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In the upcoming new issue of Bloomberg Business Week, It's out on newsstands tomorrow, it's right now online and on the Bloomberg terminal. The story notes that in the US, the most elusive piece of any new energy project isn't material. We're not talking about things like copper, steel, labor, or even capital. It is actually something as simple as a permit. Turns out, getting permits and getting these projects through not so simple.
So let's get to it.
Joining us to talk about what's going on. As Bloomberg News Energy reporter Josh Saul one of the reporters on the story. He's on zoom in New York City along with the Bloomberg Business Week editor Joel Weber in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio back in New York City. Joel, I had no idea, as you guys lay out in this story, how long it takes you.
You had no idea.
I had no idea.
There's a I have a funny joke in my house where my son will like, build a fort and I'll be like, you got a permit for that? And that helps me, like, you know, put a damper on the on the Ford building. Turns out the US also really good at putting a damper on big, ambitious US energy product projects. And what was even more surprising, perhaps from Josh on this story and company on this story, is that it's created some unlikely allies.
What's going on, Josh, That's a.
Good dad joke, Joel, I'm gonna start using that. So what's happened here is that the permitting system in the US is so is so old and so complicated that to build, for example, a transmission line that's going to carry clean power across the US, to build a new gas pipeline, to build a new solar farm that's going to create that kind of clean ener electricity that we want, can take can take years, can take ten years. Some of the projects we've written about, it can take seventeen years,
and there's still not steel in the ground. And what
that does is it costs companies billions of dollars. You know, it slows down the energy transition and the fight against climate change that we're trying to get going with all the clean energy, just a really inefficient bureaucratic way that it's set up right now, and that's created some strange bedfellows, like you said, where you have oil companies and clean energy companies and Republicans and Democrats, you know, folks who usually do not shake hands, all getting together and saying, hey,
we need to make this better.
Not only Democrats and Republicans, but also within the energy world, right you've got renewables and phossipl fuel people. Everybody hates this. So what's that dialogue been like?
It's I mean, it's hard to build anything.
And that means that in a broad sense, you have a lot of different companies, a lot of different groups, a lot of different advocacy groups and lobbyists all saying this needs to be this needs to be streamlined, you know, instead of doing you know, two years to designate the corridor for a transmission line, and then four or five years for the environmental year environmental review, and then another two years for a different federal agency to get going
and then another environmental review that can take four or five years. Those are real timelines. I'm not making that up as ludacrous as it sounds. They're saying, hey, maybe we can get this into a you know, one year, two year, one year type schedule.
So there's a sign in this story that Bloomberg has covered before, but it was a reminder of just how hellish this can look. Like there's this five hundred mile long sun zea Southwest transmission projects. How bad can this permitting stuff get?
Josh, it really bad that the sun Zeal Line, which is going to carry clean power, solar solar power from big solar fields in New Mexico to the Phoenix area. And that's important if you care about climate change, for the idea that will be displacing you know, natural gas fired plants in the Phoenix area with electrons created by
the sun that will be flowing from New Mexico. But in order to do that, you have to build a power line to carry them, to carry them, to carry them those five hundred and twenty miles.
That's really hard to do.
So that process has been going on for seventeen years and it's actually it's not a one off. I wrote a story last year about a different power line which would carry electricity from the windy plains of Wyoming, really windy area to downward down towards Las Vegas, again displacing natural gas fired plants and other kinds of fossil fuels.
And that's also been hung up for closer to two decades than one decade at this point, because it takes so long to get all of the federal permits, to get all the private permissions, to cross all of the different kind of land that a project like that would would go over.
Hey, Josh, can we talk pizza?
Yes?
I love, thank you. I would want.
As we got this far in the conversation, the one of the one of the energy analysts we spoke to had a fun had a fun analogy, and this gets to the idea that, yes.
There are strange bedfellows. Both Republicans, Democrats.
Oil, oil and gas, solar and wind folks all want to reform the system. But an energy analyst had a good point, which is that yet in a broad sense, everyone wants reform of the system. They all want hey, yeah, let's order pizza. But actually getting down to the specifics of well, what should the reform look like is as hard as when you have a room full of people and you're trying to decide whether you're gonna be murdering veggie pizzas, meat pizzas, anchoby pizzas.
Pineapple Hawaiian. And the point there is that.
