Morgan Caplan
Senior Communications Manager
Congressman Scott Peters has emerged as one of the most outspoken Democrats on fixing the broken permitting system and the critical need to build modern transmission infrastructure. We spoke with him about the political realities of reforming environmental laws—and how Democrats should talk to voters about clean energy. The highlights are below, and you can watch the full interview here.
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On Grid Challenges…
“Since 2014, North America has developed seven gigawatts of large scale interregional transmission…Europe built 44 and China is 260…But it’s pretty clear that what we have is not working…Over the 20-year history of this [NIETC] process, it hasn’t yielded a single transmission project. There’s lots of reasons for that, but opposition is easier than action.”
On Getting Energy Built…
“Environmental laws, which ironically are in the way of environmental improvement…In the service of stopping oil and gas, we were stopping everything. We’re actually going to kill a lot of the deals that are in process because we’re going to kill their financing by removing the incentives…So we’re really shooting ourselves in the foot by not going after renewables. Forget climate, just as a matter of supply and cost, we’re really shooting ourselves in the foot.”
On Messaging Clean Energy…
“America is going to see an increase in the demand for electricity, about 15 % in the next decade. For the first time, we’re gonna see a big increase…What’s gonna happen to your costs if we don’t build energy to meet that demand? I think that’s the clearest thing to say is why is the Trump administration and Republicans standing in the way of more energy? Secondarily, you can talk about reliability. If we don’t have enough power, we’re going to see brownouts and blackouts…And third, in terms of national security, how are we going to compete with China if we don’t have any power?”
On Something Most People Don’t Know About Him…
“I can sing…But that’s a paid gig. You don’t get that for free.”
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