Good afternoon everyone. My name is Carol Werner. I'm the director of the environmental and energy study Institute We are very very glad to see you here for this afternoon's briefing where we're taking a look at the fiscal 2017 budget particularly with regard to the investments that the proposed budget would make at the Department of Energy in its energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Office and all of the technologies and the interconnections that are all part of that So we are very very glad to have a panel to look at this issue again this year This is pretty much an annual event that we've been doing for a number of years in association with the House and Senate Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucuses, so we are delighted that they are partnering with us with regard to this and then also I just wanted to mention that coming up on July 12th We will all be partnering together with regard to the Congressional Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Technology Expo and Policy Forum so what we're going to learn about today to hear about in terms of what is in the President's proposed budget what the implications for that are specifically looking at the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency portfolios and how that really does affect what is happening in very real time in terms of looking at the very very important energy Sector and energy factors that are in play and I must say this is a time as you all know of enormous change and very exciting things that are underway in so many areas and We think that the budget also helps give us a real eye in terms of looking at that So I am very happy that we Have with us today to talk to us about the DOE Efficiency and Renewable Energy budget David Friedman who is the principal deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Efficiency and Renewable Energy at DOE and he will be walking through the proposed budget and obviously it's a very large budget it gets into a lot of things But I think this will be very very useful in terms of helping us understand what the priorities are Why the kinds of results that we've been seeing and therefore how that leads to Decisions with regard to these important investments David prior to joining EERE where he Overseas the whole broad technology portfolio To accelerate development and deployment of efficiency renewable technologies before coming to EERE He served as the deputy and also the acting administrator of NHTSA the national Highway Traffic Safety Administration where he dealt with a lot of of very key and critical issues dealing with the safety economics with regard to Education safety standards enforcement actions, etc but one of the things that I think is really Interesting with regard to his background both at NHTSA and prior to that In terms of his involvement with various national academy committees and having served on the president's hydrogen technical advisory committee Is that he really brings together his experience in all of this technology and Transportation area which suits him very well for now dealing with this much much broader portfolio of Technologies and their deployment David welcome Thank you very much Carol, and thank you everyone for being here It's a great opportunity to try to talk about what we're trying to do at EERE In fiscal year 17 and why we've made some of the decisions we've made In the budget that we have put forward As Carol mentioned it's it's a significant budget proposal And it's a significant budget proposal because we've done a lot of good work, but there's a lot more good work We need to do to address some pretty significant challenges I should also note because it's a big budget what you're getting today is really just a taste We'd be here for way too many hours if we were going to go through every little detail and even at that There's a lot to cover so I look forward to any questions folks may have and certainly If folks want to get into more detail on any particular piece we can follow up with more information as needed There we go. Okay, so as I mentioned EERE is it we have a broad set of work that we do We cover sustainable transportation. We cover renewable power. We cover energy efficiency Each of those offices in and of itself could be its own office at the Department of Energy But I'm really glad they're not because there's so much crossover There's so much interaction that we need with all of these different areas of technologies that I think we would be Able to do much less if we weren't knitted together the way we are and that's part of what this slide is really intended to To give you a sense of we've got our individual groups with their individual tech now technology focuses within them But we also have a core of cross-cutting efforts, whether it's on manufacturing Or energy and water Or grid modernization that pulls together a lot of the different pieces and then if you look at the outer rings, of course Even that is not enough because simply focusing on the details of technology Doesn't get you the full answer. We have to understand the policy implications We have to do good analysis so that we can plan for the future so that we can have multi-year Program plans to guide our our targets to guide our investments And then of course you have the unsung heroes on the outside ring Which are all the people who literally make eere work every single day? And it's very important that we have the resources To keep them moving because we couldn't do all the work in the bullseye without the folks Supporting our mission each and every day When we look at our work and the reason why these are the areas we focus is because we need to make a difference We need to make a difference in each of these key technology and energy use areas And I think we have made a difference if you look at the data We've commissioned an independent analysis to understand how much of a return on investment have we delivered in our portfolio so there was a sampling of about one third of our portfolio and When folks dove in and look at the numbers as you can see here We were able to deliver in that sampling a 14 to 1 benefit to cost ratio and that translates into an annual return on investment an annual rate of return of 20% So fundamentally I would argue we have been an incredibly good investment of taxpayer dollars And we want to continue that trend and hopefully even go even further You can see with the further numbers that obviously those our return is going to vary both on the stage of the technology and the area of technology On combustion engine R&D where we've had many years of investing in the technology And now that technology when it comes to reducing emissions and improving efficiency has really proliferated in the marketplace You can see there we've got close to a 70 to 1 benefit to cost ratio on the solar photovoltaic side Where you're seeing incredible increases in the market share, but still I would argue it's it's in its early years We've only gotten a three-to-one benefit to cost ratio, which I would argue is pretty good already But you can expect that number to go up by at least in order of magnitude as we see the the solar market expand using technologies and Processes that we've helped support I want to give you a sense of Where some of that progress is showing up and for the last few years we've produced a report called revolution now To help people understand how fast things are changing. I mean if you think to just five ten years ago How dramatically the world has changed when it comes to renewable power and energy efficiency Things like solar power wind power even battery electric vehicles and LEDs a lot of folks thought of these as science projects They thought of them as something that maybe someday in the future We'll get to them, but they're not anything that folks are going to see certainly in their lifetimes Instead what we've seen with a concentrated focus on our D&D to help drive down the costs of these technologies The progress has been incredible. I mean just a few of the examples here One of the the quote-unquote least ambitious cases here is in wind where we've seen a cost reduction of about 40% Since 2008 and then you get into a PV where you're talking 50 60 percent Reduction in cost batteries. We've helped drive down the cost of batteries Using technology developed at Argonne National Labs and added research projects that we've been involved in with industry by 70 Percent, but even there we know we're not done. We're targeting a hundred and twenty five dollars per kilowatt hour Maybe even ultimately a hundred dollars per kilowatt hour to keep driving down the cost of those batteries So that they can become a great choice for consumers in the marketplace And then the big winner of them all are LEDs, which we've seen a 90 percent drop in costs Since 2008 90 percent You know, there was a time where people would walk into Home Depot or one of the other big box stores and and debate in their head Should I switch to compact fluorescent? Is it is it really worth it? Those debates are long gone because LEDs are now more efficient and cheaper in many cases than compact fluorescents And they last longer and a lot of that as a result of R&D that we in the industry have sponsored that have just fundamentally revolutionized lighting technology Of course a revolution in cost is great But the impact doesn't just happen from cost the impact happens if you also see a revolution in the marketplace and That's what a revolution now does also show is that when you look at the marketplace We're seeing Significant increases in adoption across the board of all of these technologies wind power now 30 over 30 percent of new generation Distributed power distributed PV and utility scale PV each on the order of 8 to 10 gigawatts And a lot of that growth is just over the last few years Thanks to programs at EERE as well as programs in our separate loan program office that has helped catalyze these key projects LEDs are now close to 80 million dollars and as I said, they're they're flying off the shelves now You literally have companies who are abandoning compact fluorescents not because of regulations But because the market doesn't need them anymore. They're better off investing in LEDs and then electric vehicles We're talking about reaching on the order 300,000 EVs in 2014 and despite What you may have read in the press about how bad EV sales were in 2015 another hundred thousand was added To that number so a one-third growth in the EVs on the road in a year where gas prices were on the order of two dollars a gallon I'm actually pretty impressed That that we saw that large of a sales given a drop in gas price of about half or more In some parts of the country so that technology is is going strong But obviously needs more input more R&D to keep that technology moving forward So we've made big progress and I think we're really proud of the role that we've had within that progress But and this is an important, but we are far from done when you compare that progress to our national goals there is a lot more work to do and President Obama has been very clear that our nation has an opportunity to really step up in many key areas Whether your focus is greenhouse gas emissions where our target is 26 to 28% reduction by 2025 and by the way a 17% reduction by 2020 Which we are on track for and an 80% reduction by 2050 when we're thinking of an 80 a world of 80% Reduction we need to think about another revolution or two in technology to ensure that we get there And I'll talk about that part of the revolution in a little bit Doubling energy productivity by 2030 and that's not just an efficiency target That's an economic target because if we can double the amount of work we get from a unit of energy Our businesses our companies can make a lot more money because instead of spending that money on energy