Electricity demand in the United States is rising quickly, driven by data centers and the electrification of industrial processes. Meeting this load with new firm capacity alone will raise grid costs and slow decarbonization. In this talk, I will discuss how process systems engineering can turn industrial facilities into flexible grid resources. The WE3Lab has built and maintained a national dataset of more than 3,000 commercial and industrial electricity tariffs, which we use to estimate the cost and emissions value of load shifting across U.S. markets. These data show that retail price signals are often misaligned with grid emissions and that the value of an industrial entity investing in flexibility depends heavily on a facility’s tariff and required uptime. I will then present water, wastewater, and data center case studies, where optimization and real-time control built on our group's open-source WaterTAP platform demonstrated that demand response participation could cut monthly energy costs by 10–30%. I will close with a discussion of planning tools that value flexibility over asset lifetimes and policy opportunities to reconcile retail electricity costs and emissions. Decarbonized and Affordable Electrified Production Abstract: Electricity demand in the United States is rising quickly, driven by data centers and the electrification of industrial processes. Meeting this load with new firm capacity alone will raise grid costs and slow decarbonization. In this talk, I will discuss how process systems engineering can turn industrial facilities into flexible grid resources. The WE3Lab has built and maintained a national dataset of more than 3,000 commercial and industrial electricity tariffs, which we use to estimate the cost and emissions value of load shifting across U.S. markets. These data show that retail price signals are often misaligned with grid emissions and that the value of an industrial entity investing in flexibility depends heavily on a facility’s tariff and required uptime. I will then present water, wastewater, and data center case studies, where optimization and real-time control built on our group's open-source WaterTAP platform demonstrated that demand response participation could cut monthly energy costs by 10–30%. I will close with a discussion of planning tools that value flexibility over asset lifetimes and policy opportunities to reconcile retail electricity costs and emissions.

Meagan Mauter directs the Water & Energy Efficiency for the Environment Lab (WE3Lab) with the mission of supporting affordability, resiliency, and sustainability in water-energy infrastructure systems. We develop and implement computational tools that guide robust infrastructure planning, prioritize technology innovation and investment, and unlock system flexibility.

Professor Mauter also serves as the research director for the National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI), a $235-million DOE Energy-Water Desalination Hub addressing water security challenges in the United States. The Hub targets research and development of energy-efficient and cost-competitive solutions for integrating non-traditional source waters into the water supply portfolio.

Prior to joining the faculty at Stanford, she served as an Energy Technology Innovation Policy Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the Mossavar Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School, and as an Associate Professor of Engineering & Public Policy, Civil & Environmental Engineering, and Chemical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.