All right, welcome to the 2022 Congressional Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Policy Forum. I'm Dan Bresset with the Environmental and Energy Studies Institute, and it's really nice to see everybody in person. This is the first in-person panel that we've done since February 2020, and it's really nice to be back up here on the Hill. Couple quick things before we get into the panel. The first is there's a lot of materials out on the front desk, including speaker bios and things like that. We're going to move pretty quickly, so if you'd like to learn more about our speakers or any of the topics, check out the desk. You can also visit us online at www.eesi.org. Also encourage everyone. We want you to pay attention to our speakers, but we also encourage you to take part in the online conversation on social media. You can follow us on Twitter at EESI online, you can send us emails at ask at EESI.org. We have four fabulous panelists, and they will be, we have a quick schedule adjustment, but for the most part we're going to have a great discussion. If you have questions in the audience today, the in-person audience, we're in the Dirks Incended Office building for the panel itself. There are some index cards, and you can make them available to my colleague Savannah up here. There are some pens as well. Just make sure you get your questions in the next 20 or so minutes over to Savannah. If you're in our online audience, you can follow us on Twitter at EESI online. You can send us an email ask at EESI.org. That's ASK at EESI.org. Send in your questions that way, and they'll come in and we'll feed them into the conversation. So today is a four-part panel. This year is our policy forum. We're going to be focusing a lot on the infrastructure bill, Infrastructure and Jobs Act. It was signed into law last November past Congress on a bipartisan basis. This panel is going to be talking about energy system modernization. Our second panel at 2 o'clock is going to be about buildings and workforce. Our panel at 3 o'clock is going to be about the transportation investments provided by IJA. And then our 4 o'clock panel is going to be looking at energy security and national security and some of the implications of the infrastructure bill for that. So we have a lot. And in between our panels, we have special guests joining us by pre-recorded video remarks. Our honorary co-chairs, Senators Reid, Crapo, Van Hollen, and Representative Kind will be joining us on the video screen. So without any further ado, let's kick off our first panel. We're going to make a quick scheduling adjustment. My friend, Kelly, has to have a 130. And so we're going to let her go first. And I'm going to ask her some follow-up questions. And then we'll proceed with the rest of the panel. We'll hear from Malcolm, Joy, and Bill. So sorry about the schedule adjustment, but Kelly, it's so nice to see you in person. I'm really looking forward to your remarks today.  Thanks, Dan. And thank you to my fellow panelists for your flexibility. I'm so sorry that I have to hop off. And thanks for inviting me to your very first since February 2020. I think I might have been here in 2020 with you. It could have been at all at the business camp. At any rate, I'm really excited to share with you all some of the important work the Department of Energy is doing to implement the President Biden's bipartisan infrastructure law. We call it Bill inside of DOE. We really recognize our critical role in the Biden-Harris' climate agenda, which is charged with delivering transformative benefits to American families, workers, businesses, and communities. So through the bill, or through the bipartisan infrastructure law, President Biden has invested $62 billion in the Department of Energy. That's with a B. It's a lot. It's the greatest climate investment, as we see it, in our nation's history. It's also the biggest investment to the Department since our founding. It stands up 60 entirely new programs, and it expands 12 existing ones. Put another way, in the next five years, we're going to have more than triple our annual funding for energy-related programs. It's once-in-a-generation opportunity to invest in our nation's infrastructure, and it goes way beyond R&D, which is a theme that you'll hear from the Department of Energy if you haven't already. What this is doing, it's creating really good-paying jobs. It's combating climate change, of course, and it's going to grow the economy sustainably and equitably for decades to come, as we see it. It is so big that we are literally restructuring the Department around it with a brand-new energy undersecretary for infrastructure. We got to work implementing right away. In the first couple of months, we opened a joint DOE and Department of Transportation office for EV-charging infrastructure. We launched a new Office of Clean Energy demonstrations. We kicked off our Building a Better Grid initiative, which is aimed at engaging stakeholders around the build-up of new transmission lines. We began recruiting 1,000 new staffers to form our Clean Energy Corps to help manage all this work. For those of you in federal government, you know what a feat that is. Progress so far, we did establish that Office of Infrastructure, which manages, for the most part, somewhere around $50 billion. We have about $16 billion that is managed out of the EERE office, which I lead. Our focus really is on expanding and improving and securing the nation's electricity grid, enhancing clean energy manufacturing supply chains, doing the research, development, and demonstrations for hydrogen, carbon capture, energy storage, and EV supply chains, and having greater collaboration with our stakeholders, with federal agencies, with state and local governments, with nonprofits and tribal nations. In the nine months since the bill passed, we have made substantial progress, in my opinion, on soliciting feedback from stakeholders. That's one thing you'll see about the way we do our business these days, is really making sure that it is locally placed information to draw, to build out our programs. We have set the stage for a number of programs based on that input that we've had, and we've already made available about $13 billion worth of bill funding, with more to come this summer and this fall. So of the 60 new DOE programs, almost half of those have already issued requests for information, which have, again, yielded thousands of pages of feedback, so we can design these programs over the next five years, all the more effectively. There's more funding coming out of DOE right now than ever before, and I think I speak for all of my colleagues when I say just how excited we are to help Americans reap the benefits of these resources. You can visit the DOE bill webpage at energy.gov slash BIL, where you can track the newest announcements and such, but I do want to give a couple of examples, if you don't mind, of some of the programs that we're working on. In the EERE, we have three pillars. We've got the renewable power, we've got efficiency, and we've got sustainable transportation. So in the renewable power one, we launched in May the Interconnection Innovation Exchange, or I2X, which is a new partnership that was funded through BIL, focused on grid operators, utilities, state and tribal governments, clean energy developers, and energy justice organizations, other stakeholders as well. But really, this is to connect more clean energy to America's power grid by solving challenges facing the power industry. That includes a lack of data, a shortage of human resources, and more complicated grid impact assessments. That's what this I2X program is laid out to do. Organizing this grid is going to help us to address not only the technical challenges, but also the community challenges around transportation build out, around making sure that we have resilience with the onset of more and more renewable power, of making sure that we're doing this is efficiently and effectively as possible. I think that's all I'll say about that one. On the sustainable transportation mode, I mentioned a little bit earlier the joint office of Department of Transportation with DOE, but also last month we released a notice of intent to fund a $8 billion program to develop regional clean hydrogen hubs or H2 hubs across America. These hubs are going to create a network of hydrogen producers, consumers, and local connective infrastructure to be able to accelerate the use of hydrogen as a clean energy carrier and really to establish market uplift for this. The production, the processing, the delivery of storage and storage of the clean hydrogen, including innovative issues, uses in the industrial sector is really critical for DOE's strategy to achieve the goal of 100% clean grid by 2035 and net zero carbon emissions economy wide by 2050. My last example, and then I'll stop, is just last week that the department announced our intent to provide $225 million to state and local governments to expand the implementation of the latest building energy codes. That's not just standard building energy codes. We're talking about net zero codes. We're talking about stretch codes. We're talking about building performance standards. We're really going forward in leaning forward into the decarbonization of buildings as a key strategy. Those are a few examples. I appreciate your time and I'll see you at the floor. Thanks, Kelly. That's great. I really appreciate that. I love building codes, so it's always a great place to end. I have a question for you, and this is a question that I'm also going to ask our panelists a little bit later, but I'd like to get your perspective on it. From where you sit at EERE, what's your vision for the energy system of 2030? We talk about 2030 in the context of goals and emissions reductions, but what's your vision for the energy system, and where do we have the most catching up to do in order for us to realize your vision for the energy system? Oh, my God. I said I had to leave at 130. Vision for 2030. If you don't mind, I'll take it out even a little bit further, because just so you all understand where I'm coming from, the urgency of our work, 2030 is only eight years, and there's a lot to do to decarbonize our economy by 2050. So a few 2030 goals that we have, like, for example, we're looking at 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. That's going to take a lot of work, and we're starting it now, a whole-of-government approach. But I'll step back out into what the president laid out for the vision and how DOE and EERE will be contributing in that we see a fully clean grid by 2035. We've already built our strategies out for how we'll get there with solar and wind, but not just those, also with energy storage, with geothermal at scale, with a number of different technologies and also modernizing transmission. Out to 2050, I would say our goals in the vision is a decarbonized economy, and that's across the five sectors that are the biggest contributors. So the grid by 2035 industry, especially those hard to decarbonize industries that you can't electrify everything. You've got to think of biofuels and all the technologies, and energy efficiency, and carbon capture use in storage. The third is decarbonization of our transportation sector, and that's not just cars. It's road, rail, sea, and air, including heavy duty trucks for long distance, which will need hydrogen. The fourth would be decarbonization of our buildings, using building codes as a baseline and then building other technologies and grid interactivity into that. And I would say the fifth is decarbonization of our agricultural sector, and we work very closely with the U.S. Department of Agriculture on how we can do that, not just with electrifying some of the farm equipment, but also how can we help them to do things more efficiently? How can we coordinate and cooperate? For example, I was just out in Colorado visiting an agrivoltaic farm, which was super cool, and the lettuce was huge and really good. But how do we combine, for the betterment of these farmers, how they can use their agriculture and have solar and make more money and actually be able to sustain their farms? How do we help people in the end, I think? So that's kind of the vision, is getting ourselves decarbonized, but doing it in a way that's going to be impactful for people. So as we're thinking about realizing that vision, if you could isolate maybe one or two examples of our audience of where we have the most catching up to do. Would you say it's industry? Is it agriculture? Where should we be really focusing our resources to really make the big difference soonest? Oh gosh. Well, the good news here is that the technologies that are required many of them are here in hand. Many of the technologies that we have already, solar, wind, are cost competitive and able to be deployed. And that's why the Department of Energy has expanded its work to not only include early R&D, but how do we develop programs that will help the market to uplift and help others to be able to deploy? So we have programs like the I2X program. We have the solar app where we've taken, for example, for residential applications for permitting, down from about 12 days to get a permit to instant. It's zero. So we can get that much solar on the grid that much faster. Things that impact the way that we go about our everyday business at the local level are really, I think, where we can get the biggest bang for our buck as we're continuing to work on some of the earlier R&D technologies like paraff skites, for example. Well, thank you, Kelly. And we understand you have another commitment. So we'll excuse you to your rest of your business of getting us on track for Clean Energy 2030, 2035, 2050. Thank you so much. It's great to see you. And good luck. Appreciate it. Thank you. Call me in Annapolis. So that brings us to our second panelist. This is Malcolm Wolfe, President and CEO of the National Hydro Power Association. Malcolm, it's great to see you. There we go. Hi, everyone. Good afternoon. Good to see you, Dan. Thanks for inviting me. Pleasure to be here with my fellow panelists. And I really love the focus of this year's session on infrastructure. It obviously, the big legislation last year is transformative and it fits well with the priorities for the National Hydro Power Association. We really think of hydropower and just let me step back. The National Hydro Power Association represents all forms of water power. So it's traditional hydropower, run of river, pump storage, wave energy, tidal energy, all sorts of really cool marine energy technologies as well. And we really see them as forever assets, forever infrastructure. When you build these facilities, they don't last 10 years or 20 years. I have visited probably a dozen facilities that were built 100 years ago and they're still providing reliable clean power now, which is amazing. I mean, some of these facilities were built by Thomas Edison and they're still generating cost effectively today. So it's an amazing resource. I want to leave you to say, oh, no, I only have five minutes with two takeaways. Here are my two takeaways. First, hydropower and pump storage are an essential part of a reliable clean energy grid, even though it's often overlooked. And my second takeaway is that we really need parity and federal support. Otherwise, the technology that we're taking for granted now is going to disappear. So let me dive into each of those two real quickly. Hydro Power is an essential part of a reliable clean energy grid. It's right now, it's a dispatchable clean energy resource. We provide power to about 30 million Americans. Overall, it's about 7% of U.S. electricity generation, but almost 40% of U.S. renewable power generation. So 40% of renewable power generation, but I'm going to have to, I was tempted to kick Kelly under the table as she