 Welcome to this second panel of the policy form for the Congressional Renewable and Energy Efficiency Clean Technology Expo. It's amazing how quiet it just got. Thank you very, very much. And I am Carol Werner, the Executive Director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. And of course we are honored to once again put this on in conjunction with the bipartisan congressional renewable and efficiency caucus. And of course EESI is a nonprofit that was organized by a bipartisan congressional caucus to work on issues of energy and environmental issues, sustainability to be problem solving. And we've been doing that for over 30 years now. So I wanted to just make sure to repeat that again. So let us get this policy panel underway. We have some wonderful speakers here. And our first leadoff speaker for this panel is Kayla Prendergast, who is a program associate for the Building Clean program of the Blue-Green Alliance. Good morning everyone. I'm so excited to be here. And thank you Carol for that introduction. Also thanks to the rest of the staff at EESI for putting this great event together. We're so appreciative. Today is a great opportunity to bring prominent leaders together to discuss the connection between America's clean energy economy and good jobs for American workers and energy efficiency sector. Particularly in the often forgotten energy efficiency manufacturing industries. My name is Kayla, as Carol said, and I work for the Blue-Green Alliance Foundation's Building Clean initiative. At BGIF, we believe solving our nation's environmental challenges will create and sustain good jobs, strengthen American manufacturing, and build a strong clean energy economy. But what are clean energy jobs? Most people might answer that they are solar and wind jobs. But in reality, clean jobs are so much more than that. Energy efficiency is the largest and fastest growing job sector in America's clean energy economy. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, energy efficiency is the number one largest energy resource in the United States. And energy efficiency workers are the workers that install energy efficiency products in buildings and homes and workers that are manufacturing these products across the United States. In fact, there are more than 2.3 million Americans working in energy efficiency today, which includes construction, manufacturing, wholesale trade, engineering, sales, and many other jobs. In fact, in 2018 alone, more than 76,000 new jobs were created in the energy efficiency sector, continuing the trend of the energy efficiency seeing the highest percentage growth of all the energy sectors. Also last year, more than 320,000 Americans were working to make energy efficiency products, with one out of four in energy efficiency appliance manufacturing, energy efficiency appliance manufacturing specifically. And this just includes products like energy star refrigerators, energy star washer dryers, and other energy star products that you can find in the home or other commercial spaces. And this growth is not expected to slow down. Next year, domestic manufacturing jobs and energy efficiency are expected to increase by nearly 6%. And it could be even higher if we link our energy efficiency spending to the purchase of local, and if it's not available locally, you know, just American-made goods and equipment. It is promising to see sustained job growth and energy efficiency, and we need to do everything we can to keep that growing. Energy efficiency strengthens small businesses, which we all know are the backbone of the American economy. And according to the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, roughly 70% of energy efficiency jobs are in small businesses. It's clear that energy efficiency opens doors across America. You will find energy efficiency workers in all 50 states and 99.7% of all U.S. counties. Manufacturing and construction jobs deliver good jobs with sustainable wages and benefits for families, and these are the types of jobs that we need more of, to regrow and protect a strong American middle class. And these are a few of the reasons that we need to support building energy efficiency efforts and link them to incentives to create market demand for U.S. products. Utility incentives, government rebates, procurement policies, and product rating systems are all a part of this larger strategy. At Building Clean, we do our part by helping built environment professionals find U.S.-made products. We maintain a public database of over 4,500 U.S. facilities that are manufacturing energy efficiency products and parts across the country. The database can be found and is featured at BuildingClean.org. And on BuildingClean.org, you can find U.S.-made HVAC systems, insulation, lighting, plumbing, roofing, sealants, appliances like we already mentioned, windows, doors, skylights, and even water filtration systems. But you know, revitalizing American manufacturing is not the only thing that energy efficiency can do for this country. The benefits go beyond reducing energy usage, beyond saving money, beyond helping the environment, and beyond creating jobs. But that does sound like a pretty good start. Studies show that health in the built environment are undeniably connected. Billions in health-related costs can be saved through the same work that improves energy efficiency in residential and commercial spaces. In fact, according to the Green and Healthy Homes Initiative, nearly 9 million families across the nation live in unhealthy energy inefficient homes, which leads to $82.4 billion in healthcare costs nationwide. Increasing demand for energy efficiency residential retrofits creates a unique opportunity to simultaneously address energy consumption and improve health