Hi everyone, thanks for joining us. We're going to give everybody a minute or two here to get into the room and then we'll get started. All right, it looks like our numbers are starting to slow down so I'll send everyone's in. Welcome, everyone. My name is Elena Crete I work with the Sustainable Development Solutions Network or SDSN. We're here today to discuss a few highlights from America's zero carbon action plan, which was recently released by SDSN USA. For today's session we're going to specifically focus on the legislative and administrative framework that's put forward in the report, and also talk about what that means for federal state and city agencies. The zero carbon action plan was developed over the last year by the zero carbon consortium, which is made up of nearly 100 researchers from academic institutions across the United States. The primary mandate of the project was to articulate a detailed policy pathway to help the US reach net zero carbon by mid century in line with the Paris Agreement. The report is basically anchored in an intensive modeling exercise which was done by Evolved Energy Research. They used a back casting model to determine the potential lease cost pathway to decarbonize the most emissions intensive industries in the US. So their lease cost pathway to the transition or their central case in the model is what serves as the basis for the rest of the report. For today, we're going to hear from three speakers. First, we'll have John Dernbach from the Weidner University Commonwealth Law School, and Michael Gerard from Columbia Law School, who will each discuss the federal perspective and the key recommendations from the report. I'm going to turn to Kennedy, the Senior Director of the Climate and Energy Program at NRDC, who's going to give us the state and city perspective and the different sectoral tools at that scale to implement and support the transition. Before we begin, I'd just like to let everyone know this webinar is being recorded. Both the recording and the PowerPoint that you see today will be available later today on the ZCAP website, where you can also download the report. So we'll put that link in the chat shortly so you can visit that afterwards and also share with your networks. And then finally just mentioning we're going to have a Q&A session at the end of this webinar. I'd like to hear from you answer your questions, dig into the material. So please, as our speakers are presenting, feel free to add your questions into the Q&A box on the Zoom platform, and then I'll help to moderate that session towards the end. So without further ado, I see John and Michael have joined us. Please feel free to get us started. All right. Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much, Elena. The job that Michael and I have today is to talk about the federal legislative and administrative framework part of the ZCAP report. And I think as a lot of the folks who are listening today know Michael and I edited a book that was published last year by the Environmental Law Institute called Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization in the United States. It was an edited volume that had about 60 contributing authors and it made way over a thousand recommendations at the federal, state and local level. What Michael and I did in preparing this part of the ZCAP report is to build on the recommendations that we had in that particular book, but also to include recommendations that came from other authors. Next slide, please. So a framing device for this, as Elena alluded to, are four pillars of deep decarbonization that were in the technical work that was done as a predicate for this report. And it's worthwhile outlining those at least briefly. As a starting point, the idea behind electricity decarbonization, the first pillar, is to move pretty much all electricity over to renewables. That looks like the most cost effective approach at this point. The idea behind energy efficiency and conservation, partly is to save money, partly to create jobs, but also this is to reduce the amount of new renewable electricity that needs to be generated. The third pillar, electrification of transportation and buildings means pretty much moving buildings and vehicles over to electricity, perhaps some hydrogen, but mostly over to electricity. And getting that done as close as possible at least to getting that done by 2050 and then finally carbon capture, the point being that getting to negative emissions may not be enough. We also need to figure out ways of pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. I should have that significantly reducing emissions of other non carbon dioxide pollutants is an important addendum or addition to the four pillars. Next slide. As we've done Michael and I is divided the recommendations at the federal level into two parts recommendations for the administration and recommendations for Congress. And among those recommendations we've divided me in a second division and that is cross cutting recommendations that apply across all four pillars, and then recommendations that apply to specific pillars. Michael is going to be telling you about cross cutting recommendations for both the administration and for Congress, and I'm going to be talking to you about the recommendations for each of the pillars, both for the administration and for Congress. Because of the way the Senate races came out it looks like the most appropriate way to do this is to begin with the administration. And that's how we're going to proceed Michael. Thank you. Next slide please. So starting with the cross cutting recommendations of what the new administration will be able to do and what we're recommending. We're recommending that President Biden established a White House Office on climate change that would coordinate all of these actions across all levels of government. And if Congress fails to act and it looks like Congress will probably fail to act. President should use all lawful means within its executive authority to drive decarbonization now during the campaign. Former Vice President Biden said he wanted to achieve net zero emissions from the US by 2050 and zero carbon electricity by 2035 so what we're suggesting is entirely consistent with the pledges made by by now President elect Biden. Next slide. So, in along the lines of engaging the entire federal government. We suggest that each of the relevant agencies come up with specific timelines and goals for how they are going to get to these goals of zero carbon electricity in 2035 and net zero emissions by 2050. Just having the goals out there in a distant year is not is not sufficient but but each agency should come up with specific plans and interim targets so everybody can keep a track of it. And each agency should use the powers that it has under existing statutory authority to the fullest extent to achieve these objectives. Next slide. One of the things that that should be done and can be done with with an existing statutory authority is to revise the social cost of carbon which is a figure that that calculates with the damages that are that are done by industrial emissions of carbon, come up with a figure that is consistent with the objective of 1.5 degree centigrade increase above pre industrial conditions as the IPCC has said we really need to do and this number should then feed into the development of industrial emissions the conduct of cost benefit analysis procurement subsidies carbon taxes if we have that and other policies. Next slide. The Trump administration revoked a whole series of regulations and guidance documents. The executive orders, encouraging fossil fuel emissions can be revoked with the stroke of a pen. The regulations that went through the full notice and comment process will have to go back through that process that will take a while, but the Biden administration should and I think will undertake this exercise to put back the regulations that had been adopted by the Obama administration and go beyond that. The power plan of the Obama administration is particularly vulnerable to legal challenge it was stayed by the Supreme Court of February of 2016, and the Supreme Court composition