 Welcome to today's Energy Seminar. I'm delighted to introduce our speaker today, Tenly Nostrum, who, as you can see, is the Director of the CalTestbed at Clean Energy Nexus. We've heard a lot this quarter about the need for new technologies, finance, good regulations, and whatnot. Tenly's job is actually to work with this international nonprofit to coordinate all the above worldwide. It's been said, I think, our colleague So-Young In, who you heard about last week, kind of director of research for the Stanford Finance Initiative a few years ago, wrote a dissertation on which she had some kind of economic stuff and some technology and entrepreneurship. And then the last chapter was on the need in this space to create a new clean energy ecosystem to figure out how to create a control tower to make sure this was all coordinated. So you didn't have, you know, the start-up, start-up and crash right away. The research ideas, not get out of the lab. You've heard about some instances of that here. But Tenly and her group do this at scale around the world. We're accusing that this is a great week to be doing this with the leaders of the world all arriving in Glasgow this week for COP26 or 27, I've lost count. Tenly as well, able to do this work with her background having worked at the Department of Energy in several capacities and then here in California escaping the last administration to some degree. And now with this set of entrepreneur, you know, energy innovation ecosystem stimulating activities at the first level. She also just told me for our distaffed side of the things that she's one of the founder of the women in clean energy community. The C3E initiative. Association which is hosting in a couple of days their big 10th anniversary bash featuring a lineup of superstars including Secretary of Energy. I think it's based in DC, but probably being broadcast around the world. So we thank her for all these contributions and look forward to her comments today. Thank you so much. I want to thank the Precourt Institute for Energy for having me today. This is a really exciting opportunity to speak to you all. This is my first foray after COVID or not after, but during COVID most of the last two years I've spent by myself in my apartment. So I really appreciate seeing like live people and being able to interact with you all today. And I thank you for your interest. It's really exciting to see so many people who are really interested in advancing the clean energy infrastructure and making sure that we take clean energy companies from inspiration to innovation to commercialization. And that's really what my role is at New Energy Nexus. So I'm here to talk about how New Energy Nexus the non-profit organization that I work for supports clean energy entrepreneurs as we work to transition to a global clean energy economy. This topic is particularly relevant as the 26th conference of parties on climate change has just gotten underway in Glasgow. And we'll be hearing a lot about it in the next couple of weeks, governments and leaders in this space making commitments and talking about how we're going to address climate change for the 26th year in a row. And so I am really excited to be actually like on the ground working with entrepreneurs who are bringing new innovations to market. And it's a very exciting place for me to be. And I wanted to ask how many of you are working in or thinking about careers related to clean energy? Awesome. I am so excited to see that. It's really thrilling to me because there are so many different careers that have to do with clean energy in supporting the ecosystem. I mean program management. You don't necessarily have to be an innovator. You can be an accountant working at an organization like the one that I work for and still be really making huge contributions to the advancement of the clean energy economy. So today I just want to tell you a little bit about the goals of my presentation. Sorry for any granularity of the photos. I want to introduce you to New Energy Nexus, what our mission, vision, reach and approach are. I am looking to provide examples of our activities from around the world in the United States and then do a deeper dive on our California programs which I work on. Then I want to distill down the key points of what makes our approach at this ecosystem support work. Then I want to help you connect with our global network if you're interested in connecting to all of the thousands and thousands of entrepreneurs that we work with globally. I'm also going to take some questions at the end so feel free to ask me anything. I wanted to start off because part of my background in education is in communication. I wanted to start off by telling you where I'm coming from. When I was about five or six years old, I saw this call to action for Peace Corps and they were talking about how it's the toughest job you'll ever love. It really struck a chord with my teeny tiny little brain at that point that I wanted to do something that served the greater good, that every hour of my life, every hour of my work life was doing something that made the world a better place. For me, when I'm looking at clean energy, that is the return on investment for my time, for my energy, from the years of university study I've done. I'm really sensitive to the inequalities and environmental impacts that have occurred, the human suffering. I want my work to have as much positive impact as possible. And that's why I work in this space because I see clean energy and supporting clean energy as having geometric impacts. It is not linear, it bounces off each other. There are sectors throughout our economy that are affected that a lot of people don't even think about. So if you look at electricity as a given, but transportation and health, agriculture and education, public safety and even national security. So when I was running the Solar Ready Vets program, it was a national program. The way that