 Good morning everyone. My name is Carol Werner. I'm the Executive Director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute and we are very pleased to welcome you all here this morning and for this afternoon for once again the Congressional Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Technology Expo and the Policy Forum. I hope that you will take full advantage of all of the exhibits right around the corner in the Rayburn Foreer and we are very pleased to be holding this event again this year in conjunction with the House Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus which is a bipartisan caucus. So let's get started. We have a number of panels today with a number of speakers. We want to make sure that we are able to hear from everybody. There is an exciting array of information of technologies that I think it's really important for us all to know about and indeed to be excited about at this time of great challenge in terms of energy and environmental issues facing this country. So to start us off this morning we will first hear from Max Grunig who is the President of the Ecologic Institute. Thank you. Thank you Carol for convening this very important gathering of energy experts but also policymakers and policymakers staff. It's really an important event and I'm glad to be here again and thank you for having me here as a guest, as a speaker and good morning everyone. Yeah my name is Max Grunig from the Ecologic Institute we are a non-profit center for transatlantic sustainability here in Washington DC. You can hear already I'm German. I live in the US so the whole institute is very transatlantic. We focus a lot on Germany and Europe and of course the United States and since our founding in 2008 already which now seems like a lifetime ago a very different world we already focused on energy. So energy has always been a very important part of our programming energy and climate and our core program for discussing energy and the energy transition is the energy future exchange and that's also what brings me here today. The energy future exchange or short effects is our core program that connects both Europe and the United States on questions of the energy transition. For us there's two large questions or main questions that we want to address together and the first one is what energy future do we want and then the second one is of course once we settled on the first one maybe how do we get there and so these are of course two very short questions but complex questions and I think today here the expo and the forum is probably a very good question very good for addressing the first question for talking about what energy future do we want where do we want to go and I think these are very helpful and very instrumental in that regard but some things cannot be answered here in these halls as smart as the people here might be so partly for that reason and to address the second question how do we get there that's where our energy future exchange takes us to go outside in the field to explore and discover and that's really the main motivation for our activities we interact with thinkers doers policymakers and of course people can be both right so it's not a exclusive categories and in the US and in Germany and in all of Europe and of course beyond that even and I think I want to point out that there's so much happening and there's so many people really leading the transition and just people don't always know about them and it's so important to connect them across the Atlantic so for us when we talk about the energy transition it's way more than just transitioning from one fuel to another just doing the fuel switch it's more about a profound paradigm shift it's really about changing the way we do things the way our economies work the way our societies work and that amount of change triggers a lot of concern or how we say in German angst yeah so this is understandable it's not an easy transition nobody says that and to just illustrate the depth of transitions and how things can happen and also how you can succeed so I grew up in West Berlin and when the wall came down I was actually in bed because I was younger and it was past my bedtime but the next morning I realized what had happened okay so with some delay but I realized something profound had happened and nobody thought this even in the spring of 89 nobody thought the wall would be down by the end of the year and this singular event much celebrated really only was the beginning only of this whole transition path I mean it wasn't over then you had to actually take out the checkbooks and then you had to do the heavy lifting and it was a tough transition but people had a vision at the vision of the unified country and they knew where they wanted to go so they knew why they would be creating all these activities why they would do this effort and they succeeded so it's very it's a very nice example how you can get somewhere even if it's a tough road if you have a shared vision and I hope in the energy world the energy future exchange can at least provide contribute in a small degree to helping make this vision in the energy realm a reality so starting last November the energy future exchange invited members of Congress and their staffers to explore how Germany is working to transition to a cleaner energy system and our first tour took us to three very large cities to Hamburg Munich and Berlin and these are cities where very often progress outpaces policy so this is interesting in some ways now the second tour took us to a very different level of cities we went to Frankfurt the capital of finance in Germany which is also a bigger city but we also went to the German Rust Belt to the Ruhrgebiet or Ruhr area which is an area where really very often the past can overwhelm progress and that's an interesting counter example we visited very cutting-edge lab for fuel cell research we test drove electric my mailed delivery trucks and went to energy plus affordable housing in Frankfurt and saw a lot of examples we also visited the investment bank that actually funded a lot of these projects very important always to know where the money is coming from but it's really not just about the products and processes but very very much about the people and connecting the people who are behind this we're actually implementing this vision so let's go back we went to an open pit mine in the Ruhr area