 Good morning and welcome to the 2020 Congressional Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Expo. I am Dan Berset, the Executive Director of the Environmental Energy Study Institute. I will be with you all day as we hear from 25 climate, clean energy and sustainability experts over the course of six panels. Thank you very much for joining us. Let me pause here and thank our honorary co-host of the Expo, the five members of Congress who lead the House and Senate Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucuses. We will be hearing from each of them later today as we move through our panels. We would not be here today without their support and all the hard work on behalf of their staff. Before we begin our first panel, let me give you a moment of description of EESI. EESI was founded in 1984 to provide nonpartisan information on environmental, energy and climate issues to policy makers on Capitol Hill, stakeholders and the public. We do our work in different ways, including by holding briefings and lately online webcasts and writing fact sheets and articles that are distributed by our bi-weekly newsletter Climate Change Solutions. If you would like to learn more, watch any of our archived briefing webcasts and sign up for our newsletter, please visit us online at www.eesi.org. And of course, our big annual event is the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Expo and Policy Forum. This is the 23rd Expo, which normally happens in person on Capitol Hill. Perhaps some of you watching right now have attended the event in the past. The Expo is usually two events running in parallel. First, the exhibition features booths and representatives from across the clean energy sector who are available to talk with staff and other attendees. And then the second, the policy forum. Circumstances prevent us from having an exhibition this year, but our policy forum will go on and mostly as usual, except of course that it will be totally online. Mostly we'll be back next year on the hill with the Exhibition and Policy Forum, just like in the past. Before I introduce our panelists and ask them to take it away, let me give you a very quick overview of our panel format today. Our webcast platform allows us to display names, titles, and affiliations. And we've posted biographies of our speakers online at www.eesi.org so you can learn more about our experts' backgrounds. I will not give extended introductions to conserve time for presentations and questions and about questions. As we're separated, I cannot call on you if you have a question, but you can still ask questions and here's how that will work. Please follow EESI on Twitter, at EESI online, and send in your questions that way. You can also send an email to EESI at EESI.org. We will draw from your questions submissions after we hear from our panelists. And now onto our first panel, training a 21st century clean energy workforce, a perfect opening. It all starts with workforce and keeping that workforce trained and familiar with the latest techniques and technologies critical for the U.S. to retain our edge as global clean energy leaders and to do our part to work with our neighbors to ensure a sustainable and prosperous North American continent. Our first panel to the day happens to be our highest ranking. Assistant Secretary Daniel Simmons leads the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy. Thanks Daniel for helping us kick off the 2020 Expo. Following Daniel, we'll hear from Eric Belair of Natural Resources Canada, Neil James of Apex Clean Energy on behalf of the American Wind Energy Association, and Hilary Bright of Building Clean and the Blue-Green Alliance. Daniel, thanks again. Over to you, followed by the rest of our panelists. Thank you. All right, thank you. Thank you very much, Dan. Thank you for the opportunity to be here today. We are obviously in interesting times, interesting circumstances. And so it is a pleasure to have the opportunity to address this year's Congressional Clean Energy Expo and Policy Forum. Today, we have an opportunity to discuss how we can prepare today's students and other professionals for tomorrow's clean energy jobs. I look forward to the continued dialogue stemming from this morning's panel. At the Department of Energy, I lead the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, which means that my job is obviously focused on research and development, reaches and development portfolio around renewable power, transportation and energy efficiency. The Department of Energy sees an incredible value to workforce development, both for students and professionals wanting to develop skills. As technological innovation in the energy industry evolves more and more rapidly, training programs are critical to adapt as well. A knowledgeable energy workforce is essential to ensuring American competitiveness and advancing the goals of American energy independence. The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy as well as the entire Department of Energy is committed to investing in and preparing the next generation of scientists and engineers to sustain American global energy leadership in clean energy. Just last month, we announced a $20 million funding to the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, announced $20 million in funding to the University of Tennessee and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to advance workforce development in emerging clean energy fields. This funding will be used to operate a five-year training program through the existing on-campus Oak