They can invest that money in better products or better profits In addition, we've got a target of reducing net oil imports in half by 2030 sorry by 2020 We're we're definitely on pace for that one could argue We're even well ahead of the pace for achieving that goal and then of course as part of the president's climate action plan We set out a goal to cut CO2 emissions by three billion metric tons. That's rounded up cumulatively by 2030 through energy efficiency standards and each and every year We've been making significant progress chipping away chipping away at that target and again Not just delivering CO2 savings, but in applying standard after applying standard Saving consumers and businesses a lot more money than it costs to make the improvement enhancing the economy while reducing costs and reducing emissions But you know what maybe oil isn't your thing maybe climate isn't your thing Maybe energy savings isn't your thing But American jobs and American competitiveness is something I think each and every one of us can agree on And when you look at investments in R&D across the globe The core factor the matter is we are behind there is a race right now a clean energy race and China Japan Germany countries all over the world are investing to win that race. Why? It's not just simply because of climate change or energy independence. It's because winning that race means Positioning yourselves for more jobs and a much stronger position in the economy But when you look at this chart China is outspending us Japan if you normalize this per GDP their GDP is I think on the order of a third of ours maybe a little more Japan is outspending us Germany on a GDP basis is is on the same order of magnitude or maybe even higher than us So it's clear the clean energy race is on and we are not investing enough in that race right now to ensure That we're going to win we've got amazing talent in this country amazing innovators amazing scientists and engineers And I have a lot of faith that they're going to do Continue to do great work with the investments. We're making but there's a need for greater investments to ensure that we can win that race And here's another example of that If you look at the pharmaceutical industry They are investing about 20% of their sales back into R&D turning out more and more profit aerospace in defense Really critical areas to our nation investing 11% of sales back into R&D computers and electronics 8% cars over 2% Can anyone guess where energy is? Close to 0% if you round it down less than half a percent of These money that comes in through sales is spent on R&D now Yes, part of this is because you've got commodities with you know embedded price in embedded value You know in the oil etc But even compensating for that we are far under investing in energy compared to other critical parts of our economy we've got to do more and that's Really the vision and the mission of what EERE is trying to do When we look at the large-scale we just recently released a strategic plan I encourage everyone to go online and download a copy of that so you can get a better sense of how we're looking at all of this But our big picture vision is to support a strong and prosperous America powered by clean Affordable and secure energy and again that's being done because that is essential to our nation's competitiveness and our economic strength And so at EERE our mission is to create and sustain American leadership in the transition to a global clean energy Economy again that races on we want to make sure that we win Our strategic plan and all of our work is guided also by a lot of other key documents from the president's climate action plan The secretary monies is strategic plan our quadrennial energy review and our quadrennial technology review If you aren't familiar with any of these I encourage you To look at them, especially if you're like me in a technology geek The QTR is just a wealth of information about the opportunities that are out there on technologies And we very much have used the QTR as a guide for key new areas to invest in within our budget So what is our big broad budget strategy? I've tried to kind of divide it into three core pieces But the reality is there's a lot of overlap between these The first is at the core as I've said we need to do more and it's not just me saying that It's not just assistant secretary Danielson saying that it's secretary monies. It's the president of the United States It's 19 other world leaders who in November came together and stepped up and said globally We need to have a target of doubling clean energy R&D over five years And this is China. This is Germany Japan. These are all the major nations. We're competing with They're also Premising and planning to double their clean energy R&D So again, we've got to do this just to ensure that we can keep the lead when it comes to the clean energy economy That's moving forward When we look at what we're talking about in this we're talking about our D&D Across the full spectrum of our applied work at EERE whether it's Renewable energy energy efficiency and sustainable transportation And I should also note this isn't just about government R&D. You've got key major investors Who are also looking at making significant expansions folks like Bill Gates? For example, when we came out with our mission innovation announcement He and others came out with the breakthrough energy coalition. You've got Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg softbank group corporation CEO Masayoshi son from Japan So you've got a lot of different folks on the government side But also incorporate side and investor side who are saying we need to increase our R&D And we need to make sure that R&D is Investible R&D not just cool science projects But projects that can be handed off ultimately to investors who are going to put money into them and turn them into commercial products that's critical to us and critical to success in addition to that we need to keep working in areas to enhance our efforts to reduce market barriers we can do the Best job in the world of getting the cost down in the performance up But there can still be too much red tape or too little information or other challenges that block these technologies from getting into the market And we see a key role we can play there Finally the president is also putting forth the 21st century transportation System initiative which is focused at some of the real unique challenges that we face in the transportation system You saw all that progress on renewable power and some key progress on the V's But there are still some big hurdles in transportation on the R&D side But also on the infrastructure side that we have to overcome to tackle that side of things Now here's our big picture budget summary I'm not going to go over every single one of these lines But I want to give you that what the big story is here first of all you can see across each of our technology areas We've got a roughly equivalent somewhere around 30% increase Proposed in those budgets Why because we see opportunities in each and every one of those areas though you do see in Transportation the increase is a little bit larger given some of the larger barriers we see in that space You also see here that we've got our some key mission innovation cross-cutting initiatives And the increase we're requesting for that's for those is on the same order of the increase We're looking for in each and every one of the technology areas, and I'll talk a little bit more about that So overall we're proposing a 40% increase in our budget You can see right now as of 2015 we crossed the two billion dollar mark I want to thank everyone on the hill who helped make that happen that Represented an increase in our budget in obviously very tight fiscal times But I think it recognizes that folks get the same message I'm providing today Which is we still need to do more the challenges are too big the opportunities are too big not to continue increasing our investment in this space So let me talk a little bit more about some of the unique pieces under mission innovation Mission innovation really flows throughout all of our budget all of our D&D budget But there are some key cross-cutting issues that I want to make sure to highlight so In terms of it flowing across all of our budget the baseline in the way We're looking at our our D&D activities for mission innovation is about 1.4 billion dollars in 2015 Sorry 2016 our proposal then is about a 47% increase in our the our D&D side of our budget for mission innovation So without a doubt of that 40% more of that increase is targeted directly at our D&D Then the other parts of our portfolio and as you can see here I won't go into these but it touches a lot of different key areas within the work that we do Now in terms of the cross-cutting work that we're doing Part of this came as a realization that if we really want to be innovative we need to think about different ways of doing business and So we've targeted several cross-cutting efforts that are trying to shake up the way we do our our D&D The first one is to acknowledge the fact that if you look around the country you cannot find a one-size-fits-all solution if you look across the nation different regions have different energy resources different intellectual resources different policy goals and What we're proposing here Is a hundred and ten million dollars that would go into grants to support 501c3s basically non-profit regional entities that would drive innovation R&D innovation market ready R&D innovation sorry investment ready innovation Tailored to the needs of that specific region It's something that was called for from the president's Science Advisory Council Previously National Academy of Sciences has pointed some in this direction as well And critically we don't want to restrict this effort just to for example renewable energy Because for some regions natural gas may play a bigger role Coal and therefore carbon capture and storage may play a big role nuclear power may play a bigger role So we are trying to look at a novel way of looking at an all-of-the-above approach and letting the regions Drive those priorities rather than us here in Washington driving those priorities The other pieces are more focused in in at least two out of the three cases on energy efficiency and renewable energy The first one is a next-generation innovation effort right now Much of our research is targeted in silos We're trying to break those silos through some of the cross-cutting efforts But one of the things we're realizing is there could be some significant advantage for example within sustainable Transportation so across electric vehicles and fuel cells and biofuels in Supporting and opening the door to new innovative ideas That look at the transportation sector as a whole instead of each individual technology area So opening the door to ideas that may be before the individual Offices wouldn't have been able to support because they're narrower Then the idea itself and so we've got about 60 million dollars that would be targeted at each of the major offices Transportation efficiency and renewable energy for more systematic approaches to things Then we've got our energy technology innovation accelerators Really this is trying to take the model of cyclotron road nationwide Cyclotron road is an effort out in California to connect the laboratories to up-and-coming innovators who Maybe five you know before the Great Recession They could have tapped into venture capital and angel investors who would be happy to take a risk on them But then who all too quickly realized that investing in energy is not the same as investing in Silicon Valley You don't get a new technology every six months every 12 months You get a new technology every six ten twenty years and so you've got to have more patient investors and There've been a lot of challenges