 Hello and welcome everyone on this cool and rainy day in the nation's capital. Thank you for joining us today for our briefing, Modernizing America's Transmission Network. I'm Dan Berset, Executive Director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. EESI 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 policy makers. More recently, we've also developed a program to provide technical assistance to rural utilities interested in on-bill financing programs for their customers. EESI works hard to provide informative, objective, non-partisan coverage of climate change topics in written materials and on social media. All of our educational resources, briefings like this, fact sheets, issue briefs, articles, newsletters, and now we've been podcasts, are always available for free online. Just since Memorial Day, we've hosted two online briefings plus this one and published eight articles on topics ranging from the benefits of green banks, the Texas Power Grid failure, and the importance of LGBTQ plus representation in environmental and climate advocacy. So a whole lot of timely and engaging content for you to produce. The best way to keep track of our work and access our resources is to visit us online at www.eesi.org and sign up for climate change solutions and follow us on Twitter at EESI online. Today is the second installment of our new briefing series, modernizing the U.S. energy system, opportunities, challenges, and the path forward. Last Friday, we were joined by three experts to imagine the infrastructure investments needed today to strive towards the energy system of tomorrow. Next Friday, we'll focus on leveraging grid-ed integration for resilience and decarbonization. If you would like to RSVP for the whole series, visit us online at www.eesi.org. Today, the middle of the three briefings, we will discuss fittingly how things connect to each other and specifically how we can harness our renewable natural resources like hydro, wind, and solar and move clean carbon-free energy to where it is needed. Modernizing America's transmission network is absolutely essential to meet our new commitments under the Paris Agreement to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% by 2030. While these topics are interesting enough on their own, we picked this time to highlight the potential multiple benefits of a modernized, reliable, and resilient energy system because infrastructure is on everybody's mind. We take a pretty broad view at EESI of what counts as infrastructure and we think it helps to think of the big picture. Roads and bridges are great, but what about the vehicles we roll on top of it? How and where will they be fueled and charged in 2030? And what about the buildings and communities connected by those roads and bridges? How can we electrify our built environment without affordable there when you need it electricity? Can we still afford to leave so much untapped potential energy efficiency and distributed energy resources on the table? In order to make an equitable transition to a decarbonized clean energy economy, we first need decarbonized clean energy. And if you saw our briefing last Friday, you were treated to a series of maps and animations illustrating our energy grid is big and complicated and actually flush with potential renewable resources. We need to make better use of those resources and our ability to do that rests in large part on the ability of our transmission network to handle them. That sounds an awful lot like infrastructure to me. One last quick thing before I introduce our first panelist. As usual, we will leave time at the end of our session for discussion. If you have a question or comment, let us know. Please feel free to send us your thoughts by email at EESI at EESI.org or follow us on Twitter at EESI online. We'll do our best to incorporate your input into the conversation. And now it is my privilege to introduce our first panelist. Dr. Debbie Liu is the Associate Director for the Energy Systems Integration Group, a nonprofit educational organization charting the future of grid transformation. She has nearly 30 years of experience in the energy sector. She was previously a GE in the National Renewable Energy Laboratory where she worked with the Hawaiian Electric Company. Debbie, welcome to the briefing today. I'm looking forward to your presentation. Thank you so much, Dan. Thank you all for inviting me. I'm gonna talk about transmission planning for 100% clean electricity futures. So as you may know, there's been a lot of studies in the last several years investigating up to 100% clean electricity in the United States. And last year, EESIG examined those studies to see what role transmission played. And we synthesized common elements of a transmission plan. And I'm gonna talk about what we found. So let's click to the next slide. The bottom line is we want to enable cleaner electricity while maintaining affordability and reliability. So let's take the 100% clean electricity by 2035 goal. If I put it into perspective as here on this graphic, you can see, we've made huge strides over the last two decades. We've installed about 200 gigawatts of wind and solar, for example. That's taken us for about 28% clean electricity to 38% clean electricity. And so you can see in order to get to 100% by 2035, we need to step up our pace by like an order of magnitude to reach those goals. Today, we have insolved capacity of hydro nukes, coal gas on their generation, about 1,100 gigawatts on the system. So to reach 100% clean electricity, a lot of the studies are showing, we're gonna need about 1,000 gigawatts of wind and solar. But at the same time, we're simultaneously electrifying transportation, buildings and industry, in order to clean up those other sectors. And that's going to increase our load. This is the electrification future study from NREL. Our load may double from what it is today. So to reach 100% clean energy economy-wide with all that electrification, we might actually need something like 2,000 gigawatts of wind and solar. And that's shown in this top right graphic from vibrant clean energy studies. Now we certainly need distributed energy resources. The rooftop solar alone is probably gonna be insufficient to get us there. We're gonna need transmission to deliver significant amounts of wind and solar resources to load centers. And one tourist from NREL probably spoke about this in the last session. One of the things we've found is that if we can plan and optimize at a national level, if we can take a national purview and plan and optimize a large scale transmission network like a macro grid, we can save a lot of money in this decarbonization effort. So a lot of the studies like this NREL interconnection scheme study shows that you can save money if you build a large scale transmission network. And this is their HVDC macro grid design. The benefits are two and a half times the costs at a 50% renewables level. And it's an even better deal if you're trying to get to higher levels of renewables. So at 85% renewables, the benefits are about three times the costs. You pay a little extra in transmission costs but you save a lot in generation capacity and operations and maintenance fuel costs. And then on the right, this is from Brown and Butterwood of MIT. This study specifically examined the difference between each state doing its own thing, each region doing its own thing, each interconnection doing its own thing, and then finally coordinated transmission expansion and operation across the whole country. That big coordinator approach costs half of what the state-by-state approach would cost to get to 100% clean electricity. Now I'm just gonna note physical transmission is only one part of the solution. We need the markets to enable the trade between regions. That's another key to this puzzle. If you look at the costs of transmission, they tend to be tiny compared to other system costs. So these are three of the studies that I mentioned already and I've highlighted and read the transmission cost. So this is that Brown and Butterwood MIT study. This system cost of electricity is mostly wind, PV and storage for this 100% clean electricity future. And a tiny sliver maybe half a cent per kilowatt hour of transmission. And then this is that NREL Seams study and it's showing that the majority of costs are fixed and variable generation costs. And there's a tiny sliver here of transmission costs. And then the VCE study that I mentioned a couple of slides ago looks not only at transmission infrastructure, but I also look at distribution infrastructure. And again, you can see most of the cost is generation fixed and variable costs. There's a significant amount of distribution cost and the transmission costs again are a tiny sliver of what it's going to take to get to in this particular study 100% clean energy economy wide. Now I just mentioned that we need to transmission to deliver resources to load. It's not just about that though. And it's really important to recognize there's a whole host of other benefits reasons that we need transmission to make a reliable grid. So for one, transmission contributes to resource adequacy. What I mean by that is capacity value or the ability of a system to meet peak load. So on the left here is an NREL study and it's showing in the dark bars the contribution of a fleet of wind power to this resource adequacy, to meeting peak load. And this light colored shaded part on top is the contribution of just the transmission overlay to helping to meet that peak load. And you might think, oh, how can that be that transmission can help that? It helps that because it connects diverse regions. So it's connecting one region that's summer peaking with another region that's winter peaking. And by connecting diversity, it helps to contribute to that resource adequacy. And this on the right is showing this idea proven out in practice. So this is the Southwest Power Pool in the middle of the country. And it used to be that they had to build 17.6% extra capacity above their peak demand. They have been able to reduce that to 13.6% and then 12%. And they had been able to reduce that amount of extra capacity that they need to build by expanding their transmission to connect diverse regions. And they've been able to save, in this last move from 13.6% to 12% capacity reserve margin, they've been able to save $90 million a year by not building extra power plants that they would have had to build to meet that higher reserve margin. Most of the studies that are out there, they really just look at maybe one, maybe two aspects of great reliability. The mid-continent dinosaur mice cell, they recently did a comprehensive set of reliability analysis. And they looked at 10, 20, 30, 40, 50% wind and solar for the whole Eastern interconnection, right? So the Eastern half of the country. And what they do in this is they cite enough wind and solar hypothetical power plants to provide these different levels of renewable energy penetration. And then they systematically go through each kind of reliability study, say long-term and then medium-term and then short-term stability studies. And at every step, they find problems and they fix the problems with least cost solutions. And when you add up all the solutions that they had to add to this mix to make the grid reliable, you can see that most of what they needed to add was AC transmission, that's the gray, and DC transmission, that's the orange. So most of the solutions to help make the system reliable was transmission. So a lot of folks might ask, can't we just do this with storage or can't we do this with distributed energy resources instead of building transmission? Because building transmission is hard these days. So that mice cell study, they compared storage-only solutions to transmission-only solutions to a combination of transmission and storage solutions to solve these reliability issues. Now as you expect, the combined transmission storage solutions are gonna be the cheapest best option. Interestingly, however, transmission-only solutions were only marginally more expensive. The storage-only solutions were much more expensive. And then DERs are definitely part of the solution. We're going to need distributed energy resources, especially demand, response, energy efficiency. Most studies that are out there only look at the bulk power system. If they consider DERs, they only really consider the trade-off of building DERs versus utility scale, say PV with transmission. VCE is the only organization I know that's optimizing across generation, transmission and distribution. And when they optimize across distribution, they find that you build more distributed solar, you build more distributed storage, but you also build more transmission. And I know that doesn't sound intuitive. It is because you still need to manage excess solar generation, even when you've got a four or maybe six-hour battery, you still have excess solar generation and you still need to plan for nighttime needs and you still need to plan for multiple cloudy days in a row when your battery has been exhausted. So even though DERs are part of the solution, we're still going to need transmission. We put all of this into a report that you can access at this link here and we made a few recommendations first that someone, the federal government, needs to take a national perspective and lead comprehensive planning activities with this national purview. No one's got that national purview now for this kind of planning. We need to proactively plan and build transmission to zones because that will be cheaper than a lot of one-off stringy, gentile lines. And we need to get to work on getting a national network that can share electricity across the continental United States. So with that, thank you very much for your time and I'll stop sharing. Turn it over to Margaret. Thank you so much. That was a great presentation and a perfect way to kick off our panel today. Thanks so much for your presentation. And if you missed any of that, there were lots of good data points, lots of nice charts. If you missed anything in Debbie's slides, remember that everything, including the webcast presentation materials and eventually a written summary will be available online at www.esi.org. We will move now to our second speaker. Jim Hecker has focused his representations on electric utilities, utility investors, transmission companies and gas and oil pipelines on issues of infrastructure development in rate regulation, demand response and environmental law. He is also the founder and principal of Hecker Energy Law and Policy where he serves as outside counsel to wires, a trade association that promotes investment in the electric transmission system. Jim, welcome to the briefing today. I'm looking forward to your comments. Thank you very much, Dan. I appreciate that. One minor correction, I'm not with wires anymore. I now run something called Rail Electrification Council. This is a treat to be able to speak with you all. I'd say that today's panel raises an interesting question as to what does modernization mean when we're talking about something that's already acknowledged as a modern engineering marvel. The grid is in a continual mode of transformation and this is no different. Historically, the electric system in the United States and elsewhere for that matter was a patchwork of utility service territories. We didn't really have great levels of interconnection until the 1970s and this year it's 25 years since my old agency, FERC, began to require all transmission to be available on a non-discriminatory open access basis. That made bulk power markets possible with the efficiency reliability benefits that they contain and it also had a real impact on the need for better and in my view, more transmission. In by 2004, which was the last time you'll recall that we had cicadas in the East Coast. There was a lot of momentum for regional markets, a regional grid management and we spent the last decade debating grid planning and cost allocation but transmission has become recognized as a public good but back in those days, it wasn't always cool. Today, I think you can tell from Debbie's excellent analysis that it's really important and in fact, it is cool. Well, the cicadas are back and what has changed in that intervening 17 years? We've done a lot of debating about transmission. It's now a subject of polite conversation. How much do we need? Who pays for it? Where do we locate these facilities even if we acknowledge we need them? In the intervening years, new changes in electric generation, new technologies and new forms potentially of demand have come on the horizon and we have excellent analyses from groups like ASIG and NREL telling us that we need to look at the grid afresh but there are some issues. Regional wholesale markets are still voluntary. The states still regulate this aspect of interstate infrastructure. There is no single planner of this grid. We have been largely unsuccessful in building large interregional transmission projects and there is no single law governing the siting of transmission and I would point out consistent with what Debbie said, there is no national transmission policy, no agreed upon objective and that makes our work a little difficult. So it's still in many respects a patchwork, just the patches are a little bigger now. Well, I have it on good authority that the cicadas have much higher expectations for 2038 when they return. They're looking for a transition to a net zero energy economy and all that that might entail. So I think we're living in a transform, transformative or transformational moment. The modern grid needs, of course, it is smart and it needs to get smarter. A new technologies enable it to move more power, to manage complex markets, energy storage, new forms of generation, demand responsiveness has to be built into the system. Secondly, the grid needs to be cleaner. Natural gas is, of course, crowding out coal from the market and reducing emissions and cost competitive renewable energy is making a major difference and will continue to do so in the coming decade. So the grid is gradually being decarbonized. The other phenomenon, third phenomenon, I think, is electrification. In the transportation sector, especially in heating, in buildings and appliances, a variety of things, the economy is going to become more electrified. So combined with the fact that renewable energy is location constrained, that is, it tends to be most abundant where there are the fewest customers. That adds up to the need for a much stronger, more integrated transmission system that will support a cleaner, more efficient, less costly and healthier economy. So I would summarize the preconditions for a modern transmission grid for modernization as first substantial investment. The transmission system alone will require an estimated 300 to 700 billion with a B dollars by 2050. And