 Good afternoon and welcome to the 2020 Congressional Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Expo. I'm Dan Berset, the Executive Director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. As we planned our agenda for today, against the background of coronavirus and the peaceful protests in response to what's just the latest brutal examples of racial injustice, we knew what we had to do. While we generally like panels to be cross-cutting and incorporate issues like an environmental justice organically, we were convinced that only by bringing together a panel, this panel, advancing climate solutions through environmental justice on this topic, could we properly address the gravity of it and fully explore how to improve our present situation. To help us do that, it is my privilege to introduce Senator Chris Van Hollen from the great state of Maryland. Hi, I'm Chris Van Hollen and I'm proud to represent the great state of Maryland and the United States Senate. I'm especially pleased to join all of you for this year's gathering of the energy efficiency and renewable energy caucus. I look forward to when we can do the exhibition in person again, but I don't let anybody say that a pandemic got in the way of our efforts to bring people together to address these important energy issues. To any Marylanders out there, I am proud of the fact that we are moving ahead, seeking federal approval for two offshore wind projects, making Maryland a state at the cutting edge of renewable energy. We also have to think of the jobs that will bring to Maryland and the jobs that energy efficiency and renewable energy will bring to other parts of the country and parts of the world. We also need to focus very hard on the issue of environmental justice because how we interact with the environment has to do with how we organize our societies and whether it's the issue of lead in the water in Flint, Michigan or lead in paint in apartment buildings in Baltimore City that poisoned people like Freddie Gray, or whether it's the pollution from toxins from coal-fired power plants that disproportionately impact communities of color and low-income communities, or whether it's the impact of swarms like Hurricane Katrina that devastated the Ninth Ward in New Orleans, and we saw the color line there after the Katrina hit so badly. So we've got to really focus on these issues. This is a moment of reckoning in our country in so many ways, and with the passing of our dear friend and mentor, John Lewis. Let's look at 2020 the way he approached 1965, which is getting in the way of injustice as he marched across the bridge in Selma, Alabama. We've got to get in the way of environmental injustice, and we have a terrific panel here to do that with us. And we're having representatives from the American Association of Blacks in Energy, representatives from the Solar Energy Industries Association, a representative from the Energy Storage Association, and a representative from the Natural Resources Defense Council, and somebody from NCE Clean Energy. So there's an awful lot to talk about as we address the issues of climate change and energy and the issue of justice. So without further ado, let me turn it over to our great panel. Take care and thank you. Thanks very much to Senator Van Hollen and his fantastic staff for all of their work to help make today possible. And special thanks for me personally as a constituent who lives in gorgeous Prince George's in Maryland just east of D.C. Over the course of the rest of the day, we will feature welcome messages from the other members of Congress who lead the House and Senate Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucuses. We would not be here today without their support and we really appreciate it. EESI was founded in 1984 to provide nonpartisan information on environmental energy and climate issues to policy makers on Capitol Hill and to the public. We do this in different ways, including by holding briefings, which are all archived online and writing fact sheets and articles and other things too. I encourage everyone to visit us online at www.esi.org and sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions. There's really no better way to keep up with all that we're up to. As many of you have, current events have caused EESI to look inward and think about how we can do a better job telling the stories of frontline communities and explaining how environmental justice can and must be a part of future climate change policy. And to help us do that, we want to learn from the experiences and successes of others. And that brings us to our panelists, who as professionals are leading the way and as representatives of organizations that are not just committed to making a positive difference, they are actually making a positive difference. This is our longest panel of the day, which will let us hear more voices and it will give us more time from questions. We are taking questions, which can be submitted via Twitter at EESI online. You can also send an email to us, EESI at EESI.org. And now on to the panel. Our five panelists are Paulie Glover, President and CEO of the American Association of Blacks and Energy, Abney Ross Hopper, President and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, Kelly Speaks-Bakman, CEO of the Energy Storage Association, John Bowman, Managing Director for Government Affairs at the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Stephanie Chen, Senior Policy Council for MCE. For full biographies of our panelists, visit www.eesi.org. Paula, your first panelist, thanks so much for joining us this afternoon. I'm really looking forward to your remarks, and so over to you, take it away. Thank you so much, and thank you for inviting me and including me in this really great discussion. You know, for me, and I suspect for many of us, this summer has really been a time of uncertainty, a little bit of anxiety, some turmoil, and hopefully a lot of reflection. We've been locked down because of COVID-19 for now four or five months. My work-life balance, as I suspect with many of you, has been completely upended, and we're having a collective aha moment as it relates to racial justice and the inequities that exist in our country for African-American in our communities. We know that African-American communities are lagging behind in access to education, employment, wealth attainment, health disparities. We're harder hit by unemployment. There's a disparity in home ownership, housing, and in our energy costs and energy burden. The truth of the matter is, however, that these inequities have been around for generations. In fact, in our own industry, there's a lack of representation of African-Americans in leadership and participation of African-American-owned businesses across sector. But today, we're going to talk a little bit about climate and environmental justice. I'm going to start with energy efficiency, which is also one of the most effective means to address the issues of climate change, but it's the least costly climate mitigation as asset. In fact, according to the American Council for Energy Efficient Economy, ACEE, in the U.S., we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2020-2050 through energy efficiency alone. However, to achieve this result, energy efficiency must be available across all income levels and not only for those who can afford it. At the same time, there's a direct connection between energy burden and energy efficiency. And unless we fully resolve the issue of energy efficiency access, the inequities in energy burden will persist. According to the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, low-income households experience larger energy costs than all other economic demographics. That's probably not a surprise. But this increased energy burden is particularly high for African-American families, equaling a median energy burden that is 64% higher than white households. Data from energy efficiency for all and the American Council for Energy Efficient Economy revealed that for African-American households, 42% of the excess energy burden is due to inefficient housing, with this number increasing substantially when segmenting for renters, where the percentage equals 97%. And a significant portion of this burden can be abated simply by utilizing robust energy efficiency policies, including home retrofits, use of energy efficient appliances, targeting program, targeted programming to ensure that low-income families have