 Hi there, I'm Kamala Feibelman. I'm the director of the Rio Grande chapter of the Sierra Club, which represents over 35,000 members and supporters in New Mexico and West Texas. Before I get started on sort of the policy picture for a transition to clean energy here in New Mexico, I wanna frame this conversation in what is truly an utterly a climate crisis. We have over the years seen increasingly extreme hurricanes fires that drive people from their homes, impacting air quality throughout the country, extreme drought in New Mexico, changes to blooming season impacting our pollinating species and it goes on and on. This is a crisis that we have to address now. And I think looking at the COVID crisis to guide us and give an example of what to do and not to do can be really helpful because at the end of the day, the question about we act now is a question of what life will be like for your kids, for my kids, our grandkids, what the geopolitical situation for them will look like, whether there are jobs in New Mexico that can keep them local, whether there'll be enough water and quality of life for them. So in the case of COVID on the one hand, science brought us a vaccine within a year. It gave us simple solutions to staying safe, like wearing a mask indoors. However, where the Delta variant is taking hold are places where people haven't heard or believed science or have been manipulated in one way or another. And so the lesson for us is that those solutions are there but we have to create democratic systems where people can trust the information that they're receiving and that they can act in their best interest to see the solutions that really will be meaning for our quality of life now and in the near future, whether that be an economic front and an employment front or on an environmental front. And for that reason, we really come at the issues of climate change and those solutions from a social justice standpoint. Do all communities have a chance to participate in the transition? What communities are impacted most deeply from a transition or from those solutions? And does everybody have a right to the information they need and the opportunity to participate in the solutions? So let's talk about what's happening in New Mexico. In 2019, we saw Governor Luhan Grisham make her third executive order be a climate executive order. We joined the Paris climate goals. She laid out a series of policy steps that we might take to meet those greenhouse gas reductions that was passing methane rules, ozone precursor rules that was passing clean car standards and building codes. And we've made progress on some of that. Last summer, we saw an increase of the energy conservation codes from the 29 codes to 2018. Now we've got to see an increase now that we're going to see the 2021 codes coming into effect. We're waiting for the EIB to do clean car standards. We're hoping they'll get that done this year so it will impact model years being sold here in New Mexico, not just a future model year like 2027. We've seen methane rules come on the books from the oil conservation division, banning, routine, venting and flaring. And that began just as recently as the end of May and ozone precursor rules. This is the stuff that emits with methane out of oil and gas facilities and creates smog, which is really damaging to our respiratory systems. Those rules will be heard at the Environmental Improvement Board this fall. So while we're seeing some good progress on these policy positions on climate, it looks like from the latest report of the Climate Task Force with 53% of our carbon impact coming from oil and gas, we're gonna need to do significantly more and figure out how to handle that. Some have cynically asked at the legislative session, well, what is the percent impact of New Mexico's greenhouse gas emissions to global climate change? When the real question has to be, how fast are we acting and who's acting with us? Combine that with the fact that we're now the second largest producer of oil in the entire country. That's just a huge impact on the carbon economy that we have available to truly do our part as members of the global economy. So we did have some really amazing progress during this last 60 day legislative session. We did things like rid ourselves of stringency limitations at the environmental department, which means that we can now set air quality and hazardous waste rules that are more stringent than federal rules. That was a big piece of progress. We also passed community solar legislation, which is something that's been years in the making. This legislation allows the PRC to put forth a pilot program that they are doing the rulemaking for now. Those rules will likely be adopted in April of 2022. And it will allow community solar companies to build projects that are no greater than 100 megawatts and have all sorts of diversity and who can buy into those programs, gives a tribal sovereignty to tribal governments that are implementing these programs, but allows for an analysis period that the PRC will review and set the stage for a full statewide community solar program. The same with grid modernization. That was a bill that passed a few years ago that created an appropriation for a grant program that allows energy, mineral and natural