Exploratory committee to order the members of the advisory committee that I see present Stephanie Smith, Kerry Juggair, Nader Hashim, Chris Walsh, Meg Delia, we're missing Jim but we've got enough to get going. So this is the inaugural meeting, thanks for giving us on your calendars and essentially what this committee is designed to do is look at some of the more controversial issues that the legislature asked the board to make recommendations on. I think the initial list that I kind of sent around included debating some of these new and maybe different license types beyond the ones that we've approved. These would include cooperatives, direct to consumer, farm to consumer licenses, the limited space license, that's the kind of like a maybe like a cannabis kiosk in a general store, kind of a store within a store concept. Also looking at issues around concentrates, potency limits, on-site consumption, special event permitting, curbside sales, delivery, and honestly whatever else comes up, I know that all of those issues were debated in the legislature and no one could kind of really come to a consensus on any of those and so they asked the cannabis board to make recommendations and so we're going to turn to our advisory committee to debate some of those issues. For today we're going to have a much more narrowly tailored meeting. We have a report to the legislature due on November 1st and there's really three issues that they've asked us to look at. The first issue, I'll mention them all and then I'm going to ask Kerry if he wouldn't mind kind of walking us through some of the contours of the debate on the three. The first issue is the board needs to make a recommendation as to whether integrated license holders, product manufacturers should be permitted to produce solid concentrate products with greater than 60% THC for the purposes of incorporation into other cannabis products that otherwise comply with the prohibitive product section. So the way that I read this and maybe I'm reading it wrong but the way that I see this is any solid concentrate above 60% is per se illegal. However, there is an argument to be made that a product manufacturer who is not going to be selling a solid concentrate above 60% directly to the public or to a retailer should be allowed to make them and then dilute them later or have a kind of subsequent retail or someone else on the supply chain dilute it. So as long as the final product at the point of sale is below the 60% THC concentrate. That's the way I'm reading that and Kerry, I know you've looked at this language in the past. Kerry, if you can kind of maybe talk us through your thoughts on this and you know you're probably more familiar because of the HEM program than a lot of us about solid concentrates and the product manufacturing. So maybe you can kind of hit on some of the high notes or the high points of the debate. Yeah. Let me just start off by saying it would be almost virtually impossible to create a concentrate that's less than 60% or less right off the bat if any concentrate you make is going to be higher than that. You can't really, whether it's a mechanical extraction or you're extracting Keith, that original product that as soon as it's extracted is going to be above 60%. Whether it's solid or liquid, the original extraction until it's diluted is going to be above 60%. The way that we sort of dealt with higher potency concentrates in the HEM program, is that we can collaborate as well as we can call sort of that original concentrate a process intermediate. So that process intermediate in the HEM program specifically, you'll have a concentrated extract that when the plant started below .3 or .3 or below THC, when you concentrated it's four or five or six percent THC and the point of compliance that we've insisted upon is the point of sale. So you need to bring that down to .3 or below in one of your products. I think the same would hold true with THC. Right now some of the easiest way to formulate a product is from a distillate and those are nearly a hundred percent and you will be the most accurate when adding that to a baked good, baked cartridge or any other concentrated product that's being made. That said, the law as written would make it virtually impossible to make any concentrate or addable other than by an oil infusion where the materials infused in oil, cooking on oil or butter would be the only way that we could make addables under the current law. So solid or liquid concentrates when extracted will by nature be above 60 percent. So as written the laws of the North program. So, Kim Lee, can I just open this up for discussion? I don't want to kind of dominate this. I really want the employee of the South Committee. Stephanie, do you have anything you want to add to this in particular? I just echo what Carrie said is that we've navigated this by requiring that concentrate stream between registrants in the program and just being clear that they're not considered products to be sold to the public because it is impossible. And you're limiting what you can do and you're adding costs like in process and potentially harmful things maybe. I don't know. When you say add potentially harmful things, can you elaborate on that? Well, I think you're by cutting your concentrate possibly. I mean, not maybe not a solid concentrate unless you're further diluting it into something but just, you know, managing what you can actually add to meet the standard which is what you're talking about. Like you have to add things to it. Maybe Carrie or others can comment on what are typically added or what can be seen as an additive? Yeah, I, well, it seems like Nader's got his hand up. Maybe I can go afterwards. Should I just go? I just have a quick question if that's okay. You can. So concentrates aren't really something I know a ton about for this conversation. And so, forgive me if this has already been repeated, but could somebody just summarize for me again one more time why two license holders or two businesses with trade concentrates with each other but not with the public? Yeah, Nader, I'll take a shot at it really quickly. So I'm producing either chocolate bars or brownies or gummies, but I'm not growing anything. I'm a processor and I'm going to buy extract from somebody else. I'm going to have somebody else do that work of extraction and I'm just going to add it to my baked goods and I'm going to need to know how much THC is in that extract and if the processor has to bring it down below 60%, they're going to add something else to it and it makes it less accurate for me to formulate my product. If I know what I'm buying from you as 100%, I can weigh out the exact amount to get a certain amount of milligrams per edible if you will. If it's something other, if it's diluted and brought down below 60%, I need a lab analysis to come with it and I will then have to reformulate my product every time I go to make a new batch. Got it. That's a great explanation. Thank you. Hey, this is Chris Walsh. So, you know, the thing that dawned on me recently after we all kind of chimed in on the manufacturing licenses is it's really a shame that we have this 60% threshold because the two cleanest, safest, healthiest and least dangerous to produce concentrates being ice hash and rosin, which are also the least expensive to make so that tier two manufacturing license. I would imagine that would be a lot of what they would make. I don't know how you can make those products where they come out at less than 60%. And they're solving this so they're really not designed to be diluted. So I just, you know, your two cleanest concentrates would have to be manipulated before they're put on the market. Chris, I agree with you 100%. What we're talking about, that'll be a topic that will have to be brought up separately. The legislature sort of specifically asked about passing concentrates higher than 60% between manufacturers. And I think that has to be a yes in the point of, the point of compliance for the 60% would in fact need to be their point of retail sale. That said, you're absolutely correct and it would be a shame to have to produce a more harmful, less pure product out of your sort of ice hash or rosin. My only thought there is that, you know, we would see some hemp ice hash being added to, but then again, you're just drawing the profile. So I don't exactly know how to do it myself, but agreed. It shouldn't be diluted. That's my point is that you really can't dilute rosin or ice hash unless you bring CBD trichomes into it. So I'm trying to think what the, the unintended consequence from what I'm hearing of this policy that just straight up prohibits at any point in the production chain, a concentrate above 60% is essentially we're either eliminating the edibles market and the vape market altogether, or we're adding some unknown element to those products that will just make the process untenable to make the, you know, you're adding some, you're adding some adultery into the process that who knows what happens when you consume or inhale.  It will just add additional lab analysis to different points of that process because you could easily extract into a butter or coconut oil. But then your, your concentration in that oil is unknown. So we're trying to keep a tight market on how many milligrams can go into an animal. We're making it harder for producers to do that. Well, just, just to add to that, James, you're also discouraging the safest and least expensive and cleanest ways to make concentrates, the solvenous ice hash and the rosin. And, you know, I, if someone goes to that tier two manufacturing license where they aren't going to use fluorocarbons and need to say from all that expense, I don't really know, you know, I don't know what else they're going to make. And I was, I know we're not talking about we're moving that, that language right now. But, yeah, I do believe that folks that want those dabs are just going to buy flour and bring it home and blast it themselves. So we'll be having home butane extractions going on. And I'd like to hear from other folks that they, they believe that would happen. Yeah, I'll speak up again. Yeah, that'll definitely happen. People will make dabs at home and they'll purchase dabs on the unregulated market. Yeah, I would agree with that as well. So this, this 60% concentrate law, actually the unintended consequence, it absolutely does the opposite of what the legislature was intending in that it makes the product, the end product potentially more dangerous and also encouraging, encourages a black market. And what I'd say, it makes it more dangerous is, is what, when the legislature did this is when they were hearing specifically about big cartridges with that we're making people ill. The thought was that vitamin E or lanolin was being used to dilute the extract. Partridges now are pure rosin or pure extract or terpene diluted with a terpene blend, safer to inhale. We're sort of encouraging the innovation value, which we probably should not be doing. So the, the law that was meant to protect people is actually discouraging that pure clean market. That's what I was trying to get at was, I wasn't in the room when this prohibitive product was introduced. It seems to me, like from all that I know about the legislature, that they probably had a concern about children or cannabis induced psychosis with these high concentrates. So I think they were really more concerned about them. And these products not making it into the market, not that, not if there, if there's never any kind of directive THC concentrate, you know, above 60%, they're concerned will never be realized. So, I don't know.  