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Episode #134: 'From Saving Pucks to Saving Power, Transitioning from Hockey Hall of Famer to Clean Energy Warrior' with Mike Richter, President of Brightcore Energy [an Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast]

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The work being done to advance the clean energy transition is being pursued by a diverse array of leaders, some of whom have been in the sector their entire lives and others who found it amid their career journey. These varying perspectives help bring new vantage points and angles when it comes to tackling the future of energy, but the career trajectory of today's guest on the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast might be the most unique. Joining this week as guest is Mike Richter, the Hall of Fame goalie for the New York Rangers turned President of Brightcore Energy, a company implementing modernized energy efficiency and renewable energy solutions.

In this special episode, Richter joins the podcast to discuss the journey from NHL superstar turned clean energy warrior. From defending the net in the 1994 Stanley Cup to championing energy efficiency solutions as the President of Brightcore Energy, Richter's story serves as a testament to the remarkable intersections between sports, personal convictions, and sustainability. Throughout this candid conversation, Richter shares with podcast host Jason Price and producer Matt Chester the influential role his athlete sons play in shaping his vision for a greener world, the lessons he's learned in the energy sphere, and the crucial collaborations with utilities. Offering insights into his advocacy for social equity and environmental justice, he emphasizes the importance of overcoming inertia in the realm of energy transformations. Whether you're a hockey aficionado or an energy enthusiast (or both!), this episode promises a captivating blend of sports nostalgia and clean tech inspiration.

Prefer to Read vs. Listening? Scroll Down to Read Transcript.

Thanks to the sponsor of this episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast: West Monroe.  

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Did you know? The Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast has been identified as one of the industry's 'Top Energy Podcasts': blog.feedspot.com/energy_podcasts/

 

TRANSCRIPT

Jason Price: 

Welcome to the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast. This is the show that brings leading minds from the energy industry to discuss the challenges and trends that are transforming and modernizing our energy system. And a quick thank you to West Monroe, our sponsor of today's show. Now let's talk energy. I am Jason Price, Energy Central podcast host and director with West Monroe coming to you from New York City. With me as always from Orlando, Florida is Energy Central producer and community manager, Matt Chester. Matt, today is an episode I know we both have been quite excited for because it comes at the intersection of two of our passions, the energy industry and professional hockey. Matt, you grew up in the tri-state area in the 1990s, so I assume you've long been familiar with today's guest.

 

Matt Chester: 

Yeah, you're right about that, Jason. I've always been a sports fan since I was young and I can recall finally both attending in person and watching on TV games featuring today's guest and even I think assuming his avatar and a few video games. So the fact that a few decades later, here we are with the chance to have him on our podcast to discuss what is now the focus of each of our careers in clean and efficient energy technologies. It feels a little bit like a full circle moment.

 

Jason Price: 

Good stuff, Matt. And as a New Yorker in my core and a big sports fan, I share those sentiments. We're fortunate enough to welcome to the podcast today, the US Hockey Hall of Famer and the 1994 Stanley Cup champion, Mike Richter. And as much as I know you and I want to just gush over his illustrious career in the world of hockey, since he hung up his skates in 2003, he started another quite impressive career in the world of energy. Specifically, he went to Yale to get a degree in ethics, politics and economics with a concentration in environmental policy and founded the Environmental Capital Partners, a $100 million private equity fund for resource efficiency before becoming president of Bright Core Energy in 2016, a company that provides end-to-end energy efficiency solutions to the commercial market. We definitely are eager to hear about both of these impressive careers and perhaps the intersection of them. So without further ado, Mike Richter, welcome to the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast.

 

Mike Richter:

Jason, thank you. I'm thrilled to be here. Matt, we've had some good conversations leading up to this, so I am really happy to be here. This is great.

 

Jason Price:

Awesome. We're thrilled to have you. You are here to talk about clean tech and your role in the energy transformation, so take our listeners on your journey from US Hockey Hall of Fame to what brought you to the energy industry and President of Bright Core Energy.

 

Mike Richter:

Well, it's in some ways a bit logical. All competition rewards efficiency, and if I'm a more efficient skater than you, I'll get the puck more than you do. If you're a more efficient runner, you're going to win the race and business is no different. So the products that you create, the operations within your four walls, all of them are going to help your bottom line if they're more efficient. And when you're speaking about energy, the reduction of waste, i.e. more efficiency happens to go aside very well when you're dealing with fossil fuel based culture with a decreased carbon footprint. And that's what we're trying to do. So we are looking to make buildings specifically more efficient operationally by changing the infrastructure inside them and new builds as well, having more efficient operating systems. No different than cars evolved over time to have lower miles per gallon used for transportation.

