Roadtrip Nation

>>Narrator: How do I know which path is best for me?

Is it possible to take on these challenges and obstacles?

Where do I even start?

What should I do with my life?

Sometimes, the only way to find out is to go see what's possible Since 2001, we've been sharing the stories of people who ventured out and explored different career paths and different possibilities for their futures.

This is one of those stories.

This is Roadtrip Nation.

[MUSIC] >> Daniella: There's a certain level of urgency now around sustainable practices.

>> Leila: You go to class and your teacher's like, the planet's dying, enjoy it while you can.

>> Rebecca: Something people get really hung up on is they look at the doom and gloom.

>> Jennifer: But we have really big and ambitious clean energy goals here in New York state.

>> Adam: We're gonna be on a path to 100% clean energy.

>> Michael: How do we make buildings create more energy than they even use?

>> Tony: How do you maintain grid stability?

>> Cheryl: Farming in a way that is not as harmful to our environment, to our climate.

>> Adam: There's these global benefits about having more clean energy.

But there's also these decisions about communities and people.

>> Rebecca: The social side get lost a lot.

>> Adam: But there's so many bright young people and so many people who want to see a change.

>> Daniella: There are just so many opportunities to work in the energy industry.

>> [MUSIC] >> Jennifer: There's definitely a place for everyone, diverse backgrounds.

>> Rebecca: You could be a lot of things.

>> [MUSIC] >> David: There's this momentum that clean energy has.

>> Julia: Clean energy is cool.

A lot of cool stuff happening.

>> Leila: I really liked the idea of living off the land.

I'm excited to learn what kinds of clean energy jobs are out there.

>> David: That's what this road trip is for.

>> [MUSIC] >> Julia: This is Roadtrip Nation's Empowered State Road Trip.

>> [MUSIC] >> David: So for the next three weeks, >> Leila: I'll be traveling with Julia and David around New York, interviewing a bunch of leaders in sustainability and clean energy.

>> David: It seems like all three of us are super passionate about the field.

>> Leila: It'll be an adventure.

We'll all get to know each other and I'm sure we'll be super close.

Kind of reminds me of camp.

[LAUGH] >> [MUSIC] >> Julia: Welcome to Buffalo.

So, normally Roadtrip Nation takes these road trips in these big green RVs.

But we're actually gonna be in energy efficient vehicles for our trip.

>> David: Yeah, even if we're not gonna be in the big green RV, we still wanna take the Roadtrip Nation spirit with us, so, we'll swag out the vehicles a bit.

>> Julia: Yeah, looks good.

So on this trip, we're gonna be interviewing leaders in variety of spaces, including high efficiency buildings, HVAC, heat pump technology, wind energy, solar energy, clean transportation.

>> David: Really looking forward to hearing about problems like energy storage and the cost of alternative energy sources.

>> Leila: I'm mostly excited to just gain a new perspective on clean energy.

>> Julia: I'm excited to ask about their journey.

What got you there?

What decisions did you make?

>> [MUSIC] >> Julia: My name is Julia Dworetzky, and I'm currently working as an energy engineer in New York City.

>> [MUSIC] >> Julia: I feel young but I'm acting semi adult like.

>> [MUSIC] >> Julia: I am a year ish into my job as an energy engineer.

Just some light reading.

>> [MUSIC] >> Julia: I'm really enjoying the work here and learning about buildings and energy and their efficiencies here in New York.

But I wanna have a larger scope, and I'm at the beginning of my career.

I feel like I could end up in a lot of different places.

So, I'm going on this road trip to teach me about even more opportunities that are out there, career choices.

I'm just excited to learn about the energy landscape here in this state that I care a lot about.

>> Leila: [LAUGH] >> [MUSIC] >> Julia: So the first half of our trip will be upstate.

>> David: And I think getting out and seeing the whole state as a whole will be super cool.

>> Leila: In Buffalo, we went to go get OG buffalo wings, and they were really good.

They filled me up, I ate that whole basket.

There had to be like 20 wings in there.

