 Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for logging in for the first installment of our three part briefing mini series about the transportation sector and climate change. Today we will explore ports leading the way on mitigation and resilience. I am Dan Versette, the executive director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. ESI was founded in 1984 on a bipartisan basis by members of Congress to provide science based information about environmental energy and clean climate change policies to policymakers. We have also developed a program to provide technical assistance to rural utilities interested in on bill financing programs for their customers. And through it all, whether we are working on Capitol Hill or with partners in a rural utility service territory, we are always focused on solutions from mitigation to adaptation and resilience. Resilience has been a major area of focus for ESI recently. Just three weeks ago we released a report for us, the first of its kind, that compiled 30 policy recommendations based on the findings of our 16 part coastal resilience briefing series. Now I have a certain bias for this, of course, but if you are interested in coastal resilience, and in particular how Congress and the federal government could better support community based approaches to adaptation and resilience. I encourage you to take a look at our report, The Resilient Future for Coastal Communities. It is available for download at www.esi.org along with an archive of our October 29 online briefing that featured the return of four panelists from our original 16 part series. And when you visit us online, I also hope you will sign up for Climate Change Solutions, our bi-weekly newsletter. It really is the best way to keep track of our briefings, our fact sheets and other asserted goings on and ensure that you never miss a thing. Today we will hear from practitioners working with maritime stakeholders at ports to advance climate change and mitigation. Ports are complex operations, and today's panelists bring on the ground perspectives of what's working and what's not to address climate change. As we did with our coastal resilience report, we present to you today case studies as models and examples for others to emulate. You will hear about some great work at two major ports, but to really address climate change, we need to significantly scale up this work. And that very likely requires attention from Congress and the federal agencies. We have three speakers today, so I'm going to skip right ahead to introducing them so we have plenty of time for questions and answers. But two things first. Number one, this is the first of a three part mini series this week. Tomorrow at the same time, we will be taking a look at the future of low emissions commercial aviation. And on Thursday, we'll have a roundtable discussion with representatives from three leading transportation authorities about public transit. So please join us for our second and third online briefings this week. Number two, let me at let me explain how you can ask us questions. We're not together in person today. So if you have a question, you have two options to ask it. First, you can send us a message on Twitter at ESI online, or you can send us an email at ESI at ESI.org. We will do our best to get to everyone's questions during our question and answer period after our third panelist presents. And now on to our first panelist of the day. I'd like to introduce Joshua Berger. He is the governor's maritime sector lead for the state of Washington. Joshua works as the liaison between the maritime industry stakeholders, the governor's office, the state legislature and state agencies. As director of maritime, he focuses on economic development, building public private partnerships and ensuring a 21st century workforce in his role. Joshua managed the development of Washington state strategy for the blue economy for sustainable decarbonized maritime industry alongside the development of a maritime innovation center. He also founded Washington Maritime Blue, an independent cluster organization to implement the state strategy and serves as its chairman of the board. Joshua, welcome to our briefing today. Can't wait for your presentation. Hey Dan, thank you so much. I really appreciate the opportunity. Share a bit of our story and engage with the other panelists as well. So this is a great afternoon. Thank you. Share my screen here and get a chance to introduce myself want to make sure we're all good to go and get screens up. Great. All new feats here as we are living in a virtual living in a virtual reality so thank you. I appreciate the introduction and just the opportunity. Joshua Berger Dan thank you for the introduction I have to go much further than that but what I am excited to do. I'm doing a lot lately is sharing this model that we've built here in Washington state, along with a whole host of partners, the quadruple helix we call it. And then how we accelerate draw investment, all towards this end of the blue economy which is really right sustainability, clean energy, environmental awareness, ecological health, and community resiliency and equity in the maritime and space broadly and we'll do some focus on the work we're doing specifically at the ports. But it's this model for how we collaborate and how we draw investment towards this work to accelerate innovation in this space that I'm excited to share. And we've been doing a lot of sharing lately, as we're all looking towards what we've dubbed building back blue. We're excited about sharing this model for that so some quick context for Washington state. Up here in the great Pacific Northwest, our maritime industry alone is a $37 billion economic driver for our state. We're just going to start with the context. You can look at that nationally as well. It's very diverse and incredibly interdependent creates living wage jobs and draws investment. We start with that here in Washington and then of course, we boast quite well that we are actually already leaders in environmental performance and best management practices. In the work that we're doing fourth largest container gateway in the United States, the largest ferry system in the United States. We manage the most sustainable and largest fishing grounds in the world up in Alaska and the Bering Sea from Washington state incredible research happening and underwater ocean technology ocean science and research and a great system of workforce development so we're starting partly from this from from this place