 You can sit with the Encore team. All right, good morning, everybody. And welcome to REV 2022. My name is Chad Ferrell, and I'm with Encore Renewable Energy. I'm also here representing the board of directors for Renewable Energy Vermont, and of the honor of serving as this year's conference co-chair, along with my friend Jen Green from the Burlington Electric Department, whom you will all hear from momentarily. On behalf of REV, thank you all for attending what we believe will be a fantastic conference, from energy policy to regulations, from finance to energy storage, from diversifying our workforce to new and evolving technologies, such as EVs, green hydrogen, and advanced wood heating. We've got something here for everyone. Can't wait to get started. And of course, a hearty thank you to all of our sponsors for making this year's event possible. And what a time to be gathering in person for the first time since 2019, and in the wake of finally getting the largest climate bill ever in the United States signed into law. Legislation that finally puts the United States back on the playing field to address the ever-increasing climate crisis, while at the same time providing an avenue for the creation of millions of new jobs and a more just and equitable energy economy. Simply stated, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 is the most significant federal climate bill to be signed into law since many of us entered this business. With the market signals to support the continued growth of our sector, essentially, until we solve the climate crisis. At the same time, our industry, similar to many others, has been exposed to challenging macroeconomic conditions, largely due to the black swan event that is and was COVID. We are currently weathering surging inflation with steel, copper, and polysilicon costs still well above pre-pandemic levels. We are navigating rapidly escalating interest rates to levels not seen in nearly two decades. And we are also reacting to equipment delays and transportation challenges due to COVID shutdowns overseas and a shortage of transportation professionals here in the United States. Yet, still, even with all of these challenges, the predictable fixed costs associated with renewable energy generation is still a very attractive hedge against other forms of more traditional forms of energy generation. Just look at the recent natural gas prices on the wholesale rates in New England. And for an example, right here from home throughout 2022, Vermont's Standard Offer Solar Program provided electricity for Vermonters at rates well below the costs of electricity from natural gas. The same is predicted to be true for 2023 and beyond. So while the environmental benefits are unquestioned, it's these economic advantages of renewables that are now driving the significant uptick and interest for customers from the residential to the utility scale. So the bottom line is we've got a lot of work ahead of us. And since we are all trying to acclimate ourselves to in-person conference events and perhaps shaking off some of that rust to get ready for an engaging couple of days together, we'd like to start the conference off with a bit of an interactive ice-breaking exercise. You'll see on the tables before you different colored sticky notes. We'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on the green colored sticky note regarding what is making you, what is creating hope and excitement regarding where we are at this point in our march toward addressing the climate crisis, both here in Vermont and beyond. And then on the other red colored sticky note, we'd like to have you write down one thing that is giving you the greatest amount of anxiety as to where we sit in this current place. So after this morning's keynote address, we will place all of these comments on large boards near the registration table for everyone to read during the conference. So as we move forward with an exciting two days together, please check out these boards to read what your peers and colleagues are thinking and continue to add your hopes and concerns about our renewable energy future. We look forward to incorporating these thoughts into discussions in the legislature with our regulatory community and amongst ourselves so we can collectively work to decarbonize our economy as effectively and as efficiently and as immediately as possible. So thanks for your engagement there. And before the gears get spinning too quickly in your minds, I also wanted to acknowledge a new and exciting element of the REV conference this year. If you look around now and during the conference, you should notice a large number of students from area high schools, colleges, and graduate degree programs at this year's conference. We invite you all to mingle and network and learn from one another. I know that members of this community always benefit from speaking with the younger folks among us, the folks that'll be living on this planet long after many of us are gone. And hopefully the younger folks among us can learn more about this exciting, dynamic, and fast-paced industry as we're going to need all the help we can get to finally bend back the curve on carbon and realize all of this economic opportunity. So with that acknowledgement and with all these young folks in attendance, I would also like to reflect on the fact that much of the heavy lifting around getting Vermont's own Global Warming Solutions Act passed into law in 2020, and ultimately getting this huge federal climate bill passed into law this summer in Washington was done by the younger generations among us with groups such as the Sunrise Movement, 350.org, Sustain US, leading the way at the national level, and the Vermont Youth Lobby, leading the way here locally at home. So it's great to see so many students here. This is all about your future, and the IRA is your bill. Thank you all for speaking up, getting engaged, and joining in the effort to combat the worst effects of climate change and climate injustice. In order to recognize the importance of the continued engagement from our younger generations, I now have the privilege of introducing you all to Lily Terry of Norwich, Vermont. Lily is a junior at the Hanover High School, come on up, Lily, and a fellow member of the Vermont Climate Council, representing young Vermonters. Lily's going to share with us a few words from her generation's perspective as we look around not only the greatest challenge of many of our lifetimes, but also the greatest opportunity. Lily Terry. Thank you so much for this opportunity. Living in a state like Vermont, it would make sense that climate change and its consequences would be talked about from an early