 Hello and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our briefing. What's on the table for the negotiations at COP 27? I'm Dan Brissette, Executive Director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. The Environmental and Energy Study Institute was founded in 1984 on a bipartisan basis by members of Congress to provide science-based information about environmental energy and climate change topics to policymakers. More recently, we've also expanded into a program that provides technical assistance to rural utilities interested in on-bill financing programs for energy efficiency, renewable energy and storage, and beneficial electrification for their customers. EESI provides informative, objective, nonpartisan coverage of climate change topics in briefings, written materials, and on social media. And all of our educational resources, including briefing, recordings, fact sheets, issue briefs, articles, newsletters, and podcasts are always available for free online at www.eesi.org. And if you'd like to make sure you always receive our latest educational resources, just take a moment to subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions. With our briefing today, we find ourselves about to pause our series, what Congress needs to know about COP 27 until after the negotiations wrap up in a few weeks. As the briefing title suggests, our focus today will be the negotiations themselves and the range of issues expected to be on the table at the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP 27. Our briefings so far have covered the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's most recent findings as presented in the sixth assessment report, loss and damage, which we define as climate impacts that cannot be adapted to, and natural climate solutions. Each briefing has been crafted to address the issues from the perspective of interested members of Congress and their staff. And each has featured really excellent panelists with extensive experience with UN climate talks and the issues in play. If you missed any of our briefings or want to catch one again, you can watch the archives webcasts by visiting us online at www.easi.org. After COP 27, which starts this weekend, we will host a recap briefing on Friday, December 2nd that looks back at the negotiations, addresses key outcomes, and provides some analysis and perspective about what might happen next. In the meantime, I encourage everyone to sign up for our special newsletter, COP 27 Dispatch, that will be published every day while the negotiations are taking place in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt. You can visit us online at www.easi.org forward slash subscribe to sign up for COP 27 Dispatch, as well as climate change solutions, which comes out every two weeks. COP 27 will build on the main outcome of COP 26, the final set of guidelines for implementing the Paris Agreement, and will usher in a new era of international cooperation in the fight to avoid the worst outcomes of climate change. This focus on implementation will also influence the official US posture during the negotiations, which we expect to reflect the enactment of the Infrastructure, Investment, and Jobs Act last year, and more recently, the Inflation Reduction Act. Because of the status of the US as a leader, source of solutions, and top emitter of greenhouse gases, how and when these new investments take place will certainly be of interest to other parties to the UNFCCC. And of course, as the branch of government responsible for oversight of agency implementation of IIJA and IRA, this means that Congress should also be very interested in what happens at COP 27. So that just about brings us to our four expert panelists who will help us understand the mechanics and timing of the negotiations, as well as the key areas of discussion and what we might expect once COP 27 concludes. Let me remind everyone that we will have some time for questions today, and we will do our best to incorporate questions from our online audience into our discussion. If you have a question, you can send it to us via email at ask at esi.org, that's ASK at esi.org, or even better, follow us on Twitter at EESI online and send it to us that way. Our first panelist is Tracy Bach. Tracy serves as the co-focal point of research in independent non-governmental organizations, or Ringo, to the UNFCCC secretariat. She's a law professor who is taught and published on climate change, international environmental law and human rights, and healthcare and environmental health law. In addition to teaching at law schools across the world, Tracy has conducted workshops and consulted in China, in Myanmar, with the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the UN Development Program and the UN Environment Program. Tracy, it's always a delight to see you. I'm really looking forward to your presentation today. Thanks, Dan, appreciate it. So I have a delightful role today, which is to... So if we could put that on the slideshow, that'd be super. To help you orient to COP 27. Lots of slides. I'd love to, of course, if this... We were all doing this together. I would love to take a show of hands of how many of you will be attending. If we could go back to the first slide, I really appreciate that. This space, so the convention center in Charmel Shake, and on the right you see the layout of what is going to help us get a lot of steps in over the next two weeks. So going to the next slide, presuming that you are maybe your first time, maybe just the second, I wanna help you understand how different the first week is of a COP than the second week. So basically, so that's kind of step number one in orienting yourself to be productive in either following at inch arm or from away. 27. So we considered a technical week, and why it's because the subsidiary bodies of the UNFCCC are doing the lion's share of the work. These are the SPI, which is the subsidiary body for implementation, subsidiary body for science and technical advice, which is called SUBSTEP. Once the opening plenaries take place, which this year we've moved the COP back a day, so we're opening on the 6th of Sunday until Monday, and that's the opening plenaries of the plenary bodies, right COP or the UNFCCC framework convention, the CMP for all in the CMA for the Paris Agreement, as well as the opening plenaries for the subsidiary bodies. So they all will open on Sunday, where most importantly, believe it or not, the agenda will be agreed on, and there's a anticipated at least one item on the agenda that will cause some debate. So it's not always as straightforward as it might seem. But once they do open, then negotiations will start, and those take place in contact groups, then breaking down to smaller groups called informals, and then when there is lack of convergence on a particular piece of text, a decision text of that body, we get to these things called informal informals. Whichever body it is, that's gonna be happening at SBI, whatever I should say venue, that kind of negotiation group, that's gonna be happening on the SBI and sub step agendas for the first week. So if you haven't had a chance, go ahead to the UNFCCC website where you'll see the agenda already laid out, they're called provisional agendas, and I'd look at the ones with annotations, cause the annotations will give you some background on the currently table agenda items. The other thing that will take place in the first week are some mandate events. So one of the reasons we did move the opening back to Sunday this year is because there's going to be a high level segment where heads of state and heads of government will come and speak and set out broader visions. There's also gonna be the other main mandated event is the global stock take technical dialogues. And I'll get to that a little bit more in a minute or two. There's always presidency events. So that's the Charmel Shake climate implementation summit which overlaps to some degree with the high level segment in terms of timing. And then finally, you'll see other high level events occurring this week, like the presentation of IPCC findings from Dan mentioned the AR6. In particular, there's not a synthesis report yet, but it will be from working groups one, two and three and their summary for policy makers. So that's pretty important, pretty technical. So it feeds into the work of week one. I'll skip the remaining happy to ask questions. Let's go to slide two. Week two is what we call the political work of the cops. This is where on any of the hundreds, literally hundreds of agenda items, where there is divergence and where the technical folks, the members of the delegation who are experts on those particular areas or topics where they need to go back to the minister level and sometimes above to have their mandate widened, i.e. to have red lines become less red or not red at all. So there'll be a, in charm in the second week, there'll be a resumed high level segment which is an opportunity, not always for the heads of states and heads of governments, but often at the ministerial level, perhaps some heads of state will come back, but to help move those lines basically. There will also be some very fascinating, I find mandated high level ministerial round tables. There's one on climate finance that I recommend going to if you were around. There's also one on pre-2030 ambition and raising that. And then what we're gonna see in week two is basically by Wednesday, there's gonna be a lot of bilaterals and closed sessions where we're not gonna see so many informals and contact groups at this point, even the informal informals are going behind closed doors as everyone works to a decision text which ostensibly would be ready for the closing plenary on Friday, but frequent flyers will say, probably more like Saturdays, sometimes it's the wee hours of Sunday. Next slide. So in terms of one other aspect to keep in mind that something different from week one, week two is the whole idea of cops really function like the agenda by what the parties put on it. And thus these agenda are managed by the secretariat, which is the administrative staff that keeps things moving. But cops are always headed by a country from a particular region. Regions rotate every five years or every year but in the five UN geographic areas. And so each presidency has its goals that it wants