I think he was in the room when this, this issue is being debated. And I think his thinking was the same as what I just said, which is that they don't want these products on the shelves. But if they're, if they're ultimately compliant, they shouldn't be per se illegal at every step of the supply chain. Yeah, just wanted to go along with what you're saying or confirm what you were saying is that there certainly was a level of fear about concentrates or products that were at a higher potency level. There's still a lot of really old stigma and mentality towards cannabis. And so, you know, the word psychosis and we're often brought up and, you know, as well as a sphere of children getting a hold of high concentrate cannabis products. So yeah, just just confirming what you were discussing. Yeah. You know, I'm not sure that we need much more debate on this. I mean, because I think I'm hearing at least a majority of folks make do you want to weigh in actually. I tend to agree with Chris. I think it will the unintended consequences will absolutely push people to the illicit market. And, you know, ensuring that products are as safe as possible. I think it just doesn't really make sense to have this ban on the 60% in the manufacturing process. This is Chris. The irony of this is, you know, I'm not even saying to jack the threshold up that much, because most solvent less product concentrate products like hash or rosin come in around 70%.  So you're almost there. But, you know, I mean, maybe I'm saying to selfishly because I find these products on a personal level, like very clean and safe. But it's just a shame that the way it is right now, you really couldn't make these pure products without adulterating them. And then the other irony is the most dangerous way to make concentrates is the easiest way to dilute down 60%. So, you know, and it's like you've got the worst of both worlds. Well, Bryn, are you listening in on this? I am. Is it, would it be outside of our purview, certainly outside of our purview? Would it be a bad idea to make a recommendation about solid concentrates more generally alongside this recommendation? I think that this report, the November 1st report is the time to make that recommendation since we were directed to look at this issue in general. I don't think it would be outside the board's purview to make an additional recommendation. Okay. Well, Chris, I think I know your point of view on this and Stephanie and Kerry, you know, I think I've heard, I've heard the kind of contours of the debate. You know, they, you know, you guys, this is a policy decision that the board needs to make, but I think I hear kind of the considerations that we should be making. Nader, do you have a feeling one way or the other, if we should make a recommendation that would allow concentrates to be sold directly to consumers that would be a solid concentrates above 60%. Sorry, James, did you call my name? I was losing reception for a second. Oh, sorry. I just, I was curious if you had a feeling one way or the other, and if you need more time or more research, that's totally acceptable answer. But whether you had a thought about making a recommendation around allowing, I guess, removing solid concentrates above 60% from the prohibited list generally. Yes, I'm in support of that. You know, like I mentioned, this isn't something that's in my wheelhouse. In the conversation we've had in the last 20 minutes, it's been pretty efficient in explaining the situation to me. So, you know, one of my concerns from what I'm hearing are the dilutants that would go into it, which, you know, it would, I think it would be a catch-22 when we'd still be causing harm by putting dilutants into these products to keep them under 60%. So, I'm in support. Meg, did you want to weigh in just more generally about removing the 60% cap on solid concentrates from the prohibited product list? I'm sorry, could you say that again? I don't know why it just cut up. Sorry, I'm in a parking lot, it might be me. Do you have a thought just more generally about the board recommending removing solid concentrates above 60% from the prohibited product list? I would tend to agree. I think just going back to what I think was Carrie initially said, that yes, that people are looking to get those and we'll just push them to the illicit market and it's better to know that those products are being regulated and safe. And Jim, sorry about the technical difficulties. The conversation started with our November 1st report, which is the legislature wanted us to say whether or not between maybe a product manufacturer and a retailer or a wholesaler, as long as the 60% concentrate above 60% concentrate never actually hit the market, the consumer market, whether we shouldn't allow concentrates above 60%, the general consensus is yes, there's a number of policy reasons why it makes sense, a number of public health reasons why it makes sense. The conversation then moved to whether we should just remove the concentrates above 60% from the prohibited product list altogether. And I'm wondering if you had a thought about that. Yeah, I do. AI would absolutely agree that we should remove it from the prohibited products. I agree that we'll just, it's widely used products and I think we'll just push people to the illicit market where things are made with solvents that we won't be able to control. Also, from my point of view as a medical product concentrates above 60%, including things like hashish are key products. We've had witnesses tell us that many times and my concern is that we prohibited as a retail product or at the very least as an ingredient, sub-agreed for retail products, it's going to negatively affect a lot of patients from medical programs. It will become something that is labor intensive and cost prohibitive for businesses to produce. Go ahead, Jerry. Yeah, I just wanted to weigh in on one last time here. And that's from a different perspective, not the regulatory perspective but the marketing perspective. So what is Vermont's market? What will be Vermont's market? And it's going to be the higher end products. Everybody's harvesting their two plants or two or six plants right now. Nobody's necessarily in the market for flower unless it's really high end flower. So the Vermont market will be the boutique, the small scale, high end extracts. Whether that's a live rosin or live resin and we're essentially taking that away from a marketing perspective as well. So we're leaving Massachusetts, Colorado, New York, the surrounding states, the entities that are producing the higher end products, the boutique products that I think are what we should be looking to capture in the state. The flower market saturated will be these higher end, pure, live rosin type concentrates. Lots of terpenes, very pure. Chris, is that a new hand or is that an old hand? That's an old hand so I don't want to see it. Okay, I mean one other just element to this. I know the medical program has been kind of very tightly controlled for a long time. There's probably a lot of folks out there that probably wish they were on the medical registry that harms. And to say that these products can exist on the medical side but not on the adult rec side. I feel like there should be equal access, especially if a patient for some reason doesn't want to pay the $50 a year to be on the medical program, doesn't want to have the kind of relationship with the doctor but still wants access to those products. So I think that's just another angle here. I hear all the comments and all the input and I think we can kind of move on because I think we're all pretty much in agreement here. So the next issue that we have to deal with for November 1st is whether the board should permit hemp or CBD to be converted to Delta 9 THC, how it should be regulated. So Carrie, once again I'm going to ask if you don't mind to kind of walk us through what this conversion is even and maybe some of the finer points of the debate. Okay, very good. And again, Stephanie is just as first in this as I am. And so our thoughts are from the agency, we've let hemp producers know that making Delta 8 or a synthetic cannabinoid was no longer hemp. We didn't want to see those products being sold as hemp. And if it is allowed to convert to hemp, CBD or CBG into a Delta 8, Delta 9 or even Delta 10 product, that's something that should be regulated in a tax and regulate market. I don't believe these products should be able to be sold in a gas station or over the counter without some sort of regulation. Other states have allowed it. I was just down in Texas and he could get Delta 8, 9 or 10 from hemp produced. And, you know, there was no restriction on the sales and they are intoxicating. It just not, I think, not a direction I think we should be heading in. So if we do want to allow these to be synthesized from a hemp extract, I believe the sales should be regulated by the control board. My only concern with allowing this is you're being, you're permitting 1000 square foot grows essentially on your smallest tier. I can grow 100 acres of hemp under a hemp permit, extract all that and produce enough THC to supply the entire state without having to go through the process of getting a, registering with the control board. Terry, can I just ask a question before I open it up? This, to me, kind of harkens back to when we had some challenges around bath salts where we tried as a legislature, tried to prohibit certain combinations of chemicals and the processes were always changing. So they're always one step behind where people are at. If the recommendation is to say that Delta 8 should not be sold or should not be kind of, you know, a consumer product, are we going to just be back every year with some other kind of Delta 9, Delta 10, Delta 11, is that an issue?  Well, I'm almost suggesting that CBD is still in a tenuous place federally, but I'm sort of suggesting that all cannabis products fall, all cannabinoid products, not seed or fiber or protein from a hemp plant, but anything with cannabinoids in it almost needs to fall under the purview of the control board. I'm not ready to go there, but essentially I can see that happening in the future because the cannabinoid synthetic or not are certainly why folks are buying these products. And right now CBD, if you will, there's no age limit in most states. They're taking that CBD and converting it into other things, which are largely unknown. Their effect is largely unknown. We do hear that some of those effects are beneficial, right? But I believe the market needs to be controlled, so you do know what you're buying. Nader, do you have a question? Yeah, I was just going to mention, you had me thinking with the bath salts analogy. Instead of trying to focus on what the new or updated chemical name or composition would be, I think that to stay up to speed you could just say that anything that has an impairing effect that hemp could be regulated instead of trying to list all the new and various chemical compositions. Kerry, is there a way where we could require, if this was brought under our jurisdiction, is there a way that we could require kind of like a product registration so that we would know any time a new product is kind of hidden in the shelves, we would have kind of some authority, some discretion to kind of regulate it? Yep, that would be a very good way to do it. You would see a label before the product hit the shelf. And not only products produced in the state, but products produced outside our borders. Chris, do you have any, do you want to weigh in? I mean, full transparency, I own a CBD company and we grow all of our hemp in the state. Delta A, I believe there's already, it's already prohibited in Vermont, isn't that correct? Chris, what Stephanie, I'll let Stephanie address it. She drafted the letter. It's true. We don't, well, it's not, a hemp registrant is unable to produce the product under their hemp license. My understanding of how it's produced is you take a CBD isolate, which is not illegal to be sold to the general public or any manufacturing firm. That is a legal and trade product in the state of Vermont. And so what you can't as a hemp registrant produce Delta A, or synthesize Delta A from CBD. So a little nuance there. We didn't say, we didn't do it, we just said it wasn't hemp. It wasn't hemp. And you can't do it under your license, like you can't be a licensed hemp processor and do it and create that product and call it hemp. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, processing hemp into CBD oil, I mean, you are at some point in the process also creating above 0.3 THC threshold. And then it sort of gets diluted again. But I don't know, I feel like a lot of this is is bordering on like semantics. So, you know, but I do believe in the separation of church and state when it comes to the hemp program. And the cannabis control board, I mean, they are they are apples and oranges. But I mean, I gotta keep I could talk for a long time about this. But are we you're you're just saying the hemp could potentially manufacture some of the Delta T Delta cannabinoids. But they would have to have us they would have to have us a different license than just that license, right? That's kind of what we're debating. Chris, that that that is a concern to jump in here. That is a question on the table. Should the control board regulate those other deltas in 910? But only only when they're above 0.3 THC threshold. Correct. Right. Yeah. It seems like it would be a conflict any other way. Sorry, that was an old hand. Yeah, I wonder whether the question is the right question because I think of this process as. Something like making ethanol out of corn. It's not, you know, at a time where all of New England is going to come online as a retail market. You know, from my point of view, one of the things that's going to really distinguish Vermont is what distinguishes our food as a product. It's natural. It is relatively unprocessed and it's glory and it's artisan based. And this is cheap THC. So the idea of product A, it is scary that we don't know all of the effects. I agree that we're going to be chasing chemical compound, you know, differentials over the years with things like this. But even more so, it's just not, you know, if I were to want to allow it to be produced, I would want to have it be labeled separately. Not in, you know, cannabis products that natural, you know, sort of stomped on cannabis is going to be used. And so to me, it really lowers, I think, the quality overall of what people, I would hope we're going to expect from Vermont's adult use market. Terry, can I dig in with you just a little bit? And maybe it's not the best time and place to do it. But, you know, if a Delta 8 product, if a Delta 8 product, you know, ended up on a, you know, like a candy aisle in a gas station in Vermont. You know, what would the consequence be? Is it really in a legal gray area right now? I think that has happened, I remember, that the Delta 8 cartridges were showing various gas stations. And yeah, they are intoxicating. It's similar to, it's similar to a lower percentage of the Delta 9 product. It's about 80%, I guess, is what I've heard. I've never experienced the effects of Delta 8 or 10. But yeah, they're essentially the same. It really does undercut the market that you're trying to establish to have this product available at unregulated retail locations. A lot of Vermont hemp growers did produce a lot of Delta 8 and that went to out-of-state markets where hemp is legal. And you know, it's a way around a regulated market, which I don't think we necessarily need to allow. So then I'm trying to wrap my head around what we actually have to report to the legislature. It says whether the board should permit hemp or CBD to be converted to Delta 9 and if so, how should it be regulated? I mean, should we say that it should be under our regulatory authority, but it's temporarily prohibited until we figure out how to regulate it? Is that kind of... You could, just to break in here, you could create another license category of hemp producers that the ultimate intent is for it to enter into the regulated market that you're setting up so that you're capturing a license and it's somehow controlling the production of hemp for ultimate production of THC. I mean, I'm just talking here. I don't necessarily have details, but that's a way of dealing with it. So it's not, because it's not a hemp, you know, it's not a part of the hemp program. I mean, I know people are growing hemp, but it's really the intended market is not a CBD market, for instance. And then, and Carrie did say something about, you know, a future state possibly, but it could be a new license category. I mean, that's one way of thinking of it or not allowing it at all. That could be the other answer, which Jim pointed out, just not permitting it. I like to chime in too, Stephanie. I agree with you. It's the Delta AIDS really not going into CBD products. It's going into these loophole products where you can order them online and get a psychoactive effect very similar to Delta 9. I've tried Delta 8. I haven't tried Delta 10, but Delta 8, you know, 10 milligrams of Delta 9 THC is significantly stronger. But if you take enough Delta 8, it's the exact same psychoactive effect as Delta 9 THC. I've got another just common question. So is Delta 8 naturally occurring or does it have to be manipulated? It's naturally occurring in very, very, very currently very small amounts from hemp land. Correct. I don't, uh, canvas land, not sure. Is it canvas and hemp? It isn't, okay. Yeah, but there's so in hemp that there's less of it, but if it's concentrated. Yeah. But for all intents and purposes here, it is a synthesized. That's what I understand is that the process to create it is converting the CBD to the Delta 8. It's cost prohibitive to try and concentrate the small amount that is actually naturally produced in the plant. So if we were going to try our best to regulate this, or at least maybe have a kind of temporary pause button on this, we could say that any, um, we could just have a product licensure process. And if the process is using a synthesized cannabinoid, then we could put a pause on that until we really figure out more about these products and what their effects are. I mean, yeah. And to answer the legislatures, oh, I'm sorry. Just a quick thought, um, you know, is putting a pause on this? Is that something that could potentially lead to a black market as an unintended consequence? Well, I think, yeah, I mean, any regulated, any like prohibited products, what would that be a black market for, for sure, an illicit market? I would suggest less so, um, because you need a lab to create Delta 8 or 10 ground CBD, and those folks want to mass produce the product and get it on gas station shelves. Right, they want to, this is the cheap THC at cheap pie. Um, if your folks looking to produce products for a black market are going to go for Delta 9, they're not going to go for some of the synthetic cannabinoids. And I wanted to add, James, you have two questions to answer. Um, one is should this be allowed? And I believe that's still up for debate. The other question is if it's allowed, should it fall under the hemp program or the CCB? And I think, um, Stephanie and I are, we haven't really said it out loud, but it isn't hemp. We've said to the public that these synthesized cannabinoids are not hemp and don't fall under the hemp program. So if it's allowed, it should fall under the cannabis control board because they are essentially intoxicating products. Um, I'm just trying to respect the time here. We have about two minutes left. Meg, did you want to have any input on this question? Um, to be honest, I'm not as familiar with these synthetic compounds, but you know, just kind of in hearing about it and knowing the little that I do know. I think whether pausing it or at least finding, I guess, some time to do some additional research and then finding a way to regulate, regulate those products that do think is key because they will just end up in the illicit market. Um, but to be honest, I'd have to do some more research and really get to know kind of what, what the process is behind making those products. Um, any other kind of concluding thoughts? I would just say, I think that we as a board, I think Julie and Kyle have enough input right now to answer these questions. There is one more, and what I would, what I think I'm going to do is kind of get the rough outline of our conversation into a report and then send it around to the full advisory committee for final input. You know, I don't think I'll call a meeting of everyone together, but I'll send it around so that people can have one last shot at kind of providing input. The last question that we have to answer for November 1st is kind of the future makeup and in charge of the marijuana for symptom relief oversight committee. Jim has led a very intensive process to make a recommendation on that. This is essentially the group of folks that oversees the medical program and makes recommendations for improvement to it. And Jim, I don't need to really go into the details of that report.  I think it's a much more robust process than we would be able to do here today. So I appreciate all the work on that. I don't know, there's anything you wanted to add just on that piece of our November report. No, I think you covered it. I mean, I feel really confident in the nature of the deliberative process that we went through. We did not have a board that was necessarily in lockstep with each other. We really did a lot of extensive debate on it and did our best to extend the amount of public input and public comments that we took on the document at the end. So I feel like it both represents both really sound compromised, but also a real positive movement for the Oversight Committee of the Future in terms of a make up that would be patient-based and patient-focused and really represent, you know, down to the low of common denominator. So the vote is done and we have approved recommendations and I think you captured it other than that. Yeah, that's great. Any last concluding comments from the subcommittee members? Exploratory subcommittee members? Okay. Well, again, we'll send, we'll try and push some of these out to you all for one last kind of input opportunity. And if you all are okay with it, we're going to need to call you back together again. We might wait a little while because we don't have to, our next reporting requirement isn't until January. The board has a few other things that we have to do in the, like more immediate in the interim. But I'll work with you all to schedule the follow-up meeting and we can deal with kind of delivery, on-site consumption, special event permitting and cooperative licenses and all the rest of the things we have to talk about for January. So, is there anyone from the public who would like to make a comment? Nope, there's not. Okay. Great. Well, in that case, I will adjourn this meeting. Thank you all for joining. Thanks for the input.


