 I'm Carol Werner, I'm the Executive Director for the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, and on behalf of E for the Future and EESI, we are so glad to welcome you to this briefing this afternoon to talk about energy efficiency, America's job creation powerhouse. We think that there is such an exciting story to tell here that many times many of us are really not aware of what really is involved, what is really happening. We are clearly seeing shifts in our economy and in our jobs, and this is true across the country, and we think that it's really important to take a look at what the story is, to really develop the opportunity to look at numbers but to look behind the numbers, and to look at what really is going on, what are the stories that we are seeing behind those numbers, and what does this mean across our whole country. How pervasive is this, is what we are seeing with regard to job shifting, what's happening in terms of this whole sector, is it located in just certain states, is it in certain cities, how broadly across the spectrum is it. And we are going to really take some deeper dives into those issues this afternoon. We have a wonderful panel that will lead us through that to talk about that and what we really are learning. It's a chance for us to really ask questions about what does this really mean, what do we expect, is this whole area, is this now set to grow further, are there things that are needed in order for that to further happen, and it's a chance to really ask people who are up to their eyeballs in this whole issue. So to kick off our panel this afternoon, it turns out that in terms of looking at these kinds of analyses, you've got to have somebody who's doing that first work, that research really putting together the analysis. And the work that has been done in terms of this whole study that was commissioned by E for the Future and Environmental Entrepreneurs has the lead on this is Phil Jordan, who is both the Vice President for BW Research Partnership as well as the Executive Director of the Economic Advancement Research Institute. And I think one of the things that is also important is that the analysis that he has done with regard to this study has also been done by another study that you will also hear about on this panel that was done through the National Association of State Energy Officials. But Phil has authored many reports, including things taking a look at the national solar labor market, looking at regional renewable energy and green construction analyses, as well as looking at industry clusters from healthcare to other kinds of technology. And I think one of the things that he also brings to this important work is that he previously had served as the Director of the San Diego and Imperial Region Center of Excellence, where he provided training and skill gap analysis to nine community colleges in his region. And I think as we look at this whole area that we're going to find that community colleges play an enormous role across the country with regard to thinking about jobs, job opportunities in these really important clean energy sectors that have been really coming on strong. So at this point, I want to turn to Phil to walk us through the analysis. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for having me here to talk about this important work and this important study. We are going to talk about energy efficiency jobs and how they are a job creation powerhouse. And I would like to get into a little bit of information about the training, the types of people who have these jobs and the sort of things that we can do to make sure that the businesses, one of which is represented on our panel here, can actually find the workers that they need in their local communities, because these jobs are highly local. But first, I'm going to start with everyone's favorite topic, which is methodology. I'm going to sort of give a high level, but if anybody is interested in sort of digging deep on margins of error or other sorts of statistical questions, I'm happy to do that. But I did want to just sort of note that the baseline data that's used to produce this report for E for the Future and E2 is really comprehensive. It's based on data that's collected that we produce for the U.S. Energy and Employment Report, which the genesis of which was in the Department of Energy starting in 2016. That is a very large survey, supplemental survey of about 30,000 businesses each year. We're in the fourth year of conducting that research currently. It includes more than a dozen federal data sets. The methodology and results were thoroughly reviewed by the Energy Information Administration, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, by external peer reviewers. So much so that actually the research was cited by President Obama in his article for Science Magazine in 2017. So that's to say, I'm going to talk a lot about figures and numbers, and a lot of people ask the question, how do I know that these numbers are OK? And it's not just me telling you that we did this work. It's been very thoroughly vetted by a number of federal agencies and external peer reviewers in academia and the business community. I think something that we really tried to do is to make sure that we had information that was useful so we could understand all the different energy technologies, really ranging from fossil fuel generation, extraction production, to the early stage research and development for the storage sector, to really the full value chain of energy efficiency and products that save energy, as well as some transportation work as well. And to make that really valuable, it has to be really granular. We need to differentiate between the types of jobs that are working in warehouses versus working in manufacturing facilities, versus in the field doing installation in the construction sector. It also has to really be specific by location, because so many of these jobs are highly local. And so what you'll see if you go through the report and the materials, really highly granular local data on how many jobs are and what those jobs are doing. So those are sort of the keys to the methodology here. Just a few key findings that I'll run through with you. First of all, two and a quarter million energy efficiency jobs across the United States, that's really big. It's larger than any of the quote unquote clean energy sector. So it's significantly bigger than the solar sector. Significantly bigger than wind. Actually significantly bigger than all renewables combined. So energy efficiency is a lot of jobs. And not surprisingly, a huge number of these jobs are found in the construction sector. So we're gonna hear from an employer today on the panel who's gonna talk more about what those types of jobs are in the construction sector. But for those of you who I think all of you in this room probably have highly local interests, construction jobs do tend to be highly local. They do tend to be highly accessible jobs. And so what we're really talking about are a lot of local, non outsourceable, non-automatable jobs that have good steady, long career pathways. And we'll get into that I think a little bit later in the panel. HVAC is a big segment of energy efficiency works as the largest of all the segments, so HVAC and Building Envelope are two really big elements. And then as I mentioned, significant jobs in all 50 states. When we look at the various value change segments, I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on this slide, but you can see that we do look all across manufacturing and wholesale trade and distribution. Also professional and business services. So these are things like architects and engineers who are designing, for example, lead certified buildings or other types of building products. Also includes many of the early stage research and development companies as well. A few more highlights that we thought were sort of important. Almost every county in the US we found energy efficiency jobs. So 99.7% of US counties have energy efficiency workers in them. As I mentioned, these