 Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our briefing on geothermal energy this afternoon. And just like the weather here in Washington, we think that geothermal also is really heating up and that we all need to do our part to truly make that the case. My name is Carol Werner. I'm the executive director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. We are delighted to be holding this briefing this afternoon. Prior to tomorrow's day-long meeting providing an international geothermal showcase, and we are so glad to be doing this forum in conjunction with the Geothermal Energy Association, with whom we have long had a very strong partnership as we feel that geothermal is such an extremely important part of our energy portfolio that it is an area that we hope will truly grow, that it provides so many wonderful attributes and is such an important piece of how we should look at how we really truly bring forward a clean energy economy both here in the United States as well as in so many countries across the globe. And for too long, we feel that geothermal has often been what I often refer to as a stepchild in the renewable energy family of resources and technologies. And geothermal is an extremely valuable resource that can be used in so many different ways. And of course, an area which is so important in terms of as we think about the decarbonization of our power sector, the characteristic that it brings of being baseload power. So to kick off our briefing this afternoon, I want to turn to Ryan Mulvaney, who is the policy advisor to Senator Harry Reid of Nevada. Senator Reid has been a very, very long time leader and supporter of geothermal energy. And of course, Nevada is one of our great geothermal resource states. And so Senator Reid could not be with us. But Ryan is a very able representative and we're delighted to have you here, Ryan. Thanks for having me. Like Carol said, I work for Senator Reid. My name is Ryan Mulvaney. I'm sorry I couldn't be here today. Geothermal energy is important to him. And my boss is known for getting right to the point, I'm going to keep this short so we can get right to the briefing. For quite a while, the future of clean energy and geothermal energy, I think has been a classic test of willpower. The only question is whether we would persevere to create the right investment environment for geothermal and for clean energy to thrive. And why my boss has never believed that government is the answer to every problem. At least in this case, government has to create the right conditions for businesses to invest. So real progress has been made, especially after the deal in December. But it wasn't lost to my boss that work remains to bring more investment certainty to geothermal energy. So he continues to do what he can to make sure that the right investment environment is created for clean energy and geothermal energy to thrive. And work continues on that topic to the day. Beyond those issues with a tax scope, you know, my boss continues to work to improve the way that clean energy is transmitted in this country. And he was very pleased about the expansion of the One Nevada transmission line late last year, early this year, I'm forgetting which one it was. And he continues to be engaged on funding for geothermal energy and the FORGE project at the Department of Energy. So on those issues and more, I hope everyone knows that my boss's door is always open on these subjects. And we want to hear from you. And I'm confident that with the teamwork of the folks that are listening online and the people in this room, that we will have the willpower to succeed. So thanks again for inviting me, Carol, and to GEA. And with that, we'll turn it back to you. Thanks so much, Ryan. And I think as everyone knows, the geothermal has been very, very fortunate to have the kind of very consistent and persistent leadership coming out of Senator Reid's office for years and really bringing people together around that and around key policy ideas and strategies. So we are now going to turn to our first panelist this afternoon. And we are deeply honored to have with us Sakri Aksanan, who is the Deputy Director General of IRENA, which is the International Renewable Energy Agency. The Deputy Director General joined IRENA in 2015 as, in his current role, where he is responsible for leading IRENA's programmatic work and ensuring very, very close linkages among planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of all of IRENA's many, many activities across the renewable space. His career includes more than 25 years of international management experience in consulting engineering businesses, which is a very, very good background for the very important work that IRENA is about. Mr. Deputy Director General. Thank you, Executive Director Ms. Verne. Ladies and gentlemen, I must say that coming through the town and see the beautiful city of Washington in spring and experience the trees in Blossom is really a wonderful experience. And it's a pleasure to be here. And I must appreciate the opportunity to introduce International Renewable Energy Agency, our activities, and whatever, not so much, but something we have been doing on the geothermal field to this audience. So thank you. Starting from IRENA, it is an intergovernmental organization, and it has a very, very clear mandate. It is written in its statute. It supports countries in their transition to sustainable energy future, and it says that the agency promotes widespread and increased adoption of all forms of renewable energy. That's our mandate. And it, of course, includes many forms, bioenergy. There is geothermal energy, ozone energy, solar energy, and wind energy. So the whole spectrum. And if I would characterize today, it's not only the energies as self, it's the whole energy system as an integrated totality that we need to consider to get the mission accomplished. A little bit about IRENA. It is a fairly young agency. It's established five years ago, 2011. It is headquartered in Abu Dhabi and headed by Director General Adnan Amin. We have another office in Germany in Bonn, and that office focuses on technology, costs, and innovation. And then we have a smaller outlet in New York. It's a representation office to United Nations. But here to be noted that IRENA is not a UN agency. It is an independent intergovernmental agency established by its members. Our membership is almost nearly universal. So we have 140 states as members, including one non-state. That's European Union. And then we have 36 states under process of accession. So we have 176 governmental entities at the moment, and it is a very good achievement. And I would say it's also acknowledgement of our work to receive or to exceed the nearly universal membership in just five years. If I think about our operations and the focus areas of our activities, I would say that there are five groups of focus areas. One is technology. Okay, before technology, there are resources. Renewable energy resources, then there is technology. Third is technology costs. Four is policy and regulation. And five is financing. So if I look at what we do, almost everything spins around these aspects of business. And these are the elementary aspects of any energy business that is carried out by various stakeholders. And we could also say that we have three modes of influencing the global energy sector. One is to initiate discussion and contribute to the global debate on renewable energy. And in this we pay attention on the country's commitments, their ambition level towards renewable energy, their commitments, policies, INDCs, and then the different international fora play an important role. Our assembly which gathers annually is already developed to be one of the major global renewable energy events. But of course the influence continues beyond that. There are United Nations framework. There is G20 process. There is G7 process to which we also participate and various organizations and regional initiatives in which we are part. And then as well we have the bilateral engagement with our membership and different countries. Secondly, we contribute to the debate by providing information and data. And this is a very prominent part of our activities. So we provide the statistics, analysis, databases, and it's freely accessible to all. It's not so very well organized yet, but I still encourage you to visit our web pages and download some of our documents. There is a rich repository of over a few hundred documents from various fields of the renewable energy world. We publish around 50 documents and knowledge products annually. Thirdly, we provide technical assistance and capacity building services and we have created various mechanisms with our members, especially the developing countries, either directly or through regional cooperation and various platforms. We have worked with at least 90 countries directly and we have conducted so-called renewable readiness assessments for more than 20 countries. And one of our sort of products is renewable energy roadmap and these kind of roadmaps have been carried out for around 10 countries. Here is a list of the sort of brand names of these various products. Our flagship report is the Rethinking Energy Remap 2030. It's a global roadmap and then we have the national roadmaps that I mentioned, cost analysis, resource and global Atlas, which is a map-based database for renewable energy resources. As to the outreach and partnership, we interact with various mechanisms. One very interesting one is this African Clean Energy Corridor we discussed just before this panel. The idea is to interconnect Eastern Africa to Southern Africa and ultimately up to Egypt with the strong transmission links and the benefit of this to renewable energy deployment is of course obvious because there are certain hotspots in Eastern Africa for especially geothermal energy. There is the Ethiopia, Kenya area where there is an abundant resource available but there are also hydropower concentrations thinking about countries like Zambia and again Ethiopia. The