 Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for joining us today for a briefing to discuss the findings and insights of the 2022 Sustainable Energy and America Factbook. I'm Dan Berset, Executive Director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. ESI was founded in 1984 on a bipartisan basis by members of Congress to provide science-based information about environmental energy and climate change topics to policymakers. We have also developed a program that provides technical assistance to rural utilities interested in on-bill financing programs for their customers. Our event today is sponsored by our friends at the Business Council for Sustainable Energy and hosted in coordination with the leadership and members of the House and Senate Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucuses. Many thanks to Senators Reid, Crapo, Van Hollen and Collins and Representative Kind for your support and assistance with our briefing today. Let me now take a moment to very briefly share some logistics. First, as with all ESI briefings, we will post an archive of the webcast along with the presentation materials to our website. If you miss anything or want to revisit any of the topics we're about to cover, please visit us online at www.esi.org. And while you're there, please take a moment to sign up for our biweekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions. This newsletter is the best way to keep up with everything we do at ESI and ensure you receive the full range of policymaker education and technical assistance resources. And we have some really great briefings coming up in the next few weeks, including climate adaptation programs across agencies on March 18 and building a durable national framework for large landscape conservation on March 29. No one will want to miss those, so be sure to subscribe to Climate Change Solutions. And second, after our final panelist, we will transition to a discussion, and that means we will have time for questions from our online audience. If you have a question, please follow ESI on Twitter at EESI online and send in your questions that way. You're also welcome to send us an email, and the email address to use is AskASK at EESI.org. Now it is my pleasure to introduce the first of our speakers, Emily Duncan. Emily is Vice President of Government Relations and the head of the Washington DC Office of National Grid, an electric and natural gas utility with customers in Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island. With special importance today, Emily chairs the Board of Directors of the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, and she's a past president of the DC chapter of the Women's Energy Network. Emily, as always, it is great to see you. Please take it away. Thanks so much, Dan. It's so wonderful to be here. Thank you for having us. I want to thank ESI for their leadership in this space and for this great partnership we've had over these many years. If you can believe it, it is the 10th year of the Factbook, something that we are very excited about. And I think, as Dan said, there's no more important time for the Factbook than today, right? I mean, what we have going on in Ukraine, and with energy supply globally, what we all are looking for is facts, and that's something that the Factbook has always provided. And once again, this year, we have broken records as we do every year, and I know Lisa Jacobson is going to walk us through those. So I'm really excited to turn it over to the President of the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, Lisa Jacobson. Thanks so much, Emily. And yes, thanks to the entire ESI team. This is really the highlight of our outreach, and we feel very privileged to be able to partner with ESI as well as the caucus. So with that, I'm going to get started and share some of the facts with you. Just give me a moment while I share my screen. So again, the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, for those participants that may not be familiar with the organization, we are a broad-based Clean Energy Trade Association. We are celebrating our 30th anniversary as a coalition, and we represent primarily commercially available clean energy and energy efficiency technologies, products, and services. We also have members that span the entire supply chain for the clean energy transition, you know, representing industrial manufacturers, energy end users, public power, investor-owned utilities, energy and environmental service providers, and it goes on. And in total, currently in the United States, these sectors represent over 3 million jobs. It's really a tremendous growth in our employment, and the prospects are very bright for the future for economic investment as well as job expansion. And I know we'll hear about some of those discussion points in the industry panel that will follow my overview comments on the Factbook. The Business Council's primary sector focus has been energy efficiency, natural gas, and renewable energy, but we are also very involved in a whole range of decarbonization technologies, and the Factbook in some new areas is covering them in more detail. Things like renewable natural gas, hydrogen, carbon capture and storage and utilization, and many others. So I keep this slide up here for a few minutes just so everyone can take a look so you can get all the information that I'm going to share with you today on the BCSE website, plus many more tools. We have an amazing video. We have a lot of graphics for social media. We have kind of mini dives into the data set so you can find what you're looking for quickly. So if you were looking for information on fuel cells or combined heat and power, you could just go right into those sections and get to those data sets. So, as Emily said, this is our 10th year producing the Sustainable Energy in America Factbook, and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy commissions it from an independent analytic firm, Bloomberg, NEF. We've been on this road and seen many new developments. We've seen some, you know, ups and downs as we're deploying and using a more diverse energy mix. But, you know, I think the last two years really were like no other. So I'm going to share with you kind of what we're thinking of is the three Rs and I'll get to that in a moment, but I just wanted to highlight first, all the sponsors that help make this project possible and you'll hear from a few representatives from these companies and associations today. So as I said, the three Rs. is records. And we're really excited because even despite, you know, COVID conditions and a lot of challenges, the clean energy transition marched on and it was in full force and in many different sectors. I'm just going to share some of the high points with you. First is investments. We saw record levels globally in energy transition investment. And this is, you know, a methodology developed by Bloomberg NEF. So this is not even all the clean energy and energy efficiency investment globally. This is the selection that they chose. So here is a very strong but subset of investment in clean energy. On the left hand side, you'll see where we track versus other countries and we have remained in the United States, second to China in this type of investment for a good number of years. But as you'll see the overall total is record breaking. And then when you look on the right hand side, you can see where US energy transition investment is going. And we also had a record breaking year and it primarily went into renewable energy and electric transportation. Those were the biggest areas of investment in 2021. However, you know, you'll notice here you'll see things like hydrogen and CC us on the hydrogen front. We actually doubled our investment from 2020 to 2021 from 100 million to 200 million so it's still, you know, not at the scale of renewable energy or electric transportation, but it is growing fast and it is a big area for investor interest as well as public sector investment. In terms of other records, you know, renewable energy had another record breaking year in terms of deployment. You can see, you know, we topped 2020 with BNF estimate of 37.3 gigawatts built. You'll see when you look at the different color coding, it's primarily solar and wind represented in the yellow and blue. But we know we have many renewable energy technologies, and some of them, you know, are really not untapped to their potential so don't forget biomass geothermal waste to energy hydropower of course. There's much more we can do but in terms of what's being built. This gives you a very good snapshot of that landscape. One other thing I would note here because it will come up later in some of the records when it relates to policy is look at the trajectory, and especially when you look at solar. You'll see that when we have supportive federal policies in particular tax policies that are long term, and that signal the market, we deploy and when we look back, you know, over the last several years kind of going back to 2013 2014. When the investment tax credit received a long term extension, you see that steady state growth in the yellow and and solar benefited a great deal from that. So, supportive policies that signal the market will help us deploy very effectively. Another record area has been in corporate procurement of clean energy and we're right now going to look at renewable energy procurement which has primarily been solar and wind. But there's also activity in terms of clean cleaning and greening up fleets. So in the transportation area companies have been making big commitments there, as well as on energy efficiency. There are initiatives that focus on energy productivity and companies sign up for that. But another point I would make on the right hand side here is yes we see some of the usual suspects that were the market makers here in terms of technology companies. This is really broadening well beyond just the tech sector. We picked out a few so we have, you know, target we have McDonald's up here, you know, the list is very long and it grew in 2021 both globally in terms of the companies that signed on to renewable energy pledges, and and also here in the United States the companies that signed on to the renewable energy pledges as well as pledges in energy productivity and in clean and