age, but I only really became aware of the severity of these issues in seventh grade, when our teacher gave us a presentation on ocean pollution. The fact that by 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish was front and center. This idea seemed crazy to me at the time. How is it possible that this was true and yet companies were still producing so much trash? Everyone in the room while we were listening to this presentation was still using plastic bags and drinking out of plastic water bottles, even the teacher who was giving us the presentation. After this, I became determined that I would become one of the people who would implement change, even if the others around me didn't always support me or understand the impact that we can have. Since I've moved to Vermont in 2006, I've witnessed so many changes to the local climate, from increases in droughts to reduction in the annual snowfall. Some of these changes have had direct impacts on me and my community, as each year our local wells continue to run dry more and more frequently. And this is nothing compared to the issues faced by other parts of the country and the world. I've never heard the statistics, but have they really stopped to consider the actual effects of these numbers? What impact does a two degree increase in temperature really have? It looks like an increase in the number of ticks leading to an increase in the amount of cases of Lyme disease in this country. It looks like a decrease in Vermont industries, such as apples and maple syrup production. And it looks like more frequent cases of extreme weather events. My generation is growing up in a critical period. We've been able to witness some of these changes in real time. Watch the things predicted by scientists play out. Watch all of this happening while many others join us in feeling powerless. Aspectators to the disaster. We need to act now. We cannot spend the next five or 10 years just planning our mitigation strategies, running tests and collecting data. These things are important, but so is action. Each day we get closer to irreversible destruction. Each day a new species goes extinct. The sea levels rise a little bit. The snow coverage decreases. We need to find a way to stop this, to increase awareness about these issues, to decrease the amount of pollutants pumped into the atmosphere each day. We need to create sustainable alternatives to everyday processes and products, to increase accountability for the 100 corporations responsible for the bulk of fossil fuel emissions. My generation is ready to implement change. But in order to do this, we need support and we need people to be willing to change. Youth voices have been shown to make a difference, but in order to do this, somebody has to listen. These destructive systems have been ingrained in our society, but at this point, we can't take our time implementing change. We need to stop discussing these issues and instead implement political reforms to curb emissions. Thank you. All right, thank you very much, Lily. And at this moment, I've been asked to a little public service announcement to all the young folks, all the students in the room and at the conference. We'd like to do a photograph at 11.45, so if folks could go into the main lobby area near the registration table. I think we'll do a photograph, maybe going down the stairs down to the main lobby. So just before lunch, if we could gather all the students at 11.45, that'd be terrific. And now we're gonna continue with the program and it's my honor to introduce you all to the speaker of the Vermont House of Representatives, Jill Kowinski. Good morning. I am so thrilled to have the opportunity to join you here. And Lily, I look forward to working with you at the State House in January. It's so exciting to be here in person and kick off the 2022 REV annual conference and to see such a great diverse group of individuals here to discuss our clean energy future. Every year this conference brings together great organizations in Vermont with the opportunity to hear from experts on how we continue to think about the future of our state while leading the way by creating resilient green communities. It is critical that we remain focused on mitigating the impacts of climate change in our wonderful state, is we know that our economy from maple syrup to skiing to our best fall foliage are all climate dependent. We also know that storms like hurricane Irene will be more prevalent. Vermont needs to make smart investments in order to build stronger, more resilient communities. As I travel around the state and talk with Vermonters about what issues they care about, I hear the need for more affordable housing and childcare, more work on climate change and concerns about the state of our democracy. I believe that our work on climate change is at the core of all we do. It's part of our work in the energy committee, the ag committee, the human services committee, the transportation committee and so on. Our work on climate change is just so critical for our future. All of us here know the impacts will only worsen if we can't all work together and make the necessary changes to preserve our state, our country and our world as a whole from this incredible crisis. What's become obvious is that the climate crisis takes an incredible effort and buy-in from all Vermonters. We need fresh ideas and a willingness to sacrifice some of the things we have grown used to while pivoting to more environmentally friendly practices. I have heard from some Vermonters that say the task seems too daunting and question whether it's too late to make changes to save our planet. And while it's difficult, I believe that Vermont has the opportunity to show real impactful change is possible here. Over the last two years, the legislature made historic investments in climate change mitigation programs and resources to help our cities and towns from Brattleboro to Burlington with the tools they need to support their communities. Our investments in weatherization to lower and moderate income families. Our investments in flood mitigation and resilience funds for Vermonters to access electrical upgrades and energy saving technology like heat pumps. And the largest investment in our electrical vehicle infrastructure and public transportation will only move us forward. But I know, and you know, there is much more that needs to be done. We've worked hard to bring policies before the legislative body that we know will make real great change and support our climate efforts to reduce our carbon footprint and meet our climate change goals. However, it is not easy as having a majority of members in each chamber. And we have seen the power of the