 I'm Dan Berset. I'm the executive director of the Environmental Energy Study Institute, and I'm joined by two of my colleagues, Miguel Ines-Barnuevo and Molly Brindemore. They work with me in Washington, and one of the things they work on is the work around IJA and IR implementation. We are also joined by special guest Jerry Lawson with EPA Energy Star. Jerry, it's great to see you. Before we dig in to the slides, why don't I turn it over to you, Jerry? I think you have a few welcoming remarks you'd like to make. Okay, thank you. I would like to welcome everyone, but primarily to thank EESI, not only for today's important webinar, but for their years of environmental and energy analysis, advocacy, and education. If you haven't already, I recommend subscribing to EESI's newsletter and spending some time on their valuable website. As Energy Stars lead for small business in the faith community, I've been especially appreciative of EESI's articles for energy efficiency for nonprofits, as well as their general initiatives, publications, and these issue briefings, and also their social media presence. Finally, I'd like to invite anyone whose organization is not yet an Energy Star partner to visit EnergyStar.gov to find the sustainability tools and training and technical support that we offer, as well as links to more sustainability resources across EPA. With that, thank you and enjoy. Well, thanks, Jerry. It's hard to say enough good things about all the cool stuff that Energy Star has going on. I think Bank for the Buck, probably the best federal program, and so thanks for your long service to it. You think of all of the facilities you've helped make more energy efficient. Probably a really, really long list, so thanks for joining us today. We are here today to talk about opportunities for energy efficiency and for nonprofits. Just very briefly, EESI is, we're based here in Washington, DC. We were founded in 1984 on a bipartisan basis to provide policy educational, policymaker educational resources. Our emphasis is on Congress, and over time, our work has also expanded to help provide direct assistance to utilities and rural areas to offer inclusive on-bill financing programs. We take, we have a commitment, we've made a commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and justice. We take that very seriously. If you would like to learn more about our work on DEIJ, we have a statement online. That statement is how we sort of internally report on our progress, and by no means a suggestion that we haven't all figured out, but we do do our best, and we recognize that we have a long, long way to go. Our mission is to advance science-based solutions for climate change, energy, and environmental challenges, and our vision is a sustainable, resilient and equitable world. The reason why we're talking about nonprofits and energy efficiency today is because there's some really exciting things coming down the line that will help nonprofits improve the energy efficiency of their facilities, and then also more broadly embrace clean energy. And thanks to our friends at Energy Star, we've been given an opportunity to make the presentation today. We'll start, and we will have lots of time for questions. So for those who are online in our Zoom meeting, please use the chat, and that's how we'll keep track of questions. Even if you have a question as we go, we'll do our best to come back to it. This presentation won't take the full hour, not by any means, so we'll have lots of time for discussion and for Q&A. And if you would like to come back and look at any of this, we'll make the slides available, and then also post the recording, probably on our YouTube channel, which EESI uses to collect all of our online briefings and things like that. Let's just start with the basics, and that is that energy efficiency is always a good thing. Fans of Energy Star know that already, but it's always good to reiterate it. For nonprofit organizations, energy efficiency is especially good, and that's because it saves previously wasted money that can then be reinvested back into the core mission. EESI is a nonprofit. We know just how hard it is to do what we need to do with scarce resources, and simply put, the idea of wasting energy is really important to how we should be going about our work as a nonprofit. It also improves the sustainability of our facilities, of our operations. It makes a positive contribution to our community. As nonprofit corporate citizens, we want to do right by our communities. It sets in a good example. We talk a lot about climate change at EESI, and energy efficiency is one way that we can also set a great example. It also increases readiness for other improvements, like solar, for example, and lastly, it allows us to help do our part to advance climate change solutions. Specifically, we're here today to talk a little bit about something called the Energy Efficiency Materials Pilot Program. In November 2021, Congress passed and the President signed into law the Infrastructure Investment in Jobs Act, aka IIGA. Some of you may also know it as the bipartisan infrastructure law. Buried inside that big bill, which was billions and billions of dollars of new spending, is a pilot program, $50 million provided to the Department of Energy to make competitive grants to install energy efficiency materials in nonprofit buildings. These grants are capped by statute at $200,000. We are still very much early in the stages of developing and the Department of Energy in particular developing this pilot program, but it's really, really exciting. It had previously been a bill introduced in Congress on a bipartisan basis. Here it is with funding in the infrastructure bill. It really does present a really awesome opportunity potentially to improve some nonprofit facilities, but also to focus generally on the benefits of energy efficiency. The statute doesn't have a lot of detail in it, but it does have some things. I think at this point in the development process of the pilot program, it's good to take stock of what we know and what we don't know, because as we're talking today, there is an opportunity to provide comment that can help DOE sort out some of those unknowns. For example, we know what a nonprofit means. That's a definition that refers to