Order. Without objection the chair is authorized to declare recess at any time. Good afternoon, welcome to todays hearing, the future of electricity delivery, monetizing and securing our nations electricity grid. I want to thank all of our witnesses for joining us today. This is such an important topic. Im a young guy as i can tell but ive read some history about what it was like when we first started building the electric brig grade over a century from now. I dont think we could have imagined the tech elegies that we would use to power homes businesses and hospitals and i think the challenge is different. The real challenge was just extending power itself to every corner of our society. There was a challenge that those providing powers knew that they could make money in cities and well Populated Areas and places with businesses and commercial opportunities, but it was not as profitable to take it into the countryside into the hill country of texas for example. The government made a ba
Cspan campaign 2014. More than 100 debates for the control of congress. Now a discussion on federal science policy and the use of simulation to address national threats. The chief scientist for the National Nuclear Security Agency and a special adviser to energy techtary. He addresses the university of tennessee Howard Baker Center for publictoba÷ policy in knoxv. This is about an hour. Thank you. That was an overly generous introduction. Thank you, again, taylor. I think the hospitality here at the baker center, the university of tennessee has been remarkable. Its a wonderful place, and im happy to be here. You know, as an academic who ended up in washington for some reason, i wanted to give you my personal take on computational science, what we do and kind of how i view this. I think its an interesting story, i hope youll find it interesting, too, as a beta tester, i guess this can fail and still be successful as part of your learning so we can look at it that way. So i have some fr
Economics. My question really has to do with the relationship between the Gates Foundation and the world they. When i started to think about questions for you, i looked at the world banks budget and i saw a bed with a layout in between 40 billion exceed billion dollars a year on a wide range of topics. So when you entered this field, did you believe, you probably did, but how did you think about approaching a . Would you be catalytic with respect to the world bank . In other words, to do things yourself that they are not doing . For example, the reduction in infant mortality, which is certainly a big success dori really was not underway for a lot of the time the world bank had substantial resources. Was that something that attracted you . Do you think that you can be more flexible than the world bank in terms of moving from one priority to another . How do you match the world they . Thanks. We do a lot with the world bank. I had dinner with john cannon come a long dinner last night bec
Before returning to the u. S. On saturday. You can watch coverage of his trip this week on the cspan networks. We have to remember two thing, i think. First, were there because we were attacked in new york city, and 3,000 americans were murdered. Thats why we went to afghanistan, to get those people who were killing us. And second, president obama has said theres a limit to this. Within two years, were not doing it anymore. So i agree with you, julie, at some point you have to let them do it. But in our, in our first goal if we get away from the afghans, etc. , and look at what our first goal was, if i had told you or any of the listeners in 2001 that we would not be attacked again in the United States of america for the next decade, none of, you know, none of us would have believed that. Because at that point alqaeda had more of the advantage. Now we really hav alqaeda and the terrorists definitely on the defensive. And so we can at this point get out most of our forces from afghanist
Whatever. But it but the fact is, p. V. Modules available for about 80 cents a watt. And a reminder, the longstanding holy grail has been about 50 cents a watt. I mean, this is tremendous progress. In fact, now its the soft costs that we have to work on more to to get those down. And, again, you see the cost in deployment. Ill pause here just to say that a harbinger of what is coming is when energy incumbents start to seriously reexamine their Business Models in the face of whats happening. So many of you have seen today, for example, there are some, shall we call them, discussions going on between the Solar Industry and utilities, for example, in terms of how are how are distributed p. V. Systems paid for electricity back to the grid, how are things like Distribution System costs shared, et cetera, et cetera. Well, you know, it was only a few years ago when nobody cared. But the message is, in all of these and i have two more to go through you know, the future may not be always 10 yea