 Welcome everyone to this session also on renewable energy and we are delighted to have a wonderful panel for you this afternoon and we're going to start off in terms of thinking about this we're going to look at a variety of renewable energy technologies but also different ways that people use them and so to start off we will hear from Reid Spolik, who is the manager of renewable energy for Amazon Web Services. So Reid. Thank you for having me. Hi my name is Reid. I manage renewables for Amazon Web Services. Many of you I would assume have heard of Amazon. Today's Prime Day if you like deals you should go on Amazon but I work for the part of Amazon that's Amazon Web Services or AWS. AWS is the cloud computing division of Amazon and is actually the largest cloud computing company in the world. It's about a ten billion dollar business right now with over a million customers and so when we're saying customers we're not saying individual people we're talking about organizations like Netflix and NASA and Capital One and GE and even the Central Intelligence Agency host their computing their cloud on the Amazon on the Amazon cloud and so to power that cloud we have data centers all over the world and those data centers use power and we have a goal of powering those data centers with a hundred percent renewable energy and that's my team's job is to buy the electrons that march towards steadily achieving that goal of a hundred percent. We have a goal of being to forty percent globally by the end of this year and we think we're on track by a based on a pretty exciting last year last year we signed four power purchase agreements for wind and solar projects in the eastern United States. A power purchase agreement or a PPA is when we agree to buy all the power generated by a new wind or solar project for a set price and therefore provide that guaranteed revenue for the wind or solar developer to to build the project get finance because they know that there's an offtake so it enables the project to get built. So we signed four of these the first is with a hundred and fifty megawatt wind farm in Indiana this went live on January started producing electricity on January 1. After that we signed an 80 megawatt wind farm in Virginia this is both the largest I'm sorry solar farm in Virginia this is both the largest solar farm in Virginia and in the mid-Atlantic United States right now there's only about 14 megawatts of solar in Virginia so this additional 80 is going to increase that fairly significantly. It is on the eastern shore Delmarva Peninsula. Soon after that we announced our 208 megawatt wind farm in North Carolina this is not only the largest but the only wind farm in the southeast United States. The first turbine just went up last week pretty exciting the first wind turbine the southeast US just went up last week and then then with finally we signed up the hundred megawatt wind farm in Ohio so total of 538 megawatts of new wind and solar making AWS one of the largest purchasers of renewable power in the world. When these four projects are built they'll be able to generate enough electricity every year to power about 150,000 US homes that's about the number of people in Cleveland Ohio is kind of how I like to think about it and so these PPAs are also building new allowing new wind and solar projects to get built and we get excited because this is a really big new capital investment in the industry all told publicly these four projects are gonna be about on the order of a billion dollars of capital investment they're gonna generate about five million dollars a year into their local communities in the form of taxes and royalties to the local farmers for example who are hosting the wind turbines they're creating 1700 jobs for the design and the construction and operating of these plants and also new roads you think about it to get these big heavy wind turbines into these often rural parts they have to build these brand new roads to physically able to do that and then the local communities have these nice new roads left over afterwards so we're pretty excited about that it's been a it's been an exciting year and we're hoping to continue to do more but part of the reason we're here talking about renewable policies policy is an incredibly important part of the renewable energy industry and we want to acknowledge how important that is and talk about how it how it helps us you know we'd start with the extension of the ITC and the PTC last year every year it felt like a going out of business sale in the renewable energy space and finally we have the certainty to budget you know when you're talking about investments on the order of a billion dollars in a year these are incredibly important business decisions for groups like Amazon Web Services and so to provide that certainty is hugely helpful for us to hopefully continue to make these types of investments in April we also signed on to a amicus brief to the Supreme Court in support of the Clean Power Plan that was Amazon Google Microsoft and Facebook we called ourselves the tech amici standing up and saying we the big tech players support the Clean Power Plan we've got a bunch of other ones here that we've been involved in a solar bill in Virginia there's a set pack provision for wind turbines in Ohio that we're actively working on and I think the one that at the federal level we're now starting to look to is the MLP Parity Act master limited partnerships are effectively a tax construct that that fossil fuel companies coal plants gas pipelines have been used utilizing literally for decades since the 70s and they apply to fossil fuel