Green Giants – Episode 26

Tristan Grimbert (01:37)

Wow, there’s a lot of memories I can recall from my first project even before I officially started. I was officially on vacation time at my previous job and I started to work in 2004 on the project that we built that year with 60 turbines from Mitsubishi and the PTCs were renewed in September and we had when they were renewed we had 70 days, to build a project. It was quite amazing and really jumping in the big pool of renewable with all the crazy schedule. But I think if I think about my career, it has mostly been driven by the big paradigm shift.

You know, 2008 crisis and when we got to buy back the turbine from SkyPower at the time, it was a very good deal, but at the same time, we had some bad news on other projects because of the financial crisis. The start of solar was also something very important for us, offshore wind, of course. So, yeah, there’s been a lot of episode and crisis over 20 years, which made it very interesting.

Wes Ashworth (02:44)

Yeah, it’s been a remarkable journey and ride just from the outside looking in and excited to get into that a little bit more in our discussion and talk through it. So, EDF Renewables started with, and still has, a strong focus on wind energy. But under your leadership, it has expanded into solar and storage and EV charging. You’re starting to see pop up as well. I guess, can you tell us about what drove that shift and how do you prepare the company for new horizons as well?

Tristan Grimbert (03:10)

I mean we are, we love wind, we love solar, so we have very strong expertise in various technologies. But basically, what we’re trying to do is decarbonize the grid. So, we are fundamentally technology agnostic. We’re fundamentally a developer and owner of renewable facilities. And the grid has evolved a lot over the 20 years that I’ve been leading the company and there’s still a lot to evolve into. So, it really doesn’t matter what tools we’re using. We’re just trying to find the right answer for a specific situation of the grid on a specific market at any point of time.

Wes Ashworth (03:46)

Yeah, I love that. And can you expand a little bit on just leading through an organization, just going to new horizons, either new business segments or products or services or things like that, just that expansion into something new? Like, how do you drive and lead that innovation?

Tristan Grimbert (04:04)

So, I haven’t intellectualized that too much, so I’m going to try to do it on the fly. But basically, I run North America, right? US, Canada and Mexico. And I’m part of the executive committee of the global level. So, we see a lot of various different markets and situations, lot of different technology, regulatory environments, penetration of renewable. So, we see a lot of different things and we always try to see how we can bring value and continue the decarbonization of the grid.

In one specific way, usually it comes with a new idea because of a market and then we try to test it and then we see if it works or not and then we develop it further. Again, it’s being really, really pragmatic about the approach and more importantly trying to solve the problem that either the regulator or the utilities have on the grid, that’s how we try to address it.

Wes Ashworth (04:54)

Yeah, I know that’s been phenomenal. And I would love to hear that a little bit more in terms of the reasoning behind it. You see companies out there that do really put their stake in this one spot, wind, maybe don’t touch some of the other areas. And you are making such a big impact across that entire picture. So, I’m curious if we can learn a little bit more of your reasoning and logic behind that why you thought that was so important.

Tristan Grimbert (05:17)

Well, maybe I can take, as you mentioned, EV earlier, Raphael Declercq the CEO of PowerFlex and myself in 2015, we pretty much saw an EV driving down the road. It’s a little bit of legend, but that’s a little bit how it happened. And we thought, wow, we’re creating so much instability on the grid with a bunch of renewable that we’re bringing that we want to control that car, we want to control that battery. And how great would it be if 10 years down the road, because we set ourselves a goal for 10 years later, we had X number of EV charging position that we were controlling to be able to provide ancillary services and basically also energy storage services to the grid. I’m not gonna give you what the X number was because we’re far from it. I was expecting the EV segment to grow faster. So we’re not where we should be as an industry on the EV side. But basically, it’s that pragmatism is we see that renewable. Of course, has great attributes, its cost, its zero-carbon intensity and et cetera, but also it also drives a total change in the way the grid operates because it’s intermittent and also because it’s located in very different areas where the centralized thermal plants were. So, we create a lot of issues on the grid that we have to solve in a collaborative manner. with the regulators and with the utilities. So, when we see something like EVs, we’re like, great, let’s go there. Let’s provide a service to the users. And the 97% of the time when the car is not used, we want to be able to control it to stabilize the grid. And that was and still the vision of PowerFlex today.