to achieve. So I won't go through these, but I pointed out that on the Egyptian presidency website, you'll read more about the legacy that they're seeking to leave, which of course is gonna be about highlighting action in Africa as well as needs. And some of that you can see play out in the thematic days that they have chosen. These are days where there will be side events and at pavilions, at country pavilions, most likely. Also in the regular side event rooms that will track thematically. So not surprisingly, what the first thematic day is climate finance. You see a day on science, you jump down. You're gonna see at the very close of the agenda the Egyptian presidency is focusing on solutions. And the idea here is in addition to what we know are the main agenda topics like mitigation and adaptation, finance, loss and damage, they're gonna bring in a wide array of experts, a fair number of them drawn from Africa, as well as the global south, a wider geographic range of the global south to present on these ideas, is in essence to keep fueling the negotiations and expanding the areas for convergence. Next slide. So the key issues we're gonna talk about my colleagues are gonna talk about on this panel and I can't wait to hear it. So I'm just gonna give you this snapshot. From my perspective, the key issues always, so there's frequent fliers is climate finance. And in particular, the parties are working on negotiating a new collective quantified goal to take the place of that 100 billion per year. Starting in 2020, that was announced way back in Copenhagen, but which has yet to be achieved. Adaptation, I know Nisha will talk about this more, I think along with loss and damage, there's a negotiations on a global goal and adaptation, which comes right out of article seven of the Paris Agreement. Loss and damage is an issue that's getting a lot of pre-competention in part because the Egyptian presidency is focusing on it. And that's where we may see some robust discussion this Sunday as the plenaries open for both the COP plenary, where Pakistan has tabled an agenda item specifically on financing for loss and damage. And then finally, mitigation is front and center in the body of the mitigation work program, which is looking at increasing ambition and increasing commitments or contributions in NDCs. And last but not least, even though I said finally a moment ago, what are the newbies in this array, this group of five, I'll call it of key issues, is the global stock take and I'll address that in just the last few minutes together. But before I move to the next slide, I wanna be clear, my colleagues are gonna talk about different aspects of these, I'm gonna focus on global stock take for another few minutes. But the key thing to keep in mind is that as parties, as those larger negotiation groups, the 10 to 15 large ones, G77, EU, AOSIS, ILAC, et cetera, they are going to be negotiating these key issues off of one another. And what will be happening will be trade-offs that are made between the rooms. So it's important to have the overall structure of the key issues in mind as we get down to the details of each one. All right, my last little bit, next slide please, thank you. What is the global stock take? Basically, in the treaty architecture of the Paris Agreement, you have one shall requirement, the country's parties must file NDCs, nationally determined contributions every five years. In between that five-year cycle, year three, a global stock take was designed under Article 14 to one, account collectively, so not individual country's achievement, but have all the parties in their progress on their NDCs actually achieved the Article 201, A, B, and C goals of the Paris Agreement. And so that's what we call, if you go to the next slide, what's called a ratchet or the ambition mechanism, which is often called a ratchet. So here's a way to look at it pictorially. So you have this process in mind, a sequence, although of course the pandemic affected the actual dates. So back in Paris, the theory was by 2020, all countries will have filed their first NDCs. And then in 2023, there would be this global stock take, which is looking at a number of technical inputs. Think IPCC reports, think biennial reports and biennial update reports. Those are the progress reports that parties file on their NDCs. There's a lot of others, but there's expertise that's involved. And so that by 2023, which will happen next year, there will be this global stock take. And at it, the parties will go through a lot of data, be discussion, and as we know, there will be agreement that they haven't done enough because they are not at this point, all those NDCs, even if they were all achieved at this point would not keep us well below 2C, let alone on track for 1.5. So finally, the last slide I'd like to share with you is what's happening at COP 27 on the GST or the global stock take. Basically, we're at this point of technical discussion. So we have a series of technical dialogues and within them, I should say, technical dialogues on mitigation, technical dialogue on adaptation, and then a third technical dialogue, which is on means of implementation, which is another way of batching together finance, capacity building and technology development and transfer. And so what's happening at COP 27, there's my timer one minute left. In sum, what's happening at COP 27 on the global stock take is getting a lot of attention, a lot of folks wanna be involved because as you can imagine, it's cross cutting where you're looking at all this data and measuring it against the Paris Agreement's goals. It's taking place within these roundtables. You will see it on the daily programs. You can also see it right now scheduled out, locked out for the first week, right? Because this is a technical dialogue and the technical work is being done at the SBs in the first week. You learned that from the first two slides. So it's something to keep in mind if you're there for the first week because part of, I think one of the things the US can do and has been active in these roundtables. This is the second round of these roundtables is take leadership in looking at the kinds of data and kinds of assessment that we need to do collectively to make sure that we are staying on track with the Paris Agreement's goals of a 1.5 world. All right, I'm gonna stop here and pass the baton. I guess back to Dan and then to Nisha. Yep, that's great. Thank you so much, Tracy. For our online audience, Tracy presented some great slides, lots of great information as a reminder, the archived webcast as well as presentation materials and other resources recommended by the panelists. Everything's available at www.esi.org. So everything is downloadable. So if you'd like to go back and revisit any of what Tracy had to say or Nisha or other panelists have to say, it's very easy to do that. That brings us to our second panelist, Nisha Krishnan is the director for Climate Resilience Africa at the World Resources Institute. Nisha leads a team that is focused on advancing policy and practice on climate action, adaptation and loss and damage. Previously, Nisha was a senior climate finance associate at WRI's Climate Resilience Practice where she also led the finance track of the Global Commission on Adaptations Year of Action. Nisha currently serves on the UNFCCC's expert group on action and support under the Warsaw international mechanism. She has extensive experience in national and international climate-related trust fund design and processes, designing and conducting vulnerability assessments and the intersection of resilience, adaptation and poverty reduction. And if we were in person today, she would probably get the award for furthest traveled to Washington DC to participate. But since we're online, it's great to have you today, Nisha. I'm really looking forward to your presentation. Thanks Dan, next slide please. I think Tracy gave us a little bit of the context and what we're expecting at COP this year. And I was just going to give a little bit more framing around what are the headwinds, what are the sort of political and larger economic issues we're going to go into COP with and then sort of focus on some of the adaptation loss and damage and finance and energy issues at stake. And then if we have time, we can also dive a little bit into what the Egyptian COP presidency is hoping to launch at COP this year. Next slide please. First, I kind of wanted to set this background, right? One is that we're obviously starting to face some economic headwinds, whether that is raising inflation, whether that is tightening credit markets, as well as a lot of debt pressures on countries globally, particularly vulnerable countries. For example, on the continent, we have about almost half of the continent going into high debt or debt distress situations. And this is obviously influencing what is expected out of COP this year, as well as what can be delivered particularly financially at COP this year. And that is sort of the backdrop that we are going into this with. Second piece that has already sort of come up is sort of the issue of food and energy security, particularly as the consequences of the war in Ukraine. In general, countries are either going, we're going to go into winter as we're starting COP this year. And so the energy security conversation, particularly for Europe, is sort of front and mind and center and the pressures on the continent and what this might mean. And the second piece is obviously around food and food insecurity, given particularly the accelerating climate impacts that we're seeing, whether that is around drought or floods. And so that is also part of the conversation this year at COP. And lastly, one of the biggest drivers of reason for political attention and loss and damage is actually just evidence of accelerating impacts. There is no longer a world where we can ignore what has happened in Pakistan, what has happened in terms of the drought in the Horn of Africa for the fourth year running, floods in Nigeria, the hurricane in the Philippines. And so this is again one of the reasons why loss and damage is really high on the agenda. And it's also a consequence of the disappointment coming out of COP 26 last year where they established a dialogue rather than talking about finance. So that I will also dive a little bit more deep into when we