How an energy policy advisor uses memes, art and podcasts to advance important renewable energy initiatives 🔋

The Cooler speaks with Allison Bates Wannop about disrupting energy policy-making.

Allison Bates Wannop’s career in energy policy started over a coffee.

She’d been working as a litigation attorney when she saw Mary Powell—the former CEO of Green Mountain Power and current CEO of Sunrun—speak about being a woman in a male-dominated sphere. Wannop approached Powell after the speech to tell her how much she appreciated it and Powell offered to meet.

In the course of their conversation at a coffee shop a few weeks later, Powell told Wannop, “I think you might like energy work. Why don’t you look into it?”

Wannop says she doesn’t know for sure what caused Powell to make the suggestion, except that Powell was always looking to bring talented people into the small Vermont energy world. Either way, Wannop took it to heart and immediately started researching the electricity and renewable energy sectors, reaching out to contacts in the space, and joining the Energy Bar Association.

A few months into her “self-education,” in 2016, the Supreme Court issued a verdict on FERC vs. EPSA, one of the most significant energy law cases in history. The decision changed the state/federal balance of power in energy, affirming the power of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to regulate demand response transactions in wholesale markets, a precedent that has since been applied to integrate batteries and other distributed energy resources (DER)—like rooftop solar, or battery storage—into wholesale markets.

“Reading that case, I felt like a bolt of lightning hit me,” Wannop said. “I thought, ‘This is what I want to do with my life.’ I loved the complexity of the issues, and that the questions were multi-disciplinary, incorporating law, economics, policy, and engineering. There was a major question being debated: who could order that new energy technologies be used? I’ve always loved getting to the pith of complicated issues and assembling knowledge across disciplines, and I thought I could bring those skills to bear in energy work while having real-world impact.”

Wannop worked as a regulatory attorney for the Vermont Department of Public Service, then into a career in energy policy, where she has worked to help accelerate the clean energy transition. After working for two years as the Policy Director for demand response aggregator Voltus, she is now a regulatory consultant and the policy director for DER Task Force, a community helping educate utilities, regulators and people working in the energy industry on the grid benefits and value of distributed energy resources.

We sat down with Wannop to learn more about her unconventional entry into the industry, how to make energy issues more accessible and how parties can work together to solve problems in the clean energy transition.

Our team attended DER Task Force's annual conference, DERVOS, this past November. It was a great event to learn about all of the innovation happening in the energy space. We loved the vision you presented for disrupting policy work. You made it clear we still have so far to go in making utility policy more modern and accessible. What are some immediate opportunities you see to modernize utility policymaking?

There are a lot of things that could be done to increase innovation, and most of them would probably shock people. One of the most obvious things is how little information is exchanged across state lines or across RTOs [regional transmission organizations.] The reason for that is people usually specialize in doing policy work for one or two states or RTOs.

Allison's vision for disrupting policy work, presented at DERVOS 2023. She said, "Some companies have values; DER Task Force has vibes.”

Only in the last few years have you seen more exchange of information across state lines. I think that's really important, because often when I've pointed out something that is tried and tested in one jurisdiction to another, a grid operator has been a lot more willing to follow suit. So I have had a high success rate by sharing lessons learned, provided that I show how they apply to the local market. 

We don't have time to spare – we have six years now until 2030. The fact that we're leaving money on the table and not actively deploying things that are already proven is such a waste. So we need to cross-cut that silo, while also recognizing that regionalism is real, so everything isn’t going to work everywhere. We should be cross-cutting silos with intention rather than designing one thing and telling all 50 states they should do it. That balance is really important.

DER Task Force is working to bring new energy and approaches to utility policymaking. Another thing you spoke about at DERVOS, and something we found particularly interesting, is the use of multimedia in regulatory filings. Utility regulatory filings can be highly technical and esoteric. How can mediums like art, memes and podcasts help move the needle for clean energy broadly, and DERs specifically? 

Policy work, and even lawyering, hasn't kept up to date with the technologies of the last 20 years. Now, you could record a podcast episode about an issue–say digesting the filings of Southwest Power Pool’s FERC 2222 compliance docket–analyze the different parties’ positions, give an aggregator’s perspective, and say what you think FERC should do in that situation. An hour-long episode like that would be really helpful to people. Or, I could record a podcast episode or YouTube video about how a particular technology works, for a topic that might be more helpful to hear or see rather than read. You could even cite that in a regulatory filing, but nobody does that yet. Regulatory work has tended to mirror lawyering, and courtroom procedures are very strict and, I would say, antiquated. But these same rules aren’t nearly as strict in a regulatory proceeding, and since there is more freedom than in a court, we should leverage that.