[LAUGH] >> [MUSIC] >> Julia: Well, welcome to Buffalo.

>> Leila: Buffalo's pretty cool.

>> Julia: Does it remind you of Elmira?

>> Leila: No.

[LAUGH] >> [MUSIC] >> Leila: My name is Leila Tevlin, I'm 19.

>> [MUSIC] >> Leila: What excites me about sustainability is that, I just really like the idea of living off the land and solar energy and water energy and wind, because it's just a lot better and healthier and also looks a whole lot cooler.

Windmills just look dope, [LAUGH].

>> [MUSIC] >> Leila: Being in college and taking all of these sociology classes and things like that, it's fascinating, but my perspective is kind of a little bit more depressing than other people.

Because you go to class and then you wanna learn about rocks and trees and then your teacher's like, the planet's dying, enjoy it while you can.

But, I do wanna like meet somebody in this field who can kind of give me a little pick me up.

And learning more about other parts of sustainability, like the social aspect and the financial aspect in order to have a all around sustainable world.

>> [MUSIC] >> Julia: We're gonna get to see how Niagara Falls is used for clean energy.

>> David: I think technology has this ability to contribute to the climate crisis.

And, hopefully it'll help me figure out where I fit into everything as well.

I'm David Yang, and I'm 21 years old.

>> [MUSIC] >> David: I'm currently studying CS and sustainability.

There's a big push for greener, more sustainable applications of computer science, like in the cloud space, green cloud, or green AI.

Performing these huge computations without this massive draw in power, or from a clean source of power.

Clean energy is something that really energizes me.

The idea of being able to make an impact with my work and what I'm doing day to day, that's something that excites me.

But it's still not super obvious to me where my degree and my combination of degrees is gonna take me right now.

And I guess, that's what this road trip will help me find out.

>> [MUSIC] >> David: So yeah, we're gonna check out the Maid of the Mist Boat Tour which uses electric boats.

>> [MUSIC] >> Leila: Never been to Niagara Falls before.

I don't know, it'll be an adventure.

Got my shoes ready, aren't they cute?

>> [MUSIC] >> David: The boat's green colored, can't believe they painted it just for us.

I'm not too excited about getting soaked in the cold weather, but seeing the falls up close will be worth it.

>> Kevin: The beauty of this boat is it's a green boat, it's all electric, zero emission.

And you've got Niagara Falls, which is an original source of green energy, so a green boat being powered by green energy, it's just a perfect combination.

>> [MUSIC] >> Leila: Whoa, look at that, that's crazy.

>> [MUSIC] >> Julia: It feels a little bit silly, cuz we're all wearing these blue overall things and water's splashing you, but it was gorgeous.

>> David: So after this, we're gonna be talking to Daniella Piper.

She's the manager of the New York Power Authority's Western Region.

So we're gonna learn a bit more about how energy is being generated by these falls.

>> [MUSIC] >> Daniella: Hydro is really exciting.

I think of the Niagara Power Project as a marvel of engineering.

You have to think about what it took to build this plant before there were even computers.

It's massive, it was built in three years, there are just so many opportunities to work in the energy industry at Niagara in particular, whether you're an engineer, somebody who works in the trades, an electrician, a machinist.

>> Julia: So we're on this trip to learn about New York's energy landscape and learn from you.

So to kick us off, could you tell us a little bit about what you do?

>> Daniella: My name is Daniella Piper, and I'm the plant manager here at the Niagara Power Project.

We are the largest renewable resource in New York State.

We take water out of the upper Niagara River, we divert it under the city of Niagara Falls and that water is used to generate electricity.

The pump storage project acts as a storage, as a battery.

We're able to pump water up into the reservoir, it holds 20 billion gallons of water.

That water can be used to generate electricity, enough electricity to power the equivalent of 3 million homes in New York State.

And we have communities that have been disproportionately impacted by fossil fuels and things like that.

And I think the push to decarbonize to reduce our impact on the environment will have a positive impact on these communities who have been negatively impacted.

And so we've been partnering with some of these environmental justice type groups on how we can transition some of our fossil plants to some form of renewable or storage.

