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What happens when Stanford tackles sustainability.
Backed by a whopping $1.69 billion endowment, Stanford’s Doerr School of Sustainability — its first new school in more than 70 years — opened its doors two years ago, and what else came along with it but a new sustainability-focused accelerator specifically for the Stanford community. Seeking to move research out of the lab and into the real world, the Sustainability Accelerator provides early stage funding and a deep network of university-affiliated support to its grantees.
Now that the accelerator has staffed up, gathered insights from its first funding cohort, and given more structure to what is still a very flexibly organized program, I wanted to know more.
The basic concept sounded very Stanford-y indeed — gobs of money, a hugely valuable network, entrepreneurial vibes out the wazoo. But that’s nothing new. When I was at Stanford as an undergrad over a decade ago, The New Yorker’s Nicholas Thompson, now the CEO of the Atlantic (and a fellow Stanford alumnus), quipped that the school had come to resemble “a giant tech incubator with a football team.” This was in the early days of Snapchat and around the time when over a dozen computer science students dropped out to work on the Venmo-wannabe Clinkle, which went up in smoke soon after. Concerns about the university’s deep ties to Silicon Valley and the preponderance of potentially pointless startups coming out of it coexisted with plaudits poured on alumni founders with started-in-a-garage-now-we’re-here type stories.
I thought it was all a bit much. But now there’s a sustainability accelerator, and man, does that sound like something we could all get behind. So I talked with the accelerator’s faculty director, Yi Cui, and managing director, Jeff Brown, about the accelerator’s goals, what sets it apart from the infinite other funding avenues in Silicon Valley, and how they go about deciding what concepts have the potential for widespread adoption, either in the commercial or the policy space.
Brown himself is a Stanford alum with a deep background as a Silicon Valley engineer and founder — in other words, he can talk the talk as well as he walks the walk. Prior to his current role at the sustainability accelerator, he was founder and CEO of Novvi, which makes plant-based oils for use in the lubricants industry. He told me that one of the primary elements that sets Stanford’s accelerator apart from other incubators or venture capital funds is that it’s not just focused on technical solutions to climate and sustainability problems.
“There’s a lot of challenges beyond technology,” Brown told me. “This is market development, this is frameworks that need to be globally aligned, this is policy that leads to new legislation in a global scenario. And so at the accelerator, we’re thinking about these things at that scale, and working in a very interdisciplinary manner across all those spaces.”
Thirty-one projects were selected to join the accelerator’s initial cohort in the summer of 2022, their teams generally comprised of researchers with deep subject area expertise — mostly professors partnering with other professors, faculty members or postdocs. Topics spanned the gamut from highly technical ideas like electrifying steam cracking reactors for industrial chemical production to policy projects such as reforming California’s approach to wildfire management or partnering with stakeholders to support the energy transition in Southeast Asia.
“We are interested in water, food. We are interested in climate adaptation,” Cui, a Stanford professor in both the Materials Science & Engineering department as well as the Energy Science & Engineering Department, told me. “We are also interested in new approaches that could be highly scalable for sustainability — for example, synthetic biology.” He also cited grid decarbonization and industrial decarbonization as focus areas.
And yet Brown also told me it’s vital that all teams, even policy-focused ones, demonstrate that they have potential backers outside the Stanford bubble. For legislative solutions, “you have to go out into the community and find that people agree and are willing to adopt that and move forward with you.” And for technical solutions, Brown said, “you've got to show that customers are willing to receive it, and there are other funding sources that buy into that, as you're going to need increasing capital to scale.”
For the accelerator’s first cohort, projects were organized into one of three categories based on their level of maturity — planning, mid-range, and large-scale, which dictated the amount of funding they were eligible to receive. Brown didn’t want to disclose how much money Stanford is pouring into these projects (although he did say they have a “large budget” to work with) but a 2022 request for proposals indicates that Level 1 projects could secure up to $100,000, Level 2 up to $400,000, and Level 3 up to $1,000,000. It also noted that project teams can specify their own timelines, ranging from three months up to a year, with the option for follow-on funding based on a project’s progress.