are highly local. And that translates to 3,000, so there's only seven counties in the US that don't have any energy efficiency workers. I can't tell you which ones they are off the top of my head. But if you give me a little while I could. There are a few areas that we really also wanted to look into for geographic understanding, and we found 300,000 Americans living in rural areas working in energy efficiency. So this was, we thought something that was really important because we wanted to say, is this something that really only focuses around cities or only around the suburbs, and what we found is actually a good distribution across rural America as well as in the metropolitan areas. Energy efficiency workers are about a third, a little more than a third of all US energy workers if you combine all the different categories. And these are largely small businesses, right? So a lot of small businesses. So we talk a lot about energy efficiency, but what you see is almost half of energy efficiency companies in the United States have five or fewer employees, right? So this work that's being done is really driving small businesses and small business growth. And we see 9% growth in jobs. So that's, I mean, job growth has been quite good over the last couple of years, but 9% is really, is what we would sort of refer to as gazelle-type growth. It's a very, very rapid growth. And for an industry of this size, that's really something. Employers are optimistic. So the percentages that you see here are not, you know, economist projections. Like I look at a bunch of data and tell you what I think is going to happen. This is based on what employers reported. They expected to happen over a 12-month period. So rather than thinking of it as, you know, a guaranteed number that somebody's taking their reputation on, what it's really to look at is optimism, right? And so if you see those numbers start to tank, then you start saying, oh, employers are getting a little bit concerned. Or if you see them really, really big, then you say, boy, they really expect some things to happen in the future. So, you know, there's good news in the optimism there. You know, briefly, we do look at some larger occupational categories. And really the takeaway here is that there are jobs for all different types of workers. And, you know, this is not just for the construction trade jobs. There's also many other jobs in sales. There are jobs in administrative positions, management, and other professional positions. So lots of different opportunities that exist from an occupational perspective. And then we look at demographics as well. And these are, we look at a variety of measures here for different race and ethnicity and gender categories. We use the same categories as the Census Bureau. So, you know, a lot of times people ask, oh, you know, how do these numbers add up? This is the way that the U.S. government does it, so we follow suit. And there's been a lot in the news there. You know, some takeaways here. I mean, obviously, still a highly male-dominated workforce. Not surprising given the number of jobs in construction, which is historically a male-dominated industry. But also, I think the research suggests there's a lot of opportunity there. The other area that I would just sort of point out is being particularly underrepresented in the data, where there's a lot of work that we've done is for Black or African American workers. Not as represented as they are in the overall economy. And again, something for us to think about. So again, as we think about the various people working in the sector, these are just some things that we like to track over time to see if there are any changes. One thing that we know for sure in looking at Generation Z, which by the way, millennials, maybe some millennials in the room it looks like, millennials are sort of becoming old news for employers. Everyone's looking at Gen Z now, right? These are the 22 and under crowd. And they are very different. Gen Z is very different than millennials. And there's two sort of key characteristics that we see in the research. One is that it is the most diverse generation in American history, right? So if the industries are not attracting a diverse workforce, they're going to struggle to find talent because it is just a much more diverse generation. And also, something that really matters to this generation more so than millennials is that the work that's provided is interesting. So the millennial generation is known for wanting to have sort of that work for a company that provides a great social impact or something like that, whereas Gen Z really wants to know that the work that they're doing is interesting. And so this is based on some other survey work that we've done. So just some interesting factors important to track demographics so that we know that we're matching supply and demand. And then finally, I'll just say that the takeaway, right, for me, when people say what's the big finding here, right? More energy efficiency work means more construction jobs. That is the primary beneficiary of the industry. That is the, this is a deployment driven industry. So most of the jobs are actually working with, installing, creating, and actually directly installing or maintaining or repairing these positions. And this number, we track this intensity of how much time they spend. The industry, the construction industry is actually spending more and more time every year working with energy efficiency products. So what that means is that we see these changes happening. We see lots of sort of general job growth. We see lots of growth in the construction sector generally. We're seeing even faster growth in energy efficiency jobs within construction. And we see an even greater share of the work being done in the construction sector with energy efficiency. And I think if you talk to these employers and we did, they will tell you they are having a desperately hard time finding talent. There is an enormous opportunity for people who are looking for work to do construction work connected to energy efficiency, and I think we'll hear more about that going forward. So that is all the remarks that I have, and I'm happy to answer any questions you have at the end. That's okay, Pat. You can come right up. Okay, thanks so much, Phil. And it's really, really interesting and fascinating to hear sort of some of the things that you have found there. And I really look forward to having a discussion in terms of thinking about this, also this kind of gap in terms of what you were indicating was that, while there's been terrific growth, there is the opportunity for a ton more growth if there was more capacity or more people in the workforce. So that will be something great for us to talk about further. So now, to really start to get behind this, what is that? What is the story behind energy efficiency? And to put a face on this whole thing, we're going to turn to Pat Stanton, who is the Director of Policy for E for the Future. And of course, E for the Future is sponsoring, co-sponsoring with us in terms of this important briefing. And Pat has been laboring in the vineyards of this whole area for many years and is well recognized nationally for all of her work in regulatory policy analysis and advocacy related to efficiency, to renewables, and the whole range of demand resources. She is leading the faces of EE Campaign and prior to her work at E for the Future, she was the policy advocacy lead for CSG and also led a consulting service for clean energy markets participants. And back before that, and I think that this also is an important piece of the important contribution that Pat brings, is that she had also been the Deputy Commissioner for the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources and had also been involved in working on waste prevention as well as on water supply issues. So she's always looked at things in a very holistic way. And in terms of sort of bringing these things together and always looking to get behind, to tell that story that is behind the numbers. Pat? Thank you so