Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to group six of our policy and technology forum and expo today. This session is on low-carbon transportation fuels and again my name is Carol Werner and I'm the executive director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute and we are so glad to be holding this event to have all of these terrific exhibitors and speakers participating today as we work together to try and find solutions to solve energy and environmental issues as we work closely with the bipartisan House Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus. So in this session as I said we're really going to be looking at low-carbon transportation fuels and I cannot stress enough how important I think this whole area is. So much of the time when we hear about energy and energy policy so much of it is focused on is focused on the power sector on electricity which is terribly terribly important to be sure but at this stage one of the other things that has happened is that we now have more greenhouse gas emissions coming from our transport sector than from the power sector. In fact the transport sector is now producing the largest amount of any sector. So it's really really important that we address this and while some people think when they think about transportation and changes they think only of electric vehicles and primarily cars and what's really important to understand is that is that the sector is much larger than that will continue to be much larger than that in terms of looking at fuels which is why it's so important to have these folks with us today to talk about this. So to start us off is Burrell Hagwood who is a board member for the Clean Fuels Development Coalition and the Clean Fuels Foundation. 19 years ago Congress gave EPA the authority to take the toxics out of gasoline yet there are still about 30 billion gallons of benzene-based fuel in our gasoline. Congress needs to ask EPA why because 71 years ago the American Petroleum Institute said the safe threshold for benzene was zero and we can all do the math on zero. Congress needs to ask why. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimates that 50,000 people die prematurely each year from pollution from transportation fuel and that's not all diesel gate it's gasoline gate. That death rate is on par with the opioid epidemic but it's not in the news. Congress needs to ask why. The latest data says air quality is getting worse as Carol said greenhouse gases are more coming more now from transportation fuel than anything else. It's about it's not about diesel gate and the 500,000 cars that Volkswagen created a software defeat device. This is about gasoline gate and this is a report we sent to Congress today that was released on July 4th that explains that story. We want to know why EPA refuses to use real world fuels and real world testing which is what Europe is doing after their experience with diesel gate. The EPA has refused to update their transportation cost benefit analysis for 18 years. If it were my house and this is also my house, I would want to know why. How can they not respond to Congress for 18 years? The Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy have all revised their greenhouse models to show the positive contribution of biofuels and what they're making to reduce greenhouse gases but not EPA. We think Congress should ask them why. EPA by the power vested in them by Congress is about to release it's safer affordable fuel efficiency vehicles rule ironically called safe. Will they choose a standard to lower toxics, lower greenhouse gases, lower fuel costs, lower vehicle production costs, spoiler alert. We don't think so. Congress should ask them why. We suggest that EPA should be asked before their actions result in a decade, another decade of unnecessary higher fuel costs, sickness, disease and unnecessary increases in health care costs. Ask them why. Then ask them why not. Why not a higher octane standard that will save money and save lives? If this were my house, and it's my house too, after I got done asking EPA why and why not, I'd want to take a vote. Don't kind of go like this. Who wants more benzene in their gasoline? Say yay. Who wants more benzene in their air? Say yay. Who wants more benzene in their bloodstream or in their forming babies? Who wants to pay more for proven carcinogens in their gasoline? Who wants more greenhouse gases? Say yay. Who wants higher cost vehicles? Crickets. The nays have it. If people want a green economy, everybody wants a green economy, they're going to need a free market. And if you want a free gasoline market, we're going to have to free EPA from the strangleholding influence of big oil. Hashtag gasoline gate. You can read the emails that show how EPA colluded with big oil to cook the books on emission tests that protect toxic aromatics and throw biofuels under the gasoline gate bus. Someone needs to ask EPA why. Especially in Washington, you never ask a question you don't know the answer to. We've prepared. Still not sure? And read this fact book. The real cost of gasoline is staggering. So thousand plus research studies that show the impact of gasoline emissions on the body and the unborn fetus and the cost that society pays dearly every day. It's hard to believe we now live in a time when consumers know what's in their water, what's in their food and how many steps they take. But they don't know Jack about what's in their gasoline. Why? Don't like to read? Google you don't know Jack about what's in your gasoline. And Jack will explain it to you. Spoiler alert, Jack is no dummy. It was a time when the world was flat, smoking was cool and people didn't wear seatbelts. It's time for people to learn what's in their gasoline. And why? Why do most people think they know a lot about what's wrong with biofuels but they don't know Jack about what's in their gasoline? Or the impact it has on their body or the fetus of a known-born child? It's time to free the gasoline market from the regulatory stranglehold of EPA. Congress can give consumers their inalienable rights to save vehicles running on safe gasoline so we can all breathe safe air. So you can be an advocate and sign the EPA gasoline, the EPA made gasoline safe petition at change.org. And that's our why and that's why we're here. So I'm gonna start a minute short and now my kid's gonna test I can talk about this forever so everybody can sign up for the EPA petition because it's gonna take the consumers in Congress all working together to change the fuel standard to make safe gasoline. Thank you. Thanks, Pearl. And obviously it's really important for all of us to be good consumers to be informed consumers and because there are so many different aspects that we really need to be aware of with regard to health environment as well as as energy components. So we're now going to turn to Alan Schafer who is executive director for the diesel technology forum. Thanks very much Carol. Good afternoon everybody. Nice to be with you today. A quick word about the diesel technology forum. We represent manufacturers of diesel engines, trucks, equipment, component suppliers, companies in the renewable energy space like Nestay, renewable energy group and the National Biodiesel Board and also a range of other emissions control technology suppliers and the Western States Petroleum Association. So we have we have members sort of in all aspects of the diesel industry and it's great to be here today. I would say that this this event the renewable energy and energy efficiency policy forum and expo really suits diesel perfectly because when you think about it we have one foot squarely in our world of energy abundance that many of you are thinking about today but we also have one foot squarely in the future of clean energy and diesel is a technology that delivers on both accounts today for our economy on a global basis. I want to I want to start with a little a little quiz pop quiz for you today. So how many of you have an iPhone in the room? Oh just a few people.  A day? Half a day, three quarters of a day if you're lucky. So if your iPhone was powered by diesel fuel it would last for 10 days and I say that to make the point about energy density and energy efficiency and that's why diesel is the technology of choice for America's trucking industry, agriculture industry, construction industry etc. So that's that's kind of our fun fact for today. I also want to just say a word about you know sort of how diesel fits into the into the future. And we hear a lot about battery and electric technologies and those are those are are great and some will be great for future applications and they get most of the headlines. I mean let's be honest right but I just thought it'd be interesting to share with you that it's really in California we look at kind of how that state is doing relative to achieving its own climate goals and what we find is that even though the battery electric technologies are getting most of the headlines the reality is that it's diesel engines and biodiesel that are delivering the most carbon benefits today. So electric cars and trucks in California resulted only in about 1.2 million tons of CO2 reductions last year. That's one third of the emissions reduction delivered by diesel and biodiesel fuels. So as we look for solutions to reducing CO2 emissions and achieving cleaner air I think it's important to look broadly into technologies that are delivering today and and show great promise for efficiency tomorrow. Those of you who are here congressional staffers thank you for sharing a few minutes of your afternoon with us. 13 states here in the U.S. are home to heavy duty diesel engine manufacturing that supports about 3.4 trillion dollars in the U.S. economy and more than 1.25 million jobs across America. So the diesel industry is important to our economy here in the U.S. and the technology has come so far I think you know some of you may remember sort of the old days of seeing a smoky diesel truck or bus somewhere. We're proud to say in the diesel industry that those days are far behind us and today's new generation of diesel is really near zero emissions for both nitrogen oxides and particulate matter. And in fact it's so clean and here's your second fun fact today. It would take 60 think about this for a second it would take 60 of today's model commercial