I framed that opportunity to the transitioning military personnel who were coming out was this is an opportunity for you to continue serving your country. It's an opportunity for you to contribute to the safety of our nation because having a robust and resilient electricity grid and electricity for communities is a part of national security. If you were going to attack another country, what's the first thing you take out? Electricity would really have a huge effect on communications, on transportation, on food security, on health. So working in this space, it really makes me feel that every hour I spend doing it, I get a multiplier effect on every hour. My personal return on investment. And I also saw that working in clean energy helps me increase social equity. I look around and I see all of these red line communities, like when I went to grad school at Rutgers, I was in Camden, New Jersey. And in the middle of Camden, there was a trash to steam plant. There were all kinds of industrial effluence that communities suffered and struggled for so long. And when you're a person who lives in a community like that, you end up suffering from asthma. You end up suffering from various pollutants. And so bringing clean energy, like increasing the amount of clean energy, helps address that. There's also job creation, lower electricity bills, pollution reduction, improved public health, increased food security in remote communities globally. If you can refrigerate food, it stays longer and it provides increased food security. And it also reduces all these climate impacts, like on biodiversity, on water, on droughts, on wildfires, all of these climate impacts that we're all struggling with right now. So I looked at clean energy as an opportunity to use the transition to a clean energy economy globally as a lever for empowerment and economic opportunities for marginalized communities as well. So we can look at workforce development. We can look at better health impacts, fewer kids with asthma. This is a way for us to really attack a lot of problems by working on one particular topic area. So when we're looking at increasing social equity, all the strategies that we look to develop a clean energy economy, the strategies need to be designed and implemented with a Jedi lens. And when I say Jedi, I mean justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. And then we can all benefit from the extraordinary opportunities created by a just transition to a clean energy economy. So that is where I'm coming from. That's my personal perspective. And now I'm going to tell you a little bit about my organization, New Energy Nexus, which when I joined it a little over three years ago, there were 12 people. We were based in Oakland and we could all fit around a conference table. Now we are more than 100 people in eight different countries and we are impacting hundreds and hundreds of entrepreneurs across the globe. So it's been a very exciting and exponential ride since I got here to where we're at now. So New Energy Nexus is an international organization that supports clean energy entrepreneurs with funds, accelerators and networks. As I mentioned we started here in California and now we have programs in China, India, Southeast Asia and East Africa and we're looking at even further expansion. So our mission as an organization is that we support diverse entrepreneurs to drive innovation and build equity into a global clean energy economy. And the vision is 100% clean energy for 100% of the people. And that really spoke to me when I came on to New Energy Nexus. There is an urgency to this work and we know we have a limited time to address the climate crisis and this mission and vision of New Energy Nexus really spoke to me and called me from where I was living in D.C. out west for my own personal manifest destiny. So how can we use this moment in history to create systemic changes for the long term? And how can we work together as a collective to get the best impacts out of the work that we do? As you can see here, here's how rapidly we expanded in the last three years and now I'm going to tell you a little bit about our approach. So what I've already mentioned that we launch, accelerate, fund and scale entrepreneurs that we work with. And in all of the different geographies in which we work there are different needs of every community. Working with entrepreneurs in India is different than working with entrepreneurs in Vietnam is different than working with entrepreneurs in the state of California. So it's not, you can't really come up with a single model that is going to work everywhere. So we have kind of a mix and match approach depending on where the community is, where the entrepreneurs are at in terms of their stage of development. And so those are the types of activities that we have and this is the type of impact that we have. We are supporting entrepreneurs in 15 different countries and just as an FYI this was the 2020 report. I think we're getting updated information for 2021 presently but so far we've in 2020 supported 453 startups. We had 39 program cohorts around the world. We invested almost, well, more than $26 million and we always look at job creation as a metric of success. And we created with our entrepreneurs, with our partners almost 5,000 jobs globally. So here we have, these are our Southeast Asia programs. These programs work as kind of a unit. They are really working together and leveraging the work of each other. They do a lot of cooperative efforts and partnerships and they are in really close contact. They are in Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines and they're conducting boot camps and hackathons. They're running accelerators and training programs and they're building cooperative, collaborative partnerships throughout the region to establish and grow a clean energy ecosystem. And it's really taking off. My colleagues in the region are really excited about how