Monika Gerhart  00:00

Power continuity in the Gulf Coast is lifesaving work. Solar and storage is life saving work. During Hurricane Ida, we had seven heat-related deaths and untold heat-related illnesses just in the city of New Orleans, where we lost power for 10 days. South Louisiana lost power for months, and the natural gas backup generators, when everyone turned on the natural gas at once, couldn't keep up.

 Nico Johnson  00:29

Hey there, Solar Warriors. Welcome back to Suncast. One of the things that I've been really thinking deeply about lately is just how much of the clean energy transition is actually being shaped by people most of the industry never gets a chance to meet, don't see the work they do, because it doesn't happen on Capitol Hill, it happens at the local state level. Today's guest is one of those champions, Monica Gerhardt, Executive Director of the Gulf States Renewable Energy Industries Association, which serves Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, and trust me, she and her team have been hard at work saving the industry on behalf of you and me. Honestly, before preparing for this conversation, I don't think I really appreciate how much work is actually happening behind the scenes to protect and expand clean energy in markets down in the Deep South, in the Gulf, and this conversation helps us unpack how a solar moratorium nearly emerged in the state of Alabama before most of the industry even noticed, and why relationships and state level engagement increasingly determine whether markets survive long enough to mature, just how resilience, storage, and distributed energy is changing the conversation around power continuity in places like New Orleans. With that, let's tune into another powerful conversation here on Suncast. Monica, I am so glad to have you on the show. Thank you for joining me.

 Monika Gerhart  01:55

Thank you for having me.

 Nico Johnson  01:56

I want to give a shout out to your friend and mine, Aaron Greason, a huge champion of all the work that you all are doing, and I, as I mentioned, probably would not have been aware of what's happening if not for Aaron. So, Aaron, thank you for introducing us to Monica. Monica, a statewide solar moratorium nearly shuttered the Alabama solar industry, before it even really got a chance to get going. By your estimate, roughly two gigawatts of solar were put at risk. Most of the industry never really saw it coming. Can you walk me into that moment? What was going on, and how did you help save the industry?

 Monika Gerhart  02:35

Yeah, well, thank you. That's a great question. During the final weeks of a really tough Alabama legislative session, two bills dropped that would have jeopardized roughly 2000 megawatts of solar statewide. We responded and quickly galvanized members to turn the tide on rapid-fire bills sailing through the legislature to enact a statewide solar moratorium, despite all the odds being against us, including that one of the bills was carried by a Senate budget chairman, we prevailed, and both bills failed in the final hours. Companies like Onco Solar, which is one of our manufacturers, became linchpin that moved a slate of partners, the steel mills, other advanced manufacturers, even brought along with the Alabama Chamber of Commerce to galvanize no pun intended. North Alabama industry against South Alabama renewable bands.

 Nico Johnson  03:29

Wow,

 Monika Gerhart  03:29

and so we learned a lot, right? We learned about trust, we learned about how our ecosystem of trusted partners and all parts of chain that leverage each other to make a significant impact, even when the odds are against

 Nico Johnson  03:41

us,

 Monika Gerhart  03:42

yeah, and we built that trust over years, not days, right?

 Nico Johnson  03:46

I love that

 Monika Gerhart  03:46

investment inside lobbying played a critical role here too, and to leverage increase investment mattered a lot, and the third is just community, and we just heard loudly and clearly from the counties who are already seeing the property tax revenue in economic development benefits that new renewables investments bring, and we just have to continue to invest in the communities that got us here.

 Nico Johnson  04:11

Monica, as someone from the Deep South, myself, South Carolina, I think I think many probably recognize, especially with Lindsey Graham making the fool of himself that he has over the last two years, that South Carolina leans too far to the right to be considered a champion of renewables. I can empathize with our friends down in Alabama, and I'm thinking about some of the stories that must have emerged after this all went down, where you got a chance to sort of talk to folks across the aisle, I mean, in Greenville, South Carolina, we got ES Foundry and a number of other industry stalwarts building factories for inverters and cells and modules, and yet it's, you know, South Carolina is a state that is sort of robustly against all things Democratic, if. You will, how did the conversations emerge for you once the moratorium was stayed? Once you had gotten that success, did you have any enlightening conversations with folks across the aisle who from South Alabama maybe came to you in private to discuss or disclose, like, wow, we learned a lot, and I can't, maybe what I'm, what I'm trying to pull out here is like, what did you learn were maybe the stakes politically that brought this all to a head, and how did the game position change in the last minute to allow us to get a win, so to speak,

 Monika Gerhart  05:37

so look, I represent three states, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama - all three are trifecta states with super majority of Republicans in both legislative chambers and the governor. Right, so there is no working across the aisle. Right, we have to come with a solution that works to expand our industry. Right, so in the case of Alabama, the partners that we worked with most closely, that that really came to the table with us, were chosen with intention, were galvanized with intention around this is industry, this is manufacturing, right? The industrial centers of Huntsville, Alabama, in terms of the investments that the state itself made in their manufacturing success, and helping helping connect the dots on the supply chain, in terms of you have manufacturers that literally would not have off-takers in their own state, so some of the work that we did, some of the statements that we put out from some of our industry partners was really about those workers' pride in ensuring that their products, their manufactured products, could be used in states.