green fleets. Another area for records has been, you know, energy storage and you see a dramatic uptick in the past year for energy storage. Energy storage predominantly over 80% is through pumped hydropower systems and you can see that represented in the blue on the left hand side, but what's being built more recently has related to battery storage and so again big uptick and this is extremely important development as we integrate more renewable energy into the system and also, you know, as we move to more electric vehicles. The record has been in the area of natural gas. You know, as we're going through this energy transition and we are becoming cleaner in terms of our energy mix, and our power sector emissions are going down. We are also seeing increased demand across the economy for natural gas. You know, presents both an opportunity, in particular when you look at really what put us over the mark in 2021 it was LNG exports. So, if you look at the area in the red, you know, we had a record year for LNG exports. We also had, you know, large areas of interest, again across all sectors so power, commercial, industrial. So, natural gas is a key part of our economy. And, you know, I'm sure we'll hear in the discussion, how the role of natural gas fits in not just in this moment, this intense time geopolitically, but also as we decarbonize. You know, briefly what you know I think the opportunity is how do we use the existing infrastructure the natural gas system provides provides us as the molecules decarbonized, just like we did for electricity. So that is, you know, not as far advanced obviously as the power sectors decarbonization overall, but there's a lot of interest in areas like renewable natural gas and hydrogen that can help and we'll just have to see where the next few years takes us. This is a record which is not really a hooray record but I mentioned it and I'll segue into the next record which also is not a happy one. But here you'll see wholesale power prices broken out by region of the country, and you'll see a big red spike and you'll remember last February we had a very significant cold event, and it impacted number of states including the state of Texas and it's regulating body power cut is listed here and that is where this big steep increase was. Now of course that was related to both the severe event but also the way the Texas market is structured which is very specific, but I think it is important to look at, especially when you think about the next slide, which deals with increased costs and really a benchmark for the increasing impacts of climate change that we are experiencing here in the United States and this is here is pulling out, you know, we spent $145 billion in addressing disasters in 2021. It's the third highest, but you know it's very very significant for us as a country, and it means that the way we would plan in the past is not the way that we're going to be able to plan in the future and so that's where I make the difference again between the, the increase in wholesale power prices we had this dramatic increase for the dramatic event. And, you know, we're increasingly seeing a very diverse and unfortunate set of disasters across the country in the United States. We want to mitigate those kinds of price spikes for families and businesses, we want to be able to continue to provide energy services as well as other important services in our economy, and we're going to need to be planning differently and be more resilient. So wrapping up the, the positives here, you know, we saw, you know, the transition in the electricity, the electric transport industry have a record year with electric vehicle sales we basically doubled over one year, and I think the other thing that's happening is that it's a diversity of options, whereas, you know, for, for most of the last decade it's really been dominated by one provider Tesla Tesla, but now we're seeing more offerings to the public so I know that this is a track, you know, an area that we are tracking closely, and we'll be interested to see where we go in 2022. So the second R is recovery. So we presented, you know, this data for, for the last year, but we also have it for, you know, many years going back and you see a real structural dynamic in the US which is, we are more energy productive pretty much every year year on year. Now, when we were looking at the data for this year, as well as the data for last year, we were concerned, you know, we had these, you know, major disruptions in our economy with unprecedented, you know, stay at home orders and restrictions. And what would happen to this metric this long term metric that we have had on energy productivity. Well, at the end of 2020 we saw energy productivity continue to increase. Okay, so now we're in 2021 and things are opening up and we saw, you know, record breaking growth and as represented by GDP. But we didn't see our energy consumption match that we still did not impact negatively our energy productivity energy productivity continue to increase which means that we can grow our economy, and it's decoupled from our energy consumption, and other countries are experiencing this too this is not only a United States dynamic, but I think it's very very encouraging. And there are many factors that underpin this, but energy efficiency and the investments that we've made long term in energy efficiency, and the policies that have been adopted on energy efficiency clearly have a role to play. And I believe that some of the latest analysis by AC Tripoli has shown that perhaps up to 60% of the energy productivity gains can be attributed to energy efficiency investments and policies. So, um, we also want to think about, you know, our greenhouse gas emissions, they did go up in 2021 is our economy recovered, both in terms of our overall total greenhouse gas emissions as a country and our power sector emissions, but we are down the road. When we look at where we were off of 2005 levels. Overall, our emissions are down total emissions are down 15% from 2005 levels and our power sector emissions are down 35%. So there wasn't uptick. But it wasn't, you know, taking us back to pre pandemic levels. I also wanted to show you kind of where our emissions are. And a couple of years ago transportation overtook power in terms of our largest section of emissions by sector, but I think, rather than focusing on power and transport where everybody else does I want you to look at the sector areas, they really have not changed. So we have a lot of work to do in terms of industrial emissions, for example, on top of the work we need to do to continue to reduce emissions overall. So just closing us out. The last R is renewed ambition. So it's two words, not one. But it's really important. I mean, with the beginning of the Biden administration, we are back in the Paris agreement. New commitments have been put forward in terms of reducing power sector emissions and reducing our greenhouse gas emissions economy wide as a country under that leadership. And, you know, we have a long way to go. But again, I think it's important to remember that even with this very unusual set of circumstances in the last couple of years, we are, you know, the energy transition is continuing. And we are breaking records, we are investing more, we're deploying more. And, you know, if we can get the right public private partnership, both in policy and investment, you know, we can get ourselves further down the road. And the trajectory to where we need to go to achieve those goals, but it's not going to be easy. So looking on the right hand side, this will show you the overall goals and show you kind of where the power sector fits in, but there's a lot in the middle there. So again, we have a lot of work to do across the economy. And then in terms of renewed ambition, it would be really important to focus on, you know, what Congress and the administration have done. Passing the bipartisan infrastructure law was a landmark set of investments across many different industries, and at a scale that will really have an impact $80 billion of investment and you can see here and all the areas that it went. When this was written, you know, we were, we were kind of closer to January. So, you know, you can use your own definition for build back better. Definitely, it is these elements that are in it are still under consideration. And I know they would be very impactful if enacted, especially in the area of clean energy and energy efficiency tax measures. And here too, you know, I wanted to focus on closing in terms of renewed ambition on energy efficiency. We haven't seen as much push in terms of investment and policy in the energy efficiency arena as we had 10 years ago, but what we have done is delivering year on year so I'd like to come back to you next year and hopefully have more states that have adopted energy efficiency resource standards, or see a much more dramatic uptick in utility energy efficiency investment, but know that these long standing investments are working and helping us be more competitive as an economy, and also kind of keeping the demand side in check. We also have focused in the area of transportation in the fact book and in terms of renewed ambition, thinking about fuel economy standards has been an area that we've been watching closely. And just in the last couple of weeks, the waiver for California that allows them to have higher levels of fuel economy standards was again granted to California and it's not just California because there are many states that follow California's lead with regard to fuel economy. So, this is a very important as transportation is the largest area of emissions, but we still have more work to be done here too. So that wraps up my overview presentation and I'm really excited to introduce to you our industry panelists, we're going to do them one each and they're going to share a little bit of their feedback on what key trends they thought were most impactful or most important for their industry sector. And we're going to start with Bill Parsons, Vice President of Federal and State Affairs for the American Clean Power Association. Bill, I invite you to please turn on your camera and join us. Thank you very much. Thanks to Dan of the team at ESI and to you and Emily for your leadership at BCSE. You will recall you and