 Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to this session of our technology panels at our policy forum. I hope you've been enjoying the Expo. We are so glad you're here. My name is Carol Werner. I'm part of the Expo Planning Committee on the Steering Committee for the Sustainable Energy Coalition, and I'm the Executive Director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. So on this panel, we're going to look at a whole range of different technologies, which I think you will find absolutely fascinating. We've got some really, really great people here to talk about all this. So we're going to be covering everything from fuel cells to geothermal to solar, some transportation, waste to energy, and wind. So we're going to be looking across a very, very broad swath. And to kick off our discussion this afternoon is David Giordano, who is the Director for Federal and State Government Relations with Ducan Fuel Cell. David? Thank you. As Carol said, I'm David Giordano with Ducan Fuel Cell, located in South Windsor, Connecticut. Ducan is a relatively new fuel cell company that in 2014 purchased the assets of a company called Clear Edge Power, which previous to that was UTC Power, United Technologies. United Technologies was kind of the grandfather of the fuel cell industry, I would say, in the United States, developing all of the fuel cell technology that you now see today, going back even to the space program on all the Apollo missions and the space shuttle and things like that. Ducan is a Korean company, the 10th largest conglomerate in Korea, a $22 billion company with 43,000 employees worldwide. It's really a global company, more employees outside of Korea than in Korea. And really a good fit for the fuel cell business. They decided to get into this industry because fuel cells are a great application in Korea where land is constrained. There's not great applications for solar and wind and other renewables and fuel cells are something that the Korean government is really undertaken. But Ducan, saying that Ducan purchased the company, really feeling that there was a tremendous market here in the US. And fuel cells haven't been on the stationary side, but we do, haven't really been that commercialized until recently and we're kind of really starting to get over the hump. But as I said, Ducan is also a power generation company. So as I said, a really good fit for fuel cells. They develop wind turbines and nuclear plants and they're into heavy equipment, heavy industry. So just a very good foundation and we're very happy to be a lot of the folks that I work with that the company came out of the fuel cell world in previous iterations with Clare Edge and with UTC and this is really a tremendous fix. Everybody's very excited. We currently employ 275 people in Connecticut, grown from 30 back in July and the plan is to be over 300 by the end of the year. All of our manufacturing, R&D, engineering takes place at our state of the art facility in Connecticut. As I said before, we manufacture a 400 kilowatt stationary fuel cell, so we're not into anything that has to do with transportation that you hear a lot about now. Our primary application is for buildings. So kind of a good use of our fuel cell is for heavy electric users like hospitals and universities and data centers. But there's a big kind of resiliency power. Our resiliency factor, our fuel cells run on natural gas and they run continuous duty all the time, 24-7. As long as natural gas is flowing into the unit as a process by which the hydrogen is stripped out and I'm not an engineer, so I don't hold me to this. I'm the government relations guy. But hydrogen is stripped out of the natural gas and turned into electricity and turned into heat that goes back into a building. So we can achieve electrical efficiencies of about 42% and with the waste heat that we reuse, we can achieve up to 90% efficiency from our units. We're a clean, reliable source, very little CO2 emissions, low sox and nox emissions and such. We don't use any water. We're a traditional gas, natural gas fired, traditional power plant requires a lot of water to run. As a matter of fact, we produce water that we then reuse in the system for various technical aspects. We currently have 112 of our pure cell, what we call our pure cell model 400s running, operating in the world at 59 sites throughout the world. Most of our units in the US run in places like California and New York and especially in Connecticut and New Jersey, places that still have, we're still reliant on incentives at the federal level and at the state level and so there's basically two things that have to be in place for us to really be competitive and that is we have to have high electricity prices and we have to have some kind of incentive. So we're trying to take a lot of the costs out of these units but we're still quite not there so we still do rely unfortunately on incentives but someday we'll be we'll be out of that. We have a, some of our customers I just get into and I don't know how much, how much more detailed I just wanted to really talk about the company and about the kind of the reliability resiliency department Verizon and several hospitals and universities are customers of ours and we're an alternative. We want to be part of energy solutions. We don't want to tout that we're better than necessarily than any other energy solution but we want to be part of the conversation to come up with a alternative to produce better, cleaner, more reliable energy. Great. No, you're absolutely fine and thank you. I think a key thing that does have a real value in terms of an externality is, is resilience. Right. And being able to stand up during all sorts of things. Right. Something I should magically have to interrupt during what we've seen in the Northeast in the last several years between Hurricane Sandy and Winter Storm Albert, Halfred and Hurricane Irene. Our fuel cells continue to run because the natural gas continued to flow into them when the power was out. They continued to run schools and hospitals and supermarkets providing critical need to, to, to people used as from an emergency, emergency standpoint. But our systems are not designed to be kind of that backup power. They're designed to be a base load power. But we run independently of the grid. And as soon as the grid goes down, our systems switch on immediately. So you never, you never lose, never lose power. Great. I know the first time that I talked to somebody about that feature was years ago. And it was to someone who was running a credit card company and visa transactions. And they're like, we can't reboot. Right. Right. So anyway, so thank you very, very much. And we're going to take another switch to a very, very different area now, but also a very, very important provider of base load electricity and, but also as a resource that can be used in many, many forms. And to talk to us about that is Carl Gaywell, who is the executive director of the Geothermal Energy Association and someone who has been working on clean energy issues in the forefront as a leader for many, many years. Carl. Thank you, Carol. And it sounds like Wall Street and United Airlines are all learning about reliability the hard way. My name is Carl Gaywell and Ronnie had some copies of what I'm going to say. If anyone wants to, do you have some more left? Do you have any more left? This way, you can read it and I can kind of vary off of it and highlight the things I want to and