far they've come. In China, so this next slide is about our, just an example each from China and India. They're doing more than this but these are just the examples from those two areas. The Excel accelerator implemented in partnership with the Energy Internet Research Institute and Singha University is for growth stage companies and it provides corporate partnerships and pilot opportunities and market expansion. So they take entrepreneurs that are fairly mature and they are partnering them with energy, industry, utilities, folks that can mentor them and then potentially collaborate with them on pilot part and demonstration projects and hopefully expand their market throughout the region. In India, an example of our activities is the Electron Vibe Business Case Competition and this is for mature power sector start-ups that are, and this is implemented in partnership with the Regulatory Assistance Project in India and I will make sure that all of these slides are available to you after the fact so that if you want to check out more details about what we're doing globally, you're more than welcome to and I have the links to each of our programs in the slides. So our Uganda program is a unique program in that we didn't launch it from the ground level. Well, it's Inventure. It was a non-profit organization that actually was launched by one of our board members that helps entrepreneurs who are trying to build businesses. So this is more of a small business support for rural communities who have a lot of issues with access to clean energy. So we are supporting business people, small business people to start shops and sell solar lanterns and clean cook stoves and solar panels and all of the accoutrements that might be needed by people in remote communities that don't have any access to electricity and then we're hoping later down the line to have more distributed energy resources move into those communities so that they have a more stable source of power. And so far with Inventure, they have really done some amazing work. They have gotten over 100,000 people access to clean energy products. Their carbon offsets right now are 63,000 metric tons. They've created 650 jobs in remote communities throughout Uganda and 70% of those jobs are women. So around 455 of those jobs are going to women. And they've made 123 investments across small businesses throughout Uganda. And the way that the program works is that the seed incubator starts with small amounts invested in a large number of community-based organizations. And then as these community-based organizations start their work and they show some really encouraging results, then it goes to the growth accelerator. And then so the more successful ventures receive additional funds and financial management support and investment readiness so that they can launch their business and be independent of the support we're providing. And it's really amazing when you can start a business like this in a small rural community, how it changes lives. You know, solar pumps for water, clean cook stoves, like that has health impacts, that has time impacts. That could allow a young girl to go to school instead of having to go schlep water to their home. And so it really does have exponential impacts when you can provide these clean energy innovations to people who don't have access. We also started a program in New York State called the Clean Fight recently. They are funded by NYSERDA. And it's exciting because they support growth stage companies to scale in the New York market. So their application process, it's open to global companies as long as they're planning on running some of their operations out of New York and working as New York is part of their market. And so NYSERDA is the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. And so that's kind of analogous to the California Energy Commission. And the program provides business development, tailored support services, and non-dilutive grants of up to $250,000. And for anybody interested who has a relatively mature company, or if you know anybody that does, the next round of applications for this program is in May of 2022. So you have a little bit of time to get ready for it. But I did want to make that announcement in case any of you were interested in applying. Then we have the third derivative program, which is organized in partnership and implemented in partnership with the Rocky Mountain Institute. And this program is open to early stage companies with hard science, hardware, software, and business model innovation, which is kind of unique. A lot of these support programs focus on hardware because they seem to think that software, it's easy to get money, it's easy to get investments for software. And a business model or business innovation, that's also really challenging to get funded for. So this is a very unique program and it's also open to global applicants. This one has a rolling deadline. So as you are ready, you can go ahead and apply to this accelerator. And what they do is they support entrepreneurs with a 16-month long program, and they provide early and follow-on investment. There's a $100,000 convertible note involved that's optional. There's tailored coaching on business models and monetization pathways, and they really do make some incredibly strategic partnerships. They introduce innovators to funders and corporates that might be interested in acquiring the innovations. So now we're digging even more deeply into what my main area of expertise is, is the California programs. That has been the focus of my work since I arrived a little more than three years ago. And I'm really proud of what we've accomplished here in California. So our work here for the CalSEED and CalTestbed programs is funded by the California Energy Commission through Electric Program Investment Charge funds. And they're referred to as EPIC, and these two programs are sister programs. CalSEED accepts very early stage from