purpose of the initiative is to be able to upscale the deployment of renewable energy so that the countries would not limit their efforts to their national needs but would consider the continental needs and then finally to do renewable energy trading across the borders and make use of the report fully. A very important focus of our operation is also the island states. So we do have a lot of program for various islands. We are not the financing agency but as I said financing is also one of the key areas of focus because it is so important for anyone who develops renewable energy projects. We have a product which was launched just a few weeks ago called Sustainable Energy Marketplace. It is basically a platform for project developers and the financing community to meet up. So it is a meeting place and in Eastern Africa we have already something like 30 to 40 projects listed and a number of financing agencies and equity financiers also registered into the system. They can meet, they can screen the financing conditions on the other hand and then the financiers can screen the projects and pick up some and establish direct contact for further negotiations. So it is a facilitating platform. Then we have a project navigator tool which provides templates and tools for those who are at the very initial stage of project development. So helping them to develop the project to a bankable state. Finally we do have a touch, even though we are an intergovernmental agency we have a touch to the very basic level of project development through one financing facility in which we cooperate with Abu Dhabi Fund for development. And it is granting concessional loans by the Abu Dhabi government but basically IRENA acts as a fund manager effectively for this fund. Something like 15 projects and lending decisions to the amount of 144 million have been already granted under this facility. Regarding the geothermal development I need to say that it is a work in progress but we are now focusing increasingly to geothermal site. We have provided technical assistance and capacity building along the lines that I described earlier, especially to the underst countries, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. And then the ADFD IRENA funding facility through that we have provided funding already to two geothermal projects. One is in Iran, capacity is 5 megawatts and the other one is in St. Vincent and Grenadines 10 to 15 megawatts. The project is actually in a quite early stage but still progressing promisingly. Regarding the other tools I mentioned Global Atlas and Project Navigator we are currently working to include the geothermal aspect to those. So it means resources mapping on the map base and then on the other hand providing a credible tool for those who enter the geothermal business to develop their projects. Finally I would like to mention the Global Geothermal Alliance which is a new platform and it is strongly supported by IRENA. It was launched at COP 21 in Paris last December and at the moment the alliance is at the states where the members are preparing the action plan. And we are very glad that the US government and also the US Geothermal Energy Association are members and furthermore I need to say that the US government has been very active and contributed positively in setting up this alliance and helping to draft its initial action plan. The alliance has some 40 countries already signed in and 26 implementation partners out of which three are industry partners, six academic and research institutions and then we have a lot of development banks and funds who have become partners. The deployment of geothermal energy is on increase but we all recognize that comparing to the potential there is lots to be done and the total potential sort of installed capacity globally around 13 gigawatts is not a very big figure, it's a good achievement but comparing to the potential there is lots to be done. Though GTA is now an effort to unlock some of the barriers and address some of the problems that come on the way and it operates in such a way that the members of the alliance can propose projects and initiatives when they have identified such barriers or problems either working in a country or working with a project and this kind of an initiative to work on that particular case is then presented to the membership who then evaluates if there are members who want to contribute to solving this problem and of course in terms of evaluating the prospects to which the alliance will take into the program the greatest needs and priorities will then be considered. The action plan will be finalized now during this spring and it will be possibly then accepted during the council meeting of Irena in the end of May or early June and we hope and look forward that the alliance would be in operation second half of this year. Thank you. Still a few photos about the mapping exercise that we have started its work in progress. Thank you. Thank you so much. That was a very, very helpful overview in terms of the role of Irena and the process moving forward with regard to geothermal and the involvement of countries in Africa, South America, etc. I think that is so, so important and exciting. So we look forward to seeing this new plan come out hopefully in May we're seeing. So we are now going to turn to our next speaker to Dr. Mesred Zemedkin who has been with the UNEP the United Nations Environment Program since 2011 where she is the program manager of the American Rift Geothermal Development Facility. And as part of this work and I should say that she also is a geophysicist, she has worked for also more than 20 years in the geological survey of Ethiopia where she was responsible for three operating divisions including engineering geology, geothermal and hydrogeology. So she has done many, many projects working as an international geothermal consultant working with many, many different companies with many different associations and governments. It is our pleasure to welcome you here today. Thank you very much Madam Chairperson for the nice introduction and good afternoon all. It is really my pleasure and honored to be here with you all and just to share with you my experience in geothermal development in Africa and also the role of my organization UNEP in the development of this geothermal resource in the region, in African region. And I would like really to extend my appreciation to the Geothermal Energy Association for inviting UNEP to be part of this panel and to share our knowledge and experience on this. So as you see that we will mostly talk on development of geothermal resource in Africa and particularly on the key issues, the context in Africa and the renewable energy and its opportunities for development because geothermal is one of the major renewable energy that really contributes to the socio-economic development in my continent. And the role of UNEP in this energy development specifically in Africa and give you an overview what the UNEP African Reef Development Facility Program is doing in collaboration with the member countries and partners as well. The key issues now is as you know Africa is really undergoing a sustained period of economic growth and also it is transformation. But it's dramatic population growth and economies are also developing and diversifying. This really entails a high energy demand for meeting that objective of diversifying this economic growth. So the next 20 years we'll see Africa reaping extensive benefits from global developments in the field of clean energy investment specifically. So opportunities exist for Africa to realize its economic and social development but that will be really by increasing the energy, the modern energy access in this continent. So I think the Africans now have a slogan a prosperous Africa based on inclusive growth and sustainable development that really requires a sustainable energy development. So the current scenario what we have in Africa is though we have 20 years from now and also back if we see that still we have an energy access gap, big access gap particularly when you see in the sub Saharan Africa. And the business as usual scenario is not going to work because there is a dramatic increase of demand of energy so we have to really work on a different issue and also trained. The investment gap we have according to the African Union commission of the program for infrastructure development in Africa really indicates that there is 6.3% of growth of economy and also the population growth that really requires a high demand of energy so you can see that there is a big access gap in investment of this energy. So but however as we heard always that renewable energy Africa is endowed with a huge renewable energy potential both even non-renewable and renewable as well. And as you see the geothermal Africa possesses a remarkable geothermal potential which really reach a more than 20 gigawatt and also it has abundant solar wind biomass and other results of energy. But Africa has now a big goal of its developing objective to accelerate the growth of markets of renewable energy and energy efficiency and also with the context of poverty eradication or elimination, economic growth and sustainable development there is a contribution of renewable energy. So the opportunity for energy development in Africa including geothermal is instead of talking about challenge it's better to tell you what are the really ample opportunities now in Africa is a variety of renewable energy resources wind, solar, hydro, biomass, geothermal and so on and so forth. And also the increased national and regional policy commitment. Now the governments of the African countries are really committed and developed their strategy towards the clean energy development that is really a very good opportunity. And the climate related financing we have by ADB the scaling up of renewable energy program the new initiative of the US power Africa the GCF the green climate finance the clean investment the climate investment finance emerging financiers also on renewable energy and the