In this episode of Climate Positive, Gil Jenkins speaks with Malcolm Woolf, President and CEO of the National Hydropower Association (NHA). They discuss the current state of the U.S. hydropower industry, its role in providing carbon-free electricity, and the challenges and opportunities facing the sector. A central focus of the conversation is the hydropower relicensing process -- how it works, where projects can stall, and how lengthy reviews can delay investment, upgrades, and in some cases lead facilities to shut down. Malcolm shares real-world examples to illustrate what’s at stake, while also exploring the potential to add generation to non-powered dams, the role of pumped storage in supporting grid reliability, and emerging marine energy technologies.
In this episode of Climate Positive, Gil Jenkins speaks with Malcolm Woolf, President and CEO of the National Hydropower Association (NHA). They discuss the current state of the U.S. hydropower industry, its role in providing carbon-free electricity, and the challenges and opportunities facing the sector. A central focus of the conversation is the hydropower relicensing process -- how it works, where projects can stall, and how lengthy reviews can delay investment, upgrades, and in some cases lead facilities to shut down.
Malcolm shares real-world examples to illustrate what’s at stake, while also exploring the potential to add generation to non-powered dams, the role of pumped storage in supporting grid reliability, and emerging marine energy technologies.
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Chad: I am Chad Reed.
Hilary: I'm Hilary Langer.
Gil: I'm Gil Jenkins.
Guy: I'm Guy Van Syckle.
Chad: And this is Climate Positive.
Gil: Hydropower was among the first technologies used to generate electricity in the U.S., and it remains a meaningful part of today’s power mix.
As electricity demand grows and grid reliability becomes more complex, questions around permitting, relicensing, and future investment in hydropower are becoming increasingly relevant.
Today, I’m joined by Malcolm Woolf, President and CEO of the National Hydropower Association. We talk about the current state of the U.S. hydropower industry, how relicensing works, where projects can stall, and the role hydropower and pumped storage could play in meeting future electricity needs.
Gil: Malcolm, welcome to Climate Positive.
Malcolm: Happy to be here.
Gil: Let's begin with a quick level set. I think most of our listeners know hydropower in a general sense, but could you walk through what the hydropower industry looks like today, the technology, the scale, the role, and just a little bit on your work as head of the National Hydropower Association.
Malcolm: Sure. There was a recent headline with the head of the International Energy Administration calling Hydropower the Forgotten Renewable, the Forgotten Giant of the Clean Energy World. Something along those lines. And I think that really is true here in the US particularly. Shiny new objects get a lot of attention and folks have sometimes forgotten that we've got over a hundred gigawatts of existing carbon free.
Hydropower already on the grid, and it takes a couple different forms. We've got about 80 gigawatts of traditional hydropower that is either reservoir, hydropower, or run of river hydropower, and then another almost 23 gigawatts of pump storage hydropower. Which in and of itself is 90 plus percent of our long duration energy storage.
So the National Hydropower Association, NHA, represents the industry. So we've got the power generators, everyone, including investor owned utilities, public power, half the hydropower fleet is federally owned, so they're all our members. And then the whole supply chain that comes with the, the equipment manufacturers, the construction workers, the millwrights, the lawyers.
So we represent the full array of the industry along with a whole array of really cool new water power technologies, wave energy and title and current, so a whole array of marine energy technologies.
Gil: 140 years we've been generating hydropower in the us right?
Malcolm: That's right.
The first facility went online, I think in 1880 in Appleton, Wisconsin. And what's amazing that one of the very first hydro facilities I visited, they were doing a retrofit and they had this giant shiny. Hydropower turbine up on the assembly floor and I'm looking at the thing and it's like 30 feet high and gleaming and just look beautiful.
And I asked them, oh, you know who built this and when does it get installed? And they said, no, Malcolm. That's the a hundred year old facility. The a hundred year old turbine that we're getting rid of when that was installed, Thomas Edison was actually here for the uh
Gil: Wow. For the groundbreaking?
Malcolm: Groundbreaking, yeah. So it's amazing. These really are forever assets. If you maintain them, they can last forever. They're more like infrastructure, like bridges and roads, and I've toured a number of facilities. I've lost track now that are over a hundred years old and still providing carbon free, reliable power to their communities.
So when we think about a wind array or solar array lasting 15, 20 years, these facilities really do last generations, which is amazing.
Gil: I want to talk about the moment we're in, obviously experiencing explosive load growth change in administration. There are real challenges at this moment. Can you talk a little bit about this potential crunch and the challenge, but also the opportunity presented by relicensing?