industries this this tax construct currently cannot be used for renewable projects tax benefit over here for for fossil fuel production not for renewable projects and all the MLP Parity Act says hey why don't we just have this same construct for everything so everybody's on a level playing field you know everybody always talks about you got to wait for for for renewables to be at grid parity well a lot of these fossil fuel plants have had been subsidized for decades so all we're asking for is a level playing field it's being looked at at the federal level right now it's something we are out in favor of we think it it provides the long-term certainty for the industry so that all energy generation plants you know are based on the same economics and we think this will help us continue to invest heavily in renewables going forward thank you for your time thanks very much Reed and we can't wait for you to be a hundred percent renewables and then then you can really big party right okay so we'll now turn to Jim Riley who is the senior vice president for federal legislative affairs with a we have the American Energy Association thanks and we're thrilled to have customers like Amazon and others you know they're one of the stories of the last year in wind there's there's several good ones that I'll touch on but one of them is that the largest source of new demand did not come from utilities but it came from customers like Amazon Facebook Google who are entering long-term agreements for the product that when manufacturers sell and it's something that as you said there's a lot of benefit to companies that are purchasing that last year wind remained number one we we lead the world in the US here with wind energy China has more turbines but the ones in the US are better and are spinning more and are connected to the power grid so are actually generating and delivering more electricity also interesting fact there's there's now more wind power installed in the world than there is nuclear which is something that as we look at the future trend we think that that will continue to grow in the US the number one source of new electricity that came online last year was wind more than solar and more than gas we saw a the third largest year for new wind installations coming online was in 2015 today there's about 75 megawatts or gigawatts sorry of wind operating in the US it is enough for about 20 million homes the number one state for wind anybody have a guess Texas by far and above the number one wind state today is Texas and again that's a trend we expect to continue for quite some time the the other thing that's interesting with wind is it's at the national level it's five percent of the US electricity supply but in some states significantly above that and but guess what Iowa is generating their average wind contribution from or electricity contribution from wind 20 percent higher lower higher they're at 31 percent last year South Dakota is at 25 percent and Kansas is at 20 percent so in many states obviously where there's wind wind is a big part of their energy supply and in some states on some days we're seeing even higher numbers in Colorado during a period last year they were over 60 percent supplied by wind energy last year was a record job year for wind 88,000 jobs in the wind industry that includes manufacturing that includes construction that includes operation and the US Bureau of Labor statistics which tracks all kinds of interesting things said that the number one the job sector that was growing the most in the US as far as percent increase is the wind energy technician in Texas back to one of my favorite states 24,000 wind jobs last year and and what's driving all that demand or a couple of things and then I'll talk about what needs to keep it going wind is two-thirds cheaper to come online today than it was six years ago and the technology that goes into building the machines constructing the turbines and operating them continues to drive that price down so that wind is delivering a low-cost energy source for industry for homeowners and for other energy consumers and one of the really good stories we also have to tell is that manufacturing of wind turbines is coming into the US whereas there was a time where some of the machines were built overseas and shipped here more and more companies are seeing this market as a robust and long-term one and they're building factories here because as was mentioned these are not small things that you drive through a city environment you you want to build them as close as you can to where you're going to construct them and let me just close with two things about the future and then we'll leave time for questions wind the wind belt runs pretty much Texas up the Dakotas that's where most of the the rich wind resources that's not where most of the energy demand in the US is so like other energy sectors wind is reliant on a robust transmission system and we don't feel we have what we need today so working with Congress working with the states to provide a more robust and appropriately located transmission grid will be something that the wind industry is involved with and then some of you may have followed the comments from last year where we saw this Congress extend the production tax credit for at the time of five years so we have about three and a half years left on that and the industry is working hard to make sure that everything that they can do to deliver on the promise that the five-year PTC extension lays out that they take advantage of that and that includes again continuing to bring down costs develop new customers and work on