Going forward, cohorts will be organized around particular climate themes, a.k.a. “flagship destinations,” which will include key metrics for scalability and speed. The first focus area for the 2024 group is greenhouse gas removal, for which 16 projects were chosen based on their potential to remove a gigaton (that’s a billion tons, folks) of greenhouse gas from the atmosphere by 2050, either by technical or policy means. Examples include transforming rocks and mining waste into efficient CO2 sponges, and developing a monitoring, reporting, and verification framework for ocean-based carbon removal.
Brown emphasized the importance of MRV particularly, the Achilles’ heel of many well-intentioned carbon removal efforts. Reforestation, for example, “is not a technology problem,” he told me. “It's a framework problem around the MRV challenge, and getting the legislation in place, and getting community alignment around the world on how to execute this properly.”
Some in the Stanford community worry, however, that the choice of greenhouse gas removal as a focus area was influenced by the university’s fossil fuel connections, as big oil and gas companies often tout carbon capture as a solution that would allow them to continue producing fossil fuels. The Doerr School does accept research funding from fossil fuel companies, and three years ago, Stanford’s Precourt Institute for Energy collaborated with Shell, ExxonMobil, and TotalEnergies to host a workshop on carbon management. The Doerr School itself cited the meeting as one of two events that led to the focus on greenhouse gas removal.
Cui, though, has downplayed the meeting’s influence on the accelerator. In an interview with the Stanford Daily, he said that “greenhouse gas removal has always been incredibly important to everybody. It’s not because of the workshop.” It’s one of a few key climate solutions he always brings up in his talks, he added. “So it wasn’t hard at all to get to the point and say this should be the first flagship destination.”
In an effort to build the right internal partnerships, the accelerator is launching a postdoc fellowship program, in which entrepreneurial fellows will team up with faculty members to work on projects that align with flagship destinations. The inaugural class should be announced by the end of July. Cui told me the accelerator staff is also contemplating an entrepreneur-in-residence type of program and finding ways to deepen connections with the Stanford Graduate School of Business, which has already partnered with the Doerr School for its ecopreneurship programs.
The point, of course, is to leverage the full weight of the Stanford network, giving project teams access to the entrepreneurial expertise of Silicon Valley as well as the interdisciplinary skillset among the university’s different schools and departments. It’s a much higher-touch experience than teams would get at other incubators or accelerators, Cui told me.
“We actually build an ecosystem,” he explained. “We provide coaching if it [a project] needs coaching. If it needs outside partners and connections, we build that in, we help the team to do that. And if the team doesn't have an entrepreneur type of person, we might hire a person to work with the team.”
And given the university’s reputation as, well, a tech incubator with a (now bad, I hear) football team, Cui stressed that there’s a surprising amount of promising research that never sees the light of day. “There are many technologies, many solutions actually developed in Stanford faculty’s lab — they don't come out, you're not even aware of them,” he told me. But their potential in the sustainability space could be huge, Cui said. “The accelerator’s function is super important to further grow and amplify the entrepreneurial spirit on Stanford campus, and also orient the faculty into working on scalable ideas.”
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How the Migratory Bird Treaty Act could become the administration’s ultimate weapon against wind farms.
The Trump administration has quietly opened the door to strictly enforcing a migratory bird protection law in a way that could cast a legal cloud over wind farms across the country.
As I’ve chronicled for Heatmap, the Interior Department over the past month expanded its ongoing investigation of the wind industry’s wildlife impacts to go after turbines for killing imperiled bald and golden eagles, sending voluminous records requests to developers. We’ve discussed here how avian conservation activists and even some former government wildlife staff are reporting spikes in golden eagle mortality in areas with operating wind projects. Whether these eagle deaths were allowable under the law – the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act – is going to wind up being a question for regulators and courts if Interior progresses further against specific facilities. Irrespective of what one thinks about the merits of wind energy, it’s extremely likely that a federal government already hostile to wind power will use the law to apply even more pressure on developers.