Malcolm: I'm happy to, and I like the way you framed it with both challenge and opportunity. The opportunity is tremendous. We know we're in an unprecedented area of low growth, whether it's driven by AI or manufacturing or data centers, or just the fact that we all like streaming Netflix at night. It's a huge new need for generation and I'm so blessed to be part of the hydropower industry 'cause I feel like we are an established, mature industry that really is.
So well situated for what the 21st century grid needs. You know, you can lift a gate, release, water generate power when you need it, whether that's when a gas line has frozen or the wind isn't blowing or it's nighttime. We can create that reliable power when needed. But at the same time, we've got this relicensing challenge.
Unlike every other energy resource, hydropower facilities are regulated under the Federal Power Act from the 1920s, I believe. So it's over a hundred years old. And it requires facilities, 'cause these really are giant infrastructure projects. They get licenses for up to 50 years. Which means that at the end of 50 years, they've gotta get relicensed, which you don't have to do for a bridge or a road.
You don't relicense hydropower facilities in Canada or any other country that I'm aware of. But in the United States, we've got this process and just based on the age of the plants, we've got this wave of relicensing coming up. Now we've got about 40. Percent of the non-federal hydropower fleet up for relicensing in the next decade, and it takes about a decade, about eight years on average for a hydropower facility to get licensed.
Okay? Why? Why does it take that long?
Because we've got no one in charge. No single agency and one of my favorite comparisons is to compare an existing hydropower facility versus a new nuclear facility with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. They've got a process that takes 18 months. I've got facilities.
I've got members who have their existing facilities going through relicensing for over 20 years in Hills Canyon, Idaho, or closer to home. I'm living here in Maryland. The Conowingo facility has been going through relicensing for decades, and it's because you've got the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that regulates the hydropower.
Great many. You've got all the other resource agencies at the federal government. Whether it's the Forest Service, fish and Wildlifes, Marine mammals, fisheries, and then you've got all of the state agencies. The states can often issue the Clean Water Act permits under 4 0 1 of that statute. They're supposed to do it within one year, but they often don't.
And if any agency, if any state group doesn't finish their job, there's nothing FERC can do. FERC just has to wait for them. There's no interagency accountability. So we've been working across the aisle on trying to streamline this process and recognize that water is a shared resource. There is a reason for multiple entities to be involved, but there needs to be some kind of accountability process, discipline if one agency doesn't do its job, some kind of forcing mechanism so these things don't drag on forever.
So what's one thing? The biggest thing, if you could snap your fingers.
If I could snap my fingers and this, I'm hoping we're gonna be able to get this done, frankly, in the next year. 'cause this seems like such low hanging fruit. Other agencies beyond the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission can impose mandatory conditions on a facility when they're going through relicensing.
One of the simple things we want is that those mandatory conditions actually relate to the project's effects. That is so self-evident and intuitive. You would think if you're empowered to impose a mandatory condition on a facility, that the mandatory condition would relate to the facility. What we found is over a hundred years, agencies have figured out that this is their opportunity to circumvent congressional appropriations.
Hey, if we can't get Congress to give us the money for the program, we want, that's required as a mandatory condition of the hydro car facility when they go through relicensing. So we've seen the Forest Service get really sophisticated in saying, Hey, we want this facility when it goes through relicensing to pay for the upkeep of hundreds of miles of roads that don't go to the facility.
It's just a way to stretch their budget, or we want the hydropower facility to pay into a fund that will prevent farmers from using too much fertilizer. So there's not as much runoff in the river. Maybe a worthwhile public policy program, but unrelated to the facility, it's become pretty openly an opportunity to extort and blackmail the hydropower facility.
For unrelated public policy purposes, one of my favorite examples is a facility that was. Forced to build an amphitheater for the Boy Scouts. Wow. Nothing to do with the facility. Great for the Boy Scouts to have an amphitheater, but 50 years ago when hydropower was the only resource that didn't have to pay for their feedstock, the water was free.
We could afford to do that, and now we're in a fiercely competitive landscape. We need to spend millions of dollars upgrading our facilities. We can't afford to pay for. Other public policy goals that are unrelated to the facility. That is something that we're hoping that President Trump may address.
We're encouraging him to issue an executive order, requiring nymphs in the Forest Service and the Corps to do that. And we've also got legislation that we're hoping Congress may move on to do something similar.