You know, the oil folks want the oil folks want less federal oversight. The UH transmission folks want more federal oversight because they want the states overruled, because the states are sometimes the ones who you know, who put up
roadblocks as two examples. And point is that it's easy to say, yeah, we want permitting reform, but it's a lot the same way it's easy to say, hey, let's order pizza, but it's a lot harder to drill down and say this is actually what it should look like when you have lots of different groups that want different things. And the analyst, the analyst we talked to kind of
funny funny points. She said, the reform that we got in the debt ceiling bill that just passed, she said, it's just kind of little little, little, kind of some little changes. She's like, that's like cheese pizza. So it's like, sure, no one's gonna fight that one. But it's not like real, big, meaningful reform.
You know, what's divisive is Hawaiian pizza. There's people that like, that is not pizza, Josh. It's like, you know, sacrilege that you would do that to pizza.
Pizza is intense.
And my wife is from here in New York City, I'm from I'm from Alaska. There's a pizza place up there that does you know they do the chicken tie, they do the euro pizza. She's like, I don't know what this is, but this is not pizza.
Yeah, but cheese pizza. Everybody can get behind cheese pizza. It is a universal love language. But even the word reform, in permitting even the word that is a divisive word.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, my co my co writer, The Great Tender Louis was kind of as we were as we're going over the story, she was kind of like, you know, you like, maybe call it an overhaul, maybe call it you know, because reform is even that word is subjective, you know, with some groups saying well we're not reforming it, we're tweaking around the edges or we're overhauling. So yeah, you're you're right as we as we move forward and get into the real nitty gritty of how do we fix this system?
How do we streamline the system?
How do we make it so that this country can move forward and build all these things that people want. How do we do that in a way, in a way that works. That's really hard to do.
All right, I'm just going to tell you, first of all, I'm starving right now, and I will go for any kind of pizza. But having said that, in your story, like you talk about, there are you know, the government has put requirements out there. We talk about net zero by twenty fifty, right, there's requirements on companies on the country to like move ahead get these projects done, especially
when it comes to cleaner energy. So I mean the pressures on what are the changes that are likely to happen or you know, and that are being called for.
Just I mean, the main point would be some of the main points that people talked about would be.
Streamlining the environmental reviews.
So instead of having you know, one federal agency doing a long federal a long environmental review on the front end, and then another agency starting another one at the back end, but just doing one uh, you know, one comprehensive environmental review and you know, so that'd be one to to
lop off of a couple of years. Another issue that's come up is UH is UH you know, judicial review is the courts, which is that some of these projects they can get hung up in the courts, you know, because you have you have groups that will file lawsuits saying, you know, this this project goes too close to UH two, goes too close to these waterways, it violates sections of the of the Clean of the Clean Water Act, so
it shouldn't be built for that reason. And then the whole project goes into the court, the developers tearing their hair out, you know, inflation's driving up the cost of the project.
They're not making any money, their money is sitting around.
And then it's you know, before a federal judge and they're talking about, you know, whether or not the gas pipeline or the transmission line is too close to some protected water with so another reform or overhaul, depending on how you want to call it. Another another tweak that some people would want to make would be to limit the power limit limit limit how how deep into the
process the courts get. But overall, all of the reforms or fixes or overhauls would be about streamlining and making faster the process.
So we're gonna have this inflation Reduction Act that comes into play. Here, is this gonna help or hurt or hurt everything?
Josh?
Because there's a lot of money that's going to be slashing around, right.
So that's that's one of the points that came out that was important in our reporting is we kind of wanted to ask, well, so is would permit reform help clean and more?
Or what it held fossil fuels more?
You know, because we talked to some fossil groups and they're sort of saying, well, yeah, we want to build we want to build gas pipelines that we can export LNG. We want to you know, American liquefined natural gas, you know, export it all over all over the world. But we need to be able to build pipelines to get it
to ports, and that's being held up by permitting. But really, what our reporting showed and the people we talked to is that the clean energy side of the LEDGER would end up getting much bigger boost from a from an over from an overall overall portap you know, fixed to the system.
We gotta we got to jump in.
It's a great story to the upcoming new issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek, or thanks to Josh Saul and Jil Weber, this is Bloomberg.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from three to six Eastern Listen on Bloomberg dot com, the iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business App, or watch us live on YouTube.
