Uploaded December 2016 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
President Obama's in-depth comments on the Russian manipulation of the 2016 U.S. election.
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President Obama's in-depth comments on the Russian manipulation of the 2016 U.S. election.
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![Solving Climate Change with R&D and Civic Action
Smart strategies like Research & Development and targeted Civic Action are very effective ways to stop Climate Change. Watch the full episode here: https://tdc.video/programs/the-best-policy-solutions-for-cutting-co2e-emissions
Energy Policy Simulator: https://us.energypolicy.solutions/
Robbie Orvis: https://energyinnovation.org/team-member/robbie-orvis/
Designing Climate Solutions: https://www.energypolicy.solutions/guide/
Video Transcript:
[Plank] I hear you. Performing research and development efficiently will be essential for discovering solutions to the problems that still need to be solved. Luckily there are a number of successful practices for countries to adopt that will allow them to foster the innovation necessary to achieve rapid decarbonization of their economies. [Orvis] Being able to recruit good talent, having a program that fosters both domestic and international experts in stem sciences is really important. Public private partnerships. Those have been really successful in the US where a company may want to invest in a new technology, but it might be prohibitively expensive for them to build a research facility or a lab. The US government and other governments, for example in Germany they have the Fraunhofer Institute, may have really advanced tech labs where they can partner with research organizations or companies who are researching new technologies, to come in and be able to use those labs for a fee for example and leverage the governments resources into research and development. Another important one is a program like ARPA-E. This is a program the Department of Energy runs, but the idea is to help companies overcome some of the periods in which it can be very hard to get financing to develop projects. Theres this thing known as the valley of in research and development where you go from taking a product from the lab to commercializing it. And that interim stage, it can be very hard to find financing. So the extent the government is able to help, through government-backed loans or through research programs like ARPA-E that can help get products that are delivering results in the lab, into the field so they can start to be commercialized.
[Plank] Innovations are great, but for them to be implemented it often takes citizens educating their government representatives about the best way forward, and then staying engaged to make sure that path is followed. Hal Harvey - Robbies boss at energy innovations and the lead author of this book - explained the importance of civic action during a Q&A after a recent talk.
[Audience member] How does one go about applying political pressure?
[Harvey] Applying political pressure? Ill just give an example, in California, before the public utilities commission, NRDC and a group called CERT are two of the most influential. You can call them up - they will answer the phone - and say Id like to help. What can I do? And tell them what your skills are. And then they might say, I need a cost model for integrating solar with a grid, or I might need 50 people to come to the hearing, right? Theres a bunch of different ways to do it. We did this precision intervention with air quality laws and energy laws all the time. And we would get, like when there was a pollution law coming up, we would get a hundred mothers of asthmatic kids to come to that hearing. You win that venue, you win the vote. And thats what it should be. Theyre supposed to represent those asthmatic kids. Theyre not supposed to represent the owner of the coal-fired power plant its a public utilities commission. So thats what you do. You look at any good argument has ethos, logos, and pathos, so bring in one of those: do the analysis, bring in the kids, tell a story. Whatever it takes, but make sure youre an actor with intensity at that moment. Choose a venue, choose the moment, act with intensity.