We're hoping that buildings have less carbon molecules per day of use and there's great off the shelf technology to do that. And so I do think there is that intersection. It seems somewhat plain to me, but the broader question is why would you ever do that? When I retired from hockey, you live in this incredibly insular world as a professional athlete and I loved every bit of it. I would be doing it now if my body would allow me. And I was really intrigued about the personal challenge, but I think the aspect that is somewhat bothersome is I've had such good fortune in my life and so many people that helped me along the way and there's a lot of serendipity and luck involved and hard work of course, but I can't say I made the world a better place because I stopped a hockey puck. And I can say that if you put your mind and your capital and your effort to making the world cleaner in the air and the water, you are making the world a better place.

And I do think you can make a dollar doing it. So I feel like this journey is a way of, and maybe it's a little self-aggrandizing, but you're helping the world get to the place it needs to go because we need to get there desperately fast.

 

Jason Price:

Well, let's stick with being personal. So in our prep call, you've got personal and shared how your two sons, athletes in their own right, influence your day-to-day thinking on the world they will inherit. Tell us about how this thinking is shaping your direction at Bright Core Energy.

 

Mike Richter:

Well, we are a for-profit company of course, and I think this... Going back to where we just left off, this is an important consideration for everybody, for people running their businesses, for building owners, for the people that are living in these buildings. I mean, we're sitting in the middle of New York right now and somewhere between 60 and 80% of the greenhouse gas emission comes from the built environment. You have Elon Musk doing things with cars. Now Ford comes in with a truck that leapfrogs that and you're able to plug in your house and use it as a battery for your home. We are not talking about... And this maybe you can get into this later, but we're not just saying green for green's sake. This is green for human's sake. This is a better environment in which to live, to work, to breathe. And I remember I got onto the board of some local environmental groups like Riverkeeper when I lived here in New York.

And a lot of it was to do the work that they're doing and support it. I believe in it deeply, but also it's to learn how to operate in a whole different environment. I'm out of my element. When I left the rink, really here I was 38 years old and looking to start a new career and someone once called me a surprise environmentalist and I thought, well, as an athlete I'm a surprise environmentalist? First question is what does an environmentalist look like? What does somebody who caress about the environment look like? And I would argue it is everybody. This is not a political thing, whether you're conservative or liberal, you want clean air, clean water. How you go about it may be different, but I think we all do want the same thing. So this is something that is very much necessary in our society and supported by people pretty much across society.

And there's definitely arguments on how to go about it, but I think most people would expect it's government, it's capital markets, the NGOs, it's everybody to do it. So I think there's a really large swath of untapped demand out there for what we're offering generally. And I say we, I mean the energy industry writ large, doing cleaner energy. We all want it. We love the fact that there's not tailpipe emissions on these cars. Can you clean up the production them? Sure. This is about better though. It's not about simply saying, boy, I want my building to perform with a low carbon footprint and therefore I'm going to make sacrifices the put on the cardigan sweater and turn down the heat. That's not it. We're talking about heat pumps and lighting that's aesthetically more pleasing and more controllable and more durable. That's maintenance, lower operating costs. And of course with that efficiency comes a lower carbon footprint. So I would absolutely switch the word green or sustainable with the word better. We're making better products and we should be evolving toward using them as quick as we can.

 

Jason Price:

Interesting. So now that you're in this space, what has been the major points of learning for you? What are the hurdles you saw in the energy world that were previously perhaps invisible?

 

Mike Richter:

Well, first of all, business itself, it's a contact sport. It's very difficult starting a company. I had a few efforts in that regard and it's wonderfully challenging. I think you get up in the morning when you're tired and not seeing success and if you feel like there's a real reason to be, we are trying to move the world and our society to a better spot. It helps the motivation for sure, but also you want to have success at whatever you touch. And so I have found how challenging and interesting and difficult the business world is generally and running a businesses specifically. I've had tremendous help by really good people around me and I'm surrounded by just two other awesome partners and a really foundationally our company has just good people. So I think the success comes with that. Also, I think the word inertia comes up a lot in our four walls.

There's so much opportunity out there, billions and billions of dollars to be put to work in just the C&I space. We don't really do residential and there's plenty of good competition and bad competition out there, but there's room for all of us to be very successful. What the difficult part is we don't lose jobs necessarily to the competition down the street as much as it is just inertia. Why do we still drive all the internal combustion system cars? Because that's what we're used to driving inertia. How do you change the infrastructure of a society? It is pretty easy to badmouth fossil fuels, but it is in everything that we do and it's hard to just turn that around overnight, but we have some time pressure to make that exactly happen. And that's why it does take all hands on deck, but I think you have to never be satisfied but also have patience to understand there's a perceived risk to anything new.

