 I hate to move people out of the room. It's so great to see everybody getting totally engaged. But we do want to move to our next panel. The good thing is that we do have so many people, such a rich discussion that we want to bring to you today. And so for this panel, which we have called Living Sustainably, our first presenter this afternoon is going to be Ryan Colker, who is with the National Institute of Building Sciences. And this is, again, a fascinating organization in terms of their mission and their work. It's just very cool, all the stuff that really goes into thinking about the science of buildings, the materials, the design, and everything. So, Ryan? Thanks, Carol. So I'll talk a little bit about the Institute and its activities towards the end. But I basically just wanted to talk to you today about why are we talking about buildings? And why are we talking about energy efficiency and renewables for buildings? I guess kind of the big picture that people don't often recognize is that buildings are actually responsible for 40% of the primary energy used in the United States. So that's more than both transportation and industry. And then if you look at the related carbon emissions, it's 39%, which actually equals the combined carbon emissions from Japan, France, and the United Kingdom. So it's a fairly significant amount of energy and a fairly significant amount of carbon emissions associated with buildings. One other thing that we need to think about in buildings in particular is that we spend 90% of our time indoors. It's where we live, where we work, where we play, where we get healed, where we go to school. So it's really important that we have buildings that meet our needs while being energy efficient, sustainable, and then also aspects like safety and security are certainly important as well. So when we talk about buildings, we can talk about new construction and existing buildings, both equally important. We tend to see policies primarily focused on the new building side because folks seem to think it's easier. And to some degree it is because you have a codes and standards process in place that the building itself would not even be constructed unless it meets minimum requirements through the codes and standards. But I think it's important to note though that just the fact that there are codes and standards doesn't mean that the buildings being constructed are actually meeting those codes and standards. You need to have an effective adoption and enforcement process in place to make sure that that happens. I think one other thing that we tend to forget when we talk about codes and standards for buildings is that they primarily cover the major energy using systems within buildings. And then also kind of the building envelope, which kind of holds everything together. What we don't really think about codes and standards for buildings actually impacting the plug loads, the things that you plug in while you're inside the building. And those actually tend to make up an ever-growing portion of the actual energy use that occurs within buildings. So we as a society need to come up with some sort of mechanism for dealing with those plug loads. And I think one other important thing to note is that good buildings don't need to cost more. You just need to have a smarter process for doing it. And then we also need to have some incentives and guidelines in place to actually go beyond the minimum requirements. So now if we go on to existing buildings, over 70% of the buildings that will exist in 2030 are already here today. So you won't have the type of opportunity on a broad scale that you would have with new construction. So you have to make sure that you tackle the energy use that's currently going on within existing buildings. So you need an appropriate mix of incentives and mandates to make sure that our existing buildings achieve the energy efficiency and energy conservation measures that we would like to see them have. I think one thing that we really need to recognize is that a piecemeal approach to incentives is not gonna get us there. We need to have kind of a holistic approach to how buildings are built, how they are incentivized. We can only get so far with individual pieces of equipment, achieving greater levels of efficiency. Really need to look at it as how they interact together and put an end goal out there. I think one other critical aspect of existing buildings is that you need to have an appropriate operations and management scheme in place to make sure that how the building is designed, its intent is actually achieved throughout the life of the building. Buildings built today are meant to exist 40, 50, 60 years. And if you don't take the proper steps for operations and management of that building, you're not gonna get the results that you initially intended. So one thing in particular, we've actually been heavily working on with the High Performance Building Caucus is to help federal agencies in particular develop those training skills necessary to achieve their goals, which they've been given fairly strict goals as far as energy and water conservation, but to actually be able to meet those goals, you need to have the people in place that have the skill set to actually achieve those goals. So we've been working with Representative Carnahan and Representative Biggart, particularly on HR 5112 and on the Senate side with Senator Carper and Senator Collins on S3250 to be able to provide federal agencies with the necessary training to be able to maintain the buildings that they have. One