Lincoln Bleveans on Certified Gas, the Energy Transition and Earthview!

Lincoln Bleveans is Earthviews research advisor and is the executive director of sustainability and energy management at Stanford University. He is a true leader in the energy space and his passion and spirit are contagious. He is a valued member of the Earthview team and we are so excited that we got the chance to interview him to get his unfiltered thoughts on certified gas, the energy transition, and why he thinks Earthview is the premier methane monitoring solution on the market! 

Why did you decide to get involved with Earthview?

Team, solution, and impact.  The Earthview team has both the hands-on experience and the technological and entrepreneurial horsepower to create an effective, winning solution.  

That solution— the Blubird -- is robust, accurate, and easy to move, manage, and scale.  

That leads to impact: our world will not wean itself off of natural gas instantly.  So a granular understanding of that supply chain – using continuous measurements, not rolled-up assumptions – is vital.  And then understanding if and how much mitigation measures actually solve the problems.  

And that’s just natural gas.  I see applications across the economy and around the world: real-time, granular measurement and reduction of pollution from road traffic to landfills to industrial facilities to agriculture.

Why do you think Earthview stands out against its competitors? 

First, the team.  They’ve actually done this sort of monitoring the old-fashioned way: periodic measurements from aircraft, for example.  That’s a huge competitive advantage.

Second, the BluBird solution.  Better, more granular data from a better, more granular device.  And continuous monitoring.  Anything less is just guesswork and thus costly, ineffective mitigation measures that won’t have the impact we need.

What are your thoughts on certified gas and how does it relate back to Earthview?

Mother Nature is not waiting for us.  We need to do as much as we can as soon as we can.  That means making our current energy system as clean as possible while transitioning to the next one. 

That transition, in turn, must maintain safe, resilient, reliable, and affordable electricity service to our economy and society.  Electrification is the key to mitigating climate change, and that same electrification is making us ever more reliant on it.  

So finding the cleanest options along that entire journey is in everyone’s interest, even as we try to make that transition faster and faster.

Certified gas and energy transition are incredibly relevant topics right now, what do you think in your professional opinion the energy transition means and what are we transitioning to? 

How much time do we have?  😉  

For me, the energy transition is comprised of two, interconnected elements: electrification and decarbonization.  

We are electrifying our economies and societies at an incredible rate and that’s the right way to mitigate a lot of climate change.  But it also creates an unprecedented dependence on safe, reliable, and affordable electric service.  And in ever increasing quantities.

At the same time, we are decarbonizing that electric system – again, the right thing to do to mitigate climate change.  But, like electrification, decarbonization creates unprecedented challenges: we’ve never before engineered and operated electric systems based on intermittent resources like solar and wind, let alone reliably and affordably.  

But it’s actually much more difficult than that, as we can’t shut the system down while we overhaul it.  It has to be safe, reliable, and affordable every second of every day.  So we have to be incredibly careful – imagine re-engineering and rebuilding an aircraft as it flies and you’re not far off.  

So it’s a transition in the true sense of the word.  Natural gas is not going away instantly.  And that’s why getting the BluBird solution out on the natural gas system will be absolutely crucial for the cleanest, quickest, most effective possible energy transition.  

 What is something you feel extremely passionate about right now? 

We are at a tipping point as a species.  Climate change; endemic; diversity, equity, inclusion, justice; and a Generation Z that is not taking no or even slow for an answer.  It’s not Apocalypse Soon or even Apocalypse Now, it’s Apocalypse Already.  We’re in it.

But I am hopeful.  Maybe it’s working at a university like Stanford.  Maybe its because I’m deep in the Silicon Valley ecosystem.  Maybe its too much coffee!  I’m hopeful that we can and will innovate our way to an acceptable, climate-changed world.  Even thrive.

That is not going to easy.  Technology innovation is the shiny, cool part but the big challenge, the big needle-mover (so to speak) is behavior innovation.  Each one of us both individually and collectively.  Going from an extractive to a circular way of living, for example, means undoing hundreds, even thousands of years of engrained, unconscious living patterns.  

That, to me, is the ultimate heavy lift.  Real, actionable information – like we get from Earthview’s BluBird solution – is indispensable for that behavior change, that behavior innovation.  Slogans and passion only get us so far. We need objective ways – like BluBird – to see opportunities and measure progress; that’s what drives real change.

What do you like to do for fun?

 I just took my first surfing lesson at age 55!  And I am totally stoked, dude.