 Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the 20th annual Congressional Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Expo and Policy Forum. We are very very glad that you are here with us this morning and we think that we've got a lot of exciting speakers, a lot of very wonderful exhibits, a lot of people for you all to meet and and share ideas, conversations with and please make sure that you visit the exhibits in both the Gold Room in 2168, which is just right around the corner when you leave here as well as the Rayburn Foyer just down the hall from from this room. My name is Carol Werner. I am the executive director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. EESI is a non-profit organization set up by a buy set up in the mid-80s by a bipartisan congressional caucus that was very concerned about energy and environmental issues. We were set up to provide education to work for solutions to try and build consensus. We are not government funded at all, but we have a mission of providing education and as I said, working for solutions. So part of all of that involved becoming part of the Sustainable Energy Coalition and EESI was a founding member of the Sustainable Energy Coalition, which is sponsoring organization along with the House and Senate Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Coalitions. So again, welcome today and we are very, very glad that you are here for our very first panel this morning. As you know, there are several panels going throughout the day that are looking at all of the issues that are being covered by all of the people who are here with exhibits in both the gold room and in the foyer. And so to set the stage for our first panel, we will hear from four speakers. The first of whom is Scott Sklar, who is the steering committee chair for the Sustainable Energy Coalition. We will then hear from Ruth McCormick, who is the director for federal and state affairs of the Business Council for Sustainable Energy. Then from Lynn Abranson, who is the executive director of the Clean Energy Business Network. And the final speaker in this panel is Deborah Stein, who is professor of practice for engineering and the public policy department for the Scott Institute for Energy Innovation at Carnegie Mellon. So we welcome you all here and we will now start our panel. Scott, take it away. OK, excellent, Carol. Thank you. So welcome. I'm Scott Sklar. I chair the steering committee's Stable Energy Coalition. I have a 17 year old company that blends all the clean energy technologies, high value energy efficiency, energy storage, and all the renewables globally. I have projects on every continent, including Antarctica. And I teach two interdisciplinary courses on sustainable energy at the George Washington University, sponsored by the engineering school, the business school, the law school, and the science part of the arts and science school. And in fact, for my classes, which I'll leave outside, I have my students read 32 studies, which are peer reviewed and which show that if you take the entire portfolio of the clean energy technologies that I mentioned with technology we have today, we can all meet our entire energy needs in this country and on this planet economically with technology. Again, we have today. I won't test you on it, but I will leave the list outside. So I thought might be useful. I'm going to, I used to cover these studies in this opening. I'm not, I want to tell you the 10 things you should know that happened since December 31st of 2016. So first on, released in January of 2017, a United Nations environmental program study with Frankwood School noted that 55% of all new electric generation coming online on this planet came from renewable energy in 2016. So of new power coming on the global grids, more than half. First time ever. Also reported in January of this year was that the world not only added more renewable energy capacity, but 23.7% of global electricity comes from all renewable energy sources. So a fifth of the power on this planet now in electricity comes from the blend of clean energy sources. The second fact you ought to know is renewable energy constitutes nearly 19% of US renewable total electric capacity. So, and that is growing. We have nearly 222 gigawatts worth of power or 222 nuclear power plants worth of power and more than 17 gigawatts were added in 2016. So that's a new thing you should know. Starting in March 2017, we're starting to move down the year. California electricity demand for the first time reached 40% of their entire load. Now California is the fifth largest economy in the world. So that's an important note. Again, these are all all the renewable energy technologies. In April 12th, Nevada energy exceeded states 20% renewable energy mandate trees received 26.6% of their electricity in the state of Nevada from renewable energy. In April 10th, Portland County, Portland, Maine said it will go 100% renewables and is already over 50% meeting its energy needs. The sixth thing you should know at the end of 2016, 26% of Hawaiian electric ratepayers received their electricity from solar energy. So and followed by 29% for wind and 19% for biomass. So we're starting to see the state of Hawaii, which also voted to be 100% renewable energy. In May of this year, May 26th, solar panels met 25% of the electric demand of the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom has the same solar as Vermont, so that's as somebody says, huge. At the same time, also in May, renewable energy record hit 85% of all electricity of Germany came from renewable energy, offshore wind, on land solar and biomass principally. 