and over the last number of years we've recognized that this notion of the blue economy. This is the World Bank's definition that we share has been growing. This idea of this incredible shift and focus around maritime sustainability clean energy. The states and NGOs around the globe have been developing these plans. And we've been following with great interest in how they're doing this work. But it's not just NGOs and other state governments industry has been engaged the OECD tells us that the blue economy is going to triple by the year 2030 to $3 trillion. And I'll note that's about twice or sorry three times the global space industry. If we're focused on innovation and sustainability. And so industry has taken that note as well in our forming coalitions plans ways in which they're going to invest towards this work. We got Q here in Washington state and said you know what, let's take a lead here and create our strategy for the blue economy. How are we going to bring our stakeholders together draw investment public and private and accelerate innovation there's no reason why we are not a center of excellence for that work so the governor put together an advisory council 18 months of broad stakeholder work. And we developed really the first and still only comprehensive strategy for the blue economy. You can see it's a focus on decarbonization innovation, working water funds growing gateways, a diverse and equitable workforce, and that we do that in an organized way. Of course there's great detail and I encourage you to go take a look at the detail there's a lot there that could be modeled and had been has been modeled from what's happening globally. But we very quickly understood that a strategy is just a strategy, it's about as good as its graphics and the shelf you put it on. If you're not implementing and accountable to the work. And when we went around the globe, we looked at other centers of excellence and asked you know how are you getting this done how are you getting this engagement between the public and private sector research institutions community organizations. About across the board there was this model of what we call a formal innovation cluster organization that very intentionally brings together that quadruple helix towards a mission. In this case, implementing our state strategy for the blue economy. We formed Washington maritime blue. Just two years later, we're nearly 100 members long, looking at that quadruple helix of industry, our public partners in government research institutions and organizational partners, all with this mission together of working towards a growing thriving maritime economy, a healthy ocean marine environment and equitable and resilient communities and that takes place in a number of different ways. We have kind of our, our, our scope of work, the six blue f's we call them. Of course, we do work around marketing and communicating certainly our members but the opportunities around the blue economy broadly this is a global effort. We hold networking and knowledge sharing events we call blue forums. We have workforce programs with a specific focus on bringing particularly youth of color and young women into opportunities awareness and opportunities in the maritime industry. And then what I want to share with you today is the models we have around how we attract finance and how we bring together partners and what we call joint innovation projects and support entrepreneurship and innovation so I can share some examples of some of that. It took some cues from our friends in Norway and Portugal and France and Japan and looked at this model called a joint industry project or joint innovation project. And it's where we bring our members together. I'll say it just quite frankly to get stuff done. It's how we drive investment towards key demonstration projects like electrifying the country's largest ferry system. And it's like developing zero mission fast ferries that, of course, our zero mission but our quiet and mindful of marine mammals and creating jobs and addressing transportation issues in our region. This is where we bring together our members so a member comes to us and says hey we've got a concept design, we want to take it to the next level how do we bring funding to get the full construction, understand the economic impact environmental benefits, go out and find an operator with a route that we know is going to work and be specific. And that's where the cluster organization comes into play. We act as project managers, and we can attract and bring capital and funding from multiple companies. In this case we were awarded a federal transit authority grant, along with funding from local ports, and are engaging right now with private investors on a potential route for this project. Other exciting projects we're working on is a green hydrogen production at the port of Tacoma, actually. A demonstration of storing high density hydrogen in a liquid carrier which is safe and very efficient which has great implications for deep sea shipping, but in this case would be used for essentially acting as a generator for ships to plug in for cold ironing or ships to plug in when they're tied to the pier has great implications also for resiliency as well. In other areas we're working on scaling a whale report alert system to address noise issues with marine mammals particularly our southern resident killer whales, which is a great interest to us. And then more recently we've just invested and funded this program through an economic development demonstration grant in developing some predictive analytics tool to do early detection and coven 19, which we're piloting with the fisheries and maritime sector with great hopes with IHME to then share that with various different sectors agriculture food food processing and out into community so please stay tuned and watch this work. This is a great even global implications where maritime and fisheries is a great place to start. So how do we bring money towards these things and and and the new ideas that are changing the shape in the maritime and ocean space, but one is, you know, we knew that capital is having a hard time understanding and flowing towards projects so we started here locally, just to get a sense of what type of capital what flavor of capital from public grants to strict venture capital. How does it get to maritime and ocean projects. What what's appropriate what's out there. It's a great understanding that there's a need for early stage capital to commercialize these new technologies venture capital is not