So, thank you everyone for joining us today for for those of you who are not presenters or or panelists, if you could turn your video off. That way, the, all the attendees will see just the videos of the of the speakers today. And for everyone on the call, if you hover over one of the videos on the right, you can. There's there's three dots and a drop down menu and the bottom option on that is to hide non video participants. And so then you'll just see those of us who are speaking rather than seeing a bunch of black boxes with people names on them. So, yeah, thank you for everyone who's here today for for attending this, and a particular thanks to all of the organizers who have helped put this together. We've, we've spent the last two months organizing this and lining up the speakers and presenters today. And we have just some incredible presentations that I'm really excited for. And I'm sure that you'll all be able to enjoy those. So, this is an interesting time for all of us with the pandemic we've all been social isolating and so now we're doing this over zoom rather than having an in person, rather than having an in person summit. We have a unique time and at the same time our. We have thousands of people marching in the streets demanding racial justice. We're all very well aware of climate change and the actions that are being taken in Maine and elsewhere to help address the climate crisis. And the pandemic is, is creating the biggest recession that we've seen in at least 80 years. So we're at kind of a nexus of environmental and social and financial problems in the world. And the green bank is a solution that can help to move us towards better a better world in all those different realms, socially financially and environmentally. It's clearly not going to solve everything, but it is a critical first step. And I'm excited to have you all here today and be able to share with you a whole bunch of information about what green banks are and how they work. And while most of the protests are around racial justice and police brutality. It is important for us to keep in mind the systemic injustices in the fossil fuel system. Today, most refineries and fossil fuel power plants. The majority of them, more than half are in low income communities of color. And so those communities are disadvantaged and and are and are have very negative health outcomes from that with high rates of asthma and cancer and other things. And so as we transition to clean energy in Maine, we can reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and help to reduce those those disparities and injustices elsewhere around the country. And at the same time, we can retain billions of dollars in our local economy, creating thousands of upon thousands of jobs, putting people back to work to to build ourselves out of the recession. And so hopefully this summit today will give you all a good overview of what a green bank is and how they work and some of the next steps that we can take here in Maine. Up first, we have Abe Wapner from the Coalition for green capital. And I worked with the coalition for green capital over the last six years I was working for the Nevada Governor's Office of Energy, and help to pass a law creating a green bank, the Nevada Clean Energy Fund out there, and the coalition for green capital was instrumental in leading the green bank study that we conducted, and has just been tremendously helpful and is a and they're a wealth of knowledge. And so I'll turn it over to Abe, and let you take it from there. And thank you very much for joining us. Thanks so much David, let me share my screen with you all so that you can. Just real quick reminder for for those of you who have joined more recently. If you can turn your videos off. So just the people who are speaking today will have their video showing. And you can hide all of the non video participants if you hover over a video. There's three dots that appear and and that brings up a drop down menu and the bottom option is to hide non video participants. And you'll be able to see the video screens of the speakers today. Thank you, and go ahead, Abe. David. So, I work for the Coalition for green capital and I'm hoping I can talk to you all a little bit today about what is a green bank. And then how that might be relevant to what's been going on in Maine today. I think, given, as David said, the kind of current state of affairs that we find ourselves in. I think this is pretty crazy that we're all getting together for a summit on zoom. I wanted to start off by talking a little bit about green banks as a tool for economic recovery. And kind of, we've been thinking about the impacts of coven and next steps moving forward towards redevelopment. We at CGCC see a green bank is a powerful tool that that can be used to help put us on the right track towards recovery. So, just to kind of couch that and some facts about 10% of mains workers are out of work right now. In the data earlier in the week, there's about 175 residents that have filed for unemployment, about 70,000 continuing unemployment claims and on top of that, you know, 25,000 people have just dropped out of the labor force entirely. So, there's a significant portion of people that are out of work and need to find a way to get back to work. And currently at the federal level, we're seeing that spending is going towards kind of direct stimulus it's not going to job creation currently so things like the PPP but we need some tools that are going to address the amount of unemployment that we're seeing right now and get people back to work. CGCC has done a number of polls nationally to try and understand what kind of tactics clean energy voters support and we're seeing that about seven and 10 people support this idea that you know the government should be investing money in building clean energy infrastructure. They see it as a smart way to spend dollars to people back to work and repair the economy. And so the way that we think that that can happen is through a federal green bank and CGCC is pushing really hard to create a national green bank that would put $35 billion into a clean energy jobs fund. That would kind of channel money through state and local green banks that exist across the country, including one that may or may not happen in Maine to put Americans back to work. We recently commissioned a study with vivid economics to try and understand the job impacts of this kind of a fund at the national level. And we're seeing that it could create about five and a half million jobs over five years so given that there's about 21 and a half million continuing unemployment claims in the US right now. A green bank at the US level could put about one in four folks back to work. These these jobs could be spread out across the economy so they're not just in clean energy generation. We're also talking about building efficiency agriculture clean transportation, and they're not just kind of skilled skilled jobs they also have a fair amount of kind of administration sales. They're spread out across the economy to accommodate the kind of breadth of the types of people that need to be put back to work. And I think like David mentioned earlier it's also really critical that these funds target those frontline communities that have been most impacted by climate change, and have been historically left behind. Part of the bill includes 20% carve out for for dollars to flow towards low to moderate income communities and those that have been impacted by climate change. So, we see a green bank as a really powerful tool to help create jobs in the clean energy sector and drive those dollars into the parts of the economy that need the most. So, I realize I haven't really told you what a green bank is yet. So, I'd love to dive into talking a little bit more about that. So I'll start off by introducing myself my organization. I'm a program director at CDC where we work to advocate for and set up green banks across the country. We were created about 10 years ago to advocate for a federal green bank as part of the waxman market bill that had bipartisan support but the bill didn't pass the green bank never got created. We took that idea to Connecticut and made the nation's first green bank the Connecticut Green Bank and I think we're all very lucky to get to hear from Brian Garcia later today who will talk a little bit more about that organization the great impacts that they've had. But given the success in Connecticut. We have taken that model and gone kind of Johnny Apple seed across the country, everywhere from Rhode Island to Hawaii, creating green banks that have been able to drive dollars into clean energy development. We're an on profit supported by by major global foundations to do this work. So, what exactly is a green bank. And we like to use it CGC and I will just read it out loud for you all before we kind of dive into the specifics of what everything means green banks are mission driven institutions. They use innovative financing to accelerate the transition to clean energy and fight climate change. So, what exactly do I mean by that. There's a couple different words in there that I'd love to kind of unpack for you all. So, first, green banks are mission driven. And what this means is, is green banks attempt to be additive in the markets where they work. So, a green bank really strives to identify the local market gaps that exist, and then raise and deploy capital to fill those gaps, and I'll get into what those gaps are a little bit later. But the other important thing to note about green banks is that they aren't traditional banks, you don't take deposits, and a lot of them have actually kind of taken on the nomenclature of clean energy funds to more accurately kind of represent that they are specialized investment in green bank vehicles. Green banks are institutions. So, as an institution a green bank is kind of market facing and attempts to be durable, something that's going to stick around in the market and be an ongoing resource for developers and other actors. Given that they're market facing they are flexible and responsive as things change in the real world. They're providing different tools to do that, that can change over time depending on how the markets evolve financing. So, green banks use financing, not grants, and what I mean by that is that green banks invest in projects that pay back so that they can recycle that capital over time bringing it back into the market. They work in tandem with other market development activities, sometimes administering those sometimes working alongside them, such as rebates from utilities that exist, and other kind of market development activities that go on in the state. So, like I said green banks have been established coast to coast across the US, and they form a national network of mission driven actors that can really deploy capital at scale. We see this as a really powerful opportunity for if there's a national pool of capital at the national level. And that capital would be deployed through this network of green banks to most effectively target the local needs of markets where green banks exist. Currently, CDC runs something called the American Green Bank Consortium, which is a trade group to pull together all these green banks that do exist to discuss best practices, joint fundraising and kind of advocacy opportunities, etc. The Green Bank model has been successful today. Green banks across the US have driven about $5 billion in cumulative investment, which is actually a small portion of the amount that's been done globally. If you look at some of the countries like the United Kingdom or Australia that have created national green banks. They've done the lion share of the clean energy investment across the globe and so we actually see that as tell tale that there is really strong opportunity to do this in kind of a national coordinated way across the US. But today in the US it's been state and local green banks that have been driving this change, and they've been doing so effectively. One part of the green bank model that is particularly attractive is that green banks have been able to leverage in private capital through the mechanisms that they use. And on average, every dollar that a green bank in the US has spent has pulled in about $3 of private capital. This investment has led to a lot of development and has enabled places where green banks exist to get closer towards their climate goals. So green banks can be powerful tools to help the state reach the goals that they set for themselves. How do green banks do this? So something that we've learned is that green banks can and should do a lot of different things depending on the needs in the market. One thing a green bank shouldn't do is kind of come into a market and replace something that's already existing. So green banks don't come in and take projects away from private investors. They try to work in partnership with them. Similarly, they don't kind of come in and try to replace existing grant programs or market development activities exist. They're looking for those gaps that are currently there. And then they're trying to develop tailored solutions to fill those gaps. So I've listed here a couple of the common barriers to investment that green banks have seen in different markets. The first one is kind of this perceived project risk. And one thing we'll see when we're talking to private lenders is that they often don't really know how to invest in clean energy projects or evaluate them appropriately for risk. One thing that green banks have done effectively is come in with credit enhancements to make those lenders more comfortable loaning into clean energy projects. And I think Brian may touch on this later in the day when he talks about Canada, they've been largely successful working with a network of local banks in the state to encourage them to make loans directly to projects. Another barrier that we often see green banks able to overcome is kind of the inefficiencies of scale. For a private investor, it costs about as much for them to invest in a $500 million project as it does for them to invest in a $500,000 project just due to the transaction costs that are associated with a project. So a lot of the times they won't really focus on those smaller projects. And what a green bank can do is kind of take the burden of doing this transaction costs. And once they've gotten a sufficient number of those smaller projects together, they can aggregate and resell those up into broader capital markets. So basically they can connect private capital with those smaller projects that the private investors might not touch on. Another but another barrier that we often see is kind of marginal economics or just difficulty making projects pencil. And given the kind of flexible nature of green banks capital they can come in and help kind of reduce costs from financing to make those projects pencil, just by flat out reducing costs and they can do that either through providing more flexible debt, or by coming in to the transaction and get private actors more comfortable offering better terms. Lastly, I'll just mention briefly kind of first and kind of transactions which I think are fairly self explanatory but a green bank can kind of do the brain damage for a new technology or a new sector of the market, where they can help prove out an investment strategy, make that publicly available show that it does work and you can invest and make money in these projects and then kind of hand the reins over to the private sectors that they can start investing in those technologies. I think a great example of this is in the UK where they basically kicks the green bank there kickstart at the offshore wind investment and offshore wind industry and then turn it over to large scale pension funds that were able to fund further development. So, the one kind of key component of a green bank that allows them to do all of these activities is that green banks rely on having mission driven capital for their investment startup. Historically, this has come from state or federal governments. And so, almost all green banks have been created using seed capital from those sources. The states have found and government, the federal government have found driving ways to support this development including grants from our dollars that were available. Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative dollars which I think are in use in New Jersey right now. And then also utility surcharges or kind of utility settlement mergers that have also been used to capitalize green banks. That's a key role in helping add to that capital stack as well. And we've seen them layer in kind of program related investments to supplement the balance sheets of green banks across the country. Also, foundations have been critical providing grants for kind of the startup phase, as well as pre development work to understand the opportunity for green banks. I'll just point out here that, you know, obviously, the sources of capital for a main green bank remain to be determined so really excited to hear how the conversation goes today around what might be, you know, a best place to start thinking about how a green main green bank could get that kind of mission driven capital for investment. Then I'll end on this point here which is I think that we're really excited about this opportunity at the federal level. And that would, if it if you know if it comes to pass in 2020 or 2021, it would create real potential to scale up the operations of existing green banks, especially if one were to be created here in Maine. So, you know, a main green bank were created with a small amount of investment capital, $35 billion coming in from Congress would then be distributed across the country and the main green bank would be in a pretty great position to get some of those dollars and scale up its operations in a major way to help create some of the impacts I was talking about earlier with jobs and development across clean energy markets. So, I will stop there. Here's my contact information case any of you guys want to follow up individually, but I think David we can leave some time for questions to anybody has anything burning that I can answer today. Thank you, David. I'm going to unmute you. There you go. Thank you. Matt, do you have some questions that have come in from from the audience at all. Yeah, there were a couple. One quick one is are these slides available on your website. They're not on our website, but happy to make them available after this presentation. Okay, we can follow up with everyone and share. I have a couple of questions. One was about how, how do green based events screen and select what they invest in. Yeah, it's a great question. So, like I said, green banks are really focused on identifying the market gaps that exist in the specific area that they're trying to invest in energy is a very local issue just given local facilities, and nature of the projects themselves. And so, what a green bank will do is kind of analyze the opportunity in each market train, figure out where those gaps are, and then develop tailored solutions and focus on them, and kind of like I talked about above, those can be either, you know, we're not seeing a lot of development in this particular technology like say a green like the New York Green Bank is really focused on trying to figure out how they can, you know, crack the knot of storage and offshore wind to get the state moving into that sector of the economy. Or the idea could be, we're really not seeing a lot of development and the kind of LMI space so in Baltimore, there's a carve out for LMI off takers for community solar that hasn't really been used yet. So, the green bank there is trying to tackle the issue of, you know, how can we make sure that community solar is providing energy to all members of the population there. So, green banks are really driven by the needs of the kind of local geography in which they find themselves. And the process for which to by which they determine that is is kind of a needs analysis of that market. Thank you, Abe. Just following up on that and then there are a few more questions. Can you define LMI. Yeah, low to moderate income, I think it's a HUD term, but it is a sector of the population below the median income. Thank you, Abe. And Matt, I think we'll pause the questions there to keep on schedule. And so if you can save all the questions that come in that haven't been answered yet. There may be an opportunity for Brian Garcia or a panelist to answer some of those, but otherwise we'll try to follow up with audience for anyone who has additional questions, and we can follow up with them individually. So, up next we have Steve Klemmer, and Steve is the director of energy research and analysis at the Union of Concerned Scientists. And he recently did a study looking at clean energy financing in Maine, and so he's going to talk more specifically about about right here in Maine and what we can do. So thanks, Steve. Thanks, David. Let me know if you can see my screen. Okay, great. Good afternoon, everyone. It's great to be here. I really want to thank David for inviting me to this summit as well as for all the work he and others did on organizing this. It's really a timely and great event. As David said, my presentation is going to focus on the paper that we wrote in 2016 that highlights the benefits of creating and implementing a green bank in Maine. I also use this information more recently in a recommendation that I made to the main climate council as part of the energy working group. Hannah Pingree, I think we'll be talking more about the council later, but I just wanted to highlight that as well, that this is something that's being actively considered in the climate council process. So let me start by highlighting four key numbers that I think will help everyone understand the enormous challenge and magnitude of the investment that's going to be needed to achieve Maine's climate and energy goals. First number, 80%. So Maine has a goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2050 with an interim target of 45% by 2030. 80% is also the target Maine has for renewable electricity with its renewable portfolio standard that increases to 100% by 2050. Maine also has offshore wind and distributed solar goals that will contribute to those renewable targets. Second number is 30%, which is the efficiency goals for Maine requiring a reduction in electricity and natural gas use by 2020 and a 30% reduction heating while used by 2030. So that goal, Maine also has targets to install 100,000 heat pumps by 2025, weatherize 100% of homes and 50% of businesses by 2030. So Maine really has a lot of some of the key policies that are in place that are going to be needed to achieve the climate and clean energy goals. So the amount of investment, which is the next number, 40 to 50 billion is a rough estimate from a couple of recent studies of how much might be needed over the next 30 years to achieve these targets. And while that number seems pretty daunting, the good news is that Maine currently spends about $4.4 billion on imported fossil fuels as part of a total energy bill of $6.2 billion. Redirecting that $4.4 billion or some portion of that to invest in clean energy can be done without having, while creating jobs, as Abe was saying, reducing emissions and also keeping energy affordable in Maine. The investment that I mentioned before that would be needed to get to 2050 is roughly on the order of about $1.5 billion per year on average. So we clearly are spending enough money already on energy that could be redirected into clean energy technologies. Not all of this investment actually needs to be covered by a green bank. I think, as Abe was saying, most green bank programs are targeted at populations and sectors that have limited access to capital, such as homeowners and renters, small businesses, industrial facilities, farms, nonprofits, institutions, local governments. It's also important to address equity issues, as Abe and others were saying, by providing grants and low interest loans to low and moderate income households. In my view, a green bank doesn't really need to cover utility scale investments in things like wind and solar and electricity grid infrastructure. Most of the entities that will be doing that have much greater access to capital. And, you know, that said, there are ways to lower the cost of capital for those larger scale projects as well. A green bank would fund, you know, some of the typical types of investments that we've already been talking about, of course, energy efficiency and renewable energy. A couple of key ones that are really going to be needed to address main's climate goals will be deploying heat pumps and buildings, electric vehicles and charging infrastructure is also going to be really important to reduce emissions in the transportation sector. Energy storage is also going to be needed over time to help integrate high levels of renewables and things like combined heat and power and other strategies in the industrial sector are also done through a green bank that could really help main achieve its emission reduction targets. Another potential area that a green bank could focus on is climate resilient infrastructure and it touched on this a little bit too, but some other states are putting significant resources into infrastructure, especially things that will help states and communities adapt to climate change. In particular, there's a couple of really good win-win solutions like solar plus storage or clean energy micro grids that could be deployed for critical infrastructure. And those are win-wins because they can, in addition to providing power during outages from extreme weather, they could also reduce reliance on diesel generators and reduce emissions. So really a win-win from both an adaptation and a mitigation standpoint. And these solutions are already being implemented and demonstrated on several island communities in Maine. Several financial products and services, David, I'm sorry, Abe touched on a few of these already, so I'm not going to repeat those, but a couple others that he didn't talk about. Direct lending is another strategy that's obviously familiar to too many people, direct types of lending to consumers and businesses, and EfficiencyMain is currently doing this for residential energy efficiency. I think they're spending in 2019 spent about $5.5 million on something like 760 projects. That's about 10% of their budget in 2019. So clearly, those types of loans and revolving loans could be expanded to other households and businesses and other technologies as well as I discussed before. Another thing I'm not sure if Abe touched on was some of the sort of structured products and financing tools. So that would include things like property-assessed clean energy financing, state-backed leasing programs for renewables, performance-based incentives, and those types of things which are additional products that can be provided. As I said, it's really important that every bank that's implemented in Maine is equitable and benefits all residents, including low and moderate income households and disadvantaged communities. And EfficiencyMain and Coastal Enterprise is already offering some programs like this that could be built upon. There's of course the state weatherization program as well that uses federal funds. But there's also some really good models out there. I'm not going to get into the three that I have listed here. I'm not going to get into all of them. I think Brian might talk about the Connecticut program during his presentation. The one I wanted to just give a quick example about was the one Gabe was talking about, the Baltimore Climate Access Fund, which I do think has some relevance to Maine. As he was saying that in Maryland, they required that 30% of the community's solar service, low income and moderate income households, but developers were really hesitant to participate in that because of the perceived high credit risk. Lenders and investors were also reluctant to finance those things because of low return expectations. So I think as Abe was alluding to, they adopted some credit enhancements like a loan loss reserve program in case of loan defaults. They also are making available low cost debt with below market interest rates and lower transaction fees and flexible terms like that. And one of the reasons why I said this is relevant to Maine is because the legislation that was passed that created the distributed solar targets includes a carve out for 10% of those, of that energy to go towards low and moderate income households. So this is a type of program that could be considered by adopting in Maine to help achieve the goals of that program. So Abe also mentioned that some potential funding sources. So this is something we also explored both in the paper as well as in actually in the energy working group. So a lot of the existing sources that are being used by Efficiency Maine and others, CO2 allowance revenues from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and system benefits charges are big sources of funding, some federal funds from ARA and some DOE grant programs, some of the settlements like the Volkswagen settlement that's being used for ED rebates and charging infrastructure, RPS compliance payments as well as money that comes from the ISO in New England for pasty market. But really to amplify the impact of a green bank in Maine, there needs to be new sources of funding and there's several different places this could potentially come from. One is revenue bonding. Another is federal, a federal green bank as Abe was mentioning as well as some of the stimulus and infrastructure proposals that are under consideration right now in Congress to help the economy recover from COVID. Other things like on bill financing and as I mentioned before property assessed clean energy financing, which I think Michael Stoddard will be talking about more later. Those have been pretty successful mechanisms in other states. Another very large source of potential capital is institutional investors and this could come from things like insurance companies, endowment funds, pension funds, hedge funds, those types of things. And there's really literally trillions of dollars available from those sources of funding. They also have very low cost capital and a very low risk tolerance. You know, Maine's own public employee pension system is another possibility there that would kind of fit into that category. And another very large source of potential money would also be a fee on CO2 emissions from oil and gas. This was definitely talked about in the Climate Council discussions and is included in the recommendations and of course this would probably require some kind of implementation either on a regional or national level, but that's another source of potential funding. Some of the potential hosts and partners that we explored and identified for hosting a green bank. I think the most obvious candidate from our perspective is Efficiency Maine because they're already doing programs like this. They have a lot of experience. They do have loan programs like this as I mentioned earlier. They've recently expanded some of their programs into the heat pumps and EVs. But there's also some other entities that do similar types of things. There's the Finance Authority of Maine and they provide an array of loans and other financing programs to support startup and growth of Maine businesses. There's also the Maine Technology Initiative that works with entrepreneurs and businesses to develop and commercialize new technologies. Coastal enterprises, they provide some financing to renewable energy and energy efficiency projects, especially