Future Forward

Seyi (00:01.506)
Welcome everyone. It's another episode of Future Forward. And I have a dear friend on the call now. Lincoln and I met a few years ago on the Energy Conference Circuit and we've been fast friends since. And once Lincoln mentioned that he was working on a book, I absolutely had to have him on the podcast. So welcome Lincoln.

Lincoln Bleveans (00:27.991)
Thank very much. am thrilled to be here.

Seyi (00:30.904)
Fantastic. We tend to focus on Future Forward on just talking about cities, the history of cities, where we are today, and the future strategic foresight about the future that we can glean from how we've behaved in the past. And as I was reading the intro to the proposal for Climate Plus, it just

I was like, this, even the format is set in the way we tend to lay out the podcast episode. So I'm really excited to have you on here, but we'll start from you, Lincoln. What is the story? How did you, how did you get to this point?

Lincoln Bleveans (01:18.445)
boy, that is a, I often think of it as a roller coaster in the dark. I'm very, I've got a very unique background. I had a very unconventional background. think for the businesses that I've been in, I started out as a foreign language major at a liberal arts college.

Seyi (01:24.853)
Hahaha

Lincoln Bleveans (01:45.251)
taught English in Japan in junior high schools and went to law school because I didn't know what else to do and realized I was going to be a terrible lawyer. And then jumped into a startup and doing mutual funds in emerging markets and learned sort of finance by osmosis and accounting by osmosis and capital markets by osmosis. And then I learned about the independent power business. And this is back in the.

in the nineties when it was really going strong. And I thought, I've never seen a power plant in my life, but this looks really, really cool. And so I got some very, very fortunate breaks. A lot of networking that led to those breaks and jumped in with both feet. And within a couple of days of starting a job at a utility affiliate, I was in rural China, kicking tires on power plants.

And it's really, it's been a wonderful roller coaster since really around the world and across the value chain in the power industry. Everything from utilities to venture capital to private equity to mergers and acquisitions, of course, power project development, project finance, and even some workouts, equity side workouts along the way.

of very, very troubled projects. And now really bringing that all together, combined with a lot of water experience and sustainability experience at Stanford. at Stanford, I've got a really cool job. run sustainability utilities and infrastructure for the research university slash small full service city that is Stanford University. So really, it's amazing.

It's been a roller coaster in the dark, but it's landed me in a very, very cool, cool place.

Seyi (03:47.95)
I 100 % agree. Reza and I have mentioned on this show that utilities and the future, there's a mini -grid micro -grid future in the utility space and you're literally living that. Cause that is what the campus at a university like Stanford is. It's a beautiful place.

with all the infrastructure required to run almost like its own city. And I can imagine having worked at a power station, I did as well at some point in my career, you bring some of that system knowledge because it is a system. You bring it to your work daily. And I was wondering, does that sort of feed into the book, Climate Plus?

And this is also an opportunity for you to share a little bit more about the book and the influences. Yeah.

Lincoln Bleveans (04:46.817)
Yes, it's the book to be. if there are any literary, if there are any agents out there or publishers, I'm the only Lincoln Levin's out there. Give me a call. I'd love to talk to you.

Seyi (04:51.661)
Yes.

Seyi (04:59.82)
I'm pretty sure you'll get this book published, Lincoln. I'm pretty certain, yeah.

Lincoln Bleveans (05:05.089)
Yeah, it's at the proposal stage, but it's something I've been thinking about for a long time because the way, excuse me, I've come to see the world. Why I call it Climate Plus is because obviously climate change is a step function in the human reality. Economies go up and down, markets go up and down, political systems go up and down.

But climate change is a step change. It's almost like a ratchet wrench. It moves one way, it never moves back. So that's the big thing. But around that, we have pollution, air, water, soil. When I was a kid, we always used to say the solution to pollution is dilution. And in the 1970s, that seemed like a realistic.

thing to assume and what we've realized now is that our planet has hit its limit, whether it's plastics in the ocean or carbon or other, you know, the ozone layer, other things going on in air, soil and water. But then you also add endemic, which is frankly an outcome of the stresses that we're putting the system under. You add all of the adaptation and resilience and justice aspects of climate change.

