“When I’ve been blessed with so much, it’s my responsibility to give back.”

About Our Guest in this episode:

Dan LaBar is an experienced educator who has spent his entire career creating and leading innovative schools that meet the varied learning needs of students at all grade levels. He knows what works!

He has led K-12 personalized-learning charter schools, an award-winning college-prep high school, a K-8 Waldorf school, and a traditional district middle school. During his 23-year career Dan has served over 9,000 students and 400 teachers spanning 22 California counties.

Dan’s view of all schools is that they are vital hubs of their communities. During the aftermath of the 2018 Camp Fire that burned 240 square miles in Butte County, California, he collaborated with fellow educators to create the Voices Strong United Choir that brought together students from 5 local high schools. The choir performed songs of hope, healing, and resilience that supported displaced students through their recovery process. Performances were shared locally and globally. The choir was invited to perform at the music industry’s largest global trade show and was featured in the International Voices of America media outlet which is translated into 47 languages.

Currently, Dan is principal of a public charter school serving four rural Northern California counties that offers an accredited personalized-learning program for students who thrive in a non-traditional setting.

In his spare time, Dan serves as a University Supervisor at California State University, Chico, coaching graduate students to become future teachers. He is the founder of a local Education Foundation, has served on a local school board, and mentors new school administrators.

Dan has a BA degree in History from Cal State University, Chico and three education credentials from the State of California. He anticipates completing his Master’s Degree in Curriculum and Instruction from Grand Canyon University in the Spring of 2023.

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The replay of our September career conversation with Dan LaBar, innovative educator and community-builder, is now available in video, podcast, and transcript. Click “Watch Net Effect Replays” below!

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Transcript of Episode:

Robin Jones: This is the Net Effect. I’m Robin Jones, your host with the Albert Baker Fund. Today we’re gonna focus on casting our nets on the right side as Jesus challenges followers to do in the chapter of Luke, verse 5.

We have listeners in countries all over the world. Kenya, Uganda, United States, the Philippines, Great Britain, Germany, Texas. They think it’s a state yes, in a country, but it really is a part of the United States. 

Thank you all for joining us today. We really appreciate that. Before we get started, I wanted you all to be sure that you know that the Net Effect is sponsored by the Albert Baker Fund, and its wonderful contributors and we have lots of programs that we offer, but our focus really is on post secondary education.

And helping students achieve their overall goals. And we provide financial assistance, needs-based assistance through scholarships, Albert Albert Fund Scholarship, and our Pass Your Blessings Forward Scholarship, which we’ll talk about later. The way you can find out about the Albert Baker Fund is go to AlbertBakerFund.org and you’ll find a page full of wonderful information and lovely links to take you to the places you need to go. 

If you’re in North America, you can click on Apply. That’s this page that’s represented here. And the dropdowns will show the different programs that we offer from Christian Science Nurses Education to North American Education to Christian Science Military Chaplains program.

And if you’re an international student, we offer programs in Europe, Asia, and Africa. So you can click on those buttons through the AlbertBakerFund.org. So if you have any questions, please go to the page and reach out to us at your convenience. 

Without further ado, I’d like to welcome our special guest today, Dan LaBar, who’s a leader in education.

A principal, works with the local college up in Chico, Chico State. He’s earned a degree in history from Cal State University, Chico. Has three educational credentials from the state of California, and he anticipates completing his master’s degree in the spring of 2023. 

Dan, we are so excited to see you and have you here today. Thank you very, very much for joining us. 

Dan LaBar: Thank you, Robin. 

Robin Jones: We are so interested to learn how you cast your net out in this wonderful world of education that you are such a wonderful leader in. 

So let’s just kinda kick it off and say why did you choose education as a career path?

Dan LaBar: That’s a great question. When I think about that “why” I think I always ask future teachers and new teachers I do a lot of mentoring. I’m in the stage of my career where I’m, I’m giving back where I ask that same question and not about casting the net, but as far as giving back.

 It’s a calling, right? Teaching and education is not a j o b. You are called to it because it is a service industry and when you are of service that is a calling. It is not just a career. 

Robin Jones: So was it a difficult choice for you to choose education?

Dan LaBar: Early on I started coaching as a very young man. I am from California and, and played volleyball. And we actually ended up starting a a boy’s volleyball team when I was going through undergraduate school in Northern California. And started coaching. I was only a couple years older than my athletes I was coaching. So I showed up to the first day of practice with my backpack from college and I said, Hey, where’s the coach?

Yeah, it’s me. So I started coaching very early on and realized that coaching and teaching have a lot of similarities, and just followed that. 

At a certain point I was coaching and teaching for many years, and I had to make a choice. And a mentor of mine who was a coach in the NCAA said, Well, Dan, do you like your weekends?

So if you like your weekends, you probably don’t wanna be a career coach. You probably wanna stay in education. So that was one kind of push pull factor. But again, that calling for helping students and especially young students, because going through schools, when you have a group of athletes, they’re selecting to participate.

But working with students, you’re working with all types and all kinds, coming from all walks of life. So that’s always spoken to me too.

I feel like I’ve been blessed in my life and when I’ve been blessed with so much, it’s my responsibility to give back.

Robin Jones: So did you map this journey out that you’re on? How has it unfolded for you? 

Dan LaBar: I mentioned coaching. And that kind of came from some of the skills that I had. And then as I got into classroom teaching with history and social science, it was something I really enjoyed.

I ended up in alternative education environments with a lot of students that struggled with different levels of behavior and it was something that I found myself to be really skilled at. I was very patient with the kids. I really had a growth mindset model of waiting for these kids to grow and into themselves and trying to give them a safe space to do that.

I was doing classroom teaching, and then I applied for a job as an in-school suspension teacher. So I had students from third grade all the way through seniors in high school who in this school district, when they were suspended, they came to my classroom.

And so it was my job to receive them and give them a safe place to land and, help view them as the amazing people and students that they are, and get them back to their schools. 

From that experience, I had an assistant superintendent that mentored me into administration and then the budget crash of 2008 in California hit and I was without a job for over a year.

My wife was pregnant with our second child. We had three kids. So I was doing my best as a new dad to be Mr. Mom at home. She’s also a teacher and she was teaching for a virtual school at home. And so we’re all at home and, this was before all the pandemic locked us down.

This was years and years ago. I was without a job and the school year came and went and I couldn’t find a job. I was frustrated. And that perfect timing wasn’t at work because I finally let go. I was like a hamster in a wheel trying to find a job and trying to apply and apply and so I let go and I said, I’ve gotta focus on my family, focus on my son, and my future, my number two, right?

My second son was born and I was letting go and just focusing on my family. And at our first postpartum appointment, our midwife said, Oh, well there’s a job in town for an assistant principal and you should apply. And I applied and a week later I got the job. And that’s been my path in administration ever since.

And that really, spoke to that idea of perfect timing that and my human will that I was trying so hard to make happen because I was worried about my family and worried, my wife wanted to stop teaching completely after her second child. And and it all just unfolded.

Robin Jones: So the job boards and the applications and all the things that you’re supposed to do, the job recommendation came from a completely different source that had nothing to do that didn’t relate to any of that? 

Dan LaBar: Right. And ever since then, in my career, it’s been that way because I’ve let go, I’ve let go of that human will of I need to be in a certain place.

That’s not my decision. I’m called to serve. And when I’m called, it is crystal clear. 

Robin Jones: How do you let go? So often I hear that from people, from folks that are Christian Scientists particularly, they say, Hey, you gotta get to a point, you just let go. 

How do you find the inspiration? How do you find the strength, the courage to just go, Okay, let go. How do you do that? 

Dan LaBar: Well, it’s the power of prayer, right? And the prayer, the very simple prayer I used is Thy will be done instead of my will be done. Right? So that was the difference maker because I had to recognize how willful I was trying to be, and that is what I had to let go, was my own will. 

Robin Jones: So you got into education. I know you’re heavily involved with charter school education. Talk to us a little bit about that and did you know what that was or how did that come about? How did you get there and what did that look like to you at the time? 