was speaking about her vision for 2030. She mentioned, I think she mentioned almost every technology, geothermal and others and overlooked hydropower, even though I was sitting right next to her. So that's one of our challenges is we're just taken for granted. Most of the modeling that you see just assumes that the hydropower that's there is going to continue. And unfortunately that's not the case. Let me share just three reasons why I think we're essential. First of all, it's about 100 gigawatts of clean, largely dispatchable power, 80 gigawatts of traditional hydropower, and over 20 gigawatts of pump storage. So secondly, we view it as a force multiplier, particularly as the grid gets increasing amounts of variable resources, wind, solar, etc. You need to firm up those resources for when the sun goes down almost every night. So in the evening we're going to need to have power. Batteries, fantastic technology, love them. I'm an EV enthusiast, but they're really cost effective under four hours. There are times when you need long duration energy storage. It may be overcast for several days or a week, and you need long duration energy storage. Pump storage provides over 90% of the U.S. electricity storage, which is a giant water battery, and yet we're largely overlooked. So we really do view it as essential to a reliable system and a cleaner system. And we overlook it to our peril, which is my second point. We really need parity in federal support. And a couple ways. First of all, the number of voluntary license surrenders has been increasing. Most of these facilities fortunately have been small, but in the 2010s we had 41 facilities choose to voluntarily surrender their license. They get these licenses for 50 years. Once you have them, they're producing power, the water doesn't cost anything. So it's relatively easy to keep them operating. To give up your license once it's already built is a really big deal. We had 41 facilities give it up in the 2010s. We've had another 17 in just the last two years. So something is happening. The economics are changing. The cost of license renewals are just not, the industry is not willing to do it, which becomes really dangerous when you realize that half the non-federal fleet is up for relicensing by 2035, which feels like a long way away, except the licensing process often takes that long. On average, it's eight years, with many facilities taking well over a decade. So the wave of relicensing in this nation is starting now. And the economics are such that every other technology is getting some form of support, and it's very difficult to get financing to go through the uncertain relicensing process. So the specific things we've done, we've worked with the environmental community and the tribal community, American rivers and a number of tribes around the country. We've put together an uncommon dialogue. It's taken us years, but we've jointly put together what we hope is a bipartisan package for support on the federal tax side, as well as license reform support. And those two issues, kind of parity on the federal support on the tax side and reform of the licensing form would make a huge difference for the industry. So I will wrap it up there and look forward to the discussion. Thanks, Malcolm. Really appreciate that. Our next panelist is Joy Ditto. Joy is president and chief executive officer of American Public Power Association. Hi, Joy. Hi, thank you, Dan, for having me and thanks for hosting this in person again after several years. So I will start by saying, so I'm the only panelist representing actual utilities in this group and as opposed to sort of resources or the federal government. So I bring a perspective but certainly support everything Malcolm already said about hydropower. It's a key part of our mix in public power. So what is public power? Public power is not-for-profit, community-owned utilities that have been around in many cases over 100 years as well. They are in 49 states, all but Hawaii, unfortunately, five territories, and there are 2,000 publicly-owned utilities nationwide. So it's again, publicly-owned, not-for-profit. Many of those are very small utilities with communities of 10,000 people or fewer, but many are also, we have a handful of very large cities such as San Antonio, Austin, Los Angeles, Sacramento. So really, we came into being many years ago when the private sector was unwilling or unable to provide communities electric service when those communities wanted it, very similar to what we see in broadband today. So it's more expensive to produce infrastructure in smaller density areas or in small communities and the profit wasn't there initially. We are about 15% of the mix now, current times, and that means we provide electricity to 50 million 50 million Americans. Last time I checked, the entire country of Canada was about 37 million people. So we're still a pretty significant part of the mix. So in terms of- I'm going to focus my remarks on the IIJA, and I'm sorry, I know that wasn't what Kelly mentioned it, the BIL I think is what she said, but we call it the IIJA still. So the IIJA is a huge opportunity for public power, and I would venture to say the entire sector, and would really agree with Kelly's remarks, the Assistant Secretary's remarks about that, and glad to- we know that DOE has really been staffing up and creating a different structure to help get these funds out the door, create some of these new programs. But it really does help public power utilities in many cases, very small electric utilities that sometimes only have 10 employees or fewer working on these things to really build on what they've already done and to meet these clean energy needs and to address climate change. And there is however some concern over some of these- with some of these smaller entities about how they may manage even accessing some of these funds because of they are small businesses basically. So a lot of our focus now is just enabling our members to interface with the federal government, giving them resources to access the funds as they become available. Also to make sure that as funds become available, we are eligible. We worked really hard as you all were considering the legislation in the first place to define public power, which is oftentimes hard, even though we're affiliated with municipalities. In some cases we look more like a rural electric cooperative, county-wide. So we have to define ourselves very specifically. So we want to make sure those definitions hold as funds are made available and not some of our work that we do at APPA as well. But one of the nice things about being smaller is that you can really deploy resources. We're very tied to what our community needs are. We can be very nimble and we can deploy resources that have an immediate impact on the communities that we serve. We've already done that with solar, with smaller wind, with what we call community solar actually, which is kind of like a community pool. We've done this already, but now as we accept some of these funds, we can be even more innovative. We can take advantage of newer technologies or build on those existing technologies to really meet the needs of our communities. And we look forward to doing that. So I'll stop there. I know we're going to get into some of the details, but just want to give you a little bit of that purview. Thank you. Thank you, Joy. That was a great presentation. Our fourth panelist is Bill Parsons. Bill is Vice President for Federal and State Affairs at American Clean Power Association. And thank you. And good to be here with you all. It's a bit of a homecoming for me. I actually, I was a staffer for 14 years, during which time I staffed the House for Noble Energy and Energy Efficiency, caucus. And so it's fun to be back here in this forum with my colleagues. Let me in that regard also, I know Senator Crapo's office, Senator Reed's office, Congressman Kine's office, and others have put a lot of work into this event. Let me thank them for that. American Clean Power Association, if I hope some of you have received an email from me from time to time, now we get to, we're in person, we get to meet each other, which is nice. We're the unified voice of the utility scale Clean Power Industry. I'll define it because it's important to use or to understand. I'm talking about onshore wind, offshore wind, utility scale solar, the transmission to get resource to load, and increasingly green hydrogen. Our members, and I'd always correct largely, our members are largely developers. They kind of build and operate well over 80% of the utility scale power, Clean Power in the United States. We do have some utilities though. And increasingly utilities are getting in the game of renewable development and owner and operatorship. Okay, so having set the table like that, I want there are sort of four kind of key things about the bill or IJA that I want to leave you with this afternoon. The first is transmission. And the most important thing I'm going to say about transmission actually is not money. The IJA contained backstop siting authority for transmission. I want you if you would go back in time with me to the Eisenhower era, the 1950s, or before when we didn't have an interstate highway system. And what the country looked like and how commerce flowed or didn't, and what needed to happen in order, and what we take for granted today in terms of I've got a daughter who goes to college in Minnesota. I live in Maryland. I can get there pretty quickly. That's because the nation made an investment in interstate highways. And when I say investment, I mean they were willing to pay for it. And they were willing to permit and cite it. Okay, we're having difficulty with that today. Today's transmission system started as Malcolm knows with hydro. We're going back to the New Deal era, went through connecting coal to the grid in the 50s and 60s. We're now building a clean energy grid in this century. And we're going to need to connect resource to load. Those resources are not necessarily where the old facilities have been. The estimates are we're going to need to have a 60% increase in high capacity transmission. Those are the interstate highway lines of the grid. And that's going to cost an excess of $300 billion as a public private capital investment. So I ask you to keep that in mind. If you or your boss are interested in kind of leaning forward as it relates to the clean energy transition, especially as it relates to the power grid, we can build all the generation we want. We need to connect that generation from where it's produced to where it's going to be consumed. That's going to require some more transmission in addition to grid reliability, which obviously in recent times we've had a lot of experience with the shortcomings in that area. So transmission, one is a backstop siding authority. The second is some funding in the transmission facilitation program, which will be helpful. There are other things Congress can do, but I want to plant a seed. Transmission is going to be really important to the clean energy future we're trying to build. Okay, that's thing one. Thing two, energy storage has been mentioned. And we're for all technologies, pumped hydro, including there's a big, there's about $7 billion in the IHA for supply chain as it relates to energy storage. This is particularly important as it relates to lithium and building that out. This is something I detect a great deal of bipartisan interest in, that if we're going to have these technologies, we want to be able to source as much of it as possible in the United States. I think it's unrealistic to think, and we don't hold very many other industries to a standard of 100% sourcing domestically, but we can and should have more. And that would be healthy for jobs, healthy for security of supply chains and the industries for square for it. Hydrogen, Kelly had mentioned hydrogen hubs. The law requires a minimum of four. We think they ought to go big. We think they ought to go 10. Also, we think it's important to have a life cycle analysis in terms of how we are defining clean hydrogen. I will just say that for people who are just getting into hydrogen, a lot of interest in my member companies in hydrogen, two ways to make it today, methane reformation, so natural gas or electrolysis, where you use an electrolyzer turning water, splitting the hydrogen atom from water. My member companies are interested in the latter, and I'd encourage people to look into the differences in terms of the emissions profile of each. Obviously to the degree that we're curtailing renewable resources today because the capacity at the time is exceeding what the demand is on the grid, you can store that or you can use it to make hydrogen in the future, which has a lot of energy use cases. Lastly, I want a particular shout out for any members if your bosses are on the Commerce Committee or the authorizers for the NDAA. There is a provision, it's a maritime crewing provision. I mentioned in this context because the IIJA had a provision in it to make huge offshore wind construction vessels. What's weird about the offshore wind industry is that most of the time the US is leading an industry, most of the time we're leading the world. In the case of offshore wind, we're actually behind. Europe is way ahead of us in offshore wind. So are places in Asia, which means that they have built the vessels to do very specialized work. In the United States today, we have about 82% of the vessel ours are going to be US flagged and crewed by US mariners. There's an interest in that remaining 18% of having that be available here, too. The industry shares that interest. In the IIJA, they made those construction vessels eligible for funding out of the loan program office. It's not Kelly's office at DOE, but it's an adjacent office run by Jigar Shah. That was important and as important was that it was an incentive approach to try and close that last 18% gap as it relates to the country of origin of the vessel as well as the nationality of the crew that mans it. I want to call this out because the House passed a bill that includes a crew requirement that says 120 days from enactment. Everybody has to be either all American or all the nationality of where the vessel being used is flagged. It is literally going to freeze the first 19 offshore wind projects in its tracks. These vessels were beginning... Actually, one of my utility members, Dominion, is building a 500 million construction vessel in Texas today. It'll be the first US flagged of its kind. 500 million dollars and it'll take several years to build. And then we need to train people to crew it. So there's an interest in moving in that direction, but we need to be realistic about timeframes as it relates to mandates on how these vessels are crewed if we don't want to freeze the offshore wind industry before it has a chance to begin. Let me stop there because I think questions are important and throw it back to you, Dan. Great. Thank you, Bill. That sounds great. Really appreciate it. I'd like to invite Malcolm, we'll start with you and then we'll hear from Joy and then to Bill. I'd like to invite you to riff on what Kelly and I were talking about a little bit earlier. And that is sort of what your respective organizations see in terms of vision for 2030, whether it's emissions reductions, whether it's energy system modernization, whether it's infrastructure investments, maybe it's infrastructure investments that haven't yet been provided but that need to be provided in order to get us to where we need to be. So Malcolm, I'll invite you to go first. I think the overall direction of the grid, we all want a reliable grid. We all want a clean grid and I think our reliability, as we're increasingly dependent on all forms of electronics, the reliability becomes more important as is our appreciation of the need for it to be clean. What I think is lacking and I think I'm hoping that this conversation changes quickly is there seems to be a focus over the last generation on gigawatts. How do we build more gigawatts of clean? And I think that's great when you're going from 10 to 20% renewables. But as you're getting into deeper decarbonization and higher levels of renewables, we need to think about the reliability. How do you keep the grid going? And I'm riffing off of what Kelly said, if the administration reaches their goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind, fantastic, love it, that's gigawatts that is going to cycle on and off with their capacity factor. And when you suddenly have gigawatts cycling off, how do you keep the grid on? And we have an answer that happens now. In fact, just I think it was last summer, maybe a couple of years ago, there was a nuclear power plant. I think Seabrook tripped offline up in New England on a hot summer afternoon. And the lights in Boston didn't flicker because we had pump storage and bare mountain and some of the other facilities were able to instantly produce gigawatts of generation. But we can't just build gigawatts. We need to also build the corresponding storage capacity, which is probably a mix of short-term battery, lithium, as well as longer duration pump storage facilities. And that's not just going to happen. The second piece I'll add in terms of what we need to do is preserve the existing fleet. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of the existing hydropower fleet is at risk. And those are the facilities that firm up the rest of the resources. Now that we've got solar, maybe you don't need to run the hydro facilities during the day. But let's run them at night as the solar ramps off. Actually, despite the drought in the West, hydro has been producing twice as much as expected in the West in those hot summer afternoons because they simply save their water. So they can produce it when they know that solar is going to ramp off. And the irony is they don't get paid to do that. They're generating fewer hours, but more important hours. And they're doing it at an economic loss in order to keep the system operating. So we somehow have to align the reliability needs. Joy. Thanks. So again, Malcolm said a lot of really important things there that I agree with. I'm going to lead this off by saying, and most of you in the room will not remember this person, but there was a radio host who had a saying when he signed off of his radio show every night or every week. And it was keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars. And it was a guy named Casey Kasem. And I think that's where we need to be in 2030 and actually now. And then moving forward after that. So in the electric sector, we have to keep our feet on the ground. We have to provide reliable and affordable energy. And I add the affordability piece because we recognize, I think even in public power, where our customers pay all of the bills, there are no shareholders. Any additional costs flow directly to our customers. Our retail customers are homes and businesses. But we also recognize, and our communities recognize, sometimes getting to this clean energy transition is going to be more expensive. It's why the IJA is so important because it helps defray some of that expense. The federal government and sort of we collectively are saying, let's invest in some of these things so that it's not hitting the pocket books, of especially after some of the challenges we've been facing and we're still facing today in our economy. So we have to keep doing that. We have to provide reliable power. And I think our concern in public power is that if we see reliability suffer, we might have to take a step back from driving toward more of the clean energy future because people will start to get a little bit worried about what that means. So we have to keep those things front of mind as we reach for the stars with these new technologies, which is also enabled by IJA in many cases. And I think it does a good job of balancing those two pieces, or those three pieces actually, well, the feet on the ground and the reaching for the stars. So I think I envision that in 2030 is that we've done that effectively and that we've moved forward to enable some of these new technologies. Maybe we're farther along with hydrogen. We have additional hydropower technologies we're looking at. We have things like small modular reactors. We have to have this baseload capacity. Malcolm keeps saying it, meaning however you want to couch it. You can call it baseload. You can call it whatever you want. But we need to have some type of electricity that you can produce 24-7, essentially 365. That has to be there, or else we're going to have reliability concerns and right now what we can do there is nuclear, certain types of fossil fuels and hydropower, essentially.  So we need to enhance that baseload capacity, particularly on the green side. And our members are heavily invested in these types of new baseload technologies, whether it be looking at hydrogen, whether it be investing in more affordable and potentially just more widespread nuclear in the form of small modular reactors. We have our members who are heavily invested with Department of Energy out west to explore that. We also need to keep those resources that exist online. As Malcolm is mentioning with the hydropower, we need to make sure that the federal government and frankly the state and local governments aren't putting additional barriers to siting and permitting that's making some of these things uneconomic. And we're seeing it across the board, not just with existing kind of resources, but even with cleaner resources like solar and some of the utility scale solar. It's tough to get those things in the ground. At the same time, I think the last thing I would mention on the 2030 pieces, we're really balancing transmission, sort of that bulk transmission, meaning those big transmission lines you see that go interstate that Bill talked about with distribution lines, the lines that go into homes and businesses and the grids that support that retail side. We need to be building up capacity in both arenas because we're seeing things like distributed energy resources, electric vehicle deployment. That's all distribution level investment that again the IIJA supports and envisions while we also need to continue to invest in our bulk transmission system and generation system. So we need a balance of both. And in public power, we want to make sure that the cost doesn't get too out of whack on either side, which is why again these investments are important. And we certainly support that expedited siting authority that was included. We tried to do it once before in the 2005 Energy Act and we're unable to kind of make that happen. So great support for that. Again, just balancing those investment opportunities, making sure we are providing reliable, affordable and clean and sustainable power in 2030. Thanks, Joy. Bill? I want to make three quick points. One is, so let's stipulate that technologies like wind and solar are intermittent or variable sources of power. That's just a fact. They are. The conclusion that people should not reach though that I think sometimes gets conflated is that intermittent or variable is unreliable. So grid reliability is a real thing. And Joy's members, they're on the hook for it. So they got to concern themselves with it. So do my utility scale members. I get it. My utility scale, my utility members today, the ones who have committed to net zero and have goals, they already today, you have moments in time where states and power markets are operating at levels of renewable integration as high as 80%. Okay, nationally we were 14% of the generation mixed last year. At times in certain areas we have been 80%. Now, you didn't hear about it because there was no reliability issue. So I don't want you automatically to think that variable or intermittent is inherently unreliable. It's not. It depends on grid planning. What my utility scale members will say is they can see, they have visibility, they think into the end of the first 80%. It's that last 20% that they're still trying to figure out. We're at 14% today. There's plenty of room to grow without compromising reliability. Two, the 30 by 30 goal for offshore wind. All my members, everybody who's going to build that is a member of the American Clean Power Association. I'm telling you that if we don't get policy right, not only do you not get 30 by 30, you get zero. Okay, this is really important. This will be my, this is a ties to my last point. I'm not meaning to be sort of, you know, Donnie Downer here, but I next tomorrow, and please be on the lookout for this, we'll be releasing and one of the things the trade association does is it releases aggregated data about deployment and sort of industry statistics. According to our 2Q report for 2022, renewable deployment, Clean Power deployment fell year over year by 55% in the second quarter of this year. So people, especially my friends who, you know, would come to a event like this, you get used to hearing stories about, you know, every year it just seems year over year, we're setting new records and it's almost as if that's a birthright or that's inevitability, that's going to happen. Unfortunately, it's not. It can happen. It must happen. If we're going to hit 80% decarbonization in the grid by 2030, we have to be doubling annual levels of annual deployment. We're falling life more than 50% year over year. Why? Trade, tax, supply chains, some pandemic, some of the stuff, prices of commodities, permitting and siting. But there are things can do. I just, what I want to leave you with today is the progress that we've made is super important and the progress that we need to make is not inevitable. It will turn in large part on the decisions that you make and the policy support that it will require and failing that, it would be very easy to miss and by a wide mark. And I just think that's an important point to make. Can I just jump in really quickly and say what Bill said is important on supply chain as well. And I think that would be another vision for me of 2030 is to be able to solve that because we're also putting pressure on supply chain as we invest more in these new technologies that we appreciate under the IIJA and that we need to deploy. So we've got to figure that out, I think, as a country and it's heartening to see that there has been some thought put into it by this administration, by many in Congress, by many in industry, and it's across the board. It includes for very fundamental things like distribution transformers, we're having major constraints around. So I'm hopeful we can resolve that while we're, because I think that's properly part of the constraint is that just the lack of availability. So I want to just echo that as well and make sure we're aligned as much as possible kind of across the clean energy and utility spectrum to try to figure that one out. Thanks, Drew. I think that was a really important point. Thanks for adding that. We are at the conclusion of panel one at the 2022 Congressional Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Policy Forum. Malcolm, Joy, Bill, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your perspective. As our first panel excuses themselves, not only did we conclude, we concluded on time and so now we'll be joined via a prerecorded message, Senators Reid and Crapo. While my colleague, Omri, is getting that set up, you heard a lot of great topics come up. You heard about hydrogen, offshore wind, all of these things. We've actually been covering a lot of those in congressional briefings that have been virtual. So I encourage everyone, if you're interested in learning about any more of those topics, visit us online at www.esi.org. We have a lot of great resources about that. All right, I'll turn it over to Omri. Thanks so much, Senator Reid, Senator Crapo, for talking with me today at the start of our 2022 Congressional Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Policy Forum. The two of you have been co-chairs of the Senate Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus for some time. So thanks so much for your leadership. And that's the first question I'd like to ask you. Senator Reid, I'll start with you. Why did you decide that you wanted to be a co-chair of the Senate Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus, and what is it about renewable energy and energy efficiency that makes you so enthusiastic? Well, first, it was an opportunity to work with my Crapo again, who is one of the most decent and effective members of the Senate. Second, we all recognize that this has huge environmental consequences. In my state, the ocean state, water is rising. We're seeing it. In fact, they're projecting significant disruptions of bridges and other areas. So it has that effect. And then in my capacity as chairman of the service committee, it's a national security issue. The effects of climate are creating problems with rising seas and also desertification, lower water levels in the West. It will affect our agriculture. It will affect everything. So moving to renewables is the most logical and the only thing we can do. Senator Crapo? Well, first, I have to return the kind compliments. Jack and I have a great relationship. I think that we show that bipartisanship really does work and exists in the United States Senate. So it's a pleasure to work with Jack on this. And I agree with what Jack said. I can't say that Idaho has a seashore. But we have a different dynamic. We are one of the leading states in the United States on clean energy. 80% of Idaho's energy comes from clean energy. 