Leading Through Energy Affordability: The Episode That Predicted This Season (S5:E11)

The Just Power Podcast Leading Through Energy Affordability: The Episode That Predicted This Season (S5:E11) Host: Carolyn Parrs | Guest: Dr. Tony Reames, Director of the Detroit Sustainability Clinic Carolyn Parrs : Welcome to Just Power. Hi, I'm Carolyn Parrs. Here we are.

We're in the final stretch of our Leading Through Energy Affordability series. And I've been sitting with this question all season long, asking my guests: what does a credible response to energy affordability actually look like right now? We've heard from regulators, energy leaders, researchers, advocates. I hope you're listening because it's really, really rich.

And as I'm preparing for where we're headed next, I keep coming back to this conversation. Dr. Tony Reames, who was my very, very first guest on Just Power, set the tone for everything that followed. He built the first ever Office of Energy Justice at the Department of Energy.

And now he's directing the Detroit Sustainability Clinic. So when we sat down last fall, he said something that I haven't let go of. He said, the pendulum always swings towards justice, Carolyn. And that stopped me.

The pendulum always swings towards justice. Whew. What gets me is how much of what Tony said then has been proving out all season long. And the questions that he raised about who sits at the table.

What does real power look like after our federal policies have been pulled back? And our guests, whether they knew it or not, have been answering that question all along. So before we go into our final episode of the series, I want you to hear this episode, again, perhaps, and consider it a through line. So here is my conversation with Dr.

Tony Reames. Carolyn Parrs : Welcome to Just Power. Hi, I'm Carolyn Parrs and we're opening season four with someone who has helped shape the very foundation of this podcast. Dr.

Tony Reames is with us. He's back. He was my very first guest on Just Power and his clarity, his honesty and his unwavering commitment to energy justice has set the tone for this podcast and, frankly, our nation. He established the first ever Office of Energy Justice Policy and Analysis at the DOE, the White House.

And today he's the Director of the Detroit Sustainability Clinic, providing technical assistance for local communities and governments. He has spent his entire career doing the rigorous work, the deeply human work of bringing equity into spaces where it's too often been ignored. So with all that has transpired this year, with the rollbacks and the cuts and all that's happened, I wanted to begin this season with someone who understands both the policy mechanics and the human realities of energy burden to help make sense of where we are now and what the path ahead requires of us.

So welcome, Tony. Tony Reames : Oh, Carolyn, welcome to you to being full circle, right? This is a circle moment, I think. I know we'll get into the conversation, but the optimism that we had on that very first podcast.

My, my, my, my, my. But there's still a lot to be... Yeah, I'm so glad to be back and thank you for all the great work you've been doing with the podcast. You know, just exciting conversations that are really getting us to think about the role of people in this very technical energy system.

And so thank you for centering all the voices that you have over the last season. Carolyn Parrs : Thank you, I totally appreciate that, especially from you. So let's dive in. The very first question I asked you literally a year ago, right, was I asked you to define energy justice, right?

And you called forth the participation of communities and also repairing the harms from our existing system. Now here we are a year later. I just want to ask you just to get us going. Would you add anything, any nuance to that definition?

Has anything shifted for you based on what we're seeing now with policy and on the ground? Tony Reames : Yeah, the fundamentals are still there, right? I think the core understandings of energy justice remain true. And I think this moment highlights and amplifies why understanding what energy justice is is so important.

And I think also because we were able to elevate energy justice at the federal level, you see now at state and local levels, engagement like never before. I mean, energy affordability was like a main factor in the midterm, I mean, the most recent elections, right? We never heard politicians like really hone in on energy and electricity prices like we heard just last month. And so, you know, I think it remains true that we want people to participate in decision-making.

We want people to have equitable access to this transition, to clean energy, to new technology. But those harms are still there, right? And we see as the new technology rolls out that communities are still disproportionately impacted by decision making. And so that participation comes back to that.

How are people engaged in the process and what benefits they get from this transition? And so that might be the one thing that I add to it in addition to the participation is that people are actually getting benefits, right? Carolyn Parrs : Yeah, it's kind of like baked in from the beginning, right? Yeah.

So would you call this a turning point, perhaps, where energy justice really becomes its grassroots, its state-led versus this federal policy where we saw a big equity framework that was built on a political foundation and dismantled overnight, right? Tony Reames : Yeah, yeah, wow. I think I have a longitudinal perspective on energy justice. And so I often tell people I kind of bookend my work from these crisis points, right?

