This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Aloha, how you doing? Gorda the Texar here. Hi, Bacchi Talk, another exciting episode of Hi Bacchi Talk. We've been out not on the air for a while as the fundmeister, Rick's Mike Gohos here, and I have been doing a lot of traveling this year. Yeah, we found our way back though. We found our way back, we're back for a little while. But our show is going to change a little bit. We're going to be down to two shows a month now, the middle of the month and the end of the month. Don't tell my wife, I'll have more honey dudes. Yeah, so I can't let her know because I'm still going to show up during my regular thing on Wednesdays because it's kind of like my one day of weekend. And lo and behold, our guest calls us at 30 minutes or so before the show, emergencies come up, and Sam Moku, who was supposed to appear with us, he's the Acting Athletic Director at Hawaii Pacific University, was going to join us in talking about our theme today, which we're going to continue with, which is a concept that's being thrown out there, annual university intra-state baseball pre-season game. How's that? Say that's my attention. I know, but that could just be so much fun. That could be a ton of fun. Yeah, and I think it would be fun for the players but also for the fans. For the fans, the families, and a whole number of things. And this is really in its infancy. It's just discussions. I don't even know if all of the universities are even talking about it at this point. I know why Pacific University is because I've been talking with them as an alum. And we're just going to do some feeling right now to see if this could possibly get some transaction, no, traction. Traction. So pull up a chair, grab a libation, we've got a little chit chat about that. And if you've got any comments, you can give us a call at<PHONE_NUMBER>. Send us an email at the ThinkTech website if you're really interested in seeing more about this. I think, like you said, we've got some ideas on how this could be a lot of fun. And maybe after you hear some of our thoughts, maybe you have some thoughts too. And just email us at ThinkTech. And if we get a groundswell of individuals that think this is a good idea, we might be able to get some kind of committee formed and so on and start talking to the heads of the universities and such and see if they'd be really interested in doing this. Yeah, we're talking about the University of Hawaii, Hawaii Pacific University, BYU and University of Hawaii, Hilo. And they've got baseball teams and see what we could do with that and such. It could be a fun weekend. It could. And some of the other sports have had what, inter-scholastic volleyball, I think BYU and HPU, I think they used to play that. Don't know if they still do. But yeah. Because we don't have, if you think about it, what? So that would be intercollegiate, I guess. Oh, intercollegiate. There's the term.  You know this stuff. So intercollegiate, the type of an event, we don't have a thing that we wrap our hands around that much anymore. I mean, high school football is huge here, as we all know. And there's a number of other things, but nothing that becomes an annual event that people look forward to because of things that have happened. We've lost the pro bowl. That's gone. So what is it we can do to get this community interacting and having fun and things like that? Yeah, bringing the communities all back together and having fun. And having fun. I could just see it. So what we have, we're thematic, and we're going to talk about sports. I want to talk about sports a little bit. And it's, two years ago, I stopped watching NFL football because of this not standing for the flag and the respect that I believe it deserves.  And I believe for everything that it's founded on. So I'll be real clear with saying that up front. But what's gotten to me is the hypocrisy of the NFL. Yes. I mean, that was really what started to get me. When I started gathering information on certain things that happened, the NFL has reacted negatively to it or the players union has not stepped in on it, but they'll step in on other things. So it's just hypocrisy. I got a couple that I want to bring up that kind of will tell you this. And some will remember this in Tim Tebow back in the early days. When Tim Tebow came out and he would kneel, he would kneel for each game to pray, right? I'm not a big religious guy. Your family on your hand are more religious than I am, more faith-based than I am. But I had no problem with him doing this. If that's what he wanted to do from his faith was concerned. He wasn't kneeling in disrespect for the flag. He wasn't kneeling to send a message. He was there because of his faith. He wanted to take a knee and have a prayer to his God. And ask for support. And guess what, the NFL said, you can't do that. So they said, you're not allowed to do this. Then he had the eye patch. Remember John 316, I think it was underneath. His eyes kind of written in there. They made him take that, too. Okay, wait a minute. A lot of players will just have the black in there. So he used that. And then put some John 316 in there. And just added that right in. And guess what, they made him take that off. Now, last year at a college football game I was watching, and I'm not going to name who it was, because I'm pretty sure I'm right, but I didn't get a chance to do the research. So during that game, and many people watched that game, and they talked about it afterwards, they had to replace the quarterback. And they brought in this young man. He was a freshman. And I noticed when he came in in the second quarter, I believe, he had a religious statement on the shading underneath his eyes. And I looked at that, and I said, you're not going to see this in the second half if this kid's playing in the second half. And sure enough, he came out in the second half, and it was gone. Totally gone. Back to the shading. There was no shading. It was like everything was gone. So my guess, and I have no way of proving this, is my guess, TV was watching it. The word got back down into the locker room. You've got to take this off. Yeah, and that happened. So that was a college one, not necessarily NFL. But in 2013, there was another one that happened. And a lot of this stuff hasn't done a lot of press. But Brandon Marshall was fine for wearing green cleats. He was fine for wearing it because he wanted to raise awareness of people with mental health disorders. He wanted to bring that. And that was his statement, his way of doing it with not disrespecting the flag or any of those kinds of things. No, they find it. The NFL find him for this. So again, I'm sitting here going, that's why I don't watch the NFL anymore. They don't get my money so much. They already care. I've been to two live NFL games in my entire life. And that'll be it. That'll never go again. Then a guy that you wouldn't think of, I think of 2014, Robert Griffin III, our G3. Yeah, our G3, yeah. He entered a post game conference. So at a conference, you know what the post game was? He had a t-shirt on that says, no Jesus and no peace. They made him turn it inside out. And he couldn't wear, they made him turn it inside out. So it wasn't an issue that he couldn't wear a t-shirt because I think in basketball, there are, what, dress coats. Dress coats, yes. For that. This wasn't a violation of the dress coat, of a dress coat. It was in violation of his speech. Yeah. To me, this is freedom of speech. Is it not? Right. And he's good at that. Or freedom of religion. Freedom of religion. And he's going to talk about the game and what went on. And he happened to have that on his shirt. But the NFL uniform police, as I call them, they made him turn it inside out when he came up and talked. Now, I'm thinking now, in retrospect, you can always think of these. They would have been good if he just said, well, guess what? If I can't go up there with this shirt on, then I'm just going to not go up. I can't go up. And I'll just tell them why I'm not going up because I have a shirt that says something along these lines. So, and I can, you know, there's lots of people, well, what if someone has something with hate speech on it?  And that's not something that anyone should condone. Yes. Right? So let's don't play around with those kinds of things. So then in 2015, Daniel Williams, Daniel Williams, he was fine for wearing, find a cure eye black for breast cancer awareness. He was fine. For breast cancer awareness. Find a cure awareness. And he was fine. Yeah. Now, how many? But, you know, there's what? One weekend a year that the NFL team wants you to wear pink gloves, pink shoes, you know, pink, whatever, you know, on that. So, if it's NFL sanctioned, then you almost have to wear it. But if it's not NFL sanctioned. Well, what if I wanted to go somewhere? Yeah. No, I'm going to protest. I'm not going to wear pink. As a form of protest. Right. Duh. Again, it's trying to figure out this thing. Again, in 2015, William Gay was fine for wearing purple cleats to raise awareness of domestic violence. Now, not like the NFL has domestic violence problems. Oh, jeez. Oh, no. We don't want to go there. Not them. Don't go down that path. But, you know, the thing is, again, they find him for wearing those purple cleats to bring an attention to domestic violence. That needs to be something that we address, make conscious efforts of people understanding this. It's obviously been a problem within the NFL for a number of years. And now it's showing up in the universities. You see the things, all the histories and things that are coming back beyond domestic violence that's happening and those kinds of things. So it's really getting pretty amazing. 2016, NFL prevented Dallas Cowboys from wearing a decal. So in the NFL, we prevented the entire Dallas Cowboy team from wearing a decal on their helmet in honor of the five Dallas police officers killed in the line of duty. So, Dallas wanted to recognize these first responders to wear a decal or decal, depending on where you're from. For those officers, NFL said, no, you cannot do that. Not approved to do this. Which is going to keep bringing me back to this thing. You stand, kneel, or whatever for the flag.  Then, in 2016, the NFL threatened the fine players who wanted to wear cleats to commemorate the 15th anniversary of 9-11. So the NFL threatened the fine players if they wore cleats to commemorate 9-11. And then there's another one. So they've been very consistent up to a point. Up to a point. So now here we are. And so the beginning of this year, not the beginning, but before the season started, NFL said that they were going to pass a rule that everybody had to stand. This was what you do in respect to the flag. The owners said, yes, this is what we're going to have happen. And then the union got involved and said that they did not have an opportunity to voice their opinion on it because it was a union issue or a labor issue. And so now here we are back again. It's just a mess. Some are standing. Some are putting their fists up. Some are remaining in their locker. Some are kneeling. I mean, it's just, and so this asked me why I don't pay attention to it. Because if you want to send a message and you're making millions of dollars per year as an employee, then take some of your money and fund other efforts. You can still respect this flag. And you could provide that money to an organization that supports what you're trying to support. What your cause is. You mentioned LeBron James. Yes, yes. So what was that? What did he just recently do? Yeah, he just built a large school for inner city kids at risk. And he did that in Akron, Ohio. And what a great thing to do. What a great way to really, well, to give back to the community and to have a, you know, a thing that you personally were involved with. Right. And it's not just, you know, I got to give it to LeBron James. It's not just, you know, easy for him to talk about it. It was big money. It was millions of dollars. And he didn't really afford it. Yeah. But some could not, don't have to spend it, but he did. Right. And he went all in for it. It wasn't just, oh, this looks good. No, this doesn't look good. This is, I put my money into it. Yeah.  