transmission so we're very optimistic about what we are seeing this year and the next couple of years just look continually strong for wind energy we think it will meet the demand that we see today and also continue the track towards a 20 percent target by 2020 as I'm sorry 20 cent by 2030 is set out by the Department of Energy so happy to take any questions thanks Jim there are a number of federal agencies that are very very important to the development of energy and particularly renewable energy and so we are now going to hear from John Kalish who is the Chief for the Office of Renewable Energy Coordination at the Bureau of Land Management BLM at the Department of Interior John all right well thank you I'd like to frame this discussion a little bit and then tell you who we in the BLM are in a way to to frame what we're going to talk about in June 2013 the president directed the Department of Interior to approve at least 20,000 megawatts of renewable energy capacity on public lands by 2020 as part of the climate action plan for us in the BLM this is our challenge and for a subset of it the staff this is certainly a passion being on the East Coast I feel real obligated to at least go into a very short description of who the Bureau of Land Management or BLM for short is the BLM administers over 245 million acres surface acres more than any other federal agency in the United States most of this land is in the 12 Western States including Alaska we also manage 700 million acres of sub surface mineral estate throughout the nation including 58 million acres of federal minerals underlying private surface called split estate and we manage these lands under a multiple use mission set forth in the Public Land Policy and Management Act in 1976 mandating that we manage these lands for a whole variety a whole spectrum of uses from mining energy development livestock grazing recreation timber harvesting while also protecting a wide array of natural cultural and historic resources we also manage and protect some of the nation's most scenic and natural landscapes including 221 wilderness areas and 25 designated national monuments and if you've never been out west to see your public lands I sure encourage you to do so as you can guess these vast stretches of public lands have a significant renewable energy potential and as such can contribute to the nation's renewable energy portfolio of the 245 million acres of surface we in the BLM have determined that 20 million acres have wind energy development potential 19 million acres of land have excellent solar energy potential and of course they're mainly in the states in the southwest the six states and vast lands in the 11 Western states and Alaska have an untapped geothermal energy potential essentially over a hundred million acres of that potential just a little history of how BLM got into the renewable energy business the BLM started in the wind energy business back in the early 1980s in the Sangagonial Pass near Palm Springs, California and if you've been out there you've seen the wind farms and the it's quite a wind resource 1982 BLM completed the Sangagonial Pass wind energy project EIS assessing wind energy development in that area and responding to development demand the first wind energy proposals were initiated shortly thereafter and Sangagonial Pass has developed over the years into today's 21 wind energy authorizations within the past encompassing 3,500 acres of public lands totaling a thousand wind turbines we do have some old ones around 65 to 100 kilowatt all the way up to two and a half megawatt machines and an overall install capacity today of 239 megawatt megawatts so this program is really grown over the years and really allowed BLM to kind of cut his teeth on renewable energy development we also really work to expand wind energy development on other lands throughout the Bureau lands that have excellent wind resource we developed interim policies that would guide that process for the rest of the Bureau but in 2003 we prepared a programmatic EIS relating to the development of wind energy on public lands completed in 2005 and this EIS analyzed the development of wind energy projects amended 20 I mean 52 BLM land use plans to allow for expansion of wind energy development across public lands and then BLM offices utilize this EIS and analyzing impacts and it was very valuable because of a set of identified best management practices designed to facilitate wind development and very importantly to protect resources on public lands the BLM then in 2008 issued more detailed policy and guidance pertaining to protection of of various resources birds wildlife habitat resource values visual resources really trying to make a wind energy compatible with other uses on public lands we also updated rental fees and bonding requirements and continue to refine the policy to deal with issues such as eagle protection facilitating project proposals by stating what should be in a project plan of development and ensuring protection of BLM lands through important through appropriate levels of environmental analysis the success of all this Bureau wide is that it has resulted in BLM authorizing 40 wind energy projects that total approved capacity of 5608 megawatts enough to supply the power needs and nearly 2 million homes in addition the BLM has authorized hundreds of wind energy testing sites with 59 pending and 23 authorized wind testing applications the BLM currently has 20 pending wind energy development applications over about 20 about 264,000 acres of public lands across Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming so the wind