 Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for a briefing to discuss the 2021 Sustainable Energy in America Factbook. I'm Dan Berset, Executive Director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. ESI was founded in 1984 on a bipartisan basis by members of Congress to provide science-based information about environmental energy and climate change policies. We've also developed a program to provide technical assistance to rural utilities interested in on-bill financing programs for their customers. Our event today is sponsored by our friends at the Business Council for Sustainable Energy and hosted in coordination with the leadership and members of the Senate Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus. Many thanks to Senators Reid, Crapo, Van Hollen, and Collins for your support and assistance today with our briefing. Before I introduce my co-moderator and turn things over to her, let me very briefly share some logistics. First, as with all ESI briefings, we will post an archive of the webcast along with presentation materials to our website. If you miss anything or want to revisit any of the topics you're about to cover, please visit us online at www.eesi.org. And while you're there, please take a moment to sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions, which is the best way to keep up with the full range of our policymaker education and technical assistance resources. And second, after our final panelist, we will transition to a discussion. And that means we will have time for questions from our online audience. You have a question, please follow ESI on Twitter at EESI online and send in your questions that way. You can also send us an email and the address to use is the EESI at EESI.org. And now it is my pleasure to introduce Lisa Jacobson. Lisa is the president of the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, a 55 member trade association representing the energy efficiency, renewable energy and natural gas industries. Lisa advises states and federal policymakers on energy, tax, air quality and climate change policy. She is a member of DOE's State Energy Efficiency Steering Committee and the United States Trade Representatives Trade and Environment Policy Advisory Committee and Energy Efficiency Global Alliance Steering Committee and the Gas Technology Institute's Public Interest Advisory Committee. It is always a treat to welcome Lisa to one of our briefings. And so now I get to turn it over to you. Welcome Lisa, thanks for joining us today. Thank you so much, Dan. It is wonderful to be with you and I wanna start off by thanking the entire EESI team. I think we're going into our fifth year of collaborating together on the release of the Sustainable Energy in America Factbook. The 2021 issue of the Sustainable Energy in America Factbook is looking both at long-term trends but a deeper dive on the impacts of COVID-19 on clean energy technology markets and policy. So it's really a fascinating set of work because 2020 was clearly a year like no other. While we face tremendous challenges in our economy and we suffered tremendous public health losses and the loss of over 350,000 Americans, we also saw a remarkable set of trends as they relate to the U.S. energy sector. And we saw energy efficiency, natural gas and renewable energy continue to accelerate what we've seen as long-term trends. And I'm really pleased to be able to share this data with you today. So I'd like to first, before we introduce our first speaker, share a little background on the project. If you could please advance to the next slide. The Sustainable Energy in America Factbook project was started nine years ago and we could see clearly that the energy sector in the United States was changing but we weren't sure really what the baseline was. And we didn't have resources that tried to put it together in a easy to understand and up-to-date fashion. Because as we know, because of the changes and the rapid advancement of so many of the trends that if you're looking at data that's a year old, you're often looking at very out-of-date data and a picture that isn't an accurate one. So we wanted to provide a resource that could do it. And each year, the Business Council for Sustainable Energy working with its members and some outside supporters works in collaboration with Bloomberg New Energy Finance to put together the Factbook. So I wanna thank all the supporters of the project each year. You could go to the next slide please. All the information that you're gonna hear about today plus videos, graphics and other tools to get you into the content quickly can be found on the Business Council for Sustainable Energy's website. It's all available for free and we welcome your feedback on what we provide. So don't hesitate to drop us a line and let us know. Next slide please. I also wanted to mention a very exciting complimentary campaign that our sister organization, Clean Energy Business Network performs each year. It's called Faces Behind the Facts. And as we release the data, we wanna also showcase clean energy entrepreneurs all over the country that are really on the front lines of the trends that we'll discuss today. So please go to either the BCSE website or the Clean Energy Business Network website and check it out. So with that, I just wanna again, encourage everybody to go to the website and look at the materials firsthand. And now it's my pleasure to kick off our opening speaking presentation. I would love to introduce Melina Bartels. She's power associate for Bloomberg New Energy Finance and she's also for the second year in a row really the lead author and compiler of the data for the Sustainable Energy in America Factbook. So please, she could join us today and Melina, the floor is yours. Thanks, Lisa. Yeah, so as Lisa said, my name's Melina Bartels. I've been at Bloomberg for about two years. During that time, I've been compiling the Factbook as well. You wanna go to the next slide? So I'm going to just give a brief overview of what are considered some of the main slides in the Factbook and some of the primary takeaways. So just to start off, energy productivity, which is the ratio of GDP to total energy consumption rose in 2020, which is seen here on the left. So we normally use this metric to show how economic growth and energy consumption are increasingly decoupled, as you can see on the right. This means that as the economy expands, our energy consumption doesn't necessarily, i.e. we're using energy increasingly efficiently. But historically, productivity hasn't always risen. So for example, during the 2008-2009 recession, you can see it actually dropped. In those years, the economic collapse rampantly outpaced our cut in energy usage. And while the GDP shrunk again in 2020, last year was exceedingly unique. In terms of energy, we were forced to curtail our consumption due to a combination of stay-at-home orders, economic hardships, and a wide variety of other factors. So unlike the last recession, in 2020, the declines in our collective energy profiles were extreme, so much so that they matched the pace of the falling GDP. So again, when you divide the falling GDP by our falling energy usage, our productivity actually continued to rise. And then on the next slide, declines in consumption and energy were across the board last year. So coal, petroleum, nuclear, and natural gas all took a hit. The only exception to this role was actually renewables, which I'll talk a little bit about more on the next couple of slides. However, the extremity of declines greatly varied. So each reflected a different shift in the day-to-day of our collective lifestyles. And unsurprisingly, transportation, which is reflected by petroleum consumption, took the largest hit. So energy usage related to Transpo itself dropped a staggering 14% in 2020. So total motor fuel demand was cut almost in half over the course of March alone. And that figure was still recovering throughout the end of the year. On the right on this slide, the solid black line shows how electricity demand has bounced up and down year over year for a while now. As I've mentioned, different sectors saw different levels of demand drops and electricity was actually hit the least on a percentage basis. So electricity demand actually only fell 4%. Again, this is compared to transportation's 14% in 2020. So similar to transportation power demand deviated from its norm most intensely in the spring, but unlike transportation demand, it actually rebounded in a couple of months. So where electricity demand dropped heavily in the commercial and industrial sectors, it was ultimately buoyed by unprecedented work from home conditions and steep rises in residential demand, particularly over the summer as people needed to cool their homes. And then on the next slide. But the power sector was ultimately down in 2020. So it needed to be even pickier with the types of generators being fired. Renewables with their zero short-run marginal costs had a great year. They captured about 20% of the market and increased their generation on absolute terawatt hour terms by an impressive 11%. Gas trends market share rose slightly, not as impressive, it rose about 3%. This is compared to last year's increase of 7%, so a bit of a decline there. Gas's rise was largely tied in part to supply-side dynamics triggered by the oil crisis last spring. And as a result, gas prices did have a truly exceptional year in how low they were. On the other hand, coal prices did not, so gas continued to displace coal in the power system. And between this gas displacement and ongoing coal plant disclosures, coal in fact had less than 20% of a market share in 2020 and on absolute terawatt hour terms, it fell a staggering 22%. Next slide. But arguably the most significant trend in 2020 was the astounding 33.8 gigawatts of renewable capacity that were built. So last year's clean energy installations were 50% higher than those in 2016, which was the previous record holder. So both wind and solar broke records last year. Wind build hit 17.1 gigawatts installed onto our utility projects proceeded with construction largely unchecked. Developers also were rushing to start construction earlier in the year, particularly to capture that highest level of the federal PTC, which we all know has now been extended. Solar additions