in that space So those folks haven't been able to get the resources they need well let's match them with the world-class resources of the national labs and Create an opportunity for some riskier ideas to get the resources They need to potentially turn into a commercial product and we've seen some great successes out of cyclotron road And we think there's a great opportunity to take that model to all the labs across the US Finally small business partnerships Think you hear everyone say over and over again how small business is such a critical engine in our economy. We agree Let's but part of the problem with that engine is it doesn't have enough our R&D fuel Because they're too busy trying to just keep keep their doors open This is a way to give them Some R&D fuel boost them up get them in touch with the national labs Again connecting small businesses to those world-class Facilities so that they can accelerate their innovation and create new jobs and communities throughout the United States We've been doing this at EERE targeted at a smaller scale This would take this up a whole new level across all the national labs and really hopefully catalyze some good jobs and some good technologies Okay, now. Let's look at some of the more traditional part of the portfolio that encompasses both mission innovation And some of the market barrier activities I'm gonna step through these relatively quickly because I want to make sure that I'm not talking all day here So I'm just gonna give you the highlights. We can go into more detail As you saw before we're talking about a 30% increase in our investments in renewable power Some of the key examples of the work we're doing in this space are Advanced power electronic solutions for distributed photovoltaics One of the things we found in general with With distributed PV and PV in general is soft costs can really get in the way These are the costs other than the costs of the PV unit itself whether it's red tape or The balance of plant that you need to help make the system work If we can improve the power electronics for photovoltaics bump up the efficiency drive down the costs We can make distributed PV even more cost effective than we're seeing today Offshore wind we we're investing significantly in demonstration efforts to move the offshore wind Potential forward we have massive energy potential off the coasts of our nation But the challenge is it can be pretty expensive our demos are targeted at at creating a lot of real-world Experience in this space where we can learn a lot, but already in going through those activities It's clear to us that we need some more applied Rdnd to get more of those costs down So that offshore wind power can be a great cost effective solution not just in key niche areas But up and down and across the coasts of the United States Europe and other countries are investing in this area again We've got to make sure that we are not behind Not just catching up, but we are in the lead with this technology because if we can get great stuff to work here That also means instead of having to bring parts in from overseas We can generate jobs here in the US and ship those parts to other nations who are looking to invest in this space Forge, that's our effort to really revolutionize geothermal energy revolutionize and test a whole variety of new drilling techniques and in different different kinds of rocks different surfaces different subsurface We're gonna make a choice in FY 17 and down select to one key site where all that innovation is going to happen And then finally on the water side We need a better test facility so that as we move forward with MHK and other key water technologies That we've got an open water test facility that can help move these These technologies up in scale up in scope so that we can figure out which ones are the best Which ones can compete and which ones ultimately can scale up to large-scale projects Next we have energy efficiency here. We're targeting about a 27% increase in our core work here And remember when we talk energy efficiency, it's not just simply about air conditioners and lighting It's also about our manufacturing system. We want to make sure that our Manufacturing system is using less money because again just like using less money on lights in HVAC if you use less energy To build a car Build a wind turbine.  So we want to keep investing in our clean energy manufacturing innovation institutes We also want to make sure that the United States government practices what we preach So we want to continue expanding our investment in our federal energy management core activities Helping Department of Defense agriculture DOT DOE invest in saving money throughout those organizations Again, better use of taxpayer dollars and also being kind of a shining the light on where the great opportunities are for businesses and consumers Well, low global warming potential cooling right now when you have an HVA system in your car or in your building You're using a fair amount of energy to deliver that cooling, which means emissions upstream But you're also using refrigerants that at some point in their life a lot of them are going to leak and when they leak Their global warming potential is tens hundreds and thousands of times that of carbon dioxide and they aren't always all that efficient We're investing in not just new refrigerants, but solid-state refrigeration and cooling technologies They can be more efficient and can basically eliminate the global warming impacts of refrigerants themselves So again delivering win-win-win scenarios on climate on energy use and on people's pocketbooks Weatherization we provide critical benefits to Americans all over the country to help them lower Their utility bills and improve public health at the same time Sustainable transportation Here as I said, we're proposing probably the largest increase about 34 percent We've got to double down on our investments in electric vehicles We've got to drive the cost of batteries down to at least a hundred and twenty five dollars per kilowatt hour if not further and We've got to make sure that there's a broad knowledge base of information about EVs about their potential So that the market barriers that exists two EVs can be broken down Super truck to this is super truck one was an amazing success We set the goal of boosting fuel efficiency of 18 long-haul 18-wheelers by 50 percent We actually got one team over 70 percent and one team over a hundred percent now Through congressional direction and frankly just because it's the right thing to do We want to move we're already moving to super truck to where We're going to challenge all the teams to get over a hundred percent and to drive up the cost effectiveness Drive down the cost drive up the cost effectiveness of those technologies We're starting that program this year and next year's budget is going to continue that program going forward Fuel cells we've helped cut the cost of fuel cells already by 50 percent That's enabling companies like Toyota Honda GM soon to bring fuel cell vehicles to the market, but fuel cells are still too expensive So again, we've got to continue investing in that space to drive down those costs We also have to help make it easier to get fuel cell infrastructure out there And we've developed some great technology for that and finally biofuels There's great opportunities still for biofuels, but that industry has faced a lot of very technical challenges some of which is just simply What's the right combination of organisms to most effectively? Turn biomass into a bioproduct whether it's a fuel for a jet engine or a car or for Manufacturing the case of a computer We want to kind of invest in the same kind of Kind of technologies that are used in the genetic space to Rapidly prototype molecules that can potentially be used to revolutionize biofuels into the future So that is a very fast and very high-level overview of those core programs I also want to spend some quick time on the 21st century clean transportation plan initiative So this is something that the president has really I think Pointed to the fact that transportation is a key source of greenhouse gas emissions. It is still Depending on which part of the sector you're talking about 70 to 90 percent reliant on oil one single fuel and While oil prices are low today There's I can't guarantee you what the oil price of the future will be But I can guarantee you it will change again and again and again because over the last 40 years We've had at least six oil price spikes that have been tied to either economics slowdowns or true recessions. It's going to happen again and We need to really double down on our investment to help insulate our economy from those price swings and from the emissions That result so we want to invest in improving the efficiency of manufacturing for batteries We want to invest in multimodal freight Approaches that can drive down the costs of ship reduced emissions increased profitability We also We're moving into a world that is potentially certainly by 2050 if not well beforehand That is going to be filled with cars that can talk to each other cars that can drive themselves We're going to be living in a transportation system that is inherently a big data system That can create some amazing opportunities to optimize that system But no individual company has the resources or really has the Sees the value in investing in how to optimize those resources. We've got the supercomputing power We've got the ability to create new facilities that can allow car companies to test approaches to automated cars To radical light weighting of those automated cars To optimizing control systems to drive down the costs of those Vehicles and drive down emissions well beyond what you could even do just by Efficiency or electric vehicles or fuel cells alone Next and this is a really big chunk of the of the pie here at 750 million dollars We've been caught in this chicken and egg problem for decades Where car companies are understandably nervous about putting out a lot of alternative fuel cars because the infrastructure isn't in there and Oil companies and utilities and others are very nervous about putting out infrastructure Until the cars are there and so as a result you have very slow progress in many cases in each this would help break that log jam by the same way we invested in in our highways in the 50s investing in infrastructure for fuels To get stations whether they're charging stations renewable hydrogen stations or appropriate biofuel stations much more widely spread around the country just to break that cycle to break that chicken and egg cycle and Get more and more alternative fuel vehicles out there And then finally we've got a clean fleet fleet's competition because this isn't just about private sector There's a lot of local and state governments out there with a lot of fleets that if they have some more resources We've seen through through Dira for example the diesel emissions Reduction act that if you get them some resources and challenge them to step up and compete for those resources They will invest their own money in cleaner cars now all of this the plan would be this would be funded By the the $10 barrel oil fee that's been talked about We know that that's a challenge But we think it's the right time to have that conversation because the challenge we face in transportation is too big Finally, and I'm not going to go into any detail here. We've got several different cross cuts at DOE We're looking at modernizing our grid working with our partners in the Office of Electricity We're looking at modernizing the way we characterize and access subsurface resources both Geothermal resources, but also fossil fuel resources We're looking at a world where and where water could be just as if not more precious of a commodity than energy going into the future and we need to look for ways to