All right, so thanks so much for taking the time to come out today. I'm behalf of Congressman Chris Van Halen, Dave Reichert, we're the co-chairs of the House of Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Conference. My name is Bill Parsons, I'm the Congressman's Chief of Staff, and for Congressman Reichert, I'm here with my colleague Ashley Johnson, who's my opposite on the Republican side for this session of Congress. It's a pleasure to partner, as always, with Carol Werner and ESI on this year's annual EERE budget briefing. So we want to thank you for taking the time to come out today. Just a word about the caucus. It is one of the longest continuously running caucuses in the House of Representatives, certainly the longest continuously running caucus with a focus on clean energy. North of 15 years of running. We currently have 157 members that we've got. Kirsten Sinema last week, she's our most recent member, covering 39 states, D.C. and three territories. It is today and has always been, I would say, bipartisan, but I don't like them as far as to say nonpartisan. This is a forum for any member office who has an interest in these issues. We offer a two weekly services. There's a clip service as well as an events calendar. We are always looking for new members. So if you're here from a member office, I hope you will consider joining. And we have two signature kind of events of the year. This is the first. We always do a budget briefing, and I want to extend my appreciation to the panelists for taking time out of their schedules to be here. This is the time when I always, if I haven't yet, wrap my head all the way around where these issues are in terms of the current budget year. This is where I get that done. So that's what you're interested in. That's why you came for you in the right place. And the second signature event we do every year is our Expo plus forum. There's a day long series of forums and breakout sessions that goes along with the Expo in the Cannon Caucus Room. This year's Expo is scheduled for Wednesday, June 12th. So if that's an interest, please do put that on your calendar. And since we're very pleased to have Mr. Reicher join us this year and do as the Republican coach here. Let me just give it to Ashley for a few words. First of all, I'd like to thank all of our presenters today for coming out and just reiterate what Phil said so nicely about this not being a person caucus. And we certainly hope that any of you who may be the audience today who work for members who have not yet joined, I definitely encourage more membership. And I'm just excited to be able to help facilitate this event today so that we can all learn more about what is in the budget. So thank you. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Carol Warner from ESI who's going to moderate this afternoon's event. Thanks very much, Bill and Ashley. And it is always a pleasure to be working with Bill and Ashley and their bosses with regard to the caucus on the House side. And there is also a Renewables and Efficiency Caucus on the Senate side as well with whom we work and which will also be involved with the expo that Bill was talking about that is scheduled for June 12th. It's very important for us, I think, to really be able to take a look at the budget because budget really does represent policy, represents direction. It's a chance to kind of look at what has been happening, what kind of progress has been made, as well as what that means in terms of thinking about future priorities that the administration is putting out for the Hill to consider. This year, as we know, both the House and the Senate have already gone through and issued their respective budget resolutions. We do not know where that will exactly head, but that is a very, very important part of the whole process as well. And so today what we're going to do is we will adhere first from Jason Walsh, who is Senior Advisor at the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the Department of Energy to kind of lay out the department priorities and look at some of those accomplishments for Efficiency and Renewables since Clean Energy and its many attributes that affect our energy, our economy, our security, public health, all of these things are very important. Then we will turn to Francesine with the Library of Congress, the Congressional Research Service, and will be followed by Scott Sklar, who is a colleague with me on the Sustainable Energy Coalition Steering Committee. Jason. That is it. The first challenge is to get to the body without falling on my face. Let me just make sure I know how those works. Okay. Good afternoon. I'm sorry. Scott, can you finish with those? Can you take? There's a platter there that's kind of standing up. I just want you to take that down so you can see the slide. Thanks so much. As Carol said, I'm Jason Walsh. I'm a Senior Advisor at the Doctorate. David Danielson, who is our Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at DOE. Thank you all for coming on a windy Friday afternoon. And thanks to Carol and E.S.A.P. E.S.A.P. for arranging this. I'm going to talk about E.E.R.E.'s FY 2014 budget request, what's in it, why it's important. I'm going to cover a lot of information very quickly for which I'll apologize in advance. I'm not going to cover all of it just because it would take up all of our time. But I will cover some of the top lines and then hopefully we can get into more specific questions as we get into Q&A. Let me do some context setting first. At E.E.R.E., our mission is to create American leadership in the global transitional clean energy economy. We do that by supporting America's best innovators and businesses to research, develop, and demonstrate cutting-edge clean energy technologies and to make clean energy as affordable and convenient as traditional technologies. And we do that by breaking down barriers to market entry. It kind of causes not enough. There are a number of market barriers that need to be broken down and that's a part of our work. We pursue our mission with a belief that clean energy matters significantly to America. Clean energy matters because it represents arguably the most important economic development race of the 21st century at the point to which I will return. Clean energy matters because it is a job creator. Jobs and new clean tech sectors grew by roughly 8.3% annually from 2000 to 3 to 2010. About double the rate of the economy as a whole. And it's worth noting that these were not jobs and they were jobs in traditional sectors like construction and manufacturing. Clean energy matters because it enhances our energy security and therefore our national security. It matters because energy efficiency saves money for American families and businesses. The U.S. spends more than a trillion dollars a year on energy. Nearly 25% of that is wasted through an efficiency. If we made just our homes 20% more efficient which is entirely possible with existing technologies we would save more than $200 billion annually which is a significant chunk of change. And finally clean energy matters because it protects the health and safety of our people by mitigating the impact of energy production on air quality and our climate which of course is rapidly approaching at a certain point which we stray beyond at our danger. People rightfully ask the question why should the federal government be involved in the business of energy innovation? Certainly we ask that question ourselves. Why can't the private sector take care of it? Well, it's not for a set of reasons that we don't have time to get into here today but it's worth noting some of these numbers. In particular the fact that private sector investment in energy R&D is only .42% of sales. That's less than half of 1%. Now when we look across other major sectors of the national economy like pharmaceuticals at 20.5% or aerospace at 11.5% we see a pretty significant growth. So to outline the lesson of these numbers it's fairly clear the private sector again for a set of reasons systematically under invests in energy R&D and therefore we need smart and strategic federal investment to fill some of that gap if the U.S. is to remain committed. ERE we have a commitment to high impact work with high impact results. With every decision we make we first ask ourselves what we call the five ERE core questions to guide our decision. And these questions include is this a high impact problem? How is ERE funding making a large impact to accelerate technology development compared to what folks in the industry are already doing? And how will this funding results in enduring economic benefit in the United States? We ask these questions because we want to ensure that every taxpayer dollar we spend is pointed at the most high impact problems that we can solve. We've got I think a pretty long and impressive track record of success that I will only give a couple of examples of for lack of time. But let me know just a couple. Over a 20 year period ERE funded combustion R&D on heavy duty trucking efficiency resulted in a net benefit of more than $70 billion. That's a roughly 75 to one return on investment in ROI that I think any company would be proud of. Virtually every hybrid electric vehicle has ERE battery technology inside. Our research has helped reduce plug-in electric vehicle battery costs