access. That includes affordability and ensuring that these same households are successfully able to adopt and retain these measures. If low-income housing stock is brought to the same energy efficient levels as the medium, we would eliminate 35% of the household energy burden. However, it's not enough that clean energy and climate lower the energy burden and improve the health for low-income families. This new energy economy has the potential to create significant economic gains and legislation that directly connects African-Americans and other underrepresented groups to jobs. Leadership and contracts must take a priority. In 2019, energy efficiency was reported as the fastest growing sector in the industry, producing the highest number of jobs. However, communities of color are significantly underrepresented, with African-Americans equaling only 8% of the energy efficiency workforce, as compared to whites who equal 77%. And what we know is that while I'm only talking about energy efficiency, these numbers are reflective in all parts of our energy sectors. And while these sector gains have been lost as a result of COVID-19 pandemic, we have an opportunity as we move forward to ensure that we not only get policy right, but that we prioritize access. And so it's important that our good policy has to have everybody involved. If we want to address climate change, we have to look at it through a lens of environmental justice. But what I mean is not that your solution addressing environmental impacts is automatically a good solution. That's likely to be true, as it is likely to be untrue. Remember, I started by saying that when it comes to African-American communities, the inequities that exist are multifaceted and they're layered. And that requires that solutions must take into account all of these inequities. That means that the cost of the solution matters. It means the opportunities that a solution creates matters and how we're going to ensure, and maybe even mandate at times, that these same communities are getting access and support so that they can fully participate. That matters. The gaps are wide, and to shrink them requires a level of intentionality and focus that in some ways is foreign to how we solve problems. It means that we must have everyone at the table, particularly those who we may disagree with, to get to the right outcomes. It means that while the problem is difficult, getting to the right solution is also difficult. There likely is no simple answer. But if we are up to the work, we can get there. And if we do the work right, we'll lessen the gap. Thank you. Thank you, Paula. That was great. Really appreciated you kicking us off with this panel today. Abby, welcome to the Expo. And thanks for joining us. I'm looking forward to your remarks. Dan, thank you so much for having me. And thank you so much for prioritizing this issue and making it the marquee panel of your day. I appreciated your comments at the beginning. For those that don't know us, there's three of us on this panel that I've worked together for more than a decade. Kelly and Dan and I are all alumni of the great state of Maryland and the Maryland Energy Administration. So it's really an honor to be here with you and to watch you continue to do this great work, Dan. So thank you very much. Any time I get to follow, Paula Glover is an honor. So thank you for those words. So if we haven't met before, my name is Abby Hopper. I am the president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association. I'm actually in my office today for the, it's only the third time or the fourth time since March 12th. But I have a really bad Wi-Fi at home. I've learned and so if I want to actually be heard and seen and not have those weird glitches, I got to come in here. So I get to, you guys see my caps gear and my calendar that seems so important in January and it's completely irrelevant today. But Paula, I really, it was hard to listen to that that list of challenges that African-American families face. I acknowledge, I really acknowledge the reality of it, but it's hard to really face some of these truths. And so I just want to talk a little bit about the solar industry and how we bring these issues of social justice and racial justice into our work. So they're integrated into our work and they're not over on the sidelines as a sort of to do later on if we get around to it. So one of the things that's been so critical for me personally and for us as an association, as an industry, is to really acknowledge the interrelated nature of these issues. So we think about the climate crisis and we think about the economic and health crisis and we think about the racial justice crisis. They're not brand new. As Paula said, these, especially the racial justice crisis has been long-standing and systematically put in place. But those three crises, I think, are incredibly linked. We know that communities of color are most dramatically impacted by where fossil fuel generators are placed. They are experiencing the brunt of this health crisis and the brunt of this economic crisis. And so as I think about how do we create policy that helps address a number of these issues at the same time, clean energy is energy efficiency certainly, but clean energy as well is a critical part of that. I'm going to start with just some facts about the solar industry and not about how many megawatts we have or how many tons of carbon we displace. I could do that, but instead I'm going to talk a little bit about the reality of our industry and I'm going to talk about our workforce. You can't solve a problem if you don't know what the problem is. So we have taken a deep look, a deep dive into our own industry to see who works here and where do they work. And so I'm just going to look down so I don't get the stats wrong. But in the solar industry, we do this annual diversity study and our diversity study from last year showed that in the solar workforce, about 8% of our workforce is made up of Black workers, about 9% of Asian workers, 73% of us are white. We only have about 26% women in the solar industry. And so you clearly clear gaps in terms of our workforce being representative of our society. But that wasn't enough. I cared deeply about who was here, but I also wanted to know where they sat in the solar industry. Are they CEOs like Kelly and Paula and I or are they admins at the front desk answering the phone? Those are both worthy jobs, but they're very different opportunities. And so we took a look at sort of job titles and at sort of senior executives. And it was incredibly troubling what we found. We found that in the solar industry, 88% of the senior executives in the solar industry are white. Only 2% of the senior executives in the solar industry are Black. And so as we think about not just our workforce, but wealth creation opportunities, sort of entrepreneurship opportunities, those statistics tell us that we have such a long way to go. And so, you know, do I wish I came here with better numbers? Of course, but I'm not going to shy away from the reality of where we are. What I want to talk about though is what do we do about it, right? What do we do about it? And I want to talk about both our workforce and then I'm going to talk about our customer base because those are two really important constituencies. As I think about our workforce and sort of how we build policy that incents a more inclusive workforce, there's all kinds of great conversation out there. I follow Paula's lead. Paula has done some great thinking about organizations and sort of how what do we need to do? One of the things I think about a lot is about supplier diversity. We're really challenging ourselves and our industry around how do we make sure that our companies are spending on intentionally spending with businesses that are owned by African American companies, by women owned companies, those sorts of things. So there's a great deal of work happening now as a result of these conversations. But we also think about sort of policy that's been introduced in Congress. We have been very supportive of representative Russia's legislation, the blue collar to green collar jobs act that would support renewable energy workers in their transition into this economy. Those sorts of very intentional policy pieces really make a difference. We also think about our customers though, right? Like who has the benefits? Paula was talking about sort of families having access to energy efficiency. I think