other critical area is really the need to understand what we currently have. So that requires a robust data set, programs like Energy Information Administration's CBEX and REX surveys, which actually surveyed the building stock and get a sense of how buildings are actually operating, what is their energy use, and so we basically need to know how buildings are operating now so we can set goals for the future. If we don't know what we're measuring, we can't really get to where we wanna go. And so one of the critical things about buildings is the ultimate goal, which is net zero energy. So basically what that would require is a mixture of energy efficiency and renewables to be able to achieve that goal. So we see at this point a need to increase energy efficiency of a building by about 70 to 80% and then have the remainder of the energy used required by that building put on through renewables, hopefully on the site level, but there's certainly opportunities on a community wide level or even a utility level. As I started to mention, high performance buildings means more than just energy efficiency and sustainability. You need to consider other aspects like safety, security, response to hazards. You need to be functional. You need to have consideration for the productivity that goes on within that building because if you're building a building that's highly energy efficient, but nobody wants to work there, it's not an efficient building. So you need to take into consideration things like indoor environmental quality, accessibility, aesthetics. So that's all important aspects of how buildings should be operated. I think one other important thing to recognize that sometimes people don't necessarily think about is that buildings actually form the nexus for a lot of the sectors of the economy. When you talk about transportation, transportation is built to get people between buildings and now we're even looking at them as outlets for our vehicles. A significant amount of materials go into the construction of buildings which leads to manufacturing. It supports a considerable workforce, everything from laborers to professionals like engineers and architects. And they come from small businesses and large multinational corporations. And then they depend on the financial sector to be able to have access to capital, to be able to build buildings. So that's kind of just a smattering of why we should look at buildings, why we're talking about buildings. As I mentioned before, High Performance Building Caucus is here on the House side. Representative Carnahan and Representative Bigert serve as chairs. One thing that the Caucus Coalition has organized which is made up of the private sector organizations that support the Caucus is High Performance Building Week which is actually celebrated this year, June 13th through 19th. We'll have some site visits out to the NIST Building and Fire Research Lab. We'll have several briefings here on the Hill. One on just kind of what is the concept of High Performance Buildings? What do you need to consider? One on an initiative from across the building community on what needs to happen to get to net zero energy buildings. We'll also have a reception celebrating the efforts on High Performance Buildings. And we're doing a congressional visit stay as well. If you want information on that it's www.hpbccc.org. And finally I'll give you a quick rundown of the National Institute of Building Sciences. It was actually formed in the 70s by Congress recognizing that the building community is kind of a disparate community made up of different bits and pieces that all ultimately interact and should interact. And so the institute was formed to kind of make that interaction happen and to really understand how various different building systems and components work together. And basically hopefully come up with common goals and metrics. Just to note the institute's annual meeting will occur in December as part of EcoBuild which is here in DC. You can get information on that from our website which is www.nibs.org. Thank you. And now we'd like to turn to Chelsea Jenkins who is the executive director of Virginia Clean Cities. And this will provide another perspective about things that go on in communities and there are a variety of Clean Cities coalitions around the country. We're very, very glad that Chelsea's here to talk about Virginia's. Thanks Carol. And there are about 90 Clean Cities coalitions located throughout the United States and I do wanna recognize, we have Barry Carr over here and he's the coordinator from New York so a lot of what I'm gonna talk about he's also doing in the state of New York. And I was asked to come and talk about the Clean Cities program in general today but I did provide a presentation up here that kind of goes over what's driving the market forces that are driving alternative fuels a little more of an overview of the Clean Cities program and then we have lots of really great tools including they now are on your mobile phone like all fuel station locators and light duty fuel vehicle searches and that kind of thing. So that's all in this presentation. And so today's expo is much about the solutions we have on the table to solve the energy challenge that we've faced for a very long time now and we've been talking about. But I did wanna remind everyone that the transportation sector is sucking up the majority of the petroleum that we use in the country and it's actually the only sector since 1973 that's actually increased its use of petroleum. All the other in-use