Jon Powers (00:00:02): Welcome back to Experts Only. I’m your host, Jon Powers. I’m the co-founder of Clean Capital and serve as President Obama’s chief sustainability officer. On this podcast, we explore solutions to climate change by talking to industry leaders about the intersection of energy, innovation and finance. You can get more episodes@cleancapital.com. Welcome to Thinking Outside the Box. My name’s Jon Powers. I’m going to be your moderator today. We’ve got an amazing panel and we’ll dive into it in a second, but just some quick admin notes. I know we’re standing between you guys in happy hour, so we’ll try to make this a really interesting conversation. We’ll also open it up to questions. There’s going to be a chance to submit questions, but we’ll also walk around with the mic. This is being recorded as part of a podcast called Experts Only. So would you do have a question? Please, please speak to the mic when the time comes and we’ll draw attention. (00:00:59): We’ve got a really interesting series of conversations around where our industry is going and we’ll dive right in. So without further ado, I’m going to introduce each speaker as we get into the first round of questions, but we’ve got a really distinguished panel today to talk about where are industry going and what does the future look like? So part of the conversation that many of us are having is this current moment that we’re in. We have a really unique alignment happening between policy, technology and finance to allow us to scale in a way we never had envisioned before. But before we can look forward, I want to take a chance to step back and say, how did we get to this point? And you think about how things have moved over the last decade. Many of us who’ve been in the industry for a long time, I got started in the Obama administration as President Obama’s chief sustainability officer. (00:01:51): Prior to that, the first special advisor on energy to the Army. But at the time, we didn’t have much of an energy policy just prior to the Obama administration under George Bush in a Democratic Congress, they passed something called the Energy Security Act, which had tax credits for solar and wind. But at that time, there really wasn’t much of an industry, but solar wasn’t new, right? Jimmy Carter put solar panels in the White House in 1979, right? The technology, while it’s gotten better and changed, it existed for decades before, but did not scale that legislation followed by the American Recovery Act dollars that poured into our industry in a way that people did not or were not ready for. Candidly, things like shovel ready green project was a term of the time, helped really springboard our industry forward. It did a couple of really key things. (00:02:44): It started to prove out the case. We started to create new financial models around things like power purchase agreements. People couldn’t spell PPA in 2010, and now it’s a really common term. We proved that solar panels could work in places like Buffalo, New York, where I’m from, not just in places like Texas or Florida or California. Our workforce began to develop and grow, where at the time, people weren’t even sure how to install these things or maintain them. And now here we are in 2024 with an incredibly growing diverse workforce of folks entering the industry from all different walks of life, being accountants to financiers, to people going on rooftops to do maintenance or flying drones to oversee how these projects are running. That all grew over the course of a decade because those policies help trigger investment, private sector investment that started to come in and begin to blossom and grow the industry. (00:03:44): If you think about a decade ago, 2013, there was less than 25 billion invested in the energy clean energy industry as a whole. This last year we just crested 300 billion, which is super exciting. But to really see the clean energy transition through by 2030, we need $44 trillion in capital to move into this space over the next six years. That’s a really high bar try to reach, but we can get there because we’ve now proven out the technology works. We have this really great legislation that came on two years ago, the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which are putting serious dollars into grid modernization, electric vehicles, everything from energy efficiency in houses to tax credits for us to move forward. So this alignment isn’t a place that has never been before where all of those three things are triggered to allow us to grow and scale in a really exciting way. (00:04:46): I say that because now I want, with our panel, I want to spend some time looking forward and in that framework, how do we start to dive into what the future holds for us to be able to get to 44 trillion deployed by 2030, which is a really crazy number to think about. And so what I want to start off with my friend Jamie Carlson. Jamie and I served in the Obama administration together, but she’s the head of commercialization and market risk for SB Energy. Jamie is one of the few people in the industry that has lived all pieces of the policy, finance and technology space, both in the public and private sector. So from that experience, Jamie, what does this moment in alignment mean for the growth of the industry? Jaime Carlson (00:05:27): Yeah, it is. It’s really fascinating to think of how we’ve come in 15 years. I’ve been in the industry 17, 18 years, went into the Obama administration as initial money was coming in from a technology side just to ground us in where we were at 2010. We set this goal that we thought was crazy ambitious, that we would get to a dollar a watt for a panel, a solar module. Do you remember this? Sean Gallagher (00:05:55): I do Jaime Carlson (00:05:55): By 2020 and was like by 2016 we were a dollar a wat fully installed. And so we’ve just seen these crazy cost curves, right? Lithium, four hour batteries was just starting. RPE was just starting up. A lot of the technologies were coming out of there. Those costs have dropped by 80%, supposed to drop by another 30% by 2030. There’s all these challenges Now, the next big piece is the long duration, which will be a big list, but there’s also tons of other technologies like hydrogen that’s moving along that piece. So that’s kind of on the technology side. And then there’s the policy piece. And I had started my career in private sector and I’m back in private sector. I work with SP Energy, which is short for SoftBank, and SoftBank is huge for this huge technology investor is invested in Uber, LinkedIn, doing tons on AI and semiconductor chips, et cetera. (00:06:55): But the policy piece was really the piece that moved all of this. And so inflation Reduction Act is the largest climate legislation of our lifetime, and probably, I hope I’m wrong, but I think we’ll be of our lifetime the biggest. And so folks talk about how it’s so monumental. But I think an interesting contrast is to look at the American Recovery Act, which was a sixth of the size of what inflation react Act, and a lot of things that we invested in 15 years ago. We’re just seeing play out now. So a sixth of the size first loan to Tesla. And I remember sitting in a room with a bunch of folks, 5 billion going into electric vehicles being like, is this crazy that 5 billion is going into electric vehicles? And now you see it obviously, particularly in Southern California, electric vehicle, every third or fifth car, the first a hundred megawatts solar facility was done with that. (00:07:49): So that was with a sixth of the size and not even nearly the number of tools that’s have been available now in inflation reduction act. And the other thing that Inflation Reduction Act did a really good job of is they really thought about supply and demand and macroeconomics. And so I’m sure Marta and on the manufacturing side will talk a little bit about that piece. So you have that from a policy