 All right. Well, good morning everyone. Welcome to the 26th Annual Congressional Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Expo and Policy Forum. I'm Dan Berset. I'm the President of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. And we are at the beginning of a marathon day of panels of experts and business leaders, innovators and practitioners who will be here all day to talk about the multiple benefits of investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency. And there are a lot of great benefits. We're talking about jobs, emissions reductions. We're talking about savings for families. We're talking about all sorts of benefits. Our first panel is Energy Efficiency Essentials. And we'll get started with that right away. But before that, we have a very special guest. So the Expo is a lot of work to set up. We have an in-person audience today. We're also our live castingness. So if you have to step away, you can visit us online at www.esi.org and visit our live cast. But we really couldn't do the Expo. We couldn't really work on these issues if it weren't for the leadership of the Senate Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus. And for the last couple years, we have had just, I mean, delight, pleasure, you name it, just synonyms, pleasure of working with the leadership of the caucus on a bipartisan basis. Senator Mike Crapo from Idaho and our special guest this morning, Senator Jack Reed from Rhode Island. Their tremendous staffs do a huge amount for us over the course of the lead-up. And it means a great deal for Senator Reed to join us this morning and welcome everyone to the Expo. So Senator Reed, I'll invite you up to the lectern. Thank you so much for everything you and your staff have done to make today a big success. Thank you. So thank you, Dan, very much. And I'm delighted to be joining you for the 26th annual Congressional Clean Energy Expo and Policy Forum. You have a distinguished panel waiting to present, so I will be brief. I'm always short, but I will be brief. Let me stop by recognizing Dan Presett and the fantastic team in EESI for their hard work in organizing this event. And let me also thank the panelists, the exhibitors for taking the time to lend their expertise to an important topic. As co-chair of the Senate's Renewable Energy and Efficiency Caucus, I work with Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho, my friend and colleague, to increase awareness among our colleagues about renewable energy technologies and energy efficiency. And I don't think it takes much to remind people over the last several days how critical reducing our energy demands are to our economy. With weather at 100 plus degrees, with the water of Florida at 90 plus degrees, we have a climate crisis. And one way to resolve that crisis is to reduce our use of energy. We all represent different parts of the country. Mike Crapo is from Idaho. I'm from Rhode Island. They're not exactly the same. But we both, Mike, and I understand the importance of coming together to ensure that Congress has the information it needs to make educated decisions about these issues. And we know energy efficiency provides real results, both for our wallets and for the environment. Indeed, as someone once said, the cheapest and cleanest form of energy is the energy we don't use. As a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, I'm working hard to support strong funding for weatherization and other programs that help boost energy efficiency and propel a clean energy future. In addition, as you're aware, Congress passed an historic climate law last summer. The Inflation Reduction Act invests about $370 billion in affordable, clean energy initiatives that will make America more energy independent. The law is forecasted to reduce the United States carbon emissions by 40% by 2030. Through electrification and energy efficiency. And importantly, the incentives in this law will help Americans save thousands on their energy bills. But we could not have done that legislation without you, without all the work you've done over 26 years to provide a basis of knowledge and expertise that we were able to use constructively. So I want to thank you for joining us again today. Good luck with your panels and good luck with the work. It's critically important. And as I said, if you need a reminder, just step outside into the 95-degree weather and you'll be reminded. Thank you. Thank you, Senator Reed. And thank you, Rachel and Anthony and everyone else on Team Reed who helped bring us all together today. Senator Reed's right. Today's actually not a bad day to be stuck indoors. It's pretty gross out there today. But we still have a great view and I invite everyone over the course of the day. We'll have lots of panels, including the one we're about to kick off in just a moment. We also have some exhibition materials set around the room. I see my buddy Dane over there at the Federal Performance Contracting Coalition. Jennifer Schaefer will be joining us on a panel later today. I see the Department of Energy's Energy Efficiency Renewable Energy Office. We have lots of other organizations represented on the panels today with exhibit materials. I hope everyone stops by and takes full advantage of that. Without any further ado, I'm going to transition to my seated space so that I can join our panel and kick us off and we'll get started from there. So I'll turn this mic off and turn this mic on. So it's kind of fitting that we had Senator Reed sort of kick us off today because energy efficiency, weatherization, things like that are top priorities for him in his office. And I think it may be a little bit of a coincidence that our first panel of the day is called Where It All Begins, Energy Efficiency Essentials. I don't think it's hard to talk about climate solutions. You actually have to go out of your way to not talk about energy efficiency when you talk about climate solutions because it is the fastest, cheapest, and easiest in many ways, way to reduce emissions reductions. And so we have a tremendous panel today. We will hear from our panelists. We'll have a little bit of a moderated discussion and then we will be happy to take questions from our audience as well. So if you hear something that Paula, Kurt, Justin, or Brian say, we'll definitely do our best to make sure that you have an opportunity to ask a question. And our first panelist of the day, our first official panelist of the day, is Paula Glover. Paula is the President of the Alliance to Save Energy, which is my energy efficiency alma mater. So Paula, welcome to the expo this year and policy forum and I'll turn it over to you. Yep, now it is. Okay, good morning and