In other words, how do we deal with rising sea levels? How do we deal with the migrations that are going to result from rising sea levels? The fact that parts of, for example, East Africa, mean, there are parts of the Horn of Africa that are becoming uninhabitable because of temperature rises, not just uncomfortable, but uninhabitable. And those people need to go somewhere. And we need to be, we need to find

a greater humanity in accepting that and creating a new world that reflects the reality and hopefully doesn't result in conflict over limited resources. So there are a lot of things there. as I look at that challenge, which is this, it's a wicked problem of wicked problems. It's mind boggling.

Seyi (07:10.744)
conflict.

Seyi (07:23.882)
Yes. Yes.

Lincoln Bleveans (07:26.443)
I look at that and I see so many opportunities for literally everybody, whether you are an engineer or a scientist or you are a communicator, a writer, a farmer, somebody who drives a truck, somebody who runs a market or has a place in the supply chain. There are opportunities for each one of us and each one of us

being who we are and doing what we do best, what I call a superpower. And so the book is framed, is going to be framed, have to use the future tense, is going to be framed in the perspective of how do we understand this? How do we get our mind around it as a system of systems problem? But then how do we each find agency and opportunity? Each one

Whether we're in the global north or global south or global east or global west, how do we each find agency and opportunity in making our world, our habitat, a better place?

Seyi (08:37.87)
No, thank you so much for sharing that. We don't even have to look too far. I live in Austin, Texas, and we have had what is going on the second week. We're almost at the end of the second week of 100 degree days.

Lincoln Bleveans (08:56.333)
Mm.

Seyi (08:58.126)
think Wednesday, this past Wednesday, it was about 105, but it felt like 116 or so is what was reported. So we don't even have to look too far. It is becoming a problem in a lot of places that if we don't, as you're suggesting, start to reframe things.

and think about the economy in a different way, which is one of the things you suggest in your book, we will really struggle to avoid conflict. I share that I agree with you, but then at the same time, you and I work in industry and there is a clear backlash against one of the current measures of how we're doing in our fight against the climate, is sort of these ESG measures we use. So why?

climate plus even in the midst of all the backlash that we seem to be seeing here.

Lincoln Bleveans (09:58.603)
Yeah, it's the way I think about it. And this is maybe my Midwestern optimism coming back. But to me, it's especially now. ESG is just the latest version in my mind. mean, we had CSR, we had Triple Bottom Line. We've had all sorts of different ways to slice and dice and talk about this.

Ultimately, it's just another version of trying to value the things that have always been externalities before. So it's trying to value the externalities around fossil fuel use. It's trying to value the externalities around pollution and climate justice, environmental justice, my God, all over the world.

Seyi (10:36.078)
Mm -mm. Mm.

Seyi (10:50.371)
Mm.

Lincoln Bleveans (10:54.793)
So ESG is just the latest attempt to value that. And I think that there are many people in the world who see what's happening, but also see their livelihood, see their way of life, their expectations for their life challenged by internalizing those externalities. In other words, if

a gallon of gas would include the life cycle impact, the life cycle costs of that gallon of gas. We're in a world of hurt when it comes to, at least in America, one of our favorite things to do, which is drive around in our internal combustion cars. And I'm still one of them. So I think there's a lot of a lot of fear there.

Seyi (11:38.115)
Mm.

Seyi (11:42.797)
Mmm.

Seyi (11:46.926)
Mm -hmm.

Lincoln Bleveans (11:52.583)
not so much from the perspective of, I don't believe this is happening. I think that view is waiting. What I'm seeing is more of a kind of gut practical fear that I completely understand that if we start valuing these externalities, internalizing them, and then that is going to massively reprice

Seyi (12:01.207)
It's gone, yeah.

Seyi (12:20.386)
Mmm.

Lincoln Bleveans (12:20.611)
pretty much everything we do in our world, in our lives. I think people are really, really fearful of that, really anxious about that. And I get it. I'm getting on a plane to go to Europe in a week and a half. Imagine how much that ticket would cost if all those externalities were internalized.

Seyi (12:32.952)
Yeah.

Seyi (12:42.946)
I factor it in. Yeah. No, thanks so much for that. I like that it in the midst of the backlash, you see the opportunity. That optimism is what we all need for sure. We'll switch over quickly to one of the indicators stories you share in the proposal for the book. And it is, I hope I'm pronouncing this correctly.

God is so good.

Lincoln Bleveans (13:14.815)
I think that was my guess too.

Seyi (13:17.632)
Yeah. And if you don't mind sharing the story, because my understanding is it's a tiny island in the Caribbean Sea, part of the San Blas archipelago. So I'll stop there because you share a little bit more. Because it is indicative, the story is indicative of how our cities that are economically

and ecologically dependent on bodies of water, what we need to start worrying about for our cities and what lessons we can learn from there.

Lincoln Bleveans (13:57.451)
Yeah, this is, it's an island, it's part of Panama. And it's an island of a few hundred people that's been, you know, home for those families for centuries and a ways off the coast. And they are seeing sea level rise firsthand. And so it's, it's clearly, it's taking away real estate, obviously, but

And that's the direct and kind of obvious impact, but it's also creating a very, very important impact on their utility systems. So their water system and their civil infrastructure is getting overwhelmed by the sea level rise and the impact of the sea level rise. And so what the Panamanian government has done and is doing, I think, is moving

Seyi (14:35.768)
Hmm.

Seyi (14:41.143)
Hmm.

Lincoln Bleveans (14:54.881)
those populations to the mainland. There are certain people who are holding out. course, some people will stay there until it's just a square meter of land and a flag. it's a really interesting example of real impact and real immediate right now impact. Of course, sea level rise one place is sea level rise everywhere. It's all one big body of water. But often,

Seyi (15:06.218)
Yeah.

Seyi (15:21.933)
Yes.

Lincoln Bleveans (15:23.895)
the coastlines are more, and the communities are more naturally protected, whether it's by bluffs or any sort of elevation. Here, they've actually moved these populations, these families, and their need for employment, and their need for education, and their need for housing to the mainland, and in a very proactive way.

to me, which is very, very impressive. Humans tend to be a very reactive species often to our detriment. But here's the Panamanian government moving them in a very proactive way and building the housing, building the education, finding ways to translate employment opportunity on the island to employment opportunity on the mainland. And as far as I know, and I would

If I get a big advance on the book, that's my first trip is to go down there. I love Panama anyway. I did a power project out many years ago. The food is amazing, which is a big thing for me. But apparently what's happening is kind of a best case scenario. And that is that these people are being moved to a place where obviously other people are already there and already, but...

Seyi (16:21.516)
Mmm. Mmm. Wow.

Seyi (16:30.325)
Absolutely.

Seyi (16:43.949)
Yeah.

Lincoln Bleveans (16:46.635)
As far as the news reports go, it is a relatively frictionless move. You're not getting this sort of resource conflict around real estate, spots in the local schools, et cetera, around the utility systems that all of sudden have to deal with a lot more people. So it's kind of a best case scenario.

Seyi (17:10.542)
additional people.

Lincoln Bleveans (17:15.519)
It's also a microcosm of the sort of things that are going to be happening already happening in places like Bangladesh. Places, of course, the South Pacific Island nations. This is very real. This is a clear and present thing right now. So to me, it's a really interesting microcosm. I think those sorts of examples, especially, both if they go well, we learn a lot.

Seyi (17:30.712)
Yeah.

Seyi (17:34.989)
Yeah.

Lincoln Bleveans (17:45.429)
If they go poorly, we learn a lot. And those are the things that we need to start studying and really start to have a dialogue, a public dialogue about this inevitability. how are we going to not let, this is an awkward sentence, I'm sorry. How are we going to avoid losing our humanity?

Seyi (17:47.864)
you

Seyi (17:58.766)
Hmm.

Seyi (18:08.76)
Go for it.

Lincoln Bleveans (18:14.155)
in the midst of climate change. And that to me is the question for us as a species. How do we, you know, we're losing our habitat, we got to fix that. But ultimately, how do we keep our humanity in the face of these incredible, incredible changes?

Seyi (18:16.29)
Yeah.

Seyi (18:23.267)
Yeah.

Seyi (18:31.15)
in the midst of all this.

I, Reza, my cohost on this podcast, that is the theme of his work. It's, he constantly points to the need for community, the remembrance and the sort of the active utilization of our humanity to deal with all the challenges we're facing. And, I believe he shared a few.

about how it has been confirmed that in times of disaster in cities, which is the focus of our podcast, the communities that are like bound together by the shared humanity and express that are the ones that thrive after the disaster.

Lincoln Bleveans (19:32.877)
Mm.

Seyi (19:33.992)
And there's no doubt that you're hitting on on the core question. We need to start answering now hand in hand with adaptation and mitigation where we can still make that happen. And so I'm so glad you're framing it through that lens of the humanity. Flip it, though. And one of the things you mentioned is

the advancement of technology and AI being the hype machine technology that we continue to shout about right now. How much humanity is in that as we use it to...

try and address some of the effects of climate change or figure out what our disaster or emergency or recovery plans will be. Because I believe it can help with those things.

Lincoln Bleveans (20:38.171)
I'm convinced it can. actually think, you know, there's the old, I don't know how many thousands of year olds saying, you know, cometh the hour, cometh the man. Somebody famous said that. I can't remember who. But in this case, I think it's, I have a very strong feeling that cometh the challenge, cometh the solutions. And I think AI is not the solution, but I think it's a very, very important

Seyi (20:48.706)
Yeah. Yeah.

Seyi (21:01.613)
Hmm.

Lincoln Bleveans (21:08.201)
solution. Say it's part of the starting five on the basketball team of climate solutions. I mean, it's going to be one of the stars, if not the star. AI, going back to this wicked problem, and wicked very much in the scientific sense of the word. So every way you look at it, it looks different.

Seyi (21:30.825)
Mmm. Yeah.

Lincoln Bleveans (21:36.911)
It's very difficult to tell if it's been solved and then it has these feedback loops that go on forever. We have in climate change kind of the definitional wicked problem, you know, in and of itself. And then you add all these other things around it, including politics, including these rising generations who won't take

Seyi (21:52.95)
Mm.

Lincoln Bleveans (22:03.997)
no, or even slow for an answer. You add that all together and you get this kind of wicked problem of wicked problems. And with a complexity that is simply at least beyond the way beyond the capacity of my brain. It's a little bit like I live near the Pacific Ocean and I walk down to the beach and I try to look at the ocean and the size of it

Seyi (22:06.669)
Mm

Lincoln Bleveans (22:32.767)
is just, like the Grand Canyon. just can't get, my brain just can't process it. And I think the challenges that we have here are the same in that, but when you look at AI, cometh the disaster, cometh the challenge, cometh the technology, AI is designed to find patterns within these.

Seyi (22:37.687)
Mm.

Lincoln Bleveans (23:00.967)
mind -boggling, literally mind -boggling data sets, and find options, and help us find priorities, and help us find those feedback loops. Everything we do is a compromise, especially in the energy business. Everything we do is a compromise. And so we're going to have to compromise, and compromise, and compromise going forward. But

Seyi (23:17.133)
Yeah.

Lincoln Bleveans (23:25.399)
We have to look at those compromises, again, with those externalities internalized. We have to have our eyes wide open and we have to understand those and have that dialogue. Migration being just one of them. We have to have that dialogue around those compromises. And I think AI is going to be a really, really helpful tool, if not the star tool, in helping us understand what the feedback loops are.

Seyi (23:30.435)
Yeah.

Seyi (23:39.395)
Yeah.

Lincoln Bleveans (23:55.905)
what we're not looking at, what patterns we're not seeing, and perhaps what patterns we think we're seeing and we're actually, you know, are just anecdotal or overstating their importance. But then, you know, on the other side of it is, know, technology is no good unless you have changed behavior on the human side. I like to tell the story of my, house that we bought a couple of years ago, and it came with Nest thermostats.

Seyi (24:04.867)
interpreting it wrong yeah yeah

Seyi (24:17.912)
Yeah.

Lincoln Bleveans (24:25.411)
And I'm the energy geek in the family. Everybody else rolls their eyes, but I'm the energy geek. I'm like, my God, we can save money. can save, you know, we can, we can, we can help with carbon. We can do all these great things. And what does the rest of my family do? They treat it like a thermostat from 50 years ago. They turn it on, they turn it off. it's too hot. I'll turn it on. It's too cold. turn it up. And so it's, it's a beautiful machine, but it's wasted.

Seyi (24:44.846)
You

You

Seyi (24:54.274)
Yeah.

Lincoln Bleveans (24:55.851)
It's absolutely wasted without a change in behavior, without some sort of change management process that gets us to, I want to change my behavior in reaction to this technology. Then the technology is worthless. It's literally the nest thermostat on my wall. And I see that with, just to geek out on energy a little bit, I see that with

Seyi (25:23.15)
Please.

Lincoln Bleveans (25:25.205)
Electric vehicles. When we charge our electric vehicles, that puts a very heavy load on our electric system. For a hundred years, we have been taught that the best time to do anything like that, know, wash your dishes, know, dry your clothes, is in the middle of the night. And that the last time you want to do that is in the middle of the day. And now with solar penetration, especially in a place like California,

We actually have to turn that entirely on its head and say, best time for you to charge your EV is in the middle of a bright sunny afternoon on a Sunday. And that is because that's what the grid needs actually at that point. That's when prices are low or negative. That's when the grid is actually has to curtail solar to maintain stability. And whereas at night,

Seyi (26:10.392)
Yeah.

Seyi (26:17.88)
Yeah.

Lincoln Bleveans (26:23.423)
That's when a lot of those remaining baseload fossil plants are kicking on. And that's the high carbon time. that's another example of how, yes, we get the technology, but we only really get the big benefit, both economically for ourselves, if you have time of use rates, but also for the climate. If you do exactly the opposite of what your

Seyi (26:26.754)
have to kick on. Yeah.

Lincoln Bleveans (26:51.169)
You've been taught and your parents have been taught, your grandparents and your great grandparents have been taught. So it's that duality. This is fascinating to me, that duality between technology innovation and behavior innovation. It has to go with it.

Seyi (26:54.254)
Yeah. Yeah.

Seyi (27:03.854)
Yeah, yeah. That is so well said. And the phrase I discovered was said is attributed to come at the man come at the hour is attributed to bowler and English bowler, Chris Gladwin, as his team was taking on the South Africans in some competition in 1948 or something so

Lincoln Bleveans (27:18.626)
Yeah.

Seyi (27:31.534)
I do think with your work on this book, it does feel the same. You're an expert in this space without a doubt. And the knowledge you have needs to be shared with everyone near and far when the book does eventually get sold and published. so come at the man, come at the hour, come at the man.

who will educate us about what we need to do in what is a climate plus future.

Lincoln Bleveans (28:08.269)
No, I'm very hopeful. I see the challenge. think we've spent... So much ink has been spilled and so much talking has been done about the horror side of all of this. And I think we've all... I don't dismiss that, but I think what we need now, having built that foundation of knowledge,

Seyi (28:10.68)
guys.

Seyi (28:27.395)
Hmm.

Lincoln Bleveans (28:37.141)
We now need to the opportunities and the agency and the solutions on top of that. That's the mode we're in. We're going from admiring the problem, which is indispensable. I mean, that's absolutely fundamental. But now, in my mind, and maybe it's being in Silicon Valley too and being at Stanford, it feels like solution time.

Seyi (28:44.514)
Yeah.

Seyi (29:07.074)
Yeah, yeah.

Lincoln Bleveans (29:07.125)
now and that's exciting to me.

Seyi (29:11.278)
Fantastic, Lincoln. Thank you so, so much. For any of our listeners, new or old, who might know who can give Lincoln a fat book advance, or any publishers who might be listening to this, reach out to him and give him a fat book advance. How can people reach you, Lincoln?

Lincoln Bleveans (29:24.695)
you

Lincoln Bleveans (29:33.667)
The easiest way is on LinkedIn. I am the only Lincoln Blevins I've ever run into. if you type in, and my name is, my last name spelled kind of funny. and I were talking about that before we started recording. you know, find me on LinkedIn. That's the absolute easiest way. I just, you can tell I love talking about this stuff.

Seyi (29:40.993)
Awesome.

Seyi (29:47.448)
for recording.

Seyi (29:58.764)
Fantastic. Thank you so much, Lincoln. And to our listeners, please share far and wide. Reach out if you have any comments on this episode. And as always, thanks for listening. Be kind to one another.