Dan LaBar: That job that I mentioned was at a charter school. It is at a Waldorf school. So getting involved in Waldorf education, which is a beautiful model of arts infused education. And each charter school is very unique and different depending on its charter.

So getting involved in that, in my town where I live in Northern California, with the university here, there’s a lot of educators and it’s very educationally rich. So there’s a Waldorf school and a Montessori school and an open structure school and, and many of them are charter schools. So that idea of choice is something that I believe is very American.

I believe it’s something that is just a natural thing for parents and families to have. So I get excited about school choice. Because I think it’s it’s something that we should all find our fit and find our community. And, without those choices, sometimes we can feel stuck.

So I’ve worked hard to make sure that people, do have choices in our communities. 

Robin Jones: Many folks may have heard about the Paradise fire that took place in your backyard, which is just north of where I live. And this fire, just so you all know, was devastating.

It went through the town like a perfect fire storm and it just wiped people out and it killed people. It just took things out and really had a huge devastating impact on the state. You had that in your backyard, Dan.

How did you find your way to practice Christian Science in such a public way and find how to help people during that really, really difficult time when people had lost everything and the school was gone and, family, it touched everybody in the region in some way, some shape, fashion or form.

How did Christian Science enter into that world for you to help with that sort of thing?

Dan LaBar: Yeah, it was a tough time and it still brings back a lot of memories. We had 90 students that lost their homes that morning. Yeah. And I was with them in a classroom and having them call their families, because many of them are still in Paradise and, trying to get out and it was a difficult day.

To your question, what role did it play? It was a healing. There was the first responders, FEMA came, It was one of the largest disasters in the world most costly disasters in the world in 2018. And FEMA described some things in some of my conversations when we would have leadership meetings about school recovery, that they had never seen that level of victims helping victims.

First responders lost their homes and they were helping others who lost their homes as well. So just that outpouring of love for your neighbor was just enormous. And then the outpouring throughout the world, just the influx of love, attention and resources that came our way was overwhelming and people mobilizing all throughout the world to help our little corner of Northern California. It was touching.

When I thought about those first responders and I thought about the role of school a lot of the health of a community is measured by the status of its schools. There’s research about that. So I thought of us being a second responder. How can we as schools come after the first response?

I was at a school that really valued the arts and as we all know, arts is that soul expression, it can be so healing. I called up a couple of music teachers that I knew. And they took that idea and they ran with it, and they brought together choirs and musicians and taught the kids songs.

And they went around to several of the makeshift schools that were popping up of students that were displaced. The high school students were singing to the middle school students, the elementary students, and even many teachers had lost their homes as well. The healing that came from that, especially with the adults that were trying to hold everything together.

It was palpable. That group was invited down to a large convention. They were able to sing there, so those kids were able to get recognized and many of those students who were singing had lost their home. So that idea, that healing can come in many forms and many ages because the students were ready to take action. They just needed a little bit of direction. 

Robin Jones: That’s really neat. In your work today, we read about and hear so often, that Christianity is losing numbers and people going to church aren’t, that’s not happening as much and church is not that important.

Having, an affiliation with a religion is ostracized, and criticized and condemned. How do you find your practice of Christian Science? How do you embrace that? How do you do that in an environment that seems to be so secularized? 

Dan LaBar: Hmm. That’s a good question.

I guess I just, attempt my best to live it. We’re all inspired and called to be Christ-like. Right. In education we have a teacher. We have the way shower or we follow that work. We are in a service industry and I always say that service is actually the verb of love.

That’s how we love. We are being of service. As a school leader, I fashion myself a servant leader. And I feel like that Christlike idea is built into service. It’s baked into it. If you are in education, you are serving and if you’re in public education, it’s like that sign on the freeway that says your tax dollars at work. We are working for one another. 

And how does that play out with faith? It’s trying to follow our way- shower, follow the Christ idea and show others and not to proselytize, not to teach those tenants, but to be that.

And those are universal truths. Especially in public schools, there’s very much a lot of separation where those things cannot be explicitly taught in public schools. So how do you do that? You’re just are a model and you’re demonstrating.

Robin Jones: I read about families that have really been challenged over the last several years. And looking back at your own experience, what kind of things have you learned, let’s say in the last five years that as you look forward those things are helping to shape and inform your path and inform decisions you’re making? What kind of things have you learned that you could share with families to help them think about things as they’re moving forward and facing some of the challenges they face?

Dan LaBar: I can think of three different things. So number one we’ve all been through something I like to call crisis schooling . 

Robin Jones: Okay. What does that mean? 

Dan LaBar: You shared the idea, you shared everything I went through up in my corner of the world. But then of course, we had this global pandemic and every student practically in the world went home.

Right, Right. And we all had this jarring shift of how education was delivered and it also opened up a lot of opportunities. Right. But I think it really showed families and parents when that intimacy of learning, literally came home about the challenge of learning. 

And how going to a place of learning can be very beneficial. So that crisis schooling idea, I think helped everyone, realize that service of education and the value of it. So that’s number one is crisis schooling. 

I was talking with a fellow Christian Science school administrator.

There’s not too many of us, but we are, I was gonna say, yeah, . And we were talking about the idea of proficiency versus growth in terms of, student learning. And I talk with my hands, as you may have noticed, and I was, kind of doing these level things. 

I never do that. 

So I was, I was leveling proficiency levels.

And, and he, he says, Dan, I need to stop you. And I was mid, mid level and he takes my hand and he says, we’re unlimited.

And just that moment has helped guide my career since, and that was, a good seven, eight years ago. And that’s something I would just reinforce with families is when we look at test scores or, grades on the report cards or all the rest, Proficiency does not always reflect growth. It does not always reflect learning.

It’s the idea of we are, human beings versus human doings, right? And as parents, we can sometimes get real caught up in the doing. Right. And we have to remember we’re unlimited and focus on the B, right? So that’s probably the second thing. And then the third thing, which I think education really helps.

With is helping students discover and uncover or recover their gifts, that they need to be exposed to these ideas or that they maybe put something down when they’re very young and they pick it back up later in their teens. And how to wrestle with those and how to explore them in healthy ways and in safe ways, you know?

So I, I think that would be number three. And that may be number four if I’d make sure, is there’s a saying in education. You have to Maslow before you bloom, and it’s it’s referring to these two researchers. And Maslow’s ideas, like, there’s this whole hierarchy of safety. Here I go with levels again, right?

Is there’s that you have to be safe and your needs need to be met before you can focused on learning, right? So I think that’s a lot of the role of the family and school is to ensure, that, that safety, physical safety of course, but that spiritual safety especially in the home is solid and present and alive and well.

And that that helps students, grow and learn and thrive. 

Robin Jones: So thinking about college education, we help students with their college education as we talked about it in the introduction. What are your thoughts about where that goes and is it still valuable? Is it still important?

And where does it fit in this post crisis Covid, where does the education now fit in, when a family’s thinking about, or students are thinking about, is this valuable? Is this worth it is it costs a lot of money and takes a lot of effort and energy to do all that.

What are your thoughts about that? 

Dan LaBar: When I think about life after high school, as I like to talk to my students, that’s my big question for them as is what does that look like? And their answers don’t always involve college or university. A lot of answers now are about, attaining a skill pursuing a certain industry or trade.

If they do want to go to college, they typically are going, they typically have a specific goal. College used to be exploratory, right? Where go try things, explore things, find things out. But like you mentioned with the rising costs over the years that’s a very difficult endeavor and a pricely endeavor to explore.

So that’s what I’m seeing with families lately. 

There’s just many ways to attain those skills, right? Those career ready or they call future ready skills, right? Preparing for jobs that we don’t know are even here yet, or maybe even exist. So the idea, I think, at least with in K12 schools, and I think that is becoming a little bit, trickling into college and universities, is that we’re really skill focused.

We want you to learn the math. But you don’t always have to know the algorithm, like the recipe of step one, step two, step three, step four. You need the quantitative reasoning, you need the math skills and the number sense to be able to do that. Some people aren’t big fans of the common core math, but that’s exactly what it’s asking kids to do, is don’t just follow the recipe, but do to the thinking, right?

