What are renewables?
0:00 Welcome to Energy 101, where smart women ask the dumb questions so men don't have to. We have our first guest today, and I'm really excited about this. Kind of the behind the story of why we want
0:16 to start this podcast is to ask questions and really understand what people are talking about. We're tired of pretending that we know what people are talking about and honestly want to educate the
0:30 public as well. So we know there are other people like us who want to learn more about energy but don't have a good place to do that in digestible forms. So there's podcast out there that will teach
0:44 you topics. What I found in energy specifically, what I found is the ones that are the basics aren't really basic. They're definitely geared towards people who already have a degree in the industry.
1:00 Or have been in the industry for a while. There's language that you use that you're like, I don't know what that means. And then you have to go Google. Or the other part of it is they're boring.
1:11 We don't want to be boring. So the whole point of having a lot of us here is to have a good dynamic, make sure we're not boring, keep it entertaining and learn something. So each week we have a
1:21 topic. This week our topic is all about renewables and we have Kay McCall here. And I'm gonna let her introduce herself because she's amazing and has done a lot of cool things. So Kay, go ahead
1:33 and introduce yourself - The hardest question of all is, what do you do? But first I'm just saying I'm delighted and honored to be your first guest. That's fantastic. If you ever need like a guest
1:46 host also, let me know. But yeah, I'm
1:50 an energy industry veteran who has worked on the oil and gas side and the renewable energy side Currently, I'm extremely passionate about what the energy industry holds for future generations. I'm a
2:03 boomer and energy is not about boomers anymore. So I would say I'm an advocate and an evangelist for other generations getting involved in energy. And I serve on boards of both renewable energy and
2:19 conventional hydrocarbon related industries. And I help run a nonprofit trade association called Renewable Energy Alliance that is very energy transition focused and with the decent influence on
2:34 renewable energy - That's awesome. I think that's really needed too.
2:41 I don't even wanna call you a boomer 'cause I don't feel like you're a boomer-esque.
2:45 You're very not boomer-minded. And I love that. I think it's definitely needed, especially an energy where everything already runs 10 years behind. So kind of. letting the younger generations
2:59 take charges where you find innovation. So today we're gonna get into renewables. I guess the first question is back up and how did you get into energy in the first place - Well, I graduated from
3:13 law school, the University of Houston and started as a trial lawyer. And when you were a trial lawyer in Houston in the 80s, you were somehow going to be involved most likely with either healthcare
3:24 or the petrochemical and hydrocarbon industry. So I represented companies that were more in the petrochemical and hydrocarbon industry, ultimately got hired from being a trial lawyer to be an
3:40 in-house lawyer for a gas processing engineering and construction company. And that was my first
3:49 foray into it. And that put me heavily into gas processing and compression, et cetera That's cool. And then you're just - ready to dive in - Well, you know, and it was, you know, there was a
4:00 career path in Houston that you could kind of move between different technologies and nobody really thought about it. So I went from doing that. I did three years in Enron and got my Enron badge.
4:11 And when I did that, I went from working on the gas side to working on the power side. Because at Enron, they were like, smart people can figure out anything. And the fact that you'd never worked
4:24 in the power industry wasn't a problem They said, go figure it out. And you went and figured it out. So I've worked on the power side and the hydrocarbon side. And then ultimately,
4:36 after Enron, I went to work at GE, worked on the power side and the oil and gas side there. And then after that, went to work for a wind energy company, ultimately became the CEO of that. And so
4:50 ran a wind energy company on the East Coast for eight years.