outcomes for Americans. Improving the energy efficiency and quality of our built environment empowers Americans to live healthier, more productive lives. Energy efficiency in the built environment can create healthier spaces, reduce energy consumption, and deliver good jobs for Americans. So let's work together to fully realize the potential of the clean energy economy and all of its benefits. And you know, thank you for attending this panel, and I invite you to come visit us at the Building Clean Table. If you have any questions, we'll be here all day. Thank you. And I should also mention that EESI just finished up a jobs fact sheet yesterday, and so that will also be on, you can find it on our table, and Kayla's right there. So many exciting things happening in this space, and it's a terrific opportunity. So we will next here from Adam Goff, who is the Policy Director at Eight Rivers Capital, as well as the Policy Director for NET Power. Thank you Carol for setting up this event and giving us the opportunity to speak today. My name is Adam Goff. I'm the Policy Director for NET Power, and I'm going to talk to you about how we can produce zero-emission electricity from natural gas. To do that first, I'll explain the technology that we used to do this, and then second, I'll talk about what role this can play in the clean energy transition and what role policy can play in helping us cut CO2 emissions faster. So NET Power is a new way of making power from natural gas. Most power plants in this country drive a turbine with steam or with air. NET Power actually turns CO2 from a problem into the solution. We use a CO2 turbine to make power. So NET Power is a joint venture of Exilon, Occidental Petroleum, McDermott, and Eight Rivers Capital, and we invented a new power cycle that first burns natural gas and pure oxygen. The air around us is actually mostly nitrogen, so by taking out the nitrogen, when you burn in pure oxygen, you eliminate all your air pollutants. So there's no NOx and no SOx generated, and you get a pure stream of CO2. Next, we use that CO2 to drive our turbine. So that CO2 is what gives us high efficiency, and at the end of that CO2 pushing the turbine, we have it already purified and captured, so we can store it deep underground in sequestration. So I know many of you have heard about carbon capture. The general challenge is that it's expensive, and you are legally allowed to release your CO2 up in the atmosphere if you so choose. The thing that makes our technology different is that we have no choice but to capture the CO2. Since the CO2 is driving our turbine, there's no additional cost for us to capture it. It's captured inherently as part of our power cycle. So this is a breakthrough in carbon capture and that it makes the marginal cost of capture nothing additional after you built the power plant. So where are we today? We've raised $150 million from our three partners, and we've built our first plant down in Texas. So if you're ever in the Houston area, we have a 50 megawatt plant down right outside of Houston in LaPorte that's demonstrated this technology using that pure oxygen and driving the turbine with CO2. Our next stage in development is building 300 megawatt commercial plants. So we take this technology and we scale it up to 300 megawatts. We've got six or seven plants in development around the world. So that's where net power is going. What role does it play in the clean energy transition? I know many of you here are most familiar with solar power and wind power and renewables, which are our fastest growing clean energy sources. Net power can help balance those renewable energy sources. Right now the U.S. builds many gigawatts of combined cycle gas a year that releases its CO2 into the air. That combined cycle is actually very helpful in balancing renewables for when it's night and the sun goes down or when the wind is variable. We use that combined cycle to balance our more variable renewable energy. Net power can play that same role, but without any air pollution and without any carbon emissions. We can ramp up and we can ramp down and play a balancing role for renewables. And per the gentleman's earlier question on the first panel, we can help decarbonize gas in the power sector. So this very large supply of natural gas the U.S. has discovered through fracking and the Shell Revolution. We can turn that into something that doesn't harm our climate by burning that gas in a clean way. So the U.S. is definitely the best place to build this technology, but we see a global deployment potential. So since we have no additional cost of CO2 capture, we think we can hit the same price as conventional generation. So when we've built five, six, seven of these plants, we are planning to be at the same or lower price point as combined cycle gas or pulverized coal. When you do that, you really change the clean energy conversation. Just like right now solar is at price parity or below with coal or gas. You then see that technology being built out in China and India and countries that don't necessarily have the capital to spare to build more expensive power. Net power can hit that same point where it is economic to deploy it in China regardless of whether they have any price or incentive on CO2. To get there, we do need policy support to build the first couple plants. The U.S. actually in 2018 passed the 45-Q tax credit. This is part of the budget deal in February. It pays you $50 a ton for every ton of CO2 that you sequester underground. That is what's going to allow Net Power to build its first handful of plants and get up to scale. It's a pretty large incentive, so it gets us between $30 and $50 million in revenue a year. So we have the carbon incentive we need to get this technology