aware. And what a great role there is for both public funds and philanthropic funds to de risk some of those early investments, and that our cluster organization and the many others that we engage with are great pipelines into these types of investments. What's also interesting is that it's multifaceted we're talking here about maritime ports and shipping, but the crossover and technology the tech transfer that's happening right now is remarkable. Certainly global and national regulations are pulling markets, and we have even I think even more work to do to pull those markets forward. The technology costs that like battery costs are reducing dramatically. And there is really global cooperation around this work so all of that kind of breeds opportunities for investment, but we also know that as broad and diverse as the opportunities are also need to be the types of capital. And these all can play with one another which is again why we feel like this cluster organization is a great way to blend, you know what we call the proverbial hybrid stack of capital to get these demonstration projects going. But we also need to focus on those entrepreneurs and the innovation that's happening incredibly fast. We started our first maritime innovation accelerator, we brought in 11 companies from around the country actually around the globe. We set this up and immediately got 125 applications and everywhere from Kazakhstan Copenhagen to Spokane Washington, and certainly in our hometowns here in Seattle we chose these 11 companies. They're very diverse this is everything from sustainable seafood snacks to marine batteries to digital drage truck solutions and across the board that was intentional for us because we know that private capital is new to the space and we wanted to show them the breath of the types of investments that they can make. We're now incredibly successful in this first round, one of our companies, just a month ago announced a $32 million series a round a number of angel investments, and lots of other great things to report out of this so we went ahead, and we are now recruiting for our second wave. And actually expanding the type of work we do with entrepreneurs not just in this accelerator style in Seattle but in Everett in Washington State in Tacoma in Washington State we have maritime communities across the state. And all of them may focus on different things and in different ways, and our cluster organization is there essentially to be a nest and support them with early demonstration projects early sales, possibly corporate investment and partnering on these big projects. And just the one last thing I wanted to say is, this is an incredible model that we have been in communication with our friends in Rhode Island, and Alaska, and Georgia, and Mississippi, and Massachusetts. We're building these models together. We are just one part of this global enterprise of the blue economy and in any given day, the founder from one of my accelerators will go to Oslo for the catapult ocean. We've got capital flowing in from Singapore. We're partnering with our friends in San Diego and Boston to create clear impact metrics and share potential funders and investors so this is. We're part of something global. The there is one ocean. There is one, you know, large maritime and shipping and port system across the globe. And we're really only going to be able to build the black blue by building together so we're always glad to continue to tell the story to find ways in which this model can work in DC to support cluster organizing and innovation across the space nationally and it's working for us and we're excited to continue to find partners both with federal our federal partners in DC and other ports around the globe. So I'll leave it there and look forward to answering questions when we get to that point. Thank you, Dan. Thank you, Joshua. That was a really cool presentation. And thanks for hearing my East Coast time zone bias. Good morning is what I meant to say to you. So afternoon for some of us, including our next panel. I'm quick reminder. If you missed any of Josh's Joshua's presentation or if you would like access to his slides, visit us online www.esi.org. You'll find all the materials from today's briefing, as well as written summaries over the next couple days they'll get posted and so they'll help you orient yourself if you happen to miss anything, make it easier for you to find it. Also, if you have any questions for Joshua or for our next panelist, you can ask us questions two different ways. The first is by following us on Twitter at EESI online and sending a question in that way. Also send us an email EESI at EESI.org. And now I will introduce our second and third speakers as a pair because they will be code presenting. The first of the two is Jill Lemke. Jill is the manager of strategic planning and special projects at the Maryland Port Administration, where her responsibilities include planning for climate resilience. She has over 25 years of experience in the public and private sectors. She holds a bachelor's degree in communications, master's degree in regional planning, and is a certified port executive and certified climate change professional. And then our second of the two, so number two and number three, I think that's the better way to say that, is Kristen Keane. Kristen currently serves as the innovative reuse program manager at the Port of Baltimore. Through this role, Kristen needs a variety of activities related to the innovative reuse and beneficial use of dredged sediments, including the identification and implementation of reuse projects, dredged material blending studies, regulatory and policy initiatives, interagency coordination and community outreach, and stakeholder engagement. Kristen holds degrees from Salisbury University, University of Maryland Eastern Shore, and the American Military University. So welcome Jill and Kristen, looking forward to your presentations. Thank you, Dan. Pleasure to be here. Thank you for having us. And Joshua's presentation showed us sort of a more global view, and we are going to be taking you down to a more on the ground view in the perspective of a single port. The manager of strategic planning and special projects. One of those special projects is climate resilience. To start, I want to give you an introduction to the Port of Baltimore and the Maryland Port Administration. We are a department underneath the umbrella of the Maryland Department of Transportation. Unlike other ports around the country, we are not an independent port authority. Our mission is to increase the flow of waterborne commerce through the state of Maryland and in a manner that benefits the citizens of the state. As part of our vision that ties back into resilience, we are committed to acting as a good steward of Maryland's natural environment. The Port of Baltimore has had a long and great maritime history. The Port of Baltimore was founded in 1706. It is older than the city itself and the city of Baltimore and much of Maryland grew up around the Port of Baltimore. When I talk about the Port of Baltimore, I'm not talking about the Maryland Port Administration. The Port of Baltimore is a complex mix of both private and public facilities that incorporate 45 miles of waterfront. 