the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 that we're all familiar with, 501C3. We also know what energy efficiency material means, and that's a product, piece of equipment, or system that results in a reduction of energy or fuel consumption, and it lists a few examples of common energy efficiency measures. And we know roughly what the criteria of these grants will be. We know that DOE will apply what they call or what the statute calls performance-based criteria, and that will give priority to applications based on several factors. One of those factors is the financial need of the organization, but the other criteria involve energy savings, cost effectiveness, things like that. And again, if you have questions as we go, please feel free to pop them in the chat, and we'll be sure to get them. The statute, like I said, it's not a very detailed provision, so there's a lot of unknowns. A lot is left to the experts and the professionals at the Department of Energy to sort out, but they're a good group to do that. Some of the things we don't know are actually pretty important. So for example, we don't know what the minimum grant will be. We know that there's a statutory cap at $200,000, but we don't know how small the grants will go. We also don't know exactly if the criteria that the statute provides will be weighted in any way. Will they all be considered equally? Will some be given preference? We just simply don't know that, and that will obviously have a lot of influence on the types of projects that ultimately get awarded. We don't know how involved the application process will be, and for nonprofit organizations, that's really, really important. A big burdensome application process is obviously much less attractive than one that's more streamlined and straightforward, that doesn't take dozens and dozens of hours to complete, but we don't know what that looks like yet. We also don't know how many applications do we will receive. We know we have $50 million, we know we have five years to spend it, we know what the maximum grant is, but we don't know actually how subscribed or oversubscribed the program will be. That's obviously an important piece of information to know, and it will likely affect how DOE plans for the overall implementation of the pilot program, not just in the near term. We don't know when the grants will be awarded. We know that they're currently collecting information, but we don't know exactly how long it will take, and we also don't know when the grants will be dispersed. I think it's fair to say some time difference between when an application period opens, when applications are reviewed, and when disbursements are made, and for nonprofits that have to manage cash flows, especially nonprofits like ours that those are seasonal, obviously really, really important programmatic details to figure out. The good news is that the Department of Energy is currently taking ideas. There's a comment period open right now, and comments are due two weeks from today, Thursday, December 22nd. That's a great opportunity to share information with the Department of Energy about what the pilot program ought to look like. The RFI, I have a copy of it right here, and it goes into a fair amount of detail. It describes where the program came from, how it was authorized. It describes sort of the goals of the comment period and what DOE is trying to accomplish in these weeks. They are looking to solicit feedback on issues related to program development and execution, and they have a series of questions, a number of questions split across five areas, outreach, technical assistance, criteria and metrics, funding, and partnerships and community benefits. Each one of these categories, like I said, is broken up into questions. Those are pretty broad topics, and DOE is, I think, very open to all of the feedback that they get from organizations, organizations like ours that want to weigh in in order to support the implementation program and organizations like yours that may have ideas and comments and feedback, preliminarily at least, about how the program can be that's ultimately developed and implemented is the best version of the pilot program. A couple of comments on the pilot program comments. One is that you don't have to address every question. You don't have to try to answer every question. You don't have to address every issue, but the comment period is a really, really important time for nonprofits that have something to say to speak up and to provide DOE with information that will help them ultimately implement the program. Like I said, they're due two weeks from today, Thursday, December 22nd. DOE is looking to collect them electronically. There's an email address here and the RFI includes some fairly specific guidance about how to go about submitting comments. And whenever you're responding to a DOE request for information, it's always a really good idea to read the instructions because you wouldn't want your comments to be excluded because they're submitted wrong or because they otherwise aren't in compliance with the overall set of guidance that DOE's issued. The RFI also includes some important caveats I think for everyone to be aware of. The first is that the RFI is not an application. It doesn't envision any funding at all at this point. And also there's no advantage or disadvantage to making a response or to submitting comments. It's purely information gathering at this point. So if you are not able to muster comments that wouldn't have any negative impact on an application, if you are able to submit comments, it wouldn't necessarily mean that you have a leg up when applications are eventually open. We wanted to take a few minutes to talk a little bit about sort of what can happen in the meantime. So we know that comments are due in December. The program will continue to make good progress as 2023 rolls along. But there are things that nonprofits can be doing now to help them be prepared for when applications are open. And of course, energy efficiency is always a good thing. So these are good practices for nonprofits to be doing anyway. We have a couple of suggestions that we wanted to pass along and we have a lot more detail on these suggestions in some of the articles that we've been publishing over the