 We'll start with a welcome and introduction from Treasurer Henry Beck. Abe Wapner from the Coalition for Green Capital will give an overview of green banks and what's happening at the federal level. Steve Klemmer from the Union of Concerned Scientists will share what's happening in Maine with clean energy finance and some of the details with why this is needed. Paige Ziegler and Ann Carney will have both sponsored bills on the green bank and so we'll hear from each of them. In Representative Ziegler's bill, the main bank will be situated underneath Efficiency Maine Trust as a new initiative and Michael Stoddard, the executive director of Efficiency Maine will speak about their role. And then I will close things out with an overview of some of the next steps for the legislation and how you can all help to make it a reality. And then we'll have some Q&A at the end. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce State Treasurer Henry Beck. Well, thank you, David, and hello to everyone who's joined. I have the privilege of opening this event, maybe sort of getting us fired up, which is a skill that State Treasurers don't really have, so I hope you'll bear with me. Last summer and fall right in the heart of the challenge the states faced in this pandemic. I became involved in this effort, like everyone on this call involved almost just as a citizen of the state to, you know, take every step to improve and centralize a resource in Maine to help businesses and consumers save money, make money making money, okay, and take every step to curb climate change and you saw the title of the presentation. Call it what you want, involve who you want, whether it's programs we already have or having a standalone resource, we just have to leverage every opportunity. So after my effort back in the fall, I was asked to sort of set the stage, support the work that you've been doing, support the work of Senator Carney and Representative Ziegler by writing an op-ed for the Lewis and Sun Journal about this work. In that article, I sort of mused about the role that the federal government could play in our efforts and funding they could provide. And I was very confident in that op-ed. Personally, I was sort of hopeful, but realistic. Like everyone in the country, I really needed to be shown that Washington could work. And in some ways, no one is more surprised and impressed than me at what the President and Congress have accomplished recently with the American Rescue Plan and what I continue to be optimistic about what they can do with regard to the American Jobs Plan that includes funding for green banking initiatives at the state level. And that sort of brings us to where we are. You know, I can be all for this and you can be all for this, but we really have to dig down and support the work of our legislators here in Maine, influence the work in Washington. We've come very far. I don't want to say that, you know, the end is in sight, or we're almost there, but we're very much on our way. We also obviously support your work every way that I can support Senator Kearney, support Representative Ziegler. You know, I can't speak for Governor Mills, by the way, but I know, I think we all sort of seen, she believes very much in good policy, leaves in good policy on climate change. And this is good policy. And we'll keep going with our event today. I hope to be with you to get all this done. Thank you so much for coming. We appreciate your support. And your work on this. Next up, we have a Wapner from the Coalition for Green Capital, and I think Abe wanted to share some slides. So I'll let you take it from here. Okay, thanks, David. Let me see if I can't get my slides up on everyone's screen here. Thank you so much for your presentation mode. Coming through everybody. Great. So one of the talk to a little bit about kind of green banks generally and then some of the exciting activity at the federal level which Treasurer Beck alluded to. My name's Abe Wapner. I'm with the Coalition for Green Capital. I've been working with a nonprofit that's been around about 10 years that exists to expand the amount of financing into clean energy space, historically through the creation of institutions known as green banks. So we work all over the country as well as internationally and we are super excited to see so much activity going on in the state of Maine. So I wanted to talk a little bit today about some of the exciting things coming down the pipe that could mean further impact here in this state. So first off, I just want to set the stage with kind of what is a green bank and this is the definition that we like to use at CGC. Clean banks are mission driven institutions that use innovative financing to accelerate investment in an equitable and prosperous clean energy and climate transition. And since I know you can all read, I should maybe explain a little bit of what I mean when I say those words. Clean institutions mean that green banks really work to accomplish the goals set by the state. So that's climate goals. That's environmental justice goals. Green banks use public capital or mission driven capital to crowd in private capital and accelerate investment into projects across the clean energy space. Like I alluded to green banks are really focused on an equitable transition. And I think especially in the lens of the Justice 40 initiative. That's kind of launching on on Capitol Hill right now. Green banks are getting a lot of spotlight as a potential tool to fuel a more just transition as we think about where we're going with regards to climate. So, you know, what is the Green Bank model. It's been, like I said, we've been around about 10 years and green banks have been launched all across the country everywhere from Rhode Island to Hawaii at both the state and the local level level. They've given about $5 billion of investment, and they've created thousands of jobs. So, you know, the models, largely been proven to be a success for a number of different states, working on, you