energy program is expand as expanded from the early days we are developing also a project is called the West wide wind mapping project it's a collaborative effort between BLM and DOE's national renewable energy lab and argon national laboratory to generate maps and geospatial data reflecting high value wind areas and potential conflict areas and this is really a way to focus in on the best areas for development moving on to solar the energy act of 2005 spurned interest in solar energy development on public lands by 2008 the BLM was receiving or had received 125 applications I was working in an office in southern California and I felt like we had 125 in our office just by ourselves it was interesting times in an interest to respond to that demand we developed a programmatic EIS with the Department of Energy that did some really important things that provided a blueprint for utility scale utility or utility scale solar energy permitting in these six states by establishing solar energy zones 17 of which that are areas of essentially low conflict areas of of high quality solar development potential but areas were low low resource conflict trying to focus in where we could in a more efficient manner proceed in processing solar energy projects and then last time we wrote very quickly on a geothermal energy development we do handle geothermal leasing across BLM and four service lands and 11 Western states we have in 2007 published regulations that dealt with competitive leasing simplified royalty calculations and providing administration of geothermal leases and presently we generate over 12 million million dollars in federal royalties that year each year with 50% of those royalties are shared by the states and 25% by local counties we have two things that are going on our competitive wind and solar leasing rule for public lands is in its final stage this rule sets out to address fair market value for renewable energy development incentivizes development and pre-screen low conflict areas and promotes a predictable predictability for developers in permitting and refining what are appropriate reclamation bonds for our wind energy projects so back to that goal of 20,000 megawatts renewable energy by 2020 we've come a long way we presently have approved close to 17,000 megawatts our efforts to make permitting more efficient and focus on development in low conflict areas will keep us on track and ensure that development is done efficiently and in the right places thank you thank you John and that gives us a good segue in terms of thinking about geothermal to Carl Gaywell who's the executive director of geothermal energy didn't know you'd make me sit next to my landlord Ali would you take a minute and pass out the I have a presentation which we can't show you we're gonna give you a copy of and Carol I learned the value of having structure when from David Brower famous environmentalist I was on a panel with David once and he got criticized by someone in the audience saying you know you just ramble you just ramble I always have structure to my time no there was no structure here I said yes I was it was the beginning when I started talking it was the middle when I was in the middle of talking there was a conclusion when I finished so this will keep me on track geothermal energy as everyone here is going to tell you has great benefits as they're so does win so to solar etc I want to note that of 39 power plants we bought on brought on nine in the last 10 years 38 of them have been essentially zero emission power plants so we've really come a long way and our prices have also come down not as much as win but they've been reducing we have firm and flexible output as well meaning for example the power plant in Puna Hawaii can ramp up and down to match the needs of the grid so if you had more wind and solder it can come in and help fill in those those blanks to meet the demand in a reliable manner in the USA we got about 3700 megawatts of geothermal installed we have we estimate we have 1250 plan megawatts into the development pipeline that's about a 30% increase in the pipeline but that's still only a fraction of the resource the USGS estimates there's at least 30,000 megawatts of conventional resource yet to be developed and the MIT study looked at advanced technology called EGS which could bring on another 100,000 megawatts in short we have great potential for enormous growth in the future and we're for relatively optimistic the some of the things they have is optimistic are the PATH Act the PTC was extended at least to the end of next year we did not get the generous treatment solar and wind got but we're hoping that Congress will address that and I'll get that done in a minute but at least this year projects that start will qualify for the production tax credit the Senate has passed the Energy Policy Modernization Act which includes significant provisions to help streamline the leasing and permitting for geothermal projects and what we're seeing at the state level has is very optimistic with California, Hawaii, Oregon and other states looking like they're going to major RPS's which is the RPS's as they move up to 50-55% we think are going to have more room for geothermal assembly because of the analysis which is now underway in California. CERT the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies worked on a low-carbon grid study there's one of the findings in their study was that a diverse portfolio gave better results so for example they looked at one case called the heavy solar case where they had 55% renewables with solar dominating new procurement they compared that