various global continental and regional energy program projects you have heard from the deputy director of arena that there are new projects coming up so in now in Africa the UN initiative of the sustainable energy for all and global geothermal development plan by the World Bank of ISMAP and the program for infrastructure development in Africa the new launched during COP 21 Africa renewable energy initiative where UNEP has played an important role in this big investment that is really also an opportunity the African Rift Geothermal Development Program what we have in African Union Commission German Development Bank of the Geothermal Risk Mitigation Facility these are ample opportunities for development of this geothermal. So now just talking about then what is the role of UNEP in these issues why energy why the clean energy. As you all know UNEP is one of the UN agencies responsible for environmental matters that is mostly concerned with environmental assessments analysis and guidelines so that is mostly to words you know in countries to manage the environment for their sustainable development goals. So UNEP has various thematic areas about seven I don't want to go in detail but the energy part is in its thematic areas of the climate change in the mitigation and Africa you know the UNEP has different kinds of the regional offices the African Rift Geothermal Development Program is from the regional office for Africa based in Kenya but we have different regional offices including the regional office of North America here in Washington DC. So these are where we are really implementing different thematic areas including the energy and climate change so the energy branch is leading this climate change mitigation which is based in Paris. So actually the main areas of this mitigation is to secure the transition into low emission development pathways that is to mitigate the greenhouse gas emissions where we are also focusing on the energy project development. The others are adaptation read and also the science and outreach but this is mostly that is focusing in terms of the energy part. So UNEP's contribution including in this regional geothermal development is mostly providing sounds policy advice. We catalyze public and private investments for clean energy development and stimulate the uptake of low greenhouse emissions and also the climate friendly technologies. I will give you example later on how we just really contribute in the RGO program in Africa. So the engagement mostly we are engaged in the sustainable energy for all particularly in the energy efficiency part and also we help the countries on climate change negotiations and also now UNEP is really playing a role on the agenda 2030. Yeah in the agenda 2030 off on the sustainable development goals adopted in September 2015 where we all the UN agencies and also countries are really working to really eradicate poverty and also for sustainable development in each country and the other is the launch of the African renewable energy initiative. So we just launched in Africa also the sustainable energy for all initiative. Now in terms of the sustainable development goals as you see effective integration of the environmental sustainability in sustainable development goals is UNEP what is playing a role particularly in its capacity to produce science based products including assessment of reports and scientific and technical guidelines. So in this case the development of renewable energy resource in general and geothermal resource in particular is a critical mass of addressing the prevailing energy poverty in Africa. These are the main issues that really related to energy the different parts of the sustainable development goals where UNEP is also working in this area. So the energy related projects you know we have a number of renewable energy projects but I will focus mostly on the main the Jeff funded regional African reef geothermal development program that is implementing by UNEP. So this program as you see you can see that we just are involved from exploration and we catalyze investment and try to really bring the public private investments to fast track the development of geothermal energy resource. So as you see here you have heard the East Africa Rift System is really a major tectonic structures of the earth where it possesses a remarkable geothermal potential where it has a different volcanic centers that are responsible for production of this geothermal energy resource. So the East Africa Rift system it extends here from down the dates down to Mozambique which is about 6500 kilometers where we have a number of eastern African countries in the western branch like Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, Komoros and here we have also Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique. That is where we are focusing even beyond the Jeff funded project and as you see the East Africa Rift System endowed a huge geothermal resource that exceeds greater than 220,000 megawatt. But if you see today we have only 630 megawatt that is being generated maybe more than 95% by Kenya which is followed by Ethiopia and other the East African countries which have called just a while ago none of them have reached at that level and the governments are really committed and they want to develop their geothermal resources they are really trying to revise their energy policy to attract private investors and also developers. You will hear tomorrow if you come to the panel the rise of East African Rift Valley geothermal development and from some countries including the UNEP program. In this case our response and the challenge we have is the upfront cost and particularly the risks associated with resource exploration. So in that case the main response we have is the UNEP Arjo Program which really tries to encourage both private and public developers by just trying to minimize the risk associated with resource exploration and development. Here I would like to recognize the presence of our Deputy Director of the Regional Office for Africa, Ms. Fatou. She's also attending just with me here from UNEP. Yeah. So in this case the Arjo provides just fast and targeted demand driven to the challenge of these East African countries to really accelerate these untapped geothermal energy resource in the continent. So it brings solution to really mitigate the risk associated with resource exploration. And we'll see how. Just to brief, to tell you the Jeff funded Arjo target countries are six. They are Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. But apart from that we have other seven additional countries where they are really using our platform in terms of regional networking, capacity building and policy advice as well. So our mostly the support activities are the technical assistance for surface studies that is mostly to mitigate the risk associated with this resource exploration. The policy advice to develop a clear and coherent geothermal policy and also the regional networking information systems where we are able to develop the African geothermal inventory database for the certain countries which is available for all public and private developers and they can get any kind of information related to geothermal in those regions. The other is awareness creation. We just try to talk to the high level decision makers, prime ministers, ministers and presidents to really create awareness, the use of geothermal and also to diversify their energy resources. And the capacity building scheme is also very important now where UNEP is really leading and providing a matured and institutional support in setting up of the African Reef Geothermal Center of Excellence with partners. So we have different partners. We have the African Union Commission, the Icelandic Development Agency, United Nations University, US Power Africa, IRENA and many other agents we have. So so far we have tried, just as I said, we tried to create awareness. You can see that even the late prime minister of Ethiopia, we were trying to take them to Kenya to show them how geothermal really can contribute to the development of their energy resource. That's how we ended up in Ethiopia the first IPP of geothermal through Reykjavik geothermal for 1000 megawatts with the investment of about four billion dollars. So these are the different ministers and what we have where UNEP is really playing a catality role for the policy and other issues. And also we create countries ownership with this. They are the leaders and also the ones who committed to implement UNEP is there really to serve their countries. So I think we can just briefly just see that in terms of the projects what we have done particularly associated with risks to mitigate the risk. The first two projects are one is in Kenya. I think most of you are familiar. I can see that who are board of even directors of the Kenyan geothermal development company and Kenyan. Here is we have we tried to help the geothermal development company to study the SILALI project and also to mitigate the risk and identify the locate target sites for deep drilling. The other is in Ethiopia in Tendaho, Dupti, Erobera. We just managed to produce this project pipeline and submitted to the African Union Commission geothermal risk mitigation facility where we created an operational linkage that really catalyzed investments. Now at this stage these two projects are now just legitimate for the German Development Bank and also for the French Development Agency to go for the drilling there in preparation for drilling after getting the results from UNEP. The other four projects now going on it's not only Kenya in Ethiopia. Many people when they talk about the East Africa Rift System they talk about only Kenya in Ethiopia. But now we are in a scenario there are a number of countries where you can see now Eritrea Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda. They really want to go for the development of their resource to confirm that whether they have this resource or not. So UNEP has really running this four projects in parallel. Now we