ones in rural parts of the state as well as small gateway cities that are undergoing economic transitions. They also recently launched a new subsidiary that's focused on investing in solar projects and communities with low incomes. And of course the other partners, the State Energy Office and other state agencies that are involved in implementing related energy programs as well as the Coalition for Green Capital and other states that are, oh, I'm sorry, that are implementing green bank programs to amplify Maine's impact. So as part of our 2016 paper, UCS developed a spreadsheet tool to analyze the impacts of developing a green bank in Maine and other states. As an illustrative example of using this tool, I looked at what could happen from roughly a $15 million initial capitalization of the bank, which is about equal to what efficiency Maine is currently spending on all of its programs. So this is roughly double what's what was spent in 2019. And I assume that about half of the money would go to energy efficiency and the other half to solar and every dollar of public money would leverage about $5 in private investment, based on experience from the New York and Connecticut green banks. Based on these assumptions, Maine could leverage this initial capitalization into a billion dollars of cumulative investment over the next 15 years in renewables and efficiency. And this investment could deploy about 400 megawatts of solar, it could save homes and businesses about $118 million per year on their electricity bills, and it could also reduce CO2 emissions by more than 740,000 tons. And obviously, as stated earlier, these investments would create jobs in Maine, they would also provide tax revenues for local communities, and they would also provide important public health benefits as well for local communities. Sorry, I didn't click on the other bullets there. So I'm going to conclude with that, and I'd be happy to take any questions. Time to do so. Thank you very much. Thanks, Steve. Dave, do we have a couple minutes? Yeah, we have about five minutes. So if there are some questions, we can ask Steve those. Yeah, Steve, one of the questions is about other green banks seeming to focus on public infrastructure. Some of your slides mentioned green banks could be used for heat pumps and weatherization. Is this a different model? And are there other states doing these small projects with private end users? Well, I know I don't think it's a different model. I think other state green bank programs are implementing programs like that with revolving loan type funds, the cover heat pumps that cover low and moderate income households and disadvantaged communities, as I was mentioning. It can maybe speak a little bit more to that. So I think that those programs exist in many places. As far as infrastructure goes, I think, you know, Rhode Island is a really good example of a state that's really put a particular emphasis on infrastructure. And as I mentioned, some of that is going to climate resilience infrastructure, helping local communities adapt to climate change and invest in projects that would help them do so. In addition to that, there's, they have a bunch of programs oriented around investing in sort of environmental issues related to like replacing septic systems, brown fields, building roads and bridges, and other kinds of more traditional infrastructure maybe as well as things oriented around drinking water and so forth. So there's definitely examples like that out there. I think New York is also investing some of their money in ways like that as well. Great, thanks. And this is just a specific question about ARRA. Could you just explain what that is? That was the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act from 2009 that followed the last recession that we had, where a bunch of money was put together by Congress and made available to, for a variety of purposes, but that included money for energy projects, especially clean energy renewable energy projects. And so my understanding and maybe Michael Stoddard or somebody can talk to this more later but I think Maine got a significant chunk of money from that that they use to help fund some of their programs including their loan program and some of that money is still being used today. So I think that's a really good example of what could happen from the current crisis that we're in and potentially other stimulus packages that are coming down the pike. I know from work that we're doing at the federal level, there's very active efforts to include these things and I believe at least some of the proposals from the House include several provisions that are either funding for energy. The Green Bank is able to talk about infrastructure related things as well as tax credit extensions. So all of those things could be very beneficial to achieving a Green Bank and achieving Maine's climate and clean energy goals. Thanks. Thanks. Matt, were there any other questions for Steve or should we move into the panel discussion. Yeah, I think for the panel there. Yeah, we have some other ones I think I'll follow up with a bomb, but I think that's it for Steve. Okay, great. The panelists able to unmute yourselves. Give a little wave if you need me to unmute you. Not sure exactly how the settings are. It looks like you're all unmuted now. Great. Thank you very much Steve. That was fantastic. So, for the panel discussion. I'll introduce all the panelists briefly and then let them introduce themselves and speak about their backgrounds and experience a little bit and then I have a handful of questions that I'll ask and then we'll turn it over to any questions that come in over the chat. So, today on our residential panel discussion. We have Catherine Cully, who is co owner of Red Fern properties. We have Monty Haynes, who is a senior account and loan program manager with efficiency main. We have Leanne Nichols, who is the president of the Greater Portland Board of Realtors. Susan is vice president of Evergreen Home Performance. And on your right, just recently graduated from College of the Atlantic, and is a is the youth rep on the Climate Council. So thank you all for joining us today. And Catherine I'll let you introduce yourself first and we'll just go in that order. Awesome. Thanks, David. I'm so happy to be here and I've been reading up a lot on the green bank so it's a very exciting concept. I am a principal and co founder of Red Fern properties with my husband Jonathan. We developed the first lead certified platinum single family home in Portland, Maine in 2008, and since then have continued to use the principles that we learned on that project to develop more and more sustainable infill projects in the Portland area, including Joe's smoke shop on Hiawatha, or at Longfellow Square on Congress Street and our current project is redeveloping the mercy hospital site on State Street. So that's my background in energy development for residential. Thank you. Lee. Monty, would you like to introduce yourself? Hello, my name is Monty Haynes. I am the senior accountant and loan program manager and efficiency main. I've worked in accounting for over the past 15 years and it's been a great experience. Great. Thanks for joining us today. Lee and Monty, did you have more? Oh, no, I didn't. Okay, thanks. Go ahead, Leanne. Hi everybody. Thank you for having me here today. I have been a realtor for almost 30 years in our Cumberland County area largely live in Freeport in a home that has geothermal heating and cooling as well as a lot of solar panels, and really enjoy that tremendously and the lifestyle that that provides for my family have also noticed over the last couple of years. I've been in a relationship amongst the consumer population really becoming very sensitive to their energy costs in their homes when I've been helping them in the in the purchase process. So that's really kind of fueled my fascination in this developing sector. My husband is currently working on a subdivision in Freeport, where he's going to be building three sustainable homes as well, which we will then rent out. As a president of the Great Portland Board of Realtors, I am one of the founding members of the Sustainability Advisory Group, which is following the direction of National Association of Realtors and we're doing a lot of work on this sort of stuff and very excited to bring this information to our consumer population as well as our realtor population. Great. Thanks. Brian, here up next. Thanks for having me, David, and thanks for organizing all of this. This is a yeoman work that you're doing, I think for everybody and honored to be a part of it. I'm a partner and building analyst with Evergreen Home Performance, founded in 2006. I'm a residential vendor with Efficiency Main, providing efficiency services to about 250 to 300 homeowners a year. And we also are sort of honored that we were the first to help a main home with the very first PACE loan in the state back in 2011, using those A RRA funds on that revolving loan fund. And we're just thrilled to be working on the demand reduction side of things using less energy so that there can be some wonderful clean supply options to follow. Exactly. Great. Thank you. Go ahead, Anya. Hi everyone and hi all my fellow panelists. My name is Anya Wright. I, like David said just graduated from College of the Atlantic up in Bar Harbor. And I'm also the youth representative on the main climate council, and also the youth representative on the buildings housing and infrastructure working group, which works with the main climate council. I'm especially interested in climate justice solutions for climate change. And with David's and Sierra Club's help brought this green bank idea to the building's working group and I'm excited to see where it goes within the climate council. So thanks for having me. So, Catherine, you've been doing sustainable construction and development for 15 years. What about the green bank really gets your attention. So one of the biggest stumbling blocks that I have with building efficiently and with solar alternative fuel sources is just straight up financing and Abe touched on that quite a bit he called it a gap in the system. But our financial structure banking structure isn't set up for analyzing and incorporating green building practices into their appraisal process. That was one of my biggest stumbling blocks very early and it may be shifting in the residential arena, but it's definitely not that way and the commercial arena. It's a very set process of a return on investment and how your funds are working. So if I could separate out things like solar panels on my buildings into a different loan, the way that the green Connecticut, the Connecticut green bank does it makes it all of a sudden extremely possible. Because the construction loans that we get aren't exactly set up to, I'm already struggling with the construction costs and so unfortunately, you know, a solar panel is the first thing to go on most of my projects. So I think when I did my research on the green bank, the Connecticut Green Bank, I was super excited because all of their packages they have about a dozen or so projects or products that are really geared towards homeowners, building owners, contractors to weather eyes and for, you know, changing over your gas, your oil furnace to a gas boiler or putting solar panels on your roof or getting new windows, which all take a giant chunk of money and then to have it separated out so it's not part of the appraisal process makes it very, it seems very easy to sustain or to do. So it actually eases the burden of weatherizing and upgrading your systems versus creating a burden for the homeowners or building owners, which is to me very exciting for especially main and the Connecticut bank is this also interesting because Connecticut has a similar issue where it's a, it's a community that has a lot of old building stock. That is a huge user of fossil fuels and their economy so they went directly very targeted at that arena of fossil fuel use. Yeah, fantastic. So, are there any other specific issues that you think that the green bank can address in your market segment or definitely I think, for example, we're putting we're in the process of putting solar panels on, they can address back to a, you know, to social equalization. You know, no, there's no incentive for developers to put solar panels on roofs of rental units because the owner of the building doesn't reap the reward and I would argue that it's still not it's back to the risk thing that it was also bringing up that people aren't exactly sure if that's going to attract renters. It may not so there may not be a value add there but if, if the green bank can provide I'm putting $100,000 worth of solar panels on a rental unit right now. But that requires $100,000 in cash I have no way to finance that right now in Maine there's no real way to do that so if I can finance that at two to 3%. That becomes almost a no brainer in my opinion and then I could do it on my larger projects that are that require a higher dollar amount to do. Yeah. And we can certainly look to see what other states are doing in that arena as well. The, the rental situation is kind of the classic conundrum where the building owner owns the building but the renters are paying the utility bills. And so we end up with a situation where no one is incentivized to improve the efficiency of the building. But I know that's one of the things that Connecticut has done a good job of and I can't say for certain whether Brian will speak more about that later. But hopefully he does. Well thank you Catherine I'm going to move on and hopefully we can have time at the end for some additional questions. So Monty efficiency Maine has some fantastic rebate programs. I've taken advantage of several of them in my house here I've got a heat pump in the other room that thankfully it's cool enough today that it's not turned on. I've worked with evergreen on some great insulation in my crawl space in my house and so certainly appreciate the the rebates and in my in my job with revision energy. I've referred a lot of heat pump customers to your residential loan program as well. Could you give us an overview of the loans that you currently have available to efficiency Maine. You know as Steve alluded to his presentation, we've since 2011 that we received error funds for our loan pro revolving loan program and over that time we've fun we've given out around 4300 loans, which equates to around 36 billion and funding so far. So, right now we actually have for loan products, which are unsecure and then one loan product that's secured. And that's for the unsecured products and for let me be clear. We are all the result. These are tied to the residential rebates the loan program so whatever residential rebate that we're offering. It's what a customer can receive a loan for. So, let me go back to the four unsecured loan products. So there's four types, and they're at like one type is loan one, which you can borrow between 1000 to 4500. If you got a credit score of 580. And that's at a 5.99% interest rate doing have a long type to you have to have a credit score of 620, and you can borrow between 1000 to $7500 at a 5.99 interest rate. And then it goes on up to a loan type three and interest rates drops down to 4.99 if you have a credit score of 640 and above. And then you go to loan type four, which means credit score of 680. And that's also at a 4.99% interest rate. And that's, you can borrow between 1000 to $15,000. And as far as secured product is the pace product with Brian actually spoke about. I think they did a project on when they first started. And that one is you don't need a credit score for that. However, we will, it will be a lean put on your home as a will be the junior lean holder on that loan for that project so overall, like I said, we are measures, you know, been great and this loan program has been really taken off. Yeah, that's great to hear. And how would you envision or how would you see a green bank or other new financing programs helping to expand the reach and impact of your current residential programs. Well, I think I think right now, funding, if we had more funding, we could probably offer more products.  