technology readiness level two to four. CalTestbed is a little bit later. It's the next step in the pipeline of support that we provide, and that's for technology readiness level five to seven. So you have to already have a prototype ready for testing for CalTestbed. And this was a really strategic move by the CEC. I'm really impressed with how thoughtful they've been about making sure that entrepreneurs at every stage have an opportunity to get support from the state. So, you know, Bravo CEC, this is really clever, cleverly organized. In terms of the CalTestbed program, or the CalSEED program, pardon me, they've had four cohorts so far, and they've funded and accelerated around 100 companies. So they've been in business longer than CalSEED, CalSEED, or CalTestbed, sorry. We just are getting our second cohort for CalTestbed into contract right now. CalSEED has done an immense amount of work working with entrepreneurs, and they are partnered with Clean Tech Open. And Clean Tech Open is an accelerator that, you know, runs trainings, provides mentors, is really helping these clean energy innovators to think through what essential business documents do I need to have in hand? How do I reach out to investors? What kind of marketing do I need to do? How do I do hiring? Because some of these entrepreneurs, these innovators, are the scientists. They don't necessarily know a lot about, you know, communications and outreach and grant writing and all of those kinds of things. So getting this kind of assistance early on is really, really important. And CalSEED also provides $150,000 of non-dilutive funding. So that's a huge deal for entrepreneurs. Getting that cash in the door to just run operations and make sure that they're keeping the lights on is really valuable. Then further on in the process, there's a business plan competition that the entrepreneurs can get an additional $450,000, which is also a pretty big deal for these companies. So you can get up to $600,000, non-dilutive funding through CalSEED. And just so you know, the next solicitation for CalSEED is going to be in 2022. You can look at the website to find out and get more information. And I'll tell you about how we connect, we can connect you all to the community a little later. So then as I mentioned, CalTestBed, I'm really excited to have the opportunity to have launched this program. I drafted all of the foundational documents from, you know, Ground Zero. And it was really exciting to have this blank slate and then build this amazing program, this amazing community around just the seed of an idea that the California Energy Commission had. And even there were doubts in the beginning as to whether or not this would work. But I do want to mention that in a recent issue of Scientific American, a gentleman named Daniel Schwartz, he's the founding director of the University of Washington's Clean Energy Institute. He published an op-ed in Scientific American espousing the value of robust testbed facilities built on a framework supported by a public-private partnership and that that is the best way to accelerate the development, scaling, and commercialization of clean energy innovations. And in that op-ed, he mentioned CalTestBed as an example and I couldn't tell you how tickled I was to see that in Scientific American because a lot of the work I've done in my past has been very low profile behind the scenes, not really, you know, I don't get a lot of kudos for it, but that was really exciting to see this program mentioned in that op-ed. And I really appreciate it. So now knowing, realizing that CalTestBed, the way that we've developed this, I also want to mention that we got a National Lab Consortium Award for Outstanding Partnership this year, which is a kind of big deal for me as well because CalTestBed is partnered with Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and nine campuses of the University of California. So we have more than 60 lab facilities under an umbrella that's available to entrepreneurs who apply for and get selected for a voucher of up to $300,000 to test their innovations in these labs. There's another really key thing about CalTestBed, which is exceptionally cool, is that we built in that entrepreneurs can hold on to their IP. We made special agreements with the university and we crafted a tripartite agreement structure with lots of flow down terms and conditions with that in mind to make sure that the entrepreneurs can hold on to their IP and that they can publish if they choose to, they can partner with the university if they choose to, but we give them that option to be really mindful about walking the line and crossing over that IP threshold to make sure that the entrepreneurs can hold on to it. We also created a streamlined agreement structure for all nine University of California campuses, so you don't have to look through nine different options when you're looking at working with a testbed facility. Now, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, because it's a federal facility, they have their own special flow down terms and conditions, but the two agreement structures are fairly analogous. So we tried to make sure that this process was streamlined, clearly defined, clearly understood. I communicate a lot with our entrepreneurs. We have an ombuds person at each one of the campuses, so there's 10 ombuds people that are the main points of contact for each campus. Then there's a whole slew of principal investigators that are organized by the ombuds people, and it's really an extraordinary structure. It's unique and innovative and gigantic. I think it may be the largest clean energy testbed program in the country. So I'm just thrilled about how all of these partnerships that we have with the University of California Office of the President, with LBNL, with our regional innovation cluster partners, these partnerships are critical to the success. So now I want to show you a little bit of