get done in seven minutes as requested. And then even I want to appreciate thank the sponsors for inviting me to come talking about the challenges facing geothermal energy in the state of the industry today. Today we're producing power in seven Western states, 30 countries around the world, and we're developing projects in over 80 countries, which in the last few years has been a tripling of the market for geothermal power worldwide. The fact of the matter is even this amount of usage, which is about 3,500 megawatts in the US and about almost 13 gigawatts worldwide is still just a fraction of what's possible. The USGS estimated that in the Western United States, just the Western States, there's as much as 75,000 megawatts of conventional geothermal systems. We're talking about hot heated rock underneath the surface of the earth that you're using to power a power plant, not the heat pumps. And worldwide, the potential is just enormous and it's largely untapped. Many people think of the California, we're about half of the renewable power in California in terms of output, but even in California there's substantial resources that are identified. We know where they are. They're not being utilized. And what we're seeing though is there's a lot of people looking at geothermal because of all the right reasons. You wondered why we moved from 30 countries to 80. Well, many of those countries are developing countries, many of which, as I pointed out in a talk I gave a while ago, have signed the Climate Treaty. So they're looking at ways to develop power systems without carbon emissions, unlike some other countries we know of. But they're really putting their effort into it in geothermal. If you have geothermal resources like in Indonesia, the Philippines, Kenya, El Salvador, you're seeing a real push to making major parts of their economy as for their utility system. So why do they support geothermal power? We can go through the litany of reasons, but it's mostly because of its good quality, power for a utility system, clean, small footprint, low emissions, long lifetime, etc. We won't give you the advertisement. But one of the things that has changed is there's been more of an emphasis upon looking at what happens when you move to systems with a lot of intermittence. And I'm going to skip ahead to an issue because you can get two papers at our booths, one looking at the values of base load power, but the other looking at what we call the firm and flexible abilities of geothermal power. Because in the West, today, what we're doing is we're putting a lot of solar and wind on the system. And we're going to continue to do that because there's such good quality low price units. But what happens is it becomes a premium for firm and for ability to be flexible. So you're beginning to see hydropower, look at storage, you're looking at geothermal, look at how flexible can you be? Can you firm the system? Can you provide what's called ancillary services to the power system? And the paper we outlined, we looked at says definitely yes, in fact, we can outperform natural gas plants in terms of ramping times and speeds. So we see geothermal's future in the United States, particularly as becoming sort of the glue that holds together a renewable future. Because we can provide the firming power, the flexibility to make sure the system stays reliable, as we put more intermittent sense is when we're going to balance the system out to perform. But really quickly, the world market, as I said, is growing strongly, the US market is not enough to give you a quick, quick note as to why the disparity. I'd say there's two reasons. First, there's an asymmetry right now in tax policy, which means very unbalanced. 2009, we passed a broad tax act, many, many of those provisions have expired. They get did what, a two month extender on the last package? Well, it's a real mismatch for geothermal, because we have long lead times for our projects, we need to have long lead termed line times on tax incentives. And they need to be more equitable. We've supported moving towards a technology neutral credit based upon climate emissions, because you need something which can have a metric as to why you're putting the technology out there, and you're giving it across the board to everyone on the same basis or same, same, same basis, but the same performance basis. The other thing that's happened in geothermal in the United States is bureaucracy is caught up with us. The NREL did a study looking at how long it takes to permit projects and geothermal projects are taking three times as long to permit as a major wind or solar project, the utility scale wind or solar project, we're taking twice as long as a natural gas project. So we've got about six bills right now in the Senate looking at how we can deal with some of these issues. And again, our problem is, is there going to be an energy bill, will there be changes in the law? Many of these changes have been worked with some of the environmental communities that they're not viewed as too extreme, but they would help speed up the process because when you take six to eight years to build a project, which you could build in three, you're almost doubling the price just because of the delays. So our hope is that we can get some of the different senators and congressmen who have introduced bills to help streamline geothermal and keep it in a balanced way to work together on a bipartisan basis to have a geothermal provision and an energy bill, which we're at least still hopeful there's an opportunity for at least what we may find out in the next few weeks. So for moving geothermal forward in the U.S., we need to see tax incentives to be longer term and more across the board. And we need to have the bureaucratic time, lead times reduced cut in half so that you can build projects in three to five years, not six to 10 years. Thank you, Carol. That was not your signal, Carl, but anyway. It worked. Totally discombobulated, but anyway, but thank you so much. And I must say, you know, one of the things that I hope that everyone will take away from all of our panelists and our expo today, too, is how complimentary all of these renewable and efficiency technologies are, that they are all part of a whole. We are blessed in this country to have an abundance of renewables and tons of opportunities all over the place in every sector to become more efficient. Don't take things for just what they used to be. I mean, in the geothermal industry, we used to consider ourselves base load power. And many of my companies were like, well, we're base load power. That's important. Well, what if the utility commission needs firm and flexible power? Can you provide that? Well, yes, but why would anyone want it? You look at it and say, well, look at it. If the California Public Utilities Commission wants to pay you a lot of money to provide flexible power to firm the system, would you build the plant? I mean, we're in a new era and the question is what's possible. And when we went back and re-engineered, re-looked at geothermal plants and said, could they do this? The answer was, yes, they can play a much more complementary role to intermittent resources. And that's where I see the future is for them in the U.S. Which is terrific. And I must say, in terms of if you talk to Carl or go to his booth too, the other thing I also wanted to quickly mention, because I know you didn't really have time to get into this too, but geothermal in terms of looking