 So to talk about CHP, or Combined Heat and Power District Energy Systems, we have the following panel, Jessica Bridges, who is the Executive Director of the U.S. Clean Heat and Power Association. Then we will hear from Rob Thornton, who is the President of IDEA, the International District Energy Association, and he will be followed by Ken Smith, who is the President and CEO of District Energy St. Paul, and I must say, I have also been honored to be through that facility. So, Jessica, we'll hear from you first. Good afternoon, everybody. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today, and thank you for that introduction, Carol. If you don't mind, I'm going to have to keep my water there just in case. I am Jessica Bridges, I'm Executive Director of the U.S. Clean Heat and Power Association. We work to advance the deployment of Combined Heat and Power and Waste Energy Recovery Systems in the United States, and our membership is actually comprised of a very broad base of organizations. It includes turbine and engine manufacturers, developers and consultants in the business of CHP, actually a lot of the people who make the components, as well as users of CHP, so facility owners and operators, district energy systems, very broadly based, and we're based here in the Metro D.C. area. And even though this is a sophisticated audience, we never assume that everyone is CHP savvy, so for those of you who are unfamiliar with it, CHP is also known as cogeneration that usually sets off some light bulbs for people. It's an integrated energy system that's located onsite at or near a factory or building and produces electrical or mechanical power and useful thermal energy from a single fuel source. Electricity and thermal could be heating or cooling or both, and CHP systems achieve efficiencies two to three times that of grid power. CHP can use a variety of technologies and a variety of fuels, so it's really actually more of a solution than a specific technology. Our earlier panelists, one of our panelists earlier mentioned the Oak Ridge National Laboratory report on CHP that was issued in 2008, I know that a lot of people are familiar with this. But it's a very important study from DOE, and it showed that 9% of U.S. generating capacity can be attributable to combined heat and power. And that translates to reduced annual energy consumption of 1.9 quadrillion BTUs, total annual carbon dioxide reduction of 248 million metric tons, and it's equivalent to taking 50 million cars from the road, almost 50 million cars from the road. So the energy and environmental benefits of CHP are clear. And I just wanted to mention the potential for, the study actually focused on the potential for carbon reduction and jobs creation if we produce 20% of our generated capacity from CHP by 2030. And that number actually is for all of cogeneration, so both combined heat and power, and also waste energy recovery. So not just waste heat, but CHP and waste heat recovery. CHP can be deployed quickly and with few geographic restrictions and with zero meteorological restrictions. So that's very important. It's appropriate for commercial, institutional, and industrial applications, and it's very fuel-friendly. So everything from biomass to natural gas to petroleum to coal-powered coal-fired CHP systems are out there in the marketplace. And as you've heard from the solar folks from other industries, same with ours, investment in CHP has really slowed over the past few years. It's due to a variety of reasons, economic uncertainty obviously, volatile energy markets, and what I'll just term questionable regulatory structures, and importantly lack of financing. And so given my time limitation, I'm really just going to focus on this last one on the financing issue. All of these issues are important obviously, but finance is critical at this stage. It was mentioned earlier this morning, and I actually wasn't in the room, but we've earlier discussed the fact that CHP benefits from a 10% investment tax credit. It's actually limited to 15 megawatts of a system for any system under 50 megawatts. And our tax credit actually is through 2016. We benefit from the tax grant and lieu of credit program under the 1603 program, which is under the one-year extension. Obviously we want to see the tax credit continue past 2016, but importantly also that that grant program continue beyond this year, beyond the one-year extension. But our industry also has urged Congress to strengthen the CHP tax credit in order to spur additional investment in CHP and clean waste heat to power projects. We've had several bills introduced over the past couple of years that seek to expand the 10% CHP tax credit, bump it up to cover 25 megawatts. And also separately to establish a 30% tax credit, sort of bring us to parity with some of the renewable technologies. But that 30% tax credit would be for highly efficient systems. The current tax credit is for 60% efficiency and the expanded highly efficient credit would be for 70% system efficiency. In 2010, USCHPA and the World Alliance for Decentralized Energy cosponsored a study that found that if you compare it to a baseline where there was no CHP investment tax credit, an expanded 10% ITC for CHP would increase deployment of CHP by about 20%, save 107 trillion BTUs and reduce CO2 emissions 13 million metric tons annually. And very importantly, create over 17,000 high skilled well-paying jobs. Separately, increasing the ITC to 30% for 25 megawatts of a highly efficient system, meeting a 70% efficiency threshold, would increase the deployment of CHP by more than 60%, save 142 trillion BTUs and reduce CO2 emissions by 17 million metric tons