85%, you're listening to the nonsense that's coming out that our grids may fail because we have all this new technology coming on. Well, Germany is the fifth largest economy in the world and they didn't go out. They're not blinking out. In April, renewable resources in the United States exceeded nuclear generation this April. So renewable energy is growing as the leading new source of high technology. Another study was released by a group of the National Labs on the Western power grid. And what their job is, one of the complaints that utilities have said about variable renewables, that means solar and wind, that it costs more because utilities have to have all these peak or power plants around, just in case the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining. And they found, yes, it would cost the utilities about $200 million more per year to keep these peakers going, but they saved $7 billion a year in reduced energy cost. So $200 versus $7 billion, I think it's a net positive, don't you? And then lastly, as of July 4th, we have had 30 studies commissioned by states on the value of solar. A lot of utilities have been saying, oh my gosh, all this new technology is going to cause horrible results. Of the 30 value of solar studies commissioned by states, the utility commissions, only three had some questions about solar's value. And the other 27 saying it added high value to the stability and reliability of the grid. So I am here to tell you that technology evolves along with people. You know, I started, sadly, being an older guy, on long playing records, and then I went to 8-track tapes, and then I went to cassettes, and then I went to CDs, and then I went to DVDs, and now I'm on MP3 players. And I'm sure the previous industries were very upset that they were going down the tubes. There are not a lot of 8-track manufacturing companies left in the world. I'm very sorry about that, but the fact is technologies have to evolve. And in 1970, our only phone company said that cellular was a whim. Who in a country that has 99.7% quality service would spend 15 times more for a unit of communication? I'm here to tell you everybody. Cellular is more convenient, it's safety, we have data. I have tons of dial phones in my attic, if any of you want them, hard to carry around, but I'm happy to give it to you. So the point I leave with you today is technology has to evolve, and this evolution of this entire portfolio of clean energy technologies that you're going to see in these both exhibit halls, typify what the future is, and it's going to be elegant integration, it's going to be more resilient, it is going to be lower cost, there's going to be higher rate stability, and most importantly, it's going to use less water, because in the United States, we use more water to extract, convert, and use energy than we do to grow our food. And we don't have enough clean water for all these other things that we used to do in the 18 and 1900s. So thank you very much. So we're now going to hear from Ruth McCormick with the Business Council for Sustainable Energy. And the Business Council has been part of the Sustainable Energy Coalition for many, many years. Wonderful folks to work with. So before I get started, I want to let those of you in the back know that there are seats up here with your names on them. So they're here for you. We can see the names. Yeah, so I want you to come sit down. Don't be shy. So there's two seats right here. Awesome. Okay, great. Well, thank you for the opportunity. And so today's panel, this first one is called Setting the Stage. And to do that, there are three things that I would like to do. The first two are some shout-outs. The first shout-out goes to Carol Werner and her staff at the Energy and Environment Study Institute for the phenomenal effort that went into putting today's event together. I participated for a number of years, probably now going on 10 years. And it's been a tremendous event and a great opportunity to showcase some of these new technologies that Scott has been talking about. So thanks to Carol and her staff for all of her effort. And I know this was a particularly challenging year with the Cannon Building being renovated and having to make this shift over here to the Rayburn Building. But we're glad to be here in a new venue. The second shout-out goes to Nikola Tesla, who was the Serbian-born American inventor of our electric grid. Yesterday, Monday, July 10th, would have been Tesla's 161st birthday. So a lot of credit goes to him for what we have today, including cell phones and electricity. So happy birthday to Nikola Tesla. Also, the third thing that I really want to cover is some of the trends that are happening in the energy sector. Since those days when Nikola Tesla first generated power at the Niagara Falls hydroelectric facility, which provided power to the Chicago World's Fair. There have been a lot of transitions. As Scott mentioned, there have been a lot of technologies that have come online. And I wanted to share with you a little bit about what some of those trends are. I know that Scott touched on some of them himself and his remarks. But as he talks about it, it's important for the different technologies to talk to each other. Because there's a portfolio of technologies that work together that can bring about a clean energy economy. And the Business Council for Sustainable Energy encompasses those technologies. So our organization is a trade association of trade associations and businesses from the renewable energy, energy efficiency and natural gas sectors. So