The plan to bring more electricity to the West

0:00Matt Barnum:Support for Here and Now Anytime comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com. WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

0:20Gary Baum:We're not saying, hey, get rid of permitting, get rid of some of the conditions that exist. But what we are saying is it shouldn't take 10 or 20 years to permit a transmission line.

0:29Joel Ferry:You can build all the power plants you want, but if you can't move that electricity where the demand is, it doesn't do much good. That's why a coalition of Western governors wants to make it easier to build new transmission lines.

0:51Joel Ferry:It's Monday, July 13th, and this is Here and Now, Anytime from NPR and WBUR Boston. I'm Chris Bentley.

1:01Joel Ferry:Today on the show, new studies suggest merit pay for teachers could benefit the whole classroom. But paying teachers more when their students do well is not as straightforward as it sounds. This program is trying to not just reward teachers who stay in the profession, but teachers who are demonstrated to be effective based, admittedly, on the controversial metric of improving student test scores. Also, journalist Gary Baum has had people dispute his articles before, but never like this. A private AI tribunal called Objection asked him to spill his reporting notebook so it could, quote, adjudicate a determination of truth.

1:41Gary Baum:Journalists like myself are used to blowback, but this was something different. It was sort of Kafka-esque.

1:47Joel Ferry:What he found in his investigation of the AI startup scrutinizing journalists, coming up in about 10 minutes. But first, the American power grid needs work. That's why 11 leaders of Western states are planning to spend billions of dollars to upgrade the grid over the next decade. Specifically, they're talking about building more transmission lines. Those are the heavy-duty lines carrying electricity over long distances. held up by those big steel towers, not the distribution lines carrying it locally around your neighborhood. With electricity demand rising just about everywhere, people need more power, and maybe even more than new sources of that power.

2:33Joel Ferry:They need a more efficient way to move power around the grid. The Western Transmission Expansion Coalition, or West Tech, estimates that 11-state area I mentioned will need more than 12 ,000 miles of new transmission lines in the next 10 years. Joel Ferry is Utah's Commissioner of the Department of Natural Resources. They are part of that coalition. He told Peter O'Dowd, quote, the grid is in desperate need of upgrades.

3:01Gary Baum:It could be everything from just upgrading existing lines, or it could be new lines. We have new areas of demand, new areas of need, and the current system just cannot support the needs here in the Western United States. When you look at the West, we have these isolated cities and then vast swaths of open land in between. And everything was built out kind of in that regional pattern. Today, we're more interconnected. There's more people. The West is where it's growing in the U.S., and we need more investment. You know, we anticipate tens of billions of dollars, upwards of$60,$70 billion to accomplish what needs to happen within the next decade.

3:42Gary Baum:I know you're aware that Utah, in this huge data center that's planned for Box Elder County, has been sort of ground zero for this national backlash against data centers. I mean, how much of that growth that you project, can you say is data center related versus something else? Well, it's a combination. I mean, it is data center related, But data centers aren't just what powers our social media. Every day they're making our lives better through new technologies, new advancements. And so, yes, data centers are a driving force. But it's also, you know, if you think about how many electric vehicles are out on the road now, you think about even just yesterday, we saw the highest temperatures in Salt Lake City that have ever been recorded.

4:22Gary Baum:So that means people are going to be running their air conditioners more. That takes energy. And then you add the growth on top of it. And because of that, we have all these increased demands. So what's the vision? You have these 11 states coming together across the western United States to plan a grid that could accommodate this growth you're talking about. I see approximately 12 ,600 miles of planned new and upgraded transmission. And as you said, a$60 billion investment. That's right. So the western states governors got together and did what they call the PACT, which is transmission permitting alignment coordinating task force.

4:54Gary Baum:to help us as we streamline and push for updated regulations and ability to build out these transmission systems. We're not saying, hey, get rid of permitting, get rid of some of the conditions that exist. But what we are saying is it shouldn't take 10 or 20 years to permit a transmission line. It's funny you say that. I was out in New Mexico a while back reporting on the Sunzia transmission line that runs from New Mexico to power big Western cities. It's like 550 miles, And it has been in the works or it was in the works for at least 20 years. This stuff doesn't move fast. So, I mean, how realistic is this goal really?

