 All right, Troy, we're gonna get started. I promise we would wait to get started, but I know there's a few more people checking in, but they won't miss anything super important, just me. They won't miss any of the panelists. But I'd like to welcome everybody to our briefing today. The latest on the Clean Energy Tax Incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act. I'm Dan Bersett. I'm the president of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. We've covered the infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act in previous briefings. We did one as an installment in our climate camp briefing back on March 9th. I would encourage everyone to check that out. But there is just so much happening about a little bit more than a year removed from the Inflation Reduction Act in about two, coming up on two years from the infrastructure bill. That what we've decided to do is actually create a new series that we're calling IRA and IAJA Progress Report. And this is the first briefing of that new series and we'll be holding them in about every six months or so increments. ESI was founded on a bipartisan basis by members of Congress to provide educational resources to policymakers with a special emphasis on congressional staff. And our work started in 1984. So we've been at it for a while and in fact we'll be celebrating 40 years next year, which is pretty impressive. Now I haven't been around for a while. I am past 40, but I was not there at the beginning. We do our best to cover climate change topics from a nonpartisan perspective, from a science-based perspective. We know what it's like to be a congressional staff person. We also over time have developed some expertise with technical assistance in rural areas, helping rural electric cooperatives in particular, help make clean energy and energy efficiency more affordable. I should have said energy efficiency and clean energy, energy efficiency first. More affordable and accessible to people in their communities. We are based here in Washington and we do a lot of briefings, but we do other stuff too. We do a lot of writing, we do podcasts, we do fact sheets. In fact, we have a fact sheet coming out this week on mass timber. So if you'd like to learn more about tall building wood construction, that is a great resource for you as well. But briefings is really kind of what we do the best. It's kind of what we do the most of. We were here a couple of weeks ago online, actually, doing a briefing about rural research and development in the Farm Bill. That was our sixth Farm Bill briefing. We started that before back in sort of the June timeframe and we covered conservation and forestry and rural development and process. So I know we're not quite there yet with the Farm Bill, but I encourage anyone who wants to learn about the process to go back and check that briefing out. We had Jim Monk from CRS, who's kind of the Farm Bill guru. We also had a former chief economist on the House Republican Agriculture Committee staff as a panelist as well. So really, really great resources. We also have DOE on the panel today. We do a lot with DOE. We did DOE nuclear programs back in April with Assistant Secretary Katie Huff. We do programs on green hydrogen. We did one a couple not that long ago with the Environmental Defense Fund, Organics and Agriculture with Natural Resources Defense Council. And we've got a lot more coming up. We'll be back in two weeks. Shut down, we'll see. Maybe it'll be online. We're not there yet. About advanced weather forecasting, which is a super cool topic. And then we'll start our series briefings about the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Conference of Parties number 28, which will be happening in Dubai in November and December. That's a lot, but we tried to do our best to keep everything free and accessible on our website, which is www.esi.org. The best way to keep up with everything is our Climate Change Solutions newsletter. It comes out every two weeks. It's really great. It comes out on Tuesdays. I encourage everyone to sign up. We have an IIJA and IRA implementation tracker. So while we're talking about the tax incentives today, there's of course much, much more in the IIJA and the IRA. The tracker is a great way to keep up with that. And we also publish other resources. And we have one of our panelists today who'll be talking about direct pay or elective pay. We've actually been following a lot of work with the Department of Energy with a program called Renew America's Nonprofits. And so we've been doing a lot of resources around incentives at the IRA and the IIJA for nonprofits. And of course, direct pay is at the very top of that list. So I encourage you to check that out. Our goal is for when your boss comes to you on a Friday or a Thursday, and they're getting out of town, and they have a tough climate change question that you Google the topic, but you also Google ESI that you come to us because we've got really great resources. We're always trying to get resources out there before you even know it. So it's no fun to get a tough question from your boss and not know where to go for an answer. And that's what ESI is all about. Without much further ado, I just wanna tee up our conversation today, implementing these tax incentives for home energy efficiency and electrification, electric vehicles, sustainable fuels, clean and renewable energy, carbon capture and energy storage, plus the game-changing direct pay option will deliver multiple benefits to families and communities, including by lowering household utility bills and expediting the transition to a decarbonized clean energy economy. I don't know what we were thinking when we said, let's have a nine-panelist panel. That sounds like a great idea. Well, the thing is, is that there's a lot in the IRA when it comes to tax incentives and it's unfair to just focus on one. So what we wanted to do was bring nine experts together to give an overview of where things are with these tax incentives. Unlike normal ESI briefings where we have sort of extended presentations, we're gonna do this lightning round style. Each panelist is gonna get five-ish minutes to tell you a little bit about the basics of and the eligibility for the tax incentive, how much it's for, a status update, and then we get into Q&A. We'll talk a little bit more about what comes next. That also means that when we get to the Q&A and we'll have lots of time for Q&A today, you can ask individual questions for sure. We have questions teed up, but please feel free to direct any questions to our panelists. If you'd like to hang out a little bit afterwards, we'll be sort of asking a little bit of our panelists at that point, but there's also a networking opportunity after the briefing. These are super, I can vouch for most of them. They're super smart people. I won't tell you which ones I won't vouch for. That will come out. But these are great, great experts and I really encourage you to take advantage of this resource today and go back and watch it online, view their presentation materials, other resources that they posted online. So that brings us to our very special guest, the person who helped us get the room today as well, Senator Ron Wyden. Senator Wyden was elected to represent the great state of Oregon and the US Senate in a special election in 1996. Before that, Senator Wyden had served in the US House of Representatives since 1981. Today, he's chair of the Senate Finance Committee and a senior member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He also serves on the Senate Budget Committee and the Select Committee on Intelligence. He's a former Division I basketball player, a graduate of Stanford and the University of Oregon School of Law. And if you attended the Congressional Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Expo back in July, you might remember that he stopped by and talked a lot about these tax incentives. And that is because he has a very important role to play in the development of these tax incentives as the chief sponsor of the source material and inspiration, which was called the Clean Energy for America Act over multiple Congresses. And so it's really a pleasure to welcome him today via pre-recorded remarks by colleague Dan Oh. We'll get that started and then we'll get on with the panel. Thank you. Thank you all for the chance to say a few words today. A little over a year ago, all of us celebrated the passage of the Historic Inflation Reduction Act. The law is the single biggest investment in clean energy in our country's history. I think of five years ago, you had asked anyone in this room what the chances were of this clean energy boosting through the federal tax code getting passed into law, most people would have been doubtful. We stuck with it, we delivered. Since the IRA was passed into law, our country has seen thousands of new good paying jobs. And there's been an investment in manufacturing boom bigger than any in recent memory. But that victory doesn't just belong to me or Senate Democrats, it belongs to all of you. For me, the load star of negotiating the Historic Inflation Reduction Act is cutting carbon emissions. I've also believed that transitioning it to a clean energy future and creating good paying jobs on American soil go hand in hand. They're not mutually exclusive goals like some would have you believe. As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, I'm proud of the hard work we put in to this historic achievement. There's a lot more work ahead. With all of your help, I'm gonna keep fighting to secure a clean energy future for our country. I look forward to the continued partnership, all the best for a successful event. All right, thank you Senator Wyden and thanks to your great staff for helping us be in this room today and to convene this panel. That brings us, oops, there. That brings us to our first panelist of the day. Ben Evans is the federal legislative director of the US Green Building Council. Ben, welcome to the panel. I'm looking forward to your presentation. Thank you, Dan, and oops. And thanks to ESI for putting this on. Hopefully folks know US Green Building Council, we are the people behind LEED, which is the leading global green building certification system around the world. We also are a mission-based nonprofit. We do a lot of political advocacy and worked really hard on the incentives and programs that made it into the IRA. And so we're really excited about the implementation and working very hard to make sure they work really well. I wanna step back before I jump into the details of the incentives to talk a little bit about a statistic I heard recently which really hit home with me about why buildings and energy efficiency matter. And I actually heard this on the Ezra Klein podcast, but it's based, it comes from a study called the Green's Dilemma, which some of you may have seen, which is about how we do this build out of all the clean energy, all the permitting and the transmission and everything that needs