now is if anything likely to be more hostile. So, we're not suggesting that the clean power plan be put back in precisely as former form but there are other authorities under the Clean Air Act that can be used. The federal government is far and away the largest purchaser of goods and services in the United States. It can set an example and make markets by insisting that its procurement be of low emission and negative emission building materials and products and services. Next slide. The federal government has massive land holdings mostly managed by the Bureau of Land Management and shortly before President Obama left office he instituted a moratorium on leasing of federal lands for coal mining. And then Trump revoked that we think that should be put back in place and serious thought should be given to imposing a moratorium on leasing of federal lands onshore and offshore for oil and gas extraction, and consider a moratorium on construction of other fossil fuel infrastructure to the extent that's within federal power. Next slide. There is bipartisan consensus on a lot more research and development being needed on greenhouse gas, reducing technologies and energy efficiency and carbon capture removal technology so that should certainly go forward. Next slide. We also think that the federal government should design and implement policies to exploit the what behaviors behavioral science tells us about how household emissions can be reduced. The domestic and international private sector action should be should be leveraged and given incentives, and throughout all of this. The government should in the Biden administration certainly plans to ensure that people of color and low income communities are protected. It just transition for those individuals and communities that depend on the carbon economy, and that the co benefit such as reductions and conventional air pollutants be be maximized. Next slide. Finally, of course, President Biden said that on the first day, the US is going to rejoin the Paris climate agreement. It will then have to come up with its next nationally determined contribution its pledges as part of the Paris climate agreement. The federal government should also implement the Kigali amendment which called for reductions in the emissions of hydrofluorocarbons, and overall the US should reestablish its foreign policy leadership in the climate space. Next slide. I'm going to turn it back to john who's going to talk about some of the recommended actions for the administration that are key to particular pillars. Well, thank you Michael. A starting point here is is when we talked about decarbonizing electricity the first pillar was to move pretty much all electricity generation over to renewables and consistent with that. The second thing is, is that there needs to be a large scale program for for for scaling up renewables wind shore and onshore utility scale solar rooftop solar, and all the rest of it including trans transmission and storage. So I'm going to go around Michael prepared an excellent chapter in our legal pathways book on this exact point, documenting and explaining the need to, to, to advance this kind of a program and what that program would look like. Part of what that program is going to need to look like is making sure that the National Environmental Policy Act and the endangered species that processes are used in a way that is consistent with the purpose of those statutes. So we're going to really unduly delay the development of these particular kinds of projects. Next slide please. So important slice of reality here is what publicly traded corporations do there's a recent report by the Federal Reserve, indicating, actually recognizing that that there's all sorts of risks involved in managing and operating corporations that need to be disclosed. And we think the Securities and Exchange Commission should play a larger role in making that happen the Obama administration began to do that. But the Trump administration pulled back from that and so I think our, our recommendation would be to move ahead with with greater and more specific disclosure. Next slide please. So one of the other federal agencies that's been playing a large role in the transition to a clean energy economy is an agency that a lot of folks have not heard about which is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which has enormous responsibility for interstate distribution and transmission of energy. And what has been happening in the last several years is that FERC has been playing a role that is actually, to some degree, protecting fossil fuels and in discouraging renewables. And we think that ought to change. We also think that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission should approve applications by state public utility commissions and other organizations for carbon adders, which is a way of consistent with the social cost of carbon, which would have the effect of increasing on the wholesale, under wholesale markets the price of fossil fuels and helping move toward renewable electricity. Next slide please. The second pillar is energy efficiency and conservation. And one of the things that we talked about quite a lot was the fact that the Trump administration has been moving backwards in on it. Have I been mute this whole time.  Okay. One of the things that the Obama administration was pretty aggressive about under energy efficiency and conservation is finalizing a great number of rules for appliances and energy efficiency devices at in sort of the residential and commercial level. And it can slow down even stopped and reverse to some degree under Trump and what we're thinking is is that that needs to start again in an aggressive way but that in addition to that for purposes of energy efficiency and conservation. We need a really aggressive program for reducing energy use and federal buildings that could play a really important leadership role. The federal government needs to move federal funds away from funding new highway construction in toward alternatives to that modify road pricing in the process. And in subsidized rule on demand transit service for small cities and denser rural areas. We also think an interesting opportunity here would be creating a certification program for carbon neutral food products. Next slide please. A certification of transportation and buildings. What we're thinking here is actually starts with a reversal of a lot of the administration policies on motor vehicles and tightening greenhouse gas standards and fuel economy standards, with the idea of phasing out combustion internal combustion systems together and substituting electric cars. We think that a parallel process ought to occur with heavy duty vehicles using hydrogen and low carbon biofuels as well as electrification. And we think a partnership on developing infrastructure for electric vehicle part charging stations is going to be a really, really important slice of reality, where I live in elsewhere. And so the infrastructure for the vehicles is held back by not having that kind of infrastructure program. And then finally using procurement, the federal government should prioritize biofuels use for certain uses that are really harder for to substitute, like long haul trucks, aviation and shipping and move toward more sustainable production of biofuels. Next slide please. Finally on carbon capture. Carbon capture is different than renewables in the following sense, we can move and should move in a very strong way toward toward pillar one decarbonizing electricity over the next 10 years we've got the technologies to do that prices are coming down. It makes sense and there's a lot of momentum for that. To capture there's all sorts of technologies out there that are probably going to be really, really effective. A couple of decades from now but which we haven't even invented yet probably haven't even thought through. And what we really need to do is is is employ a very aggressive program of incentives, research and development procurement mandates regulatory requirements and the like to move those technologies ahead. With that we need to think about doing something similar to that with respect