last several months. And there are links to those articles at the end of these slides. The first of our suggestions is to simply learn how energy is consumed in your facilities in your buildings. That could involve an inventory where someone walks through the building in a facility and notes the energy consuming equipment or appliances that are operational. And the age, the serial numbers, the type, those are all, they all sound like very basic things, but they're all really important things to know. And that leads directly into our second suggestion, which is to engage in some benchmarking. Benchmarking can be sort of done at different levels. It could be you know, done sort of on the back of an envelope, so to speak. But since we're talking today with our friends at Energy Star, it's a great opportunity to plug an incredibly robust benchmarking tool called Portfolio Manager that is really probably the best benchmarking tool out there. It takes a little time to orient yourself with it, but it's an incredibly powerful tool. And the benefits of benchmarking done now is that it gives you a very good idea of how your building is performing, how your organization's current level of energy efficiency. And that's really helpful for scoping out what types of projects might be cost effective for your organization. So it's definitely something to take a look at. Also a good time to start defining success, what kind of projects is your organization thinking about? Do you already have energy efficiency goals in place? If not, are there energy efficiency goals you'd like your organization to work toward? And importantly, a lot of the barriers to energy efficiency aren't technical and a lot of them aren't even financial, a lot of them are organizational. And so this is a good time to also start doing the work to identify who in and out of your organization might need to be involved in decisions concerning energy efficiency and moving ahead with the project. It's never too early to start that process. We also recommend this is a good time to start looking for other funding sources to leverage. Many nonprofits are located in utility service territories where the utility offers incentive programs. There may be other financial benefits offered by your state or state energy office. Based on that inventory that you've already assembled, you should be able to identify using online resources like Energy Star, opportunities for additional incentives. And that's really important when you're talking about grants and rebates, but also for financing programs that can take a little bit longer to come together. And many states and utilities offer financing programs that might be applicable or available. This is also a good time to start thinking about your audit options. There are different levels of audits and your utility may be a good resource for finding professionals who can help come in and help you assess sort of opportunities for cost-effective energy efficiency. And then also, there are a lot of great case studies including some that we've published about nonprofits that have made a commitment to energy efficiency and that had benefited in reading those nonprofits, nonprofits from across the entire sector. It could be a good way to learn what's worked, to get ideas, and also potentially also expand your network and make connections. We also wanted to spend a few moments today talking about some other opportunities that are coming down the line. The first that we wanted to mention is a provision that's soon to be implemented by the Treasury Department that was enacted as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. This involves direct pay for tax incentives that were previously out of reach for tax exempt organizations. We have a little chart here. Previously, nonprofits were able to benefit from these provisions, but only if there was a private company with a tax liability involved and what the new direct pay allows for is for tax-exempt entities to receive a direct benefit from the federal government. That's important, maybe a little less so for energy efficiency, but for what might come next, like for example solar energy. If you're thinking about installing a solar system on your nonprofit, this is a good thing to be aware of, especially if you're a clean energy project would exist in what they call an energy community. And again, we have resources on our website that goes into this more in detail. If you are thinking about solar, if you are thinking about taking advantage of this direct pay, also a good time to start thinking about energy efficiency. It's a lot easier to install solar panels on an efficient building than when it's inefficient. And the second thing that we wanted to mention was nonprofits serve a lot of different groups and a lot of different individuals and the Inflation Reduction Act also includes a lot of individual incentives. These are probably not within reach for nonprofits, but the people in your networks may be tracking them and may start hearing about them. So this is a rundown of some of the biggest ones that are available to residential or households, residential utility customers or households. The first is the energy efficiency home credit. This is a rebate or a tax credit, I should say, for heat pumps and pump water heaters as well as building envelope improvements. There are caps, but those caps have been increased since the last time this tax credit was authorized. So this is a good thing and the tax credits take effect in the new year. We're also a couple really exciting rebate programs. The first is the home electrification rebate program. This is one that is income-based, but it's going to help a lot of people transition their residential heating and cooling equipment over from fossil fuels to electric. And that's a really tremendous opportunity. There's also the home owner managing energy savings or Homes rebate program. There's a chart here that shows that built, broken out a little bit into more detail, but we're talking about billions and billions of dollars. And this was probably a good time to plug state energy offices, which are present in your state and will eventually be a very, very important source of information about how these rebate programs are implemented because these rebate