Ridge Institute. In facilitating partnerships, this team has developed joint institutes and facilities, interdisciplinary PhD programs and a comprehensive joint facility faculty arrangement. The Oak Ridge Institute will build on previous work, establishing data science and leadership as cross-training foundations for the program. The program's research themes include autonomous, smart, secure, resilient energy systems, electrochemical energy systems for stationary and mobility applications, advanced science and engineering of materials and manufacturing, and predictive system biology for circular and sustainable economies. What makes this program unique is Oak Ridge Institute's modular interdisciplinary curricula. Students will receive professional development training, including communications, computational literacy, and technology transfer to offer new opportunities and real world skills that will prepare them to join an evolving workforce. If successful, and we obviously sure hope it will be, this curriculum can ultimately serve as a national guide for future partnerships between universities, agencies, and national laboratories. This collaboration between the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory is not the only workforce development program that the Department of Energy supports. For example, in 2014, the Office of Energy, Efficiency, and Renewable Energy started the Solar Ready Vets program, which connects veterans transitioning from and transitioning service members from the military to careers and opportunities in the solar industry. Between 2014 and 2017, 526 transitioning military service members from 10 states were trained as solar installers. The success of that program led to the launch of the Solar Ready Vets network in 2019. The network includes three separate initiatives to workers to training jobs in the solar industry. Now, EERE's Solar Energy Technology Office is providing nearly $14 million in funding for eight projects that pursue innovative initiatives to prepare the solar workforce for a digital future. EERE also sponsors the EcoCar Mobility Challenge, which is a four-year competition where 12 university teams work to improve the energy efficiency, safety, and consumer appeal of the 2019 Chevrolet Blazer. This provides a real-world training ground for students to gain hands-on experience in designing and building next-generation mobility solutions to meet our nation's energy and mobility challenges. And honestly, I've had the opportunity to meet with these students a number of times. It is fantastic to see just the interest that they have and the excitement they have around that project, but not only that, to have the opportunity to talk to some of the companies that sponsor the activities, such as General Motors, because to them, this is a real opportunity to... It's really a talent recruitment program for them, and that is fantastic. That's exactly what we want to be training to train these students. Also, our Building Technology Office has an advanced building construction initiative that develops training materials and resources for community college educators and future workers, as well as the Solar Decathlon, which may be the Department of Energy's premier student program for... Well, again, like the EcoCar Mobility Challenge, it is a competition. But it really allows students to develop next-generation building technologies and ideas. We also have jump into STEM competition that works with undergraduate and graduate students in US colleges and universities. In April of this year, we announced $4.5 million for Empowered, which stands for Education Materials for Professional Organizations, Working on Efficiency and Renewable Energy Developments. Empowered provides training programs for professionals who work with new energy systems, such as solar storage, building technologies and alternative fuel vehicle sectors. That also works to provide training materials to first responders, safety officials, and building managers to help integrate new technologies in the future. And finally, last week, our Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology Office announced a new $2 million project run by Epri and his partners focused on developing a workforce in hydrogen. This program is called H2edge, and we're looking forward to seeing that work. And along those lines, just this week, earlier this week, we saw that Florida Power and Light, which is a part of NextEra, had announced the largest renewable energy developer is planning a $20 million electrolyser to produce a clean hydrogen from solar. So the opportunity, the need for a workforce to understand these kind of new opportunities is obviously critical. So developing the next generation of science and engineering professionals is an important part of the work we do in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and the Department of Energy as a whole. Like I said, we are just one part of the Department of Energy. To look at other initiatives going on around the entire department, check out our STEM Rising website, which is at energy.gov slash STEM. Part of our mission at the department is to develop a well-prepared 21st century energy workforce, one that will help us grow our economy and keep our nation safe and secure. Obviously, this is a developing field and we need to be moving as quickly with workforces we are with technology. We have an important role to play in the development of the next generation of STEM professionals and ensure the diversity of STEM workforce looks like this great diverse nation in