Exactly. So that's my commentary for the first half of this show. You know, this hypocrisy, you know, I'm up to here with it. I feel like I got my life back, though, not having to worry about football anymore. There you go. It's so good. I still concentrate on college. I still like college football games and so on. Yeah. But not having to deal with, I don't care. Yeah. And I have a number of friends that don't care anymore. Anyway, we got to take a break. We just burned through the first half of the show. Then we're going to come back and we're going to talk about our intercollegiate. Intercollegiate. Yeah, intercollegiate. Yeah, intercollegiate. Baseball preseason weekend we're having an idea on. So Rick's the fundmeister. Gordo the tech star. We'll be back in about a minute after we pay some bills. This is think tech Hawaii raising public awareness. Match day is no ordinary day. The pitch hallowed ground for players and supporters alike. Excitement builds. Game plans are made with responsibility in mind. Celebrations are underway. Ready for kickoff. MLS clubs and our supporters rise to the challenge. We make responsible decisions while we cheer on our heroes and toast their success. Elevate your match day experience. If you drink, never drive. Do you want to be cool? If so, watch my show on Tuesdays at one called out of the comfort zone. I sang this song to you because I think you either are cool or have the potential to be seriously cool. And I want you to come watch my show where I bring in experts who talk all about easy strategies to be healthier, happier, build better relationships and make your life a success. So come sit with the cool kids at out of the comfort zone on Tuesdays at one. See you. Aloha. How you doing? Gordo the tech star here. Welcome to Hibachi Talk. I've got Rick's the fundmeister here joining us. Good to be back. Nice to have you back from our travels. Again, as we mentioned earlier, if you want to call us at<PHONE_NUMBER>, you can do that. You can email us at the ThinkTech website. You can go to the Hibachi Talk. Yeah. Outlook.com and send us an email there if you want. You can actually listen to ThinkTech shows, listen to, not have to watch them. So they don't have to see our pretty faces. They don't have to see me. Yeah, so our pretty faces are no longer there. You can go to the Apple and download and do it in the car when you're driving home. There you go. So there's all kinds of options as this entity continues to grow and evolve. Anyway, so let's talk about this. It's kind of fun, right? So the concept here is we find four university teams in Hawaii which we kind of identify through the RUH, UH Hilo, BYU, and HPU. We put together a round robin two-day, possibly three-day, a long weekend baseball event to raise money for the schools and to get families together. And this town loves rivalries. Yes, they do. Right? The rivalries that we could have. And then the things we could do to tweak the game so that the NCAA doesn't get its rules all concerned and so on because it just becomes a fun event. And it should be fun for the university. It should be fun for the students, the players, the families, and the fans. Yeah. And it could be. Listen in on this one.  There's crazy ideas.   And some of them, they're just going to be laughers. You're going to have just a great, fun time thinking. Yeah. Yeah. So things that we're thinking about doing that could happen here. So again, instead of nine-ending games, they could be a seven-ending game. Yeah. Right? Keep them a little bit shorter. Yeah. A coach or manager has to be playing. And maybe on a different team. Maybe on a different team. Yeah. I mean, we could shuffle them around and do this kind of thing. We get the ladies involved. So we can get the ladies, the softball teams. Because you got, UH has a good softball team. And get the ladies involved so that they are part of what's going on in this and how they get interjected into the games themselves. Old timers. Yeah. That'd be great. Old timers. Bring some of the old timers back. Yeah. And get them playing in some of the innings and so on. And maybe you could even bring in some of the sports casters. Oh, yeah. Or the sports riders. Yes. And here's your inning. You're going to be a pinch hitter for this. Oh. You just gave me another idea. So didn't you used to umpire? I did. And didn't you umpire with Jim Leahy? Jim Leahy? Yeah. Oh, my goodness. You banned Pal Eldridge. Wow. Jim Pal and I. Yeah. Excuse me. Guest umpire. That'd be great. Oh, did you hear the heckling for the umpire? Oh, I know. Yeah. And maybe you have to put the umpire out, you know, on first base. Yeah. You know, something like that. Something like that. Oh, it could just be. I mean, again, you could turn this into just a continually. You can have four outfielders. Yeah. You know, and one of the outfielders is going to be someone who's not, you know, not normally a player. Not normally a player. Um, the other things that he could have is, oh, you could throw politicians in there. No, no. No, man. Bad idea. Let's take that one out. Yeah. Bad idea. Oh, the losing politician. Oh, that's a bit of a worse idea. Bad, bad. It'd be a lot. Oh, God, yeah. There would be a whole team of losing politicians. There wouldn't be many Republicans. There's not many that run. It wouldn't happen. Yeah. Now, if you do it in the general, then all the Republicans would be out there. Yeah. That's where it would have to be. That's the only way they could get a team, field a team. Well, we could have the Republicans and the Democrats as the umpires. They could question a call. Oh, that would be awesome. But again, you could see the kinds of fun that we could have. Yeah. And if the call got questioned, maybe we could have a Supreme Court judge come in to determine whether or not we could have a Supreme Court judge. Are the attorney generals? Yeah.  Yeah. Well, it's not like we don't get anywhere that's just happening. But see, the whole point of this weekend, I got to come back to it again, is we don't have the pro bowl anymore. We have the high school football, which brings all kinds of families together. My wife and I went to the Wahine softball championships. There you go. High school championships. Wow. Wahiwa versus Punahou last year, and oh my goodness, what a wonderful day we had. It was an evening game. And just the camaraderie and the rivalry and everything that went on there was just, and this is one of the things that was kind of tweaking my head on this idea to see how the families were having fun with each other and all kinds of good stuff. Yeah. So, but you know, taking that course, the other things we could think of, I thought of it as like, you know, we could also have, if you do it, if we could get less more commie, each of the teams could have their own food booth. Yeah. Because they had the schools involved in the food booth. Yeah. We imagine if the teams had their own food booths and they could, you know. That'd be great. They could have a chili cook-off. Yeah. Chili and hot dogs. Hey, baseball and hot dog, just a hot dog. Yeah. Right? Yeah. That'd be great. Anything that would go... Cracker Jacks. Cracker Jacks. Do they even make Cracker Jacks anymore? They still do make Cracker Jacks anymore. I don't know. I think they do. I think they do. I hope they do. But, you know, and the sponsors that could be brought on board to help fund the event itself, be able to fund the players, you know, like UH Hilo being able to get over here, maybe discounted or somehow show us your baseball ticket and you get a discounted airfare. Discounted as you go back. Or you get something. You know, all the kinds of things that would help promote the businesses in town. So now you're promoting local businesses. Again, you've got the families. You've got the rivalries. You've got the humor factor going in there. Hey, we could get Jay up. There you go. Jay. I could see Jay as a catcher. We could get a ball by him. I know. I just insulted the boss. Oh, well. I'm sure it's not the first time. We could get down to once a month after this. No, once every other month. Yeah. Or not at all. Or we have to pay. So, but just again. Yeah. But I mean, even you could have like the school choirs come out at the seventh inning stretch, you know, and they could sing Take Me Out to the Ball Game. Yeah. You know, you could have a competition on that. You would come up with the best, you know. Oh, the things like that. The best thing, you know, the bands could get involved. I mean, there could be all kinds of the rallies and so on. I think, and I'm doing this based on experience. I meet a lot of tourists at the University of Hawaii baseball games. Many from Australia. Okay. Who purposely come when they come to Hawaii during the baseball season, they go to watch University of Hawaii baseball. They love the ambiance and everything there. And they really enjoy the game. And last year, last year, two separate occasions, I met two couples from Australia who were there for the weekend. And they said, oh, yeah, there's a number of us that come just for the games. So I think it would bring in the tourists to get in there. Yeah. We could get, we could get a movie ahead of the Hawaii Tourism and Lodging Association. Yeah. You know. You'd love to. Get in. He loves sports. Yeah. Hawaii venture capital, Hawaii. Anyway, all the different tourism organizations that we have. We could even get Angus out there. We could have a puppet. Get him to throw out the first pitch. That would go about an inch and a half. He could throw it to Jay behind the play. Behind the play. Perfect. Jay, there's no way Jay would get hurt. That's for sure. So let me tell you what's kind of happening. So Sam Moku, who is the acting director of HPU, who was supposed to be on the show today and had an emergency come up and he had to not be able to make it. So we're going to get him back. But he's actually kind of, I think, leading the charge and he's trying to get meetings with all the different athletic directors and so on. So I'll be meeting with him again and we'll get him on the show and maybe we can get some legs with this. Yeah. That'd be great.  He bought you talk at Outlook.com. Send that. I'll start playing this together. Let us know. Even, you know what? Write to the paper. You know, letter to the editor. Yeah. Well, then you and I should do that. Yeah. Actually, you got time. If you ghost write it, I'll sign it. Okay, there you go. Maybe. I'll read it first. All right. So anyway, we've burned through the show, believe it or not. It's already done.  Thanks again. Hey, it's always great to be here with you. We haven't seen you for a while, so safe travels. Yeah. We'll be back at the end of the month. So we have to get redirected on how to find this place. I was lost. It didn't work that. Anyway, Gordo the Texar. You're always lost. I'm always lost. That's true. Gordo the Texar here with Ibaachi talk. And with my good old buddy, Rick's the Funmeister. It's always a pleasure, buddy. Thanks, Gordo. Always a fun, fun time. Son. Okay, Dad. Okay. And like we say at the end of every show, one, two, three. You remember? How are you doing?