60% from hydropower. We've got a lot of rivers and a lot of hydropower. And 20% from renewables. We also have the nation's leading national nuclear laboratory, the Idaho National Laboratory. And right now we're developing at that laboratory. My understanding is they're looking toward over the next five, six, eight years the construction of four new nuclear reactors, including a commercial reactor and a number of test reactors, and really leading in nuclear energy. So the opportunity to work with this caucus and to work with Jack and find bipartisan solutions that can help us to address these issues was something that I found to be a wonderful opportunity. Great. Well, thank you for that. A major theme of the 2022 Congressional Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Policy Forum is infrastructure. And specifically the investments in infrastructure that Congress provided last year as part of the bipartisan infrastructure investment jobs act. I'm curious and Senator Creeper, maybe we'll start with you. I'm curious what your priorities were for the IIJA. And what do you see as the real opportunities from that bill or that law providing benefits to folks in Idaho or folks in Rhode Island or in everywhere in between? Well, I think that's a very good start question on this, because as you know, that was a bipartisan bill. And the reason that got so much bipartisan support was in this era of high inflation and difficulties that we're seeing in our economy right now. This bill focused on supply side spending. It was counter and is counter-inflationary. And the point I want to make there is that the most appealing part of it to me was that we had an opportunity to do some of the investing in our infrastructure that we had fallen behind on for years. And we had an opportunity to do it in a way that was offset. It did not cost any additional spending. We reallocated spending dollars and offset the spending. We got supply side spending underway and we got focused on a lot of really critical things. So when you talk about the specifics of what did it mean for Idaho, we have all the things that are traditional hard infrastructure roads, bridges, airports, waterways, and those were all important. But it also had funding in it for firefighting and for managing our natural resources in Idaho in a way that will help to protect and grow those resources, which are ways where we can have CO2 capture, carbon capture, and had a lot of other benefits. And one last one that's probably more specific to Idaho than Rhode Island is it extended the Secure Rural Schools program that helped our counties in states or in counties where the percentage of federal ownership of property is so high to be able to deal with their county infrastructure. Again, roads, bridges, police support, schools, and so forth. So this was a really big deal, I think, across America. Well, I concur with Mike. This is a really big deal and long overdue. And it was bipartisan for the reasons Mike indicated. It made sense. It served the needs of every American and it did it in a very responsible way. One of the issues that concerned me was the overall electric grid. It's been estimated that we lose about $70 billion a year from the failure of the grid. So this legislation puts in roughly $65 billion for constructing a much more robust and effective grid, which we'll need going forward. Another area is with electric vehicles and charging stations. The automobile companies are telling us that by 2030, 2035, they're just going to produce electric vehicles. We have to have the infrastructure to support them. And that would be a tremendous gain. I talked about national security before. Well, you know, if we were all electric in terms of our transportation, the price of oil would not be $100 plus a barrel. It would be much less than the oil dynasties would not be as dynastic. So that's a great opportunity, I think, for us. And then finally, when you take it back down to some of the programs that affect real people and real communities in Idaho and Rhode Island, there's money for weatherization, home weatherization. And I've been very supportive of that. And when you invest in making a home more energy resilient, you put in better insulation. You change out. And some of our boilers were put in the 1920s. You change them out for more efficient heating. You're saving on the demand for energy and heat. And you're also, it's a much more friendly home, particularly for children. Yeah. Many of the speakers at the Congressional Energy Efficiency, or Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Policy Forum are leaders from across the clean energy industry, the clean energy sector. And the businesses that they represent employ millions of people. Their companies invest billions of dollars in renewable energy and energy efficiency. I'm curious, Senator Reid, what are some opportunities you see for the private sector and the federal government to partner to increase opportunities to deploy renewable energy and energy efficiency? And do you think it's possible that we could also be helping states and local governments enter into more public-private partnerships? Well, absolutely. We are the first state, Rhode Island, that has offshore wind. It's only six towers, but it's the beginning of a much more robust offshore wind industry along the East Coast. And that was a public-private partnership with federal resources. We had the Corps of Engineers involve Bohm from the Department of Interior. The basic setup is the towers replace the energy on Block Island, and then we have a line into the mainland to take the excess energy. But that's an example of public-private partnership. It was a private company that did it. And the other thing that was so exciting about it is it generates other economic activity. We have boat builders in Rhode Island that are building specific vessels to get out to the towers and do servicing. So that's an example of public-private cooperation. Then we've got our SBIR programs, small business program. They're looking for companies, like you described, to invest in and help. So this has to be done more efficiently by a public-private partnership. Senator Crapo? Well, you know, I'm on the finance committee and so the first thoughts I have in response to your question relate to a couple of bills that we're working on in tax policy, because if we can incentivize opportunities in the private sector for public-private partnerships and for private sector investment in these types of things, that helps a lot. I am a lead co-sponsor. I'm the lead Republican with Senator Whitehouse. On a legislation called ESIC. It's the... I can't remember what the acronym exactly means, but the Energy Security Innovation Act, I believe. And this is a tax credit and an investment credit for technology-neutral clean energy solutions. It's not trying to pick winners and losers in this whole situation, but in trying to incentivize investment and production of technologies so that we can move and provide the incentive from the federal government for those technologies to be developed. Another one is... I can't remember the name of it, either, but it expands master limited partnership access to the tax benefits of investing in clean energy projects. And right now, those are limited, basically to fossil fuel and timber and minerals, I think. This expands it to clean energy types of technology so that those investment vehicles can attract the capital that will get us into those technologies. And then, coming from a state that's very heavily... I guess you would say resource-oriented from forests and deserts and things like that, there is the Growing Climate Solutions Act, which increases the focus and availability of land management and agricultural management practices that will help greater increase our carbon capture. And then finally, I always want to start coming back to nuclear. I'm a big fan of nuclear energy, and Idaho, of course, as I said, is the home of the Idaho National Laboratory. And there's legislation called NECA, which is, I think, a phenomenal effort to move forward the development of nuclear energy in the United States by building those exact partnerships. It creates a special program at the Idaho National Lab, but then that program helps to facilitate by working with the nuclear energy regulator. So we've got the laboratory and the regulator, which are the government side of it. It coordinates with academia, so the research and other development that goes on in academia can be facilitated. And then it works with private sectors. And that's why one of those reactors I mentioned earlier that is going to be developed in Idaho at that lab is a commercial reactor. But it will have gone through that partnership with our government laboratory, with the regulator, and with academia, and with the private sector to get these advanced reactors moving along into a greater development. Great. Well, it means a great deal to everyone who's attending the Congressional Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Expo for the two of you to take some time and talk with me and share some thoughts about infrastructure and sort of what we've done. My final question is a look to the future. And I'm curious, Senator Crapo, we'll start with you if that's all right. What do you see on the horizon for renewable energy and energy efficiency? Are there new technologies or new areas of interest that you have that makes you especially optimistic for renewable energy and energy efficiency going forward? Well, you know, I'm not one of the experts on all of the different things that are moving along. I understand that about 35% of what we need is in the developmental stage right now. And so those incentives that I've already talked about, I think are some of the most important things. I do have to come back to nuclear. You know, we're moving ahead. And by the way, this makes us more competitive with China and Russia. It's great for our national security. And there's a tremendous amount of potential in nuclear energy. And one of the things that I do know about that's coming are these new reactors, the new scale small modular reactor that is going to be built in Idaho. And I'm not just talking about reactors in Idaho. The development of the capacity of safe nuclear energy, I think, is one of the biggest solutions that we can look for. And there are a number of other things. You know, we're having a big debate in the Senate right now over semiconductors. Now, I don't know that semiconductors alone are what will help get us there, but they are critical. And having American production of semiconductors is something that I think is going to facilitate the technological advancement of clean energy policy. And so those are some of the things that just jump to my mind right now. I know it's a little bit technical, but again, I think one of the things the government can do most here is to incentivize and help provide the backing and the partnership with those who are out there doing the thinking about what really needs to be the next steps in these areas. Senator Reid, I think this gives you the last word. Well, I agree with Mike in terms of the potential for nuclear power, particularly the small reactors. And there's been a huge amount of federal research on fusion, which could be the key. And also the experience which the Navy has had over, since Admiral Rick over, of operating safely nuclear reactors. That's part now of the mainstream of both economic and academic, rather, in industrial knowledge. So that's another form of collaboration. I think though offshore wind has a huge potential, we're looking at projects now that are off the coast of Massachusetts and Rhode Island and off the coast of Long Island, significant projects that'll provide significant electricity to those areas. And then also I think if we can electrify our transit systems so that they're more efficient and cheaper. One of the ironies is my home state ripped of the Rhode Island Public Transportation Authority had a fixed price for fuel for $2. That contract ran out this month. I don't think they're going to get the same type of contract, but if they have electric buses, it's, they're fine. So I think that's another area, solar energy, wind energy, all these things. I don't think there'll be one solution, there'll be a comprehensive solution that will be pulled together ultimately by the national grid to deliver power to homes, to factories, and charging stations on the road to make sure we can stay mobile. Well, thank you so much, Senator Reed, Senator Crapo, thanks for taking time to talk with me a little bit today. Look forward to working with both of you in the future and also have to just give you a quick plug for your great staffs to help bring us together today but also help us organize the policy form. So thank you so much. Thank you. I totally agree with that. Great staff. Senators Reed and Crapo have been tremendous supporters of the 2022 Renewable Energy, Congressional Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Policy Forum and that brings us to our second panel. So we have four tremendous leaders from the clean energy, from across the clean energy sector. They'll be joining me right now, I think, to have a seat and we're going to talk about infrastructure and buildings and workforce and pick up where our first panel left off. One plug you heard on our first panel, you heard Senator Crapo talking about as a fly up here. A lot of talk about advanced module reactors, advanced nuclear reactors. We actually have a panelist on our fourth panel today from Idaho National Lab who is a leading researcher and will actually be specifically talking about exactly what Malcolm and Joy and others have been talking about how do you integrate renewable resources onto the grid along with energy efficiency. See, I said energy efficiency. And do it in a way that also has dispatchable resources. So I'm Dan Berset with the Environmental and Energy Study Institute and I'm joined by many of my colleagues today. We're all wearing these little pins. So I hope if you see any of us, please talk with us and we're looking forward to having some in-person networking. This is our first in-person panel in a while. It's great to be back up here. We will hear from our four panelists. We'll have a good Q&A. We have a couple hundred people watching the LEVcast, which is great. If you have questions in our online audience, you can follow us online. Twitter is at EESI online and you can send us questions that way. You can also send us an email. The email address used is askask.org. For folks in the room, you have questions. My colleague Savannah is up here in the front. Catch her eye and we have some note cards and some pens and she'll feed the questions into the discussion that way. Without any further ado, I'm going to give each of my panelists brief introductions and the first is Paula Glover. Paula is the president of the Alliance to Save Energy, one of my alma maters where I learned the ropes when it comes to clean energy policy. So Paula, great to see you today. I'm looking forward to your remarks. Is this on? This is on now, yeah. So thank you so much one for having me and thank you all for being here. As Dan said, I'm the president of the Alliance to Save Energy. So for those of you who may not be familiar with us as the Alliance, we are a bipartisan coalition. We are a 45 year old organization and our focus is advocacy around efficiency. And so I want to kind of just highlight for you the importance of efficiency in these conversations, whether it's just about a clean energy transition, a just energy transition. I'm going to argue that efficiency is foundational to that and really what's going to get you there. But it is often that tool that is forgotten about because we're not talking about producing something clean. We're talking about not using something. And every electron term that you don't have to use is as big a savings as producing something clean and using that. I would suggest it's even better. And so efficiency is really important in that way. Also when we think about the economic environment and opportunity for jobs which we talk a lot about but also small business, efficiency really is where we need to be focused and where we should start. The latest jobs report, the U.S. Energy and Employment Jobs Report talked about the fact that the energy sector has about 7.1 million jobs in the United States, 7.8 jobs in the United States, 2.2 of those million of those jobs is energy efficiency jobs. So energy efficiency is actually the largest employer in the sector. And when we think about efficiency employment, I want you to think about things like not just energy audits which is typically the thing that may come to mind first is that folks who do energy audits but think about manufacturers of HVAC systems, manufacturers of lighting systems, think about building managers, folks who develop, create insulation, new technologies that make our grid more interactive, our buildings interactive, all of those things can be defined as efficiency jobs. And the good news with that is that it requires a whole slew of skills. So it's not just folks who have four-year degrees, although we absolutely need people who have four-year degrees, master's degrees, PhDs, we also need people who work in the trades. We also need people who are working in construction. We need all of it in this business. And so it creates a lot of opportunity for jobs and growth in the efficiency industry. Second to that though is how do we do this well so that every household and small business has an opportunity to adopt so that efficiency measures are accessible to them? That means that they are available and that they are affordable and that they are able to adopt them. But also, because efficiency jobs exist in about 99.6% of the counties in the United States, I think it's like seven counties in the U.S. do not have an efficiency job. That also means there's great opportunity