 We have a second special guest actually joining us as well. Representative Scott Peters is with us from California. Sir, you're welcome to join me at the lectern and address the audience if you'd like. It's great to see you today. I like the green tie. Thank you sir. Well just to follow on that theme I'm from San Diego California where it's 70 degrees and sunny today and I did not stay where I was from because I came out here I'm really excited to work on energy issues and the energy transformation that's happening here. I started out on the Armed Services Committee but tried to get on to the Energy and Commerce Committee from the very beginning because I think that's this for a lot of exciting stuff's happening. If you look at Texas, Texas the market for the market for energy is the most perfect market it really incentivizes the things make economic sense to be built. What the market told us in Texas was that people want to build renewables something like 85% of the projects that came on for Texas before the IRA were renewables and so it's common. We put our thumb on the scale with the the IRA. We made even more incentives for renewables and now we actually have a lot of work to do. First of all we've got to figure out how to connect them all so I'm working a lot on transmission. A lot of folks on this side of the capital on transmission as well because we have on board enough projects to power 85% of the economy with renewable energy but if we don't build transmission to get solar energy for instance from places like Arizona and New Mexico to places like Detroit and Chicago we will lose those projects won't get built and we'll lose 80% of the climate benefits of the IRA if we don't get that transmission built. So the first thing I'm asking to look at is transmission. How do we move this stuff around? How do we do interregional high voltage transmission in a way that's going to provide the opportunity for renewables to get where they need to go? The other benefit of that by the way is the intermittency of renewables can be abated somewhat if you can move them immediately so you don't need to build as many batteries which require critical minerals. It provides more reliability. I'm going to tell you that we're going to have we're going to face real crises this summer and this winter in like we saw in Texas like we've seen a little bit of my state because we can't move energy from where it is to where it needs to be and I'm really worried in fact right now about some of the temperatures we're seeing in Arizona and Texas and other places we need transmission to help to help deal with that and we want we want things to be cost effective and transmission allows you to put a competition onto the grid provide better better prices for consumers so I'm working on that we're gonna have supply chain issues critical minerals is one thing you probably heard about but the metal that it takes to build to build out electric electrical transmission or a lot of supply chain issues we're gonna have we have workforce issues we have to train up people to do this so it's a big national project it's really important and I'm really committed to doing it I appreciate you're all doing some education for us we all have a lot to learn I think we're all very humble about that and finally one other thing I'll say is I'm really after permit reform so I'm a Democrat I practice environmentally an environmental law for 15 years before I went into public service elected office and I was first frustrated often that it took so much time to get where we needed to go in fact you couldn't sometimes you couldn't even get an answer from the agency we're looking for and I got to this this phrase I used to say is no is the second best answer if it's gonna be no just tell me no but tell me now so I can go on to something else right I rather hear yes you can't tell me yes tell me no don't just jerk me around we've made some progress I think and I have to give some credit to the Republicans on this in the debt ceiling deal we said okay we're only gonna take so much time for review we're gonna put a lead agency in charge within the federal government so they don't bounce things back and forth and we've started to make that that process more more sensible and I think not just for energy projects but for anyone is applying to the federal government for permission to do something we ought to give that person a response and I think that just makes sense but I'm looking at how do we make these processes faster because the other thing we're up against is we're in a race against time we've all we've all said that climate change is a crisis that we have 10 years to do so much and you know only 30 years to do everything else we have to triple the size of the electric grid in in 30 years that means we have to build another grid it took 150 years to build this grid to do another one of 15 years and another one after that in 15 years 200,000 miles of transmission lines in that period and what do we building now 1800 a year takes 10 years to do a transmission line on average we just did one from Wyoming to just approve one permitted one from Wyoming to California 18 years it took now we'll construct it you think that's how you win a race I don't think so and I would say that the environmental laws of the 1970s were built for the time and the time at the time we were making a lot of mistakes and we said we got to play defense so we put up laws that said like the National Environmental Policy Act that said wait before you approve anything you have to think of the environmental impacts think of the alternatives and make sure that government is fully informed and that was that made sense at the time we're pretty good at that now but now those reviews can take four years litigation on those on that is common you'll you may litigate the same exact facility or technology in one district court in California another district court of Minnesota and we have to rationalize that we can't take this much time if we're really in a race against the destruction of the planet which I believe this is an extension existential threat so I want to say we you know we're gonna we're all gonna have to work hard on other other issues with respect to geothermal there's there's nits to clean up there there's nits to clean up on all sorts of energy sources offshore wind we have to learn a lot but ultimately we have to do this faster and I'd ask you to keep that in mind as well I got great partners in the Senate and in the house I'm really looking forward to taking on this challenge because I'm from San Diego California I get on a plane to come to Washington DC every week I consider myself the most optimistic person here because I really I love where I live but this is where a real change happens I'm honored to have this job and look forward to working with you all and my colleagues to make sure we we get this right by energy that's reliable affordable clean to consumers to Americans and then exports of pretty good technologies around the world so we can keep that dirty coal in the ground thanks for having me and if we could be helpful please be in touch thank you