most of the renewable energy trade associations, solar, wind, fuel cells, geothermal are members of the Business Council for Sustainable Energy. As well as energy efficiency associations like the Alliance to Save Energy and Energy Efficiency Companies. And then of course the natural gas industry. So one of the things that the Council has done for the last five years is to try to capture what some of these market trends are for the technologies within the Council's coalition. So that we can share that information with policymakers so that they have the best, most up-to-date information and most comprehensive information upon which they can make policy decisions. So the report that we have produced is called the Sustainable Energy in America Factbook. We have produced the 2017th edition that was released earlier this year. We have a table out in the exhibition space that I would recommend that you go and look at. There's copies of the brochure and information about the Factbook that has a wealth of information for you to use and to hopefully inform policymakers. So some of the top-line trends that have been happening in recent years with the technologies within the Council's coalition are one that Scott mentioned in his remarks. And that is the amount of electricity that is generated by natural gas and renewable energy combined. So in 2016 between natural gas and renewable energy, they generated 50% of electricity, which was up from 38% in 2011. So the growth in those technologies even over the recent years has been phenomenal. And of that, the breakdown includes 29.6% of electricity being generated by natural gas and renewable energy supplying 10.4% of U.S. energy. So again, the trends have been going in that direction and we expect that they will continue to grow. With respect to energy efficiency, the economy has been growing and we have been using less energy to power the economy. The Factbook shows that since 2007, so between 2007 and 2016, the gross domestic product in the United States has increased by 12% while our energy use has declined 3.6%. So we're getting more bang out of the buck for the energy that we do use, which has been great for consumers, it's been great for energy. We're becoming a lot more energy efficient. Some of the things that have led to that have just become things that are driving energy efficiency. So it's been interesting to look at some of the statistics around commercial floor space, for example, and the amount of commercial floor space that is either covered by energy star or local benchmarking provisions that have caused buildings in the commercial space to become much more energy efficient. With respect to local benchmarking, right now we're at about 8% of commercial building space that is covered under some of these local benchmarking provisions, which doesn't mean a lot. At 8%, there's a lot of room for growth and hopefully that will continue to grow, but from where it started, that jump to 8% is actually fairly significant. So one of the things that's driving the changes and the growth in these industries, and I think this is really kind of the main takeaway that I would like to leave with you today, is the cost of these technologies. So consumers devoted less than 4% of their, this is US consumers, devoted less than 4% of the average household income on energy in 2016. And that amount is lower than it has ever been since we have been recording those numbers. So less than 4% of the household income is devoted to energy. And the fact book actually will break that down into what consumers are spending on electricity and then the thermal energy and also transportation fuel. So that figure is energy writ large and it includes transportation fuel. So the cost to consumers have come down significantly. So just want to leave you with those main points. I would refer you to the Sustainable Energy in America fact book, which again you can find copies of on the exhibit table that the Business Council has in the exhibition area. And thank you for coming today and for listening and hopefully we're able to set the stage and you'll learn a lot more from additional speakers this afternoon. Thank you. Thanks, Jared. Okay, we'll now hear from Lynn Abramsmith with the Clean Energy Business Network. And I must say I really encourage you to make sure that you check out the Business Council Sustainable Energy fact book. You'll really enjoy it and I cannot tell you how glad we are also that Lynn is here with us this year. This is a very, very exciting new clean energy business network that just shows how much we are seeing now in terms of business development across the country. How many jobs and how much economic activity is really involved. Great. Well, thank you so much Carol for the introduction and for having me here today. And I really would like to thank ESI, the Sustainable Energy Coalition, as well as the caucuses for all of your leadership and work on this. And I'm very excited to be here today. As Carol mentioned, we are in some ways a new network and in some ways old and I'll get to that in a moment. So I'm Lynn Abramsmith, the Executive Director of the Clean Energy Business Network. And the CEBN was founded by the Pew Charitable Trusts back in 2009 to serve as a resource to inform and engage clean energy business leaders in policy issues affecting their industry. But just as of this May, we transitioned out of Pew to become an independent grassroots initiative of the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, which Ruth has introduced. And the goal of this new partnership is to provide a stronger, more unified