I met when I was a staffer on the hill and the release of the fact book was a not to be missed event for me. I was always there in the front row and I frequently referred to it throughout the course of the year. That's kind of my Bible on these issues and so it's fun for me to be participating in the release of this year's fact book. Let me say if we can if we can switch the slide. I want to I want to just do a little bit on this slide if I could and the reason I chose to do that is a slide like this can can give the audience here a sense of trend and also a sense of order of magnitude. So first on trend. You can see in the nice color coding starting from the bottom you have seen a pretty significant almost a 50% drop in percentage generation from coal since 2011 nuclear kind of the same there's not a lot of new nuclear build. And then natural natural gas and renewables in the blue where ACP spends its time is is growing. And I do, I want to note in the blue. I want to unpack that sort of percentage a little bit and put some context around it. The first item is it says including hydro. So, and that's important, and it is a zero emission source. If you were to exclude hydro that 21 would probably drop to about 12 you're just thinking in terms of like wind solar battery storage. I think that's important context to have. Historically speaking, here's another thing that the mix even within renewable generation technologies is itself evolving. And you see this reflected in some of the slides in this year's fact book. Historically if you look at all of the utility scale renewable power deployed today. 67% of it is onshore wind, about 30% is solar and then the remaining two or 3% is battery storage and that battery storage is really kind of a functional last year or two. If you, if you then turn any and you have to have a forward looking view at what the pipeline looks like in terms of renewable deployment. It's, it's, it changes solar takes over and you're at about 55% of the projects in the pipeline at scale are solar, followed by about 20% onshore wind. And then this is something I want to flag for the audience because this is a dynamic sector. And there are a number of nascent technologies that are really poised to explode in the next five or 10 years and I want to call a few of those out. For energy storage, we saw a year over year 196% increase in energy storage deployment. It's a, it's a really explosive growth rate for energy storage. I told you that the, the, the looking backwards number the retrospective number, the percentage of offshore was an asterisk, it's 15% of the pipeline now so offshore is really poised to grow quite a bit. The, and then battery storage with that 196% year over year growth in terms of the pipeline going forward, we think that's 10% of the build in the pipeline. And so I just for folks thinking about the sector. I think the areas of offshore wind, battery storage. And then if I'm going to throw in green hydrogen, I think is getting a lot of excitement and I think is poised for some exciting growth. And then also frankly the transmission that we're going to need for these for these new resources to bring resource to load is going to be a really important feature here. Now, a report like this can have, you know, there's a lot of wins here, and I think there is a lot to celebrate. I do, however, especially for our audience here, you know, coming to us from the hill. I want to caveat this a little bit of just in terms of what we're seeing in the market. There are some headwinds here that that are important to understand. And they range from supply chain issues to trade policy. Lisa you mentioned sort of policy uncertainty businesses of all kind need certainty to plan I think that's an issue. The more exciting and permitting challenges, the more we grow, the more that becomes a factor, extremely long and costly interconnection cues a lot of people unless you're kind of like a power market you know RTO ISO nerd, you might not be aware of all these issues where all these these projects that are ready to go gigawatts are just kind of languishing in a very, very long line and we could even be doing better if we could find some steps to shorten that line and then I've already mentioned the transmission. That's sort of a cousin issue to that to help sort of get get that resolved. So, a lot of wins in the past year, and a lot to look forward to, but also I think it's important to be clear eyed about the headwinds that we face and not, you know, not take progress for granted. Obviously as a kind of unifying observation I just I want to be able to say that I am and I appreciate Emily kind of setting the table at the top. I think we all need to be mindful about what's going on in Ukraine right now. I think whether you're a climate hawk, or you're in all of the above or you're concerned about inflation, or you're interested in reshoring a supply chain in a rapidly growing sector of the economy, or you're deeply committed to homegrown energy growing this clean power sector is an integral part of that solution and it's something that we can all be working on together. So with that, let me tip it back to you and I'll look forward to comments from the rest of my colleagues and and some Q&A to follow. Sounds terrific. Thank you, Bill. Really appreciate it. Our next industry panelist is Vincent Barnes, Senior Vice President for Policy and Research at the Alliance to Save Energy. Vincent, I invite you to turn your camera on please. I think we were on Lisa. Yay. Okay, good. Well, the floor is yours. We'd love to hear your reactions to both current the current moment and the trends in the fact book. Thank you, Lisa. Good afternoon, and certainly is a pleasure to participate in today's briefing on the 2022 Sustainable Energy and American Energy Factbook and congratulations to BCSE on the 10th year of the fact book and the work that you're doing Lisa as well and your team over there. Certainly, as Lisa indicated my name is Vincent Barnes and I'm with the Alliance to Save Energy. The Alliance to Save Energy is a nonprofit bipartisan alliance of business, government, environmental and consumer leaders really working to increase investments in energy efficiency. Put simply energy efficiency is the reduction of energy intensity, if you will, or the amount of energy required to power the economy or our everyday lives. It's traveling on aircraft with highly efficient engine systems, producing and manufacturing goods using far less energy than what was required only 10 years ago, while still producing more. It's driving further and faster with greater and larger amounts of supply fuel going directly to the drive and breaking systems. And it's heating and cooling and operating our homes and businesses at the highest levels, while requiring lesser and lesser amounts of natural gas and electricity. Because of the effect of energy efficiency technologies on energy consumption. Energy efficiency has a direct impact on reducing energy carbon emissions, increasing energy reliability and helping to meet the needs of grid and pipeline resiliency. And certainly a key into current events results in overall increased energy security as well. Energy efficiency technologies are ranging from passive efficiency products such as insulation and energy star rated windows to what we would call active efficiency solutions such as grid connected appliances and equipment and grid integrated and able buildings. All of these things help keep energy affordable. Energy efficiency alone can reduce carbon emissions by 50% by 2050. If we're if we're linking energy efficiency to in terms of its role and impact on carbon emissions. Moreover, the energy efficiency. We also have the ability to achieve according to the IA 40% of the emission reductions required by the Paris agreement. That said, in addition to effectively reducing carbon emissions, energy efficiency also plays an essential role in reducing energy demand and load on the grid and pipeline systems. In fact, and Lisa you at you mentioned this earlier without investments in energy efficiency since 1980 US energy consumption that would actually be about 60% higher today. The slide from the fact book gives us a sense as to energy consumption throughout major parts of the US economy. Certainly, but the double impact of energy efficiency should be a major component of US energy and climate US energy policy and certainly climate policy as well. And that double impact of course is its ability to reduce carbon emissions, but also the, the, the ability of energy efficiency to reduce energy consumption. We certainly need energy efficiency to expedite emission reductions, and we will need energy efficiency to address anticipated increased energy demand, particularly as we move and rely more heavily on variable fuel resources. According to projections when segmenting solely for electricity consumption right, we learned that based on electrification policies and anticipated electric vehicle growth. We could actually see a 40% increase in electricity consumption by 2050 and which would lead to the need for us to install double 2018 capacity levels. However, the same studies coming from mineral the same studies that identify the energy challenge in front of us. They also tell us where the solution is as well, and that, and that is energy efficiency. According to NREL grid costs will increase to serve the growing load, but with rapid investments in energy efficiency technologies, we could realize up to $800 billion in net energy system savings. So certainly from a policy perspective. This means expansion and passage of tax incentives that encourage business and consumers to invest in energy efficiency products and equipment, including 25 the 25 C tax credit for homeowners. The 45 L tax credit for single and multi family home builders, and the 179 D deduction for commercial buildings. Also means passage of programs such as hope for homes that provide rebates when investing in energy efficient products and equipment and and would also be important for those who might not itemize for tax savings. And it means establishing and developing strong building performance standards and energy codes. It also means funding advanced research and development of energy efficiency technologies, including through relevant department