There's a little bit of an aversion to change. The adoption of electric vehicles has been a long time coming. You can argue that there's superior in many ways and there's still improvements we have to make in terms of range and how quickly you can charge them and whatnot. But there are no oily floors and oil changes and gas station stops. There's different things and I think we have to get accustomed to that because progress means that you have to do things differently and that can be uncomfortable and that's a real lesson that we learn every day.

 

Jason Price:

So in your work you're constantly trying to collaborate with utilities to put forth solutions that work towards a common goal.

 

Mike Richter:

Yeah.

 

Jason Price:

But just sharing that vision isn't always enough. We've had a lot of listeners who think like you and work for the utilities. So what have you learned about how to partner with them most effectively and what advice would you offer to the utility leaders listening in on how you wish the process was perhaps made easier for people in your shoes?

 

Mike Richter:

It's interesting. I had read somewhere where the utility industry is the most hated industry in America. I'm not sure that's true, but people love to hate them. And I have found across the board that these are intelligent, dedicated and quite lovable people. Honestly, these are very smart people running these very complex systems. I've read a little bit about how our grid, however you want to define that, has come to be. And nobody waved a magic wand and said, this is the biggest machine on earth, here's how it operates. It started in different areas, it's connected in, I don't want to say haphazard ways, but this thing evolved over time and it is still evolving and we absolutely rely on it. So again, you want to talk about inertia. How do you change the fundamental operating system for our energy and change its source, its ability to hit more demand?

And I've got three boys. We all have our cell phones and computers and gadgets, and so I just look at my house and how much electricity draw that I have. We have increased our demand probably on a per capita basis over the last couple of decades, and that does not seem to be slowing down. And then you start saying, well, if we have to phase out fossil fuels, how do you do this with the intermittency of the energy sources? So it's the clean energy sources. It's so difficult to accomplish what they've been tasked with accomplishing, and we are asking them to do it yesterday. So I think I have a real appreciation now for how difficult it is. And I will say, I mean look, we're a New York state-based company and what's going on in this state is phenomenal. I mean, they really are making our lives easier because they've got a hard job and they're looking for people to come up with solutions and partner with them on various levels.

And we've found great traction having conversations, how can we help you? Our small tail shouldn't be wagging this dog, but where can we play? Because we as a company, any enterprise wants scale and to go pick up the phone and cold call individual customers one by one is going to be a long hard ordeal. Whereas you sometimes have customers coming to ConEd for instance, and saying, "Gee, I'm at end of useful life of this oil furnace. Is there a more efficient way? What direction can you steer me? How can I do this?" But there's incredible incentives out there that people are working hard to do. Money comes and then it goes away. These things are inconsistent. They're not necessarily predictable. Political cycles are a lot quicker than the cycle of transformation of our grid.

So you're going to have different sensitivities and objectives and outlooks and philosophies that they all have to kind of roll with while we're trying to rebuild what is the largest machine I think in the world, right? Our national grid. So I've been impressed with the groups I've spoken to and more and more we are trying to reach out doing the pilot projects. To me, that's a really fantastic opportunity for them and us because look, I can knock on your door and say, I've got the greatest thing since sliced bread. But at some point you put your money where your mouth is and let's see how this thing operates. Let's see how you operate as a company, whether there's a road to be working together, but there's good people out there. There's a lot of off the shelf technology and there's a lot of experimental technology that needs to be flushed out. And we're so fortunate here, right in this territory and net grid territory.

But all across, we've spoken plenty, plenty of utilities, but you have quasi-governmental groups like New York Power Authority, Nyserda that are just there to foster the ability to move to a cleaner future. And they're not just words. These guys are putting real money and real experiments and great big brains in this topic. So I've been very impressed with every bit of feedback I've had from the utilities we've spoken to and hope to do plenty more in the future.

 

Jason Price:

Yeah. I agree. New York definitely is a progressive state when it comes to energy policy. So you mentioned pilots. Are there any favorite pilots you could share with us?

 

Mike Richter:

Well, the first one that comes to mind is we're doing a geothermal retrofit in 129 year old building on the upper west side of Manhattan. And the technology we have has been proven in Europe, and we have an exclusive rights to it here. And it's the ability to have a smaller drill rig, which you need to put the boreholes in the ground and use the thermal mass of the earth as an energy sink. Geothermal is incredibly... It's been proven. The closed loop systems have very low maintenance, very little failure, but very expensive to put in. And now with the tailwind of the Inflation Reduction Act and the fact that there's mandates in places like New York City with local law 97 where you have to start lowering your carbon footprint, it starts to make sense that people say, "Well, I'm not replacing oil with oil."

