Gabriel Gordon-Harper

Gabriel Gordon Harper  00:00

So I took a really interesting training from an organization called the clean energy buyers Association. It’s a fantastic organization that connects renewable providers with consumers, and they told me something that really surprised me, which was one of the main motivators for corporates, for large companies, to procure renewable energy, especially the data center companies, the big tech companies, is actually employee recruitment and retention. Something that I think a lot of folks listening to this podcast know, either from surveys or from their own experience, is that especially millennials and Gen Z are very motivated by working for companies where they feel like they’re making a difference. 

Bo Peter  00:50

Welcome everyone to marketing for what matters. I’m your co-host, Bo Laanen, and today we have an exciting conversation with Gabriel Gordon-Harper, or as I know him, my friend Gabe. Gabe is a senior originator at AVANGRID, one of the leading energy companies focused on renewable energy and sustainable practices in the United States. In his role, Gabe manages customer relationships, markets renewable energy projects, and negotiates long term power purchase agreements, particularly in the western United States. In our episode today, Gabe and I dive into his professional journey, the evolving trends in the renewable energy market and the citing challenges his team faces and the ever growing demand for clean energy solutions. With him, Gabe brings a wealth of knowledge from his work with large data centers, utilities and corporations, and I’ll share key insights into how sustainability is reshaping the way companies operate. Plus, we’ll wrap up by giving Gabe the opportunity to plant trees in a region of his choice, thanks to our partnership with one tree planted. So without further ado, let’s jump into this fascinating conversation with Gabriel Gordon Harper. Enjoy. All right. Welcome everybody to marketing for what matters. Today I have Gabriel Gordon Harper, or Gabe. He is currently the senior originator at AVANGRID, a leading energy company focused on renewable energy and sustainable practices. Gabe’s role involves managing customer relationships, marketing renewable energy projects and negotiating long term power purchase agreements, particularly in the western United States. So Gabe and I know each other through our graduate degree program, and we also went to the same undergrad program. So it is certainly my pleasure to welcome you to the show. Gabe, thanks for being here. 

Gabriel Gordon Harper  02:34

Glad to be here. It’s good to see you again, though, 

Bo Peter  02:37

Likewise, likewise. Well, great. You know, I think it’s always lovely to get perspective on our guests in terms of why they are in the place that they are today, why they focus on sustainability or an environment in some way. So with that in mind, what inspired you, Gabe, to have this passion for clean energy and climate change solutions? 

Gabriel Gordon Harper  02:58

Sure, so I’m from the Central Coast California, a region that experiences drought and a lot of water, typically depending on the year. But there were a few years, back in the 20 teens, that the drought became particularly bad in multiple years, no rain, a lot of fire, and it was pretty sad watching my hometown go from somewhat green to dust and smokey. I think a lot of folks who experience wildfire know that kind of apocalyptic summer that you can have with the ash raining down. It’s hard, but it’s your hometown. So that was clearly a sign of climate change. It was something that climate scientists have been saying will happen in California, especially in the Central Coast, and at that point, I decided I wanted to do something about it. I was in my early 20s, so decided to go to grad school study energy and environmental international affairs and marketing management in that space, and came out of it with a opportunity to join a renewables developer, and ever since, I’ve been very happy developing and marketing power from solar and wind and battery power plants.

Bo Peter  04:12

Now, like you just said, solar, wind, battery power plants, you’ve I know that your history has been at a couple different places, which, of course, is great for your ability to get wide perspectives on the industry, but can you share the journey that led to your current role out of ongrid now?

Gabriel Gordon Harper  04:27

Yeah, sure. So you know, coming from that beautiful surfing hometown of mine, I went to grad school where I met you. We were in the same undergrad program, though I don’t remember if we did meet there. Then I probably no, we didn’t cross paths. But Berkeley was fun too. But yeah, met at Johns Hopkins size. I was actually studying in hopes of becoming a climate negotiator with the State Department. The Paris Agreement had the Paris Accords have just been signed december 2016 which is when i. Was applying to school. But there was a shift in government. Some of us might remember 2016 in the federal government the United States a big election that occurred. The new president said he was going to pull out of the Paris Accords, and I needed to find something new to do. There was a hiring freeze in the federal government, and luckily, our program was also focused on electricity markets and and the the energy transition from fossil to renewables. So I focused on on that. Got a chance to work a little with the Environmental Defense Fund. Actually focused on international aviation emissions. Also did some work in energy efficiency with ICF in New York City, but ultimately found home at a at a solar and wind developer in Virginia. Did a few years there using some skills that I gained before grad school and sales, selling data center equipment to go into their marketing and sales type role. We call it origination in the field, and then from there, moved over to AVANGRID, where I am today, doing similar work, although I did have a brief stopover where the origination team loaned me out, actually at both companies, onto the project development team. I actually got to see how these projects are are built. So it was a little windy, but did, ultimately, did ultimately get here. There’s also a hostel that I owed in Morocco once upon a time when I was in my 20s, but that’s a different story, and I don’t know how much that led me to doing what I wanted you today.