side, which is just so exciting and so many tools in the toolkit that we get to use also on the financing side. And so on the financing side, we have more tools and we have more partners. In 2010, there was tax activity was the game. There was at the time three or four tax equity partners. It’s still a huge bottleneck in the industry, but we are just like 2025. There’s transferability now. So we have a bunch of new entrants into that. But I also think when you look across kind of the capital stack, we have tax equity, which I was talking through, we have much more debt providers who understand risk. And then there’s also all of the climate tech VC folks that didn’t exist even five years ago. And then really taking you through from demonstration to deployment where there used to be, there’s still somewhat of a valley of death from financing, but has really kind of filled in over the years. Jon Powers (00:09:07): Do you feel like industry leaders today, especially the finance space, appreciate policy or understand it? Jaime Carlson (00:09:18): I think Sean has a view on it. So look at this. I spend a decent amount of time obviously with C and in DC, and I’m not a government affairs person. Our CEO is personally involved in policy. So I think it’s shifted in that way where it’s like, I think particularly over the last five years with it being brutal in supply chain trade issues, what’s going to happen with China? It’s one of the biggest opportunities and risks of a company from a commercial standpoint. So I think it’s no longer, it’s no longer there’s a government affairs person. It’s like every supply chain person knows what’s going on. Capital markets is like our capital markets team wants to be at the table in dc. And so I think that’s really shifted where everyone’s paying attention. Jon Powers (00:10:04): Oh, that’s interesting. Yeah. So Sean, first of all, Sean Gallagher, the senior vice president at CF for policy. Let’s dive into policy a little bit. We are celebrating this month the White House party where we pop champagne for the Inflation reduction Act. It was such an exciting moment for those of us that have been in and around the industry, and it rightfully so, was a celebration. But now we’re two years into this and there’s so many different tiers of policy now at the state, the federal level, et cetera. So from a policy perspective, how do you sort of witness those layers starting to unfold and where do you sort of see that going? Sean Gallagher (00:10:41): Yeah, thank you Jon, and thanks for having me here today. And sorry, I snorted. No, that’s right. Anytime. I’m Sean Gallagher. I’m the senior Vice President for policy. At C is the National Solar and Storage Trade Association. We are based in dc, we work at the federal level in Congress and with the administration, we work at the state level in about 17 states on policies to increase the deployment ease, the deployment speed, the deployment of solar. If you’re not a member already, come talk to us afterwards. I’d be happy to sign you up. We’ve got about a thousand member companies, I think actually more like 1200 today that sort of span every sector in the industry, right? DG community, solar, utility scale, solar, every sort of piece of the supply chain or value chain manufacturers, installers, construction companies, you name it. So everybody’s here and we’re advocating on behalf of all of you all I want to say. So a couple things in response to your question. So I oversee in my role both our state and federal policy teams. And so I ran our state team for a long time. Now I oversee our federal team as well. I see it, all of that. And I guess the thematically, what I’ll say is we have the federal policy team. Jamie was right, biggest climate bill ever lengthy. We have some certainty (00:12:16): And it’s clearly working right, and I’ve got some numbers, I’ll spout some numbers at you in a second. At the state level, the state policy can either sort of amplify that federal policy, that successful federal policy or can dampen that federal policy. And we’re seeing examples of both play out in the states. Jon alluded to the fact that IRA is not just about building solar facilities, it’s about building solar manufacturing plants. And so on the manufacturing side, we’re seeing a huge number of manufacturing facilities going into the southeast, for example, where it’s easier to get a manufacturing facility cited and permitted. The states may be more willing to give the company a tax credit or a tax break or something. They’re willing more willing to lure large employers to their states. And so we’re seeing a lot of that, but we’re also seeing states erecting barriers to citing solar manufacturing facilities, particularly where there’s ownership interest from countries who are less favored. And so we’re seeing both of those things play out. But I mean, overall manufacturing is good. We’ve seen about 26 billion in announced to manufacturing investments since 2022. So what’d you say? 44? So we’re getting there. Sean Gallagher (00:13:33): Yeah, Sean Gallagher (00:13:34): Not all those facilities are in production yet, but we’ve got 15 gigawatts of new module manufacturing capacity came online in 2024, and we’re up to 31 gigawatts, total module manufacturing capacity. So Jaime Carlson (00:13:47): That’s like a full year of, Sean Gallagher (00:13:49): Yeah, it’s like a full Jaime Carlson (00:13:50): Year in installation here in solar. Sean Gallagher (00:13:51): Well, it’s a full year last year. This year we’re going to do 40. There’s 10 gigawatts of cell production that’s in construction right now. So we’re trying to build out the whole value chain, not just module assembly. And I’ll just give a plug for our team. See a supply chain dashboard on our website has all these facts and figures. If you just Google see a supply chain dashboard, you’ll get more numbers than I can throw out at you. On the deployment side. I think we had a report came out yesterday or today we did about nine and a half gigawatts in the second quarter this year we’ve done about 21 gigawatts in the first half of 2024, right? As Jamie said, we did 30 in all of last year, and we’re showing we’re going to be 40 gigawatts a year plus for the next five years, and that’s 46% above what we would’ve been without IRA, so IRA working. So Jon Powers (00:14:41): That went 40% above what it would’ve been without the ira. Sean Gallagher (00:14:43): That’s right. (00:14:46): Workforce is going to be a big challenge on the deployment side. Yes. Deployment side state policy, again, can help or can hinder, right? You’re all stuck in interconnection queues, right? At the state level, if you’re on your dg, if you’re community solar, if you’re smallish ground mount connected distribution system, you’re tearing your HA or hair out. You don’t know how long it’s going to take. You know how long it’s going to cost, and they won’t tell you anything if you, and so states have a role to play in that. We’ve been working on interconnection issues across the country. My colleague Vale here, she works in the Northeast. She’s also tearing her hair out, trying to get your interconnection issues fixed across the northeast on the workforce side, we now employ over 260,000 workers in the us. The US Department of Energy put out a report a couple of weeks ago that shows that the clean energy workforce grew at double the pace of the workforce overall in the US last year. Sean Gallagher (00:15:42): That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Sean Gallagher (00:15:44): Yeah, it is awesome. And the unionization rate in the solar industry as a result of the IRA, which requires prevailing wage and apprenticeships is now up to 14% in the solar industry compared to 11% in the economy as a whole. So we’re making progress on a lot of fronts. Workforce could be a huge issue for us though because we’re going to need another a hundred or 200,000 workers in