by 50% over the past four years. Reduced fuel cell costs by 35% over the past five years. And the list goes on. We think that we're in a very unique time and place for American clean energy. We have made tremendous progress over the last several years and last decade. And we are now in a kind of unprecedented position where a wide array of the technologies we work on are within five to ten years of being directly cost competitive with traditional forms of energy. This presents us not only with an opportunity to address America's strategic energy challenges but also sees a really fantastic economic opportunity. In 2012 alone, $260 billion was invested globally in clean energy and trillions more will be invested in the coming years. So at DOA we really believe we face a stark choice. We can either make the necessary investments to ensure that the energy technologies of today and tomorrow are invented and manufactured here in the United States, or we can surrender global leadership and import those technologies from other nations. Okay, let me talk in some detail about our 2014 budget request. It is $2.70 billion for fiscal year 2014. This funding will support research, development and deployment of technologies within each of ERE's three sectors, sustainable transportation for which we request $957 million across three technology offices where our focus is on providing American consumers and industry with more and better choices about how they fuel and power their vehicles and their businesses. We're going to bring homes, buildings and manufacturing for which we request $949 million across four offices where our focus is on reducing the amount of energy that is wasted in our homes, in our buildings and in increasing the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing by helping U.S. manufacturers achieve greater energy productivity. And finally renewable electricity generation for which we request $5 million across four offices where our focus is on squeezing more usable power out of these technologies while improving the economics of manufacturing and installation. This slide shows the request in more detail. I believe you've got a handout provided by ESI. I won't try to go through this line by line. I will say that the FY14 budget request for EERA represents a significant increase in funding from the annual ICR under which we're under right now, which represents about a 52.5% increase. And even from the FY13 request, about a 22.4% increase. Given the physical challenges we face as a nation, the fact that the president is requesting more energy generation, the president is requesting this level of funding increase for EERA demonstrates, I think, what a priority it is for his president that we win this clean energy race and greater economic and greater energy independence. Also, I think it's worth looking at over the last several years and I think you'll see the prioritization of clean energy investment has been EERA budget when we were starting in FY2010. I will say over the same period, appropriations from Congress have fallen short of those requests. And one of the lessons we derive from this trend is that opportunities like this today in courtesy of EESI where we can educate people about what we do and why we do it are extremely important. Let me talk a little bit about the same EERA initiatives which to our minds align and leverage a bunch of work that we do across our different technology offices. I'll start with one that I think is familiar to many of you which is our SunShot initiative. FY14 funding will support this ongoing issue to help solar energy cost competitive with traditional forms of energy and in particular with the goal of getting solar electricity prices down to a dollar a lot. Our efforts have capitalized growth in a sector that has more than doubled the US supply of solar electricity since 2009. Cut the overall system costs in half in a sector that has grown to 200,000 people. This is I think a really impressive story in a lot of ways. I will say it's worth noting that probably the most comprehensive third party evaluation of the impacts of our offices has been done in our solar technologies office. And that evaluation found that EERA's $3.7 billion in investment in solar PV R&D over a three decade period resulted in a net economic benefit of $15 billion due to module efficiency and reliability improvements and at the same time advance the industry about 12 years from where it would have been absent EERA investments which we consider to be a fairly impressive validation of the work that's been done over a number of years. The EV everywhere ran challenge which some of you may know was the first of the Obama administration's challenges. This challenge is focused on making sure that American companies are the first in the world to produce electric vehicles that are at least as affordable and convenient for the average American family as today's gasoline powered vehicles by 2022. Now I should know that most of this work is done out of our vehicle office which continues to pursue a portfolio of technologies that collectively can reduce our dependence on what but it is quite clear to us that vehicle electrification is an essential and significant part of the solution that we're trying to go with. And it's where the global automotive industry is already moving. We think it's important for national security and national economy for many reasons. It also benefits individual consumers. Today's electric vehicles can fuel for the equivalent of about a dollar a gallon. And the next generation of these vehicles will bring even bigger savings and in an era of four dollar a gallon gasoline we think that is significant. Last month we launched ERE's new Clean Energy Manufacturing out at one of our Bridge National Lab in Tennessee. Let me state what I think many of us know which is that manufacturing really matters. It fuels 12% of our GDP. It continues to be a source of family sustaining middle class jobs. And it is essential to the technological leadership of the nation. Accounting for 70% of private sector R&D investment 90% of patents issued and about 60% of exports. So this initiative has two central objectives. One to increase US competitiveness in the production of clean energy products. And to increase US manufacturing competitiveness across the board by increasing energy productivity. Whether by developing platform technologies like carbon fiber that can be used in multiple industries and or particular technologies that increase efficiency in a number of different settings like combined heat and power. And then let me tell you about our grid integration initiative. We are rapidly approaching a time when we will no longer be limited by the existing energy technologies but rather the ability of our electricity grid to accommodate the onboarding of these new technologies. We are already encountering this certainly in wind and solar and will continue to encounter. Essentially we need to figure out how to effectively integrate renewable energy technologies as well as energy efficiency technologies onto and help David an overburdened grid and there are a number of ways both on the technology side and on the policy and deployment side where we need to make improvements and that is the intent of this initiative. And the final cross-cutting initiative I want to tell you about is what we refer to as EERE incubators. At EERE we have very well-defined technology road maps for our different technologies. I think that is one of our greatest strengths but to be honest it can also be a weakness when we get overly fixated on a particular road map and potentially our slow to onboard new pathways that may come out of the blue and ultimately be superior to the pathways of our existing road maps. So the incubator programs are meant to address this potential weakness it devotes roughly 5-10% of each technology offices budget toward incubator programs that explicitly and only focus on pathways, technologies and new approaches that have not been supported in any meaningful way by each offices current but the idea here is merely to get out of the box to be able to get some new possibilities. I've got a whole set of office by office slides here but I think for the same time I will stop there and we can address specific office questions that people have in the Q&A. Thank you very much Jason and I know that well and obviously you have to hand out with all of the specifics in terms of looking at that and I hope that you will take the time to carefully look at that and also think about questions that we'll have for Jason in a little bit but now I'd like to turn to Fred Sassini who is with the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress and Fred has spoken at several of these budget briefings because he ends up being kind of a first line resource for congressional offices in terms of thinking about questions that offices have as they really look at what is happening on energy issues, energy technologies, what does this mean how to interpret different things, all these lots of questions with regard to the budget, what's the significance of that and so I'm very very glad that Fred is with us again today to go through and look at sort of some of the highlights and themes and to put in context a number of the areas of the efficiency and