up to scale. The things we need further to help us utilize that, there's two fixes to 45-Q. One is called the base erosion anti-abuse tax. It's pretty arcane tax details about how 45-Q is treated for certain new tax code elements introduced in tax reform in 2017. The second is called American energy bonds that allows you to split up 45-Q so you can get a more varied investor base in this clean energy projects. Additionally, we're supportive of the carbon capture R&D bills that are currently going through the House and Senate. Senator Cornyn introduced the leading act for natural gas carbon capture and a senator mentioned it also has the effect act, which authorizes carbon capture R&D at Department of Energy. So we think Net Power can play a big role in helping accelerate clean energy and reduce CO2 emissions in the U.S. and around the world. Thank you for your attention. We have a booth at the Expo. If you have any further questions or want to get more into the chemistry of how exactly we're able to do this, please come talk to us. Thank you. Thanks so much. And as you've heard, there are just all sorts of solutions. And as we look at these problems and recognize that they are problems, challenges that we must face, it is totally driving lots of innovation and great new ideas. So we are now going to turn to another company that has been very innovative for years. We are going to hear from Arlen Peters, who is the head of sustainability for Novozymes. Thank you, Carol, for setting this up. Can everyone hear me? Okay. Yeah, okay. So anyway, thank you all for coming today and giving us the opportunity to share our story and also discuss a vision for greener chemistry. So I'm Arlen Peters, as was mentioned. I'm head of sustainability at Novozymes North America. And just a little bit of background on Novozymes in case you haven't heard of us. We're a biotechnology company in the U.S. We're headquartered in North Carolina. And what we do is we find biological tools in nature and we figure out a way to apply those tools to various problems that we see. We are able to produce greener biofuels, for example, improve animal health, reduce water usage in textiles production, and improve the quality of food and the quantity of food that we produce in agriculture. The main tool that we use is something called an enzyme. I don't know, has anyone heard of enzymes before? Yeah, okay, great. I'm seeing some nods. Good, good. For those of you who have not heard of those, you basically need them to live. These are catalysts that we have in our body. They allow us to function every day. In fact, if you are breathing right now, you are using an enzyme that takes CO2 out of your cells and releases it into the air. So really, really amazing stuff. We use these to solve all sorts of problems. And in fact, our technology is a significant way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions all around the world. In 2018, we calculated that we were able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 88 million tons. That's about the equivalent of taking 37 million cars off the road for one year. So pretty powerful stuff. But I'm not here to talk to you about just enzymes. What I want to talk to you about are eco-friendly cleaners and detergents. So how many of you here care about the environment? Just a show of hands. All right, good, good. How many of you care about the environment so much that you're willing to buy an eco-friendly green detergent? All right, awesome. Okay, good. Me too. So I know that you all have purchased those green detergents. Chemical detergent manufacturers have noticed this trend too. In fact, 86% of new detergent launches in 2017 were eco-friendly or had eco-friendly claims. So that's great. But the problem is that a lot of times, these detergents don't work so well. So you've probably had the experience of maybe getting your shirt with a dollop of chocolate ice cream, going to wash that shirt, using an eco-friendly detergent, maybe washing in cold water so that you're extra gentle on the environment, and thinking to yourself, man, what a great global citizen I am. Then you look at that shirt and you're like, oh my gosh, that stain is still there, right? So you're not the only one to have noticed that issue. In fact, Consumer Reports in 2017 highlighted that problem, stating that detergents actually that make green claims often haven't delivered the same performance as top-rated detergents. So at Nova Zines, we've taken this as a challenge, right? How do we use our technology to create the most eco-friendly detergent possible while still maintaining performance? And there are several levers that we can pull to do this. First, we want to make as concentrated a detergent as possible, right? Why? Because by increasing concentration, you reduce all sorts of negative issues in the value stream. You're able to use less raw materials, less packaging, less weight in transport, and also less chemicals down the drain. Second, we wanted to try to make a 100% bio-based product so that the ingredients come from renewable resources rather than petroleum. Third, we wanted to use a completely recyclable and ideally bio-based plastic in the bottle. And then finally, we wanted a formulation that could operate super well in cold temperatures, right? Because we know that wash temperatures are probably the biggest lever that you can pull in producing greenhouse gas emissions. So this is the concept that we produced. And I can assure you this is not a hip flask. So didn't take a nip of this before starting my presentation today. So we've cut out all but the essential ingredients. So we've gone from 30 ingredients down to 13. It's 100% bio-based. It's using a plastic that is 100% recyclable. And we hope