I know we've got another guest from Insight. I'm gonna toss it over to you.
Yeah, we do. Haley sax is here.
She's the founder and chief executive officer of Finance is Cool And if you're a younger person, you may know her as missus dow Jones because she is an Instagram influencer. I guess, or is it TikTok or is it? Do you go across all the platforms.
Matt, I am verse. I do any platform I like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube. If there are eyeballs, Missus dow Jones is there.
And you have apparently a lot of eyeballs, right, I heard Carolyn. I told me like seven hundred thousand people follow you.
Is that correct?
Close to a million.
Actually now all right, so yeah, but what do you do for these people? Like you don't pick stocks, right, You're not telling them to put all their money into government bonds.
You're just trying to educate them financially.
Well, we never learn about money math. So most people enter adults and we're given our first paychecks and we have no idea what to do with it. We make decisions completely on emotion or whim and we lack the actual insight to feel confident. So I am that ladder. I fill that gap. I create financial confidence in my audience by teaching them.
But so what what do you teach them?
Like?
Oh? Everything? So we go over you didn't you don't do you don't have.
An MBA, or you don't have a CFA, or you didn't study finance yourself, did you.
I never was in the financial system, and I think that is what allowed me to think outside the box and create something that has never been done before. So I use humor, I use pop culture, and it took off really quickly because there's nothing really else in the space like that.
Carol. Let me bring you in from from Orlando.
Haley. Hi, nice to be talking with you.
I do feel like, it's interesting kind of a contrast based on some of the conversations we've had at that Matt has had over at Bloomberg Infestival, so that we're having it purging insight with a lot of the registered investment advisory world.
But tell us about this space.
What was it about your own experience and the questions that you had that have enabled you to kind of create your media world and help others. So talk to us a little bit about your own experience.
My own experience is I never learned about money, and I entered the workforce completely. I had no confidence. I was so scared and I got my first job. I was working for Lorne Michaels, and they asked me if I.
Wanted a four to one k.
They were asking me about healthcare, and I nodded as though I understood what they were saying, hoping that they wouldn't fire me on the spot, and then quickly went home that night to try and learn. And I was put to sleep by what.
Was out there.
And look, I grew up watching you know, the Kardashians, and loving Beyonce and like these fun I love entertainment, and I didn't understand why in order to learn about money. It couldn't be lively, it couldn't be exciting, And so I started to teach myself and I posted my lessons that I was using to you know, just gain knowledge on my own time online and literally within weeks it took off. So it was very very fast.
Well, so talk to us too.
And Matt makes a good point because when you're dealing with people's money and it's an interesting week where there's you know, crypto is kind of under siege from the SEC, it's very easy for investors, you know, young or old, to be pulled into things that maybe could be questionable. I'm not necessarily saying that's the case of crypto, but I'm just saying in general, so what is it that you how you get.
Your exactly right?
So I'm just curious what you lean on in terms of getting your information to make sure that it's really sound and solid for the folks that pop on your website.
Oh, I mean, my information comes from the top sources like we're using. Of course, we're using Bloomberg, We're using all the top publications. But I'm also not covering topical financial events unless they're relating to a bigger lesson, Like, I'm all about building long term wealth. I'm just trying to get people to invest the money in the roth IRA and you know, save twenty percent, make sure they
have an emergency fund, avoid high interest rate debt. And if you want to take it further and start, you know, investing in individual stocks and things like that, that's great. But I would never preach that because how often do individual stocks outperform an index fund?
Right, So it's not this is what I was trying to clarify. So you're not giving an investment advice. No, no, no, What you're trying to do is make people financially aware so that they can seek out their own investment advice.
Yeah, I want exactly That's exactly it. Like I look, I give you the knowledge, it's up to you to take action. I'm never going to tell you to invest in something, but i am going to tell you that you need to invest.
It's amazing that to me that you have a million followers, not because I don't think you can go get a million followers, but because of the idea that people care enough.
No, no, that's not in all the case.
I'm just thinking if my kind of the stereotype in my head is that someone who goes on Twitter or spends a lot of time on Instagram wants to see the Kardashians and Beyonce and does not want to hear the word four oh one k.
Right, So that's what I think is really interesting.
