I'm a senior principal here at Rocky Mountain Institute and excited to join and have a chance to talk to you all a little bit more about equity and climate policy with a focus on the shift that we've seen with the Inflation Reduction Act. And I'm gonna, I know that a lot of our interests collectively and of the folks that are joining is really around the role that finance can play. And it's really this intersection between finance and equity issues and the role that public finance and private finance can play to enable an equitable transition that is the focus of my interest. And it's what I'm gonna be talking about when it comes to what Ira has done. And I was gonna say, I had a chance to kind of be part of the series maybe two years ago. And I spoke a lot about some of these equity issues and I'm gonna start with a familiar place in kind of bringing up and talking a little bit more about why some of these issues are as central. And the exciting thing, I think especially about the Inflation Reduction Act is I'm gonna talk about first introduce a whole lot of problems that I see when it comes to equity and climate change and ones that we've seen for a long time. And I'm hoping to talk to you a little bit more about how Ira can be a blueprint to address those issues in a materially meaningful way. So let's start with the basics that everyone knows but I'm gonna kind of focus on the US context which is it is addressing climate fundamentally requires very rapid economy wide transformation. And it's particularly transition of fossil assets and infrastructure that is very stark. And this is just a scenario kind of a very rough scenario for what needs to happen, but it's representative. And what you see is that the emissions reductions that are needed between now and 2030 to be climate aligned, Paris aligned are extraordinarily significant with some of the biggest changes required in the electricity sector. The type of capital deployment that's needed particularly by 2035 represents a wholesale transition transformation of our electricity sector. This all you all know perfectly well. The difficulty in the problem from an equity perspective is that this rapid transition is being done in the context of a set of sectors, the energy intensive sectors that are extraordinarily capital intensive. Most of that capital was deployed by investors who weren't idiots. They protected themselves against some of the changes that might be coming. They designed financial structures that kept them in reasonably protected with usually some kind of long-term off-take agreement, some kind of regulatory protection or other structure that protected them against truly any kind of rapid transitions. So if we're gonna make this move rapidly, then the question of who bears the transition risk is largely to a good degree, not the right question to be asking because it isn't relevant for the investors in these projects, not that it's not totally relevant. It isn't all that terribly relevant because most of them have built these projects with contractual regulatory structures that pass that risk on to energy consumers and effectively communities. The vast majority of folks who would effectively bear the risk of rapid transition are not investors in these assets that are about to be transitioned off. There are consumers, there are individuals, there are communities, there are workers, these are the folks who bear that risk, they're unprotected. And let me give you an example, one of the clearest examples in the regulatory sector, US regulated utility sector. The US regulated utility sector has, is, or vertically integrated utilities writ large across the country are the ones that own the majority of the remaining coal plants in the country, 80% of the coal.  They are regulated, they pass their costs through to customers. If you were to transition these assets, the $25 billion in a year that customers of regulated utilities alone pay for those fossil assets in capital costs would not go away. They don't get those assets would not be stranded. They were built with regulatory approval and these utilities can recover those costs and rates in the future. So effectively what happens is if this transition happens those utilities will get their money back and customers will pay that and money on top of it for any clean energy at the end of the day. And abatement of emissions therefore without some kind of policy intervention would add to that cost and hurt customers who have energy and those communities who again are unprotected. The labor does not have long-term contracts. Some of them are unionized, which is great. The utilities are frequently unionized and some of those workers are therefore protected by their unions. But most of the individuals and entities for instance, certainly in the fossil fuel side are not protected in that way. So a lot of the communities and certainly forgetting about the individual workers there but the communities that actually are often have grown up around these facilities fossil fuel facilities for decades. The services provided by those communities often dependent on tax revenues. There is no long-term commitment associated with those tax revenues, those just go away and many of those communities become unviable. So we have a situation where as a result of this kind of imperfect competition throughout the economy and especially in the energy space and especially in climate across the United States while we imagine that there's free market and that something like a price on carbon could transition our economy efficiently the reality is far different. In the real world, these rapid transition would cause and lead to significant additional costs for a significant period of time if we didn't do something about it from a policy perspective. Now, and this is fundamentally why if you really do want to do rapid policy on climate action, you actually have to think about this and you have to deal with this real economy and this political economy problem. As I mentioned, in the absence of intervention I mentioned that the burden of the costs associated with transition would indeed fall on customers and communities. What's even worse is that many, a good chunk of the remaining coal of the assets or the communities that actually have not yet transitioned are in lower income states and a bulk of that burden because of the way in which rates of basically energy costs are extraordinarily regressive. The bulk of that burden also falls specifically and more on lower income communities. And so this is a kind of a graph that's kind of helpful to keep in mind. When you look at energy burden which is a percentage of your income that's spent on energy and you look at that across income percentile there's kind of an obvious relationship. The energy burden is by far the highest not surprisingly among those who have the lowest income because very frequently the energy consumption doesn't scale linearly with income in any meaningful way. It really plateaus. On the other hand, federal tax burden looks very different. And so this if we, and this does exclude payroll taxes it doesn't look quite as stark when we include payroll taxes but it's still a very similar situation where effectively relative to tax burden energy burden is far more regressive than tax burden would be. And when, just as we think about the sort of situation with sort of the communities that had been the particularly steam plant and mine communities that have been really for when it comes to coal have been at the ones who have been for decades, generations often the ones who've really allowed us to have access to very cheap energy. If you look at recent history what's really been happening is kind of a worst of both worlds which is that actually employment in mines and coal plants had been declining secularly for quite some time for at least a decade or more. And the reason for that is a lot of automation and the far fewer plants larger plants that use that are more efficient that survive most of the older smaller plants went away that had a lot of the employment mines became much more efficient they are using fewer people much more automation. And at the same time, if you look however at the net book value of the capital assets that have been deployed in the coal sector that those have been increasing. So you have a situation where fossil profits that go to investors have been significantly increasing in coal communities while employment and revenues have been significantly decreasing or narrowing. So this has kind of been a lose lose for a lot of coal communities that's about to get much, much worse on a forward looking basis. And just as with energy burden if you move rapidly on climate you're gonna you're ending up putting extra burden on precisely those who are least able to bear it if you don't do something different. And let me talk about one last issue which is the ongoing health burden of fossil plant emissions. These again and there've been some really good studies I've got a picture here from a study from 2019 that kind of compares where what the PM 2.5 mortality risks are by by race and income. And it's again, very stark and disproportionate which is that effectively household income groups that are particularly African-American groups but a number of other groups are facing significant burdens continues to be a very significant issue and there is a racial component that's material and meaningful to all of this as well as a low income as a challenge associated with the fact that essentially the majority of the burden is again concentrated in lower income households relative to higher income households. So the health burden is also being borne disproportionately by low income communities. Now, on top of all of that, let's ask ourselves how we found ourselves in the situation where 80% of the coal is owned by these vertically integrated utilities because we're supposed to have energy markets in this country, we have RTOs, we have regions where you're supposed to be able to anybody supposed to be able to build energy that's supposed to serve a reasonable chunk of the United States. Well, obviously competition helped but that wasn't the only part of the story here. It turns out that the way that we had structured clean incentives prior to IRA prior to about a year ago just flat out did not work. We're not structured to be useful or usable really by fossil heavy utilities or their customers and really weren't intended to help their communities. Essentially when we built clean energy in much of this country, what happened is you have a developer, developer comes in is able to either buy some land or get someone to lease land to them and give them royalties. The developer builds a lot of clean energy most of that capital investment and most of those jobs go come really aren't in those communities. There are those jobs and much of the investment is ultimately investment benefit is going outside of those communities and most of that power then is also being shipped to the coast. All of the tax incentives that come in also flow out to reduce the costs of basically people away from those communities getting a benefit from the clean energy. So in a situation where largely in most of the country clean energy meant somebody coming in shutting down a plant, destroying a community building a lot of clean energy and sending all the tax benefits off to people in California who wanted clean energy. This was not, this happens over and over again across the country. You might understand why this wasn't viewed particularly enthusiastically as an opportunity. It wasn't, and in fact, the problem was even worse than that not only