Thanks everybody for joining this session. This is going to be a panel discussion, so we welcome your questions. My name is David Boswell. I have a few questions to start with, but again, we hopefully will have time to take any of your questions that you have for our panelists. I'll introduce myself quickly. I am the Senior Director of Community Architecture at Hyperledger. I also am involved with Hyperledger's Climate Action and Accounting Special Interest Group. If you're not familiar with that group, you are certainly welcome to get involved. It is an open community effort to look at how do we take the blockchain technologies being developed by the community and apply them to climate-related use cases. If you go to wiki.hyperledger.org, there's a link to the Climate Action and Accounting Special Interest Group there. Again, you're welcome to get involved. You can sign up. They have a mailing list. You can subscribe to that list, introduce yourself, and you can get notified of upcoming meetings, and one of the upcoming meetings will feature our panelists who will be speaking more about the project they're involved with. That is coming up, I believe, on October 4th. So that will be a virtual meeting where you can dial in from anywhere. So if you're interested in about what you're learning today and you want to learn more, please join us for that as well. With that, let me start in and introduce our panelists. We have Nancy Norris, if you want to say a word about yourself. Hi, everyone. I'm Nancy Norris. Thanks for joining us today. I work for the government of British Columbia. My title is Senior Director of ESG and Digital Trust. The ministry that I work for is Energy, Minds, and Low-Carbon Innovation. For the last two years, we've been piloting this project that we're going to be speaking to you about today. It's called the Energy and Minds Digital Trust. Okay. We also have Kyle Robinson with us. Thanks. Hi, everyone. Kyle Robinson. I'm an independent consultant working on a contract right now with the provincial government, and I originally started out as a scrum master with the team and progressed and so now a Senior Strategic Advisor for the project. Okay. Well, thank you both. To start with, Nancy, can you just tell us some basics? Can you tell us about what the Energy and Minds Digital Trust project is? Sure. So this project is a culmination of two basic factors in British Columbia. So we have a fairly long-standing program around digital identity using open source technology, and it is for individual identity. We also have very strong climate legislation in BC. And so what we have done is apply this digital identity technology for individuals, and we're piloting it at the organizational level. What we're doing is mapping, in the use case that we're going to be talking to you about today, we are building on an existing regulatory process where companies, large emitters in BC, are required to submit their carbon emissions data to the government, and they're required to do so using verified, audited reporting. So we are mapping that process using digital credentials. Great. Kyle, can you share some more about the technology side of things? Why specifically is this project using digital trust technology for sustainability reporting? Right. So the big part of the emissions reporting that Nancy mentioned, regulatory reporting, we also have voluntary reporting involved in our use case, is the trust and the verification. So as it stands even today with the business process for carbon emission reporting, there's an auditor required to verify any emissions over 25,000 carbon CO2E. And so that is the existing process. It's written into legislation that needs to be verified. And so essentially the process right now is to email some PDFs around that have been signed. So we're taking the existing process and advancing that to use verifiable credential technology. The stack that we're using is actually on top of, as Nancy mentioned, the organizational identities that the BC government is using. So that's hyperledger Indy and hyperledger Aries with a non-creds credential types. And so that's again all around the organization and identity. The emissions reporting is an annual process and that's one of the pieces of their identity that they can share. Great. And so you mentioned the government of British Columbia. Where do they see the value in here in this project? So broadly the government of BC is interested and has been working quite extensively in digital identity for individuals. We see the value for industry in British Columbia because sustainability reporting is something that has been, is more and more prevalent and we see that it is only going to continue to be a demand on industries within BC. BC is a natural resource rich jurisdiction so our mining industries and others are a big part of our economy. And we want to test out the use of verified credentials in this space because we think and we've been finding over the course of this pilot that the use of these kind of credentials can actually add business efficiencies to existing processes. For example large emitters, as we've been saying, they are legislated to provide their emissions on an annual basis to the government. They can also use those reports for other type of sustainability reporting purposes like voluntary markets or investors, potential investors that are interested in ESG and sustainability or purchasers downstream who are interested in their performance. But at the moment the processes around that are really just what Kyle and I have found basically doing this pilot, the processes are really involved. So for big sophisticated companies they have whole sustainability departments who do this kind of reporting. For the small mines and operators they are missing out on big business opportunities because it's just too complicated for them to have to have to report in all of these different ways to all of these different audiences. So if we can help design a credential that can be shared with others within the digital ecosystem and also bits and pieces of that information can be shared with different audiences we see a lot of efficiency there. We also think that there's you know just for government in general there's a lot of opportunities to build trust and to work on scaling and interoperability of these technologies and this pilot is a way for us to learn more about the technology and to apply it to specific sectors. Great. To build on what you were just saying about how the current processes maybe don't work for everybody can you speak about how digital trust frameworks improve sustainability reporting? Sure. So the improvements I would say are around as I was saying before this ability to share the information in a trusted manner with multiple different audiences. There's also a efficiency angle in terms of being able to have multiple different credentials so not just the emissions credential that we're working on now this is the first use case that we've really been piloting but we're also looking to pilot other use cases such as the Mining Association of Canada has a toward sustainable mining protocol which covers off not just the environmental and climate performance of mines but also their work with the community how they their the governance of the of the mine as well and so we want to work with them in order to create a credential that is a verified credential for the TSM that would improve sustainability reporting for those mines because they could then share that credential with multiple different audiences including potentially the London Metals Exchange which is setting up a digital passport for sustainability so we think that there's a lot of opportunities here for taking efficiency and also to improve and open new business markets for them for the operators within the province. And going back to a question about that technology my understanding is you're using open source technology but you're also creating some technology as well can you speak about what you're developing and how does it fit in with the hyper ledger community? Sure thing so as mentioned we're using Indie and Aries as our base stack for this for this use case again it's a self-sovereign identity model where the credentials are informing the identity on the emissions reporting again that's an annual one so every year they will have a credential added to their wallet. One of the things that we're specifically using for Aries for the organizations is we're using Acapai and so we're actually looking at standing up a multi-tenant solution for the BC government to specifically use. That will actually be an instance of Acapai multi-tenant and we're building our team is specifically building a traction tenant UI so on your handouts you'll see a section on there about traction we have a GitHub repository to where that code base is it's right now we have a tenant UI for it so each different division or department or program in the government could use that a tenant to do any of the issuing or verifying or holding that they need to do for their business practices so and one of the partners that we're working closely with is the climate action secretariat and so they in this use case they are a verifier they'll be receiving proofs from these emissions the large companies that do the emissions so back to traction there's a tenant UI and we're just about to start building out what we call the innkeeper UI which is really an administrative tool for creating new tenants and assigning the keys out to those different divisions departments great and when we talk about building something blockchain the topic of governance always comes up can you speak to the governance side of things like how and why are you developing governance for this I'm just laughing because Kyle really leads the governance work and does an incredible job on it I one thing common I'll just make on governance is that even just in the time that I've been at this conference the point has come up that legislation and a lot of cases is starting to drive blockchain use cases and certainly we have found that in this pilot because British Columbia's climate legislation is long-standing we have the first climate or carbon tax in North America and we have a whole suite of other pieces of climate legislation that have been around for quite a while and are tested and that really provides this framework for the data that is developed and is being fed into the blockchain system so we've found that if the process already exists and it's a very robust process particularly one that's mapped out through legislation that you can build upon that and apply the technology in a way that's quite robust yes that's and so on the governance has become a very important part of our project the technology is also important but we're finding that the governance is maybe even more important so our journey there really a big shout out to Trust Over IP has been working with us we've been working with them on the governance side of this whole world that we're working in and so working on the documentation standards what the kind of things need to have governance associated to them all of the different pieces of an ecosystem need to have governance risk assessment done so those are all very important and we've been working on governance documentation we're very I would say early stages but very close to having actual governance suite of documentation put together on it's spec up is one of the actual tools that we're looking at using thanks to Stephen Curran and helping drive that forward but essentially the governance documentation location is on github repose as well and so that's the best sort of distributed not