to happen to build enough clean energy to meet the climate goals. And there's a statistic from that study, which is actually based on like a Princeton study, but anyway, it's legit, okay? It's good numbers. This is not just something Ezra Klein said on her podcast, but which is to meet the goals just from each sector and just from solar power, we need to build 800 megawatts of new solar power per week for 30 years. The largest solar facility we have right now is somewhere around five or 600. And so we're talking about like 4,000 acres of new solar per week for 30 years. And obviously that is hugely challenging. And so you get to the question of, what if we could cut that in half? What if we only needed half of that amount of energy? And what if there were like a magic solution that could make that happen? And there is, and it's energy efficiency. And it's using the energy that we have more wisely. And so, and really that starts with buildings. Buildings account for about 40% of US energy consumption. It's about a third of US greenhouse gas emissions. So we're not gonna hit our climate targets if we do not deal with the consumption side. We have to start, stop thinking of the energy policy issues as a generation, and where are we gonna find all this new power dynamic? We have to start looking at it from both sides. Like where do we find all the new power we need and how are we gonna build it? Which is a massive challenge. And we have to build all the, don't get me wrong, we have to build all the clean power. We are huge supporters of all of that. But we also have to look at the demand side and how we're using that power. And there's just an enormous amount of opportunity and potential in that space. And that's why the IEA and others have said that energy efficiency is really the cornerstone of fighting the climate crisis. It is where we begin and in some ways, where we have to end. So I think the thing about buildings that you need to know is that we don't have, you would think, well, perhaps there's all these requirements for new building construction out there that make buildings more energy efficient. Building codes are developed locally in the United States. They have local governments and states do building codes. And so we have this hodgepodge of requirements for how new construction happens. And then on the other hand, most of the energy we're consuming is in existing buildings. We're not building a ton of new buildings. We have billions of existing buildings that are gonna be in use for 50 years or 100 years. And so improving them. The first thing we have to do is stop building crappy buildings. That's really simple. Like we just have to stop because you're digging a hole. And then it is about improving the buildings that are already in the ground. And that's much more challenging, a much more challenging thing. And so the tax incentives in the IRA really address both residential and commercial buildings. And they do address new construction and as well as existing buildings retrofits. And so there's really three primary incentives. And I'll start with the first one, which is for residential, which is the 25C tax incentive for homeowners. So this is something if you all, if you own a home and even in some cases as renters, although not a lot of renters are gonna do improvements to their apartments that they don't own. But there is some of the property that you could get a tax incentive on if you're buying like a portable heat pump or something and putting in your apartment. But for the most part, this is for homeowners. And it has a maximum of, good, the slides up there. And sorry, that's a little bit of an eye chart. I think that's really more for digestion later, but it's a maximum of, so this is a tax incentive that used to be capped at $500 per lifetime, 10% of your investment. So let's say you spent $5,000 on putting insulation in your house and buying a new high-efficiency HVAC system. The max you could get was $500. And then you were done with 25C for the rest of your life. You could never file for it again, although there is some question about whether the IRS ever could track that. The changes make it 30% of investment. And it's up to $3,200 per year. And you can take it every year. So one year you could do an insulation project on your house. The next year, if you buy a heat pump and install it, you could do it. And there are lots of caps on particular projects, types of products, but it covers things like insulation, windows, duct ceiling, electrical panels, a new electrical panel if you're electrifying your house, all those sorts of things. The second one I want to talk about is 45L, which is for new home construction. So this is for new homes that we're building in the US, both single family and multifamily. This used to be a $2,000 tax credit for meeting sort of an outdated efficiency performance standard. They streamlined and simplified it with under the IRA and they made it $2,500 for meeting Energy Star. So Energy Star, you know it for consumer products. They also have a rating system for homes. $2,500 if you build an Energy Star certified home and $5,000 if you build a home that meets DOE's zero energy ready homes project. I'm sorry, certification. So, and that includes multifamily. So if you have a condo building that has 100 units, you're talking about a $500,000 tax credit. The final one is for commercial buildings, improvements to commercial buildings, both existing and new. It is one seven and D tax deduction. It's actually deduction and we wish it were a lot stronger. It's one where we wish we had gotten more gains, but it's a per square foot deduction for improvements to commercial buildings. And I think with that, I will stop there given time and turn it over. Thank you, Ben. That was great. I think your slide looks great. If anyone would like to check out Ben's slide, there are printouts. They're also available online. So if you'd like to go back to the webpage for the briefing, you can download the slides. Also, if you wanna go back and revisit Ben's presentation or any of the presentations you're about to hear, the livecast will be probably tomorrow or so. So you'll be able to do that. I wanted to also just a reminder for questions since we had a few people join us. If you're in our online audience, you can ask us a question one of two ways. You can send us an email and the email address to use is ask that's ASK at ESI.org. You can also follow us on the website formerly known as Twitter and that is at ESI online. And if we have questions in the room, I will have a microphone going around. Before I introduce Shannon, I also just wanted to mention that one of the reasons why we ended up doing this big, big panel is because there's a lot of opportunity across the entire clean energy spectrum for things to come together, right? So yes, we're starting with Ben because energy efficiency is where you wanna start, but that's not the limit, right? These are good things that go better together, right? This is bacon and eggs and toast and orange juice and grapefruit. You go on and you go on and you go on. So with that, I am going to advance, oh, someone already advanced the slide and I'm gonna introduce Shannon Baker-Branstetter. Shannon is the Senior Director, Domestic Climate and Energy Policy for the Center of American Progress. Welcome, Shannon. Thanks, Dan. Can everyone hear me okay? Okay, sounds good. So I'll turn us to transportation. As people probably know, both the infrastructure bill and IRA had quite a few different transportation investments, everything from electric school buses to advanced manufacturing, loans, grants, tax credits, critical minerals, et cetera. But I'm gonna focus just on the consumer-facing tax credits. So you may remember from pre-Ira days that there was a $7,500 tax credit for new electric vehicles and it was capped at 200,000 per manufacturer. So IRA got rid of that old system and created a new system for new vehicles called the 30D program and it's much more complicated. So this is a very simplified slide. I know it looks complicated but believe it or not, this is the simple version. So it is still $7,500 but it requires, to get that full amount, it requires both battery sourcing and critical mineral sourcing requirements. So the requirements go up over time what percentage of value of both the critical minerals, if you're getting that one, or the battery are getting, it has to be for the critical minerals extracted, processed or recycled in the U.S. or FTA partners and then for critical minerals, it's a percentage of value of the critical mineral. Again, has to be, or sorry, the battery also has to be, the components have to be sourced from the U.S. or FTA partners. So that's the total amount and then in addition, there's their limits on who is eligible for the tax credit. There are income limitations, so 300,000 for jointly filing household, 150,000 for single and then there also are limits on how expensive the vehicle can be. So that's $55,000 for a car and then for larger vehicles, bands, light trucks, it's $80,000. So it's a much more restrictive credits and then we're still awaiting the final guidance from Treasury on some of the critical mineral and battery requirements, especially the foreign entity of concern restriction which starting next year will limit any of the tax credits going if any of the battery components come from a foreign entity of concern and then the following year, if any of the critical minerals come from a foreign entity of concern. Foreign entity of concern is Russia, China, North Korea or Iran. So this mainly affects imports from China and Chinese components but Russia also provides some critical minerals that go into typical chemistries. So that's the 30D new vehicle tax credit. There also is the 45W commercial vehicle tax credit which is $7,500 for traditional vehicles and then for medium and heavy duty, it's up to $40,000. So you cannot get that and 30D and the guidance was already issued for that. So that one is already available and pretty well established as of now. And the last credit I'll talk about is the used EV tax credit and this is a brand new tax credit and this also has quite a few income restrictions up to $150,000 for income for jointly joint filers and then $75,000 for single filers. So it's a much more restrictive credit and it's for up to $4,000. It also has a pretty strict sales price limitation. The vehicle has to be sold for less than $25,000. And then the really great part about this is about to be phased in and that is a point of sale rebate that consumers can access which is of course really important for low income buyers and that guidance is also coming very soon. And so starting next year, dealers will be able to offer that at point of sale once they've registered with the IRS. So that's the overview of these three credits. Happy to answer questions as we get to the end but hope this was a helpful overview. It sure was and we appreciate, first of all, all the panelists slide discipline saying