of energy offices, such as the building's technology office, advanced manufacturing office, the vehicle technologies office and others. And though I'm not attempting to be exhausted here in terms of where the policy and energy efficiency meet. It also means substantive investments and initiatives such as the weatherization assistance program and state energy programs as well. And so I'm going to end there and with that. Lisa, thank you again for the opportunity and I look forward to hearing from our colleagues on the on the panel and getting to our questions and answers. Thank you very much Vincent and yes, look forward to continuing that especially in the policy realm. So I'd like to introduce next Aaron Duncan Vice President of Congressional Affairs for the Solar Energy Industries Association. Aaron, I invite you to turn on your camera. There we are. Can you see me. Yes. Great. You look great. Thank you. Thank you Lisa so much for inviting me to present in association with the roll out of the fact book. It's always great to be on a panel with my colleagues from our sister and brother trade associations, talking about the issues that are really important to their membership. I'm here today to share some elements from the fact book that are critically important to the solar industry and to also raise some ideas that Vincent touched on a little bit around the expansion of solar energy, and also making sure that it is accessible to communities around the country who may have previously not been able to access clean solar energy, or been unduly harmed by previous energy load. Can we turn to the next slide please. We talked Lisa did a great job at the beginning of the session talking about the tremendous growth that the solar industry has experienced over the last year. It's echoing what Bill said earlier supply chain has certainly been a challenge for our industry and we continue to face a number of threats to our ability to continue to grow at this incredible rate. Moving forward, there's both supply chain issues as well as this ominous thought threat of trade sanctions that will definitely cost some serious harm for the ability of our industry to continue to grow at this rate. However, you can see from this slide solar is certainly moving rapidly ahead. Last year we were 46% of all new generating capacity in the United States. And we expect to install 300 gigawatts of new capacity over the next 10 years so it's certainly a great time to be in the solar industry. I also want to share that, you know, as we grow, it's important that we look at policies that will make solar more accessible to every community around the country. This is a core value of SEA and our membership. We represent 1000 member companies from very small installers to some of the largest solar companies in the country, manufacturers and everything in between. It's really important to us as a core value that families and communities that have otherwise not been able to access solar energy have the tools and resources to do so. And as Vincent mentioned, there are some provisions in the reconciliation bill or whatever we end up calling it. That would make that more make that easier for families, for example, refundability in 25 D is a tool that will help more families install residential solar. It is something that we have long hoped for and worked across coalitions with climate activists and environmental justice groups to get that into the reconciliation bill and we hope that that sticks. It's incredibly important to us. In addition, we're also very excited about the way that the tax credits are structured to incentivize investments and communities that have perhaps been previously overlooked, or who would benefit the most from access to clean solar energy through utility scale solar or community solar where there are the way that the tax credits and the reconciliation act have been structured provide additional incentives to developers to go into those communities, tribal areas, low income communities, and communities that have been unduly impacted by the energy transition and to put solar energy there and I think that is incredibly important. As we look at the opportunity that the clean energy transition will offer our country. We really have the chance to do it right. We have the chance to center our focus on making sure that no one is left behind as we engage in this clean energy transition and we're really excited about continuing to grow the solar market, but to make sure that it is accessible to everyone across the country. Finally, aligned with those thoughts I want to talk a little bit about workforce development. I think, as this slide shows, there are hundreds of thousands of jobs in the energy sector, the solar industry has about 231,000 people working in it in 2021. We expect that over the next five years we're going to need to grow that number by hundreds of thousands of jobs. We're also hoping to grow the number of people who are working in the domestic manufacturing sector of the solar industry. We are very excited to continue to work to expand domestic manufacturing here in this country and create tens of thousands of new jobs and communities again that perhaps had seen their manufacturing base decline in previous years and we're hoping that policies in the reconciliation bill can help to expand and build that out more. We view that as incredibly important to the future of our industry. But also important is the training and recruitment and retention of all of these people that all of our industries are going to need in order to facilitate the transition to clean energy. And it's critically important that we think about how best to engage communities that perhaps we're not exposed to clean energy. You are interested in and often study issues that you see. And so it's really important that we have policies like solar ready vets, as well as workforce development programs within Build Back Better and elsewhere that focus on finding new clean energy workers in communities and training them, whether it whether it's in energy efficiency or into the solar industry or into, as you see there, funneling it into a union apprenticeship to create careers out of clean energy. There is so much hope and potential as we transition into this next phase of the energy mix. Solar is going to be a huge part of it. But our hope is that it reflects the true breadth and diversity of our country and that the growth and opportunity that the solar industry can bring is felt in every community across the country. So we're really excited. And we, again, thank you Lisa for inviting me to present on this panel. Oh, thank you, Erin. I love your vision. And we want to go back and talk some more about that in the Q&A. So thank you. Our final panelist is Mark Lessons, Director of Regulatory and Environmental Affairs for Johnson Controls. Mark, I invite you to turn your camera on. Can you see me okay? Yes. Wonderful. Great. Thank you. Yours, Mark. Great to have you. Thank you, Lisa. And also really grateful to Dan and the EESI team for hosting us and really letting us be a part of the briefing schedule that you guys put together for the year. So as Lisa said, my name is Mark Lessons and I'm with Johnson Controls. For those of you that aren't familiar with Johnson Controls, we're really an end to end provider of technology solutions for buildings, everything from heating, cooling and ventilation equipment to fire life and security products, sensors, controls, building management systems, and now increasingly digital solutions that really help optimize everything in a building, leverage data sources from inside and outside of the building and really start to deliver the outcomes that we've come to expect from the building sector. So, you know, my goal today is to really elevate buildings as a key tenant of how we ultimately address climate change. And, you know, it's important buildings are responsible for about 40% of greenhouse gas emissions globally. And so it, frankly, is not possible to address climate change in earnest without having a real clear picture about how we're going to put the path to net zero. So if you go to the next slide please Lisa. What we're looking at here is how we are addressing energy efficiency and decarbonization in new construction. This is the rate of adoption of building energy codes across the country. And these building energy codes have made tremendous strides that model energy codes that the Department of Energy uses as the International Energy Conservation Code and ASHRAE standard 90.1. Both of those codes have made, you know, by some destinations about a 50% reduction in the overall energy intensity of the building sector over the past 30 to 40 years. And most states and cities are adopting some version and some more recent version of these codes, which is really delivering tremendous benefits to the building sector for in new construction in terms of both energy savings and carbon emissions reductions. The challenge here, though, is that, you know, again, by some estimates, new construction by that we're building today and through 2050 is really only going to account for about 20% of the total building stock of all buildings globally by 2050. It means that if we want to address the building sector and truly address the necessary initiatives to reduce carbon emissions, we really have to figure out a way to retrofit existing buildings at scale and continue to put them on a path to net zero just as the codes for new construction are. One of the really interesting policy measures that that we're pretty bullish about at JCI is something called building performance standards, which set, you know, effectively mandatory energy or carbon emissions benchmarks for existing buildings. And, you know, they're completely performance based they tend not to prescribe what technology you use or how you get there but they do require that buildings need a certain threshold for energy efficiency, or carbon emissions by certain bed lines and that's really a going to be an important measure for how we put the build the building sector on a path to net zero and drive a lot of these retrofits. We've just seen a recent announcement from the White House Council on environmental quality that announced a building performance standards coalition of 33 cities and states that