Gil: Conowingo, they just got there new 50 year license. Talk about that and if that could be a model for how some of these large relicensing disputes can be resolved.
Malcolm: Yeah, I think it may be a, a good case study of what part of the problem is. So Conowingo, for those of you who are not in the Maryland Mid-Atlantic region, I think it celebrates its hundredth year anniversary as a. Hydropower facility. If it's not in 2026, it's 2027 and it's a pretty big size facility. I think just short of a gigawatt size of generation.
It has provided power reliably for that full 99 year history, and it's going through relicensing. It's on the border between Maryland and I believe Delaware. When you drive up I 95 to New York, you'll go over the bridge. You won't even know that you're on it. You're just going over a bridge. It's another beautiful scenic river as you're going up the Mid-Atlantic.
Turns out that infrastructure is powering homes throughout the region. They have gone through a licensing process that has been in and out of the courts. They keep reaching settlements agreements with one governor or another, and then the court invalidates it on process reasons and they have to start all over and there's a new election.
The real issue for the facility is the sediment that is backed up behind the facility. It reduces the output of the facility because there's so much sediment. They've got less water. At the same time, we have no idea what's in that sediment. There's been an industrial operations up river, and so when you dredge that sediment, who knows what's in it, and therefore the cost of managing that dredge sediment could be huge.
And if there is contamination in the settlement, it has nothing to do with the facility. The Conowingo hydropower facility didn't put any of the contaminants in there. It's contaminants that have run downstream hundreds of miles from other operations. The question is who pays for that and they finally resolved it.
I hope this one survives. They've had other settlements that haven't survived, but it's taken them well over a decade. I wanna say we may be closer to almost two decades. Which means the facility continues to operate during this period, but it operates under a one year license and any investments that the facility has agreed to make, whether they want to add some better fish passage or improve the spillway to improve dam safety.
All of those investments get delayed while this process drags on so great that they finally got their permit. I hope this version lasts, but to me it's a case study of why we need to have a more streamlined process with greater process discipline because we've been delaying needed improvements in that facility and there was a risk that they would just shut down that facility.
There's no requirement that they have to run.
Gil: Yeah,
Malcolm: it provides 10% of the state's generation. Not 10% of its carbon free generation, 10% of its overall generation. And if they were to shut it down, if they were to surrender their license, and 68 facilities have surrendered their license in the last decade, if a facility like Conowingo were to surrender its license, they would turn off the powerhouse.
They would stop generating power. The state would have to figure out a way to get that power elsewhere. But in addition, there's a highway that runs over the facility. Somebody else would then be responsible for maintaining that dam, maintaining that highway. There's significant o and m costs that the hydropower operators manage right now that would suddenly go to somebody else, and we found this problem occurring over and over again.
One example was Manchester, New Hampshire. It had a historic facility up for relicensing. They tried to suggest some really. Onerous environmental upgrades. The facility owner said, it's not worth it. It's too small of a facility. I can't pay millions of dollars for these environmental upgrades. So they turned off the facility, they surrendered their license.
All of a sudden, the city of Manchester, New Hampshire discovered. They've got no one maintaining the dam in their downtown park. All the o and m costs, let alone the tax revenues, et cetera, suddenly fell on them. So there's a lot of non-energy benefits that these hydropower facilities provide that the energy regulators aren't thinking about.
Gil: I read a stat that only 3% of US dams produce power. What are the reasons that are holding back new hydropower?
Malcolm: So glad that you asked that question, and to me, this really goes into the opportunity that we have in this country. Lemme repeat what you said. Only 3% of the nation's dams are powered. So to say that differently, 97% of the nation's 90,000 dams.
Are used for other purposes. They're used for flood control or irrigation or water storage or recreation. If we could add generation to even another 3% of those dams, we would double the output from hydropower. So it's got huge potential. Now, perhaps those non-power dams have less head and smaller size, so maybe, maybe it wouldn't double the generation, but we could significantly increase generation from hydropower, and yet it doesn't seem to be happening.
Which is incredibly frustrating, I would think if you've already got a dam that's serving some other purpose, might as well add generation to it and have it produce carbon free, emission free generation. One of the reasons it isn't happening is that permitting barrier. Not only does it take years to get permitting, but there's a lot of uncertainty in the process.
You spend years, millions of dollars developing the site, not knowing whether you're gonna get your permit, and frankly, with wind and solar, it's just a whole lot easier to build those projects. You can have the up and running within two years, whereas you probably won't even have your permit to begin construction within two years.