was this the way it was happening the option for those communities to actually get to own or the utilities in those communities to own the clean energy was not particularly was actually quite economically disadvantaged and the reasons are a little bit complicated. But number one, the way that we incentivize clean energy was with tax incentives. It turns out that utilities that own 80% of the coal across the country did not have tax liabilities for a number of different historical reasons and couldn't actually use those tax incentives at all. So effectively you cut out most of the utilities. Second, there are actually specific tax rules that were in place that disadvantaged in vertically integrated investor owned utilities competitively relative to third parties were coming in basically building power in their service church break and sending power elsewhere. It turned out that really the only way that you as a customer of that utility could have used clean energy was to buy the power from a third party. Again, might have been invested and might have been an outside company might have been a private equity fund whatever it is doesn't necessarily have any collect connection locally. And as a result of some of these things particularly this was an issue with the investment tax credit that was used for solar the production tax credit was slightly better and we did see some wind built by regulated utilities that happened to have tax incentives or tax liability to be able to use the tax incentives but that was a very small build up. And as a result, new sale of solar was largely seen as a threat to utility revenues because not only was that, you know is it the case that the only way to get access to the tax incentives for a lot of utilities was to have somebody else build it own it and sell you power. But in fact, PERPA which has been a law in the land for a very long time that was meant to encourage sort of independent power producers also required that utilities buy power from these third party entities in order to kind of promote competition which was a good thing but that made it basically even if that power was quite expensive the avoided cost formula was often such that it forced a lot of utilities to buy very expensive power from solar producers. And for a lot of customers and consumer advocates this was just a terrible thing it wasn't necessarily viewed in any way as a positive because some of the formulas for how that PERPA avoided cost was calculated were not really updated in ways that reflected real costs on the ground. So effectively new solar was seen as a threat by most of these revenue, these utilities and their customers felt the same way. Fourth, I talked about the fossil costs, capital costs they don't go away if you transition these assets because again investors that invested in these utilities did so being protected again the even if clean energy was deployed it would cost customers about $25 billion a year. And then finally, maybe not surprisingly we don't exactly have as a result of all this perhaps we don't exactly have the friendliest system in place and permitting is a nightmare. It may not be hard to understand why if your fundamental interests as communities across the country are not really aligned with seeing third parties make a lot of money off of your land or land nearby maybe you're not so interested in seeing these assets permitted. And indeed that's part of what has driven significant resistance and permitting structures and transmission and interconnection barriers that are really built to protect incumbents and to sort of push out any third party from investing in building. Just one conclusion. So when these renewable developments were happening in the areas which are traditionally like vertically integrated companies where it existed how is renewable development in that area impacting their assets like the assets of the vertically integrated companies? So some of the vertically integrated companies are actually sitting in RTOs. And for them, they really do control their service territories but there is the possibility of third parties building in the ISO. So they don't necessarily depend on the ISO for meeting their capacity requirements but they need to have an open tariff and so there is an open process for building out. And so that in principle can affect the dispatch and the of their own assets. And if they have relatively low cost assets they may be in, as is in the case in the West there's a lot of resistance to sort of sharing that that might actually increase costs locally. For the purposes, when it comes to the reason solar was seen as a threat is mainly because solar could have been an alternative and there may have been they're starting to be particularly with tax incentives it's starting to be even with PPAs that solar power can be quite cheap. And if the utility were not able to completely recover its costs then this solar power would have them use their assets less if their assets are used less and less in an economic dispatch then their regulator starts questioning whether those assets should continue to be operated and whether the customer should continue to pay for them. And even though it is unlikely that they would lose their investment it may be possible that they would be pushed to retire the assets early and recover their investments more rapidly. And that again decreases forward earnings it reduces their control over the system. And again, it is effectively something that would erode their asset base. So there is a risk to them. It isn't completely riskless. And so when I say that they're protected they are mostly protected they'll get their capital back but there may be earnings that could be still at risk with clean energy coming in. It just would be it's something that they can fight and they have fought very effectively with their regulators. So that subtlety is important. So it's a good question. So what did Ira do? And really the answer is it actually meaningfully addressed each and every one of these issues to a good degree, not completely but meaningfully. And part of the reason why I think Ira's so important is because it is starting to address these ground up challenges in a way that wouldn't have been what an economist told you to do but if you actually studied what was actually happening and talked to people and understood the political economy is actually the type of thing you probably would have to you would have had to do something like this in order for us to move quickly in climate. We still don't know that it's gonna work. The jury's still out but it's a pretty darn good attempt to address some of these issues. So what did it do on tax incentives? We still weren't able to move away from tax incentives but we were able to get provisions in place that allows entities that do not have tax liabilities to transfer that tax benefit to someone who does with less friction. There is direct pay so that entities that do not have tax liabilities utilities like municipal utilities, government utilities now can actually take advantage of these same incentives with some slightly different rules but they are able to do so. It addresses leveling the playing field so that storage and solar in particular which had not been aligned with utility interests and it's interesting to ask how much solar do you think has been built by the vertically integrated utilities that own 55 serve 55% of the customers across this country? 55% we have 100 plus gigawatts of solar they have built one gigawatt of solar. So you know that this hasn't been working for them something was wrong. And this was one of the key issues that was wrong. It has been fixed to some good degree because they can now take the production tax credit which works better for them and they don't have this limitation in being uncompetitive when it comes to using the investment tax credit for building solar. Further, again, I would say that a lot of advocates for low and marginal LMI communities and for customer advocates and consumer advocates across the country as well as industrial customers were very were for good reason not particularly enthusiastic about solar and storage because of cost and now one of the really interesting things is with the adders that I'm going to talk about specifically aimed at low and moderate income communities to address some issues associated with just transition. There are real and meaningful changes to the way that those tax incentives are structured to make it more attractive for citing the assets and serving communities that previously had been underserved and to making it attractive for entities that are for entities who are for developers and other entities to focus their building in areas that have previously hosted energy infrastructure. However, I do also want to flag there's a couple of areas that aren't addressed by these tax changes that are also really important to note which is that the fossil capital cost issue and some of these permitting issues are not obviously addressed. And when you hear about the IRA you mostly hear about these tax incentives but I want to flag one other really big piece which is the loan program, a couple of different very big loan programs and financing programs. One in the USDA and the other one that I've noted here that actually address some of these fossil capital cost issues those historical imbalances and some of the financing challenges that have made this transition a really difficult one. And I'm going to talk a fair bit more about that. I know I've gone through a fair bit but that's the second half of this conversation. I want to talk a little bit about the tax incentives and then I'm going to turn to these financing mechanisms that are mitigating some of these fossil capital cost issues and some of the financial barriers that fossil heavy utilities face. So again, I should also note that IRA is not being done in isolation. It is being done as part of a much broader set of policies that have been put in place that really are about kind of on-shoring not just sort of the supply chain for clean energy but a broader set of activities that have the potential to take advantage of existing infrastructure across the country in meaningful ways to kind of resource the manufacturing and other pieces. And so this broader industrial policy in many ways is well timed just because it provides opportunities that maybe may not necessarily be in the energy sector for a lot of the communities that have been negatively impacted and creates again the possibility of growing demand to reduce some of the challenges that we face in making a transition like this in a declining demand situation. So let me talk first about some of the adders. So the new adders are one of the ways that IRA really is built to incentivize projects that are kind of from the ground up that meant to be a bit more friendly from an equitable transition point of view. The first and most important adder is that there is a significant adder that foresighting these assets in existing energy communities. And from a sort of a public benefit point of view this is a great way to address an externality that is not carbon, which is the negative externality of communities that are left behind and often polluted and don't really have any resources to address those issues. This creates an incentive for reinvestment in those communities that takes advantage of existing infrastructure in a meaningful way. A second significant benefit is a domestic content which again creates a self-reinforcing community benefit that is likely to sort of push reinvestment in communities, in local communities to make sure that both from a