where CalSeed and CalTestbed fit in to the California Energy Commission's strategic pipeline of support for entrepreneurs. So CalSeed, you can see, is at the very beginning. CalTestbed is the next level of support. Then there's Bridge and Ramp that are two programs that are not run by New Energy Nexus, but they provide support for pilot and demonstration projects and further commercialization efforts. So the CEC has been really mindful about how they've designed this strategy and really mindful about what entrepreneurs need. I also wanted to mention that this innovation ecosystem is really important. There are, here you see, four innovation ecosystem cluster partners. So there's Activate, which used to be called Cyclotron Road. There's Blue Tech Valley that's located at CSU Fresno. There's Lacey, which is the Los Angeles Clean Tech Incubator, located in LA, and they have their own facility that's really amazing. And then there's the Southern California Energy Innovation Network that serves the greater San Diego region. And so for CalSeed and CalTestbed, New Energy Nexus is on a monthly call with all of these folks that's organized by the CEC where we talk about statewide priorities and ways that we can collaborate and support each other. Ways that we can use our networks, leverage our expertise, help each other when we're working on events to help advertise and solicit moderators and panelists. So we all are very, very collaborative and cooperative. And this is one of those situations where a rising tide lifts all boats. We all look at each other and try to build up the ecosystem because it's good for all of us. And it's good for all the entrepreneurs that we serve. So now I'm going to talk a little bit about what makes it work with New Energy Nexus because I talk to you about all of these disparate programs in different countries, what we're doing in California, what's going on in New York. We also, as an organization, really make an effort to communicate, collaborate, and replicate. These are things that are really important. So when we are working together, and I'm working on some sort of Jedi strategy, like an equity-in-equity-out model for CalTestbed, and my colleagues in Indonesia or the Philippines are looking to develop something similar, we share these kinds of ideas, these strategies across all of our geographies so that we can take what works for our cultural context, for our situation, for the stage of entrepreneurs that we're helping to support and use that. And so I strongly recommend to listen to your colleagues, listen to the stakeholders. Before we started CalTestbed, I had focus groups with entrepreneurs to ask them, what are the biggest priorities? What do you need? I had focus groups with the principal investigators from the labs asking, what is feasible? What can we realistically ask you to do? How would this approach work in your research calendar? What kind of processes and strategies do we need to implement to make sure this is a smooth-running program rather than something that will just crumble and fall apart? So listen to the stakeholders. Figure out what their needs are. Make sure that you incorporate all that feedback into your planning process and strategy. Then also, when you're conducting outreach, be really strategic about who you're going to talk to and make sure that you're inclusive to make sure that you're bringing in communities that are not necessarily always the first to be invited to the party. Make sure that you are being inclusive. Think through associations and organizations that support various communities in clean energy. There's an organization called the American Association of Blacks and Energy. There's an organization called RISE. It's Women in Renewable Industries and Sustainable Energy. There's all of these types of organizations and associations that you can reach out to and bring people in to widen the circle. It doesn't mean to the exclusion of others. It just means widening the circle and bringing more people into the tent. So that's really important when you're thinking about who you're reaching out to and what kind of impact you want to have. Then collaboration. Our partners are critical. If we did not have this partnership with the UC Office of the President and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, we would never be able to run a Cal testbed program. With CalSEED, their partnership, the partnerships that they have with Clean Tech Open and with the Green Lining Institute that has helped us develop a strategy on Jedi strategy on equity and inclusion and diversity. Those partnerships are critical. The partnerships we have within the ecosystem where all of the regional partners are feeding applicants into our process. That is critical. So make sure that when you are partnering that you are thoughtful. That you, what does a healthy partnership look like? It's commitment, respect and follow through. Make sure that when you make a commitment, you stick to it. Make sure that when you work with a partner that you're respectful of their time. Make sure that you're respectful of their thoughts. Make sure that you actually say thank you. A lot of people ask for help and then walk away after they get the help. I think developing these partnerships means with any good relationship, it requires nourishment. And then follow through. When you say you're going to do something, do the thing. There are a lot of people that right now, I'm finding it, it's almost a pandemic of people not following through on what they've promised to do. And as far as I'm concerned, my word is my bond. When I make a commitment, I follow through. And so I just expect that of everybody I work with. And then in terms of replication, I mentioned this before. When you develop an approach that works, examine it, adjust for context, and then replicate it. When we're looking at the program in Uganda, where we're supporting small business people, where we're