at direct use in terms of heating and then of course geo-exchange heat pumps, all different forms of geothermal energy, which is available everywhere. A little on the higher temperatures for this enormous reservoir of power potential. So now we will now turn to our third speaker on this panel. And because we ran out of chairs, he's going to come to the podium to speak to us. And that's Dennis Lauria, who is the senior vice president of project development with Greenwood Energy. And they do a whole variety, almost kind of I would say hybrid projects in terms of the different kinds of renewables and storage projects that you put together. Thank you. So I came in last, I didn't get a seat at the table, but I did get the podium. So I guess that's pretty good. And I've got all my notes here, so I'm just going to say a few words and then hopefully save time for questions and answers. Excuse me. So Greenwood Energy is the clean energy investment arm for the Libra Group. The Libra Group is a multinational family-owned organization that across six countries invests in transportation, energy, real estate, and hospitality. So Greenwood Energy, excuse me, is an investor, developer in clean energy projects. We currently own projects from in the United States, basically in the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast. Those include CHP or Combined Heat and Power projects, fuel cell projects, as well as solar projects. Our pipeline and our charter is to invest in projects throughout the Americas, so that includes the U.S. as well as Latin America. We have a very large pipeline of opportunities right now, both in solar, wind, and energy storage. So we are more or less an IPP, an independent power producer. We own assets, we sell power to institutions such as universities, municipalities, and private entities using clean energy and we're able to provide savings to those organizations. In terms of our message today, I think we encourage policymakers in the U.S. to do three things to help our clean energy growth in the United States. Number one is to provide a smoother transition to the reduction in the investment tax credit. Number two is to provide more support for energy storage. We see energy storage as a key for the growth of renewable energy in the United States and throughout the world. And number three, to adopt the EPA's Clean Power program. We feel that having a smoother transition in the investment tax credit will help industry plan better. Right now we have a planned step change in the investment tax credit at the end of 2016. We think it's important to smooth that transition. As I mentioned, energy storage is a key to the increased implementation of renewable energy and but like a lot of other new technologies that have been successfully implemented in the United States, both wind and now solar, energy storage right now is an expensive technology. It needs help to be successfully implemented and there's a number of ways that the federal government can do that. And then last but not least certainly is to adopt the Clean Power program will help reduce greenhouse gases throughout the United States projected at over 30% reduction and an increase and also result in an increase in gigawatts, hundreds of gigawatts of new renewable energy. So I'll keep my comments brief and I look forward to questions and answers. Thank you. Thank you very much and at least as you said you did get the podium. So we will now turn to Ellen Levine, who is the president and founder of Hybrid Pedals for which is another whole change of pace that we're going to go to in terms of looking at transportation. His exhibit A is right in front of the podium. Ellen. Hello my name is Ellen Levine. I'm not a public speaker so excuse me for that. I want to ask y'all one question. How many of you know what an electric bicycle is? Raise your hands. How many of you can name one brand of electric bike that's not that you don't see in front of you? One. One person. Right okay. Quite interesting isn't that? We've made our cities much more bike friendly. My job is to make bikes much more people friendly so that more and more people will ride bicycles. The electrical bicycle laws, federal laws are very clear. You can throttle up to 20 miles an hour with a motor not to exceed 750 watts. So this particular bike here is kind of a high-end electric bike but it sure doesn't look like your grandfather's automobile. The batteries integrate into the body what's really really propelled this industry forward is the lithium ion technology and the batteries and the strength of the batteries. They're getting lighter and stronger with every with every new shipment that we get from a manufacturer. We also build bikes for handicap people. Recomments with motors with controls wherever they need them so we can put a handicap person on a bicycle successfully and they can have a freedom they never had before. How many of you are willing to ride a capital bike, share a bike up Wisconsin Avenue or up Connecticut Avenue or up the Rosslyn Hill from Rosslyn to Clarendon? Anybody up for that? You. Three. Well that's two more than no no no brand of electric bike but it proves the point bicycles are great and they're probably the most economical way to get around to commute but there's 79 million baby boomers and a lot of people with physical disabilities that don't want to sweat on their way to work that need a mode of transportation that really works. These really work knowing do they really work but they're a whole lot of fun. A really bad day at the office for me is putting a smile on somebody's face because there's nobody that gets on the seat of one of these electric bikes and doesn't come back with a big smile on their face. To give you two examples that were recent and I'll I'll wrap up pretty quickly cost three cents to charge this bike to go about 40 miles. So when you want to talk about cost efficiencies they're very easy to solar because they are storage of energy their batteries you can go straight from a panel straight into the battery so they're very very very very simple to store I mean to solar charge so every single hospital in this country should have a solar trailer full of electric bikes so things should go south doctors labs they have a way to transport things we have bikes with trailers and gurneys that can that can haul people that weigh up to 400 pounds that'll get a body out of harm's way fascinating on earth except for a helicopter maybe but it won't get shot down. One person can do the job of four in the disaster as far as movement of bodies so we do the DOD shows there's not a single bike on the GSA schedule we're driving Humvees around a nature preserve at Camp Pendleton and there's not a single electric bike on the GSA schedule isn't that remarkable as much green as we talk now I challenge all of you industry leaders in the sustainable energy field start walking walk yourself by electric bikes for internally bike share programs for your own employees increase your efficiencies walk the walk not just in what you do to make money but in the efficiencies and and what you do for your employees health and the benefit of our lifestyle and I'll end it with that thank you so much oh by the name of the company is hybrid pedals hybridpedals.com free test rides when we rent a bike before you buy it and we got five star reviews all the way and it's not just because of me the product truly does sell itself it's not a push sale it's a pull sale great thank