national security point of view but also from the point of view of sort of externalities for publicly born externalities associated with rapid transition, we are reinvesting in ways that make sure that the manufacturing capability is built out in the country to the greatest extent possible. And doing so in ways that are likely going to be cited at least proximal to some of those same energy communities. So the combination of the two really helps sort of address some of the community justice points. And it does so because these are being done with incentives rather than sort of punitive measures, it does so in a way that reinforces reductions in likely potential energy costs tied to those investments. So that is you're not doing it in a way that necessarily will penalize the customers. You're doing it in a way so that this will be chosen if it leads to the lowest cost for customers at the end of the day. So this burden isn't necessarily for making these choices to address these externalities, isn't necessarily following on energy customers in a way that would be regressive. It's using tax money to do it, which again, as I pointed out earlier in the United States is highly progressive relative to energy burden. So as a result of this, there is really with the suite of supply side incentives a really significant potential for an equitable transition in the utility sector, a writ large, as long as of course utilities and the regulators actually use them. This is one of the huge challenges we face. There is by no means, these are all carrots. There's no guarantee that we will be able to overcome a history of really what is negative partisan politics and negative and unfortunately a kind of a breakdown in trust that has led us to a place where there is a lot of mistrust for anything that the federal government might do in many of the communities that could benefit from this. And so there is a significant challenge here in actually making sure that utilities and regulators in states that have the greatest potential for transition and benefiting from it use it. But I also wanna mention that of course, Ira goes far beyond just the electricity supply and it also creates significant incentives for broader equitable decarbonization by providing significant incentives on the demand side, whether it's through electrification, home efficiency or deployment of clean resources in distributed clean resources and storage. These incentives are also potentially encouraging significant decarbonization. However, again, that is gonna be contingent on regulatory action as many of those benefits are only likely to be available to low and moderate income communities if there is action proactive action by utilities to enable and unlock the benefits. It's very difficult. And I'm happy to get into that in later detail, but I won't focus on that so much here. So there is through both on the demand side and the supply side, in Ira a really significant suite of incentives that make it possible for both utilities to really move rapidly towards decarbonization and for customers to participate and invest in it themselves, but only if regulators act and this is one of the challenges. You can't solve all these problems at the federal level and there is a need for engagement across the country to make sure this actually happens. So let me take another, so I wanna, so with that, that's the big picture of what I think, you know, Ira really is doing and why I'm so excited about it from given all of these problems that I've laid out. It's a pretty comprehensive set of measures that is intended to address in a very surgical way, many of the political economy challenges that we faced in the real economy, in the real world that for decarbonization in the context of rapid transition of an existing system. But I wanna take an example to kind of dive into why what I've spoken about so far, which is just the tax incentives aren't enough and why there's actually more in Ira to address some really serious financial challenges that go beyond what I just spoke about. And I wanna focus in particular to kind of illustrate this point, a particular sector of the problem that is a very meaningful and important one. I wanna talk about rural electric cooperatives across the country. They have provided low cost services to much of the land mass of the United States for nearly a century. They are unlike other utilities in the country, they're cooperatively owned by their members. They, the much of their history is tied to the rural utility service, a USDA agency that really financed and helped make this a reality. We got universal access across much of the United States, except for tribal lands, because of this program, because of a government program of lending. And we did it in a way so that at the end of the day, the ownership of those utilities was in the hands of the customers, which is a fascinating thing. These cooperatives serve 42 million people in the United States in places that would have otherwise been very difficult to serve would have been expensive to serve. They also serve 92% of persistent poverty counties across the country. They are serving some of the counties that perhaps have not seen the best economic development have been somewhat left out, left behind, relatively speaking. These cooperatives don't all own giant fossil plants. They pull their resources together and they work with what are called generation and transmission cooperatives, GNTs, that actually own the bulk of the generation and transmission system that serves them. And those GNTs usually finance these investments using federal debt as well as debt from certain specific rural co-op focused lenders. Now, most of these cooperatives are nonprofits and most are exempt from federal income taxes. So this is a bit of background on how rural co-ops came to be. This is the problem. So rural cooperatives, they have a cooperative business model. They're owned by their members. They've built out a system, they've enabled near universal energy access in low income areas. They've done that over a century. Unfortunately, that means that they've taken on debt over that century. And effectively, they have essentially been overlevered to do this. They've also had to comply over the last couple of decades with increasingly stringent emissions control requirements that have caused them to significantly reinvest in their facilities. The way they raise equity is not like a public corporation. They don't have shareholders to raise from. If they were to raise equity or to try to raise equity to make a big shift, they would have to raise rates from their members to do it. And if you ask them to invest very quickly to transition in the next decade, you're gonna get what we've seen from these rural utilities for the last decade, which is a statement of hell no, we can't do this. We really can't do this. And the reason for that is because these cooperatives have relatively small balance sheets. And as I said, their leverage is already at limits. So for example, I'm just gonna take an example. Let's suppose that you're going to go to a bank to buy a house and to get a mortgage for a house. Well, they'll want you to put 20% down unless you happen to have some federal supports from FHA. Well, co-op is kind of required to do something similar. And unfortunately, co-ops have very limited resources to be able to do that. And if you ask them to go invest, they barely have any equity as it is.  And the only way that they can raise debt from their member or equity from their members is by raising rates. Yep. There's no question. Oh, sure. No problem. Could you read it? Apologize. Yeah. Question numbers. Can co-ops receive loans from contract investors who are willing to accept less than normal equity insurance? In principle, some of the cooperatives can. They are able to get investment. So it is absolutely possible. The difficulty is the scale. So I know impact investment is still relatively small in scale cooperatives need. And this is the problem. Cooperatives right now have, you know, on the order of 40 or $50 billion in assets, this is over their whole history. That is the size of their balance sheets writ large. In order for them to transition just their electricity sector, they need $100 billion over the next decade. So they need to double their balance sheets. Where is the equity going to come from? Where the heck are they going to raise the $20 billion in equity? And the only answer is it's got to come from their members. I just told you their members are some of the largest, most persistent poverty counties in the country. And our answer is that, well, you should raise their rates so that we can finance clean energy and a climate transition. That's not going to work. And that hasn't slept. And that's why they've been strident opponents of climate policy. So let's look at how bad this is. Go ahead. What's the split between the other for-profit utilities versus the rural electric cooperative? And some of the bigger ones like, do you have a number? So about 55% of load is met by vertically integrated regulated utilities that are for-profit entities. I think it's on the order of another 30% that's met by 20 to 30% that's met by cooperatives, by cooperatives plus public power. And then the remainder is really in of the, of load is served by, yeah, by independent power producers, roughly something like that is the mix. And I think I probably a little high might be, it's closer to 20 to 25, that's not 30%. So it is still like about a quarter of the problem is public power and cooperatives. And then I have another follow-up question. So you mentioned 100 gigawatts of solar has been installed and only one gigawatt by these for-profit utilities out of the 100 gigawatt. So are the corporate buyers the bulk of that 100 gigawatts of solar installation or is it independent of the power providers? So there's a, it used to be the case that either regulated utilities that served either states or cities that had large renewable targets or RPSs were actually the bulk of the buyers early on for I think much of the renewable energy. In the last decade, we've seen a significant shift and it is really corporate buyers that are dominating. And at this point, the power purchase agreements, the virtual power purchase agreements from corporate buyers have really been the bulk of the buyers of power. There's still quite a bit that's being, I think with IRA you're starting to see a meaningful shift and we'll get to that. And we are already starting to see evidence that indeed this is working and we're seeing regulated utilities and utilities that previously really haven't had any interest in clean energy start to get out there and buy this. Sorry. Go ahead. Oh, did you think there was a question in the book? I don't know if you could repeat the question, maybe I'll open that one. My apologies, we'll do. That's a good point. Go ahead, if you wanted to ask one more question. Okay. So let me, just I was mentioning the cooperative financial position and how much it might hinder. So we did a little analysis where we asked, okay, what is across the G and T's, the generation and transmission co-ops that own the majority of the fossil assets across the country, how much clean energy could they deploy given their capital structure without sort of breaching this 20% roughly barrier in debt to equity ratio and avoiding sort of having to raise significant additional, significantly raise rates in the near term to raise equity from their members. And the answer is those red bars on this graph are how much they can't do because they're constrained from financially because of their balance sheet