about who has access to solar energy and how do we ensure that families of all varieties have access to that what is actually an incredibly low cost and really reliable source of energy. And so as I think about how we weave policy into ensuring that outcome, there are a couple of ways to do it. We think about community solar. Community solar is a really great tool to make sure that homeowners as well as non-homeowners, right? Maybe if people that live in multifamily housing, people that people are renters, maybe that people that don't have the credit or the capital to invest in solar systems on their own homes, still have access to that resource. And so we have a very vigorous policy efforts in states as well as in Congress around ensuring that community solar is an option and that there's a regulatory pathway to make sure that it happens. But there's also other legislation in Congress, Senator Duckworth and Representative McKeechens Low Income Solar Energy Act that will help use laji money to help invest in solar. And it makes sense because as I said, solar is many places the lowest cost energy source. And so lowering the energy burden for families makes a ton of sense. These are just a couple of the things that we are working on to help address some of these issues kind of in an institution, not an institution, that's a big word for my organization, but in an organizational front, we have elevated our work around diversity, equity, and justice to a board level effort. And so again, following Paula's lead about how do we sort of addressing some of these issues, my board is taking some pretty aggressive steps to hold ourselves accountable to do the work that we need to do to make sure that justice is threaded throughout our work, as I said, and not simply an afterthought. So Dan, again, thank you so much for having me here. I look forward to hearing from my colleagues. Thank you so much, Abby. And yes, I didn't give it away, but you and Kelly and I are part of the MEA Alumni Association and they're continuing to do great work. Somehow they've managed to move on without us. It's amazing when I look around DC, the folks who work there and all the great work they do, whether it's at CR, energy storage, or NRDC, or multiple C at people actually. So thank you so much. Kelly, we're going to turn to you. Thank you so much for joining us. I think you have maybe the most professional looking background. So at least you'll send your the middle panelist. You're going to center us. Always in the center, Dan. Thank you so much for having me. They really appreciate it. I'm so proud to be on this panel with such an amazing set of speakers. And one of the, it's funny, pairing my remarks today, I was thinking about metrics and thinking about, you know, something that someone from Maryland said to all of us, I'm sure we've heard it a thousand times. Whatever it does, if it doesn't get measured, it doesn't get done. And so that's a little bit about what I walk about in the context of social equity. You know, we'll start with ESA. ESA is the National Trade Association for Storage, working toward a more resilient, efficient, sustainable, and affordable grid. We represent a diverse group of more than 190 companies across the entire value chain of storage. So we've got manufacturers, we've got implementers, we've got grid operators, we've got all those services around it. Our members work with all types of energy storage technologies and chemistries, including batteries, mechanical, thermal, hydro. And together over the last five years, this very diverse set of companies and interests have changed policies and regulatory constructs in states at the federal and also in organized markets. 32 states have added storage planning requirements. Nine states now have targets. Six states have incentive programs. Our industry in the last five years or so has installed about 1500 megawatts of new storage from like nearly nothing. With a third of that behind the meter and another eight plus gigawatts contracted for non-contriderous storage in the next five years. And I tell you this a little bit to brag about how we're doing because that's pretty awesome in terms of storage enabling the rest of the clean grid. But also I want to convey how important it is to have a really diverse set of interests and perspectives if you want to change the world. Right? So for ESA, we're here working with many of these people on this panel because we want to change the way we generate, deliver, and use energy. We want to change how things have been done since the first power plant was built in 1882. But clearly we haven't gone far enough to address social equity and personal diversity, inclusion, and equity in the workplace. Social justice is just frankly the right thing to do. And I think it's absolutely necessary to be conscious and active about creating a diverse, inclusive, and equitable workplace. If we want to see a different world, one in which we're proud of, and specific to the energy industry, one which is sustainable and healthy. So if we want a different grid, we need to reimagine how we're doing it now. We need to think and look at it differently. If we want to reimagine it, we need new perspectives. And if we need and want new perspectives, we have to have new minds in the room with different socioeconomic backgrounds, different ethnicities, different ages, and with different disciplines in training and professional work and backgrounds. We need to do it all differently, and we need to do it with a different set of people, people that don't come from the same backgrounds as us, and we have to do it collaboratively. So it doesn't mean doing away with best practices or engineering principles or considerations of long and short-term costs, and all of those things that we in the energy industry pay attention to. It means instead integrating these diverse experiences, resetting our priorities and objectives, and then finding a way to balance this broad set of insights to move forward in a sustainable and equitable manner. Last year at our annual conference, I had Dr. Tony Byers. He's a former global director of diversity and inclusion at Starbucks and author of the book The Multiplier Effect of Inclusion. How diversity and inclusion advances innovation and drives growth. He talks about in speeches, I just highly recommend if you can Google him, just hear about what he has to say. He talks about and quantifies how diversity and inclusion of your workforce can bring about more profitability for companies, more benefits to communities they serve, and longer-term stability for all of us, and it's just a really powerful lesson that I'd like to leave us with that thought of this is the right thing to do, it's important that we do it, and it'll get us along the way of what we're looking for in clean energy future. So thanks, Dan. Really appreciate it. It's a lot of fun to be here with y'all. Thanks Kelly. That was really great, and I really appreciate you being here too. Our next panelist is John Omen with NRDC. John, welcome to the expo. Welcome to this panel. Really looking forward to your remarks. Thanks Dan. Thanks everybody else on the panel. I am from the Natural Resources Defense Council. We're a group of about 700 folks international. We have offices in New York, Washington, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, China, and India. I sit in our DC office talking about and thinking about environmental justice. We at NRDC look at it from a number of different angles. We work with our EJ partners to help pass laws and ordinances at the state, local, and federal level. We also work with our EJ partners and litigate on their behalf. So when we look at how we can make climate advantages, I think one of the things that we've learned in going through this pandemic is that folks who have been suffering with dirty air have been especially hit hard by this virus. So we look at trying to figure out ways to go back and mitigate some of those communities. So what can we do on the federal level? What can we do on the state level? And along with a number of other environmental groups and our EJ partners, we started to look at what do we need to do? Who are some of the better thinkers? One of the bills that we are really promoting is Cory Booker's the National Environmental Justice Act for 2019. That bill would do a lot of things and go a long way toward making things equal for disadvantaged communities. It would codify and expand President