Bo Peter  06:35

I’m sure in one way or another, it shapes your perspective, right? And when it comes to the long and windy road, it takes its twists and turns. I know, for me as well, I did not think that one day coming out of that grad program that I’d be running or CO hosting a podcast on sustainability and marketing, but hey, here we are. And you know, I wouldn’t change the journey at all. Sometimes it wasn’t as easy as I’d like it to be, but hey, that’s what it is, right? Absolutely. Yeah, awesome. Well, I know that a lot of people want to get into this field, and that there’s a lot of interest in working with in sustainability. And so with that in mind, you know, I’m super curious. You’re a senior originator. What is a typical day for you look like? I think you got into it a little bit already. Marketing, sales, project, development, what are your main responsibilities, typically, and how should we understand your role?

Gabriel Gordon Harper  07:30

Sure, I think the easy way to think about my role is to divide it into three parts. One is, I’m talking to customers and potential customers. Call those off takers in our fields. And those are large utilities. Those are large corporations who are buying renewable energy. The largest category of that being the big data center tech companies that we all know from our phones, but also other corporates as well. The third category being municipal utilities. Some of us pay our bills directly to our city government, and they also procure energy on our behalf. So that’s number. One is speaking with them, understanding what their needs are, and sharing our projects and our interests in future developments. Two is bringing what I learned from my conversations externally, back internal, speaking with our project developers, speaking with our strategic folks, both about what the customer is saying they want and their responses to our projects, as well as generally my understandings the markets and prices of changes and trends and policy and then third And the part that that gets most exciting is if I’m successful at speaking with the customer, and the customer becomes interested in in a project, then I’m negotiating what we call a power purchase agreement, PPA, and that’s a long term, usually 15 to 20 years contract for The customer to to purchase from us renewable energy, wind, solar, battery, and for us to build a project and maintain it on their behalf. And those negotiations, those are some hefty contracts worth, usually a few 100 millions of dollars. So those can take some time, some effort.

Bo Peter  09:19

Well, I’m glad that’s one of the most exciting parts of your role there. It sounds exciting, for sure, especially with contracts at that size. And I think we’ll get into a little bit later, some of the challenges that I’ll get into that come with that. And I’m really excited to actually maybe let’s just get started with that. What are some of the most challenging aspects of your work, and if it’s around the power purchase agreements, let’s hear about that as well,

Gabriel Gordon Harper  09:44

sure. So a few different challenges, really, when you think about, you know, when you’re developing, and this is probably the same in all infrastructure development, though, I’ve only really developed power plant infrastructure, but you have so many cats to hurt, right? You have getting on. To the grid interconnection. You have, permitting. You have site control, getting access to land. You have, ensuring that you’re aligned with the customer’s needs. You have, procuring the equipment. You have, signing the contract. You have all these different factors that need to align time wise and cost wise. You’re making predictions as to what those costs are going to be as they’re coming out, aligning all that is quite challenging, and can often we have a joke that every project tries to die five times, usually at least once on the finish line. And it’s true, every project does, but it’s the job of the well, really, everyone and team to find the creativity and the grit to keep the project alive during those five nine. We’ll call it nine cat deaths, right, that these projects have. And I remember when I first started in this film, the development field, friend who sat next to me over beers asked me, you know, do you think that we’re just cogs in the wheel here? Are we actually climate additional? Are we creating a difference individually? And I wasn’t sure what the answer was at the time, but after years of seeing a project developer come up pull a solution out of a hat to save a piece of land that’s fallen out of out of out of control, right? Or, or a customer who comes up with a creative solution to an impasse that we’re having over a contract, or, or an interconnection engineer who is able to connect and change the conversation and with the with the utility to to creatively come up with a way to ensure that this project can get to its its interconnection agreement on time. I really think that it is but for the grit and the the dedication and the creativity and the desire of the different individuals doing this work that the energy transitions happen

Bo Peter  12:03

so many moving parts, and I’m glad that you don’t feel just like another cog in the machine there, because there’s, there’s, personally, I don’t find any worse feeling than that. But yeah, I know when we’ve talked one on one before, and you know, we could talk about this as far as as is reasonable here you’ve talked about, you know, I know a lot of people listening to this show are always thinking about the ethical considerations that come with this kind of work, with any sustainability work, because there’s always challenges here. Now I know that you and I have talked about this before, that there’s certainly ethical, ethical considerations when it comes to making some of these agreements come come alive, essentially, and as far as you’re able to, can you talk to me a little bit about some of those challenges and and how you either come up with solutions or are unable To just because they do become too challenging?