That is one real barrier. We did make significant progress this year with the tax credit in the OB three as we're calling it now. The one big beautiful bill originally in the house, they threw out all of the tax credits, so water power, hydropower was thrown out along with solar and wind. We were successful in reminding Congress that hydropower is a core base load resource, and so hydropower, along with nuclear and geothermal, were spared in that bill in the final version. So we've got tax certainty till 2033 that if you make investments in new generation of hydropower. Whether that is new non-powered dams or pump storage, which we should talk about, or even repowering the existing hydropower fleet, if you meet certain criteria.
Treasury just clarified this year that repowering, existing hydropower could make the whole facility new and therefore eligible for the tax credits. So I'm hoping, despite the ongoing licensing barriers, I'm hoping that with these new. Tax incentives for either new generation or to repower existing generation, that we are really gonna see a significant new wave of investment in the hydropower sector.
Yeah. Let's talk about pump storage.
Gil: You referenced that it's already out there. Talk about pump storage in the opportunity ahead, because that's also qualifying for the standalone storage credit.
Malcolm: That's
right. It qualifies for the storage tax credit, which is huge. For those of you not familiar with pump storage, it is such a elegant, simple technology. That's such a wonderful solution for what the grid needs right now. You simply picture two reservoirs. You've got water in the first one. You release the water. Water goes through the turbines, creates power. You do that when you need the generation. When you don't need the generation, when you've got excess generation on the grid, rather than turning off the solar, you can use that excess electricity on the grid to pump the water back up to the first reservoir.
Then release it again later on. So the first wave of pump storage facilities were actually built alongside nuclear power plants. Those nuclear power plants in the sixties couldn't cycle on and off, so ignite when the nuclear plants were producing more power than the grid needed. You would use pump storage to create electricity demand by pumping up when you excess electricity, and then they would release the water later in the day when the grid needed it.
Now that's exactly what we need for the grid to power our data centers. When there's huge demand, you can really use pump storage to meet that gigawatt magnitude of demand. And at other times of the day, I think for your sophisticated audience, folks are probably familiar with the so-called California Duck Curve.
Gil: Oh yeah, flatten the duck, right?
Malcolm: Flatten the duck. I like to say that the duck swims in water because you've got pump storage that's really ramping up when electricity demand ramps up quickly. And then as the solar comes online, you've got the back of the duck and it goes down dramatically. And then at the end of the day, as the sun begins to set, solar fades off the grid.
Suddenly you need more generation. 'cause we're all still running our air conditioners in the summer or watching Netflix at night. And pump storage can serve that role instead of curtailing the solar in California. You could use that time of day to pump up with pump storage
Gil: and just give an example of where are some of these new projects in their development life cycle.
Malcolm: The beauty of pump storage is that these are forever assets they could last forever, but that's also, a manufacturer would probably tell you a fundamental flaw you want planned obsolescence. And the hydro guys didn't think about that. These facilities last forever. So we've not built a new pump storage facility in this country for over 25 years.
So it's been a generation, but the market has clearly seen the need for long duration. We're talking eight plus hours of generation, so we've suddenly got. I believe it is 80 different projects right now are pending in the FERC regulatory queue for if they were all to get built 60 gigawatts of generation.
So if even a fraction of those were to get built, it would be gigawatts of new generation and they're really being proposed around the country. I think there used to be a perception that the resource was tapped out, that the best sites were taken. People have the vision of the Hoover Dam. You know, there's not a Hoover Dam everywhere in the country, but for pump storage, the technology has innovated such that now a lot of the designs are so-called closed loop pump storage, where you've got two reservoirs, both can be manmade, so there's no ecological impact.
'cause you're not taking a river that has fish or other wildlife in it. You can take off river resources and just pump the water between two reservoirs. You could even do it in two storage tanks, but there is some advantages of scale. So from a carbon perspective, the national labs have found that this is the lifecycle, lowest greenhouse gas intensity of any kind of energy storage because there's no mining involved in concrete.
So it's just moving water back and forth. And really the only environmental issue is where do you get the water from in the first place. That initial feed of water and in some parts of the country that's easier than others. So pump storage really is an amazing resource, particularly as folks are talking about grid reliability, challenges with low growth, with winning the AI war against China.
If we need gigawatts of new generation, pump storage can do that. And that's typically what we need. We need generation at certain times of day, which is why batteries are a great resource. 'cause you can turn 'em on when you need them, but they typically only last a few hours. Two to four hours. Hydropower pump storage can often last eight hours, 10 hours.