Clinton's 1994 Executive Order on Environmental Justice. It would require federal agencies to consider EJ cumulative impacts when they're doing permitting for Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act projects. The bill would also allow communities like Flint to bring statutory and common law claims and would reinstate a right of action under common law. It's a huge bill. We think that would be very important. And also the Environmental Justice Act by Chairman Grahava and Representative McKeechin, which included a ton of environmental voices from around the country in helping them craft that bill. We also look at ways that we can get some climate gains in the environmental justice community. Proposing the creation of an environmental justice fund that would have a $50 billion annual budget that would address pollution and health threats in disadvantaged communities require mandatory pollution reduction in the EJ communities. To that end, NRDC along with 282 other national environmental environmental justice groups signed the Equitable and Just Climate Platform, which is built on three major precepts that everybody has the right to breathe clean air, live free from dangerous levels of toxins and share access to healthy food. We are proposing meaningful investments in disadvantaged communities to promote EV ownership and EV infrastructure, electrify transit sources, and help federal agencies to create budgets that would allow for resilience investments for disadvantaged communities. And I think to close education, I consider myself a fairly educated person. And like a lot of folks who probably want to move into an electric vehicle, let's just say, until Abby and I sat on a panel last summer at the CBC, I was really pretty ignorant. I mean, I see the high cost of EVs, and I think I do pretty well, but I mean, getting an EV might be a little bit beyond my means. On that panel, I learned something which caused me to be able to drive an EV today. If you look at the second hand EV market, there is a tremendous opportunity to afford. I have a BMW i3 that's two years old that I paid about half what the sticker cost was. And I think that level of education that needs to be spread into the minority community, because you can afford an EV, you can get one that maybe isn't as nice and paid a little bit less. And I think the same goes for education on solar issues. So we're spending a lot of time talking to our front line and fence line community partners and saying, hey, there's probably a solar program in your area that can help you decrease your energy bills if you choose to. So we try and take a really holistic approach. And we think looking at the clean energy economy, we see a lot of folks who've been displaced by this pandemic in terms of work. And we think there are going to be a lot of opportunities in that economy to retrain some of these people to be solar installers, folks who maintain EV infrastructure, jobs that can't get outsourced. So we look at a lot of different avenues and we will hopefully continue to partner with all of you good people. Thanks for inviting me. Great. Well, it's our pleasure to have you, John. Thanks so much. Our final panelist is Stephanie Chen. Stephanie, you might be coming to us the furthest away from DC on the West Coast. So thank you for getting up a little early and for your part in joining us this morning. Welcome to the panel. Welcome to the Expo. And it's great to see you. Thanks so much, Dan. And good afternoon, everybody from sunny California. As Dan mentioned, my name is Stephanie Chen and I am with MCE. We are California's first community choice aggregator, which is a local government agency serving 34 communities across four counties in the San Francisco Bay Area. Today I'd like to offer up a different way of approaching environmental policy and briefly share some examples from California about what that approach can look like. So to date, the dominant strategy around environmental policy and investments has been a top down one. You go for these big planet wide wins first and you worry about the local more difficult challenges later. But as we've seen pretty much time and again, that approach just perpetuates racial and socioeconomic inequities. In California, where we have cap and trade and we have some of the most progressive environmental regulations in the country, pollution is still concentrated in the same black and brown communities where it's always been concentrated. And we are definitely not the only place where this happens. So instead of starting big and hoping for a trickle down, which often never comes, what if we start local and we aggregate those wins up? What if we start with our most impacted communities? We identify all of the pollution sources and we prioritize replacing them with cleaner alternatives. This approach still makes progress towards the global goal of climate change mitigation and it still uses all of the tools that my fellow panelists have talked about that we are very familiar with in this sector. But it does so by placing the most impacted communities at the front of the line instead of the back of the line. So I think a good example of this approach has been the California climate investments. After we enacted cap and trade, we passed a series of bills that dedicates 35% of our auction revenues to projects that reduce emissions and create jobs in environmental justice communities. This money goes towards projects like low income weatherization, electrified public transit, climate smart agriculture, and urban greening, which is planting trees in concrete jungles. Collectively, these investments add up to more than $3 billion and that's billion with a B since 2013, all invested in and for the benefit of EJ communities. Now of course, if you want to invest in EJ communities, you have to identify them. So the first of these targeted investment bills also created the CalEnviroScreen. CalEnviroScreen looks at 20 different environmental and socioeconomic indicators to identify the communities that are most burdened by poverty and pollution together. While this tool was created for directing climate investment funds, it has proven to be incredibly helpful across really all clean energy policy analysis because we know where our target geographies are. We know their demographics, we know their environmental impacts, and we can look specifically at those areas and identify what's working and what's still needed. Now, I want to double click on Kelly's remarks, which centered on inclusion. And this means that we need to build inclusive processes and we need to be intentional about that. One of the key principles of environmental justice is that the communities that are closest to the problem are also those that are closest to the solution. So in keeping with this principle, one of the most innovative of the climate investments is called transformative climate communities. Transformative climate communities is built around an inclusive process where community members come together to determine how best to spend their grant based on the needs that they themselves identify. And these are also not just participatory processes, but they result in holistic projects, which is super unique because most of the incentive or grant programs that we see in the clean energy space just operate in one lane. You've got your solar incentive, you've got your weatherization incentive, you've got your EV incentive. So one of the great examples from the first round of transformative climate communities grant is Watts and an organization called Watts Rising. Now, Watts, probably many of you, when I say Watts, you first think of the Watts riots. Watts is just south of downtown LA. It is disproportionately low income. It's overwhelmingly black and Latino, and it's kind of nestled in the crook of two freeways. The LAX flight path goes right over it. Traffic from the port of Long Beach goes right past it. It's been an impacted community ever since that concept existed. So in Watts, community leaders and local organizations brought together more than 200 residents over the course of several months for a planning and design process as part of TCC. And as a result, Watts will be getting hundreds of units of energy efficient affordable housing, bike paths, urban farms, solar installations, cooler playground surfaces, and more than 4,000 new trees, all in about two and a half of the most impacted square miles in all of California. And last, as has been talked