that's as much as 40 billion dollars a year after 2035 when the transportation fleet becomes more electrified. The second phenomenon needs to be more integrated and expanded. There has always been a debate as to whether we need more transmission. Transmission is in many ways ubiquitous already, but it's aging, a lot of the technology is old. And in many regions of the country, particularly where there's good renewable energy, the grid is weaker than it needs to be. So to reach those resources and to move renewable energy to load, to span weather patterns and connect up different demographic markets, we need more transmission. And transmission, of course, will enable states to meet their public policy goals with regard to renewable energy or clean energy. The one missing piece, of course, is whether this grid, which is now many grids, will become national in scope and more integrated. And in that respect, we are way behind other of our competitors internationally, particularly China. Third, I totally subscribe to the idea that we need a national transmission policy to support energy diversity, energy security, reliability and equitable transition from the current grid to something more serviceable and cleaner. One iteration of that that Debbie mentioned is the macro grid. This idea is getting a great deal of currency right now. There's something might want to check out called the macro grid initiative. And it's simply a high voltage direct current overlay that would tie disparate resources and markets together across states, across regions and across major interconnections. This would make it possible to ship substantial amounts of bulk power market great distances in a short amount of time making the whole system far more efficient. The barrier that's inherent in this concept, of course, is planning and citing. It's difficult enough these days to cite even smaller transmission projects within states or within regions. Between large scale transmission takes between a 10 and 15 years frequently from the time they're planned till the time they're energized. This is an enormous waste of resources and frequently money. And these kinds of lead times one would hope could be shortened enormously and will have to be if we are to meet our clean energy goals in the next decade or two. One of the solutions is co-location of new transmission in railroad rights of way, an idea that I think is increasingly popular along interstate highway systems and in existing utility transmission rights of way where all the technology can be replaced where lines can be re-conductored, where transmission can be under grounded and new technologies like dynamic line rating can be installed that will make it possible to push more power through individual lines. Those kinds of efforts will help to shorten the siting process because it will not require use of eminent domain but allow transmission to be located on private property or existing rights of way. The alternative to that however, which is one I think should be considered is a reallocation regulatory authority. I find it difficult to imagine a macro grid of the kind that we just saw having been developed by NREL having been permitted and cited without major federal oversight. And that might mean a rehab of what we call backstop siting from the 2005 act, but I think it might require us to do something a little more dramatic in giving FERC the authority to site projects that cross state lines. If in fact states are unable to do that and the recent record in the last decade is that states frequently can't agree on what benefits the region. And that will be compounded when it comes to agreement about what benefits the country. And lastly, I'd say one of the prerequisites here will be to do a lot of education. Buy in from stakeholders, from citizens, from major load centers to transmission expansion will be very important. And the predicate for that has to be a national transmission policy that addresses the economic benefits, the health benefits, the climate change issues that must be addressed and can be addressed in large part by greater access to renewables and the social justice issues that always come with developing infrastructure. So I'm delighted to be here today and I look forward to the other presentations. Thank you. Thanks, Jim. Sorry for the use of the present tense in your bio. When you click on Jim's name, when you visit the briefing page for today, when you click on Jim's name, what you'll see is a pretty long rundown of all the briefings that Jim has helped ESI with over the years. So we thank you very much for that and thanks again for appearing today. Jim, you also mentioned the macro grid initiative, probably a really good opportunity to share some special thanks with Tracy Warren. She's the director of the macro grid initiative. If you're not familiar with the macro grid initiative, I recommend it. It's a project of the American Council on Renewable Energy and Americans for Clean Energy Grid. So Tracy, if you're watching and I think you are, thank you so much for helping us get smart on some of these issues in the lead up to today. One quick reminder before I introduce our next panelist about questions. If you have questions and a few of them are rolling in, thank you for that. We'll do our best to incorporate them into our discussion. You can follow us on Twitter at EESI online. Actually, everyone should follow us on Twitter at EESI online, whether you have a question or not. But you can also send us an email and that addresses EESI at EESI.org. Our third panelist is Mark Gabriel. Mark is the president and chief executive officer of United Power, a member-owned not-for-profit electric cooperative. He is a 25-year veteran in the electric utility business. He has served for the past eight years as the administrator and chief executive officer of the Western Area Power Administration, which is part of the Department of Energy. And I should have mentioned that United Power is in Colorado. I forgot to mention that part. So Mark, welcome to the briefing today. I'm looking forward to your presentation. Great, well, thanks so much for having me. These are topics that are near and dear to my heart and have been for many, many years. I'm 30 days, excuse me, 90 days into my new job at United Power, a rural electric cooperative that was originally founded in 1938 by 26 folks who were visionary enough to try to bring electricity to what was then very rural Colorado. The name really described dozens of farmers from Adams County, Boulder, Gilpin, Jefferson, and Weld counties, roughly a year after it was founded, 300 miles of distribution today. And actually in the next two weeks, we're gonna be looking at installing our 100,000th meter to give you an idea of where we are. You fly into the Denver Airport and you see all that construction and growth. That's the world that I stepped into 90 days ago, but I think it's really emblematic of some of the opportunities as the cooperative members that we have, for example, 6,000 already have solar rooftops, nearly 3,000 of us have electric vehicles, and it speaks to some of the trends that Jim was mentioning in terms of electrification. Of course, many of you know me from my days at the Western Area Power Administration. Some folks remember me from my eight years at EPRI where I was acting president. So these topics are things that I've lived and are near and dear to my heart. And I do recall a conversation more than 20 years ago with the CEO of one of the largest investor on utilities who rolled out a map on his desk and said, look, we're gonna build 765 lines all across the United States to take care of these problems. I must admit, I'll be a little, push the envelope. I disagree a little bit about the premise about modernization of the grid should be the focus. Billions are spent and have been spent every year on upgrading the system, adding intelligence, new technology, system visibility, all since its inception. At WAPA loan, we spent more than $160 million every year on upgrades. The challenge though, I think that we all have to recognize is that these investments are always balanced against the cost and the impacts on rates and customers. And we've seen even in states with virtually unlimited checkbooks on transmission like California and Texas, they're great examples. System issues can occur. And I also poke a little bit at the commentary that floats around that the system is either old or outdated. I don't believe that to be the case, but also the fact that while permitting is really slow, money is available to invest in transmission. The single biggest thing that we can do today is to fix the hangup that we have right now that the line is gonna be used and commitments can be made to guarantee the offtake of power. In other words, if there's no demand backed by a financial arrangement, there is no construction. A great example that I have during my time, my eight years at WAPA, we had, and they still have a $3.25 billion loan authority that's coupled with what I always jokingly called land, brand and loan. We have eminent domain, we had all sorts of power to make things happen and knowledge of how to build things in a phenomenal loan rate. Yet in my eight years, we only executed a single loan. Now, why is that? Well, simply put, offtake. It's great to put maps up across this world, wonderful enterprise across the country, but by the same token, we have to recognize somebody has to pay