which we live. And one final thought is I'd just like to thank Eric and the government of Canada for being co-leaders on C3E, the C3E International Initiative, which is the Clean Energy Ministerial and which is a part of the Clean Energy Ministerial and the International Energy Agency program to advance women's leadership and engagement in clean energy. This is an important work. It's, there's the international program then we also have C3E, which is domestically to promote women in clean energy. Work like this, and especially working with Canada is a very important part of our shared workforce investments. Looking forward to hearing the discussion on today's panel, thank you. Great, thanks. And Troy, we'll go to Eric next. Okay, good morning, everyone. And first, thank you to Daniel and the EESI for organizing this event. I look forward to sharing some initiatives that Canada is undertaking to support communities and workers as part of our economic recovery and our transition to a low-carbon economy. While the pandemic has changed our world, it has not dampened our resolve to advance a transition to a clean energy future that puts people at the forefront. Canada believes that inclusivity is the key to building a greener future. We cannot leave traditional energy workers behind. We cannot leave certain regions or communities behind. Canada is committed to sizing this moment to equip our people and businesses to succeed in a future where energy is clean, reliable, and affordable. Central to this is the unique integration of the North American energy system, one of the most integrated in the world. We are a secure, reliable, and competitive supplier of energy to the United States, including crude oil and refined petroleum products, natural gas, electricity, hydro power, and uranium. This energy relationship supports hundreds of thousands of good, well-paying jobs in both countries. Looking ahead, Canada sees tremendous opportunity to continue collaborating with the U.S. to develop the secure supply chains for critical minerals that we'll need for a range of renewable technologies. We're also deeply committed to addressing climate change. So for example, we've put a price on pollution, we're phasing out coal-fire power generation, and we're making generational investments in clean energy, new technologies, and green infrastructure, all while working to decarbonize our petroleum sector. We're also investing in ongoing improvements to energy efficiency. In fact, recently, Canada joined 15 like-minded countries as party to the 3% Club, a group committed to a 3% improvement in global energy efficiency every year. So as I mentioned earlier, like our commitment to energy transition must include equipping workers and communities with the right skills so that they can successfully transition to a low-carbon economy. So I wanted to give you a few examples of how we're applying this from a Canadian perspective. So first, we're putting measures in place to support workers and communities that have been impacted by the accelerated closure of coal-fired power plants. This includes investing $35 million in skills development initiatives and economic diversification activities, as well as $150 million in dedicated infrastructure fund to support priority projects and economic diversification. Because Canada's resource industries are among the sector's hit hardest by the pandemic, part of the government's response has been to preserve employment and leverage existing skills where possible. So that is why the government of Canada has set aside $1.7 billion to clean up orphan and inactive wealth to maintain thousands of jobs in the oil and gas sector while also providing lasting environmental benefits. Another important consideration in this context is ensuring that energy remains accessible, reliable and affordable. We're working hard to improve access to clean energy across the country, partially through programs meant to support communities not connected to the grid. This includes funding projects that reduce reliance on diesel, in our Norton rural and remote communities, many of which are indigenous or have majority indigenous populations. These clean energy projects aim to improve energy security and sustainability while also empowering communities to own and operate their energy assets. I can't emphasize enough that as we begin to prepare for the next stages of the economic recovery, we must ensure we have the skills and determination necessary to get there. We believe that the success of a sustainable recovery relies on balancing the immediate restarting of the economy with other longer-term considerations, including protecting workers in the short term, developing future skills strategies and taking into account the uneven impacts of the pandemic on vulnerable and marginalized groups. Mobilizing participation from our entire labor force that lifts up underrepresented groups including women and indigenous peoples will also be vital to the economic recovery and the energy transition. So I was really glad to hear from Daniel about the C3E initiatives that Canada is involved with. And so Canada is among 150 organizations that have joined the International Equal by 30 campaign, which asks companies and governments to work towards equal pay, equal leadership and equal opportunities for women in the clean energy sector by 2030. This is important because there's a persistent gender gap, particularly in areas of innovation, inhibiting economic growth by leaving skilled talent on the table. We're also seeking to inspire an emerging