So it's a much more durable, long duration asset, and then once you've built it, it lasts for decades.
Gil: That's a good segue. I'm sure you are struck by the hyperscaler getting into Google, right? They have a multi gigawatt agreement with Brookfield to secure that clean firm power. Are we gonna see more deals like that?
Malcolm: Yeah, I hope so. And hat off to Michael Rell and the team at Google, they are so creative and really trying to figure out how can they build a 24 7 reliable clean energy grid. And I'm glad they recognize that hydropower needs to be part of that fleet. So they have reached a framework agreement with Brookfield and I think it's for up to three gigawatts of generation, the first couple of projects as part of that framework.
Our existing hydropower facilities, but having this PPA with Google makes it easy for Brookfield to say, all right, we're gonna keep this. We're gonna relicense these facilities. We're gonna reinvest in the upkeep for these facilities because we know we've got that long-term purchaser. And I think these facilities were attractive because of the flexibility.
They are reservoir hydropower. They can provide generation when needed, so when the sun's setting, when the wind isn't blowing, when they have spikes in generation, load, demand, hydropower can fill that load. So I'm hoping that other hyperscalers see the benefit of that. It used to be that they want a generation in 18 months, and so people would slap together a solar array and say, we're done.
And then at night they'd want that data center to be reliable and that solar array isn't serving their purposes and they were able to just rely on other generation on the grid, which they're no longer able to do. So I think people are increasingly seeing the role of hydropower as providing that flexible around the clock 24 7 generation.
But we can't do it in 18 months. So I think the fact that they've got now a longer timeframe perspective is great. The tax incentives for hydropower help, if we can get license reform to knock the licensing and construction schedule in half, that would be a huge help as well.
Gil: Okay, so picking up on policy in this moment and the bipartisan support, the hydropower joys, what's in your bill, if you can attach it to the various energy permitting bills being bandied about
Malcolm: Yeah, so I think there's a lot that could be done to unleash American hydropower. Two specific things, one, on the permitting side, we certainly are facing the same challenges that other technologies are with endless delays from multiple nepo reviews. From endangered species interpretations that go well beyond the original intent of the Endangered Species Act.
The state's not issuing water quality permits when they're supposed to do it within a year. California in particular, sometimes takes decades to do what they're supposed to do in a year. So all of those reforms would be great. In addition to that. Those are challenges that the transmission guys and every technology faces.
We have a unique set of challenges because we're regulated under the Federal Power Act from the 1920s, and that statute doesn't have that process. Discipline just hasn't been modernized. So a licensing bill that would address the mandatory conditions that don't relate to project effects, that would establish some kind of dispute resolution process for when different agencies disagree that would have enforcing mechanism for when agencies aren't meeting the timetable that would avoid repetitive NEPA reviews.
One of the common things we've. Experienced is that FERC will, when they're looking at relicensing, they'll say, all right, we're gonna study what is the effect that this is gonna have on salmon. And they've gotta do several spawning seasons. So it takes several years to do that NEPA review. And they'll invite other agencies to join them in that process.
And the agencies will say, nah. We're gonna wait till you're done and then we'll take a look at it. And when FERC finishes their NEPA review, they'll say, wow, this is really interesting. Okay, it doesn't have an effect on salmon. Let's see whether it has an effect on trout. And they'll then star another round of nepa.
And so simple things like bring all the agencies, federal and state together, figure out what are the potential issues, study them all at once. Those are the common sense reforms that frankly have gotten bipartisan support on Capitol Hill. It's just hard to move anything on Capitol Hill and Hydropower hasn't been able to move as a standalone vehicle, and we've been caught up in the broader conversations about energy permitting reform, and then the bill doesn't move.
And congresses have coming on and facilities are surrendering their licenses, and that's what's new is that people used to think, well, hydropower is so valuable, no one would ever surrender their license. I had a, a senior official from the, the interior department tell me that, well. 68 facilities have surrendered their license in the last decade, and I'm afraid that Ripple is gonna become a wave if we don't address some of these challenges.
Gil: Who are the big champions on the hill?
Malcolm: That's another awesome thing about hydropower, is we exist in 48 states. So the Pacific Northwest certainly has the really big dams, Gran Cooley, and some of the other really majestic dams.
So Senator Cantwell is a huge champion in the Pacific Northwest. She's been a lead on our license reform bill, as well as an important tax bill to try to create incentives for dam safety upgrades and environmental upgrade. So she's been fantastic. We've been working with Representative Ben in the house from the Pacific Northwest, representative Newhouse in the Pacific Northwest.
