 Good afternoon, Congressional Climate Campers. Welcome to the fourth installment of EESI's Congressional Climate Camp. I'm Dan Bresset, Executive Director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. EESI 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've also developed a program to provide technical assistance to rural utilities interested in on-bill financing programs for their customers. Whether briefings or fact sheets, everything we do and produce is freely available and accessible online. And as always, the best way to stay up-to-date and ensure you never miss a thing is to visit our website at www. EESI.org and sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions. Here we are at the end of April. Already time for Congressional Climate Camp number four. This year is zipping right by, and the fact that 2021 has been super busy so far in terms of climate and clean energy policy developments makes it feel even zippier. When we convened Congressional Climate Camp number three about a month ago, I said that Congress seemed to be hitting its stride after the passage of the big COVID-19 relief package. That still applies to Congress and the executive branch across a wide range of climate-related issues. Infrastructure investments, changes in tax incentives, environmental justice, and of course, the update to the U.S. nationally determined contribution announced just last week. The President's speech on Wednesday night was the latest example of the priority and urgency being placed on climate change right now. Our first Congressional Climate Camp was focused on process and specifically how Congress and the administration enact appropriations, budget, and stimulus to advance climate solutions. Then in February, we considered federal policies for high-emitting sectors, and specifically these five sectors, agriculture, power generation, buildings, industry, and transportation. In March, we look back in time at previous policy proposals that have helped shape our present circumstances. We also talked a lot about bipartisanship and the benefits of working together when crafting and refining policy and how that process could and should be more inclusive going forward. Today we will speak with five panelists about federal policy for mitigation and adaptation when wins. There is a lot of buzz right now about infrastructure investments and stimulus and rightfully so. But sometimes there can be too little focus on policies that would also help us adapt to a warming planet and improve our resilience to climate impacts. So as we look at measures and proposals to cut emissions, which is really important, some that deserve special attention are the ones that also promote climate adaptation. We only have so much time to avert the worst impacts, so anything we can do that delivers multiple benefits still deserves a close look and quick action. And while we mitigate and adapt, we should also be especially mindful of the effects policies could have on frontline communities and the potential for our actions to also advance environmental justice goals. As always, each of these four online briefings are structured so we can break out individual presentations to help the busy staff in our audience target their learning. Everything, including slides and written summaries will be posted online at www.esi.org. And a condensed audio only version of each congressional climate camp will be available as an episode of our biweekly podcast, The Climate Conversation. Before I turn to our panelists, let me address some logistics. Even though we have a busy agenda, you can still send us questions that we will try to incorporate into the discussion. If you have a question, you have two options to ask it. You can send us a message on Twitter at EESI online or you can send us an email to EESI at EESI.org. Just to set realistic expectations though, with our packed agenda and the number of you watching right now, we will not be able to get to every question during today's session. But ask away anyway, we will follow up and do our best to answer every question submitted during congressional climate camp. And now I get to introduce our first panelist. Dr. Bhaskar Subramanian heads the Shoreline Conservation Service for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Bhaskar works with various stakeholders, including federal, state and local governments, the private sector and citizens can providing technical assistance for habitat creation and restoration projects. Bhaskar also administers Maryland's Zero Interest Loan Program to implement shoreline restoration projects for waterfront property owners. He's constantly working on opportunities to push the envelope on implementing innovative living shoreline projects that combines restoration with SLR and resiliency. Bhaskar, it is wonderful to see you today. I will turn it over to you. I'm really looking forward to your presentation. Thank you so much, Dan. Let me see. I want to start this. Thank you again, Dan, for having me here. I want to actually talk about building resiliency through restoration the Maryland story. I would ask to cover a couple of points and let me actually go right to the topics. Before I talk about living shorelines and resiliency and natural and nation-based features, just want to give you a history of living shorelines. In Maryland, we have about 6,600 miles of shoreline and 16 coastal counties. And erosion is a natural process that's happening in all of those coastal counties. Erosion is really not a bad thing. It actually is important for the ecological health of the estuary itself. Traditionally, erosion has been controlled by some techniques like, as you see here, revatments and bulkheads. In some cases, people have gone put revatment on top of bulkheads and bulkheads on top of revatment and trying to build the next great wall of China on the shores of Maryland. It's definitely a misguided effort. These structural projects have problems associated with them because these structures are trying to fight nature instead of working with it. Now, if you look at Maryland shorelines, almost 87% of the shorelines that we have experience what we consider slight erosion or no erosion at all. Now, the question then comes to why living shorelines? How are living shorelines better than structural approaches? The first and foremost, they are great for shoreline protection. They enhance habitat. Aesthetically, living shoreline projects are a lot nicer to see and use. And most importantly, living shorelines are great for creating coastal resiliency. Now, one question that I get frequently asked is, is there one kind of living shoreline that is better than the other? And I try to tell folks that, you know, like many other things, one size does not fit all. There are many conditions that decide what kind of living shoreline project should be implemented in a given site, and they are dependent on the site conditions, the project objectives, and the energy regime that exists there. Now, in Maryland, we've had a fair share of severe storm events, extreme weather events. One of our biggest weather events was in 2003, Hurricane Isabel. Now, Isabel came with a surge of about eight feet. And when it came onshore to Maryland, some of the structural projects that were there, we heard from people that these structural projects were trying to fight that surge, and so it was not able to stand a chance. And so we got calls in Maryland Department of Natural Resources. We got a lot of calls, folks telling that, you know, they're bulkheads, they're somewhere out in the Bay, the environment that they build, they spend a lot of money, he's also somewhere out in the Bay, whereas many of our projects that, you know, many of the projects that, you know, in the neighborhood, which are, you know, nature-based projects which we did still stayed intact. So that was a great, you know, testament for how, you know, living shoreline projects or nature-based projects are better than your structural projects. I want to give you a quick example. This is a case of a, this is an example of a site, Chesapeake Bay Environmental Center. Before the living shoreline was done, there was a battered sea wall on site. This restored about 400 linear feet of the shoreline. There are a couple of different innovative techniques that were actually used there. We call it the living breakwaters. And then there was also an oyster reef component as part of the project. Now, you know, after the project was done, this is how it looked. I'm going to show you different angles of the same project after planting and almost after three years, this, you know, the project looks like this. As a matter of fact, now in 2021, almost, you know, 18, 19 years after that, the place looks very similar to what you see on this picture. Now, my program, the shoreline conservation service has been in existence since the early 70s. And we've done an equal number of structural projects and living shoreline projects. And the break done that you see there tells you, there's one message you want to take from this. And I would actually focus on the cost of these projects. The living shoreline projects are at least one-tenth of the cost of structural projects. Now, back in 2006, 2007, I went and assessed about 200 living shoreline projects. And the conclusion that I came to was about 131 of those projects were doing good or better. The second lesson I learned from that was investing in natural features like wetlands, forest buffers, dunes are the way, how you want to move forward. With natural buffers in place, communities have a better chance of bouncing back from climate-related events. Now, this is how a conventional living shoreline project looked back then. This was probably from the mid-90s, early 2000. We attest to the fact that less is more. And so I usually draw people's attention to the fiberglass boards. The fiberglass boards of Korea are a lot lighter than what they used to be before. But guess what? They still work. And so right now you're focusing on strategically placing materials, not trying to actually button up all the shorelines every inch of them and instead working with nature. This example is a great example of how we evolved our projects. Here's another project where I have a before and after the picture itself tells a thousand words. So we are steadily trying to innovate and push the envelope and think outside the box. And we feel that that is the way to actually move forward because we don't know what the sea level rise predictions and the climate change and everything. We don't know how much it's going to be. You know it's happening, but we don't know the extent of it. And so anytime working with nature would be the best way to do it. In terms of legislation that have been supportive of living shorelines, one of the first legislation was done in 1968, the shore erosion control law, where natural techniques were preferred over structural projects. And after 30, 35 years of actually implementing these projects on the ground and learning from them, in 2008, Maryland passed the living shorelines law, which basically put the owners on the property owners to prove to the state that living shorelines would not work on their shoreline. Maryland has invested a lot in the science and the implementation and we strongly feel that the best coastal adaptation policy is for the science to actually inform the planning and policy and law and the implementation project informs the science and future policies. There are many publications that were actually put out over the years. And in 2010, DNR, Department of Natural Resources adopted a policy of incorporating climate change in all phases of a project. And with that, and then with other working with our partners like the US Army Corps of Engineers, we created manuals like the one on the right, the building resiliency through habitat restoration. And that is where the whole building resiliency through restoration was formed. And this program, Governor Hogan actually put money towards us, put grant money towards it. And this program is called resiliency through restoration which is uniquely different from any other programs out there in three ways. One, innovation is one of the first things that we wanna do. We strongly feel that innovating and pushing the envelope is the path forward. The second aspect of this program is there's a very active monitoring program associated with this. And because there is innovation involved in it and there's a risk involved in it, we've actually put aside some monies for adaptive management, which is very, very unique. Now, talking about financing options in Maryland, there's a slew of programs from grant program, the one that I just talked about, the Community Resiliency Grant Program and the Shoreland Conservation Service Loan Program. And again, there have been other programs through the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and Chesapeake Bay Trust and so many organizations and agencies that have actually put money towards investing in living shelter practices. Now, there's been a consistent support, a federal support for natural and nature-based feature. The state CZM programs have effectively