voice for the clean energy industry. So as Ruth discussed, the Council's members largely consist of the sector-specific trade associations, as well as some larger clean energy companies. Whereas our members are quite diverse, but largely consist of small to medium-sized business owners. So executives of rooftop solar companies, HVAC installers, you know, geothermal heat pump installers, a really wide variety of technologies. And so what I wanted to do today is build on some of the comments by Ruth as well as Scott on some of these recent trends in clean energy. And as, you know, the fact book clearly shows, the U.S. energy economy as a whole is growing cleaner, more efficient, and all of this is coming at lower costs to consumers, which is fantastic news. But I want to add to this the human side of that story, building on all of that data, and tell you a little bit more about the types of companies that are on the ground doing all of this great work. So the take-home message I want to leave you with today is one of diversity. There's a diversity of technologies, of geographies, and sizes and types of companies involved in the growing clean energy economy. Over the past eight years, since the clean energy began in its former home at Pew, it has now grown to over 3,000 members across all 50 U.S. states. And they're working in a wide range of technologies. I mentioned some earlier, but we encompass renewables, efficiency, natural gas, storage, advanced brick technologies, efficient transportation, carbon sequestration, and so many more that are hard to even put a definition on. And I'm pretty sure that with our membership, we've still only begun to scratch the surface of all of the companies working in this industry. So who are some of these people? Well, there's Jeff Henler, who is the CEO of Energy Technology Savings, a firm in Livingston, New Jersey, very small, just 10 employees. And they engineer efficiency, solar, and battery storage solutions for a variety of clients, but particularly high-rise apartment complexes. As Jeff described to me, they approach projects like a doctor trying to diagnose a patient. So they'll start out by putting a lot of relatively low-cost sensors all around the building to get a better sense of the energy load, diagnose what's going on with the building. And they'll try to work with the building manager to understand their concerns. So maybe the building manager is wondering why the common area costs are so high and what it has to do with the energy load. Or maybe they're worried that there's going to be another hurricane-sandy-like event, and the residents of their high-rise apartment complex are going to be stuck for days with no power, meaning no elevators, no water pressure, no air conditioning, and that that could be a role-safety hazard. And so ETS will diagnose the building's needs, develop the right solution, and then come back and continually monitor over time to see that everything is working properly and fine-tuned as needed. There's also Nolan Hill, the CEO of Highland West Energy in Idaho Falls, Idaho. They are a developer of combined heat and power projects, and they're also starting to get into wind. And one of their sweet spots is working with hotels, campuses, and other clients that have a large hot water demand. So they'll engineer solutions that will provide a combination of on-site, reliable power, as well as thermal energy that will cut their clients' utility bills by hundreds to thousands of dollars per month. There's also two of our members that have collaborated together extensively. John Fox, the CEO of a lecture firm from Reno, Nevada, and Lois Neary of Gulf Coast Green Energy in Bay City, Texas. And they have worked on a particularly exciting project with HESS Corporation to test out a novel application of their waste heat-to-power technology. So apparently over 30% of the natural gas in the Balkan oil fields in North Dakota is just flared. It's just completely wasted. And so these companies have worked together to develop a solution to capture that natural gas on-site, use it to power a boiler, a very simple low-cost machine, and then they'll take the heat off that boiler with their unique organic rink and cycle technology and use it to generate electricity that can power operations on-site or be exported to the local grid. So they're turning waste into a resource, which is just a no-brainer. And one more example I wanted to give you was our members, Larry Richardson and his staff, Sarah Bogus, of re-energy holdings in upstate New York. They helped the Army's Fort Drum convert a 60-megawatt power plant from coal to sustainably harvested biomass that is sourced from the local community. So the new biomass plant is not only cleaner, but it is also helping Fort Drum have a reliable on-site source of power that can power its critical operations and it's helping to stimulate the local economy. These are just a handful of examples, but a recent report by the Department of Energy has found that over 3 million jobs in the United States are supported by clean energy industries. These are people who are installing solar on rooftops like our member Missouri Solar Solutions. They're building natural gas distribution infrastructure. They're upgrading insulation in HVAC systems. They're building geothermal heat pumps. They're developing the nation's first offshore wind farms like our member lead co in Cleveland. They're making supply chains and manufacturing processes cleaner and more efficient like Sir Clean in Florida. They're innovators working in the lab on the next generation of energy generation