know, different impacts as far ranging as community solar to on bill financing. So, one of the things that we're working on right now is that there is been growing support over the past year and a half or so for a clean energy and sustainability accelerator at the federal level. The initiative has bipartisan support and would be as included in President Biden's plan, a $27 billion institution at the national level that would then fund state and local green banks in their job to expand access to financing at the state and local level. The initiative was included in legislation that passed the house twice in 2020, and it's been reintroduced as part of the Clean Future Act with, like I said bipartisan support. So we're very excited to see so much momentum on Capitol Hill. And we think there's a, you know, large chance this will be included in the, you know, infrastructure package that would be passing towards the end of the summer early fall. The national NGOs that have all kind of signed on to support the accelerator, and we're really excited to see that support growing every day so we are loving the momentum. We're loving the bipartisan support and we're really excited to see this idea of getting so much traction. So let me talk a little bit about what the accelerator is and what that might mean for main. So the Green Bank or the accelerator itself would partner with state green banks to deploy capital at the local level. It's, it's mandate by Congress is broad in that it's able to target a lot of different areas of the clean energy space so everything from sustainable agriculture to renewable power. And the, but the the main deployment mechanism is the state and local institutions like the one under consideration for creation in Maine. Like I mentioned earlier, equity is a huge part of this transition as we see it, and about 40% of the investment from the accelerator would be required to go to disadvantaged communities to help create jobs and fuel businesses that focus on on those environmental justice communities. So, in order to get that capital, while the accelerators been, you know, partnering with would partner with green banks all across the country and you can see that in green we've got states that already have green banks. And in blue, there's a lot of different states that are considering green banks are thinking about how to get one up and rolling in preparation for federal funds. So, Maine's a really good company, and we're excited to see the momentum building. So, that's the update on the federal side and the kind of Green Bank 101. So, David, I will stop sharing my screen and pass it back to you. Great. Thank you, Abe. And just wanted to make sure everyone knows that main representative Shelly Pingree has co-sponsored the Bill in the House, which we're very excited about. So, next on the agenda, we have Steve Klemmer to speak about what's happening in Maine. And Steve is with the Union of Concerned Scientists. So, Steve, I'll let you take it from here. Great. Thanks a lot, David. Let me share my screen here. Everybody see that? Can you see that, David? Yeah. Okay, great. All right. Well, thanks, everyone. Good afternoon and thanks for inviting me to speak on this panel. For those of you that don't know UCS, we are the nation's leading science based nonprofit organization. We have more than a half a million supporters nationally, including about 2,700 in Maine. And my remarks today are going to be based on a report I co-authored in 2016 about creating a green bank in Maine, and some more recent discussions that have occurred over the past couple of years. So I'm really excited, given that we wrote this report five years ago, that this is really starting to come to fruition in Maine. Another important aspect is that I was a member of the energy working group for the Maine Climate Council. And one of the recommendations that I really advocated for was to establish a green bank in Maine. And thankfully, it was included as an option for consideration in the final report from the Maine Climate Council. So I'd like to start the presentation with a big picture by highlighting four key numbers to help everyone understand the enormous challenge and the magnitude of investment that's needed to achieve Maine's climate and energy goals. The first number is 80%. That's Maine's emission reduction target by 2050, which you can see over there on the right in the chart. There's also an interim target of 45% below 1990 levels by 2030, and also reaching carbon neutrality by 2050 or net zero emissions. The 80% is also Maine's renewable electricity standard by 2030, which is one of the highest in the country, and it goes up to 100% fall by 2050. Maine also has targets for distributed solar and offshore wind, as you probably know. The second number is 30%. Maine has energy efficiency goals to reduce electricity and natural gas use 30% by 2020, getting oil use 30% by 2030. In the Climate Council report, you'll also see that Maine has a bowl of installing 100,000 heat pumps by 2025 and weatherizing 35,000 homes and businesses. The next big number is $40 to $50 billion, and that's the investment that some studies have shown might be needed in Maine over the next 30 years to achieve some of these goals. And that's really, that's around $1.5 billion a year, which is a lot of money. And the fourth number is $4.4 billion. That's the amount of money Maine spends on imported fossil fuels every year out of the total bill of about $6.2 billion in 2018. And so the good news is that by redirecting a portion of that money to spending it on clean energy, we can actually create jobs, reduce emissions and lower energy bills all at the same time. It's also really important to put these numbers into context with the much higher costs of climate change impacts that we would see in Maine if we don't make these investments. And some of those costs are estimated in the the Maine Climate Council report. So that's where a green bank comes in. Well, you know, this, this amount