challenges. In other words, before IRA, these regulated, these cooperatives really couldn't own this. The only option they had was to have third parties own it and they have to buy power from it, which loses any benefit they had of being cooperatives and having a lower cost of capital from not actually, from being a cooperative business model that had federal financing, which was kind of insane. So with new era and some of the changes in financing policy, they have been specifically designed to, and size to provide, so new era is a program that the USDA was authorized in the Inflation Reduction Act and the possibility of something called direct pay for these utilities now allows them to actually build the equity by basically the government contributing some of that equity. It's not the most efficient way perhaps to do it, but if we want to transition quickly, this is a way that we can actually make it happen that doesn't put these communities at risk. And the other point I just made is that I want to mention that this is not this sort of balance sheet challenge that we see in cooperatives is far from an isolated issue, right? If we think about low and moderate income communities, businesses, individuals, low and moderate income countries, they face pretty much the same problem. If they have made any investment or if they are constrained because of their finances in any way, they're sitting in a similar position and many across the world we've had development finance that has enabled the electrification and sort of bringing power to much of the world. We've done that, especially China has done a lot of that over the last decade by loading a lot of these countries with debt, but building a lot of resources to finally give them power, which is critical for development. This is a success. And now we're asking them to break that all up, double their balance sheets and the answer we're getting is no. And this is part of the reason why they really cannot do this in a meaningful way. And this is the fundamental problem with climate finance. We go out there and say, we'll give you green finance. And the answer is crickets. And part of the reason why is because they can't take on this additional debt if they've just recently electrified. There may be some countries that haven't been able to electrify, but those are often ones that were already either unable to because they hadn't reached a stage of development where it was reasonable for them to afford it or they are very constrained in their ability to do so. This particular type of financial support is in the United States how we're dealing with this. We have low and moderate income communities across the country. The rural communities that have been electrified were only possible to electrify because of federal policy. And this is about the only way that we can think of to really address the challenge. We have to address the financial challenge that they face. And indeed, you could do this in other ways, but this is perhaps the most direct way to do it. I will say that this wasn't, you do need some outside equity to make this happen. This could have been done, for example, with third-party equity. It could have been possible with a gradual third-party equity transition. So there were ways that you could have imagined doing this that might have been more efficient, but this is pretty good in that it delivers the benefits while still keeping local ownership, which is an important, I think point of pride in an important way that you can build ownership over this. I will mention that, as I mentioned in the United States, rural communities aren't the only ones that are low-income by any means. We also want to and hope that there will be a more equitable transition and that ownership of clean energy could be more equitably distributed. And I will flag that there is a program called the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, $27 billion that could be used if they're used to their full potential to provide financial assistance to low- and moderate-income communities across the country and members of those communities to facilitate their ownership in these assets as well. But it is far from clear, however, that that will be structured efficiently to enable that. And that's a very large and different conversation. But I will flag that this exists and Ira has the potential to make this happen, but this is a clear issue. It's an issue that we see across the country. In the rural co-op side, I'm excited to say that it's likely to move forward and we're hopefully gonna see a more equitable solution. We are yet to see where the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund goes or if it survives the debt ceiling, tobacco were about to enter into. With that, I wanna point out one other final project and one other final vehicle. So we've talked a lot about how transition, we're trying to find ways to make the transition work for energy communities. And I think we've had in the tax incentive conversation a couple of really meaningful and powerful tax incentives that create those tools. But the type of financing challenge that I just laid out is also relevant and meaningful in that the capital cost issue, the fossil capital cost issue and the lack of financing for really cleanup and a lot of other reinvestment in energy communities continues to be a real issue. And I wanted to flag a program called the energy infrastructure reinvestment program, which really is only $5 billion with the headline $377 billion in the Inflation Reduction Act, but that's because, but it's really a $250 billion lending program, an enormous program. And it just recently released guidance last Friday and what it allows is for financing specifically tied to really doing the right thing with energy communities. It's financing that's targeted making sure we reuse that infrastructure, reinvest in those communities, remediate some of the damage that we've done and basically do right by those communities and make sure that we put back what we messed up effectively. It is also a program that also can significantly and must when it's used by electric utilities pass through that benefit of the financing to ensure either the communities are compensated or that and that customers are seeing the benefit of the lower cost financing. And I'm probably gonna just say a few more words about it. It's very, very flexible. It's an enormously, it in particular can even address some of the transmission challenges we face. We've been hearing a lot about how, and if you've been sort of following where we are in the United States, you'll hear that the Inflation Reduction Act could drive a whole lot of deployment but there's a whole lot of concern that if we try to build all this clean energy, the grid really can't take it, that there's no place to interconnect, that it takes eight years to build something. There's two terawatts of solar and wind out there that can interconnect. Well, this program should make it less costly for a utility to, in fact, significantly less costly if they're willing to, to pull forward reinvestment in transmission infrastructure to upgrade, re-conductor to upgrade substations to facilitate interconnection. And so there is a program here that there's something that can help and it's a matter of actually getting, starting to get people to understand that this is actually another tool that they have at their disposal to sort of mitigate this challenge. And I'm not going to go into the details. We've done some math and sort of thinking about how some of these types of programs can actually also make it attractive. And one of the challenges, we've got a lot of carrots. These carrots can work, but we need to move so fast that we have to have carrots that can actually pull forward investment even beyond what the sort of the tax incentives can. And I'm going to maybe pause there to say there's more to talk about. There's a lot that these incentives can do, but one of the, you know, the most powerful messages I hope you take away from this is that Ira has basically the kitchen sink of approaches to actually make sure that climate change and climate change mitigation can work in the real world to address some of the real barriers that we've seen across the country that have kept people from being excited, interested and in their interests in a meaningful way to drive action. And, you know, I think there, you know, I've heard many, many worries that people felt that the Inflation Reduction Act perhaps didn't go far enough that it wasn't any action at all. But I hope I've convinced you that perhaps if you look more closely, there is unprecedented action to address the real problems and challenges and something that we can hopefully build off of occurring in the rest of the globe. Well, that's all I've got. So, Uday, it's very interesting. Thank you for the presentation, Ugoway. When we are doing this free investment, it doesn't mean that we are, you already mentioned operating and retard at the spot. You know, basically, when we are trying to, like, first of all, mean that then the original business system is changing, right? Then are you, like, are you saying that it's going to be the same asset, the same contract, and then just changing the means? Or you fully terminate that financial contract and then start the new contract? Yeah, it depends on the particular circumstance. So the question here was, when, at least with this reinvestment idea and the refinancing concept with the Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment Program, does it mean that the reinvestment is happening by the same entity that either owns or by the same asset that is currently owned? Or is that reinvestment happening by that entity or would be envisioning that that reinvestment would happen with a third party coming in, basically, to take out a contract? And the answer is it's pretty flexible in how it can work. The, if it's used in the regulated utility context, it is usually the same party that's coming in. And it can be the same asset, an existing asset that continues to operate, for example. But that asset may continue to operate, but what you can do is, for example, if it's a coal asset or a natural gas asset, you can build out clean energy around it and gradually reduce its operation, perhaps moving it to seasonal or mothballing it. But, and it doesn't mean it may not close, but the massive advantage of doing something like that with this financing is, you can remove some of the significant capital cost overhead associated with the existing asset. You can keep its capacity benefit so that it's still available as a capacity resource for the grid. You, you know, fortunately, you still have significant fixed costs associated with salaries of workers there. But if you keep those folks on, you can help them get acquainted with and transition over time, if they choose to, to start to operate some of the new assets that you're building in. So you have a workforce transition plan that's built in. And you're getting subsidies because it's located in an energy community to make this work out so that it's not going to fall on rate bears. It's going to be absorbed to a good degree by the federal government. We're paying for this transition to happen in a more rational way. And the financing basically kind of augments that. It is financing that essentially further reduces the rate pair burden associated with that reinvestment and mitigate certain risks. For example, whenever you build around a brownfield, there are unknown, unknown environmental risks. You might run into asbestos. You may have coal ash pond cleanup that if you disturb, you have