about and by many of the speakers on this panel, we can't forget that this approach also has to be economically just, which is especially important now as we think about economic recovery and the role that clean energy can play in it. In a lot of EJ communities, the polluting industries often offer the best jobs. And a lot of families have put their kids through college by working in the same facilities that are giving their kids asthma. So we need to make sure that we put in place the mechanisms we need to both train and sustain a nationwide clean energy workforce. Clean energy jobs need to offer family supporting wages, robust benefits, and opportunities for career advancement, because we don't want anybody to have to choose between a good job and a green job. Now, as a best practice, some of the most successful energy justice projects in California have included a local hiring requirement. My agency, MCE, our mission is to combat climate change through local clean energy investments. And one of our flagship projects is called MCE Solar One. It's a 10 megawatt solar farm on brown field land next to a Chevron refinery. The city of Richmond, where the project is located, has a 50% local hiring requirement on projects like this. And at the time, there weren't enough trained solar installers in Richmond for us to meet that requirement for such a big project. So we partnered with a nonprofit local job training program called Solar Richmond, who essentially trained us a cohort so that we could meet the local job requirement. And we ended up having folks graduate from Solar Richmond on Friday and start work on Solar One the following Monday. And for a lot of those participants, not only was this a good job and a good career springboard, but they also told us that it really meant a lot to them to be building something that was clean and green in their own community, when for so long, the only things that anybody ever wanted to build there were polluting facilities. So I want to close by noting that the unifying theme of all of these efforts, which we're so excited about here in California, is that they are local by design. They focus on the most impacted communities, on the most polluting facilities, and on the families that need the financial incentives the most, and the small businesses that need the financial incentives the most. They're economically progressive, they're environmentally progressive, and in the aggregate, they will result in significant change that we would not otherwise be able to achieve through an exclusively top-down approach. I think we talk a lot in policy about low-hanging fruit and high-hanging fruit. And if we build a tool that can reach the highest fruit on the tree, we will be able to reach every other fruit on that tree as well. So let's aim high. Thank you. Great. Thanks, Stephanie. Really excellent remarks. I love the difference between a good job and a green job. I think that's just such a great way to put that. Thank you so much. We are going to transition not just to Q&A, but also to discussion. I'm not going to pepper you with questions and go through the roster of Paula, then Abby, then Kelly. I would really just love to listen to what you all have to say and have a discussion. As a reminder, we are getting questions online. So we do have a fair number of people watching us online and they're asking us questions. If you have a question, you can send it to us two ways. One is by following us on Twitter at EESI online. The other is by sending us an email EESI.org. And before I forget, John, your comments, you talked a lot about EVs. The Executive Director of the Electric Drive Transportation Association, Genevieve Cullen, will be with us a little bit later this afternoon on our Sustainable Transportation Panel. I could listen to Genevieve talk about EVs all day and hopefully some of you will join us for that too. I'm going to start the Q&A or start the discussion and then I will open it up and I'll just let you have it, let you have at it. I want to follow up on some of the things that Stephanie was saying. Specifically, the anecdote that always comes to my mind is we had a briefing last year, EESI hosted a briefing last year on coastal resilience in Louisiana. One of our panelists told a story about how a community-based approach to climate adaptation was changing people in his community and changing their minds about how they think about this. And he said, and he was from a place in Louisiana that is literally disappearing. So this is something that's very, very of mind to him. And he said something along the lines of, in the past, our communities were told about decisions and now we're part of the decision making. And I think about what he said all the time and I think that's one of the, I think it's just, it's a profound thing to, the difference between those two things is profound. And my question to you all to get the conversation started is how do we actually make climate policy more community-based? And how do we ensure that at the front end of decision making and policy making we're hearing from those in frontline communities who are most impacted? I'd like to offer up a couple of thoughts on that, Dan. One is that as we are thinking about policy and progress and particularly in the space of climate we know how dire this crisis is and we know that we needed to act three days ago not today or tomorrow. So there's this sense of urgency and oftentimes that sense of urgency can feel in competition with the need for inclusion because inclusive processes take time. You don't want folks only involved in the decision making, you know, being the customer in the restaurant that's choosing off the menu. We want our most impacted communities to be the ones in the kitchen designing the menu of options that everyone then can choose from and that process takes time particularly when you're talking about communities that are not as well-versed in the solutions, the technical and economic solutions and levers, but they are incredibly well-versed in community needs and also in what communities have to bring to the table to this fight which is oftentimes more substantial than anyone who lives outside of that community realizes. So I think the first thing is that inclusive processes take time and that needs to be built into our policy process. And the second thing is that for stakeholders it's incredibly important for us to be building relationships like the kinds of relationships that John was talking about when we don't have an immediate need in front of us. We want to build those relationships on a level playing field. We don't want to come in and say, hi, my name is Stephanie. I'm with MCE and we have this great thing that we think you're going to love. That's not the way to build a truly balanced relationship. We want to start that approach in between those urgent needs so it can really be a balanced conversation to say, what do you care about? What do you want? Here's what I care about. Here's what I want. Let's find our common ground together. John, please go ahead. Okay. I couldn't agree more. And I've not been at NRDC for a long period of time. And what I found is that we have an entire team that just focuses on EJ issues. And they do that in each of our local, in our US based offices. And so we try and meet our community partners where they are. For instance, we litigated on behalf of Flint residents. We didn't do ads and raise money about it, but we just went in and did it. And we built a lot of goodwill that way. But we have our challenges too. I mean, we try, we've been in the past, I think, worked with communities and asked them to be an advocate for a specific set of policy proposals and then basically not done anything after they were helpful. We're trying to fix that now. And you're right. We have to build those relationships when we don't need each other and have to build that level of trust to where when we do need to come together for common good, then we can definitely do that. And I think we have a renewed focus at NRDC now to try and recreate some of those relationships and strengthen them in other places. I just really wanted to add that I think, you know, this is just really an example and demonstration of why community members should be involved from the beginning, right? The fact that we're working now to build relationships is really indicative of the problem. We shouldn't be working to build relationships because those people should these community