5:31Gary Baum:Well, I think, you know, when you talk about the 11 Western states, you talk about very diverse states. Yet the fact that these governors are coming together saying this is what we need, I think there's a real possibility this could be successful. I'm trying to figure out practically what it means and what it would look like. So, for instance, let's say Salt Lake is in the middle of a heat wave and needs extra power. Or are you saying that this system would let that city draw power from some other part of the grid that may be hundreds and hundreds of miles away? You know, that's occurring now.

6:03Gary Baum:What we're saying is we need the ability to move more power to places that need it in a more timely fashion. Whether it's from, you know, renewable energy. Like in Utah, we're producing an enormous amount of geothermal that's going to be coming online the next few years. One of the biggest constraints that we have right now is transmission. moving that power from a very remote location where it's being produced to where it can be consumed by the population. Just like our grid is 60, 70 years old, our generation is 60 or 70 years old, the power production side. So anything new is inherently going to be more efficient, it's going to be cleaner, and it's going to be much better in terms of reliability and affordability.

6:43Gary Baum:But still, there are a lot of fossil fuels going onto the grid, and the Trump administration is encouraging even more. Sure, there are and there will continue to be. I mean, it's a major source of power for the United States. But as we introduce new power sources, inherently even the fossil fuels are going to be more efficient than the ones that were built back in the 60s and 70s. Do you think there'd be a conflict between a state like California or Colorado, which wants more clean energy on the grid, versus maybe a state like North Dakota that would want something else? Well, here in Utah, we have a vast mix, and we're very much in all of the above state.

7:19Gary Baum:And so California can choose the power source it wants, just like Utah, Idaho, North Dakota, wherever, can choose what they want. But what it is is we just inherently we need more ability to move this power to the places where the demand is being created, these population centers. And that's where the holdup is, and that's what we need to overcome. Joel Ferry is Utah's Commissioner of the Department of Natural Resources. Joel, thank you very much. Thank you.

7:50Joel Ferry:If you have a power grid story in your area that you think we should be talking about, let us know. You can email us at letters at hereandnow.org. Coming up next, should teachers get paid more if their students do well? Merit pay has long been a controversial topic in education. Two new studies show there could be some benefits. T.C. Anna Deering has that story in just a minute.

8:30Gary Baum:This message comes from NPR sponsor Carvana. Carvana believes selling your car should be easy. Get a real offer down to the penny, picked up from your driveway. You may keep waiting for a catch. There isn't one. Sell today at Carvana.com. Pickup fees may apply.

8:48Matt Barnum:For decades, Merit Pay for Teachers has been a source of conflict between people who run schools and the teachers themselves. Teachers who push back say it doesn't work, and the research has shown mixed results. But two new studies from South Carolina and Texas find that rewarding teachers based on their performance actually benefits students. Matt Barnum is an editor and columnist with our editorial partners at Chalkbeat, the nonprofit education news outlet. Matt, welcome.

9:16Joel Ferry:Happy to be here.

9:17Matt Barnum:Matt, we're talking about tying some teacher pay to student outcomes. Why is merit pay so controversial in schools?

9:23Joel Ferry:Well, because there are at least to some extent winners and losers in merit pay. Now, there are winners and losers in any sort of pay system, but teachers are used to getting raises based on experience and degrees held. And changing that adds a lot of uncertainty. And teachers are also worried they're not going to be judged fairly.

9:42Matt Barnum:So let's dig into what the two studies say. We can start with South Carolina. That paper looked at a teacher improvement program funded by the federal government, and it included pay incentives that linked to student test scores. How did that program benefit students, and what did teachers say about it?

9:59Joel Ferry:So the program had actually a variety of different aspects of it, including merit pay, but also career advancement opportunities and additional professional development. And the researchers track students in schools that participated in the program, and they found long-term benefits. Their test scores rose, and they were more likely to graduate high school. We don't know exactly what teachers thought about the program, but we do know that the sort of general culture in the schools improved. And so it may have been the case that actually teachers were okay with this particular program, though we don't really know for sure.