to fix. And this provides financing to basically mitigate some of those risks as well. And so what it is, is it's kind of a comprehensive financing approach that promotes reinvestment that might otherwise be unattractive or basically a utility might say, okay, if I'm going to shut this down, the easiest lowest risk path for me is to just shutter the thing and not think about it for 30 years and slowly remediate and let my rate pairs pay for it. This creates a different option. Regardless of the concept of the idea of reinvestment, giving the very practical need for the system like to pass with your facility to make the profit and return faster. The reason why I was asking about the, whether there's a change of the ownership or change of the financial conflict, I was curious about how we manage the, any agency problems. For example, because when you are completely refinancing it, then maybe the specific owner wants to, maximize the current price of the, the scripting price of the current flexibility so that they can just catch up a lot and then sell it out. So then maybe there'll be any like overestimation on existing, like pass with your facilities, when we are changing it to, like when we are trying to be following. Yeah, I mean, thankfully in the regulated context and for a large number of the, sort of the opportunities that we're seeing, the, because we're in a regulated utility context, the underlying book value is really very fixed and it's very transparent. And so there isn't really as much of a likelihood of that problem. For a third party, absolutely there is a risk that this kind of the, that all of these incentives, at least this type of incentive could basically escalate the price, the market price of existing fossil assets because their interconnection is valuable. Now, and indeed this does in a situation where interconnection is constrained, this creates potentially a perverse incentive for the folks to basically sit on interconnection, basically sit on interconnection rights and existing assets, maybe beyond what they otherwise would. On the other hand, the tax incentives are pushing in the opposite direction. And effectively what you have is you have a balance here and in some places they're gonna be small winners and losers, but what this tries to do is break basically a logjam where inaction was a possibility, particularly across much of the United States, which is, again, 80% of the coal is not in the deregulated markets, the place where we really need to open up these interconnection rights is largely not in, not, you know, these are regulated or effectively regulated tariff regions. So it's a little bit of a trade off, but they're, you know, again there's some, there's some natural sort of, there's some natural barriers that make that a little harder. And apologies, this was the question of whether the, there could be a perverse incentive tied to ownership of these assets. You said a little bit about the, like there's so much money available if we're able to use it and ultimately investors actually access it. Could you speak a little more to like, how do we make sure that they are using it and are actually trying to maximize the amount of money available? Are there, what are the barriers that, and we talked about a bunch, what are there other things that we can try to do to encourage usually investors to use it? Yeah, I mean, this is a place for consistent advocacy at all levels, consumer advocacy, regulator awareness, investor awareness and advocacy with investors, kind of pushing them, getting them to understand that there is an opportunity here and they kind of push them to make sure that their utilities are taking advantage but utility management can be lazy. I mean, like one of the problems with monopolies is you might have someone close to retirement and they just don't want to do anything. They'd rather just retire. Like these are real problems that we haven't solved here. So I don't want to, this doesn't solve all the problems and these are the types of problems that it doesn't solve. The utility may not be positioned and because it's a monopoly, it doesn't necessarily, their management doesn't necessarily have the incentive to go do this unless you have this outside pressure coming in. So an investor coming and saying, like, I'm going to replace you before you retire unless you go do this, it's pretty darn important for actually motivating that. And we don't necessarily have that in the cooperatives and some of the municipal utilities that has to, that's another challenge. This is thankfully, that's also one of the reasons why this had to be rich enough for them to really drive change. Because, you know, you don't indeed, it is indeed possible for a cooperative owner just to say like, yeah, well, I don't want to do anything. And so, and there is no other, you know, their members can pressure them. There is pressure coming, but it is all of these different types of advocacy pressure, pressures from investors, advocates and consumer advocates that needs to happen to drive it. What sort of labor do you think the finance community has, you know, the banks and the wealth managers who are sort of keepers of the stock of these regulated utilities to force them to decarbonize through the financial angle rather than the incentive angle? So I think without the incentives, it is, you know, we are, we did see a lot of pressure coming from the financial community already. We have seen that pressure. The pressure really came from divestment movement. So it was ESG sort of mandates and we did see that that was material, that was significant, that started to drive action. But it was very difficult for these utilities and their management to respond to that pressure in any meaningful way because they could always make the claim that their regulators weren't going to let them do it because that was going to require they raise rates and the regulators weren't going to let them raise rates. So they status quo made. And so what we saw is that even though they were setting ambitious targets, those weren't ever really climate aligned because they knew they could set a 2050 target and say to their investors, I'm going to be net zero by 2050, but I'm not doing anything until 2030 because my regular role in me. So forget, and that's basically the pattern that we've seen or 2040 because my climate alignment is going to be, I'm going to keep emitting until 2050 and then by magic I'm going to go to zero in 2050. This makes it that kind of argument. And I was critical from the incentive side to make that argument more because if a utility today isn't looking for ways to deploy capital right now and take advantage of these IRA incentives, it's commitment is committing malpractice for its shareholders. There is so much money to be earned in the near term and so much of evaluation boost. We're in a stage where, because of electrification, the electricity industry in the United States needs to become the energy industry. There's an enormous amount of capital that needs to be deployed about 3 trillion by 2035 in the electric sector which is like a tripling of their asset value. And this is really the thing that should drive shareholders to the table at the end of the day. So it is still very meaningfully tied to the incentives because the incentives are there to make sure that it actually works for ratepayers. Oh, it's very much at risk. I mean, the only thing I will say is that, it is very much at risk, but 12 years ago when we tried to pass climate change legislation, Joe Manchin took a shotgun and shot the legislation. This time around, Joe Manchin went online and was the hero that made this happen. So there's been a change and this is because this is really very differently structured. It really is supposed to work for red states. And my hypothesis is there's still some time till 2024. Some of this stuff is gonna get built by 2024 and it's gonna get harder and harder or because almost all of this is gonna be built in red states, quite frankly. It's gonna be harder and harder for politicians in red states to say they don't want this. And they said to say they wanna pull it apart from no matter the partisan politics that's gonna get tougher. They might still do it and the partisan politics may be so irreconcilable that that's still what happens. But it's as good of a shot as we've got to convince them. How involved were partisan politics with red states in the formulation of these programs? Like the rural sector cooperatives? Did they were involved in it at all? Or were they just sort of put it, mentioned just invented and put it into that? No, this was a long process of engaging with them that resulted in this particular policy being put together. So we started many, many years ago in those conversations. And there's not just some support, at least on part of something. NRECA put out the National Industry Association for Cooperatives enthusiastically put out their support when this program was passed. So this question was around the risk that funds are made available, but rural low income communities are unable to navigate the bureaucratic process to get the funds. Yes, absolutely, there's a risk. This is what, and I should say it, my hat is at RMI. We work with a number of advocates across the country. We have a team that is focused exactly on this issue. Thankfully, the bulk of again, the 80% of cooperatives get their power from generation and transmission cooperatives. There are 15 of them that really are the bulk of the power. And so there really is, it's not completely unmanageable. You can sort of help a smaller number of larger organizations and still meaningfully do this. And the second question is on whether there are reasons to consolidate electric cooperatives to accelerate transition. And indeed, this is partially what the generation and transmission cooperatives do. They are the ones that they have done this historically. Unfortunately, even they are still in a difficult financial position after having invested. And they still, but they make it a little easier. The distribution cooperatives have been trying, unfortunately, because I mentioned earlier, the generation and transmission cooperatives, their management don't necessarily have the incentive to rock the boat. They don't, but they're starting to get it from some of their members and from their distribution cooperative members who saw all this clean energy deployed nearby and weren't getting the rate benefit from it. And so that pressure has been meaningful and it is leading to some consequences for certain utilities and cooperative utilities and their management. And one of the drivers of bringing the co-ops to the table on this was really that pressure. So it did, there was some meaningful and important pressure that came from the grassroots that sort of built the will to get the new era program passed as part of IRA. And the generation and transmission co-ops see this as an important opportunity to transition their fleets while more importantly keeping their businesses alive by keeping their distribution cooperative members together. Thank you there for the presentation. Really enjoy listening to your recent work. Thank you for having me.