to to to agriculture and crop insurance because there's lots of opportunities to do carbon capture and soil and if we oriented a lot of the USDA and other programs US Department of Agriculture and other programs toward that we could actually make quite a lot of progress on carbon capture. And I'll just plug once again the agriculture chapter in our legal pathways book which laid out a lot of this and even greater detail. So the final point that I'll make here is this was the sort of the plus if you will the in a sense the fifth pillar deep deep decarbonization is looking at non carbon dioxide pollutants methane nitrous oxide fluorinated compounds and black carbon. A lot of these are subject to regulation by by EPA. And we think that that a lot of that, including regulation of oil and gas wells and we think a lot of that regulation ought to be strengthened in and made even more ambitious. As we look down the road a lot of these every single one of these has a greater greenhouse gas impact molecule for molecule pound for pound and carbon dioxide, and they deserve serious attention. Next slide please. So the next thing we did is we we had a great many recommendations in our chapter in this report on for Congress. And as we indicated before Michael is going to take the cross cutting recommendations. And I'm going to look at the pillar by pillar recommendations. Thanks john now the next slide. So it is not currently looking positive that Congress is going to be constituted such that it will do these things we're going to talk about but we're going to go through what our thoughts were anyway. So Congress should adopt a zero carbon action plan that commits the nation to these binding reductions and establish intermediate and sector specific emissions reductions targets. Next slide. This would require Congress to ask Congress to require the administration to create an enforceable national plan to move us in this direction and require each administration to update the plan. Every two years and report to Congress annually on how it's doing and calling for various other reports to Congress. Next slide. We are looking for we were recommending a tripling of the funding for deep decarbonization research and development demonstration and deployment. This tripling is that figure recommended by a report recently produced by Columbia Center for global energy policy. We think that some form of carbon tax or pricing some form of carbon pricing would be very helpful it's not essential, but it would help move many things out could be a carbon tax it could be cap and trade fuel pricing subsidies are a number of different ways that it could be done but to make sure that the externalities are internalized that there are price signals throughout the economy throughout supply chains to encourage low carbon activities. This will be requires Congress to act. We think that Congress should launch innovative green financing mechanisms now there are a number of existing authorities for financing mechanisms those should be used but Congress. We think should create more of them and should adopt the master's limited partnership parody act to allow renewables to participate in these tax advantage kinds of transactions. Next slide. The fossil fuel subsidies should be eliminated this be taken out of the tax code. Next slide. And then. So, so these are the cross cutting initiatives that we talked about. And now I'm going to turn it back to john to talk about the key recommendations that are key to specific pillars. Well, thank you, Michael. So, a, for decarbonizing electricity there are a couple of things that would help a great deal. The national clean energy standard probably emerged at the top of our list as we went through this process to develop the zero carbon action plan. So the key would be to to do to something like a renewable portfolio standard although at a national level and it doesn't just focus on renewable electricity. And basically what they're different forms of it but the idea is to move toward higher and higher percentages of clean electricity. And that would go through decade by decade. The second part of this is mandate the phasing out of all coal fired power plants. And of course make adequate provision for displaced workers. Part of the excuse, let's go back to. Yeah, thank you the the one other thing here is a low carbon fuel standard or clean fuel standard for liquid fuels for transportation. That's, that's, that's another thing that if Congress could do these things that would all of these things would help us move much more quickly and effectively toward decarbonizing electricity. Second, next slide please. To respect energy efficiency and conservation, our thought process was to strengthen the energy policy and conservation act. This is the statute that gives the department of energy authority to establish energy efficiency standards for all sorts of new products. And our thought was that the department ought to have more authority to do that that the efficiency metrics ought not to be just energy use. But also reduction in carbon use if we can make that happen. And to give the Department of Energy binding deadlines for adopting and strengthening these standards. All things that are necessary to ensure that over as we go from administration to administration there's less of the back and forth that we've seen the start stop issue that we've seen with energy efficiency standards over the last couple of decades and more continuity. And I think a federal and we think that a federal requirement that new buildings generally be fossil fuel free in meat aggressive standards of energy efficiency and carbon use reduction by 2025 coming from Congress that would be a very valuable thing. Next slide please. So in terms of electrification of transportation and buildings we had a number of recommendations. And I'm just share with you two of these. One is prioritizing biofuels use for for long haul trucks aviation and shipping. These are the more specialized uses that I alluded to earlier. The technical analysis that was done that the building block for this report was based on the premise that the use of ethanol for light duty vehicles is probably not the best use of ethanol. There's no limited amount of ethanol that you can produce in the first place and if you're going to only be able to produce a small amount of it. And producing it sustainably is going to be an issue better to prioritize it for specialized uses like these. The other thing is, what do you do about decarbonizing buildings and the thought that we had was having Congress direct the adoption of a model national energy code for buildings that could then be used by the states. Next slide please. And with respect to carbon capture two thoughts, both of these are about looking ahead. One of them is about scaling up research and development and demonstration deployment for carbon capture and negative emissions technologies, and in having sort of a national goal of bringing these technologies to scale at much lower costs as soon as possible. Similarly, we think Congress ought to mandate a strategy to achieve national forest national forest national reforestation to a particular percentage or a particular number of acres by by 2050 and we think that kind of a goal. And the, the sort of work that would go with that would go a long way toward capturing carbon from from forests. I think that's the end of our presentation. If you need to contact us that here's our contact information, and we'll take questions at the conclusion of the formal presentations. So turn it back over to I think kit. Yeah, I can't go ahead and turn your camera on and join us and continue on from the state and city perspectives. Great, well thanks so much for including me in this discussion Elena and I'm not an author of the zero carbon action plan but I worked with Mike and john on their deep decarbonization treatise which I highly recommend it wrote the energy efficiency recommendations in that book, which also covers state and local policy in great detail so I wanted to kind of bring together the the recommendations from the Z cap plan from Mike and john's treatise and my own work to