are implementing it. This is mainly to catalyze investment for geothermal development. This is the mainly the African Rift geothermal database what we have created which is online. The Icelandic Development Agency this is the Icelandic Deputy Foreign Minister that launched this database. The other is UNEP is really actively playing a role in capacity building particularly through its BNL Argeo Conferences and I know most of you have been to these conferences it is two years every two years we just create this platform for capacity building and net working as well. And also we produce we prepared capacity buildings in with United Nations Universities and also with US Power Africa with East African geothermal program and also with the German Institute and also the Icelandic Development Projects this is demand driven and we do it only when countries requested for it. The other what we are currently doing is now the African geothermal center of excellence which is I think for geothermal that is in Africa is the sustainability will come when we just set up this kind of center of excellence in order to have to really create a number of skill power that will be handed on to this geothermal development. So the last slide what we have is the role that UNEP is playing as you see here is now this is the scenario the different stages where we have for geothermal development scenario this is the early stage where probably most of the green field by the public entity that has to be done where UNEP is playing role in identify projects we have the risk mitigation facility here created by the African Union we develop these projects and it can be done and then we need to bring you know the private infrastructure and then we need to create a good transactional advisors where the U.S. power Africa is really playing an important role in the region in this catalytic role. So our plan is now the country is now to develop 500 to 1000 megawatt by 2030 this is where UNEP is playing an important role. Our conclusion is that in the U.S. we have to develop the energy only the sustainable energy specifically also the geothermal energy so the private sector participation is crucial that's what we need and also the partnership and also is a very important role and you can see in terms of strategy now countries have developed their policy and have already ready for this and we will now turn to our next presenter who is Benjamin Matic who is the research projects manager for the geothermal energy association where he is really responsible for staying on top of the status of geothermal domestically as well as internationally and provides a lot of thoughtful documentation and research and analysis with to policy issues the status of the industry and whatever the association and its members feel is needed with regard to research and white papers. Thank you. Thank you for that nice introduction. Sorry for that. So I give you a little brief who I am with the geothermal energy association where trade association of 150 different geothermal power companies who work all over the world as you can see from this graph this is a graph of the different places that our companies are working and also on that is a nice picture of wondering where are the currently identified geothermal projects globally this is a nice picture of that as well a lot of European countries you can see the South Pacific Australia, South America is just beginning to look at geothermal power companies since the 70's a lot of people don't know that but in Canada is 60's, sorry 60's thanks Ann I wasn't alive then so It was born but yeah so there we go and just quickly what I'm going to do I think this will be a nice transition because we just learned about the international market about the U.S. and then I think Doug and Jack will talk a little bit about the U.S. as well and then if you didn't know what a geothermal power plant looks like because a lot of people don't you might drive by them all the time if you're driving out west and not even realize that is a picture of what one would look like up close down at the bottom and that's Doug's plant that's why he's looking at me weirdly that is the U.S. geothermal plant in Idaho okay so here is the forecast we've started doing for a few years now for the geothermal sector people often ask us where is the sector going the blue line is where we've been the dotted blue line we forecast we did three or four years ago so you can see we've already exceeded our forecast which is some heating up news good exciting news the top green line is announced projects so that's projects where a company or a country or a government agency someone who's trying to build a power plant utility said we want to build a plant by this in this state that is geothermal energy powered the bottom line is plants that have already started construction so that's plants where there's already holes in the ground and they've done flow tests and they know there's power coming out of the ground and that's why it sort of levels off because it takes 17 to 34 months to build a power plant so normally those don't get announced as quickly so 18.3 gigawatts a little over 18 by the early 2020s and almost 15 gigawatts of plants under construction right now so you learned a little bit about global geothermal lines in the earlier presentations which is working with IRENA and UN and a bunch of other international bodies that is the blue line that is the goal they want to identify they want to increase geothermal six times by the 2030s you've announced geothermal goals in the green of the bottom that is countries have set targets or utilities or regions or states or counties globally have set targets and that is what they have said they want to build by such and such date and the blue line is what we call geothermal potential geologists in the room get mad at me for how I'm about to describe this but geothermal potential is identified projects or resources globally and that right now equals about 200 gigawatts and that is just traditional hydrothermal resources that is not EGS that is not co-production that is not direct use those would multiply that that would raise that dotted stripe area probably by 5, 6, 7, 8 if not more times and so that's just give you a picture of what the industry needs to do to sort of meet that IRENA goal or DGA goal and what can be done in the future with we're talking about just one sort of sub like the most mainstream sort of sector of the geothermal industry one of the misconceptions about geothermal is that we are an old ancient technology yes it was true that the first geothermal plant was built about 100 years ago but so was the first solar plant so was the first wind plant if you go on you know pull out your phone and look on Wikipedia right now you can see right now sort of a couple things from this chart the different mainstream technologies of geothermal but you can also see sort of some technological evolution in the industry that light green at the top line is the expansion of the binary turbine which enabled the industry to build projects on lower temperature fields that we weren't able to do 20 years ago that and that you can see that now is growing to be about 16% of the market and we've just sort of started exploring those types of resources in the US there's tons of systems that haven't even been built on yet that are that could build those types of power plants you see triple flash which is a new idea of putting more turbines on a single field that just started being done a few years ago and that's the purplish line there in the middle you have the evolution of single flash double flash and dry steam which is sort of the oldest style of plant that is the plant the geysers out in California right now is a lot of dry steam type turbines if you were wondering where are these plants in the US here's a nice picture this is a map of EGS resources but I also picked it because it has traditional hydrothermal plants on it as well the black dots are identified traditional hydrothermal systems so that's where water already exists in the ground and we're going to pull it up and use that energy to make a power plant the rest of the color coding is EGS one I think the biggest takeaway I would encourage everyone to realize from this is that there's some type of geothermal everywhere there's heat everywhere in the United States so every congressional district, every county every state you could do some type of geothermal project if that's a direct use system where you're running a greenhouse if that is a power plant because you're in California and you have the best geology for building a power plant if that is I don't know why Alaska or Hawaii aren't color coded but Hawaii is a volcanic island it definitely has geothermal power so there's no one who farms alligators with geothermal direct use heating systems so it is a don't think this is a west coast technology it's an everywhere technology here is sort of a quick history of the geothermal industry and the US right now we are about 3.6, 3.7 gigawatts of power it depends sort of on the if you want to talk about net or name plate or the total potential of a specific turbine but you have PURPA which a huge expansion of the industry after PURPA was passed you have an expansion after the PTC ITC was passed in 2005 and a very popular program among some of the probably companies in this room was the GreD program it was a small $2 million program that helped give grants to developers to build projects 3 minutes off you'll always see this chart at any geothermal conference you go to this is geothermal one of the barriers of geothermal is the high up front risk and you can see that on the left projects get less and less risky as they go on so it's really hard to find investment even though it's not that expensive to start a project the expense comes later when you're actually building it and so that is why that the best types some of the most popular types of policy incentives that work for geothermal are ones that help reduce that risk in the beginning of the