Episode 22: Tom Starrs PT. I

Today we're interviewing somebody who has not only been a CEO, he's also advised other CEOs on marketing and public affairs, something he continues to do for his present employer, EDP Renewables. 

And Tom Starrs is our precedent-setting guest for a reason. While he's done a lot of things in a career spanning 21 years in five different companies, Tom is, by my reckoning, the longest tenured and most experienced clean tech government affairs and communications lead in America. 

And as the accelerating clean energy transition meets growing pushback from the fossil fuel lobby, the future of success of our sectors is not certain. 

Clean economy companies are often disrupting powerful incumbents with decades of experience in weaponizing government influence and propaganda against market threats for newcomers like us. 

A year after the IRA's passage, it felt like a good time to bring Tom on for his institutional knowledge and his seasoned perspective. I think you're gonna enjoy and benefit from his wisdom. 

Whether or not you work in government affairs, you need Tom's wisdom to make sure your company moves forward.

We need to scale up renewables to make it a larger portion of our electricity supply, but to do so, we need a new grid model and new technologies such as battery storage and transmission enhancements.

12:45 - Net metering had many economic benefits, but that wasn’t enough to make the technology widely adopted due to other barriers such as utilities disliking the idea. They had concerns about the safety and performance of the new tech, but it ended up being 

more reliable than they initially thought.

14:17 - Regulatory barriers, not related to the economic viability of solar, can create obstacles for customers who want to generate clean energy. It’s important to address these obstacles in advance, so that when cleantech becomes economically competitive, we can deploy it without facing these hurdles later on.