible. Where the Ubers that is working to accelerate the electrification of its entire fleet, where Waymo is charging their vehicles. One of our corporate partners that's part of the transportation partnership, Volterra, is building out fleet charging depots to charge those Waymos. That you and people get into, they'll ride maybe their first electric autonomous vehicle might be here in L.A. And sort of seeing the future in the place of California, which is the land, as I said earlier, of early adopters where our policy is so far ahead of the rest of the United States and much of the world that has set the market signals to entrepreneurs, whether it's Elon Musk or one of our startup founders, Jackson Alvarez and his partner, Bill Beverly, who are creating a company called Evolectric that is taking medium duty trucks and electrifying them cheaper than someone can buy them as a new vehicle. so that smaller businesses can afford to transition to zero emissions of future while creating jobs here in Los Angeles. And so that power of the California regulatory framework of L.A.'s leadership, of our came-do entrepreneurial spirit here in Los Angeles, that pioneer spirit that is embodied in Los Angeles and California is really what we want to have on the world stage. A lot of it, obviously, they won't see. The solar and battery storage systems where we've seen explosive growth. We're about to release a paper that shows that about $10 billion have been invested since 2020 into clean energy, into transportation, electrification, infrastructure in Los Angeles. They won't see all of that, but some of it they will see. And I think they'll be hopefully impressed. And for some Americans coming here, they're like, wow, this is really great. I actually want to get behind the wheel of an electric car. I want to put in solar and storage, especially after we were on the tail end of the Iran war and the incredible spike in gas prices. And a lot of people complaining about that gas price and seeing the ROI on electric cars Yeah absolutely And still even though it looks like gasoline prices are going to be coming down because of the peace agreement in the Middle East yeah that possibility for prices to spike very high. And the implications then in terms of the cost of transport for everybody and the cost benefit calculations of owning an EV, I think, as you say, that's very fresh in everyone's minds right now, and I'm sure still will be in a couple of years. So let's just think a little bit about the barriers and obstacles that you face then of course notoriously when any city hosts the olympics there's always stories about how difficult things are and issues with construction projects and things being delayed and issues with bureaucracy and whatever it might be in terms of your thinking about the goals that you have for the olympics and in terms of reducing emissions, improving sustainability, and so on, making a better visitor experience for everyone who attends the Games. What are the key challenges for you? Yeah, it's a good question. I think a couple of things. One, when I was working for Mayor Eric Garcetti, I served as Chief Sustainability Officer for his first term. I was the first such person in that role. First time that role was created in the city and the first person to serve in it. And he made a move early on to bid on the games for 2024. And at the time, there's a long story how L.A. became the American, the U.S. candidate for the games. Originally, it was Boston. There was a lot of public outcry there to push back. And L.A. had already bid. And when they were asked, they said, yeah, we're ready. We'll stand behind what we said we'd do. One of the original concepts, could the games be powered through a virtual power plant sort of solution with solar? And so there was always obviously thinking about sustainability. But the core really piece of both the economic equation and the sustainability argument for L.A.'s bid is that we don't need to build any new facilities. We have everything we need. We've hosted the games two times before. That was really the argument. And yes, the transit and transportation systems would need to be figured out and would have a cost, but no permanent facilities. Now, there's some temporary investments that people can read about that are being made to adapt facilities for the use. Just as we're seeing with FIFA, they put in the places that are artificial turf. They put a new infrastructure on the floor of the stadium to put in the natural turf for the World Cup. Similar things are being done. And there's some temporary facilities, I think, for volleyball being created. But to be able to use existing facilities, that also meant that the organizers went outside LA. So they're doing a couple of the games, sporting events in Oklahoma City. Some of the soccer football matches will be played in venues around the country, as we're seeing with the World Cup. But really, back to the core of your question, it's that we already have all the infrastructure. So that's number one. Number two, well, we won't get to probably 100% of all the power that the games venues needs. It's not a public commitment of anyone involved with the games delivery. But there is a real commitment to figure out in California, in LA, how do we accelerate and get as much clean energy online as possible? So Lacey was the only nonprofit involved in the Games Energy Council that was part of the agreement with LA-28 and the International Olympic Committee was that Save LA would form this Games Energy Council. There's a similar Games Mobility Council. We co-chaired the Transportation Electrification Committee to really look at how do we accelerate progress. Now we've created a Tiger team with the utilities, Department of Water and Power, and the city of L.A. figure out how we get the final wave of charging infrastructure projects online for every major charging operator is involved in this Tiger team. So the city of LA is really rolling its sleeves to figure out how to get the charging in place. We're working with the governor's office, Governor Newsom's team and the administration and our state agencies see where they can move money and fund projects that meet the eligibility requirements of their existing programs to help get more charging infrastructure online, to enable more EVs, to support the electric school buses that LA Unified School District is committed to deploying and providing a healthier experience for the bus drivers and the kids in doing so and cleaning up air for everyone. So those are the kinds of things going on. The final thing I'll say, though, is Paris got the nod for 2024. Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who just left office, did a phenomenal job. She is one of the great climate leaders of any mayor that we've seen a long time. Yet one of the powers of the Paris mayor are pretty significant and able to shut down streets and do the diesel ban in her core. And, of course, there are a lot of people I know that didn't like what she did. But the delivery of electric buses of creating cleaner air is palpable. You look at a heat map of pollution before the work she did and after, and it's night and day. And so the health conditions of prisons have changed as a result. So LA is, the city is 4 million of 10 million people in this region and just in the county and the region's larger. So the mayor of LA controls just that part of the region. There's 87 other cities in the county and there's a million people that live in the unincorporated county, unincorporated areas of the county, meaning the county serves as sort of the city of services of the region. So that's a lot of parties to bring together. And that's one of the things that we've done to our transportation partnership or clean energy partnership is bring utilities and municipalities of Culver City or the Pasadena Water and Power or Burbank or, you know, Gwendale or Santa Monica to be part of our solutions and really get creative. Let's say we did the first zero emissions delivery zone in the country with the city of Santa Monica, where before the pandemic, you would have all the mobility solutions, you know, e-bikes and non-dock solutions, scooters, everything just showed up there. So we said, look, and then the e-commerce explosion was going on. So we created this zero emissions delivery zone with Santa Monica and we learned so much from that. And other cities around the country have begun to replicate those learnings through our national city climate innovation challenge that Lacey launched. And anyways, got to get ahead of myself. But it is complicated to really get everything done in L.A. and because of that. But, you know, L.A., the 2028 Games is really bringing the region together like we haven't seen in a long time. when millions of spectators athletes coaches and media arrive in los angeles for the 2028 olympic and paralympic games what will they see a city choked with smoke or an inspiring example of a region that has achieved progress previously unimaginable the los angeles cleantech incubator lacy is working to make clean air the legacy of the 2028 games and a catalyst for global climate innovation and action. Learn more and make your commitment to action today at laincubator.org slash road to 2028. Yeah, that is very interesting. I mean, you mentioned Paris, as you say, the mayor there took some pretty radical action. I know they claimed very impressive results in terms of emissions reduction. I think they said there was a 55% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions for the Paris games compared to the average of previous recent games. I know Los Angeles is a very different city. The Los Angeles metropolitan area is very different for the reasons you've been describing. Is there anything specific that you saw in Paris or that you've seen from other games recently around the world where you've thought, oh, actually, that's really good. This is an idea we want to adopt. This is something that we could really learn from them. Or anything for the World Cup even, I guess, in North America, Mexico, the United States, and Canada. Are there things you're learning from that to say, this is really good, this is something we need to do for the Olympics as well? When I worked for the mayor of LA, we looked at that question of how do we increase access to reliable transportation for first-mile, last-mile solutions. At the time, we did a pilot of an EV car share program. And the one place in the world that had really done that and one of the pioneers in addition to London on bike sharing systems was Paris. And so we were able to go and see those systems and the EV car sharing system. autolib it was called it was run by a company at the time called bolare out of france and really in that during the same trip we rode the first electric transit bus any of us had ridden on and that included you know the now ceo of metro stephanie wiggins um like this is incredible uh what a different experience the less the vibration the the less emissions uh the less reduce the noise um and then just uh the increase because in all the la metro buses there's that you there's no windows in the back because the uh the natural gas engines of the newer models that are running currently as they transition to electric uh take up the back and there's no back windows it just was like a totally different experience as a transit rider um so much better And so I think those sorts of things are inspiring. And there are other places you go and learn from to take those ideas and steal them, adopt them, improve them, whatever you want, however you want to describe it. And so that's going on all the time. And that's sort of both what we're trying to do with our Road to 2028 initiative, but also our city climate innovation challenge