Promotional meme for DERVOS 2023 (via DER Task Force.)

I’ve talked about memes and art in filings, which are just more memorable because they're fun and accessible. I home-schooled for a year during COVID-19, and I saw that humans can understand something 10 to 100 times faster if it's learned at play rather than just through rote instruction. Generating excitement is such a powerful tool.

What I love about what we're doing at the DER Task Force is that, yes, we're fun and innovative and we have this expletive-filled podcast, but we also really know our stuff. The thesis that I’m excited to test, is whether we can get further, faster, by being fun and informed than we would get by just being one of those things.

A lot of important policies related to renewable energy are happening in these regulatory filings and proceedings. Is it important to also make these proceedings and filing opportunities more accessible to folks outside the space? How do you think about this in your work?

I don't necessarily think it would be helpful if more average people were involved in the day-to-day regulatory process. 

In general, it's important to have the people who are already in those rooms be a little more uncompromising, more disruptive and less meek in their requests. I've used the term “regulatory friend zone.” It’s when you just keep asking a utility or regulator for some weak measure that isn't going to move the needle, and hoping that they're going to give it to you. We have to move past that. We have real solutions now. Decision-makers need to adopt them or we have to hold them accountable. It's time to recast advocacy into something a little bit more innovative, disruptive, and less apologetic, while also being incredibly informed.

That said, we should improve our energy and climate literacy as a country. My kids will understand our energy system and its impacts better than their grandparents, and that’s just a fact. That doesn't mean that everyone is going to know the kilowatt demand for every appliance in their household, but people will learn the capacity of their EV and the production of solar panels. I think if we go to school for 13 years and learn about sine, cosine, and tangent, we should learn about how electricity is generated, and what your sources of carbon emissions are. While that might sound wild, 1000 years ago it would have been crazy to think of universal literacy, 500 years ago it would have been crazy to imagine the average person taking a role in governing, and 100 years ago it would have been crazy to talk about the calories in food. So, I think climate and energy impacts are within the purview of what people should know, without expecting every homeowner to be their own facilities manager.

To do this, we need to be able to distill complex ideas. For example, whenever I'm traveling I try to explain to my Uber driver what I do for work. When I was working for Voltus, a demand response aggregator, I could explain that story pretty simply: “When there's not enough energy in the system, instead of paying people to turn a power plant on, we pay people to turn stuff off. This is cheaper for consumers and uses less emissions.” When I shared this with my cab driver in Missouri, she responded "What you do is good shit!" 

If you can have those kinds of conversations, it’s helpful. 

That resonates. A broader understanding of climate issues is important, so we need to broaden the tent of advocates somewhat, so more of those educational moments you mentioned can happen. You were able to join that tent thanks to the encouragement of Mary Powell. How do you think we can encourage more people to work in energy policy? What's the right way to go about that?

This is a pretty sexy area already. I constantly talk to people who have a non-energy background and want to break in. First of all, we need to elevate those resources and the stories of people who came into it differently. I think we need to elevate the resources that are already available, and then mentor the people and help them understand how their skills fit in. 

It's so easy when something is sexy to be like, I'm going to love working in it. But there are so many different things that you could do here. If I were in compliance, I would not be happy or good at that. I try to ask people, what are the day-to-day tasks that bring them joy, and then direct them to where in the energy world those skills would fit in.

It's important to make this work accessible, because just as the energy mix is changing, so are the talents that we need. It used to be that if you worked at a utility or a regulator, your job was to show up and do the same thing for 50 years. Yeah, you moved up the ladder, but you weren't expected to innovate, you were expected to be reliable. That's great, we still need that, but we need many other skills. We need software engineers. We need people who think across disciplines. We need people who are willing to take bigger risks. We need humorous people. Making this work more accessible is necessary because energy work now requires a broader set of skills than it ever has.

Climate artist Nicole Kelner designed the chocolate bar wrappers for DERVOS 2023 (photo via Nicole Kelner).

You also said at DERVOS that we need to hire better comms and marketing people—or specifically that utilities need to hire these people. You gave an example of how Green Mountain Power hired a local journalist to run their communications. Can you explain how hiring better comms and marketing people benefits utilities?