trucks the big rigs to equal the emissions of a single truck built in the late 80s 60 to one. That's how far we've come and making diesel clean and manufacturers have really achieved not only a clean technology for their customers but also one that's more fuel efficient as they work towards meeting EPA greenhouse gas requirements in the future. So I think that those are notable points about this technology. I would also say that we're excited to be here today because when you pair the advanced generation of diesel technology with advanced high quality renewable biofuels it's really an unbeatable combination that many cities and fleets around the country are finding that they don't have to change their infrastructure. They don't have to have big new investments. They don't have to dig up pavement. They can simply use their existing technology and switch the fuel to deliver lower carbon benefits. And for example in California the cities of Oakland the cities of San Francisco Walnut Creek Culver City and on and on cities have switched their entire municipal service vehicles their public fleets that serve your needs in those communities and switch those towards using renewable biofuels. And so overnight overnight they reduce their carbon footprint by as much as 80 percent. That's a pretty impressive result and the way they're doing that is burning those advanced renewable biofuels in existing diesel engines. So the solution is there. It's really delivering substantial results today. It's not something that we're promising for the future but it's really working today. The last point I would make is that as folks here debate these issues we often are attracted to what might be what might happen with electrification. Which states which technologies which vehicles are going to convert to electric. And surely some of that will happen and is happening today. But we can't take our eye off the ball for right now. We need to have continued steady progress in efficiency and clean air. And today's generation of diesel is delivering that time and time again. So with that I say thank you very much and thank you Carol for all your great work here in EESI and for having us here today. Visit us we're out here in the exhibit at the expo and you can also visit us online at www.dieselforum.org. Thank you. So thank you and because sometimes people may get confused when they hear diesel and don't realize oh diesel can be highly highly efficient and that there are renewable fuels in terms of biodiesel renewable diesel that that give you that renewable performance in in existing diesel engines. So we're now going to turn to Devin Mogler who is the Vice President for Government Affairs with Great Plains Inc. and Great Plains is part of growth energy. Thank you Carol. As you mentioned I'm representing green plains we're an ethanol producer. We have 13 corn ethanol plants across the U.S. in eight states. I'm here on behalf of growth energy which represents over 100 plants across the entire United States as well as associate members that represent every step of the supply chain. So first of all ethanol is just 200 proof booze. All our plants are are just giant distilleries that take the starch portion of a corn kernel that complex carbohydrate and use yeast to break it down those sugars into alcohol. So you could drink it right out of the tube at the end but we put denatrin in it so it only works in your vehicles and most people don't even realize that they're burning it in their cars every day. So 10% of almost every gallon of gasoline sold in the U.S. is is our product it's ethanol. So we produce domestically about 16.5 billion gallons every year. Unfortunately we're not using it all here. We're exporting about 1.7 billion gallons of that overseas to other countries that are ramping up their ethanol usage. Why aren't we using more here is basically because we're effectively capped. The petroleum ministry still largely controls the distribution system the pipelines as well as the consumer facing the retail infrastructure at your gas station. And they know that our product is cleaner burning. They know that it's more cost effective and that it works in almost every vehicle on the road. And so they're low to give us more of the slice of the market share. So we're right at 10% now. We've gotten a big breakthrough this past year. I will say the one good thing this EPA has done for us so far this administration is lifting the cap on on year around sales of E 15 which again is just instead of 10% of ethanol in your in your gas tank is having the option not the mandate an option to choose 15% blend that works in all vehicles 2001 model year and newer which represents about 92% of vehicles on the road. And again it's saving consumers just a little bit more than the E 10 is E 10 on average saves you about 6 cents per gallon at adding E 15 was save you about 5 to 10 cents I just looked this morning. Unblended gasoline is trading at about $2 a gallon whereas pure ethanol is a buck 50. So it's about a 50 cent spread there so every additional gallon of every additional percentage of ethanol that's going into your vehicle is saving you money. So it's like a it's like an extra tax break. One of the things you know we as a corn ethanol producer will get hit with is a wait a minute aren't you you know taken food away from you know what we could be eating. Well first of all the corn we're using to turn into ethanol is not the corn you roast on the 4th of July or get up the county fair. We're using field corn corn we eat as humans is only about 2% of what we grow here in the United States. The rest is what we call yellow number 2 dent field corn. And so we take that we take about 60% of it and turn into ethanol the rest of it gets turned into code products such as corn oil which we sell to our friends in the biodiesel industry to turn into biodiesel and then about 30% of that is called dried distillers grains which goes right back into the food supply but food supply for animals for livestock like cattle and chickens etc. So don't be don't be fooled by the food for fuel argument. And then the other piece we get hit on a lot is well it isn't you know corn actually you know worse for the environment corn based ethanol. There's numerous studies out there including the most recent one from USDA showing that we're about a 43% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions weld wheels versus a baseline gasoline and again that's for first generation ethanol that's just for the corn that's not taking into effect all the other steps of the second generation ethanol taking the corn stovers the stocks the the leaves etc and turning them into ethanol as well as a lot of the great things we're doing on the side now with bolt on technology carbon capture etc and we can get into all that more in the question and answer session and I'll leave a little time here on the panel for the rest of my panelists. Thank you. Great. Thanks so much and hopefully we will have time so that we can discuss a little bit more. We're not going to turn to Cassidy Walter who is a communications director for the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association and I have to say I'm very proud because I also come from Iowa. Thank you. So being from Iowa where in case you didn't know every year is an election year and one Iowa caucus season just sort of rolls right into the next one. I have to say that the 2020 election is on my mind as well as likely many of you guys and climate change and the role of carbon has already emerged as an important campaign issue for the candidates who are flooding my home state. There are a lot of exciting solutions out there but here's the reality. On January 20th of 2021 if the newly elected or reelected president were to hypothetically sign an executive order saying that every new vehicle sold is supposed to be an electric vehicle. By the end of that president's second term the majority of the vehicles on the road would still require liquid fuel because it just takes that long to turn over our nation's fleet. And today that's precisely the point I would like to make to you guys that if you're talking low carbon you should be talking about biofuels. If we as a country truly want to make take immediate action to reduce emissions significantly over the course of the next two decades biofuels need to be a part of that solution to be clear electrification will play an important role as well but it would be a mistake to ignore our chance to decarbonize our liquid fuel supply. My name is Cassidy Walter and I'm the communications director for the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association. We are a state level trade association representing Iowa's ethanol and biodiesel producers. Just a little bit of information on you know what is ethanol and what is biodiesel. Devon did a pretty good job. Ethanol is a biofuel that's made primarily from cornstarch. It's used today in our gasoline vehicles typically in a 10% blend but E15 is also growing and biodiesel is an advanced biofuel made primarily from soybean oil and that's blended into our diesel fuel supply and common blends include B5, B11 and B20. And we're all here today to talk about clean energy and this panel in particular you know we've been asked to talk about low carbon transportation fuels which honestly is easy enough for me because working for an organization that represents ethanol and biodiesel producers low carbon fuels is what I'm focusing on every day. Latest studies as Devon mentioned have shown that ethanol reduces greenhouse gas emissions by up to 43% and as our industry becomes more efficient that number is only going to grow. Biodiesel is America's leading advanced biofuel reducing greenhouse gas emissions by up to 86%. Increased use and higher blends of biofuels is simply the fastest most cost effective resource the United States has to reduce transportation emissions over the next decade. Every year the biofuels industry is becoming more efficient and more environmentally friendly. We are using less electricity from natural gas and less water. Iowa is actually the number one producer of ethanol and biodiesel and in my state of Iowa increasingly our electricity and our power is coming from wind energy clean renewable wind energy. As a state we're up to nearly 40% coming from wind so that's just another way