project so geothermal companies love the ITC because they can take that cash and they can reinvest it in their next project so the main point here is that projects that help reduce that up front risk are really popular and one of the problems with geothermal in the U.S. is we sort of had stops and starts of those types of incentives that have really hindered the industry to be able to grow on levels comparable with solar, our friends in solar gas or hydropower I mean here's one quick example there's many more of California California has built a system of very high asymmetrical incentives favoring solar over geothermal and that's why there's that famous duck curve which you might have heard about somewhere else in California they have the clean power plan gives an included solar, geothermal is not included in there there's a state tax credit rebate in California for solar there's not one for geothermal they get special rates for net metering we had someone who was trying to build a small distributed U.S. system for geothermal in California he could not get a net metering price for it and there's special solar wrecks and quickly people don't realize geysers was first built in the 60s it's one of the oldest geothermal fields and it could easily be expanded there's shovel ready geothermal projects in the Imperial Valley and up to over two gigawatts of potential power there that could be built either using California or exported throughout the west and then there's a few other locations like northern California that have lots of power that could potentially be built so that's all I have here's my email always welcome to shoot me an email if you have more questions it's what I'm here for and thanks for having me thanks that was a really good and very very quick run down of what the overall situation looks like on both the policy side as well as the resource side so I think we just have a lot more work to do to get more and more of that information out and also the whole hosts of technology applications that geothermal really can provide that I think so many people are really not aware of so we're now going to hear from that person who's plant we saw Doug Glassby who is a founder of US Geothermal Inc. and he is also the president and COO of US Geothermal and the company was started in 2001 became public in 2003 and US Geothermal has built, owns and operates three binary cycle geothermal power plants in the west right now and the good news is that they are currently developing a series of projects in the US in other locations as well as in Guatemala Doug welcome. Thank you Carol welcome everybody glad to have you here today I'm also the current president of the Geothermal Energy Association an honor that was bestowed recently we are a public company so I'll give our forward looking statement but we are as Carol said we're located in the western US we're headquartered in Boise, Idaho and we've been public since 2003 I have to learn how to use the clicker clearly so we are western US based of course we have a number of projects but we've also stepped offshore into Guatemala that was about five years ago we have the three operating power plants we have developed all those plants from scratch basically built owned and operate currently and then we have a number of advanced and exploration level development projects the geysers in northern California is our most advanced project followed by El Sabio down in Guatemala I came up today to talk a little bit about comparing I guess between what's going on in the US and what's going on especially in emerging economies of course in the United States we have a flat or declining grid load as a matter of fact an article just came out yesterday from the US Energy Information Agency in 2015 the amount of power that was sold in the US went down 1.1 percent we've gone down five out of the last eight years and when I started in this business a mere 12 years ago we were looking at one and a half to two percent growth rates and it looked like it was all sunshine going forward on selling electricity in the developing nations it's a growing load an expanding grid they're like the United States probably was at the turn of the century in the 20s and 30s when we had the REA and the government was out there building power lines, building dams and getting power to every house in a country in the US because we have a long history we have mostly smaller resources and many of them are moderate temperature we do still have a couple very large high-temperature resources are standing by waiting for development again offshore mostly larger and higher temperature resources so it's easier to build larger power plants that makes the economics better it's been mentioned earlier in the US our government incentives tend to be very short term and they're unreliable they get extended for a year sometimes they're backwards for a year or we get one week left in a year makes it very hard for the government industry to plan and develop projects we see of course in East Africa and places like the Philippines lots of development is supported by the country itself they spend money drilling resources the world banks there there's international funds everybody wants to put money into those areas to develop those resources permitting in the US on federal lands is difficult and expensive in the US where we do most of our work we're looking at 60 to 70% of the land mass of many of these states sometimes higher is federal land so we're forced to deal with federal permitting and NEPA to give you an example we have a drilling program we drilled last year some temperature gradient wells we designed and built those wells so we could re-enter them and drill them deeper if they were successful we applied to drill two of those wells deeper six months ago the well pads there the casings in the ground the roads are there we're still waiting for the BLM to let us drill those wells another thousand feet deeper it boggles my mind but what happens is everything's done at the district level in the BLM they have a high turnover rate of personnel and they don't have the expertise so every time somebody leaves an office and a new person comes in they start all over again on your project it makes it very difficult on these projects we do see relatively fast permitting I think overseas because again the government wants that energy and they want renewable energy most of all our government says we want renewable energy but it doesn't translate down to the district level at the BLM I can tell you that for sure for the most part in the US the exploration risk is borne by the developer we mentioned we had the GRED program a few years ago where they cost-shared drilling with us and that was very helpful for developers like myself and other companies trying to build power projects because it reduced our risk it's very hard to raise equity funds if you've run into venture capital guys they want 30% return on their investment that's just not the geothermal business we're selling electricity there isn't that kind of margin so it makes it hard to go out and raise money in many cases in offshore countries developing nations spend that money to do the drilling or there's international funds that spend that money to do the drilling and the developer just has to come in and build a power plant on an existing resource we also in the US have a plethora of low-cost energy options now natural gas is hit bottom solar is going crazy we've got public companies putting solar panels on everybody's rooftops it's just kind of a nutty place for renewable energy but it's growing fast in most developing nations they don't have those options yet so we have a lot of a lot of competition in the US which is always good of course then as I say last economics economics economics as a company we have to make a profit for our shareholders so at some point in this whole process after we drill dry holes, good wells build power plants, sell electricity we've got to be able to make a profit for our shareholders our countries goals I think have to be aligned if we really want renewable energy and I think the solar folks have had a bit of a problem in the permitting end of course they clear much larger pieces of land than we do but that's beside the point now as we dry our tears in the US it's not all bad news we have a great well-developed transmission infrastructure so I don't have to build hundreds of miles of transmission line to get to my project we have one of the most experienced geothermal workforces and technical teams in the world those same people now are helping in East Africa to build out other people's geothermal projects we have a great drilling industry you've got to have a drilling industry with that support in order to successfully drill geothermal projects if you need drill bits if you need drill steel whatever you need it's got to be relatively close by or the cost of drilling goes through the roof one of the big saviors in the US has been the state renewable portfolio standards it's states like California, Nevada really started I guess we've got Oregon now that's gone to a 50% standard just like California that creates market those utilities now are rethinking their goals they have to go out and find renewable energy they mentioned the duck curve maybe they bought too much solar in the last few years and they don't know what to do with it during the day solar doesn't produce at night very well so they have to start looking at folks like geothermal the department of energy has been able to maintain the geothermal technologies program and actually increase funding not just to help us with the hydrothermal program but to help with EGS engineered geothermal systems which is a real great future shot for us and of course back to the federal incentive the 30% ITC has been a real boon for our industry but the fact of the matter is we need a 5 year term we don't need a 1 year term 1 year drives us crazy when we do economic models for a project that takes 5 to 7 years to build and we only have a window we can go talk to our