Kristen Carlson, who's now one of their executive vice presidents, was a local newscaster. Mary Powell would describe herself as being customer-obsessed – wanting her customers to love their utility. She hired Kristen, even though she had said that she wanted her whole life to be in broadcasting. You can see the results of that. GMP hovers around 4 million megawatt hours a year–which classifies them as a small utility under FERC–but people across the country have heard about their programs. Why do you think they're in Time Magazine or The New Yorker? Because they incorporated Kristen’s skills.

If a utility wanted a more direct reason, I think it's easier to get something approved if the local populace likes you. I live in Vermont; our local papers will cover things like GMP's battery program. When there's positive traction around that, it makes it a lot harder for a regulator to deny. I've even seen a report that says when customers think highly of their utilities, regulators give them higher returns on equity. So what is the benefit of being customer-obsessed? Utilities still want to own things, and now that there are things like the “Bring Your Own Device” program that the utility can use for grid purposes, I think you can see a direct flow through from having that great reputation due to a great comms team.

Allison Bates Wannop interviews Jen Downing at DERVOS 2023.

That’s why, when my co-panelist, Jen Downing, who co-authored the DOE’s Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Virtual Power Plants report, said that the utilities were like, "But you didn't talk about my VPP?” I responded, "Well, then they should hire better comms people!" 

It's important to make this work accessible, because just as the energy mix is changing, so are the talents that we need…We need software engineers. We need people who think across disciplines. We need people who are willing to take bigger risks. We need humorous people. Making this work more accessible is necessary because energy work now requires a broader set of skills than it ever has.

Those good comms people are certainly helping lead others to this topic. You’ve voiced this mentality on your LinkedIn profile. You have a quote from Ruth Bader Ginsburg about fighting for the things you care about but doing it in a way that will lead others to join you. Why is this message important to you in your work, and how do you apply it to your day-to-day?

I make sure that I care about and believe in what I'm doing. I love the work that I'm doing now because I can curate it for the things that I believe in. I'm fighting for them because I believe that they are critical solutions. Then it’s just trying to do things with honesty and integrity, as well as generating excitement for people about what excites me, even if it's esoteric. I want to make the opaque and scary, understandable and less scary, and hopefully exciting. Also in this space, some people love an issue and get excited about it, and they understand the complexity, but I like taking that next step, to create excitement among a variety of stakeholders

To do that next step – not just developing a solution, but being able to get people on board and excited to see how that solution works for them – is a critical piece. I like the quote because too much of what I see is people generating anger, and I would rather than generate interest.

You said earlier, six years until 2030. 2024 is a big year for accelerating the clean energy transition, deploying solutions, and getting clean energy investments from the IRA into the states. What issues will you be following most closely in the coming weeks and months? What are you paying close attention to this year?

This year I want to see us take all this hype that we've had and turn it into action and results. If you think about an exponential growth curve, even if we just moderately improve in 2024, that would be great if it sets us on a path to get to our long-term goal.

VPPs are big. There's been so much hype, but I think it's now on the industry to socialize the results that we've already had so that we can get more programs going. I think regulators are realizing that they need to integrate distributed energy resources, and now it’s a question of whether they will do it well and use them as tools to keep rates down, or increase reliability, or not. So things like getting the stories into dockets and hearing rooms about how this week Hawaii retired its last coal plant, replacing it with batteries.

Energy efficiency is ripe for some real action. I wish everyone knew about just how much energy we waste. For example, I live in Vermont, and the motor homes here are often only approved to be at the latitude of Virginia, so they're just literally leaching heat out all winter and it’s wasteful. Those kinds of no-regrets approaches just aren’t being deployed. 

Finally, just scaling the technologies that we already have. Grid-enhancing technologies and systematizing things like interconnection software. We have to be integrating those technologies that are already out there that are already used in other countries.

We have the technologies, and the barriers we have are human-made. We need to be telling the stories so that decision-makers trust these technologies and know how to incorporate them. 

We've been talking about these issues for years. How do we convince people what is happening now is worth it and helping people?

Hemingway is credited with saying people get poor “slowly at first, and then all at once.” Perhaps more controversially, Lenin said, “There are decades where nothing happens; there are weeks where decades happen.” And, to end with a capitalist, Bill Gates said, “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”

People can get discouraged by the pace of change. But change is not linear. It might seem like nothing is happening for years, and then “Bam!” All at once. So I take comfort in that: you just got to show up, day in, and day out, for longer than you think, but not get discouraged because any day things could take off.

I know we are on the precipice of that steep, upward trajectory. We have the technologies. Climate change is visible. There is worldwide action and interest. So if people show up, and bring whatever gifts they have to this task, we will be in a much better place in 6 years. 

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