necessarily decentralized but at least as distributed location for governance documentation great one other question then we'll open it up to the audience is there anything else you'd like to add about how you were piloting both the technology and the governance yeah I would say another lesson that we've learned is that it's you know there's the technology there's the governance but then there's also this whole process around building an ecosystem of participants which is it's been a fascinating process because we you know we have some early adopters the pilot's been going on for a couple of years we put together a sort of an initial team of folks from the public private sector and NGOs and for them it was an easy step they were keen they were wanted to be a part of something innovative but when talking about this project to folks who aren't as versed in the technology maybe don't understand the benefits we've realized that we have to have a whole team that helps with communication and change management to assist us when we go and talk to new stakeholders who we think would be a great sort of part of a use case or building out the pilots but they they these are the education process to get them to a point where they're like where they're that sort of aha moment is for them that this could actually you know really build efficiencies for them create trust in their state ability reporting that wasn't there before that has been a big part of this and continues to be a big part of this pilot project so there's those three sort of main components the technology the governance and then the stakeholder relationships great thank you I think we have time for a few questions from the audience are people great let me yeah let me take the mic down you're called the energy and minds digital trust have you been thinking about any use cases to do a POC for energy side yes so we are in the process so this was sort of our MVP use case on the energy side we are piloting or we're going to start working on for the natural gas operators in BC the same piece of legislation it covers it doesn't matter what kind of operator you are if you emit above a certain level you have to report those emissions carbon emissions to the government so we are going to be doing very similarly an auditor in this case it's PWC we'll probably be using a different auditor as the issuer of the credential the holder of the credential will be the natural gas operator and then the verifier will be either CAS the the government of BC the climate action secretariat we're also just starting to develop a relationship with expansive which is a marketplace for digital fuels and the environmental attributes that are associated with responsibly produced natural gas and other types of energy very exciting work thanks for sharing so government don't do pilot for the sake of doing a pilot what are the exit condition to go in production and having something long live what is success okay so also a great question um on one of the panelists this morning was talking about that step from pilot to integration and uh Kyle and I looked at each other and went yep that's very true um so right now for our pilots um each of the actors within the pilot has a wallet and is able to do the exchange Kyle and his team have done an amazing job of deciding and helping to design the schema for the credential and making sure that it aligns with what's legislated what's required through legislation the next step and I think this it'll be a pivotal step to actually going to production is being able to integrate into the the databases of each of those actors um so that their system can actually populate the credential from the data uh within their own um IT system and then the holder can scrape that data into their um system and the same for the verifier of the credential um we are starting to uh think about you know ways in which we can assist with making that happen um for each of the the um actors within the existing use cases and I think that it's going to be um because you know as government we are only one actor within this ecosystem right like we're we're incubating it because uh we feel that um we're in a good position to bring together public private um users of the technology but uh we're only one actor within the system so uh we think that it's going to be at least another year or two of us being the the drivers I guess of this ecosystem in order to push it past the the pilot stage and actually get it integrated into the systems of of each of the users and then at a certain point it's like any ecosystem it's going to take on a life of its own and at that point you know the governance is going to be key you know whether the governance documentation and systems are in place so that it can expand in a way that's um maintains that same level of trust in the data that's being shared yeah just to add to that um there's you know sort of two main things that our team is really working on and one of them is that a government wide service uh for doing self sovereign identity and so uh our team is working hard on getting that uh code base ready the detraction uh component um and then we're going to work with the ministry of citizen services who will most likely host and run that in as a production service so you know we're talking with them they're very excited John Jordan is part of that I know a lot of you know John Jordan he wanted to be here um and so that's the one piece the other piece specific to the use case is I like to always say that for these kinds of trust triangles the value is with the verifier for the most part okay and so you can have a an issuer and a holder and if there's no verifier then you don't have your triangle it falls apart you can you can issue credentials to holders all day long and if they can't present them to anybody then there's nothing so um working backwards looking at the verifier in this case um the climate action secretariat for the regulatory reporting and then also the voluntary reporting uh piece with the open earth so we're working with them so focusing on the verifiers making sure that they are ready and you know sort of your typical it fashion you know doing change management training getting the server set up um and again the climate action secretariat would use that service you know which is that government wide uh piece so that's the technology piece um of course we also need to get the governance uh pieces organized I think we have time for one or two more questions does anybody have anything else they'd like to ask any questions if not questions did Kyle did you have some information you wanted to share so um the the other piece that I wanted to add is uh that we are working with the climate action and accounting special interest group with hyper ledger and so um we regularly attend those sessions and as David mentioned we're going to be presenting on October 4th I've also been a part of the standards group and so that's been an interesting journey for us uh because we you know there's the stakeholders that we're having to work with the issuer the holders and the verifiers but then there's also the actual credential the schema the standard itself you know what is the data that we're moving around and what's what standard is it can you use the same standard for voluntary reporting and regulatory reporting and so we um explored a number of ESG standards so TCFD um a number of those kinds of things and we talked to our issuer um in our example Pricewater host Cooper's to say okay well what kinds of things would you be able to issue and there's a few different things that they can actually issue the one very specific one that we're looking at is called a verification statement and that's the actual um legislated piece of uh dataset that needs to be part of that admissions reporting so our current standard we're limiting it to uh just what's written into legislation uh that verification statement but very easily that could be extended to use to have Pricewater host Cooper's just issue another credential to um in our use case Copper Mountain Mine or what are the large emitters so that they can have a number of credentials issued in the same process that they could use for different processes great yeah are there any I see a question there um you mentioned verifiers and how important verifiers in it in the community are one of the things I wondered in looking at your picture here is is are you getting much from Copper Mountain or the the the producers on where else they want to use the credentials and what other value they see for where they can use them in other scenarios are you seeing that at all yeah that's a great question um the short answer is yes uh and um particularly this credential um the carbon accounting credential there's uh from the interviews and the work that we're doing with Copper Mountain they see opportunities for uh like reputational gains by being able to share this with uh voluntary uh reporting um platforms um also um you know some of the larger uh folks that we're working with so tech mines um they do a ton of sustainability reporting and they get a lot of requests from investors and purchasers for this kind of information so they see value in being able to share it um with multiple different audiences okay and just to add to that on a on a technical front um one of the things that we're also seeing is these proofs um so in in the regulatory reporting there's an emissions report that needs to be done um and it's a lot more data than is provided by that third party verifier that third party verifier um price wire host coopers they verify a certain set of data um and you know let's say it's 10 attributes well they actually Copper Mountain needs to report to the government that information as verified data plus they need to self report another set of data and so there's a combination of credentials to be provided in a single proof um even self attested attributes so uh that's one of the things we're digging into uh now uh that yeah great first thanks again for the presentation and uh you mentioned a couple of times the importance the relevance of trust and verifications this might be the key issues in the development the successful development of this digital ecosystem uh I was just wondering if you could mention which have been so far the main barriers uh anyway in the development in the implementation of the projects thanks um yeah thanks so in terms of barriers um I think I would go back to um something I said earlier which is around uh the education piece for stakeholders that aren't um as you know they don't know as much about blockchain they don't understood they don't have any background with digital credentials um and so being able to explain the potential benefits to them um and also um being able to help them to see um what the what the benefits are for them specifically so being able to articulate the benefits like as a government and as the um leaders of the project we have an understanding of what the benefits are for us but also for a private sector business um for regulator uh for um like a voluntary reporting platform um the being able to articulate those benefits for each of those different types of actors has been a really important um way of making the bringing the pilot forward yeah just to add to that the one thing that comes to mind with your question around trust is actually looking at the trust registry mechanism that like climate action secretary it would need to um to have a set of trusted issuers so actually in legislation it's uh set out what the actual issuer needs to have as far as I can't remember the actual accreditation but the verifier needs but um that presumably could