work in the city of New York that is looking at the indirect source rule that our South Coast Air Quality Management District put in place for the warehouses that are going on in the Inlet Empire. This explosion of truck traffic and pollution in neighborhoods led to an action to an indirect source rule, meaning that they gave the Air Quality Management District the ability to regulate the emissions and require the Amazons and the DHLs and the WPS and FedExes and all the others to reduce emissions, to invest in electric trucks, to improve the air quality. And New York is modeling that for the state of New York because they've had a similar explosion of warehouses in the middle of neighborhoods in Red Hook and Sunset Park and Brooklyn. And so modeling the solutions that cities and regional entities see in different places is so important. And we seeing that going on of course towards the 2028 games And the other thing that we doing I talked about sort of the Tiger team and about the city and the utility and the governor office in the state Like where else can we roll up our sleeves and figure out how innovation and collaboration could unlock solutions? So one of the things that the games are doing is that Southern California Edison and DDP are looking at something known as flexible interconnection, And meaning, let's say, Ed, you got a company that wants, they're going to put charging infrastructure in at a location and you need five megawatts of power. But to start, you know, on a regular basis, you probably are going to use one and a half. But if you had to wait in the interconnection queue and get that service upgrade and both the time and cost of that service upgrade, it could take three years, maybe longer sometimes, depending on the situation with the distribution grid there. How can that infrastructure come online sooner? So flexible interconnection allows utility to do it with more certainty. You're going to have to curtail power use during certain times when there's peak demand and more stress on the distribution grid. But you can then operate and open it while you wait for that full power load and service upgrade you need eventually. So those are the sorts of innovations we're really seeing here that aren't super sexy but are really transformative. if you know how challenging it can be to wait in an interconnection queue and work through those thickets to get to delivery of the project. Yeah, that is really interesting. Exactly what's being talked about, of course, quite often for large-scale data centers and getting them connected to the grid and saying, well, you can do that so long as you can be flexible load, kind of extending that model down to, as you say, much smaller loads, just a few megawatts. The whole data center part, you're right, is obviously taking that to the next level. We've been talking about flexible interconnection for a few years now, but in the last year, it's become more of a common conversation to get data centers online across the country. Yeah, no, indeed. No, but certainly, you know, very interesting. As you say, a lot of the issues are the same in terms of kind of when you have more load to add to the grid, but also strain on the grid. And you need to work out how to manage it. And you have a grid that is not, of course, used at 100% all of the time. And so you're kind of planning for the peaks and flexibility to help ease strain on the grid during those peaks is really important. But as you say, whether it's, I guess, 500, one megawatt loads or one 500 megawatt load, right? Principle is the same. Yeah. And we've seen this. Of course, this is not a new concept now, but several years ago, we began to see battery integration at the project level for charging infrastructure to do the same thing. How do they manage the load? How do they get the system online sooner by using more of a trickle charge, so to speak, to charge those batteries and that they're available to discharge when there's higher? use at the charging depots. We have a couple startups that are doing that. One is SparkCharge that has a mobile charging solution that can be used for flexible needs or charging on demand for roadside service. Another one, Electric Fish is doing a high-speed fast charger DCFC with 350 kilowatts that is one unit and battery integrated and reduces your infrastructure. power up not just the power upgrades but the permitting of you know the digging a trench and running the wires and lines and um so finding more turnkey solutions where that's you know it's not battery new battery chemistry but it's more innovation around the integration and deployment of solutions that we're seeing some exciting things so i suppose in a sense that uh is one of the answers to the question i'm about to ask which is about lasting legacy from the games it often feels like you have in the run-up to a game a lot of talk about oh this will deliver huge infrastructure benefits for our city and that's one of the things that cities like to talk about when they're bidding to secure games and sometimes that works out sometimes it doesn't and the occasions where it hasn't worked out you know obviously often attract a lot of attention In terms of the work you're doing for Los Angeles and the changes you're trying to make, what can you do to make sure that there are permanent lasting improvements that the people of Los Angeles, the residents of the city, are really going to notice in the long term? It's a great question. I mean, I think for the region, again, back to Metro as our primary transit agency and other smaller transit agencies in Santa Monica or Culver City or other municipalities in the city of L.A. through the L.A. DOT's DASH system, which are the smaller buses. So Dash is using the Games 2028, and they committed to this through the mayor of L.A. through our transportation partnership is to get as many electric buses online as