generation of women who will be key to solving some of the world's most daunting challenges by celebrating their achievements. We want to ensure that best ideas make it from the lab true to commercialization. We're also committed to youth participation. We recently announced support for projects in remote communities amongst Ontario First Nations that focus on enhancing indigenous youth participation in the clean energy transition. By encouraging employers to hire youth, we're helping build a diverse, qualified labor pool and creating a green economy that benefits all. Our mission must be a shared one, where we come together, governments, industry, universities, communities and citizens to build a more inclusive energy sector, one that derives growth and innovation for Canada, the US and all our partners and allies. Thank you. Thanks so much, Neil. We'll turn it over to you. All right. Thank you very much everyone. I appreciate the opportunity to come and speak on behalf of AWIA, America Wind Energy Association. And I want to thank EESI as well for providing the opportunity to speak on the importance of clean energy workforce. And again, thanks to all the panelists joining us well. I'm the Vice President of Operations and Maintenance and Monitoring at Apex Clean Energy. I have more than 38 years of experience with electrical utilities, alternative energy and high voltage operations. I believe we're bringing a unique perspective on workforce development as an operations and maintenance supervisor with Apex. Our remarks today will focus primarily on the US wind and solar industry's rapid growth and opportunities as we challenge and the challenges we face in recruiting, training and developing the necessary workforce to meet the increased demand for our expanded clean energy economy. The US wind industry is made up of manufacturing, construction, operations, maintenance, development, engineering, accounting, lawyers, business trained individuals, asset management. It's not just a wind tech or technicians platform. There are many professions and career opportunities for individuals to take on. Most people think of our career and when they believe that the only path to take is the wind technician. We need to educate people to the fact that there are many career opportunities in clean energy. An interesting statistic I'd like to share with you is that the wind turbine technician is the second fastest growing job in the country. The only position above them are the solar photovoltaic installers. That's the only one that ranks higher. I'll speak to solar in just a moment. The wind industry employs more Americans than a nuclear, cold, natural gas or hydroelectric power generation. That's a statistic that we're proud of. The benefits of wind energy are widespread. Wind farms and manufacturing facilities are expanding all 50 states. We tend to see most of the operating projects with many more to come in the West, the Great Plains, Texas, and large sections of the Midwest. There's a significant manufacturing presence in both Southeast and Midwest with the emergence of offshore wind. We expect to see a localized and expansive manufacturing presence out on the East Coast. Moving on to solar. US solar industry was among the fastest growing sectors of the economy before COVID-19 pandemic hit. Adding jobs at a rate five times higher than national average over the last five years. Legislation can rebuild our economy better than before by enacting policies that spur long-term growth for solar, including modifying the solar investment tax credit, the ITC, streamlining the permitting process for solar projects, supporting domestic manufacturing of clean energy technologies, and investing in our nation's electrical infrastructures. Investing in solar energy can create hundreds of thousands of jobs while addressing climate change and lowering costs for our consumers. By investing in solar energy through bipartisan policies, United States can create 200,000 new jobs and inject $40 billion into the nation's economy over the next couple of years. With that brings a great demand for qualified people. So we're here to talk about today. In 2019, 87% of construction employers in the wind sector reported that hiring new workers was somewhat difficult or very difficult. The next two largest segments of the wind industry, professional services and manufacturing, reported overall hiring difficulty to 80 to 81 percent, respectively. Employers in the wind electric power generation industry expect more than 4% growth in 2020, which is continuing to grow on that demand of qualified individuals. And hiring them is not going to improve unless we work to inform people of the opportunity and the challenges. One option we need is more schools to offer training curriculums, the possibilities creating greater awareness of the opportunity by expanding public-private partnerships, building out incentive structures for schools to initiate these programs. For schools have programs creating incentives for them to collaborate more broadly with the industry. Another resource are our veterans. They bring some of the best talent to the wind business. The skills they learn depending on country transition well into clean energy. I wanna thank you for the opportunity to speak today and look forward to answering the questions at the end. Great, thanks so much, Neil. Hillary, we'll turn it over to you. Hi, everyone. I guess unmuting would be the key part to starting this panel. Let me start again. So thank you all for letting me be here with you to talk about energy