of money I'm talking about doesn't all need to come from a green bank. And so that's my view and I think Abe touched on this as well. All green bank programs are really targeted at populations and sectors that have limited access to capital. And those would include things like homeowners renters small businesses, small industrial facilities that could include farms nonprofits, institutions and so for it. All green energy investments are needed in all sectors of Maine's economy. I really think that the money should be focused on the biggest bank for the buck. And so, since most of Maine's carbon emissions come from transportation and home heating, switching from oil to zero carbon electricity in those sectors is one of the key strategies for achieving Maine, Maine's emission reduction targets. And I see some of the key investments that could be made there. And each of these investments is important and now it has upfront costs in the thousands to tens of thousands of dollars. But once again, most of those investments can be repaid over time through savings on energy bills. You know, UCS is very supportive of using funding like this for climate resilient infrastructure. And, you know, that that could, that's something that's really that's talked about in the climate council report as well. And, you know, that can be through different types of funding and different types of programs but as Abe was saying, the federal accelerator program can be potentially used for that purpose. And in terms of the types of products and services that green banks typically provide, one is credit enhancements. And these can help reassure private lenders, green banks can occupy a first loss position or create loan loss reserve funds are some some approaches for that. They also are commonly do warehousing and securitization where they aggregate loans and sell those collections of securities. There's also direct lending, which is more like the traditional types of consumer business loans and efficiency main does some of this currently but obviously those programs could be expanded. And then there's other kinds of structured products and financing tools, one that I would especially highlight is property assessment and energy financing, which is a bill that's currently in the main legislature that we strongly support. I think there's been one hearing on that. And also just providing technical expertise, things like underwriting support to traditional lenders, and that can help improve the knowledge of new technologies and help lower some of the risks. So really important from our standpoint that Green Bank should be designed to be equitable and provide benefits to all residents, including low income households disadvantaged communities in rural areas. And as Abe was touching on that's a really central component of the federal Green Bank that requires at least 40% of the money being targeted in that way. And, you know, main is spending money on low income households efficiency main has programs. And of course there's the state letterization assistance programs and things like that, but with these programs can really be expanded. And there's a lot of great examples from around the country. I listed three here from Baltimore, Portland, Oregon, and the Connecticut Green Bank but Abe's coalition for green capital has a lot more as well that could be replicated and emulated. So in terms of funding sources, you know, we've heard that it's talked about the federal funding sources which we're very excited about and hope that comes to fruition. There are a series of existing sources many of these are used currently to fund efficiency main programs. I'm not going to run through all these but these are sources of money that are currently in place. Obviously the federal Green Bank would be it would be huge to be able to leverage that money. But, you know, if, if that doesn't happen which will be unfortunate. There are other sources of money that could be tapped into and I think it's really important that main banks about diversifying its funding sources and so bonding is another possibility on bill financing as I already mentioned pace institutional investors are really a huge source of capital that could be tapped into and I guess Abe has some examples of that as well. And obviously a fee on CO2 emissions from oil and gas I know that's that's kind of hard to get through politically but that could also be a very large source of money. In terms of hosts and partners for the Green Bank I think, you know, in our 2016 report we definitely thought efficiency main was the best entity to do this I think the bill from Representative Zeigler identified as well as the more Michael Satter later in the call, but I also just wanted to highlight there's lots of other entities that could be partners in this work as well in a that that implement programs like this, and as well as just kind of a broader banking and financial community as well. So let's end with this slide this is just an illustrative example. I don't want you don't put too much emphasis on it but as part of the 2016 paper that we developed we also developed a spreadsheet tool that would allow different states to estimate what the money might be from implementing a Green Bank so I just put made an assumption of a $15 million initial capitalization which essentially is about the size of efficiency mains program so think about doubling what efficiency is currently doing, and that could leverage about a billion dollars of cumulative investment over 15 years by having money come back into the bank recycling the money in the loans of company property payments, and that, you know, we assume that some of it could be directed at renewable some of it could be directed at energy efficiency and estimated effective result in about 400 megawatts of solar, nearly $120 million in annual savings on energy bills from implementing efficiency, and nearly 740,000 tons of CO2 reviews So I'm going to leave it there but be happy to answer any questions or