the next five years, and where are those workers going to come from? So we need community colleges to step up programs. We need states to approve apprenticeship programs so that you guys can get the full tax credit. You can only get the full tax credit if you have a certain number of apprenticeship hours on your projects. And we need a lot of new workers. And so we’re out there every day trying to help states realize that what they don’t want to do is leave federal money on the table. They want to align their policies to facilitate the deployment of federal money into their states, reduce the cost of energy to their customers, increase the number of jobs. And that’s an argument that we use when we’re trying to advocate for all these kinds of policies. Jon Powers (00:16:50): We’re going to dive more into the policy and how the sausage is being made in Washington in a little bit, but before I do that, if you’ve had a chance to see some of the amazing pictures is of Vice President Harris in Georgia cutting ribbons at this amazing manufacturing facility in a Republican district, which used to, if I get this right, they used to make carpet in this community Marta Stoepker (00:17:12): Carpet capital of the world, my friend, Jon Powers (00:17:14): What was it? Marta Stoepker (00:17:14): Carpet capital of the world. Jon Powers (00:17:15): Yeah. The reason those pictures exist is because of our friend Marta here who has helped tell the story from Q Cells perspective. Oh yes. It’s awesome. Our industry is at a point where technology is no longer an experiment. This is about growth and scale and domestic manufacturing is going to be a key part of it. Can you talk a little bit about how Q Cells has been empowered to start to move forward in that space? Marta Stoepker (00:17:40): Yeah, so just a little background on me. I’ve been working on clean energy and climate communications for 15, and when I first started, I thought a wafer was a delicious cookie that came in the flavors of vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate. And now a wafer has a whole new meaning, has been a whole new definition. So over the last particularly 10 years, really trying to tell the story of why we’re worth investing in as an industry. And this is my first corporate job. So I drink martinis now as well, but not right now. But where we are today and what Q Cells is doing, it’s just very exciting and a lot of fronts. So one, we’re the only manufacturer that is currently building a facility that will make wafers in America. They’re not made today, anywhere. We are the only ones. But also in this factory, we’re going to be making ingots and cells and the finished modules, we’re going to be making 3.3 gigawatts of that by the end of the year. So hopefully the factory will come online, easy peasy. And then we also have another factory in Dalton, Georgia, carpet capital of the world where we set up our shop there in 2018. Our manufacturing came on in 2019 and we started at 1.7 gigawatts and we were like, that’s a lot. That’s awesome. We now manufacture over five gigawatts of panels there, (00:19:03): And we expanded thanks to the IRA, right? So we are able to not only expand our existing footprint for module production, but we’re also now entering into this world of sub components and bmy manufacturing these things in America for the first time in a long time. And many of these sub components aren’t made here today. So we’re embarking on something really exciting. It’s a little scary too. And when we’re fully up and running, we’ll have like 4,000 people in the state of Georgia working a manufacturing job. And why that’s also really important to think about is for every manufacturing job we make for other jobs are created in the economy. So we have the biggest multiplier in terms of jobs than any other industry. But not only are we thinking about building all these really amazing sub components that are critical to making a solar panel hole to put into perspective, like 95% of all panels installed in the world rely on wafer technology. (00:20:03): We’re also continuing to push the boundaries of technology. So we are expanding thinking about tandem and parasite and really trying to increase the efficiency and the duration of our technology. So it lasts for a really long time and it also runs really well. But we’re also thinking about how do we maximize the technology with software. So we’re not just a manufacturer, folks, we are developing software that pairs with our panel to optimize the performance of this panel. So if you are a rooftop solar owner, we want to make sure that you understand that our software is talking to that panel and making sure that you are getting the most bang for your buck. So we’re doing a lot of amazing things, and the IRA was a huge accelerant for that. We would not be able to do it without it. However, I can’t understate the importance of the community investment in us. You can’t build a manufacturing facility if the state doesn’t want you to build a manufacturing facility. (00:21:05): And so this is a really amazing example of when local to federal policy comes together and says, we really want to diversify our economy, because Dalton struggled really badly under the great recession. No one was buying flooring. So they’re like, we really need to diversify our economy. And so now we’re there and they’re making solar and they’re making carpet, and there’s a lot more opportunity for people in that community. And that took Dalton really wanting to see more happening in their town and the state. So we are doing a lot on the technology front, and it’s all because of just honestly the support from the local to the federal level. Jon Powers (00:21:50): Following up on Han had mentioned in Dalton, are you seeing just to get the workforce trained up, how are you guys working with the community colleges, et cetera? Marta Stoepker (00:21:59): We start talking to people when they’re in elementary school or we want you to come Sean Gallagher (00:22:05): Here. Marta Stoepker (00:22:08): We are investing a lot of time into the youth in our community. We actually have this amazing program called Project Purpose. We were part of it. We high schoolers that don’t really think college is the right place for them. I went to art school, Bayley College, but who were like, I want to do vocational studies. They’re not going to community. They’re coming to us and we’re training them and they’re getting an education from us. And we have 23 new students this year that are working at our facility. Wow, Sean Gallagher (00:22:36): That’s amazing. Marta Stoepker (00:22:37): From high school. And obviously we want to continue to have them work with us, but if they want to go somewhere else in the clean energy economy, we welcome that as well. What we’re trying to do is support the next generation of clean energy workers in this country and also really value these jobs. You don’t have to just be a lawyer or a doctor to bring value to your community. You’re building the energy of the future. So we are also engaged with Georgia Tech. We work with them a lot, and we are everywhere at every college. A lot of competition out there for good folks, especially in Georgia. So we’re really invested in trying to both train up but also engage the community to join us. Jon Powers (00:23:18): Awesome. Peter. First of all, you’re the chief strategy and technology and innovation officer at Rappa Electric Cooperative. I’m saying that hopefully all correct. What is interesting to me is the utilities are really the front line of this conversation. And as a cooperative, you truly are engaging with customers all across your footprint. How do you and your team look at the innovative solutions that are coming forward and think about deploying them? Peter Muhoro, PhD (00:23:44): Well, wonderful, and good afternoon everyone. I’m glad. I don’t bet. I thought it’d be five people here and there. A room