governor's veto that stalls us from enacting meaningful policy to address the climate issues before us. We are working hard to reelect strong climate change majorities that will help us. So I'm gonna just go off script here for a second because I'm out there on the campaign trail. We're getting close to election day. And I just think it's really important to realize that we all have to work together to ensure that we pass policies that don't get vetoed. I wanna work together with the governor to get things done. But that takes all of us really putting forward the effort. And I hope that we have a partner in this upcoming administration. Legislating with the threat of a veto, even when we come to a consensus agreement with the administration is not how we should be supporting for moners. But I know that we can work together. And while there are many policies that need to be examined, I believe it is very important that we start the conversation about our renewable energy standard. It is imperative that there are multiple pathways for renewable energy to come alive and that we have the ability to add as much additional green infrastructure as possible. It is time for these conversations and we must move forward and we must do it together. We must act quickly to mitigate further negative impacts of climate change on our state. But we can't go through this process without hearing from all of our communities. I believe that our state not only wholeheartedly believes in climate change but we have passionate for moners ready to take up the important work to get this done. We can enact the necessary policies to protect our great state for generations to come and use this opportunity as a time to lift up communities in need that have been historically not included in this conversation. And the one thing I find so inspiring is the voices in action of young Vermonters in their work to change the trajectory in which we are headed and the push for a greener future. We have no time to waste and moving to a greener, more renewable Vermont future and I know with your help, we can make it happen. Our future will be more equitable for those that come and live in our state and we will work with all voices to provide hope for our climate future. Again, it has been wonderful to speak with all of you here today to kick off the 2022 Rev Conference and I look forward to continuing to work with all of you and I thank you for all you do to make Vermont a better place to live and to visit. Thank you. Be well and stay safe. So thank you very much, Speaker Kowinsky. Those were encouraging and inspiring words. And so with the final introductory speaker this morning, I have the honor of introducing you all to Michael Pizzafari of Hydro-Cobbeck who's gonna share a few words on the importance of the regional cooperation. Important precision. I'm from the Quebec government, not from Hydro-Cobbeck but we are proud to sponsor a partner with our friends at Hydro-Cobbeck who are an essential partner to Quebec's own decarbonization efforts and I have to say it's really a pleasure to be with you all here today. Unfortunately, many of you know Marie-Claude Francair could not be with us. Her father is pretty sick and she's in Quebec City and I know that she is particularly sad and to miss this conference. It is however for me so good to be back in Vermont. So much of what I know about energy I learned in this room and I joined the Quebec government I think about six years ago and in that time I've never missed a REV conference because it is truly a fantastic event. And well, everyone I think enjoys visiting Vermont in October. We also come for the insightful conversations, the in-depth research and the innovative companies that call the Green Mountain State home. I really commend the REV team, the board, the staff, especially Kit wherever she is probably running the show back somewhere for once again organizing a fantastic conference. This room truly reflects Vermont's national and international leadership in climate action and thanks to the work of so many of you Vermont can be proud of all that it's accomplished to blaze a trail truly for ever more ambitious climate action and that's why the Quebec government is proud for the fourth year in a row to sponsor this conference. I'm confident that all of us, we may not all be leaving Burlington but all of us will leave Burlington tomorrow feeling ever more inspired and ready to tackle the biggest challenge facing our region, climate change. The next generation of climate activists as we heard from Lily don't need to be reminded of the importance like so many of us often do of climate action that is resilient, secure and inclusive. We applaud Lily's work especially in the work of so many other young people across Vermont, Quebec and around the world who push us to meet the climate crisis with the urgency that it demands. As you know of course that plane might be flying to Quebec right now. We have more American neighbors in Quebec than Canadian ones. We share border with New York, New Hampshire, Maine and of course Vermont. So when Quebec thinks about climate change we immediately think regionally. We share the same waters from Lake Champlain, Lake Manfremagog and the same air and we also increasingly share the same electricity. While the threats from climate change have grown we are fortunate that we now have the technologies at hand to tackle this climate crisis but only if we do it together. The Northeast with programs like Reggie has drastically reduced emissions from the power sector and resulted in huge investments that make this one of the most energy efficient regions in the world and there's a lot that Quebec could learn from what New England does in that space. Moreover the Eastern seaboard itself is on the cusp of an energy revolution. The offshore wind potential of this region, 20,000 megawatts by some estimates is tremendous and this is without mentioning, I'm sitting with the folks from Encore, the incredible growth of smaller scale renewables especially right here in Vermont which is leading the country in so many ways but as New England transitions away from fossil fuels for electricity use we are simultaneously decarbonizing our most polluting sectors including transportation and buildings and most cases we're electrifying them. That means that overall electricity use here in New England is going to grow and to meet this demand and to decarbonize in the way that we must, this is not a question of either or. It's a question of both and. New England's strength is in energy efficiency, wind, solar, offshore wind soon and Quebec strength is hydro but for our respective strengths to benefit everyone our