What’s received less attention than the eagles is that Trump’s team signaled it could go even further by using the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, a separate statute intended to support bird species flying south through the U.S. from Canada during typical seasonal migration periods. At the bottom of an Interior press release published in late July, the department admitted it was beginning a “careful review of avian mortality rates associated with the development of wind energy projects located in migratory flight paths,” and would determine whether migratory birds dying because of wind farms qualified as “‘incidental’ takings” – harm or death – under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
While not stated explicitly, what this means is that the department appears to be considering whether to redefine these deaths as intentional under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, according to Ben Cowan, a lawyer with the law firm Troutman Pepper Locke.
I reached out to Cowan after the eagle investigation began because his law firm posted a bulletin warning that developers “holding active eagle permits” might want to prepare for “subpoenas that may be forthcoming.” During our chat earlier this month, he told me that the eagle probe is likely going to strain financing for projects even on private lands that wouldn’t require any other forms of federal sign-off: “Folks don’t want to operate if they feel there’s a significant risk they might take an eagle without authorization.”
Cowan then voiced increasing concern about the migratory bird effort, however, because the law on this matter could be a quite powerful – if legally questionable – weapon against wind development.
Unlike the Endangered Species Act or the eagle protection law, there is currently no program on the books for a wind project developer to even obtain a permit for incidental impacts to a migratory bird. Part of the reason for the absence of such a program is the usual federal bureaucratic struggle that comes with implementing a complex statute, with the added effect of the ping-pong of federal control; the Biden administration started a process for permitting “incidental” impacts, but it was scrapped in April by the Trump team. Most protection of migratory birds under the law today comes from voluntary measures conducted by private companies and nonprofits in consultation with the federal government.
Hypothetically, hurting a migratory bird should be legally permissible to the federal government. That’s because the administration loosened implementation of the law earlier this year with an Interior Department legal opinion that stated the agency would only go after harm that was “intentional” – a term of art under the statute.
This is precisely why Cowan is fretting about migratory birds, however. Asked why the wind industry hasn’t publicly voiced more anxiety about this potential move, he said industry insiders genuinely hope this is “bluster” because such a selective use of this law “would be so beyond the pale.”
“It’s basically saying the purpose of a wind farm is to kill migratory birds, which is very clearly not the case – it’s to generate renewable electricity,” Cowan told me, adding that any effort by the Interior Department would inevitably result in lawsuits. “I mean, look at what this interpretation would mean: To classify it as intentional take would say the purpose of operating a wind farm would be to kill a bird. It’s obviously not. But this seems to be a way this administration is contemplating using the MBTA to block the operation of wind farms.”
It’s worth acknowledging just how bonkers this notion is on first blush. Is the federal government actually going to decide that any operating wind farm could be illegal? That would put entire states’ power supplies – including GOP-heavy states like Iowa – in total jeopardy. Not to mention it would be harmful overall to take operating capacity offline in any fashion at a moment when energy demand is spiking because of data centers and artificial intelligence. Even I, someone who has broken quite a few eye-popping stories about Trump’s war on renewables, struggle to process the idea of the government truly going there on the MBTA.
And yet, a door to this activity is now open, like a cleaver hanging over the industry’s head.
I asked the Interior Department to clarify its timeline for the MBTA review. It declined to comment on the matter. I would note that in mid-August, the Trump administration began maintenance on a federal dashboard for tracking regulations such as these and hasn’t updated it since. So we’ll have to wait for nothing less than their word to know what direction this is going in.
And more on the week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy projects.
1. Santa Fe County, New Mexico – County commissioners approved the controversial AES Rancho Viejo solar project after months of local debate, which was rendered more intense by battery fire concerns.