talk more about that later. Thanks. That was a great job packing a lot of information into a short presentation. I really appreciate that. So, up next, we wanted to hear from the two legislators who have introduced bills on this on this subject. So Representative Ziegler, I'll let you go first. Thank you for setting up this webinar and I have to say I'm having problems with my internet. I'm not saying it's the opponents of the bill that are doing it but I may disappear at some point. I want to talk about the history mostly of the bill and not the nuts and bolts because I think most people deal with that. I just became interested in a green banker sustainability accelerator about five years ago during a conference in Boston for legislators. There's a presentation from a legislator led to introduce a similar bill at West. This was during a time in our state maybe. I'm sure some of you can remember this when the governor was not supportive of renewable energy. We wanted to move towards a future and we would need to have more C capital to jumpstart projects. Besides this, the state's hesitation appeared that banks didn't want to invest without more security due to perceive issue of risk. I also, I was, I wanted to allow low and middle income populations access to loans to compensate for the upfront costs. There was and it still is a well known opponent of renewable energy in the legislature. He would rise and speak the centorial voice, saying there are no solar panels and trailer parks. That is not to say the people living in those trailer parks didn't want the panels, but it's more to say they couldn't pay the upfront costs. He complained of the lead ism regarding renewable energy production. The Prius crowd, he called them, I think we've over that too. That pointed out the problems with a form of energy that was not, you know, is new getting off the ground. He could have worked on a solution with the rest of us, but he continued to point to the sense of a lead ism. I read about other states that had green banks and was was impressed with what they had accomplished, both in allowing investments for projects and also loaning to communities that was talked about that were often not able to access loans. Before the next session 129th, I met David Gibson, who is a constituent, and, and he had just returned from working and living out West. He connected me with the people that have been working on green banks who you've heard us already over the years. We, David, and I wrote a bill for the 129th session. Unfortunately, during the first session, we're having a little trouble getting traction with it. We held it over to the second year and we turned the bill into resolve, which we were lucky because that was right before the pandemic hit and that would have really disappeared then. Resolve was then. We also, when we had the bill, it did not look like we could float a bond or ever use general funds. So we turn it into resolve and then the resolve went into the climate council. It was absorbed in it. The idea was to look for a source of funding. The 130th. David and I both felt we needed to reintroduce the bill. This time the bill wasn't in search of funding, but was tying itself to build in the US House and Senate, which was discussed earlier. Also, we were not looking up looking to set up a new group to administer the funds we had done that in the first bill, but we wanted to use efficiency main to do that work. And then you might ask, why do we need this bill. We need this bill because when that money flows from the feds, we need to immediately be able to administer. So we have the bill setting up a structure to do it. We can move forward. Okay, I've not heard from the Reviser's office regarding the bill when I hear from them. We have three days to either revise or accept the wording and also to find co-sponsors. It appears that this bill will have broad bipartisan support. That said, since the biennial budget bill. I hope that that continues. And I'm hoping that we continue to have bipartisan support. We're also looking forward and hoping for support from the community from labor to finance from all income levels. And as I remember, I'm a member of the Energy Utilities and Technology Committee, along with the Environment and Natural Resource Committee and the legislature. I'm aware of the changing landscape in the renewable energy market, as I'm sure all of you here are. But this is necessary infrastructure if we want to mitigate climate disruption. And as it's been said many times before, lower mains energy costs by producing as much as we can within the state's borders. And again, thank you for setting up the webinar. And if you have any questions, I'll be glad to answer them if I can. Great. Thank you, Representative Ziegler. And up next we have Senator Carney, who has also introduced the bill. So I'll let you take the floor, Senator. Thank you very much. And thanks to the conveners and the panelists for inviting me to join today. I especially wanted to express thanks for all of you on the panel who have spoken to me and helped me with the resolve. I'll talk to you a little bit about the resolve. It's something that I was thinking about over the summer. It really crystallized for me when the week before the climate plan was released, the Climate Council was meeting and Brownie Carson issued this sort of plaintiff plea about, you know, the climate plan didn't really address the financing issue. And he said, kind of with desperation in his voice, we have to figure out how to pay for this now. And so that's what this resolve does. The resolve is pretty straightforward. First of all, it's an emergency measure. So it will go into effect 90 days after enactment, if it is enacted. It is designed to pull together all of the key stakeholders and partners who and all the existing expertise in Maine. Those stakeholders and partners will have a gaps analysis performed and I want to thank a partner for suggesting the gaps analysis. And what that does is it