also broke a record at 16.5 gigawatts. So both utility scale and residential were extremely resilient in 2020. Most utility scale build was done in the South and residential solar recovered from any early on disruptions in the year, which were caused by lockdown. So homeowner demand actually held a pretty strong throughout all of 2020. Next slide. And you know, while renewable energy build booms, gas power plant build holds pretty relatively steady despite mandated and announced ambitions on both the state and federal levels to decarbonize the power sector. There are still 38 gigawatts of gas-fired power plants, which are broken out here by CCGTs and OCGTs and colored by region that are filed to come online in the next five years. So just to put this in context, this is, so this build over the next five years is only slightly higher than the 40, 34 gigawatts of renewables that came online last year alone. But there is the ever important distinction that capacity build does not actually match or reflect generation when you compare across power technologies. So a gigawatt of gas installed tends to mean more terawatt hours of gas being generated. And also just another thing to note. So considering historical trends, not all of these plants will actually be built, probably only 30 to 40% of them will. It's likely that many will ultimately be canceled or remove their filings before they turn on. That said, PJM, which here is represented by the green bars and spans the mid-Atlantic and Midwest remains the most popular region for gas builds. So about 46% of all of the current filings are in PJM. This is largely because Appalachian shale continues to provide ample and stable prices for power plants that are aiming to build among an agent coal fleets in states with very weak RPS targets. Next slide. But there are a few ways that gas can fit into decarbonization. And one way is for it to blend natural gas fuels with hydrogen. So while the US is really far behind on hydrogen policy and implementing hydrogen and other components of the energy economy, we do in fact have the largest pipeline of hydrogen burning power plants in the world. So as you can see on the left, there's 6.4 gigawatts, which is also to put into context about 20% of the total pipeline on the previous slide of gas plants will actually burn at least some combination of hydrogen. And so on the right, you can see which companies own these projects where they're located along the left axis and when they'll actually come online along the bottom axis. And the projects with blue bars are in states with state level clean energy targets. Purple bars are in states that aren't. So one thing that's important to note here is that when companies announce a hydrogen burning power plant, that by no means translates to that project having even close to the majority of its fuel coming from hydrogen. So yellow dots and the percents on the bars here are the share of hydrogen these plants will in reality intend to burn. So for example, the Longridge CCGT in Ohio will burn about 20% hydrogen and 80% gas when it turns on in 2021. Another interesting fact about hydrogen, so the largest hydrogen deal announced in 2020 was actually by Mitsubishi. So through a $3 billion deal, they intend to build three of the projects on the right hand graph. That's the dense Gammer, energy LLC, Balaco and Ember Clear. And the next slide. So finally, US greenhouse gas emissions plummeted in 2020. So they sink 9% from the year prior. And this was led by deeply, deeply depressed transportation and power emissions. So the declines in transport were the steepest. They more or less directly reflected the 14% decline in consumption. So emissions actually themselves dropped 14%. But even with this change, the sector still remained the largest source of emissions for the fifth consecutive year in a row. Just once again, reaffirming, improving how crucial the sector is to focus on decarbonization. Power emissions played out a little differently as they usually do, but especially this year. So power emissions actually fell faster than the power consumption did by a record 11%. And that's compared to the 4% decline in power demand. So power emissions ultimately hovered slightly above the levels of industry, which it's worth noting industry incorporates upstream oil and gas activity. And then on the right, we mapped power emissions, if you flip to the next slide actually, we mapped power emissions with the pathways to the CPP and Biden's target. The CPP was designed to essentially cut 32% of 2005 emissions by 2030. Even before the pandemic, the power sector was easily on track to beat this target and 2020 put the nation even further ahead of it. Last year power emissions were actually down 40% from 2005 levels. And then we have Biden's target, which is the proffered net zero by 2035. So for power, this rate of decline, linearly actually wouldn't necessarily outpace historical rates of decline. However, as we all know, future emissions will likely be harder to mitigate than those in the past. So essentially saying that this will not be a linear, would not play out as a linear decline. And yeah, that's all I had for my introduction and passing it back. To your participation later in the Q&A. So now it's my pleasure to introduce a set of panelists, business council members that both were part of the development process for the fact book, but also have some unique perspectives when it comes to different points of data that Melina discussed as well as areas in the fact book that we haven't covered yet. But I think before I introduce them, when I hear the story of 2020, again, I think it's quite remarkable that clean energy, efficiency, natural gas, renewable energy, that portfolio performed so well. And we really are the growth sectors of the US energy economy. So there's many new innovations that are coming our way and a partnership is definitely needed with policymakers and the private sector. But it gives me confidence when I see at a very unprecedented set of circumstances, the continued acceleration of the clean energy transformation. And one of the things that we didn't touch on yet is why, and I know we'll discuss it with the panelists and in the Q&A, but when I look at the data, I really focus on two areas. I focus on the cost effectiveness of clean energy technologies and the fact that customers want clean energy. And so we're fortunate in the United States that we have such a diverse and rich set of technologies, processes, and resources to draw upon. So with that, let me tell you who our panelists are and then we will go in turn to each one of them. But I'm gonna introduce them all right now. Our first panelists will be Charles Hernick, Vice President of Policy and Advocacy for Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions. Then we'll hear from Ben Evans, Vice President of Public Affairs for the Alliance to Save Energy. Next we'll hear from Bryn Baker, Director of Policy Innovation at the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance. And then Allison Hull, Director of Federal Government Affairs for Semper Energy. So Charles, I'd love to turn it to you first and I've asked each of the panelists to share just some key points to get us started with a conversation and also share one of their favorite back book slides. So Charles, I'd love to turn it to you now please. Sure, thanks Lisa. It's a pleasure to be with you all today and looking at the new data in the fact book each year. It's like a holiday for me because I think the story is impressive and what Molina was describing in terms of the growth trajectory in the renewable sector in particular but sustainable energy at large is really fascinating and important. And I think that one of the things that I wanna draw attention to on the next slide here is how federal policy has been supportive of that storytelling and what's up next. And very specifically, the close of 2020 the Energy Act of 2020 was passed in a bipartisan fashion and represented substantial update to U.S. energy policy. Benefited a lot of the technologies that are really gonna be needed to be able to drive emissions down to these net zero goals that we're all aiming for. $34 billion in potential cash put on the table by the U.S. federal government in terms of direct authorizations for R&D spending and then also the availability for tax credits. It's not the last step that we're gonna need in this effort to tackle climate change but I think the consensus is that it's a solid first step and an important down payment on keeping us on that trajectory that we need to be to accomplish our climate change goals. So what the slide you're looking at right now shows is how U.S. spending in clean energy stacked up to other countries in the world but also breaking it up into those portions that are tax related and direct spend authorizations. What's also important in the backdrop here is that the U.S. federal spending is just one part of it. I think that the other thing that impressed me about 2020 were all of the voluntary commitments made by financiers that are greening their investment portfolios and it's easier than ever for individuals to be able to green their 401k and focus on clean energy there. So it's really important and if we go to the next slide there's a great breakdown here in the fact book of where this money is going and it touches on important areas, carbon capture, utilization and storage demonstration projects, looking at the next generation of solar important finance for energy storage, tax credit, modest extensions for some of the projects that were likely or we know were delayed on account of COVID. And then also a multi-year extension for offshore wind which is really gonna be necessary for getting that industry up on its legs. So what we have here is a little bit extra runway and a very strong price signal coming from the federal government. This is a great area for investment and so my hope is that we'll see continued growth in this sector for years to come. Next I'd like to turn to Ben Evans with the Alliance to Save Energy. Great, thanks ESI and Dan and BCSE and Lisa so much. Lisa, I was thinking about it. I think it was about a year ago right around now where I think it was my last day in sort of the before times world. I was at a BCSE board meeting in Washington and Senator