that in future iterations, it will be able to create a bio-based plastic as well. The best thing about this detergent is that it works as well as top-tier detergents in the marketplace today. So if you want to learn more about it, you can talk to us at our booth outside here. I will mention that all of the ingredients in here are available on the market today. And needless to say, this biological detergent would not have been possible without enterprising companies creating better alternatives to traditional chemistries. Many companies would like to transition to alternatives with the needed functionality of desired health and environmental profiles, but one of the most significant barriers to such transitions is the lack of adequate chemical alternatives. Why is that? Well first, there is no comprehensive approach to research and training in the sustainable chemistry field. Meaning most chemists and chemical engineers graduate without any exposure to sustainable chemistry curriculum. We need to have sustainable chemistry taught in the chemistry curriculum. Second, we need significant focus and research to accelerate the development of more sustainable chemical alternatives. The federal government can support that effort, but while there are existing federal programs that have elements of sustainable chemistry, there is little coordination between agencies and programs to maximize our federal investment in this area. So we believe that with a few changes, we can get more out of the programs that exist. That is why we support the Sustainable Chemistry Research and Development Act of 2018. There is a Senate and a House version of this bill. These bills do not regulate companies or spend additional money, but rather create a coordinating entity within the White House OSTP that will assess the various existing federal R&D programs that touch on sustainable chemistry and identify gaps and overlaps. The bill would also establish an advisory panel made up of business, academic and NGO experts to advise the government on research needs, allowing federal R&D efforts to be better targeted towards market needs. So basically this bill creates better coordination among agencies and programs and allows for the better use of current resources. So feel free to join us and others including the GC3 Sustainable Chemistry Alliance, Procter & Gamble, BASF, the Environmental Working Group and LEGO in supporting this legislation. It's one of the best things we can do to ensure that we have safer, greener alternatives to conventional chemistry. As I said, if you want more information, we're in the foyer. And feel free to take a look at our mighty little 100% bio-based detergent. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Thank you so much. Well, something else that we have a lot of in this country is solid waste. So we are going to now hear from David Biederman, who is the CEO and Executive Director of SWANA, the Solid Waste Association of North America, because here is something that we need to find to treat as a resource. Thank you, Carol. Thank you, Carol. Good morning, everybody. Again, my name is David Biederman. I'm with SWANA, the Solid Waste Association of North America. We're headquartered up in Silver Spring, Maryland. We're an association with more than 10,000 members in the United States and Canada. And we appreciate the opportunity to participate again in this great annual policy forum. And we also have a booth in the foyer around the corner if people would like further information about what the association does. So SWANA's members work in both the private sector for companies that you may have heard of like Waste Management, as well as for hundreds of local governments all over the United States, such as the New York City Department of Sanitation, or here in D.C., the District of Columbia's Department of Public Works. So when you put your trash or recyclables out on the street in a container, it's one of our members who probably picks it up. So what I'm going to talk about here today is recycling and the potential role that the federal government can have in supporting this important activity that millions of Americans do every day. But like the prior speaker, I want to take a little test here, ask some questions. How many of you think recycling is important? Raise your hand. I see two people who didn't raise their hand. How many of you have read something recently that recycling is in trouble or there's something going on with recycling? Okay, most of the room, that's terrific. So you're well versed in what the current situation is. Recycling programs in the United States, they face serious challenges right now. Now it's not collapsing contrary to some of the articles you might have read in the newspaper we're seeing on the Internet. It's true that a handful of towns have eliminated curbside recycling and a slightly larger number of local governments have narrowed the types of materials that they're willing to accept in recycling. Oftentimes they're taking out what we call low value plastic, the very thin plastic out of recyclables. But every day, thousands of trucks all across the country are collecting recyclables from homes and businesses. So what caused the current problems we're having with recycling? So two years ago China announced that it was going to stop taking recyclables from the United States and from other countries as part of China's broader effort to improve the environment for their citizens. This matters here in the United States because at least one third of all the recyclables that are generated here in the country used to be sent over to China. And after China imposed its restrictions in early 2018, a lot of recovered paper and plastic began showing up in Southeast and Asian