But you know if something happens and we start having a lot of the faults then either we might have to you know either slow down the loan program or you know stop it all together for a little while until we can kind of recapitalize it. So, I think just more funding but you know be a great thing and we can probably do way more stuff with it. Awesome. Thank you Monty. So, Leanne. How would a green bank and improved financing for efficiency and clean energy benefit the real estate industry in Maine. Well thank you for the question. You know, I'm speaking on behalf of the real estate industry but the real estate industry is really about the homeowners and the consumers and in 2019 in Maine the unit sold increased here in our state 1.9% year every year to 18,424 transactions. And our prices increased 3.7% to a statewide average median sales price of $275,527, $275,527. That's a lot of money to pay for housing in a mostly rural state. You know, and now we're in the middle of a pandemic with the unemployment rate running at 9.3%, which is so much higher than May of last year. And total units of single family homes is down 5.6% for the year to date through June 23rd, compared to the same date in 2019. And in the face of that our average sales price is actually at 4.1% so far year to date. So we're in the midst of a shortage of housing and really an affordability crisis that is very challenging for homeowners in our state. And I really believe that a green bank can allow more opportunities for consumers to take advantage of ways to create energy savings in their homes. And I think it's a much more stable thing. There was a study done in 2013 that said that energy star homes actually are 32% less likely to default. So those are some pretty compelling reasons to expand upon, you know, the wonderful offerings of efficiency main, because they do have some fabulous programs. But I think we need more, and our homeowners really want more. In 2012, NAR did a profile of home buyers and sellers, and nine out of 10 of those home buyers that were in the market at that time. And this has only expanded, in my opinion, really said that costs for energy were very, very important, if not critical to their decision in home purchase. So it's a pretty important thing we are making gains, even considering that our tax incentives are decreasing and with the limited programs that we do have. In fact, last year, we had an increase of about 39% of homes that sold with solar photovoltaics. We had a 33% increase in energy storage batteries in the home sales. We had a 22% increase in air exchangers for the tight air sealing that needs to happen. We had 41% increase in heat pump sales, and a 47% increase in heat pump water heaters. So this is according to our multiple listening service data. Our data fields have expanded considerably to allow for homeowners to be able to market their homes appropriately to have these features. So we can kind of track that a little bit better too, but at the same time, you know, do have about 68% of our homes were identified as burning oil. So we have a long way to go. We've got a lot of work to do. There are some great programs, but a green bank is only going to expand upon that. There's a lot of people on the Connecticut green bank website. There's some great homeowner testimonials and a lot of those homeowners, even with the loan are saving as much as $3,000 in their energy costs, in addition to still having to pay the loan amount on an annual basis. So that's pretty compelling. And I do believe homeowners really, really want better access to more funding for these opportunities. Yeah, absolutely. I've made a lot of improvements to both the homes that I've owned and it's a lot of work and a lot of hoops to jump through. And we've had some conversations about FHA programs that's federal housing authority programs like their energy efficient mortgages and their solar loans that allow home buyers to finance these types of improvements up front. So what are, what is preventing existing programs like that from being used more broadly in Maine? That's a great question. I remember back in the early part of my career using the FHA 203K program, oh, quite a bit to help friends of mine purchase multi families on the Eastern prom for example in Portland, that needed some improvements. So it was really a tough program back then and that's just for a standard 203K. But when you add the energy efficiency component to it, it's a much more difficult process. We don't have the scale of appraisers in our state nor loan officers that are really versed in this particular program. So it just, it just, it doesn't really work. There's a lot of bureaucratic hangups along the way. So from the research that I've done on the green banks and some of the other green financing opportunities that are coming available, specifically targeted in this direction is it's an easier process. And it's not necessarily tied to the title. It's not necessarily a home equity loan. It's, it's really tied to the amount of money that people would be spending on those energy costs. So that's really, it's just kind of a no brainer, really excited about it. Yeah. Thank you. So, Brian. Most efficiency upgrades will pay for themselves through energy savings over time. And I've seen projects with as low as a two year payback and others can have, you know, considerably longer payback. But most of them will pay for themselves. But what barriers exist that prevent people from completing efficiency projects today. Well, great, great question. Thanks for asking, David. I think if I can kind of embed the question in a slightly larger context and that is that there's how quickly does it pay for itself but it's also what values embedded in the home and I think this is a critical thing that perhaps the green bank stuff can help with and I suspect the realtors would miss if they were not muted. That when you make an efficiency investment in a home whether you know it's in demand reduction or in supply, you embed a certain value in the home it's more like a CD that you're purchasing, you're taking money from somewhere, and you're investing the principle in the house so the home value tends to go up and the appraisal data nationwide as well as in the Northeast for the last 20 years has shown this conclusively. I see some positive nods so I appreciate that Leanne and others. And then the interest on that is the savings that you will get and the savings come in several forms improved durability comfort with improved comfort and decreased energy costs. So, when you consider what you pay for your your house on a monthly basis most people are paying the taxes and the insurance and the principle and the interest. They're also paying the energy. So if we include all of those things in as the carrying cost, then the efficiency improvements start to look a whole lot better when they're embedded in that monthly cost. So yes the house costs more, but it's valued more, but you actually might pay the same as a lesser price house for that better performing house. But it might even, you know, not the bigger is better but it might be bigger. So I think that's kind of the context in answer to your question more specifically, you know what's, what is holding people back. I think there is certainly in the last 10 years since you know the financial crisis of 2008 and a little. Some people are not really willing to take on more debt. They see debt as a problem and so they're waiting to build up this nest egg. And I think if we can crack that nut for people. Most people I believe aren't buying cars with cash, nor should we be thinking of improvements with cash either. We need to break that cycle with people to understand that this is an investment like any other and we need to contextualize it in that way. And efficiency main has been tremendously successful I think Monty indicated I think you said 4000 loans over since 2009 that's phenomenal. But imagine what the state would look like with 8000 or 12,000 or 40,000 loans. I think it's, I think that's a, you know, there's a, there's trouble with people getting over that hump of borrowing money. And I think if they knew that the value is still there, that might help a bit. Long answer sorry. Yeah. And as I think Catherine and Leanne alluded to, it can be hard to demonstrate that value, unlike solar where it's really obvious if you're driving up to a house that it has solar on it. So how would you see the production is usually hidden behind the walls and hidden in the attic and it's much harder for people to recognize that it's there and the value that it's adding. And so, how would you see increased access to financing, particularly if we if we can create programs focused on the low income segment. So how would you see increased access to financing benefiting evergreen's customers and main's efficiency industry. Great, another good question. I think with increased access to capital for lower income folks, you know, right now they're just absolutely struggling for the most part to keep paying the mortgage or maybe it's a home that that they already own but they're, you know, the carrying costs and food on the table gas in the lobster boat, etc, etc. So if they had access to capital, even with what might not be stellar credit ratings to do things beyond even that which efficiency main helps to fund, which might be important. You know their greatest need might be safe windows so that they can open them because right now they're going to smash down on their child's fingers. And we can't finance those two pace loans and things of that nature so I think it would broaden the scope of improvements that could be incorporated and help them, you know really start to transform some of these houses in the way they would love to do but I don't realize is, is possible and isn't really possible, because a no bank is going to loan them the money because they might look at the house and say, that's just not a great risk for us it's worth $80,000 and you know they owe 60. We're not going to lend them the other 20 to make some improvements. And that's another point where efficiency main has been phenomenal with that. It's not to get too technical but that's 100% loaned to value in some of their products, where you can borrow money that nobody else would ever consider lending you from a commercial or a private bank. Yeah. I've run into issues around efficiency and solar for a long time and lining up financing and yeah that that's the nut to crack so hopefully we can make this happen. Thank you Brian. Thank you. So the youth will be living and working through this clean energy transition that we're embarking on. What would you like to see happen as part of this process. Yeah. So very interesting time to be a young person right now between graduating into a pandemic economic collapse climate change and then large scale protests against police brutality, definitely an interesting time so. So seeing with it with all of these four major events and crises going on. A big need to change systems. And we need money to change those big systems. A lot of the times upfront capital for long term solutions so I think something that excites me about the green bank ideas. I'm just wondering some of those questions of there are so many great climate justice related solutions out there, but a lot of the big questions are okay how do we make it happen. And I really see this as an opportunity to make it happen as encouraged to buy a presentation, talking about those seven sectors of investment, and certainly homes being one of them but also there are so many sectors of our economy that can benefit from this and as a young person going into the bizarre job market right now that's definitely encouraging to me. Yeah. Great. Thank you. And how can we ensure that everyone benefits, you know, as we're making this transition to clean energy and addressing climate change. What are some ways that you can think of or how can we make sure that everyone benefits and there aren't people that continue to be left behind. Yeah, I think that's such an important question that I think all of us need to continue to ask ourselves as we go through this work and process. I've been really encouraged by all the panelists today and all the presentations mentioned mentioning like low income residents and emphasizing care for for those residents and making sure that opportunities are available. Yeah, and I think we need to ask ourselves questions. I'm not like super familiar with finance and banking. I'm just proud myself for doing my own taxes this year, but obviously the financial sector is not immune to systems of racism and oppression and sexism and those are all systems that need to be addressed. So my hope would be that in creating this green bank that we can really start from grounds of making sure that we're addressing those those inequities, including people at the table making decisions that represent communities that have been historically left behind. Yeah, I was encouraged by the Connecticut Green Bank, a mentioning that 20% was allocated for low income residents and I think when we do things in Maine I would love to see that that number be larger. I think that would be one really great concrete way of doing that but yeah I think at the end of the day it's just a question that we can't ask once it's something that we need to just keep coming back to because the systems that we're a part of are making us not want to ask those questions, I guess, so yeah. Yeah, great. Thank you. So Matt, if you want to come back on. Have we received some questions over the chat for everyone who's out there watching. Please feel free to chat, chat a question at Matt, if you have something for the panel. That relates to on his last point there. It's a question for Monty. As efficiency main look to creating a loan loss reserve fund or other credit enhancements that would allow loans to be extended to low income households for credit scores. So as of right now we do have a loan loss reserve. And we are, we do try to target the low income customers, you know with the credit score of the 580. You know that's kind of, if you look at any other the other in the industry 580 credit score will be pretty, pretty hard to get a loan loan to do anything for so we we tried, we, you know, we might potentially have other things that might come down the pipeline but that would probably be more of a question for a director director Michael started. Okay, and I guess, similarly, do we know of other incentives and other markets, maybe it's not necessarily for you Monty but other folks. So now I'm aware of the markets. Yeah, there's there's certainly a lot of different programs that have been set up in different states. It's kind of a hodgepodge around the country, depending on whether programs are run by one of the utilities in a state or by the governor's office of energy or by an independent organization like efficiency main. And so I've seen different things Nevada has a whole different set of programs than than we do in Maine. And certainly it's beneficial to look around and see what's working well in other places, but there's, you know, there's a million different programs out there, depending how hard you look, and it can be hard to sort through all of them and suss out the differences and a lot of them vary depending on the utility rate structures and you know what types of buildings they're trying to address whether it's more on the commercial industrial side or the residential side of things. So yes, there's certainly a lot of other options out there. But some of them wouldn't wouldn't work here or wouldn't be a good fit here. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, the other questions honestly are kind of related to the larger some of the larger questions around legislation and I don't think I have any other specifics for the panel at the moment. But I'm going to pose one of the big ones and see what happens. If a state if a state bond issues not possible. What do we see as attainable funding mechanism given the looming state budget shortfall and constitutional requirement of a balanced budget. I don't know if that's for Hannah later or other folks but that that is a theme from a couple people. I think it's going to really require a lot of private sector investment. I think a lot of universities trying to divest of their current portfolios you see retirement funds, also looking to do the same black rock made a big investment announcement. Also indicating the same sort of direction that they're heading with their investments so I think that there is going to be funding out there. Additionally, for this sort of thing. And, you know, like David said there are a lot of other areas in which they're doing it for our particular solar project that we're doing here in Freeport. The solar provider sent us a link to a financing opportunity that was actually based in Colorado. I'd much rather participate in a financing opportunity if I was going to go that route here in Maine. So, you know, that's my thought on it from the research that I've done and what I've heard and what's going on out there. So the Connecticut Green Bank, my understanding is they started out in 2011 with $11 million and 100% of it invested was through the state, but now, and as of 2017 they were 43%. That's one of the things I like about the Green Bank is that they do, they're maximizing the state's investment to encourage and jumpstart private investment like Leanne said with maybe college funds anybody looking to divest from fossil fuels, it's local, it actually brings in our local banks, which are all very strong. It's a strong local banking community. So, I think that's one of the reasons why I look at it and it can continue to not necessarily ride on these, on these highs and lows of a budget constraint, or a change in philosophy at the state level, that it can operate as a quasi, you know, public private financial arm that can continue to grow and invest even more money rather than be hindered by balances of the state budget. Thank you. Leanne mentioned the public employee retirement systems and in Maine, our public employee retirement system has a billion dollars invested in fossil fuels and so if we were to divest that and invest it in green solutions that would be pretty fantastic. Absolutely. Right there. 49 to go. In Nevada, I can speak to the Nevada Clean Energy Fund, and the state did not allocate any of the general fund budget to the Clean Energy Fund there, and did not issue any bonds for it. They received a grant from a large national nonprofit foundation, and so just this past year they received millions of dollars to be able to actually launch some programs with their Clean Energy Fund. It had been created structurally a couple years ago and had a board of directors and all that sort of stuff, but wasn't able to actually do any financing because it didn't have funds. We're looking at either national foundations as well as we have some fantastic local foundations across Maine. And so there's certainly additional options for that upfront capitalization from a variety of sources. And so there's options besides being allocated by the legislature, you know, especially this coming year, the state budget is going to be really short. And so there's not going to be funds there. And generally there's limitations on bond issuance as well. So, you know, we'll see. But there's there's certainly a variety of options out there. And we do have just two more quick questions I think might have time for both one for Leanne if air sealing and insulation projects kind of pay for themselves and utility savings and loans were more available do you think homeowners would invest. I absolutely do in my town Freeport we had a promotion not that long ago Solarize Freeport and many, many people participated. It's a no brainer, to me in my opinion. That's one of the first things that homeowners will look at or potential homeowners look at is what the utility costs are and we now have a requirement in our disclosures that we disclose through the real estate commission on our property disclosures that we list a property for sale what the gallons of consumption of fuel was for the year. So, home buyers and consumers have become very sensitive to that. And that's only accelerating, in my opinion, and they're very, very interested I can't tell you how many people ask me, what are you paying for solar panels and people are really watching this space very closely. I think, David, I think we have one more minute. But for Catherine, if funding were available do you think more developers would overcome that split incentive and make their properties more affordable and healthier. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean it just if you could set even in the realm of say if there was a green bank that gave me a separate loan at two to 3% on a on a package of upgrades within the insulation window air sealing package. The amount of pushing and pulling I do to get the maximum with our construction costs is a daily exercise of if I give here I'll get a little there and so to take that out and and created at two to 3% and just it's it comes in no manner. And I think that the way the Connecticut Green Bank also pulls in contractors contractors can then also educate their clients on okay here's some upgrades we can do in the air sealing package that will benefit you in the long run. So, and as a residential developer. I mean, that could be a huge opportunity as well. Absolutely. Great. Thank you Catherine. Thank you everyone on this panel. I really appreciate your, your participation and your input today. We're going to take a 10 minute break so that everyone can grab a glass of water or stretch, get away from the computer for a few minutes. So if everyone can make sure to be back at 335 and we'll start the second panel. And in the meantime, we'll try to make sure we've got all the videos up and running for the for the panelists after the break. So thank you all very much. And I'll see everyone back here at 335. Thank you. Thank you. Let's do it. All right, I'll unmute the panelists so that we can do a quick sound check. Good afternoon. Hi, Julie. And David. And Julie, you have a few slides. Is that right? Yes. Yeah, that should be able to make you a co host so that you can share your screen. Yeah. Thank you. And I am new to screen sharing. Okay. There's a green button at the bottom that says share screen. And And then when I want to stop sharing, I just click it again. Yeah, it shows up in a different place, but it'll be a red button that says like stop sharing. And so, Matt, if you want to take down the main green bank screen summit screen and we can start the panel. All right. Welcome back everyone. We're going to start the second panel now. On this one, we have Julie Mcday, who is the managing director of fresh pond capital. We have fortune on Mueller, who is a co founder at revision energy. Tom Merley leads two lights energy advisors and is formerly a board member of the UK green investment bank. Michael Stoddard is the executive director of efficiency main. And Mike Williams is the deputy director of the blue green alliance. And so I'll let you each say a little bit more to introduce yourselves. If you want to go ahead Julie. Hi, I'm Julie McFay. I am a co founder and managing director of fresh fund capital. And we are a division with Reinders McFay capital management, which is a registered investment advisor committed to socially responsible investing. I think about socially responsible investing, incorporating our values into our investment selection process, engaging and shareholders and making direct investments in our community. We manage around $2.4 billion. And we founded fresh fund capital just over 10 years ago with a commitment to justice, economic environmental, racial and social justice. We work with individuals and families, managing their assets and resources, looking to align with their values. My personal background, I graduated from Bowdoin College in 97. As a transplant from Kansas City, I became a community organizer for the Sierra Club. I ran the canvas out of the Portland main office. And for the last 20 years have been working in finance and think of myself as a community organizer in money and the justice movement. Awesome. It's great to have you joining us today. Fortunately, go ahead. Sure. Thanks, David. Thanks for having me. Thanks for putting this together. It's been great so far. I'm looking forward to hearing what everybody has to say. My name is Fortuna Mueller. I'm co-founder president of Revision Energy. Revision Energy is a main based but regional clean energy company. We've been founded in the mid coast of Maine in 2003, and we now have offices in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. When I say we're a clean energy or an energy transition company. While most people know us as a solar company, solar is a big chunk of what we do, but it's not all that we do. We do design, develop, build, service, solar projects of all sizes from residential up to, you know, larger commercial DG projects and community scale projects. But we also do a variety of other project types, clean energy project types for residential and commercial customers ranging from air source heat pumps, heat pump water heaters, energy storage, electric vehicle charging. So sort of all the pieces that we need to put together to electrify our economy and to transition to a clean energy economy. And so Revision brings those different pieces together. And finance is always a part of every one of those conversations since I said to talk about it here today. Great. Thank you. Tom, do you want to introduce yourself? Sure. And thank you for having me, Doug. It's a really, David, it's a real pleasure to be here and to join this group. My name is Tom Merley, and I started my renewable energy investment career 30 years ago up here in Maine in the biomass sector, working on plants and Livermore Falls, Chester and Holton. That led me to a career that took me to Europe for 20 years where I lived in London where I built one of the largest private equity teams renewable energy investment. It was over a billion dollars for projects, wind, solar, hydro, biomass around Europe. That led me to being put on the board of the UK Green Investment Bank. In fact, I helped conceive the bank as one of the task forces that were working on it, joined it at its beginning and sat and shared its investment committee for the full seven years before the bank was sold off. In a period of time, the bank invested about 3.6 billion pounds and about 12 billion pounds worth of projects. Today I'm back in Maine and I do work in the energy transition. I sit on the board of Amoresco, which is the New York Stock Exchange Energy Efficiency Fund. I sit on the board of a Middle Eastern solar fund, and I'm also sitting on the board of a battery storage fund in the UK. So I'm seeing all the aspects of energy storage and transformation these days. It's fantastic. Yeah, I didn't even realize all that about you. You have quite the, quite the career. So, Michael Stoddard, do you want to give a bit more of an introduction of yourself. Sure. Thanks. Thanks, David, for inviting me into Steve Klammer for including us. I'm the executive director of the efficiency main trust where I'm coming up. We are coming up next week on our 10th anniversary. So if we don't show up for work, it's probably because we're celebrating rockously in the streets. I grew up in Brunswick and live in Portland and I'm an attorney by training, but don't hold that against me. I have had a really interesting time the last six months being the co-chair of the buildings infrastructure and housing working group in the main climate council process, along with several people who are on this call today, including Anya. And Steve showed up occasionally and I forget who else, but it was, it was a good, it was a really good process and we had a lot of discussions around the need for and opportunities for a lot more energy efficiency and renewable energy distributed energy and other kinds of distributed resources improvements in homes and businesses and municipal municipal buildings and all the tools in the toolbox that could facilitate that and financing is an important one. So, as we'll talk about a bit, we have some experience with that. It's probably a bigger role to be played. Yeah, great. Thank you. And then Mike, Mike Williams, go ahead. Thanks, David. I appreciate it. I really appreciate including me and my organization here today. This is a great effort you're putting forward. So as David mentioned, I'm Mike, the deputy director at the Blue Green Alliance. And for those of you who don't know, we are a national partnership of labor unions and environmental organizations. We have staff across the country, offices in DC, Minneapolis, San Francisco. I am based here, I live just north of Portland, and it had been for a while. So my work is national, although I have done a bit of work with folks here in Maine, both the labor and the environmental movement here. And we put a strong focus into how we solve the climate crisis in a manner in which also helps and tries to root out the economic inequality crisis in America. And, you know, especially noting now also the racial justice crisis in America. It's interesting, we'll get into more of this in a moment. But all of the efforts that we want to take on almost all of them involve efforts that will involve financing and funding and such. And so the discussion around a green bank is a really great one, a potent one and a timely one for Maine here. So just appreciate it and look forward to the questions and discussion. Awesome. Thanks. Yeah, we're glad to have you involved. So going back to Julie. Can you give a bit of a description of impact investing for anyone who's on this who doesn't understand or is not familiar with that term. Sure. We like a definition that actually is really simple, that an impact investment is a direct investment in the community. So I will tease out what it's not as we've seen a big movement and interest in socially responsible investing. More people are co-opting the term impact investment for things that are not that. So for example, secondary market investments investments in stock markets that in stocks that are screened with what are called ESG environmental social governance guidelines, are not in our book the impact investments that they don't qualify. Also, it's not gift capital. So these are not gifts made that these are investments that we expect to recycle back to the investor. And the last piece is that really, there are a couple shared characteristics that are important to know one, the primary one is typically there's a lack of liquidity. And in the community is serving the community and not necessarily available for the investor. But there's also a spectrum of risk, some community investments can be very low risk, and some are higher risk. There also can be a spectrum of returns so it's not that they're all low return. So we see the larger the impact for the community in terms of a positive impact, the lower the return, but not necessarily. Great. Yeah, thank you. And since you've been divested from fossil fuels for a number of years. How do the results compare financially for accounts that have been divested versus those that