programs will flow through states. And then lastly, you've probably already heard about the electric vehicle tax credit, but that's been expanded and increased. So not only can you get a tax credit now for a new electric vehicle, but you can also get a tax credit for a used electric vehicle, which is really exciting. That brings us to just a couple wrap up slides. The first is just running through some of the educational resources that we produced. DOE also has published a lot of really, really high quality and timely educational resources. So I encourage folks who would like to learn a little bit more about those to click those links. And then if you're interested in the incentives that are sort of like the tax credits and the rebate programs that are not available to nonprofits, but that are available to people in your personal networks, we also have some articles at esi.org that link to those. And of course, like I said, we'll make the recording available and also the slides available for anyone who would like to click through those. That brings us to the end. We'll pause there and take any questions via chat. And thanks so much for your attention. And hopefully we hopefully we helped you understand a little bit more about what this opportunity for nonprofits look like. Thank you, Molly. We have a question in the chat and this is about regarding other funding sources. Are there opportunities for nonprofits to partner with a city or county to leverage EECBG allocations and EECBG stands for energy efficiency conservation block grants? Yes, actually there could be. This is the idea of leverage and partnership is something that the RFI specifically asks about. It's really important for DOE to hear sort of how different partnership opportunities or funding sources could be potentially leveraged by your nonprofit and also which funding sources or partnership opportunities might be out of reach for a typical nonprofit. I think one challenge that nonprofits will have to manage as they're thinking about this is the sort of the order of operations in terms of how these programs are rolled out. There will almost certainly be a delay between when applications are due and when applications are reviewed, when applications are approved and then when funding is dispersed. And so it will be a challenge for nonprofits to have visibility into all of those things, including when they come from other agencies. We didn't talk much about the greenhouse gas reduction fund, but that's something that EPA is also working on. So I think the short answer to your question is yes, there almost certainly will be opportunities. What those opportunities look like are very much TBD and a major source or major topic of interest on the part of the Department of Energy. Dan, this is Jerry. Will you all provide follow-up webinars like this in the future as more is known, like in the spring? Yeah, we'd be happy to do that. I think timing-wise it would probably make sense to come back in the January of February timeframe, share a little bit more about what we know. And also by then too we'll have had the experience of going through the RFI process. So yeah, absolutely. Happy to do that at your convenience and the convenience of your network. We have another question in the chat and this is about does the pilot program or the terminology pilot program imply that another round is expected after five years or even sooner if this program is successful? I think DOE is taking very seriously the fact that this is the pilot program. I think they are hopeful that this program is just knock your socks off successful and I think they would very much welcome the opportunity to continue something along these lines should Congress decide to keep it running. I think it's an open question how long the pilot program operates. $50 million is a lot of money, but there are a lot of nonprofits in the United States with lots of energy efficiency needs and so how quickly they're able to move through those dollars is an open question. I think Congress will be paying very close attention to how the pilot program goes and I think DOE is really, really well positioned to do a really excellent job with the pilot program. It wouldn't surprise me at all if DOE learns things from the pilot program experience that could then be used perhaps to either authorize or otherwise fund a version 2.0 that builds on the success, but yes. I think it was very clearly intended by its congressional authorizers to be a pilot program and I think there are lots of opportunities for this to do really, really well and hopefully grow into something that's a little bit more permanent. We'll go ahead and give it a couple more minutes and then we'll wrap up with the idea that we'll make everything available to folks who are able to join us and folks who are not able to join us. The last slide I have here in case anyone's typing a final question is contact information for me and Miguel and Molly. So if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out. Email is probably best, but those are our phone numbers as well. We will continue writing articles on documenting case studies of nonprofits. We'll continue monitoring and tracking closely the implementation and then in the spring or in the new year when it's the right time, we'll come back and we'll do another one of these. But as we start to wrap up, like I said before, the comment period is a really great opportunity to make it known to DOE. What would make the pilot program especially successful from your perspective? They're eager for comments and in fact I think they're willing to be overwhelmed. So don't hold back if you have thoughts that you'd like to share. This is a great opportunity to do that. And we'll start winding down. We're just at the half hour mark. Jerry, love to invite you back to send us all on our way and thanks to Molly and Miguel for helping making today possible and thanks to those who are able to join us. Thank you very much. It was excellent. I was also impressed with articulating what you don't know yet, which is what we'll come back for. Thanks everyone. All right, well we'll wrap up. I hope everyone has a great rest of your Thursday and we'll be in touch and don't forget December 22nd. That's the deadline for comments. Thanks everybody.