for it. In 2015, I signed the record of decision for the TransWest Express project, a great program that was gonna bring wind from Wyoming all the way down to the El Dorado Valley and into California. Yet despite having the land, the design and the loan, it hasn't been built. So you say, well, why is that? Well, bottom line, no one in this particular case is willing to commit to the power. It isn't to say that there isn't a lot of confusion and challenge with permitting and you gotta get all the banking right, but what we really need to do is fix that nugget of who is going to guarantee that there will be offtake to pay for that transmission system. I think that's something that really needs to be wrestled with as we think of these broad plans. Now, those who know me understand, I am a big thinker, I wanna look out into the longterm, but I believe while we have the vision for the longterm, what can we do in the next 18 to 48 months to fix some of the issues that we need to do while we're preparing for the new and exciting future that Debbie laid out? What can actually be done? Well, if you'll notice one of the maps that she showed, there's a line between the Eastern and Western grids. The first thing that we could do, which I believe is roughly $30 million, that will improve the entire national infrastructure is to rebuild the seven ACDC ties between the Eastern and Western grid. They exist today, they're perfectly running 1980s technology for the most part. If we simply improve those ties from where they exist today, we could change the power flow and power dynamics. A great example is this past winter, during winter storm URI, the prices on the Eastern side and the SPP were at $600 a megawatt hour and SPP was searching desperately for more and more capacity. On the other side of the ties, it was $25 or $26. And there was plenty of excess capacity. The same thing last summer in California, when we were looking at the huge issues that happened at the end of the summer into the beginning of fall, there was plenty of excess capacity in the SPP, yet the ties between the grids are really limited. So we need to work on that. That's an 18 month project folks, we could do that now and actually map some of the very same things that you saw in Debbie's slides. The second thing we could do is expand the Mead substation, which I always talk about as the second largest substation in the United States, only cause I don't know what the first one is and nobody argues. But Mead is right there at Hoover Dam. It is at the bottom of the El Dorado Valley where lots of solar could come in, where wind can come in and it's got a direct pipeline into Southern California. That'll take 24 to 36 months. And the last major piece of a real hardware that could be done in 48 months is something called the Intertide Project. Again, maps beautifully to what Debbie showed. It was started in 1964. It currently runs from the Pacific Northwest all the way down to Los Bonos in California, skips a 275 mile piece and picks up again in Arizona. We could complete that 275 miles of line in 48 months. It's already been approved. It just needs funding. And if you think about it, the line would then go from Pacific Northwest through Arizona, desert Southwest, all the way into the SPP. Now, what else could we do that is really critical right now? We can fund technology that benefits the entire nation and not just the region. Things like grid cybersecurity, especially for defense critical and national assets. It's hard to lean on cooperative customers across the West to say you should pay for something that's gonna benefit the entire West. We could find advanced sensing, which is required. Again, it's that balance between cost and who pays for it. We need more wildfire tools, technologies, and something as simple as changing the rights away for treat clearing to fight the wildfire battle, to make a stronger partnership. We can fund things like coated cables and understand that while underground costs 10 times the cost, let's make that investment where it's required. We also need to fix incentives. Number one, guarantee the offtake as a backstop. It's not just about construction, making sure that offtake is guaranteed. We should pay a higher rate of return for lines that are needed versus duplicated in existing infrastructure. Right now, a utility building a transmission line that parallels another gets the same amount of return as the utility building a line that is needed across virgin territory. We have to think differently about it. And I think we also need to pay a higher rate of return for those lines that work to build a wider grid, not just a state local grid. The other piece is building a broad and deep market that span time zones and weather conditions. Real markets, not just paper activities, empower the entities to get engaged there. And I know we're gonna talk about offshore wind as well in the questions here, but I think it's important that an offshore wind, RTO is created to coordinate all of the offshore wind and provide the trading and management platform. Finally, there's something I do wanna make sure to mention. We need to realize that transmission is best suited to fix the growing energy divide. We always talk about the digital divide and you can see that folks are thinking about the broadband divide. Right now we've got an energy divide that I believe is even greater than any of the digital broadband divides. And that is particularly the support underserved or unserved communities. Today there's 15,000 homes in the Navajo Nation that have no access to electricity. Think about it this way, the HABS can afford solar panels and storage. The HABS are paying the price for the infrastructure. The HABS can create microgrids which serve a purpose but also tend to create a balkanized electrical system. And our current business models hang on an engineering measurement, the kilowatt hour, megawatt hour, paradigm and it's no longer valid when the HABS can move their energy supply off the grid for a portion of the day, while the HABS knots deal with the issue of paying the carrying cost. Bottom line, let's figure out what we can do today. As I said, strengthen the AC-DC ties, build out the meat substation into a renewable energy hub, make sure that we finish the intertie and then let's make the right plans going forward into the future. So that 2038 when the Jim Cicadas come back out, we've got something that we can be proud of. But I'd like to see something done that happens between now in 2021 and 2025 to really improve the grid and make sure that everyone benefits from it. Thanks so much, this is a great opportunity. Well, thank you Mark for that, that was great. Thanks for the great presentation and it's always nice to hear from people who've been involved in the realities of financing to help explain sort of what that looks like and I'm also very pleased that you introduced cybersecurity into the discussion. So even more so looking forward to our exchange in the question and answer period. And we will get to that as soon as we hear from our fourth speaker who is Margaret O'Gorman, she is the president of the Wildlife Habitat Council. She works with federal agencies and multinational corporations, several in the energy sector to develop community-first conservation strategies with long-term benefits to the planet and people. She is leading the charge in the use of nature-based solutions, which we love at EESI, for climate equity, urban forestry and biodiversity uplift. Welcome Margaret to the panel and I'm looking forward to your presentation. Thank you Dan and thank you to EESI for inviting WHC to participate in this briefing. And I'd like to first of all acknowledge the work of my team in helping together our thoughts around this issue and our recommendations. So unlike the other speakers, I'm going to pivot a bit and focus on non-technocratic aspects of the opportunities of the energy transition. You know, aspects that often get forgotten in conversations around permits, prices and policies. But first I want to introduce WHC. For many of you, you may not know who we are. We work with industry across all sectors, advancing a model of meaningful conservation that brings business value, as well as benefit to biodiversity and community. And that's the basis of my comments today that will be founded in those sorts of discussions. We consult with industry to support the development of integrated and strategic approaches to conservation that meet a suite of business drivers, that mitigate direct impact on nature and that satisfy ESG ratings and shareholder propositions. So we normally share our membership along the value chain. This is who the membership of WHC is, but we could just as easily show it connected by energy, transmission and distribution. And today what I want to do is to really talk about what our position is in terms of this transition. The climate crisis, which is the focus of the transition and the biodiversity crisis, which is less well known, they mutually reinforce each other and neither will be solved unless both are tackled together. Again, this is a foundation of my comment. And we must understand as we move through the transition for climate and for biodiversity, the business as usual does not support the integration approach of tackling climate and biodiversity together. And business as usual won't create an equitable or an ecological sound future. So when we look at renewable