It's fantastic as well. Hydropower is a huge opportunity for Alaska, so Senator Murkowski and Senator Sullivan are huge champions. There's a lot of hydropower, particularly small hydropower that's old in New England and in the northeast. I think there's a lot of opportunities for support. I do find that we've got broad support on both sides of the aisle.
I think Democrats tend to like us because we are emission free. We're carbon free. You can release the power when needed. We're a great way to firm up other renewable resources. A great way to make wind and solar. 24 7 reliable, even beyond the span of a two or four hour battery. Republicans tend to like us because we're baseload, we're domestic, we're secure, reliable, so we've got support from both sides of the aisle.
The challenge tends to be one of inertia. We're not growing like solar to be such a huge force on the grid. We're a fairly mature, stable resource, so we're often out of sight, out of mind. That's our challenge.
Gil: Just talk about some of the innovations in the last five to 10 years that's sort of mitigating the historical concerns of river keepers or folks speaking for the fish.
Malcolm: Yeah. Thanks for giving me an opportunity to address that 'cause there's been so much innovation in this space. And I've spent my career, I used to work at the Environmental Protection Agency on Capitol Hill, on the Environment Committee, so I'm deeply committed to sustainability, and there's been so much innovation in this space.
This is not your grandfather's hydropower industry from, uh. 50 or a hundred years ago. So a few of the technologies that I'm really excited about, there's a challenge, particularly in southeast US of anaerobic zones, lack of oxygen in the water, which create these dead zones for the fish. Well, now we've got aerating TURs.
So the turbines actually help solve that environmental problem because as the turbans spin, they push oxygen into that deeper part of the rivers and rivers are coming back to life using these aerating turbans. Similarly with fish passage, the hydropower industry has a challenge because when a lot of these facilities were built before the 1970s, we weren't thinking about that.
So in the seventies, in the eighties, we put in fish ladders and haul and trap mechanisms, and since then we've come a long way. One of our member companies has the fish cannon.
Whoosh.
Gil: Yeah, I love that. I've seen that on YouTube. It's actually. Hypnotic.
Malcolm: It's really cool
and they've added it with AI as well.
So you can, as the fish swim in the AI identifies what kind of fish, is it a native species? Is it a non-native species? If it's invasive, it can go elsewhere. If it's a native that you want, then it kind of follows in the plastic tubing, it gets shot over the dam. But now some of our members have come up with amazing fish safe to where they're able to pass fish.
Grew the tur bits, it's a slightly thicker blade as I understand it at the front end. And so,
Gil: so you lose a little bit of, uh, output or
Malcolm: that used to be the case. And now with amazing engineers, it's just as efficient. And the beauty is not only did the fish pass. It reduces cost for the operators because you don't need to have the same level of flow restraints.
You could operate the facility more often. You don't have to have screens necessarily to prevent the fish from coming through. And they've tested this not only with large fish but with eels, which I understand are particular challenge because they're so darn long and they've been able to get 99.99 plus percent yield passage.
It's all very specific to the species in any particular region. But I think the opportunity to modernize the existing fleet with fish safe turbines and these other technologies is huge. 'cause that's gonna enable us to preserve hydropower as that flexible resource that could firm up other carbon free resources.
And when you talk about eventually getting to a hundred percent carbon free grid. You're gonna need that generation at night. You're gonna need that long duration reliability, and these innovations in the hydropower fleet are gonna make that possible.
Gil: You mentioned you also represent
marine power.
Malcolm: Yeah, Marine energy technologies.
These are so cool. DOE did a study a couple years ago, found that the power generation from Marine Energy technologies was equal to about half the load of the US electricity use. Just a massive potential. So if we even capture even a piece of that, it could be significant. These devices range from wave energy devices or tidal devices.
One example, they did a pilot study in the East River of New York. Picture kind of three wind turbines, put 'em upside down. Into the river. So as the tide of the east river goes one way, a couple of the turbine spin as the tide went out, the other turbine spin, and it worked flawlessly for a couple of years till the pilot project was over.
You can put these devices, there's one installed in I Alaska, so it's a remote rural community in Alaska. There's no grid, but this is able to. Have them avoid flying in by seaplane diesel generation for their diesel operators. So these technologies are being used elsewhere in the world at commercial scale.