Wes Ashworth (06:56)

Yeah, okay, phenomenal. And to transition a little bit into offshore wind, we’re seeing the rise of offshore wind amongst different areas as well. And I know through the Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind Joint Venture with Shell, it’s become a focus for EDF. I’m curious just to hear a little bit more about that and then some of the unique challenges you’re facing in the space and then how do see the future of offshore wind evolving?

Tristan Grimbert (07:19)

Absolutely. So offshore is clearly a technology that has a room in some markets, not everywhere of course. First of all, we need to have shores. But also, it works in areas where energy is expensive and bringing renewable power from other parts of the country or the region is complicated. So, we have been active in offshore internationally, first in the UK, in Belgium, then in France. And then when the offshore market started in the US, we saw the potential of being able to basically use the Atlantic coast to be able to provide power inside those huge cities and load centers that are very difficult to serve from inside the country. So, the strategic vision was there, and we were trying to find a way to get in that market. We’ve made a few attempts on small projects where we were very close to close and make a dent and it didn’t work. And at some point, when you’re patient enough, we eventually in 2018 managed to buy the US wind offshore of New Jersey. I think that was our third attempt and eventually we got to buy the lease and very quickly we knew we needed a partner because those projects are very long, very capital intensive and we wanted to be 50-50 with someone that knew what they’re doing and we invited Shell on board and they were very quick and we are in a 50-50 joint venture that’s been working very well since. But as you said offshore wind is not for the fainted heart. It has a number of challenges; supply chain is one of them. There is a political will and very legitimate in my view to bring manufacturing in the US, but you have to start from scratch pretty much. I mean, the first projects are being built and we’re gonna play our part to bring that local content. I think it’s very important. The permitting is complicated. The US system is not the most developer friendly where you have to pay pretty big amount of money to buy the right to start to develop for seven years at a very costly development in a lot of jurisdiction around the world. This is something that’s being done by the government that provide the lease and make the studies and make that available for people to build. So, the cost to entry to offshore wind in the US is very high. And of course you have that, you buy that right to start to develop, you do your development, and then you need to find enough tech, is also complicated. And during those very long period of time, that may be something that we will talk about, the evolution of how long those projects tend to spread over time nowadays versus in the past. A lot of things can happen and you have to manage that. It is a big endeavor, as you said, it’s become very, very important for EDF in North America.

We’re very happy with the Atlantic Shore team and the collaboration that we have there. And we’re anxiously waiting for the last RFP result in December.

Wes Ashworth (10:14)

Yeah, no, got it. And just thinking about that space as a whole, you know, just looking at offshore wind through your eyes and from your perspective, what do you see in the future? You know, what are your thoughts around, looking at the next five, 10, 20 years in the space and where you’re seeing things go?

Tristan Grimbert (10:29)

So right now, we’re trying to be very focused on the markets where it makes sense, where there is a decent feasibility. As I said, there is already a lot of natural obstacles. So, we are trying to go where one, there is a natural feasibility like fixed bottoms and things like that, but also a strong market, strong market because of lack of other ways to get clean energy, but also political desire. So, from that point of view, the New Jersey and New York and Maryland tick all the boxes. So, I think with the six plus gigawatt lease that we have, we have among five project total, we have a few years to go. We hope we’ll contract one or two this year and then we will continue to contract a project on a regular basis. But there is a lot to do with that first round. Going beyond that, I think it’s, I’ll be a little bit more cautious and look at how is the supply chain going to build up to see whether we can bring the cost down. This is still expensive today because of that local content and novelty of the supply chain. So, we’re hoping that we’ll be able to bring the cost down to be able to expand into other markets.

Wes Ashworth (11:38)

Yeah, no, good. And it’s good to hear just your sentiment in terms of the growth in the future and what that looks like for you. I want to circle back to something we hit on earlier, just related to EVs and also mentioned virtual power plants as well. And I think you were really ahead of the curve in thinking about electric vehicles as mobile storage units and the concept of virtual power plants. How is EDF capitalizing on these forward-thinking ideas today? And then if you expand a little bit on how you see EV integration playing a role in the future energy landscape as well.