to a case where they substituted 1250 megawatts of base load power for solar or actually for 3,800 megawatts of solar that case came in with almost no curtailments and the actual cost was $1.1 billion less per year to have a diverse portfolio with technologies such as hydropower, geothermal, biomass involved as well so you can see as you move out to these high renewable portfolio standards the value of other technologies becomes important to recognize I'm not saying that we will replace solar or wind in terms of total megawatts but it's getting the right mix and that's where the states are clearly headed and particularly in the West which is where geothermal has most of its technology so what are what's holding us back in the market or the asymmetrical subsidies that the PATH Act also had a small problem that it treated different technologies differently 2005 energy policy I would say and I think Jeff would agree was the first time there was an attempt to make sort of a across-the-board treatment of renewables with incentives PATH Act really singled out wind and solar for major benefits left everyone else hanging there's been a lot of discussion about what we call the orphan technologies but we hope that Congress will find time this year maybe in September to address that and pick up some of the issues that loved hanging back back in December we also the other things holding us back at the state level it's the states often look at what's cheapest they're not they're trying to figure out how do we make this into a system-wide element or just look at what's the cheapest thing to do to my house today if I have to put an insulation my rope or insulation my windows but look at it as a system and say what technologies fit in that system and as I said the search study and others E3 study and other studies are showing that the systems approach means that based on technologies and geothermal will get more of a role in the coming markets and of course natural gas prices remain low compared to the US the world market is going very strong we're seeing sustained strong growth in the world market where we're seeing 13 gigawatts today we're estimating that by 2020 there'll be an additional 5 gigawatts or more online worldwide in the US we can't make that prediction given the short-term nature of the tax credits it's going to be difficult to come up with any prediction for the United States today but I think the per Washington there are three key issues first is equalize the tax credits come in with a cross-the-board long-term tax credit that applies to all the renewable technologies based upon their carbon reduction or some other factor that's rational and systematic it's a number two is leasing and permitting that's not to beat up on the BLM because their problem is often resources I mean you're talking about when you're in the office in California the problem wasn't they didn't have enough people coming in asking for permits they didn't have enough people to process the permits many offices I've seen the problem there is resources they need to have the people to do the job right and then they need to have Congress write laws which they can administer properly and then lastly R&D and I want to command the Department of Energy for a strong R&D program for geothermal I think their new forge effort is really looking at the advanced technologies that we need and together the tax equalization leasing and permitting such as proposed by the DEA by the Senate energy bill and good R&D program will make a strong future for geothermal in the U.S. and worldwide so with that I'll take questions thank you Carol. Okay thanks Carl and I must say I think that geothermal is a very underappreciated renewable resource that actually we have in this country and quite abundant so I really encourage you to learn more about it it's very very important base load technology as well so it's again part of the whole family of resources and so we're going to talk about another important base load technology as well as part of this whole family and we are very glad to have our neighbor from the north Jacob Irving who is the president for the Canadian Hydropower Association. Thank you very much Carol and thank you we really honor the opportunity to be able to come and speak about hydropower from a Canadian perspective and widen the perspective a little bit to a North American one and really appreciate it. So I'll ask a question to the room when they do cross statistical analysis of professional sports who comes up as the number one professional athlete of all time any guesses yeah now Ali I think would probably win in terms of individual for sure for professional sports teams professional team sports and yeah you guessed it it's Wayne Gretzky beats up Michael Jordan beats up Babe Ruth beats up many others and why few different reasons one of them is that in his career he had 3,000 points number two I'm rounding number two behind him is Mark Messier with about 2,000 points so Wayne Gretzky is one and a half times ahead of the number two ranking person he's untouchable and it also just so happens that Mark Messier scored many good many of his goals racked up a good number of his points while he played with Wayne Gretzky for about four years and the reason why this is important is Wayne Gretzky is considered the best of all time because yes he does hold the scoring record he has scored more goals than any other hockey player and he is a country mile ahead of the number two in that department as well but they call him the great one because he also has the largest number of assists he set up more players than any