Invenergy President and co-founder Jim Murphy joined the United States Energy Association’s Power Sector podcast with Utility Dive reporter Herman Trabish. The two discussed Invenergy’s approach to unleashing every drop of American-made energy to meet demand and why transmission and manufacturing are key to U.S. energy independence.
You can read condensed excerpts from the conversation below.
On the unprecedented energy demand surge, Murphy said: It’s a demand story we haven’t seen in my career. That means we need all sources of generation – and the grid to deliver it. We also need to shore up our supply chain for speed and security. We’re already in manufacturing, but we’d like to expand that, especially in solar. And as I said, the missing link in the whole equation is transmission. We need interregional grid build-out – big time.
On Invenergy’s long-time natural gas portfolio, Murphy said: We’ve been in the gas-fired power business for 30+ years, even before Invenergy. In Invenergy alone, we’ve done 13 natural gas projects, totaling about 6 gigawatts – roughly 20% of our total capacity ... Gas is something we know how to do. We've been a leader there for many years.
On increasing natural gas demand from customers, Murphy said: We're seeing a significant increase in demand for all of the technologies that we're developing, and we've had a lot of customer conversations about gas-fired capacity being seen as something that will help deliver a higher system-wide capacity factor.
Murphy noted the timeline for developing natural gas-fired facilities — which is more extended than the timeline for what's in the queues right now, which is primarily renewables.
Murphy also discussed Invenergy’s Grain Belt Express — which will be the single largest transmission line in U.S. history. When asked about the benefits the line will bring Americans, he said: Every state will have the benefit of jobs and the manufacturing that we're going to be doing to support those jobs. When the line is generating and transmitting energy, it will produce about $52 billion in energy cost savings for U.S. consumers — including those served by 39 Missouri municipal utilities we’ve contracted with.
On the energy security benefits of Grain Belt Express, Murphy continued: Twenty-five percent of the Department of Defense installations in the country are within the footprint of this line. So, making sure that those essential government functions can receive power on an uninterrupted basis.
On the importance of a stable policy environment, Murphy said: Everything we do is essentially an infrastructure project with a very long development, construction, and operating period over decades. So, having stability of policy across those continuums is essential for what we do.
Listen to the full episode here: