 Thank you so much for having me. I'm really glad to be here today. Thank you for the warm welcome. So I, again, I'm Vice Chair, Jenea Scott, and I oversee the Energy Commission's research portfolio. And so I'm going to talk to you for just a few minutes about what the Energy Commission is doing overall. And then I'll jump in and do a little bit of a deeper dive into our research program. And then I look forward very much to hearing the questions from everybody this afternoon. So as you all know, Governor Newsom has set some bold goals for our state in terms of climate, in terms of clean air, and also in terms of equity. So you can see here one of the quotes that he had made just about a month or so ago, talking about why it is nice to have goals to get to 100% clean energy by 2045. It's inadequate to meet the challenges of the state. And as you all know, there is a lot of work that we need to do on a very fast timeframe in order to keep global warming under two degrees Celsius around the world. So at the Energy Commission, we are in some ways kind of like the Governor's Energy Office. We have more than 700 staff, almost 800 staff that work at the Commission on a broad set of things. The Commission is overseen by five commissioners. In order to be a commissioner at the Energy Commission, you need to be appointed by the governor and then confirmed by the state senate. And each of us has a designation. I'm designated as the public member of the Energy Commission and also as the vice chair, and I oversee our research portfolio. So each of the five of us has sort of a portfolio of energy related topics that we oversee on any given day. So what I wanted to do, as I mentioned, is give you kind of a high level overview of some of the core responsibilities of what the Energy Commission does. Pretty much anything that you can think of that touches energy at some point or place will come through the Energy Commission. But I wanted to highlight for you our core responsibilities. And then, as I mentioned, I will do a deep dive into the research that we're working on. So one of our core responsibilities is to certify thermal power plants that are 50 megawatts or larger. I really like the slide that goes here with this because it is, it actually is thermal power plants. So if you're talking about solar PV, that does not have a thermal component and therefore the Energy Commission does not typically do the permitting for that and also wind, right? So wind power does not have a thermal component to it. The Energy Commission does not do the permitting for those types of facilities either. That tends to go through the counties. So anything that has a thermal component that's 50 megawatts or bigger comes through the Energy Commission and we do all of the environmental reviews for those projects to determine whether or not they're able to go forward. Another one of our core responsibilities is in the transportation sector. The transportation sector in California is responsible for about 40% of the greenhouse gases in California. And if you include refining in that as well, then it's more than 50% of the greenhouse gas portfolio in California is coming from our transportation sector. The Energy Commission has about $100 million that we invest each year in transforming transportation. And some of the things that we work on in that space include helping get out some of the charging infrastructure. We're helping to build some of the hydrogen stations that you see around the state. We help a lot with cleaner, low carbon fuel. And we have a little bit of a workforce training component and a manufacturing component to that as well. But it's $100 million that the Energy Commission invests each year in transforming transportation. A third of our responsibilities is the research portfolio and I'm not going to say too much more about that right here because I will talk with you about that in great detail for the rest of my presentation. A fourth responsibility at the Energy Commission is forecasting our future energy needs. And the Energy Commission actually has a cracker jack set of people. They are world class analysts in looking at our energy needs. So they look at electricity supply and demand. They look at natural gas supply and demand. They look at petroleum supply and demand. And often people from like the EIA, the International Energy Agency, the IEA and others will look to the Energy Commission to see some of the research and forecasting that we're doing in this space. It's pretty powerful. And the forecasting needs are what a lot of the planning in the state is works around, right? So you forecast, here's how much electricity demand we think that we have. Then when people are looking at procurement, how much energy procurement do we need to do? What level of renewables do we need? All of that kind of ties back to that forecast for where we think electricity demand is going to be. A fifth thing that we work on at the Energy Commission is deploying our renewable energy resources. And really a lot of what we do in this space is a little bit wonky. We are looking to certify that what people say is a renewable resource actually does meet the state's definitions of a renewable energy resource. We've got a whole team of folks that that works in this space. We've also got our new solar homes program and other programs like that that help get renewable energy deployed out into the marketplace. And then the sixth of our core responsibilities is to promote energy efficiency and conservation by setting the state's appliance and building energy efficiency standards. So we do all kinds of appliance standards in the areas where we're not preempted on the federal level by the Department of Energy. So if the Department of Energy has set a standard for an appliance or another piece of equipment, then the Energy Commission cannot set an energy efficiency standard in that space. But if the federal government has not set a standard, then we can. And so there's things like the screen for your monitor for your computer, other things like that where the Energy Commission has been able to come in, the set top boxes that go with your cable. Those use a ton more of energy and so we were able to put in place energy efficiency standards for those. So those are the types of things that we can do energy efficiency standards for. And then we also do the building standards. So every three years the Energy Commission does a deep dive into what's going on, what are the latest and greatest types of technologies, building materials, all kinds of things to make sure that the buildings that we are building or that we were constructing are actually much more energy efficient. So that is another thing that we do there. Those are rules and regulations that say how much energy a building can use. So those are the overarching six responsibilities. And as I mentioned, there's a little bit of everything that's related to energy in that space. One of the things that I love about this chart, I always want to show this chart when I'm talking to people about energy, when I'm talking to people about the types of reductions we're trying to make in greenhouse gases in the state of California. And if you'll notice here, the top line of this slide shows you the GDP for California, our population, our greenhouse gas emissions, and our greenhouse gas emissions per person, and our greenhouse gas emissions per GDP. You can see in California, our GDP is continuing to go up while we are making greenhouse gas emission reductions. So it is not true that you can't make, if you make, it is not true that if you make emissions reductions, you also have a poor economy. We have a very strong, very thriving economy in California. And we have managed, we have decoupled our GDP from the greenhouse gas emissions. I don't have updated numbers on this with the coronavirus and what that economic slowdown looks like. But the last thing that I heard, California is still the fifth largest economy in the world, right? Fifth largest economy in the world. And we are reducing greenhouse gas emissions per capita each and every day. You can do it. So I just, I always like to show this slide to help make that point. Here is a slide that kind of shows you where all of the greenhouse gas emissions in the state are coming from. So you can see here, as I mentioned earlier, that most of our greenhouse gas emissions in the state of California are coming from the transportation sector. About 15% are coming from the electric sector and 21% from the industrial sector. So there's still a lot of work that we need to do across all parts of California's economy to really tighten up our greenhouse gas emissions reduction. But this gives you a sense of where the emissions are coming from. And I don't think I really need to tell any of the folks here listening. California's climate is changing. Climate change is real. Climate change is happening. And so this just kind of shows you some of the statistics about things that we're worried about here in California over the next little bit. And we have done, this is from the fourth California climate assessment. And it shows you some of the types of impacts that we expect to see in California. So if we don't start aggressively addressing climate change right now every day, some of these extreme weather events and impacts are both increased in frequency and intensity. That can include, as you see here, the erosion of our beaches, large portions of the state are experiencing wildfires, which I don't need to tell anybody about. We're also seeing heavy rain and drought in areas and times that we weren't anticipating it from before. And we're seeing an increasing number of high heat days. So one of the things that California is working on to help us make those emissions reductions that we need to make is getting to 100% clean energy standard. So you can see in 2018 we were at 34% and we are headed to 100% clean energy standard in 2045. The California Energy Commission is working with the Public Utilities Commission and the California Air Resources Board to complete a joint agency report that evaluates how do we get to 100% clean, 100% zero carbon electricity policy. And that report is on track to be completed by January 2021. It's been done with a strong public process. So if you sign up on the Energy Commission's webpage, you can track that. You can always be part of the workshops or provide comments on any of the things that we're working on. A lot of times in our docket we're really looking for great information, the latest data, the latest science on these topics to help guide us as we're shaping the policy, the direction and the guidelines for where we're trying to go. So this is one of the solutions to help us get to those greenhouse gas reduction goals that we're needing to meet again in order to stay under two degrees Celsius. All right. So I want to jump back to the core responsibilities and talk to you about some of the research that we do at the Energy Commission to really help derive this progress forward. And as I mentioned earlier, I'm the lead commissioner on our research portfolio at the commission. And it's a really exciting portfolio of projects. So with these projects, what we're trying to do, as I mentioned, is advance California's clean energy goals. And those are, as you can see here, decarbonization, affordability and equity, and our resiliency, right? So really increasing the resiliency of our system. We're looking at some technologies that that can help out in the face of wildfire or other natural disasters. Certainly California cannot get where we are trying to go. No one around the world is going to be able to get where we're trying to go if we don't make sure that low income communities, communities that are classified as disadvantaged under Cal and virus screen, either communities that have historically and are currently facing undue burdens, undue pollution burdens. So we need to relieve that. And we also need to help put these communities in a place where they can be the leaders, they can be the forefront of the clean energy goals, they can be the folks that we're demonstrating and piloting the technologies and really show how it can work. And we certainly cannot leave these communities behind low income communities, rural communities, the disadvantaged communities, tribal communities, we need to make sure we're bringing everybody with us. And then decarbonization and I probably don't need to explain to you all decarbonization of course is the key to reducing carbon emissions within our economy, but there's a few things that we're working on in this space. There are three programs within the research program that I want to quickly highlight the first two, which is our food production investment program. We've got a natural gas research, deployment and demonstration program. And then I'm going to spend the rest of the time that I have here with you guys this afternoon talking about our electric program investment charge program or the so we call it the epic program. So if you if you say I'll be the the name it doesn't doesn't go so smoothly electric program investment charge program but epic program sounds good. So let me talk to you about our food production investment program. Basically what this does is it funds drop in and emerging technologies at food processing facilities in California. As you all probably know, much of the food processing for the entire country takes place here in California. Those industries tend to be or they can be pretty greenhouse gas intensive, they're energy intensive, they use a lot of water. And so we're working to really help reduce that put in place the latest and greatest state of the art technologies but use a lot less energy and use a lot less water in this space. And so to date, the energy commission has invested about $118 million and 48 projects throughout California. The map shows here this is a pretty good geographic diversity around the state. And the epic program is part of the California climate investment. And those reinvest profits from the cap and trade into state agency programs that are focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and also for benefiting disadvantaged communities. So this this program is up and running right now. And we're really excited to work with the food producers around the state to reduce the emissions. And if you think back to that chart I showed a little bit ago that fits into that industrial category of the emissions greenhouse gas emissions. We've also got our pure natural gas research program. And as you can see here what we're working to do these are kind of the the key tenets for the program is to reduce some of the vulnerabilities and fugitive methane emissions in our natural gas infrastructure. It's to help drive large-scale customer adoption of energy efficient and low carbon technology solutions for natural gas induces. And it helps to improve the cost competitiveness of renewable natural gas as well as minimize the air quality impacts from natural gas use with zero or near zero emission technologies. And these pictures here that I have for you are showing you a natural gas hybrid electric nut harvester. So you know we work with the industries we have here in California. The middle picture is a prototype of a combined cooling and power system that uses woody biomass as a feedstock. So this type of system could potentially be used for on-site production of electricity using forest biomass. And the bottom picture shows you a truck that is mounted with a portable LiDAR system and it takes measurements of subsidence and sea level rise that could compromise the natural gas system. So it's really trying to understand where the impacts that we're seeing of climate change could impact our natural gas system. We are also looking in this program as the state makes a transition away from fossil gas to more renewable gas. What does that mean? What does that look like? What kind of analysis? What kind of questions does the state need to ask? What do we need to know to make spark policies in that kind of a transition? All right. And then I am going to turn now to our EPIC program. Again that's the Electric Program Investment Charge and this is the largest program that the Energy Commission administers. We're really proud of it and I'm excited to tell you all that it has been going on since 2011 and was just renewed by the California Public Utilities Commission in August for 10 more years. So we're really excited about the strong and consistent signal. The renewal of this research program shows to clean energy innovators and entrepreneurs and technology folks. The state is serious about climate change. We're serious about finding solutions and we've got another fund for 10 more years that's going to help help us to get there. So with our EPIC program, we invest the Energy Commission about $130 million annually into clean energy innovation. And that clean energy innovation falls into these kind of six topics. And these six topics sort of tie back to the pillars that I talked to you about earlier of what the Energy Commission accomplishes. I'm not exactly in a one to one way but it does tie back to again making sure that power is affordable and reliable to helping the state achieve its decarbonization goals. So everything that we're working on kind of fits in that broader daily way. So let's go through these six areas. So the first area is and there are no particular orders here but the first one is nurturing innovation. So to date, the Energy Commission has invested about $720 million in more than 330 projects around the state. These investments have directly leveraged over $405 million in match funding. And you can see here how that funding breaks out across the different funding priorities. So we've got what we call our entrepreneurial ecosystem. There's about $143 million there. I talked about the importance of resiliency and safety in our grid. There's $106 million there. We talked about how buildings and transportation are a big chunk also of the greenhouse gas portfolio in the state. So we're investing dollars there as well. Transportation is a little bit smaller here but that's because we've got the $100 million program, clean transportation program that can help complement the research that we're carrying out in this space. And then of course looking at grid decarbonization and decentralization and also looking at the industrial and agricultural innovation within the state. So with the Epic program our goal is really to help move new and innovative clean energy technologies through the what I call the innovation pipeline. And basically it's to take an idea. Somebody's got a great idea in their head and they're trying to figure out how do I make myself a prototype? How do I then manufacture that prototype in a smart and efficient way? And then how do I get that out into the marketplace in a way that people can adopt it and it starts either reducing the amount of energy we use, reducing the amount of greenhouse gas associated with the reducing the amount of water, those types of things. So you can see here kind of that innovation pipeline and the Energy Commission works in this early stage. Once you're out of the research and demonstration space and you're out into a mature market, this is not a deployment program, right? So it doesn't deploy technologies or help buy down technologies to get them deployed in a much faster way into the marketplace, but we kind of get them all the way up to that spot. Part of what makes the program successful I think is that we've leveraged expertise throughout the state. So we've created a robust network of scientists, entrepreneurs, technology developers, communities, academia, local government, and others. And as you can see on the slide here, we have had projects with over a hundred different companies and government entities with nonprofits, utilities, universities, and national labs. These just reflect the prime recipients. Behind each of those prime recipients, there's usually a number of partners working on the projects as well. So you've got lots of subcontractors here also helping out with this. But again, we're really excited about the geographic distribution of these projects and our funds across the state and 450 research demonstration and deployment sites at early adopter homes and businesses. So I think that's actually pretty cool. I mentioned previously benefiting all California ends. So the legislature, the governor, my fellow commissioners and I, we've all made energy equity a policy priority. And that means that we need to ensure that the benefits from our programs are equitably shared and especially go to those who are in the most vulnerable communities. The energy commission through our EPIC program is helping to advance this priority by demonstrating new energy technology packages and disadvantaged communities to validate their performance and benefits to the community. And we do this in a couple of ways. When we evaluate the demonstration projects, a portion of the scoring criteria focuses on energy benefits and health benefits to low income and disadvantaged communities. We often retire that require that a community-based organization be included in the project. And we look at their plans for community engagement throughout the project. The point is not to have somebody with a great idea drop it on top of the community. The point is really to have a community strong engagement with the community. What is it that they need? What is it that they're looking for in this space? And how do we work together to demonstrate some of those technologies in the communities in a way that's really meaningful and impactful? And we're also trying to build and strengthen our relationships with community-based organizations to help get better engagement and involvement from communities that may not regularly participate in programs like EPIC. One of the challenges is that you have to know how to apply for grants in a state system to be able to successfully get grants in the state system. And so that's a little bit of a challenge. So what happens is you end up with folks who are really good at that and they oftentimes win a lot of the projects. And if you are a community and you don't have a grant writer on staff, it makes it a little bit challenging. And so we really want to put those two resources together, the communities and the grant writers, in a way that they can, that everyone can apply to help these, make sure these projects really do benefit all Californians. And as of the end of last year, about 29% of our demonstration funding had been invested in projects in disadvantaged communities. And an additional 36% had been in projects that are low-income but not disadvantaged. And again, as I mentioned, disadvantaged communities are defined by the CalEnvirus screen. You can find that on the California Environmental Protection Agency's website, but it has a certain set of criteria that determines whether communities are disadvantaged or not. And that doesn't always overlap with where the low-income communities in the state are. All right. So we talked about nurturing innovation. Now I want to talk with you a little bit about some of the projects we're doing in energy efficiency and load flexibility. So, and we talked also about buildings and how much buildings are a part of the greenhouse gas emissions. They account for about 25% actually of the greenhouse gas emissions in the state. And the EPIC program is investing in new energy technologies to improve the affordability, the health and comfort of California's residential and commercial buildings. That includes investing in technology such as better building envelopes. And if you're not a builder, really what that means is you make the materials and put the building together in a smart way so that if I'm trying to cool it off because it's 95 degrees here in Sacramento, it stays cool inside my house. And if I'm trying to warm it up because it's 20 degrees and snowing, it stays warm inside the house. You want a really tight building envelope so that you're not using lots and lots of energy if your house is leaky, right? So that's what building envelopes are. We're looking at more efficient HVAC systems. We're looking at demand response technology and reducing plug loads, among other things. So I'll give you a few examples of the projects that we're looking at under the building efficiency space. So we are working to increase the solar, let's see, yeah, increasing the solar reflectance of a building's envelope reduces the solar heat gain and it can also help cool the surrounding outside air. So the current data right now is insufficient for accurately predicting savings from different cools, so they call those cool walls, right, or cool grooves. The data that we have is not sufficient for accurately predicting the savings that you get from these different types of cool wall materials. So under one of our Epic Funded Projects, we're working with Lawrence Berkeley National Lab to quantify the energy savings, the peak demand reduction, urban cooling, and air quality improvements attainable from cool walls. This is the first project designed to quantify cool wall benefits and LBNL found that overall cool wall technologies have the potential to provide an annual energy cost savings of $500 million across single-family homes in California and so they're now working to develop cool wall measures that can go into the codes and standards for California. Another example of this is working with a group called Ohm Connect and they developed a social media platform that encourages real-time customer responses to demand response signals and as of mid-2019 they had over 10,000 devices connected to their platform and that has yielded a cumulative savings of nearly 30 megawatts. The project demonstrates that residential customers are willing to manage their electric loads for the purpose of meeting grid needs when presented with the meaningful actionable information and that they have salient incentives to encourage them to do so. So this type of technology, as you guys can imagine, will be super handy if we're in another space where we're reaching out to folks with flex alerts and we're asking people to reduce their energy use. This gives you the opportunity to reduce your energy use and also get paid for it. So this is a little bit of an older project and it was funded under a previous program that was a predecessor to Epic but I wanted to highlight it because it's an example of where a $300,000 investment led to the development of a commercial product. So with the support of the CEC research funding, UC Davis developed an advanced aerosol sealant to better seal building envelopes. Traditional sealing is a labor intensive process and it sometimes is ineffective depending on what folks were using. This aerosol sealant was demonstrated to reduce the leakage by up to 64% in existing homes and a fun fact is that this technology was featured on this old house for those of you like me who are old enough to remember that show. So let's go on to the third priority which is renewable generation. This slide here highlights two of the projects targeted at increasing renewable generation through improved efficiency of photovoltaic tracking. So the first company that I'll talk about here is called Sun Folding. They installed and tested a unique PV system with air driven trackers. The air driven trackers not only reduce the direct product cost compared to traditional tracking systems, but they also simplify the construction and operation of the PV systems. R&D from this project has led to the installation of 14 commercial projects in California. On the second project historically PV solar is usually installed on flat land but Nevada's engineering developed a PV tracking system that was suitable for sloped and rolling terrain. This helps solar developers build projects on lands closer to load centers and interconnection points that would typically not be considered because they're not flat enough when you're creating and that creates more site options for where solar can go. The R&D efforts have led to the installation of two commercial projects in this example. Another focus for California and for us at the Energy Commission is looking at the ways to decarbonize our organic waste. This includes urban waste, woody biomass, and agricultural waste among others. So here are two project examples and what I really wanted to do by providing all these project examples in each of these areas is just give you a sense for the breadth of the types of research projects that we're undertaking. There are lots of places where we can eke out emissions reductions, where we can eke out some energy efficient savings and some water savings, and we're looking at all of those because as you know we need all of it now and faster if we're going to meet these climate goals. And again meeting our climate goals so that we stay under two degrees Celsius to me is incredibly important. So anyway so these projects are research looking into a lot of the different spaces where we might be able to gather these types of greenhouse gas reductions around the state. So as I mentioned we're looking at a way to decarbonize organic waste in the state and that includes the urban waste, the woody biomass, and some agricultural waste among others. So two project examples here for you. On the left we have a dairy waste project in which advanced waste lagoon digesters were installed to process dairy manure into biogas. The biogas is then used to generate renewable electricity to export to the grid. This project is innovative in that it is the first demonstration of a hub and spoke dairy digester cluster in which multiple dairies pool their interest across multiple biogas projects. And you really need that kind of scale to make the project cost out. So this project generates about 20,000 megawatts of renewable electricity annually and it reduces the methane emissions associated with the dairy waste from several dairies. On the right side I show a project that demonstrates a dry digester for converting food waste into renewable electricity. This is the first time the dry digester technology has been installed and demonstrated in the United States and this demonstration project is expected to process 36,000 tons of food waste into 6.2 million kilowatt hours of renewable electricity annually. Okay let's talk a little bit about storage and grid integration. So storage as you all know is anticipated to be a large part of our grid as we work to decarbonize our electric system. As we look to the future and plan for the storage we are projecting will be needed it's important to think about the long-term perspective. Currently over 90% of the storage in California is lithium ion and we recognize that the state should not rely on only one technology so it's important that we work to diversify our portfolio of storage solutions. At the commission when the mapping out when we were mapping out our storage research investments we take a three prong approach. We're looking to diversify, demonstrate, and also de-risk. And to date we have or are funding demonstrations of flow batteries, advanced batteries based on zinc, flywheels, and thermal energy storage. One of the reasons that we're doing this is typically the storage lasts you for about four or six hours depending on the output and how much you're using and in some instances we're going to need longer term storage 10 hours or more right and so we just need different types of technologies to help us as we store more energy and make