Axios House: Energy, climate and innovation take center stage

NEW YORK — Policymakers might be aligned on wanting to expand U.S. energy, but they often diverge on the path to get there, several business leaders and policymakers said at Axios House events at Climate Week.

Why it matters: AI is energy-hungry but also drives energy innovation. Political divides over which energy sources to prioritize can slow progress on both fronts.

Axios' Amy Harder, Mike Allen and Ben Geman spoke with Jarrod Agen, executive director of the National Energy Dominance Council and assistant to the president; Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.); Great Barrier Reef Foundation managing director Anna Marsden; Redwood Materials founder and CEO JB Straubel; and McLaren Racing sustainability director Kim Wilson at several Sept. 22 Axios events.

State of play: The Trump administration has argued that wind and solar projects are too expensive and unreliable, while also raising concerns about foreign supply chains.

• Wind and solar are "not going to be the solution for the power needs that we have," Agen said when asked whether the White House might change its approach to reach a permitting deal.

• While he didn't rule out wind and solar as part of energy's future, Agen said two concerns are sourcing — particularly if the materials come from China — and tax subsidies.

Yes, but: Levin said that while both Democrats and Republicans want the U.S. to dominate energy, he sees clean energy as the country's path forward.

• "[Y]ou have to skate to where the puck is going, and the puck is not going to the coal plants or to gas-guzzling SUVs," Levin said.
• He said it's important to have a "proactive vision" like the House Democrats' Thriving Economy Project, which includes energy affordability and modernizing the grid.
• A Lazard analysis this year found renewables are one of the lowest-cost forms of new-build generation on an unsubsidized basis.

What they're saying: Straubel said he's generally optimistic about energy and predicted the grid will back-connect with some of the new technologies in five or 10 years.

• "I think in its current regulatory framework, [the grid is] very stressed, but a lot of these new microgrids or separate islanded functions I think will end up back-connecting to the grid, and they're serving as ways to bring a lot of new generation resources ... often solar, sometimes gas," said Straubel, a Tesla co-founder.

Meanwhile, other Axios House conversations focused on how climate solutions are taking shape outside Washington — including through an unusual collaboration between global racing and protecting the coral reef.

• Wilson said there's untapped potential for sport-related companies in climate action and awareness, particularly with their platform of business partners and fans.
• For instance, McLaren Racing is using its performance engineering expertise to team up with the Great Barrier Reef Foundation to cut the manual labor involved in annually collecting at-risk coral spawn — a high-performance ecosystem on the front line of climate change.

How it works: Oscar One, the robot McLaren created and named after Australian driver Oscar Piastri (although it also stands for the Operational System for Coral Assembly Restoration), can perform in roughly 8 seconds what might take a marine scientist 90 seconds — a big impact when the effort requires 100,000 repetitions.

• When testing race cars, Wilson said, "we're constantly developing and iterating ... and looking at where it's performing, where can we gain more performance, and that's exactly the process we'll follow with Oscar Machine Two, Three, Four, etc."

Stunning stat: Coral takes up 1% of the sea floor yet shelters and feeds 25% of marine life, Marsden said. She said if the Great Barrier Reef were a company, it would be the country's fifth-largest employer.

• "Curing" coral reefs, she said, will require a collective alignment on climate because they are so sensitive to even a 1-degree change in temperature.
• "This is the canary in the coal mine," Marsden said. "It was only last year that it was declared that coral reefs will be the first ecosystem that this generation will witness losing if we don't actually do everything we can."

Go deeper: Watch the conversations.