members should already be involved. They should be in our organizations. And what real diversity and inclusion looks like is that they are there from the beginning before a problem has ever been identified. And in fact, they are the informants that tell our organizations where the problems are. And so, you know, to Stephanie and John's point, it's the time to do stuff is when there's nothing happening. Like this is the time to do it when there's absolutely nothing going on. And it's not an environmentalist problem. It's not an industry problem. We all do it the wrong way in my opinion, which is that we have something that we're trying to address. We need a community to support that. Then we go in and we tell them what we think the problem is and how we need them to support it and what that support looks like. That entire process is completely backwards in my opinion. And that for all of us, we have to be challenged by being there when there's nothing happening and allowing community members to come to us and say to us, look, here are some things that are happening that we need your help with. The issue of trying to get ahead of the problem and bringing people into your organization, I think that's exactly what we're talking about when we say that to have a diverse workforce to have an inclusive workforce helps you to identify what may be a problem so that you can design it out so it doesn't have start to begin with. So I think in terms of businesses, it's bringing these community focused mindsets and bringing the communications disciplines into your project management or into your project development. And then for policy, I think it's funding state and local jurisdictions to be able to help bring people around the table. So have that funding there. Prioritize it because it's important that we avoid the problems to begin with because they're more expensive once they happen. Thanks. I think that makes a lot of sense. There is this natural inclination to procrastinate and to put it off and to pay tomorrow for a hamburger today and all the different platitudes you can offer. But when they affect people's lives and their livelihoods, it's really, really serious. And there's something in us that makes it difficult for us to get over that. I'm wondering, so for me, I think the first time I really thought a lot about these issues was after Hurricane Katrina. I remember working on the hill then and watching just round the clock footage of this. It was just, it was sickening to see how people were being left behind and can't even imagine what it was like in that stadium back then. And it was really, really sad and I was kind of hopeful that we would learn from that. But I'm not sure that we did and we're still struggling with a lot of these problems. You all have done a great job sort of articulating the problem and articulating the challenges, but also the solutions. And I'm wondering how, what we can do to make sure that this time is different. So how do we, how do we system, how do we systematize? How do we embed sort of what we need to be doing better, you know, that process, those relationship buildings before there's a problem? What can we be doing sort of in a tangible way that we're not currently doing to prevent sort of being back here in a couple years, having a similar panel and lamenting the fact that, you know, we still have all this progress to make? I think that's a really important question and one that keeps me up at night, right? Is this moment going to pass and no tangible change will have occurred? I don't have the magic answer. I know, I forget who said it, but someone more than one of you used the word intentionality, right? So I think we can't just sit and hope it'll be different or we have to act with intention. Embedded in the second, everyone's answer to your first question was investing in relationships, right? And so investing time and energy and space in relationships that can be personal relationships, organizational relationships or community to community relationships, it really matters because those are the things that I think that's, you know, we're all humans in addition to being whatever our job title is, we're human beings and those relationships really matter. But I think, you know, what we are struggling with at SEA and what perhaps others are as well is how environmental justice, how do we embed that into our decision-making process, into our policy, you know, what we advocate for, how we do our business and how do we bring those frontline communities into our business model, right? And into our kind of community of folks that are thinking about this. As I said, I don't have the answer, but I think that is a different enough frame from how we've always done it that if we can crack some of those things and figure out the answers there, I think we will at least have a chance of making some progress on this. I think what I would love to add is, you know, part of it I think in my mind is how do we ensure that environmental justice isn't the one-off? Because we, you know, in the 30 years that I've worked in this industry, everything is a silo, which, and even things that we all commonalities that we have in terms of problems, we still deal with them in a silo manner, which is way more expensive, absolutely inefficient, and likely to fail, right? Those things are always guaranteed because we're not working together. And so I think when we talk about environmental justice, one of the things that we have as an association is a set of principles, but I actually have members who work in environmental justice, and I bring them in on every policy position that we debate. Those individuals are sitting there talking about it and informing and educating us because we don't all know. And so my utility folks may not have an environmental justice hat, but I have somebody who can say, hey, look, here are the environmental impacts for what we're deciding. And we need to think about what are the nuances and other connection points that we should be considering as we're making recommendations as an organization. And we don't always get it right, but that's our starting point, right? It's always ensuring that every single voice and every single sector or interest is represented in every decision that we make so that we at least can learn from them about what we may not know and what may be hidden, and then begin to solve problems and provide recommendations for those problems. I want to say we need better leadership. I'm going to say we need better leadership. We haven't had leadership at the presidential level since Bill Clinton really in his 1994 executive order. I mean, I think President Obama was a bit better of a leader than maybe other predecessors, but we need leadership on all levels. We need governors to care about this, mayors to care about it, elected leaders at all levels to care about environmental justice. And I think that's sort of some of our responsibilities as well as folks who work in policy to push this, to make this a priority for those elected leaders so that they can then actually craft the policies that will keep this from being a one-off. Because I worked in a couple of congressional offices and I can tell you we didn't talk about E.J. And one of those offices was a member of color. And we had a very poor district. But in the two years that I was there, I don't recall us really talking about it, taking lead on an E.J. issue. And that was bad on us. Kelly? No, I agree with, I violently agree with all of the statements said before. I think what I wanted to add to that is in what Abby said in terms of being intentional and what everyone else has been talking about of being intentional is to formalize that intent, right? So as a very first step, if you're, whether you're a company or whether you're a policymaker to formalize that intent, begin to measure it, take measure like Sia has in terms of what your diversity and inclusion, so at every level of your organization, and then require people to be trained to have this consciousness and this intent. Like, make sure that it's included. And then the other parts may or may not follow, but at least we'll all be intentional about what we're doing, right? So I just think it's so important to not just formalize, but to communicate that so that we know that we're in this together. And I would add that, oh, sorry, Dan, I would add that we gotta invest in this. We have to be willing to, because we live in a capitalist society and our