which Vincent has been asked to address and that is how technology can be used appropriately to provide flexibility and what kind of learner stands to benefit most. Thanks Jim. Well as you noticed I was at the end of the queue there like you know so by now I should be feeling very badly, very bad. And I should say that not for the first of my life I'm masquerading as an expert in a particular field that I know very little about but I am standing I think on the shoulders of some giants in this space particularly at IT Slego with the form of Brian Mulligan and Karen Tobin and Gavin Clinch who are a part of the Center for Online Learning and which have really spearheaded a lot of the activities that I'm going to talk about today within IT Slego. And I think the Institute has been at this for about 13 years now online like you know so there's a bit of experience built up there. But I should say it was born of necessity. It wasn't born you know of a desire to to actually get into online. It was born of necessity. The engineering courses were going down, the numbers were going down, the science courses were going down and in order to take up that slack and to drive new initiatives, yes, online learning became part of that because we had early adopters there as we said. But that's why we are in the area where they have STEM, engineering, science courses, online courses in particular like you know so. We currently have 1450 online students for the HGA purposes where they're classified as part-time mostly. So hello HGA. But I suppose contrary to some of the perception like you know the breakdown of that is actually well from L6 to L9 but the L6 and entry level is about 24% of that number. The big one is L7 at 42%, L8's at 24% and 10% on the L9 at the postgraduate level which slightly different to what people may think in terms of where that opportunity is. It's grown organically at IT Slego and I should say that I'm so far on the dark side by now that I should have a black cape on me and a black helmet. So my concern as president and head of the strategic team is how do I take something that's grown organically that's had early adopters that has permeated out from that source and grown in a way that you know has become a key differentiator for the institute. How do I now try to formalize that? Taking a vision and strategy now that's coming laterally as Mark says imposing that on organically grown thing. These are key aspects because what I can't afford to do is to kill off that good will, that organic growth and replace it with some structured way that actually doesn't give me the end goals that I predict I want to see. So the question is of course that I've been asked like you know so how can that knowledge be used appropriately to provide a flexibility and what kind of learner stand to benefit most? Well if I take the second part first the type of learner that we have is part time remote international and triggered when we talk about international these are not Indians and Malaysians these are Irish diaspora mainly who are abroad and see they want to continue their professional development through that and are aware of courses in Ireland and come to IT Sligo but they then act as a conduit to others but in essence a lot of these international students that are based abroad are actually Irish in nature. It is about seeking Kenya's professional development, it's about lifelong learning and it's their adults and the vast majority of them are workers. So the learners are employed, they're in industry or they're at the springboard level seeking to get back into full time type of education. I should say that despite this 13 years and online experience in STEM the penetration into the full time courses is probably on a par with anybody else. So there's a big challenge there. We I would say are at the forefront of some of this online activity yet we haven't brought that back into the full time face to face courses in a way that I would have expected it to have happened by now. So there's a big aspect of why is that and a lot of it I think is down to that funding, a lot of it is about the time availability, incentivization, CPD, etc. But there is a big question there as to why that hasn't happened. So it's mostly in the upskilling, it's mostly in cross-skilling even for the pharma graduates getting into the new biopharma where we move from small molecules to large molecules. There's a lot of that going on and we are the online provider of the National Institute for Bioprocessing, etc. On the technology side, technology you know use appropriately to provide flexibility. Of course technology is essential to online so we're you know so that's a given like you know. The whole idea of blended education, the flip classroom from our point of view that does add value. That's where we're trying to get to whatever the percentage of that you know involvement of the blended side of things but whether we're whatever the percent of technology versus face to face. The technology works for us and it works all the way from L6 to L9. It's not in particular point along that framework. It works all across that framework. And we are seeking to get into the second level like you know further back down the line, a MOOC on the transition from a second level to third level is underway through the Teaching and Learning Forum, through the CUA and the Midwest or as is rightly called. So the technology is a problem. Technology is not the problem in this case. There's a lot of technology. It's how you adopt that and what you adopt. And we're going from the search of online quizzes all the way through to online labs and everything in between and the fully online. So there are sectoral issues as to what technology should be adopted. Is there a means of getting a single type of technology or should we have a multiplicity of things and that diversity that John talked about? I just want to talk about a little bit about the flexibility and to maybe flip that a little bit itself. So of course the most flexible learner is they are able to choose the time and they're able to choose the place of their learning. That's in the sense of the definition of the most flexible. So it's the freedom not to be in the classroom, you know, in essence. And it's interesting that what we are seeing in our NIT Slego is our full time students are now feeling that they are disadvantaged even though they've got the face to face. They're feeling disadvantaged because they know that there are online resources available to the online students and they want access to those online facilities.  So it's another interest in the side. But as opposed as a member of the dark side, from a management point of view, there are other issues about flexibility. So and just like I just want to give six of these as they come to me like you know, but it's in relation to the flexibility of the institutes. Now these are institutes side of things as opposed to flexibility individual learner, which I think we have to get as a given. But it's about the course development. One of the issues we face is the involvement of companies in that course development. Yeah, that happens in the normal face to face side of things as well. So but the level of company input into courses, shared curriculum with other institutions. We're involved, of course, with the connoisseur alliance. We're involved as of last week with the making our presentation to become a technological university. That asks all questions about the provision of courses across all those institutions, not just your own individual institution, but how are we going to provide courses across these clusters, across these wider, engaged institutions? So it's about the building of those programs. A rising out of that, of course, is credits and the credit accumulation and that credit accumulation that could happen across multiple institutions. How do we take that on board? Bologna type of processes as well that come into play. So credit accumulations across institutions. And I think we're already seeing is how we can provide specialist courses in the third and fourth years for generic courses of engineering and science, where the specialism exists in one institution. It doesn't exist in the wider institutions, and that can be brought online and provided as a specialism in that way. And I think this is another issue for institutions working together. The combining of RPL and online learning, a very difficult aspect. We're working now through the CUA in myexperience.ie to recognize that prior learning. And we have examples of where apprenticeships, we're doing an RPL on apprenticeships, giving them credit for that, which brings them into an L6 bridging program, which is then complete online. And then that takes them into the L7, L8s as well, either face to face or online. One of the things that's happening now which is going to happen is learners staying on in companies, work experience, computer scientists going off in the third year, doing work experience. They want to stay, the company wants them. And now we've been asked that they become, they do their fourth year and final year online in the company, online training. What does the HEAC say? They're no longer a student because now they're off your books, they're online, they are not in your organ model. Big issue for the dark side. So that's another point. And I think then there's the disaggregation of learning and evaluation. And it's the evolution of MOOCs. And how we get then from their learning through a MOOC to the competency based assessment that the institutes provide. So they're taking their learning individually, but they're asking us then to assess them. So the disaggregation of the learning and evaluation is another issue for us. So I think as I say, to finish up, it's not just about the flexible learner, it's about the flexible institute, institutions working together, using technology across a wide range of learners, across a wide range of institutes. And I think it's how the institutes themselves can become more flexible in this space and how CPD can help the individual learner, but it should become outcomes orientated. We've had a multiplicity of people doing CPD who never translate that training into real online provision. And next year, you'll find them in the same, have it taken the same course again for the forgotten. So it has to become much more output orientated, much more help in that space. So with that, I'll go back into my space machine. Thank you very much.