it's a lignite mine in Garzweil and your cologne and the landscape you can really imagine this is very barren no vegetation just sand and lignite and we heard a very compelling rational story from the owner and operator of that mine RWE about the use of the law of eminent domain to manage the land how they would compensate with fair market value the owners of land and how they would get better more comfortable and more quality homes in their new locations and then that really made a lot of sense we went by coincidence the next day to a different research institute and met somebody whose parents were had been relocated in their 70s after they'd lived a whole life in their homes and they had to leave the home where they had raised their children where they had lived their lives and this story was a very different story from the version from the owner operator so it was very interesting to see these two example examples I've been given the kind of hint that we are nearing the end of the time but I wanted to say you have two examples to engage with us in life in this energy future exchange the very first one is now in September in Brussels we have a conference on the energy future in the heart of Europe discussing with European civil society and then later in November there's another program from members of Congress and their staffers going to Germany going to the north of Germany to study wind offshore and onshore wind and also power or a wind to hydrogen facilities and then in the second part of the program will be in Berlin talking to parliament and German policy makers so this will happen exactly before Thanksgiving and you'll see this I do have a booth out there so I'll have these programs there and also if you go and talk to me you can get this wonderful tote bag which is of course excellent for carrying all the documents you can gather here so thank you very much and I'll be happy to answer either questions if we have time later here or at the booth out there thank you very much thanks very much Max and obviously it's terribly important for us to learn from from others and we have often looked at at lessons that we have learned from Germany other European countries and as this panel is really focused on public policy and sustainability I think it's important to recognize how much we really depend upon our neighbors and our allies which is why you're also going to hear from another one of the countries that is so important in terms of thinking about where we go on energy and environment so let me introduce Andrew Daw who is the first secretary for energy and environment with the Embassy of Canada Andrew thank you very much Carol and thank you everyone for being here this morning it's a real pleasure to be here and see so many of you interested in the Clean Energy Expo as Carol said I'm with the Canadian Embassy and so I'm here to tell you this morning a little bit about Canada's energy story and this is a good story and one that's we believe important and significant to the United States because Canada in the US have built one of the most integrated energy markets in the world 74 oil and natural gas pipelines and 34 major electrical transmission lines transport energy back and forth across our borders each and every day Canada also supplies virtually all the electricity and natural gas that's imported to the United States one in 15 US homes are powered by Canadian uranium Canada provides the US with almost half of its crude oil imports more than all the members of OPEC combined so Canada will continue to be the best possible partner to the United States as you build a cleaner energy system that is affordable and secure this is first and foremost because Canada is an energy powerhouse we are the world's second largest producer of hydropower and of uranium we're a top 10 producer of other renewable energies we're also a global leader in the production of minerals essential to renewable energy technologies and batteries such as nickel cobalt and graphite Canada's leadership however is as much about the energy we produce as it is how we go about producing that energy and those energy minerals Canada is committed to producing energy resources the right way this means taking an inclusive approach to enter to the energy transition people are at the centre of our actions a few years ago natural resources Canada our Department of Energy conducted a public consultation on Canada's energy future that reached over 380,000 Canadians this generation energy consultation led to four principles that guide decisions by the Canadian government to support Canadian families businesses and communities these include saving energy powering clean communities using more renewable fuels and helping power the world an inclusive approach also means improving laws for how consultation and partnerships must happen when it comes to building energy projects in Canada respecting the rights of indigenous people is in is essential to Canada and the government is working with indigenous peoples to find solutions that will lead to better social economic and environmental outcomes inclusive also means ensuring everyone can participate in the opportunities created by the energy sector so along with Sweden and Italy Canada is a founding member of the clean energy education and empowerment initiative or C3E recognizing that the transition to clean energy future will only succeed if we harness all possible talent C3E seeks to enable greater gender diversity in clean energy professions so under C3E Canada launched the equal by 30 initiative to advance the participation of women in the clean energy sector and energy transition to date more than 110 organizations have signed on including governments companies and trade associations around the world producing energy the right way also means addressing climate change in Canada we know that climate change is real and that human activity is a significant contributor Canada is taking aggressive action through innovation regulation and policy we're moving forward to transition our energy system and our emissions are coming down we have a head start on this though because over 80% of Canada's electric electricity comes from sources that do not emit greenhouse gases because Canada and the US electricity systems are so highly grant integrated trade with Canada represents a low-cost way for northern states to meet their renewable energy