thank you. Thank you. Not unusual that you are an alum of the Alliance to Save Energy as I have learned. There are many people who are alums of the Alliance to Save Energy. Really want to thank EESI for this invitation. And quite frankly, I want to thank you for making this the first conversation. I'm going to suggest to all of you that this is the most important conversation that we need to be having and that's why we're doing it first. As the Alliance, if you're not familiar with us, we are a bipartisan coalition of industry, government, consumer organizations as well as environmental organizations and our focus is really on federal advocacy around energy efficiency policy. I'm going to start with the most recent news which came out a couple of days ago around the greenhouse gas reduction fund. I'm going to start with that because that's just one of the tools that we have to move and use efficiency as part of our energy transition. That fund has identified efficiency as a foundational technology, whether that's the $7 billion going towards solar for all or the money that's part of the national clean investment fund. We're looking at ways that we can get funding to do efficiency broadly across all communities. That's really, really important. But addition to that, we know that the IRA investments are also really a big push and we've been seeing now as money's coming out, how people are reacting to it and taking it. We're expanding energy efficiency tax credits. We have rebate programs. We have incentive programs. We have retrofit programs for government buildings. We have programs so that localities can adopt more recent energy codes. I would say for us at the Alliance, what we're now really focused on is what else do we need, but more importantly, how is it going? How is it going? We've got a big problem. We've got a lot of money out there and we do have to pay attention on how the money is spent so that we get the outcomes that we want. At the same time, I think my panelists would agree with me that it's probably not enough and that there are other things that we're going to need to do. One example I would say would be our buildings. We have a lot of effort on building codes and whether or not you live in New York or in California, we're doing a lot to either have new technologies adopted into our buildings. We're doing a lot to make sure that people adopt heat pumps into their buildings, but there are still a lot of buildings in this country that are not going to be able to do all of that. Many of our homes are not going to be able to do about that. If you think about large cities that have buildings that are over 100 years old, this becomes more complicated and more expensive, but it is also absolutely more necessary. We've got to figure out how are we going to deal with buildings if we want to decarbonize and we want to mitigate climate change. The last thing I will say is as we're thinking about forward and I know there's a lot of conversation on the Hill today about permitting reform and while efficiency does not necessarily seem like the kind of topic that would be a part of permitting form, I will just say that efficiency is a tool. If we're going to build new stuff, we want to do that smart. We want to do that in the right way and we want to do that in a smart way. We're going to put on rooftop solar. We want to make sure it's an efficient house that adopts rooftop solar. We're going to build new transmission lines. We want to make sure that we've adopted all the other tools before we start building new things, because we're going to continue to use more energy and so we cannot ignore efficiency and then get on with it because we'll find ourselves in the same situation. Thank you, Paula. Perfect way to kick off the panel. That brings us to Kurt Rich. Kurt is the president and CEO of the North American Insulation Manufacturers Association. Welcome, Kurt. Yep, it is on. Thank you, Dan. Thank you for having me. Senator Reid kicked it off by reminding us that we're in a climate crisis. Energy efficiency is a solution to that crisis across all sectors of our economy, but really it begins with energy efficiency in the built environment and buildings. The three of us are all buildings guys, so that's where I'll focus my comments today. It makes sense to really start with buildings. 40% of all greenhouse gas emissions are associated with buildings, with the embodied carbon and the materials that we use to build those buildings as well as the power that it takes to operate them. I'm going to focus mostly on residential construction. I think Justin's going to talk more about commercial construction. When it comes to the homes that we live in, there are 140 million homes in the United States. We build about one and a half million new homes each year, so it's really a big challenge to make those homes as energy efficient as possible and to drive down their carbon emissions. As we kind of go forward into the future in an environment that is a lot harsher, where expectations for driving down greenhouse gas emissions are a lot more urgent, we're going to change the way we build our buildings and operate our buildings. We're going to want our homes to be more resilient, to be able to withstand weather extremes. We're increasingly going to electrify our homes, both existing homes as well as the new homes that we build. Then finally, you can build highly efficient new homes, but the job isn't done until you substantially address the 140 million homes that are already built and, quite frankly, our energy sieves. That's the challenge in front of us. I wanted to use my time today to talk about and bring to your attention three recent studies that touch on each of those issues. The first is climate resilience and making our homes more resilient. The Department of Energy came out with a study just last week prepared by the National Labs, and they looked at the climate resilience of homes and a kind of a standard inefficient home, a home that is built to the 2021 model code, so lots of insulation and air sealing, and then a home that is super insulated and they call that passive house, so kind of beyond codes. Just to take Atlanta, for example. So during a winter climate emergency where you have a power outage, you're going to be able in kind of your standard home in Atlanta to stay put in that home for about a day and a half before the temperature just gets too cold and you're going to have to go to an emergency center. If that home is built to the 2021 code, suddenly you can stay in that home for three days. If that home is built to passive house standards, suddenly you can stay in that home for a week. So energy efficiency promotes climate