financial institutions and say well here's the price of our power if we have the ITC or if we have the PTC but we've got to know what we're going to have in the future and I'd urge everybody that works in congressional office either in this room or listening in to give us some help so last but not least why geothermal? it's a base load power source it's a direct replacement for coal or nuclear there's a lot of coal plants that are being shut down the state of Oregon just mandated shutting down its coal plants Nevada's done the same you've got to replace it with something you can do it with natural gas I guess it doesn't require firming power like the intermittent it doesn't require energy storage like the intermittent solar sounds really cheap until you want to turn your light switch on at 12 o'clock at night then you've either got to have storage or firming capacity and that costs extra money it provides grid stability I'd hate to be a grid operator today I have to tell you I've sat and watched a power meter a solar plant when a cloud went over they can go from 100 megawatts to 0 megawatts in seconds now grid operators are keeping us safe today but that's getting harder and harder for them to do it also has the highest job density of anti-renewable geothermal provides jobs some people don't care about that but I can guarantee you that the county that you're in and the city that you're close to does care about jobs and we're worried about the environment we have the smallest footprint and the lowest visual impact of any renewable technology and we have minimal impact to wildlife so to close I'd like to say that we like geothermal we think it's the best technology available and I'd be happy to listen to anybody's questions here in a little bit thank you very much and I can see why you're the chairman of the association so we now want to turn to Jack Thiroff who is the director of regulatory affairs for Enel Green Power and he has been with Enel Green Power for the last several years since 2012 and before that he and when we first met he was with the business council for sustainable energy so that he really brings a background in a lot of different renewable and efficiency technologies and Enel is in terms of Jack's work with Enel he is involved in terms of looking at regulatory affairs for both the United States and Canada at both the state or provincial level as well as at the federal level for North America so we are glad to hear from you Jack about everything that Enel is doing in this space thank you very much for that introduction thank you everybody for coming it's really a pleasure and honor to be part of the group today let's see if I that's definitely not the right button here we go so thank you and before we get going I actually wanted to pick up on a remark from from Ryan from Senator Reeves office about the test of willpower as a concept in the policy arena and also for geothermal development as you've heard from the first four speakers I think you've heard that geothermal is a fantastic resource fantastic technology provides a lot of benefits to the grid but it is a test of willpower it takes tough smart people to pull it off I think that's also true as we've talked about some of the policy challenges that we've had so I like that framing the test of willpower that's what the geothermal industry is about so what I'm hoping to do today is tell you a little bit about who we are at Enel Green Power and then I think you'll hear me echo a few of the reflections on the US market on the international market and then what unique attributes and policy are really needed to help drive geothermal development okay let me tell you what do we do Enel is part of a very large one of the world's largest electric utilities based in Rome, Italy but active in more than 30 countries we have about 90 gigawatts of total generation really all the above that includes nuclear, includes renewables includes fossil fuels again my responsibilities are just for the US and Canada but I wanted to give you a framing about what we're doing and where we're doing it and also to emphasize that our outlook and I think this is helpful for geothermal and just for renewables more broadly our parent company the bulk of our new investment is going into renewable energy that's not for our renewable subsidiary that's for the entire company it's a strategic shift and a recognition about how the world is different than it was five years ago we see renewables as the future we see decarbonization as a must not only for a kind of a social responsibility concept but for the bottom line of the business renewables are where it's at also with improving and strengthening the grid and I think that has a strong tie also as we're looking to developing markets where there's a need for infrastructure investment and there's a need for additional generation this is our footprint here in the United States we're unique in this market and that we work across four different technologies we do run of river hydropower we do solar, we do wind we do geothermal we're the largest owner of wind projects in the state of Kansas I think we're number two in Oklahoma we also have 150 year old dams that were old mill sites in New England that following PERPA were repowered and turned into renewable energy facilities and our geothermal footprint is all out west in Nevada and in Utah when I joined the company in 2012 we were just getting up to a gigawatt we're at two and a half gigawatts today so reflection of pretty rapid growth let me just say very briefly about these deep roots in the geothermal industry the first geothermal resource to electric production was actually done in Tuscany and that field and some of that infrastructure is still operating so we'd like to say that geothermal is really a jewel in the crown for Foranel an area where we take a lot of great pride it's obviously aesthetically very pleasing in Tuscany and it's part of the ribbon cutting in 2013 for the geothermal museum in Tuscany so when you're planning your next Italian vacation please do remember the Museum of Geothermal Energy I have not been but I'm sure it is quite lovely it's a beautiful place it absolutely is and just to give you an example I can think of two things one, it's a very established workable technology and technology is part of that as well and also just this is a resource that can work for a very long time and it's something that's very important to our company so here in the United States we have three operating plants two in Nevada one in Utah I will highlight the project far to your left Stillwater which is outside of Reno and that is a product that's been first in the world two times over in 2012 we integrated 26 megawatts photovoltaic next to the geothermal plant the reason we did that is a binary, air-cooled geothermal plant we're seeing dips in production during the hottest times of the year and during the hottest parts of the day those also tend to be where electricity demand is the highest because the ambient air temperature is high it was difficult to cool down the geothermal resource that was coming up and so the PV matched quite nicely giving us a boost of production instead of a dip and then just recently and actually we're going to have a dedication for this project in the coming weeks we're able to integrate a two megawatt concentrated solar power project directly into the geothermal project so the first time that PV and geo was paired also the first time that CSP was paired with geothermal these are say the art power plants there's a large amount of innovation in the industry I wanted to kind of contrast this with that kind of hundred years of geothermal history in Italy to say that the industry is innovating and doing some pretty exciting things we're obviously very proud of that project I'd like to point at it for that kind of map of all the countries where we're at that this is probably the coolest project in that fleet or at least that's what I like to tell our folks internally we are also putting into service projected for next year the first geothermal projects in South America this is in Chile a very unique project quite a high altitude a demanding project from a construction standpoint should be at 48 megawatts of total capacity when finished an exciting an exciting place for us and part of our company's real focus on Latin America for geothermal and for all technology to think it has a lot of promise okay so I think this will echo some of what you've heard before but looking at the match up between the market context and where we stand for policy there is a distinction in the U.S. renewables market geothermal is lagging behind wind and solar there are some kind of structural reasons for that we've heard a longer development timeline so from your first dollar invested for a wind project compared to a geothermal project you'll be selling electricity sooner for a wind project that obviously makes a difference for financing at times we can have a higher levelized cost of energy which can be an issue for us there's a more confined resource wind is the wind blows in more places than where it's commercially feasible to develop a geothermal project and on the policy side state policies have generally not recognized or rewarded the baseload characteristic of geothermal power plants we've heard federal tax policies just by their timelines have advantage technologies that can start construction and finish quicker than can geothermal there's a real mismatch in a way in irony now that the longest certainty is provided for the technologies that we do wind and solar too so I don't mean this in a biased way can be done more quickly so geothermal has the shortest outlook but also the longest time from start construction to being completed and as we've heard also a large percentage of resources is on federal lands which can make it more difficult to develop and just looking at some of the contrast internationally there is more growth outside the U.S. than here there is still geothermal is a player among the other renewable