identifies where mains unmet need is for capital. So that when as we look to implementing the climate plan, we can leverage capital and use it to meet the needs that otherwise are not going to be met. Steve Klemmer said earlier that his vision of a green bank really addresses those who have limited access to capital and that is indeed the focus of the resolve. So the resolve would then put the partners after the gaps analysis is done, would pull the partners and stakeholders together and put them to work to recommend a financing model that's specifically designed to allow Maine to pay for them, the work that we need to do to implement the climate plan, basically to get where we are now from where we are now to where we need to be in four years is outlined by the climate plan. The resolve lists specific things that the model will take into account, and that includes using public sector funds to leverage private sector investments, focusing on the effectiveness of the model to provide financing for the climate work we need to do relative to affordable housing. So the model to make capital available and accessible to populations with low incomes and underserved communities. The capacity of the model and I think this is really important to grow to grow and change over time as new opportunities for capital and new financial products arise that's something I think that the Connecticut Green Bank has been really successful in and the study would also look at the study group would look at the potential of the model to increase jobs and to raise mains annual earning for residents in the state who are doing this work. It would also of course focus on the potential of the model to really achieve the goals that are set out in the climate plan, and also the more long range goals at the 129th legislature enacted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Maine. Ultimately, the objective is that this this model whatever is recommended by the study group would become kind of a hub for all of the expertise that Maine needs to implement the climate plan now and then continue to do the work we need to do in the future. I did want to comment a little bit on the existence of representative Ziegler's fine legislation as well as my legislation. This is not kind of an either or situation. We really need to address the understand and address the gaps we have in Maine that will prevent us from reaching the goals that are set out in the climate plan, as well as being ready to accept any federal resources that are available. And I also you know our climate plan is called Maine won't wait, and that really ties into the resolve. This is a fast track process for creating a model that will allow Maine to meet our climate goals. And importantly it doesn't necessarily rely on finance finances from any particular source the capital will come from a diverse variety of resources, not specifically tied to federal legislation because in Maine we need to meet these goals regardless of what happens federally, and I want to thank everybody for your attention. And oh, a couple words on the process. The bill is out for signatures I've invited representative Ziegler to be the lead co sponsor in the house, and I'll be turning it in on Monday page I don't know if you got my email, but well check your email. And yeah, and so that's the status of the bill. Thank you. Fantastic thank you I was just going to ask if there's a bill number yet and it sounds like we'll have that next week. Wednesday. Okay, perfect thank you. Thank you very much, Senator Carney. And next up we have Michael Stoddard from Efficiency Maine, who under Representative Ziegler bill will be the host organization that oversees the accelerator. I'll let you take it away. Thanks David can you hear me okay. Yeah. Great. I don't have any slides I will just provide a little bit of context about what Efficiency Maine does now how we're set up and and people hopefully a little framework so they could envision how this might work if the legislation went forward and and and named as the administrator. That's what we do we administer funds designed to help get the marketplace over barriers to investing and installing new high efficiency equipment and clean energy equipment. So it does feel like it's a pretty good fit with a lot of things you're hearing folks describe that we need to shift to as part of our climate action plan and also as a way generally to lower our energy costs and low and lower our carbon emissions as a state. We are an independent quasi state agency that was established by the legislature back in 2010. We're an independent board of trustees who are essentially stakeholders representing different customer groups and different areas of expertise. And we have a professional staff and run these energy programs to help all sectors of the main economy from low income customers to affordable housing to small businesses, medium and large businesses and even the biggest manufacturers in the state to make investments and get over these various hurdles that they face to install high efficiency and lower carbon equipment and our as Steve pointed out our annual budget tends to come in around $50 million a year so that just gives you a sense of scale of what we're managing in terms of programs. We also have a $20 million about $20 million in loan funds so we part of the reason I think that David and the bill sponsors representative Ziegler and others thought that efficiency main might make sense as a place to house this would be because we've done it before and we're doing it now so we do have some loan programs. Steve pointed out that there are some other groups in the state who also have that expertise and and so our our experience is that when the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was passed a little over 10 years ago in the 2009 financial crisis. One of the grants that came to main was a $20 million loan fund to help fund residential energy improvements on residential energy improvements and so we have