tackled the emerging coastal issues for almost 50 years. CZM supports the congressionally recognized priorities, like management, beneficial use and the development of nations coastal zone. The CZM program also believes that in order to have a healthy coastal resource, it's extremely important to support economic drivers and conservation. Coastal communities are increasingly facing many coastal hazards and the Coastal Management Grant enables states to increase their efforts to effectively prepare for and mitigate impacts and quickly recover from these hazards. States do this by priority investments through providing technical assistance, planning and implementation dollars. And with the current pandemic situation, we believe that these projects, these resilient projects are extremely important to ensure that the public is able to access these coastal areas and a continuous investment in coastal infrastructure projects help drive local job creation. Blue carbon is another aspect that I would ask to cover as part of this presentation. In a coastal system, wetlands and submerged aquatic vegetation are major source for carbon storage and sequestration. Blue carbon is really complicated. It's got highly variable rates of sequestration. We have to also account for the methane emissions. So there have been a couple of initiatives that we are a part of. There's one initiative along with Restore America's estuaries and Compass, which basically is called the Blue Carbon Initiative which highlight the ongoing work and identify research needs. And we're trying to actually see how, what co-benefits can these international nature-based feature of projects yield in terms of flood prevention and nitrogen processing and wildlife habitat. The other group that we're working with is led by Duke University. It's called the US Climate Alliance Blue Carbon Modeling Project. And there's about six states involved in the project. And the whole idea is, you're trying to actually create a model that can actually, you know, it basically impacts, I'm sorry, it models the impact of veteran changes in a hundred years on blue carbon and coastal veterans. You know, there are many funding sources that have actually contributed towards, you know, reaching our target goals. It is a minor, the blue carbon is a minor piece of that big plan, but it definitely comes up with significant co-benefits. So, the take home message is first and foremost, working with nature and not against it is one of the most important way to move forward. The second thing, the second take home message is planned for tomorrow today. This is my contact information for anybody who would like to actually reach out to me and I'm done. That's awesome, great presentation. I have a follow-up question for you, if you don't mind. Thank you very much for addressing blue carbon. That's something we hear a lot about. A lot of congressional staff have questions about blue carbon. I'm curious about how in your work, what steps you take to ensure that living shorelines that are installed by these programs are well-maintained and are not replaced in the future by, you know, a seawall sometime in the future or other structural improvements. And also, you know, if you have any thinking or if you have any thoughts about how that maintenance of living shorelines in order for blue carbon to continue to deliver benefits, it has to be there. And even though it's a minor, these other co-benefits are really powerful too. What kind of steps are you taking to make sure that these projects are maintained in the future? So two things, and that's a very good point, Dan, because, you know, the 200 projects that I visited, if I have to say one, take a message from those projects, it's not the kind of living shoreline project, it's not the contractor who's actually doing it, it's the maintenance of the lack of. So that's a really, really important point. Now, in terms of maintenance, two things that we tend to actually do, one is to actually work with our partners. Whoever the project partners are, we have a very strong tie with them. In many cases, it is private property owners. You know, it's a hard sell to actually make in the front end to actually, for them to actually invest in these natural and nationwide projects. But once they are committed, I have not, I mean, 15 plus years of work that I've been doing and the projects that I've been doing, I have not had a project where they've converted a living shoreline project into a structural project because they're slowly but steadily seeing the benefits, the co-benefits that are coming out of these projects. That's the first thing. The second thing is open lines of communication. We try to actually, you know, my phone number, you know, anybody, any projects that I do, I still have a contact with them and they reach out to me and they say, Baskar, I have a problem with this areas, what do I do? And it is as simple as, you know, maybe moving a good degree out of there or, you know, taking care of the invasive species. Those are some of the potential maintenance issues that I've actually seen over time. And so having that conversation, I've seen that actually helps a lot. That's great. I really appreciate that extra clarification. Thank you so much for your presentation today. Quick reminder to our audience before we move to our second panelist, quick reminder, if you missed any of that presentation, if you would like to go back and visit the slides or revisit the slides, you can definitely do that. Everything will be posted online. We'll also have written summaries. That may take a little bit of time to generate, but we'll have written summaries. You can also watch the entire archive and you can also watch individual segments. So thank you so much. And as a former state government employee in Maryland myself, thank you for your service and doing all of these great things for my adopted home state of Maryland. Thank you very much. I get to introduce our second panelist now. John Quinn is an associate professor of biology at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. His research and teaching emphasize concerns related to biodiversity, conservation and sustainability. In particular, he focuses on conservation in managed ecosystems and sustainability of multifunctional landscapes. His current research focus is how agriculture in urban landscapes and soundscapes in upstate South Carolina can be managed to conserve biodiversity and enhance ecosystem services. John, nice to see you today. We'll turn it over to you. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, Dan, and thank you everyone for connecting today. I'm just gonna share my screen here real quick. And you would think, I actually need to move that over there. You would think I hadn't been teaching on Zoom for the last however long. Okay, so today I want to share some of the perspectives on solutions for climate change coming from the agricultural sector. As Dan introduced, I am a conservation biologist and interested in managing ecosystems as a whole. And so a lot of the solutions are compelling because they're essential for addressing climate change and both mitigation and adaptation to it. But they also provide a diversity of other benefits. And so I'll be sure to highlight at the end that kind of the takeaway that if we're benefiting climate change or addressing climate change we're also benefiting biodiversity conservation or maintaining water quality. So why agriculture as a place to start? There are 22 million farms in the United States and those farms cover at least 92, 922 million acres. So a substantial footprint of land is fundamental if we're going to maintain food production but also work to mitigate climate change. Our agricultural systems though are diverse. I mean, this infographic from Bloomberg, they highlight there's 650 million acres of pasture and range which have a set of challenges and complexities but also contributions when we think about maintaining soil organic carbon in our grasslands but also 390 million acres of cropland. Those acres of cropland are likewise diverse. It's not just fields of lettuce in California and acres of corn in California but a diversity of different food, fiber and fuel products that cover a significant portion of our landscape. From an economic perspective, why agriculture and why is it an important part of this conversation? Agriculture is in the US on an annual basis on over $330 billion a year in products and that's spread between grains, right? We can see on the right and fruits and vegetables but also livestock and so it is a diverse sector. And lastly, if we think about the impacts of climate change, modeling projects that by 2050 or in the future, yields are going to be affected across much of the United, particularly in the Eastern United States as temperatures increase, as the frequency of drought becomes more common, where we grow particular products and where our important agricultural regions, they may see yield shift. So what are our potential solutions then from the agricultural sector? What options do we have before us that can potentially help address this? I think I want to continue to restate the fact that agriculture is a diverse system and so what might work in one area might not work in the other. And so whether you're talking about range versus cropland or growing vegetables versus growing grains in the same way these six images here highlight the complexity of different agricultural systems. Everything from a highly irrigated system in the top middle in Kansas, where we think about what is the importance of irrigation efficiency, to smaller diversified fields that might irrigation isn't the problem but maybe crop rotations are a more important solution. To kind of pull together a rich set of resources that are out there, I'm gonna draw on the work that Project Drawdown has done over the last number of years and they continuously update and analyze new data as it comes in addressing different solutions to climate change from different sectors. The panels here highlight some of the solutions in food, agricultural and land use. And in particular today, I want to highlight conservation agriculture, some of the roles of regenerative farming, which is a very popular and important topic right now. Talk about farm irrigation efficiency and some of the programs that the federal government supports for that. And then a little bit on grassland protection and this idea that main agriculture is part of the landscape. But then also on the individual consumer, how does diet and our particular diets contribute to greenhouse gas emissions but also what are some of the co-benefits of shifting to a plant-based diet? Conservation agriculture is a diverse set of practices that work to conserve both the soils but also the ecosystem structure and function. Each of the analyses that Project Drawdown has done highlights by between 2020 and 2050, the gigatons of carbon equivalent either reduced or sequestered. And so we can see here that conservation agriculture is predicted to help sequester between nine and 13 gigatons. They've also identified either fund-saved or profit that can come from these particular practices. And so we can see here 78 to 113 billion dollars in net profit back to farmers, landowners or different practitioners from these particular practices. Some of the practices that are included are no-till farming where planting a crop here, we can see it looks like soybeans planted into corn from last year from the previous year. And this is valuable because it less disturbance of the soil but also that helps maintain carbon but can reduce erosion. So we can start thinking about what are some of those co-benefits. Cover crops are a increasingly frequent and valuable tool. And we're again sequestering carbon but keeping continuous living cover on the land. And we can see here it looks like clover interplanted with wheat. And then lastly crop rotation. So diversifying our farming systems from just corn, soybean rotation to maybe including wheat or a falpha or choosing different crops whether it's amaranth or sorghum in the particular area that provides different values but ultimately sequesters more carbon and helps mitigate against climate change. As we think about incentivizing different practices I do think it's important to think about how likely they are to be integrated in the near and long-term and how do we kind of consider that in our practices. This figure here highlights we can see in the bottom left-hand corner practices that have low potential of adoption the next 10 years and low integration in today's agriculture versus ones that here have high potential for adoption and high potential in our current practices. And so we started thinking about what might be important. We can see here that today crop rotations and crop choice are not integrated well into today's agriculture systems but have high potential in the next 10 years. We can also see reduced tillage over here has medium integration but high potential for adoption. And so incentivizing particular programs to adopt those practices more broadly is needed. Regenerative agriculture is similar to the practices