doing training opportunities in solar installation training in Southeast Asia, those training components can be replicated pretty easily to help build a whole industry and a workforce development effort that provides a lot of people who are skilled workers in this space. And this space is growing, it's massive, and it's going to be billions and billions of dollars. So this is an opportunity that we need to leverage to help people and to help ourselves in terms of this climate crisis we're currently struggling with. And then also just constantly collect feedback, constantly make improvements. And so I am wrapping up. I have a few extra bonus slides that has more information about the CalTestbed program, but I'm going to wrap up right now with this slide, which shows you the multitude of opportunities to connect with our network. So New Energy Nexus on our website, it's NewEnergyNexus.com. Down on the bottom of that home page, you can click on a way to opt into getting our newsletter. That newsletter has a ton of amazing information. It is funding opportunities, it is job announcements, it is events. It's a really, really powerful and valuable resource for folks who are trying to do work in the clean energy space. We also have a Slack channel that has more than 3,000 folks on it globally. And it's a very robust community, and please feel free to join it. We have a YouTube channel that has a lot of videos from the past if you're interested in watching any of our videos. And then Twitter, there's a NewEnergyNexus handle, there's a CalSEED handle, there's a CalTestbed handle. I'm sure there's more from our programs. And also if, I mean, I have my own handle, it's at 1-0-LY, at Tenly. I made it super short, so it would be easy for people to fit in. So if, you know, feel free to follow me, connect with me on LinkedIn. There's NewEnergyNexus and CalTestbed is on LinkedIn, and we also have a Facebook page. And then finally I want to mention the Empower Innovation Platform that the California Energy Commission created. They worked with a consulting firm to create almost like a LinkedIn for clean energy. And clean energy companies can create their own pages. There are opportunities to find events and funding opportunities on it. It is a really incredible resource, and there's a lot of information about prizes and competitions and all of that opportunity to get funding for your efforts. So I highly encourage you to connect with the Empower Innovation site as well. And on that note, I would like to say thank you and ask if anybody has any questions. Hi, thank you so much for a very interesting talk and really an opening. I'm a freshman, so it's very exciting. I'm also from Thailand and this is the first time I've heard Thailand talked about at all since I've been here. I was also wondering like in terms of implementation of these ideas, you know, because it's ultimately to do with infrastructure and coordination with the public system. Given the history of sub-usation being turbulent in terms of political stability and transparency, how has it been implementing projects in there? Has it been fruitful, or has it been measurable but not scalable? And if so, what are some considerations when you are branching off to these countries where historically like projects in the public scale has always been bombarded with corruption, I suppose? That is an excellent question. And I'm going to go back in my slides to some of the efforts that we have in Thailand. As I mentioned, we're working in a lot of challenging areas. I mean, the China program, it's a really huge challenge to work there as well as a nonprofit organization. There's, you know, some hoops that one needs to jump through to make sure that they can work with government officials and research institutes and things like that. In Thailand, we are just launching and just trying to build right now a very, there is a very small ecosystem of folks interested in clean energy, but there are a lot of international development organizations that are interested in funding clean energy efforts and particularly with this idea of leveraging those efforts to improve international development and improve opportunities for rural communities and reduce pollution in all of those efforts. So there have been two big hackathons in Thailand. There's an accelerator that there's a second cohort underway, but we are starting at a very different level than in California, which has traditionally had a ton of support for clean energy, has all of the political will behind it from, you know, the governor's office, has a lot of really sympathetic folks that live in California and as the fifth largest economy in the world, there's an economic driver here that doesn't exist in a lot of other places. And so it is, we are starting small, but we are working with these international development institutes and trying to work with universities and workforce development organizations that rather than working directly with the government, we can work with some of the institutions outside of the government to help breathe life into the clean energy ecosystem. I've actually got a question, but I've been really impressed by the work of NYSERDA over the years and I was curious to learn more about sort of how NYSERDA and New Energy NEXUS are partnering in that clean fight, I think you called it, a program, just trying to learn more about New Energy NEXUS. What things does NYSERDA do in that partnership and what does New Energy NEXUS do? What are the different roles? Well, NYSERDA brings the money. That is a lot of what they do. They are our funder and they kind of structure what they envision the clean fight to be and then we take those instructions, that blueprint and build it. And so they also are partnered with us on the focus of what technology areas are going to be, the focus of the latest, they call them chapters, I call them cohorts. So apparently chapters one and two focused on