transmission system needs to grow and we need our markets and our policies to communicate more effectively. We must also rethink how we tackle large scale energy projects. Some of you may have heard of the Champlain Hudson Power Express Project which will soon provide 1,250 megawatts of clean renewable electricity directly to New York City. This transmission line was developed in partnership with the Mohawk Council of Kanawage. The Quebec portion of the line will be jointly owned by Hydro-Quebec and by Kanawage on their traditional lands. This is really a joint partnership and a true co-ownership that is groundbreaking in so many ways and perhaps offers a path forward for all of us. A few months ago, Grand Chief Skydeer of Kanawage shared her excitement about this project with Jonathan Raab, who many of you may know. She said, this partnership is changing the narrative because indigenous people are a partner in this project and we are business partners. She says that this project shows what can happen when relationships are built on respect and communication with one another. Hydro-Quebec's own CEO, Sophie Beauchieu, shared with Jonathan how this partnership has changed Hydro-Quebec's own approach to project development and allowed the company to truly understand the indigenous perspective. Sophie Beauchieu and Grand Chief Skydeer are both also the first women in their respective roles and they are history makers in more ways than one. On that topic and in closing, we look forward to joining the exceptional women of Vermont tomorrow for the Women in Energy Lunch, which is a part of this event that our office actually helped to launch about four years ago and I know that Mary Claude is particularly disappointed to miss that. I think she was the first speaker four years ago when that event took off. This region truly of the world has everything it needs to meet the challenges of climate change. We have the resources, the talent, the leadership and the communities to meet this moment. Some of Quebec's leading innovators and change makers are participating in the conversations over the next few days. You will hear from François Lemprand, a globally recognized leader on transport electrification during today's plenary session. Patrick Gervais from Lion Electric will also be there and we'll discuss how we can electrify our school buses, delivery trucks and so much more. For those of you and many of you, for many of you this room, this might be the case, interested in transportation of the more fun variety. I really encourage you to say hello to Isabel Serres in the front here from Tiger Motors, the maker of electric snowmobiles and jet skis. And if you take away one thing from everything that I've just said, one fun fact, the first ever electric snowmobile sold in the United States was a Tiger electric snowmobile and it was sold to a Vermonter right here. I do wanna sincerely thank each of you for the work that you do and the openness that you have to working with Quebec. Vermont and Vermonters of every stripe, so many of you in this room, are beyond welcoming to your Quebecois neighbors and we are incredibly grateful for that. Merci beaucoup. Right, great, well thank you very much, Michael. That was fantastic. We're gonna move into our keynote address this morning and I'd like to invite Jen Green from the Burlington Electric Department and Alicia Barton. Jen's gonna say a few words and then Alicia's gonna join the fireside chat portion of this morning's presentation. So Jen. Yeah, I get the fun job, I think. I get the fun job, because I get to introduce the keynote. But first let me just say, I'm really excited about this conference. Chad, it's been such a pleasure working with you and the REV team is amazing. I think it's gonna be a great couple days together. I think we're all feeling really energized by being in this space together. So as Chad mentioned, I'm Jen Green. I'm the director of sustainability. I'm housed at the Burlington Electric Department where I support our team in the transition away from fossil fuels in the built environment and ground transportation sectors. So before we begin, I need to thank Greenbacker Renewable Energy Company for their sponsorship of the keynote event. I don't know if they're anybody. If anybody is here from Greenbacker, but we'd love to just recognize you. Yeah, thank you so much for your support. We know that Greenbacker Renewable Energy Company is an infrastructure company that acquires, owns, and operates income producing renewable energy and other energy related businesses, including solar and wind farms. Greenbacker Renewable Energy also provides asset management services to other renewable energy investment vehicles through its wholly owned subsidiary Greenbacker Capital Management. So thank you again. We appreciate your support and sponsorship. So before I introduce Alicia, I just wanna tell you about our program and what we have sort of on the docket. So you'll see on the table white cards different from the pink or the red and the green that Chad mentioned. The white cards are for your questions. So Alicia will share her expertise, insight, and thoughts with us for about 20 minutes with the PowerPoint. We invite you to write your questions down on those cards. Rev team, board members, and others will pick up those cards and then we'll move over to the chairs where we use those to facilitate our Q&A. So thanks in advance for thinking about your questions and capturing them on those cards. Now I get the real fun part of introducing Alicia Barton. Alicia has dedicated her career to fighting climate change and advancing clean energy solutions and brings extensive energy leadership experience to her role as CEO of First Light Power. Alicia has held many high-level public service roles, most recently serving as the president and the CEO of the New York Energy Research and Development Authority, NYSERDA, and previously as CEO of the Mass Clean Energy Center, Mass CEC, where she helped both New York and Massachusetts advance and implement nation-leading clean energy strategies. Alicia served as the co-chair of the Energy and Clean Tech Practice at Foley-Hogue LLP and is a chief operating officer with the Global Business Unit at Sun Edison where Alicia oversaw teams building utility-scale wind and solar projects. Alicia serves on the board of directors of several prominent climate-focused organizations and private companies, including as chair of the board of Green Town Labs, the largest climate tech startup in North America, incubator startup. So I know, Alicia, in your free time, you also hike cross-country ski and paddle and enjoy introducing your son to the outside world. And we know another