of conservation agriculture. It has it's developing in what its specific practices are but in addition to the gigatons of carbon sequestered and the profits here it's an important area or a valuable area to potentially link public and private efforts. A lot of major corporations are investing very seriously into regenerative practices including General Mills, PepsiCo and Patagonia here. And so if working on these corporate but government relationships can be a nice opportunity in this field of regenerative farming. Farming irrigation efficiency is one that I hadn't necessarily thought about before preparing for this talk today but we can see here you know both again not as many as great of a carbon savings but a significant amount of economic savings here. It is a great opportunity though to highlight you know two particular programs that the USDA runs. One within the USDA there's the Natural Resource Conservation Service which can provide important information for farmers that direct translation for how do we protect water, air, soil but one particular program that is well funded and popular is EQUIP. EQUIP is a program that will help farmers invest in infrastructure or management techniques that will improve their farm sustainability. One of those that they do invest in frequently is improved irrigation so this is an important area to continue to support. A long-standing and diverse practice is agroforestry. Agroforestry includes everything from silver pasture management where you know having livestock we can see here you know pigs a project we did down here in South Carolina we looked at you know how integrating pigs into a silver pasture system where trees and some sort of commodity whether it's corn or livestock are co-produced in the same land. The silver pasture provides mutual benefits for maintaining tree cover but the farmer gets you know economic revenue on an annual basis. Windbreaks and windbreak renovation are two really important ones that have a long history of research in the U.S. I wanted to highlight the USDA National Agroforestry Center which I believe is based in Lincoln, Nebraska unless they've moved but there's a lot of great research that has come out of Nebraska in the past and continues to come from National Agroforestry Center but practices like windbreaks are valuable because one you have that carbon stored in the biomass of the tree but it also helps protect the crops as a whole. A windbreak can have a you know increase the yields on the land by 10 to 12 percent just by being present and that considers the land loss to the particular practice. As we consider these different types and opportunities for interventions I think it's important to consider the scale so a lot of things in those conservation or regenerative practices fit at that field or maybe the farmer cropping system scale. So we can see tillage management so we talked about no till and crop irrigation as being field scale practices that you know we can incentivize and encourage farmers to support. Crop choice is requires more coordination across a farm but then ultimately management of landscape elements so semi-natural or natural landscape elements is work that requires networking among different farmers and I wanted to you know talk about the conservation reserve program is as kind of a context for that. The conservation reserve program is a long-standing program that funds farmers to idle land they it is the largest definitely the largest in the US private land conservation program. I mean you can see that you know the the amount spent in total CRP acres has leveled off but is valid is continually be supported. Recently the the program the conservation reserve program so just last week was you know promoted by Tom Vilsack the newest secretary of agriculture and so I think this is a space where we'll continue to see funding grow. Just a couple of last points here we can see that the conservation is a relatively small portion of the USDA budget and so that is important for us to recognize and agro-ecology practices that really focus on the sustainable systems are a much even smaller component of that. There are great projects or programs out there the USDA climate hubs provide regional information on data and synthesis tools and new technology but then I want to kind of end talking about stakeholder education and engagement which is a role that these groups fill. A lot of our work that we're focused on here currently you know thinks about how relationships between farmers and their land between farmers is so important to enhance sustainability so just paying farmers doesn't always work to increase these practices or just telling them they have to do it. Farmers are great communicators and great shares and when they share ideas and get excited about it it moves more quickly through the system. And lastly what about consumers since we all eat if we look at particular diet types we can see here that a plant-based diet has greater or has lower greenhouse gas emissions as compared to fish or livestock but importantly you know thinking about multiple co-benefits these same diets of Mediterranean, pescetarian, vegetarian diets have reductions in different health so we can see diabetes, cancer, coronary mortality and then all causes of mortality are all reduced by these particular diet types. So in conclusion kind of thinking about you know what is sustainable agriculture and how does it contribute climate change is part of that I don't know where we we think about some of the benefits that climate change can provide and you know these diagrams from John Foley highlight that agriculture isn't you know can be just for crop production we can sign into that middle practice but we think about these as multifunctional landscapes we can transform something you know a landscape that looks like this something more diverse like this that balances out different agricultural needs and demands. Alrighty so I will stop there and if folks have any questions my email is at the bottom and I'm always happy to to share and chat with others. Thank you John for a great presentation. If anyone just joined us and you wanted to go back and look at any of John's slides or Baskar's slides everything that we cover today will be posted online John I have a question for you about something that you said we have a lot of people watching this right now and a fair amount of them are staff people on Capitol Hill who represent members of Congress from all over the country. You said something along the lines of what works in one area might not work in another and I'd like you I have a question for you are there areas of the country where it would make the they get where we would realize the greatest adaptation or mitigation benefits from some of these practices how how is that information shared is there a way for staff to I guess this is a second part of the question if staff have questions along what works in their state or where their districts where would you refer them to. Yeah I would so yes what might be a valuable practice of one part the country might not work with another and that can be the same from within a county where someone is in more of a wetland area and those particular practices so really working with local NRCS agents is a really valuable tool for for farmers and supporting it more broadly. I you know the climate hubs are important because they provide region specific information in the same way if you if we talk specifically about agroforestry they have a little decision making tool to say which region are you in which agroforestry practices do we have data on and here's the best recommendations for those and so yes it is I mean the US is a very large diverse country and ecosystems you know it goes from you know temperate dangerous forest to across grasslands wetlands and so it is it is complex and diverse in that sense. Thank you very much for your excellent presentation I learned a lot and I was really impressed by the size of some of those numbers not just the sequestration reduction numbers but the cost savings and profit numbers pretty powerful drivers I would say. It is powerful and I would encourage everyone to check out Project Drawdown because they do have those numbers for each of the different practices and it is a well referenced and and again continually updated as we learn more about you know what are nature based solutions for climate change. Well thank you again for joining us today I really appreciate it we will move to our third presenter of the day Russ Vagan was born and raised in Colville, Washington Russ previously worked in many capacities including sales, marketing, operations and leadership for his family's company Vagan Brothers Lumber new opportunity however in the form of cross-laminated timber inspired a professional change for Russ in 2017 when he started a new separate company called Vagan Timbers that is now producing cross-laminated timber and unbeams and columns the company has delivered projects all over the United States in even projects in Europe Russ has served as chairman of timber product manufacturers association chairman of the Western Wood products association export committee and currently serves on the board of sustainable northwest and the northeast Washington forest coalition as past president Russ thank you so much for joining us today I'm looking forward to learning all about mass timber and cross-laminated timber thank you Thanks Dan appreciate that introduction and I'll share my screen here let's see there we go okay yeah as Dan said I'm from northeast Washington state and we we've got a pretty unique proposition in terms of not only utilizing our resources differently but also looking at carbon and climate change in a little different way we're trying to adapt centuries old technology and building materials building science industry to deal with the issues that we have of the day and we've been working on this for quite some time as Dan mentioned I'm part of the northeast Washington forest coalition and what that is it's a group of environmentalists forest professionals my family's business Vagen Brothers Lumber was I was vice president of and ran operations for about 17 years before starting Vagen Timbers and it was really the driver the why if you will to start Vagen Timbers because we wanted to show the consumer and give the consumer an opportunity to support the kinds of forest activities and forestry activities that they wanted and when we started to share with the public what we were doing in terms of thinning for us and in particular fire prone for us we got a lot of attention and people wanted to buy from us but in a sawmill capacity you're selling a commodity in bulk so if somebody wants to build a house or frame a basement or build a deck we couldn't really unless they were local sell that to them so we would have to point them to a distribution network and it didn't quite work really well and when I discovered cross-liminated timber and mass timber in general it really was like a light switch and then seeing how it worked in Europe and then being able to apply the sensibilities we have here in North America became really interesting so you'll see our tagline is forest to frame and that is because we really focus on what happens in the forest and bring it all the way through the market so we look at it in similar ways as you would see our food system so we want people to be able to decide whether they want just a product that sequesters carbon and they don't really care too much about where it comes from or want to dig into those details and maybe eco-friendliness isn't at the top of their list but still to know that what they're buying is sustainable and it is good and we look at it in terms of good, better and best practices so we want people to be also able to choose do I want a certified product that comes from FSC managed forest lands or do I want to find something that's really local it has a low carbon footprint while it harvest those materials and maybe doing what we do which is forest restoration and the byproduct of those activities going into products so we'll show you a little bit about that today but all those things are really interesting we're helping do some things that will help the environment at the same time we're building really incredible high-tech energy efficient buildings for the next generation and beyond and that's really exciting so I'll start my presentation with the era of mega fires this is a presentation done by Paul Hesper he's a PhD scientist with the US Forest Service and if you haven't seen this presentation I'd encourage you to do so he really digs deep into why we're having these mega fires of course climate change and other factors that are exacerbating this issue and it's not as simple as just going and cutting our forests and we'll be we'll fix this thing it's somewhere nuanced in between and we can have an effect on this and I think knowing that's important there are actions we can take at scale that will really help this and I wanted to highlight this image this is one that I actually took this is a forester for Boggin Brothers Lumber the company that I used to work for before starting