be uh put into a trust registry and so uh that also speaks back to the governance uh work that we're working on and how that is going to be documented the actual trust registry location uh we've also been having great conversations with indicio um on the actual um uh machine readable governance files that would be associated with the human readable governance files so that you could have a list of dids for your issuers let's say do you already have a proven value in terms of how much more efficient this kind of reporting is compared to the ss or old kind of reporting I would say um we've we have anecdotal uh evidence you know from all of the different folks that are in this use case when we talk to them about what we're doing and um have them participate they they say oh oh yeah okay we can see how this would be more efficient we can see how this would actually expand our opportunities to reach different markets um but this is a pilot so we are learning and um I think that the the long-term benefits will really hinge on adoption and um you know the whole uh next step around integrating and also the benefits around um the scale of the ecosystem because if there's only three actors within um the ecosystem that is not that's not going to be a benefit uh you have to have a much broader adoption um so I think that the scalability factor is uh is a really important one and it also sort of speaks back to the idea of having um good communications you know we have a a team of folks who who work on communications for us uh produced the the pamphlet that's in front of you uh that's a really been a really important factor for this pilot and I think uh we'll continue to be to be important so in the area where you're working energy in mines um clearly it sounds like compliance regulatory compliance is a major uh factor how are you finding the regulators reacting to what's their interest or or level of acceptance of this new way of a new form of reg tech so uh the in terms of regulators so the climate action secretary it is is a regulator uh they have a regulatory duty to um you know annually have these emissions reports um I would say that they're um they're very it's very important to them that we get the language correct um it's very important that we make sure that we're not uh talking about this project in a way or misrepresenting what we're doing like this is not uh what we're doing within this pilot isn't a replacement for the existing regulatory process it could build on that um and maybe be one way of down the road of the information being accepted by the climate action secretary it but that's that's down the road that's a future thing so I think um an important factor uh is is being able to take bite-sized chunks um you know being able to show that uh if you come along on this journey with us uh that uh it's not um you're not sort of signing on that you're going to be doing it you know they you're not impinging on a regulatory process but you are willing to explore that possibility down the road and just being able to really clearly articulate that to a regulator and um also showing them that uh you know when you talk to them about their existing processes and their existing regulation that that is then reflected back to them in the work that you produce I think that that has helped us gain trust that that we are we're doing what we said we were doing and no more and I think that that's going to be a really important factor in making sure that or having them continue to work with us on the pilot um to wrap up I had one other question I mean you mentioned about all the learning that you're doing in the pilot if there's anybody in the audience here or watching remotely who is thinking about adopting blockchain for a climate-related use case is there any guidance that you would give them is there anything that you would learn that you would think would apply to other similar related projects uh so what I would suggest for the the climate-related stuff is actually um attend the climate action and accounting SIG working group sessions um or the special interest group sessions um we meet every two weeks yeah yeah um and what you'll see in that special interest group is not just Indian Aries solutions for your carbon accounting use cases but fabric and other hyper ledger type of solutions but all in that realm of carbon accounting um so that that's a great place where I would suggest starting but certainly you can reach out to us or uh David um yeah great anything you want to share Nancy or great great I think we're right at time uh we may have time for one more question if there is one great I think we uh uh all right time so thank you Kyle thank you Nancy


I'm very fortunate. I feel very honored to be here to really save my soul and in the process save a couple of people around me. This is how it goes. This is what Allah tells us. And so our motive for doing anything is always really we're just trying to save ourselves and try to attain as best a place in the next life as we can. And this is the realities that we are unaware of just as the reality of making bigger because Allah says remember me and I will remember you. But we know in our Al-Qaeda that none of us are allowed to do anything except Allah allows us to be able to do that. And so what state should our heart be when we know that we've been chosen to make remembrance of Allah or what have any of us really done except for just a moment we plead to Allah. This is the request that we give when we intend to remember Allah and how many times have we intended to remember Allah and we have not been allowed to remember Allah. In fact how many times have we tried to remember Allah and find ourselves in the middle of a vicar session thinking about other than God and what an unfortunate place to be. And sometimes we intend to not remember God which is our Dunyaari affairs and we're forced to remember Allah. That's called problems in life. Most of which we're all familiar with aren't we? We're familiar with this in which when we have gone to knowingly we have gone to the world in some way. And then we say, we say, I hope you say that. There's other equivalents like, oh my gosh, it should be, oh my God, what's gosh? So it's really such a blessing for us to be here and to remember Allah and that's what these nights then become about. These nights become a moment in which we recognize that we are not even truly in control of our remembering of God. This is the whole remembering Allah process is really just acknowledging and recognizing how much we are as needy people, how little I am in control of my remembrance of God. Just that surrender to God to say, oh Allah, don't even turn me away from remembrance of you. Because if I turn away from the remembrance of you, where else am I going to go? Where else are we going to go if we're removed from this place? And that's why anytime we turn ourselves away from God, anytime we turn ourselves away from Allah, Allah brings us back. And then if we turn away again and then Allah brings us back. But if we keep turning away, there comes a point where Allah leaves us. And every one of us has experienced that, that's incredible isn't it? Every single one of us has experienced a moment where Allah brought us back and brought us back. We in our, you know, we can't even understand the audacity that we have with God.  To know that we at times turn away and Allah's bringing us back. So this is why the more the liquid we do, the more easier this becomes and the more peaceful this moment becomes. That's why that moment where we just say Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah. We keep saying Allah, Allah, Allah. Everything, the whole body, all of it starts to align in one direction. But other than that, you know, if we don't do that, we have one side. The heart wants to go to God but the mind wants to go to here or the mind wants to go to Allah. But the heart wants to go and, you know, make some money or text her back or whatever the affairs that we get involved in. And we find that the human being then starts to get stretched inwardly. One side wants to go here, one side wants to go there. And that eventually becomes a contradiction within because I know I was not made for Netflix. I know that. Knowing it while I pick up the remote and go, I know I'm going to have, you know what they call this? This is called a cacophony. This is called an ugly sound that's made within because the opposite of harmony. Harmony is like when things are in place, this is another word for other than for beauty. This is harmony. And so when everything aligns, that's why when you say Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah. Everything starts to align. You become a harmony within. That's where the peace arrives. Because finally everything is just in one place. But otherwise we turn away in one part saying this but the other part saying that and we're having this problem within. This is why it's so important we just continue to make vicar, continue to make vicar, continue to capitalise on these nights to make those changes that allow us to come back. And when we come back, ultimately we take our will back into willing what Allah SWT wills for us. And if we can want what Allah wants for us, that's when we arrive in that place beyond just saying Allah, Allah, Allah. But rather everything else we do is all aligned with that. So when I go to work or when I go here or when I go there, everything has in that place a complete direction to God. Because whether we like it or not, the body and everything is seeking Allah, Allah. This is why it's so profound. The more and more you become familiar, like Sidi was saying, you start to experience and you start to come to know how your body reacts to vicar. You know what happens to yourselves in that moment? You know, the whole body is, this is what it was made for, just to say Allah and to be in that place. Finally I'm doing what I was meant to do. But if we move away from it, we start to create an agitation. And that's what the whole modern world has become now.  So maybe we become people of peace. You know, one who makes peace, what that person is called? It's the one who submits aslamah, hipahuah, muslim.  Allah SWT allows us all to be people who as much vicar as we can do and upon our tongues. And so to the point where it becomes a very consciousness, a very being that we're constantly remembering Allah SWT. And that's how we're going to become those people of harmony and those people of complete peace. And those beacons of peace so strong that wherever they go, they bring about peace. You look at them and you feel peace. You know, that's the aim, inshaAllah, to become just the place of peace. What do they call that? Dhu-salaam. I'm in tawakkur-i jiraanim bi bi salami. Mazaj sadaam anjaram and muqlatin bi dami. This is just remembering the place of the people, the neighbors of the place of peace that now your tears mixed with blood are remembering those people. That's the level that you and I, inshaAllah, we can attain. We become neighbors of Dhu-salaam. We become neighbors of the place of peace. What a great place to be that when you get remembered, you rock the state that produces the Qasid-e-Burda. You rock that state. And everybody has Qasid-e-Burda in their own forms. So maybe be able to produce that, inshaAllah, by effort and effort and effort. Last ten days just go for gold. Is it a reward for excellence? Other than you get excellence back? Do you think you're not going to get gold back just by going that bit extra? Of course you're going to get it. Allah SWT was all to be able to achieve that state, inshaAllah, by His mercy. Barakalafiq Allah. Barakalafiq Allah.