possible. They're about to hit 400, so a little more than half of their fleet will be all electric right in front of our campus here as a terminus of one of the lines, and it's primarily electric buses. And so we'll see that. So that sense of urgency to get these assets deployed before the games are a legacy opportunity. You know, I think that's certainly true, as I mentioned, around charging infrastructure, the piloting of solutions that could be more permanent, given LA is experiencing extreme heat for longer periods of time due to the climate crisis. How do we protect people who are dependent on transit and want to ride transit to be safe when they're waiting for the bus? A lot of our transit stops don't have adequate shading. So other than just sort of building a shading structure, how do you do that to make sure people are safe? The city of Phoenix, not here in L.A., but just we were talking to them recently about the extreme heat they're facing. Periods of time where it's over 100 degrees Fahrenheit for weeks. And same thing here in L.A. Many parts of the region get hot for long periods of time. How do we invest in, of course, tree planting and infrastructure? And at our Road to 2028 Summit, we're going to have some exciting announcements, including around green infrastructure for commitments to action that really show lasting investment that the games are making happen. that benefit communities, frontline communities that experience disproportionate air pollution that affect the lungs of the young and the old most tragically. And just really the investment of solutions that are going to benefit these communities, charging infrastructure for heavy-duty trucks. We're trying to get a bunch of about $50 million of projects done in partnership with regional agencies that can be online to power electric trucks. And with the Tesla Semi hitting the roads, we're going to see, despite Trump administration taking away California's right to regulate truck fleets, private truck fleets, you're going to see people investing in that because of what we're hearing so far about the great performance of the Tesla Semi. And that will get out of their OEM. So with the acupuncture approach on the charging infrastructure and keep Project C online, that means more electric heavy duty trucks will come here and use that infrastructure, providing better air quality. And so when people arrive in L.A. for the games, we want the legacy to be clean air, not just clean air for the several weeks that the games are underway here. Because we are likely to face extreme heat during the games that affect the performance of athletes, the health of athletes, the health of visitors, the health of local residents, the health of kids playing soccer. in parks during the public leagues that happen all summer. What are we going to do to make sure that that's not just a clean air during the games as we saw in Beijing, but becomes a legacy of the region? And that means we need to invest in our communities, in the infrastructure, in the vehicles, in, of course, the transit systems. And that is something that we're really trying to do is accelerate and get both to help those investments get landed and new ones to come in these final two years through our Road to 2028 initiative, sort of taking more of a public-facing platform. And so I were excited that NBA All-Star and entrepreneur Russell Westbrook is joining me as co-chair of our Road to 2028 initiative to bring new voices and perspectives into this effort and help deliver more benefits to community and get that lasting investment, the economic investment in our community in Los Angeles that shows how it can be done and hopefully inspire others to follow our lead. absolutely and i do think it's an interesting phenomenon you've seen it with other olympic games you know the world cup actually just recently is that um in the run-up to the event happening there is nothing but um negative publicity and people complaining and you know everyone kind of focuses on the difficulties and the challenges and then when the event actually starts and there's great sport to watch then kind of the moon flips completely and everyone kind of realizes what's great about the games and of course that reflects the enormous amount of work that's got in behind the scenes that people like yourselves and all these others have done in order to make them work in order to make the games a positive and pleasant and enjoyable experience for everyone who attends. And I'm confident, I'm sure that'll be the same with Los Angeles in 2028 as well, that it'll be a great event when it happens. Well, we want to have the world experience as great air quality and an amazing experience with all the incredible clean energy and transportation, electrification, infrastructure investments and transit investments and safer streets in Los Angeles. We want that benefit. That's our primary drive is really what I'm about to say. We want that benefit for Angelenos and the region for decades to come. And what a great opportunity to use the games to both inspire and help accelerate and motivate people to take advantage of this moment to provide lasting investment that isn't about you know, stadia or arenas, but is about creating more economic opportunity and accelerating equitable climate action. Yeah, no, that's a great point. And certainly it is a fantastic opportunity for that. What's been fantastic talking to you, unfortunately, we do have to leave it there. But thanks very much indeed, Matt Peterson. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you so much, Ed. Great to be with you. Many thanks to our producer, Molly Merwin. And above all, of course, many thanks to all of you for listening and for watching. We really value your feedback, so please do keep that coming. And we'll be back very soon with all the latest news and views on the future of energy. Until then, goodbye.