So initially understanding how we begin to address equity issues in the energy space came out of the energy crisis in the 1970s. And this was where we began to see these disproportionate impacts of - at that time it was both fuel oil for heating homes and gasoline, right? So in lower income communities, communities of color, those prices were much higher than they were in wealthier, whiter communities. There was less access in poor communities of color.

And so you saw state and local action on that that then grew up into the federal level where we had programs like LIHEAP and weatherization being created, right? And so we can learn from that period. And I think we did, right? We saw very similar instances during the economic recession, '08, '09, when President Obama and Democratic Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, using those federal programs to then address energy access and affordability issues at the local level.

Kind of went away after that funding went away. Still a lot of action, state and locally, but then we had the climate crisis when we came in with the Biden administration and again trying to use the levers at the federal government to support state and local efforts. And so we're in one of those lows again, which means that the efforts of activists and community groups and state and local entities kind of have to amplify and supplement the work, kind of build a case for the next policy window.

I think that's a huge learning this time. I often talk to people about Project 2025 and sometimes people laughed about that document, but that was a true government proposal, right? Those were folks, the writers were people who knew government, who understood government. They cited the work that we were doing in the Biden administration as, you know, like actual documents, like real citations, right?

Of things that they needed, that they wanted to roll back or get rid of. And so those who are pushing for energy justice, environmental justice, climate action, we have to do the same thing, right? The great thing about this country, hopefully, is that we do have these election cycles. And so we have to be ready with our Project 2028 or 2029, you know, to either take the good things that we did in the Biden administration and amplify those and really think differently about what needs to change because some of the systems have been blown up.

And so we have an opportunity to build that better like we originally wanted to do but like do that in earnest this time. Carolyn Parrs : So Tony, if you had a moment to speak directly to the people in the positions that you once had, right? Federal employees, state energy officials who know that communities are being compromised right now. What is the uncomfortable message they need to hear from one of their own like you?

Tony Reames : Wow, now that is a really great question because I have not thought about what I would say to any new political appointees. So just for the listeners, I'll say that my Deputy Director for Energy Justice role no longer exists. So I wouldn't have that specific counterpart to talk to. Carolyn Parrs : Is the Energy Justice Department still, I know it was hanging on there, it wasn't active, but it's still there?

Tony Reames : Yeah, yeah. So yeah, this is a great update for folks. The Office of Energy Justice and Equity was a rename, rebrand of the 1978 Office of Minority Economic Impact. And again, that was an office that came out of that energy crisis that I talked about.

And so it was a recognition of price gouging in minority communities. And so the Department of Energy created, or Congress created an office in the department to actually address that. And so that was our first kind of federal energy justice action, even though we weren't using that term back then. And so the office, statutorily, still exists.

When the Trump administration came in, they took it back to the original name from the statute, Office of Minority Economic Impact. However, most of the people that were hired to do the new energy justice, Justice 40 mandate work are no longer there. And so the office does manage the kind of civil rights and employee equal opportunity efforts of the department. And so it's my understanding that those folks are still around with a few folks that do work on minority business and minority educational institution work.

Yeah, back from the '70s and you know, so kind of the core element of folks at the office. Although the research team, the energy justice policy analysis team is part of that 1978 statute - not called that but the office was supposed to have a research team. And so that's where we built it out during the Biden administration. So yeah, I would say if I were to speak to some of the political appointees that are in the current Department of Energy, I would say, you know, take the words of your secretary to heart, right?

There's a quote I often use when I cite Secretary Wright, the new energy secretary, that talks about when we, you know, kind of unleash American energy, we bring about ingenuity and affordability. And I say, well, if you believe that, there's nothing more American energy than solar and wind. They still focus on geothermal, I guess, because it's drilling. So drill, baby, drill.

But yeah, that community aspect of energy, distributed energy that we were pushing so hard in the Biden administration, it did unlock American ingenuity. It did begin to bring energy prices down. And so if you believe that, then you continue to work and you build on it. You don't roll back, right?

I tell people that, you know, those of us who are clean energy advocates have to figure out a way to counter the argument that the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. So we need something clever. We need something more clever to say either about renewable energy or we need a clever way to talk about fossil energy. Because again, it's not like you, you know, frack natural gas and it immediately turns into, you know, kilowatts, right?

So that's why I'm like, you know, these arguments - they aren't necessarily based in fact. And we just have to continue to be truthful about the work that we're trying to push and advocate for, show the research, but also then find very plain ways to talk about some of this stuff. And that's a challenge, right? Because it's not easy, right?

It's not easy to explain, or it's not simple to explain. The affordability challenge is very simple, right? And if we can show that renewable energy does bring costs down - but then the tough part, Carolyn, and this is another reason I was kind of inspired by the most recent elections, was that people began to think about the importance of our regulators, like the Public Service Commission, right? Because even if we're bringing the cost to deliver energy down, these rate cases that are happening in every state, people still see their energy costs go up.

And so if we look at the trends, energy has been increasing. The cost of energy has been increasing for decades. The cost to deliver that energy may be going down. The cost of certain technologies may be going down.

But we haven't gotten the rate structures right to make energy affordable for everybody. And so I think that's a new frontier. I send kudos to my friends and colleagues down in Georgia who really put the Public Service Commission on people's radar. For many people who probably skipped that part of the ballot many years, right?

And so in states where the commissioners are appointed, people are thinking about how they reach out to their legislators, reach out to their governors to say, hey, this is kind of the characteristics of people we want on the commission. So that's another frontier while we're kind of in this low period of kind of local state action that people can take. Carolyn Parrs : I love that. I mean, your commissioners really count because they influence your utility incredibly.

And that includes your rates, putting them really on the radar, right? I've been there just because I'm in this game, but just an everyday person that just opens their bill and doesn't realize the impact that they could have by, you got a commissioner, right? And commissioners are for them. They're for the ratepayer or the customer.

So I love that. Thank you for that. What would you say to a CEO? Maybe it would be the same thing.

What would you say to a CEO, right now, if you could be like, maybe off the record, what would you say to a CEO of a utility right now in this moment we're in in energy? Tony Reames : Yeah, yeah, I think CEOs of utilities need to remember they're providing a vital service, right? And what that means is that people should have continuous access to this vital service, right? And so their ultimate goal, in addition to their investment - I know they have a responsibility to their shareholders, right?

But how do you put your customers on an equal playing field as your shareholders when you are providing such a vital service? Like we can't do anything almost without access to energy, right? And so, you know, in addition to profits, lives are on the line, right? So your decisions don't just impact the profits of the company.

Your decisions are impacting people's lives. And it's life or death for some people when it comes to energy. And so I just think CEOs should also grapple with that and I know many, you know, many of them probably do and I've seen, you know, CEOs talk about that, but that is a - I mean I think that is an element that I would, you know, love to have a real conversation with a utility CEO about. It's like how do you grapple with, you know, these kind of what seem like very separate objectives but they're totally aligned, right?

Carolyn Parrs : Yeah, yeah. When I last season had Ben Shelton on, eSource, and he had just come back from a conference, I think their conference, and they had a few CEOs or C-suite around a table. And the number one thing that they said and needed to do was listen to their communities more, right? I mean, what you're saying, actually sitting down with their communities and understanding the needs, right?

Even in the design stages, like when they, you know, have to put a substation up or create something like right from the beginning, like baking that in. So I love that. That is, that's what to me is an incredible piece that I would love to see happen more instead of just going, you know, like kind of listening in on a listening circle and then continuing on in the process, but having impact. Tony Reames : Yeah, you think about, you know, I think what's so unique about utilities is that, you know, they have these defined territories, right?

So like they have a constituent base that, you know, often in most states have no other choice, right? And so the role of those companies could have in communities - I think about like how when I grew up in South Carolina, we were a big textile community and Burlington Industries, Reeves Brothers, you know, these big textile industries were like everybody in the community worked and you got your turkey at Thanksgiving. You know, like those were like company towns or - they were true, you know, they were true community neighbors or partners, right?

And I think utilities have the opportunity to do that. I know a lot of them do it through their foundations. But, you know, that doesn't touch everybody. It's the utility bill that touches every single person.

And, you know, there's an opportunity. Like, if you knew who the CEO of your utility company was and kind of knew that they cared, I don't know, I think people would view this totally different, right? Do they have time to be on the radio or on the commercials or - and some of the bills like every quarter they send out a letter. I don't know what the opportunity would be.

Carolyn Parrs : Yeah, yeah, I see them doing that with their employees very well. But like, what about the communities that they're serving? Right? Yeah.