Murkowski spoke. It was, I think that was my last day in the office. So great to be back here and on such a strange anniversary. But and just wanted to, if we could go to the next slide, I think what the fact book really points to for energy efficiency is just what a strange year it was and what a fluke it was. We, as Molina said, we used a lot less energy. In some ways it's surprising that we didn't use even less than we did and make a lot more efficiency in the games, but the games that we did have were really for all the wrong reasons and we need to get things back on track. I think one thing it does point to however, as Molina mentioned, is the power of energy efficiency to reduce carbon emissions and to meet some of our decarbonization goals. I think we often get swept up in the new technologies on the generation side and rightfully so all the exciting things going on over there. We sometimes forget the other side of the ledger that the demand side by using energy as officially as we can is the cheapest and fastest way to decarbonize and to meet some of these carbon goals. And so there's, I think there's a lesson for it in there. The other thing that jumps out from 2020 with energy efficiency is the job side. I think people forget that energy efficiency is the largest employer in the clean energy economy. We started 2020 with about 2.4 million jobs and we ended with about 300,000 less. And that's, that is a huge, obviously a huge impact and most of those job losses, most energy efficiency jobs are in construction, working in buildings, homes and buildings and making efficient efficiency improvements, manufacturing things like insulation or high efficiency windows and building components. And I think we, those job losses were really tough. I mean, you know, for a variety of reasons, economic downturn, people not wanting folks working in their homes, utility programs shutting down. We saw really, really severe losses in that sector. And that's where the alliance has really focused most of its attention in terms of rebuilding. And we have a number of proposals that we are, you know, working on on the hill around expanding and improving tax incentives, for example, for homeowners to make efficiency improvements, building owners to make efficiency improvements. We have a grant program for small businesses to be able to get, you know, utilize existing utility programs and get some federal matching dollars to make, you know, low cost or no cost efficiency improvements to their buildings. And we have a proposal to use performance contracting to retrofit millions or hundreds of thousands of buildings around the country, critical buildings, public buildings, hospitals, schools, libraries, airports and things like that. So look forward to talking about those ideas more, but that's generally where we stand on the efficiency side. Thanks so much, Ben. That was really helpful. Next, I'd like to welcome Bryn Baker with Renewable Energy Buyer's Alliance. She is new to the Factbook partnership and we really appreciate her and Reeva's involvement this year. Pleasure to be here. Thank you, Lisa. And thank you to EESI today as well. We can go ahead and go to the next slide. But I'm here representing the Renewable Energy Buyer's Alliance, which is a community of electricity customers collectively working toward a zero carbon energy system and seeking to green the grid for all customers. Our members represent over six trillion in annual revenues with about 14 million employees across the US and about 70 Fortune 500 companies. And so our community is really the driving force behind corporate buyers demanding and really deploying significant renewable energy into the market, as well as accelerating vehicle electrification and efficiency. And this is in large part due to ambitious commitments that are deepening and widening in the Factbook sort of profile some of the recent developments there. So I'll highlight a couple. I think chief among the driving factors is the fact that now 285 global companies have committed to 100% renewable energy consumption, at least matching through contracts. 123 companies now have joined an initiative called EP100, which is about pledging to improve energy productivity. And it's up to 92 companies now committed to vehicle electrification. But on top of that, you've got half of the Fortune 500 that have set climate and clean energy goals and now over 1200 global companies committing to take science-based action, which is really driving an intense interest in clean energy procurement at the same time. So it's really the ambition and the breadth of these goals that is continuing to accelerate and really driving impact in the market as companies set about meeting them. So I wanna share a second slide from the Factbook that shows how all of this has been borne out. In 2020, the Factbook shows that corporate buyers publicly transacted for 11.9 gigawatts of off-site wind and solar last year. And this was down largely due to COVID from the previous year of 14.1 gigawatts, noting that these figures come from contracts that also include government and university off-takers. So I wanna mention a subtrend because Riva independently tracks publicly announced off-site deals by corporates, which by our data equaled about 10.6 gigawatts of contract capacity. So this is a slightly smaller subset of the data. But that was actually a 13% increase over the previous year of 9.4 gigawatts. And I mentioned that because it's equal to about a quarter of new electric capacity added to the grid in 2020. And so at least for this subset of corporate buyers, the largest class of voluntary buyers, it's showing that they're remaining not just committed to clean energy in the face of everything that's happened in the last year, but actually accelerating. And so I think that's a really key driving trend to be watching in this space is that the buyers are not letting up in their interest in renewable and more broadly in clean energy. And so adding that all up, we find that the cumulative capacity deployed by these types of buyers is now up to 48 gigawatts with an increasing share coming from solar over wind. And we also see a strong diversity of buyers in the top 10 list. Obviously Amazon here is the distinct leader, but you also see telecom, auto, tech, retail, steel, higher ed, all represented. So when you look at the full list of procurers, every sector is represented. So the interest in this has really broadened and deepened as well. And I know we're short on time today. I wanted to highlight just a couple of other trends that we're seeing in just accelerating renewable energy procurement overall. One is certainly that corporates are starting to focus on next-gen carbon technologies, not just wind and solar. It's really about this broader suite of zero carbon solutions. Several of the deals last year were notable because they coupled solar with storage. Or we also see companies now starting to focus on matching their procurement to time of use and location. And specifically citing projects where the potential for emissions reductions is highest. They're really watching that. And so this actually leads to an interesting conclusion about market structures enabling this. Because what we find is that over 80% of all the 2020 deals and actually historically all of these deals have happened in organized wholesale markets. Meaning regions with a regional transmission organization that's independently operating a competitive wholesale electricity market. Noting very importantly that a competitive wholesale market is not the same thing as choosing a retail electricity supplier. But what we're seeing is that the bulk of this procurement is enabled by market structures that allow for customers to choose renewable power. And those wholesale market structures are available in about two thirds of the country. So just coloring in some of the trends underneath what you see on this chart. And with that, I'll turn it back over to you, Lisa. Next, I'd love to turn it to Allison Hall with Semper Energy. Welcome Allison. Thanks so much, Lisa. Of course, my kids have just busted in the door and it was nice and quiet a moment ago. Anyway, yeah, Allison Hall with Semper Energy. Semper Energy is the, just to give you a little bit of background about the company. We are the owner of one of the most expansive energy networks in North America. Serving some of the largest markets in the world including California, Texas, and Mexico. Semper's family of companies include San Diego Gas and Electric, Southern California Gas Company, Semper LNG, Encore in Texas, and Ainova in Mexico. Nearly 75% of our rate base is dedicated to electrification. We're invested in high voltage transmission through renewables that everybody's been talking about and the proliferation of renewables from where they're created to demand centers. We also operate the largest energy infrastructure in the country to transport lower and in the future, zero carbon molecules to decarbonize power generation, industrial sectors, and heavy duty transportation sectors. We're displacing fuel oil in Mexico with natural gas where we also have significant renewables generation portfolio. And we even have a strategy to help foreign markets follow the success of the US with our investments in LNG export infrastructure. With our California roots, Semper has been strategically enabling lower carbon energy choices long before the phrase energy transition began dominating headlines. I don't know if we're showing, yeah, if you could advance the slide, sorry, perfect. As a fact of notes in the slide here, global energy transition investment hit 500 billion for the first time last year and 9% increase over 2019, showing that sustainability is a high priority for America's energy sector. The US provides a case study towards decarbonization, diversification, and digitalization. The 3Ds that we had sent for a belief drive the energy transition. In many ways, the US is already demonstrating leadership in all three areas as we moved away from coal to cleaner burning natural gas, expanded renewables and invest in transmission and distribution infrastructure and made consistent investments in energy efficiency as previous speakers have all touched on. The slide here also shows that investment emerging technology, such as green hydrogen, is