 Nico Johnson  06:44

Is there a point where you realized that it wasn't just noise, but there was a real threat to the market? And how did you begin to unpullied your word again? Galvanize support for what you knew needed to happen, and in the timeline that you knew needed to happen. I'm just curious, how much time it took to mobilize that workforce to go act on behalf of the industry from the moment that you did get this sort of like, oh my gosh, there's a real threat here.

 Monika Gerhart  07:11

Three days,

 Nico Johnson  07:12

what, Monica? I mean, so this stuff, it happened totally behind closed doors, and then, but, but you can't take that action in three days without having already set the groundwork.

 Monika Gerhart  07:25

Yeah, of course. One of the things about Alabama, in particular, is you have this discrete set of industry partners who are doing amazing work on the manufacturing side, and that brings something to the conversation that other kinds of groups can't bring, and that's the value of a trade association, right. We have all parts of the supply chain, and so at any moment, not only do we have good cues and signals from local decision makers about what's about to happen, but then we also can quickly identify both the right messages, but also the right messengers are the issues that matter most. So, for example, another issue similarly related to utility scale work in Louisiana, two states over, we have a completely different messenger on that's on that scope of work, and that is Sugar Farmers.

 Nico Johnson  08:18

I wouldn't expect that. Okay, tell me more.

 Monika Gerhart  08:20

We are working through utility scale siting and decommissioning regulations, rulemaking right now. We fought a tremendous battle last legislative session. We defeated a bill that was extraordinarily harmful to the industry. What came out of it was a little tiny bit of language amended onto a separate bill that required citing and decommissioning rulemaking. We're going through that process now, and the sugar cane farmers, who are using part of their property to harvest the sun, they are generational farmers. Some of them are locally elected officials. They are the messengers that we are working most closely with in order to move the needle on back by popular demand, that solar is by popular demand.

 Nico Johnson  09:04

What surprised you the most about who showed up to help you stave off this threat in Alabama?

 Monika Gerhart  09:10

That industrial partners have their existing relationships already, and that our partners were willing to dig deep into their own networks and and galvanize their partners, and so we were able to very quickly stand up a coalition and be able to communicate very directly with the decision makers in the Huntsville area delegation about the real harm that South Alabama moratoria would cause for North Alabama manufacturing, and I don't think that that's a connection that had already been drawn by decision makers.

 Nico Johnson  09:43

I wonder if folks that are operating in states where they think they're politically safe with renewables, if they're listening to the story of Alabama, thinking, okay, that's great, the South is backwards anyway, are there any bellwether moments or telltale signs they should really be paying attention? To what should this story teach them?

 Monika Gerhart  10:02

Well, I think the story teaches us a few different things. The same, the same tools that are used to defend the market are used to expand the market. What I hear from a lot of companies that are looking at expansion into the Gulf states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama is that they are facing market saturation in other parts of the country. Right, so if you're going to move to the Gulf Coast, and you're thinking about market expansion, and a market seems tough to you, then be part of the solution to create the market that you want. That's what oil and gas does, right? That's what other energy sources do.

 Nico Johnson  10:38

For listeners who are unfamiliar with GS RIA, can you talk about the work that's happening behind the scenes day in and day out that most of industry doesn't see, both in what you do as well as what you're familiar with? How the rest of the state organizations work?

 Monika Gerhart  10:55

So I think of the policy framework that we operate in as the container right, and we are operating in this space, and working to expand the container that we all are operating in. In order to, that expanding the container means market expansion, right? Most of that work is done behind the scenes, it's done in rulemaking, it's done in sometimes in law making, meaning legislatively, sometimes on the executive side, certainly in the in the public service commissions, for all of those, we come early and we come often. We build relationships over time. We become trusted sources for information and data. Sometimes legislators call on me for an issue with the constituent that might be renewables related, and we weigh in, and you know, provide services that way again to strengthen those legislative relationships

 Nico Johnson  11:53

you mentioned in a previous call, that smaller markets, and by smaller, you know, states that places that people don't naturally think about New York, California, Texas being kind of the lead markets. They create different kinds of relationships. What I took to mean there is that markets mature through these relationships, not just through capital deployment. Sounds like you're leaning into some of that now, and I want you to unpack for me what you just mentioned, this idea of expanding or changing the container. What does that look like? What do you mean by changing the container?