one slide is a lot. I know that, but this is a very nice slide. Again, very nice slide. We won't have a competition of who has the best slides but you know, Ben's, I'm sorry, let me just say Ben's in trouble. We got it. That brings us to our third panelist of the day that is Judy Sheehan. Judy is a assistant executive director of the US Conference of Mayors. Judy, welcome to the panel, turn it over to you. Thank you very much. And I'm gonna do the caveat that if I've listened to a lot of presentations on direct pay and if Treasury and IRS says this is not tax advice, me, Judy is not giving you tax advice, okay? So I'm just gonna give you. And my slide is probably giving you more links because direct pay is a brand new program and it's also known formally as elective pay. Now, what is that? It's a new financial mechanism that was in the IRA that provides tax exempt entities for the very first time, the ability to get tax credits. So what does that mean? Who qualifies? That states, local governments, nonprofits, divisions, Indian tribes, water districts, school districts, universities, hospitals, this is potentially a real game changer. Historically tax credits have been used to reduce the cost of new technologies, clean technologies in order to make it not so scary to invest in that. This is the first time that these credits are gonna be available to local governments and to the other tax exempt entities I just mentioned. To this day, high financing costs, they continue to be a barrier for many of these entities because they have to do the lowest cost available and it's hard to, for example, the local government's sphere try to justify the higher costs unless you can prove that in the long run it will make sense, but in this case it gives you an added incentive and it'll lower the cost for doing some of these projects. So 12 of the IRA tax credits are eligible for direct pay. You can check out the IRS website which is on here or we have a lovely publication that we published that is also available online at the Conference of Merits website. The eligible tax credits cover everything from energy generation, carbon capture, vehicles, fuels and manufacturing. I'm gonna speak on the local government behalf. We think that, for example, the investment tax credits for clean electricity as well as the credit for qualified commercial clean vehicles will be one of the things that we can use the most. The different types of projects could include the purchase of zero and low emission vehicles, certain vehicle charging and refueling stations, renewable energy generation systems and micro grids. The effective date was as of December 31st of 2022. So, but the IRS is still doing their final rules. So comments were due on August 14th. We are expecting those rules to be published and finalized hopefully the next couple of months if the government doesn't get shut down and who knows what happens. So, and then besides the base tax credits you also have an opportunity to increase the value of the tax credits by doing like paying prevailing wages, using registered apprentices, locating the project in a low income community or an energy community, as well as meeting certain domestic content requirements. We think this could make a difference anywhere from 6% to 70% reduction in the cost of a project. So that, like I said, a game changer. And as also mentioned, the IRS is finalizing some of these rules. We expect it out before the end of the year. But basically I'm gonna just, this is what we think is gonna be a process. You have to do a prefiling registration with the IRS. You have to meet and document the eligibility requirements and you have to file the appropriate forms. And as IRS has said, this is not a competitive form. If you file everything appropriately, you will get money back. So you're not spending any money, but you're gonna get money back for doing the right thing. One of the things that they've mentioned and they stressed in all of these presentations is to identify which project and the correlating 12 tax credits that you're going to be applying for, some of them are stackable. So you've all to use a couple things at the same time. And then once you complete your project and put it into service, then you have to file for a registration form and then file the tax return and wait for your money to come. That supposedly is how it's supposed to work. One of the things we're a little nervous about just because it's a brand new program and it's a brand new way of doing things and the whole trust me, I'm the federal government, I'm here to help is like, okay, can I expect if I do all these things, will I get the money back? Will I be able to do this? We are very hopeful that that is going to be the case. And so we are right down on the process of trying to educate as many people as possible that this is an opportunity that is available to them. One of the things that we are looking for is more examples from the IRS and as to how you could do this. The report that we did issue though does give three case studies of hypothetical but based on real world examples of where you could possibly employ this and what a difference it would make in your costs. AECOM did this, they were smarter than I am so I would urge you to look at that report and thank you very much. Thank you, Judy. Direct pay is amazing, make a huge difference. That brings us to Daniel Wolfe. Daniel is legislative director for the American Council on Renewable Energy. Welcome, Daniel. Thank you, hello everyone. It's great to be here. If you're not familiar, ACOR is a national nonprofit dedicated to accelerating the renewable energy transition. And like Judy, I am not a tax specialist. I'm not giving tax advice, but Congress has decided to incentivize renewable energy deployment through the US tax code. So I've had to become intimately familiar. So maybe just a brief level set, what is the ITC? So the federal investment tax credit is a credit for certain energy related properties. The amount of the credit is a certain percentage of your total cost for constructing the property. So say you have $100 million renewable energy project, you could claim up to 30% against your taxes. The PTC, the federal production tax credit is a little different. It's a tax credit based on the amount of electricity that you generate from a project. It's an awarded on a per kilowatt hour basis. Different technologies have been eligible for these different credits at different levels in different years. I think the important thing to understand is that traditionally utility scale solar has claimed the ITC and utility scale wind has claimed the PTC. Now enter the IRA. The IRA did many interesting and very important things for these credits. Standalone energy storage became eligible for the first time. Utility scale solar was given the option to claim the PTC. Hydro was stepped up to be a parody with other technologies. But I think most importantly, both these credits were extended at full levels. So 30% for the investment tax credit and 2.6 cents per kilowatt hour for the PTC. That's indexed for inflation. They were also extended for a very long duration. In their current form, they were extended until 2025. Starting in 2025, they become tech neutral. There's an error on the slide up there. I apologize that the tech neutral paradigm runs to the later of 2032 or when emissions from electricity generation in the United States is 25% or less of 2022 levels. So very important, full value, long duration, finally providing the business certainty that developers need. Very interesting things that the IRA did for the first time. Congress imposed workforce requirements on these tax credits. If you want to claim the full value, you must pay your employees constructing the project prevailing wage. And you must also have a certain percentage of total labor hours performed by qualified apprentices starting next year. That's 15% of total labor hours. If you do not satisfy both of those requirements, you're only eligible for a smaller percentage of the full value tax credit, roughly 20%, exactly 20%. The other thing that Congress did is they introduced a bunch of bonus structures. And as Judy mentioned, these are stackable. So if you use a certain amount of domestic content and that gradually scales up over time, you're eligible for an additional 10%. If you locate your project in an energy community and there's various definitions associated with that, you can either be located in a Brownfield site. You can be in a census track or a joining census track where a coal mine or a coal power plant has recently closed or you can be in a statistical area that has a high percentage of an employment from fossil fuel industries. That's a simplification, but you can get an additional 10%. And then I'll also just briefly mention the low income bonus. If you situate your project in a low income area or on tribal land, you can get an additional 10%. And if you locate it in a affordable housing project, you can get up to 20% additional. Now this program is a little different. There's actually a cap on the number of projects that can claim the low income bonus credit. DOE and Treasury will be awarding this through a competitive process. It's capped at 1.8 gigawatts for the next two years. And we actually just learned that the first round of applications for this program will be opening on October 19th. So I think I'll save the what next for later in the presentation, but I'll just close with saying that ACOR, our sector allies and our members have been working closely with Treasury, the White House and DOE to make sure all of the implementation guidance that comes out on implementing these new programs is workable and timely, and they work for the developers and financial institutions that are underwriting these projects. And with that, I'll stop that. Thank you, Daniel. What you said, I think is really important. One of the big things that IRA did was they extended these things for multiple years, and that gives a lot of certainty that promote investments. Although I think it's probably, at some point, we'll miss the retroactive extenders fights every year, right? Just like for old time's sake. Yeah, job security. Chris Blyly is our next panelist. Chris is Senior Vice President of Regulatory Affairs with Growth Energy. Chris, it's always great to see you. Take it away. Thanks, Dan. Glad to be here. I will echo my former, our previous panelists. This is not tax advice. And my slide, I will say my slide, I probably want a little more style than substance. So there's a lot in each of these tax provisions, as you've heard everybody say. So five minutes, one slot is a little tough to cover, I'll cover the waterfront. For those who don't know us, Growth Energy, we are the nation's largest association of biofuel producers, ethanol producers. We also have a strong interest in sustainable aviation fuel as a feedstock as well. And as many people have said, including the president, you can't get to net zero without biofuels. And so what the Inflation Reduction Act did in the incentives for biofuels contained therein has really accelerated our drive as an industry to get to low carbon biofuels. Today, ethanol is already nearly 50% reduction compared to gasoline. These incentives really drive continued innovation both at the plant and on the farm to get to net zero. And so I'm gonna walk through a few of these specifics, but much rather answer your questions at the end. And there are a couple of things where we overlap. So I may cede to some of my panelists down the line a little bit as well. But on the slide, you can see some of the key biofuel tax provisions, the bio-based diesel blenders credit. This is an existing credit that was extended through 2024. It is less on the ethanol side, although corn oil is an important co-product for us. So that continues to drive investment in biodiesel and renewable diesel that's blended quite a bit today, particularly in low carbon markets. 