also growing. The US now invests 100 million per year in hydrogen, the vast majority of which is tied to fuel cell vehicle sales. As green hydrogen projects come online over the next few years, the future potential of gas infrastructure will be unlocked with zero carbon molecules and electrons together delivering resilient, sustainable energy systems. The idea is to leverage surplus renewable electricity generated in the middle of the day when it's not being used to reduce green hydrogen, which then can be injected into the natural gas grid for storage and use. Hydrogen blending is an important milestone for providing the clean fuel needed to achieve California's climate goals and the nations. SEMPA is particularly keen on driving this promising technology for our networks, our customers, and our environment. SoCal gas and SDGNE are planning multiple hydrogen blending projects throughout their respective service territories. I wanted to quickly highlight one that I recently, I shouldn't say discovered, but that I recently came across that I thought was extremely cool, which is that SoCal gas is building a state-of-the-art demonstration project to show the role of hydrogen who can play in attaining carbon neutrality. It's called the H2 hydrogen home. And it is the first of its kind in the US and will include a home, solar panels, a home battery, an electrolyzer to convert solar energy into clean hydrogen and a fuel cell to convert that hydrogen back to electricity. Hydrogen will also be blended with natural gas for use in the home's appliances. The H2 hydrogen home is expected to be complete by late 2021. And with that, I'll turn it back to you, Lisa. And thanks, Allison. Okay, so we've got a contribution for the next issue of the FAQ book, assuming that that project continues to go forward. Yeah, that's really exciting. Thanks for sharing that. And I want to thank all the panelists for sharing your thoughts to get us started. And helping us understand the breadth of information that is in the FAQ book. So again, feel free to go to the website and check it out yourself to our viewers. So, I'm gonna kind of take us back to where Charles started us off. I think we would be remiss if we didn't acknowledge the tremendous policy action in Congress at the end of 2020. The Energy Act of 2020, the omnibus appropriations, the tax extensions. I mean, we in some cases had been working for nearly a decade to see some of those activities enacted into law. Of course, there were things that didn't get enacted and we still have a lot of work to do and we have a very busy Congress this session as we all know. So, I wanted to invite all the panelists that wanted to comment first, what was the most significant set of policy actions that were enacted in 2020 from your company or industry's perspective? And then also at the highest level because we're gonna delve a little deeper on some topic areas, but what are you looking for for action in 2021? So, maybe I will, let's see who I'm gonna start with first. I'll start maybe with Ben Evans and then others can just raise their hand if they wanna chime in. But Ben, I'll turn it to you please. Sure, yeah, thanks Lisa. And I think there were several things in that year in package for energy efficiency that were great. Nothing that really just blew the doors off of everything, but we had in a permanent extension of a commercial buildings tax incentive, they could have gotten some of the details of it a little better, but they made that permanent, which we think will put some certainty into the market and improve uptake of that tax incentive. Things like the smart building accelerator, which is sort of a demonstration program around smart buildings that is really important. It was included in there as well. So I would say those is a couple of examples. And did you say we were gonna move later to talking about what we're hoping for? Yeah, well, I mean, you touched on a few things in your overview and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy is very excited about the building retrofit programs that you have. And I know that we're working together to see how they could advance this year. But I guess at a high level, we'll go into some more detail later. What are you hoping to accomplish from a policy perspective here in Washington this year? Yeah, I mean, we think there's a real opportunity this year and we think that Congress can get some things done and put some things on President Biden's desk. And a lot of it is around buildings. I mean, the retrofit campaign that we talked about, we know we have public buildings that need a lot of work and energy efficiency improvements to those buildings can help pay for that. You can use energy efficiency, long-term cost savings from energy efficiency to cover improvements for things like resilience and improved air quality and those sorts of things. Tax incentives for energy efficiency are woefully outdated. They took a step forward with the commercial buildings one, but we need better tax incentives for homeowners to encourage homeowners to make efficient, put more insulation in the attic and step up their windows or their HVAC. And it's also for new home construction. We build a million new houses in the United States every year. And if we're not building those the right way, we are baking in a lot of homes and a lot of carbon emissions and a lot of wasted energy consumption for decades to come. And then also the small business program that I've mentioned, I mean, I think we know small businesses are hurting. That's a way that we can create some incremental savings for those small businesses that can help them improve their bottom line. Thanks, Ben. Allison, I don't know if you have anything that you wanna share about either highlights from last year that were impactful or things you're looking out for in this new Congress? Sure, I think I'll focus more in the new Congress. For 2021 with all the emphasis on climate, whether it be goals our individual states have or our companies own goals or whatever comes out of the Biden administration, I think we're all looking toward our D&D, funding for those innovations that are gonna carry the day and help us achieve whatever ambitious goals we may set and get us that last mile to our goals. And then the other thing I would say is on infrastructure, everyone's obviously looking for an infrastructure bill. I think everyone recognizes, I mentioned in my remarks, I think others mentioned that everyone recognizes the need for transmission to bring renewables from remote areas where they generate to load centers where they're needed. So obviously we're really focused on transmission and what might be possible in the new Congress in that vein. Well, that's really helpful. Thanks, Brynn, I'll go to you next, please. I mean, I would say a plus one to a couple of things that you just mentioned, Allison, we're definitely very supportive of increasing our D&D budget. Really in the vein of saying, I think study after studies coming out and saying, we can get to 90% decarbonization and I'm looking at this from the power sector perspective, but that last 10 or even 20% is tough. We need to make sure that we're investing in the technologies to get us the rest of the way there, but it is also very affordable and doable to get a good bit of the way there. So it's time to get started. And part of that is supporting transmission to move the low cost power. A couple other things that we're watching and paying attention to, we're certainly as an organization interested in a vision of a zero carbon power sector, eagerly engaging and watching the discussions around a clean energy standard. And in particular, as a customer focused group, we wanna make sure that a well-designed CES is leveraging competitive procurement, allowing buyers to continue to participate and drive a CES. And I think helping address some accounting challenges that can help the whole system work more smoothly. And to that end, one of the things that I'd call out that was in the 2020 omnibus that is a bit more esoteric, but it was actually a really important provision which it was directing the Energy Information Administration to help harmonize and collect data from all load serving entities in the US around emissions intensity and resource mixes for delivered electricity. Because if you're a customer and you don't actually know what's in the electricity being delivered to you, it's really hard to manage and change your footprint. So getting all of that data and harmonizing it and making it available to every customer that wants it is actually one of the really fundamental pieces to starting to embark on this challenge and really empowering customers. So that was a really positive development in omnibus at the end of last year. And I think that it's a really important place to continue to build from. So it's like getting the plumbing right, but the accounting's gonna be an important focus for us as well. Thanks, Bryn. Charles, why don't you wrap us up here with your thoughts on accomplishments from last year and what's needed now? Well, thanks, Lisa. And I think I spoke a little bit earlier about the major accomplishments in 2020. It is a huge package and a tremendous amount of work by both House and Senate staffers. And I know many of you all are listening here. So thank you for your efforts over the past years and decade, as Lisa mentioned. When we're looking ahead, there are a couple of real key priorities in my mind. One is a standalone energy storage tax credit is really gonna be a big deal for unlocking what is a nascent industry that has been growing, but really stands to gain a lot over the next few years and help assure that what we're seeing in terms of solar and wind penetration in you on that trajectory without any reliability problems, we wanna make sure that energy storage is available at scale, not just from hydropower capabilities that we have now but looking at battery storage as well. The other part that's maybe underlooked is looking at carbon capture utilization in storage but the type of infrastructure that's gonna be needed to really move CO2 after it's been captured to storage locations or two areas where it can be put into manufacturing process and be utilized. We're talking about pipelines. We're talking about condensing units and what it is gonna