for small business growth and development. And as we start to talk about, as a country, a just energy transition. We talk about a clean energy transition but we also talk of just transition. That just transition suggests that we want to include all communities around the country. And that may be in direct employment but it also is about small business growth and development. And so I use the data around where efficiency jobs exist because that also means that those are opportunities, those are jobs that are local and that means that those are opportunities for people to create small businesses and hire and grow in that way. And so just finally, just to say to all of you as you're thinking about this transition and the work that you do and the type of policies that we need to have in place, please think about efficiency and I would ask you to think about efficiency first as you're beginning to develop all of this stuff because not spending money on something is always going to be better than spending a little bit on the same thing. Thank you, Paul. That's a great way to kick off our panel today. Our second panelist is Jason Walsh. Jason is Executive Director of the Blue-Green Alliance. Thank you, Dan. Paul, it's nice to be on a panel with you when we're both fully embodied humans in person at the same time. It's kind of mind-bending but a privilege. So as Dan said, I'm Jason Walsh, the Executive Director of the Blue-Green Alliance. We are a coalition of labor unions and environmental organizations who collectively represent about 15 million members and supporters in this country. Our two original, very odd bedfellows when we created the Blue-Green Alliance back in 2006 were the Sierra Club and the Steelworkers Union. And we have since grown to encompass 13 national and international labor unions and environmental groups. We work on public policy like the Alliance to Save Energy. I do want to... Paul, I'm glad you raised the latest Energy Jobs Report. And maybe I'll just add to what you already said by... I mean, those numbers are kind of eye-popping, right? And we haven't even begun to see the level of investment that we're going to need to see to make this transition. And I think part of the reason for that that gets less comment but I'll just say it out loud is that the clean energy, energy efficiency economy is inherently a more labor intensive economy than an economy that's based on fossil fuels and waste, right? We are in the power sector manufacturing and installing the sources of our fuel rather than burning them. That creates more jobs. In the building sector, energy efficiency turns wasted energy into work. So that goes from no jobs to lots of jobs. 2.1 million, as Paul had just said. So we care a lot about job creation. We've done a lot of work on it over the last decade plus but we are much more focused on job quality, job access, and where jobs are created. And there are many great things to say about the clean energy economy that has really over the last decade, 12 years really burst out and become a significant part of the national economy. But we still got some work to do. And in particular, not enough of the jobs that have been created to date are high quality family supporting jobs. A number of the occupations the signifier applications across a number of different sectors don't pay as much on average compared to similar occupations in incumbent energy sectors. So we got to change that. Union density rates are lower on the whole although that's getting better and that data point is related to the first data point about job quality. And to date at least many of these jobs have not been created in the communities that need them most. And from a BGA standpoint, the communities we are particularly focused on are deindustrialized communities, energy transition communities and Justice 40 community. And obviously there are both policy and political reasons for changing that status quo. I mean, from a policy standpoint, this is an issue of equity and fairness. As we build this new energy economy, we want to make it better and fairer and more equitable and more inclusive than the economy we're evolving out of. But I would submit that there are some very fundamental political economy reasons for doing that as well. Which is that if workers, working people, and in particular the unions who represent them, who are the union workers, are the only really organized political constituency for workers in this country. If their members are not getting as much or more work out of this new economy we're trying to build as the fossil-based economy we are moving away from, there will be very hard press to support it. They've got to see that direct economic benefit. I think the same principle applies to communities. If a community individually or an entire region is left behind or perceives themselves to be left behind, they are going to resist the transition that we're in the middle of here. So how do we address that? Well, we think we address it by public policy in very intentional ways. And based on the principle that if we're using taxpayer dollars, if we're using public dollars we should expect the broadest public benefit from those investments. And we have fortunately very well-established policy levers that we can use both with regard to labor standards, domestic content standards, and then more recently some interesting ways of targeting investment that we've used in budget reconciliation that can drive investment to communities that need it the most. We can talk a little bit more about that, but I think I've hit my time. That's great, Jason. Thank you so much. Our third panelist is Kurt Rich. Kurt is President and CEO of the North American Installation Manufacturers Association. Welcome, Kurt. Great. Thanks, Dan. Again, I represent the fiberglass and the mineral wool manufacturing industry in the United States and Canada. There's a lot of different types of insulation, but fiberglass is it's kind of the dominant insulation product that you see in buildings. It's about 70% of all residential construction, a little bit less on commercial construction. But if you ever, I know a lot of you probably like to wander around the aisles of Lowe's or Home Depot on the weekend and you go to the skew and see certain teeter, Owens Corning or Knoff. Those are my members. It's a domestic industry, all manufactured in the United States for domestic consumption. Before I kick off my remarks, I just have this incredible sense of deja vu. Thirty years ago, when I was a Senate staffer, we would have our monthly Montana Congressional Delegation meetings that would frequently devolve into chaos, but great memories. So it's good to be back in this room. So we're here to talk about really how we address our climate emergency and that begins really in large measure by focusing on the builder sector and undertaking actions that decarbonize our buildings. When you're talking about new buildings, the answer is pretty straightforward. You build highly efficient buildings and you do that now by simply building it in accordance with the current model energy code. So if you're building a new home, you build to the 2021 International Energy Conservation Code, the IECC. If you're building a commercial building, you build it to 2019 ASHRAE 90.1 standards. Pretty straightforward. The problem is in this country, we don't do that. Some states are very progressive on building energy codes, other states are laggards. And so we have a lot of work to do. The pathway for decarbonizing existing buildings is a little bit murkier. You know, you really kind of have two levers to do that. The first is to convince the building owner or occupant that it's in their interest to make investments to upgrade that building with the knowledge that over a relatively short period of time, they will have recoup their investment and then will continue to enjoy savings through reduced heating and cooling utility bills. The second is through either utility or government incentives. So that would either defray those investments that otherwise wouldn't be cost effective or just operating in tandem. And lots of studies have been done on this at the end of the day, it is really hard to get people to just act in their own interest. You really need that kind of financial incentive to prompt people to act. And I think that's really the golden opportunity in the infrastructure bill is the money for efficiency programs that will be flowing to residential, commercial, and industrial buildings, principally through the states, but will, I think, will provide decent incentives for building owners to act. You know, in anticipation, let me kind of just frame the opportunity. So in anticipation of this money becoming available, the broader insulation industry commissioned a study and they said to the consultant that was putting the study together, we said, we want you to look at what the emission reduction opportunities would be if you undertook very easily achievable insulation upgrade measures. So I'm not talking about crazy stuff. Just very basic insulation measures in residential existing buildings, commercial existing buildings, and industrial buildings. And their findings, and we'll be releasing this in a couple of weeks, if you were to undertake those very reasonable improvements, it would be the equivalent of all wind power generation in the country. It would displace more than a third of all natural gas fire generation in the country or it would cover the home energy use of a quarter of our existing homes in the country. So the opportunity is there. It's immense. We can make a real solid impact by investing in building energy efficiency. Infrastructure Act isn't the whole enchilada, but I think it provides a good foundation for action over the next five years. And I hope it tees us up for a kind of further investment on down the road. So look forward to our discussion today. Thanks, Dan. Thank you, Kurt. We need additional enchiladas, more enchiladas for everyone, and nachos and graditas and other things. Our fourth panelist today is joining us and she's wearing two hats. Jeanie Salo is Vice President of Government Relations for North America, for Schneider Electric. And she's also a member of the Board of Directors of the Business Council for Sustainable Energy. Jeanie, welcome to the panel. Welcome. You hear me? Okay. Well, listen, thank you. I'm so honored to be amongst this crowd. You guys are fantastic. You're doing such great work. I am very honored to be representing the Business Council for Sustainable Energy. For those of you who don't know about BCSE, BCSE has been around for 30 years in Washington. They do incredible work representing companies and trade associations all in the space of sustainable energy. They put out annually a fact book on sustainability in America. I encourage you to go find that fact book and read it. It's a really fantastic product. And we're proud members of the Board of BCSE and very active members. But who's Schneider Electric? Schneider Electric is a company that is about 30 billion dollars worldwide company in over 100 countries and all over the world we're manufacturing product solution, software and services that create energy solutions. In the U.S. is our biggest market most important market right now and many things to the infrastructure bill it's even more important. And in the U.S. we manufacture in 20 facilities we have 20,000 employees and this job force is very exciting. We're transforming we're part of the clean energy jobs of the future for sure at Schneider Electric. And we're doing some really exciting things and I want to talk about that but I wanted to share a few like overarching comments. The clean energy industry is hiring faster than the overall national economy and is paying above average wages. That's from Forbes. States with strong climate policies are also seeing strong job growth. So Michigan for example added 35,500 new energy jobs in 2021 after establishing an economy-wide net zero by 2050 goal in 2020. The future of U.S. infrastructure must be about the future workforce. We are not going to be able to execute on this infrastructure plan without these jobs. Okay, I mean first of all just basic electricians that will be needed to electrify this landscape. Electricians are retiring at a faster rate than new electricians are being trained and coming on board. These older electricians also want to take the jobs they understand and are comfortable with and maybe retrofitting a building isn't one of them. Doing something different isn't one of them. We need to recruit and retrain and develop the labor of the future if we want to implement these dollars across the landscape. And it's also just I want to really drive this home. This is the only way that the United States can stay competitive. Other countries will they will evolve and transform their workforce to be clean energy competitive economies. And we need to do that if we want to continue to be a competitive economy across the world. And I feel like I speak to that as a as a as representing multinational companies specifically. But I really want to specifically drive home this point about digital because we often talk about the digital economy. There is no other economy. It's just the digital economy and the in digitization is at the core of everything we need to do to be more efficient to transform our infrastructure. We are connected now IOT and IOT industry Internet of Things is crucial to the future of manufacturing in this country. And we have a really wonderful example in our smart factory in Lexington Kentucky which received the sustainable factory award from the World Economic Forum and the smart factory award. And it's a point of pride for us being based in Kentucky which is traditionally whole country and yet we are doing we are really executing on the future of smart manufacturing and for clean energy products. This factory was modernized to embrace digitization allowing the factory to embrace industrial IOT technologies increase increased plant processes efficiency and create good paying jobs. Our success in Lexington only scratches the surface of the benefits that can be found utilizing digitization tools across the economy. And by doubling down on this commitment to building a strong digital clean energy workforce we will as a country become more competitive and we will actually inspire people to want to do these jobs. I'm sure some of you have heard about the labor shortage and in the world of manufacturing it's hard to get people to take these jobs actually interestingly enough in the United States. But at our factory the people that we are upskilling with digital skills making them you know they're holding they're holding iPads and they're interfacing with technology in ways that they didn't in the past in a manufacturing job. They like this they're interested in it they're passionate about it and it makes them want to stay with the company and stick with the manufacturing roles that they're in and that's something that we really need to embrace and we need to work together public private partnerships to create more apprenticeships and collaborations to get this done. So I just want to state you know it is imperative that the industry and government partner to ensure the availability of a digital workforce capable of meeting rising demands and hiring. The bipartisan infrastructure law included several important provisions and aimed at supporting and growing the various workforces critical to the law's implementation including transportation, EVs, energy infrastructure, energy efficiency, intelligent systems and technologies, energy related cyber security water and wastewater, telecommunications and more but still the industry is facing challenging labor shortages and this is going to create a real obstacle to implementing the law. Schneider Electric is