drive down water use across our economy and drive up the efficiency and drive down the cost of Taking saltwater and turning it into fresh water for key parts of our nation and potentially the world That are going to be highly water stressed without that and then finally advanced materials There's so much that we can do as we invest in composites and other materials to Radically change everything from wind turbine blades to cars To to HVAC units as we talked about This is just one example of the grid modernization program I Won't go across this because I want to shift over to other folks But I think you can get a sense from this that we are looking at all Different parts of the grid system with our partners at the Office of Electricity to make sure that we are improving the devices that go into the grid system Improving the way we can monitor and sense the way the grid is working to optimize efficiency and minimize energy use We're also looking at connections to transportation. We're looking at cyber security within the grid We're looking at smart devices within the grid to optimize energy use And we're investing significant resources through this into our national labs put their world-class Facilities to work to help develop research and modernize our electricity grid so with that I'm Done look forward to your questions going forward And We will hear from our next two panelists and then we will open it up for your Questions because I'm sure that there will be a lot of them I think everybody knows at the important role that the congressional research service of the Library of Congress plays up here on the Hill that they are very very essential part of helping congressional offices and staffers on both sides of the Hill and and as well as Congressional committees do the kinds of analysis that people often don't have the time to do in their own offices But CRS provides all sorts of very very well-trained Specialists who really help provide a solid analysis and information Across all of these budget areas and so we're delighted to have with us today Kelsey Brackmort who is an agricultural conservation and natural resources Policy specialist at CRS and I would also mention that in many prior years Fred Sussin who is one of our colleagues at CRS and Fred works in the Sustainable energy and and science policy area in terms of looking at efficiency and renewables as well Fred is also here and Kelsey. We are delighted to have you with us Thanks, Carol. This is just in case you all have detailed questions. I have a lot of details in the back So good afternoon. I am not certain how many of you are familiar with CRS or the congressional research service Carol just gave a good description, but I'll just say quickly that We work exclusively for Congress to provide confidential authoritative Objective non-partisan policy and legal analysis So we are here today as a part of this discussion because Congress has cared about Renewable energy and energy efficiency in some way for some time The reasons for this interest vary but include energy security competitiveness and lower carbon emissions among other things So DOE has gone into a lot of information on their budgets. I am just going to speak about a few things I've just picked a few things to discuss today. I'm going to spend the next 10 minutes speaking with you about some of the major Changes within the budget request. I'm also going to spend some time on a relatively Significant new proposal the 21st century clean transportation plan and then I'll conclude with some issues for congressional staff Okay, so as far as the big picture is concerned pertaining to DOE EERE this table pretty much sums it up What we know is that DOE is requesting a total of 4.2 billion for FY 2017 2.9 of which is discretionary 1.3 of which is mandatory for FY 2016 Congress enacted appropriations for EERE at a level of 2.1 billion all of which was discretionary So when we compare the discretionary FY 2017 requests to the FY 2016 enacted amount That's where you can say DOE is asking for a 40% increase in their budget or roughly 829 million dollars more and the requested increase actually follows what's happened in previous years where DOE has requested Certain amount of funding and then Congress has responded by providing a level lower than what was requested Where it gets interesting is the comparison between the FY 2017 request total and when I say request total I mean the discretionary amount and the mandatory amount and if you compare that to the FY 2016 Enacted which is discretionary only funding amount that comparison yields a requested increase of 2.2 billion dollars So EERE is requesting an increase in funding and these bullet points here briefly explain what DOE reports that it will do with that funding Based on the budget request that I reviewed sent to Congress It looks like EERE is going to continue to do what they've always done which is to focus on clean energy renewable energy and energy efficiency Now in general EERE separates its funding into four categories this slide and the next three slides Show tables for those four categories And it's all increases. I put this here. Can you hear me? Okay? It's just kind of in my way Okay, what about here? Okay Thanks, so and in general for the four categories, it's all increases There are new decreases at the line item level for these four categories I have a group of tables here for the next three slides that show the difference between the FY 2017 request and the enacted amount You will also see a highlighted box on some of these tables But that highlighted box just shows some of those line items that have some of the largest increases on a percent basis or percentage basis That's not the only way to compare What is being requested against what was enacted last year? Some of you may care to look at the dollar amounts, which is also provided So this slide here shows the funding comparison for the sustainable transportation category That's the first of the four categories in general again sustainable Transportation is going to cover your electric vehicles your vehicle efficiency and your alternative fuels So here I've highlighted the vehicle technologies line item Which is requesting a funding level at 51 percent higher than what was enacted in FY 2016 Next we have the energy efficiency category this category typically covers energy efficiency improvement measures for homes buildings and industries you may notice that EER E is requesting Funding for the building technologies line item and FEMF federal energy management program line item at a level 44 percent and 59 percent More respectively than what was enacted in FY 2016 The next category is renewable energy this energy Ames to make solar wind water and geothermal power cost-competitive with conventional power Here I have two boxes again highlighted EER is requesting funding for the wind energy line item and the geothermal technologies line item at a level 63 percent and 40 percent more respectively than what was enacted in FY 2016 And lastly we have corporate support, which is just mainly your program management. I have one line item here highlighted. That's the facilities and Technologies line. I'm sorry. Let me give this name correct facilities and infrastructure line item That's the level 48 percent more than what was enacted in FY 2016 But that's basically due to a budget structure change, which I will get to in my next slide Okay, so again all increases no decreases that said, however, there are some programmatic and budget structure changes So there are some sub program cuts that includes reduced funding for a commercial buildings integration technology Demonstration program and reduced funding for the initial stages of the city's LEAP program I did come across one activity funding elimination That was for the alternative fuel vehicle community partner projects that was initiated in FY 2016 And again, there is a budget structure proposal whereby eere is requesting to consolidate NREL site-wide facility support from a number of individual technology programs To one line item under that facilities and infrastructure program line item So what's new there are a few new initiatives contained in this request. They differ in scope. They differ in size They differ in funding amount and they differ in the funding source. I'll only discuss a few for today's presentation So first we have Two on one end. Let's say of this new eere effort spectrum We have a funding request for two smaller programs for two new initiatives the metropolitan systems initiative And the three-seat energy program Both of these initiatives are funded at less than 30 million dollars and both fall under an existing line item Then if you go sort of to the middle of this new eere effort spectrum We have the cross cutting innovation initiative or the cross cutting mission innovation initiative that was discussed previously This is proposed to be funded at two hundred fifteen million dollars and it was assigned a new line item in the budget Then on the complete opposite end of this new Eere effort spectrum is the 21st century clean transportation plan or as abnick named ctp The ctp is a multi agency effort It is proposed by the administration to make smart and strategic investments To create a cleaner more sustainable transportation system Some of the other agencies involved in this effort include dot and epa The administration is asking for a large sum of money for this effort 320 billion dollars over 10 years all from mandatory funds set up at the various departments This slide here shows some of the activities that do we reports that it would work on should it receive the mandatory funding request for the ctp This table shows how eere would allocate that 1.3 billion mandatory funding being requested for the ctp Note that 56 of the funding or 750 million would support the development of regional low carbon fueling infrastructure So what might congressional staff care about regarding this budget? Well, first let's start with the ctp The first concern or issue could be the source of funds. It's a request for mandatory funds, which for eere is unprecedented Second there could be a concern about the lack of legislative detail There is an absence of legislative language for this program So it's not possible at this time for me to analyze the details of this program It's not clear what authorization law do we is referring to or proposing to in order for congress to appropriate the funds if they choose to D o t does present some language in its budget request, but i didn't come across any similar language in the do we budget request Eere administrative capacity So the amount of money of the mandatory funding being requested for the ctp is about 64 percent of the f y 2016 Eere enacted appropriations Does eere have the administrative capacity to implement this amount of additional ctp funding? Also, the ctp is likely to require full implementation and coordination by all involved agencies In order to reach the desired outcomes. So is congress going to fund all of the involved agencies should they support this effort? An incomplete funding plan. It's not clear How much each department or each agency may request for each of the 10 years of the program or of the 10 year schedule for this effort. How does congress plan for this? How do the agencies plan for it? Also, depending on how eere defines infrastructure and if that definition includes ethanol blender pumps because remember one of the Stated goals or reported goals of the ctp is to support low carbon original infrastructure So if eere defines infrastructure and if that definition includes ethanol blender pumps, there is one particular related attempt That happened in the past by another department that was dismissed by congress And specifically there what i'm talking about is the use of reap funds or rural and energy for america program funds