countries like Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia. These countries don't have the infrastructure for managing these materials properly. So they began to restrict the import of this material as well. And in fact some of you might have read that several nations in the region have started to send back containers of waste and recyclables to Canada and Australia among others claiming that there's too much trash mixed in with the recycling. This trash, which we refer to in the industry as contamination, is a very important part of this story. So as a result of this disruption in the marketplace, the value of the recovered paper and plastic generated at recycling facilities all across the United States has declined by at least 50% over the past two years. And recyclables are worth even less when they're heavily contaminated. Now Americans continue to recycle with great fervor. We do a lot of recycling, but they often put the wrong material in that blue recycling bin. Generally 15 to 25% of the material that's processed at a recycling facility is contamination. It ends up at a landfill. You'd be surprised at what people put in the recycling bin. Dirty diapers, hoses, Christmas trees, plastic bags, batteries, and electronics. Waste management reports that they receive up to 100 bowling balls every week, every week, at their recycling centers. So SWANA and others are educating Americans on how to recycle right, but it's a national problem that requires federal assistance. So how can the federal government help? So we're working with the United States Environmental Protection Agency to develop a national framework on recycling, which is going to be released on November 15th as part of America Recycles Day. The national framework is going to focus on four key areas, education and outreach, developing more domestic markets for recyclables, improving the recycling infrastructure here in the United States, and identifying the proper metrics and measurements to use to determine whether recycling programs are performing well. But Congress also has an opportunity to provide leadership on recycling. SWANA is part of a broad-based coalition requesting congressional funding to support local recycling programs. Specifically, we're seeking support for the Recover Act, which would provide money to local governments and others to educate Americans on how to recycle right, help them upgrade outdated recycling equipment, and develop new markets. The overwhelming majority of Americans want to recycle and are even willing to pay a little bit more for the service. But there isn't sufficient domestic capacity to manage all the paper, plastic, metal and glass that we generate. And as I mentioned earlier, Americans need some help in recycling right. And if you don't believe me, check the recycling bin at Union Station for what I'm talking about. Congress can encourage additional investment and improve the recycling system here in the United States through the Recover Act. Now, recycling is a non-partisan issue. There isn't a democratic way or a Republican way to collect and process recyclables. And recycling is good for the economy. It creates jobs here in the United States and needed tax revenue, billions of dollars in tax revenue. But it's also good for the environment as recycling means we don't have to cut down more trees to make more paper or mine more ore to make more cans. And it also preserves landfill space for what's really needed to go to disposal, like those dirty diapers. And it reduces greenhouse gas emissions. The small investment that the Recover Act would authorize would be a win-win for both the economy and the environment. Lastly, earlier this year, an international treaty known as the Basel Convention was amended. This would require exporting countries to provide prior notification if their shipping recovered plastic to importing countries. This amendment is going to take effect in January of 2021 and was enacted in response to the growing marine litter problem. It's going to significantly restrict access to foreign markets for recycled plastic. This just adds additional pressure to the need to improve our domestic recycling systems. Some action is already taking place. Companies are making plans to only use recycled content by 2025 or 2030. And some states and local governments are passing laws to try to address these situations. And we are seeing some improvement in the contamination rates in a handful of jurisdictions, including right here in the District of Columbia. But it's not enough. A great deal of adaptation and change is needed in a short period of time. So as I said, this is a national problem that requires federal action. And I want to end by quoting from a letter that was actually in the trade publication yesterday from the US EPA to Congressman, Congressperson Haley Stevens in response to her concern around recycling. The letter states that no one organization has the resources necessary to address all the challenges to our materials recovery system. So significant progress requires collective action. That collective action will take place with federal assistance and be successful. Thank you very much. Thank you very, very much. We will all do our best to try harder. But I think one of the things that has been so important about messages coming from everybody here and from the previous panel too, is how important the role of policy is that policy does matter. And that there is an important role for many, many different players, stakeholders. And that includes the whole role of our elected officials and our government entities. So thank you for raising all of those important points. So our last speaker on this panel is Devin McCacken, who is the Senior Policy Advisor for Federal