launching many different programs to ensure that we have the right talent and skills to reach our ambitions in this new world of work. Two key programs that we're instituting at Schneider are the Returnship Program and the Bridge Program. The Returnship Program is called Return to Work it targets those who've been out of the workforce and looking to reenter the workforce. So this has actually been traditionally women and mothers during the pandemic we all are well aware of that situation and it's a six month program that matches professional candidates who've taken a break from the corporate world with internal employment opportunities. Schneider sets out to train participants with the skills they need to thrive in their careers and help build their confidence with the goal of finding full-time roles after six months. Another key program that's very exciting that we're working on at Schneider is Bridge Program. The Bridge Program is designed to connect experienced professionals with new energy careers. So Schneider Electric is bringing in talent with non-traditional backgrounds to be reskilled and meet the current and growing demands of the new energy landscape. And so these are full-time employees who have at least a high school or GED degree while working for Schneider Electric. They also receive training during working hours and professional mentorship and this is an apprenticeship program that combines formal learning with on-the-job training experiences for permanent paid positions. This is just a few examples. Many other companies do things like this and at BCSE they did some research with their membership and surveyed at length with their members and they came out with some important information which was that the skills, qualifications, jobs, categories span STEM, computer science, project management, business development, marketing, customer service, technology and service providers and not just technicians or engineers, the barriers are training that's tied to real jobs and lack of awareness of clean energy careers at all in secondary schools. And another of the needs is outreach to underserved communities which you represented and that's so important. Outreach to students on their career opportunities and the public-private partnerships that are going to make this successful. It's a confusing to navigate and I think we need to work on that together as part of our next steps. I will stop there but I just want to just one time, one final time say we cannot be the competitive nation that we want to be if we don't get our arms around this and get and train the people of the future to do the jobs of the future which they're going to like better. And so I think collectively a public-private partnership and the White House and all the powers that be and the members of Congress on both sides of the aisle we all agree on this. This is one area where we've got to agree and we do so we should really figure out we have some great tools in this toolbox but there's more that needs to be done to untangle and make it more simplified and more effective. That's where I'll end. Thank you so much. So we have about 15 minutes or so for some Q&A and Paula I'm going to come back to you and we'll start and then hear from Jason and Kurt and Jeannie looking ahead to the implementation of IIJA or Bill or whatever we call it. Where do you see sort of the biggest potential impacts in terms of job growth? Are there any bill or IIJA investments from a jobs perspective that you're looking most forward to? Yeah, I think a lot of the investment in IIJA is going to help create economic opportunity. So if it's weatherization if it's money for schools I think what's really important about this particular piece of legislation is not just the money that's being spent for efficiency measures across the country. Well, that's very important but also that there's money that's being invested in job training. I think that speaks to a little bit about what Jeannie is talking about because the talent the finding talent is going to be the piece that we all are already suffering from and it's not just the clean energy issue. This is in a workforce issue around the country, right? Lots of industries are fighting for talent we're all competing for people we all have to think about workers a little bit differently and I think what this bill does is having the foresight to one, invest in training, right? Invest in nonprofits and higher education institutions that are thinking about training now is going to be a big deal because you're going to have to try to get people moving. And so I'm excited I think about all of that and knowing that that's not enough, right? But that this is not a situation that we're going to expect the government to buy our way out of. We all have to kind of contribute and lean in on this but we can get there. Thank you. Jason, where do you see some of the most sort of impactful investments from the IAJA? Well, there are a number of investments in buildings focused programs that we think are enormously important from an emission standpoint and a job creation standpoint. But I do want to build on what I said earlier, right? For us it's not just about the job creation it's about the job quality and access. So and while there were some good labor standards particularly around prevailing wage and domestic content that were included within the bill it's going to take this administration and agencies to be kind of creative and flexible about the incentives they put out there, right? Whether they are encouraging applicants to use project labor agreements or community workforce agreements or rewarding projects particularly big projects that create kind of a talent pipeline and even better if it's a talent pipeline that starts in the community where the project is actually happening, right? And so to my mind the best developed model for that is the apprenticeship readiness program to registered apprenticeship program pathway that is working around the country and needs to be scaled up if we're going to get folks into these jobs and if we're going to diversify a construction workforce in particular that badly needs to be diversified, right? And in particular women are underrepresented in the construction workforce in particular black Americans are underrepresented in the construction workforce and it's and it takes intentional strategies to actually change that dynamic. I would also say that that let's leverage private sector dollars out there and one of the ways to do that is leveraging the private dollars of registered apprenticeship programs, right? I mean the you know there are 1600 training centers that building trades unions run with their employer association partners around the country. They collectively invest about 1.6 billion dollars a year if it was a four-year degree granting institution it would be the largest in the country. They're going to be key partners as we try to bring this clean energy economy to scale and and to do it in a way that actually builds the more inclusive equitable economy I think we all want to build. Thanks. Kurt, there's a lot of great stuff in for buildings in the IJA but where do you see the most impact from a workforce perspective? You know the one a pot of money that I'm pretty excited about is the $250 million for building energy code adoption and implementation at both the state and the city level. Just to kind of give you a frame of reference the DOE building energy code program kind of pops along at about five to 10 million a year in funding and so this is just a in energy code world. This is a unheard of level of investment. You know and I think over five years the impact on that is as you as you train the workforce to enforce updated codes and implement updated codes it in turn is I think really going to catalyze energy efficient construction and just support all of the other initiatives that are underway across building sectors to to drive energy efficiency. So I'm super excited about that and in fact I think DOE just release their RFI on that or RFP on that yesterday so it or Friday so it shows that they are they claim I'm moving that money out the door quickly. Jeannie I think this gives you the last word on sort of where you see impact from these investments. It's going to be everywhere all across the board because you've got ports airports the EV infrastructure building specifically as you mentioned are going to play a role in every single one of those. Even if you take the transformation that's going on with EVs and just in the in the world of consumer choice the future needs of for electricity are going to phenomenally transform this landscape. I mean we can't even we don't mentally even grasp how much is going to change but you know charging stations that are going to be needed everywhere you stop and each home turning into its own virtual power plant so that it can produce and consume energy is going to fundamentally change our energy landscape and that is going to require a whole lot of new ways of thinking we'll probably get to in one of your future questions. So I'll stop there but just say I I think every state and local official who applies for a grant whether it's we want to put in our an upgraded clean port or we want to put in a cleaner more you know net zero airport should also be talking to the local university or the companies involved about what kind of job training program can go along with that project. Well how do we connect the dots between each one of these projects and really build out the re-skilling and upskilling that we need to do across the board. Thanks. My next question Jason I'll start with you you've Paula described sort of the energy efficiency workforce we talked about this on their first panel as well but I'd like to start with you help our audience paint a picture from your perspective of what the clean energy look for what the clean energy workforce of 2030 needs to look like if we're going to be meeting the goals of either the by Harris administration or the states that are setting these goals help us understand sort of what it looks like and what needs to change between now and then which is you know it's only eight years in the future. Well as I've already mentioned I think it's going to be need to be younger more diverse more representative of the economy and country as a whole let me though make sort of two interrelated points I mean yes there are going to be some new skills involved in new occupations but for the most part these are existing skills and existing occupations right and so we do need to train for that but this is not a contradiction to what I just said skills are actually going to matter more than ever right and I mean quality of work is always important but let me make a case for it from a climate standpoint right which is like the climate crisis is so urgent like we've only got one shot to do this right right and and so so verifiable credentialed skills for the workers who do that work is going to be absolutely fundamental because we're not going to get another go here right and I mean you could you could list off every example right but but you know the difference between a properly installed and maintained HVAC system and one that is improperly installed and maintained is is like tons of of emission right and so I think I think that point has to be made to get there I mean let's let's just address the elephant in the room we're going to need a functional congress that actually can make investments and pass ambitious policy that meets the moment we're in and it has been very disappointing to me and to to our coalition members that over the last couple of weeks we've seen an inclusion of climate and energy provisions in in reconciliation stall we think that's unacceptable we think as long as there is time left in this congress and in 2022 we need to keep at it and there are any number of reasons to to do that I will I will mention one of them that we haven't spoken to as much I mean as Paula mentioned this earlier as we make this energy transition we've actually got to be very intentional and targeted about where the investments are made that the the reconciliation bill that came out of the house was enormously targeted in terms of investments made to energy transition communities to take a random state as an example West Virginia would do really really well in this kind of reconciliation legislation with these kind of targeted investments in fact it's our minds the difference between experiencing mostly economic pain from this transition and experiencing we're getting their fair share or even more their fair share of the economic gain of this transition so that investment and good policy and ambition are going to be absolutely critical Kurt let's say all of those millions of dollars are rolled out for building energy codes what is our workforce look like in the lead-up to 2030 you know I I think just two quick points to address another elephant in the room you know our building trades are heavily reliant on migrant labor and as long as our immigration laws are broken that's going to put inordinate stress on on on on that workforce and so again we need a functional government who can who can kind of address that and you know if they do that I think that that that the the workforce will balance out and again in the construction trades and the second I just I'm an optimist I continue to believe that if there's strong market demand for for efficiency related products and services that that that that industry those industries will will find the workforce so I'm just I think our imperative is to keep it as a growth industry that's attracting investment we'll be okay Jeannie you were talking about a digital workforce there's no other alternative help us understand a little bit about what that looks like in 2030 and then we'll hear from paula well I mean everything is needs to be everybody and everything needs to be smarter to maximize efficiencies so you know an example is you know bringing software and real-time data analytics into a building let's take a building for example if you've connected devices in a building that understand the temperature in the room the humidity in the room number of people they're sensing it and they can converse back to take that real-time data back to a software system right that's going to analyze and say let's lower the temperature here in this room right now and you know and maybe we we don't worry about the other room where nobody's standing these are just basic like sort of basic fundamental digitization into a building into the grid into anything is going to enable you to maximize efficiencies by leveraging the power of AI IoT all of these things that we talk about and we have this chance as with these investments to do this and we cannot miss that boat we can't continue to build infrastructure the way that we've done it before in the past it will it's a complete waste of money let's just put it on it's face is you lose money right on the energy you lose but you're also limiting your insights into how to maximize efficiencies I think it's really important in manufacturing as we think about manufacturing all the componentry that we need to execute on these projects Paula this gives you the last word what's your vision for the energy efficiency workforce of 2030 yeah I mean I think simply stated the energy workforce of 2030 needs to look like the demographics of this country period and so right the the the DOE's report tells us that in 2021 74% of the energy workforce was white and male we're not going to make it that way right it's just not going to work it tells us that non-white workers about 20% but then they also say that the survey takers don't really know the ethnicity of the people who work with them so maybe it's 24% but maybe it's 26% or maybe it's 12 right so we don't really have good data to