efficiency, workforce and how that opportunity both creates jobs as well as addresses some of our major climate challenges. Just happy to be here this morning. I work for the Blue Green Alliance and I'm the director of special projects. For those of you who don't know, the Alliance joined some of America's largest labor unions and most influential environmental organizations representing public sector workers, building trades, as well as manufacturing unions. And some of our environmental partners include the Sierra Club, the National Resources Defense Council, League of Conservation Voters and several others. So together we really have established our principle as the Blue Green Alliance that we really can't choose between good jobs and a clean environment. We have to take actions now that create the quality jobs and protect working people in the environment. And all of that has to go hand in hand for us to create a thriving, fair economy and healthy environment we hope to see for the future. I think one of the key aspects that I'm here to talk about today is energy efficiency. No, I feel like I do a lot of work on offshore wind as well and in some large solar projects and oftentimes those things get a lot more attention. They're a little bit sexier, they're a little more interesting to folks but energy efficiency is one of the core components to that we need to address if we want to essentially achieve a low carbon future or also achieve net zero by 2050, which is what a lot of scientists are telling us we need to achieve. We really have to go after this sector and in the built environment. So just a few sort of numbers to get your head in the space of what we're talking about with energy efficiency. So nearly 2.25 million Americans are employed in energy efficiency, which both looks at manufacturing as well as installing and the construction side of energy efficient products. Ultimately we think this is a somewhat conservative number because the tally is only looking at products that are energy-serviced and there are thousands of efficiency products that don't actually go through that full certification rating for energy star. So just something to keep in mind on the significant sort of numbers that we're looking at in employment here. I think another important place here to think about is it's a growing and local sector. In 2019 the efficiency sector continued to be one of, to produce the most new jobs of any energy sector with 54,000 totaling over 2.3 million jobs in total. I think the demand for energy efficiency and for these technologies is going to continue to expand and looking at really jumping the number of construction trades and professional services as well as we look at the industry holistically. Nearly 60% of our energy efficiency jobs are in construction. That's one in six of every construction job. And I think the other really unique characteristic of energy efficiency, as was mentioned by some of my previous panelists, a lot of people don't necessarily associate their job with the clean energy economy or a low carbon future. And I think in energy efficiency it's critical for a lot of our workers to recognize if you're an electrician, if you're a carpenter, if you're a plumber and a pipefitter, there are a lot of different positions and skilled trades that are doing energy efficient work that may not even know it. They're just going about doing their trade and their job every day and not believe in understanding how important they are to our low carbon future. Energy efficiency jobs often are in small business as well. So there's a tremendous opportunity for entrepreneurship and growing this space both from the manufacturing side as well as the construction side. I've talked to you a lot about construction. The other key piece of this is the upstream manufacturing. We've heard this, we just heard this from Neil and Ovia that some of the other major growth opportunities in the clean energy economy are in manufacturing. Americans have built things for many years and having an industry that's growing and that truly has the opportunity to reestablish a strong manufacturing base in the United States I think is critical and it is very important to paying attention to. So some of those manufacturers include the appliances, the heating and cooling products, windows, doors, skylights, roofing, plumbing, sealants. I mean, the list goes on and on for what is possible in energy efficiency. So when you start combining the manufacturing opportunities that exist to a large degree now with room for expansion as well as the construction side, you start talking about some pretty significant job numbers that lead to careers in many cases as they're learning skilled trades. And we see this as a no better example in my mind than the Union Apprenticeship Program that we see with many of our building trades partners through the Alliance. And I think those are some of the pieces of energy efficiency that will drive ultimately to reduce the 40% of emissions that come from our built environment, create quality family sustaining jobs that lead to career pathways and can really address the consumer's need as well for electricity and cost and being able to do so in a way that supports the local economy and provide job opportunities for a lot of different people in an array of different skill levels. So one of the major programs that I just want to touch on very quickly that the Blue-Green Alliance operates is building clean. And in that, we recognize the number of jobs obviously in the space, but also really wanted to capture and