Or language is the whole idea is it’s a kind of a stair step of complexity as you get, further and further up the nuances of language. Or there’s the next generation science standards and they’re focused on modeling and all sorts of different things like patterns and systems and structure and function.

And it’s not just about the content because nowadays kids can just Google it and find it. And the content is all there where the age of inform. They need the skill and the reasoning. And so I think that’s where schools are going is that we’re teaching students not what to think and what to learn, but how to think and how to learn.

Robin Jones: I wonder what your thoughts are on spiritual education, and the importance of that. So many churches had to close down during Covid and Sunday School kind of went away because there was no open church. And the impact from that has been a decline in the number of students attending Sunday School.

How do you see the importance of a spiritual education. And how do you find it? How do you get it, and why is it important in this day and age?

Dan LaBar: It is important, the wisdom that we have, to pass to one another, it’s invaluable. And if those stories in that wisdom isn’t shared it’s a missed opportunity.

I’ve seen it myself. There’s not a whole lot of other children in our Sunday School where I am. My kids go to camp and all the kids come from many different areas. And that’s when you see it, alive with within one another.

I’ve seen a shift. And my children value that because they want to share with one another. They want to learn from other children as well, not just the adults. So I think that’s important. So if that’s the way we need to do things, then the summertime it is, right? 

But the daily practice, in each and every one of our homes is equally, if not more important, those are the habits. Those are the daily habits of how do we wake up and start our day, and how do we end our day? And those are the first thoughts and prayers that we start and end with. 

Because how we will think and pray is how we will live our lives.

I think what needs to happen is the students or children just need to be taught those habits and it’s up to them to practice it. With the declining enrollment I mean, my answer is to be that lighthouse, shine your light and put it out there and, and folks will come.

You have to shine right? 

Robin Jones: So many students when they get into college, they got a lot of things going on. What are some ideas that you might have to share with them? To encourage them to embrace thinking about walking through the door of a church or, having that time in dedicated prayerful study to help support that spiritual education when they’ve got all these different things, trying to say, Well, you gotta go to this.

And what about that meeting and what about that thing and this party and that football game. What about those kinds of things? What kind of thoughts can you share about maybe, thinking about taking some time as a college student to reflect and pray?

Dan LaBar: Well, it’s not a new idea, but it’s a story I tell my students when they’re prioritizing.

Like you mentioned that the way you put it, Robin, taking time, right? It’s almost like if you take that time to go to church, you’re taking it from somewhere else. Right. But that whole idea, it’s a story. You can find it told by others, but it’s about the big rocks and the whole teacher gets in front of class and has a big jar and fills it up with rocks, big rocks and says, Is the jar full?

The students all say, yes, it. And so he takes out pebbles and pours them in, and they come in between the rocks and it fills up to the top. And is the jar full? Some say yes and some are wise to it and say, Oh, maybe not. So the teacher takes out some sand and pours it in. Okay, now we’re onto you. No, it’s not full.

Okay. Okay. Water takes some water. Okay. Now it’s full. What’s the point of the exercise? And the first student raises their hand. There’s always room for more. No, no, no, no, no. That’s not the idea. The idea is if you didn’t put the big rocks in first, they would’ve never gotten in. Right. So our day will fill up, our time will fill up.

We will be human doings, right? But if we don’t put it in those big rocks first then they won’t be valued. They won’t be prioritized. So you, I’ve had students do this. They write what their three or four big rocks are and those need to fill up their life first. And this one, this is not a big rock, right?

This is the sand and the water and the pebbles, right? It can very easily fill up our day, especially our young people. So I guess that analogy has always helped me convey that idea of prioritization. And that if church is not a priority, it will never get put in. So it has to be made one.

Robin Jones: The time has flown by really fast and I wanted to give you an opportunity before we jump into our final questions in Q and A. Anything that you’d like to share that we didn’t really cover that I didn’t ask about that you kind of think might be important? 

Dan LaBar: Hmm. I guess one thing I’ve found in my career with students and really with all of us, cuz I’m working with adults and teachers and, community members and everyone just something that’s driven me in my career.

Worthiness is a big idea. And we wanna feel like we’re part of a worthy group and that we are a worthwhile member of that group. That’s something that’s always driven me. So trying to see one another in that light and create, worthwhile endeavors.

And kinda goes back to your question about how do you do that in education, right? When you live through those tenants that we have it creates that worthiness.

Robin Jones: That’s wonderful, thanks for that. 

Will education go backwards? Or will education adapt to the modern era? What are your thoughts about that? 

Dan LaBar: Well, I don’t know if there’s any looking back and, when I think of time, I don’t think of it as that linear expression of time.

John Dewey was the father of progressive education. Maria Montessori is the mother of Montessori education. Rudolph Steiner is the father of Waldorf education. A lot of those ideas are still present moving forward, but very different from what their founders envisioned.

The constant I would see would be change, right? So going backwards, I guess that the way that the standards based education has kind of been the new way of public education, but with the common core standards and the next generation science standards, they’re still called standards, but they’re not just content standards.

Now there’s content and skills. Here I go with my hands again. And so, that idea of skills is kind of hearkening back to apprenticeships and, journeymen and trade schools. Because we need to learn those skills. But I think the difference is with the advance of technology as rapid as it’s been, we just don’t know what trades we’re preparing students for anymore.

Robin Jones: Do you think that the new technologies that have come up, like Zoom and some of the ways that education has had to adapt and embrace, do you think those will continue? Has it created kind of an affinity for that? Are there people now in education that are really embracing technology or new ways of thinking about things as we move forward?

Dan LaBar: Well, with the age of the free flow of information, I think that it’s hard that it wouldn’t do that. Because the proliferation of information students learn from YouTube and TikTok now that they learn in these small chunks and bites and the visual ways that information is presented.

It’s very difficult for a classroom to emulate or even compete with some of the ways that these high level production can present information. And that’s not bad. They call it the sage on the stage or the guide on the side. The sage on the stage version of education with the teacher at the front and the kids in rows is yes, definitely quickly becoming an antiquated idea.

So the idea now is the guide on the side, that teachers are facilitating the learning experience. And in many ways that experience is becoming more and more authentic and solving real world problems. Sometimes when students are even very young, For example I had students years ago, a science teacher did this amazing project where they found the substance and these underwater creatures that would glow.

They said, How could we design a real world product that could use that substance? And students designed a product and did the chemistry and the biology and all the rest. And it was like a, a nose spray of if someone might be infected with something that their nose would glow. It’s called nasal glow.

But that idea of the information is out there. The teacher didn’t teach them what to do. She set the project, here’s the direction, here’s the criteria, and go. And that idea of project based learning is alive and well and working in teams. And those are the skills that all industries are looking for. Team based learning and cooperation.

Robin Jones: Thank you for that. 

How is your school handling the growing number of disability labels that are being placed on children?

Dan LaBar: That’s a great question. And that I’ve seen in my career has increased. Parents are increasingly seeking answers and they’re, as all parents are doing, doing their best to be resourceful. And that is definitely one way parents are pursuing answers, is to do a, an evaluation for special education assessment with individual special needs.

How are the schools handling it? And my current school, I’m in a personalized learning school, so it’s really set up for that anyway, because we have individual plans, which each student and I see a lot of schools moving in those directions of more personalized plans, sometimes even individualized.

I see that as a trend for sure that not all students are the same and nor should they be seen that way. The idea with the labels or the stigma or even the trend towards medicating even very young children is concerning because it’s that idea of how do we see our children.

There’s definitely a lot of research that says our, especially our young men are struggling with the idea of school. There are much more young women college going. Some of our young men are struggling with the way that school is set up with the, the old idea of the Carnegie unit of instruction.

And even the, the military model of, of some of our high schools of, here’s the bell, dang, go to the next departmentalized instruction. Those are definitely antiquated ideas. When I went through high school, some of the same requirements are for my high school students. Some of those things haven’t changed and I think some of those requirements need to be updated with our legislators throughout, at least the United States.