4:55 company sold and moved back to Houston because that's home for me. I have a question. This might be the first dumb question, but that's okay. What do you mean by power side? So that's electrons,
5:10 right? So the power side is electricity. So everything related to how you get from once the electron is created and how you get it into your iPhone. Okay And then the other side of it would be like
5:27 petroleum. Yes. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Got it. All right. So I guess we're going to go into what we want to learn today, which is we're going to start super basic and just what are renewables? So
5:43 renewable energy, you'll find people will have different definitions of it. But basically it's a non-depletable resource, right? So unlike hydrocarbons, which are depletable. energy that doesn't
5:57 deplete like solar, like wind, and like some other technology, some will put nuclear, will put nuclear in that. So that was the original way it was used. It was based on whether it was a
6:10 depleting resource or not. Now it's used a lot of times to just refer to something that has zero emissions or low emissions - Yeah, I think that's kind of where the confusion comes in I think that
6:25 energy has been so politicized that it's almost like a political word when you say renewables and it's often grouped and people like myself, I would just be like, oh yeah, renewables. And I just
6:38 thought of solar, wind, that might have been all I knew until I was like, I actually want to know what are all of them - Yeah, so there's hydro, you get the hydro, like what comes from dams,
6:54 geothermal. is often considered to be renewable. Now you've got like, they call it renewable natural gas or biogas, which is using gas which comes off a landfill and cleaning that up and using
7:11 that. So it's a term that you shouldn't feel bad about not knowing what it is because it's used really loosely now - Okay, that makes sense. I remember about six months ago, I didn't know that the
7:24 Hoover Dam was what it is. Like a hydro facility, I don't know what you call it, but - Hydroelectric facility, yeah - Yeah, I had no idea that's what dams were used for. And I just kind of
7:36 wonder, and maybe it's because I'm so ingrained because being from Midland, I am very ingrained in oil and gas that anything else is just like, oh, I didn't know that existed, but it also brings
7:46 up the point, how many other people out there don't know - I don't realize like, that's actually Hoover Dam is producing.
7:55 around it. I think there is a, you hit on a couple of things I think are super critical. Number one, the
8:02 politicization, I'm not sure I got that out. The polarization that came from it, that's all like in the last 15 years or so, like 20 years ago you didn't have it. And then it became a bit of a
8:13 political football. I mean, if you go back to how wind was developed in Texas, George Bush, when he was governor, he was a big proponent. I mean, that was on the Republican side was where wind
8:24 really got going in Texas. But then over time for reasons it would take too long here, it became a political issue, which is unfortunate because energy needs to not be that. You don't use it
8:41 politically. You use it for everything. And so it hasn't been helpful to the industry There were also a lot of misconceptions about renewable energy became a pejorative. term that was used in a lot
8:55 of messaging was like a renewable energy that set stuff, those hippies from California or Jane. And yeah, people don't understand that the growth of wind industry and Texas in the early aughts had
9:09 nothing to do with that. It had all to do with natural gas prices and trying to have power that was generated from sources that weren't dependent on natural gas Yeah, I guess that kind of goes into
9:21 my question, like why renewables are such a big important part of the energy transition and like getting people to understand that and like what does that mean? Yeah, and now it now what's evolved
9:35 over time is the connection to climate change and not that there wasn't always a faction in the industry that were connecting it to that, but in Texas, that wasn't really what was growing That it.
9:48 wasn't what George Bush wasn't concerned about that when he was promoting it.
9:56 But the idea is you can generate electricity without combusting hydrocarbons. And so you don't have those emissions. Now you still have other impacts. And then, I mean, and that's one thing
10:11 people like to talk about this like, oh, but what about this? Or what about that? As something that's not a benefit to different types of renewable energy. And that's gonna be true about any
10:22 source of energy, right? All creation of energy for our use is destructive in one way or the other. But now we've got the large focus globally on climate change and renewable energy plays into that
10:38 because you can generate electricity with minimal impact, not zero impact, lesser impact on
10:46 the climate. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense
10:51 This is kind of like the last. question I have about renewables is storing and transporting. Is how different is that? Is it more efficient, less efficient than oil and gas? So oil and gas, they
11:06 are stored in barrels. They are transferred through pipelines or trucks. Is it the same for renewable energy - That's the storage aspect of it. Well, most renewable energy, about everything you
11:21 say can think of relates to making electricity. And then once electricity is generated, electricity is moved regardless of what fuel source generated it, right - Right - The challenge with
11:35 renewable energy is, it's not always what they call dispatchable, meaning unlike natural gas, where for the most part you can turn it on and off, You can't turn on the wind and you can't turn off,
11:51 you know, turn on. the sun, although it is fairly predictable.