renewable energy budget that will provide some additional context to what we've already heard Jason talk about a little bit Fred. As all of you may know CRS was established by law to be a non-biased and non-partisan policy research agency thus I'm required to make appropriate and dispassion of disclaimers before starting my comments hence please know that despite any visual resemblance to the commentary I am in no relation to any of the following media personalities TV newscaster Geraldo Rivera classic cowboy movie star Leo Carrillo nor old-time comedian Ernie Covex a lot of you are together November 7 I'm trying to dispute that now some believe that we share a visual similarity namely having a large nose however appropriate CRS fact checking shows the limitations of that perception nose size is not the only relevant factor mustache size is also a key factor in fact most studies we reviewed show that mustache size is clearly the most important factor so now do you know why I gave up on the idea of a career in stand-up comedy and decided instead for a more exciting career in congressional policy analysis okay so let's get on with the rest of the CRS fact checking everyone should have a hard copy of the slides in the presentation and I will refer to the slides by number which is shown in the bottom right hand corner of each slide also note that some slides are shown with a dark blue background those are index slides each of which lists a group of slides that follows immediately after it so let's start with slide 2 titled Outline which provides an order list of the blue index slides which can help you find different sections of the presentation for example slide 3 identifies the 5 slides in the overview section so let's go on slide 4 highlights stresses that FY13 estimates were not available so FY12 is the baseline for all comparisons with figures in the FY14 request it also shows that the proposed $1 billion increase for EERA accounts for more than half of the $1.8 billion total DOE increase slide 5 lists the administration's goals for cutting oil imports and for advancing U.S. leadership in global markets for clean energy equipment slide 6 shows the key national interest addressed by EERA's clean energy focus international competitiveness climate change and oil imports slide 7 stresses that the budget comparisons again employ FY14 and FY12 differences and notes that many figures are rounded off for simplicity slide 8 describes the four new groupings or themes of major program accounts that DOE employees in the FY14 request namely sustainable transportation energy efficiency renewable electricity generation and corporate management slide 9 the blue index slide outlines the section on funding changes for each of the four themes slide 10 shows that DOE's sustainable transportation theme brings together the vehicles and bioenergy programs with a combined increase of $340 million slide 11 covers the major changes for the rest of the energy efficiency programs for which DOE seeks an increase of $464 million slide 12 lays out the $144 million increase for the rest of the renewable energy programs which are focused primarily on electric power production slide 13 lists the increases for corporate management and in-house activities this covers facilities program direction and strategic programs strategic programs are sometimes interesting usually small amounts of money but I think it's an area where DOE tries to lay the groundwork for doing some new things or new types of analysis slide 13 lists the increases or sort of slides 14 through 16 describe the major funding changes for specific programs note again that vehicles and manufacturing will get the largest share of the increases proposed for this new fiscal year slide 17 again a blue index slide introduces the next section which provides a more detailed breakdown of specific program highlights each of these highlight slides covers both goals and funding slide 18 for example notes that the vehicles program main priorities for plug-in electric vehicles to achieve parity for additional cars the largest funding increases for battery and electric drive technologies but also a smaller and hefty increases sought for outreach and employment this request is similar to that which DOE proposed in FY 13 but seeks a larger total dollar amount slide 19 shows the strategic elements and dollar increases for the manufacturing the main increases sought for the variety of advanced manufacturing facilities this would be supported by a hefty increase for projects also notably the relative shares of these two increases are nearly the inverse of the increases sought for FY 13 where the larger share was sought for projects and the smaller share was sought for facilities slide 20 on bioenergy shows goals for drop-in fuels energy fuels and other liquor fuels again there is a similarity to the FY 13 proposal but now there is an even greater funding emphasis on conversion technologies slide 21 breaks down the increased sought for buildings energy efficiency the major increase would go to emerging technologies hardware a definite change from the FY 13 request however chunk would also go to advanced efficiency standards slide 22 on solar energy identifies a sixth sense per kilowatt hour target for both types of utility scale technologies that is photovoltaics and concentrated solar power which often goes by the acronym CSP and old parlance was called solar thermal this request marks another change from FY 13 with a greater emphasis now on CSP slide 23 covers the elements of the wind energy request energy production cost targets are set for both land based and offshore wind equipment Europe has been installing offshore wind farms for some time now and there seems to be a growing domestic interest I guess a lot of this is hinging on what comes out of the Cape wind project which has been on the burners now for about 10 years I think so that's one to watch for offshore wind this request seeks more funding than DOE asks for FY 13 slide 23 notes that funding is requested for two innovation hubs funding for the buildings hub would be a continuation of past support while funding for the electricity hub would be a new start up also DOE appears to be funding a critical materials hub linked especially to the manufacturing program but there appears to be no line for this hub in the FY 14 request I think DOE alluded to the fact that it's funding it from some other source but I'm not quite sure how that works in your packet there's also some additional reference material slide 26 provides some background on innovation and demonstration projects for those who aren't familiar with them the developmental gap between R&D and commercialization technology poses some key financial risks for private companies demonstration projects try to help bridge that gap but tend to be expensive and thus they're often controversial in the budget process slide 27 one of the blue slides introduces a section that provides some recent funding context for DOE R&D programs slides 28 through 30 provide selected singular comparisons of funding for the four basic energy R&D programs nuclear fossil renewables and efficiency specifically slide 28 presents the breakdown for FY 11 appropriations slide 29 presents the breakdown for FY 12 appropriations and slide 30 shows the breakdown for the FY 14 request slide 31 presents a pie chart that gives a visual picture of the breakdown for the FY 12 appropriations and for deeper context slide 32 gives a long-term view of the relative funding shares for the four energy R&D programs slide 33 another blue slide identifies key national interests that shape the framework of issues which in turn creates the structure for most energy policy debates slide 34 lists some additional CRS resources that may be helpful to staff that have to work on those budget issues and finally one more CRS disclaimer many of you may know the famous American commentator Will Rogers when once asked about the extent of his knowledge on a particular subject he famously remarked that all I know is what I read in the newspapers I am today in a directly parallel situation because all I know is what I read in the DOE documents so if you have any difficult or tricky questions about the ERE budget please direct them to DOE's presenter Jason Wall thank you thanks Fred and now I think you know why it's always very helpful to have somebody from the congressional research service to work with to help interpret issues and everything and as Fred was going through that and I was also looking at Jason's presentation and I think it's really useful to kind of read those two presentations together and I think that you will find putting those context together very, very helpful so we're not going to take another look in terms of respectives with regard to the budget and what Scott is going to do is to provide yet another set of context that I think is very important for us to understand as we think the whole role of energy and clean energy in our economy Scott Sklar has been working in this policy area for decades which I know because unfortunately we've known each other for a very long period of time and he is the president of the Steliker but he is also where he works a great deal in terms of thinking about the integration of technologies both the integration of renewable