you alan and so be sure and stop by this booth we'll now turn to Anne Germain who is the director of waste and recycling technology with the National Waste and Recycling Association Anne thank you Carol so I want to thank you for the opportunity to talk today about converting waste into a resource so I've got a few questions what if I told you that we could take the gas that's generated from decomposing waste and make energy or fuel from it what if I told you that by making that energy there would be fewer odors and what if I told you that by making that energy there would actually be fewer emissions of hazardous air pollutants and what if I told you that doing this would lower our greenhouse gas emissions sound too good to be true well it's not I'm talking about landfill gas landfill gas is formed naturally when the organic materials in our waste such as food or paper decomposes in a landfill that gas that is formed is about half methane and about half carbon dioxide the methane is the energy component of the landfill gas and it can be used for a variety of beneficial uses by capturing the landfill gas and turning it into energy we can power homes and factories and even cars sometimes the trucks that pick up the waste and recycling are themselves powered by the trash that they pick up so how does this work after trash is buried in the landfill the organic portion of the waste begins to decompose naturally anaerobically producing the gas the landfill operators apply a vacuum to through wells to collect all the gas the gas is then piped into a compression filtering station and from there it is sent to an end user where it will be converted into a valuable energy resource by capturing the landfill gas and converting it into energy greenhouse gases and hazardous air pollutants are also controlled and reduced creating a win-win combination energy generation and emissions reductions according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as of March of this year 645 landfills in the United States currently have landfill gas to energy programs in place they exist in every state except for Wyoming and Hawaii the EPA has identified an additional 440 landfills as future candidates for this landfill methane to energy program many prominent companies have already tapped into this valuable resource for example in South Carolina a 10 mile long pipeline delivers the gas from the landfill to a BMW production facility where the gas is used to fuel its manufacturing process not only that landfill goes landfill gas goes to Mars and to space when I say Mars of course I mean Mars snack food in 2008 Mars snack food facility in Waco, Texas the place where 85 percent of the Snickers candy bars in North America are produced so very important facility started fueling its boilers with landfill gas from the Waco regional landfill the switch was projected to save hundreds of thousands of dollars in natural gas costs each year while also lowering greenhouse gas emissions closer to Washington DC NASA also uses landfill gas to fuel space exploration NASA anticipates saving more than 3.5 million dollars over the next decade while they're heating 31 buildings at it's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Maryland using energy from landfill gas not every project is large smaller applications have included using landfill gas to heat greenhouses to grow tomatoes or used in kilns to fire bricks so what are the kinds of energy can landfill gas be used for as you can see from the previous examples it's been converted into electricity and heat or a combination of both electricity and heat but it can also be used to directly offset another fuel such as natural gas coal or fuel oil in addition it can be turned into compressed natural gas or cng and used to fuel cars and trucks as cng fueled vehicles become more common cng from biogas such as landfill gas will also become more common in the future you could be fueling your car on trash in total as of March of this year existing recovery projects produced annual amounts of energy equivalent to over 2,000 megawatts of electricity and the EPA estimates that this is the equivalent of producing annual energy benefits powering over 1.2 million homes and reducing emissions equivalent to sequestering carbon in over 83 million acres of forest and in addition unlike some other renewable energy sources landfill gas is generated 24 hours a day seven days a week even if the sun don't shine or the wind don't blow landfill gas keeps right on going in fact landfill gas recovery systems have an online reliability of greater than 90 percent so in summary landfill gas it's a lamp it's a reliable source of clean renewable energy that reduces air pollution and mitigates impacts of climate change the national waste and recycling association appreciates the opportunity to share information about landfill gas as a valuable renewable energy resource and if you have any questions please feel free to contact me thanks great and thank you so much and landfill gas really is pretty amazing and we've done some briefings looking at that too and it's just amazing in terms of it becoming a real revenue stream for communities or companies as well as making sure that we take advantage of all of these things that we waste right so we're now going to turn to Seth Stolges who is with stion where he is the senior marketing managers Seth hi hello everyone i just wanted to briefly thank carol and scott sclar for putting on this event today i've been coming for a couple years now and it seems to be getting bigger and bigger so that's that's really great to see my name is Seth Stolges and i work for stion we are a us-based solar manufacturer so today i'm just gonna take a little bit of time and tell you about the current state of the market for us solar manufacturers i'll tell you a little bit how our technology differs from what has been referred to as a commoditized market and i'll talk a little bit about some of the projects and the momentum that we're doing so we are a solar panel manufacturer we're 100 u.s owned and we produce our product here in the united states in haddysburg mississippi we are 100 backed by cosla ventures this is the venture capital firm founded by vino cosla the co-founder of sun microsystems and we employ over 120 workers in the united states and we are set to double the production of our facility in mississippi over the next year so there are currently less than a handful of solar manufacturers that produce their panels on us soil and we are starting to see demand for high quality us made solar products increasing we're seeing this demand from residential commercial utility government markets and particularly from the armed forces so the armed forces actually have a mandate to use solar products that are made in the u.s and with their concerns over supply chain management and availability made in us a product should be used far more regularly we're also beginning to see an international demand for us a made products believe it or not countries such as africa japan when you see a blade of a wind turbine fly off your wind turbine you start to wonder about quality and so we're seeing more and more of an interest over time as some of these products start to fail from other countries so a lot of people think all solar panels are made the same a lot of them are our technology is a little bit different traditional solar panels use silicon that's the main ingredient our panel uses what's called a