10:31Matt Barnum:I want to talk about Texas now. That study looked at a program that offers extra money to school districts who participate in a merit pay program. And it found some surprising benefits for teachers and students, especially in the area of teacher retention. Talk about that. Yeah.

10:48Joel Ferry:So it found that the extra money that districts got if they agreed to implement this merit pay plan, increased teacher retention, increased student test scores. Effective teachers were particularly more likely to stay, perhaps because they got bonuses. So in this sense, it did sort of seem like a win-win. What we don't know is what teachers thought who didn't get the bonuses, and maybe they weren't quite as happy with this program.

11:12Matt Barnum:So two follow-ons to that. First, you just talked about retention of effective teachers, and that's kind of been an issue, right? The difference between longevity and efficacy in who stays in teaching. Yeah.

11:24Joel Ferry:And I mean, we know that teachers improve with experience on average, but we also know that sometimes more experienced teachers aren't always better. And so this program is trying to not just reward teachers who stay in the profession, but teachers who are demonstrated to be effective based admittedly on the controversial metric of improving student test scores.

11:44Matt Barnum:Both Texas and South Carolina we know were successful, but do we know why the programs were successful?

11:51Joel Ferry:We don't know for sure. I think one theory is that in both cases, the schools or school districts that participated got an external injection of extra money, either from the federal government or for the state. So they didn't have to take their budget and sort of reallocate it. They didn't necessarily have to have winners and losers. if you're using a fixed budget. They got more money. So in that sense, there might not actually be any losers among teachers in that system.

12:20Matt Barnum:Matt, are these big differences in student achievement in these studies? I know some past studies have showed improvement, but in the single digits, and there's a well-known study out of New York City that showed students actually did worse.

12:32Joel Ferry:In South Carolina, I would describe the difference as modest. In Texas, I would say that as best we can tell, the difference was pretty substantial, but there's a lot of uncertainty about, for statistical reasons, about just how big the gains were. In general, in education, gains are not huge. So I would be surprised if ultimately, if from further study, we see these massive gains. I would call these gains meaningful, but not massive.

13:01Matt Barnum:So this conversation and these attempts on merit pay have gone on for a long time now. Coalitions have been successful in stopping merit pay for teachers in the past, even when the research has supported it. I guess I'm wondering if there's something different now that might make it more or less likely that a state or a school district could get a merit pay program off the ground. Maybe something different in the Trump administration approach or the president's move to dismantle the Department of Education. Anything different now?

13:30Joel Ferry:I actually don't think so. And in certain ways, this was why I wanted to write about this because merit pay had sort of fallen out of favor and fallen out of the discussion. You know, the South Carolina study I was writing about was many years old. The Texas study is pretty recent and based on an ongoing program. But this has sort of fallen out of favor and no one is talking about it, but it might be worth another look.

13:52Matt Barnum:Matt Barnum is an editor and columnist with Chalkbeat, the nonprofit education news outlet. Matt, thank you.

13:58Joel Ferry:Thanks for having me.

14:03Joel Ferry:If you like stories that dig into the policies that affect your life, like education and the power grid, click that follow button so you can keep up with Here and Now anytime. We put out new episodes of this podcast every single weekday of the year. Whether you listen on the NPR app, or Apple Podcasts, or somewhere else, make sure you're following this show. And thanks. Oftentimes, we are digging into policies to see what they mean for people. But sometimes stories come out of left field. That's the case for our last conversation today. Coming up, Tiziana speaks with a journalist who was served with a legal notice from an AI arbiter.

14:46Joel Ferry:It sounds a little like a Philip K. Dick novel, but it is very real. More after the break.

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15:44Matt Barnum:This spring, a senior writer for The Hollywood Reporter, Gary Baum, discovered a group of billionaires were using their wealth to create a private court, and his work was on trial. Baum got an email from an AI startup called Objection. They were going to judge an article he'd written in 2021 about Purdue Pharma heir Michael Sackler. Sackler didn't like the article, and he appealed to the company. Now an artificial intelligence, quote, tribunal was going to decide whether the journalist had been fair. Baum was so baffled by it all that he just had to write about it. And he joins us now. Gary, welcome.