45Q, carbon capture and sequestration. It's about 25% of ethanol plants capture carbon a day. We're actually one of the pure CO2 streams because you're just taking carbon dioxide from fermentation. And so today a lot of our plants captured CO2 is used in food production, beverage carbonation, actually water improvement. But the extension and expansion of 45Q, a lot of plants are looking at direct sequestration as well as utilization. And so the amounts here, again, if you meet the prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements, it's $85 a ton or $60 a ton for utilization. And then there's five years of direct pay for 45Q. The incentive I think that probably has our industry the most excited is 45Z, the clean fuel production credit. It's 25 through 2027. It's a new credit where basically each fuel is measured on a lifecycle basis. And if it meets 50 CI points or less, it can generate a credit. And that credit is a sliding scale on how far you get below 50. So it's basically two cents for every CI point. This is for on-road fuels. So if I go to a net zero based on Argonne Greet model, most up to date, I can get a dollar credit. If I drop it 10 CI points, I get 20 cents credit. So it's short, it's three years, but investments, this is really driving a lot of investment, like I said, at the plant and on the farm. Our plants are looking at carbon sequestration. They're looking at renewable energy. They're looking at not running dryers for feed grains, which we also produce. They're looking at efficiencies at the plant. And then on the farm, this is also driving a lot of low CI practices. So things like no-till, cover crops, because a big chunk of our lifecycle emissions is actually on the ag side, the feedstock that goes into production of ethanol. The other piece to the clean fuel production credit is aviation fuel. And actually I'm gonna come back to it, but there's a standalone 40B provision for sustainable aviation fuel. That's actually in place now, but we are waiting guidance because it all comes down to modeling, and I'll come back to that. But essentially there's a base credit of $1.25 per gallon. And as you reduce carbon intensity, again, based on lifecycle modeling, you can get to $1.75 per gallon. The current model, there are two models. There's an IKO model, which is International Civil Aviation Organization. And then we are pushing for use of the Argonne Greep model. It is a similar methodology that we believe under the statute. It's really important for US model to measure US biofuels. And so we're waiting that guidance. We can talk about that on what's next. So those are the first two years for visions for sustainable aviation fuel. The next three are in the clean fuel production credit. It works similar. Again, lifecycle emissions, it's per gallon. You get additional credit as you go further and further in reductions. And so if you get to a net zero sustainable aviation fuel, you can get $1.75 per gallon. Again, there's a lot in there. There's a ton to go through. There are other sort of requirements in each of these that happy to discuss. But I think I'll stop there and we can answer questions later. Thanks. Thank you, Chris. That was great. Really appreciate it. That brings us to our next panelist, Roxanna Beck-Mohammadi. It's wonderful to see you today. Thank you for joining us and I'm looking forward to your presentation. Thank you so much, Dan. I always have to pronounce my name again. It's Roxanna Beck-Mohammadi. Apologize in advance. So thank you so much to our host here. I actually think that this diversity with respect to the panel is absolutely critical. If we truly want to change the world, if we truly want to have a transform essentially, our clean energy and transportation systems, we need to have comprehensive grand architects. All of us need to come together because actually all of our technologies overlap. And so I'm gonna get a little bit into it. First off, I am the founder and executive director of the US Hydrogen Alliance. We are a business trade association that advocates for hydrogen and fuel cells technology across the US. We actually work state by state, but we actually serve also as a conduit for state of communication basically between states and the federal government. I will tell you right now from firsthand experience. The states are not always aligned with the activities going on here, especially with this incentive. And then really mostly they're confused. They're struggling with understanding how to apply these tax incentives in their state. So certainly would love to further work with all of you to translate that information to them. I think I get an A plus for this slide. I promise you, I'm not a minimalist in any respect, but for once it's probably because I didn't make the slide. But first off, we had a beautiful gift with when we had the bipartisan infrastructure law allocate $9.5 billion to hydrogen. We haven't seen that much money in a long time. So we were super grateful, but what was this all about? Essentially $8 billion of it was supposed to go to building what we call clean hydrogen hubs. Really that's massive hydrogen ecosystems. Essentially $7 billion of it has gone to a public solicitation that has already occurred. They are being evaluated right now by the Department of Energy. We anticipate that the results should come up shortly, but again, we've got to shut down. So we'll see. Another billion dollars out of that $8 billion is actually being allocated to end uses, which is really, really critical. And then the other $1.5 billion, part of it, $1 billion of it went to R&D for such a thing as electrolyzers. You might have heard of them. How are they related? It's really a fuel cell that runs in reverse. We also have another half billion that's gone to manufacturing now. That was really fun. But then we got, oh my God, another $13 billion via the IRA. That was also really exciting. And then that direct pay business, man, that was a cherry on top. So it's a rough number. And the reason why it's a rough number, I'll get into the production tax credit with respect to us, is really because we actually are across many, many sectors. So we have fuel cell electric vehicles. They are zero emission vehicles. And so there's a lot of incentives for both light, medium, and heavy duty vehicles. That's us. We see a lot of money for ports. We provide a lot of not only power generation infrastructure, but also off-road and off-road equipment via, you know, app ports on the land or in sea applications or ocean going vessels. But, so that's kind of a rough number for us because they're bought, they're really for clean transportation applications. We do have a direct tax credit for fuel cell generators. We can provide small-scale stationary fuel cells to large-scale power producers. So there is explicit money allocated to that. But let's get to the juicy stuff. It is the hydrogen production tax credit. Highly controversial, say the very least. And we are waiting for IRS guidance on it. They're about a month late, but I used to be a former regulator, so not surprised. The maximum amount is $3 per kilogram. It's dependent on the carbon intensity of the fuel. That is a little up in the air. So again, the guidance, it's basically where we draw the lines with respect to the production. Really, any systems folks could understand that, but where do we start accounting? In the beginning and at the end, kilograms. It's equivalent to essentially a gallon of gasoline. So $3, let's say, equivalent of gasoline. I think that there's more points that I have, but I'm gonna save it for the Q&A. And that is it on my end. So thank you so much for your time and attention. We have all these panelists seeding time back to the Q&A. It's so generous. Speaking of Q&A, I'd just like to make a reminder for folks in the room, we'll have time for Q&A. We're doing great on time. And so really looking forward to that. So we'll have a microphone in the room. You can ask the question. If you're in our online audience, and I know many of you are, you can ask us questions in two ways. One is by sending us an email. And the email address to use is ask. That's ASK at ESI.org. You can also follow us on the social media platform, formerly known as Twitter, at EESI online. And you can ask us a question that way. That brings us to Alan On. Alan is Senior Resident Fellow, Climate and Energy Program at Thirdway. Welcome, Alan. Take it away. Thanks. First of all, thanks to EESI for the invitation and assembling this great panel. Again, my name is Alan On with Thirdway. Thirdway is a national think tank that designs and advocates for modern center-left ideas and policies on what the climate and energy program, our goal is to get us on the fastest and fairest path to net zero emissions by mid-century. I lead the program's nuclear energy work and activities. So with that being said, let's dive right into the credit 45 view. Section 13105 of the Inflation Reduction Act established the Zero Mission Nuclear Power Production Credit. The intent and purpose of the credit is to prevent the premature closure or shutdown of existing operating nuclear plants in this country. Since the credit is directed at existing facilities, there are a number of requirements for eligibility. The facility had to have been placed into service prior to the enactment of IRA. And the credit is for facilities that are not eligible for 45J as established under the Energy Policy Act of O5. The base credit is 0.3 cents per kilowatt hour up to a max of 1.5 cents per kilowatt hour, multiplier of five if prevailing wage requirements are met for laborers performing alterations or repairs at the facility. The credit is adjusted for inflation and the credit eventually phases down after annual average electricity prices rise above a certain milestone or threshold. So specifically $25 per megawatt hour. The credit is available at the very start of the next calendar year. So electricity generated and sold after December 31st, 2023, and then the credit expires in 2033. So that's all great, Alan. Why does