much. So, Phil, I hope convinced you that the numbers are sound, that there, we've been doing this research over and over and we've got good sound numbers. But this is complicated. This is, it's a diverse workforce and it's hard to explain. It's many of the people in the workforce don't even identify themselves as being energy efficiency workers. They identify themselves as working for corning making insulation. I work in a factory. They don't consider themselves an energy efficiency worker. So one of the things we've been looking to do is really try and develop engaging and accessible materials that can help tell the story. And as my head of communications always tells me, there's nothing like looking at a face of another person to engage people. So we've developed the faces of EE campaign and we hope you will be seeing it around. The other thing is infographics and we certainly worked very hard with Phil's team to have good infographics this year. And we feel that we've distilled down what was in the previous year, a pretty long, pretty wordy report into something that is really engaging and accessible. That's what we've really tried to do. We'd love your feedback. We'd always want to make it more accessible. And so the entire report summarizing many of the things that Phil mentioned is only four pages long. Lots of, you know, lots of graphics, lots of, so you can really get the basics in a quick package. The best news though for being here in Congress is that there's a four page sheet for each state. And I'm just going to go through that quickly to give you an idea of what kind of information is available for your state. And so as an example, we have Ohio and we have, for these state sheets, we've compressed some of the pie pieces, we've merged some of the pie pieces to try and make things, again, simpler, more engaged, more accessible. I just want to be very clear that it's all the same numbers. It's just instead of six or eight pie pieces, it's just the four to try and really get to the essence and be able to communicate clearly. And then we also have pulled out some top talking points that we think you might find really interesting. Certainly the construction jobs and depending on what state you're in, 20% of all construction jobs have the construction worker spending more than 50% of their time on energy efficiency. That's a lot of jobs in Ohio. And it's a big piece of the energy sector. It's a quarter of the energy sector of all the jobs in Ohio. And also the average number of veterans in the workforce, the average percent of veterans in the workforce is 6%. And here we have 10% of all of the workers holding jobs in energy efficiency in Ohio are veterans. So it's a field that is open and welcoming to our veterans. Phil already mentioned really small businesses. We're not talking small business as defined by federal law. We're talking five people, six to 10 to 20 people, really small, very local businesses, really great opportunities for people to start their own businesses. And we've connected on the state sheet with one of our faces to the E so that you can connect with our materials and understand that these are real people. Also for each state we have the state upper house and the state lower house with all of the numbers of jobs in those districts. Back I almost forgot, we also have all of the congressional districts. So the numbers of jobs in your congressional district, you can just look them up right there. And we have these heat maps. Now this is based on the number of energy efficiency workers per thousand workers. And it's not, you know, 17 per thousand. It's still pretty small. But what's really interesting is it's not all in one place. It's really spread out throughout the state. There are some places sort of in the northwest of Ohio where we have some manufacturing. John Manville has... Pardon? No, it's John Manville has some insulation manufacturing. So, and we have faces VE in every state. We collected representatives from the workforce and gotten their images and a little bit of their story. We've created it in a social media way. And we are happy to work with folks to advertise events or whatever. We also have collateral handout materials that show the range of the workforce in each state. And these are the numbers. Right now we still have Nebraska. We do have one in Nebraska. It took us a while. We're looking... We're going to be doing a major photo shoot in a couple of weeks in Illinois. And we're hoping to pick up some more faces out in the west. We have on our website. You can download all of these materials for your state. So please feel free to come and get those materials. And what we wanted to do is create engaging, interesting materials that would generate questions so that you would come back to us and ask questions and we can dig in. And we have already on a couple of occasions said, wow, why is there that dark spot on the map in Michigan's upper peninsula and we've gone back to BW's team and we've been able to get the answer to that kind of question. So we want to be a resource with our partner, our E2 partner to answer those kind of more detailed questions. So we've prepared materials that are not in great detail but hopefully are engaging and will generate questions and we've provided all contact information so that you can reach us. It's always important to put things in context and to figure out sort of once you take the data, where does it go? And so now to tell a little bit more of that story, we're going to turn to David Terry, who is the Executive Director for the National Association of State Energy Officials, or as we all say, NACIO. And David and I have known each other ever since he first went to NACIO back in 1996 and he has worked in a variety of capacities and has been leading NACIO for many years and in terms of thinking about the whole role of NACIO, all of the issues that state energy officials and that those offices cover across the country is really a pretty remarkable breadth of issues that those offices must deal with everything from energy assurance to thinking about jobs, how to fill gaps, what's the situation with regard to energy supply, who really exists in different fields. And there are, NACIO's membership does therefore involve 50, 60 and territory energy offices and David works with all of those with regard to looking at all sorts of national energy issues, communicating on behalf of that whole diverse group to the federal government, to Congress, and to DOE and other agencies covering electricity, policy, energy efficiency, market transformation, renewable energy, commercialization and deployment, all sorts of efficiency issues across the sectors, whether it's residential, commercial, industrial, transportation, as well as, like I mentioned, energy assurance and reliability. And so David has been working with these issues with so many different players for so many years and furthermore, NACIO was involved also working with Phil in terms of a report that was released back in May that is very complementary to this E for the Future in E2 report. And that report, which I said was released in May, looks across the overall energy sector and once again provides us some important context. David. Thanks Carol and thanks for being here today. I'm going to, there was a good segue, I think, at the beginning of your remarks of, so we have the data and we have the analysis, what do we do with it? And I think just a couple of, maybe opening comments. First of all, just the work that Carol and EESI do to inform the state energy directors around the country. As she mentioned, we represent all 56 governors, energy directors and there are some 3,000 odd staff, professional staff in different offices, covering every energy sector from oil, natural gas, electricity, a lot of efficiency, renewables, et cetera. And it's been invaluable and as has the partnership we have with BW Research on the jobs data, as Pat Stanton can attest, being a former state official, the state's lobbed some pretty tough questions that Phil and his team on jobs and came away with