talk about how states and cities can contribute to the zero carbon action plan. Next slide. So the role of states and cities in decarbonization and, and the big question at this moment is, does the role of states and cities change when we have a climate champion president. In my view states and cities are important drivers of climate and clean energy progress. And that remains true, regardless of who is president what type of administration we have states regulate in state power generation and electricity distribution. Under our under our constitutional approach states regulate electric and gas utilities and engage in energy planning states have broad authority to regulate pollution including greenhouse gas pollution. And cities have many important functions to they drive demand for clean energy, their incubators for innovation, and cities can take in many instances not all the same actions that that states can take to promote climate and clean energy progress. And states and cities are still important even under a climate friendly federal administration because of the inherent powers that states and cities have. And indeed under a climate friendly administration states and cities take on a broader role in many respects, as they are in charge with implementing federal policy. So for instance at the Biden administration produces a new version of the clean power plan, which puts which under the Obama administration put carbon limits on existing and new power plants. States would be in charge of state implementation plans to implement that set of regulations to make it real in their states cities would help also have a role. Similarly, if we do see in this age of coven stimulus funds aimed at economic and health recovery states and cities will have an important role in the distribution and allocation of those funds. It is also important to recognize that there are limits on state and city authority and ability to act. The federal government can under some circumstances preempt state action so we've seen that play out with the Trump administration attempting to withdraw the right which California has had for decades to issue its own stronger clean car standards. That's being challenged now in the courts but that's that's a very strong attempt by the current administration to preempt state climate action. States who are unfriendly to climate progress can sometimes preempt city action as well. Whether a city can adopt a stretch energy efficiency code which will promote energy efficiency and building electrification depends on the authority in many instances given to it by the state. So if, if, if you have a climate champion city in a non progressive non climate activists state that can pose problems. There are limits on state and city resources of course, particularly during the time of coven. And there are limits simply on on geographic and jurisdictional reach the federal government can through an act of Congress through an executive order through a regulation of policies that touch and affect and require action by every state in the union. When we go state by state, or city by city. It's a potentially a slower form of progress. Next slide please. So I want to touch in my brief time on a couple of areas state in city cross cutting climate action state in city energy efficiency action state in city renewable energy policy and state in city transportation electrification and building electrification. So in terms of cross cutting climate action states have all sorts of tools that they can use and we've seen states use them, particularly over the last four years. A number of states have adopted ambitious climate legislation and mandates. One example is the New York climate leadership and Community Protection Act. In the last year, which sets a net zero by 2050 climate goal for New York State, and a number of very ambitious renewable energy, clean electricity goals, and various sub mandates for things like solar offshore wind storage and energy efficiency and the CLCPA also includes important equity provisions, including that 35 to 40% of the benefits from New York's climate and clean energy programs have to go to disadvantaged communities. We also have California's AB 32, which was the first economy wide carbon cap adopted by a state, which also includes equity, and a complimentary local air pollution provisions. States act on climate via executive orders. Just this fall, Michigan Governor Whitmer issued an executive order calling for Michigan to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions economy wide by 2050. We also see states work together in a collaborative way on carbon ambition. So here in the east, we have the regional greenhouse gas initiative, 10 Eastern states working together, and individually to set a cap on carbon that will decline that declines over time. It's been a very successful program over the last decade or so that it's been in place. Carbon emissions have been cut almost in half. And there have been a multitude of co benefits decreases in other forms of air pollution job creation and investments in energy efficiency and renewables. Pennsylvania will join the regional greenhouse gas initiative in January of 2021 and Pennsylvania is poised to join the initiative in a later in 2021. We also see state collective action of other sorts also 25 or so states have joined the US Climate Alliance and these are bipartisan governors who have joined Republicans and Democrats and the US Climate Alliance bring those states brings those states together to ensure that those states are staying on track to meeting their portion of the Paris climate accord during a time when of course the federal government under the Trump administration up step back from that agreement. Cities can take many parallel actions. Many cities have climate plans climate action plans of New York City is one. We also work together collectively in a very ambitious way. So there's the the C 40 city coalition here in the US cities have banded together through the we're still in initiative whereby cities pledge to meet their portion of Paris accord goals. The American cities climate challenge initiated by Bloomberg philanthropies which NRDC and other groups are a part of whereby 25 of the largest American cities are pledging to certain actions to reduce climate emissions. The cities also have regulatory power as I noted in the last slide to adopt greenhouse gas pollution mandates here in New York. There's the New York City local law 97 the climate mobilization act, which that's a cap on greenhouse gas emissions from large buildings, which declines over time, and other cities are taking similar actions as well. Additionally, some cities have municipal utilities regulate their own utilities and cities can take climate action in that way as well. Next slide please. On energy efficiency. There are a number of important tools that that many many states are using and and and many more should be using. So an energy efficiency portfolio tool is a policy tool, somewhat similar to a renewable portfolio standard where states commit as a mandate to to reaching a certain level of energy efficiency savings per year. And energy sees recommendation is that each state adopt an energy efficiency portfolio standard of at least 2.5% energy efficiency savings per year. So our state energy efficiency standards which are the state version of the policy tool which I think john described in the last slides. We're not preempted by by the energy policy and conservation act states can set efficiency standards for products and appliance appliances sold within their boundaries and California has been a leader in that regard. States both California and Nevada have a special exemption from preemption under Epcot and have set stronger light bulb efficiency standards than been amended by the federal government, which has been important as the Trump administration has sought to roll back those standards. States can also use various tools to encourage energy efficiency financing, including green banks and property assessed clean energy financing, which allows homeowners to essentially finance energy efficiency improvements via their, their municipal