with a lot of folks. Sean, I lost. So I did say we needed beer and everyone would come in. So a little bit of background, rap, Hanock Electric Cooperative. We’re a fairly large co-op in the Commonwealth of Virginia, headquartered in Fredericksburg, Virginia. We spread out all the way going from somewhat northern Virginia down to the Charlottesville area all the way to close to West Virginia, powering about 22 parts of 22 counties in the Commonwealth, about 1.2 gigawatt load. And just note that number because I’ll come back to it in a second with about 18,000 miles of line and about a 4,000 square mile territory. So we have both the very urban areas and very rural. So we deal with that a lot. And so when we think about what does a clean energy future look like, we’re saying what can we do to be part of this game and what can we create an environment that brings in the industry to really engage with us? Now, the challenge we face is we’re also in the part of the country that is growing the most for this thing called data centers. (00:25:05): And the queue of what we have for now is almost over 12 gigawatts. Wow. 1.2 gigawatt, 12 gigawatts. Sean Gallagher (00:25:14): Wow. Peter Muhoro, PhD (00:25:14): So how do you power that it in thinking of a clean energy economy and a decarbonized grid? And so what we’ve said is one of the biggest, and we’re doing a bunch of things, I could spend the next 10 hours talking about it, but one of the biggest things is we’re taking advantage of what distributed energy resources could do for us. And so if you as a utility create an environment, so the first thing we did is streamline our interconnection process. It used to be the very manual sign this thing, fax it to us, we’ll review it then. And I asked the question, it’s 2020, what do you mean fax? What is that thing? And so if it just gives you an idea of what we had to do and my goal, I set the goal that let’s streamline this thing to not more than three days, ideally a 24 hour turnaround. Wow, Jaime Carlson (00:26:05): That’s awesome. Peter Muhoro, PhD (00:26:07): So that way when someone says, I want to install solar, in fact, I’m known for saying this, any rooftop that could get solar on it, I want solar on it, I want batteries with it. Anyone who’s got a little bit of land that they could put solar that works with the way policy is, please put, because when I think of the 12 gigawatts I’ve got, so I need that at the end of the line. Oh, by the way, I have less losses. If I have it down at the end of the line, I have a little bit more of a reliable system. In fact, if I do it right, when I have a reliability and outage, maybe that person is installed storage as well, has an opportunity to still be powered when we have an outage. So from our perspective and from the utility standpoint is we’re saying how can we encourage, if it’s the utility scale, we are required to obligated to interconnect. (00:27:00): Anyone who comes into our service territory, we walk with them to say, what can we do all the way to simple things such as we’ll lease fiber to that solar facility. So something that’s not in their business that’s required to do, they don’t have to think about it. So you take away the thing that we’re saying is how do we remove all the barriers that we could do? Now, I can’t control PJM as a market. I wish I could, but I can’t control our regulators. I did hear that maybe one day we’ll have an AI regulator, so that would be fantastic. As a co-op, we are regulated by a commission. And so from that perspective, I’ll add one more thing and then we can get back into other areas. We’ve also created the opportunity of let’s also finance it because we know that’s the other barrier that people face. As a co-op, we have access to funds from USDA rural utility service that we can essentially, we get the funds at 0% and we can turn around and finance it at a very small increment. If you told me 2% money today, I’m taking it to a quick second. (00:28:07): And so by doing that, not only does it encourage our members to consider what we’re doing, but it also places us in the game with them. So, oh, by the way, when we’re talking to them about solar, we say, Hey, why don’t we talk the big picture storage EV charger? Let’s look at it as an ecosystem. How do we make sure your home is energy efficient to do all this? And so by doing that, you’re creating an environment that really encourages the whole ecosystem to grow Jon Powers (00:28:34): In that 12 gigawatt growth. On the data center side, are you seeing a demand of the end users of those data centers? Because most cases, Google’s not going to own that data center. Some third party is, but Google wants that powered by renewables. So how is that all playing out and what you’re facing? Peter Muhoro, PhD (00:28:51): So that is the big question of the day. And so we’ve done an interesting thing and I’m hoping the State Corporation Commission will approve our request. We’re doing an interesting thing where everyone talks about risk. You want it part by renewables, you want it done by this. So what we’ve said is we want to work with ’em. We do see that demand, by the way. We do see, and we do have the ones that are building their own, at least I could say AWS for example, because they’ve gone public on ours. They’re building their own as well. What we are creating is an interesting way of doing this where we’ve told the commission, we know the risks of data centers, we know the risks of Bitcoin, we’ve seen it. We know the risks of marijuana where you can build all these facilities and then they’re gone in a quick second, or they don’t ever perform as they said that they would. (00:29:44): So what we’re saying is from a capacity standpoint, we will remain as the distribution. So we do not generate, so we’re purely distribution. We’re part owner of a generation and transmission co-op up that’s walking to decarbonize the portfolio, moving more towards, I think they’re almost at 50% renewables. And with a goal, one of the few co-ops that actually has set a goal to go a hundred percent clean by, I believe it’s 2045. But what we are proposing is let’s create this entities that power each of the data centers, but each entity, it’s a subsidiary of the co-op that powers that specific data center, not the entire company. And we are going, if we go to the market or something’s being built, it’s on the credit of the data center and not ours. So we’re protecting us, but we’re saying we’re encouraging you to also do this. So no one’s done this in Virginia and commissioners are a little hesitant when this is the first big thing that they’ve had to do as a full commission. So almost 12 months later, and we’re still waiting for an answer part of the issues with regulators, but we think that that’s one way that now we can find solutions to help drive some of that demand of renewable Jon Powers (00:31:05): Energy. That’s fascinating. So first of all, if you guys have questions, please hit the QR code and submit them. We’ll pull up in a second after this round of questions, I’m going to open it up to questions as well. First of all, I totally forgot to say what I meant by own introduction, who Clean Capital is, and I see my colleagues over here. So for those that don’t know us, we finance and develop and own assets. We’ve invested a billion dollars in 26 states in solar and storage, and we’re looking to grow and find partners. So if you’re looking for partners, can you talk to us? But we really live at that like Jamie does at the policy technology and finance sector. So I want to go back to policy Sean for a second. And as Peter mentioned, there’s still a lot of work to be done just because the policy was signed by the president. That’s not the end game, that’s the beginning. And we’re maybe in the middle innings of the ball game. So folks that aren’t in Washington and don’t really understand how the sausage is made through this, can you talk a