the sense that, wow, these are really accurate solid numbers. They have stood the test of time with our members, so just to kind of reiterate that. And also with E for the Future and the analytical work they've done with this, when Pat brought some of the state level information to our board, which includes 20 states from around the country, literally they lit up. This is the kind of analytical work they need and information they need about jobs in every sector, but particularly the efficiency sector, and this is just of huge value. And I'd like to just spend a few minutes talking a little bit about why the data matters from a state perspective, why it should matter to all of you here in an environment where we have 3.8% unemployment and a little bit about how states are using it and how they're making the data really come to life, and then a few additional thoughts that maybe are a little bit more forward looking. But starting with the why, you know, not every community has full employment, obviously, but I think the bigger issue is really twofold. One, many, many people, as you know, are underemployed and need to acquire additional skills and move up the skills ladder. Two, we have so many companies that are in need of employees in the energy space, especially, and in the efficiency space, especially, that don't have enough skilled workers. It's an economic development limiting factor for states, so this is huge, hugely important. As an example of that, in the energy savings performance contracting area, which is sort of for public sector buildings, efficiency retrofits, it's about a five or six billion dollar a year industry at the state and local level. The industry thinks it should be triple that. There are two big limiting factors. One are time available to state and local officials to make it happen from a policy perspective, but it's not money. It's workforce, the lack of workforce. So taking this data, particularly in the efficiency sector, across whether it's trade jobs, apprenticeships, community college, engineering skills in every way, the states, through their governor's priorities, through federal funds, through state appropriations, through especially public-private partnerships, they need to know where to target those dollars. What are the priority industries? Where are we employing the most people? What's the biggest value add? So without the jobs data that come from these types of studies, especially in the efficiency space, there's not a good way to allocate those funds in a fully informed manner. So really, in the last few years with this data, it's the first time we've had that. So I think that's a great driver. The other one that's a little bit longer term is the energy markets are in a huge transformational period. We have really a transformation in the electric sector and the natural gas sector, how energy is used in buildings, efficiency technologies, all of these coming together and they require new workforce skills. And again, I think the great thing about the efficiency jobs and the message that we've gotten from the data and research that the states are using, it's at every level of education from PhDs to the important trade positions and many of the construction jobs, they all matter. So it also really informs the states about how they go forward. And when they're looking further ahead, the other thing, our energy directors are engaged in a state energy planning. So they work with their governors. 42 of the states carry out energy policy plans for their governors. So new governors elected, this is a big election coming up. We'll have probably 20 new governors give or take. The energy directors will be tasked with doing new energy policies for the states that partly reflect the governor's priorities certainly, but also the stakeholders, the communities that are there. Having the jobs data behind that to help determine what's a priority, what's the value of efficiency jobs, what's the value of other jobs and energy and how should workforce development dollars be targeted. Highly relevant. It matters to the state. Governors like to get things accomplished. They like to have economic growth, obviously sustained, but also workforce wage growth, et cetera. So being able to plug this information to those plans is something that's already underway. That's what's been happening with this data. The faces of efficiency that Pat brought in helped to make that case. It's not just advocacy. It's making it real for the people that are allocating those dollars. And one other area I wanted to touch on it is quite forward-looking, I suppose, but we're really on the cusp in this country of an artificial intelligence and big data boom as well as things like autonomous vehicles. These are transforming jobs in almost every sector. We have to be thinking five, 10 years out. The jobs data we have helped to inform those decisions. Our energy director members are making those decisions now. They're thinking about the policies they put in place. What are the positive and negative impacts? What are the transitions that they have to pay attention to? And I think the beauty of efficiency jobs in particular is, as Pat pointed out, you saw in that slide in Ohio, they're spread out across the state. So there's a really robust opportunity, I think, for local officials, for state officials to put that data together and think about its impact in what it means. Lastly, I'd just like to give you a little sample from New York about how they're using this jobs data. And I could point to many other states, California, Iowa, Florida, other states, they're using this jobs data in the efficiency area. But recently, in the last couple of weeks, Governor Cuomo from Florida released his new clean energy jobs industry report, which allocates $27.5 million across a number of workforce training areas. That work was informed by this work, where they targeted those dollars in clean technology training centers, in workforce training, in public-private partnerships, et cetera. And so I think it's really a first close-up look of how the dollars get allocated and doing it in an informed way, a way that really produces results, produces, hopefully, higher wage jobs, higher skill jobs over time. And I think the beauty, again, the efficiency sector is that that's really spread across every educational level, more age groups and more parts of every state, which, for a governor, is pretty good news. I'll stop there, and happy to take questions later. Thanks. So what could be better than having somebody to talk to us this afternoon, who's actually out there doing this stuff? And so I am delighted to be able to turn to Ryan Weitzel, who is the Regional Director for FLC Energy. FLC is a home performance contractor which is working to make homes, small businesses, more efficient, comfortable, and safe. And I think it's important for us to recognize that there are all of these different factors that really come into improving the overall quality of life when we start to address energy efficiency in homes and businesses. And so FLC is working with highly qualified and trained professionals to create a really trusted brand, known for providing the very best service to homes and businesses in Maryland and Delaware. And they care deeply about making customer satisfaction their top priority so that as they go through doing very comprehensive home assessments, doing evaluations in home performance services so that they are really delivering the right goods. So Ryan, what does this mean for you? Hi, everyone. Thank you for having me here today. It's really a pleasure. Before I get started, I kind of want to talk about what energy efficiency means to me, how we operate within that realm. But I'd like to start out kind of with two questions. Can I give a show of hands by how many people actually live inside of a building? How many people work inside of a building here? Yes, so energy efficiency does actually apply to you. It's not wholly about the numbers on using less energy. It is about, I think at its core, creating better buildings that