23 of those facilities are public and 6 are publicly owned MPA terminals. Because of that complex mix, we have active relationships with public and private sector entities as well as government organizations on the state, local and national level. The Port is a nationally significant port. We generate 37,000 jobs in the state of Maryland. 15,000 of those are direct port jobs, which we are proud of because of our mission to benefit the citizens of the state. We like to provide jobs at a living wage for people with a variety of educational levels, and the average port salary for those 15,000 direct jobs is 9.5% higher than the statewide average wage. So we are a significant engine for the economy of the state of Maryland. From a national perspective, we're number one in autos and roll-on roll-off equipment, imports and exports. We're number one in imported gypsum, number two in sugar and coal. And from a value perspective, we're number nine in the US and from a cargo tonnage perspective, 11th in the US. After a marine terminal, you can probably imagine that we are on the water. And because of that, we are susceptible to the impacts of climate change and sea level rise. In addition, we are on the Chesapeake Bay in the state of Maryland. And you can tell from the graph that our water levels have been rising for the past 100 years. Not only because of sea level rise, but also because of land subsidence around the Chesapeake Bay since the last ice age. So we are familiar with the impacts of both weather and the sea in terms of our operations. So Maryland is a leader in acting on climate change. And in 2010, as a result of action on a state level policy, we developed the climate change vulnerability assessment that looked at all of our facilities in the port of Baltimore. And then turned that vulnerability assessment, which largely focused on sea level rise. We developed an approach to our operations and projects to identify ways that we can address some of those vulnerabilities. And we developed a three pronged approach. The first prong is migrate for any project we are planning, we look at whether or not that function needs to be near the water and therefore in the flood zone. And the answer is no, we will move it out of the flood plain and off of the terminal. The answer to that question is very often no, because we need to be near the water in order to operate. So the next step in that three prong process is to determine whether or not that function or building or facility could be elevated. So Maryland has a free board requirement for state facilities in the flood zone that is two feet above the annual flood elevation or the hundred year flood elevation. And we look at, is that possible or feasible for our operations. The answer is no, we will look to mitigation and how can we mitigate that project to reinforce or strengthen it in order to withstand any potential damage or impacts of climate related activities or events. And I'm going to give some more examples of that later on. As we prepare for resilience, we look at resilience within each capital project in the design and through the engineering process. We're also looking at the reuse of dredge material for resilience projects outside of our immediate terminals, and Kristen will touch on that a little bit later, and we are identifying partnerships. Similar to what's happening in Washington. We look to universities, federal state and local partners and NGOs to examine the research and what is happening in the larger system. We're also investigating electric and microgrid improvements to maintain emergency power, both for continuity of operations and security to maintain the security of the port during events and emergencies. And I'm going to change for us largely mean sea level rise and flooding from storm surge, but we also suffer the impacts of extreme rain events, extreme temperatures impacting operations, high winds, snow ice and hail events as a, as the port hail, a hail event could cause significant damage to the cargo on the terminal, and then increase sedimentation in our federal channels. We focus on sea level rise and flooding partly because the science is there and there's more information about the potential risks. And now I'm going to go through a couple of examples of how we have implemented that three pronged approach to climate adaptation on our terminals. This photo is an example of a stormwater vault that we have placed underneath the cargo storage areas on our terminal. Partly to meet state stormwater management requirements, but also to hold on to significant amounts of water that have fallen on the terminals through micro microburst extreme rain events that we've been having more and more frequently in the mid Atlantic region. This is another example this project was paid for through a tiger grant from the federal government. We did some dredging and use that dredge material to partially fill the Fairfield marine terminal wet basin which is was in this footprint that you see in the photo. And as a result of the project used it as an opportunity to add additional stormwater management facilities. This is a large vault and sand filter system underneath the terminal. And because of the implementation of this infrastructure we were also able to elevate this portion of the new cargo space that was constructed as a result of that tiger grant. And this photo shows the after image of where cars will be stored. They are current it is currently being used but it shows the perspective of how the elevation is is five feet above the remainder of the terminal. And that is for future storm surge protection, as well as that underground stormwater management system. This is an aerial view of Dundalk Marine terminal. This is our largest work for course terminal it's 575 acres. As you can imagine when we look