understand where we are in manufacturing right now and sort of where do we go with that and where can we grow that and what does it take for the workforce to be prepared to take these jobs and be a part of this economy? And we have found, we've accounted for 4,500 different building products that we've put in a database so that people looking at doing energy efficient upgrades, contractors can look in their state, look in their region and find American made energy efficient products. And we've seen a move across the country in various locations to actually give contractors a bit of a higher bid preference when looking at buying locally or buying in the United States. And I think this is a trend that if we're able to establish additional manufacturing in a cross clean energy and then really are focusing on trying to supply those needs domestically, we're just gonna continue to see a lot of investment, a lot of growth in those areas. Having said all that, I think there are just a couple key pieces to sort of expanding this and really taking advantage of what energy efficiency can offer to the country. So workforce training, obviously being a key piece of that. The great thing is a lot of the key skills that are needed for energy efficiency are skills that people do every single day. We're able to, through apprenticeship programs in conjunction with community colleges and other workforce training programs, able to tweak and upskill our current workforce and those coming into the workforce to deal with the new technologies will obviously be expanding in this space. But the core skills needed, we have veterans have been brought up as well several times. Again, the skills are here to take advantage of a lot of this right now. Construction is local for this, right? You can't really do the work somewhere else on someone's home. I think the important part here then is to focus on making manufacturing local as well and to leverage policies like Buy American as we're looking at contracting these jobs to make sure we establish that strong supply chain. And I think the last thing I'll say is on top of all of this, this applies to energy efficiency but our workforce in general in the United States is to make sure that as we are trying to rebuild the economy from the impacts of COVID that we are offering the best health and safety protections to our workforce so that they can continue to grow in various fields but really start to rebuild the economy in a way that I think offshore wind, energy efficiency, onshore wind, solar really have a huge opportunity to help in the economic growth that we hope to see from COVID. So I will stop there but I look forward to addressing your questions and talking with the rest of the panel. Thank you. Thank you, Hillary, that was great. We are gonna transition now to Q&A to learn more about any of our panelists just as a reminder, their biographical materials are available at www.esi.org. And over the course of the day we're gonna be collecting questions. So if you would like to ask a question of our panels, any of our panels on any of our topics, the best way to do that is to follow us on Twitter at EESI online. Alternatively, you can send us an email EESI at EESI.org. For this panel, let's kick off the questions. Many of you mentioned that we're sort of in a strange situation right now. We're in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and the clean energy economy and the clean energy workforce was very robust and growing before that pandemic started. According to E2, 3.4 million people employed in the clean energy workforce, about 40% of the entire energy sector. But like I said, that was before. And I'm wondering if we could start with you, Daniel, and we'll go through the crowd. What is your outlook on a clean energy jobs recovery? How might the clean energy workforce of the end of 2020 and 2021 look and be different than maybe from years past? Well, first of all, it's obviously tough. We are in, you know, there was out some new GDP numbers today, they were not great. And I think it's probably an understatement. As the economy comes back, we're going to see clean energy jobs come back. And I think that clean energy jobs are really going to come back faster than the economy. Just given that the economy is a whole, just given that there is, because that's where so many jobs have been created in the past, there's really good momentum. There is, you know, some things were definitely a challenge in areas such as in some energy efficiency jobs from people doing like weatherization where you go into someone's home. That's going to be a little bit of a challenge for a while. There is definitely reticence to, and, you know, especially if you're in a high-risk group, you're not going to see that happening too quickly. But those jobs, as things get better, I definitely have high hope for clean energy jobs to come back actually faster just because there's so much momentum in the area. And it is definitely an area. As you look to the future, people might be carrying back some investments. People I don't really think are going to be carrying back their clean energy investments as much. It means that we're going to see the jobs accompanying that investment. Thanks. Eric, what's your perspective from Canada? Thanks, Daniel. So as I mentioned in my remarks, our energy sector has been quite impacted by the COVID situation. So part of the response to this is really helping sectors such as our oil and gas sectors through programming, such as cleaning up orphan wells. So this allows from an immediate