from usda To install ethanol blender pumps that was discontinued by congress through the 2014 farm bill So some key questions to ask will congress support the ctp if so, will they support it in its entirety? Presented here is a list of persistent concerns about eere. How involved should the federal government be? What impact does the budget deficit have on the federal government's involvement? What influence will current energy prices have on research and development? And what effect will the ongoing rulemaking and implementation of environmental programs for energy production activities have on eere? Such as the clean power plan So if you'd like additional information on eere or on the budgets or any other Eere related requests, please feel free to contact myself or my colleague fred sassin We're definitely here to help congressional staff as they go forward And we're always willing to meet with stakeholders to chat about what's going on in the field So that concludes my presentation and i thank you for your attention Thanks very much kelsey Lots of food for thought there and i'm sure lots of areas in which we could discuss In much more detail. So I now want to turn for sort of our Panel closing wrap up to scott sclar Who is the chair of the steering committee for the sustainable energy coalition? And he is also the president of the stella group, which does a lot of work for Both private clients as well In infrastructure and military projects commercial and industrial in terms of the blending of technologies to provide for real energy optimization And scott also has been an adjunct professor continues to be an adjunct professor at george washington university And is a very popular teacher there. Thanks I'm the grouchy one at the end here. So thank you Um, as you can see from above, uh, my company blends all these clean energy technologies All over the world. I have projects on every continent including antarctica And I am in it. I teach two interdisciplinary courses at the george washington university With students from the engineering school the law school the business school and the science part of the arts and science school And the whole pitch is you need the whole portfolio and you've heard some of that here Um, and uh, lastly, I also chair the u.s. Department of commerce advisory board on renewable energy and energy efficiency So as you see, uh from the chart back here that, uh, we have a good story to tell Uh, you know when I saw by the way, I worked nine years in the u.s Senate in the 70s when energy became an issue And if anybody said you could grow gdp and use less energy You were thrown off the hill that was considered heresy I am happy to tell you that's exactly what's happened And this this chart with the ei numbers shows that that the fact is we can grow our economy By using less energy and I want to remind you it is always less expensive To save energy than generated from any source So if you can why wouldn't you do it? Um, the other thing I I I want to say is that uh 2015 Private sector investment. We're not talking about government investment here, but the private sector In clean energy and renewables Has put in 329 billion dollars private sector money And into these technologies and applications Again when I started in the 1970s It was under 50 million. So to see it at in the over 300 billion is Quite a big deal and it's expanding all the time I don't I'm doing projects in the poorest countries of the world and these technologies are absolutely economic And as mentioned earlier, this is from irina Which is the international agency on renewable energy and this really shows where the jobs are globally In these technologies and you know, we're over six Six million jobs by the way in the united states solar Employees more people in the coal industry if you go on the solar foundation website wind is You know about Two-thirds that and so we're seeing huge increases in jobs and unlike the traditional technologies They're not at one or a group of a group of states You've heard, you know where the coal states are the states that have uranium or the states have gas These are spread across the country because the resources But I want to talk to you about disruptive technology This is the mckinsey chart and you can see renewables are up there on the top left But advanced materials as what mr. Freedman said at doe is what drives the technology Why we have offshore wind is we and why we have marine energy technology one of the fastest Growing renewables is because guess what? We have new materials that can sit in water and last for 20 years So how cool is that energy storage on the lowest left on the lower left? I work with 28 different commercial kinds of battery types in all my projects That's astounding in my military even more than that And then of course on the on the right hand side the internet of things cloud technology all of that all these all these technologies power that and all these services enable more distributed renewable technologies they're the the plethora of performance packages on site diagnostics monitoring real time is now Is all reliant on the advanced Internet of things in the mobile internet So Again, why do we do it? Energy is the single largest cause of our trade debt It is the single largest cause of air and water pollution in additions to emissions causing climate change It is the single largest income source for terrorism It is the largest user And waste of water we use more water in our energy system than we do growing our food It is not acceptable. It is not sustainable I want to keep this going so i'm going to skip a couple of slides but I do want to point out that ken besong who runs a sunday campaign sort of reviews Once a month what's coming out of the federal government statistics and what's really happening on the ground And I have to say he He does it with humor But you know what you'll find is he just issued His 2016 monthly energy infrastructure report He looked at the at FERC and showed that in fact Renewables put more on the new on the grid than any other source of of electricity And that's something you need to know and by the way that has happened for the last five years in a row So again was considered heretical what before I When I started my career so And so FERC's december 2015 energy infrastructure update revealed that renewables accounted for 64 of new electrical generating capacity Installed last year So that's pretty astounding EIA issued its latest monthly and basically um Showed again that uh renewable grew by 2% Uh compared to 2014 so all of this stuff is growing So you looked at the chart here This is the chart of the renewal programs and I'm going to point out some inconsistencies to you first I want to say the good news mom always said say the good things first. I'm going to do that. Yay mom Uh, this is the first budget. I've seen that hasn't thrown a technology overboard This happens in every administration Including the earlier days of this one But you can count every administration that they say oh, we have to show we're fair So we're going to throw something over the boat And they would do that and then the the poor little industry that's the the one thrown over the boat Has to go fight its way into recognition survivability the good news that did not happen for this budget Great kudos. That's good One glaring omission is biomass They have biofuels But you have actually a very important renewable program And that is biomass the growing matter and waste you can make it into fuel But it's as capable to make it into energy As capable to make it into not just electricity, but thermal energy A very important part of our energy mix and in many cases quite cost effective Plus we have a lot of waste in this country huge So the chance to and by the way to intercept Degrading biomass from going into methane a more potent though short-lived greenhouse gas is not a good energy policy So while the while the budget is very good on biofuels It is actually a black hole On biopower and biothermal and that actually needs to be corrected The solar program the wind programs are doing very robustly The water program i'm going to talk about a little more But i do want to point out the geothermal program geothermal is one of the programs always thrown off the boat And i can i'm happy to email if i get an email from you To give you the 32 studies i give to my students to read on renewable and energy efficiency and storage But the one study i like to use is mit That shows with technology we have today Geothermal can cost effectively meet Conservatively 10 of our energy use And it's not all in the west It's under the appellations as well We have huge resources in geothermal. I am happy to hear from mr. Freeman We're looking at new kinds of drilling technologies and approaches. We need it. It cannot be overlooked. It's 24 hour power It's ridiculous to waste the heat coming out of this earth ridiculous um, i'm also going to uh, i'm skipping along here because i want to be um Be right, uh cover what i need, but um The the building's program Emerging technologies is really going to be very important here if you want to integrate technology energy efficiency and renewables and storage You need to really have platforms where they can be brought together So industry and the research community can learn Before it can enter into the market and so we can prepare for the codes and standards programs So they'll actually let it get into the market my biggest problem And bringing these new technologies into my projects Are the codes and standards people don't have enough education about them some of the concerns are correct You don't want the building to burn down not a good thing So i understand but the fact of the matter is we have technologies and approaches Not only for public safety, but also even better control and even greater safety than we enjoy now um I'm flipping along hydropower The hydropower and water technologies I think the the real issue is we have 88 000 dams in the united states with no generation on them That theoretically can be converted we have turbines on older dams that can be Increased in output by 20 or 30 percent We have new run of river technologies that don't need dams Or diversions therefore much more Ecosystem friendly that we want to take advantage of and then we have the marine and tidal And sorry tidal and wave and ocean thermal ocean current technologies eight billion dollars last year Investment by the private sector around the world We are not the top investors So scotland spain australia united states and then china And that's how it's going i toured a lot of these this past year It is phenomenal what's happening and i want to remind you Most people live Near water on the coasts or along rivers So having this 24-hour power That's fish and marine ecosystem friendly Makes a lot of sense and it would be crazy not to support it And the hydro association has a couple of conferences based here in april and dc So i hope those of you interested will do it and it's the whole marine system Wind power i just want to say uh and do we is doing it in their budget Looking at the offshore side of this We are slower than what northern europe is doing what japan is doing What spain is doing we've got to turn that around We have a lot of low shoreline lots of lots of capability here and wonderful wind regimes We should not give that up Lastly i want to remind you this is our planet And uh it is our the only real nest we have So these technologies do matter And i hope that if you have any questions You want to get the 32 studies i have two zero energy buildings in arlington I give tours all the time to that are off the grid And i also have the dead zero building at the washington navy yard i give tours on That i also did to let you better see the technologies and touch them Because as you can see They are going to really