resilience. It enables us to stay put in our homes when we deal with power outages either during the heat of summer or the cold of winter. The second study I want to highlight is an issue brief that was put out by ACAAA, the American Council for Energy Efficient Economy, again just last week, and it really focused on electrification and the co-benefits of a sound building envelope, so a home that is well insulated and air sealed and electrification. If you do those measures in tandem, you drive significant energy savings in those homes, anywhere from 30 to 75% energy reductions and the reduction in utility bill savings that go along with that. Conversely, if you don't do those measures together and you put a heat pump in an inefficient home, particularly in the northern United States, consumers are actually going to see their utility bills go up, which I don't think anybody wants to have happen in their state, so you really need to address these measures in tandem. I know I'm running out of time. My final report that I want to just highlight is on how we address those 140 million existing homes. ICF, kind of an international energy consulting firm, put together a report last year called the Insulation Opportunity Study, and they looked at all sectors of the built environment, but when it came to residential construction, their conclusion was very simple, straightforward, achievable envelope improvements. It's basically air sealing and putting more insulation in your attic means that you're going to have energy reductions and cost savings of anywhere from again 20 to 40% depending on the state that you live in, so real tangible greenhouse gas emissions reductions are possible and consumer utility bills are possible just by undertaking very simple improvements to the home that you live in. With that, I will close up and turn it over to Justin. Thank you, Kurt. And so speaking of Justin, Justin Kosher is the president of the, sorry, wrong page. He's not carrying on. She's on the next panel. Justin Kosher is the president and CEO of the Poly Isosirangent Insulation Manufacturers Association. Justin, thanks for being here today. Thanks, Dan. And another insulation guy, but let me try to offer a couple of complementary points to the ones that Kurt raised. First, let me just give you a quick overview of the poly iso industry. We manufacture product in 35 plants across the US, the newest one opened just this month in Missouri, and we've got two new plant openings announced for Illinois and Florida. And I mentioned that it's not unique among the poly iso industry, but I mentioned that for two reasons. One, we're growing as the demand for insulation and energy efficiency products grows. Manufacturers are making those investments to make sure that builders and contractors have access to the materials that they need. And like Kurt's industry, we're a domestic industry. From the raw materials we use to the manufacture of insulation to the installation of insulation, we're American jobs throughout the value chain. And I think it's important to know that when you're here in Washington, D.C., when you decide to make investments in energy efficiency, those typically transfer directly into more U.S. U.S. jobs. Kurt talked a little bit about residential buildings. Let me just offer kind of a perspective on commercial buildings. Poly isos used in a lot of different applications, but we're most commonly used in roofing and think flat roofs. So schools, hospitals, big box stores, the heart building here, anything with a flat roof is going to have insulation underneath it. Most of those roofs are under-insulated. If you've built a building or if you've put a new roof on an existing building 10 years or more ago, it's going to have been installed when our energy standards were much weaker. But that presents an opportunity. So we've worked with Kurt and ICF and others to model what can we do in commercial buildings. And we found, for example, on a typical one or two-story school, if you take that existing roof and you replace it, something that we do every single day with one that meets modern standards for energy efficiency, you can reduce the whole building energy use on an annual basis by 8% to 10%. And for a school, for example, that translates into huge cost savings that, of course, can be used for better investments in the school itself. It translates into a more comfortable environment for students and building occupants. And it has an offset on the carbon emissions associated with that energy use. But it's not always done. That's not done enough. And it happens for a couple different reasons. There's a lot of imperfect information within building energy efficiency opportunities. So unlike going to replace that refrigerator that just broke down in your home where federal standards mandate that it be manufactured to the latest standards, while we have standards, there's not that type of oversight or enforcement on buildings. It ends up coming down to the decisions of the building owner or the contractor makes. Also in roofing, most people don't think about their roof until it leaks. And then when your roof is leaking, your first priority is to get it to stop leaking. You may not be thinking about the energy efficiency opportunity there. So you may be acting under a situation of duress. And if you don't take advantage of that opportunity and you put a new roof on a building, you've just locked in those inefficiencies for another 15, 20, 30, maybe 40 years. So that's a huge opportunity for policy. It's a huge opportunity for federal policy to, one, provide that information. And in a lot of cases, provide the financing through different structures, whether that be tax credits. And Paula talked a lot about the recent legislation that's making direct grants available to do this work. So I think we'll get into a little bit more of that in conversation. But just wanted to make you aware that when we talk about energy efficiency, like Kurt highlighted, it's not just new buildings. We've got to do something about existing buildings. And we have to stop letting these opportunities pass us by each and every day. Thank you, Justin. Our fourth panelist today is Brian Krug. Brian is the Treasurer of the National Association of Energy Service Companies, or NASCO. He's also the president of CEG Solutions. Brian, I think this is your first expo. Welcome. And looking forward to hear what you have to say. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. So the National Association of Energy Services Companies has 153 members. And what each of our members does is we're focused on existing buildings, built infrastructure, and really trying to take all these great technologies like Justin and Kurt are talking about, and also renewable technologies and resilience technologies, HVAC, LED lighting, all these great technologies that are out there and applying those and bringing those to existing building owners to make the buildings more efficient, to save money, reduce waste, to improve sustainability, to improve resilience, to deliver all these great benefits for the building owner. And what's great about our solutions is they're almost always paid for by savings. So we'll go in and we'll identify all these ways that the buildings can be improved, and each of those improvements is going to save money over time. And what we'll do is we'll bring the financing to bear so that these projects can be paid for with no rollout front costs to the building owners, typically. And so it's a great way to kind of retrofit all these existing buildings. Because if you think forward 50 years, the vast majority of buildings that are standing in 50 years are already existing today. So you can do all sorts of great things for building codes and standards, which is a good thing to do, but it's not going to move the needle nearly as much as improving existing building stock. And what's also great about our solutions is our members guarantee the results for the building owner. While it's great for people to say, oh, yeah, it's going to save you all this money on paper, you can think back to the American Reinvestment Recovery Act aura, and all these great projects that government was doing. But then, and they were supposed to build all these savings for the building owners, but then you fast forward 10, 15 years, you look at a lot of these projects, they're not delivering the results that they said they would, because no one's actually monitoring it, no one's measuring and verifying it, no one's guaranteeing the results like they are with our projects. So it's a great tool. So just two simple points I want to make so we can get to the probably more interesting part of the panel discussion. The first one is there's this huge opportunity for leverage. So because performance contracting, these performance contracts bring private capital to bear, if you have a little bit of investment that you want to make available to invest in paying for improvements in a building, if you combine that with performance contracting and guaranteed savings in third party capital, you can take a billion dollars of investment and turn it into 10 billion dollars of investment in the existing building. There's a huge multiplier effect possible by combining appropriated funds with or grant funding or other incentive funding, these types of funding with private capital and performance contracting. Performance contracting can be really used to stretch the investment and multiply the impact of federal dollars in the existing building stock. The second thing is there's an opportunity to leverage them. There's some great policies that are out there that were passed in the last 15, 20 years. There's one policy that requires every federal building to be audited for opportunities to improve it every four years. There's another policy, Energy Policy Act of 2020 included, which requires 50% of the things that are identified during these audits to be implemented with performance contract. But I'm not sure what's going on. But anyway, so there's the Energy Policy Act requires 50% of these improved, of these economically viable improvements to be implemented with performance contracts. So it's a way that the government can implement all this stuff without spending appropriated funds and without extra money. But for some reason, we're not seeing that it be actually being implemented. There's no, the CFRs, the roles regulations haven't been actually... Well anyway, there's great opportunity to leverage this great policy that Congress passed by partisan legislation was passed at the end of 2020. And for whatever reason, it just hasn't been rolled out. The federal government has an opportunity to lead 87% of the federal government scope one and scope two admissions come from buildings. And there's this great opportunity that all these cost effective energy improvements just aren't being implemented. And if the government could really lead in this area, there's a tremendous opportunity. So that's all I have to say. Thank you, Brian. And thank you for demonstrating how resilient energy efficiency is for persevering in the wake of a noisy microphone. We are joined by a special guest. So before we get to the moderated panel, I'd like to... I can't really see him from here, but we're joined by Representative Emmanuel Cleaver, who represents the great people of the Fifth District of Missouri. Representative Cleaver has to get to a committee hearing, but happy to welcome you at the lectern if you'd like to say a few words, sir. Thank you. Good morning. Let me just say this quickly. I think you... I don't know what your theology of life is, but what you are doing is God's work. However you see God, whether you see God as a Super Bowl champion or something, like the Chiefs, the Kansas City Chiefs. But it is very seriously. When you think about the fact that this is the hottest year on record, at least since we have inhabited the planet with the ability to measure, and you look at the things that are happening all around the nation, including floods in Southern California, it would tell just about anyone with an IQ at room temperature that something has gone awry, that something has happened to this planet. I happen to believe that it is still reversible, and obviously you do too, or you wouldn't be here. It is reversible. The earth has amazing healing ability, but we can't continue to do what we've been doing. There'll probably be a lynch mob after me before the summer is over, because I'm proposing that we restrict traffic on one of the main arteries going through Kansas City, Missouri. In 10 years, we'll start now. The average car is kept by Americans for eight years, and so it gives people an opportunity to make decisions on what they want in the community. But I think we can do all kinds of things, little bitty things that will change the direction that we're headed. I appreciate what you're doing. I appreciate the opportunity to come by and just say that you are the leaders of the planet right now, and we need you to continue. Change has almost always been brought about by young people. You have very few old folk with liniment rubbing on their shoulders, and so forth, making changes. You go back in history, and it's always young people making the change. When I leave, there'll be still young people here, and you are the future. You've got to make the change. You've got