perspective to really keep employment going like in some of the sectors of our economy. Also, from a go-forward basis, I think there's a bit of a movement internationally to really use this as an opportunity to consider very substantial investments in clean energy. And I think in the coming years, I think there's going to be a lot of opportunities for job creation in these areas. But as we've been talking about on this panel, it's really important to prepare the workforce for these opportunities. And Daniel was mentioning kind of on energy efficiency, kind of may not be kind of a straightforward in the current context in terms of having kind of these workers go in people's home to perform kind of energy efficiency audits, for example. So one of the things we're looking at is that we're working with our energy efficiency organizations in Canada to look at opportunities to have online training for workers in the energy efficiency area, so that these workers are kind of equipped with the skills that they'll require when there's going to be investments made like in building retrofits to be able to kickstart the economy. So we're working with organizations like Energy, like Efficiency Canada to put in place kind of a bit of a training hub and an inventory of all the types of programming for energy efficiency workers to be able to get the right training they need in the current circumstance. Thanks. Neil, let's go to you. What's your perspective on the outlook for the Clean Energy Workforce? Sure. I'll speak to the utility scale, solar and wind assets. The impact of COVID was severe to the, you know, the day-to-day operation of the assets, but the projects were considered by the local authorities as essential to the, you know, local generation and like resource to, you know, provide a utility to the, you know, to the public. So some of the planned work suggested work, say for instance, to blades or some potential major corrective type of work was delayed due to COVID just for following the CDC guidelines and ensuring that distancing those types of things were kept. But the primary, the maintenance activities, the work that's required to keep the assets running and operating wasn't slow. So there wasn't a huge impact to the work force in that respect. Construction across the industry as well was slowed to an extent due to, you know, distancing and those types of things that were required to keep people safe, but it didn't bring them to a halt. Construction has still been active. Schedules are still being met and we're still seeing, you know, both wind and solar projects being built. It's slowed the progress, but it hasn't stopped, you know, the day-to-day construction, right? Hilary, where do you see the Clean Energy Workforce maybe a year from now, maybe between now and then? Yeah, I'm really great points brought up by all of my colleagues on the panel. I think, as was mentioned for the Canadian work and trying to figure out how to keep people training, one of the, I think one of the challenges, and to some degree we'll see this, especially in industries where, for instance, like offshore wind, where we have a lot of folks who have sort of the core skills to do the work, but really need to be trained how to be safe over water at these heights and things and doing some of that from a distance without being to do the hands-on part. I feel like could delay things a little bit just in terms of training. As we figure out what are the best ways, what plas sizes can we have reasonably? So I think that's one piece we have to be cognizant about, but I think we will overcome because the demand, in particular for some of these industries that have state-level benchmarks and requirements from state governments to fulfill, I think we'll continue seeing movement in those areas and have seen movement as others have said in offshore wind and energy efficiency and in construction side. And I think the other piece of this then is just is making sure that as we are, as folks are heading back to work, they have the best and the most up-to-date health and safety so that we're not, again, sort of waylaid by high levels of infection rates. But overall, in the long-term picture, I really see opportunities in the clean energy economy offering some great opportunities across the United States for our workforce. Thanks. Our next question, according to many surveys, some of the most in-demand jobs today were not even invented when most of us were in high school. Jobs like application engineer, 3D printing specialist, do you have any ideas of what might be some clean energy jobs that might be under the radar today but that could be indispensable maybe 10 years from now that we will look back on and say, we never would have thought that this would have been such a key part of the clean energy workforce. Daniel, we'll go back to you. Sure. One area that I think is really important is the integration of various energy technologies. When you just have, when solar, for example, is a small part of the overall energy equation, that integration isn't super important. As it grows, as wind grows, that integration is critical to how we are managing the system as a whole. What those jobs look like, I'm not exactly sure, but we have these integrative, some type of integrative job and that also goes along with solar plus, wind plus, solar plus batteries, wind plus batteries, those type of jobs that where you're combining multiple technologies together as well as hydrogen. Hydrogen has not been a part of really the clean energy revolution. There is incredible