Gabriel Gordon Harper  13:01

Sure? Yeah, there’s a few different places where ethics and sustainability and so far as renewable energy, I think, collide and solutions need to be found, and we work towards solutions right? One is we’re developers at the end of the day. And I think all of us have an experience where a developer, whether it was for renewable energy power plant or, you know, housing development or something wanted to change the land in their community and and that can oftentimes create discord, and a community can create opposition. And similarly, and that leads to challenges, of course, in the in the permitting sphere, I think in those kinds of situations. But I’ve seen the two companies that I’ve worked for and some of our competitors who have or have not done what I’m about to say is coming into the community early, being as transparent as you can be, and opening a line of communication that is that is clear and often right, can oftentimes work to to the extent possible, alleviate some of those concerns with the opposition, because ultimately, while certain aspects of the community may be being changed by adding wind turbines or board or solar modules at the end of the day, there are solutions that can be had if you Understand what the community’s concerns are. If it’s a concern about about the view shed, it’s not so difficult to plan a large burn right of trees or bushes or what have you. Community can’t see the solar farm that they don’t want to have to see a sea of glass versus an open field, right? But now they can see the trees which, which can resolve some that there’s other solutions like that. I think that’s number one. Number two is, is endangered species. There is not a huge it is actually, I think, to the industry’s credit, that there is not a huge number of raptors that have been in. And taken killed by wind turbines. The reason for that, because it could occur right Raptors usually take wind paths in their migration, etc, is both good regulation, I think that is incentivizing for the industry to to to build in the right places, in the right ways, but also dedicated biological or wildlife biologists and permitters, who I’ve certainly seen at my last two companies, and a lot of our competitors, not all, but many who are, it’s what they come from, is the wildlife biologist. So now that they’re working on getting a project permanent. They’ll be very honest with us about a project that shouldn’t be built because it’s going to be in the path of a migratory species or cause significant damage to a habitat. And I’ve seen those conversations take place, and the company takes them very seriously, because at the end of the day, the product was selling its sustainability, and it’s very hard to that reputational risk and also that ethical risk in a company with with the culture of sustainability is very real that you don’t want to have those kinds of negative impacts. I’d say the third challenge in that regard, one of three of some, is, is supply chain. I think, you know, we live in a globalized society, a lot of products are imported. You can’t get away from that. That’s, I think, okay, there’s nothing that I’m looking at at my desk right now that is likely not, that is likely completely built in the United States. And the supply chain goes upstream many levels, and there have been times in this industry, as in many where we found that at some very high level of of that supply chain, there were ethical concerns around labor practices and that sort of thing. And I’ve seen certainly that that occurred a few years ago for the industry, while I was here at AVANGRID, and I saw avogad Take some very significant measures to pay actually more, in some cases, to ensure that those those upstream concerns were alleviated so we weren’t supporting bad labor practices. And ultimately, I also saw that the off take community, the customer, community responded similarly and have very strict terms in their contracts to avoid forced labor, for example, in their supply chain. And we were very happy to be able to comply with that, because we’d taken a an early approach to that. And I think a lot of a lot of my friends in the industry that I know from other companies had done the same, because that’s important again, in sustainability, sustainability is social as well as environmental.

Bo Peter  17:48

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I really like first of all, thank you for giving such a comprehensive answer, because it really is useful for our listeners as well to get an idea of just all of the different ways that you have to think about issues like this. You don’t, can’t just set up, you know, like you said, a solar farm or wind farm and call it a day. You know, there’s a lot of, obviously, a lot that goes into it, like you described, the planning aspect, but also the community aspect, supply chain issues and all these other aspects of it. So, yeah, no, it’s really great to get a more comprehensive understanding there. And

Gabriel Gordon Harper  18:25

I think there’s an issue that if you’re not open and honest with yourself about, then you don’t address correctly. And I think it there’s some there’s myriad of ways to address those kinds of concerns correctly and or to the extent possible, but only if you, if you as a company, if you as an individual, are are being transparent with yourself, with what can occur,

Bo Peter  18:57

right and how it’s it sounds like With all of these agreements, there’s no cookie cutter approach, and you’re really continuing to learn as you go and looking for novel solutions in each of these unique situations. Yes, is that right?

Gabriel Gordon Harper  19:10

100% Yeah. I think I the cookie cutter certainly does not fly well in the in the renewable energy development space,

Bo Peter  19:22

yeah. I mean, that makes a ton of sense. I mean, a lot of what we have set out to do with this podcast is to just learn about this industry as well, because we would like to work with more folks in this industry, and it’s very broad. There’s a lot of different ways to look at the environment and sustainability, and this just goes. Goes to show how broad it can be and all the multifaceted ways. And likely, in your case, as well, there’s a big element of storytelling and how you present what you’re doing, and as well, just being transparent about it, because there’s, I think no one wants to get caught red handed here with anything. And. Of course, we already have huge problems with greenwashing and whatnot. That doesn’t really apply here, I don’t think, but still, there’s just an issue of transparency in these situations.