And we're literally... We had a very committed board to seeing this through. We had a huge help from Nyserda, a grant for a special technology where it can use a ground as a thermal battery and preheat and pre-cool the ground so I can pull it out given what's going to happen in the weather or the season coming up. It's absolutely fascinating. So this is a really interesting project where it's going to get most of the common areas. It'll diminish the greenhouse gases by something like 41% in those areas. We are drilling, we're taking apart a small drill rig. Again, very rare technology that's been used overseas for probably a decade or two, and we're applying it here and we can take this thing apart, put in the freight elevator, go into the basement and drill the boreholes within the confines in the building's perimeter.

So we never go on anybody else's property. Then we just use the thermal mass that is the bedrock of Manhattan and a pretty cool metaphor. I mean it used to be the coal room way back when, then it changed the oil room. Now it's going to become the geothermal room. So there's real progression and evolution there, and we're incredibly proud of it, but it doesn't happen without the help of some of the incentives and the grants that get these things off the ground. And that's the whole idea is why do you have these tax abatements and incentives because you want to use that tax code to incentivize the behavior we want and the behavior we need and want right now is lowering our carbon footprint. And so very difficult to compete with legacy technologies if you don't have some kind of help to get off the ground and they've been awesome.

 

Jason Price:

So if I may, we're going to have maybe some hockey listeners who may not be in the energy industry. Perhaps give us a skinny on geothermal. What exactly is that?

 

Mike Richter:

So geothermal is basically a heat pump that instead of using air, that would be an air source heat pump, it uses the ambient temperature of the earth. If you go down in this area more than four feet, the ambient temperature is about 55 degrees across the seasons. So it's below the frost line. And so you think about we're a hot day, maybe it's 90 degrees out here in New York, so instead of pulling 90 degree air out and trying to cool that to 70, you're pulling 55 degree air out to make air conditioning. It's a small lift, it's a negative lift. And so just you use the electricity to have the heat pumps to pull it just like your refrigerator does. In this case of refrigerator, it pulls the heat out and expels it, usually onto the floor of the house, say you're air conditioning ironically, but it takes it out of the machine.

This heat pump works both ways. So in the wintertime it is drawing that heat from the earth at 55 degrees and then heating it up to 70 or whatever your house needs to be or your commercial industrial as we focus on building. So I think the coefficient performance, as all the engineers say, can be four. It can be incredibly efficient, more so than any other option out there. What's been holding it back is it's hard to put in, right, and it's expensive, but with the IRA we're looking at using a majority of American made products, which we can do pretty easily. We can get up to 40% diminishment on the upfront cap costs. So it really starts to pencil financially and the operating costs are significantly lower and the maintenance costs, your maintenance avoidance is really significant too. So you have a really compelling story, but people... Their eyes glaze over and you're going to sell this, you have to immediately get into the weeds with your engineers.

And if the person, the other end of the table's not an engineer, they're going, you lost me. I mean, what are you selling me? You're asking me to dig up basically a football field for boreholes, and I don't have that space in Manhattan. That's where we feel with this urban geo product, we have smaller rigs, directional drilling, very specific, 1% deviation as opposed to 10% so I can stay on my property, not yours. These are game changing opportunities. The applicability of geothermal has really changed to these new technologies and the efficiency has always remained, but the big difference is the front end cost has come down and it makes it viable.

 

Jason Price:

Yeah, it's really interesting. When we chatted ahead of the podcast, you mentioned how much of this conversation and the work you're doing ties into performance. That is clean energy and high performance buildings lead to better outcomes, and you certainly reiterate just now. So social equity and environmental justice is equally important to your mission. So can you talk a bit about how you incorporate both these facets into your business model?

 

Mike Richter:

I think it's fairly clear that if you have the means, you can have a pretty comfortable home, place of work, money grants access, but the opposite is also true. And you think about there's over 500,000 people living in NYCHA housing in New York, the low-income housing in New York. Those buildings often aren't maintained or built to the standards just because they're so expensive to maintain. So the experience of the people within those four walls can be pretty bad. It's very cold in the winter and you get supplementary heat and it could be a fossil fuel heater, and now you're really spoiling the air quality in your own apartment. So there's just a cascading of effects that expensive energy can cause. They're uncomfortable. You look at a lot of the schools in the city, I wouldn't want to be an eighth grader trying to get through my final exams on a mid-June 90 degree day without air conditioning.