get into the key issues piece. The other point that I wanted to make is that generally at COP these last few years it is no longer a climate conversation. It has become an economics and finance conversation. And so there's a lot more attention to issues like debt, for example, at COP. And so this also is one of the reasons why I would think that you are probably much more interested in what happens at COP because it has implications, for example, what happens at the IMF and World Bank annual meetings, what happens at the G7 and the G20. And so this has really broadened the conversation and it has broadened the actors who are present at COP going at COP in general. And the last piece that I would say is that there is a real sense of frustration at particularly around vulnerable countries, but also just in general that there needs to be accountability and implementation of the commitments already made. So at COP last year, for example, there was a record breaking pledge to the adaptation funds and the least developed countries fund. There is a launch of the GFANS, the Global Financial Alliance for Net Zero. There was the launch of the Forest Declaration and there really just needs to be very transparent and accountable reporting on progress meet. And so that is another piece that we're going into COP with and there's an expectation that all of these commitments will be reported on. Next slide, please. So maybe getting into the digging deep into the key issues. The issues on hand, particularly for adaptation are on finance, around transparency and around sort of the measuring of the global goal and adaptation. One of the big commitments coming out of COP last year was this doubling adaptation finance goal based on 2019 as a baseline, which basically means that by 2025, countries have committed to delivering $40 billion per year on adaptation. The climate finance roadmap just came out, an update just came out last Friday and that shows that while we might be on slightly on track to get the adaptation finance goal, there is actually no quantitative information of where we are and that there is much more work to be done to be transparent about this. This is slightly disappointing going into COP and so there will be a lot more focus on when this can be achieved, when the goal can be achieved. And just for sort of positioning what the $40 billion means for the African continent alone, for example, the Africa Development Bank recently released a report that stated that the continent would need $124 billion per year to be able to adapt to the impacts of climate change. So $40 billion globally is actually a fraction of what is actually necessary if we are going to not be ambitious on mitigation and not actually invest in adaptation as well and which has implications for the type of losses and damages we might see. So if that's sort of the focus of the adaptation finance piece and related to that is actually this conversation around transparency. Transparency, this item was actually tabled as an agenda item by the Africa Group of Negotiators and the request is basically can we have a conversation about where adaptation finance is going? Can donors in particular provide a year in advance so ex-ante reporting on where adaptation finance might be flowing, what countries, what sectors, what types of initiatives? And you'd be surprised. There's actually very little information even on ex-post reporting on where adaptation finance is going. And so this is a request for an actual conversation around priorities and such that there is an honest conversation between different countries and all countries at the UNFCC negotiations or the June inter-sessional meetings around what adaptation finance, where we are on the adaptation finance goal. This, the piece around global goal and adaptation which Tracy also mentioned is sort of the comparative to the 1.5 degree target or the two degree target for mitigation. There is no real set goal for the adaptation and so article seven in the Paris Agreement established this but it didn't define it. So the whole process of the global goal on adaptation which is a two-year work program and we're just one year into it. And the fourth workshop of this two-year work program is actually on Saturday. It is trying to define through this process what the global goal would look like, what are the methodologies for reporting and how does this actually fit into things like the global stock take that Tracy mentioned? How does this fit into the definition of a new quantitative finance goal? How does this fit into other processes under the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement? So that's the other piece. The other piece that's come out so far and is worth paying attention to is its relationship with loss and damage. The framing around loss and damage is minimizing, averting and addressing. So minimizing is about mitigation, averting is about adaptation and addressing is about actually dealing with the impacts that are left over. And so there's this fear that the focus on loss and damage actually takes away potentially from the focus on adaptation and the need to scale up adaptation and adaptation finance. And so this is quite the delicate balance that countries are trying to play because we need both of these things. We actually need all three of these things to happen at the same time and to scale itself. So that's another piece of focus going forward. Loss and damage, as Tracy mentioned, is the hot ticket item at COP this year. And you can see quite a lot of press happening even in the US. The first hurdle is the agenda item. And as Tracy just mentioned, there's a proposal from the G77 and China Group which is actually a group of over 140 countries which Pakistan is the chair of currently that has tabled this agenda item around discussions for a loss and damage finance facility. We all know that at this point there's no avoiding this agenda item. And honestly, there is a need to address this. And so what the UNRCCC has appointed and the COP presidency has appointed are actually two co-facilitators which are Germany and Chile to help lead a conversation and discussions around what this agenda item could be such that there is no agenda fight on the first day and that the agenda is smoothly adopted. And so we're all awaiting sort of to see what the discussion will be but there will be a discussion is what we've heard so far. And that's a good, that's the, I would say the ticket item to kind of pay attention to over the next sort of two and a half weeks or so. Like I said, it is a discussion around financing and funding arrangements. We're not sure of the exact terminology of what it will be on the agenda item but they will also make sure that it doesn't potentially set up a parallel process to the Glasgow Dialogue which is what was set up last year. And the reason for the submission of the agenda item was because the Glasgow Dialogue actually has no mandate and no defined outcome. And so countries are quite frustrated about that fact and that's what this agenda item is trying to pursue. There's actually also a parallel conversation on the Santiago Network from Lawson Damage which is meant to be the technical assistance part of the conversation around loss and damage. So the Santiago Network also needs to be decided at COP this year or at least be closer to it. It's about an advisory body as well as sort of the relationship with the existing mechanisms for loss and damage under the UNEPCCC. And so this is as equally as important as the loss and damage finance. It's all a huge package. So that's another piece that I would encourage you to watch out for. Next slide please. I'm gonna start to slightly go faster. So some of the things that have come out on finance, one is obviously something that Tracy's already mentioned which is the new collective quantitative goal, the NCQG which is a really horrible acronym but that is a process that still needs to progress. Second piece is around the climate financial map update that just came but is going to be influencing the discussions at COP this year. And then the third piece that I would actually point out is actually a push from led by the Prime Minister from Barbados, Mia Motley around whether the international public financial architecture is actually fit for purpose. Her agenda is called the Bridgetown Agenda that you've actually had, we've actually had even from Treasury Secretary, Yellen also sort of speak to this as well as Germany and others who have started to question whether particularly the international public finance architecture, so that's the development banks of the world are actually set up for dealing with the climate crisis as it stands. And so actually talking right now about how we integrate things like climate vulnerability causes or disaster causes to loans, how do we get the forgiveness particularly in this conversation? So again, going back to the economic fiscal pressures conversation, how do we actually capitalize or require the development banks to use more of their capital that they already have on hand to lend and to actually mobilize more climate finance. So these are all conversations that are influencing the discussions at COP. And so which is partially why you also start to have more heads of states and ministers of finance actually showing up at COP these years. An energy which is actually not a negotiating issue per se, but it is again part of the whole conversation around the transition to a more low carbon resilient sort of economy and systems. The big piece is the just energy transition partnerships. The first one that was announced last year was for South Africa. And I just heard that the president will be releasing the investment plan on Friday. So this is whether the financing for that just energy transition plan will actually materialize. And so it will be interesting to see how much of that those resources promised actually will materialize. And there are actually several jet piece in conversation that we've heard about whether that's for Senegal, for Vietnam, for Indonesia. These are all other partnerships that are being discussed. We're not sure if anything will actually be announced this year. But really this issue, particularly as a consequence of the war in Ukraine is now sort of an issue around incentives and whether there is a rule, for example, from