economy drives social change just as much as policy does. And so we need to make sure that we are designing ways for environmental justice solutions to be profitable for the industries that are a part of them. And I think there's probably a lot of opinions about the way that California goes about doing this and whether it's a cost-effective solution. But one of the things that we have seen, for example, with our solar incentives and we're starting to see with storage, is that money actually can buy change. And so I think we need to not forget the role that our economy can play and make sure that we are pointing that engine, particularly when we enter the recovery phase, in the policy direction that we want it to go. We can mobilize that engine of capitalism any direction we want it to go, right? We can harness it. I'm gonna ask a question from someone who's following us online. And this has to do with educational opportunities. And the question is, to what extent do educational opportunities or choices made by students of color impact their access to employment? This question specific to renewables, but in general. And I wonder if any of you have thoughts about that and what we could be doing, sort of this idea of building these relationships in advance if we're sort of filling that pipeline of future leaders and future professionals and future engineers and helping to diversify that at the front end. What are some ideas that you might have around how we could do that within sort of the academy? If I could, Dan, I'd like to actually just expand that question a little bit for us. It's not just about the choices that students are making, it's about the options on the menu as well. So how can we make sure that there's a comprehensive suite of options on the menu for folks to choose from and that folks have the ability to choose according to their inclinations and their abilities, not just these are the only two options that are available to me at the time. So let's think about both sides of that question. Yeah, I think that's a great point. It's not a choice, right? Not for everyone. Exactly. You know, I think one of the things that we should think about, particularly for students, is in pursuing of opportunities. So we talk a lot about education and that may be high school and in a certificate or community college or four year or whatever that is. We don't talk enough about the importance of a network and having access to a network. And we quite frankly, I think, lead our kids to believe that the education is like, once you get that degree, you're golden. And that's just simply not true. I was speaking with a colleague who has a program focused on this and he talked about the fact that many times you will see first generation students be underemployed because they don't have a network when they graduate that allows them to pursue an opportunity that's really more fit in with the skills that they've gained. And so I think we have to do more about connecting with students in school and giving them access to our network. So my children have access to my network and my children have found jobs because they've had access to the network of people that I know and I can share who they are with. But I think we as an industry have to start to seek students out and share with them not only what the opportunities are, but also I think share with them in a way that the opportunities are limitless in a way, right? That we don't tell them that you have to be an engineer and that's the only way you're going to get to be the next Abby Hopper, for example, right? There are lots of ways that we navigate kind of the world and I think we all have, every one of us has a very different story as to how we ended where we are and I, for me personally, there's never in a million years that anyone would have imagined that my background that I would have been here. I wouldn't have imagined that. But we have to share that with our students and then work with them and encourage them and really kind of open up the door, right? And give them the kinds of insights that they're not going to get about the importance of emotional intelligence, the importance of being a likable person, right? That being smart and having great abilities are absolutely important, but people liking you and having a good attitude and all that other stuff actually really matters in terms of as they're pursuing a career. I'll just add on to that. I think again going back to the intentionality piece, we have to intentionally be in some of those historically Black colleges and universities and reach out to students of color. My organization again as an example, we have long had relationships with IBS and Stanford, Duke, some of the really good schools and we end up with a lot of great interns because they come out of those schools and those schools pay for the internships, but we've not done the same with the colleges of color. We're starting to do that now. We were on track to do that this summer, but the pandemic sort of stepped on that. But we are trying now because I got my first job in the environment over 20 years ago and I can say there are no more people of color in the community than there were then and if so it's only by a margin. Our organization, we are now trying to do a much better, more comprehensive job and to be candid. Some of the civil unrest has really opened a lot of folks' eyes within our leadership and within some of our senior ranks, but we've been talking about diversity and inclusiveness and equity for much of the last two years. I think now there's a really strong push to do something about and I think that's happening around the community. I noticed the Sierra Club made a statement about their founder a couple of days ago and talked about their commitment to people of color. I know my friends at Earth Justice, just to name some of some of the national environmental groups, are also making really strong pushes to diversify not only their workforce, but the places where we work. So, but we do have to be intentional and think about it every day. Mr. Paula's point about opening up our networks, I pulled out my cheat sheet from our diversity study because we asked about this. We asked if you think about how do people get jobs, right? Like, you know, I will echo John, like I've gotten almost every job I had through people I know and people I've worked with in my own network, but we asked the percentage of employees who found their jobs through a referral or by word of mouth, 44% of the white respondents got their job through a referral or word of mouth and only 28% of black respondents. And so it sort of goes to that point of opening up the network and providing sort of validation for others that, yes, this is important. Paula and I co-hosted an event last year at Solar Power International, Blacks and Solar. And, you know, you can give me a hard time that having a happy hour is really, is that really social justice? But, but our intent was really to create space, right? And create some of those networks and open up our networks to others. I am, I feel like that piece of the work and that emotional intelligence and that humanness is so critically important. And, yes, getting an engineering degree alone is unlikely to differentiate you from all of the other folks who also have engineering degrees. So, yes, let's keep opening up those networks. That's, yeah, that's really important. And, you know, I, when, when I heard to Paula talking, the word mentor popped right up in my head, right? I mean, you can, you know, that doesn't have to be something you're asked to do, right? That's something you can offer to do. And when you see people of promise and people who, you know, who have that drive, it's probably on all of us who have the ability to do it. I know I certainly benefited from people who I've looked up to, people, two people in fact on this panel who certainly helped me out a lot and really, really appreciated and, you know, have to have to pay that forward and do that to others. We are doing well on time, but I do kind of want to ask us one question. We've talked a lot about, now we've talked about what we can do and when we should be doing it. I'd like to ask you, looking ahead maybe three or five years, how will we know that what we're talking about today will have made a difference? What, I'm wondering from your organization's perspective or from your personal experience, what will progress look like to you? How will you be convinced