to very easily and quietly nudge old people out of the way, whose thinking is in 1920s. So thank you, cancer the chiefs. That would have been bad. Thank you, Representative Cleaver, for joining us this morning and for saying hi and for sharing your thoughts. I'm a Patriots fan, so I have to separate myself from the chiefs are great, but Patriots are great, too. We're great. Anyway, now we're going to move into the moderate discussion. I'm actually going to call sort of an audible and stand up here because I realize they can't see this part of the room. That's something you don't realize when you're doing this until you actually get into the panel that, oh, whoops, the lectern's in the way. So we're going to get into a moderated discussion, and Marco has a microphone, and if anyone has a question, we'll do our best to get to you so you can ask it of our panelists. But to kick us off, so I love energy efficiency. I'm bought in 100%, but you all just convinced me even more that we need to be doing this. So what is it that we're not doing? What specifically, why aren't we maximizing the benefits of energy efficiency? Do you have any sort of thoughts about where sort of federal policy is getting it right with respect to energy efficiency and where might there be opportunities from greater energy efficiency? Paula, happy to start with you and we can go down through the line, but I'd love to hear sort of why aren't we doing more of this? Yeah, I think the big word we always have to walk away from with is investment, right? Efficiency is an investment. We are asking people to make an investment, and investment is a choice. And so we've got to figure out how do we communicate in such a way that folks understand that this is a really critical and important choice, that it's not wasted money, that it has multiple benefits. And so when I talk about it, and I'm always talking about not just climate, not just emissions reduction, why I talk about burden and security and energy poverty is because that's the stuff that actually people think about and care about. How many times am I getting a shut off notice? Am I able to turn on my air conditioning when it's hot or is it too expensive and so I do not use it? Can I even afford my light bill? All those things are things that efficiency can solve for, but we need to make that investment. And for people who do not have enough now, we've got to figure out what are the tools that are going to allow them to make that investment. That really goes back to the conversation that Kurt was having about existing buildings and why that is really, I think, probably the most important problem that we are going to have to solve is invest in building. So Dan, we're kind of at a unique moment in time. I've spent 30 years bemoaning underinvestment in conservation energy efficiency, but that's no longer the case between the IIJA and the Inflation Reduction Act. We have just seen over the last two years a historic level of investment in energy efficiency, renewable energy, and climate action. I think the story that's going to unfold over the next year or two is how that money is deployed largely at the state level and the kind of change that you're going to see occurring in the communities that you represent as a result of those investments. So for the first time ever, I kind of feel like we have the tools to really make a substantial dent in kind of the project. And so I think it's exciting. Justin, you were Brian, eager to hear where your thoughts are in terms of where we could be doing more, especially at the federal level. Yeah, I just think, for those of you that are setting policy here in DC, it's important to see through those that bemoan energy efficiency policies. Typically, those are the folks that don't benefit from the investments as Paula characterized them. When you look at who's making investments in energy efficiency, a lot of times owners of buildings that occupy and own them for a very long time. Universities, hospitals are probably some of the more energy efficient buildings that we have out there. Those people are there, they're using them, they're paying the bills. But those of you that may rent apartments here in the DC area, rest assured that developer was not concerned about the energy bill that you pay each month. And typically those are the loudest voices that we hear criticizing energy efficiency. So important to see it for the investment, important to see it for that long-term benefits. And I think question those that come with arguments that sort of undercut the value of making those investments upfront when they can be made most cost-effectively. Two different areas, I think. So first one is there's a number of states and municipalities that are now piloting building energy performance standards, which is kind of a carrot and stick approach to encouraging energy efficiency. So this is the stick side of it where you set a target where buildings need to get to a certain standard or the building owner has to pay a fine. And then there's all the other policies that are already in place from the IRA and everything else to give people the incentives to actually do these things as well because they're cost-effective. But sometimes people need a little bit of a nudge. So Washington, DC, state of Colorado, local law 97, New York, California now, there's a lot of places that are piloting this stuff. It could be done more broadly. So second area is federal leadership. And that really requires focus. Like I said, the policies are there, but for whatever reason, the roles and regulations haven't gotten promulgated yet. This is past in 2020. We're now 2023. I don't know why three years later, it still isn't done. And it's just like getting federal agencies to really improve existing building stock and leverage the tools and the IRA and all the other tools that are available, like performance contracting, is a huge opportunity. And it's just sitting there hopefully for the federal government to pick off the tree and eat. Thanks, Brian. I'm looking for questions. I'll keep going until I see questions though. I'd like to come back to this idea of leverage. Obviously, leverage is an enormous part of your business model with energy service companies, energy contracting, all of that. But what are some other things that we can get out of leverage? What is it about energy efficiency that makes it so easy to leverage? Do any of the other panelists like to comment on this issue of leverage and how an energy efficiency investment is actually much, much more than that? Go ahead, Justin, please. I'll just mention because Paula brought it up, the greenhouse gas reduction fund that EPA is announcing. I think they've