trivia question to go along with mics regarding the electric... Snowmobile, thanks. I'm going snowblows, electric snowmobile. You are an Ohio State Buccaneers fan, Buckeyes fan. Yeah, Buckeyes. Thanks, Alicia. We're really happy that you're here. Well, good morning, everyone. Jen, thank you for that very, very generous introduction. And it's just honestly a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me to be here. Congratulations to Chad and Kit and everyone who helped organize this conference. What a fantastic room. It's amazing to see so many people here really dialed into such an important set of conversations about how to advance Vermont and how to advance the region. I have to say, I'm already a little intimidated to follow the speakers that already came. Lily, Speaker Krowalski and Michael, that was fantastic and inspirational, frankly, about the work that you're doing here in Vermont. And hopefully part of what I can do is maybe in complimenting the discussion about the regional collaboration with our friends and neighbors in Quebec to talk a bit about the New England and New York region as a whole and kind of put the work to advance Vermont into some of that context. And I'm sorry, I'm looking for the, oh, here it is. Okay, so just give me a second, hopefully. There we go. So that's me, I'm Alicia and really thrilled to be here. I wanted to just start maybe before I dive in to some thoughts about how we approach that regional set of opportunities and challenges, just give you a little bit of background on our company. And I know it's like super far in the back. So I promise there are not a lot of words in this PowerPoint, it's mostly pictures. But just to start by framing that, for my company that I'm honored to lead, our mission is to accelerate the decarbonization of the electric grid and to create a grid that's clean, affordable, reliable and equitable. So we are very much aligned with the perspective of states in the region on doing that work. We are also, I think aligned with REV and the advocacy that you've been doing to advance Vermont to 100% renewable energy system, including with significant participation by in-state resources, which I wanna strongly applaud as a focus. And saying all of this is quite easy, but all of you in the audience that are here today are doing the work and know that it can be quite hard to actually take the concrete steps forward that get us to these really important goals. Just a snapshot of our portfolio and the perspective that we bring. We are actually the largest operator today of renewable energy and storage assets in New England. So our portfolio is 1,400 megawatts of solar batteries, hydro and pumped hydro. We don't have any assets in Vermont and I'm not even sure if you can see the state lines on the slide. It looks a little faint from where I'm standing, but essentially we are spread out all over Massachusetts, Connecticut and have assets in Pennsylvania. We would love to be part of growing local solutions in Vermont in the years ahead, leveraging our footprint, which is already quite large today and hopefully strikes you as interesting in the fact that we do have quite a number of different technologies in our portfolio. Again, a large base of installed hydro, the largest pumped hydro asset in the region, Northfield Mountain, which is a nearly 1,200 megawatt battery and the largest energy storage asset in New England, as well as solar and batteries. And we are actively developing a significant additional pipeline of solar and batteries, trying to bring additional clean energy solutions at that portfolio level to the New England states. We also recently had an exciting investment in offshore wind to add to that portfolio. We participated as the largest owner of the project that's being led by Envenergy to secure a lease and advance a project in the New York Byte that would secure, that would serve New York, excuse me, and New Jersey. And I think hopefully all of this provides just a little bit of context around the fact that there are a lot of things that we are going to have to do to put together the pieces that allow us to actually get to that fully decarbonized grid. It's not gonna be one solution, there isn't a silver bullet. And the progress at times is hard. So I think there's, to start with the good news and maybe to inspire some of the things you all are thinking about on your green sticky notes, the region has made very significant steps forward. So there are a number of states that have adopted 100% clean electricity targets. And I would particularly, with some pride of participation, shout out the work that has been done in recent years in New York to advance a extremely large pipeline of renewable energy projects. So earlier this year, NYSERDA announced, and I have to admit, even having worked on it myself, caught me off guard that they have already put under contract, and sorry about the noise, hopefully you could hear, but hopefully hear that in that announcement, they made clear that they've already contracted 14.5 gigawatts of new renewable energy. So that's land-based wind, solar, and offshore wind in combination. It really struck me when I read that because it's such a big number and I pulled out my phone that day and maybe like some of you I check pretty frequently the ISO to go app on my phone and look at what the market's doing and what our grid mix is. That day, peak load was forecast at 14.5 gigawatts for all of New England on that same day that NYSERDA made that announcement just to put it in context. We kicked off that contracting in 2017 and this was an announcement made I think May or June 2022. So within five years, we actually were able to go to a truly massive supply of new renewable energy resources and New York's not done with that. And I wanna be clear, not all those projects are built. In fact, the vast majority of them have not been built yet. So there is a lot of work left to do, but I do think it provides an interesting snapshot of like harnessing a sense of urgency and a sense of mission. You can actually take big steps forward in a relatively short amount of time. On the other hand, we have seen setbacks as well. We know that individual projects, including projects that are very large and important to the future of the New England region have struggled to get over the finish line. And we are gonna have to think hard about what that means for our ability to move forward. And Chad, thank you for framing up the Inflation Reduction Act. It is such a huge new amount of wind at our backs and doing this work, admitting that, again, we really do have to roll up our sleeves. And if I have one thing to kind of offer the audience today