Gabriel Gordon Harper  20:10

Absolutely no, I totally agree. And I think, you know, it’s, it’s something that I think the industry can be very proud of, is that the the the impact on the environment has been as minimized as it could have been because of, I think again, the individuals working the culture inside, and the transparency and the good relationship that we have with federal regulators and with local regulators and and our ability to comply and interest in complying. I speak with our Chief Compliance Officer, actually in our own contracting processes multiple times. In a contracting process out, you know, I know his first name. We we connect frequently, and usually when you’re speaking with the Chief Compliance Officer, what you’re talking about is ensuring that you’re doing something ethically.

Bo Peter  21:05

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So you’ve been in this, the renewable energy market for quite some time. At this point, how has the market for renewable energy evolved since your time, both out of ongrid and within the industry?

Gabriel Gordon Harper  21:21

Yeah, so we’ve seen some significant changes, I think, in the past six to eight years, in the mid teens, in the late 20 teens, the industry was still relatively kind of mid mature, right? This is only a 20 year old or so in an industry. So when you go back six to eight years, you’re kind of going back almost half of its or a third of its life, right? It was a period where the costs curve was still coming down very significantly. I think Bo you and I actually took a class in grad school about the learning curve for new technologies and how PV photovoltaic modules, right, solar panels were significantly dropping at cost and win before that, because we were still learning how to make it more efficient, and that’s still occurring, but at a much slower clip now. So the rapid decline in price, which was also aided by the fact in that time the teens that we had low interest rates in the United States, that labor cost was relatively low, that product was relatively our equipment was relatively available in the market. That has changed significantly. What prices I’m seeing are starting to climb very fast, and that’s due to a number of different factors today. One of that is COVID. We had the same challenges that I think folks across the across industries had with a pinched supply chain challenges finding products. We also, in addition to that, though, have some unique challenges in our industry, where the the process to get studied, to come on to the grid has become very congested because so many renewable projects want to come onto the grid, and that process was really built to handle a small number of large projects, typically fossil right? So that’s made it much more difficult to come online and permanent has become increasingly challenging as and that in particular, has has has challenged the ability to build out more transmission lines, which is, of course, necessary to build more projects where the wind is blowing or the sun is shining, which isn’t necessarily where the people are living and using the power. So that combination has led prices to increase and fewer projects to be able to get built. However, the projects that are built, I’m finding now because of the challenges that have been occurring, typically are built at a more mature with contracts are signed at a more mature phase, which leads to more assurance that project can make it across the finish line. In that context, though, we have the inflation Reduction Act, which came about a couple of years ago, the largest climate investment the United States has ever made, that has had significant positive impact on the industry, giving us a lot more security, a lot more certainty about incentives and tax credits and that sort of thing. And it opened up, especially in the context of it becoming more difficult to build new projects, it opened up a whole new type of project, which is the wind repower of being think of it as a refurbishment. If you’re taking the engine out of an old chassis of a car and putting in a better engine. That gets you more efficiency. You can get more wind at the same power plant, more energy at the same wind, essentially, and with the ability now to get tax credits from the inflation Reduction Act for wind repowers, we found that NAT has opened up new doors for being able to bring up. Projects online at this time that’s difficult to build new ones to support an ever increasing demand from companies and utilities that more and more recognizing the threat of climate change, the reputational threat of not having done better renewable energy procurement and having their 2025, and 2030, renewable energy targets coming give

Bo Peter  25:23

Wow, that is quite a plethora of changes in just such a short time. And very interesting to hear how, yeah, that demand is going up. But in fact, the supply is becoming more challenging. And one of the things you mentioned that like more transmission lines in place is somewhat of a solution, or, I mean, I guess it’s the solution. But what else is being done to get more of these types of projects online? Are there any solutions, and does it? Are those solutions in the inflation Reduction Act or other such legislation?

Gabriel Gordon Harper  26:00

So I’m generally, generally quite optimistic. I think for the industry, there’s so much where there’s demand, usually there’s the ability to supply, right? It just sometimes one follows the other, and we’re in one of those periods. I think the inflation Reduction Act, what it’s done, more than anything from the industry, is given cost certainty around what our tax incentives would, what are the government incentives are going to look like long term. We have about 10 years give or take of of now tax incentive that we know will come, that we can predict, whereas before, it was usually rolling on a three year basis, and you never knew if it was going to be renewed. So that’s a significant boon to our ability to build projects. I think. Secondly, the rise of the merchant transmission line, the private transmission line being built from a place where there is high wind or solar resource, a place like New Mexico or Wyoming to a place where there’s high demand, like from New Mexico to California, via Arizona, Wyoming to the Pacific Northwest cities. Having those private companies come in and do a lot of that investment has, I think, really opened new doors, and they’re also gaining access to grants from the Department of Energy Loan Programs Office, for example, which is an excellent, excellent program for building on new technologies. I think new technologies is also something really exciting. We’re seeing advancements in battery storage, which is super important to being able to manage the grid. Have the sunshine at night, insofar as energy is concerned. And then, you know, seeing conversations on both the Democrat and the Republican sides of the aisle around permit reform that can still support the crucial, you know, National Environmental Protection Act, protections of the environment, but also ensure that permitting proceeds at a pace that is supportive of industry, of the private sector, which is needs to have a clear path to resolution so that it can make A go no go decision if those kinds of laws were, that kind of law were to be able to take effect, I think that would have a significant positive impact, also on our ability to continue and supersize the energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables. Well,

Bo Peter  28:37

based on everything that you were telling me I can only root for such such changes to the permitting process, because I certainly know that energy demands are only going up and up and up and of course, a consumer demand as well as we’ll talk about a little bit demand from companies who are using all that energy, internal demand to go to more renewable energy sources. So, yeah, I go off what you’re saying. This sounds like a good plan. I mean, you’ve mentioned earlier that supply chain issues has been a big challenge there. How has that specifically affected the renewable energy market?