Tristan Grimbert (12:10)

Yeah, I think something that I should mention when I talk about the strategy is a term that, as you know, I was born French and a term that I use from France is strategy by capillarity, meaning that we go into something that’s adjacent to what we’re doing today, where we can bring some competitive advantages. For example, when we look at EVs, we didn’t think that we’re gonna go and invest into DC chargers in the corridor. So, we’re not advertising ourselves like a long-distance EV charging company. We’re really focused on the workplace and large sets of EV charging stations because what we really want to address is the need of the grid. So, we are providing with deploying not only EV charging but also rooftop solar, car ports and stationary batteries with PowerFlex to kind of take over the green energy generation behind the meter and the consumptions behind the meter and the services, the servicing behind the meter. So the synergy is there is that we are basing the value on the services that we deliver to the grid, but also to the customers. And we have a lot of customers that we have in common between PowerFlex and the traditional utility scale EDF renewable business, people like Walmart or Amazon are the people that we’re serving on both sides of the meter and there are synergies there. Likewise, in terms of procurement between the stationary batteries, the BSS on one hand or the solar panel on the other hand, the fact that we have common suppliers at different time horizons and for different size of product, but there is a lot of synergies there.

It’s also as a company very interesting to be able to offer synergies in the financing world as well as the talent management world because we have a lot of people going from one business unit to the other, whether it’s offshore, whether it’s what we call a distribution scale business, whether it’s behind meter or whether you TTS scale, are four business units. They can really have different careers within the same organization. And that’s one of way we retain people as well.

Wes Ashworth (14:16)

Yeah, and I think what you just outlined there, probably a big reason why your growth has been 14-fold since you’ve been at the helm. So much of that makes so much sense. But I want to come back to one other topic that we’ve mentioned just a minute ago, just around some of the supply chain challenges. And also mentioned from a just political challenge standpoint, but the renewable energy sector has been facing significant challenges from those supply chain disruptions you mentioned to political uncertainties and everything else going on, but how is EDF navigating these obstacles? And then what are some of the strategies you’re implementing to ensure project success today?

Tristan Grimbert (14:53)

So, I mean, the strategy varies a lot. I will go back a little bit to our history and our, as an entrepreneur, the company started very small as a joint venture between Pâris Mouratoglou an entrepreneur in France and that has been very successful in the US as well, NEDF, a large utility. And we’ve always kept our entrepreneurial spirit and we translate into our values as good sense. know, companies have values, and a lot of companies have very similar values. Something that’s pretty unique about EDF is beyond just safety, transparency, accountability, some of our core values. We also have one that’s called good sense and we’re trying to be very, really, really practical.

In the heydays when the market grows super-fast, people keep coming to me and say, hey, do you want to do this? Do you want to do that? What is our strategy? I’ll keep telling them. What do you think we should be doing? And does it make sense from where we are? And by capillarity or by adjacency, how do we build a new business out of the strength that we already have? And then we test it. So, it is a very practical solution. It doesn’t come from nice lies from a big strategy consulting company. It’s by getting everybody involved and putting their brain to work. And I think it’s a key factor of success as well as a key factor of retention and excitement for people because we’re trying to challenge them, and they have a right to be wrong. I mean, in 20 years I’ve made so many mistakes, I’ve run so much, but we’ve also have done some great things. So, it’s rewarding to be able to build your own path within the company and explore new avenues.

Wes Ashworth (16:33)

Yeah, and I’m so happy to hear you’ve mentioned the people side of that, you know, and I think a lot of people would give some really polished answer to that question in terms of this brilliant strategy and things like that. I think you have it, although it is practical, it is brilliant, but so much of that value into the people, you know, and empowering the people that you have. And it’s known. think EDF has a really unique ability to retain long-term employees and is known for culture and retention and those sorts of things as well, which really speaks volumes about the company’s culture and what you built there. So, I am curious to double click on that a little bit. And how do you foster innovation, create that environment where people want to stay and grow for the long term? And you highlighted a few things there, but I’d love to hear more.