11:57 But still, that's a downside to it. And so now a big focus in the renewable energy industry is on storage. And how can we. If the wind turbines are creating this electricity, but we don't need it,
12:13 how can we store it? And not just use it. And then we'll have it when we need it, because we can't store the wind per se, like you can, gas or oil. So gas and oil and coal, both are much better
12:28 advantage
12:33 in storage. They're not perfect. I mean, we saw that when natural gas doesn't like super cold temperatures and
12:36 there are other things that might get a little bit more of a challenge, but it's still always going to be more reliable than wind and solar. So the question is, how do you store that energy so that
12:48 you can use it when you need it? Right now you've got batteries. but they have pluses and minuses, but there are a lot of things that are coming down the pipe on that. But yeah, there's still a
13:00 lot of questions to be answered. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Um, so you're, you're heavily involved in Houston. How do you see Houston kind of playing a role in energy transition? And like you
13:15 said, being pro energy, um, not just pro oil and gas. How do you see Houston playing a part in that? So Houston
13:25 has to be the energy capital of the future. But what that means is we have to be accepting and supportive of all the forms of energy that can be a part of that future. Um, in Houston, the energy
13:42 transition so far has meant hydrogen and carbon capture. Both of those are great, but there is no. renewable energy capital anywhere, and it should be Houston. And we hopefully will get to where
13:58 we have an employee basis fluent in all different aspects of energy. And as we work to break down the polarization, because we have to not have this idea that oil and gas is bad, and we have to not
14:15 have the idea that renewable energy is bad, but that energy is important, and we need to find a way forward. But over time, I mean, all most thoughtful people believe that there will be a decline
14:30 in production in oil and gas. There's arguments about how long it's gonna be. But meanwhile, we wanna be growing every other form of energy. And it should be, we've got the best people. There
14:43 are plenty of company, renewable energy companies that have selected Houston to grow because of the oil and gas talent pool. because it's proven that this is extremely talented group of people in
14:58 the Houston area. So to me, it has to be Houston, it needs to be Houston - I agree, it feels very much like that. And
15:11 I might be making this up completely but isn't Texas one of the top wind producers - Yes - Okay - Yes, and Houston was an early mover, again, going back to the Bush era,
15:24 Texas has a great wind resource and it was very welcoming to the wind industry early on. And it's got back in the early 2000s, 2001, 23 around then was really growing a lot of wind here - That's
15:39 very cool - Well, thanks so much for all of that information. Like this is really exciting for me just to be able to learn all of the stuff that I wanted to know, but yeah, maybe have been afraid
15:49 to ask in the past. But we're going to move into our last section of the episode, rapid fire. So we have three questions we want to ask you. No,
15:58 we're not. Okay. Okay. Okay, I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. What is the number one misconception about the energy industry? That it's one industry.
16:09 Number two, why should I care about the energy industry? Because everything in your life is impacted by energy Every relationship you have, whether it's a grandparent, a dog, an employer is
16:28 impacted by the availability of energy. And everything is up for discussion in the energy industry. And you want to be a part of that and not just let other people decide it for you. Right. And
16:44 the last one, what is your most embarrassing story in your career? I am proud to say that I completely flush out every embarrassing moment that I have ever had in my career. And somebody asked me
17:01 once, because I've made a lot of career transitions, they're like, How did you ever get over the fear of failure? And I do that by not, I just like completely flush them out and. I need you to
17:14 figure it I love that answer because I just graduated college, so I'm very, very early off in my career. So I'm like, I'm going to remember that for the rest of my career. Just flush it out,
17:24 pretend like it never happened. It never happened. And let me just say, I do a lot in my career to the fact that there were no cell phones or cell phone cameras in the first year. 15 years of my
17:37 career. Yeah, I guess you always got to be thinking, There's a camera watching you It's easier to forget it when nobody has photographic care and so on. Well, thank you so much, Kay, for coming
17:46 on for our first. episode of Energy 101. We're really happy and appreciative of you. Where can our followers find you on social? LinkedIn came a call on LinkedIn. That's the best place to find me.
17:60 Awesome. Well, thanks everyone so much and we'll catch you next time.