other Mark Messier was the beneficiary of this and so what does this have to do with hydropower and and and Canadian hydropower in particular I often like to say that hydropower is the Wayne Gretzky of electricity generation in can't in the Canadian context it is the greatest and why because it is clean and renewable in its own right Wayne Gretzky was the number one goal scorer in Canada hydropower is the number one source of electricity generation it's not just the number one renewable source of electricity generation it's the number one source of electricity generation in Canada it's over 61% of our electricity that's how we make electricity in our country but it also makes other forms of generation great the new renewables that are coming on in Canada and the United States wind and solar and the assistance that they sometimes need an integrating to the grid while hydropower is the most dispatchable form of electricity generation that there is point finale if you put aside even issues of climate change and pollution etc you would still be building hydropower today because it is the most dispatchable form of electricity you can turn it on and off faster than any other source and so in Canada our great one our hydropower enables the other new renewables that are coming on and that is all to the good the more incremental wind and solar you can bring on and that you can graft on to the backbone of a Canadian hydro system the better it is for Canada the United States in the world in terms of driving down greenhouse gas emissions so this is something that we're very good at and as I often put it I think in the Canadian context and I'm proud to proclaim this and I'm even proud to debate it with people at different forum hydropower is in Canada anyway hydropower is the best way to make electricity is it the only way no is it perfect no one is but when you look at the way that it's created and the way that it helps other forms of generation it's the best choice and so we're very proud of the fact that it's number one source 61% of our electricity but the good news I would like to share with everyone here is that it is growing and then it can grow even more in the last 10 years we've brought on about 5,000 megawatts of new Canadian hydropower and over the next 10 years will bring on about another 5,000 megawatts and we are interconnected with you we do trade electricity back and forth our two countries Canada's a net exporter of electricity we send you more electricity than you send us but the majority of what we send you is hydropower it's about 80% of the electricity we send you and you in turn use that to drive down your emissions every terawatt hour of hydropower that we send you drives down U.S. emissions but you also use it to firm up your other renewables your wind and solar and it works out to be quite a good arrangement in fact in the middle of the continent we have a stellar example of international cooperation not just energy policy but international cooperation between the province of Manitoba the states of Wisconsin Minnesota and North Dakota and this is energy policy by design between the two countries it's it's three states one province in two countries getting along to have each other's clean renewable electricity enable each other and what's essentially happening is that the wind in North Dakota is being unlocked in part by Canadian hydropower to the north the load centers are Minnesota and Wisconsin and what will happen is new wind energy will come in and feed those two states it will lessen their reliance on coal and other emitting sources it'll drive down their greenhouse gas emissions but of course what happens when the wind doesn't blow and it needs to be backed up that's when you look north to us and Manitoba to the north is blessed with hydropower the province itself is 98% hydropower driven it gets all of its electricity practically from hydropower and what it will do is when the wind isn't blowing in North Dakota it will send down dispatchable Canadian hydropower to back it up and so what we have between our two countries is we have a stellar example of clean renewables enabling clean renewables and the best backstop to wind and solar and others is hydropower because it is the most dispatchable form of electricity you can turn it on and off faster than any other and it is also clean and renewable in its own right so what I mostly wanted to do is just share with you this good news let you know that we already have these arrangements but also let you know that as much hydropower as we send you and as big business and as important as this is to Canada it represents less than 1% of your annual electricity consumption in the United States so this good news is less than 1% of your electricity we humbly submit that maybe that should grow a bit if it grew to 2% we'd be over the moon and you might not even notice and this and this is the kind of opportunity that we have before us and I'll just end it by backstopping that I think that our leadership of our countries get this your president came to visit us in Ottawa just a couple weeks ago and there was a along with the president from Mexico and you may all be aware of the new target and the target is going to be to have 50% of North America's electricity be clean by 2025 it's an ambitious target I think it's quite doable right now we're about 37% we want to grow to 50 one of the reasons why we are at 37% is because Canada disproportionately contributes to that base we're quite we're a big part of that base one of the reasons we'll get to 50 is because we can really help you all you've got to do is let us