resources to take proposals for small grid modernization projects. Those projects are being evaluated by the department now and should be authorized any day. But it does speak to this larger question of as we bring more renewables onto the system, will the system be able to support overall? But this is a big opportunity, just like all of our infrastructure needs to get with the program and get modern. You've probably heard of a couple of other things happening at the PRC, but I'll touch on some of the big successes that came out of the Energy Transition Act this last year. So what we saw was PNM affirming that they would leave the San Juan Generating Station that they intend to use low interest bonds that would save rate payers money as we transition away from coal power to renewables. We saw the PRC commission vote for 100% renewable and battery storage replacement for the coal that PNM owns at San Juan and seeing those projects in the school district that was gonna be impacted helping to keep property taxes up to help service the school system and to replace employment, especially on the construction fund. We're waiting for a Supreme Court decision until PNM can go ahead and issue their securitization bonds which would then fund worker severance, retraining and different community proposed projects for transition that have been proposed to the ETA's Just Transition Committee and would be funded by the different agencies. At the same time, there has been and people have probably seen a proposal from Avangrid owned by a Spanish company called Everdrola to merge with PNM and that is being debated at the PRC as we speak. Many of our partners have really achieved some serious concessions from this company to pay for transition funding, to look at low income weatherization, credits on the average ratepayers or customers bill. The Sierra Club's sort of lone focus in this merger is what will happen to PNM's ownership in the Four Corners power plant. This is the last big piece of coal that's owned by this utility, Everdrola and Avangrid would like them to leave Four Corners and we agree with that. However, we want that exit to come with a closure of the plant which isn't scheduled to close until 2031. APS and Arizona utility is the majority owner and despite it being a polluting, you know, pretty expensive power plant, they've been resistant to that closure. PNM is proposing a transfer of their ownership to an entity called NTECH and we're concerned that that could slow the exit from the Four Corners power plant. There are two cases at the PRC that are addressing this issue, that one is the merger case and the other is the abandonment case. So those are two cases to watch and track that definitely have their pros and cons that we are all working to figure out. But I will close with this issue that has to do with oil and gas and the reality that this is one of the major drivers of greenhouse gas emissions in New Mexico. I was recently down in Carlsbad and had a chance to drive along an area called Local Hills where you can really see, feel and smell the impact of extraction. Fields and fields of wells, some of them older, some of them the modern horizontal fracking part of the technology. But we're also seeing the impacts on water, whether that be the use of fresh water to frack or the impact of wastewater potentially on freshwater resources. And combined with that, the fact that climate change in New Mexico really has an outsized impact, especially on our water resources. You have only to drive by elephant butte to see the impact. And I think there was hope that this solid monsoon year that we had would help with that recovery. But we've seen the reports at these interim legislative sessions that the reality is it's a bit too little too late. So I think for us as a larger community, whether that be from the technological side, from the utility side, from the nonprofit side or the governmental side, this is a moment where we really gotta put our differences aside and look for those solutions that raise all boats, all communities, all people at once and view this crisis as an opportunity to do things better. And if you'd like to be a part of that, maybe you feel overwhelmed by the idea of deep persistent drought or climate change. I certainly do and it's my job to deal with every day. But we bite off little pieces of the apple to make a difference little by little to make sure that the solutions are attainable for us as we move slowly forward together. But we've also really had the opportunity to do that in partnership with other organizations who take an approach to these policy solutions that really adds whether that's the labor community saying, hey, how does the Energy Transition Act benefit our communities or frontline communities who say, you know, we'd like to have employment opportunities that go beyond private prisons and the extractive industries. And that's groups like Power for New Mexico, Center for Civic Policy, Somosun Pueblo Nido, NAVA Education Project and 8Care. So there's a lot of ways to get involved, a lot of organizations participating and we'd love to have you be a part of that. I'm easy to find Camilla Feivelman and we'd love to have you involved with a solution for global climate change. Thank you.