shape the future and be really part of our our global economy. Thank you very much So you can always enroll at gw to take one of his classes too, right? So i think what's really um To me anyway is always really compelling in terms of listening to these different perspectives Are that first of all energy is so big it absolutely runs everything And there is so much going on and so many changes and we're seeing So much now come to fruition And to me it is also So fascinating how these things are also so interconnected and it's you know the reference that scotch has made to You know with regard to thinking about the materials research that has affected so many other things in terms of technologies for that can be used for Whether it's offshore wind or other equipment that's in water or how it's used with regard to What's happening in terms of batteries or construction materials, etc It's it's so fascinating how all of these things really do Create synergies in each kind of build upon the other which is another piece that i think is so important for us To understand in terms of looking at the budget Why things are being invested in but let's open it up for your questions and comments Who wants to go first? We've got about 15 minutes. Okay, and if you could identify yourself, please And just wait for the mic. There we go Hi, my name is Romero Fon. I'm a reporter with environment energy I'm wondering if the panel could address given the supreme court's stay of the clean power plan It seems technology is going to have to do a lot more of the heavy lifting as far as reducing carbon emissions I'm wondering what that does as far as the strategy for eere in terms of reframing a lot of these programs as Primarily carbon reducing versus economic growth or technology development All right, everybody will want to take a whack at that go ahead dig Well, let me take that question in two directions. First of all, um You know, we think the the administration believes I believe the clean power plan is on very solid ground And we expect to prevail as that moves forward But we are moving forward I think as you saw from my slides as as you heard from folks today renewable power energy efficiency They are moving forward rapidly With the clean power plan and without the clean power plants states across the country Whether they have renewable energy standards or whether they're investing in renewable power to improve their economies to create more resilient grids Investing in energy efficiency to lower costs also again to create more resilient grids and or more resilient homes and businesses the clean energy race is on and I actually would expect that we will probably ultimately see more renewable energy and more energy efficiency By 2030 then even the clean power plan requires in fact n rel recently Published a study doing an analysis of the very recent investment and production tax credit extensions Those extensions are going to have a huge impact on the renewable energy sector Really they are extending for at least five years Those sectors dramatically in some cases doubling The growth rates that we've seen over the last few years. Thanks to those investments and Under one of the scenarios they did with lower gas prices There were actually lower co2 emissions than the clean power plan would have required so I see the clean power plan being upheld and I see industry and states and our nation moving forward even faster On renewable energy and energy efficiency and I think we're going to play a key role in that I like to say there there's been a lot of comment on this and I also agree with mr. Freeman that It will ultimately prevail But you just didn't see a lot of utilities suing these were partisan governors suing And most of the bigger utilities are saying actually they they're already on the course to meet the goals of the clean power plan Um So you do have 32 states now that with renewable energy portfolio standards as law or solid goals You do have five year extensions of solar and wind Though congress failed at the last minute to extend all the other renewables and energy efficiency tax credits That's like crazy. Why would you just pick two? So that needs to be changed and some of the leadership on both sides of the aisle are thinking on how they're going to do that, but that's also essential and lastly aside from the renewal portfolio standards at the state level and You also have the clean air act requirements And of course the mac rule is again the mercury rule is is back in uncontested Supreme court failed to hear that so the issue is they still have to deal with sulfur nitrous oxides Particulates and mercury and if that isn't going to drive more renewables energy efficiency in the system. I don't know what is Okay And to add to what scott said in terms of the renewable portfolio standards. We also know that I'm not sure on the number whether it's 25 States have an energy efficiency resource standard as well So that in many ways Certainly comments that I've been hearing are that a number of states Are moving forward and that in a number of ways the clean power plane is kind of following the trends As opposed to leading any trends Um, so uh other questions or comments Um, we'll go back here first and then up here I just oh, um, I'm dylan larowski from congresswoman spears office in california I wanted to ask about rooftop solar, which is very big in california and also Your opinion on what nevada has recently changed and utility companies kind of changing the fees for that And how you see the future of rooftop solar both economically and for energy Um, I'll start with that. Um And and I also ran the solar trade group for 15 years. So I might know that Um Rooftop solar it can be quite cost-effective again. I have it on both my office buildings and also my home Um, and as photovoltaics come down again in large part first from the r&d program But frankly for industry just building larger manufacturing plants and getting away at the barriers Um And companies creating leasing approaches For it so homeowners can sort of pay as you go And in many cases the least the cost of the monthly lease Is a lot less than what you would pay for the utility from electricity The electric utility industry is in a quandary because you have all these disruptive technologies And frankly they and their regulators at the state level have not caught up Very similar to what was happening in telecom when cellular was coming in same issue So the utilities who are not growing as fast because of these led light bulbs and Weatherized buildings and now and solar water heating and photovoltaics and small wind systems and geothermal heat pumps They are not growing as fast. In fact, their growth is very flat They could always count on six percent a year. They can't count on that So they're trying to fight back with standby charges and everything else and that's what happened in nevada The utilities asked for standby charges and of course the solar industry said what the hell you're going to uh to Slow the market down and people want solar energy And of course nevada try to make it retroactive And you've got a deal to get credited. Remember your your whatever electricity you don't use you send back through the meter Turns the meter backwards and you get netted at the retail rate. They like that So they're saying you're changing the deal midstream after we bought the solar So the bottom line is they did vote finally again that they're not doing it retroactively because frankly that's against federal law And they are going to push off the standby charges the extra fees that they're saying is needed To pay for their share of the grid For a few more years. So it's going to keep the the solar market going some big players They'll have backed out of the state anyway But the issue is that's not going to get them out of the jam Because all that's going to happen is sort of what I did before there were interconnection standards Batteries have come way down and all my projects now. I'm using battery banks. Why would I want to be paid? Or give it a fee by some utility For energy i'm generating i'll keep the energy generation behind my the fence or in the building And use it later on when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing So I think there's going to be this what's happening in about 18 states on these state charges Against solar and some of these other distributed energy sources Is there actually going to be new regulatory models because it cannot continue because the technology is going to overtake What they're trying to forestall I would excuse me. I would just add I think the regulatory picture will work its way out over time There will be some more bumps But this is another one of those cases where the long arc I think is going to end up in the right place over time I agree that storage Can play more and more of a role You can do a lot certainly at the utility scale on pv without storage But as you talk about Residential or community solar, which I think is another really exciting Innovation where maybe it doesn't make sense to put the panels on some on a bunch of people's houses Maybe it makes sense for a community to invest together in either a portion of a large solar plant Or or their own solar array so that the whole community Can benefit from that system I I hate to use the pun to a certain degree, but I think the future is bright when it comes to those resources and we're going to make sure We already have our sunshot goals to continue driving down the cost not just of utility scale solar But also of the smaller units. We've got a lot of work focused on the soft costs To make sure that red tape And the cost of the balance of plant etc. Don't get in the way and just wait. There's more This year, we're going to be really digging in and trying to look at What about 2030 because we're already 70 of the way to our 2020 goals We need to and we will start thinking about 2030 to see how much further we should push that technology As we're pushing down the cost of batteries and power electronics. So I think there's a lot more opportunity out there So stay tuned and we'll try to take a look at some of those other changes as they come along Um, there was a question up here. Go ahead Good afternoon. I'm Collette Brasso and I work in senator Gillibrand's office Thanks for coming out today. It was a very interesting talk And I just wanted to ask a question about the technology race I find that very interesting and I see some parallels to the space race And I just wondered whether there might be opportunities for government government partnership And other international business partnerships The simple answer is absolutely. I mean that is really part of the foundation of mission innovation is Is a recognition that the united states needs this step up But so does the rest of the world and one of the things Secretary Moniz and others are looking at is how Mission innovation shouldn't just be a one-off announcement The goal is to have a sustained effort Maybe tied to the clean energy ministerial. Maybe something more broad where we keep talking to the different nations In fact, if you look at the mission innovation Announcement one of the things that's talked about is should we start Sharing road maps should we think about optimizing our investments based on different regions? But that said I will still say our goal is to win We'll cooperate. We'll work with others But I think it's in our national interest to make sure That we be good partners, but at the end of the day, I'd like to see us being the ones Generating our own power and general and manufacturing our own units and ideally shipping some of those overseas so we can Turn that energy deficit Energy trade deficit completely upside down Same partnering to race and racing to win. Okay Well, we have over 7 billion people on this planet. Half either do not have electricity or have electricity less than 10 hours a day And they desperately want clean technology They don't want to import 100 of it and they don't need to and I think that's the issue You can have a win-win here and so what we're really trying to do is work relationships where The the u.s. Can send the more sophisticated components and also invest in they Creating the rest of their components assembling it and installing it and getting the jobs So this isn't like just importing oil, but you're just switching oil With solar panels or wind turbines or marine turbines Um, this is a sort of a whole new way of of doing things of growing together And I I agree With mr. Freeman. We can do that and win and increase exports But actually we can increase economic growth of the developing world in a far more Advantages way and much faster than the traditional model and so uh, the more we understand that complexity And what each side can can do to grow Then you get some great relationships and we're trying to do that through the power africa program through some of the greenhouse gas programs in in india and china Through some of the electric city access programs in central and south america To to try to to bring some of these to light and build strategic partners in those countries for the long term And one quick addition to that and I wanted to tie to one of the comments scott mentioned about hydro We one of the technologies that was featured when mission innovation was launched is it's a hydropower technology by a little company called netel And basically this is hydropower at a small scale You know, you're talking a unit that's maybe 10 20 feet high That could be used in rural areas. In fact apple is investing in this technology to power one of their data centers And this is a company that was supported by eere by the Department of Energy. It's also now Potentially going to be going to india and other parts of the world to provide rural hydropower to help Some of these developing economies grow with their own power and I would also just note that scott talked about putting That there are dams out there without turbines that there are older dams that can be repowered we are planning this year to Release a report a hydrovision report, which is going to lay out for the united states a bottom-up analysis of what all the different resources are and where we can potentially go with those different resources So another another thing to keep an eye out for Great. Thank you. Thank you. And I also wanted to mention in terms of looking at other nations There's a lot of Innovative and work with regard to renewables going on in island nations Which is absolutely critical and I know that that's been part of DOE's work and some of the national labs have been heavily involved in that as well And I wanted to mention that next week. We will be doing a briefing on geothermal And the geothermal energy association has a big international showcase that is occurring Also next week and there are any number of developing nations that are part of that So I wanted to mention that it's another very very exciting Area that you should hopefully You'll you'll participate in or look at our website and and Learn more about all of that because it ties into everything that we've been Hearing about today Any last questions? We've got time for a couple more. Okay, right here in the in the front. Just wait for the mic It's coming Thank you so much. I'm member for UNESCO task force. My question is what I heard today. It's very impressive beyond specific Alliances international project Given the turning point paradigm shift, we are going through now climate change energy Would you Think it's possible for united states to have educational promotional in policy making but broad education In developing as well developed countries through an international cooperation including specifically with european union and possibly japan Because there are so many changes and we have it in unis who we call it in tangible cultural heritage How to inject more education to better prepare for this? Well, and in fact, it's a great question. In fact, I just teach taught a course with the european union for players here in washington, no less in the international community, but The part of energy has supported but so have universities A lot of different kinds of learning programs and a lot of Some of them are distance learning and some of them, of course, are web-enabled learning But let me tell you what my problem is with all of this Is i'm finding a lot of it. Frankly, it's not practical Meaning it's great science, but it's not really enabling people in the way they do it and it's not necessarily regionally or Even energy appropriate to the people you're talking to So I really think it really goes on on unesco and unep unenvironmental program un development program world health organization to really start Soliciting and having some kind of review process So that we can funnel in the appropriate program and i'm going to give you one minute I'm sorry to do this, but during the ebola crisis I was going around including to the world health organization saying these these Rural health clinics have no electricity. There's tons of technology out there In fact that you have you that you have been using and specking for years that you're not doing And I was going doing it with the embassies several of us as well And it was like They had never heard of this stuff at all and and that's way too late. That's inexcusable during an international tragedy that was going on that have could have profound implications for the entire world So it just showed to me again That we're doing this very in elegantly We have a lot of good stuff coming again. Do we support this stuff? But so does the Department of Agriculture? So does EPA? So there there are several agencies here and international entities, but it's all hodgepodge up And so you international entities need to stand up a little bit and guide it So it can have more use and more practicality. I guess I'll do it. So I threw it right back at you. Sorry But great question. Thank you Okay, is there one last question? Not hearing any I want to say thank you very very much to our panelists And please feel free to follow up with any of them or with the EESI if you've got other questions You need more information Because that's what we want to do is to make sure that you really are getting the kind of information that you Need so that everybody can Have a better chance to Make better informed decisions as we all Look at these issues closely because they have very big impacts on what we all do So thank you all for coming and We look forward to seeing you next week at the geothermal briefing. Thank you. Thank you all


Live from the JSA Podcast Studio, presenting Data Movers, showcasing the leaders behind the headlines in the telecom and data center infrastructure industry. Welcome to our new podcast series, Data Movers. I'm Jamie Scott-Okitaya, CEO of JSA, along with my fabulous co-host, Mr. Evan Christel, the top V2B social media influencer. Hey Evan. How are you doing? Were you into chat rooms in the 90s, like AOL chat rooms and all that kind of thing? A little. It kind of scared me, but if it was about my dog, then yes, I was there. Okay. Well, there's a new kind of social network on the scene. It's called Clubhouse, very LA, and it's an audio chat-based social network where you go and you meet people like they were chat room style, but you're talking and listening and learning. And it's the hottest thing now in and on sort of social media. I'm starting to see the buzz, people announcing their new Clubhouse group. It's really interesting. So tell me, is this like a response to Twitter and some of the other big texts saying no to certain politicians lately and kicking them out, giving them boot? It seems to be more about people wanting that sort of human connection. And it's not like a Facebook or Twitter and LinkedIn, it's text or video-based. It's all audio chats. You don't want to literally talk to people like we used to do in the 80s. So it's rather a different approach. There's no recording. There's no content. It's just talking and it's kind of a new phenomenon. And in this day of lockdowns and bubbles and people seem to really be into it. Yeah, and we're seeing podcasts obviously on the rise. So I think folks are really drawn to, again, that human connection, hearing people feeling their emotions through their words, not just seeing it on text or video that you might not necessarily be able to connect with. But yeah, I mean, power of audio. It's definitely. The next big thing. So speaking of audio, we have a great guest today. We do. And when we've conceived of data movers, I'll tell you there were some key guests that we wanted just out of the gate because they did really personify what we had in mind here with this podcast, which is to sit down with the most influential men and women of our industry. Really, the leading telcos and data centers supporting that network infrastructure. So I'm really excited about our next guest. Please welcome Mr. Todd Cushing. He is the president of 1623 Farnham. Hey, Todd. Hey, how are you, Janie? Really good things. Good. Have been pleasure. Yeah, likewise. Welcome, Todd. Good to see you. I think you're in Omaha, Nebraska. Yes, sir. A little bit of snow going on today and about 25 mile an hour winds. A beautiful house up. Oh, I love it. Well, I'm going to go right there. That's kind of my favorite winter destination. But before we dive into your background, tell me a good Warren Buffett story. I'm sure you know Warren. You ran into him in the diner. Everyone knows everyone else in Omaha, right? Sure.  And he typically likes to have a hotbed sundae. So the rumor is he asked his doctor if he ate hotbed sundaes or ate healthy, how much would it extend his life? It was something like six months. And he's like, you know, hotbed sundaes for me and a Coke. But I've literally been at lunch with people before. They were like, you know, we want to see where Warren likes to hang out when we did it. And sure as heck, he came in and they put him behind the planner so nobody hassles him. Had some people walk in and I didn't know who they were. Has his little lunch thing with those guys and it's kind of private part of the restaurant. But that's Garots is where he likes to have lunch all the time in Omaha. That's great. Yeah, he's one of my business heroes. Seems like a wonderful guy and he's not even on Reddit. So, you know, what a great individual. So speaking of industries and investing, and it's been a tough year for many industries, but it seems like you guys at 1623 Farnham have had quite a year with some really important milestones and persevered against what's been a tough environment generally, you know, tell us more. I see some headlines here, like a $40 million expansion, all kinds of good stuff. So give us some insight if you would. Yeah, for us, we were designated an essential facility right away. So having the access because nobody knew how locked down things we're going to get, that we had the paperwork so if we needed to get back and forth and we're an existing business, existing data center. So we're upgrading it to the $40 million phase one of the expansion. And we are able to keep the facility up and running, customers happy, and expand the electrical mechanical capabilities by eight fold from what it was before. So we'll have eight megawatts at the curb, it's below ground, transformers, subterranean. And the clients are watching us evolve. So a lot of them are very happy to see an investment happening in a facility that's been around for quite a while in the middle of the US and to see it taking to a new level of security, a new level of infrastructure just from a fiber standpoint, the vaults, the way that the risers and the point of entries are managed is