Boggin Timbers and this area was a project area for a collaboratively developed project that was already approved and ready to be sold in October and the fire started in August of that same year so it passed all the oversight everything that the Forest Service does but this also went through a collaborative process where the local and regional environmental communities fought into the thinning and the activity that was going to go on here and the fire beat us to it and destroyed this landscape and that to me is really a driver and to what we do we want to be a force for good and this doesn't help anybody and you can see in the foreground there that the the ground is really torched in a hot way and that's unnatural at the scale that we're burning our forest right now and that's why we need to reduce these fuel loads when I mean fuel I mean the brush the trees everything that's out there the loading is just far too high we have thousands and thousands of trees three, five, seven thousand trees per acre and naturally we're supposed to have larger trees with wider spacing that are resistant to wildfire so we can do that and we've been putting out these fires for the last you know 50 to 100 years and what's that's done is it's allowed a lot of these smaller trees that would have burned and more intermittent fires to grow up into the canopy and put everything at risk we can do something about it and this is the result so this is a forest restoration project where we left the biggest and best trees behind the byproduct of this activity actually goes to the sawmill and we utilize small diameter logs I think that's also a misconception that the forest industry has to have large big old growth trees that's totally shifted and over the last 30 to 40 years everything is shifted towards a smaller diameter one because there's more smaller diameter material and in these managed lands that are that have roads and are already been managed but it's also just become more effective to batch the logs together and process them and this is an example of the trees that come off of those lands so what you see here is a log that is like four and a half inches in diameter up to about the steering wheel size of the car that's the material that's being used that's the byproduct of this forest restoration work that creates healthy forests that look like this the result is the byproduct so I like to tell people this is the product this is the focal point the beautiful thinned out healthy forest and the byproduct is what we need to be building our buildings with and so we take those logs into the mill and this gives you a little bit of a depiction this this imagery here where those small logs are then stacked in bulk under a crane they're separated by size and specie they're they're run into the mill they then we turn them into rough lumber and when I say we that's Boggin brothers lumber and other sawmills like it which we also buy from at our facility and then once that lumber is created we further process it we finger join it together to make it long and then we make either cross-liminated timber which you see there in the bottom left or glulam products like glulaminated timber panels glulam columns and glulam beams and that's down there on the bottom in the right we're also using very high technology when it comes to CNC equipment digital fabrication 3D modeling some of the things that are the latest advances in building science and it allows us to build building smarter with less waste they're more energy efficient and we tie together these the the mechanical electrical and plumbing aspect of these buildings back to the factory so there's less waste and it's just more efficient so it's a really good process so we're not asking people to trade off some of the the benefits of building or that we're we're building something that's eco-friendly to manufacture yet not energy efficient in the building or we're what we're doing is we're taking that carbon that's in that forest that would otherwise burn or encapsulating it in the wood then we're putting in these buildings and the beautiful part about it these buildings are also going to be able to be reused and recycled if the building has to come down at some point in the future and we've seen in many of the markets urban markets that we operate in where when they take down an old warehouse that was built a century ago and has these big heavy timbers in it that's some of the most valuable wood in the marketplace reclaimed heavy timbers that's what we're essentially going to be putting into these structures we also go beyond that we can make really beautiful things out of wood like this spiral staircase at the University of Oregon it turned out wonderfully this is these are from small logs forest restoration activity they're in small pieces so we were able to get maximum usage out of the material and it just it's another way to put carbon stored into the simple staircase of a building but it also has an aesthetic that people really love this is another neat project that we were part of you're looking at the outside cladding which is a reclaimed wood with the with the steel panel that goes over a all CLT constructed module these are 14 units on eight separate buildings on what used to be two single family lots in Spokane, Washington it's an area that's starting to be a little bit more urban a little bit more enjoyed by foot traffic so some friends of mine in Spokane created a development called blockhouse it's blockhouselife.com if you want to check it out there's some small units in there for Airbnb so if you're in Spokane you could stay there and check that out but it's also really neat to see especially in this post COVID world that we're in this is another way to do an increase in density but also not have everybody so packed tight together so there's 14 units here there's the people are able to stay there and have their own space yet be in together in a community and you can you can do this more dense but it's also just it's interesting how fast this stuff goes together we were building each one of these units from a structural standpoint in in about a week or less and then we were doing the rest of it very rapidly and these are getting better and more common as we see more modular construction this is a project that we're doing this summer also in Spokane, Washington it's it's gonna be an incredible project it's actually a house is part of a ALS charity called Matt's Place the Matt who the charity is named after he's he's still alive and doing well he's got it he's got ALS he's in a motorized chair and he started a foundation we wanted to show people what's going on with ALS and how to make life easier for those that have it so we teamed up with Miller Hall Architects Andy Barrett is on their board he's the the brains behind Blockhouse and we're building this this summer it's gonna be an ALS specific house where the all of the functions inside are made to make life easier for somebody who's afflicted with ALS we're really proud of this and we think it's going to be a really awesome project that's going to serve many purposes and could be expanded across the country I also want to show another application for this product this is the Oregon State University Cascades campus in Bend, Oregon we did all of the panels and we did all the fabrication for the glulam as well and this was constructed very rapidly but the really cool thing is Bend is in a fire-adapted landscape it's got forest fires that happen in and around it and we took products from those areas to thin forest out not specifically right at Bend but in our area which is about four hours away and we put that that material that would otherwise create wildfires into this building and now it's going to survive and provide a wonderful place for people to learn and become educated for years and years to come so that's my presentation and I'd be happy to answer any questions and further this discussion thank you thank you Russ for a really great presentation I know it's a little rude but I kind of want to invite myself over to go on a field trip to Washington and maybe check out those facilities they looked awesome no you're welcome to any time we actually to that point and people on this seeing this may know this or not but big tech has really put a big push on making their buildings eco-friendly and I'm under NDA under a lot of projects with them but you know we're we're taking I've got some samples here so we we're taking this cross-laminated timber product and we're building their new facilities out of these wonderful products and we see that as a real opportunity to tell the story their leaders they have the capital to push this forward because that's what their employees are asking for they want them to be more sustainable and use the best products they can but we also invited some of the key leadership to do what I just showed you in this presentation in real time in real life so we took a few people from Google Microsoft Amazon Facebook we went out in the forest we walked through where we had already done treatment I think it really shows people that we're not always talking about a third cut we're talking about a forest it's actually in better shape now than it was when we found it and it's got environmental oversight which is really great then we take them to the sawmill show them how that law gets processed how we use all of the wood chips all of the bark all the sawdust the shavings they all have a product and they enhance our lives so we're using everything possible and then adding even more value by returning it into mass timber and we're replacing and giving another option besides just standard steel and concrete in these commercial structures and there is a place for steel and concrete but we've been doing too much of it and I think it's we need an alternative that isn't such a high cost when it comes to carbon when we manufacture products it looked really impressive not just the sort of the facility the timber facility itself but the project is fantastic I have two questions for you one I just like to sort of get your perspective we covered mass timber as part of our workforce Wednesday's briefing series and I was just curious as your company has grown if you could comment a little bit about the workforce development opportunities that it's brought to that part of the country and my assumption is that those opportunities may not have been there before your company created those jobs yeah that's absolutely right so we're in a fortunate place we're in a rural community north of Spokane that does have a fair bit of manufacturing you know we had that in the 70s and 80s and a lot of that manufacturing went off shore and so but what we're bringing to the table is the next level high-tech stuff that people are able to go get a community college degree or a workforce focused degree and add to their skills and get paid more for them so when we're running a computer numeric control system which is a CNC that takes a little bit more than just your average high school degree need more focus and energy some of that's on the job but some of that comes from um education but it's also like the we're tying the gap tighter between building sciences and manufacturing and you know the traditional way we build is there's a there's a design team so an owner is going to do a building they're going to develop a building I'm in Seattle today so we're they develop a building in Seattle typically you have an architect that starts it and leads the project they bring on an engineer they go through they render it and then they they they build it in a in kind of this this vacuum and then they engineer it so it'll stand up and withhold the the test of time then they get a general contractor then that general contractor after the permits are granted goes out and sources of material but now with with not only mass timber but others we're doing so many parts in one spot that we're bringing a much it's much different than just materials it's not just a collection of materials and people putting it together so we now are educating the the developers the architects and so on we need to be part of that team because we need to be able to go through that process so you can one develop a cost but understand how to build it understand how to optimize it and make it most efficient so it's it is a paradigm shift and it's drawing it back to forest management and we think that's a really good thing so people should know where their products come from the sort of second follow-up question you address this at the the beginning of your presentation but I'd like just to ask you about it again because I think for a lot of staff people maybe there's an inconsistency and incongruity here between you know the idea that well using more wooden buildings how is that not actually bad for forests just very briefly could you explain a little bit more about how increased use of wood and buildings is actually good for our forests or could be good for our forests yeah so we have like two types of things going on in our forest we've got some very actively managed industrial timber lands and that's just kind of market-based stuff and and that's