tax bills. The commission policy is super important in terms of regulating energy efficiency. So states can get at good energy efficiency outcomes through individual utility rate cases, and through integrated resource planning for for those states with vertically integrated utilities. The states have the power to set building energy efficiency codes for buildings within their jurisdiction, and that's an important driver of energy efficiency. Cities have many means of incenting and requiring energy efficiency also. I mentioned New York City's energy efficiency and greenhouse gas mandate for existing buildings DC has a similar mandate. Many cities are adopting benchmarking and retrofitting or building energy performance ordinances. St. Louis, for instance, adopted a very strong building energy performance ordinance this fall. We're allowed by state law cities can adopt stretch energy efficiency codes, which go beyond the state minimum, and that's a very important tool also, and cities have energy efficiency financing tools that that they can use as well. Many cities as well as states have green banks, and cities can also of course use pace financing tools. Building electrification is a fascinating area of new focus as we do these deep decarbonization analysis as as climate advocates have been doing over the last few years. It has become crystal clear clear that not only do we need to promote energy efficiency in our buildings, but we need to get rid of fossil fuel uses within our buildings for heating, cooling, hot water and and cooking. And so building electrification is is really a new field where cities are leading the way and states are also striving to be leaders. So it's very important when we set policy here that building electrification policies be closely aligned with energy efficiency policies, so that when we look at our existing buildings and new buildings, we're both making them as energy efficient as possible, and we're electrifying them the to go hand in hand by by improving the energy efficiency of a building shell, we're bringing down the cost of of electrification which is a really important factor. We also have to align electrification policy with low income protection and benefit and housing policy. We want to make sure that low income communities can benefit from building electrification and that they aren't harmed by it in the sense that we don't want improvements in our buildings to cause rent increases that can be passed on to tenants and low income tenants. An important tool that states have to promote building electrification is market transformation and incentive policies, because we're sort of at the beginning of the building electrification movement. We need to bring down the cost of electric technologies like heat pumps. And currently heat pumps only have a very small percentage of the heating and cooling market, we have to bring up that percentage rapidly. There are also mandates on building electrification that that many states are considering. So for instance in California, the California Energy Commission, which sets efficiency codes for the state is considering and all electric building code beginning potentially as within the next few years. States have financing tools which are important to promote a building electrification. And as with energy efficiency utility commission policy is really important, including gas and electric rate cases and future of gas proceedings which look at questions like how do we transition off gas for our buildings and all together how to handle stranded assets, how to handle just transition issues for communities and workers. New York has has such a proceeding underway. For support electrification via you via use of utility system benefit funds. Importantly states can set outdoor and indoor air pollution standards to address the health risks of gas, and to expedite the transition from gas to electric technologies. And states have the ability to use their permanent authority to say no to extensions of gas infrastructure, new gas infrastructure projects that would would tend to extend the life of gas in a particular state. Cities as I mentioned have really been at the forefront and driving the building electrification movement. San San Jose and many, many other California cities have adopted all electric building codes. Just the other day San Francisco adopted a similar all electric building code. Cities can use land use and affordable housing policy to help guide the transition from gas to electric technologies. Cities have financing tools. The Z cap report for instance mentioned support land, the Portland clean energy fund as as one such financing tool that cities can use. And cities also can sometimes have municipal gas utilities which they directly or indirectly control for instance, Philadelphia gas works in Philadelphia. Cities can also, in many instances set air pollution standards to address the health and air quality risks of gas, and can also use permitting authority with respect to gas infrastructure. When it comes to clean transportation, cities and states also have a wide variety of tools and clean transformation, clean transportation encompasses a variety of types of actions. It's really important to electrify transportation in order to meet us climate goals, and it's also important to bring down vehicle miles, travel, and to improve clean mobility options and of course to improve public transportation, which is absolutely crucial more crucial now than ever in the light of covert. So states have have many policy tools here many relate to the federal policy tools, which Mike and john mentioned. There's the California clean cars standards, which are growing number of other states have expressed have either adopted or expressed interest in adopting. There are zero emission vehicle mandates which states can adopt California has just issued a really groundbreaking advanced clean trucks rule which will really require elect all electric heavy duty trucks by 2050 with interim milestones and 15 states have signed a memorandum to be standing organized by Nescom on clean trucks which by which states commit to exploring similar options within their states utility Commission policy can be used to support electric vehicle infrastructure. We see that happening in the individual utility rate cases and in more generic EV infrastructure proceedings at utility commissions. There are carbon caps for transportation which states have adopted or examining. I mentioned California's AB 32 adopted almost a decade ago now which sets an economy wide cap on greenhouse gas pollution including transportation. And here in the east 12 states plus Washington DC DC are engaged in an effort called the clock transportation and climate initiative, which is looking to set a cap on greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector with some important equity provisions in mind, low income electric vehicle programs are also really really important so that we can ensure that a low income communities and communities of color have access to electric vehicles and then states of course play an important role on public transportation policy, decreasing vehicle miles traveled and improving clean mobility options, like biking, walking, etc. And cities play an important role in this also in really in all of the above. Cities can encourage electric vehicles in a variety of ways including through supporting EV infrastructure charging stations and the like. Cities can use land use policy which is an inherently local function to encourage housing near transit cities can adopt congestion pricing to bring down greenhouse gas pollution from driving. And of course has done that New York City has done that although it is not yet in place. And cities have a variety of tools to reduce VMT and improve clean mobility options and we see that happening in many of the American cities climate challenge cities. Next slide please. I seem to have omitted. I may have omitted a slide on renewables can you just quickly Elena go back through the slides if I've omitted and I can just go through it quickly. Just go back through the slides quickly Elena sorry. Okay. My apologies I meant