that our industry as a whole is becoming cleaner. Also let's not forget Iowa's farmers who are harvesting more crops from the same amount of land and they're doing it today in a more sustainable environmentally friendly way than ever before. So the fact of the matter is that biofuels are only getting cleaner while petroleum fuels are getting dirtier. And why is that? Well first of all it's who we are in Iowa. Iowa biofuel producers have a long history of looking for ways to become more efficient and the more efficient they become the more they're going to reduce their carbon footprint. And second it's simple economics. California is our industry's biggest domestic market and in California how well a fuel does is tied directly to its carbon intensity score. Brazil is our biggest export market and in Brazil also judges fuels on carbon. As do as does the EU and states in the northeast and northwest of our country are considering low carbon fuel standards as well as Canada another important export market. So simply put biofuels are ready and eager to play an important role in a low carbon economy because that is what our markets are demanding. Furthermore reducing greenhouse gas emissions is not the only reason biofuels are good for our environment. We want to reduce carbon emissions but we also need clean air. There's a growing body of evidence which I think this gentleman here was referring to that the particulate matter that is coming out of our tailpipes from the aromatics and transportation fuel to increase octane. These particulate matter are so small that our natural bodily filters can't filter them out. So then they go into our lungs and into our bloodstream and they cause DNA mutation and they lead to very serious health problems including respiratory disease, heart disease and even cancer. Ethanol and biodiesel burn cleaner than petroleum fuels and significantly reduce human exposure to these dangerous emissions. Ethanol is actually the world's cheapest cleanest source of fuel octane. So if we as a country were to move toward higher blends and I'm not talking about going from E10 to E15 even though we are very excited that we're moving, the E15 is growing. I'm talking about E30 and E5050. If we could do that, we could reduce greenhouse gas emissions, sure. But we could also make a significant reduction in human exposure to toxic emissions in the air that we're breathing. So in conclusion, as policymakers out here in Washington are considering our nation's resources and the steps that we need to be taking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect our environment. We ask that they remember us in Iowa, the producers in Iowa, the ethanol and biodiesel producers, who are creating clean fuels that we can use today to fight climate change and protect human health. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thanks so much. Spoken like a true Iowan, right? Thank you. We will now turn to Kurt Kevark, who is the Vice President of Federal Affairs for the National Biodiesel Board. And he has been involved with biofuels and politics for many, many years. Thank you, Carol. I appreciate the kind introduction. I think we've got almost four Iowans on the panel. So we're well represented for. Yeah, we've got to hold a caucus here this afternoon. So I'm with the National Biodiesel Board, the Vice President of Federal Affairs. We handed out a packet like this, if you have it. I'm just going to go through some of this. Obviously Cassidy and Devin, even Allen covered a bit of my presentation. So we are the National Biodiesel Board, where the National Trade Association that represents, we've got about 135 members across the country, from feedstock providers to producers and marketers of biodiesel and renewable diesel. It includes about 95 production facilities. We have production facility in every single state in America. We serve the US biodiesel industry as a primary domestic voice for this emerging industry. Our mission is to advance the interests of our members by creating sustainable biodiesel industry growth. Among our organization, aside from myself and our government affairs shop, we also have communications, market development and technology and quality assurance programs to continue to promote the production, the use and the marketing of the fuel. The biodiesel, renewable diesel market, so just to give you a little bit of background, biodiesel is a fuel made from fats and oils through esterification of fatty acids and vegetable oils and recycled fats. We do have our own ASTM standard, D6751. Renewable diesel is another product that is made essentially from the same feedstocks, oils and fats, but it's made through a process much more similar to petroleum refining and is a product that's essentially indistinguishable from a molecule of petroleum diesel. So while biodiesel, today you will see blended anywhere from B1 to B5 to B20. Renewable diesel can be essentially used 100% in today's technology of diesel on the road. So in many places you'll see if someone wants to do a fully renewable diesel content, you can blend it at 20% biodiesel and 80% renewable diesel and be essentially 100% renewable. We also have a product called bioheat that is blended in heating oil in the New England states, particularly. So you have primarily home heating oil in New England. A lot of those folks are converting to blends of B5 to B20 to reduce carbon emissions coming from home heating fuel. Our current market today is about 2.6 billion gallons. So if you consider that on-road diesel pool is about 40 billion gallons. Total distillate consumption in the United States is probably around 60 billion gallons. We're about 5% of the on-road market and about 70% of our product is essentially used by a handful of the largest truck stop companies across the country. In terms of feedstock, we're extremely diverse. 10 years ago we were probably almost exclusively soybean oil. So as Devin was talking about the corn ethanol process, I'll talk a little bit about the soybean production process in the Midwest. So soybeans are essentially grown for their protein. It's the highest value, most cost efficient way to produce protein to feed livestock. So 80% of a soybean is protein that's fed to animals. The other 20% is soybean oil. We have much more soybean oil in the United States produced as a byproduct of protein production than we can possibly consume in our own diets. So we have a surplus of soybean oil. The biodiesel industry essentially exists to add value to that surplus oil. But as I mentioned, we're significantly more diverse in terms of our feedstock than we were a few years ago. If you look at the charts on page four, you'll see soybean oil today is only about 50% of our feedstock. Our other feedstock comes from used cooking oil, distillers corn oil, which is a byproduct of the ethanol process, and animal fats. So we have a lot of animal renderers who are now collecting used cooking oil across the country, as well as turning byproduct of the animal production process, the excess animal fats into renewable fuel. So we're essentially recyclers of oils and fats that don't have another market, which gives us a really great environmental profile in terms of GHG reduction. So others have mentioned corn ethanol, we're considered an advanced biofuel under the renewable fuel standard, which means we must reduce carbon emissions compared to petroleum diesel by at least 50%. We're actually recent studies show us anywhere from 76 to 86%. You might say why is there a variance in that? Why isn't it just 86%? It all depends on what the feedstock is. So used cooking oil obviously has the greatest GHG reduction compared to petroleum, and it's a range depending on what the feedstock is. But as a result, 86% lower carbon emissions, 45% lower particulate emissions, less wastewater, less hazardous waste, obviously, in the atmosphere in the air. We add value to the farm economy, 63 cents per bushel. Right now, today, in terms of today's price of a bushel of soybeans, that's about 11% to the value of their crop in adding value to the surplus soybean oil. We also save livestock producers by making the feedstock for their or the protein for their animals cheaper. And then we save consumers at least 17 cents on every gallon of diesel in 2017 by adding additional fuel into the supply. So that's a snapshot of our industry and our GHG reduction. We've obviously we've got a handful of supportive federal policies that we work to maintain. The one thing that we encourage and ask Congress on a regular basis is for certainty and predictability in our federal policies. The first one is a biodiesel tax credit. There's been a $1 per gallon tax credit in place since 2005. It's what we call part of the tax extenders. It's available to the blender of the fuel, so it is essentially, essentially, in sense, the blending. It helps our downstream marketers want to become invested in the fuel, put it in the infrastructure, market it to the consumer, and then obviously pass some of the savings on to the consumer so they choose to buy the fuel. That tax credit has been on again off again since 2005. It's been lapsed right now since December 31st of 2017. There is a bill here in the house. HR 2089, introduced by Representative Finkenauer and Mike Kelly from Pennsylvania, currently has 57 co-sponsors. It was included in the tax extender markup last month, a three year extension for 18, 19 and 20. So we hope to see quick action to get that tax incentive reenacted. As a result of its laps, as businesses that depend on the tax credit and recognize in the past it's always come back, they build in that tax credit in the value of their product. And in order to sell the product, that tax credit is built in. And with the fact that it's now been lapsed for 18 months, we're starting to have facilities that are shuttering, Missouri, Texas, Nebraska, all facilities that the economics just aren't there and they can't take the risk on the tax credit so they're shutting down, which means less feedstock being purchased, less fuel being purchased, increase in GHG emissions as a result of fewer gallons of biodiesel. Second, federal policy is a renewable fuel standard, created in 2005 and expanded in 2007. We are in the advanced category. So we go to EPA every year and ask for higher volumes. They always set the volumes lower than our current