used that fund over the last 10 years as a revolving loan fund. The default rates are extremely low which is a great which is a great success for the state and we provide through subcontracting we have the underwriting and originating services loan servicing and marketing and education to try and promote that opportunity so folks are aware of it. We mostly are using those funds to support weatherization projects or home insulation projects as well as heating system upgrades and for a period of time we were doing PV projects rooftop PV projects. Lately we have not but that is something that we have experience doing. We also have a much smaller small business loan fund and that is focusing primarily on heat pumps and heat pump and VRF systems a form of heat pump system for larger projects. That is available statewide and then as Steve mentioned if the C-PACE program does come through then we will potentially be administering that program too. That is kind of a very secured loan product. We have both secured and unsecured loan products. They each have their strengths and weaknesses but we have experience using those things. Let's see what else could I mention. I think generally we just want to know how we can be helpful with the infrastructure that we have built, the tool that we have built that is at the disposal of policy makers to do whatever would be most helpful. We are well familiar with the contractor community so all the builders and electricians and plumbers and HVAC technicians and insulation businesses all those folks who need to pitch their projects to customers and then figure out how to help their customers get it funded. We have very close relations with and databases to work with and connect customers to them. We did a lot of interaction with mains, banks and credit unions when we were first setting up that loan program. We haven't had that so much in the past but we do have good connections there and so I think the idea of trying to leverage funds both public funds and private funds is something that makes a lot of sense. I particularly appreciate Senator Carney's approach to looking at this as sort of a methodical way to identify what it is that needs help and tailor the policies and the programs to provide that help in a very targeted way. And there's a lot going on that's really good already in the private sector and there's the banks and the credit unions are doing good things. You know there is more liquidity now, there's more capital available to do a lot of what is going to be necessary. So that's we're lucky and we're an interest rates are low and that's great. But as many before me have mentioned, not everyone is able to participate as easily people face a variety of barriers, and we ought to just take a good hard look at where the need is greatest and how we should design our programs and policies to try and meet that need and I look forward to participating in that discussion. Great. Thank you, Michael. We appreciate you joining us today and for all the work you do. I know that I've taken advantage of efficiency made rebates for the insulation and heat pumps I've put in my house and yeah there's a lot of fantastic work that's already happening in the state, and hopefully this can build on top of that. So I wanted to close out the presentation today with an overview of the, the legislation and next steps for people for how people can support this bill moving forward. And I'm sorry, for those of you who are intimately familiar with the legislature if this is a little mundane for you. But I'll try to go quickly just to make sure that everyone knows how to do this. So the next steps for the legislation. The bill will be released from the revisers office with an LD number. And then the committee will schedule a public hearing. This bill should go to the energy utilities and technology committee, but it's not certain. And so if that changes will make sure to let you all know. And the legislature changed their rules last week so there's no longer two weeks of notice required. So this could come about pretty quickly. It sounds like there are some bills that have already been scheduled for next week and things like that. And so again, we'll let you know the public hearing date and which committee it's going to after the public hearing, the committee will hold a work session to discuss any changes or amendments or additional information on the bill. And then they will have a committee vote. If the committee votes to pass the bill, there will be a vote by the full legislature. And then once it passes the full legislature, both the House of Representatives and the Senate, it will be signed into law by by Governor Mills. And we have a number of supporters for this legislation, starting out with bipartisan co sponsors in the legislature. The Environmental Priorities Coalition is a group of 32 different environmental and nonprofit organizations that are strong supporters of this. It's one of their priorities for the year. Both the city of Portland and city of South Portland are supporting the bill. And we have revision energy and a number of other businesses in the in the efficiency sector as well as elsewhere in the economy that support the bill. There's this, there's a number of organizations that have expressed their support for it, but can't officially support it until they have a final bill number and the final draft of the legislation. And some of some of the supporters include the main bankers association, the main credit union league, the Portland Chamber of Commerce, and the main municipal association. And so there's a diverse array of supporters. And we are always looking for more businesses and more organizations that want to support the bill or want to learn more about it. So, the best ways that any of you listening to the webinar today can help would be to draft testimony for the committee hearing, you could write a letter to the editor. Sign on to the Sierra clubs ad up campaign and I'll put the link in the chat after