be needed to move that stuff around because as Molina showed earlier, fossil fuels are in the mix. They're gonna continue to see a lot of investment in this area and so we need to be thinking about how to capture carbon at scale, move it at scale, sequester it at scale, continue to see the growth in renewables but also focusing on the carbon management component of it too. Great, thank you. I'm gonna ask one more just kind of broad question and then I'm gonna turn it over to Dan Bresset. He's gonna ask a few questions of our panel and again, if you have questions, Dan will let you know again when he starts how you can send them to us. But I don't wanna leave 2020 without talking a little bit about the tremendous resilience of all of our industries despite really significant challenges. Ben talked about some of the impacts to clean energy workers but companies, communities, working in public private partnership, our industry sectors all made tremendous changes very quickly to try to adjust to the business conditions of COVID-19. And I just wanted to know if anyone wanted to share a little bit about what their industry or their company experienced. I know just kind of big picture some of the things we highlighted in the fact book. We had equipment manufacturers and utilities putting staff on and sequestering them two week increments where they would be 24 seven on site. We had fuel cell manufacturers that switched to providing ventilators and we had pop-up distributed generation or propane companies helping to provide power to vaccination, not vaccination centers at that point, testing centers. And now they are of course providing it thank goodness to vaccination centers too. So there's just so much that was going on kind of behind the scenes to support communities and to support households. So I wanted to see if anybody on the panel wanted to chime in a little bit about that about what their industry experienced and if they had anything to share on how they adapted. So let me see if anyone, give me Alison you're shaking your head. Do you have anything you want to say on that front? Thanks. Yeah, I mean, when you say communities and households I, you know, in thinking about this I thought, well is this related to what we're talking about? But if you're going to talk about communities and households we went through a whole wildfire season in California during COVID and had to adapt our mitigation measures and how we handle those wildfires during that period with COVID as an overlay as if wildfire season isn't challenging enough. So just as an example, couple of examples we developed a virtual emergency operation center. Obviously we have a physical one that usually during wildfire season is packed with our fire science team and others. We developed a virtual emergency operations center so it allowed for various levels of response whether everyone needed to be virtual or they could respond sort of the nearest location that wasn't the AOC or situations that required boats to be physically present at the AOC. And then if they're there we've still got to think about they've got to be wearing masks they've got to be socially distanced. So, I mean, things like that with the emergency operations center and then when it came to like the public one thing that comes to mind is, you know we still had to inform the public we did all of these public safety power shutoffs PSPS as we like to call them, you know throughout various communities where we have to shut off power for safety reasons. So we had a bunch of different drive-through wildfire safety fairs in those communities that are prone to those PSPS events. So still be able to inform the public and let them know what was going on but in a whole different way without, you know having folks come to a big center and all of that since, you know, we're trying to distance more masks and all that. So I mean, we had these drive-through safety fairs that folks wouldn't have to get out of their cars and be safe but they could still get the same information that they'd been getting previously in prior years and prior wildfire seasons. Thanks Alison, that's really interesting and thanks to your colleagues who both quickly found alternatives and then put themselves out to implement them. Anybody else wanna make a comment on this before we go to the next question? I guess I would only say that I think we noticed some interesting trends in the buyer community. I mean, as the lockdown started we started surveying our buyer members pretty regularly and there was some initial, you know I would say less than a quarter of the buyer community said, you know, we're gonna kind of pause on our goals we're gonna wait and see what happens but that means the vast majority was still full steam ahead and we really saw that trend bear out for the most part over the remaining part of the year. You know, buyers certainly experienced the supply chain shortages and some delays in projects, absolutely but I think, you know, where we ended the year is actually a really positive story to kind of how the trend started out. Yeah, we surveyed our buyers as well. Yeah, no, across the board from the VCSE side we did too, we did several surveys starting in March and ending in June and yes, for certain segments of our membership, you know, there was a lot of chaos obviously in the first month, month and a half but on the utility side or the equipment manufacturer side across our sectors, many were quickly deemed essential and yes, they had to figure out the right safety protocols but they were not as hampered as segments of our market that were really dealing with, you know, the residential side of the business but, you know, despite that, we overcame and, you know, we still have work to do but we, you know, we were able to accomplish much more than I think people thought if you had asked us six months ago. So let me turn it to Dan Bresset. He has some questions that he'd like to ask the panel. Thanks, Lisa. And I do have a couple and I'd like to use the first question to turn back to the issue of jobs. Clean Energy is as a sector a fast moving job creator. We know that people who've read the fact book for multiple years and everybody should be reading the fact book see the pretty remarkable job growth potential in clean energy sector but then, of course, the pandemic happened, renewable energy sector, energy efficiency sector, other sectors were badly hit and while there were three million people employed by the clean energy sector, that number took a pretty big dip and of the largest of those sort of sub sectors is energy efficiency, of course, 2.4 million. They were especially hard hit and especially those who work in the residential sector. Ben, I'd like to start with you. You were the one who mentioned jobs originally when we went around the horn. I'd like to turn back to you and hear from your perspective sort of what the potential is for the clean energy sector, the energy efficiency sector in particular to be a job creator once again and to help do its part to get the economy back on track over the course of this year and in the future years. Yeah, thanks, Dan. That was a great question and I think there's huge opportunity. I mean, I think at least to the previous question, you know, those first few months of the shutdown, the jobs numbers, if you follow the environment, the reports from E2 and ACOR, I mean, the jobs were enormous, the losses and then it kind of steadied over the summer and in the fall, since then, we've kind of started to claw back. We're nowhere near where we need to be back to that 2.4 million. But I think if you put the right, and obviously there's a lot of economic uncertainty right now, but if you put the right policies in place, I think we could be poised for a huge rebound of these programs and getting these folks back to work. And again, these are construction jobs and there's one study out there that shows energy efficiency jobs are in 99.9% of counties. We're not talking about jobs that are on the east coast or the west coast or in blue states or red states. These jobs are everywhere and they're blue collar jobs. You know, I've heard so much lately that talk about the wind technician versus the fossil fuel worker. And that's just really a false narrative. There are so many different types of jobs in the clean energy sector and energy efficiency is sort of the poster child for that. I mean, it's a really strong diversity of jobs that are spread across the country and there's great potential to expand them. I think you're muted, Dan. I can hop in and ask a question if Dan's having difficulty. Well, before we leave you, Ben, I actually had a question for you. So we've talked about it a bit at our board level, but given the changes in the way people were living and working with people not going into the office last year and we're still not, look, we're doing this virtually. We were usually all together in a very large hearing room in Congress, but right now we're doing it virtually. So we did see energy consumption drop considerably, but I wonder, why didn't it drop more? What was going on in commercial buildings? What was going on in households? Why didn't it really drop more significantly? Yeah, and it points to just how difficult it is to make those improvements. I mean, there's so much anecdotal evidence of college campuses, office buildings, other institutional buildings that are sitting 90% empty yet did not see their energy consumption drop very much. You hear that from airports. We worked closely with the Dallas Fort Worth Airport. They were not, you know, they're at about 20% of their travel capacity for the year, and yet their energy bills were roughly the same. And so it shows we need smarter buildings. We have to make sure, you know, there's an investment challenge here. It requires investment to improve the efficiency of buildings, whether it's putting in better controls and making smarter buildings and also just making them more efficient overall in terms of traditional things like better envelopes and lighting and ACV. And so, you know, it's, I think that it points to the fact that it's hard to do even if they're largely empty. Thanks for that. I appreciate it. So what did I miss? What did I miss? I guess that means the microphone work because you wouldn't be laughing at my bad impersonation. I'm