done something very smart and they've included the ability to make certain envelope improvements part of that funding. So if you're going to put solar on a building, the worst thing you want to do is put it on an energy inefficient building. The other thing you don't want to do is put solar on top of a roof that's going to fail in five years time when the solar investment's 20 years. So I think there are these messages that are resonating with agencies in charge of deploying these types of programs where they can really leverage that infrastructure and making sure that we're doing things smartly so that they set great examples for others to follow. And maybe just to kind of carry on Justin's theme, insulation, building envelope improvements, they leverage every other measure. At kind of the building level, they allow you to put in smaller heating and cooling equipment. That equipment will operate more efficiently. So it would be less expensive to heat and cool your building for renewables at utility scale. If you are powering an efficient building stock, that building can act as a passive battery almost and it allows utilities to kind of smooth out their peak load concerns, which are significant when you're dealing with renewables. So efficiency is going to make renewables operate better and it's going to make your mechanical systems operate better. So it's kind of the ultimate leverage. And I would just, I mean I think adding to what these gentlemen are talking, what Kurt's talking about is that there are some societal benefits, right? An efficient home is tends to be a homey home. That means you have improved air quality in that house. That means you've got better health for the inhabitants of that house. If there are children there, there are likely to be better in school. There are lots of other things that happen the minute you improve a building. And so thinking about the fact that if you improve a building of an elderly person, you may save them from having to bail out in the age in place. And if that is a person who is receiving Medicare or Medicaid, what have you saved by not having to put somebody in a nursing home unnecessarily because you made a 15,000 investment in their house and they got to be there for as long as they wanted to. And so efficiency is so much bigger than just the technologies. And then the third thing is the ability of technology to make us more comfortable in our buildings is also an efficiency thing, right? And so I don't know how many other people came in here. I'm in a puzzle and I've been freezing since I walked in this place, which makes no sense, right? That's the result of what we talked about. This is not an efficient building, which is why places where it's hot, places where it's cold, anybody who's been in a hotel where they're running the air and there's nobody been in there, right? Efficiency has the ability to do all of those things as well as kind of improve our daily lives in ways that we don't really think about. I kind of assumed it was what Justin said, which when he was saying buildings with flat roofs and poly iso, he said heart. So I just figured that maybe they got a new roof here. I don't know what is going on with microphones, but we will figure that out. Curtis and Dana looking at you. Yeah, go ahead, Justin. I'll just mention because Paula made me think of all the co-benefits of energy efficiency. There was an article in the Washington Post last week that talked about the recent announcement that DOE had made about deploying its first tranche of funding for building energy codes. And all the agencies seem to be doubling their initial commitment just based on the interest level. So I know the schools got plused up twice, the codes plused up twice, but there were interesting comments from the Louisiana Home Builders Association saying that the investments in improving Louisiana's building codes are necessary because insurance companies have left the state and folks cannot afford the insurance premiums because homes aren't built to standards that can withstand heat extremes, weather extremes. So when we talk about energy codes, we're typically talking about other codes as well and sort of high water can raise all boats, but there's things that we don't think about and costs that we don't think about that are all co-benefits of building better. So I'd encourage you to go read those comments from the Louisiana Builders about why modern codes are so important as we face the climatic challenges. So I want to come back. I want to talk a little bit about jobs. So every year on odd years, so this is one of them, ESI puts out our climate jobs fact sheet. It pulls jobs numbers from across the climate sector, renewable energy, energy efficiency, adaptation and resilience as well. If you look at the clean energy pie chart, the biggest slice is energy efficiency jobs. And I'd love to give you an opportunity to share a little bit about what's happening in the workforce development and training and jobs space in the energy efficiency sector. Paul, I'm happy to start with you again and we can go through the line, but let's hear about that. Sure. So I'm going to expand on your comment a little bit and say that we're not only the largest employer in clean energy, we actually are the largest employer in energy period. There are more people who work in energy efficiency than in any other sector in the energy economy and there are more people who are expected. So I think that's really good news and there's lots of investment and workforce development. Many of the jobs in energy efficiency are considered kind of construction manufacturing jobs. So we've got to think about students in school and how do we move students into labor and trade, which is something that we've moved away from over decades. And now we're finding ourselves in a position where like, oh, we actually do need those kinds of skills. So that's kind of one piece of this puzzle that we've got to kind of handle. But I would also say we should also be thinking about small business while we think about workforce. I think focusing just on workforce does not do us well. These jobs are local jobs, and that means that there are small business opportunities. And so we should be talking with people, we're trying to get them encouraged about our industry. We can't just always talk about, oh, you get a great job to work for somebody else. We should also talk about, you know, if you became an electrician, you actually don't have to work for anybody, you can set your own hours, you can make six figures, and you can do what you want to do. And so thinking about, I think that kind of messaging is also really important when we talk about workforce. So