2. Nantucket, Massachusetts – The latest episode of the Vineyard Wind debacle has dropped, and it appears the offshore wind project’s team is now playing ball with the vacation town.
3. Klickitat County, Washington – Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson is pausing permitting on Cypress Creek Renewables’ Carriger solar project despite a recommendation from his own permitting council, citing concerns from tribes that have dogged other renewables projects in the state.
4. Tippecanoe County, Indiana – The county rejected what is believed to have been its first utility-scale solar project, flying in the face of its zoning staff.
5. Morrow County, Oregon – This county is opting into a new state program that purports to allow counties more input in how they review utility-scale solar projects.
6. Ocean County, New Jersey – The Jersey shoreline might not get a wind farm any time soon, but now that angst is spreading to battery storage.
7. Fairfield County, Ohio – Hey, at least another solar farm is getting permitted in Ohio.
Talking NEPA implementation and permitting reform with Pamela Goodwin, an environmental lawyer at Saul Ewing LLP.
This week’s conversation is with Pamela Goodwin, an environmental lawyer with Saul Ewing LLP. I reached out to her to chat about permitting because, well, when is that not on all of our minds these days. I was curious, though, whether Trump’s reforms to National Environmental Policy Act regulations and recent court rulings on the law’s implementation would help renewables in any way, given how much attention has been paid to “permitting reform” over the years. To my surprise, there are some silver linings here – though you’ll have to squint to see them.
The following chat was lightly edited for clarity.
So walk me through how you see the Trump administration handling renewable energy projects right now under NEPA.
In general, the federal government has been much more reluctant to the timely issue of permits in contrast to what we might be seeing on the more traditional side of things.
But that’s separate from NEPA — it relates to public notice and comments and the opportunity for third parties to get involved, ensuring any decision-making on the government side is done in a way that’s evocative of a fair system. On the NEPA side, I don’t know if they’re going to treat renewables any differently than they’re going to treat other sorts of projects. That’s different, from a policy perspective, [from] how they’re handling the permits.
If, from a policy perspective, the federal government is less inclined to make a determination about a particular project — or if it decides that it doesn’t like wind, for example, and isn’t going to issue a permit — that’s different than the procedural elements associated with a NEPA review.
The Supreme Court recently ruled in the Seven County case that agencies can be granted a lot of deference in their reviews under NEPA, seeing it more as a procedural statute than a substantive roadblock. What will this lead to?
I think that what we’re seeing – and every agency’s different – but what the court said is that lower courts should defer to the agency to establish their own protocols under NEPA. They’ve begun to streamline the process by which they issue permits, issue notices of those permits, and give people the opportunity to comment on them.
What we’re anticipating will happen if the court gets its wishes – and candidly, I think this is a good thing for developers, on both the renewables and non-renewables side – is that we’ll see more expeditious permitting from the federal government.
You may not like the determinations. There’s a possibility that certain permits are denied if the nature of the permit is in conflict with the federal government’s policy and intention. But you’ll get a quicker decision than you used to get. And if there’s a will to issue a permit, you’ll get it faster.
We’ve heard the concept of permitting reform or NEPA reform as a leveling of the playing field, but in this environment, it is not entirely clear that’ll be the case. Where does the battleground turn then for those who get, as you put it, rejections faster?
That’s a great question. Regrettably, the immediate battleground is the courts. There is certainly a right and an opportunity for anybody who feels a determination was incorrect to challenge that, and to challenge the particular agency’s implementation of NEPA.
Okay, but what’s the remedy here if renewables companies are just getting rejections faster from the Trump team?
Without a real-world example, it’s hard to give you legal theories, but they will always exist. It’ll be circumstantial, and good lawyers always come up with good arguments. I don’t think this issue is fully resolved, either. The Supreme Court has done a favor to everybody by at least defining the issue, but now we’ll have to see what happens as agencies make these kinds of determinations.