to include a slide on renewables. And when it comes to renewables both states and cities also have important roles. The most important state policy to promote renewables is the renewable portfolio standard, which about 30 states have now adopted and renewable portfolio standards require that certain percentages of electricity generated within that state come from RPS is and states can also use financing, set mandates for a specific renewable energy technologies, and cities have a variety of tools that they can use also. So since we're running out of time I'll leave it at that but happy to answer any questions. Wonderful. Thank you kit. If you didn't author our report you must have at least skim through it because a lot of the examples you provided are definitely in our state and city chapter so I encourage others to go check them out there as well and lots of case studies of all of this being done in practice and how and what were the enabling factors. We do still have a couple questions here in a couple minutes left so we'll just jump right into it. Rita Clement asked about San Diego is currently negotiating a franchise agreement and also setting up a San Diego community power community association to distribute electricity. What's your opinion on the municipal framework versus the community choice energy plans. Okay, I think that's to you. Yes. Yeah, there's there's a lot of interesting experimentation going on with community choice aggregation. A ballot initiative passed on that in Ohio just in the last election. I think, you know, there are many, many different ways of getting that clean electricity. And so cities should consider all of them. I'm not sure one model is is always going to work better than another in terms of utility regulation it's really you have to really look at the political and regulatory context in each state. Absolutely. And while we have you here I just one other question from Nancy, she asked to explain the term stretch code versus reach codes. If you can just touch on that quickly. Yeah, I view them as similar. You know the idea is that you have a baseline state energy efficiency code, and then cities have the option of going beyond that in many states at least in some cities are still preempted. So whether you call it stretch or reach. The idea is your is the city is adopting a code that goes beyond the minimum required by the state. And I have a quick question for john and Michael, because you mentioned several congressional recommendations throughout the report, and given that we're now looking at the bipartisan Congress and how some of them might be very Is there any selection of some low hanging fruit that you think are still feasible to propose and push forward in this environment. I'll start I think that research and development in advanced energy technologies and carbon capture and sequestration and direct air capture I think has bipartisan support and that's one thing that may well go forward. Lisa Murkowski, the senator from Alaska has been doing some interesting things on energy efficiency, and I think there may be an opportunity for that as well. She and senator mansion have been promoting a build together that may move. Thank you. And Rita had one other question this is a very technical question so anyone jump in if you have an opinion but we're hydrogen powered buses versus electric buses. I think hydrogen technology is is still a little nascent. And it would require a special kind of infrastructure infrastructure to do it. I think in the long term there's tremendous potential for hydrogen, not only for buses but for long distance freight hydrogen has been identified probably as the most promising technology for long haul trucking for example but the technology I think still has a ways to go before it's fully applied. And we'll just say there are there are on the market and in use today heavy duty electric trucks heavy duty electric school buses. So it makes sense to use the technology that we have today, while looking at hydrogen hydrogen as a potentially helpful technology down the road as we get into that last stretch of decarbonization. Absolutely. So here your comment in here I just want to make sure to comment on it. You asked about educating, you know, the general public and really the motivation behind this report and why we should implement this and why it's so important. To directly address that in the report we're trying to do that through our network and through sds and USA that works with universities across the country to localize these recommendations and identify solutions that can be fostered at universities or with community collaboration. But your point is very well heard and it is not necessarily a key part of our report necessarily our audience was really a congressional and executive administration. One minute left so any final remarks before we close out. Well, I'll just say that it's very energizing if I can use that word that we are on the cusp of the new administration that actually wants to move forward. And I think that there's a lot of enthusiasm around the country among people who want to have a clean energy economy and what if I climate change for to sit to see this new administration come into power and we're already seeing a great deal of defense action. Well said and cities and states will continue to lead as well. And as the climate changes, the impetus for this is only going to grow. And what you've seen with the measures that have been adopted over the last several decades is that you can reduce greenhouse gas emissions build the economy create jobs protect communities. It foster development of new technology and particular income people and businesses all at the same time. And as more and more people see that and experience that I think the momentum for continued action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions is only going to grow. Thank you john well said that's many of the key messages from across the report. And so that very to finalize here just mentioning if you'd like to dig into a few more of these sector chapters. We do have three more additional Z cap webinars coming up over the next two weeks on our materials group, our industry group focusing on cement and steel decarbonization and our food and land use group. So some of those recommendations that they covered on the agriculture side really digging into the solutions there. So thank you kit Michael john for participating today really appreciated all of your remarks and everyone please go visit our website and download the report. Thank you.


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In 2009 the legal highs came and the injecting and the use patterns changed totally because the heroin user went for the legal highs when they experienced heroin user would shoot up to 4, 5, 6 times a day. When they went for legal highs they would shoot 10, 15, 20 times a day. Right now out of 7 or 8 pain testers, 4 or 5 or even 6 are HIV positive to the rapid testers. From a maximum of 2 million syringes in 2009, in 2010 we dropped to less than 1 million. Something happened and there was not at all enough injecting materials on the market. Is there any change in the financial situation after the HIV epidemic? No, we don't have any families from the center. By the end of June some home reduction problems might stop. About 200 or 300 people in substitution treatment will be left out. A lot of vein injectors will no longer have access to clean syringes and this would be just factors for increasing the epidemic. We ask the international community to help us. We just know what the solutions are but we're not able to take the right measures to save people's lives. This is not only a national problem, this is a European problem too.


