 This is our second panel specifically looking at renewable energy and so in this panel we're going to be covering hydro, solar and wind and to start us off on this discussion is Celeste Wanner who is a research analyst for industry data and analysis with American Wind Energy Association AWIA and hopefully you've already been at AWIA's booth or you'll make sure that you get there. After after this session we've already heard a lot about wind but we're gonna hear a little bit more about all of the changes going on. All right thank you and thank you everyone for being here so if you were in the previous panel you have heard some facts about wind so I might repeat a couple things but I am just going to do kind of an overview of where the wind industry is today and a little bit about what's coming up. So we currently have over 84,000 megawatts of installed capacity with over 53,000 turbines spinning across the U.S. We have turbines in 41 states plus Guam and Puerto Rico. If you compare that to 2008 when we only had 25,000 megawatts we've more than tripled our capacity in just eight years and at the same time as some others mentioned costs have come down two-thirds in just seven years thanks to improvements in technology like what Sandia has been doing. Last year alone we added 82,000 or excuse me 200 megawatts which was our second consecutive year installing over 8,000 megawatts and the fourth quarter was our second strongest quarter ever so it's a really good time for wind we're really seeing a lot of growth and it's very exciting time. In terms of the top states of where is the wind in the U.S. Texas by far is the leader with over 21,000 megawatts which to put in perspective is a fourth of the total U.S. capacity and only five countries have more wind than the state of Texas so pretty impressive. Iowa and Oklahoma are next with they both have over 6,500 megawatts of wind. California has over 5,600 megawatts and Kansas has just about 5,000 megawatts they will soon. We've seen that tower towers and longer blades are really increasing the productivity of these turbines across the U.S. and they're also opening up more areas for development such as for example North Carolina just brought its first utility scale wind firm online earlier this year to be the 41st state with utility scale wind so we're seeing more product more activity in kind of the Southeast States. In terms of generation we had a large increase in generation in 2016 with wind now accounting for five and a half percent of the nation's electricity mix which is enough to power 21 million homes in 2016 and that's of just from 4.6 percent in 2015 and we expect to see larger growth in the years ahead. Looking at states some states have set some really impressive records for their share of wind generation. Iowa is the highest with over 36 percent of its electricity from wind energy alone followed by South Dakota and Kansas both have about 30 percent of their electricity from wind. Oklahoma and North Dakota both have over 20 percent of their electricity from wind and then we have 14 states total that generate 10 percent or more of their electricity with wind. On the manufacturing side of things we also have over 500 factories across the U.S. that are making parts for wind turbines and those are everything from the big towers and blades to the small electrical sub-components. We have over 25,000 people working in those factories working on wind specifically so we're really proud of that. In terms of top states with manufacturing Ohio has 60 manufacturing facilities making wind products just in the state. Texas, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Michigan are also have over 25 factories in the state. So along with all these turbines and factories we also provide a number of economic benefits and jobs across all 50 states. We're really excited that last year we passed 100,000 jobs for the first time. So we now employ 102,500 Americans across the wind industry which is up 15,000 from 2015. This includes jobs in construction, development, operation, manufacturing, as well as turbine technicians and we're really proud of the fact that turbine technician is now the wind turbine technician is now the fastest growing job in America according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We have the wind industry has invested over $143 billion in wind projects in the last decade with a lot of that going to rural communities that really need it most. We invested $14 billion in 2016 alone. We also provide rural benefits in the form of land lease payments to the farmers and ranchers and other landowners who are hosting the wind turbines. We now pay $245 million annually to these rural landowners. So we call it like to call it a drought resistant cash crop that helps keeps farms in the family. We also provide property tax payments that help pay for local schools, libraries and hospitals. So really seeing a lot of investment in these rural communities. On the environmental side of course when has a number of environmental and clean air benefits last year we avoided 159 million metric tons of carbon dioxide which is was 9% of the total electric sector carbon emissions in 2016. So really having a huge impact there. We also avoided 7.4 billion dollars in health care avoided health care costs from reductions in sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxides and we avoided 87 billion gallons of water. So those are kind of all the big benefits of wind. I also just wanted to highlight a recent trend that we've been seeing that was also mentioned in the previous panel but we're seeing more and more interest from corporate buyers and other players outside of the traditional utilities that are buying wind directly. We have major consumer brands, city governments, universities are all signing wind power purchase agreements including brands like Google, Amazon, Target, General Mills and General Motors as well. So we're really excited about that. Google will actually be about 95% wind powered worldwide in the next couple years. And in terms of what's coming up the wind industry is poised for continued growth. We have 21,000 megawatts under construction or in advanced development right now. We are Navigant Consulting also projects that we will have 35 gigawatts installed through 2020 thanks to the long term stability with the production tax credit as well as an additional 85 billion dollars in economic activity through 2020. And we're also on track to meet the Department of Energy's wind vision goal for a 10% wind energy by 2020. So thank you. So there's a lot going on with the wind but now you're going to hear from Ross Tyler who is the strategy and development advisor for the business network for offshore wind because now there is a lot going on with regard to offshore with regard to this country. Thank you very much. Can you hear me? Okay. So you've just heard from my colleague here from the American Wind Energy Association and there's a couple of numbers that really stick out. We're talking about investments in onshore wind and I think you cited $143 billion and there's 102,000 people that are employed in the industry. What we're doing in the business network is basically trying to echo and emulate the onshore wind industry. So let me just give you a little bit of an overview of what we do and where we stand as an industry and where we stand as a country with respect to the world offshore wind sector. So the business network for offshore wind is a 501c3 not for profit organization and our focus is to support the development of a global, robust and competitive US offshore wind supply chain. So we don't do the work ourselves but we are trying to bring and empower the US business community to actually do the construction and build the offshore wind farms. So we're not a trade association but we are membership based organization and since our inception in 1912 the network has brought together many other businesses and governments both domestically and internationally to educate and prepare our companies here in the United States including historically disadvantageous businesses to enter into the offshore wind supply chain market. We spend a lot of our time trying to work with local companies such as welders, tug operators, ship builders, manufacturers and IT companies, established companies that may not have had insights into what the offshore wind industry can bring them and we try to give them guidance as to how they might be able to find their way into this huge potential of the offshore wind supply chain. So as a result of our activities we we've got recognition as a coalescing coalescing force for the offshore wind supply chain and we work basically to try to help with supporting federal state and local policies in advance of creating this offshore wind supply chain. We also provide education and we try to facilitate partnerships between businesses to increase the capacity and expertise that we have in our business community here domestically with which to be able to plan, construct, operate and maintain offshore wind farms the same functions that you've heard Celeste talk about already. So I have a couple of numbers that I'd like to share with you which is Europe has right now the greatest amount of offshore wind deployed which is approximately 12 gigawatts and to put that in kind of perspective 120 megawatt offshore wind farm might power 30,000 homes so what we're seeing is in Europe we have we have about three million homes being generated being powered by offshore wind. So in contrast where are we today here in the United States well we only have five turbines five is an easy number if Celeste asks you how many you know you're going to lose all those numbers five remember five okay so um but Europe has been working for over the past two decades and enjoys a reported and here's an important number because it's very close to that 102 it's 93,000 jobs so offshore wind in Europe is produced today 93,000 jobs so now you can see why our efforts are basically trying to emulate and work in shadow and follow the onshore wind industry here. So many of the near sited shore sorry the near shore sites in Europe the wind farms have already been developed and so the developers are now along with their supply chain businesses are looking for new markets and Asia and the United States are those two new markets and so we are competing we're competing with Asia to attract the to attract the European developers and the supply chain companies to come here and there's a reason why we should be interested in this and that is because the supply chain value is predicted to reach $144 billion by 2020 a number that's not so far from what you heard earlier. So in short the offshore wind industry presents a golden opportunity for the United States in developing a new industry doesn't compete with onshore doesn't compete with any of the other clean energy technologies and we have an opportunity for domestic job growth and simultaneously create clean energy. So the US is arriving at the offshore wind sector and industry rather late I would say the work started over 10 years ago and it's taking a long time to gain momentum but we can catch up we can catch up and I suspect we could even we could even go further than the Europeans. For the traditional proven technology in which the turbines are supported with fixed towers in the ocean floor the US can become a dominant player through its market size. We have scale we have scale that's much larger than the European offshore wind market and we can use the technology that the Europeans have kindly developed over the last 20 years. This means the US has the potential for an accelerated path to reach the same number of gigawatts as the European market and I'm going to show you in a minute or tell you in a minute how that's possible. So the US has in its favor also untapped innovation we have to remember we're a creative nation and we are innovative both in finance and in technology. So there are a few technologies that are being developed right now to meet the needs of our East Coast but we're also making advances with the next generation of wind turbines which are being made basically for floating, floating wind farms. In this case the wind turbines are not physically supported from the ocean floor but they're floating and much of the engineering of this comes from the oil and gas industry and this next generation of offshore wind technology opens up markets along our west coast up to now it's predominantly been on our east coast. So this is featured for those that don't know is because that's where the ocean is very deep there's no ability to put the turbines into the ocean floor. So all these factors are going to help drive down the cost of power that is produced from offshore wind and with increased demand excuse me with increased demand in the energy mix particularly along the coastal states. So at the present time as I mentioned earlier we've only got one offshore wind farm which is in Rhode Island state waters off Bloch Island. So the real potential is where there is scale and that's beyond the three mile state water limit and this will be in federal waters and our Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is the regulator and has worked hard over the past eight to nine years and remains responsible for the leasing of the ocean floor for the use for offshore wind in the permitting process. In contrast the states are and their respective utilities are responsible for the procurement of the electricity. So at the present time in addition to the 30 megawatts the five turbines of Bloch Island we also have committed 90 megawatts that will go to Long Island. Maryland has just approved the rate pair to purchase 368 megawatts. Massachusetts has a law to procure 1600 megawatts in tranches of 400 over the coming years. Governor Como has stated ambitions to have 2400 megawatts and New Jersey is promising 3500. At all this together you've got almost eight gigawatts of power that is two-thirds of what Europe has today and has created in 20 years. We can't stop there I'm nearly going to stop so just wait a minute one more page but we can't stop there we can't stop there as an industry. These numbers reflect the future possibilities of offshore wind in the various states that have supportive policies but there are very few that have definitive times and commitments for the purchase of the power. That is something that we all need to be working on but the industry the groups that we are working with the businesses they're calling for a consistent pipeline of one to two gigawatts of committed offshore wind per year. This will provide the economic returns and the justification to build the needed port infrastructure to withstand the size and the weights of these large offshore wind components some of which are in excess of 1200 tons. So in conclusion I would just ask you to reflect for a moment Denmark which is the size of Maryland started two decades ago with 50 sorry with 11 turbines for one offshore wind project and today the country employs 50,000 people dominating the global offshore wind industry. So our mission is to help the businesses harness the European expertise in order to contribute building this domestic offshore wind farm and really from there we can along with the technology for floating platforms this country has the opportunity to become a dominant player in the global offshore wind market. Final words offshore wind equals onshore jobs. Thank you. Another industry ready to explode in terms of growth and where we are able to really take advantage of all of the experience that is coming from from Europe and and so just stay tuned as this starts to move forward and I must say I've seen the turbines at Block Island pretty awesome. Okay so we're now going to hear from Jacob Irving who is the president of the Canadian Hydropower Association. Hydro is very old and also very new in terms of all of the wonderful services that it has been providing us for so many years in a very clean renewable way and I should also say we're very glad that Jacob is back with us again this year because the Canadian Hydro Association has been partnering with US companies and state governments and utilities for many many years and it's an important way for us to really work together and improve everybody's economic efficiency and also clean energy portfolio. Thank you very much Carol it's always a pleasure to come and speak to you as a Canadian. It's interesting we're often told that as Canadians that sometimes we're a little too polite sometimes we're a little too apologetic so I guess I'll apologize for my presentation in advance. Sorry everybody. But I'm also told whenever I've come here by my American friends you know as a Canadian you've got to be more simple and you got to be more direct with your message. So I've had many years of practice thanks thanks to Carol and everyone coming to here to speak to you. So I guess what I would probably start off by saying to all of you my American friends here is that you have a very dirty electricity system. You do. What gives me the gumption to say that coming down from the north to you because we have a very clean electricity system and this I'm not afraid to brag about. Over half of our hydro of our electricity comes from hydropower in Canada. It is the dominant source of electricity generation in our country and your country over half is still thermal and what's really important is that you're 10 times our size. So the size of the challenge for cleaning up your electricity system in this country is daunting. I present the Canadian hydropower in the context of a good news story hopefully a pleasant surprise. I put it in the sense that I like to think of as we're kind of like the $100 bill that is in your winter coat pocket right now. You forgot that it's there. You don't know that it's there but it's there. That's Canadian hydropower. Quickly who is the world's largest generator of hydropower? China is number one. Who's number two? Canada. The number one hydropower generator in the world has 1.3 billion people. The number two hydropower generator in the world has 35 million people. So in Canada we like to say that we box above our weight when it comes to hydropower. It's our number one source of electricity, 61 percent and it's growing. And so this is where the analogy to the $100 bill in the winter coat comes in. How much more do you think we can grow in Canada? I mean when you're the second largest generator in the world you kind of think well you must be kind of tapped out right? You must be sort of done. It is the majority way you make electricity. How much of this stuff do you have left? Well in Canada and we can talk about on my booth later, we can more than double our current installed capacity for hydropower. We have the second largest landmass on the planet. We're second to Russia in terms of landmass and we have the third largest amount of surface water on the planet. We have a lot of geography. We have a lot of topography. We have a lot of water. We have a lot of hydropower. So in many ways one of the reasons why we have such a huge capacity is because we have such a natural strength in it. There is no denying it. And our humble suggestion to you, our friends to the south, who are 10 times our size and who have such a dirty electricity system by comparison, is that you maximize this. And the good news is that there already is a strong relationship. We've been trading electricity back and forth between our two countries since electricity was invented. We've strung lines across borders. There's over 35 interconnection points. The majority of the electricity we send you is hydropower. We'll generate about 375 terawatt hours in a year. We send you about 60 of that. So a decent proportion. It means a lot to Canada. It means a lot for us in terms of export. We think that there's a natural advantage, a mutual advantage that happens there. It's good for both of us. But as strong and impressive as all this is, you can try and guess what is the percentage of Canadian hydropower in the United States? It's less than 1%. So less than 1% of your electricity system comes from Canadian hydropower. So our humble proposition to you is maybe that could grow a little bit. For us, I mean, if it grew to 2%, it would be double for us. We'd be over the moon and you might not even notice. And the advantage you get from it is with the Canadian hydropower that I'm talking about, this 160,000 megawatts of undeveloped potential that we have, this is all new greenfield hydropower that we're talking about. This is not talking about powering existing dams. It's not talking about refurbishing. It's not about talking out of capacity. It's about brand new hydropower projects that could be built across Canada to the service of Canada and North America, both of us. And to do the things that hydro is really good at, which is essentially balancing grids and providing reliable backup to the energy system. I mean, hydropower, the one thing about us that no one's ever beaten us on in 130 years of our history, this goes for US hydro, Canadian hydro, anywhere, is we are the most dispatchable form of electricity there is. You can turn us on and off faster than any other source, and that is hugely advantageous on the grid. We shape, I mean, we don't just shape other renewables, wind and solar. We've shaped coal. We've shaped natural gas because you can turn us on and off faster than any other source. And with storage, we offer maximum flexibility. And so, again, to me, my basic job whenever I come and speak to American audiences is it's deceptively simple. It's just to let you know we exist. We're already involved in a very positive, mutually beneficial, positive relationship. We are sending you this power already. You're sending us power back in return. We're sending you clean hydropower mostly, but there could be more of that to our mutual advantage. And this hydropower in Canada has helped to bring on new renewables, wind and solar in our country. And it also helps bring them on in the States too. This is not a complicated relationship. It's not new. Really, all you have to do is just more of it. So it's to take a winning formula and to do more. Now, the tricky part with us in Canada is we have this large, undeveloped potential. We have a very small population. We have a lot of natural resources. That's sort of the story of our country. We live next to the most sophisticated market the world has ever seen. 350 million market consumers to the south. We believe that more of this can be helped. But really the trick in many ways is the U.S. sending enough signals to us that you're interested. We can't force feed you anything. We can't hard sell you our hydropower. It's up to us to let you know that we exist, that we're helping, and that we can help even more. And in that regard, on our side of the board, I just wanted to note that we've seen the benefit of this. We're seeing the benefit of it. And the partnership between renewables has really strengthened. We, two years ago, formed a group called the Canadian Council on Renewable Electricity. And that brings together Canadian hydro, wind, solar, marine, ocean, tidal, kinetics. We formed a group to try and speak on policy with a concerted voice at the federal level. And this is important because, you know, in markets we compete. We compete strongly. Everybody wants their technology to be first in line and to gain market share. That's terrific and there's a lot of good things that come with that. But when you look at the global crisis in terms of climate change, when you look at North America, Canada as well, the job is so huge that no one of us can do it by ourselves. We really have to work together. Even Canada, this huge undeveloped hydropower potential that I've just taught you about and that hopefully you're excited about. This 160,000 megawatts, if we were to build it all tomorrow and plug it directly into the United States to help you out, we'd only be able to turn off half the coal production in the United States. Now that's kind of sad when you think about it, but it's also kind of exciting because we can't do it all for you, nor would we ever pretend to. We're not going to be opportunistic Canadians coming from the north trying to solve your problems for you. But we can be definitely part of the solution and if we work with wind, solar, everyone else together and we all click together in the best ways possible, now we can really attack some of the big problems that we're facing. So I guess the big messages that I want to just leave you with is that Canada, we exist, we're helping, we can help even more and we all really have to work together if we're truly going to lick this problem called global climate change. We can't shoot down each other's technologies. We have to figure out how we all click together and actually show the rest of the world the North American lead. So thank you. Thanks Jacob and we promise never to forget that you exist. And the other thing, Jacob also made a remark with regard to the association that they have been part of building in terms of the Canadian renewables. And one of the things that I think is so important is that hydro once again is a host of technologies. And so our next speaker is going to talk about one of those and that's Macon Harwood who is the Policy and Government Affairs Lead for Natal Energy Inc. Hi everyone. So we're going to take away our industry hat for a moment and talk a little bit about specific technology which is Natal Energy's hydroengine. So I come from Natal Energy. We're based in Alameda, California and we're a manufacturer of a proprietary hydropower turbine technology called the Hydroengine which is an innovative low-head distributed hydropower turbine. So not many people think of hydropower as a distributed asset or let alone think of a lot of new innovation in the hydropower industry because it's been around for so long. But we're trying to change that explicitly with our new technology and able to in order to open up new markets for new hydropower development and to create a path forward for cost effective and quick and hydropower to be brought online quickly through low-head and smaller distributed projects that can then aggregate up to utility scale but come online much more quickly than larger hydropower projects. So Natal was founded in 2009 by two siblings actually. They're both MIT engineers by training and their dad came up with the idea for the turbine for the first time in the during the energy crisis in the 70s and it wasn't commercialized at the time but they reintroduced the idea in 2009 by Gia and Abe Schneider the founders one of them is our current CEO and one of them is the current CTO and in 2009 we we had about five years of product development that followed a lot of which was aided by the DOE eere program specifically the water power program and grant money grant money from that program specifically and so after those first five years or so 2015 and 2016 we saw our first two commercial installs and those were one was in a existing retrofit of a drop in an irrigation canal in in central oregon which is part of a larger 10 megawatt portfolio that's currently under development and one was at a non-power dam here in the east coast in in Maine and so Natal set on a path to essentially create this distributed hydropower approach and in order to do that you need to drive down the cost substantially at low head drop so you haven't seen a lot of these kind of irrigation and non-power dam sites developed to date because it hasn't really penciled out economically so we set out to create a turbine technology that could both address the mechanical and the civil components of hydropower projects and drive down those costs substantially so Natal's driven by a vision for a more sustainable and climate resilient model for hydropower development to deliver new renewable energy that's both complementary to solar wind battery storage technologies as as our speakers before have mentioned there's a slew of technologies out there and we really got to go full steam ahead with all of the above and they're all complementary to each other in many ways and also to take an approach where we're looking at the watershed needs and the watershed co-benefits up front so that instead of mitigating for impacts after the effect like much like many projects have done to date you can then take those considerations into the the civil works approach at the beginning and be able to both deliver watershed co-benefits in accordance with your project but also create a much quicker path for permitting and and yeah and permitting moving forward and then licensing so Natal's hydroengine accomplishes these cost savings really quickly i can give more details on the technology itself at the booth in the in the foyer but we we accomplish those cost savings by material and design innovations that drive significantly reduced costs on the civil works side in particular and drive down the footprint of individual low-head projects and these these innovations are enabled by the hydroengine technology itself which improves project economics making the minimum financially viable hydropower project smaller than it would have been before so physically smaller yet still financially viable projects allow developers to employ a more versatile flexible and creative approach to project design to development and operation of the plant so the hydroengine is designed for projects of 60 feet of net head and lower whereas conventional hydros usually you know we've seen projects that are hundreds of feet tall with individual turbines that are rated up to 1.5 megawatts but with projects where you can aggregate up to 10 megawatts per individual project size so there are three major areas that we're focused on for new hydropower development the first two of which focus on existing infrastructure so if folks are familiar with the DOE hydrovision report you'll know some of these numbers but if not i'd encourage you to visit it NHA worked very worked hand in hand with the DOE on that report as well and so for the two existing infrastructure applications the first is inconduit hydropower so that's existing irrigation canals wastewater treatment plan outflows other pipe scenarios and non-powered dams so there's a large market of existing non-powered dams that are there for some other reason whether that be flood mitigation recreation transportation etc and according to the these reports that were connected by the Department of Energy in the Oak Ridge National Lab there's an estimated two gigawatts or so potential and existing conduits across the U.S. and an estimated 12 gigawatts at non-powered dams of the 12 gigawatts at non-powered dams which is across 80,000 dams in the U.S. over 70 percent of those are at sites lower than 50 feet of of head of drop and that's kind of our sweet spot as a technology and that's why a lot of these projects haven't penciled out to dates because it is a lower head application. Development of these sites provides not just new reliable and predictable renewable energy that's does as i mentioned balance well with with solar wind energy technologies but it also provides a new opportunity for investment in our water infrastructure which is very much needed so providing by providing an additional revenue source for example to an irrigation district or a water municipality who is looking to install hydropower in their system they then get an additional source of revenue through a land site lease or through or through future ownership of the project to invest in piping infrastructure if needed to invest in new to invest in other other water management and energy efficiency associated with their with their footprint in their their overall system. There have been a couple of really good examples of this so i just want to highlight a few so that you can get an understanding of how we play in the kind of water energy nexus in a way that isn't usually discussed and so in central oregon we have a slew of projects and there has there have been a a couple of districts there including three sisters irrigation district they're in central oregon they they have used revenue from their hydropower projects to reinvest in open canal piping of all of their of their canals and that increase increases the water efficiency so they're able to more accurately deliver to the irrigators and farmers who have requirements for for water use but it also allows you to leave more water at the start in stream which then creates habitat for for fish spawning in california similarly through the sustainable groundwater management act which was a policy passed a few years back irrigation districts are required to invest in their water infrastructure and in driving groundwater recharge so in driving some restoration of their watersheds so that's a really so inconduit hydropower is a really good way for them to generate additional and diversified revenue source to then invest in in their water infrastructure itself so finally there are new opportunities that exist in new stream reach as well so that's not existing infrastructure NGOs like the american rivers the nature conservancy and trout unlimited have done a substantial amount of work outlining frameworks by which new sustainable hydropower can be developed in accordance to a couple of criteria related to fish passage related to total project footprint and other environmental criteria specifically and then meanwhile a lot of resource agencies including NOAA national marine fishery service who have been focusing on watershed restoration work so purely just restoration increasing stream flows and trying to control sediment to water temperature creating new habitat for fish have looked at low head check structures explicitly for creating wetlands or enabling those types of benefits so there so we have been working very closely with those entities as well as well to identify opportunities where new distributed low head hydropower can then be paired with watershed restoration efforts and you can then deliver watershed benefits on the back of energy revenues both delivering new energy and watershed benefits so we believe there's a really active opportunity to develop new hydro and degraded watersheds and deliver those benefits and the success of community renewables programming across the country that's that's inclusive of solar wind hydro at a smaller scale and that's at a community level has been very successful in doing this including in some of the Oregon projects I mentioned earlier as well as much needed investment in water infrastructure and financing of water infrastructure or energy infrastructure projects and then finally programs like the DOE ERE program or the USDA REAP program have been very vital for for spawning some of these projects and I welcome any questions at my booth in the foyer as well great thanks so much so much Megan and we will now turn to Dave Zayas Dave Zayas who is the director of regulatory affairs and technical services with NH8 the national hydro association okay good afternoon um you guys have been loaded up with a lot of stats so instead of giving you more I'm actually going to read this from cover to cover but I'm gonna come back to this this has been mentioned so I'll try not to duplicate what you've heard already from some of my colleagues here but I work for the national hydropower association we are located here in DC if you haven't been to our booth yet please do so uh we're standard trade association we represent conventional hydro pump storage and also marine and hydro kinetics so similar to what was described earlier in terms of off-site potential for wind there's similar off-site or potential here in the United States for marine and hydro kinetics again similarly behind compared to europe but I'm not going to talk more about that today instead I'm going to actually will provide you a few stats of the hydropower industry in the United States talk about some of the growth opportunities and then some of the challenges to growth so first hydro is the largest provider of renewable energy in the United States we have installed capacity of just over 100 gigawatts so 100,000 megawatts 22 gigawatts of that is pump storage uh so those 22 gigawatts of pump storage make up about 98 percent of all energy storage in the US currently just over 40 percent of renewable energy generation in the US historically very affordable source of electricity one of the cheapest that's available jacob earlier touched on some of the critical baseload and reliability services that hydropower has always provided in terms of grid stability but something that hasn't been mentioned yet I think it's worth a note here is that it's the multi-purpose kind of attributes of these projects so a lot of hydropower projects in addition to generating you know clean renewable energy they provide their critical infrastructure provides flood control irrigation benefits navigation recreation and the list goes on so there's a lot of those benefits uh that we don't talk about frequently so if those stats now kind of behind us what are the opportunities for hydro last year department of energy and it was just mentioned by megan here's the this is the executive summary but the cover is the same on the full report it's a great nightstand kind of evening reading it's called the hydropower vision a new chapter for america's first renewable electricity source so importantly there's a roadmap in this document that identified the hydropower industry united states can grow by 50 gigawatts by 2050 those 50 gigawatts are found primarily in new pump storage projects across the us it's found on powering non-powered dams and also then doing your efficiency upgrades and operates at existing facilities i would also like to make a quick plug for the department of energy's water power program that was responsible for developing this report it was a multi-year effort and ha was involved within every step of the way so you know the water power program is really critical to our industry and for r&d for reports like this they also support the mhk side and i think the last thing i would mention too is that of those 50 gigawatts those are sustainable gigawatts of development too that was ultimately concluded in this report so what are the challenges to realizing that growth and i think i'm going to list three but two of them in terms of the growth are the licensing and the relicensing process at the federal energy regulatory commission you know we can take 10 years or longer to license a new project or even to relicense an existing project that's not good for investors it's just not good for certainty so we work every day to reduce those delays any duplication in the process but are very mindful not to undermine any existing environmental statutes or protections second i think challenge to achieving the growth is the market recognition of hydropower so we feel i think as an industry or it's generally accepted as an industry that it's hydra is not appropriately valued in the united states you can look at a number of policies that were set in place from the federal tax incentives from ptc and itc hydro was eligible it's expired for hydro but even when it was eligible received half the credit of our other renewable counterparts if you look at state rps policies across the country hydropower is you know has a hard time playing in those markets because of the way eligibility is defined based on the size of the project when it was put in place among others so we work on those two issues quite frequently and third i think it's pretty young crowd in here i don't know how many are full-time staff interns or where you're all going to be heading but workforce development is a big issue for the industry we kind of call it the silver tsunami we have a lot of people retiring we're very interested in you know how do we attract the younger generation to get into hydropower so you know keep that in mind when you're looking for jobs um and that's it i'm gonna leave it that i know we got one more speaker i'll make sure we leave time um i know you've already been peppered with a lot of stats as well but thank you for the opportunity you know a recurrent theme today has also been in terms of thinking about the the potential in terms of job career opportunities and that in so many areas across the country in terms of of the manufacturing that's required all of these different technologies and their deployment how there are jobs that are waiting for somebody to fill them so now we're going to hear from Christopher Mansour who is the vice president for federal affairs for the solar energy industries association see ya thanks girl okay i got two minutes this can be real fast okay so get your pens ready oh okay good well i got 12 minutes i'm going to read this much slower than there we go i got i got more more numbers for you too um see ya sort of solar energy industry association a trade association for the American solar industry across the board from manufacturing right up to installing on people's houses right now there's about five thousand nine thousand companies working in the united states across all 50 states it's a lot of small businesses about 85 percent of those businesses are less than 20 employees so that's something we're really excited about that they continue that kind of long-term growth at the end of 2016 we had 260,000 Americans working in solar um 2016 was a real banner year for solar in general we doubled the amount of installed solar that they had done in 2014 15 so we did 15 gigawatts in 2016 as i mentioned we had 260,000 jobs at the end of 2016 and that was up from 210,000 that we had at the end of 2015 in 2016 one out of every 50 jobs in the united states new jobs coming online were the solar job a medium salary was $25 an hour so again you can see between hydro solar wind it's actually a really great source for people to be able to come up and make a really good income in a very short period of time solar was actually the top single source of new electrical generation capacity in the united states 39 percent of all electricity generating that came on in 2016 was from solar reinstall the new solar project this includes houses as well new solar project every 84 seconds so it was a great year for us about $23 billion invested in solar to shift real quickly to the rooftop issue about two-thirds of the installations in the united states are utility scale so it's the bigger plants one to five to five hundred megawatt plants and up but they're the solar distributed generation side of things on people's rooftops with homeowners primarily has also been a great growth industry for us as well just as one stat is in 2016 the beginning of 2016 we hit our first million homes that actually had a solar project or a solar facility on its on its rooftop we'll hit the second two million by the end of 2018 we'll hit we'll double that again to four million homes by the end of 2021 so the rooftop industry itself is growing exponentially in 2017 so far it's been it's also been a strong year we added two gigawatts in the first quarter of this year it's the sixth straight quarter that we've done more than two gigawatts in each quarter and the other milestone was utility scale project prices drop below one dollar per watt and installed that's for the first time the DOE Department of Energy had a goal of hitting that one dollar watt that was three years out so we hit it three years early which we're pretty excited about according to gtm research we should install a total of about 12 to 12 and a half gigawatts in 2017 2016 was a big run-up year because of the investment tax credit and so now with that extended it actually gives people a time to to space out their development a little bit more so we'll have a little bit of a downward turn in 2017 also according to gm gtm research they expect 36 states will be at grid parity for rooftop solar by the end of 2017 so that's really important it allows people to say it actually does make sense for me to go out and invest in solar for my home across a pretty big swath of the united states solar prices continue to go down we had a 63 percent drop over the last five years so that's still being driven down part of that is the hardware itself the panels the inverters the other balance of systems process but a lot of it is because our companies are getting better and more efficient and quicker at their installations it was in the past the rooftop company might do two to three installations in a week with with one crew now they're going to do two to three in a day given the fact that they've improved improved their racking systems their permitting process and and a whole range of of changes that have driven down the cost not only for a rooftop solar but also for utility scale as well just looking ahead real quickly in 2010 we had less than a gigawatt of solar in the united states by the end of 2017 we should have four as i'm sorry right now in 2017 we have 42 gigawatts total and by 2022 we'll be we'll triple that to 127 gigawatts of solar so the future looks good that way by 2022 as well 26 states will have at least one gigawatt of solar installed so again we're growing into new parts of the united states you'll see this in north carolina south carolina georgia and that's that's growing pretty exponentially in those southern states as well dollars alone between 2017 between now and the end of 2021 an additional 84 billion dollars in its investments and installations a lot of figures i told you i was going to give you a lot of numbers but now we leave time for some questions and answers to thanks thanks another very very exciting story and because of that we've got five minutes folks so before we need to move to the next panel so were there any questions i thought i saw a hand okay yeah sure well as the national trade association we try to look at we we work on federal issues uh this is what i do we also do state issues and in addition to that we have a series of i think it's 12 state affiliates uh sea affiliates that we work with really closely on a whole range of issues from my spend standpoint as the federal affairs the vp for federal affairs the national issues we work on are like the investment tax credit which benefits every single solar company of no matter how size or shape it was so that was a really big victory to get that extended until 2021 the other issue we're working on really closely right now consuming a lot of our times and i got to get back to it we're doing a north carolina lobby day to day um is this trade case that's come up with the u.s. international trade commission which uh there's a company two companies come forward trying to uh they are requesting tariffs on imported panels that would double the price of panels in effect everybody's ability to actually make their projects work whether it's a utility scale or a dg you know a distributed generation scale um we have a thousand member companies and that's everything from like you say the teslas and the vivants and the sun runs on the big side to people who have a couple pickup trucks and some ladders so we we do try to represent the entire range of the of the industry and and work real carefully and closely with uh with companies to try to solve their issues with their state governments but also the um federal governments as well so sure we have time for one more question if anybody has one okay any last words from any of you any points that you wanted to make you know and i think that's an important point that you know that throughout today one of the things i hope that like like me i hope that like i hope that you like me have been really um excited about what we've been hearing in terms of the number of jobs the growth in all of these technologies and these resources across the country in basically every state the growth that it represents in terms of looking at supply chains and in terms of manufacturing as well as what this means whether it's for supporting of agriculture in terms of land for for wind turbines to looking at what it means for development of all sorts of hydro different kinds of technologies um that there is just an enormous potential where we've gone from looking at distributed to also now very much utility scale the whole role of storage that enables a lot more to happen so we are really looking at a changed and changing world that is happening very very quickly and so i this is a really good time for clean energy and so i hope everybody is feeling that excitement that buzz and that we really need to be about making that transition and making it happen ever faster so thanks so much for being here make sure you follow up with folks make sure you get to all the exhibits both in the gold room over here in 2168 as well as the foyer let people know that you really appreciate their being here thank you so much