I represent large manufacturers. And I think Justin did a great job of kind of characterizing our industry, the fact that we are a domestic industry, domestic supply chain. People who install our product, the contractor base, I think I would be remiss to not point out that kind of throughout the building trades, that's really driven by a kind of a migrant workforce. Until we resolve kind of our immigration policy, we really face, I think, a profound challenge in being able to adequately fill those jobs that are going to power the economy, because the economy is really driven by new construction. I'm just talking about it. So the other thing too is like with the inflation reduction act, there were some great requirements for, there were great requirements for apprenticeship and use of apprentices on for all sorts of different trades. So to qualify for the investment task credits, to qualify for the 179D tax deductions, a lot of these great incentives that are out there for energy efficiency right now and renewable energy right now, we need to use apprentices and really develop the workforce. So there's a lot of work that's going to be done, because just as everyone's been saying, like energy efficiency to implement these technologies in buildings, you have to use American local workforce. And I think there's some great policies in place that hopefully will kind of enable us to really create great jobs for folks that don't require college education, as not everyone's going to go to college. And this is a great place for workforce development, for sure. I think it's haunted. Looking across the audience, I think we have a question. Do you have the microphone yet? Okay, great. Maybe it's you. Does this work? Okay. I just thank you ESI for hosting this panel. Thank you, panelists, the comments have been great so far. So I have a question that I think actually leads in quite well from that last question. Contractors in small business, businesses play such a key part in translating policies and incentives during kitchen table conversations with the home owners that will be implementing the technologies. What challenges do you foresee in contractors being able to adequately translate these policies and incentives to the home owners and making sure that the money is deployed efficiently and expeditiously? So I'm going to talk about just answer that question in the context of residential retrofit. It's going to be a heck of a challenge. The general public, they aren't accustomed to the kinds of incentives that are now available. And when the new rebates come online next year, so they're confused, there's a lot of market confusion. Contractors aren't used to marketing these incentives. And so I think one of the big challenges, and it's kind of ignored in the IRA, is there's got to be a substantial investment in just helping the contractor base states who are implementing these programs do market education and be able to explain to a homeowner what that retrofit journey looks like, how you can take advantage of these credits, how you can stack them on top of each other, how you might pair them with weatherization funding or state utility programs, the kind of savings that they can expect. There's a lot to explain. And the contractors that I interact with, they're not currently equipped to do that. So there's a big job ahead. I would say the two other things, one really very specific would be around electric heat pumps. And what you see is a lot of contractors who don't know how to install an electric heat pump or don't know how to maintain an electric heat pump. And so if you have policies that are promoting a particular technology and you don't have contractors who know how to maintain or install that technology, they absolutely are not going to market it, because they can't fix it. And so that's a big problem that we're going to have to write. How do you educate contractors about technologies? Because what we do as policymakers is we pick a technology, we don't necessarily think about how is this going to be implemented on the ground? Who's going to do this? Second though is while we're only focusing on federal policy as it relates to efficiency programs at the residential and small commercial level, you guys start thinking about regulators. Because there's a regulatory construct in many states where utilities have to go to regulators to develop the program, to have them approved so that they can get the returns, all of that. And so we can't think about this in isolation of what's going on at the state level and the role that regulators can play in the role out of these programs successful. And how do we communicate with them so that we understand, one, how do they build regulation in that particular jurisdiction? And is this a problem or not a problem? What are the nuances around that that we have to deal with? So I think we have a couple of questions up here in the back first and then we'll come up here. Hi, I'm speaking just in my personal capacity as a homeowner who's gone through some stuffing my entire attic full of insulation and then getting solar panels put on the front and getting an electric water heater, heat pump, etc. It is very complicated. And the thing that by far worked best for me was working with an organization that I have I'm not here to represent I have no affiliation with them it's called DC Solar United Neighbors. It is an organization that essentially acts as a concierge for a group of homeowners, they go in they assemble the homeowners and then they help them do an RFP and select a contractor and that at that point individuals decide if they want to go ahead with that particular contract. The question I would ask the panel is, is anything similar being done in the efficiency space? And if not, why the heck not? I mean, I think Brian some of these are some of these services on the commercial side might be filled with companies that sell financing products as a you know, outreach education arm on how to make all of these these elements work together. Well, typically the energy service company is kind of playing that concierge role for the building owner. So we're bringing we're coming in working with the building owner and we're bringing in all the different technologies and all the different contractors and doing everything on kind of an open book basis. So the yeah, we're typically not doing single family residential. The yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's there's lots of opportunity out there. It's just a matter of focusing on different areas and single family residential is not the place where our industry is typically filled. I mean, it's you just raised such a great point and I can think