technologies to European hybrid systems as well as the role of improved efficiency in bringing those systems into these kinds of hybrid approaches which I think is really critical as we think about how do we get the most out of our energy and Scott is also the chair of the sustainable energy coalition on the steering committee we both serve Scott. Thank you. It's great to be here. Thank you very much. Oh yes of course. Excellent. I just want to make sure you understand how I'm wearing. I run a company that blends high value energy efficiency renewable energy all over the world for primarily commercial industrial sector in the US military. I'm also an adjunct professor at the George Washington University and I run a company that focuses on sustainable energy at a similar series of national affairs. I just want to get put energy in context and I used in my handout to you both Boyd and Gray former general counsel for President Bush and former CID director Jim Woolsey on the strategic issues of energy. that we have shale and natural gas deposits in the United States. All that means more is our allies, though, which are both our suppliers and most of the democracies in the world are stuck in the same hard situation that we are now and hopefully won't be in the future. Also, if you took my classes, one of the things I stress in it is energy uses more water than food. Energy uses more water than food. Now we have 11% left for everything else we do, and while we're getting better per capita on less water use, we actually have less water. And we're in the start of a 50-year drought, and as you all know, changes in climate are going to impact negatively what water we have. So that is an issue that is sitting there as sort of the line of the attention. Hey Scott, since you've got such a big moving voice and you don't need that mic, maybe as it's rubbing against your back. Yes, thank you. That's right, my 19-year-old daughter says she can hear you without a telephone. That's true. And I also want to just say again that greenhouse gases, particularly carbon, are driven by the energy sector. So if you also took my course, you would understand, you would be reading the 25 peer-reviewed studies that have been done on renewable energy efficiency over the last few years that show with commercial technology we have today. We could meet most or all of the world's or the United States energy needs with these resources. This is out of the DLL, DLA study that is the analytical group for Germany's NASA showing we have 2,000 times more solar, 200 times more wind, 20 times more biomass, 2 times more geothermal, 2 times more wave tidal, 1 times hydro. We have a ton of resource out there. Obviously it's not all economic to harvest. Obviously there are issues of getting into the end user, but really with that kind of resource space, you have very few, you only have to get a few percent to make your case. And I have my grad student interns take all those studies, poor kids, and read them, take the most conservative estimates from them. And just for the United States of America, if you wanted a hot energy efficiency renewable future, in fact that would be the blend. And that's the conservative estimates. 32 states, the Institute of Local Self-Reliance, did calculations show 32 states can be absolutely energy self-sufficient with the resources they have today and the technology we have today. And then the rest of the states, some of which are high up there in the 80s like New York, others are lower. And by the way, that does not include offshore wind or the wave or tidal technology. And that's how those southeast numbers with offshore wind would change rather dramatically. I just, when I come up here and talk to members of Congress and staff, I always get this ridiculous line about subsidies, somehow that the renewables and efficiency get them all. CRS in New York, you had some good charts about that. That was rather staggering. But we had an international energy agency as well as the G20. Both made pronouncements that the world has to start subsidizing fuels. This is the United States chart of fossil fuel fuels, renewables, and biofuels per year. Just so you know, per year out of the tax code. I spent a lot of time analyzing different pages of tax code. I hear this ridiculous fantasy that somehow the traditional fuels are not subsidized. This is the Union Concerned Scientists study, wonderful, showing 30 studies at meeting up to 70 to 127 percent of a plant for nuclear. Again, I'm not putting good or bad. I'm just trying to, again, get rid of the notion that it's the sufficiency of renewable stuff that gets subsidies. This is not true. Just not true. So you've seen the chart on the budget request by hand. I can actually read this chart. My first thing to give you an overview is it's not only a good step up in public policy. It's actually a change within this administration. Every administration, Democrat or Republican, would throw some technology overboard to show Congress that somehow they were fiscally prudent. The problem with that, as you know, is that there's no one silverboard. You need all these different technologies. This is the first budget where I've ever seen no technology got thrown overboard. So that's a very good first step. I'm not going through some of the drivers' success of these programs because my other didn't. But, you know, obviously, wind's going down in costs. Photovoltaics are going down in costs. EPRI has shown that we can meet 10 percent of our electric energy needs from tidal wave technology. This is the first budget request where we really have a solid increase in support by this administration in water energy technologies. This year was the first time in history we have had a tidal deployment of electricity. I believe it's 187 kilowatts off of Maine tied to the electric grid. We also have units now in the East River, which is a tidal river in New York, producing power. So we're starting to see these technologies being commercialized and now the Department of Energy is finally acknowledging that it is a factor. I want to remind you, most people on this planet either live near the ocean or on rivers. So the energy source is right where the population is and it's 24-hour power. So the potential is perfect. So what's missing? My job is to talk to you about what's missing. What's missing is what I'll call integration within DOE. And this says congressional staff, I do believe I want to be honest. I believe DOE wants to do this and has set some things in motion. But let's talk about this. You saw an increase in the budget request for advanced batteries and transportation. Well, you know advanced batteries are needed on the utility grid, dealing with variable technology for power quality. In my work for the industrial sector and the military sector, we're a digital account. What makes your power clean? Batteries have a lot to do with it. So it deserves multi- or interdisciplinary R&D. There are other kinds of storage other than batteries, thermal salts for geothermal and solar thermal technologies are probably lower cost storage. Oak Ridge, that was mentioned before, is the leader in looking at compressed air and compressed lubricant storage. Comphydro, of course. Even hydrogen is really a storage technology that we tie to fuel cells. So we're playing around with all of it, but it's not being looked at comprehensively. And by the way, we do have an electrical energy systems program at DOE, which just focuses on utility scale.  So the issue of how do we deal with this? Buildings is the same way. But if you look at the budget, they're looking at new advanced technologies. How about learning how to integrate elegantly the advanced technologies we already have? And yes, NREL does have an integration center being pulled together. But we really need to look at it now. We need our R&D to work with the industry so we have interconnection protocols like we have with computers. We've got to get this stuff in the real world working elegantly together, not just being nice components. That's my problem when I'm doing projects. It's a big deal. This is an Axiom Power's 1 megawatt battery carbon supercapacitor battery unit out in Pennsylvania for PJM. And they are working with DOE on a new battery technology and it's deployed. So we're starting to see these technologies in the real world. What's missing? Again, blending. Looking at the smart grid. R&D that's going on in DOE. The zero energy buildings that seems to be in the amorphous atmosphere within DOE. Infrastructure security. Within all this, these are all requiring interface of different kinds of efficiency, storage, and renewable energy technology. This is very important for you to take a look at because this is important to the marketplace and to get the stuff out of research into real world use quicker. And, you know, the LED programs and other kinds of this cold capital compact, for instance, are left. I mean, really was driven out of a lot of the DOE programs with the private sector. But now these need to be integrated into more smart uses, solar day lighting systems. Also came out of the DOE program. Electrochromic glass. We have this on the new GSA building and I just finished a zero energy building at the Washington Navy Art Naval Facilities Command where we have this on that lightens or darkens, reduces