gas in the transition. And obviously you have some African countries saying that there is, I think there's quite the evidence base now that potentially there's much more of a role to renewable energy rather than gas. And so part of the conversation is, where is the finance if there are no incentives for you to invest in renewable energy? So again, actually across all of the issues that I've just talked about, finance is the underpinning factor, which is why the economic headwinds are so important. And, but also one of the reasons why we do need to figure out ways to invest in these issues. Next slide, please. So I think I have one or two more minutes, but just very quickly as Tracy was showing, there is a huge attention of what the co-presidency wants to do. And in general, there are all of these thematic days. And alongside that are these initiatives that the presidency has put together. These are around cities, around agriculture and food security, around affordable energy transition, finance, waste management, women and resilience. Again, it's across the board. And one of the key points for success will be what comes out of this by next year. Again, and so one of the things to watch out for this year is for example, what's reported from the initiatives that were launched at Glasgow. So again, this is something that I would watch out for post-comp, but also what actually happens going forward and who are the partners that are investing in this. And with that, maybe I'll stop here and turn it back to you, Dan, and see what we have for questions. Great, Nisha. Thank you very much for a great presentation. We will definitely have time for questions and that is a good reminder to me that for anyone in our online audience, and we've got a couple of them coming in, which is very cool. You can ask us a question by following us on Twitter and that's at EESI online. You can also send us an email. The email address to use is askask.org and we'll do our best to incorporate the questions into our discussion. Our third panelist today is Ryan Finnegan. Ryan is the deputy manager for US Climate Policy Action at the World Wildlife Fund. In this role, Ryan manages the work of America is all in an alliance of mayors, governors, business, and healthcare executives, university presidents, tribal and faith leaders advancing national mobilization on climate. Ryan oversees the delivery of work related to coalition management, federal policy, international engagement and communications. Ryan, welcome to our briefing today. I'll turn it over to you. Thanks so much, Daniel. It's great to be here and have the chance to hear from the other presenters and present myself a little bit on COP 27. I'm going to pull up my slides. Sorry, just one second. Okay, great. Hopefully that works for everyone. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go into a little bit more detail about what happens on the sidelines of these negotiations at the top. Very often, I think this is increasingly the case when it comes to the COP ecosystem. The meetings and events and partnerships that happen outside of some of these negotiating halls end up being really impactful both through the delivery of strong COP outcomes, but then kind of like furthermore in achieving implementation goals on the ground. So truthfully, there's always been a little bit of an inside and an outside game underway at COP's with civil society experts and activists working to influence these negotiations through different constituency groups and kind of the evolution of the constituency groups over the past few decades has been really interesting as kind of like civil society has pushed in and these processes have adapted to circumstances and adapted to growing interest. As the other panelists mentioned, COP is in many ways kind of increasingly at the intersection of a lot of different entry points be it the finance community, local government communities, so on and so forth. But really, since the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015, we've seen a really robust increase in sub-national and non-federal participation and interest in tracking events that are happening at these international negotiations. And that's really exciting and it makes a lot of sense too because this overall framework through the international climate regime is really operating under is a bottom-up framework in a lot of ways. It's about countries setting their own national targets and therefore to really like bring delivery of those targets along, you have to have folks throughout all of society rowing in a similar direction. And so the UNFCCC has really recognized this and has been increasingly working to center sub-national and non-state action, stakeholder action from the public sector and the private sector into the COP process and into the overall mission, really building those roundtable discussions, those sideline events and these broader processes that exist at and outside of COP to bring along increased ambition from various stakeholders. And so when we're talking about US stakeholders at COP, there is any number of US stakeholders that are gonna be on the ground, but you can really think about their objectives being to influence negotiations, strengthening relationships, taking the opportunity to pursue kind of like the softer side of diplomacy and this diplomacy that might happen, again, not in these negotiating halls, but through indirect knowledge sharing and the like. And then for better or for worse, by some measures, but I think as the COP has evolved its purpose and as we're now moving in an implementation era of the Paris Agreement and then more broadly, moving past announcements and commitments towards accountability and tracking, there is an interest, not only at the national government level, but at the institutional level and the organizational level as using COP as a mechanism to force announcements, force progress points or to share progress points, share expertise. And the vast majority of this happens through an array of side events and programming, a lot of bilateral multilateral meetings that happen across various parties. And then there's also, I think really meaningfully, there has been a long history of activations, civil society demonstrations that work to influence these outcomes across the weeks of COP. What I'll do is maybe just pause and pause to talk about the US history of non-federal engagement at COP too, just because I think it's probably key for this audience. There is also a history that is a little bit different with respect to the US as it applies to other countries and that is our recent history being a little bit back and forth with respect to our dedication to the Paris Agreement, having led the negotiations up through 2015 and then doing a little bit of a back step with the plan withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. So there was very much a forcing mechanism in the US for acknowledging that ultimate responsibility to deliver on our goals under the Paris Agreement was a shared responsibility that was not just reliant on the federal government, but that really relied on a whole society approach. And so part of my work at America is all in and the World Wildlife Fund has been to really bring a robust non-federal presence so that those institutions and local governments in the United States that are committed to the Paris Agreement and committed to climate action are able to both support a federal mission on climate when there is a really positive and proactive federal mission on climate and to ensure that there's a backstop that an approved point that the US is rowing in in the right direction, kind of irregardless of federal policies, but certainly with the ability to go a lot further when federal and non-federal actors are working together. So that underlines a lot of the work that myself and our team will be doing on the ground at COP. This slide was, I think, actually more or less already shown, but just a visual for folks who will be on the ground at COP for those of us, it's your first or second, just taking a look at the landscape. What I think is helpful to know about this COP is that there are a lot of kind of outside negotiating hall spaces in which a lot of this relationship building and a lot of these events and programming will be happening. If you look at the left of my screen, that'll mark what is our America's All-in Action Center at COP, which was one of many pavilions and site events spaces that will be happening at COP. In red, you'll see, I think, the formal US center as well to the US government, obviously pushing forward a whole of government approach to climate action and to climate change. There'll be a lot of agency representation at COP sharing proof points and news research information, all coming from various agencies of the federal government too. So hopefully telling complementary narratives as we talk about federal action in the United States and non-federal action in the US. To give just an overview of the non-federal stakeholders that will be engaging at COP, a lot of what we're doing is doing our best to track who will be on the ground and who will be really engaged. This year, we're expecting three governors to be at the COP alongside dozens of state employees. Over a dozen additional state elected officials, some of those statewide or many of those statewide electeds, some of them coming from state houses or state legislatures. We're expecting, again, over a dozen mayors and city leaders also coming to COP from the United States as well as representative leadership from the National Congress of American Indians and various tribal nations. So that's when we're looking at the local government municipal authorities group. We're also expecting hundreds of academic representatives from well over 35 US colleges and universities, some of those being policy experts, some of those being students and then large numbers of large and small businesses and investors from a US headquarter as well as faith groups, healthcare organizations, culture institutions, really this increasingly diverse group of US non-federal leaders who are interested in COP, again, for those purposes of advocating for ambitious outcomes and then showcasing progress that is happening on the ground and at home. And then of course, NGOs, community organizations, youth