energy and responsible decarbonization, we of course understand that it's critical. The proliferation and success and the need for a modernized transition network is inevitable and it's not a bad problem to have. But it needs to be considered as a system beyond just a system of transmission. It needs to be considered as a system within where people live and within where nature tries to thrive. And the challenges are many. I mean, we've heard about the regulatory challenges, the policy challenges, the pricing challenges. And at the intersection of our energy transition and the biodiversity crisis lies an opportunity for maladaptation, which we must guard against. We can talk about maladaptation in terms of how a new transmission system and our energy transition can actually exacerbate problems on the ground related to both equity and ecology and certainly related to the biodiversity crisis. And it's important to the current and future conversation is an awareness of the proven opportunity to modernize the transition network to maximize co-benefits. And this is what's very cool to us whether we're working with the auto industry in terms of their efforts to electrify their products, whether we're working with the energy industry in this transition or whether we're working with the suite of industries across the sector is that there is a huge opportunity to maximize co-benefits for the environment and for communities. And we're not talking here about avoidance not citing things in certain places, but what we're talking about is citing that creates uplift. It creates benefit beyond the regulatory framework. And Jim mentioned social benefits for the community and mostly when we talk about communities that are impacted by industry the opposite of social benefit is what has traditionally occurred. If we look back, of course, to pre-EPA days, citing and industry certainly took no account of communities and the impacts that they were having. Increasingly today and certainly since the passage of the environmental justice regulation some years ago we see that companies are taking a greater interest and investment, but we're not there yet. So what we really would love to see is as these investments are made that biodiversity or ecological uplift but also community uplift get become part of the design and even if they are rarely part of the conversation. And really, at bottom, the modern however you want to define that transmission grid can't be modern if it ignores the intersections to biodiversity and community. If we want a truly modern connected grid we need connected thinking that incorporates nature knowledge and people knowledge. So for us, we see conservation as a possibility. There's many studies, a lot of knowledge around transmission corridors that have demonstrated a tangible value to biodiversity across the landscape of this country in a way that has been proven to be compatible with operational constraints and reliability. And studies have continually demonstrated from the 1960s to now that managing transmission rights of ways is beneficial for pollinators on which a large portion of our economy depends including the monarch butterfly but also ground nesting birds, ground water recharge which is an ecosystem service that is very valuable. Many mammals, reptiles and amphibians. And when we think about our biodiversity and how at stress nature is across this country and across the globe we can see transmission rights of ways and how these parts of the transmission infrastructure can really support bringing benefit for biodiversity. There's an estimated nine million acres of rights away currently and modernization would bring more to support the decline in species that could be enhanced by better management of the system. And when we look about how the system is managed and we turn to the field of integrated vegetation management this has been instrumental in making possibly achievement of multiple objectives in managing transmission corridors. In addition to a course demonstrating cost savings in long-term maintenance of the transmission system no asset owners like Pepco here in the region First Energy, ComEd, NYPA, Bonneville Tower, et cetera have all managing portions of their transmission system for biodiversity with great benefit across their system. And then of course more recently we're seeing attention to the value of transition transmission corridors in the context of climate adaptation for biodiversity. So as our climate changes our species ranges will change with us and we need to be able to provide corridors of movement for our species to allow them to adapt to climate change. And transmission corridors can act as these movement corridors as the species adapt to their range changes. And segments can be managed to mimic the objectives and management techniques of the adjacent patches that are providing habitat value and creating continuous habitat to allow these movements. And linkages can also be created on rights of ways by minimizing obstacles and drastic changes in vegetation communities. So these are all things that are happening across the transmission system at the moment but that should really be integrated into a transmission so to speak as we move into a different system. So planning and maintaining a transmission network for the benefit of conservation and reliability relies on the same management principle as systems manage solely for reliability. So it involves promoting compatible species on the rights of way and controlling the ones that are incompatible with the objectives. And we're seeing frequently that the aspect of tribal lands and the former speaker, Sarah Mark, spoke to that and how tribal lands need to have a reliable transmission and distribution system. But what we're seeing from our point of view of working on the land is managing transmission lands rights of way for the benefit of nature and the species within it resonates with the commonly held value. I mean, resonates with mine, resonates with yours but that value is nowhere stronger than in the indigenous communities. So enabling the modernization of the transmission grid to be an asset on tribal lands. It's not easy, but it's not impossible. So the traditional connection that Native American communities have with the lands in the US can be celebrated as the transmission system is modernized and as we begin to look at it in different ways. So we have an ability to right some wrongs in these lands and really provide for an understanding and an empathy for the communities who are bearing the brunt of the transmission systems crossing across their lands. And there are several examples here and in neighboring countries like Canada of energy development frameworks focusing on land stewardship within the context of tribal regulatory requirements and cultural reverence for the land. And actually just this week, WHC presented an award for exemplary grassland restoration on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota. It was a midstream operation but they're partnering with tribal leaders of the MHA nation to expedite habitat reclamation and going beyond regulatory requirements for biodiversity restorations and fostering a capacity building in the community. So there are examples across the country of how a transmission transition can actually enhance and as I said, repair historic wrongs. And historic wrongs also in what both Mark and Dan talked about in terms of communities that have borne the brunt of industry and where industry is these points of intersection where the transmission becomes distribution, where industry is active and impactful, these edges of urban areas are the areas that can really benefit from new design, new policies and new investments as we think about the transition. And in terms of habitat and access to green spaces, these are neighborhoods that have less access to green spaces. And when green spaces are there, these may actually be cut off from the community because they're operational. And so it's an opportunity to do much better. Earlier this week at WHC's Global Conference on Corporate Conservation, we heard from a group in Baltimore, the founder of Backyard Basecamp, ITO Wells, who talked about the impact of better rights away management in her Baltimore neighborhood and how BG&E made a huge difference in her community in terms of access and appreciation for what could have been a negative operation in her neighborhood. And when we talk about climate justice and we talk about the energy transition, we need to understand that we don't overburden the communities that have long borne the brunt of old energy and that new investments should consider how the communities will also bear an unfair burden from the impacts of a warming world. They've got heat island issues, they've got decreased air quality. And we know that bad air quality links to health outcomes, specifically and most recently, where COVID mortality rates were linked to communities with lower air quality. So investments in new corridors, investments in the new transmission system can be investment in green corridors that can address health and vibrancies of community, even if that green area is from an operation. And also obsolete infrastructure must be considered through the same lens and it must contribute to neighborhood life. Modernization is an opportunity to, as I said, right some of the wrongs in at risk or overburdened communities and to really think about not repeating