this matter and why are you even here? This credit is unlike many of the other IRA incentives. It's not to encourage investment into new clean energy facilities or equipment. The aim is to preserve what we already have and what we already have in our existing nuclear fleet is our largest source. This country's largest source of carbon-free electricity. And the past has shown that when we lose nuclear plants, they are not replaced by other low-carbon clean energy sources that are predominantly displaced by fossil fuels. That increases climate emissions, non-climate emissions that affect public health, local communities. I think that fact alone is reason enough to implement this credit. Zooming out a bit, we believe that there is even more at stake, though. There is growing interest around the country in advanced reactors, small modular reactors. Thirdway has done significant energy systems modeling work, looking at different scenarios and how to get to net zero by mid-century. Even under very conservative projections, we have to see an increase in nuclear capacity in this country. At the very minimum, an increase of 20%, if not more. And every nuclear plant that we lose now profoundly affects the health of our domestic nuclear workforce, nuclear supply chain. These are the foundations upon which the next generation of nuclear will be built in this country. There are so many public benefits, public goods, that come from a robust domestic nuclear energy sector, energy reliability, resiliency, energy security, energy systems viability, national security. We are now in a competition with our geopolitical rivals for global leadership in setting international norms and standards around how nuclear energy is built and operated around the world. Our electricity markets don't take these factors into account. And that's precisely why we needed this PTC in the first place. This is why preserving the existing nuclear fleet is so vital, why this credit is so important. Before signing off, two other near-term policy priorities for our nuclear sector broadly. Fuels and licensing, number one, fuels. We currently depend on Russia for a significant portion of our nuclear fuel needs. This is an untenable situation. We have existing federal programs, legislation authorizing new programs to build nuclear fuel production capacity at home. We receive $700 million in Inflation Reduction Act for the high-assay low-enriched uranium program at DOE. We need more than that. We have to make sure that these measures are passed, implemented, and funded. Number two, licensing a lot of congressional conversation and interest on how to make the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, NRC, a more effective, efficient, versatile regulator. The ADVANCE Act, which was passed as an amendment in the Senate version of the NDAA, is a great start. We have to build on that and keep the momentum going. So I will stop there. And thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Alan. Thank you very much. Our next panelist used to work at EESI. Jesse Stolark is the executive director of the Carbon Capture Coalition. When we were talking before the panel, this might be your first appearance as an EESI alumna on an EESI panel. So this is moment. Everyone should mark this down. This will be burning up the EESI Slack channels. We're so happy to welcome you back to the briefing, Jesse. Really looking forward to your presentation. Well, thanks for welcoming me. And thanks to EESI. And just so enjoyed my time with EESI. And they just provide such wonderful, unbiased information. So really great to be back. So as Dan mentioned, I'm the executive director of the Carbon Capture Coalition. If you are unfamiliar with us, we are a nonpartisan collaboration of now more than 100 industry labor unions and nonprofits all working to enact and now implement the supportive policy ecosystem that's required to see economy-wide deployment of carbon management technologies to meet our mid-century climate goals. And I should actually have gone at the very end, but it's fitting that I'm towards the end, because no matter how much we deploy these other really necessary technologies that we've talked about today, carbon management technologies will be absolutely critical to deploy to meet our mid-century climate goals. And so when we talk about carbon management, we're talking about really a full suite of technologies to capture carbon emissions from industrial facilities, power plants, as well as directly from the air using a technology called direct air capture. And so today in the United States, we have 14 projects capturing 21.4 million metric tons of CO2 per year, which is that's a great start, but it's nowhere where we need to be. The IEA projects that we're going to be needing to capture 1.6 billion tons of CO2 globally by 2030 and then over 7 billion tons by mid-century if we're going to meet net zero and mid-century climate goals. And so I apologize in advance. The 45Q tax credit is not simple. And we have to get in a time machine and go back to 2018, actually, because the 45Q tax credit did exist before the Inflation Reduction Act, and it was actually significantly restructured in 2018. But we'll talk about what happened in the Inflation Reduction Act. And I'll just mention, thanks to that restructuring in 2018, there's been now more than 120 project announcements across the carbon management supply chain in the United States, and most, I don't think it's over half of many of those projects have been in the last year alone. So in order to elect the 45Q tax credit, what much do you do? You must capture a qualified carbon oxide from an eligible facility, which may include emissions from industrial facilities, including ethanol, steel, cement, and chemicals, power generation, as well as direct air capture facilities. You then must successfully demonstrate secure long-term geologic storage of the captured carbon through regulations that the Environmental Protection Agency oversees, or you may demonstrate that the captured carbon is reused to make valuable products, including fuels, products, chemicals, and other materials. And if you elect that, you must demonstrate that you are providing a net greenhouse gas benefit as compared to an incumbent process via lifecycle assessment. So the most recent changes to the 45Q tax credit include a significant reduction of the annual capture thresholds so that more types of facilities and projects may install the capture technology. It also extends the commenced construction window out to January 1, 2023. And then once those projects are placed in service, they can claim the tax credit for up to 12 years. Perhaps most importantly, it increases the credit levels for up to $85 a ton for those sources that capture and store the emissions from industrial power facilities through permanent geologic storage, and then up to $180 a ton for those facilities that capture them via direct air capture. And as others have mentioned, to receive the full, that $85 or $180, the full value of the tax credit, you must comply with project wage and labor requirements. And that guidance was just recently issued. And so I'll just end on this point. But recognizing the complexity and financing challenges for these projects, they're very large. They're very technologically complex. Congress did something special for 45Q, and a few of the other tax credits, which is for-profit entities may elect direct pay for the first five years of the tax credit, and then they would have to seek alternative financing mechanisms for the remainder of the tax credit. And then, of course, nonprofit entities may access the full 12 years of the tax credit. Thank you. Thank you, Jesse, that was great. And a quick reminder to anyone in our online audience just joining us, all of the slides from our panelists are available on our website, www.esa.org. We have reached our final panelist, and he's a good one. Steve Capana is with the Department of Energy, where he is the Technology Policy Director. Steve, it's great to see you. Looking forward to your presentation. Take it away. Thanks very much. I am in the Office of Policy, and in this role, I'm overseeing actually a lot of the work that we're doing coordinating with Treasury and the White House and IRS on tax credit implementation. DOE's in a role where we get to provide a lot of technical expertise, and obviously Treasury and IRS get sort of final say here, but we're really working very closely with them to make sure that they have access to the R&D experience, the commercialization experience that we have across this suite of technologies, which, as you've just heard, are really quite all-encompassing across the clean energy economy. So we have, I think, last count, something like 200 people at DOE working on at least one of these tax credits. So it really is an all-of-government approach, which I mentioned in part, because we're gonna get to what's next and what hasn't happened yet. There are still guidances that people are waiting for. Roxanne, I mentioned that one was a month late, then it's gonna be a little more than a month late, and I do wanna just put in a plug to say, it's by the end of the year, as well as we know. I didn't say at the end of the year, I said by the end of the year. What we do know is that I just wanna put in a plug for the really hard work that the people at Treasury and IRS are doing. I know that it can be frustrating to wait. I can assure you that they are working full bore and that they're turning out guidance at a pace that's really historically unprecedented, especially given the incredible breadth of the technologies covered here. So with that, I'm supposed to talk about clean energy manufacturing. One that is not on here, but which I think Judy and Dan both mentioned, is the domestic content bonus. So just as a reminder, that is a 10% bonus in addition to the 30% investment tax credit or an increase of 10% of the value of the production tax credit for facilities that source starting for most technologies at 40% for offshore wind, it's 20%, and then that ramps up of their manufactured products from domestic manufacturing and then all of their iron and steel products from the United States. So we think this is gonna have a really big driver, big motivator to onshore manufacturing. And then there are these other provisions that are really more directly impacting manufacturing, although I'll also say that one of the big drivers of domestic manufacturing is aggressive deployment, which is what it's all sort of working towards. If you think about something like a wind turbine, makes a lot of sense to build it close to where you're gonna deploy it because it's a really, really big and so really hard to move long distances. But so there are two key tax credits to talk about on manufacturing. The first is 48C, which is the Advanced Energy Project Investment Tax Credit. This is actually one of the two projects, credits that DOE is implementing on behalf of IRS and Treasury. And the other one is the 