At the US we've not yet used them at commercial scale, but we just build our big pack, wave a testing facility in the Pacific Northwest in Oregon. So we're hoping now that the government shut down is over. We're gonna be able to start demonstrating that these technologies that have been used successfully elsewhere in the globe can work in the US as well, and hopefully get some greater commercial scale deployment of these marine energy technologies.
Again, they provide emission free generation, and they can be used in areas like Alaska where you don't have a grid. They're also looking at 'em in the oceans. If you think of defense applications, the ocean's a very big place. Really hard to look for bad guys using remote drones, remote sensing, you can do a lot, but those need to be charged.
Some of my members are looking at essentially creating a network of EV chargers for aquatic military applications in the ocean so that the drone or the device could just pull up to a charging device in the ocean wave technology, recharge and go about its mission without having to be manned. So a lot of really cool
applications.
Gil: Very cool. But maybe, you know, things go in salt water no matter what materials you're using. Those are shorter lifespans.
Malcolm: Yes. And we are like 30 years down the road of developing base. So what I was describing are not science fiction. These are devices that have been deployed in pilots. They haven't been done to scale, but the marine environment really is harsh.
And they've come a long way in addressing that.
Gil: Malcolm, I wanna ask you about the workforce of the future for hydropower. I read that the industry supports roughly 70,000 jobs. Talk a little bit about what NHA is doing to support the workforce of the future.
Malcolm: When I talk to my members about what keeps them up at night, workforce comes up over and over again.
There are a lot of amazingly talented senior people who are gonna be retiring in the next few years, and a lot of the younger workers don't even realize that hydropower really should be a premier career destination for them. So we're kind of out of sight, out of mind. We're competing against AI and the shiny new.
Technologies. Some folks sometimes don't realize just the array of things needed for hydropower. I'm amazed when I meet folks in the industry. We've got cool folks who are working for industry or for regulators at skit biologists as system planners. Underwater welders. There's a whole array of really cool jobs, so we need to skilled workforce.
A lot of skilled trades in addition to the college students, and we do have an exciting new announcement. The National Hydropower Association has just recently formed a strategic alignment with the. Nonprofit, the Hydro Foundation to work together on workforce. And I'm gonna be leading both groups to try to keep them harmonized and really try to raise the profile among students and connect people from the industry to students in their communities and let them know that this is a premier career destination for them.
So that's a new effort from the industry that just reinforces the extent of the workforce challenge that the industry's been facing.
Gil: Paint a picture on some of the themes we talked about. What is this moment for us hydropower in the role, in a new era of load growth? What are you thinking about as you look out next? 1, 3, 5 years.
Malcolm: I do see this as a
definitive moment for the Hydro Perry industry. We've got over 400 facilities, roughly over 40% of the non-federal fleet up for relicensing in the next decade. That's when they're gonna make decisions on whether they surrender their facilities or not. Do they invest so they could.
Keep these forever facilities up and running, or do they simply say, it's not worth it and we're gonna shut it down. We've had 68 facilities, as I mentioned, already surrender their license. I'm afraid that that's gonna turn into a wave if we can't fix the licensing challenges that are really driving some of these plants to be uneconomic.
On the flip side, I'm incredibly encouraged that hydropower is a fantastic solution for exactly what the grid needs. We're facing an error where we've got increase in load growth, increase in need for around the clock reliability and the need for clean firm generation, and hydropower really is uniquely situated for that.
We've got the flexibility. We can provide the power when needed. We provide essential grid services. When the grid goes down, you need some energy to restart the grid. Hydropower provides. Sport is a magnitude more black star capability than our resource otherwise would. So I think we've got an essential role to play in a clean energy grid.
Making sure that folks can stream the internet at night and balance the other renewable resources out there. If we can solve this short-term challenge of dealing with the licensing, dealing with the need to invest in upgrades on environmental and dam safety, then we're gonna have this a hundred gigawatts of carbon free generation continue.
We can unlock the gigawatts of pump storage that's going through the FERC regulatory pipeline to meet the moment. Of load growth and hydropower can remain the foundation for our electricity grid. I see that opportunity. At the same time, I'm afraid we may miss it. So there's some call to action for President Trump for Congress to really take advantage of this moment because it's not gonna wait till the next general election.
For those who may think, oh, you know, let's kick the can down the road. Facilities have their licenses up, their projects are old, they need to make this investment, and they're competing against other investments for capital. Do they build A SMR reactor? Do they build a new combined cycle natural gas plant, or do they reinvest in their existing ignition free generation?