excitement around hydrogen, around the world. What does that look like? And so jobs like that, as well as data, there's always data being produced. How do we do all of this stuff? How does this integration work efficiently? Those are some of my thoughts. Great, thanks. Eric, what do you see? And just to maybe compliment on some points that Daniel just made, there's a number of areas in Canada where we're looking to build supply chains in the clean energy area. So this includes hydrogen, small modular reactors, like critical minerals and batteries. So these are areas where we feel like there will be a lot more economic activity generated in these areas over the coming years. And we just want to make sure that we have the right workforce and that the people that we train in universities kind of are ready to take advantage of these opportunities down the road. Like on the point that Daniel made on systems thinking, I think this is really important. Like how do we, it's not just about like engineers and like technology kind of expertise, but it's also about data scientists, people that understand kind of AI and can apply their knowledge to kind of solving like how all these pieces of the puzzle in the energy system come together. So I think there's a kind of a challenge for all of us to be able to communicate to kind of our young people, kind of like that energy, a carrier in energy is not kind of a, just kind of a science and technology, but there's also kind of other domains that where we're going to have expertise from our young people. Thanks. Neil, from where you set operations maintenance, what do you think will be the sort of the next set of indispensable clean energy jobs that maybe we're not thinking of today? Those are great points that were brought up and I'd like to add to them in the technology side. 10 years ago, the technology that was available then versus today in the improvements to both wind and solar have been night and day. So what will the next 10 years give us, right? 15 to 20 cell phones, for example, you know, if you have a year old cell phone, it's probably out of date. So technology within the industry is very much following that same trajectory. What does that look like for the employment and the opportunities, you know, it's engineering, it's technology, it's AI, it's machine learning, a lot of things that a lot of the other industries that are more mature than wind and solar have been doing for a while. We need to catch up to that and we need to, you know, develop the workforce, I think in those areas, IT, engineering, both in the corporate sector. Thanks. Hilary? There are a couple of things that I would like to pull out and some of these apply directly certainly to the energy efficiency products that we need, but you know, we've heard a couple of times now, I'll write the importance of supply chain. I think we've seen the interruption of supply chain in a host of different areas across the United States as we've gone through COVID and that's no different as we think about supply chains that we need for the technologies and for the industries that ultimately will help us to achieve the low carbon future we're looking for. A couple of those pieces, so minerals, critical minerals and materials that are needed for just so many of the products that we use today and trying to figure out are there alternatives, you know, what kind of other products can be used and as in conjunction with sort of traditional hard rock mining, I think there's gonna be a lot of work in that space. Again, that's also definitely the AI high technology as we're looking at how to sort of extract these products in the most irresponsible way that we can to make sure we have those supply chains and can actually achieve the tremendous demand that we're seeing and that's being modeled to actually deliver on the clean energy goals of the United States and beyond. Another area that I see developing that people are thinking about now is recycling in a host of different commodities. But one of the key being in these, in products that are utilizing these more rare minerals and materials, so for instance, EV batteries. We've got folks who have done recycling of batteries in the past and have worked in this space, but now looking at the lithium ion batteries, it's a different process, right? It requires different health and safety, but also just how do we do that in a way that we can really utilize and extract those rare materials and be able to put them back into the system. I think those kinds of circular kind of reuse opportunities are gonna be really key as we're trying to meet the demands of these materials. That's great, really interesting. And sort of maybe a little bit by accident over the course of your answers and presentations, you have hinted at additional speakers that we'll be hearing from today. More speakers, if one of Daniel's top priorities is assistant secretary at ERE is this idea of integration. Well, if you'd like to learn more about some of that, David Nemzo, who directs the building technologies office will be with us this afternoon. We're also gonna have speakers from Idaho National Lab coming up, talking about advanced nuclear, fuel cells, solar, lots of different stuff. So I said it at the beginning, no better place to start than workforce and what a great way, great panel to kick off the 23rd renewable energy and energy efficiency expo. So thank you to our panelists, virtual applause, really appreciated all of your perspectives and insights and presentations. That concludes our first panel of the day.