as you go through this next couple of days of fantastic conversations and debate about how to put solutions forward, it really would be to keep in mind both that sense of urgency that's needed and that we have to harness in order to make progress, but also to think to the future. We really have several things that we've got to do at once now because of the fact that we haven't made progress as fast as we would have liked. So from where I sit, decarbonizing the electric grid is the most urgent priority. And of course, we need to focus on electrification and demand reduction and decarbonizing heavy industry and lots and lots of hard things. But a lot of that does ride on a backbone of a clean, affordable, reliable electric grid. And so if we can provide solutions to get to that, we will really leverage our impact across the broader economy-wide necessity of reducing carbon emissions. And unfortunately, again, we don't have a lot of time in doing that. A lot of goals, including I think the ones that Rev is advocating for really on a 2030 timeline. And for those of us that have been in this business for a while, like I have, looking back eight years, it really does go by fast. And we are going to have to rapidly accelerate our actual on-the-ground pace of progress. And I think the challenge that it would put to all of us is how do we do multiple things at once because we've run out of time for sequencing. So essentially we have to, yes, we have to build a lot more new renewables, new clean electrons, and that is imperative. And we are making progress there. And again, the IRA will provide some strong support. But we also do have to leverage existing infrastructure much better than we have to date. And I'll talk a little bit about that in just a moment, as well as to make sure that clean electrons are deployed in the smartest way possible, that we are trying to not only deliver electrons any time, any place, but to really channel them to the largest impact they can have on the grid. And this is particularly important now, as we've confronted as a region, some very hard questions about winter reliability, about high natural gas prices. And I really worry, the thing that I will put on my red sticky note is that we have started down a path in this region of locking in, essentially two systems. One is providing renewable energy for day to day needs. And the other is locking in fossil fuel infrastructure to provide our reliability needs. And that really is, I think, a bridge that we need to gap in order to figure out how do we maximize our investments into clean energy technologies and to clean energy projects in a way that will actually deliver all of our goals, including, again, making the grid as reliable as possible as we look to scale up electrification and become more reliant on the grid in the future. So I'm just gonna run through a couple of examples about how our company is trying to approach that particular challenge of, again, getting to both clean and reliable. So the first is, I mentioned our investment in offshore wind and the fact that we own and operate the largest pumped hydro in the region, focusing on large scale combinations of renewable energy and energy storage is one of the things that I'm just incredibly passionate about and see just vast amount of untapped potential for. Our pumped hydro storage asset that I mentioned is, it's built, it's been operating for 50 years. We celebrated our 50th anniversary earlier this year. Very proud of that milestone. But we are also significantly underutilized. We operated about 25% of the total potential output of that facility each year due to participation in wholesale energy markets and how we find market opportunity. Through new structures, things like contracting, and actually the Massachusetts legislature has leaned into this a bit in the recent climate bill, we can find combinations that will allow us to leverage better our investments in offshore wind. One of the things that I am extremely worried about is seeing the first several thousand megawatts of offshore wind that will be coming into New England in the next few years. And it is almost here. The first project is under construction, which is really good news. But those contracts are actually structured so that if there is too much offshore wind, meaning if the region moves into negative pricing, that those projects need to curtail. So they will be turned off at that point and essentially wasting offshore wind that could in fact be stored by lots of forms of energy storage and delivered back to the grid at another time when it's needed. And we are already seeing, I don't know how many people pay attention to this, but with the amount of distributed solar that we have in the region today, we see a lot of negative pricing driven by solar penetration, which again is like a really interesting thing. And it's just showing up in the last couple of years. But for storage operators like ourselves, that's a great opportunity to respond to that signal that there's too much solar, store that energy and then put it back on the grid after the sun's going down. When we hit that evening peak and solar's coming off at the same time, we do actually have that duck curve thing that they talk about in California going on in New England already today. And it's going to get so much more exacerbated as we look to the future of more solar and more offshore wind. So finding public policy interventions that will allow us to harness the best attributes of renewable energy and to say offshore wind can be a backbone of our energy system and not let some of the early policy choices we've made stand in the way of that. We've got to get more mature as an industry. We've got to get more mature as solution providers and people that deliver these solutions. And this is one example. The other one is kind of along the same vein but really thinking about, again, how do you get from clean electrons anywhere anytime to really something that works for a customer or works for the grid? And I'm really, I'm talking about hopefully something a lot of you have been hearing about which is more 24 seven type approaches to delivering bundled clean energy projects. And that's something we are actively working on. I talked about our portfolio. We are trying to provide products to customers that would leverage, for example, high capacity factor existing hydro with new build solar as well as an ability to shape that product through battery storage to actually better meet the shape of demand of, for example, a utility. We're very proud that we have significant relationships with municipal utilities in the region, many of whom are contracting with ourselves and developers