market, which is frustrating. The RFS was meant to drive demand and send market signals, yet EPA has consistently set our volume below our own market. This year, for 2020, we're at 2.43. The proposal that just came out from EPA last week would maintain us at 2.43. And as I said, our market last year was 2.6, more than 2.6 billion gallons. On top of that, EPA has been granting essentially every small refinery exemption that's been filed. Under the previous administration, you had somewhere in the neighborhood of five to 10 smaller refinery exemptions granted each year. This administration has been handing them out like candy. And as a result, they've they've they've granted these exemptions after the renewable volume has been set. So while EPA says our RVO was 2.1 billion for this year, it's actually significantly less because they've exempted a couple billion gallons of demand of petroleum product that would be required to be blended with biodiesel. So we're actually below that. And then finally, I'm going to talk a little bit about our state efforts. As others have mentioned, because of the GHG profile of our fuel, our highest demand, I mean, our product is produced around the country. The highest demand is in California. In fact, as far as the LCFS is concerned, biodiesel has helped generate at least about 45% of the LCFS credits. All the fuel a lot of the fuel that we produce essentially heads up to out to California to help them comply with their low carbon goals. Same thing is happening up in New York and New England. They're all enacting a lot of state programs to reduce carbon emissions. And biodiesel happens to be the here and now fuel that is the answer that doesn't require conversions, any type of infrastructure improvements, etc. I think I'll wrap it up there. Thank you very much. Thanks so much, Kurt. And once again, this is an area where there are lots of feedstocks that are available. And I'll never forget, several years ago, in terms of talking about biodiesel, for example, I was told just remember fog, that's oils and graces, in terms of thinking about all of the things that actually can be used. And once again, one of the things that I think is also really cool is are all of the components that can be problems that now can actually solve problems, be solutions and produce a cleaner environment and give us energy. So we should always remember that. And that's actually very cool. So we're going to take another look at another fuel in terms of how we look at a whole portfolio of cleaner fuels, in terms of thinking about air and lowering greenhouse emissions. So to talk a little bit about that is Allison Cunningham, who is the Director of Federal Government Affairs for the Natural Gas Vehicles for America, which is also called NGVA. Thank you, Carol, for the introduction. I'll apologize because I am dealing with the very end of a summer cold. So I'll do my best to get through my remarks without coughing or having a coughing fit. As Carol mentioned, my name is Allison Cunningham, and I am with NGV America. I'm our Director of Federal Government Affairs. For those of you unfamiliar with our organization, we are the national trade that works for increased use of natural gas and transportation. That includes CNG or compressed natural gas, LNG or liquefied natural gas, and increasing deployment of RNG or renewable natural gas. We have about 180 members across the country, everything from fleets, local distribution companies or gas utilities, clean cities groups, original equipment manufacturers and fuelers. There are companies that you have heard of, including UPS, waste management, Frito-Lay, PepsiCo, Love's Travel Stops, Trillium Clean Energy Fuels, and many others. So I'll go ahead and provide an overview of natural gas and transportation that I'll go more specifically into renewable natural gas. So why natural gas for transportation? Natural gas and transportation provides several advantages, including economic, environmental, and energy security benefits. Important to our topic today, NGV's offer unmatched emission reductions benefits. This was alluded to earlier, but we ask ourselves, why does this matter? Well, according to the American Lung Association, over 140 million Americans live in areas with air that is unhealthy to breathe. So that's about four out of every 10 Americans. This disproportionately impacts certain communities, unfortunately, including urban areas. In fact, 71% of African Americans live in counties in violation of federal air pollution standards. And by far, the leading source of these urban emissions is for medium and heavy duty vehicles. This includes short haul trucks, long haul trucks, refuse trucks, school buses and transit buses. And that makes sense, right? These vehicles are on the road or idling all day. They're high fuel use vehicles. And there are things like delivery trucks, seeing increased deliveries from Amazon kind of with the way internet purchasing is going. You might see trash trucks coming down your street. They've spent a long time there. But that means that these trucks also present the biggest opportunity for clean transportation in the biggest area where we can make a difference. For example, if you replaced one traditional diesel with one of the new ultra low knocks, NGV trucks, that's the emissions equivalent of taking 119 combustion engine cars off the road. That's because the cleanest commercially available heavy duty truck engine in the world right now is powered by natural gas. That's powered by the Cummins Westport ultra low knocks engine, which is certified 90% cleaner than EPA's current knock standard, and 90% cleaner than the latest available diesel engine. So don't beat me up, yeah, sorry. NGVs are also part of our climate change solution. Fueling with natural gas reduces CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions. On a weld wheels basis, natural gas reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 17% for CNG and 11% for LNG. And if we're looking at carbon reductions, renewable natural gas provides an even greater carbon reduction. CARB or the California Air Resources Board, it's found that RNG, depending on the source of the fuel, can be anywhere from 40 to 125% lower than traditional fuels on a weld wheel basis. So CARB also certified RNG from dairy waste, which is the highest methane concentration as negative 303 carbon intensity. If you look at CARB's LCFS pathways, that's far lower than any other fuel, including hydrogen and electric. So what is RNG? RNG is biogas or biomethane captured as organic waste breaks down above the earth's surface. It's harvested directly from food waste, wastewater, which is done here by DC water, agriculture waste or capturing landfill gas, waste management as a member company of ours, the nation's largest waste hauler. They capture gas from their landfills and utilize it in their trucks. And the growth of this technology is just occurring rapidly. In 2018, 30% of fuel used in on-road NGVs was renewable. So that's about 204 million gasoline gallon equivalents. Over the past five years, RNG use has displayed over 7 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. So he put that in perspective if you looked at those last five years. RNG is a transportation fuel, has lowered greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to removing 1.5 million gasoline passenger cars from our roads for one year. It's reduced CO2 emissions equivalent to 815 million gallons of gasoline or 712 million gallons of diesel consumed. And that's equal to the total energy used by 868,000 US homes for one year. And I have all these statistics at our table over in the other room. RNG has a lot of other benefits. It aids rural areas and creates revenues for farmers. You likely know that we have 34 natural gas producing states if you're talking about geologic natural gas. We like to say that with RNG, there could be 50 natural gas producing states. RNG captures that naturally occurring methane, as I mentioned before, so it really provides a double benefit for continuing to clean up our air through time. We're going to be needing to look to those other sources of naturally occurring methane and other emissions. So this captures those and gives a double benefit. I also like to say that RNG offers the quickest path to a renewable future, which is a conversation we're having a lot now in Congress and elsewhere. RNG uses proven technology. Once you get RNG into the natural gas system, it is completely interchangeable with geologic natural gas. So it uses vehicles and engines that are already on road that are already tested and already deployed. And it uses existing natural gas distribution infrastructure as well. So what can Congress do in order to spur the growth of RNG and more deployment of RNG? The most important thing for our industry is extension of the alternative fuels tax credit or the AFTC. AFTC is a 50 cent per gallon credit for natural gas, including RNG, CNG or LNG. Solder uses a motor vehicle fuel. This also includes hydrogen and also includes propane and other alternative fuels. Along with the biodiesel credit mentioned earlier, it expired in December 31st of 2017 and was retroactively extended then. It is also included in the Grassley-Widen extender bill that was introduced in the Senate, as well as the package that was recently considered by Houseways and Means. So extending the AFTC as soon as possible, providing fleets with certainty, providing others with certainty to make these cleaner investments is absolutely crucial. There are also many benefits to increasing natural gas deployment in vehicles and to extending the AFTC. Deployment of more natural gas vehicles grow the American economy, spur manufacturing and infrastructure investment, clean our air, as I mentioned before. It also reduces our dependency on foreign oil and it contributes to America's energy and national security. A few years ago, it was the head of comprehensive tax reform. We conducted a study on a five-year prospective extension of the alt fuels tax credit and the kind of impacts that would have. And we found that for a five-year prospective extension of the credit over the course of 10 years without further investment from the government, we would see $9.9 billion in economic growth, a billion dollars in avoided public health costs, creation of 62,000 new middle