Tristan Grimbert (17:16)

Yeah, I think it’s, we’re having fun. I often say we don’t grow people. My job as a leader is to create the environment where people can flourish. And we’re very transparent, we’re very direct. I am awfully direct. And one of my mottos is often wrong, always sincere. And as I said, I’ve been wrong many times and I’m trying to, I’ve got a lot of opinions, and I love to debate as any Mediterranean person. But on the other hand, I am happy to when people help me progress. For me, the discussion is about progressing together. And, you know, I’m excited by deals, I’m excited by growth, I’m excited by numbers. But what gives me the most goosebumps is when I see people growing to what I call a new orbit. When the things that I’m really proud of is when I have been able, whether it’s an assistant, an analyst, a VP or whatever, and that I have been able to contribute to create an environment where they can get to the next level and they click. I’m not doing it. My company is not doing it. They’re doing it. But we’re allowing that to happen. And there is nothing that’s more rewarding. And that’s what I remember when I retired, more than X, Y, or Z deal. One thing that gives me, just to give you an anecdote, is because there’s been a lot of our alumni all around the industry now at the American Clean Power Conference in May every year, I now have a late cocktail where I invite alumni and people come back after three, four years and they left two years ago, 10 years ago, whatever, they know each other, they don’t know each other, but it’s super nice, it’s super fun and that’s my favorite event of the whole convention. But maybe it’s because I’ve been around too long, I don’t know.

Wes Ashworth (18:51)

Yeah, that’s incredible. What are some of things you hear from those alumni or people that have maybe left or maybe gone on to do other things?

Tristan Grimbert (19:16)

Well, the one that come out of the one, I don’t want to be too naive. The one that come is usually because they have a good memory of the company, and they like us. I think they’ve typically they’ve learned a lot and it’s not just us. There are other very good players in the industry that I’m not going to name because that’s not the right way to do it. But that are also very good training ground, but because we’ve been here for a long time and also because, and that may be a bit unique for us. We have a very strong culture of transparency. We share a lot internally. And we actually tend to speak much more about our mistakes. I mean, spend 99 % of the time talking about mistakes and 1 % about our successes, which some people don’t, it’s not too American. Usually, you like to stress more the positive, but when people get comfortable with that, they actually also get more excited about overcoming obstacles and being able to grow through that. Cheap, easy victories are not really satisfying. It’s when success comes, you said we have grown, but the sector has grown. My previous company, I was in a startup and the sector was not growing and it was really difficult, very, very difficult for seven years. And I know how lucky I am to be in a growing industry, an industry that means something in terms of mission. So, it’s important that we foster that spirit of entrepreneurship, growth, ideas, challenge. And when people find that the manuals at EDF don’t tell you exactly what to do, you figure it out with your colleagues and the people that like this environment, they’re really, really flourishing that.

Wes Ashworth (20:51)

Yeah, that’s such a cool story. And I love the talking more about errors than wins, or mistakes versus wins. And I think it’s not, that’s something easier said than done, to create that culture where it really is encouraged and then people feel comfortable to come forward and like, okay, it probably maybe takes a while for them to adjust to that. Because I would say that’s not a typical American company thing where you have that sort of culture. But I think you are able to innovate and get ahead so much faster when you are harnessing that, obviously you are.

Tristan Grimbert (21:23)

I believe in that and if I can take a second on the air to take a moment to apologize to all the EDF employees that are tired of hearing me about talking about what we can do better, I would like to do that because I appreciate their patience. Sometimes I know it’s, they’d like me to be a bit more of cheerleader, but most of the people that get to know me are, get comfortable with that and we build a company and we keep going.

Wes Ashworth (21:49)

Yeah, yeah, love it, love it. And you’ve got the floor, anything you wanna share, so happy you put that out there. I’ll switch a little bit back to offshore wind a bit. Just with some uncertainty, investment risk, I think that comes up a lot. Where it represents a major investment, a lot of complexities and uncertainties that you’ve highlighted earlier as well too. What are the risks associated with offshore wind projects? And then, how do you manage these risks and ensure long-term success? Like it is a beast, it is a bear. There’s a lot of complexities to it. Not easy to succeed and win, so any insights?