sigs thin film product so sigs is copper indium galonite and selenium and unique to our thin film product it's cadmium free which is a toxic substance if not disposed of and used properly um what's unique about the thin film process is it requires far fewer materials so that's why it's referred to as thin film the film itself is actually thinner than traditional silicon doesn't require as much product going in and it also has half as many steps in the manufacturing process so our manufacturing process is um about 95 automated and that's what gives us our our high quality product that we see so even though our product is produced in the u.s it's competitive in price with foreign made products stuff we see coming out of china and it's a very high quality um our panels actually produce more energy per watt than traditional silicon panels and this is due to two reasons one there's absolutely no degradation with sigs technology so traditional panels lose about one half a percent each year after 25 years that's 10 to 15 percent loss in production we've seen no degradation over time with this technology um our panels also perform better and hotter climates so all technologies like cooler temperatures a nice 70 degree day is actually the best day for solar but as the temperature starts to creep up our panels will produce more energy than traditional panels which start to not produce as much in the heat so we were founded in 2006 we've been producing panels since 2011 and we're really starting to to see our market take off so we're working with utilities washington gas and georgia power just actually finance some of our products our projects we just last year sourced panels for four different one megawatt sites in georgia it's about a three million dollar project so about 12 million going in there and given that we're in the southeast the southeast solar market is actually starting to really take off it's a little bit different than other markets most markets go residential commercial utility in georgia and some of the other southeastern states because of the way policy is written we're seeing some very large solar farms put in the ground but that's good for everyone at the end of the day because we tend to make more of an impact with with being at scale there are some some policy changes going on georgia did just pass net metering over the past couple days so we expect the market to continue there and mississippi is in talks they're discussing net metering at a policy level as well and i should just mention the we're seeing more of a demand for like i said our product international markets we're installing a four megawatt system that's about a 15 million dollar project in Mauritius which is off the coast of Madagascar and we expect the international market to continue to grow so basically you know in short if if you can buy a high quality made in us a product for the same price is is a competitive product from another country why not and as we continue to see manufacturing jobs in the u.s move overseas we expect our facility in mississippi to double over the next year and we provide more and more jobs to americans and in turn as we export product can actually help lower the u.s trade balance internationally terrific that's a great story and it's it's wonderful to know that there's actually this kind of a manufacturing facility in the in the southeast and in mississippi we will now turn to our final speaker whom i think when all of a sudden you said something about blades on wind turbines was going oh my um and because we're now going to hear from jim riley who is the senior vice president for federal legislative affairs with a we at the american wind energy association so um and we're delighted to have you here jim thanks carol appreciate it uh i suppose i enjoy being in a theater in the round too for for those in the back apologies that you're looking at the back of my head um thanks for including us thanks for this whole forum i think this is an exciting program on the hill and it comes at a excellent time the the space around renewable energy is uh it it's high energy at the moment there's we just came from some conversations on the senate side as the senate is thinking about a tax extenders markup and energy is the topic for those of you who are in that conversation you you know what i'm talking about so yet your timing was perfect i don't know when you picked this date but but it's a good one let me let me ask a couple of questions following up on on anz idea um what percent of electricity in the united states today comes from wind this is just an average is it one percent five percent or ten percent how many say one percent how many say five percent we're about ten percent well the fives were right we're just shy of a five percent average in the u.s today comes from from wind um which state in the united states generates again on average the most wind electricity is it i'm gonna give you three choices texas california and iowa who says iowa who says california who says texas it's texas texas has more wind installed than any state in the united states what well we we can get into the per capita's but if you go to if you've been to um but what's fascinating to me is as i looked at go to texas and i talked to my daughter um she thinks of texas as horses oil wells and the dallas cowboys but it it leads the country in wind production what country leads the world in the amount of electricity generated from wind is it germany is it china or is it the united states who says germany china united states it's the united states we generate more electrons from winds than any other country today china has more wind turbines installed than any other country but they don't know or they're not being used as efficiently and they're not delivering the electricity that is happening here in the united states so this is this is a real when i talk about wind as an exciting time in the u.s this is it we're we're seeing this opportunity come into reality um speaking of my daughter she she's five and a half and she came by the office last week and she knows what i do because i come home and i say i help people build windmills she thinks that's really cool and she draws little pictures of them and i she'd been in my office for about an hour sitting there really quietly drawing finally she looks up and he says dad dad where did they build them she thought we actually built them at 1501 m street so i i had to tell her a little bit about about iowa um iowa leads the country in terms of jobs around the wind industry right now so it is it is the manufacturing center seamans and tpi composites and others have huge facilities there building wind turbines and parts for wind turbines um the the industry today is if you go down the kind of middle corridor the wind belt of the u.s that's that's where most of the turbines are operating um yes there's some in california yes there's some in maine but really we're centered in that section up and down from texas to iowa uh and so when you think about wind as we're bringing the cost down of the machines and the cost of wind has fallen 58 percent in the last five years so if you think about that forecast going forward we're on a trajectory that should assume it continues it will make wind that much cheaper and that much more affordable for families and businesses around the u.s but we're not there yet we need things like continued growth or on transmission because where all of that wind is in texas is