little bit about where we are in that sausage making and what the next phase looks like as they’re trying to deploy, what is it, 1.6 trillion in bipartisan infrastructure, bill and I, a dollars to catalyze more public private investment? Sean Gallagher (00:32:19): Yeah, thank you. And there’s a couple of different facets to your question. I’ll start briefly with the bipartisan infrastructure law, which passed in 2021, right Sean Gallagher (00:32:31): One. Sean Gallagher (00:32:33): And we were fortunate enough to have David Crane at our board meeting the other day. David oversees, he’s the undersecretary for the infrastructure at the Department of Energy. He oversees a bunch of new and some old offices that are primarily there to distribute money, about 60 billion from the bipartisan infrastructure law. And they’re racing furiously to get that money committed and out the door because in the event of a change of administration, which we could see if the money’s not out the door, it can be repurposed, it can be held up. It can not be used for its intended purposes. So the couple of their key offices are the Grid deployment office and the MEFC manufacturing and energy supply chains offices. MEFC has something like 20 odd billion to hand out. They are working furiously to make what they call conditional commitments so that the money, while it may not have flowed out the door yet, it’s committed. There’s a contract that’s been signed, and if the grantee hits its milestones, the money will be able to flow out the door and the government can’t pull it back after January 20th next year. So a lot of work going on there now to continue putting the money out the door. Same with the Loan Programs office, which is also under David’s authority. They’re trying to make, work their pipeline. They’ve got an enormous pipeline of advanced projects that they’re trying to get those conditional improvements out to so that they can flow when the milestones are hit. Jaime Carlson (00:34:03): And the loan program has a lot of uncommitted, Sean Gallagher (00:34:07): A ton of uncommitted, probably more than any place else, and that’s the bucket of money that’s probably most at risk in a change of administration scenario. Those projects are just complicated and they don’t want to make any missteps. I mean, anybody here remember Lyra, if you’re old enough, Marta Stoepker (00:34:22): Right? Oh yes, we do. I Sean Gallagher (00:34:23): Mean, it was nonsense then. It’s nonsense now. But that doesn’t mean that people aren’t just ready to pounce on the first mistake that the LPO in particular made. Jon Powers (00:34:32): What was interesting, and I don’t want to go too much into sort the record stuff that David talked about, but he did say what’s having the government view this as an investor? You look at projects, they’re not all going to work out. You’re taking a bet and you’re hoping a lot of ’em work out. Otherwise you’re probably not a very good investor, but in the government, they have to have everyone work out or they’re held to the fire. And it just makes it really challenging to sort of sort through that mess. Jaime Carlson (00:34:57): And I think it’s really interesting, the DOE loan program, which was one of the things that was really kind of set up under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, is that I think they’ve had something like 9% return, which is a pretty good return. It’s basically the only program in the American government that makes the government money actually brings money back in despite Sean Gallagher (00:35:19): The occasional, Jaime Carlson (00:35:20): But it is always the punching bag, right? Sean Gallagher (00:35:23): Yeah, exactly. Where we spend more of our time though is on inflation reduction ACT implementation. And there’s a lot of, you said sausage bacon, there’s a lot of sausage bacon going on there because the law was in many ways, very detailed, but requires the Department of the Treasury to put out rules across a broad spectrum of areas, many of which I’m sure you’re familiar with. Of course, treasury is not an energy agency, has never been an energy agency. So it’s been a challenge for them. But they’ve done kind of an unbelievably good job at getting many, many pieces of very detailed guidance out in a relatively short period of time. I mean, in treasury time spans really, really short period of time. Some of the rules that they, so to deal with agency guidance is you want to have a final rule because final rule is final, right? (00:36:17): And it can only be undone through a pretty complicated process. If you want to undo a final rule, you got to take it to court and get it overturned, or you’ve got to start a new rulemaking process. It’s going to take 12 or 18 or 24 months. So a number of the IRA rules have become final, but lots of ’em aren’t final yet. And so you’re working with things like the energy communities guidance, right? Pretty clear. People are transacting under it, but it’s not final. The things that are final are the prevailing wage and apprenticeship rules that were finalized in June. The low income communities rule for the low income communities, bonus credit was finalized actually last year. The transferability and direct pay rules were finalized in this spring, and I know that there’s people transacting under those rules. Again, pretty clear they’re able to get ’em done pretty quickly. And those rules, they’ve got the highest durability quotient, things like 45 x though as still in the proposed rule stage. And so we would really like to see a final rule out before January 20th. The tech neutral rules, everybody knows the traditional ITC and PTC goes away in 2025 and we have the tech neutral regime come in. Well, proposed rules are out on how that’s going to work. We’d really like to see some final rules on that before the end of the administration. Jon Powers (00:37:37): Jamie, as an investor, as these rules continue to emerge, how do you guys, I know how we view, but how do you guys view some of those uncertainties and risks as you’re thinking about projects? Jaime Carlson (00:37:49): Yeah, we are scenario planning for every potential playout, me both. We leverage their stuff, and then it’s both for our internal team, our parent company, our financing partners, their boards. They all want to talk through every potential scenario. So we’re looking at worst case scenario across the board. And I think one of the important things, most folks probably know this in the room, but it’s not just about how the presidential election goes. It’s also it’s going to be razor thin both for Senate and Congress and House of Representatives. And so there’s a ton of really important, I mean, it’s going to be plus or minus one or two seats on each of those pieces. So all of those things matter. And so we basically done tons of scenario planning across all of them. There’s lots of things that are nerve wracking. There’s electric vehicles we know will be, at least from a talking point, will be targeted. (00:38:48): Domestic content comes up over and over again. It’s not final. Where will that go? I actually think that the area that’s most exposed is the tax credits not actually, we won’t get rid of ira. Right? And that’s a common question I feel like probably all of us get is IRA going to go away? No, it’s here to say, but there’s pieces that can be picked away. I think the tax credits, especially getting rid of the tech neutral piece because an expensive piece, from what I understand, for those of us in kind of more traditional solar storage wind, we won’t be as impacted. Maybe they shorten it from 10 years to seven years. That’s probably a big one. So those are the things that we’re kind of thinking about and spending a lot of time. Okay, how would we play that? I think it’s not pausing us for moving forward though. And I think the nice thing is we’re a real, we’re 20 years old as an industry, not even, right? The first