Tristan Grimbert (22:27)

Yeah, there is a lot of dimension that we could cover in answering that question. First of all, whether it’s offshore or onshore, you have that, but it’s even more for offshore. You have to recognize that the project that we have are really multi-dimensional.

And I’m a biologist by training by the way, and that you only progress at the speed of your limiting factor. So, it is very, very important that you develop, we have what we call the 10 goddesses of wind, because when I arrived 20 years ago, they were talking about land, were talking about permitting, et cetera. So, I put all that in one slide to understand. And at the time there was eight categories. we’ve had 10, we call them the 10 goddesses of wind or the 10 goddesses of solar, because they guide our thinking along those disciplines that would be a more appropriate word But, it’s very important that you look at the project holistically to determine where could be the flow. So, you have to have very good SMEs, very good specialists in each of the aspects, but also people that are looking at it in a transversal way so that you don’t forget something because honestly, we’ve done a few mistakes twice, but most of the time when we’ve done a mistake, it was the first time and it’s very often hit by the bus that you don’t see coming and it’s always a different bus. This is an industry where you have to be very obstinate, you have to be very professional and you have to be paranoid all the time because there are always new things that you have not thought of like, the first time Trump put some tariff on wind turbines, it came really as a surprise, 30% overnight. And then suddenly the manufacturers tell you, I can’t deliver, but we have a signed contract. Yeah, but I can’t deliver, I’m sorry. It was really, really hard and we had to find solutions. So, you really have to be paranoid in this business, but when you overcome the obstacle and you build, you’re very, satisfied because those are very complex objects. So, the complexity, whether it’s supply chain, permitting, off-take et cetera, is something super, important to master. And I think the good developers are able to do that. And you have to do that with good sense and humility because another one of my little sentences, nothing fails like success. If you think you’re arrived, you think you’re the best, then you become complacent and you don’t see those buses coming. So, you want to remain humble in our business. That’s one critical aspect I think of our business. The second thing that I think is critical and a topic that’s a little bit new that I would like to discuss is one thing that has changed a lot in our industry over the last few years is the fact that because the grid is more and more saturated, the cost of interconnection because of the number of people, but also because of the quantity of the network upgrades that have to be done, the interconnection process has become much, much longer. So, in the US, I think 50% of the projects are delayed by one year every year. So, it’s absolutely dragging. And in the good old days, 10 years ago, in August of one year, you were basically signing your contract for the following year and you were building, that was your PTC year, you building and pretty much you are locking your off-take and locking your costs at the same time. Something I think that our industry has not fully realized is that we have become much more like the, first of all, the project have become larger, the environment is much more turbulent, and the time for us to implement and more importantly the time between the when you lock your off take and when you lock your cost is now three, four, five, six years. And you know, in three, four, five months, the world does not change much. Sometimes it does, but most of time it does not. In three, four, five years, it changes a lot. If you look back five years, things change a lot. So, I am not sure that our industry can really managing the risk as it should and has readapted to this. At EDF, we have started what we call the fly to quality, where we have really questioned the way we do business to be able to manage those risks during that interim period. Whether it is seeking index contracts, that’s critical, and you are talking about offshore, you know, during the various RFPs or rounds the customers or the PUCs have started to implement more and more sophisticated indexation mechanism because they realize that if they don’t do that, nobody wins.

And I’m gonna give you an example. I have had a lot, last three, four years have been very turbulent between trade barriers, mostly increasing cost of money. We are very capital intensive industry. So, we’re very sensitive to cost of money, inflation, great resignation, you name it. There’s been a lot of events that have really created a lot of turbulences in our industry. And we had to renegotiate a lot of contracts like everybody else. But what I’m trying to explain to utilities is that, if they give you a contract now with, I don’t know, a 200-megawatt project with $20 million security, and that you’re going to be locking your costs four years from now, in four years, there are different scenarios.One is the costs have gone down and actually we, the developer, we pocket money that could have been given to the rate payer. Two, the costs are the same and everybody’s good. Three, the costs have gone up beyond the 20 million that you have secured. And if you go there, then the developer will always make the rational decision to cancel the PPA. The utility is going to pocket 20 million and you could say too bad for the developer, good for the utility. It’s not good for the utility because once they’ve done that, they have to go back and procure, they need the energy.