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It's my last chance to explain about Phil and all the trouble I had afterwards. Phil got me into this mess, the night he died. I sat near his bed, waiting for him to fall asleep, and he said... Margot, was there anything in that milk you gave me tonight? Well, of course, darling. Dr. Landers prescribed it, a sedative. Oh?  Very beautiful. Yes. He was taking so long to fall asleep. It was already after three in the morning. I listened to the wind.  There we were, 10,000 feet above sea level, not a soul for miles. The fall season was over, and all the other guests were gone, and even Joe, who owns the inn, had gone down to Leadfield to get his winter supplies. Oh, I shivered thinking of the dark, ragged, lonesome mountains outside, and Phil opened his eyes again.  You're off the stage than you were on, I expect. But I know you're fed up with our marriage. Have been ever since I became ill. I haven't complained, Phil. No, it wouldn't fit the part. But you feel trapped out here in Colorado, don't you? You'd rather be in New York.   Don't be ridiculous, Phil. Well, anyway, I didn't take them. With a note saying that you tried to give them to me. Then I called a friend of mine long distance, an old friend. Who? A detective named Rocky Rhodes. Rocky and I have both stayed at this inn one summer. And what did you tell this Rocky? Never mind what I told him. Just remember he's due here tonight or in the morning. A detective?  I want a divorce, Margot. You do? Yes, without any strings. Those pills are Exhibit A if they're poison. Blackmail. Phil, darling, if you want a divorce, you can have it without threatening me. You'll sign the papers tomorrow? Of course, darling. I only want to make you happy. But now go to sleep, Phil. You need a good rest. Go to sleep. I stroked his forehead and the sedatives finally took effect. His breathing became very heavy and even. I looked at him and thought he was smart not to take those pills. Ah, but not smart enough. He shouldn't have told me about that detective. He thought he was protecting himself and that I wouldn't dare do anything now. Ah, but he was wrong because I had to now. I couldn't afford to wait and lose everything when he divorced me. And besides, I'd find those pills in the letter before the detective got here. There was practically no risk the way I'd planned it this time. Outside it had started to rain. A heavy downpour. And the only other sound in the world was Phil's breathing. I picked up the extra pillow and put it down carefully. Carefully over his face. He didn't move. I pressed the pillow down on the side so that no air could get in. No air at all. And held it there a long time. Once the pillow shook a little, when Phil's head moved. Once there was a gurgling sound. And that was all. I lifted the pillow and took it back in its place. The job was done. Everything I ever wanted. Money and freedom was right in my hands. Phil was dead. Dead of a heart attack, Dr. Landers would say. Oh, but wait a minute. Unless someone found those pills with the note from Phil. Phil hadn't died of poison so I was safe. But there would be questions. Questions I didn't want to have asked. I had to find those pills myself. I started to search. First the pillow under Phil's head. No. Then the nightstand beside his bed. And the desk under the window. No. Where could he have hidden it? After all, could it be Phil's detective already? Rocky? Rocky Rhodes? I'll have to be very careful. Just a minute. I'm coming. Just a minute. There it's raining in. I'm sorry. I think I'm lost. I'm looking for Pine View Lodge. Well, you are lost. This is Fisherman's Net. I know. I saw the sign. It's closed for the winter. Could you put me up? The manager's away. There's only me and my husband. The luck of the Irish. I meet a beautiful blonde and she's married every time. You wouldn't turn me out in this storm. I'm soaking wet. I'm afraid I... Please, just tonight. In the morning I'll get my bearings. Well, if it's only for one night. Thank you. What a vacation. Where are you from? Chicago. Newspaper man. My name is Mike Sheldon. How do you do, Mr. Sheldon? I'm Mrs. Weatherby. How do you do? Where do I bunk? Upstairs? Yes. You can take the trout room. Every room is named for a different kind of fish. It's the second room on the right from the top of the stairs. Thank you. It's great of you to let me stay. Would you like some hot coffee? Fine. It's no trouble. Not at all. I was going to make some for myself. I could use some, all right? I said, I said the second door on the right. The salmon room, not the trout room. I made a mistake. Forgive me, but this is my husband's room and he's not well.  Because of course Mike Sheldon was Rocky Rhodes. Who else could he be? And I had to find those pills before he did and started making trouble. Before I could get back to the search, two more unexpected guests popped in at Fisherman's Net.  But I'm Charlie Miller. I got a reservation here and I'm staying, sister. But the manager is away. He didn't mention any reservations. Oh, you must have forgot then. I made it by telephone from KC. That is, I mean, I asked a friend of mine to make it. Was it Phil? Was Charlie Miller Rocky Rhodes? Oh, he couldn't be a detective.  No, no, Mike Sheldon was Rocky Rhodes. There was a girl with Charlie Miller. I thought she was Mrs. Miller. No, I'm Susan Quinn. Mr. Miller and I met on the bus. Yeah, and we were great pals right off. I call her Susie Q. You get it? Yes. But the initials on your suitcase are SR, Miss Quinn. Oh, well, I borrowed my sister Sheila's suitcase. Sheila Riley. She's married. Sheila and I always borrow each other's things. Was it true? Or was her name Susan Rhodes, nicknamed Rocky Rhodes? Things are getting more complicated every minute. Two men had arrived, and Sheldon seemed the most like a detective. It was too late for me then to go on hunting for the pills. It was morning.  I had to take Phil his breakfast on a tray. Well, Mrs. W., hey, you're an early bird. Here, let me help you. Oh, thank you, Mr. Miller. This is my husband's breakfast. If you'll open the door. Sure thing. There you are. Thank you. Phil, Phil, dear, I brought you... Something wrong, Mrs. W.? My husband. He looks. He looks. Anything I can do? Say, he does look pretty green at that. Mr. Weatherby, hey, Mr. Wh... You'd better sit down, Mrs. Weatherby. It looks to me like your husband has passed away. Oh, no! No, no, no. Here, now. Just sit down. All right, now you just cry on Uncle Charlie's shoulder. It'll do you good. You're very kind. Oh, say, Sheldon, got a little trouble here. Trouble? Mrs. Weatherby? Well, her husband's passed away in his sleep. Looks like. I brought his breakfast. I thought he was asleep, and will somebody phone Phil's doctor? Dr. Landers and Salisbury Gap? Well, of course, but... Excuse me, I'm afraid I've been caught in my room. Oh, Miss Quinn. What happened? Have I been asleep? When you got to your room, you fainted. I still feel rather faint. I brought you some brandy. Could you drink a little? Not now. I couldn't. Where's Mr. Miller and Mr. Sheldon? They're moving your husband's body. No, they mustn't. Dr. Landers told Mike to on the phone. The rain turned to snow during the night, and he won't be able to get here because of the storm. Not until the snowplow gets through. So he thought it best we put Mr. Weatherby. Not outdoors? No. There's a hillside cellar out back. Oh, yes. What else did Dr. Landers say about Phil? He said it must have been a heart attack. And that you have nothing in the world with which to reproach yourself. He's sure you did everything you could. For suspense, AutoLight is bringing you Miss Jane Wyman in Radio's Outstanding Theatre of Thrill's Suspense. Look at that stack of Valentine's. Quite a pile, child. In fact, flocks will come. Oh, they're not for me. They're Valentine's to AutoLight resistor spark plugs. Listen to this one. You've won my heart with your kisses and your hugs and a set of AutoLight resistor spark plugs. How's that? The sparkle love. Why, sure. Everybody loves AutoLight white gap resistor spark plugs. Replace your narrow gap plugs with these beauties to make your car idle smoother. Give better performance with leaner gas mixtures. Actually save gas dollars. Now here's a Valentine that's right in line. Oh, Valentine, will you be mine and will you make me happy? Put AutoLight resistor spark plugs in my car. Help make it smooth and snappy. Boy, that's hitting on all six. Well, naturally. Here's another Valentine that touches this old heart of mine. Oh, AutoLight resistor spark plugs.   I see. That's the best yet. But right now, here's suspense. And now AutoLight brings back to our Hollywood soundstage Miss Jane Wyman as Margo in Catch Me if you can. A tale well calculated to keep you in. Suspend. I kept up my act all that day and I didn't overplay it. I'm not the type for floods of tears so I adopted a warm, gentle sadness which made the others think me very brave. But all the time there were two things on my mind driving me crazy. Who was Rocky Rhodes? And where had Phil hidden the pills? And I couldn't hunt for them. Somebody was always in my room fussing over me. Finally in the late afternoon I managed to get away. I just started to look through Phil's clothes when... Oh, there you are. I was looking for you. No snowplow I'll get through here today. I'll just have to put up with Charlie Miller's jokes another evening. Are his jokes that bad?  Lots of people have the nickname habit. My husband had a friend named Rhodes. He nicknamed Rocky Rhodes. It's a change from Dusty Rhodes at any rate. By the way, where are you from? Boston. Why do you ask? Oh, just idle curiosity. You know what they say about curiosity. Would you excuse me, please? I was going over my husband's things. Yeah, go right ahead. I'll just keep you company. Looking for something? No. I want a pack so I can leave as soon as possible. I want to get back to New York. I don't blame you. Need any help? No, thank you. As a matter of fact, I... Would you mind? I'd rather be alone. No, no, it's not good for you to be alone. I'll just stay here and keep you company. No, see. Did you say something? No, I... Here's a book of Oscar Wiles. Why don't I read to you while you work? Let me see. Did your husband own all these shoes? He did. Well, the man, apparently. How nice for you. Now, how about some poetry? Let's, uh, let's try this one.  Shall I go on, Mrs. Weatherby? But I couldn't let Sheldon unnerve me. I had to keep cool. I went on packing and he went on reading on and on endlessly about blood and poor prisons and hangings. While I tried not to miss anything of Phil's, I had to have those pills. An hour later in my room, I knew I didn't have them. But Rocky Rhodes didn't have them yet either. Otherwise, he would have said something. But the pills didn't have to be in Phil's room. Which one was Rhodes? Miller or Sheldon? I would have to find out by elimination. After dinner that night, I went into the main parlor. And Charlie Miller grabbed me and danced me over to the fire. Ah, here you are, Mrs. W. Now you just sit right here and have a high ball, see? And we'll have a nice little cozy chat with a little old Charlie. Oh, you're so formal, Charlie. Call me Margo. Margo?  You thought up Margo to use on the stage. On the stage? How did you know I was an actress? This was the clue I'd been looking for. Oh, a guy with my experience can always tell. You can? Sure. And I know how you actresses operate. You all take different monikers. I'll bet you were great, baby. Oh, I wasn't very good. There was only one way that Miller could have known about my being on the stage. From Phil. You weren't very good. I know different, baby. So what if you only played Tank Towns? I sure wish I'd seen you. You didn't miss much really. Tank Towns? That was Phil's story, all right? Miller was Rocky Rhodes. And he was just drunk enough to handle. Hey, look, how about you and me going up to my room where we can be alone, huh? That wouldn't look right, Charlie. We could go out and sit in my car. It's in the garage. Got a heater? And a radio. The hotel radio's broken. We can say that's why we're going to listen to the music. Wonderful.  