like all of you to secure renewable energy to help them meet their targets and deliver that power to New England homes and businesses. But thinking about how do we get from siloed procurements to bundled products is something that, again, very eager to discuss and find partners for and challenge each of us to think about as we look ahead. It is, again, really critical that we do that so that we're not minimizing the impact of the next marginal clean energy resource that comes on but instead putting those pieces of the puzzle together where you build from the ground up something that resembles more the load shape that we need. And then what you do at that point is really minimize the amount of fossil peaking and fossil generation that would be needed to provide reliability and flexibility. And that was really the last example I wanted to provide, which is a project that we had ousted recently that I'm super proud of, which is that we're retiring the sole legacy fossil asset in our operating portfolio, which is 17 megawatt kerosene fired peaker plant in Preston, Connecticut, which is an environmental justice neighborhood and planning to repower that as a battery peaking project. And this is a project that I think can be really emblematic of the transition that we need to go through in New England. But because we're working on it on the ground, I have to point out some of the things that are really standing in the way of other projects going forward along these lines. This project is not automatic. We are advancing it because we believe in this transition and we believe that models need to be proven. But the way energy markets work today, there's lots of incentive for that 17 megawatt kerosene fired peaker, which I should say rarely runs, provides very little grid value. I was looking at the numbers and I think over the last five years, we've averaged less than 24 hours in a year, so less than a day a year of total dispatch. And from one perspective, I've heard people say that's a really good thing. Our fossil peakers are not running that often. That means there's less pollution. And that is a good thing, but what is happening is we are still devoting a significant amount of our collective energy bill to keeping those resources around, even though they provide, again, some amount of reliability backup that we do need, but relatively little day-to-day energy needs or practically none, in fact. And what we're doing at the same time is something that is bad for clean energy. So first of all, we are tying up the most valuable real estate, so to speak, on the grid in terms of interconnection with these assets, which if there are not better retirement signals in the region, for us to convert those resources to new types of facilities, including potentially hybrid fossil, renewable facilities and other flexible type resources, they will continue to be there and drive renewable energy development to weaker parts of the grid, places that will be more expensive in terms of interconnection upgrades and fail to leverage the established interconnection infrastructure that we have. So that's bad for renewables. It's also really bad for people, particularly the people that live in the communities that have hosted the portfolio of fossil resources that we have in this region, that we know candidly we have to admit are poisoning the people that live around them. Air pollution is incredibly, incredibly bad for surrounding communities and those communities have obviously shouldered the burden of our energy needs as a region. And as we look forward to this remarkable moment of opportunity for reinvestment, driven by the Inflation Reduction Act, state policies and everything else, if we don't have clear signals to retire those assets, whether it's through, again, the market rules I just talked about or barriers in the interconnection process that we're trying to navigate at our site, you would think taking out a 17 megawatt resource and putting another one in would be simple, but it's not, if we don't fix those things, those communities that have shouldered that burden will miss out on the economic reinvestment that is going to happen. Those facilities, by and large, again, because they're not running often, they don't pay a lot in property taxes, they don't necessarily have a lot of employees. Some larger fossil plants certainly do, but there are thousands of megawatts across the region of these smaller facilities that are doing very little for their neighbors in those communities except pollution and the infrequent times that they do run. And so if we can figure out how to say, what if we targeted solar and battery new investment and the jobs that come along with those opportunities to these communities, that would be such a huge way to start to address our equity goals collectively in the context of our climate progress. So these are just a couple of examples that we're working on, and I'm happy to answer more questions about those, but really I wanna segue into the conversation with Jen and hear a lot of perspectives. These are not the only solutions that will be needed by any stretch, but I hope they provide at least a little bit of inspiration of trying to figure out how do we deliver, not only faster, but better tailored solutions that again, will make sure that we do get the most out of our renewable energy investments as we confront the challenges of winter reliability and fossil fuel transition in the region in the years ahead. It's incredibly important that we do that and we have to start that thinking now. We just can't do it on two tracks. Let's think about building clean while we also shore up an enhanced reliance on fossil fuel resources. We've gotta confront how to do both at the same time. So thanks for having me and Jen. I'm looking forward to hearing the questions and discussion. Alicia, the students here wanna know what ISO stands for. Thanks and sorry to have that bad habit of slipping into energy jargon. So the ISO is the independent system operator. So they are essentially the nonprofit organization that is charged with, in a simplistic way, keeping the lights on in New England. So they coordinate really the balance between supply and demand on a daily basis and set energy prices. So that's an important player in the regional considerations and essentially they set market rules that dictate the economics of lots of different clean energy resources. Importantly, and this is at the heart of a lot of regional debate, their mission really comes from federal statute from the Federal Power Act, which governs deregulated electricity markets, like the ones we have in New England, which does not consider explicitly the impacts of