Affairs with ITC Holdings Corporation. And that company is part of WIRES, and WIRES has a booth over in the expo. Good morning, everybody, and thanks to Carol for that introduction. As she mentioned, my name is Devin McCacken. I work for a company called ITC Holdings. That is, of course, an anonymous corporate acronym. So what it stands for is International Transmission Company. I'm very pleased to be here today on behalf of the WIRES Coalition to discuss this topic of sustainability. And for those who aren't familiar with WIRES, what we are is a nonprofit coalition of electric utilities, regional transmission organizations, and some technology companies. And our chief concern is to address all of the many policy issues that impact the electric power transmission system. And there are many, so we stay very, very busy with that. But for those of you who may not be familiar at all with the role of electric transmission in the power system, and there's no shame in that, those are basically the really big electric wires that you see by the freeway a lot of times. And what they do is they carry power from where it's generated to where people use it. And a lot of times that happens over very long distances. So what I'd like to do today is to try to address the topic of sustainability through the prism of the electric grid. And to take a look at where we stand as far as the transition to renewable power. But more importantly, think about where do we need to go from here to keep up the momentum. And hopefully I'm doing it through a prism or an angle that you don't always hear when you hear about sort of broad national climate policies. The grid often doesn't come up, but it really should. And that's what I'll be arguing today. So I'll start at a really high level. I think we all know that the topic of climate change is really rising in people's consciousness and in the consciousness of policymakers. We're seeing demands that are growing for some really aggressive policies that really rise to the challenge of this issue that we're facing. And when we talk about climate, there's basically two major sectors of the U.S. economy that are and have been the main emitters of carbon in the U.S. And those are of course the electric power sector where I'm from and that comes from the burning of fossil fuels like coal, natural gas. And then secondly, there's the electric transportation sector. So when we drill down on the electric power sector, there is a lot of good news to report, actually, happily. And that is over the last 15 years or so, we've started to see a really rapid decarbonization of the sector. A lot of old coal generation has been replaced, mostly by renewables like wind and solar. So that's been great. And it's been driven by a number of things. Of course, we've had public policies at the federal and state level, renewable portfolio standards at the states, tax credits for renewable technologies, things like that. But it's also been driven by economics, of course, as the cost of renewables has gone down and just advancements in the technology. But more recently what we've seen, which is also very encouraging, is increasing demands from consumers for renewable power and also corporations. So utilities have responded by saying, some strong commitments to move to renewables. One utility in the Midwest just announced they're going to go 100% renewable by 2050. So that's been great. So what I'll argue, though, is that a lot of what we've accomplished and a lot of what we're going to depend on going forward is our ability to invest in a robust, nationally integrated electric transmission system. So most don't know it, but that's now what we have now. We have a local and a regional transmission system that grew that way organically over the years. But what we're going to need to move to is much more of a regionally integrated grid that can move the power from where it is to where it needs to be. And that's because most of the renewable resources that are really cheap that we have in this country and we have a lot are located in the middle of the country where it's hard to access them and we just don't have the grid infrastructure right now to do that. So to get more specific about that, right now in the middle of the country today we have a situation where there's actually a huge backlog of renewable projects that are waiting to get on the grid. So these are conceptual stage projects where developers want to move forward, but they simply can't because the wires capacity just isn't there. And as long as that situation persists, you're going to have a power system that relies more on fossil fuels than it probably needs to. So I come from Michigan and I used to live in Wisconsin and there there's a grid organization that oversees the whole transmission grid. It's called MISO. And there's such a backlog of renewable projects there that it might take as long as 10 years just to plan out the system to figure out what wires we need and how to get those online to help those projects get out of the queue. So my argument in short is that the next great hurdle in sustainability and in climate policy is going to be a massive upgrade to our electric transmission grid, which will help to bring these projects online and it will help to do it at the lowest possible cost to facilitate the transition to renewables. We also have to make sure it's done in a resilient way. So the more renewables you have on the system, the more wires you need to be able to when the wind isn't blowing somewhere or the sun's shining somewhere else, but the wires are the way that you make all that work together. So I wanted to point to just at least one example of how this has worked really well in the past and that's from somewhere that might be