Welcome. Good afternoon. I am Caitlin Raimi, assistant professor of public policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. On behalf of our faculty, students and staff, it's a pleasure to welcome you all to this policy talks at the Ford School event. Energy policy has never been a more relevant topic. Corporations have made significant commitments to cleaner, more sustainable ways of doing business. And the Biden administration is building climate change into every area of policymaking, from infrastructure to commerce to foreign affairs. Our guest is DTE executive chairman, Jerry Anderson. In addition to addressing the role and future of the energy sector in a changing climate, he will also be giving us some insight into Michigan's response to COVID-19 based on his service co-chairing the Michigan Economic Recovery Council. Some background. Jerry earned his MPP from the University of Michigan, go blue, back in 1988. He joined DTE in 1993 and held various senior executive leadership roles before being named president in 2004, CEO in 2010 and chairman in 2011. He was the architect and leader of the company's strategy to focus on cost and operational excellence in the utility business and to develop its non-regulated businesses. As CEO, he focused on building a positive, highly engaged culture and on deeply connecting DTE energy to the communities it serves. In 2019, Jerry was elected executive chairman to serve as an advisor to DTE's CEO on business issues and to focus on DTE's community, state, federal and broader industry roles. A quick note about the format for today. We're going to have some time toward the end for questions from the audience. We've received some questions in advance, but you can also submit questions in the live chat on YouTube, or you can tweet your questions to hashtag policy talks. And without further ado, welcome Jerry Anderson. Well, thank you, Caitlin. Glad to be here. Yeah, we're so glad to have you. So I'm going to start off with a question. Many of the people in the audience for this talk are students who might be considering a career in energy policy. So could you start by briefly telling us what inspired you to get into the energy world? You know, I think I'd have to trace that to my father. I had a father who was deeply interested in sustainable energy. He was an engineer in the agriculture industry, but late in his life developed, I can only describe as a passion to try to figure out how to use agricultural waste and convert that to energy. Never really played out for him. That never happened, but it carried with me as a young person. I studied engineering and physics at Notre Dame, but as I worked my way through that this interest in energy has stuck with me. I remember traveling after I left Notre Dame, my brother and I took a trip around the world and remember sitting on a mountainside in Switzerland looking out at this incredible view and writing in a journal. I hope I can somehow connect my career to sustainability. And so when it came time to go to grad school, I weighed sustainable systems engineering or economic development poverty. And much of my dad's chagrin I chose economic development and came to get a PhD in that at Michigan and then I diverted, as you said, to what was in the Institute of Public Policy Studies and eventually to get an MBA as well. And I thought I'd end up in the public sector, but got a random letter from McKinsey. I didn't even know who they were. At the time I had to have a roommate tell me that they were consulting firm and I had to take the interview which I did. And I ended up working there for five years and along the way, one of the partners asked me would you be interested in an energy study. And I thought back to my prior interests and I said I really would. And that led to a specialization while I was there and serving electric and gas companies that and banks. And so when I came out through another series of random events I ended up at DTE to start up their non regulated businesses. And the first of those was a renewable energy business actually a waste methane capture at landfills, which eventually morphed over time to what it is today which is a renewable natural gas business, working on agricultural operations around the country to take waste agricultural projects and convert our products and convert those to methane to be used in the California carbon markets. And so strangely, after a long trip, I was doing what my dad had aspired to do, not quite the same way but I also along the way did get involved in the utilities and then the utilities got involved in the you know at one point somebody asked me do you want to cheer the environment committee for the industry. I said absolutely, I'd like to do that. And it led me to a lot of involvement in environmental policy, which again was tied to that desire to work on sustainability and as as things wound forward I found myself involved in the kingpin of all sustainability issues, which is climate change, of course. And so from that early interest that my dad had through a lot of steps I found myself doing what I thought about there in that mountainside, hoping that I'd be tied to sustainability. I am getting a chance to work on it. I can't tell you how helpful my public policy training is for the work I'm doing. It honestly is perhaps the best educational training I had for the career I ended up in. Great. It's a great advertisement for the first goal for those who just got their admittance letters. So, let's see, you've been, since then you've been a leader at DTA through many state and federal political shifts with very different perspectives on climate change. So, of course when you're making long term plans and investment decisions you have to consider the future well beyond anyone political term.  Well, look, I think in our industry you need to be aware of the political wins, but you cannot be dictated by them. Your strategy needs to be able to look longer term. We are the most capital intensive industry that exists by a wide margin. Our assets live for a half a century or more. Building any major project is a five year minimum and likely a 10 year endeavor from planning to regulatory approval through engineering and construction. Some of the new administrations go by in the process of building out major assets. And so you need to be aware but you can't, you can't be wed to the directions of any administration. So I'll give you an example. In my role as chair of that environment committee that I mentioned, I got very involved in the Obama administration's clean power plan development. We began in earnest in 2015 and by mid 2016, after a lot of negotiation and discussion within the industry, we'd come to agreement with the Obama administration. And what felt like it was going to be the first construct to regulate carbon in our industry. And in the fall of 2016 it was put into regulation. And I was really proud of that and thought we'd done something really important. And then the election 2016 happened. And it took about a week to understand that all of that work was going to be shelved that we were going to exit the Paris agreement, and all of the talk was about the resurgence of coal. I remember telling my wife that Christmas I feel like I threw away your my life. But in retrospect, that really wasn't true because of the way things evolved and then in early 2017 after all that work on on a carbon construct. I found myself inundated with questions about whether we were going to abandon our clean energy plans whether we're going to hang on to our coal plants now forever and so on and so forth. It was immensely frustrating because it wasn't at all where we were headed or what we were thinking. And so I pulled our team together and said, look, what do we believe? And what are we going to stand for here? And it was pretty clear that we believe this was the critical issue, public policy issue that we could affect. And that we were responsible for it and needed to be right in the middle of the solution. So in early 2017 right in the middle of all that talk about coal resurgence and whatnot. We actually came out and said, look, we're going to, we're going to reduce our carbon emissions 80% and retire all our coal plants in the process. And we've since up that to to net zero. I was afraid of what would happen. I was frankly afraid the president would personally take us the task on Twitter and those sorts of things. But in reality, the reaction was overwhelmingly positive. And we got big press coverage worldwide, literally, because people were so interested in this whole topic. And since then, the whole industries moved in that direction, the industry moved hard in the direction of commitment to decarbonization, right in the middle of the Trump administration, because the industry believes that's where we're headed. We've heard it from our investors, we've heard it from our employees, and we believe it personally. And so there was an example of the administration headed one way in the industry, headed in the opposite direction. And so I would say now for our company and for essentially every company in the industry. Climate change is at the core of their strategy. And yet the last administration would never have indicated that that would be the case. So you got to be aware, but you can't be dictated by the winds of any one administration. All right. Well, in the Biden administration, there's, there's new possibilities and new challenges. To that end, you're co chairing an electric sector climate action roundtable that includes leaders from the electric utility sector and environmental organizations. And with the mission to identify and missions reduction framework for the US electric sector, which seems to include a goal for the entire US economy to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. So that was a mouthful. But what are the sort of policies that you think are necessary and achievable from the Biden administration or others to really help meet that goal. Well, maybe a minute on the group that you mentioned so was really in 2019 when I, you mentioned I moved over to executive chairman from CEO. I began to think about where can I make my most important contribution and climate change was the topic. And when I took a look forward in 2019, I thought we might have a change in administration to one that was much more focused on climate. We do now, as you mentioned with the Biden administration. But that the the dialogue at the time was was all noise about Green New Deal anti Green New Deal. And I felt that it really missed the mark on where the industries, my industries mindset was that the people's perception of us was probably a decade old. And I also felt that there was a misunderstanding of what it was actually going to take to get the net zero.  And so I went to Fred Krupp who leads the environmental defense fund and said Fred, I'd like to pull together a group of senior industry leaders from the electric sector, and leaders of some of the most influential environmental and climate change NGOs with a goal of us coming in committed to net zero for both the industry and the economy. But I want your help in establishing a new narrative and a new understanding by politicians and the public as to what that's really going to take. Because the industry can't front that new narrative alone, we really need the environmental community to do that too. So Fred thought about it and came back and said, I feel this can be consequential we should do this. And so we pulled together just a great group of leaders I can't name them all because it's confidential other than Fred and I who've been public. We've had a great group we've been working for a year, we've really centered in on a clean energy standard for the electric sector as as the policy vehicle. And through a lot. I've been spending a lot of time I've probably met with 40 or 50 members of Congress over the past month and a half or so. All of it trying to tell them that the industry is not only open to but is desirous of trying to strike what we call an ambitious but but technically grounded clean energy standard. We're there the mindset is is ready you're not dragging us to this by the nose. We want to see if we can't figure this out together and Fred has been doing the same from an environmental side. And we're, you know, we work together and compare notes and I'm hopeful. You know that the current construct in Congress may produce this it's a, as you know, an incredibly tightly balanced legislature, but the most lasting things done on the environmental front are bipartisan. So they're not overturned every time you get a shift in in political balance. I'd like to think that with the industry on board. We can work our way to a clean energy standard that's ambitious but technically workable and bipartisan and set the construct for us to take carbon out of the electric sector and do that in a fundamental way so that's what we're working on. And in the process or working through a lot of economic modeling and technical modeling as to what that will take, but it's been great work. Just a quick follow up you you're talking about a clean energy standard rather than renewable energy standard. Could you talk a little bit about what that what that difference is. Yeah, so, you know, in some cases folks talk about zero carbon is in 100% renewable simultaneously. I think if you get in deep inside this topic, which I am and a lot of others. So for example, Ernie Moniz former Obama energy secretary and now at MIT.  