have fossil fuels in the portfolio. So we have been divested from fossil fuels for a number of years and our portfolios have outperformed our benchmarks. And I can try to screen share our performance over the last 10 years. And the husband who works with us just noted that really the interesting pieces, not how have we done as investors but more how is the S&P 500 done without fossil fuels and noting that when you track S&P 500 without fossil fuels, you see that outperformance just in, and maybe I should have pulled him on, he's our researcher to understand the notes he just passed me that energy, if you, there's a website gofossilfree.org energy is only 3% of the S&P 500. It has been down 15% since 1990 and down. I think that's 25% since 1980. Our real interest and what we think about is important to note is, as long term investors were interested in investing in lasting trends that create a better world. And we really believe that fossil fuels are more of a liability than an asset in a portfolio. We look to avoid liabilities and fossil fuels actually have a number of unusual liabilities when you think about the world that we're moving into, there's a potential for a carbon tax that would only hurt fossil fuels. We also are seeing technology rapidly replace commodities. It doesn't make an attractive industry to invest in. We're seeing the electric car come around. We're seeing alternative energy options. So you're seeing automation and manufacturing. There are a number of just innovations that ultimately are making fossil fuel investing more of dinosaur investing and looking backwards. Absolutely. And then just quickly, are you seeing many other investors shifting their investments from fossil fuels to clean energy? We are. I mean, as a whole, and I don't have statistics here other than I think it's since 2016, almost a trillion dollars has moved into the social responsible investing mutual funds. So that's not even all of the space, but that's one measure. You're seeing the same waking up of time you're seeing of mainstream and humanity. People are now bringing to their investments and saying actually these go hand in hand that values and investing should not be separated. One last point just to on your rights point of how do we address systems that really have furthered inequities. I do think there's a piece of recognizing that stock market investing while many of us cannot divest completely from the stock market. It is a system with inequities built into it. And so as much as we can hold and in our portfolios that doing one thing with our left hand and investing in really the revolution that's going to take root and lead us into the new world we want to live in. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm a big fan of socially responsible investment. I've transitioned all of my retirement funds over into clean funds that don't have fossil fuel investments. And one of them I even divested to invest in solar on my own home to start to see some of the benefit now, as well as well into the future. Thank you very much Julie and with that I'll turn to Fortuna and Fortuna how do you see increased access to capital benefiting revisions customers as well as main solar industry. It's good question David I think we heard. I think previously Abe said, you know the green bank is intended to be additive and has been most successful where it is thought of that way. In the solar space there are portions of the solar space where the, you know, financing options for customers are really robust. And so those include, for example, you know, relatively affluent homeowners with high credit scores. So if you, you know if you own a, you know above average value home and have a good job and a good solid credit score. You know, you can get a loan for a solar project at very competitive prices from a number of places we partner with a local credit union we put partner with a couple of national lenders to provide residential solar financing projects that as you know David that they instantly pay for themselves. In almost every case here in Maine.  There are some really robust third party ownership options, PPAs, and lots of capital lots of providers looking to finance those projects at favorable rates. But there are also really vast parts of the market that are where there are gaps in financing. And like Mike said, revision has a focus on making sure that we not only implement the clean energy transition but that it be a just transition and that it lift up the communities that we live in. And that means it needs to be an inclusive transition as well right until we need financing options that work for everybody. And I think that's where the Green Bank really has can do them can have the biggest impact. In particular, some of the things we've heard about already. You know, low and moderate income homeowners of which there are a lot in Maine who do own their own home but don't necessarily own a home that has a lot of value and may or may not have an excellent credit score for a variety of reasons. You know, as, as Monty said, there are some efficient to main loan options that go down to 580 in credit score, but you only get a couple thousand dollars. I could buy a solar project with a couple thousand dollars. Right. And so extending solar financing, sort of to those parts of the residential market could be a pretty big and attractive option for those customers. Likewise, we heard from Catherine and and others earlier that in the commercial space, you know, either if you are not owner occupied so if your tenant that is separate from the from the landlord. Or if you are just a medium sized business and not particularly a big business that finance it can be challenging for those companies again large businesses large successful businesses who own their own real estate can finance solar because they have tons of access to capital capital right right now in the economy is fairly available and cheap. But it is, it is immediately distributed. So I think that's where the real opportunity is. Yeah, absolutely. And how, how would you envision a green bank or other new financing programs helping with deployment of battery storage electric vehicles and other new technologies that are really just in their infancy at this point. I think it's really useful to think back, you know, in the thing back in the solar market 10 years and think about the scarcity of solar finance options 10 years ago. And, and that is sort of the challenge that energy storage has today, or that to some degree electric vehicle charging infrastructure has today, in that they are not yet as the risks of solar. And the reason solar financing is available to the entities I mentioned before is because the industry, the technology, sort of the revenue models have been substantially de risk for the purpose of the lenders. That's not necessarily true yet for storage, especially commercial storage. So, I think, you know, a bank or a, you know, a lending institution or a finance or a finance vehicle that explicitly has a goal of sort of advancing technology may have more appetite to make investments sort of on the margins on the slightly less mature technology, which is needed to drive that stuff forward. So, you know, once it's perfectly safe and everybody knows it's going to save money and the, and the lenders and the borrowers almost never default. Well then we no longer need a green bank and frankly we don't need efficiency main to loan on those projects either because every bank in the world wants to loan on those. Why don't you go talk to the credit unions who loan on solar and they say, this is an awesome product for us we have zero defaults with, you know, millions and million dollars of loans out and we have zero delinquencies and defaults. So, what we need, I think, in the public policy space is to lend sort of in an additive way to bring financing to those markets, again, and those technologies that are not yet mature. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Julie, I saw your hand did you want to add something. I'm trying to give you a better statistic for actually how much money has committed to divest from fossil fuels. So I do have that here 14 trillion and assets have committed to divest from fossil fuels of the 1237 institutions. 13% of those are pension funds. So as 32% are faith based 15% philanthropic so a number to keep in mind. Yeah, wow. Lots of lots of money out there, moving into better things. So, Tom. Can you describe some of the projects that the UK green investment bank helped to fund. And you're muted so unmute yourself. There we go. Certainly. One thing I just wanted to address before that though is was fortunate comment on storage and being with one of the first storage investment funds. The, the issue is not really some of the technology unfamiliarity. It's the uncertainty about the long term revenue stream. So the storage projects don't benefit from a, you know, a 15 or 20 year financing through a net reading program or a feed in terror for something. So you're looking at large capital investments with an uncertain revenue stream and that's what's holding a lot of people up, and that's what's held up the banks which is why it's being funded in Europe almost entirely by equity capitalization. It, it's less of a problem. It's a problem with a revenue model that is attached to storage these days at a grid scale. There's an interesting company in California that is putting them in municipal buildings and doing time of day arbitrage on electricity and the buildings can save 5070 maybe 100,000 in there by using this, you know, they decide in a half hour increment, do I charge the battery do I discharge the battery do I buy from the grid through the control systems more of a software but coming back to the UK, I think it's important to note that the UK the world's first green investment bank was also born out of a financial crisis. And after 2008, there was a lack of investment for UK and its green ambitions. And so that came to fruition in 2010 and the bank was formed in 2011. And what was important to say was what were the options then solar was still very expensive and ribs off top solar, didn't have penetration and didn't make a lot of economic sense. Not just in England because it wasn't sunny but because just where the costs were in the sector at that time, and the UK's push was primarily on larger infrastructure, but also was a energy savings the average home in the UK. You think the main homes are poorly insulated. It's 10 times worse in the UK, believe it or not. So there's a focus on that so the green bank was set up to do for specific things out of a wide range of things that were considered yeah with some people said we should do venture capital, some grants away, but it was decided to be set up to invest for return the ability to recycle that capital, focusing on offshore wind, where the UK was probably the most successful it became the largest investor in offshore wind and really proved to the private sector that offshore wind was available for financial institutions, and that resulted not only in us investing in it but then creating a billion pound fund with other capital to invest alongside of us. So that was a real success story. The second thing we invested in was community scale renewables. We saw a niche in the market where you know a mega mega watt solar farm or wind farm necessary on a community scale wasn't getting financing into that area and had success. We did led street lighting conversions, mostly with larger scale municipalities at a point when that was pretty new.  And in all of these things we had the ability to invest in either debt or an equity or an accommodation of the two. Other things we did again our biggest successes were probably an offshore wind, and in the biomass and the waste energy sector, although the led street lighting I think we did pioneer the way and we're seeing a lot more of that move forward these days. Yeah, fantastic. Now those are led street lights. I have some experience with those and something that initially they weren't as robust as needed, particularly in Southern Nevada and the desert. They didn't hold up, but the newer technologies have really come a long way and there's just tremendous energy savings available. And so I think it's safe to say Tom that you have the most experience of anyone in Maine when it comes to leading a green bank. What advice would you have for Maine as things get started here. I think I think the most important thing is, there are a couple things I think one is focus. I said when the, when the UK was in Syria Green Bank there are a lot of people coming in saying, do all of this. And what happened through the government processes setting up it wasn't left to the Green Bank to decide where the need was. The government and the industry sector and the finance work together and say where are the needs and we came up with those four areas offshore wind street lighting. We did come up with something to deal with the home insulation problem in the UK. And that's the one place where we did not succeed. It was attempt to create a finance vehicle for people retrofitting homes. And that just proved to be too hard and we ended up being unable to really back that program for a variety of reasons some of it were credit oriented some of it were cost of capital oriented problems. But we had a very clear focus as to what we could do. And the clear objective was to to invest in that largely infrastructure to do that, making sure we brought along private sector capital niche investment which we did. And it was all designed to lower carbon emissions and it can become very attractive with the Green Bank to hang a lot of other ornaments on the tree. And, you know, I agree with creating more jobs in Maine but the Green Bank we didn't have a job creation mandate. You know, we were doing offshore wind the equipment comes from Germany, let's be honest, or from a lot of the stuff comes from Norway. So, we didn't have that we were focused on greening the economy greening the energy sector without trying to hang a lot of other ornaments on it. And I think a lot of organizations that I've seen the try and hang a lot of those other ornaments can often get lost and but be unable to deliver on any of their objectives. So that focus is important. The second thing was independence, the government having set it up and owning 100% of the bank set it up with an independent board of directors. It was chaired by one of the greatest business men I've ever come to know Lord Smith of Calvin. We had on the board they had of one of the largest insurance companies. We had a retired partner from one of the big three accounting firms. It was leading my energy investment fund. We had on it one of the first woman who's one of the creators of the first green funds for Jupiter asset management. And in some ways the godmother of green investing a woman named Tessa tenant. So as a group is independent we had one government representative on the board that represented the shareholder executive, but the government didn't interfere in investment so we didn't have a political board, which meant we just made the investment decisions without someone saying I got this pet project in my constituency or you know my hometown. I want you to do something. And that led us to be the largest investor in the UK green space inside of 18 months of formation largely because that independence. The other thing was focusing on, you know, it's on capital. It's, you know, capital enough capital that makes a difference, and then focus on an area where the problem is actually fixable. I think in time the green banks can move on to maybe doing some harder things, but it was important in the UK that we got some early wins and shown that we were making a difference, not that we were writing off capital because that allowed us to get more money