Those need to be taken a look at because if we are really truly shifting to skills based education, because the content can be gained in other ways. We need to look at what these requirements are and how we are preparing students. So I think starting looking at those requirements will be a good first step because I see parents jumping towards a label of a disability, a learning disability, when that student is actually learning differently.

And it’s not necessarily a disability, it is just an ability in another area that may not be valued in traditional academia. 

Robin Jones: Is it also a preference for the student? Do you think sometimes they just, when they start to get to a certain age and they have a preference to how they want to learn and how they want to pursue their interest.

Is that part of it as well? 

Dan LaBar: Sure. And it’s about the habits as well. Right? So you, we were talking earlier about that habit of waking up. Our thoughts and our prayers and how we start our day and end our day. This is the way that many students are starting and ending their days. And so those are the things that have happened very rapidly.

My oldest son is 14, and he is as old as the smartphone. So he has never grown up in a world without it. 

Robin Jones: It’s pretty remarkable, isn’t it, when you think about that. There’s a lot of truth in what you’re saying as it relates to they start with it and they end with it and, throughout their day.

And that piece of the technology that we know is there. Going to that question of, are, are we incorporating that? So that we can have an impact. It’s in a positive way to help guide and see some positive results from those kinds of things. But I did have a question.

Are the conversations going in the direction that you just mentioned, are we moving in a direction we’re actually affecting positive change? 

Dan LaBar: I would say yes and no. It’s really about leadership 

Robin Jones: How can people in their communities help with that and encourage that. What does that look like?

Dan LaBar: We have seen a lot of that in terms of school boards.

The United States does have a unique structure of local control when it comes to public schools and parents are being much more active with saying, these are things we want, these are things we don’t want. And so I’d say that direct type of action is a way to influence and give oversight and also be of service back to the schools.

So we’ve seen a lot of that increase. Unfortunately some of it has been prescriptive or directive and, telling the educators what to do especially in terms of the pandemic and the response, that’s been challenging. But I don’t think that engagement is necessarily a bad thing.

I think that continued engagement with families and schools, it’s important. We need to listen to each other.

Robin Jones: Thank you. You have been extremely generous with your time and this content is so rich and rewarding. We’re so blessed that you’re willing to spend your time with us this afternoon.

If you have any questions or we can help in any way, or if you know someone that has children who are in that post secondary college vocational age and needs help financially, please reach out to the Albert Baker Fund and go to our website and we’ll be glad to help you and assist you in any way that we can. 

We’ve started a new pilot program for our students and it’s a mentoring program. Dan is actually one of our first mentors and we appreciate his support in that, in that nature. Along those lines and we’re, we also would encourage you to invest in the education of our young Christian Scientists who are out there working and sharing the leaven of truth. 

We are offering two scholarships presently. Albert Baker Fund Scholarship, and the Pass Your Blessings Forward scholarship.

We really would love to continue those and continue to support our youth. We would appreciate any and all gifts that you might have to help our youth in their pursuit of education. 

If you’re interested in connecting with Dan, you can reach out to me, robin@albertbakerfund.org and I will be happy to help connect you.

We also invite you to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. And we hope that we’ve inspired you today to think about casting your net on the right side. Dan, what great ideas and thoughts you shared with us today. And again, thank you so very much for being with us.

Dan LaBar: Thank you, Robin. 

Robin Jones: And remember, it’s not just about working hard. It’s about casting that net in the right way. So thank you all for being with us, and we look forward to seeing you again on the next Net Effect.

“…you have to ask yourself, is there any challenge that’s too big for God to handle?”

About Our Guests in this episode:

Our featured guest is Jill Hamilton, President and Founder of Sustainable Energy Strategies (SESI), Inc. located in Fairfax, VA. For more than 20 years, Ms. Hamilton has provided the clean tech industry with leadership on funding and public awareness. As President of SESI, she leverages alternative fuels industry funds with public and private resources for her clients, as well as manages their federal grant programs.  She provides business plans, project management and technical support for biofuel infrastructure development, including market research, fleet analysis, equipment assessment, and fleet and retailer liaison efforts.

Ms. Hamilton also coordinates public outreach activities to promote awareness of biofuel transportation technologies; authors alternative fuel articles, presentations and speeches; manages media and and prepares alternative fuel marketing strategies. She is a staunch supporter of climate justice.

Ms. Hamilton attended the University of Missouri and graduated with honors from Principia College in Elsah, Illinois with a BS in Environmental Sciences and a minor in Education.

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Transcript of Episode:

Robin Jones: I’d like to welcome you all to episode number 50. Wow. Kind of a milestone for us.

This is the Net Effect and we are so excited to have Jill Hamilton with us today. She is a terrific, wonderful person, and I know that you’re going to be really excited to learn about the really neat things that Jill has to offer. 

So before we do, I want to make sure that you all know that we are sponsored by The Albert Baker Fund. We are really dedicated to helping students grow in their education and their career development. We help students in North America, Europe, Asia, and we have two full time employees in Africa to help African students go to school in Africa. 

I love working with all of them. So if you have questions or, you know someone that is a student and they are needing financial assistance or interested in scholarships, please have them go to the AlbertBakerFund.org and all the information that you need is right there. It’s really easy to understand, but if you have any questions, you can always email me robin@albertbakerfund.org and I’ll be glad to help you. 

Let’s get started, our guest again is Jill Hamilton and she has an incredible, wonderful company that focuses in the field of sustainability. She’s president, owner of the company.

And I want to bring you in Jill. Tell us a little bit about Jill Hamilton. 

Jill Hamilton: It’s a pleasure to be here. I’ve been an alternative fuel consultant focused largely in biofuels for the last 30 years. And the last 24 has been part of Sustainable Energy Strategies. That’s my company. 

This first slide depicts my pathway. How did I get to where I am?

Robin Jones: I work with students often and many of them are interested in sustainability.

They’re interested in this kind of a space and that’s such a huge window. So I thought this would be great for you to talk a little bit about your career path and how you got, where you’re going to give them a little bit of insight for what’s available or what they can potentially think about focusing in with their career.

Jill Hamilton: When you’re going off from high school, usually somebody kind of points you in the direction. And in my case, I went to very small, rural high school. And my science teacher asked me, Jill what do you want to do with your life? Where are you going? And I said, I wanted to do something for the environment.

This was back in the eighties and it’s coming off of an energy crisis at that time, similar kind of similar today. And he said, why don’t you go into energy in environment? And that really stuck with me. I thought about maybe doing education and environment, but this energy environment really, he said, there’s always going to be work to do in the field of energy.

That rings true today as well. I attended Principia College as well as my undergrad. I received a degree in environmental studies, which is kind of the precursor to environmental science today. They didn’t really have that back then.

This was 30 years ago. So when I was working during a spring break I had to work to put myself through school was so I can really appreciate what Albert Baker does and has helped. I received support similar to that and very much appreciate the role that Albert Baker plays today.

Along those lines, while I was working one of the professors asked me the same question, Jill, what do you hope to do? And I said, I really want to do something on energy environment. And he said, well, you can make trees and grasses into fuel for your vehicle. And I’m like, that is so cool.

I really want to do that. How do I do that? I worked with another Principian and Christian Scientist who through my professors, they helped me get an internship in the Biomass Office of the Department of Energy. And I did an internship and then they offered me two summer jobs and they even offered me a job when I graduated.

And I decided not to do that. Civil service was not for me, but I really wanted something where I could interact with those that were making policy change or really boots on the ground. So again, through prayerful listening although I didn’t want to burn any bridges either, they at Department of Energy really helped me get connected to a small ethanol lobbyist. 

Ethanol back then was just a few million gallons. It was kind of a boutique fuel really was just getting off the ground. There was no some of these other fuels that I’m going to talk about today, there weren’t any. I was also offered other jobs.

As most kids graduating. You applied for several jobs. I had several job opportunities for some larger consulting firms and I chose through prayer and listening to pass up those opportunities to work for this small ethanol consulting lobbying group, because I felt like that’s really the direction I was being called to go into.

This job didn’t have a lot of benefits. One of the guys that work I worked for, he said, you got to work eight hours to get paid a very minimal wage. And then the rest of the eight hours that you have to put in for Uncle Sam. So you guys get the idea, but it was a really cool experience.