 Monika Gerhart  12:29

The regulatory and statutory framework that we're operating in. So, for example, just this week we passed a study resolution at the Louisiana State Legislature that will, that provides resources and also a framework to study the export value of electrons on distributed NFD generation, that's a pathway to the kind of change that we need in order to make these projects pencil statewide, and I also want to mention, actually, the momentum for renewable energy resources in the Gulf states are really from the ground up rather than the than the top down. I will say that where other parts of the country might be experiencing contraction, the opposite is true here, right? We are expanding, and that is particularly true because residents and businesses want power continuity during disaster, they want operational continuity, they want to lower their bills, they want reliability, they want affordability, and that is all coming from the bottom up. So we're looking at roughly a $500 million investment in New Orleans alone, and an additional $500 million investment in Louisiana statewide.

 Nico Johnson  13:48

My goodness,

 Monika Gerhart  13:49

and that came from the ground up.

 Nico Johnson  13:51

Yeah, and it goes all the way back to Katrina, right? It goes back to the region through Visa V New Orleans, Katrina, the disaster foisted upon that community, and at the time, the relative incapacity of the state, or even the country, and FEMA to respond forces the local action, and it forced now a 20 year conversation of long term local engagement, deep relationships that are inherently interested in protecting what is ours, inherently interested in recognizing that local power is more important than federal support. It's fascinating, and I think I'm starting to understand sort of the philosophical framing around change the container. I think it's really helpful for folks to understand that these markets don't just emerge naturally, and they are shaped by policy, which we all understand. The work that state-level organizations like GSRA, Cosa, CALSA, and many others are doing takes decades. It takes decades. It takes a handoff from person to person, not just through. Our legislative cycles, but through leadership cycles at the trade organizations you mentioned that smaller markets create these different kinds of relationships, which you just tapped on. What have you learned about the concept of trust and credibility operating in places like Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, that my own state compatriots here in the Carolinas, or in Georgia and Tennessee, or even as far afield as places like Wyoming, Montana, that are deep red states, can learn from and begin to I want to be able to take this conversation back to our own state legislatures of North Carolina, where we should be supporting more industry like North Alabama.

 Monika Gerhart  15:38

Community solar is a great example, where we have an active docket in New Orleans that was originally opened by just RIA members, really wanting to just put their foot in the door, start that docket process. Now we have 15 projects in queue, we have one project completing construction, and two more projects waiting to get into the queue. Right, so that kind of container expansion by design is what brings projects to fruition. Trust and credibility in these instances is bilateral, right? It's trust and credibility among our members and with our community, and including our members, obviously are national, right? They're folks who have a footprint in our Gulf States, or not necessarily companies that are located in our Gulf states, and that bilateral trust and credibility is also with our decision makers, and that's built over time.

 Nico Johnson  16:27

Is there anything that you feel is inherently sort of blind to developers that maybe you, as the trade association, help with education around fundamentally how government actually works.

 Monika Gerhart  16:43

One thing that we always have to get better at, and I shared with you about messenger messengers and messaging is telling the story that resonates and sculpting based on the world as it is, not the world we wish it would be, and that's a lesson learned from from years in government relations.

 Nico Johnson  17:11

Often, when I'm talking to operators about building companies, and let's face it, anytime you're building staffing an organization, you're building a company, it's it's a nonprofit only in tax status, you still have revenue, you still have expenses, you still have to field a team you need in economic activity, you still have operators out in the field that are your equivalent of business development and sales, your equivalent of being the PR or the public advocacy team, you have to sculpt these arguments with people who understand the language of their counterparty. How have you thought about fielding that team and building an alliance around you that is credible to the counterparty?

 Monika Gerhart  18:01

It's an interesting question, because you actually see this very dichotomous group of stakeholders in New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf South, right? So, our partners and our stakeholders, our closest allies in the New Orleans market, are much, much different than those in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, state legislatures, governor's offices, and public service commissions, so it creates an interesting dichotomy. There,

 Nico Johnson  18:26

you know, you are in the center of oil and gas economy. A lot of people think about oil and gas, and they think about Texas, and they maybe forget that New Orleans is a giant hub for the oil and gas sector, a giant tax base for the state of Louisiana. How do you think about the framing of clean energy in a region that is already has a very strong energy identity?

 Monika Gerhart  18:50

Right. Well, honestly, a lot of the partners in the supply chain are the same partners, the large engineering, consulting, permitting, environmental firms, same partners, energy, their energy resource, or energy source agnostic, right. So, coastal Louisiana is really a lot of the industry is oil and gas services, right, including manufacturing, others. The state and local governments brought a cohort of colleagues to Rhode Island a couple years ago, and we visited Block Island, and the companies that had built the infrastructure for Block Island Offshore Wind Farm are the same companies that built the same pilings and the same infrastructure for oil and gas operations in the, in the Gulf.

