Here's how the Texas power crisis points to wider damage
Bloom Energy CEO KR Sridhar joined Yahoo Finance Live to break down how the power crisis in Texas indicates that more power issues lie ahead.
Video Transcript
SEANA SMITH: Now turning to the energy sector, the massive power outage in Texas putting in focus on the upgrades that are necessary for the country's energy infrastructure at this point. And for that, we want to bring in KR Sridhar, he is the CEO of Bloom Energy. We're also joined by Yahoo Finance correspondent, Julia La Roche.
KR, it's great to have you on the program. Let's just start with the situation in Texas because it has clearly shown us that we need to make changes to our energy system, to our grid, right now across the US, not just in Texas. My question to you is what needs to be done in order to make our power systems more resilient?
KR SRIDHAR: So there are two things. Number one, as you know, electricity is in some states regulated, in some states it's not regulated. And there's neither a national mandate nor a state mandate for resiliency, that's number one. And number two is that there is no pricing mechanism to offer higher resiliency to critical infrastructure. So it is a one size fits all electricity that comes.
And just like security, right, you would want a different level of security in a bank than you would want in a home. Similarly, hospitals, emergency response centers, essential services, should have a higher level of resiliency when it comes to power. After all, electricity is the lifeblood for everything we do today.
JULIA LA ROCHE: KR, it's Julia La Roche, and it's such a fascinating issue because I frankly, was not aware of it. So in order to kind of build that resiliency, what do we need to actually change though from maybe the lawmaker side, the regulatory process? What kind of changes do they need to implement in the near term because what I understand it's a long term challenge here?
KR SRIDHAR: Yes, so fixing the grid and bringing that up for the entire country is a long process that's going to be expensive. Short term what can you do? Luckily today there are technologies available and they're economically viable to put microgrids. And what are microgrids?
Microgrids is very similar to a company having a local area network, let us say for computing, right. That's different from the internet that's on the outside. You can have all your internal communications taken care of by a local area network within a building, within a facility.
Similarly, microgrids, by bringing in fuel cells, solar, batteries, all those together, can offer an islanded operation of electricity for weeks and months. That's what you need in this new climate disaster world that we're living in where every large disaster seems to happen more frequently, for longer duration, affecting more people. So that's what you need-- and yes?
ADAM SHAPIRO: KR, help us understand something, most of us think of hydrogen as the gas inside the Hindenburg in the '30s, kaboom, Lakehurst, New Jersey.
KR SRIDHAR: Yes.
ADAM SHAPIRO: But in fact, hydrogen is the most abundant element on Earth. The output from using hydrogen to generate electricity is water. It's in our bodies. It's one of the elements that we as humans possess. Why aren't we putting technology that already exists to work to generate electricity from hydrogen? Hydrogen actually is inert, it's safe is it not?
KR SRIDHAR: Hydrogen from an environmental perspective is the most benign, right. Because there is no carbon footprint. When you use that hydrogen to produce electricity, as you said correctly, it's just water that comes out. And luckily in that there is no sulfur oxide, nitrous oxide, particulates. These are the air pollution things in addition to the CO2. So it's very benign.
Here is the issue with hydrogen, hydrogen in nature on the planet is not available by itself. It is only available as water or a hydrocarbon fuel. And to produce that you need some kind of electricity. So hydrogen on Earth is more like a storage medium like a battery.
And luckily today, the cost of renewable power is coming down so much and renewables are almost like rain, right, they just-- nature gives it to you when it wants to give it to you. When the sun shines, you get solar energy, when the wind blows, you get the wind energy. During that time when you have that excess, similar to how you store the rainwater, if you can use electrolyzers to break the water up into hydrogen and then use that hydrogen when it's not raining, like the water example, then you create that very resilient infrastructure, that's the pathway.
That's going to take a few decades for it to become very prevalent again, but today, with the natural gas infrastructure you have, in a very low impact manner to the atmosphere, to the climate crisis, but offering very high resiliency, you can put these micro grids in place. In fact, the company I run, Bloom Energy, we have 89 microgrids and from 2018 to now, we have protected those facilities that we run with the microgrids 1,700 times from power disruptions. That gives you a sense of how prevalent these power outages are and how disruptive they are to everyday business and everyday life.
JULIA LA ROCHE: KR, really quick before we let you go, what is the one thing that policymakers should resist that would diminish our energy system, what's that one thing that they need to really keep an eye on?
KR SRIDHAR: They should keep an eye on jumping to long term solutions. The pathway that we are taking towards renewable solar storage is the right pathway but it's a transition and not a flip. Which means we need to take our existing systems today and make it robust, so we can adapt to climate change. So we survive through today and tomorrow so the day after will be a wonderful thing for our children and our grandchildren. It's that balance between adapting to climate reality today and building the future where we are decarbonized.
SEANA SMITH: KR Sridhar, great to have you on the program. CEO of Bloom Energy and of course, our thanks to Julia La Roche for hopping on.