and so we're just here to say that we've got a great arrangement things are going terrific let's just do more of the same to our mutual advantage thanks okay Jacob do we get free maple syrup to go with the maple syrup will cost you okay so we're now going to turn to the other part of the North America hydro situation and we'll hear from Jeff Lehi who's the deputy executive director of the National Hydro Power Association well I feel like Jacob just you know basically did everything I needed to do with my presentation but really what I'll do is I'll talk a little bit about what's going on in the United States which is a little bit different than what's going on from Canada in in scope and also in the new development that we're working on some statistics for you hydro power makes up six to seven percent of total electricity generation in the United States today a little less as a percentage than Canada but still for our system a significant amount of clean renewable electricity that translates into almost half of all renewable electricity generation in the United States today just under half so if you add up all of the renewables and their generation we make up the other half of that generation currently and that's even in a year in 2015 where states like California and the Southwest had a significant drought and reduced generation in that year the hydro power industry in the US the my organization we represent any technology that makes power from water so that includes conventional hydro it includes pump storage resources which if you don't know what that is you can talk to me afterwards and also now new marine energy and hydrokinetic technologies as well so all of those member companies are involved in my organization every state but two has hydro power generating facilities in them I think it's Mississippi and Delaware are the only two states that don't have hydro power facilities but every state gets hydro power generation provided to them by one of the companies that that owns it and in some parts of the United States obviously we are very much like Canada the Pacific Northwest gets 70 to 80 percent of their electricity from hydro power US hydro power again which forms the backbone for bringing in a lot of other renewables into that system as well one of the big misconceptions in the United States today is that there is no growth potential in the hydro power industry and that is completely false and as a matter of fact one of the key things I want to leave you with today is that in about two weeks the Department of Energy is scheduled to release a hydro power vision report very similar to what was done for the wind industry several years ago we've been working as a partner with them I think as we did on the wind vision for the last two years we're very excited about it so stay on the lookout for that again that should come out in about two weeks we're going to be in Minneapolis Minnesota both Jacob and I for an international hydro power conference well that will be released it's first of its kind it'll talk about the contributions of the existing hydro power system what it means in terms of emissions reductions and and costs and benefits but then it'll also talk about growth opportunities I also want to talk about two couple of energy policy priorities and Carl mentioned this and I think some others in the earlier panels have mentioned this Carol we should have had you like giving us updates on whether or not the Senate has voted to go to conference on the energy bill which is about to happen in about five minutes I think but the energy bill both for us in the Senate and in the House contains important provisions for hydro power licensing improvements for R&D for the new technologies like marine energy and hydrokinetics as well as for the promotion of new development of all types of hydro power in the United States domestic development including pump storage so we are very much looking forward to that vote and we hope that it will be successful we believe it will be and obviously that the Senate and the House can get to the work of the conference and get to an energy bill by the end of the year the second issue that raises again the tax incentives as many of you have heard and I think as what sometimes is lazily reported in the press is that renewables received long-term extensions at the end of 2015 that is not the case not all renewables received long-term extensions at the end of 2015 hydro power marine energy did not as Carl mentioned did geothermal biomass biogas a whole bunch of technologies will see their extent their incentives expire at the end of the year that will be a devastating blow to realizing some of this potential that is going to be coming out and analyzed in this DOE report if we do not see those tax incentives extended by the end of the year so we have plenty of opportunities for new development my industry and our developers are very engaged in this issue we are looking to partner with other companies including the end users who may ultimately be utilizing some of that power that would come from those projects you know as was mentioned before some of the high-tech companies like Google like Facebook like Microsoft like Yahoo they like hydropower rich areas of this country because we do provide predictable affordable low-cost generation so and they have cited their facilities in areas which do rely heavily on hydropower so I think I'll end it there so that we can get to questions I thank you very much for your attention particularly as you had to sit through six of us to get to this point in the conversation so thank you once again thank you