We will not do it with 100% renewables. We are going to need new technologies in order to keep the grid stable and reliable. And in particular we're going to need zero carbon base loader dispatchable technologies technologies that run when you tell them to versus renewables which are intermittent batteries alone won't do it. We're going to need technologies that generate zero carbon electricity that may be hydrogen. It may be for a while natural gas with carbon capture. Some talk about small modular nuclear reactors, but we're going to do a ton of renewables. We're going to have to pair them up with some other zero carbon technologies in order to pull off the net zero aspiration. And that by the way was little understood a year ago that was part of the narrative change I wanted Fred to help with that was little understood on Capitol Hill a year ago. It's like, you know, widely accepted by by many now. So it's been a big shift in understanding. Great. Okay. On the other side of the climate coin. We often think about the, the role of energy in causing or mitigating climate change. But people, especially recent events in Texas in cold weather in Texas wildfires in California, it's making a lot of people worry about the resilience of our power systems and a changing climate so thinking about adaptation or resilience. So what do we need to be doing either here in Michigan or elsewhere to adapt our power system to climate change or other threats to reliable power and how much does this differ from one region to another. This is highly regional. These, these threats so obviously California is just dealing with an intense mix of issues fires, just incredibly difficult for the electric sector out there to deal with the Texas event. I'll spend just a minute on that. Frankly, that was an event that many of us in the industry have simply wondered when it's going to happen. For a couple of reasons one, they had a cold weather scare about a decade ago and a lot of people told them, you better harden your systems for cold weather. And they didn't. So, you know, much of the issue down there was gas wells freezing off and power plants not conditioned for cold weather and wind turbines without all weather packages. They'll have those now. You see that moving through the Texas legislature but that was part of the issue. Another part of the issue is they have a deregulated electric market there with a. There's scarcity pricing to, to drive reliability investments. Many of us have seriously questioned that construct as well. And then the $10,000 residential electric bills that people got was all a product of a deregulated market where marketers can pass through this price spike risk to homeowners. The price of electricity literally went from $30 a megawatt hour to 9,000 at the 300 x increase. You know, you're you're getting a year's worth of cost in a day at that rate. And so it's that that was a mess but not one that was not predicted and one that I think they'll finally probably come to reckoning with. And as you as you looked at other places, each each place has its own unique risk. So the hurricane prone states. There's a lot of prediction of increased intensity of hurricanes and I think we're seeing that more regularity more intensity. They're going to have to do system hardening for sure to address those we've talked about California wildfires and areas. They aren't the only ones in the west who could be who could deal with that over time. I would say we've, we probably sit in Michigan with the least intensity of the issues around climate driven adaptation we're seeing some, we're certainly seeing increase in warmth. So, you look over the past 30 years and I often say our people the first 15 of those 30 are become less relevant because the last 15 are just increasingly warm. So we're seeing warming for sure and we may be seeing some increase in the wind intensity of storms and therefore need to deal with the hardening of our system for that but I would generally say not like what the hurricane exposed or wildfire exposed states are dealing with. I mean, one follow up question for that. I mean, one thing I've heard from Michigan is that because we are relatively safe from climate change compared to other parts of the US that what we might end up seeing is more of a migration into our state is are you thinking about population changes as part of this. Gradually, it, you know, wouldn't that people say to me well give us enough time and we're going to be North Carolina and the UP is going to be like the lower peninsula and, you know, we're going to see population shifts. I was on a call with a member of Congress from Florida, I think Wednesday, and he was ringing his hands about population exodus due to, to increasingly hot summers, and people simply not wanting to be in a state where there's such intense heat for such long periods and you could see that in parts of the West to where they're considered ideal but frankly, in a place like Arizona if the 115 degree days go to 120 and last for a month longer. You might find people say enough of this so we aren't counting on it anytime soon but it wouldn't surprise that a long term pattern could be population migrations with with weather. Right. So, there's been a partly in terms of climate change and addressing it there's been a lot of talk of electrifying everything. Like moving to electric vehicles or moving away from natural gas and homework appliances. DTE of course deals in both electricity and natural gas. So what do you see as the tradeoffs in electrifying everything. Well that's a good question. So you're right we have a electric company on a natural gas company here in Michigan. I'd say for starters that in electrifying to to deal with the climate issue the the first hill is going to be transportation. So transportation has has now taken over as the sector with the largest contribution to carbon emissions in the country past the electric sector transportation did. And it's also, I think economically right. It wasn't 10 years ago but electric vehicles are just right there in terms of commercial attractiveness and consumer readiness and so forth and that's why you see companies like GM saying, in the next 15 years we won't be making anything buddy of these. And when you look at where our grid will be, say in the early 20, early to mid 2030s electrifying vehicles will take 80 to 90% of the carbon out of the vehicle fuel cycle so. And to do that for the largest emitting sector is a big deal. Our sectors ready to take on vehicle electrification and one of the reasons for that is that load comes pretty rateably across the year, as opposed to all concentrated in one period of the year. And so we'll plan for for that increment of load and it looks like by the mid to late 2030s we could have a load increase of 20 or 25% by taking on transportation, but we can handle that. We get to other sectors so they're actually behind a transportation electricity is industry and behind them is home heating and commercial heating and combined to those two actually are as large as, as the automotive sector is so eventually a big deal. It isn't as ready yet. And it's, it's going to be more challenging and I'll tell you why not as ready yet because gas furnaces are a lot more efficient than cars and 95% efficient cars are about 40% efficient and natural gas is a much lower carbon fuel than petroleum. And so when you put those two together and then look at what the grid can do. It's in many areas of the country it's still a bit of a toss up as to whether electrifying or using gas. Really makes a difference, but that'll change over time as our grid gets cleaner using electric heat will definitely be lower carbon and to get the net zero we're going to have to figure out the home and commercial heating. And I think there'll be two tools. One will be probably heat pumps what are called air source heat pumps which is the grid gets cleaner and cleaner clearly have big carbon advantages and when the grid gets to net zero it's a you know it's a it's a zero carbon way of heating. But there's a challenge that comes with that and that is the heating is highly concentrated in just a few months of the year. And so you get this big bulging electric usage and it happens to come at the time of year when our renewable output is lowest. So our solar output in December, January and February is is a small fraction of what it is in the summer. And our wind is actually strongest in the fall and in the spring, not in the winter. And so we go through what are known as renewable droughts where we could go 10 days with very little renewable output. And so that that you know that seasonality is dealt with today by storing 5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas beneath the surface of the country, you know here in Michigan and elsewhere in the country. And that's pulled out in the winter and used for for home eating. We're going to need something else that does that. I don't think it's going to be batteries because when you do the math on how many, you know, scale of battery investment that it would take to replace that natural gas, it's off the charts will mind the world inside out trying to do that. So people talk about hydrogen as a potential replacement for that. People also talk for a period about natural gas with carbon capture, being able to zero out the carbon but still be able to contribute to storage and then energy generation. But we're going to need something to complement those air source heat source heat pumps to deal with that that need for storage. We call it the seasonal storage issue. You know renewables batteries work pretty well to take energy from this afternoon to this evening or tomorrow. They aren't so good for taking energy from September to December or January. We'll need something else to handle that challenge. Makes sense. All right. By the way, I don't I don't see it as a, as a threat or a conflict for DT. I mean it's, look, we just have to deal with it and as an infrastructure company part of our job is to evolve our infrastructure over time to meet the needs of society and to meet the sustainability goals that that we need to go after and so this is going to be a long term journey. There are technologies and new infrastructure. Some of our infrastructure may get repurposed. We may find pipelines carrying hydrogen or carbon dioxide that used to carry natural gas will figure it out as we go. All right. Great. Let's see last question on energy. I think that has greatly changed the way that we all use energy with many more people working from home and major disruptions to travel. So I'm curious, has the pandemic changed how you see the long term future of energy, or do you see this as more of a temporary blip in energy use patterns that, you know, we'll revert back to normal in the near or near ish future. I think there'll be some permanent shifts. So, you know, you read every company is rethinking how they're going to use office, the office and office workers. And there's one CEO I know who thinks that they'll go back to anything like what it used to be. And so a typical company may have the average employee driving in a couple days a week for various things but that means three days less of commuting. Commuting is a big energy use. And so that I think will be a permanent shift, not for all employees because some have to go to jobs that require you to be there but for that 40% of Michigan employees who work in an office. They won't be traveling there as much same for business travel, I think a lot of people have found that they can get their business travel done on electronic devices. I used to fly all over the place meeting with investors, you've done all our investor meetings via formats like this, and it's worked fine. So I'll probably go see him once a year and leave the other three or four times to be in this mode. And so that's going to affect business travel. I think those will be permanent changes for the better in terms of lower energy use. One of the things that moves in the opposite direction is that as people use their home smart, energy use in the home has clearly risen. So we saw that this past year and we're continuing to see it. Our home energy use and home energy demand is up and that's likely to be permanent too. Let's see. So that leads us to a segue into some questions about your role as co-chair of the Michigan Economic Recovery Council. So this was a group of business and health leaders who were tasked with forming Michigan's recovery plan for COVID-19. So