a long way from where people are using that electricity so progress on building transmission lines and that affects a number of our technologies is critical uh carl and and others mentioned the need for continued certainty on tax policy wind has benefited from the existing tax policy in the u.s and it needs it to continue for some period going forward so that we can transition to something that is a competitive market which i think down the road we don't think that the current system will be as necessary as it is today but it has to continue for now i think enough's been covered and the fact that many of you are here wind obviously has huge benefits on the not only on the cost during the polar vortex two ish winters ago it's hard to remember how cold it was that day but wind saved consumers in the northeast and midwest one billion dollars in electricity costs a billion dollars in just 48 hours people say how did that happen it was the fact that wind was generating and utilities could move and purchase the wind contracts rather than buying what at that time was very very expensive natural gas we were heating our homes with natural gas because we don't heat our homes with wind and so the market was able to adjust and consumers saved a billion dollars which which is not an insignificant amount wind is also generating in some states as much as on average 20 of the electricity in states like Iowa South Dakota and Kansas and it does that reliably people say sometimes well is wind always there well wind is always somewhere and as the technology of the grid has improved the operators are able to harness if you know if the wind isn't blowing on this side of Iowa it's probably blowing on that side of Iowa and so the the grid as dynamic as it is is able to deliver wind as a reliable source of electricity in some states for example Colorado there was a period last year where wind provided 60 percent of the state's electricity load for a short period of time so yeah we're we are we are here we're growing we're currently supporting 73,000 jobs in the United States, AWIA the trade association that I work for has 1000 members that range from General Electric which is a small manufacturing company down to companies that provide services out at the wind farms provide the safety training to our workforce it's it's a fascinating place to be and I appreciate the chance to be here and tell a little bit about it. Terrific because I'm sure there will be lots of questions for everybody because you've all been so good in terms of keeping to your time commitments and everything we've got some time for real discussion with with all of you so any questions comments okay we'll start here Hi everybody can you can you hear me alright my name is John Harris III um I'm just an artist and activist um I just had a question about how you all feel about hip energy solar energy uh because you know the country we're always talking about tobacco and the business between tobacco and hemp product moving forward um because so much can be done energy-wise with him so I just want to know what you all thoughts were and how you feel like that could revolutionize different industries stuff like that. Who wants to comment or I'm not touching that with a 10-foot ball anybody else want to make any comment or whatever okay I guess we'll just let that one be there and and we're glad you're here and thinking about all sorts of stuff right okay uh Jim did you have a comment okay oh could you just wait for the mic there you go. Being worried about talking about industrial hemp is like being worried talking about odules. You have way under a fraction of a percent THC in industrial hemp and it does have a large number of uses and is very profitable where it's grown in other places in Canada for example where it's legal. One can make chunks of car bodies out of the hemp has a very long fiber very strong fiber it's why it's been made into rope and so forth for hundreds of years and it really is an extremely useful crop it's it's and would be a benefit to American agriculture. The problem it's faced all along is people confusing it with high THC marijuana but in fact it's quite possible to separate them from one another and it's quite possible to have a very useful growing and non-intoxicating growing of industrial hemp. Great thanks see there's always somebody in the audience or whatever that can handle almost everything and there's several states that have moved forward because certainly prior to up through World War II is a very very very important industrial crop great for clothing too okay. To the Orkney Islands north of Scotland where they have a lot of wind but what interested us was the pushback from developing it there. There was concern that the farmers these individual owners were making profits for themselves and not contributing back to the community and also a real dislike of the consequences of having a windmill in the place. I wondered what you're doing about this and if it's a problem in the development. I've I've not been to the Orkney Islands so I can't speak to what's happening there. Siting an industrial sized wind farm is not an insignificant experience and the the companies that do it and do it well work with the states and the communities to make sure that there's acceptance of the of the farm. The in Texas one of the again getting back to the stories there why is there so much wind in Texas. The the landowners there welcome the business the think about this a ranch in Texas can bring a farm in bring a wind farm in put the turbines in and that is that is guaranteed cash flow to that landowner for the next 10 20 years whatever the contract is and it's part of the deal that they might end up with better roads out to their farm. There's there's a real upside. The the farm is also in in most each state does things a little bit differently but usually they are contributing to the community whether it's the the fire the fire fund or the education fund so that states really appreciate the the royalty payments that are coming in. But there are examples where wind has had a hard time. The when think about off of Nantucket is a case here in the US that is a I think it shows all of the challenges of bringing wind into a community where and sometimes it works and I think wind has a lot of opportunity and is still being built in places where there is huge potential and support for it. Our members get calls every week from companies or from counties that want to bring more wind into into their area so. Okay thanks because I think it's one of those things that it really varies depending upon where people are in terms of the kind of of acceptance and and how things progress. We have a question over here. Yes I have a question about subsidies. The individual types of renewable energy that are individually subsidized or are they collectively given sub percentage of subsidies and if they're not collectively given why not do it as a group. I think it would be much more stronger. I have a stronger voice rather than individually lobbing or fighting for that particular type of renewable energy. Okay Carl and and Jim you should both respond and of course as they said now it's really the time this is a very very hot topic here on the hill right now. That's exactly what I meant when I said right now tax incentives are very asymmetrical and it's almost by happenstance. The 2005 energy bill was really the first time that Congress tried to put all the renewables into an