technologies not dominating but plays a bigger role we are certainly seeing strong markets in East Africa and in Southeast Asia we have a strong focus on Latin America and just reflecting on some of the why the differences the higher price of electricity generally in some of these developing markets where there isn't incredibly cheap natural gas available also growing electricity demand as we heard electricity consumption actually decreased last year compared to the previous year that's obviously not the case for quickly developing economies and we can also see places where government policy is more focused on the longer term potentially more centralized in the U.S. we have a more decentralized system tend to be short term in our outlook on energy policies and on kind of forced or organized government procurement so you know kind of the follow up to you know it's like wipe away the tears we think geothermal is a fantastic resource it is unique for a variety of reasons it's base load there's no long term fuel uncertainty it's resilient production zero to low emissions zero to low water consumption for binary plants it adds diversity in the power supply which we think is certainly important if there's a rush to one technology you can unbalance the system but because it is unique it also needs thoughtful and unique treatment from policy makers long term contracting is incredibly important making sure the incentives are paired up and equivalent for other technologies supporting mitigation of drilling risk efficient permitting programs these are all areas where we think policy can better sync up with what geothermal has to offer thank you thanks very much we have a few minutes remaining for questions and to really further this whole discussion so we welcome any questions or comments that you might have in the back there is a microphone coming if you could wait for it thank you very much thanks I wanted to actually ask about if you could take a little deeper about incentives and maybe the equity markets a little bit my co-authors and I recently finished a white paper on MLPs, REITs and yield codes so maybe whichever speaker I guess would like to take this but what your outlook is whether Senator Kuhn's MLP Parity Act unfortunately won't be passed but to have a tax advantage structure in this case with MLPs for renewables, geothermal included and then of course I think that and I recently opted out of the yield code in the US as people will know yield codes have experienced significant market turmoil just in terms of even in domestic context from a competitive advantage standpoint of how such projects play out internationally against other companies that are using tax structures it's a broad topic but I think it's pretty important I might try to just depending on for the room give a little bit of context and correct me if I'm mischaracterizing something and then we'll try to answer kind of quickly and coherently so the question is how do you finance these projects for products that have tax incentives how are you potentially making those credits usable how are you using them within the product finance there has been and just for context as well I will not prognosticate on what legislation might get passed or not but legislation introduced to open up master limited partnerships to renewables another level of investor into this market MLPs are currently restricted to certain fossil fuel industries and it's been cited as a driver for lower cost of capital for those industries and as you reference and now Green Power doesn't have a yield co yield co is essentially another financing instrument we're able to get more smaller investors involved and have a lower the idea is to have a lower cost of capital for investors who are looking for steady long term returns part of the reason why that works well for renewables is that these are very generally predictable projects you don't have a fuel cost input you're generally selling under a long term contract you can be very predictable and that can be attractive to a certain group of investors hopefully that's more or less framing it framing it correctly I will say for for looking at our experience here cost of capital is an important piece in looking at project economics but it's not a panacea it's one element and if projects are viable for the kind of larger basket of reasons in terms of cost in terms of of the cost of electricity you're able to sell at if those products are able to pencil out renewables have tended to be a pretty capital rich environment in the US and so whether there's a constraint on just investment flowing into the market I don't think we've seen that we haven't seen that yet that's not to say that the legislation isn't positive but I don't know that that's other policy priorities top level for the geothermal industry no I think Jack's absolutely right we've talked about MLPs for a long time in the geothermal business it would be another tool on our tool belt I guess I think more than anything we'd like to get some parity because all renewables aren't treated the same clearly when led the charge with the PTC for a number of years and it was always called the win PTC for about the first 10 years until the Energy Policy Act of 2005 when it really was adopted for use by all renewables including geothermal so and Ben mentioned in a number of cases where solar gets favorable tax treatment either on the state or federal level that geothermal or maybe win now it doesn't get so more than anything we're talking about parity being able to plan long term is a very big deal for us because our developments do take a long time you know typically when you have to collect win data for a year for let's say it's $100,000 and you can run out and build a win project most solar data you can find on the internet so you don't have to spend a lot of money to pick a place to build a solar facility geothermal is completely different we have millions of dollars and take several years to get to the point where we know we have a reservoir that we can build a certain size power plant then we have to get a PPA and then we have to get financing so the time frame is completely different if we can just get some of the legislation to recognize that and put us on a level playing field I think we'll do just fine okay great thanks whoa all right so let's start over here we'll start here and then we'll work our way around just right what are the most effective ways to develop geothermal energy in Latin America and what typical roadblocks must be overcome I will make sure you use your microphones okay I'm trying to okay red is on I appreciate that and I'll go first and perhaps can follow up as well definitely appreciate the question I will have to admit that my expertise is not in development in Latin America and so may defer giving you an answer that would be less than complete or informed but I will be happy to point you towards the resources that we've put out specifically on the project in Chile how it's worked and what our hopes are for the market going forward yeah I just make a quick comment I think what our experience has been is not completely unlike going into a state in the United States it's never had a geothermal development before many of these countries have never had geothermal development so they really don't know how to how to let you develop something from top to bottom starting with your first phase of exploration through drilling even in Guatemala for instance where there are two operating geothermal power plants they've been operating for 15 years or more but those plants were drilled by with international funds so the well field was never developed by a private developer they let out the power plant development so the power plants were developed on that basis they still have to figure out how they're going to give those rights to you because remember you have to own the right if you're going to finance something so that's a big deal not just finding it but making sure that the concession you get is solid enough so you can go even if it's to the World Bank and say I have a 30 year concession granted by the government right here in writing and you can rely on that concession so that when those guys lend you 150 or 200 million dollars they know that you're going to be able to carry out that project and have the concession in your possession now there's always political risk so we talk about political risk there's not much political risk in the US as I do in countries overseas because we don't know what the legislation is going to look like next year so that's I guess that would be my view on developing overseas it's been interesting though and it's kind of fun okay let's go these two first then you mentioned the size of the EGS resource and this is an emerging technology that really has big promise not just to develop a lot more geothermal power but also to mitigate some of that exploration risk Doug was talking about in Germany and France and other EU countries EGS projects are in fact developing because they do have incentives to get them off the ground so you know I would just like to comment on some of these incentives that we might like to see for geothermal can really help us scale using EGS technology okay that's a good point great go ahead so I think it's fair to say that you didn't get some of the love that some of the other renewables got back in December I just wanted to know what your thoughts were on why that happened how this piece sort of didn't fit in with the rest of the puzzle that was being put together and how you're thinking that solution to that might work going forward is that possible sort of just here on the hill on its own or are you going to need a future administration that has this as a higher priority what's your strategy I'll go first this time go for it I think we're taking a number of folks at their word and it was just a mistake it was an oversight geothermal should have been included in the section 48 fix so we're expecting a fix we'd like to see the congress, the senate house get together and