targets projects like the Manitoba Minnesota transmission line approved by the Canadian government this June will allow Canadian hydro to act as a battery for US intermittent renewables when the wind is blowing US power flows north when it stops Canadian dams will open and keep the lights on down south while Canadian Canada's clean power system is a huge advantage we recognize the need to do more Canada and the UK founded the powering past coal alliance that commits members to phase out unabated coal power generation five US states have signed on as members of this alliance for Canada's part we've committed to phase out this unabated coal fire generation by 2030 Ontario has already completed this phase out in what has been the single largest emissions reduction effort in North America the power sector is essential to the energy transition but it's important to note that Canada's push for cleaner energy includes oil and gas Canada is the only major source of US energy imports that has imposed a carbon tax on carbon pollution Canada and Alberta have brought in new regulations to cut methane emissions by 45% by 2025 and Alberta has imposed a cap on oil sands emissions of 100 megatons no other country that supplies the US with energy has a comparable basket of measures to drive down greenhouse gas emissions and through innovation per barrel GHG emissions in Canada's oil sands have fallen by a fifth over the last 10 years and it is projected to fall another 16 to 23% over the next decade today this means that oil sands are in the same range as the other heavy oils consumed in the US and is in fact lower than many such as California thermal so this progress in the oil sands is just one example of how innovation has become and continues to be at the core of Canada's energy sector we're investing 2.3 billion dollars in clean energy innovation such as wind solar alternative fuels energy efficiency carbon capture utilization and storage and on top of tens of billions of dollars in the green infrastructure Canada is also supporting projects to reduce reliance on diesel and other fossil fuels in Canada's northern rural and remote communities many of which are indigenous or have majority indigenous populations these include supporting solar PV installations with battery storage wind small-scale hydro biomass fueled heating systems and building local school skills and capacity these clean energy projects aim to improve energy security and sustainability while also positioning communities to own and operate their own energy assets Canadian clean tech labs are and startups are often working hand-in-hand with partners in the US to unlock new innovative energy solutions Canadian government labs are collaborating with the US national labs on solutions like small modular nuclear reactors carbon capture utilization and storage bioenergy hydrogen smart grids the application of artificial intelligence to energy clean energy materials and advanced manufacturing and energy systems in buildings and communities so the one message that I hope you take away from my presentation today is this when it comes to building an energy future that is cleaner more inclusive affordable and secure Canada in the United States will be able to do it better if we do it together thank you very much thanks Andrew so I would just encourage you to go to the Canada's booth to meet with Andrew and his colleagues because it's very interesting in terms of how they too as a major energy producer are looking at all of the kinds of energy and how to really lower that carbon footprint in an integrated forward-looking way and I'm certainly glad to see what's happening with regard to all of the in indigenous work but in also the inclusivity of everyone including everybody being represented in that energy force moving forward so now we're going to turn to Thomas of alone who is the president of the integrity research Institute thank you Carol glad to be here and if you have your trifolds some of them were pen handed out and others are up in the front and also we gave you a preprint two-pager of a 20-page journal article is being published in the Journal of Earth Science and climatic change I'm happy to describe what our Institute is doing and also tell you the need for it basically the climate condition that's been revealed at the end of last year by UNEP NCA for IPCC and COP 24 I believe in our Institute believes has essentially deceived the public into a little bit of complacency one and a half to two degrees C is achievable will level things out everyone's going to be happy nothing will get too hot well that's far from the truth what you see on the summary graph from the Stanford University Carnegie Institute University of Washington very impressive places even Noah Dr. Salman just on the street here and also Scott Wing from Smithsonian have all described the five to six degree change they were indebted for by the end of 2100 by the beginning in other words the end of the century 80 years from now and essentially we're looking at one degree every 20 years in other words we've already seen the Jim Hansen prediction from 1988 come true for 2019 and that was a full degree C to be experienced worldwide and unfortunately we're adding so much carbon dioxide to the atmosphere from 290 which was the pre-industrial level parts per million up to 410 currently which is 120 parts per million that's been added well Jim Hansen found through his 400,000 year analysis of the Bostock ice core and essentially we're able to correlate the co2 level increase from 290 to temperature and the reason I pause is that it's shocking because you get enough with 20 parts per million equally one degree C increase and as I said 120 is already been added to the 290 you do the math divide by 20 you have six degrees so this is our motivation for doing something extreme and not just the standard renewables that we think will solve the problem essentially the first thing we need to address and that's what our Institute is working on even with our upcoming conferences we've done 10 conferences on future energy so far the first one I was fired from the Patent Office for trying to have it at the State Department and the Commerce Department took me six years of arbitration to get the job back but this is the resistance that people have to outside the box energy solutions and what's interesting too is that as we approach the extreme