LSU’s Brad Ives says Louisiana poised for energy renaissance | Business News

With a $25 million donation from Shell, LSU three years ago created a new institute to support research aimed at issues facing the energy sector. Since then, the Institute for Energy Innovation has awarded grants to LSU scientists studying extreme winds and their impact solar installations, the risks and benefits of carbon sequestration, the best places to locate wind farms in coastal Louisiana and new forms of battery storage. 

At the institute’s helm is Brad Ives, a North Carolina native who arrived at LSU in 2023 after a three-decade career that included stints as a Wall Street lawyer, investment banker, renewable energy executive, assistant secretary of the North Carolina natural resources agency and university administrator.

The institute’s goal, Ives said, is to figure out how to decarbonize the energy sector and do so in a way that’s “fair and just.” That includes funding research into technology, public policy and economics, as well engaging in community outreach and education. 

In these week’s Talking Business, Ives discusses how the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will affect the energy transition, why he thinks it’s important to partner with industry on solutions and how he thinks Louisiana can become a global energy leader. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You arrived at LSU at at time when the federal government was investing heavily in efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Many of those programs were scaled back as part of the domestic policy bill that President Trump signed earlier this month. What does that mean for the energy transition in Louisiana?

The transition will be slower. You’re still going to see solar projects built in Louisiana after all the tax credits are gone, because it makes financial sense. 

But the big driver of what’s happening is not the U.S. domestic market. It’s the global markets. The EU is putting in what they call a carbon border adjustment mechanism that’s effectively a carbon tariff that will kick in in 2026, and it’s initially going to track steel, aluminum, cement and fertilizer. This is not woke, lefty, green, whatever buzzword you want to use: this is global competitiveness.

We have the world’s largest ammonia plant here for fertilizer, CF Industries. For that plant to continue to be competitive globally, they need to be the lowest carbon intensity producer of that product.

Critics, including environmentalists and activists, have said they’re skeptical that the institute is committed to lower carbon future given that its main benefactor is a fossil fuel giant. How do you respond to that?

The analogy everybody goes for is Phillip Morris paying Harvard researchers to say that smoking wasn’t harmful. We’re not absolving the oil and gas industry for climate change. I will tell you that burning hydrocarbons has led to climate change. That’s settled science. I don’t think there’s any taint of the money on the work that we’re doing.

If you want to look at the moral hazard of taking money from people who’ve contributed to it, I might flip it around and say, you know, this is a great sign that companies realize they’re part of the problem, and they’re looking for solutions and funding groups like ours, and they’re willing to hire somebody like me. I mean, I got fired at the University of North Carolina over my efforts to shut down their coal plant, and I’m the guy that they sought out to run this thing.

What’s amazing is if you go to these refineries and chemical plants and talk to people, they want to change it. They want to be lower carbon. This is just the job they have, and it’s how they pay their bills, and it’s what they do. They’re looking for better ways to do it.

One of your goals to make sure that the energy transition is “fair and just.” What does that mean and how do y’all plan to accomplish that?

Twenty percent of Shell’s gift is targeted towards environmental justice, which, when I got contacted by the search firm for this position, and heard that, I was like, seriously? That really resonated with me. It’s not only to do the energy transition and to look towards future, but how do you do that the right way.

The right way has two aspects. One is, here in Louisiana, you’ve got this history of people, the fenceline communities, that when you really dig deep back into it, these are the descendants of slaves that lived on properties that then became these big industrial facilities. So you’ve got long-term justice and equality issues there.

But then you also have all of these people who worked in the oil and gas industry and see that as the thing that’s been driving Louisiana’s economy for at least the last century and they’re worried about their futures.

So, the institute’s trying to figure all this out and do it the right way.

Your career has spanned the globe and included stops in New York City and London. What did you see in Louisiana that made you want to work at LSU?

I looked at Louisiana, and as a southerner had been like, “How the hell is Louisiana not the wealthiest state in the southeast?” You’ve got the oil and gas and the mineral resources, the mouth of the Mississippi River. Why did Atlanta and Houston beat out New Orleans? We’re seeing all this economic activity coming here as part of the energy transition. Isn’t this the great opportunity for Louisiana to be the leader that is should have been?

To be at a flagship university like LSU and a state like Louisiana, these are the types of places that can start to solve these problems. The potential here is unreal.

What do you see as the most promising path in Louisiana to reducing global emissions?

I think carbon sequestration is the single most important technology humankind is working on. It’s the big bridge. If we can capture a meaningful amount of emissions we’re making, then we’re going to slow global warming. 

We’re doing a lot around carbon sequestration and trying to figure out, how do we do it safely? Where do you do it? Some of the stuff is public policy. How do we reward communities that have these facilities? How do you pay the individual landowners that the carbon is going to be sequestered underneath them? Then there’s the safety aspect. How do you make sure that it stays underground? How do you tell if it leaks?

Measuring success to me is can we enable good carbon sequestration projects here in Louisiana the next three to five years, and make sure that they’re safe and effective.

If we see solar and wind growing at a reasonable rate in Louisiana too, that’s a win.

The institute announced its latest round of grant funding in June, including for a project to examine public perception of the energy sector through statewide surveys and focus groups. What’s the goal of that effort?

There’s a lot of misinformation, especially around solar power. I was talking to somebody pretty high-ranking in the community here about solar, and they said, ‘But what happens after the land gets poisoned by these solar panels? You can’t farm on it anymore.” And I’m like, ‘It’s a piece of glass. There is no poison.’ You find that misinformation seems to spread much more quickly than accurate information. 

The institute recently offered scholarships for Louisiana teachers to attend a course at LSU on energy fundamentals. Why was that important for you?

The more content we can get out to teachers, the better. My parents were middle school teachers when they met, so education has always been important. It changed my life.

Is the next Neil deGrasse Tyson in some public school in rural Louisiana, and just waiting to have that moment of inspiration, you know? How do we reach the teachers who are going to expose that kid to some concept that then leads them down that a path? Could they end up going to LSU and coming up with the thing that make nuclear fusion work at an affordable level? Maybe.