a hundred megawatts, remember as I was saying, first a hundred megawatt project got done in 2012, and so we’re now so much 12 years later, we have really sophisticated financing partners. And so we’re all talking about the risks are, but it hasn’t been, it’s kind of holding hands and jumping in together Jon Powers (00:40:03): Trying to find out how to share it or balance it. Yeah, Jaime Carlson (00:40:05): Ideally. Jon Powers (00:40:06): Yeah. So Peter, I’m going to stay out of politics for a second, but I do want to get into the social movement around climate and demand. And what are you seeing from your customers, the utility side? Are you getting that demand pull from folks? Peter Muhoro, PhD (00:40:19): Well, we’re primarily residential 180,000 meters in A good portion of that from a meter standpoint is residential. One of the things that we’ve done is educating our members, because the reality of it is, and I am a physicist by training. So what I’m about to say, you’re a physicist by Jon Powers (00:40:38): Training. Sean Gallagher (00:40:38): That’s amazing. Peter Muhoro, PhD (00:40:39): Yes. What I’m about to say is not correct, but electrons do not know red or blue actually helps some color. But any physicist, we could talk about that later. So what we look at is how do we make sure that the message gets home on this? How do we make sure we explain what the benefits of this are? Sean Gallagher (00:40:59): At Peter Muhoro, PhD (00:41:00): The end of the day when you don’t explain it, people just don’t get it. So guess what they do? They become a little defensive and they think you are wasting money. And all they want is, Hey, I just want my lights on and my bill’s low. And we could tell them by adding some of these things is exactly what we’re going to make sure as we add more and more storage, that your lights will stay on. As we add more renewables, we’ll see the cost of power going down. And so by educating them, it’s really the way to go. A good example of one of the things we’ve done in one of our, it’s Virginia, so we flip-flop almost every election right now, a Republican house and Senate Democrat. The year before this was Democrat, governor, Senate, Democrat, house Republic. It’s just, so at the end of the day, we don’t want to deal with any of that. What we want to deal with is talking with our legislators regardless of whichever way they are talking to our communities. In fact, I was texting with one of our state legislators who’s going to bring a company that they’re trying to get to build a gigafactory in Virginia, (00:42:14): And we’re going to have a meeting to explain to them why batteries are important for us. But getting that message to our consumers is critical that they get to see the benefits of it. And so we’ve taken that perspective. Another thing we’ve done is we’ve partnered with one of our high schools in probably an area that you would say is relatively red. And guess what? They’re getting training on EV charging. They’re getting training on solar and things like that. And now they’re coming from other places to go to that afterschool program. Sean Gallagher (00:42:45): So Peter Muhoro, PhD (00:42:45): We are seeing an attraction for kids to go to that. To your point, you’ve got to start way earlier. Waiting till that they’re out of high school is kind of what we’ve done with typical line walk processes. You help them go to school, but we’ve got to step this even earlier if we’re going to have that workforce that. So that’s how we’re really approaching the community to make sure that the message gets home Jon Powers (00:43:07): Fascinating. So I’m going to open up to questions in one second. So if you have a question, please raise your hand. We’ll bring a mic around to you or please submit ’em on the QRF code. I do want to talk a little bit about politics. And Marty, you guys have focused in Georgia as a Republican governor. Can you talk about the impact that, the amazing progress you guys are making there has on that community and the politics of that community? Marta Stoepker (00:43:34): Yeah. There is this awesome state legislator. He lives in Dalton. He owns a hotel, he owns a restaurant. He now owns two restaurants, (00:43:44): And he is a Republican. And I think he will stand by the importance of our investment because there’s more people eating at his restaurants and there are more people staying at his hotel. And we also just have an open door policy. We’ve established that we want people to come to our factory in Dalton to see what we’re doing, that we want them to talk to the folks who are working there. And so we’ve really welcomed the community in to see what we’re doing. So Congresswoman Margie Taylor Green has been there, governor Kemp has been there. Senator Ossoff, Senator Warnock, and Vice President Harris. It’s a pretty great group of people, Jon Powers (00:44:21): Not all at the same time. Marta Stoepker (00:44:24): Definitely, definitely the start of a joke. Start of a joke, but I think what we are trying to do is we want to continue to introduce ourselves to folks in the community and beyond, because we want people to know who we are to understand the impact. I know a lot of clean energy manufacturing workers because I work in it, but we want everyone to have that experience because when you understand what they’re doing, they’re very proud of this work. And let’s be real, the city of Dalton doesn’t want us to fail either. That was a huge investment that they made in us. That’s a lot of risk. If we don’t work out, they’re not going to have another chance to maybe go after another clean tech company or other manufacturer in general. And so no one really wants us to fail at this point because all of their legacies from a policy perspective are on the line. Of course, also are the jobs that they tout all the time on their speeches and things. But I think really what is important for us is to constantly keep that door open for people to suit what we’re doing. Jon Powers (00:45:24): Yeah. I love the fact that you guys are in the carpet capital of America, is that what you said? Oh Marta Stoepker (00:45:28): Yeah. Of the worlds. Jon Powers (00:45:29): The world. Yeah, Marta Stoepker (00:45:29): The worlds. Jon Powers (00:45:30): So we have a project at Clean Capital, but it’s on a Brownfield site that’s an old Bethlehem Steel site in Buffalo, which if you guys know me, I’ll talk about Buffalo all day long. But the town where that site is used to have their town logo, and it was all smokestacks from the industry, and they recently changed the town logo to include windmills and solar panels because they love, and it’s a very conservative part of the community. So Sean, on that note, well, first off, if you have a question, please raise your hand. Now, if you go to Sean’s slide for a second, Craig, it’s so important for us in the industry to be telling our stories, right? And C has created a wonderful platform to help us get those stories out and advocate for the successes we’re having. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Sean Gallagher (00:46:17): Yeah. I mean, soul is very popular. We put out some polling today that shows that solar is the most popular form of energy followed by wind. 74% of people say utilities should get more of their power from solar. 