 Nico Johnson  19:41

Oh, how about that? So we are in, and I, you know, it's worth noting one of our sponsors routinely for our public stages is a company called Burns McDonald, right, one of the stalwarts of engineering and EPC in the oil and gas sector. A lot of my member companies. Local, they do both. Yeah, I'm not surprised. My sense is you spend time with the folks in your, in your membership talking about how to be credible with lawmakers and regulators, because it's not something that we have an inherent.. there's no training on this, and so they, as members, need to be educated, if you want to take them on to, if you want to take them to the hill in whichever state capitol you're heading to. They need to understand the their counterparty, what makes someone credible in a deep red state in an oil and gas heavy energy environment with these lawmakers and regulators, what's on their mind? Kind of walk me through some of that.

 Monika Gerhart  20:43

Lawmakers understand that demand is driving the market right now. They understand that the need for electrons is high and that it can't wait, right? So, there's a timeliness issue to this, where our companies are delivering, and they're delivering quickly, and they're delivering at a price that that is affordable to families and businesses, and that I think is the, that I think is the linchpin that everyone can agree to.

 Nico Johnson  21:11

Just the concept that speed to power with renewables is tangible, palpable. It's here, we've already got the infrastructure, we're not, it's not alternative, and it's not in the testing phase,

 Monika Gerhart  21:21

that's right, but also in a state that experiences outages and reliability issues regularly.

 Nico Johnson  21:28

In a state that experiences outages regularly, the oil and gas sector would say, "Great, that's why we have backup generators. Natural gas is perfect for that.

 Monika Gerhart  21:36

Power continuity in the Gulf Coast is life-saving work. Solar and storage is life saving work. During Hurricane Ida, we had seven heat-related deaths and untold heat-related illnesses, just in the city of New Orleans, where we lost power for 10 days. Most neighborhoods lost for 10 days. South Louisiana lost power for months, right? And the backup, the natural gas backup generators, when everyone turned on the natural gas at once, couldn't keep up. Wow,

 Nico Johnson  22:09

you don't see that in the headlines.

 Monika Gerhart  22:12

So, in New Orleans, there's about $25 million right now in micro grid resilience hubs that solar plus storage in neighborhood-based assets, congregations, federally qualified health centers, neighbor restaurants, and disadvantaged neighborhoods that are, that are powered to keep the lights on during disaster, of course, reduce your, reduce your light bill on a regular day, right?

 Nico Johnson  22:38

Yeah,

 Monika Gerhart  22:38

but provide power continuity during disaster, have a place where neighborhood folks can walk to to a resilience hub, charge their phone, get a little ice, maybe store some insulin or other life-saving medicines. Yeah,

 Nico Johnson  22:56

I think what's key here is, you know, we have to be able to communicate to lawmakers one of the failure points in the traditional energy system is the delivery mechanism. It's not that generators don't work, it's that we have to fuel those generators with an external resource that must be intermittently deployed. I like to point out that there, but for the grace of markets goes the oil and gas supply line, right? Like the fact that people falsely say, I think I say falsely say that oil and gas is not intermittent is simply because their supply lines haven't been choked off the way we're currently seeing right now in the Strait of Vermeuse, the reality is oil and gas is intermittent. It just has a better, it has a better fuel, it has 100 year head start on fuel supply. You know, renewables is only intermittent because we turn our faces, away from the sun, the reality, as well, is that we have some form of renewable power generation in almost every square inch of the planet at every given time, geothermal, wind, solar, water, leveraging the earth's existing resources, including the copious abundance of sun that falls on it is an inexhaustible resource, and we know well, with the exception of blowing up a solar plant, a solar farm, actually like destroying the generator itself, there's not a natural disaster that chokes off the access to the wind or the sun. I think that's something that lawmakers can certainly, in current political environment, appreciate.

 Monika Gerhart  24:52

Yeah, I mean, I think solar plus storage is disaster mitigation and disaster preparedness, and the. Both the army, the navy, the air force, those offices of energy assurance that they are investing in those kinds of projects, big from Camp Mindon in Louisiana, National Guard bases in Mississippi and Alabama. We see that those kinds of investments, because, because of the understanding that we need power continuity during disaster and other kinds of outages,

 Nico Johnson  25:21

you're absolutely right. A large part of the conversation, as well, that we have to have as communicators and as policy intermediaries is helping folks disintermediate the concept of renewables as a concept seen through a climate lens. What I'm hearing from you is something much more immediate. Lawmakers are beginning to see energy supply as a resilience and a continuity issue, and that, and you know, this is something that, through the context of affordability, is showing up now in the ballot box. Talk to me about, or continue to help me unpack this lexicon that we need to begin utilizing as an industry to communicate better the value of the asset that we are deploying

 Monika Gerhart  26:04

well in the specific example of distributed energy resources and micro grids in particular, I mean there is this very specific disaster preparedness and mitigation framework that applies to that work and that has grown the industry tremendously in South Louisiana in particular, you know, we're looking at a $500 million investment by the state of Louisiana in mission-critical assets like national guard bases, emergency operation centers, congregations, federally qualified health centers, and other ways in which we want community and state assets to be able to continue operations during an outage or another kind of disaster, and that is solar plus storage. So, in terms of timeline, the $500 million GDO investment in Louisiana, the pilot projects are just rolling out right now, and we expect an additional RFQ to come by Q of this year.