groups, there's really any number of groups in civil society that you will see represented on the ground at COP. And I know that that is complementary to not just the US presence being led by the State Department and agency representatives, but we are anticipating congressional delegations to be joining as well to give a lot of insight on better action. I'm going to plug a few high profile moments that are happening where these US stakeholders are really engaging with one another and then the next speaker is going to go into a little bit more detail on the IRA and talk about like that foundational input that we now have coming into COP that has made a lot of difference with respect to US delivery. What I'll share first and foremost is we're expecting this is through America's All In, an economy-wide analysis of the US achievement pathway for our 2030 NDC. So how do we reach 50 to 52% through a bottom-up approach in the United States talking about federal and non-federal contributions? I think it's really critical as the US engages at COP26 that we talk about not just the NDC that we set in 2021, but our plan our ability to achieve that NDC. And policy proof points are going to be really key to our being able to do that. So a few other events that are just on the screen right now that bring forward congressional voices with some of these non-federal voices, those are being planned for really paying attention to that middle weekend of COP when we're in the bridge towards technical and political bases. So really making sure that we're going into big detail on the Inflation Reduction Act and how that intersects and allows an ability for US non-federal stakeholders to then implement more ambitious climate policies. US Climate Alliance, which is a coalition of US governors, US Conference of Mayors, which is the largest US mayoral network will be on the ground at COP and sharing updates from their constituencies. And then what I think is really important to do as well, the US is kind of ahead of the game and bringing these whole society delegations to the COP given the experience of the last number of years, but it is increasingly of interest within other countries as well to really promote this whole society engagement. You have state and provincial level leaders from various countries coming in. You have city level leaders coming in, talking about implementation on the ground and really drawing this through line between what is happening at the highest levels internationally and what is happening. At the impact level and the benefits level, which is community focused, it's institutional focused and it's critical to draw that through line. So a number of events that are happening across the first and the second week in which a lot of those US connection points will be made. I'll also point out for those of you who are listening in from congressional offices and other will be supporting at CODEL, maybe participating as part of a staff delegation, is that there's a lot of interest within this large group of US stakeholders that I shared on the last slide to have those meaningful connections and meetings and a lot of those are currently scheduled. A lot of those will happen on the ground as well. And then the last thing I'll share is I think a question that a lot of folks answer when they're thinking through, okay, how do I navigate the COP is there's any number of different, both pavilion spaces or side event programs that provide platforms for drawing some of these connections? And so this is more information to maybe be followed up on, but I think it'll be really meaningful to maybe dig in and find those opportunities in which you can, you know, with a strong game plan for those of you who are attending COP. And I think that that is about it for me. I'll toss it back to Daniel. Great, thank you, Ryan. Before you go, just make sure to clarify the events that you just had listed. Those will be available online, right? So people can stream them. Yes, thank you for asking that question. So all of those will be available to live stream and will be recorded for those who are listening from the US and we have more robust information that we can share outside of the call as well for folks who wanna check out other special events. Great, thank you for that. Yeah, we will just as a reminder, I mean, they did a very nice job with the live streaming last year for public health reasons. We anticipate good live streaming again this year. Not everyone will be able to go to Egypt, but as long as you remember, there's a seven hour time difference or something, you'll be able to catch all these events. They should be really, really good. And I think one last plug, America is all in YouTube channel would probably be a good resource for people to bookmark going forward. Thank you, Ryan, for that great presentation. That brings us to Erin Mayfield. Erin is an assistant professor of engineering at Dartmouth College as a sustainable systems engineer and policy researcher. Erin studies human environmental engineered system transitions in the context of climate change. The aim of her research is to develop computational decision support tools to address real world problems and facilitate public decision-making. She is the co-principal investigator for the Princeton University rapid energy policy evaluation and analysis toolkit known as the REPEAT project which produced one of the first analyses of the inflation reduction act. Erin has also held positions at EPA and in Congress. Erin, I'll turn it over to you. Welcome to our briefing. Thanks, Dan. One moment while I share my screen. So today I'm going to bring it to the domestic scale. So looking at the impacts of federal legislation. And so as Dan mentioned, I co-led a project, the REPEAT project with Jesse Jenkins at Princeton University to look at the impacts of federal legislation. There are also two other groups also looking at the impacts of federal legislation. So energy innovation and rhodium group. So in our analysis, we show that the inflation reduction act has the potential to reduce emissions by 40% below 2005 levels. And the other two groups that analyzed the potential impacts of IRA found kind of a similar about 40% potential reduction. That being said, there's uncertainty around how much emission reductions we can do both kind of on the low end kind of or high end as well. And so this figure here just shows emissions over time. In the US, historically, and then without kind of the inflation reduction act, which is this gray line, and then with the inflation reduction act, which is this red line, right? So that's a 40% potential emission reduction. And that kind of leaves us a somewhat short of the 2030 targets. So where are emission reductions coming from through the inflation reduction act? So about 20% of emission reductions are coming in the transportation sector. And so that's things like incentives for EVs, but also other enabling infrastructure like EV chargers. About 24% of emission reductions in the power sector. So things like incentives for solar and wind in addition to CCS and associated domestic manufacturing and about 10% associated with industrial emission reductions as well as additional provisions to support emission reductions related to buildings, non-CO2 greenhouse gases and land carbon sinks. So that leaves a gap of about kind of 34% or half a gigaton in meeting our 2030 target. Importantly though, this is just kind of the direct potential effects of the inflation reduction act. So this could also kind of also stimulate or make it easier for states or cities or companies to increase their climate ambitions as well, kind of to meet kind of the potential gap here. So the inflation reduction act could drive over $4 trillion in cumulative capital investment in the American energy supply side over the next decade. And so this figure shows on the left, it's the state without the inflation reduction act and the panel on the right is with the inflation reduction act and the level of capital investment. So without kind of the inflation reduction act, there's some investment in solar and wind as kind of prices are coming down. You see with the inflation reduction act substantial more capital investment in solar and wind as well as hydrogen and fossil power with carbon capture and storage. So this figure shows the potential impact on energy expenditures. So an acting IRA could have the potential to lower annual US energy expenditures by at least 4% in 2030. And that translates into a savings of about $50 billion per year for households, businesses and industry. So these savings are coming from both reduced consumption of fuels and other commodities tacked on with the incentives and those kind of net out the increased capital investment on both the supply and demand side. So again, the IRA has the potential to lower annual US energy expenditures by at least 4%. We also looked at impacts in terms of air pollution benefits and the labor effects as well. And so this figure shows the cumulative avoided premature mortalities. So IRA has the potential to avoid on the order of 35,000 premature mortalities which is equivalent to about $300 billion and avoided damages over the next decade associated with reduction of air pollution from emissions of fine particulate matter. We also modeled the supply side employment effects. So the inflation reduction act had the potential to create over 1.7 million more energy supply related jobs by 2030. And so importantly, these are direct jobs. So not all the indirect and induced jobs that would also be potentially created from IRA. And so those jobs come in the form of solar and wind construction and manufacturing but also many grid related jobs as well. And importantly, there's also provisions within IRA that it can further kind of support both workers and industries that are kind of needing to hire the workforce to build out the associated infrastructure. So to contextualize kind of the scale of the infrastructure build out which could be stimulated by IRA, this figure shows historical annual capacity additions and also modeled potential capacity additions associated with inflation reduction act. So you can see over time back to 2050 kind of the different fossil fuel kind of boom and bust cycle. So you see coal, natural gas booms as well as in the 70s and 80s substantial build out of nuclear. In