annually. There are over 3,300 systems deployed nationwide at this point, but that's nowhere near where we should be. And given the obvious benefits that a robust CHP tax credit would bring, we urge Congress to move forward with an energy tax package even in this difficult climate that includes a robust CHP investment tax credit. Increasing the CHP ITC will accelerate energy efficiency. It will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Increase operational reliability both in terms of the electricity grid and also for the operations of the institutions that implement CHP and provide economic savings that will enhance business strength. And since many CHP components are manufactured in the US, enhanced tax credits will also help grow the nation's industrial base. So I have said my piece, I appreciate your attention. And if I have any remaining time, I'd be glad to answer questions about CHP or the state of the industry. I'll just give my remarks from here. I'm Rob Thornton, I'm the president of the International District Energy Association. We were formed in 1909, so we've been around for 102 years. We're holding our 102nd annual conference next week in Toronto. And it's titled CHP District Energy, Essential Infrastructure for Energy Efficient Communities. We believe that thermal energy is the overlooked energy source in this country. And I'll share more of some other perspectives on that. But let me start first with a question. What do Barack Obama, David Cameron, Dmitri Medvedev, and Nicholas Sarkozy have in common? Who can answer me that question? They all live and work in a building on district energy. So district energy is really quite ubiquitous. It's in every major city, here in the US and around the world. But because we're underground, these are pipes underground, often hidden from view and underappreciated, around the world with Paris, Moscow, London, Brussels, and here in the US, Boston, San Francisco, Washington DC. In fact, this building, you may not know it, is on a district heating and cooling system. The heating and air conditioning for this building comes from the capital power plant, the senator knows also well, just a few blocks away. As well as every building on Capitol Hill. None of them have a boiler, or a chiller, or a cooling tower. So the federal government gets it. They get that there's a scale and efficiency to having district energy. But the capital power plant is going one step further. They're about to invest in cogeneration. And they're doing a study right now, do they put in one or two turbines? So they will, in fact, burn one fuel and get three forms of energy. Power, heating, and cooling. So think of it another way, you get twice the energy from one fuel. So they will move from an efficiency, now currently the grid in the US, the efficiency, the coal fired efficiency of the grid in this country is still 34%. It's where it was when Eisenhower was president. So what does that mean? It means that two thirds of the fuel that's used in a power plant is wasted, and it's heat that goes into rivers and oceans and in cooling towers to the atmosphere. Think of it another way. It's like you go to the package store to buy your six pack, you put it on the counter, hand over the $7, the clerk says thank you very much, and he smashes four bottles and hands it back to you. Because two thirds of the product is wasted. Now we can do better than that. We can actually use most of the fuel, and we're doing it today, with district energy in campuses and cities. University of Texas, Austin, one of our largest universities, 75,000 people on campus. They produce all the heating, cooling, and power from a single fuel, and they operate today at efficiencies nearly 90%. And in the last 13 years, UT Austin, like many of our college campuses, has added lots of space, both laboratories and dorms. When I went to college, the dorms weren't air conditioned. Today they are. But today, they're now serving 18 million square feet on this campus with the same amount of fuel as 15 years ago. They've doubled their efficiency. So as the campus has added 8 million square feet, they're still using the same amount of fuel. It's essentially carbon neutral growth. That's what our policies should be directing us at. That's what most of our cities and planners want. And district energy and combined heat and power is a known technology can be deployed today, is cost effective, but it's missing from the policy arena. Most of what happens today, states and federal, is about electricity. Obviously, electricity is important. But until we pay attention to heat, we are missing two-thirds of the argument. I'm going to conclude with a report that just came out last month, the International Energy Agency, issued a report called Cogeneration and Renewables. And in it, they talk about the importance of having a source of fossil generation to balance the intermittent supply of electricity. It really is critical. And we don't want to balance renewable supply with inefficient, once in a while, gas turbines only. If we use cogeneration, then we'll be balancing with 80% or 90% efficient portfolio. Further, and I urge you all to read this, it's on our website, www.districtenergy.org. I'm happy to send it to you. It's called Cogeneration and Renewables. And what it really says is that instead of thinking of the policy and funding trough as a zero sum game, where the renewables have to get theirs and the efficiency folks have to get theirs, we need to be working together and complimenting each other. Because when there's cogeneration, we can actually create a bigger, broader market for renewables. And the balancing act needs to