 Nico Johnson  27:00

Do you see the industry outside of your states and constituency recognizing the opportunity? Does it still feel like it's very much almost like a regional secret, or

 Monika Gerhart  27:12

it is a regional secret? We have nonprofit organizations that are disaster relief organizations that know the secret and deployed to Asheville, right? For example,

 Nico Johnson  27:25

exactly. Yeah,

 Monika Gerhart  27:25

Puerto Rico knows the secret, but in terms of other regions of the United States, I'm not sure.

 Nico Johnson  27:31

I hear you. I love the love of the work of Will and Fulben Project. Those guys are doing amazing, amazing, tremendous work. We've had them on a number of times. You know, what you're, what you're referring to here is the emerging ecosystem of this distributed resilience network. This, you know, the concept of micro grid has until, until probably the last year and a half, two years, with hurricane relief throughout the Caribbean and rural southeast been relegated to effectively off-grid, but microgrid is increasingly the buzzword for grid edge and grid resilience. Help us understand how at a state level we can, as an industry, begin to leverage that that involving that change to affect local dollars moving in the right direction for us, and does that, does that require, as well as an industry, a reimagining of what we do, and term like maybe we don't think of ourselves as large scale solar energy project developers, rather that we think of everyone is essentially developing community scale grid assets, and maybe even we don't use the word micro grid, like are there dog whistle words that Republicans look for that say not that, but things that you guys are successfully pushing forward that hit on their kind of talk to me about some of the ways that you are imbuing trust and credibility into community-led activity.

 Monika Gerhart  29:05

New Orleans is a great example, because most of us endured Hurricane Ida without power and understand the ways in which hurricanes are coming faster off the Gulf, and mandatory evacuations are less possible, that means that events are less likely to be water events, more likely to be wind events, and more likely to result in life-threatening power outages. So, we're not just talking about economic disruptors, we're talking about life-threatening circumstances. Right after Ida, at one point, the city deployed RTA school bus, RTA public busses in order to deploy cooling stations throughout the city, so that people could get on a running city bus, cool themselves, plug in their devices, and this is a better version of that, right, a more

 Nico Johnson  29:59

sustainable.

 Monika Gerhart  30:00

About, but it's born out of crisis. So, Gulf States Renewable Energy Industries Association, just REA, our member companies and our stakeholders work very hard on something that's called a DER VPP docket, that's investing $30 million in distributed energy resources, primarily storage connected via virtual network through the city of New Orleans, so again it began after IDA. These individual appropriations feed the second line got $4 million in a federal appropriation to put micro grids on restaurants and disadvantaged neighborhoods. The concept being so everyone can walk to their neighborhood restaurant. Those walk-ins are not going to lose coolers full of food. People can charge their devices, they can get some ice water, and maybe even refrigerate life-saving medications, right? All of those individual investments, let's say $5 million and under, are now ready to be aggregated via virtual power plant with an additional $10 million a year for three years, a $30 million total investment in rooftop energy storage for both residential and commercial assets citywide. Those kinds of projects did not come to us overnight, while the concepts of churning congregations, federally qualified health centers and restaurants into micro grids and energy resources during disasters. The work in the docket to implement a citywide framework that's connected via virtual network that is years long work, not so many years, but a couple years, right, of both out front talking to voters during the last election, talking to candidates behind the scene, working the regulatory docket, working with utility on the engineering side. There are a lot of aspects of that that came together into fruition, and now we're implementing, and now we're in implementation.

 Nico Johnson  32:00

You know, one of the things that I hear emerging is essentially the activity that is born from disaster relief, disaster preparedness, is essentially stress testing the future of our resilience infrastructure in real time. It's fascinating. I mean, disaster relief and grid planning have largely been separate conversations, and it feels like they're, they're converging in some way.

 Monika Gerhart  32:24

Yeah, not here.

 Nico Johnson  32:26

They've not been separate in, in New Orleans, is what you mean, in Louisiana.

 Monika Gerhart  32:31

Yeah, yeah, in the Gulf South.

 Nico Johnson  32:32

Yeah, and that, I mean, I'd say that's largely because of the kinds of disasters, like Christina. So, for the last two decades, certainly that would be true. For

 Monika Gerhart  32:42

actually, I don't know who in Florida.

 Nico Johnson  32:45

Hmm, very interesting.

 Monika Gerhart  32:46

I don't know if Florida's having the same conversations.

 Nico Johnson  32:49

That's, that's a good point.

 Monika Gerhart  32:50

And it might be that their events are still water events rather than wind events. I really don't know.