incentive package so we all got slightly different treatment but they were all there. Since then it's kind of faltered on enough right now wind which uses the PTC, geothermal, biomass, hydropower are not eligible because they they lapsed last year. Solar went with the ITC so it's still moving forward so that's why it's right now very asymmetrical but hopefully the Senate Finance Committee is talking about changing that at least for the next year and a half even it back up but more importantly there's been a lot of momentum on Capitol Hill to do exactly what you're saying which is come in with a technology neutral tax provision it's based not not on just whether you're renewable or not but on your performance in terms of greenhouse gases. So if you can show that you can you can replace carbon emissions that'll that'll vary your incentive based upon that not what your name is or whether we like you because climate seems to be the driving issue and I think climate will be the driving issue in the future. I think we're likely to see a move in exactly the direction you're saying that right now there's still differences in stovepipes between technologies and I think we're going to be over the next few years see a move towards a more uniform and more policy oriented tax incentive package. But it does make it really important for policymakers to hear from people why this is really important and and what people want our energy mix to be about in in this country. Did you want to add anything Jim? I think Carl speaks for the the industry quite well it you point out the fact that it is a stovepipe system that we have today a lot of people believe it could be more efficient but getting from here to there as the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee have tried is no easy feat. So in the short term the reality is we're going to continue something akin to what we have maybe with some minor adjustments of dates but I think you would find support for something more comprehensive. Okay go ahead and then you Alan. Yeah and I just wanted to add real quickly one of the the benefits that solar's seen is that we got an eight-year tax credit. A lot of other industries have had to fight for one or two year tax credits and you see a lot of boom and bust market so hopefully in the future not only is there a bill that looks at all this all the technologies but also one that looks at a long-term subsidy because it's really helped solar get where it needs to be that if in 2016 the investment tax credit does expire the industry should be able to stand on its own at that point. Okay and obviously we've seen a huge boom and bust kind of thing which just is not healthy and doesn't work well for for anybody. I know the charts that I've seen from Awiya before look like this giant sign curve and so I think certainty has been a huge issue for all of the industries and as Carl said where there's a long much longer period involved in terms of the building out for example of geothermal projects it makes it really really important the policies recognize all of this. Go ahead. I have a question for hybrid bikes. How much does that bicycle cost? I just came I just came back from Holland and they're scary to try to cross the street given how fast they're going but does it go up mountains instead of just flat Holland and that's my first question and then I have a question for the thin solar folks too. You can get a very good e-bike for anywhere from $2,000 to $4,000. That particular bike right there is around $4,000 but that's a very high-end bike. To answer your other question what's your question about hills or does it go uphill? Yeah it completely takes away the hell anxiety of riding a bicycle. A lot of people love to ride down the hill to the beach but they sure don't want to ride up the hill back from the beach and that's actually how one of the companies was founded by the retired president of Wind Oil Company. Now I have just a comment to add to that. It's interesting that if I'm a one percenter and I buy a Tesla for $100,000 I get a huge tax credit. If I'm an average Joe and want to ride an electric bike instead of a fossil fuel vehicle I think that needs to change. I think your average common commuter needs to be incentivized to some degree to get out of their car and get on a bike. And to go low carbon. No carbon. No carbon. Right, right, right. I have a question also solar panel. I was very interested that at least eight times you said in your presentation high quality. High quality, high quality. Is that your competitive advantage against foreign competitors like the Chinese? I would think also your lighter so they might have a competitive advantage to ship. I'm just curious what you mean by high quality. Is that part of your competitive advantage against foreign producers? Yes it is. It is one of one of the benefits. I think that there I mean there's a very small percentage of solar products made in the U.S. right now. There are a number made in Europe but the majority of manufacturing is coming out of the Far East particularly China a little bit out of Taiwan. And really the the big difference most most Chinese companies I don't mean to generalize are using handmade products. So these are giant warehouses where men and women are literally hand soldering panels together. In these higher quality environments particularly particularly like ours where greater than 95 percent of the process is automated. It just really results in a much more standardized product across the board. If you look closely at solar panels that are hand soldered together versus those that are made by machine you can see the difference and you know solar's really only taken off in the past eight years per se and what we're starting to see is that different companies panels are degrading more rapidly than others. Now we've only really had panels out there for four or five years so we can't say that there's going to be no degradation on our panels over 25 years but when we start to see certain products degrade five or ten percent within the first couple years and we look at where they made where they were made and how they were made it tends to point that you know how you make your product is very important and when investors start to see that their annual returns are diving in the wrong direction and this goes for all technologies then it really starts to to ring a bell so I have a feeling over the next five or ten years it will really start to sort itself out over which which products are higher quality and there there are some very high quality producers all over the world it's not just limited to the U.S. but I think we'll see a little bit of a shake up and a shake out over time. Yes I have two quick questions actually for the landfill gas I wondered how similar your technology was how applicable it would be to say tapping into large-scale industrial farm waste as sort of a biodegester and I wondered if the wind industry might comment on stratospheric winds tapping into the high upper atmosphere jet streams where on the scale from science fiction to actual implementation. Thank you. So with landfill gas converting waste into energy you know it's the organic fraction of the waste that we're focused on so if you can actually do additional separation and get a more uniform product so like just doing food waste like in California what they're doing is rather than having it go to a landfill they're sending it to anaerobic digesters where it's an enclosed