Full of ideas. A wagon, baby.  Oh, let's get in the back. Oh, it doesn't heat as well in the back. How about a drink? You first. Okay. Right out of the bottle. Oh, boy, this is what I call living. Music, plenty of bourbon, and a beautiful blonde. Never saw such a beautiful blonde. Can I give Charlie a kiss? Mm-hmm. Oh, wow. Sweetened molasses.  Plenty warm. Could turn off that heater. I'm still a little cold, Charlie. Just stay close to me. In a minute, we'll turn it off.  Nobody heard that. I've got to get out of here before it gets me to my feet. Going around the car, I was dizzy and getting numb. Then a few feet from the garage door, I keeled over. For a minute or more, I could move. Then I ever to get there. I opened the door somehow, pushed it shut, and half fell out and lay in the snow, thanking my lucky stars I've been smart enough not to drink. That's why it got Charlie sooner, because he was drunk. I looked at my watch and decided to wait 15 minutes. What a wonderful thing that carbon monoxide is. No smell, no nothing. It just creeps up on you. In 15 minutes, Charlie Miller, alias Rocky Rhodes, would be good and dead. He was dead, all right. When they found us, they carried me into the house and gave me a drink and put me to bed. I went right to sleep knowing Rocky Rhodes was dead. When I woke up, I remembered. I had said Charlie started the car, but somebody might think to check the key for fingerprints and find mine. I put on a fur coat over my nightgown and ran all the way to the garage. I got in the car, reached for the keys, and they weren't there. Why? Why would anybody take my keys? And who would take them? Rocky Rhodes? No, he was dead. But was he? Had I killed the wrong man? Oh, I ever got through breakfast. That's too bad about Charlie, Margot. Stop worrying about it, wasn't your fault. Look, Tire, do you want to take a walk? Get some fresh air? I don't feel up to it. I was planning to go up to that lookout cabin on the peak. No, no, no. I'm too lazy for that. I mean a short walk. Is it a long climb, Mrs. Weatherby? Long and steep, believe me. I only made it up there once, but my husband used to go there often. I guess a good climb will do me good. Think I'll try it alone. Bye. I'll be back before dark. Bye. Be careful, Susan. I didn't even hear her leave. I was thinking about Phil's walk to the lookout cabin. There was where he'd hidden the pills. I knew it. I knew it in my bones. Why hadn't I thought of it before? I couldn't let anyone find those pills except me. I managed to get away from the men and slipped out by the back door without being seen. A ladder goes up from the trail to the lookout door. The door of the cabin stood open. I climbed the ladder quietly and stepped in and saw Susan on the other side of the room near the door to the balcony. She was holding an envelope attached to a card, and she was reading the card. And suddenly, definitely, I knew Miss Rocky Rhodes, I presume. Oh! Oh, you scared me, Mrs. Weatherby. I see you found what you're looking for. The pills my husband hid. You want to know if they're really poisonous? I read the kind of a joke. Oh, no, it's no joke. One of them would kill a man. But that's not what killed Phil. I smothered him with a pillow. You didn't know that, did you? Oh! You shouldn't be telling me this. Phil told me you were coming, but I was expecting a man. I never dreamed Rocky Rhodes was a woman. You've mistaken me for someone else, really. Oh, come off it. You're already responsible for Charlie Miller's death, coming here under an assumed name. I killed him because I thought he was Rocky Rhodes. Oh, no, you didn't. Oh, you're ill, Mrs. Weatherby. You're imagining... Stay where you are!  I wouldn't go out that door if I were you. You'd step right off into blank space. But you can't do these things. They'll catch you. Who? How? Those pills are the only evidence against me, and I'll destroy them as soon as you're gone. Will you...? Stop! Stay where you are! You fool! What good does that do you, throwing them out? Watch where they fall. There. Right on the path. They'll stay there until I go down. But you've played your last card. I'm not going to waste any more time. Let go! Falling, then. Then a sharp pain. Then I don't remember any more until... I woke up here in the snow and found you bending over me. Who are you? Where did you come from? I just came up from the village, Mrs. Weatherby. We know the whole story. The whole story? Now just take it easy, Mrs. Weatherby. I know. You must be a doctor. A doctor? They'll never hang me. No, Mrs. Weatherby. They'll never hang you. You're dying now. No. No. I can't die. After all I've had to do to live. Where did Mike go? I'm right here, Mrs. Weatherby. Like a vulture waiting for me to die. You're Rocky Rhodes. Aren't you, Mike? No, Mrs. Weatherby. You're lying. It has to be you. I killed Charlie and he wasn't Rocky Rhodes. And Susan wasn't. You have to be. I have to know.  Rocky Rhodes mustn't find those poison pills.  So you would have been safe even if the pills were found. But...but... Rocky Rhodes... None of those people was Rocky Rhodes. Your own guilt made you suspicious of everything they did. But there must be a Rocky Rhodes. Phil said there was. There has to be a Rocky... Rhodes. Is she dead, doctor? I'm afraid she is. Nara was being sorry for her husband being dead. Just think. She killed her husband and one of us and none of us would have known it if she hadn't told Susan all about it in the cabin. It was good of you to get here so fast, doctor. I'd have gotten here sooner if it hadn't been for the blizzard. And maybe none of this would have happened. By the way, I'm not a doctor, Mr. Sheldon. My name is Rhodes. Rocky Rhodes. Thank you, Jane Wyman, for a splendid performance. Miss Wyman, would you do me a favor? I'd be glad to, Mr. Wilcox. I'd be glad to have my script. Why, certainly. What shall I write? Well, why not just write to A-L-R-S-P Wilcox from Jane Wyman. A-L-R-S-P? What does that stand for? Autolight resistor spark plugs. Oh, of course. I should have known. A plug for plugs. Why, sure. Well, A-L-R-S-P it is. There. How's that? Thank you. And did you know, Miss Wyman, that besides autolight resistor spark plugs, autolight makes over 400 other products from high plants from coast to coast. Autolight makes complete electrical systems for many makes of America's finest cars, batteries, generators, starting motors, coils, distributors. All ignition engineered to meet the highest standards of leading automotive engineers. So, folks, tomorrow treat your car to an expert motor tune-up. Visit your local Autolight service station listed in your classified telephone directory or the dealer who sells your make of car and be sure to specify original factory parts. You're right with Autolight. And now, in introducing again our star, Miss Jane Wyman, I wish also to extend to her, on behalf of our sponsor and all of us here on suspense, our sincere congratulations on her nomination for the Academy Award for her splendid performance in the current Warner Brothers picture, Johnny Belinda. And to wish her the best of luck in balloting. Thank you very much. And may I congratulate suspense for being one of the top radio programs on the air. Truly radio's outstanding theater of thrills. Thank you, Miss Wyman. And I'll be listening next week when James Mason and his lovely wife, Pamela Kellino, appear in the Agatha Christie story where there's a will. Another gripping study in... Suspense! Tonight's Suspense Play was adapted by Sylvia Richards from the current best-selling mystery by Pat McGeer. Music was composed by Lucian Moore-Awak and conducted by Lud Bluskin. The production was under the direction of Anton M. Lieder. Auto-light resistor spark plugs have been adopted as original factory equipment by six leading makes of cars and trucks. So, switch to auto-light. Good night. This is CBS, the Columbia Broadcasting System.


Hey guys, all right, I watched a video recently Hold on. Okay. I watched a video recently about painted feathers I'll link the video that I watched down below now unbeknownst to me. Thank you Kathy Whitney for pointing it out The creator Nina Rabina, I think is her name if it's if that's incorrect. I'll put the right name right here She tagged me in the post and she talked about an old video I did where I painted feathers and it was all the craze on YouTube for a while and in mix the mixed media world I actually happened to have two of the original feathers I painted still in my stash of stuff and She was using markers on her feathers and I Thought these were done with acrylic paint and ink and I thought I wonder if you could do feathers with alcohol ink and I said that in the comments of a video and she said if you please if you try that can you film it and I said sure So guess what we're gonna do today So I did find some white feathers. I still have some of these in my stash I do use them for different things including making paint brushes out of To make marks with with my watercolor paints in particular But today we are gonna try Drawing on them Sent me a bunch of their alcohol markers recently, which are really great. I have the Hold on this set that we're gonna use today, which is the Basic set of 24 I'll link it down below and we're gonna use it and some rubbing alcohol on the feathers And we're gonna see what we can come up with. All right, let's get going. Hey, the answer is yes, you can You guys this was really fun to do and I just did four of them really quick this last one over here I tried initially putting the color on dry and Then spraying it afterwards because I wanted the colors to blend I wanted to try some sort of spotted thing That worked really well these other ones where I sort of wanted a rainbow sort of effect I sprayed it first put the color then sprayed it some more You could try either one they both worked just fine, but they did work So if you have alcohol markers, you don't have paint pens You have a few feathers you want to try making some of these alcohol markers work great alcohol markers and some rubbing alcohol Yeah, and the ohuhu markers they work wonderful and they're very In inexpensive there you get a good bang for your buck. So anyway, give it a try painted feathers I'll link the other video mine and Nina's down below and Yeah, don't forget to like share subscribe leave any questions comments or concerns down below Check out my video description not for not only relevant links But my patreon if you want to support the free content here on YouTube and above all go out and do something nice for yourself Because you deserve it, and I'll see you later. Bye guys


Two summers ago I had an opportunity to do a long distance charity event with Jesse Itzler and Sarah Blakely. In the backyard of their home in New Fairfield, Connecticut, is a patch of grass and that patch of grass is 85 yards long and it's at a 40 degree slope and our task for the day was to run up and down this 85 yard hill at a 40 degree slope a hundred times. And we all have that voice inside of us, it's kind of that proverbial angel and devil and to have that voice come out at Rep 70, I was at a crossroads well I was very fortunate that a very good friend of mine also was running Steve Wojachowski and he is a Duke basketball icon. I said Steve how many do you have left and he said I've got one rep. One rep there's no way you only have one and then he finished his sentence. I have one rep 30 more times and that is the definition of living in the present moment. You only focus on the next rep.