as part of this council, you were faced with this brand new pandemic with lots of unknowns, it was formed last spring. Where did you even start on coming up with a reopening plan in the face of so much uncertainty? And what was the process like for identifying which factors to consider both in order to look for evidence both on the health side and on the economic implications of whatever guidelines you put forth? Well, maybe just a little background on the Michigan Economic Recovery Council, or Merck as we call it. So I remember very clearly the evolution here. It was a little over a year ago on March 12th that I was in my last in-person business meeting. It was a DTE board meeting. And on March 12th, we had a handful of cases in Michigan, but the noise was really beginning to rumble. And I remember saying to the board, this feels like it is going to reshape everything in the year ahead. Well, it only took a couple of days and we had every employee at DTE who could be homeless homes. And it was a couple of days after that that the Michigan economy was largely shut down. I mean, the central business is only. And I can remember, I was and still am a chairman of business leaders from Michigan, thinking at the time all the former work of business leaders from Michigan is toast. So we focus on now. And the focus was to try to figure out how to be safe in business. And so we began to pull together CEOs of companies all over Michigan together on multi nights a week calls to just understand what do we do to keep our employees safe. And we particularly focused on companies who had operations overseas in China, Italy, Spain, because they had seen it a month or two ahead of us. I remember so clearly a conversation I had with an industry executive in Italy who who said early on, do not underestimate this is you get everybody home who can be home get everybody in a mask who is doing any work around other people and do it fast. And so as we started to get this sort of input, we decided that what we needed to do is to put together workplace safety rules for COVID. And we began to design by industry sector. So one of the CEOs took offices and other took manufacturing and other took retail and so forth. And we we developed safety protocols that were eventually enshrined in regulation by the state those state regulations were developed by industry. But at the same time all that was playing out. The hospitals in Detroit, just filled up to the top. I remember being on calls with hospital executives who were running out of PPE. And we're managing it by the hour, literally, we have two hours of PPE left. And in the midst of that, I remember thinking how on earth are we going to find our way out of this intense dual economic and health crisis, because there was no playbook for exiting this. And it was at that point that I went to the governor and said it seems you'd be well served to get the best advice that you possibly can from business leaders and healthcare leaders and public health leaders and university leaders.  And actually it was a year ago tomorrow on April 1st of 2020 that she said yes, let's go. And we dove in with a team of consultants and volunteer analysts from companies and began to think about what you asked in your question. How do you tear this problem apart? And what became evident quickly was that the risk buried by geography and the risk buried by industry. And so on geography, it was all about connection of people. So we began to use cell phone data to figure out how people commuted on a daily basis or traveled and then mixed with each other. And we use that to define what became known as the Merck regions. These were the regional dimensions of the pandemic. And then we also tore our industry by workplace type and figured out how many people in each geography worked in what workplace type in offices, in retail, in manufacturing, in construction and outdoor work and so forth. Because the disease risk varies by workplace type. And then Mark Schlissel made the great offer of putting us in touch with Du Bois Bellman who leads the public health school and Du Bois put us in touch with a range of experts who knew both epidemiological risk but also workplace risk and we could bring those two together. And then what we did is end up ranking workplace type and geography by risk level so that, you know, the risk was intense in Detroit but not so intense in the upper peninsula at various times and so forth. But also, you know, outdoor work was incredibly different from working in a restaurant. And so in the end, we developed a system for standing the economy back up geographically and workplace by workplace. And remember we started with outdoor work, small number of employees, but safe. And then we went on to outdoor construction and then construction and then worked our way through manufacturing and allowed restaurants to do curbside and then eventually retail opened and simultaneously, we were developing protocols for customers safety protocols everybody in a mask and, you know, what sort of screening might be done at the entrances and so forth and I would just I would just say Caitlin that the first two months of that are probably more intense work than I ever had my career and my wife. I'm probably being rooted to my chair because I was probably in it 14 hours a day seven days a week. And it slowed down once we got through May or June things slowed down but we've, we've remained active until just a few weeks ago when I went to the governor and said vaccinations are in full swing feels like maybe we should stand down. And why don't you go stand by rather than stand down because, you know, this this virus may take another swing at us so that's the mode we're in now. Great.  Will you be what do you be watching out for as we get into this new stage of a pandemic recovery. There's no race between vaccinations and in this disease because since we had that conversation with the governor, we've transitioned from a bottom five state in cases to the number one state in the nation. In terms of cases per million, we Michigan is tops in the nation. And we're tops in the nation in terms of the covert variants present as well. And so I had outreach yesterday from a couple of the hospital CEOs that are part of Merck and one of them told me my hospitalizations have tripled in the last month. In half of them involved these variants. And I'm seeing a lot of young people who are sick. Really sick. The good news is that we have not seen deaths move the way they did and even lagged correlation to the cases and I think the reason is that Merck pushed really hard to get our older citizens vaccinated first. It took a little while but it was so clear from the evidence that all the death risk was in really 50 and above but especially 60 and above. I mean you literally went from a 20% mortality rate and 80 year olds to things like point one or point zero one as you got down in the 20s and 30s. So it just made so much sense to to get our older citizens vaccinated we've got two thirds of people 65 and above vaccinated now, but only about 17% of the state fully vaccinated and 27% got one shot so we don't have anything like enough population vaccinated and herd immunity and cases are running fast. So I would just tell people do not drop your guard and do not toy with this thing as a young person because what what these hospital executives are describing in terms of the symptoms are, are not nice. So I would just say we got this disease is taking one last swing at us. We get through this vaccination process vaccinations are incredibly effective at protecting people both from the intense symptoms and they're proven to be good at that breaking spread as well. So we just need to hurry and get through this. Yeah. Great. Okay, so now we have a chance to have some questions from our audience. The first one. See here is asking what is the effect on us energy independence and security of the almost total absence of renewable power generation equipment, like solar panels and turbines and transformer manufacturers. How about large scale batteries. So this by, I take it that this means we're highly dependent on foreign manufacturers, manufacturing of renewable resources. Yeah. That's got a lot of discussion as a part of cove it in this. A lot of policy discussion in the circles that I've been involved in and trying to reshore renewable manufacturing. You know, the intense cost pressures in solar, particularly from China to play into the the upsurge in solar deployment in this country. But it's not lost on people that that we're becoming dependent on that so I think it's a really good question and I think there's an appetite to see a material portion of that reshore. Whether we'll see that play through in policy as part of these infrastructure bills that are coming. I don't know. We'll, we'll have to see I think it's too early to say on that. All right. Next audience question is, what is the likely effect on power prices of incorporating ever more renewable power, especially distributed generation, like residential solar into our electricity power grid. How does your answer change of the predictions that energy storage systems like batteries will eventually experience price reductions turns out to be wishful thinking in light of the increasing cost of essential minerals. Yeah, well that that last question is a good one, the essential minerals. So I would say a couple of things if they were renewables and then there was home based renewables and then there were batteries and maybe I'll address all three. And renewables have gone from expensive to incredibly competitive over the past decade or 12 years. And in some parts of the country you can incorporate them at no cost, but they can't do everything. So, you know, in, in the Great Plains wind is really cheap and you can do wind so cheaply you can displace the burning of coal in a power plant, very economically. We don't have quite that good a wind regime here but wind is quite competitive and solar is solar was very expensive relative to wind a decade ago it isn't anymore it's it's right there with wind in Michigan so look the the state of play in Michigan for large scale renewables is that we can bring them in at a healthy clip, we still have to manage the cost, but it is nothing like a decade ago. It's so much more competitive so I think we can, we can get to a very substantial mix of renewables and do it economically, as long as we take some time to do it. So, at least renewables, typically home based solar versus large scale solar there's usually about a three to one price differential. And that's simply a scale economy. If you, if you watch the construction of a large scale project, they, you're laying out hundreds of megawatts in a, in a relatively short window. Each home projects each one is in some ways its own project with its own interconnection so as you've watched that over time it's pretty consistent pattern that it's about a three to one price differential. So I think there's a role for home based solar but if we were to try to lean on it too heavily, it would pressure that cost equation. And then batteries batteries are going to be an important part of the picture for, especially for intraday balancing where you try to balance from, you know, high solar output in the afternoon to higher usage in the evening. But they cannot play that role of taking energy over very long time frames from the summer into the intense months of the winter. Simply would be way too much battery demand, especially when in battery manufacturing, especially when added to what's going to happen to the auto sector, and whoever asked the question is right. That much battery demand will take our precious mineral demand through the roof. And we'll find ourselves dependent on some places that mine it that are not places we necessarily want our security tied to either. So I would say we got a role and important role for batteries, but we're going to have to complement them with other storage mediums like hydrogen, for example. All right. So next question what what government actions would help DTE accelerate a transition to at least 80% renewables. What role would a predictable escalating carbon fee and dividend schedule provide for DTE and other investor owned utilities to achieve carbon neutrality. So I, going back to a comment you made earlier, I would distinguish between 80% renewable and 80% clean, which means zero carbon. I, I don't know that will ever be 80% renewable. I'm convinced that will be net zero and eventually zero carbon. I think it's going to take some of these other technologies that I've mentioned to be in the mix in order to pull that off so hydrogen or gas with carbon capture, maybe modular nuclear combined with a lot of renewables. What policy regime. I think the one that I like most is clean energy standard and the clean energy standard sets just an increasing bar for the percentage of energy production that is clean or zero carbon.  