heat gain during the summer, and also reduces glare. What's missing? Three. Resource assessment. Carol and I have probably a 30 year history about whining about this capability. So, we do have some of the labs that actually play in this area but we need to transfer more of this and with other federal agencies such as the National Weather Service and NOAA Department of Commerce so that we can start handing over to the private sector more detailed, precise ways that both end users, financiers, and even component suppliers can show where their technologies have the greatest economic value. Having this kind of capability really drives it into the marketplace. We're getting there. This is three-tier out of Seattle, 40 PhD hydrologists, oceanographers, meteorologists, and supercomputers. They can tell you anywhere on earth what the solar insulation is, what the water regime is for hydropower or where the wind is at the hub height. They can say, I need a project in Somalia. They can say at 87 feet. At that latitude longitude, there'll be enough wind for the turbine you want to use. In fact, the locals were shaking their heads at me saying, crazy American, there's no wind up there. Actually, it was plenty. And we have technology that can look at roofs of buildings and show you where the best sunshine is, where you want to put the solar, all year long, looking at things that may block the solar access. So the Department of Energy has pieces of this that needs to look at more comprehensively and tie it more to the private sector if you want to accelerate deployment. Homeland security is a big issue. I'm involved in it using these technologies as a solar streetlight. They have been pushing very well to do this kind of stuff, but we need more interagency cooperation between DHS, DOE, and DOD so that we get some of these technologies to solve our security and Homeland Security problems together. That's my Zero Energy Office building in North Arlington. It's solar PV, ripping shingles, wind turbine, hydrogen fuel cell, electrochromoclase, all this stuff. You were all invited. I have two Zero Energy buildings. And I just want to end this saying, good planets are hard to find. This is all we got. So I'm counting on you to be vigilant on these programs because this is how we make our mess a little more habitable. Thank you very much. Thanks so much, Scott. So let's open it up for any questions or comments you have of any of the speakers. And if any of the speakers also want to comment about things that you said. Okay, we'll start here and then we'll work our way around. And just if you could identify yourself, please. Yes, my name is Dan Gray. I'm ASN, the Congressional Fellow. At ASN, we must know that we're spending 40% more money than we have and take in and you want to increase it to 40% more. You must have not got the message that we're spending more than we have. Is that the least total pictures or all their departments?  First, I want to get back from investments. I will say that if we're talking about investments, we need to also talk about the returns on those investments. I showed you some of the data that we've got. We've got a lot more that shows very significant ROIs for a lot of our investments and technologies. I noted the investments we made in trucking combustion that yielded a return of about something like the one compared to what we put into it. I noted the investments of our solar technology office, which have yielded an ROI of about five to one. So, to my mind, what's really expensive is sticking with an energy system we currently have that is overly reliant on dirty sources, overly reliant on foreign sources and enormously damaging to large people's health and to the long-term sustainability of the planet. So, there are a number of different ways of accounting here. You offer one. I'll offer another. I'm sure others can offer their own. Go ahead, Sharon, first. My name is Lee Sprite. I'm a former congressional staffer. Could you give a little more elaboration on the changes, with respect to coordination and collaboration between DOD and DOE and DHS and perhaps USDA? Yes, I'm glad you raised USDA. It's an understanding that are a couple of years... First, to be clear, there are some existing collaborations between both the last administration and this administration with DOE and DOD and USDA on biofuels, for instance. And there are some even some strategic interfaces. I'm really talking about more focus and more detail. Right now, generally the way DOE works with DOD is they sort of allow the labs to be succumbed for special projects like net-zero energy bases. That's fine, but that's not really what I'm talking about. I'm talking about looking at a strategic issue of power quality, cybersecurity, for instance. This is a very important issue, not just on our grid, but on our military basis. One of the ways to resolve that by the way is just redundancy. Have a lot of stuff out there, so if your cell towers go down with the grid you have a renewable generation I'm doing a lot of renewable generation all over the world with cell towers and they're not tied to computer networks, so they're just working. So there needs to be a more strategic play in that interaction. Right now I call it a warm and fuzzy play. Or more ad hoc, yeah. I really believe that really has to come from Congress. I really have to say here are the five or six strategic issues we're looking at and we want you to narrow down. We don't want hugging good feeling things. We really want you to take very tight nuggets of activity and work on it for 18 months and then get out of it and maybe move to the next thing. So that's my suggestion. I have one question for Jason and then for the second. Jason, you want to speak to the question Fred asked about it. It seemed like there may be an effort to fund a critical material stuff but he couldn't find a light item and so forth. You clarified that question.  I was really struck by the underinvestment graph that you had and I could guess at some of the answers to that and you guys could just speak briefly to why you think there's such a significant private sector underinvestment in this space. One of the advantages of coming here is that we have CRS looking at your congressional justification and your budget numbers. I actually didn't know we didn't have a line for our critical materials so it is in our budget. So I'll follow up with you. I just didn't see it but we don't have a full budget request yet either. I'm not having that. On the issue of underinvestment I think it's a much longer conversation. Certainly where you start I think is noting that in the energy sector we're talking about big amounts of money and any kind of capital investment is going to require a large amount of money and I think that is a disincentive to invest in innovation. We also have a business model particularly in the utility sector that is highly regulated and that has a number of disincentives I think toward innovation. There are probably a number of other reasons as well. If I could just add to it in fact in energy the whole reason we're trying to do what we're doing here today is to give choice in the marketplace and if you really look at it I don't want to make it too simplistic we have an oil fossil fuel choice for vehicles and we have sort of a traditional central station choice on wires for consumers for electricity. That's our plan. So you have to really work with those two intermediaries and their delivery systems they really have it sort of a centralized comfortable system which is what we have in telephones. So when you all of a sudden change the rules and have more access to different kinds of technology in the system you have more consideration and as revolutionized communications that's really what we're trying to do here that everybody will have an option to either get the lowest cost energy the greenest energy for those reliable energy the cleanest energy the most domestic energy and let the consumer decide that's really what this long term play is about. But the system we have now the Scourge's investment in R&D because why? I make it oil. I got plenty of it I got the best delivery system in the world or on the utility I do the same thing so we need to we're trying to change the rules of the gang here obviously we're just getting some of our slapped around to do some of that and it's going to be good. Do you have a question? Why such a low end investment in the private sector? I have a really good question. And I mean we've been seeing this for a long time there's been that kind of under investment I think compared to other things and I know just in terms of having observed a lot of hearings up here on the hill where it's been very clear that the private sector has not seen any interest in terms of taking that purported risk and obviously if you are highly profitable doing what you're doing why does that change? The power of the sector is very important for it. I can come back a little bit to the question I have looked at it in the broad way but one piece I have looked at is the electric utility system and I think somebody was alluding to the fact that there's a tendency to invest in energy efficiency there and that's because electric utilities were designed to profit from selling ever more greater numbers of kilowatt hours. There