I get to go see go to the White House several times under the Bush and Clinton administration got to see a lot of behind the scenes through how a bill is made, got to go to some inaugural balls, a couple of inaugural balls. That was fun, but it, but it also sometimes it’s, it’s kind of funny when we’re praying, as if you kind of stay prayed up God has a way of creating opportunities for you.

So a sister company kind of scooped me up and I without again, burning any bridges, but it was at a time when the energy bill first passed on the Bill Clinton administration and they needed to help starting up some alternative fuel hotlines and a clean national clean cities program, which I got to be a key consultant on and now have been consulting for 30 years under that program.

And that’s again prayer in action, right? 

Robin Jones: That program’s grown too, right? 

Jill Hamilton: I mean, it’s, it has grown there’s about 88 of them. And every major city is participating in that program. Yes. And that’s to help establish grant that give grants out and also help create opportunities at the local level.

I’ve told a lot of students about that’s a great place to get started in this field too. So moved on from this ethanol lobbyist to a small consulting firm, but I got to work on this national program. And that was great. It gave me experience about how to bid a contract, how to negotiate a contract, lots of small business skills that allowed me to now do what I do today.

But I was working like 50 to 70 hours a week. I couldn’t keep a date with my husband. I was flying 50,000 miles a year. It just wasn’t right. I felt like there was a need to change. It wasn’t balanced. 

I prayed and listened and that prayer, took a little while.

So I had to continue to pray and listen. Sometimes when we do that, we might doubt our prayer that it was going to be answered.

I was actually training for a marathon and running with a Christian Science friend and he reminded me that God needs to unfold your plan.

Sometimes it takes some unfolding. You need to just listen and watch. And during this period, I did again, have several job offers, but they just didn’t seem to fit for me. And so I ended up we went out to rebid it on a big contract and this is one that we’re currently managing and ended up that this small consulting firm didn’t get it.

So what that did is it allowed me to step away and start my own consulting. And I couldn’t have done that. I might’ve burned bridges. I might’ve upset people had I walked away without giving it my all. Everybody I was managing at the time either worked for the company that got the contract or they started their own consulting or they took that next step in their career path.

So it didn’t hurt anybody. It was actually God’s way of creating this opportunity for me to start my own consulting. So that’s kind of the pathway on which I kind of got to where I am and I couldn’t have done it without, of course the loving support of my dear husband too. I gotta give him a shout out.

Robin Jones: Thank you for all the husbands that are out there and I know your dear husband and he is a very dear man. I’ve owned several businesses and there’s always challenges with that.

And it’s so impressive that it’s such a young part of your career that you moved into that place with great courage. One of the first questions when you start your own business, having had to write some of those checks myself and wondering, okay, where is this going to really come from?

And sometimes you’re paying your employees before you pay yourself. In fact, that was always my approach. I took care of them first, before I took care of me, because that’s how it should be done.

You put this up here as a how to meet payroll. I love thinking about that.

There’s a lot of students that graduate, or recent graduates, and they start to think about starting their own business and thinking about how I can move. And they even today get out of school and they go, I’m going to start my own business, you know? 

So I thought this would be a really good topic to think about and address, and take a few minutes to talk about some of the things about owning a business.

Jill Hamilton: It’s so true. I will answer this by saying one of my colleagues who’s been with me 20, I’ve been in business about 22 years and she’s been with me the whole time. And we judge that based on my oldest, how old he was. Cause that’s kind of when I started about, I was about 30 years old. 

She commented, Jill, it doesn’t matter what happens. Whenever something seems to be ending, you always seem to find a new work for us. How is that? And I said, that’s divine direction right there. 

Mary Baker Eddy says, I’m going to read a quote to you, in scientific relation of God to man, we find that whatever blesses one blesses all. As Jesus showed with the loaves and fishes, Spirit, not matter being the source of supply. 

That’s so true. If we’re truly trusting that God is governing us on a daily basis, governing our business and that we are listening for direction, that we are going to find it.

And those loaves and fishes are going to jump into our nets, so to speak. And that’s certainly been the case for me. I’ve been very grateful that I really haven’t had any dull time. Even though it might seem that it’s going to happen as contracts close, there’s always been something else to fill that, but that comes through being kind of prayed up if you will.

Robin Jones: I also know that in the course of your business and your practice, I am sure that you occasionally run across some of those difficult situations. And I love how you attach this healing of personal sense. I think that’s a really neat way to think about that. Tell us a little bit about what you mean by healing personal sense? 

Jill Hamilton: That’s one of my favorites and I really need to submit this one. I think I’ve even written it up and I need to submit it to the periodicals. 

It doesn’t matter what your business, I think there’s times that there’s a seeming friction between personalities, quote unquote human personalities and those never go well. When we’re in that human trying to reason things out. 

I had a client who has been my client for 10 years at that point who, for whatever reason, we’ve always had no problem, renegotiating contracts this particular year. I don’t know whether we were trying something new and the way in which we manage the contract.

I was getting a lot of resistance to the point where I actually cried and I never cry over anything, but it was very upsetting. And then I realized I tried to go back and forth with them until I stopped and prayed and got myself out of the way. And really tried to trust that he is a child of God.

He’s listening to God’s voice, not just Jill that I needed to really hear what he had to say and understand it and not try to solve it, but just understand it. And as soon as I was humbled by that situation, took myself out of the equation and let God do the talking. Then that’s when I really found that answer.

Mary Baker, Eddy writes, even if you cling to a sense of personal joys, spiritual Love with capital L will force you to accept what best promotes your growth. 

I thought I knew what best promoted my growth and that didn’t get me anywhere. So I really had to listen and humbly ask God for that resolution.

It truly was God’s voice that brought us together and solved that problem. Never had any problems since then. That’s one of my issues of how to handle a difficult client. It could be staff as well. It’s whenever you prayerfully, let Love guide, you find that answer 

Robin Jones: I thought this third point, protection in the form of technology and client diversification… that’s a mouthful. Tell us a little bit about that. 

Jill Hamilton: This business has been around for 22 years. In that period, as you heard, there’s some times when things get quieter and then they pick back up. 

Over the past few years, that still small voice was telling me, I needed to look at diversifying what we did and how we did it and trying to figure out, well, what does that look like?

Of course human doubt likes to jump in and say, well, you don’t know much about that, or you’re not in that space. You can’t do that, but that’s just mortal sense again, right? That’s just not trusting our supply to God, but this reiteration kept coming to me about trying to diversify what we did and boy, did I really see a lot of growth in that? 

Not only do we go from being biofuels, transportation, but now we’re doing liquid hydrogen, green hydrogen, we’re doing hydroprojects, hydro as in water, to renewable electricity to a solar project. I’m a solar developer. Who knew! All those things couldn’t have come about without having a sense of that supply being God derived.

Robin Jones: I love all of those things. Those are really great points. I think now we should take a few minutes and start diving into the subjects. There is a lot on this slide.

Jill Hamilton: It’s really helpful to understand where we’re going if we understand where we’ve come from. 

Let’s take a look back to 2013. That’s about eight years ago, and I want you all in the audience to think about, well, how has it, how has our energy use in the United States going to change in eight years? So this is a Lawrence Livermore Lab. They do this pathways of energy.

So on the left is all the energy feedstocks or forms of energy that go into the different sources of how we use that energy, whether it’s electricity, residential, commercial, industrial, or transportation. And of course, as you’ve heard, I’m primarily in the transportation space, but let’s just look at this for a second on the left.

Well, before we go to the left that 97.4 quads of energy, let’s just bump that up to a hundred. It makes it easy from a math standpoint to think about. All the inputs on the left are percentages. So solar is less than a third of a percent. Hydro is 2.5%. Wind is 1.6. Geothermal is 0.2, natural gas is about 26. Coal 18, biomass is 4.5% and petroleum is 35. 

All these different lines are showing you where those inputs are going and how they’re being used. 

One of the ones that’s fascinating to me is that we think of a lot of electricity going into transportation, but it’s it’s 0.025%. It’s very tiny. 