can be a more energy efficient building, that can be a more comfortable building, a healthier building. It can be a building that lasts longer. It can be weather resistant barriers, things that shed water so the building doesn't degrade every time. In my field, home performance, we do energy audits. We deal with making homes more comfortable. But I think the bigger part of that is starting to be health and safety. I would never lead in with energy efficiency and being my selling tactic for a customer in the private market. People are not interested in that. You're probably used to paying the same bill month to month, year after year that you pay and the only time you ever notice it go up is mainly if there's a cost in like your kilowatt hour. People are accustomed to those things. What they are kind of sick of, especially in existing homes, is uncomfortable properties and properties that make them take away their health. You spend about 96% of our time indoors and if you're in a house that has mold, mildew, lead, asbestos, just poor overall indoor air quality if it's uncomfortable in different rooms, those are the things that really matter to people. I think more and more, at least in the 13 years that I've been doing this, those are the things that people are starting to talk about and that is the direction where I've seen growth in this industry, at least in the private market. To speak to kind of what some of our other panelists have talked about, the growth is there. My business over the past year has swelled so much so where I can't actually get out to take care of the customers that are calling me on a daily basis. It's a lack of education in the field trying to get qualified people who are willing to work because it's a tough job. Depending upon where you're working in the country, you could be working in crawl spaces, you're always going to be working in attics. It's hot, it's wet, it's cold, it's muggy, there are bugs, it's itchy, it's terrible work in some respects. If you're in the trenches, it really is difficult and it's hard to see a light at the end of that tunnel. Where do you go from working in an attic 8, 10 hours a day? How do you build upon that? That though is the foundation to understanding how buildings work and ultimately how to make them better, how to retrofit them, how to make a better building right from the sense of new construction. Getting qualified candidates is very tough. If I could find those people who are willing to do the job or even knew that it was in existence, that knew that it was a possibility, there's plenty of people who are willing to work hard. It's just a matter of do they even understand or have any comprehension of what it is that you're doing. I could probably hire, I have eight people on staff right now, I could probably use two more people out in the field and one more person in the office. That's right now. And the ability to service more people, the ability to get more work done, to take on more calls, that leads to a business being able to grow. It's very difficult to have to push people out two months into December when they're calling you about an issue with comfort and say, hey, can you hold off until the temperature drops 20 degrees? Not what people want to hear. People want service now. They want it yesterday, in some cases. That's in the private market. I think that in the work that we do for states' weatherization assistance programs, there's also significant room for growth there. I could have a crew that just worked on weatherization assistance, or possibly two, and then two or three that work in the private market. Weatherization assistance is important as well because not only does it provide these jobs for people, but the impact that it has for those in our community who are the neediest, that's where the real benefit is for them. And that really is down to the energy savings. Weatherization assistance programs can reduce people's bills by 20, 30, 40, 50% in some cases. They do probably have the biggest impact on making homes healthier. A lot of that work is done in mobile homes that are built before 1980. Sometimes you have three or four generations of families living in these properties. This is going to be a single wide home that might be 700, 900, that's a whole wide 1,200 square feet, and you might have five, six, seven people living in those properties. They have significant issues, and it takes a lot of time and effort to kind of get them straight. But I think that those who are most underserved in our communities benefit the most through weatherization programs and through this industry as a whole. In terms of... I guess that one thing that I do, I guess, when I hit on sort of in closing is energy efficiency I think is important because it is measurable. When we go into a house and do an energy audit, I'm testing in, so I'm getting numbers from the house, how it is currently working, and then we're going to work, and then at the end of it we're testing out. The same pre-test that we ran, and we're just getting the difference. So what did we actually achieve in this house? You can measure things like our value of insulation, what you put into a wall, but it's the tools and equipment that you measure pressure and leakage with and the efficiency of systems that ultimately really derive your savings. And the ability to measure that I think is very important. There are very few things where you can make an electric bill from month to month or year to year and say, our work that cost this much actually ended up saving this much. I think that's really important and that is something that gets left in the weeds. To me, I don't care. Like I said, I just want to make them some more comfortable and energy efficient or comfortable and safe for people. But those are numbers that you can actually attest to. And this thing, I think, it's really all I have got on that. If you have more questions for me, please. If you have more questions on who performance and energy efficiency and what I do, ask me. Thank you. So thank you very much, Ryan. And our last speaker this afternoon before we open it up for our discussion with all of you is Grant Carlisle, who is the director of advocacy for environmental entrepreneurs, E2. And of course it was E2 and E for the future who have commissioned this important efficiency report. And Grant leads the federal relations and coordination of state strategy efforts with national policy for environmental entrepreneurs. And he is working to look at E2's priorities in clean energy, transportation, agriculture, and other areas that E2 is focused on at the federal level. He has been involved in environmental and technology issues for a number of years, both in private law firm as well as having also spent some time up here on the House side. Phil Grant. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me and E2 here today. We're very, very happy that we were able to work with E for the future once again and Phil and BW Research and Nasio to publish this work. I will keep my comments brief because we've had four folks come up and talk about this information and I'm sure you're anxious to get to questions. I just wanted to highlight a few of the issues in the report we found most notable. And I think that Phil and probably everybody else has covered these but we'll just hit them again real quick. This is the most detailed report ever on U.S. energy efficiency employment. That really is a profoundly important issue because this is two and a quarter million jobs spread out across the country. It's in almost every single county in the country. I'd actually like to know the counties that it's not present. I assume they're in Alaska. I'm not really sure. But they are spread out across construction, innovation, engineering and other fields. They're in almost every congressional district, certainly every state. And they have an outsize impact on employment in a lot of communities because these are well-paying jobs and generally and they're jobs that are supplement as Dave was pointing out, the income of some people. So they