the 2000s, you can see the build out of natural gas power associated with the shale gas boom and then in kind of the mid 2000s, the present you see increasing wind and solar build out. But then you get to kind of future years and the scale of capacity build out. So the inflation reduction act could spur records setting growth in wind and solar capacity. And so that's the annual additions increase from about 15 gigawatts of wind and 10 gigawatts of utility scale solar PV in 2020 to an average of about 40 gigawatts per year of wind additions and about 50 gigawatts per year of solar capacity additions. So and these capacity additions are the rate of increases it's increasing over time. So this is a substantial amount of infrastructure that will be build out or has the potential to be built out. And to kind of further kind of give you context of the scale of the build out. This is related work that we did that Zero America project to show the potential distribution or indicative distribution of infrastructure build out in the US. So this is a snapshot in 2020 of utility scale solar which is barely visible in orange wind in blue and then transmission infrastructure which are those gray veins. And so this is a snapshot in 2020 and this is a snapshot in 2050 of potential build out of wind and solar. And this is supposed to be indicative of the scale of infrastructure and this is just solar and wind not considering all the other types of infrastructure that will be built out. So it's not just kind of a function of kind of financial incentives to build up this infrastructure but there are a lot of other policies or factors that will influence the ability to build out the infrastructure and in turn reduce emissions and meet climate goals. And with that, I'll end there and I look forward to discussion with the panel. Great, thank you so much, Erin. Great slides, very, very nice charts as a final reminder or maybe not final but a reminder, if you'd like to go back and revisit any of the slides, Erin I think you also recommended some additional resources that we've posted on the webpage as well or watch the presentations today. All you have to do is visit us online at www.esa.org to do that. Thank you so much. Let me invite our panelists to turn their videos back on and while they're doing that we've covered a lot of ground today. COP 27 will be, it'll be a lot of things happening. I am totally amped. I've never been to a COP before and I'm really looking forward to it. ESI has a lot of resources including our daily newsletter, COP 27 Dispatch. It's a really great way not just to keep up from a congressional perspective with the events of the day. It's also a really useful compendium of links to existing and new ESI resources to help learn a little bit more about some of these issues. Anna in particular will introduce in just a moment has been doing a lot of writing on some of these issues and writing about the different technologies and different policy issues. So I encourage you to sign up for that newsletter. Introducing Anna. Anna McGinn is policy manager here at ESI. She and I will be going to Egypt on Saturday to attend the first week-ish of COP and she is joining us today to help kickstart our moderated Q&A. Anna, it's great to see you. I'll turn it over to you and you can get us started. Perfect, thanks Dan. And thank you to all of our panelists for really insightful and excellent presentations. Erin, I really liked those maps you had at the end. That was a fun way to end it. So I wanna build off your presentation, Erin and ask our other panelists to comment on kind of how US enactment of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act and maybe also even kind of recent ratification of Kigali impacts or changes how the US shows up at COP 27. What will be different? What might stay exactly the same? And how do these actions feed into US international commitment? So Tracy, maybe we can start with you and we'll run through the order that you all presented in. Sure, thanks, Anna. It's a great question. No doubt the US will come in stronger than it's been for quite a while to have concrete national policy that is gonna back up at least some portion of the NDC contributions that have been pledged. I do wanna note though that having this longer view since Copenhagen, it is not just the withdrawal under the Trump administration that has caused pause. We can go back to the protocol if we want and the whole reason that the Paris Agreement is structured the way it is to accommodate US interests and bringing them in and having them ratify. So I think we still have a, I'm sorry, I think the United States still has a long way to go in building trust in these negotiations. I don't think the IRA is gonna do that per se. And I will just note I was disappointed to hear John Kerry's comments about loss and damage and funding for it. I think that was a stumble about a week ago. And so we probably aren't starting off on the strongest foot that the legislature hoped us with. Nisha, I'll jump to you next. Thanks, Anna. And I would say that the IRA obviously gives us a lot more domestic credibility and it does, as Tracy mentioned, give us that maybe a little bit more credibility on the mitigation side. But honestly, the IRA obviously is a domestic effort and has no sort of bearing on the international climate finance piece, which is where the US is actually lagging the worst in terms of its contributions to whether that is the different funds, whether that is in general giving as well. And so I think the extent to which we can show and are able to show this commitment or fulfilling President Biden's commitment are $11.4 billion per year by 2024. I think is still something that we need to do and that will be unfortunately, we will be coming into the discussion this year with that handicap. The other piece though, I mean, just to say, obviously Secretary Kerry did stumble, but I think they are recovering. And I think there has been such a big backlash to that that I think he's very much realizing and his team definitely realizes hopefully that this is no longer an if conversation. It is a when conversation and that when is well starting Sunday. So I think there is that agreement that loss and damage is on the agenda and we do need to meet the moment where it is. So, thanks. Ryan, we can jump to you next, yeah. Yeah, no. So I think Tracy and Nisha both made really great points on some of the international elements that play on IRA and IIJA, thinking back to the context of COP26 a year ago in which IIJA was coming to conclusion, a lot of Congress congressional negotiations were kind of like still at hand. So the US had made a new and ambitious NDC pledge earlier in 2021. And there was some immediate good faith and goodwill of the US coming back to the table in a significant way. But the second question and any conversation at COP was like, well, what are you doing about it? How are you actually reaching some of this domestic target? It was a surprise, the extent to which I think some international audiences were really paying attention to the mechanisms of Congress at the time of COP26 and knew that there's some degree of disconnect between our targets and the level of ambition and policy that was backing it up. And so I do think that being able to come into COP27 with legislation passed and with kind of analysis that really points to how the US can now be in within reach of its ambitious targets will definitely make a difference. And it is, like others have said, it's kind of like the next step in building a credibility that needs to go further and extend to different issue areas both within domestic US context and then thinking about how we're supporting and working with our partners internationally. So certainly really glad to be coming to COP27 with the IRA and IJ in our pockets, among other policies and recognizing that there's more work to do. Erin, your presentation sort of kicked us off on this one, but I'll pause and see if you want to share anything. Otherwise, we will jump right into our next question. I'll just say in terms of kind of benefits in the edit on an international stage, some of those benefits from IRA are going to show up kind of hopefully years from now too as we're actually reducing emissions and we're demonstrating that the policies that we enacted domestically are doing that and also driving down prices of technologies that have spillover effects beyond our domestic decarbonization. Great, thanks so much. So Nisha, I'll start with you on our next question. Your presentation provided really helpful kind of context setting. And one of the pieces you pointed out was the energy and food security challenges that the world is facing as we head into COP this weekend. Curious to hear your comments and the rest of the panel's comments on kind of a little bit more on how that impacts or influences what might happen at COP and how it might constrain what possible outcomes could be possible or what countries might be willing to negotiate on kind of given that broader context. Thanks Anna, that's a great question. I mean, so at the end of the day, energy and food aren't ever directly on the negotiating table per se for all these countries that it is sort of the, what are the incentives and signals, political signals or even financial signals that we're giving, right? So one particular energy it is this now push for alternative sources of energy particularly sort of European potential investment on the continent for gas exploration or oil and gas exploration in general. I think some of you might have seen the news a couple of months ago where the president of DRC did want to auction off leases within the Congo Basin which is one of the last sort of lungs of the world so to speak for oil and gas exploration, right? And honestly, actually a lack of uptake of that exploration rights as well. And so, and what is actually coming to fore particularly sort of in the politics of it is the fact that there needs to be finance for development which is what countries on the continent particularly or even in Asia are very concerned about is that there is no finance for development. And so, if putting climate aside there is a need for employment, there's a need for the transition resources. And so, a lot of the conversation around even gas is being driven by the need for financing