be as efficient as possible. Otherwise, we're just going forward and only drinking two bottles out of the six pack. We need a more holistic view. I just want to conclude with two liner notes. At our annual conference, we're going to host a debate. Bjorn Lomborg, the skeptical environmentalist. I know many of you have another term for him. All politics aside, we'll be there. And he'll be in a debate with Tom Casten. I'm assuming many of you know him, the founder of TriJane Energy and the chair of Recycled Energy Development. While you can't join us in Toronto, we will be live streaming it. And it'll be Monday afternoon, June 27th. We'd love for you to get online and hear what these people have to say. We think it'll be quite interesting. And then finally, we have a white paper. It's called Combined Heat and Power, Essential for a Cost-Effective Clean Energy Standard. We think heat needs to be in the mix. And combined heat and power is a key part of the solution. Be happy to provide this to any of you if you'll give me your card at the end of the day. Thanks. Thank you. And thank you for the opportunity to be here today. District Energy St. Paul is a nonprofit utility that heats and cools a city. We started the 1970s as a public-private partnership. Communities leaders came together out of the second energy crisis and said, we need to do something different in our city. So they searched the world. And they came around technology. And it was district energy, hot water, and chilled water being distributed through pipes throughout the city. And today we serve a very diverse, large customer base where we serve about 31 million square feet that we heat, 21 million square feet that we cool. And it's anywhere from hospitals, to museums, to restaurants, to hotels, to Fortune 500 companies, to residences, and the list goes on. We were created to be a model for the nation, a place where others could come and see what can be done, what the energy systems of the future could be done. In 2009, we hosted visitors from 38 countries and 15 states. And we are an example of how proven technologies like combined heat and power and district energy integrated together can create real benefits for communities, stable rates, reduced emissions, energy efficiency, and the list goes on. And while our system started as a fossil fuel-based system, primarily coal, we have transitioned to where most of our energy, majority of our energy, is renewable. In 2003, we started a combined heat and power plant that has biomass fired that now serves renewable energy to the grid, but also serves the heating needs of a city. And that, as I said, is primarily biomass, which is sourced from about a 50 to 60 mile radius of the Twin Cities. This year, we've integrated a large-scale solar thermal project. It's the first project of its kind in North America, where we are integrating a 1.2 megawatt solar thermal project that meets the heating needs of a building. And then the excess energy goes out to the grid. But it's not the grid we normally talk about in electricity. It goes out to our hot water grid, so it can also be used in other buildings. So why are we here today? Well, we're really here to educate what can be done and what is being done in St. Paul as an example, but also to talk about what could be done in the future. There's been a lot of talk today. Rob has mentioned it, but there's been speakers throughout the day that have talked about a need for a comprehensive energy policy. To realize the full benefit about what can be accomplished, we really need to change how we think about energy and how we approach energy policy. Energy policy is as complex and as diverse as the participants in this forum. It really is a very complex system. Yet when we start talking about energy policy, we tend to very much simplify it. When we talk about renewable energy standard, we almost always focus on electricity. Or a clean energy standard is almost entirely talking about electricity. As Rob mentioned, we leave thermal out of the conversation. And that really is not a good thing to do when we're throwing two thirds of our energy away from electricity generation. When we talk about energy efficiency, we tend to almost always focus on the buildings. And yet, again, on the source side of it, we're throwing away two thirds of the energy. We're throwing away more energy than is delivered to our buildings. To change the system, we need to change how we think about the system and really create benefits for overall, for our customers. In St. Paul, our rates have been stable. We heat today twice as much square footage as we did when the system started, very similar to what University of Texas, Austin. And our rates have been below inflation the entire time. I would challenge anybody to do the same thing. If you look to the future, our systems will be more efficient. They will be more distributed. They will be more renewable. They will be more sustainable. They're gonna be more secure. They're gonna be more smart. And they're gonna be more integrated. And district heating and combined heat and power are gonna be a major role part of that. Thank you. It's a huge opportunity. What's not to like, folks? I think that we are just about, well, we are just about out of time. And I really encourage you to go to the booths that follow up with these speakers because as they said, our national energy policy in terms of most of the provisions that we've seen have been focused on electricity and on fuels. And yet 40% of our energy in this country is thermal. And so we just cannot leave that out or we are really, really hurting the country. Okay, thank you very, very much. Great job.