From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of AWS re-invent 2020, sponsored by Intel, AWS, and our community partners. Welcome to theCUBE virtual and our coverage of AWS re-invent 2020. I'm your host Lisa Martin, and with me today is MRAM, Shachar, the VP and GM of Spot by NetApp. MRAM, it's great to have you on the program. Thank you, Lisa. It's great to be here. So here we are in this virtual world that we're all living in. Great that we can still connect with you, but I wanted to understand, you were the founder and CEO of Spot, which was acquired by NetApp earlier this year. Talk to me a little bit about Spot, about the technology and what's going on since the NetApp acquisition. Absolutely. So Spot is a company that was founded in late 2015 and was centered and concentrated about helping companies to optimize their cloud infrastructure costs through automation of software, of how customers are provisioning their compute. So we could possibly help customers to choose their best price of server infrastructure and the price and the best size of server infrastructure in the cloud. And since we launched the company, so we help over 1500 customers worldwide to use our technology, scale their revenues to tens of millions of dollars of revenue, raise money from top VCs, including Intel Capital, Vertex and Highland. And just recently, four months ago, we got acquired by NetApp. Excellent. So that's a pretty fast from launch to acquisition, less than five years, must have a neck brace collar on from the whiplash, that and COVID, right, whiplash. So talk to me about acquisition a few months ago, what's going on with the technologies and how is the NetApp customer base helping to expand your market penetration? Yeah, so it was clear during the rationality, when we did a rationality acquisition, so it was clear that spot is going to remain an entity within NetApp. So for example, we preserved our brand, so it's spot by NetApp. It's not going to be just integrated and that's it. So we're not going to see spot disappearing. It's actually the opposite. So we're going to leverage the market credibility that NetApp is 27 years, storage, leading storage provider has in the market. And we're going to use spot as a brand to lean forward and lead with cloud native applications. And what we're going to do is we're going to help to NetApp transform like NetApp existing customers that are moving through the cloud. So not only they can use NetApp storage in the cloud, they can also use the software and automation and optimization layers that spot provides actually. So talk to me about what's going on in the market today. We've been talking for months now about this acceleration of digital transformation, acceleration of cloud adoption given businesses now are working so differently. Talk to me about what you're seeing, what your customers are seeing and how you're helping them to manage and not just keep the lights on right now but be able to be successful and going positioned well in the future. So I'm seeing like two main trends. The first trend is like, yeah, more cloud usage but that's very general, very vague. But what I do see in addition to that is actually like priorities have been changed. And when I talk about priority like priorities not only moving to the cloud but doing it efficiently. So customers who are already using cloud or moving to the cloud, they really need to, you know, plan this in the most efficient way. So I can tell you, for example, a lot of customers that actually we were talking to them to use us at the beginning of 2020. So they intended to use us in like, you know, third quarter, fourth quarter of the year, like it all got accelerated and they started to use our platform because their priorities have changed and they want to have like optimization of cost right now. Yeah, that's been something that a lot of folks have been wanting and needing even to just keep the lights on get their eyes on visibility where are we spending costs? Are we using cloud efficiently? If not, how can we work with technology vendors to help us get that visibility and optimize our costs and spend? So tell me about from a conversation perspective, post, you know, during this interesting year the acquisition occurred. Are your conversations with customers changing? Are we seeing now is cloud rising even up the C suite stack to the board in terms of the conversations that you're having? You know, and I'm seeing this like for five years and like how our conversations are changing year over year and year over year we're seeing like improvement in our type of conversations because people leaning in like, you know, to the cloud more people thinking about about optimization is becoming a priority. As I mentioned, like, you know, four years ago, like it's not about optimizing cloud it's about moving to the cloud. And right now I have so many things in the cloud I just need to run it well. I need to understand what I'm doing in the cloud. So our conversation has gotten a lot better and especially in 2020. And if you think about cloud expenditure like this is probably the second biggest line item of every company's expenses. So it goes directly to the cogs which is the cost of goods sold of every company. So it goes directly go off the margin of companies. So cloud is definitely becoming a board discussion thing. So jokes maybe about some of the new products and capabilities that you guys have now that you're part of NetApp. So first of all, as a company, we really believe in like listening to customers seeing what they need and innovating on their behalf. I think this is like our mission. And I'm always like saying that like customers always want like cheaper cloud and more simple cloud. This is like a strategy to build a long-term business. Like, I don't know if customers will not need like cheaper cloud in 10 years from now. And I don't know if customers would want more complicated cloud in 10 years from cloud in 10 years from now. So in order to keep that momentum, so we're doubling down on like our existing technology which helping customers to optimize their pricing, purchasing. As you know, we're helping companies to purchase across the three pricing models in the cloud. And the first pricing model being on demand which is you pay by the hour. The second pricing model being reserved instances or savings plans, which is you basically reserve capacity for a longer time and then you get a discount. And the third pricing model called SPOT. And SPOT basically is like as idle resources, idle compute resources that cloud providers have and they're willing to sell you that in a low rate but they can take it away from you at any moment. So what our technology does in actually balancing in the most economical way across these three pricing models that we basically push the savings to the maximum while we also keep the SLA and the SLOs of the customers. So while we're releasing now and doubling down on the technology is we're introducing something called predictive rebalancing which is basically customers who are launching SPOT instances and they want to migrate between SPOT instances to different SPOT instances or to reserved instances. So we can do it much more proactively than ever before. We've been investing a lot of machine learning engineers on that problem. We've put a lot of brain power to work on this and we're gladly happy to release a new updated version of that it can help customers to get warnings of almost an hour before any interruption might happen. Predictive rebalancing you said it's called. One of the things I was thinking when you were talking about the three pricing tiers and what you guys help businesses do it sounds very dynamic and iterative in the moment. So based on what's it based on usage data volumes how do you help customers make that? How does the technology actually help customers with that dynamic that predictive rebalancing? So it's a great question because the way that it works it really matches the technology stack of the customer. So if we understand that this is like a web service running behind an elastic load balancer so that predictive rebalancing will have behavior X. And if we realize that this is a big data workload that requires some other type of compute provisioning so that predictive rebalancing will behave like Y. And there is also the new wave of apps which are cloud native containers and microservices. So actually the predictive rebalancing knows to identify that. So basically if you think about that what happens behind the scenes is that we migrate between different pricing models and we just move containers around the customers don't really know what happened behind the scenes but they that the output of everything is the most optimized and high available capacity they can possibly get from the cloud. So what sort of cost savings are we talking about? Can you share any examples of some what some of your customers have achieved? So yeah, we're talking about like I think the benchmark is anywhere between 70 to 90% we have a lot of public use cases with our customers and some of our really valuable customers like a check which is an educational tech technology company which are running with us their entire fleet of containers reported like over 65% of cost reduction on their compute. Also Gum Gum which is computer vision company that analyzes ads in real time. They also reported over 70% of cost reduction of their cloud infrastructure as well as the well-known ticket master which is also a very large customer virus and using us in all of their production Kubernetes clusters and also saved over 60 to 70% of their containers infrastructure. So big savings, I think the lowest number I heard you say was 60%. So big impact that the technology is able to make. Talk to me about the existing customers that and you've got some big brands you mentioned, Ticketmaster, how would things change for them or not change for them with the NetApp acquisition? You talked about maintaining the spot brand but talk to me about kind of that transition for your existing customers. So you know it's actually a very, you know I felt lucky like going through this process of an acquisition as a founder of a company and it's very pleasing calls to have with customers is when you call customers and you tell them about the acquisition and I was lucky enough to tell them like, hey guys, nothing is going to change. Like our roadmap is going to continue in the same way. Our name is going to remain the same way. The only thing we're going to bother you with quote unquote, as we're going to add storage capabilities into our compute capabilities. That must have been music to their ears but I got to ask you is it like doing an acquisition in the middle of a global pandemic and we're completely remote, right? You know, this is an experience I will never forget. You know, it's, you're just, you're at home.  So it's like, you're with your baby wife, family and just all day calls ongoing and you know, it's a really amazing experience that I think I will never forget. Yeah, I think I'm with you on that unique experience. Well, congratulations for being a new father but that also makes it challenging, right? You're CEO of a startup that's about to get acquired and you've got a newborn as a coworker. So all of a sudden all of these challenges that just add more challenges to the mix. So I'm sure it was great to be able to have the conversation with your existing customers about what little is changing. But also for them, what's the opportunity for those existing customers to really start taking advantage of all of NetApp's capabilities? So that's exactly the intersection between spot and NetApp, which I feel like super excited about because if you think about that, like we've built a technology of computer optimization over the last five years. NetApp is a big brand, credible company going for 27 years, more than 27 years. The last seven years, NetApp has been doing like a massive shift to the cloud, supporting their customers and moving from on-prem to the cloud. So NetApp actually did, and I was very amazed by that, which is they ported all of their on-premise technology and put it in the cloud. In the platform that they call cloud volumes, which is you basically you can get all of the features that NetApp provides, like advanced snapshotting and backup and fast restore and compression and deduplication, which I remember managing data centers myself from my military days, I was using a lot of NetApp stuff. And they took all of these great things and put it in the cloud. And now what we can actually do for our customers is that we can actually attach, like the computer they're buying from us and optimizing with us with the storage, the great storage that NetApp offers in the cloud and the cloud volume platform. There's a lot of opportunities there. In fact, NetApp has, we've been talking about this on theCUBE for a while for years, NetApp has gone undergone a big transformation, a big evolution, and it sounds like what they're doing with Spot and also the opportunities that it's providing to not just your existing customers, your prospective customers and your new customers, it's just kind of kicking that door wide open, which right now in this interesting time is essential as businesses are continuing to pivot as this time unfolds. And we know some things are going to remain permanent, but they've got to be able to pivot quickly. Otherwise, the competition is probably in the rearview mirror, maybe smaller, more agile and ready to take over. That's so true. And like, you know, generally speaking about like transformation, like modernization of applications. So like huge trend that we're seeing, and this is also a huge intersection between NetApp and Spot is everything Kubernetes and everything containers. So we're seeing that organizations moving to the cloud, but they're not like, not anymore looking at like just lift and ship, they're like lift, modernize, ship. Like people want to modernize their application for various reasons. And we see containers technologies just becoming like the de facto technology for shipping applications in the cloud, and we see Kubernetes on the rise. And one of our products at Spot called Ocean is a product that manages compute for Kubernetes. So our tagline is basically serverless containers, which is customers deploy their containers and then we manage the infrastructure under them. They don't need to define their infrastructure, think about their infrastructure, just like it's a really a near van for DevOps people responsible for Kubernetes. And then when we actually, you know, got into NetApp and we saw all of like the cloud volumes technology that I was telling you about, we said it like, hey, what if we can take this serverless compute of containers and we can actually make it for storage as well. And we basically can take all the good things that you get from serverless, which is, you know, no infrastructure management, billing, like utility billing, you know, scale to zero, scale to like, you know, infinite if you need and with no infrastructure management. And this is actually possible with the NetApp cloud volumes technology. So actually right now we're launching with NetApp something we call storage less volumes, which is basically for containers, we're going to allow that directly from our ocean product that you will be able to get storage less volumes that are going to be completely hands-free management of storage. And just to set the tone like, what is storage less? Like, is there no storage? Like, what is serverless? Are there servers there? Of course there are, but you don't manage them. So what storage is there a storage underneath? Of course there is, but you don't need to manage it. And is that something that your customers can take advantage of now? Is that coming in the next quarter or so? What's the timing on that? This is right now already in preview. So we already opened that to some of our, you know, advanced customers that are using like all of our latest and greatest, you know, features. So it's already with customers validation, working with them, they actually love it and love the fact that they don't need to manage storage because when you move to the cloud, you actually don't really care about storage anymore because it's becoming just oil for your applications. So, and it's going to be generally available hopefully in the first half of 2021. Exciting, something positive to look forward to. You'll have to come back and share with us some of the results. Amiram, it's been great to have you on theCUBE. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Likewise, Lisa, thank you very much. I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE.