 So, I didn't say a lot about EESI at the beginning of the Expo or the policy forum, hello Bob, because Senator Reid was with us and we wanted to hear what he had to say. But just a few words about EESI for those of you who might be new to us. We were founded in 1984 on a bipartisan basis by members of Congress to provide educational resources to policy makers. At that time it was mainly around environmental and energy topics, and then over time that sort of evolved to be environment, energy, and climate change topics. And so a lot of what we do, I would say most of what we do at EESI is really oriented around giving the congressional staff person the information they need to answer their boss's tough questions. I worked in the Senate for six years and while my boss was the nicest boss of all, sometimes at 4.30 on a Thursday, jet fumes in the air, they come by with a question, I got to find out about this. What's the deal with the extreme heat? What's the deal with the wildfires? What are we doing about emergency management? Have you ever heard of the conservation reserve program? Have you ever heard of the rural energy savings program? My goal at EESI is for when a congressional staff person gets that question, they say, sure boss, have a great flight home, and then they go to www.esi.org. Because I bet that there is a resource on our website, whether it's a briefing, an article, a podcast, a fact sheet, an issue brief that deals with those issues. And our job is to provide nonpartisan science-based information to help that staff person do their job. Now over the years, we've also ventured out into rural areas working specifically with rural utilities, co-ops in particular, or cooperatives, and helping them develop inclusive financing programs, on-bill financing programs, and accessing USDA rural energy savings program. And so this panel is one that's sort of near and dear to EESI's heart. Rural issues have long been a big priority of ours, and so it is a real thrill to have clean energy opportunities in rural communities today. I am going to introduce our first speaker, and then I'm going to have a seat, and then I'll introduce the rest of you. We'll have basically the same panel as before. So if Jamie or others have great points that you want to ask clarifications about, well, we also have backup in the form of Bob Coates here from USDA of any technical questions. But save your questions. We'll do our best to get to them. As you can see from the last panel, we'll get to as many questions as possible. So with that, I'm going to introduce Jamie Jackson. Jamie is the Senior Advisor for the Rural Utility Service at the USDA. Jamie, thank you for being here today. I'll turn it over to you. Can you hear me? Yes, great. Thank you EESI for inviting USDA to be here today to engage in this imperative discussion on clean energy opportunities in rural communities. I am excited to be here. I'm Jamie Jackson, Senior Advisor at Russ. And to give a little bit of history of USDA, we recently celebrated our 150th anniversary on May 15th. And although President Lincoln signed into law USDA in 1862, two years later he called us the People's Department. And I'm fortunate to see every single day how this agency embodies that name. And that's through our commitment in the nation and that's via our programs. So today I'll discuss some of our programs. Two of our new ones that are in the news quite a bit via IRA funding. That is PACE, that is Powering Affordable Clean Energy. It's a $1 billion program and that is eligible to almost everyone except for individuals. But we have more programs for that. But with this program and the application, the LOI stage just opened on July 10th. With this we are, it's a mix of loans and grants and to ensure that one category is not dominating more than another. The first category is up to 20% loan forgiveness that's open to everyone. The second category is up to 40% loan forgiveness that's open to energy communities, distressed, underserved communities. And the third category is open up to 60% and that's open to tribes and U.S. territories. So that is a really great combination of mixes of loans and grants. And then we also have our new error program, Empowering Rural America. That is our $9.7 billion program. And this is a great time for us to engage in this discussion because that window opens on July 31st. And with this program, it is targeting electric cooperatives and existing borrowers. And that is to create more renewable energy at affordable rates. These grants can be up to 25% of the total project loss of the total project loan. We have treasury rates of interest of 2%. And in terms of the loans, if we are going to refinance a stranded asset, it can be as low as 0%. So we're really making it affordable and accessible for cooperatives and the communities that we serve. We also have our REAP program, that's Rural Energy for America. That's a $2 billion program and it provides loans and guarantees to producers and small businesses. And that's in communities that are 50,000 or less. And these are for energy systems such as biomass, wind, solar, geothermal, wave, ocean. We really just want to run the gambit of what's available out here so we can be creative and innovative in our financing. And in addition, this can be for energy efficiency like the panel that talked before us on heating and cooling our homes, on our ventilation as the women in the audience discussed earlier. And then also just the fans, especially as we're seeing this heat. Our next program is Rural Energy Savings Program. That's our REST program. And I am joined by my esteemed colleague Bob Coats who oversees that program. So if you want to discuss it more afterwards, we are available for that. And that window remains open. So with these, there are at least three of these programs that are open. So this is great time again to talk about it. And when I have observed recently and talking with cooperatives, tribes, developers, businesses, is that there is an overwhelming amount of federal funding that's available. So where do we go? And recently we hosted a webinar, a cross agency webinar with DOE, EPA, Treasury, to discuss how you can pair our financing together. We wanted to make our programs, we designed them to be parable, especially with the recent Treasury guidance that came out. So at the end of this summer, we are looking to create a cross agency pocket guide that should be on our website at the end. And it can discuss how to pair this information and the funding. So again, I thank you for having me. USDA is amazing. And I hope to work with more of you in the future. USDA is amazing. That's a good point. I can't rebut that. Thank you, Jamie, for joining us today. Next, we will hear from Kerry Anand. Kerry is the Executive Director of the Biomass Power Association. Hi, Kerry. Hi, Dan. It's on. Appears to be working well. Good. So Dan, thanks to you and to ESI for having me here today. I am the Executive Director of the Biomass Power Association. We represent members across the country that are producing power from organic materials that are otherwise unusable. So what does that mean? Our members are located in largely rural areas that are forested and or have agriculture nearby. Our members typically get their fuel from within 75 miles of their facility. These materials are, you know, and talking about forestry in particular, you can't use the fuel that we use for any other forest products. So, you know, you have a forestry operation and, you know, you're harvesting trees. Some of those can be used for lumber or paper. Parts of the tree can be used for different materials, different forest products. We take the leftovers of that. Tops, limbs, thinnings that you take out of the forest to help the rest of the trees grow. And then in agricultural areas, things like nut shells, oat hulls, orchard prunings, you know, anything organic that needs to be disposed of. And Biomass is as much about putting power on the grid as it is about using materials to their highest potential and getting something out of them to the very end. So, you know, in terms of the industry and where things stand today, the past 10 to 15 years have not been particularly kind to our industry. We've seen power prices go pretty far down. Wind and solar have proliferated. Natural gas has come online to a large degree. And those power producers are able to offer power prices that are lower than a Biomass power facility that pays for fuel and labor. But the great news is there are a lot of federal programs out there that can help our industry. You know, we don't get paid in general. You know, you have REX and other sorts of credits. But, you know, when you're talking about purchasing power, you don't take into account the environmental impact and benefits that come along with that in general. So, you know, for Biomass power, things like the PACE program, we're hoping to see some more Biomass power built from that. Programs like the PACE program or the Obama Stimulus Program 2008, those are the types of programs that we see enable the growth of the sector. So really glad to see that. Looking forward to working with Jamie on the PACE program and hoping that our members take the USDA up on the very generous offer. And then ERINs, that's something that's very important to our industry as, you know, and, Dan, I don't know if you want me to talk about this now or save it for later. I think it would be, I think that's an acronym. ERINs, electric RINs under the renewable fuel standard. No, go ahead now, that would be great. Okay, so the ERINs, I bring it up because this is the top policy priority for our industry. When Congress passed the RFS-2 law back in 2007, they actually had the foresight to say electricity, when it's used from renewable feedstocks that are permitted under the program, and then that electricity goes to power electric vehicles, then that power producer should be eligible for RINs, just like an ethanol producer is today. And in 2007, there were not EVs to speak of like we have today. There were a few on the road, but now, 16 years later, we have a large and growing EV fleet, but the EPA has not yet implemented an electricity program to enable the counting of electricity in the RFS program. This is very important to our industry. The ability to generate credits from the power that we're already providing to the electric transportation fleet is something that will help our industry be stable. And we are hoping to see this finalized by the end of the year. He actually proposed a program after many years of pestering them about it. They proposed a program back in December, but they didn't finalize it with the recent 2023 to 2025 set rule. So we're still hoping that it can happen by the end of the year. I'm happy to talk more about that later, but I will stop talking now and turn it back over to Dan. Thank you, Kerry. Next, we will hear from Keith Dennis. Keith is the president of the Beneficial Electrification League. Hello, Keith. Thank you for having me. We have a great partnership with EESI, which I'll mention a little bit later. With the Beneficial Electrification League, I'm the president. Our organization was started in 2018 when we supported the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. You leave the place for a couple years and it's harder to say it, right? Lots of words there. And we work with a lot of electric co-ops. So we go around the country supporting the electric co-ops on the great USDA programs and everything else related to electrification. And when we talk about beneficial electrification, we're talking about using electricity in new ways to improve quality of life. And it's something that's not new. You hear kind of about this trend of electrification, but electricity has been improving our quality of life since it was invented. If you think about now we have, you know, products that help us wash our dishes and help us wash our clothes and fans and air conditioners. These were all things that greatly improved our quality of life. Now we have things like electric vehicles, electric trucks, electric buses, electric, more electric space heating and water heating. This is just a continuum of electric products improving our quality of life. So we are seeing some challenges and some opportunities around that and we're very interested in making sure that the transition to more electrification is successful. So to do that you need to not only add the kind of things you see like electric vehicles and solar panels and other things, but also the infrastructure behind it. So I liken it to kind of being on the back roads and adding Mack trucks to a neighborhood and then making sure that you also invest in the roads and the bridges or else the roads and the bridges are going to crumble when these trucks run over it. You can't just drop electric vehicles all over America without investing in what is essentially the roads and bridges of the country for the electric sector, which is the poles and the wires. And so we get kind of caught up in some of this spending on the end thing, the solar panel or the renewable energy thing or the vehicle or the bus, but we are not necessarily thinking about all that goes into that and all that goes into that involves a lot of rural America. A lot of our resources come from rural America, the wind, the solar, the ability to make sure that we're not having wildfires when this happens, that the power can get from one place to another. And to do that investment is very tricky because the folks out there that run the grid are dealing with storms, trying to keep your power on, trying to get your bills paid, but not trying to figure out how to do federal grant programs and federal loan programs and keep up with everything and then also compete with very well-resourced people in urban areas who got lots of messaging around getting this money. So it's important to dedicate some of the funding specifically to rural infrastructure so that as this all kind of shakes out at the end of the day, we're not here in five years and being like, why didn't any of the infrastructure get improved? Why are we still in the same spot? All the money kind of went into the urban areas and we tried to do this kind of solar roof thing in the cities, but we still didn't really solve the energy problem. So one of the things that I just kind of iterate for folks is that there's probably a hundred programs, I'd say more than a hundred programs that people can look at. There's 401 and 1D, there's GRIP, there's school buses, there's USDA, there's PACE, there's REAP, there's NEWEAR. This is just with the USDA. With DOE, there's ERA, there's EECBG. Just so many projects and so you start sending these emails to rural folks, oh this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, get your letter and get your letter and it's just noise. They've got to run their utilities. So we try to digest things through actionable items that folks can apply for. I think a really good example was the first round of the school bus program. It was a simple application, a rebate program that rural folks were able to participate in. The grant programs through this bus program is a little bit harder. It's sort of deprioritized the rural areas. You need a certain minimum amount of buses. We'd like to see just when people are designing policies to keep in mind that these folks in rural areas are not going to have an easy time applying for this stuff and to have set-asides to make sure that you're getting what you want done, done and to have the process be relatively easy is going to be really important. And I just say, you know, we're working on the new ERA program and the PACE program and USDA has been extremely helpful at getting this stuff together. It's like you wait, you wait, you wait for the rules. The rules come, you have to work really fast because of the way the system works but making it easy for folks and explaining it and coming around the country and talking to folks. We've been to Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Georgia, Florida. We're going to Kentucky and Indiana. So with senior staff they're making themselves available and really appreciate that. So I also really appreciate EESI for putting together the BE Toolkit and I look forward to any questions you have. Shout out to John Michael in our livecast audience. He'll be around a little bit later today actually. Last but definitely not least, we will hear from Aliyah Ned. Aliyah is the director of government relations at the National Cooperative Business Association Clusa International. Aliyah, take it away. Thanks so much Dan and a huge thank you to you and the EESI team for holding this expo and great and important conversation that is very timely. As Dan mentioned, my name is Aliyah Ned and I am the director of government relations for the National Cooperative Business Association Clusa International also known as NCBA Clusa because that is a bit of a mouthful. NCBA Clusa is the umbrella trade association for cooperatives across all sectors. I thank almost everyone of my fellow co-panelists here touched on rural electric co-ops. We also represent farmer cooperatives, food cooperatives and the like. Food, agriculture, rural electrification cooperatives are represented in every sector of the economy and NCBA Clusa has been doing this work of representing cooperative priorities for just over 100 years. We've heard about all of the new resources that are coming down the pike, not only for