technologies such as Ion Power Group in Florida. Or they're innovating unique storage solutions in the lab that someday might be able to keep your cell phones charged for 20 days like Green Fortress Engineering in Indiana. And some of them are even working on humanitarian issues involving bringing electricity or lighting to communities in need around the world such as Luminade in Chicago. These are your constituents, your neighbors, your friends. They're part of your community. And I hope some of you can join us today at the CEBAN exhibit in the Gold Room. We have featured 10 case studies of some of our members. We have an interactive exhibit where you can come and click on one of the case studies and it will pull up a really brief video or PowerPoint highlighting some of their interesting technologies and projects. And so this is our way of trying to bring the clean energy economy here to Capitol Hill. So thank you so much for having me. Great, thank you. Great stories, great examples. And I hope that you find them as exciting as what we do. And now I want to welcome to the podium Debra Stein who is with us again this year. Universities are a terribly important piece of how we innovate in this country. And we are delighted that Debra is with us from Carnegie Mellon University from the Scott Institute for Energy Innovation. So hi, so just at the beginning I want to say how many of you have ever been to Pittsburgh? Hey, a pretty good number. I'm very pleased to hear that. So I have this thing that I tell in my classes which is basically all energy policy is local. And I sort of learned this. I was in D.C. for many years, like 20, 30 years. I worked at the Congressional Research Service. And the one thing I've learned since I've been in Pittsburgh, which is now almost five years, is really all energy policy is local. And what makes sense for one community may or may not make sense for another community. So I'm focused, I've titled my talk. We see from Pittsburgh to Paris, manufacturing and efficiency in jobs. I do have a set of slides because A, I'm a data geek and B, I'm an academic. I'd be happy to send them to you. So this will be the day to help back up some of the things if you really want to get into it. So the first thing is the Scott Institute for Energy Innovation is kind of an umbrella organization for all activities at Carnegie Mellon that are related to energy, not just in engineering, which is where I'm from, but also in our economic school, public policy, architecture all over the place. And so, you know, I was sitting in my car driving along and I was President Trump and he said, I'm reading this, I was elected by voters of Pittsburgh, not Paris. I promised I would exit or renegotiate any deal which fails to serve US interest. So many of us in Pittsburgh were quite surprised about that, given that 80% of the people in Pittsburgh voted for another candidate. But anyhow, this was very interesting and caused a big flurry of activity in Pittsburgh. Particularly as the mayor of Pittsburgh also is a very much active. So he immediately tweeted out the response was, see, as the mayor of Pittsburgh, I can assure you that we will follow the guidelines of the Paris Agreement for our people, our economy and future. Now you might think that these two statements are diametrically opposite to another. I'm here to tell you today that they are not and that is because we will serve the interests of the United States by focusing on energy efficiency and manufacturing. So moving on, now Pittsburgh, I use these pictures in my class, at one point was so dark that at noon you couldn't see anything. So I have a little picture here of that. And now it's a beautiful, clean city which if you've been there recently you would really see that. Now it doesn't mean that there is an air pollution, because we do have definitely air pollution problems, particularly in particular matter, but it's certainly different than what it was in the old days. And, you know, we had steel workers in the past. In fact, my very first visit to Pittsburgh when I was a young engineer, I went and actually visited a steel plant. There is steel no more in the city. And instead we have Google, which now has its own building and is expanding its building in Pittsburgh. And of course we have many universities. We have actually over 40,000 post-secondary graduates in the Pittsburgh region in which half of them stay. So a lot of people don't really think about Pittsburgh that way. I certainly didn't think about it very much until I moved there. So the next question is, how much of Pennsylvania in terms of employment is from energy? Take a guess. Fifty percent. Okay. The correct answer is 1.8 percent, which is less than the national average. Which is, you know, kind of surprising for many of us. And that's just, that's Pennsylvania as a whole. So when we talk about manufacturing, we're talking about two things. We're talking about the manufacturing of energy efficient goods. And we're talking about improving energy efficiency of manufacturing. Both of these are positive things for the economy and for jobs. And of course the environment. And so the other thing that you'll be surprised as, do you think there are the number of coal workers versus the number of energy efficiency workers is more or less? How many think there's more coal workers? How many people think there's more energy efficiency workers? Okay. So the correct answer is there are less than 10,000 coal workers in Pennsylvania while there's more than 50,000 energy efficiency workers. Now sometimes I question, to be honest, some of this energy