out there the other side of it is we have a lot of federally owned and managed lands and what happened in the you know this the 1960s 1970s led into the 80s was a growing environmental movement a growing focus on what are we doing out in our landscape in particular our public lands and the forest service and the Bureau of Land Management which between the two of them I think it's about 400 million acres and not all of it's forested but the bulk of it is basically they decided in the the late 80s and early 90s that we've got to change some things and instead of changing and adapting they stopped so we went from like 12.6 billion board feet annually of harvest on those on the forest service lands in particular we dropped down to 1.8 billion we've never got over 3.3 billion since then it might be 3.5 and we've changed technology so we're counting smaller trees now that we weren't counting when we were developing those numbers before so we in that every year during that time the trees have grown not only like up but out and we filled the forest with all of this fuel and we need to go back and revisit that we don't need to look at it from an extraction standpoint we have areas like on the Colville National Forest where the federal lands are contributing back $1,000 an acre while they're doing forest restoration because the infrastructure is built for that place you go to someplace like New Mexico or Eastern Arizona or parts of Wyoming and Colorado and Utah where they've lost their forest infrastructure because that forest reacted a little I think too aggressively to the concerns of the public instead of shifting right so there should have been a shift but what we got was a shutdown and so we lost the infrastructure so now it's costing the government $1,000 an acre and very limited scope and the treatments that they can do around these communities and other infrastructure where if we right size the forest industry and we bring sawmills that are dedicated to that small diameter back into those communities we can create products that really work well and I think that creating that market and I know we have a really crazy lumber market right now that's got a lot of factors that go into it we shouldn't focus on that we should focus on what we need to do for the long term we need to manage our federal forest lands that does not include talking about roadless areas it does not include wilderness areas it talks about managing the already roded previously managed landscapes in and around communities and these communities in many cases have already gone through the process to identify those lands we just need to have the institutional fortitude to go implement these things and we talk about an infrastructure plan going across the country I think that is a critical thing and it adds jobs to your other point in communities where they're really critical and I saw a stat recently as well as in the last two or three years where if you looked at the impact of jobs in rural communities versus jobs in urban communities if you had a hundred jobs in a community of three or four thousand people the impact is like hundreds of thousands of jobs in a major metro marketplace so I think those are just important things there's a ripple effect there and a circular economy that we can create and I would just say there are examples around the world where they're doing this they're doing this in places like Sweden and in Norway and in Austria where they are not overharvesting their lands and they're creating these wonderful products that come from nature that are high efficiency buildings and everything else so yeah I know it's a long way to answer your question but you know we're really passionate about it I think it's a wonderful thing No that was great really great information and those sorts of job impacts something we talk a lot about at ESI as well with respect to biofuels and communities that generate and it doesn't you know you bring up biofuels and you know bioenergy and things like that this all ties in with the forest management and so that's it's something that if we get the right players at the table we can create something really powerful Well thank you very much for joining us today Russ Welcome thank you for having me for your presentation Russ you mentioned in your presentation energy efficiency and resilience and that brings us right to our fourth panelist so thank you very much Russ for that segue I get to introduce my friend Kim Cheslak Kim is a building energy codes leader and content matter expert she guides the future of building energy codes through the United States she's worked on building codes for over 10 years she has led commercial and residential code compliance studies she's worked with local governments to maximize savings through adoption of and compliance with building energy codes she's actively enforcing as well as actively enforcing energy and green construction codes in the district in Colombia as a code official she is with new buildings institute now and her work focuses on assisting leading jurisdictions to improve their use of building carbon and energy policies to achieve their climate goals Kim it is great to see you I can't wait for your presentation it's been a while since I've heard a good building energy codes presentation so I'm I'm looking forward to this thank you excellent thanks Dan and can you guys hear me okay I'm gonna get this going okay great thanks for having me here today again like Dan said my name is Kim Cheslak I'm the director of codes with new buildings institute just if you're sort of unaware of NBI we're a mission-driven nonprofit we're based in Portland Oregon and we work to push for better buildings so to achieve the zero carbon future that we all need so I want to start real quick which is the brief building codes 101 just to make sure we're all talking from the same page here so building codes are basically just laws that regulate how we design and build they cover everything from structural design to energy use that includes things like plumbing and mechanical systems fire protection and safety basically you can't build or renovate a structure without complying with these regulations so they have the potential largest impact on our building stock in the United States there are three primary codes writing bodies the International Code Council ASHRAE and NFPA they are somewhat coordinated but each have a sort of a slightly different structure and a slightly different scope in what they provide out to the market in terms of those codes and standards codes and standards are largely developed by having a committee in some form or another each of the codes and standards that I just mentioned have a process for proposals to be submitted basically by anyone you all could submit one code changes I certainly submit code changes but it's a generally open process those proposals are sent out for public comment after they're vetted proposals are finalized and voted on and new additions of these codes come out approximately every three years so I want to put in context here why we're talking about buildings and building energy codes I did say that the code is the largest way to impact buildings so buildings are responsible for 75% of the nation's electricity consumption about half of its fossil gas consumption this contributes to about 38% of U.S. emissions this these numbers can quickly be driven down to zero a typical office building in the United States existing building uses a lot of energy right so we can build a new building today at Nezero Energy that uses 70% less than any existing building in terms of energy it can use 46% less than sort of the U.S. base code and what this means is that one net zero energy building in the United States will save 169 tons of greenhouse gases per year so again why buildings President Biden has recommitted the United States to the Paris Agreement meeting these goals means cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030 getting to net zero by 2050 re-entering that actual agreement and most importantly limiting our global warming to one and a half degrees Celsius by impacting buildings we can eliminate 20% of current U.S. carbon emissions so I'm going to spend some time today previewing for you what it might look like to have a building code for climate the big piece I want to emphasize here before we dive in a little bit further is making sure you guys understand the difference between embodied carbon and operational carbon this is a quick graphic that I borrowed from Skanska I think it does a pretty good job embodied carbon is basically anything that is used to construct the building and then operational carbon if anything once the building is constructed in operations what it is consuming to run under normal circumstances at NBI we like to talk about carbon neutral buildings with these sort of five foundations and these are the way that we consider one the loading order of what needs to be done to achieve net zero carbon buildings and two just the total scope of what needs to be done to achieve those and so those are energy efficiency renewable energy grid immigration and storage building electrification and then life cycle impacts we're going to talk a little bit more about each of these so a building code for climate what would that mean within each of these foundations there has to be a scope of what we would mean when we're talking about creating a code for climate and what the goal would be and we're going to talk a little bit more about each of these so I wanted to add another layer in here and I know that Jackie is going to talk to us a little bit more about this but there's got to be also an equity component when we're talking about all of these pieces and talking about building codes it's really easy to take ourselves out and say like oh this is just a law there's legal limits and how does this impact people or how does this impact me you know we do at NBI want to focus our work around equity while still being able to ride sort of science-based and technical solutions to the building so energy efficiency the key that we're talking about here is really impacting those base codes and building systems to achieve highly efficient passively resilient buildings we've seen instances like this picture I have in the background here where all of a sudden our buildings are subjected to more extreme weather than we sort of expected them to be so there's a couple pieces in play in the energy efficiency space we have the energy code the IECC which is one of the primary energy codes just put out the 2021 we estimate that it's got a 10% gain in efficiency over the last code cycle but it also produced the most challenges to the code development process that we've ever seen and those challenges actually changed the IECC from a code to a standard which I know is a little bit in the weeds for this group but basically what that is it removed the voting process from governmental members or the users of the code and put it now into a committee and that call for committee just closed last Friday so we're waiting to see what that process will really provide for us in the future then there's a companion standard that's released by ASHRAE the 90.1 2019 determination was just released it was about a 5% improvement in energy efficiency ASHRAE's also been moving forward to form a building decarbonization task force and has released standard 228p which is focused on building decarbonization which is open for public comment right now the work that's done by ASHRAE supported by the National Lab so we sort of know again that it has a strong technical foundation I want to say neither of these standards or codes have committed to moving towards a net zero energy or a climate-based solution they're just sort of moving in the right direction but that sort of progress is not consistent and it's not assured we have a real opportunity these are the codes that we are tracking at NBI that are developing between now and 2023 and 2023 becomes a real important target because the science will tell us that for to stay on track to that 1.5 degree target based on our building stock we need to have all electric new construction by 2025 and so if we don't impact these codes like I said three-year cycle these codes that are on this map here in the next 18 months we're really going to miss a huge opportunity the next piece that goes into this code for climate is focus on renewable energy we need to provide on-site, off-site and procurement regulations that help us achieve resilience but also support state renewable portfolio standards and really focus on additive generation state renewable portfolio standards not sure how familiar this group is with that but since 2000 the personally 50% of U.S. renewable electricity generation and capacity has been driven by state RPS and what those do is they specify the percentage of retail electric sales that must be supplied through renewable electricity today 31 states including DC and Puerto Rico have a renewable portfolio standards and that represents nearly 220 million people or over 65% of the U.S. population out of these 31 states four Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Virginia