are a lot of experiments that have been going on for many years now in different states about how to change that system and it takes kind of a complicated regulatory approach yet to address three key factors which I don't know this is the best time to go into that in detail but you have to cover the program costs you have to be coupled with that long term regulatory structure that makes sales to profits and then you have to give an equivalent incentive to energy efficiency that's equivalent to power plants on the supply side so it's a complex kind of regulatory thing that's just for energy efficiency just with electric utilities so I know it exists but it's not something I'm saying in great detail for the nobles I'm back here first and we've got several other people I think the EERE vision and goals are admirable however what I don't see is what is your near term solution for people in counties and cities that have budget problems that need to be addressed today over the next two decades your problem doesn't solve that or your vision and your goal don't solve it a 25 cent rise in price of the gasoline causes major problems in the budgets and there are solutions that are being implemented in Europe not here in the states like micro refineries I just don't see that being portrayed as a near term solution it is difficult to balance more long term RVVP that by definition is kind of playing the long game with addressing very immediate challenges that people face whether budgetary kind or or any other I did know that a part of our mission is to break down market barriers particularly in areas where technologies have actually reached the deployment phase that is particularly true in the building sector where there are a number of market barriers that are inhibiting the growth of the energy efficiency sector but increasingly as renewable technologies scale up it's happening in areas like solar and wind as an example and I'll use just as one example to address your question we have worked very very hard to reduce solar technology costs and through a lot of hard work of many different actors solar technology costs have dropped by roughly 75% over the last four years however the soft costs that are everything to do with everything that is not technology many of which are driven by what is essentially the patchwork of policies across the country with respect to the interconnection and citing and permitting those costs have not gone down to the point where those costs are actually even slightly above the technology costs if you look at the entire thing so in the near term we are working with states and city and county governments to figure out ways in which we can reduce those costs often via public policy and regulation by making standards more consistent by pursuing best practices it is not a silver bullet solution it is a lot of hard work nonetheless it is working at that kind of a level that is our way of addressing the stuff that is right in front of us here and now in terms of deployment challenges I think I have a different answer because I am hired by state government the DOE program has worked with bus manufacturers for electric buses they finance their electric buses it is a dollar and a half a gallon they are starting to use them it is a step costs of running the school buses are profound they have worked analytically with industry on these what I will call industry finance solutions instead of a municipality coming and paying for the stuff out of their budget they will say they will use power purchase agreements or energy service contracts or leasing and they are just paying out less than they would pay for their utility and all of a sudden have on their building or at a facility or at their park a system that provides long term and stabilized energy costs and we could not have gotten it through the financial system had not the DOE analysts worked with us to make it more transparent so they are actually doing it and then there are practitioners like myself that actually have to go out and translate that so they can understand I think you are right if things that are happening we will talk about one more if I understand your question correctly sir a few things came to mind if you are familiar with the recovery act of 2009 one of the initiatives that was the energy efficiency block grant program I think that was about $3 billion a lot of that was focused for that type of application and also energy conservation I think it was $1 billion worth of authority there which has some more kind of still a lot of broad applications and also the state local grant program which is under PVE generally year to year it fell a fairly small amount but there was a long time recovery act for that as well I think another $2 billion focused on state local governments and if I'm correct there is a new program that the administration proposed in the FY14 budget it's not the EVERE it's called Race to the Top for Energy Efficiency and Green Modernization and we're asking for about $200 million and it says one time funding challenge of states, tribes and local governments to try to bridge the waste of the modernized grid so there is a proposal in the current budget for about $200 million good job Fred and Fred didn't miss the long term authorization program which had a huge boost during the recovery package but that number has increased in this budget as well if you look at Jason's slide and again one of the things I think is so interesting about that program is that it is actually while it is delivering important efficiency services to homes at the same time it has actually also helped drive technology development and the whole residential energy efficiency retrofit business which again allows the leveraging of technology and jobs across the country well beyond the immediate sector served by that program so there are a whole lot of things that really do make a difference and obviously we can all see lots of opportunities or things that would be great to address and what's the best way to leverage those resources Ms. Carroll mentioned that I will say in the program that whether I was over a million homes from 2009 to early 2013 and by our best estimates that will save households over the course of the natural life of their homes roughly $70,000 in energy which is a significant difference one other is not existing but it's proposal by the administration I think it was last year in the year before the Home Star program which I think was supposed to be parallel to other stations for moderate income and I was going to say that was about $2 million and it's actually one of my colleagues that follows that program so it took me a while to make it because I didn't want to pay attention to it okay let's go over here my name is Ben Taylor I have a question for you you mentioned about things that are missing from the budget you talked about integration within the DOE budget maybe going a little higher to the overall DOE budget do you see integration of energy systems as an area where DOE is not really looking to say for example would you integrate wind energy with coal or fossil fuel in some way which is not within EERE and that's the role of that program and frankly that program has really changed from even five years ago which was sort of a play thing into a much more integrative thing but again it is focused on the grid of grid management and bringing in the larger generation and the technologies to better understand how to do it and I think actually on that one will be one of the few things where I think we're well on integration well maybe not just integrating on the grid but let's say you're combining the technologies into a single well they are also trying to deal with in that program understanding the variable what I'll call variable renewables that live in solar and how you train grid operators to better understand it and what's the learning curve on that no I actually think that they do that reasonably well Scott mentioned this so I'll just elaborate a little bit part of our budget request is $20 million for a new energy systems integration facility, our National Energy Lab in Northern Colorado which is a really first of its kind facility that allows megawatt scale R&D and testing of components and strategies required from multiple clean energy technologies onto the grid essentially in flight at scale and at speed this is a facility that we're going to do the groundbreaking on in August one that we're really excited about one that the private sector has already signed up and they're testing at so from an integration standpoint we think that's going to be a really critical resource I want more leverage resources and everything to question correctly sir one thing that comes to mind I'm not in the industry like Scott or close to DOE but I know I've heard about co-firing coal plants for the biomass and I think I can do maybe up to 20% and the program has done some funding with that but I don't know if you're also asking like in a more confined setting if you're off a grid on an island or somewhere to have a complete system in an ideal case you might have a wind machine and solar but then you want something like a fuel cell so that you've got power at night and when wind's not blowing those kind of systems I know they've been looked at I haven't really paid any attention