But that is favored by the industry versus a carbon fee is that carbon fees, especially where is where they may be set by Congress, don't necessarily correlate to a to a to a known carbon reduction. Unless you know just where to set it in terms of price to get the the out or the result that you want. So that's one thing, but there's something more fundamental. The point is that in regulated companies like mine, the carbon reductions come from a transition of how we make electricity. We need to stop using coal plants and build a lot of renewables and that's very capital intensive and we have costs that come with that. The biggest stress we have in those cost is one we've already discussed, which is customer rates, and we're constantly managing customer rates and affordability. And tax simply lays on top of all of these capital plans and increases cost. And so you kind of need to go with one or the other, either attacks and, you know, leave the sort of let companies manage to that or put in place something like a cap and trade system or clean energy standard. And I think for our for our industry, the clean energy standard, driving to lower and lower carbon emission levels is is one that we, and frankly, Congress and the environmental community seem to be centering, you know, there are advocates for taxes for sure, but the discussion, the Polone bill, the Clean Futures Act, which just came out as a clean energy standard for our sector, for example, the dominant bill in the house. And most of the discussion I have with senators is on a clean energy standard as well. Great. So related to some of what you were saying there there's a question on how can we address high electricity rates in Michigan and implement policies and programs that will help make energy affordable to people who cannot afford to pay. So, I think there's two questions there one is rates and one is, is for low income. So on rates, one, one thing that I would would say is, especially for electricity but but also true for natural gas, you need to distinguish between rates and bills. And what you'll find is that DTE tends to have relatively high rates for electricity and relatively low bills. You say why is that why would, why would bills and rates go in opposite directions it's really a volume question. And so what you find is the lowest rates tend to be in the highest electricity usage states and those generally are southern states. And the reason they have high usage is that they have a whole lot more air conditioning that we do, you know those go to Houston and they're air conditioning two thirds of the year. And they tend to heat with electricity to because their heating load is not very intense so they they can get by with later systems that we have. So you put it all together and in the average home in Louisiana will consume twice the electricity that a home here in Michigan does. And it has when you're a capital intensive business obvious impacts on, you know, you're when you're amortizing across volume that is obvious impacts on rate, but they have to pay for all of those units to. And so you'll find that the southern states have low rates but high bills for homeowners, and we in Michigan will have high rates but low bills for homeowners generally. So, in conversations with policymakers, I remember asking that question to our people, why, why are rates so darn high relative to some of these other states and when you pulled it apart. It was driven by a couple of things one was volume, and the other was access to low cost fuel, like natural gas or coal and the days when those were more dominant. So what about low income low energy or energy for the low income segment. Really important issue we were really worried about it during coven. It didn't turn out to be a big issue during coven because there was so much federal assistance that flowed into the state that actually low income expenditures and so forth went up, not down. I think wealth and those consumers spending in the state generally went up during coven because of all the federal inflows. So it wasn't such a. We thought it might be an issue during coven it did not turned out to be an intensifier but we are always dealing with a segment of our community that is struggling to pay its electricity bills and highly correlated obviously with poverty which you tend to find the same people struggling with energy or struggling with food security and housing security and a range of other issues. So we have a whole group of people who focus on one trying to expand the state and federal programs that are focused on assisting. Those individuals and by the way huge increase in this 1.9 trillion stimulus plan that was just passed big increase in federal spending on energy assistance. So that'll be helpful. But just as important as the level of funds is the ability to access them. And I have to tell you for a lot of our low income citizens, the business team process to access these funds is enough in itself to put them off even trying. And so a lot of our effort over the years has been. Literally having days we call them cost energy customer assistance days where low income customers come down and sit down side by side with the person who takes them through the 30 pages they may have to work through in order to get assistance. More fundamentally what we're doing now is to try to do away with the 30 pages and get it down to one or two to fundamentally simplify the processes and thankfully. In the current administration I think we have a partner who wants to get to that so that people who are deserving of assistance can get it without undo strain and hassle so to speak so that'll be good if we can pull it off and I think we can. Great. And so last we just have a couple minutes and we have. There's a few questions that are tied to your distinction between renewables and clean energy. And so a couple questions asking about some of those clean non renewable sources. So one audience members asking what are the future plans on nuclear power and involve safety extremely long term planning high investment and also major PR hurdles. So that's one question and then there's another question on whether you have any consideration for hydrogen blending with natural gas up to 20% as is being done on the UK on a pilot basis. Maybe I'll handle the last one. First I think that hydrogen blending is something we're looking at and evaluating and I think that hydrogen presuming it comes won't come in one step it'll be blended in small volumes and then greater volumes. When you get to a certain level your pipeline systems have to be modified. So they won't be in brittle. But yes we are thinking about that we're also thinking about pilot scale carbon capture and storage back we're doing carbon capture and storage projects in California with industrial customers in one of our non utility businesses. We're working with ethanol facilities for example to capture the carbon dioxide that they produce in their industrial processes and in store that permanently underground. So we are interested in in working with those technologies carbon capture and a hydrogen and hydrogen blending at smaller scale so that we learn them. And as they evolve and I think come down the cross curve will be that much more knowledgeable. Nuclear. I don't think the the current technologies built in $10 billion projects over the better part of a decade are the future of nuclear. I think most people have concluded that we need a technology that can be built at a predictable cost at smaller scale in something more like a manufacturing setting, rather than go out to a construction site and build this massive project. And so these are known as small modular reactors or SMRs. There are a range of SMR technologies they tend to be a whole generation ahead in terms of safety features as well so the most recent large plants are another generation ahead in terms of safety but the small modular reactors take it take it even further. And I think you know if you look at today can a small modular reactor compete with you know low cost natural gas or what remains of coal or renewables the answer to that is no. When you get down the road and ask. What zero carbon firm emission source will compete. Then small modular reactors are competing with turbines that burn hydrogen or plants that burn natural gas but capture the carbon and store it in all of those are higher cost. It's going to be very important, but but higher cost and so I think there's going to be a bit of a horse race to figure out what it is that's going to complement renewables will it be will it be hydrogen dominantly or will nuclear the small modular reactors. Make a resurgence or will what role will natural gas with carbon capture play and how long will that last and so forth. And I think the general mindset that you you see in Congress in a lot of places is that we can't predict that right now so we need to create a policy regime that enables all of them to try to find their place and the most effective technologies will win. And then the the I think the questioner was right that nuclear has some some PR issues that need to be overcome. That said when you get inside the environmental community, really not necessarily publicly but when they talk to you privately they get the role that nuclear is playing and may need to play in a zero carbon world and so to a lot of policy makers not all policy makers but a lot so it does have that challenge but as we push into the zero carbon future, there are a lot of people who think it could have a role to play but we'll see which technology wins. All right. Okay, I think we're going to have to leave it there. Jerry Anderson thank you so much for joining us here today and for engaging in this important and wide ranging and interesting conversation with all of us. I also want to thank our audience for their questions and attention and and for everyone watching I invite you all to stay tuned to our website and social media for future events here at the force. So thank you so much and take care. Thank you.


I hope everyone's having a great day. I'm your host, Richard D'Souza, here for the Rich TV Live podcast, and we're going to talk about the hottest stocks of the day. First and foremost, RDHL is absolutely on fire, now up over 200% RDHL, up over 200%. Put it on your radar, put it on your watch list. Absolutely on fire, hottest stock of the day, and about to break, looks like it's about to break a dollar, currently at 97 cents. Now, what I like to do is I always like to look at the one year chart, and you can see the story here, and it's pretty obvious, it's kind of the same story that we've been saying all year with these stocks. They have been heavily oversold, especially small caps, they're all pretty much across the board, heavily oversold. You can see this has gone from $11 down to 25 cents this year, I mean that is a killer. And now it's doing this dead cap balance back to a dollar, we're back over a dollar, it looks like right now, 9999. So we're almost at a dollar, and it's up 212% as we speak. So what do you do? You jump in this right now, I say no, but I would definitely put it on my radar, put it on my watch, let's keep my eye on it, because for this to go back to 11 bucks would be a massive gap to fill, and would give you a 10x opportunity. Do I believe it's going to do that? Probably not, but anything is possible in these markets, it's been extremely volatile this year, and this is kind of the way the cookie, the cookie, this is the way the cookie crumbles in 2023, but we're almost done, this year's almost finished, it's been a terrible year for small caps in the last two years. It will turn around when, I don't know, but we'll be here every step of the way to kind of show you what's going on and help you make good quality investing decisions, but RDHL, very close to that dollar mark, you can see a lot of selling happening right at the dollar mark, but once we break resistance, we're probably going to break through, and this will probably go over a dollar. We'll see, it may or may not, but it sure looks like it will, and we'll be watching. All right, let's take a look at the next, oh here we go, did it break a dollar now, $9999, $9991, $9988, just can't break the dollar mark because there's sellers sitting there, there it is, there's a dollar. We broke resistance, and now we're at $1.2. So see that, finally after all that selling, the buying comes in, there's more buying than selling, it breaks resistance, and now we're up over a dollar, and you're up 216% and now we're back under a dollar again. So there's obviously a lot of sellers at the dollar mark, but back to a dollar one, up 220% on the day. So a lot of sellers at the dollar mark, if it breaks that resistance, we could go much higher. All right, let's take a look at the next pick that's doing well today, BDRX, a lot of the same, these charts all look so similar this year. You can see a high of 330 bucks, that's insane. A low of $2 and doing a debt cap bounce now at $6.30, up 126% on the day. On Biodexa Pharma shares double after licensing deal for Tollim IDone. So that's the news on BDRX that's taking it up 128% as we speak. Put it on your radar, put on your watches. I'm not chasing anything up 100% or 200%, it's just not what I do. But definitely worth watching and putting on your radar. All right, ASST, isn't it funny how these charts all look the same? You can see it's been as high as five bucks, been as low as 28 cents, debt cap bounce up 78% on the day with a big gap to fill. Will it fill the gap? I don't know, but you can see the trend here with these charts. They're all beat down companies that are starting to bounce from the bottom. Companies are putting out good news, trying to turn things around. But the reality is these companies have to sell stock to raise capital. So a lot of times what happens is after a one day or two day pump, they just get sold right into and they go right back down. I've seen this trend all year long. So please proceed with caution, not telling you to buy ASST up 80%, but definitely want to put on your radar. T-H-A-R, here we go again. Same looking chart, $50 stock, crashes down to two bucks, doing a debt cap bounce today up 29% of the day. And their shares are jumping after positive phase one data for film to treat liver. That's the headlines. You can see it's come all the way down and doing a debt cap bounce. Has it found a bottom? Not sure, but definitely one I'll be looking at and keeping on my radar. Here's NIR, they're up 26% on the day and surprise, surprise. Chart looks the same again, $10 stock goes down to 13 cents. That's a killer.  