Tony Reames : Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because that's, you know, that's what I've been thinking about a lot, Carolyn, since the election. And I had a colleague of mine from Brown University come visit us here in Ann Arbor - Miles Lennon - that just wrote a book about, you know, solar and people's connection to solar and how if we don't deploy solar right, we create some of the same kind of energy inequities that were created with our fossil system. But like how do we reconnect people with energy in a way that makes it really a part of people's lives, right?

And so we're making decisions. We know the company. We have these feedback opportunities to say like, hey, there's this transformer in my yard and the cap is falling - the cover's falling off. You know, like, who knows?

One, people don't know a lot of the infrastructure that's like right in their yards and in their neighborhoods. And two, if there's something going on, they don't really know what to do. And so I've always had this dream about working with community groups and mostly youth because I'm thinking like we start with kids, but doing a walkthrough of a neighborhood and helping kids identify the energy infrastructure and kind of understanding like why is this here and what does it do?

And I think it will just shift like the next generation and how we think about energy. And that's what - I feel like again, in this moment of trying to figure out what's next, what's the future we build, part of that is connecting people to energy in a way that goes beyond the bill. So we can, yeah, beyond the bill. Carolyn Parrs : Beyond the bill, Project Beyond the Bill, okay?

You heard it here first, okay? Dr. Tony Reames! I love that because we flip the switch on and we flip it off or we power off our iPhones or whatever phone we have.

And that's it, right? And we need a lot of it because there's... Tony Reames : Yes, yes, yeah. Remember, like we all had - I think we might've talked about this, but like, you know, I can remember as a kid, you know, so growing up in the eighties, so again, coming out of the energy crisis and how we were thinking about conservation at that time, like all through my elementary school, we had those stickers around the light switch that was like, you know, don't leave me turned on.

It was like a little kitschy and probably had some adult innuendos that I didn't understand as a kid. But it was like teaching. And then we all had them to take home to our parents so we could put them up at home so we'd remember to turn lights out. And I remember my parents were always unplugging stuff.

So we had this understanding of like all these things are using energy and they impact the bill. And so these are the things you do to reduce that consumption. And we definitely are getting away from that. Carolyn Parrs : That's right.

I love that - reintroducing that in some way, especially with what I want to touch on is the data centers and what's happening around AI, right? We need more energy than ever, right? And, you know, we're hearing about one, two, three gigawatt data centers that are enough to power an entire city. But what I'm not hearing - it's like a growth sector right now, right?

And it gets exciting for the energy, you know, industry. But we're not really talking about what are the true costs of these developments and how the communities will be impacted from this data center that shows up when they build and then when they leave, right? So what do you think about that? Tony Reames : Yeah, yeah, is this the next boom town, right?

Is this the next boom town? You know, I can remember when - this maybe a decade or so ago when kind of Northern Virginia was having this huge data center boom, right? And people were concerned about it, but it was super localized. And so I can remember folks there kind of raising issues like, these things are coming up overnight.

And it wasn't for AI, it was more for like all our storage and our Amazon shopping and all of that. And so again, the data center issue while not new is growing exponentially. And I think the power of social media and things are making people aware of it in ways that they might not have been, right? And so it's very similar to any other type of development that - early, often engagement with communities.

But they've been able to - and they being, you know, the developers of these data centers - to get sweetheart deals with state and local governments. Because we're in this kind of economic, you know, challenge time that, you know, some people see any type of development as good development, right? And that's like you said, a growth industry right now. And so you can create some jobs, some taxes versus no - because most of them are getting tax breaks in the places that they're locating.

But those some taxes versus no new taxes is appealing to folks. But if we go back to how we started this conversation about the definition of energy justice, that participation in the decision making process and the benefits, right? Like, you know, is justice being able to say no to something or is justice being able to be included in the discussion and then getting some benefit from it? And I think it could be both things, right?

If something is going to come to my community, you know, if I don't have a direct benefit from this data center like is my data being stored there? Am I in a construction job there? No, but that's my neighbor now. So is there some benefit that I get from this being beside me versus just a bunch of burden and harm?

And those are the conversations I feel like we're not having. And when communities say no and then there's a lawsuit that then overturns the will of the local government without any type of compensation for the community, I mean, that's, yeah, that's just building more, more distrust between, you know, government and the people. So yeah, I think we gotta figure that out. Carolyn Parrs : It's really back to, you know, bringing them more into the decision, really in the decision making and explain - the whole energy is so complex.