rural electric co-ops but for clean energy investments in rural communities and the challenges that folks have in navigating this and we've also seen how RECs have been highlighted as a core strategy as we saw they were with the passage of the Rural Electrification Act that prioritized cooperatives as a core driver to providing energy and now they power over 42 million individuals and households and touch on addressing some of the key persistent challenges being over represented in terms of powering 92% of persistent poverty counties, 56% of our landmass is served by rural electric co-ops and the benefit of cooperatives just to highlight why RECs have been so crucial for rural communities is that cooperatives by nature are democratically owned and governed so it's not some of that extractive strategies that we've heard about in the past I think Carrie and Keith both touched on that earlier but instead provides those benefits directly to the individuals within that community and we're very excited about how these new resources coming down the line can be coupled together Jamie talked about how they're working in a whole of government approach to see how you can pair these programs which is I think incredibly crucial for rural communities because they're incredibly diverse if you've been to one rural place however we know that 68% of persistent poverty counties are in rural areas that energy costs nationally is 3.3% but for rural areas that's 4.4% for low income households that goes up to 9% and continues to multiply when you look at black and indigenous communities within rural places and also economically they're diverse for some folks you know agriculture is the core backbone of their economy for other rural communities they might be focused on more of the tourism industry so that flexibility just to provide an example of that diversity is what's needed and the timing we know that we need to secure energy as a resource for as a key piece of that infrastructure and also building that infrastructure from start to finish as Keith touched on and rural is well positioned to be at the forefront of leading that charge as we see populations increase in some areas there's a wide breadth of land mass so how can we continue to incentivize folks to take advantage of these programs while also making the process from start to finish as streamlined as possible because we hear a lot about how complex some of these applications can be or not even getting to the application yet but where do we even begin to start how can this program be leveraged for our community and so NCBA Clusa you know we have seen some really interesting things happening across cooperative sectors with that so democratic control and ownership of these businesses and cooperation among other cooperatives coming into play for example with the rural energy for America program we see rural electric co-ops who are well versed in navigating these programs then reach out to the farm co-ops in their communities to say hey this is a really great opportunity to help you reduce your energy cost on farm lower the amount of inputs that you may have to do to efficiently address some of the concerns that you have around having a secure energy source and so that level of collaboration is something that we see from a community level but I don't want to get ahead of other things that we might talk about here and also the rural energy savings program as folks said RECs are being helped by Keith's folks as well as the folks at EESI to help leverage and navigate and better utilize to provide affordable affordable energy efficiency upgrades and I you know given some of the statistics that I outlined earlier you know we think that affordable piece is key so we think there's a real opportunity now with the current resources we have to improve on that in upcoming reauthorizations of programs for example through the farm bill but I will stop there and kick it back to Dan and once again I'm going to do the Q&A from up here so I have a better perch so Aliyah just mentioned the farm bill all of the programs that have been discussed so far I think we have resources about but I'd like to call special attention to our farm bill side by side by sides so the idea here is on the left hand side of the sheet is the sort of the existing text and then we get the house and senate marks hopefully later this summer and we'll use formatting to help staff quickly understand what's changing what's being proposed to change and how also the house and the senate farm bill language compares to one another and so those are available on our website you can view our farm bill resources we also just wrapped up a farm bill briefing series that cover all of these topics as well so if you want to learn more we have Q&A so that's number one but also if you want to go back and check out some of our other resources we have that so speaking of Q&A I'm going to keep an eye out for our audience with questions Nicole has the mic so she'll do her best as well but I'd like to kick off the discussion by sort of talking a little bit about some of the capacity constraints that rural communities face Keith you talked about the idea that you know the emails one after another they just can't keep up now as an organization that never sends too many emails I don't know what that's like but rural communities face capacity constraints and a lot of those capacity constraints are most severe especially where energy burdens are higher how can we deploy more resources in rural and under resource communities that would help them overcome barriers that are sort of specific to those communities Jamie happy to start with you and we can go down the line I'd love to learn a little bit about your thoughts on that that's a great question Dan as Leah just said when you've been to one rural place you've been to one rural place and because of that the programs need to be flexible enough to address that community engaging in these conversations on a regular basis to increase your curiosity and to communicate the urgency that is needed at USDA one of the things that Keith touched upon is we have an active outreach in the community to educate about the programs so we have our regular webinars we have our office hours we go in person and meet with cooperatives we talk with businesses we talk with farm owners and all of these communication is to help with filtering what's available how to apply we also have grant funding for technical assistance to assist with applying for our programs and we try to make it as accessible and equitable as possible so our websites should be user friendly I know no foes can be about 200 pages long it's a lot to digest so we have FAQs on our website but some of the initial barriers in rural America are the upfront costs but as well as the resources of people to have the time to research and apply and see what works for them so we focus on that Carrie? Yeah, thanks Dan so I think I'm going to take your question in a slightly different direction for biomass power our problem is probably more that there's not enough capacity you know when you're thinking about for instance forest fires out west and you know we work with the US Forest Service quite a bit because they see us as an important part of the solution because we're using the so called hazardous fuels that are being removed from the forest and why not use them rather than dispose of them use them for energy production so you know things like the Forest Service is testing out a pilot program to subsidize the the transportation of fuel from further to you know from say further than your 75 mile radius but to biomass power facilities specifically so you know I think in addition to just being able to grow the industry and have more biomass power capacity to be able to take on the fuel that needs dealing with it that needs disposing of you know more programs like that to be able to make sure that we have access to the fuel that we need and that you know poses a risk as well as important to us well that's certainly a thing we struggle with and working with hundreds of co-operatives you know we do our best one thing is you know just making sure that things are filtered and targeted to folks who can actually use them folks in the agencies get really excited about their program and they're like do this do this you know and then it comes to a small area and they look at it and it's just like I don't even I'm reading this 200 pages I don't even think I could win this like I don't know how I'm going to meet all these metrics they're asking us to have huge transmission you know implications but also like really big social impact and we need to have partners from all over the place and it looks like if I started this today I'd be done in a month and then I wouldn't win it and they get a little discouraged I think folks get a little discouraged when they put the effort in and they don't win and so there is a little bit of the boy who cries wolf situation that experience with the federal process and so I really think focusing on things that folks can actually win and are tailored to them and are kind of carved to set aside for them is going to be key and then also the way that cooperatives in particular are structured they have statewide organizations and generation transmission organizations to try to help some of this so really flowing through their natural networks is something that just works for them and so understanding that like USD understands that is really important because you know going to 900 individual cooperatives and dealing with those people and getting them all worked up sounds like a great thing for like grassroots and everything but it really doesn't work that well other than to gum up the situation where folks need to focus on what can they do and what's the program and how do we do it and they're just getting a lot of noise so my advice is to kind of stay focused and I do want to highlight two things that Jamie, Carrie and Keith all hit on and I think that's that making sure that these strategies are locally driven that that local capacity is built because folks know what is best for their community how the households in their communities or businesses in their communities might be able to best leverage these resources so it's very encouraging and we appreciate the continued partnership with USDA and having folks on the ground to listen and then implement that to provide for that flexibility that folks need where a program might be a little bit of a good fit but not exactly right or there might be some constraints and some examples that we've seen with recent bills that were introduced is the Rural Energy Savings Act sponsored by congressman Clyburn and congresswoman Budzinski and Senators Welch and Murkowski you know this really response to that flexibility and what we've seen just in terms of for example hearing that a specific entity like manufactured housing isn't covered necessarily explicitly within the program so providing that clarity to help folks navigate some of the challenges I think like Keith said or incentivizing other entities like rural electric co-ops to leverage the resources that are out there by providing some administrative cost or other barriers that might prevent them from accessing the program but overall making sure they're flexible and facilitating that regional collaboration through existing networks that I think Keith touched on with some of the statewide rural electric co-op associations and not making folks go time and time again when there are other people who are better equipped or well equipped to have that institutional knowledge and capacity to leverage those resources Thanks Leah maybe we'll start with you since it's no fun to always go last and we'll move backwards through the line assuming we all agree that clean energy investments deliver multiple benefits you get the clean energy that's great but you also get other stuff too including things like jobs workforce development opportunities and community resilience are there things that co-ops do that you'd like to highlight and are there things that are maybe a little bit sort of are there greater opportunities for some things in rural areas that maybe we're not thinking of? Yeah thank you for the question Dan and for letting me take the first bite at the apple here you know we've seen some really interesting things I think I talked about the rural energy for America program and the significantly new resources that cooperatives and other folks within the cooperative ecosystem are looking to leverage that then incentivizes that workforce development particularly with the technical assistance component and how can the cooperative development organizations non-profit entities help train other folks through these grants or train other folks how to leverage these grants and navigate the rural development application process and partnership with staff at the agency to help build out those workforces in rural communities to create good opportunities that provides an affordable living situation where you're not choosing between covering your energy cost and your food or your gas for the month so that is one example of some of the workforce development provisions we've seen further I think in terms of gaps that you highlighted on some of that regional collaboration how can we look at existing models and expand that to cut across all of the rural energy programs or energy programs that touch rural places how can we help facilitate that regional collaboration of multiple entities that might already be working together to further build on that capacity and tap into that and I think we could do that further as we look ahead to the future and future policy implementation but overall doing things like expanding repayment windows or providing multi-year grants so that folks aren't going year after year after year trying to do this work on the ground or chase the resources but instead they can do that work on the ground of tapping into those clean energy resources Thanks Leigh, Keith? Yeah, well I'll just say local utilities are really good at what they do they're in mountainous terrain where there's storms they're in the hot areas they're providing power to any consumer that gets there the power's on most of the time they gotta climb up on poles and they keep power affordable and reliable every day so as energy gets cleaner and can be done reliable in a way that delivers cost savings to folks they're gonna be really good at doing that now there are external benefits that come from doing things a certain way especially as you have kind of an energy transition that's like do this, do that but at the end of the day it's really gonna come down to thoughtful folks figuring out when is this gonna be cost effective and provide affordable reliable power they're gonna keep people alive with the lights on and our business is running so I think these incentives to make this more cost effective more reliable, give money to invest in them, they will do that but it can't be just like I'm gonna expect this to happen and then think that folks who are really good at their job are just gonna do something that doesn't make sense and I think there's a little bit of disconnect sometimes especially folks in DC that see these policy objectives and say how do we get there and not realizing that to get there you need to make that investment that makes sense for the folks whose job it is to do what you're saying and I think that a program like the new era program and the PACE program are programs where we see if you're getting a 40% or a 60% loan forgiveness stacked with a federal tax credit you're talking about power for one cent and if you can put a battery with that to deal with the intermittent if you can win a grant like that you're talking about meeting some of those challenges the question is how do you get that to happen all across the country that really does take that investment Carrie, can you explain a little bit more about some of the workforce development and jobs and multiple benefits from biomass? Yes so biomass provides an incredible value the power that we provide might be more expensive slightly than some of the other power sources but what you get with that is rural jobs rural jobs and then the disposal of materials that don't have a home in an environmentally friendly way so biomass is a great resource and it's particularly prevalent in rural areas and we should do everything we can to support the growth of biomass And Jamie, what does it look like from your position how do you think about multiple benefits from these investments? I wanted to touch first on the community aspect and we are just very intentional about engaging local communities and part of the new error program is having community benefit plans we also have the Buy America prevailing wage provisions and these are to benefit the consumers right there in the area also in terms of workforce development I'm continuously learning more about USDA since being here and one of the things when I was looking into possible topics we may discuss today one was I saw how our National Institute of Food and Agricultural program where we have invested $1 billion $1.9 billion over 2600 grants in fiscal year 2023 and then last year we did $1.9 billion and 3500 grants and this is directly to target students and undergraduate programs postgraduate programs trade to that focus on disciplines that grow agriculture and also other areas that are similar to this and so we