that progress has happened? And for people who are, you know, watching us online, what are the kinds of goals that you all have, whether it's in representation or whether it's, you know, staff diversity, board diversity, cultivating these community relationships, what are the near-term goals that we all have to adopt, our organizations have to adopt to really advance environmental justice? Just something I've observed sitting here with you all, I think in three to five years, if a panel that it looks as diverse as what we have here right now is not remarkable, then we all have made progress, right? And this is, to me, a remarkable panel of experts that look a lot different from each other. And I don't think that's all that common yet. It's a easy and like just a snippy answer back. I think there's some other things for real, but that just is my gut reaction that I feel like I have to share. I think I want to touch on the, I think I want to touch on the question of, I'll let you sort it out. Sorry. I think I want to touch on the question of metrics, right? Someone mentioned earlier that what gets measured gets done. And I think what we've seen across the mainstream environmental space is if we set a goal, even if it is an audacious goal, and we dedicate resources, and we put all the tools in our toolbox towards reaching that goal, we can get there. And so it's just a question of setting goals that are centered around justice and using our same set of tools that we have been using all along and pointing them in a different direction. So I think that the change will look in some ways very subtle because we will be using all of the same tools, but it will look radically different in terms of what we are using those tools for and who is at the table as has been the subject of many of the speaker's remarks here today. Paul, you and Abby both wanted to go. So maybe we'll start with you, Paula. Okay. I want to, and I wanted to just add on to something that Kelly said, because I think she's right that a panel that looks like this is, in my experience, incredibly rare, like happens a couple of times a year rare. But I think if I could walk into a room and not be the only person who said there's something wrong with this picture, because I can count the people of color on one hand, and we don't have to be the people who have to say, you know, if Abby and I and Kelly are together, we're not the one saying how come there aren't more women here, but that there's a man saying what the heck? This is a problem. I think that to me is significant progress because that's a demonstration that we're all focused on the same thing, and we recognize it. Courtney and I were going to say the same thing, what gets measured gets done. And so part of why we invest in the diversity study so that we know what our starting point is and we can measure progress in terms of gender and racial diversity, but also kind of where in our organizations, those diverse folks sit. I think about board diversification. If you go on my website and you look at my board, it's very white and very male. And so there's clear progress to be made there. And I think, you know, I don't know quite what the metric is for bringing frontline communities and impacted communities into the policy discussion. I don't know how measure that yet, but that to me is part of what progress looks like. Thanks. John, I'm happy to give you the last word on this or any other topic. You're just about out of time, but I'd love to hear from you again. Okay. I'll just I'll go back to how do we measure. We have, I'm not going to go through specifics, but we have certainly suggested to our board, which also suffers from a lack of diversity, some goals that they should incorporate a certain number by a certain set of years. And we've given them a roster of names of folks that we think would fit that bill. I think that's one way of doing it. Our staff sort of sat together and came up with a group of folks that we think would be good fits, but also in terms of our diversity within our staff, I mean, which is also remarkably low. And it's just it's hard. I mean, I've been, I've made two hires since I've been here, and both of which have been persons of color who would not have probably even applied for the organization, but for me reaching out to them saying, you know, I know you, I know your work ethic, and I think you'd be really great in this role. Please apply. And I wasn't and we have a really kind of tortured way of hiring here. So a lot of other people had to agree that they were they were good fits before they came on board. But I think, you know, if I'm not here, then they're not here. So we have to continue to bring folks in who look different from us or like us in my, my and Paula's case. But it's going to take, again, I'll go back to intentionality. We have to want to do it and think about it every day. Great. Well, this was just tremendous, you know, a wonderful panel to collectively individually. Thank you all for your leadership and your willingness to join us today at the at the expo and sort of share your thoughts and experiences and help us understand sort of what this issue looks like, but also really what we can do about it. And I hope our online audience is leaving this panel as I am, which is, you know, inspired, feeling not good about the situation, but at least good about our prospects if we all put our minds to it. And really just want to say thank you to Paula, Abby, Kelly, John and Stephanie for a wonderful panel. And we'll go ahead and end it there. We are going to take a short break. And that's going to allow Omri, Troy, and Dan, Oh, and I to have a bite to eat. Our next panel, we'll start at 130. And that is Energy Efficient Buildings as Grid Resources. This is also a really great opportunity to recognize that it is not just me sitting in the office today magically making this happen. There is in fact a failings of people. Omri next door is our indispensable communications director, Troy, who you hopefully can't see because he's sort of the one really pulling the strings. He is our tech wizard and he makes this platform possible. We have Dan Oh, the other Dan, although he's not another Dan. He's a great Dan and he is helping us just being generally helpful. He's tracking question submissions. He's providing tech redundancy. He's a Johnny on the spot, and we couldn't do these sorts of things without him. Also like to recognize Ellen, Sydney, Susan and Tim, who are all cogs in the mighty machine that is ESI and they're helping us out with notes and monitoring all of this. And we have five summer interns. All of our interns this summer are remote. They were being brought on when things were happening. And we decided that it was that we needed to have them and we wanted to have them. And so we have five interns, Abby, Bridget, Grace, Maeve and Maya. They are helping with notes. They're helping with social media. They're helping with questions. And at any given moment we have this group of this cadre of interns and they're really great and we're spending a lot of time thinking about sort of how we can diversify that group of people who join ESI as well. There's also someone very special who is not with us today. She is remote, but we couldn't have done the expo without her, Becky Blood. She has been indispensable and a wonderful team player and just someone who I've only known since like January and I can't even imagine what December would have been like or was like. She just gets so much work done and has been so helpful. So thanks to everyone. Now off for some sandwich and maybe some chips. We will be back here at 1.30 for energy efficient buildings at Grid Resources and then we'll have two more panels after that. Sustainable transportation and new frontiers and clean energy research and development. As a reminder, you will have to close or refresh your browser window. If you'd like to join us at 1.30 for the next panel, leaving this one open won't actually work. You'll have to restart it. Hopefully that's not a problem. And if you have two minutes, we would really appreciate your time taking a quick survey. There's a link there. We do really pay attention to all the feedback that we receive and it helps us think about these things and bring panels like this to you all to make sure that we're topical and relevant and getting our policy makers and the public the information they need. We'll end it there. Thanks again to our panelists and we'll be back at 1.30.