decarbonizing buildings. So big residential buildings, big commercial buildings in New York, that's a big deal. If you can get a lot of energy efficiency in those types of buildings, that can be a game changer in terms of pollution and energy savings. This next one is going to be focused on energy storage. And so NYSERDA works with the leaders of the clean fight to determine what's the next strategic pathway that they're going to focus on. And we get similar guidance from the California Energy Commission, particularly with CalSEED. CalTestbed, we have 10 different technology areas. It is really pretty broad what we will fund for vouchers in all different technology areas. I have a extra slide on that. Here we go. So we have a directory of all our clean energy entrepreneurs that we work with and a directory that's almost 300 slides long. It's a PowerPoint PDF of all of the capabilities of the testing facilities. And so when applicants look to apply to CalTestbed, they look at all of the capabilities and pick their first, second, and third choices so that we can match them up for consultations and then put together a scope of work and get them in the lab and testing stuff. But these are the 10 different technology areas. It's building technologies, energy efficiency, energy storage, grid technologies, industrial and agricultural innovations, internet of things, material-based, renewable generation, transportation, and water technologies. So that's a huge swath of the clean energy industry that we're willing to fund. But there's no software. We don't fund software and we need to have, you know, a prototype to bring to the lab and do the testing on. Thank you. Sure, of course. Hi, thank you. I'm curious to know if you are planning to expand your efforts to Latin America in the meet or short term? That is a good question. I would personally love that. I don't know. I am not sure what my CEO, so the CEO of New Energy Nexus is Danny Kennedy and he is kind of a mover and a shaker in the California clean energy ecosystem. I don't know if there are plans in the future to expand to Latin America. I think we are planning to do some work in Nigeria, but I'm not sure where else in the world we're looking at expansion because it was a lot. In three years going from 12 to more than 100 people and going from California to eight countries. So I think we're just kind of taking a breath, figuring out what works and what doesn't, and then reassessing where we're going to expand. But Danny really wants to make sure that we touch and support 100,000 entrepreneurs. I forget the date that he wants to do that by, but it's a pretty audacious goal. And so I think for us to be able to do that, we'll have to do some more expansion. I had one, if you don't mind. So given what you've said and where you're headed, I wonder nowadays if you've thought about or are already collaborating and getting support from either financial or ideas or endorsements from two entities. One is the Philanthropic Center, Fullstop, which seems like it would be logical given their objectives. And two is the tech sector, which has now gotten way into sustainability as we've heard here and elsewhere in the news kind of almost every single day. Have they been or are they already potential allies of yours or do you have plans to extend your reach in those directions if only to collaborate and coordinate with them? Certainly. Well, the Philanthropic Sector has been a blessing to New Energy Nexus. We've gotten funding through the IKEA Foundation, Hewlett Foundation. There's quite a few. We also get funding through government grants. And so, yes, we are working very closely with the Philanthropic Sector and we're trying. We just hired on some development folks that are going to be even more strategic about putting together proposals to get additional funding because as much as government funding is amazing, they don't like to pay for overhead expenses. And so, we need that cushion of just kind of unrestricted funds to pay for our space that nobody's sitting in right now and all of the things that are unrestricted costs. And then additionally with the tech sector, one of my mandates for CalTestbed is that I build a national network that will help bring in these next level partners. And so, I hold an annual symposium. My symposium's going to be December 1st and 2nd. We're going to have panels with the entrepreneurs on the panels where they can do a three-minute pitch and then talk about, have a moderated discussion about the challenges they face, the specific sector they're in. I think this year we're going to have two energy storage panels. One that's going to be focused on the entrepreneurial journey and what challenges they face and what they could use from the support community. And then another one is going to be on renewable generation. And then we're going to have two panels of next level partners. So, I'm looking for utility officials like folks who could be good pilot and demonstration partners. I'm also going to be reaching out to folks in the ports because the ports are actually really great pilot partners for these clean energy innovations. And then the other next level partnership panel, I'm inviting the chief commercialization officer from the U.S. Department of Energy, and I'm inviting some big investors to talk about what they look for when they're trying to support clean energy companies. Like seeing it from the entrepreneurs eyes first and then seeing it from the folks who are kind of picking and choosing who they're going to fund. So, the symposium is like the first half of December 1st and 2nd so that people on the East Coast can participate as well. Great. With that said, given the timing, I think we should move into your up close and personal with some students in the class. So, thanks for an inspiring talk. And thanks to the audience for excellent questions. Thank you all so much for coming and for your interest. I appreciate it.