tell us what that number looks like and we know that black workers represent 8% of the workforce and we're 12% of the population right so we've got a lot of work to do and a lot of organizations that talk about DEI and the importance this is not a I'm gonna make you I want you to feel good or a social justice kind of conversation although those are great reasons for this to do this this is a if you do not hire more women black and brown people you actually don't have a sustainable business because the demographics are telling you that the students who are coming through our systems are overwhelmingly female black and brown Joe Jason's talked about this when he talks about community centric hiring and how do you think about it in that way all of this is kind of tied together but it is really just that simple and it is the hardest work to do because we've never really done it in a way that we have you know that we're our life depends on it but I believe that that's just what it's going to have to be well thank you Paula I think that's a great spot to end the panel and we could kind of I could talk about buildings and energy efficiency all day but unfortunately we have other panels to get to and other infrastructure investments to get to so Paula, Jason, Kurt and Jeannie thank you so much for being fantastic panelists today really appreciate hearing all your perspectives as we transition away from this panel just a quick thing if you watch or you guys have briefings you know I love to plug things that we do so Jeannie mentioned the business council's fact book we did a briefing with them earlier in the spring about the fact book it's a great way to learn all about it in fact Vincent one of your coworkers Paula Vincent Barnes was on one of those panels or that panel it's a great resource also we've talked a lot about these briefings and the event today and well if you want to stay up to date with everything we do at ESI there is one way to do it that's better than any other way and that is to sign up for our biweekly newsletter climate change solutions and you can do that by visiting us online at www.esa.org and if you think you're getting too many emails from me well first of all it's not me it just looks like it's coming from me but you can manage your subscriptions online too and really hone in on what if it's briefings or fact books or fact sheets or issue briefs or press releases anything like that we have a lot of great resources that hopefully help educate policy makers about all the important work that our panelists just said has to get done so we'll go ahead and wrap it there we have about a 15 minute interlude while we'll hear from some of our additional remarks from our co-sponsor or our honorary co-sponsors for today and then we'll convene at three o'clock to talk about transportation which I can see our panelists in the back of the room and I can't wait so we'll go ahead and wrap there thank you so much Hi I'm Chris Van Hollen and I'm proud to represent Maryland in the United States Senate and I'm especially pleased to be joining all of you once again at the Environmental and Energy Study Institute for our annual Congressional Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Expo each year this gathering brings together leaders from all over the country to discuss the urgent need to deploy renewable energy and energy efficiency solutions to confront the accelerating harm caused by emissions of greenhouse gases every day we witness new evidence of just how dire the situation is and the high costs of our grossly inadequate response to climate change but I've long argued and so have many of you that rather than focus solely on the costs of inaction we should also emphasize the huge opportunities for action opportunities to build a stronger economy and generate millions of new homegrown good-paying jobs that put Americans to work addressing this crisis and importantly reducing the costs of energy consumption for consumers America's Energy Efficiency workforce is already the biggest energy workforce in the nation and we need to build on that momentum to expand it further and faster and make it more robust than ever before with your help commerce took an important step forward to do that by passing the infrastructure modernization bill signed by president Biden that new law funds important programs designed to mobilize our energy efficiency workforce and make homes businesses and communities more energy efficient in the Senate I'm working to build on that progress with legislative solutions that put more Americans to work while also helping save Americans money and protect our planet for generations to come I'm pleased to report that the legislation I introduced the Hope for Homes Act achieves all three of these goals that bill includes historic federal investments to train more Americans to install clean energy and energy efficiency solutions in people's homes by establishing new grants for online workforce training with these grants contractors and small businesses would be able to more easily train their employees to conduct comprehensive home energy efficiency retrofits in addition our bill would get fan would give families more incentives to make use of energy efficient solutions in their homes driving down the costs of energy and easing the squeeze on bank accounts and pocketbooks it's a win win win more Americans in good paying jobs more homeowners saving money on their energy bills and less of the polluting emissions that cause climate change that effort goes hand in hand with my push to create a national clean energy and sustainability accelerator which scales up the local green bank model we've seen in Maryland and a number of other states and localities around the country a national accelerator would be a magnet attracting even more private investment in clean energy technologies spur economic growth and create new jobs in the process these two legislative priorities will help build on the important progress we're making right now through the enactment of the infrastructure modernization law I'm committed to getting both of these bills and others across the finish line so we can support and build up a 21st century workforce that promotes economic growth and fights back against climate change the bottom line is that investments in clean energy present a huge opportunity for American workers our economy and our country and if we're not leading this effort we will be left behind by our global competitors so we must enact additional measures to achieve our goals and I'm proud to partner with all of you in pursuit of this shared mission you are the ones on the front lines converting ideas into action concepts into products thanks for all you do to make that happen take care well we will convene our third panel of the day the 2022 congressional renewable energy and energy efficiency policy forum we've already covered energy system modernization we were just talking about buildings and workforce now we're going to talk about transportation and there's a lot in the infrastructure investment jobs act about transportation and then our fourth panel we'll have we'll end at 345 and then our fourth panel we'll start at four o'clock and we'll talk about national security and energy security in particular so a really great session as well I'm Dan Berset I'm with the environmental energy study institute I'm joined by many of my colleagues this is probably a good moment to just say thanks to them we've got Miguel up here helping us keep time I see Savannah she's helping us with questions Jeff's in charge of named plates today Omri is just doing everything he's like you know a cartoon octopus bartender in a Roger Rabbit or something all sorts of great stuff we've got Troy our videographer making sure we look and sound great online I see Molly I see Allison I see all sorts of folks out of the hall too Anna and others so thanks to everybody who's helped us pull together today it's been great to be back in person and then really looking forward to this conversation we have an in-person audience here in the Dirksen building if you have questions you can catch the attention of my colleague Savannah she has index cards and pens and you can send questions up that way if you're in our online audience and there are several hundred of you in our online audience today you can send us questions you can follow us on Twitter at EESI online you can also send us an email ask ask at EESI.org that's ASK at EESI.org and we'll do our best to incorporate your questions into the conversation but without further ado we have four fantastic panelists here today to talk with us about transportation and specifically transportation investments provided on a bipartisan basis and the Infrastructure Investment Jobs Act and our first panelist is Carl Simon Carl is Director Transportation and Climate Division Office of Transportation and Air Quality at the Environmental Protection Agency he's kicking off our panel today so Carl I'll turn it over to you great thanks to Anna and I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you and your colleagues as well as the audience you have here too because this is a this is I think I don't think I'm overstating this characterization is that this is a transformational set of investments that Congress has given us here especially in the transportation space here too and I'll talk a little bit about this as we go forward but from an EPA perspective I'm going to focus in on the clean school bus portion of the IAJA but there are other portions of the of that bill that clearly have impact on the transportation sector writ large so thinking about the the NEVI program that DOT is is running in terms of electric vehicle charging infrastructure across the nation's highways and other areas too because that is not just accessible for cars you think about there's there's money that DOT got in terms of clean ports and looking about what you can do for ports and as we all know from the supply chain challenges we've had over the last few years port work is very important as this is a foundational part of our economy as well too and there's lots of really interesting technologies and choices there to make to make that that portion cleaner and then the other one that's maybe you know you may not initially think about as a transportation question but it's worth paying attention to and I won't go into too many details but just the Department of Energy is has started a pretty large set of investments on hydrogen so they're they're in the process of looking at hydrogen hubs they're trying to do a clean hydrogen standard under the provisions of the requirements you know hydrogen is talked about as a future fuel lots of questions still but that is one again that I think as the as these investment dollars roll out into the economy and as technology start to get sorted out something to pay attention to but let me let me turn to the school bus program because that is a got us super excited at EPA to be able to implement but it is I think for for the reasons I'll briefly share here a transformational program as well too so we're talking about five billion dollars came from Congress to implement a clean school bus program as a as a just as a a year ago comparison EPA's total budget was about 11 so you know and EPA got a whole bunch of money otherwise to implement parts of IAJA so it is a scale of investment that the agency has never seen before Congress is very clear in the requirements so it built on our successful diesel emission reductions act program but it's different so we want to make sure that as we've been implementing this where we're consistent with the new direction Congress gave us to think about how that program gets implemented but certainly the things we've learned over the last decade plus working with our stakeholders on implementation is relevant and as we've figured that out there are new priorities and considerations so there are parties that Congress asks us to think about in terms of high priority school districts tribal areas and rural areas that get prioritization in funding and then there's also considerations that we're supposed to take into account that are different than what we've seen before including thinking about bringing technologies to cost parity which is an interesting public policy question to sort through as you could probably imagine as we think about this the other aspect here that's gotten as we've done rollout on implementation is this is a question of replacement replacement is used a couple of places in the statute replacement in our mind and we think it's very important for both their quality environmental justice reasons is replacing older buses with cleaner new buses and the technologies can be hydrogen biofuels propane natural gas and electric or I think are the ones that listen in the statute we're funding three of them roughly there but replacement's important because it really does drive I think a lot of the change that we're looking for here we started a rebate program back in May it's the first of that we're going to do a grants program later in the fall and we're trying to do two more funding streams a year so allocating funding out in in various portions that we think will help address different school districts because right now there's about 500,000 school buses in use at any one time and there's I think over 13,000 school districts so the rebate program was designed to be fast easy and accessible but it doesn't work for everybody we've had great response so far in terms of the applications we're not done yet it closes on August 19th so those of you that are watching that are still thinking about it you have some time but not a lot of time the other provisions to think through here that we'll be working with stakeholders on including our federal partners is by America provisions are in the in the bill so we want to think through what that looks like for especially for charging infrastructure we need to kind of think through that and Department of Energy and Department of Transportation have the same challenges as well too and then also thinking about kind of the long-term role is how do we further integrate in our utilities and thinking about opportunities for other schools to participate and then the last one is is that five million dollars is an awful lot of money but it's it only would replace a portion of the school district buses so at the end of when the last federal dollar goes out we would love to have and we are going to be thinking about designs to have a sustainable market so that the bus bus costs come down and those choices for electric buses for example which are very pricey at the moment are not as hard a decision for school districts to think through that's our overview thanks thanks Harold that was great our second panelist is Genevieve Cullen Genevieve is president of the Electric Drive Transportation Association Hi Genevieve Hi thanks for having me Daniel yes thank you sorry thanks to EESI for for having a history of putting together really informative panels with great points of view and I'm happy to be part of it so for my part of this I'm here to talk about electric transportation no surprise with the Electric Drive Transportation Association we are a cross industry trade association our members represent the value chain of electric transportation so that its vehicles its utilities its components and materials manufacturers and folks in the infrastructure space and by electric transportation I mean anything in which electricity moves the wheels so that's it's it's plugins it's hybrids it's battery electric and fuel cell vehicles and it's everything from motorcycles to 18-wheelers so there's all the diverse needs of transportation and how electricity can serve to make those more efficient we work with our members to invest in technology grow markets and