from the banks. So, you want to use sectors that you can fix the problems where it's truly finance but we decided definitely not to be a technology investor, because we didn't know if we could fix that problem and the worst thing that could happen for the bank would have been to have right off in a risky area, which would have cut off more funds from the government. And in the end of the day that's worked so for me it's, it's focused with clear objectives, it's a level of independence, a good amount of capital and focusing that capital will work and make a difference. Awesome. Yeah, no, that's, that's certainly great advice. Thank you. So, Michael, there was a bill this year for commercial property assessed clean energy. Could you describe what that is and give a little bit of an overview of how commercial pace would benefit main. David. So the pace concept, the pace is an acronym for property assessed clean energy PACE and the idea is that it's differentiated from other types of loans, because the loan is secured against the property and it, the, and it's part of the tax assessment. So that, among other things, gives it priority status as a lean first priority status. And that has been a source of fair amount of controversy over the last decade when it was first introduced in Maine and other states 10 years the mortgage industry said that that was a non starter. They were in crisis at that time and it wasn't not going to work for them to have new loans parachuting into first position in front of them. Rob Wood, who I believe is on this call worked tirelessly over the last couple of years with a lot of stakeholders including bank industry, the unions, realtors and others to figure out ways to tweak the language of the legislation so that there would be sort of a sign off process where the, the mortgage holders would have to consent to letting these other loans go in first position. So the idea with these is that they would be limited to non residential so this would be a compliment to the kinds of loan products that were talked about in the first session focusing on residential, most of them were focusing on residential. This would focus on commercial other non residential municipal. And there would be, I think it's envisioned that the capital would come from the private sector from banks that were interested in loaning to these products but the trick is that you'd have efficiency remain presumably playing a facilitator role to do some vetting of the proposed projects to confirm that they have a savings to investment ratio that's positive. In other words that they're going to save more money than they than they cost in monthly payments. And if that standard could be met, then the idea is that it would kind of get the stamp of approval the efficiency main and then would be put out to the marketplace where private investors could choose if they wanted to finance the loan. So, I think that's the basic model and I would be at risk of guessing and making stuff up if I were to get any more detail than that so I will resist that temptation. It got very far through the legislature last spring this spring but obviously things changed when coronavirus came along and so did not ultimately get enacted. And we'll see where that goes. Rob may be able to speak to that better than I, but it would be a nice compliment to have in Maine I think for all the reasons that other panelists have said. Particularly, I think an obvious candidate that's struggling to finance things would be the municipalities. I also want to comment though that I think we should go into this with our eyes open. This is going to be a really unusual time economically. We went through something like this 10 years ago. And I can tell you from firsthand experience we couldn't get people to take loans. They did not want to have any debt at all. It didn't matter to them that they were going to get to pay it back over time. So, especially with for profit entities, they're really skittish usually in these kinds of economic situations. And so I don't, I don't know what we're going to find when we get out there. On the other hand, whether it's with this product or any of the usual financial incentives that we offer. We, there are going to be some businesses and some municipalities that have to make investments. There's going to be equipment they have that burns out and needs to be replaced. There will be some new construction projects and renovation projects and when they have those opportunities to decide what it is they want to heat and ventilate their, their buildings with and how they want to design and insulate the building shells and to put PV on the roof, etc. They're going to have some choices to make and we want to be there to help them make the best long term decisions they can. So whether it's just with the financial incentives we do have funding for or whether there's some additional kind of financing tool at our disposal. We're going to want to, we're going to want to help them at that moment. So that's sort of at a high level. I also want to mention that this maybe is getting closer to where Tom was coming from and what he experienced in Europe, but, you know, anyone who participated in the recent rounds of discussions in the working groups of the climate council, I don't think they could have failed to be impressed by the magnitude of investment that was being discussed from in the energy working group and in the buildings working group. We're talking about massive transformation of most everything on the customer side of the meter, most everything that is in homes and businesses that we use for heating and cooling our buildings. The majority of which is now coming from heating oil and in the future is going to have to come from something that is practically zero carbon, and that's likely to include a lot of heat pump technology for water heating and space heating. The good news is we know that that technology exists, but that's a massive investment to convert all that equipment over the next 30 years. But similarly, the grid that we have that is going to supply those those end uses as an electric vehicles as well is not sized to do that job today. So the grid will need to be invested in and then also the generation to feed the grid to feed the heat pumps and the heat pump water heaters and the electric vehicles. So all of that is going to need a major amount of investment and I think you know your part here of a really interesting conversation that we're going to have to keep having about how we finance all this affordably and wisely. And but also in a timely fashion, we can't wait around we got to really accelerate the rate of investment. Yeah, well I'm going to pause you there and turn to Mike Williams. We have a few minutes left in the panel so we probably aren't going to have time for any questions from the audience today on this panel. But Mike, with the creation of a green bank or other public financing programs. What would you like to see happen to make sure that the public interest is kept at the forefront. I appreciate that question, David. And I think so it's one thing I wanted to know it's a Tom had mentioned, we're worrying about ornaments, quote unquote, being put on it. I respectfully yet strongly disagree with that point. The public we're spending public dollars here, especially for thinking about public financing, you know, bonding or however we're going to capitalize this effort. The dollar should be made in the public interest and what that means is that we should be considering things like how is this going to affect working manors, working people across Maine people from disadvantaged communities. How are we lifting them up while we're also supporting the build out of renewable energy and energy efficiency projects. So carbon emissions reductions absolutely critical and that should be a core fundamental element of it but there are so many other parts to this that as we spend money. We should be doing it in the right way and what that means is effectively there's, you know, either strings attached of some kind, whether there's mandates, prioritization of the funding or financing, or at the very least basic guidelines and recommendations and how the financing or the funding would come out of this. And there's, there's a list of ways this could happen. You know there's really interesting complex procurement methods that have been done. In California or with the Chicago Metro. They're buying metro cars effectively and so they put forward an effort called an employment plan. And so you had to fill out a scorecard and what led to that was and yes their strings attached but they got the job done. They delivered the rail cars and it helped bring rail car manufacturing back to the US that hired people from disadvantaged communities. This is what we should be doing with public dollars. We should be lifting up communities lifting up working people while we're solving climate change. You know there's there's a litany of other pieces that that should just be no brainers prevailing wages. We should never be giving public dollars if we're not at least preparing paying the prevailing wage. We should consider things like local hire targeted hire where it makes sense I understand you know with labor markets and employment markets we have to have flexibility but we should be striving to be hiring local mayors and be and making sure that when we're investing these funds they go to, you know, good business owners like Fortune I and not just Wall Street financiers. This should be kept in Maine, this should be supported supporting main workers that that's that's the go should be the goal of this so. Again, this is not just an important aside tangential thing. This is core to what we should be thinking about when we're doing something like this because it's going to cost us a lot of money, a lot of taxpayer dollars to do this, if we want to do it right. And we should do it right completely consider the equity elements consider the economic justice elements in all of this. Absolutely. And thank you and sorry that we don't have time for additional questions from the from the audience. But I do want to keep to the schedule here. And clearly there's a lot of different considerations and further discussions are absolutely needed to, you know, make sure that we're doing things in the right way and and getting to the right solutions. And if all of you. Thank you all very much for participating today. And we'll turn to Hannah Pingree, who is the director of the governor's office, governor's office of policy innovation and the future. And thank you Hannah for joining us today. And it looks like the other panelists are turning off their video so you'll be the future speaker. Great. All right. Just going to click here. Can you see my slides. Yes. All right, well, I'm going to be very quick because I know that the main event is really to hear from Brian and Bert, who are zooming in from Connecticut. And I think all of us are especially interested in the Connecticut example which has been the pioneering and most successful green bank in the country. But David asked me to sort of briefly ground what we're talking about here today in the main climate council, which is has been mentioned several times since I joined the call and I know is really the place where we're talking about a lot of the required adaptation and clean energy investments that are needed to meet the state's climate goals. So I'm not going to share a whole long presentation but just a couple quick slides on the status of where we are because we are, we do have green bank discussions on our plate and how we fund all of the work required for climate transition is probably the most important question and becomes even more important in a time of economic uncertainty. So I'm just going to quickly run through that. And for most people know I looked quickly through this call and I actually see a number of our co chairs our staff, state representative senators. So thank you all for joining and I know most of you are quite familiar with what the main climate council is doing. So we have a challenge of helping prepare main to be more resilient to the impacts of climate change, and to also achieve the following goals. The main goal is to achieve net neutrality by executive order. And then the two legal goals, which are paramount to all of our work, which is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2030 and 80% at least 80% by 2050. So just a quick where we are. We are currently as of the last DEP report. Two years ago and another reports coming out this next year. We are 17 and a half percent below 1990 level so we have work to do before 2030 and obviously significant work to do before 2050. Many of you have understand clearly the state's emissions challenge. We are probably somewhat unique in our significant amount of our greenhouse gas emissions that come from transportation, but residential and commercial buildings as well as industrial are the really remaining part of the mix and then the electricity sector. So where we are the main climate council kicked off this past September and we worked through the winter and spring turning to virtual work to come up with recommendations on how we achieve the state's ambitious goals. We just wrapped up a two day meeting last week, where all of the working groups laid out their strategies for how we meet the state schools. We're meeting, spending the summer doing a little bit of work that I'm going to talk about quickly, and we have our report due by December 1. So the work was done. Our kind of leading group is the science and technical subcommittee under the climate council. I know Ivan Fernandez, one of the co-chairs is buried somewhere here on this call. Science is paramount. And then we have these six groups, each of which were required to make recommendations on how to tackle both the adaptation and the mitigation challenges of climate for Maine. So I'm not going to read through all of the recommendations, but the groups did incredible work with a ton of stakeholders, a ton of good thinking on how we transform the three major sectors that produce emissions, as well as how we help prepare our communities to be more resilient. These are the three sort of buckets of recommendations in the mitigation sectors. Really good work and these kind of quick bullet points don't begin to sort of tell the whole story. You can find it all. I'll show you our website. You can find their full reports, which I know Michael Starr wants you to read later tonight, but they are on our website. But every single, the vast majority strategies require funding mechanisms. The Green Bank came up as one of the concepts as a funding mechanism in at least two, if not three of our working groups. Here are the three working groups who did both resilience and adaptation as well as some mitigation work. Again, Michael talked about the significant cost challenge for transforming the electricity sector for making our homes and our buildings more efficient, our transportation infrastructure. But the challenges of preparing, for example, our coast or our floodplain areas for some of the kinds of effects they'll see from sea level rise or weather events, actually makes those costs even look small. So huge amount of infrastructure needs for a state like Maine. So I would just say that we are really deep into this work over the summer. We are undertaking a significant public engagement process that's going to kick off the second week of July. We are doing more thorough modeling and cost benefit analysis, and then really again core to the discussion this afternoon of funding analysis of how what are the mechanisms to pay for the kinds of solutions that have been laid out. We're also working on an equity assessment with the Mitchell Center, really making sure that equity is at the heart of our work. So just