Do I believe it? Nope, but it's up 26% of the day. And the biggest news was NIR Intelligence gets NASDAQ notification due to delayed form 10Q filing. So that's obviously not good news, but it is finding a bottom today up 26% of the day. Here's another one that's having a big day today, CAPT. Funny how these charts all look the same, right guys? Notice this trend heavily shorted from over $10 to $1 and now back to three bucks. So it is making a nice reversal after hitting a bottom. So that's bullish to me, but very difficult to decide where it's going to go from here. So keep your eye on CAPT up 33% of the day. CLIR. Okay. This chart looks a little different. This is actually one that's been going up this year and trading very close to a 52-week high. So it's a little bit of a different chart, more of a positive looking chart. And I like it when it gets over a dollar, it looks very bullish to me. So this is one that's more of a momentum trade. You want to ride momentum and it's doing quite well. So keep CLIR on your radar and on your watch list up 24%. And on the news on November 15th that their earnings surpassed estimates. So good earnings has been a good positive catalyst for CLIR, which stock has actually done quite well. As you can see, it's different than all the other charts. It looks like the opposite of all the other charts. So more of a momentum trade, but I would look for a dip to enter ESGL, back to these ugly looking charts, beaten down charts. You can see been as high as $24, been as low as 40 cents. And currently doing this dead cap bounce at 85 cents up 34% on the day. So big day for ESGL. Here's GSIT. They're up 16% on the day. Here's the one year chart. You can see they've also been much higher, come down, they've been as high as $9 came down to recently a low of $1.87 and currently at $2.68 cents. All right. Here's Coinbase. Coinbase has been absolutely on fire. The number one crypto exchange in America and may soon be number one in the world after the net CEO stepped down and are paying a $4.3 billion fine. This is one of the crypto exchanges that actually is regulated because they're on the public stock exchange on the NASDAQ. So they are fully transparent currently at $120 has been a roller on a roll this year. So it's rolling and up 4% of the day. Put them on your radar. Put them on your watches. Uber. Uber has been on fire all year. You can see their charts been climbing. They continue to go up at a new 52 week high Uber at $56 Roblox, I really like Roblox. I think there's some huge opportunity here, massive gap to fill. I've been charting this and I see this going on a hundred bucks in the next 12 to 24 months Roblox up at 1% Amazon, a new 52 week high on Amazon today at $148 almost $149 Amazon at a 52 week highs. You can see here, this is the one year chart. We just broke 149. So Amazon at a 52 week high congratulations if you're on Amazon, NVIDIA having a big year pulling back from that 500 mark, but still in the green today at $481. Draft King's also having a monster year this year as you can see they've been climbing and they continue to go green gold over $2,000 will it maintain this price every time it gets over 2000 seems to sell off. Let's see if that will continue or whether we'll go higher from here gold at $2,009 Meta formerly Facebook having a green day slightly at $339. Another one of the hottest stocks in the world this year. Part of the magnificent seven Microsoft also trading around a 52 week high in the green today Netflix also trading around a 52 week high in the green today Google trading close to a 52 week high and they are slightly green today. Oil continues to be struggling recently there at $75 Apple trading at around $190 close to a 52 week high Tesla at $235 I love Tesla but I'd like to get them on a dip COMT one of my top dividend holdings that pays a 30% dividend taking it on the chin a little bit as oil is also struggling Disney around $95 I think Disney is going to break a hundred soon Bitcoin. So we did have Bitcoin hit that 38,000 mark and sell off I did sell some Ethereum on Friday as I felt like Ethereum was trading at a 52 week high Bitcoin has been trading around a 52 week high has sold off a little bit smart investors are taking profits which makes sense as it trades at around a 52 week high totally understandable but you can see Bitcoin is above this 37,000 mark and still looks very very bullish on the charts and I just think this dip is is going to be a buying opportunity in the long run. All right MSTR micro strategies one of the largest holders in America of Bitcoin all these guys do is buy Bitcoin currently trading at $512 and they've had a big year trading close to a 52 week high XRP just trying to hold 60 cents Ethereum I sold at 2100 full disclosure I didn't sell all my theorem I sold a little bit wanted to take some off the top as it was trading around a 52 week high and I wanted to take profits because that's what good investors do GBTC this is one of the largest holders of Bitcoin in North America I believe they hold about 660,000 Bitcoin it's gone from seven bucks to $30 this year been an absolute rocket and if Bitcoin continues to go higher which I believe it will I expect that GBTC will also follow suit so keep your eyes on the prize with GBTC one of the hottest stocks that's also crypto related on the planet and all they do is buy Bitcoin thank you for watching if you're not winning you're probably not watching we bring the winners see your interviews breaking news trending topics in the world of finance sports you name it we trade it I'm your host of the most your boy Richard rich TV on a Monday less than a month away from Christmas and on Friday is December 1st can you believe it let's finish this month off strong I'll be here every day throughout the week to kind of let you know what's going on in the markets our DHL just right around a buck right now up 216% BDRX up 122% these are the biggest players of the day I'm your boy Richard rich TV and I'm out peace


We want to be the most professional, unselfish, well-conditioned, toughest physical football team in the league. And in order to do that, you're going to have to find tough players and unselfish players. And we're going to constantly look to innovate and adapt, you know, regardless of who our personnel is. And I think we're going to play to the strengths of the team. And we're going to be flexible, but we're going to do it in all three phases. And we're going to have guys that are great teammates and understand how to adapt. Because you're going to see a team that's going to fly around and you're going to see a team that's going to be smart and play a physical brand of football and play to the strength of this team. We've got a lot of playmakers and I've certainly Terry and I will look to add more to them. And we're going to fly around. You're going to see a smart team and we're going to be good situational football. Well, Matt's had a lot of success and Matt's the ultimate pro. And he's a great leader. And obviously, there's a lot of things that he can do, but I don't get in comparison. Just because we did something with Ryan doesn't mean we're going to do the same thing with Matt. We're going to play to Matt's strengths. It's like we try to play to Ryan's strengths. But I'm obviously looking forward to getting in there and coaching Matt when the time comes. But it's not just Matt. It's all the guys on this roster. I mean, there's so many good pieces here and it's going to take the entire team. I mean, that's going to be a big thing and we're going to look for guys that are great teammates and we're going to hold our best players accountable. And so certainly, whether that's Matt or Grady Jarrett, I mean, they're all going to be held to the same standard. I'm fired up. Yes, I spoke to Terry. Terry, I've got to know him briefly over the last couple of days, but we share the same vision. We have the same values. Certainly, it won't be groupthink, but Terry and I, it'll be an ultimate partnership. It'll be a great collaboration and a good partnership as we look to build this team in the short term and the long term. We're just in week one and it's going to take a long process to get through this, to get familiar with the roster because things change so much. When you've got free agency coming up, you have the draft. Certainly, what the roster looks like today is not what it's going to look like in June and certainly not what it's going to look like in September when we line up week one. So it's a constant evaluation. Obviously, there's some good pieces here, but all these guys, we'll ultimately find the best 48 to go out there on Sunday. I know you've got the 53 and the 48 that dress. We'll find the best 48 to go out there on Sunday or Monday or Thursday or Tuesday, whatever day they tell us to play. But it'll be a constant evolution. Well, certainly you want to establish your own culture. I mean, there's been a lot of success here, but this is the way we're going forward in the 2021 with the Falcons. So you want to establish your culture. Like I said, it's a constant evolution. We want to continue to grow and improve. The team that you're going to be week one is not the team. You're going to be week 17 and throughout the playoffs. So they got to understand that it's going to be constant improvement. And that's what we preach and that's what we'll coach. We flew into Atlanta yesterday. My family is so excited to be here. Got into Atlanta last night and it's been a whirlwind. You know, more so the kids like, hey, this is our new home and they're fired up for it. But everything has been, it's been awesome. I mean, the whole transition can't say no good things about everybody here getting us into town. Really, your mind starts to race. You know, you go through the season. Obviously, this season was like no other, you know, with the COVID protocols and you're going through the grind and then unfortunately we lost into in a one possession playoff game. And so everything just kind of hits you and you go through this inner process. And unfortunately, when I was able to get the job, I mean, your mind just starts moving a million. It's like a new adrenaline, new energy. And then it's just you wake up and every day you're ready to there's a lot of things you've got to tackle and task and I'm ready just to go right through them. So it's like I said, it's like a shot of espresso every morning when I wake up right now. It's one of the top flight brands and sports and then obviously being in here in the city of Atlanta, the history, the makeup of the roster, several factors. Just knowing the kind of organization this was, you know, it's rare you get an opportunity when jobs like these come open that everything just kind of fits. And so it's couldn't be better. The fit for me for my family. We're so fired up to be here for this job. The city with a rich history. I'm very familiar with it. They really kind of my whole life. I've lived somewhere in the southeast, other than if you took depending on how you call DC, do you call it the southeast or you call it the north? But Joe, I've just been fortunate going from Memphis, went to high school up in DC, went to college in Chapel Hill, worked for a year in Oxford, Mississippi, to Nashville, now I'm in Atlanta. And so very familiar. It feels like home and all these cities are different, but there's a certain hospitality to it and a great, great history here and we couldn't be more excited to be here.