Biofuels is about 1.2 quads of energy. So that gives you a little perspective on how is our energy being used. Now let’s flip it to the next slide. 

 Total renewable quads is about nine quads of energy in that last one. So here, unfortunately, it’s cutting off the top, but it’s for 2021 and it’s about the same quads of energy.

So not to worry, for all intents and purposes, our energy hasn’t changed. 

Now, in reality, if we hadn’t had a pandemic or our energy use was going up every year. And so we’re seeing it, it actually level off, but in reality, we’re probably going to see this pick back up in the next few years. So every year we tend to grow in our energy demand.

One of the biggest questions I have for you is did your prediction come true? Did you expect the changes that occurred in these eight years? 

I’m going to point it out. So solar’s quadrupled. Huge. That’s great, but it’s only 1.5% of our energy use. Hydro really hasn’t changed. 

Coal dropped in half, nearly in half.

That to me is pretty significant. That’s a huge change in eight years that we’ve taken this dirty coal and, and mostly converted it to natural gas use. So natural gas went up. Biomass went up slightly and petroleum really hadn’t changed. But to me, one of the things that’s most interesting, again, out of this is that this the electric power into transportation, which is an issue in my space really hasn’t changed.

I was really surprised to see that there’s so much energy and research and promotion going into this area, but really hadn’t seen a lot of movement yet in that space. 

I just want to give you a lay of the land before we start talking about some of the biofuels.

Robin Jones: This whole biofuel thing is really interesting to me. I’m a farm boy. And so talking about that is fun. I read this article just the other day about fuel for jet engines. And it’s like a biofuel for that. That just seems incredible to me.

What are biofuels? 

Jill Hamilton: When I first got involved in bio-fuels remember, I’ve mentioned that professor telling me trees and grasses can be, that’s ethanol. You can convert any kind of biomass into ethanol.

Now we have as part of a regulation, 10% of transportation fuel in your life due to market is ethanol. When you go to fill up your car, you probably notice a sticker that says this fuel contains 10% ethanol. That didn’t exist 30 years ago. 

Robin Jones: Has ethanol changed at all, in terms of its formula? There used to be a lot of criticism, it’s going to junk up my carburetor or fuel injectors. Has it gotten better?

Jill Hamilton: That is a misunderstanding out there. Back in the eighties there was some swelling of hoses and rubbers, et cetera. There were some problems in those early days.

If you have a boat that isn’t designed for ethanol, you can still have those issues. You really need to be careful. 

But as far as any vehicle, 2001 and newer, it’s designed to run on E15. Most flex fuel vehicles can run on up to 85% ethanol.

I think in the future, you’re going to see some more hybrid technologies that allow higher blends as well. 

Biodiesel is something that came out of a need for waste oil out of the soybean industry. They had a glut of oil and they needed a higher value market for it. 

It didn’t really move so much in the food industry. 

The soybean industry developed this biodiesel and it’s a very simple chemical process. We have it in about 5% of our diesel market. 

Renewable diesel and sustainable aviation gas are more traditional hydrocracking processes, similar to what we do with petroleum today, but just swapping out crude oil for our renewable feedstocks.

You’re going to see some investments over this next decade in green hydrogen that could either be used in transportation or in things like aviation or even rail or marine, which is harder to use electric power.

Can’t go across the nation or across the ocean in electric power. We need a liquid fuel. 

What are these biofuels made out?

Most people know ethanol is made out of cornstarch. You can also now take that distiller’s corn oil and make it into biodiesel.

You’re not taking oil that would be fed to animals, that’s still available. Anything that’s excess, they’re pulling out and making it into biodiesel. 

We’ve got soybean oil. I mentioned that’s been a kind of a waste product and that’s now being used in, and now they’re growing a lot more soybeans and there’s so much of a need for biofuels that now we’re even short in supply.

We’re looking at possibly crushing more soy beans in the United States, instead of sending them to China, for example. We’re looking at crushing them here to keep that oil here and sending the crushed meal over instead. 

Barley is also been used for ethanol, camelina, and canola oil. 

Animal fats, again, a waste product that had a low value is now being used. And about 95% of our restaurant grease is all going into the production of biodiesel. Talk about a hundred percent waste product being used and recycled. 

So fun for me interested in sustainability, seeing that happen is really a lot of fun.

Robin Jones: That’s pretty remarkable really to think about all of that excess going into something that’s productive and something that you actually use and is being used. 

Jill Hamilton: Yeah, 20, 25 years ago, you did not see that. It’s all because of this growing need for sustainable energy. 

Robin Jones: Talk to us about what’s on the horizon.

Jill Hamilton: So this is just a few. Corn oil I mentioned a moment ago. They’re now looking at ways to extract it. There are a couple of things, you can extract it out before you do other processes to make ethanol. So you can get a little bit more out. You’re not changing the crop, but you’re changing the extraction process.

The seed industry is also looking at ways of growing crops in such a way to produce more oil. 

Cotton seed oil really hasn’t been used, but now they’re looking at that. 

Algae has been on the horizon for a while, there’s such an abundance of it, but it’s still not profitable without some incentives. It could very much produce a lot of feed stock for us if we get the right incentives.

In place Cornetta cover crest. I’m going to talk if we have time later about some sustainable ag practices, cover crest is a cover crop, which is a more sustainable way of growing and doing agriculture.

And we’re now looking at seeing these feedstocks come into play for biofuels there being normally it keeps soil in place and keeps green on the ground instead of just leaving a fallow field. And if we can use those crops now to produce oil, we’re going to have a lot more feed stock.

Robin Jones: Pretty interesting, we had a giant snow storm right after Christmas and just wiped out unbelievable amounts of trees, and it didn’t really matter if it’s a hardwood or softwood.

It just took them out. And on the side of the highway, there were stacks and stacks and stacks of trees and they they were chipping them. 

We do have a lumber mill here in town and I thought for sure they would log it, but no, they chipped it up and it makes me wonder, I wonder if it was going towards some sort of biomass product? 

Jill Hamilton: Most likely not bioenergy, very unlikely. But there is some, there’s some.

I do have a client right now that’s looking at a hydrothermal liquefaction, which is similar to making a bio crude that can make sustainable aviation or renewable diesel out of it. We’re in the equity fundraising stage of that project, but that’s a billion dollar project. It’s going to take a little while. It’s expensive to do these projects. 

Robin Jones: I look at all this stuff and I think I’m perfectly fine filling up my car, going to the gas station, putting it in. I have a hybrid, so why should I care about all this other stuff? 

Jill Hamilton: With the high energy prices right now, everybody’s wondering why aren’t we doing more?

It does keep consumer prices down the pump and believe it or not ethanol in particular for light duty is better for your vehicle. The higher the octane, the better it is for your engine. If you understand much of that ethanol as a high octane, and it does really work better for your vehicle. A lot of people put out a lot of misinformation out there. 

From a standpoint of a consumer it’s cheaper and better for your engine. 

Biodiesel is about on par with diesel fuel, but you get it. It reduces imported oil. I think that’s a pretty straightforward one. We’re not sending our money to invest in other countries. We’re keeping that money here. 

Low cost pathway to carbon reductions. A lot of very smart people have done analysis on it, MIT Fuels Institute, are saying that we have a lot of legacy vehicles, the ones Robin you’re driving, the one I’m driving, are going to be on the road for awhile. 

Right now we need something that’s sustainable for those vehicles until we replace them with something better for the environment.

And in the meantime, we need to have low carbon fuels. And this is a cost-effective way of doing it.

It boosts rural economies. Basically we’ve lost about 50% of our rural economies over the past 40 or 50 years. Keeping jobs in rural economies, high paying jobs is a wonderful thing to do and biofuels is a great way to do that.

And it’s out competing other technologies in the carbon and low carbon and clean energy space. And we’ll get into that in a minute.

Robin Jones: I love what you said about helping rural economies. That’s where I grew up. You didn’t really as a student who graduated high school, becoming a farmer, the stigma was, well, if you do that, guess what, you may not have the kind of income that you want.

And so that was kind of always the challenge. It’s like, well, if I do that, I’m never going to make any money at all, you know? So it’s nice to hear that. 