build a policy atmosphere that accelerates a transition to e-mobility because that's where the market's going and for us so what's what's the measure of our success well I'm gonna just give you a market snapshot so in in 2010 there were two plug-in cars on the road and the Leaf and the Volt now there are 70 models that you can buy at all different price points there are the total I think Q3 numbers are still just trickling in but it's about 2.7 million cumulative plug-in vehicles and at the same time there is a growing investment in the infrastructure that will will charge them so 49,000 public stations which translates into about 123,000 ports but right this is great progress so gone to from you know 1% of new car sales to two and over the last between 2020 and 2021 the market grew over 100 year-over-year over 100% and so share of market roughly about 5% of new car sales which is pretty amazing right but if you look around the world you see in Europe EVs are 10% of new car sales in China they are 20% so this is a robust and growing market and all the supply chains that go with it are also growing but we got a lot of work to do for instance the U.S. car park is maybe 2.7 million vehicles so we are just 270 million vehicles and we are 2.7 of that so we've got some work to do particularly as the administration is pointing to a goal of 50% of new car sales being electric by 2030 so things things need to move and I guess one of the reasons I'd like to sort of just take a second and tag up on like why does it matter right maybe it's a given to lots of people but I think it's really important to note in addition to the fact that because transportation is the largest source of emissions you can't get after climate change goals or even air pollution goals without addressing the transportation's emissions and electrification is an essential piece of that strategy so for us and I think and UCS has just released its most recent run down of like how is it better you know the forever I tell you I had a cousin who asked me last weekend right aren't you just trading emissions from one place to another right and you're plugging into coal the fact is no matter where you charge your car in the United States it's cleaner than the average than the average gasoline powered vehicle so this is it's an effective efficient pathway and it just gets more it just gets cleaner as the grid gets cleaner so it's an important tool it's also a global economic opportunity that if we don't invest we will just be won't just be buying from the market as opposed to leading it a big part of this it's the bipartisan infrastructure law everybody knows the nevy program has 7.5 billion dollars much of it directed but not entirely at at an electric infrastructure that will seed the market then it will accelerate private investment and that's what that's what my folks are doing but in addition as I'll think of as as Carl said there's a lot of other diverse pathways for this money imports for medium and heavy duty for school buses and all the diverse ways that we need to get after a cleaner transportation and finally of course because I'm a lobbyist and it's my job there is more we have to do this is just the beginning of this we you know if we are going to do this transition we're going to have to transition the whole supply chain so lots of policy work to be done and on the industry side lots of investment to be made so that's it did I hit the number Gold Star for Genevieve and for Carl too our third panelist is Chris Blyly Chris is senior vice president of regulatory affairs with growth energy I think that worked thanks Dan and thanks to my fellow panelists nice to finally meet everybody in person Carl I've known for a while though certainly and glad to be here today and join you all I'm actually going to maybe start where Genevieve ended if your goal is to get to net zero it's going to take a variety of technologies and you can't get there without biofuels we represent 89 bio refineries across the U.S. who produce as an industry we produced 15 billion gallons of biofuel last year capacity to produce 17 and a half billion gallons annually today we are more than 10 percent of the gasoline supply and poise to do much much more we are virtually in every gallon of gasoline you see today as 10 percent ethanol we have so E85 and E30 in more than 5000 locations across the U.S. and E15 which is approved for all 2001 and newer light duty vehicles is sold at more than 2,700 locations today they're closing in on 130, 150,000 fueling locations across the U.S. so we clearly have more work to do as well to get higher blends into the marketplace but just yesterday I drove up from Winston Salem and passed several locations selling E15 and E85 E15 selling 50 cents less per gallon and E85 is selling a dollar less per gallon so at a time when we're addressing gasoline costs energy security as well as the environment biofuels are really a triple win they're providing good paying jobs here in the U.S. supporting more than 400,000 jobs they're reducing consumer costs they're lowering greenhouse gas emissions nearly 50 percent compared to gasoline as well as some other air quality improvements and we're giving American farmers a good source a good source market for their grain as well we just talked I focused mainly on the light duty fleet but our producers are also very interested and have committed more than a billion gallons into the sustainable aviation fuel market which is certainly an exciting marketplace I know for a number of people it's a tremendous market just in general for fuel and so the more sustainable aviation fuel we can produce the better we can get at reducing greenhouse gas emissions in those sectors as well and we're also looking at marine options but you know I think as Genevieve and others have talked about we have a lot more to do on the policy front and really for us as producers it's about policy certainty we have the renewable fuel standard which has been in place for more than a decade now but we need to do we need to continue that forward to provide growth to the biofuels sector we also a number of things pending in congress on the tax and investment side as far as infrastructure as well as sort of policy certainty on production of next generation fuels and lower carbon biofuels so I know we have a number of questions so I'll pause there but looking forward to the discussion that's great Chris thank you so much our fourth panelist is Art Gazetti Art is the Vice President Mobility Initiatives in Public Policy at the American Public Transportation Association welcome Art take it away join my thank you Daniel I'll join my fellow panelists and commending EESI for pulling the great information together that it doesn't bringing it here bringing it right to Capitol Hill where it means a lot I'm going to state that moving forward we're going to need our energy efficiency is going to require more and better public transportation transportation is the leading sector of all sectors for emissions now that's not to say we're number one we're number one that means that we have the most room for improvement right and there's that's the greatest opportunity for improvement I will say that transit was transit workers were among the heroes and sheroes of the pandemic never shut down took essential workers to their jobs the hospitals cities kept hospitals going kept cities going kept communities functioning for that I think going forward we're going to be there as underscored by the bipartisan infrastructure law to have a big role in our policy future the key is to give good choices to the public it's good to have a car it's good to have a road network but you shouldn't have to use that road network or your car for everything for every trip you shouldn't have to burn a gallon of gas to get a quart of milk we need a balanced system that has those energy efficient choices I will also say that public transit providers across the country have been early adopters for sustainability we embrace sustainability in all its ways from the buildings and facilities we use to the the transit providers to the vehicles they operate to the fuels that power their operations to the extending to things like water recycle waste disposal et cetera I will also say that public transportation and land use go hand in hand always have always will and the communities that are built or built on the foundation of the transportation system that's in place communities built on the foundation of public transportation are inherently energy efficient and when you crunch the numbers that's what's going to show up with regard to the bipartisan infrastructure law what's key there is the what makes it a historic bill there's first of all there's enough funds to make a difference we're just not keeping up with state of good repair needs if we make the right choices we can make it a transfer transformational bill there are provisions in it per low and no emissions buses there's discretionary grant programs that are steered towards policy outcomes such as access to opportunity emissions reduction favorable environmental outcomes that's going to give communities regions the opportunity to make the choice for energy efficient policies going forward I'll pause there and I know there's much more to talk about thanks Art and there is there's so much to talk about and there's it's really the transportation sector is really exciting with the amount of transformation that has to take place and all of the different technologies and sectors and things that are coming together Carl I'd like to I'll start with you and then I'd love to hear from the rest of the panel as well you talked about electric school buses talked about nevy from a decarbonization perspective help us understand a little bit about sort of what the potential decarbonization benefits will look like from either those provisions or other provisions of IIJA that you're especially excited about whether they're at EPA or perhaps being undertaken by one of the other agencies sure I think I touched briefly on it a bit in my opening remarks but it's just that this this transformational investment that we're making as a country in these sectors now there's been you know Jen we've talked about the history of this and how we've gone and I would agree that the trend lines are certainly very positive in terms of where you see market growth and Chris has talked about the renewable fuels program and you see a lot of growth there as well too thinking about where you what is it that you need to kind of get past to kind of the you know economic tipping point doesn't need to be 70 percent of the market it needs to be 20 or 30 percent you know that there's places where it becomes routine where businesses are making investments where it's it's giving choices I like art statement about providing choices to consumers those are the things you want to provide people with so that so that it's not necessarily being driven by one and one specific policy or a tax and center or something else but it's it's it's a kind of common nature and if you think about the transportation sector even in the last 15 years think about what we were doing 15 years ago and think about what 10 years could be I mean there's there's a lot of change that's coming here and this up this this funding stream so for school buses is your if you're doing domestic production you're you're bringing battery production on on site into this country more so because it's it's a sustainable market you're providing market signals over we're going to spend five billion over the next five years whether you know how that goes out is a whole separate question but that's going into the school bus sector that's our goal is to get as much dollars into the bus sector as we possibly can so building on that structure that allows for market investment that allows for some certainty and I think you could go down the line and other parts of IAJA that just allow for that stream of consistency Genevieve from your perspective sort of what do we need to do to ensure that these infrastructure jobs infrastructure investment jobs at investments are as impactful as possible for your your members wonky it's it's hard to see what I think there's a there's a as always there's a couple of pieces in play here right we have to create enough flexibility in the movement of this money because transportation is diverse and communities are diverse and how they consume transportation varies so you need programs built to serve all these different drivers and communities and we you know what a rural school district and a Manhattan one need in a school bus are different things right and different infrastructure to serve them and how do you get all the stakeholders together so I think that flexibility in what is is really important and I think Carl's point about seeding this market is so important and you know the ATVM program is also part of this and they're just they announced today underwriting battery production in the United States and you know supply chains follow markets so we build a market here or the supply chain comes closer and we get economies of scale and reduction in costs and this is how you actually get to that inflection point that people keep calling for Chris for you from your perspective at growth energy what are the provisions of the IJA that you think could be most impactful for getting more biofuels into the market yeah I'll I mean I'll talk a little more broadly than I mean I think I touched a little bit on the renewable fuels program these infrastructure investments is again I think as long as you're hitting multiple technologies the ability for biofuels to compete you know we talk about vehicles we have 245 at least 245 million vehicles on the road today that can use E15 but we only have it in 2600 locations so the more we can develop infrastructure and get available to consumers to give them the choice at the pump or choice wherever of technologies I think is key I think further development of efficient engines that's high octane low carbon mid-level ethanol blends and in a sort of a future technology engine I can drive even even further greenhouse gas reductions alongside electrification and other technologies and you know there's the next generation fuels act that has a lot of development of sort of this octane piece and low carbon piece but again I think it's you know giving people can choices today with available infrastructure additional infrastructure investments and then you know key incentives and key investments in sort of new and emerging technologies like sustainable aviation fuel and marine fuels thanks and our let's give you the last word where do you see the potential from for greatest impact from the infrastructure bill investments okay I'm going to break that down into you know bus and rail first of all on the rail side is we talk about the historic dimensions there's the public transportation elements and married to that are the passenger rail you know just a a huge commitment in really taking our passenger rail network to a whole new level so I'll mention that in in those words on the bus side first of all the transition is remarkable in five five percent only 95 percent of the buses were diesel in 2018 my stats are a little old it's the diesel was only 40 percent so from 95 went down to 40 and it's you take that forward it's it's only shrunk the non-diesel is risen a lot so we're already on that track and it's going to eventually be you know we're committed to zero zero emission right so that's the that's the track we're on and we're already have made huge progress the bipartisan infrastructure bill will take that project that process further I'll also mention it's not easy the transition of a bus fleet to say from diesel to electric comes with comes with issues you have to you need the charging facilities you need