to them since the late 1980s when I did a paper or two thousands of installations but I'm sure there's a lot of learning but I don't know if that's what you do off-grid stuff how would you maybe get it for greater efficiencies? DOE is looking at again, they're much more grid oriented than off-grid oriented sand like but we have these micro grids can be not tied to a larger grid and we're doing that part of the fence is doing that we've done several micro grids in Afghanistan right now and they're working very well they're interfacing about 14 different technologies generation, storage, and end-use technologies together so it's a pretty exciting time we're just in the beginning of this one it's going to be fun we do, we have several Brad, honey we were encouraged by weatherization part of that is a $24 million set aside for finance mechanism for multi-family housing very logical multi-family has not received the emphasis on the program of the truth question is, how is that going to be implemented? I understand it's going to be competitive but do we even issue rates on that it seems a weatherization more complicated short answer, I don't know Brad but let me get back to that okay good here and then here could you wait well some of the states are leading and of course California is one of them but not just California decoupling for instance Michigan could be the lead on grid integration of distributed renewables New Jersey, so and there are organizations national council state legislators national association state energy officials the international the interstate renewable energy council are three of them that track sort of the state local government side of it, ICLEI which is the, I don't know what ICLEI stands for, the international physicalities for climate but they do local government ones but if you grab my card again I have a list of all that stuff and I'm happy just to send you the list because I get my grad students to look at just that all the time okay great the final senior question labs basically for experimental related policies for renewable energy for decades in fact historically states were the sole our main province for energy policy making when we started to feel national vulnerabilities to the oil imports that the federal government used to get in the energy so they've always been there and some of the interesting examples are probably with the appliance efficiency standards where California was one of the leaders but I noticed a handful of other states that were leaders in this too and they wanted to do more with energy efficiency and appliances and they have the right to establish standards and at some point the manufacturers crazy because suddenly you have three or four different standards in different states so manufacturers who may have opposed the national standard but then come on into the federal government asked for something uniform because they were having to deal with this patchwork quilt and every couple of years some state would come up with a different standard and they'd have to keep retooling the product lines to deal with it so we have that now we have a connection for small renewables where we have 42 states with interconnection standards are all different so the inverter manufacturers have to produce different inverters imagine I'm just a refrigerator for every state you know it's just ridiculous and we've been trying to get a national approach to homogenization of that so we could standardize equipment it would change the market lower the cost so there's a lot of issues like but Fred's right the states and local governments certain counties have done amazing things in this area and if you're looking for something specific if you haven't already looked at it you should look at the designer on the long database because it has all of the all of the policies in place state, local and utility level and it has the federal in a separate category you can search it there's a nice search engine where you can go up with client standards and then see what each of the states can do with their client standards and if you want to find something creative for your state you can see what the other states are doing and pick up from there desire desire database for state incentives for renewable energy and I'll send that to you as well it's a wonderful blue it helps to find that little God bless it and it is a wonderful database and we'd be happy to help you answer some questions or help define some questions in fact in terms of looking at where you've got innovation opportunities but that's where again I would really encourage you to look at some of the items that are in the budget because it will also give you some ideas about the kinds of things that are seen as being important in terms of technology development that I think that you will find very very interesting okay back here Thank you, George Hutchinson, Current Technologies Corporation briefly just back to the DOE-DOE relationship in late 2009 early 2010 there was a successful MOU there was good work between the service secretaries of course not in DOE so it resulted in a nice MOU and it put DOE in the test role for DOE technologies and my question is the view of the panel that that MOU which at the time was rather it was sort of rather a sighted and grounded has that been optimized is it the work being executed in the DOE space is it the G-Programs is it in alignment with DOE's efforts is it duplicative I think that MOU between the agencies was an amazing first start it has had some amazing benefit to both sides opening DOE to the understanding of what are some of the mission needs relating to defense what DOE has and also giving more brain power in terms of technology specificity to DOD whose labs are really not energy labs their security and defense equipment labs so it has been very valuable it's really good and actually my instinct on this would be to say you need to do more of that but what we want is a little more focus and a little more looking at some of these short term security needs and just help drive the turnover and make it more transparent I think that's exactly the kind of things needed by the way between all the agencies and DOD and USDA for instance with the fuel side you don't have biofuels you don't have a supply chain USDA is really good they have the best labs on supplies on biomass supplies in the world DOE is really good in this hoop to drop in fuels fabulous because you don't need a whole new infrastructure to have create biofuels that can be used in any existing engine that we need so that's great and then obviously DOD is going to say we're going to use more planes use too much of that but we have a theater of war operation where Pakistan says you can't fly stuff over can we put in deployable units with what we have and do technology we can do all that stuff but we've got to have some focus on it some national will and some congressional support bipartisan like because I think some of the anger at the Navy particularly and that you know this is a very expensive dollar per gallon the issue is not the dollar per gallon the issue is options we want to make sure we have options just what we talked about earlier this provides an option it's our view that it's a tremendously exciting MOU and one we can do more with we actually my boss Dave Danielson is assuming the co-chairmanship of that partnership with that intent there's a lot we can do here we're already doing Scott mentioned that is working on with DOD it's a lot we can do on the financing side as well it's important to recognize that the purchasing power of DOD brings with it tremendous first market opportunity and they're also the only federal agency that is able to enter in the theory of power and they often don't have the expertise that folks will then defend how they can work with them in a very intentional way to really take it in I know because George I don't have an answer for you but I have a resource person a terrific person at CRS my name is Kate Blakely and if you give me your business card before you go today I can have a preview of all and I would also just mention in terms of thinking about the MOU with DOD and DOE another whole terribly important area I think is with regard to buildings and facilities where there is a lot of work underway between the two agencies which I think as we have all seen over the last couple years that that is becoming ever more important in terms of thinking about the resilience we need to build in to our built infrastructure in terms of buildings in terms of dealing with some of the really horrific storms of weather extremes that we're seeing so that we can both get facilities up much more quickly and hopefully literally weather the storm in a more resilient way and so it provides opportunity for those agencies to really bring a lot of technologies and employment skills together Are there any last questions? Okay, over here. You were lamenting the fact that industry does not invest enough in research and development one of the ways that you have dealt with regional influences is to suggest that it will increase the amount of money that is adopted from their taxes and that will give them incentive to spend more of course the government might be getting more taxes but in a long run if they're looking for the same objects you are that would