this. That is right now it's a petition to our federal legislators to encourage them to co sponsor the federal legislation. Once we have a bill number and final draft of the bill and the legislature we will pivot that to be focused on the state legislation and will contact everyone who's on that. And we'll let them know that that the state legislation has gone out and share information with your friends and colleagues about the bill. The environmental priorities coalition has a great fact sheet on this that again I'll share a link to that in the chat afterwards. So, very quickly to submit testimony on the bill, you can go to the legislature's website, and on the top right corner under contact us, you can click on testimony submission. Once you're on the testimony submission page you have to click the button for a public hearing. You will select a committee, which should be the energy utilities and technology committee and the date of the here that the public hearing is scheduled for. Once you click on the date, then a list of bills for that date will drop down and again will give you the bill number. So you'll know which bill to to support and to provide comments on and you just select the button for that particular bill number. If you want to speak at the hearing, you can click on the button to present testimony live if you want to speak at the hearing you don't have to submit written testimony. But if you don't want to talk live you can submit written testimony either by attaching a file, or by drafting it directly in the text box. It's really simple, it's gotten a lot easier to submit testimony to the legislature. And we hope that you will do that, but because you have the option to upload a file you can already go ahead and draft testimony if you know that you want to support the bill and have some reasons why you're in support. This is just a screenshot of the Sierra Club add up campaign. We've spoken with each of our representatives and senators at the federal level, and they, they, they're all familiar with this bill and representative Pingree has co sponsored it. And so our, our action here in Maine, they're all very interested as the bill moves forward in the state legislature. So all of all of our federal location has an eye on this. And so we're still working to get them to all cosponsor the bill as part of the infrastructure package that that President Biden is moving forward. I also mentioned the fact sheet that the environmental priorities coalition has put together. I'll share a link to this. It's a great resource. If you're if you're meeting with your representative or your state senator and they haven't heard about this bill. It's great resource to describe it to them. And it's also great for anyone else in the community that's not familiar with what a green bank or clean energy accelerator would do. And so with that, I'll stop sharing my screen and open the floor up to any questions. And I'll put those links in the chat. Sydney, do I see your hand up? Yes, can you hear me? Yes. Great. So I live in Falmouth and I started a group a year ago just concerned, you know, neighbors and friends who want to do whatever we can in our home and garden and in our lives to have a positive impact. And the idea of a green bank is interesting to me, but I'm still not really sure what it is. I mean, right now I use a well-known bank, and I'd rather put my money in a bank that invests in, you know, sustainable things. Is what you're talking about today the kind of bank I could do that? Or is it completely different? Yeah, that's a great question. And unfortunately no, it would not accept deposits from individuals. It's more of an institutional level bank helping to facilitate actions between other local banks. And so the idea is that it will create partnerships with local banks and credit unions. And for most of the customer level transactions of borrowing money for energy efficiency, that will happen through the existing banks in Maine, whether that's bank or savings bank or credit unions or the various other banks. And so the idea is that there will be an array of different partners, and it will help encourage all of the local banks to make loans relating to efficiency and clean energy. Okay, so right now it's probably too early to, you know, tell me which bank is more likely to, you know, be involved. I mean, I'd love to just start doing my banking with, you know, a bank who cares about what's going on environmentally and then tell my friends in the group. Yeah, absolutely. And I would encourage you to go and talk to your bank and you can encourage them to support this legislation. And that's a great way. Yeah. Thank you, Sydney. Great. Thank you very much. And feel free anyone to use the hand raised function or type questions in the chat. And I know there was one question in the chat that I saw for Senator Carney. And I just wanted to check with you is, is there an independent source of funding for your resolve for the study that your resolve calls for, or would that be funded by the taxpayers. Thank you, David. And thanks for the question. It's it's not does not envision taxpayer funding. What the resolve would do is look at a diverse array of sources of capital so it could even include federal funding that is released as part of one of the economic stimulus plans, or even the federal legislation related to the accelerator. It can also bring in private capital, people like and I'm not seeing on my screen the person who just spoke from Thelmuth, but, you know, private funds who are interested in really doing values based investment it could pull, pull in that kind of capital as well, as well as administering bond funds actually. Great. Thank you. Matt, have you been following the chat. Are there additional questions on there. Thank you've gone most of us far. There's a lot of good sharing of information on there. I just want to raise one other thing you gave everybody really great information about testifying and I, I just wanted to ask