Jill Hamilton: A lot of the farmers have invested in these plants and are receiving additional income from it if they’re a co-op of some sort. 

Robin Jones: We live in California and, we have some of the most comprehensive policies and laws as it relates to sustainable energy and sometimes they feel a little onerous sometimes, frankly. What does it look like across that landscape? 

Jill Hamilton: I call it paying for the true cost of our fuel there, Robin, I know it’s a little onerous, but it really is trying to assign a value for what we want to do in terms of making fuels more sustainable.

Federally what’s driving biofuels is the Energy Policy Act and the renewable fuel standard that’s in there and actually passed in 2015 under Bush. And then two years later, he signed another bill to revise it, to expand that program. So that’s been around for awhile. And it’s really what drives it at a federal level.

Here in Fairfax, Virginia, where I am, that’s what is driving it and I’m not in California, but California has its own incentives. Right? 

The farm bill, which is revised every five years is another thing that creates a lot of the loan guarantees that allow us to produce these technologies, bring them to market from a production standpoint.

It also provides grants, loans and research, other things that are really good that help us keep, keep these technologies going. You mentioned the low carbon fuel standard and you’re in California, that’s the gold standard for low carbon policies in the United States and Oregon and Washington have both adopted them.

Some states have biofuel policies and actually a lot of the states now have biofuel policies. I think Illinois and Iowa, Iowa just signed their bill today. Illinois, signed a bill a couple of weeks ago, renewing some tax credits and incentives for biofuels. 

The gold standard is this low carbon fuel standard.

And we are seeing the west coast states have adopted it and we’re seeing it come up in New York. So some heating oil and policies and Vermont and others, but the states can have as much of an influence as the feds on this, but those are the major ones. 

Robin Jones: Well, I thought this was an interesting slide. Tell us a little bit the numbers and kind of what this means. 

Jill Hamilton: Okay. So what you’re seeing on the left there is the renewable fuel standard that I mentioned, the federal policy that’s driving the use in our transportation liquid fuels market. And the one on the right is how it’s playing out in reality.

And I apologize, I didn’t put up a more recent one, but I like the parallel between these and I don’t have one with more recent numbers. 

The goal of the policy is to displace 25% of our petroleum use with renewables by 2022. Well, here we are in 2022.

So we should have about 36 billion gallons of displaced fuel, but we’re really at about 20 billion. So why not? Why aren’t we needing that? Right. The biggest reason in the corn ethanol, we would, we would do more if corn ethanol wasn’t capped at 15 billion gallons, but that’s why the lower green is capped at 15 that’s your corn ethanol.

Your blue line is your advanced biofuels. And most of that’s being met with our biodiesel renewable diesel. And then the biomass based diesel is also your biomass that you can fit in either category. It really depends on where the incentive credit is. The dark brown is our cellulosic biofuels.

 I mentioned trees and grasses to energy. That’s your cellulosic biofuel. And the reason that hasn’t come to fruition as everybody hoped is because EPA has the discretion to modify or not move forward with policy. So if there aren’t investments made and they don’t require that the petroleum industry who are the obligated parties under this bill, they don’t require the purchase the cellulosic biofuel and that kind of what do you call it? A catch 22 or a chicken and egg problem. 

This is where it’s important to have proper incentives for those new technologies to bring them to market.

Robin Jones: Do you see a move and a trend toward that direction? I would love to hear more debate, more things about that. But from the insider’s view, do you see that happening? 

Jill Hamilton: Well with this administration we do. And we’re seeing a lot of, especially you mentioned sustainable aviation fuel. This administration wants to basically do electrification for the light duty market, but what do you do for the heavy duty market?

And especially those harder to modify policies like technologies like rail and aviation and marine. And this is where they’re moving investments into those spaces. 

We’re hoping that that that will include more feedstocks. I’m hopeful that we’re going to get a lot more movement in that direction in these next 10 years. 

Robin Jones: What are some of the challenges moving forward? And by the way, those of you that are out there, there’s a lot of technical things here, but, we really wanted to kind of dive into this. We have a lot of students that are interested.

We wanted to dive into some of the specifics, but if you have any questions, be sure that you type them in the Q and A. Tell us a little bit about some of the challenges that you see going forward.

Jill Hamilton: If there was a silver bullet, we would be doing it already. So all of these new technologies, these change the way we do the status quo, it requires effort. And that isn’t without problems. I don’t want to say that biofuels are without problems. 

I mentioned the need for expanded feed stock. Land use change. Right now, in the United States, the low carbon fuel policies require us to monitor land use change associated with biofuels. 

Some people debate whether or not feedstocks, such as corn, that use a lot of oil and a lot of fertilizer and a lot of water, are those sustainable? Can we scale to meet the demands?

Are we going to be able to not only have the technology, but the feedstocks?

Public policy makes a difference. If we don’t have the right policies in place, things stagnate as you saw with the renewable fuel standard. 

Robin Jones: So I do have a question that Nancy submitted and she says, ask about concerns over bio fuel redirecting of crops from food to biofuel. Do you see that as a problem, you see it as a real issue? 

Jill Hamilton: I of course am a biofuels advocate. So I’m going to have a biofuels spin, full disclosure. But most of these crops are grown for food and fuel and that’s a big misunderstanding. But all of the energy and all the carbon benefits are all going towards the energy use and not the food use of those crops.

Are we growing crops for fuel rather than food? And of course my answer is no. And why? 

If you look at this trend on acreage in the United States, after the renewable fuel standard passed in 2005, and 2007, if you look at the number of farms and the acres in farmland, it’s going down.

So that really doesn’t marry with this fear that we’re not going to have enough land for food. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t pay attention to it. And there are some real challenges with land use change.

Deforestation is a real problem in some countries. Brazil, for example, is doing a lot of deforestation. So here we are, our policies United States protect against us importing these feedstocks that are coming from Brazil.

We can’t control Brazil’s policy. What we can control is how we do business with Brazil and what are we doing to incentivize them to grow sustainably, as opposed to deforestation.

This particular slide shows that that land use change. Isn’t related it’s burdened on the, on the biofuels, but it has no burden on if we are to do more oil.

And right now, as much as Biden doesn’t want to admit it, they want to produce more oil in the United States. And so this is, this is actually Alberta, Canada, but the message is still the same that then if you go after oil, you can clear cut whatever you want. There’s no obligation to hold them accountable to environmental policies. That needs to change.

This is another example of the tar sands, whereas beautiful meandering Creek and in the background and just stripped it off. Acres and acres of it. That’s another one. Just keep going. And this, this one is same thing, oil spills. If we’re doing a lot more to get oil out of the ground and don’t hold these companies accountable although we’re holding the biofuels initially accountable, that is not really equitable.

And you need to address that from a public policy standpoint. The Gulf oil spill in 2010 costs 41 billion pounds of damages. Same thing with solar. As I mentioned, I do solar development, but if we’re clear cutting forests and you can bounce the next one, Robin.

It’s not appropriate. It’s not the intention of the policy to clear cut forests to put up our solar, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it translates down to the developer. And so we have to put proper public policies in place or local ordinances. In Virginia, we’re looking at doing this and I think they’re doing it in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, I believe as well.

You can’t, you can’t take farmland. You can’t cut down forests existing from a forestry to, to put up a solar farm. So that compromises how we look at doing solar. So I I’ve kind of gone off a little bit on a tangent, but the upshot about the food versus fuel is that we are growing soybeans and corn to do both feed the world and provide fuel.

It’s not one or the other it’s synergistic. 

Robin Jones: Chris asked the question it doesn’t look like in the model and curve you showed it doesn’t look like a reduction in petroleum, but more of absorbing the growth in need with renewable alternatives.

What about reducing the need for energy? What about, yeah. What about local audience? It’s so funny. I got a buddy of mine being from Texas. We see these giant trucks and he says, Robin, I can’t believe how big these trucks are getting and how much tonnage and how big the tires are. When you start doing all that, the weight, I think there’s a good point about that.

How, what about reducing energy and then localizing energy to reduce the costs of transmission shipping and distribution. So what do you say to Chris? 