at doing improvements to Dundalk Marine terminal. And we ask ourselves how do we elevate this. Elevating 575 acres is not a viable alternative. Not to mention the fact that 100% of our cargo space on Dundalk is leased to customers and you can see all of the customers equipment and and vehicles and storage in the Dundalk is largely forest products we also do imports and exports of forest products. So, as an alternative to elevating the terminal, as we begin to renovate or replace births along the outside Dundalk has 11 marine births. Implementing a climate resilience and adaptation system that includes a new stormwater culvert so that the terminal can be separated from the city stormwater system. And that will include stormwater pumps, backflow preventers and a 32 inch sea curb as we call it which is essentially a small sea wall to prevent storm surge over topping onto the terminal and causing damage to both equipment and cargo. And that project is a $36 million project that will take place over a series of years. The first phase will include permanent barriers as well as temporary barriers as we work our way around the terminal and replace each individual birth and will be paid for in part by $10 million infragrant from the federal government. And this graph is intended to show that we are also looking at our environmental footprint. In the four year period between 2012 and 2016, our cargo actually increased 10% over that time period, and our emissions thanks to a number of programs and initiatives have decreased by 19%. Including a 23% decrease in CO2 emissions and we're pretty proud of those numbers and we'll be having new numbers shortly. We do these every four years. And as a transition to my colleague, I wanted to introduce that we also do mitigation projects outside of our terminal, when we can't do stormwater mitigation on the terminal. This is a project that we partnered with Anarondo County Parks and Recreation to do a living shoreline to help an area of their facility that had suffered serious erosion. We rebuilt the shoreline and worked with the kids to plant native grasses and this project was put into place last year. And so now I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Kristen to talk about our Drudge material program. Good afternoon. Thank you Jill. My name is Kristen Keane. I serve as the innovative reuse program manager at the Maryland Port Administration. And moving on, when it comes to ports and sustainability, we typically focus on the actual terminal facilities. But there's much more to the equation when you consider the unique requirements necessary to keep the port open for business, which brings me to the management of Drudge material. Here at the Port of Baltimore, we turn sediments into solutions. Major shipping channels in the Chesapeake Bay and Baltimore Harbor are maintained at a 50 foot depth while others are maintained at a 35 foot depth. Next slide. Jill, next slide. Thank you. Maintaining safe and navigable channels serving the Port of Baltimore helps to keep us competitive, especially among the ports situated along the eastern seaboard. The Maryland Port Administration in partnership with the Army Corps of Engineers share the important responsibility of keeping our marine highway open, which spans about 136 miles. Each year, almost 5 million cubic yards of sediment is removed from these shipping channels. To put that into context, that volume would fill the Ravens football stadium about two times every single year. Next slide. Space in our upland containment facilities is very limited, especially in the Baltimore Harbor, which is why new, sustainable solutions are needed. This leads us to innovative reuse and beneficial use. In Maryland, we have two distinct definitions for these terms, but to put it briefly, innovative reuse refers to on-land applications for the Drudge material, while beneficial use refers to in-water uses for the sediment. Next slide. In recent years, we've made a lot of progress on reusing Drudge material generated from the Baltimore Harbor. Our portfolio of upland applications for dewatered sediment includes end uses such as habitat development, daily landfill cover, remedial capping material, and engineered fill. We continue to expand our ingenuity and increase our ability to sustainably reuse the never-ending resource that is Drudge material. Next slide. In addition to the upland uses for sediment, the Port of Baltimore has also been internationally recognized for a very large-scale beneficial use project, 1,715 acres to be exact. In the 1800s, about 100 residents called Poplar Island home, and by the 1920s all of the residents were treated due to erosion and sea level rise. The island then became a hunting retreat that welcomed both President Roosevelt and President Truman. Now in 1996, only five acres remained of this once-treasured island. Through a partnership between the Maryland Port Administration and the Army Corps of Engineers, the island has since been restored using Drudge material to create 776 acres of tidal wetlands, 829 acres of upland habitat, and 110-acre open-water embankment. Next slide. Now Poplar Island will reach its capacity of 69.8 million cubic yards in a little over a decade from now. In anticipation of Poplar's finite capacity, we are planning for the Mid-Chesapeake Bay Island Restoration Project, which will beneficially use sediment from the Port of Baltimore's 50-foot channel, provide 90 to 95 million cubic yards of Drudge material placement capacity, restore remote island habitat, as well as provide shoreline protection and resiliency for a nearby county and its property owners. Next slide. With that, we thank you for your attention. Thank you, Kristen, and thank you, Jill, for a really great presentation tag team. As a Maryland resident, thanks also for being good state employees and doing great work keeping taking good care of the Port of Baltimore. And I'm also very pleased that you managed to fit in a Ravens, an M&T Bank stadium reference, Kristen. It wouldn't have been a Maryland state presentation without one like that, so thank you for that. Now it is time to shift to questions and answers. And before I introduce my colleague to take it away, if you have a question, there are two ways to get it to us. The first is by following us on Twitter at EESI online. The second is by sending us an email at EESI at EESI.org. We will do our best to get to all of them that we can. But to kick off the question and answer period, let me introduce my colleague, Amber Todorov. Amber is on our policy