and Washington DC are striving for 100% renewable electricity and we're starting to include this in the code so we've made the leap from like what does this mean to have these other policies out there and how do we regulate it in the 2021 IECC there's two options for the inclusion of renewable energy in the code both a residential and commercial zero energy appendix some of this language has also been refined and proposed into ASHRAE 189.1 to include the solar generation as mandatory on new commercial construction all right next step electrification this one's a little bit simpler all building systems and vehicles powered by clean electricity we're fighting a little bit of an uphill battle with this right now in terms of what we're dealing with in great electric supply but again hopefully those renewable portfolio standards they're going to shift this picture for us a little bit buildings in our major cities already use more electricity than they do gas but that electric supply produces slightly more greenhouse gas emissions than on-site combustion at this point by focusing on the loading order I've put in front of you efficiency first adding renewable energy targets and then electrifying buildings we can really change this picture so that the electrification of our buildings is not as scary as a lot of people are making it out to be the biggest problem that we're having in this space though is this backlash with the idea that people are wanting to move to electrification there have been a huge number of opportunities in state legislation to go through and distract the market by banning gas bans basically and so we need to actually change this map the pink here is where state legislation has been passed prohibiting local governments from restricting natural gas utility services and this includes or would include things like codes that mandate all electric news instruction this is of huge concern not just for what building codes would look like but for reaching our national targets the next piece we're going to talk about is grid integration what this means in a building is that buildings can include controls and storage to respond to time of use carbon and resilience signals that would be supplied by the electric grid by the utility grid the way our buildings interact with the electric grid is really rapidly evolving we're moving quickly away from a one way grid which we're all sort of the way we understand our electricity to move and moving into a space where buildings will face increasing regulatory and economic pressure to be able to respond to those changing utility rate and delivery structures designers are going to need to understand and incorporate strategies that allow buildings to directly interact with the utility grid and adapting to an interactive grid will be critical in maintaining building services and comfort and grid dependability in the future efforts to decarbonize the electric grid will require better integration of these distributed energy resources that we're putting into our buildings and then to illustrate the overall impact of what these different pieces would give you this is a typical energy demand of a commercial office building once we apply some sort of stringent energy efficiency measures we can shift that demand down when we equip a building with solar PV we can really shift how much energy is using at all times of the day compared obviously the sun is up as we see this dip down and then when we provide a grid integrated building with energy efficiency solar PV and that load flexibility which would include include storage we can smooth this shapes back out so that it's not only getting the benefit of the solar supply when the sun is shining but can use that in these side areas to help decrease its demand on the grid overall finally life cycle impacts we need to design for embodied carbon refrigerants and deconstruction of buildings to reduce the life cycle greenhouse gas impact of our building this relies largely right now in talking about embodied carbon building materials and construction contribute 11% to global greenhouse gas emissions building operations which I've been talking about up to this point contribute 28% and while you can say that 28 is larger than 11 also everything I presented to you thus far is saying that we are going to start to close that 28% down and so that materials and construction impact is naturally going to grow larger this is one of the times where the pie is the whole pie and so as you make one piece smaller you're going to naturally make the next one larger so to talk about buildings in their entirety we're also going to need to to focus on what we're doing when we're constructing our buildings with these materials all right real quick I'm going to just preview what might be some policy solutions to make all of this possible at the federal level appliance standards create an issue with what we call in the building code world federal preemption basically the fact that the federal government controls the appliance standards limits whole pages of my code book and those limits on the efficiency of building systems limits the overall progress of the code to meet high performance building targets if we can't adjust those systems to be more efficient and mandate that to be more efficient our whole buildings are knee capped additionally there's a federal role in the certification of model energy codes and the review of state energy code this is the current map of how the states have adopted the code there is a real lack of enforcement at the DOE and the federal level to require that these states bring their codes up to even the penultimate version of the most recent model code would save hundreds of thousands of dollars in the pockets of consumers but also the required energy and carbon that we need and then there's federal programs and I want to say that programs like energy star homes and DOE's net zero energy ready home they have great marketing right there are YouTube videos but these programs need to be focused not only on producing a fairly efficient home but a very efficient home the most efficient home and they need to be zero carbon this great marketing really needs to be combined with the climate solutions we need to be able to push the market forward beyond the federal legislation we have issues with what we call state level preemption how jurisdictions can apply the code is limited by the state laws in many places jurisdictions in these states sort of don't control their own code destiny as it were they're held back from meeting their own climate goals and more importantly held back from contributing to the national goals because of the way that legislation is set up in their states that mandates that they cannot go above the code that is set by the state and finally the jurisdictions are further limited by the traditional code development processes that I started out explaining to you NBI hasn't always been seen as a leader in developing sort of custom solutions custom road maps and custom code language that jurisdictions are asking for to move beyond the model code language and we've seen a real uptick in this in recent years with the inconsistent progress of the model energy codes we are going to continue to provide this support but we are trying to also shift the way that we think about providing the support to make it more equitable not every jurisdiction can afford to create custom language and not only can they not afford to spend the money to do it it creates a little bit of market confusion when you move from state to state to be able to really focus on what those those codes are doing and what they're asking for and the more we can unify the market around a single code that pushes on all levers that creates the solutions that the building space needs to meet a 1.5 degree target the better shape we're all in and then finally just because my comms team will absolutely yell at me when I get off this if I don't put this slide up NBI join us in New York this fall we're hoping to all be there together getting to zero forum October 27th through 29th we'll be talking about all this stuff and more that's it thank you so much Dan thank you Kim that was a great presentation so it's totally fine that you added your plug at the end for sure I liked it very quickly go into a little bit of detail you described the 10% improvement in the last code the 2021 IECC could you very briefly describe some of the measures the updated measures that were that sort of add up to that 10% what specifically are we talking about when we talk about energy improvements or energy efficiency improvements and resilience that have resilience benefits that are that have become part of the code more recently that's a great question Dan so you know some of the things that we saw we saw like incremental improvements in the envelope across a lot of different spaces we saw some improvement in envelope testing so looking at air tightness and how much our buildings are giving away free heating or free cooling to the outdoors and then we also saw some changes in sort of the structure of the IECC so there's now what sort of a points option although I will it's it's a little bit weird to say like that because it's not optional you have to do it you just get to select the way that you do it so there's several measures spelled out in both the residential and commercial sections where designers have a little bit of flexibility to pick the measures that are best for them but those measures all add up to a certain amount of savings over the previous version of the code so there you can get points for increased mechanical equipment efficiency better envelope better you know air sealing again and a couple different a couple other areas but those are sort of the key tweaks that were being made like I said we're really limited in that mechanical space because of the federal issue and really looking for federal leadership in that space so that not only can we do our part in the code as much as we can but the that legislation you know those standards can be changed to help us do our best thank you for that yeah the inability to move beyond sort of current standards for heating and cooling equipment heating equipment in particulars is pretty bad well thank you so much for that excellent presentation if anyone in our audience missed it you can visit us online at www.esi.org to see Kim's presentation either the slides or the archived presentation itself so thank you very much Kim you also in that slide mentioned a couple other organizations I will plug our friends at the appliance standards awareness project if you have questions you want to do a deep dive into some of those issues that's also an excellent resource so I just wanted to make sure I think that graphic that you had on your slide actually is sourced from ASAP so they do great stuff thank you so much I get to introduce our fifth panelist now and it kind of a perfect way to wrap up the panel by helping us put everything that we've just heard in in perspective and I'm really excited to introduce Jacqueline Patterson Jackie is the senior director of the NAACP environmental and climate justice program since 2007 Jackie has served as coordinator and co-founder of Women of Color United she has worked as a researcher program manager coordinator advocate and activist working on women's rights violence against women HIV and AIDS racial justice economic justice emergency response and environmental and climate justice Jackie holds master's degrees from the University of Maryland and the Johns and Johns Hopkins University she currently serves on the advisory boards for the Center of Earth for Earth Ethics the High Fund for Gender and Climate Justice as well as on the boards of directors for the Institute of the Black World Greenpeace the Bill Anderson Fund People's Solar Energy Fund the American Society of Adaptation Professionals another ASAP and the National Black Workers Center Project Jackie welcome to the panel today I'm really looking forward to your presentation thank you so much it's a pleasure to be here with you all I hope you can hear me okay okay yes so I am excited to be able to hopefully provide an exclamation point on what has already been said and just talk a little bit about nuance critical nuance in terms of how do we how do we get there in terms of kind of this notion of a win-win on climate when when we talk about this now we feel we're at a point where as you know with the climate clock ticking with us in the midst of this syndemic as they say of kind of overlapping disasters with with the COVID-19 with the climate crisis with the economic crisis and certainly with the with the racial uprising it's more important than ever well it's it's always been important but now we're kind of cleaning up but uh to address really the the root causes or we're going to continue to have the eruptions of the of the manifestations of the core rot in our society and so unless we really push for for true systemic change we're going to continue to find ourselves in the same place so this moment really calls for us to be aspirational to be bold to be to do what's as Missy Stultz from Ann Arbor