48, literally low income tax incentive. And the two things that those credits have in common is that they are capped. So this project is capped at $10 billion over the life of the tenure life of the credit. The first $4 billion of this is actually out on the street right now. We've received concept papers and then full applications and they're being assessed right now. These projects go, these credits rather, go to sort of a couple categories of things. One is for facilities that are manufacturing clean energy technologies. The second is for facilities that reduce their emissions industrial decarbonization by at least 20%. And the third is for critical minerals processing, refining and recycling. And in all cases, this is a credit that is worth 30% of the total cost of the investment. So as I said, the first $4 billion are being considered right now. 40% of the total value of this credit is also directed to go to coal communities, which is defined as communities where a coal plant or a coal mine has closed within specific timeframes in the last 10 to 20 years basically. And so of this first $4 billion, at least $1.6 billion will be going to these coal communities. We don't have any announcements yet about which projects are going to receive this, the credits, but I can say that we've gotten a lot of interest and that the demand for this is far outstripped to the supply. So we're eager to see which projects rise to the top here and then also in future rounds of the credit, which will happen in future years. The second credit here is the Advanced Manufacturing Production Tax Credit, 45X. This is a really unique credit because it's the first time anything like this has existed in the United States before. It is basically a per widget tax credit. So for as much as you manufacture, you get a specific value or a specific percentage of your costs for manufacturing that domestically. This is available to specific solar, wind, and battery storage components and then also to a suite of critical minerals. So for most of these, like I said, it's like a dollar per watt credit. So the more you manufacture again, the more you get for the critical minerals of which there are, I think, 51 listed explicitly in statute for processing. You get 10% of the value of the credit. That's also the case for offshore wind vessels and electrode active materials. I think I still have like 45 seconds. So I will just say that one other thing is that DOE on the one year anniversary of IRA, which is in the mid-August released a report sort of looking at what's changed since IRA and Bill both passed. And I just wanted to say that it's really impossible understate sort of how much the transformative effect that the suite of credits that you've heard about on this panel are gonna have. We're looking at getting to about 40% emissions reduction by 2030 relative to 2005, getting to about 80% clean electricity by 2030 and having something like 50 to 65% of new vehicle sales in 2030 come from zero emission vehicles. This is really a staggering transformation and one of the main reasons that the couple people have mentioned is just the long-term policy certainty that this provides. If you go back and look at like the chart of wind deployment historically, you can really peg it to when the wind credits were about to expire. There's like a boom and bust cycle and just having 10 years now of stable policy and direct pay for many of the newer credits, it we're really excited about what's gonna happen over the next decade. So. Thank you, Steve. There was definitely a version of this panel where everyone was just like ignoring Molly, going long, but that wasn't today. This was incredible and I know it was a lot to put on you to have us slide in five-ish minutes, but it was really great and I hope everyone sort of just takes away how much there is and how much incredible progress we are set up to make over the next couple of years. That brings us to our Q&A. I'm gonna get us started. If you're in our online audience, you can ask us a question. You can send us an email and the email address to use is askaskask.esi.org. Also follow us at ESI online on the social media platform, formally known as Twitter. But I'm gonna get us started here in the room and I'm gonna ask, Ben, we'll start with you because it's been a little while since we've heard from you. I would like you, and then we'll go through Shannon and Judy and everyone. What are one or two things that are about to happen or that you're anticipating will happen in the near term that will have an impact on deployment of these tax incentives? What should people be looking out for in the near term? Yeah, I mean, I think I may answer the question vaguely. Answer the question you want. So we are waiting for guidance for several of the incentives and in fact, the guidance on the 45L new home construction credit came out yesterday. And I know there's a lot of home builders who are really digging into that. But I think what we're really watching is more what Steve talked about and a little bit, Judy, what you said about sort of there's this apprehension but that we think it's about ready to explode. It's sort of like we're in the pre-season. Like the IRA doesn't really completely feel actionable yet in a lot of our space. It is, we know about 90% of what we need to know but that extra 10% is what's gonna get it going really. People aren't gonna start making multi-million dollar investments in buildings and things until they know exactly what they need to do and how they need to get the credit. And so what we are really excited about and really watching is once we get that guidance and the anticipation and the apprehension, like you mentioned cities, I mean, we talked to lots of public entity schools and municipalities and things who have never done this before. They've never done the direct pay stuff to put solar on their roof of their buildings. And so they don't know exactly how it's gonna work but we are really, really optimistic and I would also echo Steve saying kudos to the staff because they are getting this stuff out. I know everybody wanted it out six months ago but that's just not possible but we're really, really excited about what's coming and we think it's gonna take off. Like next year, we think it's really gonna take off. It doesn't really feel real yet but that it will very shortly. Shannon? Yeah, so the commercial vehicle tax credits are already available. Companies and people are using them. The used tax credits are available but like I mentioned, the transferability to dealers is still awaiting that so we're gonna expect more of those next year, more of those tax credits to be taken advantage of. And then on 30D, as I mentioned, the main thing that we're still waiting for is the guidance on the sourcing requirements for critical minerals and batteries and that will have a huge impact starting next year. So right now fueleconomy.gov lists all the vehicles that are eligible for the tax credit this past year, 2023. And so it's about a couple dozen vehicles and so that list will be updated with the new guidance as automakers attest that they are complying. So we would expect that number to drop next year but we'll know for sure once there's the new guidance and that list is updated. So those are the main things to look out for. I will say that it's pretty amazing that this year almost 10% of new vehicle sales are electric. So that's a new high watermark for sure. And then California I think it's close to 20% so. Thank you. Judy, what should we be on the lookout for? I've been sort of still my thunder on this one because I mean, I would agree with that that once the final rules guidance gets dropped I think we're just being a massive education campaign to educate people as to how to put these tax credits to use, how you take advantage of it, how they should be start thinking of projects differently. I was mentioning these case study examples like and they're based on real stories but we didn't want to embarrass the studies. Like the difference that could make they were there was considering a campus wide microgrid and they're going to add solar panels to it but because the cost was 69.4 million it's just like, okay, we can't afford that. If this investment tax credit was available to them they, the price would go down to $41.6 million. Now that is once again a game changer but they would have to know what to do, how to do it, how to take advantage of it. And so I think, and we are right now drowning in a really good thing to have. We have IIJA money, we have IRA money but we still have the same amount of staff we have at the local level. So it's drinking from a water fountain that's actually a fire hose and to try to get everyone educated and in this case it's the finance people. How do you get the finance people on board with this and willing to take, and the finance people, I mean, they like to take risks, don't they? No, they don't. And so to try to get them to be comfortable with this and to do that, that's gonna be, I think our biggest challenge we all have to work on together in order to make people feel comfortable that this is an option for them. So thank you. Thank you, Judy, Daniel. Yeah, thanks. So one thing that we haven't really touched on too much is the concept of transferability and this is a new monetization mechanism that was introduced by the IRA and basically this is a mechanism by which developers can sell the tax credits on the open market. This is important because a lot of developers do not have sufficient tax liability in order to claim the credits and historically they've needed to partner with big financial institutions and engage in very complex financial transactions that take time and money. And most importantly, there's only a limited amount of tax liability on the market now, so often the smaller players get left out. So we think this is gonna unlock a lot, but we're still waiting on final guidance from Treasury. Fortunately, they have put out proposed regulations laying out a lot of the roadmap and guardrails for this, but there's still some issues that need to be clarified around recapture of credits and transfer of the bonus credits. So we're eagerly awaiting that and we've been talking to Treasury and the White House about it, but with the combination of direct pay and transferability, we think we can double the market for these renewable energy projects in the coming years. Thanks, Chris. Yeah, I think there are several things. Like others, we are awaiting guidance. The critical piece, so the next guidance we're awaiting is 40B. It's in place now, started at the beginning of the year, runs through 2024. This is for sustainable aviation fuel. And the key piece of that will be life cycle modeling. So the Argonne Greek model is already specified for on-road fuels in 45Z, the clean fuel production credit. For 40B, we believe it is a similar methodology. Ikea was specified international model. We believe Greek can also be used. But honestly, this could make or break whether