When you start changing these buildings operating systems to a better performing option, you start having better experiences for the people living and working in them, whether it's home or school or work. And our nation's schools need as much help as they can get. The problem is who's paying for this? It's expensive as heck to transform these things, but the flip side is who's paying for it now? It's you and I. Affordable housing, our public school system or incredibly inefficient buildings and we're footing the bill for this, correct? That's tax dollars going out the window and the poorly sealed doors and the inefficient boilers in their basement. So when we start changing these things, the operating cost comes down. So it's a net savings over time, and particularly for the institutions, for schools and universities where you have a huge time horizon. You're not trying to flip this thing and sell it three years and need an ROI of two years, you're saying, I just want to lower my operating costs and have something that's maintenance free as possible.

And so it starts to make real financial sense to look at low-income housing and challenged areas of our nation and start to put in more efficiency. The flip side is it starts to change health outcomes. We're so intricately woven to where we live and the cleanliness of the environment, the air we breathe, the water we drink, all these things affect our health. And if you have a great deal of people in these asthma corridors and whatnot, that's just from basically, if you could argue inefficiency, that's diesels and gas plants and whatnot that are not efficient, that are spilling out a lot of carbon. So I mean, when you start talking about efficiency, it's not a panacea, but there are cascading effects that are very positive outside the bottom line. I would argue that the bottom line is the biggest thing, but the health effects, the quality of the experience inside the buildings and the people living in around those buildings that are cleaner is a remarkable difference.

 

Jason Price:

Yeah. What's your perspective on how we overcome inertia when it comes to the necessary energy upgrades that we need to make?

 

Mike Richter:

I think part of the inertia equation is we still equate, at least as it comes to efficiency and energy progress with I guess making a sacrifice. And you can't emphasize enough early on, maybe the electric cars were more of a small town vehicle that had a top speed like a golf cart of 20 miles an hour. But I mean, you look at these cars coming out now, some from Ford, Rivian, Tesla, they can beat the Ferrari off the line. These are very, very high performing cars. We're still evolving what they're capable of doing, but if you've had the experience of driving some of these things, you realize it's a better mode of transportation. And I think we have to get out of that mindset.

We think about evolution in so many ways, and we love progress. We think about entrepreneurship and creativity in this country like few others do. But it was only a few years ago that our light bulbs weren't that far removed from what Edison was using. I mean, we really have a blind spot when it comes to the performance of these buildings. I think about, again, intersecting with my hockey career, there were times where I had more than once some of the small rinks that we'd practiced and shut down from OSHA because of the particulate matter was so high from this gas powered Zamboni that was going around doing the ice. And here you have the highly trained athletes, huge expense paid for salary, for nutritionist, for sports psychologists, the pinnacle of people's career. And you have this building that performs so poorly that you can't even go in it for health violations.

And it's just this... I think it's indicative of the blind spot that we all have to this. I have a wonderful house in Connecticut. It's from 1905. Well, if it's a windy day, my hair's blowing when I'm at the kitchen sink that does not perform particularly well. If you look at a passive house standard, this is not a home or a commercial building built to make the spotted owl happy. This is to make you and I happy. This is to make it so that when it's 12 below zero outside, you're very comfortable inside without spending a fortune to have the heat where literally will keep you alive for a number of days if your power does go out because the insulated qualities are so high. It's a thermos that you're living in and that works for both heat and cold, and it's a wonderful thing.

It's cleaner air exchanges when you have the heat recovery. There's just so many positive examples that you can draw on that make our lives better when you evolve our energy systems both writ large with the grid and internally in each building and our homes. So I think there's off the shelf technology that people aren't even considering because they're not making that connection. And when you start experiencing it, the conversation changes. I went to school in upstate New York and I still go back. I have a little summer house there, and a friend of mine was putting in a passive house, standard building. It was his home and really interesting guy, and he was saying, you have to come over and look at this thing being built. I knew the guys that were building it. I had an old boathouse that had to be redone. And these guys are tough upstate guys going, "What the heck's going on here?

18 inch thick walls. It's overkill. We've been building homes for decades and this is not how you build a home. And hey, man, if he wants to spend money for no reason, I guess we're here." But it was a lot of skepticism and understandably so. It just was a different way of making the building envelope. But I came back about three months later and the tune had changed dramatically. The windows were now in, it wasn't finished off inside, but it's about a 25 degree day in late November and it gets cold in the Adirondacks and spitting snow outside. The guy said, "Come here. We have no heat going on in this place." Guys are in t-shirts. It's quiet as a mouse inside. You can feel the difference from outside to inside simply because the body heat of the machines working, the drills and the saws and the men working inside was able to heat that place up to a comfortable, you can be in a T-shirt.

The performance of that envelope was almost breathtaking. And I have been back since the building has been completed and the house looks normal from the outside. You don't notice it, but if you see a cross section of the wall, these are 18 inch thick walls and it's so quiet and so comfortable inside, you wouldn't know what's anything different from the outside. But he knows every time he pays his bill how little he's paying and how much a benefit is. So I think you have to make that connection that this is not a sacrifice, it's an evolution, and we're moving to a better place.