Today, we are in a load growth environment, they need energy, they’re have to go and procure again, which take them, let’s say a year to procure, then a year to approve. And they’re two years late for now a project is gonna be even still four years later. And they will have paid the market price. So, it’s, know everybody’s obsessed because that has been our tradition towards fixed pricing, but we are really, it’s really in everybody interest when you have four, five, six-year timeline to do index pricing. Then we’re a cost-plus business. We don’t want to make an in-due windfall if the costs go down and we still want to make the project if the costs go up. So, it’s a very important concept that we’re trying to discuss with the off-taker today across the US.

Wes Ashworth (29:07)

I appreciate you putting that out there. I think it’s good insight to have and hopefully those listening can kind of take that to heart as well too. As you look at the industry as a whole, are there other things that you wish companies were doing or others were doing in order to improve upon that, either from the time being so long? Maybe it can be impacted, maybe can’t. But also, as you said, more of the focus on where it’s not fixed, those sort of things as well. I guess for those that are listening that are potentially leaders in these other companies or organizations or advocates or what have you, what are some things you wish they were doing that they’re not?

Tristan Grimbert (29:50)

So, I don’t know what they’re doing today. So, all of them at least, but one thing that we are really focused right now is understanding well our contingencies. So, on the off-take side, we’re trying to get more and more index contracts and to that extent offshore fits the bill. And actually, the mechanism that we have seen are pretty good. We’re in constant discussion with the authorities to make those evolve in a way that makes sense for both them and us.

But on the cost side, we are doing a very deep dive into our contingencies. And in the long-term, long duration infrastructure project, you calculate your tornado chart of your contingency like any engineering companies would do, but you also have unknown contingencies. So, you always have kind of a layer on top of that. So that’s something that we’re revisiting, which I think is not a standard in industry, but that will become, because we have to cover such a long period of time between when you contract your project and when you start building it. And that’s a really a paradigm shift in our industry.

Wes Ashworth (30:52)

Yeah, I’m glad to hear you’re leading the charge in that as you, I think, have been a leader in the industry over the last 20 plus years in some of these initiatives. So that’s great insight. And I do want to cover, so looking ahead at next year and beyond, so as we approach 2025, getting pretty close now, what are the key trends and challenges you foresee for EDF renewables in the broader renewable energy sector, particularly changes in political leadership to just the sentiment and thinking about you as an executive in a leading company, 2025, what are your thoughts? Where’s your head at with that?

Tristan Grimbert (31:31)

So, of course I know the result of the election, I won’t share. No, I’m like everybody else, I mean, the total dark, but I think from a pragmatic point of view, more seriously, sorry, as I said earlier, the load is growing and that’s really a big change, whether it’s electrification. Of course, data centers are a huge part of that. EVs is a part of that. But also, for the last two years, there’s been more heat pump being sold than gas furnaces, the electrification is ongoing and they’re gonna be more and more need for power. And yes, we need to still find ways to firm renewables, but also renewables are the quickest way to get energy on the grid. The big challenge for us in the short term is how, and it’s not the short term, I think it’s a 20-year challenge. I’m not sure I’ll be working another 20 years, but that will be necessary to solve that challenge is how do we allow, not only 45 % penetration of renewable like we have in California, but 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%. And we do a lot of analysis on the way the power markets behave. And every 10 % of penetration, they completely change. And it’s an order of magnitude of difficulty every 10%. So, we have a lot to go. And yes, lithium-ion batteries are critical for the current phase. They are being deployed and that’s absolutely necessary for this, the current stage. But we also need to find ways to store energy or to manage energy differently, which are, we absolutely need, know, at the APRI seminar last year, I was asked, you know, what would be, what would you do if you had a magic wand? And I’d love to have a technology that $10 a kilowatt month that would store power for 12 to 48 hours. And that will be a way to go overnight with the solar and over the two, three, four days of non-winter event in Texas. So that would be for the short term, the one to a few days’ timeframe to go over the instability of the grid. And beyond that, we’re going to have the inter-seasonality. So, and I think from that point of view, geothermal as the heat geothermal, not necessarily geothermal to power has a big role to play. So, there is no shortage of challenges. And very fundamentally, we at EDF, we believe in an energy mixed, we believe in multiple technology solution for either different markets and different geographies and climate and et cetera, but also different stage of development of those markets. So, we’re very big into pump storage, for example, in Europe. And I really hope that we will find a path to market a revenue model for pump storage. That’s a great technology that is very valuable to stabilize the grid. And it has been really hard to develop any, none has been developed for years in the U.S. And that’s for me the next stage. If you want to go to beyond 50% penetration of renewable, at some point you’re gonna have to have, again, hydro and pump storage coming back. So, it’s not the lack of ideas, it’s how do we get incrementally to those solutions that we are trying to find a path to.