team, was an integral member of the team that put out our Coastal Resilience Report a couple weeks ago, and had a big hand at organizing this week's series of briefings. And in fact, I think she was the one who came up with the idea of doing these multi-day mini-series when we did climate adaptation data week back in April. So, Amber, I'll let you take it away and looking forward to a great discussion. Thanks a lot, Dan, and thank you to our excellent speakers. First question, to what extent are ports sharing information about and collaborating on adaptation and resilience efforts? I know you talked a little bit about this, Joshua, in an international context, but I guess if you could elaborate on a domestic context and if there's any federal resources that are facilitating that. And I'd love to hear from Jill and Kristin as well. Yeah, Jill and Kristin may have some more details. I mean, there's a number of port associations that are helping to lead that work and provide some great context for that as well. Marad does a really good job, particularly in terms of helping to support what federal resources are coming through Marad, but also through, you know, build grants, tiger grants, etc. Jill, you may have some more detail. Yeah, we work very closely with the American Association of Ports Authorities to share best practices and information and to keep up on what's happening on a federal level. We have partnerships with federal agencies, which also serve other ports and make connections with them that way through the Army Corps of Engineers through the US Department of Transportation and Marad to name a few. We also have participate in information exchanges like this one, and others sponsored by universities and research organizations and I don't know if Kristin had anything to add. Yeah, I can also add that we participate in the Western Judging Association or WIDA, and that brings together many state and federal partners in the maritime community. So it allows us an opportunity to collaborate with other ports and federal agencies and learn about advancements what other ports are doing and you know how do we emulate those activities across the board. I remiss not to as I mentioned the great leadership that Department of Energy has brought Department of Energy and NOAA both have really been leading at least in this and helping to nationally for us to define the blue economy. Department of Energy, we partnered with them, we ran a blue forum called R&D for Marine Energy Solutions, and really was an opportunity for all of the federal research institutions to come and share with industry. What what research are they doing hydrogen, ammonia, fuels of the future, battery technology, and then an opportunity for them to then engage with the industry to say well, we're all really focused on going this way. We want to make sure our R&D efforts are also going this way, and DOE has led a lot of that, particularly with the national labs to course PNNL is in our backyard Pacific Northwest National Lab, but NREL and Sandia, all the like so there is some there is a good coming in terms of helping us nationally define the blue economy. We just don't yet have the mechanisms. To be honest within the federal government, because the blue economy is a horizontal. It's in NOAA, it's in DOE, it's in EPA, it's in MARAD. It's hard to define it's hard to understand where those agencies can work together. How do they join together and funding opportunities. DOE and EDA though just, we were fortunate to be awardees of the EDA bill to scale grant, supporting cluster institutions specifically in the blue economy, and I was jointly funded between EDA and the Department of Energy. So there are some spickets of it starting to happen, but there's yet to really be a coordinated approach broadly for clean energy and maritime blue economy, and all that exists there. Thanks very much. The second question is, what are the next steps for the on the horizon for electrification efforts, and what barriers exist now preventing the broader electrification efforts. I can start with that. We have looked at electrification, we've studied it and looked at the feasibility we actually just got a grant from the Maryland Energy Administration to study the feasibility of micro grids. We have looked at shore power. Because of the nature of our port, ships aren't staying at port very long. We have a very efficient port. So the cost benefit analysis of the shore power right now, when we did the study was not favorable, because they're just not in port long enough to justify powering down and plugging in. But we are continuing to look at that as an option. One of the challenges is the nature of the port. We are a landlord port. We provide the infrastructure that our customers need. And so, organizing and working with our customer base, the shipping companies and the cargo owners to address energy needs is a longer term effort that we are hoping to embark on through our strategic planning process. But it is something that is very much on our minds and we are exploring options, but nothing to report on in terms of implementation as of yet. This is a really key topic for us in Washington for a number of reasons. One is, you know, we have done a tremendous amount of looking at the air quality impacts of our major terminals and particularly impacting disadvantaged communities and where our ports lie. But really across the whole region just because of the geography of Puget Sound. And so we've gone down a road here pretty quickly, both in terms of trying to electrify and implementing now electrification of our ferry system. We are in the process of converting our two largest vessels, the Jumbo Mark twos, and building five new all electric ferries as well and these are, you know, these are 200 car, you know, 2000 passenger ferries that are applying across Puget Sound every 35 minutes. And when they come into port, they need 10 megawatts of power for nine minutes every 35 minutes. So how do you have a grid that can support that kind of power. And so we are working very closely with the various utilities in our state that also means for the 25 routes may we have eight different utilities we have to engage with. Sometimes different utilities on the same route often different utilities in the same route. So we're actively engaging in that right now it's going to require energy storage solutions micro grid and new technology solutions. Our state is investing in some of that we are looking at various different federal sources for that work. And again, it, you