 

Jason Price:

Yeah, no, I'd agree. On a personal note, when I was in my Clean Energy Program, we toured a couple of passive houses in the Bronx, beautiful buildings. We've never been able to tell from the outside, this is a passive construction, but it's an entirely new way of thinking in terms of the energy efficient and build. All right, so Mike, you know that with Energy Central, we've had a number of leaders in the C-suite on the show, and chances are they're going to be listening to this.

 

Mike Richter:

Sure.

 

Jason Price:

So if we could ask you to take out your crystal ball and engage with the utilities with your organization, what would the conversation be like and what message do we need to get across all stakeholders to allow the outcomes to become realities?

 

Mike Richter:

Great question. I think it's got to be a collaboration because I know what we sell. I know how good it is, but they know their pain points, and if I don't listen to them, it doesn't matter what I sell, it'll never merchandise it well, so there has to be a real collaboration. But I do think there's a real spirit of partnerships out there. The other thing that keeps coming up is capacity. This grid is strained right now. On a hot day, you don't want to see brownouts or blackouts, but the storms are getting more violent, the heat waves are getting more intense and longer. We're talking about building electrification. Understandably, this is fantastic. We're electrifying everything from our computers to the virtual office to our cars. I've got two electric cars I plug into my house. Well, I'm not paying for gasoline anymore, but I am paying for more electrons.

They are cleaner, even with the mixture and the grid where I am, no question about it. So I feel good about that. Financial realities have to be there, they have to be beneficial. And I think there's a capacity thing. When I start plugging my car in into my own home, when I start changing that oil furnace to heat pumps or air or ground or electric furnace, I'm going to be using a heck of a lot more electrons. And so where's that capacity going to come from? Battery storage is coming, we know, but it's not quite there yet. The cost curve still has to come down and you get that with scale, no question, but it's a really dangerous time because as we shut down things, we don't want more inefficient plants and whatnot that are gas or oil or coal, that has to be replaced with clean energy and you have to somehow get that intermittency down.

So one of the things that we like to talk about is efficiency that's using less, and that's the cleanest, cheapest electron is the one you don't use as everybody says. And so if you can start with that passive house, for example, or a ground source heat pump that just gets the same BTU's out there into the environment and uses less electrons to do it, it's a good place to start. Nobody wants to pick winners because things change, but we know that more efficiency always kind of materializes into savings. So that I think is a wise place to me and just the willingness to work. And I've been really pleasantly surprised and impressed with just the tenor of our conversations because they understand their market, they understand how difficult... I mean, we have what, 2% or so penetration of electric cars right now. What is it when it's 25%?

It is going to be tough. And you get mandates coming down often from policymakers that we have great intention but don't understand the limitations of the grid right now or capacity to fill it with this increased demand. So it puts them in a very, very hard spot. So if the private capital markets can work with them to start making a solve here and they have smart people, they'll kick the tires and see whether we're real or not. But it's happening in these pilot projects. Again, I go back to and say, yeah, where did it work? Where didn't it work? Where can we course correct to make this thing better? It's really an exciting time because we need scale. I don't mean we as a company certainly do, and we are looking to do that, but we as a society, as a world, this can't be little one-offs. The fact that you are driving a hybrid car or an electric car is good and personally satisfying and helps, but it's a drop in the bucket.

We need this to really take place very fast, and I don't think there's anybody that's more capable of making those changes happen than the utilities.

 

Jason Price:

Well, I certainly appreciate your candor with these questions, and I'm sure you've won over a few Boston Bruin fans.

 

Mike Richter:

I don't know if that's possible.

 

Jason Price:

We're going to give you the last word on the show, but first we have what's called our lightning round where we get to learn a little bit more about you, the person rather than the professional. So we're going to ask you a couple of questions and your response should be left to one word or phrase.

 

Mike Richter:

Sure.

 

Jason Price:

Are you ready, Mike?

 

Mike Richter:

I am ready.

 

Jason Price:

All right. Typically athletes can play multiple sports. If not for hockey. What sport could you have also become a Hall of Famer?

 

Mike Richter:

One word answer is probably none because I'm uniquely qualified for very little, but I love all sports. I pole vaulted when I was a kid. I played football right through high school, just competition. If you didn't have a organized sport, we'd make the crap up. I got two older brothers and lots of friends that I grew up with in Philadelphia and everything was competition from eating apples to throwing them. So I guess right now I'm short heavy, not particularly aerodynamic. I love biking. It was something I did a little bit to train for ice hockey and all I do now is just buy better technology. I'm not getting any fitter or faster, but I would love to... Tour de France just got over it. I love the technology and the difficulty and the strategy of it, so I do love biking, but I played football growing up and that was just such a fun thing to do. I mean, one of those two I would like, but neither of them is realistic. Yeah.