class jobs with an average salary of $52,000 a year, and $5.8 billion in additional private sector investment in infrastructure and equipment. Use of more R&G is also expected to grow our economy and create jobs. A recent study in California alone found that dedicated investment in deploying low knocks trucks powered by renewable natural gas could create up to 134,000 jobs and provide up to $14 billion and added economic value by 2030. They found that the average labor income per job created was over $68,000 a year, which is more than double California's median salary for current workers. And more than I made my almost my entire time on Capitol Hill, so love to see those good paying jobs. We should grow R&G far beyond California though. Right now with the LCFS and with RFS, that's where a lot of this fuel's going, but we would love to see a growing thriving market nationwide. The AFTC certainly helps with that. There's very broad geographic support for an extension of the AFTC as well. There are supporters of this credit and abuse in these alternative fuels in every state across the country, and that includes the over 180 members of NGV America, 2,600 plus members of the National Propane Gas Association, 750 members of the American Public Gas Association, 40 members of the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association, as well as a group called Transportation Energy Partners that represents clean cities, coalitions across the country, with about 13,000 stakeholders nationwide. There are over 140 transit fleets running on alternative fuels such as natural gas, 5,500 natural gas school buses are operating in the U.S. Both, and these are all covered by the alternative fuels tax credit as well. That's something that's unique about this, is non-taxable entities are able to take advantage of this credit. So this enables school districts and universities and municipalities and transit agencies to take cleaner investments, utilize alternative fuels and make it affordable. So anybody here in the room works, remember we love support for the alt fuels tax credit and for the other tax extenders that are now expired. So we have a tremendous opportunity and NGVs have the chance to make a big difference in the heavy duty space. So with that I'm glad to take questions or open up to questions. And once again, I think in terms of points made by our last couple of speakers, it's really important for us to remember how important policy is. And I thank you all for drawing out what some examples of policies are that really make a difference in terms of supporting these cleaner industries that can really help us solve a lot of problems. So we have a few minutes for Q and A. Any questions? Okay, and just wait for the microphone. I guess this question's for the whole panel. How do you see this current season being impacted by number one tariffs? Perhaps domestic producers are looking for other avenues for their crops. And secondly, flooding and the weather that we've seen occurring in the Midwest. Who wants to start? Okay. In terms of biodiesel production, so we don't export much product. In fact, we fight for a level playing field and tend to keep out product from Argentina and Indonesia that's heavily subsidized. And in terms of the crop production, maybe the folks closer to Iowa can tell me that my sense is that I don't think there's a whole lot of shifting in terms of soybean acreage as a result of flooding. So we're not expecting much disruption in our industry at all. The only thing I will add is that tariffs on soybeans, particularly to China, has created a depressed market in the United States for soybeans, and we essentially help buttress to some extent by adding value to the soybean oil to help the soybean farmer kind of weather this trade turbulence. I can speak from an ethanol perspective really quickly. The trade wars have certainly impacted our business. As I mentioned in my statements, we export about 1.7 billion gallons of ethanol a year. That was what it was last year. That was a high water market. It will not be that high again this year. China has ramped up their tariffs on ethanol to 70%, effectively cutting us out of their market. They're one of the largest growing international markets as they move to an E-10 standard for ethanol as well. And also Brazil has implemented a 20% tariff rate quota on us. There are typically our number one or our number two export market. So the trade war is hurting us there. And then to your second point about the crop conditions, there's certainly portions of the corn belt which were late in getting their crop into the ground, which will impact the yield, or didn't get it planted at all. So there will certainly be areas where corn becomes too expensive and ethanol plants will slow or shut down as my conjecture unless we have ideal growing conditions throughout the rest of this year. The one silver lining for that is that it means higher prices for the farmers who are able to get their crop planted. Oh, I turned it off. Okay. I think that they actually covered it pretty well. Just, and I guess I would kind of say, I think they haven't covered the corn side really well. And the soybean side, I haven't heard as much. So I'm kind of in the same boat of, I have heard that corn prices are going up and that crops got in late. I did hear that Iowa in particular wasn't quite as far behind as some other states in terms of getting crop in the ground and planting on time. And I've heard some stuff about the corn, but I haven't heard anything yet about what's gonna happen with soybean prices, if anything. Okay. And I've heard from family who have talked a lot about how late things have been. And I know that in Indiana and Illinois in particular that they had been dealing with a lot of late planting. And so I don't know the percentage of crops that were not able to get in at this point. I know that there clearly were some, but I think it's too early to tell yet. So, but you guys make me very nervous when you talk about high water marks and things like that. It's like with all this flooding going around, change your lexicon, right? Okay. Okay, other questions? Hi, this is a question for Cassidy. Cassidy, could you, I guess, share with us perhaps one, two or three of the lessons learned about a successful state level renewable fuels, I guess, economy? Your opinion. Wow, okay. You're talking about a low carbon fuel standards or, okay. Well, so in Iowa, we don't have a low carbon fuel standard policy like they do in California and some other states, but we do have some other state policies in place to help incentivize the use of more biofuels. A really big one in our state of Iowa is the Renewable Fuels Infrastructure Program, which is a cost share program that's been really successful at helping retailers add the infrastructure that they need to add higher blends of ethanol and biodiesel to their retail stations. We also have some other tax incentives that have incentivized retailers to want to sell those products. And I think in the terms of state policy, those are some of the big things that have helped us be successful in Iowa to make the fuels available to our consumers if I'm understanding your question correctly. Thank you. Other questions? One thing I did want to mention too was that, I think it was in May, EESI held a congressional briefing looking at biogas and once again in terms of looking at all of the different kinds of sources that can be used just as we've heard in other panels so many times in terms of thinking about things that are waste that can really be resources that helps us create a lot of positive economic activity but also create a lot of public health and environmental benefits all at the same time. Any other questions, comments from anybody else on the panel? Then I want to encourage all of you to go to the tables of these organizations if you haven't done so already. Make sure that you become a better informed consumer about what is in our gasoline and start to better understand about air toxics and aromatics, really, really an important topic. Learn about what happens with regard to biodiesel and how these technologies and diesel all work together about biofuels overall in terms of thinking about the whole role of ethanol and what it could mean and about renewable natural gas and how we can just improve the efficiency of all of our vehicles through many technologies that can all, many of which can be blended together. It's not just one answer but we're lucky that we have a portfolio of answers that can really make a difference. So join me in thanking this wonderful panel.


Simple Show explains Labor Day. It all started in the 19th century. Overworked and exhausted laborers were fed up and demanded better treatment. In Canada, laborers marched to their Prime Minister's doorstep and asked for their right to form unions. Oh, Canada! The march was victorious. They celebrated better working conditions with an annual parade. Peter J. Maguire, an American labor leader, was invited and thought to bring that spirit to America. And what a success it was! In New York City, protesters assembled to fight against poor labor conditions. The movement quickly spread across America. Workers gathered for picnics, concerts and speeches, rallying for eight-hour workdays and a labor holiday. Oregon was the first state to officially recognize the holiday, but it wasn't until 12,000 government forces were sent to quell a strike and two railway workers were tragically killed that pressure mounted from the American workforce and Labor Day was put on the federal calendar. More than 80 countries worldwide celebrate Labor Day, or International Workers Day, on May 1st. But the first Monday of September made sense for Americans because it falls between Independence Day and Thanksgiving. This gives working families a much-needed break. Fast forward about a hundred years, and the Labor Day holiday has become a kind of farewell to summer. In the USA, kids go back to school, football season starts, and fashionistas hang up that little white dress. But let's not forget that Labor Day is a celebration of the labor movement, dedicated to the social and economic achievements of workers all over the world. It's evolved into an appreciation of life and well-deserved break from work. So make sure to enjoy your Labor Day with family and friends.