said in a recent call I was on with her she and she's actually with ASAP the group that I'm on the board of she talked about this notion and with Ann Arbor planning of being doing what's audacious but necessary and at this point audaciousness is necessary for us to get to where we need to to to to go here so first of all it's kind of foundational when we talk about where we need to be is to to we have to collectively reject the myth of scarcity and embrace the reality of abundance whether we're talking about regenerative regenerative systems of food whether we're talking about the regenerative design that we need for our building whether we're talking about the regenerative nature of energy if we do it if we do our energy through clean energy then it's possible for us to really reach the the heights that we need to reach in terms of the types of transitions that we need in our society away from a society and practices and policies that are are doing what they're they're intended to do we talk about kind of unintended consequences but we also know that that that contrary to this notion of the nation being founded on principles of freedom and religious freedom and liberty and so forth that was actually founded on practices of exploitation extraction domination and and displacement and so we have to turn away from that and shift to a society and it's possible it's not this utopian concept we know it's been done in different places and we'll talk about some of these examples but we have to shift to a society that's rooted in principles and practices around regeneration around cooperation because we're all we're all interdependent the ecosystem is interdependent and we have to lean into to that interdependent so it's all going to continue to fall apart whether it's bee colonies ant colonies we all the nature has has um has modeled for us the way that we need to be and if we just lean into bio memory and and and replicate the the the divine design of our earth systems then we can really we can all thrive and not and and instead of just some of us barely even surviving so with that we know that we we can reject this notion of scarcity embraced the reality of abundance and we have to do it by following the science the sciences is based on on the the realities what we know what's what's measurable in terms of our earth systems and how we do it needs to be following the principles that have been set forth by frontline communities from the him as principles of democratic organizing or actually yesterday I learned because I met someone from hey mess that is pronounced hey mess principles but of democratic organizing the um environmental justice principles that were put together in 1991 the um the Bali principles on climate justice the the frontline communities have laid out the how we do it letting people speak for themselves making sure that we have bottom up organizing committing to self transformation because each of us has to recognize our role in it and be willing to make that commitment to change and so even as we as we try to to dismantle the system that's built on the intended consequences of extraction exploitation and oppression of certain people we have to do so in a way that even that so that even well intended efforts whether it's the justice 40 or the other types of efforts that are going on don't have unintended consequences we and in the only way we're going to be able to make sure that we don't have those unintended consequences even as we dismantle the systems with intended consequences of marginalization is to make sure that we have everyone at the table so that there is there are no margins the table is a common table that we're all at making our making our design for for a society that upholds all rights for all people so again we we know that we we put people on the moon we've we've we've come up with a vaccine for covid in record time we've we've done so we've we've developed developed the interweb we've done so many things that looking back in time that people wouldn't have even been able to conceptualize much less think are possible and much less implement and yet we've done it so we have we have the ability to do all of this and so it's already working in different places as we think about changing each and every one of our systems we have to make sure that national policies and programs support local vision and leadership as we say all politics are local so whether we're talking about coastal preservation as the first panelist is talking about we know the groups like the gulligichi nation is working with groups like climate central and NOAA to to develop an app even on how do they assess their risk for sea level rise and how do they begin to plan plan for that in that matriarchal society we know groups like echo in Mississippi is working with the communities like turkey creek which are which are under threat from their the the development that's happening on the wetlands by one of these these developers and they're pushing back and saying the wetlands again are part of this divine design of our earth systems and they're they're designed to be able to absorb the water and as we as we're having this increase in sea level rise flooding and so forth let's lean into those natural protections as opposed to again profits over people letting a development take away the natural protections that this frontline community would have what would have in order to protect it from the from the from the encroaching waters and so as we think about national federal policies we have to have strong federal policies in place around wetlands restoration that intersect and we have to always think about intersectional policymaking so that it's not just oh this is just going to be in this particular sector and not recognizing again what the unintended consequences of not incorporating a cross sector our policymaking so as as Audre Lorde said we can't have single issue solutions because we don't live single issue lives so when we talk about wetlands restoration we are preservation we have to make sure that wetlands preservation is in concert with development policies and how do we how how we're permitting development we have to make sure that our national flood insurance policies that there's intersection between the the flood insurance programming and the housing programming and so forth so that we have strong national flood insurance program that that really protect people as opposed to having a kind of a myopic focus on climate risks to the extent that it's only protecting properties or protecting a budget or protecting as opposed to protecting people and people's well-being we have to to be smart about how we are doing manage retreat planning so that it's not something that's happening to us down the line where we're scrambling to figure out what's what's to happen but we're thinking now about how do we reconfigure our our budget so that we have enough investment for for a managed risk retreat for for community so that if your community wants to to retreat all together then there's resources for them to be able to maintain community and not be divided asunder by by the need to to to move back from the shoreline we have already have folks talking about energy democracy again following state and local leadership we have the great work of the Portland Clean Energy Fund and of the Future Energy Jobs Act in Illinois the offshore wind bill in Maryland the key to each and every one of those policies was having everyone at the table making sure that we develop those policies in a way that are intersectional wasn't just about energy it was energy with the through line of economic justice so making sure that there's provisions for local higher provisions there's prevent provisions for fair chance hiring that and that and that local frontline communities there's racial justice disadvantaged business enterprise provisions and the local communities are in the lead and our national policies have to follow the same having a national energy efficiency resource standard making sure that we're helping rural communities again not forgetting anyone that there is that we need to eliminate the margins not just address people who are on the margin but not actually have margins anymore again thinking aspirationally we have to think beyond kind of making things better for people who are poor making things less bad for you know for people with different racial for racialized people we have to actually eliminate those barriers as opposed to just mitigating those barriers and so similarly so in under energy democracy democracy we have to retire the federally held cold debt that's holding back role that your co-op from being able to join the clean energy economy as we think of our food systems follow the example of groups like soulfire farm and the earth seed collective and enable us to have locally produced healthy and nutritious foods through strengthening projects like the programs like the farmers market promotion program and the and the wick farmers market support when we think about transportation we follow the leadership of groups who are in the transit equity transit equity day network like the massachusetts folks who got the teapast for youth the bus riders union in la who have the mantra of a thousand more buses a thousand less police and follow with national policies and programs like increasing our inner city inter city city transportation infrastructure so that people in rural areas can get to where they need to go whether it's for jobs or whether it's so that they have equal access to coven 19 vaccines we also have to make sure that we have more in the way of satellite satellite provision so that there's equal access across where no matter where you live and also make sure that there's federal assistance for increased municipal infrastructure around electrification and again with aspirational vision of eliminating the combustible engine because there's frontline communities who are on the front lines of that near real-world air pollution my time went pretty fast I only have three minutes left so I'm going to kind of I'm already talking like an auctioneer it's going to get even worse but I'll make sure that you get these notes but when you think about labor we already have groups like the Washington Interfaith Network that is doing work around that has done flood management work and has been very explicit about bringing in people who are who are at risk or other youth and and folks seeking jobs to be a part of the workforce for flood management we have the homeboys industry in Los Angeles that employees formerly incarcerated persons in solar installation and in energy efficiency retrofizz we have national leading national networks on these issues like the labor network for sustainability the NAACP's Black Labor Initiative on Just Transition the National Black Worker Center Project these are the groups on whose leadership we have to rely and we think about federal policies we think of high we make make sure that as we think about transitioning workers from the fossil fuel economy that that we really make sure that there's a high road jobs guaranteed for transitioning workers and that needs to be right next to our clean energy goals not just like we're going to have these clean energy goals and we're going to make sure that this happens like they need to be next to each other in tandem that we make sure that these high road jobs are in place that pensions are in place that healthcare is in place for the work for the families of displaced workers and then also in terms of of labor we have to think about I don't know folks saw that when the when the forest fires were happening last year there was a kind of a comment about all the COVID that was happening in prisons and therefore there were there was that resource isn't available for fighting the forest fires and so again the objectification of prisoners in the context of fighting forest fires we have to think about prisoners and their labor rights as opposed to to just people to be used again with a dehumanization so I have some points around emergency management waste but I'll skip those well maybe just briefly in terms of ways we have to move we have local leadership around zero waste policies nationally we have to make sure that we are following and supporting zero waste the zero the waste transition we also have to make sure that we have less toxic waste so that so that as we transition away from burying and burning waste that what's that are the products that we're using in our households aren't toxic in the first place so we have to significantly strengthen the toxic release inventory and so forth and also around disasters making sure at the federal level we follow what's happening at the local level whether it's the mutual aid that's happening in the context of COVID-19 the just recovery work that's happening we have to make sure that at the federal level that we follow the same principles around just recovery whether it's making sure that levy reinforcement prioritizes people versus protecting prioritizing property values we have to make sure that there's resources for renters versus tying all the significant aid to home owners and then