either have or will adopt these building performance standards, and the total square feet are covered by these, these cities and states is pretty tremendous, you know, we're talking I believe roughly 1920 million square feet of commercial for space is going to be impacted by these by these building performance standards and. So again, a really exciting and important way that we're going to put buildings on the path to net zero and really start to drive those those all important retrofits in order to get them there. So, so we'll be excited to see the results of that and additional cities and states also consider additional measures such as building performance standard to try to drive buildings on that trajectory. But it's something that we think is is going to be a really important tool for ultimately getting us to me to net zero by 2050. If I could just make you know just raise one additional point or thought as as I take a step back and think about buildings, you know buildings are. Buildings have become extremely important to to our overall way of life, if we think about what we were asking buildings to do, even two years ago compared to today, we're talking not just about energy efficiency and and saving. Building owners and families on their utility bills we're now looking at buildings as a means to achieve our climate goals, yes. But we're also really relying on buildings and performance improvements in buildings to help us reopen and reemerge from Kobe if we think about the total amount of emphasis is being placed on indoor air quality and indoor environmental quality. We're also really being delivered in buildings by the building systems in order to make sure that the rate of clean air inside of a building is safe and acceptable for people to occupy them and not worry about transmitting an airborne pathogen like COVID or other viruses. That's an extremely important additional function for buildings that have really come to a to define what makes a sustainable building. In the future it's not just going to you know it's not just going to be responding to a pandemic but the other emergencies we've seen, we've had to take shelter and buildings during times of wildfires and other crises. And as we look to the future, as we expand all of these distributive resources on and off the grid to help decarbonize and manage our overall energy system. We're going to be looking to buildings to help balance the grid and provide really valuable services back to the grid in order to make this transition go more smoothly and deliver again all of these outcomes that the occupants of buildings have come to expect. I would say despite that now increasing list of requirements that we're placing on buildings, we are very rapidly coming up with new performance measures and ways to make sure that we are delivering on all of those things. But I still, you know, we're still really optimistic that despite all of that, we can, we can still keep buildings on a pathway to achieving net zero by 2050. We have so many technology solutions at our disposal to significantly reduce energy consumption and help optimize, you know, building systems, subsystems, buildings as a whole, really enable buildings to grid communication buildings to distributed energy resource and communication building, you know, optimization between buildings and vehicles all of these things are starting to evolve very quickly and ultimately enabling us to very fine to finally tune the operation of buildings to again deliver on the the necessary solutions reductions in order to achieve our climate goals and deliver those outcomes for for customers so very excited about the future and what the future holds for building technologies and the role that this is going to play in the overall urbanization picture and certainly eager to chat more about buildings and buildings, buildings to grid integration as a whole during the discussion portion of the presentation as well as in all of conversations as well so thank you Lisa. Thank you Mark yeah terrific I definitely want to come back and you had a lot in there that was really interesting about the new policies and what the administration is doing with performance standards for building so we'll definitely come back to you on that. I just want to remind everybody that, again, all this information and more is available off the BCSE website for free. So go ahead, go in there hop in there. And also let us know what you think we very much want your feedback so feel free to reach out to the BCSE with any reactions or questions you have and I hope that you will participate in our conversation right now as well so I'm sharing my screen. I'm going to invite all the panelists, plus Dan, reset, and Emily Duncan to join us on screen. Hi everybody, really excellent remarks, really, really helpful, going a level deeper in terms of what these trends are showing, and Dan and I are going to ask you some questions to go perhaps even further. And we also want to say, you know, all panelists can answer these questions. So you'll keep this as conversational as we can just hop on in if there's a comment that you'd like to make. I'd love to start with you Aaron, if I could because you know you talked about two different things but very important in terms of the growth and expansion of solar in the country you talked about the need to have it, you know, positively impact all communities and have, you know, kind of diversity in mind when you're thinking about your both expansion, but in terms of the types of communities that can benefit from solar, but also in your workforce. So, I'd like to see if you could chat a little bit on those topics. You mentioned some things in legislation that's pending, maybe talk in addition, you know, talk about what those things are and why they would be helpful in terms of making improvements in those areas, please. Great. Thank you so much for that question. Yeah, this is something that we're really passionate about at SIA, and have taken some really positive steps over the last several years to help lead our industry forward in this regard, because for us, a diverse workforce and a diverse customer base brings strength to our industry. And I think you need to only look as far as how we are going to fill all of these jobs as I shared in my remarks, we're going to need hundreds of thousands of new solar workers. And there's a workforce shortage in many parts of this country in this space, but folks only tend to be attracted to jobs that they understand and know about. And that's part of the role of all of us on the panel, energy efficiency, wind offshore, although I'm not sure I would want to be on an offshore wind turbine. So, offshore wind people for those with a lot of courage, solar installer, and the myriad other occupations within the solar industry is exposure and getting the word out and looking and recruiting in new ways. Among our companies. See a recently unveiled a certification program for our solar industry where companies can work through some online training to help build their skill set in terms of the EIJ issues, but also looking at how one recruits where one recruits and how you plug into plug new faces and new communities into the solar industry. So that's one way we are trying to make that change. But there's also legislation on the hill that has been really important. The blue collar to green collar jobs acts that would provide incentives to help move people who either are, you know, in categories of folks who have lost their jobs in fossil fuels or are or elsewhere, or just in underserved communities help connecting them to jobs in renewables in energy efficiency. That's really important. And we do some seed money to help that move forward is really important as well. And I think there's also some provisions and build back better baked into the ITC now around apprenticeships that can be deeply transformative. Now we first we have to pass that bill so everybody on the hill, get back to your desks as soon as you're done watching this presentation, but you know, there, I think that I think leadership on the hill did that very mindfully, looking at a certain percentage of workers on job sites have to be apprenticeship apprentices or trainees and making sure that we're constantly building the necessary workforce to help us get down the road in the future. So I think those are some elements there's there's many more. I could talk about, you know, putting put even something like putting solar on schools, which is a provision in the bipartisan infrastructure law exposes or gives public schools an opportunity to use that as an area to teach students about renewable energy and how it works. So there's, there's so many opportunities and I think as we see more clean energy installed around the country. You know, hopefully that will raise awareness of the tremendous opportunity that exists in the sector. Thanks Aaron yeah that was really helpful. Let me see if anybody else wants to chime in on that topic. Yeah, thanks. I appreciate Aaron's comments so I do want to start me we this the sector is definitely going to be very forward leaning here but I also if we pull the lens back. Today's frontline communities in the energy space are in large part defined by bearing disproportionate burden associated with historic generation. So I do think I want to acknowledge that the project we're undertaking here is is in itself. We're going to be relieving burden in terms of both pollution, as well as as energy costs as a function of income over time. So there's a generic overall good there. Having said that I think what Aaron has put her finger on is, you know, at the end of this if we get to net zero, you know, even so, then everybody will be able to benefit from clean power, which is the goal. The, you know, the history of this is, if you're not intentional about it some communities will probably predictably be kind of at the end of life. And that's not okay that's the opportunity I think Aaron is talking about. And it's something I think the sector is very much aligned around, including workforce diversity because we're growing so fast. And because you know there will there will be the worker need and also and I love the way Aaron put this. It's the kind of the chance to do this right. And so appreciate servicing sort of those