not necessarily the need for gas itself as a source, right? So that is sort of the interplay for the energy security piece and the same thing for food security, right? It is the fact that there are adverse climate impacts that are impacting our ways of actually producing food and accessing food. There are obviously conflict impacts of this but there is now a realization which is why so many of the initiatives of the presidency is launching this years around agriculture and food security. It is around water which is a huge factor in food production, it is about accessibility. And so it is influencing sort of the policy directives where adaptation finance is going while loss and damage finance is needed. But what it really shows is that there needs to be this holistic view of COP these days and that the decisions made there need to be carried through to the MDBs to the G7, the G20 which is why you're seeing a lot more attention on climate all the way throughout. So I'll stop there. Let's open it up, Tracy, Erin or Ryan. Feel free to jump in, you have comments on this one. Nisha may have covered it. So we can jump to our next, thank you Nisha. We'll jump to our next question. So curious to hear from you all kind of, if we look ahead to after COP which is a little hard to do for those of us who are busily trying to prepare in the next few days to be there but looking ahead to kind of thinking about COP outcomes either inside or outside the negotiations. I'm curious what you all think would constitute a significant progress made at the end of COP. And I think one piece of this that I'm hoping to get at is that it's always helpful to kind of set expectations on what is the realm of possible outcomes that are even possible to achieve with this COP. So curious what you all think kind of what is that realm of possibilities and what do you see as what would be most biggest advancement that could come. So maybe Ryan, I'll put you on the spot. Maybe we can start with you and then we can open it up to the rest of the panel. Sure. So I think the realm of possibility question is a good one because sometimes COP will surprise you with respect to like the announcements that'll made. That happened a few times at COP 26 where a lot of kind of like sectorally significant announcements were made and agreements were made on the sidelines or outside of formal negotiations. I do think that this year is interesting with respect to heading into the stock tape and coming off of COP 26, which was a big year for announcements. I think Nisha mentioned her presentation that it's really about accountability this year and it's a lot of like coming back to the table. So there's, it's maybe not as flashy but I think that if there's progress and success in showing progress that that would make this a fairly important and impactful COP. Going back to some of the other deliverables on the table, I do think that the outcomes of loss and damage and the outcomes of climate finance are gonna be really critical. And then echoing the last question as well, I think an achievement that really needs to happen this COP in this year is remobilizing folks in climate when it's competing against or framed as competing against kind of these near-term crises and priorities that it's really intrinsically connected with. So I think that if we're able to leave COP 27 with momentum heading into the next year that that would be helpful as well. But those are just a few reflections. I'm curious to hear what others would say as well. I think Ryan put it really well. I think one of the things about this COP is that it is almost a process COP rate. So there are plenty of things that need to be discussed this year that will lead to an outcome next year or the year after. And so it isn't necessarily the, for lack of a better, the sexiest COP possible but this is where the hard work kind of gets done. And so any movement on, for example, the global goal and adaptation where countries have been sort of frustrated about the focus on process versus substance, I think is a good signal. I think obviously L and D, loss and damage, any sort of political signal that this is an issue that it is on the agenda and is it on the agenda going forward is a win, I think. And I think we need to have that, honestly. And then I would say that any sort of movement on the mitigation work program and showing that ambition is actually still on the table is going to be necessary for this to be a success. I can jump in and just underscore the mitigation work program in particular, which is set up to give a process outcome but it's the robustness of it at this point. The global stock take comes to fruition next year under the UAE's leadership COP 28. So this year is really, and this COP 27 set up TD technical dialogues 1.2 is really a point where dialogues have to decrease, right? There's got to be more convergence about what are these inputs and the quality of them. I also just want to add, it's kind of the first question about the US, I have to be honest, I have a little PTSD from COP 22 and the second day in 2020 when the election results, I woke up to them. And that did massively change the US's ability, I would say at COP 22. So I am hopeful that on the second day or now the third day of this COP 27 will be the midterm results. So it's very important, I think that we all get out and vote about climate change because that internal political will is what's essential for the US in any country to be effective international. Thanks everyone. We have had a lot of audience questions come in. So I'm going to turn it over to Dan to jump into a couple of those. Thanks, Anna. So we do, thank you to our online audience for asking lots of great questions. We're going to get to a couple of them now. And the first one, maybe Ryan sort of just reflecting on some of the things you said during some of your, I think it was during your presentation, you kind of pointed out there was lots of room for meetings and lots of room for trust building and this question is about trust. And I'm curious, how do countries build trust at COP 27, especially since there will be some countries that look back on COP 26 and previous cops and say, well, you haven't met your commitment so far whether it's directed at the United States or another developed country. What makes us, what should give us optimism about your ability to meet commitment, say on something like loss and damage? I'll open this up to anybody, but I'm curious about how countries like those in the position of the United States can sort of encourage that trust building with developing countries that will, ultimately need a lot of international cooperation to meet their own climate goals as well. Well, sure, just to jump in first, I do think that some of the trust building does come back to the outcomes that we were just discussing that might be, you need substantive outcomes and you need to be able to move forward the conversation on some of these proof points, particularly on finance and loss and damage, I think, specific to the example that you were sharing. You need to offer something as the United States and help push the ball forward. I think that the broader question of trust really becomes about different sectoral issues that are being explored in different progress points. Trust happens at so many different levels within these ecosystems too, really relevant to I think the work that we'll be leading at COP is building those relationships and those trust points at a level that goes beyond negotiator to negotiator, thinking about how at these state and local levels, whether it is in the area of food and agriculture, energy transition, community development, that progress points for being shared relationships and partnerships are being built at a way that hopefully level up. And I think that there's a lot of progress that can be made in this, and an era that incorporates subnational diplomacy and thinks about for the implementation angle, how a lot of this support can be community to community, public sector, private sector engagement, different types of institutions working with one another. And so that shouldn't be something that can only happen at a COP. I think particularly one more mindful of the difficulties that it takes to get an organization or a stakeholder to COP and to get engaged. I think that it's phenomenally helpful to be able to have those conversations and build those relationships at COP. But it's something that needs to be happening outside of the COP process as well. And so not an easy answer and it's a pretty complicated answer, but yeah. Well, it's kind of a complicated question, but that was really helpful. Nisha, Tracy, Erin, curious if you have any thoughts, please feel free and jump in. Maybe just to jump in on Ryan's last point, it's I think COP is one moment in the year and generally there are so many actual negotiations and discussions that happen out throughout the year. And so part of it is, do you show up to each one of them and maintain that line of conversation? Are you willing to move on the issues that matter? And then I would say, yeah, I mean, it is not just what you deliver at COP and at the end of the day, the negotiations and what comes out of COP is a package. So there will be trading on all of the issues and it's not delivered as this is the loss and damage issue versus the mitigation thing, it is all one package. And so it also depends on how countries are willing to show up for each other on that overall piece. And then what you do, for example, through USAID on the US side or on State Department giving or other sort of ways of actually showing solidarity, right? And that's the same thing for everyone, right? Is what are the other mechanisms? Do you push the World Bank to do something more? Do you push the IMF to do something more? So how are you using your powers outside of the COP system to show that you do mean what you're saying that are able to deliver on that? So I'll just echo one thing that Tracy said before too, our domestic situation and the domestic political volatility, if we can moderate that and as demonstrated through kind of voting in midterms to show that our policies, our domestic policies are actually durable and kind of we're maintaining our stance over time. I can't agree with you more Erin about consistency. And the one thing I'd like to add is