devote a certain percentage of their time to this. Maybe it's not the full percentage but it helps get them across the line of not being underemployed. One other thing I wanted to point out and I'm not sure if Phil did because I think I missed the beginning of this but the amount of veterans that are in this field, this is pretty true across a number of energy efficiency, solar and wind but veterans are employed in a much larger amount than they are in the national economy and other fields. Which I'm sure would be is a very important fact for your bosses as well. I know Phil covered these but again just the amount of energy yield and energy efficiency is really profound. Energy policy as I'm sure you're all aware is one area that's really intrinsically linked to policy because it is because of the amount of investment that has to be made in any field, the structure of utility markets, you really do have to have policy leading at the federal and state level. So smart tax policies that encourage energy efficiency in new homes and businesses either at the federal or state level policies that drive weatherization innovation sort of like Ryan was talking about at the Department of Energy for instance are really profoundly important and so it's pretty measurable to watch if you see a tax policy for instance that's helped energy efficiency in the past sunset or you see a program get cut or program come into use and expand within a couple of years on these jobs which is really really important because of course they're spread out across the country in large numbers. This is just an example I know Pat really went into detail on this but just looking at the state numbers for Colorado for instance we found a lot of several states like Colorado, Pennsylvania as well where you have really fast growing urban, suburban and ex-urban areas and then with a lot of new construction and then completely rural areas with probably older people like Ryan was referring to either mobile or other types of structures that are being sort of like refurbished and renovated so it really it's one of those sort of rare employment areas that applies to a lot of areas of the state not just one certain community which obviously has a really profound impact on the employment of that state and those various communities and then Virginia we're just pointing out and I know this as well the veterans numbers and the sort of people that are employed in these fields and Pennsylvania just a color map showing where they're focused again what I was sort of pointing out at the bottom right hand corner the southeast corner around Philadelphia the southwest corner around Pittsburgh you have a really high concentration of jobs but you have it spread pretty evenly throughout most of the rest of the state as well which is older homes that are being renovated that's it I told you I'd be brief so thanks to all of our panel for presenting and for talking us through both the report and kind of sort of the some of the priority issues behind it so let's open it up for your questions and if you could just wait for a microphone to come to you so that people on the livecast can also hear do we have any questions or comments for any of our panel that's doing a fellowship here and I'm looking at the pipelines that you all are telling us are empty you're not getting the workers you need I've heard this in several briefings over different manufacturers so the K-12 scenario right before community college because I heard someone say that community colleges were going to be a really important part but also the recognition that the jobs aren't even recognized as jobs and as kids start to think in their high school you know late high school and even prior to that because you want someone to say when they're a fifth grader I don't want to be an astronaut I want to be a fireman I want to do something in energy that doesn't come up very often so where is there a place that we could put effort in or it's being done can you talk to that a little bit I think I probably would like everybody to answer that question and thank you that's a really really important comment go ahead so we just completed a study of 3,000 generation Z 15 to 22 year old students and we asked them about a bunch of different industries and what they were looking for in career and sort of how they saw their life and you know really tailored to more in the high school age population and so we can get into what to do with the younger kids in the pipeline it's a little bit different strategy but there's some pretty alarming findings actually for construction of all the industries that we looked at it was by far the lowest rank sorry Ryan the lowest ranked industry of interest when we tested a lot of industries very low rank and the reasons why were largely that the work is not being presented to them is something interesting and exciting and this is an area where I think energy efficiency can actually play a strong role in driving people's interest into the sector so when you start talking about maybe leave out the rats and the and the spider and the itchy insulation but I think there are ways to talk about the energy efficiency sector and the types of careers that you can have right maybe you know you got to be honest about the entry level stuff but after you get past that what that means in the career across a lot of different opportunities from building from building envelope construction work to design to many other elements of of energy efficiency work in the broader building space and so I think that's one area where you know the faces of energy efficiency work I think is really interesting so if those were the messages being delivered to high school students I think you would find they would think those jobs are a lot more interesting than just a being electrician or a general contractor right so I think that's a really positive opportunity also both Millennials and Generation Z they report really high interest in sort of doing social good with their work and so the message again around energy efficiency I think for particularly for students who care about climate change knowing that they can have a direct impact is also very important the last thing I would talk about is you know if you look at pay and benefits which is something that you know more and more students are concerned about taking on enormous college debt and many of the jobs and the training that you get going through an apprenticeship program in the construction sector the skills perspective is absolutely the equivalent of the development if not more so than a four year degree and so and the earning potential is there so if you look at the earnings for master electrician it is pretty good across the country and you don't have to worry about the student loan debt so these are sort of more societal and social ways of thinking about what do people look for and work the last thing I'll say is that and we do a lot of work with workforce boards and colleges and state policy directors who are pushing this top down approach which is find out what employers want make that information available and then everybody will rush to those opportunities and that's just not how it works so I think we need to spend a lot more time just generally in our education workforce policy with kids finding out what's making them tick and what they want to do with their lives and then really help employers to understand actually how they need to change if they want to attract the talent at 3.8% we're still acting like it's 2010 to 2011 and everybody's begging for a job and it's just not the case anymore so you know maybe another recession will come and people will have the opportunity to find who they need but but as of now if it keeps humming the way it's humming employers need to start thinking about change it's not my area of expertise but I will take this opportunity to drop a couple of interesting facts one is that the average middle family home in the U.S. is 37 years old that means there are a lot of homes that need to be upgraded the average commercial building