And I think those decisions are gonna be made in the next four years.
Gil: We like to have a little rapid fire. We call it the hot seat. We ask all our guests a series of questions. Are you ready to jump right in?
Malcolm: Let's do it.
Gil: Okay. I read in your bio that you write historical fiction, so which era would hydropower fit best as a character?
Malcolm: Yeah. I guess I'd have to go back to the 1880s where hydropower is really just powering American industrial revolution. In fact, the trike, triscuit, the cracker. Go back to their early marketing. They were the electric biscuit 'cause they were powered by hydropower. You've got Niagara Falls on their initial box of marketing.
So
Gil: do you have a favorite author or book that has influenced your writing style?
Malcolm: Road to revolution
Gil: you've toured a lot of hydropower facilities. Do you have a favorite dam or is it like picking a favorite child?
Malcolm: Oh, it's definitely picking a favorite child. That's a fast way to get me fired. I'm gonna dodge that one.
Gil: Okay. You could just say Hoover Dam or say things, or,
Malcolm: I actually like the really old ones. I remember seeing a facility in Juneau, Alaska. You know, this little facility was built in the 18 hundreds and it's still providing some of the power for the capital of Alaska. It's very, very cool.
Gil: One word to describe your leadership style.
Malcolm: First word that comes to mind is inclusive, particularly for hydropower and, and dealing with the challenges we have. There's a lot of folks, it's an amazing field 'cause it's the intersection of energy, environmental, water, land, use, sustainability.
Gil: You better be inclusive.
Malcolm: You better be inclusive. That's exactly right.
Gil: Big part of your job N ha's job is forging consensus. If you had to pick between the following superpowers that you possess, related to the last question, would you say it's patience, persuasion, or persistence as your superpower?
Malcolm: Patience is definitely not my superpower. I'm always eager to do things better and faster.
Maybe it's persistence, particularly in the hydropower field where these assets really do. Last for generations, we're not making decisions that are gonna impact just four years. They really impact 80 years or beyond. So you gotta take your time, get the right decision making is even more important than doing it fast.
Gil: NHA has 350 plus member organizations. What's the most surprising thing they all agree on?
Malcolm: When I joined NHA, I'm a DC policy wonk, I did a little listening tour to my members and asked them, what value do you get from NHA? And I was really thinking they would be talking about policy stuff, whether it's permitting or tax or or regulatory issues.
And across the board, the first thing they said was. NHA convenes the industry so I can get together with my friends. It really is community. It really is for a big industry that powers over 25 million Americans. It's a small industry and folks like each other work well with each other. Enjoy the collaboration.
It is dominated by engineers and they're problem solvers by nature, so they love touring each other's plants and seeing, oh wow, that's how you dealt with this issue. We dealt with it this other way, but that's really cool. Their eyes light up when they're doing. Problem solving and having come from other forms of clean energy in my career.
There's no ideology, there's no moral sanctimonious. They really are just creative problem solvers. And I, I love the hydropower community.
Gil: FERC EPA. Which one gives you the most paperwork at NHA?
Malcolm: It is ferc. FERC is the prime regulator, but the FERC has kind of an impossible task 'cause they've gotta wrangle all these other agencies and all these other requirements and they have not given any of the staffing or given any of the authority to compel answers.
So really kudos to the hardworking folks at ferc 'cause they've got a hard task.
Gil: We said earlier, hydropower is powered America for 140 years. What does the hydropower industry look like 140 years from now? If you had to crystal ball
Malcolm: 140 years from now, I'd be surprised if we're still burning fossil fuels.
That said, I wouldn't be surprised if we're still generating electricity from water, power water flows through our facilities, through a turbine generates power, and then goes downstream to be used for recreation or other resources. There's no reason that hydropower. Even some of the existing facilities that we've got couldn't be around in another 140 years.
Creating that kind of flexible base load power, I think it's part of a diverse grid that we'll still need that kind of diversity in 140 years.
Gil: Excellent. That's a good note to end on.
Well, Malcolm, thank you very much for coming on the show and wish you good luck on all the great work that NHA is doing on the policy front and advancing the industry.
Malcolm: Thank you very much.
My pleasure. It was fun to be on.
Gil: If you enjoyed this week's podcast, please leave us a rating and review on Apple and Spotify. It really helps us reach more listeners. You can also let us know what you thought via Twitter at ClimatePOSIpod, or email us at climate positive@hasi.com. I'm Gil Jenkins and this is Climate Positive.