objectives which are clearly part of the project. Lisa this is Vincent I'd like to just chime in briefly and I'll try to do this in under a minute. As we think about energy affordability energy efficiency is really that that that quintessential tool that does that right it has the ability to bring the to bring the cost of energy down for the end user. It's particularly important for those in low income communities be that rural or urban. As we as we think about lowering the energy burden and something a fact that's not often known is that low income families in rural communities have have the highest have some of the highest energy burdens, and an energy efficiency has the ability to to alleviate that burden. Importantly as we think about energy efficiency and energy efficiency as a tool. It's one thing to understand what the technology does. It's another thing to get that technology into the homes. And so as we think about equity and what equity means for energy efficiency equity means universal access not that not simply that that tool is at a home depot or the lows or somewhere else. But but but that that that tax policy or rebate policy in general, makes it easier for those products to be into the homes of low income individuals. One other point, since we're talking about workforce development. This will drive workforce growth in the energy efficiency sector. Another fact oftentimes not not not talked about a lot but energy efficiency is the largest employer in the clean energy sector. And so think about if we're if we're driving energy efficiency, as we're transforming our energy policy. We are also driving additional jobs in that sector as well. And so I'll leave it there. No, that was great. Thank you all. I don't know Emily or mark if you wanted to chime in on this. I'll give you a second. No. No. Okay, well, I want to go back to something that a few of you hit on, obviously, you know, front of mind for probably every constituent services person who's working in a congressional office right now is inflation. And some of you talked about that a little bit in your remarks. How does your industry or deployment of your sector impact inflation I mean I realize we're going to be speaking in some broad economic terms here now but you know something that I've been thinking a lot about and what and what the value of what our industries bring in terms of helping businesses and helping families right now who maybe Bill do you want to go first. And one thing, surely so thanks for that. I wanted the slide that you that you showed that had the power prices, and it showed the spike in Urquhart last year and then also a little bit in SPP which I'm going to assume is a function of the same severe weather pattern because SPP also covers the center portion of the country, where winter storm Yuri had had that effect. But sort of an and we had a, I was on a call with Barbara Sugg who ran, who's the president of SPP which is the Southwest Power Pool that's the power market the organized power market middle the country that sits right on top of texts. And she shared something really fascinating, which is this is both a reliability as well as a price issue. She had meaningfully less disruption in her power market, then did Urquhart in its and that disruption is was the blackouts but also the price spikes that you captured on your deck. And the reason for that was because they could pull power excess power from all the way from PJM, which is the power market on the East Coast through my so into SPP to keep the lights on in five mil in over five million homes. And at an affordable price at the same time that Texas was experiencing its blackouts, there was power available 100 miles away for 90% less, less money that then why do I raise all this, I mentioned transmission. We need to have a better interconnected grid across the seams between power markets and be able to push electrons from where they're produced to where they're needed far more readily than we can today. You had sort of alluded and this is a choice the state has made today. Urquhart is kind of jurisdictionally islanded on for historical reasons on purpose. If they had greater interconnectivity between themselves and the joining states and power markets free or flow of abundant affordable clean electrons. Probably everybody would be better served from a reliability point of view, as well as a price point of view. I like to weigh in that I think there's there's a lot of similar themes to what Bill just said on the demand side as well at the buildings level. I talked a little bit about the need for demand or load optimization and and buildings to grade capability to the, you know, there is a lot that can be done to help manage energy costs at varying times a day. When you have, you know what when buildings have the flexibility to manage their loads and so the more that we can do to give buildings the ability to shift their loads from periods of time where demand is high and thus the retail price of electricity is extremely high to periods of time where electricity might actually be free is extremely valuable and that can be done with digital solutions that are leveraging data from the building and from outside of the building, distributive resources that can be that can be installed as you know behind the meter as part of the building and really leveraged as part of that overall operational flexibility. And then also to the extent that a building might have multiple sources of energy that diversification can allow the building to leverage either one depending on which one happens to be cheaper or less carbon intensive or what have you in order to make sure that it's ultimately delivering those again those outcomes that customers are expecting at the lowest possible cost and lowest possible carbon footprint so I don't have a great. I suppose I don't have a great answer for how to reduce the cost of resources at the level from inflation, but I would say the more that we can do to add flexibility to our demand side assets and diversification, the better protected building end users will be from those spikes in retail electricity costs that we'll see. If I could just, if I could just add one more thing on the subject of inflation. Two thoughts one. When we have challenges in the supply chain when we have things like tariffs that are impacting our inputs are materials that we need to build this clean energy that contributes to additional costs to install the clean energy so that's that's a challenge but I do want to give an example of places where you know solar in particular is already at work, helping control those costs as my colleagues have mentioned. We did quite a bit of research a couple of years ago and learned a lot about the use of solar on farms in particular, and we have examples of depending on in this case it was Iowa's NEM policy. If a certain farmer was able to bank credits from the solar panels installed on his property and then dry his corn for free. And for those of you who don't come from corn country like I do. That is an incredibly energy intensive process, and can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. So, for particularly for, you know, for everyone but just that particular example. It's a place where, you know, costs, as my colleagues have already mentioned can can really be firmly held but but the inputs have to also be. We've seen the solar solar and storage prices go down over the last several years but these unknowns around tariffs threaten those those prices at the moment. Oh, sorry, Vincent. No, no chime in please. We're not done with inflation. Go ahead, Emily. Go ahead, Vincent. You go ahead. Thanks. Thanks, Bill. I couldn't miss the opportunity to talk about energy efficiency and affordability right it's I mean it's they actually go hand in hand to two pieces on that though as we think about inflation look. We think that the president got it right in the state of the Union, when he identified energy efficiency as a key way by which consumers, by which we can make energy affordable for consumers. And, and, and we think that that that is absolutely right if you are, if you are watching your television if you're if you are if you are driving driving your vehicle if you are washing your clothes and and and the equipment or the product type that you were using is less energy from the grid or or through a pipeline system, then you are paying less, either off the pump, or, and you are paying less in your on your utility bill. The other affordability aspect that I'd like to discuss just briefly. We should be wide eyed about what the cost of infrastructure for energy actually is and what it will be as we do as bill indicated as as we as we try to connect the grid across the country. And the cost there, and those cost impact rates, and, and one of the ways to keep those costs down and under control is through energy efficiency. If the intensity on the grid is lessened, then the need for additional infrastructure is also reduced. And so, and so energy efficiency has a way of impacting affordability both on the supply side of the equation, and also the demand side, there. So, that's indisputably true and and at the same time we know to connect new generation we're going to we're going to need grid investment and just to contextualize Lisa because it is part of this year's fact book you had a slide on the on the on the there was a starter investment there are for for grid modernization. I think, however, the real ballgame is in the clean energy tax credit as part of the build back better program where there's a proposed new freestanding itc both for long haul transmission, as well as for energy storage, and both of these technologies are tech neutral, broad bipartisan support, and needed for grid reliability as well as grid decarbonization I just wanted to make sure we left our audience with a place to go if they were, you know, kind of excited about making progress there without just throwing out the problem without offering potential pathways for solution. Agreed wholeheartedly. I'd like to bring Emily into the conversation, you know, kind of big picture as a company like National Grid going through the energy transition. What's your reaction to what you've heard so far. I want to leave this very open ended because I think for the audience, you know