in the U.S. is 50 years old so there's a lot of work there was a tweet so I don't give it a ton of you know attribution but said that at the current rate of the low income work in Maryland if we continue to invest in low income weatherization in Maryland at the current rate it would take 106 years to get to all of the low income so it could be off by 20% it doesn't matter there's just an unbelievable amount of work that to be done in this area. That's a question I think and to picking up a couple of fill and pass points it's not just the job availability it's attracting people two different sectors within the efficiency space and energy space generally and it's also the skills gap so it isn't just a person it's a person with the right skills whatever that is what the state energy office has been doing for a number of years now and they've definitely stepped up and I think better targeted their work secondary education up to say sixth grade Florida is a good example they've been doing energy education kits in conjunction with their education department in local communities we have really literally dozens of other states doing similar things they have energy job fairs at like the state fair if you will talking about efficiency talking about renewables talking about variety of energy sectors and the job availability and I would also point out there are a number of competitions that go on some of those are efficiency focused some are renewable some are conventional energy but states are supporting those there's the solar decathlon some of you may be familiar with there's another one we face a similar problem in the cyber workforce area for energy specifically how do you get how do you get cyber security experts in energy when they can have any job they want probably in any really beautiful lovely place in the country alright so there's a cyber force competition that the states in the department of energy are hosting and it's to draw people into those kind of the points that fill made what's interesting about that what value and output does that have for the community people they work with their other attributes to it so I do think it's those maybe some intangibles in addition to the income levels great thanks go ahead Brian I think as far as to your question about where to start to engage the students I got involved in a vocational program when I was in high school and specifically in the construction field of that and I think that's a really good point you're working with your hands anyway you have people who are kind of engaged with the process of construction at that point and this is really just a part of that and I think if you can see it in that fashion of this is just a part of building a better home whether it's the framing to the end process of actually putting in the aesthetic finishes of a property if you can see what will become the beautiful property that you've helped to build or help to flip or whatever it is maybe it's a little bit easier for people to get past some of the the unpleasant parts of the industry I would just say I would just add on to all of the wonderful answers given here volunteer opportunities you know I did Habitat when I was younger not that everyone can go through that particular program and that certainly taught me about being under houses and doing energy efficiency and the snakes and the bugs and everything as well but there were some really important lessons and sort of I think for folks that are maybe a little bit more geared towards working with their hands it's an important lesson like oh hey there's this skill set that I've just unlocked that isn't like playing a video game or whatever kids are doing these days you know and here's something that I think that I can have sort of a purpose in and I'd also just say teachers need to talk to their lawmakers local state and federal about ensuring that this is in policies that are passed that you're educating in ways to talk to kids to teach them about these opportunities that community there's community college outreach with schools that there's resources available to have those sort of connections that are made thank you great other questions so along the same lines of the pipeline question in your opinion are there being discussions had in the energy efficiency space around registered apprenticeships you know using the avenues that we do have with DOL and Department of Ed to make sure that these pipelines are robust and that they are matching the growth I'm happy to take a little bit of that I will say that a number of our members are very engaged with their state labor departments and through DOL so they're doing it through that avenue and that kind of coordination the apprenticeship area is one that is a particular interest I think we see whether it's the HVAC space or electricians etc I won't say it's uniform in every state it depends a little bit on the market but the short answer is yes and I think there's more of that can be done that's the space that my sense is it is more about policy and education and working with the private sector than it is about more money but not my area of expertise but that's my sense we were just, I was just interviewed actually for a piece that was done about an internship internship program in Kentucky for people who worked in the coal industry and giving an internship in the energy efficiency business and they're so I think that not only for young people entering the workforce but there are a lot of skills that have been in industries that are maybe in decline where the skills with some a little bit of assistance and a little bit of help on I think one of the things that's really challenging and this isn't again my area, these are really small businesses, you saw those they're really small businesses so it isn't as if the businesses can always step up and do all of the internships and so forth so I think community colleges and other assistants so that the small business person can get the person at the end of the internship and be able to go forward but I'd be happy to share that article with you and just briefly I think you know, first it's important to state I think that labor unions do an excellent job in preparing and training individuals already for these types of careers. The challenges that, you know, the lack of capacity often that exists and the waiting lists and other elements of actually getting into the union so there's a few things to think about there one is pre-apprenticeship that's been done really successfully at a few community colleges in San Diego County and it's I will say a somewhat rare partnership between community colleges and labor unions, they don't always get along all the time so I was very beneficial to see that. The other thing that I would mention is the Commonwealth of Massachusetts through the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center has for a number of years run a very successful internship program for clean energy businesses that are has really been geared towards college students and they are now rolling out a vocational program that will fully fund full time summer work for vocational students and students learning, sort of like an apprenticeship slash internship model but fully front funds at $16 an hour the price of the of the apprentice full time for summer. So those are some innovative ways I think of broadening the pipeline that should be looked at as models that could be adopted in other places to sort of get to that question that you have about using that apprenticeship model because I do think it's proven to work. And as you were all saying I think part of it is also making sure that we talk about this so that people can see that it really does have an impact and it's a way that you can really make a difference if you really care about social action and the kind of difference it makes for those issues and for people just like your comment with regard to thinking about habitat and how that all can make a difference and as well as that there really can be really well-paying skills that can be rewarded in terms of