some of the mistakes of the past related to energy infrastructure. So our takeaways really is, you know, these investments in the past have been made decoupled from the communities and the ecologies in which they have been made in. So can we step back from that decoupling and really think about how we have an integrated strategy so that federal agencies, the private sector and communities can actually work side by side to plan the grid of what they want for the future. And to integrate the co-benefits from the policy stages. So we always think about the co-benefits subsequent to the policy stages and ultimately subsequent to implementation. So what we really need to have is joined up policy thinking to support how, you know, the planning, the design and the implementation so that it all comes together in a systems-like approach. And having that integrated strategy, we build stronger outcomes that then can align with global, national and local goals and priorities for both environment and equity. And I'm talking about things like, you know, America the beautiful 30 by 30, the upcoming hops on both climate and biodiversity, even something as simple as community climate resiliency plan. The more we do joined up planning and joined up thinking around this, the more those strategies, those policies can actually align and uplift and echo and amplify all of these things and the efforts that are going on around placemaking, climate resilience and nature and protection and nature recovery. And the last thing I will say is, let's not reinvent the wheel. As we go through these transitions, there's a lot of knowledge that exists out there. You know, the 30 years of experience we have with business, for example, the UAA has experienced. There's IVM experience out there with pollination partnership and others. All of these groups have experienced across thousands of miles of utility rights and in communities and everywhere in between. So I think as we move forward in a new policy framework, we need to not reinvent the wheel. And that is all that I have for you today. And I appreciate your time and your interest. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Margaret. That was a great presentation. And I will invite all of our speakers if they would like to turn their videos back on and we will start doing some Q&A. So we're taking in a couple of questions from the audience which is great. We'll incorporate those as we go. I have a couple of things I'd like to ask the group about and we'll sort of start back at the beginning with Debbie and then go to Jim and Mark and Margaret. So everyone has a chance to comment. I'd like to sort of first address something that we didn't talk a whole lot about but I know it's a big topic of conversation and especially in some parts of the country and that is offshore wind. And offshore wind resources are there but we're not really taking advantage of them. And once we do, we'll have to get that electricity to where it can be used. And I'd like to ask the panel a couple of questions. First one, what does a well-designed offshore wind transmission network look like? And is that different than what we might see in sort of onshore wind or other renewable projects? And this is the one I'm really interested in. Are the challenges technological challenges? Is that the reason why we're not doing this or is it a policy challenge? And Debbie, we'll start with you and I'd love to hear your thoughts about it and then we'll go with Jim and we'll go around the horn. Sure, yeah. First of all, I think practically everything is more of a policy than a technological challenge. With respect to the transmission grid and what we need to do for offshore, so you've got to be able to connect to the grid and there's only so many viable cable routing paths that you're going to be able to use to connect to that vector and we're probably talking about the East Coast here, that East Coast corridors, some of the oldest grid in the country. So if you're trying to shove too many megawatts into some of the oldest grid in the country, you're rapidly going to approach the need to have massive upgrades of that onshore system. So a better approach and there's been recently some good studies that Brattle and Ambaric and GE did on this for New York and New England is to do a proactive approach. So get at this thing that Mark mentioned about the whole chicken and egg problem with the used and useful deeming of transmission so that we can actually get it built before there's a generator there requesting it. If we can take that kind of approach that was successfully used in Texas and we can proactively build out and plan this kind of offshore grid for Brattle, I think they studied eight gigawatts of offshore wind, they found that with a proactive approach, they could save a billion dollars compared to the one-off Gentai approach. So taking a proactive planned approach is the biggest recommendation I would make. Yeah, I think there is a remarkable resource awaiting development out there, 2,000 gigawatts of capacity offshore and I think we'll increasingly begin to develop it. NREL says quite plainly that wind capacity is available and the industry is ready to take off. I recall that 10 or 12 years ago, there was a company called Transalut that had proposed a backbone off the East Coast, a grid that would run from Southern Virginia up into New Jersey and it would be built and await the development of wind power along that route. The cables would be situated 100 miles offshore in a relatively benign environment and I think while that didn't materialize, I think we may see more of that kind of proactive issue and certainly the technology, I think, is there. I think it's very clear that these things can be built, can be built successfully at siting and permitting as always are challenges, but I think consistent with what Margaret said, the environment and the ocean environment as a very sensitive one needs to be taken into account during the planning process and a grid like the Transalut system, I think it was called, called Atlantic Wind, I think, would be dispatched just as part of PGM, just like another resource. Well, certainly in my current world, we're pretty far away from the ocean living in Colorado, but both in my time at Epri and certainly in my time in the industry, offshore wind is always a dream that exists, but right now the transmission component that is really in the field of dreams. I mean, we've got to figure out how to manage both the policy and the economics, because if you think about it in addition to the technology expense, you also have economics running somewhat counter to the desire for that resource. For example, an existing utility may have trouble making the investment given that their rates of return are driven by onshore investment. So we need to figure out what is the economic policy that drives the proper decisions. In my years in the business, I found that utilities are ultimately economically logical and environmentally sensitive, believe it or not, but we've got to figure out how that works out. Then in today's environment, you also get to the issue that I talked about, even on land, and that is who's going to commit to the off-take. If you can get an off-taker, it's amazing how quickly projects can get moved through the paperwork, move through the financing. Someone's got to want the power at the other end, not just in theory of a study, but in the practicality of an organization willing to sign on the bottom line that, yes, I want X amount of megawatts and I'm going to commit to it for 30 to 40 years. And I think what I would add to this again is the ecological impact and thinking about that. I mean, it is really interesting. It's not a technological problem because when you go elsewhere in the world, especially in the Netherlands and see the immense amount of investment that they have made in offshore wind, you know that it can be done. And I think what's really interesting on the East Coast from the point of view of ecological impacts, the East Coast is a major migratory route for Wales. And we're seeing now that developers are entering into agreements with respect to how the developments are going to happen, avoiding the migratory, had the times when the whales are migratorying along the coast. And also there's a benefit that has been identified who are actually offshore wind is beloved of anglers and fishermen because of the creation of reefs which we've been creating for years with subways and cars from New York. And now we're seeing that across where wind is being built that there is actually an ecological benefit. But it is bringing that wind on shore also which is kind of then we get to the equity point of view. We get to the equity question like you look at the coast of New Jersey, is the wind going to come on shore in mantleoking or some of the very expensive areas along the Jersey shore? No, they're going to come in and through some of the industrial communities which again are the communities that have borne the burden of that. So how do we ensure that that intersection with the land again does not add extra burden to those communities that are industrial coastal communities? But I certainly think it's an interesting one but it always does amuse me and amaze me that the US is not further ahead when you go overseas and see what can be done. Thank you for that. Yeah, it seems like a lot of the initiative for offshore wind is coming from