Sometimes it's just, you know, explain how it even works can be complex, right? For so many, which I love like, right when they're when they're kids and students starting to teach them about what is energy and how that works. I think that's like a great idea. So yeah.

Tony Reames : Have you had a lot of folks talk about the potential innovation? Because I think the conversation, a lot of it has been just how burdensome these data centers are, right? Like no data center should be using clean water for cooling. I mean, maybe they should be located near our wastewater treatment plants and so they can use some of the wastewater for the data centers.

No data centers should be built without renewable energy, right? And batteries, right? I mean, so like, I just don't understand why these conversations are - why they're growing so fast and, you know, using resources that they don't have to. I guess that's the...

Carolyn Parrs : Yeah, there's other ways to do this, right? I'm with you on that. So this is almost like we need a playbook on that, okay? You know how to do a data center well.

Because here's the thing about the jobs, like, yeah, jobs come in. There's a data center happening right now, being built almost finished in Texas. The town has 5,000 people in it, right? The amount of people that came in to create this data center is 5,000.

And after the data center gets built, there'll be about 400 I hear that'll stick around to run it. Right. So it's really less than one 10%. So it has a little boom and bust feeling to me.

Right. And how does that impact the citizens that live there who are going to be there forever? Right. So these are big questions.

Tony Reames : Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Carolyn Parrs : And it's up to the local government, really, and their mayor to really push that. And I know they want to make the deal because economic development is good, but also is our conservation, all right, and our clean air and water and all sorts of things. Tony Reames : Yeah. Yeah, and a lot of these small towns are like I said, we have to understand the economic challenges for these small towns and the opportunities that they see in this development.

I often talk about how my environmental justice connection comes from my hometown. And I mentioned that it was a big textile community. But when they lost those jobs in the '90s, we brought in the state's largest landfill and the state's largest maximum security prison as kind of economic drivers, which are things that most people don't want in their community, right? And so when communities are stressed economically, they're often likely to accept things without a bunch of the guardrails around it that would protect the community and their environment.

Carolyn Parrs : Right. Yeah. Thanks for pointing that out. All right.

Going to go to Detroit now, right? Where your clinic is, sustainability clinic. And we talked about it a little bit last time, right? So you're watching the local projects, the neighborhood solar, maybe, and I remember community wealth building ideas, right?

How's it going? What are some of the key lessons that you've learned in supporting your communities? Tony Reames : Yeah, yeah, a year plus in now at the clinic. You know we're located downtown Detroit so we have space where people can come and meet with us and ideate.

You know there's so much kind of grassroots ingenuity happening in Detroit, Carolyn. I mean, people are thinking about how urban agriculture can turn into renewable energy resources, composting and biofuels. People are using solar powered bikes to deliver food across the city. Just like so many cool projects, it's hard to even keep up with everything that's happening.

The city is renovating and revitalizing many of its parks and trying to think about sustainable native plants, ways to bring their parks back to life. Yeah, the city just completed a riverfront redevelopment. And so now there is a continuous park along the whole Detroit River from like east to west. I mean, it's just a true revitalization.

You've got to come visit. We just elected a new mayor in Detroit - the first female mayor, first new mayor in like over a decade plus. And, you know, she has some exciting opportunities and ideas about how to continue the renewal of the city. And then you brought up the solar neighborhood projects.

So for folks, it's five neighborhoods that volunteered to host solar farms that will power municipal buildings. They just did the first ribbon cutting about a week ago. And what's beautiful about this is although the solar energy does not go to the homes that are neighbors to the farm, the residents were brought in to help design what the solar farm would look like. And then they're also getting community benefits through home retrofits, through some might get rooftop solar.

And so each homeowner in a certain footprint around the solar farm is getting major investments in their homes - $10,000 to $15,000. And so it's going to be... Yeah, that's - it's at the local level, right? Stay tuned, but.

But yeah, but this is - this is the opportunity, right? Yeah, this is - these are going to be the blueprints for how we kind of mirror local efforts with community efforts, bringing together utilities because our utility is the developer of three of the communities. And so, you know, again, while we may have issues with some of the things that are happening in our utilities, there are opportunities for collaboration. And I think again, that's the opportunity they have to talk about more, right?

Like how are they being a good community partner, a good community neighbor? How are they kind of bridging the energy system and integrating it into communities? You know, what's going to be the relationship with the neighbors and these community solar farms? Like one neighborhood wanted to have agrivoltaics and so they're designing the farm so people can grow things under it.