 

Jason Price:

As we all know, professional hockey is not classified as a gentle sport. What was your diet like as an athlete and what did you typically eat the lead up to each game?

 

Mike Richter:

Interesting. I have two sisters that are diabetic and they had diabetes at a young age, and so I'm the youngest of seven. And so I saw how much their diet can affect their health, and both of them were incredibly disciplined about avoiding sugar of course. I have a wife who's celiac, and so there's always a cause and effect what we put in. I had a coach once say, your body is your vehicle to get anywhere to play in the pros to play in college. That's a Ferrari. Would you ever put muddy gas in a Ferrari? What are you thinking eating that donut? I'm thinking it tastes pretty damn good is what I'm thinking. But the reality is there's a real cause and effect there. So if the more disciplined you are about what you eat, when you eat, how you eat and your sleep patterns... I don't know an athlete out there that got to any good level that is not anal about their rest, their nap schedule and what they eat.

That is truly your fuel. And if you want confidence going into that championship game, you better have done the homework prior to. So I had a good grasp on nutrition from a very early age. Of course, I grew up in Philadelphia, I watched Rocky movies, and so I was drinking eggs for no apparent reason other than they tasted horrible. But later on really got to understand the hydration and the nutrition aspect. You can have a game where we would've a pre-game meal at noon, and if that goes into overtime, it could be two o'clock in the morning by the time you're done and you go that long without eating, you're not performing well. So the snacking and the pre-game meals, what you ate when you ate a little bit of protein, that staying power, boy, you got into routine. I knew what I was going to eat when I was going to eat four months from now. It was locked in quite a bit superstition, but a lot of it is I've experimented, this is what works.

So the chicken and pasta routine that most guys did before game, I would do. I try to supplement as many vegetables as possible. It's funny too, I'm 56 years old now, so you have to watch your diet for different reasons. I could eat anything I wanted to a cheeseburger at 11 o'clock at night and you burn it off, not so much anymore. So I think it's a good reminder that the fundamentals matter.

 

Jason Price:

What's the ideal way for you to spend a Sunday afternoon?

 

Mike Richter:

Well, I've got three boys that are now all... My youngest is going off to the last one to go off to college. So I definitely try to wring that towel out or squeeze that sponge I guess as much as possible when they're there, I'm there. You drop whatever you can and you hang out with them that it's fleeting. I can recall being 18 and you know everything and you're ready to roll and get out of the house and go on, do your next thing. And I'm sitting at home, hanging out with your parents is probably not what is first in your mind. And so that's appropriate. They should be out doing what they love to do with their friends and their next careers and onto the next thing. But you try to savor that because you know it's fleeting.

 

Jason Price:

You have a favorite hockey movie?

 

Mike Richter:

I don't think I do. Slap Shot, I never watched the entire thing from front to end, and everybody's got the great lines from that movie. And there were some really funny lines that I've grown to appreciate it. But I think Bull Durham came out when I was in the minors and I resented it so much because I resented being in the minors that I couldn't even watch the thing from front to back grown to love most of those flicks. But no, I don't. I still have to see the 1980 movie. I like documentaries more like the Red Army and whatnot because I've played with and against some of those guys. And I really do love seeing that. All the ESPN 30 for 30's about the Red Wings and even Boston Bruins have a great deal of interest for me. So I like the docs more than just the funny ones.

 

Jason Price:

Who were your role models growing up and who are your role models now?

 

Mike Richter:

Well, I was lucky. I had great older brothers and sisters and I've got a significant age gap between the oldest in my family members. So I was able to learn a lot from their mistakes and their triumphs. So I think it's a lot easier being the young guy. My father was a really good person, died when I was young, when I went off to school at Wisconsin at 18. But real disciplined guy. Been a captain World War II and a great golf player and good at business. So it's impossible not to look up to your dad when you're young. And I had a very good role model in him and my older brother. So that to me was probably the best. But sports-wise, I was so fortunate. I grew up in Philadelphia again, the expansion team was the Philadelphia Flyers back in '68. And so by the time I was five, six, seven years old, kind of impressionable, everybody was watching the Flyers because they were a really good team and they're an easy team when you're not from there to hate the Broadstreet Bullies, the way they played and everything else.