surprising to some and that's Texas. So about 20 years ago, Texas realized that they had a really great wind resource and the problem they had is that it was located in the north and the west part of the state where no one lives. The people live on the east side of the state for the most part. So what they decided to do, because they had this chicken and egg problem of no grid but lots of wind, is build the grid first and then use that to help facilitate the interconnection of that wind. For lack of a better analogy, I'll call it the field of dreams type policy. If you build it, they will come, and we'll be building the grid, they being renewables. It turned out to be wildly successful and Texas quickly became a national leader in wind output. So if I will leave you with one message today, it's that when we talk about climate policies like carbon tax, the things you hear about all the time and that get a lot of debate, we really need to include in that first tier of policies a grid first investment strategy to integrate as many renewables as possible as cheaply as possible. We're going to take a lot of policy alignment at the federal and the state level. It's very complicated to get transmission built, but we do need to be more proactive about it and we need to do it really yesterday to get all this to work together the way we need it to be. So I'm going to stop there. Wires, I know, has a booth. I don't have handouts up here, but they have plenty of handouts and our website has lots of great studies and information about how transmission plays a role in sustainability and the renewable transition. Thanks so much, Devin. We have worked quite a lot with Wires before and if any of you are interested, we have done a number of briefings that are on our website so that you can learn more about that. One of the things I think is so important is there's so much talk up here about infrastructure and so it's really important to remember that the grid is a really, really critical piece of this country's infrastructure in terms of how things run, work, whatever so we just always need to be aware of that and so there's lots of exciting things going on in that whole sector as well. We have a few minutes so we can take a few questions. Okay, go ahead. Just wait for the microphone. This is for Adam Gough. I'm wondering, I think I hadn't heard of net power before but I think it sounds really fascinating and I'm wondering, although the power solution in itself won't result in emissions which is fantastic, obviously fracking in itself causes a lot of environmental issues so I'm wondering how the net power solution more broadly speaking might address the environmental problems that come with fracking like the risk of earthquakes, water contamination with chemicals, things like that. That's a great question and something we do think a lot about but it's also a challenge for us because we don't source our own gas so I think the burden on us is to find the most responsible source of natural gas for our projects. We do think a lot of the issues with natural gas which are certainly real can be solved where you can get natural gas out of the ground and you don't have to inject it and cause that earthquake problem we're seeing in Oklahoma. I think methane leaks are a huge issue and I care a lot about climate change and we shouldn't be leaking CH4 into the atmosphere. Additionally when we buy natural gas we're buying CH4 so there's also an economic incentive there if we don't leak that methane we can actually use more of it in our project so there are real challenges as a producer of power we will do our best to solve them and also think that we can be have the lowest emissions of any natural gas power I think for all of us who work in energy every single energy source has challenges and so we're always working through those challenges but by eliminating the air emissions and the CO2 emissions we think we can be a responsible citizen and a clean producer of power. Other questions? Okay, I see a hand clear in the back. Can you just wait for the microphone please? Thanks. A question for the gentleman from SWANA. Can you talk about the policy landscape for incentives to encourage either reuse of specific materials or material science to develop new products using and use materials from recycling processes? Sure, there's a patchwork of incentives across different states to encourage reuse of material there are take back programs in certain states but there's no federal law or regulation in this space there's an EPA and Department of Agriculture policy on food waste but that's sort of separate from what I think you're talking about the patchwork that we have is part of the problem and I talked specifically about recycling and part of the problem is that over the last decade or so we forgot that the hierarchy is reduce, reuse, recycle recycles last we need to reduce our waste output we need to reuse the things that we're doing in some sort of circular kind of way and then recycle as best we can. Good question. You've probably been reading a lot also in terms of circular economy I think there's more and more conversations about that. Julie. Hold on, Julie just wait a second. Okay, there you go. Hi, thank you everybody. Those are great presentations. This question is for Novozymes. I wonder if you could just speak briefly to the work that's going on in your sector on using a wood based feedstock for ever placement for plastic products. It's a really good question. I know that there have been a number of efforts to try to find sustainable sources of raw material that can go into making biobased plastics and we have been involved in a number of efforts to produce the technology that can convert things like sustainably slurred sugars or woody