possibly be a way to improve the situation So you're talking about R&D tax credit Yeah Well, there is an R&D tax credit but I think one of the things that's interesting of course it's not part of the tax policy isn't really a part of the EERE budget obviously but there are lots of tax discussions and tax reform discussions that are going on across the hill and I know that the Ways and Means Committee have been putting out a series of white papers and calling for suggestions ideas as they start to really review tax policy and that's a good place for you to take your ideas I we're going to look for that talk absolutely Any other last questions or anything else that any of our speakers would I have one one response from the gentleman here because I'm sensitive to deficit issue and I share your concern but one of the strategic issues and security issues from the United States is we use twice the amount of energy Europe does to manufacture any gizmo and so if we're using more energy to manufacture stuff than our industrial and water by the way how can we be competitive we can't I mean the materials are global commodities so it costs the same in Europe and the United States so the fact of the matter is the only way to be competitive is to have cheap lightroom I don't think we're going to go in that direction or we're going to have to reduce our inputs the material science program at Oak Ridge and DOE can significantly reduce material inputs meaning we can make the same thing the same value for 30% of the material than a traditional manufacturer does and if you have to reduce the energy and water input then that capability that scientific prowess will keep this country competitive globally against slave labor or countries that frankly because they don't subsidize their energy their energy costs are higher industry itself has said we're going to use less energy so that's the playing and we have to understand that very clear in our strategic interest that if you don't make that investment you're going to be I don't care how smart you are how sweet the little gizmo is you're going to be more expensive and you don't sell it globally if it is natural gas is not currently a global commodity well that's a big fight it's about to be it could very well be in the very near future that's another big issue so a couple things to remember are that as we look at budgets we need to remember to think about investments versus costs and as we look at how we try to be a very strong and economically competitive in a global economy what's the best way to do that I think that as Scott was saying that it's very interesting in terms of the advanced manufacturing initiative because it's my understanding as I look at that that it is indeed really trying to recognize that recognizing how critical it is to the well-being of the US economy so I hope that you've gotten some of your questions answered please feel free to follow up with any of our speakers or with us at EESI and thank you very very much for being here today thanks


Well it's been more than nine years since an elderly leader Minnesota man disappeared. Peter Ackerman has never been found but his family felt he deserved a proper funeral and wanted to celebrate his life. Our Anthony Scott has more. On July 24th 2009 Peter Ackerman left his family farm to run some errands and he never returned. His car was found the next day wedged in a mud puddle and the police had no answers. Nine years later his family is paying tribute to the great man he was. It's nine years and it's time it's um I'm already in my late 80s and I don't want to go without finishing my job. A funeral service was held Saturday morning for Peter followed by a celebration of life at his family's farm. Even after nine years so many friends and family came to celebrate his life which says a lot about his character. He touched everybody. He sometimes you wouldn't agree with him but he still treated you treated you fair and he was a real good man. Peter was a Swiss immigrant who came to America and built something that can be passed down for generations to come. That's why he came from Europe so he could farm and he found this little heaven here and north of leader and uh it was it was our home yeah he built it into our home. My brother owns the farm now my older brother France but he was buying it from dad before dad disappeared so it was we all kind of wanted to keep it in the family. We got a big family so this will always be home everybody's got a place. Despite the family holding a funeral for Peter last weekend there is still hope that he is out there somewhere and they just want answers as to what happened to him nine years ago. Just want to know what happened. Most of all we want him home. We have this funeral today and it was it's good it's a good thing but it would have been nice to have him somewhere where we could put him. He's just was a good man and I wish whoever knows where he's at tells us. Bizarre that's the only word to describe what happened to Peter Ackerman on July 24th 2009. The family was able to have some closure on Saturday but they are still left with so many unanswered questions. Reporting from leader Anthony Scott Lakeland news a $20,000 reward is still being offered by the family if anyone has information on Peter Ackerman's whereabouts. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland news please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


And now to Aikete State, where the Federal High Court seated in a door has struck out the suit filed by the Aikete State Attorney General, challenging the dismissal of an unmarried female police officer, corporal, a largely homololah, on January 2021 in the state for getting pregnant. Delivering the judgement, Justice Buffs, Quiruumi, struck out the case on the ground that it constitute an abuse of court process as the same martyr is before the National Industrial Court in Aikete. He appears that the Attorney General has the look of stundi to persecute martyrs on behalf of late against and protect citizens right. The Aikete State Attorney General, Olawale Fakbohunda, had instituted a civil suit against Inspector General of Police earlier this year seeking an order of court void in section 127 of the Police Act and regulations which provide for the discharge from the police force. Women officers who become pregnant while unmarried, unconstitutional. So now that we have gotten an affirmation that the Attorney General has local standard to institute martyrs on behalf of litigants, indigents or otherwise, you will now see a plethora of cases of this nature before courts across the state. It's when I was told that the case was thrown out, the reason is that the lady question had earlier on filed a case against the police at Akure on 3rd of March while the Attorney General of Aikete State filed his own against the police on 5th of March. So they now said it was an abuse of court process that since the case has been on at Akure, that's why they throw this one away today. We are available at any time, it depends. Anytime the court asks us to come and defend our action, we always wait.


And we're live at the Rebooting Web of Trust Conference here in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Drummond Reed is a participant, and he also is going to be back in Cambridge at the end of this month to be our keynote speaker at the MIT Legal Forum on AI and Blockchain. So we didn't want to miss the opportunity to say, looking forward to hosting you at the MIT Media Lab on October 30th and 31st, and to just give you a chance to introduce yourself and let people know a little bit about what you'll be talking about. Sure, you may. It's a perfect time here at Rebooting Web of Trust, we're talking all about what is happening in the whole evolution of digital identity due to the blockchain revolution. And the heart of that is known as cell software identity. It's a whole new approach to digital identity, you know, puts identity in the hands of individuals and makes it portable, makes it cryptographically verifiable. This is, I believe it's going to have almost as much impact as smart contracts in the evolution of law. And it's a really meaty topic. My favorite thing to do right now is talking with attorneys about it, the difference it's going to make in their practices and their firms. Outstanding, thank you very much. The applause is for what Trumman just said. And that's largely because seriously, the reason why we're clearing out the entire sixth floor of the MIT Media Lab for two days is because the implications for the practice of law, for using law, for being a company compliant with law, for making law, for adjudicating law, for what the law is. And it's all being refactored now for a digital age. And these technologies are core to it. The program committee is in a consensus that identity is the root of the core. And so you can hardly wait for your remarks and to engage a dialogue that's constructive with, in a sense, the legal profession. It's what we're starting to catalyze with this conference. If you'd like to be part of that dialogue, sign up at mitlegalforum.org. And we're committed to robust online participation. And we also have a few spots left for in person participation, so you can fill out a request for an invite. So until then, we'll see you online. See you then.