possibilities of sequestering and capturing billions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere not just preventing the emissions of carbon which is a wonderful laudable idea because we have to reach that stage where we're no longer emitting and the trend of the increase in carbon emissions actually stabilizes and starts to go down much like population has back in 1975 when I was born there were 3 billion people in the world it's already doubled to 6 billion by the another 20 years it'll be 9 billion so in my lifetime population is tripled guess what carbon emissions are going to triple as well by the end of the century you think the two are correlated of course they are and so what we're talking about is the same trend that we see now in the rate of population growth has gone down since 1975 but the level keeps increasing until at least the near the end of the century 2050 or so where it might level out carbon dioxide is going to do the same thing and this is the this is the shocking truth in other words Dr. Solomon from NOAA calls it irreversible climate change I don't like to use that word that's her phrase but it still is what anthropologists describe leading to hunger poverty social breakdown and war so now I told you all the bad news let's look at our trifold and talk about the good news of solutions to this problem and essentially our institute is devoted to three prong attack on the world's major issues and that is energy propulsion and bio energetics and by looking at renewable energy and also outside the box emerging energy technologies we're seeing large-scale possibilities geothermal nuclear the list is so extensive that that's why we have conferences every year and we have monthly future energy e-news that you can subscribe to for free we've done it for over almost two decades now all archived on our website integrity research Institute org and so we're a nonprofit organization dedicated to researching scientific integrity in the areas of energy propulsion bio energetics and as described in our trifold essentially we're looking for the past three decades fulfilling the mission of our all volunteer staff in in these three areas and we've presented on national TV met with legislators published books journals and in fact the DVD describing what I'm talking about really is available up here at the table and also at our booth and the research department essentially has developed bioenergy devices and many projects that we funded in the propulsion areas just for an example we have an aerospace engineer from Boeing who just retired at the right time and essentially revealed a proprietary invention gyroscopic is called control moment gyro and essentially has been used to keep the space station up in orbit for over a decade and now he's able to get got permission to use it for a tabletop demo and to provide electrical power directly to provide force means that fossil fuels won't be needed for transportation or possibly even for rocket and space travel and so we're basically not only holding conferences but promoting clean fossil fuel free developments and our integrity research Institute and visions of future world where pollution is a thing of the past and abundant energy is generated on site for every home business and vehicle and one of the other projects we're actually funding and cooperating with the Canadian Hathaway consultants in Toronto is the spiral magnetic motor project and it's kind of exciting because the idea of using the magnetic gradient for power has basically never been realized except in electric motors however the magnetic gradient itself is a source of force just as the thermal gradient voltage gradient and gravity gradients are used worldwide so this is a new development that's now being prototyped and we look forward to the possibility of having electric cars that we have an onboard charger can you envision a future that will have every electric vehicle being charged as it drives and no need to go find a charging station to survive the next 10 20 50 miles so when you talk about energy look at it as the same way that air and water have been we've had free air and free water for a while why not free energy thank you very much thank you and it obviously this is all about looking at a whole variety of visions technologies as we all work to find what kinds of things really will work and how we can make things really change for the better so we are now for the last speaker in this panel going to Jeremy Richardson who is the senior energy analyst with with UCS the union of concerned scientists and they're always very concerned thank you Carol thank you Carol Jeremy Richardson as you said and there is a lot to be concerned about turns out I am not the but one of our senior energy analysts I should should add I wanted to talk for a few minutes about one specific and concrete thing that could be done to start to address the climate problem and that's a bill that's been introduced by senator Udall and and some of his colleagues I didn't pass them out but I have up here on the table some short three page description of the bill if you want to pick it up on the way out we also have some more copies out at our booth as well as some additional information about some of the modeling that we've done around the bill so I'm just going to tell you a little bit about it I won't throw too many numbers at you because if I were sitting in your shoes I'd forget them all anyway but I just wanted to flag why this is a really interesting proposal and also at the outset say that there will be a house companion we expect representative Welsh to offer one in the coming months so if you're interested in this proposal stay tuned for that because there will be a chance to to co-sponsor it here on the house side so what this bill does is it establishes a national renewable electricity standard that would achieve more than 50% renewable energy by 2035 and just to give you a little bit of context we're at about 18% renewable energy as a as a fraction of generation in 2018 and that includes all sources including hydropower so we did some analysis around this and we really think that the this proposal would help boost the economy would benefit consumers and will put us on a pathway to decarbonizing the electricity sector by mid-century which is what the science tells us we need to get to so many of you may be familiar with an RES or an RPS