sectors, industrial, commercial, residential have all shrunk their use of petroleum fuel in the last 60 years. And second, we use 25% of the crude oil in the world and we only have 5% of the population. So this has huge economic implications for our country including us spending over $200,000 per minute on foreign oil and on the individual household level sending about $1,800 per year to foreign markets. And as Ryan mentioned, the building sector does use the majority of the energy 40% but on the individual household level, 51% of our carbon footprint on the household level is actually due to driving our vehicles. And then another fact that I found related to the health and environmental impacts of transportation is that about 50,000 to 100,000 premature deaths occur each year related to air pollution. So we have a problem, we know it's a problem that's why we're all here today and it's really gonna take a lot of market forces, government policies and science and technological innovation to solve it. But I really feel like small choices have, or small changes have a really large impact collectively so the average person can really make small choices and that's really choosing to drive fuel and make like trip chaining and that kind of thing just do things smarter every day. And those that aren't familiar, how many have heard of the Clean Cities Program? Okay, a good amount, there's still some that haven't. The Clean Cities Program is actually dedicated to advancing all of these decisions for fleets and for the individual consumer and to help them be smarter with their transportation choices. It's been around for 15 years actually, it's a Department of Energy program and it's actually the only deployment program within the federal government focused on deploying lower carbon fuels and making more energy efficient transportation choices. The program doesn't pick winners or losers, we have fuel and technology neutrality so we're able to really support local decisions and work with a fleet or a consumer to decide what makes the most sense for them depending on what their economic situation is or where they are in the country. The technology portfolio really covers the gamut in terms of alternative fuels and advanced technology vehicles and energy efficiency measures and in order to help certain markets achieve market penetration with these lower carbon domestic energy sources, we really partner with any type of organization to bring a particular all fuel program to fruition. As I mentioned, there's about 90 of us scattered throughout the country, we cover, the boundaries cover over 80% of the population so no matter where you are in the country, you can most likely find a clean cities coalition to work with. In terms of top accomplishments, the coalitions have displaced over two and a half billion gallons of gasoline since 1993 and that's essentially equivalent of removing over 500,000 cars from the road or almost 300 million tons of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. And coalitions have been directly responsible for the deployment of over 70% of the alternative fuel vehicles that are on the road today and the more than 6,000 alternative refueling stations in the US. And there's about just around 700,000 AFEs on the road and coalitions have been responsible for putting most of those on the road either through funding or technical assistance. And we have a great national parks program, a lot, we've been responsible for a lot of the efforts going on in the national parks, as we know, air quality is very important to them. And inducing behavior change, education and outreach is critically important so a lot of coalitions spend a lot of time on education and outreach. And in 2008, we reached over 113 million people through over 1,300 different types of outreach activities throughout the country. And so that's kind of a background of the program. And a lot of folks ask me, well, what do you actually do day to day? What is your job entail? So a typical day for a coordinator might consist of hosting a media event or a grant opening after we've worked with a fuel retailer to put in biodiesel or ethanol. We might facilitate a meeting, for example, with all the stakeholders involved in getting regions ready for electric vehicles. We might write a proposal for a fleet that wants to do a CNG waste hauler project. But most of our time is really relationship building and networking, bringing the right people to the table to have the whole package to overcome the chicken and the egg barrier that everyone talks about with all fuels. And so our coalition, Virginia Clean Cities, happens to be a 501C3 not-for-profit, but not all of the coalitions are nonprofits. They're all housed sometimes in energy offices or councils of governments. We have six full-time employees scattered throughout three offices in the state, one's at James Madison University, one's in Virginia Beach and one's in Richmond. And that's six full-time employees that work all day, every day, dedicated to decreasing our dependence on foreign oil and displacing petroleum in Virginia. Some examples of what we've been up to are we are managing the Southeast Propane Autogas Development Program. And this is one of the Recovery Act projects. Some of you might know that there was $300 million through the Recovery Act for Clean Cities pilot programs. And so 25 different projects were funded up to $15 million with 50% matching funds to do basically any type of alt fuel advanced technology, vehicle deployment or infrastructure development. And our program covers nine southeastern states from essentially Maryland and D.C., all the way down to Florida and over to Mississippi, and we're gonna convert 1,200 vehicles to run on propane, auto gas. We'll put in at least 17 propane refueling stations in the first two years and then move to increase in public availability. And we're expecting to retain 600 jobs just through this one program. Couple other programs I'll mention is we're working with the Virginia Port Authority on a green operators program to green the dryage trucks. They're very dirty. They usually get the last round of life and the trucks out there. And so we're trying to hit a 20% penetration of replacing them to meet 2007 air quality standards. And we're on target to do that by next year. We're also facilitating the Virginia Get Ready initiative which is basically focused on getting Virginia ready for electric vehicles, and which some of them do out this fall actually, the Volt and Think, which Barry talked about earlier, some of those others. So that's a little bit about what we're doing. And just in closing, I wanted to mention that there's, does anyone know how many registered cars there are in the U.S. today? Just light duty cars? No, there's 250 million, over 250 million registered light duty cars. And so there's only 700,000 alternative fuel vehicles and that includes light, medium and heavy duty. So that's a quarter of 1% of the population of just the light duty cars. So it's a very small percentage and we've been working for over 15 years on this. We've made a lot of progress but there's still a lot more to do. And I would say that the best place to start is to get in touch with your local clean cities coalition because they're really where the rubber meets the road. And I just wanna thank Carol for having us. I don't see Karen here, our third panelist. So what I'd like to do is to go ahead and open it up for your questions. So if anyone has questions, we'll take those. Go ahead. Yes, I have a question for all of you in the first one. There are a lot of buildings, students, 70% of people only have 2,000. So we're talking about the elimination of the studies in terms of, say, you know, for example, in the solar, the current month, or whatever it means to go to student energy efficiencies in the buildings. Where do you wanna move with that? They just can't stop. Good on them. Like if you talk about the government, government users are years and year funds and years of revenue. So what are you gonna do with that? What are you thinking about? What are you thinking about the team, the city, the jet, and the buildings? Yeah, I mean, that's certainly one of the concerns. You know, one of the aspects of high performance is recognizing the historic applicability of buildings and making sure that, you know, you maintain that as part of the performance of the building. It's certainly something that you should expect out of historic buildings. I think there are, you know, certainly a lot of things, as I mentioned, efficiency is something that generally doesn't have to impact any of the aesthetics of the building. So, of course, you wanna initially at least work as hard as you can to increase the efficiency of the building. And then you can look into things like renewables. You know, if you have a flat roof on a historic building, you know, solar can work without anybody even knowing it's there. And then that's also when you get into this community approach to renewables rather than a site by site approach. So if, you know, at the building next door, if they have a, you know, a parking lot structure, you know, you can put a solar system on the roof of the parking lot structure without really affecting, you know, the aesthetics of the particular building, or you can do wind turbines or, you know, whatever you would like to do, but you certainly need to consider the aesthetics and historic. There is, you said, not many units of cars should be allowed in the West. Registered. Children should be allowed in the West. You have that position to be on the way around how many food transportations does the unit have to avoid that. I mean, if you look at Europe, the United Kingdom, both of, I have been both talking about the United Kingdom, but all the way down the line. This one block of sanitation, you would be in constant. So the question should be yours, right? And the reason why we have 250 museums, I couldn't have a car if I had, I would have food transportations system. That's really important. I completely agree with you. I mean, obviously it's best to not use a gallon of petroleum, so walking and biking and then stepping up to carpooling and using public transit, and we promote all of those means. And I agree, I take the train up here from Virginia Beach, but if I want to go to the Western part of the state, so those are some of the things that we are working on in our individual states. I might also mention that this year, well, we'll see whether or not Congress really gets to it, but another major authorization bill that is under consideration is the Transportation Authorization Bill, and obviously looking at everything that needs to go into that, in terms of kind of creating both a climate lens for that, as well as a much more efficient and how we bring in renewables into that is a critical piece. And so there's a lot of interest up here with regard to looking at doing much more on transit in terms of both light rail as well as intercity high speed rail, as well as improved bus systems. And so I think it's really, really critical that people make