US-based biofuel into sustainable aviation fuel is going to be made or not. And whether the feedstocks from our producers will qualify. So it is very, very important. I know it's a life cycle is key for several of these pieces. I think the other thing too that others have talked about, these are massive projects. And so if you're financing them, and I understand and I appreciate, and we've been working with Treasury and all the other agencies involved, you can't build a sequestration well, get it permitted on December 31st and turn it on on the 1st. I mean, you need to know what the rules of the road are. And so this is why it's really, really important because these are, it's big projects, be it carbon management that Jesse talked about, be it changing what your sort of production system is, if you're going to use renewable energy. So that's why the guidance and the rules of the road are so important. But we're really going to be focused on the 40B guidance for aviation fuel. It's really going to lay the path forward. And then looking ahead to the clean fuel production credit, it'll be the same question modeling and how granular it is. Will you be able to capture all the innovation at the plant on the forum? Thanks, Chris. Roxanna? I just have four points. First, I want to thank Judy and Daniel. I totally agree with you and thank you so much for saying that. Obviously we're talking about guidance, Steve. And I just want to first start with the global perspective. So right now, about 80% of the hydrogen projects that we see are going to go to Europe. They're on it. They have money. They're doling it out. So that means that not only do we have a global supply chain issue now, but the projects in the U.S. will be further delayed because of that. What does that mean? I think we know what it means to encumber funds in time. So that's going to be a huge problem for us. So we can't meet those milestones that are going to be required by, let's say DOE, to pay for those projects. Two, let's kind of go to a national perspective. I like to remind people because it is so complex to understand and as a fuel cell engineer, I can explain it. Yay. Look, this is the greatest infrastructure we've ever built. We've built the grid. We have built highways. We have built rail. Those were huge endeavors. For us, it's even crazier. We are simultaneously building hydrogen production infrastructure, the distribution infrastructure for it, the end-use infrastructure, meaning fueling and whatnot, and simultaneously pushing and developing even further into a higher commercialization level, the end-use technology. Then also getting adopted in these conventional industries like steel and cement to turn over their natural gas burners over to hydrogen boilers and even, let's say, large-scale, combined power natural gas burners. So that's a lot simultaneously in the time frame that we need to do, and then there's a delay, Steve, but it's okay. There's also this local issue which is actually investors. Investors are looking at putting money into these companies. Everyone's excited. It's been going on for about two years. They're like, oh my God, there's so much money. Another problem is investors are, they like to get excited and they like to put money out, but they're watching and they don't think there's a lot of progress. So right now we have these younger companies, not all of them that, I mean, most of those folks, the businesses in the hydrogen industry, I wouldn't say the margins are green, but there's a lot of mature companies that are publicly traded. Now these folks are trying to make payroll. So when there's no certainty, these investors are not providing the dollars that are necessary to ensure these companies survive. And the last thing is, yes, we need the guidance and really time is of the essence. I love you, Steve, you're my new best friend. Thank you. Allen, over to you. Yeah, just one thing to look out for. The nuclear PTC, as I mentioned, it goes into effect at the end of the year. The bipartisan infrastructure law established the Civil Nuclear Credit Program. It's a program essentially aimed with the same purpose to prevent the early closure, premature shutdown of our existing fleet. There have been some applications to the program. It'd be interesting to see once the PTC comes into effect, how these programs sort of proceed side by side. After financial stress, arguably the greatest threat to the continued operation of our nuclear plants is fuel availability. Russia controls much of the world's uranium conversion, enrichment capacity, and certainly given the situation right now, long-term supply, there's a lot of uncertainties around that. They are the only commercial source of high-assay low-enriched uranium, which is fuel that a lot of our new innovative advanced reactors would need. So I think I'll proceed cautiously, just say that there have been a lot of conversations about how there might be opportunities to redirect existing unused pots of funding. But I think this is an issue that warrants a lot of attention, as I alluded to, sort of the next big thing and probably the most urgent threat that we have right now. Thanks. Jesse? Yeah, I would say for 45Q, we're in a little bit of a different situation since we do have final regulations that we received in 2021. Not to scare folks, but they did take three years. So IRS is doing a lot better this time around. I actually wanted to go back to something that Daniel was saying about direct pay and transferability. I don't even think we really understand how transformational these two provisions are going to be. With transferability, prior to the Inflation Reduction Act, the number one rule of tax credits was you can't sell them, and now that rule is broken. And so we're talking about, in terms of tax equity markets, how much available financing is out there for these projects? We're talking about billions of dollars in the tax equity markets, which sounds like a lot, but when we're talking about building all this infrastructure that's needed to meet mid-century climate goals, if we can bring in individual investors, institutional investors, we're talking about trillions of dollars that are available. So that is hugely transformational, and then I'll just mention on direct pay, that was our top priority in the previous Congress. And the reason being is because, as I mentioned before, these projects, installing carbon capture technology at an industrial or a power facility or even building a new facility, like a direct or capture facility, they're very complex, they're very time-intensive, and financial markets are less familiar with them than they may be with some of the other technologies that we're talking about today. And so we have members in the coalition that have reported we have to provide a 30% or greater return on investment to those tax equity markets. So that means receiving 30% haircut off your 45-Q tax credit. And so for us, the direct pay and transferability guidance is actually really key in terms of unlocking the available financing for the sector. Thanks. And Steve. So since guidance came up one or two times, I will just say that the Assistant Secretary for Tax at the Treasury, Lily Batchelder, did give a report in Reuters a couple of weeks ago, saying that by the end of the year, they are expecting to issue guidance on foreign entity of concern for the vehicle's credit, the manufacturing production tax credit, 45X that I talked about, sustainable aviation fuel, the hydrogen production tax credit, and the sort of the base investment tax credit that's existed for a while on renewables. And that's in addition to the low-income tax that are credit guidance or information that went out yesterday, not really guidance but information. And then the new homes credit guidance that also went out. And I also just very quickly say that one other thing that I'm like looking forward to is continuing to see the impact of the bipartisan infrastructure law investments as well. For DOE especially, like it's hard to overstate how important that was. It's $62 billion in DOE funding. It made us create a whole new undersecretary for infrastructure and is really the most transformative thing that's happened to DOE since its creation. Traditionally we've done a lot of work on earlier stage research and development. And this is really more of a focus on demonstration leading to the deployment projects that are the deployment incentives that we get here. Thanks, Steve. Let's take questions from our audience. I'll look for hands. I see one in the front row and I have one online too. So go ahead and we'll start with you. Oh, we have a microphone coming. Laura is bringing your microphone. It's very important for the live cast. Thanks. Thank you very much for having the conference. It really a great panel, interesting discussion. So I represent city-owned electric utilities. We're sort of in sort of match the demographic of all cities. A lot of our members, most of our customers serve by large utilities. Most of our members are teeny. The question is, we've talked a lot about the complexity of the guidance and the underlying statute. My concern is that these smaller entities, so one megawatt, four megawatt, five megawatt projects, whether the guidance will be simple enough and clear enough that they'll be able to take advantage of it. These are folks that don't have large legal departments. Again, your billion dollar project is gonna be well outside the front. I think the question is what do you think we'll be able to muster the ability to have simple enough regulations that the vision of elective payment can be brought for? Go ahead, Judy. Just to let you know, the National Legal Cities and the US Conference of Mayors have joined together, what we call the local infrastructure hubs. And the league particularly focuses on what they call boot camps. And they'll have like a 10 session for small communities, particularly under 10,000, to say this is exactly how you walk through the process. And so we thank Bloomberg Philanthropies for helping us with that because I think he was trying to push this out. And so we're trying to work together in order to push that information. So I mean, we'll know when the final guidance comes up for sure, but we think it will be doable. We hope it will be doable. And so I'm hoping crossing fingers. Oh, Steve, go ahead. Sorry. Yeah, I mean, I don't think that one of the great strengths of government is typically the clarity and like being able to be really concise. So I do think that we are looking, I know Treasury is thinking about this, but we're also thinking about it for partners and things like what Judy just mentioned, I think are really important to make sure that we are getting the information out there to the people who can use them in like as simple a way as possible. So I just wanna sort of open call for recommendations and suggestions about how we can do a better job of that to make sure that we're providing those like really simple resources that do