you're kind of an additional kind of practical implementer. And what are the trends, say to you. Yeah, thanks Lisa. And I'm trying to give you know there's so much here right so how to how to present this in a coherent fashion I mean, look, I think what we're seeing obviously with Ukraine and with inflation is costs going up and for a lot of our customers their energy bills are sometimes the biggest cost every month. And so we have to be very mindful that we are providing affordable reliable energy to our customers. And we think we can do that and continue to on this path that zero right the states in which we operate in Massachusetts New York and Rhode Island, all have very aggressive climate targets and we are in partnership with them to help them meet those targets. And we also have to continue to keep an eye right on the support ability piece on this reliability piece and I think is as Aaron so eloquently put it right we need to make sure that we're not leaving anyone behind. So we serve customers in the wealthy parts of Brooklyn but we also serve upstate New York right so how do we ensure that we're meeting the needs of the wide variety of customers and the economic circumstances that they find themselves in so I think that's one point I'd make so you know when we see inflation costs go up that just puts more pressure right on the other areas of people's lives, where they're also seeing costs increase. I think the other thing we're looking at is, you know we talk a lot about kind of the electric side I think that's really been a large focus here but we also have the heating portion of our business right and so how do we you know efficiently and affordably provide heat to homes which is quite critical in the northeast. And so we have a large gas distribution business and that can be a challenge right in the progressive states in which we operate in and so what we're working really hard on is figuring out how do we green our gas system. How do we find enough green hydrogen and RNG and create and develop a real market for those resources so that we can start pushing that through the distribution pipeline system that we have and that has worked very well and served our customers very well for decades and that they've invested in our companies invested significant, significant dollars in. And so that's, you know, going back to come to some of the policies that folks have been talking about that's why the Democrats reconciliation bill is is another great piece of legislation that we need to see passed in addition to the I I J. A. There's a hydrogen production tax credit in there that we think is absolutely critical to driving down the cost of hydrogen. Do we is very focused they have a hydrogen shot on driving down the cost of hydrogen and that hearkens back to my days at sea when we had a solar shot right and what that did for the industry and bringing down the cost of these resources. So I think there's a lot of great work going on right both in Congress and in the federal agencies to help drive down the cost of these resources are ideas critical that you know, it gets tons of bipartisan support and we in the utility industry are very supportive of that so there's lots of ways I think to tackle this. And that's why I think you know, again, the fact book and BCSE are so important because it's bringing together these voices across the energy sector to try to figure out these problems and how all of these ingredients come together to ensure that we're providing, you know, clean affordable and reliable power for Americans. Thanks Emily. I'd love to invite Dan reset to ask a question make some comments. What's on your mind Dan. Well, I have a question that I suspect everyone will want to answer so this may end up being our last one, which is a bummer because this could keep going. But I'm going to ask a question about through where policymakers should be focused. And so, happy to start maybe at the top of the order bill will start with you and then maybe go through in the order of our presentations. Lisa, I'd love to hear from you as well and I can answer that I don't think anyone else is going to say so I'm going to save this one too. But what is the most important thing policymakers can be focusing on bill. If we want to return a year from now with more records and more, more good stuff to talk about in terms of a clean energy transition in the US. Thanks for that Dan so it's, it's, it's kind of the obverse of the headwinds that I kind of mentioned, you know, at the top of this conversation right so but let me start with, with removing the policy uncertainty. And I do think and all of the modeling shows this particularly for those who are climate minded if we're, if we're, if we're aiming at the administrations, you know, 80% be carbon the power sector by 2030 or completely net zero by 2035. So, that can, that can unlock the carbonization across other sectors in the economy so it's important we get that done sooner rather than later. The very best chance we have for that I think that the Biff was a decent down payment but the very best chance we have for that is the comprehensive clean energy tax platform, envisioned by, you know, the house pass bill back better act so I'm, I'm going to work together and all work together to get some version of that across the finish line. My colleague Aaron Duncan has mentioned I think we have to have supportive trade policy here and I, there's a lot of interest in the sector and we shoring our supply chain. But I think we need there's there's a sort of a climate compatible and climate supportive way of doing that and there's there are other ways to do that and we're looking to do that in a climate supportive way. I think we're going to be smart about that and as it turns out, the ass off provisions in the build back better act, we think as opposed to kind of a tariff heavy approach are far more likely to unsure these manufacturing facilities and the jobs and investment they represent. Lastly, I think this is this this is a top one let me just let me let me stipulate that. The jobs at ACP is is to oversee our state affairs work. And there isn't a state, you know, we're deploying everywhere across the country and there isn't a state that, you know, in the union that doesn't have citing and permitting challenges. And I think we need we need to, I think that we, we have a vast majority of Americans, kind of on board with the vision because we know we have to. And it's tricky when you try to, you know, when you when you take the general to the specific that's when it can get hard and I just think we're going to have to work through this together in order not in order to achieve our objective, which will be a common good. So let me I'm sure others will have good thoughts there let me let me step back and let them jump in. Thanks, Vincent. It's a great question. I would say first of all, we would have to begin to as policy collaborators and policymakers see energy efficiency. We have to invest to energy policy and climate policy, as we do on the supply side of the equation. So, just as much as we invest in an oil and natural gas, and as much as we invest in clean energy technologies. We also have to see energy efficiency as a, as a, as a substantive component to our energy policy and we have to invest in it at the, at the same levels, if not more, quite frankly, um, we also have to ensure that as we do that, that we identify pathways to make energy efficiency technologies universal, whether whether that's through rebate programs, or, or, or, or, or greater opportunities provided the utilities at the state level. In order to work directly with their customers, we have to find additional pathways to echo some of what Bill said, the, the clean energy tax credits particularly 25 C for energy efficiency. And 179 D extremely important, extremely important to move those through and give value to those similarly to the way that we give value to the supply side, quite frankly, and I will add this and I'll, and I'll, and I'll, and I'll give the mic back after. As we look at 25 C, it's important and understanding the, the, the, the, the policy need to, to, to move toward electrification. We have to understand and realize and make available the tax credit across the equipment types regardless of fuel source technologies. There are, there are a number of parts in the country, particularly in cold climate states where a high efficiency natural gas furnace simply makes more sense. And, and, at least now until the technology catches up, right. And, and, and, and because that fact exists, we should be incentivizing individuals into the most efficient pop, most efficient product type, and not simply the product type and necessarily is identified to move the needle. Based on based on a different type of policy other than energy efficiency and cost savings for the consumer. It's all in there. Thanks. Thank you, Vincent. Aaron, I think it's then you then Mark and then we'll hear from Emily, and we'll give you some second to last word. Well, thanks for this really provocative question. And my colleagues have already touched on many of the points that I would make at the top. Certainly passing a comprehensive package of climate provisions. And leaning tax policy, whatever they can fit into that reconciliation bill will be absolutely critical. We have to have a long runway to give companies certainty to build out the infrastructure that we know, and we all are in agreement on this call that we need. I do want to echo what Bill said about the importance of domestic manufacturing, I think securing state side supply chains for the solar industry is absolutely critical. And I believe that the, the holistic package of provisions currently in the reconciliation act will help us get there. But I think more important for policy makers. And one of the things that's really important on all of these individual pieces of legislation is that they just have to have courage to, to take this bold step. We are an transformative moment in our nation's history. We are in a difficult moment, geopolitically. And I think there is broad agreement, as others have mentioned, among the American people about what needs to happen and change is really hard. It's understandable that this has been a difficult road. But we have seen for so many reasons, whether