a move to more renewables. So let me give you a couple of examples here. We have EOS energy storage. They offer a zinc hybrid cathode battery which is an aqueous zinc-based battery technology that is inherently safer than competing technologies like lithium ion because of its non-flammable and non-toxic characteristics. EOS received the $2 million grant from the Energy Commission to pilot a 125 kilowatt alternative current energy storage system. This system is being installed and tested at PG&E's testing facility in San Ramon where they will look at a variety of use cases including peak shaving, ancillary services, load following, and frequency regulation. As a result of the epic grant EOS was able to reduce their system cost by 54 percent and they were also able to secure over $95 million in follow-on investment. So that's one of the other things that I think is exciting about the epic program. A lot of times when we provide awards the due diligence that the Energy Commission has done it gives the public sector that gives the private sector the confidence to invest in these types of technologies. So let's talk here a little bit about this flywheel that we have. The flywheel is achieving a 50% cost reduction and we awarded Amber Kinetics a $2 million grant to support a demonstration project and an advanced flywheel technology to explore opportunities and to reduce manufacturing costs. Building off of that grant Amber Kinetics was able to develop advanced manufacturing techniques, improve their design, and perform a safety validation testing on their flywheel demonstration project. They also, like EOS, were able to go on to receive a follow-on funding and they got about $50 million of follow-on funding for their technology. Another area that the Energy Commission has been focused on particularly over the last few years and in light of the wildfires and our public safety power shutoff events are microgrids. The Energy Commission has a long history of investing in microgrids and we've invested nearly $90 million in about 40 different microgrid projects. Earlier research focused on developing the controller technology and integrating multiple resource technologies and more recently we're looking at addressing the challenges of moving from research in the microgrid space to commercialization. One of the challenges has been that each of these microgrids is kind of like it's own special snowflake and they're very unique and they're awesome and they work really well in this the spot where they're supposed to work but they're difficult to scale, they're difficult to replicate. So that's one of the things that we're looking at. I want to highlight one of these projects here which is the Blue Lake Rancheria. The Energy Commission provided a $5 million grant and this microgrid has been online since about 2017 and during a public safety power shutoff in 2019 the system was able to successfully island the area of the Blue Lake Rancheria for 24 hours and it provided power to 10,000 people. So it really did do what it was supposed to do and it saved the Blue Lake Rancheria over $200,000 and reduced energy costs over the course of 2019. There's another microgrid that we have here in the Fremont fire station and this is another one where during the 2019 public safety power shutoff event Fremont, the City of Fremont Sustainability Manager was quoted as saying it gives us a great sense of security and resiliency. We can operate without having to worry about the grid going out. So that's the type of thing that microgrids give to folks. Microgrids aren't a solution for everything but there are lots of places where microgrids are excellent solutions and one of the things the Energy Commission is also looking at is where are those places and how do we get microgrids there. Two more topics for me to talk about and I recognize that I'm just about at time so I'll go a little bit faster for you but I just I love these projects. They're so exciting and fun to talk about and I just really like the research space that we're within. So the next topic is about electrification and so one of the things in this space is how do we electrify grocery stores. Supermarkets and grocery stores have some of the highest energy use among commercial buildings and the majority of their energy is spent on refrigeration. So the Energy Commission and Prospect Silicon Valley are working together to implement a cost-effective energy efficiency upgrade package for grocery stores. These projects is taking place in the Bay Area and they're working with a handful of local whole foods. So we're hopeful that documenting the cost savings and benefits that go along with electrifying some of the key loads within the grocery store and being able to document those cost savings and benefits will help influence others in the grocery market to make similar upgrades. We're also looking at battery electric buses delivering grid services so one of the things that you can do with the battery as large as the battery that goes into a bus is when you're not using that bus you can use that to provide it can either be storage for electricity or you can pull electricity back out of that battery and put it onto the grid right and so we're really trying to understand both what does that do to the batteries but also how can you package that together in a way that the utility can depend on it and that the users can can get paid for it. So that's the type of thing that we're looking to do so that when we have a ton of transportation that's electrified it's working with the grid in a smart way as opposed to just being a load on the grid. And then I want to talk briefly about our climate research and adaptation and I'm going to go a little bit quickly through this because I do want to leave time to answer some questions but we also find kind of what you might think about it's like traditional science type research so we do these climate change assessments and those talk a lot about we're looking a lot at the wildland urban interface we're looking at tree mortality we're looking at extreme fire weather and we're also looking into next generation fire models this is really important I think because previous fire models what they would do is they would kind of look backwards and then based on that data extrapolate out what we think is going to happen. I