sorry that I missed the answer about building energy efficiency. Before my microphone cut out and decided that it would hang me out to dry, I was just gonna ask if there were other folks, Bryn, Charles, and Allison, if you had any other thoughts about job growth potential sort of moving forward as we come out of the, you know, as we move towards vaccinations and come out of the pandemic. Well, Dan, I think that's a good question. And maybe the only thing that I'll highlight in terms of job growth potential, I think the pandemic underscored a need for a more stringent focus on supply chains and where we are getting so many of our solar panels, wind turbine parts, you know, the core elements of the clean energy future, whether that be, you know, mind minerals or critical minerals to have a firmer focus on that and to look more carefully at how we can create that job growth in the United States. It won't happen overnight. And I think that we were fortunate that we had, you know, backlogs of solar panel warehouses full of them in some cases that were able to be tapped so that we didn't slip further behind. But looking ahead, I think that there is a good focus and I think an important part of the national dialogue that is trained on how we can insource more of these jobs through strategic investment and through revisions to regulations, not, you know, strictly looking through the lens of tariffs, which is not the, I think the approach that we're interested in. Great, thanks. For the next question, I'd like to sort of switch topics a little bit and think a little bit about infrastructure. So infrastructure is one of those things that means everything to everyone, which in some ways means it means nothing at all. But I think conventional wisdom is rapidly coalescing at least in Washington around this idea that we're gonna have some infrastructure package at some point, whichever vehicle attaches itself to if it's a standalone thing, if it's part of a larger climate bill. But I think most people are expecting that there would be something on infrastructure. I'd like to go around the panel and maybe we'll start with Bryn and Allison since Ben and Charles responded to my jobs question. I'd like you to think about infrastructure and help our audience understand sort of where in the scheme of things we might be able to identify some opportunities for bipartisanship around making investments to the energy system and the energy sector. So Allison and Bryn, I'm happy to let you go first. I know, I don't know. I'm pretty sure Ben and Charles will also have some ideas about this as well, but I'm happy to defer to you first. Well, I'm gonna be a little cynical. So I don't know if I should go first and Bryn is gonna be positive and she can follow me up or if we should go the other way around. I'll take a chance in bed that I'm gonna be the cynical one on the group. I shouldn't say cynical. I just, you know, I think I'm more in the camp with Congressman Yarmuth. I just saw that he spoke recently about more of a September timeline for an infrastructure bill and that seems a little bit more realistic to me. I worry that while I do think they'll make attempts at bipartisanship, that's not ultimately how things will transpire. You know, hopefully that will be the case, but I, you know, to your point, I think, you know, it means different things to different people and, you know, the conversation about roads and highways is really different than energy infrastructure and what's possible there. And, you know, if we're talking about the opportunity for clean infrastructure proposals, you know, what that means to different people and where some of the more moderate members are willing to go on that versus where more of the progressive members are going, you know, all of that said, all that cynicism and negativity aside, you know, I do think there's some opportunity for some things. I think, you know, some of the talk about the investments in the power grid, I think most people realize that we need more and new investment in the power grid. So I think that that is a possibility, depending again on what we're talking about, but just in terms of having, I think most folks agree, we need a more resilient power grid, you know, C-texas and other examples. And then I also think that there is support on both sides for things like EVs and EV infrastructure, electric vehicles and electric vehicle infrastructure. I think people are seeing the writing on the wall and you've got automakers like GM coming out and you know, I forget exactly what their goal is, but it's in the near future that they're saying goodbye to gastric vehicles and they're going to be all electric and you know, they've got some really ambitious goals. And so following, you know, all those automakers, I think, you know, we need the infrastructure to follow it. And you know, I think that the federal government is going to have to get on board and support some of that infrastructure going forward. Yeah. And I mean, you take a broader lens on it, which is why I think it made sense for you to go first, but I support everything you just said. I think a couple of the things that we look at too is certainly, you know, the developing story around grid hardening and grid modernization, you know, historically it's always been very sensitive to the conversation around grid modernization, wanting to ensure that these costs are fully justified, but as we get to the extreme weather event after extreme weather event, I mean, the conversation is really unifying around, we've got to have resilience at the center of the conversation and our community certainly supports that and that fits fairly in with the kinds of smart policies that could go in an infrastructure package. We've also already touched on transmission and how important that's going to be to unlocking a low-cost accelerated decarbonization transition. And then the other thing that we think about, you know, there's a lot of different ways an infrastructure package could develop and what goes in it, but I mentioned earlier that the vast, vast majority of voluntary procurement has happened in organized wholesale markets and that's because they provide a platform for these transactions to actually occur. So they accelerate clean energy, but they also have historical data showing that they drive down costs for customers and because they help integrate a variety of clean energy technologies, they're gonna be really integral to this transition. So we're actually doing a lot of thinking about how expanding organized wholesale markets could be supported in an infrastructure package as well because ultimately this has to be driven by the states themselves who are not currently covered by organized competitive wholesale markets, but ensuring that state collaboration and state-driven initiative studies, even the onboarding costs are things that are accounted for because ultimately when we talk about organized markets and transmission together, these are the kinds of underlying policies that are gonna really unleash decarbonization and at least cost. And those are prime discussions for an infrastructure package. Charles, what are your thoughts on this subject? Yeah, I think that there are a lot of areas that we're gonna find our right for investment. One specific item that I do wanna mention though is that we talk about need to transition to clean energy, we talk about the need to tackle climate change by mid-century. To do that, we're going to need a lot to build a lot of big infrastructure, some of it offshore, some of it onshore, some of it in transmission. And we would benefit from a serious look at the federal level of how to expedite permits for some of these large clean energy projects. We've seen good examples in models. Fast 41 focused on fixing America's surface transportation provided a good model that you can safeguard the environment, you can safeguard local communities and do expedient permitting at the federal level and conduct these environmental reviews for big infrastructure projects that cross state boundaries and we're likely to see the need for more of that. So a focus from the legislative branch on how to do more of that will be beneficial. One of the good things the Trump administration did was focus on federal one decision so that a large project proponent to only deal with a single entity in the federal government instead of utilizing or looking to multiple agencies for their environmental reviews. So a single coordinated process. The problem with executive orders is that it's in one administration and not in the other and it's one where we would benefit from a durable solution proposed by Congress. Thanks. Ben, I think you're next up. Sure. So we definitely agree about grid modernization, lots of efficiencies to be getting there and we'd sign a few other areas that I think infrastructure where we can reduce long-term operating costs for local governments and states by improving efficiency. So water and wastewater treatment facilities, huge amounts of energy used to treat and pump and process water and deliver water. We can, by making improvements to those facilities we can save massive amounts of money and energy and carbon emissions through that. Streetlight is just a simple example. We have about 40 million streetlights around the country and only about half of them are LED right now. That's a shame. They all should be. Streetlighting is often the single largest energy cost of a municipality and we need to do more to transition those. And then also just finally, I think looking beyond what we traditionally roads, bridges types of things and look at buildings. And I mentioned our proposal earlier for critical public facilities retrofitting those public facilities. And I think we need to think of our ports and our airports and our convention centers and things like that as our infrastructure and we need to improve those. And I mentioned this proposal is based on performance contracting where there's actually not a lot of federal money that needs to go into it. We can have private investment. We can leverage the federal seed money for some private investment that is ultimately paid back through the energy cost savings over time. So there's some really innovative ways. And Dan, as you know, those types of things really have can have strong bipartisan support. So we think there's a lot of opportunity out there. Great, thanks so much for that. You have that first cost barrier that we have to overcome and finding creative ways to get past that is what we have to do. And that's where policy comes into play. Yeah, totally agree. Lisa, I think I'm gonna send it back over to you for the next couple of questions. Oh, great. Well, just before we leave that topic, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the Business Council for Sustainable Energy released just yesterday a letter to Congress with our recommendations for an infrastructure and economic recovery package and tying it back, Dan, to something you said before. I mean, there's been so much mention on both sides of the aisle of infrastructure as a job creator, especially as we come out of the COVID-19 pandemic. So yeah, there's a lot of promise in those words. We need to make them reality, but we have seen in the last Congress, especially with the surface transportation bill, that there is strong bipartisan support for a number of the initiatives that our panelists just mentioned. So we're rolling up our sleeves and wanna work with Congress and the administration to get as much done as we can. And to really use leverage opportunities, public-private partnerships, was just mentioned, performance contracting. There's so many models that we can tap into where we can really maximize and optimize what the federal government can do. So, and then the other comment I just wanted to make, we're seeing the clean energy transition throughout the country. And we obviously in our membership have investor-owned utilities. We have public power. We have many energy service companies or other developers that work in partnership with municipalities, local communities, states. And they all need to find ways to continue to respond to customers and have affordable, reliable and clean energy. So it can be done. And when I think about some of our board members, especially those that are public utilities like an Austin Energy or Sacramento Municipal Utility District or SMUD, I mean, they're really on the front lines of innovation and providing clean energy to their customers. So we look at it very broadly in terms of how the market can move forward for clean energy. So that kind of wraps up the, maybe a domestic conversation. I wanted to talk a little bit about the US involvement internationally in sustainability and climate change. As you probably all know, just last month, the US officially re-entered the Paris Agreement. And I wanted to talk a little bit about what that means for your industry sector, what it means for your company or your association. So I don't know who wants to dive in first, but tell me a little bit about the Paris Agreement and is that a market mover from where you sit? I can start, but I'll be very brief. I think it's gonna be really interesting. We certainly have supported rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement. It would be really interesting to see what the administration develops in terms of NDCs and are very eager to participate in that process. But overall, I mean, we think that any, to meet those goals, you're not gonna meet those kind of carbon emissions goals without really, really significant gains in energy efficiency. The IEA estimates that energy efficiency will be 40 to 45% of the carbon emissions reductions needed to meet the goals of the Paris Climate Accord. So, you know, almost half. And so, you know, whatever you come up with, you're gonna have to have a lot of efficiency thrown in there. Well, you mentioned something in NDC, nationally determined contribution. Can, you know, I'm happy to explain it, or do you wanna explain what an NDC is? Please do, Lisa. Okay, well, I mean, basically it's the goal that the United States would bring forward to the Framework Convention and Climate Change and the Paris Agreement, saying what our ambition level will be sometimes over the next decade or taking us out to 2050. And so, by re-engaging in the Paris Agreement, our federal government has an opportunity to articulate that again. The Obama administration did once the Paris Agreement was adopted. And now we have a new opportunity for the Biden-Harris administration to communicate that. And we are expecting that we will hear a bit about what that long-term goal will be in the coming weeks. But let me ask others. Does involvement in international climate change processes mean anything from your company or your sector? How does it impact you? I mean, I'll just jump in briefly. In Reba as an organization is pretty domestically focused, but our members, whether it's Walmart or Amazon or Microsoft or Google or Johnson & Johnson or whoever it is, they have global footprints and they have set these incredibly ambitious emission reduction targets for their own operations. And that means globally. Oftentimes, if we're talking about where the bulk of their emissions are, it's in their supply chain. Oftentimes, the bulk of their supply chain is globally. So there's lots of inherent interest for them to also be thinking about, we've got to be tackling this challenge at a global level. And there have been so many high-level business statements supporting rejoining Paris. So I mean, I think that the takeaway is that the business community on the whole is very supportive of rejoining Paris and ensuring that there's a global coordinated effort because ultimately companies are not gonna be successful in reaching their own emission reductions unless there's also an overlay to that framework that's driving the ambition across the board. Thank you. Well, let me ask one other question kind of building on corporate action and corporate commitments. We talked a lot about the activity in renewable energy procurement or in energy efficiency and energy productivity commitments, sustainable transportation. That was a great slide that you showed, Bryn. But what I certainly am hearing more of my members talk about, which we talked about a little bit here, is hydrogen in the hydrogen supply chain and renewable thermal opportunities like biogas or renewable natural gas. Allison, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how Sempra and its companies are thinking about hydrogen and RNG. Yeah, I mean, when you were talking about Paris, that's sort of what I was thinking in my head in terms of what kind of market signals are descending. One, I think companies are already moving in that direction and trending in that direction that they're coming out with all kinds of net zero by 2050 goals. And part of that is Paris, part of that is we never stopped. The industry never stopped following whatever administration was in. It's not like we all suddenly threw up our hands during the Trump administration and said, oh, we don't have to care about that anymore. Just given the states that some of us operate in, we're based in California. California has its own really ambitious goals. So we wanted to be very thoughtful about ensuring we were making commitments that we could keep. So we'll have more about that in the coming weeks. But in terms of hydrogen, I kind of spoke of that already, both SoCal gas and SDG and any of all kinds of demonstration projects that they're working on. We've got all kinds of partnerships with UC Irvine is one of the on the forefront of hydrogen and renewable natural gas technology. And then in terms of commitments actually, as far as renewable natural gas goes, SoCal gas has already committed to deliver 5% renewable natural gas to core customers by 2022 and 20% by 2030. And I think we're already at something like two or 3% RNG right now. So, you know, we've got some pretty ambitious goals when it comes to renewable natural gas. You know, there's a way to go in both hydrogen and renewable natural gas. Part of that is cost. But, you know, we're on our way and hopefully some of the research and development that we talked about that may come from federal government and Congress. Maybe that'll help us get to the next level on both of those technologies. Thank you. So I've got one final question before I turn it to Dan who's gonna close us out maybe with asking everybody on the panel to just give a final thought. But before we do that, Charles, I wanted to talk to you. I know one of your favorite slides that you didn't show today is a slide about the levelized cost of energy, levelized cost of electricity across a number of different technologies. And this is an area where Bloomberg do energy finance has a lot of expertise. And, you know, certainly we've seen over time dramatic changes and cost reductions in many technologies and kind of different technologies becoming more cost competitive. And I was just wondering, you know, from your perspective, you know, were you surprised by the rapid change? You know, what's the impact? Does that change the conversation and offer more opportunity for bipartisanship? Just wondering what your impression is since you love to talk and share that slide. Thanks, Lisa. And we don't have the slide here, but basically what it shows is that almost always it is gonna be cheaper for new generation to be brought online that is solar, wind, or natural gas. And increasingly solar and wind. And that's happening because of market pressures and because there is a crowding in of investment in this space, folks are competing against one another and the prices are coming down at a tremendous rate. It doesn't surprise me. I'm a firm believer in free markets and while there's a tremendous amount of incentive that's been put forward by the federal government for tax incentives to help get us to this point, we're at this point where we've really crossed a threshold. We're gonna continue to see these prices come down. And that's really encouraging if you're looking at accomplishing Paris goals. Paris alone, the agreement is not enough. What we need to see is the deployment of a lot of different technology, not just in the United States, but around the world. And I think that you do see bipartisan consensus that U.S. has a role to play in that future. And I think that's why we kept touching on the Energy Act of 2020 in this conversation. That was a bipartisan agreement that was years in the making. More needs to be done, but I think it's proof that it's, this is an area that's ripe