some of the cross-cutting things we need to look at include making sure that even as we talk about the justice 40 that it's not just kind of even the folks who are the most advantage of this a different advantage communities that we make sure that we're reaching the communities that are the far reaches that aren't even on the margins that we're trying to eliminate that they're not even on the map at all we have to reach those folks we also have to cross-cutting make sure that we have universal broadband access because so much of the resources that are available out there we can find out what they are no matter where we are if we have universal broadband access as it relates to the Paris agreement we have to make sure that the US not only gets back in but even when we were in before we were playing an obstructionist role we have to get back in make strong commitments and actually be a leader in an ambition not a leader in obstruction finally three more things four more things I echo Kim's statement about preemption not only at the federal level but at the state level we have to move away from this because again all politics are local and local folks know what's needed for their situation we have to to have increase our immigration policies in terms of sanctuary refuge recognizing that the US is 4% of the global population but 25% of the emissions are drive climate change that are driving people to need to come to a place of abundance because they're leaving places that we have stripped and made them places of scarcity and so we have to to share that well not just because we're responsible but also because we should be good neighbors that share the abundance and then finally and also recognize that part of our abundance was at the expense of those very communities so just really recognizing that relationship and then we have to prioritize getting money out of politics and because we see that so many of the policies that were intended in terms of the consequences of marginalization were because of the people who treasure profits over people and we have to dismantle those systems and then center center racism and our policymaking and recognizing that as we as we do these executive orders and so forth and other congressional initiatives that we that we address racism at every at every in our in all policies because that racism is is president all on all practices and the racism the intended racism is is president all policies and we have to dismantle the racism with the same level of intention so thank you thank you Jackie I'll admit that I was a little tempted to send you a chat to say no you're fine on time but you're on such a role that I didn't want to interrupt you you called yourself an auctioneer but I'm buying what you're selling so thank you I think the only person that I'm filling for everyone probably enjoyed that immensely except for our live Twitter poor Kimmy trying to keep up so if you would like to go back and you covered such an amazing number of programs and they all have actually a lot to offer in terms of mitigation and adaptation so one final reminder that everything will be posted online and we'll also have written notes as well so if one of the programs or initiatives Jackie mentioned piqued your interest there will be not just a recording of it but but also a written record of it I'd like to take a few of our final moments Jackie to ask you some follow up questions you mentioned two things that I think in my mind are connected and I'd like to hear I'd like to talk with you a little bit about them you talked about unintended consequences we also talked about community participation and so on my soapbox we don't have time to unwind or undo unintended consequences and we also don't have time to sabotage ourselves by not making optimal decisions and not including the right voices I'd like to know what you think when we're talking about adaptation mitigation win-wins what are the main unintended consequences that we should be on the lookout for and how could we improve our community our decision making to be more inclusive and equitable so that we prevent those consequences and we maximize the multiple benefits of resilience improve public health lower costs all of the good things that come with the improvements that we're talking about yeah thank you yeah I'll I always remember when I was on a call about putting together an amicus brief for the clean power plan back in the day and someone on the call said as we were kind of getting through some of the gnarly parts of it someone said well I think we can all agree that emissions reduction in the aggregate is a good thing and so and and I think everyone was like kind of nodding like oh of course needless to say and I was like actually no we can't agree on that because the emissions reductions in the aggregate can mean actually increased emissions in certain places so if we don't if we don't focus simultaneously on the aggregate and on on particular places then we actually you know you're saying that innocently like and talk about it was totally unintended like she never would have thought that by saying that that she actually is condemning some community out there to become in a hot spot and so that that's an example of an unintended concept plans I could give more but hopefully that one kind of gives a bit of a sense and then what was the second part of the question or the second question so it's kind of unfair to me to bundle them I should have let you answer that one first and then ask you to follow but just in terms of improving our decision making so that you just relayed a conversation from a number of years ago what could have been done better in the lead up to that person making that comment to avoid it from ever being said what can we be doing to improve our decision making so that we don't again we don't have to we don't have to unwind that right we can just do it correctly the first time and be more inclusive and equitable at at the same time yeah I mean I think that in some ways it's not I mean in some ways one thing is like her saying that I think part of the problem would have would have been given that everybody else was kind of nodding and going along with the comment if you know I had twisted my ankle that day or whatever like you know like that no one would have been there to say actually no like you know so even at that point it was it would that's a that's a community participation point where we're all planning together what we're going to do on this together so that's a learning moment so as long as making sure that in any of those conversations that we have an inclusive table that again we eliminate the margins that everyone's at the table like we and also making sure that that's a safe space for her so that it's set in a certain way because in some ways if like even though she kind of put that out there it's not I think just making sure that we have safe spaces for these conversations so that so that like people can put an idea out there like that and then there's there's people there who can kind of say that bring different perspectives on what the unintended kinds of causes would be for example so having making sure that we are like we know the FERC for example just putting together their office of public participation after all of these years and we're talking about how you know over these that how do we make that meaningful in terms of decision-making because right now one of the points that was made by Ted Glick who's our work with FERC over the years is that you know out of the thousand twelve permit applications whether the comments were 99 to one opposed they they went forward that out of a thousand and twelve applications only six were denied and yet there was hearing after hearing where the comments were 99 to one opposed and so what does that mean in terms of participation if you're just talking and people are making notes but they're doing what they want to do anyway then that's not that's not the kind of process that we want so making sure that there's a table for dialogue but that we put the measures in in place that the dial that what's being said by frontline communities is actually heated so me saying that at that conversation if that didn't lead to us saying okay well then we'll put in the brief that we're going to make sure that we do point source reductions as an in addition to making sure that we have aggregate goals then that would have been a problem but making sure that I'm there or whoever is there to make that comment and then it's actually implemented that's the key well that's a a great example of a great example and also some very thoughtful advice for how we should be structuring these things going forward so I really appreciate it wonderful presentation an excellent way to put everything that we previously talked about in very important context so thank you to Jackie thank you to Kim thank you to Russ thank you to John and thank you to Baskar that's impressive I went backwards in order usually I'm I can only go in one direction but today thank you to five wonderful panelists who joined us today to help our audience understand some really impressive or some really potentially impactful climate double whammies things we can do to improve our adaptation and while also mitigating and reducing greenhouse gas emissions so thank you so much we couldn't do any of these without our excellent panelists and this was the fourth in our congressional climate camp series so just one other thank you to everyone who was on our three previous panels as well really impressive our collection of experts and practitioners if anyone missed anything everything today everything in our previous congressional climate camps pretty much everything at every ESI briefing is posted online www.esi.org you can watch the presentations view the presentations read summary notes and for these congressional climate camps we're also splitting up the individual presentation so if you are pressed for time or if you know exactly what you need to see hopefully that makes it a little bit easier for you and we're also going to be releasing a condensed version of today's program as an episode of our podcast the climate conversation we have decided to schedule a bonus congressional climate camp we're looking at May 21st and we'll be specifically looking at climate policy and what may be achievable using budget reconciliation which is something that's quite a lot in the news so stay tuned on that in the meantime we have two briefings coming up in the next few weeks the on May 7th which is next Friday natural climate solutions a win-win solution for our environment and our economy that is one that's we're co-sponsoring with a group US nature for climate so a new partnership there that we're really, really pleased to work with them on I hope you'll have an opportunity to RSP for that and join us and then on May 12th which is the following Wednesday I'm pretty sure ambition and opportunity in America's new climate commitments this briefing was just announced when we found out the details of or the announcement of the US nationally nationally determined contribution so we'll be joined by three top climate thinkers to help us understand and what's in the nationally determined the NDC but also help orient a congressional policymaking audience for sort of what it actually means for what needs to be done we always and the best way to keep up with all of our programming is of course to subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter climate change solutions we have a survey link that I think will come up here on the screen in just a moment please if you have a moment or two if you take our survey we read every response we find it extremely useful we always want to do better we want to provide the most relevant and timely information to our audience so if you have thoughts about what you saw or heard today or if you had any technical issues or audio issues or anything like that please let us know and we'll do our best to correct it and your time taking that survey is very much appreciated let me also say thank you to everyone on team EESI who helped make today possible Dan O'Brien Omri Laport Anna McGinn Amber Todorov Savannah Bertrand Sydney O'Shaughnessy and our five fabulous interns Jocelyn, Hamza, Celine, Rachel, and Kimmy and special shout out to Hamza today is his last day of his internship and he has done so much great work for us this semester it's been a real joy to get to know him so good luck to you Hamza thanks very much for everything you did helping us pull off a pretty aggressive set of congressional education programming during these critical months of the 117th Congress I think we'll go ahead and end it there it says 401 thank you everyone for joining us today in our audience thanks once more to Baskar, John, Russ, Kim and Jackie for being excellent panelists and providing such excellent presentations I hope everyone has a great weekend at least in the DC area it looks like it's going to be great weather for some outdoor time thank you so much and we'll see you next Friday for natural climate solutions a win-win solution for our environment in our economy thank you so much bye