that step-by-step information. Thanks for the question. Other questions from the audience? Yes, please go ahead. Oh, wait for the microphone in. Sorry, I said please go ahead, but what I meant was hold on for Laura. Sorry, that was on me. That was on me. Hi, my name is Carolina Alstron. I'm with a company called Hycomite. We do methane splitting. And funny enough, Steve, you're very popular. I saw you yesterday at Deploy 23. And it is clear to me the message that was given there, which is for mature technologies, all of this is available. We're just waiting for guidance, correct? Now, I would just like to know what would be your advice for smaller new companies in the sense that in some of the forums at Deploy 23, it was mentioned that for a startup company, for a new technology, the piloting process takes about two years. The applications registration takes another two years. So that would be four years total. What would be your advice regarding companies that are just getting in the market and taking obviously advantage of all these credits? Steve, feel free to chime in and then anyone else who'd like to make a comment as well, please. Yeah, unfortunately, I don't think I'm gonna have a great answer to this question. I think that we do try to have some programs that are tailored at supporting early stage companies. There's a number of commercialization programs, some sort of lab to market programs. The loan program set up to try to support innovative technologies in particular in many cases. And we have a whole office of technology transitions that's really focused on tech to market type stuff. But we're also, well, the reason that we have these programs is because we're very aware of the value of death that faces new companies. And I think we do have a lot of resources available and would be happy to help point you in the right directions, but it's true. I think these credits make it a lot easier for new companies to enter the market, but there are still barriers to entry. And so we're very supportive of new technologies, new innovations, and recognize the challenges. Any other panelists? All right, well, I got a question from our online audience. And Judy, this one might make sense to start with you, but anyone else should feel free to chime in as well. Can direct pay be used by nonprofit owners and operators of low income housing? Unfortunately, Ben had to leave, but I think the answer is yes. I think the answer is yes as well, so. All right, so we're not giving tax advice. We're not giving tax advice. We are not giving tax advice. Our guess is sure. That may be something that would be, the person who asked it, if you'd like to follow up, we might be able to help you get a more concrete yes than maybe like a squishy maybe. Any other questions from our audience today? Yes, please, go ahead. Oh, I did it again. Laura will be there in a moment. Hi, I'm Sophia. I'm curious if there are things missing from IRA and IAJ that you want to add or things. I know it's a huge amount of money that they gave you, but if there's anything that you want to add or alter or take out. Oh, Daniel, his high is just green. I'm gonna jump on that one. So the one thing that was left on the cutting room floor, literally on the last day, is that investment tax credit for high voltage transmission. And we think that was a real missed opportunity. We know that we're gonna need to double the historical rate of transmission deployment to maximize on the carbon reduction benefits of the IRA. High voltage transmission is extremely difficult to plan permit in sight for a wide variety of regulatory, political and financial barriers. We think that a standalone transmission ITC is absolutely essential to build the interregional lines that we need in order to decarbonize. So if I could have one more thing, it'd be that not that we didn't get a lot, but one more thing, I'd take a transmission ITC. All right, who else has a wish list? Sorry. Yeah, we all do. I'm gonna jump in next. So I think for us, and I forgot to mention it, is that by the way, our tax section is 45V. We do need more guidance on how RNG can be included. And so it is a negative carbon intensive fuel. And so it's actually one of the most important feedstocks for us. And so we certainly want more direction on that front. And then of course, more end use, more and more end use. Shannon, did you have something? Please? Yes. The next Jesse, sorry. A long list, I'm sure. But I would start with more of the money being tied to labor standards. Some of the monies are, but not all. That was something that we pushed for, but only was in part of the programs. Another thing is that there are a lot of subsidies still for fossil fuels. And so those are kind of counter to what we're trying to do on the climate and building out clean energy. And then I'd also say that, similar along those lines, there are no sticks, and part of that is just the process of reconciliation and the limitations there. But there are lots of carrots for good things, but there are no sticks or limitations on the kind of pollution that fossil fuel companies and other providers are continuing to emit. Jesse? Yeah, I'll just come in briefly on something else in the carbon management space that got left off kind of at the last moment, which was we were seeking parity for carbon reuse with carbon storage. So providing the same credit level for reuse application to make products that we are for geologic storage because those are very nascent technologies. And the JCT did mark that up and it was 16 million over 10 years. So really a rounding error. And then the second would be, unfortunately 45Q does not begin indexing for inflation until 2026. So we're already losing and the value of the credit is already eroding due to inflation. And I could talk about IIJA, but I know we're running out of time, so I'll leave it there. Thanks. Last call for wish list items. The person who asked the question is taking copious notes. So this is your opportunity. I'll just say that if you look at projections of sort of what happens now, now that IRA exists, we're doing really well in the electricity sector, eventually we do really well in transportation. It takes awhile for stock turnover, et cetera. Industrial sector still is not, like business as usual does not get us as far as we need to go to get to where we need to get to by mid-century or sooner. So I would say that that would be one area to where additional policy support will be needed at probably all levels. Thanks. Judy, this might give you the last word. Oh, yay. Oh, sorry. Sorry, Chris. Oh, no, Chris, you wanted to go too? Okay. Something that was included in IIJA was the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant, which gave a lot of capacity to local governments in order to help staff them out in order to meet these potential needs. But our biggest thing is, please don't claw back any of these things before we get started. One of the worst things that can happen is people are planning for the future and then the threat of it like, well, it may not be here a year from now. No, no, no. We need to have some type of known for the next 10 years what we can count on. So please don't claw any of this money back. Thank you. Chris, and then Alan, I don't wanna leave. We'll go to Chris and then we'll give you the last word on the panel if you'd like it, Alan. I'll just tag on what Judy said. It's less about clawing back and more about the clean fuel production credit is three years. You're talking about big, large-scale projects and new technology with sustainable aviation fuel. It's hard to do in that short amount of time. And 45Q has a longer runway, pardon the pun, but it's going to be a debate going forward about long-term certainty and how long these can last. And we know that's always a debate, certainly as you talk about in any tax bill. Great. And Alan, I don't wanna put you on the spot, but even if it's a prediction for the Raiders game, last word on the panel. Wow. No, no prediction about the Raiders game. I briefly mentioned the $700 million for the high-assay low-enriched uranium program that was included in IRA. The reality is that if we're going to kickstart the build out of domestic nuclear fuel infrastructure in this country to produce high-assay low-enriched uranium to make up the gap left by uncertainty in Russian supply moving forward, then we're gonna need upfront appropriations in the order at least like $2 billion. So this is not about saying that we need to change anything when IRA I think got us off to a good start, but we need more. So I'll just leave it at that. Great, thanks. Oh, Roxanna. Sorry, I just wanted to say time is of the essence, Steve. All right, poor Steve. All right, well, that does it. This was a remarkable panel, not just in terms of the number of panelists, but the absolute quality of the presentations. I think you all deserve a round of applause. Thank you very much. I think we were like, is this gonna work? Could we really have nine panelists and stay on time? And we started a few minutes late, so we're about there. I'd really like, Ben had to leave unfortunately, but big thanks to Ben, Shannon, Judy, Daniel, Chris, Roxanna, Alan, Jesse, and Steve. Thank you for being tremendous panelists for us today. I'd also like to say once again, thanks to Senator Wyden and his great staff for helping us get the location and also joining us via the prerecorded remarks. We have a great team at EESI, even post Jesse, still a great team. I'd like to thank Dan Oh, Omri, Allison, Aaron, Anna, Molly, and Nicole for all of their contributions to the panel today. They did a lot of work pulling this together. As you can imagine, there's nine cats to herd and wrangle. That's quite a lot. Also, this is the first in-person briefing of our fall intern semester. So Zoe, Laura, and Maggie are with us today. Thanks for all of the work that you put in, including bringing microphones around and all that kind of stuff. So thank you so much. We will be back either in-person or online, depending on how the shutdown goes in October with innovations in weather intelligence to tackle extreme weather. That is our next briefing. We will also be back at the end of October with our COP28 series. I think the first one up is Congress and International Climate Finance. This is a survey. If you are in our online audience or if you're in our person audience, if you have two minutes to take our survey, we'd love to hear your feedback. We read every response. If there was something that worked, if you want to make a comment about whatever was happening next to our... I don't know what was going on back there, but anything that you want to comment on, if you have ideas for new panel topics, whatever, really does mean a lot when people take the survey. And we really appreciate that. But we'll wrap up. Sorry for going a few minutes over, but thanks for being tremendous panelists and thanks for being here in-person in our online audience today. And we'll go ahead and wrap it up. Thanks.