for conversation and compromise between Democrats and Republicans. And it's one where discrete federal roles that complement state policies can really empower the marketplace to act. And Lisa, to your point earlier, clean energy is what consumers want, what big companies, what little companies want. And if we are able to match supply with that unprecedented demand we'll be in a very good place. Thank you. Dan, back to you. All right, so now we're gonna conclude with a lightning round. And what we'll do is just everyone, and Melina and Lisa, I think this goes for you too. Let me hear a closing comment, final takeaway, something that is in the fact book is tremendous resource. We've covered part of it. We could have done a 10 hour panel and spent time on every slide. It really is so extensive. But if there was something else in the fact book, takeaways, anything else that you wanna do, this would be a great time to do it. And like I said, Melina and Lisa, I'm happy to start with you. And then maybe we'll go through the panel in the order that they originally presented. Well, I'll go first. Oh, you can go, Lisa. I was just gonna give you a little time to think about what you wanted to say. So I'll just end with what I said in the beginning, like the two driving forces that really impressed me. It's the cost reduction of so many technologies and resources that are driving the changes we're seeing and that customers seek out this. The demand for clean, affordable, reliable energy is strong and growing. And we're very fortunate that we have a diverse portfolio of technologies in the United States to provide it. Now we also have some longer term goals as it comes to sustainability and climate. So we're on the path to get there, but the foundation is strong and commercially available technologies we have now can do even more to get us along that pathway. So that's my concluding thought. Thanks, Melina. Yeah, I mean, when I think about the future of energy, I mean, I think about the short term and then I think about the mid and long term. And the short term, I mean, what needs to happen is market reform first and foremost. And as was pointed out before transmission build out, but then in the medium to longterm, I think, you know, if we're serious about decarbonizing, like, yes, we have like some goals around hydrogen and funding for hydrogen, but we really need to come up with a way to expand the infrastructure system to support hydrogen storage and transportation. And I think, like, as I said, if we are serious about hydrogen, that's an area where we are compared to other nations, like pretty closely unprepared. So I think, yeah, when I think about the energy future and when I think about where future policy could be focused, that's kind of the area I would be thinking about. Yeah. Thanks for that. Charles, takeaways, last thoughts, final comments? Yeah, a couple of additional comments, I think, is that when we look at the fact book, we see rapid growth in some areas and we see stagnation or even decline in other areas. I mentioned the energy storage tax credit. I think that's important for keeping renewables on the growth trajectory, for keeping energy storage on the trajectory. If it's the bacon on the grid, it's gonna make everything better. We need more of it and it's gonna help solve a lot of the problems that we do see on the grid today. The other component and thing I wanna mention is that we're not seeing triumphant growth in hydropower. Apparently not all renewables are created equally and we're seeing a little bit of growth in hydropower, but considering there are 88,000 dams in this country and only 3% of them produce power, there's a huge untapped potential there and an area where we could look and harness electric power in places that are probably closer to our backyards than a lot of folks realize and imagine. So there is a huge generating capacity there and an opportunity, but it's a matter of looking in some unlikely locations. Ben? Yeah, I think I would, so we haven't talked a lot about equity and environmental justice here, but obviously that's a huge component of this. I think we all know the damage, just pollution, conventional pollutions, the damage of climate change and the outsized impact that that has had and will have on disadvantaged communities and communities of color. I think, so all of what we're talking about here is a way to address that. And then additionally, when you look at economic opportunity and if we structure it the right way, we make sure that federal investment, that this policy is directed in a way that investment goes into communities that have not had opportunities. We can provide workforce training, things like Bobby Rush's Blue Color to Green Color Jobs Act. If we do it the right way, we can create not just jobs, but also entrepreneurial opportunities for lower income communities. And then finally, I think this is really where if energy efficiency uniquely can benefit is in cost savings in reducing energy bills. The energy burden on the poor and the working poor is enormous. But higher income households spend 3, 4% of their income on energy bills and many lower income households, 15 to 20% of their paycheck on paying their energy bills. And we've got to do something about that because that is a huge cost to those families and energy efficiency can really help there. Thanks. Bryn? Well, thank you for bringing that in because I think that's just such an important message and this transition is going to hinge on whether we do that well. I mean, coming from the power sector perspective, I mean, this just feels like such an exceptionally important time for legislative action amidst a really exceptional rate of change in the power sector. We have a power grid that was built for the 20th century with 20th century technologies but significant disruptions and challenges are really requiring us to reexamine how we build a clean, affordable and reliable grid starting now. Extreme weather is disrupting power grids, customer needs and demands are changing. And so really how we plan, build and operate our grid needs to adapt to these changing circumstances of the 21st century. And a huge segment of the business community wants to see a bipartisan, durable, markets enhancing set of policies that sets us on that decarbonization trajectory and there hasn't been a more important time for non-incremental action. Alison? Yeah, you know, we talked a bunch during this conversation about infrastructure and I think, you know, the fact that demonstrates year over year how the industry has evolved, you know, over the next five, 10, 20, 30 years we're gonna need to evolve even further and more dramatically to meet some of the, you know, climate goals that we have set and are going to set, you know, and just in terms of infrastructure, I mean, we envision a future where, you know, we use our current infrastructure to move around lower to, you know, zero carbon molecules and work in tandem to decarbonize our country's markets and homes and transportation while, you know, still to the economic justice, you know, at that point, providing resilient, sustainable, affordable, you know, energy to folks. Great. Well, thank you for that. We are just about at time and so we will begin our wrap-up process. Lisa, great to work with you on today's briefing. Thanks to you and the rest of the BCS team. Thanks to our panelists. Melina, Charles, Ben, Ben, Alison, thank you so much for being with us today. Also like to give a special shout out once again to our friends with the Senate Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus. Senators Reid, Crapo, Van Hollen and Collins, thank you very much for all of your support bringing this briefing to our audience today. Like to thank Troy, who is sitting behind the scenes. Those of us on the panel can see him. Those of you watching the live feed cannot. He is the wizard behind the curtain who helps bring our briefings to folks when we use this format. So thank you very much for all your hard work today Troy. Thanks to Dan O'Brien, Sidney O'Shaughnessy, Amber Todorov, Anna McGinn, Omri Laporte. I name everybody because at ESI it really does take a village to put one of these briefings on. And so thanks to everybody who puts all the effort in and we have five tremendous interns and they all do a lot helping us pull these briefings off as well. So thanks to Celine Hamza, Jocelyn, Kimmy and Rachel for that. We will put up a slide in just a moment with a link to a survey. We read all of your feedback. If you have in our audience, if you have two minutes to take the survey, we would really, really appreciate the feedback. If there are technical issues that you encountered or if you have suggestions for future topics, we really do read everything that you submit. So please take a moment to do that. Few other quick EI centric reminders. Please come back. We have a just a tremendous slate of briefings coming up over the next couple months. I think the next one on the calendar is March 26th. I think it's a Friday. That's the third installment of our Congressional Climate Camp series. And it's gonna be a really excellent look at sort of current attitudes and past policy attempts to enact climate change or climate policy in Washington. It's gonna be a really excellent look. Hope everyone will be able to tune in for that. And if you missed anything, please go back and watch the archive of everything including presentation materials is available online at www.esa.org. While you're there, I hope you will sign up for our newsletter, Climate Change Solutions. And right after that, I hope you go visit the fact book because it is a tremendous resource. Again, we've really just skimmed the surface today. If you're interested in a comprehensive overview of what the clean energy sector in the United States looks like right now, it is really the only resource and one that certainly I find myself going back to time and time again to understand sort of where things are and what the trends that have led us or in the trends that have happened in the past that have led us to where we are today. So with that, we will close down. Thanks again to our panelists. Thanks to BCSE. Thanks to the Senate Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus. I hope everyone has a great rest of your Friday and happy weekend.