 Nico Johnson  32:57

Yeah, I mean, the political regulatory, even the social infrastructure needed to exist before these kinds of projects that you're outlining could exist, and I'm fascinated by this concept of, I mean, I can't even repeat back to you the words that you use, because you've, you've thought for so long about how this should be framed. I'm looking forward to going back and listening to this candidly, but the, you're essentially describing sort of neighborhood power plants, something that we in the distributed community, distributed engine community, have talked about for four years. I mean, is that where we're headed as a nation, or is this going to be kind of a regionally specific form of convergence?

 Monika Gerhart  33:37

I think that as unexpected natural disasters hit more and more parts of the country. Models like ours will expand. I also just want to double click on the point that we've built the container, we've built the policy regulatory framework, right? And we are now implementing, we are moving through implementation right now, right. So you know, in terms of market expansion, we are seeing at a time where the other parts of the country are seeing much attracting fraction in the renewable energy industry, we are seeing expansion.

 Nico Johnson  34:13

Yeah, and to your point, but sort of the core philosophical argument in this episode is this idea of changing the container, and it is all about building the conditions to allow the system to exist.

 Monika Gerhart  34:25

That's right,

 Nico Johnson  34:26

you know. One of the things that I was pulling a thread on earlier is this concept around building institutional capacity. Utilities, regulators, communities, lawmakers - they all need to learn how to think differently about what distributed infrastructure can offer them. In an interesting turn, as we record this, the National Branch of the Solar Industries Association, SEA, sort of the parent to your organization, is going through a leadership change. What advice would you have for the incoming CEO of. Sia,

 Monika Gerhart  35:00

so let me say I'm not sure that the incoming CEO of Sia needs my advice. I think he's really well positioned to lead the organization with or without my advice. The one thing I would say is that, and I know that he's hearing it across the board,

 Nico Johnson  35:18

is

 Monika Gerhart  35:18

in to the state and local work that is happening, and that that is where the real work is happening right now. It's coming from neighborhoods and communities up rather than from the federal government down.

 Nico Johnson  35:33

I love that, Monica, and I think that you're being too humble, because I believe that you do have a strong voice and a credible voice that ideally the leadership at a federal or national level will be keen to lean into. I kind of look at this as like if you take over as the CEO of a major corporation, going to visit all the offices, you're going to talk to all the leaders. I'm hoping that the inbound administration will do the same, will make a state level trek to hear what's going on. The first stop is to sit in your office for the Gulf States, and to hear how you've been succeeding, and I think you're a great example of someone who's succeeding in a deep red environment through building alliance and changing the narrative, frankly, we've talked a lot about the infrastructure at a legislative level, and a lot of folks tend to think about, especially micro grids and solar policy, as a sort of like a rooftop initiative, and there's a lot of solar that we are familiar with that's deployed at scale, large utility. One of the things that tends to be a roadblock to more solar being deployed at any scale is not legislative or supply chain, but infrastructure ahead of the asset itself at the transmission grid level at the utility level. Where do you see the narrative changing there, and what sort of work are you all doing behind the scenes to work more upstream from just the generation asset itself?

 Monika Gerhart  37:09

Yeah, I mean, interconnection has been a huge issue for all of my states. In January, we hosted an event in Washington, DC. It's an annual event that's a typical Louisiana oil and gas event, but you know it's increasingly a diversified energy event, and we've come in a couple years and hosted this, this gathering, and so we included the governor's office, our public utilities, our federal regulators, and had this conversation around interconnection, bringing electrons to grid and all of the above strategy, and what we teased out of that conversation, the one, the Venn diagram of where we all agreed was really on some of the ways in which we can use innovative, commercially available technologies in order to move the needle on interconnection and increase capacity on existing transmission lines, right. And so, just recently, a couple weeks ago, I hosted kind of a follow-up event here in New Orleans with our federal regulators, our state regulators, our governor's office, and the companies that are leading in that commercially deployable in those, in those innovative technologies, and the public utilities who are using them, and just had this very thoughtful conversation. It was like curating the conference that I always wanted to go to. It was just, you know, a couple hour discussion. It was a half a day, and the outcomes, I think, are formidable, and those kinds of conversations. So, room of 30 people right curated to represent MISO, FERC, the Public Service Commission, the state, the utilities, as mentioned, bringing all of those folks together and having a collaborative conversation about how we can together move the needle and where the Venn diagram of our intersecting interests lie, I mean, those are the conversations that that change the frame.

 Nico Johnson  39:07

Do you see that regulators and utilities becoming more open to these conversations?

 Monika Gerhart  39:11

I do.

 Nico Johnson  39:11

I mean, you've got low growth and resilience both being concerns, they're becoming impossible to ignore, right? So, how do we better engage then with regulators and utilities as industry operators? I think one of the things that people think, oh, that's Monica, that's Monica's job, that's that's our state, see, as job.