Wes Ashworth (34:55)

Yeah, and I have to ask just for intrigue and I people want to know, just thinking about new technologies, new developments, things that aren’t quite there yet, are there any things that you’re particularly excited about or things that you’re following closely?

Tristan Grimbert (35:10)

They are those that I will not name but as I said the few dozen or a few dozen of hours of storage is something that’s very important, I think, for the short term, that we find a solution. There is something like 70 different providers. we’re testing a number of them. And I really, we are in partnership with some utilities around the world to test some of those solutions. What I would like to see is more of those test program with our utility partners so that we can test more of them because we need that solution to emerge quickly and the California type of pilot program are always very useful because you don’t make really money on it, but you are able to deploy some technology and cover the cost of testing basically. I hope there’ll be more of those.

Wes Ashworth (35:57)

Yeah, no good. And I want to ask you a question too, just thinking about, cause I follow a lot of, there’s a lot of startups in the industry, a lot of investment money happening, a lot of companies emerging that are this early stage startup. It’s a tough road to go. As someone that’s been in it longer, your organization’s a bit more mature and the growth kind of going past that stage, but still harnessing that entrepreneurial spirit. What advice would you give? know, some of those entrepreneurs that are starting up in the space, what are some key points of wisdom from you?

Tristan Grimbert (36:30)

Well, I started my CEO career at 30 years old, running a seven people startup. So, I come from that world a little bit. And I will always remember, as I mentioned, it was really tough at some point, and it took me six years to have enough money at the beginning of the month to pay people at the end of the month. So, I had some, know, cold sweat at night waking up to say, I need to call the customer in the morning to get the cash in. It was tough.

But I always remember in year two or three, my head of sales, again, it was only one sales guys, but he was head of sales still, came to me and said, we lost that RFP again. And I don’t understand, I don’t understand. We’re doing everything right. We have the right product. We have the right pitch. And then he talked for about 10, 15 minutes. I had nothing to say because I was disappointed like him. And at the end he stood up and he said, yeah, but you know, when you do the right thing, it always pays off. And he left. And that resilience, Frederick Jack Ma is his name, if you ever listen, has always been a lesson for me, is that stick to the right thing. Be realistic, be humble, challenge yourself. Don’t believe your own BS because sometimes we are enamored with our own self-speech. So question yourself. But on the other hand, if you’re convinced in your guts, in your brain that you’re doing the right thing, not, mean, some of those ventures will fail anyway, just bad luck but you have to look at recognition in your own guts and your own brain and persevere and then at the end it will pay off.

Wes Ashworth (37:50)

Yeah. Such great wisdom and advice there. Glad you were able to share that. And I know there’s a lot of folks beyond just really established companies that listen. There are lot of entrepreneurs that are in that phase. So, know they’ll get a lot of insight out of that, as I did as well. So, a couple more questions, kind of as we conclude or get closer to time. So again, looking ahead over the next even decade or beyond, in thinking about towards the latter half of your career, that there’s, you said maybe you won’t be here in 20 years still working in the industry. You might be, we’ll check. But I guess what excites you most about the future, just in general, of renewable energy? And then what role do you see, just seeing that EDF continuing to play in that energy transition overall?