what it does in general is it requires electric utilities and retail electricity suppliers to increase the gradually increase the amount of renewable energy that they provide to consumers that uses a market-based approach that helps stimulate competition among different technologies and and projects and companies to provide the greatest amount of clean power for the lowest price and it's sort of establishes an ongoing incentive to drive down costs this proposed this policy mechanism is currently in place in 29 states as well as here in DC and they have a proven track record of success in deploying renewables creating jobs and reducing emissions for the last 20 years so this net this idea of establishing a national RES would help ensure that the entire nation benefits from that from accelerating clean energy development so what we found is that a 50% by 2035 RES is both feasible and affordable and it will help the US get on track to meeting its climate goals just to give you a little bit of a sense of where we've been on average over the last three to five years renewable energy has grown as a fraction of sales by about a percent per year and so what this proposal would do is actually double that more than double that through 2035 and we think that's aggressive and achievable and it's also consistent with what a lot of the leading states have done recently in terms of really setting ambitious goals for renewable energy so the one point that I want to make in terms of the policy design is that typically what an RES policy does is establishes you know a set fraction of energy that must be generated from renewable sources by a date certain so 100% by 2050 or 30% by 2030 you know that they usually it's like the final target this bill is actually interesting because it it's kind of takes a novel approach and what senator Udall has proposed is that for every single electricity retail electricity's provider it doesn't matter where you're starting you just have to increase and so it sets the standard is that you have to increase by a certain percentage every year and what we think that the idea behind that was that all states would have to get started and so you take away this argument from folks from states and utilities that don't have a lot of renewables currently because they're only recently becoming economic in those places that that say well we can't possibly get to that high of a level by the date that you're talking about and so this sort of takes that away and says it doesn't matter if you're starting from zero you just have to start increasing and it's consistent with as I said how nationally how you know how how renewables have been increasing over the over in recent years and so the other thing to note is that most existing resources don't qualify for credits under this so typically what an RV RPS does is it sets up a crediting mechanism where you can either produce renewable energy yourself where you can buy a credit from from somebody that has access credits this actually really focuses in on new generation and so the idea is to try to get everybody to invest in new renewables so I'll just give you a couple numbers I won't give you too many but with some of the key findings of our analysis we did a comparable analysis of a 50% by 2035 RES and found that it would achieve about 374 billion dollars in cumulative new capital investments from 2020 through 2035 that's cumulative we'd see about a 34 billion dollar cumulative net savings in consumer energy bills that includes both electricity and natural gas it's about 0.6% savings and then finally 46% reduction in power sector carbon dioxide emissions by 2035 that's an annual number so as I said there's more we have more information about our modeling that we did on this you can see our website I think we have some copies that are at our booth some of the slides that we put together and but I guess I would just leave you with the idea that you know this is an aggressive but achievable policy it would put us the US on on course for decarbonizing the power sector by mid-century and it's important to note that we're going to need additional policies beyond that really to get us where we need to be and those are things like putting a price on carbon or somehow limiting carbon emissions broadly in in the economy stronger energy efficiency standards increased funding for clean energy our D&D and infrastructure investments and also incentives for greater electrification of the transportation sector the building sector in the industry sector and you know as as a as somebody who comes from West Virginia from a coal mining family I think talking about this the impact of these of this transition on coal communities is really important in thinking through what the policies are that can really benefit those communities as well as a really important part of this whole package of policies that we need so I'm happy to answer questions I have some handouts and thanks again for having here so we have time for one question because we have one minute left anybody have a question that you want to ask okay if not because all right we'll take that wait for the microphone please thank you very much thank you so with the recommendations that we've heard a lot of it was related to electrification my question is we didn't talk much about the gas sector renewable gas sector is that something that you guys are kind of emphasizing looking at what can be done to decarbonize the gas sector aside of getting rid of it do you have policy recommendations in that sense I don't know whether anybody here wants to take it but it will come up later today and and I'm happy to talk to you and refer you to people but did anybody else okay can you do it really fast real good sandy labs sandy and natural labs has had a project for years now called sunshine to petrol you can Google it and it's exciting because it combines co2 plus water to provide hydrocarbon fuel and there were just a bunch of articles out the other day about that and right in biogas there's a lot happening in that happy to talk to you about that later and see booths and come back for other policy forms okay so thank you all very very much for being here for this session we're going to start the next one within just a couple minutes and I also encourage you follow up with any of our speakers make sure you go visit all of those wonderful booths thanks for being here