don't need to tell anybody if you look at this year's fire season that's not what fires are doing anymore we just we need updated fire science on what's happening right now in a world where we're already seeing the impacts of global warming and climate change. So I mentioned that already we're looking at some wildfire risk management this is an award that we have put together again with Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. A lot of information here but also the the slides we will share with you so that you have a chance to to really dig into the data. One thing I wanted to highlight and close about the EPIC program which I again am just delighted to oversee is that it really is making an impact in this space and actually have an updated number it's 2.2 billion dollars of private investment had been received by our project awardees after being selected for an EPIC project. If you recall I mentioned that we have about 130 million dollars that we're able to invest each year in transforming this sector and really looking into our research and technologies and we're able to leverage that in just an amazing way I think by by bringing in this private investment this follow-on funding. We're supporting small businesses we are supporting organizations all across California. I mentioned before about 65 percent of the funds are being deployed in the disadvantaged and low-income communities that really need to see the change fast and first and need to be part of this clean energy transition that we're making and we get we get cited all the time so that's pretty cool as well. I will wrap up with two more quick slides which is that we've got a group called Empower Innovation. It is EmpowerInnovation.net you can see it up there in the top right of the slide here. This just brings together entrepreneurs and communities and financiers and everybody who's kind of in this energy ecosystem space so that they can connect they can learn what different opportunities are they can find partners they can trade ideas it's a really great space to be if you're excited about being part of this clean energy entrepreneurial ecosystem so if you are please do be sure to check out EmpowerInnovation.net and sign up for it. Last but not least I would be totally remiss in not mentioning that there are tons of wonderful jobs at the Energy Commission I think it's a really fantastic place to work if you're a student and you're looking for a job you can apply for an internship at the commission if you're graduating at the end of this year or in you know May or June of next year please do keep the state in mind as a great place to work you can do meaningful work you can do impactful work and it really is moving the needle on clean energy on climate and it's it's just a fantastic place to work so if anyone wants to reach out to me later about that please feel free there is my information and I know that the slides will get shared with you so that you'll you'll have that later to be able to reach out to me if you'd like to be I'd be happy to hear from anyone so hopefully I left enough time here for some questions. Thanks very much commissioner has got for that outstanding comprehensive and highly inspiring talk particularly like the the opportunities for soon to graduate students how do you reach out to low income and minority communities so I guess it's are the are the big big boys playing ball collaborating cooperating making it harder to do your job on the one side and on the other side given that they don't have a lot of resources what ways have you used to get them involved in how you how you configure your program select projects etc you did say there were incentive funds particularly for the low-income low-income communities but you actually said they sometimes have trouble do you actually help them find people who can help them write grants at that point or what what's your approach on that in that dimension yep yeah those are fantastic questions in terms of the the the big fossil fuel industry typically I don't work with them or hear from them all that often I think it's just because this is a the research program is a grant program it's aimed at entrepreneurs that are looking for some you know to try to bring a great idea out into the marketplace when I worked on the transportation side we did work with folks like shell and others especially as we were working to stand up some of those hydrogen refueling stations they were very interested in getting into that business so I think a lot of times it depends on what that grant opportunity is who's looking to work closely with us on the low-income and disadvantaged community side that is always we're always just trying to do additional outreach right and make sure that the communities know that we have these different opportunities available sometimes if there's legislators that are interested we'll ask them would you please share the you know the link to the opportunity in your newsletter to the community right like there are a lot of different ways I think to reach out to the the communities in this space and we're always looking for for ideas because one challenge in the clean energy space is if you are a clean energy person or an energy person you know about the energy commission and otherwise you've probably never heard of us and there's no in between and so it's a little bit challenging to do that that type of outreach we're also hoping that empower innovation will allow communities and community members to jump on and talk about needs of of their particular community and then entrepreneurs who think that they have a good solution for that and and then they can make that connection without us right we've we've done the we've provided the platform but allow the the community and the entrepreneurs to to reach out to one other or the grant makers and others to kind of reach out to one another on that platform next question is given the global nature of the climate problem how much of your time do you spend interacting with people outside the state on r&d program priorities ways to select projects we even got an explicit question on rpe do you look at that as a model to some to some degree and even I've actually been about a little bit just in accounting standards with other jurisdictions to make sure that imports and exports you I'm