Because we feel that we need to be part of and lead the way to this decarbonization.

>> Leila: Can you tell us a little bit about what inspired you to come here?

>> Daniella: Sure.

I'm from Trinidad and Tobago originally, so I'm an immigrant to the United States.

And my dad is an electrician.

And when I was younger, I would see him working around the house doing projects, and I would help him with those projects.

So I think that's what really sparked my interest in electrical engineering.

In Trinidad, I worked on the construction of process plants, and so that was my first exposure to working in an industrial environment, working in the field, working in a field that is very male, dominated by men.

And so I ended up coming to the City College of New York, did my undergrad.

My mom always wanted me to have that opportunity because she didn't go to college, and so I ended up doing my master's in electrical engineering and, I'm like, I want to learn some more.

So I did a master's in, it's really a civil engineering master's, but it's construction management.

>> Julia: So that's two master's.

And you're working full time at the same time.

>> Daniella: Yes.

>> Julia: Wow, so the focus of our trip is clean energy in New York State.

And I guess, status update, where do you think clean energy is going in the state?

>> Daniella: Yeah, well I'm really excited to be in New York State, because New York State has some of the most aggressive goals for decarbonization in the country.

The grid of the past was a grid where it was more about you had all these big generating stations just sending out power.

And the grid of the future is a bi-directional grid.

Let's say you have your own house, you have your solar panel on your house, you can also supply power to the grid.

And when you think about demand response and what's needed to control all of these distributed resources, it's all digital.

It's all digital, it's all communication networks, and so the operator of the grid has to balance all of that.

You need to have private LTE networks, you need fast Internet, fast processing capability to really crunch all that data and control the grid in real time.

>> David: That's really cool to hear about, especially as a CS student.

>> Daniella: Yes.

>> David: It's cool to hear how technology is influencing this area of clean energy.

>> Daniella: Yes, it definitely is.

And so New York State is committed to decarbonizing fully the electric sector by 2040, and NYPA is a big part of that.

We feel that hydro is key to achieving those goals because it's a reliable and flexible source of clean energy.

New York has a goal of 9,000 megawatts of offshore wind, and we see that happening.

I'm excited to see it, things are happening really fast.

>> Julia: Are you gonna get to see it, you think?

>> Daniella: I think I'm definitely gonna get to see it.

>> Julia: That's so cool.

>> Daniella: Yeah, cuz NYPA has some partnerships with companies that are building offshore wind.

So I think we're definitely gonna be part of it.

>> Julia: I'm so excited for you to take us with you.

>> Daniella: [LAUGH] >> Julia: It's gonna be so great.

>> Daniella: It will be.

>> Leila: How important do you think it is for our generation, Generation Z, to be involved in this?

>> Daniella: Innovation is really key to solving the challenges, it's key to cracking the technology to get sort of long duration storage in place.

In terms of the workforce, different skills are gonna be needed to manage the grid of the future.

So I think there's a certain level of urgency now around sustainable practices.

You're the ones who are going to have to really live with this, right?

And you're a key part of fixing this challenge.

>> Leila: I guess I have a question about, sometimes when I step into some sort of new role and I feel like it's a big deal I kind of like freak myself out.

I'm way in over my head and things like that and especially being kind of a minority in this field.

There aren't really that many brown people or identify with they/them pronouns and I'm non-binary.

How do you deal with those doubts, feeling like you're the odd one out in these situations?

>> Daniella: Yeah, I think, you know, it's taken me a while.

[LAUGH].

It's taken me a while to figure that out myself.

I think the one thing you have to tell yourself is everybody struggles with this.

One of the things I've learned is not to compare myself with other people.

I've done that where I compare myself to others and think about, you're in your head about what people think about you or who's better than you.

I think just being aware, I think as a female I experienced it.

You can tell yourself that this is what I'm feeling, but it's not true, I'm as good as anybody here in the room.

I deliver, I support the team, and it's something we have to work on all the time, at least for me.

>> Leila: I really needed to hear that.