we will talk about OD in educational institutions. Importance of educational institution for society and individuals can never be over emphasized. So, content for this part of the session is majorly drawn from the work conducted in the Ravi Mathai Center for Educational Innovation and I am Hamdabad. First of all we need to recognize that there are so many lines of debate about educational delivery system in India. So, these debates are related to job orientation or job orientedness of the education. Education should it be for the community building or only for the earning living. There are also debates about character building with the traditional values or with the modern values. Debates are also about preparing job seekers or job creators in our education system. We also see the debate and very passionate discussion about emphasizing on the academics versus focusing on the many other aspects of the development like values and skills etcetera. So, in terms of the policy related debates quality education versus making the basic education available to the masses this is also a very important debate. As a result of the different aspirations and the different espoused value of education many subsystems have evolved in the Indian society. So, we see large number of government schools. We also see state owned schools and the center government schools like Namodaya Vidyalaya or KV. We also see emergence of the large number of or sometime they are the chain of the private schools. There are many other boards in the in the category of the international schools and we also you also and many of you might be surprised that in India there are still lot of gurukuls operating. They focus on the traditional wisdom along with and many of them are integrating the traditional wisdom with the modern education and they primarily emphasize on creating the job givers and preparing people for the self self employment rather than becoming a job seeker and there are more than 8000 gurukuls operating in India. We also see the emergence of the trend of home schooling. There are small groups also which prefer home schooling for their kids. So, as a result of the different positions in the debate what we mentioned in the previous slide we also see the emergence of different types of the school and education system in India. The first part of the session on ODIN education sector is primarily focused on the school education. If we look at education system in India we see two very important historical features which have affected the design of the system. One feature is related to the ethos of the assembly line based system that was applied in the industrial era that came up in the industrialization that came up with the industrialization. So, the features of industrialization like centralization, standardization, hierarchical top down management, a rigid sense of time, accountability based on adherence to the system all these features are basically the legacy of industrialization process and the legacy of the industrial era and that has also have entered into the education field. In India particularly modern education system was erected by the Britishers who are the who colonized India for a very long time and their primary objective was to prepare clerks or the class 3 employees who can carry out and take the instructions from their supervisors who are the who who are either the Britishers or the confidants of the Britishers and their job was just to see just to interpret the rules and regulations and sometimes implementing those. So, many features of the education system which are centralized, sometime not very learning centric can be traced back to these two factors. We also see changing conditions of school education in India. If we look at the government schools there is a very massive role expansion of the teachers working in the government schools. Efficacy of the teacher training is also under question. Infrastructure related issues are suddenly there. There has been many interventions, there has been many policy initiatives like operation blackboard and few others to provide the physical infrastructure, but still a large number of schools are still lagging in the infrastructural demand and requirements for the proper education. There are also student related issues like enrollment ratio or learning outcome that can be related to actually governance as well as the teacher related issue, but learning outcome is also one of the important concern in the education system in India. Having said that we also need to recognize that there are lots of islands of the excellence in education system and particularly school education system we are talking about. If you want to know more about it please visit the website of in shodh. This is supported by a fairie the foundation of the augmenting innovation and research in education and this is hosted in I am Hamdabad site. Please have a look at it. This site has the comprehensive record of more than 1000 innovations in the field of education and many of them can be categorized as OD interventions. These are related to increasing the attendance of the students, increasing the enrollment ratio of the students, increasing their learning outcomes. This is a very very rich repository and anyone who is interested in school education must have a look at it. If we categorize the OD interventions in schools in India we can classify three types of OD interventions required in the school education in India. These interventions are related to governance, teacher development, public private partnership and that is for the ancillary educational services particularly. Now, we will look at all these three things in more detail. So, governance. Governance meaning every institution should have a governing body that needs to be accountable to the stakeholders. But how the governance should take place? What are the prerequisites for effective governance? Even if you have body we have there are some prerequisites required. There are some even if you have the formal governing board which has the representation of the different stakeholders there are some prerequisite to make this governance system effective and these prerequisites are having properly identified and articulated purpose of the educational institution. We cannot develop only one or few actors in the system. So, governance should be geared up to enhance the overall education system which includes parents, school teachers, school management, community within which that school is located. There is a need to include obviously, major stakeholders to have their perspective because they are the providers of the insights about how to enhance the system, how what are the majors, what are the indicators of the effectiveness of the system. Accountability also need to be ensured both in terms of the quantitative as well as the qualitative. So, that may include the connection with the teacher training system, the IT support system, the curriculum resource system etcetera etcetera. Benchmarking of the institutions through review of the achievement of the purpose can be an excellent OD intervention. But for the benchmarking you need transparency in the matters of the institutional performance. In an environment of the constrained resources, institutions are accountable should be eligible for the special incentives. Institutions which are using the otherwise scarce resources more judicially, more judiciously and more effectively must be recognized and incentivized. Institution that have honest intentions of accountability and are moving towards higher levels of outcome also need to be incentivized. There can be a very significant OD intervention in terms of teacher development. The professional development system as such in country have been much criticized for their inability to reach out to all those in need the high cost they entails a high cost they entail and the methodological and curriculum they use. We need to recognize that teachers can be the valued participants in the professional development. Why? Because in spite of facing the same contextual constraint that all teachers face there are some who are island of excellence and they are there across country, they are there in the private schools they are they are in large number in the government schools of public schools. So, drawing on their experience to develop a more relevant professional development curriculum and using new methodologies that combine internet with the face-to-face interaction to overcome the barrier of reach and cost these are the desirable directions for the OD intervention in a teacher development field. What I just now mentioned the in show the website has large number of OD interventions documented and most of these case studies come from the government schools. Those insights which are nested in those case studies can be incorporated and a more effective curriculum can be designed for the teacher development. Third and very important aspect of OD intervention in schools can be public-private partnership. We know that attention to non-cognitive competencies in children in the public system is to be found only in the island of excellence. Structurally or formally attention to the non-cognitive competencies of the development of the students is very less in most of the schools in India. So, we need to we so, there is a scope to enhance the public-private partnership in that field. Given the lack of skills and capacities within the public system the private public partnerships for the ancillary services that support the education can also be a very important avenue for this partnership. This can be done in monitoring process, IT support, part of the academic support, assessment of the educational outcome, assessment of the non-cognitive skills like motivation. These can be best implemented through the public-private partnership. They are performance based there can be performance based contextual arrangement to ensure that this partnership delivers the desired result. It is not fruitful to argue about whether private schools are better or why government should not implement the ancillary services through its own machinery. A more open approach which recognizes that public schools are located in the disadvantages ecosystem and need support through relevant partnership with others that approach can be very helpful in strengthening the governance system, ensuring the proper measurement of the outcomes and also ensuring that some of the some of the educational inputs being provided to the students which are not covered in the formal education system now till now. Let us talk about the possibility of OD interventions in the institutions of the higher education. Higher education system in India is also signified by some of the some of the island of the excellence and then a large number of educational systems working at the level which is very far or very below from the excellent from the level of excellence demonstrated by some of the great institutions in India. OD intervention for the higher education must start with the proper diagnosis of the different streams like what are the what is the need of the nation, what is the need of the society, what is the need of industry and how education system or higher education system or higher educational institution can meet those needs. Can and how the institutions of the higher education can help in meeting those needs in order to provide that kind of service or output vision for the educational system or the educational institution must be well articulated. According to that vision the administrative interventions for the learning center system should be introduced. Teacher training is also perhaps equally important in the higher education. Higher education teacher appointment happens primarily based on their research or based on their academic qualification. Many of them may be effective as a teacher in the classroom with their natural flair or natural competency, but there is a possibility of lack of that competency in terms of engaging students in an interesting way and for that teacher training has a enough scope to be introduced as a OD intervention in the higher education field as well. Higher education involves not only dissemination of knowledge but also requires knowledge creation. Knowledge creation happens in a typical research related activities. Most of the research activities are primarily based on modern science or primarily based on the content being created or knowledge being created in the western world in last 200 years. That is suddenly very valuable, very important and India s contribution is also there in the development and the development of the contemporary knowledge but country like India also has lot of tacit and explicit knowledge retained or nested in its systems in their in its tradition. In order to become a knowledge based society it is important to not only work on so called contemporary knowledge systems but also harness the potential of the knowledge nested in the traditions of this country. Industry academic interface is a very important missing component, significantly missing component in the higher education system in India and collaboration related OD intervention are very useful to strengthen the industry academic interface. In view of the large number of entrance in the higher education system, India needs lot of interventions in the higher education related to technology. Technology can be very helpful in meeting the very fast increasing demand of higher education in India. There are some interventions worth noting which are being started by MHRD or some other bodies in the higher education for example, academic leadership program is introduced under the Mahatma under the Madan Mohan Malvi mission. TechCoup is again a very important initiative to strengthen the human capacity and also the infrastructure in the institutions of the higher education. Appreciating query based intervention can also be very helpful in making the education system to identify their own vision and systematically in working towards realizing those mission in a collaborative in a team based environment. Some of the very powerful interventions suggested in the national education policy are related to governance, related to ensuring the learning outcomes related to the management of the education system and development of the management system. So, some of the key ideas about OD in the education fields are that society and industry focus diagnosis is important to strengthen the education system and education institution. Governance is a very important component in the OD in education field whether it is a system or education institution, making the system more learning centric, importance of the teacher development, importance of the public-private partnership in ancillary educational services, technology supported flexible system and creation of the flexible system, preparing our society to be knowledge in innovation centric society. These are some of the key ideas which must be considered when we are talking about OD in the educational field.