Gabriel Gordon Harper  29:18

Definitely. So I think one area that’s been particularly impactful is on the tariffs around importation. And I know we’re talking about sustainability here, so I’ll pull it back in. But traditionally, renewable energy is, you know, a lot of the equipment comes from abroad. A lot of manufacturing equipment, generally, the last 2030, years was imported right, part of the inflation Reduction Act, part of the goal of that, of that law, and of the current administration, and of the previous administration as well both Biden and Trump. It looks like potentially Trump or Harris next is to domestic to bring home. Manufacturing right to onshore in the United States, domestic manufacturing. And I am speaking from a US centric position, but all my work is US based, so I will, but which, of course, would have far fewer emissions related to the transport of goods across the ocean, sometimes multiple times, right? And has huge benefits, I think, also from a social perspective, because it’s easier to control upstream labor concerns, etc, when the mine for for silicon, for example, is in the United States, rather than, you know, in a province of a country far, far away, multiple levels up on the supply chain that caused a lot of the implementation of that onshoring process, though, of the manufacturing of solar panels and the products that go into them, wind turbines and the products that get blades and the products that go into them, batteries and products that go into them, both for EB, for electric vehicles and for for commercial scale batteries, has been rocky. I’d say, you know, you have a carrot and a stick, as you and I both know from our our trade class that we took together, right? But you have tariffs, then you have subsidies to break things on shore, and you want to be careful that you don’t punish the industry with your tariff before you’re able to your carrot takes effect and you’ve on shored. So we see some significant opportunities. There’s significant benefits in terms of the incentives and the inflation Reduction Act for using domestic US manufactured product, but that domestic US manufactured product is still getting built out. We’re still a few years sometimes out from being able to procure domestically manufactured project products, but some of the tariffs associated with importing have already taken effect, and unfortunately, that’s pushing up prices of energy, not just in the renewable space, but generally, I think, for consumers, the lack of balance there. But I think in the coming years, once those domestically manufactured products are off the ground, are able to churn out product as fast as as the International factories were, we’re going to see huge benefits, I think, from a sustainability perspective, in particular, because of that lack of emissions associated with transporting materials, as well as that social perspective that I that I previously talked about, and that’s something I think The industry is very excited about, but in the meantime, has really struggled with the with the timing of the lack of balance between the the carrot and stick.

Bo Peter  32:48

Now I really appreciate that, that lesson that you’ve provided us now on international trade, I’m going to resist the urge from diving in deep there for a broader discussion, but I’ll just say that we’ll certainly have to keep an eye on how this develops and what the eventual effect is. I’m sure that that the industry, as well as the US consumer, is certainly going to want to see a reduction in pricing, especially as we’ve talked about already. Demand is going to keep going up, and it’s a big question around of course, will supply be able to keep up? And will we be able to do in a sustainable manner, not just profit, you know, sustainability, but also in lots of other ways,

Gabriel Gordon Harper  33:29

absolutely so like so, let’s

Bo Peter  33:32

shift gears a little bit. So when we’ve discussed one on one before, one of the things that really stuck out to me is you talked about the different motivations for various customer segments and in their motivation to buy and purchase renewable energy and make sure that that’s something that they have consistent access to. And you talked a little bit about reputational risk, you talked a little bit about employee recruitment, and I’d love to invite you now to talk a little bit more about that and and why that’s so important for especially the big tech companies and any other other industries you’d like to mention definitely.