Another community didn't want to grow under it, but they did want it to be like kind of meadow style and have pollinators so that they could see butterflies in the spring and summer. Right. And so, yeah, just I'm excited to see these projects develop, you know, to kind of understand what is this new era of urban energy infrastructure. Carolyn Parrs : Yeah, urban energy and infrastructure.

That's so amazing. You hear a lot in the rural even, but it's happening right in the city. I love it. So given everything we talked about today, right?

Federal retreat, community strength, which you're talking about, even new pressures on the data centers, on energy and the resilience we're seeing on the local level. What gives you hope right now? Tony Reames : Yeah. Several things.

You know, again, as a professor, I'm teaching energy justice this semester and the students are amazing, Carolyn. And they, so many ideas and we're walking through kind of both the opportunity, the policy window we had and the changing policy now. And they're thinking about either being entrepreneurs or, you know, some of them are still saying like there may be opportunities in the federal government and how do we work from the inside? And, you know, or thinking about, you know, new NGOs and nonprofits that, you know, could support this work.

So my students keep me super hopeful because they haven't given up. They're fresh. Yeah. You know, some of them, you know, came back to school because of this moment, right?

You know, like I saw things changing and I want to come in and get some additional skills. And I think the other thing that gives me hope is, you know, right now, you know, we're 10, 11 months in, people have kind of shaken out of the initial shock and are starting to put plans in place. Right. And so, you know, I can say we may not have a Project 2029 that, you know, is all together, but I think there will be multiple plans that address some of the most pressing issues.

And I think people recognize now the importance of making sure those plans are implementable and things that might have seemed unimplementable before. I think many of us are encouraged to be like, when we have this chance again, we're just gonna go all in. And so I think the courage that I hear people speaking with now - and some of it's going to be at the state and local level so that we can then elevate it again to the federal level. And so, yeah, I remain glass half full.

I think the way we think about - is our tax system the right way to do this? May or may not be. It may not be the full answer. Our grants - is that the right way?

May or may not be. And so I think there are some new models that we need to figure out how these things are mixed and more integrated because I think that was some of the challenges that I see is that people were too dependent on any one funding stream. And so we need a more integrated approach to building out our new energy system. Carolyn Parrs : Right.

Carolyn Parrs : So everything kind of blew up, right? And now it's putting it back, really putting it back together a whole, like differently, a whole new way, right? And knowing - in some ways, I mean, that's, I don't want to say it's good, but it's definitely wakes us up. Maybe it is good.

It wakes us up to see what the possibilities are, a lot of new innovation. In closing, last show you said that, Carolyn - you said at the end of the day, the pendulum always swings towards justice. And I kept that near and dear in my heart all this time. So if that is true, like what is that one thing that people listening to you right now, right?

What's that one thing we all must do to keep the arc bending towards justice, whether it's energy or whatever level of justice that calls to you? Tony Reames : Yeah, I think one thing that you mentioned earlier when we were talking about the utility CEOs, it's listening, right? I think we've gotten so siloed and so we all are working in our own individual spaces, but we need to find the space to listen, particularly for those who are advocating for people who are under-resourced or underserved.

Oftentimes the people that are closest to the problems are also closest to the solutions. And so when we're trying to figure out what we do next to advance energy justice, we need to listen to people who are experiencing the energy injustices. And so yeah, listen, if we can all just pause, maybe put our phones down for a bit, stop asking AI questions and go listen to real people. I think the answers that we're looking for - we'll actually get them.

Carolyn Parrs : Okay. Thank you so much, Tony. Thank you so much for coming on and that answer as well went right into my heart. And thank you for tuning in.

You know, Tony said on the last show, he said that this is a once in a generation, right? Opportunity to do things different right now in our energy transition. And it is. So whether you are a paying ratepayer, customer, or a policymaker, or a student, right, or a community activist, you do have the power in this moment.

So use it. Ask those questions. Attend a meeting. Email your commissioner, right?

We talked about commissioners today. Subscribe to this podcast. Or, you know, check out your neighbor, right, who might be struggling right now. So change is not inevitable.

We need to move into action around this. But it's absolutely possible to happen because we're seeing it. Tony just talked to us about all that's happening in Detroit. I want to hear what's happening in your city as well.

Because remember, we are all in this together, no matter what our zip code.