representative Ziegler if, if the EU T committee has a time limit on testimony because it's helpful for people to know how long or short their testimony needs to be. Yes. Thank you, Senator Carney and I think we're both in agreement that most committees. And also the due to the if there's a large number of testimonies, you should limit it to three minutes. And I would suggest the best thing you can do as you look at your testimonies not repeat with somebody before you as said, but if you can always add new information. Would you agree with that center. Yeah, I think that's exactly right and I do think that the three minutes is the most common timeframe used by committee. So, that's great advice. And I just posted in the chat the link to the fact sheet, and the link to the Adam campaign for anyone to go on and support the federal legislation. Are that are there additional questions. I know this is a complicated topic so feel free to ask it, you know, any question at all. And I see that Abe has included a link to the Green Bank consortium which is another great national reference representative Ziegler you have a question. Yes, and since the bill hasn't been referenced yet and I don't know if Senator Carney's has been referenced yet, but it probably go through the energy and utilities technology committee and as it stands now. You know there's obviously things could change but it will pass over helping as it'll pass unanimous any bill passing unanimous will usually go under the hammer. There's a lot of bipartisan support in the committee, but I suspect it will pass in the committee and that means it will go to the floor. When we are another either as a consent or, or we have a divided report, but I see it coming out of our committee as being passed both of them. I see a question. What is the plan. If the national accelerator gets delayed or how would you segue to bonding. And so that's a that's a great question Julia. At this point the bill does not include a source of funding the legislation that representative Ziegler has introduced with the anticipation of federal funding. And so it would just create the structure of the Green Bank as a new initiative underneath efficiency main, but it does allow for the Green Bank initiative to receive other sources of funding. Clearly, we'd love to have 50 or $100 million flowing in from the from the federal government. But if that doesn't happen there's opportunities for local or national foundations to give donations or grants to start it. And it can accept other sources of funding as well. And so, if, if this bill passes at the state level, and the federal government does not pass the national bill. Then we'd probably try to move forward with bond bill in the next legislative session to line up bond line up bond funding, and we'd try to seek out other sources of funding in the meantime, so that things can can get started and it can become operational. But it is a much, it's much more difficult to pass a funding bill through the state legislature. And with the with the federal action. It seems that urgency is prudent to get the bill passed and create the structure in Maine. And we'll keep our fingers crossed that the federal government can keep functioning and passing legislation. There's a question I see relating to regenerative agriculture and forestry. And as the bill is currently drafted, it would allow for those types of projects with with the intent that they are sequestering carbon and helping to address climate change. The federal legislation specifically calls for regenerative agriculture and forestry as as areas that it would fund. I see. Are there, are there any other countries who have adapted similar plans. Yes, there are a number of green banks internationally. I attended the International Green Bank Summit in New York City back in 2014, and it was attended by the president of the Japanese Green Bank, the head of the Australian Green Bank, the head of the UK Green Investment Bank. I think there was a green bank entity in Malaysia, and, and there's others that are starting in Australia and South Africa. And the UK Green Investment Bank was so successful that a private investment group bought them out, and it was actually privatized, because they saw what the what the market was and the success of that. They were a publicly funded entity they funded some of the largest offshore wind projects off the coast of Scotland, and really jumpstarted offshore wind in the, in the United Kingdom. I at this point I don't anticipate the main green bank funding that type of project, but you know that's in the realm of possibility for what green banks can do. So anything from small efficiency retrofits to, to, you know, much larger projects. Are there any other questions. David, I would just add to that last point that you made I think I strongly agree with that, you know, utility scale renewable projects have the folks that are going to be developing those projects have access to capital. The projects are quite large and quite expensive. And so the funding that we're talking about is not really wouldn't really do that much. And I would also add to that list. You know, kind of major, major grid enhancements like transmission distribution that might be needed to do that and I think there's other ways to fund those things so once again, as I said targeting it at sort of the underserved markets that have limited capital is I think the best way to go about it. Yep. Exactly. Well it looks like we are approaching two o'clock. So I want to thank all of the panelists who joined us today. And thank you all for attending I really appreciate everyone taking an hour out of this gorgeous afternoon. I think we'd all probably rather be outside and join the sunshine. So I hope you're able to get outside a little bit. 65 and sunny out here. So thank you all, and hope you have a great afternoon, and we will send an email follow up to include the links that we shared, and there will be a recording of the meeting available as well.