states. When I worked at the Maryland Energy Administration offshore wind was a big priority of the O'Malley administration and administrations change. And there was at that point lots of discussion about things happening in Massachusetts and other places but it hasn't felt so far like there's been a big national imperative to harnessing those resources. One, so a big part of our audience this is more of just a grab bad question but I wanted to ask it because a lot of our audience today are congressional staff. And a lot of times when they will hear about this issue they'll hear not so much about the technological challenges but they'll hear about issues with how do you have an offshore wind resource and also have commercial shipping or commercial fishing operations. Any thoughts from around the group about the feasibility of offshore wind while we're also using our coastlines for other forms of commerce? I know there's been a great deal of aesthetic objection to offshore wind. I think that may be diminishing over time but I know from the sports fishing world having those infrastructures out there in some cases anyway operates like an artificial reef and actually encourages fish populations. So it may be a mixed bag. Great, well thank you for that. I appreciate it. Let's see, I'd like to move on to another question. So Mark, you actually sort of addressed this a little bit in your presentation but I'd like to double back to it. And again, we'll start with Debbie and we'll go around the horn. But Mark, you offered some ideas for some near-term improvements we could make to the grid. I think the timescale you used was 12 to 48 months. You gave a couple of good examples of that. And that makes me think that, well actually of course we have in Debbie addressed this in her presentation as well. We have lots of existing transmission infrastructure and electricity is electricity. So we should be able to make good use of it but are there other things we could do to make the most out of our existing infrastructure? We could leverage it, make that infrastructure more reliable and resilient and therefore longer lasting in the future. And also are there things we could do, Margaret this one's a little bit more for you but are there things that we could do in the near-term to make sort of the land around our existing transmission infrastructure more sustainable or friendly or to other species that may inhabit the space around it? But Debbie we'll start with you and we'll go around the horn. Sure, so I guess I'll just add to what Margaret was saying about the US being somewhat behind Europe in terms of offshore wind. We also use our right of way poorly compared to much of the developed world. And what I mean by that is in terms of how many megawatts we flow per foot of right of way space, right? Because a lot of our extra high voltage transmission was built in the big open spaces which the idea that land was cheap and we were really seeking to minimize costs of transmission towers and conductors and all of that and that was the primary focus. So we need to use our right of way much more efficiently and there's new designs, there's new technologies that can do that. A lot of our transmission was built like 60 years ago it needs replacement. I think Jim talked about the billions of dollars going into that kind of replacement. And as we do that, we should think about, why should we just replace 115KV line with another 115KV line? Why don't we think about potentially upgrading those and upsizing those if it's in an appropriate place? So we need to think about when we're doing these upgrades and replacing existing infrastructure to do it with an eye towards maximizing right of way usage we need to, when we build new infrastructure build with the idea that we might want to expand that in the future. And then on top of that, there's a whole host of new technologies these grid enhancing technologies that we could also employ to help us use existing right of way better. Jim, let's swing over to you. Yeah, I'm a believer in using as much of the existing rights of ways we possibly can. Greenfield development raises a lot of issues of the kind that Margaret's already articulated. But there are new technologies, ways to rate line capacity differently using new sensor technology. There are ways to re-conductor to make the current system more efficient. But there are also existing rights of way, transportation rights of way, highways, railroads. Those kinds of networks exist in silos quite different from the electric industry. And one of the things we're doing at the rail electrification council is trying to bring those two industries together to think about how they both can profit from joint use of existing rights of way which are, in the case of railroads, for instance, very substantial patrimony that they have. It's not always usable and sometimes it's legally complicated. But I think there are examples that we can serve the environment, make more efficient, economically efficient decisions by using existing lands. Mark, I'm thinking, we'll turn it over to you. Do you have any other sort of thoughts about sort of things that we could do in the nearer term that would leverage what we already have and get us some emissions reductions or potential? 100%, I guess my thought goes to in three areas. First is we always have to figure out who pays and who gains. I can just tell you from my experience over all these years, certainly at WAPA, it was very difficult to lean on a small group of particular customer utilities to pay for the upgrades of lines beyond the capacity they could see today or the next two years. So I agree 100% with Debbie. We should not build another 115 line in this country. They should all be built at 345 or 500. But figuring out the economics really is one key component. The second thing is back to technology. Our great technology is to increase throughput, change conductoring, do all of that. We have to figure out what the economic balance is. And the third thing, which is really, I think, missed in some of this discussion, as we shutter coal plants, we are shuttering them in areas with huge transmission capabilities. Navajo Generating Station, for example, which closed last year or the year before, is the perfect site for, I jokingly called it, a billion dollar solar farm. Today, when we think about putting in wind and solar, we have to also consider where is the existing transmission? Instead of what happens, which is, Aunt Margaret has 10,000 acres, it's got good wind profile, let's put the wind farm there. And I'm not kidding, that's a true story. No offense, Margaret, that was somebody who came in and said, well, my Aunt Margaret had this farm. So to take advantage of that and add technologies that we need, be it storage, be it a multitude of opportunities on existing sites. It also helps the local communities with jobs. It also helps using infrastructure that already exists. Now, the hour Margaret, not the farmer owner Margaret. Are there, and maybe it was, I don't know, I'm not, no judgment, but do you have any thoughts about what we could be doing to leverage our existing infrastructure in a way that's more sustainable for species that inhabit those areas? Sure, yes, I have a balcony if you want to put some solar panels on that, that's about as far as I, as I go. But, you know, to Mark's point about the coal fired plants, when you think, I mean, he talked about the Navajo Nation, but we think about in many urban areas, I'm thinking especially in Detroit, where coal plants have been shut down by DTE and those plants are in neighborhoods that have suffered the burden. So why not bring them the benefit by actually creating something that is going to be cleaner for their air and better for them. Really thinking about the design post transition, I think is very important. But then, and co-location, of course, it's something that we should be thinking about. It really is crazy how many different linear types of infrastructure we have across this country, which could all be layered on top of it, on top of one another, if we thought again in the system's way. But stepping out and looking at transmission, looking at rights of ways, I think, you know, we see a lot right now, small upgrades happening, where they're still ignoring the co-benefits for biodiversity and the co-benefits for community. It's still being done in the old-fashioned way, which is with a singular purpose and a singular engineering solution that we're trying to fix. So we're missing a lot by continuing down this road of here's the solution, let's engineer it, and that's this. So as we really think about, and this would be for me to congressional aid, and that just a little bit bigger picture, and I know it's really difficult because of the way our government agencies function. But if we could really, as we build out our infrastructure for our energy future, think about weaving stewardship and community benefits as part of the philosophy. At WHOC, we talk a lot about the EHS, Environmental Health and Safety in the Corporate World, and how safety is sacrosanct. And we need to get the E as sacrosanct as safety is in EHS, and not just environments in terms of water and air quality, but actually in terms of ecology. So as we move out, just really thinking about, putting that E on steroids so that it becomes as important as the F in EHS. The answer to the question. If I might, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention my friends at FERC. The, Mark brought up what I think is the salient point these days, and that is who pays. That issue becomes even more difficult than it is now when we're developing AC transmission within a state or within a region. If you start talking about macro grids, the beneficiaries pay formula becomes infinitely more complicated. And I think FERC, I believe, is going to revisit its order 1,000 and begin to grapple with what benefits are we talking about, including benefits of the kind that Margaret has been talking about. The agency, I think, needs to step up to that issue in a more proactive way than it has in the last decade or so, because who benefits from a macro grid overlay of that size, which is probably, you know, conservatively $100 or $150 billion? Who's going to bear that cost? What are the benefits? How do you determine that is going to be a very difficult issue? Thanks. We had a question just come in, and I think it's kind of an interesting follow-up. Jim, it might be one that we start with you, but I don't want to exclude anyone else who might have a comment since you've all talked about the issues of right-of-ways. You mentioned a couple of times using rarer rights-of-way. Sounds like that's something that's feasible and that they would be open to it. Does the same thing apply to highways or is it something that's limited to railways? No, I think it does apply to highways. Our interstate highway system and state highways, for that matter, are a network that crisscrosses a lot of the best areas of renewable wind and solar in the country, and those rights-of-way can be substantially utilized. They're frequently much bigger than railroad rights-of-way. They are subject, of course, to the rules and restrictions of not only the National Highway Administration, but state departments of transportation. And that sometimes is not altogether friendly to additional infrastructure for safety reasons and for other reasons. But I do think that a lot of the same reasons to pursue locating transmission infrastructure, along with fiber optics and other things, in railroad rights-of-way, that also applies to highways. Thank you for that. Sorry for the interruption. Kitten just woke up. We have time for one more question, and this is an important one, and you've all talked about it in different ways during your presentations. Again, we'll start with Debbie and go around. As we're making these sorts of planning decisions, investment decisions, siding decisions, all the things that we've talked about, are there things in your mind, Debbie and others, where there's a potential that we could be exacerbating environmental injustice that we should be on the lookout for? Are there sort of things that we could do sort of whether it's not on purpose, but are there things that we could do or are there unintended consequences that could have negative impacts on marginalized communities that we should just be aware of going forward to avoid? So I don't have a huge amount to say on this topic, except that, you know, transmission gives you access to a bigger market and that you're gonna want inter-regional transmission the same way you want interstate commerce. So you provide for different regions to have better resources or maybe new technologies and provide for optionality for different areas to sell that and to be able to provide those resources to the greater marketplace. And so just having the optionality, the access and the ability to trade, I think is a really important piece of this, but I'll let others speak more directly to your question. I think it's a good question. It's a difficult question because it's such a bottom-up kind of question that it has more local than regional or national impacts, but even with state and federal regulation, you end up with gas pipelines, electric transmission, other kinds of facilities being located for economic reasons, for financial reasons, very close to or even directly through affected communities that need to be avoided or impacts mitigated somehow or another. I think that my experience in the regulatory world is that we've gotten much, much better over the years trying to address those concerns in the course of approving energy and energy facilities, but I think it would help immensely, going back to one of my own themes, I guess, it would help immensely if we had a national policy about how you cite facilities and how to take into account the interests of tribal communities and other minorities, sensitive environmental areas and so forth. I think that would have to be part of an overall sensitivity raising that we probably need. You know, there's clearly the issue about social equity concerning the physical location of the systems, but what I believe is happening today is this expanding economic adversity being created by those folks who can afford solar panels and Teslas and all of those wonderful tools that we talk about. To the average family of four makes $54,000 a year in this country, 28% of whom don't own their own home or live in apartment buildings, they are being bypassed today by the economic and environmental benefits that the wealthier folks in society are. Transmission to me represents an opportunity to bring in lower cost, clean resources, but we have to be careful about who pays for it because the 10,000 square foot home with overloaded solar panels may be doing a lot for their own bill, but for the 30 neighbors that they equivalently represent in low income communities, they're the ones paying the carrying cost. So we have to figure out what the right paradigm is away from the kilowatt hour and the megawatt hour to something that properly weights the value of the environment. And I think that's one of the biggest challenges that we face today. And we've got to get through it. I do think transmission, as I said, is the big part of the solution. We just have to figure out how to balance it to make sure these other communities aren't disadvantaged any further than they already are. Margaret, I think that's the last word. Thank you so much for that, Mark. Yeah, sure, thanks. I appreciate getting the last word. I just wanted to touch on a point that you made about highways and stuff. Habitat fragmentation is the biggest threat to biodiversity in this country. So by reducing further habitat fragmentation by co-locating transmission, whether it's on rail, right-of-ways, our roads is really important. Just wanted to think about that. But as we think about equity, we have for generations exported the cost of our lifestyles on communities that can't afford it. So we have an opportunity to stop exporting that cost in a way that really engages communities in meaningful conversation. All of our work that we've done in communities, in either, you know, in edge communities, industrial urban communities, the message we can get back again and again is don't assume, talk to us, and ask us what we want. And if we're looking at this challenge of not building new infrastructure, but building on existing infrastructure, we're going to be adding the burden to these communities. So we need to recognize that. And what does that burden mean? So we need to step back and engage with them in a way that's meaningful and that actually listens to what they want and responds appropriately. So I think that would be my takeaway is let's stop exporting the burden and let's listen to our community. That's a great place to end on. Thank you very much for that, Margaret. We are at time, actually a minute over, sorry about that. Debbie, Jim, Mark and Margaret, thank you for four excellent presentations and a really great, interesting, engaging discussion. We really appreciate you taking time on your busy Fridays to share your expertise with our audience. And it was great talking with all of you today. Thank you so much for that. I would also like to say thank you to everyone at ESI who makes these briefings possible, Dan O'Brien, Sidney O'Shaughnessy, Amber Todorov, Anna McGinn, Savannah Bertrand and Omri Laporte. And a special thanks to our four fabulous interns, Anna, Ashlyn, Irina and Jackson for all their help behind the scenes and keeping the live feed on Twitter updated and questions and all of that stuff. So thank you so much for that. Two last things. One, if you have two minutes, we would really appreciate your feedback. This is a link to our survey. If you have any technical issues that you'd like to tell us about, ideas, comments, feedback, really we read every response and it means a lot to us when you take time out of your day in the audience to share your feedback with us. So I hope you'll have an opportunity to do that. Going forward, an archive of the webcast, presentation materials and eventually written summary, everything will be available online at www.esi.org. The specific link is right there on the screen. And then lastly, this was the second of a three-part series, our third briefing about modernizing the U.S. energy system opportunities challenges in the path forward is next Friday, June 18th, also at noon Eastern. And we will be discussing leveraging grid edge integration for resilience and decarbonization. That is going to be a great conversation once again and I'm looking forward to it already. We will go ahead and end there. I hope everyone has a happy weekend. Thanks again to Debbie, Jim, Mark and Margaret for your excellent presentations. And we will see you next time. Thanks so much.