Gabriel Gordon Harper  34:10

So I took a really interesting training from an organization called the clean energy buyers Association. It’s a fantastic organization that connects renewable providers like us, with consumers, usually corporates, large companies that want to buy renewable energy. And a lot of folks in my, in my, in my position as originators and buyers on the other side will take this boot camp that they offer start. And I did, and they told me something that really surprised me, which was one of the main drivers, one of the main motivators for for corporates, for large companies, to procure renewable energy, especially the data center companies, the big tech companies, is actually employee recruitment and the reason and retention. Question, and the reason for that is because you have these they told us is that you have these companies that are making a lot of money, right? You have these highly specialized fields that they need employees to fill, but the talent is highly mobile, so they need to find ways beyond just high pay to recruit and retain this talent who can walk away with the knowledge, the intellectual property of what they’ve built for the first company, right? And something that I think a lot of folks listening to podcasts know, either from surveys or from their own experience, is that especially millennials and Gen Z in large part of its computer programmers are very motivated by and survey after survey, very motivated by working for companies where they feel like they’re making a difference. It’s certainly why I’m in the field I’m in, and most of my colleagues are but also a lot of my friends who have nothing to do with sustainability feels similar, and I know that the survey said the same thing. So to be able to tell their employees and the world we are a 100% sustainably powered company is a very important factor for these companies in terms of retention and recruitment, according to the training I took at, it’s called SEPA in energy buyers Association. Now there are other significant motivators as well. One is the PR benefits. Of course, how many times have you picked a cereal up at the grocery store and you see a little note on the bottom saying, This is made from 100% recycled cardboard, right? And that the you know, oats in this packaging were processed using wind power mills. What have you. It makes you feel good, right? You don’t want to be contributing to climate change, which is a problem that most of us are now witnessing in our daily lives. And companies understand that I want to promote that they are able to be sustainable, so they buy renewable energy, renewable energy credits. I think third is, of course, reputational risk. There is a lot of emissions associated with energy if you’re not using renewable energy, and we all know that carbon emissions, methane emissions, lead to climate change, and we all are now, like I said, seeing climate change, and no company wants to be either on the wrong side of a reputational hit from that perspective, or a large regulatory change around that perspective. And then I’d say fourth, you know, we’ve been talking about the rising prices of energy, the rising cost of renewable energy, which is true in the short term and in the context only of renewable energy. But if you compare renewables to fossils, to coal in particular, but also in many cases, gas renewables is still the cheapest option, and they’re the cheapest option because you don’t have to pay for the fuel the wind and the solar comes from nature, and that’s your energy source. So these are still low cost ways that a company can ensure that it’s being sustainable and doing the right thing. And I think that those four reasons right that I mentioned, you’ve got employee recruitment and retention as a subcategory of great PR messaging, avoiding regulatory and reputational risk, and then the fact that this is actually relative to other energy sources, still the cheapest energy option on the market, solar, wind, is what’s driving companies to to procure from us, from us the the industry,

Bo Peter  38:40

absolutely. Well, yeah, thank you again for that comprehensive answer. I again, I’m just going to say it is that I find this immensely interesting to find out about reputational risk. Sure, that makes a lot of sense. The employee recruitment factor, now that you’ve told me about it, that makes a lot of sense as well. Like you said, we want to work for companies that are aligned with our values and the the threats that we see in the world, even if they’re existential. Climate change is a very big threat, and like you said, we are seeing these things in our daily lives. I live in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, it’s very clear here that things have been changing. It’s it’s not getting necessarily a lot warmer, but surely a lot wetter, as the the whole cycle and the pattern of the season says is changing, and we’re already a very wet country as it is the same over there in Portland,

Gabriel Gordon Harper  39:30

the problem for us, but saying, yeah, the western United States getting drier. Portland requires a lot of rain. It’s, I think we all know, to keep its ecosystem afloat. Everyone’s heard of the rainy Northwest, and now we have a full dry summer out through 10, July 4 Memorial Day. It’s beautiful weather, sometimes too hot, which is great for going outside, but not good for the ecosystem. Not good for the hydroelectric dams that keep our energy cheap here in Oregon and leads to a lot more fires and all of that is terrible for. Uh, not just for comfort people. We’ve got a lot of heat deaths recently in this world where we have air conditioning, but also it’s not good for the planet. It’s not good for the species that live here and the ecosystem services that keep society running the way it’s supposed to be running.

Bo Peter  40:17

Yeah, absolutely. And yeah. Well, again, I know from a lot of the things that we studied over the last years, but things that we studied at university together is that these problems go much further than just what we’re experiencing in terms of fires, but also in terms of international migration patterns or etc, and just a whole plethora of issues that I feel for most people are not being considered when, when these things come up, it’s like, oh, yeah, sure, the climate’s getting warmer, but the threats here are much more challenging and much graver than than just that absolutely. Um, now to just move us along before we dive into a deep hole of of you know, despair, I’ll cut this part out. So yeah, thank you for again, just really giving us some comprehensive answers and perspectives here. I know that we, with this podcast, are really just trying to inspire people to find ways to get into industries like this, whether it’s marketing or sales or origination. So with that in mind, I’m just really curious, from your perspective, what advice would you give to an aspiring professional or student looking to enter the renewable energy sector, and just what would you say, to motivate them to consider it or to really go for it,