fix it because it's fair and that would give us for instance section 48 gives you five years now under the 30% ITC and then it phases out well that's what we've been asking for give us a long enough runway that we can go out and do projects make plans, finance projects and I think you'll see a lot of development in the US if we can get that fix done there are a number of folks working on it right now as we speak we have people out doing congressional visits I'll be doing the same thing this afternoon and tomorrow so we have high hopes that they'll find a bill to attach that fix to it should be a relatively simple fix the senior members that agreed to this in the beginning all say that it was an oversight and can be fixed so that's our hope exactly just on timeline I think the discussion has always been this year it's a 2016 deadline and so the hope would be this administration this year and this congress is short on legislative days so I know that it's a priority for a lot of people and there is quite a lot of talk about it okay there was another question right there when you're looking to cite a geothermal facility what are the geographic slash geological slash topographic features that make a good site I guess I'll start you know when we started the company I came out of the mining business which is another business where you spend a lot of money trying to find things and I always said it was a treasure hunt so finding geothermal projects it's kind of the same way it's kind of a treasure hunt you go out and spend a lot of time looking and on very rare occasions you find that treasure that's a commercial geothermal resource having said that and looking at geology and all the technologies used to try and find the right place to drill we also look at something that's close to transmission because transmission costs money in a geothermal business as an IPP you have to pay for any transmission to get your project on the grid so if you're 100 miles away from the grid or 10 miles away from the grid it makes a big difference you also want to look for market as I said it's economics where in what state are they buying your power are they looking for renewable energy and that's why the renewable portfolio standards were so important because Nevada, California, now Oregon and a number of other states in the U.S. now have RPSs they want our power they're essentially saying we want renewable energy so those things are very important of course we've got a couple geologists that go out there and lick rocks as we say and they look at structural controls and there's of course a lot of geologic requirements that have to be met that have something that's large enough and without getting into the weeds that don't store enough energy because at the end of the day we're mining heat you know over tens of thousands of years this resource has been built up by a heat source it's a large body of hot water underground and it's taken tell me Anne, 100,000 years 200,000 years hundreds of thousands of years to create it and we still have to find it sometimes there's a hot spring at the surface that's the classical prospecting technique I'd say you find a hot springs we're able to sample that water do chemical analysis and get what's called a geothermometer calculation so that water could be lukewarm at the surface but it's geothermometer might tell you that the source temperature was over 350 degrees fahrenheit for instance well that's the kind of temperature you want to look for you might go to another hot springs and it could be boiling at the surface but the geothermometer might only be 220 degrees fahrenheit well that's not a very good temperature so there's all kinds of prospecting techniques that we use but we also look at proximity if you listen to some of the presentations tomorrow Guatemala for instance that project we have in Guatemala not only had some drilling on it previously but it's also literally on the outskirts of Guatemala city the largest group of people in Central America it is the load center in Central America and it's 12 kilometers away well that's a great place to be when you're trying to sell electricity so it really is a mix of a number of different aspects great thank you go ahead in terms of East Africa just to answer about the geographic distribution is you know the East Africa system it's one of the major tectonic structure where we have all the heat source you can see it at the surface in terms of fumaroles hot springs and also steaming grounds that's an indication and as just he said what we do now for example in UNEP we are trying now to really assist countries because by seeing only hot springs and fumaroles it doesn't mean that you have the resource there so we do an integrated geoscientific studies like geology we do the structural geology hydrogeology because we want to know the recharge and also the parameters for geothermal is the temperature whether you have a high temperature or not and the reservoir rock that's permeability you have and also the recharge so we do all the integrated geology geochemistry and after that we just ask the geophysicists to know to do to send some current and to tell us where the low resistivity is low resistivity means where we have the reservoir rock though that's the kind of integrated geoscientific study what the UNEP our geoprogram try to assist countries really to show the occurrence of those resources but it doesn't mean that for example in East Africa if we have Eastern and Western branch in terms of the Western branch hot springs but we don't have the high temperature as we have the volcanic centers so that has really also really requires a better study which can be used also for direct use application which is none power electricity but we can use also the enhanced technology like the binary unit for effective use of this energy so these are different geographical conditions that really contribute different source of geothermal which can be used as power generation or for any other direct use application in terms of incentives I can say that also the other incentive we have in the Eastern Rift is the risk mitigation facility in order to attract private developers by giving 14 percent of partial grant to the either to public or private developer of the cost of the well in order to encourage private developers this is one of the incentives we have then when it comes to developers we just you know in Africa they give like any other countries the tax holidays and also just to really import you know just equipments and other things are just tax free thank you thank you I know we are actually a little over time and so if you can make questions very very fast we ok we will take them and then that will be it ok go ahead to the back there back there first ok thank you a quick question for Mr Oksan how will the global geothermal alliance be funded can you tell us easy question yeah it will be a little part of its operation and setting up and coordination will be funded by the core budget of IRENA but the core of the operations is that the members collect the initiatives and they also then contribute to the actions so there will be voluntary we expect there will be voluntary contributions by the member countries and maybe by private entities if there is a commercial interest to solve some of these problems project by project thank you what role do communities play in implementing geothermal projects in Africa and how do the plants benefit the locals in terms of the local communities that is the member countries normally now they develop policy and legislation and institutional framework just to attract investment but the government is now also trying to do the green field to do exploration in order to attract the private investment because none of the private developers will go there when the risk is there and the resource is not identified so they are really trying to get different financing scheme even the governments and they do the exploration in the earlier stage with the different support programs like we are doing the UNEP and others and try to bring the developers at the stage of exploration drilling and in some cases for example in Kenya they really want to go further to really do also the production drilling and attract private investment because the main issue here is the PPA because governments want really to give an affordable and reliable energy resource to its nation where the private developers wants to go there invest and get profit so the governments are really playing a role to marry the students to things and to really accelerate the development of energy resources and your second question or community oh yeah thank you that's true one is the geothermal has versatile uses one is for power generation and the other is for direct use application and as a whole maybe I can use Kenya now is they are really if you go to Naivasha for example there is a lot of job creation and also for the local communities they build schools and also the water wells and other things they really get the benefit out of it apart from the power generation and in terms of direct use application now in Africa they are trying to really see to diversify and use geothermal power for agro processing aquaculture and other things where really the community can get the maximum benefit out of it because it enables so much other economic development as a result of having geothermal available in those different forms great well I want to thank all of our panelists very very much and it also seems to me that we heard recurrently how important policy is and that it just seems that the more that we can share those examples or policies that seem to be of the greatest help best practices among all of our whether it's states different nations internationally hear from the US to help be able to expedite and accelerate the development of the technology and its implementation we will all be better off so I want to thank you all very very much for coming and look forward to seeing everyone at the showcase tomorrow so thank you very very much perfect