system in a building they're doing a rapid decomposition of the food waste and then they're pulling off the methane from that and then the food then is cured waste is cured into a compost-like product which then could be used as a soil amendment so that's kind of be that probably the next step down the road we're probably not there yet because it is somewhat more expensive than most people are willing to invest in but yes it's got some similarity with other biomass type conversion. I had a question also on landfill gas I think you indicated that 50% of the stream of gas coming out was CO2 and 50% methane. What do you do with the excess CO2 or do you just burn a very low grade gas in which case the CO2 is getting in the atmosphere? Yes so the straight answer is that the CO2 is going out into the atmosphere the way the EPA looks at the CO2 from landfills it's considered a biogenic source rather than anthropogenic source because it's from the degradation of a cellulosic material so as long as it's not going under an increased value so it's the same as if you were going to compost as long as the compost is releasing CO2 it's considered part of the original carbon cycle rather than coming from a fossil source and adding to the carbon cycle but if it's going out as a methane where a methane has a CO2 equivalent value of 25 times that of CO2 that's when it's considered a contributor to the greenhouse gases. Does that make sense? There have been attempts by some people we've been told that CO2 has a lot of value and I understand that there's been talks that it could even be made into food grade quality but whenever I ask anybody they're like no no not us because I don't think anybody wants to think anything in their food is coming from a landfill so if it is used I think it's kind of on the down low. Question for the whole panel. I'm a with a WGL energy we're a we invest in distributed generation projects technology agnostic each of your vertical markets have their respective challenges plenty of them but if you collectively could combine forces what policy issue would you tackle what would what would make making your projects easier to do? In my case you know if we want to create jobs people have disadvantaged people have to be able to get to those jobs so there should be some way that a subsidy could be granted to a job lapulket who accepts a job that may not be on a public transit line or that may enable him to to to move forward in life and to progress in life especially those coming out of coming out of the military coming out of the penal institutions these people have very very difficult times because they can't find a job that's close to their home and it's it may not be on a public transportation line so I think getting some sort of a financing program working where it's somehow federally guaranteed for certain people would be quite beneficial to everyone. I think one of the things that you've kind of heard a little bit from all of us is some of the tax extenders that we're talking about I think what that does and I think you've heard from wind and solar and geothermal about what some of that does is it allows the infrastructure and the technology to develop to a degree where the price point becomes competitive and economical and that they can then compete on an equal footing it's the development of a lot of the technologies and getting the price point down that so that you know the average person can take advantage of it or a small town can take advantage of it. When I was little there was somebody that had some horrible looking solar panels that were a complete eyesore in their front yard and they were enormous and now you look at solar panels and and they're so much smaller and I would like to consider them for my own house and it's it's getting from what it was to what its potential is is assisted by any sort of tax breaks that we can get our hands on. I can add my two cents to your idea I would say there's several different things that need to be done. One is the states need to have policies to treaty look at the diversity of technologies and how they're going to move forward as a whole. They're very short term states right now looking at we're going to do this policy or this piece not looking at how we're going to make a transition in our energy system how do these different pieces fit in and give us that sort of long-term threshold you really need to play this out I mean I think solar is a great example of where you've got an eight-year tax credit long-term policy gives you the launch pad you need to really make a difference starts and stops don't work and the states are the drivers on energy policy you're going to remember that so the state policies really formulate the basis of what you've got at the federal level you're really dealing with two main policies one is tax incentives the other is transmission and there's sort of an overlap there between the states and their regional transmission modes which is going to become increasingly important for all of our energy needs is to have a good flexible reliable transmission system that isn't isn't stove piped into the states but isn't federalized but has regional components to it so I'd say regionalization better rules of the road in the sense of transmission longer term federal incentives and state policies which really set the stage for transitions in their energy systems looking at a variety of diversity of technologies first I think it's a great question by the way really gave me reason to think and pause I think the biggest you know if we're really concerned about clean energy we're really concerned about global warming we have to do something as a country right now so much every state has a different incentive program and so you know you can't put solar on your roof pretty much in florida but you know you can which is a sunshine state right which is pretty paradoxical but you can in massachusetts and a lot of other states so I really think we need a stronger federal program for a stronger federal incentive mandates unless we line on individual states if we're really going to make progress in adopting more clean energy in the united states and good things have been said that the keys for for wind and I think for a number of these other technologies is certainty over a over a long period of time and we don't we have not had that and that's made the cost of our technologies higher than they could have been if we'd had certainty and you know looking at today's administration today's congress I think we we're focused on the tax extenders because that's what's that's what's real I think we could have another discussion once we get through tax extenders about what's in tax reform or other programs that government may offer but today we have to pay attention to what's what's on the table great thanks I just wanted to mention too that it's important to think about how each of these things again works together in terms of policies and oftentimes it's not just one policy but it may be a portfolio a blended suite of policies that may be necessary to really make things work and Carl referred to transmission I just wanted to mention that that with regard to thinking about policies how important that is and that there is that's going to come up on a later panel this afternoon so I encourage you to to listen in for that as well so I want to thank all of our panelists thank all of you for being here for this and and enjoy the expo and thanks so much for coming