sure you get this question a lot imports and exports are of greenhouse gases are effectively accounted for in the california context so yeah that's a fantastic question we all truly recognize the global challenge that climate change presents I think california has been and continues to be a leader in this space and so a lot of times well when when we could travel when we could travel we had delegation foreign delegations coming through the energy commission at least once a week probably more often so to hear what it is that we're working on and my fellow commissioners and I folks that run some of the other programs the directors who run the program often get invited to go to other countries and present what what california is doing for just that reason right and again we haven't been able to do any travel no one's been able to travel since since march but continuing to have that dialogue through phone calls and zooms and things like that that's kind of how we we spread the word both nationally and internationally we do have an mou with rpe to work together and we've got both rpe and the energy commission have grant programs where if you're an entrepreneur you've gotten the grant through rpe now you're ready for the next stage rpe is not funding it but the energy commission is you can kind of come to us for follow-on funding from your rpe project and vice versa so we really try to help support the researchers in that space and as you're kind of making your way through that innovation pipeline whether it's through doe or through energy commission we're complementing our programs worked hard to try to complement one another two more great questions one is yeah you talked a lot about buildings which is crucially important and large what has been the effect of covid i mean not being a epidemiologist or anything it seems like there'll be a lot more need for better and more aggressive ventilation i guess the question that the audience asked is is that does that play off against your building shell kind of both the the reflective nature and the ceiling of the buildings i'm sure you've thought about this at the energy commission what's what's the solution to both have more efficient buildings but also have better ventilation in the preventing the virus from spreading yeah absolutely and as we worked on those building standards one of the things that we looked at if you're making a tighter building envelope your indoor air quality is critical right and so you we have got to make sure that the indoor air quality is um it is healthy right at that healthy levels it it's just as clean as it can be so there's things that you have to work on in terms of how much um outdoor air comes in right so you got you have to have good airflow um and that type of thing so we certainly have um thought that through i'm sorry i'm not the building engineer i'm sure they're crying if they hear my answer when i talk about airflow and kind of bringing in um cleaner air from out um bringing in the it's the air circulation right and there's also technologies where you can have uh ceiling fans and things like that that actually helps circulate the air a little bit better than just having a bench that's maybe in one corner of the office and that person's under the bench and they're either freezing or they're way too hot and the other part of the office isn't getting that air circulation there's a there's a lot of air circulation types of things that we need to think about and work on as as um covid um and just because we need if you're going to tighten up a building envelope like that you want the air quality to be healthy inside anyway super good for you yeah one last question is a transition to your post seminar student discussion which we appreciate your being willing to do from a student uh is um uh what is the biggest opposition where do you see the biggest opposition to california achieving its climate and energy goals coming from i thought that would be interesting because you're in a very political organization with many programs of many types but you're in the r&d part so how do you respond to that question yeah that's that's a great question i actually think that the part to me that keeps me up at night that's the most challenging i think is our transportation sector right so it's it is 40 of the greenhouse gases in the state this is this is it's a it's a personal choice um we've got 30 million cars on the road in california and another million or so medium duty heavy duty that's a lot of vehicles that is a lot of turnover that you that we will need to see right in the next 10 years right 2030 2035 it's 1015 years from now um when if you buy a car today you are likely to keep it for 12 or 15 years before you buy your next car right and so the amount of turnover in the time that we have is uh it's challenging right it's astonishing it's staggering it does keep me up at night to think through what is it that we need to do to make that transition make it go as fast as we need to and on on the on the back end of it i you know i'm part of this energy twitter and one of the things that they said that um was vaguely terrifying for me is um this this might not be the worst fire season in the last 10 years but the or the or the worst climate impacts that we've seen in the last for the previous 10 years this might be the best that we see in the next 10 or 20 years um and that's that's really scary right climate is it's real it's happening right now and we've got to put solutions in place as fast as we can possibly go um so i don't know if that's a great answer to your question but i'm always trying to think about how do we accelerate things how do we get people excited to to make those transitions well uh at that point we uh need to close down so uh speaking on behalf of the audience uh and apropos of your last response we were very grateful that you are in place in sacramento and uh working so hard on behalf of all of us and i'd also like to thank the audience for asking some good questions and i hope that trend will continue into your student session immediately following so once again thanks very much for doing this and we hope to see you sometime in the not too distant future here back on the farm you're all my mother indeed thanks so much for having me i was glad to be here today super thank you so much