efficiency employment data. However, it's clear that even if I took out all my question marks, it's still five times higher. So again, I'm thinking to myself, President Trump, you can help these energy efficiency workers because you are representing Pittsburgh, not Paris. So the most energy efficient workers are in efficient lighting, advanced manufacturing, HVAC, which is heating, venting, and air conditioning. Thank you. And most of them are also in construction and manufacturing. About 20% are in manufacturing and over 50% are in construction. So the other thing which I think is really interesting, again, for Pennsylvania is that 70% of employers report difficulty hiring qualified workers over the past year. 26% said it was very difficult. And that energy efficiency out of all the other energy fields, which is transmission, solar, wind, fuels, motor vehicles, has the highest growth rate at 9% or 198,000 jobs. And that's up from 133,000 the previous year. So what we've been doing at the Wisconsin Institute for Innovation is holding a number of workshops, folks on energy efficiency. This comes out of something called the Power 32, which is, you know, you know, Pittsburgh is not really just like one area. It's really three states and 32 stands for the 32 counties. So it's really Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio. And that region is where the workforce kind of goes around. It's actually the distance between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh is like four hours in between Pittsburgh and West Virginia is like two. And maybe even less, probably if you just hit the border. So we held a number of workshops starting the fall, looking at like what is the potential energy efficiency in the region, thinking about the workforce issues. And we're putting together a report, which we're going to which I'm writing this fall, writing now to discuss in the fall to say, well, what can we do? So the first thing we learned from this group, which is a very diverse group of people who are participating is that the key is apprenticeships. There was great demand that like, for example, we have some day here, how important is apprenticeship program to your company? And 56% said it was important or very important. Did their company have apprenticeship program though? The answer was no. And that was really key. And when one of the Duquesne Light, which is one of the big utility companies had a apprenticeship program, they found out that there were like hundreds of applicants for like 10 slots. The next thing is that industrial energy efficiency potential is very high. So there is in West Virginia University an industrial energy efficiency center. And they are funded by the federal government as opposed to cover Western Pennsylvania and so forth. What they find is that the companies in Western Pennsylvania are not really willing to interact with them in sort of Western Virginia. And so we're leaving a lot on the table so that you can just install new engines, for example, new motors, machines. And that would improve energy efficiency by 30%. Now there are a lot of challenges to this though because they have to take down production, they have to do all sorts of different things, and there's some risk involved. So that's something that we really need to think about. So just to sort of summarize. So the first is that the energy workforce demand of Pittsburgh region is not energy supply as you might think, either in shale or coal, but in energy efficiency. That there are federal programs available, but they're not necessarily sufficiently supported. We need to really understand what's happening there and that they're there, but are they not reaching the right people or what's happening? I think it would be really good to maybe have a hearing or something to really think about that issue. And that manufacturers can save approximately 30% of their energy consumption, but that risk aversion is a barrier to that occurring. We have wonderful building energy efficiency programs in Pittsburgh, but we really don't have anything for the industrial sector that is focused on their needs and their worries. So these are sort of three illustrative policy options that came out of the workshops that we had. We have a whole bunch more than this. The first one is encouraging apprenticeships and internships. So there's something called the Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act of 2014. And it is under the Department of Labor involves several different agencies and think about it relative to regional needs. So I think looking at the implementation of that would be a very good question. The second was is that there's also advanced manufacturing workforce initiatives related to energy at five federal agencies. We need to check the status of the funding of these programs. I've only been following some of it, but from what I can tell a good number of them are being cut or proposed for cuts. Yes. Yes, okay. Well, this is confirmed. Carol, I follow this closely. Okay, good. And I read your newsletter, which is probably where I heard it from. So that obviously does not necessarily make much sense. So I think that's another important issue. And then lastly, we need to really look at and understand the barriers to particularly small and mid-sized companies. I'm not really as concerned about the large companies because they have lots of people to do their work for them. But a small company is really, you know, they need the money to survive economically and to hire more people, but they might not have it. So that's it. Thank you very much. Great. Thank you.