Well, I mean, I'm sitting right in front of you. You don't think that I'm giving Beyonce and Kardashian like that's sart of my charm. I know, I am like glamorous and fun, but I'm also really smart about money, and I want you to be too.
I just think, you know, you're so right that kids aren't taught about this. Yeah, and a lot of people, even who work at Bloomberg. For years, I didn't invest in my forem okay, even though I worked here. It took Carol telling me to do it, you know, ten years into my career for me to like figure out how to do that.
So what do you hear about financial education?
What do you hear about because there's just a lack of it and we need to change that.
Right, I mean truly, whenever I'm you know, doing events, I will have the audience raise their hands.
Who here has you know?
Was taught about money, and maybe one or two hands will go up. It is true, it's an epidemic. No one understands their finances and it's something that we deal with every day, and it becomes this really emotional thing.
It's not that the it's.
Not that the meat and potatoes is hard. It's not that creating a budget is hard. It's not that I investing your fo O and K is hard. But especially women, we have so much shame around it. But why would we have shame around something that we were never taught? Like do you have do you have shame about not understanding Italian?
You know, and I don't understand exactly.
I guess I could tell you didn't speak Italian.
So yeah, talk to us about the women portion of it, because I know that you focus, I mean more specifically on girls and young women who I guess what they're they're maybe teachers, think they need homec rather than you know, financial economics.
Well, I mean, of course, finance is a very male dominated space and so can feel very intimidating. And women are in the past have really abdicated their financial power, and I'm all about having them take that financial power back because look, even if you are married, say to a man who is taking care of the finances. Statistics women outlive men. So even if you are okay, I don't have to deal with this. I've figured out a
way out. Eventually you're going to have to. So let me give you the tools so that you know how.
I have to say, I've been just playing around with your website and it's really entertaining, you know, in terms of how you pull on you know, pull on pop culture over the years to get people to look at things like their four oh one K or think about you know, don't waste your time on money instead, you know, think about growing well.
So it's really entertaining and fascinating. Yeah, Matt, you should check it out.
I will.
I just I'll actually let my wife deal with the finances at my house.
I love that. So I don't know if I'm.
In the minority here, but you know, I think it's really important to get people to think about this stuff at the very beginning of their careers.
Right. By the way, how have you done since Lauren.
Since Lorden Michaels.
Yes, I think I'm doing quite well.
Did you immediately start investing in your four oh one K.
Well, now I have my own business, so even better. I invested in myself and I built something that I own. All right, excellent, all right, Haley, better be investing your four O one K.
Yeah, no, no, now, I'm maxing it out all the time. Haley Sachs, the founder and chief executive of Finance is Cool. You can follow her cross social media platforms at missus dow Jones.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from three to six Easter on Bloomberg Radio, the Bloomberg Business app, and YouTube. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station Just Say Alexa playing Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Carol Masser along with Matt Miller. Matt back at Bloomberg Headquarters in New York City attending and featuring guests from Bloomberg invest All day. I've been here at BNY Mel and Pershing Insight featuring guests, and right now we have not only a guest, but a member of the Bloomberg family with us right now as Blueberg Intelligence Senior ESG analyst Shaheen Contractor. She was in a panel here at insight earlier today then versus now. The evolution is sustainable investing.
Good to have you here with Matt and myself. Tell us about your panel, and we do wonder kind of where the sustainable space is because it's it's been going through a little bit of a reckoning.
Sure, So the panel was, you know, really about that evolution, and we spoke about how it's gone from you know, ethical or value space more towards ESG integration. But the big question was what's ahead right and I think the conclusion there was it's really the thematic so you know, things like climate, things like gender. That's why people are looking to differentiate themselves. It also doesn't have the word yes, she in it, which now is a fun word.
Are they really kind of taking it away?
They're not not taking it away, but I just think, you know, if you say the word YSG, people tend to shy away, but if you say something like climate, they're a lot more okay with it.
Why are they showing away because of ESG?
Because of that, they don't understand what it means the first thing. And I think also we all have seen the political backlash. I mean, it's woke, it's not lie. It's that is it really all because of the political It's a bit of that, But also I think it's bringing up the challenges, which is people don't understand what ESG means. And we actually had a bowling question like what prevents your clients from doing ESG? And the second
most I feel like it was. The second one was we don't understand the boundaries, which means that they don't understand what es SHE is and how to do it.