Gabriel Gordon Harper  41:43

sure. So there’s motivation, and there’s how to get in right motivation. I think you know, what world could you work in? What the part, what sector could you work in where you can make a difference, fighting the energy transition, revolution on the ground, putting the steel in the ground to to clean up our grid, while also having the job security of knowing that you’re working in a world where the the demand is high and and, and you’re going to be able to continue building this product, and you Get to work with people who both share your mission and your passion and are really interesting, smart people. I don’t go a day without learning something new. It used to be, I think it I’ve learned as much in a year here as I did taking full time classes as a student in schools. It’s actually pretty amazing. But then how do you get in when you when you if you decide this is a career that you want to pursue, which we hope a lot of people do, because there aren’t many folks in the renewable space. So we need more good folks. And I think the answer for that is people in this industry want more good people in the industry, and they’re passionate and excited and motivated by the industry. So if you find somebody on LinkedIn that you think is is interesting, that you’d like to talk to, most people I know are always willing to to speak with, to speak with people give them informational interviews. I know, when I was trying to get in, people were very, very, very, very selfless for their time in that regard. So I think that and then finding some good energy podcasts or good energy specific news media, the industry is changing so fast, so rapidly. It’s again, only 20 years old that we mostly get our updates from podcasts and news media does not really good textbook that will tell you how things are today. I changed too much since it got published last year, so find that to get hit to it, and then you could do, what, what, what Bo and I did, and go spend a lot of money on a good grad program where there’s also young professionals, programs to do transition to the field as well. So a lot of ways in and a lot of reason to be here, I think

Bo Peter  44:07

so you just talked a moment ago about podcasts. We’re on a podcast, and if people want to be in a renewable energy sector, let’s give these podcasts a shout and give them the opportunity to to learn more about this the sector. So which ones do you recommend?

Gabriel Gordon Harper  44:22

Yeah, sure. So I listen frequently to a podcast called the Energy gang. Well, does that say there’s about five that I’ll cycle through this the energy gang, the carbon copy, the Columbia energy exchange Catalyst, and then current by Norton Rose Bowl, right? And I’d also say there’s a couple of news media, online media channels that I’m following. One is called utility guide about the the energy sector, and the other is Canary news media, which is specifically focused on renewables. I don’t know. Listen to all that all the time, but also scroll through. Look for the one that’s interesting this week. Listen to that one. And then oftentimes, Politico energy podcast with political nerds like me, gives a nice six minute intro to the day. If you’ve got a short commute or want to occupy a few minutes while you’re getting ready to work. So that’s oftentimes what I listen to, to stay hip,

Bo Peter  45:22

to stay hip, and informed, that’s certainly some things I’m going to have to check out as well. So you mentioned the young professional programs for people to get into the renewable energy sector. Tell us a little bit more about those, so we can make sure to link them in the show notes and give opportunity for people to find it Sure.

Gabriel Gordon Harper  45:39

So one great program that I didn’t do, but a lot of my peers did, and friends in the industry, is called the clean energy Leadership Institute CLY. It’s an wonderful organization that you can do while you’re working on something else. It’s once a week. These call it classes, these sessions that they offer. They have some in different you have one in a few different cities, and then a few virtual sessions as well to learn about the energy transition, and then also to help network you and prepare you to to be competitive and in the space and be able to connect right people. So I think that’s a fabulous organization. If I saw someone, I’m actually the been managing interns for our team and new recruits, and would definitely want to interview someone who done that program. And then my company, and a lot of other companies I know in this space, do these interesting rotational analyst programs for folks who are coming directly from undergrad or grad school or just a couple years into their career, where you come in, you do a few different terms of service, right in different departments you get to rotate through, you learn a lot about the industry and about the company, and then you come back say to one of those departments to that Begin your career a year or two years into into your time with the company. And I think it’s a fabulous program that we have. Ours is called the Global grad program at avangri, the grad graduate program at AVANGRID. And I know that other other companies have very similar programs,

Bo Peter  47:17

amazing. All right, so I’m going to give you one last question before we move on to the tree planting section of the episode parts, which is, you talked a lot about, you know, there’s a lot of excitement coming up in the coming years. There’s a lot of innovations coming up. Where do you see the renewable energy market evolving? What are some of those exciting innovations that you have in mind coming up in like, the next five to 10