just, it's what it would be as it almost was a new build, though it's an existing. So a lot of times the remodels a lot harder than a Greenfield. So it's a big deal for us to have it happen. And what we've also seen happen this year is the rise in remote hands and people wanting to not come on site. So they want to deploy and they want to ship a cabinet, maybe partially full or have us just racket sack form which we're doing a lot more than that that we've ever done before. And the traffic volume is podcasts, Zoom, Microsoft meetings, team meetings, et cetera. There's a lot more volume coming through that our customers, the carriers have had to respond to. So we've seen a lot of expansion in that regard as well. Yeah, and we're definitely seeing it on our end to the trends are really insane the demand for data center services and especially into connection, huge rise, huge uptake there. What's responsible do you think? You know, it's the people that weren't doing video, I think that maybe weren't comfortable having a video conversation or even sending an invite for one. So you'll see people kind of have an embarrassing moment first when this first started now they're getting to be pros as you've had that interface with them. And we see it with clients that we talked to as well that are, hey, I need a bigger I export. So I'm going to go from 10 gig or multiple 10 gigs to 100 gig because of that. So we've seen carriers bring in new routes as a result of that. So it's just a volume. It's the sheer size of data that people are trying to move files. They're trying to interconnect. It's the ecosystem that's really not one thing people have really got. So they're using cloud for this or enterprise typical for that. And they're changing their mix around a little bit. And we've said some people who are just a normal contract and have said, hey, we're going to move from traditional enterprise cabinet to this where we're going to go into an on-ramp partner and we're really going to the cloud. So we've seen that happen too. And it wasn't like they locked down or people couldn't access their systems to make those changes. People continue to evolve their technology. Yeah, and you guys are the home to quite a unique internet peering hub, Omaha IAX exchange. So tell us the significance of having that in very close proximity to your data center. Sure. IAXs are still kind of mystifying to some people. A lot of people don't understand what an IAX is. They're European, they're in bigger cities, but for Omaha, we're not Dallas, we're not Los Angeles. So people here in our region had to have some education. We've had the content folks using it. So your Akamai or your carriers or your different people that wanted to share content to hyperscale want to put some things out there. But for people to understand it has made it really evolve. And the IAX was not owned by us. It was in our facility and it was called the Omaha IAX, but it was owned by somebody else. So that group was a good friend, a good partner for us. And we were able to negotiate with them and say, hey, if you ever wanted to sell it, we'd sure be interested. So the time came around, they were interested and we were ready and we made the purchase and now we're making some upgrades and changes. And we've tethered off of our IAX now, we're gonna tether some more. So there would be remote, almost satellite IAXs off of the Omaha IAX. But I think having control of it, we were a little concerned that maybe from a carrier competition, because a carrier neutral, it'd be a problem, but it really hasn't been a problem. It's been a tertiary network that people can use to move data and connect on when they don't want to buy solid bandwidth, that they have to be accountable to. Yeah, I can tell you firsthand, the beauty and the strength of the business model for the data center owners to also be managing those core interconnections and the pairing fabric all in-house, it actually solves for a lot of problems. So I love that story. We also know that 1623 Farnham, just to skip away from Google's largest North American cloud node, as well as other hyperscalers and OTTs in the area, what has led them to Omaha? Why Omaha? I think the economic incentives that Nebraska had, it was always competitive between Omaha, really Nebraska and Iowa. Iowa is literally the Missouri River, which were, practically were about three miles away from where their large site is. Google now has three sites within seven miles of us and they're gonna build another one in Lincoln. So they've got several hundred acres there. We think it's the economic development and the cost of power is a big one. The amount of telecom that crosses right through the middle of the U.S., the crosshairs are on Omaha. And then I think that the free cooling, I mentioned a little chilly in Omaha, we're gonna be seeing like eight below real-time, wind chills will be 25, 30 below. So you get 7,200 hours a year free cooling. So that doesn't hurt. So you can find a good environment and there's a lot of geeks, strategic air command is in Omaha, a lot of large processing data centers, mutual Omaha, Fidelity has one here, Travelers has one here, first data, which is Pfizer. A lot of enterprise data centers that grew a lot of geeks and then their kids are now working at these places, believe it or not. So it's fun to see how it's evolved but it's a real strong communications. IT is a big deal in Omaha. Yeah, not just infrastructure.  All the action isn't just in LA and San Francisco. I was reading about the new 5G lab there as some cool stuff happening from the National Science Foundation at night, USA at night around augmented reality challenges and application building, the Facebook reality labs initiative. So you guys have a lot going on. Yeah, thank you, I appreciate it. I think that augmented reality most people recognize that's gonna be a big deal. How much is gonna be a big deal is just fascinating as we talk to our clients from what they're trying to achieve. It can be military, it can be medical, it can be marketing, it can be just interfacing the way we are now and entertainment is a big part of the gaming piece of it. So we have people literally will be in proximity of our building so they can have that exposure to the 5G. We've got a C-Ran that's on the entire fourth floor is a variety. So they basically, they're C-Rans in our facility. We've got a lot of 5G in Omaha. So for a city our size, I'm an Apple guy by nature. I'm sitting here with 5G on my phone. I've got a lucky enough to have it. My wife doesn't think so, but I do a antenna in my front yard. And so I've got 110 fiber to that thing. And I know a lot more about it than probably my neighbors would want to know. But it's, I've got awesome response time. So it's 5G in the augmented reality challenge has been neat. Greg Elliott, who's been someone on some social media stuff for us. He's one of our sales people. He's based out of Kansas City and he's worked with Kansas City and Omaha and jointly put together a resume of how we could compete regionally with other regions of other areas, other cities. And the Chamber of Commerce here has been very much involved. We've had universities, hospitals that are in AI that have wanted to be part of it. So to see what I thought was a niche or maybe it wasn't maybe as mature where they've got super maturity. These folks are creating organs and things in augmented reality. So it's amazing what they can do and share in the size of these files. And that gives us an insight to, again, it's not gonna be just dark fiber in a network you're gonna move these kind of files with. It's gonna be 5G at that location and probably some dark fiber and other things in order to move that kind of file. You're gonna send 3D or holograms or things without being able to do that type of bandwidth. Yeah, and to your earlier point, I love how the cool factor of augmented reality and this innovation, this technology is really enticing our younger generation also to understand really the nuts and bolts of our infrastructure world. And hopefully we'll be attracting fresh blood to our industry because of all these new cool reality challenges and innovation going on. Circling back to your experiences throughout your career and knowing what you know now, if you could go back in time and give us a piece of advice to your younger self at the beginning of your career, what would it be? You know, I think that I would probably, I would probably move around a little more. You know, I stayed at first data for 28 years and that was a long time and it was operations, it was facilities, it was global but it was a great place to be that I go to then need to maybe learn not so maybe I was old school, you know, I'm 57 so back then I was like, stay there. But it's like, I think maybe I would hop around a little more. And you know, it was funny as we worked in Asia or you know, there were people were moving around quite a bit and I think I would do more of that myself. Yeah, good fun. It's always nice to change perspectives. So let's dive into a little bit of a rapid fire round. We'll go through some fun questions, fun insights to share with the audience. If you could have lunch with a famous person in history, who would it be and why? Probably either Steve Jobs or Henry Ford. They're pretty similar, but in different ways. They change the world. They really did. One of the, probably Steve Jobs. Yeah, I mean, the insights alone would be worth it. You're obviously a pretty driven guy in your work life, but what do you do to unwind? What do you do for balance hobbies or otherwise? Well, I'm seeing those boats behind you and I'm a woodboat guy. So I've got a 59 lineman and a 54th century and a couple other toys, but I like woodboats. I'm a motorhead. So I like to work on motors and wood when I get a chance. So I'm a member of the antique classic Boating Society, but I've been for over 20 years. But I like to teach younger people about boats, mechanical things, stuff that was pre-electrical control. So it's the alter ego to what I do every day relative to managing a data center, running those kinds of things, but it's woodboats. That's fantastic. We'll send us a couple of picks we can share with this episode. I'm sure there are folks like me who'd love to see it. What's your favorite food? And I don't know much about cuisine and Omaha, but maybe it's an ice cream sundae with Warren Buffett or something a little more exotic. Omaha has some pretty good steaks, but my favorite is my birthday. Because my mom used to make a thing called Hamlo. And that's once a year, the family will put up with it. My wife will make it for me, but it's Hamlo. That sounds like the most Omaha, Nebraska dish ever. So yes, I can imagine Hamlo. Right now, movies, we're all glued to our televisions with the pandemic. If you could watch one movie on repeat, 24 hours straight, which one would it be? Well, the woodboat guy in me likes on Golden Pond. However, Alien is probably my favorite. I thought the first Alien scared the heck out of me and it was awesome. So Alien. Alien's a good one. Even the whole series is they did a good job with all the successive movies. Well, look, thank you so much for joining us, Jamie. Yeah, thanks so much, Todd. It's always a pleasure to have you on JSA TV and particularly here on Data Movers. I got to learn so much more about you. I'm very fascinating. And we'll have the wooden boats, that's awesome. Thank you. So if you enjoyed today's Data Movers podcast, be sure to check us out on jsa.net slash podcast for upcoming Data Movers episodes releasing every other week on Wednesday mornings. And also go ahead and check us out, right, Evan? Yeah, follow us on Twitter at JSCOTTO and Evan Curstell and let's continue the conversation. Absolutely. Thanks to everyone for listening in and happy networking.


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