generating businesses and perhaps also I was thinking about terms of some of the manufacturers that are part of the supply chain for products that go into homes or businesses that perhaps more of them could be thinking about kind of training or internship programs or whatever to help encourage small business development and also don't forget too that every state and many communities have their own small business councils or small business administrations so that might be another good avenue along with community colleges to really start to do more and more outreach in this whole area. Other questions or comments? Kara? Well since we are here on Capitol Hill maybe we could hear a little bit more about incentives that could help to advance these energy efficiency programs that move things forward. Ryan you're in Maryland I know there's some robust programs there maybe you can explain how Empower or the other types of programs have helped to grow businesses. How incentives actually lead to jobs and that don't necessarily need incentives because then you keep having more jobs and growing the business. In incentive programs, rebate programs they they helped to lessen the cost burden on the homeowner. In Maryland we have some of the probably one of the best rebate programs in the country right now people can get up to 75% of a project cost reduced on making their home more energy efficient so you have an energy audit done on the home, a work scope designed. You know what the estimated savings are going to be over a 10 to 14 year period and then based upon those savings you can receive a rebate for different individual measures that could be sealing the house, replacing the HVAC system, insulating it, conditioning a crawl space and so that helps to obviously cost burden right I mean it's not financing available for these things which there aren't a lot of great financing programs for this type of work as say there are for things like kitchens or bathroom remodels. The state has a great program but aside from that there are kind of few and far between so if you don't have a lot of choices even though that the whole idea of financing something like this is that it's a project and it helps to reduce your utility bill by $50 a month and the cost to pay off that loan for a 10 year increment is $100 a month well the net is $50 on that right so it pays for itself over time but these programs they talk about swelling a business in the past this switched over in June of last year and since that time my business is probably increased in the private markets I don't know exactly but I'd say probably 30 to 40 percent I mean it's it ballooned very quickly and you can look at that on the marvel powers BG&Es and PEPCOS use of the program as well I don't have those numbers but that also helps to obviously get more people out into it more people know about it they talk to their friends oh I got this great rebate I had $15,000 worth of work done and I paid $8,500 for it that kind of stuff gets the word out there it's bad news travels much quicker than good news so you have to have really good news for it to get out there for people and all of the money actually goes to the rebates too it doesn't really go towards advertising of them just to follow up I think Brian's comments are spot on obviously the one nuance I would add is I think one thing that our members have gotten better and better at over the last decade in particular is as they look at different parts of the market in their state paying attention to those markets that a low income disadvantage obviously needing weather assistance grants and just straight up help another portion of the population that maybe can have a blended grant and loan program and Nebraska dollar and sense energy savings program which is operated through local banks and delivers very low cost efficiency loans that just a portion of the interest is subsidized by the state and it's a revolving loan program that's recycled for over 20 years hundreds of millions of dollars in efficiency loans so I think that kind of nuanced approach is important and a second piece of that is that in the electric sector with regulated investor owned utilities and the interest in efficiency is almost always the lowest cost best resource the timing of when that efficiency delivers matters so we're getting more interested and sophisticated about how those incentives are applied but there's a greater good it's not just a handout these aren't that kind of an incentive necessarily they're to make the system they're to optimize the system make it run better so I think that word incentive gets misinterpreted especially in the utility sector this is about optimizing the system we're seeing a particular savings goal for some other purpose it does a lot more than that specifically at the federal level tying into construction innovation we'd seen the 179D and 45A I believe credits for commercial buildings and residential buildings that were that sunset in the last couple of years and I haven't seen any figures on what sort of effect that's had on those markets but I can't imagine that it hasn't had some sort of effect on them because those are really large federal incentives that are driving some of this growth especially in producing more obviously renovating older commercial buildings or building new ones and then of course building new residential buildings that are a little bit more efficient also the weatherization assistance program at the department of energy oh gosh there's so many programs the energy efficient building program at the department of energy as well I honestly can't get you a long list and the energy star appliance standards which are mostly housed at the department of energy for the moment as well all of which have been slated for severe cuts if not elimination in the past few years these are all real real job growth policies and they're pretty inexpensive they're actually a very good deal for the American people go ahead Pat you wanted to say something I was just going to say that the energy burden for low income is really astounding there are places in New Orleans low income people spend more on their electric bills than they do on their rent so it really does matter and as the weatherization program comes up for re appropriations it's very important and not only that but you get to employ people in the community to do the work so hope that you'll take a hard look at that program when it comes across your desk and I would just add a piece of good news was that despite the requested cuts that congress responded and came back and funded things like energy star weatherization recognize the value of that and the state energy program to say this is really really important and we understand the difference that this makes to people at the state and local level and coupled with that to also pick up on what Ryan was saying there's also what's called the rural energy savings program through rural electric co-ops and we're doing a lot of work with those entities as well because they serve so many persistent poverty counties and that that is a way to provide because there are never enough dollars to do all of the work to meet all of the needs but that that is a way for rural electric co-ops to be able to fund retrofits for people to be able to get services to improve their homes and then pay for it on their monthly bills and end up with a positive cash flow even after paying off the payment and it can make such a big difference as we talked about in terms of the quality of life improving health as well as really reducing energy costs so are there any last questions we could take one more if there's otherwise I want to say thank you very very much to all of you for all of those good suggestions and for all of your thoughtful comments and as we look to think about how do we do a better job building efficiency across the country and really allowing it to reach its capacity that we really need to meet the needs we want to hear what those efforts should be so thank you very much for coming and thank you again for our panel