Bingo, we're live, we're back for the, gee, the three o'clock rock here on ThinkTech. And right now we have Energy in America with Lou Puglio-Ace of E-Princk. He joins us by Skype from Washington, D.C. He is the CEO of E-Princk. Welcome back to the show, Lou. Lou, it's nice to be here. Go ahead. Yeah, we live at interesting times. It's not necessarily interesting in the good sense, but certainly interesting, as the Chinese say.  As I recall, that's where everything happens or used to happen. Now it happens at Trump Tower. Exactly. It's like the people's real lives. So tell us, what does the president elect offer here, and how is it going to change energy among other things? Yeah. I think, you know, there is a lot of discussion of what the Trump agenda is, and I, discerning it, is not easy. I will be the first to admit that. I do think, as we talked about this a little earlier, but one of the, you know, one of the main themes you're going to see is a, I'm just not quite sure how much of a rejection of climate, but you're going to see a great deal of what we would call environmental regulatory reform. And this regulatory reform is tied in a very political way to what we might call the working middle class, the declining incomes, a traditional democratic group, which you would argue in this election, Secretary Clinton did not connect with at the level she should have in a historic. And you know, one of the things, it's very important to point out that of all the governorships in the United States, only 15 now are controlled by Democrats, including Hawaii, of all the legislative seats held at the state level. The Democrats have lost about a thousand over the last eight years. So even though there's a lot of activity in Washington, I think there was a growing, at least political recognition that there was a disconnect from what the elite wanted to do in a lot of areas, including the environment. And what the perception was among, rightly are wrongly, but was the perception among a lot of what we might call the working middle class, you know, the people out there in so-called flyover country. So two things... Well, you know, what you say really resonates with me. It's not just that, you know, the group who voted for Trump arose during the campaign. There was a dissatisfaction going on for a long time, and these, you know, Democratic legislators, a thousand of them across the country, were, you know, were evaporating over a period of years. So when we start connecting the dots on this, what you get is a process that didn't start a year ago. It started many years ago, at least seven or eight anyway. I agree with that, and I do think there is a disconnect. And I want to show you this in a couple of examples. I think we can get a little bit more to climb it and to solar and what's going on there, what it means. I think it means a lot less than people worry about. But there are literally hundreds of issues underway now, and in fact, there's something called the Congressional Review Act. You'll watch it in January in which they will take a group of regulations that were promulgated after May 30th, and they can be rescinded by the Congress, and I think Trump will sound them into law. In fact, the basic debate in the Senate right now is they don't have enough time to rescind all the regulations they want to rescind. So they're fired up in this issue. But I thought it would be interesting to look at where some of this resentment might be coming from. The first one is, I don't know if you can get one of these graphs up or one of these pictures up, but the first one is CAFE standards. And CAFE standards are... Let's put the picture of the car up. Take a look at Steve McQueen. He was always a hero of mine. So corporate average fuel economy standards are standards which determine what the miles of gallon that auto manufacturers must pay, both in terms of the footprint and the fleet. And these jobs-producing cars are by auto workers, auto workers in the U.S. And there are lots of trade issues that Trump talks about. But one of the first things we're going to see is we're going through what's called a midterm review on the auto, which we'll reset. The question is, should we go to a higher standard after 2018? Trump, in my opinion, will not do so. Will not do so. He's going to hold the standards where they are today. And he's going to do that because of the disconnect between what the standards call for in terms of the fleet and what the customers, the potential purchase of the cars want to buy. And if that disconnect gets too high, there's stranded capital. And there's also loss of jobs, a real chance of the industry losing some jobs. Because the regulatory program is pushing the industry to produce a set of vehicles that the customers do not want to buy. And some people say, well, this terrible need to get these higher standards and everything. And so I have this picture here of Steve McQueen driving in the iconic film bullet, driving a 1968 Ford Mustang GT fastback. Which, by the way, if you listen to the film, which had a soundtrack, you'll hear a lot of double clutching. This was, in fact, not required since this was a four-speed. What? Macho, plenty macho. What's interesting about the 325 horsepower Mustang GT that he drove at that time, that car generated, spewed out, about one ton of criteria pollutants. That would be volcanic organic compounds, nitrogen oxide, volatile organic compounds. All these bad things led one ton over 100,000 miles. If you bought that car today, if you bought Steve McQueen's Mustang, but you got a 2016 model, it would generate 10 pounds over 100,000 miles. That's a small, tiny fraction. A small, tiny fraction. So this gets back to a central theme, what I call the law of diminishing returns. Yet, the regulators want to push this much further, right? And the auto guys are saying, what are you doing? The cars are pretty clean. Why do you want to go higher? Why do you want to impose a higher cost with such a low yield? Well, what's the higher, what are the detriments of going higher? The detriment of going higher is that you are spending a lot of money. And it depends what you've used a lot of money. If you talk to the auto companies, if you raise the cost of a car, four or five, $600, people leave the showroom. For a high roller like you, Jay, that's not a big deal. But for an average working man like me, that's a big deal, spending another $500, $600 for a car. And so it affects the total sales. And it's not really doing that much for the environment. We have some time, one of these times, we might talk about California, where the same thing is happening. The second decision I think Trump will make, and he will make this on the first day, is he will authorize the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. And I sent you a graphic on that as well. Yeah, let's take a look at that graphic now, too. Now, that project, if I were to give you a map of the North America, of where all the pipelines are, you would hardly be able to see the map. Because the country is just crisscrossed by pipelines. But in that particular project, I think, where even the president said, and you can see the one section there that's been constructed, that it really was a symbolic gesture, more than a real one, that project would have provided jobs for working middle class people, lots of them Hispanics, black Americans, the international laborers organization. And when I went to the last hearing of that event, held by the State Department, in the middle of the room, where all the people who came early, and these were mostly young millennials and beards and sandals and their mothers, and to the right side were all the laborers in orange jackets, who had jobs and they couldn't come in the middle of the night and get in line to be the first to speak. And I just was wondering, for the Democrats, this is their constituency. Yet they were dissing these guys in a fundamental way. And you may see all these protests about Keystone XL and all that, but even the president's own analysis said, well, it doesn't really affect oil sands production from Canada, because they can move it by rail, outrock or other things. So I do think this is part of the political disconnect, where we moved the discussion on environmental issues from a technocratic debate, a technological debate, to a political ideological debate. Yeah, yeah. And I believe that Democrats are paying a price for this. I mean, I think there are lots of things going on besides that. But I do think- Well, talk about coal. Is it the same process? So coal is quite interesting. For me, for coal is that most of the adjustment in coal is taking place because of the rapid expansion of very inexpensive natural gas. Now, politicians like to take credit for stuff. And I think this is another elite problem. They wanted to take credit for all the great environmental achievements. And I believe the Democrats might have done that to some excess instead of saying, you know, the market itself is driving us to a lower GHG emission profile, because we have this fracking and we have all this natural gas. And it's driving out coal. Now, maybe I would argue the regulatory program in the Clean Power Plan is probably accelerating it. But the Clean Power Plan is also, I would say, dead. Now, one interesting thing after we go through all this is to see what it really does to the emissions profile to the US. My guess is we're on a certain trajectory now. And if the government pulls out, it's not going to have a major effect. But we haven't done the research on that yet. That's an important question. Yeah, it's an important question. I guess your proposition is it's not some of the things that he has been promising and some of the Trump and some of the things that he is likely to do are not all that bad. No, not everything is easy. And so now, if we get to the issue of wind and solar, these are driven in part by so-called production tax credits, renewable portfolio standards. And the production tax credits are issued at the federal level. I suspect those credits will not. They're going to phase out over a period of the next four years, whether they will get axed earlier, I doubt it. And they are largely and the use of these renewables within the utility sector is really a state issue more than a federal issue at this point. And I don't see these plans retreating substantially. We do know that if you don't solve the battery problem, you do have problems with intermittent renewables at 15% to 20% of the grid. So I guess it's a question of degree. At some point, the cafe standards simply not economic. At some point, coal goes away. At some point, you know. It's slow.  The yield is too low, I think. You should allocate our environmental budget where we get the highest return. Not whatever hobby horse that sounds good. And this is actually really an elite problem because elites love electric cars. But some poor guys work in two jobs in East LA to mail the money to Sacramento, so wealthy Hollywood producer can buy an electric Tesla for $120,000, $30,000 rebate. This stuff is starting to come home. It's a subtle way. People don't really, they really can't put their finger on it, but they have a sense that there's a disconnect from their lives when they're having trouble making ends meet. You can never underestimate the importance of energy in our country and the world. And now you can never underestimate the connection of energy and politics. And I think we're going to see some very interesting changes here. And I guess there are two polarized camps on this, the environmental and, on the other hand, they call them the traditional energy people. And we're going to see this battled in the next few months, I think. Oh yeah, I think that's going to be, I mean, as they say, heads are exploding in Washington. Well, OK, that's Lou Pudirisi. He's the one with the funny University of Hawaii shirt. I guess they're wearing them all over Washington DC now. I do. And I think it's very nice that you put it on for our show. We're going to take a short break, Lou. When we come back, I'd like to talk about the decline of the solar installation industry in Hawaii and on the mainland. Why, what's happening and what will happen. We'll be right back with Lou Pudirisi. Aloha. My name is Carl Campania. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers, and Reformers. I hope you join us as we take a deep dive into biofuels in Hawaii over the coming weeks and the alternative fuel supply chains necessary for the local and global transition towards transportation fuel sustainability. We are going to invite in, and we will have significant interviews with various stakeholders, including our producers, which are our farmers and our scientists, our conversion technologies, including Tara Viva, who we'll see in two weeks, as well as our consumers. Within there, we're also going to have the investor groups necessary to make sure that this can advance. So I do hope you join us as we explore our deep dive into biofuels in Hawaii. OK, we're back. We're live with Energy in America, featuring Lou Pudirisi of E-Princk in Washington, DC, joins us by Skype. Now in this part of the show, as I mentioned, we're going to talk about the decline of the solar installation industry in Hawaii and on the mainland. It's been going down for some time. We've had regular stats on this from their building permit stats involving installation jobs from Marco Mangelsdorf. And you can also see a lot of these companies going out of business or going into some other business. Something dramatic has been happening in the solar industry, not only with local small companies, but with much larger ones. So Lou, what's going on? Why is this happening? Why is it happening nationally this way? And how serious is it? So solar is clearly an intermittent supply. In fact, you could argue that you might be able to place in some parts of West Texas and Midwest of the US wind, where you have a higher probability of lowering your intermittency. But the wind doesn't blow all the time. You can do research in fine places where it blows more than usual. But solar, we sort of know what its limitations are. It's when the sun is up. And we do know a couple of things. We know that when the utility grid itself, when the whole system to generate power, to deliver to families' homes and people's uses, when the intermittent supply gets anywhere from 15% to 18%, the cost structure begins to rise very rapidly. And I would say the grid can even become unstable. And this is not necessarily something that has to happen. If we had a way to store power, if we had a way to store power, and we could do it cheaply, and the cost of storing it and the cost of drawing it back from that storage facility will cheap, well, then the solar would be a fantastic thing. Well, I hear what you're saying, and that's really a provocative idea, that we having a problem now with solar installation, that whole industry, people are out of work. They're closing the doors and all. But if we had had, looking back retrospectively, if we had had cheap and high capacity storage systems, say five years ago, we wouldn't be having this conversation. It would have saved the solar industry. It would have avoided the decline. I think that's what you're saying, eh? Right, but the question was the government in Hawaii, and as well as the federal government, provided a set of subsidies and support, which actually resulted in very unbalanced problems. I mean, I think solar makes a lot of sense in Hawaii, but the question is, it is intermittent. It is by, it's very nature intermittent, and unless you solve that problem, and remember, I think the other problem is, of course, the people were permitted to sell power into the grid at average cost, when its marginal value, at certain times of the day, was put back into the grid for quite a long time. And so the, even the time of day pricing wasn't quite settled yet. And of course what happened is things got so unstable that HECO decided, well, not only are we not gonna let new customers sell to the grid, we're just not going to authorize the permission. And I think we talked about this before, the state budget of the state of Hawaii, I think at one time exceeded over $200 million in direct subsidies for solar installation. That's a lot of bread. You know, I remember that when we had a tax credit for technology here in the best part of the first decade of the new century, there was all kinds of resistance politically to the fact that we'd spent over 100 million on tax credits for the development of the tech industry. But that looks actually pretty small compared to what we have spent and what we could spend on solar tax credits. Yeah, and on these things, if you're going to do this, you just have to make sure, you know, the juice is worth the squeeze. And I might get, the payout, once again, the payout is just not there. It's just not there. That money would have been some, I think you want to have a vibrant solar industry, but there would have been much better off if they organized the subsidy program at a more slower pace to allow it to build out, you know, concurrently, but storage technology. Yes, yes, and support the development of the storage technology as part of these projects. But you know, it seems to me that when oil went down, not that many years ago, how long has it been, two years maybe, maybe three, oil went down so dramatically, that changed the spreadsheets. And when the solar installers would approach the homeowner, the whole transaction would be based on the appeal of those spreadsheets. Look at how much money you're going to save. Here's a dollars and cents, it's real, you can touch it, you can take it to the bank. And that just didn't come true. So, you know, the spreadsheets got thinner and thinner and are pretty thin now, and it's harder to sell. And the low-hanging fruit customers have already been sold. So, it's a real struggle for them. Yeah, I mean, there could have been ways, I think that there could have been ways in which the utility, depending on how it was managed, in which it could have engaged in very selective long-term deals, but they would have to distribute the solar in the right spots on the grid. It requires a lot of planning, unless they say central planning. Utility is a managed system. And unless you manage the whole network, you're going to get a lot of imbalances. Yeah, so where's it going to go, Lou? I mean, right now we are at a low point and I'd say that it feels almost long-term because some of the companies that were making a lot of money before doing a lot of installations are gone. Some of the expert installers are in other businesses, other trades, and people are generally discouraged about it. And I think they probably feel to go back to the first part of our conversation. It's the federal government's not excited about renewables anyway these days, or won't be starting January 21st. So, this is not a good time for the, so what's going to happen? I mean, solar is the backbone and development of renewable energy in Hawaii and probably the mainland. It's where the action is in terms of moving to those 100% goals. Sounds like those 100% goals are more difficult now. So let me tell you a story. Last week I went to a presentation at the Italian Embassy and a guy was there from SNAM. SNAM is the main infrastructure, monster infrastructure company in Europe based in Italy. And he threw up a final slide to his presentation and he said, you know, it's quite interesting. The European Union wants to electrify the continent, right? We've got electric cars and a lot of renewables. And the cost of electrifying the European continent by, I mean electrifying in a renewable sense, by 2040 was 250 billion euros. Yet, for a fraction of that cost, he could hook up gas throughout the European continent. And get virtually the same reduction in climate. That's not Russian gas, is it? Russian gas is slightly unpredictable these days. Yes, but they would be relying on Eastern Mediterranean gas and Azeri gas and USLG. So I do think that you have to have as broad a possible set of alternatives. If you commit to a single strategy, if you don't have something which is robust against uncertainty and you don't think about this uncertainty in a fundamental way, you're gonna get into a lot of trouble. Yeah, we haven't really come to terms yet with this. So what's your advice? Two people need advice on this. One is the president elect needs advice. Congress needs advice. And I, the homeowner, need advice. For that matter, you know, the regulators in Hawaii need advice. What advice would you give on how to deal with all the change we're having? Well, I do think that the, you know, they have to ask themselves, why are you doing this? If you're doing the solar to cut your utility bill, and it's not cutting your utility bill because it's fundamentally a costly process to produce power. And remember, power is not just the instantaneous part. It's the capacity to deliver it instantaneously across the entire day-night cycle. If, in fact, your strategy has a huge risk profile that spikes the cost, well, it's probably not a good strategy. And you have to go back and look at, okay, until we get some ways to store power, we're gonna need cost-effective dispatchable power. And cost-effective dispatchable power is by its nature not intermittent. I mean, it's unfortunate. I understand the problem people have, but... Well, that takes me to a show we had last week with a scientist from University of Hawaii School of Ocean Earth Science. He's into marine engineering.  In fact, in many ways, he's the father of OTEC here. His name is Hans Krock. And he's been teaching people all around the Pacific Rim about OTEC for a long time. And they're taking it more seriously in places outside of Hawaii than inside. But where do you feel OTEC can go? And I realize it's something you can only do on the coasts and near the ocean, and maybe on platforms in the ocean, and maybe only by using hydrogen as a method of storage. But what do you think? Where does it fit? Because it is dispatchable, completely dispatchable. It's constant. It has very little negative effect on the environment. Where does that fit in your picture of renewables going forward? I think it's a great idea. The question is, what does it cost? Can he deliver OTEC at 30 cents a kilowatt hour in Hawaii day in, day out? And what does it take? As we've talked about many times, inexhaustible does not mean inexpensive. If OTEC delivers, and if the environmental benefit, it's clearly does not generate energy emissions. But even if it has to, we have to kind of look at the numbers, as we've said. In God we trust, everybody else has to believe it. It always comes back to that, doesn't it? We're talking about a micro-macro-economic analysis, and we'll continue that as we go forward. This is Energy in America, always studying the larger picture, the macro-energy economic picture with Lou Pulirisi of EPRINC, who joins us regularly every two weeks on Skype from Washington, DC. Thank you so much, Lou, looking forward to our next time together. Thank you, Jay. That was a great thing. Aloha. Aloha.


What's up everybody, it's JC here for jasperjasecasebreaks.com 2020 panini prism draft hobby football One box break two random packs each number two just sold out as you can see number three is also sold out guys I'll be coming up a little bit later But I just want to show you guys the item description page again same break is number one six total spots Everybody gets two packs of red blood for them. So this box has 12 packs We will number all 12 packs from the box and randomize the numbers and the names Whatever number you match up with is what pack you get and again You can find some exclusive low numbered autographs including red and black snakeskin autographs as well So before we start the dice roll on the customer names and the numbers let's quickly open up the box Let's number these packs really quick one through 12 two So let it take pack numbers one through 12 Let's switch scenes to randomize customer names in the numbers and Just three two and a one three times. Good luck one Two Joshua all the way down to Jason. All right three times one two 12 down to three So Josh we have 12 10 11 8 9 1 6 4 Jason with 7 Josh with 2 5 and Jason with 3 So let's alphabetize it and Jason you'll go first pack 7 and 3 and Then the rest will be all yours Josh Copy these labels I Jason you have 7 and 3 7 pack 3 Good luck Yeah, Matthew. There is you want to go to the show notes and copy and paste it right now too as well We are on here right now Cooper Jacob Eason T Higgins over in a tour talk All right cool. Yo And the rest is all yours Josh All of them all of them Here you go awesome Echler You know Benjamin crusade The work people Samuel Steven won't as No problem Todd Zach Moss silver Yeah, when I get to it for sure man and Jacob nip Who look at that little snakeskin UNC Austin Echler and Henry rugs Jordan love I will not forget your play. I will not I Might remember though right on the break if I don't do it, but I'll do it right now, buddy Jake Green Jimmy G. Michael Piven Jr. Kyle Murray green CD Lam silver grand Delford silver And the lap pack JK Dobbins That's all pennies leave all these for you And there you go guys just like that. This was number two Coming up next is optic blasters 1819 five box break I believe and then we'll do the tri-star plus the hip-packs then we'll do the optic Football Optic football mixer of optic pack break to unlock spots in the mixer Then we'll do hybrid and then by then guys. I'll have a little dinner break at 730 So there you go appreciate a guy jasky's case breaks.com


Hey guys week 3 of internship has come to an end and we have seen God do something amazing things And I believe that every single intern has grown one of the main focuses here at internship is prayer So every single morning Monday through Friday We have morning prayer where the interns come and we spend devotional time and we fellowship with the Holy Spirit on Friday nights and Sunday mornings would come together with the church and we corporately pray for our vision of thousands locally and millions We intercede for the lost souls. Thank you for tuning in and remember the best is yet to come