 Monika Gerhart  39:31

So, I mean, I think these these conversations that bring together diverse stakeholders and focus on the areas of agreement, I think that's the path forward by including federal regulators and also large energy buyers in the conversation, the utilities come to those conversations differently than if they were just coming to me as a trade association, right? The conversations are very, very different, and so curating the room to have the right kind of voices and diverse perspectives, I think. Is essential to moving the needle,

 Nico Johnson  40:02

Nico. I think one thing is we are used to, and probably you as well, the breakneck speed of how legislature moves. You mentioned having three days to respond. It's in stark contrast to what can be often months, years long process with regulators for those of your constituents who are just unfamiliar, and even though it is maybe the least comfortable aspect of your job, what do people need to really understand about the way to work through regulators, and even you mentioned dockets, like I feel like people don't even understand how the regulation happens. Just give us a quick, maybe three, just give us a short inter intro into the dichotomy of working with regulators compared with legislators, and, and at the policy level.

 Monika Gerhart  40:55

So, I would say that we work closely with our network of both members and partners, and we come early, and we come often. We build these relationships over time. So, for example, every year I host an industry day in each of the states at the legislature, whether or not we have something that's moving right. It's really, it's just building relationships, it's just knowing that the next year, when we might have to play defense, that they know our names, they know our faces. We've got some branding out there, we have some familiarity, and we're also trusted experts. We hold briefings when there's a Todd issue that we feel that lawmakers don't understand, or that rule makers may not understand the process before it gets to their desk. We host a briefing, and we, and we share everything about the process that they can't see before it gets to their desk. So, for example, Louisiana is going through rulemaking on utility scale renewable energy siting right now, so we brought all the folks who are, who are writing the rules together some of the large energy buyers, and we brought in some of our developers, and said, here's everything that happens on the development side before this would ever come to your desk. Here are all of the challenges to deployment that have nothing to do with you or your job, but these are the ways that you and your job can solve for all of these other issues, and make it easier over here.

 Nico Johnson  42:23

Fascinating,

 Monika Gerhart  42:23

we don't win every battle.

 Nico Johnson  42:25

Yeah,

 Monika Gerhart  42:26

but it's taken us a long way in terms of helping folks understand us as a trusted resource for information and data that can help make their jobs easier. Look, I used to serve in local government, I know that the ways in which people want it off, their goal is to get it off their desk, get it off their desk, and be effective, right? I'm here to help them do

 Nico Johnson  42:51

both. Fascinating. Was there was there a moment earlier in your career where you realized, like, oh, this is how decisions actually get made?

 Monika Gerhart  42:58

During the Alabama Solar moratorium. There was a moment we were all at Re Plus Southeast, we were all in Atlanta, and it was a moment where the bull author started offering me amendments, and I was like, he doesn't have the votes, he doesn't have the votes to get this through, and so we don't, we, I rejected the amendments, because he doesn't have the votes.

 Nico Johnson  43:23

Yeah, amazing, that, but that's that's experience talking. It's because you've seen that when these concessions come back, it's because they're trying to figure out how to get the votes. How interesting, but that that the counterparty that you're discussing was sending you messages over email, they weren't at, they weren't at Southeast, you were at Southeast with your constituents, correct?

 Monika Gerhart  43:50

Yeah, there was a group of partners, yeah, I named Omko, but I also named Holla Steel, Nico, other partners in that, in that work that were really critical to moving the ball quickly.

 Nico Johnson  44:02

Yeah,

 Monika Gerhart  44:02

so when I talk about three days, I didn't mean that we solved the problem in three days. It took us three days to mobilize.

 Nico Johnson  44:08

Yeah, can you frame again for me how specifically New Orleans is a crucible for determining the model, the container change that we need, that can essentially create these aggregated policy resources that together actually create, while they sound like smallish sums on the surface, they create a really large amount of momentum and a large financial resource or pool of resources for the industry at large.

 Monika Gerhart  44:47

I mean, the scale of renewable energy work and resilience work in New Orleans is on commands immediate attention. The number of investments I talked a little bit about Hurricane Ida. And the kinds of innovation and also investment that has grown out of Hurricane Ida, when put together, the community solar product, the community solar queue, the network of micro grids, the $30 million VPP investment, the $4 million investments in in restaurants and disadvantaged neighborhoods are $5 million worth of investments in neighborhood congregations. All of those tie together to create essentially a $500 million investment in one of the one of the country's only locally regulated vertically integrated utilities in the United States,

 Nico Johnson  45:41

I like to, and as time allows, dig in in these interviews to kind of who you as a person are in the way that you think about and inform your leadership. Would you consider yourself a reader? Like, do you love to sit with books? What's what's a book that you have read more than once and regularly return to,

 Monika Gerhart  46:03

well, if you promise not to make fun of me, I have

 Nico Johnson  46:06

no judgment.

 Monika Gerhart  46:08

I do have a book on the federal budget that I refer to pretty often.

 Nico Johnson  46:14

Thank you for telling me you're a nerd without saying I'm a nerd. That's so okay. So, is that considered making fun of you? When I say that, because I'm not trying to make fun of you.