[Orvis] Hes absolutely right. For example, in the power sector, theres something like five public utility commissioners in every state, give or take, but thats actually where the rubber meets the road, and thats where policy gets made. If we could leverage the great enthusiasm and drive that people have to go to these marches and to push for divestment into actually attending these meetings, we could have a much much bigger impact in terms of actually getting those those reductions. And so Hal likes to talk about, you know five PUC commissioners, 50 states, thats 250. But actually theres only coal in maybe 15 of those states, so you start cutting it down, you see, okay, if we influence 50 people we can push the power sector to essentially decarbonize. Targeting those focus points is a great way to leverage everyones drive and motivation into actually getting those reductions on the ground. Solving Climate Change with R&D and Civic Action](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/rWjqmwrpurQ/mqdefault.jpg)



![Virginia: Data Center Capital Of The World
Northern Virginia has far more data centers than anywhere else on Earth, making it the capital of the global Internet. Join me in exploring why its geography and proximity to Washington DC explain why this happened. Subscribe for more videos like this: https://www.youtube.com/TheDailyConversation/
Virginia data center explosion explained https://virginiamercury.com/2024/05/28/virginia-explained-data-center-expansion-with-all-its-challenges-and-benefits/
Interactive Data Center Map https://www.datacentermap.com/content/nova/
FEMA National Risk [Interactive Map] https://hazards.fema.gov/nri/map
Northern Virginia is the heart of the Internet https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/02/10/data-centers-northern-virginia-internet/
Virginia counties population density http://www.usa.com/rank/virginia-state population-density county-rank.htm
Loudoun economic development director on tax revenue https://youtu.be/rVxfTZqVtzY?si=z_wHDxmPMfMJGGzw&t=46
Quantum Loophole (Frederick Countys massive campus) https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/analysis/quantum-loophole-heads-out-of-virginia-and-into-maryland/
Digital Gateway (Prince William) https://www.princewilliamtimes.com/news/prince-william-countys-massive-digital-gateway-data-center-development-nears-a-vote/article_79823248-7463-57ca-a3b6-a65b7d69af35.html
PJM Electricity import/export hourly map https://www.pjm.com/markets-and-operations/state-import-export-map.aspx
PJM Interconnection RTO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PJM_Interconnection
MPRP proposed route https://corporate.pseg.com/aboutpseg/companyinformation/thepsegfamilyofcompanies/psegrenewabletransmission/mprp-proposed-route.ashx
PJM regional transmission planning https://www.pjm.com/-/media/DotCom/library/reports-notices/2023-rtep/rtep-meeting-the-grids-future-needs.pdf
MPRP public hearing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8iX1-cRX08
AI electricity usage report https://www.epri.com/research/products/3002028905
Proposed Chesterfield gas power plant https://www.vaclimate.gmu.edu/blog/proposed-power-plant-chesterfield
Coastal Virginia offshore wind project https://coastalvawind.com/
North Anna nuclear license extended https://virginiabusiness.com/north-anna-gets-federal-ok-to-operate-through-2060/
Three Mile Island restarted https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/30/business/energy-environment/three-mile-island-nuclear-energy.html
US Department of Energy investing in burying transmission lines https://arpa-e.energy.gov/news-and-media/press-releases/us-department-energy-announces-34-million-improve-reliability
Google announces co-locating data centers with clean energy https://blog.google/inside-google/infrastructure/new-approach-to-data-center-and-clean-energy-growth/
AI poised to drive electricity demand https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/AI-poised-to-drive-160-increase-in-power-demand
This is the heart of the Internet: Loudoun County, Virginia. A third of all the online information is travelling through the fiber optic cables under all these data centers.
It’s all happening here because Loudoun is rated by FEMA as one of the most resilient counties - in terms of hazards - near Washington, D.C. and the 2,000 federal agencies headquartered there, who are big users of data. Plus it has the space to build: with a significantly lower population density than the other counties ringing DC.
In the 1990’s it was one of the Internet’s original “primary nodes,” the MAE-East network access point, although things are much more distributed now, with dense bundles of underground fiber-optic cables serving ultra-fast, low latency connections between the region’s growing data centers and all of our devices around the world, via lines running along the ocean floor.
This year we’ll get about three-quarters of a billion dollars in local tax revenue. There’s nothing out there that we’ve ever seen that generates the tax revenue that a data center does.
Now that Loudoun’s nearly saturated, developers are building them throughout the region. In neighboring Prince William County and Frederick, across the Potomac in Maryland, they’re going big. Each county will see vast, 2,000-acre swaths of farmland turn into campuses with more than 20 million square feet of data centers.
Hourly map of electricity imports and exports shows, both Virginia and Maryland are already big net importers of electricity in the 11-state regional transmission organization called PJM, and these new data center campuses will add hundreds more megawatts to their loads.
So to make sure everyone has enough power, PJM has contracted the building of new high voltage transmission lines, including a 70-mile line cutting through Baltimore, Carroll, and Frederick Counties called the Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project, or MPRP.
0:00 Data Center Alley
1:29 Tax revenue
2:04 Local impact
3:16 Data center expansion
3:53 Electricity demand
5:15 New electricity production
6:10 Innovations to reduce lines Virginia: Data Center Capital Of The World](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/td-7WGAQKgA/mqdefault.jpg)