Tristan Grimbert (38:37)

Who knows? Well, we have a huge problem to change. I am a big climate advocate and it’s nothing short of making a livable planet for our kids and grandkids. mean, it sounds very cliche and but that’s really why I work. I’m going to tell you an anecdote. We have, we try to have as often as we can the Sunday lunch with the family. My kids are in their twenties now and my son is in the renewable industry as well. And one day we were discussing, and I was telling him about carbon capture because I’m a renewable guy. I never thought about it. It was a few years ago. I’m like, well, you if it works and if we put a big vacuum cleaner at the end of those thermal plants and we capture all the carbon, I don’t care. Maybe we don’t have to build as much renewable, but at least we’ll capture it. And he said that that is actually, I said, well, you know, I think it’s going to take about 10 years to get it to work and then 10 years to fully deploy, then 20 years, start to inverse the curve. And he looked at me and he said, well, you mean that in 40 years we’ll be back to where we are today? Can we go have lunch? And that’s very depressing, Dad. And I’m like, that’s the quickest it can happen. And that day my motivation to keep working and say, I don’t want to leave them a world that is clearly going in the wrong direction when you look at the climate, faster than all the prediction.

We have a bigger duty to them and we have to make it happen faster. We have to be pragmatic. We’re not gonna replace gas tomorrow morning everywhere because we need to stabilize the grid. But we have a duty to our kids and that’s enough to keep me working. I don’t need more than that.

Wes Ashworth (40:24)

It’s a good why, it’s powerful for sure. You can definitely see even how genuine you are in that and just feeling that even across this virtual setting. So that’s hugely powerful. Last question, so any other sort of just parting words, things that you would like to be key takeaways? Somebody listening to this, key takeaways from the episode or things you would want them to make sure that they heard?

Tristan Grimbert (40:50)

I was in Calgary for the Canadian Renewable. I’m in New York right now because I’m being interviewed as part of the New Jersey process for offshore and I was in Calgary yesterday for the renewable energy conference and I had dinner with some of the ISO members and actually different ISO members across all utilities across Canada. you know, one of the concerns that we have and I’m not sure it’s a very, very inspiring thoughts, but one of the concerns is that everywhere we know that being able to supply the amount of energy that we need to supply in a reliable fashion is gonna be costly. Because not only you need to deploy new generation means, and even though renewable cost is generally going down with all the trade barriers in the US, it’s actually the cost have not gone, have stopped to go down, but actually starting to go back up.

Not only that, but also you have to build the grid, right? So, building the grid is gonna be very expensive. So it is really hard, I was discussing with those utility and ISO executives and they’re really struggling with the affordability piece of equation. And it’s really hard to see how we’re gonna be able to do that without rate increase. At the level of reliability, that people are used to. when there is an alert by NERC anywhere, the politicians are freaking out, the population are freaking out, blackouts are unacceptable. However, if we start to look at our demand side in a more rational way and say, we want our retail rate to go from, let’s say 15 or 20 cents? We don’t want them to go to 80 cents.

But do we need the same level of reliability? Would we be willing to give up some of the demand? Does that really matter if you have only half of your lights on at night? Does it really matter if then your thermostat is taken over and it’s five degrees more or five degrees less? It’s not pleasant. Today, we cannot imagine anything, but it is voluntary.

But if it’s at the cost of society, you know, it’s, we may want to think the demand side of the equation as well, not only the generation side. That’s not the business we’re in. Well, we are a little bit with PowerFlex, but I think it’s an area that we need as a society, we need to think about. If that’s the cost of preserving the planet. Just a food for thought.

Wes Ashworth (43:24)

I agree wholeheartedly and that’s a great way to just kind of wrap this up, but I think it’s got to be on both sides. I really do. So if anybody hearing, just take that to heart, you know, and that’s what it’ll take for sure. So that’ll wrap up our conversation with Tristan, President and CEO of EDF Renewables North America. It really has been incredible hearing your insights on leading one of the most impactful renewable energy companies throughout nearly two decades of growth, innovation, transformation. So, thank you for joining us today, sharing your journey, strategies and outlook for the future of renewable energy.

 Thanks as always to our listeners out there tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, leave us a review and share it with your network. We’ll see you next time.