But Bernie Prot was a goalie and he is a Hall of Famer, really slick, cool French Canadian guy, won both of his championships with a shutout, was supremely talented. I went to his hockey school a couple of years with my brother when I was a kid and known him to this day as a really genuine champion. And I was able to watch him and oh, everything from the number. I spent countless hours in class just doodling about his new pads or his helmet and I would imitate everything he did. And he was a good guy to imitate because he really had the fundamentals down. So that was the guy. But today I've got two great partners that have been construction finance in Wall Street for a decade and a half a piece, and then started this company. I was able to buy into it as a third partner.

And I'm lucky our investors, my partners, they're good people that handle themselves properly in the business environment and they're great role models for me. Guys like Elon Musk, you have to appreciate the chances that guy's willing to take. He puts his money where his mouth is. He puts his mouth in some funny spots too. But he's been incredible. I mean, incredible what he's been able to accomplish. And so the drive that he has, his kind of pursuit of excellence and his innovation is pretty impressive. It really makes science and technology and innovation sexy. It's cool and he's changed our world and how many people can you say that about? And I think it's a real indication from where we started this conversation, this progress, this evolution. And that's a very important thing for our culture to understand and our young kids growing up to embrace.

 

Jason Price:

Awesome, great answers and great insight, Mike. Really appreciate it. And you've been a great sport with this lightning round. So we want to give you the final word. If our listeners take only one thing away from today's conversation, what do you hope for it to be?

 

Mike Richter:

Well, we got to educate ourself, and that's a boring answer, but it's a really important one if we're going to fight inertia. What served us so well for 200 years does not anymore. And so we cannot educate ourself and react accordingly, quick enough. So it's all hands on deck. It is the little things like you getting a hybrid as opposed to a regular car or moving toward changing your stove out. All these things, they're not political. It's about moving to the right place. It'll be a better experience, but the world, it's not just a nice thing to have. Reality science demands it.

 

Jason Price:

Well, I must say this is a great conversation and we are really eager to continue to watch where you... Really eager to watch where your work with Bright Core and the energy industry takes you. As you do, hopefully, you'll pop over to energycentral.com and share updates and insights as well as respond to any questions and comments that our audience shares for you on this episode. So until then though, just want to thank you for sharing your insight on today's podcast.

 

Mike Richter:

Well Jason, thank you. Matt, thank you. It is an honor to be here. It's a great program you have. And honestly, I am thrilled to be here and I always learn a ton and it excites me to take a step back from the day to day and think about long-term. So I hope I can come back and tell you some more stories of success.

 

Jason Price:

Absolutely. We would love that. And you can always reach Mike through the Energy Central platform where he welcomes your questions and comments. We also want to give a shout out and thanks to the podcast sponsors that made today's episode possible. Thanks to West Monroe. West Monroe works with the nation's largest electric gas and water utilities in their telecommunication grid modernization and digital and workforce transformations. West Monroe brings a multidisciplinary team that blends utility, operations and technology expertise to address modernizing aging infrastructure advisory on transportation, exportation, data and analytics and cybersecurity. And once again, I'm your host, Jason Price. Plug in and stay fully charged in the discussion by hopping into the community EnergyCentral.com. And we'll see you next time at the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast.

 

About Energy Central Podcasts

The ‘Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast’ features conversations with thought leaders in the utility sector. At least twice monthly, we connect with an Energy Central Power Industry Network community member to discuss compelling topics that impact professionals who work in the power industry. Some podcasts may be a continuation of thought-provoking posts or discussions started in the community or with an industry leader that is interested in sharing their expertise and doing a deeper dive into hot topics or issues relevant to the industry.

The ‘Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast’ is the premiere podcast series from Energy Central, a Power Industry Network of Communities built specifically for professionals in the electric power industry and a place where professionals can share, learn, and connect in a collaborative environment. Supported by leading industry organizations, our mission is to help global power industry professionals work better. Since 1995, we’ve been a trusted news and information source for professionals working in the power industry, and today our managed communities are a place for lively discussions, debates, and analysis to take place. If you’re not yet a member, visit www.EnergyCentral.com to register for free and join over 200,000 of your peers working in the power industry.

The Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast is hosted by Jason Price, Community Ambassador of Energy Central. Jason is a Business Development Executive at West Monroe, working in the East Coast Energy and Utilities Group. Jason is joined in the podcast booth by the producer of the podcast, Matt Chester, who is also the Community Manager of Energy Central and energy analyst/independent consultant in energy policy, markets, and technology.  

If you want to be a guest on a future episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast, let us know! We’ll be pulling guests from our community members who submit engaging content that gets our community talking, and perhaps that next guest will be you! Likewise, if you see an article submitted by a fellow Energy Central community member that you’d like to see broken down in more detail in a conversation, feel free to send us a note to nominate them.  For more information, contact us at [email protected]. Podcast interviews are free for Expert Members and professionals who work for a utility.  We have package offers available for solution providers and vendors. 

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