 Monika Gerhart  46:25

No, I've got thick skin. That are you kidding me?

 Nico Johnson  46:28

Good. You got to be a serious wonk to cite a regulatory manual, as you're light reading your weekend, your vacation guide,

 Monika Gerhart  46:41

right, right.

 Nico Johnson  46:43

Okay,

 Monika Gerhart  46:44

so look, I mean, I've - I have always been a social scientist. I was that nerd in high school who loved social studies and debate and all of the things.

 Nico Johnson  46:56

What do you nerd out about when you're not reading regulatory manuals?

 Monika Gerhart  47:01

You know how your children kind of reflect the best and worst of you.

 Nico Johnson  47:05

Yeah,

 Monika Gerhart  47:06

my daughter will also often correct me with, like, a specificity around something that is truly frightening to me, and has even been known to say to me that is a distinction without a difference, and she's seven.

 Nico Johnson  47:22

That is really interesting. I feel like I need to go incorporate this into my lexicon. Oh my gosh,

 Monika Gerhart  47:30

the difference.

 Nico Johnson  47:31

Yeah, it's brilliant. Like, when some, you know, pointing out semantics, I mean, effectively, like what you've said has no practical or functional impact on the outcome of the conversation, not you personally, the distinction without, without a difference. Yeah,

 Monika Gerhart  47:46

yes, yeah. She also had her own little memo format when she was a baby, too. So, I, from a government relations perspective, I came up in the nonprofit sector, right? And then I moved to the public sector, and I think that those experiences are incredibly important in order to be effective, that it's not just the duration of the work that we've done, but also the ways in which we understand it from both an inside and an outside perspective, in the same way that when we try with that, when we work to move important policy, we are also moving it from both the inside and the outside. I shared with you sort of the process on the VPP on the $30 million der docket in New Orleans, and the ways in which that was on the regulatory side, it was with voters, it was with candidates, it was messaging, it was policy, it was engineering, that there are all of these components that come together in order to make a policy like that, pencil right, make it move, and that those results are real for the homeowners and businesses that are availing themselves of new energy storage resources, and for the manufacturers and EPCs, and all the companies in all parts of the supply chain that get to participate in that market expansion, and so it's not just a sort of inside thinking game, it's not just an external communications game, it's not just an engineering game, it's all of the above.

 Nico Johnson  49:14

Monica, if folks are so inclined, how can they get more of what you are putting out in the world, do you do you frequent LinkedIn? Is there a way that folks can follow you more closely?

 Monika Gerhart  49:28

The easiest way to get involved, most of our work happens at the committee level internally, and so the easiest way is to just go to juzria.org and sign up, become a member, that's PSR EIA, and be part of all the great solutions,

 Nico Johnson  49:42

and they can also come to what I've heard is a fabulous local event. Are you, do you have a local event? Yeah, we

 Monika Gerhart  49:51

host a regional conference. We host it in New Orleans. We host it on a Friday, so people can bring their families this daily weekend,

 Nico Johnson  49:58

not to love about that.

 Monika Gerhart  49:59

What's that? To love unrivaled access to decision makers, everyone in the supply chain. It's a great time that folks tell me that it's a really good use of their time.

 Nico Johnson  50:11

You can find your new bestie and have a beignet,

 Monika Gerhart  50:14

and also get some deals done.

 Nico Johnson  50:16

I hope that that is the underlying thrust of attendance. Well, we'll try to, we'll try to drive more attendance to the Gizriah regional event that's happening in September, right?

 Monika Gerhart  50:30

Yeah, so we host an incredible regional annual conference in New Orleans. It's always on a Friday, so people can bring their families and enjoy the weekend. We have local, state, and federal decision makers that are all in the room helping us work through this work. We've got local and regional legislative regulatory updates, folks, things that people need to know if they're working in this market. And then, of course, the networking and the way that the supply chain comes together and can make magic happen.

 Nico Johnson  51:00

Monica Gerhardt is executive director of GS REA, or GIS REA, the Gulf States Renewal Energy Industries Association. I hope that you will take time to take a look at what's happening in the Gulf States. I hope this last 60 minutes has enlightened you, not just about where you might look for your next renewal energy market, but what it takes to actually ensure that market is ready for you and yours to enter into. There's more work to be had. Hope that, like Monica and her staff, your hand will continue to be at the plow. We'll be here covering folks like Monica and all the legislation that is coming into play to give you fertile soil as we build the next energy revolution. Thanks for tuning in to Suncast. Thank you to our sponsors who helped make this possible. They pay the bills, so all you have to pay is attention. You can learn more about them at SunCast dot media forward slash sponsors. Find ways that you could join us in broadcasting your message to the world, like they do to 1000s of solar warriors and clean energy climate champions around the world. Remember, you are what you listen to. Thanks again for showing up, Solar Warrior is half the battle.