87% of people polled support clean energy incentives. That’s pretty good. And 78% of Trump voters supported clean energy incentives. So we’re Jon Powers (00:46:47): Popular, Sean Gallagher (00:46:48): 78% of voters, 78% of Trump voters in the survey. Jon Powers (00:46:50): That’s Sean Gallagher (00:46:51): Wild supported clean energy incentives. So if we want to see more sustained clean energy policy, we need to make sure that people know this. The policy makers know that solar is popular. We have to educate people that solar exists in their communities and it’s creating benefits, and we have to demonstrate that it’s working, but that the policy is working, right? We have to demonstrate that it’s working not just to our investors and our bankers and our colleagues, but to the people who live in the communities and to the media and to the policymakers and to voters who elect the next round of policy makers, none of whom may be paying attention to the stuff we’re saying to each other, right? Sean Gallagher (00:47:35): Yeah. Sean Gallagher (00:47:35): So we’ve really got to tell those stories in a public way and let them know how our industry is booming, how the jobs that we’re creating, the investment they’re creating, the carbon reduction that we’re producing. We need more clean energy champions at every level of the government. We create them with facilities like Marta’s. We create them with lots of hard work in Washington and demonstrating that their projects do create benefits in their districts. And we tell the stories by you telling us about your story so that we can tell them. So that’s what this is. This is a QR code. It links to a Google form on our website where you can tell us about your project that you got done because of the IRA. And if you tell us about that project, you just might get a phone call from us saying, Hey, can we do an event with your state legislator or your congress person that shows off your event, your facility, your project, whatever it is, we need to tell these stories. (00:48:36): If you’re a C member or if you’re not a C member, just tell us about your new solar installation or your new manufacturing facility creative event. Invite your state representative. Tell us that you’ve done that. Play up the good jobs, the local tax benefits, the other strengths of your project. The IRA is working. We showed you the numbers before we’re getting the job done. But if people don’t know about it, it’s almost if it doesn’t count, right? We got to tell people as often we got to show in, and we got to tell as often as we do the things that we do. Jaime Carlson (00:49:04): Thank you. Just on that front, I think this piece around storytellers is important. I’m sure you have thoughts on, this is such an important one. I think it’s something we’re getting better at as an industry. I don’t know that administrations always are the best at, but how to really tell the local story where it’s like your trusted source. I’ve been thinking a lot about this, about local news is oftentimes the news, they don’t trust national media, but it touches the local news story. We have a story. We’re finishing up projects that are feeding a data center near Midlothian, Texas, which was a 20,000 person cement town that then we also ended up getting all of our US steel from. And now essentially it’s doubled in population because there’s a data center and there’s a steel mill that’s up and running. And how do we tell that story about, and I think you were touching on it with the workers. Oh, aunt Sally has a, or cousin Bobby has a job there, and it’s just about a job story, and I think that’s the piece that’s going to actually resonate. Yeah, totally. Is just the human side of it. Marta Stoepker (00:50:04): Yeah, I mean, I think not only of our workers are obviously an incredible voice to lift up, but it’s also the folks who are living in the town that are seeing the change that these manufacturing facilities are banging. I’m from Detroit. I dunno if y’all all been there. Manufacturing went away. It’s been a little tough. So these towns can literally grow with a manufacturer in that town. And the more that we can have an impact on that town, when we send every reporter that asks me to come, except for maybe one has also come to our factory, and I’m like, go to this bar, go to this restaurant, go to this hotel. Because they will tell you, these folks will also tell you what the economic impact is for them. We are supporting a local economy, so it’s not just the worker, but it’s the people in the communities that know the workers that are literally eating breakfast with them and having coffee with them. They’re their neighbors. And so really trying to also integrate them into the story as well. And the local news piece is huge. So if you do not pay for media in this room, please start If it’s your local NPR station, because it’s really, really important that these music organizations exist on a local level. They’re going away, and if we don’t have them to tell that story through, then it’s a lot harder to sell what we’re doing. So, I mean, that’s kind of how we’ve been approaching it. Jon Powers (00:51:23): Yeah. If you follow SIA or Abby on LinkedIn, one of the things you’ve noticed she’s done in the last year, which has been wickedly powerful, she does these local media tours where, the way she explained it, I’m probably going to get this wrong, but she’ll sit in a studio and be able to go into all these local stations around the country on a regular basis talking about the data that’s coming out, et cetera. It’s a really powerful tool. Sean Gallagher (00:51:46): She’s doing that tomorrow morning. Jon Powers (00:51:47): She’s doing it tomorrow morning. Nice. Marta Stoepker (00:51:49): A SAT tour is what we call it. Jon Powers (00:51:50): What is it? Marta Stoepker (00:51:51): It’s a satellite tour. Jon Powers (00:51:52): Yeah, satellite tour. We don’t all have to do satellite tours, (00:51:56): But we all have to do something. So one of the things that I, I’m going to take the mic back for a second here as a moderator and say, I’ve had a personal mission this year of a call to action of our industry that we have to get out. We have to take some level in action, whether it be helping to tell your story, writing an op-Ed, to your local paper, meeting with your congressman, donating to a campaign, joining Clean Energy for America. Andrew, stand up real quick. If you don’t know Andrew, you should check out Clean Energy for America. They’re really creating a powerful voice for the workers in the clean energy industry to be out there advocating for the work we’re doing. By the way, having an awesome debate watch party tonight if you’re interested. I was wearing super early, sorry. No, it’s fine. I was like short. (00:52:42): If we want to see things like the IRA and the infrastructure bill stay in place, we have to take actions as our industry to do that. So we all have to personally take an action between now and November to defend the stuff we care about. So please think about how do you walk out of here and think about whether it be a personal donation, getting your company involved, writing an op-ed, we all have to take some action, or we’re going to face the consequences of that next year because policy and politics are combined. You can’t separate them. If you think you’re going to get good policy without getting politics, it’s never going to happen. Right? The oil and gas industry has understood this for decades. We are getting much more active and strong in what we’re doing as an industry. We’ve grown up, but we’ve a lot more work to do. And it’s not just between now and November. It’s about putting in place the infrastructure as an industry to fight this fight for the rest of the decade. So we get 44 trillion deployed. Lots of jobs in places like Dalton, Georgia moving forward. We have a few minutes left. I dunno if there’s any questions, Craig, that came in. So let’s go to these real quick and I will moderate. Oh, an interesting question about utility scale projects and how do we actually get that model working again? Any thoughts Sean Gallagher (00:53:57): About utilities? I think Jon Powers (00:53:59): Utilities, Sean Gallagher (00:54:01): Yeah, Jon Powers (00:54:01): Let’s ask Peter. Peter Muhoro, PhD (00:54:04): Sure, I’ll take it. First of all, the utility has to be willing, and I will say this, I’m on the super board. We’ve got co-ops, Munis and IUs, and everyone is singing the same song and talking and saying the same thing. At this point, we’re saying we need to do