biomass and convert those into sugars that can then be converted into biobased plastics. There are a number of plant based plastics out there plant based PET for example but I would say at the moment a lot of those alternatives are somewhat more expensive than current plastics or petroleum based plastics and it's really incumbent on the industry to try to improve those economics. I think there's a lot of activity in R&D for a variety of players. I know the US government has funded a number of projects through USDA so I'm hopeful that we'll get to a point where some of these things are cost competitive to the alternative. I would just encourage you and Julie to follow up because Julie's with the Forest Service and they are looking once again all sorts of issues with regard to thinking about how we can approach a more circular economy that can solve multiple problems all at the same time which is also really exciting, right? Other questions? Okay, we'll do one here and one here and then that will be it. Thank you everyone for coming. I love the diversity of solutions across the board, whether it be wind, carbon dioxide, chemical enzymes, recyclables. One source of energy that I'm curious about and this is for the panel whether it be policy barriers or whether you see innovations taking place is nuclear energy. So I'm thinking the sun is a clean source of energy. It's fusion from hydrogen to helium. Is there any research going in? And I understand nuclear energy also has the radioactivity contention with it but from your aspects as professionals in this field, any comments on that? Okay, thank you. Does anybody want to talk to that? I'm out of my depth here but there is an advanced nuclear industry in the U.S. Congress passed 45J which provides incentives for advanced nuclear. I'd recommend looking into new scale or TerraPower or Oklo or three of those advanced nuclear companies. I won't pretend to have the nuclear chemistry background to tell you how they work but there are solutions to reducing the waste from nuclear generation and third-gen nuclear plants. And I might just mention obviously the focus of the expo and the forum is on efficiency and renewable related technologies and I would also be happy to talk to you a little bit further afterwards. Okay, we have a question over here. Thank you. My name is Roy O'Neill and I'm mostly with the Forest Service, R&D Forest Products. So we deal with a lot of these things that are so called green and sustainable. So I guess one of the questions we've always had in mind that when we designed these research projects how much value does green sustainability actually bring to a product? It's at the interface of technology and policy. When we look at it, a lot of these products consider green and sustainable. It's actually because they have special properties that customers need, not necessarily because they're green and sustainable. There's always going to be a small group of customers that want something that's green, regardless. We need to sacrifice some of the property performance properties. So I guess I just want to hear first hand from people here in the farm industry. What's your take on that? Is this property, performance property to bring the green aspect of a product to the buyers? Ultimately, you're here to make money not make products, right? Yeah, I'll say something to that. So that was actually 100% behind our thinking for trying to produce an eco-friendly detergent that actually works because we know that customers often aren't willing to sacrifice the performance or the quality of products for green attributes. There is, as you said, a small segment of the population that's willing to do that. In fact, it's kind of funny. We were talking to one of our customer's seventh generation. Their CEO came down to talk to our employees and he was telling us about how people love their products. In fact, one of their customers told him that, you guys, I loved your product even before it worked. But that's not good enough and they recognize that and so they want to make sure that you can have both worlds and I think the effort now is really to try to find both the performance and also the green attributes. And I would add to that that there's a growing percentage of the population that places a higher emphasis on the sustainable nature of the product than 10 years ago, 20 years ago, et cetera. And so what we see is we see a lot of research being done and how to build better material. We actually did a conference call with Argonne National Labs earlier this week about a research project they're doing with regard to doing something with all the plastic, right? And it's going to take research and it's going to take a lot of engineering that's way above my brain power to create, you know, something like this that's recyclable in all curbside programs throughout the United States. This is not a recyclable cup, right? It says it's compostable. We've been working with paper for centuries. It goes to the right place under the right circumstances. So we have a lot to do and there's a definite role for the federal government here in being a leader and thank you to your department for the role you guys are playing. Thank you so much for your work and we need to empower them to do a lot more in this whole space and if you would also note this also links right back into thinking about the kinds of economic activity and jobs that Kayla was talking about as well. So I want to thank you all very, very much for being here and to all of our speakers and for putting forward some very, very thoughtful questions and please go visit these folks in terms of their booths and conversations because that's how we're all going to make a difference. So thank you all very, very much.