sure that policy makers are aware of how important this is to their constituents, their communities, the kinds of things that can be done, and as we also look at technologies that we, and I know that earlier this year we had done a forum really looking at transit systems and the advantages that investment in public transportation had with regard to economic development and jobs. And once again, you have these incredible supply chains across the country with regard to thinking of components that go into buses, into rail cars, et cetera. So it really is, your point is very, very important and I think that a lot of us think that we need to be doing a lot more on that. So. There are a couple programs within Department of Energy that actually tie the transportation and buildings together fairly well. There are livable communities initiatives where you plan out where the transportation nodes will be, where the buildings will be, what types of buildings should be there, and those kinds of things. So there really is starting to be some effort as far as understanding kind of the big picture of how transportation and buildings interact. Right, to make them very friendly for walking, biking, et cetera. Okay, over here. That's another quick question. What we generally do is, because it is such an infant industry and we have so much work to do, we will work with individual fleets and we will look at their duty cycles and what they do. And we will determine what their duty cycle is and what their duty cycle is. And I think that's one of the things that we need to be doing. And I think that's one of the things that we need to be doing. And we will determine what options they have. Whether that's replacing a big SUV with a smaller car or a sedan, if they can do that and accomplish the same job, or if they have diesel vehicles that can use biodiesel, they're legacy vehicles, or if they have flexfield vehicles that can use E85. So we really look at the comprehensive picture and figure out what works for them. And even if something works, they might not be able to afford it. So they want to do natural gas, but it's a $40,000 premium on a waste hauler and it's a $500,000 station. And so then we look for funding opportunities to offset that cost or tax incentives or what have you. So it's not just as simple as saying, yeah, that's cleaner, so you have to do that because each fleet and consumer has different driving cycles and different duty cycles. And so it's really important to look at what they do day to day and figure out the most efficient and cleanest way to do that with what we have available. Back here. There's probably a question from Chelsea. I think, student, I think medicine's room are more probably guilty of being stuck in DC while trying to advocate these changes for the entire country. So I was wondering what type of public reaction would you usually meet on these events where you're advocating decreases of petroleum from the American cities and get the world over? In general, the public doesn't really know about a lot of the alternatives and they're really excited about them. But part of the problem is, one, we don't want to get out of our cars and we don't want a carpool in general. And two, we don't have access to the fuel. So what we do is try and make the business case for a retailer to put in an alternative fuel so that it can be accessed by the public, but they have to be able to make money. There has to be a business case. And so what's really tough right now is we can't find, sometimes we can't, but we can't find enough fleet vehicles and consumer vehicles in one market for that retailer to make the plunge to invest in a biodiesel or ethanol plant or CNG station. But the public is all over it. There's a Honda GX, that's CNG fuel that I drove for a couple of years and I got around with two stations and all of Hampton Roads and that was really behavior change. The first month really stunk. And I ran out of fuel one time and got towed. Barry knows all about that. But if you give them the option and they have the fuel, then they're good. Is it a chain of the X integration? Yes, and it has been for a long time and we've been successful with some of the larger fleets that have a lot of throughput. But what's been really great about Recovery Act that I mentioned, the $300 million, is that gives us enough money to overcome that. So our Propane Autogast program, we have 16 fleets and that provides funding for the station, for the vehicle conversion, for everything they need to do so that they're willing to say, okay, I'll convert 300 vehicles in my fleet to use this, and that's substantial. That's a lot of petroleum reduction. And I think your point, once people start doing it, you get one fleet, it's a lot easier to get other people in an area as you start to aggregate those markets. There's a question back here. Zero net energy buildings. Particularly if we leave the numbers that were an extra 4% or whatever, you can build a zero net energy building and I presume that for most of the existing stock you can retrofit to get close to anything. Although that's a little bit more problematic. Is the problem with green building codes and so on the problem with getting their primary, the main constraint, something about the ignorance of city councils who approve these things or is it the construction industry that doesn't want to change or is it the ignorance of building owners or managers that maybe this wouldn't be such a good idea to developers oppose it? What is the main constraint or what are the main constraints to it? Or all of the above. Yeah, it's generally all of the above. I think from my perspective, I would say the largest issue is actually getting folks to recognize the difference between first costs and life cycle costs. That over the life of a building, it may cost a little bit more to do some of these designs or put in some of these technologies or those kinds of things, but you're not spending money on energy costs. You're reducing operations and maintenance. One thing that's heavily overlooked is actually the productivity of the people in the buildings. There's a statistic, something like the value of the work that gets done in the building far outweighs any investment you put in the building itself. So if you have happy people, your building is more productive and so you either save costs or increase the productivity of your people resulting in more benefits. So. But one point there, Ryan, that I just wanted to add is that what we've also found that in addition to improved productivity, and I would also say improved public health actually, that we also have the other side which is when a building is, for example, is retrofitted and made much more efficient, it's also really important to make sure that people understand how to best use the building and because human behavior, how we behave in a building really does make a difference. And so that's another very important component of how we do things. And that's true with a lot of things but certainly in terms of making buildings work properly. Yeah, we, I'm sorry. We actually, we tend to think of operations and maintenance staff as the people that can keep the building operating the way it should be, but it's really occupants as well. I've heard crazy stories about at night, buildings have attempted to set back their thermostats, but some ingenuity of persons hooked up a hairdryer next to the thermostat to blow all night. So, you know, so it would be cool enough in the morning when people got there. And so you need to have people that are in the buildings on board as well. Okay, we will have to go quickly. Okay, back here first. Quickly. And let's do one, Mr. Paul. Yes. All right. So, I just said, I think with your word, if you said that moldless is zero, is net zero in buildings. So what are the positive buildings? I mean, in kind of suite of technologies, why not just, you know, go all out and have actually buildings and get back to the grid? I mean, to some extent, you know, that could get over the problem of the capital and obviously can't do too many renovations. We can't, like, get the window on it, but the rest of the buildings around it are giving back. Just seems like that should be the ultimate goal. And it really is. But I think if we look at kind of, you know, buildings as an aggregate, like you said, you know, some are gonna have the opportunity to be producers, some are gonna have to, you know, take electricity off of the grid. So ultimately, yeah, net positive, but you also need to have buildings to have that energy go to. So, but it could go into transportation, so. Which many of them will if we do this right. Okay, there were a couple other hands. Okay, here, we'll take two more. Okay, and quickly. Okay. What's the difference between the three building council and the two building systems? Is it related to the one-story and the two building systems? So, do those two work together or is it very different or is it quite different? We work significantly with US Green Building Council, you know, a lot of the code groups, International Code Council, NFPA, IAPMO. We basically are a step back from the LEED program. It's basically the things that underlie, you know, how the LEED program is developed, you know, what are the various different technologies and practices that should be, you know, included in green building rating systems or in codes and standards. So it's certainly the activities that we're engaged and feed into programs like LEED and codes and standards, but not necessarily kind of directly. Question here? Welcome to the Armandale Baptist community and making sure that there are equitable divisions of where the improvements can be. Also, there are probably areas of synergy there with some of the communities that maybe the poorest also have the most potential for cleaner energy and commercial goods and even some environmental and toxic sites, you know, benefit from some of these. I know that the US DOE program is headquartered here in DC and they do work with EPA and some of the environmental justice programs. And like I said, the program's decentralized, so it really depends on the coalition to say how involved they are. I know we personally have worked with a few of the environmental justice groups, Southern Law Center in Virginia Blue Moon Fund, particularly on public transit, because a lot of times they live in areas with higher pollution and they're subjected to the older vehicles and there's a lot of issue. There's been some studies linking cancer to indoor equality buses and things. So we do interact with some of those groups, especially on grant programs, if a funding opportunity comes available, we'll collaborate on that. But I know we're not there, we need to do more, so we're trying to get there. Great, thank you. And at this time, we'll have to conclude this panel so that we can move to our next one, which will be on solar energy. And so we'll ask those folks to come forward and please help yourself to handouts up here and really appreciate your being here for this. And thank you to our speakers. Thank you.