Gabriel Gordon Harper  47:44

years, sure, so so much I think good is coming in the next in the sequel to this chapter of renewable energy, I Think first new technologies to help us achieve a more 24/7 we’ll call it local energy, right? If you have a battery, I think I mentioned this a bit earlier, that can move your solar production from sunny times to the night time. We already see that technology is also already commercial. Of course, California, especially, and Texas are are implementing batteries across their grids to ensure that that shoulder hour when the sun is setting and solar is turning off, that both those grids have a lot of solar on the grids. You don’t see this as as painful of a drop off of of of generation at the same time as everyone’s coming home and turning on the dishwashers and the logic machines and the lights, right? But seeing that those batteries a become cheaper and B expand in the technologies to get longer duration. Right now the standard is four hours, but there’s new technologies that can get us to eight to 10 to 12, maybe even seasonal. Will be a huge boom, I think, for the industry. Second, and this is old technology, but more and more transmission lines connecting different parts of the country to leverage on and the world, depending on where you are to leverage. The fact that the sun shines at different times in different places, the wind blows at different times in different places, and you can use that energy created in those different places. If you have good transmission, you can use that energy in other parts of the world, of the country, right? We see that here in the United States, if you can get good transmission from New Mexico, which we’re building now, to California tonight. Time wind can supply California’s nighttime energy needs when they’re when their solar power goes away. And they’re mainly a solar, solar focused industry. So I think that that’s mainly a solar focused grid. So that’s really exciting. I think the build out of. Transmission. And then I think thirdly, the increasing creativity of the customer, especially the big data center companies, they’re really always trying it seems to push the bounds of what is, what does it mean to be 100% renewable always trying to make it more authentic in a way, more centered on on, on the work, on the on the load that they actually have, the demand they actually have to the extent that the technology allows it. So this, you know, pushing the balance of what 24/7 renewable energy really means to the extent that that that there’s wind and solar and other technologies that can support that. We see that from a lot of the big data center customers that we have, and also, in the same vein, we see them pushing the balance of the connection between social and sustainability, asking for ensuring that the projects that they’re that they’re supporting have a strong relationship to the communities that they’re based in, stuff that my company is really excited about and working on with with those customers, and I think some others are as well. And that’s finally the new good people coming in to the industry. I get to see a lot of those new people coming in because of my work with interns and with global grads, with those rotational analysts in our in our space, they’re so creative, they’re so motivated, and they had a level of education that wasn’t accessible in this field to us when we were in school, even because of how much more mature industry is now. And I think that that additional motivation that we’re seeing both on the buyer side as well as the seller side. It’s really making me very optimistic about the future of this space.

Bo Peter  51:49

Amazing. Well, that’s a lot of exciting innovations coming up again, both for you as someone working in the industry, but also for what it means for being able to supply more of the energy demands that the United States, as well as the world, faces and and making them more renewable and less emission based. So we are running at the end of time. So I’m going to jump right into this. Gabe, as you know, we like to do at at peaceful media and with marketing for what matters the opportunity to thank you for your time here with us today by planting some trees. And I know that you said that you have already taken a moment to think about where you would like your trees to be planted, which is Oregon, makes a ton of sense. But tell us a little bit more about about this choice and why it matters to you,

Gabriel Gordon Harper  52:40

sure. So I’d say, first of all, I love that you’re doing tree planting. And the reason I love it is because the the path I did not go down in in the climate space was nature based solutions, you know, the planting of trees and and other supporting or paths to support ecosystems that that provide services back to society and also preventing or mitigating impacts of climate change is so important, I think, especially because we’re still trying to figure out how To create a true market to utilize to leverage capitalism, frankly, to support the support of biodiversity and nature based solutions. So I love that we’re doing this. I chose Oregon because it’s home. AVANGRID is based here. I’m based here in Portland. We are a tree based ecosystem here, and a lot of those trees, unfortunately, have been cut down to build homes like mine 100 years ago that I’m sitting in today. And why, I really I believe firmly, and I know I’ve spoken a lot about the United States in this podcast, and there’s a lot of world outside of but I believe firmly that sustainability and social change begins out right? It begins in your community and and it begins if you’re truly going to be authentic about what you are doing for sustainability, it should be. It’s best when it’s close to close to what you’re actually doing, what your emissions are, what your activities are, what your daily what where you are. So Oregon home. I’m in it now, and it’s a beautiful place, and we have beautiful trees. I want to have more

Bo Peter  54:34

than excellent Well, I’m very glad that you chose Oregon. It makes a lot of sense, and I’m glad that we could give this gift to you. So let me just go ahead and click that button and I’m going to fill this in after the show. So shoot you will get that gift of trees coming your way. But Gabe, thank you so much for this conversation today. It’s been very fascinating learning about the renewable energy sector, sector. Your work at AVANGRID as well. As the challenges that you’re facing on multiplicity of fronts, very multifaceted. We had a great discussion about how sustainability is more than just one thing, which I think is really important for us here to keep mentioning. And I really appreciate the information that you shared around getting into this industry, and how you’ve seen it change, and how you expect it to change moving forward. So again, thanks so much for being here. It was a pleasure. And any last words about where people can find you or find more information about AVANGRID,

Gabriel Gordon Harper  55:32

I think avangrid.com is a great place to go to learn more about what we’re doing, or just type in avant renewables into Google to make sure that you get a renewables sub page. It’s probably a path I would take there, and then to learn more about me, my LinkedIn page. Gabriel Gordon dash Harper, working at AVANGRID. They’ll see the you’ll even see that Moroccan hostel down there is the first job I hack, which, which, which is kind of fun,

Bo Peter  56:04

awesome. Well, Gabe will make sure to put those links in the show notes as well. Thank you again, so much for your time, and I look forward to catching up again soon.

Gabriel Gordon Harper  56:13

Thanks, Bill. It was great. It was a pleasure. And thanks for the invite. You’re very welcome. Thank you for tuning in to our podcast. Marketing for what matters. You can find us on Apple, Spotify, Google or Pandora. Love the show, leave us a review and follow us on social media, at peaceful media, to stay up to date about new episodes and as always, thank you to this earth for giving us all we ever needed. See you next time