invested that over 5 different schools and programs recently and I think that sort of intentional intentionality and agency that's focusing on who our leaders are going to be increasing jobs and then when we have our programs here in rural America that does bring local jobs as well so those are some of the things that we're seeing and there's so much going on but yes we need a longer panel I'm looking for questions I'm going to keep going unless I see some you know the one of the things that we'll talk a lot about today is sort of this year's event is very forward looking it's trying to be very forward looking this is a Farm Bill year there are lots of programs rolling out with New Era and PACE things like that but to give each one of you an opportunity to kind of define if you come back for the 31st annual Renewable Energy and Energy Congressional Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Expo and Policy Forum what will success look like what would have to happen in the next 10 years for you all to look back on and say oh wow actually we had an opportunity and we capitalized on it Jamie we can start with you and then we can go back down through the list and give Aliyah the last word rough question what will success look like one I think we're at a time globally where we're really seeing the importance of investing in clean energy and making it affordable and accessible and reliable success will look like not only is it federal funding that's going to making it a cleaner economy but also having private capital come in that is having policies that are collaborative and not contradictory on the previous panel I think it was Brian who was discussing the BEPS program here in DC and these are different requirements for resident owners and building owners but then how do they have the funding for it so in the next couple of years and five years which is a short period of time our projects that we're funding will not fully be operational but in that time we would have created more jobs we would have changed the narrative around clean energy we would have made the grid more reliant we would have more people interested in clean energy and bringing forth the workforce that is needed right now and lastly we will see a clear transition where we won't have wildfires coming as much and the air quality control that happened a few weeks ago while that's different for DC that's coming in so many places so I think that when we set a standard here it can be replicated in other places so that would be my personal view of success I think that goes alongside with others at the agency as well so as I mentioned before ERINS is the key to everything for us we see that as crucial for our industry it will the ability to generate credits for the power that we're already supplying to electric transportation will enable more investment in the industry and will enable the exploration of things like carbon capture which our members are very interested in but it remains a little out of reach for us right now but having more capital to be able to invest in experimentation with that and then valuing biogenic carbon that is captured from carbon capture processes over fossil carbon captured is important for us too and we haven't talked much about carbon capture but capturing biogenic carbon basically makes your source carbon negative whereas you're capturing fossil carbon you're making it carbon neutral so that will be important too we hope to see that in five years and ERINS will help us get to that I think there's a lot of programs that are out there some of them are five years and last five years ten years so really execution is going to be really important and I want folks to have a really good experience great experience with the federal programs that feel like they weren't forgotten they got what they were promised it wasn't that hard and everything went really well if that happens that would be a big deal if the opposite people are frustrated they feel like they didn't get what they thought that's going to be hard that's going to be hard for the federal government it's going to be hard for these investment programs so really just making sure that this goes very well and that people are happy then they'll be eager to get more and I would say also for you all double down on the programs that are working and the programs that aren't working just you know they sound good but some of them it's like you get ten percent over here and do fifty times more work if you do less work people are going to start re-jiggering and the ones that don't work that's okay but don't hammer it down you've got to do this because we have it really double down on the things that are working and keep people happy and they'll invest in the country everybody wants a better planet everybody wants better infrastructure everybody wants affordable reliable power and if we can make these work and execute we'll be in a good place Aaliyah you get the last word on the panel today and I think my co-panelists have put it very very well and don't know that I won't be repetitive here but I just want to echo really addressing the needs of rural communities making sure that local voices are a part of that decision making process listening to the feedback of what works for folks as Key said and what doesn't but making that significant investment for rural communities that are far too often been left behind with some policy strategies so prioritizing and incentivizing for the most disadvantaged communities their access to these new resources and making sure that these folks are at the forefront of future policy strategies but I think that would be a successful next five years and we have a good opportunity with the Farm Bill Thank you Jamie, Carrie, Keith and Aaliyah thanks for being great panelists today I think they deserve a round of applause