about, that really we focus so much on the cops, but it is one point in the entire year, even within the UNFCCC. So for staff who have folks they work with who really wanted to know more about finance, you could be tracking this standing committee on finance and its work, for example, tracking financial flows per Article 21C of the Paris Agreement. There's ones as nation does adaptation, the WIM, econdism on loss and damage. So those are going throughout the years and that's just within the UNFCCC. And then what Ryan said about relationships, those relationships also happen with non-state actors. And I think the US actually gets a lot of credit for the number of non-state actors, whether it's civil society or businesses or universities, for example, that build relationships around the world on these issues and that there's continuity that is not as volatile as the last 20 or 30 years of US political history on climate change. That's a great point. And something that Ryan also said that just reminded me, we think of the IRA as federal policy, federal investment, that's true, but a lot of it is gonna be deployed through state and local governments. Yes, the tax incentives and things, those are from the Treasury, but there's an awful lot of it that's gonna flow through city halls and state houses and governor's offices around the country. So I think we have time for one more audience question. And Erin, definitely wanna make sure you have an opportunity to weigh in here if you'd like. The question is, even if we fully implement the Inflation Reduction Act and all of the things that we expect or that could result from it, we're still gonna be left with a gap. You showed that pie chart, showing that there was, I think you said 34%. At least 34% was the number. I'm pretty sure I remember from your pie chart. What are some of the other policies on the table available to US policymakers to help us meet, to fully meet our Paris Agreement goals of 50, 52% emissions reductions by 2030. Yeah, so I think there's some things kind of beyond federal policy. And one thing that is not reflected in the 40% reduction that we're showing is that there's additional kind of state and industrial goals, right? And additional investment beyond kind of what's in IRA. So it's could motivate other investments to actually kind of meet our goal as is. That being said, there's also enabling policies to actually kind of that we also need kind of permitting reform has been on the table and that is important. And that's beyond just the federal level thinking about kind of state level as well. Ryan or Tracy or Nisha, any other ideas about some additional policies that the US might need to consider in order to meet our Paris Agreement goals? Yeah, I think that there's any number of policies that can help us fill this gap. And to the point, Erin, that you just made and then you made it as well. A lot of state and local action is already going further than the priorities outlined in the IRA. And we'll be able to take advantage of programs that the IRA is going to establish and set up to really accelerate action. And so you have a number of states that have set clean energy standards, so happening at the city level for the energy transition, a lot of vehicle and public transportation programs that are already going further and will have a meaningful impact on emissions reduction, buildings policy, there's any number of suite of policies. And you've also sent me up really well to plug a report that'll be coming out, a report that'll be coming out on Monday. The Center for Global Sustainability out of University of Maryland is leading this report, but it really kind of starts to profile that policy suite specific to state and local actors that can help push us further and faster and close that gap to put the NDC target within reach. And so we'll be very happy to share that in follow up and hope folks can keep an eye out for that. Yeah, that is a great resource to share. I'm glad you mentioned that. And yeah, actually I'm gonna open it up. I think we have time for one last lightning round and in the spirit of graceful plugs, other resources from around the group that you would identify as essential for congressional staff who are trying to keep up with COP. I mean, I think we all know the correct answer to the question is COP dispatch that our newsletter, but any others that you might wanna plug either from your organizations or from organizations that you look up to when it comes to this? I can jump in with the academic non-plugging my own stuff but creating a syllabus. So one, I would definitely stay abreast of carbon brief. It's a very good resource period. So just Google that and follow it. And second, I would make sure whether you're on site or not to be following the ENV during COP 27. So that's the Earth Negotiations Bulletin written by a fabulous team of incredible PhDs who really not only chronicle, but distill in essentially a third party voice, but capture things well, especially their opening one and their closing one can be really useful. There's a ton more, but the bottom line even though I don't like it, I feel like I can imagine when I say it, but I'm one like my third or fourth website change update with the UNFCCC. This one I think is very user friendly for first time folks. The COP 27 webpage, for example, has pavilions list them and their activities, which we used to go pavilion by pavilion and pick up paper and try to figure out what's going on. So I think getting familiar with the UNFCCC website is really useful. And pro tip, whenever you're looking for something and you can't find it, don't fret, Google it, and it will take you exactly to the UNFCCC and little piece to get to. The internal indexing system is a little last century. So there you go, those are my hot tips. Great, any other pro tips from across the panel? All right, oh, Nisha, you look like you might be on the verge of saying something. Well, I was gonna say, well, so WRI does have a couple. So we already have sort of our expectations for COP out there as well as some pieces, actually explaining loss and damage finance particularly since that is the hot topic. And just also for a US audience, this whole issue of compensation liabilities sort of addressed there as well. I know that hasn't potentially been a question that's come up, but that's something that I know is on top of people's minds. So that was also explained there. So happy to share that. I'd also say that the, honestly, we generally try to put out a daily press sort of briefing as well in case you do want to know the latest on negotiations and that comes out around 6 p.m. local time. So I guess that is, I think it'll be a seven hour difference or something at that point, but yeah, so happy to flag that as well. But I would, if you want a more sarcastic look at what's happening at COP, there's also the eco daily sort of newsletter that comes out, which also gives a fossil of the day award to the person or to the country or party that is being the least helpful to the negotiations. And so I think that's always a fun way of looking at what has happened in the negotiations. So I'd look out for that. Great, thanks. Hopefully Anna or I avoid making ESI fossil of the day. We'll have to be on the lookout. And Ryan, of course, and Aaron, your slides had websites and links and things. So anyone who would like to go back and learn more about the analysis that Aaron talked about or the various resources, everything will be available online. Thank you so much, Tracy, Nisha, Ryan and Aaron for really, really excellent presentations. And I feel so much more comfortable about my first COP now having a good sense of what to expect, although Anna's a veteran of several COPs. And so I have an advantage that my traveling companion is an old hand at this. But thank you so much for joining us today. I'm sure everyone in our audience appreciated it, a great deal, at least as much as I did. Thanks to Anna for leading us in a great Q&A. If you would like to reach out to Anna or me, our contact info at ESI, www.esi.org. If you are gonna be in COP or if you have questions, please feel free to send us a note and we'll do our best to respond. Sign up for our newsletter, COP 27 Dispatch. It's gonna be essential and a great sort of, like I said, a collection of ESI resources about the various topics that are discussed. Also like to thank everyone else here at ESI who made today's briefing possible. Thanks to Dan O, Omri, Emma, Allison, Savannah and Molly for all of their hard work pulling these briefings together, this was a four-parter. We've got a fifth one coming up after COP and then also, you know, there's other things happening in climate policy and so we have to keep, you know, keep up with everything else as well while we're trying to do these briefings. So thanks to a very great team. We also couldn't do it without our fall interns, Alina, Shreya and Nick. Thank you so much for all of your hard work. My colleague, Dan O, just put up a slide. This is the time and date or date and time for our next briefing, what Congress needs to know about COP, the RECOP. The branding of RECOP hasn't picked up as much at ESI as I would like, but I'm trying really hard to get it to where it needs to be, but it's going to be the COP 27 RECAP briefing. It's going to be really great. Finally, we're just about at time, but put a survey link here up. If you are in our online audience and you have a few moments to share with us how the briefing went today, whether you had any audio issues, video issues, issues with closed captioning, if you have ideas for future topics, anything like that, we read every response that's submitted to the survey and it's very, very helpful. It means a lot when people have a moment to share feedback about how today went. I think that about concludes it. Thanks again to our four fabulous panelists and everyone here at ESI. We will be taking a briefing break until we come back from COP, but that doesn't mean we're not going to have newsletters and articles and all sorts of great stuff coming out more or less on a daily basis between now and then. So we'll end here. Happy Wednesday to everyone. Safe travels to everyone who's attending COP and if you aren't able to attend COP, we'll do our best to keep you up to date with all the goings on. So until next time, thanks everybody.