know, for another example, ferries have a very traditional path and looking towards federal dollars to support infrastructure for ferries. Now they're looking at new paths around energy storage micro grid solutions. So there's a whole kind of new way in which we are looking at how we electrify our ports. We were also fortunate enough to get a good amount of the Volkswagen settlement dollars that we've invested heavily into electrifying our ports as well. I also wanted to touch a little bit on that, because we have both wagon funds as well. And we have been working with our partners to replace or repower cargo handling equipment motors through the use of those funds as well as dear grant funds. All of our cranes now are electric. They have been converted over and the new cranes that should be coming in 2021 will be electric. And we've also worked with the state of Maryland is part of a Northeast corridor initiative to study the electrification of the freight network in terms of the electric vehicles including electric freight delivery vehicles. So we are looking at those aspects as well in order to further reduce our climate footprint. And the challenge is some of that Jill, Jill mentioned this is this is a global effort right we have multiple carriers, multiple operators, various different. The ports here in Washington are also landlord ports. So multiple terminal operators. How do you just agree on what type of shore power plug. And you would imagine the amount of coordination and agreement of bringing all those different manufacturers and OEMs in the room and asking them to leave their business managers at home and bring their engineers and help us together. Define what the shore power plug of the future is going to be so that when they come to LA Long Beach, they can use the same plug that when they come to Seattle, or go around to Baltimore right and so that's a challenge in and of itself. And that's part of why we are so excited about the use of something independent like a cluster organization because you've noticed, we have every major OEM, ABB, Wartsila, Siemens as part of this organization they recognize that they have to come up with standards together, and they can use something like this cluster organization as a place for competitors to come together and create standards together, because that's what's going to be necessary. When we have a better idea about what shore power plug we're going to use off the shelf technology, but then also when we start understanding the kind of, you know, billions, trillions of dollars in infrastructure we're going to need to build to have the fuel of the future, a zero mission fuel of the future. That's going to take even more coordination, R&D and commercialization and technology, and we need these mechanisms in order to accelerate that. It was really interesting and John, happy that you mentioned the grant from MEA, I'm an MEA alumnus so whenever I hear about a microgrid grant it warms my heart so way to go. This one's come from our audience, this question and I think it's kind of interesting and Joshua you might have just touched on a little bit of it. So how do you work with your sort of neighbors in waterfront in port areas? Most of, most waterfront areas are under a lot of pressure from development, and those new developments probably also have resilience concerns and resilience challenges. In the presentation you showed a photo of the port and it's a pretty wide, it covers a lot of ground and it covers a lot of types of land use. And so maybe Jill will start with you and then we'll hear from Kristen and Joshua about sort of in your port situation, how do you work together with people who are trying to otherwise develop that pretty precious land in a pretty important city? I'm glad to ask that question because that's what I spend a lot of my time on. I came to the Port of Baltimore from Baltimore City Department of Planning where I focused on waterfront development, waterfront planning and industrial zoning. We the port community partnered with the City of Baltimore to develop zoning protections for port properties that have deep water assets, acknowledging that those deep water assets cannot be replaced. So we have land use protections in place for those properties in exchange for a more balanced approach to development of waterfront areas that do not have deep water access or assets. So that's one part of our puzzle and we are continuing to work on those protections as well as protecting the areas around our freight networks, so land surrounding our rail and highway access points to make sure that those are also protected and not cut off because of a new development or other implementation policies. In addition, we have a very robust relationship with our surrounding communities. We learned back in the 80s the hard way after one of our communities took us to the Supreme Court. Kristen might be able to talk about that a little bit more, but as a result of that because of concerns about our dredge material placement facilities, we have increased our community engagement and community outreach processes where we have built relationships with our surrounding communities to the point where they now write letters of support anytime we are out seeking grants from the federal government or others. So we have made our communities, our surrounding communities our partners and Kristen I don't know if you want to touch on that a little bit too. Sure I'm happy to elaborate. Thank you Jill. So yeah at the Port of Baltimore we have a very robust outreach and stakeholder engagement program. We actually have 10 advisory committees that consist of public and private partners as well as citizen stakeholders that we use to communicate with them and form them about our projects, seek their feedback. We basically try to bring them along with us every single step of the way, beginning with, you know, citing a project design engineering all the way through implementation and subsequent monitoring. And so, you know, just to give a little example of that years ago this this court case that Jill's referring to this was a result of the citizens and communities in the state of Maryland, really not having a good understanding of dredge material and the quality of the sediment and being very fearful of the sediment. And so in years recent years we have worked to create a paradigm shift in which we no longer view dredge sediment as a spoil but rather a resource with value. And so, rewind several years ago, we had citizens in the state of Maryland really fearing the reuse of sediment and dredge material. Fast forward to today, we actually have communities asking us for sediment for use in living shoreline projects and revitalization of their recreational assets. So we've really come such a long way but none of that would be possible without robust outreach and stakeholder engagement program that we're incredibly proud of. Thanks. That was very interesting. Another question from someone in our audience. How does the long economic lifespan and substantial capital cost support infrastructure constrict the flexibility of ports to adopt policies advancing greater resilience of climate change impacts. And are there any new innovative design concepts under development for infrastructure to address this reality. We can start with Josh. Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. And I think that's where it's challenging I think to kind of hold this balance between, you know, needing to accelerate investments for long term infrastructure, because we know this infrastructure is one. The infrastructure of the past, not the infrastructure of the future which we know we're going to need to meet the goals that we have either, you know, regionally nationally or globally to these are very long spans. So, you know, I use the port infrastructure, you know, I use the case of vessels, you know, if we're going to have a decarbonized zero mission shipping system by the year 2050. These are 25 to 30 year assets. And then you're taking to account construction financing mechanisms we have basically less than eight years five to eight years to under to to have and commercialize the fuel the future. In 2050 we can meet our targets, not, you know, much different with our port infrastructure maybe not the same length so, you know, is there flexibility there. Yeah, I think, you know, states and regions have the option to be flexible. You just have to balance both the regulation in place to, you know, be mindful of mitigation, but at the same time, allow investment and encourage investment, which means predictability, right. That's what we hear from industry and we hear from investors we need this balance of mitigation and predictability. And that's not an always the easy thing to find Jill smirking as a port leader. And, you know, our industry partners say, say the same, but it's not impossible. And there are some good mechanisms out there to look at I look at the Norwegian Knox fund as a really interesting mechanism. And this is where it's essentially attacks on on nitrous oxides and you can use it for whatever. But those dollars then are held specifically to bring back to industry in order to invest in new mitigation technologies. You know, so it's a combination of having dollars available. Having the regulatory approach that encourages investment and pulls that market forward and bringing industry along with them. So, not easy, but I think certainly doable. I would have to agree with that and just to add the port industry is very competitive. So, recognizing that adding resilience into all of our capital projects adds cost. We have to make the business case for why that's important, and it's important to our customers. And so it becomes important to us. The issue is very difficult for us as a transportation business unit under the Maryland Department of Transportation. We compete with fun compete for funds with the transit administration with the aviation administration and with state highways and the Maryland transit authority. So, we struggle with finding funds to implement our projects that's why we use a lot of federal grant programs, rather competitively. We also have unique and innovative public private partnerships. Our secret marine terminal is our dedicated container terminal, and that terminal is operated under a P3 agreement with Ports America Chesapeake. And so we partner with the private sector to help make those investments in our infrastructure, both feasible and improving the relationship between the terminal and the customer, and making the improvements that our customers need. So we use P3s as a way to sort of supplement our capital investments on one of our terminals, but we are always looking for those opportunities and other ways to provide additional resources. And it is a global issue. We compete with other ports for business. So that's why the business case is so important. Great. Well, thanks for that really interesting answer and perspective, Jill. We are going to have to wrap it up. It's one o'clock. And so I just want to say thank you to Joshua, to Jill and to Kristen for joining us today. This was an awesome panel. I learned so much about sort of the details of how ports are implementing resilience and also sort of the global context for all of this work happening. So really appreciate all the time you put into your presentations and for joining us today. Thank you so much. Thank you to Amber for helping moderate today's briefing. Thank you to those behind the scenes. Honorary, Dan O'Brien, Disney O'Shaughnessy, and also shout out to our interns, Emma, Joseph, Hamilton and Karen. They help us in all sorts of ways to make this all possible. This was a great discussion. It's a great way to kick off our transportation mini series. So as a reminder, join us back tomorrow at noon for a look at aviation or commercial aviation, low emissions commercial aviation. And then on Thursday, we're going to be back for a roundtable discussion. So a bit of a different format to learn about transit, public transit. We're going to be talking with three representatives of transportation authorities from around the country. So that's going to be a really interesting briefing as well. Even though we're closing out, I hope you have maybe one to two minutes to help us out by taking a survey. We pay very close attention to the feedback that you share with us. We hope you like our briefings. But if you have any suggestions for topics or ideas or ways that we can improve, please feel free to share them with us. We're always trying to do better. And we do really, really appreciate all that feedback. If you missed anything today, one last plug for the website, www.esi.org. Another plug for climate change solutions are bi-weekly newsletter. It's the best way to keep up with our briefings and fact sheets, etc. And it's a great way to also have a link to our brand new podcast, The Climate Conversation. We're dropping episode three next week. So one more thing to be thankful for during Thanksgiving week. 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