Welcome folks. This is Tom O'Brien of TFNN. We've got five days a week, we go seven hours a day, we go 24 hours a day on the internet at tfnn.com. Always remember folks, whatever you think about, you bring about, whatever your focus on grows, hope everyone's having a great day, safe day. The TGIF, folks, it's making a great weekend. Be impeccable with your word. Replace fear with love. The human mind is like fertile ground with seeds that continue to be implanted. When you're impeccable with your word, your mind is no longer a fertile ground for the words that come from fear. Your mind is only fertile for words that come from love. Knock it wise, let's take a look at it out here. We have the Dow Industries up 197, Nasdaq's up 56, S&P's up 26. Gold contract down $2.40, trading at $19.96 an ounce. We have Silver up 6 cents, $25.27 an ounce. Lightsweep crew up $1.93, $76.69 a barrel, notes and bonds. Attendant note, up 15 ticks, trading $1.15.06. The third year, up a full point plus 10 ticks at $131.21 and $Kingdala. $Kingdala's up 186 ticks, $101.689. The Euro is at $110, the Yen is at $136, and the British pound is at $125 to $1 US. Off-phone number is<PHONE_NUMBER>. Give us a call, folks. I want to know what's going on in your world. In the world of the S&Ps, let's take a look at it. Well, we're going to bring up the weekly charts here, folks. Let's see what we have. Because you're at the top of the range here. Okay, so daily we get a contraction, which would make sense after yesterday. Weekly, well, you're pushing on this swing with, well, it will be with volume, basically. Let's see, 4, 390, well, you're going to need more. 390 to 4, what's that? 458. It'll end up doing 4. 390, it'll do 4. So the spy is pushing at volume. So that's saying that 418 is still game inside of the spy. If we go into the NDX100, we take a look at the NDX. Let's do this same setup inside the NDX. And so that's 47 million today. This is taking the high out also. Well, this is the last time. Let's put it this way. So this here, and it has volume. Okay, so check this out. Okay, one second. Let's see. So we're at 32186. Yeah, you know what? Okay, let's do this thing. 3, so you've got 15. That looks like we've got 40 points, which is 349, which is 3... I get to get these monitors closer to me. I don't figure this out. Sorry about this, folks. Okay, what's happening is that 385, 321, yeah, 15, which is 25, yeah. You're pushing into the volume. All we needed is on a weekly, we needed 272 million, and we're going to have over that. We're 269 right now. So that's a big number, man. Gold, gold contract. We take a look at the gold contract out here. Okay, so the gold contract, 163,000 contracts. In the long sideways, this is pretty intriguing because of the fact that if we go to the dollar now, and we take a look at the dollar, what has happened with the dollar is, once again, this didn't hold price. So the dollar got up to a price point today of the 102, 172, and bottom nine didn't hold price. But this dollar looks to me like this thing wants to go. When you keep pushing, pushing, pushing like this, I suspect it's going to go. We'll see how it shakes out, but that's what it looks like to me. We take a look at the Treasury market and what's happened with the Treasuries. The Treasuries want higher price. Higher price, lower yield. Bottom line is that you get the 10 years up, 15 ticks right now, 1507. Some of the higher volume equities out. Well, hey, let's go look at Amazon because Amazon came out with numbers. Bottom line was popping up really nice after the close. Then couldn't handle price. Yeah, this is still consolidating. It was interesting about Amazon. You're still going to ABC up, you know, because you took out the B point, you took it out with volume. The differential is that this was trading on the full ABC up last night, and then they came up with a conference call and then it gave it up in spades. Some of the higher volume equities out here, when we take a look at it, is that, oh, First Republic, we've been talking about that. I'll get into that in a second. You get Amazon down 370. We have Pinterest up 444. You got, let's see, inside the NDX100. You got Walgreens. Now, Warner Brothers is up 4.7%. Intel's up 4.2. Airbnb's up 4.2. Taken away from it, you get Zscaler down 4.5. Crowdstrike's up 4.4. Team Global's down 3.7. Some of the, let's go to see where Microsoft, any follow-through here with Microsoft? Yeah, a little follow-through. Microsoft got up to 308 today. It's the 305 right now.  Snap got snapped. You take a look at Snap, and what you have with Snap is that, yeah, this gapped down a couple bucks. Bottom line, you're at 851. And so, folks, what's going on? I got to figure this out. So, picture this. This is a crazy, you've heard me say I'm having a hard time seeing. Well, what happened when I was a kid, this is my comma, man. I get shot in the eye with a BB when I was a kid. And that was my comma, because I shot so many people, basically. And like a long story short, what happened is this. I was blind for like about six or seven months. And then it went away. But what has happened, and then I went in the Marines, picture, and I was 20-20. And then what ended up happening about 20 years ago, it stopped opening again. There's nothing they can do about it. So I'm totally blind in my left eye. And it's really weird, because I can't even see people on my left-hand side. So that's why you hand me doing this. I'm going to figure this out. Stay right there, folks, and come right back.


Let's get more radical. So let's try to find the principal square root of negative 3 squared. So by our definition, the square root of negative 3 squared is the non-negative number whose square is negative 3 squared. So paper is cheap. Let's write things down. We want something squared to be the same as negative 3 squared. And again, mathematicians aren't so subtle and the obvious thing we could put inside the parentheses is negative 3. And we might say since negative 3 squared is equal to negative 3 squared, then the principal square root of negative 3 squared is negative 3. Except this is wrong.  And in fact, it's vitally important to remember when we write this symbol, the principal square root of n is never negative. So how can we find the principal square root of negative 3 squared? Well, there's two ways of doing this. First, the hard way. Since negative 3 squared is equal to 9, and 3 squared is equal to 9, then the non-negative number whose square is the same as negative 3 squared is 3. And so the principal square root of negative 3 squared is equal to 3. Now the reason that this is the hard way is the following. First, we have to find negative 3 squared. And then we have to somehow determine that 3 squared is equal to the same thing. The easy way stems from the following observation. Since negative a squared is equal to a squared, and a squared is equal to a squared, then a and negative a are both square roots of a squared. And that means that the principal square root of a squared is whichever of these is non-negative. So the square roots of negative 3 squared are negative 3 and negative negative 3, otherwise known as 3. So the principal square root is going to be whichever of these is non-negative. Well, that must be the 3 itself. And the directive to take whichever square root is non-negative leads to the following useful result. For any value of a, the principal square root of a squared is the absolute value of a. How about this square root of negative 25? So a useful idea in math and in life is to give things a name. Let square root of minus 25 equal n. Now we've named square root of negative 25, but remember this is the principal square root of 25. So we know that n is a non-negative number. And n squared must be equal to minus 25. Now let's think about that. Something we should remember is our rules for operating with signed numbers. If a and b are real numbers, then if they have the same sign, their product will be positive. But if they have opposite signs, their product is going to be negative. Now since n squared is equal to n times n, and n has the same sign as n, the product n squared, it's the product of two numbers with the same sign, and it must be positive. And what this means is that it can never be negative. And that means n squared equals minus 25 can't possibly be true for any real number. And so that means square root of minus 25 cannot be a real number. And this leads to an important result. Square root of n is only defined for n greater than or equal to zero. At least for now. Later on, we'll take a look at square root of negative 25 and similar square roots.


If you want to shoot the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn from a city you're gonna have to get high Because there's buildings all around in a city and the Great Conjunction is only 20 degrees above the horizon Which is about from pinky to thumb extended and so maybe you can see it right over here You need you need what's called a horizon a clear horizon So the only way to get that in a city is usually to get high So what I did is I found this parking ramp and I'm paying for parking right now But I don't mind because this is so cool And I went all the way to the top of the parking ramp and I've set up my camera up here And I have this great clear view of the conjunction right over the Charles River here in Boston And so this is my main tip if you're photographing the Great Conjunction do some planning We're still six days out right now from the closest pass of the two planets Which is December 21st also called the Great Conjunction or the Christmas Star And so I hope that I get clear skies that night But because I've done this scouting and I've I've picked out this spot I know that it's gonna be a great spot if we do get a clear sky And I'm gonna bring all my gear up here all my different camera lenses and telescopes and binoculars So that I can really get a cool experience viewing it and photographing it I don't have too many tips for Exactly how to photograph it because everyone's gear is different What I recommend is just whatever gear you have bring it with you and try to get some photos of this because it's so cool The closer that the planets get together of course the longer your lens will have to be to resolve that separation So on the actual 21st you probably need like a fairly long lens to actually see that they're not just one object They're gonna get that close together And another thing I would really recommend is if you have any kind of pair of binoculars bring them because this is gonna be a great Thing to view through binoculars Okay, well, I hope this has provided a few useful tips for Viewing and photographing the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn from a city again to review Find it a high spot. So this could be a hill a parking ramp like we are here The top of a building anything like that and that's going to give you your best shot at actually seeing it and to Don't actually I haven't said this yet. Don't wait for the 21st If because you don't know what the weather is going to be like on the 21st So as soon as you have an opportunity a clear night like tonight to go look at this go look at it to find it You're just going to look approximately southwest Right get there right at sunset and it will get clear and clear as the Sun goes down It's now approaching night and it's really really clear and and Jupiter and Saturn are just like this far apart if I hold out my Hand like that. They're really close together. This is a little bit a little bit scattered, but I hope you got something out of this I'm gonna go ahead and continue my testing with all my different cameras and lenses because I want to get the most out of this Before it sets for tonight. All right till next time. This has been Nico Carver nebula photos calm