carbon or any environmental impacts. Their mission really, as they are convening, is to deliver reliability and low cost. And so this tension between how you deliver reliability and low cost, at the same time you deliver the climate goals of the states who make up that region that we are insisting on, is really, it's been at the heart of a lot of regional debates and part of what makes this so tricky. Yeah, thank you for that. So here's our second question. Can you talk about specific policies that would allow offshore wind to avoid curtailments and be fully utilized? Yeah, so what I was talking about is the fact that the New England states have gone about spurring the development of offshore wind through procurements, and you've probably heard about those, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island in particular, as well as New York that I referenced, is overseeing significant procurements. They'll go out and say we want 800 megawatts, we want 1600 megawatts, even 2000 megawatts at a time of offshore wind, and companies compete to provide that. In New England, the way those procurements have been structured is that what the offshore wind developer offers is all of the electricity output of their facility and the REX, the renewable energy certificates that go along with that. But the contracts again specify that because the customers, in that case the utilities, don't want to take the risk of negative pricing that if that happens, essentially if there's too much energy on the system, which would be maybe too much offshore wind, but too much other things as well, that they need to curtail that operation. It really gets to changing the procurement structure and the contract structure. We did that to a degree in New York, which I am happy with how that's gone so far. We actually moved to a very complex different type of contracting system though that does leave more risk of actual performance on the generator, which really gives those offshore wind generators an incentive again not to curtail or waste offshore wind but to pair with storage and deliver at times when the energy will be most valuable. Yeah, great, thank you. So with your experience in New York and New England, what are the top reasons clean energy development takes so much time? There's a lot of answers to that question. And I'm sure many of you in this room are living various versions of these things. It can be public policy moving slow and going through regulatory processes. It can be procurements and customers going slow. Things that are new take time to understand. But by far, I think the biggest headwind that is causing elongated timelines is permitting and in many cases, unfortunately, opposition to citing renewable energy projects. So there's a collective sense of wanting the region to move forward and then a fairly widespread sense that people want that to happen somewhere other than right where they live. And so we've just seen this time and time again, going back to the early days of offshore wind and opposition from neighbors and a butters including very powerful ones on Cape Cod to a very obviously contentious project in the region, the NECC line that faced the Spoder referendum in Maine for people not wanting to see that transmission line built in the way that it was proposed. So I don't want to pick on specific examples because it's very widespread. We see solar development moratoriums and communities in a bunch of different parts of the region including in New York and in Massachusetts. There's just, it's not always easy to do things that are new to get public acceptance and buy into the fact that we are going to have to think differently about infrastructure and how we relate to it in our region. Great, we have a lot of good questions and we're not gonna get through them all so maybe we can put them on the table and folks can gather around and you can answer what we don't get to. Because these are some heady questions. Can you speak more about the missing price signals that would force fossil fuel peak or plant retirement? Yeah, I mean what this really gets at is that in New England we have what's called a capacity market and it does something very important which is try to ensure that there's enough installed capacity of energy generating resources in the region to keep the lights on. What it doesn't do very well in my opinion is differentiate between really valuable resources and resources that are less valuable. And our portfolio is just again, I think a very specific but particularly noteworthy example where we had this 17 megawatt kerosene fire peaker which will be retired next year as I mentioned. It runs almost never. And then we also happen to own the largest energy storage asset in the region Northfield Mountain which operates daily and is a critical reliability resource for New England. So they're different sizes, vastly different sizes, 17 megawatts and 1200 megawatts but on a dollar per megawatt basis they get paid the same value for providing capacity to the region. And there's no version in which these resources are providing the same value to the region but that's the type of market that we have and so I think it has made it rational for many fossil fuel owners even for older assets that are inefficient, that may not run frequently and that may not even turn on when you try and start them candidly because they're not really getting a lot of reinvestment. They have a rational economic incentive to keep collecting that check in the capacity market. And so we've seen over the last few years capacity prices have come down and everyone was expecting through that will we see a wave of retirements? Will we start to see more of that transition happening? And what we're seeing is transition is happening in a sense that we're getting new resources coming in which is very good but we're not seeing as much as I would argue is needed leave because again it's not just about reliability which is important and that's why I think we have a responsibility as clean energy developers to think about what's the reliability benefits of our projects, how do we make those benefits the most useful towards solving reliability as possible so that we don't say but we are really worried about keeping the lights on this winter, about shortages of natural gas so let's make sure that we keep every last megawatt of install capacity that we have today in place because again we'll just force clean energy to the margins, we'll drive up costs and we won't really get to the heart of solving some of the equity issues that we really need to wrestle with. Thank you so much, it was really a pleasure to have you with us and yeah again we'll put these on the table.