it's climate emission or creating jobs across the country in diverse communities, ameliorating the worst effects of, you know, traditional fuels or, you know, on shoring domestic manufacturing and reinvigorating that sector of our economy, or even freeing us from some of the geopolitical conflicts that have arisen because of our dependence upon foreign sources of energy. We have to look, we have to work together on both sides of the aisle and agree that for the betterment of our country, we have to take this step forward. So I think the most important thing policy makers and their staffs can do is remember why you're there, why you're doing it, and to look within themselves and find that courage to really take those bold steps. Thanks, Aaron. Mark. Yeah, I would say from my perspective, one of the real challenges that that we see is spend a lot of time talking about the need to retrofit buildings and accelerate the rate at which we retrofit buildings, much faster than what we're doing today if we're going to achieve at least within the building sector the needed carbon reductions in order to meet our climate goals. But one of the challenges is that the deep energy retrofits that are required can be pretty disruptive and pretty expensive in terms of upfront costs and it becomes, you know, frankly for a lot of building owners challenging to see far enough into the how this deep energy retrofit might actually enable a return on their investment, especially once we start getting into, you know, the benefits of decarbonization. Again, the people that the building owners that are that we're asking to do these retrofits have to see some kind of value at the end of the day so what you know the things that I really think about or what what can we do to help consumers and businesses make it easier for them to actually pursue these deeper energy efficiency and decarbonization retrofits. I think a lot of the incentives that Vincent would discuss are definitely a great way to help kind of take that initial pain of a higher efficiency product and reduce it for you know for a building owner. And, and that can really help incentivize the right decision if you will. Another interesting tool that we didn't really spend any time talking about today but it's also really has a lot of potential is leveraging public financing with private capital. That's enough, you know, that we have the ability to take, you know, a small amount of public funding, and then, you know, bring you know as the private sector bring our own private financing into a project and we can quadruple the the overall impact of that public financing that might be granted to this overall approach to addressing building retrofits and so, you know, those types of things can really help bring down that upfront cost really help customers see the value of retrofits. And then the other the last thing that it can really also do is help unlock as a service models like energy efficiency as a service or decarbonization as a service so shameless plug over here. Things that, you know, again, are challenging to package and challenging to think about if you don't have the, if you don't, if as a building owner you don't have the, you know, 10 year out patience to think through that, but being able to leverage all of these tools that the federal government can use to really help bring that down that initial pain and drive value out of these out of these building improvements that are going to be necessary. You know, we think can can really have a tremendous impact on overall emissions from the building sector. Thanks, Mark. Emily and then Lisa love to hear any final thoughts from the two of you. Thanks so much and I see we're almost at time so I'll be very brief want to just second the points around energy efficiency around build back better version 2.0 whatever, whatever we're going to call that all of the tax incentives and the package, you know, related to climate I think it's incredibly important and key to all of this work. So the two things I'll mention is just not necessarily because they're the most important but because we haven't mentioned them are cybersecurity. There's going on in Congress around that and it's important if you talk to utility CEOs that's usually the number one thing that keeps them up at night. So we are certainly grateful for all the hard work that's going into that space, and we'll become even more critical I think as the, the tragic, you know, efforts in Ukraine or ongoing. And then the other point I'll mention it was in the slides but we didn't talk about it necessarily in this discussion is ease right electric vehicles are going to be critical to bringing down any transportation continuing to be the number one emitting sector utility see electric transportation is really key to helping us drive down emissions in that sector. And we will need the infrastructure certainly at the distribution level but also probably beyond that to make that happen so EV tax credits are key to help drive down the costs, and then ensuring that we are investing and finding the citing and permitting solutions that Bill Harkin to to make sure that the grid is resilient reliable and ready to meet those needs will also be very important. Lisa, I'll just take a very brief opportunity to thank all the participants. Please think of us collectively and individually as resources for you. And, you know, the number one priority of the council right now at the federal level is enactment of the climate and energy related tax provisions that passed the house and is being considered in the Senate and we think, you know, as Aaron said we got to seize the a lot of challenges right now but I think you've heard across the board that there's so many benefits to moving forward with the clean energy and energy efficient transition that's already underway. And it will solve the problems we're discussing today and probably ones that we can't anticipate so they're really. The investments are happening. They will help our economy grow and be competitive will create jobs, as we're also addressing pressing national security, energy security and energy resilience concerns. So, thank you so much to ESI Dan and I'll let you close. Well, thank you Lisa. I'm a couple quick things Mark, you mentioned leveraging public private partnerships. We actually covered that a little bit a couple weeks ago in a briefing. And this is also a good moment to tease Vincent a little bit because he was a panelist on that briefing. He's he's come back, but that was our energy efficiency means business briefing from about a month ago so if anyone in our audience wants to see or learn a little bit more about that opportunity is Mark to scratch or Mark teed it up to one resource. I think my answer to the question. It's kind of funny. I asked the question apparently the answer is everything. The energy maker should be focused on everything so hopefully for those in our audience hopefully that's helpful. I think my answer would be let's not lose sight of the programs we already have. We've talked to our panelists today have talked a lot about, you know, recently enacted or perhaps soon to be enacted legislation. We just got a budget deal. Let's remember that there's great work already happening at DOE, HUD, USDA, EPA across the federal government there's lots of great programs, delivering mitigation and adaptation benefits and resilience benefits. Every day let's stay focused on those as well and make sure that we're not losing any ground. It's great to be excited about the new stuff and the big stuff and the shiny stuff but the stuff that these agencies are doing every day is is really really remarkable. And the spirit of Emily mentioning something that hadn't already been mentioned that's my answer. Unfortunately, this is, we have to wrap it up. And I would like to, first of all apologize for going three minutes over but like to start with a series of thank yous. First, I'd like to say thank you very much to our friends at the Business Council for sustainable energy. Lisa Laura, Ruth, everyone. Thank you so much for all your help today. Also like to thank everyone with the House and Senate Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucuses so thanks to Senator Reid, Senator Crapo, Senator Van Hollen, Senator Collins and Representative kind and all their great staff for helping us bring this briefing to our audience today. Our panelists to great panel, Emily, Bill, Vincent, Erin, Mark, of course Lisa. I was going to thank Lisa in a second for for guiding the panel through the discussion but really amazing panel. Thank you so much for joining us today. I'd also like to take a quick moment to thank everyone at ESI who helped bring the briefing to fruition today. Thanks to Dan Oh, there are two Dan's, I'm Dan B, Dan O'Brien, Omri Laporte, as well as Emma, Allison, Anna, Amber, Savannah, and we have two really wonderful interns this spring, Emily and Grace and so thank you to them as well for helping do everything behind the scenes. We're going to put up a slide in just a moment. It's going to be a survey slide. If you have a moment, please take two minutes out of your day and share with us your feedback for our briefing today. There's also a link to all of the materials, the webcast and eventually written notes, our summary notes will be available online. So anyone in our audience today who wants to go back and revisit any of the presentations we've heard any of the slides or, you know, look up the fact book itself at bcse.org do all of that by visiting by visiting us online at www.esi.org. And Mark said something along the lines of shameless plugs a couple minutes ago. Well, shameless plug time. We've got some really great briefings coming up in the next few weeks. We have climate adaptation programs across agencies on March 18, and building a durable national framework for large landscape conservation on March 29. So please be sure to tune into those. You can subscribe to our newsletter, sign up for our briefings and read all of our great articles and other resources by visiting us online at www.esi.org. And with that, thanks to everyone on the panel today, including Lisa and everyone at bcse. And thanks to everyone in our online audience for joining us today. And I wish everyone a great rest of your Wednesday. Thanks so much.