You okay for a joke? Any kind? In his previous life, Shankar Pillai was a very good man. After the brief illness, he died. A good man, naturally he went to heaven. When he went to heaven, the angels, the reception committee welcomed him and then they opened his account book. You know, they had to keep accounts of everything, you know that? The turnpages, good deed, good deed, good deed, good deed, good deed. Cover to cover, only good deeds. Then there was little confusion among the angels. Then they came to Shankar Pillai and said, Mr. Pillai, there's a little problem. Shankar Pillai said, what is the problem? They said, see, we have various types of accommodation in heaven. One bad deed, highest level of heaven, see front view. Two bad deeds, next level, three bad deeds, next level. Like this, there are many levels of heaven. But no bad deed, there is no such accommodation here. Till now we have never received a man like you, without a single bad deed. So if we don't know what to do with you, Shankar Pillai said, what nonsense? I was such a good man in the world, nobody wanted to come anywhere near me. I just lived with the hope of going to heaven, even here a problem. What kind of nonsense is this? Always I was told being a good man, I can go to heaven. And then I do a good job of it, you have problem. Then the angels met among themselves, had a discussion and they said, don't you worry, Mr. Pillai, we have found a solution.  Your body is still intact anyway.  We'll put you in the highest heaven, nothing lost. And lo, he became alive here. He sat up once again. He sat here thinking how to commit a bad deed.  You've never committed one. So he sat there thinking, thinking, thinking. One-and-a-half hours past it, then he suddenly realized there's a woman, well past her prime in the neighborhood who's been casting inviting glances at him. He being a good man, he never looked that way. Now he thought, okay, adultery is a bad deed. So he went. He went to that lady's house and knocked on the door. She came and opened the door. Shankaran Pillai said, I want you. Why, Mr. Pillai, they told me just yesterday evening that you're on your deathbed. What is this? He said, it doesn't matter, I want you. He went in. Whatever he liked in practice, he made it up with his enthusiasm to go to heaven. Nature took over, things happened. Now he looked at his time, the watch is ticking away.   So he's living in a hurry. He said, I need to go, I need to go. And he came to the door. The lady also came to see him off. As he was leaving, the woman said, Mr. Pillai, do you know what a good deed you have done for me today? One more good deed. If you're too good, you'll neither make it here nor there. Because your goodness is always coming. In comparing yourself with somebody or something, isn't it? How do you certify yourself, I'm a good man?  Compared to all these people, I am a good man. Isn't it? If you want to be really good, you have to make everybody in the world not okay. Please see. Those people who think they're very good in their minds, nobody's okay, isn't it so? Have you noticed this?  That's what it means. Yes or no? If nobody in the world is okay, what does it mean? You know, one of the things that your psychiatrist or psychologist will tell you is, if you start thinking everybody's not okay, that means you're heading for insanity. Yes? Because it is madness. And your goodness is just a kind of madness. Maybe it's needed to keep some balance in the society sometimes, but not for your evolution. Your morality will not involve you. If you begin to recognize life as life, then you will see as life you respond to life and you don't need morals, you know how to be. You will never cross any lines because there are no lines, but at the same time, you are simply incapable of doing anything harmful. That's all. You're not holding back.  You should not do that. You should not do this. The very way you are, there is no question of harm. It doesn't exist in you. Effortlessly, you can be good. Right now, with great difficulty, you're being good. And if you're too good, even in heaven, they will reject you.


So, if previously, prior to COVID-19, you were used to having one or two touch points with your people per year, now I'm hoping you realize that there's other technologies and modalities where you can get those touch points much more frequently, and you can actually get on some type of schedule, whereas even if it's just a five-minute check-in, that that can absolutely continue to strengthen the connection that you have with them. And I do want you guys to realize that as leaders, checking in with your people, finding out what's going on in their world, finding out their current pain points, or what you can help them with, that's not extra work. That is your work. These constant check-ins with your franchisees and your other team members needs to be a major, major priority, and that's a silver lining that I believe we can all pull from this, is we don't have to hide behind the fact that we don't have the time to get on planes to go see everyone all of the time. We can be just as efficient and just as effective by using some of these new modalities. And the last thing I'll say on that is, I do want you at some point to sit down and reflect to the way your business looked before COVID-19, and I want you to make a very transparent list of the things that were working really, really well and the things that probably needed a little bit of tightening. Then I want you to look at your business over the last 12 weeks when we've been in the heart of COVID-19, and I want you to do the same thing. What things have been working well and what things were really challenging. And then I want you to take both of those lists, and I want you to do a best of moving forward. I want you to take the things that were working well before and the things that were working well during and find ways to continue to implement those moving forward during recovery. And then I want you to take the things that were challenges and weren't working well in both of those scenarios and find ways to either improve them, delegate them, or mitigate them moving forward. The whole key to success is to do more of what works and do less of what doesn't. And now is a perfect time for all of us, now that we've had a look behind our own curtain to figure out what goes on each list and move forward with optimism and poise.