this. Now there’s also a thing called Doug’s dumb utility Guys. We’ve always done it this way. We recognize that culturally there’s a lot that we have to change internally, which will probably drive some of the regulatory barriers that we see. So there’s no buying internally, especially from the leadership. Not so much go beyond just what you’re being told you have to do, but go where it needs to go. And that to me is if I was picking one thing, that’s what I would say to the leadership of any utility. Just do what you know is the right thing to do and all other barriers will slowly come out. Jon Powers (00:55:01): I’m going to try to bring these questions together with one final question for everyone and I’m going to start Peter and ask folks to work down. If we were sitting here in 2030 and talking about what got us to successful place we are as an industry, what has to happen between now and then? Peter Muhoro, PhD (00:55:18): I’ll say from my standpoint is partnering as a utility. I want everyone to partner with me, come talk to us. It’s not the days where, well, you’re solar developer, this and this. We’re not going to talk to you. We want manufacturing talk to us because at the end of the day, we are going to be that thing that connects the consumer, that delivers that election and partnering with the utility and everyone who’s come to work with us and partnered with us, they get a lot more easier when they go to the county to get approvals because we are known by the counties. And so that’s the one thing that I would say. That’s what got us there. Marta Stoepker (00:55:53): Awesome. Peter Muhoro, PhD (00:55:53): Parto Marta Stoepker (00:55:54): In 2030. Well, I’m pregnant if you couldn’t tell. It’s not a beer belly. My son will be five. And so I think in 2030 what I’m really hoping to see is while we’re driving around and we’ll seeing solar panels everywhere, I’ll be like, I know the people who made those, (00:56:15): But we are still such a small part. The US manufacturing industry is so small from a global standpoint. It is very, very competitive. It is very, very hard to be investing downstream in the supply chain. That’s why we’re seeing more module investment than we are sell. I think you said 10 gigawatts of sell. We’re going to be building 40 gigawatts of projects. That is not enough. If we’re only making 3.3 gigawatts of wafers all made by one company Q cells, that is not enough. Right? It’s not good for our climate. It’s cleaner to make it here. I see this sustainability and supply chain. Yes, we are thinking about that all the time because we also don’t want to be perpetuating a problem that we’re trying to fix. So what we need to be doing is thinking IRA is an incredible tool and I do not want to diminish that. But we also have to continue to push for more and for more if we really want to see manufacturing happen here. And all of us can say in this room, I know someone who made this panel Sean Gallagher (00:57:16): Amazing. Sean. What I say is that the clean energy, I like revolution better than transition. It can’t be stopped, right? But it can be slowed down. It can really be slowed down. And I think what we need to focus on, what I hope we have done and five years from now is focused on growing our political power. Right? Today, our business savvy, our business maturity, our financial maturity, our technological maturity exceeds our political maturity. And that lack of political maturity was okay when we were spec on the wall, when we were a novelty, but we’re not a novelty anymore. We sure we’re only what five or six or 7% of overall generation in the country. But the queues are all solar and storage, all solar and storage, the interconnection queues. So we’re on all the new capacity additions are majority solar in the past 2012 months. (00:58:19): So we’re on the cusp of being the dominant energy source in this country. It might not seem that way, but it’s true. And so we’re at the point where we’re not just a novelty, we’re taking market share away from incumbents. And incumbents don’t go down without a fight. Incumbents API and the oil companies, the gas companies, they’ve been playing big money politics for years and years at every level of government. And if we’re going to succeed, if we’re going to ramp, if we’re really going to scale, we’ve got to start doing more of that. We’ve got to start playing big money politics at every level of government. So I’d like to see us by 2030. We see a big increase in our industry’s ability to exercise political power. So that’s more solar and storage champions in both parties at the state and federal level. Expanded strategic partnerships with unions, with conservatives, with everybody in between and a and healthy solar pack. That’s the sea of pack and lots of money going to support solar champions in legislatures and in the congress. Lots of money. Love Jaime Carlson (00:59:33): It. Love that. Jamie. I echo that. I was trying to think of someone in DC once told me there’s the three Ps, policy, politics and procedures, and you got to have all three to move things forward. So I was trying to think of something like that for this. I got to two of three, but basically I think it’s like predictability. We don’t need predictability partnerships and risk sharing. I couldn’t get to the last one. We’ll work on it. But the predictability is we just need to know what the general playing field, there’s always going to be some changes and we can adapt, but can we generally know what the roadmap? And I think we have a pretty good shape around that risk sharing is that we’re no longer a siloed industry. You kind of used to be the tech folks are over here and the financing folks are over here and there’s a lot of risk and we have to share that. It means supply chain and developers and sponsors with financing parties. Really trying to think through how do we do that together. (01:00:31): And then the partnership is just like, we’re not going to get there. The data center piece, the load increase, that’s going to be one of the biggest things that we see. I think that’ll be the biggest thing we’re looking back on of what actually played out. There’s a lot of noise around it. I think there’ll be a lot of movement. Google and Microsoft are both showing that their emissions are going up for the first time in a decade because of this. And so we only get there if we have the data centers and the developers like us who are building the solar and this wind and partnering with utilities. The co-ops honestly have been some of the most creative around that. But we only get there if we actually get out of how we’ve always been doing it and really kind of work through it together. Jon Powers (01:01:12): Yeah. What’s interesting for me is, I mean, first of all, thank you for the advice from everyone and if you’ve heard anything, it’s get involved be, whether it be policy, politics, get involved, help yourself a story. I think the thing that post IRA was not considered when it was done is something Peter it hit on is the absolute demand growth we’re having in the United States, which hasn’t happened in decades. And that mostly driven by AI and mostly driven by data centers. It’s here, it’s real and we need to be powering that. But if we’re not taking the political actions to start to power that you’re going to have more coal plants stay online longer, you’re going to have more natural gas plants being ramped up. There’s other solutions that are going to step into that void. So we all need to take really strong actions so we can have the advocacy and impact we need to drive it. So first of all, thank you to the panel for the phenomenal conversation. Thank you for the questions. As I mentioned, this is part of the experts only podcast, which you can get more of@cleancapital.com and post the conference, we’ll be putting it out through social media. So thank you everybody. Awesome. Jaime Carlson (01:02:19): Thank