Last week, we pub­lished the first part of our con­ver­sa­tion with Michael O’Don­nell, Nation­al Vice Pres­i­dent of the Util­i­ties Indus­try for SAP. The sec­ond part of our dis­cus­sion, Michael goes into the impor­tance of a resilient, secure pow­er grid, and how util­i­ties orga­ni­za­tions in the Unit­ed States are prepar­ing for future regulations. 

Q: What do you think are the biggest sus­tain­abil­i­ty chal­lenges that util­i­ties cus­tomers are deal­ing with right now? 

A: There are a few. A big one is resilien­cy. I think a lot of things are done under the guise of need­ing to be resilient and hav­ing a secure and resilient grid. When you start to bring up the top five things that are impor­tant to orga­ni­za­tions right now, sus­tain­abil­i­ty is up there. But I can guar­an­tee you secu­ri­ty and grid resilien­cy are more of a pri­or­i­ty than sus­tain­abil­i­ty. A lot of times, grid secu­ri­ty and resilien­cy are used as the rea­son to not move as quick­ly. And of course, we need to be thought­ful about how we think about the future of the grid – because if you’re just react­ing to some­thing and you’re not think­ing through all the down­stream impli­ca­tions of a deci­sion, you end up cre­at­ing more issues down the line. But the dan­ger is get­ting into the mode of analy­sis paral­y­sis. You do have to move. 

I think it’s smart to think through this is the oppor­tu­ni­ty to restruc­ture the entire grid in a way that allows for flex­i­bil­i­ty to accom­mo­date sus­tain­abil­i­ty inno­va­tions. Because they’re going to hap­pen. Mak­ing sure that the grid is resilient and peo­ple can get the ener­gy they need is important. 

And par­tic­u­lar­ly when you con­sid­er secu­ri­ty. ​“60 Min­utes” recent­ly cov­ered the ener­gy grid and its secu­ri­ty. Some­one in Cal­i­for­nia shot up a sub­sta­tion. Offi­cials don’t know who it was. But these peo­ple cut the com­mu­ni­ca­tions by strate­gi­cal­ly shoot­ing cer­tain parts of the sub­sta­tion to bring it down. If you take down a very spe­cif­ic set of sub­sta­tions, you can knock out huge swaths of the pow­er grid. I only bring this up because orga­ni­za­tions must account for grid secu­ri­ty and resilien­cy as they are plan­ning to dri­ve sus­tain­able solutions. 

Ener­gy grids need to be resilient, secure, and sus­tain­able. But all those things have to be cou­pled togeth­er when you plug in new types of tech­nol­o­gy — whether they be wind, solar, hydro­gen, or bat­tery solu­tions. They all have to be inter­con­nect­ed and thought through. 

Q: Let’s dis­cuss reg­u­la­tions. When do you think we’ll start see­ing sig­nif­i­cant reg­u­la­tions in the util­i­ties space in North America? 

A: We’ve already start­ed to see some. The Biden admin­is­tra­tion has been try­ing to push some whole­sale changes that have not gar­nered a lot of bipar­ti­san sup­port. It’s inter­est­ing because sus­tain­abil­i­ty ends up get­ting lumped in with some oth­er pro­grams that I think are even more divi­sive among the two polit­i­cal par­ties in the Unit­ed States. Sus­tain­abil­i­ty is a top­ic where these polit­i­cal par­ties prob­a­bly could agree if they looked at it separately. 

But regard­less, sus­tain­abil­i­ty is not going away. You’re see­ing a lot of orga­ni­za­tions, com­mer­cial­ly, that aren’t behold­en to gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions just make sus­tain­abil­i­ty deci­sions on their own. You also see sus­tain­abil­i­ty action at the state lev­el. Cer­tain states are more pro­gres­sive and they’ve made deci­sions to dri­ve a clean­er grid. You’re see­ing the net results of those state deci­sions being made and hav­ing that impact.

When think­ing about Europe, I would say they’re ahead. But the Unit­ed States is such a huge coun­try. Cal­i­for­nia has the world’s ninth-largest econ­o­my. A lot is also hap­pen­ing in the South­east. I think there are region­al rea­sons for that — hav­ing an abun­dance of sun­light does­n’t hurt. But there’s a lot of move­ment going on in dif­fer­ent parts of the country.

Q: How are Amer­i­can util­i­ties orga­ni­za­tions prepar­ing for what I can assume are going to be inevitable sus­tain­abil­i­ty reg­u­la­tions com­ing their way?

A: It’s some­thing they are con­sid­er­ing. As I said, this is some­what region­al in nature, but every­body is mov­ing in that direc­tion and they’ve made their procla­ma­tions about when they’re going to try to dri­ve down to zero. Then there are those more strate­gic long-term points about mak­ing big invest­ments in ​“clean hydro­gen.” A lot of the gas com­pa­nies are focused on inject­ing hydro­gen into nat­ur­al gas to make it greener.

It depends on where you are in the coun­try, but there are oth­er things such as how you mix solar into your over­all ener­gy gen­er­a­tion mix. And the same thing goes with wind pow­er. For exam­ple, we have a huge devel­op­ment project going up the coast of New Jer­sey that’s been going on for sev­er­al years.

We’re also see­ing more micronu­clear orga­ni­za­tions such as Bill Gate’s Ter­raPow­er or XPow­er. Jeff Bezos also has that com­pa­ny that does coal fusion. There are also a ton of bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies out there. We’re see­ing a lot of invest­ment around these solu­tions. It’s hap­pen­ing in a lot of dif­fer­ent areas to dri­ve util­i­ties orga­ni­za­tions for­ward to hit those require­ments they’re try­ing to hit. 

Q: In your opin­ion, what is the most excit­ing part of the sus­tain­abil­i­ty efforts hap­pen­ing in the util­i­ties indus­try right now? 

A: I’ve worked in this indus­try for over 20 years. For a large peri­od of that time, there was­n’t a ton of inno­va­tion on the actu­al gen­er­a­tion side of the mix and dri­ving clean ener­gy. The excit­ing part is that I’m going to be help­ing fun­da­men­tal­ly trans­form the util­i­ties indus­try in the next decade. Things will not look the same a decade from now. Being part of that evo­lu­tion to help our cus­tomers in that process of dri­ving down to car­bon-neu­tral and cre­at­ing a grid that is sus­tain­able and resilient is very excit­ing to me.