What about I want to bring mad It's just a damage can do.
Right.
This seems like this is what the hucksters do, right, They slap ESG on their funds and they greenwash everything, and then.
The suckers go and buy it.
That's why people don't like ESG, right, even before the concern about it being woke. You know, one ESG fund can shun fossil fuel and the other one can own Xon Mobile.
I mean that's why nobody buys it.
No, So I think the point is that es she just means so many different things to different people. I think that's the challenge that even you're saying, and you're talking about but ESG is really about just data, right, It's more data it's a three sixty degree view of a company rather than a one data degree view of just financial information and how people use it very so much, and I have to recognize that that's a challenge.
Yeah, but that to me then doesn't sound like it deserves its own little vertical if you will, because if there's so many different parameters, I mean, isn't that part of the problem If you have ESG and you're comparing one fund to another fund, but yet it it has different missions?
Not really, So I put the comparison to you know, people say, yes, she is not standardized, and yes, I agree, but you know, take and this is maybe I don't know how good this is its comparison, but take like a macrocano model, like show me ten microeconomic models that point to the same forecast to the economy.
Right, So ESG.
Can mean, you know, within certain boundaries, it can and should mean a couple of different things, and a fund or a score should give you transparency into what it means so that you can agree for yourself whether you agree with that. Does that make sense? Because I feel like ESG is too subjective, where if we keep talking about standardizing es she should or should not be Xon when going to keep arguing for decades. What it should be is, you know, we call it ESG. This is
how we do it. This is the transparent approach. And I or Matt or you can choose to decide whether you agree with that.
Matt, you get a thought on that.
No, I gave all my thoughts already. You know, I.
Think, listen, you're gonna invest. I can understand that some people will invest along the lines of their own values and think.
I applaud that I would do. I do that too.
I don't want to buy and support something that I don't feel is right. But the whole ESG fad that we saw, I think has died off because it means a different, completely different thing to different people. So there's no way that I can buy into, say like Deutsche Bank has an ESG fund. I'm gonna think it's good and Shaheen's gonna think it's bad, or I'll think it's bad and you'll think it's good.
That's not a great way to label a product, you.
Know, if if if you label something like that, it's just hard to sell to a large group of people. So that's why I think you've seen the backlash and then you have the whole woke political thing that you know, just adds adds on to it, the sort of uninvestigation.
I get the Yeah, I get the challenges. I get the you know, the challenges with the tone. But I think at the end of the day, what it is is just it's looking at more data again, right Like if I if I put this acronym out, but if I ask you, you know, when you're choosing your partner, do you want more information or less information? You're gonna tell me more information.
But does EESG mean anything? Like in talking with j Clayton earlier today, the former chair of the SEC, you know, he talks specifically about the governance. You know, he was brought into Apollo right part of the board, uh, non executive chairman. But you know when they were going through some of their issues like governance, we kind of get. Yes, it feels like I think environmental we should get. Although
I think there's some some movement right. You know, do you buy into a major integrated oil company because they too are figuring out how to do it, you know, and provide either their processes that they currently do in a better way, or they are embracing renewables, So does that make them you know that they can be in that category? Social feels like, oh my god, you could go anywhere. So maybe like why do we need to have that category?
So I think again, non financial data? Right, Like what is non financial data? I can almost term it as you know this ESG kind of lens. Yeah, So I think that's where it originated. Right, Whether it's a good term or not, I still think it is because it still encompasses the term non financial data, and one doesn't have to use you know, esn G. It's about what's material, Like you know, for a mining company, it's safety. Safety is a social topic. For cement, it's emissions. Emissions is
an e topic. So it's about what's material.
Financially material, I could, which is what it originally started out. And I feel like ESG went off in a whole different tangent. Yes, So that's part of the issue.
Correct, So that's what I think it is today. So when I say more information, I just mean more information to make financially material.
That's still not gonna buy it? It's okay. I can just feel right, Matt, are.
You gonna buy in? I s.
All right? We're gonna leave it there, of course.
Bloomberg Intelligence Senior est Alie seeing contractor here at Pershing Inside twenty twenty three.
This is the Bloomberg Business Week podcast, available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcast. Listen live weekday afternoons from three to six Eastern on Bloomberg dot com, the iHeartRadio app, tune In, and the Bloomberg Business App. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg terminal