if you want to learn more on climatecouncil.main.gov is our new website. It's being updated with the information from last week as we speak. And again, in a couple of weeks, we'll have a more robust mechanism for folks to really weigh in, tell us what we're missing, help prioritize what's most important to them and their community, and also find ways to engage their families, their friends and those people who don't agree with us who we still want to make sure we're having a conversation with. So I would say the climate council's work is really, I know everybody on this call sort of understands the challenge of climate for our world, our state and our country. I think Maine has really taken a pioneering look and with our aggressive goals with our sort of one of our leading, one of the countries leading renewable portfolio standards, the heat pump program which I think Michael briefly mentioned leading the country on heat pump installations. So there's a lot of exciting work happening in Maine, but a lot to do and a lot to do to meet the kinds of goals that we need to meet with a with a plan by the end of the year. So I would say with that it's kind of a perfect segue to the two speakers who are coming up. We have Brian Garcia, who is the president and CEO of the Maine Green Bank. I'm sorry the Connecticut Green Bank, and Bird Hunter, who is the executive vice president and the chief investment officer of the Connecticut Green Bank. So I have had the pleasure of hearing at least Brian on a couple of US Climate Alliance calls. The Maine joined the US Climate Alliance, a group of 25 states who are still working to meet the Paris Climate Accords, despite our federal governments in action. So we have really followed what Connecticut has done. The Green Bank is the first and oldest Green Bank in the country. They've done some incredible work. They won the 2017 Harvard Kennedy School Governments and Innovation Award. So it's really exciting to have them here this afternoon and I will pass it off to them. Great. Thank you. That was great. And as I was hearing you talk about the process that Maine is undertaking to get its arms around addressing climate change from a mitigation and adaptation perspective. It was great to see that. I was immediately thinking about our climate finance working group underneath the USCA and how we are really, there's really a need to continue to learn together, specifically around how we finance adaptation. So I'm excited to be working with you and others. I know we're going to start to bring more content to the group on that. So good afternoon everyone. I'm Brian Garcia, President and CEO of the Connecticut Green Bank. I wanted to thank David Gibson for the invitation for Bert and I to be with you here this afternoon. It's an honor to be with you, Mainers. For over a decade, my husband and I had a home on Moose Head Lake in Greenville, Maine. So a big shout out to Camp Camp, Flatlanders, Northwoods Outfitters. You know, Maine holds a special place in our heart. And I'd also like to acknowledge Michael Stoddard from Efficiency, Maine. You may not know it, but it was Michael and his colleague, Dan Soslin, who through Environment Northeast, now the Acadia Center, led the charge to create the system benefit fund that the Connecticut Green Bank now administers today, the Clean Energy Fund. So Michael, it's great to see you again. We need to catch up. So it's great to be with all of you. I'm joined by Bert Hunter, our Executive Vice President and Chief Investment Officer of the Connecticut Green Bank. He's going to walk us through a few Green Bank transactions, including sea pace, solar and energy efficiency for low income households. So we are going to address the issue of vulnerable communities and how clean energy can make America better. And we're going to talk a bit about a food waste to energy and aerobic digester project as well, just to give you a sense for how the Green Bank model can apply to different areas of our green economy. So we're going to tag team on this presentation. So just quickly in terms of who the Connecticut Green Bank is so our mission and this has evolved over time. Our mission is to confront climate change.  So we need to mobilize massive amounts of investment to address the climate problem. We also want to ensure that while we're doing that we are providing all of society, a healthier and more prosperous future in all. I would emphasize it more. I would, you know, I should color it differently. I should make it bigger. But this is really about lifting everybody up. This is an equity issue. I'll talk a little bit about that. We focus on increasing and accelerating the flow of private capital. So how can we take the limited amount of rate payer and public dollars that we have to scale up and increase the level of investment from private sources. We want to solve our climate problem on the backs of government. We need to mobilize massive amounts of investment and ultimately to energize the green economy. So this is about growth and working towards a new vision for an economy that we all can embrace. We do that through three goals. When people think about green banks, they generally think about how we mobilize private investment in economies. But we're also here to strengthen our communities and make sure that the benefits of the green economy are inclusive and accessible to all individuals, families and businesses. I'll talk about some of those social and environmental benefits in a second. And then lastly is to pursue investment strategies that advance market transformation and green investing. I'm going to talk about Green Bank 2.0 and something that we're about to issue next week. So you're kind of getting the first message on this while also supporting the organization's pursuit of financial sustainability. So that is really important in the context of a quasi public organization that is supported by rate payer funds, public funds, especially in the context of a budget environment where our states have been really hammered by COVID-19. So we're in a really sensitive spot in terms of how our legislative leaders are looking at budgets and filling budget gaps. So let me start off just quickly in terms of what we're trying to do for end-use customers. And this may differ. You know, your value proposition in Maine may be different from what it is in Connecticut. But our whole goal is to reduce energy burden, which is to reduce the amount households are paying, businesses are paying for energy by putting, by providing them capital, finance, clean energy improvements so that they have cash in their pockets immediately. So if you take a bill before clean energy, our goal is to finance as many clean energy improvements as we can through various programs. We'll talk about that to ultimately lower what they are spending to the utility or on energy as well as debt service so that at the end of the day there's cash going back into their pockets. We want to make this an economic proposition to our end-use customers. So when we know as we deliver more clean energy deployment, we get the cleaner, reliable, healthier benefits that we want to see from these technologies. And at the end of the day, we want to make it more economical to those end-use consumers so that they demand more of it. We accelerate growth and uptake of these technologies. In terms of, you probably got a little bit of this from Abe earlier in terms of what green banks try to do. So this is a diagram that tries to show how we take public or rate payer funds and have conversations with private investors about how we can get their capital invested in this clean energy economy of our state in Connecticut in this context. So we're doing what we can to mitigate risk. We want to put money into projects. We want to see multiples of their money coming into these projects. It may be that the green bank is subordinated in these transactions, meaning we take the first losses. That usually is what the private investors want. They want this mitigation. We're willing to do that. Now, we see great performance. Happy to talk about that. People pay for their financing loans and leases when it deals with energy. They just pay for it. So we know over time, as people pay those loans and leases back to private investors in the green bank, that what we get from it is more social and environmental return. So we are all about societal profit maximization. To give you a sense of some of the things we target, number one is it's driven by investment. So the more capital we have coming into Connecticut's green economy, the better. And we're going to try to stimulate and catalyze as much of that capital as we can. So these are some new numbers. We're about to close our fiscal year. But we're in our, we were started up in July of 2011. So we're at our ninth year as an organization. We've mobilized nearly $2.2 billion of investment in Connecticut's green economy by investing $280 million of public and rate of air resources. And what I can tell you is that the public resources that we have have been loaned out. So we're getting the principal interest back from that payment over time, which is great, but it also makes a target for legislative leaders who now need to plug budget gaps. So managing your capital and building a strong financial foundation is important, especially when you need to partner with private investors to mobilize investment. More investment creates tax revenues. We know individuals, corporations, sales tax, that's kind of the foundation to our governments and central services. So more clean energy that's deployed, the more investment that comes in, the more tax revenues that come back to the state. We know jobs are created from that. The jobs that are created that deploy clean energy are reducing burden of energy costs in our families and businesses, especially our most vulnerable. We want to see the affordability gap for energy be closed. So that they can spend more of their household income on the things that are important to them. It's not energy. Things that are important to them are healthcare, education, you know, those sorts of things. So the more money we can put back in their pockets through clean energy, the better. And then of course we get all the things that we're all after as environmentalists, conservationists. We reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We reduce local air pollution. We actually can model what the associated public health benefits are from local reduction or avoidance of particulate matter, socks, knocks, and all that results in improved public health. So these are just a snapshot of some of the metrics. We are working on some equity metrics now, specifically around income and race. So stay tuned in the coming year. We'll start to roll out some of those metrics. But as Hannah noted, as a result of helping to be a catalyst for the Green Bank movement in the U.S. in 2017, we were awarded the Innovation in American Government Awards by the Kennedy School. So with that, I thought we would talk a little bit now about the what we do and how we do it. So I'm going to turn this over to Bert, and he's going to walk through a couple of transactions, just to give you a sense for how the Green Bank model gets applied within the green industry. All right, Bert, I'm going to turn it to you. Thank you, Brian. Can you hear me? Yeah, you're perfect, Bert. Oh, okay. You were coming through a little bit scratchy there. So let's hope the audio keeps up. So, well, good afternoon, everyone, Bert Hunter, investment officer for the Connecticut Green Bank and yes, it's been quite interesting. I am not going to start my video and the reason is because I am actually tethered to my cell phone. I lost the Wi-Fi, so I'm sorry I won't be able to do that, but I did get your request to start video, so I won't be doing that. So commercial PACE was one of the first programs that the Green Bank embarked upon when we started back in 2011 and actually the legislation for commercial PACE came into being in 2012. We were not the first commercial PACE program in the country, in fact, I think we were approximately number 27 or 28 in the country, but we got out of the blocks very quickly because of a philosophy that we adopted pretty early on, which was to take the long view of these programs and to try to build the program from a perspective of having private capital be really the prime mover in the overall program. When commercial PACE was established in Connecticut, we were designated as the statewide administrator, which made sense because Connecticut is not a very large state, 3.5 million people, you can pretty much drive across the state in three hours from corner to corner. So it made sense to have a statewide administrator and that gave us the ability to not only set up the program, but when it came to trying to invite private capital into the program, we could set standards that would resonate with the private capital market and get money into our market for clean energy and energy efficiency. We did step into providing capital ourselves and the reason for that was because we thought we were going to build a field of dreams, you know, build it and they will come. Well, we set everything up and it was crickets. No one in the marketplace was willing to take the first step in doing the first PACE projects because our structure was untested. So we decided to use cash from our balance sheet to invest in the commercial PACE program. We did that, though, after working with the private sector in developing financing agreements that met their requirements. So after a number of months of back and forth with capital providers and their legal counsel, we came up with a standard financing agreement, which has been modified slightly over time, improved catching little imperfections that we discovered over time. But we started to provide financing into the marketplace and at the same time, we discovered since we were putting together our solar fund, not only for residential properties, but we put that solar fund together to be able to underwrite and invest in commercial properties, commercial scale transactions, everything from schools, municipal buildings. And but we also wanted to get into open the market for regular small and medium businesses to be able to have the benefits of solar PV, you know, the lower cost of energy that that would produce as well as obviously the clean energy benefits that it would produce. The problem being with using a solar lease or a solar power purchase agreement, which we have today is that it's very hard to take a 20 year view on the sustainability of a business of a small medium business. What commercial pace allowed us to do was to secure that power purchase agreement through the commercial paste system so that you really could just take a long view on the sustainability of the property being the value of the property itself, which is how CPS works. And no matter whether that business would be there for five years or 20 years or 30 years, it didn't matter because you're underwriting to a combination of the present occupant of the property as well as to the real estate. So that was a magic moment for the program where we now were armed with both a financing agreement to do pure energy efficiency as well as a power purchase agreement that we could secure through our commercial pace program, which literally blew the doors off of the entire program and capital started to really go into many projects faster than any other program in the country in commercial pace. And for quite some time we were the largest market for commercial pace and to this day we're certainly one of the top five. But California has overtaken us in a couple of markets have as well with with larger projects that they're financing. But we were able not only to reach small and medium businesses but we were able to reach nonprofits nonp