>> Daniella: So it's not something that you only feel when you're young or you're just starting your career.

There are different times in your career when you'll feel that.

And I think it's about knowing that you can compete with the best of them and just knowing your worth.

>> [MUSIC] >> Julia: I thought Daniella was an amazing first interview.

>> David: Yeah, I think Daniella was awesome.

I'm glad that we had a good experience to start out on.

>> Julia: Because you're waiting for the bad ones.

>> David: Yeah, yeah.

[LAUGH] >> Julia: For me, seeing someone who's in a position of authority and is an engineer, but is also normal and nice.

>> Leila: It really shocked me how passionate she was about this because usually when you hear about people working in a power plant.

I don't know, if you've seen The Simpsons, bro.

>> David: Yeah, Homer Simpson.

>> Leila: Yeah, and she was so passionate.

>> Julia: All right super into it.

I walked away like NYPA, NYPA.

>> Leila: [LAUGH] >> Julia: Definitely was geeking out seeing and hearing all about how this works.

>> Leila: Yeah, huge nerd alert, man.

>> Julia: It's insane.

>> Leila: [LAUGH] >> David: That was so fun.

>> Leila: That was really fun.

So far it's been super cool.

David and Julia, they always give me the aux in the car.

What music are we feeling like?

>> [MUSIC] >> Leila: After Buffalo, we went to Ithaca.

>> [MUSIC] >> Leila: I think that low income communities and marginalized groups are more affected from us not being sustainable, they just don't have enough money to just be able to ignore it.

It's really affecting people, and people die because of climate change every day, and it's just, it's sad.

I would love for somebody to just share something with me that gives me a little bit more hope about the future and things like that.

>> [MUSIC] >> Leila: Next, we're going to interview Rebecca Evans, and she's the leader of sustainability in Ithaca.

>> Julia: A big focus of Rebecca's work is focusing on the Green New Deal, which Ithaca is trying to implement.

And they're working to solve the community's various issues and their sustainability efforts.

>> Rebecca: So this is City Hall, and then right next door is the Conference Center.

It is the first conference center in the world that will not be using any fossil fuels.

So it's all electric, even in the kitchen, which is a massive restaurant-sized kitchen, that can do banquets and that sort of thing.

It was a huge uphill battle to get it there, convincing restaurant-level chefs to kick natural gas out of the building was- >> Julia: You do electric, or like induction?

>> Rebecca: Induction, yeah.

I can remember, it was the first year that I was working in higher ed and I had a student who was a sophomore Black woman.

And we were talking about doing a presentation, or like a teach-in on the social side of sustainability and how climate change affects different populations differently.

And I remember telling her, I don't wanna be another white woman in front of a room talking about racism.

And she got really somber and straight faced and she was like, we need you to be doing that.

I still get goosebumps when I think about it.

And that moment changed my life.

And that's what I've been doing ever since.

And I've really found sort of a niche for myself in terms of, I know policy, I know how to write policy.

I know how to analyze policies so that we can figure out, we don't wanna build policy for most people and then try and patchwork it so that it works for everybody that gets left behind.

I think we should be doing the opposite, and that's where I found my niche here.

But when we're talking about sustainability, it's so driven on energy and greenhouse gas emissions.

But the social side gets lost a lot.

>> David: Speaking of that social side of sustainability, I was wondering how this idea of environmental justice shows up in your work today, day to day?

>> Rebecca: Yeah, and that's exactly what I do every day.

So I write policy, this past May, passed my first ever piece of legislation that defined, yes, thank you, very proud moment.

That defined climate justice communities, or, as the state is calling them, disadvantaged communities, specific to the city of Ithaca.

So here we're a college town and we have a lot of renters and it is heavily gentrified.

So how do we incorporate those elements into policy to make sure that we are diverting resources to the people that need them?

Typically that's fixing water main breaks or filling potholes, really boring stuff.

But as I'm sure you know, it's usually the wealthier neighborhoods that are served first, so there's that.

One of the intentions of Participatory Budgeting is getting people that don't typically vote to participate in democratic processes.

So that means that undocumented immigrants are able to vote, youth are able to vote.

Basically trying to remove all of the hurdles that prevent city government from engaging with certain populations so that we can actually make progress here.

>> Leila: Environmental science and sustainability can be kind of a depressing field because I go to my classes and like, the planet's dying, and I'm like, we're not gonna be able to stop it.

And I don't know, it makes me feel kind of powerless.

Sometimes I kind of wanna just change my major.

How did you deal with just the depression of being in environmental science and policy?

>> Rebecca: I'll let you know when I figure it out.

>> Leila: [LAUGH] >> Rebecca: I don't have a lot of fear about the future, and I don't feel sad and I don't feel depressed.

What I feel is a deep sense of rage, and that is really what I've had to learn how to channel.

And that's, I think, what I do every day.

>> Julia: That's renewable energy, right?

>> Rebecca: [LAUGH] Yeah.

There are a lot of reasons that I'm angry.

People aren't acting.

They're not acting fast enough, they're prioritizing the wrong things, we're forgetting about huge swaths of the country and the world.

When the Green New Deal started as a concept in Ithaca, it was because we were angry.

We were angry about what was happening and we could not make progress on a college campus.

So we thought, how do we force their hand?

And it was going to the municipality and legally forcing their hand to decrease carbon emissions.

>> Julia: What do you think, as individuals, what is the best route to be supporting sustainability goals wherever you live, not throwing out plastic as much, maybe won't help that much, but it's something.

But what can you do?

>> Rebecca: One person cannot go up against global corporations and fix climate change, but one person can influence 100 other people, and each of those 100 can influence another 100 people.

And then you have this huge massive movement, which is exactly what's happening right now.

That's why young people are running for office.

So seeing the tides change of young people feeling empowered enough to run for office and winning, always gets me in my gut.

I cannot fix the city of Ithaca and make it carbon neutral.

It's going to take collective power and harnessing that anger which has so much power to make change.

And it's just figuring out, where do you fit in this puzzle, and how do you channel that power into something that's good, or at the very least that makes you feel good?

>> Leila: I don't ever think about people in policy being cool.

I usually think of them being very restrictive and making things more complicated than they need to be.

But she really laid it down in simple terms.

>> [MUSIC] >> Rebecca: Nice to meet you.

>> Leila: Thank you so much.

Thank you.

It was really nice talking to you.

>> David: I'm really glad I went on this trip.

So far it's been so much fun talking to these cool people.

I'm just really looking forward to hearing about all the different aspects of clean energy.

>> Leila: Look at that thing, man.

This trip has been super exciting and eye-opening.

I'm hoping the next part of the trip will be just as enlightening.

>> [MUSIC] >> David: I'm hoping to talk with people who work on the tech side of clean energy.

Because traditionally, tech is opposite kind of to this idea of clean energy, and just hearing why that doesn't have to be true.

>> [MUSIC] >> David: I like mine golden brown like a normal person.

>> Julia: [LAUGH] >> David: But Julia over here teaching me how to make burnt marshmallows, I don't know if I'm the biggest fan [LAUGH].

>> Julia: Burnt is better.

>> David: I don't think it is approved by the FDA, that's all.

>> Julia: Hey, I've lived this long.

>> Leila: [LAUGH] >> Julia: This road trip could very well inform me about whether I want to stay in the clean energy industry and what is missing from the puzzle of adopting clean energy in the state, in the world.

Is there an answer?

>> [MUSIC] >>David: We're halfway through our trip and it's been a good first half.

>>Julia: Interviewing all sorts of people in clean energy.

>>Emma: Definitely we have reduced emissions when you have an all electric aircraft.

>>Michael: That building creates way more energy than it consumes something led you to.

This is what I want to be part of.

Don't lose the fire in your gut as to why you did it.

>>Julia: This is what New York's all about Wondering what to do with your life?

Well we've been there and we're here to help Our website has some awesome tools to help you find your path And you can check out all our documentaries, interviews and more Start exploring at roadtripnation.com