Okay, we're back, this is Dave Vellante, and this is the Spotlight VMware Backup and Recovery. We're here with Mike Crystal, who is the Systems and Enterprise Architect for Server and Storage at St. Charles Health. Mike, welcome to theCUBE. Thanks, Dave, for having me. Good to see you. We're here at VMworld, we're talking off camera about all the action that's going on here. First of all, what are your impressions? Excellent show, excellent show, just to... It is the show now, isn't it? It's pretty cool, if you're into virtualization, it's the place to be, so. Yeah, who's not into virtualization?  It has, I mean, I don't think we would be able to continue to grow our business if we didn't have virtualization, staff's expensive, machines are expensive. You got to do something about it, and virtualization is definitely the way to do it. So, talk a little bit about St. Charles Health, and then we'll get into what you guys are doing in storage. Sure, St. Charles Health is a regional healthcare provider in Central Oregon. We have four hospitals that were responsible for a slew of doctor's offices and clinics. We're the largest employer in Central Oregon with about 3,000 employees. We are on the road to virtualization, like everyone else. We have about 700 servers, 450, so a little over half of those are virtualized. And in terms of the applications, heavily virtualized, working your way up this... We're working our way up, we took the low hanging fruit when we got started, that legacy applications that were easy, but over the last two years, we've really started to concentrate on those business critical applications. A good deal of our current EHR and our ambulatory care applications are virtualized. Are you on a vSphere 5? We are on a 4.1 right now. Are you on a 4.1 and planning to go to 5? Especially after we heard some interesting news yesterday in the keynote about VRAM. So we are excited to hear that. Or VRAM pricing. Yes, yeah. I had to make you happy. Oh, definitely, definitely. I think that makes everyone happy.  Big catalyst, and then we are taking one of our main databases that we were unable to virtualize due to sort of vendor specs over the last couple of years, and that we're going to do it this year. And we need those specs that 5.0 and I guess 5.1 are going to support. So we need to be able to put more than eight virtual CPUs. So it's a big deal for you.  So, if you could spend more money on care versus infrastructure, that's a good thing for everybody, right? Oh, it's a great thing for everybody. So, talk about backup. We've talked a lot on theCUBE about how virtualization stresses storage generally and backup specifically. What was your experience when you started to get heavily into virtualization in terms of the impact that it had on your backup? Sure, we just really weren't prepared. I mean, it's a whole different paradigm backing up in the virtual world. We're taking the traditional have a client on a device, back it up on a certain window and call it good. And we were doing that to tape. And what we found, and I think what most people find in a situation like that is we had to build our ESX servers in such a way as to support our peak backup times. Caused lots of problems in the organization. We're going over our backup windows and we needed something to address that. And so, we went to the marketplace and we found Avamar and Data Domain from EMC. So, we've been super happy to have that. So, you essentially were not hitting your backup windows. So, you had your traditional backup system that you had had for how many years? I mean, was it? 10 years. So, I've seen some data. We have Jason Buffington on a little later from ESG. And I've seen some data that a number of companies have refreshed their backup and they've actually re-looked at it. I presume virtualization was a big catalyst that clearly was for you all, right? It was, it wasn't. And we also had a data center optimization program that was going on where we moved data centers and it really kind of exposed just what our problems were. We were replicating data with our old backup system and it was taking two days to replicate the changes from one data center to the other. We couldn't meet any of our RPOs or RTOs if we'd lost a data center.  Yeah, so, now, okay, so you chose a solution that includes both Avamar and Data Domain. Can you talk about the use case for each and why you deployed that way? Sure, you know, from a front end perspective, to us, it's seamless. So, you know, we use the Avamar as sort of the UI, you know, and the Data Domain sort of sits behind that. So, that's how it kind of came into the organization but once we got in and we started to deploy, what we found was we could have the Data Domain as a target for backups. And so, what we ended up doing is instead of changing the way our Oracle backups were running, we just swapped it, you know, the Data Domain in.  So, what we do now is just back up directly to the Data Domain. And what happened is those backup times shrunk and then the restore times. It's a phenomenal difference on restore. I was just talking in the segment before this just about, you know, why that is. But, you know, we were having jobs that took 12 hours to do restore that now maybe take us an hour and a half. So, it's made a big impact on the business. Can you elaborate on why that is? Why are the restore times so much superior? I think there's a couple of things. I think Stephen spoke to quite a lot about, you know, how the data is actually put down on the device. But, you know, from our perspective, we don't have to send that stream compressed anymore and then uncompress it as it goes back down. And as far as our man's concerned, it's just a straight backup. So, you don't have to hydrate, rehydrate. Exactly. Rehydrate. Exactly. Transparent. And then it's all on spinning discs, so, you know, that. Yeah, it's not serial. So, are you virtualizing Oracle? As an aside? We are. We are. Join the torpedoes and we virtualize Oracle. Good move, we've advised that that the benefits outweigh the risk. Have you had any issues with that or? We are only in some test dev right now with what we're doing, but the database that we talked about this year is the one we're going to concentrate on getting moved to production. So, excited about it. So, talk about the project, if you will, where you sort of deployed this backup solution. Can you take us through, kind of briefly, the sort of, you know, the planning and design phase and then the implementation? And I want to get to, you know, what you do differently if you had to do it again. What advice you'd give to practitioners? But take us through, paint a picture of what actually happened there. Well, we had a problem. You know, we described that. So, we identified. Got people's attention. Got people's attention. Developed a series of requirements. Went to the marketplace. Started doing due diligence. Talked to people out there. Hey, what else are you doing? Talked to folks like Gartner. Said, hey, what, you know, here's our problem. What should we do? We basically narrowed it down to four separate vendors. One of which was incumbent. You know, the company we were using already. And looked at, you know, the dollars and cents of the situation. So really ended up coming down to incumbent technology and to Avamar data domain. So if we left our incumbent technology in place, we were going to spend $1.3 million over a four-year period to upgrade the system and keep it running steady state. So we make an acquisition or make an acquisition with Avamar data domain. We could do that for under $1 million or like $940,000 saving $300,000. So essentially, the system paid for itself. We went to the board and said, hey, I have an ROI of less than three years. You don't have to take money out of your pocket. It was already in the budget. And it solves all the problems we talked about. So that was pretty much a slam dunk. They picked it up and went from there. So then as far as the actual project itself, we brought in EMC professional services. And they assisted us with doing the install, which was very smooth. I mean, we did 700 agents and didn't have a single downtime. So it was a great experience for us. So 700 agents. 700 agents, yeah. OK, so the ROI was basically ROI, right? Benefit over the cost of the benefit. If you lower the denominator, you're going to get a better ROI, right? Exactly. So that was pretty straightforward. How has it impacted your business? You talked a little bit about meeting back up windows and recovery times. Can you give us some color on that? Maybe some metrics that you'd use? And maybe talk about the recoveries that you've gotten. I mentioned a little bit about the replication going from taking over two days down to just a few hours. I think 10 to 12 hours is what it's taking now. We essentially got an FTE back by deploying the solution. So instead of spending time figuring out what failed, why it failed, rerunning that back up again, locating tapes, doing reclamation, all that work is gone. So big, big change there. So that's really where the concrete savings are. And the FTE was not in the business case, is that right? We didn't include that in the business case. We did not. Because if you do, then you have to get rid of the FTE. Exactly. OK, but so ultimately that led to greater productivity and did other things with that person. And then in that nearly a million to $900,000 plus dollars, that included the deployment cost, the professional services piece? It did. It did. So it was a huge, huge, huge savings for us and really a no-brainer. Any learnings that you can share with your peers or things that you might do differently or advice that you might give them? Sure. I think one of the biggest difficulties we had and I think it's probably more relational than anything else was that Avamar and Data Domain were relatively recent acquisitions to EMC. And so the communication pipeline wasn't necessarily there to begin with as far as we had some difficulties with just a sheer number of VMs that we had and trying to get them backed up in that right window and get them replicated in the right window. So we were able to work with engineering and get all that solved. But it just took a little bit of relationship help. And we had a great sales team who was willing to do that. So it was a good thing. So just good service, attentive. Any advice that you'd give to other practitioners looking to try to solve their backup problems? Do your due diligence. Figure out what your use case is, go to the market, and do your homework. But I think if you do, our solution is probably going to work for you. Excellent. All right. Well, Mike, thank you very much. Great story. Appreciate your insights. Thanks for coming on theCUBE and sharing them with our audience. And good to meet you. Great. It was a great meeting you. All right. Take care. All right. Thanks, everybody. Keep it right there. We'll be right back with Jason Buffington from ESG. We're live. Silicon Angles coverage from VMworld 2012. We'll be right back.