Jill Hamilton: I say amen brother, Easier said than done. I mean, I would like to see us do more in, and no question that we are trying again, this is where public policy and incentives, if there was an incentive to to, to do those things for, for businesses to reduce their carbon footprint, they could do that through efficiency improvements, whether it’s proper tires or teaching drivers, how to drive better or being more local in their economies and how they purchase it.

But we also have to plan for I will tell you population growth hasn’t slowed down and energy demand is not slowing down. So what do you do if it isn’t? And that doesn’t mean that we don’t address efficiency, we should continue to do it. And I I’ve written many efficiency grants. There are some, but they’re small they’re for like $20,000 to $250,000, maybe half a million dollar project.

But most of these projects to do efficiency improvements, cost a whole lot more than that. If you’re talking about changing the way we do the way we do business. 

Robin Jones: So do you think that there really is an opportunity here for biofuels?

Jill Hamilton: So we mentioned the California low carbon fuel standard is kind of the creme de la creme or the gold standard. And this slide depicts how it’s from 2019, but it really hasn’t changed too much since then. As to how a low carbon fuel standard basically sets the policy of reducing carbon and it ramps up year after year, and biofields continue to meet the majority of that need.

So if you look at this graphic, the 39, 26 and 15% are all renewable feed stocks and 10% is ethanol and 9% is biomethane. That’s renewable natural gas. 1% is other, I’m not sure what that is. Maybe a sufficient data now, but my point about this is that we have a lot of those legacy vehicles on the road and that they can be running today on renewables and continue to ramp that up.

It doesn’t mean that we aren’t going to continue to see a migration to electric or other more sustainable pathways besides an internal combustion engine or a diesel engine. But while we have this technology in play, we’re going to sit and still need a role and an increasing role for biofuels. 

Robin Jones: So Jervis, he asks a great question. Is there a possibility to use waste food for biofuels? 

Jill Hamilton: I think that biomethane is doing that. You can digest that stuff into biomethane. You can also we’re looking at, I have a client that’s using a it’s it’s somewhat related. So you take a waste products that have oils in it. And I’m going to excuse me for saying this, but I call it the cream of the crap.

So it’s taking municipal solid waste for example, and taking the oils out of that. So yes, we can use pathways such as waste food and, and digest it either into biomethane or extract out oils. Again, the incentives need to be there, but the carbon market needs to be there. Somebody asked earlier about all right, food and fuel.

This is my one slide that I use. There there’s two points on this slide. One is that the majority of that soybean is still going to meal. Proteins and carbohydrates are all going to feed mostly livestock. Only 20% of that bean is being used to extract out for oil for biofuel, whatever biofuel you pick. But all of the carbon value is assigned to that 20% oil.

So when we think about how are we looking at carbon policies in the future and how do we is it fair that biofuel and it’s grown for food and fuel, but yet all of the carbon is going to the fuel portion of it. That’s not really a fair way of cutting the pie if you all are placing the burden.

So I would like to see public policy address that in the future and for us to make sure we realize that we’re not just doing food or fuel it’s food and fuel. So there you have it. 

Robin Jones: I just love the idea of partnerships and working towards a common goal where you can bring people together and have good discussions about things that can benefit us.

Jill Hamilton: Well, this particular partnership, I just finished a a hundred million dollar grant application. I’m glad you wanted to talk about this. I’m so excited about where agriculture is going and how it’s going to impact the biofuels industry. But also agriculture is going to affect the, this project is also, our program is also going to affect the way we grow foods, the way we use fiber in our clothing, et cetera, the entire supply chain.

USDA has put out a billion dollars to create this marketplace where not only the farmers can go, but also those that want those smart climate smart agricultural products. So from my industry, the biofuels industry wants these practices, these sustainable crops that are grown, maybe with cover crops or with less water or fertilizer And these practices have to be, have a third-party validation, but that’s what this platform is going to do.

And then we can bid on and buy or offer up that we want to buy these commodities through this platform, and this is going to change the way we look at agriculture. And so I’m so excited that we finally are getting, if not through policy, through it consumer driven incentives, some of the changes we need to see.

Robin Jones: Let’s talk about professional opportunities for the future and what’s happening now. Tell us a little bit about this. 

Jill Hamilton: There are jobs in pretty much any industry you go in, any fields you go into in, in sustainability, whether it’s stem jobs, if you’re into engineering, I would direct you to those that are doing engineering, communications and training.

I work with national trade groups and even most businesses have communications teams that deal with sustainability now and actually an environmental justice. ESG is becoming a real important part of business nowadays, and you’re actually, many of the contracts can be held. You as a public corporation, can your sustainability goals can almost be considered legally binding.

So communications and public outreach is important. Already mentioned all the policies that are around these fuels. These aren’t going to come to fruition without a lot of public policy. 

These are just a couple of websites of either businesses that are in this space, either in renewable energy or the clean, I mentioned the clean cities program earlier.

They have a lot of internships through the clean cities program through Argonne National Lab. I didn’t put Argonne up here, but the Clean Cities Program can connect you with them.

Robin Jones: It sounds like we have a bright future for yeah, it, it sounds pretty awesome.

I did want to ask you a couple of quick questions here as a follow-up. Some of this sounds a bit daunting, like way over my head and overwhelming, and it’s like, how’s this going to impact my life? 

We’re already having all kinds of challenges because as we read the newspapers every day, so can we actually meet today’s energy crisis. And can we meet the climate things that people keep talking about? What are your thoughts about that? 

Jill Hamilton: Oh, this is a great question, Robin and a lot of students have asked me that too. They always become fearful that it’s too daunting. 

You have to ask yourself, is there any challenge that’s too big for God to handle?

I’ve got a great quote and I, can I read this quote to you? It’s a Mary Baker Eddy quote that says material substances or mundane formations, astronomical calculations, and all the paraphernalia of speculative theories based on the hypothesis of material law or life and intelligence resident in matter will ultimately vanish, swallowed up in the infinite calculus of Spirit.

There are many other quotes about infinite intelligence that Mary Baker Eddy talks about intelligence that it’s derived from God. And that there’s infinite capacity if we turn that over to God. And so I believe that there’s infinite ways in which we can meet this problem if we don’t get stumbled up on fear and personal sense getting in the way. 

Robin Jones: I appreciate knowing that, hearing that, certainly from your perspective. So it sounds like that may be business as usual is not, is not in our best interest.

And it sounds like there really does need to be that, as you mentioned earlier, kind of that symposium, that people come together and look to try to solve and, and find ways to figure this out. And, and you’re saying it’s not too big to solve. 

Jill Hamilton: It’s not too big to solve. There are lots of pathways we can reduce carbon if the climate changes your fear, whether it’s sustainable agriculture or woody biomass, or what have you, but we do need to get the right incentives out there and we can do that. 

Robin Jones: It’s been really wonderful. If any of you have any questions, you can reach out to me, robin@albertbakerfund.org and I’m happy to reach out to Jill, or you can contact her directly.

It’s really important as you can see, Jill talked about how Albert Baker Fund helped her when she was going through school.

We help students every single year and have been for over 50 years. So we’d love to ask you all and your friends and family to invest in the education of young Christian Scientists is so very, very important to help these students pursue a degree in sustainability and whatever else they might want to be sustaining.

Please take a moment to come to the Albert Baker Fund and look at investing in our youth. Is so very, very important as you can see. We have a shining example of Jill who is doing incredible things an incredible leader in a very, very important and current topic in the world. So that kind of shows you what you get when you do make that investment.

It’s pretty remarkable. 

Please follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. 

Jill, you have had some very inspiring things today to say a lot of really good information. There is no doubt that you are casting your net on the right side. And we just want to tell you, thank you so much from the bottom of our heart for being willing to help for being a mentor at the Albert Baker Fund and a Career Ally as well.

So thank you so very much. 

Jill Hamilton: My pleasure, anytime Robin. For you, anything, 

Robin Jones: We so appreciate it and thank you all. It’s great to hear from you and look forward to seeing everyone on the next episode of the Net Effect. Have a great weekend, everyone.