of other isolated examples of these sorts of concierge services. But you really need to have that sort of of organization nationwide to have any sort of impact. You just think about what you're putting the owner, the home owner through. Yeah, they've got a they got to set up an appointment to have somebody come in and do an energy audit, the energy audit auditors going to then kind of give them their their feedback, probably in a language that the homeowner doesn't understand. They're going to recommend multiple measures, some of which are cost prohibitive, some of which they might be able to fit in their budget. They then need to deal with different contractors to do that work. They then need to figure out how to do all of that and figure out the incentives that might be available. At each step, you're just you're just losing droves of people, myself included I might initiate that initial survey work, but I'm going to drop out by the end. It's just the hassle factor is immense. Yeah. And then, you know, and add to that, right, the complexity that every house is not the same. It's not the same. So it's not the same for every house. And so when you're thinking about organization, I mean, I've heard folks who invest in energy efficiency projects, and they say the biggest problem that they have, the biggest challenge is how do you aggregate homeowners, right? Because no one can go to every house in a block. So I need to figure out how do I aggregate three blocks of homes that I don't know who lives there. I don't know the state of those homes. I know I don't know what people can or cannot afford, right, and then educate them about what's available to them, what they can do. And so I think it's the way you do it. And you see energy efficiency for all down the Southeast is one way that they're doing that. TVA has some programs that are trying to do that with low income customers. But it is incredibly complex because the building envelope is different for every single person, and every household is different and who lives there, who's different, like all of that other stuff adds more complexity to it. That's why my hope is next week, DOE is going to issue guidance to the states for implementation of $9 billion in rebates for residential upgrades and an electrification rebate program and a whole homes rebate program. States will have discretion to use a portion of that money to match those rebates with the kind of market education program that you've just kind of highlighted. And I really hope that states do that. So we are very close to the end, but since we had a couple of special guests join us, we went a little bit over. But I saw your hand first. If you can go very quickly, then you will leave enough time for your seatmate to also ask a very quick question. So the pressure is on. Okay, I'll go really, really, really fast. First of all, thank you all for participating and organizing this event. As a community member that encourages communities nationwide to strengthen their local climate commitments, those communities strengthening their climate action plans seem to run into a hurdle when they work with schools, because schools tend to fall under different government regulations than say, say the city or the county. Do you have any success stories of communities that were able to navigate the complexities of getting insulation combined maybe with solar, combined maybe with heat pumps, getting that through without all of the red tape and hurdles and difficulties? That sounds like a Justin question. Yeah, I mean, kind of going off the last responses in our comments to DOE and working with them to form the programs for energy efficiency improvements in schools. We've been very vocal in the need to kind of build out those programmatic examples that hopefully live long beyond the funding that's available today. I know it's a challenge. I do know, though, perhaps more so than there is on the homeowner side, there are a lot of businesses out there that do specialize in working with schools and sort of understand both the regulations and the funding mechanisms for those schools. One example that always sticks out to me that we talk about a lot in our industry is the Milwaukee Public School District and we try to share the model that they have done where they have been able actually to do more to their buildings with less money by creating long-term effective plans that go out 20 years as to how they're going to maintain their assets. So I think you probably see it more so in those large school districts that probably have folks on staff that are sophisticated in building management. But we've been vocal with how DOE can use that funding to develop programs that may fit much smaller school districts or districts that are organized in various ways from a regulatory or funding standpoint. Brian, do you have anything you'd like to add from ESCO World? I'll just say that schools are a huge component of the ESCO market. So there are lots of great examples of schools where comprehensive projects have been done that include both energy efficiency and renewables and that two things go so well together that there's a huge opportunity that there's a lot being done but there's still a lot more to do. All right, you have the last one but we're talking about seconds. Rebecca here, Judge Washington University student. My question is similar to hers with the immense opportunity for job creation. How and will you work with public schools to give students opportunity who may not go to a four-year degree? I think that would be a great opportunity for like impoverished or middle-class community. Will you do that? Thanks. So I'll just direct you to the state of New Jersey has the New Jersey is it the Clean Energy New Jersey Jobs Act I think is what it was called. A couple of weeks ago PSENG just announced and reported out on their first year where they had anticipated hiring 2000 people in the first year as part of bringing efficiency and clean energy to right marginalized communities and hiring people training and training in the first year they exceeded their goal by 200. So 2,200 people were trained and employed in the first year they're expecting that they're going to need another 41,000 individuals in the next seven years 41,000 employees in the state of New Jersey for energy efficiency by 2030. And so if you're looking for a program that is obviously showing some success I would I would start with the state of New Jersey and happy to kind of give you a contact to see what they're doing there. Well thank you Paula, Kurt, Justin and Brian for helping us kick off the 26th annual Clean Energy Expo. I think they deserve a round of applause. Thank you so much.